While you're always up for tearing your way through dens of iniquity with the inevitability of a tidal wave made of knives, that is a
lot of stairs.
"Sounds like a plan," you say as you hand him the bloodshot eye. "If I find a lantern and ye don't come right away, how long should I wait before headin' ta the Chapel through the Dream?"
"Time passes more slowly here, so five minutes should work. Good luck with whatever's behind those doors, Father Anderson."
After pocketing the proffered eye, he brings up a thumb and spends a few moments figuring out how far you need to jump. He gives you the distance to two decimal points because he's a showoff dick and you flutter away, your now properly-explained middle finger the last part of you to do so.
Extraneous significant figures aside, his aim is spot-on, depositing you just above the expected platform. It's not like it's
that impressive, though; you could aim like that too if you spent a hundred years or so locked in an immutable nightmare with nothing better to do.
You probably couldn't, you admit to yourself. You would get bored a few months in and started setting up pit fights.
Because you are a mature and well-adjusted adult, you deal with your mild feeling of inadequacy by throwing a bayonet at a nearby wheelchair gunner and laughing as the momentum sends him screaming off the edge of the staircase. You don't even hear him hit the ground.
"Please, Lady Maria..."
You turn to see another sac-head on her knees before the great doors. One clawed hand rests at her side, the other pressed gently against where her face should be. She gives no sign of noticing you, even as you carefully walk towards her.
"Hello?" you offer.
"I have failed. Please, Lady Maria..."
Christ, you can
hear the ellipses in there. You get to work shoving the doors open before she can drag the mood down any further.
Despite their size, they don't put up much of a fight, revealing a small garden of what look like sunflowers. An enormous, multi-headed stalk that twists and sways in decidedly "feed me, Seymour" fashion dominates the center, surrounded on all sides by its much smaller and less-terrifying kin. The malformed sun shines down from above; looking closely, you note that the flowers' central depressions are not circular but rather shaped like the bloodied pupil you gave to Simon.
The ground rumbles before you can consider the ramifications. A thin blue arm erupts from the soil and brings with it a towering figure, slim of limb but broad of chest. Instead of a head, a blob of flesh not unlike melted wax rests between its great shoulders.
Bile rises as the sight of blue skin and flowers remind you of the Orphanage, but you force it down with a grimace. Sinister plotting from day one, indeed.
"Can ye understand me?"
The thing lurches towards you, ponderous and unthinking in its approach. Another tears itself free of the ground behind it and joins its march. You fill your hands and lower yourself into a fighting stance.
The second time's always easier.
[] Write in...
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