The Defeat of the Fairies - Hope of a new Dawn

XX. The Great Escape pt.4

The group went through doors, corridors, stairs, and passageways. 

Nothing. No clue. 

The place was a maze bent on not giving up its trapped souls.

Hours went by, who knows, maybe days? There really was no way to tell. 

There was no distinction between day and night, if they looked out the windows, there was just a void. There wasn't either a sense of ordinary bodily needs, such as hunger or sleep, because it was a spiritual plane of existence. There was, however, a tiring of the mind, and a flourishing of pride and non-sensical grudges that kept them from talking. 

Conniving, the castle was driving them mad, and their response was to get mad at each other.

The shapeshifter was the most aware of it. Probably because he was beating himself up for the whole mess, or perhaps because he was too good-hearted to truly be corrupted? You pick.

Anyways, he mustered the guts to push through the resentment and at least make peace. If they were to spend eternity in that god-forsaken place and become just like the souls that had been following them, then what's the worst that could happen, right?

Jack's first attempts of friendly banter weren't exactly well received, but it was clear that Valory wasn't long gone. That state of bitterness wasn't natural to her, normally she would intentionally detach herself from hard feelings such as those.

At some point, noticing the blonde's exhaustion, and being as dear as he was, he innocently offered to turn into a horse... so she could ride him. Yes, that was how he phrased it.

She blushed and laughed but ultimately refused. Although tempting – take that however you'd like -, their exhaustion wasn't physical, so being carried would help little to nothing. As long she could carry her own weight, she would not willingly climb on his back again so soon.

Lacking her malice, the shapeshifter remained puzzled as to the humor and why her cheeks blushed as she kept giggling while they continued moving about those seemingly endless halls.

The color on Valory's hadn't even faded yet and a mysterious being came out of the shadows, startling their souls out of their bodies.

I suppose it was a useful trick, given it was an evil entity that feasts upon the souls of the living.

A fairy of sorts, but not the cute bubbly kind. It was a dark fae, born and thriving off the most negative and twisted of human emotions. Although it was evil, and it did evil things, it wasn't driven by it specifically. Its roots were entrained in feelings we have all dealt with at some point, maybe even on a daily basis, feelings such as envy, anger, hate, fear, and wallowing.

It had rotten flesh, a skinless skull, and, antlers and wings composed of tiny, tiny bones. Oh, and let's not forget the icing on this putrid cake; maggots. There were fat, juicy maggots coming out of every imaginable hole possible. They were everywhere.

The dreadful thing was a Sluagh Lord, surrounded by its lesser selves.

A most disgusting sight to behold. The stench alone made Valory's guts want to come out, but she forced herself to swallow it down. She couldn't simply barf mid the thing's speech; she was certain it would have killed her then and there had she done it! Bodily functions really can be a nuisance sometimes, yet we endure, don't we?

In an annoyed manner and producing a self-inflated speech, the Sluagh Lord told the group it had been having trouble eradicating a mischievous little trickster from its castle.