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

[myhungryass]

"Uh... a what??"

[lapinlazuli]

[oh right he wouldn't know that terminology]

A little object that's got 20 sides? It was all shiny.

[myhungryass]

He looks troubled. "No, but... I think there might be some memories I haven't seen around here somewhere. If you can find them and bring them here, maybe I'll be able to answer you better."

[lapinlazuli]

I’m on it!

[She’s all pumped and ready to go and then realizes she has no idea where she’s going.]

…Hey, uh, how do I get out of here?

[myhungryass]

"Oh, right. Sorry. Just use the doors in the back of the tree."

It's a big tree. When she goes around back, she'll see four hatches in the trunk, one marked with a doodle of a bird, one a wolf, one a rhino, and one with the whole monster. There's no snake door, though.

[lapinlazuli]

[Oh, well. There we go. Question answered.]

Thanks! I'll be back.

[Let's see, she went inside the rhino... so she's gonna take that door. Maybe it'll take her back to the fake Kabru.]

[myhungryass]

It does! He waves to her again from in front of the three archways.

"Did you find what you were looking for?"

[lapinlazuli]

Sort of? I found Laios, but now I've just got more questions than answers.

...Hey, you know anything about the little twenty-sided thing that looks like a tasty snack?

[myhungryass]

"That thing?" Kabru smiles, a hint of something sly and dangerous in it. "That's his greatest desire."

[lapinlazuli]

[what the fuck does that mean. stop talking in riddles.]

...Well, okay. I'm gonna... keep looking around, I guess.

[She's taking the left archway this time.]

[myhungryass]

This one leads through into... a half-finished seeming space. It's a green field with various tools and building blocks lying around—timber and stone, ropes and nails. The foundations of a building have been laid, but it's hard to tell what exactly it's going to become. There's a half-built throne, but it's hard to tell if it's in the middle of being assembled or disassembled.

She still feels hungry, but there's a sense of queasiness now as well.

[lapinlazuli]

What the hell...

[Is the throne built enough to sit on it? Because if so she is setting her ass down.]

[myhungryass]

It sways a bit worryingly, but she can sit on it! She immediately gets a sense of an almost panicked wish to not mess up.

[lapinlazuli]

[haha, as if that isn't something she thinks to herself every single day.]

Wonder what this is all about...

[she's not connecting those dots anytime soon. Are there any new paths for her to take?]

[myhungryass]

This seems to be a dead end... an unfinished space. But there is an archway, free-standing and empty, that seems to resemble the one she came through to get here...

[lapinlazuli]

[Welp, that's where she's gonna go. Assuming it goes back to where she came from, she's gonna give Kabru a little nod and then take the rightmost archway.]

[myhungryass]

That's exactly what happens! And when she steps through the archway on the right, she walks right into a memory... one she's actually seen in a longer form before.

Laios, Chilchuck, Senshi and Izutsumi are falling through the air... they splash down into water. They surface, but then everyone latches onto Laios, who can't keep up with the weight. They'll drown! —but Chilchuck reminds Laios he can cast Water Walk. His memory of the spell is hazy, but he manages it, and they all careen out of the water, bouncing across the surface until Laios plows head-first into a wall. The party bickers a bit about their next move, but then they spot bizarrely cutely patterned walking mushrooms zooming off with their gear down an open esplanade, so they take chase.

Laios manages to tackle a mushroom. It has a flower sprouting out of it. This offends him. Mushrooms don't have flowers... but maybe they can lead the party to Marcille? Before they can act on that, Izutsumi points out the sky is filling with magic familiar-birds. They're spies of the Canaries. It's not safe out in the open. They go into a tower to hide, but the familiar-birds all flock together to form a giant woodpecker, which drills into the tower stone until the whole thing starts to collapse. Laios and friends stagger out, and the giant composite woodpecker snatches them up and swallows them.

So now they're flying through the air in the belly of a giant bird made of birds. Laios, remembering his own terribly painful brush with a stomach parasite, comes up with a plan. They start harassing the bird from within while Chilchuck keeps a lookout from its throat. While he's up there, he spots a giant floral-print snake swimming through the water. They call out to it from inside the bird, yelling for Marcille to come get them... and it rises into the air, showing that it's actually a coatl... a winged snake.

It swallows the familiar-bird whole.

So now they're flying through the air in a snake belly filled with dead birds. It has weird anatomy, so Laios thinks it may not be a real monster, but a device to transport them safely. This theory lasts about five seconds, until the stomach acid starts to make Izutsumi's feet feel burny. They start to panic. Laios tries to reason things out, but before they can really make much of a plan, the snake poops them out and they're falling again.

They make a disgusting crash-landing...

...and Harriet feels something squeeze around her...

...and she finds herself back outside on the dark water, now on the far side of the enormous monster, between its two tails—the lion tail and the one that is actually a snake's head and neck.

[lapinlazuli]

[Harriet stands up. She slowly turns her head, looks back at the monster's rear... and retches.]

EUUUUUGGHHHHHH

[She doesn't smell, does she?]

[myhungryass]

Thankfully, no. She is unbesmirched.

The smell of blood hangs heavy in the air out here, though, like before.

[lapinlazuli]

[That's a relief.

Walking back around to the front of the monster, she weighs her options. Wolf or eagle... she decides to go with the eagle this time. Oh boy, crawling into an empty eyesocket, how fun.]

[myhungryass]

The black, almost perfectly round hole of the empty avian eye-socket looms above her, but the feathers reaching down to the surface of the dark water seem to offer easy handholds. Once she's reached it, the lower ridge of bony socket makes a sturdy perch... but she can't see anything inside. It's just a black abyss. Does she jump?

[lapinlazuli]

...Here goes nothing.

[Jump!]

[myhungryass]

An updraft catches her—her wings spread out behind her, and, unlike in reality, easily hold her aloft. She's suddenly soaring through a blank, white space that stretches in all directions, a refreshingly cold wind whipping by her, buoying her up.

Far below, she can see items and even buildings scattered around... a sword, a wok, a book. A tombstone, a lion plushy. Hen House. Sun and Moon House.

At the very edge of her vision, in the far distance, where the curve of the horizon should be, stands a lone, familiar figure, blonde, in a blue outfit, holding a staff.

[lapinlazuli]

[Now this is more like it! If she's gonna be in some kind of weird dream, it's nice to be able to actually fly. She enjoys it for a bit, at least until she spots the familiar figure.]

Oh! Marcille!

[Harriet does her best to land by Marcille. As best as she can, at least. It's not like she's had a lot of practice.]

[myhungryass]

Flying aimlessly feels easy. She'll find her mind feels clear and organized, racing with ideas. She might still be hungry, but it's a distant feeling now, easy to ignore.

Flying towards Marcille, though, is a struggle. The closer she gets, the trickier the winds seem to be, fickle, shifting, always trying to thwart her. Still, she can eventually land next to her. Her back is to Harriet, and she doesn't turn to look. She seems to be gazing off at something beyond this blank space.