Bædan
<!-- Description of the protagonist’s body. Focus on introspective disgust through specific and evocative options. -->
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
As the heat of life returns to you, your mind begins to clear; you are waking again to the insipid sensations of reality. Though the retreating curtains of slumber still keep you from the world, one fact remains inescapably apparent.
</div>
<div class="wsub">
It is fundamental; an endless yearning that hangs on every thought, pulling against you like a noose. In all times, all moments, you feel it.
</div>
<div class="wsub">
You detest your body.
</div>
<em>
<div class="wsub">[[A1a<-Your flesh is putrid;]]
<div class="wsub">[[A1b<-Your bones are inhuman;]]
<div class="wsub">[[A1c<-Words feel thick on your tongue;]]
<div class="wsub">[[A1d<-Your own face doesn't belong to you.]]
</em>
</div><!-- Your flesh is putrid -->
<% s.qA1 = "cA1a" %>
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
It wraps around you too tightly, almost suffocating in its presence. Monstrous swathes of hair cover your skin; they trap you in heat and sweat and all foul things. You are leathery, clammy, wrinkled, stretched, life inhabited through a misshapen vehicle of rot.
</div>
<div class="wsub">
Some unfamiliar gust of air brushes against you; it tingles the flesh, putting your hairs on end, goosebumps rising wherever it touches. You shrivel at it, revulsed by the constant discomfort of existence. It never ends; your own skin tortures you.
</div>
</div>
<%= story.render("A2") %><!-- Your bones are inhuman -->
<% s.qA1 = "cA1b" %>
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
These arms and legs don’t fit you; your shoulders protrude from your silhouette, and every step you take swings loosely like a marionette. Your very shadow feels unreal and unconvincing, like you’ve caught existence in a lie. This isn’t the shape of a person.
</div>
<div class="wsub">
One of your fingers on your right hand is twitching incessantly. It's some unconscious tic, developed in your childhood and worsened steadily since then. By now, the spasms have become almost violent in their intensity; like you're trying to shake some unseen assailant loose. Still, try as you might, it seems that you never can.
</div>
</div>
<%= story.render("A2") %><!-- Words feel thick on your tongue -->
<% s.qA1 = "cA1c" %>
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
The voice is harsh, spreading a thick taint over any conversation. Whenever you talk it’s like pulling teeth. Sound is stolen from you; no matter the words you say, they never come from your mouth, like you’re speaking a language you can’t understand.
</div>
<div class="wsub">
In the shock of consciousness, some half-formed sound jumps from your throat. Your lips stick together, and your mouth feels slick with saliva. You can feel your voicebox struggling to produce a coherent noise; its vibration is deeply unsettling, and it reverberates against your skull like it's made of glass. Unsophisticated and alien, it's a sound entirely beyond your control, like the babbling of an infant.
</div>
</div>
<%= story.render("A2") %><!-- Your own face doesn't belong to you -->
<% s.qA1 = "cA1d" %>
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
Some foul stranger inhabits your reflection. This face is never happy; even when it smiles, there’s a colossal emptiness written across the eyes. It stares at you like a clay doll, with flesh lazily packed around it as though trying to cover up some unseemly flaw beneath. Every little glimpse sends a deep and horrible numbness through you.
</div>
<div class="wsub">
You can feel the tiredness in your face, and your eyes are twitching from a lack of sleep. Your jaw aches from clenching your mouth shut; your teeth feel filthy and unclean; every day you wake up, it's harder and harder to find a reason to even take care of it.
</div>
</div>
<%= story.render("A2") %><!-- The protagonist wakes up on the floor. Description of environment and allusion to prior actions. -->
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
You’re lying naked on the ground, pulled away from all vestiges of reality. The world is out of reach, unseen, almost nonexistent to your senses. All that exists in this moment is your body.
</div>
<div class="wsub">
Even now you can’t escape it. You hold yourself tight, as though trying to restrain your mess of limbs and flesh. The air is too stale; your breath feels thin; you are a twitching, shuddering monstrosity.
</div>
</div>
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
Your blood is strewn across the floor. In some places, it's drawn into circles upon circles, a giant ring of words and symbols and intricate, desperate pleas; in others, it lies wasted, in pools of life discarded. There, you marinate, aching with disgrace and defeat.
</div>
</div>
<%= story.render("A3") %><!-- Introduction / description of the Demon. Physically incompatible and contradictory characteristics mentioned. It does not speak yet. -->
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
Suddenly, a looming presence stands above you; you can barely make it out, nor tell how long it has been there. It feels so familiar, almost motherly, yet there's not a single thing about it you can recognise from anywhere else.
</div>
<div class="wsub">
It's a creature of some sort, like some kind of undiscovered animal, so undocumented that its only evocation is some deep-seeded recollection from primal instinct. You try to make sense of it, to tie it down somewhere in your understanding; nothing avails you.
</div>
<em>
<div class="wsub">[[A3a<-It's an angel]];
<div class="wsub">[[A3b<-It's a chimera]];
<div class="wsub">[[A3c<-It's something beautiful]].
</em>
</div><div class="phistory">
<p></p>
history thing
<p></p>
</div>
<%= story.render("passage here") %>
Bædan
<div class="bdn">
</div>
<%= story.render(s.qA1 + "1") %>
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
</div>
</div><!-- The Demon begins to speak and asks why the protagonist has summoned them. -->
<div class="bdn">
"I am Bædan."
</div>
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
Its voice is starkly human. Something about it tugs at a far-off corner of your mind, an unexpected and undefined connection to you. It's soft, and warm, and nearly musical. You feel like you could lay there forever, replaying that choral sound in your mind. Even so, there's a touch of dissonance within it. It sounds ever-so-slightly out of time, like a ventriloquist speaking through a dummy.
</div>
<div class="wsub">
You feel its breath on your face, so close to you that you can see yourself reflected in the deep and beautiful blacks of its eyes. Without even thinking, you reach your hand up to touch it; you expect it to twitch away, but it stays, unbothered, as you run your fingers along the sleek contours of its body.
</div>
<div class="wsub">
Likewise, you do not recoil when it pulls itself back, passing over your head to sit itself on the floor somewhere behind you. You prop yourself up, the pains of your body returning to the forefront of sensation, and sit on your knees in front of it. Your eyes are almost level. Again, it begins to speak.
</div>
<div class="bdn">
"Why have you brought me here?"
</div>
<div class="wsub">
All of a sudden, you are inadequate again. How can you, in all your unrelenting misery, possibly begin to describe this anguish to another? How can something so perfect, so beautiful beyond beauty, ever understand the pain you feel?
</div>
<%= story.render(s.qA1 + "1") %>
<div class="wsub">
The answer wells up from deep inside you, choking you, forcing itself to be heard:
</div>
<em>
<div class="wsub">[[A4a<-"My body is wrong"]]
<div class="wsub">[[A4b<-"My flesh is not my own"]]
<div class="wsub">[[A4c<-"My voice is not my own"]]
<div class="wsub">[[A4d<-"I need to be something else"]]
<div class="wsub">[[A4e<-"I need to be anything else"]]
</em>
</div><!-- The protagonist reflects on the things they did to summon the Demon. Should convey a strong sense of desperation. NOTE: didn't really write that... -->
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
You fall to your side, hitting the ground sharply. Your head is ringing; you force your eyes shut, your arms wrapped around yourself like a cocoon, embracing the pain with all of your body. It flows into your arms, your legs, covering you entirely in an instant. You can feel it pulsing through you, like your heartbeat has been amplified all throughout your body.
</div>
<div class="wsub">
It's the one true sensation: it fills you with energy, like a lightning bolt trapped under the skin, propelling your mind into activity. Where once your body was a distant and inanimate thing, now it comes alight with feeling and connection. You hold yourself tighter, pulling yourself further and further into your world of pain, until all you feel is its electrifying presence.
</div>
</div>
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
It's difficult to tell how much time has passed when you eventually open your eyes. It feels like you've been there forever; still, the creature remains.
</div>
<div class="wsub">
You feel like a child, filled with deep swirls of anger and grief over the most insignificant things. Thrown into the world, so incapable; you are alone in your pain, stricken with a sadness entirely alien to those around you, like an animal abandoned in the street. Yet, the creature starts to move towards you, and as you blink the clouds of tears from your vision and look up at it, you see something entirely impossible in its eyes:
</div>
</div>
<div class="wmain">
Recognition.
</div>
<div class="wmain">
<%= story.render(s.qA1 + "2") %>
</div>
<%= story.render("A6") %><!-- The protagonist prepares for their transformation -->
<div class="wmain">
<div class="bdn">
"Are you ready?"
</div>
<div class="wsub">
The question brings you back to reality, the choice you've made now in full focus. It dizzies you for a moment; are you prepared to accept this moment, and all the changes that will inevitably come with it? Is this truly the right thing to do? Do you even know what is about to happen?
</div>
<div class="wsub">
You stop for a moment. You feel your breath, and that of the creature, and the feel of its body against yours.
</div>
<em>
<div class="wsub">[[A7<-Yes.]]
</em>
</div><!-- The Demon exacts its cost, leaving the player in a mixture of gruesome and cathartic agony. -->
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
You take another breath and close your eyes. You know what will happen now, as clear as life itself, as immutable as a strike of thunder. The creature pulls away from you, moving into place.
</div>
<div class="wsub">
Everything feels so slow, so carefully considered, and you force yourself to be still. You feel the creature again, the edges of its teeth clamped softly around your right hand. The moment is mere seconds away. The energy of anticipation runs through your fingers like an electric current, every primal part of you begging to pull away, to turn and run from this terrible reality. Yet you remain, a feeble two-minded thing, shuddering with uncertainty in the grasp of the creature.
</div>
</div>
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
All too soon you feel it. An incredible pressure against your fingers; the splintering of bone, the horrid tearing of flesh, a great and gruesome dismemberment. You're flooded with the searing pain of it, a giant wave of sensation sharper and more pronounced than anything you've ever felt before. Within seconds, you are consumed by it.
</div>
<em>
<div class="wsub">[[A7a<-You clench your teeth;]]
<div class="wsub">[[A7b<-You scream;]]
<div class="wsub">[[A7c<-You convulse in mindless terror.]]
</em>
</div><!-- The protagonist’s pain fades. -->
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
It lasts forever, that exquisite anguish. You lie there in an experience of pain you previously thought impossible, completely and utterly engulfed. Fresh blood is pooling all around you, more than you believed you even had left; it pours out of you like an unending torrent.
</div>
<div class="wsub">
The pain is becoming more tolerable, and you gradually begin to open your eyes. Your hand is barely recognisable, coated entirely in a deep, dripping red. Two of your fingers are missing; they've been taken off just before the knuckle, leaving only two jagged protruding stumps. You catch a glint of white bone among the mess and your stomach turns. It was naive to think you knew agony, that what you'd experienced before this was anything more than a childish delusion of self-destruction.
</div>
</div>
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
Your blood flows more gradually now, and you feel yourself slipping from the world. You hold your hand tight against your chest, the constant throbbing pain slowly swallowing you whole. In your vanishing throes of sentience, you look for the comforting presence of the creature; but it is no longer with you, and you are left alone again on the blood-soaked floor.
</div>
</div>
<%= story.render("B1") %><!-- After a time skip, the protagonist summons the Demon again. Setup. -->
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
It's been weeks since then.
</div>
<%= story.render(s.qA1 + "3") %>
<div class="wsub">
Your fingers have healed a bit in the meantime. You didn't want to go to the hospital, let alone anywhere, so you wrapped your bloodied hand in the rags of an old shirt. It hurts like hell most of the time, and you think it might have gotten infected, but the idea of showing the wound to anyone else terrifies you; so, you leave it be, holding out that one day it might hurt a little less.
</div>
</div>
<%= story.render("B2") %><!-- The protagonist reflects on their dissatisfaction with the Demon’s Changes. -->
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
You're on that gruesome floor again, back drawing the circles in circles and scrawling the desperate pleas. The old blood is still there; it covers almost the entire floor now, a cracked and fading crimson that ever-so-slightly stings the nose.
</div>
<div class="wsub">
You were going to clean it up, wipe the whole place clean of it, yet somehow you never got around to it. It's not as though you haven't been in there; a dozen times at least you've tried to approach it, but every time the sight of it would send a deep and terrible shiver down your back, and every time you decided to wait another day.
</div>
<div class="wsub">
Even now you despise it. Your hand begins to throb in recollection, waves of dull pain moving up your arm. You can still feel your fingers every now and then, when some blissful moment of forgetfulness crosses your mind; it's the closest you get to any kind of relief.
</div>
</div>
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
Something brushes against the back of your hand. You flinch away, startled by the suddenness of it. The creature has returned; it's sitting next to you, gazing over the dark span of red, like a vast archipelago of anguish.
</div>
<div class="bdn">
"I didn't expect to return here."
</div>
<div class="wsub">
You falter for a moment, unsure of what to say. Just hours before, you were so certain in your convictions; yet now, in the presence of the beast, you find yourself at a loss for words.
</div>
<div class="wsub">
But there's a reason you're here. You know why, god how you hate that you do, but you know what you came here for. Slowly, softly, you force the words from your mouth:
</div>
<em>
<div class="wsub">[[B3<-"You cheated me"]]
</em>
</div><!-- The protagonist accuses the Demon of acting/being in some way “sacreligious”. Utilises high variety in player choices. -->
<div class="wmain">
<%= story.render(s.qA3 + "1") %>
<%= story.render(s.qA4 + "1") %>
<%= story.render(s.qA7 + "1") %>
<em>
<div class="wsub">[[B3a<-"You defiled me"]]
<div class="wsub">[[B3b<-"You pulled my life apart"]]
<div class="wsub">[[B3c<-"You led me to my death"]]
</em>
</div><!-- The Demon responds by highlighting the ways the protagonist has projected their own internal dissonance against it, engaging each different choice of accusation separately. One of the more diverse and responsive sections. -->
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
The creature doesn't react. Its eyes remain fixed on your blood strewn over the floor, locked in an expression of resigned contemplation.
</div>
<%= story.render(s.qB3 + "1") %>
</div>
<%= story.render("B5") %><!-- The protagonist thinks about the pain they’ve gone through, coming to tears upon realising that there won’t be a concrete end in their future. -->
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
You slowly open and close your hand, feeling it ache in response. You can feel that tingling pain again where your missing fingers should be; you try to move them too, but they remain intangible, just beyond your control.
</div>
<div class="wsub">
That white-hot anger you felt mere moments ago has all but faded, leaving only a lingering sense of grief and futility. You try to hold back tears, struggling weakly to keep yourself from breaking into a million little pieces. It all seems so impossible. It all seems so incredibly unfair. You want to give it all up again, to run back to your misery, living sheltered from the possibility of failure.
</div>
<div class="wsub">
You turn to look at the creature, one last time. Through the warped reflection in its eyes you can see the bloody circles you painted across the ground; the old, cracked and fading, and the new, freshly spilt. There, in its eyes, you see it again: that terrible, painful understanding. Eventually, the words come to you, and you ask the beast the worst question you've ever had to ask.
</div>
<em>
<div class="wsub">[[B5a<-"What if it does just hurt forever?"]]
<div class="wsub">[[B5a<-"How can I ever be happy if that's true?"]]
<div class="wsub">[[B5a<-"How do I keep going, even though every second makes me want to throw it all away?"]]
</em>
</div><!-- The protagonist realises the beauty of their existence. Calls back to Your Body. -->
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
Finally, you can't hold the tears back any longer. The pain flows out of you in massive sobs, your entire body shaking with each breath. The creature embraces you, and the two of you sit there in wordless mourning until time itself has passed you by.
</div>
<div class="wsub">
Your eyes are red with tears, your face wet with blood and water and all other things. You open your mouth, and the words come effortlessly, the same ones you've said a thousand times before, ringing no less true.
</div>
<em>
"Thank you"
</em>
</div><!-- It's an angel -->
<% s.qA3 = "cA3a" %>
<%= story.render("A4") %><!-- it's a chimera -->
<% s.qA3 = "cA3b" %>
<%= story.render("A4") %><!-- It's something incredible -->
<% s.qA3 = "cA3c" %>
<%= story.render("A4") %><!-- referenced by A4 -->
You start to sweat. The blood you laid in so readily now sticks to your back, only intensifying the cold of the wind, yet still you're flushed with a hot embarrassment. It ripples across your skin, your hands becoming damp and clammy. Every surface on your body feels unpleasant, every sensation causing you to recoil in disgust. You feel an overwhelming desire to thrash around like a wounded animal; to push everything away in some childish attempt to escape your own skin. Your fingernails dig into your thighs, pulling long scores across the surface. You wish you could rip it all off. You wish you could just tear yourself apart and be left alone in a void of nothingness.<!-- referenced by A4 -->
The twitch returns to your hand, your fingers shivering and pulsing with a newfound terror. You curl them into fists, trying to hold the energy in, but it merely exacerbates the sensation, making your arm shake up to the wrist. Your body wants to fight; to grab this disgusting world by its heart. to tear and gouge and gore and bite until nothing remains but a twitching, shuddering heap of flesh, to bring your pain to everything and bring everything down to you. You feel like a rat in a trap, like you've ran as long and as hard as you could, finally stuck in a corner and all you can do is lash out.<!-- referenced by A4 -->
Your throat has dried up, like you've swallowed a stone. You try to moisten your lips; they're chapped and peeling, and you have to stop yourself from biting the skin instinctively. A sound comes out of you, some kind of half-hearted attempt to explain yourself. A stuttered beginning of a word, that impossible-to-understand language that brings bile to your throat, now made infinitely more abhorrent in the presence of this perfect creature. You don't want to say anything; you just want to sob, to scream, to rip these sounds out of your throat all at once like weeds from a ravaged garden.<!-- referenced by A4 -->
Your face is flushed with exhaustion now; your eyes are heavy and bloodshot, and you're having trouble focusing on anything. You run your tongue over your teeth, feeling all the more disgusting for not taking care of yourself. You want to hold the creature again, to become lost in the comfort of its warmth, lulled to sleep by its golden voice. Tears well up in your eyes. You don't want to explain yourself; you don't even want to see yourself.<!-- My body is wrong -->
<% s.qA4 = "cA4a" %>
<%= story.render("A5") %><!-- My flesh is not my own -->
<% s.qA4 = "cA4b" %>
<%= story.render("A5") %><!-- my voice is not my own -->
<% s.qA4 = "cA4c" %>
<%= story.render("A5") %><!-- I need to be something else -->
<% s.qA4 = "cA4d" %>
<%= story.render("A5") %><!-- I need to be anything else -->
<% s.qA4 = "cA4e" %>
<%= story.render("A5") %><!-- referenced by A6 -->
<div class="wsub">
Slowly, It stands up, sauntering over to your miserable, shivering form; slower still, it brings its face close to yours. Your feel the creature rub against you, the softness of its skin warm and tender against your tear-stained cheek.
</div>
<div class="wsub">
It's good. It feels good. Your breath gets a little more steady, and you're a little less desperate to push the world away. You put your arms around the great and gentle thing, and pull yourself deep into its embra`ce.
</div><!-- referenced by A6 -->
<div class="wsub">
It moves close to you, the smoothness of its gait seeming almost effortless. You turn yourself away, trying to shrink yourself even further into your cocoon of invisibility, but the creature doesn't relent; carefully, yet insistently, like a mother to her child, it pushes its head into your huddled arms.
</div>
<div class="wsub">
Instinctively, you relax your body. The creature's head feels warm in your embrace, and you wrap your hands around its neck, holding it to your chest like a childhood toy. Your fingers run themselves across its skin idly, in an almost rhythmic brushing motion, and that itching hatred of the world slowly, gradually, starts to fade.
</div><!-- referenced by A6 -->
<div class="wsub">
It calmly paces around you in a circle, the creature's gaze locked on your crumpled pose. After a while, it stops, and brings its body down to lay next to you. It moves in close, the warmth of its chest like a shield of heat.
</div>
<div class="wsub">
You have your back to it, but it's so near that you can feel every breath it takes. The steady pattern of ins and outs relaxes you, and you feel your breath start to slow to the same even rhythm. You shuffle yourself closer to the creature's body; in response, it wraps itself further around your fragile form, letting out a soft and comforting sound. It resonates out from the creature's throat, the vibrations cascading down your back like the touch of a hand. You linger in its presence, and lie there, like a child in its parents' arms.
</div><!-- referenced by A6 -->
<div class="wsub">
There it stands, inches away, and looks at you. There's a softness in the face of the creature now, like somewhere in you it's seen a part of itself brought up from beneath the surface. It holds its gaze, constant and unblinking, but it doesn't feel judgemental; you hold it back, in a mirror image of the beast.
</div>
<div class="wsub">
Slowly, you bring your hand up to touch its face again. It's as soft as you remember, the graceful lines of its shape flowing like sculpted marble. The creature's head doesn't move even a little, but you see something new in its eyes; there, in those perfect reflective pools of black, it's mourning alongside you.
</div><!-- You clench your teeth -->
<% s.qA7 = "cA7a" %>
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
Your jaw aches with the pressure; you tense your entire body, putting every sting of energy into keeping your body from falling apart. It feels like you're being crushed alive, your breath coming only in short, painful gasps. The taste of iron fills your mouth. You retch and shake as your body rails against itself; it's violent and instinctive, and the sensations of reality feel further and further away with every second.
</div>
</div>
<%= story.render("A8") %><!-- You scream -->
<% s.qA7 = "cA7a" %>
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
Something inhuman comes barrelling out from you, a sound more animal than should be possible. It hurts you; it drags along the inside of your throat like a knife, pulling raw scores in the flesh. You're doubled over in the fullness of it. Your voice comes out in thick, ragged wails, barely any breath between them, the outside world imperceptible through the heavy, painful sound.
</div>
</div>
<%= story.render("A8") %><!-- You convulse in mindless terror -->
<% s.qA7 = "cA7c" %>
<div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
The pain explodes out of you, your body thrashing and flailing out of control. You're like an animal; the dying spasms of some freshly butchered beast, throwing itself at anything it can. Your arms and legs tremor with energy, your primal drive to escape filling every muscle with electricity, your bones screaming with each impact against the ground. You writhe; there's no force on earth that could hold your terror now.
</div>
</div>
<%= story.render("A8") %><!-- referenced by B1 -->
<div class="wsub">
You rub your finger and thumb against each other; your skin feels soft and smooth, so perfect you barely even notice it most of the time. When you lie in bed, you run your hands over yourself almost unconsciously, the sensation of your own body feeling so new and alien that you can't help but reach out to make sure it's real.
</div><!-- referenced by B1 -->
<div class="wsub">
It's like a weight has been lifted off of your shoulders; your body moves so gracefully now, so perfectly, as if it was made just for you. Your shadow too has become a comfortable sight, a beautiful construction of sloping shape and elegant curvature. You don't shake anymore; that pent-up energy held within your body is nowhere to be found, exorcised from your flesh. Your body finally feels like it belongs.
</div><!-- referenced by B1 -->
<div class="wsub">
You've stopped being afraid to speak; where once your every word was eroded with alien noise, now each sentence rings out with beauty. You hum to yourself whenever you're idle, little made up tunes just for the pleasure of your voice. It's incredible. It feels like you've lived your whole life underwater, then suddenly been brought to the fresh, open air of the surface.
</div><!-- referenced by B1 -->
<div class="wsub">
The stranger in the mirror is gone, replaced by someone so familiar you can't help but stop to study their every detail. You've become infatuated with your reflection; you idle in front of the glass each morning just to spend time with it, to stay in its picturesque presence just a little longer.
</div><!-- referenced by B3 -->
<div class="wsub">
You are unholy; dragged down by your tormentor into the furthest depths of corruption. Your body is an affront to the natural world, you shamble about like some thing of clay. There is no place for you here anymore. All that is left is emptiness and rot.
</div><!-- referenced by B3 -->
<div class="wsub">
You are inhuman; a toy stripped of its parts, reconstituted in a jumbled-up mess of things. You've been twisted and poked and prodded until nothing remained as it should be. You are nothing but a discarded plaything of some careless creator.
</div><!-- referenced by B3 -->
<div class="wsub">
You are abhorrent; an indescribably twisted thing, mangled beyond any earthly recognition. You can't see yourself anymore. The only thing left is a disgusting, putrid corpse.
</div><!-- referenced by B3 -->
<div class="wsub">
You came to this creature, trapped in your own body's imperfection, and begged it to help you. You showed it your every vulnerability; and in return it broke you, abused you, unmade you, until all that was left was a flawed imitation of who you used to be.
</div><!-- referenced by B3 -->
<div class="wsub">
You'd lain yourself bare before this creature, begging that it rescure you from the agony of your flesh. You gave yourself to it, and in return it burned you down to nothingness, only a charred husk of your former self left remaining, alone in the ashes of your life.
</div><!-- referenced by B3 -->
<div class="wsub">
In a fit of desperation, you pleaded before this creature, begging for a voice that was your own. You gave it everything, and it tore your life from your throat. You have been gagged, stripped of sound, made agonisingly hollow.
</div><!-- referenced by B3 -->
<div class="wsub">
You brought yourself before this creature, pleading for any reprieve from the harshness of your on existence, offering everything you were in some desperate hope you could be made something else. In return, you were desecrated, made a mockery of yourself, some caricature of life.
</div><!-- referenced by B3 -->
<div class="wsub">
So blinded by your own unbearable existence, you put yourself at the mercy of this creature. You pleaded with it, begging for even a glimpse at any life beyond this; in return, you were heartlessly ripped from everything you knew, hung on a hook like a skinned pig, some alien heap of flesh.
</div><!-- referenced by B3 -->
<div class="wsub">
You grit your teeth; a bright, unrelenting rage comes up from within you.
</div><!-- referenced by B3 -->
<div class="wsub">
A scream is building up in your chest. You try to hold yourself back, but the words spill out regardless:
</div><!-- referenced by B3 -->
<div class="wsub">
You start to shake with a rising anger. Your hands curl into fists, and your body resonates with a hot, sharp rage.
</div><!-- you defiled me -->
<% s.qB3 = "cB3a" %>
<%= story.render("B4") %><!-- you pulled my life apart -->
<% s.qB3 = "cB3b" %>
<%= story.render("B4") %><!-- you led me to my death -->
<% s.qB3 = "cB3c" %>
<%= story.render("B4") %><!-- referenced by B4 -->
<div class="bdn">
"What is there to defile? What higher force constrains you so, that you must refuse the divinity that it is to create, to reshape yourself as you see fit? It is not a sin to chase happiness as you do; it is that very pursuit of beauty that life itself was built upon."
</div><!-- referenced by B4 -->
<div class="bdn">
"I have only done what you have asked of me. You forget yourself; look around you, at this sea of your own resentment and self-hatred. Do not speak to me of life. Do not sing praises of that which you were before, while we sit here in a room soaked in your blood. You, and you alone, have control of your life. It is you who must maintain it."
</div><!-- referenced by B4 -->
<div class="bdn">
"That death, if and when it occurs, will be entirely your own. That is not what I have given you, nor could I ever take it away. What I have given you is your life. It is yours now, as it always should have been, and as it will now be for the rest of your existence."
</div><div class="wmain">
<div class="wsub">
It turns to you, slowly, and something in its eyes tells you that it knew you were going to ask it that. A wave of sympathy pours out to you from those eyes. And you truly start to realise for the very first time that you aren't alone.
</div>
<div class="bdn">
"You must never stop looking for it. Please, I beg of you, treasure it above all else. Grief will always find you, through some way or another. The horrible indifference of this world will always be with you. That is why you must pursue the joy of existence whenever you can. Fight, fight like there's nothing else, claw your way to happiness with blood and tears and screams of agony. Live; live in sadness, live in pain; as long as you do, there will be beauty left in this world."
</div>
</div>
<%= story.render("B6") %>