We walk through the tear into a massive enclosed area, and covering almost all of it is a huge maze.
It is possible to see the end of the maze, it's at the other side of the room. It looks quite simple, really, just traverse through the maze and keep moving forward until we reach the end, and even better, I still have some raw stones with me, so I can draw out the maze and just follow it.
We enter the maze, and I start to draw the maze as we walk. It's quite complex, the walls of the maze change along the maze. Some are made of just plain wood, and some are made of hard stone, and some are made of piled leaves, which you can just walk through them but every time we try to push them over, they pile back up by themselves.
We wander through the maze for ages, and there seems to be no path forward. All the paths are blocked, and it looks like we are walking in circles, even though we are moving in random directions, which, by the map I'm drawing, shouldn't make sense.
Not only that, but when we do pass through the area I mapped out, they feel different. The path curves in slightly different ways, barely different, not enough to make a difference on the map, but it doesn't feel right.
Soon after what feels like hours of walking, we practically give up all hope we ever had of leaving this place with our lives and sanity.
"I can't go on anymore. We have no food, no water. We just got out of a near-death situation, and now they expect us to wander around this maze for hours." I say it out loud instead of thinking it to myself.
"Hold on, is that a table up ahead, and it has food and drinks?" Elara starts running to the table. I follow her, but no matter how much we run toward it, we don't seem to be getting closer at all. It even looks like we are getting further and further away from the food.
I turn around, thinking maybe it's some illusion or a mirror since we are getting further and further, and I was right, the table with food and water is right behind me. I go to grab some, but it is out of my reach. I walk towards it, but no matter how much I walk towards it, it's always just out of my grasp.
I spin around again, and Elara is gone, and the terrain around me has fully changed to stone walls instead of the combination of stone, wood, and other materials I did not recognize. I look around me more, trying to find Elara, but I'm fully surrounded by the maze, it fully surrounded me, leaving me enclosed. There is no way out of where I currently am, so getting into this situation should be impossible, yet there I was.
The walls are getting closer. I rush for one of the walls and try to find a secret door or something that would let me escape from this trap, but the walls are closing on me, and they are getting faster. The ground is starting to shake as if it's crumbling. I try to search faster, but I have no luck, and then beneath me, the ground breaks on itself and crumbles. I try to cling to one of the walls, but my grip isn't strong enough.
I fall from the wall I was clinging to and hit the ground. Apparently, it wasn't that high up, and I was panicking for nothing. I'm standing on a stone floor in a small room, and there in the middle of the room is the table with food. I go run to it, and I actually manage to grab a piece of meat.
I eat it and but then something hits me from behind, making me spew the food. "Why, why can't I ever eat the food?" I think to myself, shaking from hunger as I am dragged away from it.
I regain consciousness after who knows how much time has passed. I am chained to the wall, in the corner of the room, a man is writing on the wall with a white stone. I can see that all the walls contain writing, so I try to read them.
Day one, some time ago, I'm not sure how much I fell into this trap without luck of trying to find a way out to stop myself from insanity. I started writing on the walls, but I don't think I will last much longer. The thing that crawls in this underground area inside this maze is getting closer and closer. The rest of the first day is smeared, so I can't understand it.
Day thirty-four, today, a table with food appeared in the first room, and that was the greatest thing that ever happened to me, for I no longer starve. The table holds all sorts of foods and drinks, from juicy meat to the driest of fruits. I think the food saved me from insanity. Every time I eat some of the food, it reappears, making an infinite source of food for me. I couldn't manage to read the ones before thirty-four because of the angle.
Day forty, I can no longer eat the food. Whenever I try eating it, something stops me, whether I choke on it or just trip on a rock that is not there, and it pushes me to the brink of insanity. I don't think I can go on without the food, but that's not the worst part of this day. The thing came back, and I can no longer sleep if I ever sleep, it starts doing things in the other rooms, but if I ever go to check what it is, I fall unconscious and wake up in the room with the writing.
Day seventy-nine, some days it's as if the thing takes over me and tries to communicate with me, it tries to write on the walls as I do, but it just scribbles, and the fact that the thing can take over me horrifies me. It seems I can not starve here every day, I wake up with my hunger and thirst satiated.
My stomach clenches when I read that, filling me with a sense of dread and fear of the thing. I try looking around for it because the texts did say he was somewhere here, but I can't see or hear it. The man is still writing, probably on the current day.
Day one hundred fifty-six, The thing is getting better at communicating and can now write some words, such as hello, and some of what it wants. I am not sure whether to feel happy that I can have someone to talk to or to be filled with fear that the thing is learning the language of humans.
Day three hundred fourteen, I rarely get my body back, and now whenever it takes over my body, I remain conscious, and the thing can read my thoughts as it replies to what I am thinking. This was the first time I got my body back in over one hundred days, so I'll write this warning. If you also fell in here and are now trapped, do whatever it takes to escape, even if it means suicide, and if you can, please kill me as well. The thing won't let me do anything to my body.
The man turns around to face me, finally finished writing the day. I have no way of knowing whether it is the thing or the man, but I do not think it matters because on the day he just wrote it reads:
Day seven hundred fifty-two, I can no longer tell whether I or the thing is in control. When it is in control, it now feels like I can control it, but it also feels like it can control me. When I am in control, this is the first day in over four hundred days that I have been in full control, or so I thought. The thing is trying to take over as I write this, and I think it did take over multiple times today. A girl fell down here today. I chained her to the wall to stop her from doing anything rash to me or herself, but this is the first human I have seen in years, and I can no longer manifest speech. I have not spoken for so long that I forgot how to, but holy ancients I thank you for the gift you have sent me. I will use this girl to satisfy my desires and loneliness.
My heart sinks, my stomach clenches, and I scream in terror of the man slowly approaching me. I kick and struggle to get out of the chains, but even though they are rusted, they don't break. He reaches me and starts rubbing my body, and my body fills with a feeling of disgust and dread.
He starts kissing my neck and starts reaching down to my legs. He starts rubbing my thighs and lingers on them. He sees the pouch at my side, the one with the Flamizes. He reaches inside it and grabs one of them, crushing it in front of me, and then it explodes. A part of his face is blown off, and I can see a dark creature looking back at me, and then he screams so loud I think my eardrums might burst.
He stumbles back a little, and then he rushes me and punches my face straight into the wall. The force is so powerful that it releases one of the chains from the wall, but that does not matter. My head falls down, I lose all strength, my vision blurs, my ears are ringing, and the thing starts tearing my clothes straight off my body, leaving me mostly naked, but I can not do a single thing to stop it.
The thing does not stop when he tears the clothes off, he just keeps on slashing at me. The pain is immeasurable. He pulls me by my hair, lifting my head. "You know that explosion you did was not very nice, you made me reveal my hiding place inside this human." It cackles at me. The thing that is visible through the torn face of the man is just an empty void with glowing white eyes, but then he opens his mouth and a long he starts licking my body with his tongue, and it's not a human one, it wraps around me, it must be at least one meter long, the feeling is eerie and just by feeling it I want to kill myself it would be better then this.
I kick at it, trying to break free from the other chain, but he holds me down so I can hardly move. I can see the pouch with Flamize, it's not that far away from me if only he wasn't pinning my hand to the wall. His tongue starts crawling up, reaching my face, trying to enter my mouth. I let it slightly enter and then bite as powerfully as I can, and I manage to tear some of it off.
The attack I did on him caused him to run back and roar in anger, not pain, pure anger. He sticks his tongue back inside his mouth and suddenly grows two more arms, rips me from the chain, throws me up, and starts punching me against the ceiling. Each punch hits me so hard up into the ceiling, it starts cracking, but that is not a good thing, as it may seem the broken pieces of stone stab into my back and seek their way into my flesh, and each punch makes them penetrate my skin deeper and deeper.
I do not know how long he punched me, but I lost consciousness during his attack. I am lying on the ground, and the thing is writing again. I try to crawl to the pouch, and surprisingly, the thing does not hear me or show any signs that it heard me.
I can slightly see what the thing is writing. Girl, please read this before he takes over my body again. Take those flowers in your pouch and wait until he starts controlling me again. He will probably try to continue using you for his pleasure. Luckily, I managed to stop him from taking anything more from you than what he already did, so I beg you to throw those flowers inside my mouth and detonate them to save me from this agonizing pain of being controlled by this thing.
And just like that, he turns around and tears the man off his body, and the horrifying sight of seeing a man being torn up to pieces from the inside makes me almost puke.
It runs towards me, screaming with 8 tongues sticking out of its mouth. The sight is disgusting, but I no longer care. The man who just got torn apart by this thing had one final wish, and it was to end this horrible excuse of a living creature, and that's what I intend to do.
I dodge his rush and jump behind him, kicking him into the wall. It recovers fast and dashes towards me. I throw a Flamize into the air, timing it so the thing will run into it, and I timed it correctly, it sends it flying and screaming in frustration.
It runs towards me again. I throw another Flamize, this time very low into the air, and then jump and kick it mid jump, sending me flying above the thing and hitting it with an explosion, sending it to the ground. I drop some Flamizes on his back and drop on them, knocking it into the ground so hard the floor starts cracking up and the ground starts shaking.
It roars in pain and then screeches at me. It tries to get up, but the blow I inflict on it was too powerful to let it stand up, especially with me standing on its back. "You have done too much evil in this world for me to leave you any mercy, and I barely saw anything that you have done, but for everything you did to me and to the man you tore apart, take this flaming gift from me." I start throwing Flamizes down on him, each one sending it closer and closer to hell, where it belongs.
"Isn't that fun when I do it to you now is This is what you did to me, tied me up and beat me up until I lost consciousness, so that's what I'll do to you." I mock the pathetic thing that lies beneath my feet.
I lose track of how long it's been since I started beating the fuck out of this thing, but when I stop hole in the ground, there is a hole in his chest, and a big hole in the floor. Yet somehow it was still alive, I jump down the hole, landing on its head. I grab his head, pulling it up like he did to me. Its mouth is still open the stench from it is disgusting. I ignore it.
"You know you really are just a pathetic thing from hell." I throw three Flamizes into his mouth and then jump on him, exploding him into pieces and sending me out of the hole.
I dust myself, my clothes are almost fully torn apart, take them off, and tie a piece of silk around my chest, and another around my waist and thighs. I go to the room where the table with food was before, but it is gone. I believe the food was just there to allow the thing to take over someone's body.
But there still doesn't seem to be an exit. I look around the small area beneath the maze, and then a door opens in the room with the writing inside is a long corridor I walk to it.
The corridor is made of a combination of wood, stone, and other materials, I do not know, just like the maze was, which I think is a good sign, after all, it does mean I am on the path back to the maze, no?
After a while of walking, I can see a small light at the end of the tunnel. I run to it, and there I finally exit back into the maze. I never thought I would be so excited to be back in the trials, but it is better than being trapped down there with that thing.
I exit the tunnel into the maze back were me and Elara were separated, for some reason i suddenly feel refreshed as if i just had a meal. There is a pile of leaves in one of the walls so i walk through it and Elara is sitting there leaning on on of the stone walls.
"Airoh is that you? What happened where were you? Here come sit down and rest." She rushes to my side to help me sit down next to where she sat.
After I sit down I finally let my guard down and the exhaustion takes over and I fall down on to Elara.
"Airoh, Airoh? Are you ok can you hear me?" Elara is trying to help me but I can hardly hear her anymore and then I just let the exhaustion take over and I fall asleep after so long I finally get to rest.