The pounding is all-consuming.
After months—or was it years?—of adventuring, you finally find yourself standing at the cavernous entrance to the lair of your ultimate goal: a being so terrible its name is whispered only under muttered breaths, a creature whose form is maddening to even define, a lifeform most paradoxically both human and inhuman...the Beating Heart of Arlaigh.
The thumping of the Heart echoes louder as the cavern lining slowly gives way to its flesh, a kaleidoscope of grotesque pink held together by strands of dark red. The walls seem to pulse as you walk carefully along the now tender floors, the ceiling recoiling from your torch's near graze. Eventually, the gelatinous throat expands into a large circular chamber.
Gone is the pinkish 'skin' that covered the path before—the walls here are a crimson cascade of writhing flesh, with large, blood-filled vessels twisting and bending along its gaps. These cylindrical tubes seem to shift as you inch closer to the monstrous Heart, beating nightmarishly suspended by its arteries and veins.
"An adventurer," beckons a booming voice. You instinctively step back in caution, as it continues to speak. "Have you come to kill me?"
Its reverbed speech rattles inside your very ribcage, and you swallow a gulp as you grab onto your sword's hilt.
"I have not, o Heart of Arlaigh," you reply, taking off your belt with the sword still sheathed, "I have come to love you."
You raise your sheathed sword with both hands like an offering to the Gods, and then slowly kneel down and place it upon the guttural floor. A gnawing silence follows, with naught but the beating of the Heart to fill it.
"What," the Heart finally responds, its tone of utter confusion.
"I wish to wed you, o Heart," you explain, still kneeling on its twitching ground. Despite being met with that same pulsating stillness, it appears that your words have struck the Heart in its fullness, as you notice it starting to throb faster.