Fearful Symmetry (Pyrite)
| Fearful Symmetry (Pyrite) | |
|---|---|
| Date of Cutscene: | 26 November 2023 |
| Location: | Tsukino-Osaka Dorm |
| Synopsis: | You're walking in the woods. |
| Cast of Characters: | Pyrite, Usagi Tsukino |
| Tinyplot: | Silver Crystal |
You're walking in the woods.
In the deep of winter, the snow has fallen heavy upon the ground, and the unplowed path is all but erased.
It would be easy to lose your sense of direction, amidst the trees like skeletal hands, reaching towards a gray, clouded sky.
You make out something man-made in the distance.
You pour more energy into your chilled flesh to reach it, hoping for there to be people there, or at least a warm place to wait out the coming night.
What you find is a waist-height stone wall around a square space, with a shrine at the center of it.
The snow is undisturbed and you see no sign of anyone else.
There is no curl of smoke ascending towards Heaven to suggest anyone else has taken the time to start a fire.
Everything has become so cold since the Moon Kingdom fell.
The Golden Kingdom has fallen too, the madness that consumed the armies of Earth abated.
Few remain who are not civilians caught in the aftermath of a war they never asked for.
But you are one of them.
You navigate to the designated entrance into the temple grounds, knowing better than to disrespect a shrine by climbing over the wall, even if it costs extra calories to shuffle through the snow all the way around the wall.
When you cross over the threshold, you immediately know that this is a shrine abandoned by its gods.
It was left unattended for so long, that the kami left.
You also instinctively know something else has moved in to take their place.
You are not alone.
Inside the shrine, there is a girl with black hair so long that it pools on the floor around her.
She kneels on the ground, unbothered by the open doors letting in the cold air.
You try to call out to her, but you have no voice.
She hears you anyway.
She opens her eyes, red as gleaming rubies, and looks at you calmly.
A comma-shaped stone of some kind hangs around her neck on a string.
From the elaborate dress she wears, gold and crimson and white, you can tell she is someone special.
She waits for you patiently, peacefully, not rushing you at all.
You take a few steps forwards, advancing across the temple grounds and closer to the shrine.
There is a symbol on her forehead that you can make out as you come closer.
A celestial object of some kind.
A barely-there, mysterious smile appears on her pale, pale lips, as she holds out a hand to welcome you inside.
It can't be worse in there than it is out here.
You advance further, up the shrine's steps, and through the entryway, and you drop dead on the spot.
As your lifeless body looks up at the girl, she looks very sad, but not surprised.
She leans down, and helps your soul up out of your body.
Apologetically, she says,
"Awaken the Princess."
Then you wake up in your bed in the Tsukino-Osaka Dorm.
