contrition

<<set $current_passage to "Wrecktown End">><<if $keyword is "listen">>Masts are creaking like wind-blown forest in Wrecktown.\n\nYou don't want to get out of bed.<<set $gossip = true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "gossip">>Your giresparrow hops up on the bed, warbling its nightly journey to you like a bee dances directions, each chirp corresponding to the texture, color, and current of each mile of waves. You will never understand but you take comfort in the encrypted litany.<<set $skulk = true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "skulk">>You lift up on your driftwood crutches and make your way out the door, along the maze of decks and planks.\n\nYou know each whorl and knot, where to place your feet so the old wounds don't go throbbing again.<<set $sorrow = true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "forgotten">>When it gets too hard, you close your eyes and feel the immensity of the water. Feel how the town rests on it like fragments of bark on a lake. Let your skull soften and melt until the limits of your skull are the limits of the sea.\n\nBig enough to hold how it felt when you heard the sickening crunch of Chrysanthemum, a sound that follows you like a captive echo. It finds its expression in the grind of ship's flanks, or a rock tumbling down the sea crags to splat a tidepool.<<set $devotion = true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "devotion">>Lying there on the damp soil under the square of pale light from the open hatch. The sound of waves coming from far away like slurred vespers.\n\nYou used to pray. But it felt impersonal, like suddenly becoming formal with old friends. So you just talk about nothing in particular. How your body is feeling today, what you ate, the weather, a striking bird or fish glimpsed in early morning light.<<set $sleep = true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "sleep">>And back to your little shiphome held tight between two motherly barges, lulled to [[sleep]] by the waters, thin as creeks between the decks of Wrecktown.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "beauty">>The sisters of Contrition drift through the sky. In your dreams they are one. You clung to this for so long.\n\nBut in separation they can become something new. Walls and watchtowers split in half, made ridiculous and abstract. No longer holding your trauma tight as a fist. The possibility for something new.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "sorrow">>You limp to the grave ship, hold full of dirt and memorial stones. Like looking down into a cellar of petrified fungi.\n\nEach stone has a name on it, or sometimes a symbol.<<set $forgotten = true>><<endif>>\n\n<<display "keywords_3">>

Lightning illuminates the forest palace of the Fang Queen, a rain-swept spire of fractal bark and leaves.\n\nYou feel like you could climb those vines and be right at her chambers. Like this is the perfect moment.\n\nYou tear a strip from your cloak and pad it with moss, bandaging your palms. An eruption of icebloom spores, frostbite in the spring.\n\n[[Listen|sleep]]

The passage becomes narrower, lower, like something not intended for human use. The fumes swirl around you, clinging to your skin, damp and sticky.\n\nTripping, falling to your knees, you see the engine core through a grate. See yourself standing at the rim. Your other self leaps onto the temportal, tearing apart cables carrying chronal antifreeze.\n\nYour hands burn. You look down at them. The skin is being eaten away.\n\n[[The emerald fog takes you|to cells]]

<<display "begin">>

<<timedgoto "end" 3.5s>>

[[Listen|$current_passage][$keyword = "listen"]] | [[Gossip|$current_passage][$keyword = "gossip"]] <<if $skulk is true>>| [[Skulk|$current_passage][$keyword = "skulk"]]<<endif>> <<if $sense is true>>| [[Sense|$current_passage][$keyword = "sense"]]<<endif>> <<if $key is true>>| [[Key|$current_passage][$keyword = "key"]]<<endif>> <<if $devotion is true>>| [[Devotion|$current_passage][$keyword = "devotion"]]<<endif>> <<if $sorrow is true>> |[[Sorrow|$current_passage][$keyword = "sorrow"]]<<endif>><<if $dagger is true>> |[[Dagger|$current_passage][$keyword = "dagger"]]<<endif>><<if $horror is true>> |[[Horror|$current_passage][$keyword = "horror"]]<<endif>><<if $tongue is true>> |[[Tongue|$current_passage][$keyword = "tongue"]]<<endif>><<if $lightscarred is true>> |[[Lightscarred|$current_passage][$keyword = "lightscarred"]]<<endif>>\n\n<<if $current_passage neq "Lightmare">><<if $current_passage is "Wrecktown">>[[Wrecktown][$keyword = "listen"]]<<else>>[[Wrecktown][$keyword = "listen"]]<<endif>> <<if $sewers is true>> <<if $current_passage is "Sewers">>| [[Sewers][$keyword = "listen"]]<<else>>| [[Sewers][$keyword = "listen"]]<<endif>><<endif>> <<if $granary is true and $granary_complete is false>><<if $current_passage is "Granary">>| [[Granary][$keyword = "listen"]]<<else>>| [[Granary][$keyword = "listen"]]<<endif>><<endif>> <<if $mansion is true>><<if $current_passage is "Mansion">>| [[Mansion][$keyword = "listen"]]<<else>>| [[Mansion][$keyword = "listen"]]<<endif>><<endif>> <<if $cathedral is true>><<if $current_passage is "Cathedral">>| [[Cathedral][$keyword = "listen"]]<<else>>| [[Cathedral][$keyword = "listen"]]<<endif>><<endif>> <<if $drowned_city is true>><<if $current_passage is "Drowned City">>| [[Drowned City][$keyword = "listen"]]<<else>>| [[Drowned City][$keyword = "listen"]]<<endif>><<endif>><<endif>>

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<<set $current_passage to "Docking Core">><<if $keyword is "listen">>A massive shaft burrowed into the underside of the island, howling with the hot wind that rises from the sea. It lifts ships into the core like leaves twirling on a breeze.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "gossip">>"...500 tons of skull from the hinterlands...200 barrels of deathpollen from the iron..."<<endif>><<if $keyword is "skulk">>You creep up a slow avalanche of gravhexed crates, onto a creaky catwalk, and up a vent tunnel. The crystalline fumes have you shivering as you clamber past the frosted figurines of frozen lizards and spiders.\n\nAbove, the moon.<<set $sister = true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "devotion">>A cliff of bark rises above you. A treeship from the canopy empire of the iron druidess.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "sorrow">>Looking down the shaft you see Contrition sprawled out below, a web of light clinging to the sea in a way that seems so fragile and precarious now that you aren't trapped in its towering confines.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "lightscarred">>Bright light still hurts. You stick to the shade.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "forgotten">>You had a ship that flit like a hummingbird. It was your home, your freedom, an extension of your body. After everything went to shit, freedom was impounded then torn apart for scrap.\n\nYou never put part of your soul in a thing or person again.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "beauty">>Little purple flowers grow in cracks on the shaft rock, clinging against the wind and the fumes. Like fragments of twilight taken root.\n\nYou wish you could get close enough to smell but the pit of the sky separates you. So you imagine.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "puzzle">>That wasn't quite right though. They stopped using the core, didn't they? A dark, echoing hollow now, hanging with vines and roots, where bats and gulls wriggle in the carcasses of ships.<<endif>>\n\n<<display "keywords_2">>\n

Masts are creaking like wind-blown forest.\n\n[[Listen|Wrecktown End][$keyword = "listen"]]<<set $skulk = false>><<set $devotion = false>><<set $sorrow = false>><<set $lightscarred = false>><<set $forgotten = false>>

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<<set $current_passage to "Vaultscape">><<if $keyword is "listen">>A seashell that carries the sound of an ocean beyond this world, where the water is boiling and the waves shriek like grinding metal.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "gossip">>A collection of tongues preserved in amber. Each is scored with the attributes of the famed personage who owned it. Their skills at oratory, deception, heart-liftingness, lust. You wonder how many asterisks you would earn in each division.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "skulk">>An amulet made of the melted together final breaths of seven suicides. The most powerful tool of invisibility ever devised. No one will see you when they look at you.\n\nThis is what you came for. Now the fortress is within your grasp.<<set $forgotten = true>><<set $heaven = true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "forgotten">>A vase in a clearing of diamond-eyed statues. A memory grows from the vase, and the water is liquefied time, distilled from a captured year.\n\nPetals of laughter, thorns of retrospect.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "sorrow">><<if $beauty is false>>A box made of something like polished stone, but softer, with the faintest give under your fingers. The box is joined together out of tightly fitting plates. It has four dials and a button. Drops of warm water leak from the seams, quick little droplets like tiny water creatures hiding in the creases of your fingers.\n\n<<cyclinglink $cycle1 "lamia" "harpy" "succubus">> <<cyclinglink $cycle2 "lamia" "harpy" "succubus">> <<cyclinglink $cycle3 "lamia" "harpy" "succubus">> <<cyclinglink $cycle4 "lamia" "harpy" "succubus">> \n\n[[({o})]]<<else>>You've drunk your fill.<<endif>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "devotion">>A halo from Sidvhes Monastery. Heavy gold ring, rusty bloody surgical bolts for drilling into the head.\n\nA form of redemption for those who are beyond it.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "lightscarred">>Reading through the vaultscape's ancient codexes was illuminating, once you found the entry for //Scape Key (Compromised)//.\n\nApparently there was once a key designed to unlock dimensions. But the problem with a perfect key is not always knowing what's on the other side.\n\nOne day it was a dimension of pure intelligence. Intelligence like oil, staining the key. An intelligence that was very hungry after so long inside that burning splinter of a dimension, that traveled in the form of light, possessing and devouring.\n\nBut it still maintains the properties of a key. The key that is burnt to your heart.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "beauty">>You walk to the end of a ravine of coins and find a tall, ivory-framed mirror. In that mirror you have no scars, no patches of missing hair, no wrinkles, no bags. Your eyes look clear, unbroken, unburdened. Your hair is long and clean and lustrous, and you are smiling.\n\nYou pick up something hard and smash your perfect face in.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "puzzle">>Picking up the amulet was strange, in retrospect. That green glow like envy made real. A sprig of life on the mountains of barren gold.\n\nThe insistent, throbbing command: //ACQUIRE//<<endif>>\n\n<<display "keywords_2">>

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You stare entranced. Whether minutes or hours passed you could not say. But finally you set the box [[down|Vaultscape]].<<set $beauty = true>>

The heat emanating from the core blurs the air, enveloping and heavy. The thrum of the catwalk is strangely lulling.\n\n[[Close your eyes]]

<<set $current_passage to "Wrecktown">><<if $keyword is "listen">>Ragged figures gossip in the creaking shadows of Wrecktown.<<set $gossip = true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "gossip">>Someone is whispering behind your back: "She used to be the greatest thief in Contrition, until..."<<set $skulk = true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "sense">>Here and there you feel the spark of a little treasure deep in a home-hold, like a gold tooth in a rotten mouth\n\nYou would never steal such trinkets, knowing many of them came from across the sea, and were precious to those who worshipped gods older than mercy.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "key">>Your key is useless here. The only lock in Wrecktown is trust.\n\nStealing is something you do to citydwellers.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "devotion">>A hundred religions washed up on the shore of Contrition. A hundred became ten, at least on land. But here their old shrines are still tended, by those who remember who got them across the sea.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "sorrow">>When you left this place, you were a queen of shadows. No lock could stop you, no chain could hold you.\n\nNow barely anyone even recognizes you.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "skulk">>You follow a procession of sewermaidens. They disappear inside a secret hatch leading to the sewers.<<set $sewers = true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "dagger">>"Looks like a ceremonial dagger from the Ivory Maidens, back when they had that cathedral up on the hill. Before things fell apart."\n\nThe weapon seller gives you a hard look. "If you have the sense god gave a barnacle you'll toss it overboard right here and now and let it fester on the bottom of the sea."<<set $cathedral = true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "tongue">>You listen to the waves as they proudly list the names of those they drowned.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "horror">>You can't stop thinking about giant things sleeping far below, and how this town is a thin film of splinters on all that unknowable vastness.<<endif>>\n\n<<display "keywords">>

You stowaway on a ship bound for the [[sky|Docking Core]].

[[Listen|$current_passage][$keyword = "listen"]] | [[Gossip|$current_passage][$keyword = "gossip"]] <<if $skulk is true>>| [[Skulk|$current_passage][$keyword = "skulk"]]<<endif>> <<if $devotion is true>>| [[Devotion|$current_passage][$keyword = "devotion"]]<<endif>> <<if $sorrow is true>> |[[Sorrow|$current_passage][$keyword = "sorrow"]]<<endif>><<if $lightscarred is true>> |[[Lightscarred|$current_passage][$keyword = "lightscarred"]]<<endif>><<if $sleep is true>> |[[Sleep|$current_passage][$keyword = "sleep"]]<<endif>><<if $beauty is true>> |[[Beauty|$current_passage][$keyword = "beauty"]]<<endif>> <<if $puzzle is true>> |[[Puzzle|$current_passage][$keyword = "puzzle"]]<<endif>>\n\n<<if $current_passage is "Docking Core">>[[Docking Core][$keyword = "listen"]]<<else>>[[Docking Core][$keyword = "listen"]]<<endif>> <<if $sister is true>><<if $current_passage is "Sister-to-Contrition">> |[[Sister-to-Contrition][$keyword = "listen"]]<<else>> |[[Sister-to-Contrition][$keyword = "listen"]]<<endif>><<endif>> <<if $vaultscape is true>><<if $current_passage is "Vaultscape">> |[[Vaultscape][$keyword = "listen"]]<<else>> |[[Vaultscape][$keyword = "listen"]]<<endif>><<endif>> <<if $heaven is true>><<if $current_passage is "Heavencoast Fortress">> |[[Heavencoast Fortress][$keyword = "listen"]]<<else>> |[[Heavencoast Fortress][$keyword = "listen"]]<<endif>><<endif>> <<if $ship is true>><<if $current_passage is "Mega-ship">> |[[Mega-ship][$keyword = "listen"]]<<else>> |[[Mega-ship][$keyword = "listen"]]<<endif>><<endif>>

Contrition

<<set $current_passage to "Mega-ship">><<if $keyword is "listen">>A ship so vast it feels subterranean, unseen machinery gurgling and roaring like the molten grind of melting rock. Some incredible power is keeping the mega-ship aloft, and it radiates through the walls like a fever. You follow the drafts of suffocating heat toward your destination.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "gossip">>Three deckhands spiderwalk down the passage, thumbs dragging barrels of skyfire. They stop to snap tap and crack a conversation in Digitese. You only know a few words: "Invasion...goreplunder..."<<endif>><<if $keyword is "skulk">>You rapple down the side of a maintenance pit, dodging vents of superheated steam.\n\nThey say the ship is powered by the moment of its own destruction, a snapshot time portal capturing the supernova fuel of its own demise.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "forgotten">>A hundred wars past, this was a farmship. Grainbeast and oxspores filled the grassholds, sustaining thousands of lives during the hard lean years of the Starvation, when the ocean exuded an oily, rotten, killing mist, and the leviathans held sway.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "sorrow">>The amulet is heavier than anything. You can barely remember who you are. Every day of your existence seems absurd and confusing, like trying to solve a puzzle presented to you in a dream, a puzzle whose logic disappears upon waking and can never be rebuilt.\n\nYou tear the amulet off and throw it into the darkness.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "devotion">>The crew worships this ship, and it is designed for their worship, iron hide jutting into obelisks like a procession of spinal protrusions, hung with barbed wire garlands and marked with prayer runes drawn with the gunpowder-blood paste of a thousand battles on a thousand shores. <<endif>><<if $keyword is "lightscarred">>The engine core throws light like bleach. You wrap your cloak around your head but it keeps coming, as if spindly fingers of light were undoing the threads and pushing through to caress your face with burning nails.\n\nYou feel that puzzle feeling again.<<set $puzzle = true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "beauty">>Pressing your face against porthole glass. You can see Contrition from here. Vivid colors explode above the skyline, like globs of paint thrown into an energy field, snowglobe pyrotechnics.\n\nYou wish you were down there celebrating. You don't even remember what the festival is about. You just want to feel the warmth of stranger's bodies around you, everyone staring up at the same thing.\n\nClouds cover the porthole.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "puzzle">>The engine core is up [[ahead]].<<endif>>\n\n<<display "keywords_2">>\n\n

<<if $cycle1 is "lamia" and $cycle2 is "harpy" and $cycle3 is "harpy" and $cycle4 is "harpy">>A whirring, almost hissing sound, like tiny gears and escaping air. The front plates of the box click apart and unfold like machined petals.\n\nRevealing [[the most beautiful thing you've ever seen]].<<else>>Nothing happens.\n\n[[Okay|Vaultscape]]<<endif>>

Ragged figures gossip in the creaking shadows.\n\n[[Listen|Wrecktown][$keyword = "listen"]]

<<timedgoto "fang queen" 2s>>

The language of the metal inflects.\n\nLight becomes [[dark]].

Suddenly you can't breathe.\n\n[[Listen|Vats][$keyword = "listen"]]

<<set $current_passage to "Heavencoast Fortress">><<if $keyword is "listen">>The //chnk// of spotlights rotating turn by turn. The beat of rain against the walls. The sparks falling from <<endif>><<if $keyword is "gossip">>Perched on a rainslippery pipe, you overhear two sentinels talking about the adamantine maidens in tones of hushed fear and arousal. Their impenetrable vestments, their bolas beads.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "skulk">>You walk through a legion of auto-guards without so much as a blink of their ruby optics.\n\nThe suicide amulet hangs around your neck like a rope of ice. You feel completely forgettable, disposable, insignificant.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "forgotten">>This was the run 3 years back. The one you should have died at. With the rest of your friends.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "sorrow">>You remember the exact place where Chrysanthemum fell from the lightning wall. The exact spot where Fennel was ran through by a rapier storm. As if the blood had never been cleaned away.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "devotion">>You hide inside a reliquary chest. The adamantine maidens carry you into the mega-ship waiting at the end of the dock.<<set $ship = true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "lightscarred">>When the floodlight lashes your face on its automated patrol, you feel like a handful of water tossed into the sea: no separation, form lost, panicking at the impossibility of telling your cells apart from the world.\n\nThe lightscar stings like a cigarette burn on your heart. But through all the horribleness, the pact of the suicide amulet holds true: you cannot be seen. After collecting your photonic thoughts, you crawl back into the shadows.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "beauty">>Rain dances endlessly against the bright lights. A hypnotic pattern. Like a storm of needles.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "puzzle">>Your image of the fortress repairs itself, filling with those glowing green paths that led you exactly where you needed to go, like a cageful of snakes released in your memories.\n\nThe same fortress? Different? Does it matter? Injections of nostalgia behind your eyelids, patching over any gaps in the story.<<endif>>\n\n<<display "keywords_2">>

<<timedgoto "parasite" 2s>><<set $keyword = "listen">><<set $lightscarred = true>>

<<set $current_passage to "Mansion">><<if $keyword is "listen">>The clink of wine glasses and the laughter of those who take laughter from others.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "gossip">>A ratkid is picking through a pile of detritus at the back wall. "Sometimes they forget to burn the rubbish, and I'll find a bone with a little fat on it." <<set $mansion to true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "skulk">><<if $key is true>><<if $dagger is false>>You slip through the gate, into the garden (avoiding the lamprey vines), scale up to the third story window (watching out for the decorative spikes), down the dark halls (sidestepping the alarm runes), and find the dagger.\n\nYour arms hurt and your lungs ache. It took half an hour longer than it should have. Your body isn't the same anymore.<<set $dagger = true>><<else>>You already prised that pearl. No sense begging the shadow goddess for luck you don't need.<<endif>><<else>>The garden gate is locked. The distorted keyhole looks like no key you've seen before.<<endif>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "sense">><<if $dagger is true>>The malign presence that hid in this mansion now hangs from your belt.<<else>>You sense a malign presence brooding over the mansion, like a hoary, scarred light glowering over a litter of soft mewling creatures.<<endif>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "key">>The gate lock flares with a protective rune. The key eats through it like fire through paper and pours into the keyhole like water fills a cup.\n\nTime to skulk.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "devotion">>Every year church-money pays for a grand new addition to the grounds.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "sorrow">>So much land, and none for those who need it most. The space the Duke uses to play croquet could feed a dozen families.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "dagger">>With anger smoldering in your breast, you consider bringing the dagger back to the Duke, this time to store in her heart.\n\nBut it is better to cut the base of a rope than to get tangled in the knots.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "tongue">>The fountain in the garden is gurgling like a freshly cut throat.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "horror">>The woundflowers in the garden are moaning this time of night.<<endif>>\n\n<<display "keywords">>

<<set $current_passage to "Cathedral">><<if $keyword is "listen">>Wind howls through the gaps in the walls, and now and then the crunch of stained glass under some creature's hoof.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "gossip">>A crone in faded white rags is tending a fire in the ruin of a once-grand hall.\n\n"Are you cold? You may share this fire with me. The heat will not last forever, but while it does, it is infinitely generous."<<endif>><<if $keyword is "skulk">>You creep through the halls, skirting pools of moonlight. A deercat chews on berries growing from the rotten wreck of a pulpit.\n\nThere is nothing here to surprise you, no shouts of alarm. But the instinct to conceal yourself is as much a part of you by now as the configuration of your bones.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "sense">>An aching, god-shaped absence.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "key">>All locks long rusted or busted. Everything precious taken by thief animal wind or rain.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "devotion">>You stop in front of the statue of a maiden saint and say a prayer half-remembered from your youth. Her eyes and mouth may be defaced, but she still has ears. And either way, it makes you feel a little better, like you're placing your cares in a hidden place.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "sorrow">>The maiden statue weeps with rainwater.\n\nOnce halls like this were gatherings for the community. Now the city grows suffocatingly close, and wide open spaces are no longer built.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "dagger">><<if $devotion neq true>>"Why would someone like you want to hear my stories? To laugh at my pitiful devotion?"<<else>>The crone draws her hood closer and stares at the dagger. "I remember you, wretched thing.\n\nWe caught glimpses of a dreadful light haunting the grounds. It could not enter these sacred halls, not when we had the wards cleansed and fed every day, but neither could we sleep. We could feel it watching at our windows, a horrible luminance bleeding through the most tightly drawn curtains."<<set $horror = true>><<endif>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "horror">>"We prepared a sacrifice to repel it from the city. The herdreapers brought us a grainbeast, and we prepared everything according to the strictest protocols. But when Maiden Lander's athame pierced the beast, no bloodkernels came forth. Instead, it deflated like a hide full of scalding air, and light stained the blade like blood. It had possessed the beast, and now it was inside the walls. Nothing could wash that stain away, not boiling water, not acid, not the prayers of our most devout.\n\nI have often laid awake at night thinking how we could have turned aside that ruin. But we had no idea what we were dealing with."<<set $sorrow = true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "tongue">>Ducking under the bough of a collapsed pillar, you find a dim alcove. Huge jags of graffiti cover the wall, dripping black to the floor, down through a sewer grate.\n\nThey repeat a single word, hard to translate, but something like a cross between quarantine/sever/thimble.<<endif>>\n\n<<display "keywords">>

contrition by [[porpentine|http://www.slimedaughter.com]]\n\ninspired by cej pacian's [[weird city interloper|http://gamesforcrows.blogspot.com/2014/06/weird-city-interloper.html?m=1]]

<<if $granary_complete is false>><<set $current_passage to "Granary">><<if $keyword is "listen">>Grainbeasts are snoring within the clay walls.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "gossip">>Herdreaper Anolac is stirring a pot of mud outside their hut. "Every year they keep the most delicious looking grainbeast for Duke Cherigor."<<set $mansion to true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "sense">>The minds of the grainbeasts are calm, without fear. They have no idea what awaits them. You shudder at the memory of last year's threshing.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "key">><<if $granary_complete is false>>You unlock the door. Inside, a scarehuman guards the way.<<else>>Nothing remains in this granary except the smell of grainbeast and the body of a scarehuman.<<endif>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "devotion">>This is not godly.<<set $sorrow to true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "sorrow">>You weep for the grainbeasts.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "skulk">>You find the body of a grainbeast behind the granary. "TAINTED MEAT" is spraypainted on its flank.<<if $sense is false>><<set $sense = true>> The witch's power hums within its spilled guts. You pick up the crystallized energy and it sinks through your skin with a sharp pain that leaves no wound.<<endif>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "horror">>The threshing grounds are deeply stained with centuries of grainslaughter--as if the endless layers of kernelblood had worked their way deeper than reality.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "tongue">>Near the herdreaper's cottage, a rusty obelisk records the grainbeast count for each year. The number is higher every year, something that doesn't seem to have had an effect on the citywide hunger and poverty.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "dagger">><<if $key is true>><<if $scarehuman is true>>You creep inside. The scarehuman leaps in front of you and you slash its burlap hide. The battery soul spills free in a rivulet of straw and bones. \n\nThe dagger sucks it up like the sun melting away a puddle. It feels full and content in your hands.\n\nYou find the leader of the grainbeast and whisper to her, telling her of the threshing. The grainbeast stampede, smashing through the city gates, a golden torrent pouring into the secluded hill country.<<set $granary = false>><<set $granary_complete = true>><<set $scarehuman = false>><<else>>You keep the dagger concealed under your cloak, in consideration of the gentle grainbeasts.<<endif>><<else>>You see the scarehuman through the keyhole, but have no way inside.<<endif>><<endif>><<else>>The justice constructs are coming, and the sky cracks with alarm flares. Best be scarce.<<endif>>\n\n<<display "keywords">>

You drag yourself to the edge of the platform and drop down. You expect to be pulled back with burning pinions, or held down by incredible suffocating weight.\n\nBut nothing holds you back. Because no matter how [[far]] you crawl, the light follows you, like an endlessly unspooling cord.

<<set $current_passage to "Vats">><<if $keyword is "listen">>Underwater sound, but thicker, stickier, gooey, like a dream of tar.<<set $gossip = true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "gossip">>Through the glass you hear muffled voices, make out rippling outlines. "...prepare her for drop in...Eastern Quadrant...near palace..."<<set $puzzle = true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "skulk">>A thousand heists, scores, thefts, details switched and stitched, frustrated spiraling swallowing their own tail.\n\n//OBJECT FOCUS:FANG QUEEN SCEPTER//\n\n//EVENT CHAIN [FANG QUEEN SCEPTER] [GHOST LEATHER SHROUD] [TERMINATE HORNED INSURGENCY LEADER]//<<set $hatred = true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "puzzle">>Words appear.\n\n//MEGA SHIP "ADMIGRANDAL" BREACHED AND ELIMINATED//\n\nYou can't tell if they're in your ears or eyes or mind or all or none. They taste green.\n\n//DELETING LIFE_47...INFUSING LIFE_93//\n\nYour schema for dealing with the situation changes, becomes hazier.<<set $skulk = true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "horror">>The liquid is hardening, sealing you in.\n\n//PREPARING TRANSIT//<<set $forgotten = true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "forgotten">>But why would you run, anymore than a doll would get up and walk away in the middle of playtime.\n\nThe water glows. Your flesh feels like mist. You feel very [[far away]].<<endif>><<if $keyword is "beauty">>You close your eyes. Focus on your heartbeat. On moving past this terror.\n\nRemember the meadowrift at Sparrowdrome, how it burst open in the face of your ship, and you, braking so tight you could see individual blades of grass through the cockpit glass. The smells of fresh earth and dew, cutting through the metal and the fuel. And then it disappeared.\n\nThat was worth something.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "hatred">>A little moment of awareness each time. That residual feeling, below memory, deep in your muscles.\n\nYou hold on to that irritation, let it burn and tear inside you. Hoping that one day the scars will spell something, even after your mind is wiped clean.\n\nA cross-stitch of cicatrixes spelling //run//<<set $horror = true>><<endif>>\n\n<<display "keywords_4">>

<<set $current_passage to "Sister-to-Contrition">><<if $keyword is "listen">>Rain falls on the flying sister of Contrition. It sings as it hits the exposed crystal ridging the island (these shining ligaments keep the land pinned to the sky--bones of an otherwise invisible leyline skeleton).<<endif>><<if $keyword is "gossip">>The hot springs are heated by a cracked crystal, slow pink-blue heat rising like dye.\n\nSomeone is speaking drunkenly. "Ha, you know what's funny, you kinda look like that woman from three years ago, what was her name, the one who tried to steal from..."\n\nYou grab your towel and leave.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "skulk">>You duck behind a trashheap as a justice construct ambles by. They probably still have your face and name engraved on their mineral brains for longer than you will ever live.\n\nIn a way, the central database is responsible for your criminality. You've changed so much in these three years, but they haven't. They built a shrine to your guilt.\n\nA guttering lightpole catches your eye, pasted over with wanted poster strata. You tear away years of damp paper, gouging through sodden bounties until you find yourself.\n\n//Acacia Gutterblossom//\n\nA blot of water damage surrounded by a fringe of wild black hair. The poster, exposed after all these years, is quickly eaten away by the rain.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "devotion">>Walking the lane of godly statues. A theological construct runes mythos to tourists near an angelic fountain.\n\nThe citizens of the island worship the same gods as Contrition, except with wings. You think of the gill-slashed goddess in the drowned city, and an image of the three cities fills your head: air, dirt, and water. Sister and mother to Contrition, faith adapting to circumstance.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "sorrow">>For a flit of a moment you imagine starting a new life on Contrition's mirror--as if it were the same people, same places, just in the sky, with no memory of you. As if you lived your land life and now you can try again with your sky self.\n\nBut nothing will be the same again.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "lightscarred">>Out past the skymills, in an abandoned field, there is a stone monument rising from a stone circle. The present authorities of the city wrote it off as a particularly ostentatious sundial. But you know it as a forgotten door.\n\nThe vaultscape reveals itself to the scar of light on your heart.<<set $vaultscape = true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "forgotten">>That bar over there. The one made from the hull of an old gunboat, with the propeller over the entrance turning slowly in the wind. That's where you used to party with your old crew.\n\nA whiff of cumulus-brewed whiskey comes from the entrance, along with warmth and laughter. You recoil.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "beauty">>Moonlight pierces through the clouds, striking a ridge of crystal, bursting in a shower of sparks.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "puzzle">>How could you have forgotten such a thing? How the crystal resonance disaster shattered Sister-to-Contrition into triplets, rained fragments of their flesh into the ocean, isles of death and disaster.\n\nIf you walk across big sister, keeping to the landmarks, it's easy to forget.<<endif>>\n\n<<display "keywords_2">>

<<timedgoto "to wrecktown" 2s>>

As you press on, a sound of water rises up around you, like pressure building in your ears. At first you think it's the hydraulics, pipes carrying liquid through the walls. It's loudest in the shadowy corridors threading to the side. The [[dark unknown]].\n\nBut the [[engine core]] is so close. The distorted roar of an eternal explosion. Glowing and vulnerable with immense power.

// core\n<<set $keyword to "listen">>\n\n// one-offs\n<<set $scarehuman to true>>\n<<set $granary_complete to false>>

[[Waking up|prey]] in a pool of streetlight.

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<<set $current_passage to "Drowned City">><<if $keyword is "listen">>The echoing spatter of cavern precipitation. The clamber of soft things.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "gossip">>An amphibious humanoid gawks at you from a belfry cove. "Cti gilig ghas..."<<endif>><<if $keyword is "skulk">>Leaping across streets of water and isle roofs, past the volcanic protrusion of steeples and spires.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "sense">>The blade twitches like a deadly compass point. You feel the unearthly heat of the dagger mirrored somewhere else in this city, like a torch to a bonfire.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "key">>You unlock a blue door engraved with treasury runes. Fish swim past your feet.\n\nAny riches once laid here are now part of the fish, the coral, the water itself.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "devotion">>A statue of an ancient goddess dances with her scythes. Someone carved gills on her ribs.<<set $sorrow to true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "sorrow">>A jellyfish chandelier lights an underwater ball of kelp-animated skeletons.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "dagger">>The dagger leads you through the drowned boulevards, into a dome-like structure encrusted with coral. In the coral are coins, children's toys, skulls.\n\nA stone circle lies in the center, curiously untouched by the creeping growth.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "horror">>Contrition is built on the grave of a doomed city. Perhaps one day it will serve as the foundation to another.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "tongue">>As you mouth the words on this stone circle, it shines with a sickly light. The dagger in your belt makes a low humming sound.\n\nYou could step into the [[light|Lightmare][$keyword = "listen"]].<<endif>>\n\n<<display "keywords">>

<<set $current_passage to "Sewers">><<if $keyword is "listen">>Sewermaidens are singing in their dripping halls.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "gossip">>Girlbat hangs from the ceiling. <<if $granary_complete is false>>"I hear a grainbeast was visited by a witch and given the power of vision. She hoped it would free itself, but it could not bear to be separated from its friends."<<else>>"Someone told me the granary was sabotaged by Caidic rebels, but I think it was a bored shadow naiad."<<endif>><<set $granary = true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "sense">><<if $key is false>>You find a lantern spirit in a distant tunnel. It surrenders a key from its cage and twirls away into the aether. The key slowly changes shape in your hand, glowing liquid blue.<<set $key to true>><<else>>Hideous forces slumber deep below, but they are not your concern. The sewermaidens keep them quiescent.<<endif>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "key">>You unlock a golden grating. The relics of dead beliefs are displayed inside, gathered here by the sewermaidens who looked after them when all others had forgotten or renounced them.\n\nThe waste products of faith.<<set $devotion to true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "devotion">>You harmonize with the sewermaidens, singing a lullaby to the leviathans below.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "sorrow">>How sad for these sewermaidens to spend their lives in constant vigilance. But also how beautiful for that vigilance to be transmuted into serenity and tenderness.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "skulk">>You creep through the dripping tunnels. The chorus of the sewermaidens echoes through the pipes, as if the sewer was a vast organ of stone and shadow.\n\nYou come to a gaping pit where the waters of the sewer pour into fathomless darkness. The song of the sewermaidens seems to pour down as well, as if sucked by hungry mouths.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "dagger">>A sewermaiden crosses her arms. "That's an evil thing, and there is evil enough down here."<<endif>><<if $keyword is "horror">>You descend deep into the sewer, where the tunnels become more like caves and the chorus blends with subterranean tide. You see gargantuan shapes sleeping below the surface, skin slick and gleaming by your lantern light.\n\nA pillar juts from the water, and on that pillar is a symbol like a tongue splitting into many smaller tongues. It blurs as you look at it, like a localized defect in vision.\n\nSomething changes inside you, and you can read the writing that circles the pillar. But after a few words you decide not to.<<set $tongue = true>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "tongue">>What you thought was just scratchings and erosion on the sewer walls now attains a horrible significance to you. You feel as if you were wandering through a sewer-shaped manuscript.\n\nYou walk as if in a trance, until you are far from all light, guided by the tracing of the words on the walls.\n\nYou come to a vast field of water and stone, cast eery by a cavern sky of fungal constellations.<<set $drowned_city = true>><<endif>>\n\n<<display "keywords">>

<<set $current_passage to "Lightmare">><<if $keyword is "listen">>The lightmare hums as it drains the magic from your soul.<<if $key is true>>\n\n<<set $key = false>>The key burns away<<endif>><<if $sense is true>><<set $sense = false>> and the power of vision disintegrates inside you.<<endif>><<endif>><<if $keyword is "gossip">>Sound burns in this place like kindling.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "skulk">>Your nerves twitch and spasm.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "devotion">>The prayers emerge from your mouth as smoke.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "sorrow">>Memories crackle and pop in your head.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "dagger">>Your writhing body is a speck on a metal structure. This structure is like a splinter in a void of light. The metal of that dagger is the metal of this [[structure]].<<endif>><<if $keyword is "horror">>You feel as if you were being flayed from the inside out.<<endif>><<if $keyword is "tongue">>The language on the dagger is here. The language is the light, and now you understand every word you encountered prior to this point as a crude pidgin of that blazing tongue.<<endif>>\n\n<<display "keywords">>

Acacia Gutterblossom