• It was there, right there! Aeve could see it now, clearer than ever before, the path forwards that would take her home to Suule. The path was shining with rainbow light that drifted down from the Eternal Amaranth flower like a fine powder, dusting everything in a many hued brightness.
    The Amaranth flower, the bloom created by the goddess Nuei, who then decided that it was too beautiful for mortals to comprehend and kept it with her up in the heavens, gifting few with its vision in their dreams. How it shone, as though every rainbow that had ever existed were held in its petals.
    ‘Aeve, is this the path that you spoke of?’
    Aeve spun around, ‘Raeys, you should not be here!’ she said gently, ‘This path isn’t yours to walk.’
    Raeys smirked and looked into her eyes, his brown eyes to her green, and reached forwards to flick her brown hair, ‘As if I’d let you go alone.’ He said confidently, grinning, ‘After all, you’re hopeless.’
    ‘Hopeless?’ Aeve said loudly, gritting her teeth, ‘Right, so what would that make you? I can’t think of the right word, considering you are so far beyond hopeless that I’ve lost sight of you.’
    Both of them stood there silent for a moment, and then all at once burst out laughing.
    There was a silent ripple that suddenly rolled underneath them, the path beneath their feet shuddering and falling away, letting them fall into a void of white shining light where darkness could not exist. There were no shadows, no places that were brighter than others, and no signs of life other than their own.
    You should not be here, children of man.
    ‘Aeve?’ Raeys called, ‘Please tell me that you heard that too.’
    You should not be here, yet you are. How come you to be here, I wonder...
    Looking around frantically and terrified at still falling, Aeve nodded, ‘I hear it. But who is speaking? There is no one here but us.’
    In that you are mistaken, child of man, for I am here, and have been here for many eons. As such, it has been a long time since I have had a visitor. Will you speak with me before you die?
    Raeys tried to slow his fall with his cloak, but only succeeded in making his body spin around and tangling the cloak around him. ‘I for one would be happy to talk to the one who saved us from our fall.’ He shouted, his voice cracking with fear, ‘'Cause I don’t want to die here.’
    If I help you, you will stay a while and speak with me? Tell me of the outside world?
    Raeys nodded, ‘I will.’
    What about the daughter of man, does she wish also to be saved?
    Raeys shrugged and called out ‘Aeve?’
    Aeve looked at him, ‘What?’
    ‘Do you want to die now?’
    Aeve shook her head quickly, ‘No.’ she yelled angrily, ‘Why? Do I have a choice?’
    Raeys laughed, ‘Yes, you do!’
    ‘I’ll do anything if I’m allowed to live.’ Aeve screamed, looking down and seeing a dark circle that was the bottom of the hole. It was like the entrance to midnight, opposite to the tunnel of light in which they were currently falling through. An entrance to chaos, complete and forever changing, beautiful in its way, but there was no way to gauge what could happen to them in there.
    It is a deal, then.
    Aeve nodded, ‘Yes.’
    Good.
    Slowly their descent towards Chaos halted, and in a rush of jasmine scented wind they disappeared with a resounding crack and a shower of golden leaves. None were there to see them go, but one saw anyway.

    In the glassy sheen of the ice of the northern snows, the Dark One watched, curious, as Nuei took them in, wondering who they were that the great goddess would bother breaking her eon long silence to speak with them.
    They could be the ones to defeat me…