Riful's Heart.

[dramatispersonae]

[everything goes away.]

[sight, sound, taste, touch, smell - you lose yourself to the nothing that waits through the doorway. do you have a body? a mind? what is such a thing? for a dizzying moment, you might not even be sure you have a "you" to identify these concepts with.]

[then, wrenching and violent, the confusion of the senses pummels itself back inside you like seasoning pounded into raw meat, and you're left, painfully sensate, on an open plain.]

Comments

[THE FIELD OF SWORDS]

[dramatispersonae]

[amivoringyou]

[the wind against your skin bites with little dust-teeth. the smell of the place is dead. life doesn't grow here; it moulders. behind you the rubble-strewn plain stretches itself out till the hilly mounds scattered across the surface swallow it up like a hungry maw; a copse of trees hovers on the horizon line, distant but visible. weak-looking bushes and grass dot the landscape, and in front, rising up with stolid dignity, lies a massive hill easily mislabeled a "mountain". caverns and buildings made of rock and kiln-baked brick dig into and out of this hill like hives of wasps. it's unclear if the caves were dug by human hand first or if they were merely repurposed by men, made by something ancient and long since dead. visible atop the mountain, recognizable despite its similar lack of well-fed plant life, is the jutting shape of Onyx tower, looming over the proceedings.]

[driven into the ground like gravestones, all across the plain, rise a century's count of thin-hilted, slender blades, some broken off above the ground, some cracked. each bears an etched mark on the flat of the blade above the guard. the precise markings cannot be deciphered - a sharp object has torn into the worked metal and ruined the shape - but they remain recognizable as some kind of system of runes.]

[a thin crevice cuts across the ground, tipping some of the swords sideways over and into it.]

[you can hear no sounds of life, this far from the cavern mouths.]

[oh_brother]

[holyyy crap. just takes a moment to stare at the claymore graveyard]

What -- what is this?

[youhadmefromhello]

[. . . wow]

[flourished]

[ . . . WELP . . . ]

[badmedicine]

[ surveys the place ]

Hm . . .

[identityformations]

[well this is ominous]

[toolate]

[excuse me as i re-orient myself]

. . . Ah . . .

[medpacksapunch]

Ah-- this is...

[THE TOMBS]

[dramatispersonae]

[amivoringyou]

[the darkness is thick enough your sight can't penetrate it more than a few feet past the light that leaks inside through the opening, but the slope looks gradual. there are no steps; beyond the obvious work done to clear the entryway, erosion has done enough that if hands shaped the contours of these walls, that evidence crumbled away long before you came here.]

[oh_brother]

[places one hand on the wall then, feeling his way along in the dark. .... wait. if I have my medkit, there might be a penlight in there. he takes a moment to see if he has his medkit on him and then search for the light if he does.]

[THE WOODS]

[dramatispersonae]

[amivoringyou]

[your walk feels endless; the mounds do not change, and the cloudless grey sky wheels above like a vast muffling canopy of nothing; abruptly the edge of the trees stands before you, and it's as if you barely walked at all - the way behind is clear and no more than a few mounds stand between you and the field of swords you walked away from.]

[in the dark openings between the thick trees loom five statues much like the ones found in Aather's forest - but these are made of rough black rock and muddy pink quartz, and despite their dry appearance they smell like damp mud mixed with fresh-spilt blood. before four of them - one of them, the largest, has no sword before him - lie swords of the same make as those in the field you left behind, similarly driven into the ground - the runes etched into their blade, however, remain visible, with none of the defacing scratches the swords in the field all share.]

[now that you stand before them, the trees are much more numerous than they appeared from the field, much more like a proper forest, though still not a particularly large one.]

[the shallow impressions of bare feet stretch along the forest's edge.]

[THE WASTELAND]

[dramatispersonae]

[THE EYE OF THE WORLD]

[dramatispersonae]

[amivoringyou]

[you come out into an empty, circular hollow whose sides reach all the way up through the mountain. the sky watches you through the wide-open eye created by the rim above. three scraped-away caves head further into the mountain: one stands at a greater distance to the other two, set apart for reasons that aren't immediately obvious.]

[in the heart of the circle, a tree grows hungrily and leafless towards the edges and the sky, branches outstretched like grasping hands; its trunk, from certain angles, likens itself to the upside-down body of a grown woman, head buried underground, hair-roots flared all around her. fruit hangs from the lower branches.]

[THE TOWER]

[dramatispersonae]

[amivoringyou]

[from the outside, the Onyx tower in Sword's heart is much like it is in Aather, with one exception: standing a blithely unconcerned guard over the entrance is a statue of Sword, swordless, crouching down, finger poised over the ground as though in the midst of describing something in pictures.]

[THE PATH OF PINS]

[dramatispersonae]

[amivoringyou]

[the floor is tiled with poured cement bricks, uneven and rough underfoot, bucked by roots and dotted with scrub. past the open roof, deep into the mountain, the ceiling has sunk, forcing anyone of average height to have to duck to walk under it ...]

[just visible in the dim light of the underside is an outline of stairs.]

[THE PATH OF NEEDLES]

[dramatispersonae]

[amivoringyou]

[the path goes down ...]

[eventually it plateaus, and you find yourself on a wide flat floor underneath the earth. in the middle, a tree trunk erupts through the ground and continues up through the ceiling, and across the room is another cavern entrance. the light is too dim to make out which way it goes.]

[THE GATE OF HORN AND IVORY]

[dramatispersonae]

[amivoringyou]

[welcome to the canal of rebirth. you reach the base of the stairs and step out onto the narthex of what looks like a vast cathedral of flesh.]

[the ground is soft underfoot, and a veiny, translucent throb of red; it squelches underfoot. from above the great roots of an enormous tree rain down, almost to the floor, and growing backwards into the roots is a Riful, gone half to ribbons, eyes white and inhuman, ribbons knotting and kinking and becoming roots as they flare out behind her.]

[beneath her is a pit, with steps of needles descending down into the dark. she hangs over this, legs dangling over the empty space, and turns towards you at the first squelch.]