הניאל (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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imeeji_frontstage2022-08-07 12:02 pm
rosetograce) wrote in imeeji_frontstage2022-08-07 12:02 pm
Flowers of Heaven II: Star of Bethlehem
Who: lost(?) idols
Where: ???? a mysterious courtyard
When: day 490
[ You awaken to the feeling of cool stone at your back, and a night sky overhead.
All around is a courtyard—a wide circle of marble tile, alternating black and white, interspersed with stone benches and flowerbeds and ornamental trees, all lit by the lambent gleam of strangely vivid starlight.
It is beautiful. And it is decaying. The stone is cracked; the flowers wild and overflowing between the cracked stone; the trees bent and twisted with age, the ground around them littered with fallen fruit. There is a fountain in the center of this space, but it too is broken-down: the water sits stagnant, and nothing remains of the design except a basin and the shattered base of a once-golden sculpture.
—And surrounding it all are not walls, but dense mounds of kudzu, climbing over itself until it towers as high as any watchtower.
How did you get here?
The last thing you vaguely recall is a sudden fit of drowsiness. There’s no sign of any guide or host around, and your powers don’t currently work either. In fact, if you have any corruptions, whether mental or physical, they too are … gone? No, perhaps that's not quite it; you can still feel them—faint, like a phantom limb. Invisible, and unable to affect you.
But there is one notable exception to the rule: all wings, corruption-induced or not, remain in place, as natural as the starlight.
There are other idols around you, all waking up the same way. Is this meant to be some kind of game…? ]
Where: ???? a mysterious courtyard
When: day 490
[ You awaken to the feeling of cool stone at your back, and a night sky overhead.
All around is a courtyard—a wide circle of marble tile, alternating black and white, interspersed with stone benches and flowerbeds and ornamental trees, all lit by the lambent gleam of strangely vivid starlight.
It is beautiful. And it is decaying. The stone is cracked; the flowers wild and overflowing between the cracked stone; the trees bent and twisted with age, the ground around them littered with fallen fruit. There is a fountain in the center of this space, but it too is broken-down: the water sits stagnant, and nothing remains of the design except a basin and the shattered base of a once-golden sculpture.
—And surrounding it all are not walls, but dense mounds of kudzu, climbing over itself until it towers as high as any watchtower.
How did you get here?
The last thing you vaguely recall is a sudden fit of drowsiness. There’s no sign of any guide or host around, and your powers don’t currently work either. In fact, if you have any corruptions, whether mental or physical, they too are … gone? No, perhaps that's not quite it; you can still feel them—faint, like a phantom limb. Invisible, and unable to affect you.
But there is one notable exception to the rule: all wings, corruption-induced or not, remain in place, as natural as the starlight.
There are other idols around you, all waking up the same way. Is this meant to be some kind of game…? ]
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
[He sets his jaw and presses on, tryinging to shrug off the lethargy]
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
there is a thickening sense of despair, of loss, of pointlessness and emptiness. it's almost enough to bring one into their knees—and might, if he doesn't keep pushing on with all his might, if he falters for a moment. what was in the water, before, when his fingers brushed it—here it is in the too-heavy air.
emptiness ought to be light, shouldn't it? but no, it is heavy—heavier than all the world. emptiness asks: here, in the dark, who is he? who is he, alone? ]
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
[Of course the emptiness is heavy]
[He knows that better than anyone, doesn't he?]
[Here in the dark, in the endless nothing, he knows who he is all too well -- knows what he's capable of, and what he isn't. He's had a long, long time alone, after all, to come to terms with it]
[And still he presses on]
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
and then there is a sound like a drop of water—drip, drop, falling into a pool, and sending ripples tinged with light out from a center point somewhere ahead of him, roughly illuminating the shape of a circular body of water. ]
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
great gashes like scars are carved into the walls—if they can even be called "walls," still, in this strange void. they no longer bleed gold, but are inlaid with ice that stays frozen. only the path to the pool (again, if it can even be called that) is unmarred. and on the surface of the water—
every time a drop falls, there's a fleeting glimpse of a face, partially obscured by bars of darkness. across the pool is an empty chair—a throne, really—of polished dark horn. ]
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
-- Mehniel?!
1/3
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
Hurricane? Is it truly—?
[ and then tendrils of water wrap around Hurricane's arm, and pull him beheath the surface. ]
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
—and then, when he finds himself surfacing again, he's at the top of the stairs once more, the courtyard just at his back. ]
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
[He turns, disoriented and dripping -- looks first one way and then the other, half expecting to see him here]
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
...Also, he's totally dry? Which maybe begs the question of what all that at the base of the tower even was, if it wasn't exactly water. Or maybe not. This place clearly operates on some kind of dream logic as it is. ]
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
[Either way, he's turning to charge right back down that staircase]
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
—Regardless, it only takes a few steps down the stairs before it hits him again: that too-heavy emptiness. If anything, it is more oppressive than before.
This time the swords are missing from the rack on the wall. One seems to have fallen a ways down the stairs, blade snapped in half, leaving a jagged edge and a spray of gold across the wall nearby. ]
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
It will never ̦͇̩͚̞m̪̯̙̯̼a̗̟͎̬̘̪t̲͓t̪e͈͚̹͕͇̯̮r, in the e҉̯̰̕͞ṋ̢̦̮͖d̬̟̪̥̞̖̥͢ͅ.
Maybe it's just a trick of the dim light, but it almost seems like black liquid is weeping from the stone walls. ]
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
[After all, he's searched and searched and searched, every day now, for months on end]
[He's tried everything he knows how to try. And of course -- of course -- the very best way to ruin something important is for Hurricane to touch it]
[But he can't not try, and he pushes doggedly down the stairs, heart still slamming in his throat]
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
somehow, in this long hallway, he finds himself feeling smaller and smaller, as he descends into the dark. not that the stairway grows any bigger—just, it seems so long, like the vastness of space or the depths of Hell.
can he still keep going, faced with that? as the light fades, and black sludge creeps down the wall from nowhere—will his heart hold fast? ]
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
[He's already faced down eternity and come out the other side, whether he wanted to or not]
[Putting one foot in front of the other, step after step -- making the attempt, in the face of an endless dark -- lives in his dreams, still. It's taken up root in the space behind his eyes. It lives with him, daily, something he hasn't quite managed to be rid of]
[He digs his nails into his palms]
[He is small, here, but he has only ever been something small. He is powerless, but he's only ever been powerless]
[He presses on]
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
he's already been through so much pain and hurt for what he thinks is right. if there's no guarantee it'll mean anything, and it probably won't—
why? can he remember? here, in the night-black closing in around him? here, where just the act of moving is so hard to be nigh-impossible? ]
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
[Better, isn't it, to give up and lie down for a little while. To give up and lie down and never move again.]
[But those streaks of golden blood are bright, in the dimness. And somewhere -- somewhere, for a long time, now -- there's somebody who's been waiting for him. Somebody who's been waiting for a long time, now]
[And if he can't walk, well -- he can always crawl]
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
but he can crawl. because there is no turning back for him, is there? no real home to return to.
it's so quiet. there's only the slick sound of his hands and knees shuffling across ground that feels insubstantial. he could almost be floating in the starless space between worlds.
and then
there's a sound of a drop of water falling. ]
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
[Nothing but the path ahead, most remnants of the boy he used to be long gone]
[But maybe the boy he is now is stronger, because he keeps dragging himself forward anyway, toward the distant sound of water]
1/4
again he finds the pool, its surface black and clear as the void but gleaming with strange light. for a moment, only his own reflection meets his eyes.
...but only a moment.
and then Mehniel's face peers out instead, his eyes wide with something like desperation– ]
/5 jk
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
Re: EXPLORE THE COURTYARD?
done.
Re: done.
Re: done.
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1/2
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