agogelogs | Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three.

Entry tags:

Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three.

We do not merely destroy our enemies;

we change them.

WELCOME TO THE END OF TIME.

The Regency has its spies and its cloaks and daggers. You may have even brushed shoulders with one and not have known it. There is a place for such tactics. You are not in that place any longer.

On missions like these, the Regency prefers to keep its base close, in a intradimensional time pocket. You're apart from Gallipoli, no longer technically on Earth or in the 1910s. There are multiple segments to this complex base of Regency operations, but you can only really see two places...

THE BRIG

This is your holding cell, a constantly shifting room of indesctructable grey squares. It folds and bends to hold you and your seven companions as you await... something.

There are no guards in this place. There are no bars to look through, or sounds to listen for. You are simply in the box, left to your own devices.

Occasionally, holes will open in the ceiling, and packaged, processed rations will fall from them before immediately closing. This is the only way to measure time. There are always exactly eight bags, each with the name of one captive written on the side in their native language.

Holes will occasionally open in the walls, and they always bring with them a searingly bright light. Sleeping and sitting is difficult on the ever-shifting floors, and when you try, it always seems like a pinhole of light opens right on your eyes. Even leaning on the walls has mixed results.

DON'T GO TOWARDS THE LIGHT

The windows of light that open always stay very small, making it difficult to look through, and always pour radiantly bright, hot light. If you're feeling particularly self-punishing, you might be able to peek at an odd angle and see something of the world outside without being completely flashblinded. The world outside the Brig looks rather like the interior of a Dyson sphere. In the center, a great, bright, hot energy radiates out like a sun, and it reflects off the exterior globe the pocket dimension functions within, illuminating everything from every angle. The Brig floats around it in a slow orbit, as do many other similar looking box-rooms made of similar material, connected by constantly moving tubes and chutes. Some boxes have more chutes going toward them than others. No chutes connect to the Brig, unless someone is about to disappear into the floor...

Getting this view will be difficult, but not impossible; it will just take characters willing to blind themselves with an overabundance of light multiple times until they get the correct angle, allowing them to see outside for roughly a half second before the room shifts to redirect the light back into their eyes.

not so solitary confinement

Occasionally, the cube will split into smaller segments, throwing characters together with others at random in close confinement. This is unpredictable and fast, splitting you off from the whole for what feels like hours at a time, often with only one companion as the cube shifts and squirms around you.

technical malfunction

The power nullification is still in full effect. No magic or special abilities rule this place. Your only master are the walls, undulating with no discernible pattern, always moving.

The Regency has also attempted to break the BCE's translation capabilities, but due to the fact that COST-jailbroken BCEs work on a different system than Regency ones, this is an intermittent problem that occurs sporadically. (ie, have the translation capabilities blink in and out at your discretion.)

THE OTHER PLACE

And then, suddenly, the floor drops out from underneath you. The shifting walls make a hole perfectly your shape and size, and sucks you through. The hole closes neatly, immediately, and you slide along in a world of boxes pressing close to your skin as you are moved from one holding area to another.

When you emerge, you do so in total darkness. Power nullification is still in effect, but even if you can naturally see in the dark, it doesn't matter. All you can see is an endless blackness, and walking doesn't help. You can keep walking for however long; there is nothing to walk to. The floor is perfectly level, but you'll never reach a wall.

Finally, there's light in the distance. A spotlight from nowhere shines down on a person with the head of a jackal. Looking closer, you'll find it's some kind of highly technical mask. They are wearing armor that obscures their exact shape-- no skin shows, no hint of identity or personality, just the cold eyes of the mask. They turn to you, and speak in a voice clear and soothing, almost gentle.

"I am Kebechet. I have been looking forward to speaking with you."

NAV NETWORK LOGS OOC MEMES PLURK

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Kebechet comes before the throne, and... stops. They kneel, first on one knee, then both, hands folded before them, a much practiced gesture of deference. Kebechet is silent for a moment, supplicant before a foreign throne, before turning their head slowly to look over at Noctis.

"Where did you see us do such things?" The voice within the mask is quiet, calm, but perhaps there is the faintest echo of concern.

Noctis stares at his father's throne. His throne, now, and finally his feet are carrying him forward. He doesn't stop when he reaches Kebechet, sidestepping them in favor of the stone steps on one side which haven't been destroyed, hesitating halfway up them. He doesn't have an answer to that question and he has a feeling Kebechet must know that.

"... I was told that." The truth. "You wanna' tell me you guys have good intentions after you've been attacking us, after you kidnapped us and brought us here like this?"

"You were kidnapped from your kidnappers." Kebechet stays, still knelt on the floor. "Who are attempting to use you and your fellows to harm the many for the sake of a chosen few. I did not think someone of your birth would have been so thuroughly radicalized..."

"My 'birth' is irrelevant to what we're talking about. Stop trying to use that against me." That's at least one obvious tactic he can ferret out, taking the hit for perhaps the more subtle and insidious ones that might slip through instead.

"And you want a chance to tell me your side of the story? You had to bring me here for that?"

"You seem very eager to insult me. I hope you were half so rude to your captors."

Kebechet shakes their head and stands. "The room you stepped into when we met was a living portal, but it can only take its denizens places they have already physically encountered. We use it to unfold mysteries, things that don't make sense. I am a detective, of sorts. I had hoped we could discuss the matter as equals, but you clearly think I am unworthy of such answers."

The sound of gunfire in another room grows louder, nearer.

He could bite back that he had had some words for Chiron, at least, and will no doubt have a hell of a lot more in the future, but that'd be playing to Kebechet's hand. Emphasizing fractures in their group is something he wants very much to avoid, not exceptionally sharp in negotiations like Ignis would be, but-- fuck, Ignis would handle this so much better.

"Detective? I'd be more willing to talk to you if--" If they weren't here, if they'd been seated face to face, but the words cut off abruptly as he hears that approach. Fuck, and without a weapon on his side, too. Immediately he's moving back down those stairs, hand absently feeling in his pocket for a magic flask he also doesn't have. It's in his bag still, isn't it?

"I think you're trying to use me as much as you claim they are, that's what I think."

Kebechet remains unphased by the sound of gunfire and shouting moving slightly closer, echoing off stone tile and ivory sculpture.

"A sad truth of the world as it is: everyone is trying to use everyone. Were the world at peace, this would not be so, but strife continues onward." Kebechet turns, again showing their back to Noctis, walking slowly and calmly away from the throne. "The difference is for what purpose, and the intention involved. Or did your country not utilize soldiers when at war?"

That causes Noctis to hesitate momentarily in his search for a weapon that he doesn't find.

"... they were always given a choice. Did you give the Nibelungs a choice? Would you give me a choice?" He doesn't fundamentally disagree with the reality of Kebechet's statements. He's had a use of his own since he was a child and he's accepted that but it was his to knowingly grapple with.

"Were you given one?"

"There is always a choice," Kebechet echoes. "Fail or succeed. Comply or face punishment. Defend your home or watch it fall to violence and suffering. There is a destined outcome, and there is the desire to turn against it and create yet more suffering. This is the choice we all face."

Kebechet reaches out, and very gently settles their hand on Noctis' shoulder. As it lands, the scene melts away once more, just as an explosion of noise, gunfire and screaming, rounds the corner into the throne room.

And then they are back in darkness, barely illuminated.

"But I thank you for your concern." Kebechet takes their hand away.

He nearly flinches back at the touch but it's the bombardment of sound and an encroaching threat that have him raising an arm defensively with a sharp recoil.

Then like a whiff of smoke it's gone, the inky blackness a gift only to his throbbing head. That comfort is easily overwhelmed by the dread of the unknown, however, and the cold sweat on the back of his neck.

"I didn't say there was no choice," he follows up, quieter without any background noise to contend with. "I said they weren't given one. Rebellion against your organization isn't the same as that organization promoting free will. We're not comparing the same things."

"There is always a choice," Kebechet repeats, more slowly now, like speaking to a child. "One can accept destiny or turn from it. The world has a place for us all. A king knows this."

Kebechet turns to walk away, steps echoing through the dim light.

It's a tone he knows well, be it from his father or from Cor... or even Drautos or Clarus, once or twice. Patronizing as he's shown Kebechet's back but this time holds himself back from violent action. It's already proven to be useless here.

"... I can be my own kind of king." It's strange that Midnighter's words, which he'd resisted before, come back to him now. "And I'll choose for myself. That's my only answer to you."

"A third time, you fail to understand. There is a choice. Success or failure. Victory or defeat." Kebechet shakes their head. "There is no one else here. Are you not listening?"

If Noctis tries to move, his feet will bump against... something. It gives slightly, rolling on the ground, the size and shape of a prone body, but the light is too dim to identify it who lays at his feet.

"Yeah, I do fail to understand! Because instead of talking to me normally you're holding me in this--"

The step forward to punctuate his words cuts him off, the physical barrier taking him aback as he slides his foot back just as quickly.

"... I made a fucking choice; what do you want?"

"There is no 'normal' in war. I have tried to explain this to you, a man who should know already. Instead, you swear and yell like a child."

The light around them fades dimmer, until Kebechet can barely be seen at all. "Perhaps you only learn by the methods of my contemporaries, as they advised me. Regrettable-- it is a harsh road. But you have chosen it."

And Kebechet is gone, leaving Noctis in the dark with a body at his feet. What little light there is grows just enough to outline it in dim shadow: a fallen king, his father's body.

There are no biting responses to Kebechet's criticisms when something so much more ominous follows, barely able to discern the unnatural form of their silhouette as it fades with the last of the light. There's still weight nestled overtop one of his feet and he finds within himself a new dread associated with looking down. How many bodies has he handled within the past few days alone? He's already learned to try not to distinguish, and yet somehow he knows that the unseeing eyes that will be fixed upward at him will be familiar.

He's right.

Noctis's knees shudder with a tortured moment of realization, of recognition, and he's not sure whether or not he makes a sound (he does). But in the next second he's sinking to the ground, reaching hurriedly for that body in denial of his own horror to clasp at the back of his neck and support his head off of the ground. This is an image he'd been spared until now. He hadn't witnessed his father's corpse and he barely sees him even now, vision blurring with tears as he drags him closer when a very real part of him wants to push him away.

"Dad... Fuck, don't do this--" He doesn't know who that aborted plea is even directed to, too focused on trying to steady suddenly uneven breathing. It's delayed shock settling in now, hard and fast.

It's dark. Noctis would be forgiven for not noticing the walls closing in, the endless space in the darkness shrinking around him. But maybe he'll notice when the cold walls press in against him, his back and arms. The air is colder, staler. The world shrinks into a shape barely large enough for the two forms crumpled on the floor.

Soon, trapped in bare darkness, Noctis will find him cramped in a coffin with his father.

The claustrophobic sensation crawling up the back of his neck doesn't pull his attention away from the body he's still clutching, feeling the crisp texture of prematurely greyed hair matted with dried blood. Remembering how he'd looked the last time he'd seen him, how his hand felt on his shoulder, how Noctis had wanted to rush out without listening to his father's final words.

Guilt weighs on him as their surroundings do, forcing him to shift in order to accommodate a far more symbolic prison than any he's occupied yet.

"What--" He swallows hard to cut off a sharp gasp, red-ringed eyes glassy as one hand reluctantly pulls away from his father just to feel out the lid of that coffin from the inside. "Hey!" His next strike is far more violent, one that bruises knuckles instead of forcing anything else to give way.

Slowly, very slowly, the coffin gets smaller. It doesn't open. The lid doesn't budge. The light fades, leaving Noctis alone in the black darkness, trapped with a well-preserved corpse as the small world he inhabits grows smaller.

He's forced to rapidly accommodate the shifting space and it forces him in closer to his father, or to a shell that looks like him. When Noctis was a boy, this is the man who had promised to always protect him. Now his eyes are cloudy and his limbs are stiff and he wants to avoid breathing because he doesn't want to smell him.

He fumbles blindly in the dark for his father's hands, suddenly, feeling the fingers of one first and then the other in a last desperate hope. The ring, if he just can get ahold of the ring, if he has it...

Noctis may feel the body moving under him. Something shifts in the darkness. There's a sickly glow emanating from the king's hand, the ring glowing on his finger. When the light is near enough, it illuminates the dead king's face, displaying his eyes, open, his expression, angry.

The heat begins to climb as he pushes Noctis away.

The new source of light causes his heart to jump and sink in a sickening flip-flop of trepidation, relieved at a chance to escape but consumed by the reality of actually using it. This thing, which he watched slowly kill his father for years. Even still, devoid of options, he reaches for it, and the shout at the sudden push and the flash of a haunting expression is swallowed up the confined space.

"Dad...? Dad, hey!"

The heat grows, cracking fire over the dead king's skin. The confined space begins to stink of burning flesh and clothing. The fire builds, consuming Regis until all that's left is ash, and a glowing hot ring at its center, painful to touch.

He chokes on the fumes as red-hot fire veins out across his father's skin, grasping futilely at him but earning himself little more than scalded fingertips. Each breath is laborious and racked with short, hyperventilated sobs as his fist again thuds uselessly against the coffin's lid.

"This isn't real, this isn't real..." he repeats to himself, a thoughtless, necessary mantra to stave off the horror of what he's just witnessed. Something he couldn't fight, a man he couldn't help. Any chance of reversing a memory that claws at his insides burns up along with a large amount of what little oxygen still remains for him to breathe and each inhale strains newly ashy lungs further.

His heart's hammering in his chest when his eyes lower to the only source of light in his cramped box, one radiating heat and energy, and his options melt away. The ring of his ancestors sears his skin when he grabs for it, stuttering out his pain as he forces it down over a finger that turns immediately red and raw at every point of contact. A new pressure blooms in his rib cage and at the base of his skull.

Then everything goes dark.

The sudden pain that overtakes him is unlike anything he's ever felt before, ripping him apart from the inside with shining white fingers that calcify and decay everything they touch while voices whisper his unworthiness in his ear. He recognizes his father's. Still the fire sinks and spreads as it consumes him, a failed king, the Chosen by mistake and not by proper destiny, and the last twinges of fear that he feels cement that idea in his mind.

The torture only stops when he has no nerves left to experience it with and his eyes open slowly then, reformed and undamaged. Soot streaks his bare skin, remnants of his father's ashes and his own alike, the last remainders of a long and proud line and the evidence of the tracks it's left on his own life. Light reflects in blue as he again focuses on that ring, silent and exhausted. The dread within him grows with each passing second -- minute? hour? -- until he realizes just how much he wants to be away from it. It's becoming fucking unbearable and his next strike upward is far stronger even if his words are quieter.

"Hey! Please... I'm calm, I can talk again. I can't stay in here... We can talk about what you want."

The lid opens slowly, revealing a sunny road in Duscae. Kebechet is there, stepping out of the Regalia with a thin blanket, black and printed with the Regency's official military insignia. Their hand is gentle, and the blanket is soft and pleasantly warm. Kebechet's gloved hand could be cold and clammy, but it's gentle, comforting, lifting Noctis' head by the chin like a parent would.

"I am sorry." It sounds genuine. "But you had to see it. The risk. All that could be lost."

Edited 2018-02-17 01:57 (UTC)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject