Daniel slowly backed out of the hallway and peered into the room he'd first been summoned into. Quite honestly it didn't look good, not in the slightest.
The floor was sagging, and so was the roof. Fire seemed to defy gravity as it flowed through the room like water. The space in its entirety was filled with the thick smoke of Limbo, and it was obscuring his vision.
Daniel paid it no heed as he speedwalked through the doorway and around the corner. He made sure he was out of sight of the hall, and then sent up a silent prayer before he left limbo.
'Here's hoping I don't burn to death when I appear back in the real world. Fingers crossed.'
With that Daniel reluctantly flickered back into existence and was immediately forced to cover his eyes from how bright the fire was. It didn't hurt, it didn't even feel warm to him, but the sheer amount of light the flames put out didn't transfer over to Limbo in the slightest.
Daniel frantically took in deep breaths with squinted eyes, he hadn't been exerting himself much, but it'd been at least a couple minutes since he'd last been able to freely breath, and the incredibly vivid death threats being thrown around by Douglass weren't exactly helping him keep a calm heart rate.
'Alright,' Daniel thought, 'first things first, I need to plan out just how I'm going to get out of here. This room looks like it'll give out soon, but…'
Daniel's eyes locked onto the far window. It was almost entirely obscured by the flames and somehow hadn't broken despite the raging inferno gnawing against it.
He smiled, 'That'll do.'
Daniel stepped towards the window, but felt a chill run down his spine alongside the soft reverberation of footsteps racing towards him. Instinctively he retreated back into Limbo and watched as a figure made from smoke pierced straight through him.
"Tsk, almost had you."
The flames that filled the room split with the swing of Douglass' sword, parting to either side of his blade before quickly flooding back into the empty space with a crazed vengeance.
Daniel would've cursed if he had the breath to waste.
Truthfully, he hadn't wanted to use the gun, but Douglass was being very adamant about killing him.
'Maybe I could have de-escalated the situation when I first got transported here, but even with hindsight that still seems like a terrible idea. Either way it doesn't matter, I'm not going to just sit here and let this guy kill me,' Daniel thought as he moved to position Douglass between himself and the window before leveling the revolver and flickering back into the real world. Have conviction in everything that you do, that's what his father had always told him. Though he probably didn't mean it this way.
Daniel pulled the trigger three times, aiming for Douglass' center mass before flickering back into Limbo.
'Goddamn,' Daniel thought as he rubbed his neck with the palm of his hand. A quick glance at his glove revealed a thin trail of red.
'God he's fast, I barely saw him move,' Daniel thought as he stared at his gloved hands. 'And I probably shouldn't have touched that cut with the corpse-juice gloves.'
Douglass had been far faster than he'd anticipated, and not a single bullet had hit him. It wasn't that he'd been prepared to dodge the gunfire, but more so that he'd been very ready to rush Daniel the second he'd reappeared.
'A second more and that sword would have gone through me. Let's just take a quick moment to repress that and move on,' Daniel thought.
Douglass meanwhile seemed almost ecstatic to have landed a blow on Daniel, regardless of how shallow it was.
"Finally landed a hit on you, coward. I'm not quite sure what the trinket you just used was, but you seem rather unproficient in aiming it."
Douglass sauntered through the room with an aura of confidence surrounding him, even Daniel, who couldn't see any features of Douglass' body found it rather cocky. "Why aren't you using the rest of Samuel's deck? Or did you sell it off? For your sake I hope you didn't, because meaningless tricks don't suit someone wielding my family's legend."
Daniel got the inkling that if he responded to the man then he would actually hear him, Limbo or not.
'Maybe he's trying to bait me into talking back?' Daniel thought. 'Fat chance of that happening, conserving oxygen comes first in this place. Regardless Samuel only had the one card, and I'm fairly certain I was the first person to break into that cave.'
Daniel shifted his perspective over to the window which had shattered after the second bullet had hit it. It was clearly made of strong stuff, but it had already been losing its battle against the flames just like the rest of the room was.
Daniel sprinted across the room before Douglass could realize what had happened and only after taking a split second to look through, vaulted out the window. The fall wasn't very far and the room holding the inferno had only been on the second floor.
Midfall Daniel returned to the real-world and landed in a large group of bushes. It seemed a lot better of an option than landing on a boulder sized chunk of chitin, but it did have the downside of letting Douglass know where he was. The crazy noble only seemed to lock onto his location when he was in the real world, which would have been a huge advantage if he wasn't so unreasonably fast.
Daniel scrambled out from the bushes and into an immaculately well kept garden. Flowers flourished amidst stone statues depicting creatures that Daniel couldn't recognize. A cobblestone pathway led off into the distance with rows upon rows of flowers lining either side of it. David couldn't see exactly where it led to thanks to the large number of trees and bushes blocking his line of sight, but it was much more likely to lead him to an exit than running around aimlessly would.
Just before he began to move, Daniel flickered back into Limbo as the second story wall of the manor exploded outward, showering the garden in flaming debris.
Daniel hugged the wall and watched as stones the size of his torso came crashing down, splintering trees and crushing statues that happened to be in their path.
'That was deliberate,' Daniel thought. 'He could have easily gone through the window. Maybe he was just being a bit extra, but breaking a wall in outrage isn't something that I think he'd do. Well maybe he would, but let's not go and underestimate the superhuman. Which means he was probably hoping to get lucky and nail me with the rubble. Following that logic means my card wouldn't do a thing against projectiles like that.'
'Unfortunate,' Daniel internally cursed before beginning to run down the path.
He needed to create space between himself and Douglass. One way of looking at Douglass's reaction to being shot at, was that he was fast enough to make the gun almost obsolete. Another was to point out that three whole shots had been fired before he'd been able to reach Daniel with his sword.
The room had been large, and Daniel had been on the opposite end of it, but he couldn't have been more than twenty feet from the man. So he had time to shoot the gun, he just needed to make sure that aiming was more of a recommendation than a requirement.
Which was easier said than done, while the path did have rather large plants on either side of it, Daniel doubted that Douglass would have any reservations about crashing through them if he was getting shot at.
None of it added up to a very desirable situation, so Daniel simply ran down the path and reloaded the revolver as he racked his mind over what to do next. He already had a pretty clear mental picture of how things would go if he kept running like this. Every time he stopped to breathe Douglass would lock onto him and rush with everything he had. Overtime Daniel would get more and more exhausted, and the frequency he'd need to leave Limbo would increase.
A few seconds at a time was not enough time to recover from minute long escapades of holding his breath. Though the unique traits of the dimension seemed to help a bit.
If he'd been underwater, he could still try to breathe, it just wouldn't end well. There was none of that in Limbo. Just the unquestionable fact that he couldn't. No ifs, ands or buts about it. He didn't need to fight to hold his breath, he just did.
What he did need to fight was the urge to appear back into the real world so he could lie on the ground for a good ten or so minutes just sucking in air.
'Okay, I can't force him into a confined space-'
Daniel popped back into the real world, spending only enough time to take five desperate breaths before retreating back into Limbo where he watched as a smokey figure passed through where he'd just been. The nearby plants fell softly to the floor as Douglass' sword passed through them, not making a single noise.
'I should have just confronted him in the hallway, this is much worse, but now I don't really have a choice. I'll just need to risk it.' Daniel finally concluded.
Daniel stopped running and put his back against a tree before getting down on one knee to steady his aim.
It didn't take long for him to see Douglass. The noble seemed to be purposely slowing himself in an attempt to not overrun Daniel's position.
The path Douglass was taking seemed to be rather linear and Daniel only needed to move a couple trees over to be right in his path.
If he couldn't hit him at a distance, then shooting at him point blank would have to do. He wouldn't need to aim if he was right next to the guy. It didn't have the flair of luring him somewhere he couldn't make full use of that absurd agility, but it was probably the next best thing.
Daniel watched and waited for Douglass to pass him before, leveling his revolver, leaving Limbo, and firing the weapon.
Immediately sound and light consumed the world, as David was forcibly thrust to the ground, but the revolver didn't move an inch from where it'd been leveled.
Douglass was gripping the end of the gun in his hand and the metal of the weapon was crushed beyond use. His other hand was holding his sword which was poised to stab downward into Daniel.
The only thing stopping him was a blond man with piercing blue eyes holding tight Douglass' sword arm in an iron grip.
The blonde man didn't look worried or concerned, honestly if Daniel had to describe it, he'd say the man looked bored.
"That's enough Douglass. Put down the sword before I have to make you put it down."