The Guardian has
carried me through the void for as long as I can remember....I've known
nothing else. Never have I entertained a thought that the day would
come when the Guardian would cease to walk...on and on...through the
fields...beneath a blood red sky...With me...Clutching me in one of
it's huge hands.....

Times are changing. Changing for you. You have a dream. A bad
dream. -Wrong. -All wrong. The Guardian speaks for once. Stops and
speaks, -instead of ceasingly carrying you...The Guardian speaks.
-Laments. It moans about its 'old bones' and how 'everything crumbles
to dust' after.....a while.....
Will I crumble to dust....? You ask it mentally.
You do not know...I do not know.... the Guardian....resonates into every part of you.
It puts you down. Never before has it ever let you leave its hand....
This is as far as these old bones can go; I can no longer take another step.. The Guardian laments, You must go alone from here...
-But I cannot move on my own, You answer it mentally.
Perhaps we shall both perish here, The Guardian moans and groans, wearily, This is as far as these old bones can go...
You answer: -But.....I love you...
...These old bones.. The Guardian responds, before it crumbles apart...into a pile of dust.

Now
you lie on the soft, gray grass...staring into the vast, blood-red sky.
-Except the grass is not really grass. -It is ashes. ASHES!! You cannot
move your eyes.....You cannot move any part of yourself...yet you can
somehow see every bit of landscape that surrounds you...even up to the
horizon. Impotent, you fret.

The child of the void runs by in the
distance; Its ever-changing form flickers in the minimal light...The
rats mob It and race around Its nebulous form......and then the rats
turn their attention towards you. You feel a cold terror as the rats
close in around you, inflicting upon you a claustraphobic sting.
Then...as quickly they leave...as fleeting as the Creature Kid...that
which is no longer visible. You feel at ease now. Relaxed. -At ease.......

Still....Here...You
lie on the soft, gray grass...staring into the vast blood, red sky.
Some say that the sky is red because SZoergai Angel of the Void
has its own personal sun. -A sun that rests between the Hellmouth -and-
the gate to the Otherworld, -that shocking world of contrast- where
objects cast shadows (some things even more than one!) and where
creatures burn like stars and live for the moment.........Without
ZSoergai's meanger light...the Void would be as black as the
Hellmouth's gape....! Alas!! ZSoergai's sun is useless, for this void
is devoid of anything worth seeing. One place is the same as another
around here.....Still, you felt better when you got to travel around
with The Guardian....You got to be together...You and it............

You
quickly become surrounded by The Forsaken. Your reveries of ZSoergai
must have drawn their attention for ZSoergai was once forsaken
itself.....Once. It watched and made a decision.
The forsaken
creatures taunt you in their strange, rapid-slurring speech...what with
its awkward murmurring and long, lengthly pauses. Some of them poke at
you with their flaming swords. Some play at dismembering you...yet you
remain unharmed and whole. Those creatures are after all but
watchers...they cannot act in this barren world...They are but
insubstancial; the light from their swords reflects not upon their
inky, colorless forms...Losing interest in you...The Forsaken move
on....dissipate.........
Still you lie on the soft, ashy grass,
staring mesmerized, into the vast, blood-red sky. You're not sure if
you ever sleep. Sometimes, you slip into a trance and forget to
think...Then, snapping into awareness, you hear giggling....hear it in
the distance. Girlish laughter.
Two beastly demon girls bounce up to
you on their short, fat little legs. One is dressed like a princess;
the other is adorned in flashy, celebrity-fare.
Look! It's a little gentleman!!! the princess exclaims, clapping her hairy, lumpy and clawed hands.
What is it? the Diva Friend asks, Look at it....It has neither claws nor fangs nor horns nor tusks!!
Princess replies, Maybe
he is one of those creatures from the Otherworld. I've seen pictures of
them in books. They must be dolls, and he must be a prince among them!
The Princess and her diva friend decide to bring you home.

The
Princess and The Diva take turns carrying you towards ZSoergai's Sun.
The gate to the Otherworld and the terrible Hellmouth neighbor one
another in this harsh region. The closer you get to ZSoergai's Sun, the
more unbearable the blood-red sky seems, burning into your form. You
squeeze your eyes shut and beg for relief from the intense and constant
glare from ZSoergai's Sun.
The Princess and The Diva carry you
towards the Hellmouth they call home. A group of the forsaken loiter
near the entrance; they stand in front of a fire that releases no
heat....Similiar to their flaming swords...their favored weapons.
The
horrid, tarantula-cute little demon-girls carry you through the
Hellmouth and you can see a shining, golden castle in the distance. It
is surrounded by a moat of liquid fire. The girls giggle and chatter
happily, but suddenly their pleasant twittering comes to a stop....as a
huge, mean, bulky demon-bully swaggers towards the two girlfriends. He
points at you and asks, "What is that thing?!?"
The Diva is holding you at the moment and answers with an indignant tone, "He's a doll-prince from the Otherworld! -Now LEAVE US ALONE!!"
The
bully sneers and replies, "He looks weak. My father once told me that
he was like one of them once, back before he attained his awesome
powers..."
"Well...I LIKE HIM and I'm going to marry him, The Princess retorts, "-So NNYAAAAHHH!!!"
"..No
WAY! You're going to marry ME!! I'm a better prince...Now give him
here," The bully demands, "I'll bite his arms and legs and head off,
and eat his middle!"
You become consumed with dread. How
does it feel...to have ones arms and legs and head bitten off? -Would
you still feel great pain...Be aware? You become possessed with a vivid
memory of how your guardian felt, just before it crumbled to dust.
Pieces of it fell off here and there...Maybe you would turn to dust as
well...
-But you stop worrying about it before too long. -Especially
since The Princess and The Diva run away from the bully
screaming.....You muse...brood upon The Guardian. You sink into sorrow.

The
girls find refuge in a comfortable room. Once there, they dress you in
fine clothing and seat you upon a throne. Then they prop a mirror up,
squeezing your thin, stiff fingers around the handle. They leave
you.......You become entranced within the reflection of your own
bright, aesthetic beauty. You stare into the mirror. Some time passes
and it occurs to you to have a look around....

You notice
something bowing in front of you. It is a robust and stocky...white
dog. It was placed in a position of acquiescance, yet its teeth are
bared in a macabre grin. It is crouched in a position of playfulness.
Its manner is taunting....Daring. Off to one side is a dour-appearing
demon dressed in a snappy tuxedo with tails on the backside.
It's about time...A bored and sardonic voice projects into your mind, I never thought you'de ever look away from that mirror for long enough to notice us.."
How long had you been looking into that mirror?!?
I'm sorry,You apologize, addressing the white dog, Was that you who spoke just now?
The white dog answers, NO, that was the butler...I'm the court jester by and by..
What's going on? You inquire Why are we here?
We are the lost souls who have had the misfortune of becoming The Princess's playthings, the demon-butler replies, I was stupid enough to anger the king; he punished me by turning me into this ridiculous doll.
What happened to you? I asked the white dog.
He answered sharply, I
was originally one of the ever-lasting forsaken! -Then some fool who
felt like dealing with magic he didn't understand.....felt like
summoning my soul to the Otherworld and then imprisoning it there! If I
ever get free...I'm going to........! Well, just try to imagine the
most horrible thing that could befall a living creature.
You do not have to think long before you return with a horrible, damnable idea. Well...I
guess that means you are going to sever the creature's arms and legs
and head...and then eat its middle.....hhhhmmmmm..........?
Now, there's the right idea... The White Dog muses.

You
talk for a little while longer, the three of you. The White Dog
expresses the same opinion as the demon girls: You resemble one of the
Otherworldly creatures. You do not remember ever being there...You do
not remember a lot of things. Then the dog proceeds to tell a part of
the legend of ZSoergai that you had thought you'de forgotten.

It's
story goes something like this: Once The Void and The Otherworld were
one and the same. SZoergai, -then a creature like you- became a
powerful and terrible magician. It had gathered all of its inner,
supernatural force and concentrated it into a glorious, personal sun.
Alas! The sun was too close to the earth and too bright. Creatures
built walls to block out the terrible light and the sun was imprisoned
in The Void, which is barren of all life, except for The Forsaken and
The Creature Kid. Some say that the Forsaken are dead Gods and that The
Creature Kid is a living God who is the center of a deceased religion.

Time
goes by....Unfanthomable amount of time. Soon, you run out of things to
say to The Butler and The White Dog. You remain silent and entertain
yourself by staring at your own golden-otherworldy beauty once
more.....but that is only satisfying for so long. After a while, your
aesthetic brilliance becomes dulled by familiarity. Mercifully, you are
still able to fall into trances that let you cease to think for a
while. Occassionally, your mind turns to The Guardian, yet it is still
too soon...Painfully ever too soon. You spend much more time imagining
what it would be like to weep........

How long have you been in
this room? How long? You seem to have no concept of time, yet The
Butler and White Dog obviously do, and this ability pains them to no
end. You observe The Butler and study how his eyes roll further and
further up into his head over time. The White Dog's grin becomes more
and more intense.........

As you gaze incessantly into the mirror, an idea flashes into your mind and you express it to the others, It has suddenly occurred to me that this mirror I'm holding is a portal to The Otherworld. Maybe we could use it to escape.
The Butler's eyes roll further up into his head until they disappear all together.
How are we going to use that escape route? The White Dog inquires through clenched teeth, None of us can move.
-But
then a vortex opens up and grabs the three of you. You are no longer
resting on the throne; you are somewhere else...In a place of contrast
and shadows. The White Dog becomes animated and runs off barking madly
and foaming at the mouth. The Butler is insubstancial, but an
Otherworld Creature ventures by and it jumps into its body.
"I'm free!" it shouts and promptly vomits on the ground.

Dazed,
you relish in your power to move about....Walk. You are now free from
ceaselessly wandering through that Void of the dead Gods and false
prophets. How did you end up there in the first place? Well, you are as
old as ZSoergai, whose arms, legs and head were burnt off and whose
middle became The Void. You are not a God. That means that you
must have, at some point, turned your back on the living, redeeming God
to spew forth silly fantasies and meaningless nonsence. -But those
delusions were only able to carry you for so long. Now that you are
liberated in this world, you can have an adventure, go on a quest to
find the missing pieces of your soul.

Enough time has passed
that I no longer miss The Guardian or can remember what it looks like.
God have mercy on me, a half-formed person.