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Chapter Nine
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“And then he made this big BEOOWWW laser beam and it broke the whole tower in half!”
Ado felt like she was about to fall asleep. Sitting on the floor, her cheek bone digging into the base of her hand, her eyes kept closing out of sheer boredom at the expressive and involved story Corey relayed. Uchū’s eyes glowed with wonder and excitement, eagerly gripping his knees as he sat cross-legged on the floor aside Ado, his mouth open in amazement as each detail drew more awe to his features.
“And then the dragon came up out of the water, and he got hit by the top of the tower!” Corey gestured emphatically, just as enraptured by the story as Uchū was. “And that’s when Pataki turned to the king and said, ‘A second tower has hit the dragon.’”
“How is any of this relevant to what happened to you?” Ado finally protested, betraying her irritation at the distraction. “I don’t care about what you’ve been watching in the meantime, I want to know how you got here.”
“But I already told you I don’t know.” Corey frowned. “I was at the apartment, and then I was here. And the only thing I’ve seen since I’ve been here is David Buster’s Dragon Tower animated series. I’ve watched the whole thing like fifteen times.”
“It sounds awesome.” Uchū’s voice bubbled with enthusiasm. “How did you find out about it?”
“I found it here.” Corey gestured to the blackened desk with a swing of his head. “There was a couple different disks there, most of them were nature documentaries. I tried watching them to fall asleep but I couldn’t do it.”
“Is it insomnia, or just not boring enough for you?” Ado raised her eyebrows with some incredulity. “You seem to be eating well enough.”
“I’m trying to eat.” Corey crossed his arms, looking over his shoulder to see how far he needed to backpedal to lean against the desk. “I don’t think I’m digesting anything. I had some instant mashed potatoes one hundred and thirty one hours ago, and when I did a handstand it fell back down into my sinuses.”
“That is a horrible visual.” Uchū pressed his fingertips into his closed eyelids, trying to physically clear the mental image from his eyes. “I can’t imagine it as anything other than vomit.”
“Oh, it was totally dry.” Corey shrugged. “I don’t have water here, so I couldn’t actually make them. They were just the powder. I was sneezing for like probably twenty minutes afterwards.”
“Hold on.” Ado held up a palm. “You said hours. Do you not have a clock in here?”
“You tell me.” Corey glanced up at the ramshackle walls. “I figured out how to track the time with the runtime of a Dragon Tower episode. And every hour and a half, there’s a plink sound from somewhere under me.”
“How do you track the passage of time while you’re sleeping?” Uchū piped up, stretching himself vertically as if it would make him more audible. “Do you let the show autoplay overnight?”
“I… don’t really sleep,” Corey sheepishly replied, scratching the back of his head. “I haven’t actually slept at all that I can remember. Occasionally I black out, or something, because I’m suddenly on my face on the floor. I’m wondering if it’s why I can’t remember certain things.”
“How do you know if you’re not losing memory each time?” Ado did a masterful job of hiding her obvious prodding.
“With all of these,” Corey answered, gesturing with both arms to the hundreds of illustrations surrounding him. “I draw each key part of everything major I can remember, and I see if any one thing confuses me more than it did before, or if I ever forget why I drew something.”
“You’ll have to explain some of them to me.” Ado slowly rose from her position on the floor, towering over the occupants of the room as she softly stepped to the wall. “Who’s this one supposed to be?”
“That’s Ren,” Corey replied. The illustration showed a stick figure unidentifiable in any detail outside of its relative height in comparison to the other stick figures. “And the one next to him is me. That’s the day he took me to buy a really expensive suit.”
“What was the occasion?” Ado inquired, flinching slightly as her mind invented the expected wedding or funeral response she had come to anticipate from Kauri.
“The hotel. Big party that night.” Corey’s eyes scanned the walls for a moment before he eagerly pointed at one illustration at the topmost row, struggling to stay adhered to the dilapidated surface. “You can see the big ugly marble tiger they had at the lobby. All I know was it that it was supposed to break.”
“How come you haven’t left this little place?” Uchū asked, seemingly oblivious to the offended glare Ado shot in response as he rapidly changed the fruitful topic to one less relevant. “You’ve had plenty of time; have you ever checked around?”
“Why?” Corey replied. “It’s all dark around here. Oh!” His eyes lit up for a moment. “Did you hear that? It’s the plink.”
“Is this Ren here?” Ado tapped another drawing, doing her best to hide her irritation at the distraction. “He’s got someone different with his this time, and there’s something blue by his head.”
“Yeah, that’s Ren again.” Corey nodded at the indistinguishable stick figure. “He’s crying, but I don’t know why. The one next to him is Race.”
“There’s an orange circle next to his leg,” Uchū added, climbing out of his cross-legged position and struggling upwards with the grace and effortless finesse of an arthritic centenarian. “I’m seeing two of them up there, where that guy’s surrounded by orange and red squiggles. What’s that about?”
“Oh, that’s not something I experienced myself.” Corey waved away the illustration with a dismissive air, reaching into the desk drawer and pulling out a rubber band. “It’s the story of how Wild used the Demon eyes and got killed as a result. But that’s well before I got involved with the group.”
Uchū and Ado exchanged an open-mouth stare before simultaneously returning their gaze to Corey, who was stretching the rubber band across his thumb and forefinger to sling it across the room. “What do yo mean?” Ado finally broke the silence, making no effort to conceal her shock. “What group?”
“Are you kidding me?” Corey raised an eyebrow as the rubber band snapped through the air, striking one of the illustrations at the top of the opposite wall. It slid free from its restraining pins, fluttering through the air and landing at Uchū’s feet, depicting a very bad attempt at translating the design of an origami mask resembling a wolf. “The Wild Masks, duh.”
Ado’s bearing quickly regained its lost composure. With Uchū’s focus drawn heavily to the sheet of paper he now held, she took a confident step forwards. “Could you do something for me, please?”
—
A curl of smoke licked upwards.
The massive Sangone lumbered onward, unfazed by the tremendous weight upon his back. Dilapidated structures stood atop its shell, bound together through all manner of elaborate contraptions, a network of cables, steel beams, and metal melted into place as a tremendous spiderweb fastening the various buildings to each other.
Another curl of smoke spun through the night air, the figure leaning against the rubble of a former skyscraper and watching it rise with melancholic interest. Two eyes shrouded in shadow spied the caravan again, seeking any distant indicator of familiarity.
With none found, the figure retrieved a dirtied map from a hidden pocket, smearing it atop a crossed forearm. Briefly traveling between the map and the colossal turtle, the shrouded eyes relented, the hand dexterously folding the map and returning it to a second hidden pocket.
Standing up off the wall, the figure disappeared.
—
“I’m really regretting my saying yes,” Corey’s voice trembled.
“It’ll be alright,” Ado cooed, in clear contrast to the position she was in, crouched by Corey’s head with one knee on his shoulder to keep him pinned to the floor. “He’s only going to be there for a minute.”
“I’m working on it,” Uchū protested in retaliation to Ado’s gesturing him to hurry up, both arms and one of his legs melting down into Corey’s being. “This went a lot faster with you because you were willing. It’s not something I can just override whenever I want to.”
“You could,” Ado replied, giving a slight shrug when Uchū’s eyes snapped towards her. Uchū gravely shook his head in reply.
“No, seriously, can I take it back please?” Corey’s eyes strained to look up at Ado through his mop of golden hair. “This is really weird and I want it to stop.”
“Trust me, kid, this isn’t easy for any of us,” Uchū grunted, lowering his face to the middle of Corey’s shoulders before taking a deep breath and squishing his face against Corey’s skull, his malleable head slowly sinking in. “At least for you it’s mmmhph mprmmbh mbh”
“Please.” Corey pushed against Ado, his shoulder driven into the floor, his opposite arm restrained by her hand. “I don’t want this. Tell him to stop that almost there, it’s pretty close,” Uchū’s voice overrode Corey’s vocal chords, speaking through his body as if it were his own. “I’m nearly there, just a little something by his-”
With a violent shudder, Uchū suddenly rocketed out of Corey’s body, barely missing the improvised lamp and slamming into the ceiling with enough force to shake the building. The lamp dropped free from its restraint as he made impact, and his trembling hands caught its cord as he made his inevitable return earthwards.
“…Was that it?” Corey blinked, looking around as the light surrounding him swayed under Uchū’s weight. “That wasn’t so bad, actually.”
“What happened?” Ado stared into Uchū, reading the terror in his eyes as he clung desperately to the lamp cord. “What did you see in there?”
Uchū shook his head fervently in reply, unwilling to verbally relate his experience. The lamp sputtered suddenly, and after flickering for a moment, plunged the room into darkness. The shadow reigned supreme until a large grey hand wormed its way through the busted wall and snapped its fingers, producing a grinding sound much unlike an actual snap.
“We are out of time.” The voice of Relic rumbled. “Come quickly.”
“This is so weird.” Corey hopped back up to his feet, freed from his restraint as Ado reached out to catch the horrified Uchū. “I’ve had the lightbulb fail a couple of times before. Actually, I think that’s when I blacked out- hey,” his eyes rounded on Ado and Uchū. “How come I can see you guys?”
Both Ado and Uchū stared back at the complete darkness before them, betrayed only by the amber glow of his irises, which shook for a second as they turned to spot the stone hand that appeared. “Uh, that a friend?”
“Yep,” Ado swiftly replied, scooping Uchū up in her arm and beckoning for Corey to follow. “Three of us, Relic.”
“What’s the rush for?” Uchū protested, primarily due to his being treated like a small dog. “That thing’s not gonna follow us in here.”
Relic’s head turned to face the darkness in reply, a small grey blip appearing and reappearing as it dipped beneath shadowed shapes in its path. It could not be identified at the distance Relic stood from it, and the question lingered.
“We must hurry.”
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