RECORDING 16: THE FINAL WEEK.

[foundationmods]

A sixth week in this place begins, with less of your number among you. It's feeling more and more like something's about to break.

There isn't any increase in Miasma, but you can tell it seems...excited. Overjoyed, like a predator bracing itself for the chase of the hunt. The fog is everywhere, and inescapable...

The Temperature is holding stead at the 50's, and nippy to need a layer or two. As before, the rooms have changed, so hopefully you kept anything essential in the static area.

13 of your number still remain.

...How will this all end...?

MIASMA LEVEL: 4
Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday - Friday
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Comments

[oxidegreen]

[It would be her luck, indeed.]

Maybe so. But I've never been in the habit of giving up until it's over with.

[noneforall]

Such pretty words.

[There's a curl to his lips that isn't a smile at all; not quite a baring of teeth, either, but just a movement like peeling back the human-shaped layers until one hits something far graver.]

But do tell: how many endings have you seen? How many times have you truly been able to say, it's over? There are always those fools who don't recognize when they've lost, who insist on crawling onward in the dark, without legs, without arms or face or anything else, just words.

Do you really have anything left worth giving up?

[oxidegreen]

...It would be easier if I didn't. Then you wouldn't have anything left to use against me.

[noneforall]

And that's why I called you a fool. Marona. Even a plant knows to start seeking new direction when it runs repeatedly into the same impenetrable wall -- thus there is no need to use anything against you.

You know why?

[Now he's started taking steps into the room, though he doesn't seem to be approaching Marona herself. Instead he goes directly for the little memorial, stopping an arm's length away to make that same expression of bared predatory intent at it.

Miasma begins to crawl up, to crawl down from the air to twine in the flowers themselves. Still no wilting, but it's hampering the view a little.]

Because everything in this house flows towards the miasma. Lives. Intentions. Each step you take brings you only closer, not farther from that which you seek to escape.

[oxidegreen]

[She watches the display in silence.]

...There are some plants that keep growing. Even when the environment is awful for it.

[noneforall]

That is no longer growing, but self-suffocation.

[Speaking of suffocation, the miasma will finish choking up the view, so now it's just black clouds all around, black clouds all the way across the sky they can't see from here. He doesn't seem especially inclined to lash out with all the accumulated miasma, so maybe he's just here to be unpleasant.

Instead, he waves a lazy hand.]

Take it from me, it's an unsightly process.

[oxidegreen]

You don't have to watch me if you don't want to.

[noneforall]

It doesn't matter whether I watch you or not, because one of us is always watching.

It doesn't matter whether I want to or not, because the curse itself is always hungry for more. It is quite the voracious predator. A little inconvenient, in its own way.

[The 'little' in that sentence is drawled out, a certain amount of something like his old sardonic edge lining it for the briefest moment before draining away into the dark.]

But I suppose in that sense, you're quite good at helping something grow.

[oxidegreen]

Are you still referring to the flowers?

[The ones currently hidden from view, that are hopefully not destroyed?]

[noneforall]

[He gives that its due moment of thought, still lounging in the same place; it's hard to tell whether it's mocking or not.]

No, not just the flowers.

[oxidegreen]

You should work on speaking more clearly.