> "Hello to you, too!" [Continue down the stairs]
The yawning darkness opts not to answer your greeting.
VOICE OF THE MEEK: What... hospitality.
VOICE OF THE HERO: Don't let it unnerve you. As long as it doesn't get into you're head, you're going to do just fine.
VOICE OF THE OBSESSED: Stop hesitating. We need to finish this.
You continue making your way down the stairs, footing becoming more and more unsure as your sense of sight becomes less and less useful. Eventually, you find yourself navigating by touch alone, the only thing meeting your eyes being an expanse of pitch black. But the ground beneath your feet is stable, and you've long since fallen into a rhythm that won't allow you to trip on the edge of the steps. You are safe.
It's when you start seeing things within the darkness that you begin to feel less so.
Shapes, moving alongside you. They could almost be mistaken at first for the benign patterns of keeping your eyes shut for a length of time, but when you turn your head to look at them, they stay right where they would be were they real.
As you continue down, they resolve themselves further. Shapes not unlike your own body and yet just fuzzy enough you can't tell if they are your own body, stepping in time. Flashes of movement at the corners of your vision—a hand, a chain, a knife. Mirrors lining the walls of a corridor—are there walls, anymore? If you reached out, would your hand meet glass or wood or simply nothing at all?
Physical sensations begin to fade. First goes the pressure of your footfalls and the ache in your limbs of walking for far too long. Then goes your ability to feel the movement of your body. Then your ability to sense yourself as a body, and not merely as a presence, following something else as it descends through a hall of twisted reflections.
Futility and subversion. Wariness and obsession. Conflict and survival. Detachment and devotion. The unfamiliar and the all-too-familiar. And at the heart of it all, something that can only be described as—
VOICE OF THE HERO: —you hear me, please, this can't be happening a second time, I can't see you die a—
VOICE OF THE MEEK: HE'S BACK
VOICE OF THE HERO: He—he is. We're alive. He's alive.
VOICE OF THE OBSESSED: Whatever happened back there, don't do it again. We need you alive.
VOICE OF THE HERO: We—I—You—You scared me, you know? For a while there I thought you'd just... vanished, again. Left us walking alone for who knows how long.
VOICE OF THE MEEK: Please don't leave us alone in there again. You don't know how horrible it was, just walking in silence with no idea if we'd ever get to stop.
> [Approach the stage]
VOICE OF THE OBSESSED: Getting on with it, then? Good. At least now you're actually focused.
VOICE OF THE HERO: Can't say I have any real complaints, either. Though... could you maybe say something, at least? Just so I know you're there?
VOICE OF THE MEEK: Are you there?
VOICE OF THE HERO: Don't say that.
You make your way to one of the aisles and begin descending to the stage, ignoring the protests of muscles worked far past their limits.
The air is still here, and silent. There are no distractions to be had anymore.
VOICE OF THE MEEK: So... now what?
VOICE OF THE HERO: You know, I'm not actually sure. I kind of assumed there'd... be something.
VOICE OF THE OBSESSED: There is something. There has to be. We just need to look harder.
VOICE OF THE MEEK: I think I have a guess as to where it might be...
> [Sit down]
VOICE OF THE HERO: Okay, time out. This is now an intervention.
VOICE OF THE MEEK: Shouldn't those be... I don't know, planned?
VOICE OF THE HERO: We don't have time for that. Listen. You've been weird the whole time we've been in this basement, and I at least want you to start talking to us again so we know why.
VOICE OF THE OBSESSED: What's wrong with what he's doing now? It's better than wasting time trying to avoid his responsibilities and then dying on purpose.
VOICE OF THE HERO: It's wrong because he wasn't acting like this until a minute ago! Aren't you at least concerned as to why?
VOICE OF THE OBSESSED: Not particularly.
VOICE OF THE MEEK: I'm with the heroic one. Last time we saw him, he already wasn't... doing particularly well, but at least he was still talking. And, I mean, the last time he stopped talking, well...
> [Ignore them. Sit down.]
You make your way to the front and center seat, and sit down.
VOICE OF THE HERO: Mate. Please. At least just prove you're actually still alive in there.
VOICE OF THE MEEK: And making choices.
VOICE OF THE HERO: And making choices. Just do something that shows you're still with us.
> [Watch the play.]
VOICE OF THE HERO: ...Mate? You're scaring me again.
VOICE OF THE MEEK: Please don't be dead please don't be dead please don't be dead—
VOICE OF THE OBSESSED: Hey. What are you doing? Move.
The curtains open.
"Good evening. Shall we begin?"
A void you hadn't been paying attention to refills. A rope you didn't know was there loosens. You have your voice once more.
Choices:
(Explore) "What am I doing here? What just happened to me?"
(Explore) "Who are you? What are you?"
(Explore) "Are you the one who put me here? Can you explain what's going on?"
(Explore) "As soon as I can move again, I'm going to put this blade directly through your face."
(Explore) [Try to stand up]
You're awake again. Welcome back.
(Explore) "What just happened to me?"
(Explore) "Who are you? What are you?"
(Explore) "Are you the one who put me here?"
(Explore) "As soon as I can move again... blade directly through your face."
(Explore) [Try to stand up]