Chapter 2 - The Fragmented Empress

Within the confines of a dimly lit office space, a young man sat motionless behind a series of monitors, his movements sluggish and mechanical as he monitored the endless streams of data flowing across his screens with mindless repetition.

Suddenly a ear splitting alarm burst from his monitors as he went tumbling out of his chair in shock. Heart hammering against his ribs, he recovered quickly and scrambled to his feet before attacked the keyboard with desperate urgency, fingers flying as he searched for the source of the emergency.

A few frantic clicks later, a new window blazed to life on his monitor—its crimson border pulsing like a warning beacon. As his eyes scanned the incomprehensible data from top to bottom, the colour drained from his face.

"What... what does any of this even mean?" His voice cracked as he stared at readings that were so similar to what he had come to expect yet… different in some way. "I've never seen anything like this before."

Mumbling all the while he organised the files with trembling hands before sending them to the printer, the machine's mechanical whirring seeming impossibly loud in the suddenly suffocating room. Clutching the documents like a lifeline, he fled down the hallway.

The elevator ride to the top floor felt eternal and when he finally knocked on the guild leader's door, his knuckles rapped out an anxious rhythm that matched his racing pulse.

"Yes? Come in."

The office beyond was a monument to power—a intricately carved mahogany desk, floor-to-ceiling windows framing the sprawling city, and along the walls, trophies that spoke of battles won and monsters slain. The guild leader barely looked up as the young man approached, his presence commanding even in silence.

" s-s-s-Sir, I've received readings unlike anything in our database." The words tumbled out in an anxious rush as he placed the documents on the desk with hands that wouldn't stop shaking.

The guild leader's eyes—steel grey and sharp as blades—fixed on him with uncomfortable intensity. "Where did these originate, and why did you bring them directly to me?"

"Two cities over, sir. The energy signature... it's similar to a dungeon break, but the wavelength... it's completely off." He swallowed hard, his throat suddenly dry. "I brought them because I didn't know who else could handle something like this."

Sighing the guild leader reluctantly opened the folder, his expression shifting from mild annoyance to focused attention, then to something approaching alarm. The silence stretched until it became unbearable.

Finally, he closed the folder with deliberate precision and tucked it under his arm. His movements as he reached for the phone were sharp, controlled—the actions of a man who had just realized the ground beneath his feet was crumbling.

While his boss paced and argued with whoever had answered his call, the young man's gaze drifted to the wall display where a crystalline butterfly sat suspended in a reinforced glass frame. He recognized it immediately: the mark of a guild that had conquered one of the dreaded pink dungeons. Only a handful existed worldwide.

"Don't even think about touching that," the guild leader snapped without looking up from his heated conversation.

Overwhelmed with curiosity the young man stepped closer to the trophy, his eyes soaking in the delicate patterns the crystals formed, but something felt off about it. The butterfly, which should have been perfectly still was trembling. The movement was so subtle that only awakened senses could detect it, but it was unmistakably there.

Step by cautious step, the young man moved closer. All the while the trembling grew more pronounced, until with a flash of colour the butterfly's wings suddenly snapped open, flapping with desperate urgency against its glass prison.

The young man jerked backward sharply, his heel catching on the carpet's edge as he lost balance. Arms windmilling frantically he tried to stop his fall but crashed into the corner display, sending an ancient suit of armour clattering across the floor in a cacophony of metal.

"What are you doing?!" The guild leader's voice boomed through the room as he ended his call with violent finality. "I told you not to touch anything, you—"

The words died in his throat as his gaze turned toward the display case mounted on the wall. Behind the glass, the crystalline butterfly beat its wings with increasing desperation, each flutter sending ripples of rainbow light through its translucent form.

The guild leader's face went ashen. "What. Did. You. Do?" Each word was spoken in a voice so cold that it sent a shiver down the young man's spine.

Before the young man could stammer out a response, the office door burst open. The guild leader's assistant rushed in, tablet clutched in white-knuckled hands as she thrust it forward to him.

"Sir," she said, her voice quivering behind her mask of professionalism, "we're receiving reports from guilds worldwide. Pink dungeons are manifesting on every continent simultaneously."

The tablet slipped from the guild leader's nerveless fingers, clattering onto his desk. For a moment that stretched into eternity, the only sound in the room was the soft beating of crystalline wings against glass.

********************

Across the globe, similar scenes played out in guild headquarters from Tokyo to Moscow, New York to London. The impossible had become reality—the plague of pink dungeons, once contained to the lost continent, Australia, had spread worldwide in a single coordinated emergence.

Unbeknownst to any human or beast, in the depths of the gate where it all began, something stirred.

The cavern that had once blazed with the light of rainbow crystals now lay shrouded in absolute darkness. Where magnificent formations had grown like a crystal forest, only dull, lifeless husks remained—their radiance drained by some unknown force.

At the centre of it all, beside the shattered remains of a crystalline butterfly, the siphoned energy began to coalesce.

It started as barely a whisper of light, so faint it could have been mistaken for an afterimage. But slowly, painfully, it grew stronger. In response to the light the remaining crystals around the cavern pulsed weakly, their stored power flowing toward a single point like metal to a magnet.

The light intensified, taking shape—vaguely humanoid but indistinct, as though whatever it was wasn't quite sure what it was trying to create. And then with nary a sound all the lights cut out at once and the figured tumbled to the floor.

"Argh..." The groan echoed through the empty cavern, raw and primal.

Slowly, agonizingly, the figure pushed itself upright. Light emanating from its form in weak, stuttering waves, barely enough to illuminate the immediate area. It moved like something remembering how to exist—each gesture uncertain, experimental.

Then it felt the pull.

The figure's head turned with clunky mechanical jerks, searching for the source of the sensation that tugged at something deep within its core. There—on the ground metres from where it formed—lay the two halves of a shattered butterfly, their crystalline surfaces reflecting the figure's feeble light.

The journey to reach them was an odyssey of will over form. Each movement was a battle against a body that barely remembered how to function. Minutes became hours as the figure dragged itself across metres of stone, driven by an instinct older than thought.

When its fingers finally closed around the crystal fragments, nothing happened at first. Confused the creature tried to bring the pieces closer to itself by clutching them against its chest, and sure enough there was a reaction.

The pieces hummed gently as the seemed to resonate with the light washing gently off the figure, slowly the light grew in intensity till the fragments burst into a cloud of glowing particles that orbited the figure.

Slowly the particles began to collide with the figure, gently merging into their form like the pieces of a puzzle. As the light flowed into it the figures form grew more solid… more defined. Where once not even their fingers could be made out, now large details such as their long pointed ears could be made out among the haze surrounding them.

But the effect didn't stop at the physical aspects, within the creatures mind flickers of memory slowly slotted into place and crude thoughts began to emerge from the chaos.

But it wasn't enough. Deep within its fragmented consciousness, the figure could sense the incompleteness—fragments of itself scattered across impossible distances, each one a piece of a puzzle that desperately needed solving.

Rising to its feet with a herculean effort it quickly collapsed as their legs gave out. Unperturbed it tried again, managing two stumbling steps before gravity claimed victory once more. But primitive determination drove it upward again and again until finally, it made it to the wall of crystal that called to them.

It could feel it, somewhere within that translucent barrier, another piece of its soul waited. The figure pressed against the smooth surface, its limited intellect focused on a single, overwhelming need.

The first punch barely made a sound— its ethereal flesh against the stone producing nothing but a dull thud. The second was harder, driven by a frustration that had no outlet except violence. By the third, the figure's strikes were shaking dust from the cavern ceiling.

Again and again the creature launched its fist at the wall, each blow carried more force than the last as rage—pure, primal, and unthinking—consumed what little reason it could muster. Cracks began to spider across the crystal wall, each new fracture accompanied by tremors that threatened to bring down the entire chamber.

Then with a final earth-shaking impact accompanied by a growl of rage, the crystal gave way.

The figure dove into the opening without hesitation, its arm disappearing into the jagged crevice that had opened as it groped blindly for its prize. When its fingers finally closed around the second butterfly, its rage finally diminished if only slightly.

The rage was quick to return though when the creature found the butterfly to be stuck. Tugging at the crystalline relic the figure eventually managed to free it from the confines of the crystal. Instantly clutching it against their chest just like the last, as it burst into particles of light.

Flowing freely into the figure instead of orbiting the transformation was far more pronounced. As the light merged with the figure, feminine features emerged from the haze. Breathing in deeply the ethereal woman's movements became smoother, and more natural.

More importantly fragments of coherent though began to form within her mind, a single desire driving her first thoughts.

'crystal thing good? MUST FIND MORE.'

Feeling the tug at her soul her gaze drifted upwards and she stared out through the walls of stone as though she could see something. Rising to her feet she stumbled slightly before moving with uncontested purpose towards the sole exit out of the dark cavern.

She moved through the dark tunnels with steps each more deliberate then the last, guided by the deep compulsion to be whole again she ignored all the bodies littering the ground. Her primitive mind had room for only one priority.

Exiting the tunnel she came upon a pink portal that pulsed with a familiar energy, one her fragmented mind was briefly captivated by. As she stood transfixed by its swirling depths, a flickering ball of yellow light descended from the shadows—a pixie, wounded and desperate.

Its attack was pitiful, barely a spark against her incorporeal form, but it was enough to break her concentration. Boiling with rage and overcome by instinct her hand swept out almost casually, and the creature burst apart like a soap bubble, its remains raining down as glittering dust.

Grunting in mild annoyance her gaze returned to the portal as she stepped through without hesitation.

Outside the gate the sudden change in brightness temporarily blinded her as she desperately rubbed at her eyes whilst stumbling around.

When her vision finally cleared, she found herself in a landscape that stirred something deep within her fractured memories—blue grass swaying in the breeze, rainbow trees stretching toward a sky that seemed both foreign yet familiar.

But nostalgia was a luxury her broken mind didn't want. Already, she could feel the pull of the next fragment, distant but unmistakable. Without another glance at the impossible beauty around her, she began to run.

Her pace would have shamed any unawakened human, her form blurring across landscapes that shifted between the familiar and the fantastic. Mountains, rivers, twisted ecosystems—all became mere obstacles to overcome in her single-minded pursuit of wholeness.

Hours later, she arrived at another pink gate, this one smaller but no less important. A swarm of pixies circled it like guards, their collective light painting the area in shifting yellows and golds.

She didn't slow down.

The fragment beckoned, and she answered its call.

The Empress would be whole again.