My eyes flicker open to metal hitting rock, a small ping to my ears. Looking around, I see Silas bending over a recently dead Plagued Darklight worming its way through the poor Bado's veins.
I move my pupils to the coin on the floor that is no longer gold and is now copper before I wipe the tiredness out of my eyes. My body and mind feel much better, and I check my pocket watch to see how long I was asleep. Only two hours. Okay, not too bad. We can't waste too much time.
Everyone else is fighting for their lives.
Moving over a bit, I scoot next to Blake, who is still unmoving, a translucent ghost around her next that is protecting her from the insidious Darklight. Her eyes are spasming as if she is in a terrible nightmare. Hopefully, one I can somehow help her with.
Peering right at the young woman, only about eight or so years older than me, which, compared to most I fight with, is far less. I believe Johnny is around forty, and Silas is… at least eighty if you count his undead time. Lennox? Who knows, thousands? Bonfire is a bit older than Blake, in his mid-twenties, and I have no clue how old Skychaser is; the signs of aging on a Bado are unknown to me.
I shake away those thoughts as I try to focus on her face, slowly ramping up Ether within my body and having it crash against my eyes to begin Insight. But as usual, I twist the streams of Ether and imbue the Ether with my deep focus to improve its quality, Braided and Steel Strands coming together with a bit of difficulty.
Then, as my eyes gaze upon the closed eyelids of Blake's, I feel a slight oddity inside my body, the kind that feels like something, or someone, looking through me with microscopic detail, a hunter gazing at its prey, the innate sense of the quarry. Before I can even react to that first sensation, another appears, the unexplainable, instant feeling of being whisked away by The Cabin.
Confused by this, I open my eyes, expecting I've somehow joined Blake on her trip to The Cabin, but I am wrong. So very wrong.
One single glance tells me this is not The Cabin that I know. My breath catches in my throat as the scene doesn't give me time to ponder why I have a body and am not seeing through Blake's eyes. The room is massive, with high ceilings that stretch upwards to meet the darkness above, and veins of silver run along the midnight above. The walls are lined with dark, stained-glass windows, the only source of light in this place; sadly, the light is exclusively tainted with the corruption of the Mother Below. The floor is made of cold, hard stone, and every step echoes through the cavernous space, not that I take one. Instead, I stay stock still for what truly catches my attention.
What catches my eyes are the creatures within this cathedral of some kind. They're everywhere, lurking in the shadows, skittering across the floor, and clinging to the walls. These beings are twisted and deformed, with misshapen limbs, gaping maws, and glowing eyes that seem to stare right through me. Some of them look like humans, but their flesh is twisted and bloated like it's trying to consume them from the inside out. Others are more animalistic, with fur, claws, and jagged teeth.
I stay completely still, and many pass by me as if I'm not even there. Taking a few moments to think, I just let this continue.
The air is thick with the scent of decay and rotting flesh, and I can hear the skittering of claws on stone echoing all around me. I have to move to find Blake, but I have no clue where she is or how to escape this nightmare.
Taking a moment to test something while staying entirely still, I attempt to move Ether through my body, but nothing happens. It's just like The Cabin; my sense of time and Ether are skewed, disallowing anything to help me besides my single hand.
Dammit! I can't use Echo to find her! What else is there? Do I have to run through all these creatures and encounter her? Where even could she be?
My eyes scour the entirety of this cathedral, committing all the monsters and inhuman monstrosities to memory. On the opposite side of the cathedral, where a large pipe organ that extends upward to the ceiling, is something that almost makes me gasp out loud at the pure absurdity.
On the pipe organs far from me is a grotesque thing, a spider the size of a house, its body composed of chitin that looks like it has been carved from obsidian. The legs are unnaturally long, stretching out in all directions and ending in sharp points that seem to gleam in the dim silver from the glass on the sides of the cathedral.
However, the many orbs of light that glow at the end of each leg and at every joint along its body catch my eye and make me hesitate to move at all. They remind me of the stars in the sky, yet they seem somehow more sinister, an unblinking threat emanating from each orb. The creature hangs from the pipes of the cathedral organ, its many eyes staring down at me from its face, body, and legs with an unblinking intensity that makes my skin crawl.
My breathing completely stops. I hold it to keep anything from noticing me. My hand grows slick with sweat as my heart beats with thunderous applause for the scenery around me.
I try to listen, see if there are any signs of Blake nearby, but all I get are the constant skittering of the twisted creatures around. One that is a man walking on all fours with their stomach to the sky steps past me, fur ending with fingernails all over his body and legs bent backward to support his bloated weight. The sight elicits endless confusion and worries from me.
Where the hell is Blake?!
Feeling my air start to reach a limit, which is odd now that I think of it as I'm not here, I begin to look for an exit. I can't risk the chance that injury here doesn't somehow have ramifications on my actual body. The shimmers and flickers of Darklight are threatening enough for me to be wary.
After a few seconds of low-oxygen searching, I find a single door, closed at the very end of the cathedral below the massive spider of eyes. Squinting a bit, I see that the door is slightly ajar, a bit of light peeking out from what I thought was a wholly closed section.
Seeing a destination with no others in sight and surrounded by monsters, I take a deep breath. One mimicking Strugglers Gasp, only missing the strength that comes with it. Then, glancing at the many-eyed spider, I sprint for the door at the limit of what is humanly possible, my legs crashing down onto the wood below and my arms pulling me forward on the pews.
I start running down the aisle, my footsteps echoing through the pews empty of humanity and left with only madness and desecration. Shadows flicker along the walls, making me catch glimpses of grotesque, twisted creatures lurking just out of sight as they all turn to me. I try to stay quiet, to bring as few as possible with me, but my heart pounds so loud in my ears that I can barely hear myself think.
I see vague movement out of the corner of my eye and jump to the floor out of pure instinct and alarm, pressing myself against the hardwood beneath. A crash into the pews beside me, followed by a screech that awakens everything in the cathedral to come for me, makes my heart only beat faster, pumping more strength into my veins.
Pushed by this frantic force, I quickly get up and restart my run just as another creature, missing any sign of hair or skin and left only with muscle, is beside me, barely dodging its lunge at its slams into a pew, breaking the wood with a simple swipe.
Can't get hit! They'll break me in half!
My legs pump even harder as I have only that door in my mind. The sound of my footsteps echoes off the walls to the notice of the creatures just as the relentless pursuit of the animals behind me, their grotesque forms slapping against the stone floor as they hunt me down, echo to me from the walls.
The entire floor shakes suddenly, a powerful force moving it, and I look up out of reflex. And as I do so, I meet the gaze of a thousand eyes at once, each surrounded by chitinous armor of sinister design. Every vigilant pupil I glance at is like a hammer upon my brain, simultaneously mashing and pulverizing my thoughts and feelings.
My feet stop pushing me as I stand still for a brief moment, and so do the creatures behind me, the spider claiming me as its prey. Dumbly, and without my body responding to me as the spider is somehow stopping the communication between mind and body, I watch the spider creep and wriggle its way down the pipe organ, the squelch of each eye only causing more pain in my mind.
Once the spider gets to the wood floor of the cathedral pauses for a single moment to peer at me before committing toward my death. Then, the gaping maw of the spider opens toward me, each tooth is covered in limitless silver pupils gazing at me, every individual one sending a stumbling blast straight into my mind.
Barely able to think as it moves closer to me, all the monsters moving backward in response, my mind shifts to Blake. Is she dead? Did this thing eat her? No, if it did, then surely she would be fucked up on the outside, either a Motherbound or just straight up dead. But she's not. So she had to have gotten out of this somehow. But how!?
The spider moves just a bit closer, ever closer to devouring me as my mind fights against its control, trying to think, trying to move, and most importantly, trying to survive. But it only gets closer and closer to eating me, legs squelching against the floor with its orbs of light. Then, as it gets close enough for me to smell the scent of death from its mouth, the putrid smell of corpses, I hear the low creak of a door.
Just behind and to the right of the spider, the door I was looking for creaked open, the wide eyes of Blake meeting mine with complete surprise. But the woman quickly recovers as I am about to be eaten, and she throws something that resembles a poker for a fireplace, a pole of wrought iron with a point at the end.
It bounces harmlessly off the spider but distracts the thing, its many eyes turning to face her. She instantly freezes, the eyes doing to her what they did to me as I feel my body move again, the connection between my brain and body restored. When this happens, I sprint forward and slide underneath the spider to get to Blake.
A chitter comes from the spider as it lunges at me, but I jump forward, barely missing its bite as I am frozen once more by its many gazes. But I am not alone anymore, Blake, who is not paralyzed anymore, pulls me through the door and slams it shut before dragging me away from the door as fast as she can.
I regain my movement without the paralyzing legion of irises quickly and help her move me away from the door as a slam hits it, bulging the wood out and splintering parts of it. The woman pulls me to my feet and whispers forcefully yet quietly for me to follow her, the savior becoming the saved.
"Follow me! We need to go!"
I whisper back as I follow her movements, legs pushing up further down this empty hallway made of stone, only ornamented with paintings of vistas covered in gore on the walls.
"Where are we? What the hell is happening!? How did you find me?"
She pulls me along and pushes us both through an open door at the end of the hallway, putting us into another room; this one has two exits, one on the right and one on the left. I glance around and find a basket for pokers completely empty, all of them likely being taken by now, and a long-dead fireplace with desiccated seats in front of it. Blake repeatedly looks left and right as if making a decision before pulling me toward the right, whispering again.
"I have guesses based on old texts, but I'm not sure yet. I found you because I felt your entrance, a mind joining mine for a split second. You should have crawled through all that as they only react to sound and touch, just like the Neka in Sinscreak. Enough of that, though; we need to find an exit! I already went down the left way, but I didn't find the end of it. So, we're going right."
I follow her directions as we move with swiftness, loud noises behind us of the chasing monsters. I can't imagine the spider fitting through that hallway, but I've seen weirder. So, I don't argue and move right behind her.
We enter a new room after just a moment, a spiraling staircase on the right and a man on the left in front of a wooden door, this one just as fucked up as the ones from earlier. He is deprived of all moisture and so thin he is more skeleton than man, but as we run into the room, I see his head twist, turn, and lock straight onto us.
I glance at Blake as she resolutely pulls me toward the staircase, unwilling to risk wasting time fighting. And as we run away down the stone stairs, I see the man jump onto the wall beside me before chasing us down while hanging upon the wall, the clatter of human fingernails on the stone grating to my ears.
But we run, and we run, and we run down the seemingly endless stairs until we eventually reach the end, the wall-climbing man just behind. I take the lead and burst open the door and slam it shut just after Blake runs through, the man crashing against the door's wood. The thump almost breaks through, but I hit my back against the door to reinforce it.
I glance at the room and see a pedestal with an open book atop it, just as the tome in The Cabin is atop the table. Blake looks at me, struggling to keep the door closed, and then back to the tome. I scream at her to go to it.
"Go! It might be our only way out! Go! I'll hold it as long as I can!"
She nods at me and dashes for the pedestal. As she does so, I lock my legs and twist my body, angling my shoulder against the door. I feel the door shake violently as the creature on the other side, the humanoid without any muscle filled with a power it shouldn't have, tries to break through it. The wood creaks and splinters under the creature's relentless assault as it thrashes and rages against my strength.
I can hear its guttural snarls and the sound of its claws scraping against the wood. The stench of its putrid breath seeps through the cracks in the door. My heart pounds as I frantically push with all my might, feet slipping on the smooth stone floor as I constantly peek back at Blake reading the book on the pedestal.
But my strength is not enough, nor is the door's strength. A fist comes straight through the door as it bulges outward, almost opening enough for the creature to get through. Then, with a yell to pronounce my effort, I push against it, every muscle in my body straining to match its force. However, I have to be careful not to get touched or clawed at by the hand peeking through even as my shoulder and legs radiate pain from the contest of strength I am rapidly losing.
The skittering of feet comes down the spiraling stairs near the door. The other creatures are about to join in and break through this door. My eyes flicker to Blake as I scream at her.
"Hurry up! We don't have much time! They're about to all reach the door!"