TAKE X (6-5-17: The End)

> Give Gio advice.




Just do your best to stay calm, all right, Gio? I think I've got enough to get you out from under this. Just, uh, go easy on the narration, huh? At least until the trial's over.


He was asking something nearly impossible. I was confident in my--


Gio.


Got it.



The doors open in front of you, and the guards lead Gio into the courtroom. You follow them and take your place at the defense's bench.

The judge looks to you. He seems kind of friendly-looking, all things considered, especially for Vezretti. "Well then, Mr. Amjad, I see you've taken time from your busy book-writing schedule to conduct a defense. Though I must say you're younger than I expected."

That throws you for a second, but then you realize what he means. "No sir, your honor, you're thinking of my father. I'm Amjad Jr."

The judge's face falls. "That's a shame. And here I was hoping to get his signature on 'Deadly Flora.' It was a gripping read, especially for non-fiction." He shakes his head. "Ah well. It seems you're here, anyway, as is the defendant. Now we're just waiting on... Mr. Mugg, was it?"




No need to wait, your honor. That's me. Westley Mugg.


(I didn't even see him come in...!)



The judge nods. "Ah... very good. Then, opening statements, if you please."

My client's completely innocent, the church's charges seem to be more about silencing a dissident rather than doing any actual investigation into the matter and finding the murderer.

> Palmer: Be as Godot as possible.

> Deliver your opening statement.




Your Honor, I intend to prove my client's complete innocence regarding this murder. The charges against him reek of the church attempting to silence a dissident rather than them actually trying to find the real murderer. Moreover, I will present evidence showing that my client could not have possibly committed this crime.



The judge nods thoughtfully. "I see, I see. And you, Mr. Mugg - your opening statement."




Straight from the defense's mouth, Your Honor - the defendant is a dissident, and by divine decree 72 subsection 12A, that is an offense punishable by imprisonment and possibly death.


As is defending a dissident, for that matter.



"Ah, right, right," the judge says. "Of course. Very well, then."




Wait, what--



You have to admit, you weren't expecting them to be quite so overt.

Punch the wall in frustration.

Who's the other guy in your cell?

heck.

Surely you can counter this charge since that's not what you (either of you) were on trial for!
Actually never mind when the church controls everything you probably can't do squat.

Actually hold up what are you doing knowing how law stuff works in this "take", Palmer, I thought you were completely confused by the state of affairs?!

Hmmmmmm...

> Who's this other guy?



You hop down off of what could be generously called a bed and approach the guy in the blue suit. "Hey, I'm Makram," you say. "What're you in for?"



"I'm de Soren," he says. "I'm here because of this godsforsaken staff. It follows me all the time, I can't do anything about it, and they used that as evidence that I was doing magic. Then they locked me up." de Soren is smiling, but you can see anger smoldering away behind his eyes in a distinctly unsettling manner.

> Punch the wall in frustration.



You can't believe this. After Makram tried so hard to get you free, they just put both of you in the slammer in the blink of an eye. You're not normally one to get violent when you're angry, but you feel like it's justified right now.




Hey Gio... notch it back a bit, huh? I'm as angry as the next guy - and trust me, he looks pretty angry - but headaches aren't gonna help anyone.


...Right. Sorry, Mack.

You do your best to calm down. You also feel a draft coming from somewhere.

Looks like Gio's tantrum made that crack on the top bunk bigger. Maybe you can start making yourself an escape route?

relieve frustration by aggressively bouncing up and down on bunk instead.

So besides following you does the staff do anything? Kick the staff.

> Ask about the staff.



You look to de Soren. "So, this staff. What does it do?"

de Soren shrugs. "No idea. Magic's outlawed, of course, so I never tried using it. Mostly I just tried to ignore it."

> Kick the staff.



You attempt to kick the staff. The staff does not react in any meaningful way, but you're suddenly overcome with the feeling that if you try that again, it won't end well for you.

You take a step back from the staff.

> Work off stress by bouncing on the bunk.



You consider killing some time bouncing on the bunk. However, when you sat on it earlier, you realized that the bunk is actually just stone, as is everything else in this cell.

You make a mental note to hook the church up with some more creative architects when you manage to get out of here.

However, as you look over the bunks, you can just barely see a crack in the wall above the top bunk. Huh. Maybe you can use that to your advantage.

> Plan your escape.



"So, guys," you say, gesturing to the crack, "what can we do with this?"

Gio rubs his chin in thought, and de Soren taps his feet, staring at the wall.



de Soren suddenly snaps his fingers. "I've got it! The two of you look like you're used to teamwork, right?"

You glance at Gio, who nods. "Yeah, here and there."

"None of us can climb up to that top bunk on our own, but..."



"What if you got on his shoulders, Makram? You could call it the... Bro Piggyback or something."

Gio looks to the side. "The stranger had proposed an incredibly ill-advised name, but his idea was sound. Mack and I could combine our strengths--"

"Let's not waste any time, huh, Gio?" you say. Once he gets started, it can be hard to get him to stop.





It works like a charm. You clamber into the top bunk and examine the crack in the wall. You can definitely feel airflow coming through here, but the crack is too small to be able to see anything.

Gio: Get frustrated at this turn of events and pound the wall again.

Get de Soren to come up here too, and have him use the staff as a pick or otherwise try to expand the hole

We're not gonna touch it though, it might blow us up or something

> Get Gio to hit the wall again.



As soon as you mention that the crack in the wall's too small to do anything with, Gio leaps into action and punches the wall a few more times. Not much happens - it looks like that particular strategy has run its course vis a vis escaping.



"It's no good, guys," you say. "I still can't make anything out."

de Soren frowns. "Boy. If only we could make that hole bigger faster."







You make a mental note to never kick the staff again.



"Do you hear that?" de Soren asks.

"The sound of boots striking the ground - iron-toed, I was certain. I couldn't ever forget what that sounded like, not after--"

You nod. "Let's get out of here. You up first, de Soren, then Gio and I will get up after." You help de Soren up to the hole, then you and Gio clamber through. You're not entirely certain what the punishment is for escaping prison, nor what the punishment is for destroying church property, but you have a gut feeling that it's probably death.



The three of you jump down on the other side of the wall. Looks like the jail cells bump up right against the sewers that run underneath Vezretti - a voice in the back of your head idly notes that it probably makes it really easy to dispose of corpses. You can still hear the footsteps in the distance, so it's likely not going to take long for your escape to be discovered. You need to figure out a way out of here, and fast.

Get to the save point up on that, uh, structure

>Use your Bros. Action stacking ability to get up there.

> Get up to the top of the structure.



You're not sure what this structure is. Maybe it's here so that if there's overflow, people can still get around? Who knows. There's no ladder or anything, so you can't imagine that it's very useful.

You can kind of see something glinting up at the top.



Luckily, you know exactly how to get up there.



Once you've made it, Gio lifts de Soren up, and the two of you pull him up after. You take in your surroundings - you can definitely see a lot more of the sewers. There are plenty of these odd structures, all spaced inconveniently far apart, without ladders or bridges or anything between them. If you fell off, you'd have a really hard time making it back up.

You make a note to, upon your escape, find out who designed the sewers and punch them. Then you realize that they probably died of old age long ago, so you quickly make peace with the idea that you'd be punching a corpse. Sometimes these things are necessary.



The sewers also seem to be infested with a variety of unfriendly-looking creatures. At a glance, you can make out an ink blot, a bed of sapper mushrooms, a cockatrice, a simple grinnell... even a slime lumbering around back there.

When you were young, your father wrote a reference book on various and sundry creatures all over Ennen. He used some of the entries as bedtime stories for you. Makram Amjad Sr. wouldn't be winning any awards for Father of the Year as far as you were concerned, but it does mean that you know quite a bit about what you're looking at now.

"Okay, be careful, guys," you say. "Don't fall down there with the ink blot unless you want to be eaten from the inside out. Don't touch the sapper mushrooms; they'll try and latch onto you. Don't look the cockatrice or the simple grinnell in the eye. And for the love of all things good, keep your distance from the slime."

Gio and de Soren both fix you with vaguely horrified stares.



"What about that one?" de Soren asks in the sort of way that suggests that he's not sure he wants to hear the answer.

You examine it for a moment, and then it comes to you in the blink of an eye. "Ah, that's a blinding flash of the obvious."

"Oh, sure," Gio says, "now that you say it, I feel like I should have known that."

de Soren looks at the flash for a moment, then looks up. "Aren't these the things that give you sudden bursts of inspiration or knowledge when they're around?"

You nod, kneel down, and look over the flash a bit more closely. You consider poking it, but somehow you feel like that wouldn't be very nice. At least there's one thing down here that won't kill you brutally. You stand back up and try to think of the best way to get out of here.

>Ask Soren to attempt to use the staff to force the slime against the lever, and pull it

> Ask de Soren to use the staff to force that lever.



After thinking for a moment, you turn to de Soren. You have an idea - if it works, it could potentially save you some trouble, but if it doesn't you're going to make at least one of those critters very upset.

"Can you get your staff to force something over there against that lever?"

de Soren shrugs. "I've never been able to make that staff do anything, to be honest. I think it has a mind of its own."

You eye the staff. It floats in the air in the exact same way that it has been up to this point, but it still manages to eye you back. It's a little unnerving.



But then it crosses the gap and forces the nearest creature - that simple grinnell - down against the lever. The grinnell doesn't look too disgruntled, but then you're also trying very hard not to look at its eye.



The sluice gate grinds open. Not much seems to change, but if you were inclined to swim, you could probably make it through that passageway now. Not that you are in any way inclined to take a dip in this sludge.



"The footsteps were getting closer. Metal ringing like a bell - and it was ringing for us."

Gio's right. You need to figure out how you're going to get across.

Throw shirt/pants at the ink blot to absorb it up.

> Use the blinding flash of the obvious offensively.
Okay, it probably doesn't work like that.

The problem seems to be with the next jump. You wouldn't be able to get back up. The simple way might be to wade through the water, but it might be deep and/or dangerous.

> Consider the ink blot.



You all peer down at the ink blot. It's the nearest critter to you, so you figure you ought to deal with it first.

"Could we throw something down there to blot it up?" de Soren asks.

Gio makes a pained expression. "Um... like what? I'm not exactly carrying extra rags."

"We're both wearing jackets," de Soren says. "We could use those."

Gio makes the sort of face that suggests that, were he wearing glasses, he'd be glaring at de Soren from over the rims. "You go first." You're pleasantly surprised by that reaction - you gave him that jacket as a birthday present a few years back, and you didn't think he put that much stock in it.

de Soren holds his hands up, smiling nervously, and the staff pivots to between him and Gio. "All right, all right. Point made."

> Consider the blinding flash of the obvious.



"What about the little blinding flash thing?" de Soren continues, in what is probably a bid to change the topic. "Could we throw it down there and distract the blot?"

"That seems cruel," Gio says, calming down slightly.

"Well, I wouldn't ordinarily advocate for something like that, of course, but I figured we might as well throw it against the wall and see what sticks."

"The ink blot would probably stick, wouldn't it?"

"...I figured you of all people would understand that metaphor."

You leave de Soren and Gio to argue that out and kneel down next to the blinding flash of the obvious again. You get the impression that it's looking at you, though its gaze on a cursory level is pretty vacant. It seems to be... expectant? Like it's waiting for you to do something--



"I got it!"

Both de Soren and Gio stop what they're doing and turn to look at you. That's probably for the best; it looks like they had somehow started arguing about the best way to cook blastbacon (the correct answer, incidentally, being "very carefully, and preferably in another room entirely") and you know how heated Gio gets about that.

"I know how we can get across," you continue. "Look, de Soren, we've watched your staff warp back and forth twice now. Let's all hang onto it and get it to warp over to that door."

de Soren beams. "That's a brilliant idea! We could name it the... Bro Warp--"

"We don't need to name it." You glance at the staff, which is showing absolutely no signs of consciousness. "Can you make the staff do that for us?"

"No idea," de Soren says, "but it's worth a shot."

You nod.



You all put your hands on the staff.



The three of you elect to never speak of what you just saw ever again.

>Escape, but not before punting the cockatrice towards the entrance you used via the staff