hadriel | [3] video (post Delight's event)

(Newt's sitting cross-legged on the floor and has his phone set up to be set on him in a very steady image. He's got a sheet of paper with what looks like a map drawn on it next to another, slightly more different map. For anyone who bothers to look at the floor anyway. Newt, however, is not looking at the floor but at the camera itself.)

You know, I've been thinkin' bout the monsters here lately. Went explorin' out in the caves the other night and I kinda realized something. I know it's gonna sound bloody insane but hear me out.

I kind of feel for the monsters. I mean, think about it. They're being treated just as unfairly as all of us, aren't they? They were dragged outta their worlds too and thrown into this place. I know they're violent but they don't seem...that bad? Mostly they stick to the caves and yet we go on in there slaughtering them all of the time and not always for food. Maybe I'm wrong but...that doesn't feel right to me somehow. Throwing all these creatures into a small section of this place then just tearing them apart because the gods tell us they'll give us rewards for it.

And trust me, I'm no bloody saint there - I'm guilty of it too but now that I've taken a step back and really thought about it, I have no idea why I ever thought that was okay. They're not robots. They're living creatures. They feel pain too, don't they?

(Newt frowns, twisting at the ends of his sleeves.)

Half the time- no. More than half of the time they don't even do anything to us. So maybe we should stop killing them unless it's for food. I 'unno.

(He sighs, looking off to the side of his room. Maybe he doesn't understand the world enough to understand something like that. But then he looks as if he's remembered something and grabs the two pieces of paper and holds them up to the camera so that everyone can see. The maps are of the tunnels.

Except one is different.)

By the way, the tunnels change. Discovered that. I'm kind of disappointed. That's how our Maze was too so I can't say I'm all that shocked here. Our Maze would change every night and it turned out that if you aligned the patterns, they spelled out words. So if anyone cares about seeing why the tunnels change- there you go. Wish you luck.

(Annnnd that's about it actually. He flips the video off after that casual reveal.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Which ones are those? [ Research: not this woman's strong suit. ]

I'm struggling to think of somewhere worse than this. [ Except maybe scuzzy club toilets. ]

They're the regular looking birds who can mimic voices and scream like people they've heard before. (It's okay. Newt's here to provide information without judgement.)

This place is kind of a strange piece of paradise in comparison to the world I come from. I know it's a worse world for some people but there's a few others who come from much more horrific places than this one.

... Them? Right.

[ Others might say something poignant at this point, but Kate settles for: ] Shit, seriously? [ Because, really, she can't think of much worse than being stuck Underground, with weird creatures as freaked out as they are and a bunch of Beings who seem to enjoy keeping them in some weird version of an ant farm. ] I mean, at least this place is more spacious than the Undergrounds back home. [ But she hasn't been down in them regularly in years. ]

(Hey, he'll take it. He's had worse.)

Was there a lot of underground things in your world?

(Because that's a curious sort of thing to him.)

I guess. Creatures live underground - the entire place is a maze of tunnels. Nothing like this though. [ Mostly those spaces were just about big enough for her to pass through, never mind everyone she knew, who were stuck crawling or bent over the whole way. ]

What sorta creatures?

(Mazes. Creatures in mazes. Totally up Newt's list of experiences here.)

[ If this was real life, she'd be shrugging. ]

The kind you don't want to run into at night. Not all bad things, but creepy fuckers either way.

[ She really didn't know how to explain 'grotesque dripping monsters from the nightmares of someone who watches too many b-horror movies' in a succinct enough way. ]

[3] video (post Delight's event)

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