antreegonist | [a heart.]

Entry tags:

hearts,
ic

[a heart.]

There's a moment of nothing but light and sensation. Someone's looking you over and the scrutiny prickles and burns – it's nearly a physical pain, like fine little hooks digging past your skin, into the very meat of you. I know who you are, it says, and I know what you are, and that you don't have any business here --

“But you do,” says Mithos behind you. He's a tired, steady voice in your ear, a light hand on your shoulder. “I don't know what Dream's thinking, but everyone is welcome here in my heart; just keep in mind it's a real mess right now.”

Your vision clears.

((assume your characters wandered in here through a dream. also join #ihateyouihateyouiwanttocuddle on irc if you can!))

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You can tug him gently out of the Seed -- again, it's a younger, softer version of him. He looks tired and blank.

"Friends leave..."

[reeling him in gently, cradling him; he doesn't expect much in response, but he'll still apply love]

Not...all the time. And wherever they are...they're still with you in your heart.

He's not very responsive, but he ain't fighting.

"Are they? Are they really? You'll leave too."

[I can live with that]

They are. Always. And...I don't want to leave you. And I know I'm not the only one.

"You say that now..."

[squishes him gently]

I mean it.

"Of course you do..."

[cuddle cuddle love]

...will you let me help you, then?

"I just said it was pointless . . ."

But he's not moving to stop you or anything. The party's almost at the top of the cliff, though.

[soft soothing noise]

[let's. let's get that lid on the box before more things happen.]

What hits you when you touch the box is a crushing sense of defeat -- all you want to do is sink to your knees and curl up in a ball and die.

[.............oof]

[that...at least...is more manageable. and a little painfully familiar. fumbling that lid into place kind of weakly.]

Mithos fades, as does the scenery, slowly.

You get to watch as the party reaches the clifftop, one of the dignitaries draws a weapon, and Martel pushes Mithos out of the way, though it gets too hazy after that to make out the actual stabbing.

[still that. gives an idea of what happened at least.]

...oh Mithos...I'm so sorry...

It's long done and paid for a thousand times over, but you don't know that.

You're in a large round chamber with a cloth hung all the way around the walls. It's raised a little to leave room for the doors (one on the left and one on the right). A great deal of the cloth is still bare, but parts of it, at intervals, are thick with colourful embroidery.

The top of the chamber is open to the stormy sky.

[taking a few deep breaths and peeling himself off the floor to go check out those embroidered sections]

They seem to be a visual timeline of Mithos's memories, detailing a world that definitely isn't Aather. He's been around a while and won a lot of memories, so it might be a little alarming that more than ninety-five percent of the timeline is blank.

There is a large cluster of embroidery near the beginning, some small blips and one biggish blip around the middle, and another large cluster near the end; the end itself is blank. What part are you looking at in detail?

[...the beginning I guess?]

The very first scene shows a very young Mithos in a forest, peeking out from behind a tree at a ring of other children with pointed ears.

There's a gap.

The second shows a much older Mithos -- perhaps twelve or thirteen -- seated in a garden outside a wooden house, with a younger Martel. Forest surrounds them. She's playing tiny embroidered panpipes.

A smaller gap.

Martel and Mithos on a long road, hiding from monsters and soldiers in blue uniform, or ambushing them. Mithos backing away from a soldier lying in a pool of blood: his first kill. Past that there's gradually more incapacitating or killing. This road ends at a stylized town.

A gap.

Martel and Mithos run around a city, accosting people and being turned away. They run into a man dressed in blue, with brown hair -- you may have recognized him coming up the cliff with Mithos. This scene runs on for quite a long time: they leave the city a couple of times; the brown-haired man teaches Mithos the sword; they meet another man dressed in black with blue hair (he was at the cliff too!); they're turned away and turned away again. They talk to a king and queen and are thrown in prison, escape from prison, break the brown-haired man out of prison. The city is attacked. They fight soldiers in white, try to rescue people, but many of the people flee from them. This scene ends with them narrowly escaping the city . . . the city is aflame.

There's a lot more here. Keep going?

Your memories...

[not looking closely, just a quick check around the circle of tapestries, everything seems in order]

...you're not...as lost in that one now, I guess? That's the important part.

[I guess I am heading out unless there is something else in this room!]

You might glimpse Martel's death as you look: it's near the end of the beginning clump. Apparently it was a very, very long time ago.

You might also glimpse that Lloyd appears, but only in the clump near the end, and they're fighting.

There's nothing else immediately notable in this room . . . do you go out the left door, which is the way you came in, or to the right?

[noticing both of those, hmm :|a]

[let's try the right door]

. . .

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[a heart.]

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