idolpro | Shrike's Heart (#3)

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!heart games

Shrike's Heart (#3)

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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[Ugh...]

--Shrike? You here!?

[...so much for stealth]

[ You don't get a specific response—just, well, more whispering. The water sound is probably... somewhere ahead of you, though? If you squint, there's a vague outline of something large, like a wall or a cliff face, in the distance. ]

[Worst.]

[Pats down her pockets--lighter's gone, that sucks--then touches a panel on her forearm, attempting to fire it up--back in Hell it will glow bright, which would at least make it somewhat easier to see (not that she expects anything but infinite corpses)]

[ That at least seems to work, a little—though the light doesn't go quite as far as it normally would. Almost like the visual equivalent of muffled sound; the darkness is thick around you, and the light doesn't go much further than your immediate area. ]

[Great, perfect. Switches it back off--not exactly a view she wants to see, and task or no, there's just so many--then heads for the sound of water]

[ The voices grow louder as you attempt to follow thee 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. Regardless of where you intended to go, you find yourself walking right up to the edge—allured, almost—frozen on the precipice, unable to advance or retreat. ]

[She looks into the hole for a long time, everything around her falling into the white noise of the falls; again, fairly certain what lies beyond. And--it'd be something, wouldn't it?

(I'm taking the opposite path of what they say, actually, suddenly comes to mind. ...You don't want to go where they'd lead us.)

...Well. If even Shrike could feel so strongly about this, then she herself should at least give it a go. She will at least attempt to step away from the precipice, and move towards...well, the opposite.]

[ There's a moment of... almost a pause, somehow, in the voices, as that memory (half-memory? dream?) floats to the surface of your mind, but even so you find yourself still frozen in place by the pressure of... maybe it's the enormity of this place, the vastness of nothing on the other side of the hole, or the pressure of... a feeling of being watched by something very large, all around you.

There's something surrounding you, in a ring around the hole—impossibly large, maybe they're... buildings, or—faces? But it's unsettling, uncomfortable, in a visceral way, to contemplate for too long.

The voices fill your ears, and then there's just one, and a moment of silence around it—a woman's voice, or maybe a girl's.

Give your name. ]

[Instantly, before she can help herself:]

Which one?

[ Several voices speak up in fits and spurts—cutting in over each other—

The one—

—that—

—is you— ]

...I dunno what I expected.

[Pauses, then:]

Nemesis. Who are you all?

[Assuming there's nothing new to see]

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

What was your name? You don't remember, anymore.

The voices rise around you, saying things that... is that a response? It's unclear.

thread broken and unwinding

Entombed Heart's Desire—

Throne that Lies Below

But then... ]

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Shrike's Heart (#3)

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