idolpro | You're at the reintro. You're at the heartgame. You're at the combination reintro/heartgame.

Look bub, you're in the Foyer of Feelings, what do you expect.

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 a red-headed boy in WILD CITY clothes; 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.
Something about looking at that ?language? gives a feeling of almost vertigo, or vast emptiness, or—something that feels both unnameable yet viscerally familiar.

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.

[Hope's souldreamthing wasn't full of feelings! Just boring old books.

Valor will peruse the knickknacks with some interest, spending a long moment--maybe too long?--staring at the fourth name. It feels familiar, in a way that reminds him of the occasional hollow ache inside him, a reminder of where something should be but isn't.

...Anyway, moving on. He figures the way forward is going to mean experiencing more ~feelings~ so--touching first the lotus carving, then the aconite.]

You run your fingers over the grooves of the floral crest, and with that comes with a kind of certainty: that these are your (her) flowers, as much a part of you as your cutting edge—

With your hand pressed to the lotus carving, and again there is that feeling, but more distinct this time (spelled out, you could say):

You descend as in a flurry of wings from Heaven (or perhaps from ṣo̹͔̲̼͙m̳̫̘e̼̮͍̞p̝̟̲̹̯͟l̫̬̱̠a̹̖͚ce̮̣ ̝͖̗ͅe̗̭l̞̹͇̞̰̜̕ͅs҉̘̭͎͚̖̠̬ȩ̹̟̱). You are resonant and powerful. You transform others and give them what they need to realize your will.
Here it is: your power—to be a meaningful change in people’s lives.
Here too is your nature—the ways this has never been your choice at all; just something you are. A catalyst.

This is Lotus: Key of the Descending Angel.

[jerking his hand away. the sentiment feels similar in some ways, but very different in others, and he can't really place what those ways are.

...touching the aconite, now]

You "read" the aconite:

Your life is shaped by a terrible, world-shaking hatred and fury.
Here is rage: the kind that stays with you; the pain that defines you—that gives meaning.
...Or is it not yours, but Sidiander's rage, and you its instrument?
Here too is the counterpart to that pain and fury: that which lets you oppose it. For so long it never even occurred to you to want such a thing, and yet...

This is Aconite: Key of Rage.

[more feelings which feel kind-of-similar-but-not.

...I guess the one thing he didn't look for was a doorknob or other way of opening the door, so. he will do that now.]

There is in fact a dorm-standard doorknob—nor is anything locked, from the looks of things?

[eyes the doorknob suspiciously. are you going to give me more feelings.

but he will still open it and step through the door.]

You push open the door, and smell blood on the wind.

The space around you shifts and blurs, and you find yourself on a battlefield.

—Or rather the remnants of one. 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 you lays in the blood-soaked soil beside you—and it is his own blood which has soaked it. His lamellar armor 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.

Edited 2021-10-17 21:08 (UTC)

[It all feels so--familiar. Which makes sense, since literally his first memory was of being in the army. But the scent of blood and groans of the dying feel familiar in a way that goes deeper than that.

He is pretty sure his feelings about war and death didn't involve love in any way, though.

...Anyway, there's nothing for it but to continue, so he walks on toward the 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.

[he glances briefly at the scene of falling stars, but there's really only one thing to do here, isn't there. Valor doesn't even hesitate before jumping into the pond.]

It is dark beneath the surface, 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.

To find Her, drown yourself in a circle of stars.

...But you haven't found anything yet, and your lungs are starting to strain.

[It's hard to fight the reflex to start flailing, to start trying to head back to the surface, but--he want to stay down here, he wants to head down into the dark. So he'll try to stay down and head down for as long as he can.]

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

down, and

down, and

down.

You emerge from the water to a starry sky.

Studying the name—the way it is written in some impossible λ-language—only heightens that uncanny feeling; you have to do something akin to unfocusing your eyes to read it properly. But if you λ-look at it long enough, the shape of the letters begins to feel almost like a poem, or a tiny fragment of one:

Thousand-cutting soul;
a thousand ways of ending

You're at the reintro. You're at the heartgame. You're at the combination reintro/heartgame.

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THE BATTLEFIELD

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I FORGOT TO GIVE YOU THIS i was too excited about extra-detailed flower keys i'm sorry