Skip to content

Spend $70 more and receive free shipping! Free shipping available!

Your Return to the Five Ruins of the Bog

26 Nov, 2024
Your Return to the Five Ruins of the Bog

NeuroLog 644—Seb was right to name the alien builders Timeless. He was right about a lot of things. I wish I could tell him, prevent what happened.

This is my last log. No point without Seb. It hurts to leave without answers, but it would hurt more to stay. I’ll always wonder: did the Timeless come here for the Bog? Or did the Bog come here for them?


I: The Grounds in Ruin

Annihilation abounds on the path, so step carefully; shallow puddles litter the castle’s marshy exterior–it’s still the Bog, after all. After all this time. This time, so many years later, you avoid these familiar little pools of liquid obliteration with the grace of a man tired of being ancient. Ancient beings–alien reptiles, fish, frogs–sit frozen eternal in Bog water like statues.

This castle–this crouching heap of Bog iron–was shaped by anti-entropic ones, a race of Timeless builders. Built in the time when the universe was young and humankind had not yet touched the stars, when you and Seb had not yet been born and your hearts had not yet been broken.

NeuroLog 533—Seb is gone. We argued last night again about the Bog and–what was left to say? Nothing but poison. He wishes he could be Timeless.

Seb wouldn’t leave and I couldn’t stay. So he made sure he would be here forever. This place has ruined me, ended him.

NeuroLog 532—No no no no. No.


II: The Towers in Ruin

Calamity met you here once, long ago: this was the last place you saw your partner. Partner in life, in crime, in research, at first: a study on the anti-entropic properties of the Bog water in this strange place. Place yourself in Seb’s shoes: if someone tried to remove you from your studies, wouldn’t you do what he did? Did he even know that you were trying to save him, trying to take him away? A ways down the corridor is the alcove where you kissed for the first time, when you weren’t yet afraid of the Bog, when you didn’t yet know how it could snare a life and take it, hold it, keep it.

This castle is rich with your lives. Lives that you can only comprehend now, backwards, alone.


NeuroLog 0497—It’s time. The Bog. If a person were to touch the waters—it’d be worse than death. We need to leave, but I’m worried about Seb. He held me close this morning and between us I felt the intrusion of something cold, some manifestation of our mutually incomprehensible opinions.

NeuroLog 0316—Seb names this the Alabaster Stair, though the stone is actually a silicate-poor white marble. When I clarified, he kissed me and called me a dork.

He always says he could stay here for a thousand years and never learn enough. I always tell him we only have two more years of funding, so who’s the dork?


III: The Grand Staircase in Ruin

Every step brings you further into the castle’s heart, achingly lower. Lower down the stair is the passage to the Drowning Chamber, where Seb theorized the Timeless inured their young against entropy, against time. Time was, Seb would study their alien etchings endlessly, scrawling in chalk on the walls. The walls draw closer as you move lower, lower, past a snail which strayed too close to a puddle of Bog water.

The snail has been there, alive, Timeless, since before you and Seb ever graced these halls.


NeuroLog 0220—Sebastian stumbled upon the source of the waters today. The whole bog springs from this–it’s hard to explain–rift, of sorts. I was terrified of him falling in, but I shouldn’t have worried. He’s smart, even when he isn’t trying.


IV: The Depths in Ruin

You’ll find him down here. Here is the crypt where Seb fled after you fought at the tower. Towering over you: the statue of the alien Timeless–untouched by entropy and Bog alike–under which the two of you made camp together. Together you built a home here in the palimpsest belly of an alien civilization’s incomprehensible remains. What remains of him?

There it is. It’s impossible to hope as the spring at the heart of this place comes into vision. Visions of the past overtake you–Seb’s eyes, the warmth of his presence–and you drop to one knee. Kneeling at the source of the Bog is Seb. Seb must have felt this way when he ran from you; when he decided that the only way to stay here forever was to stay here forever. Forever he’ll smile at the waters of the Bog which burgeon around his still form like a bubbling spring halted at the instant of creation.


NeuroLog 0121—Sebastian is uninterested in the perplexing nature of the Bog. His focus is on the builders: who they were, what remains of them, what they’ve left behind. Have I been paired with an anthropologist? I do enjoy his company despite this failing.

NeuroLog 0001—Scans indicate something strange going on with the liquid here–I hesitate to call it water–so we’re setting up camp in the comparatively dry depths of the castle. The other researcher here, a man named Sebastian, has been calling the alien builders Timeless. Strange. He has his theories.


V: Your Ruin

You have theories of your own: Seb can be saved, Seb’s dead, Seb’s become one of the builders. Built around the maddeningly still waters of the Bog is a construct in your mind, a labyrinth of ideas that led you here, back to your beginning. You’re beginning to see what you’ll have to do. Do you want to see him again?

As you step forward towards the frozen-bubbling font you see nothing but Seb’s smile. Smile, it’s okay, it’s time. Time won’t bother you in this place. Place your hand in the water of the Bog and join your lover in a Timeless space without end.

Welcome Discount

Get 15% Off