Age of Ruin — Sea Voice
Rise from the Abyss
Water Elf magic propels the Hero to the surface, where Tara and Captain Rhubarb have sailed out after seeing a light on the sea. Tara’s hope that the Elves have been found meets a promise to explain when the danger passes. Rhubarb reports civilians walking toward the water as if entranced, while the sea rises to meet them. Water Elementals and monsters overwhelm a coast whose defenders must fight the invasion and keep people from drowning themselves.
Muusa and her guards have arrived, with Swordhaven forces on the way. Rhubarb’s crew has seen the Water Titan in the waves. Neso’s voice booms across the sea, insisting that she is its god and will no longer endure humiliation, abandonment or replacement. She claims the Avatars carved and protected Lore, then casts the deaths of the Water Elves as proof that they needed her guidance. Subsuming Lore into the Plane of Water becomes, in her account, an act of protection.
Tara recognizes a more immediate danger: Neso is breaching into Lore, whose body cannot bear an Avatar’s weight. The Hero explains that Neso has been absorbing Kathool, a being able to exist here despite power comparable to an Avatar’s. Taking that ability would let her occupy the world herself. Kathool interrupts within the Hero’s mind to point out who prevented the absorption from finishing; Tara’s confusion shows she is not sharing this conversation.
Kathool repeats the Hero’s decree that every threat, lie and myth must end. Their exchange recasts the Avatars’ claim to have shaped and protected Lore as a myth concealing an original wish to absorb it into their Planes. The Hero recalls other gods creating Lore in timelines fused into this one and wonders what created the Avatars themselves. These are the conclusions and questions voiced here, not a complete history newly revealed by an impartial witness.
The interruption has weakened Neso and gives the Hero a chance to force her home. Tara and Rhubarb are to protect the coast, with Undine’s liberated staff supporting them from below. Rhubarb takes responsibility for freeing the Titan from Neso’s ambitions. Neso answers the Dragon’s challenge with a threat to dissolve the Hero and make the remains Lore’s last island.
Tara’s current task, Dead Sea, follows See You on the Other Side and calls for one defeat of the Voice in the Sea. The captured definition marks it once-only. Her aim is to drive Neso back rather than kill her, while everyone else holds off the tide and Elementals. Tara also explains what the coronation changed: Kathool’s new domain makes Neso’s continued absorption an overstep like those that harmed the Champions in the Time Stream. Kathool nevertheless remains a dangerous presence whose existence is tied to the Hero’s.
Paper Moon and Tides
Below the duel, Lycegenes reports that the battle favors the Hero, but Neso’s continued presence is dissolving the coast. Shadowscythe and Legion reinforcements may be forced inland with everyone else. Circe and Orpheus suppress Undine’s songs to stop them luring more victims. Non-personnel have been evacuated; the remaining researchers have chosen to stay and support Song.
Song remembers Noelle pushing her away and sacrificing herself after longing so fiercely to return home. The researchers also have homes and families, yet stay because they believe in Song. She turns their loyalty into a new accusation against herself: perhaps inspiring people to die for her makes her more Evil than Dage. He rejects the comparison as a terrible joke, but she presses him on why he is helping at all.
Song explains the Water Elves’ name for their weapon. Behind a man-made dam, a drowning machine is a deadly current that can drag would-be rescuers down with its victim. She sees her guilt as another such trap. Overwork and self-injury have failed to ease it, the prospect of living that way forever feels worse than death, and those trying to save her are being pulled in. Rather than continue measuring whose crimes are worse, she asks what Dage’s own trap is made of.
Dage answers: ego and frustration. He earned his throne through blood and the shedding of his own flesh, yet being both the pinnacle of Evil and a Pillar of Balance has left him afraid of becoming weak and human again. Arrogant posturing led to rash decisions. The Eternal Dragon has seen how he was made and knows he is not invincible. The possibility that the Hero is stronger brings him relief rather than only resentment.
That relief changes what he wants from the Hero. Their allegiances no longer matter to him as much as their worth as confidante and rival. Song teases him about wanting a friend; Dage evades the word with a joke about a formidable means to an end. The humor matters because he is admitting dependence without converting it into another threat or a claim to superiority.
Walking Free
Malgor once told Dage that a traitor would always betray again. To save face by betraying the Hero would prove the accusation right. Dage instead intends to escape his drowning machine and return to his original pursuit of necromancy: freedom and the right to do as he pleases, without a mortal or god stopping him. He distinguishes this personal desire from speaking as the Ruler of the Underworld or the Beast.
Song accepts that she was a fool who was exploited. Forgiveness may never come, but she can treat herself more gently, learn and find joy in making others happy. Saying that she is not Evil forces another admission: she had resisted that thought because it would mean acknowledging her father manipulated her into doing wrong. Her own guilt has also been a defense of him.
Orpheus asks whether Song will now let him be judged for what he has done and go free. Song addresses the familiar voice as Dad, grieving both parents while accepting that she must let go and walk free herself. This is the artificial personality Dage created through Sparagmos, not independent proof that her father has returned. Song’s answer allows the grief and the judgment to coexist.
With the work complete, Song announces that Sparagmos is ready to fire and promises that her path will not cross with Evil again once the sea is calm. Dage answers that they will emerge from the seafoam anew and leave their burdens below. The weapon’s preparation therefore closes a conversation about choosing how to live; neither speaker claims that their earlier harm has vanished.
Tara has warned the Hero what lies directly beneath their feet. The Drowning Machine uses souls to kill beings on the level of Avatars. In her account it has absorbed a dead colossal shadow entity, drawn deeply from Dage and perhaps taken in Chaos. She wonders whether that is enough for one shot. Her description supplies the weapon’s immediate promise without resolving the earlier disagreement over the colossus’s nature.
The Champion of Water
Muusa sees the Elementals weakening and the tide receding as the Hero gains ground. Mi and Fa remain wary of their undead allies, asking whether the aid will turn into betrayal. Rand answers that he and Shakaz are unusually reasonable undead, while allowing that Dage may want Undine and Gravelyn may have other plans. Shakaz warns against celebrating with tidal waves, foreign ships and thunder still overhead.
Neso cannot understand why her stolen form is falling apart. Kathool declares itself the God of the Depths and names the Avatar’s theft as the reason for the pain now tearing through her body and mind. The Hero reminds her that Aria, Artix, Abel, Tyndarius and Kyanos suffered similar consequences because she hid her Champion when the Time Stream needed them. The demand remains for her to return to the Plane of Water.
Neso first denies fault, then reveals her hidden Champion: Rhubarb. She calls his protection a reason the Hero owes her, but the Hero insists that Rhubarb would willingly have helped in the Time Stream. Neso calls on him anyway. The supposed protection becomes another attempt to use the person she had withheld.
Rhubarb is confronting the Titan, blaming its condition on Neso forcing Kathool upon it. He condemns the Avatar’s habit of using followers as tools and growing angry when they break or refuse her. He wants to get the Titan out of her grasp. Then he loses control of his own body and recognizes Neso’s interference.
Elsewhere in the scene, Abel identifies the Champion of Water and says he will not let Neso do further harm. An unidentified speaker calls him an honored guest, then speaks the words “Togtha ag Tanaris!” An angular mass of ice surrounds the Titan beside Rhubarb’s ship. Neso subsequently demands to know where her Champion has gone; the Hero denies doing anything. The intervention is separate from the Hero’s plan. Its precise means and the stranger’s identity are not explained by these lines.
The Drowning Machine Fires
Losing Rhubarb does not persuade Neso to retreat. She blames the Dragon and absent gods for her humiliation, invokes the followers she has lost, and threatens to remain long enough to flood Lore and the stars beyond it. The Hero calls this an appeal to victimhood and points to the Water Elves’ foresight in concealing their weapon from her.
The Sparagmos voices detect a fatal threat, accept a sacrifice as fuel and announce a full charge, then aim at the seaborne threat. Song broadcasts activation. Neso recognizes the Drowning Machine; Kathool claims to hold her in its grip. She protests that the Hero is aiming the weapon at both of them. The exchange makes clear why a shot alone would not be a safe solution.
Dage deploys the shield he has prepared, calling it his gift in return for surprises and birthdays. A pale barrier surrounds the Hero as the signal is given; the weapon fires and Neso screams. Tara’s captured completion reply for Dead Sea also points to this preparation: she urges a nonlethal way to force Neso back, notices the glowing dome beneath them, and recognizes Song and Dage charging Sparagmos. The cached wiki instead repeats a report of coastal erosion; that report also appears in the surrounding battle, but it is a different completion text.
A Last Chance
Neso finds herself in an expanse of nothingness and wonders whether this is where Kyanos’s mind went. The Hero explains that time has been stopped, a dangerous act with so many eyes watching. This pause is a final offer: return to the Plane of Water and reflect on what happened. Neso is surprised that departure is still being allowed.
The Hero treats the near-death experience as an opportunity to confront the pattern uncovered during the descent. People lie to protect pride, excuse what they know is wrong and claim to shield others. Neso insists her wish to protect Rhubarb was well meant and that she did not foresee the Champions’ anguish. The Hero answers that good intentions do not remove consequences, and invokes the Mana Crisis as a mistake that cannot be made to disappear by closing one’s eyes.
Neso admits that hiding her Champion was instinctive, that it caused harm, and that shame drove her to put the blame elsewhere. The Hero says that refusing truth lets consequences accumulate; Neso completes the thought by recognizing how people become monsters. The Hero’s further distinction is harsher: beings like them escape consequences while the people they care about suffer them.
The Hero believes Neso has not remained long enough to cause lasting damage and asks her to face the other Avatars as the first step toward making things right. Asked how she can be trusted not to abuse the chance, the Hero admits there is no certainty. The offer establishes that there is always a way back. Neso thanks the Hero. This is a decision to risk mercy, not proof that every loss or danger has already been repaired.
Silenced
The Law interrupts to thank the Hero for finding the Voice in the Sea and reaching a peaceful solution. Kathool’s recognition as a god is, in the Order’s view, questionable, but Tranquility persuaded the others that it had been necessary at the time. That limited acceptance is followed by a judgment made outside the Hero’s negotiation: the Order has decided that attempting Neso’s act carries the same weight as succeeding.
Infamy gives Neso three seconds for last words. She recognizes the voice and begins to tell the Hero who it belongs to, but the sentence breaks off. The Hero demands to know what has been done. The Law says maintaining balance requires Neso to be forced back to the Plane of Water and Silenced. Her interrupted “They’re m-” does not identify Infamy or explain the remembered connection.
Tranquility apologizes for being overruled. Kathool senses a dangerous surge through the leylines and says the old gods took their attention from the Core, risking Lore’s safety to impose divine punishment. It expects to be next. This accusation comes from the newly crowned adversary, whose own survival now depends on the Hero; it should not be mistaken for a disinterested verdict on every member of the Order.
Kathool’s final taunt separates victory over the sea from control over what follows. The old gods, it says, have robbed the Eternal Sovereign of choice and destiny. It asks what new turmoil the Hero will bring for its entertainment. Neso has been stopped, but the Hero’s chosen resolution has also been taken away.
Questions at the Waterline
After Dead Sea, Tara describes Neso as Silenced and reduced to Kyanos’s state, and says it is safe to return to Termina Temple. She believes Neso deserved consequences while opposing the Order’s interference with a peaceful settlement. Her questions concern its timing: why act only now, and did its members need a reason and proof to justify Silencing her?
Dry Spell is the captured repeatable follow-up, asking for ten Algal Blooms and giving Bioluminessence. Tara wants to look more deeply into the Voice in the Sea. She suspects some Order members because they frightened the Avatars and currently control the flow of mana. Without the old leylines swelling with Core Mana, Neso might not have gained enough power to try consuming Kathool. It is an accusation assembled from those circumstances, not a proven account of a deliberately engineered crisis.
The cached quest account also preserves Blooming Sea after Dead Sea. It repeats the battle’s call to drive the transformed Avatar home and the report of the coast eroding, with ten Algal Blooms exchanged for Bioluminessence and possible Glaucus-themed equipment. The current native menu and captured definitions cover Dead Sea and Dry Spell instead. Blooming Sea therefore remains part of the event’s documented quest context, with its present availability and repeatability unestablished.
A separate cached, once-only badge task records the world-boss event’s limited reward. After Dead Sea, one Algal Bloom earned the Voice in the Sea character-page badge, with an explicit deadline of August 28, 2023. That dated invitation belongs to the event’s history; it does not establish that the badge can still be earned. The distinction keeps the continuing story separate from a reward window that has passed.