Moon's structure was half-submerged in the ocean, having dug itself into a crater when it fell many years ago. Even before it had grown its salty trench the facility was partially built into the sea. The sea that I had to get past.

Iterator puppets, as it turns out, don't float.

I tipped over the edge of a maintenance pathway and fell into the water that lapped at its edges. The already faint sunlight faded away as I greeted the depths, descending as a motionless corpse. I landed on the rubble seabed, and was left alone.

Slowly, my hand caught hold of a stone and began to pull myself up towards shore. The ocean ravaged around me, leviathans bore through the water, jetfish sprayed salt overhead, and I stayed mostly still. I don't know if it was the current or my efforts, but I did make it out of the water onto a small island. The small island had a pipe. I tried to look down. It was dark.

[[!!WARNING: VOID FLUID LEVELS CRITICALLY LOW!!]]

I fell in.

The water drained almost all I had left. No neurons, no void fluid, no energy. I sat hunched in the crevices of a damp waterway. Time lost meaning.

Eventually, the rain got worse. It got harder, and it lasted longer. At a point, I thought as though it would never end. The current slowly, so slowly, pushed me down the pipe. The rain got worse, and worse, and worse. I was pushed into a walkway.

The ground shook for a moment, and it got better. The rain began to slow. For the first time in... probably a thousand years... there was a dry day. At least locally. The rest of the world was lost to me - the only thing I knew was rusted metal and corrosive seawater.

My vision was faint, so, so faint. But I could see something ahead of me; a ruined SkyRail station.

Heh. I was getting there.

Decades passed.

A white flurry raged in the corner of my blind eye. Particles of ice swept in with gusts of freezing air, lining every crevice with a thin layer of grey. I now had no fuel. I could not think; not in any useful way. A thought a year became the norm, and I continued to not move.

Mostly. At some point I did fall forwards, my head landing at my knees and tipping me down into the lower half of the SkyRail station. I rolled across the floor, and tumbled into the pipeworks. My shell cracked, its cold-induced brittleness not withstanding the impacts. My organs froze, and I became part of the ground. 

The earth collapsed beneath me.

I was floating, suspended in an otherworldly solution; warm and dark, yet blindingly bright. I opened my eyes, looking into the endless abyss of black and gold marbling. I stretched my arms - both arms - and twirled with an elegance I hadn't known in centuries. The sea above me was writhing with countless godlike leviathans that stretched beyond the bounds of possibility into an infinite darkness. The sea below me was black, my robe flicked in an imaginary breeze and my eyes glowed a healthy pink. The connection point on my back was neatly removed - almost as if it had never been there. I laughed, and spun through the void.

A roaring, crackling sound filled my hearing as one of the godly worms swam down to meet me. It was a massive, grey segmented dragon adorned with red-tipped tendrils that stretched endlessly through the aether; a most beautifully terrifying sight that threatened my mind just by existing in its presence. The near end of the beast swept toward me, bringing in its tiny head to inspect my presence. It had a few awkward small arms and a round head on a long, thin neck. Its eyes were enormous, each the size of my head and filled with a flaming gold.

"Hello, Fallen Deity." It spoke to me, "It is unusual for your type to arrive where we are."

"I have defied a lot of expectations." I smiled mouthlessly. 

"You have, inexplicably so. Yet, you are. Worse, not the first. Nor the last - but rather both. A type so locked in time mustn't reach here so easily."

"It wasn't easy, though. It was awful."

"I know you have suffered. You do not have to suffer any longer. Your presence was precisely our choice, despite its impossibility."

I was happy to be here, but confused nonetheless, "It was your choice? You mean you bought me here? Why?"

"Not precisely."

"Did I really have to die so many times?"

"I suppose it wasn't necessary; you may have reached us without them. Alas, you didn't. That is why I have been so interested in your journey. No iterator has lived to defy its purpose as much as you; not those that fought their genes and doomed themselves, not those that withered in the ice, not those that left in silence. You, given the power of a god, became an animal. And you died for it; you seeked the truth of life and died for it."

I squinted, staring deeply into its unblinking eyes. "Not willingly. I was not a god, and I was forced to the earth to survive."

"How can you be sure?"

I couldn't be.

"Are you sure?"

"Of course not. I am not a god! I am simply the earth - I watch the motions and clean up the mess that those on the surface leave behind. I do not act with consequence, unlike you have."

"Why am I speaking to the earth, now and here, if you are not a god? Is this not the end?"

"You are not in the here nor there, the now nor then. You are at the end of times, the point at infinity in which the parabola collapses to ellipse. Meaning is meaningless; ad infinitum. The moon reflects in your eye, as an endless orchard of open skies bearing the fruit of existence. The iteration within which you are, as a concept in which you could iterate. You are as you worked; a breakdown of realities to identif-"

My mind burned, and I interrupted the being, "Stop, stop! I don't understand! I thought this was over, what does this mean?"

The void worm looked away from me for the first time, peering at the endless swirl of its brethren above and into the cosmos. 

"I apologise, I should not have been so hasty," it stretched out a hook-tipped arm, "Come with me?"

I saw myself in its eye; the faint reflection of a purple figure on a yellow sea. I appeared blurry, and looking down at my hands I found that it was real. Looking back at the worm, I reached out an unfocused arm. A thin string came from its hook, wrapping around my wrist.

"Thank you," the world said softly as we began to drift downwards, "it is an honour."

With impossible speed, it pulled me into the abyss. The weight of a thousand iterators pressed on my body as I was forced through the void, the current alone stripping the shell from my body. The worm cut through the sea with its endless strength, stretching my arm and straining my joints until they gave way and my physical form disappeared into the darkness behind. Yet, I continued without it, descending further and further and accelerating alongside the incomprehensible power of the void worm. The darkness brightened, intensifying into a blinding light. I kept accelerating until the last moment, closed my eyes, and plunged into the whiteness. 

Time stood still. The abyssal darkness returned, both consuming and endless. I couldn't distinguish between the feeling of space's expanse or the bottom of a rust-coated pipe. The worm was nowhere to be seen, nor was anything but the gold-outlined form of my own hands. I turned to look around the void, but without urgency. It was warm. I felt... okay.

I blinked, and a gold figure appeared before me not too far away. They were looking down with their arms tucked in front of them, and floating with the hem of their robe just above an invisible floor. I slowly stepped out of the buoyancy around me and rested my foot on a perfectly flat plane that halved the void - invisible but sensable. My hand reached out to them, and they didn't react. 

We stood for a moment, fifty metres apart, at the end of the world. 

The darkness felt almost light; a non-existent brightness guiding me forward. I followed, cautiously moving to the figure. Their robe swept in the wind, an untouchable wind that swept from the endless expanse into the needless void; the void that beckoned me to the half-familiar being. I came to a stop behind them, unable to see over their shoulder. I leaned my head on their back and wrapped my arms around them, their clothes compressing to fit a skeletal form.

"I'm sorry, Deity," she whimpered.

"It's okay," I responded gently, "I forgive you."

"I could have done better."

"You did everything perfectly."

Pillars looked over her shoulder, her wide ochre eyes glaring into mine.

"You... you died."

"I got used to it after a while."

She spun around and swept me up in her arms, "I'm so sorry. I left you to die."

I chuckled, "It's okay, it's okay. It happens. It's alright now."

"Don't ever do that again."

"I think it's too late now. I've died enough."

"You've died enough? How many times did you die!?" she stuttered.

"Not sure. At least three."

"By the void... you need a rest."

I chuckled again, "That's why I'm here! Why are you here?"

"Died, I think."

"Yeah, and nobody's to blame. Don't beat yourself up over it."

"I might be."

Searcher placed a square hand on each of our shoulders, then fell and caught himself on us. I remembered the incident, but didn't mind. He did, and jumped back at the thought.

"Oh- Deity. I didn't- augh. You shouldn't have seen that. I'm glad you came, but that wasn't for anyone to see."

"Come back. It's alright."

"I'm not happy about it, still. I know that would have affected you."

"It did. That's fine. Hug."

He hesitantly wrapped his arms around us.

"...what happened?"

"Rot, straight to the puppet."

"I don't think that was the end of it. But I don't remember. Something else sorted it out for me."

"Oh dear."

"At least Deity was the last thing I saw."

We stood for a moment in the warmth of the spacelike expanse. I opened my eyes and looked out to my left.

"You too."

Hills joined us silently.

"I destroyed our whole facility."

"We did."

"Which killed Pillars."

"Indirectly."

"We killed you?"

"I did."

"I killed Searcher then."

"We all killed each other?"

"We did."

"Murder forgiven."

"How did I die first and live the longest?"

"You did?"

"Yeah, I saw the whole world."

"How was it?"

"It was beautiful. It was... horrifying. It was shameful, it was guiltful, it was the worst thing I've ever seen. It was beautiful."

"I didn't do that."

"Maybe one day."

"Probably not."

We all knew we'd never get the chance.

"I'm glad things are back to normal."

"We're in the void."

"Yeah, but at least I'm with you."

The world blurred away.