Under the cold, merciless gaze of the alien sky a lonely figure walked through a desolate palace.
When looking at the building from afar one could see that it was an incomprehensibly gigantic complex of multiple tall and vertical segments interconnected with a web of bridges and viaducts.
But if one were to look closer they would discover that there was something horribly wrong with this structure. While generally resembling a cohesive building, it was a structural nightmare. The pristine white walls, spires and arches, were twisting into a rough idea of what a palace was supposed to look like, as if a distant memory, warped and distorted by some utterly deranged mind, was cast into reality.
And it had to have been cast from some unknown, indestructible material, as even though the supports and structural parts were deformed to the point that it should have long collapsed, the structure miraculously still stood in this land.
In fact it's hard to call the place where the palace stood a land at all. Just beyond the outer walls surrounding the complex, a colossal wall of cloud the color of blood and rust swirled with unimaginable speeds. The storm stretched far into the sky above, far enough for it to curve out of view before one's eyes could meet the upper edge of the clouds.
From inside the ochre gas, flashes of muted lightning lit up the white walls of the palace with an ominous red glow. Below where one would expect the storm to meet solid ground was nothing at all, the storm continued lower into the crimson abyss below along with the palace's spiraling towers, where this hellscape's real foundation may have hidden.
The palace stood in the only place in such a storm that permitted any stillness: the eye. Even there the wind never truly stopped, red dust spilling over the facades, but against the obliterating might of the storm outside, such weather passed as calm.
It encircled the whole complex from every side, leaving up to be the only direction in which one could see clearly, the clouds parted just enough to leave a funnel of cleared air, palling as it reached impossibly high, where stars shone through what was left of the sky.
The palace had no inhabitants, its bridges and terraces engulfed in deathly stillness omitting the howling winds, with no movement to be seen everywhere except the lonely figure marching unhurriedly through the empty hallways.
It was dressed in an identically white as the walls, multilayered robe nagged at by the winds, adorned with shiny, golden ornaments similarly twisting and swirling as the building's architecture and its storm outside. The face of the figure was obscured by a hood and crowned with a golden headpiece, its hands hidden under the long sleeves of the robe.
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After traversing the ivory labyrinth, and covering a distance unimaginably long without stopping once, watching as the wind further died down along the journey, the figure finally arrived at the gate of the complex's central, and biggest tower.
Inside was a single opulent hall filling the entire inner space of the building, filled with masterfully crafted marble sculptures along its high walls, and unlike the white monotonous hallways of the rest of the palace that were only illuminated by scarce windows letting the starlight and lightning in, this room was shining with golden accessories, and abstract metal shapes.
Aqueducts of glowing molten gold flowed from the very top of the hall to its bottom where the liquid metal pooled into a reservoir. Along the way it passed through a series of metal wheels and rings, that in turn spun gears, spreading through the whole hall making it look like the inside of some celestial clockwork mechanism.
At the center of the artificial lake of molten metal rose a small island, on which a single tree of pale white bark and golden leaves grew. Underneath the shade of its branches a circular table with eleven seats, cut from lusterless black obsidian stood, contrasting sharply against the nine already sitting there figures, similarly dressed as the one that just arrived in the hall.
After the figure passed through the tall doors of the hall it walked down the stairs leading to the lake's shore in a still unhurried step, not paying attention to the ones already waiting for it. The reservoir's shore was actually a massive sculpture in and of itself too, depicting a gigantic snake with gilded scales, coiling around the hall.
But where one would expect to find the snake's head, the statue was broken off with jagged pieces of rock sticking out, the only proof in the whole palace that the white stone was indeed not indestructible. The figure crossed the body of the snake and took a step directly into the molten gold.
But instead of sinking, its foot stepped onto the metal as if it was solid. It continued on its way walking across the lake, leaving only small ripples spreading through the otherwise flat surface.
When the figure finally approached the table, one of the other participants raised their head slightly and an almost metallic like voice came from behind the hood.
"Do you have to always take the pedestrian route and be late by a few months each time we want to have a meeting?"
The newly arrived figure took its seat on the opposite side of the speaker, a similarly eerie voice responded.
"Wheres the fun in instantly appearing at the doorstep? It's about the journey sister, it's all about the journey."
Slowly the rest of the beings around the table raised their heads as if waking up, the tallest of them and most speckled in gold ornaments was the one to take voice.
"Now that we're all here, we need to discuss what's to come next. After seventeen long years of waiting, it is time for our lost sibling to return to us.”