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]

It's soft! Now that it's reached you, it doesn't seem to be animated anymore. As with the book, instead of a memory rushing over you, you feel that nudge in your mind of a potential memory... the way it feels when there's one waiting in your own bracelet.

[owlimony]

[were there just two memories to find? if so, Stolas is going to head back through that portal]

[myhungryass]

There are just two! He can step through the portal onto the rhino's tongue and make his way into the mouth.

The tongue is a little spongy underfoot, but it makes a surprisingly good ramp. As he steps between the monster's teeth, 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 into the red cavern of its mouth, he'll only grow hungrier.

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.

As soon as he steps up to it, 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.

He smiles when he sees Stolas with the book and plush in hand.

"You'll want to bring those through there." He waves back at the middle archway. "Though you could take a look in there first, if you're curious." Another wave, towards the archway on Stolas's left (Kabru's right).

[owlimony]

[stumbles a little on shaky bird legs, clutching his face briefly, eyes gone very wide. a few tears prickle at the corners of them.]

I . . . o-oh.

[staring at Kabru without seeing him for a long moment, before he blinks a few times and straightens up]

Ah—. . . what's—what's down that way, then?

[myhungryass]

"Something he's learning to want."

[owlimony]

. . .

[sways with visible indecision. it probably couldn't hurt to just . . . look . . . oh, actually, can he just envision a portal to stick his head thru for a little peek maybe . . .]

[myhungryass]

He peeks 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.

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

[owlimony]

[pulls his head back, briefly hesitates, then goes on through to check it out in more detail]

[myhungryass]

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

Besides that... there's not much of note. It feels like a place that's waiting to happen, the nervous hunger of wanting to take the first bite of a new food that you're not sure will be palatable. If he touches the throne, it sways a bit worryingly, and he immediately gets a sense of an almost panicked wish to not mess up.

[owlimony]

[he leaves a note reminding Laios he isn't alone and he has support]

[goes back to talk to False Kabru. what is he? a manifestation of something? why is he weird?]

[myhungryass]

False Kabru says he's here because Laios wants him. "There's a little more to it than that. But desire and hunger have a lot to do with each other. Desire and hunger, hunger and survival, survival and death..."

He shrugs. "I'm a guard... a guide... a guy who got swallowed whole..." He gives Stolas a sunny smile. "But I'm not guarding this place from you, that's for sure."

[owlimony]

A-are you not?

[myhungryass]

He shakes his head and winks. "He wants you, too, obviously."

[owlimony]

[f-flustered, a bit nervous, shy]

I. Well, I. Hmm. Yes. I think I will . . .

[l-let's go find Laios]

[myhungryass]

He steps through the center archway 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.

If 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. (If he's paying close magical attention, he may pick up on the fact that it has been disconnected from the possibility of realization by a powerful curse that just straight-up forcibly separates it from reality.)

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

Stolas lands on a grassy hillside 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.

"Stolas!"

[owlimony]

. . .

O-ohhh!

[like, he was thinking hard about the weird magic, he for sure was, and he will remember it later, but right now he's just HEART EYES]

Oh, oh you look. Wow.

[myhungryass]

He grins, showing off little fangs, looking incredibly smug and cocky... but somehow also just a tiny bit shy. "Hehe~ You like it?"

[owlimony]

[his voice is soft and sweet as he makes his way quickly over towards him, framing his face with this hands, leaning down a little to smile at him in return]

I do like it. Very much. You are always beautiful, but you look—happy, as well. I'm so glad.

[myhungryass]

Ohhh, he blushes, nuzzling into Stolas's hands. "This feels like—how I would want to look. I think."

[owlimony]

[scritching his fingers back towards Laios's jaw, into his hair]

Then I feel very lucky to be able to see it.

[myhungryass]

He makes an appreciative little noise and leans into that. Actually, he's purring.

[owlimony]

[trilling a little laugh in response, pressing closer so he can touch their cheeks together, feel the mutual vibration]

[myhungryass]

Laios nuzzles against his face and then kisses him, his own hands finally coming up, the tiger paw resting warm and velveted at the base of Stolas's spine, the bird talons scritching gently through the feathers at the base of his skull.

[owlimony]

Oh—nnh—. . . . . mmmmmhhh . . . ♥

[he knowwwws he has things to talk to Laios about and to show him but hoooooly shiittt that can wait ///////]

[myhungryass]

It can wait until they've gone several rounds right there on the grass, right...? Because Laios is going to be insatiable and very assertive about it now that Stolas has got him going.