Chapter Text
"Entering the Medium has always mirrored the journey into the underworld. It is darker here, though your domain may be the Land of Fire and Phosphorescence; the skies above the warring kingdoms are black as sin and formless as abandoned dreams. It is easy to lose yourself, easy to bury yourself in the forgotten things from your life that have somehow fallen here with you. You are given a guide for this purpose, a guide with the head of a wild beast and the voice of someone you trust. Together you will journey into the unknown, cross the rivers of that black sea, until you have no more need of a ferryman any longer.
But foremost, you must pay to enter the underworld. Pay in a story, in blood, in honour, in a broken heart, in two coins pressed on your eyes, but pay you must before the gates will wink open and allow you through."
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"The thing you have to understand is that to people native to the Incipisphere, even to the blindest, most blinkered royalists you can find, Kings are not Good. In their deepest heart of hearts, they understand that all a King is for is to fight and conquer and throw their army at a foe that is equally matched to them, breath for breath, and tear tiny slivers out of the opposing side until something else conspires to tip the scales. One way or another, a King’s destiny is to die.
Now, a Queen, on the other hand, a Queen is something different indeed. A Queen isn’t Good either, but her ending is never quite set in stone."