They all find seating; either on ancient pipes, displaced sheets of metal, or a strange, half-euclidean square cannon shell. A temporary campsite surrounding the chemical fire, light shedding into the absolute darkness of a seemingly endless hallway that dwarfs the tiny forms of humankind.
Soaked outer layers of clothing left drying against the heat of the flame, a world currently existing in silence as the simple souls of humanity process it all together.
“I need to take a piss.” Madeline suddenly interrupts, standing from the ancient rust of the pipe turned bench. “Alto.”
The young man pauses, looking upwards as her words interrupt him in the midst of prayer. Dedication to each member of a long dead pantheon, a memorized paragraph of text created of strung scripture from each of their own words; their final advisement to humankind passed through the eons upon oral traditions and written words.
In the midst of Stratos and Strata’s prayers of power he answers her, green eyes dancing with the flame of the fire. “Yes?”
No embarrassment, simple statement dictating an informal order. “I kinda need someone to go with me just in case we get another golem coming in.”
“Could Samantha go?” Alto asks nervously, an awareness of opposing sexes made clear to his own clerical training. “It’s…”
“You’re coming with me Alto.” The woman finalizes, turning towards Judge Murphy. A statement harsh in tone, both assurance and guarantee of independence. “Don’t worry gramps, we’ll be back in a minute.”
“There won't be a place to hide if you decide to run.” Judge John Murphy assures with a scowl.
The woman chuckles at the half threat, a lawless icon easily dismissing the statement. “Gods damn alright, we’ll be just around the corner then. Be right back~”
Two hundred meters, two minutes, two souls; a serpentine path down the hallway far enough to conceal themselves against the campsite beyond. A censored moment held between the Gunslinger and the Bandit, interrupted as Alto Carrin averts his eyes from her slender form.
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Madeline breaks the silence, voice barely a whisper amongst the distant echoing roar of water. “This is insane.”
Alto pauses as he realizes the intention of the directed words. “What do you mean?”
Undergarments pulled to her knees, a position now squatting upon a far wall. A short breath taken, words transferred to him. “Do you trust that thing? You saw it, didn’t you?”
Alto doesn’t reply, a gaze kept away from her.
“Aren’t those golems the army of the old gods or something?!” Madeline continues from subsumed books and studies in prestigious universities. “This isn’t… this isn’t something anyone can do. We’re getting pulled into something crazier than we thought, Ar’s gotta be something… something more dangerous. You actually think he’s…” She tries to soften the title, like a child speaking learned swears from school yards, “The Savior?”
In the thousands of years of his restless wandering, the Being can’t place the origin of the term. An interpretation left so open even he questions the actual definition for the people contained within the district.
Separation carving through a once unitary body, the smallest cracks in a collectivist struggle engulfing the brothers and sisters of humankind. A natural drive for conflict, the base existence of humankind found only in the rage, the wars, and the dust of a broken world.
It can perhaps be traced back to the decay of the great enemy; time itself eroding the history of their kind into blabbering bits of scripture. A regression back to the times of faith, at first in celebration and at last reverence in superstition. So easy, in starvation, in suffering, in death; to turn to the comfort of ritual and belief. So easy, in the short, fragmented lives of their civilizations, to lose their once grand legacies through the simple act of destruction.
Hope and comfort in a dying world; the trillions of prayers all for some distant, unknowable savior amongst the sand and rage.
Humanity, no matter its great achievements, no matter how high they ascend; will still search for salvation.
And so will you.
It's her promise to her own kind, the Betrayer’s final vengeance to them all.
The embers of a universe on fire, the finale to everything as the ships above burn a world beneath them.
The Being waits for the man’s answer, a stance unmoving as passive sensors hone into the thin wavelengths of his distant words.
Alto is trapped with two choices, honesty felt within the unseen tragedy of a heart of faith. A life seemingly comes to fruition here in the wet, cold, and dark reaches of the world; one single syllable questions it all. “No.”