[Pumpkin] Alma Karma (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
imaginemeandyuu) wrote2014-05-03 08:09 pm
imaginemeandyuu) wrote2014-05-03 08:09 pm
Alma Heart Game
You fall into mud. It is sticky and sucking and cloying and whether you stay still and try to remain calm or struggle and try to get out, you're sucked downward. You can't breathe, you can't (of course) see, and you can feel the crushing weight of earth on you. When the blackness becomes overwhelming, you find yourself somewhere else...
STARTING ROOM
Literally.
The ceiling is made of mirrors -- largely rectangular ones, though in the dead center is a circular one. The floor matches it, made of mostly rectangular mirrors with a circular one in the center. All the walls, ringing the room, are covered from floor to ceiling in mirrors. You reflect into infinity in every direction and it has the unnerving feeling like one of your hundreds of reflections might suddenly do something different from the others.
The mirrors aren't all in the same condition, however. The tops of the walls, and the mirrors on the ceiling, are tarnished and gross, showing age spots, discoloration, handprints. Things are smeared on them, dark fluids and dirt. The circular mirror in the center is chipped, including a large sharp-seeming chip toward one edge which leaves a small black peephole into -- what, exactly?
The floor and the lower parts of the walls seem, in comparison, glitteringly clean, but these are the ones where you can see your reflections best, where, as you turn and glance around, you have the biggest sense that something turned in the wrong direction, a hand moved where it shouldn't, the wrong color for your clothes or hair or eyes was briefly glimpsed. The circular mirror in the center is also the brightest and cleanest of these mirrors, so much so it seems almost to be glowing.
Floating in the center of the room, exactly halfway between the two circular mirrors, is a bowl. It is currently empty and despite floating in space doesn't seem to be movable from its current location.
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—they've gotta work on the entry with these things.
[getting up and immediately smacking his head on the ceiling]
—Ow!
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. . . shit.
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What is all this. . .?
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He's going to move towards that peephole to see if he can't look through it. ]
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Kanda? Where's your guy? He's here, right?
[Turns around uneasily, a little stooped--and after a moment, tentatively reaches out to try to rub at some of the discoloration and smears on the nearest mirrors with his sleeve.]
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A RETURN
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PATH TO THE TRUE HEART
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UP
It's flesh.
Twisted bulging flesh, stained dark as with tattoos but with a pale whiteness showing between those whirls and bulges. You can't make out any specific body parts, and perhaps that's for the best but... you all know what flesh looks like, what it feels like.
It's warm, also, like the heat of standing in a packed crowd of people, being surrounded by this much flesh.
It forms a winding passage leading off in two opposite directions, left and right (more or less; it's hard to tell in this twisting darkness), as well as the entryway you came in by below. Of course, walking isn't exactly easy on soft, squishy flesh that you can feel give under your feet...
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[Steadies himself, takes a few steps left, then a few right, trying to see if there's any difference in light and air quality in either direction.]
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UP - RIGHT
Metal bars also start to define space, holding the walls back or keeping you in, but widen into a much larger area that is -- well. It's not good.
At first, it may seem to be flooded by blood because of the piercing chains, the sharp points at the end of the iron bars, but you only have to get a bit closer to realize that, no, the blood is from something else, and those twisted forms in the middle of the room aren't parts of the flesh of the floor but are corpses, strewn on top of each other and scattered around.
At the top of this tableau of corpses is a figure made up of feathers. You can't make out its face, but it has two arms, two legs, a head, all covered in bloodstained white feathers. One arm has an organic scythe emerging from it, a body still partially on it -- it's pretty clear it's this one who was responsible for the corpses in here. The feather person is stretching out its hands, holding a human heart, up to the beautiful young boy standing over it, also drenched in blood, holding a sword over his head and trembling as he prepares to bring it down on the feather figure or the organ it's holding.
Both figures seem to be crying.
Past them, the flesh corridor seems to split into two paths leading deeper into the darkness. One seems to wind slightly upward, the other slightly downward.
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Shit!
[But someone or something just might be about to get hurt, so he pushes down his own discomfort and races over, past the blood, to interpose himself between the boy and the feather person--and get a better look at both of them.]
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UP - Further Right (up)
But it evens out after a while and again, chains and bars start to pull the flesh back and force it to separate. Mostly chains, though, way more chains than before, winding and tugging and pulling more and more to the point that you'd have to push them aside to touch any flesh at all.
Eventually they form an opening of a sort, almost all metal, winding clanking chains shifting and pulling ever tighter. The room itself seems to have been some kind of woman's bedroom, though it's hard to tell under the mass of metal. Chains cover the bed, the dresser, the dress stand next to it. As well as those, you can make out (all wrapped up in chains) a bookcase, a rocking chair, and a washbasin.
You may be more interested in the...decoration? On the 'roof'. The chains wind up and around the body of a woman, keeping her tied up overhead. She's in her mid-thirties, with shoulder-length blond hair, and while she's no unearthly beauty she's nice enough to look at, the chains marking out a curvy body.
She is also crying, and apparently injured, blood dripping down from the chains wrapping her midsection. A knife sticks out of her, from between two chains.
There is no way out except the way you came.
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Oh, no.
[Trying to approach the woman and determine just where the knife is sticking and how deeply it's in her.]
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UP - Further Right (down)
But it continues to stay just around the size for your shoulders to brush it on either side, and eventually it reaches a pucker out of which some long white hair is hanging, maybe four feet long.
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UP - LEFT
This cave is full of what seems like stalagmites and stalactites -- sharp bone spurs spiraling up from the ground. On each of these, resting like a carving or a mask, is a face -- Alma's face, as if peeled off and abandoned.
The faces near the entrance bear smiles, bright and wide, though resting as they are on top of the spikes it's clear there's nothing behind them, hollow eyes and hollow mouth showing the spike behind it.
As you proceed there seem to be more and more of them and they bear more and more types of faces. Twisted, angry, despairing, ecstatic.
"It won't come off, it should come off, it must come off, come on, come on."
Alma -- or at least, it mostly looks like Alma, though his body is even more twisted and bestial than usual, spikes larger, tail whipping back and forth, his exoskeleton heavier than you're used to and more gnarled -- is rubbing his face against a spike, apparently trying to peel it off.
"They'll be upset if they see it, it has to come off, come off, come off!"
Past where Alma is, the path splits, one slanting slightly further up, the other slanting slightly further down.
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A...Alma?
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UP - Further Left (up)
It emerges quite suddenly through the 'floor' into a wider area. Except the outside walls of the area are glass and through them you see terrible scenes, as if through a window or a TV screen. Mordred's game images. Tiger's Eye and Ruby members dead in games. A woman crying alone, her face in her hands, blonde hair cascading over her shoulders. A beautiful young boy, unconscious, being carried into a room by several people in white coats. Blood spattered everywhere. Every facet of the 'glass' shows a different, similar scene.
There is a device in the center of the room, about three feet tall, which looks somewhat like this, though spherical in the center, with the spikes ringing it. Every thirty seconds or so (you'd better duck once you're out of the hole high enough to risk getting hit by it) it shoots out sharp spikes into the walls, which shatter around it. The glass crawls around the spikes, then absorbs them, reforming into solid clear walls again.
A screaming can be heard from inside the device. No words, just endless wailing.
There is no way out except the way you came.
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[ducking and pulling Melody down with him to avoid those spikes]
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Eventually, it seems to continue straight ahead -- but as you approach, you realize that was an optical illusion, hardened flesh that is colored to look like the path continuing, and it actually drops out from under your feet. It's not a long drop, and will be easy enough to climb back up, but it's a sudden one.
It ends in -- not really a room, or even a cave opening, so much as just a space which doesn't make much sense. It is all wrong in here. Parts are soft and covered with cloth; other parts are hard and damp and bloody. Parts are decorated in beautiful gold and gems and parts are in blacks and iron.
A pool is in the middle of the space, water mixing with stagnant mud mixing with blood. From the center of it is a flat rock, or what looks like a rock, with a doll on it. The doll is androgynous, pretty, with eyelashes until tomorrow and a small curving smiling mouth, but its hair is chopped short and it has thick brows drawn on. Its eyes are closed. Around it are laid out a lot of clothes, sized for the doll:
- A yellow short-sleeved dress with lace on the bottom and a black flower pattern on it.
- A super stretchy yellow and black skintight body suit (with a hole over the butt)
- black jacket with puff sleeves
- Black drop crotch pants
- Dark gray leggings
- A yellow jacket detailed in black with pockets
- Tuxedo wrist cuffs
- A victorian-style woman's dress, made to look like a uniform
- A black tunic top with yellow detailing on the edges
- Spandex vest and shorts, apparently underwear
- A large beaded flower necklace in yellow and black on a cord
- Open topped black boots
- A starched-collared men's military uniform
- Platform heeled black leather fringe boots
- A jacket with a high 'chinese-style' collar and sleeves
- Sturdy yellow socks
- Black and yellow leather strips for arm wraps
- Utility Belt
Although its face is porcelain, Its body is just made of cloth, unremarkable, though it seems kind of...lumpy.
There is no way out except the way you came.
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[carefully picking her way over to the pool; is the rock close enough to jump to?]
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DOWN
It's mud -- the floor beneath you, the walls, even the ceiling -- though perhaps you can't really call it floor or walls or ceiling. It's a tunnel, more than anything, through the ground, soft and squishy. If you stay in any one spot for too long you can feel yourself start to sink into the mud, but so long as you keep your feet moving, you're all right.
It's cool, at least, and it smells like fresh earth -- which is good or not depending on your tastes. The mud forms a winding passage leading off in two opposite directions, left and right (more or less; it's hard to tell in this twisting darkness), and of course you can exit by the hole you came in by. A faint glow comes from both directions, as if it's lit up further in.
Of course, walking is a bit of a challenge in this mud, but not so bad if you move carefully.
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DOWN - RIGHT
They continue on as the path widens; it does so in a bulge around some kind of scene. A young boy, who looks very much like Alma, is clawing his way down this path. On his back is an unconscious pretty boy covered in bandages, but with pale skin showing here and there, and black hair. His bandages are clean and showing no sign of injury -- Alma, however, is covered in wounds, from arrows sticking out of him to injuries all over his arms and legs as if he has clawed his way out of some kind of restraints. He seems on his last legs.
"I'll save you, Yuu. We finally... became friends..."
Just after he says that, more arrows seem to fly out of the muddy walls -- not the spots with the lotuses, but other places -- and sink into him. They seem to miss the young Kanda entirely.
Beyond them, the path splits into two, one twisting further upward, the other twisting further downward.
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But one part of the tunnel is extra dry, and cracked, and you hear the sound of scraping on the other side of it.
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It flattens out into a wide section of tunnel which is just... well, it looks like a flat plane of mud. But as the first person who steps out into it will discover, under the mud is a variety of holes that go down indefinitely, also filled with mud. You won't drown, of course, it's not sucking you down, but whatever unlucky person just steps out into it will now be swimming in mud.
The holes aren't huge -- maybe three feet in diameter -- but the fact you can't tell where they are makes them a pretty effective pitfall.
...however, they seem not to be the only ones who fell in, as you can see a child's hand sticking out of a pool of mud and grasping around, as if trying to claw its way out but unable to rise.
There is no way out except the way you came.
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[grabbing that hand and yanking him out]
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DOWN - LEFT
The lanterns continue to hang everywhere, haphazard, as the path goes on. It rises and dips and grows steadily bumpier, as if the mud dried unevenly.
After one small drop it widens, and you find Alma, decked out in his hideously yellow Tiger's Eye spandex bodysuit, with an axe and shovel, cutting off bumps and trying to pat the loose dirt down to make even walls, floor. Sometimes, when his axe swings into a bump, blood pours out; he showers loose dirt on this until it's absorbed, and pats it down. Other times, there's nothing but dirt in there in the first place; other times, it seems to have been hiding items, which he hurriedly covers back up.
"Ah! Hi guys," he calls, as you approach. "Sorry about the mess! You can keep on going, I won't get in your way..."
The path does, indeed, carry on past where he is, splitting into two separate paths, one winding upward and one winding downward -- though the way the tunnels are shaped look man-made here, as if he had dug them out himself at some point.
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Pumpkinnnn.
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It breaks through the ground at the top and on the other side is a beautiful starry sky. A lovely forest surrounds the clearing the hole emerges into. It's dark, and you can't see everything terribly well, but it really is nice. There's the remains of a firepit, and -- well. That's about that.
That said, something seems off about how things look, but it's hard to narrow down with initial glance. It's beautiful, but something's not right.
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It would look relatively like a normal bedroom if it wasn't for everything being colored so brightly -- again, not in a coordinated way, but as if every item in the bedroom was white at its core, and simply had buckets of paint tossed around everywhere. Yellow and red are the dominant colors, of course, surprising nobody, but there's a lot of pink, and some purple, and at least a little of every color (silver and black included).
Other than that, it's a relatively normal bedroom. There is a window onto nothing (this is underground, after all, so it just shows more dirt in the small places paint doesn't cover), also totally splashed with every color. A dresser. A bed -- a huge bed, a really really really fluffy, comfortable looking bed, a bed piled with red pillows, so many red pillows, a bed it looks like you could just sink into and is maybe much nicer than continuing to look around and explore and do anything at all? Like, I mean, between that bed and anything else, wow, that bed looks like a great option. It's kind of messy, though, and here and there it looks like there's bloodstains? Not big ones, just spatters. But the red pillows help tie that all together into a common theme maybe it's just decoration. Besides, could totes be paint. Either way, damn, nice bed. What a lucky person to have a bed like that.
Oh, yeah, there is also a small table with a wrapped present on it.
There is no way out except the way you came.
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True Heart
Ahead of you stands a woman and a child -- the woman you have seen throughout, in a black gown and with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, and child is the more obviously 'younger' Alma -- holding hands. They smile, and speak.
"Ah, you made it?" "That's great!"
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Hello, Pumpkin.
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