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

[psycholumin]

[She hesitates a moment - but ultimately makes up her mind to go under the wing.]

[myhungryass]

It's very dark under the shadow of the wing, but following the curve of the body makes it impossible to get lost. After walking the equivalent of at least a couple city blocks, she comes out the other side and starts to skirt the hindquarters—on this side, it's a hoofed foot like a pig's trotter.

Eventually, an enormous lion's tail comes into view, and beyond it, a final head will come into view—a serpent's head and neck, coming off the hindquarters like a second tail. The eyes and mouth are tightly closed, the nostrils mere slits. However, there is a wound just behind its jaw that has something of a suggestion of a raggedy, collapsing doorway...

[psycholumin]

[Alternian eyes are well adjusted to the dark, anyway.]

Jegus...

[Alright, this thing's got some very significant looking holes, huh? She'll carefully venture inside. Just a few steps.]

[myhungryass]

She climbs in... to a covered wagon? There are crates and sacks stacked neatly inside... clearly cargo.

A green book with many bookmarks sits on top of one of the crates.

It's a little too cold in here. Metawing feels suddenly very tired.

The wagon is bumping along... there are sounds of horses and people calling outside.

[psycholumin]

[Taking care to avoid making noise or drawing attention to herself, Metawing telekinetically snags the book, and, once it's safe in her actual hands, opens it to the first bookmark.]

[myhungryass]

It's a page describing the preparation and enjoyment of walking mushrooms, written by someone who didn't know what they were talking about, and annotated on the bookmark and in the margins by someone who did.

[psycholumin]

[Interesting. Turning to the next bookmark?]

[myhungryass]

A similar page about the basilisk versus the cockatrice! The whole book is full of descriptions of monsters... sea serpents, slimes, giant bats and rats... it seems to be a guidebook for cooking and eating them. There are many notes on the bookmarks and in the margins, making corrections and posing theories.

At the back is a loose page. The monster on it seems to have been drawn by a child, albeit one who's pretty good at drawing monsters. It has one head fewer than the huge monster Laura recently walked inside, but... it does seem similar.

If she touches that page, a memory washes over her.

[psycholumin]

[The fixation on monsters is unfamiliar, but the desire for a way out, the power to leave under one's own power... yeah, Metawing can vibe with that.

She carefully puts the paper back into the book, and the book back onto the crate, and then creeps up to look out of the front of the wagon.]

[myhungryass]

The wagon is being drawn by two horses. A blond kid, his back to Metawing, is driving them. The rest of the caravan stretches on ahead... another string of three laden horses, then a smaller covered wagon drawn by a single horse, then one more horse in the lead with a man riding it.

The blond kid hasn't noticed her yet, but even the back of his head feels awfully familiar after having just viewed that memory.