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Final Save Point: The Escapement

Terminal Platform

Cleo is still mourning her soulblade, despite the fact that in the breaking of it she has found an even greater strength. "Do you know how long I've had this thing?" she says redundantly, holding the stripped hilt and flipping it in small circles like it was some smaller tool, a stylus or a screwdriver or a flashlight. "Well of course you do, but still... it's the last thing I have from my first life. I've practiced with it more than any other single living person has ever practiced with anything. Did you see me swing it like that? Wham. I got him with it."

"He was still my brother," says Sethkill.

She hands him the broken remains of the hilt, and he examines it intently for a few seconds, then extends the especially thick nailclaw of one thumb and somehow manages to disengage the cylindrical pin that runs all the way through the thickest part of the hilt, something that she's never been able to figure out in all the time she's had it. It seems that the pin can only be removed if the blade itself is broken.

The small shards of the blade-metal that are still inside fall out and scratch the material of the deck where they strike it. The freshly broken edges must be stunningly sharp. She'd collect the pieces, but she's afraid to carry something like that in case it simply cut through anything she could possibly store it inside.

Sethkill, however, is searching for something and finds it nearby, the broken-off remains of the primary blade from his sword-spear. Unlike Cleo's unique weapon, it has snapped off cleanly at the base without shattering. Clearly it is more flexible, if nowhere near as hard.

He spends a moment comparing the respective pieces, then shaves down the outer edges still using nothing but his thumbnail, as though his claws were a knife and the metal was nothing but soft wood. With a few small slivers peeled away, the sethurani blade fits in the ancient hilt, and once he has slotted it firmly into place, he pushes his forefinger straight through the hole as though there wasn't even any metal in the way, leaving a neat circle melted through. Lastly, he slots the pin back in through the gap and locks it again.

He hands her the weapon.

"I think you should keep this. I've had enough of violence."

Cleo swings the new blade experimentally, makes a couple of warm-up passes. It's not quite the same, it lacks the artistry of the original, but it's probably the better for it. Terrowne once claimed that it was the hilt, not the edge, that gave it the extraordinary characteristics that it has. Plus, Sethkills blade has nice engraved filigreed patterns on the flat of it and the smoothed polished surface allows her to examine her own reflection and see what's behind her.

It will do, she decides, for whatever awaits.

Terrowne, during their discussion, has been admiring the fires of creation that burn outside around the edges of the terminal platform, where its spiked extremities pierce into space-time and anchor it just beyond the first moment. It's an extremely sethura structure, in a way, full of a symbology of spines and penetration designed to violate the soft inner flesh-folds of reality and lay claim. But reality always wins eventually, and the fires are slowly but surely drawing closer, patiently consuming the material of the construct and burning it away in streamers of light. Between this and the assorted damage they have already done to the structure, breaking all sorts of advanced technologies intend to stabilize and balance the massive forces involved, it seems unlikely the platform will last that much longer.

When the fires reach the center, he suspects, time will start again in an unfurling flower of brightness and flame that Cleo would be all-too-happy to die in. He can't say that he wouldn't wish to join her, as even the Dragon could not survive the direct gaze of that ancient light. But that would be giving up, and he wants to see just how far they can take it.

"So, what happens now?"

Sethkill looks at her with an expression that is halfway between a smile and snarl, looking all positively beautific. "Do you remember, long ago in Ypsilante in the Mountains, when I told you about the Tale of Fish and Dragon? You rather liked the place, as I recall."

Cleo searches quickly through thousands of years of discarded memories, and after sufficient disambiguation of the name, which has now, she notes with interest, been attached to another totally different town in the mountains, manages to retrieve a recollection of Sethkill telling a childrens story, translated at third-hand.

"The Opening of the Way lets you travel backward to the beginning, and forward to the end, to escape this universe in which we are all trapped," she quotes, and her jaw drops.

"Yes," grins Sethkill, battered but wolfishly noble still. "The Dragon has sacrificed of itself to hold the way open for us, and the Fish will soon breathe the waters no more. I think it's about time we took them both home to their mother."

The Sunjammer rests slightly askew on its landing struts, looking significantly the worse for wear where they used it for cover during their landing. There are dings and scratches and torn bits of outer panelling, as well as a few holes and scorch marks where assorted weapons have been fired at it. Sethkill caresses the shield-like forward carapace of the pilots bubble, for just a few seconds leans his muzzle against the hull. The lights in the crystal of the crown shimmer briefly as it it accesses all the ships systems with the knowledge of its builder, repairs most of what is broken, and brings nearly everything back on line.

The translucent carapace recedes, sliding back into itself in nested sections.

The main boarding ramp slides out, making a best guess interpolation with tripartite clasps to try and match its edge with the underlying surface. The whole ship is still sort of sideways, but it's close enough for casual work.

Terrowne pushes, and Cleo labours with ferocious muscle, to overcome failures in the linear actuators that allow the Walking Fish to move about. Its communication systems and external speakers are broken, shot up during the landing, and so it can't even comment on the situation or make any useful suggestions. Eventually, they manage to get it aboard with terrible grinding and whirring sounds as the ball joints resist the jagged motions and further servos fail under the weight. Outside, the flames are towering ever higher, like plasma streamers of the aurora borealis, sliding past the visibly reduced spines of the terminal platform.

While they work, Sethkill gratuitously skips all manners of safety protocols, cutting it down to the fairly well-defined minimum of the not immediately fatal, and starts depressing unseen touchpads hanging in the air in front of his vision. The carapace ratchets shut, unfolding back into its original configuration, and the drives begin to spin up in a stream of systems checks essential to the underlying mechanism.

"We apologize for the poor quality of earlier flights," Sethkill declares over the audio system, deliberately parodying his deranged passenger advices upon their transition at Infang. "Please hang onto stuff and try not to die, at least not immediately. We will be taking off in three, two, what the fuck, okay, call it one."

Everything lurches sideways as the weight of the ship rises up off the damaged landing struts and levels itself out, the deck falling away beneath them. Most of the important things, like atmosphere and gravity and life support, seem to be holding.

"May the Wolfmother smile upon you all."

The Sunjammer rises on the last of its plumes, and ascends into the shining abyss.

"So much for that not getting out of life alive thing," Terrowne does not quite have the time to quip, as the universe blazes like the very first star and consumes them, and although he cannot remember finishing the second half of the sentence, he is absolutely sure that he did.