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I stood in shock after watching my cellmate lift up his mask a little and swallowing the key whole. My only chance at escape was now resting within his stomach. I couldn’t think properly from my mixed emotional confusion, but my body instinctively stood up and marched over to him. My eyes were filled with rage as I grabbed him by the throat. He struggled to break free, hitting me, and gasping for air as I gripped his throat. Slamming him into the wall with all my force, he fell unconscious.
I was going to get that key by any means necessary. He had denied me every other option by swallowing the key. Reaching down to my waist, I pulled out my knife from its sheath. Rolling my unconscious cellmate over onto his back, I jabbed the knife deep into his torso. It didn’t matter that he was alive, he was just in my head. His eyes shot open as he suddenly gasped for air.
With my left hand, I held him by his throat to stop him from moving much, while I dragged the knife down. Trying desperately to break free, this weak and terrified part of my psyche jolted and writhed. I didn’t have the fortitude to look him in the eyes, so I focused on the wall. Neither at him, nor at the gutting process that I was going and working through. With one rapid cut of the knife, I had finished the large incision and he'd stopped moving completely. Shuddering at the sight, I reached my hand into his torso and began feeling around for the key, but all I felt was the disgustingly warm, muscle feeling of his internal organs. Reaching up towards his lungs, I finally found it. However, rather than cutting it open, I just wrapped my hand around the organ that it was lodged in and pulled with all the force I could muster. As I did so, the me under me raised his torso and stared into my eyes with a hauntingly terrified expression, yelling at the top of his lungs. It was almost as if he was looking right through me, and into the distance towards something uncanny. Letting go of his throat in a panic, his pained screams quickly turned murky and suffocated, almost as if I still were. As his voice died into a silent scream, I ripped my arm from his insides grasping an old bronze skeleton key, covered in blood and other bodily fluids.
Following his gaze, he stared down towards the key, and back at myself. "Why..?" he silently muttered, as I could read in his lips, before his head and body fell backwards towards the cell ground with a thud, his eyes still open and staring far into the abyss above us, until his pupils dilated, making it seem as if he had no irises at all.
My hands shook, dripping with blood as I looked behind me, in an attempt to see whatever it was that he was looking at through me, only to see the locked door. Looking back at the corpse of my cellmate, I could see his cold eyes in shock beneath the mask. The dried blood on his forehead where the mask was broken, and the tear stains on the mask left a haunting after-death image. Squatting next to his corpse, I felt heavy and regretful, but all I could do was try and rationalize my decision, “I’m sorry, but I need to get out of here.” As I said this, the body dissipated like water, leaving only the broken mask on the floor.
A sudden rush of strange feelings came over me. All of them made me want to scream and cry at the same time. Are these his feelings? They hurt! Everything hurts! Why does it hurt so much? My body writhed in agony as I crumpled to the ground. It was as if I was experiencing every bit of torture I had over the past three weeks all at once. I howled like no human ever should, unable to stop it and myself. Extending the key to the lock in the door was all I could do in an attempt to stop it, but my body hurt so much. Why was I feeling this? I had thought I couldn’t feel pain in the Realm of Stars. I’m afraid.
My hand trembled as I slid the key into the keyhole. Staggering forward, I slowly turned the key, before hearing the click of the locking mechanism. Then, it stopped. The pain was gone, but I knew what it felt like. That feeling of terror and agony would never leave me. After pushing the door open, I fell to the watery pool that was the floor with a thud. However, every part of my body forced me to stand back up when I felt a terrifying sensation radiating from inside the cell behind me. Turning to look at it, I froze at the sight of the masked figure, who had less than a week prior, tortured me. Wielded in his right hand was the same cleaver that he had used to cut me so many times before, dripping with fresh and coagulated blood.
I screamed in fear as I stumbled the rest of the way out the cell, before attempting to slam the door behind me, but he had already charged after me. The masked figure swung the cleaver at my head, stopping me from completely shutting the door and causing me to fall back. He lunged after me as I tried to get up, but he kept swinging the blade around erratically, never reaching his target. All I could do was run in fear. How long could I run for? Did the Realm of Stars even have an end or a place to run to? I didn’t know, so I kept running in fear. The speed in which he ran was far greater than my own, especially in my panicked state. Now that I was out of the cell, I realized that I wasn’t alone, as Sela was sitting whilst staring at me, with a book in hand and a look of shock on her face.
“How did you get out without defeating your inner demons?” Sela asked, perplexed, as I ran away from the cleaver-wielding maniac behind me.
“Facing my issues head-on has never been my strong suit,” I replied sassily before diving towards Sela. Without missing a beat, Sela’s eyes turned a glowing red, stopping the masked figure and myself from moving completely.
“You are an idiot! You were supposed to join forces with the broken part of your psyche and defeat what you fear the most together. So how in the hell did this happen?” Sela asked, infuriated, whilst keeping the same perplexed look. It was obvious that the child-like had been set off by my decision.
“Well, the cowardly version of myself swallowed the key! So I killed him and ripped it out of his stomach. Then, I guess he… fused with me. Oh, and that maniac appeared as I opened the door.” Sela just blinked, trying to comprehend what I just said, before finally speaking.
“You fucking killed yourself?! And why the fuck did the broken part of your psyche swallow the key?!” Sela asked as if I were stupid. There was no doubt that the deity was pissed.
“... I may have lost my temper,” I said, in hindsight, with a click of my tongue.
“Yeah, no shit!” The being bellowed before looking disappointed and annoyed. “Now, I was trying to read a good book before this all happened. I don’t want to deal with all this anymore, so I am going to end this right now,” Sela replied with a tired expression.
“How?”
“Like this,” Sela said with a snap of her fingers, before the masked man was crushed into a ball about the size of a pill by an invisible force. “Now, I guess you’ll have to face what you fear the most in the real world, which you will now be completely unprepared for.”
“Well, my rational side was separated from me too, so…” I replied, pointing out that it probably could have been avoided had I been able to think rationally.
“Hey! I only separated it from you so you could figure out your emotions and trauma,” Sela rationalized with a look of annoyance. We both stood there silently, before Sela realized that I was still frozen in midair and unfroze me.
“So… what now?” I asked, raising myself from atop the watery pool I had fallen onto.
“How the hell should I know? You just killed a part of yourself because you were pissed off, and did your own little thing when I had everything planned out for you; It was going to be great! You were going to deal with your problems and learn a valuable lesson about life,” Sela complained. I could tell that I had somehow managed to make this demon-like child more annoyed than they already were, but it’s not like they weren’t going to take it out on me at some point. Plus, their little tantrum was adorable, to a degree.
“Terrible choice, really. I screw up almost everything that is planned around me,” I replied sassily. The only reaction I received for that was a scoff, before Sela turned away from me to pout.
“I think I know how Rag's feels now,” Sela mumbled to themself.
“I get that I was terrified of the masked man, still am, but why did you do all of that?” I asked curiously. I figured that as long as I was entertaining, Sela would leave me alone. However, ever since I started getting tortured, Sela has been around near-constantly.
“It was supposed to reveal that under the mask was yourself. You were supposed to have this huge philosophical moment about how you are your own problem and all that... but I guess not,” Sela said with a defeated sigh.
“Ha?... I’m too dense for that,” I stated as if I were proud of my statement.
“You don’t say.” Sela rolled her eyes, before rubbing the bridge of their nose in annoyance.
***
Elysif sat against the side of an old brick building on Berner Street. The way she acted made it seem as if she were depressed, but that was not the case. Rather, she was focusing her sight on the area around her, whilst trying to act like a beggar. With Iscariot’s help, she had once again created several familiars that were scouting the area. Due to all of the information she had to take in at once, it was beginning to give her a headache just like last time, but still, she kept observing. Suddenly, Elysif opened her eyes.
“I found him. A woman and a man just disappeared into thin air around the corner of the block on the left,” she said, before clenching her head in pain and slumping down. The energy it required, as well as the mental fortitude necessary to control the familiars, wore her down to near depletion. Running out of the alley, Lou charged off in the direction that Elysif described as Scott checked on her.
”Go on, Scott. My head hurts too much to run at the moment,” Elysif said with a confident smile, as sweat beaded down from her brow. Rubbing her palm against her forehead for emphasis.
“Okay,” Scott replied with an understanding nod, before running after Lou. Just as Scott ran around the corner, he saw Lou disappear into a wall of nothing near the street corner. As he did, everything behind the invisible wall started to appear as if it had been there the whole time. The woman whom Elysif had mentioned was on the ground, lying in a pool of her own blood whilst the Changeling, disguised as a casual drunk, was being held by Lou in a chokehold.
“Scott, check her,” Lou said.
Scott nodded, as he was already in the process of doing that. Putting as much pressure as he could onto the knife wound, he tried to stop the bleeding, until he realized that she was already dead. “It’s too late, she’s lost too much blood,” he replied with a look of disappointment and regret.
“I see,” Lou agreed with a sad look that Scott knew was false. “At least we caught the Changeling, though.” he reasoned, gesturing his head at the Changeling which was fighting poorly to get free from Lou’s hold.
“Yeah, now let’s get him in cuffs before he tries anything,” Scott said with a distrustful gaze towards the Changeling, who was currently struggling to breathe. He then grabbed a pair of iron cuffs from his bag.
“Of course—Aggh!” Lou cried out in pain before grabbing his forehead with his free hand. His head began pounding. All Lou could do was shake his head and clench his eyes closed in pain, as the pounding echoed in his skull like a growing expanse within his head.
“What’s wrong?” Scott asked with a worried look.
“So that’s why he said I lost it… I become whole again,” Lou said with a weak and pained voice at the sudden realization of what future Scott had said.
“What are you talking about?” Scott asked, confusion and apprehension plastered on his face, as he put one side of the cuffs onto the Changeling’s left hand. When he tried to put the other side of the cuffs on the Changeling’s other hand, Lou let go of him, falling to the ground unconscious. The Changeling, seeing his opportunity to escape, attempted to punch Scott with his free hand. However, Scott held onto the other side of the cuffs and dodged, before giving him an uppercut to the chin.
The punch to the chin caused the Changeling to stagger back, gripping his mouth. Before he could gain any sense of direction, he was immediately pulled back in by Scott who had refused to let go of the cuffs. Scott’s grip was so strong that blood was dripping from his palm as he reeled him back in and put him in the same choke hold that Lou had him in before. After doing so, Scott looked over at Lou, who had just fallen to the ground clutching his head, and was now slowly standing up.
“Sorry you had to deal with the rational part of myself,” I said apologetically.
ns 15.158.61.8da2
