text: [Themes: Food, Fantasy, fantasy, violence, fairy tale, hunger, child protagonist]
  
  > Go downwards
  You descend the staircase.
  
  Inhale that wondrous mouldering stench: fine cheeses stacked in ripening rows. A monger's cellar wouldn't boast a breadth more noseworthy. There's brie and cantal, gloucester, blue stilton and red leicester, morbier, spermyse, and maroilles amongst others heaped deep in shadow.
  
  Westward's the undercroft, and upward a staircase curves to the eastern tapestry.
  
  > Go upwards
  You ascend the staircase.
  
  Across the eastern wall's hung a great tapestry woven with warfare and carnage. Your heart would have thundered in the skirmish sewn through these threads, wherein this castle's pretender found herself driven into exile. Ah, what a bloody rout that was.
  
  Westward lies the balance gallery, stairs wind upward into the bower and downward to the armory, and southward the banquet hall has collapsed.
  
  Now the odor in your mouth begins to dissipate.
  
  > go upward
  You ascend the staircase.
  
  Overhead's spread the nighttime sky. What once was a bower's now mere rubble with crumbled walls. Bathed in moonlight, beside the brink, weeps a phantasmal grey lady.
  
  Westward lies the scriptorium, and downward are stairs to the eastern tapestry.
  
  > Blow
  You blow out the onion's tearjerking odor, and as it wafts toward the phantom, she begins to sniffle. Ah well, a sniffle's not enough—but wait, her sniffles turn to sobs, her tureen heaves, her spoons tremble. An onion's no cause for sorrow, but even the smallest teardrop can ripple into memory. Her memories flood through her eyes, unleashing tides.
  
  Drink, drink, my darling, drink while her soup's hot!
  
  > eat lady
  Wonderful soup, beautiful soup, pouring in torrents from her eyes! Stand underneath and let her teardrops rain into your mouth. "O woe! O woe!" she cries, and every cry's another ladle's worth spooned hot on the bower. There's consommé, of course, that classic broth unparalleled, but as her sorrow deepens more soups cascade down her cheeks: bisque, bouillon, even bouillabaisse.
  
  > eat lady
  Quickly, before her sorrow cools! You'll never sample stock as rich as these sobs splashed across your face. Don't let them waste! Broth beaded with clear floating fat, chowder enriched with butter, seasoned plentifully with pepper and sea-salt, and onion soup creamy and gratinéed. Watching you slurp her tears, she wails again: "O woe! O woe!"
  
  > eat lady
  She's leaking minestrone and borscht, crying crab, carrot, okróshka, gushing goulash and gumbo with gut-wrenching gasps. She's not meant for this world, her sorrow's steeped too strong, you're sucking her into more tangibility with every slurp. "O woe! O woe!" she weeps, with leek, lobster, and lentil stew pooling below, and oxtail and split pea outpouring from her chest, and shark-fin clinging to her chin.
  
  > eat lady
  More soup! Lick every silver spoon...  taste no regret...  what's done is done...  only...  I beg you, please...  strain everything...  simmer the
  pain... 
  reduce me...  until nothing's left...  except the reduction, my dear,
  more
  potent than before.
  
  "O woe!" she wails. "O woe! O woe!"
  
  Her broken heart's boiled over. Brace yourself.
  
  Lamented fate, what cauldrons you stir in the soul! You've no compassion, no remorse! What you've got is an artist's sense for when to sprinkle melodrama's spice, when to thicken a broth with wretchedness. Our ladling lady's overcome with tears to bring the bower down.
  
  Soup runs over the rubble, streams into the stairs. Bread breaks as the floor crumbles underfoot. Phantom screeching splinters the moon. Stew nearly drowns you with every swallow, but you're not drowned: you're buoyant on spooned catharsis. Threads float around your sides, unraveled from a ruined tapestry. Sopped chambers sink. Waves flush you ashore in the undercroft, and with one final keening shriek the castle's ghost is gone, nothing now but a memory left on your tongue.
  
  Fourth course: eaten.
  
  Come and leave as you like. This red-velvet chamber's vacant, with no one left to ensure prisoners stay locked away.
  
  Westward lies the creamery, southward the dungeon, and eastward the armory has been destroyed.
  
  > check what you're carrying
  You have a hole in your stomach, and you're slathered with gore.
  
  > examine the armory
  If you'd like to see the armory, try walking east.
  
  > go east
  I hope you ate what cheese you wanted when you had the chance. The armory's demolished, buried utterly beneath chambers collapsed during the castle ghost's lament.
  
  > Go south
  Your footsteps crunch across the bridge.
  
  Wasteland, blasted and bubbling with molten chocolate bogs. Steam rises to the stars. Across the fens, impaled at every angle, skewers thrust into the ground, the night sky silhouettes human corpses.
  
  A carrion crow perches atop a nearby skewer, picking for supper.
  
  Northward the drawbridge stretches back to the castle, and a downward scramble along its embankment would see you into the moat.
  
  > look at the bogs
  Here's desolation, darling. Here's conquest.
  
  > look at the steam
  Climbing vapors melt into the dark.
  
  > examine the skewers
  Long and two-pronged. Skewers you'd use to spear fruit meant for gilding in a chocolate pot, but twisted with handles submerged, prongs staked skyward. You could not count their quantity.
  
  > look at the corpses
  Not fresh corpses by any means. These have been left to rot for such a span their skin's shrunken, muscles withered to bone-stuck strings. Enemies all, and planted for a cautionary wood. Challenge the castle: here's what will happen.
  
  > look at the crow
  When soldiers lose their guts in war, crows find them on the battlefield. Now here's a crow fed on burst bellies aplenty. Its feathers drip with carrion. Its beak's a splintered bone. Its eyes are ruby hemorrhoids in its head.
  
  "Fresh gore, fresh gore!" caws the crow. "I smell fresh gore. I'll follow you. I want fresh guts for my supper. Take me to find fresh guts!"
  
  It flaps over to land on your shoulder. Soon it has pecked the gore from your body.
  
  My dear, you have a pet.
  
  > Go north
  Your footsteps crunch across the bridge.
  
  You stand before the castle's only gate. Through this passage must pass all seeking admittance or leave, whether they be the fairest or most squalid amongst us.
  
  Southward the great drawbridge has been lowered.
  
  Walk northward, noble guests, to the courtyard; slink eastward, servants, serfs bearing supplies, through that low kitchen door. All to their stationed ranks.
  
  > go north
  No common bailey, but a garden with walls trellis-wound. Its master hauls herself from bed to bed, throwing her tendrils out to drag her leafy head across the ground. That would be Jenny Lettucehead, the castle gardener extraordinaire. Here you're in her domain, patches plump with young cabbages.
  
  A few savoy heads mewl for Jenny's attention.
  
  Northward, below a balcony, a door opens into the balance gallery, and southward are the gateway and drawbridge.
  
  > Go north
  Northward a gleaming golden door would lead into the chapel, but it's sealed. Beneath your feet, the floor's plated with silver polished to a mirror's shine.
  
  Southward lies the courtyard, westward's a tapestried chamber, but eastward the castle's collapsed.
  
  > go west
  Across the western wall's another tapestry embroidered with a grand combat, in which this castle's vilest invader, the mouse king, had his tail chopped. Milk flows into the chamber from the south, streaming through breadstick grates set in the floor.
  
  A durkha guard stands, southward, at the entrance into the great hall.
  
  Eastward's the balance gallery; upward a staircase runs to the solar.
  
  > Go upward
  You ascend the staircase.
  
  Omelettes carpet the floor. A brazier crackles merrily, surrounded by soft lard couches with marshmallow pillows. In the corner, only nougat scraps remain from the cage you consumed. Its former tenant caws on your shoulder.
  
  Southward you'll find the baron's cabinet, eastward the scriptorium, and downward stairs lead to the western tapestry.
  
  > go south
  A giant fireplace burns in a vacant room. Without the baron here to dwarf its size, the flames seem to lash higher than ever.
  
  Northward you could return to the solar; southward you'd step into the hearth.
  
  > go to the south
  You tiptoe carefully around the flames.
  
  Sweat beads your brow. Heat ripples in the air above the hearth. Stand far against the fireplace's rearmost wall; there you'll have space to skirt the blaze.
  
  Northward you'd inch back to the baron's cabinet, and a doorway leads down into a narrow spiral stair.