The Final Voyage: Part 3

The Fifth's Tales may Exalt the Suns

The Bazaar, now cognizant again, takes a moment to rediscover where it is. When it sees that it is before the Sun, you can almost see its spirit whither and die. The Sun needs not ask its subject to start; its mere presence compels it to.

First, comes the message. A repeat of the Sun's request, a tale of love, a declaration to another star. You have to close your eyes to not grow blind from the Sun's anticipation of the answer, as the Bazaar hesitates to do its final duty. When it comes, you do not need to know the Correspondence to feel the rejection in the air. You do not need to know be a Curator to feel the air grow colder, and to notice the light grow dimmer. You do not need to be a genius to know that something terrible is about to happen.

As soon as it finishes its delivery, the Bazaar's skin starts glowing - each Sigil, each love story, being sent to the Sun in an attempt to soften the blow. Stories of love and of loss, of survival and of fire, of rebirth and of faith. Each of the thousands upon thousands of stories collected from humanity: From Uruk. From Amarna. From Chichen Itza. From Karakorum. From London. From Paris. From Berlin. All in a vain, hopeless attempt to save the sun from its own grief.

It will not be enough. It was never going to be.

Tell it your Love Story Not a love of a person, or a love of a city. Not the love for learning, or the love of changing. No, this is a story of one man's love - for life, for the future, and the myriad joys that it brings.

A tough challenge
Your Watchful quality gives you a 32% chance of success.

A high-risk challenge
Your Shadowy quality gives you a 27% chance of success.

A high-risk challenge
Your Dangerous quality gives you a 28% chance of success.

A high-risk challenge
Your Persuasive quality gives you a 30% chance of success.

A very chancy challenge
Your A Scholar of the Correspondence quality gives you a 42% chance of success.

A chancy challenge
Your Magnanimous quality gives you a 60% chance of success.

A matter of luck: you need a miracle
Your Luck quality gives you a 1% chance of success.

But Never Hope to Halt what Comes

You tell it your story, from beginning to end, from birth to this very moment. You use all of your accumulated knowledge to stir the soul, all of the passion you hold in your heart, all of the love you hold in your being. You speak the Correspondence fluently, and use all of your empathy and compassion - all of your kindness - to save the Sun from its grief.

But though you have achieved monumental goals and changed the face of the Neath forever, though you have climbed the Chain and reforged yourself as a Curator, though you have bound the Bazaar to your service and brought about the impossible; the truth is that you are a mere speck of dust in the face of the cold and uncaring reality created by the Judgements.

You changed the Neath, but this is not the Neath. There is no place for kindness in the High Wilderness.

You were unlucky. There won't be a next time.

A Reckoning, No Longer Postponed

The Sun's grief sends shockwaves that nearly topple you. It pulses, growing colder and colder with each passing second. You know what comes next: The Final Conflagration. The singular moment where the Sun's emotions all explode outward, before it shrinks into complete nothingness. There will be nothing left of the Sun (There will be nothing left of the Sun.) There will be nothing left of the Bazaar (There will be nothing left of the Bazaar.) There will be nothing left of its throne. (There will be nothing left of me.)

You are about to witness the death of a god.

And your own.

Accept your fate
The face of the surface will be changed forever - many there will die. But the Neath will survive. Berlin will survive. You have done all you can. It will have to be enough.
It will have to be enough.

Exalt the Sun

How beautiful would it be if you could? How perfect an ending to an imperfect story?

Not every story has a happy ending.

A marvellous deep city starts to crumble around its denizens. Its beautifully dark architecture that provided home and hope to so many now little more than rubble. On the surface, a man's mouth waters, then fills with blood, as he clutches his chest to die by a pulmonary embolism. A community in the dark crumbles under its own weight; the fear of others destroying everything that it could have been. A revolutionary detonates an Unclear Bomb on the Pillared Sea, but all they get is a reminder of their own mortality.

A group of the dispossessed are discovered by the Ministry, to see no survivors. A surface cultist receives the blue star's gift of oblivion. A creature so far removed from death, could not remove itself from causality. Explorers travel to the Uttermost East, but all they find is death and starvation. Two lovers, separated in dreams, find themselves unable to survive without each other.

A hunter in Parabola dies having saved no one. A seeker of immortality fails in their war against the Elder Continent. A diver of the depths fails to reach the oldest of the flukes. A survivor of the Great Work cannot survive for long. A denizen of Ruined London breathes their last. Seven pilgrims witness their youngest die to its naivety. Something bright and distant, to which you set a course, blinks out completely.

There will be nothing left of you. There will be nothing left of what you were. There will be nothing left of everything you could have been.

A thread is destroyed.

There is nothing left of you--

--but you made a promise.

You made a promise.
You made a promise.
You made a promise.
You made a promise.
You made a promise.
You made a promise.
You made a promise.
You made a promise.
You made a promise.
You made a promise.
You made a promise.
You made a promise.
You made a promise.
You made a promise.
You promised.
You are not home.

The Adulterine Castle, One Final Time

Everything that isn't here has melted away...