terminus

[cancrymods]

the final layer

Down, down into the darkness you go. It's not the first time you've made such a blind descent... though some instinct beyond any kind of conscious thought tells you that it will be the last. There's no movement down here. No motion. The air is so still that as you descent, it feels like stepping into a wall of ice as you leave behind the heat of the Wrath Layer and continue into the bitter cold of... Oh. This is the end, isn't it? The machine that sits at the bottom of Purgatory is incomprehensible. The sheer scale of its size make it impossible to imagine that it could ever have been built by anyone – and yet, the sheer complexity of its design simultaneously has you reeling from the idea that it could have come into being without some intent. Wherever you look, frozen gears interlock in a labyrinthine network that soars high into the space above your heads and down into the inky depths below. All at once you remember what you had been told so long ago. Not even a god could withstand this. It's still here. So still that it feels obscene to move or to make any noise. The air is at once thin and heavy - like stealing a breath from the hanging jaw of a skull. You've reached the Cogs of Renewal. Investigate . . . ?

Comments

[daughterofthemark]

Ailing, or perhaps... upset, somehow?

[Look, she doesn't know. She would just be chilling and waiting for you guys to handle this if she wasn't following Rei.]

[schardynfreude]

Mm, perhaps, but it feels quite like the sensation of getting run through with our little Birdie's terrible-to-behold sword. Perhaps somehow she took part of the Cogs and fashioned it into a blade?

[We're back to holding the blind man's hand okay he will need assistance in getting down. He's scowling the whole of the way because he does not like this feeling.]

Where is she, anyway? If anyone's to help us reshape the whole of Purgatory, she would be the one whose assistance we need most. Given her being the Authority of Purgatory.

[cancrymods]

. . . You're right.

[ That makes Rei pause in her mascot platforming to straighten up and look back up at the spot they'd just left behind. Her brow furrows. ]

I thought... maybe when we arrived she'd be waiting for us. But...

[ And her gaze goes back into the deep dark below. ]

... is she waiting at the very bottom?

[mementomoritz]

[Medic has a very high tolerance for discomfort, but even she's walking like a cat with tape stuck to its' paws whenever she has to stand on these gears- light, quick hops, trying to touch the ground as little as possible.]

It would explain why her sword can affect memories! Although...

[A thought seems to occur to her.]

You managed to recover your memories, didn't you? [Pointing at Chirardyn.] I wonder if that means the effect of the gears themselves can also be reversed? Or maybe they're much stronger, here at the source...

[emberserker]

We'll have to find out from that demon. If she's waiting for us at the bottom, she certainly hasn't done anything to fix the Cogs... though perhaps she needs us for that.

[schardynfreude]

Don't call her that. [Snapped with a nasty little growl.] She's even more trapped here than we are. And while, yes, my memories recovered, I've little doubt that if she had managed to render a killing blow--forgive the term--that I would not have recovered anything upon reconstitution.

[cancrymods]

[ It's at this point in the conversation that you all see... something just a little further down. A splash of light and colour against the darkness of the Cogs.

Something... not living, necessarily. But certainly something new. ]

[mementomoritz]

[Is Medic immediately making a beeline for the New Thing?]

[Yes, of course she is. It's not even a question.]

[cancrymods]

[ Attagirl, Medic.

The lavender colour strikes your eyes first. It takes a moment to realize that it's because it's the exact hue of spilt pneuma, but much brighter and lighter. It winds its way around a cluster of Cogs, tangled around the mechanisms tight and growing deeper and deeper into the complexities. You think that it might be a web, but then you follow it down and see something that jars surprise through you.

Old cocoons. Split open and left behind, as if a butterfly had broken free and taken flight. ]

[mementomoritz]

Oh wow-

[Yeah, she's definitely taking a sample of that. ...With gloves and sterile tools, all of which she's going to carefully bag up alongside the sample afterwards, because at least she's responsibly irresponsible.]

[Is there anything else around here that stands out, or is the signal that they're following deeper down?]

[emberserker]

What in the world is that?

[Wolfsbane cautiously pokes a cocoon with the tip of her halberd, and then, like it's an afterthought, hacks away some of the webbing gumming up the Cogs.]

Something left behind when the Authority split off into Rei and Birdie would be one idea, something a Revenant made another... It's butterflies all the way down in this place, and they always mean something.

[schardynfreude]

Many who have tried to come all this way, simply to fail to pass on? Others, like us, who have come before to fix it?

[cancrymods]

[ This seemed to be the signal you were following, though tendrils of it certainly sink further down into the Cogs. And now that you're so close, doesn't it feel...

Familiar? ]

[mementomoritz]

[D... does it?]

[Familiar like what? Or, more accurately...]

[Like who?]

[cancrymods]

[ Come on, Medic. ]

[cancrymods]

[ Surely by now you can guess without being told. ]

[cancrymods]

[ Right? ]

[mementomoritz]

[Just looking over at Rei.]

You started getting memories back from the butterflies when we touched them, right? If this is where it started, then maybe... [Medic looks back and forth between Rei and the webbing a couple times, and then slowly peels off one of her gloves to touch the cocoon with her bare hands.]

[Sometimes you need to handle hazardous materials for science.]

[cancrymods]

[ Medic feels...

...

Nothing.

Whatever might have been here before is already gone. ]

[schardynfreude]

[Ardyn scowls at this stopover.] This isn't exactly pleasant. These pesky butterflies, all the memories that may or may not be hers or whoever she once cared about, whatever's caused the Cogs to stop, does any of it matter?

[cancrymods]

... Mm. It matters.

[ Rei says that quietly, more to herself than the others. Her head is bowed a little and she's not quite looking at any of them. ]

It matters to me. If there was something before all this and before I knew all of this... and if it has something to do with the Cogs, then I want to know. If I don't know what I did, I can't atone for my sin.

[schardynfreude]

[A scoff.] Atonement. What nonsense. When we're done, there won't be any need for such a thing.

[daughterofthemark]

I believe each of us can decide that for ourselves.

[rude!]

[mementomoritz]

Also, figuring out how the Cogs broke would be helpful! [And there's Medic with the practical(?) perspective.]

[cancrymods]

Maybe I don't need to. But I want to. If I did something wrong, I wouldn't want to move on without making sure I'd done everything I could to make it right.

[ She gives Ardyn a thin smile. ]

You can't argue with that, can you?