As Shinku and Brass stepped into the shadowy attic space, the pair examined the disconcerting assortment of discarded objects that decorated the otherwise empty room. Pale paintings with battered frames were draped in cobwebs, somber, sheet-covered furniture showed signs of age, and to add to their utter confusion, an oddly large number of clown dolls were strewn across the room.
Each one seemed to have a sinister smirk stretched across its garishly white-painted face, their cherry red lips stretched into haunting grins; their gazes seemed to follow the pair around as if they were watching them with a malevolent, silent vigilance, just waiting for them to make a wrong move.
Belle tiptoed cautiously, a mix of intrigue and trepidation coursing through her veins. The attic of the decrepit house was filled with mysterious trinkets, from bizarre antiques like an old standing mirror to creepy toys. But amongst the dust and debris, something else crept across the floor—an ominous spread of grey slime and dark mold, slowly but surely snaking its way through the attic's otherwise dry environment.
CRRCK!
Suddenly, there was a sharp SNAP beneath Belle's feet as the molded wooden planks cracked viciously underfoot, the abrupt noise whipping across the otherwise silent attic like a gunshot.
A single damp floorboard groaned in agony before buckling beneath her weight, sending her lurching forward, just barely stumbling away in time before her leg could break through the rotted floor altogether. Before her very eyes, a chunk of wood practically disintegrated and plummeted down to the sitting room far below—only for it to be caught by an unsuspecting sofa, the white sheet tossed over it muffling the crash.
Shinku spun on his heels, almost slipping upon the ancient wooden floorboards in his haste to see what the hell was going on. He stood rigidly next to the decrepit window, the Soul Mirror clutched firmly in his grasp, the assassin having already shifted into a fighter's stance, ready for anything.
His eyes darted across to Belle, verifying that she was okay, but she'd managed to scramble away from the molded place in the center of the attic. She flapped a slightly embarrassed hand at the splintered board and the massive dark spot in the floor, clearly indicating the danger so it could be avoided in the future.
With an affirming dip of his chin, Shinku honed in on the task at hand. He began to rotate slowly, the silver-faced Soul Mirror held high above his head. Its tarnished surface mirrored back the hazy and shadowy attic, with eerie lunar light cast from the window glowing off the ancient furniture and knickknacks scattered about.
He felt a sudden chill, as if a cold gust of air had raced past him, and when Shinku looked within the Soul Mirror's spectral reflection, he noticed the unexpected figure of a ghostly old woman, her form ethereal and hunched, staring back at him.
Her gaze seemed to pierce him as the ghost crone stood just over his shoulder, shrouded in faintly blue and grey-white shades, the floor-length of her phantasmic skirt shifting in a nonexistent breeze.
The specter of the old woman lifted her arm in a glacial motion. Her spidery fingers arched towards the floor underneath their feet, pointing accusingly at something unseen.
And then, between one blink and the next, her ghastly figure walked seamlessly through the wall, as if she was never there at all. An old rocking chair moved just slightly as she passed it by without a whisper of sound, the aged wood creaking as it rocked slowly back and forth.
In her wake, the only thing that remained were the swirling motes of cloying dust that hung suspended in the the attic's dim, moonlit air, lending it an unnatural stillness.
Aster is heading down to the root cellar to have a look around, for anything that seems even slightly amiss, or for any other access from outside the house. And is going to be vehemently shit-talking Pennywise the entire time, with the most venomously and petty juvenile schoolyard bully insults known to man.
At the mere touch of Aster's hand, the root cellar door answered with a low, grating creak, as though groaning at being rudely awakened from a lengthy slumber. The opening door revealed a descent into darkness so complete that it swallowed the stairs with its shadowy maw, making the cellar seem like an abyssal pit within the old house.
Steeling herself for anything and growling low under her breath all the while, Aster made her way down the stairs.
Unseen by Aster, Mollymauk noticed her solo descent below and swiftly slipped down the hallway after her. He stopped short at the top step of the cellar, watching to ensure her safety.
The moment Aster crossed the cellar’s threshold, she was greeted by a biting rush of cold air. It nipped at her silver fur, causing it to bristle and stand on end, a prickle of alertness that was instinctual. She descended, her feet eventually trading the creaky wooden planks from higher up for the cold touch of smooth greystone steps.
With her handheld beacon of artificial light, she pierced through the inky murk, a slow turn with her glowing phone revealing an underworld of forgotten storage. The shelves, once holders of sustenance in seasons past, now served as tombs for decaying sacks of blackened potatoes and rotting, crumbling-to-dust roots. In distant corners, mice scurried and scratched, their small bodies rustling through the filth and debris. Spiders had claimed dominion over the upper corners and the low-hanging wooden beams lining the ceiling, weaving shadow-stippled webs that swayed from an invisible draft.
Curiously, against one rugged stone wall, a towering pile of coal chunks loomed, stacked haphazardly and reaching towards the single slit window shedding light into the space. The window, grimy with age and neglect, allowed a thin sliver of moonlight to infiltrate the shadowy room. The cool, dreamlike illumination fell upon the silver sword sheath slung over Aster's back, illuminating the complex, interlocked etchings carved into the metal.
It responded to the moonbeam's touch with a dull, pulsating blue glow, an otherworldly pulse that played tricks with the shifting shadows, nearly mirroring the intensity of Aster's glowing blue phone screen at times.
The further Aster ventured into the cellar, the stronger the blue glow emanating from the sheath became. It flickered in the gloom, syncopated with her heartbeat, and cast an unearthly glow that bounced off the cellar's damp stone walls, creating a flickering corona of light around her figure. The frigid cold in the air grew more profound as she moved deeper into the unplumbed depths of the old, creepy house, seeping so deeply into her bones Aster feared the chill might never leave her.
It was an old stone-ringed well that lay at the back of the root cellar, shrouded in a heavier layer of shadows than all the rest, that lent this air of heavy unease, Aster discovered soon enough. The well, concealed beneath an array of worn wooden boards, was guarded by a forgotten pulley system suspended from the cobweb-riddled ceiling.
Aster stood over the gaping dark mouth of the well, her phone flashlight held aloft like a beacon in the gloom. She felt something strange, she thought, emanating from within its depths; a powerful and mysterious force, as if it was beckoning her closer and repulsing her at the same time, the sheath upon her back pulsating steadily with a tranquil blue light.
Glancing up, she studied the pulley system with a forlorn hook dangling at its end, hanging limply from the jutting beams.
The scritching and scratching of his best friend and trickster cleric, Jester, carving and drawing with remarkable speed, accuracy, and concentration was not enough to distract Molly from when the wolf-humanoid named Aster walked by him; mumbling to themselves about someone named ‘Bozo’ and they must have made her very upset the way she went on under her breathe about the person. He was impressed enough with the expletive-filled language that he followed her as she made her way to the end of the hall and stopped before a cellar door, alone.
Molly shook his head as he watched her open it and vanish into the blackness leading down, the creaking of old steps reverberating off the walls of the unlit hallway to reach his ears. “Well, been there sister,” Molly said under his breath and then peeked into the bathroom; Jester was still carving with part of her tongue out and brow furrowed in a focused blessing of the toilet-room with religious fervor. “I’ll be just down the hall if ya need me, the wolf-person, Aster jus’ went down there on their own…” Molly said, and Jester waved him off, doing her God’s work. Nalaia gave Molly a warm smile and nodded approval, but quickly returned to observing. It seemed the knowledge cleric had her curiosity piqued by this unusual display of reverence unlike any she had seen before.
Molly waited at the top of the stairs for the Hero look-alike; after about a minute he started to get bored, and ran a grimey finger down the frame, careful not to get a splinter. He rubbed the grime and dust between his fingers and took the place in, scanning his vision around, and kept his pointed ears alert. It all felt so…familiar to him despite the fact he knew he had never come through this home before. The well-dressed hunter sighed and called down to the basement.
“Aster, right? Ya doin’ ok down there?” Molly asked, trying to convey as much of his friendly nature and charm in his tone as he could. He was grabbing onto the frame after testing to make sure it was not rotted through, leaning part of his body into the darkness of the stairwell.
“Uh…what? Yeah, I'm fine, just in this creepy-ass, old-ass cellar…staring at a disturbing looking hook and a well, and trying not to die from choking on dust, but yeah, it's an absolute blast, honestly, it's great…” Aster replied from somewhere below, and Molly was not entirely sure she was talking to him or if he was just privy to a conversation between the Wolf-humanoid and the cellar. There were some more grumblings and mumblings Molly could not make out and he decided to try again.
“Well, alright, Do…you be needin’ any assistance down there, Aster?” Molly chimed from the stairs, trying to show his roguish grin in his voice.
“Uhh…why?” Aster asked in reply, her tone suspicious.
“Well, you could always come up here and join myself, sweet Jester, and the good cleric Nalaia…” Molly offered, now himself growing suspicious back.
“You’re the vanishing guy, right? The devil-ass, disappearing-ass, costume-changing-ass carnival….guy…devil…man…?” Aster called up from below. He could hear her closer and saw the light from her phone, but more so the light radiating from the sheath on her back.
“Well, that's putting a slant on it, but…yeah,” Molly called down with a sigh. “...Right, enough o’ that, Listen dear Aster, I have something you might find interesting, I'll come down-”
“How do I know you're not some doppelganger?” she said from the bottom of the stares, and he could feel her narrowed eyes, hear her fatigue and apprehension.
Molly then had to flinch as the phone light reflected off his crimson orbs, and for the second time in a day, he was blinded by the light and he made a noise. He caught himself on his tight grip of the doorframe and glared back down the stairs. Then he held up his glowing ring which shone as bright as her sheath in the moonlight.
“I think my ring and yer sheath have something in common! Ya crazy wolf! Why's everyone jus’ tryin’ ta blind poor ole Molly!” He shot back in defiance.
“Oh wow, yeah, that's actually interesting. Ok, come on down,” the Hero look alike said and he watched the glowing sheath move back across the cellar.
Molly sighed and scratched his head. “Doppelganger, pfft, rich comin’ from her…” he mumbled quietly to himself, then much louder he called out to his two friends in the toilet-room to join him and Aster in the cellars when they were finished making the small space consecrated ground.
He received two thumbs-up from two different and blue-skinned hands from the doorway, then he headed down to the cellars.
Down from the dusky attic, their footfalls echoed through the desolate hallways of the long-forgotten house. Shinku advanced with assured, yet cautious steps, his grip on the silver mirror never wavering even as an oppressive stillness frothed in the air. Brass Belle trailed a step or two behind, her discerning eyes darting around the confined, creaky old hallway, alert for the slightest unusual sign.
The stairwell opened up to the second story, revealing an array of shadowy rooms, each with their own character. The first of these was the master bedroom; a quaint chamber displaying the modest charm of an old farmhouse. The bed, unmade, still held the reclining imprint of a long-gone occupant—the bed sheets yellowed by time and covered partly by a large, mussed quilt whose cream-colored cloth was dotted with soft pink tulips, the occasional moth-eaten hole marring the meadow of embroidered blooms. Threads of cobwebs draped the corners and hung from the ceiling like wispy grey curtains, while the faded, wrinkling wallpaper peeled off in discolored strips.
Adjacent to the master bedroom was a tiny bathroom, old-fashioned and unremarkable in its aspect. The brass faucets lingered in a state of disrepair, their golden lustre replaced by trails of rust trickling down from stem to spout. Even the once-pristine white porcelain fixtures had turned to a greyish hue, a result of countless years of neglect.
The walls of the corridor were adorned with painted oil portraits, a silent testimony to a proud winemaking family, tending the lands around Haven since before simple recollection. Even in death their solemn faces stared down, suspended in time, observing as the pair of intruders trespassed their halls.
With the silver hand mirror held up, Shinku caught the wraith-like figure of the old woman as she made her way through the staircase in a ghostly stride—literally passing through it. The sight prompted the pair of investigators to venture further, brushing aside thick cobwebbing and hacking around dust to search the stairs. And sure enough, nestled just behind the wooden staircase lay a guest bedroom, its existence barely noticeable and enshrouded in dark shadow.
Upon worming their way around the stairs and entering the room, an odd smell struck them—a mix of nausea-inducing stagnation and an underlying sour acridity that weighed heavy in the air like a deathly fog.
Nervous, Brass Belle approached the closet. With a creaking protest, it opened, the doors parting to reveal a horrific sight. A withered corpse sat hunched in the confined space, the shadows curled around its mummified, curled limbs, clothed in apparel suited for a traveler with a dusty feathered cap atop his head. The face was unrecognizable beneath ancient filth, rot and spider's webs, devoid of any familiar features that could link him to the abbey.
Reeling, Shinku turned his attention to the mirror once again. The ghostly crone was no longer alone. Beside her stood an apparition of a man in a feathered cap, both staring at Shinku and Brass, their expressions bland and emotionless.
In eerie unison, the two specters extended their pale, phantom arms... each pointing a long, bony finger downwards. Then, with otherworldly grace, they spun in unison and faded away into the shadows of the open doorway, like a mist dissipating on a cold winter's night.
With the nearly golden orange-yellow light from the setting sun filtering through the grime-covered windows, casting long, eerie shadows throughout the house, Minala ventured deeper inside, her animalistic senses sharpening against the encroaching darkness. Amidst the softly spoken conversations and echoing footsteps of the other investigators, she let her curiosity guide her onwards and away from the general group, her tread pattering lightly over the floor.
She slipped through into the kitchen, an old farmhouse-style room with walls lined with oak and pine, weathered by years of hardship. The countertops and cabinetry, too, bore the scars of age—the woodwork faded and ravaged by many seasons past, the stone counters marred with glistening cracks. Cobwebs clung stubbornly to the ceiling, their silken threads catching the dying light, giving the otherwise drab room an almost ethereal aura.
Adjacent to the kitchen was the dining room, a grand space that now lay in disarray, the great rustic chandelier hanging from the ceiling dangling by a single thread, laced with spiderwebs.
Upon her entrance, Minala was met with a welcome sight. There, chewing thoughtfully on his cigar at the center of the room, stood Lieutenant Columbo.
"Ah! Minala, wasn't it? Glad to meet ya," Lieutenant Columbo greeted her affably, his gaze taking in the breadth of the room, one hand thrust deep into the pocket of his tan coat. The pointer finger of his free hand waggled towards the cluttered wooden table at the room's center, a haphazard collection of dust-covered wine bottles strewn all about, the dark-colored glass flickering in the waning light. "Seems like our past residents had a real affinity for the grape."
The detective's tone was easy and conversational, even wry, but Minala couldn't help but feel the weight of his perceptive brown-eyed gaze as the disheveled man turned slowly, scanning every detail of the dining room.
Never missing a beat, Columbo quickly paced the length of the room, his shoes soon crunching over a few bottles that lay shattered, their brittle glistening fragments littering the well-worn floorboards. The scarcely visible shards of dark indigo glass, dull and cobwebby with a patina of age, only seemed to confirm some ineffable hunch the man had arrived at.
"Notice this right here?" Columbo's voice rose as his excitement grew, gesturing to the broken bottles. His brows furrowed and he leaned forward, stooping a little to peer at the glass more closely, his rumpled coat flapping around his legs. "Kinda strikes one as a real rumpus having broken out in this joint at some point, don't ya reckon?" His gaze lifted to Minala's again, his thick eyebrows raised.
Minala took a good look around the room, letting her eyes drift across the glaring evidence of some kind of conflict. Columbo's assessment rang true to her, at least—while there were perfectly whole wine bottles sitting on the tabletop, there were many more just... tossed about the room, a few even seeming like they'd been dashed to pieces against the peeling wallpaper. How odd!
In the time it took Molly to descend the stairs safely, Aster had meandered back over to the mysterious well. Crouched down by it, she idly knocked on one of the boards covering it, testing their integrity. Old as they looked, probably not in super great condition anymore…but figuring that out could wait a bit.
“Mighty cold down here, wouldn’t ya say?” the tiefling spoke up as he drew near, peering around warily in the darkness.
“Tell me about it…” Aster huffed, blowing out a breath that fogged in the unnaturally frigid air as if for emphasis. “Cold doesn’t really bother me most of the time, but this…somethin’s off about it.” She looked up uncertainly at Mollymauk. “Like…it’s not just temperature. It’s somethin’ deeper, not natural. Gets under your skin and all in your bones, and just bites down like it’ll never let go.” And after a moment she sheepishly rubbed behind one ear, looking down again. “....that probably doesn’t make any goddamn sense, nevermind.”
“Actually,” the tiefling murmured thoughtfully. “I think I know exactly what you mean. Felt it gettin’ colder down here the further I got from the steps over this way. Almost like it was…” He trailed off, leaning forward just slightly to direct his stare rather pointedly at the well.
“....yeah. I got that feeling too.” Aster heaved a sigh as she pushed herself back up to stand, dusting her hands off. “There’s somethin’ about this whole thing that just ain’t…right.” She gestured around vaguely at the entire cellar. “The whole place feels wrong, and not just ‘cause of the cold. This thing…” And she pointed over her shoulder to tap at the sheath across her back with one claw. “....I noticed it gettin’ brighter the closer I got over here. Dunno what that means, exactly, but...somethin tells me it ain’t good.”
Mollymauk cast a quick glance down at his ring at that, before looking back up again. “Hmm. Ya don’t say. Happen to spot anything else down here? Since you got the light to look around and all.”
“Hey, uh…sorry about that whole almost blinding you thing, a minute ago,” Aster mumbled sheepishly, carefully pointing her phone’s flashlight low and awkwardly rubbing one arm with the other. “Just a little on edge, and y’know….instincts and reflexes. Shine light on things so they can’t hide. Knowing what you’re about to stare down or talk to makes it easier to not freak out over.”
The tiefling just waved a hand dismissively. “Ah, think nothin’ of it. Ya only almost blinded me, after all.”
In spite of herself, Aster chuckled. “Yeah, I guess so.” And she straightened up. “Well, didn’t really see much else, to be honest. Just a bunch of old decaying, rotted and half-mummified food and junk.” She did sweep her phone around to direct the light toward the pile of coal stacked up to the lone window in the place. “‘Sides the well, only thing that seems a little odd is that.”
Molly’s eyebrows slowly rose up. “Well now…that does look just a little out of place. Unless somebody was shovelin’ that coal in through the tiny little window there…it shouldn’t really be piled up like that.” He turned to Aster with a curious look. “Don’t you think so? If I were inclined to spin a little idea…it almost looks deliberate.”
“Who’d even bother deliberately stacking up a bigass pile of coal like that, though?” Aster shook her head. “That’d just be a huge waste of time, not to mention a monumental pain in the collective backside of anyone involved. Only reason they’d do it is if….” She trailed off, her mouth hanging half open, the gears in her head slowly creaking as they ground out a realization. “Oh.”
“‘Oh’ is right,” Molly mused with a faint grin. “Think we can spare a moment to rummage around?”
“Guess it can’t hurt. Gives everybody else more time to snoop around the rest of this place, anyway, right?
Aster is gonna dig through and ever so slightly completely dismantle the pile of coal in the root cellar, to see if it hides anything. I believe Molly is also along for the excavation attempt.
With the shared purpose between them, Mollymauk and Aster approached the mountainous heap of piled coal. The hefty mass of sooty coal chunks stacked haphazardly to the thin slit windows, blocking most of the external light from penetrating the cellar's gloom.
No intricate planning or cunning strategy guided their work—instead, they just dove in with reckless determination, stirring up all kinds of filth and potential carcinogens in the process. The dimly lit space was illuminated only by Mollymauk's glittering jewelry, the thin strand of moonlight slipping in through the window, and the blue glare of Aster's phone as they shifted the coal with their hands, the chunks leaving trails of dust along Molly's purple skin and Aster's silver fur.
Despite the eerie chill of the cellar, sweat trickled down their backs from exertion, numbing the cold in its wake. Dust swirled around them like sooty sprites. The clattering of coal disrupted the otherwise still atmosphere, rattling around like wooden blocks in a wheelbarrow.
A significant time had passed when Mollymauk's hand brushed against something surprisingly soft beneath the coal chunks.
He paused, his brows furrowing, and latched onto it with his fingers. With careful precision, the lavender tiefling dragged out a large and deeply gaudy tapestry—a heap of coal rattling about as it was pulled free—embroidered with an intricate design of a white and silver dragon upon a canvas of blue.
The once-vibrant colors were now muted, dulled by layers of coal dust that clung stubbornly to the fabric, but it was still an impressive six feet in width. The staring eye of the dragon on the tapestry, stitched in profile, felt oddly unsettling in the dim light.
Aster, on the other hand, witnessed as a host of small, furry, inky-black creatures shaped like orbs spilled out from the deepest depths of the coal pile. Their white eyes dotted with black pupils gaped roundly at her as they emitted a host of squeaky murmuring sounds, the little black puffballs levitating in the air all around the cellar like a swarm of locusts; some even came to hover in the air around her, perching upon her shoulders and her sword scabbard as if clinging to her for protection.
A pensive silence befell the team of thirteen investigators as they readied for their descent into the murky depths of the root cellar's well. The ancient and rusted pulley system groaned an unsettling hymn as it was operated, creaking a threatening dirge as its hook dangled from above, swaying ominously.
This decrepit apparatus was their lifeline between the safe world above and the unknown depths lurking far below. The wooden beams overhead, gnarled with age and visibly gnawed by rats, supported the pulley's weathered hemp rope. It was tightly wound around a wheel, grooved and carved by years of use, and the rope itself was rough and frayed but sturdy—bearing the weight of each individual with steadfast tenacity.
One by one, they clung to the hook, the thick and curved metal cold beneath their hands. As they descended, the cellar's moonlit gloom gave way to an oppressive darkness that seemed to swallow them whole, the well's mossy stone glistening wetly all around. The rope creaked and strained, threatening to break in two, sending an unsettling symphony of unnerving croaks echoing throughout the black void, the noise building into something truly ghoulish the further each investigator descended.
The well's walls were a grotesque canvas, slick and adorned with a cocktail of slime and unidentifiable greenish gunk. The scent of decay, mold, and a damp rot hung in the air, intensifying as they plunged deeper. The atmosphere was thick, heavy with the unseen and unknown, consuming them with each foot they pitched downward, the rope steadily lurching as they were lowered down into the bowels of Erde Nona.
One by one, each individual finally touched ground, their feet immediately sinking into a pool of icy water that rose all the way up to their knees, hollow splashes ringing in the claustrophobic space as they shifted and moved about. The chilling impact sent shivers clawing up their spines as they found themselves huddled in the well's dank bottom. The circular stone enclosure was shrouded in a veil of shadows—a specter that seemed to almost mock the frail beams of their flashlights, torches, and other means of illumination.
As one, their gazes were inevitably drawn to a lonely tunnel chiseled into the well's side, through which naught but darkness was visible.
It yawned ominously, a maw of deep, stygian black that appeared to laugh at their fears, twisting their nerves up into a frayed and trembling knot, poised to snap; the path ahead snaking and receding into a web of impenetrable murk, its unfathomable depths seeming to almost certainly harbor unspeakable, terrible things.
The dank air of the yawning passageway ahead, the unsettling silence that muffled all sound like a heavy funeral shroud—all of it seemed to embrace them with icy fingers, stilling their breath and hearts with its pall.
Cold shadows that seemed to quiver in time with unseen horrors lurked just beyond this threshold, writhing and dancing with the rippling of the knee-deep waters, calling them into the depths of its gloom.
There was no more time for hesitation, no possibility of turning back from the path they now knew they must tread—into the very belly of the beast.
The decision was made. They held their breaths, hearts pounding in rhythm with their chilled blood and quaking lungs, and stepped into the abyss.
Guided by the scant, flickering light of their torches, they proceeded in a single file (for there was precious little room to stand abreast of one another), each step ringing and splashing into the dark void due to the knee-high water. Steadily, the tunnel twisted deeper and deeper, slithering and curving like the body of a truly monstrous snake, leading them further into the black.
The walls seemed to close in around them as they proceeded forward, the stones damp and cold to the touch, oozing with dread and greenish algae in equal measure. Their glimmering lights danced off the wet stones and the watery murkiness ahead, casting surreal shadows that took on unsettling shapes, threatening to reach out and drag one into their fiendish fold. The only sound was the chilling gurgle and splash of the water as they trudged deeper; the icy water sluiced around their knees, rising higher and higher, creeping up their waists and chests.
Slowly but surely, the tunnel seemed to tighten—the air growing heavier, darker, the weight of the earth layered above them seeming to press down upon their chests and turn every sucked-in inhalation into a genuine struggle for oxygen. The echoes of their determined splashes grew louder, amplified by the narrow, suffocating space, until it was as if their shallow breaths were being screamed back into their faces.
Until suddenly, the tunnel opened up into a vast chamber—the transformation so abrupt it left the group momentarily disoriented, stumbling blindly and unfeelingly out of the black. The water level receded to about waist-height once they entered the space, leaving them all standing there, shivering in the cold, their clothes slick against their bodies, each figure a trembling silhouette against the hazy light of the torches.
Silent and still, this chamber was a cauldron of emptiness as their torches cast light upon its towering walls, a cavernous space that echoed eerily with the soft, silvery sounds of dripping and trickling water. Three menacing tunnels yawned out from the group's vantage point at the center, each corridor shrouded in murk.
And above each entrance, there was a crimson message scrawled and scratched into the stone, inscribed in what could only be dried blood.
The tunnel on the left bore the almost laughable words: "NOT SCARY AT ALL."
The middle tunnel was simply labeled: "SCARY."
And the right tunnel, the most menacing of the three, warned: "VERY SCARY."
The sight sent a ripple of unease through the group. The blood-red letters stared down at them, seeming particularly unpredictable and uncanny in this already outlandish situation. Yet, despite the fear gnawing at their sanity, the only way was forward... through one of the tunnels.
READ THIS!!! THIS UPDATE APPLIES TO EVERYONE EXCEPT MINALA & SIGMUND.
Your character will choose a path. From there, regardless of the path you chose, your character will wind up ALONE. At this point, your character will encounter some physical manifestation of their WORST FEAR. They will encounter physical illusions and hallucinations, and something trying to ATTACK AND EAT THEM while disguised as some component of their WORST FEAR.
Write your character overcoming this fear via some means. You have until Wednesday, November 29th at 5PM CST to write this scene.
IMPORTANT: If you DO NOT post by that date, your character will NOT be allowed to participate in the final confrontation. Instead, they will be imprisoned and will rely on the rest of the cast to free them. PLEASE POST AT LEAST ONCE! IT CAN BE OF ANY LENGTH.
Lt. Columbo is going down the NOT SCARY AT ALL route, assuming some reverse psychology may be at play.
Sister Josephine is going down the VERY SCARY route, because she wants to kill this thing.
Shinku surveyed the three ominous tunnels before them, his gaze sweeping each opening with a wary intensity. The dim light of his Soul Mirror reflected in his serious eyes, betraying a sense of caution. He crossed his arms, his brow furrowing slightly in silent contemplation while his fingers tapped rhythmically against his hip.
Suddenly, an unsettling shift occurred in the reflective surface of his mirror. The silvered glass suddenly revealed an eerie congregation of apparitions. Curiosity pulled his gaze suddenly from the tunnels to the spectral display in the relic he held. Ghosts, ethereal and luminous, appeared in a spectral array - travelers of various ages, wearing garments from different eras. A weary old man, stooped with age and carrying a tattered leather satchel, gestured with spectral urgency for Shinku to halt. Beside him, a young girl with sun-kissed curls and a flower-adorned dress seemed to echo the warning, her translucent hand reaching out as if to physically prevent Shinku from advancing.
A spectral couple, dressed in Victorian-era attire, exchanged anxious glances as they too indicated that the tunnel held peril. Even a weathered adventurer, donned in faded armor with a sword at his side, pointed solemnly toward the entrance, his ghostly expression a silent plea for caution.
The whispers of the apparitions seemed to echo in Shinku's ears, their muted warnings carried on unseen breezes. Though silent, their gestures and expressions communicated a collective plea: "Stay away."
Shinku's stoicism wavered for a moment as he absorbed the haunting scene reflected in the Soul Mirror. A frown etched itself onto his features
“Ok, duh, ‘NOT SCARY AT ALL’ is the obvious choice here. Come on!,” Belle suddenly blurted out whimsically, immediately dragging Shinku with her.
Shinku couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow and put up some resistance. “Wait. Don’t you find it weird to have something labeled like that?,” he remarked, glancing skeptically at the seemingly innocuous tunnel.
“Hey, trust me! I’ve got these perfectly tuned druidic senses. And it’s absolutely telling me to choose this one,” she said, taking a step closer to the tunnel’s entrance, her gaze pleading at Shinku to join her. “Come on, I’m sure it’ll be all fine,” she continued, hiding away the fear that had been chilling her from the inside.
Shinku stood there, his mind wrestling with the conflicting thoughts of caution and curiosity. His eyes darted between the ominous tunnel entrances and Brass Belle's unwavering gaze. The distant echoes of water droplets seemed to underscore the weight of his decision. Then, he let out a sigh, a reluctant smile suddenly tugging at his lips. “Alright, but you stay behind me,” he demanded, walking past Belle and into the tunnel.
The water rose gradually, until splashes rhythmically sloshed around their waists. Their torchlights continued to cast dancing shadows on the damp stone walls, seemingly creating eerie shadows that danced with a mind of their own.
The air grew thicker, laden with an unidentifiable tension. Faint eerie echoes greet them from time to time, intensifying the chilly sensation that the waters around them cause.
Shinku’s grip on his torch tightened, while his eyes momentarily glanced at the silver hand mirror on his other hand. Spectral figures continued to dance in the mirror’s reflection. One of them, a weary old man, draped in tattered robes that gestured with frantic urgency. He shook his head, his hands forming a subtle but firm “no” motion, his expression carrying the weight of unspeakable horror.
Then, a sudden darkness enveloped the passage. It lasted only a moment, a disorienting blink of time, but when Shinku’s vision cleared, he found himself left alone. All the water that previously sunk him waist deep disappeared as if it wasn’t even there in the first place.
“Brass?” he called out, the echo of his own voice bouncing off the cold, damp walls. There was no response. The oppressive silence pressed on him, and a sense of foreboding settled over his shoulders like an unwelcome shroud.
His hand instinctively went to the hilt of his sword, the Soul Mirror now clenched tightly on his other hand. He moved forward with cautious steps, attempting to look for his companion. The air grew colder, and a subtle, eerie hum resonated through the passageways. His eyes continued to search for any signs of Brass but it was all for naught.
The occasional murmur of distant whispers started to grow louder around him. Gradually, the echoes swelled, gradually transforming into a cacophony of eerie voices. The whispers remained incomprehensible but too haunting to ignore. It heightened the assassin 's unease.
The echoes in the tunnel reached an unsettling climax, and as Shinku strained to make sense of the spectral chorus, the shadows began to stir. From the inky blackness emerged grotesque figures, their decaying forms gradually materializing the shadows casted from his torch, and others from the dark path ahead.
Some of them slithered and crawled out of the shadows gradually shifting from inky black blobs into decaying, nightmarish undeads. Some emerged from the path ahead on all fours, their limbs contorted in unnatural angles, as if the rigor mortis had seized them in the throes of agony. Others staggered forward with an eerie semblance of life, their decomposed flesh hanging loosely from skeletal frames.
The grotesque figures continued their relentless advance, each step sending an agonizing ripple through Shinku's soul. As they drew closer, the flickering torchlight revealed their faces—faces that Shinku had longed to forget, faces etched in the nightmare of his past.
His family and friends, long lost to the brutality of bandits, emerged from the shadows with hollow eyes and decomposed, charred flesh. The faces of those he had grown up with, the voices that had once filled his childhood with laughter, were now twisted into visages of horror. The stench of burning flesh hung heavy in the air, a ghostly reminder of the day their lives were snuffed out by merciless hands.
Shinku's hand trembled as he clutched the hilt of his sword, the Soul Mirror reflecting not only the grisly scene before him but also the torment within his own eyes. The tunnel echoed with the haunting moans of the undead, but for Shinku, it was the echoes of his own helplessness that reverberated loudest.
Paralyzed by the trauma of that fateful day, Shinku found himself ensnared in the clutches of his past. The spectral reenactment of the massacre unfolded before him like a malevolent play, each step of the undead mirroring the inevitability of the tragedy that had befallen his loved ones.
Shinku's sword remained sheathed, and his body stood frozen—a statue of agony amidst the spectral procession. The silver mirror now reflected not only the spectral ghosts but also the haunted gaze of Shinku, who was trapped in the nightmare of his own history.
‘Hey wake up you fool! This is not the time to recollect that pathetic past of yours!,’ Orochi suddenly lashed out, jolting him out of paralysis.
As he came to his senses, one of the undead creatures pounced on him, forcing him to swiftly draw his sword and cut the creature in one quick motion. Gradually, the face that once resembled his father contorted back into a faceless visage before the fallen creature crumbled into black dust and got blown in the wind.
The battle however, was far from over, as the other creatures around him screeched and attacked him one after another. Defensively, he swung his blade, cleaving through the assaulting creatures with a precision that spoke of years of honed skill. He moved in a dance of sword skill, finally displaying his prowess in the use of his own blade.
The air crackled with the clash of steel against bone, punctuated by the guttural moans of the creatures. Shinku swung with a controlled fury, his movements a symphony of lethal precision. The faces of his family and friends, twisted by death and decay, bore down on him with hollow eyes. Yet, with each fallen foe, he felt a cathartic release, purging of the lingering trauma that bound him for so long.
‘You fool. What are you going to do without me?,’ Orochi hissed in a boastful tone, relentlessly ringing his thoughts with its mockery.
Shinku, on the other hand, chose to ignore his words as he often did, maintaining his composure against his current ordeal.
As the last of the undead crumpled to the ground, Shinku stood amidst a macabre tableau of his triumph. Breathing heavily, he continued to survey the area, wary of any more potential enemies that could be around. He then turned his gaze to the seemingly endless path of the dark tunnel. Releasing a sigh of relief, he began to step forward in hopes to end the mystery in Haven Abbey once and for all.
content warning: violence and allusion to suicide. Spoiler warning: substantial spoilers for parts of Shallan's backstory that aren't revealed until later books in the series, although arguably having Beil and Radiant mentioned at all is a spoiler, so... *vague shrugging*
"Oh yes, this seems an excellent idea..." Shallan frowned up at the tunnels. "I am quite convinced that something which was 'Not scary at all' would find a different method of writing the message than actual! Blood!"
Nevertheless, investigators began to separate among the differing tunnels. Shallan found herself selecting the middle path. Either the signs were telling the truth and this was the second-most dangerous, or the signs were a bluff, in which case this was the safest route. It seemed highly unlikely that the tunnel labelled 'scary' would be the worst option available.
"If the detective and our fearless leader have made their choices, I will lead whomever wishes to join me down the middle tunnel."
Pattern buzzed excitedly.These tunnels are a most powerful lie. Mmmmmmm!
"Ah, and the water recedes even further down this way! It's damp and cold and horrid still but when you compare it to our..." Shallan glanced over her shoulder as she progressed through the steadily shallower water, expecting to find some subset of the explorers were making the same discovery. A glance behind showed not only that she was alone, but that the mouth of the tunnel had entirely vanished into darkness.
"Hello?" She called out. Her voice echoed back in chorus, but there was no response from any of the others.
"If any sarcastic wolves or dramatically colorful devil-folk care to announce their presence by making fun of me for being afraid, you've waited long enough that you can do that now!"
Shallan paused halfway towards the start of her next shout, suddenly desperately certain that she was not alone down here. She strained her eyes, trying to make out the shape she could hear moving in the shin-deep water.
"Stop hiding!" Shallan growled, breathing in a deep breath of stormlight for the gems in her pouch. The cold chill fled from her grime-soaked limbs and her eyes and skin glowed alight. The swell of brightness radiated out to show the tunnel walls had long since receded. She was standing in a large pond somewhere deep underground.
The skulking figure stood in the light, one arm raised to shield their eyes from Shallan's glow. As the figure lowered their arm Shallan's confidence evaporated into cold numbness.
"What are you saying, Shallan?" Veil's dissatisfied gaze stared back at her, "Hiding is what we do best."
This couldn't be real. Shallan fumbled for the adder stone in her pocket. Her numb fingers betrayed her and the crystalline stone slipped into the water with a soft splash. Pattern was vibrating with a near constant buzzing. He sounded overwhelmed.
"Who are you?" Shallan tried to force the fear out of her voice.
"Who are you?" Veil mimicked with distaste, "Aren't you the scholar one? Don't ask questions you already know."
She began to circle Shallan at the edge of the light, moving near silently despite the water.
"Okay, then what do you want?" She frowned.
"We want what's fair."
Another familiar voice spoke up from behind her, and Shallan whirled around to see Radiant, also scowling at her from the edge of the shadows.
"You aren't light weavings. What are you?" Shallan challenged.
"Well I guess you're just crazy then." Veil laughed.
"Perhaps we all are."Radiant shrugged.
"We don't have time for this kind of thing!" Shallan pleaded, "the others need me to-"
"Now that is a delicious lie, as our spiralling friend would say." Veil sneered, "you're appealing to us to let you keep being selfish so that you can help the others? Don't manipulate Radiant's sense of duty like that!"
"We will deal with that threat once the score is settled here, Shallan." Radiant frowned. She stopped circling, holding one hand out to the side like she was preparing to summon her shardblade and staring Shallan down.
"What are you saying?" Shallan stammered, taking a step back from Radiant. She froze as a small knife poked at her back, and Veil laughed from just behind her ear.
"Just like the oppressor not to understand why they are being overthrown. We want a turn. It's not fair for one of our personalities to get to be in charge all the time."
And there it was. The lie that Shallan had never acknowledged to herself. She wasn't really Shallan, the witty, blushing scholar in training. That was just another personality she had created to hide behind. Shallan hadn't done the things she did. That was why she could forget them.
As though called by Shallan's remembrance of her existence, there was another figure in the the shadows now. Shallan could see her waiting in the corner of her eye. Radiant and Veil did too, because their taunting voices had gone silent. Shallan wanted anything but to look at that girl. She tried to think of anything she could do. Running blindly was the only thing she could think of in her panic, but she knew she would never escape that way.
She released her stormlight breath, the motes of glowing fog evaporating from her skin and fading into the darkness. If she was going to confront this, It would be better not to have to see that girl.
To Shallan's dismay, when she turned to face that horrible girl, when she looked towards Formless, there was light still.
Formless stood there. A smaller girl than Shallan was now, though not as much smaller as Shallan had hoped. She wore a very pretty Vedan dress, one that Shallan remembered getting from her father as a sort of apology one time when he was thinking clearer. Her freckled face was streaked with tears, but she smiled eagerly all the same.
Shallan's eyes took that all in at a glance, but she could not tear her gaze away from the girl's hands. One held a shardblade, thin and jagged, with dark hues. The other hand held a necklace, glittering in the eerie light. Neither was bloody, her hands were so clean they seemed almost translucent. After all, a shardblade left no wound when it killed, and a necklace twisted until breath stopped left no blood.
"All done?" Formless asked with a cautious voice.
Shallan wanted to cry, to hide, to run. Veil and Radiant stood behind her now, either keeping her from leaving or to hide behind her, she couldn't tell.
"Why are you here?" Shallan whispered hoarsely.
"I wanted to know what is next?" Formless gave an empty smile from her tearstreaked face.
"Where are-"
"Our parents? Well, I've got mother's soul right here, don't I?" Formless held up the shardblade, with a confused expression.
Shallan did not remember how her mother had looked in that room in the Davar Manor, but she knew the look of those killed by a shardblade. The burnt out eyes where the blade had cut the soul. She wilted away, as much as she could, finding that Veil and Radiant were nowhere to be found. Formless gave an uncharacteristically mirthful giggle.
"Are you afraid of the truth, Shallan?"
Pattern's droning practically wailed in her ears. Shallan broke and ran. Her boots splashed in the shallow water. She breathed in more stormlight to lend strength to her flagging limbs. She had to get away!
A string of glittering metal passed before her eyes, almost in slow motion. The necklace caught around her neck like a lasso, halting her flight with a painful jerk.
Now go to sleep,
In chasms deep,
With darkness all around you.
Though rock and dread,
May be your bed,
You'll sleep my baby dear.
With each line of the lullaby sung by her own voice, the necklace was twisted tighter, just like it had upon father's throat. A part of her considered letting it pull tight. It would be justified, wouldn't it?
Pattern buzzed with an erratic fever-pitch. Shallan reeled backwards, hands straining futily against the necklace that dug into her skin. Behind her, Formless was laughing still, though the voice no longer sounded like her own.
Please! Shallan begged in her head, unable to form words out load as she strained against the choking necklace.
I don't need to be Shallan! We can share! I can be anyone! Just not Formless!
If you swear it. I will believe you. Radiant spoke in her mind.
You better not be lying. Veil sounded far less convinced, but she didn't oppose.
Shallan exhaled the remainder of the stormlight that had been sustaining her while the necklace kept her from breathing. She was choking in earnest now, and she fell to her knees, vision cloudy and darkening. She could make out two faintly glowing figures, Veil and Radiant. The lightweavings she had given them rushed towards something behind her.
Shallan couldn't see anything in the darkness, couldn't hear anything but Pattern's frantic buzzing in her ears. There was a shriek of alarm from somewhere behind her, and the necklace loosened. Shallan gasped, coughing for breath. She drew in the last of her stormlight, and screamed.
Her form exploded into a hundred different people. All of them were her, and yet none of them were Shallan. They scrambled in every direction. Some rushing towards Formless in rage, some fleeing into the darkness, some falling to the ground and curling into a ball, sobbing.
Shallan started to crawl through the water, just one form in the crowd that roved through the chamber. She felt arms gripping her under the shoulders to pull her up to her feet. She glanced down to see one was clad in shardplate and the other wore a familiar white coat. Someone pressed the adder stone into her hand, as she half ran, half-stumbled along
"I wouldn't drop something like that. Clumsy." Veil's voice chided lightly from behind her
"Remember what you promised." Radiant spoke, then a pair of hands pushed her forwards, spurring her into a run, away from the riotous screams of rage and terror. She ran for all she was worth, clutching the adder stone and the precious glimmer that held all the stormlight she had left.
Shallan has used focus to overtax her lightweavings to the point that they became almost tangible. She has only enough stormlight for one more burst of activity (about one breath worth) until she can find another storm to collect stormlight from.
The Echo of the tunnels itself was intimidating to a degree. So many things Minala thought she'd catch.. so many shadows in the corner of her vision as they walked. A footstep she didn’t recognize, a voice whispering haunting words from the Darkness. Her hair stood on end. This place was vile. Demonic. Yet her feet moved her onward. The subtle clap of her boot against the stone that surrounded them, the closeness of those behind her. Those in front of her. It brought her a small degree of comfort. But even so. The wicked pervasiveness of.. Whatever creature stalked these ancient tunnels. Sent such shivers down her spine. The like of which she’d never felt. There was nothing in this world so inherently dark, and obviously Evil. Hellbent on… something. What was this thing doing here? What was it?
The questions never seemed to stop, or was that because she was asking the same ones over.. And over…
Minala accidentally found herself colliding with the person in front of her. Muttering a small quiet apology, too meek, and anxious to speak any louder. Luckily for her, The others were focused too much on the fork in the.. Cavern. To pay her blunder any more attention beyond an absent “It’s fine.”
“So… where are we going..? Exactly?”
Josephine merely stared at the scene before her, silent. Thoughtful. A small huff of air escaped her nose as Columbo took another dreg off of his Cigar.
The air grew quiet as suddenly the prospect of splitting off hung in the air after a short murmur from the Detective. Shortly after, people were already diverging. It seemed her own thoughts were too late to join the party. As she steadily walked into the ‘Scary’ Tunnel. She found the sounds of her breath increasing, the sounds of conversation decreasing, and the sounds of moisture, and droplets of water growing ever louder around her.
Where did this tunnel even lead?
What was even the point?
The sounds of conversation and people had otherwise faded away to near completion. The ever-deafening silence. Her feet moved forward, her armor gently pressing against her chainmail. The clicking of her leather against the stone hallway, only added to the suspense. Every droplet of water that struck the ground caused her head to perk up. Her body to tense. Why was it always her stuck in the mud?
Was it always her who was left out so blatantly? She’d had no contact from the other investigators beyond the reports they did each night. Beyond that… nothing. Though, it wasn’t as though she tried… which was most of the problem, if she had to guess.
Still, as silly as it sounded. Minala wished someone would just read her mind and pull her arm so she could join into the fray every now and then.
But still, it wasn’t as though Mother sent her on this trip with any confidence in her abilities. She did it because she was at best expendable. Which made sense. Minala wasn’t particularly talented in any areas. Her fight in the Forthrund province wasn’t… it was by a hair’s breadth, even though she could tell the man was an amateur. He wasn’t any better than she. Yet even so. She struggled.
Her thoughts found themselves disrupted by the unpleasant grating of metal on stone.
Followed by faint, but all the same obvious footsteps, pressing through water. Beyond the bend in the tunnel ahead, Minala could barely catch the form of Gascoigne, staggering through the cavern towards her. His breath as ragged as his clothing. His weapon hung low to his side, drenched in a thin layer of blood. He made no motion of recognizing her, until she stepped back a small way, intimidated by his figure.
Then he stopped, and all was still for but a brief moment while fear itself gripped the Clerics heart in a way she’d never endured before.
“Beasts all over the shop…”
He spoke in quiet rapture. Eyes bound shut by whatever blindfold he covered himself with.
“You’ll be one of them, Sooner or later..”
The questions Minala wanted to ask fell down her throat and into her stomach, where the fear and intense intimidation now resided. She began to run in the opposite direction, knowing she was no match for the man. Especially while Hakor and Luneus hid from her the more combat useful secrets of their domains.
Her heart pounded in painful rhythms to let her know she was still alive. But for now much longer? Her question was answered by a grunt of exertion as his blade cleaved through her armor and sent the Animak tumbling to the ground, the Music box falling, clanging, jumping across the stones just a short distance away.
She looked up to Gascoigne, who already had his own weapon drawn high. Reaching for her only means of defense. Minala grabbed her Melder, which morphed with urgency in response to her will, into an iron quarter staff that she held in defense as he swung down with all the force of a raging beast. Sparks flew from the impact, striking against the ground, illuminating the dank hall they ‘battled’ in. If this could be called anything but a slaughter.
However, the Cleric could feel her strength wane as Gascoigne pressed against her meager defense. The Axe he wielded drawing ever closer to her neck. With bated breaths. She pressed and fought with all her might. Though it was not enough. She howled with pain as the tempered steel pressed and cut into her flesh with ease. Unyielding Metal as Gascoigne drew a sickened smile from her pain.
In some instinct, Minala threw her foot to Gascoigne’s shin. Knocking the man off balance and allowing her to reach for what she assumed would be her only saving grace as his weapon was drawn back so he could stand more firmly. The music box.
Nonsensical though it was. She held some faith that Hakor and Luneus both would not abandon her in her time of need. So she swung open the top, and with the somber Melody now playing. She watched as the Hunter with all his strength fell to his knees. Clasping his head in dire agony. Muttering something so incomprehensibly quiet Minala with all her enhanced senses couldn’t catch.
With a swift motion she grabbed the box, stood to her feet as she grabbed her Melder too, and began to dash back. Screaming bloody murder for someone, anyone to help. The sinking pit in her stomach only growing deeper with each cry, as for each one. There was no response.
She could only pray that someone were going to arrive to her aid.
Typically, Sigmund would have felt at home in the cold, damp confines of the Abbey’s catacombs. Now, however, he was merely frustrated. His head, though mostly healed from their last encounter, still throbbed slightly, a couple of fresh scars still marking bright red lines across his pale skin. A reminder that Pennywise had managed to escape his clutches last time. Not this time, however. In spite of the seriousness of the situation, however, as his eyes scanned the labels of the different tunnels, he couldn’t help but chortle a little.
That was actually pretty funny.
Watching the lieutenant take one path and the sister take another, Sigmund paused for a short while to make his own decision. Going to either extreme end of the spectrum almost felt too obvious. Perhaps, rather than reverse psychology, Pennywise was going for double reverse psychology. Or perhaps the cultist was underhtinking it, and there was triple or even quadruple reverse psychology at play here…
Rubbing his brow and shaking his head, he decided to just pick a random tunnel and head down. Sigmund watched the young Cleric, Minala he believed her name was, head down the tunnel marked ‘Scary’ and decided, much at random, to follow suit. Though he was a decent distance behind her, he was still able to see the flicker of her torch as they continued down the tunnel… until he couldn’t. Blinking, the high priest glanced around for his fellow investigator, wondering where she was.
Then, he wondered where he was. The shadows seemed to swim around him, swallowing the cultist up in a cloying darkness that even his superior night vision couldn’t pierce.
“Hello?” Sigmund called, hearing a distinct lack of echo to his voice considering the fact that he should have been in a tunnel. Then, abruptly, radiant golden light consumed him. As if someone suddenly flicked on the lights, brilliant sunlight beamed down on the cultist, forcing him to raise his cloak to shield his eyes. His gaze quickly scanning the area, he seemed to be alone in a grassy field. Then, as his eyes adjusted, he realised that he was not in fact, alone.
Across the field, a single figure stood, emitting a similarly radiant glow to the sun beating down from above. It stood perfectly still, a serene smile on its face that didn’t quite reach its golden eyes. It clutched a gilded spear casually in its hands, which it lazily raised as it began to approach. The thing didn’t walk towards him, but rather floated forward on wings of light. It was a horrible, wretched simulacrum of a human. It was a false angel.
“Stop.” Sigmund commanded, raising the Manic Codex like a shield even as the icy blood in his veins ran even colder. “G-Get back, monster!”
“Your wickedness is revealed, elder spawn.” It said, unflinching in its approach. Its voice was so human, but there was just something so off about it. It’s tone was harsh, but in a way that seemed rehearsed rather than born of passion. It wasn’t angry, it merely acted angry because it thought it should be. It wasn’t a human, no matter how well it pretended to be one. “I have come to kill you.”
“I said GET AWAY!” Sigmund cried, sweeping his finger across the air in front of him. A blade of psionic energy manifested from thin air, streaking towards the false angel. The abomination simply sidestepped with inhuman precision, every inch of its body moving in the exact way it needed to to avoid the strike. The strike dodged, it bounced forward. Since it first laid eyes on him, its expression had failed to change from that same angry look, as if it had simply forgotten to change it.
The thing swung its spear down in a sweeping motion, attempting to cleave its foe in half with the strike, but Sigmund managed to raise his hand in time to grasp the angel with his telekinesis and fling it away, buying himself a few precious moments to launch another vivisection. This one hit home, sending a spray of molten light cascading across the field. Even now, that same angry expression remained on the thing’s face. That was easily the most disturbing part of the creature to Sigmund. The most telling sign that they were simply not human.
No matter what horrors you showed them, how you rent their forms apart, what eldritch truths you unleashed upon them. They just would not feel fear. And, ironically, for someone who used fear as a weapon, that was terrifying.
Lunging back towards him with redoubled vigour, the angel lanced towards, narrowly missing Sigmund as he desperately sidestepped the blow. Then, with its spear still jabbed into the earth, the creature twisted towards him, eyes rolling back into its head like a shark as it lunged forward, its mouth opening into a lamprey-like whirl of teeth.
Now that was something that false angels didn’t do.
The cultist dropped to the ground, allowing himself to fall limp in order to slip out of the way of the bite, saving himself from having his neck torn out. As the malformed angel stared at him with a predatory gleam, it’s mistake seemed to dawn on both of them at once. For most, that would have been the mental coup de grace, but in that moment, staring at the positively eldritch atrocity before him, Sigmund felt a pulse of clarity. The facade was broken, its almost human appearance cast aside, and he found comprehension in its incomprehensibility. It was not a false angel, and he knew it was afraid.
Sigmund’s hand lurched into his pocket, withdrawing his ever-reliable ally in his investigation. Thrusting the Guardian forward with a wicked grin, the cultist raised his voice with a mad cackle.
“I said BACK.”
Eyes fixated on the tiny turtle, the creature obeyed, stumbling backwards even as its visage returned to its previous ‘normal’ state. The burning light above seemed to grow a little dimmer as Sigmund clambered to his feet and advanced on the creature, holding the toy forward like a weapon. Piercing through the harsh radiance, a single more of white drifted down before landing on the high priest’s hand.
Snow?
Barking a harsh laugh, the cultist felt the creature’s grip over him slipping as he pressed forward.
“Ha! That’s right. You call yourself fear, you call yourself death. And yet, your end is near. We have come for you.”
With that, the light abruptly died as a darkness blanketed the field and pristine, still air was subsumed by howling, bitter winds. Purple lightning cracked in the sky with a peal of thunder that almost sounded like booming laughter.
And the, abruptly as it had all arrived, the vision was gone. Sigmund found himself alone in the tunnels once more, glancing around in confusion. Where was he now? And where was he going? Before he could take a moment to orient himself, a scram pierced the cloying silence of the tunnels and, without hesitation, the high priest took off in its direction.
~~~~~~~~~
The monstrous Father Gascoigne thundered after Minala, growling and roaring like the beast he had become. The cleric prayed desperately for help, for someone to come save her, her internal prayers joined by external screams. Then, abruptly, the Father halted in his tracks, struggling as if the air had suddenly become solid around him. Stumbling for a moment, Minala gasped for air as she turned to see that he had stopped.
Though it was undoubtedly not the god she was praying to, or even the god she wanted her prayers anywhere near, it seemed that a god had answered her prayers nonetheless.
Divine intervention had arrived.
“Father Gascoigne, please calm down!” Sigmund shouted as he telekinetically strained against the beast of a man.
“Oh, that smell. Moon-touched, are you.” the Father muttered senselessly, supposedly to Sigmund but just as much to himself. “Can’t have you turning. I’ll put you down before you can.”
Turning on his heels and breaking the telekinesis with one swift motion, Gascoigne lunged towards the cultist, dropping to all fours briefly before rising back to his two feet, howling with manic bloodlust as he charged. Sigmund’s heart sank as he saw the state his old friend had been reduced to, knowing full well how far gone he was.
“Oh, Father… I’m sorry.” Sigmund said solemnly, raising his hand towards him, eldritch energy dancing across his fingers. “I shall deliver you your last rites. Go in peace, old friend.”
With a blur of motion, the cultist carved a trio of slashes into the air, sending three deadly psionic blades slicing towards the madnesses priest. To his shock, however, Gascoigne contorted his body to bring his vitals out of the path of each blade, seemingly operating purely on instinct. Each one struck his flesh, but they were mere flesh wounds which did nothing to slow his assault.
“Ok! That’s bad!” Sigmund chirped before trying a new approach. Calling upon his telekinetic powers once more, the cultist dived forward as he took ahold of the Father once more. Rather than attempting to hold him back this time, however, he instead pulled Gascoigne in the same direction he was running, adding to his momentum and sending him stumbling forwards well past his target.
The Father slammed hard into a tunnel wall, the whole underground seeming to tremble from the impact as Sigmund landed flat on his face, slightly embarrassed but unharmed. He began to clamber to his feet, but found a pair of hands quickly helping him up.
“Gods, thank you so much.” Minala said, her voice still shaking a little from her encounter with the Father.
“Hmm. No, I suppose not.” Sigmund agreed as he turned to see Gascoigne recovering from his dazed state after bashing into the wall. “Pleasantries can wait until after we have laid poor Father Gascoigne to rest. Can you fight?”
“Against that?” Minala asked, turning pale at the sight of the monstrous priest. “I mean… maybe?! But I don’t think we have to. I have a plan.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. If it goes well, we might not have to kill him at all.”
“Oh! That would be perfect. Please, be my guest.”
“Just keep him distracted for a minute.” the cleric said before taking out the music box, beginning to fiddle with it. Alright. Just keep Gascoigne busy for a minute. He could do that.
“Alright, Father. Let’s do this.” Sigmund said, breathing a tense sigh as the feral priest lurched towards him. The cultist had been flying by the seat of his pants so far, it was a miracle that he had managed to avoid being torn to shreds for as long as he had. Raising his hand, telekinetic force reached out from the high priest, grasping at Gascoigne once more.
The Father struggled against the arcane force for a moment, straining hard as he tried to storm forwards, before Sigmund abruptly released his hold. Gascoigne stumbled as his charge was suddenly resumed, losing his footing for just a moment as the psion dodged to the side, sending him rumbling past.
The cultist ducked into a sprint, even as the Father caught himself and whirled around, snarling as he took off after the scholar. It was at this point that his luck ran out, unable to pull any more tricks as Gascoigne launched himself through the air with uncanny speed, smashing down onto the cultist like a pile of bricks.
Sigmund hit the ground hard, the wind knocked out of his as he was slammed to the floor, Father Gascoigne crouched over him. His slavering jaws opened with a bestial roar before he took a moment to aim, poised to bite down and remove his prey’s head from his body. In response, the cultist struggled to lift his hand, regretfully preparing to vivisect the hunter’s head in half.
Then, cutting through the din, the soft sound of a music box reverberated through the tunnel. All of a sudden, Gascoigne froze and Sigmund followed suit, hope blossoming in his chest. With slow, jerky motions, the Father got off of Sigmund and slowly rose to his feet, clutching at his head. Glancing over to the source of the noise, the cultist spotted Minala looking his way, a look on her face that said ‘I can’t believe that worked.’
In response, Sigmund just gave her a very shaky thumbs up.
From the grotesque, snarling maw of Father Gascoigne tumbled a guttural gasp, as if the beastly priest had been plunged into an icy spring all of a sudden, fresh clarity breaking sharp and silver over his head like a cold sluice of water.
One of his massive, gnarled hands flew up to paw at his countenance, fervently pressing against his furrowed brow, his wolfish features twisted in agony and guilt alike. His eyes, their pulpy remnants obscured by blood-soaked bandages, convulsed beneath his grimy fingers, and then... they stilled, as though the delectable opiate of ravening bloodlust was dulled by the sweet, somber tune tinkling out from Minala's tiny music box.
"Ahh, that sweet melody..." rasped Gascoigne, collapsing onto one knee before the pair, his impressive height allowing him to loom over them even still. His roughened voice was an amalgamation of mannerly regret tinged with the raw, guttural edge of a wounded animal—confined and tormented for far too long. "Forgive me... I fear that I was not myself. I have... remembered at last... what it was I had lost."
Father Gascoigne's mouth curved into a half-snarl as a harsh, canine whine ripped free from his breast, his fearsome teeth—sharper and greater in number than they had any right to be—glinting in an eerie portent of ill-contained violence. The priest's intimidating form curled ever so slightly, his ribs audibly creaking, as if the weight of the world bore down upon his berserk frame. His fingers grasped at the earthen floor, his fingernails elongated and curved into faintly sharp claws, the potent odor of blood and bestial aggression colluding like a sultry, coppery fog in the cold subterranean air.
The man panted like a hound that had run so hard and for so very long that it was nearly on the brink of death, his heart feeling as if it might simply burst inside his chest.
"I was hunting, as you know... hunting a beast," rumbled the good Father, brushing a few strands of his silvery hair from where they clung fast to his brow, greasy with sweat, blood and grime. His elongated incisors sneered from beneath the curve of his lips, glistening in disdain. "A silvery-white nightmare, all legs and blazing red fur... I'd managed to nick it, believed I had it cornered, until the sick creature slithered away into the abyss. Slipped right through my fingers..."
One claw-tipped thumb moved, almost involuntarily, to the corner of his grizzled mouth to swipe away a string of crimson-tinged spittle.
"I... I remember hazily," Gascoigne murmured, his bandaged visage swivelling upward, focused intently upon the ragged pair. "That was when the apparitions began... torments, mirages of my dearest Viola... and ooh, beasts and beasts and beasts..."
He shivered in suppressed bloodthirst, a raw shudder followed by a low, lingering growl, reverberating nightmarishly within the canyon-like gulf of silence the dank, dim tunnel offered.
The gentle melody of the music box spun within this grim silence, an eerily beautiful lullaby ghosting over the man's long-buried tragedies. And slowly but surely, the stalwart essence of Father Gascoigne, as he once was, bled from within the depths of his consciousness—roused from beneath layers of mind-numbing rage and dread hunger.
Gascoigne reached out for Sigmund, his large fingers barely grazing the cultist's shoulder before retracting, as if the old hunter feared he might tear into his friend anew.
Then, he stood, the silvery tatters of his holy shawl swaying as he rose to his full height, the metal censer dangling from around his neck thumping lightly against his chest. His axe came with him from where it had been cast aside during their scuffle, scraping across the floor with a shrill and foreboding ring, spitting fiery sparks into the black.
"Tell me," the hunter slowly shifted his veiled gaze towards the two, his grim countenance looming large above them, a menacing timbre in his voice. "Does the beast still live?"
Molly wasn't quite sure how long it had been, but it was nice to be alone with his thoughts for the first time since he had been stolen back through time, as he squeezed between tight fitting rocks and duck-walked under low ceilings that nearly scratched his beautifully adorned horns. The past few minutes he was focused on trying to remember which of the three paths he had taken as he weaved along the underground. Had he followed Columbo? Which one had the Good Detective taken… Josephine went down ‘very scary’? Scary Josephine, not scary Detective? Also, where in an Arbiter's giant ass were Jester and Nalaia? Had they all started together? The never ending abyss between walls seemed to play tricks on his mind and perception of time and recent memory, but he could not find it in himself to be panicked about it.
Molly stopped and looked around, taking in the limited sight of his surroundings from the ring on his finger, a light source which had been a great help navigating through whatever obstacles he faced in the absolutely insanely-carved and curving path he had chosen. The darkness that enveloped the perimeter of the soft moonlight glow from the Tiefling’s purple hand acted hungry, as if the moment the light was out he would be consumed, and Molly laughed a bit, looking over his shoulder and seeing absolute noth-
A soft jingle of bells came from behind him and his head snapped back to the forward direction of the cavern again, catching something flashing by in just the faintest reaches of his light, his ability to see well in natural darkness added to his musings that what surrounded him was something possibly…other? He was still trying to work out the details as much as he was trying to just get the nine-hells back to the group.
A tingle at the corners of his mind then, like a spark, replacing the fright he should have felt at the movement and bells. He could smell the lavender soap of his time-lost bride that was religiously used in her hair as a scene flashed briefly, as fast as whatever subterranean creature here with him had moved. For the smallest of seconds he was laying in bed, sun from a cottage bay window warming Molly and his wife, her head resting just beneath his nose.
“Well, enough o’ that. Yer thinkin’ yer the only one who can jingle in the dark? What was that, bells?” Molly said, grinning at the darkness, the glow from his ring reflecting off his fangs. He shook his head a bit to let the soothing and unrhythmic tinkles from his horn trinkets cascade and reverberate off the tunnel walls around him. “Ya could at least be polite and introduce yerself, I promise I wont bite…hard,” He chortled, and laughed to himself in the absolute total expanse of seeming nothingness.
He heard a growl from somewhere off in the distance, then a moment later a silhouette stood at the edges of his light, and Molly, knowing he was being stared at, glared back with narrowed eyes in reply, the softest faint of yellow from the stranger’s meeting his own devil-red. Taking a step closer towards the figure- it vanished! Then came sounds of stomping footsteps, like a floppy gait and accompanied bells jingling as a horrible laugh rang out.
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHA,” came the throaty and hoarse laugh from ahead of him as the figure clomped and long-step ran away? Molly could still feel the warmth of the memory- head on his chest mixed with the sun, the smell of lavender soap still filled his senses as he decided it was definitely a trap, this was definitely a clown, and he was absolutely going to give chase.
He ran towards the inhuman laughter and sound of bells, making the velvet suit he wore work overtime to not rip a hem as he leaped over rocks, rounding corners, having to grab onto walls edges to keep from crashing as he made sharp turns, following, following, getting ever closer, a small opening in the a wall of rock made him slide on his hip under and when he stood up to continue the chase the laughter seemed to have just dropped off the face of Nona. Molly took a moment to lean against the cavern wall, not needing a break but rather quieting his breathing so he could focus his ears, his hunter's instinct taking over. He realized not only was his blood up, but it was getting that familiar burning which made him grin, baring his teeth and fangs to the darkness. They were still somewhere down here with him.
As slow breathes entered his nostrils and even slower and quieter exhales came from parted purple lips, sounds reached his ears, accompanied by a pinprick of light. He sighed. “Well, if ya were just gonna lead me somewhere, then why all the chasing, ya bastard…if this suit gets ripped, I’m billin’ the Good Sister Josephine, and I guarantee she’ll be comin’ to collect it from yer hide…” Molly growled playfully to the black nothing as he sauntered slowly and deliberate towards the light and sounds. He was really taking his time, not out of caution, but he wanted to test the patience of the thing… and he was not disappointed when the light and music came rushing to meet him after a minute. Molly hid his grin. He could feel the…something? clown? watching him very closely from somewhere out in the darkness. Why was it so curious?
In an instant before him was a light spectacle so blinding he had to cover his eyes for a moment after spending so long straining them to see by the glow of only his ring. The music was familiar, but wrong. He had heard it before at his time in the carnival, sounds from one of those calliope machines, but even a machine had more heart than this did; it seemed without a soul, or warmth, or joy. Just empty whistle noises and other sounds, a sad imitation of the thing used to welcome people in for a night of fun. When he finally unshielded his eyes, a giant structure lay before him. Light bulbs attached to the outside of a giant arc that was shaped like a large mouth with a tongue for stairs leading into it. Giant letters jutting out of the top of the brilliantly lit structure read Funhouse of Mirrors and the building was painted sickly green, silver, orange, and yellow on the outside. Molly was so insulted, he wanted to vomit.
“This is the most wretched excuse fer an attraction I have ever seen. I mean, come on… all this pomp and fer what, to jus’ give poor ole Molly a headache-”
“WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM?!” roared a coarse and harsh voice from behind him, followed by that same horrendous laughter. “Is the dead peacock too good to play with me?” came the voice again, dripping with sneer and venom. Molly spun around to see… a clown. A very ugly clown, at that. It’s silvery suit and fuzzy poms for buttons, made the make-up and bright orange hair with those yellow eyes…it just seem kind of fucked up to Molly. It was crouched like a frog on a rock, the metallic suit reflecting the marquee lights from the funhouse.
Molly rolled his eyes. “Well, enough o’ this, jus’ who are ya supposed ta be being then?” Molly asked, because it felt like the clown wanted him to.
At this the clown lit up, and Molly knew he was about to get some sort of show, some payment whether wanted or not for giving even the slightest interest to this…creature. The showman Tiefling sighed a sad sigh as the clown started dancing a little jig and laughing that laugh that Molly felt should send shivers down his spine, but instead he remembered lavender soap and the laughter of his raven-hair wife, and tried to push the smile from the corners of his own beautiful lips.
“Why meeee?” said the clown gleefully, “I’m Pennywise the dancing clown!” it exclaimed, and shook its whole body in exaltation to itself. Then its smile that seemed more like the mask of one faded, and its brow furrowed, the entire countenance of its face and posture changing, becoming aggressive in its limpness and cocked head. Those yellow eyes stared with vile hatred at Molly. “I’m going to eat your pretty fucking face, I’m going to slurp the meat of off your bones, and alllll the rest of you who came into MY home! One. By. One. You will fear me! All of you will fear me, and then I’m going to rip you open and drink the wine from your fucking veins, you pathetic fucking excuse for a devil-”
“If I go into here, will ya stop talking?” Molly asked, having enough of being berated by someone who smelled like a sewer. He did not wait for an answer as he stepped up on the tongue shaped stairs, and entered into the mouth of the funhouse. Behind him he heard a roar that sounded more like an animal, and then the laughter and the dancing of bells. Molly shook his head, and continued on.
Mirrors were everywhere, which he had expected by the name of the place. Leaving the maze of the underground tunnels, he had entered a new labyrinth filled with his reflection, and he took the time to check out how his ass looked in his new velvet pants, lifting up his jacket to get a better look. There were no lights, but his ring shone bright in the interior of the house of mirrors, and he got a great look from all angles, then gave himself a nod of approval and winked at his reflection before moving on.
It had been less than a minute and he almost tripped and fell into a grave fit for a Mollymauk, even the horns cut out for emphasis to show this was made for him, and as the moonlight radiating from his wedding band gave him light he could see it went on forever downwards.
“Right…bit on the nose, but alright, jus’ let me step over that. Ok,” He said to his reflections as he took a large stride over the small chasm. He saw one of the reflections of him out of the corner of his eye not moving with the others and kept staring at him as he bypassed it completely without a care. He pretended not to notice and instead got lost in sweet memories of a life never lived, with a woman he left in time, in a cottage that he never lived in. Games of flirtatious chase around the house, and meals made together, over the best of wines they made as a family.
His next encounter came after another minute in the labyrinth of reflections, he passed a mirror with the hanged man from the cellar. “Hey Molly, want a drink?” the man asked, and for a moment, the Lavender-skinned Devil felt pulled into the mirror a bit, atop the hill with the man, feeling like he was also hanging upside down as a bottle was passed to him.
Molly thought of better days of never-was, making the best wine the Abbey had ever produced, stomping grapes, and taste testing with his wife and father-in-law, the giant's hearty laughter of approval as he tasted the latest batch. Then he found himself back amongst the mirrors, the upside-down man in the mirror hissed and Pennywise’s voice came from all around him.
“You’ll fear me you LITTLE WRETCH! You PEACOCKING BITCH! I’ll eat you like all the others, I like my meat with a pretty color and some art on it, or maybe I’ll make my own robe out of YOUR SKIN!” The voice boomed as the mirrors shook.
“...Fer an Arbiter’s fuckin’ sake…” Molly said under his breath and shook his head a little, putting his pinky in his ear to clear out the ache a bit and smiled as his horn trinkets gave their jingle. He straightened up, his blood burning, but keeping his cool not to do anything brash before he knew where his friends were, and where he was. He kept moving, because it seemed the only thing to do.
He wandered for what seemed like more than ten minutes before he saw something odd in one of the mirrors. It was Ash, he was sure of it, and he raced to the mirror that seemed like a window giving him a view of her sitting at the table. Her head was resting in her arms, a bottle in one hand and she was weeping. Molly could not help but feel a pang of guilt. He wanted to reach out and touch the mirror, but chose not to, instead just forcing himself watching her cry the lonely cry of grief for what he assumed was him. From behind her a shadow loomed, big and shaped like pennywise but their mouth was impossibly wide, with razor sharp teeth, the monstrous clown laughed and as his beloved turned in a shriek she was chomped down on, a large chunk of her neck and shoulder ripped from her body, as blood sprayed across the mirror.
Molly almost yelled in terror at the scene, but before he could, he saw a different image in his mind…one of Ash sleeping, resting in bed. Molly lowered his head to smell a new shock of black hair between two tiny stubs of horns as he held a newborn sleeping baby against his criss-cross scars on his bare chest. A baby girl, their baby girl…and they had named her ‘Jester’, with emerald green eyes like her mother. Molly was singing to the new babe “...Have no fear, have no fear cause yer Da is here...” over and over in a soft lilting song-voice of cooing.
Back in the Funhouse of Mirrors, a tear fell from the Hunter’s crimson eyes, a tear of joy, and love, he felt full and complete in that moment, holding onto a memory he did not own for himself or deserve, but he still had it. Not looking back at the mirror, Molly walked away- until a giant mirror crashed down in front of him. Larger than the whole building, it stood before him. A giant Pennywise was glowering at him, massive needled teeth inside a massive unhinged jaw, dripping with blood and saliva. Two towering yellow eyes of the mountain monstrosity staring at him accusingly and with vehement hatred and loathing.
Molly strode up to it, still feeling the warmth of a sleeping baby pressed against his chest and his lullaby in his mind. “Ya know, ya big spooky bastard, yer an absolutely terrible clown, but yer an even worse showman. Know yer audience, cause I have ta admit… I’m not even sure yer real… and If ya really wanted ta scare me, I think ya’d have tried a little harder. Frankly, I’m insulted ta have even humored yer ugly ass even fer a moment…Just felt bad really…but ya didn’t even put any effort in…ya gave me absolutely nothing to believe in, not when I be havin’ so much already ta put ole Molly's faith in. I’m sorry, sad clown, ” Molly said with a resigned sigh and walked through the last monumental mirror as Pennywise roared so loud everything shattered around them, including the illusion.
Molly looked around at the straight line of cavern path in front of him, put his hands on his hips, smiled to himself, then continued on out of there, humming a lullaby for his daughter who never existed.
“I’m bored,” Dr. McNinja said, his eyes weary but his mannerisms casual. “I’m going down the route that says Very Scary.”
Peter looked at Doc pensively. “Are you absolutely sure you wanna go down the Very Scary route?”
“Hell yeah. Maybe I’ll finally get to punch that scary clown.”
“Do you really wanna?”
“Yeah. Don’t you?”
“No.”
“That’s set then! Let’s get down that Very Scary route.”
Peter sighed and started trudging along with Doc, who gleefully skipped down the Very Scary route.
It was about five minutes after descending down the Very Scary tunnel that Doc finally stopped for a second. This tunnel was going for quite a while. He sighed and turned around.
“Hey, Pete, how you doing?”
But Peter was gone. Dr. McNinja clicked his tongue irritably.
“Oh, come on, one rule in a horror setting. You stick together. How many times do I gotta say-”
There was a loud crackle behind him. Dr. McNinja spun in place, drawing his katana in a single swift motion. He could hear… circus music. Oh good. The clown was near.
“What,” something within the circus music mumbled deep within Dr. McNinja’s mind, “is your fear?”
Dr. McNinja groaned and sheathed his sword. “Oh, so it’s like a riddle thing. Um.”
Doc feigned a thoughtful expression. “I’m afraid of unexpected pickles. You know, when you’re eating a perfectly good sandwich and suddenly you crunch and it’s brine. Ugh. Not a fan.”
It was hard to parse what happened next. Doc would later recall it happened in something of this order: he was tackled from behind by an individual he knew without knowing was Dr. Hans Leon. Daisy was behind him, cheering him on. Then there was his family: his mother, his father, his old ward Gordito, all of them stabbing him with various daggers and other sharp objects. Count Dracula reared his ugly head and slashed at Doc’s shoulder. King Radical appeared and jammed a fist into Doc’s stomach, nearly causing Doc to vomit.
But then they were all gone - just hallucinations. And facing McNinja was none other than him.
Peter.
“Let me guess,” Doc mumbled, “You’re a hallucination and you vant to drink my blood.”
“No, no,” Peter grinned, “I’m a hallucination and I vant to kill you.”
“Whatever, monster thing,” Doc snarled, drawing his blade, “Let’s boogie.”
***
Peter watched McNinja with unease.
“Hey, Doc,” the vampire said, “Why are you staring at me like that?”
Dr. McNinja winced. “You’re a monster. I should’ve killed you months ago.”
“I- what?”
“Vampires are just blood-sucking monsters,” Dr. McNinja continued, approaching with a hostile glare, “And you are a danger to everybody. I never should have trusted you.”
“That’s not you,” Peter said, backing up, “You don’t really think that.”
“Whatever, monster thing,” Doc snarled, drawing his blade, “Let’s boogie.”
Peter gulped. Okay, this thing was probably another hallucination. That meant that this evil Doc couldn’t hurt-
Peter instinctively leaned out of the way as Doc slashed at him with the katana.
“Doc!” Peter yelled, “You almost cut my head off!”
***
“You almost cut my head off,” Peter said with a cocky smirk, leaning out of the way.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m working on it,” Doc grunted, sweeping at halluci-Pete’s legs.
Peter deftly jumped over the kick and landed a strong punch on Doc’s jaw. Doc recoiled slightly, but he used his backward momentum to retreat into a backflip. As he did, he flung two frozen shamrocks at halluci-Peter, who hissed loudly as the sharp projectiles thudded into him.
Odd that the projectiles didn’t just pass through the hallucination.
“That hurt,” Peter hissed, pulling out the shamrocks.
“It’s supposed to,” Doc quipped, charging in.
***
“That hurt!” Peter yelped, pulling out the shamrocks.
“It’s supposed to,” Doc snarled, charging in.
Peter vaulted over Doc’s shoulders, but Doc was too quick. The tip of the blade nicked Peter’s ankle, causing the vampire to hiss in pain. The nurse landed behind Doc, grunting slightly. With his great strength, the vampire then spun around and palm struck the doctor in the back.
Dr. McNinja flew back, landing hard against the wall. But it was moments until the doctor recovered, kicking off the wall in a whirl of flashing steel.
“Please don’t do this, Doc!” Peter yelled at the hallucination of Doc.
***
“Please don’t do this, Doc,” Peter hissed.
“Gotta beat you up or something to get out,” Doc replied.
The doctor stopped himself mid-air, landing deftly on one foot. The tip of the blade stopped inches away from Peter’s neck.
Peter snarled at him. But something already seemed… fishy. Dr. McNinja brandished his sword, but watched Peter’s hostile form with apprehension.
“Why’d you say please?” Dr. McNinja asked.
***
“Why’d you say please?” Dr. McNinja roared in fury.
Peter watched him warily. “I dunno. ‘Cause you’re my friend?”
***
“‘Cause you’re my friend,” Peter cackled, flashing his fangs.
Dr. McNinja approached Peter slowly. Peter watched him, crouched, brandishing his talons, but not moving either.
***
Peter watched carefully. Something was wrong. Dr. McNinja was slowly approaching with his blade, as if to stab him… gently? That’s not a thing. Peter watched the blade approach his cheek, resisting the urge to swat it away.
***
Dr. McNinja gently poked Peter’s cheek with his finger.
And with that, the illusion seemed to shimmer. Peter’s hostile expression relaxed and then tensed again into a look of concern. Peter, in turn, no longer saw Dr. McNinja’s blade, but correctly perceived it was, in fact, Doc’s soft finger.
“Oh,” Doc said, with widened eyes, “Oh my goodness.”
“Yeah,” Pete replied, “I’ll say.”
“It was the real you I was fighting.”
Pete rubbed his eyes to rub away the lingering illusion. “You called me a monster.”
“I thought you were the clown!” Doc snapped impatiently, “I thought you were the clown looking like my good friend Peter who I’d never hurt.”
“Unless I went into a blood craze.”
Doc hesitated. “Yes, unless you went into a blood craze. But you’re not! Everything’s cool. Let’s keep going.”
Peter shivered and rubbed his arm, where the shamrocks had landed. “That did hurt.”
“Sorry. But you did also hit me pretty hard.”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“S’cool. Let’s save it for the clown, eh?”
Doc patted Peter on the back and the pair started moving down the tunnel again.
Step by step, Lieutenant Columbo trudged down the long, dark, damp tunnel.
Perhaps splashed would have been more accurate of a term. The water rose steadily, creeping up his body inch by inch—an icy chill seeping into his bones with it, the intensity of the sensation nearly suffocating him.
It reached his waist and the scruffy-haired detective braced himself for the inevitable plunge, but instead, the rising tide... abruptly retreated, falling away like a hazy mist before his very eyes. And from that mist emerged the warm details of his house back in Arcadia, taunting him with their plain familiarity in such an unfamiliar situation.
Suddenly, the detective found that his feet were firmly back on solid, dry ground, albeit stumbling from his astonishment.
Columbo blinked rapidly, drawing a hand over his eyes, pressing the flat of his hand to his forehead as if he might be checking for fever. He couldn't believe it. It was the strangest thing, like wading through a dream while being rudely reminded of reality—the sharp, acrid scent of damp stone mingling with the mouthwatering aroma of a homemade mayonnaise and olive oil sandwich and something meatier, spicier, faintly wafting from... the kitchen. The kitchen across from the entryway he now stood in, past the living room.
Yes, that was it, Columbo thought to himself, turning to scrutinize the kitchen with furrowed brows. The kitchen, in his house, with its simple wooden cabinets and cracked tile floor.
A quite voluptuous woman, somewhat shorter than him but with sleek black tresses pulled tight into a perfect bun atop her head, was bustling about the kitchen when she caught sight of him stumbling in through the doorway.
Mrs. Columbo, the love of his life.
As soon as she saw him, she pivoted on one foot with a broad grin tugging at her lips, the playful glimmer in her eyes dancing and twinkling under the warm glow of the kitchen lights. Her loving gaze took in his soggy state, the strained wrinkles of a hard day's work upon his face, and she expertly maneuvered around the kitchen island to greet him.
"Darling!" Mrs. Columbo called out affectionately, her delicate arms already outstretched for an embrace that was long overdue. "Oh, where have you been? Were you caught in the rain?"
But Columbo sidestepped just in the nick of time to avoid her canoodling. He was still half-soaked, his once beige raincoat now a dark, dripping mahogany and his pant legs dangling and heavy with absorbed moisture. Looking down at her shoes, he grimaced. "Ah, sweetheart, I've only been gone a little while. And you'll hafta forgive me, but I wouldn’t want to spoil those new shoes of yours. They're Italian leather, ain’t they?”
This remark earned a warm chuckle from Mrs. Columbo.
"Don't you worry about me, darling! It'll take a lot more than some water to ruin these shoes," she chuckled, her laugh seeming small and perfectly ordinary amidst the soft backdrop of their little slice of suburbia—a far cry from the cavernous echoes of the gloomy tunnel he'd just stepped through.
She went for another hug, her arms reaching for him like vines, eager to wrap him up.
"Ah, now, honey," Columbo began, deliberately wriggling out of his wife's reach. He skated around her, wandering into the living room, his rumpled appearance fitting almost like a puzzle piece into the surrounding coziness of their tidy carpet and homely furniture, he slid into the scene of domesticity so well. His dark brown eyes scrutinized everything, acutely aware of how... perfect everything seemed to be. It was familiar, and yet so distant at the same time.
"There’s something..." he murmured, turning left, then right, then left again.
Columbo's voice trailed off. His eyes darted around, attempting to locate the source of the subtle discomfort gnawing at his steel trap of a mind. Something just wasn't right—the newspaper folded neatly on his favorite sitting chair, a brand new box of his favorite cigars waiting on the coffee table, the lampshade with its distinct dent from one of the kids hitting it with a football... all in place, just as he would've expected.
And yet, a distinct pang of unease nudged at the detective subtly, nagging at the furthest edges of his consciousness. He traced the slightly peeling floral-patterned wallpaper with his still-damp fingers, not yet fully trusting the appearance of his own living room.
His gaze finally settled on Mrs. Columbo, the discomfort in his warm brown eyes giving way to a veiled seriousness. From the sound of laughter carrying in from the front window to the neighborhood kids visible just through the lacy scalloped curtain, chasing each other on their flashy bikes up and down the pavement... Everything was a little too spot-on, including his wife's loving smile.
"The kids," Columbo began, his tobacco-roughened voice an octave lower than usual. "They still at school?"
Mrs. Columbo cocked her head, appearing mildly puzzled at the gravity of his manner, but nodded. "They must be, dear. It is a Monday, after all,” she replied easily, the sound of her voice briefly melting away his discomfort, grounding him in this... intimately familiar, yet undeniably alien scenery.
"Mmm." A noncommittal hum grumbled at the back of Columbo's throat, his acknowledgment more of a broody afterthought than anything. Giving his wife a final keen-eyed glance, he completed his circuit around the living room. The flaps of his drenched coat hung around his legs, flapping wetly as he did so.
His fingers steepled together, Columbo tilted his head slightly in contemplation. Yet, before he could ponder more on the... positively eerie perfection and the strange sense of disconnect plaguing him, a hearty, inviting aroma wafted his way.
The detective's head perked up like a hound on the scent. The kitchen, he remembered suddenly. Mrs. Columbo had been cooking something, and it seemed she'd decided to return to the task. His interest decidedly piqued, the detective promptly followed the scent trail to Mrs. Columbo bustling about their family kitchen, her hips swaying along with the soft, tinny tune purring out from the little radio next to their can opener; both devices equally integral to the cooking process in the Columbo household.
"What's cooking, sweetheart?" Columbo asked, his voice holding a casual thread of interest.
With a rhythmic stir of her wooden spoon and a quick taste test of whatever simmering concoction she had on top of the stove, Mrs. Columbo laughed—a high-pitched and sweet sound that Columbo's ears simply never tired of. "Chili, dear. Your favorite."
Now that was surprising.
Columbo looked around at her in a rush, his brows furrowing even as an amused glint sparkled in his brown eyes. He planted his hands on his hips, a theatrical scowl spreading across his lips. "I thought you wanted me off the chili, honey, because of my—what was it, now—my cholesterol? Doctor didn't like the looks of things, last time I was in."
Not that he'd turn down a good bowl of chili.
A chuckle left Mrs. Columbo as she smiled at him, throwing a sly wink his way. "Oh, that won't be a concern for much longer, darling."
What an odd thing to say. Columbo was about to try and untangle her cryptic words when the shrill ring of the landline sliced through the cozy atmosphere of the kitchen, snagging bother of their attention. With quick, clattering steps over the tile, Mrs. Columbo veered towards the counter, sweeping up the receiver in one fluid motion.
She'd be occupied for a while, Columbo imagined. Breathing in deeply, the detective turned his attention to the bubbling pot of chili on the stove. The succulent scent of slow-cooked meat mingled with the fiery kick of chili powder and red beans, all laced with the tangy sweetness of tomatoes. It was a mouthwateringly rich smell, spicy and full-bodied, just the way he liked it—Mrs. Columbo could cook one mean pot of chili, that was for sure.
But beneath it all, there lingered a smell... one that was at odds with the domesticity of the scene, and yet... familiar, in a lot of ways.
The coppery scent was sweet, almost metallic, and stirred a deep-seated memory within Columbo's mind—hundreds of crime scenes, each one a bleak narrative soaked through with blood, desperation and terror. But was he just imagining it? The detective's brow crinkled, and he gave an unconscious shake of his head. Surely he was. Maybe he’d been working too much lately.
Lt. Columbo's meandering perusal was abruptly cut short when Mrs. Columbo issued a sharp, horrified gasp. All thoughts of the unsettlingly coppery scent were quickly banished from his thoughts as he swung around, just in time to see her grip on the landline tighten, knuckles going white and creaking around the hard plastic, her face draining of all color. A perfectly cinematic moment of agony, like something out of a movie.
Her voice came out in a whisper, choked with emotion as she stared at him with unseeing eyes. "It's the children... an accident."
The words hung in the air like a heavy weight. Lt. Columbo stiffened, instantly alert, hot blood roaring in his ears. His wife's hand flew up to her mouth as a strangled whimper broke free, her eyes stretched wide with terror, mirroring his own.
And Columbo's concern got the better of him, his questions coming out in a rushed torrent. "What is it? What’s happened?" he blurted out, each question more desperate than the last, but Mrs. Columbo was already in a flurry of panicked motion, her coat clutched close as she dashed for the front door. Columbo, in his drenched raincoat and untied shoelaces, scampered close at her heels—concern morphing into panic with each passing second.
The door swung open, revealing a sight that froze the blood inside Columbo's veins, and time seemed to stutter to a standstill.
Their quiet, well-trimmed lawn was a grisly diorama of horror—their children lay motionless on the grass and front walk. Eerily silent, sprawled out like puppets with their strings cut. Crimson pooled around their tiny bodies, the sickeningly metallic smell masking the idyll of the suburban night. Yellow police tape fluttered in the chill wind, casting dancing red-blue shadows from the flashing beacon of the patrol car parked on the curb.
And just like that, the world shrunk down to the point of a needle as terror clawed at Columbo, the stark reality of the nightmare in front of him a physical blow—his children were dead. His heartbeat pounded in his ears, each throb echoing with a raw, unspeakable dread that gutted him utterly.
His children were dead. His children were dead. His children were—
But as he stood, petrified by the terrible scene that stretched before him, a silvery thread of... realization began to weave itself within the detective's mind. A recollection of that peculiar smell entwined with his favorite chili. His wife's odd words. The uncanny perfection of their home.
None of it felt right.
None of it felt real.
Gradually, Columbo's world expanded again, and a nightmare within a dream became... a shuddering realization. Despite every nerve in his body screaming at him to rush forward, Columbo took a steady half-step back from the door, the gears in his mind whirring with dependable, impervious logic.
With slowly dawning disbelief, the heavy shroud of mind-numbing shock began to lift, and Columbo realized the truth—he was still in the tunnels. This was not his reality. This was not his home. And those were not his children, dead on the sidewalk.
Deeply-rooted resolve steadying his shaken core, Lt. Columbo pulled the door shut. It creaked on its hinges and swung closed, cutting off the macabre spectacle from his sight. Then, he drew in a shallow, bracing breath, and turned to face the entity that wore his wife's face.
He could see the panic etched into those familiar features, those beautiful eyes glistening bright with tears—a sight that threatened to shatter his heart into a million itty bitty pieces. She sputtered incredulously, staring at him in mingled shock, disbelief and anger. "What... what are you doing?! The children—"
His gaze met hers, the same warmth and affection he felt for his actual wife surprisingly present in his eyes—but the words that left his lips were frank, steady, and firm. "Nothing to be worried about, sweetheart."
Then, Lt. Columbo turned away from her, walking back into the living room, his footfalls feeling uncharacteristically heavy.
Out the corner of his eye, the detective noticed her following him— seemingly forgetting the door altogether, something his wife would never do if their children were out there, dead on the sidewalk. The air grew tense as the entity tracked him with a silent, cat-like grace—balanced on the balls of her feet, her eyes never straying far from him.
The hairs at the back of Columbo's neck prickled, lifting. Deep down, he knew he would have to confront this entity head-on, no matter how unnervingly it mirrored his wife.
For a while, he simply... let the suspense chew up the space between them, his usual tactic. Then, drawing up short in the living room, Columbo locked eyes with the entity. His fingers toyed with a cigar from the pocket of his stained raincoat, fumbling over it in familiar patterns, an effort to quiet his nerves.
"...you know," he said, conversationally, slowly bringing the cigar to his lips, tucking it into the corner of his mouth. His words slurred just a little around it. "The chili isn't the only detail you got wrong. Oh, you had me really goin' for a while, no doubt, but..."
The entity froze up, outraged befuddlement twisting its features. Those eyes he loved so much narrowed, a tinge of unease creeping in. Columbo kept his composure, finishing his sentence with a heavy sigh, "My wife... well, y'see, when I get home, she always greets me by name at the door.”
A frown of confusion crossed the entity's face.
"What do you mean, darling?" It asked, and the voice coming from her lips was eerily accurate, Columbo had to admire that... only he was more disgusted than anything.
Lt. Columbo shrugged, allowing a soft, fake chuckle to slip through, his tone calculatedly nonchalant. "Ah, it's nothin', really. Just a small observation, ya know. But, sweetheart," he straightened up, tilting his head a little as he looked her dead in the eye. "It's just that if you really are Mrs. Columbo, you would... well, you'd address me by name, like always. Ain't that right? So go on, say my name.”
He began to saunter backward, subtly allowing his steps to guide him toward the warmth and simmering sounds of the kitchen. His familiarity with that part of the house gave him enough room to breathe, to calculate, and to strategize.
His wife seemed to grow more agitated by the second, her eyes flashing with a momentary yet violent fury underneath the veil of confused disbelief.
"What are you talking about, dear? Of course it's me. Are you feeling well?" the creature's voice filled the room—a terrifying cocktail of exasperation, bewilderment, and an ever-so-subtle undercurrent of... of threat laden underneath.
Columbo thought he could almost hear the hollow echo of the tunnel walls around them, then, creating an unsettling dissonance between her sharp, agitated words and the cadence of his steady breathing.
Slipping back inside the kitchen, Columbo sidled up to the simmering pot on the stovetop. One faintly trembling hand reached out, lifting the lid—its underside glazed with thick, glistening condensation. Beads of moisture dripped down, hissing as they hit the hot metal of the pot. Columbo paused, inhaling a deep lungful of the swirling aroma of spices, meat, and something much darker—a smell that no one could mistake. Underneath all that good cooking was the coppery-sweet scent of something he was all too familiar with.
Bringing his gaze to focus on the bubbling chili, a faint shiver of revulsion coiled in Columbo's gut at what was staring back up at him, there in depths of the pot. Partially obscured by a mound of brown beans was a rather gruesome ingredient—a clouded, gory eyeball, a knot of stringy nerves still clinging to it, simmering atop the red sauce. A cracked molar rested nearby, swirling amidst the slurry, knocking up against the jutting shape of a severed index finger like a kayak amidst rapids.
The police detective's stomach lurched, and he quickly replaced the lid with a rough clatter, grimacing. "I see you've been trying out a new recipe, sweetheart," he attempted to joke, the words acidic on his tongue. He dared a glance over his shoulder, spinning around, the familiar words tumbling from his lips, “But there’s just one more thing—”
But as his words echoed throughout the increasingly shadowy semi-darkness of their homely kitchen, the lieutenant found himself swallowed in a chilling realization. The entity, this monster masquerading as his wife, was just inside the kitchen, closing the distance between them. It stood well within striking range, roughly three feet away now—the stunning likeness of Mrs. Columbo contorting as the false facade was slowly eviscerated and broken down under the brunt of reality.
A predatory tilt emerged in the entity's demeanor as it slooooowly cocked its head to the side, considering him. Something animalistic, hungry rippling beneath its surface, ready to claw free at any moment.
Soft, lilting words slid past the thin veneer of its disguise, a cruel mockery of his love's voice. "What's that, darling?"
Lt. Columbo's cholesterol-riddled heart thudded madly in his chest, like a drum signaling danger. The blood in his veins raced to the beat, shrieking at him to flee. But he couldn't, not yet. His mind whirled like a roulette wheel, spinning through tactics and carefully posed questions, straining against impossible odds. He couldn't, he couldn't, he couldn't.
Instead, he turned back to face the creature masquerading as his beloved wife, its every movement, its every breath a twisted mockery of the woman he cherished. The woman who loved him. The woman who was waiting for him to come home. Maybe with a steaming pot of chili. Maybe not.
"Well, isn’t it about time for ‘Crime Alert’ hour, sweetheart? You never miss it on the TV," Columbo quipped, one corner of his mouth pulling up in a crooked smile.
It was the wrong thing to say, or maybe just the right thing. As if triggered by his words, the creature convulsed, face rippling and contorting as something monstrous broke free from beneath its skin. It lunged with startling speed, its mandible dislocating impossibly as an abyssal cavern of needle-like teeth ripped wide open—wicked and terrifying, easily the worst thing he'd ever seen in all his years, and it was flying right at him.
But Columbo did not freeze. He didn't break a sweat or let the terror freeze him, either. Instead, he acted, grasping for the handles of the sizzling chili pot, the scorching heat searing at his fingertips—
He turned just in time, the creature's shriek piercing his ears as he delivered a solid swing, the boiling hot chili pot flying towards that bared, ghastly maw.
I could not for the life of me understand the caliber of the men, women, and whatevers that were standing down this monster with me. With three routes to the demon clown, very clearly labelled, the ‘not scary at all’ route was a complete and utter no-brainer. While heading down the sane, safe, and not at all dangerous route, I was only joined by a few, In particular the good detective who had a perceptive head on his shoulders, and my always-helpful companion Trevor. Everyone else had apparently disappeared…
Well, it was time to pass the time, so as we walked, I tried telling an old story - a bit distracting, but given this thing was all about terrifying us, maybe distraction’d be a good thing here? Something other than the weird shapes in the firelight, or the fetid stench of the old, half-eaten sewers.
“So, a while back, I knew this king.” I add nonchalantly. “Had this whole test set up for anyone who wanted to take his daughter’s hand in marriage. He’d tell each prospective husband to choose between two doors. One lead to his daughter. The other lead to a ferocious tiger.”
I Stopped for the sake of showmanship, giving a slight chuckle as I recall the adventure. “Of course, the guy who actually won his daughter’s hand in marriage, was the guy who refused, and told him he wasn’t an idiot, ‘cause…uh…”
My grin faded, not just because the room had filled with darkness, or because I hadn’t heard Shinku’s or Colombo’s voices in some time - those were terrifying things, and they were the main source of my kneecaps shaking themselves out of their sockets right now.
“‘C-c-cause…”
“Go on, Brass old buddy. Finish the story.”
I spun on my heel as the scene seemed to re-arrange itself. There was no way back I could see now, and the way forward seemed to stretch on forever. I’d have recognized that voice, those fruity, husky tones. A charismatic, honeyed tone that commanded and charmed in equal measure.
Wilfred Honeypot’s chiselled features stood behind me, one hand on a sword as long as he was tall, and the other around a familiar, ritualistic knife.
I Swallowed.
“What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue~?” The Vampire teased, showing his fangs. “I figured you’d have a solution to that if anyone did, buddy.”
The answer to the riddle laid at the tip of my tongue, as I stuttered.
“Cause, both of the entrances h-had a t-t-tiger. Th-the right answer’d be n-not to g-go at all.”
Wilfred gave a booming laugh, the one I’d known for a couple years, as he slowly walked forward, and my look turned to one of disgust as it briefly overwhelmed my fear.
“Don’t!” I Spat with a glare. “You’re not him!”
“Brass, you’re kinda being mean, girl. I didn’t mean to scare ya. Just looking for a hug.”
Gods, this was wrong on so many levels. The vampire had contained no trace of my old friend before it was being puppeteered by a killer clown-thing, but it was very, very convincing, and the pale-face that once contained so much warmth still scared me to my core. Instinctively, I clutched at my side, at a gash across the body that was no longer there.
But it’s memory remained, and the suffocating fear of it still held my feet like quicksand, as he came closer. Clammy hands caressed my cheek, as he got within inches of my face.
“Brass, buddy, relax. I’ve protected you for years. We’ve fought all sorts of things together. I’d never hurt you. Just as long as you behave for me.”
I gulped, trying my best to move, but my legs didn’t, as he put another hand on my shoulder… My mind couldn’t take him coming back as all my mind could come up with to do was whimper. His grip strength was insane, worse than i remembered, as I felt like a building was suddenly holding me down.
Wilfred gave me a smile, grinning ear to ear, and his fangs shone even through the darkness. The image struck me like a bucket of ice water, and every muscle in my body tensed as I struck out instinctively. Couldn’t move when he was holding me down, but I didn’t have to, as a cloud of spores reached out in hunger, instinctively attacking my attacker as spores caught onto his hand.
Something was definitely wrong and I was reminded, briefly, that this was an illusion, as the hand seemed to just phase out of reality, but I was a little too focused on running to question that, as I promptly turned a hundred and eighty degrees and ran as fast as I could in the other direction with a high-pitched scream.
The wisdom of my decision was questionable as I heard Wilfred’s throaty chuckle behind me, and I threw myself deeper into the mossy tunnel. By now, it had become more nature than artificial, the stinking tunnels drying out further in, tree roots and Dirt digging into a cave that had to have been here for hundreds of years… even a couple dismal sources of light her and there, a couple rays of the sun shining in from above.
I got ready to run straight on through and into the next tunnel, but something stopped me as I ran into the next tunnel, and saw Wilfred’s shining plate armor in front of me.
“Brass, brass… why on earth did you think that would work?”
I gulped. Right. Wilfred’s armor. Adamantine, with runes of teleportation. Light as hell and more than capable of letting him blink around an area at will.
I tried to skid to a halt, to avoid running into him, but my feet caught on an unfortunate rock, and I Tumbled forward instead, slamming ass first into his greaves in an impact that left a couple bruises, As I tried to stagger back.
Instinct saved me more than anything as I brought my quarterstaff up, the black wood slamming against Wilfred’s greatsword as Cracks developed along the surface.
“You’re really just prolonging the inevitable.” Wilfred taunted, as he pulled his blade back out of my old weapon, and the stave shattered, sending wood shrapnel everywhere and forcing me to shield my eyes. “You know how this song and dance is gonna end, Brass. We’re completely alone here. And you’re going to die, alone.
My breathing grew ragged, as a boot slammed into my gut, and I was sent flying into the nearby wall. Pain, of the concussive sort, wracked my body as I hit a nice, jagged group of rocks, and I heard Wilfred lick his lips like he was admiring an ice cream.
I groaned as I clutched my chest.
“You weren’t a good adventurer, you’re a pretty shitty hero, you sucked at being an investigator, but you do look like a delicious meal.” Wilfred taunted, and I recoiled in horror as I realized my situation.
Something bumped into my hand, though. The seed, still hidden under my armor.
“...what’s that?” Wilfred asked in a very un-Wilfredy tone, even if he still wore the voice like a suit. Something about it woke me up.
The Seed. The sign. The charge I’d been given.
I clutched something else with my other arm.
“...Not alone.” I snapped back.
“Do you see anyone else here?” Wilfred replied, and suddenly, amidst all the bluster, I could see the truth.
I was a druid of Silvanus. I represented nature in it’s purest form. The earth itself, and this thing was no part of that nature. Compared to me, a mortal, it was godlike in powers, but in scope, it was some sort of fucked-up nightmare eater. It didn’t know as a god did, it didn’t think as a god did, and it served no purpose to the world as a god did.
But more than anything, it was alone, and it didn’t understand what a god did.
I reached for a stick of some kind with my other hand, and to my surprise and luck, I found one… just next to the corpse of someone less fortunate. any long length of wood became something deadly in a druid’s hands, so the old walking stick of Willow I found rotting in the old guy’s skeletal fingers would do… and I’d just avoid looking at the owner ‘till I wasn’t busy summoning my courage.
“I Don’t have to!” I shot back. “You wouldn’t know, ‘cause you’re no worshipper of shit, but I subscribe to a higher calling, and she’s pretty good at givin’ me spell slots to prove she’s payin’ attention. And while you might be right about me - I might be a shitty hero, or investigator. Hell, I’m probably a bad friend!”
I swung the length of woods straight for Wilfred’s face, and his blade came up with a neat deflection, slapping the strike away… and leaving him open for the cloud of fungus I released on his face, the vampire hissing.
“But I’m a damn good Druid!” I yelled out, before taking a dagger-sized piece of my shattered old quarterstaff, putting every bit of druidic power I could on short notice, and putting it all in the point of my improvised stake. Letting out a howl of rage like I had barbarian training, I stabbed with all my might, pushing the stake through the plate, Past the ribs, and directly into Wilfred’s black heart…
Only for him to poof, his last expression one of surprise.
Bloodied, ragged, and exhausted. But I was alive. I placed a groaning hand on some of my stab-wounds - luckily, my armor had deflected the worst of it. I was bleeding, but I wasn’t in danger.
“Right. Time to go find the others. Ask if they’ve got some gauze. Or a healing spell. I’d really prefer the latter, honestly.” I babbled, stumbling forward. I had a ridiculous grin on my face despite everything. It had been a long time since I’d gotten anything close to a straight win…
Though, I looked down to the seed in my jacket, as I stumbled forward. “Thanks, little buddy.” I said quietly, in case the others were close by and might think me crazy for talking to my jacket pocket.
For what felt like a long time, Aster just stood there, staring up at the ridiculously scrawled words over each of the tunnels. In any other situation, it might have been enough to rattle her. Or, well, rattle her a lot more than it was doing right now. In that moment, though, she was already too far gone and just completely over everything that was going on for it to really get to her. It was more annoying than frightening.
Whether that would keep holding out was anyone's guess.
Eventually she let out a shaky sigh, her body not quite up to par with her mind's level of 'fuck this and everything about it', as she looked down. Obviously, everything about this was supposed to be scary. That was how the clown intended it, at any rate. Hell, there was every chance that this choice didn't even matter at all, and every tunnel would lead to the exact same fucking place in the end, so...
"Fuck this..." she eventually grumbled under her breath, and quickly shuffled forward into the middle tunnel.
She squinted in the dark as she went, not really wanting to bother getting her phone back out just yet. Besides...the sheath on her back hadn't stopped glowing for a while now, and the glow from it was more than enough to see by, for now. Thank goodness for sharp nightvision.
It didn't exactly help with some things, though. The water flooding the tunnel was still as icy cold and black as it had ever been, casting most of the tunnel into a virtually impenetrable murk up to her chest. It was even worse when the slimy, slick stones out of sight proved to be loose, sending her stumbling and splashing haplessly into the special cave soup.
"I am going to need like a dozen showers after I get out of here," she mumbled to herself, spitting out a mouthful of the disgusting cavern ooze as she futilely ran a hand over her face to push her fur out of her eyes.
The surprise that came when, only moments later, the floor of the tunnel seemed to miraculously tilt upward, rising on a steady incline. Within only moments she had trudged up and out of the muck, her boots leaving heavy wet prints in amid the clear trail of slimy soup and cave water in her wake as she tromped forward onto mercifully dry ground. Mostly.
She took a long moment to shake and wring herself as dry as she could manage, in the still frustratingly damp cavern air, while slowly trudging half-blindly forward. She only took vague notice of the sound of her boots going from crunching and grinding over loose stone and gravel to the shifting, rustling crunch squelch of small sticks and wet grass, and it wasn't until the stray, scraggly limb of a tree scraped at her face that she paid full attention to her surroundings again.
"What...in the world...?" She gazed around blankly, taking in the scene at hand.
Mist swirled in pale gray streamers through the air, drifting lazily and almost serenely in semitransparent curtains, casting everything into a vague haze, thickening into dense gray-white fog as it clung close to the ground and boiled in impenetrably opaque walls in the distance. Trees loomed large and dark around her, leaving an impassable fence just a short hop behind her, any trace of where she'd come from completely lost. The wind sighed and groaned through the limbs and boughs, scattering leaves and twigs to flutter weakly down to the sodden earth, vanishing into the carpet of murky fog.
"Okay...this is different..." Aster's breath, as she let it out, misted in stark white vapor before her. She shivered against the chill, tugging one hand out of her jacket to quickly zip it up. "I'll give you a point for this one, clown...wasn't expecting you to pull this out of your back pocket..."
Steeling herself as best she could, she trudged forward resolutely. The ground was hidden under at least a foot of gently swirling off-white ground-clouds, but thankfully it seemed to be mercifully clear of any obstructions. An occasional tangled knot of slippery grass or weeds, fallen sticks or jumbled pebbles were her only concerns, all easily worked around.
She was stopped in her tracks by the sound of water. Softly churning and lapping around the old, half-rotting timbers of a dock jutting out into the icy green-black water of...a lake? Aster squinted out into the mist and fog, trying to make out what it was, but it was impossible to tell. It stretched on and on and on, in all directions away from the shoreline before vanishing into the fog.
"What in the world?" Aster murmured. "This...is starting to seem really familiar, somehow..." It was nagging at the back of her mind. Something about this entire scene was just begging to be recognized, and not in a pleasant way. Like a nightmare or something, just barely there at the back of her mind and struggling to remain firmly balanced right on the point of fading into obscurity but remaining tantalizingly within recall.
Kinda pissed her off, honestly.
The sign that was hovering there, just barely out of easy sight in the mist, would probably clue her in, but... A quick glance down at the rickety-ass boards of the dock made her seriously question whether that was such a bright idea.
She wasn't exactly known for her brilliant ideas, though.
The boards creaked worryingly underfoot as she stepped out off of solid ground. One step after another, squinting through the gloom and trying to make out the words on the sign. The thing looked positively ancient, the wood warping and the paint on the lettering having all but completely faded or peeled off. In the dim, misty lighting it was hard to see much of anything clearly.
"Welcome to... Camp—" Before she could read much more, a board snapped into a cloud of rot and splinters under her, sending her toppling down to one knee with a supremely undignified and childish yelp. "....gah...fucking thing. I knew it..."
As she struggled to pull herself free of her predicament, working as delicately as she could to not send more of the decrepit wood falling to pieces around her, she was quickly stopped dead as something came to her realization. The sheath on her back had begun to glow again -- or rather, it had never really stopped, but now it was slowly starting to glow brighter. She'd managed to piece it together by now that it started doing that when some absolutely horrible, just really awful nightmarish fuckshit was about to get unceremoniously dumped all over her.
As she finally managed to pull herself free of the crumbling wood just in time for the rest of the plank, and several of its nearest neighbors, to splinter apart and go tumbling into the murky sludge below. They splashed once, disappearing beneath the mist and water...and then it returned to unnatural stillness.
"For the love of Terrance..." Aster groaned, just sitting there to catch her breath. The thought of dropping into that nasty mess, all mud and slimy-ass lake water and splinters and nails...eurgh. Made her skin crawl, her stomach churn, and her brain send little phantom gremlins with red-hot poking knives all up and down her spine. No thanks.
"Hey!" a sharp voice suddenly called out from behind her, as the wavering light of a dim lantern came hovering out of the mist. The heavy tread of boots was soon to follow, quickly stomping over the damp ground toward her. "Who's there?"
Aster tensed up, quickly scrambling halfway up to her feet, but a lance of pain up her leg gave her second thoughts about going the rest of the way. Probably nothing sprained or the like, she desperately hoped, but something didn't feel right. Knowing her luck, probably a splinter the size of a dinner fork lodged somewhere she couldn't really look for right at that moment.
A humanoid figure came swimming out of the mist, a lantern held high in one hand. The dim haze of flickering flame, combined with the swirling mist, almost made them seem like a mirage at first, as Aster blinked several times to try and dispel the potential illusion. It was...a woman, that much Aster could make out for sure. She was tall — taller than Aster, by at least a good half foot. Her clothes were ragged, faded and tattered in the way that only stubborn survival could do. Heavily worn and scuffed boots, fraying and tattered but still mostly intact jeans that might have once been blue but were now only a faded gray-black color. A rugged leather belt just beginning to crack on its surface from age and wear, but not yet ready to fall apart. A tattered light green-blue shirt, a few holes here and there doing precious little to hide the absolutely immaculate body beneath it — the words 'sculpted like a god' flashed through Aster's mind, and it was almost painfully hard to tear her eyes away before she became enraptured or started drooling like an absolute freak.
"Oh..." Aster whispered to herself, her tail involuntarily drooping down to rest against her legs.
Finish the mystery woman off with a knee-length leather coat, fraying and ragged at its hem, sleeves and collar, and it was...certainly an imposing sight. Either someone insane or desperate enough to wear something in such poor condition, or else someone who had been wearing — and surviving in — it for so long that it was in worse condition than they were. The number of scars in varying states of freshness that could be made out here and there, along with the steely and unflinching gaze in her pale gray-blue eyes, seemed to strongly suggest the latter.
"...oh..." Aster gulped, probably rather audibly. "...oh sweet Terry, help me..." she mumbled.
The newcomer, seeming to have heard her, leaned forward slightly. "You alright there?" The lanternlight glinted off her eyes, casting them in a warm, golden amber glow. "Heard the crash a bit ago; you fall through the docks or something?"
"I-I, uh..." Aster stammered, trying to regain her completely shattered composure. "Yeah. Fine. I am." She winced, pointedly looking down. "Probably just pulled something, or got a few cuts or—"
"Uh-huh..." the mystery woman's tone was unreadable. "So you don't need any help, then?"
Aster's head snapped up. "W-Well, uh..." She coughed, clearing her throat. "Maybe not...need," she said weakly. "But...definitely appreciated..."
"Hmm. Right. Can you walk?"
"I...think so." Aster winced again as she tried to get herself up and standing again. It was mostly successful, in that at least she was on her feet again, though even trying to take a step sent her awkwardly back down to one knee with a pained hiss, despite her best efforts to mask it.
"Never really had to deal with gettin' hurt too much, huh?" The other woman sighed heavily. "Alright. Hold onto your butt, girl." And without further prompting or warning, she stepped forward and hefted Aster up with one arm, slinging her unceremoniously over one shoulder with all the apparent effort of hefting a sack of potatoes.
It made the wolf ever more thankful for her fur to hide the furious wave of red blush that she was sure went racing over her face. And also her current predicament, to hopefully make the surprised squeaking yelp seem like a noise of pain as she involuntarily squirmed around from the unexpected manhandling.
"Simmer down, now," the woman grunted. "Don't wanna drop ya."
"R-Right, uh..." Aster stammered.
"Name's Jaye."
"...th-thanks, Jaye..." the wolf mumbled. "I, uh...I'm Aster."
Jaye just cracked a grin. "Don't mention it, girl," she said, almost pointedly not actually bothering to use Aster's name. "Out here in a place like this, can't really just leave someone to fend for themselves, now can you?" Her eyes glittered as they fixed on the distant sign, flickering red-orange in the dim glow of her lantern.
Welcome to Camp Crystal Lake
"Who knows who or what might find 'em?" And she turned away, her heavy stride quickly carrying her away from the water's edge and back into the mists. "I don't have much, but should be able to at least get you walkin' again so you can keep on to wherever you were goin."
"Ah...yeah, thanks..." Aster mumbled. At this point she was almost too ashamed to admit it was probably just some bruise or something, and not actually anything serious. Given a few minutes to grin and bear it, she'd probably have been fine, but...
uncomfortable sexually-charged hypnosis and/or sexual abuse (collar/pet restraint, heavy groping, coercing to action with promises of sex), blood, brief mention of full-frontal nudity, body horror/transformation, way too many god damn teeth
Aster couldn't tell you if she had just dozed off somehow, or if she had simply completely lost track of what was going on for a minute. All she could tell you was that she was suddenly alert at the sound of creaking floorboards, shortly before she was rather not so gently deposited on a chair she was sure was comfortable at some point in its past. Probably.
She gave a soft groan, rubbing at one of her eyes.
"Tough it out, now, girl," Jaye's voice cut through the mental fog, as a gloved hand roughly patted her head. "Don't go anywhere; I'll be right back." Then the heavy tread stomped out of the room and by the time Aster finally cracked open her eyes, she was alone.
"Terry's sake..." she mumbled. "I must be more out of it than I thought... This place is really takin' it out of me." It was true, she definitely was exhausted. More than she thought she'd be, after just a few nights without much restful sleep. Pulling an all-nighter definitely hadn't helped anything, but...it still didn't quite feel—
She shivered slightly, as something in her head ached. Against better judgement, she struggled up to stand, fumbling the oversized sheath off her back to use as a support. With it as a makeshift crutch to take some of the weight off of her aching everything — why did she hurt so badly, anyway? — she slowly limped around the room she had been left in to get a look at where she'd ended up.
In her tired mind several things were reeling around, now that she had been mercifully spared from the attraction of the mysterious lady appearing out of the fog and being almost everything she wanted and needed right now. There was something really, really wrong about all of this right now, that she had been too flabbergasted and confused at first to really put her mind into trying to figure out. The whole foggy lakeshore thing, the unexpected guest.
....and where was everyone else?
"We were all together, in that cavern, before we started splitting up to go down those tunnels..." she muttered, brows furrowing. She had been so focused on trying not to wind up looking completely stupid in front of anyone else, or doing something useless like drowning in subterranean cave soup, that she didn't even have a clue when everyone else had even disappeared at all. They weren't here now, though.
She came to a halt, in front of a window, peering out into the misty gloom. Despite the atmosphere of things out there, the sight of what she could make out didn't...actually look that bad. A covered wooden porch stretched out to either side as far as she could see, steps descending down to a lawn with a gravel path running through it. Distantly, at the edge of seeing before the world was swallowed in fog again, there was a tree standing tall and barren of leaves, an old wood and rope swing still hanging from one branch and creaking softly in the breeze.
Somehow it struck a familiar chord in her. She couldn't really place why, but—
"Didn't I tell you not to move?" Jaye's voice suddenly spoke up, from almost directly behind her.
It nearly made the poor jump out of her fur. When she'd left just a minute ago, the floorboards and her heavy tread had made a very clear indicator of where she was. Aster hadn't heard so much as a single creak though, and now she could practically feel Jaye's presence hovering right behind her.
"S-Sorry, I just— Wait, why was she apologizing? She hadn't really done anything wrong. Sure, walking around probably wasn't doing her any favors right now, but still.
Jaye just sighed. "Whatever...doesn't really matter. Let's just get you taken care of."
"Oh...y-yeah, thanks for your—" There was a sudden, cold tightness around Aster's neck, and the distinctive click of some kind of lock or clasp or buckle or something being fastened. "—h-help...?" she trailed off, trying to process what was happening.
In the dim reflection in the window in front of her, as her eyes slowly drifted over, Aster noticed several things very quickly. The bundle of looped chain-leash Jay held looped in one fist, attached the heavy leather and iron collar now clamped around her own neck. Her other hand held the haft of an old, battered axe, both its blade and the flat backside of its axehead marred with old rust and bloodstains. And lastly. that Jaye's eyes were no longer the soothing, steely blue-gray that had so entranced her at first; a dull, burning red-orange now gleamed back at her through the reflection, as a smile slowly curled up at the corners of her mouth.
"Don't you worry, now, girl," she said, voice laden with an entirely new tone. Different from the stern, almost gruff but well-meaning voice she had initially greeted Aster with at the docks. "Even if you don't listen when I ask nicely...it's alright. I'll still take care of you, just like I said. Get you all fixed up and ready." There was something new now, hidden in her words and tone, that sent electric shivers and jolts tingling up and down Aster's spine and made her head feel foggy and dizzy and her knees feel weak.
She crept closer, until she pressed close against the by now trembling wolf, the looped chain in her hand curling and coiling up further into her grasp almost as if alive, rapidly taking up almost every last bit of slack. "You don't need to worry about a thing." Aster's head was tugged back, eliciting a half-choked noise somewhere between a wheezing agreement and a gasping cough of pained surprise. Jaye's chin came to rest on the wolf girl's shoulder, her breath wafting over the side of her face. "Jaye's gonna make all your problems go away." It was suffocatingly warm and hot, ripe with the sickly smell of rotting meat and death, but with Aster so lost to her current mental haze, all she noticed was the warmth wafting through her still-sodden fur even as her subconscious mind registered the wrongness of the whole thing as the absolutely rank scent assaulting her stole her breath away and made a silent retch bubble up from somewhere in her stomach.
"I just need you to do one thing for me, first," she all but whispered, turning her head so that her lips brushed against her captive prey's ear as she spoke up. With a heavy thunk the axe in her hand was embedded in the window frame, her newly freed hand coming to gently brush her gloved fingertips along Aster's chin, down her neck, and then slowly drift down her chest, the delicate motion ripping apart the wolf girl's jacket as if tearing it apart with so many wicked claws, leaving thin droplets and flecks of blood to run down and stain her fur. "Drop it."
Aster's spine went stiff, and her vision went hazy. Every bit of conscious thought she still had left protested, her claws trembling as they clutched at the sheath still half supporting her. A sudden feeling of hot, moist wetness as Jaye's tongue snaked out, unnaturally long and flexile as it slithered a long, slimy caress along the side of Aster's neck sent whatever resistance was left in her body into hibernation. Her hands started to go slack, her eyes glazing over as she almost unconsciously leaned back against the strange woman.
"Thaaaaaat's right..." Jaye whispered, her gloved hand slipping down lower...and lower....inch....by inch.... "All you need to do...is just let it go. Do that, and what happens next will be...much nicer for you."
Aster just nodded weakly, a faint whispering buzzing in her head as a series of increasingly lascivious images flashed across her sight. And her hands went fully limp, the sheath slipping through her claws and falling to the floor with a loud clattering.
"Good girl," Jaye all but purred, the room suddenly seeming to go deathly silent. "You dumb bitch."
Aster's breath nearly stopped as the collar around her throat was pulled — and pulled hard. She was quite literally pulled off her feet, left dangling a good foot or more in the air as Jaye — or whoever she really was, hoisted her up into the air, where she dangled and slowly spun not unlike a piñata, both hands weakly clutching and grasping at the collar threatening to choke her out then and there.
"So easy to read, Fifi," Jaye chided coldly, wrenching the bloody hatchet from the wall to rest lightly on her other shoulder. "Like an open book." She chortled, eyes twinkling and flashing in a red-yellow-orange kaleidoscope. "Did you really think you were going to get a 'happy end' down here? After everything that you've seen and been through? There's nothing 'happy' about this. But you might just get that 'end' you were so looking forward to."
Aster's vision had started to go dark, her eyes watering as her breath failed her. It was still hard to fight back, much as she might try. Without any leverage to speak of, not to mention how much her everything still hurt and how quickly her strength was deserting her, all she could do was awkwardly kick and claw at her captor. It did about as much good as trying to break down a brick wall with a child's toy hammer.
Jaye laughed. A chilling, terrible sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once, ringing and echoing in bubbling and chaotic bursts. The lights in the room flickered and sputtered, flashing dizzying cascades of shadow and illumination around the room which made Aster's eyes ache.
One of the lights flared to life, shining a pale silvery light around the room. As its radiance fell upon the discarded sheath laying on the ground...the intricate designs upon it flared to life, a blue glow steadily crawling along its length until it bathed both Aster and Jaye in its soft glow.
Jaye hissed and recoiled, the bundled chain falling from her hand as her arm came up to shield her eyes and she staggered back. "That...thing! How?!" she howled, swinging her axe around wildly.
Aster crashed to the floor with a heavy thud, air rushing back into her lungs as the spell was broken. Her mind was reeling and swimming, as the overpowering heat and smell of sickly sweet, nauseating rot assaulted her in all-consuming waves. Struggling to breath, she rolled over onto her hands and knees and desperately grabbed at the sheath, clutching it close to her body as she forced herself up onto shaking legs and broke into a staggering, stumbling run.
She recognized this place, now. Her grandparents' old vacation home. Grandma had always been fond of keeping some strange things around, though at that moment Aster was never more glad that among those oddities were moon globes. Real, genuine moonlight in the palm of your hand. She had always made fun of her grandma for buying into something so obviously fake...and it had just saved her life. How or why she was here right now, she had no idea, but she didn't really care. There were more important things to worry about.
Like, for one: how the fuck to get out of here. Even knowing where she was, it wasn't a place Aster remembered very well. Hadn't been there in years at this point, and her last trip hadn't exactly been a pleasant one.
As she staggered around a corner, she came face to fake tits with the thing calling itself Jaye. Resisting the little corner of her mind that had been — and somewhat still was — more than a little enticed and distracted by whatever had been promised in Jaye's machinations and seeming hypnosis, Aster forced herself to look away from the object of rapture and stagger back several steps, lifting her head to look—
......her blood ran cold.
There stood Jaye, or at least the thing that had been calling itself Jaye. Now with a decaying, weathered old hockey mask over her face. The bloody hatched was clutched in one hand, and a very familiar machete was held in the other. Behind the mask, her eyes were cast in dark hazel and amber, flickering and flashing with dark and angry red-orange light from within.
The wolf felt her breath catch in her throat, as her legs threatened to give way under her. A fresh pain blossomed in the side of her neck, a searing line of white-hot agony blossoming down her chest, as fresh blood slowly flowed over the blade of the machete. A bloody, hacking cough escaped Aster's mouth as her entire body convulsed. Her heart hammered and pounded in her chest so hard it hurt, feeling like it was sure to literally burst at any second.
It was all she could do to back away, her breathing ragged and bloody and the phantom, remembered pain of her last (and thankfully, only) actual in the flesh encounter with Jason Voorhees now playing out in her mind all over again.
She felt hot, moist breath waft over her from behind as she slowly trudged backward, and with jerking movements she slowly turned her head to look back over her shoulder.
There was Jaye again. Stripped utterly stark naked this time, showing every last inch of the immaculate, sculpted, scarred body that had been crafted to torment the wolf with. Beads of swat poured off of her, blood dripping slightly from her scars, as she panted and heaved hungrily. Her eyes flashed and shone with pulsating yellow-orange, her mouth stretching open far too wide with an impossible number of teeth, her sickeningly long tongue hanging down past her chin and onto her breasts. A guttering glow of orange roaring from the back of her throat, sputtering and flickering as she spoke without words.
"This is what you wanted, isn't it?" The tone was mocking, each word hitting like a hammer blow against Aster's already reeling psyche. It made her head throb, and something else throb for attention in spite of the rampant terror coursing through her system. "Well c'mere. Let mama Jaye eat you up. I'll make it aaaall go away!" And with a shrieking, howling noise she pounced forward, fingers splitting and pouring steaming-hot blood as her nails lengthened into flesh-tearing claws and talons.
Aster yelped and cursed, throwing herself down and to the side in an awkward stumbling roll. Jaye-wise's claws sank into the floorboards with a twin explosion of splinters and plumes of dust and the stink of rotting meat.
As she staggered away, Aster could hear the lumbering footfalls of Jaye-son set off in pursuit of her. It made her panic rise fresh in her throat, as she stumbled over the spooling length of chain still trailing from the heavy collar clamped around her neck.
She hit a staircase at the closest she could manage to a dead run, limping and stumbling up them as fast as her aching body would carry her. The railing, as she touched it, was slick and slimy, as if someone had spit and slobbered all over it. The floorboards squished and squelched under her feet, every breath she took coming back in with the overpowering smell of rot and hot, wet breath.
Chh chh chh....ahh ahh ahh....
She reached the top of the stairs, and nearly had her head taken off by a wildly swinging machete. As it was, Jaye-son's gloved fist simply clipped her head, sending her spinning and drunkenly stumbling into the wall. She sunk down it on her knees, trying to will the stars from her vision, even as she could both feel and hear the nigh-bestial, predatory approach of Jaye-wise tearing the stairs apart.
Instinctively, she flung herself forward as Jaye-son's hatchet turned the top of the stairs into splinters, and the machete carved a gash through the nearby wall that tore a huge chunk out of it. Stumbling forward, Aster spied a potential escape at the end of the hall. A window. It wasn't the best idea, but it was an idea. And she'd take being cut to hell by glass and dealing with a rough fall over a nice rousing game of fuck, murder, eat with the two things chasing her. She had no idea which order they would come in, and only one of them would be any kind of pleasant.
God dammit why'd they have to be so hot while simultaneously being the incarnation of her worst nightmares?!
Every lightbulb she stumble-ran past flickered and burst in showers of sparks. Every doorway rattled in its frame and burst open to reveal rows of grinding, sawing teeth. Every floorboard squished and bowed under her like a living, quivering thing of meat rather than house. The windows almost seemed to blink, their frames grinding and crushing together to form slavering maws as she raced past. The entire house was turning from an unpleasant memory to a nightmarish, hungry thing, hot on her heels and desperate to have her for dinner.
She made it to the final window just in time for Jay-wise to catch up, her mouth now split wide into a slavering maw full of a dizzying number of needle like stabbing, grinding and crushing teeth. She had grown in size and adopted a far less appealing form. Dropping to all fours, limbs shifting and twisting into angles that would snap a human's bones; something between a wolf's digitigrade stride and the spindly, multidirectional splaying of an insect's legs. Even on all fours, her unnatural posture and increased size saw the slavering void yawning behind her teeth still hovering at Aster's head height.
A chilling presence burst from the wall to Aster's left, as the gloved hand of Jaye-son grasped the length of chain on her collar, and yanked the wolf back, wrapping an arm around her. The shrieking form of Jaye-wise lurched forward in a thundering rush, and hit them with the force of a runaway truck. The wall and window behind them exploded, sending a shower of blood, meat, wood, stone and glass out into the mist and fog.
Aster's world turned to spinning stars and blackness, and whether it was three seconds or three hours she couldn't tell you, before she was sprinting madly away. Fresh cuts had blossomed over her body, bits of glass and stone and wood splinters littering her fur as blood trickled down from who could even say how many fresh wounds. She had no idea how much of it was real and how much was just the grand clown lord of nightmares fucking with her to slow her down and make her easy prey.
All she knew was that he could SUCK IT, because she was still alive and breathing. Well, desperately gasping for what little breath she could get, but it still counts! Just had to hope that no one else had fallen prey to....to whatever that had been....
The brooding hunter stepped forward into the center tunnel, wanting neither of the specialized paths that supposedly had a different end. He felt it would be all the same, though truthfully he felt tired of it all. His eyes were puffy, swollen, and dark from the past few nights, nonstop nightmares and turning over in his sleep. Each time, his father and Vergil taunted him, whispered darkness directly into his mind that he could hear them even if he had been deaf.
It felt different this time.
The fog rolled in and he turned to see that he had already been separated from the group, alone as the darkness began to scratch and pry itself from every corner of his mind.
"Why don't you just give up already Jesse, before you disappoint yourself, and everyone else here."
Vergil's voice echoed through the mist in a demeaning, mocking tone.
"What have you dont to even help those here, sleep and eat their food while the detectives do the real work? Are you waiting until someone tell you to shoot at something?"
Jesse gritted his teeth, clasping a hand around the shotgun on his chest before hesitating and relaxing his grip. "And what if I am. Don't remember asking for your opinion of how I should do things."
"Oh son, you are far more delusional that even the most subservient of thralls. It's a shame that you won't let us give you the true power."
"Like you did Vergil? I know this is all some messed up image in my mind. I saw what you did to him."
"And here I was able to save him. He was not strong enough, not strong like you. But certainly had a bit more thoughts in his head. Hasn't had a tinge of regret since he properly turned, right Vergil?"
"Of course sir, how could I not realize how much more you have to give then your son? I just wish we could see what the gauntlet could do with coupled with such power..."
"Come on out, if you really are there, and I'll put you in the ground again. Father or not."
The silence hung as still as the thick fog, until a shape formed out of the mist. With a quick flick and draw, Jesse emptied all six shots of his electric revolver, watching as the figure shook and eventually fell. He stepped forward with narrowed eyes as they fell upon the feminine figure.
"Shit... it's not real Jesse, snap out of it..." The man spoke to himself as he closed his eyes, though the vivid image of Emilia's corpse. The holes in her chest and hanging jaw brought a sickness to his stomach that he could not hold down. He balanced with his hands on his knees as he heaved and spat out that day's nourishment.
"Thought you stronger than that son. She was unimportant anyways."
"She had more loyalty than any cracked up government advisor did, and she is the only reason why we were able to keep you alive so long. Should have listened to her and put you down before things went to shit."
"Yet here you are, babbling and struggling alongside these folk and lying to them that you can protect them. You've seen our power, Jesse, and we've only grown since you defeated Felicity. You've no chance to stop anything now. You'll end up just as I did after the war, crippled and worthless as stronger beings took their rightful place. You know I care for you, son. You only need to trust me."
"I don't care what you are, I am getting to the bottom of this, and I'm gonna shove this barrel so far down whatever throat you have and have you taste the gunpowder before I pull the trigger. Then I'm gonna beat the ever living shit out of you."
The voice seemed to drop its facade.
"Then come, Jesse Rentier. Face your death and join your father in feeding the worms in the dirt. Hope that you have a quicker and more graceful end than he."
"Gladly." The hunter stepped forward with more courage and resolve than any time before this, headstrong to defeat this foe.
