“C’mon ****, this is an opportunity! With this strange item of yours everything we’ll ever plan is going to be a piece of cake,” a young man in his early twenties said, his black military uniform gleaming under the bright sun.

“Look, this is far too risky! What if we die trying, or worse, are caught and publicly executed?” another young man in front of him shouted. He pointed his arm towards a small group of people picnicking in grassy fields. “What then? Think about your sister! Your mother! Your freaking wife! What are they going to do once we die?” He grabbed the uniform of the man in front of him, pulling him closer so that their faces nearly touched. “TELL ME!”

The other man stayed silent. After not getting an answer, he sighed and let go of him. “Fuck, you know what? Take it!” He paused for a bit, completely ignoring the excited expression on his friend’s face. “Should you ever fail - don’t give me that look, we both know that this is highly possible - then know that I’ll welcome you with open arms. If your stupid actions haven’t killed me until then, that is.”

An old man in rags hiccupped, the fading memories being replaced by blurry people walking past him. He rubbed his tired eyes, stretching himself on the busy street he sat on.

A small coin fell into the plastic cup in front of him, shaking it for a few seconds. He turned his glassy eyes towards it, reaching out to gather it with his free hand.

His unkempt beard dragged over the concrete under his feet as he shuffled the credit into the only intact pocked left. His dark, sun burnt and dirty skin was exposed in many places and a foul odour was spreading through his vicinity, causing most of the people who walked past him to frown.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, his dazed expression remaining unchanged.

The sky above that particular district of the city of New Pandora was an isle of azure in the endless sea of ominous dark clouds promising rain and thunder. As if aware of that fact, the sun shone with an intensity that let the people below feel as if they were about to melt.

Beads of sweat ran down the old beggar’s rough face as the alcohol within his body caused it to heat up even further, but he was already too drunk to notice things like that.

“Guess who the new emperor of New Pandora is?” the young man whose military uniform had been replaced by a magnificent robe said with a smirk. He had grown older; a few wrinkles having appeared on his otherwise youthful face. “Right, me!”

“So? Am I supposed to be astonished? Remember who lent you his marble?” The other young man from the picnic remarked. In stark contrast to his friend, he hadn’t changed at all. It was as if no time had passed for him. “Seriously, I still think that it was a stupid idea. What about the Alliance? They won’t let us off like that. The former king was a trusted ally of theirs.”

He looked off into the distance, where hundreds of thousands of people were celebrating. Sighing for what was probably the hundredth time that day, he said, “The whole galaxy will probably curse me in its history books for this, but you know what? Just keep that damned thing. You’ll probably need it more than I ever will.”

The newly crowned king’s eyes went wide. “Seriously? I mean, isn’t it extremely important to you? I don’t want to sound ungrateful or anything like that, but why not simply continue lending it to me?”

The other young man waved his hands lazily. “Because it’s not like I’ll ever do something significant with it anyway. Such a marvellous object would be wasted in my hands, so why not change the fate of the whole human civilization by gifting it to a friend?”

The crowd around him suddenly became far more chaotic, causing him to look up. All the people, even the children, were staring upwards with open mouths.

In the darkening sky, one could faintly see the silhouettes of dozens of massive ships hovering in the air. As time passed, their figures became larger and larger, until one could finally see the vague outlines of the varying insignias scratched onto their hulls.

Seeing that, the old man rummaged through his pocket, pulling a small object out. It was a marble, so dark that it seemed to devour the very light around it.

He stared at it with a blank look on his face. Then, as if it would shatter at the slightest sudden movement, he gently brought it in front of his face. He slowly closed his eyes, whispering, “This is the very last time I shall request something of you, so I hope that you’ll be more compliant this time.”

“Oh? And there I was hoping for another few years of productive cooperation. Well, there’s nothing that can be done about that, I guess,” an eerie voice that came from the aether marble said. The very air seemed to fluctuate with every word it said, but no one aside from the old beggar noticed that. “Anyway, what do you want?”

The old man sighed. He looked at the chaotic mass of people around him, all the while rolling the marble between his hands, then into the sky, where the last remnants of the azure areas were being swallowed by dark clouds. “What would it cost me to eradicate the allied forces of the Alliance?”

For a brief amount of time, the voice didn’t answer. But before the old beggar could even ask about its answer, a booming laughter filled his surroundings. “I would never have thought that such words would come out of your mouth at a time like this. Why didn’t you say them before your friend went to war? If you did, he would still be alive, wouldn’t he?”

Ignoring the odd looks that were being directed at him, the old man stood up and smashed the marble onto the wall behind him. “Shut your fucking mouth! I asked you whether or not you’d fulfil my wish, not why I didn’t do so earlier!” He combed his messy hair back with his hands whilst breathing heavily, turning around to face a curious crowd of onlookers. “What do you think you’re doing? Fuck off, all of you!”

The marble appeared inside his hands again, having magically vanished from the dusty ground. “Well, I could, but are you sure you want to do this? The price you’ll have to pay won’t be small.”

Seeing that the crowd had started to turn its attention upwards again, the old beggar smiled. “I don’t care. Take the rest of my lifespan and, if something like that even exists, my very soul if you deem it necessary.”

“Are you sure? This isn’t something reversible. Once you agree, there won’t be a way back.” The marble in his hands vibrated gently, the fluctuations in the air having vanished.

“Yes, now hurry up!” the old man shouted.

At that moment, a blinding white light that even the people surrounding him could see erupted from the marble in his hand. It slowly spread through his body, until nothing but a blinding white light could be seen.

A pillar of light shot forth from where he stood, scattering the gathered clouds and reaching the height where most of the hostile ships were orbiting around New Pandora, splitting up into many smaller beams that each targeted a single ship.

Soon, massive explosions dyed the sky in a fiery red. Many blazing hot parts of destroyed spaceships sailed through the air, leaving blazing trails of destruction wherever they landed.

People all over New Pandora were shocked at that sight. Just what could have caused something on this scale? To actually destroy such a massive fleet, and one that was reputed for their invincibility no less, was no small feat. It would require something on the level of divine intervention.

But their shock soon turned into horror as the remnants of the ships started raining down on them, causing them to scatter and hide wherever they could.

All of this, however, didn’t concern the old beggar. His figure had already vanished from that once busy street, along with the black marble that used to be in his hands.

In a certain place that was infinitely far away and yet extremely close to where the old man had vanished, a small white cloud appeared in a space of vast darkness. It was like a small candle in a dark night, yet it never seemed to go out.

Suddenly, it moved. ‘Huh? Where the hell am I?’ The cloud lightly pulsated, as if reacting to that thought. ‘What is this? Am I not supposed to be dead? Didn’t that damned marble take my life? This doesn’t make sense!’

The pulsating became stronger and stronger, until the cloud rhythmically expanded and contracted. ‘Wait, could this be some sort of afterlife? If so, then what will happen to me? I’ve never been religious, so I guess that means I’m in hell? Or an equivalent of it?’

‘Wait, how can I even sense that this is darkness? I can’t seem to move my body, yet I’m still capable of ‘seeing’ that is dark? Are my eyes closed or am I in some sort of coma? Have I become one of those patients that are unable to communicate with their surroundings, yet retain their consciousness?’

The cloud continued like that for a long time, until the realization that there was no one to welcome it to a hellish place, no one to introduce it to a heaven on earth sunk in. It was all alone in that vast darkness, and that scared it.

Yet, even that feeling was eventually replaced by the sheer boredom of such a place after an extremely long time went past. Even a confused soul only had so many things to think about, and, in many ways, the boredom was far worse than the previous fear of the unknown.

Even the pulsing had eventually been reduced to an occasional throb, and the cloud seemed slightly lifeless.

‘If this is how I’m supposed to spend the rest of an eternity, then this place certainly is hell. Now that I think about it, what happened to that marble? Did it simply switch owners?’

‘Wait, could it be the reason for this situation? But that wouldn’t make sense at all. What reason would it have to do so? I even offered my soul to it, and, judging by my very existence in this strange space, I guess that it took it. Then is this the place where devoured souls reside in? But I don’t see any others in here. Could it be that they were digested? Perhaps they were used up as a battery?’

Before the cloud could continue that train of thought, however, it was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a multi-coloured white light that came from seemingly far away.

It ceased whatever thoughts it had. The new stimulation for its strange senses was just too interesting. Who knows when something like this would occur again? Or perhaps this was some sort of judge arriving to deliver its verdict? Whatever it was, by now the cloud was sure that anything was better than eternal boredom in that damned space.

As time passed, the radiance grew stronger and stronger, coming closer with every second that passed. Soon, everything that the cloud could sense was enveloped in it.

Though it would have been scared had it been any other time, the fact that it wasn’t alone in that all-encompassing darkness relieved the cloud immensely. The thought of spending an eternity all alone, with no one else to talk to was far more terrifying than anything those multi-coloured lights could possibly do.

If worse came to worst, it’d simply eradicate the cloud, solving all of its problems at the same time.

But as the multi-coloured light drew nearer, a strange feeling started welling up inside it. It was strangely soothing and calming, as if it were a baby inside the warm embrace of its mother. Though the time of it needing mental support had long since passed, the cloud would never pass up on another topic to think about in that boring hell.

It briefly wondered about the reason for this warmth coming from the multi-coloured lights, but dismissed it just as quickly as it came to its mind. This was probably something to think about once all of this had passed, since the lights seemed to be aiming for the cloud.

Before it could continue with any sort of thought, its assumptions proved to be on spot as the lights drew nearer and nearer, until they were close enough to literally feel the light radiating from the sources of those lights. Well, close by the perception of the cloud, since it wasn’t able to estimate distances in the darkness, but it did feel close so it judged it as such.

“We finally found you, beloved child of ours,” a chorus of melodic voices shouted.

The cloud’s vision went dark, along with its consciousness.