Salo wakes up enveloped in liquid warmth. A woman's voice is speaking to him, telling him to lift himself out of the tank and breathe; he does so, the air shockingly cold after being immersed in the strange warm fluid. He opens his eyes, finding the world much too bright until the voice tells him where to find his spectacles and clothing; at its direction, he towels off and dresses, pleased that he's been given sandals.
He can sense something non-physical, a chaotic, unpleasant energy forcefully permeating the world around him. The voice explains that by the time he's hearing this, she'll have been dead for days or weeks. He steps out of the room into a hall full of statues of nightmarish beasts, moving quickly towards a flickering lamp at the other end. There, as the voice tells him there's not much time left, and that he is her finest work, he finds its origin -- the dead body of a woman, finely dressed and adorned with gold jewelry, horribly burned and decayed.
He finds a flight of stairs, and the voice tells him to trust his instincts and survive; that he'll know the way out. It's telling the truth, and he follows a path upward by instincts, finding more horribly burned bodies in rooms with magitech consoles, all of which he can feel tickling the edge of his mind. As he reaches the ground floor, the recorded voice gives him a final apology, though for what, he has no idea.
The world outside is a hellscape; smog has turned the air blood-red, and fires rage everywhere in the city. Chunks of debris float everywhere in the skies; apparently whatever killed the city broke natural law, too. There are strange vehicles everywhere, and dead bodies. He realizes that the vibrations he's feeling are a kind of poison in the air, killing everything it touches except, for some reason, him.
This is the land of the dead, he thinks in horror, and I walk among them.
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timeasmymeasure
Waking up in a ruined city
Date: 2023-11-12 02:50 pm (UTC)He can sense something non-physical, a chaotic, unpleasant energy forcefully permeating the world around him. The voice explains that by the time he's hearing this, she'll have been dead for days or weeks. He steps out of the room into a hall full of statues of nightmarish beasts, moving quickly towards a flickering lamp at the other end. There, as the voice tells him there's not much time left, and that he is her finest work, he finds its origin -- the dead body of a woman, finely dressed and adorned with gold jewelry, horribly burned and decayed.
He finds a flight of stairs, and the voice tells him to trust his instincts and survive; that he'll know the way out. It's telling the truth, and he follows a path upward by instincts, finding more horribly burned bodies in rooms with magitech consoles, all of which he can feel tickling the edge of his mind. As he reaches the ground floor, the recorded voice gives him a final apology, though for what, he has no idea.
The world outside is a hellscape; smog has turned the air blood-red, and fires rage everywhere in the city. Chunks of debris float everywhere in the skies; apparently whatever killed the city broke natural law, too. There are strange vehicles everywhere, and dead bodies. He realizes that the vibrations he's feeling are a kind of poison in the air, killing everything it touches except, for some reason, him.
This is the land of the dead, he thinks in horror, and I walk among them.