sheep_game | hello (heart)gamers. im here w some special guest stars

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hello (heart)gamers. im here w some special guest stars

WHO: all who dare enter angie's literal mind palace. it's OPEN HOUSE! no invites needed!
WHERE: in front of miku's salad (and yours)
WHEN: evening 73.

[ in the middle of running a perfectly innocuous miniquest, Angel Devil falls down.
His clothes have twisted away into bone-white rags, leaving a body covered over with only thick swathes of red fur, and downy feathers. His long tail is curled into a tense arc, banded fur standing on end.

The air wavers like he’s a heat mirage, not a man. He’s boiling away with absolutely stupid amounts of arcane power… and, most frighteningly, he does not seem in control of the fact that it is there and being brought to bear. It’s impossible to get any closer to him.

When he speaks, it’s quite timid. ]

Oh.
Oops.
...Thought I had... a little more time.

[ (and in a blinding flash of light, there is the sound of something breaking.) ]

~KRRSHHK~

[any observers will see, strangely see-through and superimposed on the scene, some kind of vast tree, illusionary roots twisting over and around to frame a door. the door itself is wrought of opaque stained glass in blacks and whites and greys; a stylized rendition of Angie in that strangely ragged, feathered form, curled in on himself, eyes closed. Angie himself is nowhere to be seen. ]

instead, a shadow . . . steps into view from behind the door. for a moment it looks like nothing so much as a second genome – then it turns, gaining features and definition with the movement. The monkey tail separates into three plumes; a ponytail unfurls into wings that lift up from the sides of the head.

Teleute(?) is here, dressed in her customary black, but there is colour in her skin, and her hair and eyes are blue. she’s frowning.]

. . . well. This is the least I can do before I go, in exchange for the safe harbor.

[she lifts her head, nodding to any observers, and gestures at the door.]

You’ll want to head in there now if you don’t wish to lose your flockmate, I think. Even the false-death of this place won’t be much help to him, if his soul is left to finish pulling itself apart.

My sisters and I can maintain the way into and out of it for you, but we were not made to knit such wounds by ourselves. Have a care.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[is there anywhere concrete to look past the mirror, or is it still all Mist?]

[ the light from the mirror doesn't make the path beyond clear, exactly, but it does shape the darkness in a subtle way that informs one there is a path. ]

[welp! that makes it simple enough. onward

he also doesn't have much hope of it working as a compass if he is literally in the soul and soaking in Mist, but he casts out the necomancer's senses the pasture gave him. looking for that fragmenting, wisping thing he held and repaired, not so long ago. looking for the bright harlequin cord, or the pale one he used as a temporary patch. trying to see if any of those ping and help him get his bearings as he walks.]

[ you listen to more than your eyes,
and the cord you wove shines like a brilliant lantern in the darkness.

there's sounds of activity to the right, but that's not where the braid you wove from yourself is leading you. you soldier on into the black, eyes closed to blot out the useless distraction...

and when you open them again, ]

[ you find yourself in a rather wretched hall, in the depths of a dark and dreary castle.

To the left is a row of four structures like wheels, connected by thick, dark red tendons. Three are filled by disks in the middle, but the fourth has only a deep recess. To the right; a sharp drop, filled with a rat's nest of something like veins connecting and filled with who-knows-what... and the tree roots. Dense. Invasive.

The 'wheels' ceaselessly churn to themselves, serving some hideous purpose or other. They're clearly powered by Mist.

the braid you've been following is somewhere up ahead, past them. ]

Edited 2024-04-15 05:11 (UTC)

[well, the tree roots are obviously of some significance, if Teleute opening this door caused a vision of them...

he pauses and brushes a hand along the nearest ones, just seeing if that does anything interesting or prompts a reaction.]

Edited 2024-04-17 09:31 (UTC)

[ to a Lily, they sing in a chorus, able to retain coherence rather than wail in insensate pain. These roots are overfilled with the running sap of the unresting dead.

how did angel devil get so full of them? this is more than the act of one man's dying. is it simply because of the sheer, unfathomable number of deaths he's caused?

but how, then, could each singular one of their souls have touched him so deeply? ]

Edited 2024-04-17 13:33 (UTC)

[that is indeed a burning question.

to help answer it -- do they seem to be flowing to/from the same place as the soul-braid, or somewhere entirely different?]

[ they are flowing away, as if in this moment released from a prison. ]

[what happens if he tries to pull some of them out of this channeling outflow system...?]

[ this man had a black horn in the middle of his forehead, three children and three sisters. none of them ever left the village they were born in, until the day they all died in a fiery, inexplicable doomsday,

brought by a red eye up in the sky. ]

[ this doll fought at the battle of Burmecia, but it wasn't really a battle at all; a massacre. felt nothing while burning them alive. then, with five identical fellows, trapped on a boat on a choppy sea, wondered when all those people they burned would get up and go on with their day. would they be told to burn them up again?

then the red eye lit up in the sky. ]

[ since the death of her father at the end of a Burmecian spear, her grief had festered. the day Lindblum blotted the sky with their airships and ordered the ceasefire, its dark ember was forced to stay buried in her heart. so many years on, the world will be hers, Alexandria's, and no one will ever force them to bow their heads and settle again.

that man is the only obstacle left.
a red eye lights up in the sky. ]

[ they are such small fragments. not a whole self, a whole soul, anymore. ]

Edited 2024-04-18 17:30 (UTC)

[ what angel devil's own soul tells him, knows to its bones,
is that none of them ever understood it wasn't an eye, at all, riven through by fear. ]

[ the dwindling souls do not last outside of that flow, falling to cinders in his fingers, but a red mask is left behind. ]

[tucks it in his coat, bowing a little to the roots in acknowledgement, and walks on down the hall, moving in the braid's direction now]

[ angel devil's own disembodied voice walks with him in a weak echo. it's near a monotone, free of all his habitual, playful complications. ]

""This isn't... where I thought we were going. I've never seen this part of the castle before..."

so much is so... uncomfortable, in this soul. not the content, but the objective sensation; the blue light streaming in through the windows above feels too-bright, dizzying, painful if you stand still in it too long. it's easiest to try and not to let too much of it touch you. even the machines carry a murmur, making it harder to think.

"...the... crystal's light is so much stronger here..."

[ it sounds like he's falling behind, even as the gate up ahead is opening up. ]

...must you hang back, really...

[he doesn't stop walking, but he reaches towards that voice. if it's part of the soul, could he pull it to him quickly before it gets damaged by the light?]

Edited 2024-04-18 19:03 (UTC)

[ your MASK OF THE KING glows brightly as you hurry the scrap of soul along. though you can't see it, a good chunk of the paint flakes off, revealing the black base beneath.

you can feel its presence at your side. a lil nervously, ]

"...I understand. No more distractions."

[ but it hangs back again, when you're crossing the threshold into the final room, where an ominous chair waits,

with a death-masked memory of a young Angel Devil, insensate.
the shining braid Charon wove is visible like stitches across his vital areas; neck, chest, and gut. lucky he did it. the frayed rainbow-string of Kefka's curse is basically down to one hair's-width.

the problem is the third string holding him together,
the dark god's.
it seethes. feels as if it's rejecting him, trying to writhe out from where it's been sewn deep in. before it was calm. uncaring. placidly held its part of the pieces in place, with the bored tolerance of a man allowing an ant to crawl along his arm. ]

[ abruptly, angel devil in the chair sits up, extremely awake and aware.
and his blue mask, riddled with holes, falls off. and cracks down the middle. ]

[ the golden mask of the King on Charon's face, the one he had protested at the moment of its assignation, cracks down the middle, too, and falls off. ]

Edited 2024-04-18 19:36 (UTC)

[flinches back a little bit; he’s not easily surprised but when it is happening RIGHT in front of his salad that does make a difference. catches the halves of the mask as they fall though, frowning at them then at Angie]

Good morning.

"..."

"Take... two steps to the right for me, Lilylord."

[checks behind him first]

[ without the mask of the King making the spectre too shy to be clearly seen, that's definitely redhead, Chronologically Earlier Version angel devil in a standard issue scifi monkey uniform. sure, he's not younger in physical age. but still.

man one of these days i need to do icons for that time period. shorter hair. no feathers.
anyway.

he's definitely looking at him like "who the fuck are you" now that the mask is off. ]

[y’know what]

I need at least a touch of explanation before I move, I think.

[ slightly manic laughter ]

"Sure. Okay. Why not.
I think I have time. I. I don't think either of us are chronologically accurate at the moment, anyway."

Edited 2024-04-18 20:49 (UTC)

In memoriam.

I’m listening.

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