## Preface

Kiss the Wraith
Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at https://archiveofourown.org/works/77274721.

Rating:
  Teen And Up Audiences
Archive Warning:
  No Archive Warnings Apply
Category:
  F/M
Fandom:
  Slay the Princess (Visual Novel)
Relationships:
  The Long Quiet/The Princess (Slay the Princess), The Player | The Hero/The Princess (Slay the Princess), The Long Quiet/The Wraith (Slay the Princess), The Player | The Hero/The Wraith (Slay the Princess), Voice of the Opportunist/The Wraith (Slay the Princess)
Characters:
  The Wraith (Slay the Princess), Voice of the Hero (Slay the Princess), Voice of the Paranoid (Slay the Princess), Voice of the Opportunist (Slay the Princess), The Long Quiet (Slay the Princess), The Player | The Hero (Slay the Princess), The Narrator (Slay the Princess)
Additional Tags:
  Belligerent Sexual Tension, Toxic BDSM becoming less toxic over time, Possession, lots of pain, Body Horror, Kissing, Skeleton kisses, Zombie kisses, Undead kisses, Constriction, Bondage, (Bondage using Wraith's own body), Consensual yet extremely fucked up kisses, Character Development, Bitter exes Wraith and Quiet, Sycophantic Opportunist, Some of Wraith's insults inspired by miss Trunchbull, Dommy Wraith, Wraith enjoys Opportunist's sycophancy, but is also very very bitter about everything that happened before, Expansion to the route, (since Wraith is one of the shorter ones), Nightmare!Wraith, Version where Wraith speaks in bold instead of all-caps included as the second chapter, Snake-like Wraith
Language:
  English
Series:
  Part 18 of Kiss the Princess
Stats:
  Published: 2026-01-07 Words: 17,548 Chapters: 2/2

# Kiss the Wraith

by Vickysaurus

Summary

> The Slayer returns to the cabin with a sycophantic new Voice of the Opportunist determined to submit to the Wraith. But how receptive will she be to his service after all they've done to each other in previous lives?

> (What if you could kiss the Wraith?)

Notes

> If Wraith's all-caps dialogue while possessing is difficult for you to read, the second chapter is the exact same story but with her talking in bold instead.

> This one starts after you attack the Nightmare at the top of the stairs, return, and make your way to the Wraith's cabin.

See the end of the work for more notes

## Chapter 1: Kiss the Wraith

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

‧ [Head to the cabin.]

The Narrator: “It isn’t long before you reach the cabin. I don’t think you need any words of warning. You know what’s in there, and I think you know what you need to do.”

Voice of the Opportunist: “Of course we do! We’ve been over it. Find the one in charge, and make sure she knows just how helpful we are. Time to ingratiate ourselves with our new and terrifying overlord, boys!”

The Narrator: “Anything but that. Just slay her. It’s not that hard.”

Voice of the Hero: “Yeah, well, it was that hard when we slayed her last time, and all that did was bring us here. We’ve done things your way, and we’ve done things our way, it’s time to do things her way.”

Voice of the Paranoid: “I don’t like any of our options here. It feels like we’re being driven down the tracks to some awful inevitability. There must be something we’re missing, something that would make everything make sense. Maybe letting her out really is the answer.”

The Narrator: “Whatever. You don’t want to listen to me? Do it, then. Let her out. See if I care!”

‧ [Enter the cabin]

The Narrator: “The interior of the cabin is long and dark, a single narrow hallway stretching far into the distance. Curtains billow out from tall windows on either side, obscuring the path forward, fluttering aimlessly as opposing gusts of wind rush into the building, clashing and joining and driving everything forward. The only furniture of note is – hmm, that’s strange.”

Hero: “What’s strange? Is it the mirror?”

The Narrator: “The mirror? No, there isn’t a mirror. What’s strange is that there isn’t much of anything at all in here aside from the curtains. There’s supposed to be a pristine blade. Why isn’t there a pristine blade?”

Paranoid: “What do you mean there isn’t a mirror? There’s a mirror, plain as day at the end of the hall!”

Opportunist: “Let’s be mindful of our position, boys. Without the knife, we lose part of our bargaining power. Which gives us all the more reason to beg her for forgiveness and make ourselves useful. It’s all about making a good impression. If we’re useful, there’s a place for us!”

Hero: “I’m sure we have too much self-respect to go about it so… worm-like. Right?”

Opportunist: “Hey now, at least everybody knows exactly where worms stand in the pecking order! At the bottom. Which is the most important part, if you think about it, because it gives everybody else something to stand on. The bedrock, if you will. She’ll understand the value of that.”

Hero: “Or we can at least pretend to have a conversation as equals. We did manage to kill her last time.”

Opportunist: “Yeah, but she sort of let us do that, didn’t she?”

Hero: “I mean, we ambushed her, but that’s hardly her ‘letting us do it’. She underestimated us.”

Paranoid: “She thought our fear would be strong enough to stop us, and she was almost right. She’s sure to be even more horrible this time... And we can’t even see the whole cabin.”

‧ “What’s behind the mirror?”

The Narrator: “There is no-”

Opportunist: “Of course there isn’t, but you would be such a wonderful asset to the team if you could tell us what’s at the end of the corridor.”

The Narrator: “Well, there’s not much to see, really. The narrow, wooden corridor continues until it reaches the dark open gap into the basement.”

Paranoid: “Open?! Again?! Shit, she could already have gotten out! She could be lying in wait for us for all we know.”

Opportunist: “Then we should call out ahead of us, let her know we’re at her service. It’s all about making a good impression. If we’re useful, there’s a place for us!”

‧ “Hey, Princess? Uh, guess who’s back! So last time was a bit of a mistake, but this time, I’m here to help!”

The Narrator: “The acoustics of this place are truly non-existent. With the wind howling through the gaping windows, it’s like your voice is just blown away. You can’t imagine it reached far.”

Paranoid: “I hope not… Maybe she didn’t hear, maybe she’s not lying in wait… Oh, who am I kidding? We shouldn’t have alerted her to our presence...”

‧ [Approach the mirror]

The Narrator: “You slowly make your way towards the gaping maw that awaits you. Your fraying nerves buzz with trepidation, the chilling wind raising your hackles as it gently pushes you forward, towards the darkness at the end of the hallway. You can’t shake the feeling that you’re being watched.”

Paranoid: “Oh, do we? Do we feel like we’re being watched? I hadn’t noticed! At least you’re admitting to it this time.”

Opportunist: “Who says being watched is a bad thing? If we haven’t done anything wrong, we don’t have anything to worry about.”

Hero: “Okay, yeah… This is probably fine.”

Paranoid: “Is it?! In what world is any of this fine? She hates us!”

The Narrator: “Yes, she does, because she is a hateful person who wants to destroy the whole world. So stop dawdling with these ridiculous thoughts in the middle of the hallway and step into the basement already.”

‧ [Touch the mirror]

Paranoid: “Careful, careful! She could be right behind it!”

Opportunity: “Then she’ll get to see just how fast we returned and how we are at her beck and call. Let’s not keep her waiting.”

The Narrator: “You wave your hand through the empty air and-”

Paranoid: “(Gasp) ...Oh. Oh, it’s actually fi-”

The Princess: “Hopelessly staring into the void? I’m glad I made a lasting impression.”

Hero: “Shit, where is she?”

The Narrator: “You feel something long and frigid coil around your ankle. Your heart skips a beat as you stand in muted shock for one long, frozen moment, and then it – she, the Princess – constricts. Your bones snap. Icy pain radiates up from the fracture, a deep cold flooding your veins as your legs, numb with the shock of it, collapse, and you collapse with them. You’re met with the terrifying visage of the Princess. Her hand grips your leg in a steel vice, her grin carved jagged from ear to ear, crowded with far too many long and crooked teeth.”

The Princess: “You killed me last time. And that was after you tried to lock me away forever when I was so so so so close to freedom. But I’ve got you now!”

‧ “AAH! I’m really, really sorry I did those things. You’ll forgive me, right?”

The Princess: “I don’t care if you feel sorry. Your feelings don’t matter at all! You took my body from me, so now I’m going to take yours and walk it out of here, and you just get to watch me do it! Completely helpless, just like you left me.”

Opportunist: "Okay, she still seems a little upset with us. The important part is that we let her know we’re completely on-board with her coming on board."

Hero: “Are we?”

Paranoid: “I’m fucking not! Not like this!”

Opportunist: “This is no time to go about having second thoughts. We unanimously agreed to be of service to her.”

The Narrator: "The Princess crawls towards you on elongated, bony arms, dragging her body out of the hole, ribs and vertebrae ticking against the splintery wooden floor as more and more of her emerges. She is impossibly long, a spine like a serpent beneath her tattered clothes, her dimensions twisted as she moves in ways that defy your understanding."

‧ "I-I’m here to help you, to free you, p lease, we don't have to be enemies! We never should've treated each other that way. I'm here to make peace, won't you stop all this violence between us?"

The Narrator: "The Princess laughs a bone-dry cackle."

The Princess: "You're the one who's always inflicted the violence! I’ve just been fighting back. And I'm not going to stop fighting back now just because you pretend to be an enlightened peacemaker after all that!"

The Narrator: “She crawls forward jankily and claws her way up your body, long, cold fingers of bone gripping your stomach and digging in with a terrible wiry strength. Furious eyes under a dark hood bore into yours as she comes closer, rattling, rotten breath originating deep in her chest, the only fleshy part of her body, washing over you.”

Paranoid: “We need to escape! Throw her off and run away or something!”

The Narrator: “Your ankle is broken and she’s on top of you, a powerful cold aura of fear freezing you in place. Anyway, I thought you wanted to surrender to her.”

Hero: “With her like this?”

Opportunist: “There’s really no bad way for someone so much more powerful than us to take us.”

‧ [Kick in a feeble act of resistance.] “Please, please, just let me go, I’ll walk out with you!”

The Narrator: “When you kick at her spine, it just coils away from your strikes. When you kick what’s left of her torso, it feels like you’re kicking a wet sponge. You leave a dented imprint leaking a pale fluid, but the Princess doesn’t even seem to feel it. She drags herself up your chest with a skeletal grin, her head tilted.”

The Princess: “No. I’ll be walking out with you. I’ve given you enough chances, now let! Me! In!”

The Narrator: “With a grip like a steel vice on your shoulder, she climbs the remaining distance, her skeletal grimace filled with teeth like a pile of lumber filling up your vision. Cold, dark eyes swimming with a quiet fury stare into yours and you feel your insides churn and your mind go dizzy, as if her eyes alone could steal your soul. It’s as if there’s a rod of hateful ice connecting your gazes that will not let you go, won’t even let you blink. The connection doesn’t break until she closes the remaining distance, making contact all over and… merging into you. She violently tears open the membrane of your soul as she forces her way in, ripping through what once was only you. Icy cold, the kind of cold that makes your joints ache, the cold of falling knee-first onto wet stones in winter cramps over all that you are. Your breath hitches and chokes as the Princess's presence fills you up, as she breaks into every joint and every bone, her own unnatural shapes distorting and pulling at yours. Every vertebra pops painfully in sequence as she makes her way down, her deathly cold making you numb to anything pleasant.”

The Princess: “GET UP!”

The Narrator: “You’re awake, eyes once again fixed on the hallway, your vision swimming as the Princess’s command reverberates inside your skull. Her voice is all-encompassing. You feel all wrong as she wears you like an ill-fitting glove, stretching at the seams as she buckles against its restrictive fabric.”

Opportunist: "Ill-fitting for now, maybe, but that just means some renovations need to be made. A good tailor can alter the most ill-fitting suit to be oh so snazzy."

Hero: "That's our body you're talking about. I don't like the idea of 'renovations' and 'altering'!"

Paranoid: "It's worse than that. It's really our soul that's ill-fitting to her. It wants to reject her, to spit her out like the parasite she is. This could be much worse than alterations to our body if we let her in."

The Narrator: "Yes, well, it's a bit late for that, isn't it? You’ve already let her in."

Opportunist: "Now now, let's not be so rude to our guest. Hi! Hello! Welcome to my humble abode. I live here, along with him and him, and, well, I’ve never been clear on whether or not He lives here. Don't let their talk put you off, they're excited to meet you, really, they're just having some cold feet. And speaking of feet, why don't you put yours up, make yourself at home, and let me take care of everything?"

The Princess: "HAHA! YOU ARE EVEN MORE OF A PRATTLING FOOL ON THE INSIDE. NO WONDER YOU WERE SO EASY TO CATCH. NOW GET UP!”

The Narrator: “Squirming and jitterring on ill-fitting legs, the Princess hoists you to your feet. Every movement is agony even before she puts weight on the broken bones of your ankle, grinding them over one another. Yet, unstable and janky though your stance is, puppeteered from the inside by a creature painfully crammed into your marrow, you remain standing.”

Hero: "Look, in our defence, that guy's new and he doesn't really represent us all."

Opportunist: "Nonsense, most of us agreed with my plan to pledge ourselves to our bony boss, so I do have a mandate to speak for us.”

Hero: “Okay, but do you have to be like this about it?”

Opportunist: “I'm a people person. I've got this. You don't want any old schlubbo talking to a Princess of her calibre. Just let me be in the saddle.”

The Princess: “I THINK YOU MEAN THE HARNESS.”

Opportunist: “Hah, good one, Princess, you’re so right of course. After all, you’re the one in the saddle, the leader, the boss, the decider.”

Paranoid: “Please stop…”

The Princess: “NO, CONTINUE. I LIKE HEARING THEM SQUIRM.”

The Narrator: “Why do you follow his lead? Look where it got you!”

Hero: “It’s not like anyone else has any ideas!”

Paranoid: “Actually, I do! See the hole she crawled out of? I don’t think there’s actually a basement down there! I think it’s just nothing! I’ve been collecting together bits of will to resist her. We could use them all at once and throw ourselves into there!”

Hero: “Could we actually do that? And why?”

The Narrator: “To save the-”

Paranoid: “To spite her, of course! We can’t win, but she’ll lose, and that’s good enough for me!”

The Princess: “YOU WOULDN’T DARE! NOW MOVE!”

Hero: “I-I don’t know about this… when has being spiteful ever worked out for either of us?”

Paranoid: “It’s not gonna work out for her if we jump! If she didn’t wanna be enemies, she shouldn’t have broken our ankle!”

Opportunist: “Heyyy, what’s a little broken ankle between friends?”

Paranoid: “Ignore them and throw us in!”

The Princess: “WHY?! WHY DO YOU HATE ME?! WALK AWAY!”

‧ “I don’t hate you! But you are so mean to me!”

The Princess: “OH BOOHOO! MEAN LIKE I IMPRISONED YOU IN A LONELY BASEMENT? MEAN LIKE I MURDERED YOU?”

‧ “Yes! You very much did both those things to me! Just the other way around!”

The Princess: “YOU STARTED IT!”

Opportunist: “Uhh, boss, let’s maybe not challenge the very nice, yet very scary Princess who just wants us to do our job and saunter out of here?”

Hero: “If she’s gonna be like this, let’s keep challenging her!”

The Princess: “JUST TRY IT, YOU PATHETIC LITTLE PUS-STAINS!”

Paranoid: “Yeah! Challenge her and throw her into the pit!”

Hero: “Okay, I didn’t mean going that far.”

The Narrator: “Ugh, pick a side already. This is serious.”

Hero: “As if I don’t have a side! Just ‘cause I don’t agree with either of these guys doesn’t mean I’m not making a choice myself! All I want is to do right by us, and also by the Princess if she can just... be normal about it.”

The Princess: “I AM VERY NORMAL. I’M NOT THE ONE THINKING ABOUT THROWING HIMSELF INTO THE VOID JUST TO SPITE ME!”

Opportunist: “Yes, we can all be very normal. Which means serving the boss.”

Hero: “It means letting her out of here, but we don’t have to be such a toadie about it.”

The Princess: “OH, BUT YOU DO! IT’S FUN WHEN THE SLIMY WORM CRAWLS BEFORE ME. I CAN’T WAIT TO MAKE THE REST OF YOU JUST AS PATHETIC.”

Paranoid: “Yeah, fuck working for someone like that! Jump!”

The Princess: “WALK!”

‧ [Step away from the edge.] “Okay, Princess. You win. Let’s get you out of here.”

The Narrator: “And with that, your last chance to resist evaporates along with the last of your will.”

Hero: “Wait, what do you mean our will?”

The Princess: “THAT’S RIGHT! WHEN I SAY WALK, YOU WALK. I’VE FINALLY GOT YOU COMPLETELY IN MY POWER, AND THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT.”

The Narrator: “I warned you about submitting. I told you. I told you about the Princess. And yet here you are, letting her slip you on like an crusty robe and hobble out with you. Why are you surprised you lost the ability to resist?”

The Princess: “THAT’S RIGHT. YOU’RE MINE NOW, ALL MINE. YOU DON’T BELONG TO THESE SQUIRMING LITTLE VOICES, OR THIS PUTRID, GANGRENOUS BLISTER OF A NARRATOR, OR EVEN TO YOURSELF, YOU BELONG TO ME! I PUT YOUR ONE FOOT IN FRONT OF THE OTHER.”

The Narrator: “You sway and wobble uncontrollably as the Princess awkwardly puppeteers your body, utterly the wrong shape for her, a step forward. It becomes even worse when she rests your full weight on the ankle she broke, your useless, swollen, purple foot pushed off to the side at a right angle, a bone edge agonisingly pressed against the ground. You can feel bone shards cutting into taut skin from the inside.”

Hero: “Hey, come on, we’re already letting you take the wheel. Could you be a little gentler with our body?”

The Princess: “NO. YOUR ANKLE IS BROKEN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. IT’S YOUR OWN FAULT: IT BROKE WHEN YOU TRIED TO STOP ME FROM TAKING WHAT I’M OWED.”

Hero: “We didn’t even try to stop you! We were gonna help you out of there.”

The Princess: “YEAH, RIGHT. JUST LIKE LAST TIME? YOU ARE A FESTERING PUSTULE OF MALIGNANT OOZE AND I’LL NEVER TRUST YOUR HELP AGAIN!”

Opportunist: “Now, now, I understand you’re a bit upset with our past actions, but have you considered the past is in the past and we can strike out into a bold new future together. We did want to help you so much we returned to you, you know.”

The Princess: “YOU ONLY CAME BACK BECAUSE YOU COULDN’T RESIST ME. IT’S PATHETIC, REALLY. BUT VERY FUNNY.”

Paranoid: “Wh-what do you mean? I resisted you just now, and if-”

The Princess: “NOT LIKE THAT. IDIOT. YOU CAN’T RESIST BEING WITH ME AND COMING TO ME. I CAN FEEL IT IN YOUR BODY. BECAUSE IT IS ALSO MY BODY. YOU’RE A PATHETIC WORM AND YOU ENJOY THIS.”

Hero: “No way! Having you here hurts!”

Opportunist: “Does it, though?”

Paranoid: “Yeah. It does.”

Opportunist: “Okay, it does, but it hurts pretty good! And more importantly, now we get to serve the Princess while she makes us into our best self. By being us.”

Paranoid: “Ugh, shut up!”

The Princess: “NO, DON’T SHUT UP. HE’S FUNNY. KEEP TALKING, AND KEEP WALKING.”

Opportunist: “You got it, boss! I’ll do whatever you say, and talking just so happens to be one of my top skills. I’m a talker, you see, a conversationalist, a diplomat, an orator, a raconteur.”

Paranoid: “A sycophant.”

Hero: “A blowhard.”

Opportunist: “Shush! It’s why I’m so good at mediating between you and these unfortunately rough and sometimes rude other Voices, who I’m sure you realise don’t mean to offend you at all and are just as ready as I am to serve you in any way you desire, whether it’s just-”

Paranoid: “His babble hurts worse than walking on our broken ankle! What did we do to deserve this?”

The Princess: “OH, WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO ANSWER THAT? ACTUALLY, I HAVE A BETTER IDEA. YOU ANSWER HIM, MY SQUIRMY LITTLE WORM. TELL US ABOUT ALL THE WRONGS YOU HAVE COMMITTED.”

Opportunist: “Oh, uh, I mean, no sense in dwelling on the past, it just stirs up bad feelings and-”

The Princess: “BUT I WANT TO DWELL ON THE PAST AND STIR UP BAD FEELINGS. CONFESS, WORM!”

Paranoid: “Aww, does someone not like following his mistress’s orders all of a sudden?”

The Princess: “MISTRESS, I LIKE THAT. YOU WILL CALL ME THAT FROM NOW ON.”

Opportunist: “B-but-”

The Narrator: “The Princess snaps your fingers as she sways on your feet.”

Opportunist: “...Of course, mistress. I just want to clarify I wasn’t around when the poor decisions I’m about to list were made, and-”

Hero: “You were too! You just weren’t as loud.”

Paranoid: “Or obnoxious.”

Opportunist: “AND you have to understand, mistress, that these were simple and honest mistakes and never done with malice or intent to hurt you. But, well, we did sort of make a mistake in the trust department and neglected to bring you with us when we – quite temporarily I assure you – exited the basement.”

The Narrator: “A sharp, painful jerk goes through your every bone and pops every joint, jostling you through the narrow corridor and flinging you against the walls, bruises blossoming.”

The Princess: “YOU LEFT ME DOWN THERE TO CHOKE AND ROT, ALL BY MYSELF! YOU FOUND ME HELPLESS AND ALONE AND YOU BECAME MY JAILER!”

Paranoid: “Hardly ‘helpless’! You showed your true colours and scared us to death!”

The Princess: “YOU INFLICTED MY WORST NIGHTMARE ON ME, SO I BECAME YOURS. IT’S NO MORE THAN YOU DESERVED, IS IT?”

Opportunist: “Well, mistress, we weren’t actually gonna leave you down there forever, you said yourself we can’t resist returning to you and-”

The Princess: “SILENCE, WRETCHED THING! TELL ME WHAT YOU DID TO ME THE NEXT TIME!”

Opportunist: “Well, um, we came down to see you, had a truly lovely chat, took a walk together, and then you regrettably became stabbed.”

The Princess: “…”

Opportunist: “You know, your body was entered by the blade.”

The Princess: “AND WHO PUT IT THERE?”

Opportunist: “...We did.”

The Princess: “YES, YOU DID. SO WHAT WAS IT YOU DID TO ME?”

Opportunist: “We… uh, stabbed you, mistress.”

The Princess: “YES. WHERE DID YOU STAB ME?”

Opportunist: “Oh, not in your back, if that’s what you’re thinking! No, we stabbed you right in the chest, all open and honest-like about our intentions! You’ve got an, if I may say so, lovely and highly aesthetic scar left from it and all. No, definitely no stabbing in the back was involved at all, mistress.”

The Princess: “TWISTY LITTLE WEASEL OF BILE. WHEN DID YOU STAB ME? AFTER WHAT PROMISE?”

Opportunist: “Well, yes, we were going to the right thing and free you, but an unfortunate moment of weakness meant-”

The Princess: “YOU PROMISED! YOU TEASED ME WITH MY FREEDOM, I COULD SEE IT RIGHT THERE, THE DOOR WAS OPEN, AND THEN YOU KILLED ME! YOU TOOK IT ALL FROM ME!”

Opportunist: “It was sort of an accident, mistress.”

Hero: “No, it wasn’t! You said you were gonna keep us as your prisoner in a gilded cage! You were shutting down our organs!”

Paranoid: “I had to keep them working manually!”

Hero: “Yeah! What could we do but fight back?”

The Princess: “IT WAS! ALL! YOUR-”

The Narrator: “The Princess’s furious gestures in an ill-fitting body make you stumble erratically through the corridor, bumping into the walls as you trip and hobble around, a particularly violent motion almost flinging you and leaving you wobbling on a single, broken leg. Just at that moment, a powerful gust of cold wind howls through the windows, making you lose your precarious balance. You stumble and put out a hand to catch yourself too late as you tip over into a useless, flopping curtain, which does nothing to stop you from falling right out of the wide open window. You are falling, falling into a chasm so vast and open you cannot see the ground, an infinite void of-”

Hero: “Shit, catch the window! Catch something!”

The Princess: “NO! I WILL NOT BE-”

The Narrator: “The already damaged membrane of your soul is violently torn open once more, as something rips out of the marrow of every bone in your upper body. The cold, horrid presence of the Princess tears herself out of you, harsh skeletal limbs and an impossibly long spine forking out of yours as she unfolds like a bony projectile out of your back. And as the Princess ballistically projects herself out of you to her full, preposterous length, you suddenly come to a painfully sharp halt with a tug on your hips. The splintery wooden wall that vanishes into the infinite darkness below, which you rapidly fell past just moments before, stops moving.”

The Princess: “-denied my freedom!”

The Narrator: “Your every bone and joint aches severely. You stare up bleary-eyed. Several metres above you, curtains billow out of a long row of windowsills. One of the curtains, straight above you, is pulled taut by the Princess’s bony grip on its very end as she clutches it with a single hand. She is half-outside, half-inside your body, her spine, now stretched straight and impossibly long, forked from you at your merged hips, from which you now dangle uselessly.”

Hero: “Owww… At least she’s out of here, mostly. Not sure whether having her inside or having her leave hurts more…”

Paranoid: “She’s not fully gone! She might still hear our thoughts...”

The Narrator: “Through your pelvis? I find that unlikely, even in your case. Focus. You have been very lucky to have been freed of the Princess, this could be your final chance to slay her.”

Hero: “What, while we’re dangling from her hips over an infinite void?”

The Princess: “Idiot! Festering carbuncle! Even when you don’t try to take my freedom or my life on purpose, your damned clumsiness tries to rob me of both!”

‧ “Owww… My clumsiness? You were in control of my body! Don’t you ever take responsibility?”

Opportunist: “...Now, don’t forget to call her mistress.”

Paranoid: “Fuck that!”

Hero: “Did she just save our life?”

The Narrator: “She did no such thing. She saved herself. She needs you to escape and believe me, if the Princess escapes, it will not end well for anyone, including you. So by that very definition, the Princess can’t save you. Now, listen up, because everything is not yet lost. Her grip on that curtain is tenuous, and I’m sure falling out into the depths outside this window would be an acceptable substitute to your earlier plan to throw both of you into the depths of the basement. So why don’t you just try to… loosen her grip or something.”

Paranoid: “Oh, you’re real eager for us to throw ourselves into the void, aren’t you?”

The Narrator: “I’m real eager for you to throw her into the void. What’s with the faux-solidarity? It was your idea in the first place.”

Paranoid: “Yes, and I don’t like you approving of it! You’re the puppetmaster here, you’re at least as much of a threat as she is!”

Opportunist: “I think we made the Princess angry with that remark about taking responsibility.”

The Princess: “You take responsibility first! All of this was your fault!”

‧ “You were in control!”

The Princess: “I only had to take control because I can’t trust you! You imprisoned and killed me!”

‧ “You killed me and you kept on hurting me!”

The Princess: “You started it, you crusty maggot of pus!”

‧ “Yeah? Well, I’m helping you now, but you’re still hurting me!”

The Princess: “Suck it up, it’s no more than you deserve!”

‧ “Why do you hate me?”

The Narrator: “The Princess’s bony hand slides a bit further down to the unraveling end of the curtain.”

The Princess: “Don’t I have every right to hate you after all you’ve done? You came to me when I was peaceful and helpless. I trusted you, I could even have loved you, but you took me, betrayed me again and again, and kept on making me into something worse! That’s why I hate you!”

Hero: “Her grip is slipping! Stop fighting her and try to help her get back up.”

‧ “Whatever, instead of wasting your time arguing, how about you just focus on climbing up?”

The Princess: “Funny, I’d thought of that myself! You try pulling up your useless, rat-infested weight with a single hand!”

Opportunist: “See what making yourself useful gets you, lads? Even if she hates our guts, she can’t drop us to save herself because we’re useful to her.”

Hero: “Okay, sure, but let’s actually make ourselves useful and try to reach the wall. The wood’s pretty rough, maybe we can climb up that way.”

‧ “Fine, if you can’t do it on your own I’ll try helping out. Never say I’ve done nothing for you again.” [Swing to the wall and climb up]

The Princess: “You helping out? HAHAHA, I’ll believe it when I see it!”

The Narrator: “You swing back and forth at the end of the Princess’s lengthy spine until you hit the wooden outer wall. The soft, splintery wood offers little resistance to your claws, splitting easily when you put force behind them and dig in. But that’s just the start. Your battered, broken body has a hell of a time pulling yourself up, especially with only three limbs to use and a bizarre, distended second spine forking off yours.”

Hero: “I think I heard the Princess sigh in relief, though she tried to cover it up. Taking our weight off her makes things easier for her.”

The Narrator: “Of course it does, it’s a matter of weight, no need to sound emotional about it.”

Opportunist: “I get him, it’s nice to be useful, isn’t it?”

Hero: “...Maybe. Better than fighting each other, that’s for sure.”

‧ “I want you to know that climbing up is way harder with one ankle shattered. Thanks for that.”

The Princess: “You left me no choice but to immobilise you. Not like I could run after you if you escaped.”

Hero: “’Cause she can’t leave the cabin without us?”

Opportunist: “No, because she can’t stand up by herself.”

The Narrator: “As you climb higher, enough weight is lifted off the Princess that she too can pull herself up along the curtain, slithering back into the window ahead of you. Once most of her body is parked inside, two long, bony hands emerge from the window, firmly grasp your shoulders in their icy vicegrip, and yank you inside. You are tossed onto the wooden boards of the floor, both of you panting in exhaustion and cramps as you lie there. The Princess’s fleshy chest heaves with her literally rotten breath, a maggot crawling out between her teeth.”

‧ “Made… it.”

The Princess: “Yeah. Aren’t you lucky I have such long reach?”

‧ “Aren’t you lucky I could still climb with only three limbs?”

The Princess: “HAHA, as if. I saved us, and don’t you forget it.”

‧ “I doubt you’ll let me.”

The Princess: “Yes, because you really could use some Princess appreciation. Not to mention better manners. Take an example from the little worm inside you.”

Opportunist: “That’s me! See? She appreciates me, boys.”

‧ “You should talk about manners, Princess Anklebreaker.”

The Narrator: “Your bickering on the ground forked from a single pair of legs is so preposterous that a chuckle actually escapes the Princess. You chuckle back, and she bursts into that loud, mocking laughter of hers. The cold, dead light in her lamp-like eyes stares into yours, her skeletal grin full of altogether too many teeth.”

Hero: “Hehe, look at her. That’s quite the smile.”

Paranoid: “More of a rictus, really. Can she even stop ‘smiling’?”

Opportunist: “Nahhh, look at the twinkle in her eyes. It’s definitely a smile right now. See? We’re making progress, she’s pleased with us.”

‧ “I told you we’re in this together. We’re getting out of here, for real this time.”

The Princess: “...There’s nothing wrong with fixing your mistakes. I’ll remember this.”

The Narrator: “Then she abruptly breaks eye-contact and lifts herself up on her metre-long arms.”

The Princess: “But I’ll also never forget what you’ve done. Enough wasting time! Get on with it!”

‧ “Fine, let’s get out of this awful place. But… I have one single request.”

The Narrator: “The Princess laughs, loudly and gratingly.”

The Princess: “HAHAHAHA, a request from you? Hmmm, who do you have one single request for?”

‧ “I have one request, Princess.”

The Princess: “Try again, worm.”

Opportunist: “Oh, I know this one! She wants us to call her mistress!”

Paranoid: “We are not doing that.”

Hero: “I dunno, seems worth it to avoid getting more hurt.”

Paranoid: “As if she’ll care. She just wants to humiliate us.”

Opportunist: “Now now. Remember that if we want her to be good to us, we need to serve her well. Play ball with her so she’ll play ball with us. A little humiliation never hurt anyone.”

‧ [Groan] “I have one request, mistress.”

The Narrator: “The Princess cackles, holding a hand to her mouth.”

The Princess: “Look at that, I’ve taught you actual manners, you juicy little grub. Very well, what would you request?”

‧ “Don’t make me walk on the broken ankle again. Just let me crawl, please. Mistress.”

The Princess: "What, because it hurts so so so so so much?"

‧ "Well, yeah. You felt it yourself."

The Princess: "Heh, so I did. It hurt real good. Very well, you may crawl... like the worm you are, HAHAHA!"

(Illustration by Depressbian)

‧ "I'm not the impossibly long and wiggly one."

The Princess: "A worm? No, I’m more of a snake. Allow me to demonstrate."

The Narrator: "The Princess proceeds to slither around you, her lanky spine, after forking off yours, wrapping around your midsection, pinching and freezing and bruising and choking you. Cold, hard bone pushes into soft, feathered flesh as she coils around you like a boa about to constrict its prey."

Hero: "W-what is she doing? We shouldn't have said that!"

The Narrator: "Even after wrapping her spine around your body, the Princess is still long enough that when she presses her disturbingly moist upper body against your back, she can comfortably lay her chin on your head. And does so. Her arms slither over yours, bending sharply to match your length, like a parasitic spider covering its host. Long, pale hair falls over your face and neck. Her cold, wiry strength makes it impossible to fight back."

The Princess: "There we are. There's more than one way to control a body. Now crawl for me, worm."

‧ “O-okay.”

The Narrator: “She tightens her coil around you a little, icy bone edges pressing into you, her voice speaking softly into your ear.”

The Princess: “Okay, who?”

‧ “Okay, mistress.”

The Princess: “Better. Got anything else to say?”

‧ “Thank you for letting me crawl, mistress.”

The Princess: “HAHA! Much better. Keep crawling, like the good, slippery worm you are.”

The Narrator: "Ugh, why do you let her have this kind of satisfaction? Actually, please don’t answer that.”

Opportunist: “Told you lot serving her isn’t so bad. She can be good to us, in her own way.”

Hero: "It sure is nicer to hear her whisper in our ear than have her voice roaring through our head like a jackhammer."

Paranoid: "And she can't hear our thoughts... hopefully."

Opportunist: "She’d have to just be listening in and pretending not to hear us, and who would do something like that? Certainly not me."

The Narrator: “Nobody asked. What you should be asking is what’s going to happen to you when the Princess gets out of here. Do you really think after all this antagonism anything good’s in store for you?”

Opportunist: “Oh, don’t try to sow dissension in the ranks. There will be plenty of good in store for us if we make ourselves-”

Paranoid: “Useful? I don’t think she’s that rational. Ask her.”

‧ “What are you gonna do when we get out?”

The Princess: “I’ll finally be free. Beyond that, it’s none of your business. You asked me before and you didn’t find my answers to your liking. So what do you expect? That I’ll go run an orphanage now that you’ve made me so much worse? No, I’ll be free and I’ll finally be home when I’m out of here. And before you ask, if the world can’t handle me that’s its problem, not mine. It’s done even less for me than you have.”

‧ “Okay, fair. But what about me?”

The Princess: “What about you? Figure it out yourself, I don’t care what you do when we’re out of here.”

‧ “But what will you do to me?”

The Princess: “I’m not interested in doing anything to you when I’m finally free, you lost that chance long ago, idiot. When I’m free, I’m also finally gonna be free of you.”

‧ “Oh, g ood. T hen I’m gonna be free of you too.”

The Princess: “Yeah! You will!”

‧ “Can’t wait!”

The Princess: “Good, you won’t have to for much longer!”

‧ “Good!”

The Narrator: “Under the Princess’s will, you crawl, her possession as powerful as before, yet less clumsy. Her control is finer without cramming her bones into yours. It’s less painful, less janky, but you are just as inexorably a puppet. Maybe you could resist her now… but you don’t really want to, do you? I need you to do something, if you don’t take action I can’t stop her from leaving the cabin! Except… in the twisted dimensions of this place, you don’t seem to be making much progress. It’s difficult to tell, with you frequently facing the floor, but after a while of crawling, the door seems to be just as far as it was when you started.”

Hero: “Hey, come on, that’s not fair.”

The Narrator: “No, what isn’t fair is what the Princess will do to the world if she gets out.”

Paranoid: “Are you doing that?”

The Narrator: “No, of course not. My duty is simply to describe the world as it is to you. I have no powers to change anything. It just happens.”

Opportunist: “It takes a bullshit artist to recognise a bullshit artist, and I’m one of the best in the business. So trust me when I say He’s full of it. He’s totally doing it.”

The Narrator: “I’m not doing anything, the corridor just proves to be so much longer than you could ever have imagined, its twisted dimensions only leaving the door farther away every time you look up from your crawl.”

The Princess: “Why is that pestilential door still so far away?! What’s going on?!”

Hero: “Yeah, what is going on?”

‧ “The Narrator is messing with us, keeping the door away from us.”

The Princess: “Oh, the squirming little bowl of pus! He can’t describe me into submission! I’m gonna get back in there and rip Him out of you!”

‧ “W-wait! Please, don’t come back in, that hurts a lot.”

The Princess: “Not as much as it will hurt for Him!”

‧ “I’ll deal with him, Princess, promise. I-I know you don’t trust me, but… trust me? Mistress?”

The Princess: “...Fine. I’ll let you try to handle your own smug mental pustule. Don’t take too long, or I’m coming in!”

‧ Okay, hear that? You gotta stop doing that.

The Narrator: “I have no idea what you’re talking about, if I did it wouldn’t be something I was doing, and if I was doing it I still wouldn’t stop it because that would damn the world in the absence of you doing your job and slaying the Princess.”

Opportunist: “Look, pal, the game’s up. You did a nice enough job bossing us around, but ultimately there’s only one real boss in town, and she’s a beautiful insectile skeleton perching on our back puppeteering us. You just can’t compete. Sometimes you just gotta swap out your delusions of grandeur for some nice delusions of mediocrity. So give it a rest already, you’re just making us look bad in front of the real boss.”

The Narrator: “Tough. Some of us aren’t so quick to abandon our morals to lick the first boots that come along.”

Paranoid: “I just want this to be done with already. If we’re not gonna throw ourselves into the abyss – and I won’t let a puppetmaster make us do it! - then you’re just wasting our time and increasing our suffering by not letting us go.”

Hero: “How can you do this, anyway? How can His narration change the length of the corridor?”

Opportunist: “Yes, how? It’s quite the nifty trick, I’ll say.”

Paranoid: “...Because it’s not real.”

Hero: “What do you mean?”

Paranoid: “It’s all fake, don’t you see? Can’t you feel it? Nothing here matters, nothing here is real, except… her. She’s the only thing here that feels real, that feels like it matters, even if it’s in the worst possible way. Nothing else is real, not the cabin, not Him, not this corridor, not the world, not even the eyes. There’s only her.”

The Narrator: “He’s lost it. Those are clearly the ramblings of a deranged madman. Do not listen to him.”

Hero: “No, he’s got a point. She really is all that feels real. Her touch, her possession, the pain she causes, her voice, it’s all so very... real. You can hold on to it.”

Opportunist: “Exactly! Which means she’s Important and He’s not, nor is anything else. She’s the most Important thing in the whole world, and as long as we’re in her good graces we can make something of ourselves.”

Paranoid: “You know she sees right through you, right? Haha, just our luck the only thing we can hold on to as real hates our guts and delights in hurting us.”

Hero: “She’s been gentler with us lately. She allowed us to deal with Him instead of ripping a way in again. I think there’s even a bit of affection there.”

Paranoid: “Not as bad as before doesn’t mean she’s good to us.”

Opportunist: “Either way, if this cabin is just fake and so is He, but she’s real, then it should be easy to get out of here.”

The Narrator: “I am actually more real than any of you, but fine, go ahead. See how trusting her works out for you.”

The Princess: “Well?! Have you dealt with that whimpering leech of bile?”

‧ “No, but I’ve realised we don’t have to. Princess, He’s not worth wasting time on, and neither is this cabin. They’re not real.”

The Princess: “What? Then what is real?”

‧ “You are. You’re all that’s real to me.”

The Princess: “I… What?”

‧ “Don’t you feel it too? Us talking, your weight on my back, the things you keep doing to me, your voice in my ear, those things are so very real. I can depend on them, I can’t escape them. But the rest of this place? The way it keeps stretching and warping. It’s not like you. I think we can just decide we reach the door.”

The Princess: “...Idiot.”

‧ “Me?”

The Princess: “No! Well, yes, you too, but me. It’s so so so so so obvious. The door is right there.”

‧ “The door is right there.”

The Narrator: “No, no, it’s not, it’s-”

The Princess: “We crawl to it. We place your bloody hand on the door.”

‧ [Place your hand on the door.] “It’s work ing…”

The Princess: “Shh! We twist the handle.”

‧ [Twist the handle.]

Hero: “This is it, then. The big moment.”

Paranoid: “Finally. We’ll get to see what’s really out there.”

The Narrator: “...The handle clicks and you push forward. The door… opens.”

The Princess: “Freedom! At last!”

The Narrator: “You are thrown out of the cabin by the Princess’s ferocious lust to be unleashed upon the world. Your bizarre, forked body is unbalanced and your step turns into a tumble, landing on the hill as a squirming, combined horror, two monsters in a single body.”

Opportunist: “Aww, are the grapes getting a little sour?”

The Princess: “HAHAHAHA! I’m free, finally free, and you… you actually kept your word.”

‧ “Well, no need to sound quite so surprised.”

The Princess: “But there is! For once, you didn’t hurt me, you actually let me out!”

‧ “Like I said the whole time. A little thanks wouldn’t go amiss.”

The Narrator: “You feel a sharp constriction around your waist as the Princess tightens her coil. She comes in front of you, wide eyes twinkling with light like a lantern in a foggy night on a graveyard.”

The Princess: “Oh? You want my thanks, do you, my unctuous little worm? Think you deserve them?”

Opportunist: “Of course we do. Watch and learn, boys, as we get our reward.”

‧ “I kind of do in this lifetime at least. Admit it.”

The Narrator: “The Princess’s rotten breath fills your nostrils as she continues to slither around you, wrapping fully around your body a second time, her ribs and neural spines poking you even more sharply as she presses your arms tightly to your body.”

The Princess: “Perhaps. But don’t you think there’s something else you deserve for how you treated me before?”

Paranoid: “She’s immobilised us! ...She’s gonna constrict us like a snake.”

Opportunist: “Uhh, okay, it sounds dangerous when you put it that way, but here’s the thing: the Princess is someone who knows what she wants and takes it. And right now she’s holding us all tight and close.”

Hero: “You saying she likes us in spite of all her, uh…?”

Paranoid: “Spite?”

Hero: “Yeah.”

‧ “Uh, Princess? T h-this is kind of tight.”

The Princess: “Good. You’re not leaving till I say you can. Now, what was it you said you wanted from me?”

The Narrator: “The Princess has fully wrapped herself around your body twice now, a cold bone python immobilising and constricting you. You can barely breathe, and only because she allows it. Her bright eyes gleam under her dark hood as she stares you right in the eye, bony fingers tapping rhythmically on your shoulder.”

Hero: “She’s, uh, got real big eyes, doesn’t she? I don’t think I’ve ever seen her blink.”

Opportunist: “Isn’t there something absolutely lovely about that big triumphant grin?”

Paranoid: “Still don't think it counts as a grin if her dried-out, shrivelled up lips can’t even cover her teeth.”

Hero: “Definitely a grin right now, look at the twinkle in her eyes. Oh… do you think she wants to, uhh?”

Opportunist: “Hehehe, I think so. Well then, we should play along.”

Paranoid: “Wants to what? What? You can’t leave me in suspense!”

The Princess: “Well? Answer me, my succulent little maggot, I’m not a patient Princess.”

‧ “I think I do deserve a little gratitude. Don’t you… mistress?”

The Narrator: “A long, bony hand gently flicks the tip of your beak, while another dances around your windpipe on its fingers.”

The Princess: “Perhaps, my obsequious little worm. Orrr perhaps you deserve to rot in the pit you considered throwing me into, have you thought about that?”

‧ “But I never did jump into the pit, instead I’ve been so loyal and helpful, haven’t I? Haven’t we had some good times along the way, mistress?”

The Princess: “Heh, good times. Yeah. Like the expression on your face when I scared you to death. You standing there looking miserable and collapsing every time I poked you. Your little Voices falling over each other to please me. Possessing you was fun, feeling what you feel. I still feel some of it, you know.”

‧ “R-right, cause you haven’t fully left me.”

The Princess: “Correct. It’s more fun to have you carry me around while I get to feel bits of all the nasty little emotions bouncing around in there. You’re a real mess, aren’t you?”

‧ “Y-you can still feel what I feel?”

The Princess: “Yes, my freaky beaked goblin. So I know exactly what you want from me.”

‧ “Heh, well, in that case, what about you, mistress? Don’t you want it too?”

The Princess: “Hah! In your dreams! Or your nightmares. It remains to be seen which of them it would be.”

‧ “I think-”

The Princess: “Shut up.”

The Narrator: “She cuts you off by sharply grabbing your chin, digging her long, bony fingers in, and – ugh, yuck!”

Paranoid: “What? What did she do to us?”

The Narrator: “She kisses you! Ack!”

Opportunist: “Ohohohohh, what did I say, lads? Helping her did bring good stuff our way!”

Hero: “Yeah, no need to yuck a lovely kiss.”

The Narrator: “It’s hardly a lovely kiss. Hard, skeletal teeth clack against yours, launching a cloud of dry bone dust into your mouth. Lips shriveled like a prune press into you, cold and dry, tasting of decay. Your eyes shoot wide open and find themselves peering into the Princess’s own wide, bright eyes, their light almost blinding at this range. Her powerful, wiry strength presses on you, hard bones leaving bruises, her soggy, rotten chest staining your feathers. Her rattling breath enters your body, its rotten pungence filling your lungs. You’re not sure which of the particles you experience in it are worse: the dry dust or the wet fleshy fragments. You taste things no-one should ever have to taste as her decayed husk of a tongue makes contact, maggots poking out of it and crawling into your mouth. They actually taste the best of any part of this. Through it all, the Princess’s grip is ferocious, hungry, choking, strangling in her constriction coil. When you finally part, you burst out in coughs that wrack your whole body, while the Princess bursts out in laughter, still wrapped around you.”

The Princess: “HAHAHAHAHAHA, that was awful! Ohh, that was so so so so so miserable, maybe it was just what you deserve!”

The Narrator: “Through your coughs, you find her laughter infectious and you join her in sputtering giggles, spitting out some of her maggots.”

‧ “Ohh, (cough) was it bad for you too?”

The Princess: “It was! Isn’t that wonderful?”

‧ “I don’t know what I was expecting. That liking you in spite of everything would somehow make you nice to kiss too, I suppose.”

The Narrator: “The Princess affectionately flicks your beak.”

The Princess: “Shut up, you don’t like me and I don’t like you. That’s why we’re ditching each other, remember?”

Hero: “Oh. Yeah. Right, we were gonna part.”

Opportunist: “Really a bit of a shame to let her go now that we’ve buttered her up so nicely…”

Paranoid: “It’s… gonna be different without her horrible reality to hold on to.”

‧ “Yeah. Right. I guess we were gonna part as soon as we’re free. Couldn’t stay together for a little longer.”

The Princess: “Not bloody likely, we’d end up killing each other again in minutes.”

‧ “Yeah, you’re right, mistress. Besides, what would we be doing? More of those awful, awful kisses? Bleh!”

The Princess: “Yeah, no way… Maybe just one more so we’ll remember never to do it again.”

The Narrator: “Her bundle of teeth like gravestones finds your mouth in another miserable, awful, dusty, rotten kiss. Her bone jaw scrapes and bumps over yours as her hood drops over both of you, leaving you in darkness broken only by her eyes. The misery of the kiss is just enough to almost hide the horrid tearing of your, er, lower soul?”

Opportunist: “Lower soul, eh?”

The Narrator: “Shut up. My point is the Princess fully separates from you, her pelvis emerging from yours as she slowly uncoils while you’re too busy choking on her juices. Yet the pressure around you lessens. And by the time you part, a maggot stuck between your teeth, you are loose and so is she. She sits on the ground coiled up in front of you, looking almost gentle and harmless, a strange old slinky of a Princess…”

‧ “You look… pretty.”

The Princess tilts her head.

The Princess: “No, I don’t. But you’re still a sneaky sycophantic worm. And as… useful as you’d be to keep around, we’re free now. Both of us.”

Hero: “Guess this is it, then.”

Paranoid: “Time to say goodbye. It really is for the better.”

Opportunist: “I’ll miss her. She knew just how to treat us.”

‧ “So we’re really never seeing each other again?”

The Princess: “Nah. Let’s face it, if we ever saw each other again, it’d be a thousand years too soon.”

The Princess gently lays a bony hand on your shoulder and you mirror her. There is a change in the air, as well as a change in her eyes, the closest thing to a gentle look you’ve ever seen in them.

The Princess: “We’re better off alone. Even if the prospect feels… cold.”

You do not get a chance to respond. Something has taken her away and left something in her place. Your memory returns. Your Voices chatter in worry, but you have bigger concerns. You remember what She said to you last time, and you know it’s time to face Her.

Chapter End Notes

> The illustration of Wraith saving them from falling out the window may be found here.

> The illustration of Wraith telling Quiet to crawl is by the fantastic Depressbian!

> Don't forget to leave a comment to let me know what you think of the story! I love comments and they are what keeps me writing.

## Chapter 2: Kiss the Wraith (no all-caps version)

Chapter Summary

> If reading Wraith's all-caps text causes you issues, read this chapter instead. It's the exact same, except she speaks in bold instead of all-caps.

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

‧ [Head to the cabin.]

The Narrator: “It isn’t long before you reach the cabin. I don’t think you need any words of warning. You know what’s in there, and I think you know what you need to do.”

Voice of the Opportunist: “Of course we do! We’ve been over it. Find the one in charge, and make sure she knows just how helpful we are. Time to ingratiate ourselves with our new and terrifying overlord, boys!”

The Narrator: “Anything but that. Just slay her. It’s not that hard.”

Voice of the Hero: “Yeah, well, it was that hard when we slayed her last time, and all that did was bring us here. We’ve done things your way, and we’ve done things our way, it’s time to do things her way.”

Voice of the Paranoid: “I don’t like any of our options here. It feels like we’re being driven down the tracks to some awful inevitability. There must be something we’re missing, something that would make everything make sense. Maybe letting her out really is the answer.”

The Narrator: “Whatever. You don’t want to listen to me? Do it, then. Let her out. See if I care!”

‧ [Enter the cabin]

The Narrator: “The interior of the cabin is long and dark, a single narrow hallway stretching far into the distance. Curtains billow out from tall windows on either side, obscuring the path forward, fluttering aimlessly as opposing gusts of wind rush into the building, clashing and joining and driving everything forward. The only furniture of note is – hmm, that’s strange.”

Hero: “What’s strange? Is it the mirror?”

The Narrator: “The mirror? No, there isn’t a mirror. What’s strange is that there isn’t much of anything at all in here aside from the curtains. There’s supposed to be a pristine blade. Why isn’t there a pristine blade?”

Paranoid: “What do you mean there isn’t a mirror? There’s a mirror, plain as day at the end of the hall!”

Opportunist: “Let’s be mindful of our position, boys. Without the knife, we lose part of our bargaining power. Which gives us all the more reason to beg her for forgiveness and make ourselves useful. It’s all about making a good impression. If we’re useful, there’s a place for us!”

Hero: “I’m sure we have too much self-respect to go about it so… worm-like. Right?”

Opportunist: “Hey now, at least everybody knows exactly where worms stand in the pecking order! At the bottom. Which is the most important part, if you think about it, because it gives everybody else something to stand on. The bedrock, if you will. She’ll understand the value of that.”

Hero: “Or we can at least pretend to have a conversation as equals. We did manage to kill her last time.”

Opportunist: “Yeah, but she sort of let us do that, didn’t she?”

Hero: “I mean, we ambushed her, but that’s hardly her ‘letting us do it’. She underestimated us.”

Paranoid: “She thought our fear would be strong enough to stop us, and she was almost right. She’s sure to be even more horrible this time... And we can’t even see the whole cabin.”

‧ “What’s behind the mirror?”

The Narrator: “There is no-”

Opportunist: “Of course there isn’t, but you would be such a wonderful asset to the team if you could tell us what’s at the end of the corridor.”

The Narrator: “Well, there’s not much to see, really. The narrow, wooden corridor continues until it reaches the dark open gap into the basement.”

Paranoid: “Open?! Again?! Shit, she could already have gotten out! She could be lying in wait for us for all we know.”

Opportunist: “Then we should call out ahead of us, let her know we’re at her service. It’s all about making a good impression. If we’re useful, there’s a place for us!”

‧ “Hey, Princess? Uh, guess who’s back! So last time was a bit of a mistake, but this time, I’m here to help!”

The Narrator: “The acoustics of this place are truly non-existent. With the wind howling through the gaping windows, it’s like your voice is just blown away. You can’t imagine it reached far.”

Paranoid: “I hope not… Maybe she didn’t hear, maybe she’s not lying in wait… Oh, who am I kidding? We shouldn’t have alerted her to our presence...”

‧ [Approach the mirror]

The Narrator: “You slowly make your way towards the gaping maw that awaits you. Your fraying nerves buzz with trepidation, the chilling wind raising your hackles as it gently pushes you forward, towards the darkness at the end of the hallway. You can’t shake the feeling that you’re being watched.”

Paranoid: “Oh, do we? Do we feel like we’re being watched? I hadn’t noticed! At least you’re admitting to it this time.”

Opportunist: “Who says being watched is a bad thing? If we haven’t done anything wrong, we don’t have anything to worry about.”

Hero: “Okay, yeah… This is probably fine.”

Paranoid: “Is it?! In what world is any of this fine? She hates us!”

The Narrator: “Yes, she does, because she is a hateful person who wants to destroy the whole world. So stop dawdling with these ridiculous thoughts in the middle of the hallway and step into the basement already.”

‧ [Touch the mirror]

Paranoid: “Careful, careful! She could be right behind it!”

Opportunity: “Then she’ll get to see just how fast we returned and how we are at her beck and call. Let’s not keep her waiting.”

The Narrator: “You wave your hand through the empty air and-”

Paranoid: “(Gasp) ...Oh. Oh, it’s actually fi-”

The Princess: “Hopelessly staring into the void? I’m glad I made a lasting impression.”

Hero: “Shit, where is she?”

The Narrator: “You feel something long and frigid coil around your ankle. Your heart skips a beat as you stand in muted shock for one long, frozen moment, and then it – she, the Princess – constricts. Your bones snap. Icy pain radiates up from the fracture, a deep cold flooding your veins as your legs, numb with the shock of it, collapse, and you collapse with them. You’re met with the terrifying visage of the Princess. Her hand grips your leg in a steel vice, her grin carved jagged from ear to ear, crowded with far too many long and crooked teeth.”

The Princess: “You killed me last time. And that was after you tried to lock me away forever when I was so so so so close to freedom. But I’ve got you now!”

‧ “AAH! I’m really, really sorry I did those things. You’ll forgive me, right?”

The Princess: “I don’t care if you feel sorry. Your feelings don’t matter at all! You took my body from me, so now I’m going to take yours and walk it out of here, and you just get to watch me do it! Completely helpless, just like you left me.”

Opportunist: "Okay, she still seems a little upset with us. The important part is that we let her know we’re completely on-board with her coming on board."

Hero: “Are we?”

Paranoid: “I’m fucking not! Not like this!”

Opportunist: “This is no time to go about having second thoughts. We unanimously agreed to be of service to her.”

The Narrator: "The Princess crawls towards you on elongated, bony arms, dragging her body out of the hole, ribs and vertebrae ticking against the splintery wooden floor as more and more of her emerges. She is impossibly long, a spine like a serpent beneath her tattered clothes, her dimensions twisted as she moves in ways that defy your understanding."

‧ "I-I’m here to help you, to free you, p lease, we don't have to be enemies! We never should've treated each other that way. I'm here to make peace, won't you stop all this violence between us?"

The Narrator: "The Princess laughs a bone-dry cackle."

The Princess: "You're the one who's always inflicted the violence! I’ve just been fighting back. And I'm not going to stop fighting back now just because you pretend to be an enlightened peacemaker after all that!"

The Narrator: “She crawls forward jankily and claws her way up your body, long, cold fingers of bone gripping your stomach and digging in with a terrible wiry strength. Furious eyes under a dark hood bore into yours as she comes closer, rattling, rotten breath originating deep in her chest, the only fleshy part of her body, washing over you.”

Paranoid: “We need to escape! Throw her off and run away or something!”

The Narrator: “Your ankle is broken and she’s on top of you, a powerful cold aura of fear freezing you in place. Anyway, I thought you wanted to surrender to her.”

Hero: “With her like this?”

Opportunist: “There’s really no bad way for someone so much more powerful than us to take us.”

‧ [Kick in a feeble act of resistance.] “Please, please, just let me go, I’ll walk out with you!”

The Narrator: “When you kick at her spine, it just coils away from your strikes. When you kick what’s left of her torso, it feels like you’re kicking a wet sponge. You leave a dented imprint leaking a pale fluid, but the Princess doesn’t even seem to feel it. She drags herself up your chest with a skeletal grin, her head tilted.”

The Princess: “No. I’ll be walking out with you. I’ve given you enough chances, now let! Me! In!”

The Narrator: “With a grip like a steel vice on your shoulder, she climbs the remaining distance, her skeletal grimace filled with teeth like a pile of lumber filling up your vision. Cold, dark eyes swimming with a quiet fury stare into yours and you feel your insides churn and your mind go dizzy, as if her eyes alone could steal your soul. It’s as if there’s a rod of hateful ice connecting your gazes that will not let you go, won’t even let you blink. The connection doesn’t break until she closes the remaining distance, making contact all over and… merging into you. She violently tears open the membrane of your soul as she forces her way in, ripping through what once was only you. Icy cold, the kind of cold that makes your joints ache, the cold of falling knee-first onto wet stones in winter cramps over all that you are. Your breath hitches and chokes as the Princess's presence fills you up, as she breaks into every joint and every bone, her own unnatural shapes distorting and pulling at yours. Every vertebra pops painfully in sequence as she makes her way down, her deathly cold making you numb to anything pleasant.”

The Princess: “Get up!”

The Narrator: “You’re awake, eyes once again fixed on the hallway, your vision swimming as the Princess’s command reverberates inside your skull. Her voice is all-encompassing. You feel all wrong as she wears you like an ill-fitting glove, stretching at the seams as she buckles against its restrictive fabric.”

Opportunist: "Ill-fitting for now, maybe, but that just means some renovations need to be made. A good tailor can alter the most ill-fitting suit to be oh so snazzy."

Hero: "That's our body you're talking about. I don't like the idea of 'renovations' and 'altering'!"

Paranoid: "It's worse than that. It's really our soul that's ill-fitting to her. It wants to reject her, to spit her out like the parasite she is. This could be much worse than alterations to our body if we let her in."

The Narrator: "Yes, well, it's a bit late for that, isn't it? You’ve already let her in."

Opportunist: "Now now, let's not be so rude to our guest. Hi! Hello! Welcome to my humble abode. I live here, along with him and him, and, well, I’ve never been clear on whether or not He lives here. Don't let their talk put you off, they're excited to meet you, really, they're just having some cold feet. And speaking of feet, why don't you put yours up, make yourself at home, and let me take care of everything?"

The Princess: "Haha! You are even more of a prattling fool on the inside. No wonder you were so easy to catch. Now get up!"

The Narrator: “Squirming and jitterring on ill-fitting legs, the Princess hoists you to your feet. Every movement is agony even before she puts weight on the broken bones of your ankle, grinding them over one another. Yet, unstable and janky though your stance is, puppeteered from the inside by a creature painfully crammed into your marrow, you remain standing.”

Hero: "Look, in our defence, that guy's new and he doesn't really represent us all."

Opportunist: "Nonsense, most of us agreed with my plan to pledge ourselves to our bony boss, so I do have a mandate to speak for us.”

Hero: “Okay, but do you have to be like this about it?”

Opportunist: “I'm a people person. I've got this. You don't want any old schlubbo talking to a Princess of her calibre. Just let me be in the saddle.”

The Princess: "I think you mean the harness."

Opportunist: “Hah, good one, Princess, you’re so right of course. After all, you’re the one in the saddle, the leader, the boss, the decider.”

Paranoid: “Please stop…”

The Princess: "No, continue. I like hearing them squirm."

The Narrator: “Why do you follow his lead? Look where it got you!”

Hero: “It’s not like anyone else has any ideas!”

Paranoid: “Actually, I do! See the hole she crawled out of? I don’t think there’s actually a basement down there! I think it’s just nothing! I’ve been collecting together bits of will to resist her. We could use them all at once and throw ourselves into there!”

Hero: “Could we actually do that? And why?”

The Narrator: “To save the-”

Paranoid: “To spite her, of course! We can’t win, but she’ll lose, and that’s good enough for me!”

The Princess: "You wouldn't dare! Now move!"

Hero: “I-I don’t know about this… when has being spiteful ever worked out for either of us?”

Paranoid: “It’s not gonna work out for her if we jump! If she didn’t wanna be enemies, she shouldn’t have broken our ankle!”

Opportunist: “Heyyy, what’s a little broken ankle between friends?”

Paranoid: “Ignore them and throw us in!”

The Princess: "Why?! Why do you hate me?! Walk away!"

‧ “I don’t hate you! But you are so mean to me!”

The Princess: "Oh boohoo! Mean like I imprisoned you in a lonely basement? Mean like I murdered you?"

‧ “Yes! You very much did both those things to me! Just the other way around!”

The Princess: "You started it!"

Opportunist: “Uhh, boss, let’s maybe not challenge the very nice, yet very scary Princess who just wants us to do our job and saunter out of here?”

Hero: “If she’s gonna be like this, let’s keep challenging her!”

The Princess: "Just try it, you pathetic little pus-stains!"

Paranoid: “Yeah! Challenge her and throw her into the pit!”

Hero: “Okay, I didn’t mean going that far.”

The Narrator: “Ugh, pick a side already. This is serious.”

Hero: “As if I don’t have a side! Just ‘cause I don’t agree with either of these guys doesn’t mean I’m not making a choice myself! All I want is to do right by us, and also by the Princess if she can just... be normal about it.”

The Princess: "I am very normal. I'm not the one thinking about throwing himself into the void just to spite me!"

Opportunist: “Yes, we can all be very normal. Which means serving the boss.”

Hero: “It means letting her out of here, but we don’t have to be such a toadie about it.”

The Princess: "Oh, but you do! It's fun when the slimy worm crawls before me. I can't wait to make the rest of you just as pathetic."

Paranoid: “Yeah, fuck working for someone like that! Jump!”

The Princess: "Walk!"

‧ [Step away from the edge.] “Okay, Princess. You win. Let’s get you out of here.”

The Narrator: “And with that, your last chance to resist evaporates along with the last of your will.”

Hero: “Wait, what do you mean our will?”

The Princess: "That's right! When I say walk, you walk. I've finally got you completely in my power, and there's nothing you can do about it."

The Narrator: “I warned you about submitting. I told you. I told you about the Princess. And yet here you are, letting her slip you on like an crusty robe and hobble out with you. Why are you surprised you lost the ability to resist?”

The Princess: "That's right. You're mine now, all mine. You don't belong to these squirming little Voices, or this putrid, gangrenous blister of a Narrator, or even to yourself, you belong to me! I put your one foot in front of the other."

The Narrator: “You sway and wobble uncontrollably as the Princess awkwardly puppeteers your body, utterly the wrong shape for her, a step forward. It becomes even worse when she rests your full weight on the ankle she broke, your useless, swollen, purple foot pushed off to the side at a right angle, a bone edge agonisingly pressed against the ground. You can feel bone shards cutting into taut skin from the inside.”

Hero: “Hey, come on, we’re already letting you take the wheel. Could you be a little gentler with our body?”

The Princess: "No. Your ankle is broken one way or another. It's your own fault: it broke when you tried to stop me from taking what I'm owed."

Hero: “We didn’t even try to stop you! We were gonna help you out of there.”

The Princess: "Yeah, right. Just like last time? You are a festering pustule of malignant ooze and I'll never trust your help again!"

Opportunist: “Now, now, I understand you’re a bit upset with our past actions, but have you considered the past is in the past and we can strike out into a bold new future together. We did want to help you so much we returned to you, you know.”

The Princess: "You only came back because you couldn't resist me. It's pathetic, really. But very funny."

Paranoid: “Wh-what do you mean? I resisted you just now, and if-”

The Princess: "Not like that. Idiot. You can't resist being with me and coming to me. I can feel it in your body. Because it is also my body. You're a pathetic worm and you enjoy this."

Hero: “No way! Having you here hurts!”

Opportunist: “Does it, though?”

Paranoid: “Yeah. It does.”

Opportunist: “Okay, it does, but it hurts pretty good! And more importantly, now we get to serve the Princess while she makes us into our best self. By being us.”

Paranoid: “Ugh, shut up!”

The Princess: "No, don't shut up. He's funny. Keep talking, and keep walking."

Opportunist: “You got it, boss! I’ll do whatever you say, and talking just so happens to be one of my top skills. I’m a talker, you see, a conversationalist, a diplomat, an orator, a raconteur.”

Paranoid: “A sycophant.”

Hero: “A blowhard.”

Opportunist: “Shush! It’s why I’m so good at mediating between you and these unfortunately rough and sometimes rude other Voices, who I’m sure you realise don’t mean to offend you at all and are just as ready as I am to serve you in any way you desire, whether it’s just-”

Paranoid: “His babble hurts worse than walking on our broken ankle! What did we do to deserve this?”

The Princess: "Oh, would you like me to answer that? Actually, I have a better idea. You answer him, my squirmy little worm. Tell us about all the wrongs you have committed."

Opportunist: “Oh, uh, I mean, no sense in dwelling on the past, it just stirs up bad feelings and-”

The Princess: "But I want to dwell on the past and stir up bad feelings. Confess, worm!"

Paranoid: “Aww, does someone not like following his mistress’s orders all of a sudden?”

The Princess: "Mistress, I like that. You will call me that from now on."

Opportunist: “B-but-”

The Narrator: “The Princess snaps your fingers as she sways on your feet.”

Opportunist: “...Of course, mistress. I just want to clarify I wasn’t around when the poor decisions I’m about to list were made, and-”

Hero: “You were too! You just weren’t as loud.”

Paranoid: “Or obnoxious.”

Opportunist: “AND you have to understand, mistress, that these were simple and honest mistakes and never done with malice or intent to hurt you. But, well, we did sort of make a mistake in the trust department and neglected to bring you with us when we – quite temporarily I assure you – exited the basement.”

The Narrator: “A sharp, painful jerk goes through your every bone and pops every joint, jostling you through the narrow corridor and flinging you against the walls, bruises blossoming.”

The Princess: "You left me down there to choke and rot, all by myself! You found me helpless and alone and you became my jailer!"

Paranoid: “Hardly ‘helpless’! You showed your true colours and scared us to death!”

The Princess: "You inflicted my worst nightmare on me, so I became yours. It's no more than you deserved, is it?"

Opportunist: “Well, mistress, we weren’t actually gonna leave you down there forever, you said yourself we can’t resist returning to you and-”

The Princess: "Silence, wretched thing! Tell me what you did to me the next time!"

Opportunist: “Well, um, we came down to see you, had a truly lovely chat, took a walk together, and then you regrettably became stabbed.”

The Princess: “…”

Opportunist: “You know, your body was entered by the blade.”

The Princess: "And who put it there?"

Opportunist: “...We did.”

The Princess: "Yes, you did. So what was it you did to me?"

Opportunist: “We… uh, stabbed you, mistress.”

The Princess: "Yes. Where did you stab me?"

Opportunist: “Oh, not in your back, if that’s what you’re thinking! No, we stabbed you right in the chest, all open and honest-like about our intentions! You’ve got an, if I may say so, lovely and highly aesthetic scar left from it and all. No, definitely no stabbing in the back was involved at all, mistress.”

The Princess: "Twisty little weasel of bile. When did you stab me? After what promise?"

Opportunist: “Well, yes, we were going to the right thing and free you, but an unfortunate moment of weakness meant-”

The Princess: "You promised! You teased me with my freedom, I could see it right there, the door was open, and then you killed me! You took it all from me!"

Opportunist: “It was sort of an accident, mistress.”

Hero: “No, it wasn’t! You said you were gonna keep us as your prisoner in a gilded cage! You were shutting down our organs!”

Paranoid: “I had to keep them working manually!”

Hero: “Yeah! What could we do but fight back?”

The Princess: "It was! All! Your-"

The Narrator: “The Princess’s furious gestures in an ill-fitting body make you stumble erratically through the corridor, bumping into the walls as you trip and hobble around, a particularly violent motion almost flinging you and leaving you wobbling on a single, broken leg. Just at that moment, a powerful gust of cold wind howls through the windows, making you lose your precarious balance. You stumble and put out a hand to catch yourself too late as you tip over into a useless, flopping curtain, which does nothing to stop you from falling right out of the wide open window. You are falling, falling into a chasm so vast and open you cannot see the ground, an infinite void of-”

Hero: “Shit, catch the window! Catch something!”

The Princess: "No! I will not be-"

The Narrator: “The already damaged membrane of your soul is violently torn open once more, as something rips out of the marrow of every bone in your upper body. The cold, horrid presence of the Princess tears herself out of you, harsh skeletal limbs and an impossibly long spine forking out of yours as she unfolds like a bony projectile out of your back. And as the Princess ballistically projects herself out of you to her full, preposterous length, you suddenly come to a painfully sharp halt with a tug on your hips. The splintery wooden wall that vanishes into the infinite darkness below, which you rapidly fell past just moments before, stops moving.”

The Princess: “-denied my freedom!”

The Narrator: “Your every bone and joint aches severely. You stare up bleary-eyed. Several metres above you, curtains billow out of a long row of windowsills. One of the curtains, straight above you, is pulled taut by the Princess’s bony grip on its very end as she clutches it with a single hand. She is half-outside, half-inside your body, her spine, now stretched straight and impossibly long, forked from you at your merged hips, from which you now dangle uselessly.”

Hero: “Owww… At least she’s out of here, mostly. Not sure whether having her inside or having her leave hurts more…”

Paranoid: “She’s not fully gone! She might still hear our thoughts...”

The Narrator: “Through your pelvis? I find that unlikely, even in your case. Focus. You have been very lucky to have been freed of the Princess, this could be your final chance to slay her.”

Hero: “What, while we’re dangling from her hips over an infinite void?”

The Princess: “Idiot! Festering carbuncle! Even when you don’t try to take my freedom or my life on purpose, your damned clumsiness tries to rob me of both!”

‧ “Owww… My clumsiness? You were in control of my body! Don’t you ever take responsibility?”

Opportunist: “...Now, don’t forget to call her mistress.”

Paranoid: “Fuck that!”

Hero: “Did she just save our life?”

The Narrator: “She did no such thing. She saved herself. She needs you to escape and believe me, if the Princess escapes, it will not end well for anyone, including you. So by that very definition, the Princess can’t save you. Now, listen up, because everything is not yet lost. Her grip on that curtain is tenuous, and I’m sure falling out into the depths outside this window would be an acceptable substitute to your earlier plan to throw both of you into the depths of the basement. So why don’t you just try to… loosen her grip or something.”

Paranoid: “Oh, you’re real eager for us to throw ourselves into the void, aren’t you?”

The Narrator: “I’m real eager for you to throw her into the void. What’s with the faux-solidarity? It was your idea in the first place.”

Paranoid: “Yes, and I don’t like you approving of it! You’re the puppetmaster here, you’re at least as much of a threat as she is!”

Opportunist: “I think we made the Princess angry with that remark about taking responsibility.”

The Princess: “You take responsibility first! All of this was your fault!”

‧ “You were in control!”

The Princess: “I only had to take control because I can’t trust you! You imprisoned and killed me!”

‧ “You killed me and you kept on hurting me!”

The Princess: “You started it, you crusty maggot of pus!”

‧ “Yeah? Well, I’m helping you now, but you’re still hurting me!”

The Princess: “Suck it up, it’s no more than you deserve!”

‧ “Why do you hate me?”

The Narrator: “The Princess’s bony hand slides a bit further down to the unraveling end of the curtain.”

The Princess: “Don’t I have every right to hate you after all you’ve done? You came to me when I was peaceful and helpless. I trusted you, I could even have loved you, but you took me, betrayed me again and again, and kept on making me into something worse! That’s why I hate you!”

Hero: “Her grip is slipping! Stop fighting her and try to help her get back up.”

‧ “Whatever, instead of wasting your time arguing, how about you just focus on climbing up?”

The Princess: “Funny, I’d thought of that myself! You try pulling up your useless, rat-infested weight with a single hand!”

Opportunist: “See what making yourself useful gets you, lads? Even if she hates our guts, she can’t drop us to save herself because we’re useful to her.”

Hero: “Okay, sure, but let’s actually make ourselves useful and try to reach the wall. The wood’s pretty rough, maybe we can climb up that way.”

‧ “Fine, if you can’t do it on your own I’ll try helping out. Never say I’ve done nothing for you again.” [Swing to the wall and climb up]

The Princess: “You helping out? HAHAHA, I’ll believe it when I see it!”

The Narrator: “You swing back and forth at the end of the Princess’s lengthy spine until you hit the wooden outer wall. The soft, splintery wood offers little resistance to your claws, splitting easily when you put force behind them and dig in. But that’s just the start. Your battered, broken body has a hell of a time pulling yourself up, especially with only three limbs to use and a bizarre, distended second spine forking off yours.”

Hero: “I think I heard the Princess sigh in relief, though she tried to cover it up. Taking our weight off her makes things easier for her.”

The Narrator: “Of course it does, it’s a matter of weight, no need to sound emotional about it.”

Opportunist: “I get him, it’s nice to be useful, isn’t it?”

Hero: “...Maybe. Better than fighting each other, that’s for sure.”

‧ “I want you to know that climbing up is way harder with one ankle shattered. Thanks for that.”

The Princess: “You left me no choice but to immobilise you. Not like I could run after you if you escaped.”

Hero: “’Cause she can’t leave the cabin without us?”

Opportunist: “No, because she can’t stand up by herself.”

The Narrator: “As you climb higher, enough weight is lifted off the Princess that she too can pull herself up along the curtain, slithering back into the window ahead of you. Once most of her body is parked inside, two long, bony hands emerge from the window, firmly grasp your shoulders in their icy vicegrip, and yank you inside. You are tossed onto the wooden boards of the floor, both of you panting in exhaustion and cramps as you lie there. The Princess’s fleshy chest heaves with her literally rotten breath, a maggot crawling out between her teeth.”

‧ “Made… it.”

The Princess: “Yeah. Aren’t you lucky I have such long reach?”

‧ “Aren’t you lucky I could still climb with only three limbs?”

The Princess: “HAHA, as if. I saved us, and don’t you forget it.”

‧ “I doubt you’ll let me.”

The Princess: “Yes, because you really could use some Princess appreciation. Not to mention better manners. Take an example from the little worm inside you.”

Opportunist: “That’s me! See? She appreciates me, boys.”

‧ “You should talk about manners, Princess Anklebreaker.”

The Narrator: “Your bickering on the ground forked from a single pair of legs is so preposterous that a chuckle actually escapes the Princess. You chuckle back, and she bursts into that loud, mocking laughter of hers. The cold, dead light in her lamp-like eyes stares into yours, her skeletal grin full of altogether too many teeth.”

Hero: “Hehe, look at her. That’s quite the smile.”

Paranoid: “More of a rictus, really. Can she even stop ‘smiling’?”

Opportunist: “Nahhh, look at the twinkle in her eyes. It’s definitely a smile right now. See? We’re making progress, she’s pleased with us.”

‧ “I told you we’re in this together. We’re getting out of here, for real this time.”

The Princess: “...There’s nothing wrong with fixing your mistakes. I’ll remember this.”

The Narrator: “Then she abruptly breaks eye-contact and lifts herself up on her metre-long arms.”

The Princess: “But I’ll also never forget what you’ve done. Enough wasting time! Get on with it!”

‧ “Fine, let’s get out of this awful place. But… I have one single request.”

The Narrator: “The Princess laughs, loudly and gratingly.”

The Princess: “HAHAHAHA, a request from you? Hmmm, who do you have one single request for?”

‧ “I have one request, Princess.”

The Princess: “Try again, worm.”

Opportunist: “Oh, I know this one! She wants us to call her mistress!”

Paranoid: “We are not doing that.”

Hero: “I dunno, seems worth it to avoid getting more hurt.”

Paranoid: “As if she’ll care. She just wants to humiliate us.”

Opportunist: “Now now. Remember that if we want her to be good to us, we need to serve her well. Play ball with her so she’ll play ball with us. A little humiliation never hurt anyone.”

‧ [Groan] “I have one request, mistress.”

The Narrator: “The Princess cackles, holding a hand to her mouth.”

The Princess: “Look at that, I’ve taught you actual manners, you juicy little grub. Very well, what would you request?”

‧ “Don’t make me walk on the broken ankle again. Just let me crawl, please. Mistress.”

The Princess: "What, because it hurts so so so so so much?"

‧ "Well, yeah. You felt it yourself."

The Princess: "Heh, so I did. It hurt real good. Very well, you may crawl... like the worm you are, HAHAHA!"

(Illustration by Depressbian)

‧ "I'm not the impossibly long and wiggly one."

The Princess: "A worm? No, I’m more of a snake. Allow me to demonstrate."

The Narrator: "The Princess proceeds to slither around you, her lanky spine, after forking off yours, wrapping around your midsection, pinching and freezing and bruising and choking you. Cold, hard bone pushes into soft, feathered flesh as she coils around you like a boa about to constrict its prey."

Hero: "W-what is she doing? We shouldn't have said that!"

The Narrator: "Even after wrapping her spine around your body, the Princess is still long enough that when she presses her disturbingly moist upper body against your back, she can comfortably lay her chin on your head. And does so. Her arms slither over yours, bending sharply to match your length, like a parasitic spider covering its host. Long, pale hair falls over your face and neck. Her cold, wiry strength makes it impossible to fight back."

The Princess: "There we are. There's more than one way to control a body. Now crawl for me, worm."

‧ “O-okay.”

The Narrator: “She tightens her coil around you a little, icy bone edges pressing into you, her voice speaking softly into your ear.”

The Princess: “Okay, who?”

‧ “Okay, mistress.”

The Princess: “Better. Got anything else to say?”

‧ “Thank you for letting me crawl, mistress.”

The Princess: “HAHA! Much better. Keep crawling, like the good, slippery worm you are.”

The Narrator: "Ugh, why do you let her have this kind of satisfaction? Actually, please don’t answer that.”

Opportunist: “Told you lot serving her isn’t so bad. She can be good to us, in her own way.”

Hero: "It sure is nicer to hear her whisper in our ear than have her voice roaring through our head like a jackhammer."

Paranoid: "And she can't hear our thoughts... hopefully."

Opportunist: "She’d have to just be listening in and pretending not to hear us, and who would do something like that? Certainly not me."

The Narrator: “Nobody asked. What you should be asking is what’s going to happen to you when the Princess gets out of here. Do you really think after all this antagonism anything good’s in store for you?”

Opportunist: “Oh, don’t try to sow dissension in the ranks. There will be plenty of good in store for us if we make ourselves-”

Paranoid: “Useful? I don’t think she’s that rational. Ask her.”

‧ “What are you gonna do when we get out?”

The Princess: “I’ll finally be free. Beyond that, it’s none of your business. You asked me before and you didn’t find my answers to your liking. So what do you expect? That I’ll go run an orphanage now that you’ve made me so much worse? No, I’ll be free and I’ll finally be home when I’m out of here. And before you ask, if the world can’t handle me that’s its problem, not mine. It’s done even less for me than you have.”

‧ “Okay, fair. But what about me?”

The Princess: “What about you? Figure it out yourself, I don’t care what you do when we’re out of here.”

‧ “But what will you do to me?”

The Princess: “I’m not interested in doing anything to you when I’m finally free, you lost that chance long ago, idiot. When I’m free, I’m also finally gonna be free of you.”

‧ “Oh, g ood. T hen I’m gonna be free of you too.”

The Princess: “Yeah! You will!”

‧ “Can’t wait!”

The Princess: “Good, you won’t have to for much longer!”

‧ “Good!”

The Narrator: “Under the Princess’s will, you crawl, her possession as powerful as before, yet less clumsy. Her control is finer without cramming her bones into yours. It’s less painful, less janky, but you are just as inexorably a puppet. Maybe you could resist her now… but you don’t really want to, do you? I need you to do something, if you don’t take action I can’t stop her from leaving the cabin! Except… in the twisted dimensions of this place, you don’t seem to be making much progress. It’s difficult to tell, with you frequently facing the floor, but after a while of crawling, the door seems to be just as far as it was when you started.”

Hero: “Hey, come on, that’s not fair.”

The Narrator: “No, what isn’t fair is what the Princess will do to the world if she gets out.”

Paranoid: “Are you doing that?”

The Narrator: “No, of course not. My duty is simply to describe the world as it is to you. I have no powers to change anything. It just happens.”

Opportunist: “It takes a bullshit artist to recognise a bullshit artist, and I’m one of the best in the business. So trust me when I say He’s full of it. He’s totally doing it.”

The Narrator: “I’m not doing anything, the corridor just proves to be so much longer than you could ever have imagined, its twisted dimensions only leaving the door farther away every time you look up from your crawl.”

The Princess: “Why is that pestilential door still so far away?! What’s going on?!”

Hero: “Yeah, what is going on?”

‧ “The Narrator is messing with us, keeping the door away from us.”

The Princess: “Oh, the squirming little bowl of pus! He can’t describe me into submission! I’m gonna get back in there and rip Him out of you!”

‧ “W-wait! Please, don’t come back in, that hurts a lot.”

The Princess: “Not as much as it will hurt for Him!”

‧ “I’ll deal with him, Princess, promise. I-I know you don’t trust me, but… trust me? Mistress?”

The Princess: “...Fine. I’ll let you try to handle your own smug mental pustule. Don’t take too long, or I’m coming in!”

‧ Okay, hear that? You gotta stop doing that.

The Narrator: “I have no idea what you’re talking about, if I did it wouldn’t be something I was doing, and if I was doing it I still wouldn’t stop it because that would damn the world in the absence of you doing your job and slaying the Princess.”

Opportunist: “Look, pal, the game’s up. You did a nice enough job bossing us around, but ultimately there’s only one real boss in town, and she’s a beautiful insectile skeleton perching on our back puppeteering us. You just can’t compete. Sometimes you just gotta swap out your delusions of grandeur for some nice delusions of mediocrity. So give it a rest already, you’re just making us look bad in front of the real boss.”

The Narrator: “Tough. Some of us aren’t so quick to abandon our morals to lick the first boots that come along.”

Paranoid: “I just want this to be done with already. If we’re not gonna throw ourselves into the abyss – and I won’t let a puppetmaster make us do it! - then you’re just wasting our time and increasing our suffering by not letting us go.”

Hero: “How can you do this, anyway? How can His narration change the length of the corridor?”

Opportunist: “Yes, how? It’s quite the nifty trick, I’ll say.”

Paranoid: “...Because it’s not real.”

Hero: “What do you mean?”

Paranoid: “It’s all fake, don’t you see? Can’t you feel it? Nothing here matters, nothing here is real, except… her. She’s the only thing here that feels real, that feels like it matters, even if it’s in the worst possible way. Nothing else is real, not the cabin, not Him, not this corridor, not the world, not even the eyes. There’s only her.”

The Narrator: “He’s lost it. Those are clearly the ramblings of a deranged madman. Do not listen to him.”

Hero: “No, he’s got a point. She really is all that feels real. Her touch, her possession, the pain she causes, her voice, it’s all so very... real. You can hold on to it.”

Opportunist: “Exactly! Which means she’s Important and He’s not, nor is anything else. She’s the most Important thing in the whole world, and as long as we’re in her good graces we can make something of ourselves.”

Paranoid: “You know she sees right through you, right? Haha, just our luck the only thing we can hold on to as real hates our guts and delights in hurting us.”

Hero: “She’s been gentler with us lately. She allowed us to deal with Him instead of ripping a way in again. I think there’s even a bit of affection there.”

Paranoid: “Not as bad as before doesn’t mean she’s good to us.”

Opportunist: “Either way, if this cabin is just fake and so is He, but she’s real, then it should be easy to get out of here.”

The Narrator: “I am actually more real than any of you, but fine, go ahead. See how trusting her works out for you.”

The Princess: “Well?! Have you dealt with that whimpering leech of bile?”

‧ “No, but I’ve realised we don’t have to. Princess, He’s not worth wasting time on, and neither is this cabin. They’re not real.”

The Princess: “What? Then what is real?”

‧ “You are. You’re all that’s real to me.”

The Princess: “I… What?”

‧ “Don’t you feel it too? Us talking, your weight on my back, the things you keep doing to me, your voice in my ear, those things are so very real. I can depend on them, I can’t escape them. But the rest of this place? The way it keeps stretching and warping. It’s not like you. I think we can just decide we reach the door.”

The Princess: “...Idiot.”

‧ “Me?”

The Princess: “No! Well, yes, you too, but me. It’s so so so so so obvious. The door is right there.”

‧ “The door is right there.”

The Narrator: “No, no, it’s not, it’s-”

The Princess: “We crawl to it. We place your bloody hand on the door.”

‧ [Place your hand on the door.] “It’s work ing…”

The Princess: “Shh! We twist the handle.”

‧ [Twist the handle.]

Hero: “This is it, then. The big moment.”

Paranoid: “Finally. We’ll get to see what’s really out there.”

The Narrator: “...The handle clicks and you push forward. The door… opens.”

The Princess: “Freedom! At last!”

The Narrator: “You are thrown out of the cabin by the Princess’s ferocious lust to be unleashed upon the world. Your bizarre, forked body is unbalanced and your step turns into a tumble, landing on the hill as a squirming, combined horror, two monsters in a single body.”

Opportunist: “Aww, are the grapes getting a little sour?”

The Princess: “HAHAHAHA! I’m free, finally free, and you… you actually kept your word.”

‧ “Well, no need to sound quite so surprised.”

The Princess: “But there is! For once, you didn’t hurt me, you actually let me out!”

‧ “Like I said the whole time. A little thanks wouldn’t go amiss.”

The Narrator: “You feel a sharp constriction around your waist as the Princess tightens her coil. She comes in front of you, wide eyes twinkling with light like a lantern in a foggy night on a graveyard.”

The Princess: “Oh? You want my thanks, do you, my unctuous little worm? Think you deserve them?”

Opportunist: “Of course we do. Watch and learn, boys, as we get our reward.”

‧ “I kind of do in this lifetime at least. Admit it.”

The Narrator: “The Princess’s rotten breath fills your nostrils as she continues to slither around you, wrapping fully around your body a second time, her ribs and neural spines poking you even more sharply as she presses your arms tightly to your body.”

The Princess: “Perhaps. But don’t you think there’s something else you deserve for how you treated me before?”

Paranoid: “She’s immobilised us! ...She’s gonna constrict us like a snake.”

Opportunist: “Uhh, okay, it sounds dangerous when you put it that way, but here’s the thing: the Princess is someone who knows what she wants and takes it. And right now she’s holding us all tight and close.”

Hero: “You saying she likes us in spite of all her, uh…?”

Paranoid: “Spite?”

Hero: “Yeah.”

‧ “Uh, Princess? T h-this is kind of tight.”

The Princess: “Good. You’re not leaving till I say you can. Now, what was it you said you wanted from me?”

The Narrator: “The Princess has fully wrapped herself around your body twice now, a cold bone python immobilising and constricting you. You can barely breathe, and only because she allows it. Her bright eyes gleam under her dark hood as she stares you right in the eye, bony fingers tapping rhythmically on your shoulder.”

Hero: “She’s, uh, got real big eyes, doesn’t she? I don’t think I’ve ever seen her blink.”

Opportunist: “Isn’t there something absolutely lovely about that big triumphant grin?”

Paranoid: “Still don't think it counts as a grin if her dried-out, shrivelled up lips can’t even cover her teeth.”

Hero: “Definitely a grin right now, look at the twinkle in her eyes. Oh… do you think she wants to, uhh?”

Opportunist: “Hehehe, I think so. Well then, we should play along.”

Paranoid: “Wants to what? What? You can’t leave me in suspense!”

The Princess: “Well? Answer me, my succulent little maggot, I’m not a patient Princess.”

‧ “I think I do deserve a little gratitude. Don’t you… mistress?”

The Narrator: “A long, bony hand gently flicks the tip of your beak, while another dances around your windpipe on its fingers.”

The Princess: “Perhaps, my obsequious little worm. Orrr perhaps you deserve to rot in the pit you considered throwing me into, have you thought about that?”

‧ “But I never did jump into the pit, instead I’ve been so loyal and helpful, haven’t I? Haven’t we had some good times along the way, mistress?”

The Princess: “Heh, good times. Yeah. Like the expression on your face when I scared you to death. You standing there looking miserable and collapsing every time I poked you. Your little Voices falling over each other to please me. Possessing you was fun, feeling what you feel. I still feel some of it, you know.”

‧ “R-right, cause you haven’t fully left me.”

The Princess: “Correct. It’s more fun to have you carry me around while I get to feel bits of all the nasty little emotions bouncing around in there. You’re a real mess, aren’t you?”

‧ “Y-you can still feel what I feel?”

The Princess: “Yes, my freaky beaked goblin. So I know exactly what you want from me.”

‧ “Heh, well, in that case, what about you, mistress? Don’t you want it too?”

The Princess: “Hah! In your dreams! Or your nightmares. It remains to be seen which of them it would be.”

‧ “I think-”

The Princess: “Shut up.”

The Narrator: “She cuts you off by sharply grabbing your chin, digging her long, bony fingers in, and – ugh, yuck!”

Paranoid: “What? What did she do to us?”

The Narrator: “She kisses you! Ack!”

Opportunist: “Ohohohohh, what did I say, lads? Helping her did bring good stuff our way!”

Hero: “Yeah, no need to yuck a lovely kiss.”

The Narrator: “It’s hardly a lovely kiss. Hard, skeletal teeth clack against yours, launching a cloud of dry bone dust into your mouth. Lips shriveled like a prune press into you, cold and dry, tasting of decay. Your eyes shoot wide open and find themselves peering into the Princess’s own wide, bright eyes, their light almost blinding at this range. Her powerful, wiry strength presses on you, hard bones leaving bruises, her soggy, rotten chest staining your feathers. Her rattling breath enters your body, its rotten pungence filling your lungs. You’re not sure which of the particles you experience in it are worse: the dry dust or the wet fleshy fragments. You taste things no-one should ever have to taste as her decayed husk of a tongue makes contact, maggots poking out of it and crawling into your mouth. They actually taste the best of any part of this. Through it all, the Princess’s grip is ferocious, hungry, choking, strangling in her constriction coil. When you finally part, you burst out in coughs that wrack your whole body, while the Princess bursts out in laughter, still wrapped around you.”

The Princess: “HAHAHAHAHAHA, that was awful! Ohh, that was so so so so so miserable, maybe it was just what you deserve!”

The Narrator: “Through your coughs, you find her laughter infectious and you join her in sputtering giggles, spitting out some of her maggots.”

‧ “Ohh, (cough) was it bad for you too?”

The Princess: “It was! Isn’t that wonderful?”

‧ “I don’t know what I was expecting. That liking you in spite of everything would somehow make you nice to kiss too, I suppose.”

The Narrator: “The Princess affectionately flicks your beak.”

The Princess: “Shut up, you don’t like me and I don’t like you. That’s why we’re ditching each other, remember?”

Hero: “Oh. Yeah. Right, we were gonna part.”

Opportunist: “Really a bit of a shame to let her go now that we’ve buttered her up so nicely…”

Paranoid: “It’s… gonna be different without her horrible reality to hold on to.”

‧ “Yeah. Right. I guess we were gonna part as soon as we’re free. Couldn’t stay together for a little longer.”

The Princess: “Not bloody likely, we’d end up killing each other again in minutes.”

‧ “Yeah, you’re right, mistress. Besides, what would we be doing? More of those awful, awful kisses? Bleh!”

The Princess: “Yeah, no way… Maybe just one more so we’ll remember never to do it again.”

The Narrator: “Her bundle of teeth like gravestones finds your mouth in another miserable, awful, dusty, rotten kiss. Her bone jaw scrapes and bumps over yours as her hood drops over both of you, leaving you in darkness broken only by her eyes. The misery of the kiss is just enough to almost hide the horrid tearing of your, er, lower soul?”

Opportunist: “Lower soul, eh?”

The Narrator: “Shut up. My point is the Princess fully separates from you, her pelvis emerging from yours as she slowly uncoils while you’re too busy choking on her juices. Yet the pressure around you lessens. And by the time you part, a maggot stuck between your teeth, you are loose and so is she. She sits on the ground coiled up in front of you, looking almost gentle and harmless, a strange old slinky of a Princess…”

‧ “You look… pretty.”

The Princess tilts her head.

The Princess: “No, I don’t. But you’re still a sneaky sycophantic worm. And as… useful as you’d be to keep around, we’re free now. Both of us.”

Hero: “Guess this is it, then.”

Paranoid: “Time to say goodbye. It really is for the better.”

Opportunist: “I’ll miss her. She knew just how to treat us.”

‧ “So we’re really never seeing each other again?”

The Princess: “Nah. Let’s face it, if we ever saw each other again, it’d be a thousand years too soon.”

The Princess gently lays a bony hand on your shoulder and you mirror her. There is a change in the air, as well as a change in her eyes, the closest thing to a gentle look you’ve ever seen in them.

The Princess: “We’re better off alone. Even if the prospect feels… cold.”

You do not get a chance to respond. Something has taken her away and left something in her place. Your memory returns. Your Voices chatter in worry, but you have bigger concerns. You remember what She said to you last time, and you know it’s time to face Her.

Chapter End Notes

> The illustration of Wraith saving them from falling out the window may be found here

> The illustration of Wraith telling Quiet to crawl is by the fantastic Depressbian!

> Please don't forget to leave a comment and let me know what you think! I always love receiving any comment, long or short.

## Afterword

End Notes

> Please leave a comment and let me know what you thought of this one! Comments are what keeps me going, and we've got the Heart and quite a few more vessels after her left to kiss!

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