Liam Hall

Tuesday, April 12th, 2022 (22 days after the Shutdown)

When he’d closed his eyes that night, he found himself back in the artifact museum where he’d met the Creature, halfway across the colossal chamber.

“Why am I here, again?”

It was becoming repetitive.

He knew what was going to happen. Memories of him effortlessly beaten to a pulp resurfaced.

Spinning around in a bid to hide himself, he caught sight of the nearest pedestal.

Running towards it, the moment his feet left the central pathway and immediately, a wave of pressure crushed him to the marble flooring. Blood spurted from his orifices, clogging his airway.

In a panic, he squirmed back onto the central pathway and the pressure rescinded as quickly as it came. Liam desperately sucked at the air around him, throes of guttural coughs rattling his lungs.

The Creature still hadn’t come despite the commotion.

Where is he?

Hobbling down the central path, the closest artifacts whirred to life.

There were the strange sands that he had remembered from his last visit, but with each step, the next pair of glass exhibits on either side of him were illuminated, revealing their contents.

There was a plain ceramic bowl whose water kept spilling over the edges, disappearing when it left the bowl’s rim.

Focusing on a case to his right, an ornate necklace created with an elaborate pattern of precious gemstones emitted a weak pulse.

Lining the central row alone, there must’ve been tens of thousands of artifacts.

“Liam…” a voice whispered, heavy with a flowery accent.

His fascination with his surroundings was punctured by the sound. Fearing the worst he grabbed his head to force out the voice.

No, no… This is your mind. Picture yourself in bed and safe. Especially safe. No more of the Creature. Stop imagining the sadistic bastard.

“Liam…” it whispered again.

From a column behind him, an ethereal woman floated towards him, her body shimmering as if caught in a mirage. Her features were hazy but even still Liam could tell she was beautiful, making him uncomfortably aware of his unkempt appearance.

She slowly reached out to touch him and despite himself, Liam grinned.

Her hand swept through him and a cold like ice in his veins, rippled across his body. He felt present, whole, without any emotional divots. A sense of unease warned him but he waved it away.

Why would anything be wrong?

Aware that she was inspecting him, he tried to remain steady but his body had other plans. Liam felt a pit in his stomach open up, eating away at his consciousness. He stumbled around, fruitlessly trying to regain control of his flailing limbs but for whatever instruction he gave his body, it bypassed every decision.

He’d become a passenger in his own body.

Panicking, he watched her nod as if she were satisfied with the results. Waving his body over, they moved off of the central path. The nearest ten rows of artifacts became effulgent, flooding the dreary room with light.

The further away they moved, the greater the pressure on his body was. But it registered as a shrill buzz in his ears. Either the spirit’s aura was shielding him or his possessed body was shrugging it off, but his body continued forward, nonplussed by the changing environment.

As they continued navigating through the artifacts, she paused from time to time, stopping in front of various artifacts. And each time, Liam saw a sorrowful expression etch itself deeper on her face.

Leaving the artifacts, they entered a small clearing at the side of the chamber in the shape of a horseshoe. There were 5 identical doors similar to the cavern he’d seen before the first time he arrived but none of them were his destination.

At the center of the clearing stood an enormous supporting column with a girth dwarfing the ones lining the central column.

Leading him to the back, away from prying eyes, they stopped.

Shivering as she took his left hand in hers, she lightly traced a finger across his palm and a thin stream of blood seeped out.

Pressing his palm against the back of the column, glowing blue runes materialized in the shape of a door and fell away to reveal a spiraling staircase leading downwards. While his body continued to follow her in a trance, the cut had allowed his mind to regain some clarity.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Freeze, he screamed at his body. Stop… fucking… moving.

His arms slightly twitched.

The ethereal woman looked back, her irritation agitating her violet aura and she reached out a hand.

A pressure clamped down on his will, crushing it until its authority was firmly cemented and Liam was reduced to a puppet once again. For the rest of the journey down, his thoughts of freedom had been cauterized.

There were no torches in the spiraling staircase, but with the ethereal woman telling his body how to move, there was no need for them. She drifted over the stone slabs, leading him deeper underground.

The stairs finally stopped and he walked out onto a landing platform, a long entrance hall stretched out in front of him. But where the room upstairs presented some sense of decorum and elegance, here that warmth and curiosity he’d felt were sapped away. Plumes of dust sprang up at each step and disquiet began to burden his mind.

There were two rotten wooden doors to his left and right, betraying its purpose as pieces had broken away to reveal the smaller corridors behind them.

The only one that interested the ethereal woman was the obsidian archway ahead.

Stopping beneath it, its capstone was engraved with what looked to be a solar eclipse.

“Enter,” she commanded and his body moved to follow.

Placing his bloodied hand on the veil in front of him, it peeled away revealing a dark cavern. Stepping through, he caught one last glimpse of her smile before the veil regenerated, blocking her from sight.

The moment the veil closed, Liam regained control over his body and mind but try as he might to leave through the veil, it rebuffed him.

Turning around, he stood there, blind in the pitch black of his surroundings.

Nothing screamed bloody murder aside from the uncertainty he felt in the presence of the surrounding void. He stood there waiting.

What’s happening now?

Holding back some very choice words he wanted to tell the glowing woman, he sat down, refusing to play along with the Creature’s games, which he was certain this was. Closing his eyes when the tension became unbearable, he waited in the musty room yet nothing happened.

Fine, he frowned, brushing the dust off his jeans. I’ll play along.

Holding his breath, he took a step forward, the hairs on his body rising when he entered the cooler microclimate. Immediately, torches flared to life around the room. Thirteen ringed the room, revealing smooth walls and stalactites overhead.

The cavern looked out of place with what he’d seen so far. Even the passageway outside, while cold and foreboding, carried the theme of black. In contrast, this place was almost primitive, a simple mud cave.

The only thing that was out of place was the megalith that stood in the center.

The large stone almost seemed to be foreign, reflecting the torchlight like a crystal, while possessing the physical appearance of a slab of sandstone. It even had runes different from the ones he’d seen so far. Black chains were wrapped around the rock, softly glowing red.

Is there another doorway here or am I supposed to touch the rock?

Deciding against the latter for the moment, he pulled on all the torches, hoping that it would cause the same thing as before, where a magical doorway would appear. When that didn’t work, he smirked.

Of course… them and their obsessions with blood.

He placed his bloodied hand on the chains and stepped back.

The chains began greedily drinking his blood, its runes blazing with intensity the more it absorbed.

Clink.

They fell away, corroded where they’d been touched by his bloody handprint. A rumbling filled the room and the stalactites above him began to shudder, small chunks hitting the dirt floor. Sheltering himself under a torch, it stopped and the massive stone that stood two meters tall crumbled away.

Coughing from the cloud of dust, Liam was unsure of what to expect.

He had been hoping for a mystical key to escape his dream realm, not more shadows.

In the center of the rubble left by the megalith, a black specter-like creature hovered there, the size of his head. Wisps of dark smoke curled off it as if it was ablaze, but its presence seemed to consume all the warmth in the room, causing Liam’s teeth to chatter.

Just as he was left wondering what the next step was, the shadow abruptly attacked the torch directly behind.

Wailing as it angrily battered the flame into submission, it moved to the one adjacent to it. With each flame it quenched, it grew larger and more chaotic.

It's feeding off the shadows.

Sprinting towards one of the few remaining torches, he leapt up and ripped it from its sconce. Ignoring the splinters from the rotting wood, he swung it around in a wide arc causing it to veer away.

It can’t handle heat, he realized.

Backing towards the edge of the cavern, he glanced around him for the other torches but they were all destroyed, left in splinters. Whatever thoughts he had about attacking it or escaping the dream were supplanted with his immediate survival.

“Get the fuck back!” he cried, waving the torch in front of him.

Looking at what the creature had now become, his heart was heavy with despair. The specter towered above him in silence, a cloak of shifting shadows covering the furthest corners of the room. Shielded by the light of the torch, he looked around for the entrance but it was lost in the sea of black in front of him.

As if realizing his intention, the specter lazily reached out and destroyed the wood of the torch, extinguishing the flame.

It’s over.

Encased in its cloak, Liam’s desperate struggles were futile as its incorporeal vapors began to swirl around him. The eldritch horror was waking up.

From the shadows, a pair of draconian eyes wreathed in fire slowly opened in front of him and studied him with curiosity.

Liam couldn’t breathe. Frozen under the gaze of the creature, his mind went blank with terror and his body began to tremble uncontrollably. A chill ran down his spine and his legs gave out from under him. Earth taught him power meant money, strength or influence.

But in the face of this, those fleeting concepts withered.

This was Death incarnate.

Its eyes blared and Liam’s body went slack with fear, its aura overcoming whatever little mental fortitude he had left. Without hesitation, it plunged into his chest…

… and he woke up screaming at the top of his lungs.