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

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?"

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…

"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."

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

"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."

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...?"

"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."

"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.

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."

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."

"Would you rather be called Phoenix?" Jarlaxle asks seriously. "Because I can switch back to that if you wish. Or I could call you both. Laios, my Phoenix."

Laios stares at him, arrested. "That sounds so cool."

Jarlaxle laughs. "Both then," he says, pleased. "Phoenix makes for a very fine pet name in my mind."

"A pet name, huh?" He goes red and rubs the back of his neck. "A-anyway, I should—take the last one—"

"And I'll be with you the whole time, Phoenix," Jarlaxle promises.

When Laios looks into the plush's button eyes, memory washes over you.

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 world 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.

Laios is staring, shell-shocked. He obviously experienced that at the same time you did.

Jarlaxle reaches over and wraps both his arms around Laios.

"I do not think your normal body is as boring as all that, my Phoenix," he says quietly, "and I think you were very clever to outwit the demon how you did. I am proud of you, Laios."

He lets out a breathless laugh, hugging back, but seeming a bit abstracted. "O-outwit, huh... is that really what happened..."

"How do you see it, then?" Jarlaxle asks, stroking Laios' hair.

"I don't really know yet how much of that I managed on purpose, but... well. I did defeat it." He takes a breath, settling against Jaraxle somewhat heavily. Letting that sink in.

"...I did defeat it."

"You did," Jarlaxle says, pressing his face the side of Laios' head because he thinks that's the kind of affection that fathers are allowed to give. "You did. Well done, my Phoenix."

He gives him a squeeze, letting out a long breath. "Thanks, dad."

It sounds more natural this time.

Jarlaxle smiles. "I like you calling me that."

That gets a big grin. "Really?"

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nevercaught - 2024-08-12 04:57 (UTC) - Expand

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