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]

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!

Jarlaxle 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.

[nevercaught]

Jarlaxle smiles brightly at him and waves back, the two memories tucked under one arm.

"Laios! Oh, that is a fine body you have made for yourself in the dream—you do not mind your limbs not matching?"

[myhungryass]

He shakes his head. "No—it's cool, right? I know it's a bit greedy..."

[nevercaught]

"Laios," Jarlaxle says, quite sincerely. "There is nothing wrong with being a little greedy—especially in a way that it harms no one."

[myhungryass]

He smiles. "Mm. If I can't even look the way I want inside my own heart... that would be pretty stupid, right?"

[nevercaught]

"Exactly," Jarlaxle says with a smile. "I am sure that in my own heart I likely look the way I best see myself as."

[myhungryass]

"Do you think it's much different from how you usually look?"

[nevercaught]

Jarlaxle takes a moment to think about how he might best like to look and how it would differ from how he normally looks.

"I would have my nails polished," he says. "And I would be wearing rather more dramatic cosmetics than I do in the Tributary, because I would have access to whatever I wished. And I would be wearing all my best jewelry and my most beautiful clothes and I would glitter somehow. I think. And perhaps I would be in the prime of my life instead of being near six-hundred, with a leg that aches in wet and cold weather."

[myhungryass]

"So even long-lived races feel their joints when they get older... but, still, it sounds like a lot of that is something you could do while you're awake, too. Even if you're missing your jewellery and makeup in Tributary."

[nevercaught]

"But I do not sparkle," Jarlaxle points out. "I would like it very much if I could glimmer."

[myhungryass]

"Maybe there's a spell for that..." Even as he says this, though, Jarlaxle will feel a subtle shift. His skin begins to glint with flecks of light, like sun-dazzle on water. His clothes... well, Laios is terrible at picturing fancy clothes with any specificity, but there's some hint of lace and brighter colours?? More importantly, Jarlaxle can feel that he could easily take the reins of this transformation and appear however he wants, here and now. It is a dream, after all, and Laios wants his happiness.

[nevercaught]

Jarlaxle happily takes the reins of the transformation from him--the garments he conjures up are quite luxurious and colorful indeed, with a profusion of gold jewelry and sparkling gems. His cosmetics highlight his eyes and indeed, he does seem subtly younger and more vital. It is clearer now that despite his energy, Jarlaxle is actually well into his middle years.

"Thank you, Laios," he says fondly. "That will do nicely." He reaches to ruffle Laios' hair.

[myhungryass]

"Hehe~" He's so chuffed. He did a good thing! He was praised! "You're welcome."

After just basking in that for a moment, he sighs a little. "Do you mind if I take those memories you found? I don't want to put it off..."

[nevercaught]

"Of course, of course. You've put them off long enough already. And I will be here with you, so if any of them go badly, I can talk you through or comfort you."

He pats Laios' shoulder. "Let us sit down together and you can take them."

[myhungryass]

"That would be... really great." He settles down on the grass, leaning back against the tree, making room for Jarlaxle next to him.

[nevercaught]

Jarlaxle sits side by side with him. "So," he says, setting the memories down in front of them. "Which do you wish to take first?"

[myhungryass]

He gives the lion a slightly dubious look. "Let's try the book."

When he picks it up and opens it, a memory rushes over them both.

It’s extensive, six years in one go, but a lot of it blurs into repetitive misery. The beginning stands out—Laios is twelve years old and leaving his home village for boarding school. It’s his own choice, born from outrage and disgust at how his sister is being treated… but also the desperate need to just get away from adults who would treat a child with such hostility and suspicion just because she has a talent for magic. She’s going to be sent away, too, to magic school… but as far as he knows, she doesn’t want to go. She cried about it so much! She’s basically being banished!! Sometimes he dreams about monsters swooping in and devouring everyone in the village except for the two of them.

He feels some guilt about leaving first, thus leaving her in their village alone with parents he doesn’t trust and neighbours who are malicious, but he comforts himself that by doing this, he’ll be able to find a way to make a living, so he can go get her, and the two of them can live in happiness.

It doesn’t work out that way, though…

School is awful. He can’t get along with the other students. He’s bullied, verbally and physically. He gets into fights. He exasperates the teachers by daydreaming and not paying attention. He’s trying. And then he’s trying to try—but it’s so hard to want to try when he feels set up for failure. Because of his interest in monsters, he produces some good scholarship in naturalism classes, and the teacher takes note. For awhile, there’s talk of how he could earn a chance to study in a university, and become a real researcher of monsters. But he falls too behind in his other classes, unable to make himself focus on the things that bore him and without support to help him through, and that talk dies down.

He writes to Falin faithfully. At first her life at magic school sounds as lonely as his own… but eventually she makes a friend, and then it begins to sound like she’s having fun every day. He’s so relieved for her…

…that’s the rhythm of his life until he finally scrapes through to graduate. He’s eighteen, now, but with a dismally undistinguished academic career behind him, there’s nothing left to do but join the army.

The memory fades…

[nevercaught]

"I also had trouble studying things that I do not find interesting," Jarlaxle admits after the memory is over. "I try to compensate by finding reasons to see everything as interesting... but I do have to trick myself at times."

[myhungryass]

Laios was looking pretty grim and chagrined, but he perks right up with interest at that. "Really...?"

[nevercaught]

"Really," Jarlaxle says. "Kimmuriel has complained about my lack of focus, but I have told him that I can focus on that which engages my interest."

He reaches over and squeezes Laios' hand. "Your mind does not run along common pathways, but I do not think that makes it a bad mind. There is strength in our differences from the norm. You are an exceptional young man, Laios, and I am honored you think of me as a father. I have never had a child I was allowed to claim, but I will do my best to live up to it."

[myhungryass]

He squeezes back, a little overcome. "If you weren't already more than living up to it, I would never have thought about it. I don't remember him much at all yet, but I doubt my father ever said anything like that to me in my life. You really don't mind...?"

[nevercaught]

"I do not," Jarlaxle promises. "As I said, I've never had a child I could claim, but that does not mean I would not want a son. It is only that my life has gone in ways that kept me from being a father. And I should be happy to stand in for yours."

He smiles and adds, "And with Falin too if she'd like. I do not know her so well as you, but she is your sister."

[myhungryass]

"She's an adult too, so I don't know what she'll think about that. But I'd really like it if you two got to know each other better."

He gives Jarlaxle's hand another squeeze. "...thanks—dad."

It's not even slightly a joke, which makes the delivery even more awkward, but it feels important to say it.

[nevercaught]

Jarlaxle reaches to ruffle his hair again. "You are most welcome, Laios." After a moment he remembers how humans do these things and adds, "Son. You will have to excuse me if I do this wrong—I am only just learning."

[myhungryass]

He laughs. "I don't think there's a normal way to do it, so we can just do whatever we want. You can keep calling me Phoenix, if that's what seems natural. Or Laios."