15strangers | (no subject)

W̡͜E̶EK ̵̕2̕͠

[The blight would not stop.

The world's leading experts have been trying to find a cure, to no avail. Th blight keeps changing, keeps foiling all attempts at being fully understood. It's almost sentient, or at least more sentient than any disease that's been encountered before. People fear the disease jumping from what's left of the grapes into other plants, into animals, or even humans.

You can only watch as entire economies and ecosystems collapse. You can only bury your head in your hands as your own business comes to its end. The destruction of the clusters of grapes has not simply destroyed the wine industry, either-other businesses are being destroyed by the plague. Food, transport, retail, nothing is untouched.

You look on your own vineyard, its yield almost entirely blackened and dead.

This can't keep going on.

-

A week has passed since everyone's arrival. No one has died, yet. But surely no one is holding their breath to see if they would survive this unscathed. They are veterans of the game, and they must know that whoever it is that is in charge demands their pound of flesh. The question is when it will happen.

It is the second week, after all-and when the second week of the game comes, death is not far behind. Not even when you wake up, feeling something different in your mind as you remember the truths you originally woke up with, deep in your mind. You feel...lighter, somehow, when you realize there is a change.

Even so, there are 15 strangers left in this place.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Finally got a guess right.

[~~It's about time~~]

Well, nice to hear that you managed to get justice yourself, and without even letting anyone know it was you. I'm not really one for magic most of the time, but it's good that it helped you and your friends out.

[Magic helps sometimes!]

[ There's a bit of a pause... ]

... Actually, I did step forward in the end. Spent some time locked up. [ after another pause, and said quietly: ] My... friends were pretty upset that I turned myself in without even telling them I was going to do it.

...okay, going to have to ask how you did that, though. Unless magic like that is a normal thing where your from, I think the worst that could happen when admitting that stuff would be getting put in the nut house.

[He won’t ask why he did turn himself in. Not yet, anyway.]