[S] Knight: Wait
Even to a troll, Karkat's Land is a nightmarish place. The game of Sgrub assigned some of the trolls whimsical game-worlds--the Land of Little Cubes and Tea; the Land of Maps and Treasure--and some of them beautiful and majestic ones--the Land of Caves and Silence; the Land of Quartz and Melody.
And then there's the Land of Pulse and Haze.
Some 400 hours into the game session, Karkat has seen a great deal of his pocket-sized planet. The vast majority of it seems to be an ocean of bright red oxygenated blood, the blood of an animal or the game's genetically-engineered and cloned NPCs. Or of Karkat's own mutant blood. Even after all his time here it seems like a particularly sick joke on him.
The Knight of Blood. And what a long, bloody night it's been; in the Medium, there's no sun, only the distant gleam of Skaia and whatever light your own world provides, and there's not much here. The dull glow of a leaden sky and toxic purple clouds that clot the horizon.
Most of the Land that isn't cherry-red blood is black rocky outcroppings and ebony step-sided temples, vast and apparently pointless amphitheaters with jet tile and obsidian mosaics, and weird structures that hang half-unsupported in the air and look like ruined black castles. The last are pumping stations. That's where they keep the hearts.
But the hearts are stopping now, one by one. He's waited too long. And now he's waiting again, twitching impatiently outside a shimmering silver gate that glows in mid-air here at the top of a steep path.
And then there's the Land of Pulse and Haze.
Some 400 hours into the game session, Karkat has seen a great deal of his pocket-sized planet. The vast majority of it seems to be an ocean of bright red oxygenated blood, the blood of an animal or the game's genetically-engineered and cloned NPCs. Or of Karkat's own mutant blood. Even after all his time here it seems like a particularly sick joke on him.
The Knight of Blood. And what a long, bloody night it's been; in the Medium, there's no sun, only the distant gleam of Skaia and whatever light your own world provides, and there's not much here. The dull glow of a leaden sky and toxic purple clouds that clot the horizon.
Most of the Land that isn't cherry-red blood is black rocky outcroppings and ebony step-sided temples, vast and apparently pointless amphitheaters with jet tile and obsidian mosaics, and weird structures that hang half-unsupported in the air and look like ruined black castles. The last are pumping stations. That's where they keep the hearts.
But the hearts are stopping now, one by one. He's waited too long. And now he's waiting again, twitching impatiently outside a shimmering silver gate that glows in mid-air here at the top of a steep path.