ic inbox.

[lucentia]

HELLO

"Greetings."

GOODBYE

TEXT | VIDEO | VOICE | ACTION

Comments

[lucentia]

[a light nod]

I certainly hope that we didn't all die to come here, at least. [a flicker of a mental image, of water.] I'm not even sure of how we're leaving.

[aerodynamic]

[ hm... ]

I'm not either. But we'll get there.
For now though... do you guys remember how you got to where you ended up?
Maybe there's a hint in that.

[lucentia]

Our... strange journey? My first memory of it is waking up on a boat, though much like yours, I had altered memories to suit the situation.

[aerodynamic]

[ he frowns at this. ]

It feels like it's been half and half on the memory thing.
A boat?

[ "how the hell..." ]

[lucentia]

Yes. We were looking for treasure, although we ended up on a detour that took over the rest of our journey. It ended with us drifting in the water, albeit boat-less.

[aerodynamic]

What kind of a detour made you lose your whole boat?

[lucentia]

We left an island, later came across another boat with Tokinaga, a woman I didn't recognize, and an ill Rafayel, and decided to accompany them back to the island to try and cure Rafayel. Things... spiraled from there.

[aerodynamic]

They always do... [ hm. he can sort of put together who went where at least. ] How far did you guys actually get?

[lucentia]

... To be frank, we didn't manage to save anyone. If anything, we got everyone with us killed, and barely managed to escape the island ourselves by letting the river take us.

[It always seems to come back to water.]

[aerodynamic]

[ i see my text html just failed me entirely whatever it's fine aNYWAY. ]

If it's any consolation, we didn't save anyone it ours either. Not until the very end, and even then they disappeared on us.
The river?
A different one than the river here, I assume.

[lucentia]

Yes, it was just a river on the island. I don't know that it itself had any special properties, but it took us to a lake, where we... sunk into the water. Things ended there.

[aerodynamic]

Lucien... this sounds terrible.
Not that I expected it to sound GOOD, but are you telling me you guys drowned to get back here?

[lucentia]

Not exactly. We sunk into the water, but it didn't feel like drowning. [I would know...] It was... peaceful?

[(cyoa runner voice) imagine you are sora kingdom hearts going into the water in the kh opening]

[aerodynamic]

[ well this explains a lot. ]

Like floating through nothing.
And then you were back here?

[lucentia]

Essentially, yes.

[aerodynamic]

Weird.
There are similarities to some of the other trips, but then there aren't.
I thought maybe there would be some pattern but nothing's come up that's concrete.

[lucentia]

That's unfortunate. I haven't been able to notice any decisive commonality either.

[aerodynamic]

The most common factors are meddling with memories whether that's outright taking all of them to replace with new ones, or new ones are replacing old over time, and then having to usually deal with tragedies involving people close to you. Either by killing them, watching them die, or killing them and watching them die.

[lucentia]

Indeed, those all sound familiar. Though I'm not sure what the point is.

[aerodynamic]

If I had to guess maybe just to see what choices we'll make and how it'll affect the maze.

[lucentia]

I suppose that makes enough sense. It did feel like we were weighing things on the scale at times, so to speak.

[aerodynamic]

Hard decisions as you were going through with the experience?

[lucentia]

Perhaps not so explicitly, in that I don't think our journey was directly testing that, but there were times where I realized I came close to making a decision I would regret, or that I might make one were I not careful.

[aerodynamic]

[ huh. he stops to look at lucien for a moment as if trying to imagine what those decisions would even be. ]

What made you change your mind from making them, you think?

[lucentia]

[...]

Sylus was the one who immediately decided to accompany Tokinaga and the others back to the island. [a smile] He is a much kinder man than I had previously given him credit for.

[we also broke the cyoa because we weren't meant to do this but it's fine.]

Truthfully, I was ashamed that I had initially intended to let them go alone, even if I don't think I was wholly in my right mind, looking back. [sometimes... you really want to find treasure for some reason...] Still, I'm very grateful Sylus was there.