Happy Valentin's Day

I crept along the dark, rounded hallway, keeping to the shadows so that the occasional floating eyeball sentries might not notice my presence. The walls were all brick, with mold and blood staining them at different points. There was noise behind each door I passed. Screams of torment, moans of sadistic pleasure, the whirring of various tools, animalistic growls and hisses. The Screaming Tower is never a pleasant place to visit.
From the outside, it looks similar to the Temen-Ni-Gru from Devil May Cry three. But the inside is much more complex than the level designers team at Capcom could possibly imagine. I peeked into a room briefly to see if it was occupied. Upon confirming it to be empty, I slipped inside and pulled out the map Marshall hand given me. He had already told me not to rely on it too much, as the rooms and corridors of the tower occasionally shifted and rotated, but it was a useful reference.
After studying it for a few minutes, I left the room and continued down the hallway. After a while, I found what I had been looking for; a stairway. I began ascending it. It was long and round, and after several minutes I stepped off onto a new floor. I consulted the map again briefly before continuing. If the map was right, I was still two floors below my goal, and the best was up was a stone ladder on the outside, next to a balcony. I kept moving, turning down a different hallway after a minute, then turning down another own a couple minutes after that. I was the doorway to the outside a few yards away and approached it.
I stepped out onto a short balcony overlooking a maze of plants. Different kinds of bizarre plant-life grew in that garden, ranging from bushes that repeatedly retracted and extended their thorns, to oversized, mutated fly-traps, to giant flowers that dripped acid and venom from their drooping petals. I felt a surge of sympathy for the poor men and women I saw wandering around in it, with chains tied to their ankles, dragging large balls of steel behind them. Most of them looked starved. All of them looked tired.
I shook my head an began looking for the stone ladder. I had a goal to focus on. Mercy could come later.
I found the ladder. Or, what the map described as a ladder. Several feet from the right edge of the balcony was a curved wall of stone, broken off around the edges, that looked like it had been glued to the outside of the tower. It stretched up several stories above me, and looking up, I could see the balcony above that I was supposed to reach. Looking back at the wall, I could see that it was covered in bulky rocks, much like a practice rock climbing wall.
On any other day, I could phase into the Godsway and reach the wall effortlessly. But I'd had enough trouble entering this realm without the Wooden Girl noticing me. If I went and used my Devil Killer powers here, in her domain, she had ways of sensing it, and she would find me almost immediately. The only way to reach it was to jump. I gulped. I'm an unaging, super-powered fencing master from the future. But there are still moments when I fear for my life. Especially with the disturbing forest of death and madness beneath me.
I took a few steps backwards, then ran forward and launched myself off the edge. I reached out, and just barely wrapped a hand around one of the jutting rocks. I hung there for a moment or two, catching my breath and giving the adrenaline some time to settle. Then I realized it wasn't a rock I was holding. IT wasn't quite hard enough, and there were patches of soft, wet material clinging to it. I took a deep breath and looked, then I came very close to emptying my stomach. I now knew for sure it wasn't a rock. Embedded in the wall of stone was a skull, of some kind of large feline. It was fresh, too. Bit of muscle were still attached at points, and it still had an eye in one of the sockets. Through the other socket, I could see there were still scraps of decaying gray-matter on the inside. I struggled to keep hold and keep my lunch simultaneously as I looked up. It wasn't just this rock. It was all of them. Skulls of various animals, even people, and been worked into the wall as makeshift hand and foot holds. The Wooden Girl has a sick taste in exterior design.
I pulled myself together and started climbing. I kept my eye on my destination above. Reaching it wouldn't be easy, and of course, the tower decided to make it harder. The chunk of wall I was clinging to detached itself from the side of the tower and began floating upward, and away from my target. I passed above it, but I was too far to the side now, and getting farther. I let go and drew my sword. The chunk of wall moved away, and I stabbed the blade of my rapier into the outside of the tower, barely stopping my fall. I was in one place now, but I was too far away from where I was headed now.
I suddenly heard a shriek of surprise from the other side of the wall. Someone had taken notice of the tip of my sword from the other end. I heard another shriek from behing me, and I turned to see one of the Tower's flying guardians soaring nearby, watching me. It shrieked again, and was answered by another creature higher above, then by more creatures in every direction. So much for stealth... Now she definitely knew I was here.
Which meant hiding my powers was pointless now.
I pulled my sword out of the wall and flung myself at the distant flying creature. It began flying at me, as if accepting my challenge. My body changed, becoming semi-corporeal, stuck somewhere between fluid mass and pure energy. Gravity ceased pulling me, and I simply soared in a straight line at the thing in front of me. It noticed the change in my being a few seconds too late; it was too late for either of us to change our flight path and avoid the other. I melted through it, passing through its skin and infecting it. I melded with its nervous system, and entered the depths of its mind. I could feel its madness, its instability, its desire to serve its master. I could feel its will, and I forced myself against it. As a being made to serve, it didn't have the strength to fight back against me. Its will was pushed to the back. I was in control.
I guided the creatures body toward the opening I had been trying to reach via the ladder, and crash landed on the floor, unintentionally breaking its neck in the process. I was ejected from the body, and rolled across the floor painfully as I became solid again. I rose to my feet. My body resisted. I felt fatigued, and weariness took hold of my mind. I shook myself awake and began moving. This was a terrible place to pass out.
I hadn't gotten very far down the hallway when a group of people stood in my path. They were visibly in pain. Their mouths were sewn shut by Her strings. Their eyelids had been stretched open, the top ones sewn into their brows, and their bottom ones sewn into their cheekbones. I couldn't see it, but I could easily imagine the threads running through their bodies, pierced into their muscles and bones, forcing their bodies to move as she wanted, whether they liked it or not. Puppets. The unwilling servants of the Wooden Girl. And they were lined up to stop me.
I raised the blade of my sword to my lips and whispered to it.
“Blade of darkness, deliver mercy to the wicked,” I spoke.
Then I charged. Every Puppet that came near me had their life ended abruptly. I slashed throats, pierced hearts, impaled organs and opened intestinal tracts. IT only took a minute for me to kill them all and get to the other side of their gathering. Killing them wouldn't stop them, of course. Even in death, the Wooden Girl still had control over their bodies. But I had accomplished two things. First, I had saved them from another moment of their suffering. Two, I had moved past them. Now I just needed to outrun their lifeless bodies.
I kept moving. I didn't have time to check the map. Instead, I decided to check behind every door I passed as quickly as I could. I'd need help with that.
“Shadow!” I commanded.
My shadow rose from the ground beside me, taking an almost solid form, gliding an inch or two above the stone and moss floor.
“Open!” I ordered it.
It flew ahead of me, twisting all the doorknobs and flinging them open faster than I ever could. As I passed each one, I glanced inside, for a couple seconds each, to see if I could find my target. At the 14th door, I stopped. It wasn't what I saw on the inside, but what I could feel. I stepped inside. In the center of the pentagon shaped room was a table. The legs were made from human bones and strips of muscular tissue, bound together with countless strings, and the table top was made of broken pieces of wood, glued together with what appeared to be coagulated blood. Sitting on the morbid table was a chipped wooden music box, with faded carvings depicting some kind of olden fairy tale I was unfamiliar with. There were words along the lid, written in what I think was French, or maybe a similar language. I opened it up, and the rusty gears began moving, producing a soft tune, that might have sounded beautiful when the box was new, but in its old age, the melody had grown scratchier, and distorted, do to the poor conditions of the internal mechanism.
This is what I had come for. The next piece Marshall had sent me to find. This makes 8.
I felt a presence behind me immediately after I shut the lid on the box, and the door slammed. I could feel the eldritch power of a Fear. I gripped my sword and spun around, expecting the Wooden Girl to be right there.
“You!” I exclaimed, upon seeing who had arrived.
An old man stood before the shut door. His clothes were old and musty, but still seemed to have some antique charm about them. His hair was thin, and clunk tight to his wrinkled scalp, and a pair of dark glasses concealed his eyes, or lack thereof. In his gnarled hands he held an old, decrepit book. His withered lipped curled into a gentle smile.
“Paradox,” he said.
“What do you want” I demanded, lowering my sword a few inches.
Now, don't get me wrong. I hate the Fears. The Blind Man is no exception. It's just that... well, in my timeline, he was important. He has a purpose, and I don't want to finish him until its been fulfilled. But if he crosses any lines, I won't hesitate to kill him with the others, purpose or no purpose.
“I've been made away of what you and the Chaos are up to,” the Blind Man said.
“What of it?” I demanded.
“It is a foolish idea which will likely end in the deaths of you and countless innocents,” he said. “That being said, I can tell you exactly where the next piece is.”
He told me before I had a chance to question him on it. Then he turned and opened the door.
“Why would you tell me if you have such a dismal idea of how it will end?” I asked.
“Because a certain mortal may balance the scale,” he said. “Oh, and you'd best leave before She sends more puppets.”
“What about-” I stopped myself before finishing the sentence.
I was gonna say “What about the Puppets she already sent?”, but then I became away of another presence on the floor. Someone powerful, wreaking havoc further down the hall.
“The Fury is here?” I asked.
“Don't get in his way,” the Blind Man said nonchalantly. “He's in what Martyr Beta refers to as 'the Zone'.”
With that, the Blind Man vanished. I stepped out into the hall. I briefly considered going to confront the Fury, but I didn't. It wasn't his time, and it wasn't my duty. The Fury was someone else's to deal with. IT would have to wait.
I stepped out onto another balcony, overlooking the maze of terrible plants, with its numerous victims wandering endlessly in it. I fought back a few tears and raised a hand toward the ground below me.
“Who will find more peace in Hell,” I said, and orange flames accumulated in my palm, “then in this nightmare she has created for you.”
With that, I unleashed the inferno and set the garden ablaze. The plants went up in flames rapidly, far faster than ordinary foliage would ignite. Screams echoed beneath me, and I turned away from in, feeling sick. I stepped through the Godsway and reappeared in my hideout, dropping the music box amongst the other pieces I had gathered. I crashed on the torn mattress and closed my eyes, trying to stamp the images and sounds of death out of my head. It wasn't easy.
It never is.