*ducks stones*
ALRIGHT THIS IS A SLIGHTLY WEIRD THING and it's not even really... RP material, but I thought I'd just try this and see what people think. The reason I've decided to do this in this particular format is because to do something individually with people on this scale would be a massive undertaking, definitely well above what I'm able to do, but the last thing I would want to do is scale back the plot just to make it more managable and thus, more boring for your characters. I've devised this method to make sure you guys will all, sooner or later, get a passage that your character can perhaps grow from and get an interesting experience out of. But it IS a bit weird. And if you have any objections, any at all, hit me up here or on AIM and we can talk about it. I'm really willing to do anything I can to make this fun for you guys.
Hopefully these will get tackled at the rate of 2-4 a week, but it's definitely going to fluctuate by my schedule. If your character is unable to take their wee travel on the day due to an oversight on my part or schedule clashes or anything, please don't worry about it! They can take it at any time. Also, if I seriously muck up your character's test in terms of what their motivation is and all that, hit me up and I'll rewrite it. Aaaand if any of you guys know if a character has left that I missed or anything like that, please let me know. c: I'm sorry for the delay, and I just hope it's worth it.
How it works:
Each of your characters immersed in this plot is going to go on a journey. The journey is broken up into separate sections, and each section features a note and finishes with a problem the character must solve in order to pass through to the next section.
Due to the sheer number of characters tackled by the plot, rather than going stage by stage individually, I've laid out the entirety of their journey - but their reward is something the player must earn by responding here with the correct answer to each challenge. This can be in log form or just written as a simple answer, if it's preferred. If it's something the character isn't ever likely to figure out, let me know that I've made that error and I'll rewrite it as something that'll cater to their knowledge.
If one of the responses given is incorrect, I'll reply to acknowledge the wrong section. However, this doesn't necessarily mean failure. If they make a mistake, it'll be like groundhog day for them. They'll find themselves right back at the start of the journey, and what's more, they'll discover a sharp tingling in the section of their body covered with the dotted line. If they try to walk away from their task, the pain will become sharper still - thus they are trapped, and simply have to go through the journey again.
This is when you're able to amend any error made in their first journey.
Most of the tasks would be pretty simple to an observer, since this isn't as much as a challenge for the players as it's intended to be for the characters. If you'd like a character to make a mistake because you think the character is the type to, that's totally okay. This can also be a chance to explore their weaknesses, as well as their strengths.
Please let me know if anything I said there made no sense. I have a feeling it all sounds a lot more complicated than it is. ):
DAY 1:
As always, it starts with a note and a stone.
Not that it has to. That is, there's no real significance to the smooth, black stones that weigh down the messages left on the doorsteps of Neffe's targets, nor the yellowed map it pins down, nor the discoloured ink that stains the back with its message. They are, like so many other aspects of Purgatorium, questions that desire no answers. They're just there, because that's how Neffe likes it. Well. They're there when they should be, when there are things that need doing.
Today, for example.
Today's targets are
Kadaj.
Laharl.
01 : KADAJ
01a: Message.
Kadaj's message is written on the back of a piece of the Purgatorium map that displays the old school, one of those dreaded areas of town that few have explored in a very long time, a place that lays abandoned on the edge of the current generation of occupants. His journey is going to take him to it - if he chooses to listen, if he chooses to comply with the request of the message.
The building's symbol is circled in the same questionable ink that his message is smeared in, painted with sticky red fingers. The colour has since turned to a rusty brown.
On the plain back of the map, it says:
children wait at the gates
to be retrieved by their mother.
At the school, the gates are locked, but the tall black wrought-iron can be scaled or, with enough force, broken through. It's no obstruction - at least not to someone like Kadaj. But then, it hasn't really begun yet.
It's about to.
01b: School.
The school itself is a dark, cold, silent shadow. It's a simple and old construction in the style of the 19th Century Victorian schoolhouses, and though it's seemingly just another abandoned building on the edges of the city, there's something a little wrong about the atmosphere here, a little unnerving. The windows are entirely dark, and the wind here is nonexistent. The trees surrounding it are dead, and their branches look rigid and sharp, as though a wind would snap them sooner than bend them.
In every way, it seems to beg one to turn away, to walk back the way one came.
The path leading up to the front entrance is marked with fresh chalk, outlining the shape of a hopscotch board. There is a stone on the number 5.
There is a second note pinned on the door to the school, and this one isn't part of the map paper; it's dirtier, older, stained with what looks like blood. The note says:
you are going to be
late to the lesson.
The door, despite its worn and weathered appearance, is locked tight and doesn't budge under pressure. In fact, no amount of attacking it or shoving it will open the way, or do any damage to the building at all.
Kadaj's first task is to open the door.
01c: The Pale Men.
The door slams shut and locks.
Though many of the windows are boarded up on this side, it's done haphazardly and poorly, and they let a sad grey light in like spread fingers. This provides the only illumination to the inside of the building - just enough to give clarity to small spots in each corridor, punctuated by long stretches of darkness.
In this reception a large broken window at the other side hasn't been boarded up like the others, and this one area is, while far from well-lit, brighter at least than any other place presently visible.
The old hardwood floors creak underfoot, and a chill wind rises occasionally to brush through the long, bleak corridors, though from where it comes is a mystery. Every step feels too loud in this huge, empty reception, and as one spends more time there, one gets the feeling that the school is watching. It feels like an observer - and you feel like an intruder, like you've stepped foot in a living, breathing thing. Like the walls could suck you into them, make you part of them if you wandered too close. Like the long passages traveling from end to end are veins, if devoid of blood.
On the reception desk, a note is pinned facing the door, clear to see.
It says,
to value reason over trust.
What Kadaj will see, prominently, is the familiar Shadow Creepers he and his brothers summoned in Edge. They're motifs in the wallpaper, carved shapes at the top of the banisters. In the corner of his eyes, moving, breathing, treating him like prey. Should he turn to look, to try and face them and attack them, he'll find nothing - but they'll seem to crawl at his back again, always out of reach, getting closer, closer, louder.
Wherever he turns then, he will see his brothers.
At first, they may seem quite normal. The same voices calling him by name, glad to see him. The same pale skin he remembers, like his own, and the same silver hair. Only, their movements aren't right. They walk with a strange stagger, as though their legs are too long and misshapen. If Kadaj weren't wary, if he trusted too quickly and ran to them now, he may find himself in a predicament.
And as they step into the light, and as it passes their brows and covers their face, it becomes apparent that they have no eyes.
That's because they're in the palms of their hands, raised to watch their "brother". They are the Pale Men who stalk the school's corridors.
Once, a long time ago, one of them devoured a Turk who entered on a rescue mission, but pickings have been slim. Kadaj is the first humanoid they've encountered since - and they're going to make the best of him.
Kadaj has a choice. He can fight them in their brother's forms and head up the stairs they stand before, or he can run down the dark corridor in the opposite direction, not knowing where it will lead.
01d: The Mother.
The next room Kadaj will find himself in will be bare, absent of any furniture. The lock clicks into place in the door behind him and silence permeates the building again, but that same creeping unease has yet to subside. In this room, the one large window provides minimal light from between thin boards. The blinds that once covered it now lie in a pile on the floor below it.
On the opposite wall is a sole decoration - a painting, the details of which are too small to make out at a distance. If Kadaj approaches to look more closely, he will find that part of the floor seems to be separate from the rest - a semi-circle is cut around the wooden boards, circling from one end of the opposite wall to the other.
And the reason is made clear when, before the painting is in view and before Kadaj can step over that faultline, the opposite wall begins to turn in a circle.
The other side reveals Jenova's head, driven into the wall by a nail, comically large, beaten right between her eyes with such ferocity that it has bent at an angle. The fluid that once carried his mother's head runs down the wall and onto the floor, spelling out the next note. It says,
to value trust over reason.
And her voice subsides. All voices subside. Any comfort, hope, any delusion Kadaj may have carried about his mother's survival will, in that moment, be gone. Any others he sensed to be his brothers will be gone, including those found during his time in Purgatorium. An overwhelming, all-pervading loneliness will set in.
The fluid melds together on the floor, forming new words.
end this.
There's a sudden, sharp thud on the floor by the locked door. A familiar gun lies there, one he might recognise to be Duke's. A quick check will reveal that it is fully loaded.
Kadaj must choose to do something with the gun.
If all three answers are correct, the final stage will be given to him.
02 : LAHARL
02a: Message.
Laharl's message, just like Kadaj's, is written on the back of a piece of the Purgatorium map. The section in question shows the entirely-too-familiar clock tower, circled with a curious ink. On the back is the message,
you have lived for centuries,
and now you have no time to waste.
Neffe's used the clock tower before. Once, a long time ago, it completed a full circuit of pillars - but whether or not it'll come to the same use this time remains to be seen.
However, there is something slightly different about Laharl's delivery. The rock has a rubber band wrapped around it, seemingly without purpose.
02b: Clock Tower
The Clock Tower, on arrival, looks much the same as it always has. A huge, imposing structure that casts long shadows over the buildings, telling the time just as effectively as the ticking face overhead. Today, however, something is amiss. The ticking of the clock face isn't consistent, seems to skip a few, stop. One tick. Stop. Three ticks. Stop. If one stands there long enough, one notices that the minute hand is moving in the wrong direction.
And here, right in what should be the bustling heart of the city, it seems silent, dead. Laharl is completely alone; it appears that there isn't another soul in the whole city. Even the wind is silent, as though holding its breath in suspense.
The door of the clock tower is shut and locked, and a note is pinned on it saying:
one with your stature would know
that often it's the smallest mistake
that can cause the biggest problems.
Next to the door, almost unnoticeable in how it's tucked away, is a smaller version of the clock tower - a little toy. It's surprisingly heavy, and its clock has simply stopped. If one were to open the back of the toy, one would see that it works on very unusual wind-up mechanism - only, one of the components seems to be missing...
Laharl's first task is to repair the toy.
02c: The Statue
When this task is complete, the Clock Tower door becomes unlocked - but slams shut behind Laharl as he enters, locking him in. The inside is dark, without a single light except a few small, square windows that follow the staircase up through the Clock Tower. The tower is amonstrosity of a thing - and getting all the way up to the top is going to be quite a walk. There's nothing else to see here, though, and the door isn't going to budge under any amount of force. His best bet is ascension.
The stairs spiral upwards, and on every other full circle there's a level on which to rest. However, something will be waiting for him when he reaches the third stop - the sixth level of the clock tower. The small, flat space to rest is there, but where there should simply be a window to peer out through, an open space where the wind blows in colder and colder as he goes higher, there is, instead, a door.
The clock tower is smooth on the outside. There's no way that a door should be there.
And what's more, a gate blocks the upwards path - reaching from the foot of where the stairs resume right up to the underneath of the flight above. It spans across the full length of the clock tower inside, making it impossible even to clamber around. There is simply no passing through, and the door is the only possible option.
The door opens on a dark, ash-grey room with no notable features along the walls - no windows, no doors except the one Laharl just passed through. It, of course, shuts and locks behind him. In the ceiling, three small holes generate spotlights through which a bright, dazzling sunlight filters, illuminating three points in the room - the only three objects filling the space in front of him. To the left and right, quite close to Laharl, are two cylindrical pillars, made of the same featureless ash-grey substance that the walls are made out of. On top of them lie two ribbons - the one of the left pillar being red, and the one on the right, blue.
And then the last feature, towards the back of the room and directly opposite, is a statue. It's the only thing in the room that's white, and the sunlight makes it glow. The figure - because that's what it is, perfectly sculpted and smooth - is no doubt a familiar one to him.
It's carved in the perfect likeness of Flonne, her eyes closed, hands clasped together in what can only be prayer. Her uniform is that of a Fallen, though lacking the ribbon that normally holds her hair. Stuck to her chest is a simple note reading:
to value reason over trust.
And before Laharl's eyes, the stone begins to crumble.
At first there's just a soft crack, crack in the silence, like a smattering of rocks tumbling together down a hillside. And then it gets louder, and the cracks become visible, climbing across Flonne's marble body and crumbling her, breaking through her features and the delicate carved ruffles of her clothes. As the carving falls away, there is Flonne beneath, with a bright voiceless smile and red eyes.
Her movements jog and ping like clockwork, like a wind up toy, as she points to the blue ribbon on the right. And she says nothing, still, silent. Waiting.
Laharl can select either ribbon.
02d: The Rival
On picking the correct one, Flonne will return to her stone state, and a door will open just past her back, the smooth grey ash of the wall sinking back and then tumbling, plunging down the stairs. Although Laharl has crossed the room, he'll find himself back in the staircase. He's now fifty flights up, which is impossible. The clock tower is tall, but it's not that tall. Ten to twenty levels, maybe, somewhere in that region. Fifty? Impossible.
But sure enough, going to the window will verify that he is, indeed, incredibly high up above the lowermost level of Purgatorium. The air is bitterly cold, enough to sting a person's eyes. In this tiny micro-Universe, it already smells of atmosphere.
There's only two more spirals of the stairs above him, and then he hits the top; there is no flat surface, no place where the stairs level out. Instead, they lead directly into the ceiling, and there is an old steel wheel one can turn there, rusted into a deep reddish-brown. It looks like a part of a submarine, utterly mismatched with the ancient stone of the tower.
On it is a note.
to value trust over reason.
how would a trusting man act?
how would a reasonable man act?
surely a trusting man would kill a companion.
surely a reasonable man would forgive attempted murder.
The wheel's stiff to turn, but it'll eventually give and open a hole in the ceiling that leads to the outside. From here, Laharl can stand on the very top of this (ridiculously high) clock tower.
And he won't be alone up there. Etna is waiting. No sooner does she see him than she goes lunging at him with a mallet, roaring at the top of her tiny lungs that only one of them can be Queen. King. Whatever! Her attacks are designed to push Laharl closer to the edge of the tower, perhaps knock him off for good. However, her movements also leave her open to attack. She's acting very unlike herself, but unlike the Flonne from before, she doesn't seem to be clockwork. She doesn't seem any less than completely real.
Laharl can attack back, or he can attempt to make peace with Etna in whichever way he sees fit.
If all three answers are correct, the final stage will be given to him.
*holds head.* This took about a month longer than planned just due to deadlines. The others should be quicker, now that my dissertation is over. I'm very sorry for the wait, guys. Thank you as always for your incredible patience and I hope this tactic just isn't a massive disappointment for you. Even if you're not the two people tackled in this post or even someone who volunteered for the plot at least 100 years ago, you're welcome to leave feedback. And I'm sorry for spamming your flists so much with this.
Hopefully these will get tackled at the rate of 2-4 a week, but it's definitely going to fluctuate by my schedule. If your character is unable to take their wee travel on the day due to an oversight on my part or schedule clashes or anything, please don't worry about it! They can take it at any time. Also, if I seriously muck up your character's test in terms of what their motivation is and all that, hit me up and I'll rewrite it. Aaaand if any of you guys know if a character has left that I missed or anything like that, please let me know. c: I'm sorry for the delay, and I just hope it's worth it.
How it works:
Each of your characters immersed in this plot is going to go on a journey. The journey is broken up into separate sections, and each section features a note and finishes with a problem the character must solve in order to pass through to the next section.
Due to the sheer number of characters tackled by the plot, rather than going stage by stage individually, I've laid out the entirety of their journey - but their reward is something the player must earn by responding here with the correct answer to each challenge. This can be in log form or just written as a simple answer, if it's preferred. If it's something the character isn't ever likely to figure out, let me know that I've made that error and I'll rewrite it as something that'll cater to their knowledge.
If one of the responses given is incorrect, I'll reply to acknowledge the wrong section. However, this doesn't necessarily mean failure. If they make a mistake, it'll be like groundhog day for them. They'll find themselves right back at the start of the journey, and what's more, they'll discover a sharp tingling in the section of their body covered with the dotted line. If they try to walk away from their task, the pain will become sharper still - thus they are trapped, and simply have to go through the journey again.
This is when you're able to amend any error made in their first journey.
Most of the tasks would be pretty simple to an observer, since this isn't as much as a challenge for the players as it's intended to be for the characters. If you'd like a character to make a mistake because you think the character is the type to, that's totally okay. This can also be a chance to explore their weaknesses, as well as their strengths.
Please let me know if anything I said there made no sense. I have a feeling it all sounds a lot more complicated than it is. ):
DAY 1:
As always, it starts with a note and a stone.
Not that it has to. That is, there's no real significance to the smooth, black stones that weigh down the messages left on the doorsteps of Neffe's targets, nor the yellowed map it pins down, nor the discoloured ink that stains the back with its message. They are, like so many other aspects of Purgatorium, questions that desire no answers. They're just there, because that's how Neffe likes it. Well. They're there when they should be, when there are things that need doing.
Today, for example.
Today's targets are
Kadaj.
Laharl.
01 : KADAJ
01a: Message.
Kadaj's message is written on the back of a piece of the Purgatorium map that displays the old school, one of those dreaded areas of town that few have explored in a very long time, a place that lays abandoned on the edge of the current generation of occupants. His journey is going to take him to it - if he chooses to listen, if he chooses to comply with the request of the message.
The building's symbol is circled in the same questionable ink that his message is smeared in, painted with sticky red fingers. The colour has since turned to a rusty brown.
On the plain back of the map, it says:
children wait at the gates
to be retrieved by their mother.
At the school, the gates are locked, but the tall black wrought-iron can be scaled or, with enough force, broken through. It's no obstruction - at least not to someone like Kadaj. But then, it hasn't really begun yet.
It's about to.
01b: School.
The school itself is a dark, cold, silent shadow. It's a simple and old construction in the style of the 19th Century Victorian schoolhouses, and though it's seemingly just another abandoned building on the edges of the city, there's something a little wrong about the atmosphere here, a little unnerving. The windows are entirely dark, and the wind here is nonexistent. The trees surrounding it are dead, and their branches look rigid and sharp, as though a wind would snap them sooner than bend them.
In every way, it seems to beg one to turn away, to walk back the way one came.
The path leading up to the front entrance is marked with fresh chalk, outlining the shape of a hopscotch board. There is a stone on the number 5.
There is a second note pinned on the door to the school, and this one isn't part of the map paper; it's dirtier, older, stained with what looks like blood. The note says:
you are going to be
late to the lesson.
The door, despite its worn and weathered appearance, is locked tight and doesn't budge under pressure. In fact, no amount of attacking it or shoving it will open the way, or do any damage to the building at all.
Kadaj's first task is to open the door.
01c: The Pale Men.
The door slams shut and locks.
Though many of the windows are boarded up on this side, it's done haphazardly and poorly, and they let a sad grey light in like spread fingers. This provides the only illumination to the inside of the building - just enough to give clarity to small spots in each corridor, punctuated by long stretches of darkness.
In this reception a large broken window at the other side hasn't been boarded up like the others, and this one area is, while far from well-lit, brighter at least than any other place presently visible.
The old hardwood floors creak underfoot, and a chill wind rises occasionally to brush through the long, bleak corridors, though from where it comes is a mystery. Every step feels too loud in this huge, empty reception, and as one spends more time there, one gets the feeling that the school is watching. It feels like an observer - and you feel like an intruder, like you've stepped foot in a living, breathing thing. Like the walls could suck you into them, make you part of them if you wandered too close. Like the long passages traveling from end to end are veins, if devoid of blood.
On the reception desk, a note is pinned facing the door, clear to see.
It says,
to value reason over trust.
What Kadaj will see, prominently, is the familiar Shadow Creepers he and his brothers summoned in Edge. They're motifs in the wallpaper, carved shapes at the top of the banisters. In the corner of his eyes, moving, breathing, treating him like prey. Should he turn to look, to try and face them and attack them, he'll find nothing - but they'll seem to crawl at his back again, always out of reach, getting closer, closer, louder.
Wherever he turns then, he will see his brothers.
At first, they may seem quite normal. The same voices calling him by name, glad to see him. The same pale skin he remembers, like his own, and the same silver hair. Only, their movements aren't right. They walk with a strange stagger, as though their legs are too long and misshapen. If Kadaj weren't wary, if he trusted too quickly and ran to them now, he may find himself in a predicament.
And as they step into the light, and as it passes their brows and covers their face, it becomes apparent that they have no eyes.
That's because they're in the palms of their hands, raised to watch their "brother". They are the Pale Men who stalk the school's corridors.
Once, a long time ago, one of them devoured a Turk who entered on a rescue mission, but pickings have been slim. Kadaj is the first humanoid they've encountered since - and they're going to make the best of him.
Kadaj has a choice. He can fight them in their brother's forms and head up the stairs they stand before, or he can run down the dark corridor in the opposite direction, not knowing where it will lead.
01d: The Mother.
The next room Kadaj will find himself in will be bare, absent of any furniture. The lock clicks into place in the door behind him and silence permeates the building again, but that same creeping unease has yet to subside. In this room, the one large window provides minimal light from between thin boards. The blinds that once covered it now lie in a pile on the floor below it.
On the opposite wall is a sole decoration - a painting, the details of which are too small to make out at a distance. If Kadaj approaches to look more closely, he will find that part of the floor seems to be separate from the rest - a semi-circle is cut around the wooden boards, circling from one end of the opposite wall to the other.
And the reason is made clear when, before the painting is in view and before Kadaj can step over that faultline, the opposite wall begins to turn in a circle.
The other side reveals Jenova's head, driven into the wall by a nail, comically large, beaten right between her eyes with such ferocity that it has bent at an angle. The fluid that once carried his mother's head runs down the wall and onto the floor, spelling out the next note. It says,
to value trust over reason.
And her voice subsides. All voices subside. Any comfort, hope, any delusion Kadaj may have carried about his mother's survival will, in that moment, be gone. Any others he sensed to be his brothers will be gone, including those found during his time in Purgatorium. An overwhelming, all-pervading loneliness will set in.
The fluid melds together on the floor, forming new words.
end this.
There's a sudden, sharp thud on the floor by the locked door. A familiar gun lies there, one he might recognise to be Duke's. A quick check will reveal that it is fully loaded.
Kadaj must choose to do something with the gun.
If all three answers are correct, the final stage will be given to him.
02 : LAHARL
02a: Message.
Laharl's message, just like Kadaj's, is written on the back of a piece of the Purgatorium map. The section in question shows the entirely-too-familiar clock tower, circled with a curious ink. On the back is the message,
you have lived for centuries,
and now you have no time to waste.
Neffe's used the clock tower before. Once, a long time ago, it completed a full circuit of pillars - but whether or not it'll come to the same use this time remains to be seen.
However, there is something slightly different about Laharl's delivery. The rock has a rubber band wrapped around it, seemingly without purpose.
02b: Clock Tower
The Clock Tower, on arrival, looks much the same as it always has. A huge, imposing structure that casts long shadows over the buildings, telling the time just as effectively as the ticking face overhead. Today, however, something is amiss. The ticking of the clock face isn't consistent, seems to skip a few, stop. One tick. Stop. Three ticks. Stop. If one stands there long enough, one notices that the minute hand is moving in the wrong direction.
And here, right in what should be the bustling heart of the city, it seems silent, dead. Laharl is completely alone; it appears that there isn't another soul in the whole city. Even the wind is silent, as though holding its breath in suspense.
The door of the clock tower is shut and locked, and a note is pinned on it saying:
one with your stature would know
that often it's the smallest mistake
that can cause the biggest problems.
Next to the door, almost unnoticeable in how it's tucked away, is a smaller version of the clock tower - a little toy. It's surprisingly heavy, and its clock has simply stopped. If one were to open the back of the toy, one would see that it works on very unusual wind-up mechanism - only, one of the components seems to be missing...
Laharl's first task is to repair the toy.
02c: The Statue
When this task is complete, the Clock Tower door becomes unlocked - but slams shut behind Laharl as he enters, locking him in. The inside is dark, without a single light except a few small, square windows that follow the staircase up through the Clock Tower. The tower is amonstrosity of a thing - and getting all the way up to the top is going to be quite a walk. There's nothing else to see here, though, and the door isn't going to budge under any amount of force. His best bet is ascension.
The stairs spiral upwards, and on every other full circle there's a level on which to rest. However, something will be waiting for him when he reaches the third stop - the sixth level of the clock tower. The small, flat space to rest is there, but where there should simply be a window to peer out through, an open space where the wind blows in colder and colder as he goes higher, there is, instead, a door.
The clock tower is smooth on the outside. There's no way that a door should be there.
And what's more, a gate blocks the upwards path - reaching from the foot of where the stairs resume right up to the underneath of the flight above. It spans across the full length of the clock tower inside, making it impossible even to clamber around. There is simply no passing through, and the door is the only possible option.
The door opens on a dark, ash-grey room with no notable features along the walls - no windows, no doors except the one Laharl just passed through. It, of course, shuts and locks behind him. In the ceiling, three small holes generate spotlights through which a bright, dazzling sunlight filters, illuminating three points in the room - the only three objects filling the space in front of him. To the left and right, quite close to Laharl, are two cylindrical pillars, made of the same featureless ash-grey substance that the walls are made out of. On top of them lie two ribbons - the one of the left pillar being red, and the one on the right, blue.
And then the last feature, towards the back of the room and directly opposite, is a statue. It's the only thing in the room that's white, and the sunlight makes it glow. The figure - because that's what it is, perfectly sculpted and smooth - is no doubt a familiar one to him.
It's carved in the perfect likeness of Flonne, her eyes closed, hands clasped together in what can only be prayer. Her uniform is that of a Fallen, though lacking the ribbon that normally holds her hair. Stuck to her chest is a simple note reading:
to value reason over trust.
And before Laharl's eyes, the stone begins to crumble.
At first there's just a soft crack, crack in the silence, like a smattering of rocks tumbling together down a hillside. And then it gets louder, and the cracks become visible, climbing across Flonne's marble body and crumbling her, breaking through her features and the delicate carved ruffles of her clothes. As the carving falls away, there is Flonne beneath, with a bright voiceless smile and red eyes.
Her movements jog and ping like clockwork, like a wind up toy, as she points to the blue ribbon on the right. And she says nothing, still, silent. Waiting.
Laharl can select either ribbon.
02d: The Rival
On picking the correct one, Flonne will return to her stone state, and a door will open just past her back, the smooth grey ash of the wall sinking back and then tumbling, plunging down the stairs. Although Laharl has crossed the room, he'll find himself back in the staircase. He's now fifty flights up, which is impossible. The clock tower is tall, but it's not that tall. Ten to twenty levels, maybe, somewhere in that region. Fifty? Impossible.
But sure enough, going to the window will verify that he is, indeed, incredibly high up above the lowermost level of Purgatorium. The air is bitterly cold, enough to sting a person's eyes. In this tiny micro-Universe, it already smells of atmosphere.
There's only two more spirals of the stairs above him, and then he hits the top; there is no flat surface, no place where the stairs level out. Instead, they lead directly into the ceiling, and there is an old steel wheel one can turn there, rusted into a deep reddish-brown. It looks like a part of a submarine, utterly mismatched with the ancient stone of the tower.
On it is a note.
to value trust over reason.
how would a trusting man act?
how would a reasonable man act?
surely a trusting man would kill a companion.
surely a reasonable man would forgive attempted murder.
The wheel's stiff to turn, but it'll eventually give and open a hole in the ceiling that leads to the outside. From here, Laharl can stand on the very top of this (ridiculously high) clock tower.
And he won't be alone up there. Etna is waiting. No sooner does she see him than she goes lunging at him with a mallet, roaring at the top of her tiny lungs that only one of them can be Queen. King. Whatever! Her attacks are designed to push Laharl closer to the edge of the tower, perhaps knock him off for good. However, her movements also leave her open to attack. She's acting very unlike herself, but unlike the Flonne from before, she doesn't seem to be clockwork. She doesn't seem any less than completely real.
Laharl can attack back, or he can attempt to make peace with Etna in whichever way he sees fit.
If all three answers are correct, the final stage will be given to him.
*holds head.* This took about a month longer than planned just due to deadlines. The others should be quicker, now that my dissertation is over. I'm very sorry for the wait, guys. Thank you as always for your incredible patience and I hope this tactic just isn't a massive disappointment for you. Even if you're not the two people tackled in this post or even someone who volunteered for the plot at least 100 years ago, you're welcome to leave feedback. And I'm sorry for spamming your flists so much with this.