Darkness, part six
Far out in space, so far that the dreadful fire-storm of a planet only known as Apokolips was but a somewhat large speck in the background, a spaceship drifted downward through what the Oans had designated as space sector zero-zero-seven-four.
The vessel was broadly rectangular, yet its edges were curved mildly. The vessel's chassis was a hue of black reminiscent of burned flesh. Its six external surfaces were solid and flat; almost nowhere on them were there any cracks or dents, to notice on the spacecraft. The exceptions laid at the center of every surface, in the form of holes that were almost eighty metres wide. Around those gaps in the structure, there were a hundred metres of solar panel technology - glassy, and filled with circuitry, and drinking the starlight in.
In the depths of the ship, some of Apokolips' mightiest gods were to be found, and each were occupied with their own activities across the hundreds of floors.
On the thirtieth floor, the God of Pain had come to build himself a laboratory to nest himself inside, out of a few dozen rooms. For the past few months of the ship's journey across the cosmos, he had been content to remain there, endlessly building and refining insidious instruments of torture and assorted articles of weaponry, and designing new models of Parademon - everything that he could dream up, he deemed fit to make a reality.
The torturer didn't stop to eat, or drink, or rest his body and mind, half because all that he needed to keep himself going was the exultant bliss that his dreams of the endless suffering and anguish he could cause with his devices brought him, half because of a few benefits of his pantheon's biology.
Most of his fellow travelers tended to leave him to his device and self-indulgent fantasies - a few, like Agogg, because they thought him repugnant, but most commonly because their interest in Desaad began and ended with what he could provide them.
On the seventieth of the ship's floors, Kalibak was laughing so hard from bloodlust that it was unmissable to all his adversaries, even as he was bleeding from three different parts of his abdomen. Behind him stood the one person he might deem a friend, Troia of the Female Furies, with raised fists.
All around the hall, there were signs of the battle that was raging there - scattered bits of the floor was burning while others were coated in a layer of ice, both courtesy of the Dragon of Apokolips, while other regions of the hall had been either dented or outright ripped apart by Starfire's bolts and blows. Still other areas had swords embedded in them, courtesy of the sword-oriented sorcery that Lady of Swords favored in battle.
The god-prince stood surrounded, near and far, by those six he had chosen as his sparring partners for this particular occasion. All but Mad Harriet were still standing at the moment, some more shakily than others. In the maw of the dragon-child, a bit of flame was brewing, and a low growl was escaping him.
Elsewhere on this floor, husband and wife were enjoying themselves an altogether more peaceful occasion than Kalibak's sparring session, over in the pool region.
There, silence reigned, and comfortably so. The lighting of the room was dimmed down, almost so much that the light of their eyes did more to illuminate the area than the lamps did. At the center of the room, the basin was situated - round in, and precisely twenty-seven metres wide as well as five metres deep at its most.
"What do you suppose you will do when we chance upon another inhabited planet? However long the road might be," asked Dark Phoenix. The queen sat opposite the king, by the edge of the basin. "I myself anticipate, quite eagerly, to build another throne of bones upon a mountain of skulls. A tad cliche, I might concede, but why not indulge myself with a classic?"
He decided not to chuckle at that, humorous though he found it. "Whyever carry yourself with such restraint? A river of blood would only be fitting around this manner of throne."
"True enough," smiled Phoenix, "but as appealing as that notion is, I doubt that a blood river would last a great span of time before it clotted. I suppose that it would be a solution to harvest the blood of the citizenry, but that seems rather wasteful simply for the purpose of ornamentation."
That was reasonable enough, decided the god. "Is it merely to be another day of slaughter, then?"
Her smile ceased to be innocent, and became almost teasing. "One might mistake that tone for one of boredom, Darkseid. Weary of the world, are you?"
A slight smirk grew on his face, mixed amusement in his eyes. "That could scarcely be less true, that I assure you. Even after thirty-thousand centuries, the wanderer in my heart yet finds the cosmos an intriguing place to explore, with new conquests and adversaries and sights waiting for us."
It surprised her not one bit to hear. "Though it is unneeded, your reassurance of your fortitude is appreciated, dear."
The mild smirk on his face relaxed. He didn't answer her, simply just relaxing into the silence and the water's warmth.
Without much warning, a voice sounded in her mind, "Why are you doing this?", one that Dark Phoenix recognized as her own.
Many galaxies away from the ship Dark Phoenix was aboard, on the planet called Earth and in the land called America, in a bedroom in a school in Westchester, a red-haired woman sat on her bed with her arms folded.
"Lovely, another incarnation of myself seeking to make her feelings known," bemoaned the goddess, verbally. The god's face became noticeably heavy, with knowing weariness. "I do what I do because I am evil incarnate, mortal. That is all you need to know."
"I refuse to accept that as an answer," telepathed Jean. "Just hear me out. I understand what's happening - once I almost lost control of myself to the Phoenix Force too - so I know first-hand how tempting all that power can be, but you have to try to remember Scott and everybody else who loves you. It doesn't have to control you."
Dark Phoenix wanted to laugh at that more than anything else, particular her mortal self's 'Phoenix Force' delusion.
"How touching," returned Dark Phoenix, mental voice heavy with mocking amusement, "and how utterly wrong you are. You believe that I have lost any of my self-control to something or someone else, that I am merely another's instrument? Mortal fool, I am an arch-deity, she who the gods worship. If either of us labors under any delusion, it would sooner be you, with your Phoenix Force nonsense!"
"I'm sorry?!" inquired the earthling telepath. Mocking laughter rang out to her, over their astral connection, irking her.
"You know what I mean, Jean Grey," asserted the goddess. "I speak of the fact that you have maintained a deception so comprehensive that even you believe it truth for quite some time, that there exists some Phoenix Force and that this was this living power which... oh, how does the story go? Did the Phoenix Force possess you while you were dying aboard the space shuttle, or did it create a doppelganger of you before sending a dying woman away to heal? Do you even know this yourself?"
"What are you getting at?" questioned the telepath.
"I am telling you, Jean Grey, that there is no such thing as the Phoenix Force," announced Dark Phoenix, solemn and forceful. Jean wasn't convinced. "Consider the absurdity of it, if you doubt me. You believe that there exists some primordial fiery entity, as old as time and the universe, whose appearance and abilities of controlling life and fire are directly drawn from a mythology in your own planet's history. Do you not see the contradiction in that?"
Jean swallowed, finding the reasoning all too sound.
"The cause for that particular oddity is thus," continued Dark Phoenix. "On that day long ago, you gained powers beyond those of any mortal upon your world. Spirit and time and space and substance, they were yours to command. The guilt you felt is the cause of this particular charade. A deed you should have taken pride in instead shamed you terribly, and so, you began to exert your psychic powers upon the universe. Perhaps you even did it consciously, and just lie to yourself, or perhaps you do not actually know what you have done. In any event, time bent to your will, until you had something else to blame for your deeds."
"You failed even to keep the lie coherent in your own mind," announced the goddess. "How often has some aspect of what it is and does changed, to suit your lie?
"Why should I believe anyone who openly calls herself evil incarnate?" countered Jean.
"I care not whether you choose to accept the truth about yourself or to deny it," replied Dark Phoenix, indifferently. "I will know, and be certain in my knowledge that what I tell you is true. On a tangential note, I believe you have other matters that require your attention."
Jean frowned uneasily.
Before Scott's worried gaze, his lover fell back over on the bed, hands reaching for her head. An almost pained groan escaped her lips.
"Are you okay?" inquired the brunet, voice tinged with concern. He soon got his answer, by way of her eyes burning whitish-gold and an unsettling chuckle. Upon her face grew a smirk, of a kind such that it didn't exactly indicate a sound mind.
"Okay?" echoed the red-head, in a voice that Scott recognized as both hers and utterly unlike Jean's. "I am perfection, mortal. I am divinity. I am the bringer of the apocalypse, for a thousand worlds and ten-thousand every one of those."
Scott knew what had happened - it was that Jean Grey from an alternate reality who had fallen to the Phoenix Force, and now she had possessed Jean.
"Almost true, little creature," Dark Phoenix corrected his thought. "My mind and my power are my own, directed as I will them," as she spoke, the ethereal flames erupted from her. "I am ruled by nothing, certainly not this little excuse the other Jeans have conconcted to escape their guilt."
"What?" queried Scott. Pain, worse than almost anything he had known in his life, erupted from his left eye and a scream from his throat. The man's hands flew to his face, while his blood seeped out from behind the visor. Her smirk remained unwavering.
"Yes, I imagine that it might sting somewhat," her voice held a measure of feigned concern. Then, she heard the sound of blunt footsteps, followed quickly by a gasp. Phoenix turned to look, seeing an auburn-haired woman garbed in black in the doorway. Shock filled her features.
Dark Phoenix felt an inclination to laugh. "Fortuitous, a victim."
She raised her hands. Rogue stiffened in her stance, before lifting off the floor.
"Oh," her voice was full of glee, "what to do with you, little thing?"
She quickly decided her course of action, mentally moving both of the telekinetic holds she had on the mutant. The sound that followed that was one that very few in the Fifth World had ever heard, yet one that Dark Phoenix was familiar with.
Rogue's blood rained down on the floor of the bedroom and the hall, followed by her bones and tattered flesh once Dark Phoenix released her mental grips on them.
A brief while passed. Then, back aboard the spaceship of the gods, Darkseid watched her eyes begin to gleam once more.
"How was your venture?" inquired the God of Fascism.
"Well enough," replied the Goddess of Life and Fire, a grin sent him. "All in all, it was a brief bout of fun, with satisfactory quantities of blood and a lackluster number of bodies. Only one provided a modicum of resistance."
Apokolips, he loved this woman. "Such is the way that mortals are - tiny and bounded in all regard, and nothing before even the presence of a deity," he paused for a moment. Dark Phoenix slipped deeper into the water and its warmth, savoring that sensation. "If you will permit, I have a desire of mine I wish to make known."
"Yes?" was her response, tone tinged lightly with curiosity.
"I would like for us to have a child," disclosed Darkseid.
Uncertainty formed on her face. "A child? Darkseid, I..." she fell silent, briefly. "I will be honest. I am not certain how to respond to that. The ideas of child-rearing and motherhood is not one that I have much considered over the years; if ever I have given that thought, I cannot remember it."
"I infer that your answer is that you will need time to consider it?" speculated Darkseid.
"That is indeed so," affirmed Dark Phoenix.
Renewed silence took root in the air.