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?

Comments

[finalmix]

[ there are Implications about the lone grave right in the middle of the foggy expanse, but anyway. that's way too much to unpack right now but joshua has some Thoughts.

anyway, since there's nothing much to clean off the grave with but he at least feels compelled to do something, he's passing the lantern over to shalem for a moment just so that it frees his hands and he can dust off some of the dirt that's on the name stone.

he's being respectful about it, at least. ]

[kandata]

[Dust off the grave, Joshua, with those hands! The more he dusts off, the more he finds his hands get caked with black and white dust. Odd, that!

The name...there's a name there. Before Joshua and Shalem can focus on it, though, sensations invade them:

Momentary elation, but there's a undercurrent of melancholy underneath it, and a voice comes out from the mound Joshua left alone]

...I can be someone better now...!

[When they blink, they find themselves back with everyone else. Feel free to share with everyone what you found!]