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The water drips down the stone pillars. It is deathly cold. Kinger is sitting with Pomni, who is hyperventilating. Jax is a bit away from them, leaning against a wall, ears down, body shaking and breathing hard. It is dark. too dark.
Kinger tells them that it's “not really typical of what you’d think hell would be.”
This prompts Pomni, shaken and traumatized as she is, to burst into a fit. “We… are LITERALLY in Hell right now. HELL! Of course I’d be in Hell. How could I not be in literal Hell right now?”
Kinger Interrupts her. “Just try to stay calm right now. I’m sure Caine included a way to escape.”
Jax doesn’t speak, just stares into the darkness for some time. He sees something. A corner that’s out of place, a hole into nothingness. A stop sign.
He gets up, still trembling and groans. It’s a groan that comes from deep within him. “It’s fine. you just gotta get out of here. Come on.” Pomni and Kinger get up and follow Jax towards the fogged-out hallway near the end of the room.
He stops at the hall, and Kinger stops Pomni.
“hold on.” Kinger takes an eye, “lemme take a look.” and throws it into the hall, taking note of the tiny floating glowing things that make up the mist.
As his eye looks around, he finds a staircase out. “Hey, Jax, Pomni, there’s a staircase on the other end. It could be a way out, though i’m worried about what that recording said.” Pomni decides that she’s “just, going to go fast.” and does so. “WAIT!!!”
she doesn’t make it far. Her body contorts in ways that make her rigging crack. The fog floods into her, changing her. “POMNI!” Pomni’s eyes become yellow. Her voice distorted, Pomni cackles evilly, and says one long drawn-out word, “fReEeEeDoOoOoM.”
Kinger is about to grab them from range and pull them back out, but they don’t go to the stairs; they leap back down the hall, towards Jax. they both get sent into the wall by the horrifically enhanced strength it has, and it starts clawing at him. He can’t fight back, only make loud shouts and yells of terror as - to him - it switches between the forms of a distorted but still recognizable Pomni and something else… something black… something sharp… it can’t have happened to her, not now.
“GIve iN tO ThE DarKNESs, bUnNYboy. You’RE HEADliGHtS arE AlReAdy BROKEn. hegheghEHghEHGheghEhEE. DriVING In My Ca- UgH!” Kinger grabs them and separates Pomni from Jax by heaving her away. She plants right against the wall.
Kinger takes his shotgun and bashes Pomni with the stock. “AnD hOw's yOuR WiFe, KiNgEr?” He hits her in the face, removing the last of the souls. She gasps for breath. Jax stares at the scene with a face of pure terror.
Then he withdraws. The world feels like it’s moving.
Pomni’s eyes do that scribble-y traumatized thing and she collapses into Kinger. “The souls must be attracted to living things. They just want to leave. Man… Seven years of Comp-Sci for this, huh?”
“Why?” asks Pomni.
Kinger looks at her.
She gets off him. “Every day I spend here is one nightmare after the next! I knew it would end up like this! He –” she drops to her knees. “He just wants me to suffer. I really am in Hell.”
Jax risks a frightened glance at her, the black thing stares b- he withdraws further.
Stop, please..
“Don’t say that. Let's just take a moment to relax while we’re not under attack?” Kinger gets down to her (and currently Jax’s) level. Pomni begins sobbing.
Kinger begins to exposit. “It was my fault we went down this path, wasn’t it? I’m really sorry for that.” Pomni asks him “why are you acting like you’re not crazy anymore? You’ve been acting sane for nearly the entire adventure now?”
Kinger chuckles and says “I’m normally not too good with memories, but being surrounded in darkness always… Brings me back to a certain time. Right after my wife had – had abstracted… I don’t recall the exact string of events, but we both ended up in the fort together. And it was dark. The darkness seemed to calm her down a bit. The harsh, jagged edges smoothed out, and she didn’t seem aggravated anymore. She wasn’t the same as before, but she was calm enough to touch one last time… before she got sent to the cellar. I’m always taken back to that moment when engulfed in darkness.”
Pomni asks “you had a wife, here i-in the circu-”
the scene plops out of existence. She is back in the main room where the doors are. Still in her position, though.
After one second, Ragatha continues talking to Caine. “You said you would pull THEM out.”
“did I say that?” caine’s voice comes from the door. “No.” he points up to the lightbulb which comically dings. “oh, yeah, I didn’t. After all, you asked me to pull POMNI out. You didn’t ask me to go into the room, check on all of them, then pull them all out. Besides, this was the moset efficient method.”
“Fine, pull them out too.” Pomni declares. “Well, but- uh, but they’re doing so well.”
Kinger stares at the now absent spot where Pomni was for a few seconds.
She doesn’t come back. He sighs, and mutters under his breath. “Darn, it seems he’s leaving us here.”
He gets up and walks over to (and sits next to) Jax, who is still trying in vain to hide from it.
For a minute or so, they don’t speak at all, until Jax starts. “Leave. Please.”
Kinger looks at him. “Why?” Jax raises his head. “You know why. We’re the two most likely to find it. So, he knows he needs to do something about us. He’s already getting leverage in me, I won’t last much longer, and when it finally snaps, I’ll turn you as well. So please, make sure that at least one of us makes it out alive. Run.”
Kinger stares back morosely. Then shrugs as if he doesn’t even care. “Nah.”
He stills takes this seriously. “I don’t know much about how it works, but I know that if the worst comes to worst, I can attempt to wake you up. As many times as I like. And I will not let another one go. Not while I'm still here.”
Jax is still looking down at himself, as if even trying to look up will show something horrible. “I’m already standing on the knife’s edge. Why are you trying to pull me back?”
He looks at his trembling hand. The darkness and his magenta skin almost mix into a color resembling blood. “I think I heard it happens slowly and gently. You know. You lose all your worries and fade.”
“I would not describe her go-” he snaps back at kinger. His body quivers. “YOU DON’T GET TO TALK ABOUT THEM!”
Kinger isn’t even fazed. Jax goes back to staring into his now trembling body.
“I may not have been there for everyone, but I’ve been in here ever since the first. I’ve even stopped a few actually. So I know that as long as I won’t let you go, I can still find you a way out.”
Kinger takes Jax’s trembling hands and holds them. Jax looks at his face. “It’s hard just trying to keep going…” he starts tearing up. “I lost so much, I-”
“But that doesn’t mean you have to lose yourself, too. I was going to say to her, a memory can mean a lot, especially here. And you have a lot of memories. Memories you can look back on, memories you can cherish. Don’t waste them. Use what little strength you have and keep pulling yourself up every day. Just keep going. And don’t ever stop.”
Jax glances back at the (very big) hole. Something reaches out. “Okay.”
Kinger pulls him up. “Well, if we’re going to do this, we better do it fast.” they make it back to the entrance to the hall.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees that the rest of the room seems to have stopped existing.
He chuckles and stares right into the fourth wall, saying brightly “well, I hope you’re happy, viewers, because now you get to see what happens when I hold my breath.” he takes a deep breath in, and…
… he closes the door behind him. Still staring directly at Caine with what can only be described as an expression of hatred. The rest of them are a bit more miffed than usual, as well, and are similarly exchanging death glares at the toothy ringleader. Caine states flatly ”See, they’re fine.” … Pomni breaks the silence. “What if they abstracted in there?”
“Uh… roll credits.”
/TADC Credits\