@grcdientshift
Simon doesn't know how he's still standing. Repainted, remade, mortally wounded and yet still moving: he bleeds golden chroma from the tattered remains of his left arm, severed just above the elbow during his fight with the Axon. He no longer bleeds red — he bleeds golden, silver, shimmering — he holds the power to unmake in his fingertips, a gift given by Aline.
But he rebels. Instead of going under the Monolith, he came here. He was met by the strange entity of legends, friendly and soft and sympathetic, claiming to know where the true Clea was. Where the heart of all these monsters came from ——
And so he's here. He's here, in this —— strange, terrible Atelier, floating so high in a way that his normally so pragmatic self would balk at had he already not been taken apart and remade. He's fought his way through, but it's easy, now: god, those horrors that were hard, impossible fights not so long ago now fall before him easily, even one-armed and he is and as half-dead as he feels.
New Nevrons fall, and the remade Sword of Lumiére walks on.
The final door opens, and he comes through, shoulder on his good side slumping heavy against the crooked, strange doorframe — the sight before his ruined eyes is bizarre, strange, everything swirling and strange, nonsensical. Canvases so large as to seem to contain universes ——
And her. And, oh, her.
" Clea. " And he straightens, and his voice is still sound, still him. The massive sword of light is left at the entry, thrust into the stone with a hiss, as smooth as if it were butter — and he doesn't even know if he needs to breathe anymore but he feels the air burning in his lungs regardless. " Clea. "
