Bab 2: Morpheus's divine realm: The last god of Earth

Drake did nothing but stare on blankly as the ripples, in reality, rushed at him. Too shocked to react, he was silently swallowed up by the supernatural event, and around him, the Greek mountains melted away.

He then found himself in a new, astonishingly chaotic realm.

Now surrounding Drake was countless glassy shards of rainbow light that shimmered, pulsated, and bled into one another, continually shifting in shape and size. Rhythmically, the shards bound together, close, before expanding out rapidly, like a beating heart of some sort of rainbow monstrosity. From a place unknown echoed voices rang out; the hushed whispers of forbidden secrets, the depraved mutterings of mad-men, screams of terror, shouts of joy, and the laughter of children. All somehow individually distinct, they threatened to overwhelm Drake's mind, testing his sanity.

Thankfully, this world began to shift.

Reality appeared fluid, as it flowed passed Drake, but perhaps he was the one flowing through it, either way, the chaotic realm began to change. Faster and faster, the strange voices and light blurred past until they blended together, creating an ear gratingly high pitch drone and flickering streaks of shaded light.

The world continued to speed by until...

(('(Boom!!!)'))

A monumentous explosion of sound, light, and heat burst forth.

It blinded, scorched, and deafened Drake, before going away as quickly as it arrived, collapsing in on itself as if absorbed by a black hole.

Everything became still, quiet.

The shaded light of before had divided out into an inky black sky, seeded with stars of celestial white light. Grey fog curled around Drake's legs, solidifying below his feet and before him, suspended atop an ashen cloud, stood a columned white marble building, reminiscent of the Greek Parthenon.

"What the hell is going on, did I die?... Were their shrooms in my coffee?... Is this a hallucination or... maybe a dream?" Eyes wide, Drake strolled towards the temple as he spoke aloud to himself, feeling a subconscious pull from it.

When he arrived at the marbled steps, in his mind, a voice sounded. "Ding a ding ding, our champion guessed right, congratulations, give him a round of applause everyone,"

Out of grey fog floor formed a rising colosseum. The seats were filled with hundreds of same faced white-robed men and women, clapping, cheering, and hollering praise. The walls of the colosseum had formed around Drake, converging with the temple, creating a single structure.

From out between the Parthenon's pillars floated a man, he was dressed in a simple black robe and out of his back protruded silky black wings, almost twice the size of the man himself.

"Well, which one was it?" Drake asked, the bizarre reality of his situations still having not fully sunk in.

"It's a dream, of course... well, I guess you're technically dead too, but that's just a temporary matter I assure you, I can't bring anything 'living' into my divine domain of dreams now can I? A corporeal form in an incorporeal world, now. that doesn't make much sense, does it?"

The man gave a speedy mocking grin before waving his arms. They're surroundings faded away and transformed once again.

Drake was now standing on a restaurant terrace, with an up-close and personal view of the Eiffel tower. It was night, and Paris was lit up by countless street lights, presenting it in all its splendor. The sky above was somehow still starry, unpolluted despite the luminous city below, further adding to the beauty of the scene.

The winged man gestured to a chair, and spoke. "take a seat." Drake gawked at the city, and mesmerized, he couldn't help but ignore the winged man.

"This.... this is..." Paris, the final destination on Drake's long bucket list of places he was planning to travel too.

A dubious expression formed on the winged man's face, a mix between childlike pride from the recognition of his creation, and the irritation of being ignored because of it.

The irritation eventually won out though, so the winged man waved his arms again, and the world shifted, if only slightly.

With the shift, Drake was now sitting down in a corrugated steel chair, facing the weird angelic man.

The winged man cleared his throat before talking in a pompous official tone. "Well, lad, I have a proposal for you, well more of a demand per se, as you have little to no choice in the matter anymore. The other gods of Earth have all buggered off somewhere while I slept, and frankly, good riddance... always waking me up with their frivolous squabbles."

His voice changed again this time a nasally high pitched whine came from the winged man's lips.

"Aphrodite cheated on me with so and so, Ares has started another war again, and Zeus has lasered off Hephaestus's beard with lightning, oh no what will we do. You would assume after a few millennia, they would have matured a little."

Drake watched the winged man jabber on as he missed out on the irony of calling others immature when he lacked in that department himself, interrupting the ranting he asked,

"I'm sorry, but who the hell are you, and did you say I was dead? Am I dead?!" there was a little panic building in Drake's voice.

Ignoring the question, our feathered friend continued to talk. "Hush and listen; there are more important matters at hand than your pathetic mortal body. Now, where was I, ahh yes, introductions. I am the great god of dreams Morpheus, and you, my little mortal friend, are my newly chosen champion... hurrah," he finished with a little clap.

Drake tried to interject, what did he mean by pathetic? But found his lips had been sealed, closed by a mysterious force.

"So to sum it up, my realm is near collapsing, and with the pantheon gone, I'm just a remnant of what I was, a mighty oak without its roots, so to speak. I blame you guys, the ever-increasing mortals... you lot do love procreating, hughh... Anyway, I have been having a little trouble keeping up with all the dream energy that passes through my world from other dimensions. It's attracted by, and pools into, the unconscious mortal mind, and I'll be needing a little help with this matter, any questions?"

Feeling his mouth unseal, Drake questioned.

"Why was I chosen?"

The god looked a little embarrassed, he rubbed the back of his neck and looked away as if to admire the Effiel tower.

"Ahhh, that. You weren't so much chosen; it's more like you happened to stumble into this place. So essentially, errghh... convenience was the main factor for you becoming my champion. I don't exactly have the resources left to search the entire Earth for any particular human talent, but I'm sure you'll do just fine. You look like a reasonably capable fellow... well... for a mortal anyway."

Drake gave the god a look bordering on contempt, feeling that maybe Morpheus's hasty actions of pulling him from his world were more out of laziness than anything else.

"What exactly do you need me for then?"

"Oh yes, didn't I say, well this is a rather sticky matter I'm afraid. The condensed dream energy of the nearby dimensions continuously flows into this one, attracted by the unconscious minds of you mortals, in the form of dreams.

Its a perfectly ordinary occurrence, but now with the increased presence of sentient life on Earth, attracting stupendous amounts of this energy, and my godhood weakened after the dissemblance of the gods, I am struggling to keep all the excess of energy at bay."

Morpheus let out a sigh.

"The dream energy has been building up for a while now, and I've got a few hundred years of it backlogged already. Anyway, at the rate things are going, there are only two or maybe three decades left till this reality... Earth will be taken over by the materialization of transdimensional dream energy. Your world will become like my domain, incorporeal."

"And... what exactly does this mean." Drake inquired, not really understanding anything the god was saying.

"Let me put it into perspective for you. If it wasn't for me right now, your soul would scatter to dust, and what's left of it would become a type of receiver and relay for transdimensional dream energy."

Drake nodded along.

"If the encroachment of energy isn't stopped, all the souls of your reality will be enveloped, consumed, and scattered... being converted, and the humans of Earth will cease to exist.

Drake paled considerably, not taking to the incoming apocalypse well. He felt like he was drowning in a sea of dread and panic, as his thoughts turned to the people in his life.

Friendships he had forged in his youth, old crushes, flings, partners, and the comrades he had served with on the battlefield, they would die.

"What exactly do you expect me to do about it then, as you said, I'm just a mortal, and if you, a god, can't do anything about it, what the hell am I supposed to do?" Drake snarled

"Finally, we get to the main point of all this."

Morpheus pushed his right hand into his chest. It sunk in cleanly as if he was made of water, his body neither of flesh nor bone. Out from inside the cavity of his ribcage, he pulled, clutching tightly in hand, a ball of congealed grey fog swirling into itself, like the dark clouds of a storm sucked in by a collapsing tornado.

The world around them became blurry and sparked with a colored static distortion, similar to that of Drakes faulty GPS. It returned to the dark sky of before, but now the white stars were dimmer and the grey fog below receding.

Morpheus looked fatigued as he presented the twisting mass of ashy grey matter before Drake.

"This is roughly a third of what remains of my divinity, it's just about enough to lay a seed of divinity in your soul, and give you a one-way trip to a world that is bleeding into this one. If you can accumulate enough energy, it can facilitate travel again,"

He thrust it into Drake's chest, Drake was shocked by his sudden actions, and his eyes opened wide as he shouted: "Wait!".

Morpheus gave a farewell, "You need to grow strong and return, I hope I'm right about this all being caused by mortals, the alternative is not a pleasant one... either way, only together do we have a chance to stave off the end, good luck in your travels dreamer."

With a slight push from Morpheus, Drake was sent back into the void.