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]

The egg is warm... a busy tangle of thoughts wash over him when he touches it, all related to care. The egg's routine, daily schedules, diet and exercise, the care and keeping of chimeras, and then more wide-scale... food distribution on a kingdom-wide level?? That sense of potential remains potent.

The rest of the room is... sketchy. There's a big bed? It's a small room? There's a window? Aside from the perfectly accurate egg and incubator set-up, the shrine has some random shoes and gloves (mostly in correct pairs) and... weirdly non-descript metal boxes?

[pocketlockpick]

[... Laios definitely has... his focuses. Does he think the egg will be a chimera?

He'll poke at the boxes, but carefully.]

[myhungryass]

They're sealed on all sides. This is probably what tinned meat looks like when mentally rendered by someone who hasn't paid much attention to them and doesn't actually know about these kinds of cans.

[pocketlockpick]

[oh. not like Chilchuck knows any better either.

He will check the bathroom before heading out of Hen House.]

[myhungryass]

In the bathroom, when you look in the small, discoloured mirror, you see Laios’s face instead of your own. You are filled with a sense of dull dissatisfaction, even revulsion.

If you touch the mirror, your mind is flooded with facts about orcs and kobolds (the dog kind): their anatomy, the cultural practice that orcs have of wearing trophies from their kills, the way a kobold’s mouth and vocal cords aren’t well-suited to common human speech, but they have their own language that humans also can’t mimic easily. Mixed in there are some less factual-seeming musings about trolls? The information feels well-organized and easy to understand, but it comes tinged with a sense of restless envy as well as eager curiosity.

That's a great note to go back outside on! He can pick up the book, which it becomes obvious is the second untaken memory once he's laid hands on it, and then... does he bother with the sword or the other buildings, or just look for a quick exit now that he's found his objectives?

[pocketlockpick]

[This really doesn't help the idea that Laios 100% wants to turn into a monster.

After tucking the book away, he's going to try and find Laios. Is there a direction that seems like he hasn't explored or seen yet, or... I guess where a tall-man can hide. Maybe one of the cottages?]

[myhungryass]

As with Hen House, 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.

Sun House is inaccessible. If you knock or try to open the door, voiceless words echo through your head: Go away unless you have hard evidence! You're wrong! You can't be trusted!

It's possible to peer through the windows... the library and kitchen look mostly right, if a bit hastily sketched.

Moon House door swings open if he knocks, though. At the doorway, a wave of information floods through him, 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. Clearly, Laios's memory isn't perfect.

If he investigates the ball pit, the balls rattle together restlessly. His 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.

And finally, he finds an exit. The trap door that should lead to Moon House's cellar leads back out onto the dark water, beside the snake head at the back of the giant monster.

[pocketlockpick]

[he's just going to take a moment because holy shit he has a headache now. Is it possible to jump back into the river so he can forget all that? Tempting, so very tempting.

Chilchuck is just going to take a look around, and sigh, and then just start screaming for Laios.]

LAIOS, GET YOUR BUTT OUT HERE~!!

[myhungryass]

Laios does not materalize, wherever Chilchuck is... if he's stepped out next to the snake head, this accomplishes nothing at all, actually.

If he's still in the white space within the eagle's head, though, Marcille will eventually come hustling over, even if he's still in the basement of Moon House.

[pocketlockpick]

Marcille, honestly.

What the fuck.

[myhungryass]

She huffs. "I don't know what else you expected in here! You know him well enough even without that many memories. Anyway, his true consciousness isn't in here. It's where you'd expect. In his stomach."

[pocketlockpick]

[points to the large monster creature]

... that one. That stomach.

[myhungryass]

"Yes. So you'll have to go through the mouth."

Only one of the heads had a mouth that was accessible - the rhino.

[pocketlockpick]

... I don't suppose you'd lend me your staff as a walking stick...?

[myhungryass]

"I will if you need it. You can also just glide there, though. It's probably a lot less tiring than walking."

[pocketlockpick]

Really? Thanks for the tip.

You're going to be alright up here?

[myhungryass]

"Mhm." She smiles at him. "It's not like I'm really Marcille. I'm just the part of Laios that thinks critically and can actually be self-aware. The part that worries, the part that stops to question if he's doing the right thing or not. So, this is where I belong."

[pocketlockpick]

Well, I think he needs to listen to you more, but Laios wouldn't be Laios if that were the case.

[myhungryass]

She huffs and crosses her arms in exasperated agreement. "He should definitely listen to me more! Thank you, Chilchuck!"

[pocketlockpick]

You're welcome.

Well... got to find him.

[And I guess he's going to attempt to glide into the rhino mouth. God, what a day]

[myhungryass]

"This way." She leads him back up to the white space outside of Moon House, and will help him strap the plush and book to himself. When he picks up his impromptu feather glider, a gust of friendly wind immediately lifts him up into the air, carrying him to the black circle high above, like a reverse full moon—the eagle's empty eye socket. The wind carries him up straight through and he flies into the air above the giant monster, getting a full view... the two different wings, the snake's head and plumed tail...

Out here, the wind dies to nothing in the heavy air. But he has enough altitude to cruise down easily wherever he wants. He can, in fact, let it carry him right through into the rhino's mouth to touch down at the back of the tongue.

[pocketlockpick]

[gross. But he appreciates the quick travel, and will carefully make his way past the tongue and down the throat. Is there a light?]

[myhungryass]

Strangely, it's better lit in here than it was outside. The walls of the mouth are vivid pink and red, the clear pathway down the esophagus easy to see. The smell of blood gets heavier and stronger... but also more appetizing.

His stomach growls. His mouth floods with saliva. It smells good in here. As he walks further in, she'll only grow hungrier.

As soon as he moves into the throat, there's an enormous gulp, all around him, and he's swallowed. There's nothing he can do. One moment he's pushing carefully forward, and the next he's sliding helplessly, rushing along, squeezed down by that powerful contraction of muscle, slick fluid making it impossible to find purchase.

As he's dragged along, a memory washes over him.

He lands with a thump in a dark, cavernous space, on a flagstone floor. Before him are three large archways. Between him and the archways sits a familiar figure.

It's Kabru...? He is almost cross-legged, one knee up with the foot planted on the floor. There's a slightly dangerous light in his blue eyes. Also, there's a big ol' hickey on his neck and he is not wearing a shirt.

[pocketlockpick]

[there's a very long moment where Chilchuck just gawks at
Kabru, his mind still trying to catch up to what just happened.

Finally...]

Are you his sex life...

[myhungryass]

He laughs, startled. "Way to pigeon-hole a guy?!" But then he leans in, leering for effect. "I'm not just his sex life."

Clearly this was just to be a brat, though. He sits back again, shaking his head. "I'm something he wants, that's true. But this place isn't only about desire. Desire and hunger, hunger and survival, survival and death... all of that is connected. I'm... a guide, and a guard."

Shrugs. "And a guy who got swallowed whole. I'm not not his sex life."