Abyssal Awakening-Chapter 968: Playing Tag

From the fog, the silhouette started to hum a tune.

Her footsteps were light, she twirled in the veil.

Her hair fluttered in the wind while the monsters around them backed away.

Even from this distance, Alice felt a sense of unease like no other.

Her instincts warning her, telling her to run.

But to where?

They haven’t escaped the Nightmare. No names can be summoned nor could she teleport.

Clenching her jaw, Alice pulled back her bowstring and aimed into the air.

"What are you doing?" Miki frowned.

She too saw the silhouette and humming but it seemed to be a human.

At least for now.

Shouldn’t they see what was behind the veil before attacking?

"Act first talk later!" Alice fired the bow as it rained down from above.

A wall of flesh and blood was constructed in an instant, blocking the path between them.

Without any hesitation, Alice grabbed Miki by the wrist and turned around.

"Huh? Wha-!"

"F*CKING RUN!" Alice shouted, not wanting to spend another second in this place.

They couldn’t teleport so the only thing they can do was backtrack! As fast as they could, as far as they could.

They ran.

It wasn’t a tactical retreat not was it repositioning.

It was a full on sprint for their lives.

Just instinct and survival.

Alice’s boots slammed against the cracked stone as she threw three arrows into the air.

She grabbed the first one before it fell, firing an arrow into the head of a monster waiting on the roof.

As the next one fell, she fired it towards the beast lurking behind the alleyway.

With the last one, she turned her body once more and fired it behind them, setting another flesh wall hoping to slow the thing chasing after them.

Yet behind this mound of flesh, they heard a giggle.

Soft, light...

Childlike even.

"Hehe~ Are we playing tag? Or would it be hide and seek?"

Miki didn’t look back.

She couldn’t feel the anomaly Alice was feeling.

However...

When the strongest person you have ever seen starts running as if their life depended on it, Miki was NOT going to question why.

Only fools ignored the reaction of the strong one and stayed behind to question things.

She was no fool.

Stabbing her spear into the ground, she used it as a vault, catapulting herself into the air as flames twisted around her arm.

"HAH!!!" Tossing her spear like a javalin, she cleared a path out in front of them as Alice continued to set barriers behind them.

Yet doing so only served as a reminder that whatever was chasing them was keeping a consistent distance.

They could hear the walls crumbling in the distance.

One by one, slowly, methodically.

"FASTER!" Alice screamed, sweat dripping down her back.

"I’M RUNNING AS FAST AS I CAN!" Miki snapped back. Her lungs screaming for air as she vaulted over a collapsed pillar without breaking her stride.

Yet no matter how they sped up, the sound behind them never changed.

Same distance, same pace.

The same soft skipping footsteps and childish giggle.

Tap...

Tap...

Tap...

The girl continued to hum, continued to dance.

Alice clenched her jaw, loading three arrows into her bow.

This time it wasn’t for a barrier.

When her fight or flight instincts kicks in and flight didn’t work...

There was only one choice.

FIGHT!

Three arrows ripped through the air as it sunk into the fog.

*Giggle...

Right behind the ear.

A shiver ran down Alice’s spine.

So far yet so close.

Alice watched as her arrows were snatched from the air.

"Hehe... You missed~ Are we not playing tag anymore? Is it time to hide and seek? Or shall we play a different game?"

Her voice was delighted, ecstatic.

Like a child who had finally found someone willing to stay and play.

The girl skipped towards the boundary of the fog.

Light steps, excited.

Alice couldn’t breathe.

Her body refused to move.

She wanted to fire another arrow, to disrupt the approach of this thing but couldn’t.

Her instincts screamed louder than ever before...

But she stood frozen.

The girl lifted her foot.

Just one more step.

One more before she breaks free of the fog.

Then...

*Clap.

The sound was soft.

Not loud, not violent. A simple clap and reality fractured.

Neither Alice nor Miki had time to react as the world folded around them.

The sound of breaking glass in their ears as the ground gave out beneath them.

A spiral of different nightmares converging into one.

Both of them fell. It was neither downward nor upward. Their bodies were thrown around like a hurricane, through countless scenes that flashed by too fast to process.

A burning city, a sky filled with screams.

Blood rain, the beasts erupting from the ground.

Layer after layer after layer.

Nightmares nested inside nightmares.

Each one trying to overwrite the previous.

Each one more unstable.

When the world around them turned crimson, when the space was filled with water, a single ominous moon hung overhead, shining down red light that broke through the water’s surface.

They felt a violent pull, their body being dragged under then out of the water.

###

The girl stepped out of the fog.

The smile on her face slowly fading away seeing the empty streets.

"Nyer!" She shouted, stomping her foot in annoyance.

"I told you not yet." Nyer sighed, his hand patting the girl’s hair.

Yet the moment it came into contact, his arm was removed up to his elbows.

"I was playing with sister! Why is everyone else allowed to have fun but I’m not!?" She glared at him, clearly upset by his intervention.

"Sorry, I know you want to play with her. But if you meet her too soon, you’ll trigger the wrong cogs. Why do you think she started running?" Nyer kneeled down to eye level with the girl.

He wasn’t bothered by the fact that he was now missing a right arm.

It could always be replaced.

The girl wasn’t convinced, causing Nyer to sigh.

"In the first place, shouldn’t you be at home? Why are you wandering out here?" He asked.

Her shoulders jolted up.

She had actually snuck out while Nyer wasn’t looking.

"Tha-... That’s not the point right now. Why did you stop me from playing with sister?" She changed the topic though sounding less annoyed and more so wanting to divert his attention.

Nyer smiled helplessly.

What a wilful girl.

He picked her up with one arm.

"If you had met your sister just now, there was only one outcome that would’ve occurred in that moment." Nyer started to speak.

Waving his finger, the surrounding area started to change.

"That singular outcome would’ve killed one of you. Unfortunately, at this moment, the one dying would be her. And we can’t have that." He shook his head.

"Eh?" The girl blinked, a frown forming on her face.

"But... But I didn’t want to kill her. I wanted to play with her..."

"I know. I know you don’t mean harm. But humans are very similar to dolls. With the wrong move, they’ll break. Your sister is durable yes, but humans die in more ways than just one." Nyer nodded.

"They say humans die three times throughout their life. One is physical death. The second is spiritual death. And the third, is existential death. The kind where people are forgotten forever.

"Had you met your sister just now, it would’ve resulted in the second death. And we can’t have that can we? So I sent her out." Nyer pacified the girl as she reluctantly nodded her head.

Nyer rarely spoke about the cogs to her. The times when he mentions these things are when it’s very serious.

So the fact that he had to stop her just now...

She felt a pang of guilt in her head.

"I’m... sorry..." She mumbled in a low voice.

"Don’t worry, I’m not blaming you. I just don’t want you to regret seeing your sister too early. If you find her later, you’ll have more time with her." Nyer shook his head.

Hearing this, the girl nodded happily before pausing.

She couldn’t help but look at his missing arm.

"It can always be replaced. Your happiness is more important to me." Nyer reassured as the girl hugged him with her arms around his neck.

"Sorry... I’ll behave..." She apologised as he smiled.

The two of them walked through the fog and back to her room.

###

Alice sat up slowly on the bed.

Her clothes soaked with her sweat.

She could feel her heart slamming against her chest...

"What happened just now?" Suyin asked with a frown on her face.

Alice and Miki woke up later than the others.

Not only that, but the mental and physical stress she felt near the end spiked to levels Suyin didn’t think was possible. In fact, it even broke the scale as the numbers flatlined.

"I don’t know." Alice replied truthfully.

Whatever it was, she didn’t want to go through it again.

It felt as though something would’ve broken the moment she saw whatever was on the other side of that fog.

That something would snap inside her mind.

Clutching her head, Alice let out a slight groan.

"Setting that aside, I think I go ta piece of good news for you." Suyin spun on her chair with a grin on her face.

"Hm? What kind of good news?"

"The kind that’ll let you fight properly in the Nightmare."

Alice paused as her eyes turned serious.

"I don’t know what kind of experiment you were doing in the Nightmare, but I could track some of your abilities activating in reality. Skills and energy flowing through your body." Suyin handed Alice a few reports.

"Whatever it is, I think with the right preparation..." 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

She grinned.

"We should be able to artificially import your Sigils into the Nightmare."