███████

Alma rushed to embrace the eldritch woman. “Sorry. It sure feels like it’s been forever. Thank Macha you’re here. I think it’s been a few days now actually. There's no way to fucking tell. That… evil thing in the sky just won't set! I've barely been able to sleep. If it’s not the constant heat that won’t go away, it’s watching out for those shadows out there in the forest! I was scared I might be lost here forever, but now you can lead me back—Wait. W-Where’s Hwal?”

“Alma!” Qu’l-Nia pulled her away and held her at arm’s length, staring deep into her tired, yellow eyes. There was an increasing look of anxiety growing on the eldritch woman’s face that Alma had never seen before. “There is something much more important that you must know. I was blind. So very blind. Our focus was split. How could we have known?”

“Huh? What are you talking about, Q? Know what?”

“All this time. It’s not your planet I should’ve been worried about. We should have been looking for him. He’s always watching. The D…" She trailed off. Qu’l-Nia clutched her head with a frustrated grimace. “W-What? No. Who was I thinking of just now…?”

“Q? Looking for who? Watching what? Derleth? Wasn’t that always the plan?” Alma saw the fear slowly vanish from Qu’l-Nia’s otherworldly eyes, replaced by a confused searching through piercing white pupils lit by an iridescent color out of space. “…Qu’l-Nia?”

“Alma.” Her face returned to her regular serene look of calm. “I seemed to have forgotten what it was that had me so rattled a moment ago.” She let go of the ex-soldier and looked curiously at her new surroundings. “Fascinating. You say the sun never sets here?”

“What? But… O…kay.” Alma was left befuddled by the woman’s strange behavior. Then again, this was Qu’l-Nia she was talking about. “Right. That thing is not a sun. I don’t know what it is, but it’s definitely lethal to anything caught in it.” She unwrapped a dressing around her arm, revealing a searing patch of red skin. “A small bit of its light touched my arm yesterday and the area is still weirdly scarred.”

“You are half correct,” she said over her shoulder, looking out at the strange desert just behind the trees. “That is indeed a sun, that through some form of eldritch influence seems to have come to life. I do not completely understand the mechanisms behind it, but it appears to thrive on consuming all it can with its foul light.”

“Wait. If the sun is black, why does everything look… not-black?”

“It does. I believe your eyes are simply compensating by showing you a world you are more accustomed to.”

“Does that mean this isn’t our world?” she asked. Alma took the long strip of fabric that was covering her arm and wrapped it around her forehead like a bandana. “That’s a relief. I thought maybe we’d royally fucked up our mission and the world ended.”

“I would not celebrate prematurely. Do you understand how you came to be here in the first place, Alma?”

“No, actually. Been ruminating on that since I dropped here. Thought maybe we got invaded by one of your long-lost relatives. Maybe your mortal enemy finally tracked you down and obliterated you from space, taking the rest of the world with it.”

“That is a preposterous assumption. I have neither a mortal nor immortal enemy.” Qu’l-Nia looked at Alma with a perplexed look. “And any intrusion by my kin would be found to be in direct violation of what you childlings would refer to as our ‘rules.’”

Alma’s lips turned into a soft, amusing smile. “I can’t believe I’ve missed that pompous attitude of yours.” For a fraction of a second, Alma thought she had caught a slight frown on the eldritch woman’s face. “Aren’t your people supposed to protect universes? Space janitors and all that? Maybe one of them went rogue. It’s happened before, hasn’t it? Maybe you just didn’t know about it.”

“That is simply impossible,” replied the stone-faced Qu’l-Nia. “This was not caused by my kind. I had to travel very far to find this universe, having found it interred in one of the cosmic necropoli. It seems this world has been designated doomed and subsequently abandoned. My guess is some greater outside force has killed its gestaltian, effectively destroying its quintessence.”

“This is a dead world? That’s no surprise.” The sniperess clicked her teeth. “Wait, what’s a… gestal…tian?”

“Alma, are you sure my explanations of the mechanics of your entire existence does not frighten you? You seemed so distressed when we first met.”

“Wow. Is Ms. Eldritch Terror having another one of her rare crises of conscience?” Alma grinned tauntingly. “Relax, Big Q. I’ve gotten pretty numb to it by now. You’re not gonna scare me. I practically grew up around insanity.”

“Alright.” The woman smiled warmly at Alma. It had been a while since she got to enjoy explaining things to her friends. “Then allow me to expound a few interesting facts! Each universe begins its life as a living entity. A macrocosmic, animate thing one brother of mine so affectionately dubbed Manayothni. We did not create these Manayothnies—they are native creatures of The Real that have thrived there far longer than we have. In fact, I believe I have mentioned this before but, I, too, was believed to have been once born from one.”

Alma detected a noticeable copper taste along her tongue from biting her lip a little too hard.

“We rear these creatures, and when we believe the time is right, a member of our kind is then chosen to become its guardian. Said guardian must then… rend it—for lack of a proper term. It is an extensive process used in the creation of a universe. Upon this universe’s creation, it goes into an immediate decay that lasts… a very long time. A gestaltian is something akin to its world soul. As I have come to understand it, it is a being born from this decaying process that collects the souls of all things once they undergo their final death in order to reconstitute itself once more. I believe it is most similar to the concept you childlings refer to as a reaper.”