Darkness, part five
Space: An infinite abyss that was mostly empty. No matter where one was, she contemplated, one could reasonably expect to see a billion of the stars that littered the cosmos. Beyond every single one of those, a billion more awaited.
The astral form of the psychic, free of the laws that governed material things, appeared in the gulf between the New God worlds, already appearing the size of either planet. Silently and almost unconsciously, her projected form started to become larger and larger and ever larger.
It pleased her to know that she was still capable of astral-projection. "Were I still able to bend space, and reach these distant worlds with but a meager thought, it would be ideal, however."
In every direction that Dark Phoenix could see from here, the spacescape was full of galaxies - to her, they now appeared scarcely larger than they could fit in her palms. It intrigued her to no end to consider all that awaited her out there.
"I, Dark Phoenix, hereby command the universe's attention," ran her mental message. "I am Dark Phoenix, queen and arch-goddess of the planet Apokolips, revered by billions of mortals and served by gods. When religions and mythologies across the universe speak of the ultimate enemy, the supreme evil, I am the one they mean."
Free from the laws that governed matter, her psionic message swept across the whole damn cosmos in but an instant, heard by creatures of every form and species that baryonic matter could conjure up. It was but a small handful of those planets, thousands among countless trillions, who were able to understand the words that sounded in their minds - be it through knowledge of the language, or some ability or technology that handled translating. Only a handful within that handful possessed psionic abilities with which they could respond to the missive.
"When we come, we will bring with us the end of your worlds," conveyed the red-haired telepath. "The greater goods among you will be made into our servants, and the evil ones elevated to heights unlike any they imagined prior. The citizenry of your worlds will become worshippers of the evil gods. All that you are will be mine, by divine right. Your defeat and humiliations is beyond doubt against one like myself, and the one who stands beside me, and the many who act my divine will."
Downwards and straightly southwards from her position, about twenty lightcenturies removed, in a system of red planets around an emerald star, seventeen billion Namekians (and, as well, hundreds of people from other species) resided. On the third-largest world, Emperor Floot nodded to himself, pondering the message. With a grin, he rose from his throne.
Downwards and south-west from her position, and eight galaxies away in that direction, the eternal one who ruled mankind - he who was called Lord Doom - sat upon his throne, stoically listening to the proclamations.
Elsewhere still in the cosmos, long since displaced in time and on a version of his homeworld billions of years ahead, Charles Xavier heard the mental voice of a beloved student, twisted and cruel and almost beyond recognition, and felt concern at it.
Upon the homeworld of the Imperium of Man, the Master of Humanity - freed from the Golden Throne, once the Warp had been wiped from the face of the universe, and the two burdens of that spirit realm lifted from him - was interrupted amid his stroll of the palace by the message. It displeased him greatly to know that even now, when Chaos was no more, humanity yet had a self-proclaimed god with astral powers to face.
At the center of the hangar bay, a single, broadly rectangular space-vessel was under construction.
Between either two of its sides - northern and southern, or eastern and western, whichever - it currently covered about four kilometres of the floor and also reached three kilometres up from there. Across what was currently its top floor, ran a veritable labyrinth of corridors and bedrooms and halls. The outgrowth had hardly been even or smooth; in a multitude of regions, the contents of lower floors could be glimpsed through gaping and huge holes. As well, rooms and passageways were busily being added on to the structure by remotely operated nanite-swarms and raw material.
Hordes of minions - Parademons to do the heavy lifting, Techno-Chiefs who managed the installations of the more sensitive and complex things like internal-power circuitry and the life-support systems for the individual rooms and the art-grav projectors - trailed about, inside and out the ship.
From atop a platform in the western region of the hangar, four of the local gods - the lord and lady of Apokolips themselves, along with Desaad and Big Barda - were watching the whole hurried fuzz unfold.
"Is it not glorious, supreme ones?" Desaad's voice was low, filled with reverence for the rulers. Neither husband or wife looked his way, focusing instead on the ship. "I am certain that you will find it most satisfactory. When it is finished, it will be perhaps the most formidable ship ever built, on Apokolips or on New Genesis!" he sounded positively ecstatic, now.
"Once the ship has been fully constructed, the nanite-probes will have ensured that the hull is utterly beyond damaging," exulted the lesser deity. "How it pleases me to dream of the grandiose battles yet to waged in the void between the stars and the planets, across the infinite, and the suffering they will bring to the mortals," in his loins, the robed madman felt a stirring that he found most familiar.
None of the three deities with the god of pain said anything in response to that, keeping instead their attention on the spaceship.
After a moment, Desaad spoke again. "Would it please my divine majesties if I were to pontificate about the virtues of this mighty vessel?"
Darkseid inclined his head his underling's way, affixing him with a look that spoke measures. "You may continue, Desaad," he replied. "At this juncture, it would make little difference for you to do so or to refrain from such."
The greasy-haired godling's face lighted up. "You shall never want for space aboard the ship, my lieges, for there shall be almost four-hundred floors, and to each, four-hundred rooms. The myriad amenities there will surely please," he assured the ruling duo.
"For your convenience, first and foremost," exposited the God of Pain, "there will be the likes of the swimming pool hall on floor seventy and the six observation decks, and then the meditation chamber on floor eighty-five if the mood for that activity should strike you sometime," Dark Phoenix supposed that, considering the time-scale, it would be an inevitability.
"In addition to those facilities," continued the evil genius, "there is the combat hall on floor seventy, for the times when the passengers might feel the need to relieve tension or resolve some dispute. Everything of this vessel, this formidable vessel, will be encased in an immense shell that shall be impervious to every kind of mortal assault and every amount of force. I am certain that you will find it luxurious lodgings in the centuries to come," once Desaad finished speaking, he stayed silent.
Dark Phoenix's lips tugged upwards, almost a smidge. "Fascinating little decision on Desaad's part, eh, dearest one?"
"Indeed so," ran his mental response. To Desaad, he spoke, "see to it that you do a satisfactory job with those chambers of the ship that yet are to be constructed."
His face lit up. "And will I be severely punished for it, should I fail? Oh, I can barely contain my own excitement," he gushed aloud, sounding to all the world like he was actually sincere, "at the thought of the ease with which either of my divine sovereigns will be able to subject one such as I to a stay in a firepit."
Desaad went ignored. Barda spoke up. "I grow mildly curious, supreme ones; in your absences, what or who is to govern Apokolips?"
Neither one of them turned to regard her. It was Darkseid who answered her, his voice sounding flatly to her mind's ear. "That task and privilege has been given to Mortalla. What transpires in our absence, however, is of no celestial significance."
An iota of confusion showed on Barda's face, but quickly died down when it returned to the Goddess of Despair that - despite how little he made use of it and how often the mistress did - lord Darkseid also possessed the gift of telepathy.
Down in the ship, the Apokoliptian god-prince stood. He was flanked by a tall ebon-haired woman, who stood garbed in a crimson golden-starred suit that covered most of her abdomen and lower body yet bared her cleavage and her well-proportioned arms.
Before Kalibak and Troia was a single doorway, about eight square metres big, whose door had slid aside and revealed the room inside to their eyes.
In large part, the bed-chamber had been hued a faded orange, from the ceiling and down to the floor. By the left wall of the room, almost where it met the back wall, the gargantuan bed had been positioned, and equipped with an abundance of pillows. At the center of the floor, a crimson-glass lamp - surrounded by a metal ring; its purpose eluded her - was positioned, and softly illuminating most of the room.
Beyond that, neither the god or the ascended-goddess observed anything in the room that were its doors or its walls.
"Satisfactory, even as a blank canvas yet to be moulded by its inhabitant, would you not agree?" voiced Kalibak to the woman next to him.
Donna pursed her lips, taking another momentary glance at it. "I would deem it just so, prince Kalibak, though it affronts me to merely behold it."
Kalibak turned his head her way, a note of curiosity in his eyes. "Why is that so, Troia?"
"By its presence, it reminds me that I am but an alien on this world," she explained, feeling strangely nostalgic at that for a reason she couldn't place. "Though it be divine will that I am here at all, it is also divine will that I now leave it," she fell silent, a note of displeasure visible to Kalibak on her face.
"What, precisely, troubles you about that?" he inquired.
A moment passed before the Female Fury answered. "I suppose that," she paused for the fraction of a second, "hurh, that my discontent stems from my life's circumstances," she took a longer pause this time, before speaking on.
"Dark Phoenix ruined me, a very long time ago," sighed the coal-haired Fury. "She took everything in my mind that I thought good about myself, and made it into everything that I never wanted to be. Worse still, she let me keep the essence of who Donna Troy used to be," related Troia, her voice growing wistful, "so I can know precisely what I have become," another pause in her venting ensued.
"They forced me to kill my own people, the Amazons," she murmured, almost so quietly he didn't hear her. For hundreds of years, they have sent me to kill their enemies for them, with no reward of any kind for it," a faint growl crept into her voice, "and my children were taken from me to be worked, mentally and bodily, into living weapons, and tasked to die for the glory of my gods. All that I have is what they deigned to give me and have yet to take away."
Concern filled Kalibak's eyes. He doubted that a meager 'I am truly sorry for everything that you have endured because of my father' would suffice here.
"What is perhaps the worst thing of all," her voice was softer, and much more plaintive, "is that I do not hate my gods for all this. Perhaps she does not allow me that state of mind, or maybe I simply do not feel any resentment towards them. Whatever the case, I am simply glad that Diana and my other sisters are not here to see me in all my wretched glory. Thank you for hearing me out, Kalibak."
He almost wanted to laugh at that, like she somehow expected otherwise. "Troia, together we have made both war and love, on occasions uncountable. You are perhaps the one thing I have to a true battlemate. It is my honor and my pleasure to lend you an ear when you feel the need for one."
She almost wanted to laugh at that. "How like yourself that sounds, God of Lust."
Silently, he draped his arm over her shoulders; his intent carried wordlessly to her. Together, the Apokolips denizens entered the bed-chamber. It was with the press of a switch that the door slid closed.