Stephanie's Heart: The Archive
Jan. 11th, 2025 11:17 amIn your dreams you are in a thick and foggy forest. It could be mistaken for the woods around Tributary if you don’t know your plants. You are on a trail leading into a clearing, in the center of which is a simple, concrete structure with a single door. A chaos star has been spray painted on it with a stencil.
You approach the structure. Looking over your shoulder you see a large shape lurking in the fog, obscured by the foliage. Two shining Feline eyes peer at you from the brush. You feel your heart rate spike as you turn the knob and find an old fashioned elevator tucked neatly inside with an accordion grate standing between you and the ornate, gilded interior. It creaks open as the presence behind you steps into the clearing. It is a sphinx, an eight foot tall lioness with the face of a woman and the large brown wings of an eagle on her back . The feminine face and olive skin tone of a Greek woman from antiquity smiles as she readies herself to to pounce, the wings on her back stretching and give a few readying flaps.You back into the elevator and close the gate with shaking hands as the sphinx leaps at the elevator. Her claws twisting and shearing the metal of the grate slowly, but she is too late. The elevator springs to life and you descend.
A small light above flickers on as it illuminates your view outside the exposed elevator as you sink into the concrete structure. You descend for a few moments before an opening in the concrete gives you the view of an observation deck on a hill, looking down on the sprawling suburbs and campus of a college town. The elevator continues downward. The concrete gives way to old, dusty marble as you continue sinking. You see a vast maze stretch far and away that gets nearer and nearer. This has to be it, right? Your destination? No. You plunge further down, past the walls of the maze and the marble is replaced again by well polished wood. Beautiful stained mahogany rises past you as your descent finally starts to slow. You are greeted by another grate that creaks open for you. Entreating you to enter.
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Date: 2025-01-13 07:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-13 07:18 am (UTC)"Hello, Miss Barrow. How can I help you today?"
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Date: 2025-01-13 10:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-13 10:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-13 10:49 pm (UTC)[she's heading into the Sun House shrine room door first]
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Date: 2025-01-13 10:56 pm (UTC)Someone is tucked comfortably into the four mattress high bed, loom, spinning wheel are all exactly where they ought to be. There's something else here as well though, one of the bookshelves from the reading room is along the wall and there's a chair from the reading room as well. Sitting in the chair is...Stephanie? No, a wooden Stephanie sits reading a book, unlike the other wooden people you've seen so far this one isn't self animated though, she seems to be puppeted by a figure made of pitch black smoke with eyes and large black pupils. The figure and the puppet look up at you at the same time. She speaks with a soft, whispery voice.
“Oh, hello. I wasn't expecting- me?”
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Date: 2025-01-13 11:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-14 12:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-14 12:25 am (UTC)It's strange to see—this, too.
[she touches the Stephanie puppet's head]
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Date: 2025-01-14 12:38 am (UTC)It looks wooden, but once you touch it, it feels real.
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Date: 2025-01-14 01:29 am (UTC)[absently caressing her cheek]
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Date: 2025-01-14 01:38 am (UTC)"You can go to her...If you want. The trick door..."
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Date: 2025-01-14 02:35 am (UTC)[frozen for a moment]
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Date: 2025-01-14 02:44 am (UTC)"You can keep looking for the cards too..."
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Date: 2025-01-14 03:04 am (UTC)Is there one in here...?
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Date: 2025-01-14 03:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-15 05:36 am (UTC)I love you.
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Date: 2025-01-15 06:03 am (UTC)Going inside the shabby door you find yourself inside a ruined cabin. There are three college age humans around the room. Moss grows on their limbs. Vines twist around their bodies, creeping from inside a stone circle in the center of the room. Behind the circle there's an altar built of discarded furniture. Scrawled pages of yellowing notebook paper are stapled to it all over. There's an open bag that looks to have some implements for a spell prepared.
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Date: 2025-01-15 06:14 am (UTC)[going to look in the bag]
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Date: 2025-01-15 06:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-15 06:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-15 06:33 am (UTC)The pages on the altar appear to be entreaties for help from a "Lady of Pages" in their studies as well as odes to her in thanks. It seems possible they have ran afoul of this figure somehow.
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Date: 2025-01-15 06:41 am (UTC)Can you hear me?
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Date: 2025-01-15 06:45 am (UTC)You recognize the student from Stephanie's descriptions though. It's Florence.
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Date: 2025-01-15 06:52 am (UTC)This must be the ritual she used to save you.
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