Never Trust an Effeminate Straight Male Truck Salesman

The Princesses Astra, Exotica and Sophia were dead, splattered by machine gun rounds. Princess Imelda was curled up in a corner retching and screaming. Josh Burbank lay lifeless, legs and arms charred to a stiff crisp by a grenade and pointing toward the ceiling. The Lady Annie Oakley and Countess Maria and Duchess Elena were dead too, of mixed causes. Sara and Jasper Hewitt had been riddled with poison throwing stars, and Mike Cain and Jerry Seinfeld had perished when the lower half of the Staircase Room collapsed. None of the surviving Authors could be found.

Helena and Imelda are crying. "This is a catastrophe," Diana says to Scott Chen. "I thought the Staircase Room was supposed to be a happy and light-hearted place. A place where people laughed. How could this happen?!"

"We may never know," says Furry Sara, nursing a shrapnel wound on her leg.

"It is human madness," says Lady Sara Ushiko of MalBoncton. "You all think you are so smart, but you cannot control your own fates. And now look! Look at what you have caused to happen!"

"So are you saying that this is somehow our fault?!" Steve Thomas says.

"No..."

"Just shut up, you two!" Ardua says. "We've got to find a way out of here! That's what Astra and the others would've wanted."

She glances down at the abyss left when the lower half of the Staircase Room exploded and collapsed downwards. There was nothing left to do but climb up.

1. They climb up.
2. They jump down into the abyss.

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