Paradise Lost (JSAB)

A forgotten leaf lies at the bottom of an artificial river.

Some days before, 0240 Hours, Tetra's dreamscape

As if Tetra's dream's couldn't get any weirder- one fateful night's sleep they found themselves floating in an abyss, surrounded by what seemed to be swirling dancing colours, a waltz of pink and cyan that hurt their eyes to even look at. Like someone mixed the two paints together and ran a paintbrush through the surface, like ink or mist or smoke or perhaps even a kaleidoscope. Either way- it was absolute, an empty void of pure substance. There was a sound, a dull sound like a pulsating heartbeat rippling through the air.

Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub.

They were sitting at a table. A table floating through spacetime, like a planet, with its own force holding it in place. They could tell it was a dream almost immediately. The table was large, enough for six people to sit in total, sitting at one end in a chair that was not too soft but not too hard.

Strangely, despite the lack of a solid ground underneath them, the chair stayed in place where it should be. There were floating cups of coffee and plates with disassembled cake floating away from the table, hovering by some strange force. In the middle there was a thick, round coffee pot. If gravity truly did exist in this weird dream, then those objects would be neatly resting on the table's surface, but instead looked as if they were falling apart as they floated around the void.

But more importantly, there was someone else sitting on the other end, a tall man with a face shrouded in shadow. They couldn't see his face, only a large, maniacal grin that belonged to a demon. The man wore a feathered pink royal cloak around his shoulders over a fine, expensive suit.

They couldn't see his face but at once Tetra knew that this was the demon king Fresh. Their mortal enemy. They pursed their lips as they stared at the figure, eyeing him.

"Hello, Square Guardian Tetra." Fresh's voice came out a bit deeper than usual, taking a floating empty cup, and filling it with coffee which strangely filled the cup normally despite the fact that gravity didn't seem to exist except for him and Tetra. He passed the coffee, floating through the air, over to his guest, and poured himself his own drink. "Let's play a game."

Tetra caught the floating cup and took a sip, something that they wouldn't have ever done in real life. The coffee tasted... bah, what's the word... Spicy? Was coffee supposed to be spicy? They grimaced, both at the taste and at the man in front of them, who had now leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. He has yet to touch his own coffee.

"I have better things to do than entertain you. Let me wake up." They narrowed their eyes at him.

"Oh?" The monarch chuckled. Weirdly, despite the fact that he was audibly talking, his lips did not move. They were just stuck in that permanent, diabolical smile. That horrid smile. It made them sick to look at. "How mean... I'm hurt... But not like you have a choice, anyways. Let's play together, Cyan. We'll have lots of fun."

"I'm not sure I like where this is going. And my name is Tetra."

"The rules are simple." Fresh ignored them, and held up three fingers. "I ask you three questions. You answer all of them correctly- congratulations, you win, and you get to wake up. If you lie, you lose, and I kill one of your allies."

This certainly could've gone in worse directions, but Tetra still sighed. "And what if I refuse to answer?"

"Then the game simply will not progress." Fresh rested his head on his hands, tilting it to the side like an infatuated schoolgirl. "And you will never. Wake. Up. We can stay here forever if you want, drinking coffee, eating cakes, gossiping like teenage girls, until the end of time and entropy claims us all in its empty embrace."