"So shall it be done."
Eternity raised both hands in a gesture for a blessing, and reality itself responded to his will.
White light erupted from every direction simultaneously, overwhelming Jay's senses. Not painful, but absolute, consuming every photon of perception until nothing existed except blinding radiance that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
The light wasn't just bright. It was the first ray of light from the Big Bang.
Jay felt himself being moved… no… ejected from Eternity's realm. The cosmic entity was relocating him, moving him from one point in his realm to another with speed that made teleportation look slow.
The sensation defied description. Like being fired from a cannon made of pure space, reality folding around him and expanding explosively.
Colors flashed past that had no names. Dimensions he couldn't perceive left impressions on his consciousness like afterimages. The journey took both an instant and an eternity as time became meaningless in the space between spaces.
When the light finally faded enough for sight to return, Jay found himself somewhere completely different.
He stumbled, his enhanced balance barely keeping him upright as his brain struggled to recalibrate. His hands came out automatically to catch himself, but there was nothing to catch. Just space.
He blinked rapidly, clearing his vision, forcing his enhanced perception to focus and catalogue his new surroundings.
Turns out he was in a courtroom of sorts.
But not any courtroom he'd ever seen. This was cosmic architecture made manifest, a space designed to contain judgment on a multiversal scale, in the Dimension of Manifestations where reality's fundamental forces gathered to witness multiversal law being enforced.
Massive thrones arranged in a perfect circle dominated the space, each one sized for beings of impossible scale. The seats themselves were carved from materials that shouldn't exist, as they were concepts given physical form. Order manifested as perfect crystalline geometry. Chaos writhed as ever-shifting liquid stone. Love glowed with warmth that pushed back void. Hate festered with malevolence that made the air itself feel oily.
The thrones weren't just large. They were positioned with absolute precision that demonstrated their occupants' relative power in the universal order.
And they were occupied.
Jay's enhanced vision cataloged them automatically, Sage's abilities identifying each cosmic entity even as his danger sense screamed warnings about the sheer concentrated power in this single space:
At the right, slightly elevated above the others, sat Eternity himself, his form now stationary and formal rather than meditative. Beside him, Infinity stretched endlessly despite occupying finite time, her form suggesting unlimited time contained through cosmic will alone.
On Eternity's other side, Queen of never sat uncomfortably as her expression seemed nervous for someone of her stature.
On Infinity's other side, The Natural Order of Things manifested as perfect geometric patterns that hurt to look at directly with lines of binary codes running along them, angles and lines that existed in more dimensions than three. On the far side, Mistress Love glowed with warmth that seemed to push back the void itself, her presence radiating affection on a cosmic scale. And at the end sat Phoenix blazed in cosmic fire that burned without consuming, as a primal force given consciousness.
On the opposing side, positioned at equally high elevation, Lord Order and Master Chaos sat in perfect contradiction. Order was absolutely still, frozen in perfection. Chaos constantly shifted her position and dress, never maintaining the same form for more than a heartbeat. Somehow, they occupied adjacent thrones without destroying each other through fundamental incompatibility.
The Power That Be radiated authority that made Jay's knees weak even from a distance, Source of any and all magic tend to do that. And at the end sat Sire Hate festered with malevolence that felt like oil on skin, as if corruption and loathing made manifest.
One throne on that side remained conspicuously empty, a gap in the lineup that felt significant.
And presiding over it all, positioned at the absolute center and highest point of the circle, sat the Living Tribunal in a throne that dwarfed even these cosmic giants.
Three faces looked out from his massive head, each one carrying its own expression and focus and terrible purpose. Equity stared with perfect neutrality, weighing all things against each other with mathematical precision. Necessity gazed with cold calculation, evaluating what must be done regardless of preference. Vengeance glared with righteous fury, ready to punish transgression against universal law. Each face seemed to perceive Jay on different levels simultaneously.
Opposite the Living Tribunal, positioned at equal height but across from his throne, sat Oblivion in a throne of pure shadow. His form was absence made presence, void where a being should be, darkness that suggested the heat death of universes made into something that could think.
His head rested on one palm in a pose of studied boredom, and his fingers drummed against the armrest with a rhythm that felt like the heat death of universes counting down. But his attention, despite the casual pose, was absolutely focused on something below.
And the gallery was its own story.
Stretching up and away from the main court in tiers that seemed to extend into infinity, filled with beings whose mere presence threatened to overwhelm mortal perception. The Dimension of Manifestations had gathered its inhabitants, and they were watching.
Jay's Comic Book Nerd perk flooded his consciousness with information as his enhanced vision tried to catalog them all:
The In-Betweener hovered between states of being, simultaneously here and there, matter and energy, existence and non-existence. Celestials loomed in perfect stillness, each one the size of a building, their armor pulsing with cosmic power that could birth or destroy galaxies.
Watchers observed with eyes that had witnessed the birth of existence itself, never interfering but always witnessing.
The King in Black perched in shadow that seemed to eat light, symbiote god radiating hunger for consumption. While the Kings in Ivory, Beyonders whose very existence suggested realities beyond comprehension, beings from outside the multiverse who viewed it as an interesting experiment.
Eon and the Elders of the Universe filled spaces between, each one ancient beyond mortal measure, having existed since the first moments after creation.
Not to mention beings like Umbraxas and Goblin force and many stationed in the gallery despite their own powers comparable to the abstracts.
The sheer weight of attention from beings who individually could reshape existence threatened to crush Jay's consciousness. His danger sense had gone from screaming to simply playing a constant high-pitched tone, the cosmic equivalent of 'you are so far beyond your depth that measurement becomes meaningless.'
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His enhanced mind struggled to process the scope. This was a gathering that shouldn't be possible. A collection of cosmic forces that individually could unmake reality, gathered in one space to witness... what?
But that wasn't what drove the breath from his lungs and made his enhanced danger sense explode with warnings so loud they nearly deafened his conscious thought.
It was the one thing that drew Jay's focus with magnetic inevitability that made everything else fade away.
A small figure on the courtroom floor.
Tiny compared to the cosmic giants on their thrones. Fragile in a space designed for beings who could survive the death of universes. Human-scale in a place meant for gods.
A little boy in black and white overalls.
Brown hair falling across his face in familiar patterns that Jay had brushed back a thousand times.
Piercing blue eyes streaming with tears that caught cosmic light and looked like liquid starlight.
And in his arms, cradled with desperate gentleness, lay Bonk.
The Pachycephalosaurus' dusty green scales were matted with something dark and wet. Blood. The liquid pooled on the pristine cosmic floor beneath them, spreading in a crimson stain that seemed obscene against the majesty of cosmic architecture, mortality and injury made visible in a place meant to be beyond such things.
The dinosaur's chest barely moved, each breath shallow and labored, the kind of breathing that said death was approaching. One of Bonk's eyes was half-open, dim. His tail lay limp, no longer animated by playful energy.
Recognition crashed through Jay like lightning, violent and absolute and consuming.
His son. The boy he'd sworn to protect, to keep safe, to ensure never knew pain and fear. The child who represented everything good Jay had found in this universe and every reason he had to be better.
Crying and clutching a dying pet while cosmic giants watched.
Every logical thought evaporated. Every strategic consideration burned away in the face of pure paternal instinct.
Fatherly rage overrode caution and self-preservation. Nothing else mattered. Nothing except the small boy crying on the floor and the desperate need to reach him, to protect him, to make whatever had hurt him pay.
Jay's scream tore from his throat with force that made several cosmic entities flinch, sound carrying primal fear and desperation:
"LUUUVVVV!!!"