Blue skies full of lush white clouds
A lush great tree growing up among them
An inverted pyramid holding its roots in the sky
A thing of unnatural black stone blocks
Shifting constantly
Covered in glowing green lines
Geometric patterns with no clear meaning
A thin layer of water across the surface
Spilling endless into the clouds below
A single pedestal set before the tree
A chess board atop it with no pieces

         “Hmm, you’ve come to entertain me, have you?”

         The question left the lips of a youthful and slender man, boyish yet beautiful. He was garbed in white, possessed hair the color of the golden loops that hung in the air known as Rings, and looked out with a piercing but beautiful gaze from red hued eyes. His skin was the color of sun kissed beach sand and his voice intoxicatingly pleasing to hear. He lounged in the loop of a Ring far larger than the more common half-meter sized that one could see all over, and his white cape grew damp where it hung down and dragged along the surface of the water.

         “I could use the entertainment, especially as your actions as they seem wont to do have ended the world yet again. Though things may be more dire than most instances in the past.”

         Gentle laughter escaped the boyish man’s lips, and he turned his gaze towards the sky. There, two moons drifted among chunks of destroyed planet, an asteroid belt where the Earth once was. One moon was nearly as broken, half of it lost to some long past calamity.

         “Saving the world from me?” the boyish man continued laughing as he brought his gaze back down and across the chess board between him and his guest. “I am the God of Rings, Emperor Benedict Yoluku. The world as it is made of Rings is naturally mine to do with as I please. If not for the troublesome seal that binds me, I could easily restore this broken world. Though watching the few surviving dirt dwellers struggle is its own entertainment.

         “But I am awake, and they do not know of me,” Yoluku stated, the mirth gone from his demeanor. “It is scarcely a setting worthy of my attention.”

         The cold glare Yoluku granted his guest only lasted a moment however, and soon he was once more laughing. A sound most beautiful.

         “Your defiance continues to amuse me. Truly, I am grateful for your visit.

         “I can’t help but wonder why though. The world ended because of you several times over. There is no longer a world to save.”

         Carefully Yoluku studied his guest, seemingly to find an answer to his question. However, it was far from an answer likely to come easily. Except that Yoluku’s guest was not solely focused on him.

         Higher yet in the sky, it’s position nigh indeterminable, a massive Ring lay in the sky. Hundreds of miles across, it was a sight to behold. Even more so due to that only two-fifths of it remained, the loop completed by a matching hued cogwheel that turned through it. Both the fragment of the Ring and the Cogwheel however were subjected to the occasional arc of electricity that erupted from the relatively minute black sphere at the center of the circle they drew. It was an odd and unnatural thing, like a hole in the fabric of space time, holding something far deeper than the eye could see. A Darkness beyond comprehension. A Darkness that could easily hold one’s attention too long. Especially with the God of Rings watching you.

         “The Ring of Memories?” Yoluku questioned as he laughed. “Why yes, if you could control it then you could very well change the world without me. But I wonder, how will you do it?”

         Shifting in the Ring he lounged in, Yoluku turned his own gaze past the great tree and to the massive Ring in the sky. Watching it he smiled proudly, and amusedly. “It is perhaps the greatest Ring I’ve ever crafted. One that allows me to give a person new memories, or to change the Memories of the Rings themselves to rebuild the world as I see fit.

         “Really, it was barely more than a toy though,” Yoluku laughed as he fondly recalled the Ring of Memories’ purpose. “Watching the dirt dwellers lose their sense of selves as I changed their memories would have been so amusing, their struggles and confusion, their desperation and loss of self. So delightful it would have been. Though I first would have needed to use it to break the bothersome seal that still leaves me so trapped. And I was so close.

         “Alas,” Yoluku sighed with a smile as he returned his gaze to his guest,” my power over it was stolen. Now only the thief can control the Ring of Memories, but they are… Well, I can hardly say, but I doubt there is much left of them if anything.

         “…

         “Now that would be something very interesting,” Yoluku smiled enthusiastically. “Is that your plan? Is that how you’re going to try and save the world next?”

         Laughter erupted from Yoluku, and he near fell from the Ring he lounged in due to his delight. “That would be perfect! But can you save the thief? Can you even find them? Would you be really willing to make a pawn out of one of my former pawns? A pawn who betrayed me.

         “How I desire to see it.”

         Sitting up, Yoluku stretched a gloved hand out over the chessboard. Twinkling in motes of golden light, very tiny Rings spun into being to fill the starting points of the chessboard. One however turned from a Ring to a crystal figurine representing a pawn.

         “Very well, I allow it,” Yoluku smiled as the pawn was set in the collection of Rings opposite his side of the chessboard. “Let us begin the game, one where we do not eliminate pawns, but steal them from each other.

         “What a delightful idea,” Yoluku laughed with a great deal of vigor. “I truly am so glad you came to visit. My forced slumber is long over, and it is far past time that I am relieved of my boredom.

         “Now, I can’t wait to see who you shall make your pawns, and who I can steal as my own.

         “Let the game begin.”

         A game for a god and his guest so begins. And so too does a story begin. One held in the Darkness housed in the Memories of the Rings.★