There was no light source inside the plane, but the sky glowed. Multicolored swirls spilled through the ice-glazed windows and illuminated circles of the scene. A group of tired survivors, gashed, bruised, on their last legs, all huddled around alcohol-fueled normalcy. Now, they huddled closer as creatures crept from the shadows.

Aberrations of nature. Slow, and methodical, they inched out like spiders. Crawling faces, withered and old, men and women, and from the back of their thin-haired scalps sprouted a series of fingers. Long, swollen knuckled fingers gripping the plane walls like tarantulas.

The survivors stood back to back against these new intruders.

Zoe stepped toward the face that spoke from where it hung on the wall. She grabbed an in-flight magazine from the pocket of a seat, rolled it up, and swatted the face.

The magazine passed through the creature as though it were nothing more than the shadows it crawled from.

“Scary, scary,” the face grinned. “You strike at those who wish to help, but might as well strike at despair. Yes, yes? Strike at despair.”

The dozens of faces all grinned, all chimed in with their voices like desiccated paper.

“Yes, yes, strike at us and learn.”

Zoe swatted, and again the magazine passed through and struck the wall as though the creature wasn’t there. She stepped back. Her heart rattled. The wound in her side ached.

She refused to show the fear on her face.

“What…” Zoe cleared her throat. “What do you — hey, leave them alone!”

She stomped toward the elderly couple, who hadn’t left the side of their dead son. Seven of the crawling heads had surrounded them. A pair crawled up the legs of the mother, who merely wept and let them ascend. Up her shirt. Onto her shoulders. Near her ears.

The faces watched Zoe approach. They brushed their fingers through the mother’s tears. Collected droplets on their yellow nails and drew them greedily into their withered lips.

“True despair,” they crooned. “Unfortunate, unfortunate, unlucky, unlucky.”

“Leave her alone,” Zoe clenched the useless magazine. “Tell us what you want.”

“Want deal, deal, delicious deal,” the leader said. “You feel the despair of your situation? Black pit yawning, yes? The Seven Winged Frost Mantis stalks your metal cocoon. You have no escape. We offer escape. We offer you life beyond this night.”

The pixie-haired college student scoffed.

“We can’t listen to these things. They’re too creepy. You can see out the window the monster is gone. We just need to get to the town, it can’t be more than a few hundred feet away.”

The face grinned and crawled in a circle until it was upside down, and the wide smile seemed the deepest snarling frown.

“Yes, yes, flee into the woods. Infested with mouths. Hungry mouths in this new world. Be the first to feed yourselves to the snarling shadows. Yes, yes, or no, no, make a deal and live…”

Zoe narrowed her eyes.

“What deal?”

The face rotated once more. A beaming, grandfatherly smile perched atop ten wrinkled fingers.

“Always reward curiosity, yes, yes. Deal is simple. Join us and live. Become us and crawl through shadow toward safety.”

The college student gagged.

“Become like you?”

The survivors murmured. Some disgusted, others perplexed. Zoe felt a deep revulsion. Even after all the changes happening so fast, she couldn’t imagine herself becoming like this thing in front of her.

Her expression revealed her thoughts, but the thing kept smiling.

“We were all not us, once upon a time. Another world, another sky, we lived and wept until the shadows crawled and offered us a hand. Same hand, same hand, same hand we offer you now. Ah, look, she has decided. She has agreed.”

The creature pointed at the crying mother. A dozen of the things crawled over her. Shadows draped from them and cocooned her. She turned to face the group, the horror in their eyes matched by the depths of her despair.

“I just… can’t face the pain…”

Her husband reached for her.

“Melanie, don’t —”

His hand passed through her. The tall, shadow-cocooned form crumbled, and the heads fell to the floor. They crawled away on silent fingers toward the walls, and at the bottom of the pile, a new face emerged. Withered, smiling, but unmistakably the once crying mother.

“Is not bad, no, no,” she said as she crawled toward her husband. “Join me, join us. The world is vast and despair is endless. Let us escape together, yes, yes?”

He shuddered as she crawled onto his shoe, but did not kick her away. She crawled up his leg, his flannel shirt. Blue polish flaked from her fingernails as she crawled toward his ear.

There she whispered something nobody else heard, and he nodded.

“I’ll join you.”

“Yes, yes, into the darkness, yes, yes, out of sorrow.”

More heads crawled toward him, as more emerged from the shadows.

Zoe couldn’t move. Couldn’t drag her eyes away from the scene. The heads crawled, emboldened, toward the survivors. Some backed away in horror, but others let them ascend. Let them whisper.

Another shroud formed. Wisps of darkness covered the scratched cheek of a lonely man. His face melting into relief as it melted like hot wax. As his body shrank in on itself.

And not him alone.

Where eleven stood, eight remained.

Despite herself, Zoe felt curiosity. What did the heads whisper? What secret, what truth, could persuade someone to shed their humanity in such a grotesque fashion? A head crawled toward her across the floor.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Maybe there was an escape from the despair looming in her heart? The tide kept at bay by a crumbling wall of willpower. Willpower can’t last forever. Every wall collapses in the end. Best not stand on the wall at all, and if there was a way off…

How could she ignore the easy way out? Just because life was hard, didn’t mean it should be hard. Just because one deal left her in debt, didn’t mean every deal would. Just because some people betrayed her, didn’t mean everyone would…

Bella grabbed Zoe.

“We have to get out of here,” she said. “We can’t listen to them.”

Zoe frowned. Did she trust this girl more than the others? More than the whispers of these creatures? She was a stranger, after all…

Something flickered in her peripheral vision.

A head on her shoulder. Lips moving. Whispers synched with her thoughts. Sweet poison of helplessness dripped from its grey decrepit tongue.

Zoe’s eyes widened. Horror. Repulsion. She recoiled, physically, mentally, and wished with all her will that the creature was gone.

Something wriggled within her. She thought of the steel tendrils. The threads of power stitched into her flesh. She bared her teeth, and the creature flinched.

She shouldn’t fight. No. No. Why fight when she could surrender and join the swarm? There was no need, no need, no need, to be a lonely girl. She didn’t need to be young in the dark house of broken windows calling out for a mother who would never come…

No!

Zoe growled. How dare these creatures pluck at her mind? The thread whipped within her. A silver flush swept over her brown skin. Steel sheathed her, and the sound of a snapping rope echoed in her mind.

[Skein 40/57]

The creature shrieked and leaped from her shoulder. It landed on the ceiling and skittered away. Scowling as smoke curled from singed fingernails.

Zoe swayed, but Bella caught her.

Just as she suspected. Skein was the tangled power she felt within herself. She couldn’t be sure if it was the metal tendrils, or something else, but she had used it twice now.

First when healing herself, and now when she repulsed the insidious creature. It had taken ten Skein to reject one creature, and though it remained at a distance, already more crawled toward her. She didn’t have enough Skein. Soon, they would overwhelm her. Soon, she would join the other survivors in the shrouds of tattered shadow.

Bella tugged on her, and Zoe nodded.

“We have to get out of here,” she said.

“But how?”

“Emergency exit.”

“It’s frozen."

"We’ll force the door,” Zoe hoped her new strength was enough. “Maybe we can reach the town before the mantis gets us.”

Bella nodded.

"Let’s go."

Zoe caught the unspoken doubt in Bella’s voice. But what other choice was there? Six humans remained: Zoe, Bella, Anton, the two college kids, and the drunken flight attendant. As a group, they retreated from the crawling heads.

Dozens of the monsters swarmed from the shadows. Crawling fingertip by fingertip with the glacial patience of the inevitable. All smiles. All joy as they sang about the sweet release of their deals.

Zoe backed toward the emergency exit. The survivors crowded behind her. The monsters kept their distance but gained by inches. Hesitant to approach her. The singed one remained at the back.

Zoe glanced at Anton.

“Can you open the door while I keep them back?” she whispered.

He gripped the handle, tried, and grimaced.

“All my attribute boosts are in Insight,” he said. “I’m not strong enough.”

“Fine.”

Zoe’s hand closed around the handle to the emergency exit, cool in her hand, and pulled. Metal ground against metal, but ice held the door.

The lead head, with his thin long hair and crooked teeth, snickered.

“You would leave us, leave us? Into the dark and into the trees? Lose yourself out there and stumble in snow until the mantis picks you off one by one. Think we will not find you hopeless fools out there? Think you will not make a deal when you sob before the onslaught of insectile blades?”

Zoe glared.

“Shut up.”

She gritted her teeth against the pain in her side and wrenched. Ice splintered. A gaping hole in the plane's side. The door fell.

Into darkness.

Beneath the colorful sky, a pine forest. Suggestion of the town through the trees. Brief glimpse of flame-lit smoke. Frozen ground reflected the sky, but did not dispel the thick shadows between the trees. Out there, somewhere, lurked the mantis.

Zoe hesitated. The distance seemed so short, but she had no doubts about the danger. She ignored the survivors pushing against her back. Urging her as the heads drew closer.

None of them saw the mantis. She alone witnessed the cruel, predatory perfection of its wintry gaze. No hope lay in the pines beyond, and it wasn’t the creeping heads that told her this.

A stiff wind blew through the empty doorway. Glittering sparks of frost rode the breeze. The heads, sensing the uncertainty, charged.

Zoe stomped down on the first monster to get too close. Steel flashed up her bare foot as she concentrated her will. The creature hissed as she crushed it between her toes. It melted into shadows and smoking slime as the cold sensation of power ran up her leg and into her body. Pooling inside her. Building into something more.

[Skein 25/57]

Damn.

It took even more Skein that time, but the creatures stopped advancing. She felt the way the string of power wriggled within her, like wrestling a snake. Her control was abysmal. Less a sense of control and more like she wildly flailed. But if she put her mental grip there, held it like that… maybe she could figure this out before she ran out of Skein.

Before they all died.

The creatures watched. Heads bobbed on fingers. Smiles sharpened at the corners.

“Nowhere to go,” sang the leader, waving pointer fingers like a conductor. “So little Skein. Kill one, kill two, we shall claim you in the end.”

Anton stepped beside her.

“How did you do that? Can I help?”

Zoe shrugged, still glaring at the leader.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “Just, focus? On the stringy thing inside you and lash out? But it takes Skein and I don’t have enough for all of them. I think we either run, or we lay down and die.”

He chuckled, and Zoe’s skin prickled. He had a laugh that belonged in an alley, behind you, on a moonless night.

“I don’t love these choices, but what else can we do?”

[Phase 4 complete.]

[Dungeons seeded.]

[The pockets of the world hold more than loose change. Find treasure, find yourself, find your way out.]

Twenty feet from where the survivors stood, amidst the crawling heads, the air buckled.

Groaned.

The monsters shrieked as a door appeared. Tall and wide, built of shattered mirror fragments clung together with thick red grout. Grout flowed and seeped into the carpet. Endlessly.

Blood.

Etched into the center of the door was the black outline of a bell. Shadows seeped from the outline.

The heads too close to the mirror brushed its surface, and it sucked them inside. For a moment they shrieked soundlessly inside the reflection, before vanishing.

Despite the alien nature of its construction, despite the danger, the door beckoned.

“What else can we do?” Zoe pointed at the dungeon entrance. “How about we go in there?”