Chapter 410 - Return To Hell

Again, the repugnant fluid from his stomach flew from his mouth and onto the poor, inanimate foliage as he coughed and hacked. As he seemed to finally expel it all from his guts, he stood there for a minute to catch his breath, wiping the residual bile from his mouth. 

Perhaps it was the very ambience of the forest shrouded in constant night, but something didn't feel right. 

Silence. 

It was deathly silent; the rustling of bushes, the squeeks of small critters, the howls of predators--none were heard. Not even the passing winds hummed against his ears; it was still, far too still. 

Swallowing his own breath, he fixed his zipper as a chill ran up his back; it felt as if it were some sort of supernatural warning, some sixth sense attempting to tell him not to turn around. 

...Why does it feel like if I turn around...something will happen? He thought. 

He stood there for an entire minute, simply looking off into the distance shrouded by white trees, but staring at nothing as he felt an inexplicable, irrational fear to turn around. 

Cold. It's cold. No...I'm trembling on my own. Why am I so scared? Nothing's wrong, he assured himself. 

Gulping down whatever irrational roadblocks stood in his way, he finally began to turn himself around, slowly and with trembling eyes. 

It was seamless. 

There wasn't an abrupt change in scenery as if warping into land or being swallowed by newly risen walls, but as he turned around, he was no longer surrounded by silent, pale trees. 

Gone without any trace, the forest he was just in vanished, being replaced by cold and smoothed, stone walls that gave off a deathly stench. 

While shocked enough to be left frozen still, he wasn't completely confused--he recognized the likely explanation. 

"Hell's Hell," it was similar to what he had encountered with the maddened Marquis of Rot previously. 

Standing there frozen was all he could do as a wave of inescapable dread clung to his skin like a new layer of non-sheddable skin. 

Turning back around briefly, a solid wall met his eyes, closing him off completely to the singular path that was the enigmatic, cold corridor. 

"...Iris? Jay! Macheo!" He shouted. 

His voice echoed against the narrow walls of the lengthy corridor, but his voice was all he heard. Nothing; a complete lack of responses ingrained into his skin a building horror. 

"Aiko! Hongse!...Valerie! Iris!" He continued to shout. 

Even as nothing came, even as his expectations fell to null, he felt that as long as he shouted, he didn't have to walk forward through that hell. 

But after running through the reserves of air in his lungs, there was no other choice but to walk the grimy, dank path ahead. 

He drew Belus from the sheath as his hip before beginning to take his slow, cautious steps; glancing at the dark walls around him, he watched as the chains protruding from the walls fell to a complete still as no wind found its way into the enigmatic territory. 

Even as he took a few strides forward, he halted as an unknown quiver took to his legs; a tremor of fear persisted beneath his skin. 

It wasn't horror, or a fear or something monstrous waiting in the unknown, hellish corridor.

For some reason he couldn't quite figure out, he feared what scenery--what haunting reality may be waiting for him at the end of the hall, shrouded in such suffocating darkness that not a single shred of light came through. 

"Iris!...Iris," he called once more.

Though he yelled, his voice fell the second time he called the girl's name as an inexplicable sense of despair drove over him; he had yet to see or experience anything, yet his heart felt as though it had been wrung. 

Looking down as he raised the hand that held his blade, it trembled; trembling so uncontrollably he questioned if his grip on the handle would even hold. 

What's this feeling?...Why am I so scared? I've been through this before--it's going to be alright. It's going to be alright. Ren, it's going to be alright, he thought. 

But, his hand continued to quiver; there was no stopping it as the fear was deeply ingrained into his body. 

I'm telling you it's alright...so why won't you stop shaking? He thought. 

Beginning to become swallowed in his irrational emotions, he forced himself away from such thoughts, forcibly clenching his hand before continuing to march down the dreary, cold corridor. 

Overwhelmed with a liminoid experience, alone in the halls in which he felt the presence of others should exist, he finally began to reach the seeming end of it, though even as he neared it, the darkness was too abundant to see through. 

As he dragged his feet to the summit of the path he trudged through, a single step beyond the end of the shadowy corridor brought him to a statuesque halt. 

It was a smell, so horrid, so foul, so abhorrent, so repulsive, bringing such a loathsome experience to his senses that he instantly turned away, releasing bile from his guts onto the stone beneath him. 

No. No. No. No. No, he thought. 

Tears had already lined his eyes as the sickening stench persisted; he gripped the loose slab of stone in the wall beside him, clenching it tight enough that it felt as if he was clawing at the material. 

It's not what you think. It's not. It can't be. It's impossible. There's no way. I won't accept it. That's false, he thought. 

He recognized what it had to be immediately, though he didn't want to consider it; even as it dug to the forefront of his mind, he tried to ignore it, but he absolutely could not. 

It was the stench of death. 

Such a stomach-churning smell brought him to his knees as he refused to turn around to discover what laid in the chamber, waiting. 

All he could do was hold his hand over his mouth as his eyes quivered, trying to guide his mind away from the flurry of thoughts all centering around 'death', attempting to flood it so rapidly with incomprehensible snippets of his mind that would turn him away from the one possibility he did not want to recognize. 

He sat there, exhaling and inhaling light, frequent breaths as his chest tightened, feeling as if being contorted by a tangible force of fear. 

Even as he stared at nothing but the hall he came from, he refused to turn around and face whatever reality sat behind him in that enigmatic room. 

Memories he intended to bury somewhere deep, never to be found, had resurfaced in the undesirous environment; memories that etched themselves into his skin, flesh, bone, and soul of the dreadful night at the nobleman's estate. 

It was the reawakening of these memories in their full potency, accompanied by the stench of death he seldom wanted to remember, that brought his entire being to a freeze as he felt like shrinking away; to curl up into a ball and let it all pass. 

Eventually, he found his way to his feet, pushing himself through the veil of miasmic stenches to enter the room beyond the wall.

It was a small room, and another corridor sat at the end. Though something else sat in the dim room, a slumped over figure that seemed to be the source of the horrific smell.

Even in the darkness, he recognized the armor the figure wore, and the horns extended from the female's head.

"Valerie…"

Drawing closer, he used the wall to guide himself as he could hardly see in the quiet, dank chamber.

"Are you—"

As he knelt down to check on the draconic woman, he extended his hand to touch her shoulder, only for his slight touch to cause her to lifelessly slump to the side.

"Huh…"

A thick coat of blood layered the wall where her head once rested. 

An anguished yell left his throat from the core of his body as he realized the reality of the companion of his. A massive wound was present on the back of her head, made from a curved blade embedded in the back of her skull.

"No, no, no…"

He fell back, dragging himself away from the abhorrent sight before he spewed bile from his gut, exuding it onto the floor behind him. 

Everything about the dim chamber now trapped him with its horrors as his palms ran across a puddle of lukewarm blood, brimming with chunks of material he wouldn't allow his mind to decipher. 

As he attempted to crawl back to space himself from the sight he wanted to reject, he stopped as his hands touched something soft behind him, though a squelch resounded.

Slowly turning his wide, trembling gaze, his eyes met with the crimson-furred companion to the draconic knight.

Another wail left his lips as he fell back again, seeing the state of the fallen panda, stuck with a dozen blades as blood continued to leak from the demi-human.

"How…no, no, this isn't real…it's a dream—an illusion!" He stammered out.