Wander

//Liquid Courage//

It took Wander quite some time before he was able to calm down enough to start thinking again. He had curled up into a tight ball, rocking back and forth slowly, the flames from the lantern dancing from within the confines of their old, rusty container.

If the monster didn't manage to catch him and kill him, then a heart attack would end up being the thing to do him in instead.

He had no idea what had come over him that had made him try to even consider taking on that thing in a head-on fight. It was faster, stronger, smarter and had the advantage of stalking it's prey within familiar territory. It had every single odd working in it's favor.

Wander took a deep breath, slowly wrestling his emotions into submission to the best of his abilities. After doing that, he tried to come up with a course of action that he could take, so as to at least keep moving. Sitting here was doing him no good - he had to keep going, he had to keep trying to find a way out.

First and foremost, the girl was gone. He had no idea how she had disappeared so quickly, or where she could have gone. For all Wander knew, she was already dead, or worse - for he knew that even death was a welcome prospect when compared to having to try to avoid getting eaten by the demonic nightmare that stalked the walls of this horrible castle.

To make matters worse, Wander was hurt. In his frenzied rage, he had managed to hurt both of his hands to the point that it hurt to even move them, jagged splinters of wood protruding from his flesh at odd angles. That, coupled with the injury he had sustained earlier, made him feel completely helpless. His hands, two things he had always been able to count on, now where close to useless.

On top of all of that, Wander could feel the castle's dark atmosphere starting to poison him. He was seeing things, hearing things, and feeling things that weren't there. Was it possible to slip into a state of insanity as fast as he had? He had only been here for a couple of hours, and he was already losing his grip on the real world, falling further and further into a dark and twisted reality where he was not welcome.

Shaking his head, Wander winced as he slowly got to his feet, pain shooting through his hands as he pushed himself upright. He grabbed the lantern gingerly, trying the best that he could to avoid irritating his wounds any further, and held it up above him to look around.

His surroundings had not changed much, save for a layer of fresh saliva that covered the floor in his immediate area. Focusing on the recent events, Wander made his way back to the crude barricade and the men who lay in death's cold embrace, steeling his nerves before searching their bodies for anything helpful they might have carried.

His streak of bad luck continued until the last corpse he searched; a middle aged man of sturdy build that had no face, just as the others he had combed through. Holding a small, metal flask up to the lantern, Wander gave it a small shake, a sloshing sound echoing around the empty chamber. He unscrewed the lid, holding the unknown liquid to his nose, pulling it away after catching a small whiff of the liquid.

Alcohol. He smiled to himself, throwing his head back and downing the remaining liquid in one fluid motion. He threw the flask back down onto the man when he was finished, shaking his head and moving his tongue around is mouth slowly. As crazy as it sounded, he was glad he had found whatever he had just drank. Liquid courage was a powerful tool when used under the right circumstances, and as far as he was concerned, he could most definitely use as much courage as he could muster.

Inspecting the barricade, he frowned slightly. Why would the men lock themselves into a room that had only one exit? And an endless staircase wasn't exactly the best means of escape, so there had to be another way out of here. His imagination kept him from seeing what lay beyond that collection of bodies and wood, for fear that he would find something far more terrible then his current dilemma.

He turned around, following the wall around the entirety of the room. He came upon the staircase once more, passing by the wreck of wood that littered the ground, praying that he could find another way out.

Sadly, there wasn't. The rest of the room had no other apparent exit, which puzzled him further; what sort of church didn't have a bell tower? The only things of note where two large windows of some kind - no doubt stained glass, but it was hard to tell - that stretched towards the ceiling in massive depictions of glass shards.

He let the thought pass him by, coming to a stop in front of the makeshift barricade once more. As much as he hated it, Wander had concluded that the only viable means of escape would be through here. He loathed the thought, but welcomed it more then going back to the staircase and seeing what lay deeper in the dark confines of the nightmare he found himself in.

Readying himself, he gingerly grabbed one of the wooden benches, tears welled up in his eyes as he slowly began the agonizing process of breaking down the obstacle. His hands had started bleeding again after only a few minutes, the red fluid trickling down his arms and sending shivers down his spine.

When he finally finished, he risked a quick look down at his hands, wincing at the sight. The wood pieces had opened a wide array of new gashes, staining his hands crimson. Before moving on, he tried the best that he could to pull out as many of the fragments as possible, though a few of them he couldn't manage to remove, embedded into his hands in such a way that only a real doctor could ever hope of getting them out.

Wander returned his attention to the large doors before him, feeling a large lump in his throat start to form. It would be so much easier to just sit here and wait for the monster to come slithering and crawling back, to let it kill him quickly, to give up...

Just before he went to open the doors, he paused, frowning. Stained glass.....a church without a bell tower? That couldn't be normal...

Then it connected. Like a tiny flame in an endless expanse of darkness, details he had overlooked previously fell into place. He quickly rushed back towards the stained glass, praying that his torment had finally come to an end.