The space between dimensions is called the abyss. A black, featureless void dusted with gray particles falling with no end. Deep, deep within that void, sat a fortress. Chained in place by sky defying gravity wells, the first home of a conqueror sat suspended in nothingness.
Deep within, machines incomprehensible to mortal minds ran incalculable programs. An empty search, spurred by a favor from his savior. It was fruitless, he knew. But the price for his life was worth oh so much more, if that's what she wanted, she would get it.
A figure stood at a circular table with a depression in the middle. Though nothing was present for proper scale, it could be said such construction dwarfed mortal size. A projection of multiple universes and dimensional boundaries whirled at dizzying speed, text flashed like lightning and the being watched with bated breath.
Whirring jerked to a halt and the projections turned red. The text stopped its endless cascade and the being slammed his fist into the circular table, leaving a sizable dent despite the high end means of its production.
That's the seventh time.. He thought, frustrated. It's a sure thing now, what the hell am I gonna say? As a cruel twist of fate, he felt a twinge in his authority. He sighed and stood straight from his lurch, rewinding the dent in the table once again. He gestured to open air, and a blue storm appeared at the far wall.
The storm grew larger and more clouds willed into existence as the portal blurred into use. The blue deepened and the clouds at the edge unwound into white mist. A figure nervously stepped out from the vortex, and walked towards the larger being.
“Hey, ********, how's it going?” She flashed a small smile. “Any good news?”
“Quite the opposite, actually.” He ground out. Her smile faded as he beckoned her towards the circular table. She hopped over thick cables and teleported through several delicate machines and magical constructs blocking her direct path.
He waved his hand to the side, and the machine began running the program for the eighth time. “Look at this. I've run it multiple times but I've had the same result each time. If they are still alive, they aren't in any of the neighboring dimensions, or even the surrounding multiplex’s.” He formed eyes on the side of his head to gauge her reaction.
“The search went faster since I already had probes in some of the dimensions, not to mention my own personal familiarity with most of them.” The being continued.
“Now, I massively doubt they were taken to a distant dimension, since we would have at least seen ******** stir at that, or start bitching about it. Which means,” he swept his hand to the side again, and the projection changed to a display of the dimension plane.
In the middle sat a cube highlighted blue, surrounded by hundreds of other cubes. The first layer of eight cubes were also blue, but the next two layers 16 and 28 cubes respectively were highlighted yellow, the next four layers highlighted red with the rest a neutral teal color, the base color of all the projections.
“The middle one is our Multiplex. These other blue ones are all the ones I've checked. The red ones are the ones I know ******** would complain about if they were taken there.”
“So… the yellow is the area you think they are?” She asked. He nodded. “How long… will it take to check all of that?” He grimaced. “...For us? No time at all. For them? Probably a few years. I'd say eight max, maybe one if I'm lucky. Probably around four or five though. And that's without accounting for time dilation. A year on Earth could be a hundred for them.”
“But..!” He cut her off, knowing full well what she was about to say. “Which leads me to that. I'm not sure if any of them would be alive after five or so years. They certainly wouldn't be your children anymore.” He put an obsidian-clad hand on her crystalline shoulder. “I'm sorry, ****, I wish I could help more. I'll keep searching, forever if I have to.”
He conjured an obsidian bench and sat down. She followed, and tried to suppress tears. “I just don't get it.. They could have at least.. Asked? Why… why!” Tears began running down her cheek, while the large obsidian clad being silently contemplated the issue. He knew that solving the problem would absolve her feelings much better than any soothing ever could.
“They probably assumed you would have said no, cause I certainly would have. Honestly, I might have just dusted them for even daring to ask. They probably foresaw that and knew that trying to kidnap them after making an introduction would only make them the primary suspect.”
She suppressed her sadness and cracked a small smile. “You know, that attitude is why all the other **** are so afraid of you. I heard one of the minor **** call you ‘The *** Killer’ you know.”
He smiled as well. “A Minor *** said that? Interesting, they don't even meet my eyes at the annual gala.” She clasped her hands over her mouth. “ Oh no! Don't dust ********* just because I said that!”
“So that's her name huh? I'll be visiting her shortly.” He smiled viciously, and the comparatively small women punched him in the arm. “Oh please, the poor woman is stressed enough. If you visit her she might obliterate herself from shock.” They both chuckled at the image.
They sat in silence for a moment, before the heavily armored being turned the mood grim once again. “How are their families holding up?” She sighed heavily at that. “That's the thing ********, they are! Just fine! I mean sure, some of them are genuinely distraught and grieving, but most of them are already over it! Others are even angry at the inconvenience of their possibly dead children!”
“Sigh.. I always forget how awful humans can be.” Her eyes opened wide once she connected the dots. “N-no offense! I don't-”
He chuckled. “It's fine, it's fine. I haven't been human for decades. Besides, as a former human I know better than anyone the horrible capabilities of my old kind.”
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They sat in silence for several long moments. Eventually, the larger one stood up and took a deep breath. “Welp, I should get back to work. I have to add more processing drives and probes, and I have to bother ******** for dimensional passes and what not. I'll drop by if I make any progress.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” She asked genuinely, and he cracked a smile. “Not unless you can wrangle black holes a few light years away. I’ll have to neglect my chores for a while.”
“Isn’t it a bit.. I don't know, sacrilegious to call your divine duty a chore’?”
“Maybe for me, when it comes to the sheer scale of things, but think about *******. Can you really call all that micromanagement anything other than busy work? I mean, fuck, he’s kind of an ass but its warranted with all that deskwork he's constrained to 24/7. No wonder he gets pissed when I overuse his authority.”
“Speaking of that.. Is your friend okay?”
“HAHAHA! ****, it's been centuries since then, and you're only asking now? He's fine, don't worry. I've been looking out for any more occurrences but so far the effort has been fruitless.”
He grew serious again. “And speaking of fruitless searches, I really should get back to my job.”
She opened her mouth again, but he cut her off coldly. “No, seriously. Get out.” She pouted as he turned back to the projection once again, muttering codes and otherwise manipulating the light.
The same blue vortex opened right next to her, and she left without a goodbye. She was faced with the open expanse of the ascendant realm, a place that takes on a different aspect of each of its dwellers.
For ********, a sea of stars and twisting nebulae. For *******, the ground was filled to the brim with golden, glimmering sand, the sky filled with dark smoke, with visions playing throughout its atmosphere.
But for ****? It's quite similar to Earth. Rolling hills, glimmering lakes, cloudy skies, the only exception being the mile high pillars of hot pink and dark purple crystals holding up the sky and liberally dotting the landscape.
She crossed thousands of miles in a single step, stopping at a large pool of moon kissed water. She kneeled and stared into its glimmering depths. The pool swirled and shimmered, the reflection within contorting to a different perspective.
The vision of the world.
—
Deep within the west side of Chicago, sat a certain investigative agency. For months, they had been getting the same calls over and over again. Dozens of people simply... vanished.
Mr. Scourge, A detective in the missing persons department, though not by choice, sat thoughtfully at his desk. For weeks he had been gathering every single similar case he could, he had even discovered a fair few himself, and now, he was left with the bare frame work.
Exactly one hundred people, all across the world, have vanished. He thought it might have been supernatural if it had been at the same time. Instead, they were all taken a few months apart. Never less than a week, or more than a year.
Plenty of cases had been dismissed as something else, a case for sure but not connected to this one. Clothes, belongings, anything the missing people had on them vanished with them. Attempts at contacting the myriad of phones have been attempted, but failed every time, as if they simply ceased to exist.
Mr. Scourge poured over the files again and again, searching for any kind of connections, leads, anything at all. Unsatisfied, he finally dived into the parent testimonies. Over the many months officers and therapists have been deployed for interrogations and health check ups.
Both to keep the parents sane, and to keep track of the state of the house. What if this was all some big kidnapping scheme? It's unlikely for one key factor. The indiscriminate nature.
Whatever took, or even killed these people, didn't seem to care who it was. Any child older than eight, and any senior below fifty five was taken. Race, even nationality didn’t stop it. This was no targeted attack.
In the last week he had found only one thing, an interesting but not so useful facet of information. Every single taken individual, was taken in a grid pattern across the earth. At least that rules out any coincidental animal attacks or some unorganized criminal activity.
Whatever had done this, was big.
Mr. Scourge had no leads. No evidence, at least any to track down who did this, or even the slightest scrap of where to go from here. It's as if the hand of god had plucked them from the Earth himself.
He went back to the testimonies. For witnesses, it was like magic. Every single one said the person that went missing had slipped their mind all at once. One of them was in a highschool classroom, surrounded by his classmates. But when he vanished without a sound, no one noticed. Even when they all left for their next class, they didn't notice his absence, in fact, no one did, not even the teachers. It was only his parents that went hysterical and kicked up a fuss, thus spawning the nation wide search. In fact, it was thanks to them that this case was given a spotlight at all.
Some of the parents though, almost exclusively the asian ones, were not all that sad. Sure, a lot of them are in some pretty deep depression, but some of those whose kids were taken first are already starting to show better vitals.
The parents who kicked up a fuss are still absolutely distraught. After two whole months the entire household has been shaken irreparably. The older brother threw himself into school. I've heard his grades have shot through the roof. The father and mother are grieving together, both of them eating less and abandoning their hobbies.
He looked away from the depressing report and back to the timeline. The earliest known disappearance of this nature was some college student about five years ago. With the most recent being an eight year old about three weeks ago.
While the culprit doesn't seem to care much about age, the majority of the taken have been those between the age of thirteen to late twenties.
With the last of the files compiled, he saved his nonexistent progress and shut down the desktop. Time to go home. As Mr. Scourge walked through the office and said his goodbyes to his fellow workers, his mind continued to look through the case.
He exited the glassy office and stared out onto the horizon. He sucked in a breath. Ah! The air feels… bad? He thought. He sniffed the air again. There was no foul odor, yet something just felt.. Wrong.
He felt it drive through his legs, like the earth beneath suddenly shifted slightly. He felt unbalanced, wrong. He stumbled past his car onto a nearby hill, right next to the office. The feeling continued, the air around felt almost.. Slimy, like we were walking through wet cement.
He got to the top, and saw the world in a new perspective, almost like in grayscale. So many tiny, insignificant factors made the entire landscape feel alien. He didn't even realize how at home he had felt before, now that it was stripped away from him.
As if, as if, as if. Nothing was actually wrong. Everything looked fine. He was fine. But he could not deny the underlying tone of everything.
It almost feels like…
He stared into the dimming light of the falling, red sun.
The world is grieving.