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

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[handpuppets]

[ The nearest house to you that hasn't caught has its door standing open, swinging lightly on its hinges. You enter.

From the outside, it looked ordinary, but—there's something odd going on inside this house. There's a handful of ink drawings on paper set out standing up, each with a sort of... strange little shrine with its own offerings.

The rest of the room is filled with artifacts—lost dolls, dried flowers, notebooks, keepsakes, roughly sorted into piles. Pinned to some of them are notes that seem like names, though most of them bear question marks. ]

[deicider]

[Weird...

Of course they're drawn to one of the dolls first.]

[handpuppets]

[ It's a ragdoll, with dark hair and black eyes, clearly not made with machine sewing or anything near to that. some of the stuffing is coming out of a tear in its stomach. ]

[deicider]

[Nothing they can do to repair it right now, though they do tuck some of the stuffing back in.

Then they take a closer look at the ink drawings.]

[handpuppets]

[ The first one that stands out to is... your own face. Laid out in front of it are a golden spear, a bottle of sake, and a bouquet of amaranth flowers.

So. ]

[deicider]

[Hm.

They look at the others to see if they recognize any more.]

[handpuppets]

[ There are two more you recognize. One is of BARiTONES's Kohime, which seems to have received an offering that's just a stack of knives; the other is of BARiTONES's Alexander, who has received a paper lantern that glows from being lit by a candle.

There are two more; one is a dark-haired man, looking unwell, dressed in simple clothes; his shrine has a child's doll (or a doll of a child), and lacks a name placard. The other seems to be of a soldier, in piecemeal armor; his lacks a name as well, and the only thing laid in front of it is a broken sword, tied together with a white piece of string. ]

[deicider]

[After some contemplation, they take their own bottle of sake.

They'd pour one our for themself but they already paid respects twice. It wasn't seem right to mess with the rest so they leave, and look for anpther building to nose around.]

[handpuppets]

[ shots shots shots

the less on-fire buildings all seem to have... the same sort of odd collection in them. keepsakes, lockets, lost dolls, army medallions.

you spot Griffin rifling around through one of them, which seems to be the twin of the one that you went into. ]

[deicider]

[Why two???

They're going to go tag Griffin now.]