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 ==ENTRY 9 - Heretical Flesh==
+This page is blighted with mold and the imprint of a memory…
+The words seep experience into your open mind…
+THROUGH THE EYES OF AN EMPTY VESSEL…
+Dormant. Bound.
+[Knock]
+Threat.
+Storm outside.
+Rain soft thirst.
+Flashes show shapes.
+Shapes I know.
+[The Knock is stronger]
+Gentle whispers reach from me.
+To all.
+As Father, as Fikrul.
+Barons. Kells.
+Gone.
+Another voice…
+[The Knock is insistent]
+Pressing.
+FearandConfusion.
+No.
+The mind beneath this one screams to the surface.
+Nothing, Scorn, a Son… Fallen… Eliksni…King…
+Akriis does not bow.
+Arise, commands the voice buried in whispers.
+Akriis does not bow, but Akriis is dead.
+Peeled away.
+__________________________________________________________________________________________________
+The spine of the Glykon breaks, its vertebrae now interchanging.
+Scorn howl to herald the crossing into Nothing.
+Through the Locus, they hear the whispers and obey:
+"Meet Salvation."
+FRENETIC SCRAWL INKED IN THE MARGIN READS: There's a scanner array off the hull near the hangar. I patched a line through to it to check Qinziq's feed. Needed somewhere to listen.
 ==ENTRY 10 - Blood in the Barrel==
+This page is blighted with mold and the imprint of a memory…
+The words seep experience into your open mind…
+THROUGH THE EYES OF KATABASIS…
+Weeks bleed away.
+"Where is your Ghost?" Bahto grunts as he throws a crushed Scorn into a tangle of festering dark tendrils. These fungal growths had grown across the Glykon during the timeless expanse since their plunge, and only continued to spread.
+"I don't know," I sputter as I pull a ragged blade from my gut. "Off fraternizing somewhere."
+"I'm here. What do you need?" Gilly says, appearing.
+"Fewer holes," I groan.
+Bahto looks to the three Scorn that had ambushed us, now returned to the grave. "The rest will feel their deaths. How much farther?"
+"Assuming the ship hasn't shifted again, not far once this one gets up." Gilly gestures to me. "Is Qinziq certain severing the crown will send us back?"
+"It'll work. We better not have dug up this command key for nothing," I reply, holding up a Imperial security key.
+"You said it was to stop the Scorn!" Bahto roars.
+"Stopping them doesn't matter if we don't get out."
+"I pledged my life to Calus, and you want me to forsake him!" He towers over me.
+"I know a thing or two about abandonment. He used you to get what he wanted, just like he used me. He's gone, Bahto, and we're close to follow. Where does that leave your bloodline?"
+I stand as a wave wracks the Glykon. It isn't something you see, more like a lightbulb bursting. A long blink before the pins and shivers wash over. Numb. I can hear it moving through the ship like cold metal tension.
+The three Scorn snap and contort in grotesque reanimation.
+"You're welcome to stay, skull-cracker."
+__________________________________________________________________________________________________
+We make it to the ship's bridge, howls tracking us down every hall. I seal the door with the command key and meet Qinziq beneath the command console at the entrance to the viewing chamber. She stands, encircled by 15 loyalist soldiers.
+"This is everyone?" I ask.
+Qinziq nods. I insert the command key into the viewing chamber door. After a moment, pistons disengage, and the door opens. Qinziq focuses for a moment. "Empty…" her voice rings from her.
+We enter the viewing chamber. The soldiers take up positions around the room. Bahto strides past the Darkness-infested crown and drops to his knees at the open viewing window.
+He stares into the endless. "How do we choose who deserves our loyalty?"
+I walk to his side. "Everyone's got their own way. No one's right. You don't owe anyone anything, Bahto."
+Qinziq signals that she is ready. As I approach the crown, I watch her eye trace the scorched handprints of each Councilor that last communed here.
+Shrieks echo down the steps leading to the bridge. Metallic scraping heralds the flame.
+"I will do this so that others may live," Qinziq's voice flows. "I did not intend suffering but should have expected Calus's deceit. Ambition to steal away his secrets damned us all."
+"Get us out and we're square."
+She plants her next words into my mind: 'I will, because you do not belong here.' She places her palms on the crown.
+Velocity surges backward into infinity, tearing away the surrounding reality. We stand in nothing, 17 defenders back to back around Qinziq and the crown. The shrieks grow louder, and through the whines of bending steel, the trembling flesh of Scorn pour into the nothing with us.
+Slug Rifles unleash a salvo in all directions from behind a handful of Phalanx shields, tearing line after line of Scorn down with explosive force. Incendiors step forward to cremate the remains between volleys. I add my gun to line, dropping Raiders before they can align shots on our ring and slinging Voidwall grenades to stem the flood. Qinziq screams, straining to sever the link as the Glykon thrashes against Dark waves. Black fire scalds her hands as Nothing twists around us. We fight until the floor is lined with dead Scorn and empty magazines.
+The shrieking recedes. Scraping metal echoes through the viewing chambers as a wave of Darkness tremors through the Glykon. Every unburnt Scorn seizes and begins to reconstitute. Soldiers panic and fire into heaps of writhing bodies, hoping to stop the process.
+In the chaos, lightning rips through the air, cutting through three Legionaries and rupturing an Incendior tank. The blast kills seven; the circle tightens. We return fire in the direction of the lightning and are met with two fetid Abominations. They burst into the chamber and rear back with crackling fists. I charge one, slipping into the Void to draw blades from it its sheath. Bahto snatches a Phalanx shield resting at his feet and challenges the other. Its bolts break on the shield. Our remaining guns harry them with slug-fire until we close the gap. I cut through hands and head, then pivot to see Bahto driving his shield into the other's face.
+Qinziq cries out. I spin on my heel to see her engulfed in black flame and the cosmos racing around us. She spreads her pain to us to hold on a few moments longer, to no avail.
+I look back to Bahto. Deeper past him, in the nothing, to the hulking silhouette dragging a flaming censer and I know: this is where we die.
+FRENETIC SCRAWL INKED IN THE MARGIN READS: Cut out a hideaway under the knife. Stowed some lab tech nearby.
 ==ENTRY 11 - Sullen==
+This page is blighted with mold and the imprint of a memory…
+The words seep experience into your open mind…
+THROUGH THE EYES OF KATABASIS…
+It didn't work. Truth be told, I have no way of knowing if Qinziq even finished what she was doing. Gilly said it took days to find a safe place to bring me back. The big one they all follow was hunting for him.
+I make a task of committing the Cabal bodies to burial. The costs are heavy, and I don't get everyone.
+We try to keep hidden, using the smuggler's hovels where I stashed go bags across the ship.
+All it takes is one of them seeing you.
+Been keeping track for what I think is a month… three months. The waves are random. When one hits, it rearranges pieces of the ship, and I have to find my way again.
+Gilgamesh is becoming more distant. Talking less. He wanders off for days at a time. So far, he always comes back.
+When I die, I dream of a City burning. Death dreams are a first. When I wake up, I don't know how long it's been. Gilly… won't say.
+There have been a hundred lives between this and the last one I remember.
+I live in a charnel house.
+__________________________________________________________________________________________________
+I'm alive. And old.
+"Get up." Gilly's voice is thin.
+"Why? There's nothing to do but starve."
+"Giving up again? You'd rather I just left you here?"
+I roll myself to face him. "I'm not giving up. Just… take my Light and hold it until… until there's a way out."
+"You know, I used to think we were the way out—us, together. But we're just stuck in another cycle."
+"There's nothing to eat, Gil. You don't feel that emptiness chewing at you. Promise you'll leave me be until we're out."
+Gilgamesh looks at me for a long time without speaking. I close my eyes.
+"I promise."
+FRENETIC SCRAWL INKED IN THE MARGIN READS: Maze of vents. It's somewhere in there. That fungus crap keeps blocking my path.
 ==ENTRY 12 - Debtor's Knife==
+This page is blighted with mold and the imprint of a memory…
+The words seep experience into your open mind…
+THROUGH THE EYES OF GILGAMESH…
+I linger on the corpse of my once-Guardian. I've hidden his shame for so long. I believed it was my obligation, to be the warmth when his fire died… but now, I see that obligation was a leash to keep me tied to life. It is a cold, coiled, choking reality, and I will hang gasping from it no more.
+See the truth, the whispers had offered. I saw it in every moment suffered aboard this vessel. A microcosm of violence extrapolated to the world beyond, with only one escape. Soon Katabasis would know it too.
+Scorn onlookers surround us.
+I raise Katabasis.
+"Gilly…" Katabasis kneels before me, his rifle beside him. "What is this?"
+"A way out. I won't carry you anymore."
+"You're… abandoning me?" Katabasis looks to the Scorn, his rifle, his Ghost—no. No longer. Not his, not the Traveler's, not anyone's.
+"I sacrificed everything to keep you moving forward. Guided you to every power you needed to survive." I share the truth he wants to forget. "And for what? It never ends anything. There's always more."
+The Scorn encroach across disjointed walkways. Katabasis sinks. "You said you wouldn't…"
+"You, the Traveler. You've kept me trapped in this death knell. Now it's time to set us free."
+"What does that mean?" His words like stone weights.
+"Sever our Light, or they'll rip you apart for a thousand lives." I gesture to the Scorn.
+"You wouldn't."
+"Your deaths are heavy, Katabasis, but I'll bring you back as many times as it takes for you to learn." He does not understand. "You think I don't feel pain? You think I don't suffer while you're hiding in your limbo?"
+Katabasis lurches forward. "I did everything YOU asked me to."
+"YOU LEFT!" I shout. "You left me here. You left me in the City. Made me turn away from the Traveler. We're like the Scorn in those tanks, drowning in panic… confusion… forever. You did that."
+"The City was burning, and I wanted to live. Everything was… so we could live."
+He still didn't see it. This place is no different than Sol. A barrel of blood. There's no reason to go back. "Now the Light is burning."
+"We can survive this." Katabasis holds out his palm for me. "Please?"
+"I don't want survival, Katabasis." I drift away from him. "I want salvation."
+"…It got to you," Katabasis sobs weakly, his epiphany complete.
+"You can end this, for both of us. It's your turn to sacrifice," I offer.
+"Everything you say is a lie!" Katabasis grasps for his rifle.
+Lever-to-action.
+Shot to nothingness.
+Ghost to dead memory.
+FRENETIC SCRAWL INKED IN THE MARGIN READS: Water under the bridge, flooded with bodies waiting to stand again in the next wave. Be careful.
+[[Category:Articles with verbatim transcripts of official documents]]
+[[Category:Lore]]

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Revision as of 00:23, February 17, 2021