idolpro | Shrike's Heart (#4)

Entry tags:

!heart games

Shrike's Heart (#4)

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

[ You stand, and find your footing amongst the dead. Water might soak into your shoes, but it doesn't feel cold, here.

It doesn't feel like anything.

There are the tools of war everywhere, here—knives and swords of every make and size, maces, shields, war fans, fist weapons. If you want for something to defend yourself with, then none of these people will likely object, permanently silenced as they are.

The whispering just at the edge of your hearing grows a little more distinct. It's like they're coming from somewhere, a little ways away. It feels like you should follow, eventually, but it's not urgent. ]

[Clicks his tongue at this annoying voice. So this is the kinda shit she'd hear, huh. It grated on him, out of principle alone.

Pulling a broadsword out of a corpse, he remarks,]

Sorry, I need this more than you do right now. Poor bastards.

[Starts to walk away, but...

mmmghhhh

Shrike would want him to have a bit more compassion??? Begrudgingly, he pauses to turn and close his eyes for a second.]

May the Saviour be with you.

[Huff. Okay he's going.]

[ You close the corpse's eyes, murmur your prayer, and feel at least a little shored up by the action—like you've made things at least a little more right. You gain +1 WILLPOWER.

The voices grow louder as you attempt to follow the sound of the 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.

blood begets blood begets blood begets blood begets—

all are alone in the end

you stand in the place you were born for.

In the distance, you can make out the vague outline of... a building, maybe, or a cliff face. ]

[Yells out into the dark,]

Wow, there's a whole peanut gallery, huh?

[Let's check out that building, then.]

[ You press onwards. The voices rise in an overwhelming crescendo, but the louder they get the more impossible it seems to turn from your path, as oppressive as it feels. 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 your feet taking you there, right up to the edge—almost allured—until you stand frozen at the brink, looking down into a deep, infinite darkness from which neither sound nor light can escape. ]

[Crouches right up to the very edge and shouts:]

ECHO...!

[And waits for an echo. Though honestly doesn't really expect one, this is a freaky death hole and he's just fucking around.]

[ You call out, but it's stifled, muffled, garbled, and the sound vanishes almost immediately, like light across an event horizon.

...It's a freaky death hole.

The voices rise, and rise, and rise, and then—for a moment, there's silence, and then there's only one. A man's, maybe.

Give your name. ]

[Hmmmmm. Gonna casually sit at the edge of the freaky death hole, legs dangling as water spills past him. The most irreverent.]

Yeah, about that. I kinda like my name? You wouldn't happen t'settle for a nickname, would you?

[ You feel suddenly as if you are in the grip of some enormous pressure. Perhaps its the enormity of this place—the infinite darkness of the hole, the cacophony of the whispers, the unsettling visages—faces? of the impossible, incomprehensibly large buildings you realize were what you saw, that surround this place in a ring.

Give your name.

You must pay twenty (20) willpower to resist the Neverborn in their place of power, thanks, ]

[Grumpily rolls his eyes. Fuckin' Neverborn, pain in the ass ghost voices.]

Fine, take it if you want it so bad. It's Griffin.

[ 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.

but then... ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Shrike's Heart (#4)

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START

Re: > START