myhungryass | Laios's Heart Game

Laios's Heart Game

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.

a dead three-headed monster

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.

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Oh boy. He puts the plush down for the moment. "Well—" Where to even start? He wishes he could make Kabru do it.

"So, remember how dungeons are full of mana, and lots of magic works better inside them? And how people in the dungeon can really consistently be resurrected?"

...

... Laios, just take the memory for now, and if you need explaining, do so when we're both awake.

"Right, okay." He put down the plush, but he's still holding the book, so he'll focus on that first.

A memory washes 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…

Huh.

Guess the normal life was never meant for you.

He rubs a hand through his hair. "Hah... I guess that's not really a surprise, is it?"

No, but... do you know how many times you've probably saved our lives with your monster knowledge?

Sure it's really niche, but we all have our strengths, right?

He cheers up a bit. "Mm. And we can rely on each other to cover our weaknesses, too."

I bet we would have been starving and malnourished if we never met Senshi.

Or worse yet, dying from poison.

"We definitely would have. I don't think that book of mine was always very accurate. And if we hadn't had your skill with traps, or Marcille's magic..." He shakes his head. "Somehow, though, together, we managed to save Falin twice over, and even earn the help of the Western elves? I sure hope we remember how we did it, soon. It seems like we may have even managed to defeat the demon... right, but I'll explain all that when we wake up."

He picks up the plush again. "Maybe this will tell us more."

Right.

I have so many questions Like why is kabru naked but I definitely need a drink asking that.

"I-it's also fine if you never ask about that part."

... depends if it's more torturous for you or me.

"Wow."

But he glances sidelong at Chilchuck. "Either way, let's get that drink together, okay?"

Yeah. Sounds like there's a lot I need to catch up on.

"Sorry about that. We should actually have a group meeting soon, too. I don't think you're the only one. First things, first, though."

He hefts the lion plush. "...ready?"

Go for it.

He focuses, and a memory washes over them.

If there was any sense of distance when you viewed the other memories, there is not in this one. You live it. You are Laios.

You are a giant four-headed monster. Finally as strong as you have always craved, as untouchable, as free. You leap up into the air, shattering the false sky of the dungeon above you, bursting through into the true sky of the surface. The shattered edges of the barrier look tasty… you swoop down take a few bites, gnawing, swallowing down the mana of its magic, before flapping up higher.

In the sky flies a monster even bigger than you… an enormous floral-print coatl. It comes at you in a flash, mouth gaping and swallows you whole.

That’s fine. It can’t hurt you. But it’s dark and claustrophobic in there. You slit its belly open with a talon and fly free once more. Far below is a spiral of stone, reaching down into the waters of the dungeon…

And then you see, on its tip, a familiar figure. A hated figure. Blond, armoured, stupid looking, boring. It’s the body you used to have. You swoop down silently and close your talon delicately around its body.

You lift it up to look closer. It smells… good? Rich. It’s talking, but that’s not important.

…that’s right. This was your body, but something else is using it. Something infinite… but something that contains a desire of its own.

A desire. That’s what smells so good. Your mouths water. You want to taste that. …that’s right… you wanted… you wanted to know what that would taste like.

You pop the little tallman demon into your mouth and chew. But it’s too much? It’s infinite. You have to spit it out and spit it out… but you keep eating. You’re dimly aware that slits have opened in the sky around you and huge eyes are peering out… huge spindly arms are reaching down to scoop people into another world… but you don’t have much attention to spare for that. You keep eating. Your friends are on the stone spire with it, and you don’t eat them, but you keep eating the demon. Eating, and eating… eating as it swarms over you. And then…

It starts to eat you back.

It hurts. Thousands of tiny wounds, over and over again, into the tender parts of your body. It stabs into your eyes, your eyelids, your nostrils, your tongues. Its many hated faces and your own blood darken your vision. It’s killing you.

It’s a contest of wills, a contest of appetites, a contest for survival. Eat or be eaten. You eat and are eaten. You try to shake it off your body, but it is legion.

You fall.

But you chew. You chew. And swallow.

You can’t feel your enormous body any more. Its eyes have been eaten. Part of its brain has been eaten. It’s dying… it’s dying. But you’re still here. You’re still alive, in the dark hollow of its being, and you’ve bitten into the thing that you wanted to eat.

The demon pours itself into the space after you. But you’ve consumed part of it, made it yourself. In here, now, you’re on equal footing. It grabs you, turns you, tries to grab that shining gem of desire out of your hand.

“You— Why do you have that?!” it cries.

But you evade, almost effortlessly. This thing is yours now. You’ve already swallowed. “...I wanted to know…” you answer, holding the desire-gem aloft. “Normally you would be an existence beyond human comprension. And this “desire” that a being like yourself is so completely fixated on…”

You take another bite. “I was wondering what it might taste like.”

It leaps for you, transforming in mid-air, yelling at you to stop. That that belongs to it—that’s its appetite. But you can play by the same rules. You pin it beneath your enormous paw, and you keep eating. You tell it this isn’t something it needs. That this desire was poison to it. You argue…

But whatever it might say, you know you’re right. It has to play by the rules of the living rule now. It’s eat or be eaten.

You eat until you’re completely stuffed.

And the winged lion starts to drift apart. It can’t feel desire for anything anymore. It’s lost what was keeping it attached to this world… which means it’s losing its identity. But it’s not meant to have identity. You tell it that it’s meant to be freer than that.

This does not make a good impression.

Before it can completely break apart completely it turns and grabs you, and curses you. It tells you your greatest desire will never be granted. (Does this mean you can’t resurrect Falin?! The thought flashes through your mind.)

With that, it breaks up completely, into blinding, stinging motes of light. You can’t see…

…the memory fades.

[Just.

Excuse me a moment while he tries to comprehend that]

[DOES THAT MEAN THE MONSTER AT THE START WAS LAIOS?]

[This is absolutely taking eating to a new level]

.............

... Laios what the fuck.

[Laios has been staring into space, shell-shocked, while Chilchuck processes that. When addressed, he suddenly gasps in a wheezing breath.]

L-like I know?!?

It's your memory? I think?

It's my memory, but—

...

...

...I guess that's how I defeated the demon?!

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