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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.]
Re: ???
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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The boy didn't know why. But he listened to his aunt. He grabbed his cousin and tried to run. His grandmother didn't like that.
[The boy grabs the girl's wrist and tries to move. His grandmother and his older cousin try to get in his way - his aunt interferes with them both. As he runs, his older cousin produces a long stick with a blade on the end.]
His aunt tried to protect the two of them. Tried to make sure they could get away safely. But...
[The aunt is stabbed with the blade. The girl reaches out for her mother, but is taken out of the temple by the boy. The boy and the girl run away from the temple, through the village.]
The girl screamed for her mother. She tried to go back for her. The boy kept running and he dragged the girl with him. He didn't stop when they got to his house, to the girl's house, or any house. He kept running past the houses, into the trees. Something in his mind told him. If they caught him, his grandmother would kill them too.
They came to a wall. Not a wall like the ones that held up their homes or their temple. A wall woven from magic.
[The houses fade away, giving way to nothing but trees. The boy and girl come to a purple glowing wall.]
The boy had never known it was there. The girl, through her tears, explained it was to keep them from leaving. Her mother had told her about it.
The two heard voices behind them. The voice of their older cousin. Their teacher. Their grandmother's enforcer. The one who had just killed the girl's mother. The boy did the only thing he could think to do. He put his hands on the wall and pushed - and the girl did the same.
[The purple wall in front of the two fades away.]
And the wall parted for them. And they ran. They ran as fast and as far as they could. They ran all night and didn't stop until morning. Only when they stopped, did the boy open his hands and look at what he'd felt in his hands all night. In his hands, he saw it.
The Heart.
[Briefly, everything fades away and the temple reappears. The aunt, in the heat of the moment, kicks the purple circle into the boy's hands as he runs away, just before she's attacked. The temple then fades back into the forest. The boy is holding the purple circle in his hands.]
They would have never made it past the wall without the Heart, the boy realized. But it had come at the cost of his aunt's life, and, he now realized, the cost of seeing his parents...possibly ever again?
The boy had spent his entire life following his grandmother's rules, and now he'd broken all of them. He knew that his grandmother would kill over the Heart, because he'd seen it with his own eyes. And he knew that his aunt had said that her brother (which meant his father) had been brainwashed, reduced to his grandmother's puppet.
Sitting there in that forest, while the girl cried over the loss of her mother, the boy wondered if he'd ever known his parents at all, or if they'd only been an extension of his grandmother's will. Who he now knew he had to get away from, if either of them were to survive.
[Eventually, the boy and girl start walking through the forest again.
The boy and the girl didn't know where they were going. But they knew they had to keep going. They tried to ask the Heart what they should do. They tried to ask it to hide them from their Grandmother. They even tried to ask it to bring the girl's mother back. Nothing worked. They couldn't get it to listen to them.
[The purple circle, previously glowing, has gone dark in their hands.]
And eventually, they were found.
Their older cousin found them. She had their other cousins with them, but something awful had happened to them.
[The older cousin appears in the forest, holding her weapon. With her is four...there's no other word for it. Monsters. They should be human children, but something has happened to them. The clouds represent it as dark, cloudy, bulbous patches over their bodies, drops of black rain falling from them and an incredibly stilted way they move with strings from above controlling their movements. You get the feeling that if something like this actually happened, it looked significantly more macabre.]
Their grandmother had turned their cousins into monsters, to take their Heart back. And their older cousin sent them after the boy and the girl.
[The monstrous children, at the oldest cousin's order, all leap at the boy and the girl. As they get near, the circle starts glowing again.]
What did the boy do?
[What should the boy do to his cousins?
> Fight
> Run away
> (choose something else)]
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run away. ]
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At their most dire moment, the Heart listened to the boy and the girl.
[The clouds rumble. A pulse comes out of the purple circle and knocks the monsters away.]
They asked it to protect them. But, even with what they had turned into, the boy and the girl could not bring themselves to ask the Heart to harm their cousins.
[The monsters land on the ground and are dragged back up by their strings and forced to attack again. The boy and the girl vanish, becoming grey silhouettes.]
The older cousin and the monsters she commanded looked for the boy and the girl and the Heart they had taken. But the Heart cloaked them from sight. Nothing was stronger than the Heart, and as long as it chose to listen to the boy and the girl and not their Grandmother, there was nothing she could do to them.
But the boy and the girl did not want to fight. And they did not know how to free their cousins. So they did the only thing they could.
They ran.
They heard their cousin barking orders at the monsters that their cousins had turned into. They forced themselves not to turn back around. They kept running, and soon, they didn't hear it anymore.
It would've been impossible for them to choose to hurt their family. But as they heard the noise behind them, they wondered if they had condemned their cousins to something worse than death.
[The boy and the girl eventually leave the older cousin and the monsters behind and the trees start to thin out.]
The boy and the girl reached the edge of the forest. They knew that once they left the forest, they could never return, and thus, they had no home.
The girl knew she had a family. Her mother had told her about them, at night, when no one else was listening. A father, a sister, a brother. They were why she had come to live in the Forest in the first place. Her children were sick, and she knew that if she used the Heart, she could cure them. When she gave birth to the girl inside the village, she tried to leave with her. But she the found the wall around the village that meant she could not leave. And everything slowly, but surely, fallen completely out of her control, leading to this moment.
The girl's mother was gone, now. But they had the Heart. And they knew that the rest of the girl's family as out there, somewhere.
Outside the forest, they were two worlds. One of the humans, who knew nothing of magic, because it had been purged from their world long ago. And the world of witches, who lived in secret realms, hidden from the humans.
The Heart could get them into these secret realms, if they asked it. But they didn't know where to search for the girl's family.
Where did they go?
[Where should they search for the girl's family?
> Search among humans
> Search among witches
> (choose something else)]
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search among the humans. the witches are kept away from the humans. ]
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[The trees fade into the background, becoming smaller and smaller as they're replaced by buildings, eventually making a whole city around the boy and the girl.]
The girl's mother had spoken about the outside world as a beautiful place, not a place she wanted to live hidden from. The girl thought this meant she had decided to live out in the outside world, among the humans. So the boy and the girl decided to search among the humans.
The world of humans was huge, dizzying and scary. Huge buildings, technology they didn't understand, even if the girl's mother had explained some of it to her and so, so, so many different people.
[The children are surrounded by tons of adults, walking by them in both directions.]
The girl had one thing, though. Her name.
In the forest, they'd all only had one name. But the girl's mother had told her her family's name. The name she'd gotten when she'd married her father.
The girl's mother had once told her the greatest gift her father had given her was his name, and the family they'd raised with that name. The girl had made sure she remembered the name.
[All of the adults fade away, until just one is kneeling down in front of the two children.]
So when asked, she told them. She told them her name, her mother's name, her father's name, her sister's name and her brother's name. And with her name, she found her family.
[A young woman with white hair appears.]
The girl's older sister found her. She had never known her younger sister existed, but she took both of them in, welcoming the girl and treating the boy as if he were her brother as well.
[The buildings fade away and a hill slowly rises out of the clouds, with a small cottage at the top. The boy, the girl, the older sister and another child, a white haired boy, stand outside the cabin.]
The boy and the girl came to live with the older sister and the older brother. It took getting used to, but the older sister loved them both very much and did everything she could to acclimate them to this new life.
Their grandmother, their older cousin and their enslaved cousins were still out there somewhere. They would not stop trying to retrieve the Heart from them. A time would come when they wouldn't be able to run away. They would have to fight.
[Everything else fades away....except the boy and the girl, standing next to each other. They reach out...and wrap their arms around each other.]
The boy and the girl had lost much, suffered much, and would suffer more in the future. They had both lost their parents. They had both lost their cousins. But for that cost, they had their freedom. They had the ability to live their lives as they chose from now on. They had a new family that loved them.
Most importantly of all, they had each other.
[The Boy and the Girl have gone as far as you can guide them. From now on, they'll have to make their own choices. You can say one more thing or tell them to do one more thing before you part ways, if you wish.]
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