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

[aluminumfoil]

Alright...

[he... walks past... himself. hesitates. eyes that bruise on his own neck.

His face burns.]

...

Does he... want...

[myhungryass]

"Yes...?" His doppleganger gives him a mischievous grin.

[aluminumfoil]

... To know what I taste like...

[myhungryass]

He tilts his head to the side, showing the bruise off more, and fingers it lightly, suggestive. "You know he does."

[aluminumfoil]

[/////////////////////////////////

I know he does. I know he does]

Laaiiioooss...

What's-- to the left and right? What's with this setup, are you a guard?

[myhungryass]

"A guard... a guide... a guy who got swallowed whole..." He shrugs, waving a hand to your left (his right). "In there is something he's learning to want." He waves the other hand. "And that's... well, the normal way you'd exit something's stomach."

[aluminumfoil]

[i really did get swallowed whole. thanks.]

... Well... I do want to see what he's learning... can I go back to the middle if I do?

[myhungryass]

"Sure, that won't be a problem for you."

[aluminumfoil]

Great. Uh... keep up the good work.

[he steps backwards a few times before actually stumbling and righting himself, going to the left]

[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. Behind him there is an archway, free-standing and empty, that seems to resemble the one he came through to get here.

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

[aluminumfoil]

[Oh... ohhh. His expression softens despite the queasiness...]

That makes sense...

[he walks through, leaving it be. walking through the freestanding archway?]

[myhungryass]

He steps back through into the room he just left, behind his alter-ego.

[aluminumfoil]

[Alright...

Takes a breath. He goes through the middle!]

[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.

[aluminumfoil]

[Kabru's breath staggers, and he gulps again and wipes his mouth. He takes a dazed step forward. His stomach growls. He's so effected and distracted he barely glances around to not see Leonard.]

How... can you possibly bear this...

Is this... What is this, Laios?...

[hypnotized with the hunger, he reaches up to touch the gem.]

[myhungryass]

When he reaches for it, his hand glances off... nothing. A disconnect in the world, like what's beyond that point is totally separate and unreachable. He gets the sense that it's less a barrier and more that the gem is just... not quite in the same place as him.

However, reaching for it also transports him immediately elsewhere before he can contemplate that too deeply!

Kabru lands on a grassy underneath a tall tree. The sound of the sea can be heard lapping in the distance. Laios is lounging under the tree... but a different Laios than he's ever seen before, with hooves and a tail, feathers around his neck and shoulders, and strangely formed arms, one resembling a bird talon and the other a tiger's paw. He looks up, perks up, and waves.

"Hi, Kabru."

[aluminumfoil]

...Laios!!

[he rushes right towards him]

Is that-- you?!

[myhungryass]

He suddenly looks a little sheepish. "Y-yeah, you found me..."

[aluminumfoil]

[YOU'D BETTER BE SHEEPISH grabs his cheeks with both hands tilts his jaw up feathers]

Look at you!! Let me see, turn around! I was so worried about you!!

[myhungryass]

"I'm fine—" He can't turn around, his face is being held. He pats Kabru's shoulders with both hands, the paw and the talon, looking a bit helpless.

[aluminumfoil]

[paw and talon. stripes. due to: tigers are cool. He kisses him.]

[myhungryass]

"Mm—"

He kisses back eagerly. His teeth are a little sharper, canines elongated.

[aluminumfoil]

[of course he has fangs

his hands drag down his neck, over the fluff, though then he breaks the kiss to stare at his fingers while he carefully weaves through the lay of the feathers, not wanting to hurt his skin or pull at the quills]

Ohhhh wow...

[myhungryass]

A bit cautiously... "You—don't mind?"

[aluminumfoil]

Mind--! No. I figured something like this would happen. Or did happen...