In a place where the gloom never eased, there stretched a plain of wind-blown silts. Lying half buried in beds of the dun, fine-grained material, the detritus of countless civilizations cluttered every possible view, reaching out to the horizons. Godly idols crouched with their backs to the incessant wind, shouldering high dunes that curled round to make empty bowls in their laps. The statues of kings and queens stood tilted, hip-deep, with arms upraised or one hand reaching out as if to grant benediction. The tall backs of thrones thrust like tombstones from the flats. Here and there, foundation walls from crumbled palaces and temples made ridges and lines; rooms sculpted hollows, and cracked domes rose in polished humps.

Wings folded, the Azathanai Skillen Droe followed the set of tracks wending its way across this eerie, despondent landscape. Flight was out of the question, as the air was caustic above the plain, and riding the high, grit-laden winds was too excoriating, even for one such as he.

Instead, the tall, arched figure plodded shin-deep through the desiccated, lifeless silts, his reptilian eyes fixed on the ragged trench made by the one who had walked ahead of him. His mysterious predecessor was dragging something that did little more than glide over the deep furrows carved by its thick, bandy legs.

It had been a long time since Skillen Droe last visited this realm. Since then, the wreckage and ruins had proliferated. Most of the idols he did not recognize. Many of the statues portraying emperors, kings, queens and child-gods revealed features that were alien and, at times, disturbing to Skillen’s sensibility. And he could feel the push and tug of the wayward currents of invisible energy that he knew as the Sidleways, although he was not the Azathanai who had coined that name.

Forgotten monuments rode the Sidleways, inward from other realms. Like flotsam, fragments washed up here, as if this plain served a singular purpose as the repository of failed faiths, abandoned dreams and broken promises. Perhaps it was, as some of his kin believed, the corner of the mind, and the mind in question was the universe itself.

It was difficult to decide if the notion pleased or irritated him. If indeed the universe possessed a mind, it was a cluttered one. And if corners such as these thrived in that mind, then the custodian was asleep, or, perhaps, drunk. This river of semi-consciousness abounded in musing eddies and swirls, in spirals of relentless notions, spinning and spinning until they devoured themselves. Ideas rushed forward only to recoil from boulders in the stream, curling off to the sides and dissolving in the churning tumult. No, this was a mind in hibernation, where only vague memories and flashes of inspiration made the waters restless.