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

[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?

[emberserker]

She's got a point, you know. You might be fed up with who you were down here and the whole concept of Purgatory, but do you honestly expect everyone else to be? We came down here for a reason, and if you no longer subscribe to that reason then you've got a whole level all to yourself you can march right back to.

I was far from a good person either, whether or not you blame whatever was getting into my head, and most of you lot don't even like me and think I always cause problems. But now look. The second you decide you're sick of being everyone's beloved saint and the person you're becoming isn't so bad after all, you do nothing but cause problems.

[schardynfreude]

[He stares mildly at Wolfsbane, blinking slowly.]

It's a wonder how you ever convinced yourself that you're reviled among this group, Sword aside.

[Apparently that's the only thing he finds worth commentating on out of that. But he does glance upward with a tuneless little hum, as though contemplating the idea of his history of causing problems, or maybe that he might go back to his shiny new level. who knows something something inner machinations of his mind are an enigma something]

[mementomoritz]

[Calling over her shoulder while wrist-deep in weird cocoon parts:] I like you!

[Anyway, while this is happening she's just gonna reach out to see if she can pick up the trail of... whatever this is, or anything else deeper down.]

[cancrymods]

Probing with her senses, Medic will gradually be able to tell that the cocoons are... alive. More alive than anything else in Purgatory. They're new, a fresh soul created within Purgatory itself, an impossibility. And their roots are tangled in the mechanisms of the Cogs – not too deeply or widely, just enough to have forced a stop entirely by accident.

Or maybe the Cogs stopped themselves, for fear of crushing this miraculous new presence.

Either way, they aren't the only thing Medic can detect. Something deep, deep, deep down at the very bottom of wherever this path leads...

Would she recognize Birdie's power, if she detected it? ]

[mementomoritz]

[The mechanisms of death stopping in refusal to take a life... what a strangely beautiful possibility.]

[She's only met Birdie briefly, but that sort of power is a little hard to forget.]

I think we have further to go. Someone might be waiting for us, but it's hard to say for sure.

[emberserker]

[Wolfsbane is taken aback, turning pink for some reason. She shakes it out of her head and looks down through the path.]

Very well. Let's get to it.

[And she hurls herself down in the direction Medic indicates.]

[cancrymods]

[ AND... THERE GOES WOLFSBANE...

This is definitely a silly question to ask but is everybody following? ]

[mementomoritz]

[You would need to use severe physical force to stop her.]

[daughterofthemark]

[Veil has outsourced her impulse control to Rei for the forseeable future and will go if and only if she goes.

So yes, probably.]