The Screaming Tower

The Wooden Girl is a bitch.
And that’s all I have to say on the matter.

***

It was only moments after writing how suspicious the open gate was that I-330 decided to enter the castle. Without hesitation, she strode forward. When her foot crossed the threshold, instead of entering the gardens which she had seen from outside the walls, she was indoors. It was a circular tower, with red and black checkered floors and a gilded spiral staircase stretching up higher than I-330 could see. When she looked back, there was no sign of any doorway or gate that she had come through. The walls of the tower were perfectly smooth stone, without any openings. Yet even without any windows or sources of light, the interior was completely illuminated.

Cautiously, I-330 went to the stairs and began to walk up them. After some time, she started to wish that she had counted steps, because there was no way to tell how far she had traveled. When she looked down, she couldn’t see the floor anymore, but when looking up there still didn’t seem to be any end.

As she came up one step, a pathway made of gilded metal extended from the stairs, reaching towards an ivory door. Once again, the invitation seemed suspicious, but I-330’s curiosity overrode any doubts. She went through the door, and found herself in the back of a grand theater. The rows were filled with audience members, all focused on the stage with grins fixed on their faces. The play being performed was a domestic comedy, featuring slapstick quarrels between the bumbling husband and his wife. I-330 watched with more than a little confusion at the performance. The acting was stiff, more like a puppet show than a theater. But in spite of the show’s poor quality, the audience laughed mechanically at each joke.

At one point in the play, the wife responded to her husband’s blunder by hitting him over the head with a rolling pin, causing the pin to snap in two. The audience burst into laughter, and continued laughing as she kept hitting him. Even as his skull started to cave in, and blood splattered across the stage, the laughter didn’t stop.

I-330 ran out of the theater, back onto the staircase. She had come to the conclusion that this was “a seriously fucked up place,” and leaving should be her first priority.

But when she tried running down the stairs, instead of descending through the tower, she continued to go higher. When she tried running the opposite direction it had the same result. No matter where she went on the stairs, she kept getting closer to the top. Until, without any indication that it was coming, the stairs stopped. At the end was another door, made of black wood. After her experience with the last door, I-330 quickly came to the decision to not go through this one. She turned to leave, only to find that the stairs had disappeared, leaving instead a massive drop that stretched all the way down to the bottom of the tower. The only path open was through that door.

Before going through, I-330 turned her shadow arm into a blade. At the very least, she could be prepared to fight. With painfully slow caution, she cracked the door open, and peeked inside. The room beyond had the same red and black checker tile as the bottom of the tower. The walls were covered in shelves of porcelain dolls, and in the center was a table, set for tea. Seeing no one inside, I-330 entered the room, and walked to the table. It had a distinctly Victorian appearance, with a lace trimmed tablecloth and elegantly crafted china.

I-330 reached for a cup, and the moment her hand touched it, deafening laughter came from the dolls on the shelves. I-330 turned to run for the door, but standing between her and the exit was the Wooden Girl. Before I-330 could fight, strings fell from above, wrapping around her limbs.

The dolls stopped laughing, and the Wooden Girl raised its arms up. “Yes! I did it!” It started skipping around I-330, giggling as it spoke. “All this time I’ve been trying so hard to get you, when I just needed to open the front door and let you walk in!” It skipped up to I-330 and grabbed her jaw. “Now, you belong to me.” The Wooden Girl forced I-330’s mouth open, then stuck a hand inside. I-330 felt strings flowing down her throat, into the rest of her body.

“This is… the heart. Let’s try stopping that.” The Wooden Girl said, and I-330 felt like her chest was about to burst. “Aaaaand start it again.” The pain vanished. “And here’s the lungs….” I-330 started choking, unable to draw in breath. “Alright, enough of that.” The Wooden Girl pulled its hand out, and I-330 could breathe again. “Oh, don’t glare at me like that.” It said. “You’re my pet now. Put on a smile.” Against her will, I-330 felt her lips turning up into a grin. “Muuuuch better.”

The Girl clapped its hands and giggled again. “I’m going to have so much fun with you! Ever since we met, I’ve been saving a special place in my plays for you! And I’ve set up a room just for you to stay in and have all kinds of games for us to play and it will be so fun! Won’t that be fun? Say ‘Yes, Mistress.’”

I-330 struggled against the command, but was unable to control her mouth. “Yes… Mistress.”

The Wooden Girl squealed with excitement and jumped up and down. “Say it again! Say it again!”

“Yes, Mistress.”

With another squeal, the Girl started to run circles around the room. “I can’t wait I’m going to tear your skin off then sow it back on and we’ll dance together and I’ll break all of your fingers and I’ll rip out your throat and then kiss it to make it better and we’ll watch the sunset and I’ll make you gouge out people’s eyeballs and eat them whole and-” The Girl stopped running, and stood straight up. “It’s tea time!”

With a twirl, the Girl sat itself down at the table. “Oh Pet, would you be a dear and pour me a cup?”

I-330 walked to the table and picked up the teapot. She began to pour it, but her grasp started to loosen on its own, until she dropped the pot on the floor, causing it to shatter. The Wooden Girl shook its head. “Oh dear. You’ll need to clean that up.”

“Yes, Mistress.” I-330 went on her hands and knees, and started licking up the tea, while the Wooden Girl laughed.

“You missed a bit.” The Wooden Girl put its foot in front of I-330. “Such a bad pet, spilling tea on its master’s foot. Clean it up as well.”

I-330 struggled for a moment, but then leaned forward and licked the wooden foot. Splinters stabbed through her tongue, and when she stopped her mouth was filled with blood.

“That will do, Pet. Now go and get me another teapot.” A cart with a new tea set had appeared in the room. I-330 began to walk toward it, but suddenly came to a stop. Her shadow arm had grabbed the edge of the table, and was refusing to let go. I-330 tugged on the arm, but it kept its hold. The Wooden Girl flicked a finger, and a string sliced the arm off.

“Get the teapot. Now.”

Unhindered by the arm, I-330 walked to the tray, and picked up the teapot with her remaining hand. But as she lifted it up, her shadow arm regrew, and smashed the pot. Before the Wooden Girl could react, the arm extended in a spike that went through the Girl’s forehead. The Girl fell, and the strings that had been controlling I-330 vanished. Her arm’s sudden attack had surprised I-330 as much as the Girl, but once she took in what had happened, she started running for the exit.

The Wooden Girl rose up, it’s face now painted in an image of rage. “No no NO!” The voice screamed through I-330’s head. “You’re ruining everything!” The dolls rose off the shelves, and flew towards I-330, who smashed them with her shadow arm.

“Stop breaking my things!” The Girl screamed as the roof was torn off, and hundreds of strings came from above. I-330 threw open the door to leave, but there was nothing on the other side but the screaming void.

“You’re going to stay….” The Girl said, slowly advancing forward as the strings followed behind it. “And we’re going to play forever.”

It didn’t take long for I-330 to decide that the screaming void was the preferable alternative there. She jumped, and fell into the darkness. For hours she fell, until space began to distort again. The next I-330 knew, she was lying in sand. And all around her was a massive, unending desert.

There seems to be a constant trend of me never getting the chance to just sit down and process things. Writing in this journal seems to be the only opportunity I have to think, and even then it only comes in short bursts between disasters.

What I really wanted to do was lie down on that grey shore and stare at the burning sky. Three Fears, dead in seconds. We’d had all these plans, taking on the Slender Man’s Fears individually, trying to pick them off one by one while I regained this power I was told I should have, until we could afford a direct confrontation. But then the Slender Man just wiped them out, with barely any difficulty. How am I ever supposed to compare to that? I’ve only managed to kill one Fear so far, and that was on accident. It destroyed an entire pocket universe by creating and blowing up a fucking star!

I don’t know what I’m going to do next. Maybe if I actually got some time to sit down and try to plan a way out of this god damn mess, I’d figure something out. But I was only on that shoreline for a few minutes when I suddenly felt the ground shaking beneath me. Out in the ocean, that massive tree was appearing. Which meant the Slender Man wouldn’t be far behind.

Once, I might have tried to fight. But after seeing its power in action…. I just ran. Ran like a coward. A stupid coward, considering I had no idea where I was or where I could go. But you rarely think things through when you’re panicking.

Thing about that beach: no matter how far you run on it, you never seem to move. Every time I looked back, the tree was still the same distance from me. And its branches were growing outward, as if reaching for me. The sand beneath my feet started to give way as huge rifts opened up in the ground, and huge waves rose from the ocean. A rift appeared beneath me, and I started to fall into darkness.

And then, I felt something pulling me. An invisible force, grabbing me and ripping me away from that universe. Everything twisted around me, and I was flung through a chaos of space as the sound of a young girls’ laughter echoed in my mind.

When everything stopped, I was no longer on the beach. Instead, I was… wherever this is. It looks like I’m outside the most stereotypical Disney fairy tale palace imaginable, with gleaming white towers and vibrant gardens. Except it also happened to be floating in the middle of a howling void of darkness and screams.

The front gate is wide open. Honestly, it looks a little too inviting. Given the shrieks of terror coming from the whirling blackness all around the estate, I’m a little suspicious. Hence why I’m just sitting out here and writing instead of exploring.

But I’m going to have to go in and explore eventually. It’s just the sort of thing I do.

The Beach

I’m sitting on a beach of grey sand, watching a still sea as the sky burns from the remains of a dead universe.

What happened to that optimism? We were going to attack. We were going to take the fight to the Fears. Start killing them off. Turn the tides. Win the war. Now… this.

We had been preparing to leave. The Red Cap had suggested we kick our counterattack off by attacking one of the Fears’ pocket universes. If we all attacked one together, we might have been able to kill it before the other Fears arrived to help. The first target was going to be the Black Dog, as that’s the Fear I seem to have had the most success physically fighting.

The Red Cap had started to distort spacetime around us to transport us, when a total silence fell over the temple. Like a switch controlling all the ambient noise had been suddenly switched off. The distortions the Red Cap had been creating vanished, as spacetime reverted to its usual order.

“Oh.” The Red Cap muttered. “Fuck.”

It pushed me away just as black roots broke from the marble floor where I had been standing. The roots wrapped around the Red Cap, and crushed it into a puddle of blood. More roots came out of the ground, impaling the Convocation’s birds and encircling the Brute and Bride. I scrambled across the floor as the roots tore through the tile, coming toward me. Had to stop when my head bumped against the side of the fountain. I looked up, and saw that the blood coming from the fountain had turned black. Cracks were spreading along the marble woman, which quickly reached her eyes. Black branches burst from those eyes, followed by more branches from all over the statue, tearing apart the fountain and splashing that black blood all over me. Had to wipe it away before I could see again, and when I opened my eyes, in place of the fountain was the Slender Man.

It looked down at me, and I felt frozen to that spot. Its hands reached toward me, and started to grow, slowly coming closer. I knew I had to get away from it, but my body couldn’t move. Its hands were almost at me, when a wave of blood hit it, knocking it back. The blood formed into the Red Cap, who quickly shouted at me to run before turning into liquid again and wrapping around the Slender Man.

With the Slender Man pushed back, I could start moving again. Jumped to my feet, and started running away from it. A pillar had been knocked over by one of the roots, so I jumped behind it, using it as cover so I could look at what was happening. The Red Cap was flowing through the air around the Slender Man, changing between humanoid and liquid as it tried to press the Slender Man back further. The Convocation and Brute and Bride had joined in, shooting lightning and fire at it. None of it seemed to have any effect; the Slender Man stood still, unfazed by the attacks hitting it, not once looking away from me.

A bird landed on my shoulder, and started tugging at me. I slowly followed its pull away from the fight, but kept looking back at the Slender Man. As I moved away, it followed after, slowly taking each step, without a care for the Fears trying to stop it. The Red Cap appeared in front of it, and blood poured from every nook and crack of the temple behind it. The blood came into a huge wave that towered over everyone, which thundered toward the Slender Man, shattering the roots and pillars in its way.

The wave hit the Slender Man and completely enveloped it. But when the wave had passed, it was still standing. It pointed an arm at the Red Cap, and black branches rapidly grew out of it, impaling the Red Cap. The Red Cap struggled against the branches for a few moments, and then dissolved into a pool of lifeless, inert blood.

The Convocation swarmed around the Slender Man, completely covering it in birds. Sparks flew between their wings, turning them into a mass of lightning that roared around the Slender Man. Hundreds of branches exploded outward, tearing the birds off the Slender Man and ripping them to shreds. As the blood and guts rained down, the branches retracted back into the Slender Man.

A stream of fire roared across the temple, exploding around the Slender Man as the Burning Bride appeared. The Brute appeared behind the Slender Man, swinging one of its massive fists. Branches came out of the Slender Man’s back, wrapping around the Brute before it could finish its punch. The branches brought the Brute to the ground, trapping it. The Bride unleashed another stream of fire, but as it approached, the Slender Man held out a hand. The fire stopped, then started to flow into its hand. It condensed into a small ball of fire, which vibrated and glowed with all the energy being compressed into it. It almost looked like a star was growing in its hand.

The bird that had been pulling me earlier started tugging at my sleeve again, and I let it guide me. As we got away, spacetime around us started to distort. Before we teleported, I looked back once. The Bride had been trapped to the ground by more branches, and the star in the Slender Man’s hand was violently shaking as more fire was drawn into it.

There was a burning flash of light and a roar just as we teleported, and we appeared on a grey beach that stretched on and on. The place looked like it was shrouded in twilight at first, but then a sun exploded into existence in the sky, bathing everything in burning light. Trails of flame leapt from the sun, leaving burning gashes across the sky.

The bird that had taken me there, the last of the Convocation, let go of me. It tried to fly, but fell to the ground. After a few more attempts to flap its wings, it became completely still. Leaving me all alone on this grey beach.

What do you do when you start questioning who you are?

I’m looking at the last entry I wrote in this journal, and I’m having a hard time convincing myself I said those things, let alone wrote them down. No, I don’t want the Red Cap bowing to me, it’s fucking creepy. Why the fuck am I even working alongside these monsters? There’s no point to their rebellion thing. I already lost. Humanity’s dead.

Of course I’m still going to wipe the Fears out of existence as payback for that, but there’s no reason I should be as… eager about it as I seemed in my last entry.

I think I’ve been putting this off for too long. Whenever I’ve been in a really bad pinch, I keep being saved by shutting off any thought process and letting what can only be called instinct handle everything for me. Suddenly gaining the ability to withstand excessive physical trauma and fight with a sword during Grendel’s revolution; almost singlehandedly fighting my way out of a heavily fortified bunker when I woke up in another universe; killing a fucking Fear with one hand…. I don’t know where it’s coming from, it just happens. Like with this arm. There was no process of learning how to make it shapeshift, that knowledge just kinda gradually filtered into my brain. Never took the time to stop and think about it. Always was too busy, or just didn’t want to think about it. Kept pushing it off in favor of more direct issues. But ever since R’lyeh, it’s been getting worse. The whispers, the knowledge, these ambitions….

Thing is, I do have an idea of the why for all of it. Nyarlathotep. I just keep wishing that wasn’t the reason. I’m me. I-330. Badass time traveling monster hunter/The Doctor wannabe extraordinaire. That’s all I want to be. Not an ancient malevolent manifestation of chaos reborn. Just me. But the way things are going, I’m starting to think my opinion’s not going to matter much in the end….

I didn’t even get a chance to look at our new destination when we arrived before the Red Cap grabbed me and practically shouted, “How did you do that?”

“… What?” Yeah, not exactly my most aware at the time. My mind was still reeling.

“That thing where you broke spacetime! With your hand!” It let go of me, and took a few cautious steps back. “Grendel needed the entropy sword before he could use that kind of power! And you just… with only your hand….” Its eyes widened, and it started to speak almost with awe. “You really are Nyarlathotep.”

Out of habit, I started to deny that claim. But the words didn’t come out. I didn’t understand how I’d been able to kill the Plague Doctor. Not on an intellectual level, at least. I’d just acted, and somehow….

“This is good. This is very good.” The Red Cap stroked its chin. “If we just stay alive long enough for you to get back your full power….”

“Wait, this isn’t already full power?”

“Oh no. Nyarlathotep was a god, milady. Breaking apart spacetime would have been a party trick for him. When you start juggling planets, then you’ll be getting an idea of what you’re capable of doing.”

That sounded… impressive. And highly impractical. Why would anyone need to juggle planets?

Can’t say I was entirely comfortable with this line of conversation, so I let it drop there. Time to start looking around at wherever I was.

At first glance, it looked like a vaguely Greco-Roman temple. It was constructed of white marble, with evenly spaced pillars reaching up to an arched ceiling. Scattered without any pattern I could see were marble statues of people. Those statues were… interesting. I wasn’t even aware some of those positions were anatomically possible. And it was really hard to tell if their expressions were of pleasure or pain. At the center was a fountain made of intertwined marble bodies. Their hands held up the figure of a pregnant woman, her belly slit open and blood spilling out into the pool below.

The Red Cap noticed me staring at the fountain and smirked. “You like the décor?” It said. “It took me a while to find enough people for it, but the result is just so… stimulating.”

“People? These are actual people?”

“Of course. A collection of my favorite victims. I wanted to preserve them for immortality.”

Sometimes, the Red Cap does a really great job of reminding me what a bastard it is. “So then, this place is….”

“Me. Me as manifested in a pocket universe, like what the Library was to the Blind Man.” The Red Cap suddenly appeared next to me, and whispered, “I always knew you’d be inside me someday, milady.”

I quickly pushed it away and tried to ignore the tingling feeling its breath had left on me. “Wasn’t the whole reason we were in the Library because no one would think to look there? Isn’t coming here a bit obvious?”

“Probably. Not like we really had much of a choice, since you did wipe our hiding place from existence.”

“Well then, what are you planning to do now?”

“That’s a good question. What would you like us to do, milady?”

“What?”

The Red Cap fell onto a knee, and bowed its head. Behidn it, the Convocation and the Brute and Bride appeared. “We are yours to command, Nyarlathotep.” The Red Cap said. “Just give us the order.”

What. But… Shit, I was still trying to deal with the fact that the entire human race had gone extinct because I’d fucked up, I wasn’t ready for this.

The Red Cap continued. “Shall we destroy them? Shall we crush all those who defied you? Make them pay for their insolence?”

… But it wasn’t my fault they had all died. The image of the Plague Doctor swinging its cane at the prone humans returned to my head. There’d been no need for that. There had been no need for any of the wanton cruelty the Fears had done. This wasn’t my fault. This was theirs.

“We can do it. With you at our lead, we can frind all your foes into nothingness. We can be the instruments of your revenge.”

Familiar whispers started to echo through my head, and I felt my skin scrawling. Them bowing to me was… right, somehow. They should obey me. They should all obey me. The Fears have taken too much from me. And I will make them suffer for it. “We’re going to kill them.” I said to the Red Cap. “Kill them all.”

Hopping universes with the Red Cap was considerably less exciting the second time around, now that I knew to expect the shift. The trips were brief, anyways. Not really much time for tourism in post-apocalyptia.

First stop was a rainforest; I’m guessing the Amazon. Looked Amazon-y. The Red Cap directed us to our first survivor pretty quickly; the man was hiding in a makeshift tree fort above where we appeared. He tried throwing some kind of spear at us, but it passed through the Brute without causing harm. Then he started shouting at us in a language I didn’t understand.

Right, maybe showing up accompanied by several Fears wasn’t the best way to make a first impression on someone here. I ducked behind a tree and tried to think of some way to communicate to him that we were friendly.

While I was mentally working out a series of elaborate hand gestures in my head, the Red Cap flew up to him on a trail of blood. Before he could do anything, it grabbed him by the head, and fiercely kissed him. His eyes widened for a moment, then he collapsed, unconscious. The Red Cap picked him up, tossed him over its shoulder, and came back to the ground.

“Alright. Got one. Let’s get the next.”

Space distorted again, and we appeared amongst a mountain range. Definitely the Himalayas. We had appeared in a small valley, next to a camp someone had set up. A woman looked out of a tent, and when she saw us, she screamed and started to run. Dammit, this is why you don’t travel with someone who is on fire.

“Wait! We’re here to help!” I shouted, hoping talking would work better than the last time.

The woman paused, and looked back at us, still clearly ready to flee. “You… speak… English?” She said. There was a strong accent, but it was still understandable.

“Yes! Yes. Don’t worry; we’re not here to hurt you. We’re trying to get you someplace safe. Now just-”

The Red Cap pushed past me, and with surprising speed caught up with the woman. It grabbed her and kissed her, causing her to go unconscious as well.

“Hey!” I shouted. “I was trying to explain this to her!”

“My way was faster.” It said. Before I could respond to that, space shifted again, and we were back in the Library.

The Red Cap dumped the two survivors on the floor. “Alright, there’s no way the other Fears didn’t notice that. They’ll be here any moment. Get ready.”

The Convocation took to the air, the fires on the Bride roared around it and the Brute, and waves of blood appeared at the Red Cap’s feet. While they all had their impressive power up displays, I stayed by the survivors to make sure they were safe.

And sure enough, they came. A howl echoed through the Library, shaking the dust off the shelves. Then the buzz of a thousand insect’s wings shrieked toward us. The black mass of the Intrusion came with tremendous speed, as one body made of innumerable insects. The Brute and Bride waved a hand, and a wall of fire appeared before the Intrusion, burning any insect who came close to ash. Strings came from another direction, slicing through the bookshelves. Another wall of fire appeared in front of them, burning away the strings. Soon the fire had formed a ring around us. I could see more Fears gathering on the other side. The Wooden Girl glared at me through the fire, while the Intrusion kept sending more of its creatures on suicide charges against it. The Black Dog soon joined them, and stalked along the perimeter, looking for an opening.

Then the Cold Boy appeared. It seemed to smirk at the fire, and walked straight into it. The flames died down around it, and it began to walk through the opening it was creating. It looked like it would make it through, when lightning shot from the Convocation and blew its head off. Before it could heal, more lightning struck it, launching it away.

Okay. Things were looking good so far. We were holding them off. We just had to keep this up until… um… they… get tired and decide to go away? Crap, Fears don’t get tired….

The Fears outside the fire stepped aside, revealing the Archangel, in its long black coat and bone gas mask. It reached a hand into the fire, then quickly pulled it back out. It stared at us from across the fire for a while. And then….

I saw six wings burst from the Archangel’s back, and then was blinded by a burst of light. When it faded and I could open my eyes, the fire was gone. Four of the Archangel’s wings were covering its body, though light could be seen coming through the gaps. With the fire no longer protecting us, the Fears rushed forward. The Wooden Girl went straight for me, strings flying out of its hands. I jumped under and rolled past the strings, and came up with a left hook to its face, tearing off part of the wood. Drew my sword and slashed across its chest; cut through the dress, but only scratched the wooden body underneath. Least it drove it back a little. I would have pressed the attack further, but the wave of insects rushing at me made me realize that running would be a better idea. Even sprinting as fast as I could, the swarm managed to get right at my heels, and I could feel some of the faster ones landing and crawling on me.

Another flash of light, and a shockwave that sent me flying onto the ground. Then another, and another…. The Convocation was shooting off lightning into the Intrusion, like a thunder storm gone mad. Even as the Wooden Girl’s strings cut through the flock, killing dozens of birds at a time, their storm continued.

With that immediate threat to me out of the way, I looked back at the two humans. Still unconscious, but still fine. Back to the fight, the Cold Boy was skating across ice appearing at its feet, going around the Convocation’s storm. I ran at it, slashed my sword across one of its arms and punched at its chest. The sword, again, didn’t really accomplish much. The punch, however, cracked its icy body and knocked it over. Unfortunately, this had the side effect of making me the focus of the Cold Boy’s attention. The temperature around me plummeted. In seconds, ice was forming around my legs, trapping me where I was. The ice kept spreading, no matter how much I tried hacking at it. Then I felt something warm press up behind me, and a voice whisper in my ear, “I’ll handle this, my lady.”

The Red Cap flowed around me, and grabbed the Cold Boy’s hands. Steam rose from where they touched, and the Boy’s arms started to melt. The Cold Boy giggled, and a stronger wave of cold came from it. Ice began growing along the Red Cap’s arms, trapping it to the Boy.

“Okay, bad idea, bad idea!” The Red Cap said. “Hey! Fire people! Little help here?”

The Brute and Bride were fighting the Archangel, who had returned to its more human form. Fire and smoke were so intermingled that it was impossible to tell the two bodies of the dual Fear apart as they swirled through the Library. A quick jet of fire was shot toward the Cold Boy before they resumed their fight with the Archangel. The flame hit the Boy and melted it in an instant, and the Red Cap dissolved into a puddle of blood that mingled with the melted water. The Cold Boy soon reformed its body, but there was now a dark red liquid moving underneath the surface of its ice skin. Steam started rising from its body as it looked down at itself in alarm. Drops of blood broke from within it, melting its body away as they ran down to the floor. The Cold Boy tried wiping the little streams away, but when its hand touched them, that hand began to melt as well.

I saw the Wooden Girl’s strings coming in our direction, so I ducked down. I wasn’t the target, however; the strings hit the Cold Boy, and cut into it. A moment later, they ripped out, trailing the Red Cap’s blood behind. The blood quickly came together in the Red Cap’s human form, still held by the strings. The Black Dog leaped over the Girl, toward the Red Cap. I jumped toward it, swung my sword, and knocked it out of the air mid jump. Soon as I landed I took off running toward the Wooden Girl. Rolled to dodge the strings that came for me, and came up swinging. Hit the Girl hard enough to crack its wooden body, and made it release the strings it was holding. The Red Cap quickly came up to join me once it was free. It didn’t give the Wooden Girl the time to recover before shifting into a bloody spear and striking the crack I had made, breaking through and impaling it.

For a while, I started to let myself get optimistic about the situation. The Convocation had the Intrusion locked down, while the Brute and Bride kept the Archangel busy. Which only left the Cold Boy, the Black Dog, and the Wooden Girl for the Red Cap and me, and we were just managing to handle them. If we could just keep wearing them down, maybe we could drive them away….

The sound of someone coughing broke my focus. I had become so focused on fighting the Fears that keeping an eye on the humans had pretty much slipped my mind. When I looked back at them, I realized what a mistake that had been. While dealing with the other Fears, the Plague Doctor had appeared by the humans. I don’t know how long it had been there; given how fast the Doctor can affect people, it may have only been a few moments. But the condition of the two humans was….

It was like they had been ravaged by years’ worth of diseases in only a few minutes. Massive tumors were visible across their bodies, and each cough brought up more blood. The Plague Doctor raised its cane, and I shouted at it to stop. It swung the cane down, striking each of their heads. Both began to cough viciously, spitting out more blood with each hacking sound. Then they both drew in a ragged breath, and became silent.

Didn’t do anything for a moment. Then, I roared. My vision seemed to turn red, and all I could feel was pure, unrelenting, hatred. It felt like I was losing control of my body, as conscious decisions faded away and instinct took charge. I charged at the Plague Doctor, screaming wordlessly. It waved its gloved hands, and I felt a wave of nausea and dizziness pass over me, but I pushed through it. As I got closer, it started to swing its cane at me, but I ripped it out of its hand, and snapped it in half. Before it could flee, I grabbed its mask. I could feel it breaking under my shadowy fingers as I squeezed, causing cracks that shone with emptiness to spread along its face. The Doctor struggled to escape, abandoning its humanoid shape and becoming a mass of sickly black and green darkness that twisted away desperately. A putrid stench filled my nose, and I the even stronger feelings of nausea hit me. Still, I held on, feeling the Fear break under me.

 With a final burst of strength, I shattered the Plague Doctor’s mask, and the spacetime which it had been inhabiting. In the place of its head was a hole in reality, which quickly consumed the rest of its body. And it spread from there, with cracks rapidly growing across the entire Library.

The rage which had been fueling my actions faded away, and instead I found myself torn between confusion at how I had just done that, and panic at the speed which reality appeared to be collapsing. I felt the Red Cap’s warm hand grab my shoulder, and it shouted at me, “Time to run for it!” Space distorted around us, taking us from the Library just as it was completely consumed by emptiness.

Conviction

I’ll say, the Red Cap suddenly leaving like that didn’t leave me all that happy. Quite rude of it, really. It’s almost as if I was obstinately refusing to work with it out of a sense of self-loathing and continued to insist on suicide by Fear regardless of its opinion on the matter or something.

After the blood was gone, I angrily stomped around the Library for a while, looking for a door out. That’s how I’d gotten out during my previous visits, but during those times I’d also entered through a door, not… Fear… teleportation… universe-hopping… whatever that was. So I had no idea how to get out of there. Wasn’t long before I started to consider just knocking down bookshelves and seeing what happened.

Before I could start doing that, I found the Red Cap again. It was leaning against a shelf, reading a book it had picked off. Occasionally, it would chuckle to itself.

“What are you doing now?” I said.

“Reminiscing.” It tossed the book to me. “Here, you should give it a read. Especially the ending.”

I looked at the cover, but there wasn’t a title on it. It looked different than the other books I’d gotten from the Library before: it was bound with an oddly moist leather, and it was heavier than it should have been for its size. I opened the book and read the first few pages, finding it to be a biography for a woman named Samantha Reynolds. She was a mostly unremarkable woman, and I started to wonder why I was supposed to be reading about her. Then I skipped to the last few pages.

After some late night shopping, she was kidnapped in the parking lot of a grocery store. For the next several weeks, she was repeatedly raped by her captor, and then finally murdered. The book went into quite a lot of detail describing the entire thing.

When I looked up from the book, the Red Cap was smiling. “That was my work. Well, I hadn’t been planning to kill her, but you know, sometimes you’re just struck by a whim, and then-” And then I punched the Red Cap through the neck, tearing its head off.

Not that it really did anything. The blood quickly came back together again, and the Red Cap was whole. I was about to hit it again, when another book fell between us. Looked up, and saw several birds flying above, some holding books in their talons.

“You may want to read the ending to that one, too.” The Red Cap said.

Grudgingly, I picked it up and skimmed through. This one was a biography of Jonathon Williams. He was lynched by a mob during a wave of religious revivalism that swept through his hometown. “That was the Archangel.” The Red Cap said. “He always did love letting humans do all the work for him.” It pulled another book off the shelf, and threw it to me. “Check this one out as well.”

Read the ending of the new book. Ayako Hoshiko, mauled to death in her sleep (“The Rake.”) Another book was dropped by the Convocation. Slava Gavriila, suicide by jumping off a building (“The Cold Boy.”) Adam Summers, shot by the police after he butchered his family (“The Mother of Snakes.”) Jenny Walker, died without warning in her sleep (“The Grotesque.”) More books were tossed to me, each with a similar ending.

“We can keep going as long as you like.” The Red Cap said. “I’ve got billions to choose from. Seriously. BILLIONS.”

“So? I know you Fears are monsters. You don’t have to remind me.”

“Don’t I? You claim to know that we’re monsters, but do you understand it?” The dim lights illuminating the Library darkened even more, and blood started to rise out of the floor. The Red Cap slowly walked toward me, a red cloak that dripped with blood billowing behind it. “Do you understand what we really are? What we are to humans? Because I don’t think you do. Every time you’ve met us, it’s been on a near equal footing. To you, we were just another kind of monster to be fought. But what about those who don’t have your godly powers? The little humans who went through their days without any knowledge of us, until the moment one of us suddenly decided to enter their life?”

The lights had dimmed so that everything around me except the Red Cap was shrouded in blackness. Its face was inches away from mine, and its lips pulled back to show fangs. The blood in my ears was pounding so loud I could barely hears it as it spoke.

“I am their hunger, their lust, their shame. For as long as humans have looked on each other with desire I have existed, fueling their greed. And when I come to claim them….” It grabbed my jaw, and moved me even closer, until we were nearly touching, as its body became more animalistic. “What do you think happened to Samantha? She died, yes, but then what?” It tapped the side of its head. “She’s in here. Still conscious. Still aware of what’s happening to her. I claimed her as mine, and took possession of her for all eternity. Do you want to know what that feels like for her?”

Blood poured from above, drenching me. I suddenly felt like I was floating in a red haze. All at once, I was hit by extreme sensations. There was intense pleasure flowing through me, better than any sex I’d ever had. But at the same time, there was unimaginable pain across every inch of my body. And then there was hunger, a ravenous desire to take everything….

The moment was gone, and I was in the Library again, with the lights back to normal. The blood was off me, but I could still feel it, like a filth I could never wash off….

The Red Cap had moved away from me, and was in the much less threatening child appearance. “It’s true, if the Slender Man erases you, it would be possible to return the multiverse to its old form.” It picked up one of the books I had read. “This form. An eternal hell for the human race, where not even death can free them from their torment. And there will be no one capable of stopping them.”

It took a few attempts for me to stand back on my feet. “But this is still my fault.” I said. “It’s because of me that everyone is dead….”

“Really? Because from what I remember, it wasn’t you who was burning down cities and massacring their population’s. It’s not as if you forced the Fears to go on a killing spree the moment the multiverse started to fall apart. And besides…”  It appeared in front of me, older again, “they’re not all dead.”

“… What?”

“There’s still three… no, wait, one just died, there’s still two humans left.”

“But… what? How?”

“Mostly luck. The Fears were more interested in putting on a show for you than actual efficiency in their purge, and these two were pretty isolated. They’re not going to survive long, of course, but….”

“We’re saving them.”

“Really? I thought you were going to be off dying so that the apocalypse could be reversed.”

“Shut up. We’re saving them. I’m not going to sit here when there are still people out there in danger.”

For a moment, I think I saw the Red Cap smile, then it turned its back to me. “Are you sure? It would be pretty dangerous. Opening another gate out of here will let the Fears realize we’re hiding here. And we’ll probably have to fight them in the process of rescuing these people….”

“What part of ‘We’re saving them’ was so hard for you to understand? Now take me to these two, before they die as well.”

The Red Cap turned back around, a huge smile on its face. It shouted to the air, “Alright, birds, Brute, Bride, get ready! We’re going back on the warpath!” Hundreds of birds flew down around us, and fire roared into the shape of a woman, with smoke billowing behind it. The Red Cap flicked its wrist, and the space behind it began to twist. It gestured to the distortion, and bowed to me.

“After you, my lady.”

Took a deep breath, and then stepped though.