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: THE RUINED TOWN

[handpuppets]

[ some others have headed into the reeds, as well; you with your knife, that girl with her sword. Eventually, you spot the source: there's a man lying in the reeds, dark-haired.

No—a man and a boy, though it's hard to make out the features of the youth bundled up in his arms, since his hair is slicked to his forehead with blood. The boy doesn't move, though the man's chest still rises and falls, with a soft wheezing nose. ]