Kirumi Tojo's Palace | The Ultimate Maid's Failures

[kandata]

By now everyone may be used to find themselves in bizarre locations, between going into palaces and visiting Nekyia. It might not come as a surprise that it has happened again.

What might come as a surprise, though...is how empty this place is.

All around you there's nothing more than a large, gray, featureless expanse. In the distance there seem to be bars, curving upwards to gather so, so high above you, possibly hundreds of miles above, so high it’s hard to distinguish.

It’s a cage. So unfathomably large. You could escape, were you to get to the edges of the cage, but...it would take forever. No matter how you look at it, you're trapped. The atmosphere is so...hopeless. Devoid of anything even remotely positive.

Not that you want to hang around for long, do you? After all, this is someone's palace. Not a place to stick around at. What to do, though?

It’s all so...empty. Silent. Featureless. A flat expanse of hard gray tiles.

Gather together, everyone. Gather and choose a direction. North, East, West, South. All directions look completely identical, but could it affect your time in this place, somehow? Probably not. But all treks start with the first step. Perhaps, if you get moving, you'll progress?

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[moonshaded]

[The emptiness is oppressive - and all too familiar. As soon as they appear, Kainé briefly trails her arm through the air, as if testing that it's real and thin.]

... There's nothing. [Nobody.] These places aren't usually empty like this, right?

[It's weird, right? It's a brief moment of being unsettled that she quickly tries to downplay by moving on. She looks to the west, where it seems she intends to move. Already restless, she doesn't want to linger in the empty plane for too long.]

[kandata]

[To the west you go, Kainé!

To the west there's...there's something on the ground. It's a red marker. Not too far away, slowly sinking into the solid ground as if it's trying to phase through, there's a teddy bear, it seems. Hard to see its features when it's disappearing little by little!]

[moonshaded]

[The teddy bear catches her attention - more for its mode of disappearance than any of its features. Instead of being buried, it's more like it's phasing out of existence - like a memory lost.

Is Kainé able to pass the red marker and approach the sinking and totally harmless teddy bear or does it phase through her, too, when she tries to stop it from quicksanding out of reality?]

[kandata]

[You can pass! Come closer, try to reach for the teddy bear!

The simple moment of trying to reach for it makes the surroundings change just for a fleeting moment. The general coldness of gray nothingness changes into a warm place Kainé can't identify well due to how brief it was, but there's the sensation of holding something in her hands -- something soft, a plushie. All these sensations vanish in less than a second, but they were there, that's unmistakable!

When it's all gone, the teddy bear has sunk into the floor, out of sight, but Kainpe's hands are stained with black and white dye, like she touched something that was seeping those colors.

She also is back with everyone else. Feel free to tell the rest what you encountered!]

[moonshaded]

[And Kainé is left staring at her stained hands, fingers flexing slightly, and stuck with that memory of warmth.]

Well, shit.

[Time to wait for the regroup.]