No More

Chapter 81: Clockwork Part 6

"Hold on, there's a word carved here," Axel squinted, reading the single jagged word on the wooden door. "It says, 'Offering'? What does that mean?"

Luke sniffed the air, his mood cheering up. "I smell cake!"

"Is it a kitchen?" Axel wondered. "Why name it 'Offering' instead of 'Kitchen' then?"

"At least we can get something to eat!" Eagerly said Luke, who impulsively punched the door down and ran in without a second thought.

"Luke!" Axel yelled into the dark, stepping through only to groan in frustration in discovering that it's another stone hallway. "Are you okay?!"

"Dude, there's so much stuff in here!" Luke shouted cheerfully as Axel carefully ventured inside, careful not to trip over anything. "I even found some cake!"

"So it is a kitchen?" Axel asked. Not to confirm, but to keep track of the location of Luke's voice.

"Yeah!" Luke shouted cheerfully in the dark; Axel knew he is getting closer to the blue-haired male. "Well, I think it is? There's food here and -Oh wait, there's something here near the wall..."

"Luke?" Axel shouted after a moment of silence. "What did you find?"

"I don't really know; it's kind of hard to see." Luke's voice echoed in the dark, but his confusion clear.

"Wait, if it's dark, then how did you find the food?" Axel pointed out.

"The food is on these weird bowls," Luke explained, Axel figured he was not too far away. "They're glowing slightly, and have that creepy eye design the soldiers have on their hoods."

'Why would that be down here?' Axle thought as he continued forward. "Try to describe the thing you found."

"I'll try," Luke replied; a moment of silence passed again. "...It's cold. Squishy. Wet. Hairy. I don't know what this is!"

"Just hold on," Axel yelled back. "I think I'm close to you."

"Nah, it's fine," Luke reassured, the sound of an item being crafted can be heard. "I got a torch here-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!"

"LUKE!" Axel shouted in concern and panic, rushing toward the newly illuminated room far ahead, at the end of the hallway where he can see Luke's shaking silhouette. "What's wrong?!"

"THERE'S A NAKED DEAD LADY IN HERE!!!" Luke screamed. Axel ran faster into the room, only to slip on the quartz floor.

After landing on his face, blinking and groaning in pain, Axel got up to see blood covering the floor as the crimson liquid smeared on his cloths.

Axel quickly rose from his position of the floor, disturbed and panicked while he tried to get most of the blood off of his startled face.

After calming down lightly, Axel looked at his new surroundings: a large quartz room, with black candles that are lit with red fire in the corners of the white room as about a dozen large chests equally line the walls.

A red circle with a dot in the middle, representing an eye, is on the quartz ceiling; directly above the deep pool of blood in the center of the floor that is five blocks in diameter. The blood-filled pit is surrounded by, after Scribing the material, blocks made out of blood that are used as pedestals for bowls to be placed.

However these bowls are black, with a red eye in the center, a design of veins protruding outward while pulsing like a heart.

Despite all of this, Axel's attention focused on what traumatized Luke: a naked dead woman, chains made out of red energy bound her legs to the ceiling as she hands upside-down; her black hair and pale arms droop down to the quartz floor.