PA_LA-CE

Lyn's heels were muffled by the flattering sound of carpet. The first floor lobby of Llafiella was nothing unlike the outskirts, nor the palace grounds from outside the ivory door. Everything was draped in maroon red: from curtains, drapes, floors, carpets, and even the walls. The reds were triple toned to match the upholstery; from darkened reds to light reds, the entire palace was painted in red.

However, the ivory furniture, pillars, stairs, and key areas where it required a solid foundation for its architecture remained quartz white. Most of the statues from the outside, where the infected had been praying to, had same exact replicas nestled in the first floor lobby in corners and crevices.

Most of the tree's influence had not spread to the first floor. Lyn stepped forward and saw no exact signs of infectious hazards. The palace, although seemed royal and elegant at first sight, as more eerily empty and tense to Alfaic. Although Lyn could not sense human emotion, she could understand that her guard was not to be lowered, despite being moderately safe from the stalker fiend that they had just evaded from.

Lyn slowly strolled throughout the expansive first floor lobby. The sounds of the carpets were calming, yet ear-shattering. It was the only sound that was played in the vast emptiness of the area, which made it much more worrisome to the pair.

She approached one of the paintings nestled on the way and recognized the similarity it had to Stravia, the village Cethe and Damian lived in. It was a watercolor painting of the outskirts in sunlight, shown to be in prototype phase and unfinished. Lyn turned around and watched Alfaic survey the rest of the room. She caught up with it and held its handle firmly.

"Well, this is certainly different," Alfaic commented. "This has to be from Elaina's memory."

"Yes." Lyn said.

"The tree took her in, right? It had to have made some kind of influence on this place. I mean, look at it! Someone must be playing housekeeper here too. Just look how neat and clean it looks."

Lyn approached the first set of stairs, wanting to ascend to the second floor. Regal mosaic style windows decked the front lobby, along with a set of knights dressed in Stravian armor standing firmly beside some pottery with the crimson leaves inside. As she attempted to leave to the second floor, Lyn's blade, Relámpago, began fluttering and reacting to the knights' armor.

"Hey, what's going on?" Alfaic asked.

Lyn raised Relámpago up to the knights' armor, hovering over the chest plate to reveal hidden text invisible to the human eye. The left plate read "Welcome to" and the right plate read "my castle."

"Whoa. Didn't expect that at all," Alfaic said. The two of them turned around, facing the second floor. "Looks like she knows we're here. Big surprise, I guess..."

Lyn carried Relámpago over her head as one would do with a torch trapped in a dense cave. She entered the second floor of the palace, watching for unnatural clues around her. Two more knights stood parallel apart with blades in hand. As she walked to hover Relámpago over them to determine if there were any secret texts written on their chest plates, both knights began wriggling uncontrollably to Lyn's movement.

As Lyn retreated by taking several steps back, the knights broke out into complete movement. Each section of their steel armor split open, revealing paper thin flesh holding the flaps of each plate altogether. The plates breathed as one's lungs would breathe. The parasitic knights stumbled over and tripped on each other before summoning their hungry strength to attack.

"You've got to be kidding me!?" Alfaic cried as Lyn snatched it by the handle. As one of the parasitic knights struck down with its iron sword, Lyn swiftly dodge to the side and sliced through its paper thin flaps. The other knight chased after her and swung its blade down. Lyn parried it and sliced its steel gauntlet off before sending another quick blow toward its neck, decapitating it.

The first knight, whom Lyn assumed had been killed, found itself regenerating from its spaghetti-like flesh reattaching itself to create stronger fibers. The helmet of the knight shook violently, and out burst the same worm-like parasite. Tiny smaller parasitic heads appeared near its side with tiny teeth. Its speed increased as it grabbed Lyn by the shoulders, attempting to bite down upon her.

Lyn jammed Relámpago in its torso and sliced upward, destroying the parasites within. The second knight swung down with its elbow, striking her back as the parasites detonated in its helmet. Lyn leapt off of one of the ivory pillars and gracefully flipped around the knight. She dragged Alfaic across the movement, slicing through the parasites and sending both knights tumbling down in defeat. The fibers began to decompose and vanish.

Alfaic sighed. "Surprises everywhere, huh?!" It cried. "Glad you're here to deal with them, eh? Nice fighting."

Lyn ignored the knights and Alfaic's compliment to continue moving forward, being cautious of the other suits of armor. She advanced toward a white door with a black and gold plate labeled on it with "Gallery." Pressing her hand toward the door, tangled vines retracted from underneath and disappeared once it had opened.

Under the idea that a gallery room would have continued antique photographs in the same crimson style as the lobby, Lyn and Alfaic were both mistaken upon first glance. The all-white room surprised Alfaic, as its distinctness was both bright and shocking. Silky see-through curtains and drapes decked the gallery's hallway. All surfaces were bright white; the poorly drawn illustrations tapered on the side of the walls were the only brief glimpses of color in the area.

"The idea of being a lord of SIGMA is horrifying," Alfaic commented as Lyn scanned the sides of the gallery room. "Like I said before, she's just a victim. Looks like even if you don't want to do it, you're forced to. The tree who took her in must be above. Let's not waste time and get going."

"Wait." Lyn said, pausing in front of the poorly illustrated drawings. The flattened paper contained five drawings of individuals in different shapes and sizes, as if illustrated by a two-year old. Torso sizes were abnormally large. Arms and legs were paper thin. The dried and aged crayon used to doodle the illustrations were decades old.

Elaina. Cethe. Damian. Mom. Dad. With each name labeled above their heads, only one face out of all was not smiling happily ever after. Elaina's face was crossed out, and red arrows were pointing toward it as if it was a caution sign. Lyn pressed her hand against it, wondering what the drawings indicated.

"Cethe never told us why the village decided to banish her," Alfaic commented. "Heartless bastards. Why couldn't they realize what they did was wrong?"

"I don't know." Lyn mumbled as she approached a secondary drawing.

"I mean, come on! Someone like her? Naive and young? You'd have to pay someone to do something like that! What kind of community, let alone in SIGMA, would allow that to happen?"

"Wait." Lyn repeated again as she examined the second drawing. This time, the drawing depicted the same abnormal drawing of Elaina with her face in plain sight. Nestled next to her was a brown colored stick, sharpened to resemble a weapon. A second character, a person depicted with X-eyes to indicate death, was shown with a pool of old red crayon beside it. More arrows dangerously pointed toward the brown colored stick.

"What..." Alfaic whispered. "What do you think that means?"

"Death." Lyn blatantly stated.

"Yeah, but... that person's not from the first drawing. What do you think really happened?"

Lyn returned to the first drawing and activated Relámpago's light. She hovered it around the picture and was able to make tiny mystical words appear in invisible ink underneath.

The first drawing read, "We were once a happy family. But I wasn't."

Lyn scooted over to the second drawing and hovered Relámpago underneath to uncover additional secret writing about the unusual story.

The second drawing read, "The courier was a happy fellow. Always watching. Always touching. I didn't want it. So I X'd him."

"The courier...?" Alfaic said, realizing what Elaina's secret text was unveiling. "No... don't tell me... it was the courier of their village?"

Lyn maintained her blank stare, unknowing about the situation. She moved to the third drawing and examined it first. Upon closer inspection, the drawing depicted a mob of individuals with bold eyebrows slanted downwards to provide the hint of hostility. They pointed at the girl presumed to be Elaina with the courier's body beside her. She hovered Relámpago over it.

The third drawing read, "They didn't understand. I told them the truth. They didn't listen. They refused to listen."

"I do not understand." Lyn said in a monotone voice.

Alfaic sighed. "There's two more. Let's check them out." He said in a dull tone.

Lyn moved toward the fourth drawing, where uneasiness began to settle for Alfaic. Cethe, Damian, and their parents were shown detaching Elaina's limbs. Cethe and Damian grabbed a hold of her arms, while the parents were drawn to snatch her legs off. Only her head remained, drawn in a way which represented a single tear being shed on the lower left eyelid. In the background, raging fire was vividly colored in pink and red.

"There's no way that's true," Alfaic commented. "If she's telling the truth, Cethe and her family were involved in this? Cethe... lied to us?"

"Yes." Lyn concluded without a single word.

"No, that can't be right," Alfaic interrupted. "What the hell did they do to her?"

Lyn hovered Relámpago over the drawing.

The fourth drawing read, "I gave them everything. They took away everything. They were my family. I did not mean to do it. I didn't do it I didn't do it I didn't do it I didn't do it I didn't do it I didn't do it I didn't do it I didn't do it I didn't do it I didn't do it I didn't do it I didn't do it I didn't do it I didn't do it I didn't do it I didn't do it I didn't do it I didn't do it I didn't do it I didn't do it I didn't do it I didn't do it"

The eerie hidden writing was scribbled all the way to the bottom of the wall, ending after multiple repeats of the same phrase. Lyn, who was completely void of emotion, noticed something unusual about the drawing. In the background, the same mermaid doll that she picked up near the beginning of her journey with Alfaic was scribbled in blue. Her mouth slowly went agape, realizing the harsh truth.

"Lyn? What's wrong?" Alfaic asked.

"This girl," Lyn spoke with a heightened tone. "The courier. I understand now."

"Yeah, the courier's an absolute creep. He must have been someone who preyed on innocent girls like Elaina. Stalking people like her, and he got what was coming to her, and-"

"No," Lyn suddenly gasped. She returned to the second drawing with the deceased courier sprawling with blood in the center of the drawing. "No, no, no." She repeated.

Encore, encore.

And there it was, nestled in front of Elaina's stick figure feet, with the brown sharp stick. A circle with a yellow dot on top, indicating that a ring was there.

Encore. Encore!

Lyn had felt it. The pain. The trauma. The unbelievable idea of what it meant to be played for a fool. The lug nut. The white flower. The marionette. The theater. The church bells rang in her ears. Her eyes and mouth widened until she could not budge a single inch. She realized what Elaina was trying to say. It had all made sense to her. 

"You... were right." Lyn voiced out with her back turned against Alfaic.

"Huh?"

Lyn turned her face toward Alfaic with a troubled glare. "Monster."

The glass windows from where the pure white curtains and drapes shattered as a towering cloaked figure crashed through the gallery room. Lyn snatched Alfaic in time and flipped backward until the back of her feet were touching the entrance. The blood-curdling low growls of the stalker fiend returned, eyeing Lyn with white eyes.

The flower.

"Damn it, not again!" Alfaic cried.

"You," Lyn called out, gritting her teeth. "It's you."

The stalker fiend snarled and ripped its cloak from its back to reveal an impenetrable insect carapace covering its outer shell. An extended and hardened shell and tail, representative of the wooden exterior of the marionette puppet, popped out from behind and lashed out toward Lyn, forcing her to dodge midair. She failed to move in time, and it whipped Lyn outside of the gallery door and back into the crimson lobby of the second floor.

Lyn growled after recovering on her two feet with Alfaic in hand. She clenched her teeth and rampaged forward, anticipating two of the stalker fiend's strikes. She dashed and attempted to slice through its arm, but once again, its skin was much too difficult to pierce through. It grabbed Lyn by the head and slammed her on the ground twice.

The drawings on the side of the gallery room began to tear itself from its rapidly flailing tail, causing absolute chaos for all of Elaina's perceived memories.

After Lyn jabbed her blade in between the fiend's hands, she freed herself and yelled in anger, grazing through the fiend's forehead with Relámpago. A lapse of lightning shock bitterly chipped off a section of the fiend's impenetrable carapace, causing it to clutch back in slight dizziness. Lyn landed on her two feet and glanced over at the second drawing, still intact with the deceased courier.

The brown stick.

Lyn glanced over at her blade. Relámpago.

With a dash as swift as the blistering winds, Lyn pierced the fiend through the torso with Relámpago's lightning effect, piercing through with absolute ease. She dropped Alfaic on the ground and pressed on. The fiend attempted to remove the blade from Lyn's thrust, but Lyn held on tight, refusing to release it from her absolute disgust. She shifted her position over with the creature until its back was facing the open windows from where it began its intrusion.

"Monster." Lyn shouted. "You monster!"

The fiend chuckled.

Following Lyn's decree, she summoned an ungodly amount of strength and pressure from her aura and redirected it toward the sole of her foot. She drove her foot toward the fiend's chest with an absurd amount of physical force, launching the fiend outside toward the palace grounds. 

Lyn held onto Relámpago as she collapsed on the ground. The sudden unnatural burst of emotion overtook Lyn's body as she began covering her eyes with her palms drenched in the fiend's blood, making it sting. But she did not care. Something was bubbling up inside of her chest. She wanted no more of it.

No more lies. No more exploits.

She was exploited. She was lied to.

"Lyn..." Alfaic hovered over to her. "Tell me what's going on."