text: [Themes: Historical, Religious, moral choice]
  
  > go downwards
  The stairs are slippery with something. A particularly poor step sends you careening down, your candle getting snuffed out in the process.
  
  You brace yourself for the hard impact at the bottom, but it never comes. Instead, you fall into a soft, uneven mound. It jars your bones, but at least nothing breaks. The light from the kitchen barely makes it down the stairs: all you see is shadows.
  
  Be careful, father. Someone's coming. -- Luke 4356:235
  
  > hide
  Where do you want to hide?
  
  > hide under the corpses
  Bracing yourself for the smell, you worm your way into the pile of bodies. The weight is suffocating, as is the smell.
  
  A wolf howls in the distance. A hungry, plaintive sound.
  
  > wait
  Time passes. Slowly.
  
  Footsteps sound through the hatch. They are faint but growing stronger.
  
  > eat the corpse
  The mass is soft; your teeth enter easily. You tear off a chunk. Flesh. Plague flesh. The tumor squelches in your mouth, and rancid blood drips from your lips.
  
  A chorus of rings sounds from the tower, echoing through the land. Five rings. None.
  
  > eat figure
  The blood is warm, delicate. It has a hint of illness, but it still soothes the thirst that dries you deep inside.
  
  > Search figure
  Warily, you lift the cowl from the man's face.
  
  Ignatius.
  
  > Keep going
  You've already done that.
  
  > get all
  prybar: Taken.
  
  > eat constantin
  Constantin's flesh is soft and squishy. The plague has done much. You barely have to chew. It simply slides down your throat and into your belly.
  
  A gust of wind slices across your ears. You shiver.
  
  > get Constantin
  He is too heavy.
  
  > go to the north
  Ignatius's room does not smell as strongly as the others. A bed is pushed up against one wall, opposite the door to the south.
  
  > go south
  Dozens of openings line the hall, each leading to a separate cell, except for the west, which leads to the cloister. Although there are no doors, the entrances are positioned as such to afford as much privacy as possible. Brother Matteo's chamber is to the south, Ignatius's to the north, Drogo's newly appointed cell is to the northeast, Constantin's is to the southeast, and Lucca's to the southwest.
  
  Whispers dance in your ears. Growing. Fading.
  
  > Burn paper
  (the papers)
  It does not light. The dampness spoils everything here.
  
  > Go north
  Church (in the pews)
  The pews stumble over eachother, desperately crawling for the chancel in the north. The light outside finds no entrance: the Saints will not permit it. The frescoes are all but lost in the darkness above.
  
  Matteo welcomes you to the chancel from his perch on the cross. His perpetual grin consumes his face and blood drips into his eyes from the crown of thorns.
  
  A rank chamberpot sits before the chancel, human filth caking its sides.
  
  The Saints scream from their glass cages. They would run, but they are trapped.
  
  > examine crown
  Matteo grins. It spreads throughout the church.
  
  > go to the north
  Church (on the chancel)
  God, to think of all the time you wasted up here. The blind leading the blind. A quiet laugh spreads through your heart. A joke. The rest of the church lies to the south; it's not as funny of a joke.
  
  Matteo welcomes you to the chancel from his perch on the cross. His perpetual grin consumes his face and blood drips into his eyes from the crown of thorns.
  
  Wormholes, rotted flesh, and maggots are all that remain on Saint Cuthbert's bones.
  
  The lectern has crumbled away. The weight of the Bible is crushing to the wicked.
  
  The Saints scream from their glass cages. They would run, but they are trapped.
  
  > Cross
  You can go only south, down or out.
  
  > look at the cross
  Matteo revels from his perch, his blood staining the splintered wood.
  
  > look at Cuthbert
  He is a body with holes, or a skeleton with flesh. Rot extends to his bones, causing them to crumble into vile dust.
  
  > look at Bible
  The dead animal hide wrapping its pages is rotted and filled with maggots.
  
  A gust of wind slices across your ears. You shiver.
  
  > get Bible
  It burns to the touch, charring your hands.
  
  > Go south
  Church (in the pews)
  The pews stumble over eachother, desperately crawling for the chancel in the north. The light outside finds no entrance: the Saints will not permit it. The frescoes are all but lost in the darkness above.
  
  Matteo welcomes you to the chancel from his perch on the cross. His perpetual grin consumes his face and blood drips into his eyes from the crown of thorns.
  
  The Saints scream from their glass cages. They would run, but they are trapped.
  
  A rank chamberpot sits before the chancel, human filth caking its sides.
  
  > Go east
  Cold, heavy light slides in through the window and creeps along the floor out the door to the west.
  
  The dim light leaches all color from the desk.
  
  The bed, cold and harsh, no longer welcomes you.
  
  > talk to Cecilia
  "Damn them," she spits. "Very well. Go to the stone in Matteo's room. I want to see what this whole situation is about."
  
  > talk to Cecilia
  "Go now. It is time."
  
  > go west
  The locutory used to be alive with the bartering of merchants and the tales of visiting brothers, but since the gate was closed, no one has been in here but you. A small bed is pushed up against the wall for those visitors not permitted residency in the monastery, its tired frame supporting a light mattress.
  
  A small circle of warmth surrounds the fireplace near the door to the east.
  
  Cecilia paces back and forth.
  
  Whispers dance in your ears. Growing. Fading.
  
  > kill Cecilia
  You move, but something holds you back.
  
  Kill me not, for I will be your salvation. -- Job 345:90
  
  > look at the corpses
  Dozens of bodies line the wall: the villagers of Rovato.
  
  An itch tickles beneath your skin.
  
  > eat the corpses
  The flesh is hard. Your teeth grind upon it, eventually releasing a tiny lump of plague-ridden muscle. You chew. It tastes delicious nonetheless.
  
  > go to the north
  Darkness begins to creep across the sky from atop the infirmary in the west. The last rays of light expose the stables to the east and the gate to the south. The monastery lies to the north, its walls offering promises of shelter.
  
  A gust of wind slices across your ears. You shiver.
  
  > go north
  The last hint of shelter against the outside world. But it is only a hint. The wind rushes by like a stream of ice water to the south: only the curve of the arch protects you. The warmth, for as much as it can be called that, of the monastery awaits to the north and the cold of outside to the south.
  
  > go north
  Before you leave, you close the entrance door lest the snow, or worse, get in.
  
  Clouds close off the sky, blocking the light but not the snow.
  
  The colonnade is broken to the south by the exit to the hall and to the west by the entrance to the refectory. The brothers' dormitory lies to the east, between the calefactory in the southeast and the belltower in the northeast.
  
  The church rolls and laughs to the north, pointing Her sharp fingers in a perpetual mock at God.
  
  > go east
  Dozens of openings line the hall, each leading to a separate cell, except for the west, which leads to the cloister. Although there are no doors, the entrances are positioned as such to afford as much privacy as possible. Brother Matteo's chamber is to the south, Ignatius's to the north, Drogo's newly appointed cell is to the northeast, Constantin's is to the southeast, and Lucca's to the southwest.
  
  An itch tickles beneath your skin.