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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[we_meet_again]

[Crouching to let Weḑ͟͡ǹ̷e҉̀̕s̀da̸͞y̧͟͞ slip off his back, he starts looking around urgently for something like a well or trough or anything else he can use to try to slow the fire that's threatening to spread to the currently not-on-fire buildings]

[handpuppets]

[ There is at least a water trough; it looks to be where someone previously tied up riding animals of some sort, though the animals are long gone. There's enough water in it to at least slow the fire to one of the buildings. ]

[we_meet_again]

[Not enough to save anyone, though, is it!! He grabs a bucket and starts pitching it on the closest building that's threatening to burn its neighbor! He'll just keep doing this until he runs out of water]

[handpuppets]

[ You aggressively start firefighting, and, hey—it does actually start to work. You manage to put out one building more or less entirely, since it hadn't spread past the thatch.

You run out of water midway on a second, and half the roof has fallen in, but it's at least in better shape than it was. ]

[we_meet_again]

[That's better than nothing. He doesn't know what more he can do than that, to be honest.

Are there any people around who look like they need immediate help?]

[handpuppets]

[ The only people you can seem to find are dead.

but, then... ]

[we_meet_again]

[Oh... everyone's dead already. He was so fixated on the fire he didn't even confirm if there were living people here or not.

Well. This building's preserved now, he guesses.

Then the gold line reappears. He makes a note of where it goes, then turns back to the town. He checks the bodies in his vicinity, checking the pulses of those that aren't obviously dead, and shutting the eyes of the ones that clearly are. He does this to multiple bodies.

After that, he's going to look around the town and see what he sees.]

[softlyfalling]

[ You look around the town; unfortunately, it seems that the battle (or what passed for one) was long enough ago that anyone living or able to flee has fled. For your regard for the dead, you gain +2 WILLPOWER.

There are farm fields, across the way; a shovel lies discarded, forgotten. The houses that were still on fire have mostly collapsed in on themselves, putting their own fires out; it's quiet. Peaceful, in a sense; the breeze blows through the stalks of grain and the reeds, and all it leaves in its wake is a gentle rustling. ]

[wonderlandgirl]

[W͖̋̿͋̇̈ͫ͒e͎̯̫͓͇͈̠ͣ̍̚d̹̲̰͖͎͕̗̃ͯ͛̐̉ͭͨn͝e͈̯̣͖̫͙̅ͪs̮̭ͅd̗͓̙̻̤̯a̴͍̼͙̭͚͍ͥ͗͛̈́̚ý̲͔̗̬̓ͬͯͅ doesn't really know what she's expecting to find around here, but there's got to be something they can use to carry water - if they can find water. Hasn't there?]

Can you say anything...?

[handpuppets]

[ on the other side of the town are farm fields, and there are some wooden buckets left about, in various places; that might work. ]

[we_meet_again]

There's a trough over there!

[and Cardigan running in and out of buildings. He guesses they must be empty]

Maybe if we find some buckets...!

[wonderlandgirl]

Over there--!

[She points toward the fields, and books it over to try and grab one, and fill it with water...

[It's a lot harder than it seems, because she's not very fast and not very strong. There's no way she's working fast enough for it to do any good.]

This isn't working, is it...?

[we_meet_again]

Let's do our best...!

[They do their best!!

Eventually, though, the water runs out.]

Whew... I don't know what else to do about that. Let's look around and see what else we can do.

[wonderlandgirl]

[W̢̤̲̪͗ͣě̖̞̙̽̊̍͡d̠̗̙̰̬̥̈́̑nͣ͗̆e̻̬͇ͤ͆͗̀s̤̗ͦ͢d͈̺̖̦͋̌̚a̳͓͚͓̱͚͊ͯ̃͒͊ẏ͕͚̺̦ͭ͆̌͑ͩ glances quickly around herself - is thgere anything at all they can do? She can only see bodies, and burning houses, and... what? At least some of the buildings don't look like they're on fire.

[Maybe she should go and take a look inside one?]

[handpuppets]

[ 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. ]

[we_meet_again]

[following Wednesday inside, looking around]

...What's going on in here?

[He's going to be nosy and read some of the notes. Whose names are these? What's this notebook? etc]

[handpuppets]

[ the notebooks vary in type—one seems to be a farming long, another seems to be a diary of someone's Imeeji Idol Productions sparkling idol life. The names are unclear. A pile of army decorations is marked with the same series of six blanks, like the collector was trying to fill in the name but couldn't remember it. ]

[we_meet_again]

...Hm.

[Checking out the shrines now]

[handpuppets]

[ One drawing is of avante en garde's Cardigan; laid out in front of it are a golden spear and a bouquet of amaranth flowers.

Another is of Kohime from BARiTONES, which seems to have received an offering that's just a stack of knives.

A third is of BARiTONES's Alexander, who has received a paper lantern that glows from being lit by a candle.

There are two more of unfamiliar people; one, a soldier in piecemeal armor who has received an offering of a broken sword tied together with white string, and another, a dark-haired man, looking unwell, dressed in simple clothes; his shrine has a child's doll (or a doll of a child). ]

[we_meet_again]

[Oh, huh. He recognizes that spear from the house. He doesn't know the name of the flowers, though. Did Shrike kill Cardigan? He doesn't know. Kinda implies that, though.

Kohime and Alexander, too, huh? Hmm.

Is there any incense he could light, or something else he could use to make an offering?]

[handpuppets]

[ as it turns out, yes; there's some laid to the side as if someone meant to make an offering later, and flint and steel. ]

[wonderlandgirl]

[W̙͎͕̟͎̚̕è̱̞̣d͙͔̘͎̠̤̝n̟ͣ͒͆̇͞ḛ̝ș̬ͤͯ́d̨̯̼̺͍̮ą̪͓̖͚̎͊͛ŷ̼̔͊ is going to investigate the dolls, picking one of them up and taking a closer look.

[What do they look like?]

[softlyfalling]

[ It's a ragdoll, clearly handmade and not with any kind of machine sewing; the materials are rough. It has black hair, and black eyes, and some of the stuffing is coming out from a tear in its neck. ]

[wonderlandgirl]

[She's going to try and gently push as much of the stuffing back in as she can without damaging it. Are there any scraps of material she could use as a little scarf?]

[softlyfalling]

[ There are some scraps of material lying around, and a needle and thread; it seems like someone intended to repair them, or has been making some repairs to this ever-mounting pile of lost items. You could easily do the same. ]