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Игру "Alabaster" можно закончить восемнадцатью различными путями, один другого краше. Составлю краткий обзор, чтобы вы могли оценить накал страстей.

Игра начинается с того, что вы бредёте по ночному лесу, ведя за собой связанную Белоснежку. Снежная королева послала вас, главного королевского охотника, принести ей сердце Белоснежки. Вы выследили и поймали Белоснежку, но раздумываете, как поступить дальше.

• Вариант 1: Вы возвращаетесь со связанной Белоснежкой в замок, ничего особенного не добившись. Снежная королева вас убивает.
• Вариант 2: Вы освобождаете Белоснежку и вместо неё приносите Снежной королеве сердце оленя. Остаётесь в живых.
• Вариант 3: Вы освобождаете Белоснежку и собираетесь вернуться к Снежной королеве без сердца. Белоснежка вас коварно подкарауливает и убивает.
• Вариант 4: Вы убеждаетесь, что Белоснежка - вампир, после чего убиваете ее. Снежная королева оставляет вас в живых.
• Вариант 5: Вы провоцируете Белоснежку-вампира убить вас.
• Вариант 6: Вы пытаетесь сжечь Белоснежку керосиновой лампой. Она гасит лампу и убегает. Вы остаётесь ни с чем в ночном лесу.
• Вариант 7: Вы изгоняете из Белоснежки вселившийся в неё дух Лилит, после чего приводите её в замок. Снежная королева вас убивает.
• Вариант 8: Вы изгоняете дух Лилит, после чего развеиваете пепел оленьего сердца. Освобождаете Белоснежку и собираетесь вернуться к Снежной королеве без добычи. Скорее всего, она вас убъёт.
• Вариант 9: Вы изгоняете Лилит, освобождаете Белоснежку и возвращаетесь в замок ни с чем. Вы нарушили обещание, данное мёртвому оленю. Снежная королева оставляет вас в живых.
• Вариант 10: Вы изгоняете Лилит, освобождаете Белоснежку и возвращаетесь в замок c пеплом оленьего сердца. Дух Хэппи Блю переселяется в зеркало, а Снежная королева излечивается от злых чар.
• Вариант 11: Вы освобождаете Белоснежку и приводите в её убежище, к гномам. Гномы вас не признают и выгоняют.
• Вариант 12: Вы приводите связанную Белоснежку в её убежище, к гномам. Гномы раздумывают, не прикончить ли вас.
• Вариант 13: Вы изгоняете Лилит, освобождаете Белоснежку и приводите в её убежище, к гномам. Гномы относятся к вам обоим с подозрением, и собираются выгнать.
• Вариант 14: Вы вызываете дух Лилит на разговор, и соглашаетесь стать её супругом.
• Вариант 15: Вы вызываете дух Лилит на разговор, но отказываетесь её развязать.
• Вариант 16: Вы узнаёте от мёртвого оленя, что вы заколдованный король. Вызываете Лилит на разговор и рассказываете ей правду о себе, Белоснежке и Снежной королеве. Вы становитесь супругом Лилит.
• Вариант 17: Вы узнаёте от мёртвого оленя, что вы заколдованный король. Расколдовываете себя и Белоснежку.
• Вариант 18: Вы изгоняете Лилит, после чего пристаёте с расспросами к Белоснежке. Она сходит с ума.

Можно играть онлайн: iplayif.com

Или можно скачать и запустить на своём компьютере:

$ wget https://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/glulx/Alabaster.gblorb
$ glulxe Alabaster.gblorb

Покажу здесь полностью пару вариантов: номер 2, простой, и номер 16, самый эмоционально насыщенный.

Вариант номер два, простой:

It is the bitterest night you can remember since the dwarrows last marched against men. The sky is too cold, the village too still. There is smoke in the air but no voices from the doorways. The Queen's light burns in the tower window behind you. She is watching, as far as she can.

You and the girl move through the narrow lanes without speaking, past the muted inns and shuttered bakeries, until you reach the narrowing path beyond the churchyard.

Pass in silence the graves of veterans and goodwives, and then at the outskirts the graves of suicides, which are granted no markers. Come to the place where the village ends and the trees begin to grow.

Enter the forest like two spies, one sent to kill the other.

Walk for hours.

Alabaster
An Interactive Experiment by John Cater, Rob Dubbin, Eric Eve, Elizabeth Heller, Jayzee, Kazuki Mishima, Sarah Morayati, Mark Musante, Emily Short, Adam Thornton, and Ziv Wities
Illustrations by Daniel Allington-Krzysztofiak
Release 3 / Serial number 090609 / Inform 7 build 5Z71 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N)

Dark Woods
It is a moonless night. The lantern light does not reach far. You are seldom frightened in these woods, but tonight is unusual.

Snow White is with you. Her wrists are bound behind her back. She has made as much of a nuisance of herself as she could, deliberately stumbling over every root in the dark, until you had to half-carry her this far.

Earlier, you killed a hart and left it here. It was a preparation: you didn't want to have to hunt such an animal in the darkness.

Now, you can't help wondering whether you should have spared the noble beast.

> take heart

You slice the heart out of the dead animal. It is cold now, just like any ordinary sort of meat.

She goes awkwardly over to the corpse and goes to one knee beside it. "Thank you," she whispers - to it, not to you. Then she leans down and- what, exactly? You can't see. Maybe she kisses it. Maybe she licks its blood. Maybe neither.

When she's done she struggles back to her feet and looks at you defiantly.

Of course you could ask what she was doing, but who is to say that she would answer?

> put heart in box

(the hart's heart in the heart-sized box)
The lid is stiff on its hinges, but you get it open with a little effort. You tuck in the heart.

Snow White watches the way a child watches fresh cakes being taken from the oven.

> wait

The lantern flickers.

She paces around to where she has the upper ground and can face you eye-to-eye - very much like her stepmother. "We had a deal," she says. "I have made a safe resting place. You promised to take me there if the Queen turned against me."

Only one explanation comes to mind: you could say that the safe haven is too far away to reach tonight.

> ask haven

"It is too far away to reach tonight." The Queen sent you out long after midnight. There are probably only a few hours remaining before dawn.

She shivers. "I suppose the Queen will expect you to return quickly." You do not say anything, which is a kind of answer.

The lantern dims.

"Untie me, and I'll go on alone."

> no

"I don't mean to untie you quite yet. I don't know you won't bite."

"I'm tired," she says. "My feet hurt. My wrists hurt. I am a third your size. Do you really think there is any harm I could do to you?"

> no

"Probably not." She is a small thing, after all. Delicate, like chicken bones. Funny how when you think of her you always think of blood and bones and dead parts of things.

"I am not taking chances, all the same," you add.

She grimaces. "The Queen must have been very persuasive."

> ask where

"You told me before that the safe haven would take about an hour to reach, but you never said which way to go."

"North. Safety is to the north, and the sooner we start, the better."

Both of you are silent. It might be just a trick of the light, but it almost looks as though the hart moved.

Of course you could ask what she did to the hart, but who is to say that she would answer?

> south

If you go on from here, it should be to Snow White's haven - the tiny house she has had fitted, and the servants she hired, and the sealed coffin-bed that she had made for herself (for protection, she said, from the vision of the mirror). And that lies to the north, she says.

It would be dangerous to return to the castle while Snow White is still with you.

Of course you could ask what she did to the hart, but who is to say that she would answer?

> south

If you are really going to leave, you will have to decide: do you set Snow White free? If not, she will have to come back with you, still chained, to face the Queen again.

>> yes

You take off the chain, and it vanishes as soon as it is removed. No ordinary silver, that.

"I'm going back now," you tell her. "You can go on on your own; I'll take my chances lying about this matter to the Queen."

"I wish you luck," she says. "My life depends on your lie, as well as your own."

You part ways. She is quickly gone to the north, her footsteps no longer audible. You make your way through a growing dawn back to the palace, where you present the Queen immediately with the heart in its box.

You expect her to take it before the mirror for verification, but she does not: not immediately. Instead she opens the box and looks at the heart-flesh inside, and commands you to leave her.

***

After a day or two of waiting, you decide that the Queen has accepted the ruse.

***

For a time, everything is quiet. The mirror is heard less often in the halls. The Queen almost seems at peace. The servants begin to relax. The winter solstice feasts are celebrated as gaily as you can remember.

And then - after the frosts pass - there begin to be new rumors of trouble among the dwarrows. After their difficult pacification, they are growing restless again, angry, dangerous. You had very little part in the last war, but the news fills you with a nameless dread. Somehow this is her fault. The escaped princess is taking revenge, not only on her stepmother but on all the realm of men and dwarrows. But you cannot escape the feeling that whatever evil task she has come to, she did not wholly want it, or why would she have caused so much delay, there in the woods? She had some secret.

The Queen sickens, and her famous beauty fades a little. She spends many hours closeted again with the mirror. Sometimes she even asks you to give her advice - though, of course, you have none of significance to offer. She seems to know that the princess must be alive, though she does not charge you with betrayal. The silence between you is full of secrets not spoken or even admitted in thought. Around you she wears her hair immodestly unbound, and does not cinch her robe, and though she knows she is torturing you a little, no one says anything about it. Even the servants do not find it strange.

And so for most of the spring she stands in her tower looking down in thought, as the orchards fill with apple blossom.

*** You survive - for the time being. ***

Вариант номер шестнадцать, навороченный:

[...начало такое же...]

> cut hart

You slice the heart out of the dead animal. It is cold now, just like any ordinary sort of meat.

She goes awkwardly over to the corpse and goes to one knee beside it. "Thank you," she whispers - to it, not to you. Then she leans down and- what, exactly? You can't see. Maybe she kisses it. Maybe she licks its blood. Maybe neither.

When she's done she struggles back to her feet and looks at you defiantly.

Of course you could ask what she was doing, but who is to say that she would answer?

> ask Snow White about what she was doing

"What was that?" you ask. "What did you do to the hart?"

"It died for my sake; I repaid a little of the debt." Her lips look dark, almost black.

> wake hart

You wait for Snow White to become tired of glaring at you and after a few moments she obliges, turning toward a scurrying sound in the underbrush with a hungry glint in her eye.

Seizing the opportunity, you kneel before the heartless hart and ask, "Hello?"

Several things happen at once. Firstly, Snow White whirls toward you, her face livid. "YOU CAN'T -"

But before she can finish her sentence, in point of fact as she's starting it, the once-dark forest flashes with frantic, ice-blue energy, the air fills with a steady, ethereal hum, and you see the pallid princess lifted before you, suspended in the thick, vibrating air, her rage caught in her throat.

The immediate impulse is to taunt your suddenly riposte-incapable companion, but petty vengeance quickly dissolves in the face of a final sudden development.

Namely, the hart - which now stands proudly upright, its eyes and empty chest cavity glowing an incongruous silver.

It has what can only be described as a wry expression on its face. "I suppose I should begin by thanking you."

You might ask why he thanks you, say that he's welcome, or ask what his name is.

> ask why

You've hunted and bested many harts through the years, but this is the first to comment on the exchange afterward. Awestruck, you manage to stammer "Th-thanking me?"

The decomposing hart corpse glances into the canyon that used to power its circulatory system. "You've been through a lot. Please forgive my sarcasm."

The decomposing hart corpse peers at you sardonically. "Before we go any further, is there anything else you'd like to carve out of what's left of my body?"

> no

"No," you reply sheepishly.

"Very well," says the hart corpse, "then let us get down to business."

You are less cold than you were earlier.

"I will tell you exactly what just happened, and indeed provide enough information to turn the tables on your know-it-all prisoner over there, if you agree to my terms."

> wait

No time passes at all.

As though to add to the disturbing qualities of the moment, the hart gives you something that might be intended as a reassuring smile.

> smile

You try smiling back, but it doesn't feel at all sincere.

The hart corpse paws the ground innocently. "It's very simple, really. I want my heart back."

It's hard to imagine how that would be possible.

> ask how

For what you realize is, incredibly, the first time, you feel disgusted. "Back... in there?" you ask, gesturing at the decomposing hart corpse's glowing rib cage.

The hart corpse rears upward, clattering back to the ground with enough force to jar a few loose gobbets from its body cavity. "Don't be grotesque. I mean that I want it back in a more cosmic sense."

Which raises the obvious question of what he means by "cosmic".

> ask cosmic

"What exactly do you mean, 'in a more cosmic sense?'" You can't believe you're negotiating with a decomposing hart corpse.

The hart blinks, heedless of the fact that silver light continues to escape from its torn left eyelid. "Unfortunately, I can't answer that question without revealing too much of my hand, such as it is. I am proposing you a pact. Do you say yes or do you say no?"

> yes

You figure there's no harm in collecting pacts. "I accept," you intone solemnly.

The decomposing hart corpse clatters excitedly, and its silver glow momentarily surges while the urgent blue prison surrounding Snow White flickers and dulls. "Excellent. It is done. I believe you are in possession of a small wooden box?"

> yes

"Yes, I have such a box," you admit.

"Very well," says the undead hart, "Then you must burn the box with my heart inside, and scatter the ashes round this spot."

The woods are eerily silent. "Only that way can I be made whole - and set free," he tells you, "So, will you do that for me?"

> yes

"Very well, if that is what you wish," you agree.

"Good," the hart replies, "And in return, I will aid you against your prisoner. But do not delay, the deed must be done 'ere the night is o'er."

No one speaks, though only the two of you experience any pause. "I should have introduced myself. The name's Happy Blue, professional juggler and itinerant dwarf-about-town," declares the hart corpse proudly, crooking a fractured forelimb and dipping its matted shoulder in salute.

You might ask where its name came from or ask whether he was a servant of Snow White.

> ask king

"Where is the King?" You lean towards him eagerly. "He vanished, but where did he go? Did the Queen kill him?"

His laughter is sharp. "You are the King."

You might request that he repeat himself.

> ask repeat

"I'm sorry - what did you just say?"

"This is fun," he says. "I could do this all day. I said that you are the King. Not that you'll find it easy to retain that information. Try to hold onto it, or it will slip out of your head again."

You could always ask what happened to you.

> ask what happened

"That's impossible - I don't remember being King. I grew up nearby... I have cousins in the village. The King on the other hand-"

"Probably has cousins in the village as well, considering the way his father and grandfather behaved while they were alive," says Happy dryly. "But you wouldn't remember."

The wind has dropped completely. "You've been blood-sundered. It is a magic that unmakes families, destroys the connections between people, and in so doing yields great power that can be used for other purposes."

You might ask who performed the magic.

> ask who performed

"But - who would have done such a thing to me?

"As King, you were not kind to the dwarrows," he says, his voice harder than you have heard ever before. "You provoked us. You gave plain preference to your own kind, allowing them to mistreat us, upsetting the balance that your father had - with great difficulty - established. There was suffering and war."

You can ask how the current peace came about.

> ask current peace

"I don't understand." This makes less and less sense as you go. "If I provoked the dwarrows - if I was such a bad King -" (and how could you have been the King at all?) "- then how is it that there is peace now?"

"When you saw what you had done, you felt- you regretted it." He tilts his head at you. "You decided to create a peace. But that is very difficult work, and it is not the usual use of magic." He smirks, if an animal's face can be said to hold such an expression. "Demons arrange magic, and as a rule they prefer to do more harm than good. So you were forced to sacrifice yourself, your family, and lose your throne, and dwindle into no one. In exchange for this, we have had this- ragged sort of calm.

The light from your lantern casts an unusually steady glow over the scene.

"Don't mistake me," he adds. "A poor peace is better than none. I appreciate the gift - though I doubt that anyone else does. It cannot be known what you did, you see. So the dwarrows still hate your name."

> wait

No time passes at all.

The silver glow surrounding the hart begins to fade. "Alas, I can stay no longer," he tells you, "Farewell - and beware!"

He sinks to the ground, a final sigh escaping his decaying throat, "Do not delay - box - heart - burn."

Then the glow is gone, and the hart is still once more, with nothing to show he ever moved..

Snow White returns to earth. She looks around her, blinking: she seems a little confused. Perhaps she does not remember you speaking to the hart.

> wait

It is getting colder.

> wait

You would be warmer if only you were still moving.

> talk roots

"I meant to mention earlier," you say, "you're going to have to start doing your walking on your own, your royal highness, and start watching where you're going. You may be willing to risk your own neck with this deliberate clumsiness, but I assure you, I'm not risking mine."

Snow White gazes at you coldly. "I see. You think I'm being difficult on purpose.

"It didn't occur to you that the Queen might have wounded me, or wearied me with her spells. Nor have you considered that a palace girl with her hands bound might have difficulty making her way through the forest at night. No; it's quite clear that I'm intentionally delaying, risking my only chance to escape, isn't it now.

"Be honest now, royal executioner: which of these sounds most likely to you?"

It seems unlikely that the Queen hurt her or that a creature like her is having real trouble (though you could ask). But you still have the feeling that she is delaying on purpose.

> say she is delaying

"The last one," you say darkly. "I'll be damned if I know why, but you're deliberately slowing us down every step of the way."

For the first time, Snow White smiles. The expression is not encouraging; in fact, the temperature seems to dive and your lantern nearly extinguishes itself. "Correct," she says. "You are learning, huntsman. I do nothing that is not deliberate, mark my words."

> ask her about delay

"Am I permitted to know, your highness, why it is you're so carefully tripping over roots instead of fleeing for your life?"

She considers before speaking. Then, "I am searching for something," she says, "which is as necessary to my safety as reaching my haven. I'd hoped, though, to make my find far earlier, before you noticed."

She muses for a moment. "I should not tell you. But you would hardly let me stay silent, would you?"

> no

"No, I wouldn't. I'd be a fool to, and well you know it."

"Fair enough. Since we have no bond, though, I cannot tell you directly. A riddle, then:

"Red and sweet - the perfect meal;
Sustenance with such appeal
With a bite release its charm
Thus shall ye be safe from harm
Lilith had none, yet her man
Could not share his - no one can."

Tempting to refuse to guess.

> ask Lilith

"Who was Lilith?"

"You don't care to guess the answer to my riddle, then?"

"Not now," you reply.

"Lilith," she repeats, sing-song. "The first wife of Adam, before the milkmaid Eve came to the garden. She was formed from fire as Adam was formed from earth: she was his equal, and said so, and so he cast her out."

> ask Adam

"Why did you mention Adam?"

"All men are like Adam." She looks you over, then adds, "...though some less than others."

> talk apple

"Is the answer to your riddle an apple? If so, you have the wrong sort of woods - the trees here are pine and aspen."

"You answer right, and yet you don't understand." Her expression, dimly seen in the lantern light, is almost frustrated, as though there is something she wishes to tell you, but cannot.

But it's not clear how an apple would help her.

> ask apple

"What good would an apple do you?" It seems more and more that you are humoring the mad.

"It is the food of mortals," she says. (Wistfully, you might think.) "Those who eat, die; those who die, live beforehand."

> ask mortals

"And you are immortal?"

"Partly." She walks away from you, around a tree, out of sight, and then circles back into view. "It grows tiring. Under the proper conditions, I would change my situation."

You wait, out of reach. "Perhaps we should begin with the Queen. Her magic is to blame for all our situations."

You might ask if she is a witch, ask whether the Queen herself made the magic mirror, or ask if the Queen is a witch.

> ask if the queen is a witch

"Is the Queen a witch?" you ask.

"She may fancy herself as one," Snow White sneers. "In truth she dabbles with powers she does not comprehend."

You might ask what powers the Queen dabbles with.

> ask what powers

"What are these powers the Queen dabbles with?" you want to know.

She kicks with irritable energy at the base of the nearest aspen. "Even for a huntsman your ignorance is remarkable. All sorcery involves the manipulation of demons. I thought everyone knew that."

You could always ask if the Queen is possessed or ask what demons the Queen invoked.

> ask what demons

"So, what demons did the Queen try to invoke for her witchcraft?" you ask.

"The Queen called on Lilith," she tells you, "She wanted great beauty, and foolishly thought Lilith could endow it."

You could now ask if the Queen is possessed or ask whether Lilith made the Queen beautiful.

> ask queen is possessed

"Is the Queen demon-possessed?" you ask.

You brace as Snow White inflicts another smile upon you. "No, she managed to avoid that."

You could ask how the Queen avoided possession or ask whether Lilith made the Queen beautiful.

> ask how

"How did the Queen avoid possession?" you inquire.

"By making a bargain with the demon that wishes to possess her, of course," she replies.

You can ask what bargain the Queen made.

> ask bargain

"What manner of bargain did the Queen make to avoid possession?" you ask.

"She provided another victim," she shrugs.

The conversation could turn to the Queen, witchcraft, or the demons.

> ask victim

"Is that it?" you ask, with a flash of terrifying insight. "Are you possessed? Is that why you have developed this taste for blood, and why..."

Snow White's glance suffices to silence your babbling, but the look she gives you convinces you that you have hit upon the truth of the matter. So that's where the demoness Lilith went.

You could ask whether the Queen herself made the magic mirror or ask whether Lilith likes drinking blood.

> ask what Lilith wants

"What do you - Lilith - want?"

"I kill boy-children: did you know? I suck out their lives and leave them to die. It is punishment for all the children of my own that Adam stole from me, when he cast me out of Eden, when he rejected me and sent me away."

But it does not seem to you that you have heard what she wants.

> again

"But is that what you want?"

She looks up at you and her eyes are filled with grief beyond tears. "I want Adam," she says. "And he wanted me. When he had Eve, that docile witless blonde, he saw the bargain he had made and he wanted to take it back, and at night it was my body he dreamed and my name he called. But it was too late. And I was cast out into the storm and the desert and I had no equal on earth."

> wait

Your ears are growing numb.

"You ask what I want," she says slowly. "I want what Adam should have been, if he had chosen differently. I want a man who is my match, who is clever and private and wise; one who likes the wasteland and the night-time and the open sea rather than the daylight crowd of Eve's feckless brood. With such a man, I would be mortal, live my days, and die, not cursed but reconciled."

You yourself prefer the wasteland and the open places.

> talk me

"I prefer the wasteland and the night-time."

Speaking this is like the moment a bit of metal, coming too close to a lodestone, snaps to its side.

She is no less terrifying, and yet you know her as clearly as you have ever known anyone. You also know yourself. You have no desires that you would need to hide from her; no secrets that she could not know; there is nothing in the beauty of the forest or in the joy of the bloody hunt that would shame you in her eyes. All the restlessness of your life, your failure to take a wife, your discomfort in company, your awkward otherness - all that is translated from disorder into function, as she sees it.

She frowns, and her eyes search yours. "You are no one. An ordinary man."

But only ordinary men now populate the earth.

> talk king

"I was once the King," you tell her. "I performed a blood-sundering in order to reconcile my kingdom with the dwarfs. The Queen's magic is nothing to that which I performed, but mine was an act of expiation."

Her mouth opens. You have surprised Lilith.

"I didn't see that," she says. "You didn't know until-" She frowns, and looks at the corpse. "Yes, I see. And now instead of reversing the sundering, you are willing to come away with me? Snow White is your daughter after all, then - you are willing to leave her to her fate, and the Queen that was your wife, and your kingdom, being destroyed by the Queen's malicious magics, and simply go?"

> yes

"Yes. There is nothing more I can do for the kingdom; I have offered it all I have. As bad as it is now, I think it would get worse if I were to revoke the sundering - if I could even find a way to do it."

She takes up the rest of the explanation. "And besides this, though you still sometimes desire the Queen, you do not feel as a husband feels towards her; and though you protect Snow White, you do not feel that you are her father; and you do not want to feel those things."

You do not meet her glance, but you and she both know that she can see into your mind at times.

"Your weakness before was that you were too gentle to your own people, and did not punish them sufficiently when they showed cruelty to the dwarrows, and the injustice led to war, and war to death - but a war that you were winning, nonetheless. You did not act to save your own; you acted to save the dwarrows when you saw what you had done to them." She has crept closer to you as she spoke, her gentle voice laying open old wounds, and now she tucks her hand under your elbow and stands beside you in what is almost an embrace. "I too was cut away from what was mine. I know."

***

As you look, Snow White becomes two women: one the princess, your daughter-that-was, who does not recognize you. The pink returns to her cheeks and she looks, again, like an ordinary girl.

The other is stranger, older, an archaic face, framed in a tangle of nut-brown hair, and as Snow White was ice, this woman is a creation of fire. She reaches out to you and takes your hand, and your fingers are shocked by the warmth.

"Go," says Lilith to Snow White. "Find your place among the dwarrow. In time - if you can remember - tell them what has happened. Fight the Queen together, and reclaim your kingdom."

Snow White looks dazed - just a little girl now. "I can't," she says, in her smallest voice.

Lilith reaches out and presses her finger to the girl's forehead, and when she takes it away there is a fiery brand. "You will," Lilith says. "For the sake of this man, who was your father, and now can do nothing more for his kingdom. You will do the rest, so that his sacrifice will not have been in vain."

Then Snow White straightens her back and takes the lantern - a fair bargain, you suppose, since you have Lilith instead - and she walks away into the forest to the north, never turning back her head. You feel the ember of something that might have been pride. But she is cut off from you and will never again be your own daughter.

***

"The Queen was not a bad woman, before," you say, remembering.

Lilith's mouth quirks. "But she is unquestionably of the stock of Eve." She looks at the tip of her finger, which appears a little numb. "I will be your equal, if you will be mine."

*** You and Lilith are free ***