The Gallery was not a contained space. It sprawled indefinitely no matter the direction a player chose to follow, spawning artful horrors as it crept ever outward. There was no puzzle to solve or maze to navigate. The way out was in Ann's painting and that painting was the central piece of an exhibit that pulled itself out of a hat wherever it pleased. The players were not meant to find Ann; Ann was meant to find them.
"How many left?" Ann asked.
An instance boss was fettered until certain conditions were met. Ann felt the restrictions keenly – the thorn-studded vine wound around her throat like a living noose was hard to miss. It tightened in warning whenever she peered in on the players. Reaching out to grab K by the collar had cost her a necklace of bruises. Even so, she could only bring the man so far into the painting. He remained out of her direct sight and she, out of his.
The single candle burning on the captain's desk flickered as the ship swayed. Ann's shadow fluttered against the back wall, blooming outward before bowing back into something resembling a human silhouette.
"Three, provided the group remains together," K's disembodied voice floated through the open cabin window. "More if they split up."
Ann frowned. The players better stick together, after all the effort she'd put in herding those damned rabbits.
She must have muttered at least part of that out loud, because K laughed and said, "There were easier ways to go about it. I do applaud the ingenuity, however."
Ann knew the man was talking about the giant, slobbering dogs shepherding herds in various media around the gallery. They had given her the idea to scare the players back together in the first place. They'd sure scared Ann into fleeing the other way.
She huffed and decisively turned the conversation back to the problem at hand.
"They've been forced to lose a player in order to advance at every stage so far," Ann said, and very consciously didn't think about the possible real-world repercussions for the fallen players. "Is this the glitch at play?"
"No," K said.
Ann frowned. "That doesn't make sense." The attrition rate was forced and much too steep for an instance that was not structured as a battle royale.
"Would you like to buy a clue?" K asked brightly.
Ann glared out the cabin's black window. She couldn't see K's face, but she could imagine the man's smug expression just fine. A small part of her was glad to have the man back to his very unique brand of normal. The rest was fighting the urge to say something crass.
"I thought you were on our side," she said instead.
K hummed noncommittally. Ann ground her teeth.
"What do you want," she bit out.
"Look after someone for me from here on out," K said.
Ann thought briefly, then said, decisive, "Mr. Glasses."
K barked out a laugh. "You must be willing to keep him, if you've already named him."
Ann pursed her lips, cheeks reddening at the slip of tongue. "He's the other person on your list, isn't he?" she asked, blustering through the embarrassment, "You got your brother to pull the two of us into the rescue mission. Why?"
"Alexander told you," K said after a quiet moment.
Ann shifted uneasily at the sudden flatness of the man's voice. "As I said, we're playing on the same side."
"And which side is that?" K asked.
Ann let out a grunt of frustration. Talking with the man when he decided to be stubborn was worse than talking to a wall! At least the wall wouldn't talk back!
"Whatever! I'll look out for Mr– for your friend, alright? Are you going to help, or not?"
"I didn't say he was a friend."
"K!"
"Breadcrumbs," K sighed, as if Ann was the one wearing him down with nonsensical conversation.
Ann swallowed the first two things that she wanted to say in response. "What," she snapped.
"The players caught by creatures at each stage. They're breadcrumbs," K explained. Without actually explaining a thing, of course.
Ann tried to follow the spider silk-thin strand of logic. "Like in Hansel and Gretel?" she guessed.
There was a short clapping sound, as mocking as it was cheerful, then silence. K was gone.
"Ugh," Ann groaned as she laid her head on the table. "Breadcrumbs. That's his big clue?" Her lips left red smears against the wood as she muttered to herself, each shaped like a flower petal. Beneath her, the ship swayed on a sea of ink.
"What's the point of this instance anyway?"
Ann sat up at once, sending her shadow hugging the curve of her shoulders scattering back against the wall.
"What is the point of this instance?" she breathed.
***
Frances threw a whining teenager with one hand and grabbed a swinging bat with the other. All of this as he attempted to disembark a pretend-ship while fleeing from a weeping statue.
He was decidedly not enjoying this instance.
"Shut up!" he snarled at the man yapping about a monster and collecting clues.
"It could have the key!" the man who was now sans a bat argued, not backing down. He had been swinging the bat at the statue, hoping to break it apart.
Frances shouldered past him, moving the man bodily further away from the pit of cement just as the siren swiped a clawed hand their way. The man scrambled back until he hit the nearest wall. Frances sneered.
"It could be the key," Michael murmured.
Frances looked at the siren. The siren stared back, frozen mid-reach. Its eyes were large and flat in its face. The arm it had stretched to grab them rippled with small shivers. The other, clutched under the creature's chin, bulged over whatever the siren had in its grip.
"I don't think so," Frances said. "It's something round. And glowing."
"A clue, then," Michael hummed.
The hall plunged into darkness. It was happening with greater frequency now, and the lights remained off longer every time. The players barely reacted anymore.
Michael yelped. Frances turned toward the sound, snarling, blind in the dark. "What happened?" he demanded.
"Nothing. I'm fine, just," Michael trailed off. The note of unease in his voice had Frances' hand clenching around the bat.
Light spilled from above, briefly blinding. A long shadow fell over Frances. When he looked up, he saw the siren curved above them, balanced on a serpentine tail that was easily six feet long – and that just the part that was visible above ground.
Frances eyed the creature. When it didn't move, he turned flinty eyes on Michael.
"Just, what?" he said.
"Hm? Oh, I thought I felt something – but it doesn't hurt now," Michael said, gesturing absently at the back of his head.
Frances moved behind him. He sucked in a startled breath, which he let out as a curse.
"There's a mark," he told Michael. "On the back of your neck."
Twin scratches, in the shape of an X. Thin but deep enough to leave behind red welts. Michael traced them the abrasion with his fingers.
"Was there anyone standing behind you when the lights went off?" Frances asked.
"No, no one. I was standing too close to the wall. There was only..."
He trailed off as he turned to look at the painting hanging from the wall at his back. A sunset-pink sea lapped at a deserted shore, waves foaming over scraggly rocks.
The impression of footsteps in the wet sand seemed distinctively out of place. They trailed out from the sea and stopped right at the edge of the painting, then looped to the side and out of sight.
"Were those there before?" Frances asked.
Michael shook his head. "I don't know."
"Excuse me," a tentative voice broke in. "Can we – shouldn't we, um. Leave?"
The other players had edged away from the towering statue and by extension, Frances and Michael. They darted nervous glances between the cement pond and the many exits around the exhibit. Had they known which way to go, they would have probably not bothered to wait around at all.
Svetlan and the three teens the man had helped rescue were the only exception. Their little group was clustered at one end of the cement pool, engaged in a conversation with a – Frances blinked. With a strange turtle creature balancing a bowl on its head.
"And then you bow," one the teens – Danny, Frances recalled – said.
He demonstrated enthusiastically. The boy-turtle-shaped statue in the cement bowed back. The bowl on its head tumbled off. The turtle creature clacked its beak in dismay and dove into the cement, possibly chasing after the errant ornament.
Danny whooped, fist pumping in the air. "And that's how you get rid of kappa!" he exclaimed. His friends clapped obligingly.
"Very impressive," Svetlan agreed. "What if it's already dragged you into the water?"
Danny scratched at his chin in contemplation. "Oh. Then you're dead, I guess."
"Hey!" Frances called. When the group turned to look at him, he told them pointedly, "We're leaving."
He was answered with eye-rolls and a grumbled, "Okay, mom," that he chose to ignore.
"We could try to break its tail," Michael said. He was looking up at the siren statue, eyes on the shining bauble in the creature's hand.
"It'll fall over on this side, if we aim right. Once it shatters, we can collect the clue," he added.
Frances was shaking his head before the man was through. It was an instinctive reaction he was forced to justify with words under Michael's bemused stare.
"I think it's human," he said.
Frances hadn't thought about it consciously. The pieces were all there, clues he had picked out and kept at the back of his mind until they snapped into something tangible and escaped fully-formed out of his mouth. He tried to back up a little, explain about human eyes in the dark and a shaking hand and how he was almost certain the statue had no face before it drowned a player. Michael listened patiently.
"You think the player might be trapped inside the statue?" he said in the end.
Frances shrugged. "Maybe. Better play it safe."
The other players were listening in. The man who had lost his bat snorted, unimpressed.
"So what? If it's got a clue, it's fair game."
"They don't know," Michael reminded Frances quietly. He'd grabbed one end of the bat at some point. Frances realized only when he tried to tug it free and possibly swing it in the mouthy player's direction.
Frances took in a calming breath that bore some resemblance to a bull snorting in air before a charge.
"Stay if you want," he said, then stomped toward the painting of the ship the butler had briefly occupied. Both the ship and butler were gone. The canvas was an unending swatch of black – sea and sky melting into one, discernable only by the broken moonlight caught in cresting waves.
The players followed in a staggered line. Svetlan and his group joined them from the other direction, circling in counter-clockwise.
"An inspiring show of leadership," Svetlan said.
Frances grunted at the man. He looked back at the exhibit, and caught the siren's eyes. It had turned in its perch to look after them. Its cheeks were wet.
"It'll be fine," Svetlan said. There was nothing teasing in his voice this time.
"How do you know?" Frances asked.
The man smiled, angling his face so that the glare of the lights dimming flashed over his glasses. "Just a feeling," he said.
They walked in the dark for some time. The players whispered among each other to keep their unease at bay. The glint of eyes and teeth in the paintings that covered the walls on either side of the hallway kept them clustered close together. When the girl with the bleached hair stumbled, she nearly sent them all cascading, like a tipped-over row of domino chips.
"Jesus, what– is that a cat?" the girl exclaimed.
She was answered by a smug meow. A small shape darted ahead of the group; it was a cat, its glossy black fur shining obsidian in the dark. It flashed luminous golden eyes their way before pointedly strutting down a branching hallway.
The girl cursed. "Stupid thing got in my feet. I almost kicked it!"
"It's cute, though," Danny pointed out.
The cat meowed again, shriller this time.
"I guess we are meant to follow," Michael said.
The players picked up their speed. The air grew warm and bright, and the floor crunched tellingly underneath their feet.
"Sand," Michael sighed.
"What're the odds we don't get mobbed by mummies?" Frances asked offhandedly.
Svetlan laughed quietly. "Not very promising," the man said, just as they rounded a corner into a treasure-trove half-buried in a sea of white sand.