[Area] Seth's Dream dome

Niki, noticing the cracks in the floor, flies up with her functionally superfluous wings and attempts to dodge and deflect what she can of the oncoming onslaught of weapon up-pour.
"That's what I'm trying to say! An effort must be made, but you have the mystery step before profit all wrong!"
"And when there's nothing else left... That is when you have lost all that can be lost! Are you really saying you'd rather be ALONE FOREVER than allow anyone else to live? Because that's COMPLETELY SELFISH!"

---

Ikin, being a mirror void player, is not doing as well under these circumstances. Not only does he miss dodging the cracks, but while he's down, the geyser of weapons just pummel him like swiss cheese.
He begins bleeding quite a bit on the ground.

---

Meanwhile, Dylan is rooted out of his underground bunker by the subterranean attacks. He phases out of there and hides inside of a warp pipe.
He goes down it and arrives at a lower level in the castle.
"This place is falling apart at the seams... I need to disconnect the stage from Seth and his others. Only then will he be safe."
Dylan begins running down a dark backstage hallway. The textures appear to be early debug style, some objects only textured on 2 or 3 sides.

Eventually, Dylan arrives at the Green Room. Or as it should be said, Green Rooms. They seems to all be small honeycomblike rooms with one or more passageways open to other rooms. A glowing path in the floor leads to each next open room.

This is the maze at the center of Seth's mind. At the center of it, if Dylan remembers correctly, there should be something that keeps it tied to this bubble. If he can relinquish ownership, At least then any damage done to the dome will not affect his mind severely.

Dylan begins walking. This might take a while...

Dylan continues his trek deeper into Seth's mind. Because of his passive void abilities, he is nearly undetectable.
It doesn't change the fact that these rooms keep going and going.
If he remembers correctly, there should be a room for every single choice each version of seth has ever had to make. The larger the choice's impact, the larger the room. The vast majority of the rooms seem to be fairly small, accounting for minuscule everyday decisions. Dylan doesn't even stop to try and figure out what each room is, he just keeps to the lit path while going as fast as his legs will take him.

After a while, he finally gets too tired to run and resorts to floating. He doesn't really like floating that much, but he has to get to the core sooner rather than later.

Dylan arrives at a rather large room. He takes the opportunity to stop and rest for a moment. A glass sphere in the middle of the room appears and projects a vague scene over the green honeycomb room.
Everything is a golden yellow and there is a sense of great height.
A harmless masked figure stands in the way of the next room.

Dylan curses his decision to wait long enough for the memory to be loaded. He probably should have rested in a smaller room instead, one with a much less drastic decision.
In order to go forwards, he must knock the masked figure out of the way, in a way that would kill.

Being curious, Dylan decides to take the unlit path instead.

The next room, the sphere shows a rather unfamiliar scene. It seems to feel further forwards than the last.

A figure with lemon-yellow pigtails and a dark bloodstained dress stands in the way of any other further rooms. They have an explosive lemon in their hand, and there is a clear feeling that it could be thrown at any moment.
It's clearly a dead end.

Dylan backpedals out of there and back into the previous room. The imagery is still present in the room.

Knowing he has to follow the lit path to get to the core, he rushes towards the harmless masked figure and pushes them out of the way.
The figure falls and is impaled by a chandelier.

The path forwards is open, but at what cost?
Dylan doesn't have time to ponder the simulated blood on his hands, he has to save Seth's mind.

He continues down the lit path.

Upon landing in her hands, Raine's mace changes slightly. A crown of ornate hour hands spring up in a well-aligned circle, radiating outwards by a slight angle. Several rings of gears magically orbit around the upper part of the handle.
There is a sort of familiarity to it now, like it has a similar presence and feel to the old clockwork mace, but this one is more... refined? Complete? It definitely feels a lot better to hold. There is a lot less malice and a lot more purpose and resolve. Any previous feelings attached to this mace beforehand are still there, just accompanied by more.

If you didn't already know, she was from my timeline. About an hour ago she saved me from the darkness in my heart. It's not gone, it's only pushed out of the way. Honestly I'm surprised she's so forgiving after I literally murdered her.
Sometimes I wonder how a fuck-up like me even keeps getting nice things.

...I shouldn't be distracting you so much, we have a fight to win after all.

The three oversized weapons embedded in the ground groan in movement as they lift, slowly then faster still in an upward disengage that sends debris and weaponry flying in a scattered rain around the battlefield along with three waves of tearing seismic force rushing through the ground in their wake. The destruction it wreaks with almost every action it makes is taking its steady toll on the area, ground jagged and uneven. The section of rubble the scourge sees fit to plant its feet in is askew but its stance remains resolute on it, unmoving from that spot despite the onslaught. But now the bright light of the pillar around it fades to spears of light emanating from fissures below it, leaving it visible without the glare of light.

"....ignorant....."

A circular disc hovering behind it, about the size of its body, rotates slowly at an angle, lit by twelve bright orbs a range of colors. Its elbows and knees are gaps in space but somehow its arms and legs move naturally, those gaps home to crackling black flames that shift from that to new colors in turn. The two wings at its back of black flame raging around prismatic light flare out, and the five arms merge into two as all but one of those ridiculous weapons fade away, held in one of the strengthened appendages. The giant robot and FLord approach with a purpose to them but its eye is alight with its own as it shifts it from one to the other, then to the others in the room.

"who is selfish............ who sacrificed, and, received, nothing....... who was met, with failure......... who, defends, system...... winners and losers......"

The scourge's eye unfocuses as that weapon comes down crackling purple sparks, clashing with the flaming sword and triggering an explosion to knock it back. One of its arms lift now to send arcs of purple, dark red and pinkish lightning toward FLord, the likes of which drag... A wispy red figure out of him, still connected by strands of deep crimson. The thumping heartbeat that thumps with every twitch of those strands, growing more and more numerous as more lance out to connect to the wispy red silhouette and drag it back.

"so many... dead... gone... fighting for life, already lost. nothing left. nothing, but, standing in way..."

Those wings beat, and sickles of razor wind rush through the room amidst a buffeting wall of wind sweeping through. One sickle slices through those tendrils of blood and FLord becomes acutely aware of himself, mental capacity restored just in time for the wall of wind to bowl him over. And behind the heir, a shimmering distortion in space, a dot of white energy that expands into a palm-sized orb. Slowly it grows, ticking to new colors every second as the area around it shimmers prismatic.

"cling to death....... why.......... we..... have to..... you............ why..............."

Dylan continues on the path to power. For some odd reason, one of the walls are made of glass, allowing for rooms on the other side of it to be visible. He's too busy trying to go further here for any real attention to be payed over there. there appears to be a different distribution of big and small rooms between the paths.
Dylan reaches a large room with a separate intersecting path and stops for a moment. He is in a tall sand-dusted hall, standing in front of an occupied throne of metal and stone.
A contract and an inkless pen is placed in front of him. The words on the paper are strangely vivid and legible.

By signing this contract, you, the signer, agree to the following terms and conditions:
If Chronos, your time space mentor extraordinaire, tells you to complete a task, you must complete it no matter what.
You must never let anyone know of this agreement outside of the adjoining parties, if any outsiders learn of this; they must be disposed of immediately. This includes the living, dead, undead, and those of various other planes of existence.
You may only use your time abilities when it is required to complete a task and when specifically allowed by your mentor.
You may not prevent your own tasks from being completed.
If any of these above are violated, the signer gives up their right to be mentored by Chronos and risk being a target to a contingency plan of his own design.
X_________________


To continue on the path, Dylan must sign the contract, just as Seth did before.
He wonders if anyone will be sent after him for learning this secret, but then remembers that he's the best at keeping secrets. Besides, would the proper parties know to strike him down while in Seth's mind? He doubts it.
Dylan winds up pricking his finger on the pen, causing a drop of blood to fall onto the dotted line.
The drop turns black upon sinking in.

The path forwards is opened up. Dylan glances across the way to the parallel room. A figure stands in front of the same other figure upon the same throne, but there is no contract. Dylan walks onwards to the next room.
The ceiling rumbles slightly from the action upstairs, prompting him to break back into a run.
He has to go faster.
He has to reach the end soon.

Dylan keeps going for while, back to flying again to conserve energy. There doesn't seem to be very many large rooms on his side of the other side for a while, but he has a hunch they will be there soon. All the while, parts of the path from other points in time keep intersecting, but not ever crossing the glass barrier.

Eventually though, he reaches a massive complex of large windowed rooms with a quite intricate snaking trail, guiding through a funhouselike labyrinth.
From the other side, a series of medium-large rooms can be seen instead. The shadowy figure on that side has a scythe with a built-in shotgun in his hands.
Dylan appears to have a similar scythe in his hands now, minus the shotgun.
He must complete a terribly long and brutal timeloop aided killing spree.
He's so glad this is only a memory. It doesn't change the fact that it's incredibly messed up.
Of course, he lost all other options when he signed that contract. Dylan had checked a couple of alternate paths on the way and they all ended in either being killed by Chronos somehow or by the blue hole swallowing everything.

"This is just like in those violent video games... they aren't even real... Just go through the motions and get to the end... why did I have to solve that dumb puzzle back there... It's too late to turn back now, I'm already this far."
Dylan takes a deep breath and rushes down the twisted path, wildly swinging at any figmentary target he comes across. In truth, he doesn't know how to use a scythe, but it appears to be moving as if he did know how.

Visions of blood and terror assault Dylan as he just tries to follow the path and expend as little effort as possible at actually trying to complete the killing spree.
Round and round the path loops and loops and he wonders how this clusterfuck of a timeloop was even engineered. Maybe it would make more sense if he tried to pay more attention to it, but right now it just looks like a knotted up mess with an unavoidable beginning and a promised end.

After spending way too much time blindly flailing at hapless victims, Dylan reaches the last one.
It's a girl. One somewhat oddly familiar to Seth.
Kat.
On the other side of the glass, the scythe wielding figure has entered a secret garden.
It was supposed to be her sanctuary.
On both sides, the girl is sleeping.
And she must die.

Dylan closes his eyes and lets the scythe do the work for him.

Though he has seen quite a bit of things in his own time while being held captive by that horrorterror, Dylan still doesn't like this kind of senseless violence. He's a little surprised his moral compass had weathered through the storm mostly intact enough for him to be affected by Seth's memories, but now isn't the time to be pausing for thought, he still has to get to the end.

Dylan opens his eyes, and Kat's dead body lays in bloodstained bedsheets before him.
The path forwards is open. There are no remaining targets.
He looks over to the other side of the glass. The long coat wearing figure is standing there in a similar fashion above the same girl, in a different nightgown.
The blood spilt is all the same.

It seems he wouldn't have been able to avoid this conclusion either way.
Dylan takes a deep breath, and resumes walking along the path, somewhat tired at this point. It seems the rooms are mostly small rooms up ahead from that he can see. The parallel path seems to have a bit more variation at this point in terms of room sizes, but at this point Dylan is too tired to care. He floats forwards on autopilot to rest a little bit.

---

Meanwhile, Ikin sits up after being healed by the life witches and looks about at the chaos. He notices the mostly familiar face not too far away.
"?srekooh dna ,kcajkcalb htiw ?retal ytrap 'tey yaw eht lla deid t'nevah ew wow' a evah annaw .pu wohs ot dediced ohw kool" He waves at the walking enigma, still naked.

---

With Niki, it appears she's been holding back quite a bit, only going with the same old corn and wing dodge thing. At this point, she's given up on trying to reason with this technicolor madman.
"As much as I don't want to do this, it looks like I have no choice but to remove you from this world, just as you have to countless others. GOODBYE, HEIR JORDAN!"

Niki conjures an array of cardboard boxes and now is wearing the cardboard gundam suit, wings sticking out in the back. She spins her cornstaff until it becomes the Divine Produce Scepter. a cornucopia filled with harvested fruit and vegetables, including corn, is twisted around a rather thick solid oak staff. a tiny orange full moon orbits the head of the scepter.
Her hair grows to great lengths and reflects golden light behind it.
She waves her scepter in an arc and five rotating diamonds begin rotating behind her, reflecting the light at odd angles. It is quite dazzling.

Suddenly, from the other direction, while she's busy looking flashy, Hooktail crashes through a side wall and stomps on the scourge at her command. Hooktail is wearing a mr. big shoe from the demented cartoon movie.
There are several stomps downwards.
And then a plane crashes into Hooktail and blows up, making her components go flying.
While that is happening, Niki arranges her diamonds in a lens formation and focuses a beam of light through all five of them, shooting a much more powerful ray of burning light out the other end, aimed right at the tattered heir. She holds the light lazor for a few seconds before taking a moment to think of her next move.