Chapter Text
rage against the dying of the light
WynnCraft-Interstellar, ESTNOUverse, POV Ava
Summary: It’s been twenty years since Ava was exiled, and the provinces are dying around her. There’s only one way left to go: to the stars.
(Theme: Mythology) Chapters:
Prologue (Antikythera) 1: Lemnos (island where hephaestus crashed)
Lunaria (Ava) 2: Ark (noah’s ark; a lifeboat)
Post-timeskip Lunaria (Ava) 3: Odyssey (a journey in which there is only one survivor)
Nibbles’ and Tasim’s Planet (Ava) 4: Excalibur (the sword in the lake)
Seaskipper’s Planet (Ava) 5: Lifthrasir (the woman that lives after ragnarok to repopulate)
Interlude (Aster) 6: Yggdrasil (the tree of life that connects the nine realms)
Home (Aster) 7: Avalon (the paradise where Arthurian legends go after death)
Epilogue (Lari) 8: Golgotha (the place where jesus was crucified)
Overall Plot: Aster returns from space to warn the Earthlings that the humyns and wybels predict Earth’s collapse in a few years. Operation: Skybound is made to begin evacuating everyone. First Contact Crew is sent ahead to look for habitable planets. Meanwhile, O:S ropes in as many people as they can and create space-viable structures and vehicles. A city is established on the moon: Lunaria. Bob’s Crew leaves in the Starskipper to check out the planets. First Contact Crew discovered. Mehme drowns on Nibbles’ planet. Lari is defeated on Tasim’s planet. Aster kills Tasim aboard the Starskipper. Antikythera’s mech and Aster are ejected into Gargantua so Antikythera and Ava can make it to Seaskipper’s planet, dubbed Eden. Aster guides his past self by writing in his questbook. He makes it out of Gargantua, losing his powers in the process, and onto Eden where he reunites with Ava. Lari wakes up from where she was hibernating in cryosleep.
Prologue (Antikythera)
Antikythera is connected to a laptop. They’re not far underneath the ruins of the factory anymore. It’s the human that tried to destroy them: Myrmidon. The computer’s speakers are disabled so they can’t do anything but silently fume. Myrmidon explains that Corkus is being threatened by the Decay and the Corruption. The human Corkians are no longer the biggest threat to Corkus. He turns on the speakers and Antikythera agrees to help.
Aster tells his story. The humyns told him they predicted Earth would fall to the Decay and the Corruption in a few years. He said his goodbyes returned to Earth for the first time in decades and contacted The Orange Wybel with this information, despite their status as enemies. He asked for forgiveness and offered help in any way he could to get The Orange Wybel off-planet. The Orange Wybel told Aster he and the other wybels would be leaving, but Nibbles was willing to stay to help, along with any other wybels that got attached to their masters. He visited Bob’s Tomb to ask for advice, and Bob told him that he was bound to this tomb, unable to leave. He wished Aster best of luck. Aster arranged transportation to his housing in Detlas for anyone he thought could help and called them to this meeting. The people in the room include the Corkian Council, the Avos Chief, Yahya’s family, Nibbles, Antikythera, Dr. Legendary, a representative for the Ragni King, and Tasim. It is revealed that he was made the Hero of Corkus a while ago and could’ve called upon the Corkians at any time. Antikythera, who survived on a backup hard drive far beneath the Factory that Aster found with a humyn scanner, deemed the death of Earth to be the greatest threat to Corkus, and agreed to help. Lari, who held back the Dern Beast, Bak’al, and the Decay as long as she could, signs up to join the crew. Nibbles, Tasim, and the Seaskipper Captain (First Contact Crew) leave early, on a ship gifted from the humyns, to search for planets.
Examples of Antikythera writing:
[Action: Assessment]
[Action: Identify: Human: Myrmidon: Threat Level: High]
[Query: [Designation] Antikythera: Online] [Response: 1]
[Request: Assistance] [Response: 0]
[Action: Display: angry.png]
[Statement: Doubt: “Corkus is in danger.”]
[Action: Statement: Query: “What do you mean?”]
[Request: Download] [Response: 0]
[Statement: Exasperation: “If I wanted to destroy you, I would’ve done so before I turned you on.”]
[Request: Download] [Response: 1]
[Action: Download]
[Action: Load File]
[Action: ReadWatchListenUnderstand]
…
Insert long dialogue sequence ft. aster and friends
...
[Action: Function Call]
def threatReaction(threat) {
...
if threat > biggestThreat {
biggestThreat = threat
}
...
}
...
newThreat = new threat(100)
threatReaction(newThreat)
...
[Request: Assistance] [Response: 1]
[Statement: Gratitude: “Let’s get you out of this trash heap then, how about that?”]
Takeoff (Ava)
Ava and Maxie finally return from their beast hunt. They were hunting one of the last remaining dragons, and the dragon told them she was dying and they should use her corpse for the greater good. When they return to Corkus, they find it in a storm of activity. They go to the council room and Aster and Ava reunite. The crew (Aster, Ava, Lari, Mehme, and Antikythera) name themselves Bob’s Crew, as a tribute to the hero that fell and rose again the way the residents of Earth would fall and rise again. They get on their ship (Starskipper, after Seaskipper) and create a portal to the system where the three potentially habitable planets were. It is unknown whether any of the first crew survived.
Nibbles’ Planet (Ava)
Aster, Ava, and Mehme go down to Nibbles’ planet. When they land, they see the wreckage of Nibbles’ ship. Mehme heads out to grab the data Nibbles left behind while Aster follows. Ava realizes there’s a massive wave inbound. None of them have the capability to prevent tidal waves like that. Aster makes it back to the ship by vanishing and spell cycling but Mehme loses his grip on his armor. He manages to throw the data to the ship. Ava and Aster get swamped by the wave. After they fix the shuttle and head back to space, it’s been 23 years for Lari, who spent that time learning as much as she could about Gargantua and the other planets. She realized the tidal nature of Nibbles’ planet early on.
Tasim’s Planet (Ava)
Next up is Tasim’s planet (Mann’s Planet). It’s mountainous, covered in snow, with deep caverns that split the ground so deep it looked like the Sky Islands. They found Tasim’s settlement halfway up one of the mountains, just above the cloud cover. They wake him from his cryochamber and he’s elated to have sentient contact once more. Aster and Lari go out to explore the cave full of materials Tasim mentions while Ava stays behind to inspect the colony he’s starting to build. Tasim locks Ava in the bunker and activates the detonators in the cave. It is revealed that Tasim blames Aster for Aledar’s death. Aster and Lari, both highly mobile sentients, escape the cave. Aster rescues Ava while Lari blocks Tasim from killing Aster. Lari is defeated. Aster and Ava make their escape, not knowing Tasim flew up in his own shuttle aboard the Starskipper. Aster kills Tasim but by then it’s too late and Bob’s crew has to lose weight to avoid Gargantua.
Interlude (Aster)
Aster knows he can’t die. At least, his cause of death will be old age. This, he knows. That is one of the reasons why he falls into the black hole instead of letting Ava go. He finds himself sitting on a wagon to Ragni, from Fruma. He can see all of time at once, across the multiverse, the millions of variations of Chosen Ones. He sees himself. He’s suddenly aware of his past in Fruma but he wipes it away from his memory. Pretends he doesn’t see it. He looks down and notices he’s holding a quill and he realizes he’s the one who’s been giving himself the quests all along. He follows himself on his adventures, writing in his questbook all the while, all of it culminating into his final confrontation with The Hunter. He watches himself on the moon, watches himself lose the walls he built around himself. The twenty years crawl by. He knows it’s time. He writes in the questbook and past-Him starts to look down. The quill turns into dust in his hand. He wakes up.
Seaskipper’s Planet (Ava)
Ava watches Aster’s capsule fall into Gargantua, its descent slowing to a crawl. She knows to him, only a few seconds have passed and it will only take a few seconds to fall, but to her, it will take several thousand years. She has a few hours to gather her thoughts and prepare for the landing. She mourns the loss of the entirety of Bob’s Crew, save for herself. The ship lands roughly on the Seaskipper Captain’s planet (Edmunds’ planet). When she steps outside, she sees life. Nothing sentient, but there’s flora and foreign bugs flying around. She nearly stumbles into a ravine. She can see the remains of someone at the bottom of the ravine. She goes down the rickety wooden staircase and notices the faded blue robes. It’s Seaskipper. He left behind the beginnings of a colony in the ravine, a town with one inhabitant in a crevice on a foreign alien planet.
Home (Aster)
Aster wakes up on a bed in the house of the last citizen in Lutho. She tells him that the Obelisk will protect her and that she will join her fellow eyeless citizens when she’s ready. She tells him he’s been in a coma for twenty years. She tells him the Hunter led her to him. She found him, collapsed, at the Path to Darkness, and has been waiting for him to awaken ever since. He realizes his powers are gone. Utterly bewildered, he sets off to find Farcor the dragon, who is still on the beanstalk. It’ll be a hard journey without his magic. He didn’t intend on taking a final trip around the province to say goodbye, because he just experienced it all as a ghost to his former self, but he didn’t have teleportation scrolls and fast travel was disabled as everyone fled off-world.
Aster makes his way through the Silence Expanse to Detlas, which for the first time in a thousand years, is deserted. He’s at the airship dock before he realizes the airship guy is gone. Probably off to be a pilot for Operation: Skyborn. He reaches Nemract, where the last few Gavelians are still milling about. The boat salesman is gone as well, and when Aster grabs one of the old boats behind the boat stall, they creak and groan under his touch. He stays a few hours to chop trees and craft a boat. He thanks all the gods above for granting him the foresight to keep axes in his bank despite there being no trees on the moon. He makes his boat and sails to Jofash Dock. It’s mechanical, grueling work, traveling by boat. He makes it to Jofash Dock. Well. Where Jofash Dock is supposed to be. It’s been split in half, the water in the bay falling into the void. Farcor is going to die on Earth with Gavel because he will not abandon Gavel. Farcor explains, smugly, that whatever magic he had- there’s two of him, right now. One that is currently falling into Gargantua, a fall that will take a million billion years, and another him. The one standing in mission control. The rule of the multiverse dictates there can only be one Chosen One in each universe, and past-Him was chosen. He sprints down the hall to mission control. The floors are caked with dust. He arrives just in time to catch the last shuttle heading off of Earth. He sneaks off in another shuttle and heads down to Ava/Seaskipper’s planet. He sees her running out of a teal-white dome as he touches down.
Epilogue (Lari)
There’s someone looking at her through the glass. She squints, her thoughts muddled, trying to remember what happened. The last thing she remembers is dragging herself to the cryochamber. She gets pulled out of the cryochamber and she gets handed a magic blanket and a cup of hot cocoa. She asks about the fate of the Starskipper. One of her saviours explains that the Starskipper safely landed on Seaskipper’s planet and have established a growing colony there. They tell her she’s still alive because they injected healing potions into the cryochamber fluid. She learns Aster and Ava are alive. Over the comms, Antikythera says, “Yes, yes, they’re all alive. We made it. You’ve done your job. You’re done.”