Date ?

GM: Pain.

It surges through bone and blood—and beyond.

Amelie’s head swims and pounds. Her belly is an aching pit someone stuffed hot coals into. Her back scalds and burns.

Something cold and rough presses against her skin. Her bare skin. She opens her eyes.

Or maybe just tries to.

All she gets is darkness. Her surroundings smell of mildew, offal, and metal. Her throat is dry and parched. Her mouth tastes of coppery, equally dried blood.

But it’s another sense that tugs at Amelie the most. A latent one, stunted and underdeveloped in most humans, but rarely ignored when it speaks. It has spoken to Amelie, often and loudly, over the past few months. It’s perhaps all that’s kept her alive.

Right now it doesn’t talk. It screams. Louder than it ever has, with raw, mindless panic that makes her heart pound like a drum and her blood freeze like ice:

DANGER.

Amelie: Waking to pain. It feels as though it’s become rote. Amelie feels it all swinging, burning, aching. Her back aches, her scars—her scars.

Her every limb suddenly pulls in to try and protect her body, scrambling to try getting into a more defensible position. Her instincts going so insane she feels like she could choke on them. Like a rat caught in a room soaked in cat piss.

The woman’s mind races, her heart hammering in her chest so hard it’s painful, moving sheets of ice scraping at her veins. The black is all too familiar of her first time in the dark of the… underworld. She isn’t sure where, when, or if she is.

What she does know is that something has come for her—is coming for her. Something wrong.

“I’d like a sword,” she mutters, trying to summon her mother. She clambers to her feet, hands groping at the dark for a wall.

GM: The darkness answers.

It’s a hot, throaty, feral sound, like wild dogs tearing flesh to devour the pumping heart beneath. It’d chill the marrow of Amelie’s bones, if they weren’t already frozen.

It’s laughter.

The darkness speaks. Its voice is a searing brand against her ears.

“Okay.”

Then.

pain

Pain

PAIN

Where is her mother?

The darkness laughs.

Swallows.

Gone.