Chapter Text
There were Terras almost without end out there.
Hundreds of thousands, millions, billions, all lying close to each other, some on top of the others, some no more than a breath away from another. Futures that could have been, pasts that never were, presents that pulsed and glowed with lives and blood and violence - not infinite, never infinite, but numbering so high that they might as well have been.
They were invisible to all but the magical - or magically-assisted - eye, and so the Entity could see every one of them. It had the whole of almost-infinity to choose its victims from, both predator and prey. But some things drew its attention more than others. Some worlds, some possibilities, were more attractive than the rest.
It could sense a path to somewhere it normally couldn’t reach. A weak point in a boundary like a hole in a chain link fence, something it had always known was there but never considered for lack of being able to reach far enough. There was something there - an opportunity it wouldn’t get again.
It saw the searing pulse of violence, the black stain on two worlds, and reached out, and -
Took.
In the darkness outside the light of the campfire, where only the permanent full moon could light the way, a sudden wind rustled through the trees.
Élodie looked up from where she was picking a cluster of flowers out of the ground and scowled. She was far enough away from the safety of the campfire to be in danger, but she was pretty certain she would hear someone if they tried to approach no matter how stealthy they wanted to be. Out here, footsteps were audible. There were grass and leaves and branches that would snap, giving away someone’s location in an instant. Even the wind wouldn’t cover that up.
But it wasn’t an approach that she wondered about - it was the wind itself. Something about it was … off.
She shook the dirt off the flowers’ roots without looking away from the sky above the clearing she was in. It was a little place, hemmed in by trees and close to the pond they’d showed her, often providing them with supplies or solace or a few minutes of silence to try and get their heads back together, usually metaphorically. Like the space around the campfire, there was enough room between the trees to show off the unfamiliar sky above; unlike it, there was no smoke to block the way and hide the even more unfamiliar stars.
Clouds scudded across the sky, making the little pinpoints of light vanish and reappear. And then …
For a second she thought she saw the sky change. There was a moment where it looked like it flickered, from a blue so dark it was almost black to a lighter lilac, like the color of the horizon at twilight. The stars winked out, and then like a ripple in a pond the darkness came back, bringing the stars with it.
And for Élodie, an uneasy feeling pooling in her gut.
The fog was a nightmare. It was a familiar nightmare, one she’d known about and been so close to for so much of her life that coming here should have been easy. She’d studied it, learned about it, hunted it to the fringes of the world and back around again. Anywhere that told a story or gave a hint, she’d gone to. It had been, as she often sourly thought, like a trail of breadcrumbs, but instead of taking her back to safety it had led her into hell - and there was no one she could blame for it but herself.
It had remained a very constant nightmare, though, so for something to change like that was a sign. She’d bet that it was a bad one. If things changed here, it was always for the worse - at least, in her experience.
She stared up at the sky for a minute more, but it didn’t change again, so she glared back down at the flowers in her hands. Claudette had asked her to bring some back if she had the chance, and since there was no reason to say no she’d agreed. They made for a decent offering to the fire, something to try and sway their monstrous captor to cut them some slack. She wouldn’t ignore anything that might help them.
Even if it all seemed so pathetic to even try.
There were a few more out in the little field, but she only took one more clump before pushing herself to her feet. She’d been out looking for a path through the fog and found nothing but darkness; Jake knew how to get around, but he still wouldn’t show her how even though she’d been here for a while now. Much as she could understand his reticence - apparently he had hideaways out in the darkness - it was stupid to her. If she could help find a way out, why not show her how to get places?
When enough dirt had been shaken off to satisfy her, Élodie turned and made her way back into the trees. If nothing else, the campfire was easy to find. The light didn’t comfort her the way it did some of the others, but it was better than unsafe darkness, where the killers could creep in and follow her - or worse.
Voices faded back in as she got closer. Familiar, or at least becoming more familiar by the day - if there were days here - and she barely even thought about it until she reached the clearing around the fire, and stopped.
There was a stranger sitting on the other side of the flames, next to David. Older than her, but probably not by that much, dressed in a more professional - or at least classy - suit, though without the jacket. White shirt, black vest, gray pants, and a gray fedora on black hair. She couldn’t quite see his face from the distance and with the heat from the fire between them, but he looked like a more serious man.
And there was something wrong about him. She didn’t know what and wasn’t sure she could even hazard a guess about it, but something wasn’t right. Years of hunting through the occult side of the world and determining the fake from the real had given her a sixth sense, and it was lighting up like a Christmas tree in her head.
He caught sight of her and scowled; she returned the favor, and turned to sit down next to Claudette.
“Who’s that?” she asked, handing over the flowers.
“He showed up while you were gone,” Claudette said a little quietly, taking the plants and setting one on the ground next to her feet. “He’s just like us. Doesn’t know how he got here and isn’t sure why. His name’s Terry.”
“Terry?” Élodie looked at him again, where he was in a conversation with David, or at least listening while David talked. “He doesn’t look like a Terry to me.”
“Well, we don’t pick our names.” Claudette carefully picked the blooms off the plant in her lap so the stems came off with them. “Jake doesn’t really look like a Jake, right?”
“No, but he fits the bill for it.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I’ve never met a Jake that wasn’t an asshole.”
Claudette made a noise somewhere between a cough and a laugh, never looking up from the flowers in her hands.
“That’s what he says his name is, anyway.” She glanced across the fire again. “We’ve explained as much of things as we can, but he’s not going to really understand it until he gets into a trial, I think.”
“Doesn’t believe you?” Élodie knew she only had because of what she knew, but Claudette paused, lips pursed.
“No, I … think he did,” she said slowly, “but he didn’t seem too worried about it.”
“Of course he wasn’t,” Élodie said dryly.
Across the fire, David was still talking to him, with Dwight nearby sometimes trying to interrupt and usually failing. Terry was watching the both of them with an expression she couldn’t quite read. Probably distant, polite confusion, the usual response to David refusing to shut up.
“Why’s David being so helpful?” she asked.
“He’s from England too, so David said he’d be the one to help him out,” Claudette said, pulling the last flowers free and reaching for the other plant. Élodie scowled again, but didn’t say the thought that crossed her mind.
As she watched them, Terry glanced over at her again. This time he just watched, lips thinning; then he said something she couldn’t quite hear, and David looked over at her. She deliberately ignored both of them at that and looked down at her hands, where the dirt from digging up the flowers didn’t quite cover up the blood that was still flecked under her nails.
“Something wrong?” Claudette asked her, picking up on the sudden tension.
“I don’t trust him.”
“I … don’t see why not. He’s just new. He’s not a killer in disguise or anything.” Élodie looked over at her, one eyebrow raised.
“You’re sure about that?”
“Killers can’t get this close to the fire. I know that.” She sounded certain - unusual for Claudette - but Élodie only made a dismissive noise in response. “Besides - someone new is … isn’t … maybe he can help teach us something new to get through trials. Like you did.”
She tried not to give Claudette a disbelieving look. It was possible, even for a guy who looked like he’d been pulled out of the 1930’s, but it seemed unlikely.
But … one more person meant that she was one less away from being the freshest meat in the locker. It felt like she’d been here forever, even knowing she’d barely been here for any time at all. Not like Claudette, who’d been trapped for so long she was starting to forget the order people showed up in. At least now they might stop treating her like she needed help as much. Trying to protect her when they shouldn’t, or take hits for her. Doing things she hated, because it put them in danger, or even killed them, for her.
If they wanted to die for the new guy, then so be it. As long as they left her out of the problem. She knew Jonah would be grateful for the shift in attention.
“What I’m worried about is whatever came with him,” she said after a short silence, and Claudette paused with her fingers around a flower stem.
“There might not be anything,” she said, voice brittle with a sort of desperate hope.
“Since when has that happened?”
“Ash didn’t,” she insisted. “And Bill. And Mikaela. We didn’t have anything new to deal with when they got here.”
“Three out of how many?”
Claudette looked away. For a second Élodie felt a tug of guilt, but this wasn’t something they could just ignore.
“We won’t know until we find it.”
“No, but if he knows something, it wouldn’t hurt to have an idea.”
“He might not. The only people who ever knew anything were Zarina and Yun-Jin, and they couldn’t even say much until after the trials started.”
“And Laurie, and Quentin, and Jill and Leon.”
“And … well, yes, but … he might not even know until he gets into a trial with it.” She twisted the flower stem until it broke. “Why do you think something came with him?”
“Let’s just say I’ve got a feeling,” she said, and sat up straight again to call across the fire. “Did you ask him what he thinks might have showed up with him?”
Everyone looked around, but she watched David with his perpetual unfriendly grin - or at least perpetually unfriendly whenever he looked at her - and Terry, whose expression hadn’t changed.
“No. Why the hell would I bother with that? Chances are he’s not gonna know it either, ‘least ‘til he sees it.”
“Call me curious.”
Terry watched her as evenly as she watched him, like he was picking his words very carefully.
“What might have showed up with me?” he echoed.
“Everyone had some monster suddenly start killing when they arrived. Almost everybody,” she corrected, seeing Claudette turn to look at her out of the corner of her eye. “If you know something that might want to hunt or kill us, you should tell us now, and spare us the surprise of having to deal with it blind for the first time.”
Terry was silent, staring at her with a blank expression. The silence lasted just a few seconds too long for Élodie’s liking before he shook his head.
“No idea,” he said, in a tone of voice that was perfectly normal for someone who’d just showed up in a strange nightmare hellscape and was being questioned by suspicious people. “I’ve made it my goal in life to avoid lunatic murderers and the like.”
“And what was your job?”
“I was a clerk,” he said, and immediately shot back with, “what was yours?”
“Treasure hunter,” she said with a little hint of pride.
“Really. Very exciting.”
“This isn’t really necessary, Élodie,” Dwight said, trying to pour water over a potential fire.
“Yeah, shut it,” David added.
She opened her mouth to snarl something back at David, but Claudette nudged her leg; not really a warning, but a suggestion that this was a battle best left unfought. Élodie closed her mouth and glared back into the fire, letting the temperature cool back to whatever its normal was around here.
Fortunately a few people came stumbling back from a trial just then, providing a welcome distraction. Yui, helping Cheryl along with an arm slung over her shoulders, came and sat down next to Claudette once she’d deposited her charge next to Meg; on the other side of the clearing Adam offered Jake a gleaming piece of metal, and just behind him, Felix came into view, picking his way behind the logs to find a place to sit and pausing to glance at the new arrival, and then over at her.
Élodie looked back, and he gave her first a questioning look, and when she just shrugged, a faint, helpless smile. She glanced away maybe a little too quickly at that, and by the time she looked over again he’d found a place to sit down and rub phantom pain out of his shoulder.
Things were normal again, for as normal as they ever got around here, but as she sat in the flickering firelight, she suspected that was going to change.
Because she knew down to the center of her soul that Terry was a liar, and had lied with every word he’d said so far.
It wasn’t long before the Entity swept her up into a trial; she barely had time to snatch a bag of salt from her stash behind the log and throw it into the fire before the fog descended and took her away.
When it cleared, she was in one of the dark forests - not heavy, but cold and seething with malice. Crumbling brick walls and a quick check toward the center of the grounds told her she was at the storehouse. Not her ideal place to put up with, but then again, none of them really were.
There was a generator right next to her, but she ignored it in favor of heading a little closer to the center, where she could see another one. She crept through the trees and grass, letting the rocks hide her; no point in giving herself away just yet.
As she approached the generator, her foot hit something metal in the grass. She glanced down.
It was a bear trap, shut and harmless but very much right there.
So. The Trapper in his own territory. That made things worse; even with the way the Entity apparently switched things around for trials, he still probably knew this place inside and out. He was also probably going to come for this trap eventually. She moved on, heading toward the building, climbing over a broken piece in the wall at a window to get inside and find the generator there.
For a while, there was silence; there usually was, with the Trapper. He had to set up his traps. Had to think, had to plan, had to have time to get really angry at them, though that was usually a given. She pulled at wires, tried to connect the right ends together, forcing something to spark to life inside the hunk of outdated and unreal metal in front of her, but the whole time she kept her ears open for any sign of someone approaching.
Eventually someone did. She heard heavy footsteps, but no pulsing heartbeat to say it was the Trapper; she glanced around and saw David, sneered, and went back to the generator.
He was talking to himself. About … what they were supposed to do?
“These things power the way out. Gotta get five of ‘em done if you want everyone out alive.”
“I’m not really a mechanic,” said another voice.
Élodie froze, then turned sharply. David was there, and so was Terry. She hadn’t heard his footsteps at all and still couldn’t, even as she watched him follow David. He walked so lightly it was like he wasn’t even there. That seemed wrong for a man like him, even skinny as he was - not even Dwight could walk that quietly.
The two of them approached her and joined her on the generator. Terry hesitated, looking at the levers and broken innards of the thing.
“You’ll know what to do,” David said. “Everyone does. Trust me on that. Right?” He gave Élodie a half-smirk; she returned it with a cold look, and went right back to work. It was true that even the least mechanically-inclined among them somehow knew how to fix these things on arrival, but like hell she was going to agree with David if she could help it.
Eventually Terry started working. To her surprise he never set it off in an explosion of sparks and smoke, leading the Trapper right to them, which she had to grudgingly admit was better than she’d done her first time here. Between the three of them they got it finished in a hurry, and crept their way out of the storehouse in silence.
“It’s Trapper,” she said once they were out of the pool of light cast by the generator.
“Of course it fuckin’ is,” he grumbled, and turned to Terry. “Keep an eye on the ground. This bastard sets bear traps.”
“Bear traps?” was the deadpan response.
“Yeah. Nasty fuckers, too. Go right to the bone. Don’t jump a window unless you can see what’s on the other side.”
As if to punctuate the warning, there was a snap in the distance, and Feng’s high-pitched shriek from somewhere across the ground in the same second.
“Damn.” David sucked in a breath through his teeth. “‘Least we know where he’s going now. You got her?”
The question was directed at her, but Élodie was already stalking that way; better she took care of the rescue than let David try it with his new friend in tow and get all three of them killed.
“Just get another generator done,” she said as she headed into the fog between the trees.
On her way she avoided another trap, not setting it off yet to avoid warning the Trapper that anyone was coming. He’d grabbed Feng, and already there was a heartbeat starting to pulse in her head; she couldn’t see him, but that was warning enough. She crouched behind a huge rock and waited.
Feng hit the hook with another scream, not far from where Élodie was. She watched and waited, hearing the heavy thump of Trapper’s boots in the grass and dirt as he set another trap not far from the hook and stalked away into the darkness. She peered out from behind the rock and watched him until even his silhouette had vanished into the fog; only then did she creep out and pull Feng down, helping her stumble to the same spot on her newly-crippled leg.
“I hate him,” she moaned as Élodie pulled out a roll of bandages and wrapped them tight around the huge punctures in her leg. “Every time I think I’ve got the drop on him I hit a trap.”
“That’s what he does,” Élodie said flatly, pulling the bandage tight and tucking the torn end in before moving to her shoulder. “Stop trying to jump out every window and you won’t hit so many.”
“But that’s what I do.”
Élodie didn’t respond to that; Feng wasn’t one to listen to common sense, in her experience. She just finished patching her up and let her dart off into the darkness, despite the fact that her leg should have crippled her for the rest of her life, nevermind the rest of the trial.
It was quick work to disarm the nearby trap and then creep away; the Trapper came back, but she hadn’t moved fast enough to leave tracks, so he only took the trap and stormed off. She watched his hulking shadow vanish again before moving away from him, toward the next generator, in the hopes that someone else would get his attention and drag him to the other side of the grounds.
She wondered, as she worked, just how badly this trial was going to go. They were one down and one hook so far, which wasn’t awful but wasn’t great. Worse still, things could get bad in a hurry with Trapper; a quick and easy trial could turn into a nightmare when people suddenly stepped into traps ringing the last three or four unfinished generators, leading to a relentless chain of saving and getting caught, of new hooks and bad luck. And with a new guy on board, she wasn’t particularly hopeful about getting out alive.
Terry hadn’t looked like a particularly quick runner. Or the kind of person who could figure out how to hide. If he’d been a pen-pusher then he wasn’t going to be particularly athletic or stealthy, either. She’d give him one chance, she thought, to prove he was worth saving; after that, it was all on David.
Off in the distance another generator went off. At least the two of them were doing work. She heard Feng yelp again in the distance, but this time it wasn’t getting caught in a trap, so she stayed where she was. She’d get this finished and then maybe see if she could help.
But as the generator picked up speed she heard David yell something. Her eyes flicked up to the world around her, only seeing mist and fog. No figures running out of the darkness. No signs that the danger was coming closer to her.
The new guy would be fine. For a while. David had probably told him all about what to do and what not to do, not leaving room for questions or interruptions, just expecting him to pick it up and learn as he went. Which was about what anyone could expect around here. If he died, it’d be a good learning experience - and when he came back, they’d probably have to deal with the freakout, but that was normal, too.
Or at least she told herself that, because it made her feel better about the panic she’d gone through on coming back from her own first death.
She finished the generator just in time to hear David go down. They were at three for two, which was fine; she could spare a little time to help someone out again. Élodie made her way through the forest toward where she heard the scream and stayed still behind a rock when Trapper stormed past her, carrying a struggling David over his shoulder.
This time he didn’t have the chance to set down a trap once his prey was on the hook; Feng jumped a nearby windowsill, getting his attention and pulling him away. Sometimes flashy idiocy had its benefits, she thought dryly, watching her drag their antagonist away. Still, Élodie waited at least ten seconds before creeping out and pulling David down.
“Stay still,” she snapped as he tried to push her away and stagger off toward the nearby shack.
“Leave off, I’m fine.”
“We’ve got time. He’ll chase her until she’s dead.” She pulled out the ever-dwindling roll of bandages and started on his shoulder, ignoring the nasty slashes in his back. “Where’s the new guy?”
“Left him on a generator. Told him to hide ‘til I got the fuckhead away.” David winced as she yanked the bandages tight. “Should still be there. I told him not to try anything heroic.”
“How selfless of you,” she said, not particularly nicely, and David glanced up at her with an empty grin.
“Hey, some of us have to look out for each other. We can’t all be selfish.”
“Oh, please,” Élodie growled. “I’ve seen you head right for the exit when someone’s going to die. You’re no hero. You just like this guy because he’s from your hometown.”
“Fair enough reason to like him, right? Bet you just don’t because you’re French.”
“Don’t you try that on me. I don’t like him because he’s a liar - ”
She didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence, or even finish fixing up David. The blade hit her in the back so suddenly it knocked the breath out of her, stopping her from screaming and sending her hurtling into the darkness in a pain-fueled panic. She hadn’t heard him approach. Neither had David. He’d just crept up on them, no warning, no pulsing heartbeat. How - ?
The questions drained out of her as she glanced back and saw he was chasing her instead of David. Of course he would. She darted into the shack, saw there was no stairwell leading down and paused in the middle, waiting to see where he’d go. She wanted to run, to get away and find somewhere to curl up and hide until the pain went away, but she had to focus. Had to make sure she kept his attention long enough for other generators to finish - and to keep him from killing the rest of them.
He turned into the shack and she staggered toward the other door, where the pallet lay. There was no trap in the grass outside it, so she stepped out, grabbed the edge of the wood, glared at him as he slowed his approach. It hurt to breathe, but it was going to hurt more if he caught her.
For two seconds they stared at each other; then a generator went off in the distance, its ring and flash of light in the fog cutting through the darkness. It got her attention for just long enough that she stopped fully paying attention, and that was when he lunged.
She slammed the wood down, but the blade hit her before the pallet hit him. It bit through her stomach and leg and made standing impossible, the fresh pain exploding in her gut hard enough to knock her back. She hit the ground on her knees. Tried to drag herself away before he could pick her up.
But she wasn’t nearly far enough away for that to work. Trapper smashed the pallet in two blows and hefted her onto his shoulder without so much as a grunt.
It hurt worse than anything she’d ever felt - anything physical she’d ever felt - when she hit the hook. The others claimed it got more bearable eventually, but she hadn’t believed them, and her time here had proved her right. Frantically she grasped the bloody end of the hook where it was sticking out of her shoulder, trying to alleviate some of the pain, but it just dragged against her fingers, getting them slick with her own blood.
And it seemed like it was only seconds later that she heard David go down again, yelling somewhere out of sight as he either hit a trap or went down to a machete blow, and she fought back a whimper as the pain radiated even harder through her. Feng should have been running distraction, injured or not. That was what she did, wasn’t it? And the new guy was probably hiding in a locker somewhere, not knowing what to do, too scared of the huge, hulking figure with metal impaled in his shoulder to try anything else. She was going to be taken, here, and another part of her was going to wither away to feed the Entity’s endless hunger -
Movement caught her eye. From around the other side of the shack she saw someone approaching. It wasn’t Feng.
“Hold on, I’ll - ” Terry hesitated as he looked up at where she was impaled. Élodie grit her teeth and yanked on the hook.
“Just - grab and lift,” she managed, and after another second of hesitation he did, managing to pull her off easily to his apparent surprise. Some of the pain ebbed away, but there was still plenty to fill up the rest of her world, and she staggered away, trying to hide around behind the shack. Terry glanced over when David hit another hook, but followed her anyway.
“Go away,” she hissed.
“What? You’ve got a bloody great hole in your shoulder - I’m not just going to leave you.”
“I’ll be fine. I can fix it myself.” She reached into her pocket, where the bandages were down to such a slim roll she knew that wasn’t going to happen. “Just go - finish the generators.”
“Using that?”
She glared at him, but he had a point, so Élodie relented. She crouched down and let him wrap up her shoulder, the bandages doing a lot more than they had any right to do; they soaked up the blood, held in the pain, and in some ways stitched the body back together. It didn’t last forever, and it wasn’t perfect, but it was the only way they could manage to hold themselves together through any given trial.
“Not sure I understand how you’re not bleeding to death right now,” Terry said, his voice so carefully flat she knew he was holding back a not inconsiderable amount of panic.
“Neither do I. That’s just how this place works.”
“What’s the point?” He moved to try and wrap up the slice on her stomach, but she snatched the bandages out of his hand and did it herself. “Isn’t the whole point that we’re here to die?”
“No. It’s not.” She gave herself a quick wrap or two and ripped off the end, tucking it under and handing him the bandages again.
“Then what is it?”
“You’ll find out.”
“You’re not going to say.” It wasn’t actually a question, so she ignored it, moving away from the shack toward where she knew David was still on the hook.
To his credit, Terry didn’t pester her any further; he just followed in silence, probably sullen, as Élodie crept through the trees. She heard a faint yelp in the distance as Feng started running distraction again way too late. It was good enough for now. She’d at least pulled him far enough away that they could get David off the hook and fix him up.
Élodie crawled over a windowsill and found David fighting the Entity; she had to fight a shudder of her own as she saw it, and pulled him down. Terry, halfway through the window, had paused on seeing it, his expression as flat as his voice had been, and it took him a few more seconds to fully pull himself through.
“What was that?” he asked. It was carefully calm. Élodie sneered to herself and pulled the bandages out again.
“The fucker that’s got us trapped here,” David said through panting breaths. He saw Élodie’s slim roll of bandages and handed over one of his own. “I told you. The Entity. Doesn’t kill us right off the bat, but two hooks and you gotta fight it. Three and you’re dead.”
“Why play that kind of game?”
“There’s reasons, but - ” Élodie yanked the bandage tight, making David wince and cut himself off. He gave her a glare. “ … but we’ll explain it later. That make you feel better?”
“This isn’t the time or the place,” she hissed.
David stood up, and just in time they heard Feng go down again. They were doing decently, considering there was someone with no experience on their team, but there was always time for things to catastrophize.
“I’ll go,” she said, a little more wearily than she meant.
“Thanks.” David didn’t even argue, just grinned and gestured with his thumb toward one of the distant walls. “C’mon. There’s another one over here.”
“Keep an eye out. He snuck up on us last time,” she reminded him, heading past the two of them toward where she’d last heard Feng, but David just waved her off. Terry gave her an uncertain look, but followed him, leaving her to creep into the fog alone.
Feng’s next hook wasn’t too far away, so she didn’t hurry, instead crouching along the edge of the storehouse until she saw the fog swirl off in the distance as Trapper went looking for different prey. Only then did she run in to get Feng, who swore she had a generator almost finished and dashed off before Élodie could stop her. She started to follow, then stopped abruptly.
Almost finished. That other generator had been almost finished when she took a cleaver to the back. It struck her as something strangely familiar now that she wasn’t on the business end of a blade; she’d run into it in trials before. Total silence, except for the breathing …
A premonition tingled along her spine. Élodie turned, looking into the mist.
Seconds later, she heard a snap - and this time, the ensuing yell was unfamiliar.
So he’d shed first blood, she thought grimly. The thought made her smile a little. Everyone had to learn. Everyone had to figure out how bad the pain could be, though Trapper was hardly the worst. She was about to move to help Feng so they could get this finished when she heard David yell again.
Was he trying to play the hero now? Trying to save his new friend just to prove he could, or spare him some kind of pain? It was so stupid, she couldn’t - but at least she didn’t hear him go down again, so she headed for where Feng had gone, avoiding a trap on the way.
Unfortunately her sudden arrival startled Feng enough that she crossed the wrong wires, making the generator explode in light and smoke.
“Shit! Next time come in where I can see you!”
“You can’t still be this jumpy.”
“He’s being too quiet! You could have been him.”
Élodie snorted and crouched down by the generator in time to hear the new guy scream as he hit the hook. He had time, as long as David had told him not to try and tear himself free, and David would probably get him down. She brushed the thought of going after him away.
And then David went down, too.
An argument started in her head. She should finish this, and get a door open, and then go to get the guy. He had time. He could hold out. But another part of her was reminded of how terrifying her own first trial had been, how the others had fought to get her a chance to escape so she didn’t have to die the very first time she had to deal with this place. They’d done it, at the cost of too many lives, and even with her mistrust and anger she’d been - grateful.
The metal in front of her gleamed, the pistons moving fast.
Great. Great.
With a heavy internal sigh Élodie pushed away from the generator, leaving it to Feng, and ran across the trial ground again. David hit his hook as she went, and she had to fight to not look up as the sky swirled with black clouds and orange light, the Entity’s massive tendrils and claws coming down to claim another broken fragment of a soul. She ran, and ducked behind a rock, and didn’t see the Trapper even as she approached Terry’s hook.
There was an obvious trap not far from it; she avoided it and pulled him down. His hat had gone missing, probably in the chase. He didn’t say anything in favor of clutching at the wound in his shoulder, and she had to drag him away from it before Trapper came back, shoving him into a corner and then taking the bandages out of his own pocket to try and fix him up.
“Move your hand,” she snapped. He did, wordlessly, and winced as the pain rushed back in. Shock, she told herself. The first time she’d been frozen. The others said the same thing. Frozen in shock, or panicking, or trying to run. It was a hole in the shoulder; it should have been fatal.
She wrapped him up in silence, ignoring the ugly slices on his back in favor of fixing up his leg next. Blood had soaked into his pants, making them almost black in the cold moonlight. Once she was done, she handed the bandages back, which he took with a hand that almost didn’t shake.
“Thanks,” he managed.
“We’re almost done. Follow me.”
The last generator went off, and immediately she heard Feng shriek. Either she’d stuck with it knowing she was dead, or Trapper’d gone around behind her, silent thanks to whatever power he’d stolen from the Entity, waited for her to finish and turn and -
“We have to find one of the gates.” Élodie peered out from behind the nearest wall and saw one, just visible in the fog. “Over there. If we get it open, we can get out.”
“What about them?”
“Too late. They’re gone.”
“Gone?”
“Dead,” she snapped. “It happens. You’ll see them back at the campfire.”
Terry’s expression was, for half a second, appalled. He shut it down quickly and followed her, clearly wanting to argue or ask another question but holding back on it for now.
Not too far away, Feng hit a hook for the third time; she barely had time to scream before she was cut off, and the sky trembled and warped again. The two of them stared up into the sky as the Entity descended a second time, Élodie grim, Terry so completely silent she knew he was wondering if he was just having a really nasty nightmare.
She didn’t say anything else herself. Instead, as soon as the claws disappeared she crept ahead, looking around corners for any sign that Trapper was heading their way. She tried to step out into the open when Terry suddenly flung an arm out, catching her in the chest and knocking her back.
“What was that f - ”
He looked down, meaningfully. She followed his gaze.
There was a trap lying open, almost invisible in the grass.
Élodie ground her teeth together, holding back all the words she wanted to say and instead slowly stepping back. She would have landed right in it. With Terry here she would have gotten out in no time, but Trapper knew when he’d caught his prey.
“How did you see that?” she whispered, crouching down.
“I’ve got good dark vision.”
“Funny thing for a clerk to have.”
“Never heard that before.” He watched as she reached out for the center of the trap. “What are you doing?”
“Disarming it.”
“With your hand? At least use a stick or something!”
“Do you see any sticks around here?”
The ground was as devoid of sticks as it was of ways out; strangely enough, despite the fact that there were trees everywhere, she’d never seen a stray stick, only ever leaves. Terry looked around, then back at her hand.
“That’s still the dumbest thing I’ve seen someone do in years. And won’t he know you’re doing this?”
Her fingers froze half an inch from the pressure plate. He would know, as surely as he knew when someone hit a trap; maybe not exactly where, but he knew where he’d put his traps, and he’d find them that much more quickly.
The pair of them opted to go around instead, climbing over a windowsill that wasn’t trapped and heading silently for the gate. They hid behind separate trees when the Trapper came storming over to make sure they hadn’t started to open it, then kept going when he backed off; as soon as his heartbeat faded from her head, Élodie started to pick up speed.
She wanted to get out. She wanted this stupid trial to be over, now. She was done babysitting, she was done letting people get in her way, she was done letting people die because she couldn’t move fast enough to save them, she was -
Her fingers didn’t even have time to brush the switch at the gate when the second, should-have-been-obvious trap snapped shut around her leg, cutting away every thought in her head except the pain.
She couldn’t stop the yelp from escaping her as she collapsed. Her hands clawed frantically at the jaws, trying to pry them open, but she couldn’t get a grip.
“Shit.” Terry was at her side in an instant. “What should I - ”
“Open it,” she managed.
“But I don’t know what to - ”
“Just grab them and pull!” Trapper was going to come back. They might not have time. They might both die here. Her voice carried the frantic terror of that, and it must have shot right down to some animal part of his brain, because he grabbed both of the trap’s jaws and yanked them apart.
The teeth cut into his fingers, but Élodie pulled her leg free before he let go. It snapped shut, glinting with their blood. She ignored it and grabbed the switch, hoping that if she leaned all her weight on it the door would open faster.
Terry tried to shake the blood off his hands and looked around until the first alarm on the door made him jump.
“Why the hell is that so loud?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” Her leg throbbed with agony, but there was still no heartbeat. Not yet.
“And why the hell is it taking so long to open?”
“I don’t know,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “Just shut up and look out.”
“Your leg - ”
“Leave it.”
The second light went on. Maybe. Maybe. The other door must have been on the absolute other side of the trial grounds. Or maybe he’d been looking for the hatch, just in case one of them tried to get out that way. Or if she was really lucky he’d stepped into one of his own -
That was when she heard it, just on the edge of hearing. His heartbeat. Steady, but fast, his anger giving him speed and strength.
She didn’t look around.
“He’s coming,” said Terry, his voice flat.
“I know.”
“We should move.”
“No. It’s almost open. Just stay - there - ”
Even though he wasn’t touching her, she could feel his tension as the urge to run must have tried to seize him. Who wouldn’t want to? She glanced back over her shoulder to see the hulking figure storming out of the fog, blood on his waders, on his cleaver, on his mask.
The third light went on.
“Élodie - ”
“Just stay!”
It was almost a scream, a terror that wasn’t fully hers fueling the selfish desire to survive above all else. She instantly regretted saying it, but hung on to the switch for dear life.
She could hear that awful heavy breathing now, like a bull’s. She was dead. She was going to die again.
It was Terry who took the blow, protecting her from going down, and so seconds later the door opened with a screech of metal and a low tolling bell; she staggered toward safety, saw Terry doing the same, and heard that awful heavy breathing coming for them again. If she was David she could have taken the next hit, could have dodged it through sheer willful stupidity and stubbornness. If she was Feng, she could have ducked and dodged and weaved and managed to not be where the cleaver landed next.
But it was just her, Élodie. Who knew how to deceive and find lost treasures and use the world around her to fight back. And there was nothing she could use here.
The cleaver came down on her back; she couldn’t bite back a scream as she hit the ground. She tried to crawl ahead, tried to find the threshold where the killers couldn’t cross and escape, but it was too far away. Her fingertips were just barely scraping it. He’d pick her up and drag her off and she’d be dead, all because she hadn’t been fast enough. Just like so many times before. But at least she wouldn’t be the reason everybody died, again -
Trapper wiped the blood off his blade, reached down, and grabbed her by the ankle. She bit back a sound as he dragged her away from safety and glanced back, expecting to see Terry booking it for safety, but -
He was behind Trapper, hidden in the man’s shadow. As the killer stepped back, he stepped just on the edge of one of those awful bloodstained boots, which shouldn’t have done much but was unexpected enough to make the Trapper - who was built like a brick shithouse - actually stumble back.
He’d tripped him.
It made Trapper let go of her leg to try and catch his balance. Terry darted out from behind him, faster than an office worker had any right to be. The blade slashed at him but only met the air where he’d been; then he was at her side, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her toward safety, and this time it was enough.
She felt fingers graze her calf, but even as they dug in she knew she wasn’t going back; the Entity had rules, and one of those barred killers from dragging them back into danger once they’d played the game correctly. Terry managed to pull her out of Trapper’s grip and into the semidarkness, where she grabbed at him to use as balance while she forced herself to her feet; she wasn’t going to drag herself to the campfire. Again.
“Did you just trip him?” she hissed as they heard the Entity’s claws crawl into place to stop the Trapper from following them past the threshold.
“Yes,” was the hissed reply. “Now get moving.”
As she staggered up and away, Élodie only glanced back once to see the Trapper by the threshold, his silhouette menacing and furious and then disappearing as the fog swallowed them up.
There’s something new out there.
The message came from Evan, delivered short and clipped as it always was. He wasn’t a man for spare words, Philip had learned. Something picked up from a childhood where anything that wasn’t a yes, sir got a backhand if he was lucky.
Despite Philip’s tendency to wander the fog and learn every pathway and realm, he didn’t have Evan’s innate ability to know when new paths had opened up. It was something to do with the way he was bound and loyal to the Entity, and also based on where his own property was, which was much more central than most of the others. For a given definition of central, considering there was no way to map the fog.
So … something new. That could mean many things. Lately there hadn’t been too many new realms. The blighted thing they sometimes chased off didn’t seem to stay anywhere in particular. Charlotte and Victor lived with Anna more often than they didn’t. Ji-Woon picked his hideouts from anyone who could stand him, like Ghost Face did. The Hell Priest appeared at his leisure and seemed more interested in the fog itself than the places it held. Only the scientific abomination and Carmina had their own territories among the more recent arrivals, so someplace wholly new was at least enough to pique his curiosity, since at least he could find it.
As for the killer … he had yet to see.
Philip followed Evan across the Macmillan estate to one of the walls of fog. It looked the same as ever, but he trusted Evan’s word that it wasn’t. He stepped through it and followed it, trying to pick up a sensation in the endless gray that wasn’t familiar. That was the best way to find anyone. It was the only way to find anyone.
All Evan had said was that it felt like a nail in the back of the skull, which was strangely physical for a psychological pull. But as he moved he felt it, too. A pain, with an echo of the stuff trailing behind it like the tail of a comet. The same way he felt after a bad trial when the Entity took out its displeasure on his failures. Not quite real pain, but so close it almost didn’t matter.
The fog went on and on and on … and then he stepped out into a forest, which wasn’t a surprise, but a new one, which told him Evan was right on all counts.
There was a new killer in the fog. And he’d brought his home with him.
The trees were big ones. Both tall and wide, dwarfing Philip as he looked up into their branches. The foliage was widespread and heavy, almost blocking out the sky and casting a strange sort of twilight into the space between the trunks, faintly purple instead of gray or black. Underfoot it was all dirt. No stones, no hints of a path.
Ancient, he thought to himself, and moved ahead.
Eventually the trees thinned out toward a clearing. He made his way through them in total silence, but not invisibly, until he reached the center and could see the sky again.
And it was … a strange sky. As he looked up it seemed broken into pieces. Some of it was a faint, twilight purple, a little lighter than the shade between the trees; in other places it was a burnished orange, like stone baked in a red sun. A cloud drifted from one purple patch toward an orange one and disappeared, only to reappear in another purple patch on the other side.
Like a mirror, smashed into pieces and reflecting two different images.
Philip stepped out of the woods.
In front of him was a large, squarish building, with broken fencing on either side and more trees surrounding it in every direction. A perfectly even number of windows led up toward the roof. It wasn’t in particularly good repair, but nothing in the fog was. Still, not many places had severed heads on pikes in front of them, and Philip eyed the nearest one with something like disdain.
The road in front of the place led off into the trees in either direction, but this was the center of everything. He could tell, somehow. If he followed the road he’d find the fog, or maybe loop back around to this place. There was nothing else here. Like so many other places in the fog, it was a piece of another world, copied from its original and dropped in, everything past it simply gone.
Above the crumbling double-door entry were heavy black letters nailed into place. Several were missing. He had no idea what the first word could possibly be, but the second had clearly been hotel. The design of the building made sense for it, even if it was about the ugliest hotel he’d ever seen in his life.
He approached the doors, but paused instead of going in. The strange pain was still there, getting more intense as he got closer to the building, and at the edge of his hearing was a strange shrill buzz just distant enough that he couldn’t place it. It couldn’t be insects; it was too persistent, and he didn’t see any around. It wasn’t electrical. It wasn’t anything.
A feeling of uncertain dread was looming around the place, but Philip hadn’t felt fear since he was a child. Even this place couldn’t, and wouldn’t, scare him.
He pushed open a door and stepped over the threshold.
Inside was the hotel’s lobby. As dilapidated and ruined as the outside had been, the bare wooden floors creaked underfoot and the walls were cracked and crumbling. Immediately he was hit by the stench of blood, which wasn’t abnormal, but also of rotting meat, which was a little more so. There was blood on the floor and walls. Not splashed, but streaked and splattered. Like someone suffering a terrible injury had been moving at speed, trying to escape from something.
There was a flayed corpse on the check-in counter. It had likely been there for some time. The limbs were twisted, the sides of the counter riddled with deep bloody scratches. Hints of bone were visible through mangled muscles. Even after the initial torture, things had just kept on going until the heart couldn’t keep up. But Philip only gave it a cursory glance, his attention drawn to the figure standing just by the body.
To say the figure was tall was to miss the opportunity to use the word towering. It loomed over the desk, casting a strange shadow in the flickering yellowish light coming from a bare bulb on the ceiling. But even then it wasn’t the same kind of tall as so many of them had; it was like someone had taken a normal human and pulled, stretching them out too far and then leaving them be. The head was a little too small for the height of the body, which gave credence to the idea.
It was dressed in a long black coat. Leather, most likely, but strangely shiny. At the throat was a white cloth that disappeared under the coat; unsurprisingly, it was speckled with blood. For a few seconds Philip thought it had on red gloves, but a moment’s more inspection revealed that the hands, stretched thin like the body, were as skinless as the corpse in front of it; blood-soaked bandages were wrapped around the palms, the stray ends dangling loosely. One hand hung by its side; the other was gripping a scythe even taller than the figure, with three blades too many on the end, each set at right angles to each other.
Its head was all white. There was no face. Philip looked long and hard at it as the thing’s head turned toward him. There was no hint of shadow to suggest he was looking at a cloth pulled tight over a human face. No suggestion of features anywhere. Just a blank white head in the approximate shape of a skull. There was no hint of blood on it, or even soaking through it.
From the angle of the body, it was looking at him. He stared back, blank gaze for eyeless stare, and tried to see what he could see on everyone else save one: the condemning ghosts that had brought this thing here.
But there was nothing. Nothing but a red haze that had filled the room since he stepped inside. It seemed incredibly unlikely that something that brought this kind of place here could never have killed someone, particularly given the ridiculously huge weapon. Even the Demogorgon, which didn’t have a human brain to understand condemnation or guilt, had ghosts that trailed after it in fear and hatred; only Rin was left alone, the only fear and hatred in her world being her own.
For several long seconds they watched each other in silence, and then something clicked.
Maybe it was the Entity granting him understanding. Maybe he just turned his head a little, and saw things differently. Maybe he’d been ignoring what he’d been seeing out of some kind of sheer, overwhelming, spiritual horror.
The red mist wasn’t a mist. There were flickers of movement in it. The shapes of bodies, fading in and out of sight. Eyeless faces. Exposed ribcages. Skinned and eviscerated and brutalized, mouths open, swarming around each other, all so drenched in blood they blended into one another.
There must have been hundreds. Maybe thousands. He couldn’t tell. It seemed impossible, but he didn’t doubt his own sight.
And that was when he realized that the buzzing he could still hear just on the edge of the building’s empty creaking was an endless cacophony of voices, screaming in endless, terrible pain, most without words, some with a single mantra howled on repeat:
it hurts
Philip stared for five more seconds, then turned around and stalked back into the forest.
The figure watched him go.
i. And so as the Arrogant Man was cast down by the New Prince, the court rejoiced, and celebrated, and praised the King and his wisdom in ensuring they lived in harmony and splendor forevermore, and the New Prince took up his role as the King’s most ardent defender and servant.
ii. The Arrogant Man who was once the Prince was left to wallow in his regret, cursing himself and his failure to obey the King as a good and loyal servant. He had no more allies, and none would be so foolish as to tie themselves to him now, so he was abandoned in his suffering.
iii. But then a figure came to the Arrogant Man and asked him: why do you, once so loyal a servant to the King, lie forgotten in the dust? How can such a thing have come to pass after so long?
iv. He responded, “For I have committed a grave sin and betrayal against my King, and no longer shall I know his grace, only the memory of it, and all my suffering is just and righteous and deserved.”
v. And though this was all so, the figure leaned down to lift the Arrogant Man from his misery, and said: though you may deserve all that you receive, you may still be useful, and perhaps in time you may prove your worth to the King again, and he will welcome you back to his court; all you need do is take that which I offer you, and serve me as you have served your King before.
vi. The Arrogant Man had no understanding of how this could be so, but the chance to regain the favor of the King was too tempting an offer to refuse, and so he took that which was offered, and gained a new might and purpose, and became, once again, the Prince.
vii. And so the Prince left the lands of the King for those of the Queen.