There are many worlds.

Not worlds as in planets or moons. Worlds. Dimensions. Zones. Alternate realities. Terms as many and varied as the inhabitants that dwell within them. Worlds. Side by side...pieces of creation between the void...light in darkness.

Yet even within these worlds, the darkness came first. As fast as light travels, the dark is always waiting for it.

And sometimes, the darkness moves from one world...to another...

Sonic the Hedgehog: Jungle of Shadow

Prologue: Heart of Darkness

He had heard the call...and he'd answered.

It might have seemed odd for a mobian, Overlander or...well, anything with a degree of sapience to see Flicky Bluebird standing on the ground, on the edge of the jungles of South Island. Why, someone would ask, was he standing there? Why would a mobian of the sky not be a bit closer to his natural habitat? And why was he on the edge of the jungle, staring at it? Why not dwell in the Green Hills, or the beach further south of them? Why...well, that was just it. Why? A question that dumb-founded organics and according to science fiction movies, could send computers into a system crash.

Flicky didn't know. Didn't know any of it. Didn't know why when he'd entered the jungle a week ago that he felt the urge to stay there. Why even now, a week on, he felt the urge to return. And in regards to actually being on the cusp of carrying it out, of entering the domain of that which was calling him...well, even if a proverbial computer survived a proverbial meltdown (not that the bluebird truly understood what either of them were), he doubted an answer could be provided.

Sonic might know the answer...or Scout...

The bluebird sent those ideas flying back to the surf. Sonic had enough problems right now, not the least of which was the incident with Doctor Kintobor-an incident that Flicky didn't fully understand, but was willing to take on faith that it was best not to be discussed. And Scout the Mockingbird...well, she'd run off with someone called Dill. And that was all Flicky knew or cared about.

Apart from the call that was...

Tightening his beak, and wondering what it would be like to have teeth so that he could clench them together, Flicky took the plunge. The flight into the unknown. His feathers ruffled, his usually pink cheeks darker, he made the flight of faith. Into the jungle. Into the call. To find the source of the splinter in his mind, and the means to remove it.

Welcome.

The jungle was...dark. Darker than usual. Flicky had been in here a few times before, and talked to his fellow birds that frequented it, but even so, he hadn't expected it to be like this. Tall trees, fighting for the right to receive the touch of sunlight, even at the cost of their fellow sentinels of wood. Down below, tiny plants...cut off from the sun by the above canopy, struggling in the dark...just like the bluebird that flew above them, drifting from tree to tree, listening to the deafening sound of silence.

Can't...breathe...should go...back...

Coward. One foot in the grave, pulling you in...you will need both to get back out...

Feet...such a strange way to move around. The air...so thick and dense...a suffocating shroud of oxygen, nitrogen and a dozen other gasses that he breathed in every day.

But maybe it wasn't the air that was suffocating him. Maybe it was from breathing in the darkness...

Wishing he had feet like Sonic or any mammalian mobian as much as he wished that he had teeth right now, Flicky kept going. Flying from tree to tree...flying through the dense air...weighing down from him, as if it were part of the judgement of a vengeful god. Not Aurora, nor any being that might reside in the sun...he was beyond both of their domains, despite being noon and the sun being at its highest. Shining above a world that he no longer felt part of...he was in a world of silence now. For all intents and purposes, another zone...whatever that was. Another thing in the realm of physics that Flicky barely knew of nor understood.

There is so little you understand.

And then it began.

The bluebird flew to the next branch, unable to stop himself. But he did stop nonetheless...stop in mid-air. Stop then and there, finding himself embracing the coolness of Mother Earth that bore him. Yet now, on the cold floor of the jungle, in the strangling silence, he felt like a bastard child of that which bore him. Or had the nature of such conception been...altered?

Help...me...

You're not a cat...but curiosity will be the death of you.

Flicky struggled to get up, struggled to fight against inevitability. Yet he couldn't. The air, the darkness, the silence...it closed in around him, the trees spinning around his eyes, reminiscent of the bars of a cage. He couldn't sweat, not being a mammal...but he was as close to the motion as possible. As close as he was to the...thing...coming out of the gloom. Demon or angel, friend or foe...struggling against the oppression, it meant little.

You're not the one I wanted. But it matters little. He can't ignore the call much longer.

And then it happened. The only thing that Flicky the Bluebird, struggling to keep conscious, could do...

...scream.

A/N

The full story behind this...story is on my homepage, but I think it behoves me to lay out the basics here. This was the last story I concieved under a multi-verse premise, before forsaking said premise and writing for individual Sonic the Hedgehog settings. In regards to converting multi-verse stories to said settings, Friendship had already been written while Transgression was made an Archieverse story, with this one following on from both of them (and Of Rodents and Rings, but that's on the backburner). Here however, I settled on making this story AR (as opposed to AU...yes, there is a difference), serving as a vague continuation from Friendship, but mainly stand-alone. Elements of Transgression remain, such as Flicky actually hearing the call originally in this story's predecessor rather than the first time as portrayed here. And...yeah, think that covers it.