"Dum.. da da dum... da dum..."
The group sang in a rather high-pitched voice. Although it seemed as though they all should've had different voices, they were strangely harmonized, as though they were the same person.
The Gameboy in Mia's hand vibrated rather intensely. The display screen was malfunctioning, chaotically displaying pixels rather erratically all over it.
"R-R... Ru-... Miiiiii- MiA."
Anna desperately tried to get her message across, but her voice soon became unintelligible, just a series of glitchy sounds like a failing computer system. Mia panicked as she looked at the Gameboy in her hands.
"A-Anna?"
The glitching eventually stopped. Though just as Mia was feeling the tiniest amount of relief, a simple display of a rose. Then, an awfully familiar song came from it, with the crunchiness that came with a VHS tape.
The same song that everyone else was humming along to.
Jessica held onto the side of her head and cringed. Her breathing became ragged, as she hunched over.
"W-What is this?"
Mia wasn't in much of a better condition. She grit her teeth, clearly in pain from the song. Her knees buckled, losing their strength. Then, a moment later she fell down, the Gameboy landing on the ground and clattering to the side.
"Ah! M-My head!"
The singing had a clear detrimental effect on their mental state.
Though, contrary to the atmosphere of everyone else, Jack was just scratching the side of his head. After taking a quick look around, he let out a small laugh.
"Oh, everyone is singing! I want to join in too!"
He raised his hand in the air and began trying to sing along as well.
"Daaa DEEE Doom... DuDu DAH!"
However, unknown to him, he was terribly tone-deaf. It came to the point that his voice was even more grating than the voice that appeared to be infused with magic itself. Jack was simply singing as loud as he could.
Jessica and Mia didn't have the luxury to be impressed by it, simply because they both ended up falling to the ground, covering both their ears as tightly as possible. They could hardly even process the situation around them at the moment.
Jack was simply having the time of his life, singing ignorantly, while the strange cult members were chanting a song in an attempt to overwhelm his mind. The originally harmonious song was now rather ear-grating.
It was a rather discordant scene, to say the least.
Though Jessica and Mia were essentially being tortured, it didn't appear to be a hopeless situation. The strange cult members were beginning to sweat if they were on the more intact side. For those that were more bones, they began to tremble fiercely, rattling.
Somehow or another, Jack's very voice appeared to be enough to fight back against the magic, despite how little sense it made. One of the strange cult members only had a few patches of rotten flesh on its bones, and was the first to suddenly fall down, collapsing into a set of assorted bones.
Jack hadn't noticed this, as he was prancing around with his eyes closed, focusing hard on the music. The more he sang, the more grating his voice became. At a certain point, it wasn't so much that he was bad at singing, but that it no longer sounded like something that would come from a human being.
His singing somehow transformed metallic and powerful.
Another one of the singers fell down, unable to stand Jack's voice. And a few seconds later, another fell.
The cult members appeared to be having difficulty in keeping the original rhythm of the song. There were occasional breaks in between, while the tune was gradually becoming a bit random.
The original volume of their singing had died down considerably simply because there were less people. Even some of those that were still up were simply convulsing, unable to continue singing.
Jack realized this change and opened up his eyes, looking around. And when he did, a wave of people fell down one after another. There were only two people that hadn't collapsed to the ground yet.
Although it was only a few minutes, Jack stopped singing, looking around with confusion.
"What happened? Are you guys ok? You aren't dead, are you?"
However, there was no real response. The two remaining singers had fallen to their knees, but it looked like they hadn't given up yet. They began mumbling the tune once more, even as their voices trembled, and their strength faltered.
Jack blinked a few times, looking between everyone with curiosity. He then casually walked up to one of them and spoke in their face.
"Are you ok? You aren't dying, right?"
Though right after he said that the guy he was talking to collapsed to the ground like the rest. While on the ground, his eyes widened as he spoke with his last breath.
"It... hurts."
Apparently, he was alive. However, it didn't last long as he died right after being released from what had put him in a trance. There were clear defined wrinkles on his lips, while the coarse texture made it look more like sand. From the looks of things, he died from dehydration.
As for Mia and Jessica, they were still writhing on the ground, but with the song dying down, they too began calming down. They slowly removed their hands from their ears, only to reveal hands that were covered in a fresh coat of blood. The ears themselves looked like a horror show, ignoring all the bodies around them.
The last person that was still kneeling suddenly stopped moving altogether.
Jack turned to him, as he was the only one that seemed able to have a conversation with him.
"Why did everyone stop singing? Are they going to sleep? Or maybe they died because they were too old?"
The person didn't respond. However, the face did end up moving. There was a bulge that briefly appeared at the nose bridge. And a second later, the sides of the man's face were directly ripped open, breaking in half vertically.
What looked like a purple flower with an orange center bloomed from within, but closer inspection would reveal that it was actually all made of some form of flesh. Upon taking a look at Nathan, it let out a high-pitched screech.
Though as ambiguous as that was, it didn't seem to be a battle cry considering the body picked itself up and began running away. More accurately, it seemed to be a cry of terror.
As for Jack, who simply stood in the middle of this mess, felt a bit aggrieved. He just wanted to have fun singing with other people, but just a few minutes later all of them either collapsed or ran away.
He let out a long sigh before shifting his gaze to Mia and Jessica, who were both on the floor.
"What are you guys doing?"
Mia smiled bitterly, just barely able to hear what he was saying.
"Fuck... we were just... convulsing in pain."
Jessica closed her eyes rather tightly and got up. She took a few deep breaths to compose herself and looked around in a daze.
"This... I still have a lingering urge to obey something and start singing. But I don't really understand what... Thank you for snapping me out of it."
Jack puffed up his cheeks as he looked between the two of them.
"I don't really get it, but it sounds like you were having some fun! Don't worry about it."
The Gameboy appeared to reboot, with a loading bar on top of it. When that finished, Anna's concerned digitalized voice came through.
"Mia! Mia! Are you ok? Did you get away?"
Mia let out a groan and crawled over to pick it up. She smiled weakly while looking at the overly concerned chibi face.
"I'm ok now. Getting away wasn't exactly something that happened, but... what matters most is that I'm still alive."
Anna let out a gasp, artificially raising her eyebrows.
"What happened? Were you able to find the source and kill it off?"
Mia swallowed hard and began rubbing the side of her head with a hand.
"I'm not sure. To be honest, it was Jack that saved us again. I didn't see exactly what happened, but all those creepy ass dudes are now down on the ground."
Anna let out a sigh of relief.
"It's good that you're safe. That monster is pretty rare, but people without a special kind of defense won't be able to last against it. And from what I know, that kind of thing is almost impossible to get on the second floor."
Jessica dragged herself over as well, curiously looking at the Gameboy.
"Do you know what that thing was?"
Jack peered over their shoulders curiously.
"Hm? Weren't those just some people that wanted to sing?"
Anna paused for a second, seemingly looking at Jack for just a moment before turning her gaze back to Mia.
"What you encountered was called the Singing Mandrake."