idolpro | Shrike's Heart (#2)

Entry tags:

!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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Climbing to his feet and surveying the absolute sea of dead.]

This was one fuck of a battle.

[He glances at the corpses nearest him, looking for one with a spear.]

[ you survey the corpses, and find a spear sticking up—

it turns out to be still clutched tightly in the hand of Griffin of avante en garde, who lays with a bloody gash across his stomach, and one across his neck. ]

[Well. Fuck.]

[He bends to ease the spear out of his hand - hesitates, frowning, and closes Griffin's eyes.]

[ You close his eyes. He looks very... different, in death, somehow. But perhaps it can bring him some measure of peace, if you pick up his weapon and let him rest; you gain +1 WILLPOWER. ]

[Does he know anyone else among the dead?]

[ 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—like you might have seen them once in someone else's memory. A number of the faces resemble Shrike in features, but with dark hair and tan skin.

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.

What is true of every corpse here, though—apart from Griffin, and a few of the corpses around Sekhmet—is that all of them have their eyes wide open. ]

[Well. He can't exactly take care of the whole battlefield, but he'll close the eyes of the ones he recognizes.]

[Then he takes a breath in, hefts his spear, and starts walking toward the running water.]

[ you give them what peace you can, and then move on.

the water sound seems to be coming from one particular direction. over that way, you can make out the vague outline of something large in the dark, too, like maybe a wall, or a building front.

as you walk, the whispering gets louder, mixing with the sound of the water to almost a cacophonous level. The voices are all speaking out of time and over each other so full thoughts are almost impossible to make out, but you catch, for a moment—

—here. I love you. I love you until the end of time but there is always an ending—

and then it's gone, buried by other voices again. ]

[Hmm. Who did it sound like?]

[He doesn't let them slow his steps, though; he keeps pressing toward the building.]

Edited 2020-02-20 01:44 (UTC)

[ It doesn't sound like... anyone you know, really. That one was a man's voice, but not one you can place.

The voices rise in an overwhelming crescendo, and 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. ]

[Is the building still a ways in the distance?]

[He walks around the hole, giving it plenty of space, and carries on toward the wall]

[ that's what you intend to do, but—

the hole radiates a sort of intense pressure. it's alluring, in a way. rather than give it a wide berth your feet carry you

right

up

t̳̦͓̘̰̩͜o

t̹͉̼͟h̨̺̫̱̟͟ͅé҉̧̻̖͓̪̯͖ͅ

ę̵͉̙̙̻̠͢͢d̬͉̪̩̘̰̭̫͙̹͚͈̟́g҉̢͘͏̳͈̜̯̲͍̯̖̥̩̬͙e͟҉̶̬̭͚̩̮

blackness, infinite void. it's nigh impossible to look away from, and you hear the voices, all around you, a heavy crush against your ears—

Give us your name, they say. ]

Who's asking?

[He tips his chin up, in challenge. If he's alarmed from coming to the edge without meaning to, it doesn't show on his face.]

[ the voices don't answer—exactly. they rise in a babble again, odd phrases, shrieks, bubbling laughter—it's not coming from the pit, but from all around you.

the dream of the dark

—but only if you listen closely. that song. the one no one taught you, not your mother, the one that exists because we made it—

VENGEANCE! VENGEANCE!

—and so on. and then one repeats, in a clear tenor man's voice:

Give us your name.

And here, in their place of power, even exercising what control over yourself as you can—you cannot say no. ]

Edited 2020-02-20 02:03 (UTC)

[But can he say fuck you? Because he sure is trying to say fuck you.]

[ you can say "fuck you," but—

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

you get the impression you aren't walking out of here until you give them your name. ]

Thorn.

[Fuck these voices. They don't get his real name]

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

What was that name you went by? You can't remember.

but then— ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Shrike's Heart (#2)

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START