In a sunlit chamber, a wooden door ingrained with the pattern of a rose flourishing midst bushes opened soundlessly. A few seconds later, a topless girl missing both her ears, fell out on the grass beneath. The door closed behind her and vanished.

The girl was Ria. She had survived… but not without repercussions. She had to sacrifice both of her ears and a part of her left hand to sate the Crocs hunger. She had survived, but the price she had to pay might just have been too big for her to remain sane any longer. If it wasn’t for the weakness which had hit her right after and the Crocs unbiased kindness –for he was the one who had shoved her into the door after she had lost conscious- she might just have ended up becoming a part of the bone dumps she had seen in the pitch-black dining chamber.

Exhaustion had sent her conscious adrift, but the everlasting pain managed to bring her back around. Time seamlessly passed but the surrounding didn’t show any reactions to its movements. The light shower remained constant throughout as if the cycle of day and night had been demolished and exchanged with a never-ending day. The night refused to come.

Sometime later, Ria woke up with pulsating blobs of hurt ravaging through her body. Pain pounded her head from both of the sides. Assaulting her like the sting from a hundred bees. Her left hand, which was wrapped in a bloody bandage haphazardly created from her own t-shirt, however, was numb. When she tried to flex her fingers, it led to a sharp spike of unwanted emotions crawl up her arm, which made her leave it for the time being.

Groaning and cursing under her breath, she shook her head. She mindlessly rubbed her other hand –her safe hand- on the grass bed, remembering the last of her coherent thoughts. The images of the Croc, one by one popping her bleeding fingers and ears into its mouth, and delightfully moaning while chewing on the bone -which snapped under its fangs with a gut-wrenching crunch- involuntarily passed through her mind, nauseating her further. She moved through the motions of vomit, failed to produce any result, and fell face-first on the wet grass with her eyes open.

She stared directly at the green grass and the brown soil beneath it, unable to produce any thoughts. The sound of her own breathing echoed in her ears.

Grass,

The thought, the sight, the past, the present, they seemed so incredulous to her. It wasn’t long ago when she had happily fallen sleep in her condo, not planning to wake up until night; and now here she was, in this hell of a place, being tortured and maimed, brutalized and forced to drink and harm. She wasn’t this girl, this rabid and insecure mental being without the capacity of making rational decisions. Just how had she decided it was her only option to do as told and follow creepy sewer beasts without a sense of security or rationality? It is crazy unbelievable to just think about all these things and she had managed to walk through these horrible ordeals and was still alive and well- considering the other side of well was not unwell, but dead.

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“URG!” She groaned as load as she physically could- some of it to numb her pain, and some to steel through the frustration clogging her chest and making her restless. Because groaning alone wasn’t helping her much, she started yelling and rambling at the top of her voice and pounding the ground with her safe hand. She even banged her forehead on the ground a good few times before her thoughts cleared up –naturally- and she understood that foolishness wasn’t the way out of her situation. She needed to get her act straight.

Rubbing her open hand on the grass bed, she pushed her fingers into the soil and curled them into a fist. With the sound of roots tearing, she stood up and breathed in the cold fresh air, blinking. The haunting was still fresh in her mind. However, somehow, the horrifying pain she had gone through didn’t turn into trauma and change her personality for the worst. The incident didn’t make her cold-hearted either, but it is safe to say from her recent emotional display that her mentality was changing. Now whether it was adapting to her situation or degrading was something that time would tell. For now, she was focusing on her surroundings, ignoring everything else.

The area, the light, the grass, and the overall freshness fascinated and overwhelmed her at first, but she pushed these emotions away before they could take dangerous roots and grow into hope. Although there was grass under her feet and plants growing around her, she was still inside the sewer. She knew it and it was true. Her situation hadn’t changed. She had just completed a challenge and was facing another.

The whole floor had grass growing over it. Even the walls were covered in a curtain of deep and lush flowering barbed vines. She could even see a humongous tree growing at a distance; its countless branches covered the whole roof like a web. There was not a hint of anything related to sewers in this whole area. Even the odor unsurprisingly was of flowery and fruity scent with a hint of herbal taste to the mix.

As if this paradisiacal display wasn’t enough, there were even butterflies roaming; and the singing of birds wasn’t lost either, rather it was pretty loud and clear.

Am I still in the sewer? The thought did come to her mind but her desperation wasn’t light enough to let her grow complacent. She thought, she processed, and she discarded. She took the bright roof as her proof. There was light in the garden, but it wasn’t coming from an open sky. A squinted glare had confirmed to her that the whole roof was shining white. There were no cracks slipping light into the garden. The light was actually a manifestation of the crystal growth covering the whole roof. The crystals glowed, emitting a soft warm light, making it possible for the greenery to flourish here.

I’m still in the sewer. She understood it completely.

If her sight was telling her the truth, and she was to believe it, there were fruits growing over the tree’s various branches. Her rumbling stomach wasn’t being shy either. No matter how vigilant and careful she wanted to be, there was something’s which she had come to understand about the sewer. First was that there were monsters or guardians -as the croc had said- waiting for her on every floor. And second that they weren’t there to harm her.

Now, she could ignore the basic needs of her body and risk dying from hunger rather than walking to the tree, which was clearly set up as the meeting point with the guardian of this stage, but it would be a senseless decision. Not only did she need to talk with the said guardian to know her task, but also needed to complete the task if she wanted to travel further down the sewer; because that was her only way out.

Having made up her mind, Ria started walking toward the tree. “Hopefully, there won’t be any tigers waiting for me there.”