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

[deicider]

Is that where you are...

[handpuppets]

[ The voices rise, and rise, and rise, and then—for a moment, there's silence, and then there's only one. Quiet, soft.

Give your name. ]

[deicider]

[Cardigan tips their chin imperiously.]

You first.

[handpuppets]

[ The voices swirl around you, and—maybe it's some kind of answer, that they give you, for all that none of them sound like names—

The Dark Water Beneath the Surface of the World

endless devourment for the unrighteous

LIGHTLESS HOPE

and then, again:

Give your name.

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. ]

[deicider]

I'm going to find you, [Cardigan taunts lowly.] You really are going to wish you were never born when I'm done with you.

[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, ]

[deicider]

Cardigan.

[And if they can, they're going to dive into the hole.]

[handpuppets]

[ oh my god why do so many people want to swan dive into the hole unbidden

Your voice emerges, but the words are muffled, garbled, warped, and swallowed into the nothingness that surrounds you.

What was your name? You can't remember, anymore.

BUT BEFORE YOU YEET BODILY INTO THE HOLE YOU MIGHT HAVE A BETTER OPTION ]

[deicider]

[Don't fuckin tell C̺̹a̧͇̺̫̰͓r̖̞̺͢d͕̙͟i͉̜̞̳̗ͅg̩̭̹͕̘̯̦ą̼̭̹̹n͝ͅ what to do.

They look a little irritated at this cop-out appearing when they were just about to yeet themself into nothingness, but whatever, they'll roll with it.]