Chapter 79 (Patreon)

Uh, okay. So there are eyes staring at me out of my menu, guy. That’s weird, right? I feel like that’s weird. For sure. Right? Yeah. Yeah I think so. Apart from that, this is the worst state I’ve ever seen it in and uh, well, the map isn’t of much use if I’m gonna be honest with you. Feeling somewhat uncomfortable at the many eyes staring at me, unblinking and flickering in the glitchy menu, I run by paw against the glass pane, which reminds me of the slick ice beneath me, and swipe it away.

I keep moving, already feeling my feet begin to stick like glue as the bloodied raw soles begin bonding to the ice that was slowly rising around me. I have no idea where I’m going. But…

Hey. Wait.

Do you hear that?

I look around, still walking slowly; trying to identify the sound I hear. It sounds like something… wet. Something squelchy and uh… slushy. Like a disemboweled stomach still filled with goo being dragged over the floor. But no matter where I look I can’t quite get a bearing on the origin of the noise. The ice reflects any tones so excellently that the sound could be coming from literally anywhere. Any hallway, any corridor or passage. I get the feeling that it doesn’t matter where you are on this floor, the noise you make will just bounce and travel through the many passages. Echoing around and around until it reaches…

I squint, walking quietly now, but still never stopping.

Until it reaches…?

I don’t see anything. My dramatic narration was supposed to end with some kind of visual emphasis there, but all I see is more ice and more bodies, friend. Hollowed out bodies that don’t have eyes anymore. Hundreds of frozen hands reaching out as if to grab and dig their way out. No. I look at them closer, look at their posture a little more closely. They reach out as if to push something away. The serpent I saw before with fangs bared. The minotaur. The many bodies all around me. All of them frozen in time as if to stop something from coming, to stop something from touching them.

The squelching keeps growing louder and louder and I pick up the pace again, feeling an uncomfortable fear in my little heart. I notice though, the deeper I go. The fewer eyes I see. The more empty sockets I see. The deeper into the floor I push in my search for a way out, the worse the expressions on the bodies become. The worse the dismemberment, the mangling of the corpses behind the ice becomes. What the heck is this place?

The squelching grows louder, louder. It’s closer now, whatever it is. It’s closer now. Getting closer every second. I can tell. I can smell it now. Whatever it is. I can smell it. It smells like old meat. Like frost-burnt organs. Like some black, dripping goo seeping out of a burst abscess on an old corpse. It is all around me, the sound, the smell; one is as nauseating as the other but I don’t dare to stop. Something tells me I don’t want to stop.

Hey, neat. There’s a dark-fairy. I think, distracting myself from the encroacher with whatever else I can see before me. I don’t like this floor, guy. There’s something else here with me and it isn’t the thief-girl. Something th-

I turn my head back as I walk and then I see it. I finally see it. See the great, milky-white creature lurching out of a sidewards path I just left from. I see it writhing, squirming forward. Some giant disgusting worm-like, slug creature made out of so much discolored meat. Some pasty maggot crawling through the tunnel. Its body is large, encasing the entire passage from floor to ceiling. Its round, bloated shape blocking off the entire way as it presses its mass through the passage I just left behind me. Disgusting stalks, no, feelers, tentacles reach out before it, slithering over the ice as it touches and feels its way ahead. It has no eyes. No face. No discernible features. It’s just a tube, a mass of rotting meat pressed into a form that lurches and feels its way around the perpetual darkness it must live in.

Ugh. What a horrible thing. I don’t remember any trash-mobs like that. But then again at that size, maybe it’s some kind of sub-boss? It turns towards me, feelers touching the ice in my direction, the chunk of thrashing meat behind it slowly turning to follow. Then I understand. It doesn’t need eyes, it can see just fine. To my horror I realize what it’s doing. The pasty, slimy feelers that secrete some kind of white ooze as they flop around the ground can detect vibrations in the ice. Every step I take sends out a tiny, minuscule vibration that it can see. It can feel. It can taste. I keep moving and it moves forward, closer and closer to me spanning the distance. Encroaching. I pick up the pace as I now no longer walk, I scurry.

It stops and I don’t, but I spare a moment to look over my shoulder to look at the monstrosity behind me. The feelers reach out, swiping over the ice around it until it finds the body. The corpse of the dark-fairy and it plunges one of the tube-like parts of its body through the ice, stabbing through it like a sword to a heart. The single tentacle shooting straight towards the head of the dark-fairy, straight into it, squirming around in the ice which seems to give way for the creature alone. As if the white-secretions it oozed out repelled the overgrowth. In disgusted horror I watch as I realize what it’s doing. As I see the tentacle plop back out and pull back into the writhing, mass of dead flesh. Something small. Something that glows.

It’s eating the eyes.

Nope.

Nope. Nope! I see it resume its movements, following my directions, following my trail. Nope! I no longer scurry-scurry, I’m in a full-on sprint now, bounding around the icy corner as my nails dig in deep to keep me standing upright. Nope! Nope! I need my eyes, thank you very much! I bound around the next corner and sprint straight ahead, aiming to build as much distance between me and the creature as I can. But now, no matter how fast I run. No matter how far I run, I hear the squelching. The slapping of wet meat coming from the walls as if it were just behind me. Even if I can’t see it. I can still hear it and I know it can hear me.

I understand now the trap I’m in. If I stop moving, the ice will swallow me up and render me helpless. I understand now why many of those I saw here were fighting in their last moments. I understand now that they were trapped, immobilized. Stuck to only watch, with maybe their hands free as the giant mass of sloshing meat came closer and closer towards them. Wet tentacles slapping out around the ground until it finally reached them.

Until it finally reached their eyes.

Nope!