Fear of the Dark

Over the next hour or so advancing toward Cafeteria #2435, I witnessed tower-made horrors beyond comprehension, but none quite so strange or horrific as Adam or his creation. I had, at last, come to a point in my advancement where the casual horrors of the Tower were becoming routine to me. Between my spellcasting and my previous experiences, I cleared classrooms of cartilage, crushed flesh-golem amalgamations of discarded body parts, and carved a path of blood and experience through the hallways and classrooms between my location and the cafeteria where I had first encountered monsters and lost new acquaintances in the Tower. The atmosphere was growing more oppressive and raw, while more protuberances of flesh jutted out of the walls, but I was in it now, so it didn't really register as disgusting at this point.

I regularly heard the scratching of experience points and advancing skills in my Journal, but I hadn't seen any significant loot in any of the classrooms, even after I cleared them. Chum had clearly not been entirely right about monsters being unable to enter classrooms they didn't originally come out of, as much of this area of the Tower was taken over by the strange fleshy amalgamations of the boneshard abomination — the very monster I had to kill to get rid of my terrible class.

I would have to use every tool and ability I had to destroy the monster that had nearly killed me less than two days ago, and so I opened up my Journal and went over the tools available.

Alex Vorhal Level 9 Helpful Human Coward

Attributes and Capacities: Power 2: Strength 1, Agility 2, Intensity 1 Resilience 4: Stamina 1, Willpower 3, Self-Esteem 0 Mind 4: Knowledge 4, Arcana 4, Enlightenment 4

Notable Skills: Spreadsheet Management 6 Spellcraft 5 Stealth 3 Arcane Theory 3

Traits and Features: General Anxiety Disorder (Mild) Trauma

Abilities: Run Screaming : Upgraded to Retreat Forwards Run and Hide Critical Support I Survivor Community Hide in a Hole Party Up Arcane Chat

Spells Known: Seal Door (Rank 1, Tier 1) Conjure Icicle (Rank 1, Tier 2) Shield (Rank 1, Tier 1) Conjure Fog (Rank 1, Tier 1) Protection From Fire (Rank 1, Tier 1) Mind Worm (Tier 2, Rank 1) Control Undead (Rank 2, Tier 1) Invisible Barrier (Rank 2, Tier 2) Curse of Misfortune (Rank 2, Tier 1) Conjure Greasefire (Rank 2, Tier 1) Conjure Void Sphere (Rank 2, Tier 1) Conjure Pseudoportal (Rank 3, Tier 1)

Brands: Brand of Suffering I: Infernal

Equipment: Boots of Goblinkind Felt Wizard's Hat Robes of the Ruby Court Gnarled Staff (Charged with 1 charge of Invisible Barrier) Rod of Depths

Party Members: Rebel Human Guildmaster Artemis Level 14 Undead Human Death Knight Hannah Level 9 Administrative Human Rogue Clarence Level 9 Drunken Human Punk Zack Level 7 Righteous Human Troubadour Chimo Level 5

Checking my Journal, I could also see that I was close enough to the next level that the timing of the assault would probably work out, so long as the monster was worth a good amount of experience. And so long as I survived. At the end of a list of monsters I'd defeated and classrooms I'd cleared, it said:

Log Unspeakable Horrors Killed x3 Experience to level 10: 3420/5000 Stealth increased to 3 Skill Gained: Exploratory Vivisection 1

I found that I had more or less remembered all the tools available to me due to my enhanced Knowledge attribute, but I had almost entirely forgotten about my Rod of Depths. I checked its item description, which plainly stated that once per 24 hours, I would be able to cast that spell the squid apprentice had cast at us back when we had gone to rescue the survivors of the original guild hall. It would create a roughly five-foot radius orb filled with water, suspending whoever or whatever was caught in the orb mid-air for quite a significant duration. The monster I was about to face was clearly much larger than that, but there was every chance it would come in handy in some unpredicted way.

The Trauma trait still frightened me. Its description still stated that I had a 50/50 chance to freeze in terror when I next saw the creature. I had hoped that using the pseudoportal to see it from a distance would give me a chance to bypass the penalty, but I still couldn't be sure if it had worked. I had frozen when I saw it through the portal, but the trait description hadn't changed.

Trauma: You have experienced something too terrifying for your simple mind to bear. Some people learn to grow stronger from overcoming their trauma. You are probably headed for PTSD. If you come face to face with the source of your trauma again, there is a 50% chance that you will be completely unable to act. If you don't, it'll haunt you for the rest of your life. It sucks to be you.

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I considered spamming out the pseudoportal spell three or four more times to see if it would cause the same seemingly supernatural dread, but the spell was a complex third-rank spell that I could barely cast sitting down in a meditative state and focusing for several minutes, and it took a lot more mana than my lower-ranked spells. Probably. It was still quite frustrating that my mana pool never showed up anywhere in my Journal.

So I checked over my tools, ran my hands through my hair. I put my palm face-down in front of my face and, sure enough, it was trembling. I was in a sort of post-fear, post-disgust state at the moment, but it was no surprise that my body was still reacting to the high-stress environment. So I made a fist around my staff, held my spellbook firmly, and I walked forward the last hundred feet or so.

And there I stood, in front of a growth-covered, pulsating door, above which there was a placard proclaiming CAFETERIA #2435, just as I remembered it. The holes from the spikes that had followed me were still open in the door, and a pulsating red light came through them. I let my book fall to the leather strap that attached it to my right hand, took a deep breath, put my hand on the handle, and I pushed the door open.

And there it stood in a room that was an unholy mixture of a school cafeteria, an industrial abattoir, and the inside of an organic creature. Scuttling, half-formed gremlins rolled and crawled away from the door as I opened it. The massive, shadowed form was standing something like ten feet tall, and built like a mutant bodybuilder hedgehog. I took another step in and was now properly inside the cafeteria.

As one of the buboes of flesh sloughed and fell off the fluorescent light fixture above the abomination, it was revealed in all of its grotesque glory the stubby, elephantine feet, the pale white-skinned flesh, the mismatched corrugated and erinaceous spikes jutting out from its body all over the vaguely humanoid shape and it fucking happened again. I froze.

This time it was really clear that it was not natural fear. As it noticed me and focused its attention on me, I found that internally I was functional. Terrified, but I could think of a dozen things to do. I was sending signals to my limbs and vocal cords that I was convinced should have been going through, but none of it actually worked. Or, perhaps, that was what natural frozen terror felt like. I'm not sure. I hadn't ever experienced such terror before being brought to the Tower.

The lumbering abomination began ambulating toward me with heavy, wet, slapping footsteps and I could do nothing but stand frozen in supernatural terror, my hand gripping my staff with white-knuckle desperation. As it came closer, it stank more of blood, a butcher's shop that had lost power a few hours ago, and rust along with an animal smell that was not quite human. I hadn't really realized that I had learned to tell apart the smells of human and animal decay over the last two days, but there it was.

As it towered above me and opened its palm, I saw that the inside of the creature's palms was covered in short, sort of two-inch-long spikes, like broken and chipped razorblades. When it grabbed me by the right calf, the blades tore through my cargo pants and into my flesh as it squeezed. I was gripped firmly, but not crushed. It moved its hand up, upturning me, smashing my head on the floor on the way down, and lifting me up to its face. The image of Luke Skywalker being pulled up by his foot by the wampa creature on the ice planet Hoth flashed through my mind uninvited, as it held me upside-down by my foot and held my face up to its own. I hadn't really realized before how much panic involved bodily reactions and movement scurrying, soothing yourself, screaming, shutting your eyes closed. I couldn't do any of those things, so even through the terror I could think about old movies and the details of my pain.

There was no mouth on the creature, but a dozen cuts, perhaps holes from which spikes had been recently ejected. And those moved and expelled air and made something like speech. I could not understand what it was saying, but it was a moaning, pseudo-linguistic exhalation. It carried me to the back, where the kitchen area had been. It was not murdering me right away, so that was something. It wasn't much comfort, but more than you might think.

Out of all of the cafeteria, the kitchen had changed the least. There was a strange red glow emanating from the inside of several of the kitchen appliances- some of the fridges, the ovens, the dishwasher, but the growths were minimal here, and I saw no gestating gremlins anywhere.

The abomination opened the fridge door, and it was dark inside. It jammed me in there, and closed the door. I heard a click that sounded like a padlock closing. What the fuck? I found myself frozen in fear inside a dark, constrained room and came to terms with the fact that I was alive and possibly out of imminent danger. I focused my breathing and waited for the terror to subside. The last time I had frozen at the sight of this monster, it had taken less than three minutes to get over it, so this should be over soon. Why had it put me here? Was it not hungry right now and storing me for later? Every few seconds I tried to move the fingers on my hand as I thought through my situation and my options.

I wasn't dead. I was probably locked inside a fridge. The fridge was on and functional, which meant I had less than an hour or two before I'd die of hypothermia, but I had fire magic. Flashes of the worst pain I'd ever felt in a similar dark hole as I healed my burns came back to me. Correction - I had fire protection magic and fire magic. The lock was my big issue. If I could unlock the door, I would be back to the same place I had been when I entered the cafeteria through the main door, ready to roll the dice on my terror once again.

Twitch.

I let out a breath of relief. The instant I could move one of my fingers, I could move my entire body. I was about to test whether I could force the fridge open, when a thought occurred to me. I was hurt, and I was in a dark, cramped space. My healing ability should kick in in a few minutes, and whatever I did next, it would be better for me if I faced this monster at full health.

So I thought about what my best chances for opening the door would be, relaxing and giving time for my healing ability to kick in. I was in no rush. There were more than eight hours left until it would be too late to defeat the monster. My spells seemed like a bust. My main offensive spells were ice and fire, which were not exactly powerful in such a way that would blast open a door, while my utility spells were more about keeping space locked down and protected than opening new paths. Perhaps I could do something with the pseudoportal spell, get a little help from my friends, if one of them knew a spell to open doors.

My mangled leg throbbed with pain. Surely it had been five minutes, hadn't it?

It definitely had. My stomach dropped when I realized the only reason the ability wouldn't work. The requirements for the ability to activate were as follows: number one, the space had to be dark. Number two, the space had to be sealed off from the outside world. And number three. I had to be alone.

At that very moment, I felt a wet, fleshy, bone-covered tendril press against the side of my neck.

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