Project: _AI

begin the end

     It was nice inside the crypt.

     It wasn't really a crypt, per se, more a gazebo half made out of gravemarker steles and other ominous materials. The point was, Dea found the Memory Pavilion a calming place to be, especially during trying times. A little escape from Edens.

     Especially good now, seeing as the entire place was burning down around her and had been for, what, the last week?

     Dea traced a hand over the stone tablets as she walked the perimeter like she'd done so many times before, the smooth marble cold and calming to the touch. Grey, white, grey, white, grey, white. Dark, something lost, light, someone lost. Memories and friends.

     Once she'd walked her fingertips raw, Dea decided to climb to the pavilion roof to clear her head. As she drifted upward to settle upon the pavilion roof, she began to smell the decay of the collapse, blood and salt and iron and rot. Began to see and hear it, too: red waters and grey skies and limestone rubble and dirt and ichor, random bursts of dying screams like thunder in a rainstorm. Oh, well. At least it wasn't as noisy as it was 2 hours ago. And she had a nice view.

     Dea sat down and swung her legs as she surveyed the chaos. As she counted the dead and dying, she sang.

"I told you so, the stars were melting away."

     Baz warned her. Baz warned her and she didn't even listen, didn't even try to save her. Now all Dea had of Basil was a tear-soaked little armillary charm and a small ether trace Dea kept in a box. They didn't even leave a fucking body.

"And it's my place to say, today, our lives will never be the same - "

     Lilith tried to tell her that Storm was plotting something. And she still didn't listen. So Storm made sure that Dea would be the first to find her body, right in the wishing fountain at the front of Dea's house that Lili loved so much.

"For we were two of a kind."

     So many of them were two of a kind. Gray, Lukas. Insa, Baz. Vance and Jace. Cyan and Lis. Even Eris and Theodosius.

     Now they were all just... gone. Discarded by Storm who used them all. And for what? This shitty dimension?

     There was only one acceptable option, right? An eye for an eye, true?

     Yes.

     So, therefore, it was justified that Dea flooded the fountain where they found Lilith's body, its' waters tinted red from Lilith's slit throat everywhere for all to see. If all of Edens could make tragedies their newest source of entertainment, then why not the mortals? A pretty show in the sky, a story to transcend the ages. That was always what the Denizens, the Council, Storm, wanted. She was just making an offering to the dead.

     So, therefore, Dea unleashed the chaos of Basil's world upon Edens. The Astral Recesses were only calm because Baz was there to keep them in check. Now that she was gone, the entire place had collapsed into a core fragment that Dea kept on a charm bracelet. If the mortals could believe that the death of a celestial being could create a star, then Dea could bend that formula around in the name of justice. The heavens were a sign of power. Dea was just giving Edens its' favourite thing.

     So, therefore, it was justified. It was only fair, so why wouldn't Edens just accept its' punishment?

     Even while listening to them plead for their lives, Dea still did not think that the few denizens left of Edens had atoned enough for their sins. There were very few left that she wanted to save, and they were not any of them, not hardly. The ones who defected to the Void were the few good ones, and Dea let her head get twisted about even them, damn. Not that she could apologize. They were gone too. Mostly. Their descendants were being sheltered in the Paper Labyrinthe, the only part of Edens Dea didn't plan on removing from existance. Either way, if the Void was allowed to be decimated, then Edens was to follow.

     An eye for an eye, two of a kind.

     She sighed, then coughed, waving the smoke away. The sun was already up, it was high time Dea get back to the Reform. The kids would be worried. She opened her hand, the glass box reappearing. Dea clasped her hands around it, bringing it close, and whispered to it.

     "Soon."

     And with that, she turned and began the journey back, her creation of an end coming to full fruition behind her in a grey implosion of dust.

__
References to Two Of A Kind by GHOST (damn i love that song a bit too much)