Shrike's Heart (#3)

[idolpro]

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

Comments

Re: > START

[irregular]

[Okay.

[Is that an exit? A death trap? A what?

[K tears himself away from the rim of the hole; he picks up the nearest small object he can find and tosses it down, waiting to see how long it will take to fall, and what it sounds like when it strikes the bottom.]

Re: > START

[handpuppets]

[ You... intend to do that, but the best you can do is to bend to the side, looking for... a discarded rock, weapon, anything to throw in to the hole. The pressure of the enormity of this place, and the enormity of the void on the other side of the hole is too much to bear, too much to move under.

You eventually find something in the dark, though—it's a bone, bleached clean, and shuffle it into the hole. It falls, soundlessly, and vanishes like it's blanketed in a starless night.

The voices continue to rise, filling your ears, and then—then, there's only one, and silence around it. A boy's voice—

Give your name. ]

Re: > START

[irregular]

[Okay, Holes equal Bad Times.

[And why is he not surprised it's a bone. This whole place appears to be made of bad vibes and it's really starting to creep him out.]

My name?

[Are we just giving this shit out to disembodied voices now?]

Don't have one. Best I can give you is a letter.

Re: > START

[handpuppets]

[ it's bad times all the way down, my dude; welcome to depression quest 2k20

The voices rise and fall and are almost incomprehensible, and then several say, clearly, at once:

Then give it. ]

Re: > START

[irregular]

K.

Like I said. That's it. Any chance you'd return the favor?

Re: > START

[handpuppets]

[ 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.

VENGEANCE! VENGEANCE! VENGEANCE!

the darkness that comes before all

undoing of the finest weave—

But then... ]