First Referenced:
The Desolate Guardians (Part 4)
Additional references:
The Fountain of Youth, 'I was told that everyone I'd served with in the military died shortly after I left.', Our Final Acts
The Crushing Fist, as first named by a deceased Sentient Flame during interrogation by Cristina Thompson with the Soul Reader (Book), is considered to be a series of apocalypic events that will result in the destruction of the human populated area of the multiverse. The Crushing Fist originated from the destruction of a vast number of realities by The Mad God, and is caused by the destroyed fragments of realities being drawn to the Outer Shield. The result of the accumulation of the Inter-reality dust, or ashes of these destroyed realities is to create a literal crushing force on the entire shielded structure, which causes earthquakes and dimensional rifts to The Raving In-betweens to appear between different parallel realities. The warping and spatial anomalies caused by this pressure is the cause of the loud metallic screeching noises heard on many worlds affected by disasters.
The Crushing Fist was reported by Higgins to Conn Thompson to have been brought on by the actions of Ward Shaw, a brigadier-general commonly known as The Sword, and later as The Double-Edged Sword. Higgins believed it to have been caused by The Sword going too far with his brutal tactics during the engagements in The Ink on Earth 44.
Subsequent observation of the damage to the Outer Shield by Ward Shaw after passing through the Shadow Sphere identified that the damage appeared to have been caused by the flailing of The Mad God, which seriously compromised the Outer Shield and triggered various readjustments of the positions of various universes within, along with the buildup of the pressure later known as The Crushing Fist.
The First World has attempted to put both Ward Shaw and a group of Brownshirts on trial, accusing them all of bringing The Crushing Fist down on the multiverse, however the subsequent escape of the Brownshirts from Teskoy Prison and their capture by The Black-eyed Army changed the nature of the trial, which was then held against Cristina Thompson, Conn Thompson, Ward Shaw and Vasiliev Blaku.
The Crushing Fist was not caused by the Shadow Entities as previously thought by The Council, rather the Shadow Entities were merely taking advantage of the breaches in the Outer Shield to devour the minds of helpless victims previously protected by the shield systems.
The Crushing Fist is described as such due to the way it is visualized in the structure of the multiverse. It initially appeared as five lines of crushed bubbles of universes within the structure, which gave it the appearance of a hand holding, and crushing a globe. Even with the destruction of The First World, the compression continued to increase, resulting in distortion and damage to many universes within the Outer Shield.
Traits:
Compressive force generated from the destroyed remnants of many realities pressing on the Outer Shield. Able to be described in the form of action figures, which were sold on The First World. When depicted in a 3D model of the multiverse, appears as five lines of damaged universes within the sphere of the outer shield, which exists around many universes which originally cushioned The First World and its golden Inner Shield.