Episode 3 Part 3 Sneak Peek #15

Hi folks, 

Today's sneak peek contains spoilers for a major decision along Route 1. There are variations in how this event can go, but the MC's dialogue does mention one outcome explicitly. 

SPOILERS AHEAD.

By the time you climb the stairs to the fourth mezzanine, your body is hurting. Your pace has slowed, your chest clenches, your breath comes in gasps. You grit your teeth, annoyed, and put a hand on the railing to pull yourself up. This ache punches through deep to your bones, every part of your body feeling battered and bruised. After a month aboard a ship without decent activity and regular training, the mission today is taking its toll.

All this walking in circles is making your head spin. Why did they not think to connect one set of stairs to the next set of stairs like normal people?

Grousing to yourself, you emerge on the landing with your shoulder sagging and your calves aching. Aeran is yards ahead, the torchlight bobbing from halfway down the walkway. The destruction on this floor is much the same as the one below; there’s nothing new to take note of here. And yet he seems distracted, his fingertips brushing the edge of the mezzanine railing as he looks down at the broken stone so many floors below.

You follow his gaze as you approach, looking down down down into the abyss, and wonder if his thoughts have gone to the same place as yours. You may have killed the shroud, but that doesn’t mean it is gone from your mind.

“Still thinking about it?” you ask, your voice echoing dully in the stale air.

Aeran flinches, his brows drawing together. “Yeah. Something like that.”

You chew your lower lip. What was the shroud, really? This terrible being of storm and shadow, might and magic, released from its confines. That chorus of whispers in its strangled ancient tongue will be difficult to forget. Supposedly there is complex perception magic that can translate any language, known or unknown—not like you could make use of it. Ironic, that.

“No point,” he says distractedly after a moment. “Waste of time.”

“I’m not so sure.” You arrive at his side and fold your hands, resting them on the railing. “We have some questions answered. It was clearly sentient. It had consciousness, gods know from how many millennia ago. Though I wonder how it came to be sealed within Diradan Tower in the first place.” You pause, swallowing the lump in your throat. “Umbria’s apprentice released it… and I destroyed it. It was never going to get its freedom.”

“You think that’s what it wanted?”