Penance

The landscape of Amicia's scarred consciousness

## Trophies

*I did it for him! And I'll kill you again if I have to! I'LL KILL ALL OF YOU!*
Amicia

"**Penance**" is the thirteenth chapter of *A Plague Tale: Innocence*. As the name suggests, it confronts Amicia with actions taken over the course of the game and revisits some past characters.

## Plot

### Synopsis

> At the de Rune estate, Amicia and Lucas discovered that the Macula, Hugo and the rats are closely intertwined. When they returned to Château d'Ombrage, Amicia had Hugo drink the elixir that their mother had started making, which Lucas managed to finish. It will let the young carrier of the Macula pass the first threshold safely.
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### Summary

The sun is already shining as Amicia de Rune is awoken by Mélie, who says Rodric beat her brother Arthur at the sling, although the young smith says the young thief is "just rubbish". The children are in good spirits, but then Amicia notices that her brother Hugo is missing from the mattress next to her. Everyone falls silent, realizing that none of them had seen him. They fan out through the Château d'Ombrage to find him, but Amicia finds that the his de Rune pendant that he hung on one of the trees is gone, confirming her worst fears: he has run away.

Running along through the forest, Amicia calls for Hugo as a light snow begins to fall. In her panic, she trips and falls into a shallow, rocky gorge, hitting her head and losing consciousness. Awaking sometime later, she makes her way down the narrow crevice between some fallen trees. When she passes through a small opening in the rock and brush, she finds herself in an eerily familiar village that she does not remember being nearby. She sees no one, but the doors ahead of her close and her cries for help go unanswered. Then, at the end of the street, she sees a familiar face: Clervie, a kindly old woman who had offered them shelter earlier on. The old woman points out that, like before when Hugo had run off when Amicia had gotten angry at him, no child runs away without a reason. Opening a door, she cautions Amicia but lets her pass further.

Directly beyond the door, the scene shifts to another familiar, grisly sight: piles of slaughtered pigs line the path and, a short distance away, is Laurentius' farmhouse but left intact. Stranger still: Laurentius himself, no longer sick, is standing by the door, calling to the girl. Like Clervie, he questions why Hugo left and urges her on to save him. Some distance away, Hugo can be heard as Amicia pushes through the door, now finding herself in the hallway outside of Hugo's room on their family estate before it was raided and Béatrice herself standing in the doorway blocking her. She criticizes Amicia for hiding the truth from Hugo about his mother being alive and says that the girl is no longer needed; Hugo wants nothing to do with her. Nonetheless, she lets Amicia pass to "see for herself". Hugo is within and immediately berates Amicia furiously, claiming that she is jealous of his love for their mother and that this is why she kept her survival as a secret. Before Amicia can stop him, the boy knocks her down and the scene goes black.

Amicia then wakes up back in the gorge where she fell, revealing the bizarre sequence of events was, in fact, a dream. She hears Hugo calling out in distress nearby, and, climbing out and running on, finds her brother being kept in a cart and watched by two leering Inquisition guards. Killing them, she frees Hugo who says he heard his mother calling to him, seemingly unaware of her survival unlike in the dream. Amicia maintains the lie that Béatrice is dead, and starts to lead him home.

A woman can be heard in pain, and Hugo, insisting that it is their mother, breaks away and runs off yet again with Amicia in pursuit. Amicia's strained psyche collapses again as she somehow finds herself back on the family estate, following Hugo down into a long, straight tunnel lined with rat droppings and the still-moving corpses of soldiers that she has killed trying to slow her down. Pushing further into the darkness, now wading through rats, she spots Lord Nicholas in the distance with Hugo. The boy hears Amicia's anguished cries, but the Inquisitor dismisses them and leads the boy away to see his mother. Amicia can only helplessly scream in despair as the scene fades to black.

## Trivia

* Given the bizarre ebb and flow of the dream sequences, it is hard to tell how much of the chapter even occurred in the waking world or how much is simply in Amicia's head.
* Being a chapter focused on Amicia's psychology, many of the characters and elements represent parts of Amicia's mind rather than their actual selves. This all shows that Amicia has taken significant psychological damage over time.
	+ The dead soldiers represent Amicia's regret at having taken so many lives. They even taunt her and try to pull her down.
		- Although the soldiers claim that Amicia killed them, some, in fact, wear blue French Army uniforms; Amicia has never killed any French Army soldiers. This could just be mental scarring, as she has killed so many men that it's become instinctual and blurred into one.
	+ Béatrice represents her regret at having lied to Hugo and her doubts as to whether she can truly protect him.
	+ Clervie represents her regret at having gotten angry and yelled at Hugo.
	+ Laurentius represents her regret at having failed to protect him, as while Amicia was willing to kill anyone to protect the boy she had failed to fill the void that Béatrice left in his life.
* A few feet before reaching Clervie, Lion's corpse can be seen at the right side of the path.

Navigation

* I – The de Rune Legacy
* II – The Strangers
* III – Retribution
* IV – The Apprentice
* V – The Ravens' Spoils
* VI – Damaged Goods
* VII – The Path Before Us
* VIII – Our Home
* IX – In the Shadow of Ramparts
* X – The Way of Roses
* XI – Alive
* XII – All That Remains
* XIII – **Penance**
* XIV – Blood Ties
* XV – Remembrance
* XVI – Coronation
* XVII – For Each Other