Darkness, part four
Desaad's main laboratory was, as was common, a quiet affair.
All in all, it measured about forty square metres of fairly-crowded space. The walls of the room were a pristine silver, as were its ceiling and floor, and it was all pretty short on reflective surfaces. A single large lamp, built into the floor at the very center of the room, served to illuminate it.
Over by the left wing of the Pain God's lab, a series of large glass tubes extended from floor to ceiling. Each was filled with a color-lacking liquid, and the fifth from the right was occupied, by a dragon child. One young wyvern had black-yet-red-tinged scales across much of its body along with four pale-blue wings on its back, and was napping with its arms on its stomach.
In other regions of the lab were assorted other torture-devices and contraptions and machines, built and maintained by none other than Desaad.
It was into this room that Darkseid was stepping at the moment, and in this room that Desaad had spent the past few weeks on never-ending toil and malign experimentation. "Desaad," his voice rang out across this cavern of technology, "your lord requests your presence."
The oily-haired deity froze, amid his examination of his once-more rebuilt computer, at the center of the room. The one who had mastered the laws of physics turned to his god-king, and made a revering bow to ancient Darkseid. "My liege," murmured the New God of Pain, "I am unspeakably honored that one such as you would grace me with your presence. However can I serve on this exalted occasion?"
"You can begin," snarked Darkseid, "by ceasing your sycophantic prattle. Then you can state what you have been able to determine over these past days."
The godling rose to his full height, standing with his arms folded. "Well, my liege, I am afraid that I have not much to tell. Whatever the origin or nature of the recent phenomenon, it has had... hm... it has not caused significant changes to the laws of the universe," disclosed the violet-robed scientist.
"If the effects are anything, they would be a simplification of them. As but one example, irregular spacetime conditions and effects such as black-hole singularities and the Boom Tubes no longer seem to be possible," Desaad went on. "I cannot yet make any firm assertions, not without closer observations than from galaxies away, but I haven't been able to observe any sign of spacetime curvature or unusual spacetime conditions anywhere nor been able to replicate such even with devices that were formerly capable of such."
Darkseid regarded him flatly. If nothing else, noted the New God of Tyranny, this explained much - why both he and Phoenix had experienced the fading of godly might, and why Pythia had lost her foresight. "Thus," continued Desaad, "I believe that the restriction on matter's motion called the light-speed barrier might no longer apply, and provide an alternative to Boom Tube travel into other galaxies."
Darkseid's eyes took on a curious slant. "Elaborate on that, Desaad."
"Gladly, my eternal lord," smiled Desaad, broadly. "I won't bore you with all the mathematics and theoretics at work, but my theory is rooted in the negation of abnormal spacetime conditions. If this should be discovered to hold universally true, then causality cannot be violated through superluminal motion. No matter how fast one were to travel per second, be hundreds of metres or at the very speed of light, the rate of time-passage should constant and one-directional. Based on that, and the fact that Lightray remains able to accelerate his body to the usual extents even now, I conclude that the sole hurdle to overcome in building superluminal spacecraft is the issue of accumulating sufficient energy to propel the ships to such speeds."
Darkseid remained still, pensively regarding Desaad. After a moment, he spoke, and thusly, "See to it, then, that the technological supremacy of Apokolips over all other planets across the cosmos entire be maintained, Desaad, for what is it to be a deity if one's power is not absolute and uncontested?"
"It shall be done, my liege," replied Desaad, solemnly. "I shall exhaust every iota of my genius to devise spacecraft and weaponry unlike anything before, for the glory of Apokolips. This, I swear."
Motionless, wordlessly, Darkseid observed him for a moment. "And if you fail, Desaad, if you should fail in that endeavor, then know this," announced the stone man. "The advances that you make will be acceptable, for even without superluminal space travel, the powers of Apokolips will still have the means to reach the galaxies that lie beyond my world - simply, by traversing the endless gulfs at the speeds of mortal science."
A momentary, uneasy pause took root in the room as Desaad processed that. Even now, knew the Pain God, it was a rare thing for his lord to be lenient.
"Tell me," ordered the craggy-bodied man, "of the laws of magic, whatever they be. What have you discerned, that might allow my thusly-disempowered servants to once more serve as they have for decades by the dozen?"
Desaad moved down, to bow. "My sincerest apologies, my all-powerful master, but I have yet to begin studying the arcane more than passingly. My studies this past week have been in the fields of science and astrophysics."
He simply turned left, gazing towards the ceiling. "Be it thus. Persist in your efforts of knowledge-gathering, Desaad, and let no avenue of thought go ignored to you in your craftings, for this might well be the dawn of the Fifth World. For the conquests to come, Apokolips must ever remain the height of power in the universe."
"I used to be his father's wife," aired Mortalla, to no particular one of her bedmates. Man of Eyes decided to ignore her, knowing that sentence by rote. None of the four answered, Kalibak because he was busy with kissing the ascended-mortal and getting the ex-mutant into a proper mood, the other three because they didn't much care to indulge her.
She frowned, but decided against pressing the topic. It didn't much matter, really; so mused the goddess. "It can hardly have been more than a thousand years, since I ceased to be Darkseid's queen, on that accursed day when he cast me down among the rabble," her voice harshened with the utterance of that word, "to be a mere servant among the hordes of Apokolips."
The post-Tamaranian released a sigh at that, and glanced away, focusing on memories.
It couldn't have been more than sixty short years, thought Starfire, since the day on Groxious Seventeen, yet the scent of the wolf-flowers was still as difficult to forget. There were only the two of them left now, an unwelcome thought. "Rest well, Victor."
"But," continued Mortalla, "it does not matter. Be it in a century or a hundred, Dark Phoenix will fall from Darkseid's favor, and I shall reclaim my throne as his queen. All in due time," she finished, with a chuckle.
The other red-haired Female Fury who occupied the bed - Lady of Swords, was the posthuman's moniker - looked curiously at the sitting woman. "Why would she utter such brazen disloyalty, on this planet of all? But then, Mortalla has never been wanting for audacity, so perhaps this should not be any surprise to me."
A voice, that of the overlady of Apokolips, spoke in the magician's mind. "Why should I not let Mortalla indulge her fantasies?"
She supposed so, with a mental shrug back to her mistress. Mortalla noted the brief-lived glint in her fellow Fury's eyes with a displeased frown, suspecting to know what it signified.
The quietude of the room was then broken - chased right a window, even - by the sound and sight of their tentacled bed-mate hoisting Kalibak up above the quartet. After a moment, the other three occupiers of the bed lost interest in that momentary distraction.