damned_institute | Night 68: Main Hallway, 1-Center

He'd said he didn't want to use his mana if he could help it, but the monster hadn't even reacted when Lloyd's knife had sliced into it. Blood splattered, scattering flecks of darkness across Lloyd's clothes, maybe on his face, too, but he barely registered it. His mind was on the verge of panic. Al was going to be dragged into that darkness!

In a split second, he threw away his first instinct to slam the thing with Beast. Beast had exhausted him when he'd used it on the front door three nights ago, and he couldn't afford to be exhausted. Not now! But maybe something weaker, that didn't need as much mana from him.

His mana raced down his arm as he focused it almost without conscious thought. Even before it reached his dagger, he was moving, aiming another strike at the monster's arm in a technique he'd done so many times it was almost second nature to him. Mana and light streaked through the air as he hurled it with his blade, a shockwave already forming.

"Demon Fang!"

Let's see how you like mana point blank!

Al struggled desperately against the pull of the monster, clawing at the hands to loosen them, get enough slack to break free. His heart was pounding, and the still-new feeling of adrenaline drove his reactions even further out of hand. Terror lent strength enough to halt the pull of the hands for a little bit longer. He couldn't die, he couldn't die here, not like this--!

A sudden flash of memory--another time years ago he'd been taken in a mysterious creature's grip, the pain that had followed-- "Brother!!"

Ed was also remembering this and he sped up and dropped his flashlight to grab Al and yank him towards himself.

"I am not losing him again," he snarled at the darkness, hiding his fear behind anger.

Lloyd's attack struck home. Bone and rotted sinew snapped, both arms pulping open until they dangled freely, connected to Al only by the ferocious strength of their fingers: for even as decaying flesh oozed black slime down his back, they clung on, pulling without the logic of physics, until --

Even as Ed reached for his brother, the darkness reached back. The sluggish mess staining his shirt, cold to the touch, suddenly writhed into motion at the same time as the blackness behind him did: it whipped around Al, grabbing at him like myriad tiny hands dragging him back into the darkness. Except these were no hands. If the patients took the time to look, they would see: it was hair, a sea of it, creeping along the shadows cast in the hallway and making them alive.

Strands crawled over his face, writhing around the hand still clawing into flesh until it subsumed it altogether and the fingers became hair themselves, funneling into every crevice: mouth, nostrils, ears, seeking even to creep between his eyelids and eyeballs.

Even as his mana lashed out at the monster, Lloyd could feel the drain as it left him. Not as bad as when he'd used Beast, but still leaving him winded, his muscles a little weak and rubbery. If only he could sit down and catch his breath-

But there wasn't any time! The hands hadn't let go, and now there were fingers, strands of hair and darkness, wrapping around every part of Al he could see, and if they didn't do something-

"Edward, cut the hair!"

If they couldn't kill the monster - and it certainly hadn't acted like it cared about his attacks! - then they needed to get Al out of its grasp, and they needed to do it now! He sliced his dagger into the black strands nearest to Al's head. They couldn't let it suffocate Al before they cut him free!

He shrieked in pure terror and pain, thrashing within the prison of hair and holding onto Ed's arm in a death-grip. There was nothing that could be called thought anymore, just a desperate need to be free of the gripping black around him, so similar to the hands of the Gate that to him there was no distinguishing between the two.

"I'm here," Ed told Al, the panic in his voice undercutting his attempt to be reassuring.

Ed hacked at the hair as soon as the words left Lloyd's mouth, desperation giving him strength.

Their blades cut through the hair with the metallic shiver of thousands of strands sliced through at once, hanks of it falling to the ground -- where they writhed as if alive, clutching at anything close by until they found the body of darkness again and melded back into the shape. The shape: was shifting, coalescing from the indefinable cast shadows into something concrete.

It was almost a body, but grotesque and broken, back wrenched into an arc and arms groping upward as the source of the hair enveloping Al. The guttural croak sounded and grew louder until it was nearly deafening, and still the hair pulled at him, bringing him closer and closer to the warped body behind him.

Why isn't it working?! Lloyd shoved his flashlight into his pocket to free up his other hand. It made it more difficult to see, but he was desperate. Gripping Al's shoulder, he hauled back with as much strength as he could, even as he slashed at the hair again. If they could just cut enough of the stuff, surely it couldn't hold-!

"Keep trying!"

His thrashing only increased, clawing and holding desperately onto Edward with every bit of strength he had. For all the hair was falling away bit by bit, he was still being pulled away, toward something he didn't want to go back to. "Brother! Brother, help!"

Ed yelled when some of the hair latched onto him instead, and kept hacking at the hair as he pulled at his brother with the other hand.

"I'm here, I won't let it take you," he promised.

As the hair built up into a body its grip on Al strengthened, thick and thicker swathes of hair wrapping around him and tearing him from his brother's grip: but where before it only fell and reformed at the strike of blade now it responded, half-recoiling and half-writhing whenever a blow landed on what might have been an arm -- a shoulder -- a torso --

The rattling sound that surrounded them coalesced with the hair, focusing until it sounded clearly from a rapidly-forming head. Still the shape was built of hair, still it seemed to hug the ground in a wretched contortion, but more and more it was humanoid: human-shaped, but twisted, assembled incorrectly.

"What the hell is this thing?!" Ed's flashlight was on the ground, providing a steady but ill-aimed source of light, and Lloyd's flashlight in his pocket wasn't doing much better, the head poking out but jostling with every step or movement he made. Even so, he could see just enough to see the mass of darkness begin to take shape, and he could see its grip strengthening despite all the hair they were cutting off.

This isn't working! We need to try something else! If it's hair wasn't a weak spot, then maybe its body-

Urgency drove him into action even before he finished the thought. He lunged forward, plunging his dagger straight into what he hoped was the monster's chest.

Al screamed as his grip on Ed was torn loose, thrashing wildly in the grip of the creature. He couldn't see, couldn't tell where anyone was anymore, but still fought back, trying to tear at the hair clinging to him with all his strength.

"I don't know!" Ed said before yelling when Al was pulled away from him.

He followed Lloyd's lead of stabbing the hair monster as his mind raced to think of a transmutation that he could perform against it.

The hair-body reached, enfolding Al in ever more hair until thick strands were extending not just from its arms but from its legs and torso, as if pulling him into its encasing mass -- and nothing worked -- until it did, all the hair recoiling sharply from the blows that Lloyd and Ed landed into its chest. For a moment it was still, hair flowing slowly without pulling, and then --

From amongst the strands there burst a body: a woman, blue-pale, wide-eyed, linked to the dark mass still gripping Al through her own hair -- and both hands latched into the closest patient's throat, nails digging in with every intention of tearing flesh.

Unfortunately for Lloyd, the short range of his dagger meant that he was the one who was closer. The monster's nails dug into his throat before he even had a chance to jerk back. The teen screamed, the sound half-choked by the hands on his throat. Desperately he clutched at the monster's wrist with his hand even as he slashed wildly with the knife in his other.

Edited 2013-02-07 23:48 (UTC)

Al was struggling for breath now, though he still fought the hair with terrified vigor. His choking screams were muffled by the hair, but just as hysteric.

"Dammit, let him go too!" Ed couldn't really see a choice but to try Scar's method of attack.

He clapped his hands together and reached for the nearest part of the newly fully revealed monster and prayed that it would actually work. He had no idea what he'd do if he couldn't make some part of her explode.

It worked: at least in the simplest definition of worked. Her arm bulged, the scent of rot heating up at an exponential pace sweetening the air, and then exploded with a wet burst of flesh and bone. Black blood splattered them all, this time, painting over skin as if marking them, and the hand that had been clutching onto Lloyd's throat wavered, bereft of the arm that had held it steady.

And then it very deliberately let go and fell to the ground with a wet smack, hair building around it and subsuming it within seconds. The death-rattle surrounding them stilled; the hair that had all but cocooned Al in its smothering embrace paused.

Her head turned, wide-eyed gaze locking onto Ed's for the first time, stare furious, as enraged as it was blank. They had all intruded upon her territory, had awoken the spirit whose work it was to share the suffering, and so they would: share.

In an explosion of movement, hair looped upward from the ground, winding into a thick trunk beneath Al as it lifted him clear into the air. Every strand around his body tightened and tightened again, pulsing into a squeeze harsh enough to cut skin.

The moment Lloyd was released, he stumbled back, gasping for breath. His hand clutched at his throat, trying to stem the flow of blood, but it oozed past his fingers, and it hurt, it hurt to drag breath down, but he greedily gulped it anyway. Blood spattered across his face, but he didn't care, he was too focused on being able to breathe.

Until horror gripped his lungs and froze the breath in his chest. "Al!" His shout was hoarse, but no less full of panic as the monster's arm burst apart and rejoined the rest of it in its relentless attack. There wasn't time to think! Without thinking, he reacted, lunging forward on feet that he refused to admit were unsteady, and he slashed with every bit of mana that he had. Demon Fang raced at the trunk of hair-monster-dark-

Please please cut through- "Edward, get him out!"

Al screamed in pain, too tightly held to thrash as the hair bit into his flesh in countless places and drove what little breath he had out of him. His vision started to go grey, though adrenaline warred to keep him conscious.

Ed froze for a moment at her stare, staring back into her eyes. He didn't remember ever seeing someone with that much anger before although he'd run across plenty of people in the past that came close.

Lloyd's command snapped him out of it and he nodded and grabbed for Al to pull him free.

He didn't want to fight this thing any longer, just get Al and run. He was completely out of ideas for how to counter it, the one idea he did have failing spectacularly.

Inside the cocoon of hair, where Lloyd and Ed had no line of sight, the intent of the darkness was shifting, changing: seeking in the boy it had entrapped a vessel as much as a victim. Even as both other patients struggled, the hair found Al's open mouth and writhed in through his screams, filling his throat until only the barest slivers of air could sliver through, strands crawling their way down oesophagus and deeper.

The rattling quieted as it did, as Lloyd's attack sheared through the thickest wind of hair: Al's body thudded to the ground along with the mass of hair surrounding him, but it was rushing into him at a rapid rate, releasing him at the same time as it suffocated him.

Exhaustion hit him even as the last of his mana flew free, and it was only adrenaline and desperation that kept him from staggering or falling to his knees. With a sense of finality and dread, he knew that that was it. He wouldn't be able to hurl anything else at this monster except for steel and fists, and up against this, when he was so shaky and tired he wanted to drop...

Lloyd shoved the thought away. It wasn't an option. Instead he half-lunged, half-stumbled toward Al and grabbed one of his arms to help haul him up, pushing, pulling, whatever it took to get him away from that thing.

"Run!"

They had to get away before it reestablished its grip!

Night 68: Main Hallway, 1-Center

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)