Rousing Majestic Freedom: Thea's Quest

One day something happened.

I remember it like I'd only just experienced it yesterday. It was the most incredible thing I had ever seen. A giant blue star appeared in the sky, and in no time at all, it grew so big that its light could be seen even during the day. It was terrifying and beautiful at the same time. I remember being scared that it would swallow us up whole, but also feeling awed by its magnificence.

As the days passed, we started to get used to it. It was there every night, shining brighter than all of our stars put together. We didn't talk about it much; we were too busy trying to figure out what to do next, because where we lived once stood an Earth-like planet now sat a Moon-sized chunk of rock. The mother planet was gone, and with it most of our people. For those left alive, a new life had to be found elsewhere.

We did what we could for the survivors; set up makeshift shelters and collected water from underground caves until help arrived from other planets. Everything worked out well enough for a while, but then things started going downhill faster than they were going uphill.

I don't know how long ago it was exactly, but I remember how things were changing as they got worse one bit at a time: First food went missing; then some of the people lost their minds and attacked others; then more people died suddenly without any reason whatsoever; then one by one, some of us started disappearing... only to return later on with unidentifiable marks on their bodies. And that's when someone said "This is bad..."

The first to disappear was my horse Her Majesty. She was always there for me when no one else would talk to me or play with me, and so I was very sad when she disappeared without a trace or a sign that she was ever there in the first place. I cried for days after she'd gone missing until finally someone came to see me and told me that if I wanted to save my horse I would have to go find her myself, because apparently she'd been taken away from me by something called "the Sleeper" by someone who sounded really angry and really scared all at once. This person told me that the Sleeper wasn't part of our existence anymore, but had suddenly awoken from his slumber now that everything here had gone wrong somehow. This person told me that he believed my horse must have been special somehow because why else would he pick her?

So I went looking for answers! And after asking everyone who might be able to help me along the way (and many who couldn't), I found someone who knew what happened before everything changed forever: An old man who lived alone in a small house filled with books and tools whose purpose I couldn't even begin to understand let alone guess at! He told me bits and pieces about this "Sleeper" thingy - how he'd stayed asleep for too long and now was awake again because he was angry about something being different from how he remembered it being! He told me so much about this Sleeper - how his sun had given birth to many things in our universe as ours gave birth to many things in his own far away galaxy! How every world has its own version of him which keeps watch over us from afar! How he can take away your world and make another world instead if you are bad! How if you are good, he'll give you a better world made out of dreams full of cool animals with superpowers like mine! How there's no way for him not to notice you when you're doing bad things even though you think you're hiding them very well! Oh yes... He told me so much more than just bits and pieces until eventually I understood what needed to be done next!