[LP CYOA] Spiral

[Elfberserker]

A
Hmmm.
Getting help from mysterious entity who seems to be little girl as well maybe have ability to send eyeballs to watch situations seems no brainer.
We might go to hell, but at laest it will be a loli who sends us instead some creepy zombies

 

[Nevill]

Spiral - 'I wanna be the Onii-chan' edition.

 

[treave]

Current tally:

A - 11
B - 1
C - 1
D - 3

If I don't manage to update tomorrow, I won't be updating for about a week since I'll be off on a trip. If I don't manage to update after a week, I'm probably dead, just so you guys know.

 

[a bear named spigot]

can you put your ideas and outlines for where this is going in a time capsule to be unlocked should you not return?

just in case

 

[Rex Feral]

Current tally:

A - 11
B - 1
C - 1
D - 3

If I don't manage to update tomorrow, I won't be updating for about a week since I'll be off on a trip. If I don't manage to update after a week, I'm probably dead, just so you guys know.

Where's this trip to? Ukraine?

 

[Kz3r0]

Current tally:

A - 11
B - 1
C - 1
D - 3

If I don't manage to update tomorrow, I won't be updating for about a week since I'll be off on a trip. If I don't manage to update after a week, I'm probably dead, just so you guys know.

Where's this trip to? Ukraine?

Worse, Detroit.

 

[Rex Feral]

Current tally:

A - 11
B - 1
C - 1
D - 3

If I don't manage to update tomorrow, I won't be updating for about a week since I'll be off on a trip. If I don't manage to update after a week, I'm probably dead, just so you guys know.

Where's this trip to? Ukraine?

Worse, Detroit.

Actually, I can't even complain, judging by the speed he writes these updates: treave>root>George R.R. Martin

 

[treave]

The Builder

track: building

The entire room begins to creak and groan, the walls themselves seeming to sway from side to side. You have no choice but to call out to the book. “O-okay, help me out. What should I do, then?”

Pick me up, quickly!

You do so frantically. The hard surface of the cover pulses weakly in your grip, as if it is alive. Are the bindings made of leather? The texture is strange… almost warm. “Now what?”

Now you stall for time!

That was unexpected: you had hoped that the book's help would have been more useful and decisive. You dart to your right, narrowly avoiding the clutching, ghostly fingers. In your haste, you knock over a display case containing a rather impressive specimen of the male genitalia. It falls and shatters. The acrid smell of formaldehyde fills the air. The rigid penis once trapped within the case rolls across the floorboards and under a shelf. Its movement seems to distract the shade, but only just for a while.

Before you can get away, those pale, bloodshot eyes fix themselves upon you yet again. The shade flies through the air with unnatural speed, its fingers curled into claws. Reflexively, you lash out at it with your foot. Your kick lands straight in the middle of where you think its abdomen would be… and passes right through with little resistance. Meanwhile, the shadow’s hands close around your throat. It is close enough now that you can make out the details of your assailant even in the dim light; it is a man, his skin ashen white and translucent under the ever shifting shadows. His eyes are unmoving and dead, gazing at something you cannot see, but his mouth is constantly chattering and muttering in a low, unintelligible mumble. His forehead is a gory mess of torn skin and cracked bone.

Don’t let go of me! If you do, it’s all over!

That’s… unfair… Though you are unable to interact with the ghost, he can touch you physically. He continues to choke you mercilessly. The icy hands clamp ever more tightly around your neck, squeezing. A sharp, stinging pain begins to spread… as if there were tiny thorns on the spirit’s fingers that are, even now, growing and branching out under your skin. Are… you not done… yet? Unable to speak, you can only think in desperation, hoping to broadcast your thoughts.

I’m done, I’m done! Good job on holding out, Onii-chan! Now, grab his head and recite this chant

You recognize the sentences that appear in your head, even as you speak them. They appear to be a norito for exorcism: a Shinto prayer… but the words themselves feel unusual to you – it is not a normal prayer. But you have no choice.

Hear me, the eight myriad deities assembled on the High Heavenly Plains. Thus I speak.

Yield to my command the spirits of purification, as it was before the Great Mother Izanagi returned to the darkness and banished her divine children to the sky. Thus I speak.

Through my hand all manner of catastrophe, calamity and sin shall pass, and be purified in malice. All sins shall be cast into the darkness of the earth as a blessing that rejoins the eight myriad sinners assembled in the Lightless Abyss.

Thus, I speak.

The dead man screams in agony. The shadow surrounding him explodes outward in a wave of darkness. In that instant, you are hit with all of the man’s emotional turmoil shortly before his death.

His fear. His desperation. His pain.

Scenes flash in your mind, like pages in a book.

The man, working. Tools scattered about. He is building – constructing – a structure, along with a few others. He may be a bricklayer, or a carpenter.

The man, on his knees, his forehead touching the ground. He is begging for his life, but two large men in suits pin him down and begin tying him up. There are pillars on the grounds now, the building is complete…

No, it is still incomplete.

It will not be complete until he is entombed within the pillars, together with the others.

The man, screaming helplessly through the gag in his mouth. Wriggling, struggling, but to no avail. The knots are tight.

Watching, as they put the bricks in one by one.

Watching, as all light is cut off from his eyes.

Watching, as the air runs low, and his stomach begins to rumble.

Dying, as he bangs his head against his stone prison madly, hard enough to bleed but not hard enough to escape.

You can feel his malice – the culmination of all his fear and desperation and pain and hatred at his death – flooding through your body. It is something that would easily drive anyone mad, to make them bite off their own fingers and choke on their own blood.

But you have been through worse. You have plunged into the Abyss more than once, and this…

This is nothing.

You grit your teeth, and steel your resolve. The mounting pressure from the builder’s darkness suddenly fades, dispersed by the force of your will. The shadow surrounding his body fades and flickers, though it does not vanish entirely.

You did it! I knew you could do it! Such a weak, useless little malice like this? Hah! It’s not anywhere near dark enough to corrupt you once you get serious, Onii-chan!

You glance at the man, kneeling on the floor before you, his face blank. “What… what do we do next?”

Well, you could disperse the malice, scatter his spirit. This would only return his essence to the... for lack of a better word, let us call it this ‘world’, and it would reform soon, no less diminished than before.

“Is there no other way?”

Oh, of course there is. You could always take in the malice into your own body, using yourself as a vessel. This would diminish the world’s power slightly.

“And in that way this ghost won’t be able to respawn, right?”

Yes, just like that. Of course, there’s also the third way! Give its essence to me.

You glance at the book, puzzled. It is radiating a bit more heat than before, and you get the sensation that it - she - is blushing.

Well, Onii-chan, my hands are really quite tied at the moment. I can’t recall a lot of the stuff I used to know, which is why there are limits as to how much I can help you, as you saw just now. It took me quite some time to prepare the incantation necessary. If you let me feed on the ghost, however…

“You can unlock more of your powers?”

Yup yup, I’d be able to level up! And be of more use to you, Onii-chan! There are a lot of incantations that would be very valuable to you!

“Are these the only choices?” you ask, “Surely there is a way to purify the spirit properly, to allow it to pass into the afterlife?”

I’m not that kind of book, Onii-chan! What do you take me for?

You can’t quite tell, but she seems to be feeling insulted.

Well, wait… maybe I might have that knowledge somewhere inside of me… but I won’t be able to know for sure unless I open up more of my pages…

she says hopefully.

***

After hearing the book’s suggestions, you decide to:

A. Disperse the spirit. The hospital will likely reform it afterwards, but you will just have to deal with it again when it reappears.

B. Absorb the malicious shade into yourself, weakening the hospital further. Every little bit in this struggle helps: it would mean one less pawn for your enemy to use to screw you over when you least expect it.

C. Feed the ghost to the book. It will become more able to help you, the hospital will become weaker, and you will have killed two birds with one stone.

***

“By the way, what should I be calling you? Do you have a name?”

Oh, I’m Ei, Ei-chan is fine, but you can address me any way you want, Onii-chan! Wait, do you like to be called Onii-chan? Or should I call you Master instead?

“Well…”

A. “Onii-chan will do.”
B. “Call me Master.”
C. “Please call me by my name.”
D. *suggest a name*

“And I will call you…”

A. “Ei.”
B. “Book.”
C. *suggest a name*

 

[Kz3r0]

A.C. A.

 

[Nevill]

Well, Onii-chan, my hands are really quite tied at the moment. I can’t recall a lot of the stuff I used to know, which is why there are limits as to how much I can help you, as you saw just now. It took me quite some time to prepare the incantation necessary. If you let me feed on the ghost, however…

'Give them an inch and they will take a mile.'

Sorry, Ei-chan, you are going on a diet. It should be good for your health.

I don't want to risk altering the balance of malice in the world without knowing anything about it, and I am not particularly worried about the spirit returning, especially now that we know the chant. I'll probably leave it. A.

Call me Darling, Ei-chan.

Say, have I told you that I am very much into books?

Also, where is your sister, Ne-chan? I would very much like to meet her.

The show pimping must go on!

Her name sounds cute. It'll do. A.

Spoiler

Pick one:

A. Dog
B. Cat
C. Fish-in-a-bowl
D. Tentacle-monster-in-a-jar

 

[ERYFKRAD]

CCA

 

[treave]

I don't want to risk altering the balance of malice in the world without knowing anything about it, and I am not particularly worried about the spirit returning, especially now that we know the chant.

The prayer by itself doesn't do anything without channeling from the book, which takes time to prepare.

 

[Tigranes]

Since we are now on rather intimate terms, dear, you should call me... Shulgi.

 

[Baltika9]

BCA
I want to be an Immortal.

 

[Rex Feral]

First choice A - taking the spirit in us might be weakening the hospital but it will most probably have bad side effects to us too. Also I don't trust a book that had us paralyzed not a moment ago

Second choice D - Sei-chan will do. Shinohara Seiji is a bit too long to pronounce each time.

Third Choice A - Ei-chan and Sei-chan best friends forever in the wonderful world of Kaimei/Ikei hospital.

 

[Grimgravy]

CCA

Perhaps the book knows our real name.

 

[Kz3r0]

Now we have the tome of absolute power, The Lolicomicon, who could stop us?

 

[Azira]

CBA

 

[Kipeci]

CBA

 

[oscar]

ACA

 

[Jester]

CBA

 

[Nevill]

Since we are now on rather intimate terms, dear, you should call me... Shulgi.

Then we would have to call the book 'Ea-chan'.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

CCA

 

[Tigranes]

treave?

ACB. Let's call it 'book', come on.

I'm sure that further ghosts won't be cakewalk, and we might pay the price for not strengthening Book, but I feel like we still know so little, and that book has just demonstrated pretty occult powers in forcing us to behave against our will.

 

[Nevill]

I'm sure that further ghosts won't be cakewalk, and we might pay the price for not strengthening Book

There was an option to get by without Ei at all.

Things might get interesting if the book becomes strong enough to argue with us on certain subjects.