Chapter Text
Grace has never made it this far before.
They’d learned pretty fast that when the Void calls, it's an endless loop until everyone dies. You do the same thing, over and over, in an increasingly growing array of platforms and towers and grindrails and enemies until, eventually, there is only one left. And the last man standing always falls. The Void cackles her delight, and they’re sent back into the main hub until she decides she’s bored again.
It’s just that. Over and over.
Grace is lucky to have a portal back to EE. The other Scapers are not so lucky.
Today, though, something is different. Someone is keeping their run alive.
Grace isn’t sure how long they’ve been going. Twenty iterations of the loop? Maybe thirty? They lost track at fifteen, when the Void screamed her rage and started throwing everything she could at the runners. Grace, consistently, has been in the last few alive, diving and dodging and doing all they can to stay alive, but there’s another. Another that always, without fail, is the last man standing.
And always, without fail, lives.
They’re a guest, that much Grace can tell. The hat is a dead give away. But they aren’t like any guest Grace has ever seen, in the Scape or back home. They’ve got two sets or horns, first of all. Wispy, smokey ones that flicker between white and purple and pink, curling back from the sides of their head and solid black ones that poke out from the top of the hat and slope back. There’s also the giant voidbound scarf clinging to their neck. Grace summoned the scarf before, she knows how….restrictive it can be, but the guest uses it almost like a second pair of arms. The tail, though, that’s what catches Grace’s eye. The guest grapples with it.
It’s a chainlink tail lodged into the base of the guest’s spine, that extends far more than it should and clings way easier than most other grapples Grace has seen. They use it in ways Grace has never seen a grapple used before, moving sideways and even backwards.
That, Grace thinks, is what’s keeping them alive.
Anyways, point is, Grace has never been this far before. So it’s a shock to her when she notices new terrain. Giant floating islands with spiraling platforms – ten of them, to be exact – start appearing scattered around the map once the beacon opens. Inside the spiraling platforms are giant, floating, black crystals.
The first time the pylons appear, Grace is dead. She’s latched onto the guest, the edges of her soul clicked into their’s, when she sees them. The guest sees them, too, because their momentum suddenly shifts. Their tail launches sideways into a grapple point and yanks them towards the first of the crystals. When they get to the platform, they hesitate for a moment, like they aren’t sure what to do. Then, their eye glare flares in time with the star latching the voidbound scarf into place, and suddenly they’re a blur of movement.
The guest moves so fast that, even latched as Grace is with them, she can’t tell exactly what they’re doing. She can only tell that they’re grappling from spiral to spiral, reeling themself in circles around the crystal, and– wait.
The crystal is glowing.
There’s a faint purple hue at the center that’s pulsing outward, growing the longer the guest grapples circles around it until–
An explosion of purple light. Around the world, there are more explosions of purple, one, then two, then four, and then ten. The guest’s crystal is glowing white. They look up at it, and Grace can just see the grim slope of a smirk before they turn and grapple themselves into the beacon.
Her soul shatters at the edges.
When the Void finally reforms them, Grace is curled up behind one of the bookshelves on the intermission island. They can’t get their servos to unlock. There’s a foreboding sense of doom lodged between their gears, holding them in place.
“You…..”
Grace’s whole body goes rigid.
“Were you the ones to wake me? How….. arrogant.” Grace doesn’t know what language that is. It’s not in their database. It’s so animalistic, like something screaming into the void. And yet, they can understand every word being said anyway. The voice, the one beyond the untranslatable language, is cold, like the space between stars, like the absence of light. Like a wilted flower. “What is it that you seek? I hold no answers for you. I do not possess an escape.”
Escape. Grace wants to escape. She wants it please please ple-
“If you came looking for a savior, heed. My. Words.” Blocks of ice settle in Grace’s chest. They cannot move, why can’t they move what is happening somebody help them–
“Do not persist.”
As suddenly as the sense of doom appeared, it was gone. Grace heaved in a breath that they didn’t need to take. Beyond the bookshelves they’re curled behind, they can hear the other runners arguing. The Scapers want to throw the run, Grace thinks. They aren’t opposed to that idea.
Grace blinks. There is scathing silence.
“You–what?” A Scaper asked, sounding incredulous. “You want to keep going. Did you not hear what that giant fucking bug just said?”
Grace grits their teeth and stretches out their stiff limbs. With all the strength they can muster, they pull themselves to the edge of the bookshelf so they can peer around. The guest is in the center of the Scapers, fingers moving furiously. –it would lie. They signed. It’s clear it works for Lady Void, of course it would lie to us.
One of the other Scapers, the one Grace has seen consistently make most of the picks that the Void allows them, scoffs. “That thing is the literal harbinger of doom and gloom. Didn’t you feel it?”
The guest shrugs. It’s an enemy, same as the others.
“It spoke,” the leader snapped, throwing a hand back to the enemy choices. “Those enemies don’t speak.”
Enemies are enemies, the guest signed, baring their teeth. We fight to the end, we don’t quit.
The leader shifted unsteadily on his feet, glancing at the collected Scapers. “Well?” He snapped, raising an eyebrow. “Who wants to keep going then?”
It’s a vast majority, spearheaded by the guest. Dread builds behind Grace’s chestplate. The run leader shrugs and makes the choice.
Grace doesn’t have a chance to settle. The Void laughs her delight as they get pulled to the start.
The next five iterations end just like the first one. Ten pylons lit. The guest grinning their feral delight. A beast of unimaginable, uncontrollable power demanding they cease. Dread, doom, and despair become a constant for Grace the further along they go.
“Leave me to my slumber. Do not test my patience.”
Grace is terrified. She has never felt this before.
“You want an answer? You will discover salvation by joining the abyss that enshrouds us.”
Grace cannot breath.
“Do not let me see you again.”
There is sludge in her gears. Grace cannot move.
“If nothing has taught you your attempts are futile, I shall be the one to put you in your place.”
There is nothing but death ahead of them.