Thwip!
" . . . bwuh?" Theo made an unadulterated sound of utter confusion as he suddenly found himself conscious in an incredibly dark room, functioning as though he were half-asleep.
Theo slid his arms back and forth as though making a snow angel, probing whatever he could to get a sort of anchor to consciousness. He traced the cracks on the floor, felt the cold touch of stone beneath his body, heard the friction between skin and cloth---it wouldn't be until Theo accidentally knocked a tower of empty boxes onto his head that he could properly think.
' . . . are my eyes open or closed right now?' Theo spoke as he rapidly blinked and moved around, working his beating heart fast enough for his fiery Faith to encapsulate him once more, illuminating the room with an orange hue as though on cue.
Theo joked with himself, 'Open, I see. Haha.'
With wobbly feet and a horrible sense for balance, Theo tried to stand up but immediately fell back onto his bum. He tried again, only to fall down once more. It was only after his fifth failed attempt that Theo gave up and tried scaling a nearby wall.
It felt like the world was spinning at dizzying speeds trying to get on his own two feet.
'Why is this so hard? What the hell did Jared do to me?' Theo asked to no avail, doing a full pat-down in case a bone was sticking out wrong. 'Better yet, where even am I?'
Roughly measured to be around eight-to-ten meters long, the small room made almost no accommodation for space as junk and trash could be see piling up to Theo's waist; gadgets of alien origin seemed to be the most populous of the junk. Picking them up and fiddling with every knob or lever Theo could find didn't help their understanding at all, either.
They were useless to him as they were useless to those who made to them, so Theo simply tossed what he picked up back into the heaps of trash.
Opposite to the junk was, delightfully, a door that led to what Theo could only be the outside, though the perpetual darkness of the hole-littered room didn't quite support that theory. Using much of the piled trash as support, Theo felt wobbly walking over to the door, like he was balancing himself on a parking block.
A few baby steps in, however, and Theo made fair work of the distance, settling his fiery hand on the cold, rustic doorknob.
Click!
" . . . an altar?" Theo spoke, surprised to see the door open from one small room to another.
Unlike before, however, the room was long and narrow, dedicated to some sort of religion indeterminate through just a single glance. The room's jagged, uneven walls led Theo to believe it was carved out of a stone wall, and its furbishments gave no different perspective.
Stone carvings, if not just oddly shaped rocks, spread across the floor with abstract symbolism painted on its curves and edges with black-hued blood. Looking further down the hallway gave way for even larger rocks to be painted by whomever's artistic abilities, with the largest carving of stone being at the far end of the room.
But the focal point of the room wasn't its abstract symbolism or bizarre architecture, rather, it was the individual kneeling before its altar; a black humanoid whose arms were limp by their side, bewitched by the faith of its choosing.
Theo closed the door behind him.
"Jared? Is that you? Whatcha doing over there, man?" Theo cautiously spoke out, inching closer to the entity.
[ . . . ]
The entity gave no response.
"Whatcha doing over there, man? Something freaky catch your fancy?"
Their eyes were firmly tethered to the thing before itself.
"Hm."
As if to test the entity's unyielding concentration, Theo picked up one of the small rocks littered across the room's floor and tossed it on the being's head. As expected, the entity didn't do so much as bat an eye over behind itself.
'Lucky me, I guess.' Theo nonchalantly spoke, making a small mutter under his breath as he found his grip on his trusty fire axe.
A slow stride covered the distance between him and the entity, and promptly, Theo cleaved his fire axe right down middle of the entity's head without another thought to spare, having felt like himself as though he always was himself.
' . . . looks a whole lot like Jared with those beady eyes, though he didn't have much else to define him in the first place other than his name tag or darn-scary first impression.' Theo observed, stepping over the humanoid's corpse to see what could possibly warrant more attention than a fire axe cleaved into its head. ' . . . was it playing dress-up?'
On top of the altar wasn't some holy figure or demonic totem, but rather a straw puppet drawn with fashionable clothes and accessories; perhaps closer to a toy rather than anything religious, really.
Under this newfound context, by the largest stretch of his imagination, Theo could see semblances of everyday appliances drawn on the rocks that littered the floor. Maybe this rectangular rock was a microwave, or that rock carved inward was some sewing machine? Theo couldn't make much sense of it, but there was a hint of clarity behind his eyes.
'I guess I should try crawling out one of those holes if there's no way forward from here,' Theo thought back, feeling a grasp at his ankle. ' . . . hm? It's still alive?'
Looking down towards his ankle, Theo saw the black humanoid grab at his foot with a firm clutch; their eyes that of an animal full of curiosity. Theo kicked away the hand and, to much of his disgust, a sludgy wet feel was left on his ankle.
"Eugh, the hell? Don't make me chop at your eyes." Theo warned, brandishing his fire axe at the black humanoid taking a few steps back himself.
Regardless of what Theo told it, however, the black humanoid didn't understand a single bit of the words that came out of his mouth. Instead, it just squelched towards Theo, driven by its newfound curiosity and obsession for this new stimulation before its eyes.
"You asked for it."
Prompted more by his annoyance and disgust than actually being pushed into a corner, Theo unhesitatingly swung his fire axe once more, this time at the black humanoid's signature eyes; Theo always knew that an enemy's most defining trait would be their weakness. Where would one strike, if not the big glowing orb implanted into the video game's big bad villain's body?
As though he were slicing through tofu, Theo chopped through both of the black humanoid's eyes in one fell swoop, shattering them like ceramic plates hitting a stone floor. The entity flopped to the ground once more, but this time, Theo felt confident it would stay down.
'Well, whatever indicator that writhing pain can tell me anyways.' Theo articulated, witnessing the black humanoid convulse as though he had reduced their soul to ashes.
Having no interest in enjoying an otherworldly alien's pain, Theo turned to leave the black humanoid to die alone, affording no further thought other than towards his own return to his pet rabbit Missus.
Theo settled his hand on the cold metal of the door's doorknob, and twisted it open.
Click!
____________________________________________________________________________________
The world presented before Theo's eyes as he opened the door had varied from the one he had awoke in. His gaze met creaky wood flooring instead of cold stone, the tall windows transparent to the blue sky outside instead of a concrete wall, mixtures between victorian and gothic architectural styles instead of a squarish-bland room---wherever Theo had managed to find himself in, it went the full mile on the ancient mansion aesthetic.
As for similarities, however, the mansion-thought-to-be corridor didn't seem to part with the theme of rot and decay, looming over its grand arches and gilded posts. Many doors up and down the corridor were either broken or barricaded, with the one Theo had existed from being the only door to have a functional doorknob.
' . . . yea, like hell someone would build a room's only door to lead to a dead end. One closed door opens to another dimension entirely. I gotta find Jared before I get lost in this whole matrix-bum setting.'
Stepping out beyond the altar room's doorframe, Theo saw a storm of dust kick up from his feet; large accumulations of dust shading many surfaces with a hue of gray. Just closing the door behind him showered an ungodly amount of dust onto Theo's back.
It seemed as though nothing was spared in this mansion from the cruel hands of time.
Snap!
"Ah, shit . . . the doorknob." Theo spoke with the doorknob in hand, the door's rotting wood far too weak to handle casual usage. "It wouldn't just magically not work after breaking the doorknob, right?"
Theo opened the wooden door, saw no change, closed it again, and as he could astutely observe through the large peephole he had made for himself, the room that stood behind the door still had the same painfully writhing corpse as he had seen before, now melting into a pile of black goo.
Trying for a few more times, Theo had now reduced the rotting door to a swinging saloon door that swung on one hinge and was horribly disproportionate to an actual swinging saloon door.
'Maybe it's just more common sense than magic for something not to work once broken, I guess. But it's not like it's the only door here, right?' Theo thought to himself, willing to try the many dysfunctional doors in the corridor.
Bringing his shirt's collar up to his nose to block out the dust, Theo walked to the closest door to his right---a doorknob-less slab of wood only defined as a possibly door by its hinge and general outline.
Although Theo was patient in the first half of his time with the door, gently pushing or pulling on the door so as to not break it, but not a second more of the two minutes and 24 seconds of trying at the door did Theo deliver a mean kick more than enough to shoot splinters out from the other side of the door.
" . . . ha?" Theo spoke out of surprise, the rotting wooden door having endured the kick albeit with much of its center caving far enough inward to go up to his calf. "One more, then."
Having taken a few steps back for some warmup room, Theo sent away his ID weapon and began stretching. He hopped here and there, cracked his back, wound back his body, clenched his fingers, and finally . . .
"OOOORRRAAAAAA---!!!" Theo screamed as though imitating a war cry, taking a step forward before springing forward his fist with knockout levels of force against the creaky old door.
Bam!
" . . . vvvvvvppppppppphhhhhhh! Haaaaaaa . . . . vvvvvvvpppppppppPPPPPHHHHHHHHH! Haaaaaaaa . . . . that was dumb of me." Theo spoke as he sharply breathed in and out, holding back tears as he swept off the splinters stuck in his knuckles.
Yet still, despite all of that force packed into his punch, the rot-some old door still held through. Although it looked so frail that a fly could push through, not a single gap or hole was made into the room beyond its doorframe; it was like trying to run through styrofoam reinforced with a large net of duct tape.
Theo made a meager dash towards the next door down the hallway, setting his hand on its doorknob-less rotting wood and pushing with enough force to make it crack, but it never gave through.
Each and every other door that Theo tried down the corridor shared the same phenomenon, the same frailty yet elasticity as any other.
To be specific, it was only after the 127th door and 3rd window that Theo had tried that there was practically no hope to find a enterable door throughout this entire corridor, looking down to see an nigh infinite number of dysfunctional doors doomed to share the same fate.
" . . . should I start making my amends now? I mean, it'd be pretty awkward if I couldn't apologies over the eternity I'll be . . . " Theo spoke until he fell short of words at the sight that replaced his pathway back, " . . . okay, then. No amends allowed, it seems."
Having turned around in resolution to apologize for his wrongful killings, Theo didn't see the infinite distance of ancient wood before his eyes, but rather an encroaching, abysmal darkness that was peeling away at the corridor's rotting planks and letting them fall into its impossible depths.
"Had I really never looked back even once? How long had this been here?" Theo spoke, first out of shock but soon evolving into curiosity as he inched closer to the edge.
[For quite some time now, sonny.]
Theo stared blank-faced into the abyss before him, " . . . ah, schizophrenia. Nothing like a dissociated voice to tell me I'm already going insane."
[Oi! I ain't nobody's schizophrenia! My name's Delilah, and I hope you know better to just call me a voice in your head.]
"The schizophrenia is trying to tell me it's not schizophrenia . . . oh, how deep the rabbit hole goes. Maybe I should start playing dress up with that doll for the rest of eternity to keep my sanity?"
[You want a few funny voices in your head? I'll make you a few funny voices in your head.] Delilah spoke with malice, shaking the corridor with a thundering voice.
Theo shot up his hands in surrender, "Okay! Alright, alright. You're not my schizophrenia or anything of the like. Just another unfathomable being casually inhabiting a church's basement like it's an airbnb, I guess."
Delilah's annoyed voice rang out, [Delilah, mate, Delilah.]
" . . . yes, of course." Theo spoke as though still awkward with the notion that incomprehensible beings like Delilah or Jared would be named such normal names.
[Good lord! Some sodding bastards Jared sent my way.]
"You know Jared?"
['Course I do! Ain't the fact that we both loiter around in this grotty basement as neighbors enough to know someone?]
"And he sent me to you? Like, to train? That's what he said, right?"
[ . . . yes? What, a chav like you didn't like the scenery? Got bored of the big blue sky? I tell you now, ya blind arse, that the closing vice of the grim won't be kind to blokes like you, blokes that wear a whole lotta shades of rose over their eyes lookin' at this kind of trade . . . ]
Theo felt an itch in his throat, as though something wasn't quite digested all that well, and fretfully muttered his Name as he closed his grip on the fire axe now present in his hands.
[ . . . blokes that can make rubbish of a kind gal's life and still try to make use of their noggin like it ain't already rottin'.]
Before Theo could comment on the nonsensical string of words that just entered his ear being said for nothing but its rhyme, as though on cue with what he thought was her threat, a grueling atmosphere blasted into the corridor and sapped away Theo's strength as though he were working a nine-to-five, minimum-wage job on the daily.
His legs ached and buckled under the body of his weight, the blazing heat of the sun from the windows beside him singed into his skin, but above all else, Theo felt the world circle round and round into itself, circling and looping a sense of depressive poverty without end.
There, a ray of luminescence shone upon the abyss before him as though it were by the work of a flick, boring into the darkness to reveal a concrete flooring stained with ancient liquids most similar to coffee.
Then another beam of God came down onto the darkness, scorching its cold light onto a luxuriously carpeted flooring exquisitely weaved with red and gold, and then yet another to shine upon a surface of parquet flooring, and yet more in styles that couldn't be distinguished to have a clear pattern.
On his right, to his left, up on the ceiling, and down to the floor, Theo felt sickly from the uncountable axes that these glares of light could be constrained to; it was like gravity was pulling in every direction that the spotlights shined down upon.
Theo turned away from the sight and collapsed to his knees, heaving like he was ready to puke out his innards before a presence made herself known.
[Not a sight for pretty eyes, eh?]
"Urgh . . . uhff, don't you mean 'not a pretty sight?'" Theo spoke as though he couldn't help himself correcting Delilah despite currently retching out his empty stomach.
[I've meant what I've said, you chundering mutt. Pretty eyes like yours can't take so much of a gander at the dandy floors I've mopped, but do squander a peep at mine self; my fashion and aesthetic will be the last thing you may enjoy with those peepers of yours, so lucky you I've decided to dress on the clock today.]
Theo raised his chin and faced the entity known as Delilah, and simply put, she was breathtaking.
Despite possessing a name that Theo thought would entail a slough of an overworked employee, Delilah's appearance was nothing short of a ten-foot doll, molded into the brilliant vision of a master craftsmen at every muscle or bone of her body as she was painted dainty details and pale white skin.
Yet, in contrast to her ghost-like complexion, or more so in compliment to it, Delilah wore a gothic black dress and veil that covered all but her hands, adorned with intricate, sprawling embroidery of thorny vines and silver webbing that shot the image of dark beauty through Theo's very soul, and for every second that he looked longer, the design grew deeper and deeper.
Roses of black began budding and blooming all across her veil, a Victorian-like filigree border weaved from the darkness it began in, a moonlit forest with silhouetted trees and moth shapes in iridescent thread spun from her skirt---it was like Delilah's entire dress was in animation.
For Theo, breathtaking wasn't enough to describe such an artificial wonder of mind; the sight alone was enough to reap his very soul . . .
. . . which is what should've happened if not for the faint blue of a janitor's jumpsuit lurking beneath Delilah's dress, as well as the giant broom she carried over her shoulder.
"Well, as you've said, on the clock."
[Hm? But of course, mate. It requires a certain degree of discipline to clean a whole infinity's worth of flooring. Ain't no doddle, after all.] Delilah spoke with a tinge of pride in her work, standing her broom upright on the wooden floor and resting her chin on the tip of its stick. [Speaking of a doddle, why don't you pick yourself up from the floor there? Caking up all that dust on your lips ain't gonna do you any good.]
Theo took another glance at the stand-still Delilah before getting up and patting off the dust on his legs, " . . . how very kind of you."
[Heh, I know, right? I'm the only bloody janitor of this place, so you better know that no one's gonna best the dust-busting, kindness-acing, sonuva-bitching chap that I am---!] Delilah spoke with increasing emotion, winding back her leg and kicking the base of her broom to sweep the floor from Theo's feet, quite literally.
The floor that Theo had just stood back on jerked to the direction in which the broom swept, tripping himself on the sudden movement as he fell back down.
But before Theo could even hit the floor, Delilah, with her freakishly long legs, covered the distance between her and Theo in three or so strides and brought her broom in an upward swing, slamming into Theo's chest and propelling him to break through the roof while throwing his ID weapon out into the void of spotlighted floors, the ancient corridor's mechanic of unyielding material having been nullified for the swing of Delilah's broom.
As he had seen before, the abysmal darkness awaited Theo as he flew upward into its arms, freely floating higher and higher into its shade as he could barely formulate a thought in his head.
In this freak of a void, feelings and emotions popped and whistled off like sparks of fire.
What was once the crushing pain of receiving blows of inhumane strength cackled and shot into the darkness in a flicker of a light, making Theo into a living firework with every thought or sensation he embodied.
Fizzle, went his empty mind, and thus Theo felt freeing bliss.
Hiss, from Theo's numbing nerves, and so forth a blanket of warmth.
The indifferent embrace of the void was so daunting in its nature yet so comforting in its clutch that Theo couldn't help but close his eyes and plead in whispered thoughts that no more was wanted in his life, that this ghostly womb never birth him in his earthly flesh . . .
[ . . . some numpty you are, tryna catch forty-some winks when ya got a whooping to attend!]
The sound of an external voice immediately shot back Theo's consciousness into his head from the void, twisting and turning his body in all sorts of fashion to determine where he was falling. There, suddenly beneath Theo in an impossible form of movement, Delilah readied her broom like a bat and swung.
"Ghh---!" Theo clenched his teeth and tried to guard against the impact, but the bizarre angle as he fell into Delilah's batting range was far from optimal.
Crunch!
"AGHH!"
With the sickening crunch of his bones flaring pain straight into his brain, Theo's body arched and gave way to Delilah's monstrous strength, launching him countless meters in a direction impossible for him to discern at the time as the impact thundering into his ears had disoriented any brain function Theo had besides his pain receptors.
For a moment or two, Theo's body flew free in the air as alien sensations brushed past his body, but his trajectory would not be an unobstructed one as his body slammed into jagged angles and flat surfaces alike.
With nothing but the most visceral agony of maimed flesh and snapping bones perpetuating throughout his entire mind, all that Theo could afford to comprehend of his new surroundings were nothing but the most bare-bones of observations; rudimentary words that explained nothing but the sense of touch or sound as he was being ricochetted like a rubber ball.
Wall, crash, floor, bounce, corner, fling, crash, boom, wood, bend, snap, crunch, cut, cool, splat, roll, roll, roll, roll, roll, roll---it was apparent that the new environment surround Theo was cluttered with objects and materials.
At last, after the ninth roll and a bump into a wall, Theo came to a stop, feeling the white hot pain radiating his body numb as a strong dose of adrenaline was kicking in. With shallow breathes and watery tear glands, Theo could just barely open his eyes to see Delilah whistling as she rested her head on the stick of her broom.
[Hui~! Hole in one! Should I quit and go be an athlete? Nahh, I love this job! Where else do I get to beat up minors if not the job of janitor?] Delilah casually joked, kicking up a chunk of rock and swinging her broom like a golf club to roll the stone into the elevator with Theo.
'An elevator . . . ?' Theo realized, pushing his eyeballs to observe the elevator around him, a spark of hope lighting up as he set his sight on the number pad.
[Hm? Oh, please. I can climb the elevator shaft faster to the next floor than those doors could even close.] Delilah scoffed before a brilliant idea of athleticism came to her as she leapt and hopped at least a hundred meters away from Theo, [How about this? If I get through those doors before they close, you give me all your worldly possessions! None less than every button or dime you have!]
He was just thankful for the very chance of survival.
[Alright, ready? You press a button on go. Three---!]
Theo held onto the elevator handrails to pull himself up, desperate to meet Delilah's demands before she slammed him into a bloody red mist™.
[---two---!]
With much of his bones shattered, much to his surprise that he could still even function his brain, Theo's finger wasn't strong enough to press any of the elevator's buttons. Thus, he drew back his left hand in preparation to slap the number pad with the force it required.
[---one---!]
'Please, just get me the heck out of here!' Theo internally screamed, planting his face into the twenty sixth floor option of the elevator before his hand could even meet a hard surface, the immediate sting of bitter cold seeping into his skin and down into his core.
[Go!]
Slam!
" . . . huh? W-Woah!"
Without so much as a single moment to spare, the elevator doors slammed shut as the metal box rocketed upward, the initial inertia too much for Theo's wrecked body, pushing him down onto the floor. A feint ruckus could heard down below, as though someone were climbing the elevator shaft with aggressive force, but it had been drowned out by the elevator's noisy machinery soon there after.
Now, lying on the elevator floor with the luxury of time, Theo couldn't do anything but rest his ruined body.
What should've been death on impact the moment Delilah had swung her broom was instead dragged on to be a torturous tumbling through rocks and concrete, with only the static noise of the elevator to numb his brain from the pain. But through this bizarre form of anesthetic, Theo could slowly regain his bodily function as more focus returned to his consciousness.
His lungs took in shallow breaths, his muscles twitched and quivered, his nerves stretching and twisting into his body like a hand to a sock puppet, sending signals to an unconscious brain---it was as though Theo was being reanimated by the surgical hands of the elevator.
And to finish it off, like a switch being flipped from off to on, Theo's brain regained its consciousness.
For the first few seconds, Theo turned and looked around with wonder; an infant in its birth to the world. He rubbed the tip of his fingers against the dry stone flooring, swung his arms and legs a little as though to make a miniature snow angel, and then reality came back to him in the form of the fact that he was currently on the run from a murderous janitor; like snapping out of a daydream, Theo 'awoke.'
" . . . I feel like a bag of sand." Theo commented as he tried to stand up, but the feeling of static pouring into his body had tripped him back to the floor. "W-Woah, what?"
Hanging onto the handrail for support, Theo propped himself up and observed the body that should've been a mush of bone dust and meat soup, now properly working its motor functions as though it had lived a lifetime without injury.
It was a recovery so profound that all Theo could do was inspect his body out of disbelief, probing for a displaced bone or ruptured blood vessel.
If there was anything to really complain about, it was that his body felt so numb that he couldn't properly move.
But there wasn't enough time for Theo to luxuriously spend it on curiosities as a glint of light caught his eye; the button for the twenty fifth floor glowing as it neared his destination of the twenty sixth.
'Come to think about it, this elevator feels . . . normal?' Theo observed the normal-sounding performance the elevator conducted, as though it had lost all the juice it needed to skyrocket up the floors. ' . . . juice? Is that my . . . Faith . . . ability?'
Reminding himself of the draining feeling it took for him to press the elevator button with his forehead, Theo looked down to see the gentle mantle of flame lingering on his body gone without a trace; its absence giving his heart a persisting feeling of emptiness almost opposite to how it felt to jam his fire axe into a flammable object . . .
. . . and then a brilliant idea had popped in Theo's mind, finally giving him a hint on his own style of fighting that didn't solely depend on swinging a clumsy axe around.
Ding!
Reaching the twenty sixth floor of the infinitum that was this complex, the elevator doors peeling back to reveal a fresh cloud of steam escaping into its confines.
"Cough, cough! W-What the hell?!" Theo exclaimed, covering his mouth and nose as a crude spaghetti of pipes and tubes filled his sight.
Although it wasn't all too bad in the elevator at the moment, the ungodly amount of white clouds spewing from the floor was undeniably hot enough to steam a person to death. In fact, the only reason that Theo hadn't already suffered injuries from all over his body was because of its deathly cold temperature from using his Faith, but that was soon to change
Letting go of the handrail and crumbling down to the floor once more, Theo pushed his body into a corner and tried to breathe in the cooler air that settled on the bottom of the elevator; death looming right around the corner if he couldn't act sooner rather than later.
Theo tried to quell his mind in order to properly think about a solution, more than grateful for the feeling of static in his skin rather than the boiling pain of steam cooking up his organs, 'Calm! I'm calm, calm . . . what in God's name do I even do?!'
With nothing but the stress of survival on his mind, Theo began panicking as the breathable air beneath all the steam became thinner and thinner. He quickly thought of his newfound knowledge about his Faith, but it was discarded once its properties came to mind.
' . . . discard? Discard . . . the heat. I deal with heat. Discard the friggin' heat! Elevator! Where's the elevator number pad?!' Theo had finally wracked up the solution as he reminded himself of the sudden drop of body temperature it took to use his Faith, grabbing onto the hot, semi-wet handrail to trace and crawl towards the position of the number pad and slammed his fist against the close-door button.
But, unlike before, Theo had to wait the awkward five seconds it took for the elevator doors to close, stuck in the same position as more and more heat began welling inside his body.
Finally, the elevator shut its doors airtight, and Theo sighed a rough breath of relief, sprawled across the floor as he saw the steam dissipate through the ventilation system, wherever that led to.
"Aurghh . . . it didn't close as fast as I thought. Is there a conditional to my Faith other than contact with my skin . . . ?" Theo spoke as he began to theorize, thinking back on all things related to his Faith. 'The aura . . . I'm missing the aura. Although it does deal with temperature, it can't be said that the inverse works as well, body temperature charging my Faith, then . . . ?'
Theo rolled his head left and right to look around the elevator room for anything to jam his fire axe in. His first idea was to chop at the wood of the elevator, but he felt it wasn't wise to cut at something lest he break it.
So the next idea was to either cut at the handrail, which was sorta warm but also annoyingly durable with its steel-like material, or . . .
' . . . the steam itself. My fire axe doesn't restrict itself to solid material, does it?' Theo questioned, summoning his fire axe of jagged form from the few but devastating blows of Delilah.
Then, with much laze to his swing, the blade of Theo's fire axe chopped at the steam above, sifting through the white air as a wave of heat flowed from arm to heart. Just as before, a gentle mantle of flame wrapped around his body, but there was a notable difference in potency that Theo never knew he could point out, even if they looked the same.
Although the steam above was hotter than most of the things he had physically cut, the 'charge' he got back had fallen off hard, more than trying to chop at a block of concrete for fire.
'So the material in which I cut is important, huh. I should take note of that. What else should I test? Hmm . . . I don't spend it on everything that I touch, right? Consciously or not?' Theo took on a sudden worry, standing himself up against the elevator wall and running his fingers against the number pad to no effect. 'Awesome sauce. But what do I do now? Go down a floor? Risk my life with the unknown again? Or do I risk my life with the dangers that I do---'
. . . bang, bang, bang
A feint but savage drumming came from below, making still of Theo's thought process for the moment's he heard them.
. . . bang, bang, bang bang baNG BANG BANG BANG!
"TOHSHITOHSHITOHSHITOHSHITI'MNOTCURSINGBECAUSEI'MSAYING'TOHS-HI'TOHSHITTTT!!!" Theo made a pseudo curse, staying somewhat true to his religious background while hauling his ass to the elevator's number pad.
Expending what little Faith he gathered from cutting at the steam, Theo repeatedly jammed his finger into the door-open button, frantic to escape what sounded like impending doom. Once more, Theo felt a twinge of emptiness invade his heart as the elevator doors tore itself open, but he wasn't allowed the luxury to dwell on it for even a second.
BOOOM!
Throwing himself out the elevator in just the nick of time, Theo turned to see a slit of cosmic spells and mechanical intricacy rip itself open, expanding evermore to consume the elevator as a pair of pale, doll-like hands pushed against the tear.
The moments that followed were not so much allowed even a shallow breath from Theo as Delilah stepped into the elevator, aloof in every sense of the word. She destroyed the elevator number pad with a whip of her broom and brought down all sorts of rubble to block out its entry; there was no such thing as escape.
A count of each step Delilah took place in Theo's mind, failing to pass the third count as it only reminded him of his certain doom, the memory of split and torn skin stabbing at his nerves. Then, as if to still the very beat to his heart, Delilah stood before Theo and stared with a stare that Theo couldn't exactly determine where she was looking at with the veil and all.
[ . . . it's bloody cold in here! Seeing nothing but blue all around, too.] Delilah offhandedly commented, rubbing her arms together as she shivered from head to toe, excessively moving her body to stave off the cold as she walked past Theo.
The fog of fear cleared itself from Theo's mind as he turned his neck to look at the oblivious Delilah, 'What?'
Without so much as a second doubt in her mind, Delilah kept walking until she was eventually beyond the range of Theo's dumbfounded stare, who was sitting like a duck until functionality had finally took ahold of his mind.
'Is she . . . blind? Can she even see through that veil?!' Theo's mind stormed with thoughts as he tried to theorize what had just happened. 'No, she could see me before, then . . . '
Theo was reminded on how Delilah commented that it was 'all blue around.'
' . . . does she see through thermal vision?' Theo hypothesized, morbidly curious on how he could use this piece of information.