Heart part 1

Chapter 34 - Descent To Darkness

By the second, huffed breaths pumped tirelessly into the air. Esther, Jaqueline, and Sandy stood open-eyed in front of a large smooth wall. Unlike all the other cave walls, this one didn't bend, fold, or jut out at any sharp angles, it was just smooth. In the center were two indentations that took the shape of two monstrous doors. They were so well blended into the wall, you could hardly notice them there, and the darkness didn't do much to help. But this wasn't the only thing here. Sprawled out over the area were the bodies of some of the Casimir guards who were tasked with searching the very cave they were standing in. The look on each of their faces was positively horrifying. The three had already found the others on their way here. In fact, it was a trail of their blood and corpses that had even led them here in the first place. At this point, the sight of sprawled-out corpses had become nothing more than an eyesore for Esther and Jaqueline. No longer did their stomachs twist or hearts start pounding with unease.

When they first laid eyes upon the wall, the three were stunned into silence. A clearly not natural wall sitting deep beneath the surface, tucked away inside a cave, with a set of doors to boot. There was only one thing this could mean: They had found it, where the Construct Core is being kept. With the scene of bloodshed crowding the front, it's obvious that the Casimir guards who were searching down here had been attacked, but by what was the question.

" Was it Dandy?" Esther thought, her eyes locked up at the vast wall like a moth to a flame.

"...Or was it something else?"

Regardless, there was no way the three weren't going to investigate inside. And so, with lumps at the back of their throats, they each took that first fated step forward.

As soon as they started to approach the doors, a room-shaking groan rang out and the two doors began to rumble open. Cautiously pacing inside, the doors slid shut behind them, trapping them inside the pitch-blackness of a tall, narrow hallway. The walls towered over them, as high as some small hills.

" What sort of creature could have roamed through halls like this?" Esther silently asked herself as she helplessly stared up at them, feeling smaller than an ant.

Lighting the way with their lanterns, the three started to make their way through to whatever hellhole that could be waiting for them at the end. The walk was long and nerve-wracking, but it eventually came to an end and the three emerged into a gargantuan hall. The room stretched further than they could see, but adorning the sides looked to be a row of some statues that started from the wall and continued forward into the darkness. Some appeared to be incredibly large, while others were much smaller. Waving her lantern's light over so they could get a better look at one of the nearby statues, Sandy nearly dropped the light out of her hand. What stood in front of them was no ordinary statue made from wood or stone, but a monstrous creature of inhuman form.

Instinctively, Esther and Jaqueline tore their weapons out from their backs and Sandy dived in to end the beast before it even got the chance to move, but suddenly she came to a halt. Her flattened hand floated mere hairs away from the thing's wooly chest. Esther and Jaqueline looked on in caution as she stood there, silent and unmoving.

" This thing...isn't alive." They heard her mutter. Softening her hand, she slowly moved a finger close and gave the thing a quick tap.

Its fur was undoubtedly real and so was its flesh. Was this creature trying to play some clever trick? No, it couldn't be. Sandy couldn't detect an ounce of life coursing through its veins. It was like it was just a standing corpse. A layer of dirt and dust covered it as if it had not moved in a very long time. Its body was stiff like wood, but its flesh was still strangely squishy. Stepping back and shining the lantern's light onto the others, the rest of the statues were all nearly the same, the only difference being the creature locked in the frozen state. Some were as thin as sticks and others bigger than houses. Some made sense and others didn't. And some hurt her head just by looking at them. Going over and feeling some of the others, she was met with similar results.