Azrael opened his eyes, to find himself floating in a dark and endless void. However, unlike last time, this one was filled with countless stars and swirling galaxies. He felt as if he was floating in the heart of the cosmos.

Despite the vastness of the space, he found himself in, it was not static. Everywhere he looked there was movement on unimaginable scales.

Great galaxies swirled together, passing through each other, while stars collided in impossibly massive fusions of energy. Black holes feasted on solar systems, the individual celestial bodies being sacrificed to an inexorable doom. Worlds collided, the planets fracturing and wiping out all life in the blink of an eye.

Yet, even as he watched, new stars blossomed into existence, born from the ashes of ancient solar giants and long gone galaxies.

Meteors and space dust merged, being pulled together to form new celestial bodies, under the influence of new gravitational fields.

Change, destruction and rebirth happened continuously and constantly, at a cosmic scale unfathomable to the human mind. The energies of these phenomena ripped through Azrael, despite their epicenters being several thousand light years away. He had never felt smaller or more insignificant than at that moment. At the same time he was both humbled and proud to be able to bear witness to such vast cosmic power.

A polite cough drew him out from his stargazing and Azrael’s eyes fell on a single individual dressed in an assortment of motley clothing. The individual in question was seated at an antique table sipping tea from a small porcelain cup.

The image was only made more bizarre when Azrael realised that the person’s face was constantly shifting, as if unable to settle on a single appearance.

One moment they were an innocent young lad with blue eyes and brown hair, the next a lady with flaming locks of red. Even the clothes seemed to subtly shift, changing in accordance with their appearance. The only thing that stayed the same were the eyes. They were blue and twinkled with irrepressible humour, like a bubbling spring in sunshine.

The person lifted up a cup.

“Care for a cup of tea?” asked a blue-eyed old man with a beard.

“It’s quite good” said the little girl, as the same beard vanished from her face.

Azrael was left speechless, his mind having a hard time comprehending things.

“Cat got your tongue?” asked the figure, growing cat ears and changing into a cat kin. It laughed at its own joke.

Azrael’s hand went to his hip, searching for his daggers. They found empty air. He looked down. He was barefooted and dressed only in the clothes that he had on when he’d gone to bed. His daggers were nowhere to be found. Right. He’d taken them off.

Looking at the space around him Azrael tried to rationalise. This was a dream right? This had to be a dream. He tried summoning his [Status], only for it to fail. Definitely a dream. Either that or mind magic.

But if it wasn’t a dream, then it begged the question, was who was this person in front of him and why were they here? Had Sophie manage to somehow break her oath? No, she thought he was dead. Why the elaborate set up then? The galaxies, the table floating in deep space, it made no sense. Mental attack or illusion? Azrael realised that just thinking about it wasn’t going to get him any answers.

“Who are you” Azrael asked. “What do you want? What did you do to me? Where am I?

The figure only laughed. Azrael bristled. Should he try to force answers out of this person?

Something told him that that would be a very bad idea. He wasn’t sure what made him think so, but he stayed where he was, cautiously watching the figure.

Eventually though the figure stopped laughing, wiping tears of mirth out of its eyes.

“Ah” it sighed “That’s why I love mortals. Although, you’re the first of your kind that I’ve spoken to.”

Azrael debated internally before asking “My kind?”

“Travellers, Chosen, Adventurers, whatever you want to call yourselves. You who are not from this world.”

Azrael felt himself pale as things started to click into place.

Who… No. If he was right, then whatever this person was, they were far more dangerous than anything Azrael had encountered. The dragon included.

Now that Azrael was aware what he was up against he knew what to look for. He could feel it now.

The figure was surrounded by an aura of absolute power and dominance, so vast that he hadn’t noticed it at first, but unmistakably there, exerting power on the surrounding space. Mana, space, bits of reality and even the remnant forces of the dying galaxies, all bowed their heads to this figure.

The aura was being suppressed with a godly level of skill, but Azrael could still feel it, in the way it interacted with the world around them. The table, chair and teacup were all directly manifested through the person’s power. Azrael had a sinking feeling in his stomach.

“Who are you?” he asked again, hoping to be proven wrong.

The figure finally seemed to settle on a face and Azrael found the mischievous blue eyes twinkling at him from under a mop of messy orange hair. The figure raised an eyebrow.

“I’m sure you’ve guessed it by now.”

Azrael swallowed.

“You’re a god” he whispered.

The figure clapped excitedly.

“Marvellous!” they exclaimed, as if he had just deciphered the world’s greatest secret.

Azrael took a step back, startled. Despite being a god, they were clearly not right in the head. Should he try to run? He could… he looked out into the cosmic void. There was nowhere to escape to. He might as well stay and hope to get some answers.

“Who are you?” he asked for the third time, resigned.

The god didn’t seem to notice his resignation.

“Ah! It’s been so long since I’ve been asked that question, I’d almost given up hope. Finally! My name is…” The god strangled to a sudden stop, as if an invisible force was choking him.

The teacup fell from the god’s fingers and shattered on the table, as he clutched his throat. His fingers scrabbled around, as if to catch an invisible binding.

A brief moment later, the god removed his hands and gasped for breath. He muttered something under his breath, which Azrael barely caught.

“ …rules”

The god picked himself up and smiled at Azrael.

“Restrictions” he explained to Azrael, while rubbing his throat “Can’t have gods cause too much chaos in the mortal realms. Knowledge is power and all that stuff. And to know a name is to know a person.”

Azrael watched him silently and the god chuckled again.

“No need to look so surprised. Even gods have to acknowledge higher powers.”

Azrael just stared blankly as the being that claimed to be a god spoke to him. Rules? Restrictions? Higher powers? What was a god if not the highest power? Too much was happening with too little explanation.

The god walked up to him and gave a small bow, while holding out his hand.

“Trickster” he said. “God of Mischief, patron of thieves, jesters and mischief makers.”

Azrael shook the Trickster’s hand reflexively, before quickly pulling back.

The briefest of touches was enough to cause his bones to shake and his hair to stand on end. The sheer amount of raw power being contained in the god’s vessel was overwhelming, even in a supressed state.

If there were higher powers Azrael hoped to never encounter them. The Trickster’s aura was starting to weigh on him. Just an ordinary dragon was enough for him. He turned to the Trickster, realising that he’d missed what the god had just said.

“Pardon?” he asked.

The Trickster sighed, repeating what he’d just said.

“I said I’ve been meaning to meet you for a while. That system you made. Beautiful! Oh, the divine realm hasn’t been in such an uproar in centuries! All those gods” He smiled reliving the memory, before looking at Azrael conspiratorially. “Chaos, chaos I tell you”.

He wiped a mirthful tear from his eye, laughing.

“Heavens above. At that moment I knew that I had to meet you right there and then. You caused so much chaos by accident, I’d love to see what you would come up with if you tried.”

Azrael ignored that last statement.

“Why here, why now?” he asked.

“Well, I would have liked to meet you earlier, but like I said, gods have rules too. What you see in front of you is currently a projection of myself. I haven’t been able to manifest myself properly in the mortal realms for.. ah.. since the… what did you mortals call it again? The Fall? No. The Ending? Yes! The Ending! Terrible thing really. All the mana, *POOF*, gone, just like that!” The god made a little hand gesture to show all the mana just vanishing “There are some things that were never meant to be tampered with. Even my pranks would never go so far.”

Though Azrael felt very lost, he suddenly had an intense feeling of worry crawl up his spine.

What sort of god was this Trickster that he considered wiping half the world off the map a prank gone too far? If this was a god, a supposed ‘holy’ deity, then what were the demons and devils like in this world? Where there even any? He tuned back in, to what the Trickster was saying.

“Without mana we aren’t able to manifest. It would have taken a few good centuries more before there would be enough natural mana to do that again on the smallest scale. Even with you Travellers arriving and accelerating the natural process, I would have still had to wait at least another year or so at the current pace, before I could manifest.”

“Wait? Before we came? What did we change?”

The god ignored him.

“But then you built that dome of yours. So interesting, yet so flimsy. Ha! I bet none of the gods expected that either. The pure unintentional brilliance. You sped up a natural process that would have taken centuries into a few mere months. Months!”

“My dome? I did?... What?!?”

“Ah, don’t worry. It’s nothing bad. Your runic array created a highly dense field of natural mana, allowing me to manifest. I still had to borrow a fair bit of power, but it was enough for a foothold. I tried directly manifesting into your reality, but ultimately failed. When you arrived, your presence shifted the natural equilibrium.”

Azrael was getting more and more confused the longer this conversation went on. He let his confusion wash over him, keeping a [Calm Mind]. In the end, there were only two questions that really mattered.

“Where are we and why am I here?”

The Trickster looked at him, his face becoming serious in the span of a heartbeat. He turned to Azrael, staring straight into his soul. His eyes were deadly serious. The Trickster spoke in an authoritative tone.

“Azrael, Traveller of another world, I have been asked to act as an intermediary between you and another.”

There was a subtle shift in the air. A thrum of power that he hadn’t noticed before.

“You have been called into the presence of the Primordial of the Void, Keeper of Chaos.”