BatIM Five Trials

Chapter Fifteen

After taking a solid five minutes to consider which route to take, Jade finally decided. She walked to the right, toward the angel route, since her caution on Alice was much too great to choose the other. The moment she stepped inside, the other gate slammed shut, startling Jade pretty badly. She went to see it, and sure enough the demon route was blocked off.

No turning back now, I guess. Jade thought to herself as she stepped back into the angel route. The room seemed rather nice, complete with a couch. This was probably the one room Jade could think of without a drop of ink in it. On the sofa inside the room, there was a recording by Susie Campbell, again written in the pretty cursive writing like the last one with an Alice plushie lingering beside it.

Jade sat down by the plushie as she pressed the play button, careful to avoid the candle in front of it which she had just noticed. Susie's voice sounded almost broken and distraught, catching Jade by total surprise.

". . . everything feels like it's coming apart! When I walked into the recording studio today, Sammy was there with that. . . Allison!"

Susie's voice dripped with as much venom when spitting out Allison's name as she could possibly manage for it to, and Jade flinched at this.

"Apparently, I didn't get the memo, Alice angel will now be voiced by miss Allison Pendle. A part of me died when he said that."

Susie had to catch her breath, which came in rather loudly and made it all the more obvious for Jade that she was crying.

"There's gotta be a way to fix this!" The recording clicked off.

So Susie got replaced as Alice's voice actor? I wonder why? I mean, Susie really didn't seem to take it well at all. Jade only pondered for a few minutes before getting up and moving on. Through the hall ahead there was another miracle station, which Jade took note of as she went. As she got to the next hall, which was a right turn from the last one, she suddenly had a feeling she wasn't alone, but didn't feel the same dread that she had with Alice. She wasn't at all tense as she walked down the hall. . . until a Bendy cutout leaned out and scared her. She let out a yelp and froze until a familiar face then poked out where the Bendy cutout had been.

"Boris! You scared me half to death!" Jade was incredibly relieved that it was a friend now, not a threat. At first, the wolf seemed relieved to see her, but then his ears lowered at the sight of her new injury. He approached with a concerned look, carrying what looked like a pipe of some kind as well.

"Don't worry Boris, it's not too serious, it's only a flesh wound." She tried to relieve him of his concerns, but in reality, she was a bit concerned herself. She wondered how much ink she had in her system, and how bad ink poisoning would get. Especially since this ink could apparently take form as searchers or living cartoons like Boris.

Boris didn't seem entirely convinced that the scratch wasn't only that on the surface. "Jade, what gave you that? Is there something dangerous that you ran into?"

Jade was hesitant in her reply, but what would the point be of keeping it secret? "Yes, I ran into Alice. . . now she wants to see if I'm 'worthy to walk with angels' whatever that means."

Boris just nodded, offering Jade the pipe. Though he still seemed concerned about her new injury, he hadn't brought any medical supplies with them, so he couldn't really do anything to help treat them either way.

"Oh, you found a weapon!" Jade took the pipe and tested swinging it a few times. It most certainly felt different than the axe, nowhere near as long, and the pipe didn't fit quite as well in her hand as the axe's handle did, but she couldn't complain. At least she was armed now. "Thank you very much Boris, this will surely come in handy."