descent

[cancrymods]

growing heavy for the vintage

Like flakes of snow, the days spent in the Sloth Layer slowly but surely begin piling up. Life here is quiet and easy, even with the anxiety that comes with needing to move onto the next layer. But as the days drag out, so do the mysteries at play here – with the gradual uncovering of the odd doppelgangers and the seeming lack of any way to proceed to the next layer, it leaves the Executors at a loss for what to do. Until one day, everything changes. It comes entirely without warning – the ground lurches under everyone's feet in a sickeningly familiar way as a brief but violent earthquake rattles through the town. Then all of you feel it; a snapping sensation deep from the very foundations of Purgatory followed by the most cataclysmic impact any of you have experienced in your lives – or unlives. Snow explodes up from the ground, houses creak and lurch and the whole layer seems as though it might shatter apart under your feet. It seems like it's going to last forever. Then, finally, it stops. The silence that follows is even more pronounced in comparison to the hell-rattling noise from before, but as some semblance of calm starts to return, you realize several things. First is how eerily quiet the town is. Surely after all that, you'd hear a Specter or two... but there's nothing. Secondly – a splash of something wet strikes your cheek. Then again. Until it becomes clear that the weather has taken a sudden drastic turn and in place of the gentle snowfall from before, the heavens have opened with a torrential rainfall. Why? Possibly because of the steadily growing heat you suddenly feel burning up through the foundation of the layer and radiating out through the town. Will you investigate?

Comments

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[cancrymods]

[ Separated as they are, it's hard to keep track of the group. Wolfsbane is the first to vanish into the steam, then Medic and Mantle. And with a powerful beat of her wings, Galea ferries the rest of the Executors into the unknown as well. With no way of knowing what they're about to face, the Executors descend...






into the mouth of madness. ]

[cancrymods]

[ Not too far down, the steam dissipates, clearing your lungs but leaving your vision empty of anything save strange, cavernous shapes cast in shadows by the light bleeding up from the Layer below. The heat is close to unbearable, even for the Executors with an affinity for this sort of environment, wringing sweat out of your pores and drying your voice to a croak. But still, you proceed.

You smell the smoke first.

It rushes up like a wall of cloud cover and with no way to slow yourself, you barrel through it. It smells rotten and sweet, like singed hair and summer roses and you cough and choke on it as you continue your seemingly endless descent. No buildings or structures swim into your vision as you come closer to the Wrath Layer of Purgatory and it becomes clear why when you finally make landfall and feel the crunch of hard, barren earth under your feet.

Whatever might have made up this layer before... nothing is left.

Welcome to Ira, the Wrath Layer of Purgatory. ]

[daughterofthemark]

[................]

Perhaps we should ascend again.

[swordofajerk]

[Internally, Sword agrees. What the fuck.]

This is...

[Y i k e s]

[crypddyd]

[Lion lands with a thud, panting already in his heavy furs and armor, hair even greasier looking than normal thanks to the sweat. He peers around, taking in the landscape.

And starts to smile]

Ah. Finally.

[there's a familiar manic tone to his words, and he tears off his cloak, letting it desolve in black sparkly flakes, before starting to walk with very clear purpose. Where? Who knows! Sure as fuck not him!]

[emberserker]

What -- where in Purgatory are you going, Lion? Come on now!

[Wolfsbane doesn't look bothered by the heat, but she stalks off after him, grumbling.]

[mementomoritz]

Oh, wow... [Medic lands with a soft thump, looking around with her usual endless fascination as she hurries on after Lion and Wolfsbane.]

[Mantle's tendrils reach out as she walks, lightly and quickly prodding and examining things as she passes. One even scoops up a teaspoon of the barren soil and deposits it in a little plastic baggie for later analysis, which then vanishes into the depths of Medic's many pockets- the contents of which are always a mildly alarming mystery.]

[Of course, Medic herself isn't slacking on the analysis department, either- she's keeping her senses extended the whole time, partially to understand this place better, and partially to warn the others if anything hostile is coming towards them.]

[If there's anything still out there at all...]

[crypddyd]

[He calls back to Wolfsbane as he goes, his breastplate joining his cape in dissolving cuz fuuuuck it's hot]

Is it not obvious? We have reached the End. The Eternal Flames have scorched away everything, and the gears scream with steam- our purpose lies ahead and I will be done with it!

[So someone might be taking what he remembers of the Church doctrines, Faerghus' self punishing culture and what he knows of Purgatory into one big mental soup]

[daughterofthemark]

You might at least wait until we've determined what direction is "ahead!"

[WHY THIIIIIIIIIS]

[emberserker]

We don't even know where whatever Revenant blasted this place to glass is! We ought to find it before any of this wandering off.

[grumble mutter following anyway]

[mementomoritz]

Oh. [Medic slows slightly, eyes widening a little as her sensory powers brush up against something.]

I think maybe I do know where... well, I guess I don't know if it did all this, but I can feel something that's... asleep?

[Slowly, she reaches out with one hand and points.]

[Straight down.]

I think if we want to find it, we didn't go down far enough.

[daughterofthemark]

...does anyone have a shovel?

[It's possible!]

[crypddyd]

[Okay that's enough to make him stop his wandering and rambling]

... hm. The Gears perhaps?

[He pokes the ground with his lance]

[mementomoritz]

Maybe? Acedia was Sloth, so if there was supposed to be one layer left, then this... [She gestures around them.] ...should be Wrath.

But I can't sense anything up here! Maybe whatever stopped the Cogs was destructive enough to damage the layer right above it, too?

...Or maybe something was very, very angry.

[emberserker]

If Acedia didn't even have an Underside -- or perhaps if it

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If Acedia didn't even have an Underside -- or perhaps if it <idid,</i> before all this destruction happened and we skipped directly to this place. It's not as if we could tell the difference. Look at this mess.

[mementomoritz]

It feels like there definitely used to be something here, but I don't know what.

[If this used to be part of the Acedia Underside or the Ira layer or both, it's impossible to tell now- everything's just gone, and all the wreckage looks the same.]

Although... [She frowns thoughtfully.] If whatever caused this happened that long ago, what broke open the way to Acedia?

[The Cogs have been broken for a while now, after all.]

Was something building up in here all this time, and it couldn't be contained any longer? [She's imagining something like toxic gas, but more metaphysical possibilities aren't exactly out of the question.] Or did something change down here, today?

[daughterofthemark]

Perhaps some calamity was set in motion long ago, surviving past its creators' demise, and today it finally reached its activation.

[That's an oddly specific idea, Veil.]

[mementomoritz]

[Cheerfully:] That's an oddly specific idea, Veil!

But it's a pretty solid potential hypothesis, considering the information we have so far-

[She breaks off midsentence, blinking briefly in surprise as she notices something.] No, wait- part of this is newer.

It feels... almost like Acedia? All the newer parts do, definitely. But none of the older ones, they feel like something else.

[She steeples her hands in front of her face, putting her thoughts in order as she tries to piece together the timeline.]

So whatever happened down here happened a while ago, a really long time, and whatever it was... incinerated the Wrath layer. And even after the actual event, something kept building up until it finally hit the Acedia underside- and when the underside broke from it, that cracked open the way down here.

[cancrymods]

[ So hey, is Medic still reaching out with her sensory powers?

Just curious. Don't worry about it. ]

[mementomoritz]

[In the full knowledge that you may be about to vaporize my entire ass:]

[Yes.]

[cancrymods]

[ Great! Let me paint a little word picture for you.

When reaching out with her sensory powers, Medic usually gets a lot of pings due to how populated Purgatory is. The hard part is sifting through all that noise and working out what the relevant information is. This time, though, there's just... nothing. It's like standing at a doorway whose other side is completely concealed by pitch black darkness. By reaching out with her powers, Medic is doing the equivalent of reaching her hand into that pure, perfect darkness.

And when she does, something seizes her hand.

Clamping down on Medic's sensory powers and refusing to let her withdraw them. ]

[mementomoritz]

Um!

[Medic breaks off in the middle of theorizing about metaphysical layer structures- more muttering to herself as she tries to sort out her thoughts than anything else- when she feels herself get grabbed.]

[In the tone of someone not entirely sure if they're about to get in trouble for what they're admitting:] So I think something noticed me? Or felt me trying to notice them-

[When you're grabbed out of nowhere, the instinctive response is usually to jerk back, try to pull away. Because something might be dangerous, might be trying to hurt you.]

[Except...]

[It isn't Medic's instinct. She doesn't flinch back from potential dangers, because to her, they usually aren't. On that instinctive, visceral level, she just never quite learned.]

[And when someone takes your hand, even if it's strange, doesn't it mean they're reaching out?]

-hello, can you understand me? Are you out there?

[So instead of trying to pull away, she pushes herself, straining at her limits to try and flare her sensory powers wider.]

[She felt you, stranger in the doorway. Can you feel her?]

[cancrymods]

[ Medic senses... nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, but...

She can tell as she makes her way through that something was here before that has been blasted into nothingness by now. The haze of smoke and the acrid leftover stench of burning hangs thick in the air, so it's not too hard to guess why everything is gone. There are no structures left that you can make out – just blasted ranges of rock, mountain and a smooth, glittery mineral that isn't quite like glass or obsidian.

There are no Spectres or Revenants here that you can sense, but...

Deep under the crust of the blasted earth, there is something. You can pick up much about it, almost as if it's slumbering. ]

[mementomoritz]

[Asleep? Well shit, maybe this is still Sloth after all.]

[Is it at all possible to tell how recent any of this feels? Either from her powers or just by good old-fashioned observation. There's smoke, but is anything still on fire? Or does it seem more like something that all burnt out a long, long time ago.]

[cancrymods]

[ It's from a very long time ago. Probably from after the Cogs stopped working and long, long before the Executors ever even arrived in Purgatory, let alone awakened. There's a sense of the damage being not just old but almost forgotten, consecrated in stone and rock for so long that it has ceased to be damage – simply the way things are. And yet, the heat continues to build and something continues to burn.

And yet... there is something new here. You can't exactly describe it, but... it's almost as though the spiritual equivalent of rubble is scattered all about – fragments from the Sloth Underside, broken apart and collapsed into the Wrath Layer, as if the flames and hate down here are rotting the very foundations of Purgatory. ]