River’s Notebook
-> Two groups with their own goal
Our goal: Complete ritual
-> Map: Building, ground floor off limits
-> Length: Seven days, no repeats
-> No shadows – real setting
Rules
-> Be social/communicate
-> Don’t try to leave
-> Don’t walk around at night
-> Don’t enter another person’s room
Other Group
-> Papyrus (Strength), Soot (Knowledge), Acorn (Social)
-> Goal: ???
Situation
-> Morning bell with meals together on second floor
-> Seven floors + open rooftop
-> Feeling watched/observed?
-> Miles some sort of leader? Talks about other people’s lives
-> Possibly two opposing cults in here?
-> Security walks around at night, once an hour
Building
-> Ground floor ng (Fingerprint lock)
-> 1. ??? (locked), infirmary (with unfriendly/suspicious doctor?) (Selene, is nice to Acorn)
-> 2. Meals, meditation
-> 3. Rooms
-> 4. Rooms
-> 5. Library, open rooms (also sports)
-> 6. Some rooms + ??? (locked)
-> 7. ??? (locked) cultist room? Miles talks in the evening (no symbolism?)
Incidents
-> Night 1, Logan lost tongue (is conscious, otherwise unharmed? Accident?)
-> Night 2, Vanessa lost fingers + Iris lost tongue
River had put on his pajamas, but Aspen was wearing all black – ready to sneak out, once it got a wee bit later. For the moment, he took to sticking to River, completely silent.
“Are you pouting?”, River asked in a deadpan tone, stroking his companion’s hair while having half of his attention on his notebook.
“I can’t believe you tested me.”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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“So you thought, let’s just see if he’d not actually like me better if I was different.”
“Well, yes.”
His personality was one thing, affection was another. If Aspen could have the same relationship with him as right now, the lack of judgement, while River was… different, would he like it better or not?
It should have been a passing thought, but it did prick him like a needle, so he simply tried.
And got a bruise on his shin as an answer.
“I want my zombie.” Without warning, Aspen bit his shoulder. “I’m good with the dead guy who doesn’t feel like changing his expression. I’m good with the puppeteer who likes it better to watch and control rather than get involved. I’m good with River, all pieces attached. A you that acts human is just not you. Or are you saying you’d like me better if I wasn’t me?”
“Point taken.”
The image of a normal Aspen wasn’t just foreign – it was downright revolting.
“Who cares about chivalry and whatnot, find me a man who cuts apart a corpse with me to get a bleeding hand.” Aspen huffed under his breath, followed by a surprised squeak when River’s body started shaking with amusement at the stupid comment.
“Find me a man who kills my brother with a fire extinguisher”, he added, a tiny bit playful.
“You know, I totally would have done that in reality too. But I do think that it was nice you got to kill him yourself.”
“Yeah. It was nice.”
They both sighed wistfully at the image.
Aspen finally released the other man, falling to the side to stretch languidly. “Okay. Time for me to get to work.”
“I’d ask you to take the Gamblers’ phone along so we can communicate but… that’s probably cheating, isn’t it?”
They both looked at their paired phones on the nightstand.
…Most certainly cheating.
“Don’t worry about me. I know I look like-” Aspen vaguely motioned. “-this, but seriously, I’ve lived through a lot. I’ll handle it, one way or another. Besides, only one we can’t kill is the other group, right?”
One of the phones was still taken along – as a portable light source – vanishing into some pocket inside of Aspen’s clothes.
Pulling on the hood, he was now completely cloaked in soft black, the fabric barely making a sound.
“Wish me luck”, he playfully said in front of the door.
“Good luck”, River earnestly said, sitting up straight.
He wasn’t going to sleep until Aspen returned. There was no need to say that much out loud.
The door opened and closed with its obnoxious clicks, and River exhaled into silence. Pulling his knees close to his body, he wrapped his arms around his legs and waited.
…As for Aspen, he felt taken back to his childhood.
At some point, when his family noticed he got weirder and weirder, his parents would start checking up on him. They kept up the facade of course – masking it as going to take a glass of water and similar things.
Several times a night, there’d be someone pacing around the house for a minute or two. Sometimes, they’d even glance into his room.
Aspen learned quickly how to hide – and which corners humans were blind for.
Overall, people wouldn’t expect anything out of place. Even a security guard would expect things to be the same as usual, so as long as there was no movement or something standing out a lot, their eyes might just pass by.
The biggest danger zone was the absolutely open hallway of their current floor, but as he had timed to move when they knew there’d be no one around, this wasn’t much of a challenge.
All other floors offered hiding places – up and below, where humans didn’t tend to look, within the shadows of other items and around corners.
He wasn’t worried.
His chocolate-colored eyes were wide open in the dark, the beast slowly searching for its prey to stalk.
…It seemed to take forever until Aspen returned.
He was incredibly tired but appearing satisfied, so River wordlessly pulled him into the bed and tucked him in. He could hear all about what happened tomorrow, for now it was better to catch up on some sleep.
Aspen yawned peacefully and curled himself up tighter, just a single hand poking out to hold a piece of River’s shirt as he fell asleep.
They took the morning minutes when they got ready to talk.
“It’s the staff”, Aspen confirmed. “It’s like, impossible to follow them closely but I managed to watch one from afar. They went into a hallway on the fourth floor empty-handed and came out carrying something at around half past eleven.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Yeah. Can’t tell you what it was, or from who, though. We will have to see. Other than that, I can tell you that that person went up to the seventh floor.”
“It’s where we have meetings with Miles.”
“Yup.” Aspen shot him a glance, but River had no adverse reaction to their near-confirmation that the ritual was linked to the staff and the old man. “Overall, it’s pretty damn quiet at night. There’s only those staff members walking around.”
River blinked. “…Several?”
“Huh?” Aspen paused. “Uhm, yeah. Two groups. There was that individual person who went around and got the thing, and then there were three people together… But they didn’t go into the hallways. Almost caught me a couple of times, just wandering around.”
Maybe actual security? One person out for the hunt and the rest were to ensure that there was no further ruckus?
“Hmm… How high would you say is the risk of sneaking out like this?”
“Overall? High. They’re pretty careful. I’m fine doing this again, but let’s say it’s not something we should try more often than needed.”
“Alright. Thank you for doing it.” River hugged him from the side. “Now we’ve got a time too, which is important for the final step. I imagine they conduct the ritual at midnight sharp.”
“Exactly at the end of the reset… Uh, the game’s end.”
“Time and place we have roughly. Around midnight, somewhere hidden on the seventh floor. When and where. Now we need the what, why, and how.”
“Today will be the third day. Let’s see if we can’t find out more about the pattern behind it!”
If there was a pattern at all.
No one said that there couldn’t just be a random book that went – hey I want you to offer to me a tongue, fingers… and all that, in that order.
In general, humans loved patterns though, and this was ultimately a solvable game, so there should be one?
They weren’t too worried about figuring out who the next victim was now that they had Miles’ word to enter the infirmary freely, but as they left the room on time, they had to realize that this was an unfounded worry in the first place.
There certainly wasn’t any breakfast today.
What there was, was a corpse.
Aspen had not seen what the staff member had brought back last night, but it was evidently a heart, carefully cut out of the chest of a middle-aged man, leaving behind a gaping hole.
His face was serene, and someone had placed his hands comfortable folded on his stomach, almost as if he was only sleeping.
…The gaping hole and blood splatters aside.
River had grown rather resilient, but his face did twitch at the sight of the hole, revealing the broken bits of ribs that had been necessary to open up in order to reach the heart.
Aspen had followed the staff member with the “package” the night before and hadn’t seen it, but someone else must have taken the body and had carried it down all the way to the first floor to place it in front of the infirmary, where it was still lying right now.
They had used a thick, white sheet of fabric that must have also stopped any blood from dripping down on the way, though the overwhelming stench was unmissable by literally anyone inside the building – now all gathered in the hallway, or run away in shock already.
The sight was shocking.
There was a gentleness and honor in the way the man had been treated. Neither his clothes nor the rest of his body were in disarray, the sheet was put down without any wrinkles, and the work on his chest was anything other than wildly messy.
The questions were stacking.
When Logan had said people were left in front of the infirmary, this wasn’t what he had had in mind.
Hides under covers… This game is really creeping me out
I love dark novels and this one does not disappoint