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Priscilla	Priscilla has all the time in the world for this. All the time she could possibly need to patiently wait for Enark, to let him sort out his convoluted knot of thoughts, and to hear him out through all of it. It's strange. She had brought people here as a matter of urgency she hadn't felt able to face alone, but being here again, in the dark and the cold and under the eerie sky she had gotten used to, it really feels like . . . like a few more years could by and she wouldn't notice. It strikes her as odd. The desire to stay here after she had desired nothing but to stay away. She doesn't think much of it at the time, though.     "Strain thineself not too hard, Blue Scholar. None of this is apt to flee thee any time soon. If there is something to be known here, something to be intuited, it wouldst be thine to do so, not for I. Wouldst it be that Tharmas kneweth too little? That he wished for a perfect start once again, without the interference of the Multiverse in prophecy? That he wished for a different version of mineself? Or that for some reason he wished to keepeth me away?"     Kushiko slides down the narrow shaft of the empty well, even her expert fingers starting to slip over a layer of frost that seems almost painted on. At the very bottom, a considerably longer distance than it had seemed from the top, her light shines upon cramped stone walls close around her, and then an extremely narrow and claustrophobic path; one that splits into a tight, orthogonal maze of crisscrossing passages, for purposes unknown. As expected, there is a fair degree of snowmelt sloshing around her ankles down here, and the many narrow channels eventually converge into a single room, wide and tall enough to be a small gallery, supported by thick pillars of masonry.     It's pitch black, and littered with a number of further human remains in various states of crucifixion and impalement that have either failed to animate, ceased moving long ago, or are maybe just waiting to ambush her. The far end of the room contains another ladder, in somewhat better repair than the first, leading up somewhere else. The center of the room displays a solid iron crank wheel easily large enough to haul an anchor from the sea, connected to chains that seem to vanish straight up into the ceiling.     Flint goes for the smithy. It isn't terribly hard to find; the place is laid out more or less logically, when one gets a sense for is strangely steep and towering proportions, and the unshakeable feeling it was built for someone very very tall. The smithy involves going indoors and up several flights of stairs, which necessitates a certain amount of avoiding aimlessly wandering, plague-bloated corpses, even more horrendous (and probably stronger) than they were in life, if he doesn't want to fight them all as well. It shouldn't be beyond his abilities to get there, though, and when he does . . .
Priscilla	The place is remarkably well in order. The forge is, of course, completely dark, but it seems to have been lacking any kind of coal or wood for a much longer time than it hasn't been used, somehow. The torches on the walls have long burnt themselves out, and the window facing outside is boarded, but all the tools are accounted for, all the items are neatly arranged in the right place, and a large amount of rather nice-looking medieval arms and armour has piled up across the desks and in corners without having left the room, seemingly until the smith just ran out of metal. In fact, it looks like he might have locked himself in here. Testing the handle, Flint can easily tell it's been sabotaged when someone last broke in here, though the chokingly thick dust obscures any footprints.     What stands out is that the smith is still here, in a sense. Near the anvil, in the center of the room, a human figure is hunched over on a stump stool, motionless and cold. The physique is unmistakable as anything other than Andre, which already makes no sense, because the blacksmith is still alive and well in Lordran. What's more unnerving, however, is that when he gets closer, he'll see that the man's entire body has turned to some kind of coarse, ashen coloured basalt, down to every single hair of his beard turned to stone. It looks like he was holding something large and box-shaped in his arms, but it's been removed, and a creeping, inky black stain had spread over his chest and arms from where they had been in contact, like a burn mark or blood stain.     Reiji and Eryl piling into the breach with fire and thunder, leverging explosives and magical swords against the phalanx, succeed in their goal rather quickly. The surprising fortitude of the fleshy blob of tortured arms and faces is unnerving, and takes considerably more punishment than it ought to, which involves several opportunities for what should be a helpless mob to strike and stab at Reiji, and hurl their spears at Eryl, but they make headway all the same, and soon those blobs of souls are disappearing into the wind as well. When they approach the statue at last, Xiaomu in tow, they will find several things.
Priscilla	One is that Eryl's examination turns up that there is, in fact, a trick of engineering going on. The statue's base is hollow (in as much of a sense as solid rock can be), and performing basic acoustic tests can tell that a rather elaborate mechanism runs into it, and stretches through the floor. Reiji can definitely sense the taint of especially foul magic on it, though not emanating from it, as if it were used as a foci or fetich. Xiaomu, however, finds that the blood sacrifice was not used for anything particularly obscene. Rather, it seems to be the remainders of a very powerful seal, cast somewhere else within the painting. Even within the sealed Painted World, someone had wanted to keep something locked up.     The Flotilla at the edge of the cliff can hear the echoing rumbles of the earlier gunfire and the new explosives still bouncing off the far mountains, echoing to an extraordinary degree, as if the black chasm between them served sound as well as skimming over the surface of a deep lake. The Abyss has ever been a hard thing to define, easy to recognize, but only by its intuitive approximation of humanity, privileged only to the brain. What they can ascertain at least, isn't wildly far off, but the fact that it is different at all is possibly more concerning than the mere idea that the Abyss could be present in a sealed universe.     It's a fact that the divide between the mountains is a void of elemental Dark so saturated that it has ceased to be its usual cloying, effervescent presence, or even the semi-physical press of its concentration in dark magic. It has flowed downhill, ever settling into the deepest parts of the Painting, pouring down and down and down, until it has condensed and changed under its own immense weight, like the dark waters found at the bottom of the ocean. The sheer amount of Dark could have come from any number of outside sources, adding up bit by bit over centuries. Artifacts, occultisms, cursed objects, cursed people, dark rituals, blasphemous magic, the worst acts of humanity, death, Undeath, and the Darksign itself, but none of those things answer the worst, tingling, /crawling/ question that scratches at the back of the mind.     The Abyss had been welcoming; alluring, even. It was a threshold one had merely to step over to enter a dark and strange, yet unshakably familiar and nostalgic world of bizarre physics and ever-present, unseen inhabitants. It had resonated with human nature. It had evoked longing, nostalgia, a little bit of fear, and a ruinous want, as if some instinctual attempt of the soul to go to where it came from after recognizing its own true nature.     This . . . this murmuring, humming, calling thing, more and more difficult to shut out; it doesn't feel that way. It doesn't entrance. It doesn't beckon. It doesn't silently preach to the commonality of mortal things and tempt them to rejoin it. It feels like if one were to take that step into it, they would not be welcomed, but rouse something just beneath the surface that they rather should not; that they would not be embraced and changed, but that they would be seized and grabbed, dragged down drowning and screaming, and that they would never leave again. It's not like gazing at a home one never knew they had. It's the uneasy feeling of staring at a gargantuan, dark shape in the water, just underneath a tiny boat one is stranded on, and feeling one's heart beat faster as they can only hope it doesn't /really/ belong to anything alive.
Captain Flint	Flint has no desire to fight the bloated corpses, having seen their handiwork far closer than he would've liked. Much of his ascent to the smithy is marked with brisk jogging and sudden jukes away from grasping arms or their wandering owners. At points, he finds no way around them, and his journey is elongated by backtracking to find shortcuts past them. Eventually, he finds what he's looking for. And something that he wasn't, but which is interesting all the same.      The first order of business is to take advantage of Andre's craftsmanship. Each of his limited interactions with the man have seen him hammering away--and indeed, it would appear he was busy doing that even into his death. Perhaps it might have even /caused/ his death, but there are those here who can say with more certainty than he. Flint retrieves something simple, sturdy, and blunt--a cudgel with iron rings serving as reinforcement.      Now equipped with something better suited for skeletons, he moves to inspect the corpse-statue. Undoubtedly, someone will want to know of this. Electing to save them an annoying, undead-riddled trip, the captain takes a dagger from his belt and scrapes a bit of the black, stained surface of Andre's body into the empty bottle he'd previously used as an accelerant for his anti-skeleton measures.      Next stop: the well. Flint uses the cudgel to smash open the boards on the window. If he can get to the courtyard that way, he'll simply place his grapple on the windowsill and rappel down. If not... well, he's just going to have to navigate the stairwell once again and hope no corpses take issue with his plundering.
Eryl Fairfax	The cloying mass of Undead are blown apart and incinerated by the combined efforts of Eryl and Reiji. The Grandmaster dusts some viscera from his form with a faint look of distaste as he regards the ugly mass they've left behind. He can't help but wonder... would it be kinder to restore Flame and banish the Curse before they regenerate? If they came back like that... what an awful existance.     He pushes such thoughts from his mind and regards the statue at last. His knuckles rap against the stone base, and hears the hollow reverb from within. There is something within the statue, a mechanism of some kind based on the response he gets. He could break open the base, take a good look at what it might be... but to deface such a thing, even in the state the Painted World is in, goes against everything he believes in. So no, the statue shall remain preseved.     Instead, he turns his mind towards where the source of the mechanism might be. Based on the echo from within, it sounded like it was straight down below... there was that well in the courtyard, wasn't there? "Be right back," he says to Xiaomu and Reiji before jogging towards it, just in time to see Kushiko vanish down the shaft.     "Can you see any kind of mechanism down there? A lever or somesuch?" he calls down after her, Original Face feeding him the estimated vicinity it should be in based on where the statue is, information he shouts down at Kushiko.
Kushiko	<"Deeper than it looked!"> Kushiko calls out. And on the premise that it might be too far for her voice to be heard, it's practically 'thrown' up high. It belies the fact that she swears she had to put /more/ than just her natural climbing skills and traversal ability to the test, and that's with Valkyr's totally not catlike reflexes (she's not a cat, we swear~) at the ready. Nonetheless, once she arrives at the bottom, she's keen on mapping--and not so happy with the fact there's more than a few narrow passages. The lack of bones actually animating anytime soon is something that troubles her more than she'd be willing to share. So instead of sharing, she simply levels the Javlok occasionally and sends a fiery blast of corrosive blaze into a few intermittent patches. If nothing else, the cinders would do well to perpetuate some measure of lasting flame and illumination. Back to the claustrophobic paths. If Tomoe is still with her, she occasionally signals a different path to go down given the criss-crossing passages, but also to keep her in sight. Once they've actually /reached/ where the paths finally lead into the gallery itself. And this... room. <"... what in the world?"> she murmurs half to herself, and the other half to Tomoe, who ostensibly should be with her. The crank is the most obvious thing to look into, but more curious still is the the fact the chains are leading upward. She's drawn close to them, grimacing a bit at Captain Flint's news before hearing the shout from above! Well, that answers that. <"There's a rather large crank here, chains that I can't see the end of, they're probably at whatever you're seeing!"> She relays this with some additional data--if Eryl has some of the techy hookups for it, he should get a picture of what she's seeing.
Eryl Fairfax	Eryl does indeed have the techy hookups to receive images. "A wheel crank, good. That means the mechanism is purely rotational. Turn it, if you would. I suspect it will rotate the statue up here. To what end, I'm not sure. But we need to prod at everything."
Tomoe	Tomoe is indeed still with Kushiko and she'll be attempting to keep up with her. "I can't aruge wiuth that Kushiko. It takes her abit to keep up with the Tenno but she's done well enough. She's also casted a small light spell to help herself see by and she has the misfortunate to see the human remains. She'll keep moving and comments back as she looks about. She'll be soon to get to help with the chain and wheel though. "I think together we should be able to do this."
Starbound Flotilla	"Having now peered into the flow of data and come to understand this contamination in the paradigm of ecological damage, I have come to believe that the contaminant itself, the bleakness within the chasms, has transformed under pressure not unlike how a dead star might transform into a black hole under its own weight." Moonfin says, rising from his perch in a single, dramatic, clean motion, and returns to his machine. "Sadly, this gives me little insight into the locations of any objectives. What could we do against a pollutant so densely packed, where the source of true exacerbative impulse is gravity itself?"     "...Baffled. Moonfin, you are joking, correct?" Seft says, flickering a O_O onto her visor. "Explaining. The objective doesn't have a location. The objective is a direction. We defeat gravity daily. Let's try that now. I'm going to see if we can build some gravity generators." Her big knightbot un-kneels, as the rest of the Flotilla begin gathering up. She's going to do a scan and a few bits of experimental prodding with smalller constructions of elaborate space-age tech with stylish spinny bits... To see if Ariamis' painting responds to something the Flotilla uses often in space-station construction: Gravity generators!     They're hoping to start an array of them on the cliff, which means heading for that gunfire and those explosions, which they've just naturally attributed to the rest of the group. One fundamental difference, or at least a difference they greatly hope for, between the bleak pseudo-black-hole construction of this non-Abyss, and an actual black hole, is this: A black hole increases gravity so that you cannot reverse the source of its buildup. So they're going to see if any progress can be made with this contaminant through trying to reverse the original source of its condensing: Gravity!
Reiji Arisu	Regardless of how thick their shells might be, blobs of congealed flesh are blobs of congealed flesh. Overwhelming numbers might be a problem for some, but Reiji is well practiced in dealing with those sorts of obstacles. When Karin encounters hardened armor, Darkdrift soon joins it, hewing into the soft flesh underneath and allowing flame to cleanse the rest once vulnerabilities are exposed. He nods to Eryl as his CO makes his way to address his own findings. Reiji remains near the statue, carefully running his gloved fingers against the stone. "It's not exactly /cursed/ but... Who would cast a seal on a statue? Was it to prevent something within from escaping, or... Maybe to make sure it didn't open what it was meant to open?" Well. No use trying to purge a protective seal just yet. Not until they understand better what it was meant to do. "Xiaomu," Reiji frowns, pulling away from the statue, "You think we could maybe figure out what this thing's sealing away? I'm wondering if that young necromancer we met the last time isn't responsible. But if he is, then what did he seal?"
Xiaomu	"Whatever it's sealing," Xiaomu replies as she looks up from inspecting said seal, "I don't think it's necessarily *here*. This looks like part of an anchor to a larger ward - like the protective barrier around old Kyoto, except keeping something pinned down instead of walling bad juju out." Yes, she actually said 'juju'. It's a technical term in this context. Trust me on this one. "We'd need to find one or two more of these and have a good map of the Painted World to figure out where the central containment node is ... I just wish I had some guess at to what somebody would want to seal away so badly that they laid down a barrier like this *inside* a pocket reality which was already basically used for a prison. Posh and comfy as it may be, this is still ... well," Xiaomu trails off with a shrug as she gets back to her feet. "You don't really need me to say the rest." She still looks decidedly troubled, though. "This does not feel like it was just somebody trying to be back-handedly efficient ... was Priscilla going to be a jailer-cum-executioner if this Something broke loose, or was she just going to be a victim on its way to trying to tear the walls down from inside them?"
Carna	Enark seeks to calm himself and think clearly about the subject, and the questions posed. The conclusion he comes to is much as he said on the radio when explaining to Staren yet again who Tharmas is. How he can not know who Enark's patron is after all this time, he does not know. But to Priscilla, he answers, "I do not, based upon the evidence, think it was at all accident or coincidence that he chose here and this version of you. He must have known of Los's prophecy, which explicitly included references to the you of 'now' who rules over Anor Londo. While I can not deny his information may have been incomplete, if this was truly the model for his world, and Alouette was a living tapestry of sorts, a world with its own will and desires, than the outside contamination that exists here might be representative of the World Mimic there. Meaning that might NOT be its true nature or core, but something that can be purged."     He crouches down, placing a hand flat on the ground, tempted for a moment to try to create a template of this whole world, but not sure he has the brain space for it. And he doesn't know the consequences of such an act if it contains eldritch horror data or something that would break the sanity he has managed to reclaim. But he can at least use water divination. There's plenty of it frozen all around them, after all. He tries to see as far and wide as he can, chanting in a muttering rush like multiple voices speaking the same lines as him, repeated throughout all time... Those past speakers, speaking now in the present. When the spell is cast, he completes his thought with, "To contact the heart of Ariamis, we may first need to find what corrupts it, and cleanse it. I am less familiar with the mythic resonances of your world, and do not know if Fire or Water would be more appropriate for the task of cleansing. But given this is a painting, Fire seems as though it would be more harmful than helpful. Water must have gone into the paints and dyes originally, so reordering them to extract the poisonous influences seems, and this is purely hypothetical, the correct association."     Carna continues to stalk into the woods, seeking the source of the watching presence. She felt no draw or desire like she did from so many other sources when gazing into the Chasm. She did not feel power that would set her to salivating. Whatever presence or power it possessed, it did not seem like the type she could easily devour. And there might be more choice prey in the immediate vicinity. But she hunts now not as a Lantern, but as one seeking answers. If something is watching her, aware of her, then it has at least enough consciousness to recognize existences outside of itself. That might be a starting point for communication.     If not, perhaps a blade will suffice as arbiter.
Kushiko	A nod to Tomoe as she looks to the crank. <"Let's do it then,"> before giving the crank a brief look--given the chains, she's /pretty/ sure she could crank either direction and make the mechanism respond properly. If not? One direction, then the other, presuming only 'one' direction works, listening for Eryl to confirm or deny.
Staren	Staren's left kind of hanging around Priscilla, still. Thinking, and starting to pace. All the clues he has are rather... abstract, in nature. Clues that might fit observations, fall into place with more information, but that don't really give him anything concrete to LOOK for. It's intensely frustrating. Is there really no better strategy than to wait for someone to stumble over something that makes one of the clues fall in place?     "Rrrrgh." He grumbles to himself as he paces in front of Priscilla and Enark, muttering. "The cycle of life and death is messed up. But how do you interact with that? It's not like there's a physical object that handles that. Where do you GO to deal with that? If someone managed to corrupt it in the first place, that means there's a way to interact with it. And there's a seal of some kind still in place, preventing souls from leaving to Lordran. What form would THAT take? Or maybe something that's supposed to be connecting the cycles of the painting and Lordran is broken, but same problem. The Crow's scripture talked of fighting against the darkness of humanity, speaking about it as an external threat rather than an internal one. But we haven't SEEN, like, Shadows from August's world running around or anything like that!"     His voice raises. "It doesn't make any sense! If someone messed all this stuff up, there HAS to be a way to touch it!"
Priscilla	When Flint scrapes the surface of the once-human statue away, it certainly seems very much charred, like the object it had held onto had been on fire for quite a long time. More than that, though, it seems to have stained deep into the substance of the 'stone', and trying to scrape more than the very outermost layer turns out to be near-impossible, as the consistency becomes more like fused, black metal beneath the thin crust of ashen stone. The simple reinforced club he picks up turns out to be vastly more effective than he thought; frighteningly so in actuality, smashing apart the boards with such trivial ease he'd have to wonder if it wasn't somehow sharpened. He can hook the grapple just fine, then-     Tomoe likewise makes it down the well with Kushiko with no issue. Under her careful party tank attentions, nothing comes alive. It seems like a lot of these bones were skewered and dumped down here simply on the suspicion that they might be touched by necromancy, rather than the fact being confirmed. It doesn't stop the process of watching over her as she turns the giant crank any less tense, nor does it make Kushiko's effort to move the rusted, frozen, ancient piece of stiff iron machinery any easier. When it gets underway, the chains connected to the ceiling begin to turn through with the clattering and churning of massive gears.     As Eryl suspected, up above the statue in the courtyard begins to rotate, slowly turning its bloodstained gaze towards the far, gigantic, locked and bolted doors, gaining a certain, tingling charge as it does. Reiji and Xiaomu can both feel it; a sort of magical alignment that intensifies as the statue is turned to face something beyond the iron gates, connecting some sort of ley line or celestial point of uncertain design. Just as it lays eyes on those doors, something very loud suddenly snaps, or even breaks, behind it, and they begin to creak open, to reveal-     "Art thou forgetting, Sir Staren? There is most certainly a physical embodiment of the cycles of the world, including that of life and death, in every realm of Lordran. The Bonfires, which art linked to the very essence of the First Flame itself." says Priscilla, gesturing to the surreal, tinkling flames as they flush slightly with the onrush of scant souls from the mass slaughter of the phalanx earlier. "Thou art correct that the issue is a mystery, however. Were this Bonfire connected to the rest, the matter wouldst resolveth itself. Clearly, if Lordran's lows apply not here, the bridge between them is either broken or suppressed, and the original seal was not the culprit." Priscilla's expression twists into a highly uncertain frown at Enark; more uncertain than she ever is simply upset or mistrustful when she makes that face, like she really doesn't want to entertain the thoughts he puts out at all. Nevertheless, she takes a second to compose her thoughts, and hesitantly says-
Priscilla	Nothing prevents the Flotilla from building their strange machines at the edge of the cliff this time. Were it still somewhere in the convoluted distortions of deep time, it could be a problem, but their engineering holds fast to the present just fine. The ground is unbelievably poor for trying to set up anything of size, but it is at least very flat near its edges, where the cliff seems to almost take on the shape of salt pillars of irregular height, involving dozens of smaller, interlocking plateaus, as if it were breaking away and crumbling into the gap. The antigravity generators, at first, don't do a lot more than lift snow, rocks, and dropped objects buried in both from the ground, hovering slowly into the air. After quite a while, though, as if it were taking forever and ever for the field to propagate downwards, longer than in every other direction, blackness begins to crawl up the side of the mountain like a slow and steady surge of dissolving ink, poured upside down into the crystal clear water of thin air. The field drags it up the stones, crawling towards them, where it seeps over the edge like smoke, and from that thickly rolling bank of disturbed, churning liquid, they can see the emergence of-     Enark is already setting his mind to the purpose of using his water magics. Certainly, there is no shortage of water, frozen into various states, and so his spell, or murmur as he calls them, spreads with ease through the ground around him. When it rushes through the swaths of ice and snow all around him, though, what bubbles to the surface is far from what he would expect. He identifies no poison in the soil, but the earth /bleeds/. That is, it literally bleeds. Where his magic interferes with the base substance of the painted frost, rapidly spreading blots of bright, bloody crimson spread throughout the snow, staining it as if fresh blood were blotting up from the underside of an icy white bandage. It-
Priscilla	The whispering returns. The whispering, chattering, talking, humming, chanting, singing. The song of the deep. No siren song at all, but the dark hymn of something beyond understanding. A near-religious mantra with no words, no language, and no meaning whatsoever, whispered in black glossolalia and formless nothing-sounds that neither translate nor force the mind to struggle to comprehend. The non-communication, the empty sounds, the void of impression of something speaking, the Ur-song, swells from the upward crawling ocean, rises like smoke from the pooling blood, emanates and echoes from the turned statue, and pours from the dead and petrified mouth of the Dark-touched non-Andre. Throughout every corner of the Painted World, it can be heard, deafening and absolute, inescapable and impossible to make sense of as anything but fear; fear and loneliness and misery and a seething, drowning, asphyxiating, crushing, bottomless and ice cold hate.
Priscilla	Flint's light is snuffed out. The dark smithy fills with freezing fog so thick it feels as if he's been cast overboard in the darkest, coldest, stormiest seas he's ever sailed, and he's drowning and flailing and nobody has noticed he's gone over. The solid stone floor ripples all around him, and up from the murk, clutching the pistol and sword of his dead crewman, rises a shape that is all at once, vague and meaningless, and yet gravely human in likeness. It is black and formless, but visually defined where its borders bleed into reality. It whispers to him, into his ears and his eyes and his head and his mouth. It says: "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-"     Kushiko's light fails. Tomoe's HUD flickers out. The pitch black of the underground vault becomes suffocating. Choking. Thick and cloying and like moving in dreaming nightmare slow motion. The walls ripple and churn and splatter nothing liquid into the room, and formless, eyeless, voiceless men and women crawl through the walls. They gather around Tomoe, clutching the remains of an apple tree, withered and dead and lovingly stripped apart, piece by piece, and one approaches Kushiko, clutching the abandoned rapier of a Pardoner of Velka, stained in black. They speak to Tomoe, and they say: "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-" It speaks to Kushiko, and it says: "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-"
Priscilla	The snow churns and splashes around Eryl, Xiaomu, and Reiji, like the flat ground were merely the surface of a still pond, and now something thrashes and claws its way to the top. Even under the surreal glow of the green-grey 'sun' behind the eternal leaden clouds, they can still only make out the visual bleed of their silhouettes, and just barely, the bottomless whites of their eyes; voids and holes in space in the way an endless blackness should be, rather than the glow that always goes with white. They clutch old abandoned swords and tokens of ways of life given up forever ago, unearthed from beneath roadside shrines. They clutch the discarded tools of endless dead villagers, killed of curse and plague and murder. They clutch the bones and sacrificial tools of necromancers and their victims.     They crawl and stagger and drag themselves through the snow to Eryl, and they say: "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- ". They come to Xiaomu, and they say: "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-". They come to Reiji, and they say: "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	The blood all about Enark turns pitch black, neither rotten nor burned, but blotted out like the deepest, blackest ink on a pure white canvas, precisely filling the holes that had bled in the substance of the canvas, and arms and heads and fingers push their way through, though there are no arms nor heads nor fingers to be seen at all. Neither he, nor Staren there to witness would understand, but even they would see the broken pieces of Staren's drone, wielded like sharp, jagged, improvised weapons in their grasp, and the unmistakable bloodied attire of the dying man Enark had seen to half a millennium ago. They walk inexorably towards Staren, and they say: "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-" They walk inexorably towards Enark, and they say: "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-"     The creeping, climbing, unnaturally reversed Dark flows and spills over the cliff edge, defying everything natural and even the proper designs of the gravity generators themselves. It spills as if the chasm had filled entirely, and were flowing over; the onrushing current of an overflowing riverbank, gushing upward in a flash storm, rising and building in power and frantic energy and mere minutes away from overflowing and becoming an unstoppable flood that kills so, so many. Unlike the things of the Abyss, the shapes that crawl forth from it are not clearly human in suggestion, but horridly human in implication, and they do not burn with the soft white anti-fire of Humanity around their edges, but bleed a sort of midnight indigo-violet distortion from their frames, horrendously tainted and dark and bloody. They clutch the myriad pieces of all the Flotilla's many inventions of this place, including, most dangerously of all, ammo from the artillery cannon itself, as if they know exactly it's purpose. They trudge and crawl as a seething fog bank rolls into a village and causes it to disappear. They come like a wave to every member of the Flotilla, and they say: "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-"
Priscilla	Carna is lost out in the woods when the trees themselves ripple like a stone cast into the surface of many tree shaped ponds, and then break apart like the surface of so many shattered, liquid mirrors. Shapes not wholly unlike the dark things that lurked within the homes of abandoned Barrowville, and yet, for how frightening those things were, these are somehow worse. Not for any existential reason, or for a feeling that they provoke, or for a great instant sense of danger, but for the horrid feeling of intelligent spite, intelligent malevolence, and overwhelming, intelligent grief, that each and every one of them possess, surrounding her in a crowd that drag the heavy weapons of old knights with them, and they say to her: "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-"
Priscilla	And lastly, they come to Priscilla. Behind the bonfire, in the long shadow she casts, the impression of hands, belonging to men and women and young and old and the forlorn and the forgotten and the cursed and the unwanted, reach up and cling and pull at the hem of her skirt. They break the surface of the ground, desperately rising from the depths of the water that is some invisible, hellish negative space, and they crawl and hold to her for dear life, and they say: "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."
Staren	Staren looks at the bonfire for a moment. "...Yeah, but how do we DO anything with it? Are there magic rituals that--" And then he stops to watch as Enark makes the ground bleed and the strange sound can be heard again. "What did you DO?!"     And then...     Things are very fucked up. Staren reminds himself that he's inside armor few foes have breached and carrying power none have entirely beaten. These things are unknown... and he will understand and control them.     The first step is understanding how they interact with high-energy atomic nuclei and seeing if he can control them into being inert and powerless -- 'killed', some might say.     "NO!" he shouts. "I'll never give up, because I'm Staren, and I'm too arrogant to believe anything is unfixable! If you want me to die, then you'll have to kill me where everyone else failed!" He starts firing the particle cannons at the black things immediately. If there's a large enough group of them, plasma missiles start firing from his armor as well to try and fry them.     They have stuff to say to Enark too! "Denying facts now, are you? The Outside exists. Your refusal to face that is why you'll lose."     The words they say to Priscilla, though, are stranger still: "Priscilla, do you know these guys?!"
Captain Flint	The familiar clang of the grapple upon a solid, sturdy surface. It's a sound that the captain's heard many a time in his life, and much of those times have been the prelude to shocking acts of violence and theft on the sea. Not one of those times has his entire field of vision gone dark.      At once, he's surrounded by indistinguishable susurration, and hateful cold. The ripples in the floor are like the waves of the sea the night that he and the Concord took the Urca. The night they lost Billy. When the figure arises from the floor, his rational mind knows it's meant to be Packard. But part of him sees Billy, his imagination filling in the blanks left by the formless figure, filling them in with the fear and anger so plain upon Billy's face before he went under.      The fear wells up within him, culminating in that fabled fight-or-flight response. But then... the whispering echoing in his skull strikes the wrong chord. 'Their loved ones should die.' This thing... servant of whatever force controls this place, has threatened to take something away from him. Perhaps the only thing of value he has left. The only person left in his life who loves him.      The cudgel is swung in blind rage. If it connects with the shadowed figure, that won't be the only time it's swung. With no form and no grace, Flint swings it overhead, across, overhead, across, over and over again. Reiji had asked him on the last mission to curb his bloodlust. He'd done an admirable job of that... until now. Now they'd come after him, and that won't stand.
Kushiko	It's considerable effort; even though by all accounts it's a suit of armor, the organic aesthetic of the Valkyr seems to strain and muscles cord and ripple beneath--sure, they (her and Tomoe) could work together but reality dictates that someone needs to watch over while she does this. At times, she simply uses Rip Line cables to practically anchor herself, until the turning gets going and going and going. Her eyeless face turns upward to watch the moving of chains, light cast upwards and is about ready to call up there--what's happening after all. And then everything turns to black--both literally and metaphorically. She tenses like a cornered cat--unable to see Tomoe but able to hear--hear that terrible gods be damned song. If the Lotus was trying to reach her, she can't make any sense, any thought of it. Even within her Orbiter, she can hear, /feel/ nothing. Make no mistake--what she sees itself, the Pardoner of Velka, approaching her and uttering her--his?--dark pronouncements, her claws extended in a brief moment, an attempt to chase away the darkness, to ready herself for the battle that never comes. If her expression could be seen, it would be darkly accepting, yet angry at the same time, yet even more, her head swivels to Tomoe briefly. As if hoping that, because... /she/ can hear what they're whispering to Tomoe, then Tomoe might well be able to hear her. The worst part of it all, is that there's truth. She can't remember. It was Tenno like her that would simply /possess/ creatures, transferring their consciousness into the wild Rhino, inside of what she and the children did to Margulis. What Margulis did to them. What... they did to their parents. The parricidal monster, unknowing of herself, the cloak pulled over her eyes. For her own good. For her to do good for the universe at large. For the Orokin's good. But what of her good? Maybe it was right. She was a monster after all, but others to know it was another matter. Her fists balled up. The only reason she can pull herself out of it is the whispers she's hearing directed at Tomoe, <"That's... none of that's even remotely true of you, Tomoe."> The tenor of her voice... says well enough that she's hardly contesting what's said of her, in that moment of darkness. Such is what happens when one says such cutting words to a child. Even in that moment, forgetting the delight of a certain Kubrow back home. It's impossible not to imagine impressions of her hands deeply gripping the chair, the chamber of her Orbiter even now, emotions without context swirling in a maelstrom of the unknown.
Xiaomu	There's a reason why Buddhism is the usual religion of choice for funerals in Japan. Partly it's because the whole concept of reincarnation helps people out when they're wrapping their minds around the death of a loved one; the belief that they'll be reborn in some form is a frequent balm, for all that Xiaomu isn't sure what she'd like to be reborn as if the subject ever comes up. Mostly, though, it's because Shinto treats death as a pollutive, corruptive force - something that is not just ritually unclean, but literally contaminated. And that's not too far from the truth either - corpses are messy, smelly, and unpleasant, even before they start rotting (which just makes things worse in a hurry). The Chinese sage fox is starkly reminded of this dichotomy as the shades come swarming out of the ground around them. Xiaomu manages to maintain her composure, just gripping her staff all the tighter as the ghastly ghosts stagger around the trio; hiding behind Reiji wouldn't do any good even *if* Xiaomu were the type of girl to freak out when faced with spirits of the ancient dead. She actually looks a little bit haughty at them, in fact, even as she listens (somewhat unwillingly) to the whispers. A fraction of her attention is directed towards what's being sussurated at Eryl and Reiji; more of her focus is on the whispers which have her as their intended focus. And the look on her face as that chorus of 'die die die die' sets in is best translated in the vein of the classic expression, 'bitch, please'. "Mortal life is precious *because* it's so short," she retorts, nestling her staff in the crook of her elbow and starting to unwrap the string of beads from her left wrist. "I've seen plenty of friends die - of violence, of sickness, of starvation, of simple old age - and I've been to more funerals than I'll ever want to go back and count. You want to know what keeps me going when every human I've ever met is going to grow old, wither, and pass away, while I keep looking this pretty for centuries to come?" The beads are passed to her right hand as the staff is twirled back into her left hand, and she thumps the staff's butt on the ground to make the rings on its headpiece chime against each other. "Because there are always new meetings, new friendships, new wonders to seek out. The friends I have now, I'll fight to protect as well as I can, just as I trust Reiji and Eryl and others to fight to protect *me* when that's how the cards fall. Their lives are short enough already, with more than enough suffering in the existing mix, without letting the likes of you try to make it all *even worse*. Now stand aside from our path, or pass on to the next world that's been denied you until now, but either way - you shall not bar the road to us." She raises the beads to her lips and begins reciting a sutra, praying for the souls that she's attempting to dismiss from around her, Reiji, and Eryl.
Eryl Fairfax	Eryl immediately begins to think that having the statue be turned was a poor idea.     The earth beneath the snow trembles and shifts, discharging body after body, undead after undead clutching ancient weapons and tools as they advance on him, bile spilling from their mouths.     Eryl seems placid externally, but the words strike deeper than he lets on. He does his best to be likable, but is it having the opposite effect? Does he come across as fake, bland, distasteful? His hands ball into fists as he looks past the advancing figures at Reiji and Xiaomu, both of whom are dealing with their own shambling masses and harsh whispers. His molars grind as the wave of shadowy figures start to get close, allowing him to lash out with a kick aimed at the one in front, aiming to send it stumbling back into its compatroits.     "I don't care," he replies as he advances towards them. His arm lashes out, the HF armblade leaping out to sever limbs. "Even if they hate me, spit at my feet, curse my name, I don't care. A SAVIOUR exists to help those in need. Even when it is unasked for, even when it is seen as obtrusive or unkind. I don't care. I'll still do it."     He makes his way towards his fellow Paladins, shooting, slicing, and throwing the figures as best he can. His aim is not to stop them, he has no doubt that there will always be more. So he intends instead to keep them preoccupied with each other, getting them in each other's way.     "Whatever turning the statue opened, we need to go there. That is likely part of why this is happening now!" he orders, both at Reiji and Xiaomu and over the radio. His second grenade is deployed, aiming to blow a wide path open between he and where the statue now faces, before breaking into a sprint towards the open door.
Starbound Flotilla	The overwhelming whispering crashes into the Flotilla like a ton of bricks, disabling many of them once more. Seft is the hardest hit by far: Her psionic systems and her overall emotional vulnerability means that when the wave of whispers and the deafening noise of formless uncommunicative nothing impacts her mind with misery and crushing hatred, she actually sparks, sputters, and begins to experience visual glitches. Painful and damaging, she starts emitting a glitchy noise that is not unlike a digital sob, staticky and pained, layering multiple attempts to produce a single noise of pain.     Her visor flickers and shudders through lines and signs of damage, and parts of her head spark dramatically inside her heavy machine. Soft beeps terminate each sign of damage as she indulges her incredibly poor habit of shutting down parts of her own mind, leaving her more and more disabled by the stress. If those creatures attack her, she's going to be moving on autopilot, and very badly, even self-destructively.     The rest of the Flotilla are similarly harmed by it, rendered unstable by the stress, at least temporarily. Moonfin empathic though he may be... finds himself drawing from resolve. This is one thing he needs to focus on. One thing he needs to speak to. One thing he needs to act in his capacity as a /missionary/ for. The man opens the cockpit of his craft and steps forward along the arm of his machine towards the amassing, surrounding figures, staggering only slightly as the deafening un-noise clogs his sensitive senses. And then, he tries to call out, and to speak:     "No more new things." He says. "No more strange intrusions. No more prisoners. No more curses. No more banished. No more afflicted. No more pained and wounded or painful and wounding. No more. We will take them back and take them away. We will keep them out. We will leave none of it behind to pollute and litter the Painted World. We will respect it as it deserves: A great work, a powerful expression of artistic mastery and skill, and beauty that deserves to be untarnished."     "In this, we agree. In this, I wish only for your understanding and your assistance. Are you what has shown us the visions? What has made us proxy of the past? Are you what has granted us the lessons of the tainting of this once-perfect world? Are you what rejects the light of the fire, new and dangerous as it may be? We will accept your will and let go of bringing new things here. We will remove all we have placed here. We will take it with us to the outside, and never again bring it here, if that is the lesson we are meant to know."     "But so much has already been done here. So much has been left here, so much has been lost here. We will do this, we will /follow/ your requests. But we ask only one thing. We ask only to restore the old. To not only stop, but to undo. To not simply cease the further additions to the Painted World, but to undo the damage done by those who have done the same. And we would be willing to do so with none of our technologies, our structures, our equipment, if that is your will. Hear me and know my promise is spoken for all of the Flotilla, and hold, I ask."     Moonfin seems to believe these creatures are... A manifestation of perhaps some sort of immune system of the Painted World? Merged badly with the damaging influence of the once-fireless world beyond, perhaps the compression and the density simply forced it to become part of the painting in such a fundamental way... But most importantly, he refuses to strike first. He's ready to strike if or when it comes time, but he /will not/ strike until the masses surrounding them have struck the first blow, and rejected his attempt to be... Diplomatic.
Reiji Arisu	Everything goes bad. In a manner far too familiar for his tastes, the snow and stone underfoot suddenly seems to become as water. Ripples spread across the illusion of solid ground, revealing this place's true nature. A grave. A fathomless, unknown Deep filled with the roiling, raging dead. Shadows not so unlike the sprites of humanity that he and the others faced in the Abyss surge upwards, filling the world. They murmur, the countless lives that met their end here. The myriad curses abhorred by the world speak with poison tongues and toxic words. The dead will never return. The dead stay dead. But. "Of course they do," Reiji murmurs as he sheathes his burning blade. The invisible edge of Darkdrift somehow seems to stand out in stark contrast to the rising dead. Reiji flicks his wrist, scything the blade into the swarming dark and crushing despair. "Do you think that I don't know that? Do you think that I did not realize that after so many nights spent mourning?" Reiji's tone is... not fearful. Not sad. It's angry. There's a fury there, as if these things had touched on a wound long scarred over. "The dead should never return. That is as much a blessing as it is a curse. I know that now. I will not allow myself to be held back by such half-truths. You base creatures who know only suffering and rage, who came to this dark place seeking comfort from the harshness of the outside world, only to find that /it/ had followed you here. We will set you free." Reiji glances to Xiaomu as she prays and quietly joins in. He looks to Eryl, nods, and begins pressing towards that now-open passageway. And to Enark... The exorcist focuses. A pulse of deep, blue energies races out from him. He has opened himself for the Blue Scholar to draw upon. The depths of the Arisu Bloodline's spiritual power have been made available. Use them.
Tomoe	Tomoe does all right getting down and helping Kushiko out well, for the she does keep watch on the bodies but it seems that they are just corpses with no magic upon them. A lucky break or so Tomoe thinks for the moment, as she keeps pushing it seems that it's going to take a lot of work hell she's feeling the burn even with her current form's strength. "remind me to throw wd40 into my inventory..." She mutters as they finally get it working, this is good right? She and Kushiko can get moving on ahead. Then Tomoe's HUD goes out that makes the Salamander pause that isn't normal that isn't normal at all but then she hears something speaking to them and she just halts. The blackness worries her and the voice town right scares her. "I don't know who you are, and I don't care shut the hell up!" For all the brave front she's pretty damn scared, then she hears what it's saying to the Tenno. "Kushiko...?" It's true there's many people she could not say it's also true if not for a fluke that someone hung on to an seemingly worthless item? She'd have died to the skull reaper. The pardoner however is speaking and there's a good deal of truth to what's been said. Thoughts that to fill her mind a bit about it she was a nobody originally from a world of nobodies even if she'd survived SAO there would be nothing of note she only had power due to the mul....and that's where the Tenno speaks up and she shakes her head, her dark train of thought has been interrupted by Kushiko getting her attention and she now has an idea of what the Tenno thinks of her too. "Thanks...Kushukio." Alone someone like Tomoe would break she knows this she can't survive alone but part of a group with it supporting each other? That's a whole other story she she tries to keep with the Tenno for the moment. "What are you trying do to my friend?! Back off!"
Xiaomu	Xiaomu glances aside briefly, sensing more than seeing Reiji supplying energy to Enark. If Reiji had consulted with her about the wisdom of this course of action, she might have had some rather pointed words on the subject. But she has enough of a reserve to spare (for the moment, anyway), so she starts feeding some of her own magical reserves to go with what Reiji's sending. She'll have to replace that energy somehow before getting into major combat - but she's not gonna let Reiji shoulder this alone.
Carna	Enark's eyes widen at Staren's words. That sounds just like... But before he can voice his thought, terrible things begin to happen. Enark finds no sign of corruption, of poison. That does not mean it is not there, but there is no immediate evidence of it as he had thought there would be. And in the process of searching for it, the world begins to bleed. He has torn open Ariamis's wounds. For a moment, guilt plagues him, but it is then replaced with shock and then horror as figures begin to rise up out of the blood stains around them, the blood having turned to black.     It seems that no matter where Enark goes, of late, he is followed by blood. The necromancer he had wanted to help, whom he had made a template of, and the words that are spoken to him, initially leave him frightened and guilt-ridden, until he realizes what he is looking at. And then he feels immensely saddened. His whole body is held rigidly, his face full of tension that paralyzes it so much it is difficult even to speak.     But speak he does. "I am sorry that this happened to you. You must have suffered for a very long time. But it is not too late." he says, seemingly to the necromancer. But he does not truly believe that this is that man. He sees it as this world itself, trying to ward them off. Lashing out at them. A wounded beast attacking its rescuers. A mother cat, bleeding from her injuries, ferociously hissing and clawing at those seeking to help her, while she desperately tries to protect her sole remaining kitten.     It becomes somehow easier to deal with when he views it that way. A crushing sadness, a deep and abiding fear, and guilt, but not despair. Not anymore. And when he commits himself to helping, even fear has to go buzz off for awhile and find somewhere else to be.     Then he calls out to everyone here. All of those he came with. Those he knows, and those he has barely interacted with. Those he admires and respects, and those whom he still harbors distrust for after all this time together.     He implores them to share their power with him. In a way, this place is the perfect environment for him to weave this exact type of magic. As the awareness he has spread and refracted off of the surroundings shows him everyone's progress, their fearful paralysis, their discoveries, their determination, he uses it to draw any offered power inwards, on a current.     Water is about cycles and the flow of time. It is about the way it runs through and connects everything. It is very much about life.     They are in a world of paint, surrounded by ice and snow. And as this world bleeds... Well...     Though it is not the type of magic he normally uses, blood, too, falls within his Element.     He begins to chant, his voice trying pitifully to war with the deafening sounds that surround him, try to smash down his mental defenses, to penetrate into his brain. It makes thinking very difficult, but despite what the world has said, there is still so much to know, and Enark wouldn't be a scholar if he stopped thinking and remembering.
Carna	He builds the power, pouring all of his Dead Lights and his magic into it, pulling ropes of raw energy from Reiji and Xiaomu, and weaving them together into a stream. He takes mental hands and draws deeply from the well of spirit fragments Kushiko has gathered. He finds where the native power of Ariamis pools, and pulls that together into the mass. He borrows from Staren, the reserve that has been built up since the inventor's first day in Lumiere. The Dead Lights that have amassed as Tomoe stood between her allies and the enemy hordes, over and over.     It is not quite enough yet. He needs more for what he attempts to do, layering different aspects of Water over each other in order to multiply the Murmur's effectiveness. About the only way that the conditions could be more perfect for working this type of magic would be if there were a great body of water nearby, and a Moon to influence the tides.     But even so, he does not know if he is good enough. This is a world that has been severely injured and suffered enormous trauma for a long time. It is alien to him, even if he thinks he understands some of it.     The very vision of that necromancer he copied a template of is a visceral reminder that he can not fix everything and everyone, and that he is very capable of failure. Not that such is news to him. It makes him start to second guess himself and his plan.
Carna	Carna, meanwhile, finds herself surrounded. She fights down the impulse to draw a weapon and watches the figures that surround her, crimson eyes wide as she peers out of the space between masked collar and hat. She is always afraid. But there are degrees of fear. What she endured when facing the Throne of the Crimson King recently was far worse than this. But much like during that fight, there were different flavors. If she was still the fresh-out-of Unlit creature she was long ago, she would already be attacking. Hell, if she was the person she was six months ago, she would be either fighting or fleeing.     Instead she stands there, waiting, and listening to what they have to say. Their condemnations that she has trouble being offended by. Their words that speak truth. "Yes," she replies to them. Unlike most others here, her identity is fractured, malformed, and underdeveloped. Killing is usually easier, faster, and more practical than talking. That's just a fact. Why would she ever question that?     No, really. WHY? And WHEN did she start questioning it? WHAT made her start thinking that there might be another way? HOW did she think she was going to emulate the Living who had long been absent from... Everything. And WHO exactly does she think she can become? For that matter, who is she now? WHERE does she think she is going to go? Up? To what?     She doesn't know, and that very absence of knowledge is what drives her. Whatever it is about her that made her feel that doubt, that desire, that drive to be something different, she IS different. And though she has stumbled and fallen along the way, many times, backslid into old habits and old ways, and, for a time, been on the verge of crumbling into a murderous beast, she has begun to come back from that. She may stumble and fall many more times from here.     No, she knows she will. It is not so easy to build a person out of scraps that one can simply expect the gaps between pieces to not suck you in to wallow in the darkness.     But as she is accused by the knights, knowing that their words are true, accepting them, she also knows that a killer is not ALL that she is. And it is not all that she can become.     There are a few things that Carna hates above all else.     Being attacked, being denied, and being taken from.     But as she reluctantly tallies together all the Dead Lights she has received, including those from the slaying of the Throne, she discovers something new about herself.     She does not nearly hate giving as much as she does being taken from. It is a small thing. But it is a start.     She gives all she has to Enark, as she tells the phantoms around her, "You are right about what I am. That is why I must change."
Carna	Enark feels Carna's Dead Lights flood into him, the power she has been hoarding for a year and change, aside any expenditures to strengthen herself. With the Concord providing what she needs, there has been little need to spend any of it on purchases from other Lanterns. And now, after all the Concord has done for her, Carna is giving back.     Enark feels guiltier still, that the one he distrusted out of everyone here, is the one who has entrusted him without expectation of repayment, completely unlike the creature he believed her to be.     He takes his guilt, his sadness, his grief, and his anger and himself, and he throws those into the spell too. And then he intones the final word as he casts the reanimation of a dead spell out into this alien world, and attempts to give Ariamis a chance to heal.     And it literally rains down as pure healing, restoration, and mending, in a deluge from clouds of Water magic in the skies above, to touch the surface, to pool and gather, to seek ways down, deeper, into hidden places that have been left to fester for far too long, and to do what Water does, and reconnect everything.
Priscilla	Staren fires into the oncoming masses. They don't avoid him at all. They don't defend themselves. As if seeking their own destruction, they trudge forward through the withering hail of particle beams and plasma missiles, and are instantly blown apart, splattered like invisible vessels of black paint the evaporate into equally black smoke, except the smoke seeps into the ground. Then, where the piece of drone fell, another black, formless hand thrusts its way up through the splashing surface of the world-fabric, and clutches it anew, restoring its shape, and then renewing its march. He can empty as many beams and missiles as he likes into the crowd. It will slow them down, certainly, but it does not intimidate them. Inexorable as the Reaper, they crowd around, rebuilding themselves over and over again, embracing their utter destruction, only to be reborn again in seconds, as they are so completely empty that destruction is utterly meaningless to them.     The Undead had been immortal; killable, but endlessly resurrecting. They had also been flesh and blood, and taken a deal of time before the world spat them back out again, a little piece of them taken away. Is this what it's like when there never was any flesh to begin with? When there never was any human being from the start? This pure, Dark, empty core of something that cannot die for more than seconds at a time, spurred onward over and over again, with no mind or soul left to break? Or is it something similar? A convergent evolution of the same basic substance, the same Dark 'atoms' that make up everything born of Fire's antithesis, willed into shape by something very different than mankind. ==================================<* ?????? *>==================================     --The ending is not fixed, and the choices matter. ?????????? It will put you in much more danger than usual. ?????????? and know that there are worse things than monsters to fight. ================================================================================     They stagger towards him until they can swing their pieces of sharpened wreckage at him, whacking him with his multi-tool and his camera and jagged pieces of the drone's shell and it's battery and transciever and all sorts of small and laughably ineffective objects. They surround and batter him with the improvised tools of his own leaving, slowly piling on him like a vengeful mob, where the metallic objects ding and clatter uselessly on his armour. Except . . .     It hurts. It really, really hurts. It really really really really really really hurts. Every scratch on the paint of his suit is an agonizing laceration across his skin. Every useless thwack of a blunt object is a skull-splitting blow to the head. Every crude jab of a sharp piece of chassis is a twisting, spiteful blade between his ribs. It seems like it's just a supernatural effect, an impression of pain magically imposed on him, until he can /physically feel/ his suit filling up with blood. A lot of blood. It's practically sloshing around his feet, somehow.
Priscilla	Flint is stuck in a room with one of these things. Just one, but in a dark room that pours itself into his lungs and chokes the life out of his body, blinding his eyes with stinging salt and deafening him with the roar of silent sea thunder. The club connects with the thing's head, and Billy's and Packard's heads go splashing over the floor, and the club connects again and Billy's and Packard's arm splatters into a million inky droplets. It connects again and again and the thing is slowly beaten away from the head downward, until only the stumps of its legs remain. The puddle of black lies still, then gathers back inwards, and rises as a new silhouette, wearing its non-face and speaking in its non-voice. Not one of his crewmen. One very dear to him.     Yet it still possesses the pistol, and without any visible motion of hands or fingers, it fires.     It's as if the things in the dark can sense that Kushiko accepts them. The singing becomes bottomlessly intense in her ears, drowning her senses one by one, and drawing her in like the inexorable and yet formless pull of the tide. It practically croons to her, miserable and hateful, but soft and soothing, as the ultimate, cosmic expression that misery loves its company. The thing with the rapier comes to her, and suddenly lashes out to plunge it into the Valkyr's 'heart', as spitefully as it is lovingly.     Kushiko has encountered a number of threats in stranger parts of the Multiverse that have destabilized or interfered with her somatic link, and psychological hazards that had left their feedback. This time, when and where the rapier connects, the link is fine. Instead, sticky red blossoms on the corresponding spot on the child's body, so far away in her chair. Bio-monitor warnings and all.     When it comes to Tomoe, they seem almost eager to pry her loose from Kushiko. Though it is her role as party tank to protect her allies, or perhaps solely because of it, they'd like nothing more than to separate them, and to drag her away, alone and terrified. There's no question that pieces of an apple tree, the one she had planted, even meticulously and vindictively ripped apart as it has been, are not effective weapons, but unbeknownst to her, it's already been demonstrated on Staren that objects of significance seem to lethally harm their connected Elite in paradoxical and terrifying ways. It isn't those they hit her with, though. Instead, the floor bursts in a spray of shattered reality-water around her feet, and dark, freezing, burning, numbing, agonizingly painful arms wrap around her legs, thrashing and clawing and dragging as they seek to pull her /straight through/ the floor with it, and submerge her in whatever place they had come from like a crocodile violently drowning its prey at a river's edge.
Priscilla	By contrast, the things that surround Xiaomu seem somehow silently, incoherently, incomprehensibly enraged by her words. They gather and swarm together, their ranks redoubling as more and more sprout from nowhere at all, clawing their way free of some invisible, immaterial, watery skein, each clutching a new object abandoned by a forlorn soul. With such spiritual contamination, --such an intensely unbelievable hazard of death and metaphysical pollution--, it's a safe bet that ritualistic purification and prayer would be a solid hammer against these worst and most forsaken of the dead.     So it is a creeping, horrifying realization, when it does nothing at all. It's not as if Xiaomu's power doesn't work. Nothing had stopped her. Nothing had interfered. What she is forced to realize, as her own little exclusive pearl of terrible wisdom, to cherish separate of anyone else, is that none of these 'people' are dead. None of them have souls. They aren't incarnations of the travelers whose items they drag out of the fade. They never existed in the first place. They The heirlooms they bear, they have chosen solely, specifically, explicitly, to hurt her with. They've chosen them, out of everything in the Painted World, not because they had belonged to them in life, because they never lived from the start. They'd chosen to defile items she was familiar with on purpose.     Eryl's results are much the same as Staren's, scattering the substance of the nothing-men, but his aims aren't the same. Looking to clear a path rather than actually kill them, he succeeds, though briefly. Slashing and kicking and hacking, the carves and smashes his way through the encroaching wall of abyssal substance just wide enough, and for just long enough, for Xiaomu and Reiji to follow him. One of them lashes out and strikes him with a sickle used by a Corvian villager. The blow barely scrapes his arm, but white-hot agony shoots all the way up his brainstem, and blood seeps out of the augmentation /itself/. Original Face suddenly has to correct for an abrupt intrusion, ironically finally doing its job of compensating for Eryl's sanity. It activates, and finally silences, the wall of text that suddenly fills his vision. It goes like: die die die die die die died die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die died die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die died die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die died die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die died die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die died die die die die die die die die die die die die die     Reiji joins Eryl in slashing through the mob. Darkdrift finds them fully solid, sliding through nothing to disrupt some vital essence of death, like it does to living and armoured things, but cutting them as a physical katana would physical flesh. It's seriously as if, somehow, both the intangible blade and the dark shapes occupy the same realm of existence, in some nebulous way, or rather, that they have swam up from somewhere even deeper and darker than the realm of Death, and the closest they can become to material is the exact state of Reiji's sword, which may explain why they care so little for physical sense. It is, in fact, solely Darkdrift that can parry their blows, and that allows him to escape unscathed, probably with Xiaomu if he grabs her.
Priscilla	It's Moonfin alone who decides to do something completely bizarre. While others violently reject what is whispered and sung to them in the negative space in syllables and the gaps of silence between words, or else internalize them with sinking, repulsive dread, Moonfin gets out and actively responds to the wordless claims and non-existent demands as if they were levied straight at him. The crowd does not particularly falter. Dark grave-shapes stalk between and through the headstones just fine, inexorably moving forward, but the threat of their immediate assault is uncertain, since unlike the others, several of them possess ranged weapons that they could use, but haven't yet. It isn't those things, those lack of things, that speak. It is the echoing, rising, swelling, chorus crescendo of the endless abyssal chasm that sings to them, and the words go like: "I/we won't give it back until I/we get her/it back. My/our mistress/queen/other-half/self/love/mirror/truth, the only one who knows/understands/comprehends/loves me/it/us. She/it left and has new things and outside things, and left me/us/it/them all alone, but I/we/it/us are a part of her/it forever and ever and ever. Let us/me/ours/I snuff out all the stars in the sky as we/it/I once did to the Green Emperor, before she/it pushes us/me/herself away and left for good."     The things claw at Priscilla, holding on to her as an anchor, a rock in a stormy sea, a vital lifeline to a craft lost in the depths of endless space over an endless fall. They bear no weapons, and seem to do no harm to her whatsoever. In fact, their core substance of substancelessness treats her as if they were fully physical. She is at a complete loss of what to say to Staren, pulling them free and moving back towards the gate, only for more to surge out of her own shadow, desperately clinging to her for dear life, as if she walks over an ocean of trapped souls that can only escape through her shade.     "Knoweth these- of course not! Wouldst thou thinketh I wouldst somehow fail to mention something so- such as /this/!" Her voice contains an impossibly rare hint of real, actual panic; absolutely the first he's ever heard, and not even panic borne of fear. "Away! To the north! The far bridge! Quickly!" she insists, struggling that way herself. It's the way Eryl, Reiji, and Xiaomu are going, at least, as the iron doors seem to open onto a long, paved bridge, or rather a layer of many, that jut absurdly far over the void, impossibly held up solely by pillars broken halfway down, no longer connected to any solid substance.     The bridge terminates in a single tower vastly taller than any other in the entire castle, and is inaccessible from anywhere in the Painted World but by going through the exact way they had come. It looks as if it had once reached the bottom too, but spiral stairs are visible peeking out from its bottom like a broken bone, clearly destroyed on purpose, such that nothing could walk up them from beneath.
Priscilla	Finally, Enark unleashes a tremendous spell unlike incomparable to anything but two things that have been seen in the world created by Ariamis in its thousand and some years of existence. Rivaling the work that had blotted out the stars and the sky, and the vast change out in the secret grove that had taken place after Priscilla had pulled the trigger on the genocide of the universe of Annu years ago, rainfall that is so completely anathemic and antithetical to everything here pours across the mountain peak, deluging down the walls, pouring though the broken roofs, sloshing down the well and pooling in the catacombs, and running through the trees and the rocks in small rivers.     Some of it freezes more or less instantly on contact, leaving elaborate formations of glittering, bright blue icicles where it lands. Most of it runs clear, and where it washes over the stone, some of the pitted marks and stains and damage of age and violence and black magic begin to fade, regressing several centuries to a somewhat less bleak state. The Hollows and other things are unaffected, as being Undead is the natural, hellish equilibrium that humans occupy in this limbo between Fire and Dark, but the things that walk amongst them hate it. The rain sizzles and pops in bright flickers of light against them, each droplet of life and renewal and Time interacting with its exact, antithetical opposite, and annihilating in flashes of raw magic, unbound at the fundamental level.     It doesn't seem to actually wound or harm them, but it is deeply disorienting, unpleasant and even repulsive to the things, which scatter into shade and shelter, trailing white smoke and pale fire, as parts of their midnight auras are briefly purified and radiate small plumes of Blackfire. The most important fact of all is that this rainstorm will last some time. Aside from the miscellaneous benefits of rendering much of the Painted World's infrastructure actually usable next time, it globally suppresses the hordes of the Dark that seek to consume those who had dared entered it, and thus they have the remainder of time it will last to escape (or do something else, if they have a better idea) unimpeded; even Carna, stranded off on her own.
Captain Flint	The cold is so choking that Flint's fingers slip off of the cudgel. Beating the shape of his crewman, giving into his anger is so exhausting that the moment he thinks it's over, the weapon clatters to the ground. But it isn't over. The shape reforms--and this time, it's Miranda, still clutching a sword and pistol.      The captain's breath catches in his throat, needles of pain stabbing into him as if he'd been running at full tilt through the English countryside in the dead of winter. Just as much as he feels he's freezing, he freezes in his actions, looking up at her. It's a trick of the light, or his overactive imagination or something... but he swears he can even see her face. That same severe, heartbroken frown, her thin lips quivering as she holds back the tears.      The blackness of the room is briefly illuminated by the flash of a flintlock pistol. Though his entire body is freezing and the air grows harder to breathe each passing second, the immense physical labor it takes to stay awake and conscious allows him to be conscious of something else. A small patch of warmth... slowly spreading across his abdomen. He's been shot.      He can't die. Not yet. Not here... he won't be another faceless corpse stumbling around in the dark. The rain washes in in through the broken window. It's enough to give him the opportunity he needs. Mustering all of his worldly might, Flint pushes past the phantom Miranda and leaps out of the window. The grapple pulls taut.      What follows is a clumsy, rough descent down the length of the smithy's tower. Several feet from the ground, his strength gives out, and he loses his grip, collapsing to the ground in a heap. Mixed in with the stinging, cold rain is a tinge of red, slowly leaking from the captain's prone, exhausted body. Not yet, not here.      Fingers numb from the cold, Flint slowly drags himself across the courtyard, inches at a time... towards the gate. Towards the bonfire.
Reiji Arisu	Darkdrift does as Darkdrift would. The invisible blade inexplicably interacts with the dark, un-stuff of these strange, hostile shades. Reiji parries and strikes as the darkness continues to flood in, his blade a whirling, deadly hurricane. He roars as he hears the creatures nearest to Xiaomu agitate and flood in, surging up and over his own assailants to drive his blade into their swarm. "Xiaomu, are you alright?" Reiji calls behind him as the first raindrops begin to fall. "Let's move. If this place has anything worth finding, it's down this bridge." The purifying, healing, regenerating downpour. It does more than just drive the shades away. It refills some of the energies the Exorcist has already expended. The Ura-Tenmon has been opened, restoring the strength in his limbs as he races down the bridge, to that distant tower. He glances aside at the shattered staircase-- ... That... That might be useful in the future. But for now, they need to keep going. They need to press on. It's a fortunate thing, then, that the rain has more or less silenced the dark tides for now. Would it work again? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But it's something that they need to keep in mind. And just like that, the beginnings of a plan begin to form in his mind.
Eryl Fairfax	The sensation of striking these beings, of pushing them away, taking their limbs is strange. It's like hitting dense water more than skin and bone. "I don't care," he repeats to himself, a mantra to push through their hateful words the same way he pushes through them. Upon regrouping with the two exorcists, he expands his defensive efforts. They are likely to be of more use than he in resolving this, so he does his best to cover them, banking on his nature to protect him from their blades.     So it's a great surprise when that sickle finds his arm and carves through it, drawing blood that he gave up a long time ago. He screams, a genuine shout of pain and fright as words in bright green fill his HUD, a pain that is clamped down on by another, older, less intense pain. ERROR UNEXPECTED NOCICEPTIVE RESPONSE IN LEFT ARM INHIBITING SPINOTHALAMIC TRACT     Even phantom pains need to follow a path to the brain, and with his implants blocking the route, Eryl snaps back to the fight, his bleeding arm lashing out to snatch the sickle and drive the blade through the leg of the offending being. At that moment, Enark's healing rain cascades down from the sky, running down his form and calming his mind. To his amazement, his implants inform him it is even recharging his KOAN Core.     Time to splurge a little.     Out comes both Ungraspables, audibly humming as they vibrate against the cold air. The edges begin to glow, shining a bright red through sheer friction as the engravings gifted to him by Priscilla begin to stand out more strongly, etchings of black against the cherry glow. The blades begin to whirl, slicing at what the undead have brought to bear. Sickles have their heads severed from the shaft, ancient blades are cleaved at the hilt, even mere shovels and hoes are trimmed down. Knowing now that these beings have the means to harm them on deeper levels than he could ever imagine, he intends to leave them with only sticks and fists.     But all the while, he speaks. The pain made him realize something; that was only a taste of what they are all feeling. Saying 'I don't care' only made him not care for them, a grave sin for any diplomat.     "I'm sorry for what was done to you," he says, blades still whirring as he safeguards Reiji and Xiaomu across the bridge. "The crimes that the gods, that Anor Londo, Lordran, and the world as a whole perpetrated against you all was foul and unimaginable. Your pain and suffering is legitimate and unwarranted. From the bottom of my heart, I'm sorry for it. But please, do not bear the brunt of it against us. None of us had anything to do with it. TO let your anger and fear rule your actions is only to mirror the sins that were perpetrated against you. Please, let us go in peace. Let us convince the new Lordran to acknowledge what was done to you. Let us be."
Starbound Flotilla	"..." "Fuck, shit hell, can anyone hear now? This is all awful." "Aye, matey. It's in your head like an erchius scream." "Worse than Miniknog riot suppression. This is an area hazard, we need to go." "Nnnnh. Floran can't get robot friend to move!!" "We cannot resolve this now. We must speak to the First."     "Robot friend! Robot friend!! Ssseft!!!" Biteblade shouts, trying to get Seft in motion by shaking her mecha and receiving a poorly-coordinated strike from her friend in return. "Aaaah!! George sssaid not to turn off modulesss again!! Dummy!! Come on!!" With a single clean motion, the Floran rips Seft's cockpit out of her huge knightmecha and puts it under her own mecha's arm. "Floran hasss robot friend, run!!"     Moonfin closes his eyes and makes a tense noise. He flicks something on his wrist, activating something or another... It locks those gravity generators, sticking them on dispersal mode at max power. Setting them to pull the dense zone apart and de-compress it. Lord knows what it'll do to the painting, but the compressed abyssal construct... Well, he hopes it'll reveal the source.     "Flint!!" George calls out. It doesn't really matter how much of a shitty chronic liar he is, Captain Flint is still someone he both considers respectable and considers a friend... Inasmuch as George can ever have a friend. So when Flint reports having been shot, and has that /unique tone/ that says he might not be able to get himself out, he leads the charge ahead. "Dammit, hit the courtyard! I don't want Flint blood adding to the stuff we gotta restore out of all this!"     "We don't have time for--"     "Fuck you, furball, MAKE time. Let's go!"     All five functioning mecha tear ass what they hope is over, rather than through, the crowd, but those weapons aren't for show. If those masses try to attack, they will be assaulted with VERY heavy melee, and some ranged assaults, at peak Starbound expense and quality. The objective, for this one, is to swing over to Flint, where they hope he is stabilized at the least by the healing rain. George intends to just pick him right up with his big mecha-arm, and then make way for their entry point across the bridge. That's where Pris was coincidentally yelling, but it's just the only point of "running away" that makes sense right now!
Xiaomu	Oh are you *@#2589ing kidding -- Beads wrap around staff head, sword is drawn from staff, and Xiaomu doesn't actually stop praying as she starts slashing Suiren through the shades. So they just *LOOK* like ghosts, they're more like malicious intent made manifest, and something about that makes the sage fox even angrier than she was to start with. She doesn't get out entirely unscathed by the spirits' cruel weapons, but she's fast enough to follow with Reiji (and hopefully Eryl). The rain is incredibly refreshing, and Xiaomu lifts her face to the clouds for a moment, trying to keep breathing and drinking separate. *JUST* what she needed. Half on a whim, Xiaomu sweeps Suiren through some of the falling rain, trying to crystallize some of it into ice. Not that she can keep it frozen long enough to take out of here, but if the healing power will remain for a while then it could be handy, especially if they go somewhere out of the rain for a while (which may or may not actually happen; she's just trying to cover possible conceptual bases). She doesn't really have plans beyond that right now - detailed strategy tends to be more Reiji's thing, Xiaomu's strategic pretensions are largely confined to games.
Reiji Arisu	Suddenly the situation has... changed. Reiji whispers a quiet curse as he slides to an abrupt stop and pulls an about-face. "Hold on," he murmurs, "Both of you. I'm coming." He breaks off, then, fast as he can move. Darkdrift and the driving rain will hopefully be enough if anything decides to have ideas. He can put off his own escape for now. There are lives to save.
Carna	Enark's skin glowed in the power he had gathered. His hair rose on unfelt air currents. His blue robes flows and moved almost like they had become silken water themselves. And when all that power left him, streaking upwards from him on a pillar of power to coalesce in the sky and become clouds that redistributed it all, he felt the fatigue drop over him like a black curtain. He was barely even peripherally aware that the shades around him were retreating. He feels immense relief in addition to the fatigue. He feels happiness, and pride. And a lot of pain all through his body.     He answers people's questions on the radio as best he can, as he gets off hands and knees and just rests on his knees. He holds up his hands in front of himself, looking at them as though seeing them for the first time.     "I... Did it? We did it. Together. I'm so glad... That I could finally..."     His eyes are clouded red like they were in the Mausoleum, from burst capillaries. Bloody tears run from them, and trickle out of his ears, his nose, and the corners of his mouth. "...Save... Someone." Then he slumps over to the ground.     The Dead do not sleep. But whatever state one would call what Enark is in now, it certainly is not 'awake' in any way that a living being would understand it.     Carna watches the beings around her flee sizzling and smoldering, Blackfire sprouting from their auras, retreating and hating what is happening to them. Carna, a creature of Death, regards the rain neutrally. But it is also soothing in its own way. For the first time since she can remember, she isn't afraid. She turns, hearing the need to evacuate, and begins making her way out of the forest that had rippled and distorted around her, trying to find her way back to where the others have gathered, and the way outside. The outside that Ariamis's shades insisted wasn't there, so that it could keep the one it lost locked away here once more.     She does not feel happiness, or relief, or anything like that. Just, for the moment, an absence of fear. That, in and of itself, might be considered to be like happiness, for one who knows nothing BUT fear.     However, she feels very empty now. And she hungers to replace what she gave away.
Kushiko	Dim is the field of perception when it comes to what Tomoe's trying to do; she acknowledges it, she knows it's happening, but bleak acceptance found its way through anyways, found its way because of the fractured pieces, the blindness regarding her memories. The desire to know more, yet at the same time there's a part of her... For a brief time, she can at least surrender the Dead Lights--at that she can at least do that much. But the rest of her very much feels, for a few fleeting instants those feelings and not solely due to the mere influence of the Dark. Yet the one thing she didn't expect... was /true/ pain. When the rapier strikes, it turns her world on /fire/. It's a white, all encompassing deadly fire. She's never felt pain here. Not true pain, the echoes of when her frames suffered while she fought and guided them. It't that pain that awakens Valkyr with a scream to mirror her Operator's own. Both child and inhuman technocyte abomination in agony, and Valkyr's case... ... a terrible vengeance like none other. Claws extended, she tears--uselessly, before it's a little more useful, more when that water begins to flow downwards. **NOT YET** **YOU ARE STILL REQUIRED** come the voices within, the essence of the Warframe 'personalities' that had been briefly muffled, silenced. She clutches her chest, and in turn, Valkyr clutches her own. When she gets close enough, there's something instinctive that happens. She crosses that border. Kushiko the Tenno briefly melting out of the frame completely, not as a surge of energy release she typically can do, but her frame going almost stock still for that water to be collected into one hand as it trickles from above, to clutch it over. To wash away the red, to fill it with that magic. She is not truly flesh and blood, but this... thing, was enough to steer her from death. Yet afterwards, she can scarcely move. It isn't her that moves, however, as she collapses in the flow of cold water. It is only the fact that part of her still touches the Warframe that it moves instead, very very crudely trying to pull her arms around and lift the child out of of the water. And then it's voice--her voice? It was hard to say /resonates/ throughout the painting in two simple words. It is primal. It is animalistic.                 <<HELP US.>>
Tomoe	Things are just not right here and the attack on her mind even if just forged by words has taken a good deal out of here, and worse more things are happening. She will have to trust in what Einark is doing as he draws from here she sees Kushiko attacked and she's not fast enough to act, and the sinking also can be heard something isn't right but the Rapier seems to be dead on target for Kushiko. She starts to move but something else is happening as she moves to try and aid her friend. She'll finds part of the apple tree she's planet it had to be worked against her. She's grabbed she can't move and she has no idea that the remains of the tree would have an effect on her until it starts. She finds the floor bursting under her in a spray of reality water. She's now suddenly finding one she's in pain two her HP bar is dropping fairly fast. She's on fire, she's freezing, it's numbing and he's cant help but to scream in pain as she tries to pull herself lose she has to get lose, she's got to get lose. There is pain so much pain and she starts to stink under into the reality water as she's being pulled down, she is being pulled down and then a thought comes to her even as she hears the call for help through her pain. "I will not ... die like this not LIKE THIS!" She pushes with everything she can muster even through all the pain at the risk of her avatar state being overloaded and her left as the seldom to the multiverse seen Sheena rather than Tomoe.
Staren	The horde comes ever closer. They don't stay dead, huh? Just as he's about to take to the air, they hit his forcefield, and it HURTS. He screams in pain and surprise, so shocked at being hurt in such a way that they have a chance to keep hitting him.     Escape. He must escape. No matter what happens, as long as his body makes it outside, friends will revive him. Through the pain, an idea comes: They're damaging him directly. His armor is unharmed, which means it can still soak plenty of normal damage. He detonates missiles point-blank to clear some space (and possibly melt the 'weapons' that are hurting him so.)     It hurts too much to fly. He starts to walk the way Priscilla indicated, focusing through the pain on the idea of Escape. Just because he's not used to pain doesn't mean he's powerless in the face of it. And then... the rain.     It still hurts so much. And now he needs to get Enark. He checks his diagnostics. This is bad. How long before he bleeds out? He pictures himself struggling through the pain to move Enark, only to collapse before they can reach whatever egress Priscilla had indicated. Not thinking clearly, he briefly forgets how much easier his armor would make it.     Ideas come. He orders Dawn, his support AI, to keep his armor moving to the exit if he passes out. He stumbles over to drop to his knees by Enark, groaning at the pain as wounds in his body press against the inside of the armor. He removes one of his gauntlets, pulls a stone from his bag, and presses his palm holding the stone against Enark, trying to push the magic in. This doesn't work on people, but Enark is sort of dead, right?     Nothing happens. He kneels there, blinking for a moment, in the rain. It not working on Enark tells him something about the magic Iianor taught him, but it's hard to focus on what...     Oh right. Escape. ESCAPE! Focus on escaping. And he remembers that the armor should make carrying Enark much easier. Shaking his head and wondering how much blood he's lost (he may have just gotten a bunch of blood on Enark from his hand), he puts the gauntlet back on and picks Enark up with a groan, settling on a princess carry. Moving still hurts, but moving Enark isn't much harder since it uses the armor's strength instead of his own.     He plods after Priscilla. "Where's the exit? How do we get out?"
Priscilla	The rain falls down the long shaft of the well. It gathers and polls in the caverns below, as the well was designed to do. It washes around Kushiko's and Tomoe's ankles, and it pours through tiny fissures in the ceiling where the ice has penetrated over many years, stippling their bodies. It's just enough to save Kushiko's life. It's just enough to wash over the horrible hole in the world in the shape of a human likeness dragging Tomoe into an abyss beyond the Abyss, and scorch it with the crackling fire of annihilating energies diametrically opposed in concept. It's enough to survive. Enough to escape. Enough to drive the dark shades away and make a break for the ladder.     The rain falls down on the courtyard. It blankets the open air of the field in a downpour that drives the masses to shelter with the Hollow things in the shadows, only able to watch and ripple and burn as their prey? targets? foes? escape. It's enough to heal Eryl's arm. Enough to power his Ungraspables as they scythe down the remainder that obstinately stand in his way, forcing them to reform elsewhere out of the rain. Enough for Xiaomu to freeze into temporary barriers of the frozen waters of Styx to keep anything from chasing them, and enough to rejuvenate Reiji into renewed motion.     The rain falls down the castle walls. It splashes and sloshes in the long-crumbling streets and pools in the snow, soaking soothingly into Flint's body where he crawls through the reddened snow. It's enough to stabilize him until George arrives. Enough to keep him going as the mecha hauls him towards their only exit. Enough to make sure nothing can seal the deal, even as the few that dare to get in the Flotilla's way are instantly blasted. It's even enough to help Seft, as much as it theoretically can help a Glitch.     The rain falls on the mountainside. It is Enark's own rain, and thus does not suffice to recover all that he had spent. Unable to get inside Staren's armour by design, it canoot help him either in his current state. It is only enough to keep the black, surrealist presence that surrounds Carna faded into the ancient shadows of the gnarled and twisted forest, and enough to drive the clinging, cloying not-beings away from Priscilla and back under the liquid film of this malleable reality, freeing her up to move. Seeing how badly wounded Staren is, she actually scoops down to support him, using her own pretty tremendous strength to speed him along, and prevent Enark's weight from slowing him down, guiding him to the far bridge where everyone converges.
Priscilla	The bridge, terminates over the same chasm that has, in revealing a part of its mystery, become the most horrific thing experienced in all of Lordran to date. It is a dead end, with no particular way but down. Nonetheless, there is a particular phrase, scrawled not in soapstone, but carved shallowly into the stone itself, that Staren may recognize from researching the hidden lore of the ancient prayers of mankind, back before they worshiped the gods, and prayed only for safe passage through the Dark. Peering over the edge, the blackness, in one, small, specific spot, is silent. It looks no different from the rest, but it is a void of blessed quiet in the hostile sea of malevolent song that surrounds them from all sides; a blackness borne of a lack of destination, rather than there being nothing in visual language to truly signify what it is.     That much is good, because Priscilla indicates to do what only a couple of people here have done once before, quite a while ago. She drags Staren, secures Enark, and then tilts and plunges over the edge, threading the needle into that quiet spot in the black, just ahead of the broken stairs downward. Those that have the sense and accuracy to follow her will skirt certain and inescapable death by a few meters to either side, and come tumbling out into the throne room. For whatever reason, the oppressive darkness that had exuded from it, worse every day, is absent. Only a washed-out kind of pallid hue suffuses the room, bleak and sterile.
Staren	Others see the shades as the dead, or as a malfunctioning guardian. It never occurs to Staren to think of them as anything but a hostile, anathemic force that has invaded the painting. Noticing how his hand feels better in the rain, he removes his helmet, stuffing it in his bag, although he can't afford to remove his armor completely.     Priscilla carries him. They return to the castle, and he sets Enark down. "What's wrong with him?" He winces in pain as he moves. He was going to just force himself to walk to the warpgate, because he probably CAN... but it suddenly occurs to him, is that really necessary? "Sorry to trouble you, but can someone carry me to the warpgate? ...Nnh, the armor's heavy, and you'd need a stretcher anyway. Maybe I should just have robots come pick me up..." Sooner or later someone points out that the Concord has /people/ for this. That Anor Londo has people for this. It's a strange notion to Staren. He can't remember the last time he had to rely on someone else to get healed up. Even when HK's assassination attempt on Twilight hospitalized both of them, it was Staren's machines that stabilized them, brought them to the Njorun medbay.     He detaches the armor, revealing the full bloody extent of his injuries. Somewhat detached himself, he tries to bandage himself while waiting for the healers. His body is another machine to be repaired. Albeit one that's gotten an awful lot of blood everywhere now that the armor's open. "Sorry about that." Staren comments, when he realizes the mess opening the armor has made.     Everything's going to be alright. Technology and magic will sustain him. The healers are on the way...