Palace Game 6/3

[fujimaru]

The Dreamer In The Grand Temple
Humanity Foundation Value: ????

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

Comments

[fujimaru]

"Who knows? Some higher power, probably." His tail is low, and vibrating; as he speaks, his lip keeps curling back from his teeth, though he is also making visible effort to calm that down.

"But we weren't supposed to be given a second chance. Our existence negates the 'proper' world... in the end, when we fought, we lost."

[eggstinction]

You deserved a second chance and more.

[folds his hands together, keeping his own body language inoffensive and meek]

But... You do not need me to tell you that. Thank you for your explanations. You have been very patient to speak to me about your loss.

[fujimaru]

"Nah," he says. He's clearly uncomfortable about this, shaking his head.

"My world was... we forgot. We forgot anything about being strong, and being the strongest. All we cared about was beating everything and anything. Shit. It wasn't a world where kids could know anything about laughing without being afraid. It wasn't a viable world at all."

[eggstinction]

But you have you learned that now, and too late.

[fujimaru]

"Too late," he says. He does not appear to be angry about it, at least. "She fought the Tsar, and she won, somehow, against that monster."

[eggstinction]

Ritsuka did?

[fujimaru]

"Fujimaru, yeah." Patxi's ears lift just a little, though that's about the only even slight shift in his body language. "Dunno how the hell she managed. He was bigger than you. But still..."

He shakes his head. "I dunno anything about mages, or other worlds, or anything like that... I just know that if she's from somewhere where people still know how to smile, it's not a bad place to win over mine."

[eggstinction]

So long as you are content with it. It will not be your world's future, but it is a future of your making.

[that sounds like she might have helped kill a world off though? hey? hey???]

...Where is Ritsuka now, Patxi? Do you know?

[fujimaru]

Welcome to the life of the protagonist of a fate/series,

Patxi's ears lift a little, pin again, and then he sighs.

"Not exactly," he says. He nods to the first broken door. "Wherever she went, she's on the side I can't follow. But even here, I've heard 'em complaining. Something about a temple...?"

[eggstinction]

[flexes the hand that was dissolved before and folds two of his others around it]

Before they were both made unconscious, Goetia was trying to make a throne. He could have one here.

[fujimaru]

"That guy?" Patxi's muzzle wrinkles, like he isn't sure whether he wants to snarl or not. "Probably. He doesn't seem to be real popular with most of the people who move around this place."

[eggstinction]

He has not made himself popular with the people outside either.

[fujimaru]

"Kings usually don't," Patxi says. It isn't sympathetic, but it's not without understanding. "So if he is building himself a throne, it'll be somewhere away from everyone else."

[eggstinction]

I'm not unpopular...

[MUTTER]

If he is through a door like that, that will have few other people indeed.

[fujimaru]

"I wouldn't recommend going through any of those doors," Patxi says. "But it's probably a shortcut. Fujimaru does stupid shit like that a lot, from what I've heard."

[eggstinction]

If she would do it, I will do it.

[fujimaru]

"Ha." Patxi grins at that suddenly, all teeth, amused and grimacing both. He finally moves, headed for that first door, picking his way gingerly through the rubble around it. "I dunno if I think that's a good way of doing it. But if you want to try, I'm not going to stop you."

[eggstinction]

[picks his way along behind him]

I will try. If it is a shortcut, it will be doubly worth the risk.

[fujimaru]

"Shortcuts aren't always the best. Sometimes, it's just going straight off a cliff."

He pushes the door open; unlike when Moon tried, it opens easily. He pauses on the threshhold, looking back over his shoulder.

"Are you sure about this? It's not going to be pleasant."

[eggstinction]

I do not fear cliffs and I do not fear the void. But thank you for your warning, Patxi.

[fujimaru]

"Suit yourself," he says, and steps through the doorway. It now stands wide open, though no matter how hard Moon strains, he will not be able to see anything--there's just blackness, a wide unending void, like a cessation of being.

He can go forward, or he can leave.

[eggstinction]

[He'll step through]

[fujimaru]

When he steps through, it feels like a jolt, a slam of pressure that does not hurt, precisely, but is more like a complete and utter rejection of everything about him--the feeling of being studied by something bigger and older and more unknowing than himself

(a sense of Nothingness, a void that lies at the very heart of multiple potentials, a source of all beginnings and all endings, uncaring of anything that lives or anything that dies)

it feels like being slowly compressed, slowly and methodically, tighter and smaller and smaller, until--

You're falling.