Shattered Skies: The Morning Lights

CHAPTER 63: Inter-Mission II - Without Him

Chapter 63: Inter-Mission II - Without Him

Elsewhere

Above it, the heavens in all their glory stretched out to infinity.

Around it, a circle of enormous, prismatic waterfalls tumbled down in silence. The water came from nowhere and seemingly went nowhere, yet the falls never ran dry.

Before it, there was an outcropping of rock which emerged from behind the falls, where a simple stone doorway with an arch stood halfway along its length. A tall, armored figure waited just in front of its closed doors, motionless.

And over the edge of the outcropping, waiting below... was everything.

It could only be described as a massive whirlpool, as much light as it was liquid. Neither description was accurate enough to capture its state of being, though, for its every molecule shone with brilliant golden radiance, and nothing else in existence shone quite like it... both fierce and gentle, a glow to make the brightest newborn stars look dark and dull.

At the whirlpool's perfectly circular rim, the waters hit some kind of border incomprehensible to mortal minds. Nothing they knew of was there to stop the waters from flowing outward forever. Yet at the rim of the circle, the overflow cascaded down into the endless cosmic void, visible as a glitter of stardust before it vanished altogether.

This hallowed ground, this place of unearthly beauty and soul-freezing terror, was the birthplace of all stars. The heart of the Milky Way Galaxy, or perhaps the universe, or perhaps all realities: the Galaxy Cauldron.

The armored figure seemed indifferent to the sight. She waited before the doors at attention, her hands clasped over the pommel of a gigantic slab of metal, a Zweihänder over three quarters her own impressive height from end to end and half a meter wide. Its point was planted in the rock at her feet. Nothing at all could be seen of the figure's flesh, for every last centimeter of her body was hidden beneath spiked midnight blue plates over a densely-woven inner mesh. The closest thing to a face Dead End ever saw of her was the wicked V-shaped visor of her helmet, slit with harsh, angular breaths that offered no clue as to who or what was inside. For all anyone knew, she was only humanoid as far as having a head, four limbs, and ten fingers went, and there were more than enough demons, monsters, and aliens in the palace whose anatomies fit that description close enough. No one ever saw inside the armor, and no one was brave enough to ask her to remove it.

At sight, the Zweihänder she grasped was easily as deadly a blunt instrument as it was a sword. A curious blend of both traditional craft and magitech, its blade was little but a bulky hunk of alloy with a finely sharpened cleaving edge. By contrast, the hilt, the crossguard, and the ominous ten-centimeter bore barrel which ran three quarters the length of its fuller were all at sight beyond any technology yet developed on Earth.

Movement. From the waters of the Cauldron, a tiny piece of void and darkness rose until it hovered over the edge of the rock. Black clouds of vapor gathered and solidified around it in a slow and laborious process, giving form to what once was shapeless. In time there was a head, a body, two limbs, then four... After about twenty minutes, Joker was whole again. He heaved and shuddered as he lay bedraggled on the rock.

The armored figure chuckled, a low and somewhat tinny sound, and there was an impression of a cheeky smile beneath the helmet's blank and featureless mouthplate. "Damn, you look like shit. They kicked your ass but good, huh?"

"Azurite." Joker hissed through his teeth in between heaves. "Weren't you... supervising... in Vertex Five?"

The motion Azurite's armored shoulders made was hard to identify. Probably a shrug. "I was. It was boring. Then your signal disappeared... and when the Last Laugh protocol activated, I figured it would be less boring to come see what the trouble was. Had to be a hell of a thing to make you play that hand."