Hershey punched the wall as it collapsed. A nearby beast looked towards her before it started eating itself up while Hershey gritted her teeth.
A successor?
She clenched her fist once more and punched another hole on the wall, Annatella appeared beside her and looked at the two destroyed walls.
Then she turned to Hershey and her small frame before grabbing her hands.
"Calm down, calm down." She softly muttered as Hershey breathed in and out.
She then urged Hershey to sit on the not so comfy bed.
"What's wrong? Why did you explode like this?"
Hershey glared at her.
"Mother found a Successor."
Annatella stared at her eyes filled with hate.
"Was it the huntress?"
Hershey gritted her teeth as she nodded her head. Then she grabbed her arm and started scratching it.
"How dare an outsider..." She mumbled as she continued scratching.
Annatella stared at her, then spoke, "Isn't it good that Mother was able to find a Successor? Why are you reacting like this?"
Hershey turned to her, paused for a moment, and then looked away.
"None of your business, wench."
Annatella looked at her before letting out a sigh.
***
Rueben grabbed a stick that fell from the ceiling. He looked at it for a moment before ripping some of the cloth from his pants and wrapped it tightly.
He then placed it above the candle and waited for it to catch on fire. When the make shift torch lit aflame, Rueben stood up and pushed it forward, but it seemed that whatever was obstructing his sight was only seen by him and wasn't affected by the real world.
Pursing his lips, he took out the fire with his hand, not minding his palms being burnt. He then grabbed the somewhat burned clothes and threw it near the candles as it slowly burned.
Then he swung the torch, i.e., stick, around for a few times, and nodded his head. Though it was a lousy weapon, it was a weapon he could use nonetheless.
Rueben looked up at the ceiling. There was a small hole above him, something that the stick fell from. It also felt hollow, too, judging from what he had seen from down here.
If he could just find something to make the hole bigger...
He looked at the ceiling for a moment.
Then he squatted down. He calculated for a moment before jumping high enough to at least touch the ceiling, but instead of touching the ceiling, he burst out of the floor above.
He landed on the ground and rolled around a few times before ultimately stopping. He then swiftly sat up and stared at the hole he had made with his head before turning to his surroundings.
It looked like he was in some kind of mansion. The halls were wide and large, filled with luxurious carpets and marble statues, large and thick pillars with the ceiling having chandeliers.
It would have looked like a rich man's mansion if it weren't so dilapidated. The corners full of cobwebs with spiders awaiting prey to come into their web and snatch their lives.
Some of the marble statues and furniture were covered in a white sheet of cloth, hiding them from the dust that would inevitably accumulate.
The carpets were not bright red due, now brown filled with dust due to age as well as the walls, their wallpapers scratched and torn in all sides.
It was like he arrived in a mansion, an old-abandoned mansion. Rueben saw a crack of light from the boarded up windows and stepped forward to look.
He looked at the boarded up window, covering the view outside before ripping one of the planks and peeking inside.
Then he saw something interesting.
"...Is that the skies?"
He saw skies. For the first time in his 3 decades of existence, he saw skies. It was a mesmerizing sight to behold as he was drowned with moonlight. He turned to the bright silver circle on the sky.
"The sun? No, it's clearly nighttime, so it should be the opposite of the sun. Is it the moon?" He muttered softly as he looked at the moon.
The moon looked beautiful. Even though it was alone, it shone brighter than the stars. Rueben was looking at the moon for the first time.
It was beautiful, something he wished to go to in the future.
Rather, is the moon something he could explore in the future? He never knows.
He stared at the moon for a while before stopping as his body hair stood straight, his body slowly turning chilly as if warning him to not look at the moon for too long otherwise there would be consequences.
He looked down from the skies and saw an endless sea of trees, dark wood trees that span endlessly to the horizon. Rueben squinted his eyes to get a better look, but he didn't have any clue as to where he was.
Rueben soon stopped looking out of the window and covered the window with the plank. Placing it back to the original spot.
Then he looked back to the gloomy atmosphere of the mansion. Holding the stick, he moved forward.
It seemed he was in a Main Hall part of the mansion. There were stairs leading up to what he felt was the lounging area or something.
He turned to the left and walked to the door. Turning the doorknob to the side, he opened the door and peeked inside, there was a long hallway with doors on the right side and large windows covered up by curtains on the left wall.
Pursing his lips, he turned around and saw that there wasn't any place he could go to the right and he felt going to the Lounging Area might get him in trouble, he entered the left door and closed it behind him.
Then the entire hall turned dark, his eyesight even more obstructed by a dark mist. He frowned and tried wiping his eyes but it didn't really do anything to help him other than make his eyes itchy.
He bent down and knocked on the floor, feeling the wooden floor boards underneath. It was hollow.
'Must be connected to that long hallway of cells underneath...' He thought to himself before standing up.
–What are you doing?
Just as he was about to walk, he heard a voice on his head. He then swiftly bent down and dashed to a nearby furniture and hid behind it.
He looked around infront of him before peeking behind the furniture and tried to make out anything a few meters away from here.
Seeing that no one was around, he tried using his other senses to find whoever was talking but he didn't really find anything.
-Ha! This is the first time I've seen you this cautious.
Again, a voice sounded out from somewhere.
He frowned and gripped the stick tightly.
-Are you trying to find me? Is that it?
The voice let out a chuckle.
-Don't waste your efforts, human.
"...Who are you?"
The voice let out another chuckle.
-Really? You don't know me? Have you forgotten who almost killed you?
"..." Rueben frowned.
"Where are you?" He asked out loud.
But the voice didn't say anything anymore. Making him frown even more but as he couldn't really do anything about it, he tried ignoring the problem he could not solve and stood up from behind the furniture.
He didn't hear any more voices, so he presumed that whoever it was, it may have gone away.
***
Hershey stared at Gwynne, who was lying on a comfortable bed with her eyes closed. Her entire body was shown for all the world to see as tubes of distorted space was stabbed through her veins and brain.
The tubes were pumping out the blood from her heart and replacing them with this black liquid like blood.
She then turned her eyes to the woman sitting by the chair while caressing Gwynne's head gently, touching her as if she was the most fragile glass in the world.
Her fist clenched themselves behind her back as she watched with little to no expression on her face. Annatella was sitting down in a sofa on the room while mannequins were serving them tea.
She stared at Hershey for a moment, then to her clenched fist that were digging into her flesh, before turning to look at the woman by the bed.
[ It's almost finished. Soon, it will drain all HIS blood, and only my Visage would flow through her veins.]
The woman chuckled as a chunk of Axerilites flew close to her mouth, and she swallowed it whole after chewing.
Hershey clenched her fist even more.
The woman stared at her from the corner of her eyes and chuckled.
She continued to tend to Gwynnne as she ignored Hershey's reactions. Then she saw a mannequin holding a tea cup on its hand, she looked to Annatella before grabbing the tea cup and drank from it silently.
Hershey just stared at the scene as she remembered what Annatella said to her.
"None of my business? Do you really think i would leave you alone?"
"I have no desires or any expectations that you would console me, so leave."
" You are envious."
"..."
"Envious, i must say."
"And your point?"
"Well, nothing really."
Then she left, but not after she gave her a smile that seemed to hide millions of things from her, hidden from the surface.
Hershey continued thinking as she stared at the woman lovingly patting Gwynne's cheeks with a soft and gentle smile on her face.
She gritted her teeth behind her mouth but didn't let out any expresson on her face, wanting to remain expressionless.
The woman just smiled and continued tending to Gwynne.
Knowing that waiting for a dam to be filled until it overflows was a disaster begging to happen. And the woman wanted this disaster to come.