BatIM Five Trials

Chapter Thirteen

As the coming days came and went, Jade slowly started to recover from her injuries. At first, she needed Boris's help in walking, since walking on her own was far too painful. The run from the Ink Demon seemed to have made it worse than it had been before then. After a few days, Jade had started to walk a short distance on her own before having to lean on a wall and rest it. The first time she had tried this really concerned Boris because he thought she would have accidentally made it worse, but she turned out fine. It didn't reopen, at the very least. Then Jade started to be able to limp further on her own until eventually, she could easily make the distance from the bedroom to the main table. After this, her limp started to become less and less noticeable, until finally, she could walk normally again. Well, this was if she wasn't stressed, as, for some reason, stress seemed to bring back minor pain in the leg. At much more random times, however, it would hurt enough to cause enough of a hindrance to make her limp again. What caused this, neither human nor wolf had any ideas.

As Jade recovered, Boris began teaching her sign language. It was rather lucky that she was a quick learner, and caught on how to interpret it quite quickly. It was learning how to do the hand motions herself that was the difficult part. It was always putting one finger up that didn't need to be, or keeping one down that needed to be up. Soon enough, the kinks were worked out, and Jade could effectively communicate with her silent friend. After being able to work out sign language, Boris then proceeded to start teaching her how to play the banjo, so if he ever found another instrument, the duo could spend their time playing together. Jade found it a bit difficult to adjust from playing her primary woodwind instrument to a string instrument, not to mention all of the scales and the notes being called differently than the names she had been used to giving the sounds. Soon enough, she got the basics down pat. She'd play random tunes she'd get stuck inside of her head to deal with the boredom of not being able to sit down and play whatever song she wanted. She particularly missed Clair De Lune, but could not play the piano herself. She also wouldn't risk returning to the Music Department to attempt playing it, if she could figure out the notes in the first place, so she made do with the banjo.

Boris did his best to provide the best care he could, going out and scavenging the studio for any sort of aid. Jade could tell at first he was scared to leave their safe house and go very far, but he seemed to get used to it, becoming braver over time. He ventured further and further away, she noticed since it took longer for him to come back. On his scavengings, he stumbled into her bag one day and brought it back, and she was relieved to see everything was still intact on the inside. There were also a few new cans of bacon soup, but that was Boris's haul for the day along with the bag. Another day, Boris brought a plushie of himself back with him. It looked adorable with its long fluffy tail and fluffy looking stitched on boots. Jade instantly decided she was going to keep it along with the Bendy plushie she had. It most certainly helped chase off nightmares, which had started to arise the longer she stayed.

Most times, the nightmares were back in Trial Two, focusing on the sacrifice and the chase which happened just after, but there were a few exceptions. Including one where she was back in school. It had made the Trials she had been through up until that point almost seem like a dream. . . but something was indeed off about the school in that dream. Everyone was silent, only staring at her as she went by, and all of their irises were orange. Not their normal browns, blues, greens, and hazels, just straight up orange. She found it quite odd, and tried to shove it off. . . but one of the hallways had turned into the faded brown boards of the studio. She was going to turn back, but as she did, the school no longer lingered and was instead replaced by the looming Ink Machine with the menacing demon known as Bendy standing right in front of it. As Jade turned to run, she could feel the slicing pain of getting all three of her injuries all at once from an unknown source. Needless to say, she wasn't as lucky to get away this time, and being brutally murdered by the sharp claws of the demon jolted her awake.