Zgax leaned against the rock she had been sitting in when the human, Amber, had arrived. She was too excited, and cold, to sleep. The gods had dropped another chance to get away from the empire directly onto her lap. While not necessarily as safe as a rim world, earth was a ways away from being conquered. However, despite her excitement, she was kinda bored.

Zgax turned to look at Amber, who was still asleep in the sleeping bag Zgax had lent her. She got the impression that Amber was a bit too trusting of people, after all, she went to sleep in front of a stranger she had never met while in the middle of the wastes. She’s lucky I found her, she looks like she’d be dead in a week otherwise. Zgax thought to herself.

“I wonder what kinda bugs earth has?” Zgax thought to herself. She loved bugs, with their cute faces, and with countless variations to learn about. Before she ran away, Zgax used to keep a list of all the bugs she had encountered. She pulled out her copy of the  ‘Encyclopedia of Monsters’ to take a look.

The ‘Encyclopedia of Monsters’ is a misleading name, as it contains more than just monstrous creatures. The EoC is a database of all species and subspecies of life in the universe, however one is only capable of seeing entries of life from one's own galaxy. It is written by an enigmatic mechanical author, who has countless copies of himself across the universe. It is even capable of entering veiled worlds. Once a world with sentient life is visited, they are given copies of the Encyclopedia for free, and are always capable of requesting more.

The device used to access it was made out of a lightweight and tough material that looked like gold. It had a handle with a port to plug into at the bottom. Attached to that was a box with a small screen. Attached to the screen was a thick antenna on one side and on the back of the opposite side of the device was a small camera. Its use of buttons and dials made it appear to be an archaic piece of technology, its durability, battery life of a couple hundred thousand years, and zero cases of ever being hacked suggested otherwise.

As Zgax was reading about a type of bug called an ‘ant’, she started to feel warm. She looked up from the intriguing article to see fire seeping out of her glaive in streams. She followed its twisting path to see the fire leading into the lantern Amber had brought with her. She rushed to grab the glorified staff and stop whatever was happening. 

“What are you doing?” Zgax spoke in a harsh whisper. “We don’t know what that thing is, it could hurt us!” 

The wax within her staff spoke in the pained, goopy voice it always did. “Child of Metachrome, my mother is dying. Leave me”

“What the fuck are you talking abou-” Zgax never got to finish her question. Something seemed to snap in her mind, causing her to immediately fall unconscious.

***

Zgax could tell when she was dreaming, it was a skill her father had made sure that she had. This is not how she knew that she was in a dream. Zgax saw the black stone walls, the arches and pillars, and the altar in the center of the room. She had been here. This was the church of Arbidron, the one in the capital at least. Of course, due to this being a dream, the already large room was as large as it had felt when in the building.

Zgax begrudgingly made her way to the altar, there wasn’t much else to do but replay the events of that fateful night. The altar itself was covered in prayer candles, causing wax to pool around the base like a tiny burning moat. In the center was a massive candle that had been burning since the start of the reign of Zgax’s father, 987 years ago. The fire burning atop it was no ordinary flame, it was a tiny piece of the divine judge Arbidon. That however, is not why she was here. The candle beneath it was also divine, as she had recently learned.

He had introduced himself as Sacrosan, lord of wax. He had begged Zgax to release him from Arbidon’s fire. He said that it hurt more than anything she could ever imagine. Zgax had seen what the holy flame was capable of, she had heard its victim's screams. Screams that never lasted long, not due to death, but because the one screaming would scream so hard and so loud, that their vocal cords would tear from the stress.

Zgax removed the glaive from her back and plunged it into the perpetually melting god. When she had done this in the waking world, Sacrosan had escaped his prison and made his way into her glaive, this time however was different. Just as contact was made, the wax parted, revealing Sacrosan to be hollow. Inside of him, curled in the fetal position, lay Amber. She said something.

***

Zgax was already awake when I woke up. She was dressed in her armor and holding what looked like it might be the last piece of jerky, she must have eaten the second to last piece. I wanted to keep sleeping, but the ground wasn’t all that comfortable and we didn’t have much food left, so we needed to leave soon.

“Good morning Zgax, thanks for not robbing me in my sleep.” I said.

She didn’t turn to me as when she responded, “ya.” we sat there in awkward silence for a couple seconds. “Sleep well?”

“Ya, I had the strangest dream.” she suddenly turned to me, I couldn't read her expression very well because she quickly hid it.

“What was it about?” she asked in the tone of someone masking how nervous they are.

“Well, I dreamt that I was inside a tree, I think, then it melted and wrapped around me like a shell, then I found some bugs and they bit me, then I woke up. Like I said, it was super weird.”

Zgax stared at me for a couple seconds, then shrugged. “Well, we better make it to the next town quickly, we don’t want to starve out here.” she threw me her cloak. As I put it on, she rolled up the sleeping bag. “Are we bringing the lantern?”

I looked at it. Despite everything that it had done, I wanted to make sure it got home to its owner. That didn’t mean I wanted to touch it again. “Could you put it in your bag?”

“Sure I have room.” her voice was slightly muffled by a helmet she had put on when i wasn’t looking. It was clearly the centerpiece of her armor. Its shape reminded me of a biker helmet, if a biker helmet had horns made of what looked like gold. they sprouted from the sides and curled forwards and up. The visor was tinted gold and some of the gold like metal replaced the black metal of the rest of the helmet just under said visor. Along the sides were two holes built in, one on each side, facing backwards to allow air to flow out behind her head rather than fogging up her vizor. The back was open to allow her feathery hair to flow freely. She looked incredible.

“Where did you get that?” I had been wondering about her armor for a while, but the helmet was the tipping point.

“I- I’ll tell you later.” she said. “Anyway, we need to get going.” she said quickly, trying to change the subject. If she didn’t want to share, then I wasn't going to pry. I was given my jerky, and we were off.