Akanae Thal's Questionnaire

Why, my royal palace of course... Actually, come to think of it, it was never really a palace at all,  was it? Some infernal trap fashioned to keep me complacent while imprisoning me. Revolting. I swore upon the day of my ascension that I would never be kept captive again.

And so, I am an empress without a throne. A shameful state of affairs, but better a powerless peon than a puppet of hollow pride. I am still the Golden Empress. I will reclaim my divinely appointed rightful reign over all that I can see.

...

Until that day, I will continue slaving over menial repairwork and load-carrying at an inn located within this... crossroads between worlds. Biding my time, waiting to strike.

I don't like having dish duty. It feels uncomfortable on my carapace.

I have entered into... resentful yet voluntary servitude under a simple, weak-minded man who runs an inn between worlds. Apparently the deluge of adventurers seeking their next glory cause a number of tables to be flipped at particularly dramatic times, and those tables must be repaired. I am excellent at my craftwork, though the finer details may sometimes escape me.

Other than the regular tax I pay to the lord of this inn, I know not what to spend this money on. The purposes of the items I witness being carried about have not revealed themselves to me, and so I refuse to indulge in that. What on Gaia is a 'Phown' and why is it's intelligence important in purchasing one?

I was born feeble and weak underneath the third waning sun of my world. I remember well the days I toiled in those accursed fields, paying homage to those who claimed themselves to be above me. It was not until I acquired the power of the Crystal, found in those filthy fields, that I tasted true glory. I will do ANYTHING to keep myself from those fields once more. I will slay any that stand in my way, I will break through the walls and ramparts with my bare hands to cast the kings aside and claim those thrones as my own because they are MINE TO RULE FROM!

Death, however, is a constant observer at my back. When it comes to living a slave or dying an ignoble death... I do not know which I can pick.

If you had asked me a mere year prior, before I took my righful place as queen, it would have been finding the Crystal in the fields of my childhood. A magical relic, blessed by the Goddess. Instead, it was something more... sinister.

As I awaited on my throne for the foolish so-called Crystal Warrior, I began to spot the patterns of the walls... flickering. The texture of my royal carpet smoothing over unevenly. It took me time to piece the dreadful secret together, and only when I began carving the messages onto my carapece did it truly click. I was being reset. My mind, my body, and my very palace were being reset. I was placed back to continue my role, while something happened.

Communicating with myself gradually, I uncovered the secret of the false reality I was placed into. The hero would come, the hero would die, the hero would reset. I would reset... but the hero remembered.

A VILE INSULT, THAT WAS! I would be doomed by nature of repetition as that cursed Crystal Warrior had the very fates stacked in her favor, did she not!? I had to break my way out from my prison with my bare hands, tearing the shackles of fate off myself and fleeing into the gap between reality I found between the corners of my palace thanks to an innumerable number of time I was not allowed to or supposed to remember.

Hm. First, the lord of the inn. Howard, his name is. He is strange to me. Simple minded with his attention focused solely on his inn, no ambitions higher than that. It boggles the mind how one can be so... unambitious.

Second, my most trusted general. Elanora the Fierce. To say that she is in my life is to be not entirely honest, as she is still trapped within the confines of the same trap that held me for long, doomed to unwittingly face an endless stream of vagabonds, one after the other, and forget the glories of her combat. I would see her freed and returned to my side.

Third... the memory of the Crystal Warrior haunts me still. I have come to doubt my very past after breaking free of the slavery I endured on my throne, but one thing I am certain of is how she looked at me when I faced her in the rubble of her village, an unfortunate casualty of my conquest. Not a look of arrogant disdain or raw hatred but... Admiration? She, the one chosen by fate itself, admired me.

I need time to think on this.