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[ENTER THE PALACE]
[You find yourself with a sensation like floating in water.]
[Above, the sky is dark. You can occasionally see things shifting, like gusts of wind, or perhaps waves of water. Is it…even a sky above you? Or is it some kind of giant ocean? Whatever it is, you can’t make it out very well. All around you, you appear to be floating in what appears to be water. It looks like a great, wide ocean of…space in every direction around you, with stars and lights twinkling in the distance. It looks like water and feels like water, but it doesn’t make you wet. You can reach your hand into it and pull some out, the purple and violet water and the tiny points of light inside it will even rest in your hands if you cup them to carry it, but once you’re not trying to hold it anymore, it’ll flow off of you, not a single drop remaining behind. You feel something similar if you go underneath the surface. The “water” doesn’t touch your eyes, mouth or nose when give the chance, it merely drifts around you, allowing you to breathe and see unabated. And you can see for a great distance, the twinkling stars illuminating the ocean of space all around you. Though perhaps less dark and empty, it feels every bit as vast as the sky above. You feel like you could swim forever and never reach the edge.]
[It’s quiet, here, with little noise around you but the starry ocean’s waves crashing back into its surface. It’s peaceful. In another situation, it might even be comfortable.]
[Above, the sky is dark. You can occasionally see things shifting, like gusts of wind, or perhaps waves of water. Is it…even a sky above you? Or is it some kind of giant ocean? Whatever it is, you can’t make it out very well. All around you, you appear to be floating in what appears to be water. It looks like a great, wide ocean of…space in every direction around you, with stars and lights twinkling in the distance. It looks like water and feels like water, but it doesn’t make you wet. You can reach your hand into it and pull some out, the purple and violet water and the tiny points of light inside it will even rest in your hands if you cup them to carry it, but once you’re not trying to hold it anymore, it’ll flow off of you, not a single drop remaining behind. You feel something similar if you go underneath the surface. The “water” doesn’t touch your eyes, mouth or nose when give the chance, it merely drifts around you, allowing you to breathe and see unabated. And you can see for a great distance, the twinkling stars illuminating the ocean of space all around you. Though perhaps less dark and empty, it feels every bit as vast as the sky above. You feel like you could swim forever and never reach the edge.]
[It’s quiet, here, with little noise around you but the starry ocean’s waves crashing back into its surface. It’s peaceful. In another situation, it might even be comfortable.]
???
[It's almost like it was outside, in that big ocean of stars. You think you can even hear the sounds of waves again....but rather than being surrounded by a vast ocean, you're surrounded by clouds. White, fluffy clouds drift by and the surface beneath you is soft and cushiony, to the point where it takes a second or two to get used to walking on it.]
[Are you...dreaming?]
Huh? Someone else?
[A flat voice rings out from behind you.]
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whirls around ]
Who—?
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...I was about to ask you that.
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Sprezzatura Vaux, academic and scholar. And you are?
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[He pauses for a second.]
...I guess, "Hitman" is most accurate.
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I see.
How do you know Nessa?
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Also, the thing I just said.
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...you didn't.
[ do not say you, too, were trying to kill her ]
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[He averts his eyes.]
Get used to it.
She has a lot of cousins and most of us have tried to kill her at one point or another.
Besides Esmau, none of us had a choice.
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[Still refusing to make eye contact with Sprezzatura, he turns away.]
Yeah.
Fine.
Follow me.
[He walks off into the clouds.]
[You're now forced to notice that you don't have your phone with you. But you get the feeling that if you did, you'd be being offered a Quest right about now. You also get the feeling that following him is roughly equivalent to accepting a quest.]
[Or you can Wake Up if you want.]
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She is my friend, you realize.
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[Dimitri is grabbing pieces right off the clouds as he walks by them. He seems to be gathering them up for... ...something?]
You're all here trying to find the Voidheart so you can save Nessa.
Esmau is trying to kill all of you.
I'm staying out of it.
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[ what is he... can she grab pieces of the clouds? ]
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....what the heck are you supposed to do with these?]
I was a part of it.
Out there....I don't get a choice. It's either fight Lilith or fight Nessa. One gets me killed by Esmau. The other gets me killed by all of you.
I'm removing myself from it.
It's the only choice I have.
[He's talking about choice, and specifically, its absence, a lot.]
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You keep saying this, "only choice", "no choice".
[ she herself is a woman who is so often paralyzed by choice, and who often does nothing with what she has until the options are taken from her, and the end comes to pass with or without her input. maybe that makes her better to speak on this, and maybe that makes her worse. who can say. ]
What do you gain from being up here, besides your life? Is there anything, or do you only sit and wait for it all to be over?
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[He doesn't have much to say to that for a few seconds.]
....and what do I gain from deciding to fight?
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/2
Why don't you show me, then?
[He walks away....and vanishes into the clouds.]
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Clouds in the shape of trees slowly rise up around them...then in front of Sprezzatura, human shapes rise up from the clouds.
Like shadow puppets in a play, the human shapes moved around, some large, some small and a voice starts to ring in Sprezzatura's head. It...almost sounds like Dimitri? But it also kind of sounds like Nessa. Sometimes it sounds like both.]
There was once a village, hidden away in a forest, where a family of witches lived and were cared for by their matriarch, their mother and grandmother.
[One figure rises above the others, floating into the air. Her hands are outstretched towards the others.]
She built them homes, kept them safe, fed them and shared her wisdom with them.
[The figure floating above the others raises her arms. Houses appear in the background. A book appears in her hand and she gestures to the people below
She had lived a long, long life as a powerful witch, thanks to the Heart that listened to her and her alone, and she used the Heart's power to provide for her family.
[A small sphere rises in front of the floating matriarch. She clasps it in her hand. The sphere pulses, briefly bathing the area in violet light.]
She asked only one thing of them in return.
The outside world is poison.
The outside world hates witches.
The outside world will tear you down for what you are.
[More trees rise up, forming a wall around the houses and the people.]
Only this forest is safe for us.
Never leave the forest.
Never ask about the outside. Never think about the outside.
Listen to your grandmother. Listen to her Heart. And you will all become powerful witches like her, one day.
[The matriarch and most of the other people vanish into the clouds, except for two. Two children. A boy and a girl.]
One of the children living in the village was a girl. A curious girl, a girl who often lagged behind in her studies, who wasn't as close to becoming a witch as the rest of her family. One day the curious girl approached one of her cousins.
Her cousin was a smart boy, a studious boy. The oldest of his cousins, he felt a responsibility for them. He tried to make sure they listened to their grandmother's studies, so they could become witches like her.
The girl told the boy, she had been thinking about the outside. Outside of their village. Outside of their forest.
How should the boy respond?
[How should the boy respond to the girl?
> Tell her to stop.
> Listen to her.
> (choose something else)]
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>listen ]
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[The boy briefly turns away from the girl...but then, he turns back.]
The boy almost yelled at the girl to stop. Told her to stop thinking about the outside. That she was breaking their grandmother's most important rule.
But something made him decide not to. Something made him listen to what she had to say. The girl seemed surprised, but she told him things she had been thinking about. She asked why they weren't allowed to know anything about the outside, if it was as dangerous as their grandmother claimed. She pointed out that some of their parents had come from the outside, but none of them ever talked about it.
It simply didn't make sense to the girl that if the most important thing was how dangerous it was outside the forest, so much so that they could never leave, why weren't they allowed to ask about it? Wouldn't the adults want them to understand, rather than just be ignorant of it?
The boy listened, but told the girl that she was overreacting. Their parents and their grandmother told them what they needed to know to become witches. That was what he had told himself so many times. But when he got home, he couldn't help but feel doubts when he looked at his own parents.
[The girl vanishes and the boy is surrounded by two adults.]
The boy asked his parents about how they'd met. Where they'd met. Was it here, in the village, or was it somewhere else? He asked his mother, who had been born outside the village, about where she'd been born.
[The two adults turn their backs to the boy.]
The boy's parents had no answers for him. They avoided his questions and told him not to worry about it. They lived here in the village with their family, now. That was all that mattered.
The boy did not doubt his parents on that night. He simply realized he'd had doubts about them for quite some time now.
[The two adults vanish. The girl returns as the boy approaches her.]
The next day, before their lessons, the boy saw the girl. The girl noticed the boy's perturbed manner and asked him what was wrong.
What did the boy do?
[How should the boy respond to his cousin?
> Avoid her.
> Ask her about the outside.
> (choose something else)]
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The boy told the girl what had happened the previous night. About how he had asked his parents about how they'd met and they could not answer. About how his mother couldn't even tell him where she'd grown up. He asked the girl if she'd ever asked her own mother about those things. She admitted that she had, and her mother had told her. The girl looked around nervously. The boy could tell she didn't want to speak about this around the others. So they found a spot to speak privately again.
[The two children move away from the other children and one adult and move to a private spot, surrounded by trees, just the two of them.]
The girl said that her mother had told her she had more. A father, a brother and a sister. She had told them about the home they lived in, about the places they went, about the people they'd met. She said that when her mother spoke about it, the outside world sounded like a beautiful place. Her mother had lived there for years, for decades, and her father and her two siblings had been born there. They were all witches, but nobody had hurt them. So why did their grandmother insist that the outside was dangerous?
And the boy wondered, if the outside wasn't so dangerous, why did his own parents refuse to tell him anything about it.
[The girl vanishes and the boy is back in his home, with his two parents.]
The didn't know what to think. He knew if he kept asking about the outside, he would be breaking the rules, but he couldn't look at his parents the same. He didn't know what to think. That night, he snuck out of the house and walked around the village.
[The boy is now alone, with a moon hanging above in the sky. A large building rises up in front of him.]
While he was walking around, trying to clear his thoughts, the boy noticed the temple door was open and heard noise coming from inside.
[The boy enters the temple. The girl is standing there, with a glowing violet circle in her hands.]
The boy found his cousin, taking the family's Heart. Even with his doubts, the boy couldn't understand this. He insisted that it belonged to their family, she had to put it back. The girl tried to explain herself, but--
[The door bursts open and two adults enter. One immediately kicks the girl over and she drops the circle.]
Their grandmother and their teacher found them. Their teacher began punishing the girl for touching the Heart.
[One of the adults kicks the girl repeatedly as she lays on the ground. Something strikes that adult in the back of the head. She spins around, for another adult to appear.]
The girl's mother, his aunt, appeared. She admitted her ruse, admitted she'd told her daughter about the outside and admitted she was planning to steal the Heart. She accused her mother of stealing her family from her. By brainwashing them. Turning them into her pawns. She mentioned the boy's father by name, when she spoke about how she looked into the eyes of her own brothers and sisters and saw nothing anymore, except the strings leading back to their family's matriarch.
She said all this to get their eyes off of the children and onto her.
The boy's aunt told him to take his cousin and leave the temple. Go to her house and wait for her. His grandmother ordered the boy to stay where he was.
What did the boy do?
[Who should the boy listen to?
> His aunt (take the girl and run)
> His grandmother (don't move)
> (choose something else)]
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take the girl and run. ]
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