You descend down the wrecked stairs to the princess. Nails and beams jut out higgedly-piggedly and you trip, but it's okay. You only scrape yourself and trail a little blood.

At the foot of the stairs, there's a writing purple mass, unbound by chains that lie useless in a corner. A horn grotesquely floats in the center of the goo and a susurrating moan emanates as the goo slides across the askew-angled cobblestone. A sparkle flickers from the goo-riding horn--magic!

Before some cruel spell can become effective, you do what the voice of the irritated suggested--"something unexpected". You practice your free will and, questing to end this torture: this endless loop of a story, the pain of dying and being reborn, the pain of enduring false ends and false hope and false stories, and so many things that barely make sense but that the narrator insists has meaning on a deep spiritual level--you claw out your throat.

And you die.

And that's the end.

This is the narrator speaking. You're reborn and the cycle continues, but you've lost your mind. Worthless. You'll fade, and I'll fade.

I failed. Death was not defeated.

And you failed. You didn't become one with the princess and restore yourselves to your world.

I should not have placed real creatures into the forms of concepts.

I will try again: gather my strength and concepts from all the realities--enough strength to anchor the concepts in their pure form.

One last try.

Let's discover how it turns out in... Slay the Princess! The video game.

Author's Note

This is an "Act Three" ending.

This "Act Three" is structured different from how the game did it, to encourage you to purchase the game if you liked this adventure.

Consider this Act Three ending a 01: Refusal ending.

You had enough of being manipulated.
You're tired of trusting the narrative.
And so, you see a piece of the truth.
It's not a good ending.
Because you gave up.
But you gave up on your terms after it was demonstrated to you that doing what the unreliable narrator said wasn't working out.
The game was rigged from the start when you followed the clumsy path.

You can start again and try to find a different ending.