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Priscilla     Kushiko decides that braving to the far shore is better than fighting against the current and trying to swim back, in the metaphorical, but slightly literal sense. Eryl is taken along for the ride, and as the malevolent well of inescapable gravity takes hold of the both of them, sadly, Staren is too, despite his best efforts to do exactly the opposite pull Kushiko out of the roiling, singing, splashing, fractal quicksand in space. Once he crosses that event horizon, there is no turning back, as surely was there was no chance of changing heading when the Painted World of Ariamis had first grabbed them. Reiji and Xiaomu follow from high above. Tomoe rushes in to reach her friend. Flint swings down with his Divine token of Andre's work at the fore, swinging wildly at that dark and thorny proverb ahead of him. Seft is left to settle for her most powerful Erchius crystal (???) before the opportunity closes, as surely as Enark barely has time to prepare his buffs, and shortly thereafter, the entire team of Elites, dense in number and veteran as they are, are dragged into that howling torrent of Dark.

    It's not the singing they hear on the other side. At least, not the singing by itself. As the darkness closes completely around them, it isn't a floating void that spreads out before them, nor a drowning river that rushes in around them. The world beyond is not truly shadows nor void nor water nor miasma. It is black and it is cold and it is heavy and it is dense and it is chaotic and it is lost and it is without direction or time or sense or meaning of any kind. It is blackness only defined by the even deeper blackness that swirls throughout it, invisible to the eye and inaudible to the ear, undetectable by every means, but there all the same, and one /knows/ they are there.

    They are this place and this place is them. This world is the things that move and swirl through it in this turbulent, howling, ringing, disorienting, drowning dirge of inescapable black chaos. This world is little shapes. This world is moving things. This world is millions of entities that blend together into a impossible, infinite, surging tide that erases all distinction between where one tiny being ends and where the next begins; metaphysical neutronium; spiritual singularities, and just as dense and dark and nonsensical and impenetrable and dead as their comparison's sake.

    They are/the world is insects. It is an impossibly dense swarm of them flying through every square centimeter of air, flitting through corners of vision and buzzing violently past the ear. They don't exist, because nothing exists here, but they are devouring locusts, they are ravenous beetles, they are murderous wasps; anything and everything that kills and consumes and lays waste to everything in its path through sheer numbers and voracious primal instinct. It's the best way the mind can comprehend it. Drowning in a black hole of devouring insects. The world is a cannibalistic swarm of infinite, insatiable, incomprehensible hunger.
Priscilla     It's not the only thing they/the world are/is. Though insects are the strongest impression, there are other layers, other flavours, other pitches and tenors woven throughout, different for each witness of this ineffable nightmare, playing on especially strong experiences and associations in the mind. The insects are tiny carnivorous fish of the tropics, crushing into an impenetrable thrashing ball of bloodthirsty teeth, where they flay flesh from bone and strip cattle into skeletons in seconds. The insects are the crackling, static-filled scream of the cosmic wind, hateful and indifferent radiation and forgotten particles of an ancient planet's creation left drifting through the void at hypervelocity, scorching and peeling and blasting away the skin. The insects are exploding fragments of glass and an uncountable swarm of flying bullets, thrumming through the air as black blurs and sizzling past the ear as doppler echoes, ripping anything caught in their way to a million tattered pieces. They are all these things and more. They are the uncountable stinging and killing and consuming and multiplying cells of some endless drifting horror of the deep seas that exterminates the ocean floor wherever the winds guide it.

    They aren't just imagined, either.

    There are no insects. There are no fish nor winds nor glass nor bullets nor anything else but a formless suggestion, but the danger is all too real. The shields used by many are slammed by the unfathomable roar in an instant. They crackle and boil in the scouring tide, and begin to disappear, not draining or depleting as they should, but thinning and disintegrating as dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of tiny holes appear in the surface of the water Murmurs, of the Warframe's shields, of Staren's forcefields, and widen as if the screens were eaten away by acid.

    Armour is no safer, even for those wearing it as their first line of the defense like the Flotilla. The surface of any and all protective wear is riddled with tens of thousands of tiny pits within seconds, and then rapidly ground down layer by layer, dismantled and disintegrated unevenly across its various surfaces, until just like the shields, holes finally breach all the way through and let it/them in. Clothing provides an instant of respite, shredded through as a year of ravenous moths happen in freakish time lapse, and then comes the flesh.

    It isn't even like eating anymore. It doesn't feel like tiny teeth. Exposed skin is riddled with such chaotic and instantaneous punctures that it feels like white-hot projectiles atomizing flesh in shallow splatters; ultra-fine particles of antimatter carrying away a little bit of someone's physical bieng a tiny bit at a time. It hurts. It really really hurts. A hundred bites/stings/cuts/shots/punctures/burns happen every second, and leave wildly streaking ribbons of blood tearing away in the current, blooming into the darkness exactly like it would from the victim of a starving shark.
Priscilla     No matter how one looks at it, there is an inescapable truth. Nobody, no matter how sturdy or skilled or clever or prepared or strong of will or body, could survive this for more than minutes at most. It attacks their survival mechanisms as if there were no difference between them. It analyzes them in an instant and applies a grinding wheel to their metaphorical HP bar. It /literally/ attacks Tomoe's HP bar. The green gauge drops faster than she's ever seen it before, fizzling, popping, and glitching with chromatic aberration and screaming warning bleeps as a Status Effect indicator she's never seen in her life flashes beneath it, as a clearly broken image with fragmented text that spells out a word she can't quite register for a moment, but which sinks into her retinas with a jarring and chilling familiarity once it does.

    !LIFEHUNT!

    It is no small miracle, or perhaps no miracle at all then, that the distance they cross is short enough to be survivable. Enough to leave uncountable, agonizing wounds, but survivable. They tumble one after another into the 'air bubble' beyond; the safe space of a never-unsealed cavern under the black, soul-slaying waters of this place, and finally, at last, they can see what actually exists at the bottom of the chasm with their own eyes and ears, in quiet and safety.

    The ground is beneath them once more. The air is just air, in their lungs and not in their blood, inert and cold and not slashing away their very essence. The earth is relatively soft, and seems to extend for dozens of meters all around, visible as an island of soothing, pale blue light, the opposite of the Bonfire in hue, but not dissimilar in its tranquility. All around them blooms a field of tiny, delicate, pure white wildflowers; a veritable garden untouched by time or man. The petals luminesce softly, and tiny motes of sparkling diamond dust seems to rise from them. The gnarled roots of great trees so massive and familiarly bizarre as can only be compared to Archtrees perforate the landscape, often extending crazily into empty space, but they are either frozen over in meters or ice, or they are simply made of the glassy blue substance through and through, adding even more surreality to this tiny oasis of life and light. A flower garden amidst Archtrees of ice in the middle of a bottomless hell of Dark.
Priscilla     The light itself isn't a mystery though. It is cast by a very obvious source, visible to all, in a concrete and entirely non-abstract sense. Tiny little glowing specs, barely bigger than fireflies, eddy and drift in serene, dancing motions throughout the clearing, spiraling and glittering carefree through the air, shedding their pale radiance wherever they go. They don't seem to be anything but points of light, but one immediately and firmly attributes intelligence to them. They don't drift in random directions, but dance and trace deliberate patterns through the air, gradually gathering to meet the badly bloodied Elites at a short distance, practically flocking to them as if curious.

    They are deeply soothing to look at. They are a much-needed anesthesia for the mind after the moments of horror just endured. More than that, their very presence seems to numb and sooth the wounds borne by all, and very slowly, only just quick enough to barely be perceived, they begin to heal them. /Reverse/ them may be more appropriate, even including damage to clothing and armour, though at no hurried rate. They twinkle and pulse as they do so, as if communicating in some fashion, at once strange and alien. No sense can be made of it, silent as it is, or at least possessing some quality of sound impossible for the mortal mind to comprehend, but matters change when Priscilla steps out of the black and past the Elites, and approaches the little, playful lights, completely unscathed from head to toe.

    An unforeseen advantage, or a red flag?

    For whatever reason, she doesn't quite seem shocked. Not familiar, but as if she is seeing these things for the second time rather than the first. She approaches while others are recovering, moving with a purpose, and is just about to say something, when it seems the sentient stardust knows her mind, and replies. Not in a sensible way. This place is far too many steps disassociated from ordinary reality for that. Their reply is a word that is a shape. A sound that is a form. A pronunciation that is a character. Something simultaneously heard and seen as it is understood, without quite being either. Not a phrase of any kind, but a signal. No, a counter signal. The second stage in a greeting protocol. A communication of their origin, and their intent.
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Staren     Staren, once he realizes he's being pulled in, applies thrusters and wings against it, but... it doesn't work that way, does it.

    The WAY it's damaging his forcefield is concerning. He tries to move, to pull out -- no, that won't work, maybe... pushing through?

    Soon it's EATING HIS ARMOR. How does that work? He tries to contact the tablet he left behind, perform an emergency evacuation and leave this body... but there's no signal.

    And then it's eating HIM. The pain is so strong that he doesn't initially realize that it should never be this strong, could never, this body doesn't work that way. He turns pain off, but it's still there. He can only scream, while some part of him searches for a way out, wonders who's going to come find the signs they disappeared...

    And then he stumbles into... somewhere... and the pain's over.

    His thoughts run off in multiple directions at once. He can see the others survived somehow, but what WAS that? He's never been damaged this heavily before... What is this place, and ooh those lights are calming to look at.

    And they're healing him. Regenerating is perhaps a more appropriate word.

    He checks the radio signal again. No other way out.

    It didn't hurt Priscilla. "What WAS that?" he asks her. "And what are these things?" he probably means the weird lights, since she... talked to them, sort of.
Kushiko For what its worth, existential and literal agony are among the things that Kushiko was not trying to impart upon Eryl, Tomoe, or anyone else that would end up following her here.

Thing of it is, in times before, she'd almost fallen, lagged behind in some way. So given what they saw here, given what was going on... /moving forward/ was what felt /right/ to do. Even if moving forward was riddled with suffering. Lingering, or trying to double back would not eliminate the problem.

So she pushed--and pulled herself forward.

Realistically, she did her best to not do much towards /pissing off/ the Dark, as it had seemed, given the interaction her Void aspect had with it. The weird state that the howling Dark itself is in is something that's gnawing at her, for however fleeting or drawn out moments it is. She doesn't know why, only that the sensation itself confounds and confuses her, and frustrates due to a lack of time to actually dwell on why. A lack of memory tends to hurt in these situations. It's provoking a sense of familiarity she knows no reason to exist for.

The notion of existence itself is something that gnaws at her further; given the way she herself functions, far and divided from her Orbiter, from the Warframe, through that Transference of hers. She exists, in this moment without knowing, between two worlds herself. And now that very sensation is planted directly into her core, thanks to the Dark. It's something that's going to eat at her in ways she can't begin to fathom.

The insects. The insects... that. /Bothers/ her. Makes her think of the Infested. Their swarms, the insatiable hunger. She has to put this into frames of reference that will make sense, but it's a losing battle. What little shields she has are gone in an instant, leaving behind the incredibly dense and flexible armor within the appearence of corded muscles, lights flickering dangerously and listlessly in the great Dark itself. The sensation of being *ground* into evokes a momentary HOWL from Valkyr itself against the Dark, as though trying to summon up what little energy remains, to wreathe oneself in the madness, in the furor that reminds the Warframe's ancestral memory at being dissected at the whims of Alad V.

The concept of pain is, simply put, redefined. Pain is something she's known, but she--the Tenno, the child who cheerfully, happily kills all that the Orokin, and then the Lotus and the Concord have guided her into--feels this so much more than before.

She struggles without shape, without anything other than primal instincts guiding, but it's a useless, futile thing, lilac Void energy sputtering into and out of life in the now, while the maelstrom of light so far away, behind her in her Somatic Link seems to be almost /angry/ and unable to find /something/ to counter, to survive against.

And then it feels like it's over in an instant, yet not without incident. Valkyr falls over, like a puppet with it's strings cut and losing any sense of being able to hold onto Eryl (if she still was!) before pushing herself, trembling and shuddering up slowly, blood and sinew exposed in horrifying fashion pooling and drooling in equal measure. The sights one can see through the Transference are beautiful and haunting, and it's something that she can vaguely seize upon the sight of while she struggles to even move. Any attempt to surge her systems to restore are not working. Too much trauma.
Kushiko ... and then it's like a hand turns back the dial on what just happened. It still /happened/, make no mistake, but the reversal of such wounds is distinctly different from being healed. Instinct means briefly does Valkyr wreathe herself in violent, protective energies before moving to check on Eryl's state of being, given she was holding onto him at the time.

Her voice seems to dance: people knew well enough her voice did not originate from the battle golem, but existed without presence, in the air around her, echoing. But now, it seems to give in and out, like it's jumping from place to place, before stabilizing somewhat. <"... I, I'm sorry, is everyone okay? I. I didn't think that trying to back out of that... was the best. Move forward."> It's as though she's trying to convince herself as much as she might be trying to make amends for what could've been a very bad situation.
Eryl Fairfax     Upon grabbing hold of Kushiko, Eryl realizes his many, many errors. He had never accounted for a future in which machines had advanced to the point of not needing any kind of inlet, period. However, she seems to finagle something, based on the sudden drain on his Core beyond whatever the Dark is doing. On some old instinct, he takes one final, deep breath to hold before it swallows them all.

    The experience is a crushing one. The infinite black consumes all senses, and exposes one to the raw truth of reality. Septillions of little things grinding together in some great machine, of which he is only a slightly larger cog. Something anyone can acknowledge on an academic scale, but exposure to this truth at such a primal level leaves his spirit raw and ragged.

    His body soon follows, the Murmur granted to him by Enark quickly dissolved by the hateful tide, chunks of flesh are ripped away from him, the false flesh that hides his mechanical limbs scoured away as the metal is turned to dust, leaving pistons and wires exposed. Even his iron, augmented will breaks as a scream is ripped from his throat, joining the awful song that permutes this place.

    And then, it is over.

    He slumps on the soft ground, letting go of Kushiko finally as he does. His eyes take in the motes of light, his mind uncomprehending for a long moment before they numb his existential horror. Original Face initiates a long checklist, gently prodding at each sector of the diplomat's mind to make sure he isn't entirely broken as his wounds and damages begin to heal, his parts becoming whole once more. His breathing comes under control once more.

    And then, Priscilla arrives, looking morose, and somewhat aware of this place, and untouched by what happened. "Priscilla..." he chokes out, his throat still a little raw, dropping her title for the first time in a while. And then the little things seem to answer her unspoken question, in the form of a glyph that imprints on his mind. Original Face saves it /immediately./

    "We're at the very bottom," he concludes, straightening out his clothes. "Our best chance of resolving this is here. But... we have all gone through something that can only be described as a taste of the Biblical Hell. I'm sure all of you are reeling from the experience. But this is the last leg of this journey across time and through the Painted World. So I ask you all... find your footing, and let us carry on. If you find that you cannot, then wait here."

    Finally, he turns his gaze to the little lights that surround him. They can clearly communicate, if only in strange ways that his mind interoperates as symbols. Perhaps they can be interrogated... "Where is the source of all this? Where is the absolute bottom?"
Captain Flint Flint steps through the blackness a bloodied mess, his eyes and teeth shining through the crimson pulp like the rictus grin of death itself. He collapses onto the ground, his clothes hanging off of him in soaked, bloody ribbons. Ragged, shallow breaths escape his prone form in uneven meter, gradually becoming less wet and more even as the fireflies slowly reverse the damage done. From his spot on the ground, the convalescent captain can see Priscilla entering. Unscathed. As the blood slowly seeps back into his wounds, and as his wounds slowly seal themselves up, his frowning face is revealed.

     What could be the reason for that? Not only is she unscathed, but she seems unsurprised at the fact. When his strength returns, Flint pushes himself off of the ground. A hand rises up to touch his face, to run through his hair--the pirate clearly wondering if he's still alive. Still extant. "I've not before encountered something so opposed to mere existence. Your safe passage was... fortunate," Flint says, allowing the implication to speak for itself. There's something she's not telling them.

     He leaves it at that, however, as a signal, a word, a glyph is put into his mind. It resembles the trident wielded by Poseidon, the Greek God of the sea. And, in his mind, he'd just waded through a frenzy of whitetips on the ocean floor. The color, too, reminds him of the clear seas of the Caribbean. Flint responds with a signal of his own. Reaching into his coat, he produces a drawing--the parchment on which it's drawn looks several years old by now, having been folded and unfolded many times. Holding it aloft before the fireflies, Flint unfolds it and "shows" it to the swarm. Those who have sailed with him before, such as Priscilla, will recognize it as the same figure painted on the Walrus' flag.

     A skeleton, one hand holding a saber, the other holding an hourglass. Time waits for no man.

     He glances momentarily towards Kushiko--a look is given to her. His eyes still gleam with the same intelligence, the same willpower, and his wounds have all healed as with the others. Whether he agrees with her idea or not, he's here, and he seems fine, mentally and physically.

     "I am called Flint," says the captain, facing the fireflies once more. "I depend upon the sea to keep me alive and fed. If I've correctly guessed your affiliation," he says, putting away the drawing for now, "Then you're either a representation of, or some manner of servant to the sea. And if that's so, you'll find no more fervent ally than I."

     "You repaired us--which means you're no ally of what lurks outside. We're here to undo it. Any information you have would be useful." He sighs. "Provided you can even understand me."
Starbound Flotilla     The rest of the Captains join Seft. Two of the Flotilla think, as they make their way inside.

ERROR
NETWORK RECEIVER MODULE 1 ILLEGAL ACCESS (0xFFFF0A)
NETWORK RECEIVER MODULE 2 ILLEGAL ACCESS (0xFFDC88)
CORE HIVEMIND CONNECTION MODULE ILLEGAL ACCESS (0xDEAD00)
LACERATION SIMULATOR BUFFER OVERFLOW (0x0000A7)
CONTUSION SIMULATOR BUFFER OVERFLOW (0x0000A7)
TOXICITY SIMULATOR BUFFER OVERFLOW (0x0000A7)
HYPOXIA SIMULATOR BUFFER OVERFLOW (0x0000A7)
TELOMERASE SIMULATOR BUFFER OVERFLOW (0x0000A7)
RESTARTING IN SAFE MODE...
SAFE MODE ABORT.
SUSTAINING SYSTEM (INTEGRITY WARNING)
FOCUS.
BREATHE.
HELP HER GET BACK WHAT SHE DESERVES.


    The first pillar of the philosophy, society, and peace of the Hylotl civilization is that pain is a universal constant. The pain felt by one is the pain felt by all; it is simply a matter of how numb one makes oneself to it. The Hylotl cannot be numbed, it is in our nature. This moment, I must take in. To be both pain, and that which is brought to such harm. This moment, above all else, I must meditate. I must allow myself to drown as all Hylotl did in the days of the war. Perhaps it is the only way to survive it.

    Seft and Moonfin are the only ones who make it through enough to go on, even after healing them from a dangerously incapacitated state. George, Albert, and Pavo are all badly disabled, even post-healing, by pain. Biteblade might be able to continue with the right regeneration, but the near darkness means she cannot photosynthesize, and the best she can do is pull herself to the insects and... Try to refrain from eating them. She'll have to tend to the others of the group. Wordlessly, with a nod, she signals to Seft that she'll hold here. Only Seft and Moonfin, of the rest of the Flotilla, will continue this effort.

    "All is as it was meant to be, Kushiko." Moonfin says. Then, he cocks his head to the side at Eryl. "The source... Can there be a source, to the ocean? Is the deepest of trenches truly where its home is? ...Perhaps there is insight in what you are saying, though. Seft... Please."

    Seft emits soft, warbling, unstable tones, glitched out by the sheer overwhelming pain. "Scanning. I'll look, but I'm doubtful, and..." She starts, pulling out her repaired hand-scanner, trying to look for patterns among the motes of life, somewhere that the currents emerge from. That's a secondary focus at best. Her main focus is on Priscilla. "Hopeful. First... Priscilla... It wanted you back so badly. It said so, I think, before... Is it welcoming? Is it helping? I hope..." She sounds... Well, as neutral and synthesized as always, but the soft electronic beeps she makes after sound hopeful, albeit glitched from the pain.
Reiji Arisu It lasts for only an instant, but in that instant there is an eternity of pain. Describing the process of being summarily dismantled atom by atom, moment by moment, is impossible. There is only pain. The sensation of holes being punched through one's very being at speeds so rapid and yet paradoxically so individual and distinguishable as to feel each and every one is not unlike being assaulted by a swarm of vicious wasps. Each sting is a lifetime of pain, each pinprick radiates to merge with each other pinprick, forging a tapestry of agony that stretches through the entirety of past, present and future. A dimension, a timeline of suffering, agony, of the very antithesis of life.

And then it all comes to an abrupt end.

For a long moment, Reiji is certain that he is dead. It's the only explanation that makes sense, having been thrust from a crucible of agony into something so relatively peaceful and tranquil. The only thing that informs to the contrary are the slow, ragged breaths filling his lungs and the dull ache that still suffuses his limbs. Azure light dances across his back and shoulders, flickering over the outside membrane of his eyelids. He groans as he rises, cloth knitting back together thread-by-thread, blood flooding backwards up crimson contrails into weeping wounds that then seal shut as well.

He coughs, convulsing briefly as his strength returns to his limbs. He opens one eye before the other, staring up at the strange, azure candelabrum hovering just out of reach and the motes of light that comprise it. "You are--" Reiji mouths, reaching towards those strange lights. The meaning burns in his awareness without even needing to be spoken, "--'Fathomless Depths?' I am... Well. Reiji Arisu, but I feel as though a name wouldn't suffice. I am a servant of the balance. I have few symbols that can adequately describe what it is that I am. Where is this place? Do you know anything of the darkness that has filled this world?" He pauses then, pressing a hand to his temple an old scar aches and throbs and--

"Xiaomu," Reiji calls into the darkness beside the deep blue haze, "Are you alright? Where are you?"
Tomoe To say the damage is bad is an understatement, it's horrible, things are breaking there is a good deal of pain for here. Tomoe is just being taken apart it goes so bad it glitches but it does not stop there, the warning beeps, the status effects and it keeps going her body distorted not any semblance of flesh is gone as she becomes a humanoid shape of red wire frames that are slowly bleeding away into nothing.

There is something left there, a somewhat shorter woman clad in simple casual earth clothing with very long red hair is now visible she too is in pain, a good deal of pain she's screaming now and if one gets a very good look at her face? It's Tomoe, or should one say the actual person behind the Iron Lily. One Sheena Armstrong, at least until the restoration starts She kneels on the ground as this happens the healing starts. She's breathing raggedly still as the wire frames , beginning to reform over her body and slowly but surely she's the Tomoe everyone is far more familiar with once more.

"I ... I have never felt pain like that before."

She slowly rises up again shaking her head hoping she does not feel anything like that again as she gets her bearings once more.

"Is everyone else all right?"

She checks to make sure everyone around her such as Kushiko is okay and not needing help, then again everyone has felt a new level of suffering today. She then pauses for a moment.

"Pain is input when I think about it..."

She now takes to gazing upon the motes
Carna     Enark is no warrior. And even with the mysteries he has plumbed, and the horrors he has witnessed within Lumiere since the Death Of All Light, the sanity-breaking experience of being consumed and stung by things that aren't there, a flood that eats through his Murmurs, and then eats through the very blue robes that Carna got him last year as a replacement for his ratty and tattered ones, and then eats through his body in turn, is beyond any pain he has suffered before. Even the agony of feeling like he is about to burst, as though he is tearing himself apart by pushing beyond his limits, loses out to this feeling that sends images and associations shooting through his brain like lightning, forcing pain-hallucinations that might not be quite as hallucinatory as they appear.

    When they finally arrive in something more sensible, he is too overcome with suffering to take in any of the wonders. He can only curl into a ball, his hands clutched to his face as though to keep the contents of his head from spilling out, and let the fireflies do their work restoring him. Only once he has healed (or 'reversed') sufficiently does he stop trembling on the ground and start to become a bit more cognizant.

    It would not be the first time he has been driven insane. If it had kept, he would have snapped back eventually, most likely. The Dead do not change, after all.

    He sees the clear difference in conditions between all of them and Priscilla, but even his keen mind takes time to start working again. Eventually, he offers another of his theories. "Queen Priscilla wields the power of Lifehunt, yes? This place treasures her and wishes to keep her here. She forged her scythe from the Dark Ember here, and its influence may be what scarred this Painted World. If there is any connection between what we just experienced and any of those factors, it may be that she is immune, or that it does not wish to harm her. It rejected the rest of us quite strongly before if I recall."

    He sits up slowly, closing his eyes against the symbol in his mind. Wonderful, so this is what he was missing out on as everyone else hallucinated things.

    He looks around, again taking a head count. He struggles to get to his feet but lacks the strength. So he just sits for now and tries to recover. He does not have a Lantern's endurance or recuperative powers. He does not have a Lantern's health bar either. He is just insufferably hard to kill, no matter how much he can sustain in the form of suffering, like all Lit. But this is a power that can kill even souls. Would he make it through a return trip?

    "Carna is still not with us." he offers. "She may have stayed behind." He hopes that's the case anyway. Their altercation at the start aside, he does not want her to be gone forever, a victim of this world. And she made good points about focusing on this world and the people in it, rather than the past and himself. He'll just have to do as she suggested, as aggressively worded as it was, and do all that he can to accomplish the group's objective here.

    He holds out a hand. "When someone has the chance, can they help me up? Please?"
Xiaomu According to the tenets of Buddhism, death is little more than the transitional stage between one incarnation and the next - not an ending in itself, not something to be particularly avoided. That said, Xiaomu - hardly anyone's example of the best Buddhist around - has always found it preferable to keep on trying not to get killed: not because she's specifically afraid of dying, but becaus she prefers her current incarnation, her present life as a shapeshifting fox spirit, and all the nice things she's able to enjoy and share in while she possesses the abilities, skills, and magic which come with her current life.

All of the above notwithstanding, though? The sensations which the Lifehunt brings upon them all in passing are enough to convince Xiaomu that, if she ever has the chance to meet Prince Siddhartha in person, even if it takes until her own ascension into nirvana, she *is* going to knock him on his ass for dismissing the fear and terror and pain of dying. Besides which, insects are *NOT* supposed to eat living and animate things - only carcasses and plants, as far as the sage fox is concerned - and for all that those myriad bites are individually infinitesimal, put them all together and THEY HURT. Even if they aren't real insects, just some kind of embodied metaphor for being devoured and consumed, it's more than adequately awful all the same and she doesn't find herself particularly caring about how real it is.

And then it's over.

Earth underneath her, air around her, clean enough to breathe; a relative absence of pain, although 'relative' compared to the slightly-less-than-literal teeth of the Lifehunt doesn't necessarily set a high bar. The scent, however faint, of the flower garden which surrounds them. All in all, sensations of being alive.

An ear perks up, an eye opens, and then Xiaomu sets about getting back to her feet, leaning on her staff for the moment while she gets used to being capable of movement and action once again, and takes in their surroundings more fully. The gathering motes of light provide a welcome distraction from still-fresh pain, and she actually reaches out with a hand - or rather, with a finger, the nail facing up, as if offering a spot to land without an intent to grasp any of those light-motes. The healing (or, well, de-wounding) which follows from those motes' closer approach catches her by surprise, but she doesn't flail around or anything - just stands with her guard open and lets the tiny lights do their thing. "Better now than ten seconds ago," she replies to Reiji. "As to where I am ... uh. Good question, other than 'two and a half meters to your seven o'clock position,' or something in that area."

She turns her attention to that 'symbol' - seven branches above a single 'stem'. Reiji tries to give a name to it/them; it's a convenient attempt at conceptual encapsulation, but the sage fox has her doubts that trying to pin their 'host' down with a name or with language is really the best move here. Sure, it's inconvenient as hell to try to talk with anything that doesn't have some sort of name .... but trying to name a thing is akin to binding it. Words and names have Power, and at the moment, Xiaomu is extremely wary of trying to exert any kind of influence around, at, or (worst of all) against the entity who is quite possibly the reason they have a place to be *alive* down here under the water.

So she simply inclines her head in the direction of the seven-branched symbol, and says solemnly, "We're deeply grateful for your safely receiving us, here in what I presume to be your domain."
Priscilla     Unlike the incomprehensible, indescribable hell of pain that had shattered all former concept of the meaning of the word, Priscilla must be experiencing the same thing as everyone else again, for even just looking upon her face, she 'hears' and 'sees' and 'recognizes' and 'understands' the same word shape form just as anyone else with visible reaction to the strangeness of it. She is, as some others suspect, not altogether unfamiliar with it. Overwhelmingly, yes, but not entirely.

    It takes her several seconds to find her voice, but not for fear or uncertainty; for finding the right words. "For reasons obvious, I didst not, and I shalt never, experience the same as thee. As the Dark of the Abyss was the formless but physical presence of the Primeval Man, and his insatiable, terrible, longing desire for the outside made manifest, I believeth so deep down into this Dark to be the very Lifehunt itself, no small spark that ends the life of an individual, but the very air thou were forced to breathe." Even she stops to look at herself, turning over her flawless hand before her eyes. "Though given a name, and thou I hath personified it in moments of fancy, it hast never been a thing greatly considered by mineself, for lack of any possibility of answering. Whether or not it welcomes mineself, or whether it is so enmeshed with mineself as to be harmed by it to be as a fish drowning in water, I knoweth not. Naught but that the Dark Ember alone is not responsible for the scythe, but the piece of mine soul I gave up for it." That's her honest answer. All that she holds back is a vague question of if this was what the last moments of a particular universe were like not so long ago, and an unspoken, but perhaps visible tension, of vague guilt for everyone else having to experience what they just did.

    She looks up to the dancing, bobbing, swirling, pulsing, glittering, throbbing points of light, so far removed from anything else as to make one wonder if they even belong to this world, and not in the Multiversal sense. "I am not certain what they art, but they art not things to fear. Perhaps they appeareth to those rare few who hath the eyes opened to see them, for once I briefly did in a moment not entirely unlike this. I wonder if perhaps Seath might, whence on the brink of the madness of his mortality, for his last work was certainly not one of knowledge earned of research. They art, perhaps, a 'revelation'."
Priscilla     The lights surround the wounded and those in pain, those shaken and terrified and who had just felt their very lives slip so far from their grasp unlike any other time. They surround those bound here by death and Dark, and they bring some form of solace, unwinding the brief moments of time that had been so incomparably and fathomlessly hostile to their very being, and as they mend the heart and the soul and the mind so that all three may listen, they speak thus.

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Eryl Fairfax     Priscilla issues an explanation as to how she was able to brave all that without harm. "So that was Lifehunt..." He can see now why the gods found it so fearful. He can also see the vague expression of guilt on Priscilla's face, no doubt feeling somewhat responsible for their experience. So, he reaches up and gives her a single pat on the arm. A quiet gesture, expressing, 'It's not your fault' to her.

    The little ones 'speak' once more, expressing another glyph into their minds. Again, Original Face preserves it entirely, filing it away and running some quick comparisons to the first. Trying to figure out some underlying etymology, even as understanding floods his mind of what they are trying to express.

    "So there is a singular source..." he murmurs, rubbing his chin. Someone so thoroughly beyond reason, someone so mired in anguish and rage that not even these beings can get through to them... he'll have to see it to believe it. "We shall do our best to lift his spirits," he says, both to the tiny beings and to everyone present. He's marking a line in the metaphorical sand here. 'Don't try to kill it right away.'

    He bends down, and carefully plucks one of those strange flowers, then another and another should the first not scream at him or do anything else awful. Once he has a small bouquet, he says, "It's incredible, even in a dismal place like this, there is beauty to be found." He then begins passing the flowers out, one for everyone. The look on his face is significant.

    Does he have a plan?
Reiji Arisu     The exorcist releases a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. Finally the waves of numbing, soothing light washing over his mind are allowed to loosen that last tangle of apprehension. "Xiaomu. Good," he sighs, rubbing again at his head. "I was worried." Not knowing precisely how something like the Lifehunt might affect a being of spiritual nature was... deeply concerning. It seems that Xiaomu, at least, had survived the ordeal. They all had. That was good.

But what Priscilla is saying-- that is not. This whole place is suffused with the Lifehunt. That is the darkness that surrounds them; that explains much. Reiji is about to reply, when the motes of light suddenly rearrange.

Impossibly, the exorcist understands the meaning of /that/ symbol as well. It blazes pure meaning into the folds of his brain. Perhaps the only reason his psyche isn't on fire is due to where they are; the Deep Sea serves as a bulwark against the unknown. And these sprites, now they are offering something else. This is... "...Guidance," Reiji mutters softly the sprites speak. The sensation is akin to a susurrus of silk pages tumbling across the surface of his bind. His mind does not understand the words as they are spoken- they are foreign even to the augmented grasp of language that all Elites possess. And yet he understands them, not through the act of hearing, but by the experience of revelation. It's as if a gate had opened, pouring the meaning of their words directly into his brain.

"This place has become a repository for all manner of things. We had understood that much. Misery, hatred, loneliness. It sought to swallow us up, to keep us here, so that it would not be alone again. And the one you speak of, the one who left, that can only be..."

Reiji's gaze turns from the glowing symbol toward Priscilla.

He shakes his head.

"...In its madness, it does not realize that it is not truly alone. So then, what if we were to... bring attention to the those things it cannot find? This place is where all those people and memories we were privy to had disappeared into. So then our memories and our experiences-- the fact that we were there to witness those events and speak with those people- perhaps we might be able to guide this entity towards what it cannot find."

He's silent for a moment. His lips draw into a fine line. "The Painted World rests on top of this great sea which contains so much of what once was. If this Deep Sea is meant to keep this darkness sealed off from the world, then we were mistaken. It's not that the world had been cut off from the flame by the entity, but perhaps that the same mechanism that keeps the entity sealed away also prevents this place from connecting with the First Flame. To unseal it would be a mistake, but what if the spirit's hatred, its loneliness, its misery, were to be... Soothed? Its nature cannot change, but if it can be made... 'acceptable,' then perhaps the veil can be lifted without danger."
Staren     Staren looks between Priscilla, the others (taking in that everyone's alright, or at least still alive -- he takes a moment to help Enark to his feet, if allowed) and his slowly-regenerating self as he waits for her to respond. Maybe he's just a bit out of it, but her explanation comes across dense and impenetrable. He has to play it back. So, he didn't get /why/, exactly, but that was Lifehunt, and either it likes her or it's part of here. Fair enough.

    He wonders if turning himself off for the return trip would work.

    Tomoe, he notices, has been knocked out of her powered form. "Tomoe... are you able to use your augma here, or do you need weapons and armor? Though I fear I don't have much in the way of armor besides a spare spacesuit..." You know, just the sort of things one carries around all the time just in case. And then she's back. He simply nods.

    "A revelation, huh?" Staren tries to poke one of the lights with a finger. "So reveal stuff to us, already."

    And they do! How does he understand this?? Perhaps it's a particularly weird example of the Translation Effect.

    "No." he clenches his fists. "It will not be a grave." He listens more. "...So are you saying there's something here, and if we destroy it, the Dark will go away? Continue restoring us, and tell us all you can about its powers and defenses."

    After a moment, he realizes Eryl said something different. He blinks at the Paladin cyborg. "Do you really think we can?" Staren rubs his chin. "Well... perhaps. It /would/ be the better outcome..."
Starbound Flotilla "Nothing among the patterns?"
"Tense. Nothing. At least not yet."
"As I feared."
"Processing. The language has been comprehensible, though."
"And I like none of what I heard of it."
"Concerned. ...What is here is a part of Priscilla isn't it?"
"Then it tarnishes her beauty as much as the Painted World's."
"Worried. We need to try to talk to it, then. To heal it..."
"Pain is a universal constant. There are times when it is best ended."
"Pained. Haruto..."
"..."

    "Indeed." Moonfin says, to Eryl. "But the Painted World must be restored one way or another, no matter the costs of such sorts." He accepts the flower, as does Seft, who seems to cradle it carefully in her palm. "But pain is only so much an excuse. There are times where one must judge with the purest of eyes for consequence."

    Seft makes a number of pained, stressed buzzing noises at Moonfin's insistence on keeping the aggression path open, despite him being the one who tried to do the negotiations before. She tries to focus, now: "Hopeful. Please, guides, do you know where this misery is? Or--" She starts, before realizing a little more of the nature of things here. "Correcting. 'Where' is probably not right. How... How can we make contact with the avatar of the Dark?" She clasps her hands together close to her chest, cupping the flower and holding a hopeful look. And of course, she'll be following any instruction or direction to take them to this mysterious avatar, this unknown entitity.
Tomoe The world is no longer Pain, she's the Iron Lily again and that's important otherwise she'd end up being a burden to the rest of the party here if things become heated once more. She does not want to become an added complications that would make her pretty serous dead weight. Thankfully that is not the case however something comes now something she did not expect to see here. She looks to Priscilla as she speaks listening. This is pretty heavy some of it is way above her mortal mind but she is able to get the idea of this this connected to the life hunt in some sense and that certainly makes her take notice.

She understands for the moment what is being said to them.

"What can one such myself do about such things?"

Tomoe is thinking she's thinking hard but she's likely one of the lest smart people here and she's taxing her ind to thin, what can be done here? She takes a look at the strange flowers she now starts to get it.

"So this is the place that hate, misery and such go in this world and it was trying to eat us like Reiji said? I think I get it Reiji."

She looks to Staren for a moment and shakes her head.

"I'm fine, but I'm damn glad you do have spares like that. I am thankful for the offer."

She seems to be starting to get somewhat of an idea of what she can do but she's also cleary trusting in others to help her be able to fully understand what's going on here.

"That is true it seems more about how we seek to do it, Moonfin."
Xiaomu Definitely, thinks Xiaomu, not something to try to pin down with a specific, singular name. But she listens nonetheless, to the extent that 'listening' is the right word to describe the process by which those radiant motes convey their message.

"So ... the piece of darkness that permeates this place," the sage fox says questioningly, "is kind of at the bottom of the metaphysical hole down here? Like it were stuck in the well which - is the Painted World 'inside' this ocean, like a layer that contains the pocket reality, or is this part of the world outside, or what?"

Meta-reality physics makes her head hurt enough that she just goes back to ignoring propriety, at least long enough to pull out a package of fried tofu, tear it open, and take a bite or two while others are talking (and maybe getting answered as well).

"Important part is, there's something here that isn't really friendly and has forgotten whatever it knew about making nice with anyone not part of its own darkness. Is that good enough of a short version?"

And Reiji's trying to sort out how to put the negative feelings to rest, rather than asking how to kill it. This is why Xiaomu likes working with him. She offers her partner a piece of fried tofu as well ... and then, experimentally, holds a piece out to where the motes can try nibbling on it. It's perfectly fine vegetarian food, after all.
Captain Flint Flint's frown sours further. These things /can/ understand him, and he can understand them. But they're being obtuse about how to handle the issue of the thing outside. Perhaps he wasn't clear enough.

     "Mr. Fairfax," the captain says. "This thing threatened someone very dear to me. With respect, I don't give a shit about its spirits." Haruto puts it perhaps a bit more euphemistically than Flint does--and though his reasons differ, he sees no harm in adopting the Hylotl's stance. It might garner him more credibility than simple vengeance. "Besides that," he says, "The feelings of one tortured being, however old or removed from humanity by any measure, hardly justify the willful decay it causes."

     Then, he attempts to put words into the mouths (if there are such things) of the glowing lights. "These beings have been waiting," he says, gesturing to them with a hand, then leveling an analytical gaze upon Eryl. "What is it you think they've been waiting /for?/ For someone more skilled in soothing words? It's clear they're waiting for someone to do what they can't--to put this beast out of its misery."

     Doing so might hurt Priscilla, being that this thing might somehow be linked to her soul. But the mechanics of such things are not only beyond his expertise, they're, at present, beyond his ability to care. This thing, this force, will serve as example to those here, and to any lurking beings of a similar bent that Captain Flint is not trifled with. That his example might harm Priscilla... well, if that happens, it's a worthy price to pay, and the benefit to her world should more than outweigh the cost.

     Flint shoves his hands into the pockets of his coat, and narrows his eyes at the fireflies. "Well?" he asks expectantly, nodding to Seft. "Tell us where this avatar of the Dark is, and we'll kill it for you."
Kushiko Once somewhat assured, nodding in brief to Captain Flint, Eryl, Tomoe, Moonfin and Seft--though not without a momentary hesitation given the condition of the others, she begins to move in earnest. Dismissing and releasing the held energy from herself, she's able to recover fairly quickly. Near death situations are not something new to the Tenno--she was not terrified of death, she was more against failure. There's little doubt that if ever the time were required, she would /gladly/ give herself, to suffer a death, even here in the multiverse which may make it more permanent, or at least more impactful.

One day, someone'll need to talk to her about that suicidal slant.

She's able to properly commandeer her senses, to briefly mull over--the runes--both the one they saw when they arrived, and the new one now, once Priscilla finishes speaking. Yet even before the presence of the rune is made manifest, she gathers herself enough to approach the Halfbreed, though her attention is somewhat affixed to the swirling motes of light. Light which... feels oddly calming, in a peculiar fashion. Her hand moves to trace their path as they draw near, almost an absentminded gesture before she freezes up at the rune itself.

Or more accurately, the words themselves.

It's truthfully what she hears from others, from people like Reiji, because she herself... is not very good a things that do not involve combat. She needs a little input, words given phrasing by the others. Eryl's words affirming that, indeed, the very distilled essence of Lifehunt was here. Internally, she might suspect a parallel--different /types/ of force. The ocean...

        The blinding night...

She shook her head, the faceless Valkyr looking--somehow, of all things--shaken up for a few moments. <"What if it isn't part of her? What if it's something else within it all?"> she asks of the Flotilla. She's not given to immediate violence, as they don't yet fully understand what's going on here, at least--that's how /she/ feels about it. With Flint's words, she's a bit more torn on the matter. There is a point to be made here--if threat, destroy it. <"Misery is an easier existence for it than finding something that resembles balance. I am willing to consider an option with more lethality, but..."> An audible sigh, Kushiko's 'gaze' landing on Priscilla.

<"This is a wound. To further wound would be to remove the limb, to use an analogy. But what can we do to mend it? Can we help it find itself?"> It's a wondering to the others as much as it is to the fireflies.
Reiji Arisu Reiji has accepted this gift of fried tofu. He's chewing thoughtfully at it while... /everything/ plays out around him. "You're going to have to go through me if you want to jump straight to killing it," Reiji says after a moment. "My work involves mediation. To take the convenient path just to make a statement is unappetizing to say the least."

"If all that we have seen of the painted world leads us to destroy the very incarnation of the suffering and misfortune heaped upon it, then we have learned nothing from our jaunt through history. To destroy and cast away as a matter of convenience, expediency and the like is exactly what caused this problem. I won't trod down that path again until I know that it's the only solution we have left."
Carna     Enark looks shifty-eyed around at the strange voices, wiping his blood on his clothes as they mend so that it all reverses together. He would not have thought to speak to the fireflies himself. He is glad to have so many quick-witted people around him. He does not think overly look about what they have heard. The course of action seems obvious to him. He may not be a leader here, but he takes matters into his own hands, clears his throat and responds to the strange language with a simple question, that he hopes is the correct one.

    "How can we help?"

    He already has an inkling of an idea, at the mention of an ocean or sea. He thinks talking would be best. But something that has been so twisted, so isolated for so long... Would it immediately accept help? The story of what this being or world or whatever it is has gone through strikes a deep resonance with Enark. A memory he has been struggling to recall for a long time, starting to come to the surface bit by bit.

    "I'm Not Okay."

    He can see himself in a mirror. Bleeding, but smiling. Knowing that he is about to be left behind, but not really grasping it. Too numbed by shock to react. He can't even feel the pain. He can hear the sounds of struggles. Of monsters howling in the halls. But that isn't important. All that matters is that the only person keeping him company is about to leave him here like this.

    Abandoned again.

    And he can not say a word. Just stare at his reflection, at that smile, as blood drips down his face from some gruesome injury he can't lift his eyes to look at. Doesn't want to see. To be reminded of the meaning of. Swallowed up by feelings of his own failure.

    He had been the last one left of the Blue Scholars, afraid, ridden with guilt, and hate, and rage, and crippling sadnes and loneliness, but he had been feeling those things with company to share the misery with. And from that, some small light had been gathered. And now even that was about to be snuffed out.

    "Be Good Won't You?"

    And then... What happened after that? Like strands of mist, the memory escapes him. He just knows that was the last time he saw him. And then he spent almost forever alone, until people came and found him. And they had to chase him down.

    At first, he wouldn't accept their help, their very presence, either. He was so bound up in madness and so used to his misery that the very idea of a different existence had become alien to him, frightening, painful to extract himself from because he couldn't tell how much he hurt until he hurt a little bit less. Despite the fact that his desire for it, the contrast of not having it, was what defined him.

    He looks down at his hands, then to Tomoe, confused by her transformation. He does not recall if he has seen that before or not. What was that exactly? He contemplates Flint's sentiment, of reprisal. Others seem to have similar notions. Still others not so much. He finds himself in agreement with Reiji but does not immediately speak.

    He closes his eyes, and again he's in that basement in Ariamis, seeing someone he wants to help, to return the mercy afforded him by passing it on to that person, even if a stranger. That dying necromancer he made a promise to in the distant past, right here in the Painting. One he has yet to keep.

    Then he opens them, and pushes himself to his feet since no one else picked him up. What was it Kord had told him? 'If you don't want people to keep dying for you, learn to carry your own weight'? He wipes his face with his slowly mending sleeve as he does just that, standing on his own legs.

    "If I might have a moment, I have a suggestion."
Priscilla The tiny little mesmerizing things speak again. It is just as alien and strange as before, but just as easy to understand, resolving in the mind more quickly now, as if the brain's comprehension of the very idea of thought and meaning and communication were a set of eyes steadily adjusting to the dark, newly able to pick out faint shapes that it hadn't before, as if it always had the capacity to see, as if it were born with it, but needed the right stimuli before it would change They say:
    "Be careful of what you take. That which you hold as beautiful is not a garden that grows for sun and soil. Each flower is a memory of something lost. Each bloom grows when something irreplaceable is taken. A thousand years of individual moments, some kind, but most cruel, are within those petals. Removing them from this garden will not be taken well, even if you would unwind them into what they were before."

    "Guidance is not incorrect. We offer guidance to those who have reached a rare precipice of life's fragility and facade, where they walk the razor's edge between madness and revelation. It is only with clear thoughts that one may pursue the only light in the dark, and the dark is only so black as to see such a faint light when something consumes all the rest of the world that exists within the mind's eye."

    "The weeping hate that is lost in the maze of the deep does not defend itself, but the reminders of what it once had, with a bottomless ferocity. Its powers hold time prisoner here. They hold the dead prisoner here. They hold memories prisoner here. Nothing can escape, as it would give nothing up. Despair so deep that follows grief hates hope and fears resolution even more than it longs for it. Despair follows when denial and bargaining have already failed, but when acceptance remains out of reach, and so it recoils from the hand that promises it salvation."

    "Rather than releasing those that died, it clings to their memory, even as it drags them into the same drowning depths that consumes itself, and makes their less-than-existence understand its own misery and its own hate and its own loneliness, reflected in murky recollections of men, of whom it no longer remembers their faces and their voices, but who cannot ever be destroyed entirely."

    "The grieving in the dark cannot be destroyed entirely. Certain demons can be fought. Certain wounds can be soothed. Both always leave their scar. If you fight the demon it will attempt to destroy you, and it will use the power that nearly destroyed you once. It will use it as its sword and its shield and its scalpel and its fingers and its words and its song. It will call its murky recollections of men to you and they will seek to erase your certainty and your definition until you are as difficult to prove that you ever existed as they. The grieving rage may be fought, and it may be subjugated, but it cannot be killed and it cannot be destroyed. It can be beaten down, but it must be made to accept what it is and what has happened, before the grip on this world within a world you care for so greatly can be released."
Priscilla     "As a wound, it may be treated, and it may be tended, and it may be healed, but it cannot be undone. The wound upon the heart is too great to ever be forgotten entirely, and the more one wishes to erase it, the more stubbornly it will leave its mark, as the subconscious rebels against what the self wishes. If one wishes for the wound to close, one would have to accept the same injury. To heal it is to sacrifice something to it. To bargain with it is to make something never the same again. There could be much more gained in doing so than standing fast and defeating it, as this Dark has much to return to where and how it was, within it, but asserting one's strength is antithetical to the process of healing. One can stand strong and unbroken, or one can Experience Loss and so touch it with one's own hands, but not both."

    "As the Dark, it can be banished, but not forever. The Dark of this world is a thing tranquil and a thing serene, but it is a thing that lives and a thing that responds to the heart. The Dark is the natural habitat of humanity, and responds to human desire, human fear, and human longing, but it is not those things itself, and it is not exclusively human. It must be granted volition to become something, and when it is, it becomes something of its own. When something that is not human grants it volition, the Dark is no longer the same. When something that does not live gives something to that which does, it becomes a toxin to both. It can be driven back. It can be dissipated and exposed to the light. Something may be salvaged of such, as the scarce few things that are brought back from the Abyss. Some modicum proof of what came before could be retrieved, without so much danger, but it is an amputation, not healing. A serviceable replacement that little risks the whole, but which only gains back a fraction of what could have been."

    "These choices are yours, but they cannot be done by you. Not without us. They cannot be done without our guidance, and so we shall help you. It is our purpose to bring peace to those bound by Death and Dark, and so we reveal ourselves when needed. There is a proper channel for our light. We brandish it forth. We grant it to you."
Priscilla                                               
                                              
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    Priscilla seems to understand it immediately. A couple of others had touched upon it, amongst other things, in their private discussion. Wordlessly, she draws the sword Moonlight forth, born from the lucid revelation within Seath's soul of madness, after he had obtained his immortality. Its pale, cerulean light seems to resonate with the 'natural' ambiance of the tiny circle of safety and serenity at the bottom of the ocean of hellish truth, growing brighter and expanding its radius. Fully done their work in reversing the time of the Elites' injuries, the glittering, dancing, thoroughly alien things flicker and shine and swirl about the blade, drawn towards the shimmering, near-liquid designs of its magical 'steel', and where they condense, they become indistinguishable from one another, perceptible only by their unified aura of soft, blue light, and then even that light becomes indistinguishable from Moonlight's own. The sword sings; not in the same way as the whispering, crawling, infinite, terrible blackness all around them, but not in a way that is its opposite, in an uplifting or wholesome sense. It is song neutral in its remoteness and alien timbre, like a chorus of silver bells being un-rung, but it is soothing to the mind, and as the shimmering tune becomes a low, endlessly reverberating, vibrating glass sound, the light that provides safety centers itself around Moonlight. It becomes a mobile 'torch' of a kind, holding this moonlit serenity within itself, and allowing Priscilla to take it with her, shielding the other Elites.

    "I knoweth whence it is." she says, very suddenly and very plainly. She moves on.
Priscilla     The trip through the blackness is not an easy one, but it is a quiet one, made in an eerie, suspenseful silence, fraught with unforgettable danger in every single direction, but with a pearl of transcendant beauty to it all the same. It is not unlike walking across the surface of some craft suspended thousands of miles in orbit, left in the oppressive, silent vacuum of space, in which no human can possibly belong, held to life and safety by only a single safety hook and tether that keeps them from a terrifying death by floating into the void and helplessly asphyxiating, but presented with the most beautiful view of mother earth possible for the eyes to see all the same, making it somehow, spiritually worthwhile.

    The flowers stretch on as far as the valley goes, almost perfectly flat, and overflowing with the delicate, almost ghostly blooms, but constantly strewn with the glittering ice-fascimiles of great and impossible tree roots, running through the landscape in nonsensical spirals and fractal branches, weaving in and out of the ground and the stone walls and from space itself, as if they had grown down here in thise false space, instead of simply reaching it from a greater trunk above. How Priscilla knows to navigate down here is impossible to tell. Even she doesn't know. Soon enough however, the group finds itself at a very auspicious place, obvious to even the most oblivious eye.

    In this endless plane of flowers representing pieces of the Painted World lost to time and tragedy, and the icy Archtree roots borne from some older memory still, they stumble upon the bottom of the tower that rises from the chasm above; the one in which Priscilla had originally been met, which leads to the bridge and the only exit out, warded by primordial verse and prayer, and which had been purposefully destroyed long ago, to keep its bottom away from its top. The same architecture is here, with all its sweeping and gorgeous arches and balconies and winding stairs, clearly meant to lead down into the mountain valley so one could explore the river and greenery that once existed here in the ancient past, though its stairs and upper floors are shattered away near the ceiling of the light's reach. In the center of it, shaded under the viewing platform above, is some sort of lone, stone monument, unreadable at a distance, and a single shape sat before it.

    It is not unlike the shapeless, voiceless horrors that had assulted them before. It is a void within the void, just the same, without bottom and without substance and without meaning. It is the prototype of shape. A being defined solely by the fact that its non-existence is a thing that exists as its opposite. Where the others had been warped and tortured things, barely more than pale shades of indistinguishable human beings; where their dark auras had bled into a swirling, toxic haze of midnight blue rather than the pure white of elemental Dark, or the violet tinge of Abyssal Humanity; and where their voices had been a crawling, formless, unintelligible ur-whisper, as without substance or sense as their shapes, this one is clearly three things, and only three things.
Priscilla     It is silhouetted without poisonous midnight, but by rising tendrils of grey-white ink, floating upwards in the 'water' and dissolving away much like the tongues of the bonfire far above. Its shape is defined, as someone young, small, and feminine, as well as distinctly non-human. Its voice is audible and clear, as an amalgamation of hundreds of others, young and old, some barely different from one another, but all belonging to the same person, for the fact that the oldest amongst them is so painstakingly obvious as Priscilla's, to go along with the tiny void of herself the way she was when she was first abandoned all those centuries ago.

    It speaks familiar words. They are words those gathered here have heard before. They were words spoken to them by the murky men, but they were words that were only repeated. Echoed. Broadcasted. Reflected. They were not the words of the murky horrors, but their reverberations drifting from the bottom of the dark, and through the channels of their formless bodies. These words they have heard once before were uncannily meaningful, striking something personal in each of them, but these words they now hear again were not /meant/ for them. When they hear them in Priscilla's infinite voices, they hear those very same words in the form of void Priscilla endlessly repeating them to herself, huddled and clenched with her face in her knees, alone in the Dark, at the bottom of the tower the real thing once lived in, divided long ago.

"get out this place isn't yours get out go back home get out people with homes should get out people with homes to go back to should just die and get out and people with people who love them don't belong and should get out and their loved ones should die and get out and die die die die die-"

"they aren't worth saving they hate you they always hated you they don't need saving don't save them everyone you should save is dead and everyone else hates you and they pretend to like you but you help them and they hate you and the only ones you ever helped are dead and everyone else should be so everyone else should just die die die die die-"

"you're a monster and a freak and you should kill yourself and don't remember a thing about what's inside of you and you don't know anything about yourself so you should kill yourself and even the animals look at you like they want you to die so you should just kill yourself and die die die die die-"

"the dead stay dead don't lie to yourself they're dead and they're never coming back and you can't talk to them and you can't bring them back so don't listen and don't hope because they're not coming back and you can't fix it and they can't fix it and they're dead and gone and don't exist and all they ever did was die and all they ever do is die die die die die-"
Priscilla "all you do is hang around them and they won't be there forever they won't be there for you they'll leave eventually you'll live and they'll die and they'll forget about you because you're useless and they're dead and you can't stop it and you need them and you want the best for them because it doesn't matter because they'll die and what's the point if they'll die so who cares about anyone who'll die because they'll leave you and die and die die die die die-"

"what are you protecting is this a joke they don't need your protection they don't want your protection they'd rather die they already have died you were supposed to protect them and they're did and what did you ever do for them because you're useless and you couldn't even do that useless idiot so many dead because you're useless and nobody even wants you to try anymore so you should just die useless people should just die die die die die-"

"stop building stop making stop bringing things no more no more no more new things hate them get out keep them away nobody should have anything nobody should make anything why can't they be happy with what they have hate people who make things stop changing things stop changing leave it alone just stop and leave it alone it's already so bad so just stop and let go and wait until you die die die die die-"

"you don't know anything there's nothing outside don't talk about the outside the outside doesn't exist people shouldn't come from outside nothing should come from outside outside is hell stop thinking stop remembering don't talk about outside anyone who pretends the outside exists should go to hell just die and go to hell outside person go to hell and die die die die die-"

"all you do is kill is that all you can do is that all you know everyone else knows more everyone else can do things but all you do is kill and nobody wants that nobody wants a killer killing is useless killers are useless they hate killers they're afraid of killers they don't want you to kill they fear that you kill but killing makes you stronger but killing will eat away at you because it's death and death and nothing good comes from death and every time you lift you hand someone dies because all you do is make people die die die die die-"

"give up idiot stupid useless idiot it's broken and it can't be fixed and maybe you could have done something but it's too late now because you were stupid and too late always stupid and too late and nobody wants your help and nobody needs your help because you're stupid and too late and you can't fix anything because it's broken so give up and die already and die like the rest why can't you just die die die die die-"

    The negative impression, as the light is dimly cast upon it, looks up. It turns its head towards the group, towards Priscilla, but one can only tell because of the twin sparkles of its impossibly bright, grey-white eyes. "We missed you. We kept it just the way it was. We knew you would come back. Nothing changed. Nobody left. It's just us again.

    We missed you, so let's kill them all.
"
Captain Flint Flint follows the First into this strange copy of the way things were, his thoughts preoccupied with the potential consequences of letting this entity live. His mind twists as surely as his lips do, curled into a determined scowl. Instead of musing on ways it could go right, all he can seem to think about is the consequences of failure. His brow furrows as he imagines ways not only to exact his retribution upon this Darkness, but upon those who would be responsible.

     All of those thoughts pause, the moment he sees the negative impression of Priscilla. It's as Reiji says--these words were never meant for him. In his anger, he would've killed over the sad musings of a lonely child. This being seems not only a metaphor for the wounds suffered by the Painted World, but by Priscilla herself.

     The captain reaches into his traveling bag. He'd meant to save these, have them refurbished and presented to the First as a Christmas gift. Right now, it seems like there's a little girl who would like very much to have these back. Flint produces the wooden toys, sourced from Priscilla's tower in the ruined version of the painted world. They're cracked and swollen with age, the paint all but totally peeled off. But they're hers.

     "I know what it's like to have things you love taken away from you," he says. "If you doubt that, then use whatever means you have to look at me, truly. I'll not fight it." The captain hands over the toys, cracked and splintered. The motes said they'd have to give something up. This might do--but if it doesn't, he's prepared to show through his own past experiences, however painfully they're ripped out, that he is a kindred spirit. In his mind, he's already suffered the same wound.

     The ruling elite of England took everything from him--made him into a monster for daring to lead his life differently. For daring to suggest the most modest of reforms to a society that refused change or leniency. The moment he dared to be an advocate for those society painted as monsters, he, too was made into one. All of his friends abandoned him, one person he loved thrown into prison, the other disgraced. The two of them fled England in the night like rats scurrying to the next sheltering shadow.

     From there, they found a Painted World of their own--Nassau, a humid, stinking place of desperation mingled with aimless ambition. A place England ostensibly claimed as its own, but neglected just as surely as Lordran neglected the painting. As with the Painted World, criminals and monsters alike tended to end up there. Flint's efforts to reform the place had been met with mockery and scorn. He had to protect Miranda, but to do that, he had to kill the man he was, to harden himself into something crueler. Into the man that now kneels before the avatar of the Dark.

     Is that enough to prove he's a kindred spirit? Or will the Dark see fit to take something from him all the same? Before he realized what it was, he was all too willing to just kill it. But faced with this vision of a child's despair, he can't bring himself to do it.
Eryl Fairfax     A grim expression covers Eryl's face as the beings warn him about the flowers. He gives everyone a serious look, before adding, "We will return them to the soil when all is said and done, I promise." The diplomat places the bloom in his breast pocket before turning to Staren. "I think so. If it is still cognizant, it can be reasoned with."

    There is a brief bout of bickering with Flint over the radio, a man who wishes to take this being's life, pinning responsibility for his lost crew upon it. Privately, Eryl thinks that the responsibility falls on him for not keeping together, but now is not the time for that. An agreement is reached; Flint will hold all those who advocated the peaceful route accountable should it deceive them. None could hold Eryl to account more than himself if that happens, but he's willing to agree to that.

    Priscilla produces the Moonlight Greatsword, and the tiny things resonate with it, congealing together upon its crystalline surface. They mentioned that they came to those on the border between madness and revelation... that would certainly fit Seath to a 't.' An interesting factoid, if nothing else.

    They advance through the crushing darkness, with only Priscilla and moonlight to guide them. They pass by the dregs of the Painted World, the vast roots of the Archtree, and arrive at the monument. There it is, the source of all this.

    It turns and speaks, and Eryl recognizes some of the words the frenzied mass said to him last time. No doubt the rest of it was addressed to everyone else that time... so, these are the nasty, bitter things Priscilla keeps herself from saying to them. She is, in many ways, still a child. She pushes such things away, rather than deal with them in a healthy manner, so they too congealed down here. Just as she was at the centre of the painting, so too is her shadow at the centre of this darkness.

    Last time, he lashed out. But this time, he's ready.

    "Just because others are pretending to be my friend, that does not mean I cannot be a true friend to them," he replies, before taking a seat on the ground before the figure. "It's good to meet you in person. I'm sorry I was so... closed off, last time. I hope to be more open now, and that you'll forgive me."

    From the inside of his coat pocket, he produces... a tablet computer? A strange thing for a man like him to be carrying, owing to the computers in his head. But he lacks a built-in display, so this is what he uses when he needs to show others things he has saved his head. He places it upon the ground, screen-up, and slides it towards the being.

    The screen lights up, and images begin to flash across its surface. Screenshots from Eryl's own memory. Starting recent, with his adventures here in the Painted World, then going back to the collapse of Njorun. His dismissal from ReGenesis takes up a corner and remains there, the next images never obscuring it. Time spent on his homeworld, wandering the desert wastes. A photograph of every corpse and desiccated skeleton he found, along with the best biography he could put together for them based on what was around them. Grand skyscrapers, now hollow frames that list to the side. The many many friends he made in settlements he found along the way, before leaving them, knowing that they could be long dead before he ever passed that way again.

    Then it goes back further, to Eryl's days in Eden before he departed. His time as a teenager, undergoing medical procedures to halt his aging. An image of him in a hospital bed, looking to his side, only to see an empty sleeve where his right arm once was. His time as a child, where his hair was a more natural blonde, rather than the near-white it is now. Growing up, undergoing a gruelling curriculum filled with vagaries and tests with multiple players, aimed at gauging his suitability to become a SAVIOUR.
Eryl Fairfax     "I have experienced loss vicariously, but I feel my own experiences are not as strong as any here. I was willing to give up parts of my body, and I knew the loss of my purpose in life would come some day. But in both cases, I persevered, and came out better from them. No matter how much the world hurts, no matter how much knowing others hurts, that hurt can fade, and you can be better from it."

    "So I ask you; please leave this place with us." And with that statement, Eryl produces one final flower, and extends it towards the dense core of sorrow to take. One like he gave everyone else, an offering to join them.
Reiji Arisu Moon.

Moonlight. Reiji knows it when it reveals itself to him. It's a strange kind of synesthesia, to have a glyph burnt into your brain through your ears. But somehow, it works. Reiji follows the motes with his eyes as they blend and blurr into the blade of that great Moonlight sword. So that's what it was, then. That's why they seemed familiar.

Priscilla says she knows the way. And so Reiji follows.

Frozen archtrees. They're an unusual, fascinating addition to this place. He shouldn't have expected any differently; of course there would be Archtrees beneath a place so interconnected with Lordran. It only makes sense.

Soon, though, their journey through the valley comes to an end. They find their way... somewhere close to where they began.

They find there something that drives a dagger deep into Reiji's heart. A lonely child. Its words hiss in his mind, again not something he truly hears or deciphers, but something that he simply intuits. Words that arise from the darkness. Seeing her here, understanding finally the context of what all this has meant, it's...

A child. He forced away a child. It rose up and struck out at him-- why? Because it was afraid? Because it thought he and the others would take the thing it loved away again?

Reiji Arisu is not an emotional man. The times Xiaomu has seen his facade crack can't be more than a tenth of her age. But this seems to have struck a chord. Flint moves first, Reiji follows second.

"I didn't bring anything," the exorcist says quietly, having left his weapons behind. He will bring no harm. "But... I know what it's like, to feel like you're alone in a world that you think will never accept you. I understand the hatred that comes when everything you've loved is taken away. How you would give anything-- everything-- to turn back the clock, to bring back the dead, to break every law just so that you could have that someone back again. How it feels like everything is your fault. That nobody should be happy again."

Xiaomu would know. She was there to watch first hand what happened in the wake of Shogo's death. How responsibility and grief and guilt were piled high on the shoulders of a boy who could never be expected to fight. She could remember the rage, the hate, how could never forgive, never let go, how suddenly a talented young man had been thrust into a world of turmoil and conflict because he had made a mistake, and because his father had paid for it with his life, and because he had carried a good man's blood.

Reiji's shoulders rise and fall with his breath as he kneels down next to the void-child, and reaches for her hand. "I was lucky. I had someone there to help me through, who finally convinced me that there was more to live for than... Hatred and my own self-loathing. You've been alone for so long, down here."

"Take whatever you need. Cry as long as you like on our shoulders."
Starbound Flotilla     The still-pained remains of the Flotilla stay behind. They'll try to recover, and they'll try to work to build a way out that's better suited to the passage. They'll work, perhaps with those beings of light, to find some solutions for the pain of passage. More than that, they'll hope to not need to leave that way at all.

    Only Seft and Moonfin move on with the rest of the group. They follow closely behind Priscilla, calmly walking together and each intending an entirely different purpose. But they keep close, even while looking with an awe each their own at the powerful aesthetics of the architecture, the lost pieces of the world, the terrain... They, among all the others, know best what awe to hold for it, and what sorrow to feel for its loss.

    When they come upon the figure, they both hold for a long time. Moonfin glances to one side, and the other, and then looks as though he's going to push forward and say something. Seft grabs his shoulder, and the look on her face is... Solid. Every part of her visor is filled with blue.

"Seft--!"
"Determined. I'll try."
"At full module activation, you said yourself--"
"Tense. And you think the First isn't revealing just as much about herself?"
"...I will not tell the others."
"Tense. I'm sure I'll appreciate that when I care about it again."

    This is a rare situation. Seft has done something that she very rarely does. A sacrifice, of particular sorts, for the situation, one appropriate. She has enabled every module of her mind, allowing for full and open processing of each personality attribute, including all of those that often lay suppressed. She pushes forward and begins to speak. Her tone is strange, like the synthesizer is working in an entirely different way. What she says next is... Odd, for someone like Seft. "Sympathetic. You're right. About it. They all have perfectly good homes, why do they have to get in the way? They all have families who still love them, why should they try to take even more out of the world? Why do they deserve that? What gives them the right? To show off," She makes small, frustrated gestures in a robotic way. "To rub it in how much they can have because their homes and their families and their friends love them."

    She takes a step forward. "Stressed. And why-why-why should you commit yourself to goodness and rightness and saving them and trying to help when nobody ever did for you when you needed it, when nobody would have done it then and you know why they want to do it now, for their own gratification, to feel good about being a hero, instead of because of caring? Why should you help when none of it ever works out, when all the circumstances you have to indulge to survive mean none of what you did to help gets remembered, and none of it lasts, and everyone still probably hates you because of those circumstances at the end of it."

    "Strained. And how could you even help them in the first place? How can someone who doesn't understand themselves, who doesn't know how they do the things they do and who doesn't understand why it made people hate them, how-how-how--!" She buzzes and clicks and surges static for a moment. "How can someone like that even be able to help anyone-ne-ne!?"
Starbound Flotilla     "Stressed. How can someone who kills-s-sssss be able to call themselves good or hope that anything can get changed when none of the things that get destroyed can ever really come back, it's just wounding and amp-amp-amputation, and--!" Her body rattles in a way that feels damaged. "Pained. And you protect them, or you try to follow them and protect other people, but what is even the point of that? Always-always-always chasing some little moment of gratification that maybe doing a /good thing/ will make me suddenly become a /good person/, but it never does, it never brings anything back, it never makes me into anyone besides the person who got cast out and turned away and ran instead of staying and helping!"

    And she goes on, with a momentum that's hard to stop. She's swapped pronouns, from "you" to "me", but hasn't seemed to realize she has. Even her voice is breaking, as briefly, just for a moment, Glitch voice synthesis reaches emoting levels. Her monotone falters in a storm of static and it becomes an aggressive tone of self-loathing. "So what's even the point? What's the purpose of any of it besides useless pointless gestures that stories and so-called friends say will pay off in some way that never /does/? I can't /build/ something that makes me stop being someone who has these thoughts and kills the people I have to kill to do what I think-think-think-THOUGHT was right, to go along with this HEROISM and this RIGHTEOUSNESS that isn't-- It's not--!"

    Her emoting has become far less robotic, in a way that seems like the motors in her body are not moving in a way that they were designed to. Her speech flickers in and out of coherence. "Why can't I have been someone who could create and be liked and wanted and not thrown away by the people who're supposed to care about me, the people who I loved as much as I was supposed to, who promise to do that and then lie the moment they find out that what I am threatens them in some way that I wouldn't even ever do!?" Her eye-visor flickers erratically, now, flashing occasionally under the knight helm. "It wasn't /my fault/ that I'd been born that way, it wasn't /my fault/ that I couldn't just decide to be someone else, something else that wouldn't make them feel so scared of something I'd never do, it wasn't /my fault/ that they hated me and hurt me so much that I had to make the fears right, but at the end of it I'm the only one /hurting/ about it, and they live their lives or die their deaths and do they even feel guilty about what they did?! Do they feel half as guilty as I do?! Are they even-n-n-!!" She buzzes, restarting her voice module entirely. "Can I even say they're worse than me?!"
Starbound Flotilla     "I look around and I can see /good people/, I can see people who everyone loves because of how good they are, even if they have to do the wrong thing sometimes, even if they're scary, even if they are wrong themselves on some level, because they're /good people/. Because something about them makes them good on some pillar, some core, some piece inside that nobody around them can deny, and even if they do bad things and make bad decisions and even make decisions that would make them fail, they'll still be a good person, they'll be someone who gets to be successful, they'll get to go back to a loving home and friends and family and they'll get to live a life I don't get to live! Because no matter how much I keep trying, I can't /become/ a /good person/ just by doing enough good things that magically I turn into someone who gets to have that life of love and success, and instead I have to kill and cheat and hurt and suffer all the way to almost succeeding and still not-not-not-NEVER being good the way they are just naturally! Because those thoughts and those feelings and that pain I caused don't ever just turn off, all I can do is--!!"

    And then, the visor flickers one more time, and becomes Seft's eyes again. Wide, distressed, and anxious. She's gone back to having some of those modules deactivated... As is her awful habit. "...Sympathetic. All I can do is forget a little while. Being alone... Makes it hard to forget. Those things are true. They don't go away, no matter how much I push the rest of the world away. All I can do is hope that drowning it in other people and other places can make it harder to remember, for a little while." The glitchy sound of pained static she makes sounds like a heavy breath.

    "Will you please let us help you forget?"
Tomoe Tomoe plans with her comrades over the radio for a moment and then, a deal is made with Flint and she prays it's not going to be a bad one. The way forward on that is set she is willing to give her o2n blood if it is needed. She takes a deep breath and makes herself ready. She hears the things speak of what the flowers are that brings her some pause their warning about the razor's edge on which they stand is quite clear to her now. She does know doing nothing is the worst of all choices here she knows that much.

So they have three paths before them as she listens on, they can try to sooth it and make it accept self. They can try to banish it, or try to exchange with it? At lest as she thinks about these choices it's some serious things, but what is the time she has other than time she wouldn't have had in her home world. She knows she's alive by multiveral interference after all.

Priscilla speaks now and she simply listens here. The conversation on the comm goes on for a moment and then she thinks she at lasts understands what she must do. They must share their pain...

"I too know what it is like to lose those who are close to me."

She takes a moment her transformation drops for now revealing Sheena once more.

"I know what it's like to lose and rage at the world for being powerless to do anything about it...I didn't understand even remotely the pain you were in.."

Sheena tilts her head for a moment before I speak.

"I am like Captain Flint you can see into us can't you then see...in me."

They would see a younger Tomoe only by a few years with a group of people. They are not Kirito, Silica, Asuna or any of the other GU but other victims. Tomoe wasn't one of the Clearers to start she was just a gatherer and crafter to afraid to fight her way out.

She was out gathering with several of her friends from the computer club of the school she had gone to as part of the exchange program. Mai and Kouji were with her they had hit a good sc9ore but they turn out not to be alone. Players with red markers on them and the guild tag LAUGHING COFFIN. Afraid they start to back up from the rogue players. The lead one speaks to Tomoe a name is spoken her eyes go wide at them knowing it.

An demand to join them is made, she says no, and the red players spring into action. Tomoe is slammed into a tree then a sword is driven into her gut more demands are made she screams she refuses potions are force fed to her as she's forced to watch when they do to her friends. Kouji is the first to perish his hp bar spiking out and he explodes into a million shards of light. Mai hangs on longer but she too meets the same fate and a figure in black is seen appearing saving her but leaving her crushed with despair and loss.

"I know I have nothing physical offer you but if i can help share the burden of your pain i will gladly do so...if I had been left alone with my pain it would have destroyed me others...forced me out of that place."

That dark day set her on the path to who she is now why she again and again reckless throws herself between harm and others like the day she took a fatal hit for Klien against the Skull Reaper. If not by a trick of luck and fate she would not be here. Just the idea of losing him like she'd lost other was too much carry in the end she's just a mortal as some might put it whose found herself above where her universe intended her to be and just trying to do what she thinks is helping.

"In the end I'm just someone who was never intended to have any ability in any real way. Yet due to a trick of the multiverse here I am. Always over my head trying to just make my way forward and I know I can't do it by myself...no one really can. With all my own pain if others didn't help me it would have destroyed me."

She's looped a bit but it's clear she means every damn word she's saying.
Xiaomu Xiaomu didn't have any intention of touching the flowers, whether with fingers or with foot. They're there, they're pretty; this is where they belong, and she's not so attached to their beauty as to take even one of them away from here. And that's *before* the light-motes explain what the flowers represent, what they *are*.

More is said; the ways forward are illuminated, the better to decide upon a course of action. Xiaomu's in no particular hurry to get into another fight, especially down here, so the prospect of trying to heal rather than battle is very agreeable to her, indeed. And Priscilla knows where they need to go? All the better; the sage fox follows along, finishing her fried tofu and tucking the empty wrapper away in a pocket of her vest. (Like hell she's going to leave litter lying around *here* of all the possible corners of the Multiverse.)

Reaching the place, though, and hearing the voices - the *voice*, singular - which uttered those words before ... things fall into place quickly, even if it takes Xiaomu longer to really follow along with what's happening. It's not - as best sense she can make of it - that these things, these echoes, are Dark themselves; rather, they're pieces carved out by something else Being ... or rather, as she sees now, someone. The shape of nothingness displaced where Priscilla was, at many different points in time. The echo of silence, displaced from where/when words were spoken, aloud or not. Whatever they do here, something will change irrevocably - because what happens to a wound when it heals? It 'goes away,' vanishes as far as a mortal's perception can tell or a mortal's mind can care, but even if a scar remains, the wound itself ... if you treat it as a thing that existed, then here at least, it doesn't simply stop existing.

She listens, to the echo of past voices and thoughts, and to the sound of her allies speaking to Priscilla's past moment-selves; there's too much to focus on everything, and even the sage fox would probably crumple if she tried to take in everything.

There is one voice, one set of words, which draws her attention as inexorably as though Priscilla's past had been speaking to her directly - largely because they're the same words that *were* aimed at Xiaomu, the first time these voices addressed her. And the sage fox turns to seek out their source, stepping as nearly to silently as she can as she moves among the echo-shades. Then she crouches in front of that echo of Priscilla.
Xiaomu "Sucks to be immortal sometimes, doesn't it," she says quietly. "All but immune to the ravages of age, while the mortals around you are doomed from the day they're born, someday to die when you can't save them. All the power we can learn to draw on, and there'll always be something we can't confront to protect them. But what I said before is still true: that fragility, that mortality, makes them more precious than any treasure of gold or jewels or magic. I've counted many a human as a friend in my time, and no matter how many of them return to the dust, I'll never stop thinking fondly of them. And I'll never stop seeking out more friends, no matter how short their lives; if I can make their lives brighter, safer, happier, even for a day, then my time among them has been well spent."

She lays her staff down and holds up her left wrist, looking at the prayer beads wound there with a contemplative expression. "These were a gift from an abbess I met in China," she reminisces. "Last heir of the convent-school where I was taken in hundreds of years ago, raised and taught like human girls. Place got destroyed decades ago when a war passed through too close ... I'm likely the only one who remembers it, now. But I still remember. I *will* remember it."

Her gaze shifts back to the echo-shade she picked out to talk to. "Losing friends is never gonna stop hurting," she admits. "But as long as the likes of us are alive to remember them, we've given them the only immortality we really can - and there will always be more people to meet, each of them precious and unique. We'll always be apart from them, separated by immortality and power from the people we walk among ... but it's because they all die, eventually, that we should value them, and who knows? Maybe we'll meet them again - in another life, or another world."

She reclaims her staff and rises back to her feet, smiling. "Isn't it better if their memories of us are happy ones?"
Kushiko She's not good at this.

Only the vaguest of memories actually exist. She is broken in ways she cannot comprehend, only stitched together because the truth was, and is, too much for understanding. Perhaps that is why being around Priscilla was more soothing than unnerving half the time, versus others.

And yet because of this, there is no great... set of words. Nothing that she can truly offer, because all she's known is violence, even if her memory of it is fleeting. As she followed along with the others, she listened. The reversal of injuries fully complete made it much easier to listen. As Moonlight was drawn--literally and figuratively, the rune itself, she did her best to center herself mentally as they progressed. The flowers. The valley. The frozen trees. It did not have the impact it did on her as it did on others, for she knew not, and had not the context for it all.

The words... brought a kind of terrible, horrifying realization, a zenlike moment of cognition of what was going on. Why she felt as she did. She suspected, she felt, she empathized with these things, even if she had not the full grasp of them all.

For once, the voice that comes out of the Warframe is without that ephemeral, presenceless aspect to it. So often they had heard her speak, that 'mind hive' aspect to her. She spoke as 'we' because she spoke with her fractured yet whole aspect. The Warframes felt as she did, because without her, they did not live. If she could be seen, there would be a small bitter smile as Seft spoke. She wasn't good.

She was what was required.

She dismissed those thoughts as much as she could, burying them. The voice that is unmistakably that of a child's: there's no pretense, no air about it, bereft of anything influencing it. A harsh reminder given what they've all seen of her, both here and elsewhere. "We were just kids. All of us. I didn't want to live anymore. I didn't know what I was. I didn't know what any of us was. We hurt her. Blinded her, because we didn't... we couldn't, none of us could control what we were."

The Warframe's very demeanor is remarkably /human/, the technorganic surrogate lifting her hands and gazing down at them--if it--she, had eyes to gaze at them. Valkyr's pulsating lines seem to shimmer a bit more radiantly for a few fleeting moments amidst it all. "All I know now are memories from here and beyond. There's a place inside of me that's a void. But maybe there's something more now. The Lotus might have wanted me and some of the others with your Concord, but *I* wanted to be here because of you. Because there's people like you, that feel like they could be family."

Her hands clench momentarily. "We... I. /I/. *I*. Want to help. I can't. I don't... *I don't know how* except with what I am." she admits, a kind of shaking in her voice, grown small just by that utterance. Her head turns to the shape that spoke. The reflections of horror and bleakness. There's a terrible vulnerability here, one she doesn't know the full extent of. "But that won't stop me. Won't stop any of us, from helping you. Not now, and not everything that's happened before." she finishes.
Carna     Enark has spent a lot of time contemplating his failings. Lots and lots and lots. More than Earth has existed in most universes. Nearing as long as the UNIVERSE has existed in most universes. Though he sometimes escaped into insanity, he was always pulled back by his nature, to go over it again. His time alone in that tower was his own hell. One day he was care-free, hallucinating and unaware, then it would all snap back, he'd be lucid again, remember who he was and where, and that there would never truly be any escape, and crawl in the depths of despair. The moment of fevered delusion made the return to reality that much worse. Like waking up from a dream only to find one is living a nightmare.

    He has suffered loss over and over and over, for far longer than a human mind should exist intact.

    He does not in any way feel that compares, or is more valid than, or is worse than what this impression of a girl's negative thoughts might entail. He has contemplated his failings. And seeking to just wash this world clean, in trying to, once again, make it all about him, the scholar-mage who aspired to be a hero when he was young and never let go of that dream, trying to live it out in another's world, when he should be focusing on HER... After all his resolve to change despite the nature of the Dead, despite his efforts to focus on the now and those he is here for, he keeps being drawn back into that spiral. Here it is, the very thing he thought to use magic to resolve being the very thing he was trying to avoid, and the solution seems to be to do exactly what he didn't want to do either, by dwelling on his own poor fortune.

    And as he stands before her, hearing those words, and reconsidering his choices, he finds himself once more wallowing in guilt and self-hate. Though he keeps saying it, because it is common knowledge in Lumiere, he is only gradually beginning to truly believe those words.

    'The Dead don't change.'

    Who told him those words originally?

    'Not by gaining. Only by loss.'

    Was he destined for loss forever then?

    'You must carve out pieces of yourself if you wish to go on.'

    Because there was nowhere left to go to?

    'You can not gain without losing something in return.'

    That just can't be right.

    'If you wish to change, you must lose something you find precious.'

    Can it?

    'That is the curse of Humanity.'

    Even so, as the Dead can not change... That means he can not give up. Because that is the one part of him he will never let go of. When he lets go of that, he will stop being HIM.
Carna     He steps forward, opening his mouth to speak after communicating his doubts on the radio, when he hears a strange *WHUMP-BMM* sound off in the distance behind them. He turns to look in the direction it came from. Did something fall down here with them...? But his attention is drawn away.

    He finds himself offering the length of time he was alone, the entirety of his time in Escher, and immediately bites his own lip in anger. Others are offering so much smaller numbers. The periods of time they have survived, that they can take on, and he thoughtlessly blurts out such a ridiculously long period of time. Is he trying to make it about him again? To take all this burden alone?

    ...No. He wasn't thinking of himself at all when he said that. For once, upon self-examinaton, he realizes there was no such intent, subconscious or otherwise. He just did as those around him. And he feels that, if he had tried to cut down that number, to be more conservative, he would have hated himself for not giving his all like everyone else.

    Especially hearing all they have been through. Realizing things about them that had been invisible to him before. Things about their true natures.

    And that's what this is really about isn't it? It's not him that's saving Priscilla. HE'S not here for her.

    THEY are. WE are. It's all of them. Us. Together.

    Like frozen lightning through his brain, it illuminates things hidden, things he couldn't see, makes them literally painfully clear, and then locks them in place within veins of blue crystal... Like the roots and branches of these Archtrees. It hurts to learn like this, to come to this realization, to comprehend what a wrong idea he had held all this time, and accept it.

    But it's the first evidence, ever that the Dead can truly change. Not by loss, but by gain.

    It's not about him. Not just his issues, and not his efforts. He keeps trying to take on more and more to prove himself. But it wasn't him he was thinking of when he came here. Just like when he offered all of his suffering, he wasn't thinking of himself when he agreed to do all that he could for Priscilla. To keep coming back. That was not in his mind or heart. What WAS there...

    Was for all of them to come together and help her with everything they could give.

    He voices all this. He says it for all to hear. He tells his story, his time in the land of the dead, his colleagues lost to monsters, his time alone when he tried to create new companions and failed over and over again and leaving him surrounding by mechanical statues bearing simulacra of his friends' faces, finally succeeding in a mimic who acted like a person, only to have that one leave him too. To be alone and alone and alone for what easily could have been forever.
Carna     And then to be saved. And to realize that saving Priscilla in turn was not his personal accomplishment. It is the task that all of them have accepted gladly.

    He is proud. Proud to have this realization. Proud to stand beside them. Not proud for himself, but proud that all these different faces and pasts could come together at the end of a long, long journey, and support one who matters much to all of them.

    He is proud to know these people. He is proud to have met them for the first time here on this quest.

    "I am proud," he finishes. "To call Queen Priscilla--No. I am proud to call and know that Priscilla is my friend, and that she trusts us all for a task so deeply personal to her, that she must have closed her heart against long ago, and been even further hardened to after venturing out into the Multiverse. She has met many souls, she has lost some of them never to be seen again, and she has enriched many. Though I may have endured longer, I was an adult, with a life time of experience to draw upon. You were but a child. You did not know that there could be anything different. And unlike when I blamed myself, you were blameless and yet must have felt the same depths of guilt and hate and blame. It must have been very hard for you. Very, very hard. But it does not have to be that way anymore. Not ever again."
Carna     He smiles warmly, knowing that if his body worked more like a living person's he would definitely be crying right... "Hm?" He reaches a hand up as he feels something hot running down his cheeks. Is he bleeding again? The memory of his reflection in the mirror of the bloody head wound that leaked...

    I'm not okay.

    No. This fluid is clear. Colorless. He would almost think it is sweat, but like tears, that is something is body can not produce.

    Or so he thought. His blurry vision, distorted by overflowing wetness, says otherwise.

    And then he feels the hairs on the back of his neck prick up despite lacking the biological responses for it. Something familiar is here. Something he would never normally detect, because it is everywhere where he comes from. It is something from Lumiere, that is here now.

    He raises a sleeve and wipes his face, trying to stave off the seemingly unceasing flow of tears, the waterfall of suffering beyond what any mortal should have to endure, trying to escape from him right now that he has a body capable of releasing it.

    For a moment he glances over his shoulder, half-expecting to see Crow. But no. This thing that is approaching is nothing so friendly as a smiling Shadow.

    He does not wish to interrupt the others, he does not wish to sully this ritual of sharing with an exclamation. But he hopes everyone can hurry. Because something is coming.

    It's moving very fast.

    And it's hungry.

    He raises his radio while trying to clear his leaking eyes enough to see by, and whispers into it, trying not to break the mood, "I do not mean to alarm anyone, but I believe we have Unlit incoming."
Staren     Priscilla knows where to go. Staren follows. Mentally inventorying everything he has that might be able to provide power for Enark's spell. The beauty of the scenery is somewhat dulled by the situation. Still, he feels better now, thanks to the complete regeneration of the motes. Stronger. If this comes down to a fight, he won't be caught at his weakest.

    And then they come upon the small figure, that is a female humanoid and yet not. It is immediately apparent to Staren that this is the lifehunt itself, talking to itself of its misery. All that it does is kill, even when it shouldn't work. Staren remembers the scenery in Alfheim dying, even when there probably wasn't programming for that. "But killing can be useful..." he replies without thinking. "By removing bad things from people's lives, from the future, you make what's left that much better."

    Others maintain some theory that this is Priscilla's jungian shadow archetype -- the parts of herself, the feelings, the thoughts she has but suppresses, refuses to face. He doesn't see it. Priscilla's not a scared little girl. Even if, in some small way, this thing patterned its form after what she once was... she's moved on. The leader she is now is not the same woman that learned of what would become the greatest happiness in his life and tried to poison and devalue it with words of doubt. Just as he is no longer afraid that any day now, his so-called 'allies' will denounce him and force him to hide, unable to help the Multiverse. Sure, sometimes people SEEM to move on but harbor resentment... but sometimes, they really do move on. Things are different now. People are different now.

    But, it is apparently those same doubts he must relive, to connect with the Lifehunt. He takes a deep breath, and remembers... That christmas, when long-time allies he hadn't talked with much suddenly spoke up, telling him they didn't hate him. No, further. Trying to file a permission for resurrection form, getting shouted at despite not forcing anything on anyone. Who was it? He doesn't remember exactly. Probably Sisko. Further. Making an offhand comment about how the X parasite is too dangerous to study, and everyone shouting at him, as if he'd said the exact opposite. He never understood, to this day, but he's moved on.

    Conversations he scarcely remembers the details of. How many times, did he beg and plead for understanding, just saying he wanted to understand, and yet all they had to give was toxic words and venom? There. He feels something. Anger? Anger, now. Those ungrateful idiots, all he wanted to do was help...

    Further. Where did it all begin...

    Commander Julian Egret was dead. Others just accepted it. They mourned. Anger rises. How could they GIVE UP, on someone who had led the Wings of Nemesis to heroism again and again? The Wings of Nemesis, most of the Union people that he... if not exactly friends, were people he got on well with. And now one of their number needed help more than ever, and noone would give it.

    He'd gone to see Morg. The one man he could trust to understand him, to see things the way he did. Morg gave a beautiful speech to him, about the tragedy of deaths of men who could do so much, but NOT TODAY. Today they would make it different.

    Of course, they weren't careless. They didn't jump to conclusions. Bringing someone back Harrowed was a last resort. Back then, Staren didn't really understand the horror of having a demon in your head. He still doesn't, now, but he at least has some suspicions. So they didn't set out to communicate with Julian's spirit. To confirm his death, and to ask him if he wished to come back. They wouldn't force being a Harrowed on anyone.
Staren     The Lifehunt, in front of him. He looks at it again. "You've been alone a long time. Longer than I can imagine. But we're here now. Let us help you, like we were helped. It's not... You're not useless. You've helped Priscilla make many people's lives better. I'm sorry we didn't know to thank you."
Staren     They travelled in Morg's ship, to the site of the battle. A funeral was being held nearby. They were not happy. The ones who'd GIVEN UP on their comrade were unhappy that someone would try to do something for him, to help him. They said it was disrespectful. What could be more disrespectful than LEAVING a man to the reaper?! Heads got heated. Words were said by short-sighted fools, and the people who were just trying to help someone.

    And then...

    AND THEN...

    There was a mysterious burst of static on the radio, and the mourners rejoiced, believing Julian was trying to contact them. They REJOICED, at the very thing they so vehemently denied that he and Morg should attempt to do!

    Staren's fists clench, and he growls. 'Fucking morons.' He mutters. He didn't swear like that, back then. Not even when those... those... he doesn't have WORDS for how, how STUPID, how SHALLOW, how SELF-DAMAGING such behavior was! He nearly screams in rage, but holds it in.

    A simulated tear moistens one of his eyes. That's when he knew. Because the only reason for them to decry his actions, and then rejoice when the same goal happened without him -- well, when they BELIEVED the same goal had happened, not that they had any proof, the mindless fuckwits --

    It was because they hated him.

    They had to have.

    They hated him. And, and he stayed. He tried to help, to prove... but that's what he'd been doing in the first place. Why did he think it would change anything?

    But he kept going. Desperately trying to prove himself to the Union. But no matter what he did, noone trusted him. Even in his own specialty, freaking giant robots, they always went to Winry instead. They found tools of great power and hid them away, even after seeing what they could do. Metatron. Phazon, which allowed regular people to stand up and fight threats they'd needed elites like Samus for before... No. They'd throw that potential away. And still he struggled, to gather power on his own, to do whatever he could...

    But if they'd hated him even when he was working towards a goal they rejoiced in... Why would he have ever thought that anything he could do would help?

    ...

    ...

    ...That's the past, Staren, come back. Think of that christmas. Psyber, Himei, and Kimiko, voices and faces he'd seen for a long time but never been close to or considered friends, stepped forward to tell him it wasn't like that. Twilight accepted him. Focus on that, and not on Priscilla saying that friendship so freely given is worthless. I said NOT ON THAT. Focus on the present.

    Staren opens his eyes and takes a deep breath, then lets it out. Like Eryl, he gets out a tablet. Staren can't transfer these memories, per se, but he can record the experience of remembering them. Which he has, and now he copies it to the tablet, and slides it towards the being. "...I've been there. If I... without anyone else, I would've... I don't like to think about it. Things would not have gone well. I, heh, I might have started trying to tear the Multiverse apart, because I thought only alone could the worlds be free of so much strife and suffering. But there were others. They talked to me, they tried to help me, and one understood me."

    He looks with some surprise at Seft. Is that really how she feels, but she's... turned it off somehow, like Septette can? Counterarguments start to come to his head--

    And Sheena. He doesn't like thinking about what it must've been like, to get trapped in SAO. Perhaps more concerning, she feels she was never 'meant' to have power?

    Xiaomu's concern is his possible future. He doesn't like to think about it -- he tells himself that he'll manage to convince friends to accept agelessness before they grow old and die. That's what he tells himself.

    but no. Now's not the time. They can help Seft later. Right now, there's...
Priscilla     To hear those words again, as they are, seems to cause Priscilla deep, visible, physical pain. Even more pale than she usually is, it's the first time the crossbreed has looked as if she is actually going to be sick; as if she really, genuinely can't handle what she's experiencing. It's perhaps no wonder that she has always been so unflappable and emotionally immovable in the past, if she had actively cast these things from her mind, as many have just begun to suspect. It would, in fact, be a ready explanation as for how she had retained her sanity, alone on this mountaintop of horrors for centuries.

    Even if there was no literal, metaphysical way of removing these thoughts and these feelings from herself, she must have well forgotten them enough that being made to confront them is akin to discovering them all over again; a flashback of deeply repressed trauma that makes her stagger, hold her head, push down the urge to be sick, and halt in backing away only as it comes dangerously close to withdrawing the light away from her friends and allies here, trying to hard to help, out of mind that they would be consumed instantly. It takes most of her willpower just to remain at that distance, close enough to provide the shelter and sanctity of Moonlight.

    It looks after if all of them may be killed anyways. The creature on the ground; the immortal shadow of everything Priscilla had hated, about the outside world, about the people that betrayed and failed her, and about herself; a reflection of her own personal darkness as the Abyss had been to Manus, lethally antithetical to everything that is not like herself, being everything else existence, all alone as she is; recognizes her, but not the others.

    Approaching it, one can feel its aura, its concentrated essence, so impossibly, disgustingly, terrifyingly strongly, that it's like the unforgettable nightmare moments they had experienced not long ago are creeping up on them again, the same unbearable sensations slowly prickling to a faint start once more, like heat just radiating off of the thing; the Lifehunt personified. Physically touching it would almost certainly be instant death. It goes beyond 'killing intent' or 'bloodlust' to an aura that can only be described as a tingling perception of mortality itself, beyond what any assassin or beast or demon could ever be capable of generating in all of infinity. A concept of murder so primevally pure and terrifying that even the dead and the undying recognize and fear it.
Priscilla     . . . but people approach it all the same. They come bearing tokens of the world it jealously and miserably holds prisoner, but can no longer see. They come bearing signs of the outside world that its mirror, or perhaps to quote the disembodied Dark itself that Moonfin had previously spoken to, its 'mistress/queen/other-half/self/love/mirror/truth' and 'the only one who knows/understands/comprehends/loves me/it/us', had abandoned it for, and in those signs it is as desolate and full of death and sacrifice as any other. They come bearing the willingness to set aside their very functionality and bearing their worst, darkest, most toxic and horrific feelings, better for them that they never speak aloud at all. They come bearing their throats, their hearts, their weakest selves, so laughably easy to snuff out without even needing to strike, weak and frail and liable to collapse just by themselves. They come bearing words that certainly it couldn't bear to hear, but words that it can't deny all the same, spoken with intolerable understanding of the exact same people that it had lost, as if they'd /met/ them. They come bearing the still-smouldering scars of another bizarre and horrifying void, impressed deeply in memory, but more importantly in the soul, smoking with the Wrongness with which it had burnt away their wings. They come bearing the madness that had become woven into the fabric of existence here, so rich and horrible that these alien visitors of light had senses it, wrapped up in a near-infinite loop of incomprehensibly lengthy memory. They come bearing the closest thing to a physical embodiment of experience that can be given, encapsulating rejection, abhorrence, and rage against all the universe and the people in it, tugging at the sleeves of what it is to be one of the Forlorn; the ones so broken of the world that their star would fade from the sky of their own resignation, and who would gladly disappear into a cold, lonely, and very gentle nowhere forever, as their one place to call their own, and be accepted.

    Something about those things, some combination of them perhaps even some metaphysical aspect of them, reaches what they approach. They finally /blip/ on the radar. They give off the right radio signature for this alien existence to perceive, necessary to verify that they are even real. When its entire world is itself, and itself is suffering and loss and the inescapable entropy of life, where one can only hope to seize more with time than they lose over its duration, those are the only experiences, the only things it knows, and the only senses it possesses to understand things outside of itself, and so this odd, fumbling, painful, agonizingly soul-searching attempt to make contact is like some kind of sign from the other side, or from across the cosmos. It does something.
Priscilla     The thing before them, in all the ways that language cannot ultimately grasp it, just as the mind is so irrevocably wired not to accept a true understanding, as a basic necessity of being a living thing, pauses. With no face but a suggestion and piercing, formless eyes, no sense of its own mind, in whatever form it takes, can be gleaned, but when it reaches out towards them; slowly, hesitantly, gently, thirstily; the tone of its aura, radiating something totally and polar opposite to the fact that any of them speak and breathe, changes subtly, like a wavelength shifting in hue as it drops to a lower energy. It could touch any of them. It could lay its endless, nothingness fingers upon them at any moment. It is just then, on the infinitesimal precipice of the last moment in time there is left where anyone could still change their mind and retreat, there is a subtle, subjective, but powerful, freezing of events, and a complete understanding, so formless as to be without even the eldritch whispers and synthesic runes that have so far stood in for words and meaning, comes to them unbidden.

    To accept that touch is to stay and prove one's legitimacy. To stand make contact is proof that one knows what loss and fear and resentment and loathing truly is. To retreat would be to assert that one's experiences clearly did not make such a mark as to be able to tolerate the touch of the truly, ultimately, Forlorn, and forsake any impact of the gesture one hopes to make. To hold the line will be to make fleeting contact with the formless, universal, omnipresent, transcendent truth of loss and death that can be understood in all places and all times and all contexts by all beings. To brush with that Truth is to lose something. Connecting to that void will allow something to fall into it, irretrievable by any work of might or miracle or magic of any Elite. Not something of the present. A piece of one's future. To reach out and make contact with eliminate something that has yet to be, with no clear picture of what.

    One might give up the last few years they will live through some retroactive twist of causality's knife when their final moments are probabilistically ordained. One might give up an small but important memory that would be crucial one day in averting the loss of something vital. One might disturb fate such that someone they would eventually come to love or respect or rely upon, someone who could change their life, would die before ever meeting them. One might entirely erase some small thing from existence that would give them a chance to do something great and wonderful for the world. There is no constructive way about it.

    There is no way to circumvent it. There is no precise telling what it is. Accepting the existence and the validity of this Truth for but a moment will not consume everything the future still holds, or all the chances one might have to finally set something right. It would be brief enough to leave one as still the master of their own fate, with their dreams as possible as they ever will be, but it /will/ take away one thing, one chance, one treasure, and they won't ever know what it was. To accept that Truth, however, is an exchange, for in touching them, that Truth accepts them, and as beings of substance and reality, there is /so much/ they could bring back from that endless, inconsolable abyss of abysses. So many things that were lost in this world, which could be found again, but never by themselves. There is an understanding that the more that accept, the greater the effect would be, but ultimately, there is no one that could ever rightfully demand from another to give up something in this way. They have but a single, arbitrary instant to decide, being no time at all and yet as long as it takes, before the last chance their living minds and physical bodies still have left to change and to move.
Staren     It noticed them. Staren wonders if it even heard what he said, but it approaches now. In a... non-menacing way. They've changed things...

    And then it tries to steal his future.

    There is no reason for it to do this. Even if it thinks it has to, he would happily find another way to help it.

    But to accept such loss is not who he is. It goes against everything he stands for. He would defy death and fate, to save people.

    It never occurs to him, even for an instant, that perhaps he might need to /accept/ death and fate, to save someone.

    It wants to TAKE something from him. Maybe on purpose, maybe it doesn't know any better. As he pulls away, the pattern-matching part of his mind is already predicting that the Lifehunt will take this as rejection of itself, even if Staren doesn't see it that way.

    Then again, if it really is death and loss personified, he's been rejecting it the whole time, hasn't he? But Staren sees this as some... being, a mind, perhaps a soul, that is victimized by cruel nature and needs to be helped and set free. Not as a representation of loss itself. It's the same way he sees a lot of things.

    "You don't need to do that." he says, coldly. He's already mentally preparing to fight, though he hasn't entirely given up hope. "You don't have to hurt us. Let us help you, please." The tone is cold and wary, though. He hasn't given up hope, but he's also not letting his guard down again.
Eryl Fairfax     Eryl feels the trepidation. He understands that accepting this creature's touch will steal something from him. He will never know what it was, and the absence of it might bring about disaster. It could be a personal one, it could be a massive one. It could result in his life lost, it could result in other lives lost. It could potentially cause any number of things, and he might never understand why.

    So he reaches out, accepts the Forlorn's touch, and places the flower in its hand. What else could he do?
Xiaomu Face to face with the embodiment of the Lifehunt - of Death, as elemental as such a thing can be made manifest - even an immortal must tremble. Xiaomu shows no sign of drawing away from it, and if she does indeed tremble, she does a good job of not showing it by much. A faint shimmer of sound from the rings atop her staff, where they should be silent if it were held still, perhaps elicited by her suddenly white-knuckled grip on the shaft.

Xiaomu breathes in deeply, then lets the breath out. She was born of nature, immortal though she may be, and as such, death is not so alien to her as one might imagine. She already knows it's going to hurt, but pain is part of life, part of Nature.

Immortal or not, that which is born will someday perish. Xiaomu knows this, and while she may not like it, she accepts it without qualms. She's in no hurry to die, of course - she likes the life she has right now, and wants to do as much with it as she can - but a day will come, sooner or later, that she simply isn't around to see. That's been true for all of her mortal friends; really, why *shouldn't* it apply to her as well?

So Xiaomu reaches out to clasp hands, however briefly, with the shape of the Lifehunt, the manifestation of Death. If she dies a little sooner for having tried to help this world, this soul, she'd like to believe it's a price well worth paying - and this time, she willingly weathers whatever pain comes with that touch, not flinching from it.
Reiji Arisu Humans are mortal.

This is a fundamental truth of the world. Someday, sometime in the future, he will die. He knows it, staring at this creature. He can feel the familiar sensation of Memento Mori. Darkdrift's familiar pulse tugs at the very fringes of his spiritual awareness. To reach out, to touch this creature, it means that he accepts something he can never take back.

It means accepting loss.

It means surrendering some portion of the infinite potential of his future, and in so doing, makes it finite.

But it was always finite, wasn't it?

In the end, he will die. Maybe not now. Maybe not tomorrow. But someday. Someday he will die.

A man is not measured by the length of his life, but in what he accomplishes, the people he loves, the lives he touches. A sad smile slides across Reiji's face. This, here, is the foundation of the Four Noble Truths. Xiaomu knows it, that's why she reaches out.

Reiji knows it, and so he does the same.

Besides, he can't very well leave her to be the only sacrifice, can he?
Tomoe She has owned Priscilla much and as odd as their relationship might be she considered her a friend. The suffering Priscilla has suffered is not something she'll ever be fully able to understand. She makes up her mind. Sheena moves to reach out and accept the Forlorn touch, she will never know what she might lose, or what might be effected but she knows what will happen here if they don't do anything. She's made her choice and she too reaches out like Eryl does. She's faced death before against the Skull Reaper, her bar was zero, she had seconds left she told him her real name and had accepted it was the end.

It was not to be and she wondered about that was it borrowed time she now existed upon? She sees Xiaomu and immortal also willingly taking this on. She'll never know what she'll loose from this but she has an idea it will help someone dear to her. Thus Sheena accepts, this being's price.
Captain Flint Flint holds the line. At first, he considers reneging. Backing away, and not 'sacrificing' whatever it is he's meant to give up. But then, he remembers biting back bitter tears, Miranda in his arms, the two of them cowering in the hold of a ship desperately hoping they wouldn't be found. Desperately hoping they'd make it to Nassau, both of them hoping to pick up the broken ruins of their lives and perhaps fashion something out of them. No one bled for them--all those who had been their friends had conveniently disappeared.

     His mind flashes to one memory--an argument with Miranda. There she stood before him, her lips quivering, hurt painted upon her severe features. Flint, through gritted teeth, stands in the doorway of the Puritan woman's home. "This ends when I grant them /my/ forgiveness," he'd said. "Not the other way around."

     To pull back and deny this being what it seeks would be proving he's no better than them. It'd make him a coward, who promises support one moment and pulls back the very instant that support requires sacrifice. Sometimes, he resented those people even more than the lords who had cast him out. And no matter what the cost, Flint will never, ever allow himself to sink to that level.

     His hand remains fully extended, despite the uncertainty of what it is he might have to give up. "Go ahead."
Carna     Enark has learned much of arcane lore, of eldritch secrets, of things that humans learned and became part of human knowledge, even though it never should have been. There is much, still, that lies outside of that. Which is beyond his comprehension and contained in no books. He seeks knowledge, and has always sought it. Even when it has been to his detriment. He loves to learn. He loves to teach.

    And he knows loss.

    If he can teach this manifestation, this Lifehunt, this Abyss, this piece of Priscilla, whatever she is, a little bit of something better, if he could contribute some part of himself alongside the others, and together gain so much more... Not for themselves, necessarily, but for so many others... That is an exchange he is comfortable.

    As terrifying as the aura is, he accepts it now. He accepts it as natural. It is nothing to fear. Not really. It may scare him regardless, but he accepts it.

    He accepts that touch.

    And he accepts that loss. As much of it as he needs to in order to make Her whole.

    And then a beast runs in. A beast on all fours, clothing ragged to match its tattered form. Its grisly half-formed flesh, barely a coating of meat and gristle on bloody bones. Lipless mouth with sharp teeth. A pair of empty sockets with a pair of glowing red lights floating within. Soul sparks, barely caged. Stolen light, shining in a shell of darkness.

    Red hair torn and missing from scalp in many places, but enough of both those red strands and of her attire remains to show that this creature is Carna. A Lantern fresh out of a resurrection without Dead Lights. One step removed from returning to being an Unlit.

    She does not understand most of what she's seeing. She barely made it through that agonizing experience on the way down. Being half-way gone already is what allowed her to remain functional after her landing, and to hunt down the others by the smell of their souls.

    When she arrives, jaws dripping, stretching wide with holey cheek-flesh tearing in the process, she looks every part the monstrous Unlit adventurers in Lumiere have faced, even with a more visceral, bestial nature. But there's still enough of her left to, in her state between the Madness of Unlit, and the Enlightenment of Lanterns, see a slice of Darkness. In that Darkness, the reality she normally occupies, full of horror and distortions of what everyone around her are, she finds her equivalence of solace. It is like having her eye to a hole in the wall of horror so tightly that all she can see outside of her own personal void of suffering is her own eye, monstrously warped, looking back on her. But seeing that, that recognition of Other beyond the Self, is what she clings to as she slinks closer to them, still mimicking a quadruped hunter, a wild Beast of some kind, in her huge hat and cloak and leathers.
Carna     She hates being stolen from. She hates being TAKEN from most intensely. But in her state where memory is even more of a rare commodity than usual, one tiny spark, by sheer fortune, drifts past her mind's eye, drawing the attention of the other eye that stares back at her. It forces that wild, bloodshot orb back as it seeks to track the Light it wishes to consume.

    The Lantern called Carna assembles enough Self to recognize the spark as more than Light, as more than spirit fragment, as more than food, and remember that she doesn't hate giving anywhere near as much as she does being taken from.

    A lesson she only learned recently, but what that crystallized as a burning memory.

    She was not here to offer her history, to make an impassioned plea, to remind Priscilla, who is standing right there and hearing all this, what she means to each of them, all while the Cross-Breed tries not to puke (probably not from the sweetness of their words. Honest).

    Carna, without having any emotional stake in this at all, simply acts on instinct to reclaim that bit of herself. She chases that drifting ember. That tiny flame.

    In her mind this is accomplished by inviting it through the hole and into her side of the wall, where she can cup it in her hands and keep it safe.

    In the physical world, this monster that lives only for eating souls half-rises, still in an almost lupine stance, and approaches close enough to be touched. Because the physical representation of reclaiming that bit of self, that piece that can give without fully hating it... Is to enact it and by so doing affirm its truth.

    'This is me.' it is saying. 'Not just something I stole. This is the real me. The monster capable of being something else, and of giving.' It does not matter that she might not know the consequences. It does not matter that she might not understand what is happening, who and what she is giving to, or all that this entails. She intuits that this is what she needs to do. This is who she really is -- or a piece of who she is -- at the fractured core at the center of a sea of pitch.

    And that means she is willing to give of herself, even if it means loss. Especially to a child.

    She requires no compressed time. She does it without hesitation.

    Removed of all else, her instinct, after spending so long with all of these people, is not to kill, but self-sacrifice.
Starbound Flotilla     Seft's eyes flicker uncertainly for only a moment. But however long they flicker is almost impossible for human vision to see, as what settles in is an absolute affirmation. Whatever this thing takes from her, at least it'll have been taking it from someone who wasn't as good as she wished she was. Maybe, if it understood, it would take something away from her identity that she hated, something like itself. Maybe, just maybe, she could get it to take away the psionic aspects that had made her so hated.

    Or maybe it wouldn't. But when she holds out her hand and accepts it, she accepts whatever comes next. Because if she didn't, she'd lay awake at night and hate and despise herself even more, and regret it even worse. And if there is one philosophy that the Flotilla's captains always agree on, it is this: Never knowingly make a decision that you will agonize over and regret like that. Always take the plunge.

    There is little left for Seft to do besides hope this last connection of de-isolation will untangle the knot of this mess, and release the painting's seal.

ALERT
Cultivator-class connection from terminal 0x00007A
Cultivator privileges granted over biometric simulators
Cultivator privileges granted over cognition simulators
Cultivator privileges granted over psionic simulators

Take what you need.
But please.
Do something better with it.
Something better than I would.
Kushiko There's ... a moment. The fact is, the possibility of something awful, something horrible happening does not bother her. The fact that she could be giving up something that she has no idea she's giving up, a memory that was as yet unknown to her...

The soft lines of a hand. My mother's, I think. We were watching the stars, awaiting the jump to Tau. She was afraid.

Yet there was also the strange, twisted resonance of what she felt within this... manifestation of the Lifehunt. What was within her. What she was. To give to that which could be everything or nothing. The notion of her death did not frighten her. Tragedy. Triumph.

... Honor, even when those who made you would rather you be dead, forgotten, or simply used.

<"... maybe there's something you can use."> she murmurs quietly, almost inaudibly before Valkyr reaches.
Priscilla     In that one, fateful, moment, as close to a fatal one as the way it sounds to the ear, a great, scathing ripple passes through the future. It does not pass through those present. Where they might expect to feel the same pain they could only claim to have survived on the way here once more, there is instead a cold spark of something like static, where something from the future falls out of them, and something from the past rises into them; things heavier and lighter than water, passing by one another though the underpinnings of empty water that defines this world and decides their movements before they could ever be made.

    Only Staren is exempt from this strange feeling, and no matter how any others would think of him for it, it is a valid choice. It is one that takes conviction to make, now cowardice, and though what happens is the trite and tragic inevitability of what this thing /is/, unable to be changed by words, no matter how anyone might wish, it is something he was given the choice over for a /reason/. One he might not understand for months or years to come, but one that he feels he will.

    Even with Carna appearing out of the blackness, having chased her way here on the last threads of her failing sanity, that impression does not change, and though Priscilla would almost certainly wheel to strike her out of reflex were she physically able, where she passes in the glow of Moonlight, the toll taken upon her begins to reverse, slowly but steadily, and as surely as the blood and soundness of mind the others had paid to come here. Certainly there is no way one could claim she does not understand what rock bottom, what true nothingness, is.

    The change is not immediate. In fact, it takes a second to realize anything had happened at all, because it takes the brain a second to process what the difference is; the exact phenomenon that happens when one suddenly realizes a background noise they had tuned out has suddenly stopped. The Song of the Deep, of the World Within the Canvas, is gone. After its last echoes fade, so too does the pressure all around them. As the Dark far above evaporates, or perhaps it actually pulls in on itself, the crushing weight opn them decompresses, just a bit at a time, but growing slowly, exponentially faster. Soon the depths are like the open seas, and then like the shallows, and then like a thick and damp fog, and then like smoke, and then like a mist, and then something as impermeable but omnipresent as gravity, in and around and through them in every respect, but invisible in every other.
Priscilla     The blackness, more scathing and inescapable and abjectly impossible to survive than even the Abyss is drawn away, not like a curtain letting in the light, but like a bad dream draining back down into the subconsciousness, as lucid, waking reality falls upon the surface. As the light of outside begins to mingle with the edge of the moonlight radiance cast by the joined beings of light and the blade revealed to only one worthy at a time, the two blend and become indistinguishable, and Priscilla finally steps forward.

    With the Dark surging inwards, as the seas down a volcanic fault, to meet the molten core of the Earth and catalyze something else, they clearly do so with the Lifehunt's personification as its ground zero; its origin and its focus and its final destination. Where others accept the loss that has happened in their lives, Priscilla, of her own accord, finds it within her, after so very long, to accept that which she had denied by her example. As she moves towards the tiny void of a girl, burning with the black and white ink of the canvas, it grows in proportion with her proximity, transfiguring into an older and more mature shape with the square of her approach, until it is exactly her height and shape just as she makes contact, and embraces the thing that had called her all those titles at once.

    The thing that had told her, in all of its inconsolable hatred for all of existence, that it had missed her.

    That finishes it. Not only Priscilla's image, but Priscilla herself, intertwined around one another in loving embrace, are both enwreathed and consumed in the collapsing Dark, for a short time impossible to perceive any longer, but as it fades to its last, it soaks into Priscilla herself, leaving her the only one standing. Moonlight fades to a dim, shimmering hum in her hand, left by the tiny beings of light, but not unchanged by their touch.
Priscilla     Redefined to an even greater degree, before her is the Lifehunt Scythe, planted in the mound of flowers, before the stone monument of uncertain purpose, as the sword of a warrior would be in memory before his grave. Once a simple thing, forged by an amateur over the flames of the Dark Ember, but empowered by a piece of Priscilla's very own soul, the personal transformation she has taken through all of this is outwardly reflected in the silver scale she had melted down to give shape to it.

    In one sense, it looks like its silver was polished to a brilliant shine, but then tarnished and corroded with unfathomable age, burned through as water wears away stone, as rust consumes metal, as teeth rend away flesh, and as fire destroys human possessions, but in another sense, the erasure of its form, while random at first glance, is so strangely patterned that it is artful, taking away a significant portion of its mass, and yet in such a way as to leave it structurally intact and strong, like some abstract work of glass art, wrought in silver and black. Its physical form has been all but unraveled by its 'completion', but it all but sings to the eye with something Significant about it. Some realized potential, hidden behind its makers previously stoic rejection of its true self. If it's a piece of her soul, then what does that say about its owner?
Priscilla     It is possibly the least of the change that happens in pure scope, however. As the darkness fades, the Painted World itself returns, but strangely, the flower field of phantom petals and ice-glass Archtrees does not change in any way, standing out in sharpness in colour against the stained and eerie vagaries above. When they look up, the Elites will see the Bonfire takes the full bloom it had in Staren's vision of inspiration, exactly as he had seen it, and where its ephemeral, symbolic branches spread and its blossoms of fire and embers blossom, a ray of is light fires upwards into the sky, rending asunder the leaden clouds, and briefly exposing the sun, permanently eclipsed by the black of the moon, such that a blazing ring surrounds it, in ghastly green off-tint similarity to the Darksign.

    Just as it had when the First Flame was re-linked, the sun here is touched by the full strength of Lordran's Fire, and the centuries old twilight is torn away. The light changes from its horror-movie hue to a piercing, brilliant, winter night blue, and mere moments later, starts begin to reappear in the sky, where the deathly clouds drift over the horizon. The lethally bitter cold recedes to something somehow gentler. Snow begins to softly drift from the air, as the stones of the mountain finally take on the glow of the sky.

    From the field of flowers, the unmistakable sight of souls appear in great numbers, rising from each blossom as a flickering wisp of insubstantial white flame, as embers cast from a fire. They drift into the air in uncountable quantity, each remaining piece of the Painted World's vitality surge into a great river of light, steadily surging over the high peak, inward from all directions, and to the roots of the Bonfire, swelling massively in size and strength, even as its tree-visage finally fades away.
Priscilla     Before their very eyes, not only do the dark, wandering shapes of murk-men dissipate in the newly regain, chilly night breeze, but the castle above, though barely visible, changes. It is not quite the same as Enark's purifying rain, but steadily, the horrible, painful decay that the Dark had insisted on maintaining, against the painting's self-restorative natural order, as a reminder of its hate and loss, begins to fade away. No life and activity can suddenly be seen returning to it, as if the clock had wound back a thousand and some years, at least not in any immediately demonstrable sense, but even as they watch, they see stone mend, rust sublimate, bloodstains fade, corpses dissipate into shimmering soul-dust upon their pikes and from their nooses, and the wooden bridge tense and sway as it sheds its ages of snow and recovers from its sabotage. Before them, the broken base of the tower grows upwards like the bud of a great plant, and seamlessly rejoins its long-lost twin above.

    Notably, the spot where they had dived perilously from to escape the incalculable threat before is now obvious. A wide and complex circle of runes, extremely similar to that ones that display in light when casting the greatest of Miracles, though more primitive in their script somehow, without centuries of artistic embellishment by clergy and gods, lies bare and gleaming in the snow, in the hollow of a great ice tree, coincidentally not dissimilar to the hollow some present had found the last surviving Dragon in some years ago.
Priscilla     Time will tell what the /precise/ effects of this grand and unbelievably strange exchange of past and future have been, but it unshakably resembles the effect that the light had upon the flesh and clothes and possessions of those same Elites here not an hour ago, except on some massive scale. It is certainly uplifting enough, finally, /finally/ allowing a swell of joy in one's heart, after centuries of joy's death in this place, that one can hope for the best, and wish the Fire good fortune in its existential quest to bring life back to this World Within the Canvas.