Gates of Penance-Chapter 19: Hideous monster

’More hallways!’

Nacht was getting more annoyed the longer they spent on this floor. In his opinion, this floor was the most annoying by far, and it had the highest chance of getting him killed as well. There were many sinners on this floor, each of them with the ability to kill him at any given moment. However, the large amount of sinners also told him something else.

’It’s almost over.’

His time in the crucible was coming to an end. The more sinners he saw meant that more of them were going to die, eventually leaving the last team standing. There was probably only one more floor after this one before he could finally leave penance. That fact left him feeling anxious.

’I still haven’t repented.’

He hadn’t been able to find an abstract on this floor, let alone one he could realistically kill. Hell, even the weakest of abstracts would be hard to kill. It was much more probable that it would kill him instead! If he didn’t repent soon then the chances of escaping penance were dim.

Focusing back on his surroundings, Nacht noticed this part of the floor was slightly different from the white hallways. The walls were now a dull grey, lit up with small white lights. The walls were no longer compressing towards them forcing them to follow a predetermined path, but he also noticed something else.

"Hey Alister... haven’t we been down this path before?"

Alister scratched the back of his head.

"Did we take a wrong turn?"

Nacht shrugged. He felt that something was deeply wrong but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

They continued down the long winding hallways until they ended up back at the beginning, except this time there was no crack in the wall.

’What the hell?’

This time they walked down a different path. He had been counting their steps, keeping track of the path they took and yet they had still ended up in the same place. He even tried to mark up the walls with his sword to have any kind of evidence that he wasn’t going insane but it was all for naught. Neither he nor Alister was strong enough to deal any sort of damage to the grey walls.

They took different routes, they would go left when they had previously gone right and would go right when they had previously gone left. Yet no matter what they did, they still ended up back where they had begun.

Nacht was beginning to feel anxious.

Somewhere along the line he had begun to feel a burning sensation at the back of his skull. He had initially thought that he was losing his mind but Alister told him that he felt the same sensation.

They were running out of time.

Eventually, him and Alister came up with a plan.

"Let’s split up."

They began to move on their own. One of them would go left while the other went right. Initially it seemed to work! Nacht noticed that the hallways were beginning to look a little different, the walls were no longer pristine, having gained small cracks and other signs of deterioration. He even managed to carve a small cut into the wall with his saber. But his hope was short lived. He heard a set of footsteps and for the first time, Nacht was hoping that it was a different sinner and not Alister, but his hopes were for naught.

Alister looked at him with a strained look on his face.

"Well hello again Nacht, fancy seeing you here."

Nacht scowled.

"Are you sure you didn’t take a wrong turn?"

Alister looked beyond him and saw the same hallway that they had been walking down for the past... What was it? A couple of hours? Nacht didn’t know, he hadn’t been keeping track and he didn’t have anything to tell the time.

"Oh I’m sure."

Nacht lingered for a moment.

"I think what we’re doing is working, the walls were slightly different weren’t they?"

Alister nodded.

"Then maybe we should try... running this time?"

Alister looked at him in confusion.

Nacht was a little unsure of himself but he wanted to test something.

"Just trust me."

With that, Nacht began to run in the opposite direction of Alister and he could also hear Alister sprinting in the distance. The walls did indeed begin to show cracks and start changing but there was something different this time. Nacht could hear the movement of the different walls changing and clicking into place like a jigsaw puzzle, rebuilding each path anew. Then he saw it. In one of the walls was the mark his saber had left behind. He continued to run facing the same direction until he came upon the same mark in the walls.

’Something is deliberately trying to keep us in here!’

The moving of the different hallways and components were being regenerated to trap them on the floor! It could have been the mechanisms of the floor itself or it could be an abstract with a unique ability.

Nevertheless, he and Alister were being watched but he didn’t know from where! He hoped that he wasn’t being looked at directly because if he was, then there was almost no chance of escape. His head was beginning to feel like it was on fire so he needed to end this quickly. While Nacht was deeply pondering what to do next, he wasn’t keeping track of where he was going and ended up colliding into something. He lost balance and ended up falling on the floor.

He heard someone curse before he realized who he had jumped into.

He turned around and saw Alister also on the ground straining to keep his smile.

Alister spoke in a restrained tone.

"So did you learn anything?"

They both got back up to their feet before Nacht began to explain what he had found out.

"Its good that you figured out we are being watched and that there is a sick bastard watching our every movement, but how exactly do we get out of here? I feel like smashing my head through these walls the longer we stay here!"

Nacht’s mind was literally on fire but he came to a simple conclusion.

He leaned forward and whispered into Alister’s ear just in case someone or something was listening.

"If it loses track of even one of us we could find a way out. It has trouble keeping up with us when we are not in the same place so run in the opposite direction and break all of the lights."

Alister was smart, so he instantly knew what he wanted to do.

In the next moment they both charged in the opposite direction. Nacht was able to break the lights himself as the wall was weakened with the mysterious user’s control as it struggled to keep up with them. However, that wasn’t his role. His role was to escape while it was Alister’s role to support him.

Nacht heard several lights explode as the path began to shake more and more. He desperately ran down each hallway. All he could think about was nothing besides the pain that was beginning to envelop him. He knew that if he kept his pace up long enough there would be an opening and eventually there was. As he ran down the same familiar hallway, he took a left and found himself submerged in darkness. Alister had taken out most of the lights and it would take some time for them to be repaired. Nacht instantly stopped as he felt the mind numbing pain disappear and without hesitation, he darted into the opposite direction towards the very first hallway he had just ran by.

Once he reached it he felt the ground slip beneath him and he came face to face with the ugliest thing he had ever seen in his life!

He was looking at a grotesque ball of flesh wrapped in chains with small hard to see tentacles. It smelled horrible! If one looked close enough they would also notice that it was using the tentacles to somehow move each component of the floor and not just the part they were currently on. It also played a part in controlling the white hallways. It most likely did this to force them into its trap and gain more power off of killing them by torturing their minds. Nacht looked around and noticed that he and Alister weren’t the only ones that were trapped in the infinite hallways.

He heard the screams of many sinners as they slowly succumbed to the hideous monster.

’A tier IV blight.’

Usually tier IV abstracts had other weaker abstracts at their command but this monster seemed to be alone and confined. The abstract was an entire tier above the dreadful creature of the dark forest. He had thought that the previous abstract was bad but this abstract was on a whole other level. Now that he thought about it, the two floors had something in common. Instead of the abominable heat forcing them to the next floor, it was instead the abstracts that had sent them running which had cut their time short.

Nacht reached the blight and took out his saber. Naturally, he knew he wasn’t going to be able to kill the abstract let alone pierce its flesh but then again, he didn’t need to. The purpose of this floor wasn’t to kill the abstract after all, even if he desperately needed to in order to leave this place. Once his saber made contact with the blight it let out a screeching whale and something beneath him lit up.

"Agh what the hell!"

The last thing he heard was Alister’s shout before he was sent to the next floor.