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Shrike's Heart (#2)
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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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. ]
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[Then he takes a breath in, hefts his spear, and starts walking toward the running water.]
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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. ]
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[He doesn't let them slow his steps, though; he keeps pressing toward the building.]
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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. ]
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[He walks around the hole, giving it plenty of space, and carries on toward the wall]
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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. ]
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[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.]
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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. ]
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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. ]
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Thorn.
[Fuck these voices. They don't get his real name]
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What was that name you went by? You can't remember.
but then— ]