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

[dragonindungeon]

[ ... frowns... ]

[myhungryass]

"Anyway... was there something I can help you with, Falin?"

[dragonindungeon]

. . . I was hoping to help Brother with his memories too. Maybe I can help you tidy things?

[myhungryass]

She brightens again. "That would be great! There are definitely a couple memories around here that he hasn't taken yet. Maybe if you bring them to him, it can help sort things out."

[dragonindungeon]

Okay. I'll get started then.

[myhungryass]

Since there are only a few items and locations scattered around an empty space, it probably doesn't take Falin long to zero in on things! Both the book and the plush lion give her the impression of a memory waiting to be taken. She can take those with her!

Besides those, there is the wok, the tombstone and the sword to potentially examine, although the sword will flee when she gets close. Or she can explore Moon House. (Sun and Hen House might both be too small for her to enter in her chimera form, although if she tries to change again, she can.)

[dragonindungeon]

[ You know she's distracted by the fleeing sword, let's be real now. ]

[myhungryass]

It doesn't respond to coaxing, but it's not that fast. If she pounces, she can grab it!

A flood of information about monsters and how cool they are and how to prepare them for eating and musings about what certain ones might taste like and whether or not people and monsters could ever have a more harmonious relationship washes over her, if she does. There's no voice to go with it... it's more a series of images and concepts... but it's accompanied by a feeling of eager fascination, even obsession.

[dragonindungeon]

[ She's absolutely on it. Something instinctual just overcomes her. And then she's clasping the sword to her chest with deep joy and interest. ]

Hehehehehehe.

[myhungryass]

Once she's actually laid hands on it, it stops struggling.

Two little eyestalks poke out to look at her.

[dragonindungeon]

[ GASPS ]

[ She pokes a finger back at it. ]

[myhungryass]

A few more tendrils sneak out and wrap around her finger.

[dragonindungeon]

[ Almost starts shaking the tendrils back— ]

[dragonindungeon]

[dragonindungeon]

[ DON'T THESE THINGS REPRODUCE BY HOLDING HANDS!? ]

[myhungryass]

You're not living armour! It's not trying to mate! It's fine!

...if she jumps in surprise, though, the tendrils quickly go back into hiding.

[dragonindungeon]

[ ............ oops. That follow-up thought occurred to her far too late. ]

[myhungryass]

Oops.

Anyway, if she looks for a way out of here, the eye socket is still visible far above her, like a black full moon in a white sky, and if she launches herself toward it, she'll find she can fly up easily.

[dragonindungeon]

[ She takes flight! Book, plush lion and sword in arms. It's joy enough to be able to fly so high, when usually all she can do is glide. ]

Wheee~

[myhungryass]

Her body feels so light! In no time, she's zooming through the aperture and back into the darker atmosphere of the heart's surface. She has enough momentum to send her up high enough to see the whole monster from above...

But her body is much heavier out here.

Luckily, she has a lot of altitude, so she can make a controlled glide down to wherever she'd like to land, even though she can't keep holding herself aloft.

[dragonindungeon]

[ She lands gently, and considers the surface again... she could explore more, but she's on a mission for her Brother. She'll backtrack inside. ]

[myhungryass]

Back through the rhino mouth! She does have to experience being swallowed and relive that memory of watching herself being eaten again before she lands in the room with Kabru. But, she knows what to do! She can carry her cargo through to the pit with the desire-gem in it and try to touch it... which she can't, but it will bring her back through to that tree-shaded hilltop with Laios in his partly monstrous form. (If she's paying close magical attention to why she can't actually touch the gem this time, she may pick up on the fact that its been disconnected from the possibility of realization by a powerful curse that just straight-up forcibly separates it from reality.)

Anyway! Surely that's fine. Laios comes over to her, talon-hand and paw-hand both extended in happy greeting. "Falin! You found them...?"

[dragonindungeon]

I found them!

[ She will pass over The Goods ]

[myhungryass]

He takes the sword first, eager, looking incredibly happy. "Kensuke!" He is going to hug this sword, then belt it on over his shift. "That's great. Thanks, Falin."

He looks at the sword and the plush a bit more dubiously. "So these are my memories, huh...?"

[dragonindungeon]

Mm... don't be too hard on yourself for losing track of them.