Opposition is True Friendship.
Ridley is in a dark room, dark and cool. The air is artificial, as is everything else around him, and cool, cooler than he would like. But it is dark, and Ridley is at home in the darkness. With avarice he clutches his prize, hidden between his feet. With impatience he waits on the one who will come to reclaim it. He is as eager as he has ever been in his life. He is eager and he is ready.
She arrives. Golden Child, Daughter of Destiny, Woman Clothed with the Sun. She is here and she wants her child back, the Emerald Hatchling beneath him. He is determined she shall not have it.
Ridley roars and shakes his fires in the synthetic air, hungry clouds swag in the empty. The woman jumps aside—the fires go past—and flings her rays of light into him. With that, the darkness is gone, destroyed, and as hot as Ridley prefers to be, the rays of light burn deep, burn painful. He lashes back with his tail, strikes her. He breathes his heavy fires. They envelop her, and he is glad. But now she is out of it, out of it and into the air, no harm done. She casts another ray of light at him. He winces, drops his prize. He reclaims it, is angered, now flees. But this place cannot survive the absence of his perception. The artificial disk shudders and smokes, is destroyed, but Ridley is gone and the Hatchling with him. He is glad.
Ridley wakes and rolls on his side. The pain has lessened, but he knows not how much time has passed. A moment is an eternity; they feel the same and he feels them not. Here, time is meaningless. He is Lord and Master of all he surveys. He is ruler of an infinite nothing.
Ridley sighs.
He closes his eyes, leaves them shut but cannot sleep, opens them. The Woman he left behind is not dead, she is coming here. In minutes or hours or days she will be here in this very place, and he will be waiting for her. They will fight, one of them will die, and that will be that? That will be that. He would like nothing more than to see her dead. He lies on the floor.
It is possible that she is not coming, he realizes, that she is already dead and buried somewhere in the labyrinth that exists above. Perhaps she has become trapped and is dying. Perhaps someone else has killed her. Perhaps there is no reason to wait. Perhaps he will wait here forever.
'Will take more than one death to end her,' says he, 'If she dies, she will try again until she reaches me. And then we will do what we must,' he reminds himself. The thought comforts him.
He closes his eyes, relaxes, sleeps.