Where Annihilation Dwells

How insignificant the years must seem to them, how like the blinking of an eye. She tightened her right hand into a fist, the sound of the leather cracking, her brow creasing in a frown, eyebrows narrowing, her gaze fixed on the endless sea of stars beyond the window of her castle, yet still unable to see them. Even here, within the vast expanse of the Vader Dimension, could she sense that presence, their terrifying, unknowable presence, the shape of them impossible for any living mortal to truly comprehend.

For more than 3,000 years, the servants of her court had ridden out into the realms beyond her majestic castle and enacted her will, wiping away worlds that laid claim to beauty yet whose inhabitants proved to be unworthy in her eyes.

More than 3,000 years in which Queene Hedrian had held sway over countless planets, numerous cultures, only now to discover the presence of a host of beings far older, far greater than anything she been able to comprehend before. Celestials, the other had called them, the asymmetrical fringe of silver hair coming dangerously close to falling over her right eye, the riding crop held firmly in her grip.

At the time, Hedrian had dismissed the other, an envoy of some petty power, the Yodon Empire, so they called themselves. The woman had possessed neither a knowledge of nor an appreciation of beauty, proving herself to be little more than the petty handmaiden of her master—and yet despite this, the term she had used for those primordial forces had remained in Hedrian's mind: Celestials.

Not gods, she thought, staring out beyond the stars, that would imply a power more deserving of worship than the throne of the Vader Clan, but beings of unparalleled power, creatures that had seeded life upon countless worlds.

Had they visited the Vader Dimension also, she asked herself. That had been what the Yodon woman had implied, that mocking suggestion that such as the Vader Clan were, there was too much of a similarity between them and the peoples of Earth, the peoples of dead planet Denji, for it to be coincidence.

It unsettled her, this suggestion that her right to beauty, her right to rule was not something that had been decided by the blood and rite of the custom of her own clan, but something set in motion by unknowable giants travelling from world to world, making judgements on what was acceptable, and what was deviant.

She shook her head, a futile gesture in the absence of others, in the conversation she held solely with herself.

No, the Vader Clan was not like the piteous humans of Earth or the peoples of Denji, she was called to a higher purpose than that, it was vulgar to believe otherwise. These beings, these Celestials, they might have seeded life in other realms, on other worlds, but not within the Vader Dimension. Her own bloodline was pure, untainted by outside influence, and such standing gave her the right of life and death over others. She was not, like them, a slave of unknowable beings, a creature fashioned by design within the furnace of their desires.

She lifted her fist up, her hand aching from how tightly she held it.

She was Queene Hedrian of the Vader Clan, she bowed to none. Should such being as the Yodon woman had described ever cross her path, she would judge them by her standards, not the other way around, and, should they be found wanting, like all others, Hedrian would pass a sentence of death upon them.

She released her fist, silently acknowledging the pain, allowing her arm to drop.

She bowed to none, she told herself once again, and should ever the day come when she was she was pressed into service of a cause of another, then she would not rest until they were overthrown and whatever power they held over her turned to dust.

Celestials, she thought with a sneer. Let them come, let them try to judge her. After all, who was more divine than the Queene Hedrian herself?