Night 63: Main Hallway 1-West

[stop_the_rain]

[from here]

...Another empty hallway.

Chair held by both back legs - one in each hand - Murphy sighed and slumped against the wall. These stupid clothes didn't have pockets, and shoving things awkwardly in the waistband of his pants was beginning to become a pain. If this were a normal chair, like he usually found, he'd just break it apart and use one of the legs. Unfortunately, that didn't look like an option.

There was less junk lying around here, too. Practically none, now that he thought about it. Maybe...maybe he didn't need a weapon? The radio had remained silent, and there were no corpses lying around. Not even a blood trail.

He set the chair down and took the radio out, wondering if maybe it was broken. He stuck the end of the flashlight into his mouth to free his hands and allow him to investigate the piece of equipment.

Maybe this was some sort of clue....

[For Nina!]

Comments

[skeletonenigma]

Sesshouseki... it sounded Japanese. And yet the woman, with her perfect American accent, pronounced it flawlessly. Of course, very little else had made sense so far. Did 'America' and 'Japan' even mean anything here?

Skuldugggery had to admit, it was possible she really was immortal if she came from another reality. So he generously gave her the benefit of the doubt there and moved on. "I might have been entertaining the thought," he admitted. "Of this not being my own reality, I mean. But I don't think it's the reality I should have ended up in, either." Just a few minutes ago, voicing that thought out loud would have made Skulduggery sag with relief, but now...

He cocked his head at her last question, noting in particular her use of the phrase 'whatever you are.' It was an odd choice of words, and a little too coincidental. "I'm what's called an Elemental. The only thing I can sense about you is that you're standing in front of me. Which is fairly useless, as far as useful information goes." Remembering his new real and physical face, Skulduggery looked at her with what he hoped was a proper mixture of suspicion and curiosity, but really could have been anything. He needed to find a mirror at some point.

"What do you sense about me?"

[she_is_ruin]

So he knew about different realities. But not, she thought, about the sesshouseki. That was… almost regrettable. Almost.

“No one is supposed to end up here,” she observed with a world-weary acceptance, “and no one seems to belong here. So don’t feel too bad about it.”

For her part, it was only fair that Yomi failed to recognize the term ‘Elemental’. She knew the word, but when it came to her knowledge of the supernatural, categorizing things as Elementals felt rather outdated. The fact that he hadn’t reacted to her spiritual presence and had claimed couldn’t see her with more than his eyes made her think his spiritual senses were relatively weak, whatever the case.

“Yes, fairly useless,” she agreed distantly, returning his look with a cheerless one of her own. “I sense… no, maybe the sesshouseki senses… you’re more than human. You have power, that I can tell. It’s okay not to explain more than that. I’d probably use it against you one day, though sorry to say our captor already knows. If you find yourself weaker than you should be, you can thank him for that."

[skeletonenigma]

So it was entirely possible that Skulduggery ending up here was not, as he initially thought, a big misunderstanding. In fact, this might not have anything to do with the Faceless Ones at all. A reality and/or prison where nobody was supposed to end up, nobody belonged, and mortal wounds were treated as nothing more than a slight inconvenience in the grand scheme of things. It was more than he'd known a minute ago, but didn't quite classify as knowledge. Not yet.

More than human. This woman certainly loved to be cryptic, but Skulduggery couldn't blame her this time. Nobody understood what he was, or how he could exist. Still, the skeletal frame his consciousness inhabited had become such a part of his life that now, being alive again, felt wrong. Not just strange, or unfamiliar, but completely out-of-place and unacceptable. He almost felt better knowing that someone, somehow, could still see a fraction of the truth. It meant he hadn't been brought completely back to life, as eerily similar as his current state might seem.

But then what did he call himself? Dead? Partly alive? Not-quite-alive-but-close-enough?

Those thoughts were almost immediately forgotten the moment the woman mentioned powers being weaker than they should be. Skulduggery held up his right hand and snapped the fingers, but there was still no magic, no spark, no heat. "Yes," he said with a nod, "how exactly does this mysterious captor do that?"

[she_is_ruin]

Yes, indeed. He was learning fast already.

Yomi shook her head slowly, first one way, then the other. “How does he bring people back from the dead? I don’t know. You could try asking the others if--”

Ah, but it had to be Saturday if the others had been stranded on their way back from Doyleton. And if it was Saturday, that meant it’d only been two nights since Albedo’s victory in the Coliseum. Somehow it felt longer.

“--if they were here.”

[skeletonenigma]

Skulduggery paused. "He brings people back from the dead a lot, then?"

The others - did she mean other prisoners, other people she knew, other people who had died? Or perhaps she meant people who had managed to escape? He didn't ask - it wasn't exactly an important question. But if he wasn't the only person here who should be dead, then maybe he could finally start to figure out how he'd ended up here in the first place.

[she_is_ruin]

Did he? A dull ache started by Yomi’s temple and she closed her eyes briefly to try and dispel it. If she believed it was Landel’s power and not merely the sesshouseki‘s, then he’d already brought her back from the dead twice. And if there had been others like her, others who had unknowingly wandered into the Coliseum… then he’d probably done the same to many more. Many, many more, some with stories like hers of being snatched out of time and space and made to live on when realistically they should have been dead.

The pain spiked for a moment, making her grimace. “Maybe. Probably. If he can do it to me, there’s no telling how many others there are. So I suppose that means killing yourself to get out of here won’t work if he wants you back bad enough.”

[skeletonenigma]

It didn't sound like the mysterious voice over the intercom had a name, but whoever it was sounded powerful. Someone to genuinely be wary of, then, until Skulduggery managed to find him. It also didn't sound like anyone knew exactly where they were, which meant there was very little this woman would be able to tell him that he couldn't figure out himself.

He glanced around the hallway, his gaze settling on the staircase at the far end. If all those rooms Skulduggery saw back there were prison cells rather than hospital rooms, then it logically followed they were in some kind of basement dungeon, yes? At the very least, rooms people didn't typically want you to see were kept upstairs.

Skulduggery glanced back at the woman, his head tilting slightly to the right. "If you're sure you don't want help, I'll stop bothering you," he said. "If, on the other hand, you wouldn't mind coming with me, a guide would certainly be useful. I'd like to know what's upstairs."

[she_is_ruin]

Yomi shook her head, feeling more tired than she’d ever remembered being. Now wasn’t the time to be playing flattery games. She wasn’t some damsel in distress with infinite patience to spend on her would-be hero.

“I think it’s more like this: you’re the one who needs help,” she replied with a soft-spoken flatness in her voice. “You’ve woken up in a strange place with no one to trust, and you found me. I’m not the best choice to help answer your questions, though--one of the others over there might be better at introducing you to the place.” She smiled a little, almost like an involuntary twitch. “Sorry. Sorry I’ve made things harder for you already. Bad luck brought you to me tonight. But I’m heading upstairs for my own reasons, so if you still want to travel with a kook like me, I won’t stop you. If you want to stay close just because you think I’m a hurt woman, though, you don’t have to. I’m not a very pleasant person, either.”

She knew how she sounded--weak, frazzled. Crazy, even. Whether or not he was offering to stay in her company because he wanted to take advantage of her vulnerability or honestly wanted the two of them to help each other, the least she could do was be honest about his options. She wouldn’t make a good guide. If anything, there was every chance she would only make things worse for him.

[skeletonenigma]

"Nonsense," Skulduggery replied, and tried a smile for the first time. Unbeknown to him, the smile worked mechanically, with the corners of his lips twitching up slightly. But, genuine as it was, the smile didn't quite reach his eyes. "I'm sure you're very interesting to talk to, and you've made an excellent guide already. And you're right," he added with a brief shrug, "I could use the help."

Without waiting for a reply, Skulduggery turned and began walking towards the staircase. His steps were slow, but at least he wasn't in danger of falling flat on his face anymore. Falling flat on his face. Wherever they were headed and whatever they might run into, Skulduggery was fairly sure none of it could compare to suddenly having to worry about bruising his face.

Speaking of his face... With one hand trailing along the wall, Skulduggery glanced back over his shoulder. "I don't suppose there are any mirrors on the way to... wherever it is you'd like to go?" A little quick practice with facial expressions could go a long way.

[To here.]