"This shit is driving me crazy!" Annabelle howled out. "We've been stuck in this place for days! Days! How the fuck can a manor be this big?! It has an endless number of rooms and corridors. No matter how many we clear, there's just no end to them!"
"How many times do I have to tell you? The arrays enclosing the manor are distorting space and time." Jules sighed for the nth time. He'd been repeating the same thing like a broken record for the past few days whenever his sister was about to blow up. "We've been wandering for a week, but I bet it hasn't even been five minutes outside."
"How the heck can you be so sure of that?!" Annabelle finally snapped.
"Because, otherwise, Cains and Reyes would have long barged inside. No matter how complex an array is, deactivating it is child's play for Cains. I still haven't felt any disturbance, so they mustn't have arrived at the amusement park yet."
Annabelle appeared unconvinced and mumbled something unintelligible. Still, she stopped complaining and kicked a skull away instead. Her already short temper had grown even shorter these past few days, maybe due to hunger. Even though Jules and Bastien tacitly decided not to touch what little food they had left and gave it to the girls, they didn't have much to start with, and they ran out of food the day before yesterday. If this continued, the girls would starve to death before being killed by monsters. Annabelle was more or less used to going hungry, but Melody and Iris weren't.
"Couldn't we at least stumble upon an edible monster?" Annabelle tsked as she readily caught Melody, whose legs finally gave up. "Hop on my back; I'll carry you."
Jules eyed his sister. Although he didn't comment, the look on his face said it all. He was mi-amused, mi-discouraged by Annabelle's idea to feed on monsters. The fact that she could calmly talk about eating the very things that were trying to kill them said a lot about what her life was like in the other realm. He couldn't even start to fathom what she went through, and maybe it was better that way.
Until now, they had met with mostly undead beings. Even if their stomachs were sunken, eating rotten flesh wouldn't help. They wouldn't die from hunger, but being devoured from the inside out by worms wasn't a pleasant ending either. Meanwhile, ghosts were intangible, and they were the most frequent things they encountered. Let's not talk about poisonous beings.
"Can monsters even be eaten?" Iris asked after a moment, as if her brain took a minute to process her friend's words. Or, maybe, she took the time to ponder the idea.
"Why not? You should see what I used to eat back in that world," Annabelle sneered. "Trust me, ghouls look cute in comparison."
Even Jules felt his stomach churn at his sister's words. He had seen disgusting things as a hunter, and ghouls were among the top ten. But Annabelle ate things even more gruesome? He shuddered at the thought.
"You know," Bastien started with a smile that wasn't quite a smile. "A few monsters actually taste divine, contrary to what their outer appearance suggests. Back in my days, humans would hunt them to sell their flesh as some rare delicacies. They'd even fry certain species of giant spiders' legs and sell them at the marketplace like you would with kebab. It was quite popular with the populace at the time."
"You gotta be kidding me," Iris scowled with disgust. She hated spiders.
A laugh escaped the demon's mouth. "If you don't believe me, how about trying a taste first?"
Bastien tilted his head toward another twist and turn of the corridor. Something twinkled, and Jules frowned. Thousands of silver threads hung from the ceiling and the walls, blocking the path. The hunter recognized them at once: they were giant spiderwebs intermingled together. The dim candlelights barely illuminated them, making them glisten like distant stars. It could have been a beautiful sight if not for the half-eaten dead bodies hanging in the threads.
"FOOD!" Annabelle screamed as she more or less dropped her friend onto the floor, charging forward.
"Be careful of the threads!" Bastien chuckled. "They're sticky as hell."
"Don't worry, don't worry!"
Jules massaged his temples, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Ultimately, he decided not to think about it and followed after his sister, aware she wouldn't wait for him before entering the monsters' den. Meanwhile, Bastien stayed behind to protect the exhausted teenagers.
The hunter cursed under his breath a few times. It was tricky to move around with his wings, the feathers almost getting caught into the webs at his every move. There wasn't much space to maneuver about, to begin with, and the huge things on his back made it difficult to advance. Annabelle, though, was like a fish in a pond. She gracefully and quickly avoided the threads, bending her body into shapes that left her brother speechless. Could a spine even be twisted that much without breaking?! What did she do with her vertebrae?!
"Will they be alright?" Iris asked as she leaned on her ancestor.
"Of course! Nothing is going to happen to Annabelle with Jules by her side."
"Strangely enough, I don't believe you," Iris sneered. In the spent of a few days, they almost died at the hands of ghosts a few times–she still had finger marks strangling her neck–Bastien had his back ripped apart, her friend was spirited away and came back as an adult, Jules was almost killed by werewolves, Melody turned into a puppet-like being due to shock, and so on and on. Yeah, everything was always going as planned.
***
The walls surrounding the corridor had collapsed, creating something akin to a cave. It was a vast, ruined space. The furniture was covered in webs and dust while rotten and fresh bodies lay everywhere, parts abandoned left and right. Some corpses hung wrapped in a cocoon from the ceiling, and some had their hands or feet sticking out. The spiders hadn't done a good job bundling their prey, adding eeriness to the scene. Jules took the time to scan the cocoons, making sure there was no survivor. But he knew once a human was wrapped in a spider's web, it wouldn't take long before they suffocated. Still, he couldn't help himself.
He found no living beings.
With a sigh, Jules lowered his eyes and his gaze fell upon a skeleton. The bones had been gnawed on until whatever was eating them reached the marrow. The thing had visibly sucked it out. The hunter frowned. It seemed like spiders weren't the only thing living in this den. Again, it was something surprising as giant spiders tended to either live alone or with a few other spiders of the same species. They didn't usually share their den with other monsters, feeding on them instead.
The ecology in this manor was all over the place. Things he would never see outside were current occurrences here. It almost felt like his knowledge of the supernatural was useless.
"Why is it empty?!" Annabelle whined. She had been overjoyed at the idea of finally eating something, only to have her hope dashed. There was no spider in sight. Heck, there was no sign of monsters at all!
"I've got a bad feeling about this."
Jules turned around and rushed back to the demon's side.
Please, let them be safe this time.