Steven woke gasping for breath, looking around panicked, his mind came back to reality as he took in the scene of the quiet beach house around him. Panicking again when he saw Pearl watching him sleep, again.
"Pearl, I thought I told you to not to watch me sleep anymore." Steven said in mild annoyance.
Pearl looked at him with concern.
"Well, I did stop for a while, then you kept waking up in the middle of the night gasping for air, I just wanted to make sure it wasn't Lion doing something to you while you slept."
"No it's not Lion, I keep having this dream and I can never seem to remember it." Steven said putting two of his fingers to his temples to massage them. He tried to remember what it had been, but the memory falls through his hands like sand.
The look of concern on Pearl's face deepened.
"We should go get Garnet, she'll propably be able to help use see what's going on inside your dreams."
Pearl rose and went to the Temple door.
"I'll be back in a minute Steven, try and get some sleep. We'll figure this out soon enough."
Pearl opened the Temple door and walked inside, the door closed behind her and then there was silence. Steven was unsure if it was wise to go back to sleep, but he knew that his body needed to sleep to function. His body seemed to pull his mind back into a sleeping state the moment his head touched the pillow.
Inside of Steven's dream, he suddenly realized he was falling through the air.
Steven was slow to reailze what was happening around him. But as he got hold of his senses, he realized that the ground wasn't getting any closer. Much time passed with him just falling throught the midnight sky, he waited to hit a ground that never seemed to grow closer. A minute passed, then an hour, so much time passed that, in the 'completely logical' setting of a dream, Steven grew a full beard. The sensation of waiting for something seemed all encompassing to Steven. The world around him almost seemed to say it was waiting for something to happen.
Then Steven heard someone call his name from what seemed miles above him. Steven looked up to see Garnet falling towards him. Steven moved out of the way, sure that Garnet would smash into him if he didn't. The odd thing was that as Garnet got closer to Steven she started falling slower, so slow in fact, that when she reached Steven she was falling at the same speed as him.
"Steven, can you hear me?" Garnet said, it was honestly very strange indeed. Steven could hear her easily over the wind in his ears.
Steven nodded and asked, "How are you here?"
Garnet removed glasses and pointed to her third eye which was wide open staring off to the right.
"Future sight isn't my only power." Garnet responded then replaced the glasses on her face. "We need to find whoever's making this place!"
Steven looked at her confused.
"Isn't this my dream?"
Garnet shook her head. "This is a projection, someone else's mind is making this."
Garnet scooped Steven up in one arm and angled herself so that she and Steven fell in the direction her third eye pointed instead of straight down. The environment didn't seem to like that, it almost seemed to fight their advance. But, just as a stream wears away stone, slowly they did make progress.
After a time of moving in the same direction, they spotted a flat-topped mountain in the distance. It grew closer until they saw a blue mass on top of the mountain. Both the mass and the mountain grew larger as they neared.
When they finally landed on the mountain, they saw that the blue mass they had seen from far off was actually a massive dome that glowed an bright ethereal blue right at its center. In the center was a man floating on his back, he seemed to look around the age of twenty five. He looked almost as if he were dressed in clothes made of static. There was nothing on his feet.
The man seemed completely unaware of the two of them.
"We've found who's making this place, let's go and see why." Garnet said as she walked up to the dome with Steven safely behind her.
Steven reached for his chin to stroke his beard only to find that at the lightest tug the beard came off, shrugging it off he watched Garnet walk up to the dome.
Garnet was unsure of how to proceed, the person that built the dream seemed to have encased themself in some form of protective dome. With great caution, Garnet placed a hand on it. In the same instant a voice began to speak. Its voice emmenated from everywhere but the figure within the dome did not move.
"Yes?" The voice sounded weary, but at the same time it seemed to sound kind and soft.
"Who are you?"
"Last." The voice responsed with a slow deliberate tone.
"Last of what?"
"..." There was momentary silence. "Not last."
"What do you mean by that, 'Not Last'?"
"I am not the last of anything, it is the name I chose to have."
Garnet was already tired of this conversation, she wanted answers.
"Alright then, why have you tethered yourself to Steven's mind?"
"He is strong, stronger than all else, but that is not the reason. The reason is, his love, it is in his nature to love everything around him. I haven't felt anything but empty in a very long time. I doubted I could feel anymore. Then I felt him, his love for the world he lives on and those that inhabit it, it gave me a reason to pull myself from the dark."
Garnet was fairly surprised by his answer, but the last part bothered her. "What dark?"
The dome 'laughed' softly at the question and began to sing a simple melody in response.
"All I need is a little love in my life, all I need is a little love in the dark, something that might just kick start, me and my broken heart."
The man under the dome turned from laying on his back to straight up. He descended to the ground below him and walked to the edge of the dome. The dome seemed to compact and fall in on itself towards Last. Garnet stepped back and so did Steven, right to the egde of the mountain plateau.
The still brightly shining dome pressed itself on to Last's body. The dome stopped being solid and pulled itself inside of his body. For a moment however, it formed an exact outline of how Last's body looked, then sank beneath his skin and faded out of sight. The world beneath them began to pulse, an ancient heart began to beat once more. Last opened his eyes to reveal blue eyes that almost seemed to have fire coming from around the edges. He began a slow walk towards Garnet and Steven. Garnet summoned her gautlets.
"Thank you." Last stopped a few feet in front of the duo.
"I would have never had the will to leave my own mind if not for you Steven." Last gave Steven a small smile then looked to Garnet.
"And to answer your question..." Last said to Garnet, "the dark that is inside of me."
Quicker than was perceptable, Last raised a hand and Garnet's three eyes closed. Before Garnet knew what had happened, she was gone. To say Steven was shocked would be an understatment.
"What did you do to her?" Steven exclaimed.
"I sent her back to the waking world. Now, as to why your still here with me. It's because I wanted to talk to you privately." Last sat on the fround in front of Steven.
"What's to stop her from coming back here to get me?" Steven asked nervously.
"Time, in here, time runs at a rate of one hour here equals one minute in the real world. Even if she tried, she could not come here again because I don't want her back. Now, back to why your still here."
Last looked to the horizon, far away from both him and Steven, there was a small speck of blue on the horizon.
Looking back down at Steven, Last continued. "I'll make this relatively brief, I'm nearly there."
"Nearly where?"
"To you, in reality my body has been drifting for a very long time, but it had no place to go. Now it does, to you. That's what the fall whenever you enter this dream is about, it's me, waiting for a reason to do anything. You see Steven, you are the bi-product of a love that shouldn't have worked, you are half-human and half-gem. Someone like you shouldn't be able to live but it seems nature has a few rules in need of revision because here you are, impossible but true."
Last's face failed to hide the look of amazement he had.
"You are a being that can do anything with sufficient time and training. You aren't bound to a three-dimensional world. Your emotions almost come off as a wavelength, a signal for all the world to see. Me on the other hand, I felt it from the darkest part in my mind, your emotions were strong enough to wake me from my waiting. To pull me away from a void. For that I must thank you with both my hearts."
Last pulled down the collar of his shirt to show a heart cut blood diamond embedded in his chest. "The heart that runs my body..." And then the blue of the dome once again shown from under his skin. "And the soul that is the center of my being." Last raised a finger to his lips in a 'keep it a secret' gesture and then tapped the same finger to his gem turning it clear.
Steven's expression changed quite a few times through the course of what he heard. First fear, then that fear softened as the explanation went further. Eventually his face settled into complete neutrallity.
"How long until your body gets to me?"
Last pondered for a moment as he estimated the time remaining.
"Hmm, I will be there at sunrise, the way we can judge time in here relative to the real world, is by looking up at the sky." Last pointed up at an immense starry night sky with the moon hanging overhead.
"When that moon makes it to the horizon, it will be dawn where you are and this place will cease, after an endless eternity. It'll all come crashing down, it will become whatever my mind makes it into, for the moment it's mostly set, unchanging. But what's a dream if you can't change it, this place is based off my perception of the world. Untouchable, no matter how much I wanted to. Now I can finally reach out and feel something. I don't know how to describe how I look at your world, I just want to touch it, to feel something besides the nothingness I feel from this waiting."
"Well, it is a nice place to spend awhile if you ask me." Steven said looking around at the dream, and up at the sky. "What do we do now?"
A chess board rose from the ground along with two chairs. "Care for a game?"
"I don't even know how to play?" Steven said climbing into one of the chairs.
The chairs and the board moved themselves away from the edge of the mountain. "That's alright, I can teach you. We certainly have the time to do it, I can even teach you a few tricks and strategies that most people don't know."
Many hours passed and many hundreds of rounds of chess were played as the moon drew closser to the horizon.
"Checkmate" Steven said with a smug smile, while Last had a very shocked expression over the loss.
"Well, it looks like i've taught you all I can about chess." Last said looking at the moon. "And it looks like we are almost out of time." Last turned back to Steven with a serious look on his face. "Steven, when I do make it to Earth, I want you to promise me that you'll be the one that I see first when I get there." Steven noddedin agreement.
"Well then, it looks like it's time to wake up..." Last trailed off as it happened.
The moon seemed to actually hit the horizon and a massive burst of white light came from it, the light raced towards them, wiping the land clean of everything.
"Hey Steven." Last called to him over the roar of the impact as the light approached.
"Yeah?" Steven shouted back.
"Catch you on the flid-side." Last shouted with a smile, just then the light reached them and the world went blank.
Steven gasped for air opening his eyes to see, not an explosion, but to see his room with Garnet siting right next to him asleep in her own dreams. Turning his head somewhat Steven saw the first glimmer of sunlight coming over the horizon.
'It's dawn.' Last's voice sounded faintly at the back of Steven's mind. 'It's time to begin.'