IN A PLACE-BUT-NOT-A-PLACE, in a world-but-not-a-world, in the-beginning-but-not-the-beginning, a serpent lay tightly coiled around a massive ash tree, his tail clenched firmly in his fangs. As he slumbered, from far above and far below a redness seeped down from one of the many realms, where a human stag stood beside a goblin king. The redness fell onto the serpent and sank through his skin, and as it did, the beast began to stir.
Slowly, as if he hadn’t moved his muscles in countless millennia, the serpent began to writhe around the tree as if sensing a disturbance to his slumber. He looked toward the surface-that-was-not-the-surface, his eyes narrowed in a predatory glare, until his massive jaws opened, and he consumed his tail no more.
And so began the beginning of the end.