#2ol.narrative

It's been approximately two months since your body was stolen from you and one month since your heartbound friends had managed to evict the unwanted guest.

And you are still nowhere close to getting back.

You'd been wandering this vast emptiness ever since the winged cherub had torn you out, watching as life carried on without you.

It hurts. You know you are missed, but it hurts all the same.

Unable to impact the world around you, to see but never to touch.

Was this loneliness truly your fate?

Maybe not. Maybe your fellow gods aren't the door.

Perhaps you need to follow in your fellow space player's footsteps.

Dying never gets any easier.

At the very least you had hoped hunkering down in the basement, long built for your explosive episodes, would mean you'd be in relative comfort until the end.

You should've known better.

It was almost immediately apparent something was wrong, the usual intense buzz beneath your skin had been replaced by a prickling sensation.

Mild at first, punctuated by an odd pinching feeling in your guts, but concerning nonetheless.

You couldn't stay in here.

New meant unpredictable— there was no way to be sure the basement could withstand whatever was about to happen to you, and considering it was more than just you in this cabin that was a bit more than an inconvenience.

Pushing yourself up, you fumbled towards the door.

Something frigid and thick begins to run from your nose, you hurriedly lift your hand to cup the sludge.

Whatever it was, you think it'd be a headache to get out of the carpet. It's a nice carpet, you don't want to ruin it.

Maybe you shouldn't have let her bring it in here.

Maybe you shouldn't have let her start that garden either, you'll need to get a good distance not to ruin it with your remains.

Maybe you shouldn't be so selfish.

Are these really going to be your last thoughts?

Okay. It's not time for your "final thoughts" quite yet but the point still stands. You should get a grip and feel a little more guilty, be ashamed at the very least.

You knew this was coming, you shouldn't have wasted so much time shutting yourself away to mope.

If you hadn't, maybe your insides shredding themselves wouldn't hurt so much now.

Maybe you should've written a note or something.

You're going to choke on all these regrets if whatever's pouring out of your face doesn't do the job first.

The Mage of Doom is consumed by despair, The Page of Hope by elation. Equally pacifying, presenting me the briefest of windows to complete my task— though it is destined to fail.

Three corrections have been made, four remain; Three trolls and one remnant of the Fledgling Witch's experiments.

I will only manage to dispose of the remnant before my return is discovered, after which I will be too preoccupied with interference from the human gods to continue my work.

The Witch of Space, gaining control of a mortal vessel to wield, will arrive to reveal me completely.

It will be first time I have heard my own name in years.

Although I will accept my defeat, the consequences of stagnation I sought to prevent will only have been delayed.

The survivors of a universe long dead have made many past attempts to breach, each ending in failure.

Until now.

There was hardly time to react to the strange green dot in the sky before it erupted into a multicolored burst of light.

It'd be pretty if it wasn't currently hurtling towards the ship.

Melone practically tossed his broom in the scramble to get out of the way, the blinding light piercing through the ship's hull with ease.

Between the chaos of putting out the fire, maintenance doing another sweep of the vessel to assess the damage and the headcount— no one had really volunteered to break the news to their superior, and the expressions of the crew made it obvious no one was jumping to do so.

Some mutant psionic embedded in the ship and the loss of a chief helm medic was too serious to handle internally, someone was going to take the fall for this.

Shouldn't it be the troll in charge?

The suggestion came from the chief mechanic, Tollya, a gruff troll squinting at the punctured hull with her brows knitted in irritation.

By all accounts, the ship should have taken off thirty minutes ago— it's none of the crew's fault their captain takes his sweet time with his smoke breaks.

Going around their captain's authority was similarly likely to get someone culled, but considering the rest of their options this was the best they've got.

If someone has to, it might as well be you.

Melodramatic, you know, but try floating around with a hollow midsection and see how grounded you feel.

The delayed revival process at least had the courtesy to numb your open wound as it attempted to heal the internal damage, but the sheer emptiness was still weird to feel.

Apparently you'd become an incubator for a more cooperative vessel once your mind guests realized you intended to keep them sealed, a fact only uncovered when they attempted to hatch it too early. Desperation, if you had to guess, since they were moments away from being banished via whatever ritual Equius had set up.

You hadn't really followed things up, too preoccupied with the whole dying and all, but Sephone seemed confident in him.

All things considered, it worked out. You just had to take it easy, let the healing sort itself out.

You are the MAGE OF DOOM.

This is a title you feel should mean something to you, but meaning has been hard to grasp these past two days.

What were you doing?

Telling someone some bad news, you think. Someone you went to a party with, someone you have spoken to frequently as of late.

Was she your friend? You do not recall.

Maybe you just need to think harder.

As you try to pull yourself together, you feel something massive stir in turn. Something starts to whisper, a lone voice you recall being accompanied by many like it.

You remember their choir pressed against the inside of your skull. They were nothing like the usual chatter that resided within you, they were always scrambling to claw their way out.

That's right. You were trying to stop that, weren't you?

You could feel it now, the hold you'd settled over everything around you. The more you pushed to remember, the less focused you were.

The less focused you were, the more likely they were to slip from your hands. To go places they shouldn't.

But what happened? It was right there, you just had to reach a little further.

She'd brought something for the two of you to share. You don't remember what the occasion was.

You only know you begun to feel strange after. That strangeness distantly lingered.

And now you're here, wherever "here" was.

You've been trying to make an effort to leave the hive more.

Sometimes with company, sometimes alone.

It's been helpful, probably. You can't quite tell what you've been feeling lately, aside from an ever present exhaustion.

The constant visions haven't helped. They've been different since you've returned, providing you deeper and deeper glimpses into oblivion, the fates of those already gone or teetering on the brink. You can still never quite tell where it will ultimately fall in the grand scheme, only able to make handfuls of educated guesses as always.

Death has been a pretty nebulous concept for most of your life. It's still an end in a way, but more often than not merely a great change; A fresh perspective or a catalyst for something bigger.

You just wish you could actually internalize all of that instead of getting worked up every time. You wish you'd improve, at the very least.

The new wildlands have helped somewhat.

You're unsure if it was Peixes' scattered ashes or some final display of power, but the greenery that had taken over the site of her death bounces back no matter how many psionic tantrums you throw.

Though that doesn't spare you from her teasing.

Her ghost finds you in your dreams from time to time, always updating you on the gossip in the bubbles— her creations. You'd update her on the state of Tertia, how its inhabitants grieve her loss.

It does nothing to sway her on letting you find a way to return her to life.

Between finding the other ghost players of your timeline and quelling the continued unrest of the Outer Gods, she's found her calling. The long overdue fulfillment of some prophecy her lusus whispered sweeps ago.

Who are you to argue with prophecies?