“I have always said that it was my intent to throw myself at the mercy of the public as soon as this world's End was forestalled, and I hope you can accept my apologies that I was not able to do this sooner. The work of the palace has been busy of late, and I am most thankful for the contributions that you have all made to the reconstruction of this kingdom.”

Queen Aina carefully shuffles a stack of papers. Even stood at the head of the Theatre, she looks… small.

She always looked small, really. Before it was the meagre height of the Sidekick between the prominence of Protagonist and Antagonist. Both metaphorically and quite literally. Geroi was a mountain of a man, and Anton's greyed hair and great robes billowed in the wind. Now, she is small before the gazes of the people of Modnik, her bespectacled gaze flicking between the audience and her notes.

“Now, I shall confess and explain my sins… and those of my father, and those of Anton. I cannot by right consider Anton's crimes distinct from my own, when I knew of them, aided in them, and benefitted from them for so long. I shall note as well that I do not consider the imprisonment of Story or Structure to be crimes; to do these was necessary to save our world from oblivion. Similarly, it remains my belief that the power wielded by the Character should not be entrusted to such a capricious being; though now we have found a tenuous peace with them I would well understand any disagreement.”

She pauses, just for a moment, as she glances across the audience. The room is reasonably full, and she can get a good impression of people's feelings on the matter by glancing across it. Whatever they are, she doesn't seem to be affected much - she smiles her usual soft smile and glances back to her notes. A Bee. Maybe quite a lot of Bees.

“Most of the crimes I shall tell you of today are from much longer ago. Our first and greatest failing was that of deceit; once we had captured the Story, we chose not to share what we had learned with the rest of those then alive. In learning the nature of the world, we came to exist outside the influence of the Character; we can no longer be twisted against our own wills by paintbrushes. By withholding this truth to ensure our own power, we left many vulnerable to the Character's power, and indeed this power caused many to suffer. It was the use of paintbrushes by the Story that turned much of the force of the guard to our sworn foes, which we were forced to strike down.”

Aina's emotions aren't simple. There is relief - the relief to finally confess this, after yet-untold decades. So, too, there is pain. The weight of a sin is lifted from her back, and yet in so doing it is spoken and understood anew.

“In remaking the world, we used the magic of the Story to… 'recast' those then alive, for want of a euphemism. What this meant, in essence, was to destroy them, and then to build up a new person around the core left behind. Without the magic of the Character, we were unable to produce new individuals.”

She flicks one paper over to the next. It's as much an excuse for a pause as it is anything else.

“And… 'twas not one time alone that we did this. It was again, and again, and again, over the course of fifty long years. We built world after world, with each collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. Each time - sometimes after months, sometimes after years, and once or twice after a decade - we rewrote the world and all its people once again. I… believe it may have been Anton's plan to do the same with this world, had he regained power over the Story.”

At last, she sets down her notes and turns her gaze to face the crowd alone.

“But that is not the worst of it. The monsters of Modnik, too, were once people in the world that existed before. Without the power of the Character, we used the Story again to create them. That… is why I took this position as Captain of the Royal Guard, and why I have urged restraint in hunting monsters.”

She shakes her head.

“Though not all monsters were once people, as the monsters we created were able to have children of their own, all of them have the potential to be made human again. It is my intention to use Ethan's skin, which we were thankfully able to retreive, to restore as many of them as we can. Still, I cannot claim innocence in this matter. I stood by as it happened, and kept my silence for year after year.”

A brief pause.

“The gods of Modnik, too, were crafted by the story. Ordinary people were… taken to NOTE, where Anton replaced their skin with the skin of the Story and injected ink into their blood, while using the Story's magic to give them the memories of the god they were to be.”

Aina lets that statement hang in the air for a moment, before picking up her notes as a soft smile comes across her face.

“Thank you for listening to my confession. I did not expect to survive to see this world, and… in truth, for long enough I believed it right that I should die for what I had been party to. But I am here now, and I intend to carry on. I will live, and I will continue to serve the people of Modnik by blade or by pen.”

Aina reaches her hand out to her side, where Mirara has come to stand alongside her. She crosses her fingers in Mirara's, and squeezes gently.