Night 70: Cafeteria

[impudentsongbird]

[from here.]

Gabe came through the swinging doors into the expanse of the cafeteria, with its rows and rows of tables, and stopped short. Somehow, the way the room was laid out was even gloomier and more terrifying than the hallways in the darkness. There were a dozen places for monsters to hide, to leap out at them.

The kitchens were opposite, behind a long, long counter. Gabe swallowed hard and gripped the metal pipe. "If the cafeteria is likely to be empty and the kitchens guarded, you should go first. You'd be more effective in a fight."

He was frightened, but it was true. If they were attacked from behind he could handle things, but the threat was at the front of them. Skulduggery was better served to handle that, with Gabe behind him if he needed help controlling his necromancy.

Comments

[skeletonenigma]

A moth was a good form to take. Skulduggery was about to ask why Gabe, an angel, would need any sort of help navigating what he'd already seen in a human form, but Gabe transformed just as Skulduggery opened his mouth. He closed it again with a sigh that only vaguely bordered on exasperation, and watched the Gabe-moth travel in the exact opposite direction of the door.

Was Gabe still aware, when he was in his other forms? Normally, he would have to be. But if Landel was capable of capturing and holding an Archangel, he was probably capable of altering far more than just the body that Archangel was inhabiting. Skulduggery could be, for all intents and purposes, dealing with the tiny mindset of a small moth.

Moths were attracted to light.

Skulduggery held his hand down by the crack between floor and door, and snapped his fingers. A small flame flared up, the only bright light in the room, and it sent dancing shadows over the door and surrounding walls. Once the Gabe-moth was close enough, Skulduggery wouldn't need much air to coax it through the crack entirely.

The only problem, then, was if Gabe changed back on the other side and was faced with a monster. Skulduggery just had to hope Gabe could get the door open before anything like that had a chance to happen - or at least was able to get it open before the monster killed him.

[impudentsongbird]

The vibrations of Skulduggery's movement made Gabe's moth instincts shy, but then there was a sudden brightness out of the corner of Gabe's mothly vision, brighter than the dim luminescence of Skulduggery's torch. It took a moment for Gabe to realise it was, it must have been, a flame.

He laughed, or puffed pheromones equivalent to a mothly laugh, and spiraled in toward the light. As soon as he was near enough he could sense the broadness of the wall and floor on his sides. Only one of them had a crack in it.

Without needing any help at all, Gabe overrode the moth's instincts to depart from the flame and fluttered down to the floor, scuttling underneath under his own power.

[to here.]