Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

…

Finally.

This took so long… 

istgIdied294timesfidiehere-

The young person stood in front of an open door labelled A-1000

“What is this?” they spoke.

In the following room, was an ever so familiar wooden bridge. Why was it so familiar? They didn't remember anything. 

On the bridge itself, there was an item. It appeared to be some sort of scanner.

The bridge leads to a door, The Exit.

Picking up the item and going through the exit, a flash of white appeared in the person’s vision. Opening their eyes, they find that they’re in the Infirmary.

“Why here of all places?”, she said. They thought that at least it would've let them finally leave this place, but they weren't surprised.

They felt something was off, yet they brushed off that feeling.

Unbeknownst to them, something was very off.

She proceeded to the following doors, up until door 100, and put the scanner into the rift. Then, the ending scene happened once more, and now she was back to the start.

The familiar elevator music played once more, and before proceeding the following room, they checked their backpack just in case something new was in there. The items they brought when they first entered the Hotel would always replenish whenever they died. She took pack of snickers bars, Rush always liked them for some reason, it's how they managed to "befriend" it.

Passing through the second room, a glitched white face appeared in their field of vision.

What is this place? Strange, yet interesting. Is this where that person came from? Were there others here? This place looks vintage. What is that music? Similar feeling to mine, yet different. What is that blue light? Why am I here? Why are we here? 

Thoughts and questions occupied the yellow light’s mind, until the blue light spoke.

“You seem familiar. Where did you come from?”. Nothing was ever in the void before, save for me and that glitchy one. This one doesn't know how it got here, it seems. 

“I have never met someone so similar to me before, and where I’m from? Iit's place called ‘’The Rooms’. It is... a strange place to say the least. Perhaps this one may be stranger.”

“Quite interesting. Like you said, this place is another strange one. What is your name?”

“Mine, they call me... Guiding Light.”

“…The few people I’ve met called me the Curious Light. It seems we are quite similar, after all.”

Rush was rushing through the rooms as per usual, until it smelled something.

Snickers, did they call it? Or chocolate, maybe? It doesn’t matter what it’s called. I want it.

It rushed to the source of the smell, which was at the third door.

“You.”

Josie let out a sigh. “Why are you so obsessed with these?”, they said as the pulled out the whole pack out of their bag.

“They were delicious. It makes me faster, too.”

“It's because of something called 'sugar'. But before I give these to you…”, they stopped for a moment.

“’Tell me if there are any new entities, m’kay? More specifically a scribble smily face and a distorted red smily face.”

“Fine. Just give.”

“Alrighty…” They gave it the whole pack and it went on its way.

I need to make sure, They thought.

I don’t want more things to deal with. 

Especially that stupid face. 

Screech was drawing like any child would. It drew itself with Seek, who usually takes care of it, and Figure, who would always listen whenever Screech wanted to ramble about something.

Then, the sound of a metallic thumping could be heard. It was quiet, yet discernable from the ambient sounds within the hotel. It was glitchy as well. The sound came from the next room and it slowly got louder. Screech tried to open the door but something was blocking it…

“Oh, a new friend?”, the small ball covered in black goop said.

Chapter Text

The entity behind the door had sensed the presence of someone in the room. It had prepared to strike.

The door opened, revealing a slightly pixelated scribble of a crudely drawn smiley face. It moved fast, but not faster than someone like Rush, and moved towards the closets in the room. Yet upon seeing the small entity, it stopped.

This was not a person, it was… another entity? Perhaps it could help me with this odd situation.

“Hello!”, Screech said to the smiley face. “Are you a new friend? What’s your name? I’m Screech!”

Ah, it’s a child. “I am who they would call A-120. Do you know where we are, little one? You see, I am lost, and my… other friends are lost here too. Have you seen them?”, the face spoke.

“You speak just like some of my friends!” It said. “You’re in the hotel, it’s my home.” Then, it held out its drawing to the face. “This one is Seek and That one is the Figure! They know a loott about the hotel, maybe they know where your friends are!”. 

“Interesting. Would you mind taking me to them?”

“Okay, follow me!”. 

Just like that, A-120 followed Screech and both were heading to the Library. The face stayed cautious, it did not know if this place and its inhabitants could be trusted or the possible dangers within it.

It could easily overpower the small entity if it leads it to danger. 

Door 30.

Josie was halfway there to the entrance of the Rooms. She already went there a multitude of times, so it should be no hassle, right?

Nope.

Despite such entities like Rush and Screech not present, the former because they gave it something it liked and the latter likely being busy at a later room, A-90 would make Josie much more cautious and thus slower, not only that, but also make the other rarer entities much harder.

On door 20, the Eyes appeared. Usually, it would take a second for them to fully form inside a room, during which Josie would have time to look away, but A-90 appeared at that exact moment. Not being able to look away, blink, or even move their eyes away from the entity, they took a lot of damage. They were pretty pissed about that. 

Opening the door to Room 31, the lights flickered, and a few of Seek’s eyes could be seen on the walls. 

A-60 had no idea where it was. One second it was in the Rooms, now it was wherever this was.

It was in a very dark room, only illuminated by its red glow. Exploring the room further, two stairs leading to two doors were at either side of the entity, and there was a metal gate preventing access to a door at the front. Upon inspecting and moving closer, a number plate can be found, with the number “0062” engraved on it. Opposite to the gate was an open door, its number plate stating “0061”.

Not knowing what to do, it moved to door 61 and travelled to the doors before.

0060. Familiar music could be heard from far away, it felt like home. I’m just hearing things. Homesick, probably, but why would I miss that wretched place?

0059. Another dark room.

0058. A normal room.

0057.

A distant sound could be heard.  It was low pitched and distorted. Then, the sound disappeared… and appeared again, but this time it came from farther away and getting closer and closer at alarming speeds.

Being the absolute competitive dumbass that it is, A-60 rushed towards the source of the sound, producing a high-pitched glitched scream, accompanied by a distorted static noise, wishing to see what it was and that A-60 was better than it. 

-----

Ambush was sure that the human didn’t reach that far yet, and that there were no other humans present, yet it had sensed a presence in door 0057, though no previous doors were open. Odd, perhaps the human somehow reached a shortcut and was just backtracking?

Or, maybe it is a new entity.

Nevertheless, it rushed through the rooms until it reache-

What was that?

Something as fast as someone like Rush passed Ambush.

Ambush would sometimes glow green and red rather than green and magenta, but that red glow came from something entirely different.

And so it is something new… but why would there be two of essentially the same thing? Perhaps it does more than just that.

The other entity realized they went pass each other, and so it rushed back, towards the green glitched pale face.

…

“OW”

“WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU”

“YOU JUST BIT ME!?!”

“ANSWER MY QUESTION”

“I SHOULD BE ASKING THE SAME”

“ANSWER MY QUESTION VACCUM CLEANER”

“WHAT ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT?!?”

“WHERE AM I”

“You are in the Hotel.”

“OK THEN ANSWER MY OTHER QUESTION?!?”

“YOU LITERALLY BIT ME WHY SHOULD I?”

“IM BETTER THAN YOU”

“NOW WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?!” 

"DON'T CARE + DIDN'T ASK + L + RATIO +CRINGE + CRY ABOUT IT" 

"Jesse what the fuck are you talking about?!"

“YOU TWO. SHUT UP.”. Another voice came in from a nearby closet. “Stop being so loud.”

“YOU ARE NOT PART OF THIS, HIDE.”

“Sigh, do I have to do this?”

“Do… what?”

A small dark tentacle came out of the closet holding what seems to be a plushie of a lamp with a simplistic cartoonish face and limbs. Its features were colored copper, and its head was blue and cracked.

“IS THAT MY- MY-”

“-Airy plush. If you do not stop, I will burn him in the fires near Seek’s domain.”

“…ok, we'll stop.”

The closet then gave the plush to Ambush.

“No way, I have one of those! Extremely based ONE by CheesyHFJ found on Youtube dot com fan..”

“Assuming that ‘based’ is a compliment, thank you. Would you like to join me in convincing Rush to watch the show and nag it about random things? “

“Yea sure why not, I’m A-60 by the way.”

“I am known as Ambush.”

“You are not even going to question why this entity is here, nor care about your injury? A-60 does not seem like it belongs.”

“And they already left. What is a 'ONE', anyways? Why is the lamp named Airy? Wait- do they have internet here? How-” 

The entity sighed. "I shouldn't think about this too much. It only opens more questions. Perhaps I should rest a bit..."

An endless void, a cool gray reaching as far as the eye can see. The only thing located within it is the Hotel and two glittering lights.

A view of the Hotel in this void was odd, the only way to describe it is as if you were spectating a location in a video game while clipped out of bounds. 

The two lights were watching, the yellow one asking questions, and the blue one happily answering them. There were only few who could access this void, let alone be willing to accompany the light.

"Who is that, in the window?"

"That is Window, otherwise known as Sally. They are only there to watch." 

“Does the rain ever stop?”

“For as long as I have been here, no.”

“Who are those two? In the library.”

“That is Seek and the other is the Figure. They are the ’main’ entities in the Hotel. They seem to be friends.”

The aforementioned entities seemed to say farewell to each other, the humanoid black goop sinking into the floorboards and travelling somewhere else.

“What about that person?”

“Ah, that’s Josie. They’ve been here for a long time. I doubt they need much of my help anymore at this point, yet she seem to like my company even if we cannot directly talk.”

The human looked slightly panicked, moving around in the room, thinking about something.

“Oh, they’ve been in the Rooms before. They looked very determined to reach the end there, and they did! Watching them and their experience helped.”

“Helped? Help with what?”. Now it was the one who became curious.

“My curiosity, and… something else.”

“Interesting. I hope you don’t mind me asking, what was that white face?”. It was the one asking questions now.

“That one? Usually I don’t tell people what they do, but…”

“It’s called A-90, it usually appears after the room A-0090. It appears in someone’s peripheral vision for a moment before striking. It seems that to avoid it, you have to stand very still and not move for the duration of its attack. It does show a red stop sign, after all. That’s what I’ve seen from my observations.”

“Would you like to know more about them?”