#and Nier slaughters The Aerie pretty much the moment they start to cohabitate with the shades

[kikizoshi]

In the spirit on NieR-related stories never to be written, here's a what was once meant to be an opening line: two paragraphs I wrote with the concept of Nikolai hailing from Facade, in which he'd been sentenced to that thing where you have to stare at sand for a long time:

In the ever-flowing sludge of quicksand, Nikolai Gogol felt two long years of his life drift away. Should someone have went up to him at that moment, to ask him for a favour or to otherwise simply ask how he was doing, he wasn’t sure that he’d be able to resist hurling them in with the skiffs floating endlessly along the canals. ‘Though, I can’t, of course,’ he thought. ‘Such a thing would break Rule 89: "Intentional murder of another citizen for no discernible reason is hereby strictly prohibited…" Then again, who may blame me, were it naught but an accident? I could hurl myself into the river, along with him…’ Nikolai’s face fell into a grimacing smile. ‘Ah, but then that breaks Rule 338: "Throwing oneself into the sand is forbidden." They truly do think of everything…’