(you can pm me here or on plurk if you'd like to beforehand, but also if you'd just like to drop something at my doorstep with no preamble please do!!)
[ For a moment he thinks – hopes, with the sick thrill of a man who has come to appreciate unknowable beasts – that the colossal Behemoth will solidify, and then he's gone, golden Cheshire grin lingering in the air just long enough for Maruki to wonder if this has happened before. Not this, exactly, this type of full blown manifestation. But if there have been other times that signs of Ábramar have blinked in and out of his reality.
His old reality.
There is so much to explain. ]
Come, this way.
[ The Palace is massive, sprawling and pristine. It has taken the Phantom Thieves several visits and a tremendous amount of painful work to manage to fight their way into the garden – hours spent winding up spiral staircases, through exam rooms, into the tight and dark corridors behind the scenes, pawing through boxes of his own memories, arguing with each other over puzzles, consulting maps, doubling back, leaving and returning again and again.
But this is, for all intents and purposes, Maruki's home. He has not left the Metaverse since Christmas Eve. Outside of one trip that he knows he needs to make, to pay a visit to that humble cafe, he doesn't intend to leave until the fusion of Mementos and the real world is complete – and even then, even after his new world is born, he can't imagine he'll leave more than occasionally.
It is of his design, and he has come to know every inch of it as if it were his own flesh and blood. Even the parts that he had let mutate to better suit Yoshizawa still belong to him. Ábramar is right in calling him the master of the domain, and the master of the domain has special privileges.
He leads Ábramar through the lobby doors and into the entrance hall, with its great swaths of golden cables and its cognitions puttering around, and speaks as they walk purposefully up toward the center of the room. ]
I did wonder if you would still be able to contact me after I began to change this reality. I should have known that a little thing like that wouldn't stop you – in fact, it seems that it's only made it easier for you to make yourself known. That was an unintended effect on my part, but I have to say it's a happy one– ah, here we are.
[ 'Here they are' is an elevator, like any other in the place. When the Phantom Thieves went through it, it took them to yet another level to weave around and battle Shadows.
Maruki presses a hand against the door, and that wave of iridescence returns, like the hazy mirage of a hot day. Azathoth has created these shortcuts for him, and there is none that he uses more often than this. When he is implored to step away from his work and rest, there is only one place that he wants to do it.
It doesn't take them to the next level. It transports them directly to the very heart of his psientific model Eden, sprawling and lush, teeming with wildflowers in all colors. The grand marble gazebo that they exit onto at one end, and the massive Tree of Knowledge at the other. His heart lifts to see it, shoulders untensing and breath coming easier.
Maruki smiles at Ábramar then, warm and wide. ]
Welcome to paradise, my friend. I really am so glad you could make it.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
don't mind me handwaving his palace's bitch of a layout
His old reality.
There is so much to explain. ]
Come, this way.
[ The Palace is massive, sprawling and pristine. It has taken the Phantom Thieves several visits and a tremendous amount of painful work to manage to fight their way into the garden – hours spent winding up spiral staircases, through exam rooms, into the tight and dark corridors behind the scenes, pawing through boxes of his own memories, arguing with each other over puzzles, consulting maps, doubling back, leaving and returning again and again.
But this is, for all intents and purposes, Maruki's home. He has not left the Metaverse since Christmas Eve. Outside of one trip that he knows he needs to make, to pay a visit to that humble cafe, he doesn't intend to leave until the fusion of Mementos and the real world is complete – and even then, even after his new world is born, he can't imagine he'll leave more than occasionally.
It is of his design, and he has come to know every inch of it as if it were his own flesh and blood. Even the parts that he had let mutate to better suit Yoshizawa still belong to him. Ábramar is right in calling him the master of the domain, and the master of the domain has special privileges.
He leads Ábramar through the lobby doors and into the entrance hall, with its great swaths of golden cables and its cognitions puttering around, and speaks as they walk purposefully up toward the center of the room. ]
I did wonder if you would still be able to contact me after I began to change this reality. I should have known that a little thing like that wouldn't stop you – in fact, it seems that it's only made it easier for you to make yourself known. That was an unintended effect on my part, but I have to say it's a happy one– ah, here we are.
[ 'Here they are' is an elevator, like any other in the place. When the Phantom Thieves went through it, it took them to yet another level to weave around and battle Shadows.
Maruki presses a hand against the door, and that wave of iridescence returns, like the hazy mirage of a hot day. Azathoth has created these shortcuts for him, and there is none that he uses more often than this. When he is implored to step away from his work and rest, there is only one place that he wants to do it.
It doesn't take them to the next level. It transports them directly to the very heart of his psientific model Eden, sprawling and lush, teeming with wildflowers in all colors. The grand marble gazebo that they exit onto at one end, and the massive Tree of Knowledge at the other. His heart lifts to see it, shoulders untensing and breath coming easier.
Maruki smiles at Ábramar then, warm and wide. ]
Welcome to paradise, my friend. I really am so glad you could make it.