The boy's comment actually gets through Lup's bitterness and she blinks down at him for a sec. Shit, so it's not his first rodeo either. Guess that shouldn't come as a surprise, seeing how pretty much all the kids here have been through some kinda wringer before all this. It just still sucks, every time. At least that means she's not about to like, ruin his faith in the Storyteller forever or something.
"There was-- Well at first we just found a bunch of ancient buildings carved into the caves, which is weird enough on its own? Nothing much was even left, and those sigils were everywhere. But there was this, this glowing crystal cropping up everywhere. And the further down we went, the more of it there was. And then uh, big crystal golems started attacking us. Took some doing to take one down, but once you did and you really, you properly looked at it? You could tell there was something inside. Somebody." Fuck, no more talking around it. No thinking about how, how Taako could've been one of those things if he'd-- if she and Chara hadn't found him. The conclusion is inevitable, and her voice shows it, growing hard and flat for what's ahead.
"The crystal was transmuting people. Like an infection. Most people had touched it, used it for lighting or, or blew it up to get at the sigils, breathed in the dust and-- It, it grew so slowly. I think some people survived by cutting the crystal out fast, but-- Lots of people died, down there. Horribly." And that's all she's gonna say. That's all she has to say, to get the point across. No reason to paint a fucking word picture here of the suffering of the infected, and of those who-- who could do nothing for the people they cared about, except to make it quick.
"The Storyteller got us out once the last of us left had destroyed all the sigils. Revived the dead a couple days later. They were... horrified at what they'd done, and they promised they'd never force us to go anywhere against our will ever again."
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"There was-- Well at first we just found a bunch of ancient buildings carved into the caves, which is weird enough on its own? Nothing much was even left, and those sigils were everywhere. But there was this, this glowing crystal cropping up everywhere. And the further down we went, the more of it there was. And then uh, big crystal golems started attacking us. Took some doing to take one down, but once you did and you really, you properly looked at it? You could tell there was something inside. Somebody." Fuck, no more talking around it. No thinking about how, how Taako could've been one of those things if he'd-- if she and Chara hadn't found him. The conclusion is inevitable, and her voice shows it, growing hard and flat for what's ahead.
"The crystal was transmuting people. Like an infection. Most people had touched it, used it for lighting or, or blew it up to get at the sigils, breathed in the dust and-- It, it grew so slowly. I think some people survived by cutting the crystal out fast, but-- Lots of people died, down there. Horribly." And that's all she's gonna say. That's all she has to say, to get the point across. No reason to paint a fucking word picture here of the suffering of the infected, and of those who-- who could do nothing for the people they cared about, except to make it quick.
"The Storyteller got us out once the last of us left had destroyed all the sigils. Revived the dead a couple days later. They were... horrified at what they'd done, and they promised they'd never force us to go anywhere against our will ever again."