Scene #7065: LI0: Harmony To Cacophany (MSQ?)

Owner	Pose
Linehart	This is The Ending. Everyone knows The Ending. It's so old it's become a cliche. The story starts at the ending. It's set up from the moment you open the book. It's plain as day - four keys on a dais, ready to be filled. Four slots on a dais, ready to open the way. This is the Ending. Everyone knows the EnZGluZy4gSXQncyBzbyBvbGQgaXQncyBiZWNvbWUgYSBjbGljaGUu. It's just a dHJpY2s= of the bracelet and a c25hcA== of the Data Drain. The slots on the dais pulse. Above, though Haseo cannot see it, a pillar of yellow light pours into the sky. The wall opens like four irises unravelling. Beyond is a stairwell of pure stone. Yellow torches burst into being, painting the hallway in a dark xanthous pallor. Every step is oppressive. There is no music here - the moment Haseo sets foot into the Final Dungeon the dark music of the Ruined Temple cuts entirely. All he can hear is his own footsteps, and the breathing of creatures he'd rather not see, the dark things that dwell within this place. And it's cold. It's physically cold. In a world without temperature this is the first place where anything has chill. All Haseo has to do is pull up his own menu to see a pulsating status effect - Underworld's Bite. That explains it. Something slowing him down, something making his joints ache. The monsters down here are tough. They're all sorts of nasty things, like Ro-Langs Sorcerers that threaten Haseo with powerful magics ("Fiat Metallum IV" seems to be a favorite, blasting him with flechettes from all sides), six-armed Gyalpo Kings that hit him harder than he'd possibly like, and the three-faced Jvaras that layer sicknesses and status effects upon him with every strike. What's worse is that they die - they don't just disappear, despite the numbers popping up in front of them whenever he hits them, and they don't take their turn, and they don't fight fair. They don't fight with skill - just brute force or spells - but they don't stand still and they don't just wait to be murdered or only attack after he has. Finally, he makes his way past the miniboss - Geser, a monster that shifts in and out of existence as it strikes Haseo, attacking, disappearing, and then attacking again, shooting arrows like a guerilla fighter. Past that point is a vast double-door with a yellow sign scrawled upon it. This hallway is where Linehart would be. But he's not. So all Haseo has to do is walk up to the double doors. As he walks forward, words appear before him with every couple steps. THINGS FALL APART THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD MERE ANARCHY IS LOOSED UPON THE WORLD The doors part. This is indeed a Boss Room. It is a massive room shaped to look like a cavern made of bricks, with tattered yellow banners hanging from the ceiling. More of those awful yellow torches hang from pillars carved to look like stalagmites, aligned in a five-point star. In the center of that huge star is a shrine, a giant, unbelievable throne. On that throne sleeps a yellow dragon of the Eastern variety. Haseo can feel its breath. It smells like the grave. It smells like the depths of the earth, the dank and unpleasant smell of a world removed from the sky and the fresh and the wind. It is a dead thing that lies dreaming upon a throne, coiled about the huge rock chair, a serpent in the truest sense of the word. This is his destination.
Haseo	Haseo's world for a healer right now. The monsters are tough, tough enough to give even Haseo a bit of pause, but it's fine. If he doesn't have the strength himself, he just pushes through with Skeith. This place is all big game, no matter how 'life like' it is. So he can cheat. He has zero qualms with playing the game /HIS/ way and just brute force his way through everything. Even the miniboss, with enough bull-headed effort, falls to his hands. Easy. Too easy. He's lying to himself a bit. Downplaying the difficulty. It's actually really damn hard. But if he's the one left standing, he's allowed to say whatever he wants. He rubs his nose in thought and sneers a bit before moving past the room that Linehart should be in. Of course the game is going to tell him he's doing it wrong too, just like his 'friends'. Just like the people on the radio. And just like both of them, he ignores them. If he's made it this far, he's clearly doing something right. He's progressing farther than anyone else, anyway, considering he doesn't see Staren, or Shyra, Lilian, or even that dumb 90's Wizard here. And then comes the final boss room. The place he's been looking for. The place where he's going to take the title of EVIL GOD for himself and actually get shit done rather than pussy footing around. Even as the cold dank stench of a grave fills Haseo's lungs, he speaks out loud in his usual crass tone. It's not directed to anyone in particular. But it's something he's said already within the dungeon plenty of times before. A calling. "Come on, COME ON! I'm, right here..." The rogue is halfway crumpled over at this point, a hand clenching his face as if he's in pain as various glpyhs float around his model. Rather than discomfort though, there's an almost cheshire-like grin on his face. He's so close. He's SO CLOSE. "SKEITH!" A flash of light engulfs Haseo, his form replaced with a monstrously tall beast. A form that's more fitting for a Monster than a Hero. A being of stone rather than flesh. Skeith lets out a roar, it's arm lining up with the sleeping dragon. Several holographic petals surround its extended arm, a cannon barrel forming between them as the sound of charging fills the throne room. The cannon barrel widens to accommodate the size of the projectile it's getting ready to fire and then... It fires. The Data Drain fires. It's at this point Haseo realizes he should have probably checked this was the target he was after, but it's too late now.
Linehart	The moment Skeith is summoned, the dragon awakens. Haseo gets a brief moment of targetting data before Skeith fires. It's just an instant, just a moment. It reads, on the bottom of his screen, YELLOW EMPEROR. The Data Drain hits. The world turns upside down. The cavern vanishes in an instant. The landscape becomes a roiling, chaotic mess of color and light, a jumble of all the colors an eight-bit processor can handle. Red, green, blue, yellow, black, all roiling together in a mess of nonsense. There is no floor. There is no ground. There is no sky. There is no ceiling. There is only kaos, primordial and eternal, the building blocks of order itself. This is not a place where humans should be. This no longer feels like it is obeying the rules of the game. This feels like it is standing before a dark and terrible god, a Thing Primordial excised from the world long ago. There are no numbers here. There is no blinking 1 and 0. There is nothing for Haseo to touch and hack. There is a god, bound by rules, and nothing more. And that god is no longer a dragon. It is a mess. It is seven hands with eyes upon them moving in slow rotations. It is countless yellow wings that undulat like tentacles. It is a halo of power, nine points above it in space radiating light, clearly part of it but separate from the body. A halo of power roars around it, a physical light, a feeling of light, throbbing and hammering against Haseo's body with overwhelming majesty. This is a thing meant to be fought in a party. Haseo came in here alone. The music seizes control. The pulsing, low, rapid beat, layering bit on top of bit. The suggestion of voice in high 8-bit notes, haunting wailing and chanting. As the majestic thing rises it turns all of its countless eyes upon Haseo, all of its hands pointing at him at once. The targetting reticle confirms it. EVIL GOD DISCORDIA The hovering opening above its head, a gap in space and time, opens wider. Each hand moves in a pattern. Haseo skipped a phase of the boss. Haseo skipped the part of the boss where he'd have time to buff, where he'd have time to power up, the phase of the boss where its attacks are only hitting one person because it's a big dragon. Haseo skipped to the end game. The hovering horror moves its hands in a mandala formation. Two fingers come together in front of it. No words appear above it. They aren't meant to. The player isn't supposed to see the god taking damage. The other hands move in separate mandala patterns as the chaos begins to spike, physical tentacles of pure nothingness lashing out in all directions. It doesn't apply status effects - it poisons, or it curses, or it hurts, hurts, hurts. Where it touches burns like being disassembled. Where it grabs starts to come undone, like flesh turning to strings. This is not a game. This is a horror.
Haseo	The game world falls apart. The dragon disappears. The rogue probably broke more than he was planning to fix at this point. But he can just put it back together. Right? Actual full-fledged doubt starts coming in. It starts as a trickle before upgrading to a full on flood. The music. The emptiness. The place where he clearly should not be. It's all pretty oppressively screaming to him that he's messed up strongly. And then there's Discordia. The mass of hands. The mass of eyes. The thing that, even as large as Skeith is, Haseo can't fully fit into frame. And then the fear strikes. Not just his own though, but Skeith's. Haseo can feel the Avatar's urge to FLEE. Like it remembers something. Something awful. Something painful. But tools shouldn't have memories, and unluckily for the Avatar, Haseo is still in full control. Not that it does him much good. He's locked up. He can't move. He doesn't want to die. Not again. Not /again/. He's stronger. He has Skeith. He can't just lose after coming so far... And yet he does. Skeith, despite it's glitchy nature to /be/ and ignore the laws of things such as HP values, can't keep up. Each attack exposes more wire frame. More of the Epitaph's internal structure before finally it can't take it anymore and just. Breaks. It can't keep itself materialized anymore, it has to retreat. Back inside Haseo... Back inside Haseo. He's truly alone now, the Terror of Death's true self exposed. vulnerable and defenseless. It really was a bad idea. He should have listened, but it's too late. He just screams. No attempt to fight back, no attempt to hold on any longer. The true terror of death has taken hold of whatever sensibilities he had.
Linehart	Discordia is a relentless horror. It picks Skeith apart, piece by piece. It tears it apart in the way that any Final Boss can destroy a solo run attempt - with action economy. Every action Skeith takes, Discordia is four times as fast. Every strike Skeith makes, Discordia returns fourfold. It moves like a living creature, though it appears like nothing that should be called alive. It undulates. It pulses. Its eyes twitch and move around the landscape of madness. The landscape is part of it. It is part of the landscape. All is one. One is all. And it isn't like Skeith isn't hurting it. Haseo can take pride in that. The damage is being done. Bits are being cut away. Lumps of pulsing, twitching yellow soul-flesh fall to the chaos and become one with it. He's doing damage, he just can't see how much. He can't see how much HP it has left. How much strength it has left. How much power it has left. And it just. Doesn't. Stop. Skeith disappears. The eyes refocus onto Haseo. The music changes key. The mandala motions become six-handed gestures, twisting into shapes and symbols. The seventh hand stares at Haseo ominously as the light in its eye changes to a mirror of the chaos around them. It spreads its arms apart. A sound reverberates through the room. OM. It isn't spoken. There's no textbox. It's felt, like a chime. It's felt, like the ringing of a note in the back of Haseo's mind. It's felt. The sound cracks. The world cracks. Haseo cracks. Everything shatters, falling away into nothingness. There is only Discordia, hanging in the void. Words appear above Haseo's fading consciousness. GAME OVER But it's not a game. It's a world. It persists onwards when it ends. The only person it ends for is Haseo. The only GAME OVER is Haseo's life. That's it. He's gone. He isn't coming back. Reboot the console and try again. Except... ...except he's not a character in it. He's not part of the party. He's can't save the game. He's a non-player character in place where non-player characters can't be. Well. One of them can be. Haseo's eyes are forced open. His consciousness is forced back inside him. Eyes grow on the ends of his hands. He can see out of them. An arm grows out of his chest. He can see out of it. Two more arms under his armpits. More eyes. On his forehead, a glowing red opening. On his neck, more openings that pulse with light. There is only one non-player character allowed in this room. And if you cannot reload when you die, you must be a non-player character. You must be EVIL GOD DISCORDIA
Haseo	It's over. He's dead. There's no way he's coming back from this, he's failed- Or so he thought. He's back in the throne room, alive. He snaps back into reality, continuing his scream. Eventually all of his senses come to, and he stops. And then the extra senses come to, and he's thrown off balance. He yelps again, this time startled, before the realization hits him. It worked. He did it. All that saying that it was a dumb idea, that he would just be wasting his time. That he /couldn't/. He proved them wrong. He can't, he can't hold it in anymore. His face breaks into a full twisted smile as he laughs. It's the laugh of a sick person, the laugh of someone who might not be all there. It's also a wasted laugh, given that no one's around to really hear it. But he just can't stop himself. "I did it. I did it! I'M the Evil God now! Me!" In the middle of gloating, Haseo takes a seat in the now empty throne, his extra pair of arms laying against the rests as he just laughs. And laughs. He hasn't laughed like this in a while, but man does it feel good.