Rage swelled through her body.

They had taken her boy. The news echoed and tumbled in her ears, bouncing through her skull like a ball in a pit. Her sun, her radiant beam had been extinguished. Her mouth gaped open, but no words nor strangled cry escaped.

Killed during his proudest moment.

It was of little consolation to her, even if it meant that her son had went down with a smile on his face, wrench stained with the blood of another corrupt politician. Terrorist, they had called him.

Her teeth gritted and grinded against each other, her grief violently tugging upon the layers in between-

It stopped. Though her anger had not ebbed, a psychic knife had came down upon her tether to the beyond. Slowly, it all stabilized, and only ripples remained of the waves that had formed upon the surface of the Infinite Sea.

The winds brushed across the neon-lit skyscrapers of Yukon. An unnatural aurora forming upon the horizon - a phenomenon atypical of the time of year. Reporters and journalists had gathered from all over the region to photograph the lights - strange, but calm.

And like her son's life, it was all shattered in an instant.

The cameras found the face of the up-and-coming hero - a visage that had often appeared on national TV for its near-perfect looks. Now, however, it was /ruined/. Norse's manicured hands clawed at his face, digging deep gouges into his skin and flesh. Trails of blood ran down from empty sockets, his eyeballs held in either hand. A crippling scream rang out from a jaw that was locked open. In its wake, the reporters found themselves rooted to the spot, unable to end their casts and helplessly left to try and decipher the perpetrator of this vicious attack.

They did not have to think long, for from behind him stretched a two dimensional plane of color - one that was incomprehensible to the eyes of its helpless audience, yet often so, for they had seen it before, always heralding the appearance of the Jester. Yet what stepped out from within was a woman - her stature normal, scarlet hair flowing out behind her. Its every strand was tinged with abstract, impossible shapes that clung to it like tortured fingers to a cross.

What happened next, they could not properly describe.

Norse was dragged into the earth itself, the redhead diving in after him to close a grasp around his throat. Instead of stone, he could see - no, this wasn't seeing, his eyes had been left behind. Yet, his mind witnessed a swirl of dangerous, indescribable colors, pulling his body, his mind, his very /self/ into a spiral. His mind fractured from the strain of trying to understand something else, something that he was not supposed to see, much less learn from. It tore apart at its seams, leaving him with only the most basic of ability for what happened next.

At the bottom, he could hear - his very mind could feel what awaited him. The tormented screams of his fellow heroes etched deep into his shattered consciousness. And when he reached the end, he was himself, and he was them. His body was no longer his, and neither were theirs to them. Their minds mixed and crumbled at the edges much like his had, his very /self/ being grafted onto theirs as much as theirs into his. Space fractured and twisted, rendering their bodies malleable to her vicious will. Their apologies and pleas were no longer coherent, for they now shared the same mouth, broken consciousnesses unable to coordinate any last words.

Space twisted for a final time, and reality ripped a hole in itself, dumping the mangled, twisted and singular body of five people. Their flesh had been churned into a neat ball, expressions agape as they attempted to understand what had happened.

They never would.