The Voidstone Fields. Typically not a place you want to be. The connection between the Fields and the Eternal Dream is intermittent at best, and it's fairly close to the Negative, giving it a distinctively chaosian and rather weird existance. But when you need demigod-level weaponry, you need to come to a place like this, where wild magic still lives.

I am standing on one of the larger voidstones. All around me is deep fog made of the stuff of creation and the stuff of destruction. I subconciously wonder what it would be like to study it under a microscope. The dual nature of the fog would be fascinating to observe in action.

But enough about fog. Interesting as it may possibly be, there are other matters more pressing. The athame stuck in the black existance of the voidstone I am on spits lightning in a chaotic yet not totally random fashion. Said lightning keeps hitting my hand, the one wrapped around the athame's handle, causing quite a bit of pain. But I perservere and finish the pentacle, then release my grip. The athame is consummed by the dark rock, and the bizarre but expected inverse lightning stops. I begin chanting the spell to wring the weapon I saught out of the raw creation present in the fog here, then wait for it to arrive.

In time, I would come to use the weapon I had summoned in serious combat. For a time, though, the closest it would come to use in battle was when I dueled with my own illusions for practice with it. But this time would not last long. I am always ready for the time when my father's throne becomes vacant, and don't have long to wait. In a few decades, I recieve an email from my sister Sonja, containing two words: "It's time."

The battle for the Eternal Dream was on.

***********************************************************

Sonja is quite possibly my favorite sister, but we haven't seen each other in so long that I've managed to forget what she looks like. The only things I remember are her long black hair and slanted eyes - both characteristics being due to her bastard birth on a continent called Asia on a world known as Earth. I had totally forgotten about how perfect her smile is, how pleasurable it is to look at her.

As we are meeting on - or more accurately in - Sonja's favorite world, I am dressed rather formally. Allies we may be, and even friends (an unusual occurrence, that, among the children of Tasmos), but the rules of courtly decorum still demand attention. My own vestments are in my traditional colors: silver and dark red. Sonja wears clothing more casual than mine, as is her right on her own world: a knee-length dress in her colors of black and gray.

We talk for a while about various unimportant matters and exchange the usual pleasantries. I compliment her on the beauty of this place - which is one of many bubbles of air in the vast sea that forms this world - and she makes similar remarks about some of my own existences that she has visited and can recall from memory. We reminisce about childhood memories - childhood, that magical, almost-forgotten time when family was family, not rivals - and experience joy and sadness as we do. It takes us quite a while to get to the real purpose of this meeting. I am the first to bring it up.

"So", I say. "Dad's dead."

"Indeed he is", replies Sonja.

"Someone's going to have to replace him. Nature abhors a vacuum", I continue.

Once again, she replies with "Indeed."

"Better one of us than one of the others", I say.

She takes a while to reply. When she does, her response is more of less what I had expected:

"I accept your offer of alliance, Alexander. Nothing has changed with my military situation, except for the addition of three new worlds and a corresponding influx of troops. Intelligence-wise, I have been focusing on Xavier and Katrina. You?"

I grin weakly. "You know me, Sonja. I've spent my time using the Technocracy and the Fate Core to keep improving what I've got, not adding more territory. I just can't keep track of as much stuff as you. I'd estimate us to be about equal in terms of firepower. I've been tracking Xavier as well, but the rest of my intelligence network has been spent looking out for the Fallen." A pause. "Oh, and there's this."

I unsheathe my new weapon. It is a longsword, one half gleaming white, the other a dull and featureless gray.

"Sonja, meet Lux Tenabrae."

"So you've finally done it", she says after a while. "You're crazy, you know that?"

Another pause, then "But it's the kind of craziness that's going to win us the Eternal Dream."

***********************************************************

Our combined training camp is erected rather quickly - hardly surprising, given the vast number of workers available. It proves to be quite an odd experience to survey it Positioned in a neutral world consisting of a vast forest where the trees have long since become dead, and more specifically in a natural clearing in said forest, it is ringed by a wooden palisade defended by Sonja's archers and a few of my Reality Hackers. I find that term quite amusing, by the way: They might be able to hack into local existences, but changing anything about global reality is far beyond them. Or actually anyone, save the Harbinger, who won't. But explaining the nature of things to such has proved pointless. Anyway, what makes the camp odd is the mixture of technological eras. Sonja's forces are mostly archers (with, it is worth noting, enchanted arrows that I have seen take down tanks) and a few casters, but mine are Reality Hackers, giant robots, and cyborgs. The rest of the place mirrors this mixture.

"So, what do you think the others are up to?", Sonja asks, interrupting these thoughts. She is dressed similarly to the way she was during the first meeting I chronicled to you - that is, the way she almost always dresses. I myself am wearing more informal attire than at that meeting, as we are no longer on one of Sonja's worlds.

"Well", I reply, "my intelligence has Xavier in the Greyscape as of two weeks ago, and many bizarre creatures follow him. The Fallen were sighted on an unnamed world near Argent - you may have heard of an out-of-place chaosian plane there, which would be the same one - and appear to be resting there. Collin is probably going to try to renew his old alliances. Most of the others I don't know about, though a nuclear submarine was recently invented in Meretus, suggesting that Jake or David may have influence there, possibly."

"My intel agrees with yours about Xavier. I also know that Katrina is in Despite, recuperating from a chaosian wound."

This second statement intrigued me. Apparently chaosian abilities interest more than myself. Either Katrina had attempted a voidspell - possibly akin to the one I had used earlier in this story - and lost control of it, or she had been attacked by a creature from the lower existences. Come to think of it... If Xavier is commanding "bizarre" creatures, then maybe those creatures have chaosian existence, implying that he had summoned them. And if that's the case, maybe he had one of them attack Katrina!

Bah. Conspiracy theories and paranoia. We Shifters are full of both. I put the thought aside.

"It might be a good idea for one of us to go visit her.", I say. "At the very least, we can figure out why she was fooling around with chaos."

She nods. "You go. Katrina and I have some issues."

I feel it prudent to not dig any deeper, say that I will go, and head off for Despite.