idolpro | Shrike's Heart (#4)

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!heart games

Shrike's Heart (#4)

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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[ wow, you rascal.

you leave the room in its new mildly disheveled state, and the discomfort abates, but... the baseline level of the sense of dread has risen, just a little. hm.

where to next? ]

[...notes that and quickly goes back in to fix that, then. once it is fixed, back to the way it was, then will actually go back down the hallway and to the other side.]

Edited 2020-02-26 06:08 (UTC)

[ you set things to rights in the master bedroom, and the feeling lessens properly, once you're outside the room.

when you head down the other hallway, there's something that smells faintly of food cooking... and the unsafe feeling abates, at least just a little. the halls gradually turn to hewn stone, and you realize you're in the avante common room and kitchen.

the floors, as always, are a little chilly, but someone seems to have piled a bunch of blankets and pillows in the middle of the room. like a nest. it's a little less decorated and home-y than you'd normally find it, otherwise, though the portraits of every member of avante with their swords hang on the wall here, rather than in the music room, which doesn't seem to be here.

shrike's portrait seems to be missing. ]

[ah. hmmm.

where could her portrait be. he is going to look around for where it could possibly be hiding.]

[ you spend some time rifling around the common room. it doesn't seem to be tucked in any of the nooks and crannies, though, nor in the blankets.

it seems like someone's left something cooking in the kitchen, though. maybe that way? ]

[will go look there, then.]

[ The kitchen smells of heat and cooking spices; there's water boiling in a pot, and some kind of sauce simmering in a covered saucepan.

But also, cooking is for other people.

Poking around, you notice something sticking out from behind the refrigerator. But at the same time, you hear the click of boots on stone coming from the hallway. ]

[is there somewhere to hide? hopefully there is.]

[ you could hide behind the existentialism cauldron, or the refrigerator, or perhaps in the pantry.

the feeling of unease grows. ]

[...behind the refrigerator, then. maybe he can find whatever it is behind there too.]

[ you squeeze yourself in behind the refrigerator; not hard, since you're pretty waifish.

what's back here turns out to be a portrait in a frame of a woman with a sword—done in the same style as the avante portraits—it's hard to make out features, squeezed in here under shadow, but she has tan skin and dark hair.

the other reason it seems hard to make out the features is that someone seems to have dripped black paint over the top of it.

the sound of the footsteps grows closer; it seems to be just one set of footfalls. they enter the main room, and then you can hear a huff of disapproval. ]

Edited 2020-02-26 16:11 (UTC)

[just going to remain still, very still, very still for the moment.]

[ you can hear the sound of someone out there moving things around. maybe taking things off the walls? ]

[hmmmm. :|

how long before they go away...]

[ you might be stuck here for a while, buddy. ]

[then...waiting for a while.]

[ actually, sometime in here, you start to hear another set of steps coming down the hall—a little less purposeful, a little more uncertain, as if the person is looking around a bit as they go. ]

[will take the portrait that he found behind the refrigerator with him when he creeps out, then.]

[ You begin pulling the portrait out from behind the refrigerator.

meanwhile. ]

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Shrike's Heart (#4)

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