We, the drowned. The lost and found out.

oh, not the response she was expecting, but the fragrant loom of warmth and – is that oregano? – fills her nose upon the bludgeoning triumphant shout from behind. ah, never a dull beat with boss. “ oh, uh? i wouldn’t steal from the people i clean up after. that’d… probably get me fired! but the true evil would be doing only a half-decent job  &&.  still get tipped! mwahahaha. “

“ man, i clean up after everyone so often, i might as well put it down that i have housekeeping experience on my resumé. at least, whenever i can apply for jobs. ”

“Hey. What did I say about blaming yourself.” Akira groans, taking another moment to orient himself. Or to attempt to. The odd, lopsided feeling isn’t quite going away, and it reminds him vaguely of the transition between ‘real world’ and ‘velvet room’, except constant. Just something to get used to, he supposes, like the sensation of Arsene in the back of his mind. “Besides-” Stretching, trying to focus on himself, on the fact that he’s right here in this moment, and not in the desert, or hallucinating. “I heard you at the start of that place.”

It’s here that he gives Raven a Look. It’s not angry - not even upset. It’s determined, more than anything. Determined, and a bit exasperated.

“I heard you. ‘How did’. How, you said. You didn’t expect the desert any more than I did.” Then the look shifts into a smirk. “Otherwise I’d be yelling your ear off about not warning me about the memory stealing desert.” Though he did wonder why Raven had opted to stay silent. Maybe he’d had to? Could a person awaken if they were led by the hand the whole way through?  Probably not. Personas didn’t work that way, so it tracked that this sort of awakening was similar.

Raven admonishing the maze itself, makes Akira chuckle, though, even if only in that baffled sort of confusion where you can’t help but be amused at how nonsensical something is. The maze was sentient? It made him wonder why it chose that desert scenario, then. Then again… why not? How fitting it had been, Akira thought, briefly looking down. Just stop struggling, take the easy way out and be happy forever - Maruki had been the same way, and oh how he’d been tempted to accept. Even now part of him was exhausted with it all, but he’d never change anything. Never. Not like that.

“To be fair…” He began, looking back up at Raven “I don’t think the Maze was entirely wrong with it’s decision.” A soft laugh, then he continued- “I’ve been through a similar song and dance before, and it was just as tempting then as it was now.” Hopefully that’d help Raven’s nerves. Or maybe it would make everything worse. Maybe it already had - hell, maybe Raven knew all that already and explaining himself had no point.

“…Normally, I’d say coffee. But… something tells me I don’t need caffeine right now. Technically the idea of ‘hot’ in general makes me wanna throw something, but that’ll pass.” He was buzzing enough already, and a shot of energy would probably make the sensations worse. “Wait.” Coffee adds after a moment, pausing. “I’m not? Had a thought like that in the Maze before I left, still don’t get how that could be. Awakening - or, Flowering… is that big of a change? Unless we had this conversation already, we might have.” He was a bit… not dizzy, but the word worked well enough for now.

“Well that promise was before my own attraction went rogue and pulled something from me. I- I really don’t know how it did that, the Pathology Maze didn’t even exist until well after Lloyd and I closed the Caravan show for good.” Still fearing and fretting, Raven brushed some left-over glassy sand from Akira’s lapels.

“It- That mirage, it was a foolish thing Lloyd and I did when we first experimented with flowering.” He looked even more worried. “It... didn’t have a very good track record. in fact it almost never worked... especially with... with men...” He stepped back, getting a better once over of Akira. “That show isn’t meant to be done with only one participant, and especially without actors to support it!” He stuffed his hands into his coat pockets, pulling out a small fidget cube and, well... fidgeting with it. “I will have to look into why it was able to do that. And if someone’s hacked my carnival...” Again...

“It’s... hard to explain.” Raven focused on the cube in his hands for a moment. Surely borrowing a little explanation couldn’t hurt. “The you that You are... now. Is not the you that you were. Nor are You the you You would have been.” He stuffed the cube away, placing a hand on Akira’s shoulder, in a way that he hoped was mentor-like. “There are hundreds of billions of universes. Each which might have contained a ‘you’, and in those  hundreds of billions there were hundreds of millions of Akiras living out the same- though slightly different- events and ultimately coming out ‘the same’., but You--” he placed a hand at Akira’s center, “-- your very Soul has changed. There cannot be another You, anymore. There will be other Akira’s, certainly, but none of them can be You.”

He stepped back once more, taking off his hat, finally. “However, You can become them. You could become anyone! It will take some time for you to really get a hang of it, but as long as you stay Here-” he gestured to the Carnival, and the greater space that contained it, the very Collective Unconscious that somehow brought them together- “and within Levels Three and Four-the universes and space between them, respectively- You should have no problems, since You were already rather well verse in extra-Narrative Travel, even if you didn’t know it yet.”

Raven squinted slightly, “by the looks of it, you’re already part way into your first Trope...” He muttered something almost unintelligible under his breath: “Actually... seems you can already tap into quite a few if you try... must be because of your Personas...”

For a moment, Akira feels a rush of… not fear, but something adjacent to it, when the chandelier swings towards him. Looks like it’s going to hit him. Run, comes the thought in his mind, when it happens, and Akira tumbles away, expecting an attack or an impact or something - somersaulting backwards and tensing when the chandelier shatters against the floor.

Once again, strangeness happens. The entire place shatters, which Akira happily takes as proof that this was the ‘not real’ he’d been warning himself about this entire time. Or at least part of it. Because something is Poking at him now. Jabbing at the back of his mind, as he finds himself minutely distracted by the ill-fitting remnants of what once was. It and the Desert and Everything - it seems different, off-kilter, tilted slightly to the Left and possibly a bit Up as well.

Akira’s not even sure that’s the right description. It’s lost or gained something that it didn’t have before - and is about to lose something else, that occurs to him that he needs.

The thought comes unbidden - unwarranted. He isn’t even entirely sure how or why he’s doing what he is, but he Reaches - in over under around through - and Takes himself back. He went into the Desert knowing things, and then forgot them. Akira knew he knew things because he’d held onto some of it, even if only barely, and if he’d known nothing been nothing then he wouldn’t have had anything to hold onto so tightly to begin with.

He is - was? Is. Work out the minutae later. Akira Kurusu. As soon as he’s Taken it back from the Desert, he spares a moment to hold it close to himself, breathing for a second. He is Here, he is Safe, he is In Control.

And speaking of…

Another unbidden thought and act - or rather, it is bidden, but he’s still unfamiliar with it all in a way that bothers him, because it feels very familiar at the same time. Sort of like Mementos, but smoother. More Willing. Less in the way and certainly much less angry about it. Reaching Through is a new sensation and he half expects it to punch him in the gut like it did before, but it doesn’t - and with the thought that he does not wish to be in this Desert anymore, he just… isn’t. There’s a transition of some kind that he can’t put his finger on, but the desert just slides away into a scene that is much less… sandy. And slightly more real, whatever that means now.

“I have developed a brand new feeling about deserts.” is his greeting as he settles himself in the Not Desert (thank fuck) and tries to sort out all the new Sensations. “I call it Super-Hatred.”

Raven stands, moments away from comically chewing his fingernail off. He fears the worst. Fears greatly for Akira and the situation that he’s in. Caravan was never meant to exists without a playhouse to support it. And yeah, it was sort of breaking down, The Maze could really only do so much...

Gods dammit, this is exactly why he shouldn’t just do things! He should know better by now! Always talk to Lloyd before doing some wild shit! He just got too excited. A kid who had already tapped some of the potential? That was a gold mine! How could he pass this up? Still, he clenches his fists. Says a stupid little prayer.

And watches.

And when the desert falls a part he holds his breath. Holds it until his face is almost the same color as his signature purple coat.

And when Akira comes out of the Maze he screams.

“AAH!” He rushes over to the boy, “are you okay? The mirage didn’t hurt you did it? I’m so sorry that was a terrible idea, I’m a horrible guardian and if you want to turn some of that super-hatred on me, I absolutely understand. I shouldn’t have tried to push your flowering--” Words just tumble out of his mouth in one long stream of consciousness, picking up speed until it’s unintelligible.

Then, on a dime, he turns towards The Maze. “Bad! Bad Pathology Maze! You aren’t even made to handle that! You could have hurt yourself and the boy!”

And the maze... lets out a sad(?) groan, before closing its tent flaps tightly.

“That’s right! Think about what you’ve done!” He waggles an accusatory finger at the tent before turning back to Akira.

“I am one month closer to realizing my New Years Resolution!” Nanako announces, holding up a test with 100/100 on it.

The idea of an endless sandy nothing… does bother him. He was willing to admit that. It sounded miserable, no matter what way you looked at it. And true, some part of the offer did sound tempting - just lay down and forget all of your issues, let them go, be happy now and forever. But at the same time… the anger that it stirred in him. 

That anger was made worse by the phrasing the other kept using. Better to be happy than to suffer. Lay down and accept what comes to you. He was sure that to some people, it would be heaven. Not everyone could live with their problems. But he didn’t think he was one of those people. Not with how angry the idea of laying down made him.

“…I’ll admit. It sounds nice, on some level.” He says, turning again to eye both the Old Man and the candelabra - when had it started swinging? …How long had he even been there for it to start swinging? “I’m sure you get lots of people that love it here - if all the sand came from people, you’re definitely popular. But that’s… not me.” One of few things he was certain about, right now. “I’d rather.. chance the desert. This place just… makes me angry.” If it turned out he was wrong, he’d turn to sand anyway. But if he didn’t… if he lived, then he’d… well. Still be alive. And that was a risk he was willing to take.

The light was pointed at him, though, and he instinctively squints, tilting his head away try and avoid that awful glare of light being shone directly at you. Now or never. Lay down and give up, or keep moving. To him, the choice seemed easy.

“I appreciate the offer, but I’m not dead yet. I came from somewhere, and I’m going somewhere - somewhere that isn’t here.” A shrug, and Akira added- “I don’t think I’d be happy here anyway. Whole places makes me too mad. Appreciate the break from the sun, though. But my answer’s gonna stay ‘no’.” He’d chance the desert. If it was real, and he accepted, he’d die. But if he didn’t, he might well die anyway.

But there was a chance he wouldn’t. He’d take those odds. Well, that, and this whole place was starting to give him the creeps. But he was allowed to justify the decision. 

“I’ll say hi to your desert for you, Mr Sandman.” Akira quips, opting to get moving again. He didn’t want to get tangled up in whatever the hell this was.

“I see.” The Old Man releases the candelabra, letting it swing freely towards Akira. For a moment, it even seems like it might hit Akira, before the thread holding it snaps.

The Candelabra crashes to the floor.

The Mirage City shatters back into the desert. There’s nothing. Though If one looks, one might see bits of that fractal floor in the sand, the smile of The Old Man, the strange music, the color of the feeling of being there.

It’s behind you. Under you. There is just You now.

You and the desert stretching out around You.

The desert is deadly silent, even the heat seems to be gone. This moment.

Your choice made this happen. You have control over Your Story.

Take it. Tell it. Change it. It’s yours!

The exhaustion dragged at him - heat and hunger both urging him to just drop onto the floor and finally rest, because rest, in itself, sounded like a fantastic idea after so much endless sand and heat. Rest and relax somewhere that wasn’t a goddamn desert. But then the man continued, and again it pulled at something that immediately made Akira angry.

Wrong wrong wrong. Forget your problems and turn to sand? Akira was having trouble remembering things right now, but that statement, specifically, rankled him. No the fuck he wouldn’t ‘forget and turn to sand’, thank you very much. Why? He was positive he knew why somewhere in his mind - otherwise why would it make him so mad - so he opted to combine his sheer indignance with the ‘not real’, and defy out of pure spite, if nothing else.

His gaze dragged up from the floor to stare uncomprehendingly - and irritatedly - at the other.

“I didn’t come from the desert.” Akira said, eventually. He couldn’t have. If it was just sand, then there was no food. And if there was no food, he, by definition, came from somewhere else, that wasn’t desert. “And I’d rather stand.” Glaring. A bit of bite in his voice. He didn’t like sand, he didn’t like forgetting his problems, and he certainly didn’t like being ordered around by total strangers. An invitation to lay down if he wanted was one thing, but a constant repeated demand was another. And then there came the scream - which made him jump, distant as the noise may have been.

Purpose… in being sand? What purpose was there in that? Purpose in saving people, in helping them be better, in healing wounds and helping them get through their problems. Forgetting was just… running away. And turning into sand sounded uncomfortably like death.

“My pleasure isn’t sand.” He says after several more moments of silence. Fighting the urge to lay down, rest, stop thinking. He hates sand. Why would he want to be sand? Sand and the heat that accompanied it was miserable. Not real, he repeats again, and his eyes narrow. Something isn’t real. What if it’s this? Deserts were known for… seeing things, right? Things that weren’t there. Was this one of them? Fuck, it was certainly unsettling like one, right now.

“No… No, I’ve…” He’s heard that before. Better to be happy than to suffer. He’s heard that before. And he hates it. “No!” He spits, again. Certain this time. “Keep your sand-” A brief glance at the floor- “and your gorgeous if weird and unsettling floor. I’ll keep my problems, thanks.” Whatever they were, he would hold tightly to them, as well. They were him. Forgetting anything that was You was dangerous - which brought a whole lot more questions around given his memory was shot full of holes right now, but that was besides the point. Memory or no memory, he refused to risk falling into the Not Real. Something about this place made him furious, insulted him deeply, so he’d hold onto that.

“I’d rather not.” Is his finally reply to the other before - reluctantly, like he had to force himself - turning away. Gripping his name, his other name, and the anger.

The Old Man points, undeterred. “There’s nothin’ out there but sand. You’ll be walkin’ forever if you leave.”

A crack. It’s small, but directly opposite Akira. Across the spiraling fractal floor, The candelabra almost catches it, before swinging back towards The Old Man.

“If you leave y’can never come back, just you and the hot torturous sands.” The Old Man catches the candelabra as it passes, holding it in place, “but I won’t stop ya if you leave. It’ll be your choice if you leave. The surety of just layin’ down and acceptin’ what comes or leavin’ out into the unendin’ desert waitin’ on another Caravan.” He points the light directly at Akira.

“Make your choice.”

He hates the desert, is the main thought in his head, for a while, as he walks. Sand and heat and no relief to be found anywhere - at least in the last desert he had a car. It had no ac - because it was Morgana, and Morgana was not an actual car - but faster movement, too, would be a blessing here.

And time passed. Or it seemed to. Days or hours or weeks or minutes or years - well. Probably not years. Months? Too long. He was human, humans needed food. He hadn’t eaten anything so at worst it had been a few days. Not real.

Sand and sand and sand and heat, and him with no anything. The music was something to focus on but everything else was just heat and sand and nothing. Not real he says to himself, for what feels like the hundredth time - even though he’s starting to lose track of what, exactly, isn’t real. Something isn’t real, and he’s holding onto that tightly. The time or the heat or the desert of hell maybe even him. Akira. Persona. Arsene. Metaverse.

Something is trying desperately to take the meaning from them - it reminds him of Maruki and the weird, thick, moving-underwater-like dream he’d had when he first woke up from it - fog in the school and all the paths rounding back on themselves, barely able to think because he wasn’t supposed to it broke Maruki’s illusion- and so he holds onto his name and The Other Names as tightly as he can, repeating them to himself over and over without cease. Akira. Arsene. Metaverse. Not real. The names and the dubious state of somethings existence aren’t related, though. Another thing he holds onto as desperately as possible, on the off chance the Something tries to blend them together and make him think he is the thing that isn’t real. He is real. He is real.

Akira. Arsene. Persona. Metaverse.

He’s in the desert - and then he isn’t. Towers that are and are not nearby him, and he briefly wonders if they’re less real than even the thing he’s been chanting is ‘not real’ - then between one blink and another he’s… really no longer in the desert. No sand, no blazing sun - not real he punctuates his thoughts with, following it up with a now automatic ‘Akira, Arsene, Persona, Metaverse’. The dubious state of something’s existence stays in his heat-drained mind - and something else stands at attention in the very back, watching hard, furiously hard, for the moment he needs to break the rules and act - so for a second he just stares at the strangely unsettling presence of other people. Then the place flickers, changes - Akira groaning in something that isn’t quite pain, but definitely adjacent to it, hand at his head as he wonders once again what it is he’s supposed to be careful about.

Somewhere to be. He does, doesn’t he? He was certain he did. Why else would he be in the desert? One wouldn’t just wander into the desert with no gear for no reason, so he had a reason, a place, a goal- though granted, it could be this place. Not real. Something isn’t real. He holds onto that. And the other four words. Akira - his name. Arsene - his other name. Persona - what Arsene was. Metaverse - where Arsene was from.

But still, he thinks, trying to figure out what the hell was up with the floor - was it even safe to stand on holy shit - still, waiting to catch his breath for a moment couldn’t possibly be that dangerous? He doesn’t like the idea of forgetting his problems - it feels viscerally wrong to him, even though he indeed can’t quite place what they were beyond Arsene being a thief and a rebel, which meant he was those as well. But resting. Just for a second. Then he could get back into… walking through the desert. 

Not real, he holds onto. Staring at the floor, trying not to think of anything else but what he’s been chanting. Just in case. Resting, indeed, sounds nice, but… ‘forgetting’ sticks in his thoughts. There will be no forgetting. Forgetting is bad. Forgetting fixes nothing. It continues to stick, so he turns towards the other, and asks;

“What does… what does rest have to do with forgetting? Problems can’t be solved, if you just… pretend they’re not there. That they didn’t happen.” He genuinely wants to know - doesn’t even mean it to be rebellious or defiant. Rest? Sure. Forgetting? …Why?

The Old Man shrugs lazily. “Nought. But it ain’t stoppin’ you, is it?” he nudges Akira with a sharp elbow. He strides on, long sure steps across the fractal floor, stopping on the very edge away from the center.

“It may not look it, but lotsa folks here like to lay down an’ just let the spiral take em. There in the center, they return to the sands. Nought t’worry about then, just bein’ sand.” He grins at the boy, once again, all teeth, little sincerity. “I mean, there’s only desert out there for ya. Here y’can have purpose. Joinin’ those of us that stay. Those that like this place where pleasures freely shared.”

He raises a hand to his ear, and somewhere in the distance there are screams of pleasure (or pain).

“Better a life of wonder than a life of strife...” The Old Man finally sits down himself, reaching a hand out to Akira. “Lay down.” He says.

“Lay your spirit down.” “Lay down.”

over and over, inviting, warm.

-

Meanwhile, Raven is sweating literal bullets. Seeing The Old Man in the book was. not what he wants to see. How. How could The Old Man be there? Raven sure as hell isn’t playing that part! Lloyd and Han were elsewhere... who could’ve known? Unless... no one... is playing that part? A rock suddenly set deep into his stomach. “Oh, I’m too old for this...” A Trickster could only do so much against his own tricks.

hmmmm.... stranger danger... but also she reeeeeaally wants to share!

Akira expects there to be a fight - expects not-Akechi to get back up and start swinging. Or shooting. Or to turn into somebody else to try and drag him down with, like Shido. Not real, though, he reminds himself. None of this is real. Or… well. It is, technically. All of this was ‘real’ in that it was a real place, and this was really happening, but it wasn’t his real. Not the real versions of the people he’d known, the places he’d been. He wasn’t a part of this place, and so, to him, it wasn’t real. Perception was a weird thing, sometimes.

But then it all turns to… sand. Sand, sand, and more sand. Akira can’t help but let out a long, loud, groan.

“Of course there’s a giant cognitive desert. Because going through one of those already, clearly wasn’t enough.” He hoped this one didn’t include the unbearable heat of the real thing, like Futaba’s had. Akira didn’t miss the way Raven had spoken at first, though, making a mental note of how Raven clearly didn’t expect this to happen, which made him put his guard up. ‘How did’, as well. Something wasn’t right. Not real, he told himself again.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned-” The young man began, speaking to Raven, wherever he might be- “it’s that the Metaverse doesn’t answer to a damn soul if the person doing the ordering isn’t on the throne.” Unless you were Jose. Because Jose was just that special, apparently. One day he’d learn how and why Mementos just bent to the kid’s whims so easily. “Sometimes it goes along with you, sometimes it decides to punch you in the stomach and do something else.”

On the path or off the path didn’t seem to matter, at first glance - either way, there was a whole lot of nothing - but Raven clearly knew this place enough to know it shouldn’t be here. So, on the path he stayed. And added a new set of things to his mental chant; This place isn’t real. I’m Akira Kurusu. I’m a Persona user. God he wished this place felt like his Metaverse did. It’d make it so much easier to keep track of it not being real - his little corner of the Metaverse felt more floaty, more… malleable. It functioned on belief and perception; if you believed a toy gun was a real gun, so it would become. If you believed you could make a particular jump, you probably would. And when you spent enough time in it, you could feel that.

“Not gonna lie, though… last trip I made through a cognitive desert would have ended really badly if not for a whole lot of pure luck.” Akira - still following whatever seemed to be acting as a ‘path’ out here - let some of the nervousness slip into his voice. This wasn’t a mistake, but damn if he wasn’t a bit unsettled by this whole thing. The Metaverse was never not spooky as hell, he’d give it that.

“Giant desert, meet soul of rebellion. Let’s see what tricks you’ve got up your sleeves.”

The music points the way, in the ‘path’ through the desert there isn’t much. Sand. But the constant music is there. Just a soft, otherworldly melody leading Akira along.

The desert reflects the light of the non-existent sun above. Hellish hot and all moving towards its end point. The mirage at the end of the desert. The horizon that stretches back and back and back into the depths of the once mirror maze... A dim shape that is not there and is.

Any perception of time becomes lost. Raven even seems to stay quiet. (He’s chewing his nails, a habit he thought he’d kicked long ago.)

The heat saps as much as it can from Akira, seemingly even trying to sap away his memories. Blur them just as much as the shape in the distance is blurred. No need for things like those here in this desert mirage. The sand kicks up every now and again, settling in as a small distraction from the heat, and also trying to pull away at ‘Akira’ or the parts of Akira that make ‘Akira’ Akira as opposed to just a ruffian wandering the desert.

But eventually, the shape in the distance becomes clearer. A town, made of ivory and reflecting back all the light around it. Whether this town is or isn’t real doesn’t seem up for debate, as the further one walks, the closer one gets, but the farther one walks the farther away one gets.

This is Mirage at the end of the desert.

Towers of ivory seem to spring up all around him, the town that was far in the distance is now right on top of him. Or... is it? As the towers can’t seem to decide if they actually want to be there with him, seemingly flitting back and forth between right next to the path or far off into the Mirage.

 Until the space ignites around him, and the desert becomes a velvet room. Not The, mind. Simply A Room seemingly made of and from the color of Velvet. It’s exact contents don’t seem to stay in place, moving and changing as soon as they solidify.

Then there’s The Old Man, who is neither old nor a man. “Welcome, glad you dropped in.” His accent is thick northern British. “Why not come in, and stay a while?” The Old Man smiles a crooked smile all teeth, almost no sincerity, “Yer just a youngster eh? Youngest we’ve had. Welcome!” He scratches his chin, contemplating, or not.

Still the room that is a velvet room does look inviting. Even if the furniture and decor can’t seem to decide what sort of room it wants to be. For a moment is does seem to take the shape of a familiar jail cell, before once again changing and seemingly settling into a gallery, with Grand Candelabras lighting the way to the grandest ballroom to never exist, made from several intertwining kaleidoscopes in a grand tableau that makes a spiral towards the center. Fractals forming fractals forming a ballroom floor made of fractals forming fractals, spiraling on and on, down and down.

Akira hadn’t even noticed the thickness of the area until the Other-Akira shattered, and it went away. It was strange how much he hadn’t noticed it - how much it felt like he’d been stuck inside it until he wasn’t anymore. Sneaky little bastard of a maze.

“Don’t congratulate me just yet. Still mad.” Akira responds, sounding very much still angry. If the Maze wanted his anger he’d give it his anger. Now that it had dredged it all up, he wanted to vent. But really, in here, it could go either way. Worse yet, he could still feel that niggling temptation, a worm in the back of his brain about how much more satisfying it would have been to just kill them all instead of letting them go free.

Something he’d have to deal with later. Maybe he’d give Vivi a call. If he made it out of this intact, of course.

“This place is damn good at pissing me off.” He grumbles- “If it gets any worse, I’ll be honest, not sure how well I’ll be able to say no.” Or he’d just snap. Unless he already had, because damn if he didn’t feel pretty darn ‘snapped’ right about now. Idly, the thought crossed his mind about how it was good that the real Akechi wasn’t here. He’d always had a weird fondness for seeing Akira angry. A really weird fondness.

The shards reforming into Akechi made him a bit nervous on top of the boiling rage - until he realized the ‘stained glass’ look wasn’t going away. Well. If the maze wanted to make it easier on him, he’d take it. Just made it easier to be mad.

“You say that like Akechi had any power over me.” He spits at the mockery. “Sorry. He’s already shot me. It didn’t stick. All you’re doing by showing me a dead man’s face is making me angrier.” Case in point, his tone really wasn’t getting any less infuriated. More so, if anything. “I’ve faced worse than some sentient maze trying to play into my worst aspects - eat shit.” And he twists - sweeping a leg under the mock-akechi in an attempt to knock it over before it could cause any damage.

The Mirror Akechi goes down fast, and shatters on the ground into tiny shards. In fact the shards are so tiny they almost seem like sand. And then... they are sand. and the dark mirror maze becomes a vast unending desert.

The... Caravan? How did...?

Raven tries to keep the panic out of his voice. The maze isn’t even supposed to connect to the Caravan, and there isn’t even a cast to support it? Troubling indeed... But probably best not to bring that up to Akira.

This is an unexpected development!

Raven forces the same jubilant tone into his voice that he had before. He can’t interfere now, not without taking full narration...

The desert almost howls in response to Raven. The wind kicks up some of the mirror-turned-sand, blowing up into a cloud that rolls into the distance. Almost... leading him somewhere. And a song. so quiet.

Raven steps back from the book, Was it trying to lead Akira to a Soliloquy? But he was still just a kid! This is a mistake, he shouldn’t have suggested this. The maze was safe. He traveled the maze plenty of times. But it led him to the Caravan of all stories?

He sighs, stuffing all that panic and worry into a box for later.

Raven steps back up to the book...

I know this story well, I made this story. Follow the path. And... Try not to lose yourself.

An invitation.

Follow the sands to the Mirage at the end of the desert?