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

[idolpro]

Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.
- Pablo Neruda

✦

bought a bubblegum scented sword so the last thing
my enemies realise is how fun and cute i am
- wolfpupy

Comments

[ninuanni]

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

[carrionmywaywardsun]

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

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

/2

[ninuanni]

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

THE BATTLEFIELD

[ninuanni]

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.

[carrionmywaywardsun]

[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.]

[ninuanni]

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.

[carrionmywaywardsun]

[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.]

[ninuanni]

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.

[carrionmywaywardsun]

[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.]

[ninuanni]

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.