This is intended to be multi-chaptered, and is at least in part, being intuitively written (in other words, made up as I go – don’t get me wrong there’s a plot and an ending planned and everything, but I’m letting my brain take me on its own route there.

Chaos Mythologies.

Intro.

Once upon a time, there was Chaos, and there were the worlds created from it.

These worlds were unique because they were not crafted from the ground up, the way most worlds are. They experience no vital moment of beginning, possess no mythology of their creation, are Mythless, but they are. They exist after forming from the fragments of worlds that are already in being. They are the split ends of the multiverse. They are, and yet they should not be. They break the rules which should not exist.

More importantly, these worlds are chaotic. More than chaotic –they are Chaos personified and given the form of life, powerful and endless. But Chaos itself is not enough. Chaos alone is destruction, and must be tempered with endurance and peace. Chaos must be mastered, or else the ruin of all things shall occur. This is the way it has always been. Chaos is uncontrollable in many forms, yet without it, there could be no life. There could be no being.

This is a secret. Don’t tell anyone.

Here’s another secret: Chaos touched on other worlds also. The worlds from which the Mythless were created.This should not have happened, and yet it has. That is important.

Perhaps then, we should start over. Begin this story differently.

Once upon a time, there was Chaos. And Chaos shall be both the root of all things and the end of all things. So it was written, so it shall be.

What more of a story could possibly occur in the interim?

You’d be surprised.

Three hours, fifteen minutes, twenty five seconds... Counting...

It was waiting for something.

Knuckles knew this. He understood, to an extent, how the Master Emerald worked. All its nuances and plans were as complicated and carefully organized as any living creatures might be. People like Sonic might laugh at the idea of the Master Emerald being alive (him of all people, he ought to know better than that, damn it, he’s been using the Chaos Emeralds himself for long enough...) but Knuckles knew otherwise. The Emerald thought. The Emerald knew. And most of what it knew, it was honestly better that others didn’t.

Knuckles had never drawn attention to these things. Some things you simply didn’t question. It wasn't anyone’s place to do so. So now, he sat before the glowing Emerald in the afternoon sunlight of the forest, and said nothing.

‘So anyway, what’s up with the Master Emerald, Knuc’ster?’

Some people, however...

‘Ngh.’

‘Hey, is that anyway to greet a friend?’

...Some people didn't have a lot of the respect they should have for a lot of things. As Sonic was demonstrating right at this moment. Even without opening his eyes and leaving his meditation state, Knuckles knew he going to see Sonic, probably lying on top of the Master Emerald like it was a sun lounger or something, and showing it absolutely no respect whatsoever.

‘Yoo-hoo, Knuckles? Anyone at home in there? You didn’t fall asleep on duty again, didja buddy?’

‘Murfle.’

‘What was that? Didn’t catch it.’

Knuckles sighed and opened his eyes. Sure enough, there was Sonic. Using the Master Emerald as a sun lounger. Knuckles could practically feel its discomfort in the air.

Well, it's discomfort, certainly, but not its rejection. The Master Emerald would never reject Sonic the Hedgehog, no matter how little consideration he showed it. ‘I said that if you’re planning on taking a nap somewhere, try and not make it in my immediate vicinity. Especially not lying on top of one of the most powerful forces in the galaxy, Sonic. The Master Emerald isn’t a park bench.’

‘Maybe not,’ Sonic said. ‘But it’s kinda comfy up here, you know? And warm, too, since it started glowing, all freaky like.’ He swung his legs at high speed, battering the Emerald's side as he did so. Knuckles winched the way he imagined Cream’s mother might if she caught Vector messing around with her fine china. ‘Why is it doing this, anyway?’

‘Get down.’

Sonic looked at him, still grinning. Always grinning, Knuckles thought. Even with the universe under threat it would take a lot to wipe the smile off that guy’s face. ‘Alright, alright. See, look; I’m down already, safe as houses.’

And he was. Now he was sitting halfway down the steps of the Temple, with his arms folded behind his head, looking upwards.

‘The Temple steps aren’t a part bench either.’

‘Hey no fair, I’ve seen you lying here hundreds of times.’

‘That’s different. I’m the Guardian.’ Knuckles waited until he was sure that Sonic wasn’t going to try and use the Master Emerald as a parking space again before he closed his eyes. ‘Is there some particular reason you’re here, Sonic, or did you just feel like bugging me?’

‘Nah, no reason. I just had itchy feet, that’s all. And it’s a nice day, so I thought I’d run over and keep my good buddy company in his eternal -and eternally boring- task of Emerald Guardianship.’

‘You always have itchy feet. And what makes you think I’m bored?’

‘The fact that you’re half asleep?’

‘I’m not half asleep.’

‘Ohhh. Then what are you?’

‘...Thinking.’

‘About what, sleeping?’

Knuckles sighed. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Sonic, but sometimes the hedgehog could be so frustrating that Knuckles had to wonder why Chaos Control had ever gone to him, of all people. And then he remembered Sonic saving the universe, Chaos’ light changing his body from blue to gold, and he understood –appearances (and attitudes) could be deceiving. Sonic’s certainly was.

‘The fact that this is a solemn task of great importance might evade you, but not me. Not all of us need to be running around making up as many adventures as they possibly can every day. Some of us have duties to attend to.’

‘Yeah I know. Sucks to be you, huh?’ Sonic got up and zipped back up the steps to stand next to him again. ‘There is one other reason I came out here, if you really wanna know. Though I figure you’re not going to answer my question. You've already avoided answering it once.’

‘What question might that be?’ Knuckles muttered, finally relenting and opening his eyes. It wasn’t like he was going to be able to focus so long as Sonic was running laps around the temple, anyway. Typical of him to skirt around his real reason for being here at high velocity.

‘C’mon, Knuckles. You know what it is: What’s with the Emerald?’

‘It’s glowing?’ Knuckles suggested, trying to input just the right amount of nonchalance into his voice, so that Sonic might decide that whatever it was, it wasn’t important and go away.

Sonic’s eyebrow went up. ‘Uhuh?’

‘That’s pretty much as far as my knowledge of “What’s with the Emerald?” goes, Sonic. It’s glowing. It does this now and then, usually when something odd is going on cosmologically, but it’s not necessarily anything for us to worry about.’ Yet. ‘That’s all I know.’

‘Yeah?’ Sonic looked as if he didn’t know whether he was satisfied with that answer or not. ‘Well I’ll tell ya what I know, buddy. I know that the Chaos Control in me is itching almost as much as my feet.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, really. It wants out, or something. Feels like I need to go fight something, just for the heck of it. Seriously, what’s going down here, Knuckles?’

So much for making him go away. ‘If I knew I’d tell you,’ Knuckles looked back at the Master Emerald, but trying all day to decipher what it was saying hadn’t done him any particular good.

‘Well can’t you just ask it or something?’ Sonic asked, scratching his head in the manner of the eternally impatient.

‘You don’t honestly think it works like that, do you?'

‘Well, you talk to it whenever you’re doing your “servers” and “unifying” speech, what was I supposed to think? It always seemed to listen.’ Sonic shrugged . ‘Hey, trust me, buddy, there’s no shame in talking to things that aren’t really alive. I mean Cream holds conversations with her flower garden all the time.’

‘Sonic...’

‘What? I’m just saying, honest!’ Sonic was biting back a laugh by this point. ‘Besides it’s not like you’d really be talking to something that isn’t alive.’

‘Of course not,’ Knuckles muttered. ‘You talk to Chaos Emeralds often, then?’

‘Meh. Sometimes this one, when you’re not around.’

Knuckles looked at him , trying to work out whether or not Sonic was being serious. He was smiling a little but then again, he usually was, so that didn’t tell Knuckles anything. ‘...You talk to it You?’

‘Why not? You’ve got a little bit of Chris in there, after all.’

Knuckles started to grunt, then stopped and blinked. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Yeah, he told me about it. About what happened to the rest of him when he shot through here? I know this this is where those extra years of his were kept.’ Sonic patted the Emerald’s side. The glistening light almost seems to rub off on the fingers of his gloves. ‘So what I taslk to it, it kinda feels like I'm talking to him. I use it to talk to Cosmo, too. And anyone else who’s not around anymore. It’s not like them really being here, but...’

‘It... speaks to you, then?’ Knuckles phrased the question as casually as he could, but Sonic’s reaction was still as he had expected it would be.

‘Uh, I wouldn’t go that far.’ Now Sonic looked a little more embarrassed, as if realising just how crazy what he was saying sounded. ‘That would be weird. And possibly really creepy. I’ll leave that stuff to you Guardian types.’

Darn hedgehog needs to be clearer what he’s saying. Knuckles thought irritably. He tried to say this thought aloud, but was interrupted before he could begin by a sharp light slicing right through him. No pain, just light, so sudden that he could easily have imagined it had he not been certain that Sonic saw it too. The Master Emerald glistened with a single, brighter shine, running through the now dimming glow.

Sonic shuddered a little, but Knuckles knew that he was the only one who really understood what that glimmer meant. Sonic was just reacting to the Chaos inside and outside of him. It was pure coincidence while Knuckles' sensation was pure intuition. ‘Yeeeah. Creepy, huh? Has it been doing that a lot, too?’

Knuckles considered a sharp retort, and then decided against it. ‘A few times... I guess something really is happening.’

‘Well whatever it is, it needs to happen faster already,’ Sonic muttered, tapping one foot at a speed most beings couldn’t even reach.

‘Sonic, you think that everything needs to go faster. If the world tried to keep up with you, it’d need a new planet egg every six months, or something.’

‘Yeah there is that in it,’ Sonic nodded. ‘I mean it’s not like anyone or anything could ever keep up with me. So anyway, let me know if anything else weird happens with that thing?’ He tipped his head at the Master Emerald with the same nonchalance he did most everything, but Knuckles could sense his hesitation nonetheless. Which was really quite something. Not many people could sense anything from Sonic. He was hotwired up too fast for most peoples' intuition to cope with.

‘Heh. Don’t worry, I’ll let you know if anything explodes.’

‘Hey, no worries here, Knuckles. I’ll probably know about it before it’s even happened,’ Sonic smiled at him, but Knuckles couldn’t find it in him to return the gesture. ‘Course, if I hear what sounds like you having an argument with the big, glowing rock...’

‘Do you mind?’

‘Alright, alright. Sheesh, some Echidnas.’

‘Oh, like you know any others.’

‘Fortunately, nope.’ Sonic gave the Emerald another pat as he turned to go. ‘Later, Chris. Cosmo.’

Knuckles waited a few moments even after Sonic’s speed blur has vanished into the forest, giving him a chance to get a good few miles away, before Knuckles let out the breath he had been holding and turned back to the Master Emerald.

‘Alright, he’s gone now. What do you have to show me?’

The Emerald flickered once more, brighter than before. And then he saw.

Broken crystal glistening in moonlight. A planet. A world. A shell which could’ve hidden anything in its core. Flashes of light in his eyes, colliding in the air over and over again It seemed familiar... A high speed battle, maybe? Couldn’t be anything else. A sky with half a moon. Bright eyes, belonging to no one he could recognize –green eyes, Knuckles realised. Green and too bright to possibly be natural. A sharp pain in the heart, not his own, but someone’s, somewhere. A slow decent, and yet fast at the same time. A broken chair. A ring in someone’s hands.

It's beginning.

Silence.

The Emerald shimmered one last time before fading to a mere, dim glow, almost like that of it's usual self. Knuckles sucked in a breath, trying very hard to keep calm. The forest shifted in a light breeze. The sun kept shining. Everything appeared to be exactly as it should have been.

But appearances could be deceiving.

Three hours, two minutes, fifty seconds... Still counting. Still waiting for something.

Knuckles sat down on the temple steps, arms folded, eyes closed, and waited with it.

Might be important to remember that.