Everyone
Location: Between Worlds
Time: Useless
In many of the spiritually awakened cultures, the soul is a sacred concept.
The soul is the reflection of the self. In that, many of the magically inclined religions agree. In many worlds, a person is considered the combination of their soul and mind, but it is the soul that provides the capacity to feel, the capacity to truly be.
In the trinity that composes a being, the soul is often argued to be the most important piece, and the most taboo one.
A taboo, because a soul is considered to be the most intimate part of one’s existence. It is supposed to be invisible and intangible, something for you and you alone. It is not supposed to be seen or touched by someone else.
Yes, in many ways, a soul is the ultimate taboo. Even many of the evilest beings in the endless worlds will hesitate to mess with someone else’s soul. Greater powers that you can’t even begin to dream of will act to smite those who commit this crime.
Perhaps it is a mercy that you do not know of this.
The moment Zeus High School is enveloped into a column of darkness that disappears in the blink of an eye, leaving nothing behind but a wide hole and the ruins of a town…
Something from beyond the veil reaches towards you, inside the concept of ‘you’ and touches your very soul.
It is a horrifying sensation that cannot be described in words, because your language has no words for it, nor had taken the concept into account. In the passing of a mere instant, that thing changes you irreversibly, against your will, without giving you any choice into the matter whatsoever.
Your fate was sealed the moment you were caught up in the sorcerer’s great ritual.
You are warped forevermore.
An ancient decree fulfilled.
“Do not forget that everything was done and made for the sake of killing me.”
Trauma then fades into unconsciousness. The last you manage to perceive is a crashing sound.
And then follows a silence more overwhelming than any noise.
Soon, you’ll awake. You’ll trickle and ‘spawn’ into this world one by one, within a warped, labyrinthine version of this school.
But for now, you sleep.
You’ll need this sleep. You’ll need all the strength you can muster.
The first day in this brave new world always tends to be quite traumatic, one could say.
The skies shattered and down came the school’s building, with its terrains around. Impelled by magical forces, and yet cushioned by similar forces, it descends down to the ground, interrupting a hapless witch mid-ritual, and raising general havoc with the surroundings.
A storm of spiritual power puts the many powerful entities into alert, and awakens lethargic Spirits, but it would be more than a few hours before true hell begins. Before the first death occurs and snowballs into catastrophe, as the undead start to plague the now convoluted maze of hallways.
Ancient schemes are fulfilled and begin yet another phase. The wheel of fate turns, and the bell tolls for the fourth time, announcing the arrival of the Fourth Generation of Survivors, those doomed to end it all, for good or for ill.
True hell begins now, but within it reaches the opportunity to reach heaven, if you grasp it.
PHASE 1 – SHATTERED HORIZONS
“It lurks. It approaches, day by day. Step by step. That most dreadful nightmare of Hundun.” – Metropolis, Archives #87
Rika Griffin, Sakura Sumeragi & Eilian Aubrey
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Distorted Hallways – ??? Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon
You all wake up at the same time.
You don’t wake up well. The experience of having your soul be manipulated so callously is a harsh one. You feel ill, your limbs tremble, and you feel more than vaguely dizzy.
Really, you feel like you need a month of rest and a pool full of brain bleach after that one.
But you are awake nonetheless, and you can move and act, and that’s all that matters.
Even before you open your eyes, the stench that hits your nostrils is positively vile.
You’ve never smelled something like this, so rotten, so utterly putrid. It is revulsive, and it is that, more than anything else, what pushes you awake.
When you open your eyes, you notice you three are the only ones here.
Correction.
You are the only three living ones here.
The room you’ve landed within is not one you can recognize. You are fairly sure no room like this exists within the school. Not that you know of.
But what calls your attention, even more than the complete lack of furniture or of anything in the room is all the blood coating it, liberally, like someone had splashed a bunch of red paint around.
Oh, and of course, the pile of death bodies in one corner of the room, thankfully away from you three.
How to describe the horrible sight? The corpses at the bottom, that looked like they had been ripped apart, or mauled by wild animals, missing portions that looked like they’d been bitten off, organs dribbling out…
Or the corpses at the top, those who looked like they had been dead for a long, long time, some mutilated, others appearing to have been staked through the head at various angles, rotted and decaying, putrid beyond belief, only recognizable as human by the uniforms they wore. That all the corpses wore.
Uniforms of Zeus High School students came into view, illuminated by the single functional lamp in the ceiling.
You struggle to process this horror, but you aren’t given time.
A high pitched, soul-rending scream interrupts your reverie. It is muffled somewhat, but it is still incredibly loud, the sound of a human throat being strained at the very limit by absolute terror.
It comes from one of the three exits the room has.
Before you can even think of how to react, the scream is interrupted suddenly.
And then, there is only silence and the stench of fear and decay.
Lorelei Weber
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Twisted Classroom – ??? Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon
There were many ways to express how you felt right now.
None were elegant, polite, or ladylike.
It was perhaps best to say ‘like shit’ and leave it at that.
You stirred and groaned as you struggled with the torpor that invaded you. You were really out of it, and given what you had experienced, perhaps you did hold the wish to be out of it for a while longer. Mostly because ‘it’ was not a good place to be at. You were pretty done with ‘it’. All ties severed.
“Behold. The sleeping beauty stirs at last.”
The voice is so dry with sarcasm, so unfitting for the situation, that you can’t help but to open your eyes and sit up upon hearing it.
… What did you even open your eyes to?
This is a classroom, alright. Except that it has been twisted so heavily that you can’t recognize it anymore. Half of it looks… sort of melted, you’d say. The floor tiles overlap with each other in a vaguely sickening way, and the walls look swirled, as if stirred paint. Except someone stirred the material itself.
No lamp functioned. The only light that illuminated the scene came from the windows and it was teal, faint enough to create stark shadows, but present enough for you to notice even more disquieting details.
Many desks and chairs had been strewn around, and a few looked broken. One chair was coated with blood, one of the desks was half-melted and the blackboard had been sundered in twain at some point, with more blood dribbled on it, including a stain that greatly resembled the print of a human hand.
“Yeah, doesn’t look good at all, right?” The girl whose voice woke you up said, but she doesn’t look very bothered by it all. Judging from her uniform, a fellow student, though you didn’t know her.
She was standing near the door of the classroom, and peering through its window. Her hand grasped a stick… no, the leg of a chair, with a tip that looked as if it had been sharpened really quick.
Whatever she was looking at, it seemed to be holding most of her attention.
“As far as nightmares go, this one’s pretty pleasant. Got the bizarre décor down pat.” More of a mumbled, deadpan comment to herself, but your ear did manage to catch that.
Alexandra Gray
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Courtyard – Tree Garden)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon
The strange things that had happened to you were very concerning.
Feeling nauseous, dizzy and vaguely like you needed an adult was also very concerning.
Waking up hanging head-down from a tree was also extremely high on your list of concerning things.
You twisted to look upwards. You were still wearing the gi and the pants the Martial Arts Team had lent you, and you saw that one of the sleeves of your pants had become entangled with a particularly gnarled branch of the rather tall tree you were onto.
Which, to be fair, was the only thing keeping you from a head-on collision with the ground.
… You didn’t really remember the trees in the school terrains looking so gnarled and twisted. You had a bad feeling about this.
Thinking positively, you at least didn’t seem to be feeling the bruises you should be sporting after that match with Hiyori. You had healed… somehow.
Thinking negatively…
The flapping of wings alerted you, and you looked around until you detected two black shapes approaching in the air, and landing a cautious distance away from you.
Encountered Mutated Crow (x2)
These had only the vaguest of resemblances to a crow. Their bodies seemed to be bigger than they should be. Their beak was oversized and looked knife sharp. The shine of its eyes was blood-red, and a bestial, unreasonable rage dwelled within.
They cawed, if you could call cawing that grinding noise. Those eyes were locked onto you.
They did not look friendly.
Johnny Justice
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Distorted Hallways – ??? Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon
You struggled up.
Being the king of the streets hadn’t been an easy job. For every victory that had ended in a single punch, you’d had at least three that had come after a tremendous slugging match where you and your opponent had exchanged blows until both of you were a bloody mess.
You were no stranger to being wounded.
You were willing to concede that this feeling was something else alright. It didn’t take you much to shake it off, to force your hesitating body to move as you willed, to school the involuntary trembling with the iron of your will.
You were also no stranger to corpses. You’d seen perhaps a bit too many back in the day.
And this was definitely a corpse. The light of the single lamp illuminating the dark, warped hallway didn’t do much to help you see, but that unmoving thing half in the darkness was without a doubt the corpse of a boy, of a fellow student, whose chest had been ripped into.
It was not something you’d expected to see. To be fair, nothing of this was something you expected to see. For a moment, perhaps caused by the earlier insanity, you struggled to parse the situation.
Then, the corpse started to decay before your very eyes.
The rot took hold quickly. It devoured the cadaver in the blink of an eye, the stomach-turning stench filling the hallway.
And then it started to stand up by itself.
Shuffling. Behind you. Danger.
Two more, shambling out of the darkness in your direction. Empty gazes full of nothing but empty hunger and berserk will. No intelligence there, just instinct to consume and devour.
Encountered Decayed Being (Human Schoolboy) x3
Danger.
Instincts not used in a year came back online as if they’d never left. Adrenaline pumped through your veins.
Fight or die.
Now there was a language you were definitely no stranger to.
Olivia Reeds & Cyrus Ferdinand
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Distorted Hallways – ??? Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon
“Wake up!”
A sharp voice, shrill with panic, blasted on your eardrums. That managed to stir the both of you out of the torpor you felt, although it was a true struggle. Waking up like that after such an experience was… not pleasant. To say the least.
“Fucking wake the fuck up already! Fuck!” The voice screamed again, and Olivia felt someone lightly kicking her side.
Finally, your eyes snapped open, and heads moved, searching the source of the noise.
Cecily Ridley. Member of Zhong’s gang. Who looked to be so scared she was about to soil herself.
“Oh fucking finally! Shit, shit, shit! Stop… fucking… aaaugh! STOP LYING THERE! GET UP!” She howled.
She looked like hell on earth. Scrapes mostly, but a few nasty wounds had been opened on her right side, and her shirt looked like a solid half of it had been torn apart somehow. A vicious burn could be seen on her back from Cyrus’ standpoint, though it looked a lot worse than it really was.
There were two other persons here, two boys neither of you recognized, but that also seemed to be scared for their lives, as if they were about to just go running away at any time now. Neither seemed related to Cecily or her gang.
And what the hell was that noise? You weren’t sure of how to describe it. Like nails on chalkboard. As if the floor was being scraped…
Cecily’s eyes widened in terror, looking kind of like a haunted animal.
You followed the direction of her eyes. And you witnessed something truly inexplicable.
The many windows in the hallway projected teal light, providing fair illumination to witness the yellow mass of acid slithering through the hallway, occupying it fully, stretching as if to cut off any route of escape from that way.
Encountered Yellow Slime
Was that… a corpse within the mass of acid? You only saw it for an instant, and it had been already melting, but… that janitor was definitely not having a good day…
Now you understood why everyone was scared shitless. It was hard to not look at that thing move, acid eroding floor and walls as it passed, and not feel fear. Although for Cyrus, the situation merely evoked a strange sense of déjà vu.
Neru Sune
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Twisted Classroom – ??? Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon
Some of your dreams were recurring. A lot of them featured the same monsters, the same death traps, but the situation mostly varied, and no dream was quite the same.
And yet, some were almost always the same. There was some variance, but the essence remained unaltered.
Men and women, seated cross-legged. Their hands united in a symbol you had difficult discerning. How old, you couldn’t tell, because they always looked dry and mummified, their robes hanging from their bodies almost like a shroud.
You couldn’t they if they were dead or they yet lived somehow, but they looked too corpse-like to be alive.
Their robes… black, and their adornments were gold and ruby. They all looked vaguely Buddhist, like belonging to an Eastern religion that had much in common with them. But you had once investigated and seen enough images to conclude it was not so.
The quantity of the monks always varied. Sometimes there were a few, around five or so, sometimes there were a dozen, two dozen, or even fifty. A few times you’d seen what you thought were hundreds of them.
Main reason you thought they must be alive was the chanting. The haunting noise, syllables of an unknown language, had to come from someone. Or rather many someones, as it was quite the choir. But you never saw any of them open their mouth.
The scenery was blurry, and hard to remember. It was underground, most definitely, it looked too cave-like to be any other way. An underground temple.
The decorations resembled the ones the monks wore. Golden skulls here and there, some silver, and you knew that when you went forward, you’d see crystal skulls, one, maybe two or three, sometimes. There was a bead of rubies, all with runes carved on the round surfaces. You didn’t know why, but something about the shape of these runes creeped you out.
You walked forward, to the front, where the faces of the monks were pointing to. Their eyes were closed. That detail never changed.
The hole in the forehead was new, however. This dream was always so blurry and strange, that you’d never noticed it, but today it seemed more… defined, to put it in words. You didn’t waste much time examining them, as you were compelled to continue forward.
Another thing that never changed was what laid at the other end of the room (or what you thought was a room).
The nude man there had once been handsome. In fact, he’d been so beautiful that he would probably have gotten straight men worshipping him by the hundreds.
The reason he wasn’t that beautiful now was that it was hard to look your best when a spear had impaled you through the top of your head, continued straight through your body, and nailed you to the ground.
This one you were sure that he was dead. He had to be dead. Yet, the corpse always looked fresh, as if recently dead, untouched by any corruption. You could still see the dry blood that had soaked the top of his blond hair.
Sometimes you thought you saw the corpse twitch, but you weren’t sure. Almost as if there was the residue of life left there.
Usually, you didn’t die in this dream. It wasn’t a proper nightmare. You normally just remained there, feeling creeped out and afraid, but never quite sure of what. It was as if feeling of omnipresent horror reigned within this temple. And then you woke up.
Some of the painful deaths you had suffered were less scary than this. At least they were direct and to the point.
This time…
You weren’t sure of when the Mannequin had appeared in front of you. One moment, empty space. The next one, sudden creep.
It did not seem pleased to see you here. It waved a hand, and off you went, tumbling back to the waking world.
--------------
You’d had bad drug trips that were much better than this. Only the worst of your nightmares were worse than whatever had happened once the world went insane. You curled on yourself, and remained so for a while, unwilling to entertain the world while you fought the queasy sensation that came with having some creature giving your soul the spiritual equivalent of a swirlie.
Apt comparison, perhaps, but not entirely so.
The sound of voices arguing woke you up.
“… telling you that we should just go while we can.” A male voice said.
“And leave everyone else to rot?” An angry female voice replied.
“I’m just saying we’re going to get ourselves killed trying to help. We’ve already lost three persons, if you haven’t noticed.”
“And? We’re saving plenty more than three, if you haven’t noticed.” The female voice replied thornily.
“Bah, fucking coward. I can almost smell the shit on your pants.” Another female voice, more mannish, interrupted.
“I swear… will you never shut up, woman?!” The male voice got heated at that.
You opened your eyes and managed to sit up.
Rosalin Lovell, treasurer of the Student Council, was someone you recognized, at least, although of course you’d never talked to her.
She was arguing it out with a taller boy with a very intense stare, who currently had his arms crossed and had an air of strained patience. Neither of them looked very happy.
The third voice had come from a woman you also recognized but you’d never seen in the flesh. Lizbeth Moores was a pretty well-known figure in Zeus High due to her boxing achievements. She was also involved in the American Football team, if you recalled.
The other two looked normal, but Lizbeth… she didn’t seem all that badly hurt, but her clothing looked it had been sliced into ribbons, and scratch marks could be seen everywhere on what was visible of her skin.
Wondering what did that was not a very pleasant exercise.
You’d been lying on top of a desk. Your awakening was noticed by the other people in the room: three boys and two girls, all underclassmen, who seemed to want nothing to do with the argument the trio was carrying at the moment.
The three then noticed you.
“Ah, the deadweight’s finally awake.” Lizbeth said, without much malice or heat to her words.
“Finally. Was getting tired of carrying his ass.” The boy sighed and relaxed slightly.
“Ah, never mind them.” Rosalin walked up to you and examined you. “Are you alright? You don’t seem wounded but…” She asked. But… yeah, just one look at her eyes and you could tell that the experience of having something mess with you in a way you shouldn’t be messed with wasn’t exactly exclusive to you.
… What the hell was wrong with this classroom? The walls and ceiling looked normal, the desks and chairs were strewn around but were normal… leaving aside the traces of blood here and there, which you noticed just now. But the shape was all wrong.
And why were there no lights? What was the teal light coming from the windows?
Suddenly, you had a feeling you weren’t in Kansas anymore.
Masaki Tomomi
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Twisted Classroom – ??? Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon
You’d had nightmares before.
Having an eidetic, photographic memory sounded really good, but it did always have that one flaw: what you saw couldn’t be unseen. Forever.
And your childhood did have quite a lot of nightmare material, even if none was something all that overt. Dreaming of your blood parents was always deeply unpleasant.
Of course, that couldn’t compare to what you had experience. It had been much worse than the nightmares.
You felt sick.
And you felt yourself waking up, slowly but surely, almost against your will.
You were being carried. Your eyes opened, but your body remained still as your brain struggled to get itself started and process what was going on.
You were slung over someone’s shoulder, being held there by a strong arm. You blinked. At least your carrier was a girl. A girl with red hair…
A sudden chill almost froze your blood when you recognized Liu Zhongli. What was going on? What had happened? How had you ended up in the hands of one of the most terrible persons in the school, and what was she planning to do with you?
Instinctively, you remained quiet, your eyes closed into slits. You took a look around as slowly as you could.
The red-haired girl advancing at her side was Stacy Tirrel. The girl was very recognizable as well, so you were sure of her identity. The others, you didn’t recognize.
Two gang members, both male, were walking ahead, holding metal sticks on their hands that you recognized as part of the chairs and desks of the school. To the side, slightly behind, two gang girls were carrying a blond girl with them.
There were at least two people behind you, as well, but in your position, you couldn’t afford to take a look at them. To your hearing, due to their breathing and the way they dragged their feet, they sounded… wounded?
You were going through a dark school hallway, which… you were a hundred percent sure did not exist. Your memory confirmed that. This hallway was impossible. It shouldn’t be here.
Once in a while you crossed a window. You couldn’t see outside, but this teal light was definitely not the light of the sun you once knew.
What the hell?
And then you saw a sight that did truly chill you to the bones.
Corpses. Two. Dead boys.
Your mind froze for a moment as you processed that. Both were face-up, with looks of horror on them. One was missing an arm and his throat had been ripped out, and the other had his torso split almost wide open.
The image remained there for a moment.
Then, before your very eyes, those bodies started to rot and decay.
It was a horrible sight, more grotesque even than the corpses themselves. But that did not surprise your ‘company’ at all.
Stacy barked an order, and the two boys in front rushed to the corpses just as they started rising. Before the zombies… and yes, they seemed truly zombies, could do anything, the boys drove the sticks into their brains with a grunt of effort.
The corpses ceased moving.
“Shit.” Zhong said to nobody in particular, perhaps more of a general statement towards the situation. She looked around, at her underlings, and noticed how tired they looked. “If there’s no nasties in there, we take the next classroom. We need a breather.”
“Got it.” Stacy nodded, and waved the rest of the company. They got moving, and in a few minutes, they arrived to an empty classroom.
Compared to the hallway, ignoring a bunch of broken chairs, it looked normal. If you ignored the checkerboard pattern of dents in the ceiling.
Zhong walked up to one of the desks, and deposited you there much less roughly than you had expected. The others did the same with the blonde girl, who appeared to be still asleep, and really not having a good time of it. Understandable, given what had happened.
Stacy and her boss retreated to a corner of the classroom, and started talking. You had to strain to hear them from your position.
“… fucking Tanner screwed the pooch. Shouldn’t have gone with his stupid idea.” Zhong spat.
“It was the best one given the options we had at the time.” Stacy disagreed. “Oh, I think he’s an asshole who can’t take the broomstick off his ass even with his life in danger, but he isn’t exactly stupid.”
“Don’t care, now we’re split up and we’re losing people left and right. And every dumbass that bites it adds to the trouble. Did you contact the other guys?” Zhong asked.
“Some of them. They’re all lost. We’re being kept split up. Can’t organize jack if at every turn everything goes to shit. We need a safe place. If it’s true that Deschamps is set up in the lobby…” Stacy’s controlled non-expression suddenly showed frustration, before she reasserted her mask.
“Yeah, that’s fine and all, but we got no idea of how to get there. And I swear all the really bad stuff’s been trickling down to the first floor. I’d love to scrap with these things, don’t get me wrong, but it ain’t good if all of our people die.”
“There are a few other options. We could…” Stacy interrupted herself, and sighed. “You know she’s awake, right?” She nodded her head towards you.
“Yeah, felt her breathing change.” Zhong shrugged.
Well then.
Xavier Augustus
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Twisted Classroom – ??? Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon
Your head hurt like hell after all that.
And this song wasn’t helping matters.
Whoever was singing had a pretty voice, but didn’t really know how to use it. She was very out of tune. And the song appeared to be just nonsensical sounds. Either that or it was in a language unlike anything you’d ever heard.
It was so bad that it almost single-handedly galvanized you into waking up and sitting up out of sheer indignation for this heresy towards music in general.
You almost wished you hadn’t.
You weren’t sure of how to describe the scene in front of you.
The classroom had become spiral-shaped at some point. Or at least the floor and ceiling had, while the walls curved abnormally. One corner had a small part of the ceiling actually cave in.
You thought you saw a bit of red, like blood over there. You chose to believe you were just seeing things for now, because the most abnormal part of this resembled a drug trip.
There was the ghost of a pretty girl, floating over there and singing her merry song. White flame came from her extended hands, and bathed…
Some sort of green gelatinous mass? It did have a resemblance with a certain monster that often appeared within videogames.
Encountered Infis
Encountered Green Slime
The green slime was trapped within a circle of white flame, and it was being slowly cooked out by the ghost, who seemed to be just enjoying the process.
Suddenly, she turned her head around and saw you.
“Oh, would you look at it?”
“Would you look at that?”
“He woke up!”
“Woke up!”
“Though the slimes would eat you before you came to!”
The ghost spoke in two different, distinct voices, and laughed as if the concept of your demise via acid organisms was a very funny joke.
Aaron Arturio & Willow Durand
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Detached Building – ??? Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon
“… ke… up…!”
Neither of you wanted to acknowledge the voice. You were a bit too under the weather for that. Instinctively, you wanted to curl up and pretend nothing had happened for a while longer.
“Wake… up!” The girlish voice insisted. And eventually, you had to obey, as the mists of sleepiness and trauma retreated.
You opened your eyes. You were lying side by side on the corner of a room you couldn’t recognize, a… triangular? Empty room. You… were sure this room hadn’t been a thing.
“They’re awake!” The girl who said that didn’t wear Zeus’ uniform. Red-haired, with twintails, cute-looking… seemed more like a middle-school student.
The other people in the room interrupted their arguing, and approached.
Bryanna Halls was easily recognizable. Few students in the school didn’t know the girl who ran the school newspaper, and Willow had been interviewed by her at least once.
The other boy who approached was a gang member. You didn’t know who he was, he didn’t have fame enough to be well-known.
The boy looked quite bruised, as if he had been caught in a series of tussles. The reported looked intact… although her uniform was somewhat bloodstained and she… was carrying a gun?
…
There in the other corner of the room. Were these corpses of students? Why did some of them look so rotten? Why did the room look like it had been a battlefield not long ago?
“Thank you, Marie.” Bryanna patted the head of the girl, who smiled weakly, very intently looking at everything but the carnage.
“Well, you are Durand, and you are… Arturio, right? I’m sure you have many questions…” The reporter sighed. The room was quite well illuminated, with three functioning lamps in the ceiling, and a window from which teal light filtered through.
“Don’t think we got much time to give answers.” The gang boy grunted. “We got to keep moving before we get munched on. Again.”
The other three students in the room shifted uneasily. They seemed pretty damn scared, and one of the girls there looked… unwell mentally, to say the least.
A feeling of imminent danger dominated the room.
Aster Hunter
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Broken Rooftop)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon
Cold.
That is what wakes you up and makes you struggle to open your eyes. It is no supernatural chill, merely the reaction of the human body upon being exposed to uncomfortable conditions.
The cold wind bats at you as you open your eyes.
And for the first time, you behold the Shattered Skies of the Warped World.
Black. Endless black, as if a cover had been placed over the world. And there were cracks on said cover, cracks through which an eldritch teal light filtered through, providing the sole source of light in the world.
Light that was rapidly fading into a sunset darker than any sunset you’d ever experienced. But light that was enough to show you your situation.
The rooftop of the school looked like some sort of natural disaster had rampaged through. The floor was cracked, shattered and entirely broken in many places where the ceiling of the floors below had given out.
It was a lot bigger than you remembered it being.
You were lying near the border of the rooftop. A place that gave you an excellent view of just how fucked things were.
The monstrous crows flied by. Occasionally, they’d descend down, and peck on one of the many corpses, students and teachers, that were towards the center of the roof. Slowly, the carnage was being devoured by the crows.
You didn’t need to be very smart to guess that these critters were trouble.
Encountered Mutated Crow x4
For now, none had paid much attention to you. Perhaps they had confused you for yet another corpse. If so, it wouldn’t be long till one of them came by for your eyeballs.
A sudden shuffling caught your attention. Near the exit to the floors below, someone… no, something shambled.
It was the corpse of a teacher. You didn’t recognize him, you had never taken classes under him, apparently, which wasn’t strange given how many students and classes there were in Zeus High.
The troubling part was that the corpse was on its feet. And moving. And looking like he’d been dead for days, already.
Encountered Decayed Being (Human Adult)
Danger. You were in danger. You were in deep shit. Those crows were bad. The zombie, instinct told you was even worse.
… And yet, you could feel adrenaline pumping through your veins, excitement instead of fear.
Perhaps you had finally found what you were looking for.
Kaguya
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Distorted Hallways – ??? Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon
“Gotta go! No… no time! It’s coming!”
“Calm… down! We can’t just leave her…”
The sound of your voices roused you from the sleep where you had instinctively taken refuge from the horror. It was a struggle, but you managed to open your eyes and force your body to sit up.
“She’s awake.” The blond girl that had been arguing just now approached you. “Yo. You’re Kaguya, right? Think you can stand up?”
You recognized her. Hiyori Fontaine, as the captain of the Martial Arts Team, was a well-known figure in the school, even if you had never interacted with her before. Evidently, she had also heard of you and seen you before.
She didn’t give you much time to answer, grabbing your arm. You tried to reject her touch, but you were still too woozy and confused to put up much resistance as she yanked you up forcefully.
You stood away from her and examined the place you were at. The hallway was… twisty. Distorted. Seemed like it was leaning to one side, causing the floor and the ceiling to be slightly slanted. Most lamps had gone out and been broken, but a few were still on.
To your left, the hallway continued on. To your right, there was a closed door that led elsewhere. Before the door, was a male student you didn’t recognize. Probably hadn’t been anyone famous or remarkable.
He looked like hell. His face was bruised, and he was pressing a cloth against his bleeding shoulder, his uniform looking ripped in many places. He was hyperventilating, and ranting to himself hysterically, and so fast you had trouble catching the words.
Suddenly, he looked up towards you, his eyes wild.
“Fuck this! Fuck you! I’m going! I ain’t standing here waiting to get killed! I’m-!”
You never got to know what else he was.
A heavily rotted hand broke through the door behind him. Fingers that resembled claws pierced through the back of his head, penetrating through his skull and coming out to the other side.
Hiyori and you both took a few steps back, eyes widening with terror. You could see the clawed fingers wriggle through the boy’s mouth, and then the hand retreated, part of the student’s skull collapsing as it rotted.
The corpse fell to the ground.
Zeus Student has been slain.
Then, the door exploded.
Out came a creature out of a twisted nightmare.
It had once been a student. The uniform still clinging to its frame told you so. That was the only indication you had of his precedence.
The body had rotten to the point patches of the skin had peeled, revealing inhuman, corded muscles, as if the human that he had once been had mutated as it rotted. A gray, malodorous aura surrounded it, framing its cadaverous silhouette.
Encountered Ghoul.
You stared at its dead eyes.
And you felt the intense and maddened murderous intent behind.
“Run…” Hiyori muttered between clenched teeth. “Now.”
Myo
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Courtyard – Northern Yard)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon
You woke up inside a bush, and for a moment, you had to struggle to remember what had happened.
Then it all came back to you in a flash. The infiltration. The fight. The strange successes that had happened, and the end, when you had been paralyzed and enveloped in darkness. And then the horrid touch of that thing on your soul.
You sprung up from the bush with a start, struggling for a moment with nausea and disorientation.
First, you’d been pretty banged up at the end of the fight. However, now you were… it was as if the fight had never happened. Even your broken bones had healed up.
Second, you weren’t in the detached building anymore. You were outside, in the terrains of the school. You could see the enormous, twisted silhouette of the main school building from where you were at. It took you a moment, but you figured out you were at the north of the school terrains.
Third…
Teal light bathed the courtyard. You were sure it hadn’t been that big before. You were sure the vegetation here had looked… different. You were in a place full of bushes, some that came up to the height of your waist. And the trees you saw here and there were all gnarled and twisted up, some having rather weird spiral shapes, as if their main trunk had wrapped into itself.
And… you looked up. To the broken black sky. To the cracks where the teal light came from.
Sir Darion Charles Parsons, the principal of Zeus High School, had succeeded in his ritual. What that meant, where you were at… you didn’t know the answers.
And you weren’t given the time to dwell on it.
You heard a chittering sound, and a sudden chill ran through your spine, causing you to unsheathe your swords and take your stance almost immediately.
They came, crawling out of the bushes. As big as a medium-sized dog, and as heavy as them. Their long frontal teeth came out of their mouths in an overbite, pointy and fang like. The smell of pestilence accompanied them. Long pink tails, the length of your longer sword, whipped against the brush.
They didn’t look like rats.
They looked like the version of rats that existed within a schizophrenic’s nightmare.
Monstrous and bloated, with deadly fangs and clawed hands. And a feral hunger in their red eyes.
Encountered Mutated Rat x2
They advanced. A pincer, one from the left and the other from the right.
You were their prey.
Masaki Taichi
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Twisted Classroom – ??? Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon
The sound of a struggle woke you up.
You fought your disorientation as you arose. You handled the nausea, and shoved the part of you that was gibbering in terror aside to take stock of the situation.
You’d been lying against the wall of a classroom that looked like a bad surrealist painting. The insides of the classroom were a mess. Chairs and desks lied around, broken and shattered, some smeared with blood.
Two corpses had been lain on the floor. Both boys and fellow students. They had died messily.
You looked towards the classroom’s door, where the noise was coming from.
Two students, a bespectacled boy and a blue-haired girl (Astor Miller, head of the Gaming Club, and Myrthe Zegers, head of the Swimming Team, respectively. They were well-known enough for you to recognize them), were struggling to keep what looked like… rotten zombies? Out of the classroom. They were holding chairs and doing their best to blockade the door, but the zombies at the front were very strong, and continuously pushed them backwards.
Encountered Decayed Being (Human Schoolboy) x2
Encountered Decayed Being (Human Schoolgirl) x2
Their situation was quickly turning for the worse.
Ishmael Freeman
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Distorted Hallways – ??? Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon
“And the end will come, no matter how much you struggle, no matter how much you despair! So WE HAVE to be prepared! Only the prepared, the strong, will survive! You’ll be incarnation of that ideal, boy! I will show that asshole Schwarz who’s the superior one! I will show him that my ideal will surpass his!”
You don’t know why, between world, that rant came to your mind. Your ‘grandfather’ had some moments where you could almost feel the madness come to the fore, a madness fed by a lifetime of bitterness and regret.
Usually, in those moments, he would rant and rave about things you couldn’t understand at all, and had no connection or context to. Many times, he would just drive himself into a rage, other times he would just continue talking to himself until lucidity took hold of him.
You’d forgotten most of the content of the rants, and you’d never cared to remember them. This one had only come to mind due to one reason and one reason only.
A deeply, incredibly upsetting and annoying feeling that your grandpa had been right, after all. Or that at least, he’d known something about this.
That was probably more annoying than having the innermost parts of your being messed with.
--------------
“… Hm?”
In the darkness, a single eye opened.
“Interesting…” A voice spoke in a cheerful monotone. “So, that old man was able to accomplish something, after all.”
A small ripple of surprise poisoned the cheery stillness of the man’s voice.
“My, I expected to go another thousand years or so without taking interest in the mortal world, but…” A figure stood up amidst the darkness. That figure was darker than dark. Blacker than black. An ink stain against the backdrop of the world.
“Well, this game has proceeded to a stage that nobody could have predicted. Always the old men, isn’t it? But to dare to flip the chessboard at this late date…”
“Ishmael Freeman, is it now? A suitable name, I imagine. Heh.”
“Freeman. The irony of it all.”
--------------
You surveyed your surroundings warily.
You’d woken up in a hallway within the school building, improvised medikit in hand. That was… about all you knew.
The hallway had no windows, and you couldn’t correlate it with any place within the school. Most of it was in complete darkness, save for a few spots illuminated by still functioning lamps.
And that was all the information you had. You stood up. You had to decide in which direction you’d proceed.
… Did you see a shadow flicker below one of the lights, or was it just your imagination?
Jordan J. Jones
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Distorted Hallways – ??? Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon
How to describe the sound that woke you up?
It was like the unholy combination of grinding and hissing. It was a sound that made nails on chalkboard sound like one of Shelia’s hits in comparison.
Someone shook you. Again and again, mutely calling for your attention. And finally, you obliged.
Your eyes snapped open.
You didn’t know who this girl was, but she looked scared. She immediately brought a finger to her lips to call for silence, before you could ask anything, and then pointed towards one direction of the hallway you were at.
You moved your head to look and-
Encountered Green Slime
What the fuck.
It was a videogame slime. Okay, not exactly like one. This one looked uglier and much meaner and was evidently composed by acid, given how it was melting and devouring a classroom door.
Its green, viscous mass was sticking halfway through the doorway of the classroom. It seemed to be busy eating, and it hadn’t noticed you nor the girl who had woken you up.
The hallway was in complete darkness, save for the teal light that came from the windows, casting away the dark so you could see your plight.
You didn’t have to be immersed in videogame culture to suspect that the slime would prove to be less than friendly.
Eleanor Lansing
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Distorted Hallways – ??? Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon
Cold.
Why was this place colder than an icebox?
You’d waken up atop a desk abandoned in a hallway. It had been a struggle to get up after what you’d undergone, but you did. The smell didn’t let you delay facing reality any longer. It was a smell you’d recognize anywhere.
The smell of blood.
A shallow pool of blood coated the floor of the hallway.
How? Where had it come from? To who did this blood belong?
All questions without answer. The hallway continued beyond your sight, and the pool of blood was ever-present and stagnant.
You almost expected it to be frozen, given how cold it was here, but it wasn’t.
What was going on? You felt more confused than you should. As if your senses struggled to catch up with reality, trying to understand your situation and failing to.
Save for the teal light from the windows, you were in the dark. A fitting metaphor for your situation.
Originally Posted by Mike1984
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