The flash of a brilliant dancing rainbow of light that had engulfed her birth parents the last time she had seen them, and the final day of the woman who had given her her family name…
She had not been well enough to speak then. Mei didn't know what her last words would have been.
...
She lifted the container and poured it down into the black gauntlet she had prepared for the occasion.
For a moment, as the red liquid drained down into the gauntlet, nothing happened. Once it was done, the seal over the hole she'd just poured it into just shut closed again.
She waited patiently, until…
The gauntlet began to change. The metal began to wriggle, the steel changed shape, sharp edges shooting out of metal before retracting, then the metal changed completely to the horrific shape of skinned flesh… Then to undefined and pulsating meaty flesh… Then to the absolutely horrifyingly disgusting feeling and look of burst and splattered brain matter… Before finally settling back down as a gauntlet, now with 4 different lights dancing across it.
Mei did not react, nor move as the gauntlet made it's transformations.
If she had flinched at this small bit of Eldritch display, she would never have dared what was about to come.
She put her free hand under her chin and considered.
Four. Four Members of Shoto's direct family had been touched by madness. Those alive at least.
That was not good. It suggested mental problems ran in the family. If it was genetic… There wasn't much hope. On the other hand… They might be like Mei herself.
In any case, she would take a closer look before giving any judgement.
She grabbed one of the lights dancing across the gauntlet.
A red one.
This one was Endeavor. She had no doubts about that.
It was still burning strong, but as Mei saw the world around her as a twisted place of fire and flayed flesh, she could tell it was in many ways a burnt-out place.
She let go.
It would seem that Endeavor's madness had left him long ago. The rage was still there, the potential for going over the edge still very much a part of him, but nothing of the caliber it must have been at when he raped Shoto's mother to conceive him.
The second flame was blue.
And this one… This one was alive beyond words.
The entire world became nothing but a world of dancing bones alit by blur fire of pyroclastic proportions.
Mei quickly let go, panting.
Mad. Definitely insane… But who? She didn't know.
She felt her hand slightly shake as she grabbed the third one, this also white.
This one was far, far lesser in intensity or horror than the previous ones.
It was simply a lake of eternally simmering boiling water.
Shoto's, she thought.
He's not truly mad, but… He could end up if circumstances went the wrong way.
So, a bit better than her.
She let go of it, before focusing on the final one.
Unless the one of blur fire belonged to her, then this was Shoto's mother.
The moment of truth.
She grabbed the orb of blue, icy light… And the world in front of her… Became a Winterland.
Not raging, or pouring down with ice and snow. Just… Covered by white.
She turned from side to side.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
That meant… She looked down.
It had to be under the snow then. Buried. Forgotten.
That was a good sign. It boded well that this might not be a gigantic waste of time.
This time she did not let go. Instead, she pulled the orb out, and put it in her hand, closing a fist around it.
The other lights went out, as the winter landscape vanished.
The metal of the gauntlet began glowing with a blue light.
Alright… She had the connection.
She turned to the device in front of her.
Then took a deep breath, as she began untangling the inexhaustible power source from her belt.
The gift from the Alien. The wonderful little device that had allowed her to tap into the power she needed for her arms… This eldritch gauntlet… And greater things.
She inserted it into the device… and the world behind it broke.
The air itself shattered like a mirror… Leaving a hole in reality, and beyond that hole…
A black sun, a dark, golden sky… And the faraway sight of a great and terrible city by a dark and sunken sea.
Carcosa.
The place between worlds. The place where all the unconsumed Emotions that had ever been was gathered. The place that bound all those touched by Madness together.
It had been a while since she had seen it's shores. Not since she had fruitlessly searched it's alleys for the key to further life.
Mei stepped through the mirror.
...
Rei looked out the window, at the moon, beyond the metal bars of her room.
She did not like the nights.
The darkness that seeped into the world as the light left it, surrendering to the return of the primordial void…
The brightness fading as slowly but surely, the old human instincts began to seep in telling you that there was something wrong here…
Humans were not creatures of the night, not even when they were in peak mental shape.
She was not one such.
But the thing she hated most about nights… Was sleeping.
Nothing would happen to her here in this room. She knew that, despite what instincts told her.
She was safe here.
The four walls of this room might be a cage… But it was a secure cage.
Sleeping though… Sleeping was surrendering herself to her dreams. And her dreams… Her dreams were not safe for her. Her dreams… Her dreams could hurt her in a way that her current life could not.
They could remind her of how no one in the world wanted her. No one cared about her wretched life.
Not her parents, not her children… No one cared. And she had only herself to blame for that. That was why she was here.
She put it off for far, far longer than was healthy, but eventually, sometime around the first hour after midnight, Rei turned to her bed, the tiredness beginning to take full hold.
It did not take long once she actually laid down, her eyes closing, her senses slowing down… And then…
She felt a massive PULL and yelped.
The world became colors, gold, red, black, blue, purple, pink, orange, green, dancing around in a massive rainbow of energy, and in one short, all-encompassing moment, it seemed to her that in front was a bridge like a frozen, enormous rainbow…
Then she was pulled past it, beyond it, moving on and on seeing glimpses of a world beneath her until… She stopped.
She gasped and fell over on her knees, suddenly feeling a… Pressure on her entire self.
She took deep breaths, then realised that beneath her was not anything from her room. In fact… It was like nothing she had ever seen before.
It was cobbled, glowing, golden stones, like something out of medieval Europe. Only instead of grey, the material between the stones looked like a cast black diamond.
Was this… A dream? It didn't feel like a dream.
She raised her head…
The world around her was… Breathtaking.
Mountains… It was like the Himalayas stretched from one end of the horizon to the other. It was hard to make it's features out, but… They were lit up by a black sun, and… A golden sky. Not blue, or red, or orange. Pure, total gold, without a shred of hue or different shades of coloring.
"Finally! I was starting to wonder if you were planning on staying up all night."
Rei scrambled to her feet as she turned around… And was struck by the sight in the opposite direction of the mountains.
It was… It was a city.
A city that stretched on beyond the horizon. Beyond comprehension.
A black and golden city that at the same time seemed both ancient, medieval, futuristic, and… Something more. Something Alien .
Citadels of gold and black, with… Something wrapped around the walls. Something moving. Something that made Rei feel fear into her soul.
Spires that stretched up so far that she could not see the top, though she was far, far away.
And she was far away.
What she was standing on, was what looked like a small plateau of cobbled stone beside some massive structure built into a mountain.
It was far, far up in the world.