I awoke to see a brick ceiling directly above me and a feeling of softness below. Both the pounding headache and sickness were absent. I was about to sit up until I took a breath. The smell was an assault on the senses. It was a pungent sweet odor at first however, it was quickly obvious that the scent of rotting flesh was more dominating. The breath caught in my throat as I did not want to inhale through my nose. I managed to sit upon my second attempt. It was then that I realized that I was on a bed, a bed! I haven't been in a bed in so long. I took a long look around the room. Most of it appeared to have an ancient brick-like architecture, with golden accents around each corner. It was mesmerizing to look at. And at the centerpiece of it all, was a large woman in a white robe, she appeared to be mixing some sort of liquids and other materials. It took me a few seconds to realize who I was looking at. I felt my body tense up as I tried to stop myself from squealing in fear. Unfortunately, my attempts were in vain as a slight squeak escaped my lips. The plague's head turned around as she finally realized that I was awake. She slowly got up and began making her way toward me. I began to try and move but I felt like my legs were paralyzed, or rather strapped to the bed for whatever ungodly reason. As she began to get closer I found myself pleading for my life. "No please don't," I said, my voice sounding weak and tired. It wasn't even a decent plea for mercy, it just sounded like a pathetic request.
When she finally reached the bed, she reached her hands under the covers and yanked off the leather straps that held me in place. When she did that I felt my body scream at me to run, to get out of there and not look back. Yet I couldn't, for whatever reason I just couldn't. So I just ended up letting her lean over me. I looked up at her face, half of it was rotted it lacked even the most basic skin color. It just looked like mangled flesh from a zombie. However, the other half of her face still retained her former beauty. Her green eye that looked like it had seen so much pain, was no longer as piercing as it normally was in trials. I watched as her eye seemed to study me as she looked me up and down. I felt a slight blush in my cheeks as she did so, I'm not too sure why I began to blush, but it didn't help when the woman decided to run her golden claws over my face. Despite their coldness, my body heated up. I heard her mumble something I couldn't quite make out but it was certainly in English. I saw a small smile pull at her lips before she walked away and sat back down.
I was shaken by the interaction slightly, but against my better judgment, I decided to speak up. "You can speak English?" I questioned. I immediately cringed at what I said. From what I knew about the plague she was from ancient Babylon, so I wouldn't imagine that she spoke English. I cringed afterward because we had taught some of the non-English speaking survivors like Yui the language in a rather impressively short period. So it would be pretty damn obvious that this would be the case with her. The woman in front of me turned her head once more and spoke.
"A limited amount but yes, I do." She spoke with a rather thick accent of indiscernible origin. She continued mixing the liquids as if nothing had happened.
"So....what's your name?" I realized how weirdly innocent of a question that was. A better one would have been: "why did you kidnap me and take me to your strange living area/lab place?"
"Adiris" she replied. I didn't realize how nice her voice was to listen to, it was uniquely soothing. I quickly shook my head, attempting to purge my mind of the hormonal thoughts that polluted it. "Yours is y/n, correct?" She asked. I could hear her voice slightly change when she spoke that sentence. It sounded oddly exited now for whatever reason.
"Yeah, yeah that's me." I responded a bit cautiously yet oddly intrigued. "How did you know my name?" I feel my own voice begin to quiver as the question left my lips.
"You seem to be quite the altruistic one. Your name always seems the one called when someone gets hurt, it's quite admirable really." She turned around when she spoke, a smile appeared on her face once more. Before I could ask her why she took me here, she got up from desk and made her way over to the bed and held out her hand to me. "I wish to take you somewhere, come with me." Without really any other option, I obliged and took her jeweled hand. She pulled me on to my feet and began to lead me to an unknown destination.
It was quite strange to see all of the realms in their more pure forms. No little structures with pallets and windows. Just grass, corn, sand, or snow. All appearing untouched by the entity, as if pulled straight from when they were taken. Eventually I head the sound of running water, not like the pools of devotion but more akin to a waterfall. I quickly saw the source of the sound, as it was indeed a waterfall. Not only that, a beautiful forest surrounded the area, perfectly lit by a setting sun. Adiris loosened her grip of my hand as she sat down on a grass ledge. I immediately followed suit. Sitting myself down right next to her, we stared off into the waterfall and forest for a few moments before I spoke. "This is.....gorgeous." Adiris turned her head to face me and replied with a smile. Before facing back to the waterfall. I thought for a few moments before I asked her the question that I had been meaning to ask as soon as I arrived: "Why did you take me?" I looked over to her after I said that. She was still staring at the waterfall in silence. Yet, I could tell that she was carefully choosing her next words. After a few more slightly awkward moments of silence, she finally replied:
"I have seen..... so much bloodshed in my life. From the sacrifices that my people used to make to our gods that loved us so dearly, to the endless amount of times that I have impaled you all on that damn hook. I have seen more blood then I would have ever thought possible. When I was first taken, I truly believed the entity was the sea goat god that I had devoted my entire life to. That every sacrifice I made, every drop of blood that I spilled, was simply showing devotion to a god that I thought had taken me so that my people could live. I believed this for a long time, until I looked into....it's eyes, those black, evil, inhuman eyes." Adiris paused, I saw her wipe
her eye as she cleared her throat. I near instantly figured out who or rather what she was talking about, but I chose not to say anything. I knew letting the her just talk here was the best thing I could do. As I had done this many many times before. After composing herself, Adiris continued, her voice still shaking slightly. "Killers acquire new fabrics the same way survivors do. Did you know that? The only reason I know that is because I've seen a survivor change clothing mid trial. One minute they were running from me, the next, the fog came over them for a moment and they were in new clothing. It really is quite the strange sight isn't it?" Adiris chuckled slightly before continuing. "One day it, the shape, acquired new fabrics. When us killers first saw this, some of us laughed, others of us were flustered as the outfit showed quite a bit of skin." I could see the healthy side of Adiris's face start to turn a crimson color. "But the outfit set off something within Sally because as soon and she saw him, she began lunging at him while screeching something about cleansing the sick of their impurities. I believe it was; Me, Danny, and Max who reacted quick enough to try get Sally away from him. We did, just not before Sally got stabbed through her hand. As I pulled Sally away from the shape I looked into his eyes. When I did that, I realized something. I realized that no god that I worshipped could house something and inhumanly evil as that thing. So, I screamed. I screamed not because I was scared, but because I finally understood that the being I served wasn't the god that I thought had loved me and saved my people, but something else entirely, something that was eternally hungry and wanted to feed. So I sat there, shaking and crying, as I fully realized that I was lied to, and that there was nothing I could do to change what I am now. Soon after that incident, that pyramid thing arrived. With him came pain and punishment, he punished all of us. He made us not only see, but feel all of our sins. I saw creatures who looked like all of the people that I had sacrificed, and they were all coming after me. The pyramid thing showed me what no one else could. That I was wrong. That I was always wrong, everything I did was in vain and that I would spend the rest of eternity shedding more and more blood. With that I came the realization that I could do nothing about it. Then you arrived into the fog. Initially when I saw you, I thought nothing of you. Simply a new survivor to sacrifice. Yet you were more than that, more than I ever expected. I saw the way you not only relentlessly saved your friends, but seemingly loved them too. You were ready to give yourself up from the beginning if it meant everyone else could live. Just like how I had done many years ago. So when I sacrificed you for the first time, it felt so wrong. Much worse than all the previous times that I had done so to the other survivors. During the moment of your sacrifice, I vowed that I would never, that I could never, sacrifice you again. So when I heard you begin to cry. I knew that I couldn't just let you live like normal. I had to do something else, something more."
"Adiris, I don't even know what to fully say." I shook my head trying to try to force my mind to come up with some sort of words. "Wait, does that mean every time I snuck past you, every time I did something incredibly stupid, you actually saw me but just pretended not to?" She nodded. "Uh thank you I suppose." I kind wanted to hug her at the moment, but I didn't know if I'd get some sort of disease. Quickly, I heard an impulsive yet valid thought run through my head. "Just do it you pussy." So I wrapped my arms around her and held my breath so I didn't have to smell the disgustingly sweet smell of rot the she always carried with her. I felt Adiris jump from the show of affection before she quickly returned the embrace. I felt her run her claws through my hair, causing a deeply relaxing sensation to spread throughout me. We sat there like that for a while, before Adiris spotted some of the fog coming towards one of us. She got up and said;
"I believe it is coming for me." She stepped towards the fog, ready for another trial to begin. She turned around before she fully stepped in. "The way back should be a straight line from where we came from, make sure not to wander, I don't want some of the others to find you." I nodded in response.
"Goodbye Adiris." I waved to her, feeling slightly saddened that out time together had ended so abruptly. That last thing I saw was her wave back before the fog seemed to swallow her whole.
A/N: I apologize for this being so long, I feeling like splitting the chapter up would have been unnecessary as there isn't enough story to justify that. Most chapters will not be this long, this is just and exception.
