fujimaru | Palace Game 6/3

[WHY U LIKE THIS, RITZ

huffs out hard, well he's going to start with getting a good look at the statues]

SOMETIMES YOU HAVE ISSUES, RUGGIE!!

The broken statues can't be exactly identified, half-rubble as they are. But the three that remain intact appear to be warriors of some sort: a soldier holding a lance, a crouched figure with a skull-like mask, and a huge hulking shape carrying a great cleaver.

[pats the muscles on big cleaver friend

then shuffles to a busted door to try to examine it and also open it]

Touching the big muscled friend gives you a brief flash, the sound of a familiar(ish?) voice, if you know Da Vinci on Sphinx:

"Daybit Sem Void. He was something of an enigma, really. A loose cannon, you could say. Even got himself banned from his department at the Mage's Association.

That would be the Folklore Department, or Brishsan, if you're wondering. They deal with otherworldly artifacts. It's an unorthodox field of study despite being led by the Clock Tower's chancellor.

Anyway, Marisbury had the highest regard for Daybit's talent. I thought he was a rare find too. There's only one, maybe two other people I recognized as geniuses even when I was alive... and Daybit was right up there with them.

He never tried to understand anyone else, and nobody else ever understood him. He was expected to form a contract with a Berserker, though no one ever expected him and his Servant to reach any sort of understanding."

But among the rubble of the broken door he approaches, he can see a small flash of red under the stones. It doesn't look like blood, more like... a flower?

...

[stoops down to carefully scoop up the flower]

It's a red poppy in full bloom, somehow unbruised and uncrushed despite being buried amidst the broken pieces.

This, too, triggers a memory:

You see a young woman, wreathed in flames, weeping beside the giant, broken body of her lover. Her grief is something older and more piercing than you can understand, the immortal mourning for a mortal. Regret is the weight of millenia, born down upon her shoulders, an emptiness where love once existed and has been taken away.

[the struggle between feeling sorry for this woman but also

man lookit her titties]

I'm looking respectfully in your trying times.

Yeah her outfit is kind of like that.

There is the sense, though, as the scene fades, of something like... hope? Something that might actually turn out for the better? There's the glimpse of a lakeside camp ground, there and gone, and then it's just a flower in his hands.

[tucking his flower into his shirt, then trying the door]

The door appears to be an ornate wooden door, carved with hanzi characters that are faded and worn, perhaps too rough to be read even by someone familiar with the language.

He can get the door partway open before it hits on something on the other side, which is too heavy to push over.

[trying to peek through]

Hello~?

Through what he can see, there just appears to be... void space. Sheer nothingness. It's completely black, but looking at it too long might make him queasy; it's like the mind is trying to assume something is there, when there is nothing. There's no indication of what is blocking the door, only that there's something truly empty behind it.

. . .

[tosses a piece of rubble in]

As soon as it passes into the door, it simply vanishes--one second there, and the next gone, like it never existed in the first place.

[...huh

should i stick my head--hell no.

going to check door #1 now]

The door here appears to be more ornate in design. (Russian-flavored, if there is any sort of equivalent in his canon.) Amongst the rubble, there is the gleam of something bone-white, instead of the dusty gray of ruined marble.

[karina farek voice: THE BONE GAME???

going to grab for the potential bone]

It appears to be a fang of some sort! A wolf's fang, if he recognizes it.

That, too, is a memory: You see young man, looking so, so tired. You want so much to reach out to him, to help him when it looks like a strong breeze might knock him right over, but you know that he will certainly reject it. Regret is a knife in the back, a wolf's lonely howl in the distance.

Why is everyone sad and attractive here?!

[trying THIS door now!!11]

Because most of Ritsuka's cast is unfortunately hot,

The door has the same issue as the other one he tried: it catches on something unseen, a yawning void just behind it.

[fuck it

STICKS HAND IN]

RUGGIE PLEASE,

For a second, nothing happens!

And then, slowly, he can feel his hand dissolving. It's an oddly painless sensation? If he's looking at it, he can see that it's mostly like his fingers are fading into glittering particles, blowing away in some unseen wind. There's no blood, no exposed muscle or bone... despite the effect, it's more like someone has just taken a giant eraser to him and is slowly scrubbing the existence of his hand away.

[YOINKS HAND BACK]

UNFORTUNATELY, HE IS STILL MINUS SOME OF HIS FINGERTIPS EVEN AFTER THAT.

But hey, at least it's not spreading!

...enh s'fine.

[gets up to check another door. 2?]

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