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 Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2024 6:51 pm
It hadn't been Niter's preference to speak with General-King Faustite, but he'd been admonished time and again for trying to hide behind Jet for that part, and now sufficiently burdened with guilt, he stood before the burning boy's door. He'd been aware of the stories, of course – stories of people being bodily blown back out the door and into the stone wall, often enough that the maid senshi who hung around him had to pass by daily to clear away the soot and bloodstains. He'd heard that his team had to constantly prove that they were more useful than their starseeds, that he regularly marched senshi out into the Rift and dangled them like fodder to motivate the youma, and that he had a room in the secret Castle basement full of the limbless, living Transcendeds that he kept for spare energy.
He'd also heard that Faustite fed exclusively on the flesh of men, which meant Niter was likely to get eaten alive if he misstepped. And one of the Lieutenants told him that Faustite had already devoured six senshi this week and showed no signs of being sated yet. Niter would mark lucky senshi number seven.
It was with heavy resignation that Niter finally knocked, though it was perhaps so faint that Faustite hadn't heard. If he didn't, Niter supposed that was fine; he wasn't sure that the information he was looking for was really worth his life, and as he stood before the door ruminating about it all, he became quite certain that anything he asked of this General-King would certainly cost him his life, and Niter wasn't sure that death would really be the great solver of all of his problems. Or be the solution he was looking for, either.
He was about to turn and leave when he heard a voice from the other side of the door. It sounded like Kamacite.
"Um. No?" Niter called back hesitantly. "It's, um, Niter, sir. I –"
"Enter."
"O-okay." Feeling trapped by his own obedience, Niter turned back toward the door and reached for the handle. He expected it to be hot – hot enough to bake his skin to the metal, by what the Lieutenants kept saying – but it only felt warm. He turned the knob and bade himself entry.
The room was sweltering, like a brick house with no air conditioning in the middle of a hot summer day. Niter hadn't quite started sweating yet, owing to his senshi outfit, undoubtedly, but it was hard not to notice. Just like how it was hard not to notice the strange smell of copper and burnt gunpowder, or the overtly dramatic desk and matching chairs made of twisted, gothic metal and red glass. The room glowed a red-orange that reflected off each silvery fold in the chairs and thorny desk, competing with the thin violets from the crystal formations on the walls.
There was other decor, too. Some kind of writing desk in the corner with framed sheet music on it, a wall-mounted trophy holder displaying the leg of some giant insect, old Christmas decorations, and other oddities that didn't fit with the theme of 'final boss' that the furniture seemed to project.
Niter wasn't prepared to fight a final boss. He didn't have a stack of ninety-nine elixirs sitting in his subspace so he could chug away the damage while inflicting whatever he could. Not that it would save him, he figured – someone that slight had to be a glass cannon, and if Niter failed to dodge but once, he was probably getting oneshot. Starseeded and fed to one of those youma in the rift. Or worse, one of his subordinates. Suppressing a shiver, Niter managed his best and bravest greeting: "Um. Hi."
But Faustite had not so much as glanced up from whatever he was reading on his tablet. "Sit."
Helpless to obey, Niter made his way toward one of the metal sets. He pulled it out just far enough that he could slide in, finding that the cushion itself was weirdly plasticized.
"You wanted to discuss senshi planets."
"Oh, um, yeah."
Flame eyes flickered up to his guest. "Start. Discussing."
"R-Right. So, um… I heard you went to some senshi planets before? And I was wondering if you, like, saw anything useful there. Stuff that we could maybe take back to Negaspace and –"
"Why." The tablet was retired to the desk, seemingly forgotten.
"Why?" Niter echoed, wide-eyed.
Faustite did not speak further.
Niter was expecting Faustite to follow along with the conversation. Maybe he'd have questions, sure, but for him to so abruptly derail everything without any thought to politeness? Niter knew Faustite was part youma, but he hadn't realized that meant he was effectively raised by wolves. Or that he was so conversationally impoverished.
"Um, I guess because I wanted to see if senshi planets could be useful to, um, the Negaverse? Cuz we have them, and –"
"Niter. Do we collect apples?"
"What?" Niter looked up in a panic, then immediately stared back down at his hands. "No, um, not that I know of?"
"Do we pick ******** flowers?"
"N-no?"
"What is it we collect?"
"Energy and starseeds, um, sir." Niter kept staring hard, as if maintaining unblinking eye contact with his hands might alert him to the precise moment that he would be getting starseeded for his insolence.
Faustite studied the boy. It was as if he wanted to shrivel his way into his seat, but the seat would have none of it. He leaned on his elbows as he observed, his arms crossed. "Have you ever heard of a Negaverse colony on a foreign planet?"
"I don't think so? But maybe that's like, need-to-know?"
"There are none."
Niter didn't know what to say. "Oh," he muttered faintly.
"This war has been on for a thousand. years. We have always gathered energy and starseeds. Not once have we mined a planet, farmed it, or harvested it for its resources. Why do you think that is, Niter?"
Oh, he didn't like that the spicy superior was using his name now. Niter's danger meter was already pegged the moment he walked in the door, but this was starting to sound like Final Boss Reaches Second Stage Where Statistically, Most Players Die. Sinking further into his chair, Niter all but whispered, "I don't know?"
It could be anything. It could be that the Negaverse hadn't thought to innovate, or that planets were actually useless, or that they couldn't actually stay on the planet long enough to do anything like that with it, or the resistance on the planet was too much, or…
"We're not paying you to think, are we." Faustite snorted a small puff of smoke. "There's nothing a planet can produce that's more useful than energy. We've no means to get to planets because they're not worth the investment. All we crave is access to its energy. Its core." It was then that he leaned back against his throne-like chair, reading the other boy for what few braincells were still active in his empty head.
"So, um, should I stop looking for a way to get to my planet? I mean, I don't even know what's up there. It could be good? Maybe?" Again, he daren't look up
"What's your real purpose in this?"
"Um…?"
"Banking on an alibi to join the White Moon? Negaverse senshi can't reach their planets."
"Really? Um, how do you know?"
"I have over a ******** dozen of them on my team. None of them can reach space. Even that dead-from-the-neck-up husband of mine who chatted with ******** Ganymede about it. Only way to get there," Faustite pointed skyward, "is to join the enemy.
"I won't ask twice."
Now Niter felt as if the edges of his vision were closing in. Had he said something wrong? He didn't want to join the White Moon. None of this was supposed to be about the White Moon. "I just… Wanted to find something that I could, um…" He paused and drew a shaky breath. He spared a wincing glance at Faustite, who just stared on in intensified silence. "I want to pay the Negaverse back, somehow. For, um, all the help they've given me. Like, because of the Negaverse, I have a better job? And I have housing I can afford, too? And now I'm getting paid to, like, do all the stuff I was asked to do before. It, um, made my life a lot better. So I just… Wanted to find a way to pay everyone back. Something that only I can do."
"You thought your planet was the answer to that question."
"Y-yeah. I was hoping."
This time, Faustite stood. "You're right," he said as he rounded the corner of his desk, "but not in the way you're thinking." He beckoned with a blackened hand, and it was not in Niter's purview to deny him.
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Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2024 8:10 pm
The question burned on his tongue long before he worked up the nerve to ask it. But Niter, ever meek, had to swallow those words and hold them at bay while he and the General-King who, after their discussion, Niter decided he did not like very much, entered the Hall of Shadows. The Hall he liked quite a bit less than he liked Faustite, having gone through it once before, but it was easier to tolerate with dozens upon dozens of the Negaverse's finest filling its lengthy passage. The danger felt far more distant, then, when there were people on all sides who might be taken before him. Now, he was walking in silence and in step with a Sovereign he didn't fully trust to protect him from whatever reaching hands passed beyond the glass.
Faustite hadn't been the talkative type when they were walking through the Castle earlier, but Niter felt his silence in those eerie, oppressive halls. His firelight might have chased away some of the gloom, but Niter didn't know how to feel about his quietude. Was it like a reverential thing? Was he scared? Peering at his face, Niter saw that he mainly just looked alert. Was he concentrating?
Whatever had been the case, they were soon descending the infinite stairs toward the bottom, where they would find passage to the Rift. Despite their earlier discussion, Niter was quite readily convinced that Faustite saw fit to dispose of him there. He'd end up a snack for whichever youma was Faustite's most loyal, and then he'd be off to find a new stupid senshi to feed to the proverbial wolves. That would be how Niter would pay back the Negaverse for all of its succor – as a snack for one of its infinite, undying soldiers that would probably forget about the meal five minutes later.
Niter's shoulders slumped inward as they rounded the narrow spiral. Faustite looked small from behind, like he was warped by his youma side and made to fit in ancient, uncomfortable halls like these. Of course, they weren't much similar to Dark Souls' vaulted ceilings and endlessly tall buildings, mainly because that game wanted people to die of fall damage as much as possible, but it got Niter thinking that spaces like these were more historically accurate. Maybe that one Lieutenant was right and Faustite was an immortal creature that was around when the Hall of Shadows was first built. Maybe that was why he fit in it so well.
After an eternity of sharing a tense silence, Faustite finally pushed open the double doors to reveal the foreboding wilderness that was the Rift. As soon as the space was opened to him, Niter could hear the shrieks and howls of distant youma, waiting to have their fill of him.
It was then, when his fear was at its zenith, that he thought to ask. "You mean ascension, right? Not, um, feeding my starseed to a youma?"
Faustite shot him a quizzical look. "The ******** would that have to do with your planet?"
Niter wanted to shrink away from the spicy boy, but doing so promised certain doom, so he sort of scrunched himself up in a way that was more befitting of wearing a hoodie than standing around in skimpy senshi clothing. "I… don't know?"
Faustite sighed as he started their descent through the steppe. "You're Jet's. You have any idea how pissy he'd be with me if I killed one of his senshi?"
"Um…"
"It's rhetorical."
"Oh."
Faustite led as if he was navigating the city of his birth, which led Niter to believe that he might have actually been born here. The way he followed what seemed like invisible paths with such certainty, or dismissed the occasional curious youma without a single word, and most of the rest intrinsically understood that Niter was none of their business spoke of more experience than the average agent, he imagined. He had to have been born there, right? Maybe he was a youma turned half-human and –
"Have you been to the tower?" Faustite kept his attention trained ahead as they walked the long, craggy paths through the Rift.
"No, never. I mean, I've heard about it? Jet told me a little bit about ascension, but…" He paused, casting a glance around in case any youma were closing in on them. "I guess I was hoping there was something else I could do. Where I didn't just, like, sacrifice a whole bunch of stuff that makes me human if I could avoid it, you know?"
But Faustite had stopped, which meant Niter then stopped, and Niter realized, belatedly, that Faustite was staring at him. And it was a very unsettling experience for someone with fire for irises to be staring him down like that, so Niter immediately stared at the violet-tinged pebbles at his feet.
"N-no offense. I mean, you're just as human as the rest of us?"
"Don't be dense."
"What do you mean?"
Faustite about-faced, then beckoned for Niter to follow. The senshi, sensing he didn't have a choice in the matter, then jogged to catch up.
It was only when they were moving again that Faustite dabbled in an explanation. "People idolize humanity like it's what defines you. Then they call it a sacrifice. They say you lose it when you become part youma, or when you ascend."
Niter wasn't sure if he was a captive audience or if he should truly speak up about the matter. He wasn't sure how the end result could be any other way: people were born human, and then something happened to them and they weren't human anymore. Youma weren't human, as far as he was concerned, but they used to be, and that sounded like a loss to him. And ascension, from what Jet had said, sounded like sacrificing some of the parts of his life that he was entitled to, as a human, in exchange for whatever he got out of that. Which, come to think of it, he wasn't really sure what he was getting other than a sense of paying the Negaverse back.
Come to think of it, would he still care about that sense of fulfillment afterward? Would he be able to feel it?
Feeling the pressure of a response on him, Niter answered hastily. "Isn't it a loss?"
"It's a change," Faustite corrected nigh immediately. "A change that grows familiar."
Whatever he was trying to say, Niter missed it.
"Thought it was a loss, too. When I first changed, I mourned it like I lost some core piece of myself. Wasn't human anymore, Ended up missing parts that all humans are supposed to have. Might as well be someone else entirely."
"Um, that sounds right."
"It's anthropocentric garbage. You'll learn that for yourself once you step inside the tower." Faustite didn't seem like he was open for suggestions about visiting the tower some other time, either.
Niter wasn't sure how he felt about that. On one hand, he didn't want to dismiss experiences that he never lived. But on the other hand, there was something distinctly inhuman about Faustite that wanted to discredit his story. And it didn't quite feel to Niter like Faustite was intentionally leading him on or gaslighting him, for he seemed readily convinced by his own point of view. Still, it struck Niter like unrealized hopes that had been left to fester for too long and congealed into delusions – delusions that he hadn't truly lost anything. That, by belonging in a nightmarish landscape like this, he was only different from any given human.
It was hard for Niter to see through Faustite's middle and spy the rocks ahead while hearing that Faustite hadn't lost anything, he'd just changed. Niter kept the piteousness of those statements to himself.
"So, um, have you met an ascended senshi?"
It wasn't a graceful segue, but Niter hoped that Faustite would overlook it, given his own lack of social finesse.
"Only met one. Alkaid."
"What were they like?" Maybe hearing about one would sell him on this weird, impromptu trip.
"Didn't care much for feelings. Reminded me of youma. Was like she pantomimed emotions without fully understanding them. But she'd been around a long time, was an effective soldier. Worth looking up to, for a while."
"For a while?"
A youma roared loudly enough for Niter to jump once it reached his ears, and he tucked himself closer to Faustite. Weathered the heat for it, too. Faustite said nothing of it.
"Haven't seen her since we reclaimed the Tower of Portunus."
Niter opened his mouth to ask what that was, but soon realized it was likely their destination. He thought that, maybe, they'd call it something like Tower of Ascension because the Negaverse didn't have a whole lot of imagination about these things and they didn't want to forget what it did. Or they'd give it a super edgelord name, like Tower of a Thousand Shattered Stars because it sounded violent and formidable. Niter didn't know what a Portunus was. Maybe it was like a Patronus? Or he'd be forced to fight a boss named Portunus at the top of the tower? He almost wanted to ask, but Faustite seemed like he'd have no idea what Niter was talking about, and he seldom seemed in the mood for humoring anyone.
"Did she, um, look different?"
For whatever the reason, there was a delay in Faustite's response. His attention was fixed on a hill that fast loomed ahead of them. "Never met her when she was human. But she looked like a porcelain doll that was dropped and poorly glued together, if the glue was black and made of chaos energy. Otherwise, she looked human, if that was what concerned you."
Niter supposed that looks weren't quite the crux of his worries. So, with a breath, he followed up as precisely as he could. "Was she in pain?"
"Doubt she could feel pain anymore."
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Posted: Thu Jan 18, 2024 1:43 pm
Their ascent through the tower reminded him of the Hall of Shadows. They had very little in common beyond being two ancient spiral staircases at that moment, as the tower lacked a glass wall full of nightmares staring back at him, but Niter thought about it all the same. It would have been nice, he thought, if they were returning from their jaunt in the Rift. If Faustite was taking him back to the Castle to let him think about if he wanted to ascend or not. It sounded like a lot.
They spoke a margin more on the way, before they started climbing the staircase in silence, and it left Niter less hopeful for the outcome. Faustite didn't seem like the patient type. He also didn't seem gentle like Jet, or like he really cared about Niter's best interests. Granted, Niter didn't know what his best interests were, either; he would have been content to just drain energy for years to come and work the minimum necessary to keep the lights on, the Mountain Dew in the fridge, and the new games rotating. Maybe that would be considered leeching, though.
He tried to think about if it was Jet with him, and Jet was taking him to the tower. He'd probably be doing it to allay some of Niter's anxieties, or just show him around and explain what the tower did. He didn't seem too sure about it himself, though, and Faustite didn't seem a whole lot more sure about ascension, either. So, they'd probably go up, then look around like two people who didn't know much about the place they were in, and then either learn something or dip out. And maybe they'd revisit a few more times before Niter made a decision.
And Niter's decision, as he digested who Alkaid was and how she seemed to be, was leaning toward no. Maybe there was something else out there that only he could do. Maybe his magic could do something powerful if he hit Eternal. Maybe he could bring them a Princess's starseed somehow, he didn't know.
But he didn't think throwing away the things he cared about was the answer. No more video games, no more Mountain Dew, just so the Negaverse could have access to a bunch more energy.
Being less human? Not human? Human adjacent? Didn't seem like a good time, either. Faustite looked and seemed pretty miserable. It was like he begrudged people for being unable to participate in society and blamed it on them somehow, though Niter was reasonably sure that the DC general populace wasn't responsible for his youmafication. Niter didn't want to end up like that, even if it gave him like six spouses and a hundred people on a team that worked under him. For one, that sounded like way more responsibility than Niter ever wanted. For two, that sounded like a life without video games, because he was pretty sure Faustite wouldn't play very well with nails that long.
Then they reached the last room at the top of the tower. Faustite entered first, beckoning Niter in. It was only when Niter crossed the threshold that the vast, star-flecked dome lit up and began to shine down at them. Niter stared at it, transfixed; it was startling to him to watch the way the ceiling, like a series of discs, rotated each of those stars gradually. Somewhere up there, Nycticorax was probably floating around.
Niter took only a couple steps past the threshold. He was still looking up at the stars, though something told him to be aware of the podium, too. That was probably where Faustite was going to give a speech and have Niter all ascended and such.
"So, is this where you give me an ultimatum? Like either I ascend, or you like, eat my sister or something?"
He couldn't see Faustite, but he heard him just fine. "What the ******** thought that was how this was supposed to go, though."
"Who the ******** told you I would eat your sister? Get the ******** out with those ideas." He did start to pace toward the podium, however. "Don't have an ultimatum for you. Can't shackle you to the podium and make you ascend. Doubt it would work with you as you are."
"Huh?" Niter tore his gaze away from the heavenly caricature to look at Faustite. "Then why are we here, if it won't work? Oh, were you trying to like, show me around so I would be less anxious about it?"
"No," Faustite spat back. "I'm not your ******** babysitter. But if you're serious about paying back the Negaverse, if you weren't talking out your a**, then I can give you the power to pull it off."
"I thought that had to, like, have paperwork attached. And go through proper channels so people – …"
Faustite was staring at him. Niter was beginning to get the idea that he should keep his mouth shut about the do's and don'ts of Negaverse protocol. It was the way Jet always did it, though, always by the books, so it wasn't Niter's fault that he didn't conceive of other means. Like asking forgiveness instead of permission.
Niter had to remind himself that Faustite was very different from Jet. He didn't seem very easy to understand, and he must have thought about things a lot differently in order to come up with the viewpoints he had about being human. So, Niter shoved his hands in his pockets about it, glanced back at the sky, then stared at the floor.
"And if I say no?"
"Then we both wasted our time."
Yeah, not at all like Jet, who would probably be telling him that it was okay to have doubts. And that it was just as acceptable to stay human and keep doing the things he'd been doing. And that did sound nice, because he'd probably work off that debt over time – or would he? If they were paying him for his services now, on top of giving him power, and a job, and a place to live, how else was he going to outpace that?
Suddenly the decision wasn't so easy to make. "And you're sure this would, like, pay them back completely? For everything?"
"Fully and forever more."
"But they're like, paying me monthly now. And they gave me a job, and a place to live, and power and stuff."
But Faustite was just staring at him again. It occurred to Niter, belatedly, that Faustite looked very young. Younger than Jet, though he thought they were supposed to be the same age. Maybe he didn't know what it meant to be homeless, or unable to pay for food, or unable to find a job that didn't just abuse him out of existence. Maybe he skipped all those parts because he never got there before he was youmafied.
"Do you know how much those mean to me?" Niter ventured.
Faustite shook his head. "I know how much energy means to the Negaverse. That you can give Her a planet's worth of it is an opportunity only senshi like you have."
"So you're really not forcing me?"
"You sound like you want me to."
This time, Niter fell silent. It would've been easier if he didn't have to make the decision himself. If he didn't have to consider the ramifications of it, how it affected his life, how it affected his family, and then own the decision thereafter, with all its consequences included. But, if Faustite had forced him, then would it feel as though he was paying the Negaverse back for all it had done for him? Or would it feel like slavery for failing to pay them back on terms that were never made clear? Wouldn't he just begrudge Faustite for however long it lasted? Or would hate be robbed from him, too?
There were no guarantees, he understood, beyond that he would change and that Metallia would get her energy out of his planet. No one really understood all the ins and outs of ascension, the Sovereigns included. The people who did know were the people who went through it, and Niter hadn't been able to find them to ask.
It wasn't going to be an informed decision, but it was a decision that was undeniably his. Maybe that was the best he could ask for.
Faustite stirred from where he was perched against the podium. "When I was a Captain, I met a Lieutenant who was holding a senshi hostage. Trying to feel her out and talk her over. That kept on for months, and I got tired of waiting to see results. So I visited that Lieutenant in her home, cut her ear off, and kept it in a freezer. Told her she had three days: either bring the senshi over or bring me her starseed, and we'd reattach her ear. If she didn't, she'd be maimed for life. Guess which option she chose."
"Um…" How was he supposed to know? Niter couldn't think of any Negaverse officers he knew who were missing ears. Which in itself was unsettling and high key terrifying, but Niter tried not to focus on that part. "She brought the senshi over and got to keep her ear?"
Faustite did not move as he held Niter's gaze. "She left the Negaverse."
"Oh. Um, that sucks."
"Doesn't it."
"So…"
"Can't always force the conclusion you want."
"Oh."
The room fell silent again. As much as Niter recognized that this would have a very distinct impact on the things he enjoyed and the stuff he was able to do, a part of him did truly want for this. It wasn't the accolades or the promotion or whatever responsibilities came out of both of those things, it was the opportunity to settle the books. To feel like he didn't owe the Negaverse anymore, that they were square, that he was finally a contributing member somewhere and he wasn't being looked down on by his grandmother who so preferred his cousin. He didn't really find anywhere else that he fit in. Not online, not at school or work. It was the Negaverse that made a home for shy people like him, and didn't ask too many questions when those shy people needed to disappear for a while.
"Do you think… Um, do you think I'll be less anxious if I do this?" He glanced at Faustite, feeling hopeful.
But Faustite's response held an ominousness to it that Niter struggled to explain. "I don't think there will be anything left to fear."
"Is that because I'll be the thing to fear?"
"Maybe. I just don't think anything will touch you the way it does now."
Niter sighed. All these questions were just pulling him about like a tug-of-war rope over the chasm of the decision that awaited him. Nothing he asked seemed to give him the answer that would make the choice seem like a definitive yes or no. That was, perhaps, the worst part: knowing that he wouldn't fully understand the consequences of the decision he made before he made that decision. He knew, just as well, that he could always revisit this decision in the future if he turned it down. He suspected that, in the future, it wouldn't be Faustite standing in the room with him, making it all sweltering and uncomfortable and giving him torture stories out of nowhere.
And maybe those would be good things. Maybe he'd have Jet with him, explaining everything to him, again, and every three months or so they could work up to the big choice. And in those three months, he'd accumulate more debts to the Negaverse. More reasons to pay them back faster, more robustly than before.
There might come a day where ascension wouldn't be enough to pay the Negaverse back for all they'd done for him. That was, perhaps, what motivated him most.
"Okay," he heard himself say. "I'll do it."
And it felt a little bit like a death sentence, as soon as the words left him, but maybe that was just the anxiety talking. He felt his heart start to pound and his hands clam up, but he told himself it was just his fear of the unknown. And did he really want to shoulder the burden of his own dependency for the rest of his life?
Faustite wasn't giving him time to process his own answer, either. Soon as he heard the words, he was crossing the gulf of room between them. In a few short steps, here was there, in arm's reach. He was there, reaching unbidden into the dark hole that held Niter's starseed.
Faustite wasn't gentle like Jet, Niter learned in short order. It was like he didn't stop to consider Niter's feelings on the matter before violating his personal space, or causing him all the pain that came with a promotion. Niter had been through it before, so it was familiar to him and he knew to brace for it, but that hadn't stopped him from crying out. It hadn't stopped him from clutching the elbow of the boy before him until he realized it was too hot. But, by the time he wrenched his own hands off burning skin and cloth, by the time he shook them out for how they burned and throbbed, it was done. He had two coquettish black bat wings sitting behind him. And his head felt heavier.
"A warning would have helped?" He whined as he blew on his hands.
Faustite looked unsympathetic. "You had your warning."
"You never said anything."
"I said I would give you the power to ascend if you chose to do it."
"Yeah, but –"
He was already walking toward the pedestal. Niter sighed. He thought he caught the smallest smile on the General-King's face as he gestured for Niter to take the podium.
Niter still didn't want to take the podium. But he also didn't not want to take the podium. And there was a part of him that said he could absolutely take the promotion and run, even though he was pretty sure he'd get devoured by youma within six feet of exiting the traveler's tower. If Faustite didn't eat his starseed first.
What was more confusing was that now he felt more motivated to do it, which wasn't the same as wanting to do it, and motivation was a rare thing to Niter. He took that as a sign that he should finish what he agreed to, even if his starseed still sung with the pain of a certain someone's boiling hot hands holding it like a club. As he stood on the podium, the starry sky above them shifted and darkened as a single planet remained overhead. It was covered in something like a fog, though, and even as Niter craned his head to look at it, he realized that this felt like the right thing to do.
This was something that only he could do. And, like, the Negaverse earned this for helping him for so long. For putting up with him and pulling him a little bit out of his shell, and also letting him live in it. This was where he belonged.
"So that's Nycticorax?" He asked Faustite while staring at the shroud of darkness.
"How the ******** should I know?"
"Oh. Yeah, good point…" Niter mumbled, mostly to himself. He couldn't really make anything out about it, apart from it being vaguely planet-shaped. He couldn't see any part of the surface, in case there were actual resources that were worth more than Faustite thought they were.
"And I'm supposed to hold these things?" He asked again, pointing to the grips on the podium.
Faustite spared them a brief glance before his attention returned to Niter. "Think so."
"Well, okay." He placed his left hand on one of the grips. "Goodbye, planet." Then he placed his right on the other.
Chaos bolted through him at once, in a manner so incredible that his body couldn't decide on a feeling for it. Part of him was in indescribable pain, like his body was rupturing and calcifying simultaneously, but part of him was in the throes of a strange ecstasy, as foreign as the planet that he looked upon.
And part of him simply wasn't there.
Part of him was on another world's paradise, where he looked on at a blue violet ocean lapping against its pale sands. But the next stroke of the ocean against the shore faltered and fell, where a great fissure opened up and swallowed sand and sea alike. Portions of rock jutted up and broke apart, fresh mountains in the making, as blackened energy surged past them. The palm trees, scattered and shriveled as they were, collapsed into desiccated pools once struck by black lightning.
This was the world beyond the shroud. The Nycticorax that he dreamed about while he hunted for some way to repay the Negaverse, He hadn't put much thought to what it would look like when it was blowing up, but he realized, belatedly, that it reminded him a lot of the Frenzied Flame ending in Elden Ring. It was a lonely place, Nycticorax, and in a lot of the same ways, it was a doomed place. And while, yes, he doomed it by his own hand, it likewise felt like the best ending this place could have gotten. All it was doing, otherwise, was floating quietly in space while it slowly died. Wasn't much different from the Lands Between.
The scene didn't last much longer, nor did the agony and exhilaration that shared his body. When he came back to himself, the tower was quiet once more, and the only sign that anything occurred was the bald look of shock on Faustite's face.
For once, Niter wanted to smile about it. Faustite had gotten the tables turned on him after spooking Niter for so long.
"I guess that's it, then, huh?" Niter asked. His voice sounded a little different to his own ears. Flatter, maybe, but there was another quality there that he couldn't place.
"That's it," Faustite replied after he recovered himself.
Niter paused for a moment. Then he said, "I need a nap."Castle
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