Chapter 16: Paranoia

Escee Sixty-Six

EE-Thirty swiped the card through the machine, activating the elevator. At least, that’s what Sixty-Six wanted to believe. The elevator was just so jittery that he believed a single step into it would result in a collapse. It was like a tiny earthquake simulator.

He wrinkled his nose as he stepped into the death box. Miasma was much more noticeable through the vents in the elevator than out on the first floor. It seemed the miasma was much more concentrated on the lower levels.

EE-Thirty flashed a wave of sickly yellow mana through the circuitry, jumpstarting the shaky lift. The lift shook up for a moment before suddenly plummeting to the second floor. The sudden stop left the elves feeling breathless and nauseous.

The doors slid open. An oppressive feeling sank into their lungs, like years worth of cigarette smoke had just blasted into them. EE-Thirty immediately casted a constant cleansing spell with her gauntlets, but Sixty-Six saw her straining against the stagnant miasma as it slowly choked the mana out of her.

They were ill-prepared for this floor. If the miasma suddenly got this bad just from a single change in level, how much worse were the bottom floors?

Sixty-Six shivered at the thought.

“I never did tell ya, did I?” That voice reached his ears again, “I really do appreciate ya comin’ here. Joinin’ our team. Really, thanks.”

“What?” His elven ears twitched like wind blowing through them. He spun around. No one was behind him.

“What are you doing?” Thirty-Four tilted his head, genuine worry plastered on his face over Sixty-Six’s behavior.

EE-Thirty grew visibly annoyed that Sixty-Six stopped the group, while Zero-Two deigned to stand back, not getting involved. She grabbed his collar, pulling him close to her. “Enough! Stop being so wishy-washy about this!” His commander nearly threw him to the ground. “You’re being far too slow.”

For a moment he stood dumbfounded. Why was she suddenly so angry? She wasn’t the epitome of patience, sure, but she was acting strangely right now.

Observing the situation as he followed behind her, he realized something. EE-Thirty, while protecting the others from the miasma with barriers, her own barrier was much thinner to compensate. In fact, he saw tiny holes in her barrier, letting miasma seep through in tiny quantities.

Not enough for it to be fatal, sure, but it was clearly affecting her mental state.

Or maybe he was just hypersensitive, a small part of him thought. After all, that part of him knew that he was only focusing on EE-Thirty’s mood because he needed a distraction.

A distraction from the voice he had been hearing. The voice of a man he thought was lost, no, still lost. It was the voice of the only man he had ever cared for.

He wanted to hear his voice again. Sixty-Six yearned for it, more so than the acceptance of the Sanctuary. Even if that meant heresy, but not like this.

Not in this twisted dimension. Not with that undertone of its negative existence.

Maybe that’s why his connection to the Sanctuary has been dwindling. He hadn’t been able to hear its voice apart from near inaudible whispers, and sometimes his telepathic connection to his comrades and his commander had been hard to maintain.

EE-Thirty and the others hadn’t seemed to notice. Which meant it was on his end.

A part of him didn’t really care though. His days as an adventurer were his happiest and he would never exchange it for the riches of the world. Stephen was a wonderful human man.

Which was why it was too hard to remember him. The guilt and pain was like a heated knife, cutting apart his belly like butter. He couldn’t breathe when he remembered him. Sixty-Six never knew until then what it meant to lose happiness.

He realized his time serving the Sanctuary was empty. Sixty-Six was content, not happy, serving it, and even then, he might have been lying to himself.

The Sanctuary and its Council always said that happiness and heaven was the link that connected every elf that gave its will to the Sanctuary.

He had thought it true at the time. Back then, he would open his link to the Sanctuary and bask in the glory of the thousands of voices singing to him, and he would sing in return.

Now though, he realized just how shallow those voices were. They all sang the same tune. He thought uniformity was the key to beauty in life.

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Sixty-Six realized how wrong he was. Life is beautiful because everything was different and unequal yet valuable all the same.

He hadn’t noticed it at the time, but little by little his views on the outside world had changed. Sixty-Six stood behind EE-Thirty, but he felt she was behind him in experience. She didn’t understand the ethereal beauty of the outside.

To his elven comrades, the outside was ruled by chaos. The world away from the Sanctuary was too loud. For a long period of his life, he agreed. Life outside the blanket of the Sanctuary was too harsh, too nonsensical. Within the Sanctuary, there were rules and order.

He was content with that. That was, until Stephen.

“There’s a type of secretion here,” Thirty-Four pointed at a turn corner in the hallway on the left. It was a strange black liquid-like substance that was pulsing, almost breathing like a living thing.

Thirty-Four bent to poke it when EE-Thirty’s hand slapped his, “Don’t touch it! We don’t know what it is. Might be parasitic, or just plain not hygienic. Could be excrement for all we know.”

Sixty-Six grimaced hearing his commander’s words. Did she have to be so graphic?

Her hand hovered over the black goo; her gauntlet glowed a faint yellow over the liquid, scanning it. “It has human DNA...whatever this is, it came from a human,” she said, before pulling her nose away in disgust. “Ugh, it reeks.”

Zero-Two knelt and pulled a syringe from a magic pocket. He stabbed the needle into the black goo, absorbing some of it into the syringe before stashing it back into the tiny pocket dimension. Sanctuary magic bags were small yet efficient. Something clearly kept a secret from the Dahlia Kingdom.

He stood up as EE-Thirty nodded to Sixty-Six and the rest of the crew to follow her.

As they moved deeper into the hallway, EE-Thirty’s light paved away against the darkness. They walked until they met with two slide doors which were ostensibly damaged. The left door had its top rail bent outward; electricity sparked out of it as a wire had been cut off and damaged.

The other door appeared to shrivel onto itself, with strange plant-like tendrils growing from every cavity.

The commander strengthened the mana in her gauntlets and pulled on the protrusion on the left door, finally tearing the door open just enough for everyone to slip through.

She stepped through first to make sure the room wasn’t a death trap. A few moments later, Sixty-Six heard her voice echo a bit, “It’s fine, you can come through.”

Zero-Two went through first, then Thirty-Four. Finally, Sixty-Six slipped through and took stock of the room. It was a massive cafeteria, or what was left of it. Dozens of tables had been torn apart and scattered into blocks of wood and metal. There were no signs of food, and there were puddles of the same black goo they encountered earlier.

However, what overpowered the wretched stench of the black secretion was a strange out of place sweet smell of vanilla.

Sixty-Six could taste the waft of vanilla on his tongue. Vines grew from the cracks of the ceiling, walls, and floor.

He reached out to one of the vines. At the end of it had a strange purple flower that pulsed lightly with a violet glow. This flower was giving off a strong scent of vanilla. Each vine had a flower. Sixty-Six realized these flowers emitted the smell.

“The plant life here isn't supported naturally. Something’s feeding them,” Sixty-Six said, touching a petal as he realized the roots of the flowers themselves were rooted in concrete rather than soil. He looked over the black goo below the vines and realized it was being consumed by the plant.

He didn’t know if what the plants were doing were considered cleansing or if they were being corrupted by the strange black substance. Sixty-Six didn’t really want to know.

The elf plucked a flower from the vine and handed it to Zero-Two to place it in the magic pocket. Then, the ground suddenly shook, with pieces of metal falling from the ceiling like glass.

Suddenly, the floor burst open as a figure flew through it; black goo dripped across what remained of the floor. A strange silhouette fell against an overgrown vine, its limbs dangling limply like a ragdoll.

Sixty-Six recognized that figure. “Elsie Eillenheart?” He muttered. EE-Thirty heard his muttering and raised an eyebrow.

“The black-haired one? How is she here?” She shook her head, “Doesn’t matter, she’s clearly possessed. Get ready for extermination.” Zero-Two and Thirty-Four readied went in front of EE-Thirty, protecting their commander.

“Wait, we’re going to kill her?” Sixty-Six gasped, “She’s clearly a victim! It’s our job to-”

“Our job is to shut down whatever abomination has spawned here. That’s the Sanctuary’s Will. So get up, you’re starting to sound more and more like an Exile, Sixty-Six.”

Elsie’s limbs twitched as her spine contorted upwards. The black goo that escaped her veins started to sprout flowers like the one Sixty-Six plucked.

She reeked of sweet vanilla.

[Maw]

A black-haired figure spasmed as its feminine limbs sprawled across the ceiling, its skin burning as it came in contact with the plants scattered across said ceiling. It hissed. Jumping down to the floor, it landed on all fours as it crawled to a strange dark portal. The figure jumped through it with ease.

It found itself in a massive basement, with countless demon runes plastered across the walls, floor, and ceiling. There had to be at least hundreds of them. “Hello there~” A chippy voice said, “Haven’t had visitors in such a long time. Since you made it through the seal in one piece, I can guess you’re Mister Maw, right? Or is it Missy Maw now?”

“Ԁɐllqǝɐɹǝɹ…” it muttered, angry.

“Is that all you’re going to say? Really? C’mon! Let’s have some fun!”

The figure growled at the strangely energetic voice; black goo dripped from its mouth. It gazed at the out-of-place flowers growing out of the metallic floorboards which gave a twisted sense of holiness across the darkly lit room devoid of life.

“C’mon now, little Maw, don’t look at me like that~ Aren’t we two peas in a pod? Both of us are using fleshy puppets! Doesn’t that make us siblings? No? Comrades? Fellow puppeteers-in-arms? Meatbag extraordinaires?”

It hurled to her. Black goo dripped from its cracking skin. The opponent’s mismatched eyes rolled in response, and an elongated hand stretched to the raven-haired figure’s chest in response.

The force broke several of its ribs as the inhumanely stretched arm pummeled it across the basement. It then took a hold of the Maw’s collar, raising it up and trapped it against the ceiling before shoving it back to the floor. Another hand smashed the Maw’s head against the concrete, its body going limp.

“You’re going to be my ticket out of here,” the mismatched eyes spoke through the darkness, “Too bad you came here in a human body,” it stroked the Maw’s host’s black hair, “if you had come in person, I wouldn’t have been able to deal with you~”