Endgame: Part 2

[letsplayamod]

The week goes on. A small miracle, how quiet it is. With no motives or attacks to speak of, you can breathe a sigh of relief even when a tension gripes the air. So few of you now, what exactly would you do were Typhon to return and decide the game was over? Was Athena always going to be out of reach? And what exactly did she want you to find in the center of this mountain temple, anyway?

Questions abound, and no answers.

...Until this morning. The sky itself is clear with very few clouds, but something still falls into your home. Not "physically," though, it's more of a feeling. The sensation of some great power entering this space. Everyone will notice it, and the way it passes by, sinking beneath the floors - all the way to the bottom level.

And there it ends up, waiting for someone brave enough to investigate.

Comments

[stringup]

[ Immediately, Velvet thinks of that terrible night where her life was changed irrevocably. A moment's lapse where she traded the fate of the world in exchange for two people's lives and damned her soul, all for naught. It was a decision that can never be taken back and which she has regretted ever since. Survival at the cost of a sin that she can never truly atone for, every step that isn't shrouded in death feeling like choking on life itself, and an existence that is rejected by even the sun.

So she should say she wouldn't. There are still moments where she thinks she should have perished with her family. If she had died, she wouldn't have to be responsible for all the terrible things she was complicit in after. Maybe the world would have been a little less worse, some part of her naively tries to justify.

But if Velvet hadn't—

She wouldn't have learnt what it meant to live with people who cared again, to rediscover that there were still beautiful things even in a diminished world, to have the opportunity to one day go to the stars offered to her, nor met a ridiculous man who cherishes her like something precious despite everything. The first person to tell her after so many years, Even so, I am glad you didn't.

It's almost laughable, how all it takes for her to have hope again is someone wanting her to exist, in spite of all the reasons she shouldn't.

There's only one answer she can honestly give. It's deeply selfish of her, she knows. ]

I would.

[ Velvet would have otherwise never met Ferdinand and found that she could still love earnestly like a normal girl, or ever dreamt of living a peaceful life after everything that has happened. ]

[letsplayamod]

[It listens, taking in what is said and unsaid.]

You've found someone striving to be worthy of your loyalty, Goddess of Craft Wistful Dream Shrouded in Velvet.

[The incomplete glyph under her hand changes, piecing itself together into the golden shape of a gently streaming teacup decorated with juniper berries.

Another deactivation of the shell.]

[stringup]

[ Oh, this is...

For some reason, her heart feels so full looking at it. ]