It was a void, but not like the one he had experienced when he had destroyed the original Tsurani rift at the end of the Riftwar. This felt different. Rather than the absence of anything, this place felt as if they were surrounded by everything, but in a fine powder, compared to which the finest mote of dust was grotesquely large and coarse. ‘Where are we?’ Pug asked.
‘We are in the fourth realm below, or what your poets, dramatists, and not a few clergy called the Fourth Level of Hell.’
Thinking of what he had glimpsed through the portal to the fifth circle when Macros had battled the Demon King Maarg, and what he had seen of the second plane – the Dasati plane – he said, ‘This is not what I expected.’
‘Nor is it what you would have encountered millennia ago, had you cause to visit.’ Pug detected an odd tone in the god’s voice, a note of regret. ‘This was to the Dasati world what their world is to yours. There were beings living here, Pug, a little more civilized by your standards than the demons, but not by that much. Still, they had a society, or rather a great many of them, for they were spread far and wide throughout this universe, much as humanity is spread throughout our realm.’
‘What happened?’
‘The Dark One,’ said Ban-ath shortly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘No one knows, or at least no one I know does, and I know a lot of people… billions in fact.’
Pug glanced at the source of the voice, expecting to see Nakor again, but there was nothing but void all around him. ‘What am I seeing?’
‘A plane of reality so devoid of life that it has been reduced to a fine primordial grit, a place where every single bit of reality has been equally distributed across the entire volume of this reality.’
‘How is that possible?’
‘In an infinite universe, anything you can imagine is possible somewhere, probable, even.’
‘Then this entire realm is completely devoid of anything beyond this… fine dust?’
‘Well, nothing is eternal, or at least we’ll never know. Even the gods as you think of us have limits on their perceptions and existence. It may be that for some reason or another two motes will bump into one another and bind, and eventually a third will join them, and that attraction will continue as it pulls more matter into a sphere. Eventually all that is here will be pulled in and when it reaches a certain level of density—’
‘It explodes,’ said Pug. ‘And a new universe is created. It’s what Macros showed us—’
‘In the Garden by the City Forever, when the Pantathians trapped you, Macros, and Tomas was there with that dragon, yes, I remember.’
‘You remember?’
Laughing, the God of Thieves said, ‘I orchestrated it!’ His tone turning serious, Ban-ath added, ‘You may never fully understand, nor may you ever forgive me – about which I care nothing – but many of the pains you’ve suffered and the wonders you’ve observed have been part of a much larger plan, one that has been preparing you for what you must do now.
‘Seeing that image of how your universe began was merely your first lesson in appreciating just how vast things are, and how important what you’re about to do is. For you must do something that you would have been unable to until now. You had to see a universe born, watch people die including those you’ve loved, travel the Hall of Worlds, and do so many other improbable things, Pug, because you must undertake even more arduous and challenging tasks and make decisions no mortal should ever have to make.’
‘What decisions?’
‘In time. Right now you must learn more.’
‘We’re not really here, are we?’
‘No. We’re still in your room, actually, and you’re sitting quietly on your bed staring into space, but for the sake of what comes next, think of yourself as being on an amazing journey.’
Ban-ath snapped his fingers.
There was a flash and suddenly they were in a different reality, one in which massive chunks of rock and debris sped past at great speed. This time Pug saw a, sky that was more akin to what he might expect of the Dasati universe, a place of colours and energies vivid to the eye, but beyond human senses. But here there were vast curtains of colours with massive flows of energy pulsing across their surfaces, and he knew he was witnessing something incredibly distant. Sheets of scintillating colours, red, purple, violet, and indigo shimmered impossible distances away, covering incalculable areas in the heavens. A giant rock the size of a mountain tumbled past, energy dancing across its face, sending jets of magma erupting into space. A vast distance away, stars illuminated the vault of the sky, though there were far fewer than in the night skies at home.
‘Where are we?’ asked Pug.
‘This is the third realm, most recently occupied by the Dark One. As you see, he left enough big pieces behind this so that level of reality has a chance to reform a little more rapidly than the realm we just left. There are corners of this universe where life still exists, a few minor civilizations in fact. They may even endure long enough to reach out to other worlds.’