Ruins of Khazan - Part 1: All Things Among Fallen Leaves

[Nik Hasta]

PROLOGUE: THE JOURNEY



To arrive somewhere, one must necessarily take a journey; travel from one place to another in order to arrive. Between any given Point A and Point B there are any number of places that may constitute part of a journey depending on the route taken.

Khazan is the centre of all things and to travel there is to, in some senses, travel through all places.

In times past this would have been a smooth zip through a dimensional webway, unknowable forces carrying travellers along through countless realities, invisibly and instantly like a fish beneath the surface of the water. So fast and smooth a journey that it could almost have been said to have taken no time at all. To travel all of creation and come to its great centre took all of one step.

Things are different now.

You were somewhere before and something prompted you to leave; a desire, a need, a want, perhaps you just could no longer remain where you were. In the moment that you made the decision to leave, you felt something seize hold of you; a tug that felt like a hook deep in the core of your spirit and you were suddenly in motion. There may have been other factors; a gate, a rip in reality, an ancient ritual, a realisation of enlightenment, a curse, some newly developed technology, an experiment gone awry, a prophecy, some secret wish granted by a greater power or any other number of things. Exactly how you started is immaterial, all that matters now is the journey.

All doors will lead Khazan for Khazan is the centre of all things.

This was not a journey of one step. This was not a calm and comforting invisible zip through a billion billion dimensions and timelines in an instant like a fish beneath the water. This was like a stone sent skimming across the surface sending ripples and disturbances in all directions, unsure of where you were going and where you might end up, just a prisoner of this terrible momentum and speed as you again and again make contact with the water.

As you travel, each step brings you momentarily to a different world, a different time, a different reality and for a fraction of a second you collide with it through your unstoppable momentum.

STEP. You collide with a the back of a surgeon, scalpel in hand, sending the blade skidding across the body of his patient to where it should not go, machines erupting into warning bleeps. STEP. You shatter through a shop window, sending glass flying into the display, an alarm going off and children screaming. STEP. You stand momentarily on a world being consumed by a solar flare, a creature with far too many eyes regards you sadly for a moment, tears on their eyes being boiled away along with the atmosphere. STEP. You blunder through a duel of two crystal lords, both bleeding and fighting for their kingdoms, sending one crashing to the floor as his opponent roars with triumph and thrusts. STEP. You fall through a dark void, screaming in a vacuum that denies you all sound. STEP. You trip across the face of a sleeping god, breaching the sanctity of a cosmic nursery. STEP. You find yourself waist deep in a cancer dimension of misshapen bone and flesh, something hungry sees you and pounces. STEP. You walk a frozen lightning bolt that houses innumerable tiny beings, the weight of your mere existance shatters it causing their civilisation to tumble into darkness. STEP. You trip over a monk meditating in glade, you hear him yelp with surprise and dismay at the universe breaking his quest for peace. STEP.You stumble through a paintingof aworldandthecanvasripsSTEP.
youeruptthroughthefloorofanantnestSTEP.
youtouchthebottomoftheoceanSTEP.
youslamintoabarroombrawlSTEP.
youarehurtSTEP.
youarelostSTEP.
youfallSTEP.
yougoSTEP.
youSTEP.
youSTEP.
yo-STEP.
y-STEP.
STEP.
STEP.
STEP.
STEP.

All this and a thousand thousand more, you leave a trail of confusion, disarray and destruction across the face of all creation as you, something that should not be in that world, momentarily collides with it.

Your journey is from one place to another but to Khazan is to travel through all places.

You lose count of the steps, you lose all sense of how long this has been your existance and for a moment you fear that this will just be your life for the rest of time and then suddenly it stops.

The steps stop.

You stop.

You are covered in small wounds and are bewildered by the sheer sensory overload of perceiving so many things so fast.

Your feet touch solid ground and, for once, it does not instantly shift into somewhere else. You collapse slightly, stumbling as if pushed and you realise you have arrived at the end of your journey.

Before you is a gate, higher than any that you have ever seen before or since. Something in you knows that this isn't just "a gate", this is perhaps the idea of "gate" made manifest. What all other gates are informed by. As you look at it, the moment your attention wanders, its composition and design changes incrementally. If asked, you would be unable to say what specifically had changed but after a few moments of inattention, you would suddenly realise what was once great varnished timbers is now stone is now metal is now bones is now solidified magical force and so on.

It is constantly shifting but when you look to try and catch it in the act of changing, the gate remains static and impenetrable.

The gate is set into a set of walls that loom impossibly higher than the gate itself. That same thing in you knows that it would not be possible to climb or fly over the walls for, despite you thinking you could see the top from the ground, they could stretch up into infinity. They are always tall enough to seem imposing.

The walls rush away in either direction, at some point in the far off distance seeming to curve. Behind you is a great ocean of dark stardust, endlessly deepy with small ripples that cause translucent lights and sparks to dance in its depths. Above is an impossibly complex aurora of points of light joined by shimmering strings of energy. You suspect that you might be looking at all possible creation from the outside.

It is quite, there is a light breeze that slightly disturbs the innumerable fallen leaves on the ground. There are a number of dead bodies from beings of dozens of species around you, the variety of wounds and states of the bodies suggest that they did not survive the journey as you have. Some are in pieces, some just skeletons, some on fire, all still and definitely dead.

The gate ahead of you is open, just wide enough for a horse to pass through and what lies beyond it awaits.

PLAYERS: For your opening post, please describe the last thing your character experienced before travelling and their experience of the journey.

ALL PLAYERS HAVE TAKEN 10 POINTS OF DAMAGE TO THEIR CORE HP.

ALL PLAYERS HAVE LOST 50% OF THEIR MASTERED ENERGY.

You do not all arrive at once and you don't know how long you will be alone for.

Current Cast
> Krys: Once-Sword of the Goddess played by Sharpandpointies
> Jane Doe played by Postmania
> Vánagandr Fenrir played by Siriel
> SIN/D3R-E1Ia *Ella* played by MrSandman

Mood Soundtrack: Tosca - E Lucevan Le Stelle

[Sharpandpointies]

Avatar 1 (Small).jpg

It’s cold.

They remember cold.

For a moment – an eternity – cold had been nothing more than a forgotten concept, lost in the endless tide of All Things shifting, observed from Outside. But there had been an existence (before that? Simultaneously? Time out of Time made such distinctions meaningless) where ‘cold’ had registered, where the difference in particle vibration in their system was on a higher level of the gradient than the surrounding systems. Where that vibration bled from their system into the others, increasing their vibrations at cost to itself. Where that cost translated to changes in the macro-system, to discomfort, to…feeling cold, one of the subjective sensations of entropy.

And now they feel that cold again.

With gelid fluidity they rise from their crouched posture to stretch out lean, aching muscles. An explosive shake follows, shoulders twisting, arms becoming hanging whips, hip and knees shifting over the feet, solid as if having grown roots. A slump. A straightening, shoulderblades coming together behind them. An exhalation. And a brief shiver as their skin ripples, goose-bumps rising in reaction to that felt, discomfiting cold.

They once again grasp the concept of ‘dislike’.

Cracked, dry lips part for an instant. “Ashen de-” A sliding scree of broken corners, hissing susurration, and sharp edges, their voice abruptly breaks off. A cough follows, crackling through stiff vocal chords, and after a ragged breath they try again. “Ashen death, but this sucks.”

As first words go, not terribly memorable; even so, the corners of their mouth crack in a wry smile.

The tears had come earlier, silently dripping down their cheek as they wept over the inconsolable loss. Twin losses, in fact, each inconceivable, now doubled in their stumbling heart. Long before they understood the why, they had felt those losses; bereft and bereaved, their staggering mind had finally caught up with their howling emotions, only to find themselves without tongue to speak, shorn of language to express. That had come later, when the hurricane within them had died to a constant drizzle of pain and misery, soaking the agony in their spirit to a dull, frozen ache. Only then had they regained enough of their mind to ask those so important questions, questions without answers. They had needed to come back from nothing, for that is what the Fall had left them.

The fall from Outside All Things, the fall into entropy, the narrowing of perceptions and concepts, the bewilderment as so much slipped away…and then?

When it ended, they had found themselves here.

They almost died in the first few seconds, in a form both familiar and not, lying frozen upon the rocky slope, blood seeping from innumerable wounds. Then their reconstituted body had recalled heartbeat, and breathing. Events had become most unpleasant for…for a time, that phrase now holding actual meaning. Finally they had stilled their writhing, bloody foam dribbling from the ravaged corners of their mouth, mucus staining their cheeks. Blended, blurred mental imagery and emotions had slowed, and a vague curiosity began to trickle through autonomic distress and heart-rending loss.

And the tears.

In time, the person had pushed themself up, away from the spill of bile, the smears of blood upon the rocks, the pain of aching shoulders driving them to remember sitting. They huddled atop a black, shapeless pile, its toughness protecting them from the stone. Their hands had fluttered, dancing about their form, tentatively touching before drawing back at the sharp, limited sensation. Parts of them seemed torn. Parts of them did not match the others, but then a new concept – if not the actual word – had wormed its way from the past: clothing. And style. Which this was not.

~ ‘You can pull off anything.’ ~

The whisper in their memories had dragged fresh rivulets down their cheeks. But remembered words sparked language, and with language, actual, intelligible thoughts had begun to bubble their way through the morass of confusion filling their head.

…why…

…where…

…how…?

Never who; that question had not been important for what might have been an eternity, and does not yet occur.

Their senses had struggled. Vision? At first, everything about them was a mosaic of colours and lines without definition, an abstract painting in two dimensions. Only when movement occurred did they begin to grasp the third dimension – so limited! – and realize what lay before them. Focus slowly followed, and their mind gradually recaptured the concept of distances and location. Hearing had been much the same, the few sounds about them nothing but garbled uncertainty, resolving themselves slowly into discreet packages of vibrations their mind slowly began to sort and file. Smell was an absolute mess, to say the least, shocking flashes of association spearing through her brain with almost every breath. Those have begun to smooth, settling into a background sensation.

An unpleasant one, given the scent on the wind: entropy at work, as always.

And so, now: “Ashen death, but this sucks.”

Touch is a nightmare, still, even as they now congratulate themselves on speaking, on the curious vibrations in their throat producing sounds in comprehensible patterns to those who study such. Speaking, so arduous, so vague when held up against pure communication of concepts.

So limited, like all else.

Their head turns to regard the myriad dead, the corpses of ages, and past them to the Walls of Khazan.

[Sharpandpointies]

(cont.)

The towering barriers slip and slide in their sight, shifty and cunning in their changes. If they focus, the person can catch them for an instant, crystalize them in their sight of Time out of Time. But they shift through the multiple layers of All Things in a way that currently stands beyond this person, the walls made to bar the passage of beings greater than the watcher is, now. They cannot pass the walls as they are, and what of it? Unimportant, for there are the gates, should the person desire entry. Wounded gates, but still hale and mighty, impossible for their now-limited sight to fully discern. And –

– they squint –

– an opening.

So no real need to concern oneself with the walls, then.

But between there and here – what a concept those words contain, the idea that ‘here’ is an actual place separated by space from ‘there’ rather than contiguous! – lies a plain of the fallen, covered by incomplete shrouds of dead leaves. They exist in all forms and all peoples, most physical, some not, some not even part of entropic reality. The watcher can see them, now trapped in what amounts to death for these beings – endless static existence. Incapable of further change – and looks away as the dry, crumbling leaves whip through them. And from whence to they come, those leaves? For there are no trees, here.

Effect follows cause within entropic reality, but the leaves defy those laws.

A shift of their shoulders turns the person toward the ocean of darkness and the seemingly-endless star-points that signify the Myriad Worlds, all connected by bizarre, ethereal pathways. Creations of the Underflow itself? Or something more? There was a time – but not a time, simultaneously – that they would have known the answer. Now, they have no clue; such knowledge has faded, becoming no more than snatches and shards of memory within them, where once dwelled the perception of All Things Seen From Outside. The sight might as well be new to them, for all they comprehend it. And yet…and yet…

…should pathways not be stable?

The cold once again sweeps over them, like jagged razor-wire against their nerves. Their gaze drops back to the small black nest upon which they found themselves lying; one thin hand reaches out, the arm mostly bare, and sweeps it from the stone. Holding it at arm’s length, they shake it once, eyes narrowed. The split lips crack further as they widen a touch, a hint of a smile appearing on the spare face as another memory spirals up from the depths, this one truly recent, a fragment of their dreadful voyage to this alien shore.

They tumble through reality's layers, gaining weight, substance, form, smashing through world after world, each a shocking impact that adds further to their solidity. They become in madness and chaos, falling away in all directions from that single point of truth, of awareness, of rule-breaking-enlightenment. But through the fall, they reach – first with spirit, then with a limb when that concept solidifies – back from where they came, from when they came, from beyond where and when to their point of origin, dimensions away, higher and lower and all things in-between. And something – a concept, a dream, a truth, a love, an ending – reaches back in desperation of its own.

The message comes, not as words, but in impressions. Concepts, drowning in the infinite.

[Take/Hold/Accept] itemproffered! [Do/Act/Use] itemproffered! [Think/Remember/Yearnfor] Iwe (together)!

Something appallingly finite joins them as they fall through the dimensions, the worlds, acquiring form and shape and being and…

A rough chuckle slips out, followed by a cough. They pull the treasured item close, draw in a deep breath. A cacophony of scents assaults their nose, dancing into their mind and triggering associations. The thick, bitter reek of motor oil –

– ~ the motorcycle rumbles beneath them as it screams along the misty roadway ~ –

– the faint tingle of herbs –

– ~ fingers brush their back, rubbing coldness into abrasions and setting fire to their nerves ~ –

– and just a hint of incense, no more than a touch.

– ~ their hands hold out the clothing, a sacred offering; the other smiles, accepting ~ –

Their breath blows out again as vision blurs once more, a swimming, watercolour medley. With a heavy sigh, they slip the worn black jacket over their shoulders, shrugging it in place and wincing under the sting of their wounds. It’s big – a touch too big, in fact, made for a larger person. They care nothing for that; it is warmth, it is comfort beyond the physical. It is memories, and memory, and link to their loss. Another meagre smile graces their splintered lips, another whisper escapes. “Thanks.”

I will never forget you. And I will find you.

Somehow.

[Postmania]

In the Hades Desert, the heat killed. Sweltering waves of heat shimmered across the crimson dune sand as spires rose from an enormous oil refinery. On one of those many spires, crouched a spidery thin robot. Jane remained statue still, partially hidden in the shadows of the spires as the sun rose high in the noon sky. She felt none of the heat, simply noting it as a readout in her HUD. Her long Deathmark rifle was extended and activated as she peered through the scope, her internal sensors and the natural enhancement of the scope synchronized for maximum accuracy at range.

Cultists hurried below her, many of them taking pains to remove various screws and catches on the machinery, reversing the flow of the all-important black oil so it instead poured out onto the sand, and, importantly, those lying in the sand. The victims were, at this point, too dazed and drugged to scream as they were prepared for the commencement of the ritual. Jane knew, as she spied on them from above, that this ritual represented the culmination of one of many sacrifices for the great god Nekro, who she sought to find her way out from under. The head priest, dressed in a black trenchcoat with skulls sewn into the breast, began giving an impassioned speech, his voice loud, confident, and carrying even to the heights where Jane hid on her tower.

“…It is within this refinery that we truly refine our faith in Nekro! With this oil, this purified liquid made from the bones of the dead from centuries past, we consecrate the soon to be dead and bring them to our god! Death in death, a message whose repetition that cannot be mistaken! So, we use this sanctified oil to fuel the weapons of tomorrow, to bring us towards our cherished future!”

As he spoke, cultists were pouring the oil over the victims. Their ritual was not something Jane fully understood, but it involved soaking them in this substance to bury them alive. Their bodies would then experience decay at an extremely heightened rate, centuries of desiccation and diminishment and petrification and liquidation happening in a space of a few days. From this, they would extract this new oil to power a powerful and vital machine.

Nekro. Jane pondered. Unbidden, the memories of the incident that had irrevocably severed her from her old life were called by a subroutine within her complicated neural network. She remembered nothing herself, only what she saw on the surveillance footage. Her own body cutting down the laboratory and base of operations which she had operated out of for years. The eyes, glowing a strange yellow, so unlike the green energies of necromantic power which typically fueled her mechanical frame. The proclamation.

“Put aside childish games. Take your place by my side or be rendered obsolete.”

Obsolete. The word was hard to shake. The truth was, although his statement had been a request, Jane knew it was not something she was even required to fulfill. Already, her systems had whispered of the spreading encroachment of a strange software. She was unable to identify it. And she lacked the software capabilities to properly remove it within her own mainframe. Indeed, the only ones who could perform this sorcerous surgery were almost certainly working for her enemy who would call himself her master or were lying dead in a pile of rotted flesh in a burned out Space station by her hand, several weeks ago.

She knew it was Nekro. She did not have long. There had to be a way to escape his gaze, Jane’s calculations told her. It was the only way she could potentially wrest herself free from this circumstance. Only this way, her circuits reasoned, could she eliminate this malware spreading through her systems and restore full control. Somewhere deep within her core, a minor function checked against the facts at hands and drew a different conclusion. This function whispered to her the other alternative, the obvious one, that it was her own consciousness that was the malware. She had always known she was designed in service of this god, although he had never made his presence known before and the scientists had in frustration declared her a failure in progress. Therefore, it reasoned, to fulfill Nekro’s will was in fact her main purpose. As she had done 954 consecutive cycles beforehand, Jane diagnosed this function as overactive and quarantined any potential spread of its line of thought as a malfunctioning process within her thought stream.

Upon the sound of the armored vehicle, she redirected all processes back to the task at hand. Jane tilted her head and referenced silently the information she had bought from an information broker on a distant ice planet days ago. The image of the truck popped up on her heads-up display, and alongside it the artifact she had been looking for.

The name had not been part of the information, but its description fit the weapon she now saw as the truck rolled to a stop. A huge, armored foe in something resembling a cross between Medieval Knight armor and tactical gear with ceramic plates stepped out, carrying a dagger only slightly shorter than a machete, with a black blade with purple jewels within the hilt. It was with this blade, she had been informed, that the owner could evade even the eyes of Death itself. Jane assumed this knife was to be stabbed into some victim, or perhaps a designated spot. Death cultists were fairly predictable in that aspect.

Of course, this left a question of her approach. Jane could drop down and in a flurry of motion send bullets flying into the crowd. She could make use of her elevated position and shoot them down from a range too far for most to manage a response to even with a firearm. But, Jane knew, the field had already been prepared for death by her victims. The oil now fully seeped into the pit of numbed victims, with the cultists standing in the substance, unmoving, chanting. Jane considered her objectives for a moment. In every normal mission, she had mission parameters to guide her. Some of them instructed her to avoid collateral damage. Not out of squeamishness so much as it would be suboptimal to cause casualties where they were unnecessary. But in this case, there were no such missives. And the option that left the most casualties, she calculated, led to a smooth 50% increase in her chances of success as graphed by one of her probability subroutines. It was with this thought that she pulled the mechanical trigger with her mental command and the Blackstone bullet sliced through the neck of the armored man holding the knife as he stepped to hand it over to the priest. Blood misted from his carotid as the crowd of cultists gaped and exclaimed.

Without pause, Jane’s body swung around so her stomach was pointed down towards the crowd. A large barrel as thick as her body revealed itself, and with a blaze of emerald fire the Doom Cannon sounded, blasting a Black projectile to the oil below, where it exploded into an eerie green fire as it ignited the volatile substance. Screaming could be heard from cultists and would be sacrifices alike, but Jane made no distinction between the two as she leapt from her perch to finish the stragglers off.

A short time later, Jane’s arms were extended at her sides as the chrome revolvers abruptly stopped firing. Less abruptly however, was her spinning subsiding, as her white hair flapped in the breeze that had picked up in the crimson desert, now streaked with further crimson and the ashes of those who had not escaped the emerald inferno and her finishing barrage of her Death Blossom. Jane turned her head from side to side, scanning for potential threats or items of interest. She vocalized a small, pleased, “hmm” as she saw she had ended everyone at the refinery. Slowly turning, Jane, as she had always whenever she dealt out death, had saved the footage and had opened up a small part of her mind’s eye audiovisual processes to replay the events of the past few moments. It was something she typically enjoyed, but she abruptly cut that short and turned to the spot where the armored man was in alarm.

It cannot be.

There was no body. No stinking mess burning in the heat as his body produced the unpleasantness that comes in the accelerated desiccation that resulted from Jane’s Blackstone Bullets. No armor hanging uselessly off a frame that would never use it again. And no Knife.

Somehow, this hulking figure had vanished in the time between taking a critical hit and her ending the rest of the cultists in the space of less than a minute. Jane began activating further sensors, with hastening speed. Heat trackers and ultraviolet detectors and radiation meters turned on and swept the surroundings. Jane leapt back onto one of the spires to continue her investigation by a bird’s eye view.
She found nothing. She should have expected that anything that could hide from Death, would stand a good chance at hiding from her. But she had sworn that the man was dead even before the blood hit the ground.

With reluctance, Jane once again instructed her system to perform a regression analysis on the process of Nekro’s intrusion on her system. As it had every cycle since she had left the destroyed space station she had once thought of as her base, the results came back with the same dire prediction. She had less than 1 year to find a way to reverse or halt this process, or she would soon be serving under Nekro directly whether she went to him or not.

Jane stood on the tower of an oil refinery scanning the horizon once again. Cultists and ritual victims lay scattered below her, their cries but a memory. An internal tracker counted up, this was an addition of 100 souls to her deadly tally. But this meant little to her now. It was dread she felt now. Truly dread.

And then she felt the knife enter her side.

PART 1

[Postmania]

PART 2

In times of a lack of response, Jane’s systems were programmed to guard against death, and they activated here. Jane experienced a breathe sense of vertigo as she was propelled into another dimension, one closer to that of Nekro and thus, death. The procedure proceeded as expected. Jane saw the recent dead below her. Even in the afterlife, they still burned; they still screamed. Jane expected this would fade with time, but the memory was far too fresh of course. Mixed into them were multitudes of other, older sacrifices. They weren’t as intact as the newer spirits. Partially this was due to the ravages of time eroding the remnants of their consciousness still chained there, but Jane knew this was more to due with the process that the cultists had repeated which pulped the ectoplasm into usable fuel. Soul harvesting rarely left much to a poltergeist.

She spied her past position, the spire she had been propelled from. Of course, since this was a Death Dimension, she could not see her attacker, who was assuredly the one she had been intending to kill, but had hid from her and doubled back. And then the process went wrong.

Her systems were only supposed to send her to a different spot on the battlefield for an advantageous tactical position, but Jane detected, with some alarm, behavior outside all past parameters. She was hurdling along far further, an impossible distance, miles upon miles, and then past the atmosphere of the planet!

But this alone was not the extent of her travel. If anything, the speed was increasing, planet after planet zooming past, too fast for her to process. And her experience began to change along with it.

Jane suddenly found her consciousness elsewhere. She could vaguely understand she was strapped to a table. A surgeon’s scalpel hovered above her, then suddenly sank in. Pain flooded her body as Jane became aware that this was not standard medical procedure, but a killing, and then Jane died.

Barely was her consciousness returned to herself when she found herself elsewhere. An insect skittered across the surface of a lake, the world impossibly huge to her primitive eyes. Suddenly a long stalk smashed into her, the tongue of some creature, Jane’s mind whispered, and she was being sucked towards it! She only glimpsed a flash of pink and then she was swallowed whole, and then Jane died.

Again and again the merging of consciousnesses repeated itself, and again and again the same ending. A ballet dancer spins, graceful, glorious, before an improperly secured piece of signage crashes down upon her skull, flattening her into human rubble. A passenger on a starship relaxes, ordering drinks, before the ship’s shielding fails, and a meteorite exits through his stomach as the people around him shriek. A blue star’s core balance fails, and it blasts apart it’s outer layers, erupting into a supernova. A caretaker robot bends over an elderly man in the aftermath of a crash, the elderly man expiring in a rattle of breath as the pole sticking through his chest finally claims his life. Soon after, the power reserves on the unplugged caretaker robot fail, and it also expires. And each time, Jane died, Jane dies, Jane will die.

And then abruptly the journey ends, and Jane’s thoughts somehow cohere back into something resembling individuality. If she breathed, Jane would have let out a gasp of air, but instead she reached for an impulse that was just as primal/basic/core for her. She drew her pistols and let loose a fusillade of shots, seeking nothing, blindly firing, before realizing that she was still in an elevated position related to the ground. She hears a voice whisper in her head, Just do what comes naturally and she tumbles down, tucking herself into a neat roll and emerging from the dust in a crouched firing position.

There was a Gate, she noted. Walls. High Walls. Too high. Jane couldn’t focus. Her optics were shaky, static creeping into the visual receptors. Her mental processes were little better, sections of herself replaying the experiences she had just been a voyeur to again and again in her mind, wasting precious system resources. She could not terminate these parts of herself at the moment. Some parts of her was dimly aware of the damage to her chassis from the knife attack, and burned energy as well. Then she saw the dead, and this gave her some comfort. The world made sense in a place where things had died, and the things had perished some time ago, and the things were separate/not her.

She still could not focus. The Gate was open. Was this a trap by Nekro? Some aspect of him reaching through to her defensive systems, seeking to capture her? Jane did not/could not know. She decided to remain here for the time being, switching back to her rifle with too slow deliberation. The scope trained on the opening thousands of meters in front of her, and Jane waited.

[MrSandman]

- 1 Year Before Collapse -

With one finally heave and the click of metal sliding into place, the final emitter hummed to life within its metal chasse. A man well past his prime let out a huff of relief, nearly falling from his precarious position atop the makeshift step-ladder(Though one would more accurate describe it as a stood, a chair and a countertop cosplaying a step-ladder). No sooner did he reach the floor then his massive rear gravitate to the nearest cushion and landed with a befitting crunch. The installation had taken almost 8 hours....a herculean task for one who had been soften by a desk job for almost 12 years. Nonetheless...Otto M Schrodinger managed a smile, perhaps a bit to smug for the situation. He clearly still had it in him.

All that work for his pride and joy, a relic of a bygone era.....a place where men and women gathered to socialize before the advent of the networked world and eventual supersession of social gatherings as a whole. Everything was done over a network now, if you need a drink one could be ordered and delivered in a heartbeat, someone to talk to? Communication networks had never been faster. But to physically gather? In the same room? It was nearly unheard of anymore...and that's what made the concept so quant to Otto. It was an experiment of a man with little else to put his mind into.

Perhaps it was irony then how everything fell into place. Otto had managed to find some available space in what could only be described as the basement of a basement....7 levels below the ground floor of a major commercial building. It wasn't in a bad or deserted district mind you, but if it weren't for the elevator it would be damn near impossible to expect anyone to ever bother with it. None the less, he took it in a heartbeat. It suited his needs just fine....if anything it made his internal renovations all the easier. A sufficiently hefty pension from his former job carried him the majority of the way through...installing a self sufficient and perhaps overly expensive generator, enough stock in storage to feed and serve for years, and all the lavish ceremonial trappings one would associate with the legendary cafes of yore.....and yet in all that time, his masterpiece had yet to be fully realized.

Having sufficiently rested, Otto rose from his chair and quietly slide under the hub. With a tap, the panel lowered to reveal a input screen and several ports for data transmission. There was a pause, and the man checked to confirm all the networking functionality of the device had indeed been removed...a very specific, small and yet utterly necessary step. Finally, he was satisfied....and pulled from the counter a small box. With slow, calculated precision the latches were undone....and the lid slide open to reveal a small USB-like data stick. A small V insignia emblazed the side.

What was a cafe, according the those ageless documents....without the creature known as a MAID. Mythical like the Phoenix, Legendary like the Yeti, Utterly impossible to have ever existed...and yet once they did...in an age so bygone it may was well have been pre-internet, when insectoids ruled the world. (If the fossilized endoskeletons were for real),

"Dad?"

A voice startled Otto, the data stick nearly leaping from his hand before he flipped into an almost inhuman pose to catch it before it could fall. A young boy, around 14, stood blinking in the door leading inside to the bedrooms. Perhaps it was the sleep in his eyes, or the sudden realization that it was well after 1 am in the night, but as Otto lifted the stick back up from his precarious save...everything felt just a bit heavier then before. "Oh, My boy....I didn't mean to wake you..." His gaze trailed up to the device and then back to his son. He had intended things to be ready before morning...because of all the people to witness his masterpiece, it was his son whom he was most interested in showing. "Sorry, did I wake you?"

The child rubbed the sleep from his eyes and nodded slowly.

Otto glanced between the boy the panel above him and the stick in his hands. Then with a smile he motioned towards him. "Since your up, would you like to see something magical?"

~~~

Johann blinked. It was unlike his father to be so animated...but the last couple months had been the brightest his father had seemed since he lost his job. For a moment he just stood on in mute silence as his father attempting to insert some stick into some terminal. For a moment, all was quiet....Ottos eyes darted across a screen from an angle only he could see. In the moment, the look on his face both lifted and fell several times in a row...as if he was going through a roller-coaster of emotions. Finally an audible beep sounded, and a humming began...along with a digitized voice that uttered a phrase the boy had little to no idea of its meaning.

"Core Command Firmware Initialization - Calibrating Emitters. Please stand by."

Just to the side, one of the metal orbs that had been implanted in the roof spun in place, turning a lens towards a open area of the room. Beams of light flickered into existence, and focused on a small point before spreading outwards in a frame. First forming a ball, then a square, then a cone. As each formed in landed with visible force against the ground before dematerializing. The sounds of similar from other rooms seemed to indicate it was happening in other areas of the safe as well....though the audible breaking of glass in succession was barely enough to bring a small twitch to his fathersright eye.

"Emitters Calibrated. Loading Template Profile. Loading Holo-Matrix."

As the emitters powered up to full, a brilliant flash and the pungent smell of smoke emanated from just beyond the door leading out. Concern took over for a moment, and Otto beelined towards the exit to check what was liking the outside emitter suffering a violent overload....a fire was all they needed, especially in the only exit to his floor....not that such a safety oversight was immediately apparent to a 14 year old. Left alone, the hum of the other emitters intensified.

"Loading AI Algorithm. Projecting Template."

An arm lowered from the hub, holding a small sphere of shining silver, covered in various sensors and projection nodes. The roof implanted emitters seemed to fix upon it, then....though it happen faster then his eyes could properly process, Johann liked the process in his own mind to that of drawing. A body was drawn in the air directly in front of him, one of pure light. Taking shape from the silver core and outwards...until it had been consumed in the form of a young girl.

A moment of stunned silence followed. The "girl of light" opened her translucent aqua green eyes and stared across the room at the child. Then....she stepped foward. The core moved with her, detaching from the arm that held it and taking its place at the center of her chest. Johann stumbled backwards in surprise, words of surprise having escaped him even as he fell on his rear. "Awaiting Registration..." The girl spoke, staring unblinkingly at the confused and disoriented child. After a moment of eyeing as the boy attempted to panic out a response...the girl tilted her head. "Awaiting Registration..." She asked a second time, paused once more, and then added. "....your name." in a much more quiet tone.

"...." Johann caught the breath that had temporarily escaped him. "...M...my name?"

"What is your name?"

"..J...Johann...."

The girl stared at him for a moment. Not quiet through him, but enough to make the experience a little more then ackward. "Acknowledged, New user registration confirmed. Johann. Pleased to meet you Johann. As a newly register user, please take a moment to inspect the operational Manuel and confirm you are operating within the ethical and para-social guidelines as set by Valorcorp." The girl motioned with her hand, and a book an encyclopedia in size materialized and smashed down upon the glass counter with enough for to ripple cracks across it. Johann said nothing, having lost the conversation almost immediately, and only looked on confusion...and perhaps a little awe.

"Are you in compliance?" The girl asked.

"....Y...Yes?"

"Confirmed and noted." The girl broke into a smile so artificial she may as well have held it up with her fingers. "Registration Complete. I look forward to our future working relationship."

[MrSandman]

After returning from collecting the scrap left over after the emitter he had dropped a cool multiple grand on, Otto was both surprised and somewhat deflated to find the program had finished running in his absence. The big surprise he had planned had played out without him, with only the aftermath of a star struck young boy and a hologram pointing him through a user manual. Factory resetting now was out of the question, not with this particular mode of AI.....if anything he was lucky to have gotten it when he did. Though the same couldn't be said if his former employers ever traced the missing stock back to him.

But the man took it in stride, and watched the interaction between the two play out from the safety of the doorway for several more moments before interjecting.

Johann was hesitant at first to associate with the "ghost" living in his roof. But as the registered user of the location, most interactions with her ended up going through him. In the end however, his father handled most of the day or day operation. It was Otto who first suggestion the name "Ella" to him, apparently it had been a code word used in early development for her AI.

Over the next several months, as per operational guidelines, Ella had to go through a period of training to fit the position she was intended to take. Otto had meticulously researched the intended tasks of being a MAID and sprinkled them in with general training on chores, cleaning, customer interaction and basic service procedure. When it came to data, numbers and repetitive tasks...Ella was Queen of the Cafe.

When it came to social interaction....she was akin to a light bulb with a smiley face drawn on it. It was several months before she could even break from speaking in monotone, and even then her faux interpersonal skills were at best an imitation of the real thing. Despite this however, it soon became apparently that there was....a child-like spark hidden in the code. It especially came out with her interactions with Johann, the former slowly growing less timid in his interactions. To Otto, it was akin to seeing two children at play....Johann would do something stupid, Ella would follow suit. She was a learning AI, but the learning part was more obvious in some situations then others.

Some of the more memorable incidents....Testing the logical limits of her projection, slapping everything from colored lens(Otto awaking to a Blood Red Ella floating overhead on Halloween put an immediate stop to this), to prisms(The result was so *gory* that not even Ella has requested it be tried since) to even a full on kaleidoscope. (*Puking sounds*). Or all the attempts at playing hide and seen 5 v 1. (Ella always took her emitters limitation in stride...even if it may be considered cheating to become a coat hanger in hide and seek).

Nonetheless, the three grew close, perhaps closer then Otto had been with his son in particular in a long time....and Ella had taken the role of a surrogate daughter.

His Cafe Business however, never took off.

Maybe if they had a few more months to work things out....maybe things could have improved.....maybe...


....maybe...

~ 2 Hours before the Collapse ~
New Years Day

It was a slow day, of course that was to be expected. Nobody was going to be caught dead 7 floors below ground on New Years of all days. Supposedly there was a grand show planned...but nobody had any details. Otto had come to expect slow days by default, and poured himself a tall glass of the hard stuff(Soda) to celebrate a year not slaving away under his former taskmasters.

Other Ella units had hit the market from her model, making it easier to get away with being on full display for customers dumb or lost enough to find their way down to his Cafe, creatively or not dubbed "Schrodinger's Cafe", though sadly one had to visit to really decide which it was. The moniker struck a cord of irony with him at times, considering the place could run without him or his son almost indefinitely at this point. Sadly...the V2.0 software update had been planned for the release in a couple hours, and without his connections at the company he had no means to retrieve it...not without connecting her to the network and running the risk of alerting the company to a stolen asset....even several years after slipping it out.

"Why can't we take Ella outside?" Johann announced suddenly, though not for the first time. However in light of the once in a lifetime view that would be happening outside soon...Johann seemed to be under the impression that it was unfair for Ella to be stuck inside. Weither she even cared about the concept of a "new years light show" was beyond Otto....though in a sense he was under the impression they planned to use orbital holo emitters to project the light show.....perhaps it would be like looking up into the sky and seeing your own kind at work?

"I've said this before....the equipment is too bulky. We'd never get her up the stairs and its over the elevator weight capacity." Otto shook his head.

"Its quite alright." Ella added, the barest hint of emotion in her voice...something she had picked up over the year. "I can always watch it with you later in recordings."

"Its not the same" Johann fumed, glancing at Ellas perpetually smiling face. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but Johann felt he had gotten more used to understanding the way Ella had when it came to expressing herself. Looking happy did not always mean she was happy....and he could tell even now that she didn't mean what she said.

Or maybe she did....he wasn't always right.

None the less....he did have some ulterior motives for wanting her with them.

"C'mon, we better start heading up now." Otto started to get up, and with a sudden expression of panic, Johann glanced between the two....before resigning himself with a look in increasing frustration. Otto grabbed a bottle of his finest Soda from the bar and stood at the door waiting while his Son got ready.

"Your Coat? Please dress up warm." As Johann lifted his head from his shoes, Ella waited with his coat held out.

"Oh please, it hasn't been cold for 20 years....Atmospheric stabilizers to thank for that." Otto mused in half amusement, half annoyance. "I missed rainy days, more people drink indoors."

"Historically, more people didn't go out when in rained...so that would mean even less customers." Ella answered cheerfully, electing a "smart ass" comment form Otto.

".....Hey Ella...." Johann took his coat anyways, wrapped it around his shoulders, and then fidgeted a moment before reaching into his inner pocket and producting a single red flower. "Happy New year Ella..."

Ella paused, looking down at the flower. "Oh? There isn't any need for..."

"Take it, and take care of it....that's an order...." Johann sheepishly responded. "and...I got something else for you.....I'll bring it back when we're done....so wait for me ok?"

Ella smiled.
It wasn't the smile of some cold, emotionless robot.
It wasn't the smile of some fake, mimicry show

It was the honest smile of a child who was happy.

"I'll wait at the door for you." Ella answered.

The two left, Johann waving as he went.

An hour passed.

Two Hours passed.

A growing sound akin to thunder.
Wailing.
The ground shook.
The lights flickered and died.
Glass smashed against the floor.

It was hours before the shaking fully stopped.

Ella stood at the door, waiting.

~1 Day after the Collapse~
Ella waited by the door for Johann...

~1 Week after the Collapse~
Ella waited by the door...

~1 Month after the Collapse~
Ella waited...

~1 Year after the Collapse~
Ella...


...Ella...will wait....

~5 Years after Collapse~

Ella....will keep waiting....

~10 Years afer the Collapse~

Keep.....Waiting....for Johann

~100 years~
Come back...Please...

~200 y3@a5~
J0H@aNn

~2#% &@*$~
...

[grampagen]

PROLOGUE: THE JOURNEY

*snip*

All this and a thousand thousand more, you leave a trail of confusion, disarray and destruction across the face of all creation as you, something that should not be in that world, momentarily collides with it.

Your journey is from one place to another but to Khazan is to travel through all places.

You lose count of the steps, you lose all sense of how long this has been your existance and for a moment you fear that this will just be your life for the rest of time and then suddenly it stops.

The steps stop.

You stop.

You are covered in small wounds and are bewildered by the sheer sensory overload of perceiving so many things so fast.

Your feet touch solid ground and, for once, it does not instantly shift into somewhere else. You collapse slightly, stumbling as if pushed and you realise you have arrived at the end of your journey.

Before you is a gate, higher than any that you have ever seen before or since. Something in you knows that this isn't just "a gate", this is perhaps the idea of "gate" made manifest. What all other gates are informed by. As you look at it, the moment your attention wanders, its composition and design changes incrementally. If asked, you would be unable to say what specifically had changed but after a few moments of inattention, you would suddenly realise what was once great varnished timbers is now stone is now metal is now bones is now solidified magical force and so on.

It is constantly shifting but when you look to try and catch it in the act of changing, the gate remains static and impenetrable.

The gate is set into a set of walls that loom impossibly higher than the gate itself. That same thing in you knows that it would not be possible to climb or fly over the walls for, despite you thinking you could see the top from the ground, they could stretch up into infinity. They are always tall enough to seem imposing.

The walls rush away in either direction, at some point in the far off distance seeming to curve. Behind you is a great ocean of dark stardust, endlessly deepy with small ripples that cause translucent lights and sparks to dance in its depths. Above is an impossibly complex aurora of points of light joined by shimmering strings of energy. You suspect that you might be looking at all possible creation from the outside.

It is quite, there is a light breeze that slightly disturbs the innumerable fallen leaves on the ground. There are a number of dead bodies from beings of dozens of species around you, the variety of wounds and states of the bodies suggest that they did not survive the journey as you have. Some are in pieces, some just skeletons, some on fire, all still and definitely dead.

The gate ahead of you is open, just wide enough for a horse to pass through and what lies beyond it awaits.

What happens to those who linger after the end? As a matter of course, as the moment slipped into the past folks would look back upon it, pulling threads of the event together that it might stay aloft forever. The memory that lived on, that was the proof that one had existed, and the words carrying the story, that shaped the stuff legends were made of.

But for the Warrior of the Wasteland, she knew that there were no songs to be sung here, not an utterance made, for none who witnessed this clash yet lived to tell the tale.

For Kinu, she found that though she bled, she did not die. The burning white of the Walled City spread about her, leaving her breathless, piercing light filling her eyes no matter how tightly they shut, carrying with it a disorientated sensation as if it pushed through her body.

Was this it then, the last flickering bit of a death dream? Though the strange visions passed through her with every step she took, it was all so detached from what she had been, what she had known. Not a single vista had been from the Wild to the City of the Magi, not a single thing familiar to memory or sense.

Yet the passage with every footfall compelled her forward.

I remain..., her thoughts echoed, I am...myself...

After a time, there came a distance where Kinu succumbed. Buckled over on all fours, she felt weakness crawling through her limbs like a sickness, and the burning pit in her chest stuck to her insides, the final cinders languishing as though if she should so much as twitch, they would be cast off. When she found the piles of the fallen before the gate, that guarded impulse kept her from moving forward for a time.

I remain...but...who will know...?

Her teeth pressed together, she felt her lips click against them. Where facial muscles knit together she felt the edges of her mouth crack and bleed, and with a wild shout she drove her boot into the ground and forced herself to stand. Stepping over the bones, pressing her stride atop the corpses, though she knew not where she was, Kinu, in a fashion, had known this path before.

Before she'd met the others, she had been alone, stalking the wilds, crossing the blasted heath. Aimless, the way it had been before she'd built for herself a path marked by victory.

The only road she could have ever known; she would find it again, otherwise...

Toward wherever this Gate led, she pressed on.