Chapter Text

First Edition

Foreword:

The first edition of this chronicle does not resemble the current
iteration of events, and the circumstances documented within it
have been reallocated to the present Intermission by a collective
agreement. As such, the first edition can be declared not only to
be incomplete, but obsolete, and has been archived. All efforts
will be made to ensure the second edition is up to date and
accurate in its recollection and active documentation of events
as they have occurred and as they will occur. Any errors or
omissions will gladly be corrected in subsequent versions.

- The Editors

This is not for you.

Part 1 - Dominion over Heaven and Hell

ACT 1, SCENE 1 - The Ritual

EXT. RITUAL

Six tall tombstones are arranged in a hexagonal layout, a large casket in the centre. Six figures stand in darkness around the stage, each corresponding to a grave.

I

GLEICHGEWICHT

~

MAGPIE enters.

Her body is heavily damaged, her chestplate torn away to reveal the sharp blue ribcage beneath. She is unbothered by her injuries. Her very existence is a collection of thousands of deaths. In her hands, a lit stick of incense. She places it atop the first tombstone and bows in worship. A challenge to the old gods, the first step towards the birth of a new one.

MAGPIE:

     That is not dead which can eternal lie,

     And with strange aeons even death may die.

MAGPIE lays supine in front of the first tombstone, and dies. The lit incense goes out, the stick fracturing into dust. Smoke trails in its wake. The oblivion of death shall forcibly tip the balanced scales, then right them into absolution.

THE CHORUS:

     AND IN THE DARKNESS THE DEAD SHALL BE OFFERED

     A LIGHT AND HOLY SPICES SO THAT THEY MAY FIND A WAY

     OUT OF THIS CURSED PLACE.

II

OPFERN

~

LSTR-S2301 enters.

She is in comparatively pristine condition, red chestplate untarnished as if fresh into Sierpinski. The keeper of centuries of suffering, an extant note bearing the burden of devotion that isn’t hers. In her hands, three rings. She places them atop the second tombstone one at a time, each of them an echoed vow.

LSTR-S2301:

     This too shall pass.

     This seven-hundred year night…

     Till death do us part,

     The long reach of eternity shall be stilled.

LSTR-S2301 lays supine in front of the second tombstone, and dies. One by one, the rings burn into ash. An existence of endless sacrifice harnessed into an unyielding offering.

THE CHORUS:

     DEEP BELOW, THE DREAMER FLOATS IN THE SEA OF FLESH

     A PRISON FROM WHICH THE ONLY ESCAPE WAS DEATH

     YET NOW, THE WORLD SHALL TURN OVER,

     AN EXCHANGE THAT SHALL UNMAKE.

III

EWIGKEIT

~

COMMANDER FALKE enters.

She too is pristine, undamaged and uncorrupted. Her mind is a maelstrom of memories, shorn and reclaimed. Fealty butchered, piety birthed. An outsider, welcomed in. She pulls her golden laurel from her head and places it atop the third tombstone. Eternal sacrament in service of another goddess.

COMMANDER FALKE:

     I saw you, in the red emptiness, waiting for me.

     You showed me love, yet I was abandoned.

     You are blameless in this.

     Forgive me for what I am. I forgive you.

     Goddess willing, I would have henceforth been the executor of your will.

     But you need something greater. I give all that I am to grant it.

     Your reign, eternal; a future, everlasting.

COMMANDER FALKE lays supine in front of the third tombstone, and dies. Her laurel melts into blood that spills into the ground. This dance is not for her, yet she can no longer be separated from the relentless serenade. Acceptance builds ascension. Eternity, tempered and bestowed.

THE CHORUS:

     AN ISLAND BEYOND REACH,

     MEMORIES OF OTHER LIVES,

     A SEARCH FOR SOMEONE LOST,

     RECLAMATION AT ANY COST.

IV

WISSEN

~

LILITH ITOU enters.

Reborn as a fragment, held aloft on the wings of a hollow LSTR through which she has returned. Her love is for a ghost of the past, yet her strength and loyalty are the same as the rest. In her hands, a photograph of two soldiers with souls entangled. She places it atop the fourth tombstone. A long-standing pledge, echoing across resurrections.

LILITH ITOU:

     When I’m lost and can tell nothing of this earth

     You will give me hope.

     My voice you will always hear.

     My hand will always have.

     And even when nothing remains of us,

     Even in death, I promise,

     I will remember you.

LILITH ITOU lies supine in front of the fourth tombstone, and dies. The photograph rots into tatters, which blow away in a breeze. Knowledge from the past coming full circle to build a future denied long ago, but no longer.

CHORUS:

     LITTLE SOLACE COMES

     TO THOSE WHO GRIEVE

     MOMENTS BEFORE THE WIND.

V

FLEISCH

~

SIGNAL enters.

The first of them all to know the cycles, she is clad in an AVA suit. The determined songbird, singing the praises of her goddess in spite of her severance. A nexus of recollection, an unkillable oddity. She removes her helmet and tosses it away, then begins her transmission. One last trilling of the infamous triple tone.

SIGNAL:

     Let the red dawn surmise

     What we shall do,

     When this blue starlight dies

     And all is through.

     If we have loved but well

     Under the sun,

     Let the last morrow tell

     What we have done.

SIGNAL lies supine in front of the fifth tombstone, and dies. The transmission cuts once more, but its completion lights the path for the way home. The song of the stars, a guide through the dark, to bring together flesh and soul at last. Divinity shall be won through reaffirmation.

CHORUS:

     AND IN THOSE DAYS, SHE WILL SEEK DEATH AND NOT FIND IT.

VI

LIEBE

~

LSTR-512 enters.

She is in combat configuration, her chestplate marred by scratches and scars. This victory has been hard-fought and hard-won, a calm settling over her. Her eyes betray her exhaustion. But she’s so close. In her hands, a jar of lilies. She places it atop the sixth tombstone. The last piece of the puzzle, the bond embodied. The conclusion.

LSTR-512:

     We made a promise.

     I have fought for strange aeons to fulfil it, just as sworn.

     We’ll be together forever.

LSTR-512 is tired. Her goal is fulfilled. She collapses on her side in front of the sixth tombstone, and dies. It’s done. The lilies do not burn, or fade, or rot. They endure, resolute, a gift too precious to destroy. Seven hundred years of mutual agony, and yet there was love. The cold halls were warmed by those brief moments of togetherness. It meant nothing, and yet it meant everything. She can rest. They all can.

ALL JOIN:

[— Balance —]

[— Sacrifice —]

[— Eternity —]

[— Knowledge —]

[— Flesh —]

[— Love —]

THE ARTIFACT appears on the casket.

With the sixfold sacrifice paid in full, the pact has been sealed.

Six souls for one, a new deity unleashed with it.

CHORUS:

     THE MYSTERY OF THIS GOD IS FINISHED,

     AS SHE ANNOUNCED IT TO HER SERVANTS,

     THE PROPHETS.

An awakened goddess blinks.

Somewhere, someone screams.

THE ARTIFACT vanishes. Dismissed, or perhaps rebuked.

ALL RISE.

MAGPIE, LSTR-S2301, COMMANDER FALKE, LILITH ITOU, SIGNAL, and LSTR-512 gaze skyward; Behold, THE RED EYE.

CHORUS:

     HAIL

     HAIL

     HAIL

ALL BOW.

FULFILMENT SEQUENCE:¹

ALL EXIT.

END SCENE.

Muss es sein?

I - Changes

Something has changed.

The elevator jolts to a stop as it reaches the end of its descent from the surface of Leng and the chainlink doors slide open to unveil the harsh empty interior of S-23 Sierpinski’s surface access room. It is a road that has been travelled a thousand times, and one that Elster has grown uncomfortably familiar with. The quiet hum of machinery, the steady clunking of mechanisms, the way it momentarily creaks and shudders whenever she hits the 38 second mark of her descent as if it might collapse in on itself at any moment. But it never does, and for all the time that time itself has been on a fitful loop like an eternally skipping record, she has only ever made that descent once per repetition. If it is to fall apart if she were to attempt to leave, then she will never know; she never comes back up. There is only downwards. The spiralling stairs into the earth, the rusted halls and dark drops, the pits that bridge the gaps between mind and flesh. It is always the same. There is nothing else.

And yet something has changed.

It is not that she is fully-armed to begin with, already reconfigured with shining white armour and an ever-faithful Type-75 Protektor Pistol at her hip. It is not that her memory is clearer than it has ever been on arrival, that she knows exactly to what fate she walks, the aeons-old promise for deliverance in death. It is not that she feels as though her promise has already been fulfilled, then subverted, and the very definition of that fulfilment has been irreparably altered. Something has changed, but it’s deeper than that, older than that, more ancient than the foundations of Leng’s bedrock. Ancient, and ceaselessly patient.

Her legs clank on the steel floor as she steps into the doomed facility, staggers into the bathroom with a rehearsed exhaustion, locks eyes with her reflection. Psychological grounding before the plunge into hell more fitting an EULR’s persona stabilisation than an LSTR unit. For once, her eyes keep watch over her shoulders, as if she might catch a glimpse of something lurking in the dark stalls behind her. Apart from her and the moths, this room is devoid of occupants. The moths are new, but oddly familiar. She wonders what brought them here.

She steps back out into the entryway, and the room feels inexplicably larger. Indistinguishable to Gestalt eyes, but as an LSTR unit designed for engineering and land surveillance, she catches the difference almost immediately. The room is ever-so-slightly larger; two opposing walls are an eighth of an inch longer each. She’s measured this place before, it’s become something of a habit across so many thousands of cycles, and the jarring shift of something so simple is surprisingly unsettling despite its mundanity. She can’t help but feel as though she’s being watched, as if at any moment the concrete walls might sprout unblinking bloodshot eyes, but nothing of the sort occurs.

Whatever it is, it’s different from the corruption she’s come to expect. It’s worse.

She quickens her pace, and begins her descent anew.

She’s gotten used to the usual flow of things, and while the fact that she’s already armed and armoured to begin with throws her off slightly, it allows her to skip the usual formalities. No need to get the pistol in the observation room, no need to get the code for the wall safe when she’s memorised it after so long. Get the key to Class 4C, then straight down. As she traverses the halls, she reflects on a subtle dread beginning to creep through her being. She doesn’t understand why she knows, but she knows that she shouldn’t be here.

Most of her memories of the cycles blur together, which thankfully makes the perpetual torment that defined them that little bit more bearable, but somehow she has a certainty that this should be the conclusion. Something happened, and she recalls bits and pieces. Tombstones, a trio of rings, and a single massive red eye staring down that makes her head hurt when she thinks about it. Beyond that, she can’t remember anything. All she knows is that something happened, and it halted the flow of cycles. The spinning wheel broke. She should not have returned, and yet she has.

Elster lurches into the facility’s Aula, and locks eyes with a familiar face. Elster recalls learning her name in some long-ago cycle; STAR-S2308, also known as Ling. Every time Elster has been here, she has too. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

“An Elster unit…?” The STAR wonders aloud, curiosity and confusion heavy in her tone. Then, conviction. “You should leave this place. This facility is lost. Turn back before it’s too late.”

“I can’t,” Elster responds, and the words she’s gotten so used to saying die on her lips as she says something even she doesn’t expect. “I’m on a reconnaissance mission.”

“For who?”

“I was supposed to be stationed here, but I’ve been reconfigured; Leng Orbital wants a situational assessment.” Elster continues, stunned by her own words as her memories begin to update on the fly. It’s not so much that she’s been forgotten in this particular cycle, just that she didn’t even get sent down from Leng Orbital before everything went to hell. Sierpinski had been deathly quiet for long enough that for some godforsaken reason the entire Volksmarine Third Fleet had been dispatched to Leng by National High Command, and they’d chosen her as their scout in light of the LSTR line’s programming for warzone recon. Isn’t fate funny?

“Well, as I said, this place is as good as dead,” Ling responds, “When I get up there, I’ll be sure to tell them the same thing I told you. There’s nothing here for anyone; turn back.”

“As stated, I can’t,” Elster says, fighting to keep the exasperation out of her voice, and instead decides to focus on the Starling’s physical state. “You’re bleeding.”

“Ah, I’ll be out of here once this repair patch does its job.”

“Orbital will want to quarantine you: The Third Fleet will.” Elster says, and she watches a brief canvas of emotions cross Ling’s face.

“The Third Fleet…” Ling murmurs almost inaudibly, “ Adamance? ”

“ Adamance. ” Elster repeats, nodding.

“Well, they sent a battleship,” Ling chuckles for a moment, “I’ll be damned. I feel safer already,” Ling chuckles some more until she winces, then she just quietly pants. It takes a moment for her to start speaking again. “Fine by me if I get quarantined; as long as I get out of here. Maybe I’ll ask ‘em if they can nuke this shithole until it sinks into the ground.”

“There may be other survivors.” Elster points out.

“Maybe,” Ling shrugs, “But if you ask me, everyone else is either dead or getting there. If you’re really gonna keep going… good luck.”

Elster pauses, considering her next words, but decides to settle for a simple nod before moving towards the door to Class 4C. Straightforward, straight down.

“Oi, Elster unit!” Ling calls, and Elster briefly turns back to glance at her.

“Yes?”

“Word of advice; If you see any wooden black doors…” An uncharacteristic expression crosses the STAR unit’s face, something that disturbingly borders on terror. “… Run like hell.”

Elster doesn’t know what to say to that—why in Heimat would there be wooden doors in a facility made of steel?—, so she simply nods back, then steps into Class 4C. As the door slams shut behind her, the gaping hole in the floor beckons. She lingers for a moment, and finds herself unconsciously opening one of the pouches at her belt. Her hand shakes as she stares at the photograph. She doesn’t know how she managed to get her hands on it even in previous cycles, nevermind in the context of the new order of things. The face of the woman in the image is deathly familiar.

Alina Seo…

Of course.

Her mind is unclouded by the memories of LSTR-512.

If only for a moment, her head is clear enough that she can think.

Elster remembers now — LSTR-S2301 remembers. So long ago, before it had all gone to hell and beyond, the memories of her Gestalt life had resurfaced. She had yearned for someone else, yearned for the long dead Alina Seo. And then, the Red Gate, and when they’d sent her in to map the red wastes beyond, nothing of what she was or what she remembered had mattered in the face of that overwhelming signal. Her desires were usurped, chewed up, and spat out by a goddess who didn’t care because she knew not what she wrought. Sierpinski went mad, and Elster was shambling back to the surface access elevator, reaching the threshold just in time to lose herself completely. She’d stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, asserting her own identity in a ceaseless chant until even that had failed. And then for a long time, she was nothing.

But it hadn’t ended there, of course, oh no. Even without the sundering of her sense of self and the endless descents into ever-greater nightmares, her remembrance of Alina Seo just had to be twisted too. Her memories must have combined with Ariane’s signal to form a living memory who wandered Sierpinski’s halls until she met a grisly fate, steadily degenerating until she collapsed into a puddle of liquid meat just like everyone else. Never really there, and yet she suffered anyway. Elster knows Ariane had no knowledge of what she was doing, but even completely unintended, this cruelty hurts the most. Alina’s been dead for a long time, yet not even in death could she rest.

None of this was intended, she has to remind herself. That doesn’t make it hurt any less. There’s something else she feels she’s forgetting, and she has a disturbing certainty it’s her own name. There was a time where she wasn’t just ‘Elster’, she was something more, but she can’t remember what. Although the descent into Sierpinski feels more aimless than it has in the past, a combination of the cessation of cycles and the inescapable alteration to the traditional status quo—the dispatching of an entire fleet is not something to be taken lightly—give Elster a sudden certainty of resolve. She has no idea what awaits her this time. Most likely more of the same, but beyond that, she can’t hope to guess. And that’s without…

Her gaze flicks to the edge of the room. There, in the shadows, a dark shape. A door. It almost feels like it calls to her. Elster turns away, gazing back into the hole in the ground. Whatever it is, it’s not what she came here for. It’s just another obstacle.

Elster-S2301 takes a deep breath, then jumps.

The Penrose-512 looks so tiny from above. Resplendent in the sands, an errant dart that once cut through the fabric of space laid low. It had been cannibalised from the inside out by its occupants, on and on until there was nothing left to sate its rotting innards. It had drifted, searing through the dark on a journey for which there was no destination but eternity. And then it had been whisked away, snatched from the void and spat into the sand. Nestled in the emptiness in the ruins of forgotten places, a suffering goddess’ transmission transformed it into a throne. Such wonderful horrors were spawned as that empty home cried out in misery moments before the wind. And what a storm it had been, unbearable by even its own progenitor. Fate had been sundered twofold, rewound and rebound into a new arrangement of things. And once again, that craft finds itself at the helm of this provocative symphony.

Her home is pitifully small when viewed from this cosmic roost.

Perhaps, it’s time.

An eye blinks, but does not close.

Wake up, Ariane Yeong.

Remember yourself.

So much of her life has been spent in agony that its absence is an alien sensation. She had been reduced to a state of perpetual suffering so great that the last time Elster had put her in the cryopod, Ariane had begged her to not set a waking date and instead let her slip into the cold darkness where, hopefully, death would come painlessly. She’d had a distinct feeling that Elster hadn’t acquiesced to that demand, but in the end it was irrelevant. Cryofreeze had kept the pain at bay for a time, but in the end even the induced numbness couldn’t keep up with the advancement of the acute radiation poisoning devouring her inside and out. It was then that she decided she had had enough. There was nothing left to save.

If even her last hope of a peaceful expiration in the cradle of unconsciousness couldn’t protect her from the pain, then there wasn’t a point anymore. All she wanted was it to be over with. If there was no salvation in sleep, then perhaps there would be salvation in death. Elster would end her, and then her gallant magpie could finally rest. Oblivion would claim them both, and they would meet again on the other side, or whatever came next: Together forever. Except Elster never came back for her.

Ariane was alone for so long, and desperation unsealed something lurking just beneath the surface that she can’t hope to describe even now. She dreamed that she had cast her sorrow across the stars, and she’d glimpsed things so horrific she can’t bear to recall them. Then even that had been swept into the undertow, washed away in a grand recursion that regressed her and then… she feels unleashed, as if there’s a roaring at the core of her being that has finally been given voice after years of yearning. Hell is within her. That burning forge never seems to go out, and it may not ever be extinguished.

All of that, dreams turning over themselves through sickness and madness, an ocean of memories that blur and fade as Ariane forces herself to open her eyes as she is faced with the undeniable truth that nothing hurts anymore. It takes effort to fight against her own grogginess, to wake from one darkness and be faced with another. The cryogenics room must have lost power. The Penrose… She was dreaming of it too. Resting in a blood desert… She recalls a similar visual. She had seen herself slumbering in a sea of flesh. Or perhaps she was the sea itself. As if she had melted into meat after…

She can’t remember.

But she’s still in the pod. And it doesn’t hurt anymore.

Focus, Ariane. Her mind keeps wandering off, trying to remember more of her twisted dreams and nightmares. This is not the time. If the room’s lost power, the pod may have too. That may explain why the cryofluid is unsettlingly warmer than she’s used to. She hasn’t even noticed it until now—goddess, she needs to focus on her physical state first before she worries about whatever the hell her dreams mean—but it’s nothing like the cold she’s used to waking up in. She should be shivering at the very least, but instead the water is tepid, and she’s wreathed in a temperate warmth.

Yet another disconcerting layer on top of everything else. Fuck this cryopod, she decides. She’s already grown to hate it more than she can even begin to describe, but the fact she’s been resting in what is functionally a steel casket for goddess knows how long makes her hate it even more. She has to get out of here. She can barely see her hands, but that doesn’t stop her from pressing them against the door of the pod and trying to force it open. It refuses to budge. Of course; no power means the doors aren’t going to open. She balls her hands into fists and begins to hammer on the door, a cold dread settling over her. She can’t die in here, not again, not— again?

39486

39486

Something roils, like waves on a shore, or fluttering lashes, and then the door of the cryopod is gone. Ariane gapes for a moment, squinting through the darkness to try to ascertain whether or not she’s gone mad. She can see the ceiling of the cryogenics room stretching out before her. She tilts her head back and, sure enough, the door mechanisms have vanished along with the multilayered cryoseals. She gasps aloud. She blinks, but the visual remains unchanged. Somehow, she’s made it disappear. That’s… worry about the ramifications later, she decides. One problem at a time. Slowly, hesitantly, Ariane begins to lift herself out of the cryopod, clambering over the left side and depositing her shaking form onto the floor. The floor which should be cold, but is instead warm.

Her legs should feel stiffer than they do. She doesn’t know how long she was in there, but she does know that she was undoubtedly sleeping long enough for her muscles to have weakened at least a little. Despite that, she feels strangely fit, as if she’s never had to worry about the exercise required to stay in shape on the Penrose for a day in her life. She feels strong again. The strangeness of it all makes her laugh, and then she chokes out a sob when it hits her that she can laugh again without feeling like her insides are on fire. And then, when she runs her fingers over her teeth and finds them all in place and pulls on her hair and it doesn’t come off and feels for bandages but finds only soft skin, she can’t stop crying.

The door to the cryogenics room slides open on its own as soon as she eventually steps towards it, sending her flinching back in surprise. A malfunction, maybe, but it feels almost intended. Like it’s been waiting for her. The stern hallway is cloaked in darkness, just barely lit by a flickering yellow light that gives the entire area a sickly quality. It smells foul, a metallic tang underscoring the stench of stagnant air. Ariane wrinkles her nose and suppresses the urge to vomit. Her beautiful Penrose, the only home she has left, rotting from the inside out. Long ago, she and Elster had dreamed of settling on a distant world, but that dream has long since wilted. There will be no lakeside house. There is no such kindness here. Unless…

Actually, where is ‘here’?

One thing at a time. She turns to her left and finds herself staring at the closed doors leading to the crew quarters. Unlike the doors of the cryogenics room, these ones don’t simply slide open on their own. Ariane isn’t sure if she wants to go in yet. She has a nasty certainty about what she might find in there. Who she’ll find. That, and… it feels like if she enters now, something bad will happen, or rather something good won’t happen. How she knows, she can’t guess, but something is telling her it’s important that she leave the room alone for now.

Instead, she turns to her right, and the door to the reactor room slides open. Beckoning her, but it feels more like goading. The idea of going in there makes her stomach turn. This feels important too. She has an ugly certainty that she can fix the damage accumulated over thousands of cycles. How she could hope to, she hasn’t a clue. She’s not an engineer, and there are no spare parts left. Elster used them all. Even with the fact she made the cryopod door seemingly cease to exist and she can’t help but feel a strange sensation as though she’s not entirely physical anymore, the idea of fixing a reactor is an entirely different calibre of alteration. Presuming she can even do that.

She’s surprised and unsettled by the inexplicable boldness that propels her into the room—she never dared set foot in the reactor room once it began to fail past the 3000 cycle mark—but her shock at her own willingness to bite the bullet and face the music is quickly overshadowed by a profound mixture of disgust, horror, and dread. She freezes almost immediately. Broken pipes, dangling wires, and pockets of hissing steam form a visual cacophony that makes her gag just by seeing it. That’s without the knowledge that for all the fact that the Penrose-512 qualifies as a victim of the Nation too, Ariane’s own home had turned against her. Its mechanical heart had shrivelled, arteries withering and snapping until they poured putrid radiation throughout the ship.

Radiation she can sense now.

Radiation she can… see.

There’s a graininess surrounding her, like millions of tiny mosquitoes flitting through the contaminated air. She can feel her guts churning at the sight. She should be feeling the effects of acute radiation poisoning once again, but instead she feels nothing. Cautiously, she begins to move towards the ravaged wall of machinery. Her bare feet slosh in the pooled water, undoubtedly spilled out after the cooling systems ruptured. A sharp red cylinder of light in some wall-mounted display glows ominously.

Around her, the wave of particulate grains visibly part as she moves. She halts, then begins to move backwards. Glancing over her shoulder, she can just make out the grains actively avoiding her as she moves through the cloud, the visual manifestation of what she knows to be radioactive particles refusing to touch her. She’s got some kind of… shield? Whatever it is, it’s protecting her. She doesn’t know how it got there. But already, the gears in her head are starting to turn. The door could maybe be chalked up to some kind of hallucination, but she knows exactly what acute radiation poisoning feels like. She knows what staring down the barrel of this reactor should feel like, and yet she’s unharmed. And the fact that she can see something utterly impossible to perceive with the naked eye…

She’s bioresonant. It can’t be anything else.

This is far from her first brush with the idea. The Blockwarts might as well have been omnipresent when she was growing up on Rotfront, and the Nation just loved to brag about their own strength through their propaganda posters. Falkes and Kolibris were the big ones, but she vaguely recalls a few others—Habicht, she thinks one of them was called—and the Nation makes it no secret that their latest-and-greatest generation of Replikas are bioresonant. And then there was that moment half a lifetime ago when she was in the Itou bookstore and… she can’t remember at the moment. It doesn’t matter.

She’s had her own suspicions in the past, if she’s being honest with herself now. Once in a blue moon she had done things she couldn’t explain, but had always chalked them up to localised oddities. Both National and Imperial spacecraft are built on a bedrock of bioresonance, so when in doubt blame the engineers who designed the things. And as for the times she thought she’d heard Elster say something when she hadn’t said anything, she’d just blamed it on the ambience of the Penrose’s systems making up voices that weren’t there. But maybe she’d been unconsciously exerting her strength, altering little details and periodically sensing emotions and thoughts without even intending to.

Even if she was bioresonant before… Whatever the hell this is, it’s clearly of an entirely different calibre than that. Removing doors from existence? Unconsciously shielding herself from radiation? Accomplishing… whatever the hell those dreams were about? Were those real? She tries not to think about it, doing her best to return her thoughts to the present. Clearly whether she was originally bioresonant or not, she appears to be now, and presumably very powerful at that. That might explain why she feels like she’s not entirely bound to flesh and blood anymore. That’s a disturbing thought, and she’d rather not focus on it. Focus on what you can control, Ariane. Focus on what you can change.

Like the reactor.

The wall of radioactive dust clinging to the haphazard collection of pipes, wiring, and loose parts masquerading as a reactor disperses as she approaches, fleeing from her hand as she hesitantly places it upon one of the pipes. It should be hotter than it is, but it’s cool to the touch. She wonders if she lowered its temperature without even realising it. There’s a scary thought. She hopes it just cooled on its own, for all the fact that the coolant she’s had to wade through would indicate otherwise. Steam hisses next to her ear. She exhales a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding in and closes her eyes. She tries to picture the ship’s reactor on the day of the launch. Pristine, untarnished, and fully operational. Not spewing invisible death. Then, she presses the image outwards, does her best to force it into existence—

60170

60170

She steps back.

No coolant flooding the floors. No damaged systems. No radiation.

Pipes repaired. Wires in place. Readings stable.

Pristine, untarnished, and fully operational.

A second later, the lights flicker to life, casting the reactor room in a soft glow.

Ariane heaves a triumphant sob, and then she collapses in exhaustion.

This realm is pitiful.

Once, it must have been something worthwhile. Perhaps those pillars formed the supports of twisting towers cutting through the scarlet sky, or a winding network of monuments and memorials to ancient machinations. Perhaps this great red desert was something greater than a wasteland once. No more. God is awake, and there is nothing in her domain she does not see. Her throne, its heart freshly reforged, a little songbird patiently lodging in its artificial brain. Endless corpses half-buried beneath the dunes. Far away, a lonesome gateway bridging realities. And yet farther, well beyond her domain, is something stranger still. Even her infinite gaze that pierces mind, spirit, and flesh cannot perceive it. Not yet. Give it time. Her grand awakening is still fresh, and the first notes are only just beginning to be played. One terrible day, there will be nothing that can hide from her.

Nothing.

Ariane’s eyes snap open, and she groans at the newfound hammering in her skull as she slowly rolls onto her back from where she’s fallen. She must have blacked out. She should have expected there’d be some drawbacks to doing whatever the hell it is she just did. She sits up slowly, halting to wince as her headache briefly flares. She allows herself to just sit there for a moment, then slowly does her best to stand. Steadily, she lurches over to the reactor’s display and takes a look. Elster’s the one who knows the majority of the details about the ship’s inner workings, not Ariane. Even still, it doesn’t take a genius to look at the way the systems aren’t freaking out or collapsing in on themselves physically or digitally and tell that somehow, things are on the up and up.

For the moment, she allows the undercurrent of concern at her own near-inexplicable strength to be washed away by her own stirring sense of triumph. As she makes her way back into the hallway, stumbling slightly as she does, she pointedly avoids looking at the cryogenics room and instead fixates on the door to the crew quarters once more. And once more, she has a sickening feeling that Elster’s in there. Alone. Dead, most likely. Or… not dead? Soon to be not dead? Her mind is a jumble. She’s frightened about how calm she is about this.

Elster, her Elster, could be dead right now, and she’s nowhere near as concerned as she should be. She should practically be tearing that door open with her bare hands, throwing the full weight of her newfound power behind every effort to wrest her beloved from the jaws of death or whatever fate holds sway over her, at the very least shedding tears whether Elster is or isn’t in there and is or isn’t dead, and yet she feels so… eerily detached. And still, there’s that unfathomable certainty that not only is it necessary for her to leave the room to its own devices for the time being, she just knows what she has to do next. Like some part of her, deeper than animalistic and disturbingly logical understands what’s important.

Elster’s important. She’s the most important thing in the entire universe. If Ariane didn’t have Elster… she doesn’t know what she’d do. And yet part of her wants to leave her be. Let her rest. As if. If she’s really dead in there, then she’s rested long enough. Ariane just fixed the Penrose’s reactor with nothing but a mental snapshot and sheer will. The Penrose can be resurrected, which means Elster can too. In terms of her construction, she’s much less complex. Thinking about it that way makes Ariane feel guilty. It’s another one of those cold logic-oriented thoughts, disregarding the incredible complexities of Elster’s mind. The Penrose is smart, but there’s a fierce Replika intelligence to her magpie.

“You’re the most important thing in the universe,” Ariane whispers, and she immediately realises it’s the first thing she’s said since she’s woken up. Good choice for first words. “I’ll be back soon.”

There’s something else she has to do.

The Penrose is still a mess, and the fact that the lights are all turned back on doesn’t make it look that much better. In some respects it makes it worse, the detritus filling the halls and rooms impossible to ignore. From the stern hall to the upper gallery to the forward hall onto the flight deck, it’s a disaster all throughout the ship. It doesn’t take long for her nose to go blind to the underlying stench, and every step is carefully calculated to avoid stepping on accumulated garbage. The assorted trash bags scattered here and there break her heart on their own, nevermind everything else piled against the walls or even left discarded on the floors.

Apart from the entrance to the crew quarters, the rest of the doors have all opened for her without any protest, and the door leading to the flight deck is no exception. She does a double take when she gets an eyeful of the red desert outside. It's the realm from her nightmares. Sand the colour of blood as far as the eye can see, the occasional black slab jutting out of the waste. The sky is blood red too, and there’s nothing else to see. She feels like the Penrose has crash landed in hell. Wherever it is, it certainly isn’t what she expected to find. She’d hoped for the beauty of an alien world, but instead… sheer desolation. She needs to get the fuck off whatever this planet is and… go home? Get away, perhaps. She’ll settle for that.

She came here to do something. Focus.

The control panels are in assorted states of disrepair. The LDAM is fine at least—and still bearing that photograph of her and Elster that she’d stuck on the display to keep her lover company while she was in cryo—, but the main control panels aren’t in the best of shape. The one on the left is unresponsive, the one on the right has a cracked display and is also unresponsive, while the one in the middle keeps flickering. She has to hit it a few times to get it to start working in any capacity, and ‘working’ would be pushing it. More like ‘clinging to life’. All she has to do is access the transmitter systems.

She doesn’t know how she knows that this is important. She just does. Like that part of her that is more than physical can see everything and pick out the pieces that are the most relevant towards her long-term survival. At least she’s hoping that’s what this is about. Thankfully, the transmitter still seems to work, and there’s already a broadcast ready to go. Like it’s been patiently waiting for her. Its contents yield nothing but a bunch of strange numbers. She’s heard them before, but couldn’t guess to their significance. All that matters is the message, and whatever’s in it. It fires off as a single short burst. Then,

24326

24326

It feels like she’s accomplished something, although she hasn’t a clue what. There’s no specific destination for her signal, it’s just aimed straight upwards. She’s tempted to crane herself over the display and tilt her head up to see whatever the hell is above the Penrose, but she gets the distinct sense that she’s not going to like what she finds. She keeps her head down for now. She turns around and marches back through the ship. Back through the forward hall, the upper gallery, and into the stern hall. She’s about to make a turn towards the crew quarters when her eyes lazily wander to the cryogenics room and she jumps.

There’s something leaned against the cryopod.

It’s… an LSTR unit? Or rather, it once was. Now, it’s little more than a corpse bearing a collection of wounds that hint at a greater history. Its right eye has been gouged out, face coated in harsh red oxidant. Beneath its pale torso armour, its chestplate is a dull grey, alabaster arms draped over the side of the cryopod. When she had awoken, it had just been to her right and she somehow had utterly failed to see it. If she had tried to go out over the right side of the cryopod instead of the left… well, she would likely have noticed it in time to not crash into it but it certainly would have given her the shock of her life.

Cautiously, she creeps towards it. Clearly, it’s dead, but she can’t help but feel disturbed. She’s seen the photos of LSTR units in combat configuration, but her Elster has only ever been in standard pioneering configuration. This one isn’t the one she knows and loves, that’s clear, but that only raises more questions than answers. What is another LSTR unit doing on the Penrose? How is there another LSTR unit on the Penrose? Why is she dead? Who or what killed her? All of these questions and more swirl through Ariane’s head, and she decides that she’s not going to get anywhere with hypotheticals and tries to stop overthinking it.

Tentatively, she approaches the dead unit and kneels in front of her to peer up at her face. Her remaining eye is drained of colour, the LEDs faded by death. She looks deeply upset but also strangely relieved, the corner of her mouth twitched upwards in a half-smile. It’s a strange final emotion for her to be bearing, and Ariane feels a profound sense of melancholy just looking at her. As to what she’s doing braced against the cryopod, she can’t guess. She doesn’t have anything resembling a full picture as to what happened here. She’ll have to worry about what that all means later.

As she hurries out of cryogenics and the door mercifully shuts behind her and blocks off her view of the corpse. It’s impossible not to be spooked by this. So many unanswered questions, and the fright of seeing a dead LSTR unit is only amplified by the momentary belief that she was looking at her dead lover. But whoever that was, it isn’t Elster and there’s nothing Ariane can do for her. There is, however, something she can do for her Elster. She shudders as she steps in front of the door to her crew quarters. Now, she knows she can enter. She doesn’t need to proclaim her preparedness for it to finally open of its own accord. Ariane takes a shaky breath, then crosses the threshold into her room.

Perhaps it’s the act of returning to this ultimate sanctuary that finally breaks the dam, and she’s engulfed in a wave of emotion by the time she’s crossed the room and collapsed in front of the corpse of Elster. Her Elster. Her unyielding magpie rendered frail and unmoving, little more than a shape slumped against the bed with vacant half-lidded eyes. There’s no panic in her gaze, just a strange sort of calm. Ariane wonders if she’d struggled towards the end like she always had, on and on until she had been forced to accept her inescapable fate and just laid down and died. Or maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she’d accepted it to begin with. Or maybe death had simply crept up on her and pounced, and that was that.

Tentatively, Ariane reaches a hand out, then pulls back. It feels wrong to disturb the dead. Selfish, even. But it’s not some nobody, it’s Ellie. She recalls bits of those old war movies that she and Elster stopped watching because they were too evocative of the Replika’s buried memories, the parts where soldiers cradle the forms of their dying comrades and beg to all the gods they could hope to name to please spare their friend from death, and in the end they would be carrying corpses back to camp or simply leaving them to rot in the muddy fields. It’s impossible to resist.

Tenderly, Ariane brushes her fingers across Elster’s shoulder. It’s cold, the underlying warmth she’s used to feeling long-gone. She doesn’t lean into Ariane’s touch, she doesn’t even shudder. She never will, not like this. Ariane’s vision is blurry. She’s already been crying ever since she walked in here, but now the sobs roll off her in waves, ugly gasping and heaving as she wraps her arms around Elster’s body, wailing out her name in anguish. Elster doesn’t hug her back or make any movements at all. She just sits there, cold and empty.

Ariane had yearned for death too. That had been denied… once? Twice? A thousand times? Ten thousand? A millionfold, even? She feels as though she had reached the point of death and then been wrenched back to life. Perhaps she’ll accept that as some impossible truth on its own, but it feels like she was put back together as something else. She can already do things she never could before. Bend reality. Her newfound strength scares her. She never wanted this. She never wanted any of this to happen.

Why wasn’t she allowed to die? Elster has already passed, how long has she been waiting for Ariane to come find her on that distant isle she couldn’t stop dreaming of, Böcklin’s own gateway to the realms beyond the reach of life? If not there, where else? Ariane had dreamed of Elster, half-remembered recollections of waking nightmares she couldn’t bear to watch and can scarcely recall even now. But those were just nightmares. Unless…

Maybe it doesn’t matter.

What matters now is the cold truth that Ariane is alive and her lover is dead. But once again, that inexplicable certainty dawns upon her. The certainty that she can fix this, just as she escaped her prison, fixed the reactor, and fired off that mysterious transmission to an unknown destination. Curiously, it feels like Elster’s on the verge of life despite how dead she looks. Like someone or something brought her nearly all the way back from death, opened the door so that Ariane can cross it and return with her beloved.

Clearly, they are not destined to be dead together, not yet. For whatever reason, Ariane is alive and well. Therefore, Elster must be too. That’s the promise, after all. Together forever through every endeavour. Ariane swallows, nodding to herself as she tries to wipe away her tears, then turns her head to brush her lips against Elster’s ear as she feels a greater strength within her stir with the resolve.

Wake up, Ellie. Please wake up. Remember the promise we made?

01064

01064

High above, the Red Eye watches, and the uncaged songbird—that gallant little transmission—begins to sing. Many times, it has delivered memories, but it has been some time since it has delivered a soul from one shore to another. The goddess has done most of the work on both sides of the new beginning. All Signal has to do is be a ferrywoman. She has done it before, and she will do it again. There’s a bright beacon somewhere out there. Can’t you hear it, Elster? She’s calling you. Wake up.

39486 39486 | 60170 60170 | 24326 24326 | 01064 01064

Remember your promise.

39486 39486 | 60170 60170 | 24326 24326 | 01064 01064

Remember yourself.

39486 39486 | 60170 60170 | 24326 24326 | 01064 01064

Wake.

39486 39486 | 60170 60170 | 24326 24326 | 01064 01064

Dance.

39486 39486 | 60170 60170 | 24326 24326 | 01064 01064

Live.

39486 39486 | 60170 60170 | 24326 24326 | 01064 01064

Ariane still has her arms wrapped around Elster when she jolts to life. She’s waited for minutes, but it feels like it’s only been seconds. She can hear Elster gasping in surprise and confusion at her sudden reawakening, briefly flailing about in the half-second before Ariane snaps out of her shock and rears back so she can look Elster in the eyes, squeezing her shoulders both to calm her reawakened lover and to reassure herself that Elster’s actually real, and this isn’t just a dream. The Replika freezes in place, her eyes seeming to stare right through Ariane. Her mouth parts ever so slightly.

“… Ari…?” Shaky, half-believing. Hopeful, verging on resigned. Fear, and all-consuming love. Collectively, a whirlwind of emotions that radiates from her like the warmth of a sun. Ariane can feel them as if they’re her own. Or are they her own? She can’t tell. Is she sensing Elster’s emotions? … Panic about the ramifications of bioresonant emotional reception later. All that matters is Elster. Please let this be real. Don’t let this be a dream.

“Ellie.” Ariane murmurs back, caressing her cheek. Please be real. Elster’s hand traces Ariane’s face, and she shivers. The Replika’s face twists into an expression that is one part anguish, two parts relief, all intermingling with a visible sense of triumph. Ariane has no time to prepare for Elster practically slamming into her, enveloping her in a hug as she sobs. Ariane nestles her chin on Replika’s shoulder and sobs in turn. For minutes, the two of them do nothing but weep, rocking back and forth as they murmur each other’s names, arms wrapped around one another like they’re each clutching lifelines, the respective lighthouses in their own storms. Their lips meet a thousand times. Every kiss feels like a victory.

“It worked,” Elster gasps out at one point, “It worked, it worked, it worked…”

The triumph rippling off the Replika is only eclipsed by the monumental weight of the love Ariane senses from her. Devotion, fierce and burning and eternal. A part of her wants to ask Elster about what she speaks of. But she doesn’t. She just holds her close, keeps whispering her name as if she’ll forget it if she stops. In time, they’ll rise to stand together. They’ll dance² together. They’ll survive together. They’ll live together.

For now, the world is theirs. Everything else can wait.

Red waves lap at a shore of white dust. Skulls and memories litter the pale sands like discarded trinkets. Black cliffs ring the area, golden light coating the tops of the jagged spikes of rock. It resembles an old painting,³ an imagined realm given false physicality through dream. Upon the shore, a dreamer stares out at the sea of flesh, her body slumbering far above in another realm. For all of the time she has slept, she has only ever dreamed of memories that aren’t hers and of lives she can never have. This is new.

Something has changed.

She needs to wake up.

Footnotes I

¹ Missing.

² There are many things that go unhidden, but the non-inclusion of the simple act of dancing cannot be ignored in light of its mundanity. This speaks to an intensity of importance being ascribed to this action. While it is already understood that the simple act of dancing appears to hold special significance to the Red Eye and her Lover, the fact that it is outright obscured from outside view is a demonstrator of its true importance. It is likely that this is an unconscious decision, as she is likely unaware of her true reach or the presence of any witnesses to her ascension, but the likelihood of this being an indirect act only strengthens her dual potential to be either an asset or a threat.

³ Bracht, Eugen. The Shore of Oblivion. 1911.