Slay the Princess: The Princess (Chapter II)

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Talk to the Princess before attacking her, don't be dissuaded by her Super-Strength, and press on for a Mutual Kill. She'll come back as a Blood Knight, waiting for a rematch with you.

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• Absurdly Sharp Claws: Mostly she uses her fists, but a spread of several panels in the fight shows one in which her claws are bloody.
• Amazonian Beauty: She's presented as a beautiful muscular woman, albeit one with demonic horns and hooves, and she's slightly taller than the Player Character, who is himself very large. The Stubborn is naturally attracted to her and perhaps the player themselves.
• Badass Arm-Fold: She's often crossing her arms in an intimidating fashion, especially when taunting you, which only shows off her muscles and her bosom despite it meant to mock you.
• Blood Knight: While other Princess incarnations share this trait in shades, this is her defining feature. She wants nothing more than to fight you, over and over again for eternity, and will be greatly disappointed if you don't fight back or are easily defeated. She doesn't even care about her situation or escaping the cabin.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Unlike other vessels, Adversary has surprisingly enough, truly no malicious intentions towards you. If anything she has genuine affection for the Player, but due to her Blood Knight mindset and knowing nothing else, she can only express it in the form of mutual violence and killing. You can try to avoid fighting her, but that just grinds her gears; anything other than fighting is just a waste of time to her. If you tell her you don't want to hurt her anymore, she's upset, because that's exactly what she wants; saying that is tantamount to saying you don't love her anymore in her eyes. That said, she doesn't want to fight you in a way you can't recover from. Fighting her hand-to-hand rather than with the Pristine Blade leads to you suffering increasingly horrible injuries to the point that the Adversary is genuinely disturbed and upset by it. Either of these paths can end with you dead and her suffering a breakdown before transforming into the Fury.
• Breaking the Bonds: She's strong enough to break out of her chains on her own just by pulling them. But since she's a Fair-Play Villain she won't immediately turn hostile once she does it, but once she does it, it's impossible to run away from her without her easily catching you.
• Challenge Seeker: She enjoys fighting you as long as you are able to challenge and keep up with her. If she deals you a Curb-Stomp Battle, she'll give in further into the bloodlust, becoming the Eye of the Needle, and if you end up horrifying her by constantly forcing yourself back to life even as your body is horribly mangled (if you try to fight her unarmed) or try to Turn the Other Cheek, her fear will destroy her willingness to fight and will turn her into The Fury.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The Adversary comes to be after you both kill each other in Chapter I, which causes you to see yourself as an equal to her in battle — causing the two of you to get locked into a more deadly engagement.
• Combat Sadomasochist: She's a Blood Knight who wants to fight you to the death, and openly talks about how much she enjoys wounding and being wounded. She will refuse your offer to spar with her instead of fighting to the death, because a fight where you hold back isn't "real" to her. That being said, you can go about Horrifying the Horror if you keep getting back up despite grevious injuries.
  The Adversary: What's real is when my flesh splits open. What's real is when you keep getting up until your legs can't hold you. What's real are the things we do to each other when the only options left are winning and dying.
• Complete Immortality: Notably unlike the Proto-Razor or the Prisoner, the Adversary's ability to get back up and keep going after her apparent "death" is not dependent on you. After stabbing her in the heart you can walk away, believing that she's gone, but when you walk up the stairs the world outside hasn't faded into a void and you'll hear her calling you back, irate that you didn't take her at her word that she can't die. The Narrator is horrified, but the Princess and the Stubborn relish it, because it means there's nothing in the way of their duel — she doesn't have to hold back, and getting killed just gives her a chance to reevaluate her strategy and psyche up for the next bout.
• Cruelty by Feet: In one of the panels of your fight, she's shown stomping directly at the camera.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Resist trying to fight the Adversary, but ultimately give in and attempt to slay her, and she'll kill you with one blow with her elbow.
• Dragons Are Demonic: She has a mix of demonic and draconic traits in appearance, with horns, cloven hooves, a devil tail, and razor-sharp teeth.
• Everyone Has Standards: The Adversary loves violence, no doubt, but she has actual morals and perhaps some empathy to her despite her aggressive attitude, but while she revels in fighting, she only enjoys it when it's being inflicted in a fair and honest fight — actively stop resisting while she's beating you to a pulp, and she'll be so horrified at the realization (as well as being genuinely terrified at the sheer amount of punishment you're able to take) that she quickly kills you with a Neck Snap and evolves into the Fury because the idea of killing a defenseless opponent rattled her to the core that much. Hinting at the empathetic nature layered beneath her battle lust. She's a Spirited Competitor, not a blind Sadist like the Razor.
• Fair-Play Villain: Unlike many of the Princess' other iterations, all the Adversary wants is a good fight out of a Worthy Opponent. As such she never tries to trick you or sneak attack you, even if you chat her up. If you don't bring the Pristine Blade down with you the first time, she even allows you to go back up to the cabin to pick it up, and she won't attack until you're ready. Should you manage to kill her by piercing her heart with the Pristine Blade, once she gets back up, she'll toss it to you instead of using it herself. Because the Adversary wants your altercations to be as suspenseful and heart-racing as possible, she needs them to be fair. She only gets pissed if the player acts like a coward by running away or trying to hide from her.
• Femme Fatalons: Her nails have grown to become long and sharp. She rarely uses them in combat, but it still makes her look more intimidating than before.
• Fingore: Towards the end of her chapter, she gets her fingers cut off by the pristine blade in one of the fight scenes... not that that's stopped her from growing them back, of course.
• Flipping the Bird: Pick the right options, and it's possible for the Narrator to force you to flip her off. She will respond in kind by flipping you the bird in return.
• Friendly Rivalry: This is what gives the Adversary her name. She exists to be your opponent who pushes you to overcome her, so that you may push her to overcome you in turn. This is also what separates her from the Eye of the Needle: while she is a predator you couldn't hope to overcome through fair play (hence the name), the Adversary is your equal who you may fight with evenly head-to-head and lose yourself in the thrill of never ending competition, with your mutual Resurrective Immortality. Shockingly enough, the Adversary is quite possibly one of the more friendly vessels to encounter despite her desire for a never ending battle.
  The Adversary: (as part of the Shifting Mound) You feel the shame of a hundred deaths and the pride of a hundred conquests, all the peaks and valleys weaving themselves into a single tapestry free of beginning and free of end. Do you remember when we killed each other with such passion that death itself no longer sat on our shoulders?
• Good Old Fisticuffs: She fights you by brawling with her bare fists and elbows, which is more than enough thanks to her massive strength.
• Hidden Depths: The Adversary is surprisingly philosophical over what she desires from the connection she and the Player share while fighting. The Adversary along with the Voice of the Stubborn will be genuinely brought to tears over the poem the Player eloquently declares they will sing in their own blood.
• Horns of Villainy: This incarnation has three horns in her head, to fit with her draconic motif.
• Horrifying the Horror: Both ways to do this lead to the Fury in Chapter III.
  • If you try to fight her bare handed she will kill you by crushing your head and splattering it all over the room... but The Stubborn can let you get back up and she will be suitably horrified as you no longer have a face. If you keep fighting her, she'll get more and more perturbed by you getting back up despite her destroying your body more and more, to the point she loses her fighting spirit, and just wants to give you a Mercy Kill.
  • She's a Combat Sadomasochist, but not a Sadist, so should you Turn the Other Cheek and allow her to beat you to death she'll become very distraught that you're allowing yourself to get killed without fighting back.
• Hot-Blooded: She has a passionate, fierce personality, a loud booming voice, and is single-minded in her desire to fight forever.
• In Love with Your Carnage: She doesn't hold a grudge for you killing her at all. Instead, she admires you as a Worthy Opponent she can throw all her weight behind fighting to the death.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: The Adversary declares your brawl in the previous chapter to be the "best three minutes of [her] life." She also describes your potential battles in a way that comes off as exceedingly passionate and evocative of a sexual encounter. The Stubborn is not far behind the Adversary in terms of eagerness to start and continue fighting, with the same erotic undertones. According to Nichole Goodnight, her voice direction for both the Adversary and the Eye of the Needle was "horny for a fight."
• It's the Journey That Counts: The Adversary represents the drive to push oneself and find meaning in the personal journey of growth, "winning" is second to the struggle of the contest itself. Tellingly, she and the Eye of the Needle (who bears similar themes) are the only Princesses that aren't focused on the end goal of escaping the Cabin, but rather the experience of testing themselves against you for its own sake.
• Lightning Bruiser: She's both incredibly fast and strong, making her one of the deadliest princesses to fight.
• Living Forever Is Awesome: She and the Stubborn are both real happy when she gets brought back to life since it means they can get back to fighting.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: In her base form the Princess is already very strong, but she's decidedly more heavily built in this form, befitting her being a combat-focused Lightning Bruiser.
• Neck Lift: If you engage in Turn the Other Cheek pacifism and refuse to fight her, she will beat you down and then casually lift you by the neck before she demands to know why you won't fight back. And then she finishes you off with a Neck Snap.
• Not Good with Rejection: She genuinely likes you and the Interplay of Sex and Violence that comes part and parcel with your fights. Rejecting them or telling her it's an unhealthy dynamic causes her to become as hurt and emotionally distraught as if you were spurning her. It causes her so much distress she turns into The Fury.
• One Free Hit: If you question her and your potential Resurrective Immortality, she'll allow you to stab her in the heart and kill her once, just to prove to you that the both of you are meant to fight to the death for eternity.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Normally, she's a Blood Knight who's positvely frothing at the bit to fight you forever. However, if you keep bringing yourself back from the dead, she'll be horrified by your increasingly mangled body, showing genuine terror and regret. The shock of this twists her into the Fury.
• Pointy Ears: She gains pointy ears to go along with the demon/dragon hybrid motif.
• Resurrective Immortality: Even an Attack on the Heart, which kills every other princess, doesn't make the Adversary stay dead. She'll fall, but it's not permanent and after a short while she'll simply get back up, pull the Pristine Blade out of her chest, throw it back to you, and continue the fight. Luckily, you also can't die this way.
• Scary Teeth: She has sharp teeth, contributing to her draconic appearance, and she often shows them off while grinning.
• Sex Is Violence: One could almost swear it's a sexual encounter with how eager she and the Stubborn are to fight and the gratuitous way they do so.
• Smug Smiler: Often has a confident, taunting grin on her face, which also makes her look intimidating due to her Scary Teeth.
• Smug Super: The Adversary is powerful, and she's very proud of it. She's also figured out that you have Resurrective Immortality, to the point that she'll let you kill her once just to prove it.
• Spirited Competitor: The core of her being, this Princess is one that's only concerned with how she and you can challenge each other and grow through the conflict. She's not bothered if you gain the upper hand during your fight, and she's not even concerned with escaping the Cabin anymore, so long as she has you to test herself against then she's happy.
  The Shifting Mound: (On the Adversary) This one yearns to grow and struggle. Even now I feel her will pushing against mine, not realizing that we are one. She will make for a bold heart. Do not mourn her. We will provide her with the growth she fought for.
• Story Branch Favoritism: Because the Adversary was the first of the Chapter II branches to be written and illustrated, her chapter has more unique art and more choices than the others.
• Super-Strength: She's as strong as her large muscular frame suggests, and she's able to break out of her chains with ease without harming herself, something even The Fury can't do.
• Tall Is Intimidating: She's significantly taller than the hero, something the Voice of the Hero finds to be very intimidating, especially when you step closer to her and truly take him her height.
  Voice of The Hero: She's a lot bigger than I thought she was.
• Tears of Joy: If you indulge her Combat Sadomasochist tendencies and tell her you understand the connection you have when you fight, the Adversary will be so happy she'll briefly cry tears of joy (and so will The Stubborn).
• Tomboyness Upgrade: Compared to the baseline Princess. Her figure is much more muscular, her dress is shorter and tattered to allow her to move around more easily, and her interests begin and end with violence.
• Women Prefer Strong Men: Her attraction to you is based on you being strong enough to fight her as an equal. She will be thoroughly disappointed in you if you try to run, outright refuse to fight, or get easily beaten. She wants nothing more than for the two of you to continually, physically, and violently challenge each other, and she's most receptive to you when you aren't holding back. Should you prove to be a Worthy Opponent and say you understand the connection that you both have, the Adversary will cry Tears of Joy that you understand her.
  The Adversary: And you waited for me. I knew I could count on you, I knew we were connected.
• Worthy Opponent: Discussed. She wants to fight you to the death, but only if you want to fight her to the death in return. Fighting in self-defense or because you're scared of her just makes the Adversary scoff at you. However, should you even somewhat show the same level of fervor that she does, the Adversary will at least try to be fair. She'll return the Pristine Blade to you if you kill her with it, and she'll wait for you to grab the weapon if you didn't bring it with you. She also won't attempt to backstab you or attack while your guard is down. If questioned on this, the Adversary explains that she wants an opponent who can match her when fighting blow-for-blow to the death, because that's the only kind of fight that's "real" to her.

Go down without the Pristine Blade, but stab the Princess as soon as the Narrator drops it down. Alternatively you can go up to retrieve your blade without explaining why and lock yourself in the basement. Either way, give up once she starts fighting back. The princess turns into a Talking Animal, driven by the need to hunt you down and eat you.

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• Animalistic Abomination: In contrast to the anthropomorphic Witch, she is a feral-bodied big cat with small wings on her back, but like every other version of the Princess, she retains her intelligence.
• Beast with a Human Face: As bestial as the rest of her body is, her face is still reminiscent of the Princess' humanoid form. Her mane resembles the Princess' hair.
• Cats Are Superior: She's very arrogant about her new feline beast form, boasting that she's now far mightier than the player.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: If you, after coming to the basement without the Pristine Blade, backstab the Princess as soon as you retrieve it, she endures and tears you apart in an animalistic manner. Her refusal to reason with you and complete dominance forces you to see her as the predator, and you the prey (hence why you get the Voice of the Hunted in the Beast's chapter).
• Combat Pragmatist: When you enter the basement and meet up with her for the first time, she wastes no time in attacking you in an attempt to swallow you whole and carries this approach throughout the whole chapter.
• Consuming Passion: The core of her being. Given that every vessel in the game represents a form of love, she, alongside the Den, represents consumption in both its sexual and instinctual aspects:
  The Shifting Mound: (On the Beast) This one is consumed by instinct. A predator pushing those around her to adapt. She will make for a cunning heart. She wishes me to devour you. To make you a part of myself. But she is only a voice. Do not mourn her, for she is part of something greater.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: If you reached this route, she would have bitten and clawed you to death in chapter 1 without taking a single hit from you. Similarly every outcome in this chapter results in her killing you or forcing you to free her.
• Eaten Alive: This princess doesn't just want to kill you, she wants to eat you. Play your cards wrong, and you'll end up being swallowed and digested in her stomach acids, complete with an interior shot of the Beast's stomach lining.
• Eating the Enemy: While the Beast has claws and she does use them to swipe at you, her main goal is to swallow you whole.
• Entertainingly Wrong: The Beast believes that eating you will allow her to escape without penalty from the cabin because she was unable to escape as the proto-Beast but knew you could come and go, and dead doesn't count. She thinks having you alive inside her will allow her passage out. As she finds out the hard way, this is wrong; the Beast needs you to agree to release her in order to allow her to escape. This can be lampshaded when you confront her at the End of Everything:
  "You cannot use eating me to prove that you're right."
• Face Death with Dignity: If you manage to slay her after she swallows you, she seems impressed you found a way to kill her and says she'll see you next time.
• Getting Eaten Is Harmless: Viciously averted. Being eaten by the Beast involves getting digested, with stomach acid eating through you. Even in the scenario where you survive this, you suffer nasty burns all over your body.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: She refuses to negotiate her release with you even if you offer it, instead swallowing you so that she can force you to let her out of the cabin. Because of this, any event where she swallows you may lead to you killing her by cutting her open from the inside and stabbing her heart, or slitting your own throat to spite her and trap her in the cabin, when if she'd been willing to talk to you, she might have gotten out without a fuss.
• I Just Want to Be Free: Well, not 'just', she also wants to punish and overpower the player character who turned on her, but the desire to get out is still very strong.
• Just Eat Him: Averted. Give her the chance and she'll do it, and the results are not pretty.
• Karmic Death: Should she swallow you whole, you can dig through her flesh and stab her in the heart.
• Kill It Through Its Stomach: One possible fate for the Beast — the player is swallowed whole, but remains undeterred and hacks his way to her heart from within.
• Lightning Bruiser: She's extremely strong and fast for her size, and you can't dodge her attacks for long until she eventually catches and eats you.
• Loophole Abuse: She believes carrying you alive in her stomach will allow her to leave the cabin since you're from the outside world.
• Major Injury Underreaction: The Beast is merely amused at the Player cutting his way out of her stomach after she devours him whole, all while melting in her stomach acid.
• Mercy Rewarded: If the player allows her to leave after she's swallowed him whole, The Beast will vomit him up after she's out. He'll be burned from stomach acid, but still alive.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: While she's primarily cat-like, she's got wings, bird-like talons and horns, traits which become even more notable in the Den.
• Monster Modesty: Despite being more of a cat-like creature, she actually wears strips of cloth around her chest, torso, and lower body. It's most noticeable if you let her leave the cabin.
• Must Be Invited: Inverted. If The Beast wants to actually leave the cabin with the player inside her, she can only do so if the player allows her to or expresses a desire to be free.
• Mutual Kill: Suffers this on the path where you kill her. She swallows you whole and melts your body away in her stomach, but you cut your way through her body's inner portions to reach her heart and stab it, which kills her almost instantly. She takes it pretty well, all told. Because you die within her body, this leads to the Wild in the next chapter.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: The Beast is not one for small talk, and refuses to truly engage with many of your attempts to speak with her. She's much more interested in trying to eat you.
• One-Track-Minded Hunger: No higher goals or ambitions exist within The Beast anymore. She only wishes to consume you, believing it will grant her freedom.
• Our Sphinxes Are Different: She's essentially one of these, albeit with small wings and a far less human-looking face.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: The Beast is met by getting on the good side of the Princess, then betraying her (or at least leaving a good impression of it). As a result, the Beast is hunting you not just because she's hungry, but because she thinks you have it coming for what you did to her.
• Roar Before Beating: Her attacks are accompanied by a creepy and terrifying roar.
• Sinister Silhouettes: In "The Beast". Once you get down to the basement, the Princess stalks you from the shadows. All you ever see of her are glowing eyes, a clawed hand, and sharp fangs. The only time you can get a good look at the Beast is after she's been grabbed by the Shifting Mound and become an Empty Shell.
• Slain in Their Sleep: If you locked the door after retrieving the blade, you can choose to wait it out, and you'll get drowsy and fall asleep. Unfortunately, the proto-Beast gets the chance to strike you down, making sure you sleep forever (thankfully, it doesn't stick).
• Talking Animal: What she is now, thanks to you. The princess has ceased being human and is now a cat-like creature who is hunting you, hates your guts, and wants to eat you.
• Wings Do Nothing: The Beast has a small pair of wings on her back that don't seem to do anything to enable flight.
• Womb Level: The result of you getting Eaten Alive by her. From there, since her stomach acid is harming and dissolving you, you can choose to either talk or wait, commit a Spiteful Suicide, make your way to her heart and slay her from within (all of which lead to the Wild), or quickly allow her to escape the cabin so that she can vomit you out.
• You Are Already Dead: If the Beast delivers a fatal blow on you instead of eating you, she will make an assumption that you are dead... and you are still alive and baffled for a few seconds before...
  Voice of the Hero: But we're not dead, we're— [screen shifts to black]
  The Narrator: But you don't have time to protest her premature observation of your death, because everything goes dark, and you die.

Don't pick up the Pristine Blade, help the Princess escape, and resist all of the Narrator's attempts to kill her. The result is a naive, yet good-hearted princess who treats you as her Knight in Shining Armor.

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• Ambiguous Innocence: She's a naive and lovestruck woman who just wants to make you happy, which isn't strictly the same thing as being a good person. If you suggest leaving to live a peaceful life together outside the cabin, she'll happily agree. If you suggest slaughtering the entire world in horrific ways and leaving nothing but ruins in your wake, she'll agree to that just as happily.
• Animesque: Her appearance as the Damsel makes her look the part of an idealized, adorable princess. If you keep asking for her opinion when she doesn't have one, her anime style gets increasingly exaggerated to the point of Art Shift into an extreme crude sketch version of herself.
• Apologetic Attacker: The Pre-Damsel Princess tries to Mercy Kill you when you're struggling against the Narrator's control, apologizing the entire time. Unfortunately, since she doesn't know how to use a weapon, she's rather upset to find out the hard way that her attempts at a quick kill are ineffectual, and your death is drawn out and painful.
• Art Shift: She initially seems fairly normal, albeit slightly exaggerated in her feminine traits to make her look like a Princess Classic. But the more you ask her about her opinion or thoughts on something, the more some element of her changes, becoming more and more clear that by way of you creating a situation for her to be the stock Damsel in Distress to rescue from the cabin, she is little more than a hollow shell for this purpose. And this is demonstrated by Stylistic Suck, as she becomes more simplified the further you push her until she's a borderline crude facsimile of herself. If you stop questioning and decide to escape, or ask her to stay in the cabin with you, she reverts instantly to her idealized form.
• Bear Hug: As soon as she's freed from her bindings, she thanks you and immediately jumps up to embrace you in a big joyful hug, much to the Narrator’s frustration.
• Bishie Sparkle: In several scenes, the Damsel gets surrounded by sparkles to emphasize her innocent, idealized and adorable Animesque princess appearance.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe:
  • If you insist on freeing the Princess no matter what—going into the basement without the Pristine Blade, cutting her from her shackles, and resisting the Narrator—she will become the innocent damsel you perceive her to be, to the point that she practically has no desires beyond being a prize for you to win — and like all the other versions of the Princess, to escape the cabin.
  • Agreeing with the Voice of the Smitten makes it so you can free her from her bonds by willing it that her hands are so small and dainty that the shackle binding her to the wall simply slips off her wrist. The Narrator is baffled and insists you shouldn't be able to do that. Likewise, the Smitten's belief that you can open the locked Basement door with The Power of Love makes it so, to the Narrator's barely-concealed anger and confusion.
• Cradling Your Kill: The Pre-Damsel Princess holds you when she kills you, crying all the while.
• The Cutie: Deconstructed. The Damsel is a sweetheart who only wants to make you happy. The thing is, the Damsel takes this to a logical extreme, to the point that it can be Played for Horror. While she's drawn with very soft features and has a very feminine voice in the style of a Princess Classic, she also has no agency of her own outside of being your lover and someone for you to save. Also is the core of the Damsel's being:
  The Shifting Mound: (On the Damsel) This one is soft and delicate. You molded her to love you, and she'll make for a gentle heart. Do not mourn her. She has served her purpose.
• Damsel in Distress: There's a reason why this version is called the "Damsel", having the form and attitude of a Princess Classic, calling the player her "dashing hero" while treating him like a Knight in Shining Armor, and overall being a perfect example of the stereotypical princess to be saved, to Satellite Love Interest levels.
• Empty Shell: She's been made into your love interest, and there's very little left of her beyond that. Other than her desire to escape the cabin, she's got no personal motivations, beliefs or goals, and will literally disintegrate if you try to examine her personality. She won't even resist you killing her if that's what you want (until her next incarnation, at least).
• Everyone Has Standards: She may be an Extreme Doormat, but she still wants to leave the cabin. Electing to stay with her there is the only thing she will not blindly agree with.
• Extreme Doormat: The core of the Deconstructed Damsel's being. The Damsel already has no desires outside of whatever you want and a vague desire to leave the basement, which she only mentions the once. Questioning her about this just makes her devolve further and further until she transforms into the Deconstructed Damsel. It's so extreme that, even should you kill her, she'll ask what she did wrong and/or just let you do it with no resistance at all. Even her one clear desire isn't immune to this — if you ask her to stay in the cabin, she'll struggle to say that she wants to leave before, with great sadness and reluctance, agreeing to do it if it makes you happy. However, pretending to like the idea is such a strain on her "ideal lover" facade that, if she's devolved into her Stylistic Suck form, she'll immediately snap back.
  The Shifting Mound: (On the Deconstructed Damsel) This one is a reflecting pool of desire unfulfilled. She will make for a pliant heart. Do not mourn her. She has served her purpose.
• Flat Character:
  • Discussed. She's just a Princess Classic and a Damsel in Distress, with her only other desire aside from pleasing the main character being to leave the cabin. Even if you hit the Damsel with a Logic Bomb of making you happy by making you unhappy, the Damsel will just instantly agree to it.
  • This becomes a Deconstructed Trope if you insist on asking her what she wants; no matter how many times you ask, her answer will just be to make you happy, and nothing else, which causes her appearance/artwork to gradually deteriorate until she's nothing but a crude pencil drawing. Fittingly, this form of her is known as the Deconstructed Damsel.
  • Averted with the Pristine Cut, as it's shown that she's a lot more hesitant to agree to stay with you in the cabin and becomes a Stepford Smiler in the Happily Ever After route.
• Go Out with a Smile: If you stab her with the Pristine Blade, she forgives you with tears in her eyes before shutting her eyelids as she dies with a smile. Even in her deconstructing form. This kinda crosses into Peaceful in Death... if it weren't for the fact that the Narrator says that she collapses pathetically to the ground in a gloatingly smug voice.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Interestingly, as a Flat Character, the only other desire she has is getting out of the cabin like most of the other Princess' vessels. She remarks no-one else has ever asked what she wants, so she doesn't know for sure besides her freedom. This is only mentioned if you ask what else she wants, or if you try and keep her in the cabin. You can also offer to help figure out what else she wants aside from making you happy after you get out, but you never find out as she gets grabbed to be absorbed, her purpose finished.
  • If you stab her, she gives a tearful sad smile, indicating that even though she lets you stab her for you to be happy, being hurt is not exactly part of what makes her happy. She sees that the cabin is making both of you hurt each other and wants to end the suffering with you, leading to The Burned Grey route.
• Literal Metaphor: The Damsel is a deconstruction of the Damsel in Distress trope, and she will literally deconstruct if you keep asking her what she wants, since she doesn't have any thoughts or desires that aren't just making you happy (well, she does have one desire).
• Nice Girl: She's the nicest version of Princess and genuinely wants to make the Hero/player happy. She'll even forgive the player for killing her, thinking she did something to make the Hero unhappy.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: If you ask her to stay with you in the cabin, she drops her smile for the first and only time while visibly struggling to overcome her Extreme Doormat tendencies and tell you that she desperately wants to leave. Note that otherwise, her Perpetual Smiler expression and "I'll do whatever makes you happy" demeanor doesn't even drop when you kill her. It's serious enough that if you ask it to her in the middle of her deconstructing, she'll snap back to normal.
  The Damsel: But I... I... we would have to be here forever. I don't know you. This is... really what you want, though, isn't it?
• Perpetual Smiler: She's almost always got a big, warm smile on her face. Even if you choose to kill her, she'll still be smiling with tears streaming down her face.
• The Power of Love: She's shaped and moulded by this. The process of getting to her requires the Player to go out of his way to save and protect her, albeit unsuccessfully. This turns her into an ideal Love Interest, and bringing her out of the Cabin relies heavily upon it as well, i.e. The Smitten's narrative influence makes it so you can slip her hand out of her shackle without having to cut it off, and the locked door to the basement simply unlocks when she, the Player or both will the door to open, as exposited by the Damsel in the ending.
  The Damsel: But the stakes meant nothing to you. You had a desire, and you set that desire free, you lifting me and me lifting you, forever and ever and ever. Consumed by true belief, there was nothing that could hold us back.
• Princess Classic: Sweet, innocent, a Damsel in Distress, the Smitten's love interest, and treats you as a Knight in Shining Armor. Freeing the Damsel will make her give you a big hug and take your hand in her own. She's also drawn with very soft features and very large eyes, as well as her voice being very soft and high-pitched, all to make her appear more feminine.
• Satellite Love Interest: Deconstructed and Played for Horror. While the Damsel also wants to leave the cabin, she may end up shrugging away that part of herself to please the main character and ensure his happiness, because your choices have made it so that she has literally no agency to do otherwise. Trying to ask her what she wants for herself results in her physically devolving, as if the mere idea of doing something of her own free will is completely foreign to her.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: Taking the advice of the Voice of the Smitten and freeing the Princess has the two of you joyfully leaving the cabin together, with a big hug and hand-in-hand, as the Narrator loudly voices his disgust with how lovey-dovey you're acting.
• Sorry I Fell on Your Fist: The Damsel's innocence and adoration of you are so strong that, if you slay her, her response will be to apologize and ask if she did something wrong as she lies dying.
• Stepford Smiler: There are several indications she's not quite The Pollyanna she presents as — she's just as desperate to escape the Cabin as the other princesses and quickly breaks down if you try to investigate her motivations. Maybe most tellingly, if you kill her, she keeps up her smile and cheery voice while visibly sobbing, with the Narrator describing her eyes as "full of terror" as she dies.
• Stylistic Suck: Keep asking her what she wants, and her artwork will keep devolving further and further until it's nothing but a crude pencil sketch. Go all the way with it, and the form grabbed by the Shifting Mound will also be in this crude sketch style. She'll turn back if you stop pressing her on the point or you ask her to stay in the cabin with you.
• Tareme Eyes: She gains these as the Damsel, to such an exaggerated degree that it verges on Uncanny Valley.
• Video Game Caring Potential: You get the Damsel when you do everything in your power to not kill the Princess, even with the narrator urging you to.
• Visual Pun: The Damsel has no agency or personality of her own outside of wanting to please you. If you repeatedly ask her what she wants, she will keep repeating "I just want you to be happy!" (and variations thereof) over and over until she turns into a flat, crude scribble drawing. She's literally two-dimensional.
• Willfully Weak: Her hands are dainty enough to simply slip through her chains, something she likely would have realized if she tried. Her extremely passive nature and desire to do anything the Player wants of her makes her effectively harmless; she even allows the Player to kill her if he so desires.

Leave the basement while keeping the Princess locked away, or run away upstairs while fighting the Princess. The princess becomes a Humanoid Abomination in a mask.

---

• Beneath the Mask: Literally. At first, she seems like a mere Joker-esque Card-Carrying Villain who wants to torment and terrify the entire world, you included, for fun. But if you start down the path that turns her into the Moment of Clarity, she takes off her mask and reveals that she's actually a sad, broken woman who's been trapped in the cycle of life, death, loneliness and suffering for too long.
• Broken Bird: The core of her being. The Nightmare, for all the aura of fear and rage that emanate from her, is a broken figure who honestly just wants someone to love her.
  The Shifting Mound: (On the Nightmare) This one is filled with sadness. A doll abandoned to the company of her darkest impulses. She desires only companionship, but the only thing she knows is how to hurt. She will make for a tender heart. Do not mourn her — she has finally found her way home.
• Bullying a Dragon: Her constant tormenting of the Player might just lead to you getting the spine necessary to kill her. For all her Evil Gloating, she goes down pretty easily too.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: She can kill you with just a touch, but she abstains because she needs you alive to help her escape. And because it's fun to watch you squirm.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Deconstructed. She's a gleeful and self-admitted horror, delighting in the suffering she inflicts and eager for the chance to ruin the world. But the Shifting Mound's comments state that this is a cover for her fear of rejection and isolation. Better to be a monster than to be forgotten.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The Princess becomes the Nightmare if you Take a Third Option and leave her in the basement. This fear of confrontation creates a frightful being that will be terrifying to meet face-to-face.
• The Dreaded: Just being near her terrifies the Player so much that the Paranoid has to resort to a Survival Mantra in order to keep you alive in her proximity.
• Electromagnetic Ghosts: Her speech is sometimes partly drowned out with the loud sound of static feedback, despite the world appearing to contain nothing that's electronic.
• Evil Is Petty: If you take any path other than letting her out at the first opportunity, she'll trap you in her Basement out of spite.
• Faux Affably Evil: She speaks with a polite and playful tone that makes it clear she's just mocking the Player and enjoying how much he squirms in her presence.
• Finger Poke of Doom: Her touch can break your concentration, which is all that's keeping your organs from failing. However, most of the time she doesn't do it because she enjoys watching you squirm.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Right before the Mind Rape sequence and just after she pulls off her mask, you can see her shed a Single Tear in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment.
• Fright Deathtrap: Her presence is so terrifying that it can actually cause organ failure and kill you, and the Voice of the Paranoid has to recite a Survival Mantra just to keep your organs functional and ensure that you stay alive. Even then, she can always break your concentration with a single tap of finger. The reason why she doesn't is because she'd rather watch you squirm and she needs you to escape from the cabin.
• The Gadfly: She messes with the Player for her own amusement, as she finds it hilarious just how terrified the Player is of her and enjoys messing with him just for her own amusement, such as invading his personal space or dragging her fingers along his neck.
• Glass Cannon: Simply being around her causes the Player's organs to shut down and would have killed him if it weren't for the Voices keeping his heart, lungs, liver, and nerves alive. At the same time, the Nightmare is not only one of the easier Princesses to slay, but she stays dead until you die. She still performs an indirect Mutual Kill though by leaving you trapped in the basement with nothing to do and nowhere to go.
• Hidden Depths: During the confrontation with the Shifting Mound, the Nightmare's art and dialogue reveal that her removing her mask was a misguided and desperate attempt to show the Player her innermost self in the hope that he'd understand her deeply rooted pain. The Player's reaction to her revelation utterly shatters her heart. Before the Pristine Cut update, the Moment of Clarity still wore her mask despite it being thoroughly cracked, most likely out of the deep fear and shame of being rejected by the Player again.
  The Moment of Clarity: [as part of the Shifting Mound] There are few things more terrifying than one's own heart, and there is almost nothing more terrifying than sharing it with another.
• High-Class Gloves: She wears fancy white opera gloves that give her an air of opulence alongside her dress, mask and body language.
• Humanoid Abomination: She looks vaguely human, in that she's a feminine figure in a long dress with long gloves and a mask. But taking into account that the basement has turned into an Eldritch Location that's subject to her whims and she floats and flickers in and out of reality at will, it's clear that the Nightmare is not human.
• I Am What I Am: She frequently declares this.
  The Player: You're a lunatic. You know that, right?
  The Nightmare: I am what I am. And right now, I'm in control.
• I Fell for Hours: If you slay the Nightmare while heading to the top of the stairs, she pushes you into the endless void before dying and becoming the Wraith. The only way out of this void is to simply die, either by slaying yourself or letting your biology collapse in on you.
• I Just Want to Be Free: During the nightmarish sequence she shows under her mask, she repeatedly screams "Let me out!"
• I Just Want to Be Loved: The Nightmare's main motivation next to escaping the cabin is to have companionship. Unfortunately, her long isolation and the rage and frustration resulting from the Player trying to keep her trapped means she genuinely doesn't know how to do anything but hurt.
• Literal Metaphor: Her Beneath the Mask moment is one.
• Loves the Sound of Screaming: She wants to fill the world with terror and fear. Specifically, the fear of her. While she needs your help to escape the cabin, she also finds you immensely more entertaining alive and petrified of her than she would if you were dead.
• Mind Rape: If the Player attempts to run from her or resolves to just stay down in the basement forever, she triggers one by pulling off her mask. The sequence shows a horrific trauma that's implied to be hers, which is so bad that it causes the Narrator to abandon the player.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: The Nightmare is not deterred by death. Threaten her and she'll say that they'll just end up back in the cabin again. Actually kill her and she'll only laugh and say that she's going to become so much worse to you now.
• No Face Under the Mask: If the Nightmare takes off her mask, the Player will see nothing but darkness, a lipless mouth and two eyes, one which is shedding a tear. The Player's senses are then flooded by an endless traumatic cycle of death and rebirth. Even the Narrator is so shaken that he stops narrating and abandons the Player and Voices to their fates.
• No Sense of Personal Space: The Nightmare harasses the Player by leaning in close to him, touching him, and whispering in his ear. This brings the Player closer to death by frightening the Voice of the Paranoid and interrupting his Survival Mantra. The Nightmare doesn't do this to kill the Player; she just enjoys his discomfort and suffering.
• Not Good with Rejection: The Player's rejection of her when she pours her soul out to him during the mask removal scene causes the Nightmare to become an even more horrifying version of herself called the Moment of Clarity.
• Nothing Is Scarier: A core theme in this route. The basement becomes an endless void of nothing, and the Nightmare can kill you by simply being around you for seemingly no reason at all. In Chapter I, if you simply choose to leave the Princess in the basement without fighting her or coming back with the knife, it's never shown how she freed herself, even though she apparently needed your help to do so.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: The Nightmare is a ghost-like being who can float, flicker in and out of existence, causes electric static noises and naturally emanates fear.
• Paper Tiger: For all her gloating about how she has you in her power and the fear she induces with her mere presence, the Nightmare can be killed with a good stab in the heart like most incarnations of the Princess. In fact, it genuinely surprises her if you take this option, as if she never thought you'd work up the courage to stand up to her.
• Power Floats: She's a ghost-like being who floats off the ground instead of walking.
• Powers Do the Fighting: She never lifts a finger against you; at most she lightly pokes you to break your concentration. If you manage to attack her despite her aura, she has no way of defending herself and is slain relatively easily.
• Pragmatic Villainy: The reason the Nightmare doesn't just kill you (besides the fact that she relishes your fear) is because she's figured out that she needs you to help her escape. By the same token, if you can help her escape, then you must be useful in other ways, so the Nightmare vows to perpetually keep you near her.
• Psychotic Smirk: For most of the interaction with her, she regards you with a devious grin. However, should she take off her mask, she fells a Single Tear, making it evident that her expression is actually a Broken Smile.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Should you continue to deny her escape, she'll start screaming "LET. ME. OUT." at you.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: If the Player refuses to help the Nightmare out of the basement, she will give you a scathing one.
  The Nightmare: You poor, deluded thing. Do you think a single moment of bravery changes you into something you're not? I am what I am, and you're always going to be a coward.
• Sadist: She relishes how terrified you are of her and gets a kick out of watching you struggle to survive. The only reason she doesn’t go further is that she needs you alive to exit the basement.
• Single Tear: If the Nightmare takes off her mask to reveal what is underneath, her Psychotic Smirk doesn't falter... But she also fells a tear at the same time, hinting at the deep pain inside of her.
• Stepford Smiler: Despite the smirk plastered on her mask, she is deeply in pain over her situation.
• Supernatural Fear Inducer: She radiates fear by her mere presence, and it's strong enough that she can cause the Player's organs to fail if she stays in his presence for too long. It's only the Voice of The Paranoid's Survival Mantra that allows the Player to survive in her presence.
• Supernatural Floating Hair: Her long black hair is perpetually floating, due to her ghost-like nature.
• Taking You with Me: Slay her and she will either remove the stairs to your escape, or tackle you with her into the abyss; both leaving you trapped in the void until you die from starvation or choose to slay yourself.
• Teleport Spam: She loves to move by vanishing and reappearing wherever she wants, and occasionally flickers in and out of reality in a single spot.
• Token Evil Teammate: While several of the princesses can be hostile towards the Player, the Nightmare is arguably the only one who fully embraces the idea of escaping the cabin so she can make the world a worse place by filling it with fear.
• Villainous Breakdown: Should the Player stab her in the heart while the two are leaving the basement, the Nightmare will be momentarily stunned silent at the Player's audacity. Her becoming the Moment of Clarity is a major one.
• Voice of the Legion: Her voice has a creepy reverb applied to it.
• White Mask of Doom: She's a terrifying ghost woman who wears a creepy doll-like white mask that's beginning to crack.
• Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: If the Player runs away or throws the blade away, the Nightmare, right before unmasking herself, gets in his face and stares at him with a wide-eyed expression, made more frightening by how her normally large irises had shrunken down.

Pick up the Pristine Blade, but help her escape and resist all of the Narrator's attempts to kill her. The result is a sullen and downtrodden captive who cares only about escaping.

---

• Actually Pretty Funny: If you get snagged by the loose shackle with the Pristine Blade knocked too far away to retrieve, she'll say she finds the irony funny.
• Apologetic Attacker: Once the Chapter I Princess who's about to become the Prisoner sees you're Fighting from the Inside, she'll apologetically (albeit coldly) promise to be quick and Mercy Kills you.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: It's easy to miss, but unlike the Damsel, the Prisoner seems to take note of the fact that something besides the two of you was pulling the strings when you met her in the previous chapter. By extension, she seems to deduce that whatever the force behind that was, it's likely still around and is still watching the both of you. Hence her not voicing the full extent of her plan and leaving it up to you to figure out that you need to take her head outside with you once she finishes removing it.
• Berserk Button: She might be in chains, but she's not a helpless damsel. Undermining her autonomy or disregarding her wishes will break the stoic facade and lead to her viciously strangling you until you relent.
  The Prisoner: Did you think my chains take away my say in things?! I said no!
• Chained by Fashion: Unlike the other princesses, the Prisoner not only has both her arms bound instead of just the one, she also has a chain around her neck. Even her crown is made of chain links.
• Chain Pain: The chains are too strong for even her to break, so if you try and come at her with the knife, she resorts to using them to strangle the Player.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: If your suspicions of the whole "slay the Princess" scenario drive you to help her despite taking the Pristine Blade with you to the basement, she will be forced to kill you after the Narrator possesses you. When you meet her again, the Princess becomes even more shackled by the confines of the basement, and whether or not she escapes is based entirely on where your curiosity and skepticism takes you.
• Defrosting Ice Queen:
  • The Prisoner is unlocked by getting the "Cold" Princess, agreeing to help her escape the Cabin and resisting the Narrator's attempts to force you to kill her. The Princess, able to see that you're doing your best to protect her from something, gives you a clean Mercy Kill out of gratitude. Once she transforms into the Prisoner, she devises a plan that will allow you to rescue her properly without the Narrator's interference.
  • When you come back to the Prisoner in the basement, she treats you mostly with apathy and aloofness, and while she does trust you enough to be of help, she still insists on maintaining a safe distance from you, and will get hostile if you overstep your boundaries until you drop the knife. However, if you play along with her plan to bring her to freedom by carrying her severed head outside, she sincerely thanks you for your help, with an approving smile on her face, and says that she's glad to know she was right to trust you.
• The Eeyore: She's very sullen, downtrodden, and mostly completely uncaring about the events of the world around her.
• Faking the Dead: Very convincingly, as she cuts off her own head right in front of the player, who can only watch or close their eyes and be forced to hear her do it. It's a gambit to fool the Narrator into thinking his problem is solved which allows you to carry her head out of the cabin if you pick up on her ruse.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: If you've killed another version of the Chapter I Princess and left the basement, not only does the Prisoner's apparently twitching eyelid seem to indicate that she's still alive, the view from the cabin's windows as you leave will confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that her self-inflicted decapitation didn't kill her.
• Foreshadowing: If you ask the Prisoner about what happened in the previous loop, she reacts with surprise about you "giving away the game", foreshadowing that she is aware of the Narrator and his machinations, as well as foreshadowing her faith in the Player to help her out of the basement without him knowing.
• Hates Small Talk: Outside of necessary exchanges of information, she doesn’t like to talk much. If the Player gets trapped with her and attempts to strike up a conversation to pass the time, she only replies enough to indicate as such.
• Hidden Depths: She appears quite aloof, distrusting and stoic towards the player even though she was partly responsible for his death in the previous chapter. However much of this is an act, as she senses the force (i.e. the Narrator) who nearly killed her is nearby and she is now bound in heavier chains. If she escapes the cabin with you, she starts to open up in those brief moments (including expressing sincere gratitude if you carried her head out or warm curiosity if you waited with her). Furthermore she will ask the Shifting Mound to let you remember her after, inferring that she did care, and was grateful for your efforts.
• Losing Your Head: Due to only being killed when her heart is pierced, the Prisoner is able to escape the Cabin by cutting off her own head and letting the Player take it away.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Even more so than normal. This princess is so apathetic to the world around her that she can cut off her own head and not even look annoyed by the process. If you stab her, she'll only remark that she should've expected you to kill her in Revenge, and that she won't help you next time.
• Mercy Kill: Once she realizes that something has taken hold of your body, the proto-Prisoner takes the Pristine blade, promises to make it quick, then gives you a Slashed Throat so you die quickly.
• The Not-Love Interest: Unlike most of the friendlier versions of the Princess she isn't particularly affectionate to the Player beyond simple gratitude if he helps her escape the cabin, and while she will fight the Player if he gets too close to her she doesn't get any enjoyment doing so the way the Razor or the Adversary do. If the Player gets trapped by the shackle in the basement, it becomes pretty clear that outside of his potential to either harm her or help her escape the cabin she is entirely indifferent to his presence, other than some slight annoyance should he try to make small talk with her. Amusingly, the Voice of the Skeptic cheerfully refers to her as "the missus" in the Cage route, suggesting that, like most of the Voices with their Princess counterparts, he's still very attracted to her and even sees their relationship as a romantic one.
• Not So Above It All: She usually says only what she needs to, but if you ask her about the empty chain next to her, she'll make a quip about how you could try it on ("Maybe it'll fit.") and make a wry smile. If you do examine the chain, the Narrator remarks that she eyes you with "faux-disinterest", but she is genuinely curious to see what will happen.
• Not So Stoic:
  • Despite her seemingly apathetic nature, she does not take you ignoring her consent or trying to kill her lightly, and she will attempt to strangle you with her chains until you relent or kill her.
  • Like the other Princesses, the Prisoner can't stand the idea of being left to rot in the cabin alone. If you try to walk away from her mid-conversation, she'll angrily call you a bastard and threaten to make you regret it.
  • On a more positive note, if you successfully figure out her escape plan and pull it off, she gives you a genuine smile and heartfelt thanks.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: If you kill her, while she accepts why you'd choose that she also says that she won't ever offer to help you again, even if it means damning her as well. She's next seen as the Drowned Gray.
• Poor Communication Kills: You can misread her intentions if she uses the Pristine Blade to decapitate herself and you leave without taking her head. In which case she will actually die, and come back as the Cage^note as of the Pristine Cut. Previously, it would've taken you to the Grey, just like slaying her would.
• Properly Paranoid: If you come into her basement with the knife, she suggests you sit down well out of arm's reach to talk. Sit closer and the Prisoner, angry, says she's not powerless and starts to strangle you with her chains, insisting that if you don't drop the knife she'll kill you. The Voice of the Hero is dismayed but the Voice of the Skeptic thinks this is a completely reasonable reaction — and you can in fact stab her in the heart from that distance.
• Slashed Throat: After the Narrator takes control of you in Chapter I, the proto-Prisoner will effortlessly and efficiently slice your throat open with one cut.
• The Stoic: The Prisoner is down to business, borderline apathetic, and Hates Small Talk. The Narrator describes her voice coming up the basement stairs as "harsh but controlled". If you get yourself trapped in the basement, she will resign herself and sit in her upright perfect posture, staring in complete silence at the other side of the room until the walls erode from entropy, after which she'll only give an amused remark that you two got out of the cabin after all.
• When She Smiles: Once you've helped her escape the cabin by taking her severed head outside, she gives you a small, yet genuinely grateful smile, thanking you for helping her with her escape and saying she was glad she could trust you.

Doubt the Narrator's claim of the Princess being unarmed before slaying her or attempting to lock her in the basement, giving her the time to reveal a Pristine Blade of her own. Alternatively, examine the Princess' body after killing her, at which point she revives and stabs you. The result is a blade-mad princess who wants to kill you repeatedly.

The Razor leads inevitably to Chapter III and IV: if you took the Pristine Blade in Chapter II, you will get Chapter III: The Arms Race and Chapter IV: Mutually Assured Destruction; if you didn't, you get Chapter III: No Way Out and Chapter IV: The Empty Cup. However, the game considers all of these variations to simply be the Razor.

---

• AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle: Her inflexion and cadence are very different from the other Princesses, and it's particularly noticeable with how she says "in-no-cent princess."
• Actually Pretty Funny: If you charge the Razor (who is made of knives) and try to punch her in the face with your bare hands, she's thoroughly amused by the sheer audacity on display and lets you get in a free hit for it.
  The Razor: Ow ow ow ow ow! That hurt! What are your bones made of, metal? Because mine are.
• Affably Evil: Despite being so Ax-Crazy she considers it just a fun game to repeatedly butcher the Player, she's actually pretty genuinely friendly and enjoys her time "playing" with you, and is truly happy to be flirted with, not that that stops her.
  The Shifting Mound: She is cruelty, but she is also joy.
• Ax-Crazy: The Razor is so insane with her bloodlust that killing you over and over again never gets old to her. Any attempts to dissuade her into doing something else just result in the Razor slicing you up even faster.
• Bad Liar: When you first meet her, the Razor tries to repeat the captured Princess act, but her acting is very wooden and she rather awkwardly and repeatedly insists that she won't kill you again. Even the Voice of the Hero, who admits that he's not very good at picking out lies, can tell that this is all just an act. Any amount of scrutiny towards the Razor will make it clear that the Hero doesn't buy it; the problem is that the Razor is actively hostile and probably hiding a weapon, so the question is less if she's telling the truth (since she obviously isn't) and more about how to approach her.
• Barefoot Loon: She goes around barefoot, which serves to make her look more unhinged.
• Beware the Silly Ones: The Razor is a goofy, Affably Evil woman who is absolutely terrible at hiding her intentions, but she is by far the Princess with the highest body count, with her One-Winged Angel form requiring the Player to exile all of the voices and the Narrator from his mind in order to actually slay her.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: She slips blades free as soon as she realizes she doesn't have to bother pretending to be innocent, leaving the slit open flesh of her arms and hands to dangle like trailing sleeves from her elbows.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The Princess becomes the Razor if you question if the seemingly unarmed Princess is secretly hiding a weapon, or refuse to accept she's dead even after you impaled her in the heart. Your paranoia is rewarded with a stab to the neck, and the next time you see the Princess, she has become a kill-happy psycho who is not just hiding weapons, she is a weapon.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: In the final confrontation, she expunges all her flesh and becomes a skeleton of blades. However, it's this form that makes her the most vulnerable, as her beating heart becomes visible. Indeed, if you have the knife with you, you finally kill her in this form (though she also kills you). Interestingly, if you don't have the blade, she will instead shatter her own blades on you and be reduced to only her heart.
• Dating Catwoman: She's one of the few princess you can actually get into a romantic relationship with, with her happily reciprocating your advances. This won't stop her repeatedly murdering you, but at least there'll be romantic subtext to the murders now!
• Dissonant Serenity: She kills you many times all whilst still smiling.
• Evil Is Angular: Her design is made up almost exclusively of straight lines and sharp angles — it's particuarly noticable with her shoulders, cheeks and breasts. In-universe this is because she is literally made of knives. On a more thematic level, it gives her a subtly robotic and inhuman appearance even before it's apparent what's actually going on.
• Exact Words: She claims that she doesn't have a knife, which is entirely true: she has a Blade Below the Shoulder.
• Failure Is the Only Option: A theme of her route - every option availiable when fighting the Razor is bad (if not blatantly idiotic), and all of them will end with your death at her hands. The only way to beat her is to find a way to stop making choices, by removing the voices and narrator from the equation.
• Horrifying the Horror: Should you bring the Razor to the Long Quiet without taking the knife, she'll attempt to kill you again, but it will be a No-Sell on the player's part, eventually bending all of her metal body into scrap. All the while, the Razor will be confused, angry, and even scared that she can't slice you apart anymore. The only part left of her will be her beating heart that the narration says is beating "calmly", which will be taken by a single hand of the Shifting Mound.
• Humanoid Abomination: She doesn't transform into blades so much as she is nothing but blades. As in, her human appearance is actually nothing more than a thin suit of skin over a mass of blades, which start poking through her mouth and fanning out from the simple single-blade arms she starts with. If an unarmed Player punches her in the face she gleefully says her bones are made out of metal. In Chapter IV she says she's been working on something and causes her whole exterior to stretch and shred, revealing herself as a humanoid figure made up of "a skeleton of blades" that's considerably larger than her human form, with the sole organic component being a disconnected, beating heart.
• Identity Breakdown: If you left the knife behind, your final fight against The Empty Cup has you "become nothing," which leads to the Princess being unable to kill you and wondering what that means about herself.
  "But it's like you're nothing now. You can't be nothing! If you're nothing, then what am I? Am I nothing too? No! I'm the one who hurts you!"
• Interplay of Sex and Violence:
  • The final confrontation with the Razor where you're armed with the knife really plays this up:
    The Narration: Your weapons clash again and again, you and her entering a rhythm free of thought and free of self. There is only the dance. The ebb and flow, the shifting of the tides back and forth between you. The deeper you fall into your play, the faster your hearts pound, and the faster the momentum volleys between you. An endlessly building crescendo and then... an opening. Your blade strikes free of volition and hers strikes too. Both strikes are lethal. Neither of you will survive, but neither of you fear what's to come. This is a good ending.
  • It's not that hard to interpret this Mutual Kill at the end of the battle as a Visual Pun for la petite mort, a phrase which literally means "the little death" but has been used since the late 1800s as a euphemism for orgasms.
  • The lead up to this fight has the Player force all of his Voices and the Narrator from his mind, setting the stage to a twistedly intimate and highly violent "alone time".
  • Played for Laughs in the instance of you flirting with her, which she reciprocates. She'll still kill you, but now you both can enjoy a mutual romantic subtext to it!
• Laughably Evil: Her Ax-Crazy status that makes her enjoy slaughtering you not out of malice or revenge but fun means there's quite a lot of comedy made over how kill-happy she is, from how much of a Bad Liar she is to her appreciative blushing at you flirting with her before stabbing you again.
• Love Redeems: The Player can attempt this by confessing his affection for her as she prepares to kill him. Her response? She blushes, admits to liking the Player as well... and then kills him anyway, all while still blushing.
  The Razor: Still going to kill you, but now we can enjoy a mutual romantic subtext to the murder!
• Machine Monotone: The metallic reverb in her voice, as well as her transparent attempts at getting you to let your guard down, results in a cheerful variant of this trope. It helps that she is basically a living mass of metal blades with the skin of a human.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: The more permutations of her you meet, the more and more sharp teeth she gains, until they're crowding outside of her mouth.
• Natural Weapon: The blades that make up the Razor appear to be a part of her body.
• Non-Standard Character Design: While her initial appearance superficially resembles the Princess in chapter I, even before her blades are revealed the Razor herself is drawn with significantly more sharp angles and straight lines, giving her an almost robotic appearance.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • If you come in with a knife for your final battle, she'll drop her playful and childish demeanor to seriously say "you're incredible" just before your Mutual Kill.
  • Before that, if you suggest searching for knives in her "secret areas", she'll drop the smile and coldly tell you "there's nothing there". Hero admits that for once, that sounds sincere.
• One Free Hit: In Chapter III, if the Voice of the Contrarian has you throw away the knife but you insist on fighting the Razor, she'll let you have one free hit, which you use to deck her in the face. Unfortunately, it does nothing, and she skewers you.
• Perpetual Smiler: Always sports a Slasher Smile no matter the situation.
• Psychopathic Womanchild: Throughout the Razor route, she gleefully slaughters you. And it's not out of some sense of revenge or retribution, but because she wants to see you do new things and for the fun of killing you over and over.
• Scary Teeth: As she kills you again and again, turning more and more into a living knife, her teeth become so sharp and long that they don't even fit in her mouth.
• Sincerity Mode:
  • If you ask her to prove that she doesn't have a knife, she'll gleefully hold up her hands and even roll up both her sleeves. If you continue to push it and suggest she's got a knife hidden away somewhere secret, she makes a point to drop her blatantly insincere tone completely and declare that there is nothing hidden in any of her "secret zones".
    The Razor: What kind of Princess do you think I am? I would never hide something sharp somewhere secret. Wait, that sounds like I'm lying, but I'm actually not. My secret zones are for me only they have nothing to do with you or my intention to not-stab you to death the second you get close to me.
    The Narrator: Her smile drops for a second, her expression sharp and flat.
    The Razor: I assure you, there's nothing hidden there.
  • If you flirt with her or give her "The Look", she'll blush, shyly raise a blade to her chin, gently smile, and reciprocate your feelings. It won't stop her from skewering you, but at least now the two of you can enjoy some romantic subtext to all of the murder.
  • If you chose to go in with a knife, she'll sincerely tell you "you're incredible" during the final fight.
• Slasher Smile: Her permanent expression after she really gets into slaughtering you is a gleeful smile.
• Stealth Pun: Her One-Winged Angel form is a massive woman covered in sharp in blades who wants to kill you. In other words, an Iron Maiden.
• Super-Toughness: Her entire body is made of metal blades, meaning trying to fight her initially has zero effect, with any strike using the Pristine Blade only causing superficial damage to her skin-suit and punching her doing nothing but hurting your hand. It's only after she exposes her heart, the one part of her vulnerable to damage, that you can hope to slay her.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: She talks almost entirely in these in her chapter II ("It would be so silly of me to cut you open and look at your insides!"), although she drops the act once the exit to the basement is gone.
• Un-Evil Laugh: Her "laugh" consists of her just saying the word "hehe" out loud with a completely blank expression rather than any kind of actual laughter.
• The Unfettered: The core of her being. The Razor has no grand designs and lives purely in the moment. She's a single-minded killer who will stop at nothing to kill you, over and over again, not because she hates you but simply because her relationship to you is based around violence and she's found that she enjoys it. Fittingly, the key to overcoming her is also in emptying your mind of all outside distractions and experiencing a perfect, serene moment, whether that takes the form of a simultaneous killing stroke, or peaceful tranquility.
  The Shifting Mound: (On the Razor) This one is a single-minded edge. She is cruelty. But she is also joy. She will make for a piercing heart. Do not mourn her — she is exactly where she needs to be.
• Villain Respect: See Worthy Opponent for details.
• Villainous Breakdown: In the scenario where you empty your mind and don't take the knife with you, the Razor becomes horrified as her body breaks when she tries to attack you. It doesn't take long for her to ineffectively throw herself at you, ranting that she's the one who gets to hurt you.
• Voice of the Legion: Her voice gains a weird metallic reverb, making it sound like she's farther away than she is or like she's moving around.
• Wolverine Claws: In the demo version, she had these rather than the Blade Below the Shoulder of the final version.
• Worthy Opponent: The Razor will be completely awestruck when the Player Character clears his mind of his Voices and the Narrator in order to properly fight her in the Long Quiet, remarking that she needs to take you seriously for once.
  The Razor: You're incredible.

Slay the Princess without hesitation, then escape the cabin by killing yourself. The result is a dead but snarky ghost version of the princess haunting the cabin.

---

• And Show It to You: Shows your heart straight to your face after she rips it out of your chest.
• Apologetic Attacker: If the player provokes her enough to attack, she will say this as she does:
  The Spectre: I never wanted to have to hurt anyone. It's not who I wanted to be.
• Attack on the Heart: If you choose to leave the Spectre in the basement or insist on trying to kill her, she respectively becomes distraught and then gives into anger, or is furious from her attempts to make peace being met with more violence. Both outcomes lead to her reaching into your chest, ripping out and crushing your still-beating heart. She then swears to take your body by force next time, sending you on the Wraith path.
• Berserk Button: Should you say no to helping her out or destroy her corpse, she'll be thoroughly pissed at you.
• Beware the Nice Ones: The Spectre's gentle incarnation is one of the nicest and most pleasant princesses, and even her harsh incarnation is still nicer than a lot of vessels. But if you try to slay or abandon her, she'll tear out your heart with her bare hands, her eyes filled with rage, and come back in the next incarnation as the monstrous Wraith.
• Big "SHUT UP!": Says one during her Shut Up, Hannibal! moment towards the Narrator.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The Spectre appears if you slay the Princess without hesitation but refuse to accept the Narrator's "happy ending." This refusal means that the Princess's death evidently lingers on your mind, so she starts to exist in a state beyond death.
• Cute Ghost Girl: Her form as the Spectre, despite being an undead ghost with a skeletal face, is drawn with somewhat cute features. She's certainly more pleasant to look at than the other undead forms she can take. Granted, she does have the occasional Nightmare Face.
• Deadpan Snarker: The Spectre calls you "killer", yet is quite snarky with how she does so.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: The core of her being. Having been previously killed before you could get to know her, she wants something more than what she currently has.
  The Shifting Mound: (On the Spectre) This one is vaporous. She is a dream of a life she could never have, but that longing has given her so much capacity for kindness. She will make for a yearning heart. Do not mourn her — she will finally be able to hold what she never knew.
• Everyone Has Standards: Though she's mad at you for killing her and even suggests that she ''might'' want to see a little begging, once she sees you beg, she feels bad about suggesting that and for you.
• Exact Words: Partially. She says to the Narrator that he won't be around for much longer if he continues to attempt to try to manipulate everyone. Should you let her out of the cabin, the Narrator vanishes.
• Expressive Skull: She has a skeletal face, although it doesn't stop her from displaying a free range of expressions with it.
• Face Death with Dignity: Sort of; in the end of each route, the Princess' incarnations always react with fear as the surroundings disappear and they begin to feel cold before the Shifting Mound claims them. Not the Spectre. Unlike them, after being taken outside into the Long Quiet, she simply calmly accepts her fate, even noting that this is where she is meant to be, right before the Shifting Mound takes her away.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: To a certain extent, not unlike the Tower. If you let her possess you she can hear and converse with your voices, including the Narrator.
• The Gadfly: She is surprisingly playful for someone who was murdered. She'll sometimes use her Nightmare Face just to get a rise out of you. If you meet her unarmed, she playfully says she might forgive you if you beg for it (though she'll take her words back if you actually do beg).
• Gallows Humor: The Spectre sardonically refers the Player as "Killer" and throughout their conversation dryly jokes about both her own death, and potentially killing the Player.
  The Spectre: All I know is there's a hole in my chest, and not the big obvious one that you put there.
• Ghostly Chill: Whenever she comes into close contact, the narration will describe the experience as incredibly cold. Being touched or possessed by her is outright painful for this reason.
• Hates Being Alone: For the most part, the Spectre's demeanor is surprisingly cheerful and friendly given the circumstances. However, should you bring up the possibility of leaving her in the basement, she abruptly descends into panic.
  The Spectre: But if you're just leaving me then...Then I'm really just going to be stuck here forever. Th-There's nothing I can do, it's just going to go on and on and on and on, lonely and sad and hurting and empty. No... Nnnno. Not that.
• Hates Being Touched: If you don't take the Pristine Blade, your options to attempt to slay her are replaced instead with attempting to grab her. Doing so will yield the exact same result: her ire and eventual death at her hands.
• I Just Want to Be Free: The Spectre knows she should be "home", outside, part of things. Getting out of the basement is far more important to her than punishing the Player who killed her.
• Implied Death Threat: If you allow the harsher Spectre to possess you, she doles this out to the Narrator and the Voices, saying to the former that he won't be able to manipulate everyone for much longer and to the latter that your head is "too crowded" and that she's going to make "renovations" if it turns out she's trapped in there.
• Insult of Endearment: If you patch things up with the spectre and let her possess you to escape, her nickname of "Killer" takes on a more affectionate tone.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Her harsh incarnation is rude and impatient, and will remain so no matter what you do. However, she's still fully sincere in her claims that she wants to bury the hatchet between the two of you. If you let her escape, she'll tersely but sincerely thank you for the help and give your body back with no complaints or last minute attempts at vengeance.
• Mood-Swinger: Swings between playful and ethereal to guttural and scathing at the drop of a hat, switching between looking like a Cute Ghost Girl and a Nightmare Face depending.
• Nice Girl: She's a real sweetheart, all considering. At least as long as you don't try to kill her again. And even if you do but still ultimately escort her out of the basement, she's more snarky, dismissive and impatient than outright hostile, which is pretty reasonable given the circumstances.
• Nightmare Face: Whenever she gets upset or wants to make a point, she drops her Cute Ghost Girl look and puts on a nightmarish visage.
• Non-Malicious Monster: Contrary to what the Narrator claims, the Spectre genuinely doesn't want to destroy the world; all she wants is to be free from the cabin, something she makes abundantly clear during the conversation with her. She'll kill a player character who won't help her, but isn't happy about it. When she possesses you and gets to meet the Narrator in person, she outright refutes his notions of her wishing to bring an end of the world in one conversation.
  The Spectre: I'm just trying to get home. You don't have to act like it's the end of the world.
  The Narrator: But that's exactly what you leaving this place is going to be.
  The Spectre: You don't know that!
  The Narrator: I do.
• No Sympathy: Should you inform her on what happened to you in the aftermath of you slaying her in the previous chapter (with you being stuck in an empty cabin for an unimaginably long period of time and being forced to escape by killing yourself), she at first pretends to sympathize with your plight...before bluntly telling you that you deserved what you got, and that now you know how she felt when you slew her. Justified, since from her point of view, you were a cold-blooded killer who felt no sympathy for her predicament, so why should she return the favor?
• Oh, Crap!: If you let her possess you, you get one last option to stab yourself, taking yourself with her. The Voices and Narrator realize this is her moment of weakness, and she starts panicking as she resists in vain.
• On Second Thought: If you came down to see her without a knife and didn't make a move to grab her, she'll say that she might be interested in seeing you beg for forgiveness. Should you oblige her request after revealing that you killed her because she was supposed to end the world, she'll proceed to take her words back.
  The Spectre: So... does that mean you regret what you've done? Are you here to apologize and make nice? Beg for absolution, maybe? Because I might be interested in seeing a little begging.
  [...]
  The Player: (responding to her "cold" comment) I'm not cold! I'm just... dumb! I'm just a big dumb stupid idiot! Stupid stupid stupid what was I thinking just believing what I was told?
  The Spectre:Nevermind. I don't think I want to see you beg. That's just sad. I shouldn't feel sad about my murderer.
• Pet the Dog: After you let her possess you and successfully bring her out of the cabin, even if she's been left irritated by your previous failed attempts to slay her, she still expresses her gratitude to you after she unpossesses you.
  The Spectre: All's well that ends well, right? You lived up to your end of the bargain, so I'll live up to mine. Thanks.
• Pummeling the Corpse: After chatting with her and trying to grab her, you can ask the Voice of the Cold if there are anymore ideas. He suggests pulverizing her skeletal corpse in an effort to destroy her completely. Of course, this does not end well for you...
• Rejected Apology: She refuses to accept your verbal apology, given how little it does to make up for killing her. She wants you to actually try to make it right by helping her leave the Cabin before she gives you that grace.
• Scars Are Forever: Even as a ghost, she bears the scar of the stab to the heart you gave her.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: An irritated Spectre allowed to possess you will call out the Narrator for trying to manipulate you and the other voices.
  Spectre: Oh, shut up! Stop trying to manipulate everyone. Or don't, actually. It doesn't really matter, because you won't be around to do this for much longer.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Likely due to how limited your interactions in Chapter I are, the Spectre's personality changes depending on how you treat her in Chapter II. If you apologize for killing her and accept her proposal to possess you without issue, she'll express gratitude towards you and defend you against the Narrator, saying that she can tell you truly want to make amends. If you attempt to slay her, she'll be irritated, and if you then allow her to possess you, she will be impatient, dismissive of your discomfort, and be more confrontational with the Voices and especially the Narrator, outright telling him to shut up. Interestingly, this is reflected by the tone of her voice in your head, as she sounds closer to the version of the Princess if you don't take the knife in the former situation instead of the version of the Princess if you did take the knife. The most noticeable difference is seen when you wake up after she possesses you:
  (if you're antagonistic to the Spectre) "Get up. You've still got a job to do."
  (if you're apologetic to the Spectre) "Come on, you. You've gotta get up. I know everything feels... heavy right now, but we still have to get out of here."
• Symbiotic Possession: Asks you to let her escape in your body, since killing you only resets the "Groundhog Day" Loop and she'd prefer to be asked before coming in. The Spectre playfully dodges the question if asked if she needs consent to possess you. If you let her in, her entry is quite painful and having her cohabit is chilling and exhausting, but she can snark at the Narrator and the other voices in your head.
• Transformation Horror: She cries if she tears out your heart, saying that she had wanted a peaceful solution but now she can sense herself about to become much worse.
• Voice of the Legion: Her voice gains a spooky reverb and a whisper that repeats everything she says as she says it. The distortion becomes more pronounced when she feels intense emotion. While she's possessing you this effect is all but gone and she sounds much more like the Chapter One princess.
• Wham Line: She describes the Narrator as something that doesn't belong, a barely there shape of something left behind, more memory than person. And then:
  "You're kind of like me, actually."
• You Can't Kill What's Already Dead: Unlike every other Chapter II version of the Princess, she cannot be directly attacked and killed due to possessing permanent Intangibility as a ghost. Trying to slay her and "slay her harder" only results in your blade passing harmlessly through her neck, and if you try to slay her while she's grabbing your heart, she is tangible enough to have her neck slashed, but it doesn't hurt her and certainly doesn't stop her from crushing your heart. She's only vulnerable to death after she enacts Symbiotic Possession on you and you go Taking You with Me, since at that point she has a physical body that can be re-killed.

Walk away from the cabin or attempt to go on an invalid route, for example by loading in a save with choices leading up to a defunct route from pre-Directors Cut demo. She was initially five alternate versions of the Princess◊ that you unintentionally merged into a single multi-headed being.

---

• All There in the Manual: The five fractured versions of the Stranger have names in the game's files. The "Harsh" and "Soft" Strangers are named as such, which was implied by the paths in the basement leading to them also being described in the same way. The Stranger you first meet by going down the middle path is "Neutral", which is alluded to by the Voice of the Hero when he calls her "blank". This leaves the Obviously Evil Stranger and the depressed-sounding Stranger, who are labelled "Monster" and "Emo" respectively.
• Alpha Bitch: One of the Princesses who make up the Stranger has a snooty and demeaning attitude. You encounter her first if you take the harsh staircase.
• Ambiguous Situation: In her version of the "And? What happens next?", when the Long Quiet tells the Stranger-heart of the Shifting Mound "I don't want to be a god", rather than responding that she doesn't want that either, she says she doesn't think there's a choice. She still comes with him out of the cabin as a multi-headed, multi-armed being, if less mind-meltingly complex than the full Shifting Mound. The other versions of this ending are commonly interpreted as the Shifting Mound becoming mortal, but it might not entirely be the case with this version.
• Benevolent Abomination: She's easily the least human of the Vessels, even beating Shifty in terms of sheer incomprehensibility. However, she's also one of the most benign — she's the only Princess other than the Damsel who never attacks the Player, with most of the danger of her route coming from finding her rather than anything she does. Afterwards, you can meet her in a more stable form in the finale, where she's just as friendly and loving as the more conventional hearts.
• Broken Bird: One of the Princesses that make up the Stranger expresses how hopeless she feels everything is and is overall extremely gloomy, to the point she outright begs to be killed.
• Collective Identity: The core of their being. The Stranger is made of five separate Princesses forcibly merged. As the Heart of the Shifting Mound, they have stabilized physically and mentally. They now all think of themselves as a single collective Princess, and are somewhat proud of being a smaller reflection of the Mound.
  The Shifting Mound: (On the Stranger) These ones are a contradiction. A winding kaleidoscope of paths unwalked. They are stretched into a shape not unlike me, but it is a shape they cannot hold. [I am sorry that you met this vessel so early in your journey, but] they will make for a rich and vibrant heart. Do not mourn them — for they will finally get to know themselves.
• Deadpan Snarker: One of the Princesses who make up the Stranger is flippant and snarky.
• Doppelmerger: The Stranger comes to be when the breaking of the narrative by refusing to enter the cabin results in a Merged Reality that fuses five possible alternate versions of the Princess into Sharing a Body, resulting in a Humanoid Abomination full of Body Horror, including five arms, five heads and a horribly misshapen body.
• Death Seeker: The Broken Bird Princess is so gloomy she outright begs to be killed at one point.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: The Stranger in the 2022 Demo was misshapen and grotesque with a Long Neck, but recognizably humanoid. In the 2023 Demo, her appearance changed so that her head and neck looked more like an earthworm attached to a humanoid body. In that version, she also has an atonal sing-song of a voice. The full release completely re-hauled her design, turning her into a Doppelmerger comprised of multiple different versions of herself.
• Eldritch Abomination: She's the most alien of the Princesses, a blurry and contradictory mass of people, actions and images that only barely come together into a warped humanoid figure. Even the Shifting Mound acts more like a human than the Stranger. She does, however, get better when you meet her again in the finale. ^note The original idea for her was , but this was rejected as "too comprehensible" and replaced with the current version
• The Eeyore: See Broken Bird for details.
• First Girl Wins: In a fittingly strange way. If the Stranger's route is the first one you experience and you choose to go to the Shifting Mound's heart in the final confrontation, you meet the Stranger in the cabin. Albeit a much happier and more stable version of them than the one you initially met.
• The Generic Guy: If you go down the middle staircase, the Princess you encounter first comes off as nondescript, without any distinctive personality quirks. The Voice of the Hero even describes her as "blank".
• Humanoid Abomination: She's a fusion of five Princesses converged into one being, and all five of her heads can speak independently of one another.
• Mirror Character:
  • To the Shifting Mound in being a convergence of multiple versions of the Princess. But The Stranger considers themself a "shadow" of Shifting Mound that exists independently of her.
  • Also, to the Voice of the Contrarian, as both are the result of the player avoiding what is required of them in the game. The difference is that the Contrarian chooses to act against the script while the Stranger and the princesses who formed her had no choice.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Her fused state results in having five arms, and while not directly threatening, she destabilizes reality just by existing.
• Multiple Head Case: The end result of her merge has three horribly misshapen heads attached to one neck, all of which, plus two more that aren't visible in the portrait, speak at the same time to provide a Voice of the Legion.
• Nice Girl: One of the Princesses who make up the Stranger has the persona of a gentle and caring person. You can meet her first by taking the soft stairs down.
• Obviously Evil: The "Monster" Princess bears a Slasher Smile and gleefully expresses her desire to destroy the entire world when freed.
• Reality Warper: Reality shifts, courses, coalesces, and breaks around her the longer you're in her presence. They eventually converge into one being, albeit one that isn't completely human.
• Royal "We": Because she is Many Spirits Inside of One, she refers to herself in the plural, and her speech has this effect.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Initially misshapen, The Stranger becomes similar to the Shifting Mound in appearance when you meet her in the cabin in the goddess' heart.
• Token Evil Teammate: One of the Princesses that compose The Stranger reflects the impression the Narrator gave you of her: an evil monster who wants to destroy the world. Her voice even periodically slips into a demonic Voice of the Legion as she relishes in the blood and destruction she'll wreak if she's freed.
• Voice of the Legion: Her heads all speak at once, their voices overlapping and having different tones.
• What Have I Become?: All five of the Princesses, from nice to snooty to evil, react with equal horror at their new form after being fused into The Stranger.

Try to slay the Princess but give up while fighting, hesitate before attempting to slay her in a way that expresses fear, or tell her that she's supposed to end the world then fight her. The princess becomes a towering goddess who cannot be disobeyed.

---

• Above Good and Evil: To an extent, anyway. Trying to convince her not to destroy the world will go nowhere because she's just accepted it's what she's designed to do.
  The Tower: This isn't about desire. This is about what I am, and I have little interest in discussing destiny with one who cannot see the divine truth that shines within my heart.
• Achilles' Heel: When she makes an offer for you and her to rule together, choosing to slay her will have you cut the Tower's left Achilles' tendon, dropping her to her knees and letting you stab her in the heart. The Tower is not happy about this.
• Agony of the Feet: In order to strike at her heart properly, you have to wound her literal Achilles' Heel.
• Always a Bigger Fish: She is this to the Narrator. Should she become aware of him, she uses her powers to wrestle him into submission. Whenever he speaks afterwards, he is echoed by her Compelling Voice and narrates only what she tells him to.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Though it's not so much incomprehensible as a sign of how above you she is, or at least believes herself to be. Believing herself to be a goddess of death and rebirth, she makes it her mission to travel the cosmos, destroying worlds so that new ones can emerge from the ashes. Because of this, she is incapable of empathising with you as an equal; at best, she will respect your attempts to defy her before forcing you to either cut your own throat or give in and pledge yourself to her anyway before making you her disciple. If you tell her she doesn't have to be that kind of goddess if she doesn't want to, she responds simply that it's not about what she wants, but that she has accepted being a Destroyer Deity as part of her intrinsic nature. Similarly, if she becomes aware of the Narrator, she gloats that his endeavours are just a weak attempt to control things beyond his comprehension.
• Break the Haughty: She's extremely arrogant and believes herself to be invincible, but it's still possible to defy and attack her at which point she defends herself with her hands rather than her presence, which causes her such an Identity Breakdown that she becomes The Fury.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: You can kill her despite her claims to divinity, but it results in a Mutual Kill and reduces the Voice of the Broken to an inconsolable wreck.
• But Thou Must!: When using her Compelling Voice on you, you have no choice but to do her. That said, it can be mitigated by the Voice of the Hero's resolve long enough for you to kill her.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe:
  • The Princess becomes the Tower if you either inform her of her power to end the world or fall in battle without taking her down, both endings confirming the power the Narrator insists she has. She then becomes a straightforward interpretation of a goddess-in-physical-form.
  • Similarly, if the Player chooses to pledge himself to her, he removes her shackle holding her to the wall by willing it into non-existence.
  • This applies to your confrontation with her as well. If you put up no resistance whatsoever, implying that you think she's too powerful to defeat, then her power will grow to the point where she'll hijack the Narrator and impose her will upon the narrative itself. And if you kill yourself to try and escape her, implying you think she's even farther beyond you than the servant she wants you to be, then she'll become the Apotheosis, a being of even greater divine power. But this also works against her. Resisting her as best as you can, implying that you think you can still beat despite her divinity, will indeed allow you to slay her, resulting in a Villainous Breakdown and her downgrade into The Fury.
• Combat Breakdown: Should you choose to slay her, she will, in shock, disbelief and anger that her Compelling Voice wasn't enough to keep you from doing so, resort to simply crushing you with her bare fist. This horrifies and disgusts her as she considers her commanding voice failing unbefitting of a "divine" entity, and it causes her to undergo an Identity Breakdown that transforms her into The Fury in the next chapter.
• Compelling Voice: The Tower has one. Resisting is futile, as you have no choice but to do what she tells you to do. Show enough resistance, and she'll order you to slit your own throat, or even repeatedly stab yourself until she allows you to stop. Each time, you have no choice but to do what she wants, though the Voice of the Hero's Heroic Resolve can allow you to grab your knife hand and at least slow the process of stabbing yourself. Even the Narrator isn't immune to this, as she can see the Narrator and use her compelling voice on him, too.
• Condescending Compassion: If you choose to serve her, she's entirely open about her intentions to treat you like a pet, or at best, a priest who exists only to be her Sycophantic Servant. Being a literal god, she's incapable of relating to you as an equal.
• Create Your Own Villain: If you tell her that she's destined to end the world, she will decide to make it her purpose, and credit you for the idea. Even if you didn't tell her before she beat you to death, she will find out by forcibly reading your mind when you next meet her and come to the same conclusion.
• Cruelty by Feet: The Pre-Tower Princess ends off her Curb-Stomp Battle against you by repeatedly kicking you, breaking your bones with the points of her heels, before smugly stepping onto your broken body and kneeling on you to crush what remains of your organs and break your windpipe. Thus showcasing that she sees the Player as such a pitiful and easily broken weakling, with the durability of an insect to be squashed. This, in turn, leads to how the Tower holds to being a goddess far above you in both visual stature and might.
• Dies Wide Open: Manage to slay her, and the Narrator describes her as open-eyed and full of anguish and fear as the two of you die, though the final image of her in that scene has her with closed eyes.
• Didn't See That Coming: If you wait until the second chapter to tell her she's supposed to end the world, she seems genuinely surprised by this revelation. She takes it in stride pretty quickly, but it wasn't her first guess.
  The Tower: ...Is that so? Something about that thought wraps itself around my heart, as if it were a fundamental truth to my being that I had somehow forgotten.
• Double Meaning: When she refers to you as "Little Bird" it is easy to assume it is just her calling you a pet or a benign animal (especially since she can call you a worm), but your appearance and the size difference between you mean that her words can also be taken literally.
• Eviler than Thou: It's possible for her to subject the Narrator to a Villain Override and use her Compelling Voice to take over his narration. Dark as this is, it can be amusing to see him get taken down a peg.
• Evil Is Bigger: The Tower is so tall that you don't even come up to her waist. Notably, after this Princess is taken by the Shifting Mound, the hands that grasp her can only partly cover her face, head and neck, as opposed to covering every other princess completely.
• Evil Sounds Deep: She speaks more slowly and in a deeper, more commanding register than most other variants.
• Fan Disservice: The tallest humanoid version of the Princess, and also much more domineering and tempting than the other versions of her. However, considering everything you know about the Princess, not to mention the implications of submitting to her, the Tower's beauty likely isn't the first thing on your mind.
• Foreshadowing:
  • If, in the previous chapter, you mention that you were sent to slay her to prevent her from destroying the world, she admits in her current chapter that she is seriously considering the idea, explaining that the old must be done away with to make way for the new, and that the current world is overdue for alterations...which directly references the world-view of the Shifting Mound, a goddess of change and the true identity of the Princess incarnations' core being.
  • When she compels you to pick up the blade and stand up, she tells you that you are "quiet shadow", foreshadowing your status as the Long Quiet.
  • If you decide to do something in the Tower’s favor, she will eventually take notice of the Interactive Narrator, and accurately deduces his true nature that he reveals near the end before taking control of him.
    The Tower: Is that a person? No, it used to be a person. It's something different now. An echo.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: Played with. She doesn't know she's in a video game, but the Tower can see the Interactive Narrator, and even use her Compelling Voice on him. Should she do so, the Narrator's text will have the Tower's text colors, and the Narrator and the Tower will speak at the same time.
• Giant Woman: She has a Meaningful Name in that she towers over the player, both physically and metaphorically. She not only fervently believes that she is a goddess, but she has to kneel down just to get close to your level, and even then, she's still far bigger than you are. If you 'fight' the Shifting Mound in the endgame, she causes vessels that you've brought her to surface from her Body of Bodies and speaks through them. Most of these surface in front of the primary trunk of the Shifting Mound, but the Tower is so large that only her head and shoulders appear, and she's beside her.
• Glowing Eyes: The subtle backlighting on the Tower highlights how her eyes have an unearthly glow to them.
• A God Am I:
  • The Tower considers herself a god, and greater than any other creature. Her self-importance is not entirely misplaced, as she can see and hear the Narrator, identify him as an echo, and can use her Compelling Voice not just to make you do whatever she tells you to do, but commandeer the Narrator and his narration as well. The Voice of the Broken fully and enthusiastically agrees with her.
  • If, in the preceding chapter, you mention that you were sent to stop her from ending the world, the Tower says that the idea had wrapped its way around her heart, that the old must be done away with to make way for the new, and that the current world is overdue for alterations. If you manage to slay her, the Tower will suffer a Villainous Breakdown as she's forced to fight back physically and realizes she's about to become something worse and not divine at all.
• Holy Backlight: The stained glass behind her pours lightning on her back, giving her a divine appearance.
• Kneel Before Zod: Commands this of you upon meeting her, no matter what you did beforehand. Whether you choose to obey or not, you'll end up kneeling in front of the Tower because of her Compelling Voice. You can also just choose to submit yourself to her and become her servant.
• Lack of Empathy: As manifestations of the Shifting Mound's all-encompassing cosmic weight, the Tower and the Apotheosis are incapable of truly caring for you, or any individual, as an equal. They can express a sense of affection, or even a degree of respect, toward you as one would toward a short-lived pet, but they can't love you deeply in a way that would put you above them.
  The Shifting Mound: (on the Tower) This one is dominance. A figure capable of bending everything to her will. She will make for an overwhelming heart. Do not mourn her, for she would not be able to mourn you.
• Laughing Mad: If you choose to slay her, once your Pristine Blade finds her heart she'll start laughing manically before she knocks you across the room.
• Light Is Not Good: She's one of the cruelest incarnations of the Princess and is the one with a light motif due to her divinity.
• Light Liege, Dark Defender: She intends for you and her to have this dynamic.
  The Tower: To defy me is to claim we stand on level ground. We do not. You are quiet shadow while I am brilliant radiance.
• Literal Metaphor: What's her Achilles' Heel? The Achilles tendon in her ankle. Go figure.
• Magical Barefooter: As she holds to the view of being a divine existence while exhibiting Power Floats, her outfit lacks the regal heels she formerly wore to represent how she views herself as too mighty for the cold, hard ground to bother her feet.
• Meaningful Name: Obviously, being very tall, she towers over the Player. But her title also brings to mind the Tower card of the Tarot, which is associated with change and destruction, fitting for a version of the Princess who embraces the claim that she will cause the end of the world, and espouses the same philosophy as the Shifting Mound.
• Megaton Punch: If you manage to stab her in the heart, the Tower will retaliate by striking you so hard into the ground you bounce.
• Morton's Fork: All the endings for her route result in a bad outcome for you. You either submit to her and become her slave in helping destroy the world, kill her and she will kill you in return and turn you inside out as the Fury, or resist her and wind up killing yourself and having to face off against the Apotheosis.
• Not So Stoic: If you manage to fight her and start stabbing her in the chest, the Narrator describes her stony composure breaking into crude emotion as she laughs. The expression on her face is one of disbelief.
• Ominous Pipe Organ: The main musical component in her theme, complete with being accompanied by an Ethereal Choir and a slow drum beat. Eventually "Psycho" Strings and Horns of Destruction are added to the mix as the tune reaches a climax.
• Painting the Medium: She diverts from the "pink for friendly and red for hostile" text trend used by the other princesses. Instead, the Tower uses pink text when speaking normally, and red text when using her Compelling Voice.
  • The Tower can eventually be made aware of the Interactive Narrator, and use her voice to make him obey her as well. The combined text of the Narrator and the Tower will be in the Narrator's font, but the Tower's color.
  • When she gives you a command, there may be options you can pick from after the order is given. All but one will be greyed out and unselectable, and all of those which are grey will be attempts at resisting her. The only choice which is white (and thus the only one you can pick) is the choice that obeys the Tower.
• Personality Powers: How very appropriate for a tall, monumentally arrogant and commanding woman to have the power to force others to do what she wants by speaking.
• Pet the Dog: Downplayed. She makes it very clear that she in no way considers you an equal, but she does see you worthy of being by her side and spared from the destruction of the world so you can be with her in the next. If you resist slaying yourself twice, she'll offer you mercy and save your life in exchange for serving her.
  Player: I'm yours. [Pledge yourself to her.]
  The Tower: [smiling] That's right. I can feel your heart opening to me.
• Power Echoes: Her Compelling Voice has a reverb behind her words whenever she's using it, and her ordinary voice partly echoes as well. During her Villainous Breakdown, the Tower's voice isn't echoing anymore, a sign that her belief that she was an all-powerful goddess to be misplaced and that she's dying.
• Power Floats: The Tower floats above the ground as a demonstration of her might. She also glows.
• Power Glows: Her glowing is another demonstration of her power.
• Powers Do the Fighting: Invokes this on purpose. She won't lift a finger against you or even break her chains herself, despite clearly being able to. She relies entirely on her Compelling Voice to make you free her, thinking that this narrative will inflate her perceived status. If you force her to defend herself, she is horrified that you forced her to use her own hands.
• Powers That Be: The core of the Tower and the Apotheosis as fragments of the Shifting Mound, they are effectively the manifestations of the nature of the universe as something that is both beautiful and vast, but uncaring and unforgiving. And in confronting them the player either finds meaning by choosing to accept them as something greater than themselves that they can put their faith into or struggling against them in defiance.
  The Tower/Apotheosis: (As part of the Shifting Mound) Only with both of us is there a future to look towards. It is hope that carves meaning into being/consciousness. / Without me there are no externalities to resist, and without you to resist me, there can be no externalities. It is struggle that carves meaning into consciousness.
• Property of Love: This is the kind of love she offers you. She does not, cannot, see you as an equal; accepting a place at her side means you have to be okay with being her priest, prophet or pet — because she's a goddess, and as far as either of you know, you're just a mortal. The Voice of the Broken, who openly advocates for you to surrender yourself to her at every opportunity, is more than okay with this.
• Psychic-Assisted Suicide: If you defy her orders to bow down before her, she can compel you to slit your own throat (with even the Broken complying at the Narrator's vaguely-worded command to "end this" and forcing the blade onto your throat), and the results won't be pretty if you're going for the Apotheosis route. However, you can still defy this trope if you want to go for the Fury route.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Delivers one to the Narrator, should she become aware of him and realize he's stopping you from obeying her.
  The Tower: You're a small one, aren't you? A shrivelling little worm, stretched beyond its limits, trying to control things that it can't understand.
  Narrator: No, no no, what are you talking about, I'm just-
  The Tower: I don't care what you are. You're mine.
• Rule of Drama: Invoked by her. She's more than aware she could just break her chain and be done with it, but she still wants you to do it for her, because the idea of you falling at her divine feet and willing her chains to break is a more fitting tale for a goddess of her calibre.
• Shrine to Self: The basement she's in is depicted more like a church, a temple, or a shrine to the Tower than any kind of prison. Not only is the entire place covered in bright light and stonework, but the window behind the Tower is a stained glass window of hands reaching up towards her.
• Smug Snake: Her arrogance comes from her belief that she's a divine omniscient being, but while she's powerful, it's still very possible to defy and even slay her.
• Smug Super: She's one of the most powerful incarnations of the princess and has a very haughty, arrogant, and condescending demeanor. Which makes the Player slaying her cause such a Villainous Breakdown.
• Statuesque Stunner: She's a tall, towering woman and one of the most conventionally attractive versions of the princess. The Voice of The Broken is clearly taken with her.
• Tall Is Intimidating: She's an inhumanly tall woman, which helps to illustrate her image as an all-powerful domineering goddess who has The Broken utterly terrified.
• Telepathy: She's capable of reading minds, and if you came down to her without telling her beforehand that she's meant to end the world, but refuse to communicate with her, she decides to pry your mind for answers, discovering her role as the world-ender anyway. These mind-reading powers also allow her to hear the Voices and the Narrator, which lets her address them directly.
• This Cannot Be!: Despite the Tower being incredibly powerful, it's still possible to slay her with an Achilles' Heel attack and a repeated Attack on the Heart. At first, the Tower will No-Sell it, but she'll eventually show fear and strike you with her hands, sending her into a Villainous Breakdown.
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: She's enormous, and the Voice of the Broken remarks repeatedly about how small you are compared to her.
• Transformation Horror: Slay the Tower and she realizes she's about to change, and looks at her body with horror and disgust.
  The Tower: I... I can feel myself twisting into something new. Something dull. Something defiled. What have you done to me?
• Villain Has a Point:
  • She argues that she must destroy the world in order for a new one to flourish in its place, and that the world is overdue for alterations. If you deliver 5 vessels to the Mound and meet the Narrator, he admits that he has frozen his world in time at the moment of its destruction and wants you to slay the Princess in order to prevent its destruction. Notably, you can decide she's right and submit yourself to her will.
  • The Tower scoffs at the Narrator for trying to have her killed, calling him a Dirty Coward whose efforts are born from fear of and an attempt to control things he can't understand. Again, during the endgame, the Narrator says that the entire reason he set the plot in motion was an attempt to remove the very concept of death from the universe because of his crippling Mortality Phobia.
• Villainous Breakdown: The Tower will suffer a major one should the Player somehow manage to slay her. She pummels you and breaks your body and seems more upset about being made to use her hands like that than about dying. The Tower is filled with abject horror and disgust as she realizes she's about to become the Fury, as the Tower considers herself a god.
• Villain Respect: Resist slaying yourself twice and she'll order you to stop hurting yourself. She'll admit that she finds your determination admirable and you stronger than the last time they faced each other. "If you've learned your lesson", she's willing to save you from dying from your wounds. You can either agree, or resist once more to gravely injure her.
• Voice of the Legion:
  • As with the below-mentioned Wraith, her voice has a reverb applied to it, which is distorted even further if she gets angry/powerful, even with her Compelling Voice.
  • When she gains control of the Narrator, both his drone and her deep voice are very unsettling when he speaks.
• We Can Rule Together: The Tower offers you a place at her side. Not as an equal, but as something treasured — she will let you become her priest or prophet, or maybe "something akin to a pet".
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Conceives herself this way, arguing that she must destroy the existing world to allow a new one to rise in its place. Considering her ego and obvious God complex, it's easy to doubt her claims, but once you learn about the Princess' origins, you discover this is in fact her purpose.
• Willfully Weak: Refuses to break the chain holding her to the wall, despite being more than strong enough to do it herself, because it wouldn't be dramatic enough for her liking and she wants you to do it for her. That, and using her own strength is beneath a goddess who can command people to do things with the power of her voice.
• Wistful Amnesia: If she doesn't find out she's supposed to end the world until after her chapter has already started, she is briefly surprised, but remarks it rings true and feels like she somehow forgot a fundamental aspect of her being.
• Women Prefer Strong Men: Played With. Despite her being a domineering woman who wants to break you down, she enjoys it when you put up a fight, at least up to a point. She'll notably be a bit more receptive to you if you have the Pristine Blade.

Betray the Princess after attempting to free her. Alternately, go back to retrieve the Pristine Blade after you meet the Princess, then leave the door open behind you so she can lock you in. The Princess is now a Little Bit Beastly sassy witch, with a taste for revenge.

---

• A Handful for an Eye: At the beginning of your fight, she throws a handful of dirt at you to try and blind you.
• All for Nothing: If you give her the pristine blade as a sign of goodwill, she'll use it to kill you (as she assumes you're trying to backstab her), only to realize at the last second that you were being sincere and that her killing you was pointless.
• All Witches Have Cats: Played With as she's not a witch with a feline pet, but a Cat Girl witch.
• Barefoot Loon: She goes barefoot, as she now has bestial cat-like feet that fit with her new wild and unbalanced personality.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: The Witch has a spiteful and sarcastic sexual tension with the Player which is brought to the forefront during their No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. It can develop into something much healthier or devolve even further depending on your choices.
  The Witch: I can't wait to do this again, you wretched little thing. I hate you...but I wouldn't have it any other way.
• Blood from the Mouth: If you keep fighting her to the end, as the cabin's roots start crushing you both, there's blood dribbling out of her mouth before she starts becoming a bloody mess (even with Tears of Blood) as the roots crush the life out of her... seconds before they do the same to you.
• Blood Knight: To a lesser extent than the Adversary, The Eye of The Needle or the Razor, but if you choose to attack the Witch, she displays an eagerness to fight and will mock you for running away.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Subverted; although she acknowledges that she can't leave the Cabin without the Player and insists that she'll keep you alive so you both can leave, her spite ultimately gets the better of her. She backstabs the Player one way or another, no matter what choices you make. Even if it means sabotaging herself in the long run.
• Cat Girl: She's a humanoid female with cat-like features (while her ears are merely pointed instead of being outright cat's ears, she does have fangs, a lion-like tail, cat-like feet and the occasional Playful Cat Smile), mixing witch symbolism with cats having mischievous personalities, and the predator-prey theme she has with the Player (as cats are natural predators to birds).
• Cats Are Mean: She's a Cat Girl with a smug, spiteful and hostile personality due to her holding a grudge over you betraying her in her previous incarnation. She always betrays you. Not matter what tact you take.
• Cats Are Snarkers: She's a Cat Girl with a sassy personality, often responding to the Player's questions with sarcasm.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Deconstructed, as the Witch plays it to the point of self-sabotaging Stupid Evil. Even after admitting that she needs you and it's in her best interest to be on your side, she still inevitably betrays you. She's so spiteful and obsessed with getting one over on you that she doesn't even wait until you've got her out of the basement. While you can deliver her to the Mound, nothing you do gets you out of the Cabin without being betrayed, stabbed, crippled or some combination thereof.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The Witch comes about as a result of your betrayal of her (and potentially, the Narrator's betrayal of you). As a result, she is completely distrusting of you and is constantly looking for ways to get back at you, even at the cost of her own freedom.
• Combat Pragmatist: If you escort her out of the Cabin and follow behind her, she locks the door in front of you. If you lead her out, she pulls you down the stairs. If you try to fight her directly, she blinds you with a fistful of dirt, gouges your eyes, bites you, and overall uses any underhanded tactics she thinks might work. If you give her the Pristine Blade, she immediately stabs you with it.
• Crush Blush: Despite how much she resents you and the spiteful way she acts, she still seems attracted to you and will gain a Luminescent Blush when she sniffs you or if you flirt with her.
• Cute Monster Girl: She's an anthropomorphic Cat Girl who retains the attractive appearance of the princess, albeit in the form of an Unkempt Beauty. And despite her resentful and traitorous nature, she's often drawn to make her look goofy, with many of her mannerisms being played as cute, such as her smug Playful Cat Smile and her Luminescent Blushes.
• Cute Witch: For all her snark and resentment, the Witch is still fairly cute in her own way.
• Cycle of Revenge: The main theme of her route.
• Deadpan Snarker: If you apologize for trying to slay her the first time, and the Witch will call you a "gracious little monster" with a clearly sarcastic tone.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: As part of her general untrusting nature. If you give her your blade as a sign of goodwill, she stabs you with it, only to realize with uncomprehending horror that you were being genuine and not trying to get one over on her again.
• Failure Is the Only Option:
  • She never gets what she wants in her chapter. If she controls the roots to cut off your escape and kill you, they end up crushing her too. If she tries fighting you, the roots start growing on their own, resulting in both of you getting crushed. If she makes you fall down the stairs, she falls too and breaks her own spine. If she locks you in the basement, the world disappears, freeing you. If she successfully stabs and kills you, she comes to regret it.
  • This applies to the Player as well. You cannot slay her without being killed yourself, and you cannot leave the cabin with or without her - if you try, she'll either kill you, break your spine and paralyze you, or just lock you in the basement.
• The Farmer and the Viper: Choose to help her, don't give her the blade and lead the way up the stairs and she attacks you. The achievement you get is called "The Frog", in reference to the fable "The Scorpion And The Frog", implying that it's in the Witch's nature to betray you and be betrayed by you. Alternatively, you can take the knife and follow her up the stairs. Whether you actually want to or not, the Opportunist will stab her in the back. This gives you "The Scorpion" achievement.
• Green Thumb: Downplayed. As a witch, she has some power over "the Wild", which manifests in the ability to grow the roots that comprise her underground hovel on command. That being said, she lacks the precision to crush you without killing herself as well. Unfortunately for you, that doesn't stop her.
• Hairy Girl: She has noticeable hair (not fur, body hair) on her arms and legs, which adds to her Unkempt Beauty.
• Heel Realization: Giving the Witch the Pristine Blade will result in her stabbing you. As you die, she taunts you about getting you before you got her... and then she notices you aren't fighting back. It's only then that the Witch realizes she's betrayed you just like you betrayed her, that you were serious about wanting to make amends, and that she killed you for no reason and actively made her own situation hopeless because she just had to backstab you. But now it's too late to do anything about it, and the Witch ends up lapsing into a Villainous BSoD as you die.
• Holier than Thou: The core of her being. Having been betrayed by you, she feels the need to get revenge on you and is constantly trying to backstab you out of spite, not thinking herself as any better than you in that regards in spite of talking about how bad the two of you are.
  The Shifting Mound: (On the Witch): This one is hope marred by bitterness and betrayal. She could see the end of the tunnel, and the door was closed on her. She will make for a righteous heart. Do not mourn her — she is finally on the other side.
• Humanizing Tears: Her eyes fill with tears when she realizes, only after she's killed you with the blade you gave her, that you were sincere in wanting to break the Cycle of Revenge.
• Ignored Epiphany: If you give the Pristine Blade to her and explain that you want to end the violence between the two of you, she pauses for a moment, clearly surprised by your words. Unfortunately, her distrust wins out and she stabs you anyway, killing you...and has another epiphany that she can't ignore. Which leads her to her Villainous BSoD.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Although she's way too consumed by spite to ever give you a chance to make up for your wrongs, the Witch's resentment is understandable, since you did betray her trust and tried to backstab her in the previous loop (or at least made a very good impression of it). This holds true even in the scenario where she suffered the least. If in the previous chapter you spoke with her, went upstairs and then came back with a blade, even if you never got to actually harm her, as far as she knows, you still had intent to. This is something the Opportunist is quick to agree on.
  The Player: I didn't do shit to you last time. You're the one who locked me away until I died.
  Voice of the Opportunist: That is an exceptionally good point.
  The Witch: And you were the conniving beast that left in search for steel to slay me. Just because I won and you lost doesn't mean I'm to blame for bad blood.
  Voice of the Opportunist: Also a good point.
• Large Ham: The Witch heavily plays into her new role. Her voice in particular rises in pitch and becomes more nasally to match, and her word choice also changes. She refers to the cabin as her "hovel" and constantly calls both herself and the Player wretched.
• Little Bit Beastly: She has a somewhat cat-like appearance that includes a lion-like tail and even the occasional Playful Cat Smile.
• Living Lie Detector: During the discussion of who should be the first to climb the stairs, if you insist on her and claim you won't betray her, she sniffs you so she can "smell" if you're lying. She concludes that you're not, but the fact that you can still betray her on the stairs after suggests she's not as perceptive as she thinks.
• Luminescent Blush: After sniffing you, her cheeks blush strongly and brightly.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: The Cycle of Revenge is the main theme of the Witch's route, since you have to betray the princess to access it. This causes The Witch to be naturally distrustful of you and to greatly resent you, and she will try her hardest to betray you no matter what you do or tell her. Even to the point of committing a Spiteful Suicide if it means she's taking you with her.
• Mutually Assured Destruction: There's four ways of securing this on the Witch's route. If the two of you get into a physical confrontation or if the Player tries to leave alone, the cabin will fatally close in on the both of you. If you try to escort the Witch out with the blade, no matter what, it ends with the two of you falling back down the stairs, and both of you breaking your backs.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Should you give her the Pristine Blade in a show of good faith, the Witch will still stab you with it. However, when nothing stops her and you begin to die at her feet, it convinces her that you really weren't going to betray her.
  The Witch: [Laughing] Hahaha! I did it! I got you! You... You... Why? Why did you let me do this?!
• The Nose Knows: As a Cat Girl she has an enhanced sense of smell and at one point will even sniff you to try to tell if you're lying to her.
• Oh, Crap!: In the ending where she locks you in the basement, she will smugly throw insults at you from the other side of the door... until the whole cabin vanishes due to the Construct ending and you're face to face again. She then quickly drops her smug demeanor and tries to butter you up before the Shifting Mound claims her.
  Witch: O-oh! I didn't think I'd have to see you face-to-face again, otherwise I might have given you a little more courtesy at the top of the stairs. No hard feelings, I'm sure.
• The Paranoiac: Due to the actions that lead to her, she has no trust in you. She will regard you with suspicion the entire route, assuming you're going to betray her, and plotting to betray you first. Proving that your sincerity by handing her the blade is the only way to regain her trust, but only after she has already stabbed you with it.
• Playful Cat Smile: She often has the mischievous smile associated with cats plastered on her face, due both to her sassy and traitorous nature and her cat-like appearance.
• Pointy Ears: She has a pair of pointy, cat-like ears.
• Poor Communication Kills: It's possible to get this route without actually harming the Princess; just go to retrieve the knife without telling her why, and she'll assume the worst. You can also get it if the narrator forces you to attack her — with no way for her to know this, she assumes it was a deliberate betrayal.
• Properly Paranoid: Downplayed, as her paranoia is self-destructive and often irrational...but you do have the Voice of the Opportunist in your head advocating that you murder her, and he can take control of you and do it if you give him the opportunity.
• Psychological Projection: Start a brawl with her and she'll squeal giddily and repeatedly that you're a terrible and horrible backstabber of a little creature. Just like her. She's elated you're on the same level and share in the same mutual anger. On the other hand, if you're actually trying to make up for your mistakes and help her leave the Cabin, she comes off as rationalizing her own treachery and spitefulness, even though betraying you traps her in the Cabin. This is especially tragic on the Thorn route, since she's forced to realize that you giving her the blade was not treacherous, and she just killed you with it for no real reason.
  The Witch: You must have known I would be ready for you. Deep in your heart, you know the same things about me I know about you. We're both so very awful. [...]
  The Witch: I know you and you're hideous! Absolutely wretched! Just like me!
• Revenge Before Reason: Unique among the princesses, she's happy to remain trapped in the Cabin if it means that you end up trapped there too. Indeed, there's no way to get her out of the cabin — even the most sincere attempts will lead to her spitefully screwing you over and trapping the both of you there until you die.
• Slipped the Ropes: Not too long into your interaction with her, the Witch will reveal she could've escaped her chains at any time by just slipping them off her arm, which is now too thin to be held.
• Smells Sexy: She will sniff you so try to detect if you're lying, but she apparently enjoys your scent since she blushes and darts her eyes away from you when she does it.
• Smug Smiler: She frequently displays a smug and self-satisfied smile, especially when she has the upper hand.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: The Witch's mien is that of a treacherous Deadpan Snarker, but it's born out of your betrayal of her in the previous loop. She becomes the Thorn if she betrays you despite you showing absolute trust in her.
• Spiteful Suicide: The Witch will gladly give up her life or chance to escape the Cabin to spite you. If you lead her out of the cabin, she will either lock you in the basement or drag you down the stairs after you stab her (if she is leading) or pull you down the stairs and shatter both of your backs (if you are leading). If you choose to fight her or run away, she will allow herself and you to be absorbed into the Wild.
• Stupid Evil: Played for Drama. It's possible to give the Witch the Pristine Blade as a sign of trust, and insist that you're not going to betray her. If you then attempt to leave the cabin with the Witch, she'll backstab you anyway, thinking that you weren't being serious. As you lay dying and not fighting back, the Witch realizes that you were completely serious, and now she's betrayed you the same way you did to her, and she's doomed herself on top of that.
• Taking You with Me: In the event that the cabin starts closing in on you both, the Witch will repeatedly and gleefully proclaim that she's happy to die if she gets to take you down with her. She will express the same sentiment if she drags you down the stairs, breaking both your backs.
  The Witch: We get to die together. Isn't this a treat!
• Tsundere: While she is understandably resentful with you for betraying her in the previous chapter, especially if it was fully willing on your part, there are multiple hints that indicate that she doesn't hate you quite as much as she claims to. It's best demonstrated when you convince her to leave the basement first without a knife, after which she smells you and finds herself blushing (as if she was enamored by your smell), much to her own chagrin. She also blushes when you call her beautiful after you give her your Pristine Blade as a gesture of good will. The internal files even specifically label the frames of her blushing as "witch_tsundere". In fact, in the Thorn route that follows you give her your Pristine Blade, if you have the Voice of the Smitten with you, he even describes her as such, stopping short only of using the term itself.
  Voice of the Hero: [On Thorn route, in the aftermath of the Witch's betrayal] She hates us.
  Voice of the Smitten: Does she? She hesitated before stabbing us to death. There might just be a kernel of affection in that angry, angry heart.
• Unkempt Beauty: Her dress is tattered and her hair is tangled and full of twigs, and the basement is a "hovel" in her own words. She's still cute despite not being as put together as her other versions.
• Villainous BSoD: If you hand the pristine blade over to her as a sign of goodwill, the Witch will stab you in the heart anyways. Initially, she does so because she's sure that you were going to betray her. But it's only as you're dying on the floor and not fighting back that the Witch realizes that you were being sincere, and now she's just betrayed you as you betrayed her. All the Witch can do is stare at you with widened sad eyes as you die in front of her, her expression one of clear regret.
• Why Did You Make Me Hit You?: If you give the Witch the Pristine Blade, she'll stab you with it, thinking you gave it to her in a gambit to betray her first. After she uses it however, the Witch realizes it was the truth, and asks why you "let her" stab you. Downplayed in that she doesn't so much blame you for your own death, as she is completely unable to comprehend why you would hand over all your power to her if not to trick her.
• Wicked Witch: Her namesake, with the Princess taking on the voice, personality, and mannerisms of a classic witch. In particular, power over nature and having cat-like features play right into the archetype.
• Wild Hair: Her hair is very disheveled and filled with twigs, fitting with her wild, spiteful nature.