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cancry2023-01-15 05:24 pm
cancrymods) wrote in cancry2023-01-15 05:24 pm
descent
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? | |
cw: abuse backstory
...
He mulls over that for a second before standing back up, and turning to Ardyn. ]
...I don't know if I can yet, either. And not just the memories here. There are... so many people who continued to live on through me and my memories long after they passed. Entire generations of the very same people who embraced me as guardian and kin, people whose names were only remembered by centuries old gravestones that aren't even there anymore. The songs my best friend wrote and then taught to me so that she could live in my playing will be gone as well... and it's hard. I'm intent on seeing the Cogs, to stand with Rei, but I don't know yet if I'm ready to go through them myself. It's very possible I might just get cold feet and run back up here to you as fast as I can. But I...
[ He looks down at the ground, considering his words again before looking back up. ]
I want to believe... that not everything will be gone. That it did matter.
[ His hand subconsciously goes to his earring, knuckles brushing against warm, black crystal as he continues. ]
My eldest sister Cerberus told me once... that when our parents were creating us our father took special care with our hearts. Unbreakable crystals made of mana and fire that he insisted were perfect replications of a man's soul. I don't know if he actually succeeded, he himself was far from a man after all... though perhaps the fact that I ended up here at all is proof enough. But what I do know is that those crystals always remained when we died and that they remembered. I'd find them sometimes in that long dead world and while the memories had often faded, the emotions would surge forth in a rush at mere contact - like they were permanently burned into the very core.
And it was almost always pain. So much pain... Agony at being unable to die without being murdered, grief over those of us we had lost when man still roamed that place and feared what they didn't understand, despair over the loss of what we once had before our all powerful Goddess mother tired of watching her children die and enacted revenge on the rest of the world. My siblings suffered for thousands of years and you couldn't separate them from those feelings even when the bulk of their memories and identities were lost to time.
...I told you once, a long time ago now, that the reason I left my home world wasn't a happy one. The state of that place was only one of the reasons; Cerberus was exiled because of me, lost to a place where I could not follow her, and I was left alone with my other sister Chimera. She too was hurting, but dealt with her pain by taking it out on me. She forced me into promising to never leave her, no matter what she did to me. And I agreed, because I was but a child and she had successfully convinced me she was now the only one who loved me, the only one who could love me.
Two thousand years. Like you, that number unfortunately holds an awful significance to me as well. That's how long it took for me to finally escape that place. Two thousand years spent trapped and confined to the ruins we made into our den, by a sister who was all I had left... where being beaten and berated constantly was the only life I really knew. So much of that time is blacked out in my mind in a way that isn't just the memories being missing, but an attempt to protect my sanity. She treated me not like family but like a piece of property she could do whatever she wanted with... and I just accepted that's the only kind of "love" I deserved. It was only because of that Goddess finally acting like a mother to me for once in my long life that I was able to see things were different in other worlds, and I took my escape to try and find Cerberus or at least something better.
[ He pulls his hand away from his earring and stares at it, the warmth lingering on his finger tips. ]
I've wondered a few times now what sort of emotions are left behind in my crystal now - the one in the world of the living, the only physical proof I ever existed. After I left Chimera spent millennia trying to find me, eventually succeeding in her hunt. She took so much from me and tried to destroy everything important to me as punishment for abandoning her... and eventually even pulled herself from the grips of death to finally kill me with her own hands.
[ ...Had that been Chimera, actually? It suddenly occurs to him that there's a chance it might not have been, but merely someone wearing her face and crystal... but he can't be sure. And he'll never know now, so in the end it doesn't really matter. ]
You'd think then that perhaps the most obvious emotion I left behind would be anguish and suffering like my brethren, or maybe perhaps even wrath not too dissimilar to yours.
But I think... it has to be full of love.
The love I had for my first love, for the Beastials, for my best friend, for my ex-wife, for my child... for that whole world. And the love that they gave me in return... so, so much of it...
When I awoke here those were all the memories I regained first. The painful memories came eventually as well, sometimes sandwiched in between those happier ones, but for the most part it was the love that came back first, stronger than anything else.
And I want... I want to believe there's a reason for that. That there's a reason the crystals of my kin remember such strong feelings even as everything else fades. I want to believe that there was a truth to what my father said - that he did somehow make a perfect replica of a soul, and that this isn't just a feature unique to us beastly automatons. I know nothing is for certain but I don't want to believe that we're truly wiped completely clean - I want to hope that some things can never be fully erased, burned into our very essence like ink stains that can never be fully wiped away.
Perhaps I am just foolish... I know I am uniquely privileged. Even though it was all taken from me in the end, I still had a happy life after all the pain I went through to get there. I had that chance to be loved and live with the ones I love and watch them grow old and die many times over... a chance others don't always get. And I don't begrudge you for wanting to hold onto what we have now nor do I want to convince you against doing so - as I said, I don't even know if I'm ready to move on yet... if I'm ready to leave this behind.
[ He then puts his hand over his chest, where a human heart would be if he had one ]
But I want to believe that even when I do... this is what's seared into me forever. The essence of Orthrus the Father of Beasts, of Achilles the Executor... of me. I will remember being loved. By a world that gave me a better life, and by two men called Chiron and Phoenix who stayed at my side. The names will fade but that warmth won't, and it'll comfort my reincarnations through whatever might come their way... so that the next time another Chimera tries to convince them no one can ever love them, they'll know that's not true. No one else needs to remember... my soul just needs to, and that'll be enough for me.
...I know I sound naive. But that's... that's what I feel. What I hope for. I want to believe in my crystal soul... in my heart.
It will always matter to me. It must. It has to.
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[Normally this is a sneer saved for when Veil says something particularly naive.]
Only the dead and the gods above have ever remembered me, and even they wish they could erase that memory. Would I care to hope for the memory of me, my self, this, of love, to carry on in my present self's absence?
...A child's wish. To be dashed upon the rocks of time. I have no crystal to retain my emotions or essence or what have you. None but the one that damned me in the first place. I very much doubt a soul would remember anything at all.
And if it does. [He grips at his coat, vest, shirt, where a heart would likewise beat if it ever did so.] And if it does, then I've a soul that would move in pain and fear and anger, restless for the next time it is made an unwitting sacrifice of, the next time it is skewered and left to rot. One that perhaps might remember love, and then be unable to find it, wonder where it went? I cannot claim to understand the nature of the soul.
So you see? [A sad splay of his arms.] I have no path to winning in either event. Perhaps if you carry on with a memory of the thing that was Chiron, perhaps that would be enough.
Perhaps that would be enough for you.
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It wasn't like he hadn't expected this response. He'd said himself that what dominated his siblings' remains were all those negative feelings. He's sure Chimera's crystal still pulses with rage and jealousy, that Hydra's is still weighed down with an immeasurable grief and depression, that Cerberus... well, he'll never know what happened to Cerberus. Maybe she regrets ever taking him in now. Who knows. But of course if this was how things were for them then if human souls truly worked the same that's also certainly the way it'd be for Ardyn. He knew this could be the response, but he chose to speak his feelings anyway, to bear his heart.
That doesn't mean it doesn't still hurt though. It hurts a lot. ]
...I'm sorry.
[ For the terrible circumstances that brought them here. For not siding with him like Phoenix did. For having been more fortunate in the end that he could say any of that and mean it. For being a naive fool. For saying anything at all.
This whole conversation has been reminiscent of his last time speaking to Odysseus, but in this moment in particular he feels the most reminded of her. Reminded of the moment where he realized it was over, that nothing he could say would be the right thing to say to her.
...It's the same now, isn't it? There's things he could say, wishes he could make... but what good would they do? What good would it do now to wish they'd met while alive, to wish he could have stopped what happened, given him better, give him what he actually deserved instead of such a cruel hand... but he can't. Even if any of it were possible it makes him the person he is now, the same person he doesn't want to lose. So he doesn't speak it, lest he make matters worse. ]
Again, I don't begrudge you. I... understand. I truly want the best for you - even if I don't know what that might be - I want there to be some way for you to be happy and for no one else to suffer or become a Revenant unable to move on. I wish I could say whatever it is that you want me to say right now, agree to stay here with you forever if that's what it is...
...But I can't, Ardyn. I just can't.
[ He's going to move on at some point, even if he's a little unsure of it now. He knows he will. ]