A/N: A big thank you to Lin Lamont for betaing this fic for me. Find her on FFN, AO3 and tumblr under the same username.

Deep within D-Point of the Arctic circle, Queen Metalia slept.

And as she slept she dreamed of many things.

There were nightmares of maidens with hair of purest silver pushing her down, down, down into the very bowels of the Earth.

There were sweet dreams of broken seals and these same maidens screaming in agony.

And there were strange visions that even she could not comprehend.

She dreamed that she was a tree. A massive tree with ebony bark that stood alone, shrouded in thick smoke and fog.

Then, as the smoke and fog cleared, she saw she was not the tree. She was simply a branch of it. A branch reaching up towards the sky, where a single magnificent silver light shone bright. And there were other branches too.

One stood out at a 90 degree angle but seemed to curl back upwards. It was as if it had grown towards another, lesser light and now sought to redirect itself.

Upon a far nearer branch, beautiful yet poisonous flowers bloomed. The flowers were covered in spiders' webs and the branch hung over a dark pool of water. Within the water's reflection no flowers bloomed, and the wood and bark seemed old, withered, and decayed.

The smoke and fog was thicker farther down the tree, that the final branch seemed to fade in and out of sight, like a phantom. Even when the smoke cleared, the branch could not be properly seen. It was covered in so many thick, ebony leaves that they acted like a hood concealing the branch itself from sight. Despite being the youngest of the quartet, the branch hung low towards the ground, stooping almost like an old man weighed down by years of wisdom. Wisdom it might impart to potential passers-by whose heads its hood of leaves might brush.

All four branches fed back into the central trunk, the very body of the tree. They were at once separate, growing their own ways, yet part of a greater whole, driven at their cores by the same fundamental desire. A desire for that brightest of silver stars.

It was then that, from the fog, emerged a young woman with hair as ebony as the bark of the tree. She was lost and amidst the smoke, clearly unaware of the tree's presence. She came to a halt beneath Metalia's branch and fell to her knees weeping. Metalia's branch creaked amidst a cold wind and the maiden looked up at her.

Metalia smiled. She would be awake very soon.

A/N: So I tried doing a fic explaining Metalia's origins, how she wound up in the Sun and so on but it got super complicated because of all the lore with Chaos and the other Big Bads. Once you try to tie everything together you realise how Takeuchi was making a lot of this stuff up as she went along, lol.

Instead I pivoted and used this fic as an opportunity to celebrate all the Big Bads at once but from Metalia's POV. I think the tree analogy is the best way you can explain to someone how the villains 'relate' to one another.

For the record though, I figure that Chaos was always after the 'light', which you can interpret as meaning the silver crystal or sailor crystals or just like 'life' in general. So I figured that the like larvae form of Metalia got spat out of Chaos at the same time the star seed for Earth's Sun did and kind of latched onto it, growing inside like a parasite. But then when the Silver Crystal showed up, a much BETTER source of 'light' it decided to switch targets. Thus it left the Sun, formed an alliance with Beryl and built up an army to take the crystal.

Also, just to let you know I am involved in a discord called 'Moonlight Legends' which is dedicated to sharing all sorts of Sailor Moon fanworks, including other fanfics. If you would like to join so you can share your own work, get help with your current projects or just connect to other fan creators shoot me a PM and I'll send you an invite. All are welcome!