The monsters rushed in at once. Their arms stretched out, grabbing air relentlessly. Their feet pushed against the wooden floor to get on top of the other mold monsters, leaving behind a trail of ugly black slime everywhere. The collective groans that echoed from their pile of mold caused a shiver to run down my bones.
What was worse was that they were never-ending. The more you thought that they had hit their entity limit, the more they doubled. By the time we had even gained control of our shocked bodies back, the pile had risen enough to touch the ceiling and completely block out the corridor. It looked like there was no escape.
But now, first, let me calm you down. Imagine green valleys and a light breeze blowing your hair just right. It doesn’t get in your eyes and bothers you, but rises enough to let the cool air hit your nape. In the distance are mountains lush with colorful flowers and trees of varying heights. The sky-blue sky is littered with the cutest, most fluffy clouds. And, you know…so on and so on.
Don’t let the pinch of body horror stemming from the horde of moldy monsters distract you from the fact that we were cooking cheese omelet toasts a few hours ago. And rest assured that we will return to that immediately after this short break of intense action and a lot of screaming. I will survive, obviously. I am writing this definitely fictional NovelPhoenix right now because I did. It’ll all be fine…
“We can’t leave!” Bella screamed, stumbling backwards as three more of the mold monsters started to crawl up the stairs. The rot in the dead garden had also come together to form more enemies.
Trapped on two sides, there was only one open path – behind us. That, too, however, was a dead end. Even with the little bit of light that was available to us, I could make out that we weren’t going to get anywhere from that side.
“The Banquet Hall!”
One of the twins, who had been messing with the double-sided door to our right, finally got it open. The doors swung inwards, and all five of us ran into that last remaining bastion of defense.
Pouring into the room, the first thing that I was met with was another large round table. One that I suspect had been brought in here from the Bar and Restaurant of the Northflame Inn. This time, however, it had been draped with a white cloth and pink ribbon. The chairs surrounding it were also the same, and so were the many tables and chairs everywhere else.
The five of us huddled together. Standing shoulder to shoulder, with me courageously hiding behind all four of them, we awaited their entry. In the meantime, however, I took a quick look around to notice a small blackboard near the entrance with the words – Nathan Weds Fera.
A wedding? In the middle of this nonsense, a wedding? Who the hell had even arranged all of these tables and decorated the rooms? Where even were these two people who were apparently tying their knot on such a horrible day?
Before I could even focus on answering those very important questions, the monsters finally poured in. With all of them falling to the floor the moment they got in, their weight had clearly worked against them. Bella yelped as some of the slime flew in the air and landed on her face, taking deep breaths as she tried to stop herself from crying.
The twins drew weapons. One of them had a knife, while the other had a…fork. Strange choice of blade, but it was better than my nothing. Poltrick, as expected of a dwarf in a totally not racist manner from my side, had a hammer.
And sure, it wasn’t half bad of a defense. As far as we were aware, one chair smashed into their bodies, followed by a stabbing, was a sure-fire way of dealing with these things. But still, there were only about ten chairs in the room at maximum, and the things had grown to about ten times that.
Not to mention that we weren’t sure if the capsaicin had to be involved as well or not. Thankfully, though, if that were the case, then I still had some left over on my hand from before.
“Bella, now’s the time to stop being a coward, child!” Poltrick bellowed, looking at her while he brandished his hammer and kept moving backwards.
“I’m not being a coward, Master Gregson. I…I just…”
“You’re what!?” He screamed as the twins bravely stepped forward, preparing to use their utensils to send these monsters back to Hell. “You’re refusing to use the power you have, even when multiple people are on the verge of death! That’s it.”
“I am not. I cannot use them. That’s it. I have tried over and over again, but my powers do not work!”
The elf girl stumbled back to be right beside me, almost tripping over multiple fallen chairs on the way. Mold monsters kept closing in every second, more and more of them swallowing the tables and chairs that we had once been right next to. And the entire time, all I could do was whimper and wait for them to come close and end it all.
It wasn’t until I hit the wall with Bella, though, that I understood how inevitable that future was getting. She gulped and looked at her hands. Her eyes got moist while her face started sweating intensely.
“I…I can’t. I can’t do it.”
“What are they talking about? Bella, what the hell can’t you do?”
“M-magic.” She murmured, “I can’t. I can’t use it anymore. It’s gone, Laura. It’s all gone.”
“Well, it would be great if it came back, like, right about now!” I held her shoulders, shaking her as my heartbeat rose, looking at the coming horde. “It would be amazing timing, Bella. Come on. Is this that blue light that was coming out of your hands earlier?!”
“W-what?”
“WHAT!?”
The first had been Bella herself. The second was, obviously, the dwarf. He turned, hiding his hammer back somewhere in his clothing. Moving an interrupting chair out of the way by throwing it at the horde behind him, he looked at the two of us with widened eyes.
I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I stayed quiet and switched between glancing at both of them. Once I realized that they were doing the same with me, though, I knew that I was the one who needed to speak up.
“I mean, yeah. Back in the Kitchen, when the first one appeared, she had…a weird blue light coming out of her hands for a second. But then you just put your hands back down and got a chair instead. Honest!”
“No, that can’t be true. That’s not possible. I can’t use magic anymore. It’s the truth. I can’t. It’s all gone.”
“It’s all gone? It’s all gone, is it!?” He scowled and jumped up, grabbing one of her hands and aiming her palm at the horde. “Let’s find out then, Bella. Let’s see if it’s really all gone as you claim. You just close your eyes and use it!”
“No! It won’t work.” She whimpered, crying. “It won’t, I know. I ca-”
“Shut up and close your eyes, Bella!”
And for once, she did exactly that. Closing her tear-filled eyes, she let her palm fly open as her face strained and creased. The sweating stopped, and her eyebrows focused as the faint blue light returned in her hands. Her arm began to pulse, almost like her veins were vibrating with the movement inside. The light grew stronger. Every mold monster in the room paused to look at her as the twins stepped aside in awe and made space.
Then, it burst out. A small blue-tinged pulse rippled through the air and made its way to the nearest monster. There was no big blast or beam, but rather a magical tint crawling through the air before it touched the head of the slimy humanoid, and stopped. For a second, nothing happened. Every heart in the room beat at that exact same second. The next second? Mold spread out across the room as the thing’s head splattered everywhere.
“Holy shit,” I whispered, almost letting a whistle out. “That’s sick.”
“I know. It disgusts me…”
“Oh.” I nodded. “Not what I meant, but…don’t have the time to explain.”
“To the corners!”
The dwarf grabbed the hands of one of the twins and, for some reason, me, and then started running to one of the corners of the room. Not the one closest to us, however. He ran diagonally for the edge that was on the same side as the door. He moved closer to all of the mold monsters. For some reason, everyone followed him there.
Bella stretched out her palm once more, sending a blast towards one of the approaching monsters before she reached our position and looked down at the floor. With all of us now collapsed into one small circle in that corner, the enemy had started to salivate at their mouth. Not literally, since they didn’t have mouths, but you get the point. The elf aimed her palm at the floor and closed her eyes in prayer.
“Ok, not good. Not good.” I shook my head, “Why are we trying to fall!?”
“There is nothing between the Banquet Hall and the Lobby directly!” Poltrick explained, “But the corners will open up at the staircase, so we’ll only fall down one story. No broken bones! Ok…very few broken bones.”
“Nope. No. I liked the no broken bones part better. I just got he-”
The magical blast rippled out of her hands, and touched the carpet were standing on. That was the first thing to get ripped apart, followed by the wood underneath it. I looked up at the monsters, mostly because I was too afraid to look straight down, and then grabbed on to Bella as the enemies ascended from my perspective.
My stomach churned, and a very childish, inhuman scream escaped me as we fell down together. But to Gregson’s credit, he was right. The fall had left my ankles weak, and it was difficult to stay on my feet, but we had landed on the stairs. A little bit off, and we would have fallen straight into the Lobby and definitely broken a bone or two. A two-story fall in this inn was higher than it should have been.
“Ok, ok.” I nodded and gave the elf a pat on the back. “That’s good. Great. We made it out. Now what?”
“I…don’t know.” She answered, shrugging as she looked at the dwarf. “Now what?”
“Hell, if I know!” He grumpily answered, looking at the twins to continue the pass-it-on chain. “Now what!?”
“Why are you looking at us? We haven’t even said anything till n-”
“Grrrraowooooooo….”
That last one was the mold monster who had taken one for its team and dropped down the hole right behind us. Falling through and slathering its slime all over us, the monster landed straight between the circle that we had all created. And for a moment, everything was peaceful. The monster stayed there, and the others looked on from above.
“WAAAAHHHHH!”
That one was Bella. Screaming the moment its monster’s face touched her legs, she pointed her palm down and blasted it right there. Her trigger-happy palm was great, as seen above. But that did not always translate to the best construction safety outcomes. Because as the blast tore through the moldy guy’s body, it also tore through the wooden platform underneath.
“You’ve got to be-”
So, we all fell down once more. The slime blasted everywhere, covering our entire bodies as gravity claimed five victims another time. Trying to cling to someone was not possible this time, however, since I was not prepared for this little downward adventure. Crashing straight into the ground floor, my mold-covered calves took the brunt of the damage this time around.
“Ugh…” I cried, using Poltrick as a conduit to stand back up. “You gotta keep that hand in check.”
“Sorry,” Bella grunted, coughing out some mold and wiping her hands. “This is why I don’t use magic. It’s the worst. I don’t like it!”
“Get your hands off!” The dwarf pushed me away and stood up with the help of the twins. “And don’t you whine now, Bella. It’s that magic which got us down, so you did good work. Now, we'd better move before another one falls on our heads.”
“Yeah, don’t wanna end up in the basement, do we?” One of the twins laughed as he moved out of the way.
All of us followed him. Right as we did, another one of the monsters made its way down the hole, only to splatter all over the floor and lose its barely-there life instantly. Wobbling into the Kitchen, which was back in sight now, all of us took a second to breathe.
“The mold had grown on the third floor and in the garden.” Poltrick noted, “Who knows what happened to Nathan and his girl, but we’ll need to go back to get Dom. Who’s with me?”
One of the twins put his hand on the dwarf’s shoulder, “We’ll go.”
“I…I’ll come, too.” Bella volunteered, stepping forward with a slight enthusiasm.
“No, we got it,” Poltrick replied. “Me and Trev can handle ourselves with one or two of them. We’ll just get Dom out and come back. You stay here and keep the innkeeper safe. There’ll be no dinner if those things take her!”
In my brain, I very much wanted to curse the dwarf for two things. The first was the misassumption that I was defenseless. It might have been true, but it was still rude. The second was that he was still thinking about dinner. We were basically in an apocalypse, and he wanted his food.
My heart, on the other hand, was quite pleased at him having left me with Bella. The sky was the limit when you had the literal manifestation of the hand gun dream every sixth-grader ever had.
“Should we just stay here?” Said that manifested hand gun elf girl. “I feel a little bad not helping out.”
“Well, they’re coming back here. And there will be no monsters around this place, so…”
Halfway through that sentence, I had realized that I wasn’t being completely truthful. And by the time I trailed off, the realization had set in for both her and me at the exact same time. We looked at each other, and then at the part of the corridor that I hadn’t explored till now. The one where the monster had come from in the morning.
“On the third floor. In the garden…” Bella counted down the places, “And…”
“Somewhere in there.”
The mold was not growing in two places, but three. The one in the morning could not have come from the garden or the third floor. There was another source right here on the ground floor. And if every other one was flaring up with monsters, this one would be no different. In fact, this one had just been faster than the others…
“But it’s not here yet.”
In my defense, Bella was the one who spoke the words of disaster. So, when three of those monsters burst out of one of the rooms attached to the corridor and started tumbling towards us, it was her fault. Narratively, at least. Technical narratively.
“Ok, just three. You can blast those.”
In my offense, that one was me.
The three monsters were crushed almost instantly by the horde that followed. If the one above had been about a hundred of them, this one was…a bit more. Let’s just stick with a bit more. Anyway, they were still hurtling towards us at their terrifyingly middling pace, which made it even worse.
“Lobby?” The remaining twin asked.
“Lobby,” Bella confirmed.
And so, the three of us made a run for it. Right as we did, a screaming dwarf and second twin jumped down from the first floor and crashed into the reception desk, breaking it. Along with that, also sending a bunch of paper flying everywhere in the sky.
“Taken. Dom’s taken.”
“Taken? What do you mean, Master Gregson? Taken?”
“He…he wasn’t there. He was covered in it. Just covered in the t-”
Pause, dear reader. Because here was the moment of revelation. The truth collapsed on all of us at once, without mercy. The horde coming down from the first floor, the horde on the ground floor. About six hundred of those monsters came for us at once. Decorating the scene was the paper flying around the room. And finally, as the swansong, came the light.
A bright, singular light. It did not come from anywhere in particular, and everywhere at once. The brightest bright white light you can imagine. Right in the middle of Poltrick speaking his piece, it consumed every single one of us before we could even process what was happening. Before we could be sure of the consequences of this occurrence, they had already consumed our lives.
Then, there was nothing.
_____________
So, I woke up.
In that strange room in an inn.
Once more.
The second time, for now. Without knowing that there were thousands of times that would follow.
Welcome to the first day of the rest of my fantastical life.