With the naval armada reduced to next to nothing, Vaile returned to the cabin and then returned to bed. However, it wasn’t long after that before the ship began to slow down once again. Rising from his nap, Vaile half assumed that there would be another armada, but was both pleasantly surprised and a bit let down when the mass of warships that he was expecting were not in view. Instead, what was before his eyes was a single building, jutting up from the endless waters around it.

It bore the likeness of a lighthouse, but there was no way that a lighthouse would be all alone out here and several days away from the port by sea. And, as if it was not creepy enough, the top of the tower was not ringed in glass and no light came from it. In fact, it was more of an obelisk than a lighthouse, but one that gave off a feeling of unnerving anxiety.

The tower looked to be something one would expect to find in a story about some eldritch horror, like a pillar leading to the great city of R’lyeh in a fanfiction set in the Lovecraft Mythos. The ambient fog stayed very far away from the tower, and yet at the same time, it could be seen that the fog was trying to claw its way towards it at the same time. Tendrils of mist reached out like tentacles towards the massive structure, only to recoil after a while and be blasted away by some unseen and unfelt force.

The water and wind in this area were so still that you could not see a single ripple, which was a massive departure from the normally violent waves and gusts of wind that were just beyond the circular area of influence that the tower seemed to project around itself. Even the jets of water produced by Vaile’s ship made little to no changes in the placidity of the water around it. Despite this, the ship moved forward upon its own power, but had slowed considerably, though not due to the calm waters.

Vaile peered over the edge and saw that the ship had slowed to carefully navigate around the jagged bits of rock and darker stone that lay just beneath the surface. As if the current situation was not based deeply enough in Cosmic Horror, Vaile could tell that he was essentially sailing over a massive sunken city that was only barely below the ship’s bottom. Either that, or what was beneath the ship was some massive art project, and to be brutally honest, Vaile decided that he would much prefer if it was the latter option.

He had played enough games and seen enough movies and read enough literature to know that he was now entering some deep, ancient, and generally nasty shit. In the end, he had tasked the ship with taking him to the place that would let him escape from this realm, and he had little choice but to hope that this was, in fact, the right place to be. The ship slowly made its way through the maze of underwater obstacles until it reached the tower, stopping as it reached what could have once been a balcony but now served as a place where Vaile could disembark.

The gangplank was set down, and Vaile took his first tentative steps onto the mass of rock and stone, expecting to feel the slippery stone he set his feet upon to be covered in algae and other such things. However, the stone was dry as a bone, only looking slippery due to it being polished to the point that it looked to be covered in water. In fact, closer inspection led Vaile to double-down on his apprehension, as the stone seemed to be transparent and filled with some dark and ever-flowing ooze that slowly shifted and swirled and gave the impression that the rock was alive.

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Vaile closed his eyes, tensed himself, and then exhaled, letting out a long breath and releasing the pressure he was exerting on himself as he actively tried to lower his anxiety. After repeating this action several times, he opened his eyes and saw a glimpse of someone standing not too far away from him before vanishing as if it wasn’t there.

“Fuck me…” he grumbled as he moved forward towards a massive door that was embedded in the side of the tower. “More hallucinations…”

Although, if the previous ‘hallucinations’ were anything to go by, he wasn’t alone and that wasn’t a trick of his mind and his eyes. Regardless, he reached the doors and placed his hands on one of them, almost bracing himself as he figured that he would need a lot of force to open even one of them. Instead, he was nearly sent to his feet as the door opened with minimal effort, almost like he had tried to force open a door with no lock or handle made entirely out of a single, thin piece of plywood.

The door swung open with incredible force before coming to a dead halt when it became perpendicular to the position it had been prior. Regaining his footing, Vaile cautiously walked into the tower, which, like one might expect from such a thing, was much, much larger on the inside than the outside’s dimensions would suggest to be possible. As Vaile made his way deeper into the massive open space, he turned as the light behind him began to vanish. In typical Horror fashion, the only known way in and out slammed shut behind him once he was too far in to reach it in time.

He cursed himself for forgetting to follow the Rules of Horror, Monster, and Slasher Fiction and letting what could have been his only way out be lost to him. Then again, he likely wouldn’t have been able to keep it from closing anyways. He had seen the thickness of the door and that it was made of the same stone as everything else here. It likely was only so light because of it wanting him to get in easily. Now that he was in, the door would be heavier than a Neutron Star, or at least heavy enough that his current limits would mean that he would be unable to budge it.

With no other options open to him, Vaile looked around and began to feel the old and familiar sensation of being watched intensify to an ungodly extreme. The pure abyssal darkness that surrounded him meant that he was more than likely going to find himself lost unless a light source provided itself, and he would rather not make one himself.

Any time someone in such a situation in a Horror, Monster, or Slasher fic made their own light, the thing that was after them would either be right behind them and attack or would use the light to find them. He had already ignored one of the rules, and he saw where that got him, so he wasn’t going to ignore another one. While certainly risky, it was far less risky to wait in the darkness for a light source to appear than it would be to make one of his own, and even if one did appear, he wasn’t dumb enough to scurry towards it immediately.

He would play this game the way it was supposed to be played. He knew what would likely see him killed or captured, and he refused to engage in such cliché fuckery. If what was in the darkness did exist and was coming after him, it was probably in his best interest to not know and wait for a silent, unseeable end to hit him. After all, when you see the monster or murderer, you practically ensure that your end will be painful, gruesome, and agonizingly long.

If he was going to die, it would be quick and painless, and so he waited in the dark for death to find him.