Darkness swirled all around me, as if it were a living thing, with its own hopes and dreams—likely as unfulfilled as my own. It encompassed the entire world. I stood in complete black except a small light that came from the Dragons-eye amulet which hung around my neck.

  Holding it out in front of me, I was surprised that I felt no pain. I reached down, feeling for my injuries, and they weren’t there—

  I was completely healed.

  Before I could fully wrap my mind around what was happening, I saw something out in that eternal gloom. An outline. Squinting, I could just make out the silhouette of a figure. As they came closer, I saw they wore a hood, but it was still too dark to tell more.

  “What have we here?” they asked, their voice drifting forward like a pleasant aroma on an autumn day.

  Something about them already pissed me off.

  They came ever closer, and I noticed their feet weren’t touching the ground. They flew… or hovered, above a sea of rippling black tar that seemed to manifest wherever they went. As for myself, looking down, I saw nothing at all below me, and my heart leapt into my throat as I imagined falling into it forever, never hitting the ground, but never dying either.

  An eternal life without smokes… a fate worse than death.

  “Wh-wha-what-is-this,” I stammered out, my entire body shaking; from fear or lack of nicotine, I could not say.

  The hooded figure drifted ever closer, coming into the light of the Dragons-eye.

  “Careful…” Dragon warned. “This one is a dangerous foe.”

  “Dangerous…” I muttered in response, but sensed nothing of the sort.

  “Dangerous?” they repeated. “Yes, I suppose you could say that. But dangerous to you? Hardly.”

  The cloaked individual was now directly in the light of the Dragons-eye. The hood they wore was embedded with intricate silver weave, and the colors of it seemed to shift as often as they breathed. From the inside of the hood, in stark contrast to the world around us, was a blinding white glow. So powerful that I couldn’t see any features of their face.

  Swallowing hard, and forcing my nerves to calm, I asked, “Where are we?”

  “Hmmm,” they replied, as if I were a complete moron.

  I was right to dislike them.

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “Still ignorant, I see,” they finally said. “This before you is the in-between. The place between worlds. You are a traveler. A walker. A world-hopper..”

  “World-hopper,” Dragon repeated in my mind, as if the words held some sort of deeper meaning.

  I ignored the Dragon.

  “And what is that exactly?” I asked. “Or is it as simple as it sounds?”

  The hooded figure held their hands high to the sky, or what would be the sky if such a thing existed here.

  “It is everything!” they bellowed out, almost as if they were in pain.

  The dark shifted suddenly, swirling, like water in the faucet of a sink. The inky black drained from the world, leaving us standing in its absence. When the shroud was lifted, I looked out in awe and wonder, my mind not fully comprehending how this was possible. There we stood in the deep vastness of space, the completeness of the universe around us in full light and spectacle.

  The figure pointed a long gloved finger behind me. “Look!”

  Reluctantly, I turned to the sight of two planets, one as red as Mars, but different. Full of life. The other was blue, matching Earth. No… it was Earth! The two planetary forces were engaged in some type of battle, for lack of a better word. A battle where multicolored strands of light tried to envelop the other, and, between them, the inky black swirled, integrated with strands of light.

  It was a sight unlike anything I could have ever imagined.

  “Beautiful, is it not?” the hooded figure asked, gliding to my side.

  I couldn’t pry my eyes away—I was speechless. Utterly and completely silent.

  “I do this for you so that you can understand. My power—this power—it can be yours. No, it will be yours.”

  I turned back towards the hooded figure, hoping to catch a glimpse of the god I spoke with, but inside the hood, it was still too pure—too bright.

  “All of this could be… mine?” I asked.

  “Will be yours,” they repeated. “Will be.”

  “Don’t listen!” Dragon boomed into my head, sending pain flooding through my body. “They Lie! They Lie—”

  Then, as if someone slammed closed a door, Dragon’s voice was gone. Simply vanished. And in its place, there was only the soft silence of the universe, whispering sweet poems of eternity in my head.

  “That one is… unexpected,” the hooded figure said. “But it doesn’t matter. They are weak. Not like you.”

  “Dragon is the weak one?” I asked. “And I’m strong?” I couldn’t help but to laugh. “It’s a Dragon. How could I possibly be stronger?”

  The figure clapped me on the shoulder. “Dragons are weak… compared to gods. Now, it is time for you to go back. I merely wished to show you your future. We will meet again at Eternity’s End. Or perhaps sooner. The future is… unresolved.”

  “My future…” I muttered. “At Eternity’s End.”

  The figure sighed. “You’ll get there. Soon. Soon. Soon...”

  The voice drifted away.

  A silver portal appeared before me, the same that I had taken in my living room—that felt so long ago now.

  Looking around, I realized that I was all alone now, the hooded figure—the god—nowhere to be found. Looking at the Dragons-eye, I could sense rage flowing from it. Pure, unbridled fury. Despite my sudden fear of it, I held it close, and stepped through the portal.