idolpro | Shrike's Heart (#2)

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!heart games

Shrike's Heart (#2)

The woman before you is beautiful—fair of features, with lovely golden skin and luxurious long black hair, petite. You have the immediate and distinct impression that she's just let go of your hand, and she steps back, and smiles.

It's not quite a happy smile.

"I'm sorry," she says. "There's just nothing I can do, as things are. But the way is there; it just needs to be lit."

You open your mouth—maybe to say something, or to express confusion—but you have to cough, and taste something metallic, spattering black blood onto the ground in front of you. Then you realize—blood seeps from opening wounds in your arms, your chest, your stomach, your face. It rims your eyes and trails from your nose and you feel like you're dissolving—

—and you fall through the ground like it's the surface of a lake, and go down, down, down.

> Wake Up

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[Well, this is okay. I like this.

But first, if this is a place of the dead, it is not right to simply let them lie here like a charnel house. She kneels down, pulling out weapons, closing their eyes.]

I will not fail you.

[ Nice here, isn't it?

A little nicer, now that you've made the dead a little more restful. You gain +1 WILLPOWER for your consideration.

The corpses stretch for some distance—all real-seeming, distinct faces, still and ashen in complexion. Some seem like total strangers, or perhaps vaguely familiar at best. Mixed in with all of them are the bodies of your fellow idols—you might see your own face mirrored there, though for whatever reason, it seems wholly unfamiliar, if unsettling. ]

[Bending down to examine "herself" closer!]

[ Well, she certainly looks like you, down to the haircut and clothes, but it's a little like looking at a photograph that is clearly of you but that you don't remember being taken.

And you're standing right here, aren't you?

She seems to have been killed with a sword, though.

Meanwhile, water might be soaking into your shoes, but it doesn't feel cold, here.

It doesn't feel like anything.

The whispering just at the edge of your hearing grows a little more distinct. It's like they're coming from somewhere, a little ways away. It feels like you should follow, eventually, but it's not urgent. ]

[Investigating the idols' bodies, to determine if there is any sort of there is any sort of pattern to who is here, and who is not- and if they have all been killed in the same way.]

[ There's enough bodies here that every idol in Tokyo-F could easily be among their numbers—it's hard to find them all, in the dark, and overlapping as they are. There's even some transferred idols here—Harpy, with sword in hand, as if she fought until the end. Griffin, clutching a spear. Cardigan, skewered on three swords.

Oh, and that's Kohime, with her hair matted bloodily across her face, a spear driven through her chest. Nearby, the tallest member of BARiTONES has fallen, the back of his head crushed into a bloody mess, dyeing the white sections of his hair red. ]

[Ah... this is all so hard to see. Especially Griffin and Kohime. But Sekhmet will not look away. Void and pain and slaughter are part of her too. And she cannot simply deny that. In any case, these people are important to Shrike... as she suspected.]

...What would you have me do here?

[ the voices that whisper in your ears are a chorus—some that sound far, some that sound alarmingly near, although the only... living?... souls around you are few. all of them speak at once, on completely different lines of conversation, but for a moment, you hear some distinct snippets of words—

...walk. She flew beyond the ending of her...

...always further to fall. I know not—

walk. ]

[No. Not yet. First she will at least pull the weapons from her fellow idols, close their eyes. Put them at peace.]

[ You close their eyes, the ones you can find—lay them out a little bit more naturally. Perhaps someone will find rest, here. ]

[And now, she will walk, in the direction of the sound of water.]

The voices grow louder as you attempt to follow the sound of the water, occasionally parsable as distinct words in a wide array of uncanny voices—the odd thing is, they feel different and memorable, but trying to describe what sets each one apart feels impossible.

They rise in an overwhelming crescendo, but the louder they get the more impossible it seems to turn from your path. And then you see the hole.

It's only the rush of water that gives it away, in the darkness—a wide, circular hole in the ground ahead, the dark water falling down the edges in sheets, the roar blending with the voices until it's overwhelming. You feel compelled—allured, maybe—to walk up to the edge, and look, frozen in place, at the infinite darkness below. ]

[She takes a couple more steps forward, closer to the edge.]

[ It's a complete, pitch darkness—not even that. It's nothing, on the other side of the hole.

There's something strangely beautiful about it.

The voices, rising around you, continue whispering—they ask for your name. ]

[She remembers something like this. This allure, this beauty. It makes her sick. It thrills her.]

Hlasoh.

[ Your voice emerges, but the words are muffled, garbled, warped, and swallowed into the nothingness that surrounds you.

What was your name? You can't remember, now.

But then— ]

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Shrike's Heart (#2)

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