John Skelecoot's Story

No one would have believed that, since the first mortal of fantastic origin was brought existence by the young Creators, that sapient affairs were being watched from the timeless gulfs of space. Perhaps from those damn aliens from the red planet and neighbouring galaxies, yes, but the idea of an intelligence infinitely greater and nastier than man, woman or in between studying them with the utmost hatred was lost on the vast majority of all sentient life in the Imagiverse. Of course, the Hand Druids knew of said intelligence, as well as the blissful ignorance of the rest of the sentients, and kept it a closely-guarded secret, that is, until they were greeted by their first and, as of currently, only visitor, who was of less skin than any living thing should be...
And yet, across the infinite gulfs of deep space, a near-omnipotent being, chained to the rim of the universe like the beast it was, regarded all beings of Creation with immeasurable hatred. To attempt to fully understand the extent of it's rage, think of someone you really, really hated, so much so that you would locate them on every piece of social media, every article, every scrap of conversation, and vent your utmost abhorrence in stunning length, send them messages filled with venom and vitriol, and never avert your attention from them. Can't think of anyone? Well, in which case, merely consider this scenario, then multiply it a thousand-fold. Then, you might have an inkling on how much the malignant being despises all that is formed of Fantasy, of the Maker's dreaming.
And slowly, and surely, the Maelstrom drew its plans against the Imagiverse, or, specifically, against the minuscule capsule, with a small crew of insignificant mortals, that was reaching it's realm of influence...
Stars. But not stars. A whirling sea of colours, some from the rainbow, but others that corresponded to no pigments of the mortal eye. A whirling sea of Creation, forming and unforming into ghastly creatures, faces howling in unnatural frequencies. There were no stars in this realm. Nothing but Creation, the burning waves of a mad god's restless dreaming.
Of course, the passengers could not properly see into the sea, as it burned to even glance outside. What they could see, however, was that the porthole was now a screaming mouth, contorting and shivering inhumanely. There were more coming out of the walls, the metal now slowly resembling flesh. Out in the corridor, voices whispered, forming a susurrus which haunted the ship.
From the gramocon, there was a brief noise, somewhere between a scream and a wild laugh, before it abruptly stopped. Jack was hiding under the covers of his bed. The others were staring at the walls. Max had attempted to fight back the faces, but stopped when one bit him.
None of them bothered to ask the most commonly-asked question in these situations, which was "what the hell is going on?", because they were already given the answer prior; the wild currents of an ancient Imagination was distorting the reality around them. There was an affliction associated with space travel, similar to cabin fever, referred to as space madness, in which long periods of travelling the empty, infinite planes eventually wear down a man's resolve and causes him to turn against his crewmates. This, however, was the term approached from another, terrible angle; it wasn't them that were going mad, it was time and space itself.

Vragi relaxed slowly, feeling (wrongly) that he had acclimatized to the threshold’s effects.

-Well, this isn’t so bad- he mouthed as he untied his makeshift blindfold. Unfortunately, rather than making any sound, the words appeared as glowing runes in the air just a few inches in front of him. He cleared his throat.

“Apologies, I meant to say, well this-” as he began repeating himself each rune changed from its pale silvery hue to a deep crimson as he spoke, “…isn’t so…bad.” The now ruddy symbols each disappeared with various sounds, one of which was something like a lost sock meowing.

He stared at one of the runes, which had stubbornly refused to give up its brief existence. The thing seemed to be staring him down. Reaching out a hand, the dwarf poked the glyph experimentally.

There was a rush of something around Vragi, as if the air were about to pounce on some unsuspecting prey, and his hair seemed to stand up on its own accord. With a bouquet of iridescent sparks, a wave of forceful energy scraped across his body and launched the poor dwarf across the room, slamming him into the wall. The rune, thankfully, did go away. From the look of it.

“OK, I take that back.” He muttered, as his goggles began to glitter merrily contorting and shifting into a quite unpleasant creature vaguely like a sea-cucumber which dropped to the floor and was promptly squashed by the startled smith.

“Those were my best pair…” he lamented, waddling to his pack which he rummaged through, to find a spare.

While he was doing this he was oblivious to the unsettling transfiguration of the ship’s fabric, so that when he re-emerged donning a pair of rather bright lime-green goggles (they’d all changed appearance under the threshold’s influence) He was immediately hit with the...scene.

He walked silently up to the wall, and poked it.

"Should I try feeding it the slug? Hm? Are you alright?" he asked the raccoon, apparently oblivious to whatever she'd encountered

"Uh..? Wh..." she mumbled, a bit confused as she shifted her gaze to the dwarf. There was a moment of silence from her until she let out a short laugh. "Am I alright? What? Do you think this little disturbance bothers me much?" she says, folding her two set of forelimbs. "So the very air around us is going mad, so what? To me this space, this subcon-manifestation anomaly of hyper-fantasy... it is to me a sign, an opportunity, my rapture, my-"

A horrific distorted laughing face on the hull interrupted her, getting up in her face with its warped voice passing all through the vocal spectrum... and beyond. With a swift motion she punches it across the cheek,distorting its features even more... and apparently dislodging a tooth from it.

"S-stop laughing!" she screamed, looking a bit manic. "They all laughed, I know they did, all with that 'oh that poor girl'! And then there's that performance arts... dancer girl, whatever... oh, how they all loved her! News flash! Everybody can dance! It isn't special!" she continued in a wild rant, grabbing the face by the ears and laughing back at it.

"Miss, please, control yourself, the Threshold is affecting you," Grimms chimed in, trying to calm her down.

"Oh? You think I'm mad? 'Oh poor thing, not right in her head,' is that it? Do you pity me!?" she said, as she released the... wall face... and looked to Grimms with crazed eyes, aglow with a misty green light as a few tendril reveal themselves from her back. With no hesitation she leapt from the ground onto Grimms, who stood perfectly still as the little mutant began to crawl and peck at his head. "So calm and confident!, always looking down! What makes you tick, hm!? Bet you're the most deranged of the lot! Who in their right mind wears such horrific things as this mask!? Does nothing hurt you!? Do you even feel anymore!?" she rants, taking shots at him making metal clunks with each strike, until reaching around for his mask. Inadvertently, in doing so, she singes her hands, causing her to yell and fall back, causing Grimms to try to grab her, but instead only grabs her bandana mask. Catching herself, she blew her hands a bit, shaking them, then glared up at Grimms, her lower jaw having what seems to be wire wrapped around it. A fissure ran down near center of her lower jaw, the wire seeming to be what is keeping it together, and there was a blackness to her mouth. Her eyes jittered a bit before resting eyes on Grimms's hand holding her handkerchief, her eyes widening in horror. She gasped, twitched nervously, and tried to cover her face.

"I'm sorry, I only meant to catch you so you wouldn't hurt yours-" Grimms began to say, cordial as usual, but she hissed and leapt up to snag the cloth back, hastily wrapping it over her face, avoiding eye contact from anybody, even the maddened aberrations littering the ship's interior. "Perhaps you should have that looked at," he said, but she was unresponsive, holding the cloth over her face. "And hm..? Weren't you shorter than Mr. Odd before?"

The volunteers would be interrupted by a blood-curdling cry, coming from the fourth bed. Once unoccupied, now it held the vague shape of some sort of humanoid being with fin-like ears and huge, bulging eyes, like that of a mutated goldfish, batting at invisible demons with one claw and clutching the bedsheet with the other. Continuously, it cried out in terror, "No! Get back! Get back! You can't take me! No no no- AAARGH," before it abruptly vanished, the bedsheet deflating into its original shape.
Perhaps unbeknownst to the volunteers, that was not the only phantom currently haunting the ship. The numerous, unoccupied cabins rang with the cries of dozens of different throats. Another phantom ran down the main corridor, which was now bending and swaying as if it were a snake in motion, towards the now incandescent technicoloured light of the engine, crying out, "Turn off the engine! Turn off-" before it too would vanish. As time knotted, and reality crumbled amidst the crashing waves of the Threshold, spacefaring souls that were imprisoned within the Edge, unable to find their way to the afterlife, were forced to relive their last moments within the twisting bulk of the S.S Victoria.

Meanwhile, within the bridge, Jonathan had now partially recovered his senses enough to determine the direction they needed to travel. This is proving to be difficult, as most of the dials and buttons have now crawled from the control panel, now dotted around the walls and the floor; he was now left with only the basic controls needed to sail the ship, but with impaired awareness of the ship's conditions in terms of valve pressure and gathered heat.
With a front-seat view of the prismatic hell of the Threshold, it would come to surprise to many, including himself, that he was still at least partially coherent in the face of maddening circumstances. Those who have known him long enough (this also included himself), however, would surmise that this was mainly because he had already passed the madness horizon long ago and had reached the opposite side of the spectrum from the wrong way; in short, he is now in possession of a very special type of sanity, one built out of the fragmented pieces of his broken mind, sane thoughts constructed out of insane components.

As the dislodged tooth arced through the twisting space of the room, Vragi made a dive and just caught the strange apparition. He proceeded to peer at the curiosity from different angles, tapping and shaking it questioningly. Perhaps he wasn’t entirely absorbed in his own world though, as he did at least glance at his fellow volunteers.

In fact, he did spin round when his full attention was won by Grimms’ accidentally revealing Skitters’ face, though a slight grave look passed over his own and he looked away, deciding not to pursue the subject.

Luckily for him, this threshold was by no means short of surprises as he was almost immediately greeted by their strange new guest. He rushed over to the phantom, the bubbling stew of questions within the dwarf’s head literally making his ears steam like a kettle. Unfortunately, any hope of interrogating the poor soul was cut short, so he shrugged and got back to examining the strange tooth. Well, assuming it hadn’t already either vanished or become some other oddity.

"Ah, these are... people? Our predecessors?" Mr. Grimms commented as he observed the phantasms as they all screamed and ran in distress, his tone being a bit more grim than usual. There was sympathy in the fiery giant's eyes an motions. "I cannot tell if they are alive or dead, if this is a mere recording of their final moments, or their personal essence is preserved? I wonder if they can be saved somehow."

"If they are alive, they are as good as dead, or maybe worse, constantly in a chronological flux, reliving the end on repeat. On the off-chance you could recover them they would never be the same again," Basalah muttered, still trying not to make eye-contact with anyone.

"I would've assumed you would be in favor of living in spite of conditions," Grimms retorted, causing the creatures hair to bristle.

"What does it matter, anyways? Better to look out for number one in these kind of situations, because I'm not going through that again for some randos. Besides, they knew what they were getting themselves into," she grumbled.

"Did you?" he asked bluntly.

The pompous raccoon wrinkled her nose, and tensed up her claws into fists, wanting to retort, to yell back, but the words failed her. He keeps reading me like one of his damn books! she thought, puffing up as her hair stands on ends. She wanted to tell him what for, put him in his place, tell him it was easy for him because he ended up strong because of it.

"Frankly, my dear, smart as you are, you're a real spitfire. You are far too vain, too jealous, and too angry," Grimms said. She turned and glared at him. "Honestly, if that weren't the case, you'd be quite charming with that energy and ingenuity of yours. You're not even that bad off, that jaw of yours can be treated."

She froze, confusion took its course, that giant again won a round of psychological chess with her. She couldn't say anything, not to him at least, and she couldn't remain angry at this point. In fact, somehow, she felt... rather sobered. She huffed and scurried over to the gramocon.

"Please tell me we're about clear of this madness, the apparitions are just getting worse... and I think my blanket is slithering up the wall... not really sure how to feel about that," she said rather calmly, a tone that was only half-serious. "Oh, and... I'm talking without the box now, surprise~!"

Something in the distance would catch Jonathan's eye. To a more unordered and easily-confused mind (that is, a living mind inhabiting a lump of wrinkly muscle), the faint twinkle in the searing abyss would have easily passed as part of the visual chaos. John, however, blessed as he was by peculiar foresight, took it as a metaphysical lighthouse, leading him into the clear and away from the jagged space-time rocks that awaited his precious vessel. Relieved, he resolved to reassure his crew on the awaiting closure of this moment of madness.

The gramocon curled like a waking snake. A metallic honk emitted from it's flared mouth before a distorted voice said, reassuringly, "wibble wibble sneep, snill fibble gibble zib snip snip. Gib gib flib flibble vip-" before the piping, hidden within the tormented hull of the ship, tied itself into a knot and prevented anything else to pass through. Just outside the cabin, a gibbering phantasm was scratching the walls, as if trying to peel away the hull in a desperate attempt to escape.
Meanwhile, in the opposite cabin, Max was standing on a struggling Jack's shoulders, yelling into the resisting gramocon. "John! I know you can hear me in there! How much longer have we got? I'm up to here with the f____ing wall-faces! You hear me?"
"Wibble wibble sneep, snill fib-"
"Don't you give me that shit, you good-for-nothing bonebag! I'm gonna keep screaming into this gods-damned trunk until you give me-"
The tone of the engine's moaning rose. Before he could react, the vessel accelerated rapidly, causing Max to fall off Jack's shoulders. And onto Fancy Pants.

The Imagiverse occupies one half of a spherical universe, as to make it easier for humans to comprehend it's structure. On one hemisphere, Reality operates like clockwork under laws of physics and logic, while on the other, Fantasy manifests all dreams and imaginings of the inhabitants of a blue planet. As you get closer to the equator, where the two hemispheres touch, the two dimensions begin to mix, adopting certain aspects from each other. For Reality, this means inexplainable phenomenon that does not correlate with the known physical laws. For Fantasy, this means that beings of a Fantastic nature are less able to survive, as they reach a no-man's land untouched by Creators and inhabited by unknown terrors. The equator, otherwise known as the Rim or Creator's End, is, theoretically, an area of spacetime where the ratio of Fantasy and Reality is equal, although it is uncertain what this means in practice. It is very likely this is in no way good.

Alone in the cold depths of deep space, a metallic shape glides, trailing a blue, shifting mist behind it. With the exception of the occasional nebula, the Edge is seemingly barren. Where the Outer Centre was rife with strange activity, the Edge was bleak and unpleasant. What was once nearly certain, is now rife with uncertainty.
Within the hull of the S.S Victoria, a warbling song plays through the multiple mouths of the gramocom, serving only to punctuate the uneasy quiet. This near-cessation of noise, save for the almost-oppressive hum of the engine, was initially taken as an improvement of the invasive smorgasbord of noises that filled the Threshold. Now, as the excitement dissipated, it only grew more profound.
The volunteers, once again, have a moment of peace before they reach a suitable world to explore. The present enigma stands; how will they spend this moment?

The silence pounding on Vragi's ears like a particularly uncomfortable cabin pressure was thankfully broken by song lilting through the speakers. Mind slightly more at ease, the dwarf took a moment to ponder all of... whatever they had just been through. Although thinking about it might not have been wise, his thoughts immediately turned to the mysterious phantoms. The chaos around them may have worn off for now but as usual a flock of questions raced around his head like seagulls caught in a storm that had just started raining chips.

“Whatever those spectral folk were,” he mused, “it’s a right shame they couldn’t have stayed longer. The knowledge I’ll bet they could tell. Oh, er, not that I would want them to keep suffering like that or anything.” He added hastily, “I meant more, it’s a shame they were in those circumstances, whatever exactly those were.”

He scratched his head in shame. He wasn’t lying, it was more a case of tactlessness.

The raccoon, or rather, what had taken the body of one, now spent time in a corner to herself, grooming herself to a small hand mirror, as best she could with a varmint's form. She wasn't prettying up, however, but studying the extent of her... transformation. The exposure had given back her voice, the box no longer necessary for communication, aside from that, she had become a little taller, and her coat now had a more silvery sheen to it. The tendrils on the back of her head, as well as down her back had become more visible, resembling black hair. No change can occur without adversity, she thought to herself. And that was quite adverse. She put down the mirror and hopped off from the bed, heading to the door.

"Strange... I have this strange feeling of déjà vu," Grimms said as he stood motionless in front of a porthole. He caught a glimpse of Basalah, as she preferred to be called, slinking out the door. He said nothing, as she exited, and simply turned back to look out the porthole again. "Getting a bit of cabin fever, I imagine," he said.

She had not turned to go to the engine, but rather, she was in search of the rest of the crew, in hopes that would give her something to do for the remainder until they hit some form of land, hoping that some even existed.

As Basalah left her cabin, she would be joined by the occupants of the opposite cabin. Their expressions wore varying degrees of apprehension (with the exception of Max, whose own uncomfort translated into a common emotion from his palette, which was irritation, which was amplified by the omnipresent music), equally unnerved by the near-silence of the Edge. They would not see Basalah until Adam almost trips over her, yelping as his stray foot made a pirouette and sent him staggering into a wall.
Max would turn back to Adam to chastise him, before noticing the rodent. "Having a good trip so far?" he asked, referring to their first, eventful encounter with hyper-fantasy. "Well, hopefully that'll be the worst part over with, before we find a new world to run through. We're just gonna head to the Cafetorium, get our heads together for the trip. You're free to come with us, as well as the others." On that note, he would motion Adam to follow them and head down the corridor. Adam's gait as he went down the corridor was much like a marionette with a few strings cut; his long limbs swung unsteadily, now cautious of hitting any more short creatures on his way.
Now having spent some time in the Edge, occasionally one's ears would pick up something from the almost-silent gulfs of space, a strange, almost musical noise ringing just outside the mortal range of hearing, but nevertheless inciting an unwelcome feeling of dread. Hidden sects of the Imagiverse tell of fundamental tunes and frequencies which correlate to a specific emotion, some of basic emotions like happiness and anger, others of more complex feelings, like the apprehension that an elderly person feels as they approach the end of their life. Said sects claim that the Maker incapsulated these emotions into these sounds, for reasons only known to the Maker.
This particular sound, heard almost only in the Edge, is said to invoke dread of the unknown, an emotion more related to the ancient beings that lurk between the stars and of the hidden horrors within the dark of space. To replicate it, one would need a theromin that exists in 5 dimensions at once. However, since text cannot make sounds, an attempt will be made on how it might sound in words:
WEEE-OOO, Weee-ooo, weee-ooooooo.......

“Wondering if you might’ve seen something alike to this before?” asked Vragi, glancing at Basalah’s exit as he stood not far from Grimms. His new goggles made him look something like an aged but rather flamboyant pop musician who’d just joined a LARP club.

Curious what exactly the full view was out there, the dwarf scuttled over to the chest to retrieve his pack, grabbed a couple of pillows off the beds, and stacked them haphazardly and scrambled onto the unstable construction, balancing precariously as he grasped the edge of the porthole with both hands and peered out.

As he leant forward to get a better view, he unfortunately lost his footing, toppling his support and sending him crashing (albeit softly) to the floor on a heap of bedding. Thinking better of making another attempt, he hastily gathered the mess up in a bundle and waddled away with it, acting as nonchalant as was doable.

“I think I might go join the others, see if I can get the run-down on what’s happening next.” He said, throwing the pillows roughly back into place. The dwarf pushed his way through the door, holding it open for a second to look back in case of any response from Grimms.

"Perhaps, out there, is the place of my genesis," Grimms said, still staring out. There was a somberness to his tone, or maybe just apprehension. "Would I even know it if I came to it, though? I've lived so long in another world that it may as well be my native... and yet..."

He glanced back for a moment and then turned, "bah... I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, I think I'd like to stretch my legs as well," he said, before also heading to the door.

Basalah covered her head as nearly a bag of bones, sans the bag, nearly came toppling down upon her. She let out a short grunt, still rather agitated, until seeing the clumsiness of her would-be accidental assailant perform a rather unfortunate ballet. It was small, but for once in a long time the aggressive creature let out a small laugh, unable to contain it further. She then noticed them heading off and scampered over to keep up.

"Hey, it wasn't anything too big, but I do wonder if it was some form of spectral imprint or truly cognitive reflections," she said, trying to spark conversation. "Also, notice anything different? Huh? Huuuh?" she asked, pointing to herself with all four of her claws. "Hearing anything different..?"

Max would pause on a door through which the rest had gone, emerging a fair distance away, and look back at Basalah. "Well, you're looking more like something we'd normally kill on sight," he said. "Those tentacles are always a dead giveaway for demons. No worries about that, though. Also, you're talkin' without that staticky stuff from that voicebox. Bet the Threshold broke it, 'ey?" Giving Basalah a grin, Max would walk through the door and join the rest of the Chosen Few, who were currently a long way away; if one didn't want to travel the whole mile distance from one end of the vessel to another, the doors served as excellent shortcuts, provided that you remember where each door lead.
Eventually, they would reach the Cafetorium, where the window which occupied almost all of the outside wall provided a view of the Edge. As was mentioned before, the Edge seems to hold much less activity than the Outer Centre, instead providing a haunting picture of a cosmos leaning closer to cold, logical Reality than the spontaneously vibrant Fantasy that the crew lived on. Here, it was uncertain that anything lived in these gulfs, save the currently thin tendrils of a psychopathic near-omnipotent being that desires nothing but the extinction of Fantasy.
Seemingly unaware of all this existential terror, Max and the others would wander to the Cornucopia machine, where they fabricated various drinks before sitting down on one of the long tables, their backs to the window-wall. "It'll be a while before we reach land," said Fancy amiably. "Might as well stretch our legs and kick back for a bit, get to know each other a bit more."
"Yeh," said Adam, cradling a glass of milk, a textbook beverage for the calcium-based undead.
"Feel free to get a drink or something from the thingy," said Fancy. "If it does what John says it does, it should give you any drink you want."

Vragi caught up with the others just as Basalah was inquiring about her new look. Under the goggles, he screwed up his tiny eyes in concentration and peered at the Duchess. He wracked his brains for a moment or so as if struggling to grasp exactly what had changed and what that meant.

“You’ve…aged!” he concluded triumphantly, probably misunderstanding the new colour her coat had taken on. He beamed at everyone, apparently not seeing anything rude about the statement he had just made.

Waddling into the cafetorium with the rest of the party, the dwarf caught sight of the huge window. A mature or sensible adult would certainly recognize at least a sense of cosmic horror in such a situation. While he was technically an adult, Vragi was, for better or worse, neither of these things and so giddily bounded over to the wall.

“Ah, finally a view I can see!” he whispered, staring hungrily out into the space as his eyes glazed over under their glassy shields. He appeared to be lost in thought and only vaguely picked up the gist of the conversation going on. Shortly after he ambled over to the strange machine that was procuring drinks from seemingly nowhere, joining the back of the queue so he could gawp at the thing without holding anyone up. He then ambled up to the table, holding a tankard of something that frothed fiercely like some poisonous dragon’s bile (although it emitted a rather pleasant sweet scent).

“How long did it take you to learn those shortcuts? In the corridor. If you don’t mind me asking.” The dwarf inquired, after having briefly introduced himself to the Chosen Few. He still appeared mildly out of breath from the ordeal, as he had taken the direct route. He didn't admit that this had been so he could try and count all the doors on the way.

"Hah! Broke it? More like it fixed me!" Basalah began before looking down at her claws. "Well... not quite... but a hypothesis has been proven probable, that endurance and will are factors of ascension. Admittedly for a vermin shell, it has become more manageable, a stature, while still short is no less bigger and more complex than its default state. Nowhere near what is necessary to trigger a cascade event."

Her somewhat thoughtful tranquility would be disrupted, however, by a voice from behind.

“You’ve…aged!”

The raccoon's hairs bristled up her spine, her claws tightened into fists, and her entire body tensed up. "I'll have you know," she growled. "I'm neither a demon nor a hag!" There's a brief pause as her eyes shift around looking somewhat embarassed. "B-besides, I've grown fond of this vessel, and I won't have it b-be mocked."

Max would take a swig of his drink, a canned beverage labelled "Bloxy Cola", and swish it around his mouth as his considered the dwarf's question. Swallowing, he finally answered, "Well, we've been hanging around for a few days before the journey, to get the feel of the place. Apparently he didn't even bother to make a map for the ship, so we had to memorise each shortcut." He took another swig of his Cola. "Sometimes, you gotta learn quick to last as long as we have out there."
"The numberth on the doorth help too," contributed Jack, drinking a glass of water with an admirable attempt at preventing himself from spitting it out due to long-term gag training.
"Yeah, and that."
Despite their initial complaints, or at least the complaints of the Robloxian, the Few seemed quite at ease so far from home. Perhaps it was years of experience with the unknown, always on the move to worlds that had only few similar physical laws between them. They certainly had the air of people who have seen everything possible to be seen by mortal man and more.
"Tho, while we're waiting, wanna tell uth about where you guyth came from?" asked Jack. "Jutht to break the ithe a bit and get to know each other."
"Well yeah," said Fancy, a touch reproachfully. "That's pretty much the point of this chat, Jack. I already said. But yeah, where do you guys hail from?"

Vragi seemed to have offended Basalah - any reason that his comment could have been considered rude had clearly gone over his head before he had made the remark. “Ah...OK, noted!” he blurted, waving his hands, perhaps in apology or defense. What exactly this ‘ascension’ was that the raccoon was seeking he had no idea, but he thought he’d best avoid prying for now so as to not cause further insult.

He nodded as if making a mental note as the Robloxian answered his question. Learning the layout of the ship sounded a good challenge to him so he’d be sure to have a go when he got the chance. He was just taking a long, thoughtful swig of his beverage when one of the few inquired about the newcomers’ homes. Pushing his tankard to the side so it obscured only half of his face from everyone’s vision, he took it upon himself to go first.

“Oh, well my hometown Nidvell is very dark and stuffy and mostly underground. And there’s soot everywhere.” The dwarf said jovially. “We mostly trade in smithing, see, so it’s very much like one huge furnace. Most of the light comes from the lava streams and glowing algae in the water.”

Basalah rolled her eyes and decided to shrug off the dwarf's clear inability to catch on to social cues. Recent unpleasantness aside, she shouldn't let these matters bother her, she did after all recently reacquire the ability of speech, without a ridiculous voice synthesis device. Besides, something else had now taken precedence over a misstep with her pride, an inquiry: from where does she hail from?

As the dwarf finished, she supposed it was her turn to explain. It wasn't pleasant to recall things of her past, but there was no point to be so secretive now.

"Weeeeelllllll," she said with an odd fluctuation. She held her throat, looking a bit perplexed, coughing to clear it. "I come from the world of Tzel... ah, imagine a land blanketed in perpetual dusk, illuminated by the fauna and flora, and a gentle warmth that flows throughout. Now imagine the other side of this world, cold, desolate, and blanketed in darkness instead, where people who have descended from banished dissidents now live in perpetual turmoil. That is where I'm from. Believe it or not, I wasn't always like this, I was taller, eyes of jade, hair of emerald... a green torch in a dark world. I was... I waaaaasssss..." She began to trail off, looking at her clawed hands with a perplexed look. "Mother named me Basalah, courage, for nothing startled me... saaaaaid I held lots of promise for our people."

"As for me," Grimm's voice chimed in, as Basalah's eyes grew distant. Grimms walked in, adjusting his tie, apparently having had little trouble traversing the ship's oddly warped space. "From where I came originally? I really don't know, the world I grew up in was certainly not my native. The people that raised me, a nomadic lot, said I fell in from the sky, from 'Orion's armpit' they said, Betelgeuse, the red star. Betelgeuse Grimms, get it?" he continued, chuckling a bit as steam blasted out from the break in his armor around the neck. "I started young as an adventurer, a hero, though I admittedly did it for the thrill. You know, fighting monsters, averting disaster, smashing large stones with my head and flexing... lots of flexing... looking back on it, I was quite an.. hmmm... idiot. My wife found me incorrigible, until she tricked me into learning humility, getting me to admit that there were things I was just awful at. Like... almost everything involving not slaying monsters or smashing something... and er, reading. Anyways, I really don't know from where I originally came from, I've thankfully ruled out all sorts of aeons, daemons, angels, and gods. Closest I've come to in my hunt for knowledge is Fae, or something akin, but I am neither malign, nor pleasure in toying with the lives of others... at least, not usually."

"So, what, you think you'll find home out here somewhere in the tumor of the multiverse?" Basalah said, letting out a snicker.

"Well, that and when I fought a swamp witch, she said we both came from a place beyond the veil of stars, y'know, as she tried to gnaw off my head."

"Wh... what..? Basalah muttered, looking perplexed at the concept, imagining a green human hopelessly trying to chew through Grimm's hard shell.

"Er, she had absorbed many beasts and animals of the swamp, so she had amalgamated into a massive and horrible monstrous chimera... thing? Just to get an idea of what I was dealing with. Actually, maybe she wasn't that horrible... maybe it was the fact most of what I saw in the fight was endless rows of teeth. Anyways, she lost interest in our constant stalemate, thought I was the thing missing her being, found out she was my twin sister, er, liberal on the 'twin' part, and... and... well, here I am searching beyond the veil of stars."

"Your life is... weird, Basalah said.

"Yes... yes it is," he said, nodding in agreement.

Max regarded his Robloxian soda, turning the can this way and that, as he listened while the others listened more intently. While the dwarf's homeland was, typically, an underground smithy city, it was becoming more apparent about the oddity of the other two as they described their home; one split between light and dark, and the other... Well, it was unclear where Grimms hailed from, but the testimony of his twin sister certainly hinted towards someplace celestial, or, a favourite word between them when regarding anything beyond their worlds, eldritch.

Max would lean forward, resting his elbows on the table, as if to relay a riveting story. "Well, I come from this world that we call Robloxia. Mainly suburbs and cities, I don't think I've ever seen a blade of grass, considering there isn't any parks. Just miles and miles of tall, shiny buildings filled with Robloxians. To a man, we rarely leave our apartments; pretty much all the time, except for sleeping, we hook ourselves into these machines which connect to this big ol' server where you can create anything you want. "Powering Imagination", that's their motto. Of course, I don't use those machines as often, since I'm from a Builder caste; those are the guys who build those buildings. Dunno why, but I was made of much more stronger stuff than the others, could carry five I-beams without breaking a sweat. Nowadays, John would say it was probably the Creators leaving a mark on me as if to say 'this guy right here, he's gonna be the muscle of our little group when he's older', but I just think there was some sort of bug in wherever we were hatched or built that added too much muscle."

A few seconds of awkward silence would pass between the other Chosen Few before Max turned to his colleagues and rumbled, "Hey, don't get antsy or anything; I'm only stating it as it is. Anyone of you wanna talk about your homeworld next?"

Fancy would clear his throat. "Well, I dunno if I have that much to say about my world. I come from Squiggleville, just a regular place, although it doesn't have a third dimension as far as I remember. To be honest, it came as a shock when I was brought out of my world, seeing people going forwards and backwards as well as left and right and realising how shorthanded Squiggleville was in terms of spatial whatsits. It was all drawn as well, although not like pencil-and-paper drawn, I don't think, but... I dunno. I can't really describe it. It felt real to me, but when I saw the Imagiverse I realised that it was just... something out of some kid's sketchbook." His brow wrinkled, indeed like paper.

Glug-glug-glug. It was the sound of Jack pensively taking a swig of his water. Forcing himself to swallow, he said in that special bright tone one takes in an attempt to dispel awkwardness, "Well, I come from Toontown. It'th uthually a pretty happy plathe full of fun and practical joketh, eckthept when the Cogth are around. Their jutht thethe mechanical men in thuitth alwayth trying to thell you dethk toyth and thwindling you out of your jellybeanth. Bathically the only guyth that can put a Toon down, and I mean really down. They've got headquarterth in all four cornerth of Toontown which we regularly raid to try and thlow them down, but really, it'th what I've heard John call a "war of attrition". Other than that, it'th a nithe plathe."

The Chosen Few turned to Adam, who looked back with a momentarily blank expression. Then, finally realising what they were expecting, he said, "Oh, err. Well, me and John come from Earth- or, err, Anti-Earth, I fink it's called out in the Imagiverse. We lived in the 1890s and in a rich family. Our dad owned a bunch of factories and companies, and our mum... I guess, was just our mum. I remember her being very beautiful, although I can't remember the colour of her eyes for some reason; can't remember whether they were blue or green. Anyway, we also had another brother called Nick who was a bastard, according to John. Got into a lot of trouble when he was younger, and he did us even more trouble. Wrestling and slamming my head into the wall, for one thing. In the end, our dad sent us to New Orleans to find some girls to marry, cause that's what you do when you're old enough. Then Nick heard word about some fortune teller, brought John with him, next thing I knew, John was buried in a local graveyard and I got attacked by some shadowy figure in an alleyway that looked like Nick. Other than that, I don't know what to tell you."

This time, the silence was thick with terrible retrospection of Adam's summary. He was known to the group as being so emptyheaded that his mind was a vacuum, with only sparse sparks of thought flickering within. They had heard John's summary of their past, which was more filled with spit and venom when their third brother was mentioned, but Adam's blank and vague delivery seemed to make it much worse. As a man, they theorised if these beatings of Nick inflicted more than bruises.

As they stood silent, however, the volunteers may notice something outside the window. As they went deeper into the Edge, it seemed that the horizon held slightly more stars and nebulas and other cosmic constructs that mortals could not identify. It now seemed as if the stars were winking out, in a thick line, as if they were being obscured by something. Something vaguely serpentine but almost completely invisible, or rather, visible by the negative space it occupied. Somewhere at the end of this oblong blot in the sky, a red star flared.