A small crab meandered down a starlit beach.

He looked up at the stars and the moon and wondered exactly what they were. He knew they were lights in the sky, and the big light told him when it was time to make baby crabs, but other than that, he, once again, knew nothing.

Knowing nothing was really starting to annoy him.

Maybe if he could get a better look, take a little nibble, it would provide some enlightenment.

He reached for the big light with his big claw.

Something happened!

He felt like his claw was stretching further and further away.

Oh, he did NOT like that.

He yanked it back.

He put his claw in his mouth, grooming it thoughtfully.

It felt the same and tasted the same.

Weird.

For now, he would just look at the lights in the sky.

They were pretty and much further away than he originally thought.

It would be nice to go to them, he thought as he gazed at the night sky.

I wonder what they taste like.

***

“So,” Faun said as she followed Zvaxus like a baby duck, “You and Frostie had a war?”

“Fortunately, not a real one,” Zvaxus laughed, “It was more like an armed misunderstanding. It was when the last of the normal stars were dying, a grim time for us and many other of the great galactic empires. As there were fewer and fewer stars, there was less and less territory for us to all share. It was a time of madness and war….”

He sighed.

“I hate war,” he said, “and there was so much of it. Civilizations that we had known and called friends were suddenly mortal foes as we fought over the last inhabitable worlds. So much death….”

He looked off into space and drank.

“Gods fell,” he said after a while, “more than a few by my hand. Dear friends perished on my blade.”

He sighed once more.

“I’m… I’m sorry….” Faun said as she gently laid her hand on his shoulder.

“It was what it was,” he shrugged, “War almost always comes down to resources. They have it. You want it, or the other way around. We were all fighting for the survival of our species… The Hell of it all was that it was completely unnecessary. Had we worked together… Bah… No sense crying about it now.”

He drained his mug, and a Sk’athor zipped by with a fresh one.

“Gotta love the service in this place,” he grinned.

“Anyway, it was towards the end of this madness that Frostie’s scout ships appeared. As luck would have it, our universe had the right constants and was at about the right age for them to start developing it. Of course, we thought them yet another race determined to take what we had, so we attacked. Experience had taught us that diplomacy was obsolete. It was kill or be killed.”

He smiled ruefully.

“It was a glorious battle,” he said, “We prevailed… only to realize that those were the scouts, not their warships… There is no polite word to describe what happened to us next.”

He scowled.

“They didn’t even have the decency to kill us! They flew like… like angels… amongst our formations and disabled our ships with precise strikes from their infernal black hole guns… They three-sixty no scoped our whole goddamn fleet. We had no choice but to descend from the heavens and take the field ourselves… Which, of course, summoned them.”

“Frostie?” Faun asked, wide-eyed. “F10w3rchy1d?”

“Nah,” he laughed bitterly, “we weren’t worth their time. They sent the handmaidens. Fearsome beings with skin as dark as the void and white hair. Each of them had the power of a God and their skill… It was like nothing I had ever seen. Of course, I now know why. We were trying to fight entities who had aeons to hone their arts, and we were still stumbling along our first one. We were noobs up against the enforcers of game balance on their most vicious servers, the Handmaidens of Log’Sharginoth. Again, we lived solely because they desired it. It is one thing to be defeated. It is another for your opponent to deliver advice and instruction as they beat you senseless with a wooden sword.”

“A wooden sword?”

“We didn’t even rate steel,” he chuckled darkly, “They knew it was just a misunderstanding, and they did not wish to wipe us out over a bad first contact.

“But Frostie did show up, right?”

“Oh yeah!” Zvaxus chortled. “About the same time I stopped trying to actually fight and started asking questions, all of which were being cheerfully answered, the great and mighty All-Father decided to make an appearance and start the fight all over again. He demanded their head god meet him in single combat. The head maiden just laughed and called out, ‘Hey, boss, we have a live one for you,’ and Frostie appeared. She whipped the All-Father like he was a hatchling.”

Zvaxus laughed.

“The fucker locked himself in his room for a hundred thousand years after that beating, which gave us time to sort out the whole mess. Frostie and F10w3rchy1d were very kind and helped us fix (and improve) our fleet, giving us the edge we needed to prevail against our foes. They even wiped out some ‘assholes’ they took a disliking to. They also left behind some ‘garbage’ such as one of their automated factories along with its onboard databases… Which kept Veelanora busy for thousands of years. F10w3rchy1d dropped by fairly often until the All-Father finally crawled out from under his rock and pitched a fit. She’s the one who told us about this place… which is, of course, absolutely forbidden by the All-Father, but he can suck it.”

He grinned.

“I learned that phrase from F10w3rchy1d, too. She has done so much for the advancement of obscenity among our people.”

“I can believe it,” F10w3rchy1d said with a little smirk.

Zvaxus pointed at a doorway.

“Let’s go over there!” he enthused. “I wonder who’s playing!”

“Playing?” Faun asked.

“With all of the gods of music cluttering up the multiverse,” Zvaxus replied, heading for the doorway, “This place has the best tunes! Come on!”

***

Faun’s jaw dropped the moment she stepped through the doorway. She was immediately hit by a coherent wall of sound, the likes of which she had never heard before.

It was… amazing. She felt it in her chest, rolling over her skin…

In her very soul…

Zvaxus turned and grinned.

“Yeah, it was like that my first time, too,” he laughed. “I’ll give you a minute.”

As Faun’s vision cleared, she found herself in a large open room absolutely packed with a wild assortment of beings. Graceful bipeds draped in silks gyrated next to tentacled masses. Crystalline polygonal prisms bounced and twirled, flashing with an impossible array of colors… literally impossible colors… Horned demons danced with glowing angelic beings while strange creatures composed of nothing but wings and eyes flew crazily above the throng along with strange glowing clouds and all manner of things Faun couldn’t even begin to describe or even comprehend.

She thought the bar outside was weird. But, this… this was another thing entirely.

Against the far wall was a stage with three beings. There was a giant blue crab covered with glowing glyphs beating an array of strange crystals with all of its legs. Beside it stood a peculiar pale-skinned biped, clad only in an open silken robe and a pair of what appeared to be short, tight trousers howling what seemed to be nothing but rhythmic profanity and sexual innuendo while fiddling with a table covered in strange contrivances (but it sounded amazing).

Standing above them on a platform was a strange woman, wearing a short vest and a bottom that covered only the barest of essentials. Her entire body was covered in what Faun now recognized were representations of electronic circuitry. Her eyes were obscured by a large pair of glasses covered in lines of glowing script, and she wore a strange headdress that entirely covered her ears. She nodded sagely as she also fiddled with a glowing panel covered in strange items sprouting additional arms as it suited her.

“Oh, we are in luck!” Zvaxus, barely audible over the symphonic cacophony, exclaimed, “Mixxer is in the house!” he shouted, pointing at the glowing woman. “The god of music gods!”

Mixxer seemed to be in a trance as she wove the two other musicians into a tapestry of pure sound, adding a nearly infinite selection of samples accumulated over aeons of traveling the multiverse, hunting the best tracks that ever existed.

As Mixxer quietly bounced and gyrated, Faun couldn’t help but do the same. It was intoxicating.

“This is amazing!” Faun shouted.

“Isn’t it?” Zvaxus replied, starting to dance, “I dragged our music god here once. She lost her mind and not in a good way. She started screaming ‘blasphemy’ over and over again, and I had to take her home… where she hid in a cave for a few thousand years. She ratted me out, of course. Forgive me for trying to expand her horizons! I should have known better,” he “said” telepathically (the only way to have a conversation in that place), “she is one of the old gods.”

“Old gods?” Faun thought back as she started to jump around (as commanded by the strange robe-clad one). This was fun!

“Yeah,” Zvaxus thought in reply, “You can split our pantheon into two big factions, the old gods and the new ones. The old ones are the All-Father, the Mother of Creation, the God of the Hearth, and the first Gods created to rule over society’s older, more basic functions. The new ones arose as the Glavvor developed and their concepts and views of the world expanded. Those would be gods like Veelanora and her ‘children’ the gods that arose dedicated to a particular important technology, gods over concepts like liberty, freedom, and stuff like that, and ‘old gods’ like myself, the god of medicine, and the god of agriculture who are dependent on and constantly changed by the technology that Veelanora creates. Technically, the old gods still ‘rule’, but they pretty much stay the Hell out of our way. The Glavvor live and die by our grace now. The Glavvor know it, we know it, and most importantly, the old gods know it. They will have a reactionary hissy fit every now and then to remind us ‘who's really in charge’, but the only reason they haven’t been put in their place is that I hate war and violence. The only way the All-Father will step down is if he is put down and… well… I don’t want to kill him and the gods who would follow him. There just isn’t a point. We suffer, and the Glavvor suffer. The war would transfer down to our worshippers, and trillions would die over divine pride and ambition. That I will NOT allow.”

Zvaxus’s body whirled, his tail sweeping Faun off her feet in a tangle of cape and robes.

“Sorry!” he thought as Faun was helped up by countless friendly hands, tentacles, and beams of pure thought.

“It’s ok,” Faun thought back, “Thanks, everyone,” she broadcast, just a little creeped out. (but they meant well)

“Where was I?” Zvaxus thought as the beat swirled around them in dozens of separate standing waves, “With the death of the stars at hand, unity is far more important than who nominally leads us. The All-Father is a pain in the ass, but he means well, and he does care about the Glavvor. That’s what’s truly important. Unless I was the one in charge, a fate I do NOT want to suffer, I would find fault with whoever was. He’s an ass, but he is an ass who has ruled since the beginning. We are all still here, and our worshippers are still happy. I can get spitting mad at the uptight asshole, but I can’t hate him. As long as we don’t openly defy him or undertake something he deems too risky, he pretty much lets us do whatever we want ‘behind his back’… or even to his face sometimes. I know pantheons are not favored by the big gods… or entities… or whatever the fuck they want to call themselves, but we’ve made it work… barely… There have only been a few ‘wars in heaven’, and most of those were due to a group of Glavvor splitting off and forming their own empire.”

He stopped dancing.

“Those are the wars I hate the most. The ones against our own kind.”

The beat dropped like a nuke, and he started dancing again.

“I had a pantheon once,” Faun thought, “They betrayed me and tried to kill me and steal my power. Then they attacked my teacher’s realm and caused a ‘false vacuum collapse’.”

“Shit!” Zvaxus exclaimed, “There’s a real collapse taking place in your teacher’s realm?”

“Yes,” Faun replied, “It is spreading at the speed of causality across his universe. He says that it’s no big deal because he set the Hubble constant properly, but there are still countless worlds and countless innocent beings we have to save… not that we actually save that many….” Faun pouted. “So many worlds doom themselves. It can drive one to despair.”

“Yeah,” Zvaxus replied, “For every civilization we met, we found the ruins of countless others. Nearly happened to us more than once. I will tell you that for nothing. We had some really close scrapes over the aeon… Now we face ‘the big one’, the end of the stars themselves, heat death.”

He shrugged as he danced.

“But that’s still a long way off, and Veelanora is working on it. She’ll pull another miracle out of her pocket and save us like she has done so many times before… Either that or she will cheat and ask Frostie for her notes on the subject… It never hurts to have friends, especially Blitz. Those guys… damn… I hope we will be able to do a fraction of the good they have once we make it to ‘the big leagues’.”

Faun was silent for a while as her body moved to the music, and her mind was soothed by the cascade of sound. It was easy to dislike Frostie and F10w3rchy1d, but it seemed that they were actually a mighty force for good. First the Noltans and now these kind people… and many others, it seems….

A rather unpleasant and disloyal thought crept in.

They probably saved more people than her beloved teacher… a lot more… It seemed to be their primary focus, their mission, and not a resented encumbrance.

Ugh! It was so complicated!

She let the music distract her from her thoughts and still bruised heart and hurt feelings. Music was simple, even music as divine as what she was now hearing. You didn’t have to think or make impossibly complicated decisions involving unthinkable numbers of innocent beings. You just had to feel…

And dance!

So that’s just what Zvaxus and Faun did for a while. They forgot and danced…

Until Faun realized that something was terribly wrong.

One of her children was missing!

“Hey!” Mixxer proclaimed as the music calmed down to a pleasant mellow tune, “We have an entity who has just lost a creation! Everyone freeze and check the floor! We don’t want to squish it!

The whole room stopped and started searching.

“Thanks for being cool, guys,” the pale-skinned biped said.

“Anybody see it?” a floating polygon broadcast.

“I hunger not!” a demon boomed, “There are no mortals in this space!”

“Oh, he’s not mortal!” Faun shouted, “He’s a dragon!”

The room groaned.

“That makes it harder, then,” Mixxer replied from the stage. “He could look like any of us. Hey, dragon! Your mom is looking for you! You in here?”

There was no reply.

“Maybe it got loose in the main hall?”

“M-maybe…” Faun stammered, “I’m so sorry for ruining the mood.”

“You didn’t ruin anything, sister,” the silken-robed biped wearing only boxer briefs said, “This party never stops….”

“Never stops…” started repeating in a loop, building in intensity.

“This party never stops!” echoed as the beat dropped and the dancing resumed.

“I… I better check the main hall….” Faun thought to Zvaxus.

“I’ll come along,” he replied, “Maybe Sk’athor knows where he is.”

***

A long golden serpentine dragon coiled around a barstool/perch gazing despondently at her drink.

“Why won’t anyone help me?” she wailed piteously.

“Because we all have our own problems,” an annoyed suit of armor sitting next to her growled, “and we came here to take a break from our own crises, not help some goddamned demi with theirs. So save yourself or die trying, just like the rest of us.”

“It isn’t just me,” the dragon wailed, “countless others are in….”

“Yeah, yeah,” the suit growled, “just like the rest of us. A million noble men just perished on the Plains of Agony trying to thwart the Horde of Vaaal, dammed be her name!”

“Hey!” a woman with grey skin and glowing eyes, clad only in a few strips of leather, shouted from a few stools down, “circle of life, buddy. If your little morsels can’t hang on the field, they hang from hooks in our larder.”

“Shut up, Vaaal,” he rumbled, “or do you want to take this outside?”

“Big words from someone counting on the Accord of the North Star,” Vaaal sneered. “But, if you want to break it, I’m game. Let’s go.”

The armor fell silent, and started to study his drink.

“That’s what I thought,” Vaaal sneered.

“Hey!” Sk’athor pulsed, “You are the one going outside, alone, if you keep this up, Vaaal. You know gloating is not permitted here. If you are looking for a fight, I know of a few here who would be more than happy to accept your challenge.”

He directed his attention towards F10w3rchy1d, who was still happily chatting with Veelnora while scribbling on a bar napkin.

“I’m sure she would love to hear of your follower’s conduct on the battlefield. Shall I invite her over for a complimentary drink?”

Now Vaaal was the one suddenly interested in her beverage.

“Speaking of bar rules,” Vaaal snapped a few moments later, “Why are you letting the little demi-wyrm stay in here? Godbegging is also against your precious rules.”

“It’s my bar and my rules,” Sk’athor pulsed, “I can enforce them as I see fit. If it bothers you, there is a portal right over there… Besides…” it said as it carefully wiped a mug, “I want to see where this goes.”

“YOU’RE PRETTY!” a dragon shouted as it shoved its way beside the golden wyrm, “mynameis Kalar! Doyouwanttodo…courtship stuff?”

“What?” The golden dragon asked, stupefied.

“You’re… um… really pretty…” the other dragon stammered, “The prettiest dragon I’ve ever seen… Um… and I’m a dragon too… and… um… do you want to mate?”

“And the award for the most awkward pick-up line ever goes to Kalar!” Vaaal chuckled as a golden statue of Kalar and the serpentine dragon doing the nasty appeared before the mortified Kalar.

“Actually, it isn’t,” Sk’athor chuckled. “I think, ‘It’s the circle of life, buddy,’ and then challenging your crush to single combat is far cringier, wouldn’t you agree? It is why you sent your hordes against him in the first place, isn’t it?”

Vaaal’s face turned bright crimson, showing color for the first time in ten thousand years.

“I don’t normally involve myself in the affairs… or unsuccessful affairs of my patrons,” Sk’athor pulsed, “but you are getting on my last star.”

“W-wha?” the suit of armor stammered in complete shock.

“She’s into you, big time,” Sk’athor replied. Why else do you think she keeps leaving those dead bodies on your doorstep?”

Vaaal squeaked like a drowning mouse before being replaced by a cloud of oily black smoke that streaked out the door.

“She murdered a million men!” he bellowed, enraged.

“You know what they say about an entity scorned,” Sk’athor chuckled. “Either fuck her or murder her. It’s just going to get worse until you do. At the very least, you two need to sit down and try, I don’t know, actually having a mature and rational discussion. I know it’s a hard concept for some entities to grasp, but behaving like adult mortals quite often prevails where even power such as I have fails.”

“I… um… I…” the armor rumbled before it sprinted away.

“Kids…” Sk’athor chuckled as he made the obscene golden sculpture disappear.

“I… I’m sorry….” Kalar hissed, completely mortified, “I apologize for troubling you. I don’t belong here. I’ll just… just….”

“I don’t belong here, either,” the golden dragon sighed. “It looks like we both have failed, Kalar. Forgive my rejection, but I have not the heart for affairs of the heart, even with one as handsome as you.”

“You… you think I am handsome?!?”

“It matters not,” she sighed, “my realm is at an end, and so, too, am I.”

“Kalar!” a sharp voice exclaimed, “You are in big trouble, young man!”

“Mom!” Kalar squeaked as he turned to face a quite nonplussed Faun. “She needs help! Help her!”

Faun just grabbed Kalar by the ear.

“Mooooom!” Kalar exclaimed. He thought he was mortified before. He was wrong. Now he was mortified.

“You had me worried sick!” Faun exclaimed, “This place is dangerous! What if someone stepped on you?”

“I’m thirty thousand years old, mom!” Kalar huffed, “I can take care of myself.”

“So that’s how I sound to them!” Faun laughed, “No wonder they fail to take me seriously.”

“Mom, please!” Kalar whined, “You’re embarrassing meeeeee!”

“Good!” Faun snapped. “Maybe you will think twice before sneaking off and scaring me half to death!” she exclaimed as she snatched him up and shoved him inside her… right in front of the golden dragon.

“Forgive my child,” she said to the golden wyrm, “He gets so… Kalar sometimes. If he caused offense, I take full responsibility.”

“He caused no offense,” the dragon replied, “In fact, he was quite charming.”

Kalar’s head appeared from Faun’s stomach.

“Reeeely?!?”

“Get back in there!” Faun snapped as she shoved him back inside.

“But I am in no position to accept his rather disarming proposal,” the dragon said, “I… I should really be going….”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Sk’athor pulsed with annoyance.

“Have I caused offense, Lord Sk’athor?” Faun asked, abashed.

“You noobs are going to drive me insane,” Sk’athor grumbled. “Geelvara… Why don’t you actually look at Faun….”

Geelvara, the golden serpent of Avarr, looked at Faun.

Her eyes widened.

“My… My Lady…” Geelvara stammered, “Forgive me for not rendering you praise, mighty one….”

“Wha?” Faun replied.

“You have been wandering around begging minor entities for help and walking past major powers,” Sk’athor pulsed. “Do you honestly think little bugs like Vaal and that pathetic little tin man could actually help you? Here is someone who could. I will allow you to bother my patrons once more before I toss you out… Fucking ask her already… Sheesh… Why do you think I made that dragon see you in the first place? Honestly, why do I even bother?”

Sk’athor turned towards F10w3rchy1d (not really, but you know what I mean).

“F10w3rchy1d, you get over here, too,” Sk’athor pulsed, “You are going to want to hear this… and will probably get involved anyway.”

He “turned” towards Geelvara, who shrank under his cosmic gaze (and disapproval).

“You freaking noobs are so dense!” Sk’athor grumbled as he floated to the other end of the bar.

“What’s up?” F10w3rchy1d asked as she teleported beside Faun.

“Geelvara (such a beautiful name!) needs help and….” Kalar exclaimed as he poked his head out of Faun’s cape, earning him a swat on the nose. “Ow!" he cried as he darted back inside.

“You are grounded, young man!” Faun snapped.

F10w3rchy1d snerked.

“I knew you were the mother of all your realm’s creatures, but to see you actually be a mom is freaking hilarious.”

“Ha ha,” Faun replied. “You have no idea what it’s like trying to keep those dragons in line.”

“You haven’t met Pantsu yet,” F10w3rchy1d snickered as Veelnaora trotted up, clutching a bar napkin like it was the most valuable thing in the multiverse (because it was), “So, what’s so important that Sk’athor stopped cleaning glasses for a full five seconds?”

“Please…” Geelvara wailed, “You must help me.”

“Oh no!” F10w3rchy1d exclaimed. “Not again! Nope!”

“My entire realm is in dire peril!” Geelvara cried, “We will soon perish without aid. I’ve come all this way and….”

“Well, you came all this way for nothing,” F10w3rchy1d replied, “Sorry, it looks like they already have an entity, such as you are. Fix your own mess. My plate is quite full thanks to Faun the Necromancer over here.”

“Those were NOT my fault!” Faun huffed.

“Yes, they were,” F10w3rchy1d replied, “You are just too green to realize what you fucking did!”

“I refuse to believe that simply saying that things can’t get (murph)!”

F10w3rchy1d’s hand shot out and firmly seized Faun by the snout, holding it shut.

“I swear to fucking God,” she snarled, “If you say it again, I am not responsible for my actions! Let’s go.”

F10w3rchy1d started to walk away, dragging Faun along by her snout.

“Please!” Geelvara wailed, “If you don’t help me, Nixx will devour my entire world and everyone on it!”

F10w3rchy1d stopped walking.

“Did you say, Nixx?” she hissed.

“Yes!” Geelvara cried, “The mighty and fell being Nixx has descended upon my realm and will drain the lives and souls of everyone! Please help us!”

F10w3rchy1d turned and walked back, still dragging a flailing Faun.

“I fucking warned that asshole,” F10w3rch1yd snarled, “Is he running another isekai scheme?”

“I know not what an isekai is,” Geelvara replied.

“Why do you all talk like that?”

“Kind and noble lady, I know not what you mean.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake….” F10w3rchy1d facepalmed with her free hand (still holding Faun’s mouth firmly shut with the other one). “Just tell me what that stain is up to.”