~ The Screaming Season ~

by

Joseph Armstead

PROLOGUE

The Ways of the Worlds

"And the earth was formless and void and darkness was on the face of the deep." Genesis 1:2

When the universe was still young, a magnificent unimaginably vast infant of burning suns and raging storms, its darkness hid a mystery to exceed any secret it would ever develop, a mystery kept even from itself.

It, the universe itself, was not alone.

Incredibly, there were other universes. Not just one cosmos, one universe, but instead a Multiverse. Many universes existed side-by-side, out-of-sync with one another. Some were reflections of the embryonic, fathomless colossus we are still only beginning to explore.

Others were older and darker places full of savagery and dangerous wisdom.

Each universe was its own separate Reality, segregated from its cosmic brethren by a chronal-space Veil, a time-space membrane, which cloaked each Reality’s existence from the other.

One origin, but many places, many faces, many spaces and a rushing flood of differing time frames, filling an incalculable nothingness that still vibrated from birthing its thousand thousand star-filled children.

And each universe had its Keepers, beings evolved from the cores of the stars. Immortal and incredibly powerful, these Keepers were not quite sentient or humanoid. Yet they were independent in thought and personality, standing outside the flow of biological evolution. They were called The Zuraphym.

There were three, forming a unit called a Host to each universe.

One Zuraphym represented Order, cold and precise, controlling all that has structure, form and logic, creating harmony, yet rigid, stifling evolution.

One Zuraphym represented Chaos, that which, by nature of its violence and turbulent formlessness, creates change, mutating the Order, evolving the universe from Then to Now to Next.

The last Zuraphym represented Balance, demanding that all things, both Order and Chaos, reach an equitable agreement that nurtures the existence of each Reality.

The Zuraphym were aware of one another, and knew that there were many different worlds.

They worked diligently, a single cosmic family to keep all Existence in a harmonious state.

So it went unchanged for millennia until one day, one Zuraphym, a Keeper of the Balance, went mad and demanded that all things change, that Chaos and Order were irrelevant to the existence of all the worlds. This solitary Keeper decided that the Zuraphym were meant to be the ruling masters in each of the many universes.

This Keeper wanted massive and sweeping change regardless of the consequences.

Like most families, there were those who loved and trusted this Keeper of the Balance who, until his madness manifested, was the most trusted and most courageous of them all. And so they sided with him against those who disagreed that the Order and Chaos were invalid, inefficient and inadequate concepts.

So the mighty Zuraphym went to war.

Reality tilted out of control, the time-stream fractured into many tinier divergent streams. Suns died, galaxies ruptured, worlds wound down like old clocks.

Others froze like glacial ice and the time-space veil ripped like a sail caught in a hailstorm.

Eventually, the Keepers of Order defeated the Keepers of Chaos and the Balance was restored, but not before the one Zuraphym who started the massive conflict that threatened all creation was rousted and cast out; doomed to exist outside the time-stream, doomed to have no home in any one Reality.

He was named Achrion. They called him the Chaos-bringer and his punishment, his banishment, drove him even more insane.

So it was that of all the Zuraphym, it was Achrion who became the most… human.