The Chaos Sea was not an empty vacuum. It was a churning violent ocean of raw paradox and unformatted concepts.

Navigating it was like trying to sail a wooden raft through a hurricane of liquid razor blades.

Arthur Sterling stood at the Ebon Helm with his hands gripped tightly around the obsidian wheel.

His dark coat whipped wildly around him despite the closed windows of the bridge. The sheer conceptual friction of the Ark pushing through the Primordial Chaos was bleeding into the room.

"Report!" Arthur barked as his eyes locked on the chaotic swirls of non Euclidean colors outside the viewport.

"The structural integrity is holding at eighty percent." Sylvia Thorne called out from the primary engineering console.

The Arch Mage was sweating profusely. Her pristine silver hair clung to her forehead as she rapidly fed complex magical equations into the ship grid.

"But we are hitting a massive weather anomaly dead ahead."

"It is a Time Storm." Kaelith projected. Her six crystalline spider limbs weaved a frantic barrier over the navigation controls.

"It does not rain water. It rains accelerated entropy. If it hits the hull, the Ark will age ten billion years in a single microsecond."

Arthur sneered. "We don’t have the budget to replace the paint job. Morwenna! Reroute the abyssal engines. Push us through it!"

"With pleasure!" Morwenna roared from the lower deck access terminal.

The Demon Empress had her hands plunged directly into a pool of highly concentrated dark matter. Her abyssal tattoos blazed with violent gold light.

She fueled the thrusters with pure unadulterated destruction.

The Ebon Citadel lurched forward. The massive engines at the base of the floating continent flared with a pitch black exhaust.

It literally erased the space behind them and propelled the Ark forward at impossible speeds.

"Sizzle! Sizzle!"

Massive droplets of glowing gray rain slammed against the Ark outer shields.

Wherever the Time touched, the reality barrier rusted and decayed instantly.

[System Warning: Defensive arrays compromised.]

[Auto spending 1,000,000 Points per second for immediate temporal reversal.]

Arthur watched his capital bleed and his jaw tightened. "Lyra, Aurelia. We have guests. Get them off my lawn."

The Hunter Fleet hadn’t given up. The massive planetary sized anomalies were swimming through the Time Storm effortlessly.

Their anti matter biology was entirely immune to the aging effects.

They were closing the distance. Their gaping fleshy maws opened to bite chunks out of the Ark shields.

"Our front-line cannons are loaded and ready, Emperor." Aurelia reported.

The fallen Valkyrie stood at the tactical holomap with her dark radiant spear glowing. She moved her hands across the display and locked onto the massive horrors.

"I have got the internal security tight. Nothing breaches the hull without getting a dagger in the eye." Lyra added.

Her rogue instincts were perfectly suited for monitoring the micro fractures in their reality bubble.

"Fire." Arthur commanded.

"KRAA-THOOM!"

The underbelly of the Ebon Citadel lit up. Hundreds of massive pitch black cannons powered by the Absolute Order energy Arthur had harvested from the Celestial Court unleashed a synchronized barrage.

The beams didn’t explode when they hit the Hunter Fleet. They enforced physics.

"SQUELCH!"

A colossal star eating leviathan was struck dead center.

The moment the Absolute Order beam touched its chaotic flesh, the beast was violently forced to obey standard gravity and mass.

Its body instantly collapsed in on itself. It crushed its own internal organs into a microscopic singularity before winking out of existence.

"Direct hits." Aurelia stated coldly. "Three dozen hostiles erased. But there are thousands more. We cannot win a war of attrition in this sector."

Arthur knew she was right. He couldn’t just sail blindly into the abyss. He needed a map and he needed a port to resupply.

"Kaelith." Arthur said as he turned to the Weaver. "Find me a rock. Anything stable out there."

Kaelith white pupil less eyes closed. Her ethereal limbs stopped moving for a fraction of a second.

She sent out a massive hyper refined pulse of spatial awareness into the dark ocean.

’Authur.’ She projected. Her mental voice was laced with a sudden tense urgency. ’I have detected a localized frequency.’

’It is massive. A stable non Euclidean floating continent perfectly anchored against the Chaos currents.’

"A faction?" Arthur asked.

’It is known as the Court of Madness.’ Kaelith explained. ’It is a neutral gathering ground. A marketplace for lesser Outer Gods, Eldritch merchants and rogue entities.’

’It is highly dangerous. The laws of physics there are entirely dictated by the Mad King.’

Arthur’s predatory smile returned. A marketplace. Finally something he understood perfectly.

"Set a course." Arthur ordered and sharply turned the Ebon Helm. The massive multiverse shifted and banked heavily through the chaotic void.

"Emperor." Sylvia warned and stepped away from her console. "If it is a gathering ground for Outer Gods, driving our entire realm up to their front door is tantamount to ringing a dinner bell. They might swarm the Ark."

"I know." Arthur chuckled. His dark coat settled around him as the Citadel locked onto the new coordinates.

"I am not bringing the ship inside. We will park in the asteroid field just outside their sensor range. Keep the engine running and the shields up."

"You intend to board the continent alone?" Aurelia asked with her brow furrowing with concern.

"I am not going alone." Arthur said and stepped down from the dais. He pointed at Lyra and Kaelith.

"You two are with me. Lyra, you are stealth and recon. Kaelith, you are the local guide. We are going to walk into this Court of Madness, get a map of the Primordial Chaos and mug the locals."

Lyra swallowed hard. She tossed a dagger in the air and caught it. "Mugging Gods in their own backyard. Sounds like my kind of Tuesday."

"Keep the house clean while I am out." Arthur told Sylvia, Aurelia and Morwenna.

He didn’t wait for their affirmations. He stepped toward the exit. His Ebonheart Sword dissolved into a dark tattoo on his wrist.

It was time to do some networking.