[LOADING...]
<<LEVEL TWO: COMMENCE>>
[Good Luck.]
~=×=~
The library always had a cool sheen in the mornings. A gentle white glow to decorate the cream walls and oak bookshelves, all in a circular room with an open-glass roof. The columns that surrounded the centre of the room caged a beautiful young tree that seemed to beam just as bright as the sun above.
Her finger tapped against the book impatiently. Usually reading books like this would be enjoyable, especially in such a peculiar and fascinating environment. But this circular building could only house her for so long, and her companion was taking awfully long to come back.
The last three months had been difficult, to say the least. With the disappearance of this unpredictable world's inhabitants, the search for help, supplies or any other communications has been long since deserted. The silence was surreal and almost exciting for the first two days... but now?
Now the loneliness. The abandoned atmosphere liked to stalk them from a distance, always watching and splashing its presence wherever they went. It wasn't as if Y/N was alone - Echo was there to help with that. But if this lurking, haunting wolf will never relent... then maybe other things won't, either.
Like the fact of that she knew the other 'players' were still there, too.
That's right, dear reader, it's just you, Echo, and the menagerie of dangerous and wild cretins who have all hit rock bottom.
Oh, that's right! You don't know most of their backstories. Their reasoning, what drives them, how they got here, where they came from, their regrets, what they miss, their experience here... ooh, level two will be so fun!
For now, the elf lay with her legs curled up and hair down, soaking in the sunshine through that glass roof with half-lidded eyes. Her sharp nails drew pretty pictures on the leather-bound cover, letting the scritchy-scratchy sound call back to her with each brunt swipe. She swiped her tongue over her mouth. "I want to draw."
A simple desire. A particular memory liked to haunt her, of when she'd had a dabble with charcoal and ended up making a mess in the living room. She and Echo rushed for hours to clean everything up before her dreaded parents got home. That would be awful.
But there was one little inconsistency that made her brows furrow. She recalled their disapproving nature, of how she had to sneak a notebook from her dad's study and a pen from her mother's bedside table. That had been how she started.
But in the memory, there was a great, beautiful canvas mounted on an expertly hand-crafted easel. Charcoal at the ready for her use, and with it she drew what one could only describe as a hooded horned man. But where did those supplies come from? Her parents weren't artists. Who set that up?
The birth of a headache smacked her forehead. This always happens when she tries to delve a little deeper into those memories. How cruel.
There was the clutter of someone stumbling over rubble.
Y/N shot up. Echo doesn't have legs. Where'd that sound come from?
She pulled herself to her feet and poised her arms with the paralysing crackle of magic raving at her fingertips. Her voice came out in the sly breath of a cautious whisper. "Who's there?"
The boy tripped over his own legs and crashed into a crumpled heap on the floor. She could recognise the scruffy, scrappy blonde hair anywhere. Her mouth fell, "Tommy?"
He forced a cough, head flying up with a disgruntled expression. "I prefer, 'oh wow! The handsome, awesome, big man his highness!'"
"Well, I don't." Echo folded his arms as he appeared from the hallway behind him. The sleeves of his jacket had been torn off, now displaying toned arms and the slightly-glistening skin of a Soulwisp. "This idiot almost broke his own neck getting here."
Tommy pushed himself up from being stomach-down, to some weird child's pose. "It's not my fault I fell down the stairs! That vine just jumped out at me!"
The flutter of eyelids told Y/N that Echo had rolled his eyes. "It was a bright, vibrant green against a dull grey. I've never seen a vine stand out more in my life."
The elf raised a brow at their bickering before rushing to help Tommy up and giving him a warm embrace. Her Soulwisp companion was wonderful, but finally seeing someone else after three weeks is a nice break. "Tommy! What are you doing here? Where's Phil? What's it like back at the town?"
The Harpy brushed off the bits of dirt, gravel and apparent vine scraps before clearing his throat. "You'll never believe this, but the kingdom's been totally overthrown! Apparently, citizens just disappeared one day three weeks ago and the King's gone, too. Well, not quite gone like them, but he went to Endernovalia for answers."
"Endernovalia?" Y/N stepped back. "Why?"
Tommy shrugged. "Apparently, there's something powerful enough to do something like that there. So King's gone to find out where the people went and how to get them back." Suddenly his expression turned serious, and his eyes held a new kind of history that Y/N didn't want to see on him. "He took a small team of remaining people with him. Phil was one of them. Apparently Phil knew the king personally, because they were talking really informally with one another." He straightened. "And, uh, because I swear they greeted each other saying 'old friend' and shit. I guess."
Echo moved forward, his own face becoming sympathetic. He placed his hand on the boy's shoulder. "I found him wondering around on his own, looking lost. Said he didn't have a home anymore. Wouldn't say much more than that."
Tommy's face sunk. "No... I... don't really want to."
Y/N smiled. "Hey. I'm glad you're okay."
Echo stuffed his hands into his pockets. "Oh, and as for Nicki... couldn't find her. Not in that pond, not on the outskirts of town."
"What about everything else? Weapons? Books? Food supplies?"
He shook his head softly. "I found a couple weird stone structures, an empty cottage with empty beehives, and an old campsite. The fire had only been recently extinguished and there were traces of food now eaten and where multiple people had been, but whoever they were had left with no tracks."
Y/N huffed and grit her teeth. "Damnit!"
Two days of waiting and that's it?
Tommy raised his hand. "Uh, you're telling me you have no food? So I came here for nothing?"
She turned to him. "There's something strange we noticed about a week and half after the people disappeared. The food didn't go bad. It didn't rot, didn't smell bad, and seemed to remain perfectly preserved." She watched the confusion on Tommy's face and continued with a twinge of uncertainty in her voice. "But we've also noticed that the pace of everything else becoming run-down has accelerated."
He tilted his head. "How do you mean?"
Y/N swept her arms wide and gestured to the library. The burns had calmed now. "Look at this place. Came here eight days ago. It's falling apart. And the towns? Plants growing and overtaking the buildings alarmingly fast, structures crumbling, animals becoming bolder... It's weird and dangerous."
"So what does that mean for us?"
Y/N looked at the boy and then looked at everything else. Looked at the rows and rows of bookshelves with all the information they held within and how none of what was written would ever help them. Just novels, cookbooks and encyclopaedias. She looked to the cork pin-board and what they had stuck on it, the leads to what they found in Dream's room and what they had learned in town. What they knew of how and when she woke up.
She looked at the sunroof, how even at midday they sun's rays felt lacking. Dwindling. She looked at that bit in the corner where they slept, with the bundles of scavenged blankets and camping gear, with the bundle of burnt sticks from where the fire had once been lit. Looked at the prospering tree in the centre of the room and how it would only grow bigger, stronger and wiser, and how she may not be able to follow.
She looked at Echo. His hair had grown much in this time, and his eyes had hardened to decisive, calculating spectral stars. They had to be, for the monsters and creatures that emerged from the shadows now called for it. And maybe hers had changed, too, because when she saw her reflection that night three months ago, she could have sworn she saw someone else. And maybe if herself from three months ago saw her Soulwisp, maybe she'd jump and startle at the difference.
[This legit took me like 20mins. Kinda proud.]
They'd been hauling and working together all these months to stay alive. With many buildings collapsing, Echo and Y/N had to seek new shelter everyday. With the constant onslaught of bloodthirsty monsters, they'd had to reinforce those temporary homes by hand constantly, and fight those same beasts with a limited amount of food. Their weariness to magic could not be left unaccounted for; for those burns still lingered on her arms as an everlasting reminder of what she had done.
But Echo's scars? Well, magic flows like water, and so does the wispy matter of his skin. To scar a soulwisp would be to scar a god.
He forgave her fast. He apologised for scalding her for what she didn't know, criticized himself for breaking down and making her endure his tears. And Y/N felt worse because of it.
They hadn't spoken of that part of that day since, but over the course of three months they mulled over what they found in Dream's room over and over again. They talked about this strange 'Yandere Metre' and what it could mean, and they discussed what these 'upgrades' and 'players' could symbolise.
"I'm player two... and you're player one..." Echo sat with his tail coiled like that of a snake with his hand to his chin, humming gently. It was the sixth day of whatever this was, and they'd used this old restaurant as refuge. The pair of them watched their dinner cook over the fire and wished that the gas and electricity would work again. "And you said that Wilbur is player six?"
"That's right." Her stomach growled as she watched the food. The burns made it difficult to do simple tasks, and getting too close to the fire would only reawaken that awful pain. Echo didn't mind doing the cooking, because he'd gotten a scare when she was showing off to Schlatt and didn't want to see her not look at a knife again. "And he donated something called 'energy' to me. I think it's some kind of currency."
"So I was right. Players." He looked up. "We're in some kind of game, Y/N."
"Yeah, I gathered that." Her brows scrunched together. "The real question is why. And how. Two real questions."
"We'll need a lot more 'real questions' than that if we want to get anywhere." He sighed. "That Endbeast encounter earlier today is a sign that the monsters are getting stronger. Which just makes our deaths an inevitability that's only getting closer."
"I don't understand." She groaned, flinging her head back as she snapped her eyes shut. "Why the time limit now? Why did the people disappear? Why is the world starting to fight us?"
Echo considered her rambling for a moment. "Maybe it's because there's something it wants us to do? You know, a goal for the game. A way to win."
Y/N stared at Tommy for a moment. Eyes drifting over the messy ruffle to his hair, the grazes and bruises on his skin, the loose threads on his tunic. It took these generous seconds to let his presence truly sink into her soul - and when her brain allowed her to register it, she made her decision.
"Tommy." Her sudden addressal after the lingering silence unnerved the boy. He blinked, watching her with bright ocean eyes, and waited for her words with lips taut in a thin line.
"...Yes, Y/N?"
She looked to Echo for confirmation. When she got the nod she wanted, she stepped forward. "There's something I'd like to show you."
×
Tommy breathed with wonder. "What kind of library has a basement?"
He had been led to a stone spiral staircase leading down and out of sight. His bird-claws tapped against the ground as he approached the rough steps. Y/N turned to him with a wry smile. "This one."
The echo of their footsteps wasn't as lonely and dreadful as it had been the previous times. No, because now they have someone new with them - and someone they can undoubtedly trust. Because he trusted them.
Echo seemed to take interest in the marks in the walls, running fingers over them and tracing the shapes. Y/N glanced at him. He did this every time they came down here.
Eight days, this library had been theirs. And two of them Y/N had been left alone here to keep an eye on their special little prisoner.
The stairs opened up to a plain room, with cobwebs in the corner and long candles that had deformed with the amount of times they had been lit. Regardless, Y/N picked up the box of matches and struck them, a corresponding shhhick! hissing back at her. One by one, she lit the candles, giving way for more light to fill the room.
Now there were wooden tables and chairs in the corner, an old cupboard and a dusty desk with a broken lamp on one of its corners. But that wasn't the focus.
It was the barred cell that housed a very special man, who seemed to house very special intel.
Tommy's mouth dropped open, and his voice came out in staggering waves. "W-Will?"
~=×=~
[Nice start to level two, huh?]
~=×=~
2290 Words
Not Edited.