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: 2/2

[we_meet_again]

[Maybe shrike doesn't hear you, but Cobalt does]

Amaranth... You're here too, huh?

Re: 2/2

[worthathousand]

[ She blinks at the sound of his voice, looking, for a moment, almost lost. But she sees him, and straightens her back. ]

It appears that I am.
I have... seen Shrike in a place like this before, though I thought it merely a dream. "Sorrowful Blade of the Softly-Falling Rain" is a title she has been known by.

[we_meet_again]

I saw that dream, too. Didn't know that title, though.

Do you know what it means?

[worthathousand]

...The meaning of the title, or the of dream?

Though the answer is the same either way: I do not.
But in the memory where she was called by that title, the... woman... who used it was no mortal—I'm certain of that.

[ a pause ] And in the dream, I made her bury the dead. Because she was the one who had killed them.

[we_meet_again]

I wonder if she killed these people, too.

...But maybe they're a metaphor.

[worthathousand]

Like as not, if we are in a world of her mind's making.

But she has killed many, many people.

[we_meet_again]

[I mean, haven't we all]

I wonder if she's around here somewhere.

[worthathousand]

[ let she who has not killed thousands of people throw the first stone, ]

She must be.
[ resolute, uncompromising ] I am going to find her.

[we_meet_again]

Is it okay if I tag along?

This place makes me think if we get separated we may never find each other again.

[worthathousand]

Ah—of course.

But we should move swiftly.

[ though unfortunately this presumably means that he and Wednesday actually witness uh.... all that. ]