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Choose Your Own Adventure: Lady of the Woods 2a

<This section continues from part 1 - Drink the nectar - path> The strange woman’s smile doesn’t falter as you take the flower from her hands. It’s delicate and surprisingly light, despite the fact that its bloom does contain a generous amount of pale gold liquid. As you look back up, her face remains unreadable despite your best efforts. There’s still something unnerving about the intensity of her stare and the fullness of her smile. But the flower’s sweet scent is catching in your nose now and it calls to you to take a sip. Reluctantly, you pull your eyes away from the lady and down the flower’s offering like a shot of alcohol. It’s smooth. Light as air and just barely sweet. It glides across your tongue effortlessly, but it’s only after you swallow that you realize something has gone wrong. “What’s wrong?” The lady asks. Her voice echoes in your head like an earworm, digging its way deep into your mind. You look up to see her changed. Her eyes glow with a sinister light and her smile, tenuous in its sincerity, has shifted into an outright malevolent smirk. You try to speak, but the nectar has poisoned your throat and it’s all you can do to gasp out a questioning plea. “You humans are all the same,” she says. “One little temptation and you fall right in headfirst. No backbone, no willpower.” As she speaks, the forest begins to melt away. The trees evaporate into swirling clouds of green smoke that seem to stretch on forever even as they close you in. The dappled sunlight that made the meadow feel so warm and inviting twists into a demented halo behind the woman’s head. “I see the look in your eyes. You think I tricked you?” Her smirk deepens into gleeful contempt. “There was no lie. The nectar does promise a long life. A life spent in my realm, for you can now never leave this place.” You try to resist, but your feet refuse to budge. You look down to see the ground too has become nearly formless and root entangle your feet. Or, perhaps the roots are your feet. Nothing seems to make sense anymore. How much of this is nectar induced hallucinations, and how much is real? You watch as the woman grows additional arms, as new eyes flicker in and out of the smoke, as her hair begins to float. You can no longer see the ground. You can no longer feel your legs, or turn your neck. Your entire existence is now this moment, forever burned into your sight. “Was the temptation worth it?” She asks with a laugh that runs down your spine like ice water. “Now tell me, what should I do with you?” She leans forward, the new eye on her forehead staring into your soul. “Should I add you to the garden? Turn you into a gift for the fairies? Or maybe, I could give you another chance…” “Do you think you deserve it?” <Decision point - Do you nod yes, or no?> To be continued…