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“Oh, look at that. I’m dead. Wonder which layer of hell i’m going to. Wonder how the rest are doing.”

His drowsy state was gradually replaced by a dizzy feeling, like he just woke up from a dream. He slowly stood up and lifted his head off the ground, not like he could see anything. His vision and consciousness slowly sharpened as he lifted his back off the bottom of the canoe. Instantly taking a huge step over to the edge, he peered over the edge and realized that he was travelling in some kind of tunnel. A tunnel swirling with every kind of matter or energy the multiverse could offer, swirling around a three by three meter tube. With a mundane flax canoe heading through it. Bizarre? Nothing’s bizarre in the multiverse.

“What hell is this?” he thought as he slowly put his fingertip over the edge. A little bit of the skin vanished, though it left no pain. He decided to leave everything as it was, and just sit down and do nothing.
“A hell of eternal boredom. The gods thought of everything.”

In nihilistic apathy, he thought of wether to throw himself off the edge or just sit and starve to death.

Tengrys stared bug-eyed at the very spot Urgonoff had vanished, making some kind of strangled, prolonged shriek. Greildric was more intrigued, with his knowledge of arcana making him doubt if he was dead. He made a strange gesture over that very spot, and his hand glowed with some kind of ghastly pale green flame. He obsessively scrutinized the movements of the flame as it whirled around in strange patterns.

“Do not worry, Tengrys, for he is alive, only teleported.” Greildric announced, still looking at the otherworldly swab of energy.
“Really, dude?”
Greildric’s relief only turned to shock once again as he observed its final pattern.
“If he manages to survive- I thought it was mythical! Oh no! T’is the island between realities, the sundered land where horrors lie, an evil place where all hope dies, a place where the stranded disappear, a place where death is always near, a place which even wards off the keen, for he is stranded on the island - MALORKEIN!”
His shock turned to mindless babbling.

After carrying Greildric over his shoulder, Tengrys fought to keep what was left of his hope. First one of his allies disappeared, then the other went mad. He recalled how many cans of rations they had, and thought they could only last a week. At least the crystal clear sea was generally nice, warm and shallow even during the night, and on the stolen boat he saw a lot of fish he thought’d be appetizing. And coastal crabs were plentiful, so much that he’d became cautious of stones here. Seafood was exotic to him, since for most of his life he didn’t eat anything that wasn’t preserved for a month or more in a can. He’d have a massive chance of survival here. His will to survive was fully replenished when he realized he had a radio transmitter in his backpack, with no power. He could use his own metabolism to charge devices, so all he needed for freedom was to kill several crabs. He instantly whipped out his plasma cannon, lowered the intensity to the minimum and increased the accuracy to the maximum, and finally turned on the torch, intending to use it like an anglerfish’s lure before marching over to the cimmerian beach with a determined smile harbouring a hint of an inflated ego.

Half an hour of blaster-fishing later, he sat on a chair-sized fulgurite that was a byproduct of the ruthless firing as he blew away the scalding cloud of superheated seawater steam and scraped the salt of his shoes. He had already cooked 8 decent-sized fish, though he would have got about 20 more if he didn’t reduce the rest to ashes. Each time he fired, the gentle circle of light in the water would transform into a radiant flash which lit up the entire coast for a split second. The gentle lapping of the waves would be killed by the sound of a fully grown man jeering at the fish, followed by an aftershock of immature laughter seconds before he slowly choked on a cloud of hot gas every minute.

Three hours later, Tengrys finally managed to build a large four-room tent, and loaded everyone’s supplies into it. He dragged the babbling wizard into the room opposite to his, and fed him some rations and water, hopefully making some attempts to restore his mental state by delivering careful electric shocks to his cranium. Recalling his accomplished psychological knowledge mostly concerning the cerebellum, he tried to cure him for the rest of the night. Things actually started getting better, though. “Adububbabalb” became “ahbaha doom will be brought to us”, and the occasional “gimme water...” came out from him. Within two hours he could even eat from a can himself.

The cringing cyborg wrote a mental note to tell Greildric not to tell anyone before erasing the embarrassing events from his memory files.

In a rain-damp tavern lit dimly by crude lamps resided only a sparse number of people eating simple food and drinking the cheapest ale available. A tavern was a place for eating, socialising, and merrymaking, but the thick rain killed that mood as some of it slowly dripped from the high thatched ceiling, as if it was saying “Get back to reality, you drunkards.” over and over again as each drip of water hit the floorboards.

Joane wearily sat on a pile of her muddy plate armour, wearing a soaked green tunic and a red cap. Even the supposedly naive Dei’vukkh had his childlike obnoxity robbed from him. Joane felt some odd kind of satisfaction, some kind of peace within herself as she feasted on his boredom. She didn’t really know that his obnoxious side was one of many facades that he used solely for confusing people. On the way here, she purchased a copy of a novel based on a journal which cost a few merchant’s moons. Since no-one here felt like talking, she burrowed through her untidy bag until she felt a leathery, firm surface and quickly reeled it up and took a quick look at the cover.

In aurulent print, the cover read “Tales of Miriam Susan - Volume 1”.

As she browsed the epilogue, Joane learned that the events depicted in the story happened in some far corner of the world, at the borders of Orythoth only 4 years ago. The novel was about Miriam’s first adventure, her first delve into the temple of Quael Zahar with a team of 7 people, in order to defeat the threat of the reficula legions of the north. It said that she was still alive, as she was exalted into godhood, and dwelt in someplace outside reality, pursuing some kind of unknown threat. The book was not well known, and only a few copies were printed. Joane actually wondered if they were true.

Some kind of metallic aura filled a warm, gray room where two stickmen conversed. One was short looked like what you’d see in an animation, webcomic, or cartoon and the other looked like he belonged in a weird fantasy novel. The short stickman was completely orange, and wore a scientist’s white coat. Urgonoff, startled by the sudden teleportation, spoke his first words in another world. The orange man sweated with anticipation, recording whatever he heard or saw for this would be history as the first contact with an extra universal sapient being. Project Beyond would be fulfilled, and ascend the scientific understanding of the Galactic Republic of Nova beyond the stars. He would be the one responsible for it.

“You speak Common?”
The scientist spoke in an authorative clear voice into a microphone. “Incredible. The entity can speak Novan.” He muttered as he typed some letters into a blue holoscreen.
“Who are you?”
Reciting his line as carefully as possible, he answered “It seems we are not alone.” Euphoria filled the excited scientist’s brain, as he envisioned his own historic words etched in stone for millennia. His name would be written into every history book in every academy ever. He would be vilified throughout the entire galaxy, and his children, grandchildren and ancestors would brag about their predecessor for eternity!
This would be the greatest discovery since the first discovery of hyperspace 400 years ago.
“Okay, It seems we are not alone, Where am I?”
“You’re in Nova. It’s another world. Welcome.”
Urgonoff, struck by awe, muttered “Good Raililun...”

Following a bright flash of white light, he was teleported into the lab, filled with the galaxy’s top versologists clad in futuristic white garb with alien symbols written on them. The scientific facility was a massive white dome, filled with strange, sleek devices and mechanisms.

“What’s going on?”

All 50 of the humanoid sapient beings gawked.

Urgonoff grimaced at the thought of leaving everything he knew and loved behind. His tribe - now fanatical worshippers of the savage demon lord Baphomet, which turned against him and he managed to escape. It was only weeks ago when he finally decided they were far beyond reconciliation. Why did this happen? He deeply regretted his irresponsibility and his recklessness, for they had plunged many lives he had known into endless war and strife. The Frostfall Genocides - The Trimonarchic Wars, could have been prevented. Yet he felt some kind of satisfaction abandoning this forsaken world and coming to this nonsensical plane of potential freedom. He’d forget about the evils indirectly committed by him, or even forget the meaning of morality and embrace a new life of hedonism or something like that since this world seemed decently civili-

Suddenly, the vast white wall exploded as an expanding storm of smoke and splinters showered the fortified facility to instantly reveal a blazing downpour of flashing red spears of light illuminating the skies. A blaring alarm sounded as the prestigious researchers desperately flooded out of the doors screaming in mortal terror. Ozone flooded the room.

“Protect the specimen! Protect the specimen!” raved one of the scientists, an old one, perhaps as he took his time to shout at his colleagues.

Urgonoff was already aimlessly running around the disintegrating corridors, jumping terrifying leaps down every stairway which went down. Sections of the concrete walls exploded into smouldering hot rock as the intense winds streaking with the deadly beams threatened to drag him into the skies. He ran for his life, wondering if it had any meaning in this new world.

An hour of sprinting later, his lungs were filled with putrid fumes and his knees were starting to show the slightest symptoms of cramps as he found the lowest layer of the massive floating building.
He was stunned to see that a split second before he touched the ground, a mysterious portal with a deep, echoing noise emanating out of it materialized directly underneath his feet. Explained by only the most bizarre pseudosciences, he was temporarily blinded, and he felt a far milder version of the psychic shock he had felt when he first found that magic canoe.

The room was huge and white, 3 times as tall as it was wide. The air felt surprisingly dry and industrial, and furniture and containers seemed to be randomly stacked and piled around the place.

“So this is a byproduct of the galaxy’s greatest disaster, huh?” spoke a gruff, low voice.
“Come on, dude.” A more casual voice responded. “This is the multiverse we’re talking about. Nothing’s as it seems.”
“Shred’s got a point. The last time we tried messing around with this kinda stuff, we unleashed a huge cthulhu thingy.” A slightly more nasal voice stated.
What kind of name was Shred? Sounded like an autistic kid’s original character.
“I apologise for my folly.” said a more formal, metallic voice.
“What on Orythoth is going on?” Urgonoff murmured as his vision cleared out to see a shorter, skinnier stickman with spiky hair going left-to-right which seemed to look the same no matter what angle his head was viewed.
“Welcome to Nova.”
“Heard that before. What’s your name?”
“Shred. The daywalker’s Ripper, Greenie’s Morphau, and Titanium Brain’s Tekz. Yours?”
“Urgonoff. ”

Both of them tried not to snigger at each other. Urgonoff had heard names a little like these when he fought alongside costumed vigilantes with Tengrys, who seemed a little too anticipated meeting them. The cyborg apparently owned a life-sized pillow with one of his favorite female superheroes drawn on it. Being the man-child that was Tengrys, he made the mistake of revealing his comically depraved body pillow to her when he met her in person. How he foamed blue bubbles at the mouth and jittered and steamed… It was simply priceless!

“Looks like a human with a stickman head.” Commented a grumpy voice coming from someone who looked exactly the same as Shred, but with red hair.
“Not really. A lot of aliens have humanlike builds.” The nasalish voice seemed to come from someone who also looked like Shred, but with green eyes.

“Are they mutated triplets?” Urgonoff thought. He felt strange noticing how Shred slightly reesembled him. His attitude was much like Tengrys, except much more childlike, as if Tengrys wasn’t childlike enough.

He suddenly remembered what the oracle said, and shuddered. Perhaps she was legitimate.

Finally, he turned around to meet a silvery android with these.... grooves down his face with black stuff underneath. His round eyes glowed apathetically as the robot analyzed every detail of the summoned extradimensional being. His telepathic module told him exactly what the stranger was thinking, and he made a very quick response pointing at Ripper then Morphau.

“Brother. Clone. And yes, they’re both mutated.”
“Mutated.” He also heard that word while he was talking to the superheroes a few months ago.
“Basically, we have this weird compass-looking thing which does weird magic things and apparently some kind of incomprehensible monster got summoned by it. Titanium Brains says it’s an interdimensional conduit in tangy bell form… Is that how you say it dude? ”
“Slightly mispronounced.”
“Okay. And he tells us not to wreck it because it’ll send more in. And you look a bit more benevolent than an eldritch abomination driving people insane. ”
Urgonoff took this as some kind of half-compliment, as he knew that he looked intimidating but not monstrous.
“Thanks?”
“We apparently got visited by some kind of entity that said he was slowly passing through time and space. And he told us something nasty was coming to our world - and we’re sure it’s not you. It says we gotta prepare for it or something like that, and - and... ”
“Shut your aspergers mouth, you dipwad! This is a multiversal catastrophe we’re talking about, and we gotta send his loinclothed ass back to where he came from!” Ripper roared at Shred, who laughed it off in response. Making a ginger joke like he did many times before would probably get him incinerated and mauled by his fiery breath and superstickman strength. Despite him being his brother, he threw morality right out the window when his emotions went out of control.

Morphau tried to keep the debate civilized as he was the only one who made the most effort to refrain from conflict. Changing the topic would have the most effect. “Calm down guys. Tekz, you got the new readings yet?”

The android buried his face in some kind of tall machine with a billion different whirring technological gimmicks which looked like it belonged in a saturday morning cartoon. A growing cacophony of energy and mechanical noises sputtered and pulsed from the structure, as he furiously adjusted the convoluted modules. The cacophony eventually melted into something reminiscent of singing, much like dubstep but a little bit less chaotic. Shred gazed proudly at the machine, for he was the one who successfully recovered it from the crashed alien spaceship in a past venture. Of course, with little technical knowledge he would of course leave an intellectual robot to do his job. He put his own life in danger the most in order to save the lives or even the conveniences of his fellow stickmen, so it was only fair that he left the menial tasks like research and engineering to his fellow teammates. He proceeded to lazily slouch back on a burned couch he had found in a wrecked hotel, but still watched in anticipation.

Curiously, Urgonoff asked “What’s that machine for?”
Shred was less than enthusiastic to answer. “Dimension tapping matter transporting thingamajigs. We keep getting lame stuff from it. Like tables and warm chairs.”
“What?”

A deafening metallic noise wracked the entire room, as furniture and supplies flew around the huge room like confused migratory birds.

“Watch out! Watch out! Watch out!”
“It’s a damn gravity surge!”

Falling piles of wood weren’t enough to threaten one who confronted horn, fang and blade every dusk. While the others engaged combat-worthy superpowers to neutralize the falling projectiles, not limited to vast conflagarations from Ripper’s mouth, a shapeshifted sword-arm from Morphau, beams of deadly light from Tekz and a ruthless cacophony of fireballs, radiation, plasma and antimatter from the eyes, mouth, and hands of Shred. As this ostentatious lightshow of radiant destruction reached a glorious apex, he stood still and tightly closed his eyes as they struck his head, shattering into a rain of splinters and woodchips everywhere.

Obscured by an massive, choking cloud of sawdust and smoke, an ominous entity slowly made its way into the sight of Shred’s vigilant black eyes and his ensemble.

Ripper, prior to the encounter constantly warned them about doing something like this. But like the irresponsible teenagers they were, they just wouldn’t listen. The only statement he could make was a basic insult dipped in subtle fear.

“Idiots.”
“Oh crap.”
“What the heck is that?”
“Told you this would happen.”

Horror and disgust triumphed over their hearts, as they witnessed the rousing of a sheer mockery of reality itself - had they not be conditioned to engaging atrocious monsters in bloodthirsty superpowered combat on a near-daily basis, they would have descended into madness. This thing - which should not even be called a thing, for it would forever blacken the name of every entity granted the decadent privilege of existing - was a screeching abomination, evil roars and diabolical bawling laughter mixed with noises that only the insane hear, which cannot be described by mere human words. The mere appearance of the monster could never be described in any language - primitive or advanced, mortal or divine. Any sane living being’s reaction would be to flee, with the exception of our heroes. It approached with the attempt to mutilate the bodies, minds and souls of every being existing.

It gazed with what seemed to be its eyes, filled with the commitments of evil done by every living being to exist. They were struck with fear, but this did not stop them from taking initiative.

“Who’re you lookin’ at, huh, big guy? You want some? Eh?” Shred mocked, as a blaring trumpet of overconfident pride in his heart was played. “We can’t let this atrocity get seen by anyone else! My brain already feels like it’s gonna blow! Kill it, and we’ll sell its corpse to the scientists for a bazillion credits!”

Morphau sprinted out of the room so fast he nearly lost balance.

This insult to reality itself loomed over the ensemble. The most hot tempered one of the group was the first to attack. Ripper furiously gritted his teeth for a split second, only to regurgitate untold quantities of foul molten brimstone at it, with a trail of putrid smoke following behind it.

“Swallow my burning hot gooey fluids!”

Shred took a few strategically placed steps backwards before releasing another symphony of colourful energy blasts right at the monster, and finally Tekz, highly prone to overanalyze everything, almost to a bureaucratic or comical extent, made several tactical observations of the perfect spot to stand at, regarding temperature, trajectories and time, before searching for any weak spots, then processing a file titled antimatter_blaster_activation.roc, before finally transforming his arm into a massive metallic cannon with a mysterious glowing black orb protruding out of it. You can guess what happened next.

The barbarian didn't need a light show. Martial pragmatism and a generous dollop of brute strength were enough to incapacitate a decently sized ogre, and since he had mutilated giants, he thought of this as a fair challenge to defeat, though it made him so disgusted he felt like vomiting out of his eyes. Brandishing his rusty greataxe, he instantly engaged in a flurry of murderous strikes, in hope for his armament to be stained with more exotic blood. He still was afraid, though, as this was worse than any aberration he had ever encountered.

Corrosive sludge seeped from beneath it, so Urgonoff abstained from lunging too far forward as the rest stood behind. Despite the brutal strength, determination and joules used in Shred and Ripper’s attacks coupled with Tekz’s obsessive attention to detail and strategic mastery, this unspeakable horror was nigh impervious to their most vicious attacks.

The horror formed several orifices in its “body”, which glew a variety of eldritch luminations where Ripper and Shred repeatedly fired at the holes from afar. The results were hopeless. It erupted a vast quantity of strange matter which seemed to keep changing properties - sludge became crystal which became gas which became some kind of swirling plasma. The noise made by it was so sickening the blood-weary eyes of Ripper and Urgonoff cringed harder than when you watch Jacob Sartorius’s videos. Shred, desperate to escape this destructive invocation, created a spherical, semitransparent shield of blue energy to surround all 4 of them, and then made the shield fire laser beams out in every direction.

Their bodies immediately rejected this strange new substance, so they vomited it out as it all collected in the bottom of the energy shield.

“Forget about sellin’ ya corpse to the scientists.” he retched.

Tekz created a tiny black hole between his two metallic hands and used it to try and absorb the deadly matter around them, which barely succeeded.

Shred’s ensemble and their otherworldly visitor were weakened from the agony from this abomination’s onslaught. It mercilessly attacked them in unspeakably painful and unpredictable ways, like burning some of their organs and launching waves of liquid nitrogen. Their vast arrays of superpowers were near powerless as they defiantly tried to fight back, as their endurance, vitality and willpower were the only things that could save them. Even Tekz’s shockingly brutal logic and mechanical ruthlessness, Ripper’s undying rage, Shred’s recklessness and stupidity were at the brink of giving up as they all reached their physical and mental limits fighting this futile battle.

Is this the end for our ostentatious vigilantes?

Description
“Oh, look at that. I’m dead. Wonder which layer of hell i’m going to. Wonder how the rest are doing.”

His drowsy state was gradually replaced by a dizzy feeling, like he just woke up from a dream. He slowly stood up and lifted his head off the ground, not like he could see anything. His vision and consciousness slowly sharpened as he lifted his back off the bottom of the canoe. Instantly taking a huge step over to the edge, he peered over the edge and realized that he was travelling in some kind of tunnel. A tunnel swirling with every kind of matter or energy the multiverse could offer, swirling around a three by three meter tube. With a mundane flax canoe heading through it. Bizarre? Nothing’s bizarre in the multiverse.

“What hell is this?” he thought as he slowly put his fingertip over the edge. A little bit of the skin vanished, though it left no pain. He decided to leave everything as it was, and just sit down and do nothing.
“A hell of eternal boredom. The gods thought of everything.”

In nihilistic apathy, he thought of wether to throw himself off the edge or just sit and starve to death.

Tengrys stared bug-eyed at the very spot Urgonoff had vanished, making some kind of strangled, prolonged shriek. Greildric was more intrigued, with his knowledge of arcana making him doubt if he was dead. He made a strange gesture over that very spot, and his hand glowed with some kind of ghastly pale green flame. He obsessively scrutinized the movements of the flame as it whirled around in strange patterns.

“Do not worry, Tengrys, for he is alive, only teleported.” Greildric announced, still looking at the otherworldly swab of energy.
“Really, dude?”
Greildric’s relief only turned to shock once again as he observed its final pattern.
“If he manages to survive- I thought it was mythical! Oh no! T’is the island between realities, the sundered land where horrors lie, an evil place where all hope dies, a place where the stranded disappear, a place where death is always near, a place which even wards off the keen, for he is stranded on the island - MALORKEIN!”
His shock turned to mindless babbling.

After carrying Greildric over his shoulder, Tengrys fought to keep what was left of his hope. First one of his allies disappeared, then the other went mad. He recalled how many cans of rations they had, and thought they could only last a week. At least the crystal clear sea was generally nice, warm and shallow even during the night, and on the stolen boat he saw a lot of fish he thought’d be appetizing. And coastal crabs were plentiful, so much that he’d became cautious of stones here. Seafood was exotic to him, since for most of his life he didn’t eat anything that wasn’t preserved for a month or more in a can. He’d have a massive chance of survival here. His will to survive was fully replenished when he realized he had a radio transmitter in his backpack, with no power. He could use his own metabolism to charge devices, so all he needed for freedom was to kill several crabs. He instantly whipped out his plasma cannon, lowered the intensity to the minimum and increased the accuracy to the maximum, and finally turned on the torch, intending to use it like an anglerfish’s lure before marching over to the cimmerian beach with a determined smile harbouring a hint of an inflated ego.

Half an hour of blaster-fishing later, he sat on a chair-sized fulgurite that was a byproduct of the ruthless firing as he blew away the scalding cloud of superheated seawater steam and scraped the salt of his shoes. He had already cooked 8 decent-sized fish, though he would have got about 20 more if he didn’t reduce the rest to ashes. Each time he fired, the gentle circle of light in the water would transform into a radiant flash which lit up the entire coast for a split second. The gentle lapping of the waves would be killed by the sound of a fully grown man jeering at the fish, followed by an aftershock of immature laughter seconds before he slowly choked on a cloud of hot gas every minute.

Three hours later, Tengrys finally managed to build a large four-room tent, and loaded everyone’s supplies into it. He dragged the babbling wizard into the room opposite to his, and fed him some rations and water, hopefully making some attempts to restore his mental state by delivering careful electric shocks to his cranium. Recalling his accomplished psychological knowledge mostly concerning the cerebellum, he tried to cure him for the rest of the night. Things actually started getting better, though. “Adububbabalb” became “ahbaha doom will be brought to us”, and the occasional “gimme water...” came out from him. Within two hours he could even eat from a can himself.

The cringing cyborg wrote a mental note to tell Greildric not to tell anyone before erasing the embarrassing events from his memory files.

In a rain-damp tavern lit dimly by crude lamps resided only a sparse number of people eating simple food and drinking the cheapest ale available. A tavern was a place for eating, socialising, and merrymaking, but the thick rain killed that mood as some of it slowly dripped from the high thatched ceiling, as if it was saying “Get back to reality, you drunkards.” over and over again as each drip of water hit the floorboards.

Joane wearily sat on a pile of her muddy plate armour, wearing a soaked green tunic and a red cap. Even the supposedly naive Dei’vukkh had his childlike obnoxity robbed from him. Joane felt some odd kind of satisfaction, some kind of peace within herself as she feasted on his boredom. She didn’t really know that his obnoxious side was one of many facades that he used solely for confusing people. On the way here, she purchased a copy of a novel based on a journal which cost a few merchant’s moons. Since no-one here felt like talking, she burrowed through her untidy bag until she felt a leathery, firm surface and quickly reeled it up and took a quick look at the cover.

In aurulent print, the cover read “Tales of Miriam Susan - Volume 1”.

As she browsed the epilogue, Joane learned that the events depicted in the story happened in some far corner of the world, at the borders of Orythoth only 4 years ago. The novel was about Miriam’s first adventure, her first delve into the temple of Quael Zahar with a team of 7 people, in order to defeat the threat of the reficula legions of the north. It said that she was still alive, as she was exalted into godhood, and dwelt in someplace outside reality, pursuing some kind of unknown threat. The book was not well known, and only a few copies were printed. Joane actually wondered if they were true.

Some kind of metallic aura filled a warm, gray room where two stickmen conversed. One was short looked like what you’d see in an animation, webcomic, or cartoon and the other looked like he belonged in a weird fantasy novel. The short stickman was completely orange, and wore a scientist’s white coat. Urgonoff, startled by the sudden teleportation, spoke his first words in another world. The orange man sweated with anticipation, recording whatever he heard or saw for this would be history as the first contact with an extra universal sapient being. Project Beyond would be fulfilled, and ascend the scientific understanding of the Galactic Republic of Nova beyond the stars. He would be the one responsible for it.

“You speak Common?”
The scientist spoke in an authorative clear voice into a microphone. “Incredible. The entity can speak Novan.” He muttered as he typed some letters into a blue holoscreen.
“Who are you?”
Reciting his line as carefully as possible, he answered “It seems we are not alone.” Euphoria filled the excited scientist’s brain, as he envisioned his own historic words etched in stone for millennia. His name would be written into every history book in every academy ever. He would be vilified throughout the entire galaxy, and his children, grandchildren and ancestors would brag about their predecessor for eternity!
This would be the greatest discovery since the first discovery of hyperspace 400 years ago.
“Okay, It seems we are not alone, Where am I?”
“You’re in Nova. It’s another world. Welcome.”
Urgonoff, struck by awe, muttered “Good Raililun...”

Following a bright flash of white light, he was teleported into the lab, filled with the galaxy’s top versologists clad in futuristic white garb with alien symbols written on them. The scientific facility was a massive white dome, filled with strange, sleek devices and mechanisms.

“What’s going on?”

All 50 of the humanoid sapient beings gawked.

Urgonoff grimaced at the thought of leaving everything he knew and loved behind. His tribe - now fanatical worshippers of the savage demon lord Baphomet, which turned against him and he managed to escape. It was only weeks ago when he finally decided they were far beyond reconciliation. Why did this happen? He deeply regretted his irresponsibility and his recklessness, for they had plunged many lives he had known into endless war and strife. The Frostfall Genocides - The Trimonarchic Wars, could have been prevented. Yet he felt some kind of satisfaction abandoning this forsaken world and coming to this nonsensical plane of potential freedom. He’d forget about the evils indirectly committed by him, or even forget the meaning of morality and embrace a new life of hedonism or something like that since this world seemed decently civili-

Suddenly, the vast white wall exploded as an expanding storm of smoke and splinters showered the fortified facility to instantly reveal a blazing downpour of flashing red spears of light illuminating the skies. A blaring alarm sounded as the prestigious researchers desperately flooded out of the doors screaming in mortal terror. Ozone flooded the room.

“Protect the specimen! Protect the specimen!” raved one of the scientists, an old one, perhaps as he took his time to shout at his colleagues.

Urgonoff was already aimlessly running around the disintegrating corridors, jumping terrifying leaps down every stairway which went down. Sections of the concrete walls exploded into smouldering hot rock as the intense winds streaking with the deadly beams threatened to drag him into the skies. He ran for his life, wondering if it had any meaning in this new world.

An hour of sprinting later, his lungs were filled with putrid fumes and his knees were starting to show the slightest symptoms of cramps as he found the lowest layer of the massive floating building.
He was stunned to see that a split second before he touched the ground, a mysterious portal with a deep, echoing noise emanating out of it materialized directly underneath his feet. Explained by only the most bizarre pseudosciences, he was temporarily blinded, and he felt a far milder version of the psychic shock he had felt when he first found that magic canoe.

The room was huge and white, 3 times as tall as it was wide. The air felt surprisingly dry and industrial, and furniture and containers seemed to be randomly stacked and piled around the place.

“So this is a byproduct of the galaxy’s greatest disaster, huh?” spoke a gruff, low voice.
“Come on, dude.” A more casual voice responded. “This is the multiverse we’re talking about. Nothing’s as it seems.”
“Shred’s got a point. The last time we tried messing around with this kinda stuff, we unleashed a huge cthulhu thingy.” A slightly more nasal voice stated.
What kind of name was Shred? Sounded like an autistic kid’s original character.
“I apologise for my folly.” said a more formal, metallic voice.
“What on Orythoth is going on?” Urgonoff murmured as his vision cleared out to see a shorter, skinnier stickman with spiky hair going left-to-right which seemed to look the same no matter what angle his head was viewed.
“Welcome to Nova.”
“Heard that before. What’s your name?”
“Shred. The daywalker’s Ripper, Greenie’s Morphau, and Titanium Brain’s Tekz. Yours?”
“Urgonoff. ”

Both of them tried not to snigger at each other. Urgonoff had heard names a little like these when he fought alongside costumed vigilantes with Tengrys, who seemed a little too anticipated meeting them. The cyborg apparently owned a life-sized pillow with one of his favorite female superheroes drawn on it. Being the man-child that was Tengrys, he made the mistake of revealing his comically depraved body pillow to her when he met her in person. How he foamed blue bubbles at the mouth and jittered and steamed… It was simply priceless!

“Looks like a human with a stickman head.” Commented a grumpy voice coming from someone who looked exactly the same as Shred, but with red hair.
“Not really. A lot of aliens have humanlike builds.” The nasalish voice seemed to come from someone who also looked like Shred, but with green eyes.

“Are they mutated triplets?” Urgonoff thought. He felt strange noticing how Shred slightly reesembled him. His attitude was much like Tengrys, except much more childlike, as if Tengrys wasn’t childlike enough.

He suddenly remembered what the oracle said, and shuddered. Perhaps she was legitimate.

Finally, he turned around to meet a silvery android with these.... grooves down his face with black stuff underneath. His round eyes glowed apathetically as the robot analyzed every detail of the summoned extradimensional being. His telepathic module told him exactly what the stranger was thinking, and he made a very quick response pointing at Ripper then Morphau.

“Brother. Clone. And yes, they’re both mutated.”
“Mutated.” He also heard that word while he was talking to the superheroes a few months ago.
“Basically, we have this weird compass-looking thing which does weird magic things and apparently some kind of incomprehensible monster got summoned by it. Titanium Brains says it’s an interdimensional conduit in tangy bell form… Is that how you say it dude? ”
“Slightly mispronounced.”
“Okay. And he tells us not to wreck it because it’ll send more in. And you look a bit more benevolent than an eldritch abomination driving people insane. ”
Urgonoff took this as some kind of half-compliment, as he knew that he looked intimidating but not monstrous.
“Thanks?”
“We apparently got visited by some kind of entity that said he was slowly passing through time and space. And he told us something nasty was coming to our world - and we’re sure it’s not you. It says we gotta prepare for it or something like that, and - and... ”
“Shut your aspergers mouth, you dipwad! This is a multiversal catastrophe we’re talking about, and we gotta send his loinclothed ass back to where he came from!” Ripper roared at Shred, who laughed it off in response. Making a ginger joke like he did many times before would probably get him incinerated and mauled by his fiery breath and superstickman strength. Despite him being his brother, he threw morality right out the window when his emotions went out of control.

Morphau tried to keep the debate civilized as he was the only one who made the most effort to refrain from conflict. Changing the topic would have the most effect. “Calm down guys. Tekz, you got the new readings yet?”

The android buried his face in some kind of tall machine with a billion different whirring technological gimmicks which looked like it belonged in a saturday morning cartoon. A growing cacophony of energy and mechanical noises sputtered and pulsed from the structure, as he furiously adjusted the convoluted modules. The cacophony eventually melted into something reminiscent of singing, much like dubstep but a little bit less chaotic. Shred gazed proudly at the machine, for he was the one who successfully recovered it from the crashed alien spaceship in a past venture. Of course, with little technical knowledge he would of course leave an intellectual robot to do his job. He put his own life in danger the most in order to save the lives or even the conveniences of his fellow stickmen, so it was only fair that he left the menial tasks like research and engineering to his fellow teammates. He proceeded to lazily slouch back on a burned couch he had found in a wrecked hotel, but still watched in anticipation.

Curiously, Urgonoff asked “What’s that machine for?”
Shred was less than enthusiastic to answer. “Dimension tapping matter transporting thingamajigs. We keep getting lame stuff from it. Like tables and warm chairs.”
“What?”

A deafening metallic noise wracked the entire room, as furniture and supplies flew around the huge room like confused migratory birds.

“Watch out! Watch out! Watch out!”
“It’s a damn gravity surge!”

Falling piles of wood weren’t enough to threaten one who confronted horn, fang and blade every dusk. While the others engaged combat-worthy superpowers to neutralize the falling projectiles, not limited to vast conflagarations from Ripper’s mouth, a shapeshifted sword-arm from Morphau, beams of deadly light from Tekz and a ruthless cacophony of fireballs, radiation, plasma and antimatter from the eyes, mouth, and hands of Shred. As this ostentatious lightshow of radiant destruction reached a glorious apex, he stood still and tightly closed his eyes as they struck his head, shattering into a rain of splinters and woodchips everywhere.

Obscured by an massive, choking cloud of sawdust and smoke, an ominous entity slowly made its way into the sight of Shred’s vigilant black eyes and his ensemble.

Ripper, prior to the encounter constantly warned them about doing something like this. But like the irresponsible teenagers they were, they just wouldn’t listen. The only statement he could make was a basic insult dipped in subtle fear.

“Idiots.”
“Oh crap.”
“What the heck is that?”
“Told you this would happen.”

Horror and disgust triumphed over their hearts, as they witnessed the rousing of a sheer mockery of reality itself - had they not be conditioned to engaging atrocious monsters in bloodthirsty superpowered combat on a near-daily basis, they would have descended into madness. This thing - which should not even be called a thing, for it would forever blacken the name of every entity granted the decadent privilege of existing - was a screeching abomination, evil roars and diabolical bawling laughter mixed with noises that only the insane hear, which cannot be described by mere human words. The mere appearance of the monster could never be described in any language - primitive or advanced, mortal or divine. Any sane living being’s reaction would be to flee, with the exception of our heroes. It approached with the attempt to mutilate the bodies, minds and souls of every being existing.

It gazed with what seemed to be its eyes, filled with the commitments of evil done by every living being to exist. They were struck with fear, but this did not stop them from taking initiative.

“Who’re you lookin’ at, huh, big guy? You want some? Eh?” Shred mocked, as a blaring trumpet of overconfident pride in his heart was played. “We can’t let this atrocity get seen by anyone else! My brain already feels like it’s gonna blow! Kill it, and we’ll sell its corpse to the scientists for a bazillion credits!”

Morphau sprinted out of the room so fast he nearly lost balance.

This insult to reality itself loomed over the ensemble. The most hot tempered one of the group was the first to attack. Ripper furiously gritted his teeth for a split second, only to regurgitate untold quantities of foul molten brimstone at it, with a trail of putrid smoke following behind it.

“Swallow my burning hot gooey fluids!”

Shred took a few strategically placed steps backwards before releasing another symphony of colourful energy blasts right at the monster, and finally Tekz, highly prone to overanalyze everything, almost to a bureaucratic or comical extent, made several tactical observations of the perfect spot to stand at, regarding temperature, trajectories and time, before searching for any weak spots, then processing a file titled antimatter_blaster_activation.roc, before finally transforming his arm into a massive metallic cannon with a mysterious glowing black orb protruding out of it. You can guess what happened next.

The barbarian didn't need a light show. Martial pragmatism and a generous dollop of brute strength were enough to incapacitate a decently sized ogre, and since he had mutilated giants, he thought of this as a fair challenge to defeat, though it made him so disgusted he felt like vomiting out of his eyes. Brandishing his rusty greataxe, he instantly engaged in a flurry of murderous strikes, in hope for his armament to be stained with more exotic blood. He still was afraid, though, as this was worse than any aberration he had ever encountered.

Corrosive sludge seeped from beneath it, so Urgonoff abstained from lunging too far forward as the rest stood behind. Despite the brutal strength, determination and joules used in Shred and Ripper’s attacks coupled with Tekz’s obsessive attention to detail and strategic mastery, this unspeakable horror was nigh impervious to their most vicious attacks.

The horror formed several orifices in its “body”, which glew a variety of eldritch luminations where Ripper and Shred repeatedly fired at the holes from afar. The results were hopeless. It erupted a vast quantity of strange matter which seemed to keep changing properties - sludge became crystal which became gas which became some kind of swirling plasma. The noise made by it was so sickening the blood-weary eyes of Ripper and Urgonoff cringed harder than when you watch Jacob Sartorius’s videos. Shred, desperate to escape this destructive invocation, created a spherical, semitransparent shield of blue energy to surround all 4 of them, and then made the shield fire laser beams out in every direction.

Their bodies immediately rejected this strange new substance, so they vomited it out as it all collected in the bottom of the energy shield.

“Forget about sellin’ ya corpse to the scientists.” he retched.

Tekz created a tiny black hole between his two metallic hands and used it to try and absorb the deadly matter around them, which barely succeeded.

Shred’s ensemble and their otherworldly visitor were weakened from the agony from this abomination’s onslaught. It mercilessly attacked them in unspeakably painful and unpredictable ways, like burning some of their organs and launching waves of liquid nitrogen. Their vast arrays of superpowers were near powerless as they defiantly tried to fight back, as their endurance, vitality and willpower were the only things that could save them. Even Tekz’s shockingly brutal logic and mechanical ruthlessness, Ripper’s undying rage, Shred’s recklessness and stupidity were at the brink of giving up as they all reached their physical and mental limits fighting this futile battle.

Is this the end for our ostentatious vigilantes?