7 in 3

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Luna

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By the time I land on the roof next to our target, Lenkin is most of the way through eating a sandwich. I move close to him before speaking.

“Where did you get the sandwich?” I ask, somewhat dumbfounded. 

He jumps, and then chuckles. “I stopped by my favorite restaurant, they’re always open late.” He takes one of the few remaining bites out of his dinner. “Figured I’d still beat you here, there were even some people in line ahead of me.” 

I let out a groan and feel my blood boil. He’s goading me, he’s goading me and it’s working. I will beat this man at his own game before I die, I swear to god. 

“Well miss slowpoke, time for our entrance.” He throws the wrapper his sandwich was in off the roof before vanishing again. This time I get a closer look, andI don’t think he actually vanished. I think he’s just moving so fast my eyes lose track of him, maybe. I jump down from the roof and walk quietly towards the window we’re using for an entry point. 

As I crouch to open the basement level window I notice it's already ajar. The bastard went inside without me! I silently slink through the small space and land on a dusty stone floor. Somehow the knight hasn’t disturbed the dust that coats everything.  As my feet hit the floor silently, the dust flies up from my impact and fills the room with a cloud of filth. 

I try to hold back but eventually I can’t anymore, and cough. Like my voice, it’s stupidly quiet, like someone whispered it, but in the silence of the room it's almost deafening. 

“Rookie.” I gasp at the familiar voice behind me. “You’re lucky the building is deserted. You should really wear something over your mouth too.” He fades into view partially, enough to see his shoulder and outstretched hand. “Give me your hand.” 

I hesitate for a moment, not used to touching people, but eventually grab the offered hand. I feel a warm fuzzy feeling run up my arm that quickly dissipates.

“It’s a tracking spell, makes it so we can tell where each other are without being able to see. You have to willingly take the person’s hand for it to work though...” The man explains, as if we aren’t in a potentially dangerous building. “Let’s go.” He releases my hand and fizzles out of sight again. 

Just like he said, I can tell where he is. Not that I can see him, but if I get close enough to where he is, it’s like I feel his presence. He leads me down a long, dimly lit hallway that turns to the right. After about a minute of walking there’s another right. The hallway is brown stone, cracked in a few places but otherwise well kept. Another minute and another right. The ground has no covering besides an occasional loose page from a newspaper. Another minute, another right. I sense Lenkin stop suddenly, so I follow his lead.

“Luna, this hallway doesn’t work…” What? I chew on what he just said, slowly realizing what he meant. We just went in a perfect square, how did we not hit the way we came in? 

We both start searching the hallway, looking for some clue to what’s going on. Eventually, after searching for a good ten minutes, Lenkin makes the call to turn back. We head back down the hall to the exit. But we don’t, because where the exit should be was an extra left turn. 

“I don’t understand.” Lenkin’s voice creaks with a hint of worry. “There’s no invisible paths, no false walls, no moving floors. How did they get us in here? And why put us in a loop like this instead of killing us the moment they caught us?” His troubled tone makes anxiety start to creep up my back. 

I sit down to think. The man in front of me is an advanced user of the same class I have, so he would have any relevant skills. If he hasn’t used them then none probably apply. That leaves my blessing. Besides the passive stealth I’ve never tried to use it. It’s worth a shot.

I focus inwards, finding where the slow strands of magic laze in my core. The lethargic wisps touch against my probing curiously. I gently push past them and reach further, to where I’ve been told my blessing lies. At the center of all the clouds of magic inside me is an inverted night sky wrapped into the shape of a sphere. The starry shape reacts to my presence, engulfing my mind. 

I open my eyes, feeling the power shimmering through me. The hallway looks the same, albeit with a blue filter over it. I can see Lenkin clearly now, but that’s not exactly helpful. I search for anything that could be important for a while, but only see the occasional wisp of magic fly past. 

That’s when a cold voice from nowhere scares the shit out of me. “Sorry to intrude, Luna, but it seems you’re stuck.” My skeleton desperately tries to leave my body at the sudden noise. Lenkin silently jumps into a defensive posture, looking for the source of the voice.

After I reassure my bones that inside me is a good place to be, I speak to the disembodied voice. “Vone, I’m on a mission.” My voice comes out a bit more whiny than I want.

“I know, but I’m pretty sure you’ll be trapped forever if I don’t intervene.” She says in an obnoxiously smug tone.

Lenkin decides to cut in. “Who are you, and how do you know that?” His tone is completely different than when he talks to me, sounding more like an undead groaning than a person. 

Vone pauses, probably deciding if she will respond. “Well, who I am is none of your business, as to how I know you’re trapped is because I can see inside this little geometric trap, and from the ceiling light’s point of view you’re walking in a circle that doesn’t exist.” 

Lenkin scoffs. “Yeah, we already knew that much, lady.” 

Vone continues. “The problem is that I can also see through every light in this building, and the entrance still leads to this hall. Past that it gets messy.” 

I decide to speak up. “Vone, I used my blessing and saw through even Sir Lenkins illusion, I don’t think this is one.” 

A small orange light pulses near where my heart would be before fading away. “Then what if it is real? If someone is changing the space as you walk?” The disembodied woman asks. I look over at Lenkin to see what he thinks.

He’s scowling, but slowly his eyes widen. “Yes, that would fit. I didn’t even think of that because of the level of magic it would require. Honestly I’ve only heard of anything like this from old vets, and that’s old from my point of view.” He scratches his head. “Doesn’t help me know how to get out though.” We all stand in silence, trying to come up with something to undo the magic trap. Then I think of something.

“Let’s just break the floor!” 

 

【〓〓〓〓】

 

Bricks fall through the newly made hole in the floor, clattering into the room below. Lenkin jumps down first before motioning for me to follow. We land in what looks like a morgue. I glance up at the hole we just came through and see the brightly lit hallway vanish, replaced with smooth stone. 

The room smells horrible, the stench of death and decay permeates everything. Everything is made of gleaming metal, and it all looks horribly used. Metal beds with wheels hold covered up corpses… small corpses. My stomach churns over that implication. 

We move through the vacant room, searching for anything important. All we find are corpses and surgical equipment. Creeping through the hall of death, my instincts start telling me to run. I ignore them, pushing onwards. Eventually we reach a large double door at the end of the room.

Lenkin slowly pushes the metal doors open, probably using a skill to keep it quiet. Once he’s through he holds it for me to follow through. I slip through the crack between the doors noiselessly.

Which was all pointless, because as soon as I see the next room I gasp. Lenkin doesn’t say anything, but I see him grimace. My pathetic volume is beneficial this time and no one seems to be around to notice the out of place sound.

The room is massively long, with windows lining the left and right walls. Beyond each pane of glass is a human being. Some are just sitting in place on the floor. I see a few in the distance screaming, but no noise comes through the glass. A few of the chambers are filled with liquid, the people inside unconscious with tubes going into their mouths. 

We pass by the captured people, not able to help just yet. The ones closest to the door we came through are all adults, mostly men. They all have missing body parts or huge surgical scars on their torso. Some are barely alive, somehow kept from dying by the tank they’re floating in.

As we keep moving deeper into the hall the average age of the captives starts to drop. First there’s some younger adults, instead of thirty somethings. Then there's teens, then children. All missing body parts, eyes, ears, arms. The age eventually stops decreasing, settling around seven years old. 

We finally get to the part of the hall with empty chambers, which are unlit. The other end is now in sight, another pair of doors standing there ominously. We make our way over, careful to be totally silent. Odd noises come from the other side of the doors occasionally. As we slip through the silently opened doors, Lenkin closes his hand over my mouth. Instead of getting angry, I’m instead grateful for his intervention. The room is somehow worse than the last, and I almost want to scream. 

Instead of being long lengthwise, this one stretches upwards. The room is a large cylinder, with smaller cylinders of glass lining the walls all of the way up. Inside each of the cylinders glow a slightly bluish fluid, the same glow as the gem-lights that light the space. Over half of these tanks hold body parts.

The room is filled with preserved organs. In the center of the room is a large table with an old man standing next to it. The man hums a tune I don’t know, but that oddly gives me a feeling of nostalgia. We creep closer to try and get a glimpse at the contents of the table, but can’t get past the man. Eventually the older man turns, walking to one of the tube filled walls. Once he’s up against it the tile under his feet just rises up, carrying him upward.

“Hmm… I swear I had an ave esophagus…” The elderly man clinks the glass tubes together as he searches, giving us a chance to look at the table closer. My mind shudders as I see its contents.

A child. A child lays on the table. The kid is a patchwork, arms and head a different skin tone than the torso. The unseeing eyes are two colors. Surgical scars cover their body head to toe. Their one foot has clawed toes while the other is slightly scaled. The thing shouldn’t be alive, but somehow it’s chest slowly rises up and down.

Without hesitation Lenkin draws his sword from his side and swings at the child’s neck. But then things go sideways. Everything in the room pulses violently, like someone just plucked the fabric everything is sewn onto, and then Lenkin’s sword vanishes. Along with the rest of his arm. 

“Ah ah! Can't have you doing that now.” The old man appears out of thin air, standing between us. We both jump back, Lenkin somehow already tying off his stump with a bandage. The teleporting geriatric looks like someone left their grandpa out overnight and let him go bad. His beard is long and white, but mangey and unkempt. Then I notice his skin is milky white, like Scarlet’s. 

“Naughty kiddos!” He says with a nasty grin that shows his rotted teeth. “Can’t let you just up and kill the body I’ve been making myself all this time, now can I?” The world wobbles again and the doors we came in through vanish, the wall now nothing but smooth stone. “This world is very generous to us people who it pulls in, isn’t it child?” He’s looking at me. Not near me, or close to me, he’s looking me dead in the eyes. 

My throat closes up as icey fear runs through me. I back up against the wall, bumping into some of the glowing tubes. Lenkin jumps between me and the man, another sword in his offhand. The old man’s smile drops.

“Now could you please stop that? I’m trying to talk to this girl, it’s not often I can talk to someone from home!” His face twists back into his grin, eyes full of malice. What is he even talking about? I’ve never met this old bastard.

Lenkin doesn’t move from his place in front of me. The man sighs before everything warps again. After things snap back into place Lenkin is in the floor, up to his shoulders in stone. 

“Now, do stay there, would you?” The man walks towards me, kicking Lenkin as he passes. Lenkin goes limp inside his stone binds. The man stops just in front of me, looking down into my eyes. His gaze feels disgusting as it runs over me. 

“You… I don’t remember you. What were they testing on you?” I stare at the man, totally clueless as to what he’s talking about. He frowns slightly. “At the facility, before we came here?” He gestures around the room.

I grit my teeth and force out a stilted answer. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Before I came here I was at home, in the Count’s manor.” The man laughs at my response, startling me.

“You’re serious, telling the truth… Are you kidding? Amnesia? Wow, how classic!” He snorts loudly in amusement. “You don’t remember Earth at all? Baseball? Cars? Television? Nuclear Power? Any of it ringing any bells for you?” The wretched man seems to be enjoying my ignorance in what he’s talking about. “Oh wow this is great. It’s like an anime or something.” 

Space pulses again, putting me into the floor next to my chaperone. “Unfortunately for you little girl, this isn’t an anime. There isn’t going to be some last minute savior for you.” The man returns to working on the child. Horrible gurgling sounds fill the room. 

The man works on the damned thing for what feels like an hour before saying something again. “Y’know, for all the gifts this world gave me, it also took something important. I’m only in my thirties… I fell into a room in some temple underground the second I got here. There was a trap that activated when I landed. Damn thing aged me for what feels like a hundred years.” He pulls his arm up, a needle leading a taught thread coming into view. 

“Laura was an idiot, trying to go back. I told her it wouldn’t work, but she was so desperate to get back to her woman that she ignored all my advice.” He lets out a sigh. “She always was headstrong.” He pulls the thread tight again, dripping blood from the needle. “Apparently there’s next to no way to reverse aging in this world, and the people who can do it don’t want to share.” His tone is bitter. “Since no one would help me fix this body, I decided to help myself to a new one. My deserved pound of flesh if you will.” He chuckles to himself. 

He walks over to another suspended organ, one I don’t recognize. After bringing it back the madman continues his spiel. “If you’re wondering why I’m monologuing, by the way, it’s because no help is coming for you.” His tone is completely certain. “I stopped time outside this room the second you stepped in here.” He hums to himself for a bit. “Well not stopped exactly, just changed the relative time scale of this room compared to the rest of the world to basically stop it.” He starts fiddling with the child again. 

“Anyways, I tried to steal someone else’s body. It wasn’t hard to get my hands on a soul stealing spell. It’s commonplace here! Can you believe it? They think there’s nothing you can do with the thing. There’s no way to store or use souls apparently, even if you do extract them. They just zip back into their original bodies, unharmed.” He laughs. “People here also think you can’t destroy them, but I didn’t waste a decade in an underground lab for nothing. Tearing souls out of a body was easy, the problem is after that.” 

He groans. “If you destroy the soul, the body dies instantly. I’m no necromancer, so that didn’t help me. Then I thought, what if I made a body up of parts of living people? Then I can put my soul inside, and their soul won’t come looking for it. It sort of worked. I could keep the body parts alive to make a body, but they would reject each other pretty quick.” His tone gets darker. “Then I started using younger subjects.” 

He talks quietly now. “Young body parts didn’t reject new tissue like an adult’s did. I ended up having to use grade schoolers. I don’t really want to use a child’s body, but I also don’t want to be an old man.” He chuckles, “I only lost a couple dozen people doing all this. Keeping them alive is needed after all.”

He steps back. “There, done!” His face is so proud, I almost throw up. “Time for the big shabang little girl, too bad your friend isn’t awake to see it.” The world warps and a large metal tube appears behind the man. A door in the front opens with a hiss.

He looks the thing over before stepping inside. “I guess it’s appropriate you have amnesia, this machine does look like a cartoon villain’s.” The door swings shut, huge metal parts clunking into place over it. 

I desperately try to move, but having your body encased in the floor really hampers that. Lenkin is unconscious, I can’t teleport yet, my blessing is useless, I’m still invisible. What did he say? Last moment savior or something? I could use one of those. You around Coil, I could use a hand? My head stays painfully silent. Of course the one time I want his help he’s gone, he never shuts up usually!

I’m gonna die here. In the floor, killed by that grotesque child. 

Lightning sparks on the sides of the machine, crackling over its hull. The window in the door fogs over. I’m gonna die to this creepy old man in a child’s body. Dammit! Wait! That first time I woke up. I vibrated out of those cuffs, didn't I? How’d I do that? 

Focusing I push my blessing into my body, spreading it out evenly. I feel my body start to shake. “Yes! Like that!” I start vibrating for real and start slowly moving upwards in my stone tube. That’s when the lightning shoots from the giant evil machine. 

The bolt flies towards the table, electrifying the entire thing. Sparks fly over the metal surface, causing me to squint. My ears ring from the horrid sound the crackling electricity makes, my nostrils filled with the smell of ozone.

The child floats from the table. Floats! In the air! The face of the child smiles down on me creepily, his mismatched eyes glinting maliciously. “Too late, girl!” The villain squeaks. “Mike Zan- wait that name is lame as hell. Hold on.” The naked kid floats towards the wall, muttering to himself. 

I start trying to shake my way out again while the nutter comes up with his villain name. I barely make it a few finger widths before he turns back around.

“Okay I-” He stops when he sees my progress. “Wow you only got what, eight centimeters? I took a while to think up a name, ya know.” His smirk bites into my bones. This prick is gonna get it I swear, first Lenkin and now this stupid kid. 

“As I was saying…” He does a stupid pose. “Hawk Lightning is born!” He tries to bellow out his name, but his childish vocal cords just turn it into a loud squeal. He frowns. “Hmm… I’ll workshop the name. Anyways, time to kill you.” He turns down to me, and space warps.

And everything goes black.