ic inbox.

[lucentia]

HELLO

"Greetings."

GOODBYE

TEXT | VIDEO | VOICE | ACTION

Comments

[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.

[aerodynamic]

[ this is so funny what did you guys do. ]

I don't think you can blame yourself too bad. These things are designed to make you question what you know. Especially when you can't tell at the time if the people there are real or not.
I'm glad Sylus was there, too.
Even if it does sound like a bit of a hassle in the end to regroup.

[lucentia]

Indeed. Perhaps it would've been safer to stick together, but I don't think any of us were expecting things to have escalated so quickly.

[It might've been my fault... I was the one who simply left and told them to do as they wished.]

[aerodynamic]

You never do at first.
Either way I'm glad you all made it back in one piece. Safely.
Which I know is a choice to say given what happened with Hien but you get the idea.

[lucentia]

We should've taken better note of Hien's mental state before departing, so I apologize for that.

[but at least based off his conversation with hien, he doubts that lucien's attempt to, uh, self-sacrifice (which no one else needs to know about) aggravated it even if hien was getting ready to tpk when it was happening.]

[aerodynamic]

[ he frowns before he scribbles a little more frantically. ]

I feel like that's probably not something to apologize for when I'm gonna guess you guys had a lot going on yourselves.