idolpro | Vergil's heart game r2

You feel weak, your body won't move no matter how you try, and you are falling, away from everything you know and love. Away from everything you need to accomplish. If you could just reach out, maybe you could hold on to it, claw your way back. But it's a useless endeavour, you fall unconscious, and your mind goes blank except for poetry and a familiar voice.

O mother Enitharmon, wilt thou bring forth other sons?
To cause my name to vanish, that my place may not be found,
For I am faint with travail,
Like the dark cloud disburden'd in the day of dismal thunder.

My roots are brandish'd in the heavens, my fruits in earth beneath
Surge, foam and labour into life, first born and first consum'd!
Consumed and consuming!
Then why shouldst thou, accursed mother, bring me into life?

You wake on the ground in a cave, cold, wet, and sticky. It smells of rotting flesh. Your objective is clear, but you can't recall a name or face. Nothing else about your memory of him is changed, but for some reason the name "Vergil" just won't come to you, and you couldn't describe how he looks if your life depended on it. But at least your body starts to respond to your will, slowly regaining enough strength to carry on.

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Far more of the black sludge than there appears to be leaps towards you and swallows you up the moment you're within its reach. There is nothing for a moment, only the feeling of the tar sinking into you through your flesh, probing your mind and soul as it searches for information, and then...

There's a burst of blinding light, a terrible screeching noise that continues to ring in your ears, and searing heat. Before you can see or hear again, you can smell burnt flesh. There's the smouldering buildings and plant life, the metal and gasoline from vehicles too, but the flesh is overwhelming, far more distinct than any other.

When the dust settles everything is smoke and ruins. Except Vanya's body in your hands, holding her by her collar, a knife stuck in her chest. What did you do, Five? Did you try to stop the apocalypse by killing your sister and end up causing it? Or maybe you just couldn't stop yourself, you just felt like it. Either way her blood is on your hands at the very least, and awfully suspicious you should be the lone survivor, isn't it?

It feels as if ages pass, hundreds of years, thousands? Any time you try to use your powers to escape you only find yourself in a slightly altered version of the same thing. There's no one. Nothing grows, and eventually there's no tinned food or even insects left. But you don't even starve to death, even if you try you can't die. You only have eternity to think. You can't even escape that smell.

Eventually you wake on the ground in the cave again.

Amaurot stretches out before you, home restored at last. Reunion with your loved ones, that wonderful feeling of knowing you've finally done it and can rest at last. And it is euphoric for a little while.

But you begin to notice things even from the first few moments that are off. At first people are just a little too defensive, a bit too quick to argue, slightly petty. But it becomes more obvious by the day, that these people are not really your people. They're not the Amaurotines you know. They're just like the shards, cruel and shortsighted. They don't even have the power of Creation...and they live short lives. Perhaps most damning is the way their souls look, wrong.

Is this place even Amaurot, or does it only look like it? Just a set piece. Maybe something of your own invention, just an illusion you've trapped yourself in. Or maybe it is Amaurot truly, but it's been irreparably tainted by the shards. But in that case is it really Amaurot?

You'll have plenty of time to worry about it. But eventually you find yourself back in the cave, waking on the ground.

You find yourself in Amaurot. You're so close to accomplishing your goals, and at the moment you're in the convocation, working away on preventing the Final Days alongside your people and even your own double. Full of hope. But all work stops, a hush falls over the convocation.

Hythlodaeus stands with both Emet-Selchs. They look right at you while they announce this can't continue. Things have to be allowed to run their course, after all if your plan fails, your Emet-Selch has confessed what you will do. Destroying the shards, killing all those people. Don't they have just as much right to exist as anyone here? Hades can hardly meet your eyes, but for just a moment he does to mouth an apology. He looks incredibly tired, worn down by all the long, painful years. Isn't it better at least to meet death alongside your people?

Everyone seems to be in agreement, especially about how horrific the things you've done are. Even Five, Absinthe, and Vergil are there and seem to nod and agree after only the most pathetic attempt at argument. Their hearts were never really in it. And Igeyorhm - one last attempt to appeal to someone, but she only steps closer to your double, away from you and the terror of knowing what you've become.

Finally it's decided you can't be trusted not to try something, and so you, Emet-Selch, and Elidibus are taken away, kept under heavy watch in separate, far flung places until it all begins. The Sound, Amaurot crumbling before you, and finally, the end. But you can't even take comfort in your two dearest friends, the only ones who continued to stand beside you.

Eventually you find yourself alive and waking on the cave floor once again.

What kind of nightmare do you give a man with so little fear? Well it's terribly uninteresting. You're in a line. It never seems to move. Once in a while you get to take a step forward. But you never actually seem to get closer to the end.

Have fun in endless, eternal line hell. They don't even have any music playing, it's the most boring, mind numbing thing imaginable.

At some point you find yourself back in the cave, laying on the floor.

Vergil's heart game r2

NIGHTMARE

FIVE

EMET-SELCH

LAHABREA

BLACK