@ thesolutionist

((well let me write you a starter then))

The sun filters through the forest’s leaves, falling through the green-tipped gaps and gently filtering down-

onto the body of William Strife.

He lies in the center of a clearing. His shirt is ragged, his waistcoat torn, and he is bleeding something unnatural and thick and green. Also billowing out from his wounds is something bright green and gaseous, sparkling with dark pinpricks of paradoxical light, but this gas seems reluctant to leave its body behind.

It is as if he is pollution itself, set against the verdancy around him. The forest seems uneasy at his presence.

He is barely breathing. His eyes are fluttering slightly open, and he’s groaning, and with each groan and movement, more of the strange gas escapes.

If you look closer-

"Of course I’ll come to the tower with you. I need to see what plants you’ve got, after all." He puts on a bright grin, his most cheery facade. If he gets nothing else from this endeavor, he wants to see Strife smile/annoy him to death before the creepy cloud can get here. Either works.

It’s a bit awkward. How do you apologise for accidentally setting an evil demonic chaos entity on someone’s forest? Strife’s glad that it hasn’t really happened to this extent before, but really, this shouldn’t have happened at all.

He had contingencies. He had armour.

He had limped from Parv’s castle, from where the magic police had cast their ruin, and in that wild flight he had heard the darkness mock him.

Look at him now – left half undone, putting all his hope onto this stranger, this tree spirit guy who was going to use plants to bind the darkness back unto himself. He laughs bitterly to himself, but he shouldn’t be too mean.

He’s trusting the guy.

Nilesy.

Nilesy.

PUT ME DOWN THIS INSTANT OR I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL SHOVE THIS POTATO UP YOUR ASS.

Strifey.

I will not put you down because right now, I have to show ya something~!

*stops flailing*

Niles-

Is that a heart.

Nilesy Poolson.

Did you just send me a loveheart.

I-

Hey, I was just checkin’ to see if you had actual feelin’s and wasn’t pulling my leg or anything. Which you probably are.

Are you sure, Strifey? ‘Cause, you tell me if someone who was pulling your leg would do this..!

...

=)

*leans in, starts passionately making out*

*oh do you fucking want more details do you*

*their tongues wrestled like professional heavyweight champs who were probably harbouring a secret love for each other*

He coughs again, then levers himself up and turns around to sit properly, still breathing hard. His eyes widen, then he frowns when he sees the drifting indistinct red creature – the Not-Strife —coming toward them. “Oh, bugger off.” He flicks one hand at it. “If I had my sword you’d be done in already! Come on, Will.” He stands and takes Strife’s hand to help him up and gestures to the path. “Let’s find a way out!”

He starts up the path, still holding onto Will’s hand as if he’ll fall behind if Parv doesn’t. About halfway along, when he does let go there’s a moment where their respective skin seems to have melted together, stringy and stretching between them painlessly as Parvis, apparently oblivious, moves away. The illusion disappears, but there is now a pattern of tiny green lights along Parv’s palm.

The top of the path ends at a wall. Parv kicks it. “Oh, very funny. Well, I’m not going back down!” He looks over the side of the path, which is now open onto the pit where, above them, is one of the red spider webs. Far, far below is the lake of blood. It doesn’t seem like they had walked that far up, but there it was.

Parv turns back to the wall. There is now a roughly-hewn hole in it that’s tall enough and wide enough to walk through, the equivalent of a two-by-two mineshaft. He glances inside. “I see light through here! And it’s yellow, not red! I’m so sick of red. Let’s check it out!”

He grabs Will’s other hand with his not-glowy hand and pulls him along. After a few dozen steps the tunnel narrows to one-by-one width and Parv lets go of Will with the same result to their hands as before.

If Will were to look behind them, he would see the Not-Strife steadily drifting along, red eyes tilted in glee as it blocks any chance of backtracking. There are now small green shards dancing in the miasma of its body.

Ｓ ｔ ｒ ｉ ｆ ｅ Ｄｏ  ｙｏｕ  ｅｖｅｎ  ｋｎｏｗ   ｗｈａｔ   ｙｏｕ   ｈａｖｅ   ｄｏｎｅ  ｔｏ  ｈｉｍ? Ｉ ｔ  ｉ ｓ  ｄ ｅ ｌ ｉ ｇ ｈ ｔ ｆ ｕ ｌ

Near the end of the tunnel it gets even narrower, the walls rougher. The back of Parv’s shirt tears as he squeezes through sideways, and one arm and cheek get scratched by the stone, which absorbs the blood left behind. Once out, he rubs at the cut on his face as he looks around. The green glittering from his hand settles into the spot.

Ｓ ｔ ｒ ｉ ｆ ｅ Ｆ ｒ ｏ ｍ  ｔ ｈ ｅ  ｉ ｎ ｓ ｉ ｄ ｅ  ｏ ｕ ｔ

There’s a ledge circling another pool, the yellow light being emitted by oddly-colored lava that laps at the edge. Could be lava, could be liquid glowstone. Either way, Parv mumbles, “Probably shouldn’t try to swim in there.”  He looks up, glad to see that there aren’t any spider webs. There are, however, a dizzying number of small caves and trails, some with haphazard wooden struts holding up the openings and lit by a handful of scattered torches. “This reminds me of the time I got lost in an abandoned mine. I found my way out eventually, I mean it took a while and all, but I can’t remember what the trick was… Any ideas, Will?”

Thick blood that has a greenish sheen wells up from the cut on his back, soaking into the frayed edges of the rip in his shirt.

To Parv’s mutterings, Strife says distractedly, “Yeah, could be piss or somethin’.” He’s looking around, trying to judge what’s the best course of action and trying to ignore the asshole behind them.

Ｉ ｗｉｌｌ ｔｅａｒ ｈｉｍ ａｐａｒｔ. Ｙｏｕ ｗｉｌｌ ｔｅａｒ ｈｉｍ ａｐａｒｔ.

He doesn’t usually talk to him. To hear him like this is just plain wrong, because in his memories he’s the one doing the talking.

Ｒｉｐ ｈｉｓ ｈｅａｒｔ ｏｕｔ. Ｆｅａｓｔ ｏｎ ｔｈｅ ｒｅｍａｉｎｓ. Ｉ ｙｅａｒｎ.

“Everyone gets lost in these things,” says Strife, “But- I don’t think we need to worry ‘bout that. We just need to not get flippin’ separated – well, until we can wake up or somethin’. Not really experienced in this dreamin’ thing.”

He begins to inch his way around the ledge until he reaches the first opening, where he slips in. Jutting from the walls here are great crystals, iridescent and glimmering with spectral beauty. Strife admires them for a single second before he reaches out of the opening and grabs Parv, dragging him the same direction.

“Let’s not get separated,” he says.

For a while, they walk. The crystals get thicker and more clustered, and the stone itself slowly turns to gems – until they’re crunching shards underfoot. Strife slides the sunglasses down over his eyes, finding the luminous glare rather too much for him.

The cave opens into a-

what-

There’s a giant room, and the thing is that it’s a room, not something natural. There’s a great chandelier that looks to be made from the same luminous crystals from earlier, and tables covered with white cloth line the side, leaving space in the middle for dancing.

There are plates on the tables. On the plates lie great, bloody chunks of meat-

wait, there’s arms and legs and heads and fuck, Strife feels like he might just throw up a little. He’s seen this stuff before but he’s Strife now and he doesn’t like it now.

“I hope you’re not hungry,” he says to Parv.

There’s no one else in the room.

As Strife gingerly steps in, he suddenly finds that he’s wearing a rather nice version of his usual wear. It’s also reversed, red on black, and there’s a weight on his face. He reaches up to touch his face and finds a mask on his face.

He's heard things about gods and goddesses and games of survival and chance.

Niles-

Is that a heart.

Nilesy Poolson.

Did you just send me a loveheart.

I-

*shocked tbh but hey kissing is gr8 so he just kinda rolls with it. figuratively speaking.*

Hey, I was just checkin' to see if you had actual feelin's and wasn't pulling my leg or anything. Which you probably are.

He steeled himself, drawing in a breath as he raised the sword. “I guess I’ll deserve it when it attacks me.” He pressed his lips together and inhaled again. The sword wavered for a second.

“I’m so sorry, Will.”

He was careful, he really tried to be, when he brought the blade down past the spikes. It was one thing to ‘accidentally’ hit an ally during the chaos of a mob battle, he just got so overenthusiastic sometimes, and playfully punching someone — not to truly harm them or anything — he just… he just…

He just wanted to be sick, honestly. It was finally beginning to sink in as to how bizarre this had turned out to be, how much he had possibly hurt Strife with the whole stupid removing of his own heart, how… how… STUPID PARV.

His back was arched, hands contorted into class and what might have been a snarl danced across his face. He was grimacing in pain, and the sounds coming from him were barely even human anymore. It even sounded like something was screeching in the background, howling in pain and cursing everything that would live, did live, continued to live-

the monster wails and curses, the crack in the wall of the prison cut off

Certainly, it was far easier to try to hold onto the mundane in this moment of the whirling maelstrom, but it was so fucking hard right now-

Well.

Strife never, ever did things the easy way.

Panting, he reached out for the vague humanoid shape in the storm, clinging on and biting his lip to keep from crying out anymore. He tasted the salt of his own blood – too small a wound to let anything else escape – and the sharp tang brought him back to terrible reality.

He staggered-

Through the cutting, furious cloud, he fell onto Parv, eyes pure, glittering green with no sign of white, gasping and- absolutely not sobbing thank you very much-

They tumbled onto the ground, and from sheer tiredness, Strife said-

(w/o m!a) Nilesy squeaked as he suddenly got carried. He didn’t do much to try and get out of the other’s grip, but that doesn’t mean it was very… Comfortable.

"Strife," he said, a little angry at everything right now. "What are you doing, and where are you taking me..?!"

(w/ m!a) Nilesy gasped softly, but quickly smiled. “Ohohoho~ Where are we going, Strifey~?” If he was a cat, he would purr very loudly. He, however, wasn’t so… No purring. He was, however, giggling while he was being carried.

"Shut up," Strife hissed, cheeks greenening rapidly as he walked. "There's- there's a pack of zombies behind us, and they're angry. This doesn't mean anythin', it just means that I'm savin' you from the undead horde!"

His voice rose in intensity and volume, and as he realised his mistake, the zombies turned towards them. How had Nilesy not noticed those guys?!

Too lovestruck, apparently.