steelmyself | who stole your heart and the key?

When your eyes open, you're in a blasted wilderness, with cracked, parched ground all around you. The air smells of heated metal, but there's no forge to be seen. Shadows fall on the ground from above.

Just ahead of you is a large rock, with a young man leaning worriedly over it. Next to it, a narrow crack opens up in the ground, leading down, down, down.

Though the scent of brimstone lingers faintly, before long the crack opens up into a small field in a narrow valley. Unidentifiable red and pink flowers grow amidst the grass. Further ahead, the valley's walls close in again and slope down once more.

A woman sits over a campfire in the middle of the field.

You leave the lovely field behind you, and soon the walls of the valley close around you, forming a winding cavernous passageway. Strangely, terrible winds whip through the tunnels, making it hard to continue.

The wind carries the faint sound of a young girl singing, but it's impossible to make out where the voice is coming from in these wind-blasted twisting passages. Every now and then, an agonized roar echoes from far away.

As you move onwards through the caverns, the misshapen walls become more even, until you're clearly walking through a manmade basement rather than a natural tunnel system. After a short while, it opens up into a long, narrow room, with a lengthy and somewhat odd-looking table set in the middle of it. On the far side of it, a plain door is set in the wall.

The table is stacked high with food.

Beyond the door, a short passage leads you into another room. This one is much wider and more high-ceilinged than the dining hall, and every inch of every wall is lined with books. Aisles of more bookshelves fill the room. Dust clogs the air.

An impatient muttering and clanking noise can be heard from within the aisles of shelves.

You really are approaching Hell now.

In front of you, a deep, jagged chasm yawns open, with a dull, flickering red light dancing far away within it. There appears to be no way across it save for one.

It isn't even a bridge: merely six swords laid end to end, somehow suspended across the gap in the stony earth.

All around you, fire leaps up high into the air. Ahead, it rapidly becomes impassable. Even here, the heat of the flames sears your face and dries your throat.

Just before where the flames make it impossible to press forward is some kind of lump of debris. On top of it sits a young woman.

A thin chill clings to the air here, and the scene that greets your vision is no more promising than the cold air. The ground is hard and rocky, but still there are things growing from it--for certain values of "growing."

Blocking your way through the narrow valley are a series of eight gnarled, thorny trees. Walking slowly amidst them, watering them with a pitcher of something that doesn't appear to be water, is a small blonde woman with distant eyes.

There's nothing of note in this dusty, open wasteland, save for one thing: a low, Japanese-style house, with a few outbuildings around it. Dust clogs the air even more thickly here than in the library, and a sense of desperate abandonment seems to almost seep through the ground.

Shadows and footsteps indicate that someone--or something--is making their way around the house.

[ W... what. What??

He freezes and stares for a long moment, confused, before cautiously approaching the man. ]

... Um...

[Picking herself up and dusting herself off as she looks around.]

[She does not, immediately, approach the man, rather cautious in fact, she surveys the landscape with a frown before calling to him.]

You.

[Mm wastelands, his favorite... Caster takes down his hood and approaches the young man.]

Hey.

On closer examination, the large stone has a sword plunged into it. That's what the ginger-haired young man, a boy in his late teens, is fussing over. He's trying to pull it out.

His eyes flicker a little in your direction, but he refuses to be distracted from his task.

On closer examination, the large stone has a sword plunged into it. That's what the ginger-haired young man, a boy in his late teens, is fussing over. He's trying to pull it out.

His eyes flicker a little in your direction, but he refuses to be distracted from his task.

"Uh, hey." Back to sword-tugging.

An enormous serpentine form arches high over the blasted earth, its rosy-gold scales gleaming. Both ends of it disappear over the horizon; its head and the ends of its tail are nowhere to be seen.

As for what's more nearby, on closer examination, the large stone has a sword plunged into it. That's what the ginger-haired young man, a boy in his late teens, is fussing over. He's trying to pull it out.

His eyes flicker a little in your direction, but he refuses to be distracted from his task. "Huh?"

[ watches for a little, but... ]

... I'm... not sure it's supposed to be removed, if it's stuck there...?

[Look in fact one time she stuck a sword in earth and it summoned a dragon so. She tilts her head up to the sky then back to the boy.]

What are you doing?

[ ummm?? ]

Sure it is.

I'm pulling out the sword.

Why?

[She looks at the progress there, how's that going for him?]

What'll happen if you pull that out?

"It's a sword. It's meant to be wielded. I can't just...leave it here."

[ It's not. The sword is just as stuck as ever. ]

Why?

who stole your heart and the key?

START

THE FIELD

THE CAVERNS

THE DINING HALL

THE LIBRARY

THE CHASM

THE FLAMES

THE THORNS

THE HOUSE

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