Quet scampered into a side room halfway up the staircase, which appeared to be some kind of study. The walls were nearly blank. Perfect.
She turned to Omet, who had been hot on her heels, and handed them her glitter pen. “You mind?”
While Omet pulled the pen in two with ease, Quet slid her anti-gravity glyph underneath and tapped it, so that the ink floated in place three feet above the floor once it dripped out of the pen.
Omet looked over Quet’s other two glyphs. “Yeah, there’s a plan unfolding here.”
“Don’t you know it.” Quet slapped another glyph and released several dozen sheets of paper, which floated aimlessly through the air. “I actually tried to figure out something similar while I was making those holographic paintings back in the fifties. It’s just that I was doing that with strands of cloth.”
“Oh yeah, I remember that.” At their sister’s wordless request, Omet placed the remaining glyph by the doorway.
“Didn’t work, of course.” Quet sat cross-legged in the middle of the room, looking directly at the floating blob of ink. “Had to draw the matrices for that by hand. But I guess this’ll have to do.”
She snapped and the paper began whizzing past the ink, dipping their edges in it before flying off to the edges of the room. They began to brush up against the walls, leaving fine trails of glittery pink in their wake. Quet’s eyes darted across the room, making sure the rapidly-forming geometric patterns were accurate. “Man, this is way easier when I can just mentally specify ‘right angles only’. B-T-dubs, Omet, can you just put that last glyph by the entrance? Give it a slap, cover the door.”
Omet placed the glyph by the door and tapped it, covering the entrance in impenetrable darkness. “Neat.”
“Yeah, we should just get that last part out of the way while we can.”
-
“But I think we should be asking ourselves a very important question,” said Horan. “Why are we talking about floors and ground again?”
Yang buried her face in her hands. “I don’t even know anymore. I did not murder my friend for this.” She looked up and raised one hand. “You know what? No. I’m not taking this. I am well past the point of civility!”
“Okay, I’m out.” Horan leapt off the balcony and yanked Waia toward him with a gust of wind, pulling her right out of the path of another bolt of lightning from the Locus. He pointed at the staircase behind Mark. “That way!”
Salazar ducked under the floating orb. “Yup, I’m okay with that.” He waved at Yang as he passed. “Bye!”
“Alright, fine, back to business.” Yang hooked the curve of her halberd over the railing of the balcony, then jumped off and extended the handle so that she was gradually lowered to the ground-floor. Ugh, now she was confused.
Mark, Horan, Waia and Salazar heard the Locus begin to hum as Yang commanded it to follow them down the stairs. Omet emerged from a patch of darkness on the wall and gestured for them all to enter.
Inside, Quet was still sitting down in the middle and examining the matrices the paper was smearing on the walls. “Oh, we’re out of time?”
Omet stuck their head out of the wall of darkness, then immediately pulled it back in. “Yeah, pretty much.”
“Alright then, guess I’ll have to stick with the cut-corner version.” Quet placed a finger on a small matrix on the floor near her. The glyphs covering the wall briefly flashed with green, then vanished. The paper drifted to the floor, and what little ink was still floating splashed onto the glyph. “Gross.” Quet picked up the two remaining glyphs. “Well, I’d call that a success. We’ve got, buh-buh, fifty-seven seconds.”
Yang stood outside the impenetrable shadow on the wall, the Locus floating disconcertingly next to her. “Wow, guys. Great job trying to hide. Really had to work to find that one.”
The six watched her step through the darkness, holding her halberd in one hand like a walking stick. “Well, here I am.” She snapped with her free hand.
But instead of the blast of lightning that Yang had expected, she just heard the sound of a party horn followed by her back being showered in a spray of multicolored strips of paper. She looked back to see that the Locus was outright gone, leaving only Orsinus, who was now covered in thousands of faint scars.
Yang snapped again, receiving the exact same response. She turned to look back at the others. “...What?”
Quet stood up and folded her arms. “I completely disabled all externally-active magical effects. And then I replaced it with confetti. Impressive, yeah?”
Yang deflated. “Wh-why not just take away the magic?”
“Then there would be no confetti.”
“Ugh, okay…” Yang weakly threw her hands up. “So now what?”
Mark stepped forward. “Well, I’d say that that means we win. So if you don’t mind, we’ll just take that map and be on our way.
Yang covered her pocket. “Yeah, no, you can’t be serious right now.”
Quet tried to harden her facial features. “We’re always serious around these p-”
Yang turned back to Quet with an air of immediate disdain. “You turned my lightning ball into a confetti gun!”
“Didn’t smile once.”
Waia began walking towards Yang. “Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got some steam that needs blowing off. It’s fun, seeing someone vulnerable when you couldn’t touch them before.”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Yang backed away. “Or, alternately, I could just leave. I’m sure you picked this room for a reason.”
“Nine seconds,” mumbled Quet.
Salazar elbowed Mark and whispered into his ear. “Shoot. Her.”
“I can hear you!” Yang pulled the map out and stuffed it into her shirt. “Gonna ruin it with all that blood?”
A gunshot. Orsinus stumbled backwards and fell, gold leaking from his forehead. Mark lowered the smoking barrel of his rifle. “Don’t really need to, to be honest. No rush anymore.”
Before the demon could flee, Waia reached out and grabbed Yang by the throat. “Didn’t even need that guy to be dead. I just need to be delicate.” She leaned away and dipped her hand into the wall and pulled it out, encasing it in a perfect sphere of lava. The shell began to slide downwards to mimic the shape of Waia’s hand. “Besides, there’s a lot of-”
A choir-like hum abruptly began to emanate from Orsinus’ body as his limbs jerked and spasmed on the floor. The faded glyphs covering his body were seemingly painted over by several dozen new ones, all uniform in design rather than the eclectic smorgasbord of styles that the Locus had given him. And these new glyphs did not shine with the typical rainbow light of the Down Below. These were all a single shade of pale, ghostly blue.
Orsinus began to get to his feet. Waia glanced back at Yang, who made the best attempt at a shrug she could, given the hand wrapped around her neck.
The flesh under the glyphs seemed to churn and stir, with the outlines of bones forming brief bulges under Orsinus’ skin. Waia dropped Yang and all seven people in the room began to back away from the sight.
Mark watched Orsinus elongate and bend in unnatural shapes with a series of nightmarish clicks and creaks. He nudged Horan without taking his eyes off of the sight. “Y-you know what’s going on right now? You seen this before?”
“I’d remember it if I have,” mumbled Horan.
Orsinus’ eyes sunk into his sockets and his jaw began to stretch forward, revealing rows of constantly-extending fangs. His back arched and his vertebrae pushed outwards, nearly poking out of his back entirely. As his body twisted and reshaped itself, his clothes began to rip and hang in tatters from his joints. It didn’t take long for the thing standing among the people to be nigh-unrecognizable as human.
Orsinus turned to look at Yang with his empty eyes, his mouth twisted into a lipless, unnaturally wide grin. Arcs of electricity began to shoot across his arms, legs and back, creating a sound like the buzzing of bees. Yang could practically feel the desire for a command come from within herself.
Waia noticed the demon raising her arm. “Don’t. I-I know you don’t want us here, but I don’t wanna touch that thing.”
Yang took several steps away from Waia. “Sucks to be you, I guess.” She snapped.
Orsinus was on Waia in a second, snarling like a rabid dog. It was all Waia could do to keep her lava-coated hand between Orsinus’ drooling nest of fangs and her face. Claws that had once been fingers crackled with electricity, swiping at her throat.
After a few very unnerving seconds, Waia got a foot under Orsinus’ inhumanly thin underbelly and shoved him off of her, sending the abomination flying into the opposite wall.
Salazar locked eyes with Yang, who backed towards Orsinus as a response to the perceived threat. Salazar groaned. “Stupid.”
Waia scrambled towards where the other five were standing. “Thanks for the help back there.”
Omet patted her on the shoulder. “Hey, you were lifting up the floor earlier, right? Isn’t it made of giant bricks or rectangles, or something?”
“Uh, I think so. Why?”
Omet knelt down and pointed at Orsinus with one hand. “That’s why!” They touched the floor and split the rectangle that all six people were standing on.
Orsinus extracted himself from the ruins of the wall he had landed in and stared at the six with soulless malice. Meanwhile, the diagonal cut that Omet had placed through the brick led to both halves falling through the floor, directly into the room below.
The group barely had time to roll off of the halves of stone before Orsinus followed them down, Yang close behind. Orsinus stared down at them like a predator, awaiting Yang’s command. He seemed to be barely able to contain himself at the thought of ripping through the people below him.
Waia pulled the lava on her one hand across both her arms, forming a thin, orange protective layer. “Everyone, get behind me.”
Orsinus glanced at Yang, simply reading her thoughts. He slunk down from the top of the brick, prowling towards the prey before him. The group began to back away, towards a massive fireplace behind them. Yang recognized the fireplace as the same one that… Nevermind.
Mark trained his gun on the black depths of Orsinus’ eyes. “Status report. Everyone, what do you still have?”
Salazar inspected his arms. “All out of quills.”
Waia flexed. “Give me time, and I can get more. Just can’t let him get close.”
Horan summoned a new sword into his hand. He wasn’t even sure what had happened to the last one. “I’ll manage.”
“As for me…” Mark looked up at Yang. No good, she was blocked both by the brick she was standing on, and by Orsinus’ impressive frame. “...I’ve still got this.”
He opened up on Orsinus, turning his gun into the heftiest minigun he could feasibly carry. He had to spread his legs almost impossibly far apart just to stop himself from getting thrown off his feet by the knockback. If this couldn’t bring Orsinus down, nothing would.
But, naturally, it didn’t work. Orsinus plodded through the hail of bullets like it was nothing. Sure, the gunfire shredded his skin to pieces and blew chunks of him clean off of his frame, but any lost parts simply regrew near-instantaneously. Nothing even seemed to be past the few surface layers for Mark to damage. No blood, no organs, no nothing. It was like Orsinus was just a few inches of skin and meat pulled over a skeleton.
As Orsinus endured the pathetic onslaught, his empty eyes began to fill up with the same pale blue that had overtaken him before, rising from the depths of his body. A high-pitched scream echoed throughout the room as a crackling mass of electricity formed behind Orsinus’ wall of teeth, ready to be unleashed upon the cornered prey in front of him.
Yang raised her arm, ready to give the command for the killing blow. “It’s a real shame. You didn’t have to let Xiao play you like that just so he could get to me. But now? He’s dead, and there’s nothing between you and me anymore.”
Mark, Waia and Salazar stepped forward, trying to position themselves between Orsinus and the others. Waia had even gotten enough material to give her arms some properly bulky coverings. Yang glanced at the back of the fireplace, the same one that the mysterious stranger had appeared and vanished through. Two large scoops had been taken out of the brick, that was Waia. But those weren’t the only markings. Numerous small dents were evenly interspersed up the chimney, leading out of sight.
Dents that would function perfectly as handholds.
Yang looked at the twisted monstrosity that Orsinus had been turned into, staring intently at the six trapped people in front of him. She looked at his back, crackling with electricity, for an uncomfortably long time. Then, she dropped her hand.
The light within Orsinus vanished, and he looked back at Yang. The look was probably meant to be quizzical. That emotion was conveyed much more clearly by the other six, who watched as she pulled the map out of her shirt and tossed it to Mark.
“There. Now leave.”
Mark looked at the scroll in his hands. “Wait, wh-?”
“Leave!” Yang pointed at the room’s exit; hand poised to snap.
The six decided not to push their luck and did as they were told. On their way out, they heard Orsinus clamber up the chimney, his claws scraping against the brick. On their way out Omet took one last look back and saw Yang slumped to the floor, completely alone in the wide-open room.