Three of the motes of light in the cloud shone more brightly than the others, coming together to form a rune. This rune was the first in the group. Its many facets spun by at a high speed, light flickering and dancing like lightning in the cloud. With a mighty bang, the rune expanded, showing the outline of a world.

  Colorless and void, covered in a thick haze, the vague image formed. The original trio pushed and pulled against this malleable material, squeezing more detail out as they went. Mountains and valleys, oceans and rivers, all sprang into existence.

  The three spun once around the scene once more, and the world thrummed with a civilization - bleak and weary as it was. With another motion, life energy appeared, a thin veil of mist wrapping the sphere in its grasp. Other points of light wiggled around the scene as it appeared, eager to contribute. Slowly the haze formed into more and more details, as the image expanded, filling up the void.

  Motes flew into the world, spinning down through the atmosphere, plummeting through their nascent creation until they reached the ground. They whirred through the desolate remains of a forest, the dark canopy of trees devoid of any foliage, as though the soil had been depleted of its nutrients. Their brittle branches and yellowed leaves hinted at approaching fall, yet the warm, humid air suggested the presence of spring or early summer.

  The forest had a distressing silence to it, with very few of the noises of life one would expect from such a place.

  Several more motes descended after the initial group, exploring the world left behind by their predecessors with curious wonder. What impact would they have?

  I fell forward as the desk was kicked out from under me, somehow keeping myself from slamming into the ground face first. I wanted to shout in my defense at the brute who still had his foot extended, but I thought better of it. I already knew how that’d go from the example of others. Looking up at him, his sharp features were hardened, his fist clenched. Dark eyes stared at me.

  “Sleeping on the job? Useless, all of you.”

  I had to keep any of the feelings going through me off of my face. He had all the power in this dynamic, both figuratively and literally, being one of the very few people who could access their inner world, to form and use it for his will. In other words, not someone I wanted to mess with if I wanted to wake up in the morning.

  The air had a slight feeling of static to it. Something I’d felt before whenever he was mad. It seemed to me like people who had inner worlds like him were always upset at something. I’d only ever met two before like that, and they both had short tempers. It wasn’t , though.

  “My sincere apologies, sir,” I said. Doing my best to sound like I meant it, even. In the same breath as I spoke I bowed, canting over at the waist like a hinge, the most polite I could manage. He waited a few seconds, as if expecting me to say more.

  “No excuses, I can appreciate that at least.”

  My eyebrows took a vacation under my bangs, heading towards my hairline for a forest retreat. I hadn’t expected that. But I could work with it.

  “There are none to be given sir, I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

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  He seemed satisfied with that response, turning to leave. Maybe he wasn’t a complete asshole, like I had thought. Maybe some parts were missing. Maybe he’d had a good night’s sleep. I wasn’t about to second guess my fortuity, though. Or was I already doing that?

  I gave the mental equivalent of a shrug to myself.

  While he might have been okay with my answer, I wasn’t. How could I prevent something, when I had no idea how it happened in the first place? What was that dream, even? Was it even a dream? It felt so damn I was doubting myself.

  I’d been gliding over the outskirts of town, being chased and chasing the most entrancing of lights. They were fuzzy and indistinct, but something in me told me they were special. I’d followed them into the through the outskirts of my city, where the forest gave way. At first to smaller homes, but eventually we were zipping around, passing by the ponderous bases of the giant buildings.

  The air smelled of cinders, something I’d never understood.

  We were long past the point where one had to combust something to stay warm, but it constantly smelled of fire just the same. Just this acrid haze that seemed to hang in the air, claw at the nose and throat, and make one hoarse. But no fires or pillars of smoke. The towers, craggy and stabbing at the sky, perhaps had once been individually beautiful, but now they just ‘were’. Frozen in time as fixtures of the landscape, seemingly waiting for something that would never happen.

  Bits and pieces of some of them lay here and there, the owners not even bothering to replace the sagging fa?ades as their bricks tumbled to the ground, or the panes of glass that sometimes lay shattered. Most of the bottom floors were useless, taken up by the destitute or ill.

  My companions and I darted into a narrow alleys, crowded with refuse. I turned my eyes so I wouldn’t have to determine if the hand I saw peaking through top of a pile was a discarded mannequin or a something worse. You wouldn’t catch me dead in one of these in normal circumstances.

  Well, you might catch me dead, but that’s the only way I’d be going there.

  We flew with purpose, but it seemed passage went on for longer than it should have. One only got a sense of scale for the true size of the buildings when you tried to traverse them. Otherwise, the perpetual grey shrouded the tops, making them indistinct from below. Once you got farther out of the city, you could see them better, or so I’d been told.

  On the other side lay a building I knew well. It was the one I was currently standing in. So that’s where that alley went. Good to know. Or maybe not, I still didn’t want to go through it. The lights with me examined the entrance. Watching them, I got a vague sense they were curious about something. Maybe where I worked?

  “It’s a retrieval team,” I told them, not even sure if they understood my words. “We go into the rifts and gather shards from within, artifacts of the void.” They moved around like a wave in the water, transiting up and down slowly, something that felt like nodding to me. With a jolt, I realized what I said wasn’t accurate. “Well, I don’t, my boss does. Sorry about that.”

  They didn’t seem to care, instead pushing in, going right through the door. I felt myself following, throwing my arms up to defend my face against an impact that never happened as I, too, phased right through the solid object like it wasn’t there. What a weird feeling that was.

  We went up the elevator, which was a bit of a trip, since it didn’t work anymore. Normally to get to the office I was in one had to traverse stairs. There were a lot, but I honestly couldn’t be bothered to count any of the times I’d done it. I’d get bored and forget what I was doing, usually around twenty. The highest I’d ever counted was in the mid thirties somewhere.

  Eventually, we passed through another door (to the elevator, this time) and came out into the lobby, which was actually pretty clean, now that I could view the whole trip on in a few minutes. I was lucky to work where I did, which had helped me keep my mouth shut when I almost found out what the flooring tasted like earlier.

  We flew in through the front, and passed the name plate for my office on the way through. It was blurry and indistinct. Weird, I remember thinking. I looked back forward, and that’s when I saw it.

  Myself, sitting at the desk. She (I?) looked up and locked eyes with me. Her mouth moved, it formed words, but no sound came out. And then the world exploded and I “woke up”.