by Kell Inkston
Jobber Colette Ketiere smiles slyly as she takes Grancis by the hand and leads her in. Again, Colette feels the tug of the wall's barrier holding on with just a slight of resistance before giving way. However, when Colette pulls in Grancis, she slips right through- curious.
The two step into the secret hall in Irefall's manor, only to be greeted by a screaming ghost.
"Gnave! Let me out! Please, I'll be your best friend!" The spectral armor shouts, smashing its fist against the salt prison's invisible walls.
Grancis draws back in surprise and Colette scoffs uncomfortably; stupid ghost's been here this whole time. Colette aptly pulls Grancis along by the hand, around the ghost's mineral bastille, and toward the door of Irefall's most private chamber.
Grancis can feel the sweat Colette's already excreting, she's getting very nervous.
Colette leads her friend up to the door, and takes a deep breath. "Alright, Gran... This is it. Just... look away the second you see it. It could be anywhere," Colette explains, reaching her trembling hand for the knob.
The two girls brace for true horror as Colette takes one final breath in preparation, and throws open the door.
Again, it appears uninhabited. They wait a few seconds.
"Strange," Grancis whispers, "where is it?"
Colette hovers her peripheral vision over at the mirror. She's already figured out a strategy. She can see something is amiss in the mirror, something incorrect in the reflection of their own, material world, but she's not looking directly at it. It's only a dark, horrible mess of moving blurs.
"The mirror," Colette says, readying her pistol.
Grancis, if naively, peeks over to the mirror. "...Oh!" Her tone is so mild, Colette would almost think Grancis is strolling along in a park.
" 'Oh' what?"
Grancis inspects the thing in the mirror as it emerges. "It's... I'm not sure how to explain it."
"But how are you looking at it?!" Colette asks.
It plops out of the mirror, but begins floating toward them with all the stuff of nightmares. "It's... I don't know, just not... anything, really. What's so scary about it?"
Other than the flying eldritch horror hovering their way, equally terrifying to Colette at this moment is that Grancis is somehow immune to the eldritch's anti-humanness.
She shoves her pistol in Grancis' hand. "Shoot!"
With a moment's difficulty, Grancis complies and squeezes the trigger aimed at the something. Somehow incomprehensibly, the bullet splatters across the eldritch like a brush of watercolor, smearing the image but not deterring the creature in the slightest.
"Did it do anything?!" Colette wheezes in horror.
"I..." Grancis peers through the mirror, and spots something very interesting. "I don't think so, but I think I see the Black Eye!"
Colette gasps, taking a few steps back from the slowly encroaching monstrosity. "Well... well get it, I got this!"
Grancis snaps her gaze to the cowering Colette, already pathetic and whimpering under her breath. "...I'll make it quick!" Grancis runs at, then around the creature, reaching out with myriad appendages to arrest the dashing Grancis. Abruptly it picks up speed after her, but it's grabbed from the opposite direction.
"Stop right there you- *ummh*" Colette again spits up bile. She must be becoming looser in the head, she can't believe she grabbed it.
All at once, the part of the eldritch Colette grabbed responds with sensations of burning, freezing, chewing, cutting, grabbing, digesting. An incomprehensible mess of stimuli overcomes her arm as she pulls away in natural reflex, but she can't escape. What she thought was the creature's shoulder was actually it's teeth, and yet a shoulder at the same time, and somehow the teeth are her own.
Grancis leaps into the mirror realm listening to the confused, horrified screams behind her as she dashes for the mirror, grasps The Black Eye, and runs back. She feels nothing coming out of the eye, like it's barely worth noticing.
The moment the eldritch spots Grancis with the eye, it releases Colette's arm and tears off after her.
As Colette recovers from the assault, the eldritch latches onto Grancis with an array of furious, finger-like teeth.
"Run!" a grounded Grancis says just as she tosses the eye to Colette, who picks it up and runs without reservation. The creature gets off Grancis and turns for Colette. She cannot understand what it is she's holding, but she knows it's the eye. She runs on, through the secret hall with the creature just behind her. It passes through the salt-circle the speed blowing apart the formation and releasing the ghost. Colette doesn't look back. Just as she can feel the cold of the beast behind her, she goes through the room.
Out of breath, she turns to her side, to find herself unaccompanied. "Grancis?"
There’s a pause, and a bleeding Grancis reaches weakly out from the illusory passage. Colette yanks her friend out and holds her in an embrace as she ushers her away from the passage and towards the ballroom immediately.
“Are you… are you alright?” Colette asks, averting her gaze from the eye, which she can somehow feel the pressure of emanating to every part of her body. Grancis’ expression is blank, a true thousand-yard stare. She’s limp in a way that suggests sleep walking, and is drooling slightly as she rests against Colette. “Uh, Grancis? Sort of important stuff we need to do.”
In a snap, Grancis jolts in Colette’s grip, and she stands to full alertness. “H-huh? What… Are we okay?” Grancis asks with wide eyes as she surveys the safe(r) hallways of the manor commons.
Colette looks over Grancis’ injuries, and decides treatment can wait- they’re surprisingly mild. “Yeah, we’re fine… more importantly, why aren’t the other two chasing us. What happened back there?”
Grancis stares forward with a dull expression. “I… I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everything just sort of… blanked for a second.”
Colette squints in confusion. “But you got out?”
“…I guess I did”
“Huh, well alright then. Let’s haul ass over to The Captain with this eye and…” Colette stops.
“What is it?”
Colette finally makes the connection that she has The Black Eye; it’s time. “The eye, we have it.”
Grancis looks behind them as she regains full control of herself. “Yes, what of it?”
Colette holds the dark orb, feeling like writhing, devouring glass, and stares inside. Slowly, gradually, Colette can see something small and white in the middle of the orb.
And it grows…
“Colette?” Grancis shakes her.
And time slows down…
“Hey! What’s gotten into you?!”
And then it speaks, and wraps around her.
“HUMAN SOULS.”
“What?” Colette thinks.
“OFFER YOURSELF, AND YOU WILL KNOW LIMITLESS POWER.”
“…You… You’re the eye!”
“SUCH A STUPID OBSERVATION, PERHAPS YOUR MIND WOULD NOT BE SUITABLE TO CONTAIN ME?”
“…If I said yes, you’d eat my soul, right?”
“I WOULD ONLY ASK FOR A RETURN EQUAL TO WHAT YOU ARE GIVEN. SURELY YOU CAN SPARE ONE SOUL.”
“…One? What do you mean?”
“YOU ARE UNAWARE OF YOUR OWN STATE? HUMAN, SURELY YOU WALK A DEEPLY CURSED PATH. YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY ONE WITHIN YOUR BODY.”
Colette freezes up, and lets the orb drop from her hands, breaking her from the trance. “… More than one.” Colette says outwardly to Grancis, who has been shaking Colette for nearly a minute.
“You’re okay!” Grancis shouts, her bloody arm having messed up Colette’s shirt.
“No, I don’t think I am,” Colette says bluntly.
Grancis raises a brow as she lets go of her friend, picks up The Eye, and leads her forward. “What’s wrong?” Grancis asks as they move forward again.
“The Eye… It talked to me- says I have more than one soul?”
Grancis scoffs. “Well if it needed to ma
ke a deal to eat your soul then I’m sure it would make it sound like not such a big problem.”
Colette nods. “I guess…. Must’ve been a trick.”
“Well The Captain’ll explain everything once… Martaine!” Grancis spots Officer Vangair round the corner in front of them. He’s smiling, but not quite in the way she expects of him.
“Good evening, you two,” Martaine says, reaching into his coat pocket.
A Manically-Famous Guest OR “He Who Has the Last Laugh” (Truly, a Memorable Evening: Part Three)
The battle rages on in the ballroom; it's truly a blitz. It's been minutes since they've started as while The Mayor's strength and speed increases, it seems The Captain's starting to wear out. As Martaine fires neigh-useless shots from his pistol, The Captain and Boris tangle with a steadily mutating, increasingly-powerful Mayor Irefall. The guests *ooh!* and *ahh!* at every display of skill and prowess between the two main combatants, as Martaine isn't really doing anything other than shooting behind cover and Boris is sort of just... scary.
Irefall slashes forward with her hand, now resembling a hooked glaive more than anything, and tears through the dodging Captain's side. Just as Boris smashes a claw into her face, she shrugs it off, flips Boris with a roll over the back, and swings him into a wall.
The Captain leaps back with some bandages. "I'm quite impressed," he says as he rolls on a new layer in only a couple seconds. "You're far better at this than last time."
She laughs, her voice tainted by the eldritch presence. "I've been outsourcing a good deal since our last dance, Lewis. I received training in all sorts of things, including murder!" She leaps forward again just as Boris rams into her, piling her to the floor.
"IF YOU ARE GOING TO BE DOING OF THE SOMETHING, BE DOING IT OF THE NOW!" Boris yells as he barely constrains Irefall under him. She's so physically dense, Boris can't even pinch her without massive resistance.
The Captain reaches inside of himself and pulls out nothing other than a longsword, an antiquated item with deep etched carvings.
"Goodbye, Pertalaine!" There's a golden flash, and The Captain cuts through the struggling Irefall with incredible ease, mocking their previous efforts to hurt her.
"NOW THAT IS WELL OF THE DONE, CAPTAIN!" Boris shouts as the crowd erupts into gasps, cheers, and a couple boos. Boris steps up from Irefall, Martaine mysteriously stops firing, and Irefall lays still, hewn asunder.
The Captain sighs and withdraws the sword back into his bandages. "It was prudent after all to bring this along, I was worried it'd have no effect."
"CAPTAIN, MAY I BE OF THE-"
"Of course, Boris, finish the nerves."
Boris grasps Irefall's body and, much to the chagrin of the crowd, bites into it with a single, mandibled crunch.
"Ahh." the divided Irefall says, in a strange mix of both pain and humor.
Boris drops his food and everyone jolts their gaze straight to her corpse. Slowly, her sinew raise and begin to reconnect. "I was wondering why the hell Martaine wasn't using the special weapon I had given him for this occasion, I suppose you..." She stops a moment. "Of course, you somehow had the girls freed as well, looks like I really do need to take more drastic measures."
The Captain scoffs. "What do you plan to do?"
"To take this seriously, naturally." She waves her hand over Martaine's direction, and he suddenly stands at attention.
"How?" The Captain says, retrieving the sword again.
She smiles, now a nonsensical, angling mess of lines. "While your childish sand can control him, my powers are far more substantial for overtaking the human mind." She waves her hand again and Martaine runs off.
The Captain pulls his gun to shoot Martaine, but just as the shot rings out, an arcane barrier is raised around the ballroom, blocking the bullet. "How exciting," Irefall says, "Looks like your two little girls will have to worry about my big strong officer coming after them. Oh, I wonder what he'll do when he finds them?" She cackles. Her voice is monstrous in its tone.
The Captain adjusts his hat. "There's nothing to be done about that but to defeat you here and now!"
"IT WILL BE OF THE EASIER THE SECOND TIME!" Boris yells, claws raised and moving fast for Irefall's neck just as she swings her foot into his side, cracking part of his shell and sending him again flying into the wall.
The Captain and The Lady of Ire fall into a crazed bout of slashing and dodging at each other, most moves imperceptible to the mesmerized audience.
The two move like the breeze, if that breeze had a giant lobster running at it, only to be flung back time after time.
Eventually, it does prove to be too much. Boris' poor crustacean shell is damaged to the point that his fluffy, delicious lobster flesh is showing, and The Captain is leaking sand from a multitude of wounds. Only one more cut from Irefall is made before The Captain is sent to the ground with a plop. Irefall looms above victoriously.
"Well then, I suppose you might as well hand me that box, now."
The Captain still has the strength to grin snidely. "It's not on me."
Irefall laughs as she steps on The Captain several times amidst the shocked onlookers, and an exceptionally useless-feeling Jim. "Well, I suppose that's that, then. I'll just have to peel the skin off each of your crew members until I get it! Now let's put you away for good." She pulls from her person a bottle with a paper slip on the lid, and upon the paper slip is writing in a glowing blue ink—magic. She pokes a hole in the symbol, which is precisely over the lid of the jar, and air begins to travel into it like a vacuum. She gently places it next to The Captain, and the bottle begins vacuuming up his sand, slowly compressing him into an eternal prison. "I do wonder, though," Irefall muses out loud, "Why you never pulled out your rifle. I would have imagined it'd be the first thing you'd do when Boris pinned me. Did you, perchance, lose it?"
The Captain laughs. "I did not."
"Then why?"
"Because, as always, I found a better use for my means," He says as something protrudes from his bandages.
Irefall squints an eye. "Whatever could tha-"
*BANG*
There's a shock amongst the crowd as The Captain fires a round from the rifle using the sand of his insides to pull the trigger. The victim was the very worst, or perhaps very best target in the whole room: Cooking Minion.
"Wha-what?" Cooking Minion, profusely bleeding from the gigantic wound in proportion to his tiny body, gushes glowing white essence mixed with red blood all over the floor as he collapses. "I don't... This… hurts," he says pathetically as even Irefall stares on in horror. Guests are beating against the sealing barrier in the ballroom, frantic for escape; they know what’s coming.
"My rifle's ammunition has anti-magic properties. It would have no problem tearing through an enchanted mortal coil," The Captain explains.
Irefall steps on The Captain once more, tearing him open with her suddenly-sharp shoe. "You bastard! Do you have any idea what you've-" Irefall stops at the sound of the universe being wounded.
Ignoring Irefall's magical barriers, a portal is opened over Cooking Minion. From the gate of worlds steps the blacker than pitch, tall, magnificent, light absorbing and glowing-eyed High Overlord- the most wanted person in all the Omniverse and the true public enemy number one. They call him The Great Defier, The Unkillable, Ruler Over Fate, and The Antithesis of Society… and this isn’t even his story, the show off.
To the guests, he does not need an introduction, for he is High Overlord Chaos, the Killer of One Billion life forms, and self-proclaimed ruler over all beings.
Members of the crowd are inconsolable as he steps forth, looming over his downed minion, and kneels by his side.
Irefall stutters to explain. “M-M-M-My L-”
"My dear chef." Chaos speaks over Irefall with a voice that sounds like what many would imagine life's narrator to be, if the narrator happened to be quite mad. There's such a depth and calm to his voice, but in that there is a twinge of looseness. It is the
voice of someone who’s been to the brink on a daily basis for thousands and thousands of years, an incomprehensibly-long life of adventure and insanity.
"H-hey *cough* sir," Cooking Minion says, the white chaotic infusia oozing from his jaws along with his real, organic blood.
The only one that dares move in The High Overlord's presence is The Captain, who is putting himself back together faster than the enchanted bottle can draw in his sand.
"Why are you out here? I have never been to this place. Did I, perchance, send you here without thinking about it?" Chaos asks, slivers of glowing white peeking from the inside of his angular jaws as he gracefully scoops Cooking Minion into his arms and holds him against his tall frame.
Cooking Minion chuckles weakly in the petrified room. "I did it for you, of course. I left to get more recipes."
Chaos squints in curiosity. "Did you? I was not aware of this; not at all, in fact. I thought you simply went for a nap."
"For... for three and a half years, sir?" Cooking Minion scoffs with a smile.
Chaos smiles in paternal response. "Well, perhaps you are lazy and enjoy going back to bed every time you wake up. Perhaps you had long dreams, wonderful dreams."
"No, sir. I came here to improve."
"Ahh..." Chaos looks over, in, and through the crowd, but he stops for only a second looking at The Captain before looking back to Cooking Minion. The onlookers, if they were peering carefully, would see a flicker of anger on The High Overlord’s face; as if he recognized something about The Captain, but wasn’t completely certain. "Would you consider this place dangerous?"
Cooking Minion laughs again, "yeah, sir. Definitely."
Chaos holds Cooking Minion tight. "And you really came here simply for recipes? For what reason?"
"For you, sir."
Chaos draws back. "For me? But I love your cooking."
As if he were shot a second time over, Cooking Minion’s expression widens in disbelief. "...You... you do?"
"Yes, of course! There is no need to run about finding new recipes when you already have thousands. I'm quite happy with what you make for me."
Cooking Minion's face is that of pure awe. "You mean... sir, you remember what I've done?"