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

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?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Twelve cameras, and twelve of us.

[ Whatever that means, it feels like it can't be a coincidence. ]

A camera for each one of us...

[ Honestly, it's unsettling, really. ]

I wonder if we should simply take care of them...though I am uncertain if doing that may cause more trouble instead.

Alternatively, each person picks one up. To use or break, who knows.

...There's an idea as well, I suppose.

Snipe them with magic, perhaps?

I'm open to picking one up; breaking seems risky right now.

[ Nodding. ]

We should at least test what happens when we get in front of them - so far these palaces have always followed a set narrative, so it might be our only way forward.