Shrike's Heart (#4)

[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

[handpuppets]

[ This dream again.

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.

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. ]

Re: > START

[we_meet_again]

[He checks out the corpses. Does he recognize them this time...?]

Re: > START

[handpuppets]

[ The corpses stretch for some distance—all real-seeming, distinct faces, still and ashen in complexion. Some seem like total strangers, or perhaps vaguely familiar at best; those who've seen a few of Shrike's memories might recall some of them as members of her army unit, or faces she met on a battlefield. A number of the faces resemble hers in features, but with dark hair and tan skin.

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, is that all of them have their eyes wide open. ]

Re: > START

[we_meet_again]

[The familiarity, even if indistinct, tugs at his heart a little. As he picks through the area, he stops to close their eyes, and smooth the hair off their foreheads, and cross their arms into more peaceful shapes.

His own body is really creepy but he closes its eyes anyway.]

Re: > START

[handpuppets]

[ You tend to the corpses, and close their eyes; you feel at least a little calmer from the gesture, and gain +1 WILLPOWER. ]

Re: > START

[we_meet_again]

[He's meandering around, now, checking in on folks, pausing occasionally to shut the unseeing eyes of various corpses.

Eventually he starts wandering in the direction of the sound of the water]

Re: > START

[handpuppets]

[ 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.

all are rotting and all are dying and

WRONG, all WRONG, it's all—

betrayed from the very start, built upon the foundations of our bodies—

They 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. ]

Re: > START

[we_meet_again]

[Mmm no. Nope. Nuh-uh. Nah. No thanks.

Going to try wandering away from this to find something else.]

Re: > START

[handpuppets]

[ You cannot. 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.

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

Give your name. ]

Re: > START

[we_meet_again]

Don't you already know it?

Re: > START

[handpuppets]

[ They repeat, now, other voices joining the chorus:

Give.

The pressure intensifies—like the crushing deep of the bottom of the ocean, where no light reaches. You could almost feel as if you'd been forced to your knees, but you're still frozen in place on the edge of the void. ]

Re: > START

[we_meet_again]

[oh gosh

His voice comes out sounding strangled]

Co—

[He clamps his mouth shut to keep the rest from coming out]

Re: > START

[handpuppets]

[ The pressure closes around you like a vise. It feels like a fist around your heart.

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

Re: > START

[we_meet_again]

[You make a pretty compelling argument, creepy death hole.]


—Cobalt.

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 again? You can't remember.

But then... ]