>>6284350Smaller flywheels rotate rapidly, humming as they whirl. Iron pistons hiss pneumatic sighs, copper valves opening and closing with automated regularity. If this place had a smell, it would be oil and hot metal, like a vast machine shop.
A world away from the sleek, gleaming technology of the Hollow Sun.
One level down, one level deeper.
“This,” Daegal says, his voice echoing hollowly over the chatter of machines, the purring of mechanisms above and below, “-is what I wanted to show you.”
He begins to walk down a flight of metal steps. It descends to another platform; Other walkways branch off it, some obscured by the humming machinery. Overhead, brass gears the size of banquet tables slowly circle.
The drop below is immense. It descends into infinity.
“I…You’d call it a Reality Loom. <span class="mu-i">How</span> it works isn’t important - Just what it does. It-” He hesitates, searching for the words. “It spins things out of the Red,” Kazuya says, finally. “It binds information with the physical world. Makes them <span class="mu-i">real</span>. That’s how the Hollow Sun creates things; It takes a template of how things are supposed to be, and superimposes them on what <span class="mu-i">is</span>.”
A muted crackle of static, from deep within.
“Without the Hollow sun, it’d build up interference patterns and implode, but…As the Shroud collapses, there’s a weak point in the fabric between the Red and the world - <span class="mu-i">our</span> world. You could call it…A liminal place, I guess.”
He looks up.
“Normally, we’d have to worry about real-space contamination interfering with its function, but I thought…All of this is going away in four days. We’ll never have to deal with the paradox. Which is why I told myself - What the hell, you know?”
Kazuya lays his hand on a flat block of obsidian. It hums beneath his touch - golden filaments from his gauntlet draw die-straight lines across the terminal’s surface, like sunlight running over water.
“What I’m saying is…This is a miracle machine. It’s a wish-granter. Tell it something, and it’ll bend things towards that outcome. Within reason, of course - the more you change things, the bigger the risk. I…Hell, the Hollow Sun didn’t want me to bring you here. It knows what could happen.”
He really does know you too well.
“But…Ahhhh, shit. I thought - If anyone should get the chance to use this, it’d be you.”
[ ] “This is dangerous, isn’t it?”
[ ] “What are the limits?”
[ ] “Kazuya…What aren’t you telling me?”
[ ] “This - It’s going to cost you something, isn’t it?”
[ ] “Why don’t you want the others to know?”
[ ] Free
YOU HAVE CONTROL
