A young man was locked in a closed-off room. A chamber with its windows and doors covered by thick bars. The youth lay on a battered old cot, covered by a soiled, threadbare, sheet. Beneath the sheet, the young man’s body was covered in all manner of bruises, burns, and soars. He’d already told his captors what they wanted to know ages ago. Now it seemed like they were torturing him just for the hell of it.

The young man was just an average youth from an average family. He was just unlucky enough to have a father who’d been employed by the wrong person. Overhearing his father’s work details because of the man’s lack of an external office was the youth’s second stroke of terrible luck. When the regime eliminated his father and his father’s employer in one fell swoop they captured and killed everyone who might know of the old guards’ secrets.

“Am I...Am I going to die here?” said the young man. One arm over his face, while he wept bitter tears of despair.

In the young man’s heart perhaps that was for the best. He’d been informed that his mother and younger sister had been killed trying to flee the country, a few days ago. Now the young man had nothing else to live for. There was nothing waiting for him on the outside, no family, no friends, no future. No reason to hold onto hope.

Then a voice came from the darkness.

“This world...This terrible world. Do you seek the power to change it? Do you wish to up-end the heavens and hells, and punish those who have wronged you?” said the voice. Simultaneously low, high, harsh, and soothing. A voice that touched the very core of the young man’s raw psyche.

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Elsewhere on another planet, in another universe, in another multiverse, a wolf-eared woman stood on a stage, dressed in rags. She was surrounded by a braying crowd that cried for her blood, as they pelted her with fruit and refused. No one would be able to imagine that not so long ago she was the monarch of this country. Their queen. Alas, she’d been overthrown by her deceptive and despicable Grand Chancellor. He’d plotted against her to steal the loyalty of her nobles and military.

She wasn’t a bad ruler, she’d just trusted the wrong people, in her immaturity. The old queen, the woman’s mother, died when she was still young. Allowing the Chancellor to become the young monarch’s sole pillar of support. Which in turn allowed him a great many years to run around and quiet steal the country out from under her. Then he’d had her husbands, and children killed. They’d ripped her last child out from her womb, and killed it in front of her, and now they were preparing to burn her at the stake, to celebrate the rise of a new nation and the fall of the old one.

A group of soldiers tied her to the stake. Then the young queen watches as many of her former allies and friends throw torches on the pyre. Just as the flames and smoke began to rise, the young queen heard a voice.

“Such ungrateful people….The ignorant masses, and the snakes of the noble houses, all deserve death...But you...You don’t even care about all that. You never cared about all that. Those power-hungry sharks took you for one of them, but all along you were thinking of other things. Your heart was always in other places...You’re thinking of ‘them’ even now aren’t you... The ones you lost...What would you say if you could get it all back? Get your family back? What would you give to have the world returned to the way it should be? The way it was meant to be...Would you cast the world into madness for the chance of holding your children again? Tell me, dear queen….Do you want power?”

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Elsewhere in a certain segment of the cosmos, there was a great pit. A great jail for beings that refused to follow the order set by those who ruled this slice of the cosmos. Some of the beings within this prison were righteous existences that had solely wished to preserve their worlds. Others were true monsters that sought to consume all life within their part of the cosmos. Yet, regardless of who they were and what they were, they all heard the voice in the darkness. A voice that called out to them, a voice that reached out to them, and bade them extend their hands towards it.

“Their song is corrupt...Their song is wrong. Let the bells be broken. Sing...And we will sing with you. Roar and we shall roar with you. You, whose flesh and bones have been stolen to make up this realm's earth and sky, have no need of our power...But still, our power can offer one thing that your own power can not...Tell us, brothers and sister….Do you want freedom? Do you wish to be set loose to right the ancient wrongs?”

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Similar messages spread out across a certain slice of the cosmos. Message promising power, freedom, and favors, to those who would tap into a power that would trigger the world’s end. Historians would ponder on the methodology used for eons to come. Wondering whether it was the inhumane weapon that was scariest, or the fact that the voices in dark had somehow managed to mostly keep their word. Upholding the majority of their impossible promises, even as the current era came to a cataclysmic end.

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Kalpana and I sat in a massive office with 2 to 3 million of the Empty-Harvesters. Our plan for spanking the folks who’d tried to invade the Empty-Dream was well underway. We reached out to countless beings, offering them treats and wishes, in exchange for some minor aid, in our effort to burn the world down. I’d expected to find only a moderate success, but in mere seconds of starting our campaign, I’d had to call for help from the Harvester colony, to manage all the receptive answers we were getting.

“Oof, is it messed up that I’m a bit curious to see how this ends up?” said Kalpana.

“Yes...But that’s probably just Jack rubbing off on us,” I answered. Ending one call to start another. Keeping a close eye on the overwhelmingly unstable anomalous energies that were flowing out of the holding pen I’d created, and into the territory of our enemies