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]

[ 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.

you've been here before, haven't you?

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

[forgottenmercy]

[those voices are so familiar. so familiar. his had been louder, from what he remembers, so much louder, a chorus that could not be washed away or drowned out, but here, close, so close.

in this darkness, he cannot sing. this darkness drowns everything, light and sound and voice and life itself, existence itself, a cessation, an ending beyond an ending beyond all endings. he knows-but-doesn't-know-but-knows that the voices are right, that he has been here before, just like Shrike-]

Re: > START

[handpuppets]

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

Give your name. ]

[forgottenmercy]

[for a moment-that-is-an-eternity-but-a-moment, Persephone stands there. he does not remember doing this, not before, not in the life before this, but he is the same as Shrike, whatever they are, and he must have done the same thing. standing on a precipice, a transition, an ending, an ending-

stands in silence, a bird with its wings clipped, a butterfly pinned beneath glass. a moment a moment a moment an eternity and he has only one name he has to give, not anymore, he cast off and threw aside the Betrayed Bride Veiled In Forgotten Mercy and become a new person, a new person a new existence born when his memories were taken away and there is only one name he has to give-

and in the darkness, in the silence that swallows all sound, the silence that curves down forever, he whispers-]

Persephone.

[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.

but then... ]