myhungryass | 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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Ow!

[absolutely does not retaliate in anyway. barely tries to dodge]

I didn't mean to......

Did other people come by too?

Was there an entrance on the other end???

...I feel like there have been other people here... but... everything outside of this space is a bit vague for me. It's just—a feeling.

I see. Are there different versions of you too? Or you can't really tell?

Cause I definitely heard you talking about fathers in Hen House.

...

...a-about fathers... huh...

... Yes? Why are you blushing?

Well, I don't really know about the "Hen House" part, but it's a little embarrassing if you heard my thoughts about that. I can imagine what it would have sounded like.

... Probably nothing I haven't heard before?

You think we talk about that kind of thing? I sort of got the impression we usually just talk about work.

Good point, I don't know.

Not something that comes up in a dungeon.

Besides, you already think I'm kind of crazy. I don't want you to think I'm totally childish, too.

...

[Holds up the plush]

I'm blaming that on Tributary's magic!

Uh huh.

We're work friends, but still friends.

—y-yeah?

I know I respect and rely on you a lot. I remember being grateful you were willing to work with me, and wishing we were friends, but—

...

I'm really glad.

If I didn't like you, I wouldn't have stuck around, you know. There's only so much a good wage can gloss over.

Ah... so that's how it is.

Thanks, Chilchuck.

You're welcome.

So here's the deal; you should tell me how to get out of here or you're going to tell me who else is wandering around shirtless in here.

I-I think you just have to wake up. There are a lot of doors in this tree, but they just go to different areas inside here... that's not leaving for real.