This door is heavy, but once you give it a push, it swings open on a well-oiled hinge.
Inside is a standard-looking BAD END bedroom, pleasantly lived-in, but with one noteworthy exception: There are deep gashes carved across the entire room—stretching across the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Something about them is familiar; perhaps it takes you a moment or two before you realize that they are exact matches (albeit magnified) for your own scars. Each “scar” is limned with gold, like kintsugi.
Up close, you can see that there is quite a bit of extra detail on and around this door. In fact, the whole doorframe is surrounded with photos and knickknacks, like some kind of magpie’s scrapbook: there are various photos of BAD END members, of pep!pep! at the beach, of the garden at ☆ZRAEL; there are snack wrappers from the conbini; a dangling tsum tsum of Scythe; a neat-looking leaf from the park; a handprint in what looks like old blood.
Beneath the name “HELLFIRE” (the katakana are enthusiastically oversized) are many other names: “Kiri,” “Cut Through All Foes,” “Khrysaor, Temptation of Angels,” and—written like an addendum to that last one—a fourth, which is not in katakana but rather some strange script that makes your vision blur at the edges: “Khysael.”
Most prominent of all, though, is the carved crest on the door: a detailed lotus and aconite, twining together into one whole. And you understand, intuitively, that this is as much a name as all the others.
—smell blood on the wind. The rest of the dorm falls away, and you find yourself on the battlefield.
…Or the remnants of one, in any event. It’s not just blood on the breeze, but the sickening smell of spilled entrails, and the groans of dying men: You really did it! You slew them all. The one who wielded lays in the blood-soaked soil beside you—and it is his own blood which has soaked it. His lamellar has broken apart around the head of the spear that pierced through his gut, but his face is still set in a howl of triumph.
It isn’t any particular battlefield, or any particular warrior. You loved them all, but there were so many, and you were wielded again and again and again.
In the distance, past the tattered flags and corpses of men and horses, is the sheen of what looks like a pond.
The surface of the pond is mirror-smooth, and reflects velvet-dark night sky, moonless and glimmering with stars—and each and every one of those stars is falling.
It is peaceful here. And you know: here, in the water, is the way home.
The mirror-dark surface of the water stretches out around you: a vast circle. Above you and around you, reflected in the water, the stars continue to fall.
It is dark, in the deeps, like the dark of the sky had come down into the water itself. In fact, it is too dark to see anything; you can only feel how far the dark stretches: a welcoming void.
...But you haven't found anything yet, and your lungs are starting to strain.
It's hard to drown yourself, even intentionally. Every instinct of the body fights against it.
...But you hold yourself under, and you let the water fill your lungs as you submerge yourself completely.
It seems as though the water reflects the void not just on the surface but underneath, for it is dark, too dark to see anything—but there is not need to be afraid, for here the void is right, it is warm, it is good—and though it looked to only be a pond it's so, so much deeper than that, and you find yourself like a weight, sinking
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: CHARACTER ROOMS
[He hesitates, then heads for his own]
Re: CHARACTER ROOMS
Inside is a standard-looking BAD END bedroom, pleasantly lived-in, but with one noteworthy exception: There are deep gashes carved across the entire room—stretching across the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Something about them is familiar; perhaps it takes you a moment or two before you realize that they are exact matches (albeit magnified) for your own scars. Each “scar” is limned with gold, like kintsugi.
Re: CHARACTER ROOMS
Re: CHARACTER ROOMS
Up close, the "scars" on the wall have a warmth to them; a kind of emanating tenderness, as of shared touch.
Re: CHARACTER ROOMS
Re: CHARACTER ROOMS
You feel rested; renewed. You feel loved.
Re: CHARACTER ROOMS
[He angles his head just the right way, so that the hair obscures his expression, though of course there is no one here to see]
[It takes him a minute or two, to pull it together enough to head out of the room again, toward the room marked with Hellfire's name]
Re: CHARACTER ROOMS
Beneath the name “HELLFIRE” (the katakana are enthusiastically oversized) are many other names:
“Kiri,” “Cut Through All Foes,” “Khrysaor, Temptation of Angels,” and—written like an addendum to that last one—a fourth, which is not in katakana but rather some strange script that makes your vision blur at the edges: “Khysael.”
Most prominent of all, though, is the carved crest on the door: a detailed lotus and aconite, twining together into one whole. And you understand, intuitively, that this is as much a name as all the others.
Re: CHARACTER ROOMS
Re: CHARACTER ROOMS
Lotus, Key of the Descending Angel.
Aconite, Key of Rage.
(In fact, if Lumen has read Hellfire's profile before, he may recall that it says exactly that.)
Re: CHARACTER ROOMS
[He has read her profile before, and he makes the connection - lingers a moment longer, before trying the door to see if it's open]
1/2
Re: CHARACTER ROOMS
—smell blood on the wind. The rest of the dorm falls away, and you find yourself on the battlefield.
…Or the remnants of one, in any event. It’s not just blood on the breeze, but the sickening smell of spilled entrails, and the groans of dying men: You really did it! You slew them all. The one who wielded lays in the blood-soaked soil beside you—and it is his own blood which has soaked it. His lamellar has broken apart around the head of the spear that pierced through his gut, but his face is still set in a howl of triumph.
It isn’t any particular battlefield, or any particular warrior. You loved them all, but there were so many, and you were wielded again and again and again.
In the distance, past the tattered flags and corpses of men and horses, is the sheen of what looks like a pond.
Re: CHARACTER ROOMS
Re: CHARACTER ROOMS
It is peaceful here. And you know: here, in the water, is the way home.
Re: CHARACTER ROOMS
[Time to head home, then]
[Wading into the pond]
Re: CHARACTER ROOMS
Re: CHARACTER ROOMS
Re: CHARACTER ROOMS
Re: CHARACTER ROOMS
[...well]
[He ducks his head under the surface of the water - begins to swim downward, toward the bottom]
Re: CHARACTER ROOMS
...But you haven't found anything yet, and your lungs are starting to strain.
Re: CHARACTER ROOMS
Re: CHARACTER ROOMS
Is that alright with you?
Re: CHARACTER ROOMS
[He keeps going]
Re: CHARACTER ROOMS
...But you hold yourself under, and you let the water fill your lungs as you submerge yourself completely.
It seems as though the water reflects the void not just on the surface but underneath, for it is dark, too dark to see anything—but there is not need to be afraid, for here the void is right, it is warm, it is good—and though it looked to only be a pond it's so, so much deeper than that, and you find yourself like a weight, sinking
down, and
down, and
down.
You emerge from the water to a starry sky.