Cooldown: 1 minute 2 seconds....
Sail had to say that even he was shaken at the state of his own mental. His body had been doing quite a good job at speed running through all emotions possible, some he never thought he could even have.
Holding a handle on himself while constantly keeping his mind spinning was something that left him wanting to laugh,cry and perhaps just fall over and die. Certainly it made him want to rest.
But he tried show nothing of such emotions or even properly feel them.
So long as he pre-occupied himself, he somehow managed to always keep moving.
Amidst all the new information received today he never once sat and tried to not understand. It felt like trying to study a new language and being given 200 words to memorise in the same day. Perhaps he was just destined to fail.
But Sail had an immense hatred for failure.
One such emotion that he had found within him today was the heights of fear.
In the short second before being smashed into by a lorry...
In the minute of being licked upon by an array of floating balls...
he had been struck with a sense of fear like none in his life.
Horror movies and the like had never truly scared him much other than having his body react to cheap jump scares. But now, after such experiences he would have to give his apologies for underestimating fear.
Looking back, he had no real clue what was so scary about the orbs themselves but a shill fell down his spine whenever he thought about them.
This is all to say, Sail once again found himself afraid...
Deep within the door to the right of the black eye, the signature giant red glove came out into view from the door. This time, it had none of its usual speed and instead floated gently out into the center of the gallery.
The black eye remained still with not a single laugh to be heard. Its lullaby had begun to slow back down to the original pace as it filled the room.
The springed limb approached gently before then opening up its clenched hand and placing its palm upwards.
The hand gently slithered forward, bending down enough to sit and drag itself across the ground.
A harsh metallic sound like the spinning a crank came about. The spring kept coiling back, becoming more and more taut.
"What is it..."
Shilling stood facing the giant red glove that settled in front of him and lifted the shrieking bell with his right hand.
From outside, the scene may have looked as though he was about to hand a gift to a giant.
His face was riddled with sweat and his black hair was completely disheveled. His insides were bleeding and his other arm was broken. Shilling managed to stare out ahead and face his fear.
He recalled an obsidian face that never faltered amidst an onslaught of punches.
The crank of the spring kept turning even though it already looked like it was about to snap.
"Ringing in.. 3.."
Sail quickly grabbed Shilling's wrist.
"WAIT"
"It.. it looks like its.. its about to pull back...any second..."
"..."
Time seemed to stand still as both parties waited...
The lullaby reached its end and the track started back up from the beginning.
"The arm is an equal part of its body...".
Shilling's bell was now held out almost above the palm of the ghoul.
"And??"
"I mean.. i mean the arm is an equal part of the soul... its being.. It doesn't have ears right?? ... Its whole body is a single one soul which reacts. It. It wants you to ring. It.. It plans to pull out of range"
Sail looked back into the crying black eye as though he could somehow read its intention.
"So... Its going to dodge?.."
The shrieking bell hung over the glove.
Shilling's hand shaked a touch but the clapper of the bell would never move without his command.
"It can't really dodge this close right?.. right... not without getting hit.."
Sail stood slightly beside Shilling and breathed out slowly..
"I can run with a dash skill"
"A dash? The C rank dash?? You have that as well?"
"Yes. You know it? Alright then.. The cooldown just finished right... now. If you can get this thing to drop once more im going to make a run for it and follow it"
"Follow the spring?"
"Yes. If there is no other thread its likely that following up to the base is the only way to its core. To its possessed object."
"Thread? Ok. ok. So.. so im ... gonna be alone again?"
"Yes"
"..."
"I'll be bothering it, you'll be fine."
"..."
"Probably.."
Shilling did not respond to such a thing and just kept inching ever closer.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
The glove sat gently but Shilling could feel an insatiable restlessness inside it.
Gingerly, Shilling lowered the bell .. more.. and more.. to the point where it was about almost touching the glove. His eyes shifted to look at Sail as if to ask for confirmation.
"..."
'At such a distance...'
Sail nodded and froze his nodding head into black ore.
"OOONN..."
At the immediate drop of sound, the fist shot back vanishing from view leaving a sonic boom against the air. The force was so much that both Sail and Shilling stumbled backwards.
As soon as the fist sucked behind the door all the white doors flashed.
The black eye and the fist were now gone, behind those doors the only thing seen was black shrubbery.
Behind every single door was black shrubbery...
Every door.. black hedges.. black flowers and ... black gates.
The ringing of the bell resounded out with a bang and all the doors shook as though in an earthquake. The doors trembled and forged black blood on their edges.
The door frames all bled in sync and poured down into pools across the gallery floor.
Each door was a passage to the same garden. From all angles Sail looked into a place flooded with all manor of dark fauna and gothic ornaments.
Inside the center of the graden sat a cage made of giant elegant gates.
The gates that surrounded the entire garden perimeter were also surrounding its center.
Within the cage was a floating figure. Between the grand elegant spires and twisted patterns of the gates was.. a ghoul.
Its being was mostly made up of two giant wrinkly white hands. Each finger was drowning in jewels and rings.
The fingers were slender as though they each had twelve joints in them and were all longer than the rest of its body.
Such hands were currently pressed and clenched around its tiny head as it gave forth and agonising wail.
All the doors shimmered and flipped back to displaying random locations.
"...They.."
The scream instantly was replaced with a visceral laughing and a nursery tune.
Sail's head span about looking at every which door in a panic.
He dialed into his ears and felt a static filled laugh swiftly teleporting its location every which way. It was a kind of twisted roulette where one had to predict the landing.
"Did.. did it not get stunned??.. What.. What just.."
The two instances of the same song rolled round and round before settling in on a set of doors on the same wall. One door was invisble, covered by a giant watercolor painting of a windmill and the other was clearly open slightly further along.
Sail quickly jumped over into the path between the doors and Shilling, freezing solid and staring into the bleeding door frames.
It was then that he clearly heard a coiling spring and the noise of paintings being reduced to splinters...
...And then another such sound... both behind him...
Nothing came from the doors before him.
"A feint.."
Shattering out of obsidian to spin around, he saw two flying springs smashing through the air.
Shilling had dived into a forward roll at first notice to barely dodge.
His body crashed into the floor. His broken ribs piercing him from inside as his body fell out of the roll, sliding across the floor like a corpse.
The fists were slurped back into the doors and the sound of the lullaby once more rolled around and landed. Much faster this time.
The sounds landed right behind Sail.. The same two doors...
Sail focused intently, his mind working for everything it could. He dug, dug for the noise.
The noise, the noise of the coming spring coil. React. React. Just react. The noise. The noise is...
A giant sucker punch blasted through an enormous portrait of a windmill. Shattering it into fragments.
The sucker punch smashed strait through and into the back of an obsidian figure with an explosive "BANG" as it bounced off. The figure was sent sliding in spirals with both feet sat firm across the wooden floor.
As he was sent spinning Sail saw another fist about to crash forwards from within another door. The fist was arced down slightly in order to perfectly smash strait into a body that was led out on the floor...
In these 10 seconds the Sucker punch was going to make certain to kill such a thing as that abhorrent bell.
Sails body after its third spin smashed out of its obsidian coating and the momentum threw him to the ground himself.
Scrambling up onto one leg with the other still kneeling against the the floor, Sail then activated dash and ran straight into the coming red death.
He ran full force, faster than a rolling wench worm, and jumped. He carried his momentum and clenched up into a shoulder bash as his body turned into dead black obsidian.
He crashed straight into the middle of the glove.
"BBBBBBBBBBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGG"
