Void Queen: She stood before Kaitlyn, arms at her sides, and eyes burning with the hate of a thousand timelines. "Kaitlyn.." Her voice was deep and static, as if it had grown tired.
Kaitlyn: "What.." She thought for a moment, processing what just happened. She turned towards the Void Queen. "What do you want from me!" She screamed, walking towards the Void Queen furiously, before attempting to slap her.
Void Queen: She caught her arm, and began to twist it. She grabbed Kaitlyn's chin and forced her to lock eyes with her as she screamed in agony. She threw Kaitlyn to the floor. "You are incompetent. You are a disgrace to power."
Kaitlyn: "I…I am who I am.." She said, still feeling the pain.
Void Queen: "Do you really think you can stop the Sculptor? Trust me, I tried. But you will learn very quickly that survival rests in the hands of his followers."
Kaitlyn: "I..don't care. I will stop him, and I will save this universe. I do not care if you're his followers trying to stop me, you won't." She wheezed, coughing from the pain.
Void Queen: "Believe me, positivity will get you nowhere. I used to think that, but trust me; it gets you nowhere." She grabbed Kaitlyn by her neck, and lifted her to her feet.
Kaitlyn: "Who..are you..?" She stared down the Void Queen, fearful of what's to come.
Void Queen: "I am you."
Kaitlyn: She looked around slowly, looking for Maverick and Viktor. "What have you done with them..?
Void Queen: "Oh, they are..somewhere safer now.."
Maverick: He woke up in a dark dungeon. The ground was coarse dirt, and the occasional pile of the bones of a human. He looked around, studying the area. The walls were dirt and supported by charcoal colored wood, with lamps on the ceiling of hardwood. A beast suddenly appeared before him in a flash of light. The being appeared to be made of shattered glass, with tentacles of that glass latching onto the walls.
???: The beast charged at Maverick, roaring with the sound of a firework. Its tentacles slashed at him.
Maverick: Green energy and sigils appeared in his hand as he stood his ground, his eyes growing bright green. As the beast charged at him, he shot out a beam of concentrated energy at them. The beast was sucked into what appeared to be a black hole with a green accretion disk, screaming and wailing, before vanishing. "Bastard.." He walked around the room as the light in his eyes died down.
???: The beast reappeared in a white void. No floor, no life, absolutely nothing. They saw themselves at every point in time; every second, every minute, of every day, stretching out towards infinity. Then they saw it; the beast began to become erased, as points in time self destructed. Soon, it was as if the beast had never existed.
Maverick: He continued to venture throughout the dungeon, cautious for anything.
Viktor: He suddenly appeared next to Maverick, hitting the floor hard, screaming. "God damn it…where are we..?" He got up, adjusting his glasses.
Maverick: He helped Viktor get up. "I don't know. But what I'm worried about is where is Kaitlyn..?"
Kaitlyn: "You.." Pink energy collected in her hand, as wind began to be pulled to her. "You remember why I rarely use my power.." A pink scythe of energy suddenly formed in her hand, with several ruby shards making up the base of it. She held the scythe back behind her. Energy from around the room began to be pulled into the scythe, the statues crumbling, and the walls unraveling as spacetime itself became undone. The very dark pristine castle they all stood in became vaporized as the matter turned brittle and shattered before them. Soon, all that remained were them standing on an invisible floor in the void of space. "You bastard!" She charged towards the Void Queen at unimaginable speeds, swinging the scythe towards her head. The scythe stopped before it could hit her, seemingly by an invisible force.
Void Queen: "How pitiful.." She reached her hand out towards the scythe, as the energy inside of it began to disperse and the rubies faded out of existence. "Did you seriously think you could stop me..?" She began to approach Kaitlyn closer, drawing her head near hers. "To think I spent a quintillion years being tortured by him, to be broken by a tyrannical god, for the sole purpose of corrupting you early on, only for you to be weak, and disappointing."
Kaitlyn: "I..am..not..weak!"
Void Queen: She grabbed Kaitlyn by her throat, lifting her up. Her other hand's fingers turned sharp like the claws of a thousand lions. "That statement is…incorrect.." She brought her hand straight through Kaitlyn's chest.
Kaitlyn: She gasped for air as blood burst out of her chest and mouth, the Void Queen's finger pierced through her.
Void Queen: "I am sending you there, to my time, so you may feel the anguish I felt for a billion, billion millenia. You will see what I suffered, how I suffered, and how I was broken. Then I will bring you back to start it all over again."
Kaitlyn: "Wait..no..please!-" She tried to speak, but she was too weak. Suddenly, time began to fast forward many years. She fell through a tunnel as reality warped around her. She saw horrifying things; her being ripped apart, the corpses of deities rotting, worlds imploding, and so on. It stopped and she hit a hard iron cast floor of gears and wires. She looked around, the walls with red and marble with oak wood supports, and the ceiling was asbestos. "What.." Before she could finish, her hands and feet suddenly became pulled apart from each other, holding her in place. "What the??" A mechanical arm burst out of the ground, with a saw at its head. The saw approached Kaitlyn's head, slowly. "No no no no.." Tears ran down her face as she tried to back away, but the mysterious force kept her in place. Her cries did nothing. The saw tore through her flesh, sawing her in half. She did not die, she felt every bit of it. Rewind. She fell back into the floor, her damage undone. She touched her body, felt it, nothing. She was safe again. Suddenly she felt a tug on her hair. Something began to drag her, lifting her off the ground and her hair, then snap. Her head ripped clean off from a mysterious force. Rewind. She fell back to the floor, hitting it hard. She let out a cry, her eyes barely open and her face drenched in tears. Suddenly she couldn't move. She couldn't move her eyes, not her tongue, nothing. It was as if she was frozen in ice. The wires on the floor suddenly began to move, and began to puncture her body. Her body cried out in pain as she was forced to remain silent. 2 wires forced themselves into her body through her eyes, causing excruciating pain. Rewind. She hit the floor hard- no she didn't. An arm caught her before she could land. As she looked down, crying, she noticed all the wires had been melted by something, or someone. The arm was clad in futuristic, silver armor. She looked up at the man, with his long white hair and oni mask; Xavier Martyris.
Xavier: "Do not let the Sculptor nor the Queen scar you. All you have to do is resist, and victory shall be yours." He pressed his finger against Kaitlyn's forehead. "I will rewind the clock, before the Void Queen struck your convoy. Everyone but you will forget, you will go past the Ethereal Palace, and to the Tempest Eye. I will save you just this once. Go." Blue light emitted off of his fingers. Rewind.
Maverick: "What if he's not real and it's just a hoax?"
Kaitlyn: "Lets hope he is, for..." She remembered what happened. Her torture, the time rewinds, and Xavier. She took a moment to take everything in.
Maverick: "for what..?" He was confused by the sudden stop.
Kaitlyn: "Nevermind, lost my train of thought." She knew this wasn't true. She remembered exactly what happened, but it left a deep scar in her.
Maverick: "You know, there's something I've been wanting to ask you. Will you…" He paused for a moment, contemplating what he was going to say, and if he should say it. "Will you..be my-" Suddenly shouting began to echo through space, interrupting him. He flashed his head to the right, looking at what happened. A black hole opened up, a large one at that. A starsail's engine broke, causing it to crash into another, plunging them both into the abyss.
Kaitlyn: "Turn the starsails away! Get us out of here!" The convoy turned away from the black hole, and their warp engines activated. They blasted away from the abyssal consumer, although half the fleet couldn't make it.
Viktor: "Where now? That black hole is covering the path to the Ethereal Palace!"
Kaitlyn: She turned to Viktor. "How far away is the Tempest Eye?"
Viktor: "Not too far..but why? That takes us far away from the Ethereal Palace!"
Kaitlyn: "Head there."
Viktor: "What, why!?"
Kaitlyn: "Trust me!"
Viktor: "Okay…" He held onto the steering wheel, turning it left towards the route of the Tempest Eye, unsure of what this would bring.
Kaitlyn: She walked over to Maverick, who was leaning against the rail of the starsail. "So, what were you going to ask me?"
Maverick: "Oh it's nothing." He scoffed, playing it off as nothing.
Kaitlyn: "What, no. You were going to ask me something."
Maverick: "Listen, it's fine. I'll just ask you later."
Kaitlyn: "Okay.." She turned away from him, confused. She walked through the starsail's deck, and came up to a knight. "So, how many men and ships are left?
Knight: "7 starsails and 68 men, your highness."
Kaitlyn: "Damn it.." She turned around back towards Maverick and Viktor, walking towards them. "We've lost most of the convoy, all because of that stupid black hole."
Viktor: "Yes, troubling indeed. But let's not get our hopes down. If for whatever reason you want us to head to the Tempest Eye instead of the Ethereal Palace, which we came here to do, let's just…do it."
Maverick: "Yeah, why did we even abandon the mission in the first place?"
Kaitlyn: "It's…complicated.."
Maverick: "So complicated we had to abandon the sole purpose of this convoy!? So complicated we let innocent men die for your change of decision??"
Kaitlyn: "I saw something okay! I don't know what it was, but I went through something. I remember a dark being attacking us instead of that black hole, causing us to crash land on the Ethereal Palace and meet the Unnamed deity. The story gets more complicated from there but it ends with a time reset, reverting back to a couple hours ago. I can't necessarily explain it, but a deity, or someone, whatever he was, told me to go to the Tempest Eye, Okay???" Tears slowly began to run down her cheeks.
Maverick: "Sure you did. And, what was this other 'deitys' name, exactly..?" He scoffed, mocking her.
Kaitlyn: "I cannot say, he hears everything."
Maverick: "Sure he does, if he's even real. Anything else, we should be aware of..?"
Kaitlyn: She thought for a moment, thinking about whether she should tell of the torture she suffered because of the Void Queen, but ultimately, for their sakes, she did not. "No..thats all.."
Maverick: "What even is the Tempest Eye anyways?" He turned around to Viktor, sarcastic in that question.
Viktor: "It's a titanic storm that connects every timeline into a singular point, holding the structure of the universe together. It's the largest singular structure in the entire universe itself. Speaking of which, look ahead."
Kaitlyn: Her and Maverick looked up in front of Viktor, as he too turned around. Before them stood a massive dark cloud, full of lightning, stars, galaxies, nebulas, and many other cosmic phenomena. "Holy shi…"
Viktor: "The Tempest Eye, in all of its glory.."
Maverick: "Oh..my…god.." The men in the convoy suddenly began to shout once more. They looked closer, and saw a lone being approaching them. White hair, oni mask, hyper advanced body armor; Xavier Martyris.
Xavier: He approached the larger starsail, lightning connecting his feet to the deck of the ship. As he landed on top of it, the wood around him cracked and splintered as if it was trying to reach out to him.He looked around them, studying Kaitlyn and the others down thoroughly. "This…is what you prepared for the Tempest Eye. I expected more from you, Kaitlyn."
Viktor: "Wait Kaitlyn, you know him??"
Kaitlyn: "It's a…long story.." She looked towards Xavier, holding out her hand. "Thanks for saving me…by the way.."
Maverick: "Hold on, what the HELL is going on here?!" He stared down Kaitlyn, forcing her hand down.
Kaitlyn: "Okay well after I said we entered the Ethereal Palace, something happened and I ended up almost in a quintillion year death loop but he saved me after just 3 cycles."
Xavier: "I didn't do it for you. I did it for myself.."
Kaitlyn: "What do you..mean..?"
Xavier: He shut his eyes. "Let me show you, all of you." Suddenly the whole starsail convoy, space, and the Tempest Eye disappeared. They were still there, but now invisible, replaced by a black void of nothingness. Only Xavier, the knights, Kaitlyn, Viktor, and Maverick could be seen. Xavier created a visualization of what's to come, a physical representation of a vision. "After the Sculpor's victory, he used the primeval power of the Void Queen to kill every lasting being he did not see fit. Every spark of hope out there was vanquished. Soon, he placed every lifeform in existence in the same death loop you suffered, but made it last eternity. I traveled back in time, escaping him, and to remove the Void Queen from existence."
Kaitlyn: "So time is his weakness..?"
Xavier: "No..why do you think the creator of the universe has not intervened with what the Sculptor is doing..?
Kaitlyn: "Well, I-"
Xavier: "Let me tell you, Kaitlyn. That creator has not intervened because the Sculptor is that creator."
Kaitlyn: "No.. it can't be.."
Xavier: "He created this universe hellbent on torturing us, and you just so happened to be born in the funnel of his consumption. My work here is done." Just as quickly as he arrived, he left, vanishing in a flash of light and everything returned back to normal.
Kaitlyn: "No…" She was heartstruck by this, but knew what needed to be done. "Bring all starsails close together, and enter the Tempest Eye!" She shouted the command, and soon the convoy followed it, heading deep into the Tempest Eye.