Chapter Text
Before everything; before the asylum, before her own near incarceration, before the Entity; Sally Smithson had, had a very normal life. She was in love, she was married. She and her husband, Andrew, loved each other very much.
And despite their ups and downs, their financial struggles, their trouble trying to put food on the table some days, they had planned to start a family when they became more stable.
Sally had always dreamt of having a family, of two little versions of herself giggling, running around the house surrounded by a white picket fence. And with Andrew, that dream seemed possible once they got over their struggles.
But then Sally was paid a visit one day by one of Andrew’s coworkers. Her husband had been a lumberjack and... Well, suffice to say it was a dangerous job though Andrew had loved it.
All those financial troubles before suddenly seemed crushing. Sally received letters through the post, telling of missed payments; letters threatening eviction. Andrew had been the only one with a job while Sally had been a house wife, waiting for the day she would have a little one to look after.
But with Andrew, the love of he life, gone and ominous letters posted almost everyday of the week, Sally needed a job. She tried almost every job she could find in shop windows and job centres, but the only place who would take someone as under qualified as her was the local asylum. Crotus Prenn Asylum, to be exact.
Sally had heard of the horrors that went on inside the terrifying building. She had sworn upon first hearing about it that she would always keep her distance. The only people who worked there were the ones who were in dire need of a job and fast. Unfortunately, that description fit Sally too well.
So she had applied for the job of caretaker and had, upon being hired, begun a new chapter of her life.
In this new chapter of her life in an entirely different realm, far away from the Asylum but, at the same, not, Sally had sworn off romance and love, and everything even remotely close to it.
Andrew had been the love of her life, her beloved, doting husband, and she wouldn’t look at another man or woman the same way she’d once looked at him.
Besides, in the Entity’s realm, she had other things to look at and think about. For example, the survivors whom she was meant to kill and sacrifice to the Entity so it could feed off of them.
Sally didn’t know exactly how that worked nor did she care. As long as she got to kill and purify these ‘survivors’, she was satisfied.
She hadn’t always been this way, of course. How could she be when all she’d wanted to begin with was a family? But two decades at the Asylum, suffering physical and verbal abuse from countless patients, could change even the strongest-willed people. And Sally hadn’t been that strong-willed. She’d simply been desperate.
But she’d still worked her way up, with no education, qualifications, or prior experience, to one of the head nurses. But she soon saw after too long (too decades too long) that her patients needed help and she sought to give them such help. Just as she would give these survivors before sacrificing them to the Entity. In a way, the survivors sort of reminded her of her patients.
But she would help the survivors as she’d helped her patients.
It was what she was doing now, in one of the ‘trials’, searching for the remaining three survivors. She’d already sacrificed one to the Entity, having slashed the girl’s back open then hung her on a hook. She didn’t know where the other survivors were as they had tried to rescue their friend a couple of times, but disappeared as said friend died.
The girl had been too weak to hold off the Entity for long, quickly bleeding out on the hook, and had been impaled. The other survivors had run away and Sally had lost them after a few minutes of chase.
The area was quiet. It was a new area that Sally hadn’t had the privilege of before which is why she had lost the survivors so quick. They seemed to know their way around well enough. Either that or they had just run and gotten lucky.
The new area, Sally noted absently as she floated by a broken generator, looked like a temple. It was located in the Huntress’ forest and looked strangely out of place. Like someone, probably the Entity, had picked it up from one area and dropped it mindlessly in another.
It was lavish, though, Sally thought. Made of stone and gold. With high arching doorways, but no door. In what Sally referred to as the basement, she remembered seeing a room blocked off by four different gates on each side, that had some kind of altar inside. Nothing else. Just an altar.
That was how she knew it was a temple.
She considered whether or not it was wrong to murder people in a temple then decided it didn’t matter as she was probably damned already, what with all the killing.
It was as Sally was absently admiring the altar, passing by, that she heard the familiar sound of a generator exploding nearby. Perhaps the survivors weren’t as good at repairing generators as they’d thought.
With a twitch of her lips, Sally looked up and prepared to blink through the floor back up to the surface. A quietened cough caught her ears and she turned her head to the right slightly, searching for the source of the noise, but she reappeared somewhere else before she could find it.
She was quickly distracted from the cough she’d heard seconds later when dizziness struck her from blinking and she panted, leaning forward slightly as her stomach turned. When she had caught her breath again, she straightened up just in time to see one of the survivors duck behind a crumbling wall.
Perfect, she thought.
With a wheezing breath, she floated towards the wall.
...
Mild annoyance ate at Sally’s heart as she watched the remaining survivor of the trial escape through the gate. Though she knew better, she followed the survivor as close as she could get before the Entity blocked her path, keeping her in the trial.
She sighed with frustration, the air warming her face behind the bandages, as she retreated and backed up. She floated aimlessly in the trial for all of a minute before the Fog began to eat away at the realm until nothing was left but darkness.
Then, the fog faded and she reappeared where she and the other of the killers usually gathered in between trials.
In the realm, she saw the majority of the other killers and one member of the Legion though she didn’t know which one it was. Not that it mattered, however, as she only knew one of the girls’ names and this member was distinctly male.
Floating to a hay bale, Sally sat down on it and tossed her bonesaw on the ground by her feet. It fell with a clang and Sally bowed her head, frustrated. The trial hadn’t gone bad- after all, she’d sacrificed three out of four survivors- but it still wasn’t enough. She’d wanted to be successful in purifying all four yet the final one had escaped.
And he’d smirked at her as he’d run through the gates, too, knowing Sally was helpless to follow him. Damned survivors, she thought, digging her feet forcefully into the dirt.
“Well, it’s more than I got last trial,” someone said casually, inviting themselves to sit down beside her.
Sally looked up from watching her toes scrunch in the dirt and saw the Legion member she’d spotted a moment ago.
”Survivors, huh?” The kid scoffed. His shoulders were hunched, posture stiff.
Sally hummed and nodded, looking away from him.
”I’m Frank, by the way. I know you don’t know my name, so yeah.”
“Sally,” Sally murmured in response.
”Oh, so you do talk?” Frank joked.
Looking at the kid, Sally pursed her lips. The teenagers at the Asylum had been some of the worst, with no respect for their elders, and this Frank kid of the Legion suddenly reminded her of her younger patients.
”It’s just I haven’t seen you do anything other than sit on this hay bale during trials since we arrived,” Frank continued, seemingly unbothered by the glare she was shooting him behind her bandages.
It was true, however, what he’d said. At the killers’ realm between trials and when she wasn’t in her own realm, Sally didn’t do much other then sit on the same hay bale she was on now and contemplate.
Depending on how well the trial went, Sally mostly contemplated her life before the Entity or her two decades in the Asylum. Sometimes her thoughts were calm but flitting like a humming bird, other times they were dark and heavy like an anvil.
Again, it depended on how well her trial had gone.
”Anyway, I don’t know if you know, but there’s going to be a new killer today,” Frank informed Sally.
Sally perked up. She hadn’t known that. The Entity hadn’t told her and nor had anyone else aside from the Legion teen.
She turned slightly to said teen.
”What do you know?” She asked, voice wheezy.
”About the killer?”
Sally nodded slightly.
”Nothing.”
Sally tsked and huffed, looking away.
“Except that she’s a woman and if I understood correctly, she’s from from another time. As in, the past. Probably the nineteenth century or some shit like that. Ye ol’ plague. Ha.”
Sally looked at Frank again.
”Oh, I’m kidding. I’m sure she doesn’t have the plague.”
“Seventeenth century,” Sally corrected.
”What?” Frank asked.
”The plague. Seventeenth century, not the nineteenth.”
”Oh, right,” Frank chuckled, “yeah, I never paid attention at school.”
”Really.”
”I can sense your sarcasm,” Frank looked at her, though his face, like her own, was covered with a mask. Well, hers was bandaged.
“I didn’t say anything,” Sally said.
”You didn’t have to,” Frank accused.
There was no chance for Sally to reply to the Legion’s jest as, in interruption, the realm quaked slightly. Like the beginning of an earthquake except it stopped almost immediately.
All killers knew what that meant and curiously, Sally rose from the hay bale in time for the Fog to gather at everyone’s feet like smoke from a burning building. Black wisps licked at Sally’s bare toes as they brushed the grass.
She and the others watched as the black Fog climbed up the wall of a rotting, wooden shack coated in flaking red paint. It swirled for a few long moments, enough for Sally and the other killers to grow restless and impatient until finally, something happened.
Or rather, something began to leave the Fog. It was just a foot at first, bare like Sally’s own feet. Then, following that foot, a hand decorated with beautiful golden rings that looked like claws. The rings were decorated by red jewels.
Eventually, the rest of the new arrival stepped out of the Fog. Sally’s jaw almost dropped at the sight. This new killer... not only was she shockingly tall, she was also a strange mix of horrific and, well, Sally couldn’t think of any other word than beautiful.
On one side of her body, from the tips of her toes to the very top of her head, the woman was- Sally didn’t know how to describe it. It was like her very body was just rotting away.
One of her feet was black and missing a toe upon a longer glance, both her legs and arms were covered in blisters that Sally scrunched her nose at. And her face... It looked like she was missing an ear, her features looked to have sagged one one side with whatever was ailing her, her right eye gone and that side of her lip cleft, revealing her teeth though her mouth was closed on the other side.
She’d lost most of the hair on the right side of her head, the remaining hair dangling in clumps that looked wispy and dead. Though most of the hair loss was hidden by the golden headdress she wore. It was big and extravagant, and it even came down with prongs either side of her nose.
In her right hand, the woman held what Sally recognised as a censer. Thin wisps of something sweet wafted out of it, masking what Sally knew would be a rotting smell if the woman weren’t carrying around the censer.
Sally couldn’t tell if the woman was disgusting or breathtaking.
For a few moments, silence fell upon the killers. It was only broken briefly by the caw of a crow.
Eventually, the silence was broken by the Legion kid, whispering to Sally’s back.
”I might have told a lie. Maybe she does have the plague,” he said in an almost sheepish way.
Turning, Sally glared at him. The kid shrugged his shoulders.
...
As it turns out, this new killer didn’t speak a lick of English. In fact, she didn’t speak any language Sally had ever heard of (and she’d heard a lot in the two decades at the Asylum).
Communicating with her was hard, but the other killers somehow managed to get the woman’s name simply by pointing at themselves, saying their names, and then pointing at her. It was a very long-winded process but soon enough they had a name to call her.
Adiris.
It was a nice name, Sally thought. And somehow, it suited her. Sally couldn’t see the woman being called anything else though she’d never heard of the name Adiris before.
Soon enough, everyone grew bored of Adiris’ arrival and they began to disperse, heading to their own realms rather than the shared killer one. No one was sure whether this new killer knew her role here in the Entity’s realms, but she didn’t seem intimidated by the others nor did she look as innocent as a survivor so they simply assumed she did.
Sally, herself, was about to begin making her own way back to the Asylum until the next trial until she noticed the newbie shuffling around the shared realm looking something akin to a lost puppy.
Looking back towards the mist at the edge of the realm, Sally considered just going and leaving the woman to it. She could manage it, Sally thought, but then the glanced at Adiris again and saw the furrowed brow and the confusion.
Perhaps she doesn’t know her role, Sally thought with surprise.
With a sigh, Sally turned back around and floated back to Adiris. The latter looked up from where she had been studying the burning barrel in the centre of a circle of gathered hay bales and crates that the killers used to sit.
”Follow me,” she told Adiris then pivoted and began to float away before stopping abruptly and almost face-palming. Language barrier, she hastily reminded herself.
She turned and pointed at the woman who hadn’t moved an inch, then made a come here gesture. That seemed to do the trick as Adiris slowly began to move towards her.
Sally nodded and started floating backwards, making sure the woman had got the message and was still following, then span and floated into the mist, looking back every so often to make sure Adiris was still following.
At some point, she said something but it sounded like a bunch of noise to Sally so she ignored it and kept going.
Sally could only assume Adiris’ realm was the Temple she’d had her trial in earlier, but she had no idea where that was currently and the Entity clearly wasn’t inclined to tell her any time soon so she decided with hesitation that she’d just take her to the Asylum for now.
Looking back, Sally noticed Adiris watching her. She gave the woman a twitch of her lips though she couldn’t see it then turned back around lest she float into any trees.