Something feels different. All of the memories slowly fade away, and I find myself back in the chamber in Pavia’s palace.

I don’t immediately get up, however. Even though the flashbacks are over, the voice still rings through my head. I suppose in a sense, it always does…

After a while, I hear footsteps from in front of me. I look up to see Anja, stumbling towards me like she just woke up in a hangover or something.

“Hey Nova,” she greets me. “Are you awake too?”

“I guess so,” I say. “Where did Ashley go?”

“Uh, I don’t know,” she admits. “I think she walked ahead of me, so maybe she’s further on…”

I look around, and we’re still in the same room, but in front of me I can see a door. Are we back at the entrance? I turn around and there’s another door… wait, what?

“I remember this place being a lot bigger,” Anja comments, looking around herself. “Well… I’m pretty sure that the exit is that one, that’s the direction I came from.”

“Isn’t magic a bunch of fucking bullshit?” I say, because it is.

“Yep,” she agrees. “There’s something about this room. It made me act like… someone I’m not. Or at least, someone I don’t want to be.”

“Huh.”

“Were you affected by it too?”

“Yeah, I guess so. But… it didn’t really make me act like someone else or anything. It just reminded me of who I already am.”

Anja looks at me sadly. “It seems like it really affected you. Do you need to talk about it?”

“I dunno what there is to talk about. It’s just… isn’t it all such a load of bullshit?”

“Uh… what specifically? You mean this palace, or…?”

I groan at myself. “I guess just… life. I don’t know if you’d understand…”

She shrugs. “Well, I can try. Come on, talk to me while we walk.”

I nod, and we both start walking towards the back. For a few steps, I just stew in silence, but then, I start talking.

“Anja, do you know how everyone always says to follow your dreams and make something of yourself, and all that? Well, what do you make of yourself if you don’t have any dreams? What if your whole life is just… numbing yourself enough to bear waking up the next day?

“Well… okay, I’m probably being overly dramatic. But it’s hard not to be when you’ve not accomplished much of anything. Everyone always says I could be good in school if I just tried… but when I do try, I still can’t seem to figure anything out. Not much point in trying, then. So whenever I’m forced to sit and reflect for a while, it seems to me like the only way to win the game is to not play.”

We arrive at the door. Before we go through it, I look at Anja to see her reaction. She seems concerned…

“Thanks for not laughing at me,” I tell her. “I know I’m not too much of a poet.”

“Hey, no problem,” she says. “I’m not too much of a poet either. Nova, do you remember our conversation from Saturday?”

“Yeah, I do. It’s not like I like where I’m at right now. I just… I dunno.”

“You don’t know where to start?” She offers.

“Yeah. I guess that’s it.” I breathe a sigh of relief. “Thanks for listening to me. I know it doesn’t make sense, but I kinda feel better now.”

“Take it from the daughter of a therapist,” Anja replies, smiling at me. “Sometimes just vocalizing your feelings is all you need.” Then, she gives me a hug. I’m surprised by this for a brief moment, but then I return it.

After hugging, we open the door and end up in a different corridor. Ashley is already there, leaning against a wall like she’s about to fall asleep. Surprisingly, Ted is there too.

“And where have you two been?” Anja questions.

“Oh, you know…” Ashley explains. “You guys took a while, so I took a nap… got up… fought some monsters… went to Starbucks… took the PSAT…”

“Well, I hope that you’ll bedazzle everyone with your scores!”

“...What?”

“Oh right. You guys are freshmen, you don’t get that joke.”

“And what about the armadillo dude?” I ask Ashley.

“Weirdly, he was here the whole time,” Ashley explains, shrugging. “For whatever reason, he’s just kind of exempt from having to go through that.”

“Speaking of ‘that’,” Anja says. “What was that, exactly?”

“The chamber seems to have some sort of curse that makes people who walk through it want to quit,” Ashley answers. “From what I was able to gather, it’s some sort of test. It’s Pavia’s way of judging someone’s ‘worthiness’ or whatever.”

“Wait, how do you know that?” I ask her.

“I found Pavia’s shadow form a little further on, and that’s more or less what he told me,” she says.

“Oh, you found him?” I ask, getting excited. That didn’t take as long as I thought it would. “Hell yeah! It’s time to whoop some ass!”

“Yeah, I’m with you,” Anja says, nodding with me. “But first, something about this doesn’t add up. How were you able to get through, Ashley?” She then looks down at Ted. “And what makes him exempt?”

“For Ted, it was probably his non-human status,” Ashley answers. “For me… I’m not really sure.”

“Hmm… well, it seems like the chamber makes us feel apathetic and demotivated,” Anja theorizes. “So maybe you got through because you’re the most motivated one?”

“Um… I think it affected each of us differently,” Ashley says. “I didn’t really feel demotivated, so much as…” she huffs suddenly. “Well, that’s not important. The point is, we don’t know.”

“I wouldn’t really say it made me feel apathetic either,” I add. “It was more like a… total hopelessness.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Huh. I guess it was personalized to each of us, then,” Anja concludes.

“So did you free us from… whatever magic bullshit that was, then?” I ask Ashley. “How did you manage that?”

“A couple of shadows were about to kick all of us out,” she explains. “But Ted and I managed to trick them into turning off the chamber, and then we killed them.”

“Nice going!” Anja says approvingly. “Well, glad that’s over. On to the next challenge!”

----------------------------------------

After about a minute or so, we come across another door. We walk into the next room and… oh boy. This is not going to be fun.

It’s a courtroom, which is already not bringing back great memories. But there’s a twist: everything is made out of white marble (of course.)

As the four of us walk through the center aisle, we don’t see a soul, enemy or otherwise. An ominous quiet hangs over the court. As we reach the front where the judge would normally sit, Ashley turns around to face us.

“Where did that smug asshole go?” she wonders aloud. “Not even that assistant guy is here.”

“Are you sure this is where he was?” Anja questions. “It’s so quiet in here… suspiciously quiet, in fact.”

“There’s probably a boss fight coming up,” I tell her.

Ashley turns towards me, giving me this sort of condescending look that I don’t like. “A boss fight… Oh, I see,” she says. “You’re thinking about this as if it were a video game.”

“I mean, it could be one.”

Ashley shakes her head. “No, Nova. We are not inside of a video game. I can assure you of that much.”

“Sometimes I like to think that I’m the star of my own TV show,” Anja comments, grinning. “I find myself internally narrating my life…”

“You think that you’re the main character?” Ashley says in reply. “That’s really cute.”

“What? Why can’t I be?”

Right at that moment, we are interrupted by a smack that is so loud that it feels like the air is split in two. I quickly cover my ears, feeling dazed by the noise. Ashley winces, and then starts frantically looking around to find the source. Anja is so surprised that she falls over onto the ground.

“What the hell was that?” I shout at nobody in particular.

Ted points off to the side of the witness stand and says, "I do believe that the 'boss' is here."

He’s here, alright. And he looks fucking pissed off to see us.

“Ah, excellent. We were just looking for you,” Ashley says.

“Alright, battle time!” I shout. “Let me at ‘im!”

“I don’t think so!” Pavia yells back at us disdainfully. “I told you all to leave. You are not worthy of being here!”

“We’re not leaving!” Anja cries. “Get ready for a beatdown!”

Pavia just sighs heavily at us, and then snaps his fingers.

In the blink of an eye, the three of us are sitting in chairs behind the defendant’s desk, and Pavia is suddenly in the center where he normally would be during a trial, staring down at us. I try to get up, but I find myself unable to move my arms and legs…

“To tell the truth, I thought you all would be coming back. Since you’re here, I want to know something. What did you see when you walked through the Chamber?”

“Well, I saw a bunch of these creepy statues,” Anja answers. “And there was this red carpet, and…”

“I think he meant what you saw in your head,” Ashley interrupts.

“Oh. Well, then he should’ve specified!” Anja replies indignantly.

Pavia waves his hand. Anja keeps moving her mouth, but no sound comes out. When Anja realizes what happened, she gets visibly furious and starts making weird faces at him instead.

“I’m most interested in hearing from you, boy,” Pavia says, shifting his gaze over to me. “Do speak up.”

I feel myself becoming enraged. “None of your business, asshat,” I spit at him.

“No need to take that tone with me,” he says patiently, but he’s smirking. “That chamber shows you nothing more and nothing less than the parts of your heart that you are trying the most desperately to bury. And we can learn a lot from those.”

“There’s no ‘we’ in this,” I respond. “You’re not learning shit.”

“You’re so vulgar,” he comments sardonically. “Trust me, boy. You don’t want to end up like that father of yours. And with the path you’re going on, you will…”

“I’ll fucking show you!” I shout at him. “I’ll show everyone.”

“Oh will you?” he comments in a bored voice. “Well, if you’re just going to disrespect me, I have better places to be. Goodbye.”

He snaps his fingers again, and a bunch of enemies spawn in front of his stand. I see three extremely tall knights in golden armor, as well as a couple of strange winged creatures that I can’t get a good look at on either side. 

“Escort them back to the chamber. And please do it properly this time…” Pavia orders the enemies, as he gets up from the desk and stomps back to the door. After he leaves, I suddenly regain the ability to move my arms and legs. Not like that helps much…

“We’re outnumbered… this isn’t good,” Ashley says. “Those golden men are like the ones I fought. They’re weak to fire and bless, but resist physical attacks.”

“Um, Ashley… that means nothing to me,” Anja says, nervously getting into a battle stance. 

And before I know it, the other three have charged off into battle. Ashley immediately uses a white light or some shit to hit one of the armored guys. Ted starts using his pistol to try and shoot down the winged ones, who on closer inspection are vaguely cat-like humans with wings coming out of their heads… freaky. This leaves the other two armored guys to gang up on Anja. She’s shooting them with all she’s got, but while the bullets are punching holes all over their armor, it’s not doing much to slow them down… this is painful to watch. 

The two knights are moving faster than it looks like they should. Anja’s trying her best to duck and dodge around them, but it’s hard when there’s two of them. Before long she’s been kicked off to the side…

I can’t stand it anymore, so I run out towards her. However, when I’m halfway there, I feel something pick me up by the collar of my shirt. I am lifted up by one of the enemies who was just attacking Anja, who brings me face to face with himself. 

“You don’t even have an awakened Persona yet,” he scolds me. “Do you have any sense at all?”

“Let me down… you fucking… bastard… bitch-ass…” But my shirt collar is pressing against my neck, and it’s suffocating me… 

“Or what, exactly? Are you going to keep swearing at me? That’s typical of children like you...”

From behind him, I see a huge blast of fire knock one of the others down and into the back of the one holding me, who shouts and tosses me in front of him as he loses his balance. I land flat on my ass right next to where Anja is laying. 

I take this opportunity to immediately roll over and look over her. She’s conscious, but her face is scrunched up in pain…

“Are you okay? I ask.

“Uh… owie… got me right in the stomach…” she says, grimacing at me.

I get to my feet and whirl around to make sure I’m not being snuck up on. I see Ashley nearby, the two winged creatures flying around her head like two extremely large angry bees. The knights are currently preoccupied with Ted, who is making use of his small size to run into between each of their legs, causing the three to stumble around in confusion.

“You just gonna stand there?” Ashley gripes at me, trying to swat them out of the air with her sword.

“What do you want me to do? Spit on them?” I argue back. “I don’t have any weapons!”

“Well, this is your moment, dude. I know you have a bad habit of procrastinating, but this is ridiculous…”

I’m so mad… I ought to show her too... I’m so angry, I feel like I could just… well, wait, that’s new.

Greetings, young lad, a manly voice says inside my head. I have come to lend you my power…

Oh thank god, finally, I think back. Yes, give it to me please.

Oh. Well, splendid. Right this way, then…

----------------------------------------

 I see a figure standing across from me. It’s… no way… it can’t be...

“Chris Hemsworth?” I ask. “Is that you?”

“Um… uh… I do not know of this ‘Chris Hemsworth’ fellow… I am your Persona,” he explains.

“Oh.”

“It seems that you are tired of having no say over your own life, and are finally ready to take matters into your own hands… a wise decision. You have proven yourself worthy to wield my power!”

“Cool.”

“Um… alrighty then. Carry on.”

“Okay”

----------------------------------------

I know instantly, when I begin trembling, that it must be happening… the awakening of my Persona. I feel a mask on my face, and I tear it off. It sucks, but I know I had to do that to get my fighting abilities. Then, my clothes change around me… I’m wearing a long, golden robe, and some weird thing on my head that I can’t see. But what excites me most is the huge steel hammer I’m now holding in my right hand…

In front of me, Ashley is making an unusual face at me… she’s smirking?

“I thought that all you needed was a push…” she says.