The Ink Demon's Little Prostitute~

{2: Where Do You Think You're Going?}

His boots clicked and tapped against the creaking floorboards as he strode down the hall.With each step he anticipated that horrible, oily voice to taint his thoughts.

But with each passing moment...nothing. Nothing but the quiet falling of ink and his quickened heartbeat pumping along inside of him in uneasy escape. Shadows seemed to crawl in the corner of his eyes.

The searchers trailing behind him groaned breathily. He pressed his gloved finger to his mouth, silently shushing them.

Their ink leaked around his boots, lapping hungrily at them as he stopped to peer around a corridor. Empty. Releasing his held breath, he carried on.

The ink oozing from the damned stung. Every moment he stopped, he had to choke down a hiss of burning pain. Still, he couldn't seem to be rid of them.

The inky hoard was there at his every turn, trying to trip him, drown him. He didn't let them.

He was heavily outnumbered. But faster. The searchers moved at a snail's pace. The only real inconvenience they caused was in enclosed spaces, or when he needed to stop and use his axe.

Recalling the boarded hall from earlier, he shuddered and put a bit more distance between them. His wounds still stung, and he knew the demon would scold him for being so careless.

The Ink Demon. The same one he was deliberately disobeying by not getting on the elevator when he passed it almost ten minutes ago. He may have already arrived at Level P by now, had he done as he was told.

An ink pipe overhead groaned. He flinched, and his head jerked up warily.

How long would it take before the beast became suspicious and sought him out? It felt like he had been wandering for hours. He could no longer remember when he'd turned the corner in the Heavenly Toys, the studio's spacious toy factory, deciding he wouldn't be attending.

Then again, he couldn't remember a lot of things.

Ink lapped around his boots in small, stinging waves as he continued down the hall. He continued down the next intersection of corridors. Next thing he knew he was standing below a large sign. He had to crane his head to make out the letters.

'WELCOME TO BENDYLAND', the hung sign stated loudly. The bright bulbs around it flickered, casting an eerie, yellow light across the head of a grinning cartoon devil accompanying the words.

This was supposed to be 'Bendy' the creature assumed. Someone had crossed out the word 'LAND', replacing it with 'HELL' in blocky, dripping black lettering.

He gazed at the sign a while longer, uneasily watching the inky humanoid who stood atop a towering pile of large wooden crates next to it. It gazed back with hollow, glowing eyes.

He walked further into hell.

A maze of towering wooden crates surrounded him before leading off into a larger area. The floor here was of wooden planks fading in and out of rough stone, a stark contrast to the majority of the studio's wooden floor boards.

Rickety stands stood on the edge of the towering cavern, the middle full of industrial metal shelves towered with more of the wooden crates in orderly lines. Each stand advertised its own carnival-esc mini game, though he couldn't remember what a carnival was as he walked past it all, not having time to stop and look.

Searchers came as well. They slopped together in an inky mess, toppling over each other greedily to reach for him. He picked up his pace to a jog, his large axe bouncing on his shoulder.

By now the demon would have been suspicious. If it hadn't been already. Time slipped between his fingers as he searched for a place to hide.

Something metallic and cold knocked the air from his lungs as he was hit from behind. With a gasping breath he whirled, throwing the hilt of the axe into his palm.