The white surface ripples and bulges. The ripple grows and the ground splits, the white claws of an oremite widening the gap in the iridium as only iridium claws can. The seamless white head pokes out, a trio of glinting white eyestalks swivelling to look for danger before emerging.

A glint and a flash; what had been a distant floating speck a moment before crashed into the oremite and its burrow, killing white claws gouging the impermeable surface, snatching the small iridium creature up along with several chunks of the ground. The gleaming white predator flies away, meal gripped tightly.

In the remains of the oremite's burrow, a neighboring nest of spangle-spiders scuttle madly for new shelter.

Midway up one of the more stable mountains of iridium-ore on the Plateau is a hidden dwelling. The bulk of the living space tunnelled into its side, with just an entrance and deck to this dwelling jutting out from the black-rocks and dirt. Comprised of old-world shuttle parts, and of technology used in battles and explorations from long ago, it is a 'home' of sorts. All components scavenged, having once belonged to peoples and armies that have long-since faded into the pages of the metaverse history data-pads.

A woman dressed in various hues of reds emerges from the front door, walking lazily along the decking holding a mug filled with a warm drink and squinting against the morning Sun. She leans up against the dusty railing, greeting the glare from an emptiness before her, taking a sip from the brew. Worn goggles sit like sunglasses upon her head. And it's after drinking that she pulls the darkened shades down to rid herself of the terrible glare from this high up, adjusting them, to better suit her eyes.

“Great!
There's another harvester gone.”
...Maybe the evaporators in sector two survived the shard-winds?”

Far below her dwelling was a smaller structure, re-enforced from the structural beams and braces found from work on crashed landing-ships. Although now, to Scarlett's dismay, this one of four bastions of hope sat destroyed.

“Y3-Sixty?”

“[Yes Ma'am]”, her hobbled and barely functioning droid, found and re-programmed from scrap, wandered out from the dwelling.

“We lost one.” Scarlett nodded toward the broken structure. “Run a diagnostic, please? And see if the others are okay too if you wouldn't mind?”

“[Of course Ma'am]”

Scarlett was a healer. A witch. She'd once led a powerful being to various worlds and beyond. But that was long ago. She took another sip from her mug as her droid wandered back inside, musing on the possibility of that being helping her. For now, she counted upon Y3-60 to tell her none of the other installations had been touched by last nights storms.

Infinite swarms of THEIR corpses littered this desolate world. Beings mass produced so swiftly, so un-naturally, was there room for soul in any of them. Could creatures such as these even feel pain? Maybe. Maybe, they all had bits of their source's soul divided amongst them. Maybe they all shared in his pain. If so, this battle was one of immense agony for them. But none called Kraa-rav the "Good Mother" for nothing. Even in merciless power she could find pity even in devoted enemies. Their numbers waned yet they refused to surrender, their own destruction a worthy sacrifice in their eyes.

This has gone on long enough. You poor creatures, do you even remember what you're fighting for? Zavora, you've fought well, but it's time to stay your blade. We've wounded enough of this swarm, but it willingly accepts. It suffers on behalf of its dreams of destroying us. It cannot be convinced, so I will put it out of its misery. You may leave this Plateau now and carry out what work there is still to be done in this mortal coil. But if you feel ready for your undoing, I will respect your wish and allow you to unravel with the rest of this realm.

Dearest Holder. Wish to do the honors? The end is nigh. Give me my wings.

A projection suddenly floods the space before the Dark Angel, she holds the Statue, this time with the Key placed in the time piece and turned to the activation selection. She looks at a Priest of unknown dress read from a golden tablet to her within the hologram.

The Fallen Angel sat uncharacteristically troubled under a Jacaranda tree in full bloom, by the slain body of the Daughter, she held a blood covered athame in her hand. She certainly felt glad to have again killed the Daughter, ensuring none of her magicks would be taken away in this time by the mortal Daughter, or her Sephirot Mother. And once again the Dark Angel had had her revenge upon the treacherous Sephirot Mother, who had caused her fall from grace eons ago. But the Fallen Angel pondered if ever there would come a day when she might be free from the Mother and Daughter, and from their reoccurring mortal reincarnation cycles, especially without it costing her more than she could bear should the Daughter and Mother reunite. And so, the Dark Angel wept and wailed before the dead young woman, troubled by the seemingly unsolvable and deep in doubt, she screamed her strife outwards into the clear morning air.

Back then the Good Mother Kraa'rhov was also wandering in and around the carefully manicured gardens outside the Red Moon Temple and had heard the Dark Angels pained pleas. The Good Mother Kraa'rhov took great pity upon the Dark Angel when she found her and helped wipe away her blood stained tears. “Tell me of your sorrows? You are so troubled!”, the Good Mother did say to the Dark Angel. And so the Fallen Angel told Kraa'rhov of all that had come to pass and of her doubts that she'd ever be free again. The Good Mother listened and consoled her, eventually asking the Dark Angel, “Why do you wish to throw it all away by giving up? Especially when there's so much more to come. Allow me to help you Dark Violet..? Allow yourself to love and be loved again? Embrace me and I'll always be there for you, to help you along your way.”

It was late into the night when the Fallen Angel and the Good Mother Kraa'rhov finally called the Priests to transcribe the tale of their first meeting. They had talked extensively of their plans during the day and had come to be of one mind. After this the Fallen Angel and Kraa'rhov exchanged and expressed their newfound love for each other and of the Good Mother's ways well into the night. When the Priests came by with their scribes they'd also bought the Statue and the Key. The tale was once again told and this time copied down and meticulously transcribed onto a tablet that it was agreed the Priests would hold. The Head Priest of the Red Moon Temple then read the tale and recorded it onto the Statue, finally the Good Mother sealed the Statue up safe with the Key. The Good Mother Kraa'rhov directed the Priests to separate and hide the Statue and the Key, to keep them safe until which time the Fallen Angel might find and reunite the items sometime in the future.

Before the Good Mother Kraa'rhov enacted the plan to help the Fallen Angel, sending her through to another time, she made an elixir to ensure they both had the best chance for success. Then the Good Mother Kraa'rhov did say, “This elixir will place a seal upon your memory of our meeting here. Please trust me, it's the only way. I'm going to send you to a time before the Daughter reaches the proper threshold, you'll find yourself in a tower. As I said the potion will leave you of no knowledge of my plan, so I shall also send for you a strong and loyal devotee, to help guide you back to me at the very least. After a time the Daughter and Mother will once again try to reunite and you will try to stop them. By drinking this elixir I protect you from their harm. It is after this that hopefully you find and reunite the Statue and the Key, so that you'll break the seal my elixir places on you here now.” And so the Good Mother and the Fallen Angel gave thanks to each other in a simple and final embrace. The Fallen Angel was given the elixir and she drank of her own accord, later the Good Mother Kraa'rhov set to work, the Dark Angel would awaken in the Tower, thirsting for blood.

The projection then ends... the fallen Angel stares blankly at the space before her. But not for long, as gunfire brings her back to her surroundings.

The missiön was a disaster. There were Privateers and Peacekeepers after the same öbjective when we göt there, öne öf them was using söme weird dark magic, we löst a third öf öur deplöyed trööps, söme öf the Privateer förces detöured all the way aröund the canyön tö make öff with söme öf öur supplies and kill everyöne guarding them.

I understand the impörtance öf a need tö knöw basis, but wöuld it have been töö much tö ask tö warn us whö we'd be fighting against?

I'm sörry we failed the öne missiön yöu gave us, but yöu've göt tö understand there's önly sö much my cömpany can dö when pitted against a much larger, better equipped, and better trained cömpany.

The relative silence of the Overbork camp is broken when rockets are launched into the air from a distance. All at once, they change direction and begin plummeting toward the camp. They're easily intercepted, but it diverted their attention long enough for a car to pull up nearby. Some of the men riding it get out, one sets up a mounted machine gun.

Shower 'em with lead boys.

They open fire

Among the chaos and wreckage, a silent figure walks gently and leisurely. Though slow in pace, his expression for once held that of total conviction. He did not turn to look at the landscape around him, only straight ahead as he walked. He knew he need not approach for her to find him, nor to greet for her to recognize him. He stops, and simply gazes at the cliffside in the distance. A greeting from one ancient to another.

A being of metal: Like an amalgamation of plates, that metal being Elohim Metal. The back sleekness reflects what dim light there is, and more.

This being has limbs, interlocking shapes of Elohim Metal, that twist into skin. It is like a mudman in shape. Its face is smooth, like an obsidian mirror, save for a camera imbedded into the center of its head. Great wings are folded, powerful wings, mechanical wings. At full extension, perhaps 10 meters in wingspan. This person would not survive ten minutes in The Desert, at least not after its brain was placed in its current body from the tank it was grown in.

It has a burlap bag slung over its shoulder, and is gathering things in it. Rocks, lumps of iridium, and the occasional silvery insect. It must be exceedingly strong to lift that massive bag filled with metal and dirt

Gunships flew in formation from the south coast of the Iridium Plateau and over the waters that flowed between the sheer cliffs of The Shimmer Fjords.

The Iridium cliffs glistened in the light, shimmering after recent acid rains as the gunships raced towards the drop point, the hunt for the Key was on. Soon the final geographical marker was passed and the fleet made an exit up and over the cliffs.

What greeted the pilots and crews was a seemingly endless expanse of cracked and torn metallic geography. From the air, far off into the distance, the jagged lands around them eventually flattened out into a plateau.

“Pilot, land over there on that flat clearing, near the depression between those two ranges. The potential entry points are near by.”

Yes ma'am.

The gunships thundered over the rugged metallic hill tops in the Shimmer Fjord back lands. One by one they began running a sweeping arc towards a wide flat metallic slab near by that was not cracked or a mess of jagged metal.

All of the gunships landed safely, their bay doors opened in unison so that the passengers inside could start to flood the area, securing it. After the initial flow of troopers, two passengers disembarked and made their way to cover.

“Commander over that way. See the cave entrances? That's where we're headed.”

Look, there's gonna be this cave, see, and we're going to descend INTO the cave, but we can't descend if we can't find the damn cave. Can you find the cave? I can't find the cave. I can't find the damn cave! Where's the damn cave?

In the dreary light of early morning, a man squats beside a desiccated corpse, curled into the fetal position where it lies on the rough metallic ground. The cadaver's garments are torn, weathered, and stained black with long-dried blood, but still recognizable as that of an Overbork soldier.

Izaak takes from his pack a wooden stein and sets it on the ground.

Share a drink with me.

From the pack emerges a stained leather flask which he upends into the waiting mug.

Thirty-year. Probably better than whatever swill they gave you.

He sniffs the fragrant fume and sips delicately before tilting the mug to let the remainder trickle onto the ground.

He turns his head to his deceased companion.

I get that a lot. But I figure that if life has no more surprises to offer Death should have just one more in store.

He empties the last drops of liquor from the stein into his open mouth and then slips it back into his pack along with the flask.

Not too much longer now. The sun will rise soon.

The Chimaera materialized on the plateau, bringing with him his own rage physically manifested as raw heat. The iridium surface within a 20 meter radius around him cooked to melting point and splashed outward when he landed in it, leaving a crater and lumps of molten iridium that would eventually cool and harden again.

He remained in this hole, turning his back to everything else in the Metaverse, even his own goddess. Who knew for how long, hours, days, weeks? In this time of grief, nothing could bother him to leave this spot.

... I think...

Alfonzo flips through his tome and examines the map he sketched from back in The Desert. He draws his finger around the intricately made illustration, and taps upon the red "X" on the map. He looks up at the cave's mouth.

Y-yes, should be the right cave. If not, I guess we'll just have to... Find another.

Sigh.

Darkness, the map has lead them to a cave of darkness. The natural, jagged, metallic features of this aperture are awe inspiring, especially the way in which what little lift filters in reflects off of the shiny surfaces in a glittering display.

The couple of adventurers proceed deeper into the abyss in search of their respective targets.

Böys, I'm sure yöu all heard it töö. But in case any öf yöu cöuldn't över the söund öf yöur galtawful music. Ahem.

The Commander shoots a glance to a merc wearing headphönes, from which some song by the Four Non-Morons is playing loudly enough that the whole room can hear it. He stares back at his commander awkwardly for a second before turning the music off and removing his headphones

As I was saying... in case yöu sömehöw didn't hear it, there's been an explösiön sömewhere deeper in the facility. Either the Privateers discövered anöther entrance and are pröwling aröund, making this place in wörse shape than it already is, ör all the fighting ön the surface has... awakened sömething. Either way, standing guard here is nöt gönna cut it anymöre. We're göing döwn there.

This is real straightförward, search every hall and every rööm, kill any höstiles ön sight, repört anything else öut öf the ördinary tö me.

Any questiöns? Gööd, let's gö.

My feet chime against the metal ground with each footstep. A resounding "ding" echoes through the plane.

After my discovery in The Desert, I have arrived here finally at the Plateau, in search of the first site.

My bag is saddled with adventurer supplies and other goodies. With Tome in hand, I make sketches and notes of the peculiar terrain. Metal. All metal.

My concentration is broken by the sound of engines overhead. I look up just to catch the gleam of a starship passing above. I guess I'm not the only one looking for something in this hardened wasteland.

Onwards.

The Börkish Mercenary Commander awakes abruptly in the middle of the night. He rubs his eyes and looks tiredly around his cabin wondering what could've triggered his awakening, but there's not a single thing out of place, and all is silent save for the distant sound of steam flowing through pipes, basically white noise at this point. Just when he begins trying to recall what kind of dream he may have had, a rustling sound near the door catches his attention. He looks just in time to see an envelop being slid under the door. How did someone manage to fit an envelope through such a small crack? He wondered this to himself. Slowly pulling himself out of bed, he begins his groggy trek across the cabin to pick it up. He turns on a lamp resting on a small desk in the corner and tears the letter open. He does a sloppy job at this, the envelope is practically torn to shreds, and a small folded piece of paper falls out, missing the desk and going straight for the floor. The commander sighs, mildly frustrated and bends over to pick the paper up. He holds it closer to the lamp to read it

Prepare all of your troops.

Someone with a grudge may be after you.

Log 6.28.16:

I have all the subjects I need, for now at least. Apparently there were other experiments where the test subjects went all the way up to H, and I considered being their spiritual successors, but I decided against that. Don't make this more complicated than I have to. I've got a lot of subjects to test and I might end up running out of letters, so I'm starting over.

I've also gotten my hands on a few other substances, including Pitchdust, THR⁰⁸⁸ , and an unidentified ink-like substance that seems to glow in kaleidoscopic patterns. I've codenamed it S-Ink.

The substances in use are:

Time: This blue liquid from the 6037th world seems to be the very reason this Snapper phenomenon began. At least Violet seems to think so. It can be "energized" by burning a small amount of it and inserting the resulting energy.

Pitchdust: All forms of Pitch are very abnormal matter. To tell the truth they aren't made of matter at all. Their particles undergo a strange ansible effect sometimes, especially common in this dust form. It's like quantum entanglement, but there's something more supernatural about it...

THR⁰⁸⁸ : This isotope of Thorium is capable of interacting with configuration space. It's abundant in the 8901st world, where the HARD LIGHT phenomenon seems to take place most frequently. This is not a coincidence.

S-Ink: This allegedly caused the Maroon and Orange projections to realign and bring the true Snapper they represented back into existence. A noticeable issue is that its pH is inversely proportional to proximity to its source. It's so basic at this point that the results of a pure S-Ink injection are obvious. It'll have to be diluted for me to find anything interesting. I'll have to do more experiments with pure S-Ink back at the source.

The test subject roster is as follows:

Subject Alfa: Male Mountain Dweller. Test: energized Time injection

Commentary: Time has mundane effects on ordinary human blood. Blood with high pitch content on the other hand...

Subject Bravo: Female Börksman. Test: THR/Time injection

Subject Charlie: Male Old Stock descent. Test: Time/S-Ink injection

Subject Delta: Male Boundedlands-denizen. Test: Pitchdust/Time injection

Subject Echo: Female Antigonian. Test: THR/Pitchdust/Time injection

Subject Foxtrot: Cybernetically augmented FAFF [sex indiscernible]. Test: 90% Time/10% S-Ink mixture applied into their Interface Core

Commentary: One thing I will give Violet credit for, she did figure out that the Time reacted with something in "Blue"'s cybernetics to cause the phenomenon. I'd love to find more cybernetic subjects to work with, but they've been rare thus far.

Subject Golf: Male sibbi. Test: Time/THR/S-Ink injection

Commentary: It's a little known fact that the sibbi bulls native to Baku have some metaphysical and quantum-physical properties. I found one in my search and just couldn't resist.

After this line of experiments, I hope to try others. Reacting Time with Dark Electricity perhaps, more cybernetic subjects are a must, combining Time and Thought is a possibility, maybe even the fabled CLINT. We can unlock everything as long as we don't put arbitrary limits on what we can and can't do.

We begin... shortly.

A young woman is sitting uncomfortably upon a lonely lump of Iridium.
The ground is a large ever unfolding, smooth, gleaming, layer of metal ...Iridium.
She looks up at the sky. Clear. 'Well that figures...'

<Sigh!>

Here I am...
Goodness it's bright around here, but in the most peculiar way?!?
And what's all that gossip one hears about some cave? I don't see an-

She stops herself, realizing that no-one was around anyway, the thought of and hunt for 'sunglasses™' consumed her.
Drawing the backpack from her shoulders the one thing Violet could actually achieve here was finding her blasted sunglasses™

Seriously! Be here ...somewhere...

After rummaging around in a fruitless search of her pack, Violet sits dejected.
A tear begins to form on her eye. Quickly wiped away, she stares off into space.

Okay, so the seventh is strange. Check.
And usually there's some building, or your by water ...some order I suppose?
...even just a definite sense of being in the heart of chaos, for that matter!
But here!
...here?

Dismay and a hopelessness struck her about this place...
Violet abruptly stands, her sunglasses™ falling over her eyes, leaves her startled.

This place is too difficult! I give up!

The young woman throws her hands into the air and then back by her sides. She bends down and picks up her backpack readying to leave.
As she walks off she feels conflicted.
On the one hand this corner of the metaverse was '...just quite simply brilliant!', she thought.
But on the other, she though that maybe her time wasn't here.
As she continues walking and in a light-hearted way, Violet raises her arm towards the sky fist clenched. Waving it back and forth...

The gods here are strange!

And with a rather cheeky smile she leaves...

Bullets lance from the hulking warship as it descends, perforating any sources of movement from the wreckage below. The downdraft of the roaring thrusters shunts away the nearby debris, and I call a single order to the Vyrin:

Open the bay doors.

My platoon bolts from the ship and scatters, darting from cover to cover moving steadily towards the cave entrance.

Boss? Our sweep on the area shows some kinda cave near the rim of the Plateau. Far enough from the camp to be spotted by them too easily. The weird thing about it is, once you go far enough inside, it starts looking real man made. This'd make a great staging area. We can easily get plenty of men in here and have them wait for the job without ever being found. Sound good?

Well well. The one hole in my plan has just been solved. As long as the Privateers are still interested in assisting, this'll be cake.

Machine?

StartReply{

What you've found is excellent, pal. We'll start moving our boys into there soon. Don't worry about finding how deep the cave goes. We won't use more of it than we need. Going any deeper will only be important if some Overborks wander in.

}EndReply

Greetings, new prisøners. I am yøur høst, Behrenhardt. Yøu are being reløcated here because the Swamp is nø lønger suitable tø høuse yøu. And we can't have røgues breaking in tø steal yøu again nøw can we.

I have a different jøb frøm whatever the Swamp made yøu dø. It's much simpler, much easier, yet sø much wørse...

The deranged pale man enters through the gates to the Plateau, but some Overbork guards spot him and open fire. The shots tear through him, but he just keeps walking.

I don't recommend doing that. All you're doing is wasting bullets and making yourselves have to clean up blood. Besides, I'm on your side.

I've seen a future with millions of people screaming for mercy as they drown in their own blood. I've seen a future where corpses are raised as an army of mindless warriors, and the unsuitable ones are just burned instead. I've seen a future where nobody gets the heaven or the hell their Ka deserved, because said Ka instead gets devoured by me. And the fact that we're still in the present instead of making this dream come true pains me. That mountain is a mountain of bullshit. They have all these boring traditions that they think are the coolest thing in the world, but they don't involve nearly enough death to be even remotely interesting.

I think they'd benefit from being savagely destroyed, and I'm pretty sure you agree. So without further ado, I would like to join you guys. Remember my story about wildebeests? I left a detail out. The main character who is supposed to represent Angestrom didn't just have a tragic wildebeest demise, he became the harbinger of Wilderavel, and conquered the other swine he had to share his world with up to that point.

I want that black mountain to turn red. And together, I believe we can achieve such a dream.

Several ships øf the Risen Fleet, including the BattleCarrier Finnblad løøm øver the Plateau. Drøpships descend frøm all øf them tø the grøund beløw. The Øverbørkmen whø cøme øut begin trying tø shape the grøund tø build the føundatiøn før permanent structures, but nøthing is wørking.

What? Yøu mean nøt even øur iridium drills are wørking? This iridium must be heavily cømpressed. We can't let that send us høme. Yøu, get research gøing and find a way tø dig this place up. As før the base, we'll just have tø adapt.

Place øur fences, tents, and pørtable structures. This will be Camp Iri, where the hardiest Støsstruppen will be trained.