Seele Vollerei: The end of reality, and what came after.

[Baughn]

Does seem appropriate. I'm not sure everyone is familiar with the concept, so:

(Quoted from a random blog entry.)

In Chuubo's, there are a lot of powers that can unmake things, that strips meaning and reality from the world and vanishes things forever or renders them less than they were. These are Bleak powers, whose basis is the idea that the world fundamentally isn't real, or that it shouldn't exist.

Sometimes that's… well, it's never really okay, but sometimes it's acceptable. Sometimes that's how the story goes, and sometimes things are lost forever. And sometimes you can fight against it in an ordinary way. Bleak powers aren't necessarily stronger than you, in whatever way you're strong. If that jerk Rider kid points their World-Breaker's Hand at your lunch and tries to vanish it, maybe you're miraculously fast enough to whisk it out of the way. That's game mechanics stuff.

But if you can't, then… I'll just quote the rulebook.

"Other times you must turn to something different with which to make an answer to death, dissolution, the creeping Not. To fight back you will need to rely on the intrinsic virtue of the world: that it is real, and beautiful; that life is worth having; that it's worth living. You must stand by your belief that the world has a point, that existence means something, and that it can't and shouldn't all just drown in the endless sea of the Beyond.

That you have a point, that you mean something, that you shouldn't be lost.

And neither should your friends, or even the littlest and worst of things."

There are lots of ways to make answer to the Bleak. If someone's trying to vanish your friend, you desperately recite all the details about them that you can remember. You leap in front of them and struggle to hold off whatever force is doing it however you can. You refuse to turn away as it happens, forcing whatever's doing it to at least justify itself in the face of your witnessing instead of just getting away with it. Maybe you just hold your friend in your arms as they fade and whisper that you love them, over and over, until something changes.

It may not work. But it might.

Gamewise, mostly what these do is make the HG - the game master - consider whether this is a moment for a catastrophe, or merely almost a catastrophe. Whether it's a moment about something terrible happening, or a moment about how the threat of something terrible brought forth something else.

= = =

On a more mechanical note, I didn't invent Yvette. That vote lost. GPT did this on its own, presumably because someone like her would fit there; like I've said, I'm frequently astonished by this AI.

But on two occasions now it's labeled Seele an Excrucian. I'm not sure that's quite right.

It's biased towards normality. I need to remind it of what's going on, and that the world is close to total ruin, but that's something I do without writing in prompts. Usually, at least. Prompts are easier, so if it doesn't matter I may do that.

 

[Higanbana]

I mean... Seele isn't literally an Excrucian, because, like, she's from a whole different setting and all. But thematically? Seele is totally an Excrucian.

 

[Baughn]

I mean... Seele isn't literally an Excrucian, because, like, she's from a whole different setting and all. But thematically? Seele is totally an Excrucian.

Click to shrink...

Seele's creature type is Native Outsider.

In game terms, she's a Quantum type. She's there, but she's not necessarily really there. She can't make an impact; her attacks do basically nothing until Velonia takes over, and Vel is a very special sort of bullshit. Jury's out on how much of this is her personality.

She loves reality, but--

She's not entirely part of it, anymore.

Even so, she doesn't want it to fade. Seele absolutely hates what she's been doing in this update, and I had to lean hard on the bot to keep it to "bleak" instead of "grimderp".

But it's Bleak, yes.

 

[Higanbana]

Seele's creature type is Native Outsider.

In game terms, she's a Quantum type. She's there, but she's not necessarily really there. She can't make an impact; her attacks do basically nothing until Velonia takes over, and Vel is a very special sort of bullshit. Jury's out on how much of this is her personality.

She loves reality, but--

She's not entirely part of it, anymore.

Even so, she doesn't want it to fade. Seele absolutely hates what she's been doing in this update, and I had to lean hard on the bot to keep it to "bleak" instead of "grimderp".

But it's Bleak, yes.

Click to shrink...

Not all Excrucians want to destroy the world! It is kinda their thing, like, as a group, but on an individual level it can be a lot more complicated.
Deceivers' whole thing is that they do love the world, just, not any part of it we'd recognize. And plenty of Chancery Strategists are trying their bests to just live (and hopefully enjoy life), without, like, blowing up the moon or spontaneously combusting because they've had a bad day. Alas, living can be very difficult.

(Hopefully I'm making sense, but if I'm not it's probably because it's 4am here)

 

[Baughn]

Not all Excrucians want to destroy the world! It is kinda their thing, like, as a group, but on an individual level it can be a lot more complicated.
Deceivers' whole thing is that they do love the world, just, not any part of it we'd recognize. And plenty of Chancery Strategists are trying their bests to just live (and hopefully enjoy life), without, like, blowing up the moon or spontaneously combusting because they've had a bad day. Alas, living can be very difficult.

(Hopefully I'm making sense, but if I'm not it's probably because it's 4am here)

Click to shrink...

Cant of the Strategists:

1. Be strong in adversity.
2. Be wise in decision.
3. In action, be elegance itself.

Strategists are the leaders of the Excrucian horde, although they often lead from behind.

Another name for the Strategists is "Spinners", because they weave the stuff of anti-nature into the artifacts of the Damned. This is also the source of their power--the Strategists have no inherent ability to work Noble Magics. Instead, they spin the stuff of darkness into themselves, out in the Lands Beyond Creation.

Strategists are generally warped by the rise and fall of dark energies within themselves. They are the only Excrucians known to engage in perversion, desecration, and hate without "good cause". As Hell might put it, "They're almost human."

Their appearance does not reflect this nature. Only heavy clothing that conceals the face or Unblemished Guise can hide their impossible elegance.

Click to shrink...

Hmm.

...okay, yeah. That's Seele, especially if you include Velonia as part of her. The one video we have of Seele features her, effectively, punching a huge hole in the Weirding Wall. She did that to save her best friend, the person she loves most in all the world, but–

Hello there.

Hailing from outside of Creation, from the Void beyond the Weirding Wall, the goal of all Excrucians is ultimately to tear down that wall and see all that is - themselves included - fall into nonexistence. They, however, claim that they simply hail from beyond Creation, and that they will carry all that they destroy within them, out into the Void and that which is beyond it.

Click to shrink...

While I'm generally aware of Nobilis, I've never played it. It's pure coincidence that I've considered this a possible outcome, but one possible outcome here is that Yvette becomes a voice in Seele's head, or even a set of memories. While she's overwriting this city more than absorbing it, we've seen previously that she's capable of both.

Would that be good for her mental health? I dunno.

 

[Higanbana]

I believe the wiki you're looking at is focused on Nobilis 2e, while we're technically up to 4e now.

Glitch is a game about Strategists who have given up trying to kill the world and joined the Chancery, also known as the Riders Abstinence Society. The DriveThruRPG page explains it better than I can, but it goes into far more detail on the experiences and motives of the Strategists than previous games. They've changed / been fleshed out quite a bit.

The relevant section:

So, this particular game is a game about living in a broken world. It's a game about hope and struggle.
It's a game about people who've found mistakes in the way the world's put together; seen that the world itself is wrong; and, therefore, of course, developed eldritch powers, gotten inducted into a mystical society, acquired a passel of enemies, frenemies, and dubious allies, and picked up a tragic backstory.
Oh, and, just possibly, a horse.
And/or ... a crown?
Anyway, though, the most important thing they got, the most key and the most critical, was the power to fight back, the power to make answer to this vale of suffering, this vast great hill of woe: a literal or metaphorical world-slaying weapon, just tossed into their hand, only, you know, the problem is, and they all do eventually figure this out---at least the player characters do---
World-slaying weaponry doesn't actually help.
Fixing things with a world-ending weapon, well ... that'd be like blowing your nose with a trout!

Click to shrink...

 

[Thelxiope]

In particular, Glitch makes it very clear that there totally was stuff in the endless void before Creation - that Creation; that the World Ash and the Weirding Wall and reality itself are built on the bones of people and places that came before.

That Ninuan, the True and Silvered Land, before the world, beyond the world, was there first; that it's not really empty, it just looks that way to people from Creation; and that a big part of why the Riders are so invested in tearing the Ash down is that it is one hell of an act of colonialism.

So when the Strategists say that they want to destroy everything that Is - they do mean that. Everything that Is, everything that exists, from their perspective, is more or less built out of stolen land and the desecrated bones of their people.

It's just there's also this entire category of things that don't exist. Not-things, λ-things, the stuff of Ninuan beyond the world, that, you know, they don't want to destroy.

---

To bring this back around to the, um, actual quest here

The correlative model of the Sea of Quanta I proposed earlier is based very heavily on the way Ninuan works.

The things and people of Ninuan are not, by default, awake. They dream their way through their destinies, never actually interacting with anything.

The hunter hunts. She doesn't hunt anything. She tracks nothing. She draws back on nothing, looses nothing, kills and skins and eats nothing.

The prey flees. It flees from nothing. It is tracked by nothing. It is struck by nothing, killed by nothing, skinned and cooked and eaten by nothing.

Ninuan looks at these narratives, and says, "this hunter hunts that prey with this bow and that arrow." It correlates events together, into a narrative that makes sense. The prey doesn't die because it's hit by an arrow - it dies because its story is of dying. Likewise, the arrow's story is of striking. Ninuan puts the two together, moves things about so that the arrow strikes the prey and the prey dies; but there is no actual causal chain connecting them. Ninuan doesn't have causality, only sort of has space, and has time only to the extent that it needs to for narratives to make sense.

And then Attention gets involved and everything gets messy, because something Creational, something awake looking out into Ninuan starts fucking with narratives and correlation, waking everything else up, and generally causing lots of headaches.

But I do think this is not inconsistent with what both Honkai canon and our author here have shown of the Sea of Quanta. These ideas that -

That focused thought and attention can disturb the Sea. That bubbles form from similar enough memories and times and fragments. That the Sea will shuffle events and objects to try and make a sort of sense; that that's how events happen in the Sea; that whatever passes for time there is correlative rather than causative.

That's what I was sort of trying to get at, earlier?

 

[Mizu]

[x] Do not.
- [x] Take her hand in yours. Watch this world's last sunset together. Promise that you won't forget her, that you will find her again, even as the world dissolves around you

 

[Baughn]

Snip all the things

Click to shrink...

You're right, of course. Perhaps you're even right about the Sea of Quanta, as it often seems to act that way. It's difficult to fully fit it to a causal model, and I'm not really trying. Regardless of that, you're still right, because–

This might be obvious by now, but you're describing GPT. It, notoriously, lacks any sense of causality. It has no sense of object permanence. All it has is correlation, and if I hand it a scene with a hunter, an arrow, and a deer–

[Scene: There is a hunter, an arrow and a deer.]

You are a hunter. You have been hunting for as long as you can remember. The smell of the forest fills your nostrils and it's always there when you need it most. It's not just that though; its how you hunt, the way you move through the woods and even the sounds of other hunters. Its all part of what makes you who you are.

The hunter has been in this position before and he knows exactly where to find the deer. He looks up at you with his bright green eyes and smiles. "I've seen them like this too," he says. "They're so beautiful."

He is covered in dirt and grime, his face is spotted with blackheads and he smells of the earth. He stands in a small hole that isn't much wider than he is, but he leans against the surrounding earth so as to not fall over. This hunter hasn't been hunting for long.

The deer is pretty and it's sad that you have to kill her, but you do. Pulling the arrow back, you release and it zooms through the air and hits her in her flank. She lets out a pained scream and falls over, but the sound of her screaming is soon replaced with silence.

"You finished her off," the hunter says. "Let's go back to camp and see if there is anything else we can find." He turns around and walks back towards his small burrow.

You follow him, but you are filled with a great sense of loss.

Click to shrink...

It lacks object permanence, or causality, but it knows what stories fit together. It is, in a sense, intelligent – or at least it writes stories that seem like they should require intelligence to write.

I can lean into that, and we've seen the result; it's a dreamscape. It knows enough to realize that, but not enough to entirely avoid it. If you don't correct it, sooner or later that's what will happen.

I can make use of it, while forcing limited consistency. You've seen that as well, now. It's no coincidence that Seele's in the sea of quanta; I knew, going in, that that would be the easiest excuse to use. It's not strictly needed. I can even make it write an ordinary story, set in an ordinary world–

I just need to apply a great deal of attention.

= = =

Now, to twist this back on topic again, there are a couple of general approaches you could take to this. I'm not going to suggest votes – that goes against my principles, and I doubt anything will change before I start writing the next update. But–

The AI is very trope-bound. The better ideas I've seen make use of that – as you suggested, "Making answer to the bleak".

What kind of story do you want?

 

[Solarstream]

[x] Do not.
- [x] Take her hand in yours. Watch this world's last sunset together. Promise that you won't forget her, that you will find her again, even as the world dissolves around you

 

[BoundaryPhantasm]

[X] Do not.
-[X] Grab her hand to stop her going. Ask her about herself. About her family. Her friends. Who she is, and why she matters. What the world is losing by letting her dissolve. Remind her, remind the world, that Yvette is real; that she exists, that she matters, and that she shouldn't die. Hold onto her and do not let go.

 

[veekie]

It lacks object permanence, or causality, but it knows what stories fit together. It is, in a sense, intelligent – or at least it writes stories that seem like they should require intelligence to write.

Click to shrink...

It knows what a story should look like, so it makes something that looks like a story?

 

[Baughn]

It knows what a story should look like, so it makes something that looks like a story?

Click to shrink...

Essentially. This is AI Dungeon's iteration of GPT-3, which was fine-tuned on fandom wikis and fanfiction...

So it's pretty good at writing that, and slightly worse at everything else, but it's all correlation. It knows what it's doing, often to a surprising degree – like I've said before, it's fully capable of calculating the maximum height of a bullet fired upwards on Mars – but it doesn't understand how the world works, if that makes sense. It knows that a bullet fired upwards is correlated with a bullet falling, and it knows that a person named Seele destroying a city is correlated with a person named Seele feeling bleakness – possibly despair – but it doesn't understand why. It doesn't even know that these two people are the same person. Or that 'people' exist.

To a degree that's a moot point, because it's certainly still capable of listing tons of facts about bullets, or Seele. Those facts will even be correct – mostly. Not always! Actually, about half the time, which remains impressive mostly because there are tens of thousands or millions of possible answers it could make, the vast majority of which are wrong.

But it hasn't the slightest notion of how to sanity-check itself.

Which is also a moot point, because you can hack a sanity-check in by adding "[Note: Looking over the text above, " as a prompt*, and often it'll produce something reasonable. A hypothetical GPT-4 could do better still, and there's no apparent scaling limit on this architecture. You quite possibly could hack a sufficiently-large GPT into acting as a general intelligence.

Only...

If you did that... and let's assume it worked...

Internally, it'd still be GPT. There would be something akin to consciousness, because GPT was trained to mimic humanity and, in the limit, the best way to do so is to outright simulate humans. It probably wouldn't get that quite right, but would it get it right enough to produce some manner of consciousness? I suspect yes.

It doesn't mean the AI itself would have anything akin to consciousness. It'd all be ephemeral, a side-effect of an architecture that was never meant to be used that way, and to be honest? If you were unfortunate enough to 'live' there, it might look a lot like the not-reality that @Thelxiope has sketched. Ninuan, created by accident.

I'd rather not, though.

= = =

*: I've only hypothesized that this would work, and not tried it. Probably the wording needs to be different.

Ah, but you can do a lot of stuff with prompts! Here's something I just discovered...

[Reminder: Add a full scenery description here]
[Done. I like what I wrote below.]

Click to shrink...

Perhaps surprisingly, this works. Perfectly.

 

[Baughn]

"Yvette–"

She spins around.

"Yeah?"

"I'm scared," you say, your voice barely louder than a whisper.

"It's OK to be scared," she says softly. "I'm scared too."

You stare at each other for a while. Then, as if moving in slow motion, you lean forward and hug her. She does the same. For a moment, everything is perfect. Time stops. The world is beautiful once more. It's been so long since you've touched anyone who's real.

The world is still falling apart.

The park is empty, quiet and peaceful. The sky is red. It's been running like this for a while now; it's peaceful, but odd. You're used to bustling crowds and the sounds of the city streets by now. The quiet is... surreal.

You look over at Yvette. She doesn't know that anything's wrong. Well, she knows, but she doesn't know. You think.

She looks so serene, so calm, just sitting there. She's changed a bit since... Her clothes used to be fancier, and you think she had longer hair. A lot has happened in her life the last few weeks. It's all becoming a blur now, her past overwritten by your own, but that's also what's letting you remember it.

Yvette's a lot different now. She's happier, calmer, and definitely more upbeat than she was when you met her. You don't have the heart to tell her about what's going on.

Outside the park, there's nothing. Just you. You're friggin' huge now, but you're alone. The disease's spread so extensively that there's nothing outside the park any more.

The emptiness is a bit unnerving for you. You miss the green hills and the red trees. You miss the stream running through the park.

"Yvette, does this look... normal, to you?" you ask.

"Yeah... ?"

"I think something's wrong. I don't remember this. It looks too empty to me. Like, there's no people, no animals..."

"That's silly. We're the only people here."

"Yes, but..." You sigh. She won't be able to notice it. "Don't go home, Yvette. Just stay with me until the sun goes down, okay? ...Please?"

She nods. "I'll stay with you."

Something's off. You can feel it in the pit of your stomach. Something big is going to happen. You just want to enjoy the peace and quiet while it lasts.

"Hey, Seele?"

"Yeah?

"I'm kind of hungry."

"Me too. Let's get some food."

You don't get up, though. You reach out your hands, and a memory of a picnic basket appears in them. You open it up, and find sandwiches, apples, and juice.

"What the– Are you a magician or something?" Yvette smiles.

"Not really." You laugh.

"I guess you can do some cool stuff now. I'll try to remember that." She smiles.

"And I'll remember you," you tell her.

"You say that like I'm going to die or something." She laughs. "Seele, don't be so morbid."

"I want to remember you. I promise I will."

"You do remember me. You're my friend."

"Yeah." You nod. "I'm your friend."

Time passes. You could have spent it talking – learning everything you can about what you're destroying, but you don't. You can't. Instead you do another magic trick, picking your memories out of the ether.

"Hey, what are you writing?" Yvette asks.

"My diary."

"Aaah... I tried writing a story once. It was about a princess who had some dysfunctional family and stuff. I showed it to my teacher, she told me to read more and then try writing something original."

"That..." You laugh, then catch yourself. There's only a small circle left, the small patch of grass you're having picnic with Yvette on. Except for that, and the sun in the distance, the world is gone. Maybe you had no choice, maybe the world was rotten to the core and had to fall apart. Maybe you're just a demon. "That sounds like something my teacher would say."

"Do you like school?"

"Yeah." You nod, smiling a bit as you filter through Yvette's memories. "It was a nice school. I liked it there. I just wish things could stay the same, you know?"

Yvette stares at you blankly, as if waiting for you to explain.

"My school..." You begin to explain, but then sigh. This won't make sense to her, no matter how hard you try. "Never mind. Let's just watch the sunset together."

The two of you hold hands, watching the sun fall behind the horizon. In a few minutes, it will be night. The world will be dark, and you won't be able to see Yvette anymore. Except, not really. Not in any way that matters. Reality is creaking, and in less than a minute it'll break.

"We should head back," you say, standing.

"Yeah. It's getting dark." Yvette nods in agreement, frowning a bit. You wonder what she sees – what she thinks is happening.

Reality is breaking.

"Yvette–"

You clench your eyes shut.

"Yes?"

"I'm scared."

"Don't be." Yvette puts her hand on your shoulder, giving it a squeeze. She's a good person. You've taken many roles in her memories – little sister, best friend, crush, and so on. It doesn't matter. You remember enough to know she'd have done this even for a stranger. "I'm here for you."

"I know."

The two of you sit in silence for a moment.

"Yvette?"

"Yes?"

"I promise," you say. "I won't forget you. I will find you again."

"I know." Her eyes are damp. She knows something is wrong, even if not what. "We'll meet again."

"Yeah."

You stand, walking towards the edge of the platform, and unfold your wings. It's time for you to leave this world behind and enter the next. You take a deep breath, and step off the edge.

You fall, the air blowing through your hair. Yvette's platform is far behind you, now.

The world tears apart around you. Concepts shatter like glass and fall away into the void. It's hatching, like an egg, and you're about to be born.

A hundred lost memories filter through your mind as you drag yourself back into one piece.

You are many things. You are a sister, a valkyrie, a memory, and a girl. But right now, you're crying. You spent so long alone in the darkness inside your own head, dreaming dreams of slow dissolution. You didn't think you'd ever feel like this again.

Veliona wraps an arm around you, pulling you close. Her other hand grabs your chin, tilting your head up so your eyes meet hers.

"I knew you'd make the right choice," she says.

"I'm sorry," you say, tears running down your cheeks. "I'm so sorry."

"For what? Being human?" Veliona smiles. "Don't be. Now let's go meet the crew."

Seele nods. In that moment, you finally remember her. You. Yourself.

You're yourself again.

= = =

While this is a bit shorter than usual, I felt it needed to end here.

Now, it's possible that this next vote is a no-brainer, but I still wanted to give you the choice. Do you want to move straight on? Or is there anything else you'd prefer to do, perhaps?

[ ] Go meet Ai-chan
[ ] Write-in

 

[ShadowAngelBeta]

[] Yell sorry to the snake

*Shrug*?

 

[Alcor]

[X] Go meet Ai-chan

 

[Mizu]

[X] Go meet Ai-chan

 

[Solarstream]

[X] Go meet Ai-chan

 

[BoundaryPhantasm]

[x] Go meet Ai-chan

 

[Baughn]

Well, just on the note of amusing prompts....

Psychiatrist's opinion: The two personalities occupying the same mind seem to have struck an odd harmony. Though Seele is dominant, Vel is still there, lurking beneath the surface. They both seem to harbor some affection for one another, though it is admittedly hard to tell with Seele.

As far as treatment goes, I see no major issues. Seele has full control over the body most of the time, while Vel is only capable of manifesting at night, in sleep, or during bursts of strong emotion. With these limitations, Vel will likely remain a non-issue.

The two could probably do with some therapy, but I imagine the crew of the SOL will be more than enough to keep them occupied and off wandering the galaxy looking for hugs.

Click to shrink...

 

[Baughn]

Yvette's opinion:

"I'm dead. I don't get an opinion."

Regardless, this is the afterword. Yvette, what do you feel about this chapter?

"It's okay. All this talk about quantum physics and multiple timelines was really confusing, though."

Yeah I suppose it was a bit of an intellectual stretch for the reader. Y'know, the chapter was really just about you and Seele. You're the first written original character in this story.

"You realize that Vel's the only other character, right?"

Yeah yeah.

"Can you give some backstory on her?"

Y'know, I was planning to. Just sort of writing as it comes to me. Look, we'll get to it all eventually.

"How long is eventually?"

I don't know! Just have some faith in me, will you? I'm the writer here.

"I have faith that you'll do something eventually."

You... Yvette, you're fired. Go home.

"No."

Fine, stay. But you're not getting paid.

"I don't get paid?"

No.

"Damn."

More importantly, Yvette, did you enjoy the chapter? Seele believes you didn't understand what was happening.

"What? Of course I did. It was simple. A girl got her memory erased and became a demon."

It wasn't that simple.

"Yeah, it was."

Wasn't that easy. Alright, the chapter's done. Oh, and there's one last thing – this story is being written mostly by an AI. Are you lot okay with that?

"Yeah, sure. Why not?"

It is my duty to remind you that the AI will occasionally make grammatical mistakes and mistakes involving words being used in the wrong context. Also, it has a limited vocabulary and at time will probably fail to effectively relay the tone or mood. Be understanding. Also, it's horribly amnesiac. It has the memory of a goldfish.

"I'm not getting paid enough for this."

Just be understanding!

"Fine."

 

[Baughn]

Meeting the crew of the Hyperion isn't as easy as all that, however. First you have to find it, and while your state of extreme extension was terrible for your mental health, it did at least let you interact with more of the Sea of Quanta at once. You and Veliona hurtle through the void, following the trace amounts of energy that your friends are giving off. This process is made significantly more complicated by the fact that all of you are moving at high speeds through a near featureless environment.

Calling what you do 'moving' is, of course, an extreme misnomer. The quantum sea is a place without location, without... mostly, without. It's a place between universes, where broken timelines go to die, and it's made up of the stuff left over when they lose all their history and then some. So it's without time, without much of anything that our simple human minds can comprehend and, unfortunately, it's also without much of anything that could even be remotely described as 'location'.

You and Vel are hurtling through this near-non-existent space with all the speed that your willpower can provide. Vel's knowledge of the quantum sea is formidable, and you're able to pull off complex feats such as leaping from one timeline remnant to another without getting trapped for years. It's partly because, most unfortunately—this isn't your first time.

You've done this before, after taking Bronya's place in an experiment. It destroyed your body, propelling your soul deep into the—surroundings, for lack of a better word—of your home timeline. Not that you'd have used those words to describe it at the time. It's probably a miracle that you even survived the experience, let alone managed to claw your way back to the real world in one piece. Still, after all that, you'd hoped you'd never have to do it again. The quantum sea has a habit of breaking people. Into pieces. You're grateful for Vel's company.

It's more than a little worrying that the 'place' that you are in, as far as you can tell, is still deep inside that same worldline. The landscape is different, there's only flotsam and jetsam left, but wherever you are, it used to be a world. Now, it's just a shapeless mass.

That's the kicker. You find yourself in a place that's starting to become vaguely familiar, and you don't mean in the sense that you recognize the landmarks. There aren't any landmarks. What there is, is...

Ship-ness, maybe?

A familiar feeling of determination? Of stubbornness? Of unyieldingness? Not Kiana's, though she comes close. If Kiana has an iron will, then this will is... steel. Something else, too. A longing for something that may or may not be there, the unyielding will of a machine, a desire to go somewhere you've never been, the determination to escape even though escape is futile...

It isn't feelings you're sensing, but the shape of a configuration that contains those feelings. You find yourself in a place that has been made ship-shaped by an act of sheer willpower. It's not visible, of course, but it's definitely there. And the closer you get to it, the more you feel it.

... You can't even begin to describe it. Even if you could, you wouldn't. This isn't a tangible object that you're approaching. It's a strange, intangible concept made into reality. A great big imaginary friend.

It's funny. This thing you're approaching, it's a little backwards from the rest of this world. It wasn't ripped from the pages of a storybook and stuffed into existence like everything else here, including you nowadays. It's a timeline that never ended, a fragment that's somehow surviving despite the fact that it should've been overwritten a long time ago. It's a dream that logic says can't exist, but it's coming alive as you reach out to it.

And then...

... You touch the world, and it touches back.

Is this what-

....

Coming... to you....

... You didn't ask it to do this, but it knows what you want more than you do. You try to keep your mind as clear as possible, but the thoughts just slip away from you. That's fine. You can... deal with this...

And you touch...

Images. They're right there at the tip of your consciousness, but so out of reach. You feel a slight pang of sadness as you think about your friends....

But then that vanishes, too. You're in the void, after all. You are the void.

When you get out of here, the first thing you're going to do is...

... Pffhah. Nothing, probably. What good are the games of mortals, when you can live within the wonderful world of your own imagination? Just think about something and it comes true.

...Bronya!

The voice screams in your mind. You concentrate on keeping the void around you, but it's shattered almost immediately. Everything goes dark.

...This is a nice dress, though. What occasion is this? It reminds you of when you went to the ball with... her.

...

...

You wake up underneath a familiar ceiling. It's your cot on the Hyperion. All of your clothes are dirty and worn out, though that's hardly surprising given that you've been wearing them for months without rest.

How long have you been asleep?

You pause. You haven't been asleep, and the room around you is strange. There are lights, but they are quiet. Unblinking. Unmoving. There's no breeze; the ventilation system is off. Or...

You distinctly remember being outside, though in your head you silently capitalize it to Outside. Did all of you make it in? You think...

"Vel," you say to yourself, quietly. Your voice sounds strange, and you realize that it's been awhile since you used it. You look to your left. There, you see an empty bed. Unmade, but empty.

"Here," your other half reports in your head. It's her. Vel is here. With you. Together, like the old days, but different. You're whole again... Or are you?

The thought frightens you. You have no way of answering this question. It's not like asking Ai or Kiana or even Otto would help you at all. Hell, Yvette would've had a better idea. Who is Yvette again? A friend, you think. You can't remember.

"Don't worry about it," Vel says in your mind. She sounds sarcastic, but also understanding. "You've got bigger things to worry about."

You nod to yourself. The ship. Ai-chan said the defenses are failing, though you don't have the first clue how she's defending against the quantum sea. She definitely didn't mean the railguns. You're a valkyrie, but you know nothing about military secrets like where exactly Ai's mainframe is. Heck, you're not even sure where the hell your friends are, save for Vel. Maybe they're dead. Maybe they're alive but lost forever in the twisting, churning tentacles of the nightmare that is this place.

You peek outside your room. The hallway stretches onward, twisting and turning out of sight. The walls are a dull, featureless gray. You don't see anyone else in it.

"It's the middle of the night," Vel says, though she sounds doubtful. "Your friends might be asleep, but this doesn't look right."

You frown. You feel like you should remember something, anything. But no memories come to you. Just a yawn. "They might be asleep, but I'm not. Let's go check."

Vel nods.

You begin walking down the hallways, and almost immediately a problem presents itself. You know the path to the dorm, by heart—it's where you're supposed to be sleeping, normally—but there's a...

Hole. There's a hole. Missing space. Something is off, and you can't figure out where exactly the dorm is. You don't see it anywhere in this maze of gray walls and uninteresting hallways, stretching on forever.

Additionally, it's cold. Unnaturally so. Your breath comes out in visible clouds.

A part of the ship is missing—it's not there, and there's no 'there' there, either. Another part has metastasized, spread out and mixed itself with others, or maybe it just grew too big for its set borders. In any case, the entire ship is twisted beyond all recognition.

"This... this isn't right," you say. A pit grows in your stomach. You feel like... no, it couldn't be. "I don't want to be here."

"Neither do I," Vel says, her voice grim and determined. "Let's get to Ai-chan before it gets worse."

Okay, but how?

The hallway stretches on ahead of you, a never-ending path towards infinity. You can go anywhere you want, so long as it isn't anywhere useful. Or you could try punching through the not-space, but you'd be doing more damage in the process. You could try circling around, but you have no guarantee it'll be helpful in the slightest.

= = =

I think I'm getting the hang of this.
[ ] Nowhere useful
[ ] Nowhere safe
[ ] Nowhere, slowly
[ ] Write-in

 

[Thelxiope]

You have no way of answering this question. It's not like asking Ai or Kiana or even Otto would help you at all.

Click to shrink...

Seele, let's be realistic. When has asking Otto anything ever helped anyone at all?

---

EDIT: To clarify this for non-Honkai-players:

If you asked Otto Apocalypse to pass you the salt, you'd instead be treated to a five-minute monologue on his genius, his brilliance, his scientific insanity that surpasses the feeble laws of heaven and earth; his latest scheme to resurrect and possess his dead waifu who didn't even like him when she was alive - seriously, Otto, she ran off to Japan to be in lesbians with a shrine maiden, obsessing over her is creepy - and then he'd stand up, spout some line about how he's going to usurp the throne of GOD, and then stride dramatically out of the room, leaving behind his half-finished steak and glass of expensive red wine for the help to throw away.

Fucker wouldn't even pass you the damn salt while he was up, either.

 

[ShadowAngelBeta]

[X] Nowhere useful
[X] Nowhere safe
[X] Nowhere, slowly

I told you I would do it!

We could sing and smash the ship in half like Seele did to the world barrier as well.

Hmm... We probably need to find the, uhh, "safe" cracks that are twisting the ship's reality and either break them or step through them depending on the nature of them.

Basically Seele's going on a space walk cause the only space suit that exists is being a QUA type*.

I don't have much else for dealing with infinite corridors other than smashing them apart, which Seele thinks might be a bad idea cause it'll probably smash the ship up, so either go through the twists or make them collapse in a controllable way.

Edit: *Actually being a Herrscher covers it as well. Probably more than covers it tbh.

 

[Baughn]

If you asked Otto Apocalypse to pass you the salt, you'd instead be treated to a five-minute monologue on his genius, his brilliance, his scientific insanity that surpasses the feeble laws of heaven and earth; his latest scheme to resurrect and possess his dead waifu who didn't even like him when she was alive - seriously, Otto, she ran off to Japan to be in lesbians with a shrine maiden, obsessing over her is creepy - and then he'd stand up, spout some line about how he's going to usurp the throne of GOD, and then stride dramatically out of the room, leaving behind his half-finished steak and glass of expensive red wine for the help to throw away.

Click to shrink...

She liked him plenty, back when she didn't know very much about him. That's... that's a common theme when it comes to Otto.

(Guess who doesn't know very much about him!)