Darkness, part one
In a universe that the vast majority of mortals and immortals in the Omniverse's uncountable planes knew nothing of – and would probably not believe anyone who informed them about it – two worlds drifted in solitude among the stars and the dark. They were only alike in that their size would greatly dwarf almost any galaxy in any other universe. Well, that and the fact that most of their residents were larger than most planets.
One of them, known as Apokolips, deserved - in every facet of its being - to be called hellish and a deep scar upon the face of the universe. Under the dispassionate reign of the one called Darkseid, as it had been for ages, the machine-planet had long since been stripped of everything that might be called natural, organic or beneficial. That world was an engine of evil, driven by divine forces and minds, populated by countless hordes of people from many species. Eternally, its society and technology acted in sinister harmony to birth new breeds of wicked, twisted things and creatures. Even from distant stars, the raging firepits that were sporadically scattered across Apokolips were observable across the dark gulf of space.
In brief, it was a place of evil in its every form and expression.
The other, New Genesis as it was called, was a place of beauty and wonder - an unparalleled blue and green jewel in this cosmos whose like was not anywhere on this plane of existence, and on very few others. It teemed with natural vistas - forests of verdant emerald, streaming and sparkling rivers, towering mountains, and much beside - and the floating city of the gods was equally rich in things to please, amuse, fascinate and explore.
In brief, it was a place of good in its every form and expression.
Of the people born onto these two worlds, they who were called the New Gods, much could be said, and already had.
Their race was one of immortals. Each member either had their own individual kind of power, or might attain such. Their technology was without peer in both sophistication and imagination, in their own reality as well as in almost any other.
Of them, we might speak at length, or we could just skip straight to things.
Once more, Darkseid pushed his... erm... godhood into the flame-haired posthuman's depths, and he did so with nearly enough force to crush a world. Her inner warmth was akin to that of a star, more than sufficient to roast the meat, bone and gristle of a mortal, but entirely an experience that his stone loins could weather. His well-muscled abdomen had developed a coating of sweat, as had his glorious pectorals. Yet, despite the strenous exertions and his building arousal, there was not even as much as a wince or a twitch on the rocky countenance of he who was the rock, the chain and the lightning.
The psychic sat atop him, a sly smirk etched on her face and her body as bare as his, and his member buried in her. Her scarlet tresses, for lack of better visuals to ascribe them, waterfalled down her back and front, and all the way to her waist region, thoroughly disheveled. A few of her carmine locks half-covered her abundant breasts, practically glued to the mounds of flesh by sweat.
These two had settled into a moderately-forceful rhythm for this bout of intimacy, and their climaxes were so quietly building that neither lost control of themselves in mind nor body to the passion of the act.
A throaty grunt suddenly rolled off her lips. Their climaxes arrived just as quickly as her groan, and with little more prior warning.
They both felt something like a fire of ravenous delight being lit within almost every cell of their respective bodies - telepathically revealed to one another as they were, one further felt whatever the other did from their reached peaks, every iota of raw and blissful sensation. At that very same moment, they felt the shudder of his godhood against her deepest inner walls, and the singular explosion of his warm release into her. In that moment, their eyes flashed - his a bloody red, hers an orange-gold.
Against everything he now felt coursing through his body, even ever-disciplined Darkseid was unable to keep himself from releasing a sigh of contention. Though the woman's smirk did not physically change, it nonetheless took on a triumphant note.
Dark Phoenix's flames erupted from her shoulders, as well as the nearby areas of both her neck and upper arms, like a volcano might spew its gore; no heat escaped them, for they were only manifestations of her psionic prowess, illusory things. An almost silent gasp escaped her.
A sense of restful silence slowly returned to the bed-chambers, almost caressing the air around them, as the moment of their session's consummation passed. They remained unmoving as their conjoined orgasms ebbed away to nothing, and their heartbeats slowed down again. After the passage of a moment, the woman called Dark Phoenix craised herself from Darkseid, then laid herself down beside him.
On the floor, left side of their bed, their duvet laid swept aside. It began to move, animated by her telekinesis, and draped itself over the couple.
In almost that moment, Darkseid saw his surroundings change. The edges of his sight blurred, and an apparition began forming. Darkseid paid it no heed, for it was not an unusual occurrence to them.
The moment after, the apparition had solidified. It was a chessboard, with three separate levels. The pieces belonging to both sides were scattered across the layers of the board. Its position was fixed, barely a tad above the bed-covers and the occupants.
Darkseid gazed over the board, inspecting the position of each piece and noting his options. The rock-faced man then felt the distinctive sensation of her mind's fiery eye recede from his consciousness. He thought it preferable, for their games; there was not much worth in facing an opponent who knew your every thought. It was not technically cheating as the game had no rules prohibiting telepathy, but it did milden the intrigue of playing, he mused.
His eyes moved, and his gaze focused on the black-colored Queen piece. He spent not a moment on pondering his move. "I move my Queen from 2-E-7 to 1-D-6."
The piece he had announced began to move by itself, and passed down through the board. The Queen piece placed itself atop a black square. The piece of hers that stood nearest to the monarch was a Pawn, on the 1-B-3 square.
He gazed pensively. The rules and particulars of the game were instituted because somebody in some time and some place had devised them for use in it, pondered the divine man. Possibly, multiple persons were involved in that. The pieces were named as they were because the creator or creators had devised names for the individual pieces. Further, they had assigned values and practical capabilities to those.
The objects were only imbued with their names and properties because those intangible qualities had been agreed upon by the original game-designers. Their attributes were retained because he and she did not deign to engage of whimsical acts of reinventing the game's names and workings. By themselves, the board and pieces were only objects without attached meaning, collections of so-named atoms and molecules.
The chess pieces and the New Gods were alike in that regard, reflected Darkseid. With the Anti-Life Equation, one could revise the concepts and ideas and metaphors that surrounded them, change the meanings of things as it pleased one to. He recalled making that revelation about the equation long ago.
He scarcely remembered how much of his life and how many long millennia he had devoted of his life to scouring creation for it, but the quest did not matter, not when he was past its end, now that he had found it in her - his dear wife, his wonderful Anti-Life Equation, his beautiful Philosopher's Stone.
"Darkseid?" he heard her voice, light yet with a note of concern attached, interrupting his musings. "It is your turn, now."
He cast a brief glance onto the game board, quickly noting what her move had been - the relocation of a Tower to the 1-A-8 square.
Their game of three-dimensional chess stretched late into the night hours, and was concluded by them becoming too sleepy to bother to continue it.
Vertically as well as horizontally, the six firepits formed two identical rings around Apokolips out of firepits. Their languid burning of these hellish bonfires was an eternal and sinister one, rivaled not even by the fires of the average Hell. Their presence on and in Apokolips was a large part in why the planet was so degenerate, a truth that the great Galactus had found surprising during his visit.
On many an occasion had it happened that one of the so-called Lowlies, or Hunger Dogs - the lowest of all those who served the ruling pantheon - had met an agonizing and fiery death by accident. Almost equally as common, however, was that someone was flung into the hellfire by intent, either because of pains too great to desire continued life or as a lecture to the others who resided in other regions of Apokolips.
Yes, it was known widely across the planet that nothing, be it mortal or divine in nature, could survive in a firepit. That knowledge, which had been taught and painfully reinforced over many generations, might make a Lowly disinclined to believe you if you told them that there was currently someone down there, in the firepit closest to Darkseid's central fortress.
Amid the fire, Dark Phoenix sat in a meditative pose, eyes closed. Her skin, hair and the red, black and gold attire she favoured were safeguarded from the hellfire raging around her by the fiery aura emerging from her in the shape of her namesake.
Sighing, she attempted once again to clear herself of stray thoughts and attain peace of mind. With a bit of effort, the psychic attained a state of mental rest. It was not a complete one, to her annoyance, but it gave her solitude from the spectrum of bitter emotions permeating the planet in which she could think. It took her a moment to recall where she had left off when last she had ventured here to introspect.
Change was the nature of the universe. Planets moved in orbits that had developed over millions of years, stars transmuted hydrogen into light, organic life reproduced and mutated over the course of generations. That much was known to her. The question was, what did that ... hmm, what to call it, an existential paradigm? ... mean for immortals like herself and the other divinities? By definition, they were exempt from the aging process, or so thought most.
It seemed a reasonable conclusion that they were not working parts of the cosmic clockwork, but she dismissed it. However could the gods of evil not play crucial roles on the stage that was the cosmos? Why, the very thought was absurd.
A change of contemplation topic was in order, she decided. Perhaps... yes, perhaps another attempt to discern the relevance of good and evil to the Fourth World was in order. Where had she left off last time - ah, yes.
Contrary to the school of thought which held that the binary constructs called good and evil held no meaning to the universe, certain New Gods represent various practices which occupied points on the morality spectrum and served the Fourth World in that role. The Dog of War, for instance, symbolized the notion of a just war, whether he knew it and cared or did not, just as his grand-uncle was the god of cruel war.
By their existences, the universe was invested with meaning - the concept of whatever it was that they symbolized. In essence, mused the posthuman, the greatest and most active of New Gods wove universe-spanning metaphors as long as they lived.
She felt a pang of disappointment. That particular conclusion was not one she had expected to reach so readily. What else was there to ponder, wondered the psychic. Even after the acutely-felt passage of moments, nothing occurred to her.
Could it be, she fretted mentally, that there was indeed truth to the idea that those who chose the path of evil were inherently limited for it - cursed with stunted imagination for having chosen that? Could it be that after four-hundred years of living here and of touring the stars and spreading her own brand of evil, the path she'd chosen was starting to lead her away from greatness?
Her pale lips twitched almost undetectably. Likely not, supposed the ruler of the hell-world. More reasonable was that she was merely experiencing a bout of ennui, brought on by the passage of the decades. Perhaps it was merely a natural consequence of immortality, something that all the eternal ones eventually experienced. Yes, it made sense to her that it might merely be that.
She shifted her attention elsewhere, her mind free to wander.
Elsewhere on Apokolips, in a certain room deep inside one of the strongholds of the gods, Darkseid the destroyer was chilling out on a couch - said couch was a one-seater with a high-reaching back and wide arm-rests, crafted from some brand of metal. Thus, it was (joke completely intended) the couch of the gods.
The god of fascism set leisurely in his couch, but what occupied his mind - be it grandiose scheming and plotting, or ponderings of a more mundane nature - was not for I to say.
A voice whispered in his mind, "Does the quietude of this day vex and bore you as much as it does I, Darkseid?", but it was not his own; it was one he recognized equally well among his musings, though.
"To tell the truth," conveyed Darkseid, "this is not among the best and most gratifying of my days, but no matter. It takes a resolute soul to weather eternity, and a perceptive mind to fully grip all that it offers."
She gave something like an amused semi-sigh, lost among the hell-flames around her. Her husband had never been a man of comfort and kind words; so simple was that. Dark Phoenix decided a change of scenery in order.
The incandescent goddess unfolded her legs, and directed a fraction of her nigh-boundless psychic energies to a different purpose than shielding herself. So began her ascent from the firepit, with almost as much speed as sound devoted to the effort.