Laios's Heart Game

[myhungryass]

It's dark, and you are not quite conscious. You have the sense that you are climbing; that you have been climbing for a long time. You can feel the burn in your thighs, the ache in your calves. You're a little too hot, and what you're wearing is a little too heavy. You have the sense of taking a last weary, heaving step onto a plateau.



You find yourself in a dark, blank place, dominated by a huge, dead monster, building sized, as big as a tower. Each of its enormous heads that you can see laid out before you is easily the size of a ballroom. There is blood on its lips and nostrils, blood crusted around its empty eye-sockets, but there is a feeling of hollowness about it. On second thought, you're not quite sure if it's a corpse or a moult.

There is no sign of the stairs you vaguely remember climbing. You are standing on the surface of some opaque black liquid. It feels almost completely solid under your feet, springy, but your footsteps leave ripples spreading out in rings... all around you is a velvety, impenetrable darkness. The only thing you can see is the vast, lifeless beast in front of you, illuminated as if by spotlights, though no actual light-source can be found.

Its orifices are mostly clogged with blood, but somehow, as you stare at it, one vaulted nostril on the wolf's head begins to seem like an archway... the lolling tongue hanging out of the rhinoceros's head like an entry ramp... the exposed, hollow eye-socket on the eagle's head like a portal...

Of course, if you're not quite ready to step inside a monster, you could keep walking around its body and see what you find.

Comments

[applecar]

Oh.

[He doesn't get it. He looks up at the part of the ceiling he must have fallen down from, and then back at the Kabru in front of him.]

Is this Kabru my friend too?

[myhungryass]

The ceiling appears unbroken. There's no sign of where he might have fallen from.

"Of course I am."

[applecar]

Then you should come with me. This place is very big, pizza party, and I am very small.

And I'll be lonely without you.

[myhungryass]

He considers this. "I can't leave, but I can give you something to let you see me and talk to me while you're looking around."

[applecar]

[He thinks for a moment, and then nods his little head.]

Okay, pizza party.

[myhungryass]

"Here, take this." He puts a hand behind his back for a moment and then holds it out to Leonard Miller, Caterpillar. Balanced on the tip of his finger is a tiny mirror, no bigger than a sunflower seed. "If you rub the surface and speak into it after you leave this room, you'll be able to contact Kabru."

[applecar]

Thank you, pizza party.

[He accepts the mirror and then looks at Kabru hesitantly. Like he wants to hug the man but isn't sure if that's socially appropriate to do with his best friend or not. He doesn't have a ton of experience with friends, after all.]

Um. Which way to leave this room?

[myhungryass]

"It's my pleasure, Leonard. You can leave through any of the archways behind me."

[applecar]

Okay. Please stay safe.

[And with that, he'll totter out of the room.]

[myhungryass]

There are three archways... which one does he go through?

[applecar]

[Let's say the center one.]

[myhungryass]

He steps through and feels a jolt, like missing a step on the stairs. He finds himself in a dark pit, an archway of light far away up above. His appetite is overwhelmingly strong in here. It's not painful—he's not starving. But it's hard to think about anything else. It feels like he could never be satisfied.

Floating in the air in the center of the pit is a twenty-sided gem, bright and gleaming. It looks so tasty. It even looks like he might be able to reach it...

[applecar]

[Masami are you trying to tell me that he is a Very Hungry Caterpillar?

He looks at the gem, and it does look tasty. But he also wants to see if the mirror works, so he'll give it a rub and speak into it.]

Um. Hello, pizza party? Kabru? There's a gem.

[myhungryass]

At first the mirror goes dark. But, after a moment, he can see Kabru's face, peering down at him in some confusion.