#denizenconfrontation

->FS: Emerge

It has taken some time now locating the palace of Hades deep down in your land's core, and you must say that you've come a long way. From braving the consequences of your past blunders you've resumed interactions with your brainwashed consorts, fully explored the remainder of your land's underground depths and regained the favor of the ferry...guy, Charon (you're honestly not sure what to call him), without whom you would not have been able to go as deep as you have in the first place...

It has all led up to this point, braving the searing seas of Phlegethon down below into the deepest depths of the planet. As you sit there at the bow, drawing ever closer to the immense structure before you your attention turns to the skeletal ferryman behind you. His eyeless sockets seem to stare right past you as he continues to push the boat you're upon further forward. You've found that the two of you had never really been ones for long conversations, and yet this time when he opens his clattering maw the words he utters carry meaning with them.

“This is as far as I go.”

As you continue to just stand there it further dawns upon you the meaning of that which you are about to do. You are about to enter the den of he who governs your land... the den of the one who had challenged you... the one who had humiliated you... and the one who had made you flee your land. You look back on these events further as your footsteps lead you further towards the edge of the boat's protection. All these things... they had happened... and you had come back stronger than before and further discovered how he had twisted the land to his own design in your absence. You see it everywhere... how the once lush vegetation of the land's underground had hardened and chilled itself to cold, unforgiving chains of variously contorted angles, how the fruit that came from them enslaved your consorts to his favor... it makes sense, now that you think about it... food of the underworld... lord of the underworld... all that jazz... you begin to wonder if this was what was truly happening all along while you had been too concerned with your own failures to realize. Was this land always like this? You haven't the faintest idea... and yet here you are about to metaphorically leap out through a wall of impenetrable fire and into the corridors of your denizen's dwelling place.

You smirk at the scene and utter two words before leaping out into the castle in the only way that you can afford to.

“Cacophonous Aegis!”

Shadows surround your form with a thunderclap as you fly out of the frying pan and into the fire. Impenetrable means nothing to a void player... and the damage negation from the fraymotif should hold up until you get there...

Now is the time to end this...

Now is the only time to end this...

You put your quest's completion off long enough...

Far, far too long...

And now it's time to take all that nothing you've done in the past, and make something of it at last...

You emerge out of the large and frenzied moat of fire and arrive at the doors to the entrance and draw Excalibracket in your hands. The shadows about your figure dissipate shortly after, not to be used again for some time. There is no turning back now. You're not just doing this for your land, or for your consorts... above all you are doing this for yourself...

You're not going to stand idly by and do nothing anymore.

You are the thief... you rip away the nothingness...

It is you.