The abandoned house in front of her was vivid the way she had seen in her dream. The blood stains and the bluish grey hue of the room, she was brought directly into the setting in the same way she had been inside her dream. With a slight turn of her head, and she had been summoned into this room.
"Hmm... looks interesting." She quietly spoke to herself while holding onto her wound, uncertain of how much longer she could hold on. With the past month in mind, she had slowly but surely somehow gotten out of her patience in handling pain and wounds, which now resulted in a major disadvantage. Her scapels cluntched tightly around her fingers as she took a closer look around the room.
"The vase... the table... bed... closet... bookshelve. Everything looks to be in an order which is exactly copying my dream." Her thoughts turned around, but her mind didn't scream the way it would have if she found herself in this type of situation in an usual time. Her mind slowly opened itself to the blood hunger as she stared at her own hands.
It won't hurt to kill another... I am already in the list of names for murders who kill just anyone. So... might as well go and hunt a few more right now... if it turns advantageous for my side too. A smirk settled against her face as she tried to click open her inventory one last time.
After several tries, she eventually accepted defeat and threw her scapels to the ground while holding just one, her hair clip still equiped in the other hand. The vent cap had small wide gaps that allowed her to send a scapel through and inside, using it to slowly twist open the screws. At this point, she couldn't tell how many were there and whether she could reach all of them from her place.
Her fingers ached with the way she had curved them just so she could reach the screw with her scapel first, tracing the edges with the instrument, then slowly using the sharp edge to twist the screw out of its place. This was the part that took her most time and most energy to complete, where each one took about a minute minimum to take out.
Slowly, she reached the fourth screw and it fell to the ground with a click and a clatter, making sounds that guaranteed the maniac's attention by now. Using her elbow to push open the rest of the cap, she crawled out of the side wall and stretched her right hand. That was painful... and loud.
Her eyes immediately diverted towards the door as she observed for a very frustratingly long time, and eventually settled with the most oblivious of all decisions to break the vase on the table. Then, as if it were not enough, she kicked the table's leg as the entire furniture collapsed into stray pieces and caused a lot of noise. The maniac, who was around that time walking around the basement, suddenly got drawn to the sounds coming from the second floor, first bedroom to the right.
His angry stomping could be heard, and a short while of running up the stairs, a complete success in plans despite it being the most dangerous. At her hand rested the two pieces of sharp equipment as she broke the cabinet door with her elbow and threw the books while flinging the torn pages into the air like a kid. Her hand then reached the drawers of the bookshelve, and she immediately pulled them out, broke them into plain planks of rusted, decomposing wood.
The floor turned into a mess as her own blood splattered against the floor and printed steps onto the pages scattered against the ground. There was an enjoyment in her expression as she ripped apart more and more of the furnitures, knowing that the maniac was likely to enter in a short while anyway, so I might as well enjoy it the moment I have gotten myself to do so.
The door knob clicked as the keys immediately turned at a very quickening pace, as her hands finally reached towards the mattress. Now... for the grand finale... She spoke into her mind as her sharp instruments stabbed against the fabric and ripped at a diagonal cut. Then, dropping the scapel and hair clip onto the broken table, she used her hands to pick up the feathers that were embedded into the mattress, just the moment the door flung open.
"What is going on in here?!" The maniac in a sheep mask walked in as he stared with disbelieve at the flying feathers everywhere, at an invisible epicentre of a person who stood there just seconds ago, but somehow not anymore visible to the eyes. "Who was in here?!" He immediately looked towards the fallen ventilation cap and an anger rose inside of him, then his eyes fell to the shattered vase and the broken furnitures.
His steps lifted towards the bookshelve in a stomping manner, thinking the person might be behind the bookshelve, hiding away due to fear now lasting inside of them. "You think you can hide after you have done all of this?! Who do you think you are dealing with?! This house is infested with beasts who would like to chew on your meat and they all work under my rule!" He shouted with a laugh as he stopped a little short from the shadowed corner.
"Come on kid... you would make a good subject for my next experiment!" He bent over to slowly creep the person behind the bookshelve, probably holding their breath and waiting to be caught... but surprisingly, no one was there, no one was hiding in this room who wanted to stay away from the maniac. A shock settled against his face and hands as he trembled in place with the very thought in mind whether he had captured some sort of ghost soul by any chance.
"Stop playing tricks on me! You can't outsmart me!" He shouted while stumbling backwards in fear as his sheep mask felt suffocating, but he couldn't take it off knowing how the victim wasn't a third class player who could be dealt with this early on. To be able to take on them, would take huge determination and calculation while also absolutely no fear about being haunted.
"Did you say... I can't outsmart you?" The voice of a young girl echoed at his ears as he straighted himself. "Then how... did I manage to make you gain a fear against me?" She smiled while walking away with her heels clicking loudly against the ground. Paranoid, the maniac took a very long time to turn about and look for the person, but the simple eye gaps restricted his vision to only the front view at most.
"Who the hell... was that?!" His voice shoke as he glanced back and forth, wrecking this mind, trying to figure something out. But since the person is still practically hiding... she must be slightly afraid to directly face me... The realization sent a motivation up his mind as his steps quickly lifted towards the next room.
Meanwhile, Aefia had jumped down from the second floor directly towards the ground as she reached her hands towards the basement door. Finally... I am out of the first cage. She thought to herself as her steps quickened down the steel stairs, interacting with multiple hanging dead bodies tied to the ceiling, flesh torn and their torn hand ligaments being the only hook to hold the rest of the body up from the floor.
That's... gruesome... She slowly diverted her eyes from there just for a second while also feeling a chilly gaze against her bloodied back. Her view turned back immediately towards the dead bodies... one was seemingly missing. Steps were heard from the far side of the ice-cold room and her curiousity reached further into her mind. I guess I have no choice.
Her hands felt the surface of a cold metal and glass body inside her pocket as she pulled it out and her blood stained fingers turned the surface almost unreadable. The ticking of the clock has completely stopped, or even slowed down to a point where even the second hand moved like an hour hand. So... this is more like a dungeon?! She questioned herself and put away the watch and glanced back up.
The dead body was back in its place... but she wasn't locked in enough to take that matter into her hand. The last time I checked... time moved slightly slower inside the unknown worldly dungeon... almost the same way it is at this area. So put it into a direct answer... I am indeed inside a dungeon and I just need to complete it to get out. Added to that, I was dumb to not have considered into mind that I could have been dealing with beasts until now.
Her hands reached back into her pocket and dropped the metallic watch as she faced towards the end of the stairs and descended it. Shortly afterwards, a sound reached her from behind as her fingers wrapped tightly against the scapel at her hand and flung it across the air with full speed. The fast movement made pain erupt at her side as she breathed heavily with narrowed eyes.
Her vision scanned the entire room, then finally landing at the source of the sound and the absolutely disturbing sight of a huge head with absurdly thin body that lightly supported the weight of the huge skull. Hollows replacing eyes and the mouth sewed to a close, hands with six fingers in each and skin the colour of bones, stood still at the end of the room with a creepy expression that didn't feel scary to her.
Her ignorance caused the beast to growl loudly as it immediately dissolved into the air, and appeared right behind her with its hands reaching out to somewhat inspect her hair and it's silvering ends. She continued moving, despite having full knowledge that the monster was behind her, her attention stayed stuck towards descending the next pair of steps.
It was expected she would be facing useless monsters who were going to drain her energy over the passing time while she has only got a short amount that she would be able to use before eventually falling unconscious. I still have a reservoir of his healing energy left... which I can't use around here. So I will have to find the lore of this dungeon and then immediately return to the present world to heal myself and walk back to the palace. And that was also when a writing on the wall caught her eyes, which was painted in bright red.
"The eyeless hobo says to surrender your eyes."
My eyes? She questioned herself as she stared at the writing with her expressionless face. Was it supposed to scare me or something? Because the way it has been written... the monster just wants to try and install fear inside me where I have already grown used to this sort of problems... thanks to the subway and the abandoned hospital of course.
Yeah... at this checkpoint... I was expecting some sort of thing to happen in this a surely quiet area and this seems to be my starting... now... where is that 'eyeless hobo'? Dancing while being dead? She looked forward and noticed a brightly lit room where colourful playing lights were illuminated, alongside a nursery rhyme of 'ring around the rosies'. She has grown used to it with the excessive desire of watching horror movies about kids becoming ghosts, and this was definitely a few of the 'warnings' that most characters would ignore, leading to their deaths.
I am not falling for it. She thought to herself while watching an approaching figure and walked towards it. A torn hoodie and the usual hollows replacing eyes, the man seemed to be holding a knife at his side while his eyes bleeding in the form of tears. But along side the sight, the monster who followed here there, raised a hand against the back of her hand as it shrieked loudly to alert someone or something.
Calmly, she held the claw reaching towards her and spun the weightless body in the air while throwing it to the ground with his head hitting the floor with a loud thud that ehoced across the walkway. Sensing this, the hobo immediately ran towards her with his fingers stretching out towards her eyes, but with a single arm movement, the hands dangled at the edge due to a piece of flesh to hold them both up.
Then, spinning the blade between her fingers, she threw it into the hobo's forehead with a stab, and the sound of skull cracking rang along the fallen monster's ears. It tried to get up to support the hobo, but her shoes had already pressed down on its skull, as her other feet fell onto it to crush it. Blood spewed against the walls as she wiped the blade clean with a fling. "That there... is the power of anything sharp." She smiled while walking forward with bloodied heels.
"And that movement... was sharp too." A familiar voice spoke that raised anger among her veins as her mind turned towards the watchman with the same bloody look as her. Her eyes narrowed into a fierce stare as she gritted her teeth and told in place. "I am sorry if I have seemed to wrongly dragged you into this place... but I have proper reasons... and you were the one who followed me." He continued speaking.
"I didn't follow you... you lured me into this mess. Your reason... must be reasonable as you said." Aefia spoke in a low voice as she opened the door to a dimly lit chamber and pulled out a crowbar from inside. "Otherwise... I will end you the way I just killed these few beasts here." Holding it over her shoulder she walked past him with almost no acknowledgement of what he wants to say.
"I had to lure you in because I needed help getting my children out. And I couldn't do it if someone else didn't come along to help me." He caught up behind her and spoke out with calm eyes. "I know it might result in someone's death, but I am counting on someone as powerful as you to release them! That's my only wish as a single father!"
For a second, Aefia stopped to listen while turning around with widened eyes. Her mouth moved multiple times, but no words left them. "What if... you suddenly came to realize your father was trapped away from you?" The man asked. It was an intriguing question that she didn't want to answer.