[ENDGAME] Stage 4; Allegory
The clouds dissipate, and only then do the people below realize that they had never been clouds, by the ashen offal generated by so many bioelectrical creatures in the sky. The atmosphere is a seething, crackling mass of solid Entropi. They bump into one another, passing through and generating wide arcs of lightning, seeming like the whole racial
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Dust sifted upwards in small puffs as she ran through the ruins, shouting out the names of her friends and family, hoping that she might find someone she knew in the midst of this ruination, but yell though she might till she was hoarse, there wasn't a soul to be seen or heard.
"All right," she growled, skidding to a halt, panting. "I'm not going to let this get to me. Maybe they're hiding, waiting to spring out and surprise me. Wouldn't be the first time." She began her search again, this time more calmly, but there was a worm of fear gnawing its way through her guts, and the more she looked, the more desperate she became. Where was everyone? Why was she the last one left?
At last, Atem stood in the same spot she'd found herself, her heart struggling to come to terms with a sudden, shocking revelation. The Entropi were gone, defeated, presumably, and Neocontra was a shell of its former self ... and she was alone. For whatever inconceivable reason, she'd been left behind. Maybe there'd been an exodus, and she'd been forgotten in the confusion, but why? Had she offended her friends and family somehow? Granted, she could be a bit rough around the edges, but surely those who loved her knew better than to think she was a bitch on purpose, right? After all, she'd never been the most social of creatures to begin with, thanks largely to her royal heritage, and her tendency to explode with the slightest provocation had been her natural defence, a way of coping with suddenly being thrust into the limelight of human interaction.
But had she been too much for even her loved ones to handle? Maybe they were all safe at home, thinking themselves well rid of her. Maybe she'd never really belonged in the modern world at all. She was, after all, over 3000 years old, and a freak of nature to boot, a male-turned-female through the puzzle's strange magic. An old, faded relic, better dead, kept alive only by magic. An old, tired, has been. A dead god walking. A zombie.
With an angry scream, she broke the chain holding the puzzle, and hurled it to the ground, watching with grim satisfaction as it smashed to pieces on the pavement. "Good fucking riddance," she growled. If no one wanted her, if no one truly loved her like they'd claimed, then it was time to be gone from this world.
An all too familiar darkness began creeping over her vision, her knees buckling as the spell keeping her in the physical world unraveled at last, and as she toppled to the ground, the light fading from her eyes, there came a last thought, bitter in its irony. At least there'd be no one foolish enough to try solving the puzzle now.
Her so-called loved ones had gotten what they wanted at last.
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Neocontra
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Atem tumbled from the tree, dead before she even hit the ground.
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