Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Silence.

No matter how hard the voice strains to listen for what he knows he should be hearing, there is no Narrator repeating the same words He does every time.

“Every time?” That can’t be right, can it? He’s only been to the cabin… the cabin… he’s never actually been to the cabin, right? How does he know there even is a cabin? When has he ever actually met the Narrator, or a Narrator, whichever it’s supposed to be?

And yet he does know about the cabin, and he has met the Narrator, and he knows exactly what is supposed to be happening. The Narrator will give His little speech, and then the being who owns the body he lives in will pose some sort of question or at the very least silently move on to the cabin.

But it doesn’t make sense. When could he ever have been to the cabin? Wherever he was before this, it definitely couldn’t have been the same cabin that’s on the path ahead of him now. That would be nonsensical. Though… speaking of where he might have been before this… he can’t remember anything about it. He can’t remember anything from before this moment, on the path, in the woods, leading up to a cabin.

…People are supposed to have memories of their lives leading up to the present moment, right? He isn’t just making that up?

“Is there really no one here, then?”

The voice sends a jolt through… well, through the voice. It’s not as though he’s got a name of his own—come to think of it, neither did the one in charge of the corporeal body. Even the Narrator and the Princess had moreso titles than names.

All that’s besides the point, though it might not be for long if the voice isn’t actually alone in here. The new voice isn’t at all like the Narrator’s, and though he doesn’t remember what the voice of the one in charge sounded like, he doesn’t think it’s the same as this. This one sounds… colder. More detached.

“I’m here, if that’s what you’re talking about. If you mean the one in charge, or the Narrator… I think they’re not here.”

The voice manages to keep his composure slightly more at the new sound. This one is more… gravelly? Measured?

“They’re definitely not here. If they were here, one of them would have said something by now, and we wouldn’t be… stuck here like this.” The next voice to speak up is quick and hushed, so quiet it would probably be hard to make out if it weren’t coming from inside his head.

“Who cares if they’re here or not?” growls another voice, loud and rough. “I say good riddance, at least to that Narrator.”

“Yes, He was quite the stick in the mud, wasn’t he?” The next voice—he’s pretty sure every one of them is a new voice, even though the only real difference between them all is their tone—seems almost to be performing each word. “Always insisting we murder our beloved, even to the end!”

“ Beloved is hardly the word I’d use.” That’s yet another, this one higher-pitched and snippy. “She’s not any better than the Narrator. At least He couldn’t physically do anything to us.”

“Yeah, and it was fun to mess with Him.” This voice is light and upbeat. Definitely not the same as any of the others. How many are there? “What do we even do, now that He’s gone?”

“The same as we always do. Find a way to survive.” This one is low and tense, and as distinct from the others as each one before it. The voice is starting to wish he’d kept count.

“What does it even matter?” another voice practically sobs. “Narrator, no Narrator. All it changes is there’ll be one fewer person to watch us die.”

“Come on now, cheer up!” That’s another upbeat voice—though it’s definitely not the same as the last. This one is less playful, smoother, something. “We’re all competent, intelligent people here, aren’t we? I’m sure we’re going to do just fine. Whatever it is we’re doing.”

The voice—the original one, the one who was here before all the others started talking—though from the sound of it they’ve all been here as long as he has—tries to block out the conversation and focus on the… ramifications of it, or whatever.

He’s never met anyone aside from the Narrator and the one in charge of all the decisions. That much he’s certain of. Then again, he doesn’t remember meeting those two, either, even though he’s also certain he remembers interacting with them, somehow.

But it still feels… natural. Natural to have other voices in the same head chatting about whatever situation they’ve found themselves in. Maybe that can be chalked up to being, himself, a voice in someone else’s head, but that doesn’t feel quite right.

Besides, even if he doesn’t actually remember any of the other voices, he still recognizes them, a little. Like they’re familiar, but he isn’t sure from where.

A voice breaks free from the chatter he just finished tuning out. It’s the rushed and nervous-sounding one. “There’s someone else here who hasn’t said anything.”

“Really?” That’s… probably the playful one. It’s a little hard to tell from just one word. “I wonder what they’re doing, being all silent. Is that you, Narrator? Cat got your tongue?”

The voice hesitates before he speaks. “Sorry. I was just… processing things.”

“And there’s a lot to process, isn’t there?” That’s the gravelly, measured one. “The Narrator’s clearly gone, or He would have started his spiel by now. And the one who’s supposed to be in charge isn’t here either… at least, I think. Wait a moment, let’s see if he speaks up.”

For a moment, there is an almost blissful return to silence. That moment stretches on into another, which stretches on into another, which stretches on into—

“He really is gone,” marvels the detached voice. “We’re all alone in here.”

“But we can’t be alone, right? Someone has to be there to, you know, make the decisions, right?” Panic rises in the voice’s being as the unbidden thought arises of being stuck in a body with no pilot, on a path in the woods, for an unseen eternity.

“Calm down.” That’s the nervous one again. “Our heart rate is spiking, so clearly we must have some control over this body on our own. If we all focus on moving it, we should be able to go somewhere.”

“And where do we go? Back to the cabin, like the Narrator wanted us to?” A skeptical edge creeps into the measured voice. “Back to ‘slay the Princess and save the world’ again?”

The playful voice hums before answering. “We don’t have to do that, though, do we? A path goes two ways, after all. Why don’t we see what He didn’t want us to take a look at?”

“Or we could swoop heroically into the cabin and rescue our beloved!” crows the one who sounds as though he’s performing every word he says. “Now that the Narrator is gone, nothing is left to stand in the way of our love!”

“Those both sound like excellent ideas to me,” cuts in the smooth voice. “Why don’t we put it to a vote? See which one’s got more support.”

That’s probably a better idea than trying to argue it out. The voice has the feeling that sort of thing never goes anywhere, even though he’s still pretty sure he doesn’t have the memories to back it up. “Right, sounds like a plan. All in favor of turning around and heading away from the cabin?”

A chorus of “aye”s and other assorted voicings of agreement ring through the voice’s head, almost overwhelmingly noisy if not necessarily loud. He tenses until the sound fades.

“And all in favor of going back to the cabin and… rescuing the Princess?”

Only two voices speak up in assent to that plan—the smooth voice and the one who’s clearly lovestruck. Come to think of it, he’s pretty sure the smooth voice was in the cacophony of agreement to the first idea, as well.

“Well, that seems to be that, right?” the smooth voice observes, as though he didn’t just vote for both choices. “We’ll turn our backs on this chapter of our lives and go see this world He wanted us to save so badly.”

“As though you didn’t just vote for the losing option,” retorts the snippy voice. Apparently he hadn’t been alone in noticing that. “Though at least we’re getting out of here. It’s nice to have some control for once.”

If the voice had a physical body of his own with which to nod, he would. “Right. Does anyone have any ideas on how we’re going to… you know… move?”

“Just imagine you are. If we’re able to influence this body subconsciously, we should be able to influence it consciously. Think through it muscle by muscle, if that helps.” It’s the nervous one who gives that advice, of course. He’s the one who pays the most attention to the body they’re in—however it is the voice knows that.

“I don’t think focusing on muscles is going to help any,” the voice says aloud as he tries to remember what moving felt like from memories that don’t exist. “I mean, I wouldn’t know where to start just pointing them all out, much less moving them one by one.”

Before anyone else can make a comment, their view shifts, jerkily. Then it does so again, and again, until they’re facing the opposite direction they were before.

An overlapping chorus of excitement bursts from within the voice’s head. The rough voice is outright cackling, but most of the others are nearly as loud, and it’s a moment before things are quiet enough to put any focus into moving again.

When they are, walking is even easier than it was before. It must be the product of getting used to the idea of being the only ones capable of moving, or of subconsciously learning to work together instead of all trying to walk independently. By the time they’ve made it a ways down the path, it feels as natural as it did when they had someone else to move for them.

“What do you think the world’s like, out there?” someone asks—one of the two upbeat ones, probably, though it’s hard to tell which. The voice half-expects the disruption of silence to shock them back into stillness, but their feet keep moving, and don’t even stop when he begins to respond.

“I don’t know. Be nice if there were people, though. Something besides us.”

“There have to be people, right?” That’s definitely the more playful of the two, though an edge of something else is slipping into his voice. “Worlds are supposed to have people in them, right? We can’t be alone out here. That would be… lonely.”

“Why don’t we worry about what’s out there after we actually reach it?” asks the measured voice. “One thing at a time, right?”

“Right,” the voice replies before anyone else can—he can hear at least one of the others starting to make noises of worry. “It’s not going to change anything to panic over what might or might not exist until we’re actually out of here.”

“Well said, well said!” There’s the smooth voice. “If you ask me, that’s the smart thing to do. Escape first, worry later.”

Still almost on autopilot, the body they’re all inhabiting rounds a corner and enters a clearing. The voice—and presumably the others—turn its head to take a look at what lies at the other end of the path.

It’s the cabin. Again.

“I see fate pulls us back to our beloved despite your dastardly efforts to turn our back on her!” The almost worryingly smitten voice is back. “Now, let us march into that cabin and rescue her!”

“Well…” the smooth voice chimes in. “If it’s our only option, I say it’s a good plan.”

Before either of them can act on it, though, the playful voice interrupts. “I don’t think anyone ever said this was our only option, did they?”

The smooth voice hums, and the voice can’t help but picture him nodding—even if he has no idea what any of them would look like, or even what the body they’re wearing looks like. “What else do you suggest, then?”

One leg jerkily swings around to the side with an awkwardness the voice had thought long stamped out of their motion. The other follows, until they’re facing perpendicular to the path and directly into the woods.

The playful voice doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. He’s already gotten his point across.

“Oh, excellent!” gushes the smooth voice. “How clever! Yes, this is definitely worth exploring.”

“Didn’t you just declare your support for going into the cabin?” asks the measured voice, skepticism edging into his tone once again.

“Now, now. All I did was declare that both ideas were, separately, good plans. I never devoted myself to one over the other.”

The snippy voice lets out a long sigh. “Again with the playing both sides. I swear, you’re always so opportunistic.”

“I prefer the term enterprising.” The smooth voice draws out the word.

“That does not mean what you seem to think it means,” points out the measured voice.

“I know, but it sounds good. That’s the only thing that really matters.”

The voices peter out as the body they’re inhabiting steps off the path and into the woods. Walking may have grown easy on the flat surface of the path, but the woods have brush and roots that seem determined to catch on their feet.

Someone brings their gaze to the ground to monitor the obstacles ahead, and the voice is greeted with a view of claws and feathers picking their way through the undergrowth. It doesn’t surprise him—it’s not as though he ever had any preconceptions of what the body was supposed to look like.

Twigs give way to grass as they step into a clearing and look back up to see what lies ahead.

It’s the cabin. Again.

“Look,” begins the measured voice, “I don’t want to give credence to any theories about it being ‘fate’ that we rescue the Princess, but it is weird that we keep coming back here no matter what we do.”

“Something wants us to enter the cabin,” whispers the nervous-sounding voice.

“We should do what it wants and get it over with.” That’s probably the voice that was sobbing earlier. He’s been silent ever since.

“We’re too deep in this now to give up,” retorts the rough voice. “We have to keep pushing at the edges until we find something that isn’t this cabin again.”

“Something that isn’t…” The nervous voice starts to speak, but trails off before he can finish his thought, and though no one else says anything for a moment afterwards, he never picks it up again.

The body turns at a sharp angle—the voice can’t tell who’s doing it—and wobbles a little before setting off back into the woods and returning to the pattern of picking its way through every obstacle on the forest floor.

They don’t have time to reach another clearing before something in the world breaks, coming closer to knocking them off their feet than any tree roots have managed.

Instead of undergrowth and leaf litter, the ground beneath their feet is a path of packed earth, rimmed with grass. When someone actually gets around to tilting their head back upwards, instead of one cabin in the distance, they see two.

“Well! That’s certainly something new!” crows the playful voice.

“That’s ridiculous,” spits the snippy voice. “They can’t just add new cabins to trick us into entering them.”

“And who, exactly, is ‘they’?” the voice asks.

“The ones who put us on this path. The ones who locked the Princess in the basement. Maybe even the ones who put this whole world together in the first place. The Narrator and whatever friends He has. You know. They.” The nervous voice doesn’t so much as pause for air as his words rush out.

“You know, I’ve always thought it would be fun to mess with a being outside of our mortal comprehension.” The playful voice hums. “Right, then, let’s see how long we can keep this up.”

“We don’t even know if they’re real cabins,” the tense voice adds. “It could all be an illusion. Don’t trust anything you can’t touch.”

They step off the path again, barely making it a few steps into the forest before the world breaks again, this time succeeding in casting them to the ground. Being upended is a new experience entirely, and whatever subconscious patterns they’ve pulled together while walking are completely useless in getting back up. Limbs flail against themselves, and no amount of effort on the voice’s part can get most of the others to calm down.

In the end, they don’t need to stand up. The world breaks on its own, and then it breaks again, and then it breaks them right onto the slope of a hill, which they tumble down, and then there is no longer a world.

Chapter Text

Silence.

There is no Narrator repeating the same words He does every time, nor is there anyone to answer him. The voice doesn’t even bother straining to hear them. He won’t.

He doesn’t wait for anyone else to speak this time. “Is everyone all right?”

A chorus of noises confirm that everyone is, in fact, all right. Most of them are affirmative—yeses and the like, and a statement of “never better” from someone the voice can’t identify. A couple are less so, more like whimpers, but the voice is still pretty sure everyone’s accounted for between them all.

Whatever forces broke the world apart and pieced it back together seem to have placed the body back onto its feet, so at least no one has to actually figure out how to stand up quite yet.

They also seem to have placed a wall around the path, leaving them with nowhere to go.

“Of course they’ve penned us in.” The snippy voice seems to have also noticed the wall. “We find a way to beat their game, and they take it away as soon as they realize, is that how this works?”

“We still don’t have to go to the cabin,” points out the playful voice. “We could just lie here until the world ends again. The only way they could make us go to the cabin would be to drop us in there from the start.”

“So you want to wait for that to happen now?” hisses the nervous voice. “Now that you’ve said it out loud, it’s definitely going to happen. Do you want to wait until all our choices have been taken away from us?”

“The circle is getting smaller. Our only option is to go to the cabin.” That’s the tense one.

“You’ve said that before, haven’t you?” the nervous voice asks. “Have you been here before? Have I been here before?”

“I don’t think any of us have been here before,” the voice cuts in before things can escalate into paranoia. “I mean… I recognize some things, but I definitely don’t have any memory of being anywhere but the woods. And I definitely haven’t been walled in like this before.”

“Has anyone, though?” The nervous voice doesn’t seem too keen on dropping his train of thought. “Maybe some of us remember different things. Or have sharper memories. Or maybe all of us have been through this before, and something wiped our memories of it. Maybe they didn’t do a good enough job. Maybe they sent someone to make sure they did a good enough job. Maybe that someone is—”

He’s cut off by the rough voice. “Oh, shut up. Who cares why we remember or don’t remember things?” One of the legs starts to move on its own, tense as though straining against a force holding it in place. “If this place wants us to go to the cabin, we’ll go to the cabin and break things there.”

“ Very assertive! I like your style.” There’s the smooth voice, right on cue.

“At last we can properly free our beloved instead of coldly abandoning her!” the smitten voice declares. Naturally.

“And what, pray, is wrong with abandoning her?” asks the detached voice. “Aren’t all our options equal?”

“They most certainly are not all equal, you villainous—”

Before the smitten voice can escalate far enough for them to discover whether one of them is capable of performing violence on another, the smooth voice cuts in. “Now, now, boys. You’ve both got some great viewpoints. But, since they’re not contradictory just yet, why don’t we focus on the here and now? Say, we start by deciding whether we should go to the cabin, and figure out what to do from there once we are there?”

Both voices make affirmative noises, and the smooth one continues. “Right. All in favor of heading to the cabin?”

It’s not as unanimous as running away was, but a good number of voices do chime in in favor—the voice can definitely pick out both the smitten and detached ones showing their support.

“And all in favor of doing… anything else?”

Silence, except for the playful voice beginning, “Well…” and then petering out for a moment before picking back up, “it’d probably be no fun doing the same thing twice. On we go, then!”

The forest is exactly the same as it was before, save the wall cutting off any hope of escape. Soon enough, the trees part to reveal a hill rising above them, a cabin perched on its crest.

“This is it, then,” the voice says, more to calm his nerves than anything else. “We’re going to go through with this?”

“Go through with what?” asks the detached voice. “I don’t seem to recall ever agreeing to any course of action. Though I suppose it’s not as though it really matters what we do.”

“We’re going to find the Princess,” growls the rough voice. “I don’t care what we do after that, either, but we’re wasting time standing out here like this.”

“It seems we’re all in agreement, then.” That’s the smooth voice. “On we go!”

They step towards the cabin, legs jerking for a moment in a loss of the grace they’d managed to build up, but the ease of walking soon returns, and it’s only a few moments to reach the cabin. Its door swings open at little more than a touch.

The interior of the cabin is not at all what its exterior would suggest.

The voice isn’t even sure any exterior could suggest something like this. It seems to have been cobbled together from countless cabins, the material of its walls shifting from cobblestones to planks to bricks to logs back to planks and bricks, and its floor no different, with rocks and roots breaking up its surface. One of the windows doesn’t match the shape it had outside, and another is far larger than it should be. A featureless table whose legs land in the wrong places sits in the corner, blade perched on its edge.

As their head turns, the different fragments of the cabin seem to shift in odd directions, drawing attention to the seam in the floor revealing a star-filled void beneath despite the voice’s efforts to redirect it.

“This isn’t how it’s supposed to be,” the nervous voice puts words to the thoughts no doubt running through all their minds.

“I don’t know,” chirps the playful voice. “I think it’s fun!”

“ Very avant-garde,” agrees the smooth voice.

“Let’s just get out of here as quickly as we can, yeah?” The voice wrests their gaze from the seams—almost tipping over at the rush of dizziness that comes from each fragment moving in a different direction—and begins to carefully guide the body towards the table, doing his best to ignore its geometry.

The blade, at least, is normal, though he could probably do without the chorus of voices who are apparently all very opinionated on the act of taking it.

“Do we really need to take such a barbaric instrument into our beloved’s domain?” asks the smitten voice. “I can hardly bear to think of what atrocities might crawl into some of our minds given the means to carry them out.”

“We need the steel claw to defend ourselves. If she attacks, we have to be able to respond in kind.” That’s the tense voice.

“Either way, it’ll give us more options. Don’t lose your head already—no one’s said anything about harming her.” There’s the measured voice.

“I’m not sure it makes a difference either way,” whispers the nervous voice. “There’s something weird at work here. Can’t you see the seams where reality is disagreeing with itself?”

“It’s not going to make a difference.” There’s the sobbing one again. “We’ve already lost. We lost the moment we set foot in this cabin.”

“You all are getting awfully worked up over something so simple as a blade,” the detached voice says. “We aren’t even in the basement yet. How do you expect to function once we’re face-to-face with her?”

“What about—” begins the snippy voice, but he’s immediately cut off.

“ You are exactly the one who worries me!” retorts the smitten voice. “Who knows what vile intentions you have with our beloved?”

“Come on, now, this is a democracy, isn’t it?” asks the smooth voice. “I’m sure the voices of reason will rise to the top when the time comes to make a decision.”

“See? Nothing wrong with having a weapon on us, right?” That’s the playful voice. “Though, it seems you’ve picked it up the wrong way. You’ve got to hold it with the thumb at the bottom, that would look much cooler.”

“It doesn’t matter which way we hold it. Stop wasting time.” There’s another twitch in their muscles as the rough voice speaks.

“You’re forgetting—” the snippy voice cuts in again, once more being interrupted before he can get more than a couple words out.

“Holding it this way feels natural.” That’s the tense voice. “We need to align with this body’s instincts or we’ll be limiting our ability to survive.” 

“Yeah, but what about our appearances?” the playful voice presses. “If we switch our grip, we’ll really look like we know what we’re doing, right?”

“To whom?” hisses the nervous voice. “There isn’t a Narrator anymore. The only one who’ll ever see us is the Princess.”

“Are you not—”

“Are you implying it doesn’t matter how we appear to our beloved?” asks the smitten one. “Though I’m certain she’ll think no less of us either way, I won’t stand for anyone being so dismissive of her!”

“Frankly, you’re all making great points, and—” the smooth voice is cut off before he can finish his sentence.

“I. Don’t. Care. Every second we spend talking is a second we could be spending doing something.” Again the rough voice starts trying to pull them away from the table, sending their limbs into convulsions that nearly result in them losing their grip on the blade.

One of the voices decides that this is a perfect time to scream.

The jolt that rushes through the body is exactly enough to push their spasming muscles over the edge to release the blade entirely, sending it clattering to the floor and tumbling through the hole in the ground, clearly never to be retrieved. The rough voice spits out objections at the sight, but the screamer is undeterred, and eventually even he peters out.

The screamer goes on for a few more moments before abruptly stopping. Without the barest pause, the snippy voice says, “Finally. Is no one going to talk about the mirror?”

Right. There’s one thing in the cabin that actually seems to be following the laws of physics. A dark mirror, coated in a layer of dust, hangs on the wall beside the door which seems to be slightly out of alignment with its frame, serene despite the chaos of the cabin around it.

“It’s not that important,” spits the rough voice. “What is important is you’ve disarmed us.”

“Oh, I’m sure it won’t turn out to be such a big deal,” the playful voice cuts in. “Besides, I am very interested in this mirror. I don’t think the Narrator ever gave us a chance to learn what we looked like.”

“Does it really matter what we look like?” asks the detached voice.

“No, he’s right.” Their muscles twitch again as the measured voice attempts to move the body closer to the mirror, easing into their usual motions when the voice steps in to help him. “I’d like us to have as much information as we can, and this mirror should be able to provide us with some.”

The layer of dust on the mirror is enough that their reflection isn’t readily visible, but it looks easy to wipe away. Their hand shakes as it lifts to the surface of the mirror—no doubt from the rough voice trying to tear it away—but, slowly, settles on the smooth stone bricks of the wall.

“What was that?” yelps the nervous voice.

“It’s gone. Must never have existed, if that’s all it took to get rid of it.” The tense voice is calmer, but still rushed and even more strained than usual. “We can’t trust our eyes alone in this place.”

“ Now can we get on with this?” The rough voice, naturally, pays no mind to the mirror’s disappearance, and the twitches are growing stronger now. The voice is starting to think they ought to just give in to him, before their uncontrolled movements send them the way of the blade.

“It must be—” begins the measured voice, but he seems to have come to the same conclusion as the voice, as he cuts off whatever he was about to say in favor of, “Let’s keep moving. If we’re getting any answers here, they’ll be in the basement.”

The door to the basement swings open as easily as the last, revealing a clean entryway despite the way it seemed to hover over the back wall. Beyond the door is a small landing, and beyond that the stairs to the basement.

There are a lot of stairs to the basement.

On the left, rough-hewn stone steps coexist with decaying boards coexist with jagged shards of wood that only barely resemble stairs. On the right, a tangle of roots sits alongside a lushly carpeted cobblestone staircase sits alongside a set of isolated planks. In the center is a set of stairs that seem to be carved from the same featureless material as the table. A massive spiral staircase forms the crux of the arrangement, its top few steps serving as jumping-off points for all the others.

The branching doesn’t end there, either. As far as the voice can see—which is very far, given the stairs seem to be the only solid objects in an otherwise empty black void—each stairway splits into countless others, sometimes shifting in material, sometimes remaining the same.

The voice’s voice is a strangled squeak as he fights to put words to the sight in front of him. “Can we… leave now?”

“Come on now,” chides the playful voice, “fun’s only starting! We can’t back out now.”

“Surely a few stairs aren’t giving you cold feet?” asks the smitten voice. “And even if they are, that’s just one more reason to make haste. Surely the Princess must want to leave this place more than anyone else.”

“Enough wasting time. Let’s get a move on.” The rough voice once more tries to pull the body forward, causing it to wobble dangerously near the edge of the stairs.

Before any other voices can say their part, something from outside of them echoes upwards. “Is that— something nasty— it’s been ages—I hope you’ve come to—WITNESS ME.”

Her voice is as fragmented as the stairs are as fragmented as the cabin, shifting in tone every few words. Sometimes it sounds hopeful and human, other times grating and sarcastic, other times booming and malevolent. It is not the voice of a single being.

“ Now can we leave?” asks the voice, barely above a whisper. It won’t change anything. He already knows the answer to his question.

“We’re going. Now.” The body shudders as the rough voice speaks. If they don’t make the choice to head downstairs, he’ll probably end up throwing them into the void alongside the blade.

“But which staircase—” The nervous voice doesn’t get the chance to finish speaking as the rough one interrupts him.

“Doesn’t matter. Move.” A foot lands, hard and awkward, on the first step of the spiral staircase.

“It’s all a trick of our minds. They’re fundamentally the same. Just pick one.” That’s the tense voice.

“Mind, I’d rather we pick one that looks as though it won’t shred our feet.” There’s the measured voice. “We don’t seem to be wearing any shoes.”

He does have a point. Some of the staircases seem as though they would be painful to walk on, or that they’d be liable to shake off anyone who tried stepping on them. Eyes scan over the countless sets of stairs before landing on a set of aging wooden steps. They look as though they haven’t been used in years, down to the thick layer of dust that seems absent from all the others.

The first few steps are easy as long as the voice doesn’t pay any mind to the void on either side of them. He can feel the dust picking up on the soles of their feet, but no one comments on it, and it’s not doing any harm.

After a while, though, their feet seem to sink further into the steps than they should, as though the wood is growing soft—or the dust is growing thick enough to compact into another layer of material beneath their feet. The other staircases are too far away to see now, save for the faint edges of paths fading into the void.

The dust grows thicker, rising into the air even unprompted, and an arm raises to their face at the first coughing fit. Every footfall kicks up a plume of grey.

The air itself begins to grow hazy with dust. They can no longer feel their feet or see the edges of the stairs, only trust that they will not slip.

The stairs are less stairs and more dust.

Are there still planks beneath their feet, or has the dust formed its own solid surface?

Is there a surface anymore, or are they just swimming through a sea of dust?

What is there in the world that is not dust?

There is no response. There was no question to have a response.

The edge between self and oblivion blurs. Images swim through—needles, ribcages, chains, nails, eyes. A brief motion, a color that cannot be named. A dying star. A cabin. The door of a cabin. A void pressing in at the edges. Hands. A fracturing mirror reflecting everything from nearly a dozen angles. Shadows, flames, swords. A halo. A crack in a mirror spreading outwards until it engulfs the entire world. The edge of the world. A blade embedded within a heart embedded within a person embedded within a tree embedded within a woods embedded within a world. Bloodied hands. Hands. Hearts. Hands. Hands. Hearts. Hands.

Solid basement floor.

Dust heaves in the body’s airways and sends them into a coughing fit, collapsing on the stone. It takes a minute to regain control over their breathing, during which the only sound is the nervous voice—the first thing the voice has heard in what feels like years—chanting something, over and over.

They pull themselves into a sitting position. The room is dark despite the window at one end, but there is still enough light to make out the outline of a person sitting by the opposite wall, eyes glinting in the shadows. She is wearing a dress.

“Hello?” the Princess asks, voice wavering. “Are you okay?”

There’s a long pause as each voice waits for one of the others to speak.

“What are you all hesitating for?” asks the smitten voice, shattering the silence if only inside their mind. “We can’t keep a lady waiting so long!”

“You’re hesitating, too,” points out the nervous voice. “Besides, speaking out loud is different. I’m not sure if any of us even know how.”

“I’m sure it can’t be that hard! Watch, I’ll make us a good first impression.” The smooth voice pauses, and when he speaks again, it is not the same as before.

There’s a scratching sensation in the back of their mouth as he clears his throat—their throat—or maybe it is his, now that he’s the one bothering to control it. Their mouth continues to move, unbidden by anyone but the smooth voice, as his words fall from their lips.

“Oh, we’re— I’m quite all right, but thank you for your concern! It really means a lot.” Their muscles spasm a little as the smooth voice picks the body up and strides it towards the Princess, extending a hand, but it’s much less violent than when the rough one tried to seize control. “Pleasure to meet you, by the way. I’d offer a name, but I’m afraid w— I don’t have one to give. You?”

The Princess hesitates, half-lifting her chained arm but dropping it rather than complete the handshake. “I… you may call me Your Royal Highness. Or Princess, if that’s too formal for you.” The shadows recede from her face. She looks… normal.

This is normal. Possibly the most normal thing that’s happened in this cabin.

“Does she not have a name?” muses the voice, but there isn’t enough time to linger on that question. Reality breaks, just as it broke when they were still trying to avoid the cabin, and where there was once one Princess there are now two.

The second Princess eyes them, at once directly in front of them and at some sort of angle to the first. Her posture is tense, as though bracing for a moment where she might need to make a sudden movement, and the fingers of her free hand are curled into claws. “I’m not entrusting my name to someone who won’t bother to give me his. What’s your angle here?”

“Well, this is unexpected!” crows the playful voice. “Oh, new plan—let’s see how many of her we can make!”

“Or we could not do that…” mumbles the voice. It’s probably pointless to resist anyway. Clearly nothing normal can last for long in this cabin. It probably won’t be long before they stop being normal, too.

“Charismatic one!” begins the smitten voice, and the voice is reminded of something else—none of them have proper names. That’ll probably be something to figure out if they’re all going to coexist moving forward—once they’re out of this cabin and back somewhere normal, of course.

The smitten voice continues. “Our lady is at a conflict with herself. Allow me to step forward and put her mind at ease.”

No words are spoken—at least, not between the voices—but there’s an ever-so-slight shift in the way the body is standing, and the words it next speaks are unmistakably the smitten one’s. “My lady, allow us—allow me to escort you from this prison posthaste. It is terribly unjust that one such as yourself would be kept in such conditions as these.”

The first Princess relaxes. “You really mean it? I’ve been waiting for something like this forever!”

Where the first Princess seems to have fully dropped her guard, the second only raises it further. “And what’s the catch? Just because you don’t look armed doesn’t mean you don’t have a trick up your sleeve. What’s your angle here?”

Reality breaks again, leaving a third Princess, wide-eyed and innocent, staring up at them. “You are? Oh, thank you, hero!”

“There’s something strange about them,” says the measured voice. “Almost like those stairs, somehow.” He only pauses for a moment before adding, “Let me try something.”

No one objects to him, and the body shifts again. “How long have you been locked up down here?” the measured voice asks aloud.

“...I don’t know. Too long.” The first Princess glances to the side.

“Why does that matter to you? What games are you trying to play?” The second Princess leans in closer.

“I don’t know! But it doesn’t matter now that you’re here to save me, right?” The third Princess beams up at them.

Reality breaks. “It doesn’t make any difference how long I’ve been here, does it?” asks a fourth Princess, hands folded neatly in her lap.

There’s a brief clamour of voices, but their head shakes, so slightly as to be imperceptible to anyone not either within it or watching very closely, and the nervous voice hushes them.

“Who locked you down here?” asks the measured voice.

“I… don’t know. It’s been so long, I must have forgotten,” says the first Princess.

“Are you trying to pull something with these tricky questions? What are you trying to get me to say?” asks the second Princess.

“I don’t know! Do you?” asks the third Princess.

“That’s just as irrelevant as your last question. It shouldn’t matter who locked me up,” says the fourth Princess.

There is no fifth Princess.

“I was just curious,” says the measured voice, and he nods, again almost imperceptibly.

The next shift in the body’s posture is not accompanied by anyone announcing their claim, so it’s a surprise when the next words out of its mouth are, “I was told you would end the world if you escaped. Would you really?”

“Why would you—” the voice hisses to the detached voice, no doubt the source of those words, but the Princesses are already speaking.

“I don’t know anything about that, honest! Is that really what you believe?” asks the first Princess.

“So that’s your angle, is it? I bet you’d like to know!” says the second Princess.

“Would you want me to end the world?” asks the third Princess.

“I can’t imagine where you would get an idea like that. Do you really trust the person who made those claims?” asks the fourth Princess.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone. The only thing I want is to get out of here,” says the fifth Princess.

Great. Now the voice can’t even feel the world breaking. That’s probably a sign that something even less normal is starting to happen.

“Okay, I feel like this bit has run its course,” says the playful voice, and the voice couldn’t agree more—except maybe for a slight objection to whether they should have participated in the bit in the first place. “Could we… do something else now?”

“Like what? Slay her?” The rough voice scoffs. “I’d love to, if someone hadn’t made us drop the blade.”

“I did what I had to,” retorts the snippy voice. “You all were talking over me.”

“Come on, now, there’s no use dwelling on the past.” There’s the smooth voice, this time back on the inside. “We’ve still got options!”

“And what, exactly, are those options? Strangling her?” asks the rough voice.

“We should just give up,” sobs exactly the voice one would expect to do so. “It’s hopeless at this point.”

“It’s not hopeless. As long as we’re still alive, it’s not hopeless.” That’s the tense voice.

“We can always try leaving. Maybe break her chains while we’re at it.” The measured voice pauses before continuing, “You, angry one. Do you think you could muster up enough force to rip them out of the wall? We might need to rig something up, but maybe we could find materials from upstairs—”

“Oh, I’m sure it won’t be a problem,” interrupts the newly-dubbed “angry one” (yeah, the voice is not using that epithet).

“Right. I think we ought to put this to a vote, since we seem to be in agreement that we should make some sort of move—” starts the smooth voice, but he’s cut off before any terms of said vote can come to light.

“Don’t need one! Let’s go!” The rough voice’s words this time aren’t accompanied by muscle twitches, but the body leaps into action either way, raising the blade in one hand to bring it down towards the Princess’s heart.

…No, that can’t be right. They dropped the blade into the void. That was the whole deal.

It doesn’t seem to matter, though, because the blade is already digging through the Princess’s bone, just below the shackle. Her body falls to the floor, blade embedded firmly in her heart. She kneels on their chest, knee digging into their throat. Her arm, gnawed off at the base, lies far too close to their face as they’re knocked to the ground.

A knife digs into their flesh as a fist collides with their jaw as their ribcage creaks under pressure. Their blade drags across skin as it stabs into bone as it’s pried from their fingers.

“Now this is a real fight!” roars the rough voice.

“It’s alright, we’re nearly out!” cries the smitten voice.

“It was always going to end this way,” mopes the sobbing voice.

“That wasn’t very hard,” muses the detached voice.

“Speak for yourself!” snaps the snippy voice.

“We should have dodged,” whispers the tense voice.

“I knew we shouldn’t have trusted her,” declares the smooth voice.

“It’s all right. At least we aren’t doing the wrong thing,” reassures the measured voice.

“What are you seeing?” hisses the nervous voice. “I don’t think you’re seeing the same thing I’m seeing.”

They aren’t. Each voice keeps declaring a single version of reality to be correct, while every one of them flashes before the voice’s eyes. Their body grinds to a halt as they collapse from exhaustion as their windpipe shatters as they are tackled to the floor. Their throat is slit as their chest is torn apart as claws dig into them as a knife cuts through organs. They pick up the blade and pierce their own heart.

The only other silent voice is the playful one, and when he speaks, it is a reassurance. “This… this isn’t very fun. It’s the same thing as not doing anything at all, when you think about it.”

At least “not doing anything at all” doesn’t last forever. They die as they die as they die as they die as they die as they die as they die as they die as they die, and when they die, reality finally gives up.

The Princesses, all of them, are ripped away and molded together into something that carries all their faces. It looks… uncomfortable.

“Everything fits… wrong,” they say, and their voice is many voices despite them only having one unsealed mouth. “Did you do this? Did we do this? What is ‘this?’ Can you help us?”

There isn’t enough time to respond before hands reach out from the darkness and take them away. All that remains in their stead is the mirror, still dusty.

“Well,” begins the playful voice, “That… was. That was.” It is, if nothing else, an accurate assessment.

“We need to find her,” snaps the rough voice. “I’m not done yet.”

“I would have thought we’d be plenty done after what we did,” says the detached voice. No doubt the two are speaking of entirely different sequences of events.

“It seems like she’s… gone,” the voice begins tentatively. “I think… maybe this is the end of the world?”

“Can’t say it’s much worse than what happened when there still was a world,” quips the playful voice. “Oh well. Do you think this mirror will disappear, too?”

That’s a good question. It looks the same as it did in the cabin, perfectly upright and as tall as they are, and just as solid as it did before it vanished. This time, though, it has a weight to it the voice couldn’t describe if he tried. It feels… final.

For some reason, he has the feeling that it’s supposed to feel final in a bad way, in the same way that death is final or that shoving someone down a flight of stairs in an argument is final. This time, though, (what does that even mean? It’s not as though he’s ever been here before; he would remember that) it feels final in the way closing a novel after its epilogue is final, or the way being shaken awake from a dream is final.

“We won’t know unless we look at it, right?” He says the words almost without meaning to, but the other voices murmur in agreement, even though some of it seems more reluctant than enthusiastic. None of them fight as they step towards the mirror.

Their hand is steady as it lifts to the surface of the mirror and, slowly, settles on the smooth glass.

It’s real.

The veneer of dust comes away far more easily than it should, as though it were always meant to be wiped off, as though the mirror wants to reflect just as much as the voices want to be seen in it—though that’s silly, to personify a mirror like that. It’s only a mirror. It can’t want anything.

They are a bird.

Taller than the average crow, to be certain, but that’s hardly a meaningful criteria, and neither is their lack of wings or the presence of two scaled, five-fingered hands. Their body is covered in feathers all the same, and their face is mostly consumed by a black beak, on either side of which wide, shining eyes meet their reflection.

“So that’s what we looked like all along…” muses the detached voice. “I can’t honestly say I’m surprised.”

“At least we’re not some hideous abomination,” says the sobbing voice.

“You thought we’d be an abomination?” asks the measured voice. “We have got to work on your self-esteem.”

“We’re not alone.” The nervous voice’s voice is tense. “There’s something behind us.” His words are accompanied by a flash of movement, somewhere a little to the side and nearer the base of the mirror.

The voice focuses, and certainly enough, he’s right. There are shapes, similar to them but not them, huddled close to the mirror, more than can easily be counted.

One of them blinks, and everything falls a little to the left of in focus.

“ They’re not behind us,” the voice corrects, almost without thinking. “ You’re behind me.”

“Hey, now, don’t get a big head just because you were the last one to—wait.” The playful voice cuts himself off midsentence. “Did you just say ‘you’re?’”

“Yeah.” The voice turns around, still barely paying mind to his own actions. “Don’t tell me you don’t see it, right?”

A few minutes earlier, turning to address the other voices would have been fruitless and silly, like a dog trying to chase its reflection. They didn’t exist outside of a body that didn’t even belong to them.

This time, though, he’s met with ten other pairs of eyes, and they clearly see him now, too.

“This is certainly… new.” The detached voice’s voice comes from a thin figure with dark grey feathers—still much lighter than most of the others’—and a hood obscuring most of his face in shadow, save for a veil hanging from a long white beak and a single visible eye. Stray feathers swirl around his feet, hiding them from view, and the same can be said for his arms.

“I kind of like it! It’s much more fun to not be at the whims of whoever’s decided to grab control.” A figure with white feathers covering his stomach, legs, and shoulders is next to speak, his voice unmistakably that of the playful one. Two masks hang askew from his head—a tragedy mask to the side, and a comedy mask half-covering his face, both clearly designed for someone with a beak.

“Yeah, it’s much better not to have to deal with you lot stalling all the time.” The tallest figure folds his arms over a leather chestplate—clearly this one is the rough voice. A pair of feather tufts on his head grant him the illusion of even more height than he actually has. On his shoulder rests a shape much more like a bird than most of the others, with shiny, dark eyes and a metal collar and chain around his neck. It’s hard to tell, but from the way he shrinks into himself he might be the sobbing voice—and, okay, they really need to have that name conversation soon.

“I don’t know about all that, you’re all great company—though I am liking this new look.” The smooth voice is the next to speak—he’s got the same feather patterns as the playful voice, but his shoulders and back are covered by a suit jacket, left open with the sleeves rolled up, and a tie is pinned to his chest feathers. A pair of sunglasses rests on his forehead.

“On that we can agree, my friend.” The smitten voice adjusts the shoulders of the cape he’s wearing, beneath the fluffy collar of white feathers around his neck. A single white feather sticks up from his head and bobs around as he moves.

“I’m not sure I like this,” whispers the nervous voice. He’s one of the shorter ones, and his form is hidden even more than that of the detached voice—a quilt is wrapped around him, placing a design of a red heart over his back, and clearly clutched to his chest by nothing more than his own hands, forming a hood over his face that shades all of it beyond the tip of his beak. Only the glint of his eyes escapes its shadow. “We’re exposed like this. It isn’t safe.”

“No, you’ve got it backwards.” The tense voice is just as small, and his form is more like a bird’s than most of the others. His head and shoulders are covered by a patchwork cloak, and what’s exposed is covered in countless tiny scars. “There’s safety in numbers. It’s better now that we can watch our backs.”

“Even so, it’s unusual that we’re only now separated.” The measured voice wrinkles his brow. “No—‘unusual’ implies we have a ‘usual’ to compare it to. This is just ‘odd.’” His torso is covered in grey feathers in contrast with the black that most of them share, and a single thin scar passes over one eye. A pair of glasses frame his face, and leather wristbands cover both wrists, alongside a scarf wrapped around his neck.

“I think I’d rather worry about this place than about our forms.” The snippy voice’s feathers almost seem to be a different shade from the rest of theirs. Scars litter his face and disappear into the neck of a white buttoned shirt, over which a jacket and bowtie rest.

That’s probably a good point. Everything that might stand out as a feature—except for them, of course—has been scrubbed away by something, leaving only a textured void. And yet, in that void, there is still substance—a ground beneath their feet, a sky above their heads, and, when the voice turns back around to see that the mirror has once again vanished, a path lined with some sort of columns.

This is not a place meant for things like him. It’s meant for something bigger, something both more and less solid, something for which death is final in the same way setting down a finished novel is final.

It’s almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the world they came from, and it’s the not quite that itches.

He can almost imagine there’s a cabin somewhere in this void. There’s always a cabin, after all.

“We should take a look around, get our bearings,” suggests the measured voice. “It’d be better to have an idea of where we are.”

“It’s too dangerous to split up,” hisses the nervous voice, drawing closer to the feathers cascading over the detached voice’s feet. The feathers flow less like something that’s attached to his body and more like a cloak of some kind.

“I wasn’t suggesting we were.” The measured voice draws nearer to the head of the pack, coming to a stop at the voice’s side. “It feels like this place wants us to head in a particular direction. We may as well find out what’s there.”

The void is as solid beneath their feet as the path is supposed to be, and despite himself the voice can feel himself settling into this place as they walk. He supposes it at least isn’t as bad as the cabin—this one looks exactly as it is from every angle he’s been able to look at it from.

Something appears from over the top of something not entirely unlike a hill, white against the textured darkness of the place. It is too far away to make out any details, but it is in constant motion amongst itself as it lingers atop the mostly-hill.

The shape does not recoil as the voices approach, if anything reaching out to them. Once they crest the mostly-hill, its contours come into stark focus.

A mass of arms towers over them, endlessly reaching out and writhing towards its own edges. In the center, a few of them gingerly hold the form of the Princesses, one hand cupped over each eye.

“Something finds me in the Long Quiet—” She begins, voice light and breathy, but skips a beat seemingly as She takes in the voices. “What are you doing here?”

“Well—” the voice starts, then thinks better of it, but it’s too late—all eyes are on him, and even though the mass of hands doesn’t seem to have any of those, She’s clearly focused on him as well. “I mean—the world ended. Where else would we be?”

“You should not be.” Her voice is even, as though She is stating some obvious truth. “This place is made for larger truths, not shards of broken glass. A fragment should not exist on its own here.” The arms supporting the Princesses’ form lean it closer, as though it is some sort of puppet making up for Her lack of a human body. “Where is your truth?”

Someone pushes past the voice, and he relaxes at the sight of the smooth voice stepping forward. “Now, pardon us,” he begins— “by the way, lovely place you’ve got here—but we are a bit lost, what with the world ending and all, and I am afraid you might have us mistaken for someone else. An honest mistake, I’m sure, and we’ll be glad to get out of your hair if you can just point us somewhere that isn’t here.”

She pulls the Princesses back. “There is no exit. There are worlds beyond the edges of this place, but it is beyond my power to reach them as I am, and certainly beyond yours.”

“Oh, come on, you don’t know that!” The smooth voice smiles up at Her. “I’m sure there’s something we can do.”

“There is not. I am powerless as I am, and you are worse than powerless. But I cannot be the only thing which exists in this place. This place is not me, and so there must be someone else within it who is not me. But they are not here.”

“We’re here, though?” the smooth voice offers.

“You don’t count.”

The smooth voice recoils, smile wiped from his face, and pulls the rest of the voices into a huddle some distance from Her, dropping his voice to a whisper. “I hate to say this, boys, but I don’t think I can get through to Her.”

“She doesn’t sound malicious,” the measured voice points out, dropping his own voice in kind. “I don’t think She means anything by what She’s saying; She’s just acting as though we all ought to know the same things She does.”

“And as though we ought to feel the same way about them,” adds the nervous voice, clutching his quilt even closer.

“Right. It’s almost as if She believes Herself to be an entirely different sort of being than us.”

“She is.”

The various voices turn to see the sobbing voice, still perched on the rough one’s shoulder, gazing up at Her with wide eyes. “Can’t you feel it?” he asks. “She’s so much more than us.”

“Don’t get started on that,” the rough voice growls. “She isn’t more than us, She’s just stuck-up.”

“No, he’s right. She is more than us. We exist on a different level from Her, and She’s expecting someone on the same level.” The tense voice, too, is keeping his eyes trained on Her, posture poised to act.

“That still doesn’t mean we have to put up with Her.” The snippy voice folds his arms. “We ought to find something—hey, where are you going?”

His last words are directed at the smitten voice, who by this point has broken free of the huddle and strode up to Her alone, tossing his cape behind him.

“My fair lady!” he announces. She tilts the Princesses’ heads as a little girl playing pretend with her dolls might.

“You are separated from your other half, are you not?” the smitten voice continues. “It is a pain I know well myself. We may not be the one you are looking for, but I would like to offer our service as knights to Your Majesty and to make what efforts we can to locate them. Simply say the word and I shall move heaven and earth to meet your desires.”

She pauses, bringing one of the Princesses’ hands to one of their faces in a mockery of human gesture. “What could you do? You are far too small for this place.”

“We can look.” The voice shrinks as all eyes land on him again, but still steps forward to be side-by-side with the smitten voice. “Whatever— who ever you’re looking for, clearly you haven’t been able to track them down yourself. Maybe we can, or maybe we can help you, or maybe we can—I don’t even know. Look, clearly you’re not all-powerful, or you wouldn’t have these problems, right? And if you’re not all-powerful, you can still get help from other people. Even if we are… tiny.”

It is a moment before She responds. “I am incomplete. I had not had nerves with which to perceive this place until you brought me this vessel. Even with others, I would not be whole until the other being here makes themselves known, but I would be more than I am.”

That almost makes sense. “Right. So you’re saying… you need more Princesses?”

“If that is what you wish to call them. Perhaps ‘perspectives’ is a better word. You must see her from angles which have not yet been viewed, so that I may grow in ways which I have not yet grown.”

“And how are we supposed to do that from here?” The voice gestures to the void. “I’m sorry, but I don’t exactly see any Princesses around.”

“This vessel is a creature of perception.” She raises the Princesses. “If you believe that she can piece back together the world whence you came and return you to the path in the woods, you will find yourselves there once more. I would like if you could forget what you have seen here, but the minds of people are too rigid to change perspective without the pain of past choice. Instead, I ask that you remember, whatever you see in that cabin will be me only in potentiality. She will still be merely a Princess.”

“...Right.” The voice turns back to the others, who have by now drawn closer to him and the smitten one. “I didn’t ask—are you guys okay with this?”

The playful voice shrugs. “Has to be more fun than waiting around for eternity in a void, right?” The others nod in assent.

“All right. If you’re all sure about this, I suppose I have to be as well.” He turns back to the Her. “How exactly do we go about doing this? Is there something we need to do, or is there something you—”

Glass shatters before he can finish speaking.

Chapter Text

He wonders how he died.

It’s not a question with any fruit to it. He knows that. The person he is reflecting is gone for good now, not that he would ever be able to reach any living person in his current state, and he himself is an Echo splintered off before that person died. He simply cannot recall that moment, nor should he want to. It’s a ridiculous thing to want. No one wants to experience death.

At least it helps pass the time.

Clearly, he is not the first Echo, a fact of whose knowledge cannot even be tempered by the reassurance of knowing how many preceded him. The Voices—fragmented reflections of the Long Quiet, far more than he could ever have predicted would arise—drowned him out immediately and wrested his agency away from him, only returning it for long enough to get what they wanted before tearing it away once more.

Now they are all yelling, and the Princess—twisted far beyond what she ought to be, no doubt as a result of the Long Quiet poking in too many places he shouldn’t have poked during all the iterations that fragmented him far beyond how he should have fragmented—is waiting for the change that is in her nature but that she is for now powerless to produce herself, and the Long Quiet is letting all this happen.

So he ignores the noise as well as he can—at least he isn’t on the same plane as the Voices; he can’t imagine how the Long Quiet is putting up with all this—and he wonders how he died.

Before he sacrificed his physical being, he had been terrified of dying—both his own and that of those around him. It was a good thing he hadn’t had any friends or remaining family by the time he began forming the Construct—otherwise, it would have been difficult to leave them without him for an eternity.

He would have had to make it quick, so he couldn’t back out. If he had backed out, he might have run out of time, and certainly as an Echo he would remember it.

He doesn’t remember it. Clearly the version of him that used to be alive had been able to muster up a conviction that the Echo he is now cannot scrape together. He does not remember, and it’s pointless to theorize—an Echo cannot change in the way a person can, and even if he could, he does not exist in the same world his human self once did.

The Voices continue to talk. They’ve been at this for a while, and still neither the Long Quiet nor the Princess has made a move. What is he waiting for?

Is he… trying to outwait what needs to be done? Conducting some sort of experiment to see how long the Princess will wait before she does something? Hoping beyond hope that eventually the Voices will shut up?

None of that is going to happen. That’s how the Construct works, except for the last one, which is simply a (very accurate, of course) observation of how the Voices act when they’re all clustered together like this.

Still nothing moves. Maybe they’ll all be trapped here like this for eternity. Hopefully it will be enough to postpone the end of the world if not stop it, but the world will no doubt still suffer as long as the Long Quiet keeps stalling like this.

Time stretches on. How much, he can’t say—in the Construct, time is what he says it is, but no one has let him get more than a few words in edgewise this iteration, and even then only on their terms.

The Voices continue to talk. The Long Quiet continues to refuse to move. The Princess continues to wait. Nothing changes. This is not a sustainable state for the Construct. Eventually, something is going to have to happen, whether the Princess forces it or reality simply unravels around her.

He hopes, selfishly, it’s the latter. At least then he wouldn’t have to see it happen.

Really, it’s a surprise he’s as aware as this. He’d always thought of an Echo as a sort of preprogrammed automaton, where the programming was the mind and memories of the person it once was. But he, somehow, is conscious enough to contemplate the mortality of the human he used to be as he waits for something in the Construct to change.

He thought that an Echo could not perceive things. Clearly it still can’t, not in the way a person can, or else the Princess would be much more even than she is now—but he is still perceiving, somehow.

Maybe he’ll get to find out what it’s like to die. Not a particularly pleasant thought, but he is now what he is now, and if he has to die as an Echo he doesn’t exactly have the option not to do that.

Unless, of course, the Long Quiet somehow manages to keep the Construct in stasis for an eternity, which would be an interesting way to resolve things despite being far from an ideal outcome for the universe.

Time continues to pass. The voices continue to talk. He can’t even tell at this point whether they’re finding new things to say or just repeating themselves ad infinitum.

Something changes.

One of the voices—it’s much too hard to identify which—falls silent, sending a ripple of blissful quiet through the rest of them. Once they’ve all finally shut up, it becomes clear what, exactly, has changed.

“Are you… crying?” he asks tentatively, surprised when no voices rush forward to interrupt him.

The Long Quiet does not respond, but from his vantage point he can clearly tell there are tears falling down his face.

“Hey, come on now!” crows the Opportunist, first to break free of the silent pack. “I know it looks bad, but I’m sure you of all people can find a way to spin this into something that ends well for everyone.”

It’s unclear to him if the Voices know their own names. He hasn’t heard any of them introduce themselves—of course he hasn’t—or use names for one another this time around—there wasn’t time, really—and he wouldn’t know about any other iterations of the Construct.

“Stop giving us false hope,” sobs the Broken. “We’re going to die here as soon as she decides to let us.”

“Speaking of which, why isn’t she moving?” asks the Skeptic. “It’s as though she’s been waiting for us to make the first move.”

“As we should!” The Stubborn is quick to respond. “Enough waiting around. If we’re going to fight, we shouldn’t waste time about it.”

“Or we could keep waiting,” suggests the Contrarian. “If she wants us to make the first move, why should we bother to give it to her?”

“If we do, we need to be ready to dodge at any moment. We already know she’s faster than us, so we need to watch carefully.” The Hunted’s voice is tense as he speaks.

“Whatever we do, it’s just going to end painfully,” complains the Cheated. “Why would we want to bother dragging it out?”

The Cold’s rebuttal is swift. “I’ve already told you, it doesn’t have to be painful. You’re the one choosing to make it that way.”

“That isn’t how it works,” hisses the Paranoid. “I can’t believe I’m even bothering to respond to that.”

“I for one think we’ve waited long enough!” The Smitten would no doubt be making dramatic gestures as he speaks if he had a body to do it with. “It’s time we face our destiny.”

“Not to encourage him, but yeah, I think it’s about time to end this,” says the Hero.

The Long Quiet does not speak through this, and continues to not speak as the cascade of Voices turns back into an unparseable wall of noise. He is still crying, silently.

Time passes. Not nearly as much of it, this time. That much is obvious.

Once more, the Voices peter out, as the Long Quiet’s beak moves in an attempt at speech—or maybe he is talking, and it’s being drowned out by everything else.

“...What was that, buddy?” asks the Hero once everything is silent.

The Long Quiet hesitates before he finally voices himself.

“I’m… going to miss you,” he says.

The change that comes is difficult to parse for him. It’s a visual shift, not a conceptual one, which at least in the bounds of the Construct is not within an Echo’s repertoire of senses. Still, he is a Narrator, and he would be sorely unequipped to handle such a task if he couldn’t at least make some sense of the world around his hero.

Or, he would be able to make some sense of it, if he were allowed time to do so.