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

[lapinlazuli]

[okay yeah that all floods her mind but as soon as she's back to thinking her own thoughts she drops the wok immediately.]

Wh- why the fuck are you thinking about Senshi in his underwear!?

[myhungryass]

There's no response.

[lapinlazuli]

[Of course not. Yeah, she's gonna... leave this one behind. The book's next, and once again, she has a pretty good idea of who that might be associated with?]

[myhungryass]

Actually, the book just gives off the same sense of a memory yet to be taken as the plush lion.

[lapinlazuli]

[HMMMM. WELL ALL RIGHT THEN. Taking that with her too. Her arms are getting full.]

Okay... what now.

[Hen House seems like it might be the right place to go, but it's hard not to be curious about Moon House, since that's where she lives. Ultimately she goes with her curiosity and checks out her cottage.]

[myhungryass]

The details are a little off. The rickety curve of Moon House is even droopier and more dramatic than in real life, the clang of wind-chimes patches in and out, Sun House looks stubbier, and the colours of its stained-glass front windows are somewhat jumbled.

The door opens for her, and she can go right on in. At the doorway, a wave of information floods through her, about carnivorous plants and constellations and monsters and how to treat one's friends and owl demon sexual characteristics and myths... the information is neatly organized, and there's a visual component to it, the vague impression of a flow-chart. Sorry you now know so much about cloacas. At least it came through fairly clinical and academic.

Inside, it looks like Moon House, complete with ball pit. Some details, again, are just a little off or not quite complete, but it feels familiar. Maybe Laios's memory isn't perfect.

[lapinlazuli]

WHAT THE FUCK

[myhungryass]

Yeah. Yeah.

Might be a good time to bury yourself in the ball pit for a minute until that knowledge fades back a bit.

[lapinlazuli]

[She does just that. Wades into the ball pit until she disappears under the balls.]

[myhungryass]

The balls rattle together restlessly. Your mind is flooded with information and urgent questions. If someone is taken out if this cycle, will they immediately be stabilized? How best to help them? If one’s nature is changed, that’s harder to get rid of than a curse, right? But at the same time, people grow and change naturally throughout their lives. Is there a way to encourage a soul to grow more whole again? There has to be, right? The questions feel anxious but determined.

[lapinlazuli]

[Oh. The demon sex knowledge is now forgiven.]

...You've really been thinking on this a lot, huh.

[Crawling back out of the ballpit, Harriet decides to check to see if the secret passage to Sun House is there.]

[myhungryass]

Instead of leading to Sun House, it leads back outside next to the snake head.

[lapinlazuli]

[OH. Huh.]

...Well. At least I didn't get shat out this time.

[Let's see, two heads left to go... you know what, it'd be a pain to walk all the way back around again. Let's go in the snake head.]

[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. Harriet feels suddenly very tired.

The wagon is bumping along... there are sounds of horses and people calling outside. Closed flaps hide the view both to the front and rear.

[lapinlazuli]

[Huh. Weird.

Might as well check out this book.]

[myhungryass]

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the book is full of descriptions of monsters! Sea serpents, slimes, walking mushrooms... 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 Harriet recently walked inside, but... it does seem similar.

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

[lapinlazuli]

[This explains a lot, but also Oh No.]

...Jesus, Laios, what did you do?

[myhungryass]

"Huh? Nothing!" yelps a startled voice from the front of the wagon, on the other side of the flaps.

[lapinlazuli]

huh?

[She's poking her head out front.]

Laios?

[myhungryass]

The wagon is being drawn by two horses. 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.

A very familiar-looking blond boy, maybe ten years old, is driving the wagon. Or, he should be. The reins are in his hands. At the moment, he's twisted around in his seat, staring at her, completely wide-eyed. "Y-yes??"

[lapinlazuli]

[The wide-eyed stare is mutual.]

...Oh. Uh. Hey, little guy.

[myhungryass]

His eyes start to sparkle. In a tone of hushed, awestruck joy, he half-whispers, "What are you??"

[lapinlazuli]

[Should've seen this one coming. She rolls her eyes.]

I'm a person. Look, can you tell me where you're going?

[myhungryass]

He kicks his legs. "Noooowhere, that's where! We're always in the middle of nowhere! It's so boring!"

[lapinlazuli]

Oh. Damn. That sucks.

Okay, uh... new question. If you could go anywhere, where would you go?