fujimaru | Palace Game 6/3

...So we're going to be here for five years if I don't fight anything?

He laughs at that, putting a hand to his face. "Hardly! These curses devour each other and grow stronger, and hungrier, and worse! But they can be crossed in less time than they have taken to accumulate. Fear not! Have heart! Persistence is the way through!"

Yeah, don't worry, I have a lot of that. Just - tell me when I need to do something.

"Watch," he says, as his pace picks up. The blood around them is bubbling, barely visible in the light he casts around him. "And do not turn your eyes away. Whatever you might see, do not avert your eyes."

[he nods, silent, as he walks faster to match his pace.]

As they walk, he will hear things in the darkness, in the silence from Mr. Edgelord. They're voices--not whispers, exactly, but things that might have been shouts or loud exclamations if they were somehow closer; it's like hearing a fight from some distance away.

At some point, something does make a grab at his ankle.

Whoa—

[he kicks at it instinctively, looking down to see what it is.]

In the dim light, it sure looks like a human face, so covered in thick liquid that the features are mostly indistinguishable--just sockets for the eyes, the rise of a nose, and an open, silently screaming mouth.

—Sorry! Sorry, sorry...

[moving right along with a grimace]

As he moves on, it lets go of him, though that is not the last time something tries to make a grab for him. Sometimes it does feel like a hand reaching up, and sometimes it feels a bit more inhuman--teeth at one point, catching in his pantleg, a pinch like a crab's claws, and something that is probably a tentacle... they're all grabby here.

[he pulls away and keeps on going each time even as he glances down, concerned, and after about the third or fourth time this happens:]

Hey... Do I need to be doing anything about these?

"You can try to calm them, if you like," he says. "They will return, but they can be appeased. It's best to cut them down... but if you are so certain that you are able to calm them, their fury and their fire--then by all means! Go ahead!"

Oh - okay!

[he brightens up a little and then then looks out for the next one he sees, stooping down next to it carefully.]

Hey there...

The face moves its mouth soundlessly; one voice rises above the others--a man's voice, screaming. He doesn't really sound like he's having a great time, unfortunately.

Hey - you're not alone, I'm here. What do you need?

He(?) doesn't seem to hear the words, only clawing further at the air, like he(?) is trying to break free of the blood. But whether or not he has any empathic abilities, there is a sense: of hurt, and anger raging into fury, bewildered at how he's found himself in such a place.

[he's careful as he does, but he reaches out to touch him.]

Hey...

The contact lets him see, for a fleeting moment--

A battlefield, a confused clash of a ragtag army that is somehow managing to overcome the might of the knights of the kingdom. In life, he had been a soldier, proud to serve his king, determined to do whatever was necessary to honor the glory of this city, with its walls of white chalk--

Only to be cut down by an interloper, a monster in human form. And as he falls, he sees, standing just behind his murderer, a young girl with red hair, watching him as the world goes dark.

[gently:]

...I'm so sorry that happened to you.

That voice wails again. It is fury, it is frustration, and it is the deep, almost childish confusion that he had done what he believed was right--he had followed a king chosen by god, who had been blessed with both a holy sword and a holy lance--so how? Why? Why would he fall, at the end of the line?

But it is, perhaps, slightly less frantic than before.

I'm sorry.

[he repeats, concerned.]

But you can rest now. You don't have to hold onto this feeling.

The wailing is slowing, slowing, fading into a pained sort of gurgle.

It is only one soul among so many, but it does appear to be calming.

[he glances up towards the man who led him here.]

...Is there a way to do this for all of them?

The man glances at him briefly. His expression is mostly unchanged, but there is something like pity in his strange, strange eyes.

"You could preach for a thousand years, and not reach all of them," he says, somehow not unkindly. "And there are things that would not understand your words at all. You are a human, speaking to a human. There is more than that, in the dark."

[he takes a breath, before he nods.]

...Okay. Finding her is more important.

Re: the delights of a human's heart

Re: the delights of a human's heart

Re: the delights of a human's heart

Re: the delights of a human's heart

Re: the delights of a human's heart

Re: the delights of a human's heart

Re: the delights of a human's heart

Re: the delights of a human's heart

Re: the delights of a human's heart

Re: the delights of a human's heart

Re: the delights of a human's heart

Re: the delights of a human's heart

Re: the delights of a human's heart

Re: the delights of a human's heart

Re: the delights of a human's heart

Re: the delights of a human's heart

Re: the delights of a human's heart

Re: the delights of a human's heart

Re: the delights of a human's heart

Re: the delights of a human's heart

Re: the delights of a human's heart

Re: the delights of a human's heart

Re: the delights of a human's heart

Re: the delights of a human's heart

Re: the delights of a human's heart