While the Doctor is frantically doing what he can to keep the chaos outside the bar from spilling inside, somewhere not too far into his own future (but very, very, very far in the past), his universe's version of the Legion of Doom have lured him beneath Stonehenge where the Pandorica awaits. He knows the source of the cracks in the universe now, but there's nothing he can do as he is dragged literally kicking and screaming into the cube, the universe's perfect prison where nothing escapes, not even time.
Meanwhile, somewhere everywhere: the TARDIS is being pulled inexorably, unstoppably toward something. River does her best to steer the bloody thing, to force an emergency landing. Finally, she feels the exit from the Vortex. All she has to do is open the door and get out, and everything will power down, and the universe will be saved. It takes some creative rigging to override the circuits, but the door unlocks. She pulls them open... only to run into a brick wall. A literal one, sealing off her exit. She looks over her shoulder in time to see the console explode.
And over the skies of Milliways, where so many lights are going out... a new star blooms.
The shaking's getting worse as Claudia gets closer to finishing, but she's way too invested in this thing to give up now. And through it all, there's one thought that she can't shake loose. "It must be Thursday," she says to herself. "I never could get the hang of Thursdays."
Sariel makes the back door, staggering for a second against a blast of unnaturally icy winter air, and doesn't hear a thing that may or may not be going on upstairs.
It's not noticeable at first with everything else going on - there is something missing from the great din that howls through the end of the universe. The bar creaks and groans on its foundations, the battle rages both by the lake and among the dying stars...
...but the lightning has stopped.
Suddenly, with a flash brighter than the hidden sun, a sound rises through the red-tinted tumult of battle. An indescribable shout of triumph, greed, and fury that seems to go beyond sound, piercing into the very heart of those who hear.
And with that shout, the silver hemispheres come together, sending a thick, malevolent column of fire boiling up into the sky, burning away the surrounding gloom with its heat.
The triumphant voice of Orannis the Destroyer howls across the landscape of Milliways like a great wind, echoing against the distant mountains.
Among that that are still fighting the influx of creatures from the Darkgate, Teja runs back and forth, exhorting them to keep closer together so they may be shielded more easily, as he has promised Yrael.
And angry, and tired - not from the fighting, but from this, all of this, the noise and the blood and the trembling ground and the entire fucking nerve of it, the gall of this fucking disaster to just stroll into his life like an old friend, right when everything was so -
He was so -
He's just muddy, from top to toe, smears and splotches of earth blurring into reddish spatters of something it's probably best not to look too closely at. His sunglasses are long gone, and his eyes are wide and gold-vicious in his head.
He's still standing guard over the bomb, pike in hand, a deepening ring of bodies littering the churned ground around him and his fellow defenders.
He's trying not to think about the fact that for every attacker they cut down, two more seem to take its place. Or about the fact that if the ground keeps shaking like that beneath them - beneath the bomb - it won't be the invaders they'll have to worry about. He's trying not to think about -
Well, suddenly he's not thinking, because something round and glowing and the same yellowish-gold as his eyes has just rolled out from beneath a corpse, and come to rest against his shoe. Distracted, Crowley blinks down at it, and then -
(well, he's not thinking, you see)
- he bends down to scoop it up.
The tip of the pike drops to the mud with a squelch, the weapon hanging loosely from Crowley's fingers.
Atton, still fighting the tide of creatures from the Darkgate, is starting to flag. His clothes are torn and charred, and there's deep bruising across most of his body and face. He's covered in blood and ichor and scraps of lizard flesh. One arm is crumpled and broken, uselessly mangled up to the shoulder.
He has his lightsaber in his good hand, cutting through hordes of creatures with ease - and if every so often he has to pause to steady himself and do a quick self-heal, that's surely not a problem, is it?
Though the shape and design of the cells has changed every so often, the containment spell originally laid down by the magician Tim Hunter is strong, as it has had to be. Strong enough to resist any power seeking to break it; durable enough to last for eons upon eons, if not for eternity. Certainly too strong and too durable to be failing after the mere handful of years since he created it.
And indeed, one could argue that strictly speaking the spell itself is not failing at all. But the bedrock it was laid on, the physical and metaphysical structure it was tied to, is rapidly crumbling.
From a practical standpoint it makes very little difference.
Over the past hour, one after another, the cells have been failing. By now every one of them is standing open.
He can't even locate the Stars the way he would be able to at home, not through all the other magics that are pervading the atmosphere. He's just searching blind, hoping against hope that he can find something and keep it safe, and meanwhile growing ever more certain that someone or something is going to get them before he does and break the whole place.
Aha! There, several yards away, a flash of blue waves breaking the spray of the sea clouds on a stormy day the ice so cold it burns lifting eroding drowning healing being flung from somebody's hand - Felix can't tell, doesn't take the time to notice, whether the person is dead or not. His attention is on the Star, flying through the air. He tries to bring up a slab of rock, to knock it back toward him, but as has been happening more and more it fails. Then he loses sight of the Star as something about twelve feet tall with feathers and entirely too many tongues tries to grab him. By the time that's defeated, he has no idea where it went.
Growling under his breath, he turns and begins hacking his way in about the direction he saw it last.
When something (ten to one it's the rock demon they've been hunting) cracks her across the shoulderblades and sends her flying, Liz fully expects to connect, hard, with the dusty cavern wall.
Instead, she goes catapulting into Milliways, landing painfully on one knee and an elbow on the floor and tumbling -- with the last of the rock-demon-momentum -- under what's left of a table.
Liz stares up at battle-scarred wood.
"Now?" she demands, and then something with teeth is lunging at her face. On reflex, she raises her arm and puts five bullets into its gaping open mouth and it crashes down next to her, gurgling. She sits up and, with a quick glance at the furry body to make sure it isn't moving, rolls out from underneath the table and gets up.
Another one of the things is immediately leaping at her (and, seriously, what are they? she doesn't immediately see any eyes; just fur, claws, and a whole lot of teeth), and she squeezes off a snap-shot. It yelps like a wounded animal midair, blue blood springing from a front paw. In the same instant, Liz ducks, staggering when the heavy body clips her left shoulder while passing overhead, then she spins and puts the monster down. She stands there a half a stunned second, pistol in her right hand as she takes it all in, breathing heavily. Then the whole floor shudders and she rocks with it.
Something that looks suspiciously like a slime-soaked mutant crocodile snaps its jaws together and slithers toward her. Keeping a wary ear on the chaos reigning behind her (fully aware, even from her brief bewildered glance, that there are more creatures, and more Milliways patrons fighting them -- and what sounds and feels a whole lot like the place tearing itself to pieces -- all around), Liz narrows her eyes, lifts her left hand, and lights it on fire.
The crocodile-thing hisses.
"Oh, I'm sorry, do you not like fire?" Liz says, and the red-gold flames coil up higher around her forearm, wrist, hand, and fingers.
It's been a while since River was in the bar. Long enough, in fact, to have missed the red sky and growing cracks and assorted other signs of impending doom. It's just the kind of thing that happens sometimes; you get busy, you have the mopping-up from a friend's kidnapping and rescue to deal with, you don't have any particular need to shop for produce, and you don't end up stopping by Milliways for a week or two.
And then a door slides open -- River's head snaps around, half the ship away, and she's running -- and she makes it to the right corridor just in time to see the door close on screaming chaos, and her captain's limp body on Serenity's grating.
She ducks long enough to check his pulse. (Still strong. The head wound is minor; he'll come around.)
"Gonna be okay, cap'n," River whispers, and knows she might be lying.
One more stop, to grab her guns, and her sword, and everything else in her ma'sun she can easily carry. And then, a door to Milliways.
The opening of the Darkgate has cast a false night over Milliways, the once-crimson sky now a seething cloud the colour of old, dried blood. But the darkness is not total.
Even now, there is light.
The fiery column by the lake reaches up towards the sky from the silvery sphere on the ground, consuming the gloom like the very air feeding the unnatural flames.
It's been growing brighter.
The air is thick, sick, heavy with the smell of Free Magic, harsher and more cruel than even the scent of death that hangs over the field.
And then everything goes:
WHITE
- stark and bleached in a blinding flash of light, and the ground judders even more violently than before. And when the light is gone...
The light is gone.
And so is the sphere.
Until it CRASHES back to the earth with another jarring impact, knocking all those nearby off their feet.
And then
everything
goes:
WHITE
The shields around the sphere have protected Milliways from the worst of the devastation. Inside, however - within the area contained by those working against Orannis, there is nothing left. No grass, no trees, no life. Only ash, and the glass beneath the sphere that once was sand.
A mushroom cloud is rising, darkening the sky even further - but there is still light. Even now, there is light.
Where once the sphere was silver, there is now a ball of liquid fire, crackling against the forces containing it.
You've done well. You all have; so very well. Thank you. But it's too late. The shields are disintegrating. Galactus and Unicron have battered at them too long and too hard; the looping death of the TARDIS has taken it's toll, and that toll is too high. The centre cannot hold.
They spin slowly into the black hole, one after another, silent in the empty void of space. The TARDIS flickers and blooms one last time, and then winks out, like a candle being snuffed. The two destroyers s t r e t c h away, long and terrible, and then they, too, stutter and are gone.
Everything is growing light, decreasing in mass as the end draws near.
The plants in the greenhouse have withered and wilted, choked on the sickness in the air. The water in the lake is boiling; nothing there is left alive.
The horses are screaming in their stable. The rabbits are screaming in their burrows. Baby is curled up small in a shelf behind Bar, two made things together, and they, too, are screaming.
All things must end - even here, at the end of all things.
For thousands upon uncounted thousands of years, it has been the single driving desire of the being known as the Orannis, the Destroyer, Ninth of the Bright Shiners: to witness the destruction of all things.
Some dreams do come true... even if not exactly as one might have wished. All things are indeed ending, but the final victory is not the Destroyer's.
The combined efforts of those standing so valiantly in place of the Seven have succeeded. Blown by waves of wind and lightning-flame, driven by a sword of power and shifted by rumbling earth and the glorious song of the Eighth, its sibling, the gleaming sphere that is Orannis is borne inexorably backward until at the last it slides through the portal of the Darkgate -- and vanishes, irretrievably lost into the dimension beyond.
"Okay, I'm out of ammo, I'm out of grenades, somethin' the size of a fuckin' Toyota ate my goddamn pipe wrench, and the whole godfuckinmothershitting universe is comin' apart at the assball seams," says Shephard, who's finally come inside to get out of the way of the unspeakable things falling out of the sky. "This ain't what I'd call optimal."
"Mrryip?" offers a tiny little voice, as do seven or eight others in rapid succession.
Shephard smiles, and reaches over to scritch the nearest puppy along his first neon blue stripe. "That's right, boy," he says. "You'n the others'n your momma, we're in this shit together. And you know what?"
Mrs. Wilson blinks at him as she nudges a few of the pups closer to the human.
"We gon' git through this somehow. Fuck me if I know how, but we're gonna. We did our part'n now it's down to the Almighty to do his. And he will."
Over there, he thinks, on the other side of the smoking wreck that used to be a table. That's where General Rogers was sitting the first time Shephard ever met him. Where he was sitting, in fact, when he gave Shephard a certain charge.
It's not that Shephard's afraid to die, because he isn't. He's at peace with the Lord and he doesn't worry about what's waiting in the end. It's just that he doesn't think today is the day that end is going to happen.
General Rogers told him he was gonna live, and the Corps with him, and whatever else happens Shephard doesn't reckon the Almighty's gonna make a liar out of Steve Rogers.
The air is thin now. Everything is so light; even the tremors don't seem so strong anymore.
All that remains is this: love, life, friends.
Piece by piece, the sky starts to break away, streaming away like banners towards the heart of the black hole. Piece by piece, the bedrock starts to follow.
The TARDIS snuffs out like a candle; Galactus and Unicron stutter again, and are once more gone.
All of Milliways leans in, narrowing down, focusing towards that one most important point.
The pike gets there first.
The wave that rolls out towards Milliways is blinding; bright, light, fire, energy, white, free-falling, bright, bright -
Claudia doesn't have time to turn off the bridge device. She doesn't have time to catch her breath. She barely has time to close her eyes against the bright, bright, bright light-- (I'm free-fallin' out into nothing) --and even that doesn't help, not really, and she's thinking Joshua Artie Myka Pete Leena guys I love you I'm sorry (I live this moment as my last) because really, everyone here knows they're going down with the ship, and everyone who had the sense or ability to get home knows there may not be a ship to come back to. She just hopes everyone at home gets the message somehow. (every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end) ...but is it her imagination, some last desperate completely insane hope... or are they falling away from the black hole?
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howarewefortime) wrote in ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
milliways_bar,
February 23 2012, 20:03:56 UTC 3 months ago
-03 HRS
There's aDRUM
in the bones of the place, as the walls and the rafters and the deep stone bedrock of Milliways groan and shake in unison.A rumble and a roar as the destroyers of worlds continue to hammer
DRUM
at each other beyond the shields, as the dying stars look on hungrily, as the cannons fire and the great, slow battle beats against theDRUM
of the world.There's a
DRUM
in the air of the place, the THRUM and HUM and FLARE of magic, the cymbal-clash of steel and snare of bullets, and the steady beat beatDRUM
beat of the fight.February 23 2012, 20:24:22 UTC 3 months ago
Re: -03 HRS
While the Doctor is frantically doing what he can to keep the chaos outside the bar from spilling inside, somewhere not too far into his own future (but very, very, very far in the past), his universe's version of the Legion of Doom have lured him beneath Stonehenge where the Pandorica awaits. He knows the source of the cracks in the universe now, but there's nothing he can do as he is dragged literally kicking and screaming into the cube, the universe's perfect prison where nothing escapes, not even time.Meanwhile,
somewhereeverywhere: the TARDIS is being pulled inexorably, unstoppably toward something. River does her best to steer the bloody thing, to force an emergency landing. Finally, she feels the exit from the Vortex. All she has to do is open the door and get out, and everything will power down, and the universe will be saved. It takes some creative rigging to override the circuits, but the door unlocks. She pulls them open... only to run into a brick wall. A literal one, sealing off her exit. She looks over her shoulder in time to see the console explode.And over the skies of Milliways, where so many lights are going out... a new star blooms.
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February 23 2012, 20:36:26 UTC 3 months ago
Re: -03 HRS
The shaking's getting worse as Claudia gets closer to finishing, but she's way too invested in this thing to give up now. And through it all, there's one thought that she can't shake loose."It must be Thursday," she says to herself. "I never could get the hang of Thursdays."
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February 23 2012, 20:41:44 UTC 3 months ago
Re: -03 HRS
Upstairs, thingsclatter
are jostled
crash
out of
tinkle-tinkle-tinkle-smash!
their places.
thump thump rattle thump
Things are
clang
jarred
bump
into disarray.
swish-thump, swish-thump flump
Sariel makes the back door, staggering for a second against a blast of unnaturally icy winter air, and doesn't hear a thing that may or may not be going on upstairs.
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February 23 2012, 21:23:31 UTC 3 months ago Edited: February 23 2012, 21:35:12 UTC
Re: -03 HRS
It's not noticeable at first with everything else going on - there is something missing from the great din that howls through the end of the universe. The bar creaks and groans on its foundations, the battle rages both by the lake and among the dying stars......but the lightning has stopped.
Suddenly, with a flash brighter than the hidden sun, a sound rises through the red-tinted tumult of battle. An indescribable shout of triumph, greed, and fury that seems to go beyond sound, piercing into the very heart of those who hear.
And with that shout, the silver hemispheres come together, sending a thick, malevolent column of fire boiling up into the sky, burning away the surrounding gloom with its heat.
The triumphant voice of Orannis the Destroyer howls across the landscape of Milliways like a great wind, echoing against the distant mountains.
Freeeeeeeeee!!!
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February 23 2012, 21:25:34 UTC 3 months ago
Re: -03 HRS
Mal makes it back inside, without grenades and without much hope of finding those he is looking for --But.
"Ma!" he screams. Mal sounds tinny even in his own ears.
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February 23 2012, 21:31:13 UTC 3 months ago Edited: February 23 2012, 21:32:00 UTC
Re: -03 HRS
Among that that are still fighting the influx of creatures from the Darkgate, Teja runs back and forth, exhorting them to keep closer together so they may be shielded more easily, as he has promised Yrael.And now and then, he slays a demon in passing.
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February 23 2012, 22:01:19 UTC 3 months ago Edited: February 23 2012, 22:07:37 UTC
Re: -03 HRS
Crowley is muddy.And angry, and tired - not from the fighting, but from this, all of this, the noise and the blood and the trembling ground and the entire fucking nerve of it, the gall of this fucking disaster to just stroll into his life like an old friend, right when everything was so -
He was so -
He's just muddy, from top to toe, smears and splotches of earth blurring into reddish spatters of something it's probably best not to look too closely at. His sunglasses are long gone, and his eyes are wide and gold-vicious in his head.
He's still standing guard over the bomb, pike in hand, a deepening ring of bodies littering the churned ground around him and his fellow defenders.
He's trying not to think about the fact that for every attacker they cut down, two more seem to take its place. Or about the fact that if the ground keeps shaking like that beneath them - beneath the bomb - it won't be the invaders they'll have to worry about. He's trying not to think about -
Well, suddenly he's not thinking, because something round and glowing and the same yellowish-gold as his eyes has just rolled out from beneath a corpse, and come to rest against his shoe. Distracted, Crowley blinks down at it, and then -
(well, he's not thinking, you see)
- he bends down to scoop it up.
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February 23 2012, 22:38:26 UTC 3 months ago
Re: -03 HRS
Atton, still fighting the tide of creatures from the Darkgate, is starting to flag. His clothes are torn and charred, and there's deep bruising across most of his body and face. He's covered in blood and ichor and scraps of lizard flesh. One arm is crumpled and broken, uselessly mangled up to the shoulder.He has his lightsaber in his good hand, cutting through hordes of creatures with ease - and if every so often he has to pause to steady himself and do a quick self-heal, that's surely not a problem, is it?
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February 23 2012, 23:14:35 UTC 3 months ago
Re: -03 HRS
Raylan loses his feet helping a patron to the safety of the Lost and Found.The second time, he avoids a chunk of a rafter, but pitches face-first into a bouncing wooden stool, seeing stars and supernovas on the way down.
Sideways.
Whatever.
His teeth clack together when he meets the floor.
There's no time to even curse; he has to get back on his feet before he's crushed by inanimate objects or trampled by evacuees.
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February 24 2012, 00:01:56 UTC 3 months ago
Re: -03 HRS
And in the Security Office --Though the shape and design of the cells has changed every so often, the containment spell originally laid down by the magician Tim Hunter is strong, as it has had to be. Strong enough to resist any power seeking to break it; durable enough to last for eons upon eons, if not for eternity. Certainly too strong and too durable to be failing after the mere handful of years since he created it.
And indeed, one could argue that strictly speaking the spell itself is not failing at all. But the bedrock it was laid on, the physical and metaphysical structure it was tied to, is rapidly crumbling.
From a practical standpoint it makes very little difference.
Over the past hour, one after another, the cells have been failing. By now every one of them is standing open.
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February 24 2012, 00:41:30 UTC 3 months ago Edited: February 24 2012, 00:42:19 UTC
Re: -03 HRS
This has been a very frustrating day.He can't even locate the Stars the way he would be able to at home, not through all the other magics that are pervading the atmosphere. He's just searching blind, hoping against hope that he can find something and keep it safe, and meanwhile growing ever more certain that someone or something is going to get them before he does and break the whole place.
Aha! There, several yards away, a flash of blue waves breaking the spray of the sea clouds on a stormy day the ice so cold it burns lifting eroding drowning healing being flung from somebody's hand - Felix can't tell, doesn't take the time to notice, whether the person is dead or not. His attention is on the Star, flying through the air. He tries to bring up a slab of rock, to knock it back toward him, but as has been happening more and more it fails. Then he loses sight of the Star as something about twelve feet tall with feathers and entirely too many tongues tries to grab him. By the time that's defeated, he has no idea where it went.
Growling under his breath, he turns and begins hacking his way in about the direction he saw it last.
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February 24 2012, 00:52:16 UTC 3 months ago
Re: -03 HRS
Somewhere in a dark corner of a small box, time has come undone."This," says a voice from within, "is new."
So it goes, so it goes.
February 24 2012, 01:06:55 UTC 3 months ago
Re: -03 HRS
It's too chaotic. Sallie can't move, can't keep looking.So next best thing - stay by the Lost and Found box. Help those who need to get in.
Keep an eye out for Mike.
Please please please
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February 24 2012, 01:20:01 UTC 3 months ago
Re: -03 HRS
When something (ten to one it's the rock demon they've been hunting) cracks her across the shoulderblades and sends her flying, Liz fully expects to connect, hard, with the dusty cavern wall.Instead, she goes catapulting into Milliways, landing painfully on one knee and an elbow on the floor and tumbling -- with the last of the rock-demon-momentum -- under what's left of a table.
Liz stares up at battle-scarred wood.
"Now?" she demands, and then something with teeth is lunging at her face. On reflex, she raises her arm and puts five bullets into its gaping open mouth and it crashes down next to her, gurgling. She sits up and, with a quick glance at the furry body to make sure it isn't moving, rolls out from underneath the table and gets up.
Another one of the things is immediately leaping at her (and, seriously, what are they? she doesn't immediately see any eyes; just fur, claws, and a whole lot of teeth), and she squeezes off a snap-shot. It yelps like a wounded animal midair, blue blood springing from a front paw. In the same instant, Liz ducks, staggering when the heavy body clips her left shoulder while passing overhead, then she spins and puts the monster down. She stands there a half a stunned second, pistol in her right hand as she takes it all in, breathing heavily. Then the whole floor shudders and she rocks with it.
Something that looks suspiciously like a slime-soaked mutant crocodile snaps its jaws together and slithers toward her. Keeping a wary ear on the chaos reigning behind her (fully aware, even from her brief bewildered glance, that there are more creatures, and more Milliways patrons fighting them -- and what sounds and feels a whole lot like the place tearing itself to pieces -- all around), Liz narrows her eyes, lifts her left hand, and lights it on fire.
The crocodile-thing hisses.
"Oh, I'm sorry, do you not like fire?" Liz says, and the red-gold flames coil up higher around her forearm, wrist, hand, and fingers.
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February 24 2012, 01:24:20 UTC 3 months ago
Re: -03 HRS
It's been a while since River was in the bar. Long enough, in fact, to have missed the red sky and growing cracks and assorted other signs of impending doom. It's just the kind of thing that happens sometimes; you get busy, you have the mopping-up from a friend's kidnapping and rescue to deal with, you don't have any particular need to shop for produce, and you don't end up stopping by Milliways for a week or two.And then a door slides open -- River's head snaps around, half the ship away, and she's running -- and she makes it to the right corridor just in time to see the door close on screaming chaos, and her captain's limp body on Serenity's grating.
She ducks long enough to check his pulse. (Still strong. The head wound is minor; he'll come around.)
"Gonna be okay, cap'n," River whispers, and knows she might be lying.
One more stop, to grab her guns, and her sword, and everything else in her ma'sun she can easily carry. And then, a door to Milliways.
This, too, is her jurisdiction.
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February 25 2012, 00:54:59 UTC 3 months ago
Re: -03 HRS
Anthy dips a finger into the pot of curry."Oh," she says, gazing out at the windows, "it needs more garlic."
February 24 2012, 01:25:54 UTC 3 months ago
-02 HRS
The opening of the Darkgate has cast a false night over Milliways, the once-crimson sky now a seething cloud the colour of old, dried blood. But the darkness is not total.Even now, there is light.
The fiery column by the lake reaches up towards the sky from the silvery sphere on the ground, consuming the gloom like the very air feeding the unnatural flames.
It's been growing brighter.
The air is thick, sick, heavy with the smell of Free Magic, harsher and more cruel than even the scent of death that hangs over the field.
And then everything goes:
WHITE
- stark and bleached in a blinding flash of light, and the ground judders even more violently than before. And when the light is gone...
The light is gone.
And so is the sphere.
Until it CRASHES back to the earth with another jarring impact, knocking all those nearby off their feet.
And then
everything
goes:
WHITE
The shields around the sphere have protected Milliways from the worst of the devastation. Inside, however - within the area contained by those working against Orannis, there is nothing left. No grass, no trees, no life. Only ash, and the glass beneath the sphere that once was sand.
A mushroom cloud is rising, darkening the sky even further - but there is still light. Even now, there is light.
Where once the sphere was silver, there is now a ball of liquid fire, crackling against the forces containing it.
The shields are barely holding.
Everywhere - the shields are barely holding.
February 24 2012, 01:32:27 UTC 3 months ago
Re: -02 HRS
Yrael yowls his challenges to Orannis aloud, even as the hot blast of air hits, ash falling from the sky like dark snow.He can feel the weakness in those few shields that are left - and knows Orannis can, too. They won't last much longer.
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February 24 2012, 06:20:21 UTC 3 months ago
-01 HRS
It's too late.You've done well. You all have; so very well. Thank you. But it's too late. The shields are disintegrating. Galactus and Unicron have battered at them too long and too hard; the looping death of the TARDIS has taken it's toll, and that toll is too high. The centre cannot hold.
They spin slowly into the black hole, one after another, silent in the empty void of space. The TARDIS flickers and blooms one last time, and then winks out, like a candle being snuffed. The two destroyers s t r e t c h away, long and terrible, and then they, too, stutter and are gone.
Everything is growing light, decreasing in mass as the end draws near.
The plants in the greenhouse have withered and wilted, choked on the sickness in the air. The water in the lake is boiling; nothing there is left alive.
The horses are screaming in their stable. The rabbits are screaming in their burrows. Baby is curled up small in a shelf behind Bar, two made things together, and they, too, are screaming.
All things must end - even here, at the end of all things.
It's too late.
Milliways is dying.
February 24 2012, 06:36:20 UTC 3 months ago
Re: -01 HRS
All things must end.For thousands upon uncounted thousands of years, it has been the single driving desire of the being known as the Orannis, the Destroyer, Ninth of the Bright Shiners: to witness the destruction of all things.
Some dreams do come true... even if not exactly as one might have wished. All things are indeed ending, but the final victory is not the Destroyer's.
The combined efforts of those standing so valiantly in place of the Seven have succeeded. Blown by waves of wind and lightning-flame, driven by a sword of power and shifted by rumbling earth and the glorious song of the Eighth, its sibling, the gleaming sphere that is Orannis is borne inexorably backward until at the last it slides through the portal of the Darkgate -- and vanishes, irretrievably lost into the dimension beyond.
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February 25 2012, 03:47:55 UTC 3 months ago
"Mrryip?" offers a tiny little voice, as do seven or eight others in rapid succession.
Shephard smiles, and reaches over to scritch the nearest puppy along his first neon blue stripe. "That's right, boy," he says. "You'n the others'n your momma, we're in this shit together. And you know what?"
Mrs. Wilson blinks at him as she nudges a few of the pups closer to the human.
"We gon' git through this somehow. Fuck me if I know how, but we're gonna. We did our part'n now it's down to the Almighty to do his. And he will."
Over there, he thinks, on the other side of the smoking wreck that used to be a table. That's where General Rogers was sitting the first time Shephard ever met him. Where he was sitting, in fact, when he gave Shephard a certain charge.
It's not that Shephard's afraid to die, because he isn't. He's at peace with the Lord and he doesn't worry about what's waiting in the end. It's just that he doesn't think today is the day that end is going to happen.
General Rogers told him he was gonna live, and the Corps with him, and whatever else happens Shephard doesn't reckon the Almighty's gonna make a liar out of Steve Rogers.
February 25 2012, 03:55:02 UTC 3 months ago
If his eye follows the blood trail the darkness will resolve itself into a vast and familiar shape.
"Well met." Kreyu's voice is unfathomably weary, a worn sound instead of its usual rumble.
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February 25 2012, 06:28:26 UTC 3 months ago
00 HRS
It's too late.The air is thin now. Everything is so light; even the tremors don't seem so strong anymore.
All that remains is this: love, life, friends.
Piece by piece, the sky starts to break away, streaming away like banners towards the heart of the black hole. Piece by piece, the bedrock starts to follow.
The TARDIS snuffs out like a candle; Galactus and Unicron stutter again, and are once more gone.
All of Milliways leans in, narrowing down, focusing towards that one most important point.
The pike gets there first.
The wave that rolls out towards Milliways is blinding; bright, light, fire, energy, white, free-falling, bright, bright -
February 25 2012, 12:58:17 UTC 3 months ago
Re: 00 HRS
Claudia doesn't have time to turn off the bridge device. She doesn't have time to catch her breath. She barely has time to close her eyes against the bright, bright, bright light--(I'm free-fallin' out into nothing)
--and even that doesn't help, not really, and she's thinking Joshua Artie Myka Pete Leena guys I love you I'm sorry
(I live this moment as my last)
because really, everyone here knows they're going down with the ship, and everyone who had the sense or ability to get home knows there may not be a ship to come back to. She just hopes everyone at home gets the message somehow.
(every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end)
...but is it her imagination, some last desperate completely insane hope... or are they falling away from the black hole?
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