A new take on hell that leaves you gasping on the edge of panic.
You become aware of your surroundings slowly, unsure if this is new or you're only recovering for the last time you succumbed to your environment. You can feel yourself struggling, gripped in place by an unseen force. Around you is a world of blue. Swirling waters whip around you tightly, and you are at the center of their movements, and you almost can hope, hope to break free and shoot out from your bonds and ride the swirling waters out like a surfer can shoot out from beneath the crush of a wave crashing, crushing him in a beautiful blue tube. The air rushes around you with the water, not filling with spray, but rather being sucked away, almost like a vacuum, as if the water was consuming the air around you. As the crush of the water seems to close around you and the panic breaths you take get shallower, you see something dark in the water ahead. It doesn't seem to be coming closer to you so much as it is slowing down as it travels through the same claustrophobic current as you. The shadow beneath the ripped water walls stretches out to the limit of your vision, but looms closer in front of you, suddenly piercing the tunnel to reveal itself as a spiked paddle ended tentacle or tail as it thrashes near you, questing for the thing of interest as if your conscious presence in this prison displease it and now it will smite you with a casual pat of its wagon sized appendage.
Pass out, be struck down, drown, suffocate, no matter which fate you hope for, you have a echoing hollow feeling of certainty that when you come to again, you'll still be at the center of this spiral, and this beastly leviathan will still be inexorably bound to you.
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Continue the path
Three more steps through the hall.
- A New Take on Hell by Ancient Gamer Bound
Other takes
No other takes yet — the best compliment on the Citadel is a Retelling.
Bonds
Curated bonds across the Citadel. Kindred Favors are another thread in the same weave.
This is a really well-written description of a hell of perpetual drowning. It doesn't answer the questions of how one would get in and out of such a place or why you would want to go there but it really evokes the feeling of drowning. Who does this hell exist for? Sailors?
Definatly a sailor Hell.
This set-up leaves little room for adventuring, though.
I share Echo's sentiment. This is very descriptive and well written, but how do you get there? How can you, like Virgil in Dante's Inferno escape again to warn others of their grime fate?
I think this shows promise, but as others have already said, it seems a bit short for true usability. I like the demonic shadow, and would love to see more detail for it as well (after all, it's inevitable that it be encountered when visiting realm).
The noise in this place must be incredible. I can imagine that the longing for silence, for stillness, would eventually come to equal the longing for dry land. Still, it is incomplete as Echo first pointed out. A little more development would help.
A tantalizing glimpse, but I would also like more detail. Perhaps an intro where the soul dies for the first time to answer the question of how he landed there. Maybe even a plot hook on how to get the adventurers in and out of such a hell, either looking to save a lost comrade or on a mission for information from the deceased (who would quite likely demand release as payment.)
I'm witholding my vote for now.
With a plot hook this would be even better then it is.