Yes, I-- [...] I think that may have been the point of this place.
It asked us to reckon with how much we truly desired that which we came here for. If we'd be willing to turn on a friend, how much we trust the others here.
I think so, too. Though ours wasn't so pointed, in that regard.
[She sighs.]
There was a child with us, in ours. She was strong and brave. We didn't wind up as hurt as any of you - even when we made mistakes, she came to our defense.
At the end, we. . . [She closes her eyes, like she still doesn't have the words for this.] It became clear that to survive, we would have to kill her. She asked us to. She only wanted to help us.
Needless to say we did not agree. I think perhaps a simpler test than yours.
[he moves to just put an arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer. she can probably hear how terrible his breathing is like this, how it sounds a bit like he's struggling to get air in his lungs, but he trusts her not to point it out at the moment.
This one is difficult? He disagrees that their test was simpler. It's the idea he's had to wrestle with, isn't it? It'd been so simple and easy to sacrifice himself for something he cared about, but Beauregard following him here--
it's easier to be the one who leaves.]
I'm sorry.
[There's a lot of things to say here, but. Maybe just that's the thing she needs to hear right now. It was something that was too cruel to ask.]
[No, she's going to grumble and try (extremely, extremely gently) to push him off.]
No, stop it. I've had enough of people deciding I ought to be comforted today. I am fine. It was awful, and I am still very sad about it, but I do not need to be consoled for it at this particular moment.
[Hmph. She crosses her arms - end of story.]
You on the other hand, have become a particularly vivid anatomy lesson. And. . . I know that it cannot have been easy, to make that decision consciously, far more than we did.
[he refuses to be pushed off, sorry. but he does relax a little. just letting his arm hang there.]
I don't know. I-- If it was trying to tell us something, maybe I took the wrong lesson from it. There's this ... when we first arrived, and I was speaking to Beauregard, there was clearly something she wasn't telling me. I had a feeling what it might be. She'd asked to my face if it was really me, Mollymauk. Not in the way you ask someone if they're a dream or not. And sidelong references to a future I was not a part of.
So, for once in my miserable life, I thought I should look behind the curtain. I asked for her to tell me what she meant. And in return, she asked me if I was sure I didn't want pretend for a while more. It was then she told me that Lucien haunted them. That there's a reason it isn't as simple as a cleric and enough gold can't fix the issue. And I decided I wanted to go back to pretending. But you can't exactly unlearn the things you know, once you've seen them. Can you?
But that question is the one that keeps fucking rattling around my brain. After I decided I wouldn't do it, I heard it again. Don't you want to pretend a little longer? In my head. And then that I'd made my decision.
[I don't know, man. You can unlearn them if you have access to a necromancer who can help you while you open up your brain.
Anyway, she frowns, listening to all of this.]
Isn't that odd, though? If pretending here means avoiding one's problems even though they have a lot of useful information and access to an extremely talented necromancer, then - was it suggesting you'd failed to face them once again? Or was the meaning that this time you had faced up to something?
[TENABLE, LONG TERM SOLUTIONS THAT ACTUALLY WORK, HARROW
anyway he just. shrugs. because he doesn't really know either way? but he'll continue.]
It ... wanted us to make the obvious decision. We felt this urge - or, I suppose I'm assuming the others did too, by the way they reacted so quickly. That the only way we could get what we wanted was to trust only ourselves. The others had weapons, had motive, and if you didn't stop them, what would happen to you. To the ones you loved. To the wish you wanted so bad.
But I don't know, I-- if I couldn't tell who was real. Douman's suggestion made it sound so easy to them, but in that moment. [He looks at his hands at this.] I said I'd fight for Beauregard, and I'm fucking fighting every minute of my fucking day, but I said I wouldn't let this place drag me into muck and blood. Fuck that.
[She sort of stares at him while he says this, and then places her hands over his and squeezes, meeting his eyes with something in hers that looks a little like pride.]
What was the urge, specifically? This may be important.
[he pauses, while he struggles to put it to words.]
... You want it. You want what you desire more than anything else. Anybody else? They're nothing. They are in the way. This whole place has just been illusions. How do you know what's real and what isn't?
[It is something to think about, isn't it? She seems curious and thoughtful, and she even laughs a little, humorlessly.]
Hah. All along, I'd thought we failed. And I felt as you did - fuck it. If that was failure, I accept failure. But now I wonder if I misunderstood.
[But her gaze turns dark again, looking up at him with absolute seriousness.]
I am going to tell you something, because I have permission to do so from each of the four involved. It is not something we have spoken of other than with one another and the Avatars, and your dispensation is only to hear it, not to speak of it.
Furthermore, you will not pet me like a frightened little emotional support cat when I tell it. You will accept it as information relevant to your circumstances that I am choosing to convey to you.
[technically, he is the emotional support cat in this proposed scenario, but. he just removes his arm, clasping his cold hands together in his lap instead.]
[She's ignoring that joke. She'll just cross her arms across her chest.]
. . . Ours was gluttony. The whole of our adventure was themed for it - we were surrounded by ravenous giants, some in the form of people we knew, but revolting engorged versions of them, stuffing their faces with meat and fighting for scraps in between trying to consume us.
And at the end, as it was for you - a nigh impossible to ignore urge in the form of the base instinct at the heart of gluttony. We were hungry, Mollymauk. We were starving to death. We would have done anything to satiate that hunger, and what we were offered to satiate it was the flesh of the child.
But there was no noble choice, no moment of decision. We never decided to die rather than to do it. We scrambled and grasped pathetically at anything else, made desperate and futile decisions, ate from our own accumulated pieces of gore to avoid it until all of our energy was depleted and we simply died of hunger.
[She does stare him down directly in the eyes while she explains this, as though daring him to break his promise and try to be nice about it.]
When I say ours was easier, it is because we all felt there was no choice at all - it would have been impossible for any of us to do that to her, even in such a debased state as we were in. But as a result, we also left her behind in that hell. She wept for us as we died, begged us not to leave her. So I know that what we did was not "right," either. Nor do I think the others in your group were right to kill to protect what was theirs, nor do I think you were right, you contemptible ass, to abandon the vows you have made to survive.
[Her eyes glint with malice for a moment there, but then it's gone.]
What I mean to say is that, in both of our cases, if there was a right answer at all, I think it was in the form of a solution that neither of us saw.
[He was told not to pet at her like a child, so he doesn't. He simply listens, and accepts. This is one thing he actually good at. Listening, and accepting. The only reaction he has is his gaze flicks (or. as far as it's possible to tell. a shift of the light.) to the side when she calls him out on his attempts to slip back into the grave.]
I can only agree.
[There was no right answer. No perfect solution.]
... I did think about how-- When I saw that grave, I felt what they had felt. [The nein. putting him in that hole.] It'd be nice, almost. To be remembered like that. And breathing was so fucking hard and I thought, maybe, just for a moment I could go back. But I did promise I'd fight. And I won't leave anyone behind. That's the deal. So I kept breathing.
Being remembered is-- It's stupid. I came here because I want more than that.
[Yeah, well, not being remembered is pretty fucking stupid, too.
Anyway, she softens at that, nodding in recognition of his words.]
I want more for you, too. How pathetic, how offensive, if you didn't get to have it because you were being stubborn about some convincing illusion.
But if it's as you say, maybe you did win after all. You told them fuck it, and they taunted you for it and made you cold and stiff for it, but all of that is set dressing on the fact that a bluff was made and a bluff was called. I only wonder if the bluff was part of the design of the test, or whether it was a mercy on the test giver's part that won't be granted on the final. Best find out, don't you agree?
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It asked us to reckon with how much we truly desired that which we came here for. If we'd be willing to turn on a friend, how much we trust the others here.
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[She sighs.]
There was a child with us, in ours. She was strong and brave. We didn't wind up as hurt as any of you - even when we made mistakes, she came to our defense.
At the end, we. . . [She closes her eyes, like she still doesn't have the words for this.] It became clear that to survive, we would have to kill her. She asked us to. She only wanted to help us.
Needless to say we did not agree. I think perhaps a simpler test than yours.
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This one is difficult? He disagrees that their test was simpler. It's the idea he's had to wrestle with, isn't it? It'd been so simple and easy to sacrifice himself for something he cared about, but Beauregard following him here--
it's easier to be the one who leaves.]
I'm sorry.
[There's a lot of things to say here, but. Maybe just that's the thing she needs to hear right now. It was something that was too cruel to ask.]
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No, stop it. I've had enough of people deciding I ought to be comforted today. I am fine. It was awful, and I am still very sad about it, but I do not need to be consoled for it at this particular moment.
[Hmph. She crosses her arms - end of story.]
You on the other hand, have become a particularly vivid anatomy lesson. And. . . I know that it cannot have been easy, to make that decision consciously, far more than we did.
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[he refuses to be pushed off, sorry. but he does relax a little. just letting his arm hang there.]
I don't know. I-- If it was trying to tell us something, maybe I took the wrong lesson from it. There's this ... when we first arrived, and I was speaking to Beauregard, there was clearly something she wasn't telling me. I had a feeling what it might be. She'd asked to my face if it was really me, Mollymauk. Not in the way you ask someone if they're a dream or not. And sidelong references to a future I was not a part of.
So, for once in my miserable life, I thought I should look behind the curtain. I asked for her to tell me what she meant. And in return, she asked me if I was sure I didn't want pretend for a while more. It was then she told me that Lucien haunted them. That there's a reason it isn't as simple as a cleric and enough gold can't fix the issue. And I decided I wanted to go back to pretending. But you can't exactly unlearn the things you know, once you've seen them. Can you?
But that question is the one that keeps fucking rattling around my brain. After I decided I wouldn't do it, I heard it again. Don't you want to pretend a little longer? In my head. And then that I'd made my decision.
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Anyway, she frowns, listening to all of this.]
Isn't that odd, though? If pretending here means avoiding one's problems even though they have a lot of useful information and access to an extremely talented necromancer, then - was it suggesting you'd failed to face them once again? Or was the meaning that this time you had faced up to something?
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anyway he just. shrugs. because he doesn't really know either way? but he'll continue.]
It ... wanted us to make the obvious decision. We felt this urge - or, I suppose I'm assuming the others did too, by the way they reacted so quickly. That the only way we could get what we wanted was to trust only ourselves. The others had weapons, had motive, and if you didn't stop them, what would happen to you. To the ones you loved. To the wish you wanted so bad.
But I don't know, I-- if I couldn't tell who was real. Douman's suggestion made it sound so easy to them, but in that moment. [He looks at his hands at this.] I said I'd fight for Beauregard, and I'm fucking fighting every minute of my fucking day, but I said I wouldn't let this place drag me into muck and blood. Fuck that.
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What was the urge, specifically? This may be important.
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... You want it. You want what you desire more than anything else. Anybody else? They're nothing. They are in the way. This whole place has just been illusions. How do you know what's real and what isn't?
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Greed, or . . . Envy. A distrust of the others. How they could turn on you. But greed seems to fit better, doesn't it?
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Hah. All along, I'd thought we failed. And I felt as you did - fuck it. If that was failure, I accept failure. But now I wonder if I misunderstood.
[But her gaze turns dark again, looking up at him with absolute seriousness.]
I am going to tell you something, because I have permission to do so from each of the four involved. It is not something we have spoken of other than with one another and the Avatars, and your dispensation is only to hear it, not to speak of it.
Furthermore, you will not pet me like a frightened little emotional support cat when I tell it. You will accept it as information relevant to your circumstances that I am choosing to convey to you.
Understood?
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Not even Frumpkin shall hear of it.
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[She's ignoring that joke. She'll just cross her arms across her chest.]
. . . Ours was gluttony. The whole of our adventure was themed for it - we were surrounded by ravenous giants, some in the form of people we knew, but revolting engorged versions of them, stuffing their faces with meat and fighting for scraps in between trying to consume us.
And at the end, as it was for you - a nigh impossible to ignore urge in the form of the base instinct at the heart of gluttony. We were hungry, Mollymauk. We were starving to death. We would have done anything to satiate that hunger, and what we were offered to satiate it was the flesh of the child.
But there was no noble choice, no moment of decision. We never decided to die rather than to do it. We scrambled and grasped pathetically at anything else, made desperate and futile decisions, ate from our own accumulated pieces of gore to avoid it until all of our energy was depleted and we simply died of hunger.
[She does stare him down directly in the eyes while she explains this, as though daring him to break his promise and try to be nice about it.]
When I say ours was easier, it is because we all felt there was no choice at all - it would have been impossible for any of us to do that to her, even in such a debased state as we were in. But as a result, we also left her behind in that hell. She wept for us as we died, begged us not to leave her. So I know that what we did was not "right," either. Nor do I think the others in your group were right to kill to protect what was theirs, nor do I think you were right, you contemptible ass, to abandon the vows you have made to survive.
[Her eyes glint with malice for a moment there, but then it's gone.]
What I mean to say is that, in both of our cases, if there was a right answer at all, I think it was in the form of a solution that neither of us saw.
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I can only agree.
[There was no right answer. No perfect solution.]
... I did think about how-- When I saw that grave, I felt what they had felt. [The nein. putting him in that hole.] It'd be nice, almost. To be remembered like that. And breathing was so fucking hard and I thought, maybe, just for a moment I could go back. But I did promise I'd fight. And I won't leave anyone behind. That's the deal. So I kept breathing.
Being remembered is-- It's stupid. I came here because I want more than that.
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Anyway, she softens at that, nodding in recognition of his words.]
I want more for you, too. How pathetic, how offensive, if you didn't get to have it because you were being stubborn about some convincing illusion.
But if it's as you say, maybe you did win after all. You told them fuck it, and they taunted you for it and made you cold and stiff for it, but all of that is set dressing on the fact that a bluff was made and a bluff was called. I only wonder if the bluff was part of the design of the test, or whether it was a mercy on the test giver's part that won't be granted on the final. Best find out, don't you agree?
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Again, I can only agree!
[he sniffs a bit, at the broken nose.]
Are you still prepared for our grand plan?
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I am. Are you?
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I am up and about. No problem.
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