Lion's Gift

Chapter 26

"Let's talk for a little bit, Vivienne Anika Raji," The Most Powerful murmurs, as if weary of what he has to tell me. "First of all, this isn't a dream. Well, your dream self is in this place, and only we can see you, but this place here," he gestures with his hands, "Is real. The creature realm is like the human one; what happens there happens here, and vice versa. Both realms mirror each other," I silently scoff but nod at him as if I believe what he is saying. My brain is a messed-up place, and this is a messed-up dream.

The Most Powerful looks at me like he knows what I am thinking and sighs. "I know that it is hard to believe, but just keep an open mind," We stop walking as he puts a hand out to halt our meager progress. The hall has expanded infinitely now.

"You see the images lining the mosaics, like a border?" He asks quietly, and I question myself for a moment if I actually heard him.

"Yes, they are all beautiful, in their own way," I say thoughtfully. The Most Powerful shakes his head, chuckling.

"For some reason I always thought that you would be more like my partner than myself, even when all the prophecies said you'd be the best combination of us,"

"Really?" I murmur. If my brain is going to mess with me, might as well play along. "Well, Most Powerful, what is your real name?" He looks at me, a little taken aback, but he quickly recovers.

"Seeing as you are going to become our savior and Queen, I might as well tell you. My real name translated into your tongue is Abacus, and no, the abacus was named after me, not the other way around," I give a slight smile at his joke. "Moving on, though, I must quickly explain to you the rest of our history, little Queen," I grimace at his new nickname but motion for him to continue. I am curious what my brain can conjure up.

"Long, long ago, there was only nothing. Nothing at all, except for God, which we don't know for sure, but the most religious of us believe so. His name is something that cannot be spoken nor heard. Only the brightest Light angels or the most shadowed Dark angels could take His name, but anyone who happened to hear would combust into ashes," I almost ask him what exactly the angels are, but the wistful expression on his face makes me keep my mouth shut.

"As the legends go, He became tired of holding the nothing together, and looked down at the nothingness and decided to create living beings that would be trained in order to combat something murky and evil that lay beyond the nothing. This evil, murky creature was created when He first tried to create a world where every being was as powerful as Himself. He realized that the creatures held too much power and too little goodness, and when He destroyed the world it became the vile creature, just a little less powerful than the original creatures," I nod to show I am listening and he continues, pointing at specific places in the border. I see a black sludge take the form of a man with red eyes, trying to break into the black of the nothing, while a giant humanoid figure made of golden light held the sludge back.

"That first world is what we now call the Dead Realm. Even though the remains formed into the evil being, we refer to it as the Dead realm when we need to speak of it before its destruction. Then was formed our realms, His first and last successful attempts at an army. At first, He tried to make animals and organisms into an army, but then realized they didn't have nearly enough brain power. When he re-created the human universe, he made it basic and without much magic, not too much power. At the same time, when he re-created the creature universe he made it with much more magic, but not nearly as much power he put into the Dead Realm. What you humans understand as outer space is only a tiny speck of the hundreds of galaxies in your universe, which you already know, but what you never knew for sure is that there is no life anywhere except for your planet. No aliens, no plants, no organisms, because they all died out since they all had too little power. Only Earth survived. Since the creature universe mirrors the human world, the same thing happened, except the creatures that died out had too little good will," Goodness, where does my psychopath brain come up with all this?