Member
mickilennial
Spike
Crimson Flame
Angstyrainbow
CitrusArms
Einherjar 906
Foster
Dragonydas
Xaltwind
BunniesOfDoom
Fantasy Fixer Films II
Level 10 Primrose (226/100), Level 7 Therion (276/70),
Level 12 Sectonia (holding 6 level up) (3/120), Level 5 Roland (Holding 1 Level up) (0/60)
Word count: 4001 (+5)
Roland manipulated the diving bell so they could go down, down into the old world being the only one with any knowledge of how to vaguely use it. Upon reaching the ground, there was nothing to do but step out into the world. Unlike what Therion had feared, there was no water. Instead it was just pitch blackness all around besides the windows of the metal factory in front of them, and no monsters about.
The pyromancy flame flickered to life in Primrose's hand. She figured out the flashlight fairly quickly and clicked it on, as did Therion, shining the lights around the area. The outside of the factory was completely devoid of color, everything a monotone shade of gray wherever the dark shadows didn't blot it out completely. While there was debris of various things scattered everywhere there was only one building, directly ahead of them but still a little ways off. Much closer by was a circular hole in the ground, lined with stone and a metal staircase descending downward. Another entrance, or something entirely unrelated?
"Any tips from the 'horror master', or should we just pick a direction and go?" the thief said, casting a glance Roland's way.
Roland shrugged, saying. ”We have no clue what we will see down there, so just picking a random direction and going there sounds good to me. Just remember things like to ambush you from the shadows.” Roland said. ”I’m the camera man, so I can’t take point for this. Anyone wanna offer?”
Sectonia waved her hands, and while for a second Roland thought it was her offering, a few pink portals appeared and out popped light blue ant-like creatures. ”My antlers will take their initial attention.” Apparently these were the things that she said she’d summon, and thus Roland nodded. ”Alright, why don’t you choose where we start Mr. snarky?” Roland said, gesturing to Therion.
The snarky one ignored the comment, but he did survey the area a little more closely so that he could find a suitable direction. The outside looked devoid of life entirely, so inside or underground it was. With the helmet on it was a little harder to listen for anything they couldn't see, but there did seem to be faint noises coming from both directions. Steady methodical sounds, nothing that seemed like it was alive. After a moment Therion sighed and nodded towards the factory building. "Might as well head there."
"Then I'll go ahead with the little antlers," Primrose said, amusement in her voice. The antlers would lead the way with the dancer close behind, and with Roland at the back filming Therion and Sectonia could go wherever they liked, either in the camera's view or outside of it.
As they approached the building, and subsequently entered and descended a separate set of stairs, the noises Therion had picked up became louder. Now everyone could hear creaking, groaning, the turning of metal, and various other noises that wouldn't be out of place in a modern industrial factory - not that any of them save for Roland knew that for sure. There was also another, very distinct noise that reached all of their ears. It was... shouting?
The shouts and yells were muffled behind walls of solid concrete, so it was hard to tell which direction they were coming from. Undaunted, Primrose continued forward with the antlers leading. The underground factory was just as dark as expected, with only small areas of light scattered around from hanging - or sometimes even free floating - bulbs. The flashlights they held barely penetrated the shadows, but they did help somewhat.
"Sounds like someone else got here first," Primrose said. She supposed if multiple teams chose the same destination, they may meet up. Which made the possibility of cheating once again an option, which Therion pointed out. "We could always snag someone else's camera if comes down to it."
”oy oy, aren’t they your friends? Although its not a bad idea…” Roland said, looking for something to film.
”Probably one of the other groups. I wonder what they came into contact with…” Sectonia said, summoning some ice antlers to walk in front of the group.
”Hey, don’t we need to dedicate 20 seconds of our 90 second video with these sodas being drinken? One of each flavor within the 20 seconds? I’m not really in the mood for pop myself.” Roland said, pointing out their sponsorship deal that would earn them some bonus rewards at the end of this if they fulfilled it. Sectonia commanded her antlers to grab a flavor each, satisfying the need to drink this product while being attacked by a monster.
Eventually the shouting stopped, and around the next corner came a little guy. It was hardly bigger than Sectonia's antlers, with short limbs and a wide mouth. It spotted the four of them at the same time they spotted it, and it stopped walking only to stare at them.
”Huh… I was expecting something more horrifying down here. That's almost cute looking.” Roland said, Sectonia looking at the fixer, then the creature, then Roland with a look of mild disgust. Roland snapped back. ”What? I did say almost!”
Primrose agreed with Roland, at least on the first point. The large mouthed creature stood still while the antlers surrounded it all with drinks in hand. Now would probably be a good time to get the "sponsorship" out of the way, since the little monster didn't appear to be aggressive. She turned to the cameraman.
"Should we 'record' with the antlers no—"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!"
Nearest to the monster, the moment the dancer's back was turned it opened its mouth and let out a blood curdling screech. It startled Primrose, and she whipped around with intent to burn the thing to a crisp. However, after clamping its mouth shut it moved, running a little distance away before stopping, peeking at the team of four, and then not so stealthily trying to run around behind them.
"..." Primrose closed her fist and snuffed the spell. Therion snickered at her, but picked up where she left off while pointing to the thing. "You wanna get this guy or look for something else?"
”Hm…. I have an idea…” Roland said as he directed the Antlers to start to hold their soda, sip it, and mill around. He got some starting footage of them chilling around and about the factory walls, acting like nothing was amiss. (Although Sectonia had to give those orders, Roland couldn’t really do it himself) and after a bit of a start, Roland used the next scream of the mouther to end the scene with the Antlers looking a bit startled.
”And there we go, there's some footage and a bit of a start. And some of our ‘sponsorship deals are done. I’ve got a couple other ideas but let's continue onwards.” Roland said, gesturing to move forward.
The four of them went on, followed by their monster tag-a-long for a little bit until they got tired of continually looking over their shoulders to prevent more screaming. Primrose gave up her lead to forcefully shoo it away. It skedaddled back up the stairway leading outside, finally leaving the group alone - though they wouldn't be for much longer.
It could have been any number of things really; the unknown number of other teams stirring up the factory's inhabitants, the screams of the little big mouth attracting other monsters... or maybe the monsters of this minigame were just high in activity to make for good video... either way, the team was beset by another monster before getting very far at all. This one blended perfectly into the dark, nearly invisible unless one was looking right at it. It was quick, and made a bee-line right for the easiest targets: Sectonia's antlers.
The monster reached out with its long arms and snatched one of the little minions, then began dragging it away into the dark. Roland had his camera on the antlers and started recording as they had been dragged away, 2 of the three antlers finishing their sodas in a vain attempt at the ‘special’ power listed on the soda to save them in trouble. The third being dragged off of, drinking the blue soda, had this happen though as they vanished in a whirl of waves much to the confusion of the creature dragging it away. Roland meanwhile had to put the camera away after that, having gotten what he thinks was enough sponsorship footage, as he struck at one of the creatures going for him and his camera.
”Hey, hands off. This is my camera!” Roland said as Sectonia offered him some support by striking the creature with her light beam. It dissipated as soon as she did, and the Travelers’ flashlights warded off any others. ”Hmph. We should probably move forward and find things that are more scary and less annoying.” Sectonia said, summoning a green antler and a couple blue ones for more fodder.
Primrose and Therion had a better grasp on the objective after watching Roland do his thing a couple of times. With new understanding, they had better insight into the game itself, and concurred with Sectonia - watching cute little ant monsters get harried by bigger, less cute monsters wasn’t very scary.
"Mayhaps a damsel in distress could make things scarier," Primrose suggested as the group continued on. Now that they were getting deeper, the factory was getting darker. Primrose looked at Therion when she followed up with, "any volunteers?"
"No," he said with a roll of his eyes.
They walked through winding concrete hallways that branched off into more and more hallways, punctuated by large steel doors. Rarely their path was blocked by lines of bright, hot lasers whose purpose was obvious to all of them, but otherwise they could freely go as deep as they wanted.
With the factory being mostly featureless, when they came upon a different looking room it was almost a relief. Though it wasn’t terribly big, it was wider than the hall they’d come from by far. The ceiling had collapsed, exposing a pitch dark hole above them and rubble on the ground in front of them. A new sound could be heard from here, almost like a disjointed accordion.
Therion tipped his head to listen to it. It was definitely getting closer, but the echo-y nature of the building made it hard to pinpoint. "Sounds like something’s coming. If it’s not scary enough for you, we can figure something else out."
Though he’d grown to like it somewhat, his Junicorn was pretty freaky looking. And Sectonia’s glowing face in the dark was most likely unnerving to those who didn’t know her. As long as their presentation was “scary,” it probably didn’t matter if it was authentic or not.
”Why are you looking at me like that…” Sectonia said as Therion was looking her over as if she was a monster. Roland meanwhile was keeping an eye out on this ‘newcomer’. While his hopes weren’t high on it being exciting, he didn’t want something to try to take the camera from him again.
While they stood around speaking, the harsh noise continued to get louder. Eventually it was loud enough to be near deafening, which is when the next creature appeared. From the hole above them, a silhouette just barely visible appeared. It did not have the comical or animalistic profile of the monsters they'd already encountered - this time, it seemed like they were looking up a man. Already it made Therion's hair stand on end, and Primrose to clench her fist in preparation. Without hesitation the dancer angled her flashlight up, revealing it.
It was indeed more like a man than anything else. He didn't appear to be nude per se, but instead it looked like his body was made of almost the same material the environment was made of. His face was shadowed, especially the sunken black pits where eyes would normally me. His body was very tall, and much too thin for a human. He held his arms up in front of him, his large hands and long fingers opened almost placidly. Every little step he made was accompanied by discordant musical notes. Although realistically any of the four of them would easily be able to handle such a foe, within the confines of the minigame and deep into a dark factory, this thing was definitely scarier than what they'd already found.
It stared at them for a second, enough time that if this really were a horror movie the fear would be able to sink in. Then it moved again. Realizing its intent, Primrose attempted to warn her team. "It looks like it's going to—"
Its arms unspooled, stretching more than three times its own body length. Being above them it immediately reached for the nearest person, the large queen bee, and grabbed her. To her credit, she wasn’t really into this whole thing at the moment, having seen disappointment after disappointment. The underground had way worse things.
Having little to grab on from above, the creature fell and grabbed Sectonia where it could get the most purchase, around her midriff. Sectonia, not too pleased by the now very loud sound near her and getting grabbed in such a manner, teleported away with an indignant and angry look on her face. Roland got everything, including her yelp of surprise, on tape much to her annoyance. As well as the retaliating sword floor that came up to greet the creature in retaliation.
However, like the minigame before, damage seemed to be turned off - for the monsters. The spikes didn’t harm it in the slightest, and it didn’t even notice them as its long arms began reeling Sectonia closer. She would be able to see that the “HP Bar” displayed on her helmet’s screen was going down.
"Are you alright?" Primrose called to her. She stood ready to defend the queen, but between the filming and not being able to see the 'damage' she was taking, neither she nor Therion were sure if they should intervene yet.
At this point Sectonia had freed herself from its grip, saying. ”I’m fine…” Sectonia was more flustered than anything. And this wasn’t the only monster here. As if being lured by this thing’s music, another creature, an old looking man, appeared around the corner. At first it seemed a bit odd, but harmless. That was until it opened its mouth wide enough to swallow a human whole, and it roared before it dashed at the one of the Antlers as the rest of the group had gotten away from the creature after seeing it take down Sectonia’s HP. Once it reached one of Sectonia’s antlers, much like its mouth suggested, it devoured it whole. Roland had gotten a bit of that as he ran, with this new creature now going after the other Antlers Sectonia left behind as a distraction and doing the same to them before going after the group, the Arms following behind being a lot slower.
Things were ramping up quickly now that they were suddenly faced with two dangerous monsters. It would be a good thing for their video, if they could make it out with the camera.
Their head start saw them down a new L-shaped hallway. When they turned, the path narrowed enough that the humans could just barely walk shoulder to shoulder. Being their cameraman, and thus at the back of the group, Roland could get a good view of the large mouthed man dashing toward them. Although there wasn’t too much film left now.
"It's catching up," Therion pointed out. And with nowhere to dodge or run to, the group's only choices were to fight or sacrifice one of themselves. Sectonia was first through the corridor, followed by Primrose, leaving the two men at the back. And since Roland was the cameraman... it sort of left things up to him.
With a sigh Therion skidded to a stop and spun around, about to summon his striker. Ending things on more monster battles would tie the whole video together, but unfortunately for him it didn't turn out that way. The former monk monster was upon him in moments, giving Roland a good shot of the creature catching up to, and eating Therion. Well… Roland didn’t know what to think about that. He had to deal with dying all the time in the library, although he never remembered any of it, and apparently this place had the same power, but still that looked very painful. And if that wasn’t the case, he’d have some choice words with the mascot character running the show… Still they all had to make a run for it, and as the creature made another roar, Roland got the message “Out of Film”, relaying he had finished recording everything. With that being said, Sectonia summoned a golden antler to allow them to escape back to the diving bell, the old man unable to get its large mouth around the even larger golden antler now bonking it on the head with its mace and the creature attacking the antler with fire.
The three of them remaining hurried through the complex, finding a ramp leading up. Primrose looked back, an urge to put the monster down making her hesitate to leave, but eventually she had to will herself to let it go. This was just a game after all. As the team ascended, they found they got lucky: the ramp led to the outside right next to their diving bell, and the entrance they'd seen at the start but neglected to take. Once they were inside, she closed the door and the bell lurched, pulling back up to the island in the sky.
As they arrived on the diving bell, Roland’s fears were put to rest as Therion was there by the shack. ”Hey, glad to see you're ok. Hope getting eaten wasn’t too painful.” Roland said, not actually remembering ever having gone through that pain, although Angela did tell him that that did happen once.
Therion had removed his helmet already, his ears twitching in lieu of a greeting when the others returned safe and sound. "It wasn't. I just showed up back here."
He wasn't upset about being sent back to base, seeing as he'd hardly wanted to go down there in the first place.
”Oh huh. Thats nice.” Roland said, still getting used to how easy things seemed to be. ”Glad to hear it wasn’t bad at all.” roland said, giving Therion a thumbs up.
Well, all that was left was to figure out how to upload this video. It took Roland a bit to fiddle around with the kiosk, but he figured out how to upload and turn his video into a playable disc, which had its own dedicated slot so the video could be uploaded and viewed. He wondered how this thing would turn out since they didn’t edit anything, although in his experience nothing was all that scary minus the thing near the end.
Now they could watch their film back, and see what it looked like to outside eyes. Their video began with a cold open, seemingly showing a small community of ant-like creatures chilling with each other outside of a spooky abandoned factory. They all had the sponsored drinks in hand, and were completely unsuspecting of the Mouthe creeping into frame. It screamed, its voice violently cutting through the ambient silence of the first part of the video and startling the antlers.
The next shot was of the antlers in peril once again, with dark entities tugging them away into the blackness. The escalation from the little minions getting spooked to them being spirited away titillated the audience, though ultimately they were still just looking at mild monster on monster violence.
The next cut was the appearance of the long armed monster. With Roland's steady hand he captured its reveal, its fall, its capture of Sectonia and her escape, as well as the spikes she raised and its indifference to them. At that point he'd backed up, getting as wide a shot of the room as possible and including the Orsterrans and the sudden appearance of the second monster.
And finally, the last chunk of the footage was the pursuit. The camera jostled slightly as the team ran, adding to that found footage vibe as the long armed monster and the large mouthed monster chased them down the hall. Eventually the long arms was lost, unable to keep up with the rest, but its haunting accordion music could still be heard echoing in the background of the final moments of the video. The fallen monk charged forward in a blaze of fire, swallowing Therion whole. The video cut out very soon after that.
When it was over the screen they'd watched it on darkened, showing the option to replay it. At the bottom was a counter for views and ad revenue, as well as another marker for the extra revenue they'd earned thanks to taking on a sponsorship. With absolutely no frame of reference for the numbers, most of them didn't know if they'd done well.
"I suppose once every one is finished, we'll be back with the host and learn who won," Primrose surmised.
”Yep. Honestly it was pretty boring besides the end. I’ve seen scarier things on a day to day basis.” Roland said, scratching his neck. ”I have no frame of reference myself, but there were far, far worse things in the under.” Sectonia commented.
She was completely right. All four of them had seen horrors far beyond what the minigame offered, but then again it was only a friendly video-making competition. Not to mention they didn't know how their video was going to be graded. Maybe these mildly scary monsters and the gradual escalation of spookiness would make the cut, or the other groups got unlucky.
