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 Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 10:10 am
Day 1 Task: Goddess of Paranoia
This place looks awfully familiar, Clairins thought to himself. It seemed emptier than he remembered: the door was missing, as was one of the goddess statues, but it looked uncannily similar to the fog-filled place where he first woke up. A closer inspection revealed that the missing statue was the goddess who gave him his golden heart, and for a moment, that heart seized at the thought, an odd (and entirely unreasonable) sliver of apprehension. It was fine. Goddesses surely had other business to attend to.
But still... Clairins leaned down towards the abandoned pedestal. There was something inscribed on the plaque; he squinted at the letters, seeing blurs until he bent even closer, until his face was nearly pressed against the stone.
"The Goddess... wrought with Paranoia... created...?" He squinted harder. These letters were particularly eroded; scratched out or faded, he couldn't tell, and he couldn't hazard a guess as to what they once were. He went on. "Her last and final project before... It was then that she discovered how to replicate..."
"Or so it goes."
Clairins jumped, whirling at the sound of her voice. There was his goddess, safe and sound, but even with his poor eyesight he could see that she was different than before. She was lit by the same sickly yellow that filled the Ruins, windows of light dotting shifting shadows in shapes he could not fully perceive. Wires snapped to life and sparked with gold before dying off into the mist. He rose from the ground, only to lower himself again as he bowed to her; he owed his very existence to her, and so she deserved his respect.
She offered him a bag. "Go on, open it up. I have a gift for you."
Jumping at the chance to claim physical proof of her favor (for a creation as wonderful as he was had surely earned it), he opened it immediately. Then he wilted in disappointment.
"Pardon me, Your Grace, but... is this some sort of joke?" He inquired as politely as he could.
"Oh. A small error. It's okay, I can fix this." Her eyes were upon him, fathomless. He did his best to hold her gaze. "With your help, I can fix this."
"I'd be happy to, Your Grace! Anything."
"Could you fetch me more parts? I stored them in my special labs but it's getting a little cluttered down there. Just look for the chests, they should be inside. I don't need everything it holds, just the heart."
The way she said 'heart' sounded odd. The request was odd in itself; what did she need a heart for? Had she not given him his, or at least made it so it matched her own? Reflexively, Clairins' hand went to his own chest, hovering over it. The goddess took his other hand and placed in it a pair of scissors. "That should do the trick. Just the heart. They don't need theirs after all."
"How could they possibly..."
"... they didn't quite make it."
He trembled, that seed of apprehension cracking at the edges and splintering into a new emotion: fear. And yet, he found himself nodding, his smile shaking and trembling like the rest of him. "Of course, Your Grace. I'll fetch the heart for you."
He turned quickly. Ahead of him were three doors. He could barely see them -- his mind blurred like his vision, awash with questions: why did she need a heart? What could have happened to this... person, he could only guess, to have erased their need for it, the core of their existences that felt at once so vital and important, and suddenly so incredibly fragile?
A broken thing, like the middle door of the trio, twisting in wicked arches towards a wretched sigil. It should feel wrong. But he found himself drawn to it, the same morbid curiosity that took him into the Blue Rose. That had ended badly. For a moment, he stilled with fear for his existence, but remembered that even though he had faded, he was still here... still safe. Perhaps that would carry him through, even in this place. It wasn't enough to quell his worries, but it spurred his feet forward, past the second door.
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Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 1:08 pm
He entered to applause. A crowd surrounded him, multitudes of faces he almost recognized smiling for him, cheering for him, and Clairins spread his arms wide to bask in their adulation. Yes! He shouted with them. This is the fate I deserve! Here was the destiny he imagined for himself when he awoke, the cries of uncountable admirers so adoring that he was almost overcome. Oh, the goddess truly did understand him, to give him such a wonderful gift...
Then he realized that the name they were chanting was not his, but someone else's.
"Sinclair! Sinclair!" They cried. His joy was instantly crushed by disappointment. No matter, He thought, scrambling to collect the scraps, because this stranger's name was similar enough for him to pretend that those cheers were meant for him. And so he closed his ears, distorting them until they too were as lost as his eyes, but soon, too soon, the exalting phantoms were gone and Clairins was left alone in a dark, silent hallway. He closed his eyes in a vain attempt to hold onto their images for awhile longer, but they didn't look quite right, caught underneath his eyes in shadowed caricatures, with mouths sealed shut despite the harmony of their voices echoing faintly around them. He shuddered.
"Back to business, I suppose." Clairins whispered. He was unable to suppress a sigh at the prospect of navigating the dreary expanse ahead of him. But he must, for the goddess. He said he would. And besides... If he did a good job, perhaps the goddess truly would make that ephemeral vision a reality.
With his arms held in front of him, he continued onward. He expected some form of resistance, like the debris in the Blue Rose, or a creeper, or even some sort of equipment -- the goddess had called this place her "lab", after all. But the hallway was surprisingly accommodating. "Such a gracious host," He laughed. His arms fell to his sides, and he strode confidently the rest of the way. It was only when he reached the very end did his knees knock into a hard surface. Not a wall, but something more hollow. It thumped back, as if in protest.
Once. Then again. Thud.
Thud.
"Is someone... in there?" Clairins grazed his fingers over the sides of the object, working his way up to the top. Firm and grainy. Then, something rougher, fabric that scratched at his fingers before falling away, lower, hitting the bottom with a final thud.
It was a container of some sort. The chest? Someone... no, something was inside.
"Hello?" He waited.
It had to be a something. It didn't respond. Clairins peered over the top of the container. In the darkness, a dim yellow heart gleamed, much like his own. This must be the heart the goddess wanted him to retrieve. He reached for it, and yet he couldn't help but wonder...
Why would a something have a heart?
There was a steady rhythm threading its way through his ears. Clairins did his best to ignore it. His hands met fabric, thick enough to prevent him from simply plucking out the heart, and he realized that this must be why the goddess gave him those scissors. He hesitated.
It's fine, it's fine... He told himself to stave away the throbbing ache buzzing through his head. The scissors caught a thin slash of yellow on the blade before Clairins sank them down, snipping away at the fabric.
The first layer yielded easily. The second resisted. He pressed harder, deeper, until the fabric fell away in clumps. He was starting to grow accustomed to the odd snapping sound the scissors made when a voice crawled up his back to reach his ears and whisper: "Desmond..."
He screamed. "Who's there?!" No response. He waited. When no answer came, he returned to his work. "What or who is Desmond?" He muttered as the heart's faint glow grew steadily brighter, and so too did the odd pulse thrumming in his ears. He tried to concentrate. It was odd, though, that the voice that spoke sounded disturbingly similar to his own.
Just the crowd. He tried to convince himself. Maybe they were asking for a Desmond too. Well, after they realized they ought to be cheering for me. When the heart was finally in his hands, the ache faded away, and the lie was easier to believe. But it was not enough: a man -- a boy -- he couldn't tell, appeared before Clairins, as still as the specters of the crowd he tried to keep. The phantom stared at him, without affection or even hatred, only curiosity. He could not look away. Abruptly, he was struck with the terrible sense that he had known this person, long ago.
Then, he was gone. Gasping, Clairins scrambled to his feet, shoved the heart into the bag, and sealed it tight. He ran for the door as fast as his legs could take him.
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Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 1:51 pm
His feet slapped against the floor, thump-thump-thump-thump, until the sound changed, and he stopped long enough to see the floor glaze over with a strange sheen and his legs come up from under him. He skidded forward, sliding until something cold caught him. Cold, and strangely wet.
Behind him, a splash. Clairins jerked his head up towards the noise. He couldn't see anything, but it wasn't the first time his eyes had failed him.
"Who's there?" He called. His voice shook. He tried to stand and inch his way backwards, but the cold-wet swallowed up his feet, climbing steadily upwards past his knees, his waist, and he really should stop, he realized, but there was another splash and he refused to stay to find out what it was.
"Sinclair..." A voice said, not the adulation of the crowd but something far lower and dangerous, he had to leave -- "Come on. Give it back."
"No," Clairins whimpered. Under the water, his hand clenched tighter around the bag. "No. I'm not Sinclair. And this... this is mine now."
"Come on. Give me back my --"
He screamed. "NO!" His voice echoed madly off of the walls, the water roaring all around him, trapping him, trying to sink into his lungs as icy cold wrapped around his throat --
The phantom was above him, so blurred his features looked like an unforgiving mess of color, and then he was dragging Clairins forward, out of the water, his face bizarrely familiar and his eyes like the abyss of gray he had so hated...
"Give me back my heart."
"Desmond," Clairins choked. Those glassy eyes narrowed before they were lost to the cold and writhing blurs as Clairins was submerged again. His cry came out strangled, "Brother!"
Desmond, his twin brother, wearing a face so much like his own and yet so different. Desmond, laughing, encouraging, a constant presence in a life he never knew...
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Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 2:01 pm
Desmond, brilliant, infuriating, excelling where he had failed, always taking taking taking the glory that should be his...
Shrieking, Clairins raised his scissors, feeling them shake in his hand before he clenched them tight and stabbed blindly -- again, and again, and again, uncountable, until his twin's screams died and his grip slipped away.
He came up sputtering. The floor felt much drier than it should have.
Someone was watching him as he stood. Squeezing his eyes shut, Clairins stumbled out of the room before his head snapped around to face them, too afraid of what he would see if he did.
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Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2013 8:33 pm
Day 2 Task: Goddess of Ruin
If he had to be honest, Clairins might have admitted that he was avoiding the shrine. But, when he finally obeyed the goddess' call and dragged himself to the shrine, seeing the Goddess of Ruin waiting there made him particularly disinclined to say as much. She stood tall, great and terrible, caressing a dangerous-looking scythe. Clairins gulped.
"You cannot escape forever." She said with a note of finality that made him shudder. Her hand remained on the scythe. "I-I'm ever so sorry, Your Grace." He said as smoothly as he could with how badly he was shaking. He couldn't take his eyes off of her weapon. His own couldn't possibly last against something like that. Not that he was considering picking a fight with a goddess, of course not, that would be utter foolishness...
"You must face your Fears." She continued. "Eat or be eaten. That is the way of it here. Were it another time... I wonder which one you would be?"
"Pardon... Your Grace?"
She swooped down from her pedestal to circle him, eyes narrowed in appraisal. He tried valiantly to stand tall under her scrutiny. He had nothing to hide, aside from the fact that he had squandered his time -- time that could have been spent serving the goddesses -- on more frivolous pursuits. But he was here now, and surely that had to count for something. Apparently satisfied, the goddess stopped in front of him. "I wonder indeed. Perhaps we shall solve this little mystery? Take this." She handed him a small jeweled dagger. Clairins' eyes caught on the jewels, but upon closer inspection, the weapon was decidedly plain and uninteresting.
"That should be more than enough," The goddess said. "You will need to learn to fend for yourself, to take on your challenges and judge for yourself what it means to sacrifice. That is the only way you will become stronger, else you'll fall prey to someone greater still."
Clairins winced. It seemed this challenge had a great deal to do with fighting. The battlefield had shown him that he wasn't utterly awful at battle, yet it wasn't something he was looking forward to. He did his best to hide his reluctance. "Yes, Your Grace. Of course, you are right."
She nodded. "You are ready. Go." She swung her scythe, and that was all the 'encouragement' Clairins needed to scurry towards the nearest door.
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Vethrfolnir rolled 1 4-sided dice:
3
Total: 3 (1-4)
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Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2013 8:36 pm
When Clairins opened his eyes, everything was white. He blinked. "That's... odd." He murmured. "I don't remember closing them..."
He strained his eyes against the bright light. His back felt somewhat sore, like he had fallen asleep on a stiff surface for much too long. Said surface felt cold to the touch. "How very odd." He said, sitting up. He had ended up in a room, somehow. It wasn't terribly interesting: nothing but white, except for the table, which was a shiny, polished gray. Well, He thought wryly, At least white is change of pace.
He stood up. This room was awfully clean. Even the floor was polished to shine; he could almost see his face in it, and he took a moment to admire it before inspecting the rest. If this was part of the task the goddess assigned to him, this couldn't be all she wanted him to do; there had to be more to it than that. After some feeling his way around, Clairins eventually came upon a door, and he half-expected to use the dagger the goddess gave him as a makeshift lockpick before he realized that it opened with a simple turn of the knob.
"Oh. Well then." He said, strangely disappointed. He continued out into the hallway.
His disappointment wouldn't last.
He had been walking for awhile. He must have been halfway through the hallway, but it felt as if the other side was an eternity away; it didn't seem to be getting any closer. Despite that annoyance, perhaps it was a relief that nothing terrible had happened yet, and it had been a peaceful walk so far... until a set of footsteps not his own scraped against the floor and turned his body cold.
He turned around fearfully. A tall figure cast in black shadows was behind him. It edged closer -- something was in its hands. Clairins' vision blurred. Fear shackled his legs to their place. The figure lurched towards him, a mess of shadows, and Clairins could hardly comprehend its form until it stood so close to him that he could feel its breath. The only thing Clairins could make sense of were its eyes, white and empty. "What's the matter, Sinclair? Too scared?"
He screamed, shocking his legs to life, and took off running. The being laughed. "You were always such a coward!"
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Vethrfolnir rolled 1 4-sided dice:
4
Total: 4 (1-4)
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Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2013 8:37 pm
There was nowhere to go but straight ahead, but Clairins could hardly see the path ahead of him. He hoped he wasn't running straight into a dead end. Remembering the dagger in his hand filled him with another surge of panic. Was that the thing he was supposed to fight? "Oh, no..." Clairins moaned. "No, no, no... I'm not ready for this!"
Sure, he had done admirably in the battlefield, but... he had help then. Convenient distractions for the enemy to deal with. Here, he was alone, and this opponent seemed especially fixated on him, no matter whoever this "Sinclair" was.
The sea of white continued, until it was broken by a small clump of... something. Hoping it was something that could help, Clairins dived for it. Only when he held it in his hands did he realize it was a piece of paper.
"A equals zero, B equals one, C equals two?" He read, holding it up to his face. "That's all well and good, but how does that help me?"
There was a loud thud behind him. It was much too close. Yelping, Clairins scrambled to his feet, crumpling the paper in his fist and hurrying down the rest of the hallway.
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Vethrfolnir rolled 1 4-sided dice:
3
Total: 3 (1-4)
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Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2013 8:39 pm
"Oh, jack..." The figure was looming over him, laughter rumbling in his voice. "This is pathetic. Trying to run away again, huh? Face it, Sinclair. You'll never be as good as me!"
Clairins had no idea who or what he was talking about, but he felt the need to reply, "No, you're right. I'm better than you!"
It laughed, but its stance seemed to grow more menacing. Clairins couldn't stare it down for long. Stifling a whimper -- he refused to give it that satisfaction -- he kept running until his face smashed right into a wall.
"A-agh, my face..." Clairins touched his nose and his cheeks gingerly. Relieved to find nothing was broken, he put his hands against the wall, trying to steady himself. His hands slipped and caught onto some sort of protrusion. He grasped at it. "A handle!" He cried. He tugged. It didn't budge.
"Bloody pork-eyed blithering little..."
He clawed desperately at the door. They caught on something else -- a square object with smaller panels. Squinting at it, he realized there were numbers on it. His mind instantly went to the paper; then, he groaned.
"B-but which numbers do I need?!"
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Vethrfolnir rolled 1 4-sided dice:
2
Total: 2 (1-4)
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Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2013 8:41 pm
He turned. Something was pinned to the wall. This blur looked distinctly red. Clairins snatched it, and his heart skipped a beat as he realized that it was another piece of paper. Frantically, he shoved it before his eyes to make out the words.
"A, C, E, G. A C E G." His mind raced. He quickly unraveled the other paper. "If A is 0... C is 2... D, E, three -- wh-what's next -- F! Four, G -- Five! That's it! I've got it!"
He felt a surge of triumph as the door slid open. "See? I am better than you!" He cried gleefully, letting out a peal of laughter as he raced out into the woods.
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Vethrfolnir rolled 1 4-sided dice:
4
Total: 4 (1-4)
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Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2013 8:44 pm
The sight of the gray trees made Clairins grimace, but after realizing how many of them there were, he had never felt more grateful to see so much gray. He ran into the forest, making sure to take as convoluted a path as his legs would allow. If he did that, he was sure he could lose the follower here.
By the time he reached the other side of the forest, his breath was coming up in gasps. He turned, hoping his plan had worked...
Black flitted through the trees. No such luck.
The only way out of here was a bridge. If Clairins could see better, it would have looked disastrously unsafe; as it was, it looked like a pathway to his escape, and he bounded across it with abandon.
There was a loud crack behind him. Startled, Clairins looked back -- his stalker was not far, but was looking down, down at a gray piece of wood falling into a dark abyss below. He was stuck.
Clairins' throat burbled with nervous laughter. He was nearly cackling when he reached the end of the bridge.
A terrible howl echoed through the chasm. "Keep running! Run until your legs break! Then I'll take your heart, just like you took mine!"
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Vethrfolnir rolled 1 6-sided dice:
6
Total: 6 (1-6)
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Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2013 8:46 pm
Tall gray buildings loomed in the distance. They reminded Clairins of the Ruins. Seeing nowhere else to go, Clairins headed towards them. He was choking out his breaths by the time he stumbled onto the pavement.
Somehow, all the buildings had disappeared, save for one. Its shadows cast a strange, heavy darkness over him.
"I'm surprised you made it this far. You've always been such a failure."
Clairins gasped, dragging himself up to face his pursuer. "How did you... follow me?"
It smiled darkly, brandishing the object in its hand. Scissors, Clairins realized. "Don't you remember, Sinclair? I'm better than you. You're nothing but a defective mistake. Our parents didn't want you. No one wants you."
What he was saying made no sense -- it shouldn't have -- but Clairins still found himself reacting, staggering to his feet, his hands shaking. "Shut up!" He screamed. The dagger in his hand flashed red.
"Will you eat or be eaten?"
Clairins needed no more encouragement. He plunged the dagger straight into the foul being's heart. Where it should have been, but where there was nothing but empty space that immediately gave way and collapsed in sodden clumps.
It was strange. Up close, the creature's face looked strangely like his own.
He was standing in front of a suitcase filled with silk, jewels, and other finery. They were necessary. He needed them for...
Someone was behind him. He turned, looking into a face that was uncannily like his own. The other boy looked displeased.
"I can't believe you got in." He said.
"I can hardly believe it myself! But it should come as no surprised, since they must have realized that they couldn't do without my talents--"
"No. I can't believe you got in." He repeated. The emphasis was odd. It made his hackles rise. "You're not good enough to get into Amityville."
"E... excuse me?"
"You heard me. You're not good enough, Sinclair. You're... well, you're you -- I'm sure Mother and Father must have bribed the officials some how, they must have felt sorry for you, or they just wanted you to stop whining..."
"How dare you? How dare you!?"
The memory blurred. The last thing he remembered was the boy with his face holding onto his cheek, split with a cut from bared claws.
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Posted: Sat Aug 17, 2013 6:17 pm
Day 3 Task: The Goddess of Longing
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Posted: Sat Aug 17, 2013 6:19 pm
You drink from the gold teacup, and the memory you immediately evoke is one of pride. You feel carefree and strong. You feel accomplished and empowered. You know, or some part of you, some part of you that clicks and connects, that this was, once, yours.
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Posted: Sat Aug 17, 2013 6:20 pm
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