"Run damn it!"
She ducked under one, sidestepped another. Her small stature helped, she could fit through gaps that the creature's longer limbs couldn't navigate. But there were so many of them now, reaching from every direction, their pale surfaces catching the nothing-light and gleaming wetly.
[I'm tired. My stamina is running out]
She risked a glance over her shoulder. The darkness was absolute, she couldn't see anything, not even the glow of her own sparse mana as she gathered it instinctively. But she could hear it now, that dry rustling growing louder, closer, until it seemed to surround her completely.
A limb passed close to her face.
She felt it before she saw it, a disturbance in the air, a shift in temperature so subtle she almost missed it. Then it was there, emerging from the darkness like a branch from fog, pale and wrong and reaching. It ended in fingers that curled toward her, nails gleaming wetly, joints bending in directions that made her stomach lurch.
Neila ducked.
The limb passed over her head, close enough to stir her hair. She felt its cold wake against her scalp, that terrible chill that seemed to seep into her bones. Another limb emerged from her left, and she sidestepped, her small frame fitting through a gap that a larger person couldn't have managed.
[I guess I found another reason to thank myself]
She wove through the reaching limbs like a dancer through a forest of pale branches. They came from everywhere now, emerging from the darkness in a slow, terrible cascade. She couldn't see their source, the painting was lost somewhere in the void, but she could feel them, sense them, that wrongness that made her skin crawl.
A hand closed on her ankle.
The fingers were cold. So cold. Like touching a window in winter. Like pressing your hand against ice until it burned. They wrapped around her ankle with terrible gentleness, not squeezing, not yet, just holding.
"You vermin, you dare touch me!?"
Neila kicked.
Her heel connected with something that gave slightly, like flesh, like meat. The grip loosened, and she pulled free, stumbling forward. Another limb reached for her, and she ducked under it, rolled across the strange surface, and came up running.
The creature's limbs reached for her from every direction. She felt them pass close, close enough to stir the air against her skin. They were cold. So cold. And getting closer, always closer, the gaps between them shrinking with each passing moment, scraping against the side of her stomach, drawing blood.
She ducked under one, sidestepped another. Her small stature helped, she could fit through gaps that the creature's longer limbs couldn't navigate. But there were so many of them now, reaching from every direction, their pale surfaces catching the nothing-light and gleaming wetly.
I need to see. I need to know where they are before they reach me.
But the darkness was absolute. She couldn't see anything, couldn't sense anything except through touch and sound and that strange pressure that seemed to precede each limb's arrival.
[Seraphina.]
Neila ducked under another reaching limb, felt its cold wake across her back. Her lungs burned, her legs ached, her heart pounded against her ribs like a trapped thing trying to escape.
[I made fun of her for her ability but where is she when you need her?]
Another limb, closer this time. Its fingers brushed her shoulder, leaving trails of red that burned against her skin. She twisted away, felt something tear in her side, kept moving.
"Don't touch me damn it."
[I'm a genius for fuck's sake, I can do this]
The limbs kept coming, kept reaching, kept closing the gaps between them. She had seconds left, maybe less, before one of those cold hands closed on something vital and didn't let go.
[I'll have to improvise, even if I can't fully imitate her]
Neila stopped running.
She stood still in the absolute darkness, her chest heaving, her body screaming at her to move, to dodge, to keep fighting. The limbs surrounded her, she could feel them now, a forest of cold reaching from every direction, close enough to brush against her clothes, her hair, her skin.
She closed her eyes.
[Doesn't matter since I can't see anything anyways]
She raised her hand. Mana gathered at her fingertips, and this time she didn't try to shape it into an attack. She just let it flow, let it spread outward in a thin, controlled wave.
[I'm a genius, a prodigy with a talent that only Sophia Miller can surpass]
And she listened.
The sound spread outward, and the darkness answered.
She felt them. The limbs. Not as shapes, not as images, but as absences. Places where her sound couldn't go, where it stopped and flowed around things that shouldn't exist. She felt their positions, their movements, their terrible slow reaching. She felt the gaps between them, the paths that still existed, the ways through.
She felt the painting.
"Found you."
It hung in the darkness like a wound, an absence so profound that her mana simply ceased to exist where it touched. She couldn't sense its shape, couldn't feel its boundaries, just the void where it was, the hole it tore in the fabric of her perception.
[There]
She was walking. Stepping with precision through gaps that her mana showed her, between limbs that reached for her and missed by inches. She felt them pass behind her, beside her, sometimes close enough to brush against her clothes. But she didn't stop, didn't slow, didn't let the cold touch of their passage disturb her focus.
The darkness pressed against her from all sides. The breathing continued, that slow wet rhythm that seemed to come from everywhere at once. But beneath it, under it, she could hear something else now, a sound so faint she almost missed it.
A whisper.
But different from before. Softer. Almost... sad.
"Please."
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, from the painting and the darkness and somewhere deep inside her own mind. It was the voice of a child. A girl. Young and scared and so terribly alone.
"Please help me. I don't want to be here anymore."
Her eyes narrowed.
"I've been here so long. So long. I can't find my way out. Please. Please help me."
The limbs had stopped moving. She could feel them now, still as stone, surrounding her in a frozen forest of pale reaching. Waiting. Watching.
"Please. I can see you. You're so bright. So warm. Please don't leave me here."
"Don't worry you little pest, I'll be together with you until the end of your life."
She raised her hand. Mana gathered at her fingertips, brighter now, hotter, more focused than before.
She snapped her fingers.
The sound didn't die this time. It traveled, amplified by the darkness, guided by the mana pulse she'd been maintaining. It found the painting. Found its heart. Found the place where it was weakest.
And it shattered.
The creature screamed.
Not the dry, cracked laughter from before. A real scream. The scream of something dying, something ending, something that had existed too long in a space that was never meant to hold it.
The limbs convulsed, reaching wildly, blindly. One caught Neila's arm, its cold fingers digging into her skin. She didn't flinch. Didn't move. Just watched as the darkness began to lighten, as the void started to fill with something that might have been color, might have been space, might have been the real world bleeding through.
"Die."
Another snap.
The painting tore.
The limbs reached for her one last time. Their cold fingers brushed her face, her throat, her heart.
Then they were gone.
And Neila was falling.
She hit the ground hard.
Not the strange surface from before. Real ground. Marble. Cold and solid and blessedly real. Light exploded behind her eyes, actual light, fluorescent and harsh and absolutely beautiful.
Neila laid on her back, staring at a ceiling she recognized. The dormitory hallway. The same white walls, the same chrome doors, the same humming lights.
But different now. Real now.
The number on the ceiling flickered one last time.
'4'
Then it faded, and the lights steadied, and the hum returned to its normal frequency.
Neila pushed herself up slowly, every muscle in her body screaming in protest..
Seraphina stood a few feet away, staring at her with wide eyes.
"You're alive," Seraphina said.
"Obviously." Neila's voice came out hoarse, but the old condescension was already creeping back in. "You pushed me in and didn't even follow behind."
"I thought you'd be mad that I pushed you in."
"That was something I would've done, but if it was anyone else that had pushed me then I wouldn't let them off so easily."
Neila brushed off the dirt from her clothes.
Seraphina offered her hand.
"I don't need it," Neila slapped away her hand. "I can stand up by myself, just go into the next hallway already."
The number on the ceiling flickered.
'5'
[If I had loosened the hinges, then maybe
someone would stay, or I would.]