Chapter Text
Before all this, Pomni thought Ragatha was a strange person to be around. That wasn’t to say Ragatha wasn’t nice. She was very nice, kind, and forgiving, and always seemed to have something positive to say in every situation. But therein lay the problem: It was difficult to understand someone’s positivity when all circumstances demanded otherwise. Like speaking to a street fundraiser, there was something about her friendliness that pushed Pomni away.
All this to say that Pomni wasn’t thrilled when she fell down the scary door in the haunted mansion with Ragatha and Kinger in tow. Perhaps it wasn’t as bad as having fallen in here alone, but Kinger didn’t have a clue what was going on half the time, while Ragatha… well, she wasn’t sure how she would do here, but from the two adventures Pomni had seen so far, Ragatha hadn’t exactly proven herself as the action-oriented type in high octane situations.
“Hey Pomni, are you okay?” Ragatha asked once they were spat out of the scary door, already next to her like a shadow.
“I don’t know how to answer that,” she said as she rubbed her restored eyes, blinking down at the yet more polished wooden floor beneath her, which wasn’t… too bad. Given the fleshy tunnel they fell through, she thought she might end up in the belly of some giant creature, getting melted down by its stomach acid.
Not that this was actually any better. The rest of the room was something out of a game Pomni wouldn’t have touched with a ten-foot pole: twisted faces on the wall, recordings from a dead man, an uncanny humanoid monster lurking in the shadows. As the first recording ended with a precursor to far crueler events, a chill ran all over Pomni’s skin, starting from her legs and up to her scalp under her hat where it itched like a thousand ants.
So, she was stuck in a horror game. Of course she was. What was one more layer of nightmare in this hellhole of a circus? Was there a way to knock herself out in this world? Could she get a game over and get an early exit? Because if she could, that fireplace sure looked like it could use extra fuel in the shape of a tiny jester.
“Wow.”“Oh my god!”
Pomni jumped back from Ragatha, whose impromptu comment made her almost have another wild-take, or perhaps worse. Pomni would be so pissed if her heart jumped out of her chest during this adventure like in those cartoons. And since when did Ragatha come to stand right next to her, anyway?
“Sorry, I was just looking at this setting and just, wow. I mean, this one is really well done. I totally get the feeling that it’ll blink any moment, don’t you?” Ragatha nodded at the mounted monster-head before them.
Pomni’s hand over her rattling heart curled into claws. “You’re impressed by this? Isn’t it scary?”
“Well, sure, but isn’t that why people watch horror movies in the first place? And to be honest, it’s pretty interesting to see what Caine comes up with in these horror adventures. He’s great at this genre in particular for some reason.”
“Greaaaat.”
“Oh, but hey, don’t let it get to you. No matter how scary or real this may feel, none of it actually is. Just think of it as a… a really immersive movie.”
“I’m not really sure if that helps.”
“Um, well, what if you think of it as a… an art gallery?”
“A horror art gallery?”
“Yeah. We enter, see the pieces, appreciate the craftsmanship, and before you know it, we’ll be at the exit.”
Pomni stared. She got the distinct sense that Ragatha didn’t quite understand her when she said ‘I’m not really a fan of horror’ at the start of this. “Can we just focus on getting out of here first?”
“Right,” Ragatha said as her pep visibly deflated. An odd reaction. Did she expect Pomni to play along with her happy-go-lucky attitude? “Well, let’s try to make this quick, huh? I think Caine is reusing some elements from his previous adventures, which means there might be a hidden way out somewhere here. Let’s see…”
The first door Pomni opened had a clear sign it would lead to the stairs, only to end up opening to a brick wall, which was just… Why? Was someone watching this door constantly, waiting for some sucker to open it and see the disappointment on their face?
“Ooh, a door that leads nowhere,” Ragatha said. “Classic. Right, Pomni?”
Pomni slammed the door shut and moved on.
The next and only other visible exit was the gate to the dumbwaiter, which was, of course, locked. The thin metal bars held together by the flimsiest looking lock that bent and rattled when pulled but never snapped apart. After shaking the cage with all her weight a few times, Pomni jumped off it, wanting to scratch her own eyes out.
“It’s locked. Of course, it’s locked. I love that it’s locked.”
“Come on, it’s not so bad. This one’s not blocked by a solid wall or anything, so there might be a hidden key somewhere. We’ll be alright.”
“Hey, Ragatha?” Pomni said between clenched teeth. “Since you know so much about this, could we split up and find a way out together instead of having you follow me around?”
“Oh, yeah, sure. Sorry, I thought you might like the company given how afraid you were.”
“What I want is for us to get out of here, and saying nice things to me doesn’t really address that, does it?”
Ragatha didn’t reply, looking down at her with surprise and, maybe a hint of hurt? “Right. Sorry, I’ll just…” She turned and walked away, heading back towards the fireplace with shoulders drooped.
Pomni let out a silent sigh and ran her hand over her face. Was that mean? Perhaps she could have been a little less snippy with her tone. Maybe.
She still didn’t quite understand what the deal with Ragatha was, chasing her around like a mother hen. The easiest answer was, of course, that Ragatha actually really cared for her, but that theory always felt inadequate. Caring for someone didn’t equate to treating them like a porcelain doll being transported upon on a rocky road.
This wasn’t helped by how Ragatha had acted when Caine fixed her ‘glitching’ issue after the whole Kaufmo incident. Distant, aloof and utterly unreadable, Ragatha had completely ignored Pomni throughout the whole ‘feast’. And though that might have been understandable given how Pomni had abandoned her for the exit, what wasn’t understandable was when Ragatha did yet another about-face after their meal and volunteered to walk Pomni to her room with almost bouncing cheer. It was unnerving to say the least. Almost as unnerving as this whole trophy room, now that she thought about it.
Thundercrack boomed in the distance, making her jump and look about with pinprick eyes.
She’ll apologise to Ragatha later. She will apologise. She just needed to find the breathing room to step back from the edges of a panic attack.
With nervous gait, Pomni scampered off to the small office to the side of the trophy room, hoping Kinger had been more resourceful than Ragatha had been.
“Well, this is some rather inconvenient lore placement,” Kinger said once the second recording ended, something Pomni was only half listening to because she was busy searching for a key to the lift out of this stupid desk. Ragatha was still out in the trophy room, examining the mounted heads for any hidden switches, which was nice of her because that wasn’t a job Pomni would have taken for a thousand dollars. It also made Pomni a little guilty, knowing that she could have just asked Ragatha to help out without being short with her.
But then why did Pomni have to ask her to do anything in the first place? Shouldn’t a veteran like Ragatha—who was handling horror so much better than her—be taking charge and resolving the situation? The thought made her brow twitch, and Pomni decided she needed to push it away before her current state of fear amplified it to something ugly.
Thankfully, a glimmer of something unusually shiny caught her attention, and she dug her hand through the pile of papers and into the corner of the drawer.
It was a key.
“I got it!” she exclaimed, snatching it out of the drawer and holding it up in the air with a face-splitting grin.
The mansion answered her joy with a loud metallic clank and plunged the floor into pitch darkness.
She blinked, then growled. Of f^#king course.
“And this is some rather inconvenient darkness,” Kinger said with exasperation.
“Guys? What just happened?” Ragatha’s voice came from a distance.
“We’re here,” Kinger said back. “Pomni took the power out by finding the elevator key.”
“What? That’s… That’s not how this works.”
“It isn’t? Oh well, I never was good at figuring out how story progression worked. We used to have a dinosaur for that. Or was it a jellybean?”
Pomni frowned before shaking her head. “Well, we have the key now. Maybe we should make our way back to the trophy room?”
“Hm? Oh! Yes, yes, I agree. I think we’re getting to the part where we’re just on the verge of making it out of here unscathed before something horrible happens and the ‘real’ adventure finally begins.”
Pomni blinked. “That doesn’t sound—”
“Guys, what’s our next move? Do I come to you, or…?”
“Stay where you are, Ragatha. We’re making our way back.” Kinger’s hands grabbed Pomni by the shoulders. “Come on, Pomni. Adventure awaits!”
Pomni fought to control her panic while Kinger pushed her through the darkness. Carefully, the two of them felt along the walls, the furniture, tracing the armchair backs. As she came to the end of the armrest, Pomni stumbled forth with her arms held out, intent on finding the next piece of furniture or wall in the dark that would eventually lead them towards the dumbwaiter. Her hand brushed against something soft and covered, and she snatched it with both hands and gripped tight.
“Oh!”
“Oh my god!” Pomni jumped back. “Ragatha?”
“Y-yep, you found me,” Ragatha said, sounding oddly out of sorts.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah! Never better,” she said, clearly a lie. “Um, so you found the elevator thing’s key, huh? Great job. I knew you could do it.”
“Well, let’s not celebrate yet until we’re out of here,” Pomni said, her nervous tone signalling for Ragatha to hurry.
The dumbwaiter was only a few steps away, on a straight-line path with no furniture blocking it. In no moments at all Pomni traced the crossed bars of its collapsible shutter door, feeling its shape in the dark in order to find the keyhole.
“So, Pomni, how are you feeling so far?”
Pomni’s hand on the lock paused. She turned to look at Ragatha, but of course, all she saw was darkness. She turned back, trying to figure out what was even being asked and what to say back. “I’m… fine, thanks,” she said finally.
“Good. That’s good.”
A bout of silence stretched on, heavier now that Pomni had stopped working on the lock.
She half-thought of simply brushing the question off and returning to work on the lock. As awkward as it may be, as long as Ragatha was happy to sweep the situation under the table, she could play along as well.
But what would that actually solve?
In the long run, if this whole circus business was as permanent as the others had made it out to be, her ignoring this situation would only guarantee her relationship with Ragatha forever being built upon this awkward foundation. Ragatha would end up as a permanent presence hovering over her for inexplicable reasons, and a nervous edge would hang over every interaction the two of them would have. As much of a nightmare this adventure was, that was a whole another level of torture Pomni wasn’t keen on suffering.
“Ragatha, is there something you want to say?” Pomni forced herself to ask before she chickened out.
There was a long pause, one of surprise, maybe? Ragatha sighed. “I just wanted to tell you—and, you know, this might not be the best time for it, but—I’m sorry that these adventures have been so horrible since you’ve got here. I swear, it’s not like this all the time. Some of them can actually be fun. It’s rare, but they do happen.”
“That’s… not all that reassuring, to be honest. It’s not like any of us are in this world by choice.”
“Ha. Yeah. I guess we all wish we’d never put that silly headset on when we did before we came here. When I first came here, I used to wonder all night why I even bothered putting it on, and what things would have been like if I hadn’t.”
“Tell me about it.” Pomni scoffed before falling into a somber silence. “Um, I should have told you this earlier, but I’m sorry about how I acted before. I was pretty snappy with you, and it wasn’t very cool.”
“Oh. Don’t worry about it. I know how I’m, you know, a bit much sometimes.”
“So you are aware of it?”
Ragatha made a sound akin to a muffled ‘yeah’.
“Why do you do it?” Pomni asked.
“I-I’ll stop if it’s bothering you.”
“No, that’s not what I—” Pomni stopped to keep her tone in check. “It’s not like what you’re asking is bad. It’s very kind of you to want to help and everything, and I mean it when I say I’m very grateful for your support. But…” She struggled for the right words. “Sometimes, you need to stand back and let people process their feelings first. You can’t just tell someone at a funeral to see the good side of things when they’re crying in front of the coffin. It’s not the right time for it.”
Another pause, a longer one this time, held only because in the utter darkness, they could pretend they were alone and no questions had ever been raised. But that was just that: pretend. And just below the darkness, the silence grew painful by the second, growing like moss with each unbroken moment until it was hard to breathe.
“Ragatha—”
“Ragatha, I forgot to ask,” Kinger spoke up from behind them, making them both jump. “Did you happen to keep an eye on the monster's head in the trophy room while you were there?”
“Um, you mean the pale face thing?” Ragatha said, sounding almost normal, though laden with a subtle weight. “Yeah, it was still there when the lights went out.”
“Oh good. Had me worried there for a second. Then we know for sure that the head only moved after the lights went out.”
For a moment, Pomni couldn’t breathe. “What?”
“Oh, you know, the monster head on top of the—”
“I know what you’re talking about! What do you mean it moved?”
“Well, I mean it moved. I went over to check the mantle just now, and I’m pretty sure all I felt was an empty panel. The head went somewhere, and we probably won’t find out where until—Oh wait, there it is.”
Pomni and Ragatha whipped their heads to the side, just in time for the giant monster head to open its mouth, its pale skin set aglow, revealing the rows and rows of jagged teeth that seemed made to cause more suffering than chew. The sound that came from the depth of its throat was so loud, Pomni could feel the air vibrate upon her cheeks. The screams of a thousand souls.
It lasted for…. What, a second? A minute? Eternity? Before the screeching finally stopped and the horrible white glow went away. Except when it did, the head was still there, and no one dared to move, not even breathe.
Or at least that’s what Pomni thought until King narrowed his eyes and said, “Excuse me, how are you making that noise without any lungs?”
“Run!” Ragatha exclaimed, taking their hands and running off to the side, away from the head that began screeching again as it slowly gave chase.
As agreeable Pomni had been to the idea of getting the f%*k away from the monster, its presence didn’t magically open a new escape route, and after running for less than three seconds, they hit the wall at the other side of the room with nowhere to go but back towards the elevator.
“Now what do we do?” Pomni said, panic rising in her voice.
“Uh, um, over here!” Ragatha waved her arms in the air before shooting off to the side, back towards the fireplace.
“What are you doing?” Pomni said.
“Distracting it! Go, unlock the elevator!”
“What? But–”
“Go!”
Pomni didn’t move. She turned to Kinger for his input, but he seemed to stare at the head with curiosity more than fear, completely unaware of their immediate peril. Pomni groaned.
It was a bad idea. Sacrificing someone to survive was a common trope in any horror movie, but seeing it occur behind the screen and have it happen right before your eyes was incomparable.
But hadn’t she done this before? Ragatha before a monster, and her running away.
Suppressing a growl of frustration, Pomni ran once more towards the elevator and focused on the keyhole as the screeching monster lit up the room. It was just a keyhole. All she had to do was calm her trembling hands and insert the key. There didn’t need to be any sacrifices today.
First try, she got the key upside down.
“Come on, you big inverted cactus! Come and eat me!” Ragatha yelled at the monster.
Second try, the key slipped because the stupid thing was such a tight fit.
“I’m big and full of cotton—”
Third try, the key slipped again because her hands were trembling and whoever made this key did so with the sole intention of infuriating the user, f^*#!
“—and my hair looks like liquorice! Bet I taste like… like…”
Fourth try, and finally the key squeezed into the lock.
“.... heeey, sweetie.”
Click.
Pomni turned. Ragatha was still on the other side of the room, but instead of distracting it, she seemed to be distracted instead, looking into its wide-open mouth with a dopey expression. Her pupil shot wide, and her posture slumped as though she was drunk or on some medication.
“Come here, girl,” she said, slow and dreamy. “Come to Mommy.”
“Ragatha, what are you—? Ragatha!” Pomni said, but Ragatha stepped towards the monster’s open mouth, reaching out towards it with a dazed smile. In doing so, one of the teeth’s edges scratched her arm and tore out a puff of cotton.
Pomni snapped to attention. “Kinger!” she called, and thankfully, he needed no further instructions to follow as she ran for Ragatha. They were on her in an instant, pulling her back from the maw, a moment away from those jagged teeth chomping her whole torso off.
“Ragatha, snap out of it!” Pomni said.
“No! Let me go!” Ragatha cried, fighting against her and Kinger’s hold. “She needs me!”
Pomni knew she was the smallest out of all the circus members, but it surprised her still just how strong Ragatha was, fighting back both Pomni’s and Kinger’s grips in her vie for the monster’s mouth. Pomni didn’t know how it happened, but it was obvious Ragatha was completely out of her mind, and they would get nowhere at this rate. So she did the only thing she could: she let Ragatha go. And then slapped her so hard, Ragatha’s whole body lurched to the side.
“Snap out of it!”
All the fight left Ragatha’s body, and when she turned, she stared at Pomni with surprise. “P… Pomni?” she said.
“We got no time for thi—!”
What happened next was too fast for Pomni to process.
Ragatha’s eye shifted upwards, her brows furrowing in alarm, and before Pomni could blink, she saw the world spin as a pair of cotton limbs wrapped around her in an embrace.
A gut-wrenching scream filled her ears, not that of the monster but that of a person, one in pure shock and agony. After a brief sensation of floating in the air, Pomni landed on the ground with a heavy thud, the hard impact cushioned by Ragatha’s arms.
“Ragatha!” Kinger shouted in alarm.
Pomni blinked as she got her bearings. She was on her back, Ragatha holding her in her embrace, face buried into Pomni’s shoulder as pained whimpers escaped her lips.
Kinger lifted Ragatha up, peeling her off of Pomni and the ground, and spinning her around to give her a hug. Except it wasn’t a hug. Ragatha had simply collapsed into Kinger’s arms as she could hardly stand on her own. The moment Ragatha turned her back to her, Pomni’s shoulders tensed up in her shock. Ragatha’s entire back was a mess of shredded dress and ‘skin’ fabric, puffs of cotton spilling out of her in clumps at an alarming rate.
“In here!” Kinger said as he pushed Ragatha into the dumbwaiter.
Pomni scrambled up to her feet and ran, the monster still shrieking at her somewhere behind her.
As she settled into the corner of the dumbwaiter, she saw just how thin Ragatha’s torso looked then, how tired her expression was.
Despite this, as Kinger slammed the gate behind them and the dumbwaiter lurched to life, Ragatha looked up at her with a weak, yet genuine smile.
“Thanks,” she said, her voice quiet, yet hitting Pomni like a gong. “For coming back for me.”
Pomni said nothing back, and the group sank into the depths below.
Pomni watched as Kinger consoled the injured Ragatha.
She realised now that, in her attempt to snap Ragatha back to reality, she had placed herself right in the path of the monster’s jagged teeth, and it was only through Ragatha’s swift action that she didn’t get to experience all those incisors sinking into her flesh and shredding her to pieces. That experience now went to Ragatha, whose feet hadn’t been quite swift enough to dodge the bite fully. Now Kinger was pushing what remaining cotton back into her and tying the wound shut with impromptu bandages made of torn pieces of Ragatha’s skirt.
“A… Are you okay?” Pomni asked, unable to take her mind off of how much thinner Ragatha appeared then.
“I’m fine. I’ve had way worse than this, I promise,” Ragatha said, her stooped posture and bags under her eyes betraying her smile.
“I-I don’t understand. The pain here is, like, incomplete, isn’t it? I-I fell hundreds of feet in the last adventure and I was hurting for like… what, a few seconds?”
“Pain in the digital world is relative to the narrative context of the situation,” Kinger said, his brows set in a worried frown. “This is a horror adventure, and Ragatha got hurt through an act of sacrifice, which means the narrative context amplifies any pain she experiences from it to an almost realistic level.”
“You’ll understand once you’ve been here long enough,” Ragatha said before she sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth.
“So—” Pomni gathered her thoughts. “So you knew you’d be in pain because of this?”
“Well, given how scared you were of the monster, I wasn’t sure how much pain you would’ve been in had it got you. I couldn’t let you go through that. Not when it’s only your first week.”
Pomni stared at her, her heart sinking.
“You rest. I’ll go check out the area. Pomni, can you stay with her?”
Kinger didn’t wait for an answer as he headed off, searching the cellar for an escape.
Pomni stood for a long time, studying Ragatha’s tired form, the way the bags around her eyes sagged, the way her mouth seemed to hold back groans as she winced now and then, her back stiff and trembling. For a brief instant, Pomni wondered what she would look like if they all still had their actual bodies, and the queasy feeling she got quickly proved it a terrible line of thought to pursue.
After a moment of silence, Pomni knelt down in front of Ragatha, meeting her gaze. Ragatha gave a meek smile, though her eye seemed to beg for rest. Pomni wet her lips for what she was about to say.
“Ragatha,” she began. “I… I first want to say thank you.”
“Any time,” Ragatha said in a tired whisper.
“But to be honest, I really, really wish you never did any of this in the first place.”
Ragatha’s smile fell. “Was it too much again?” she asked, looking away.
“Yes.” Pomni kept her eyes on Ragatha’s even when Ragatha kept her gaze averted. “Ragatha, we… we don't know each other. And I’m not trying to be mean when I say we’re not friends. Not really. Not enough for you to go through stuff like this for my sake. It is too much, and it makes me scared of what you might do next.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No.” Ragatha flinched, and Pomni closed her eyes to hold back a sigh. “I’m not trying to make you feel sorry. I don’t want to make you feel anything bad. I’m happy you care, but I don’t want you to care about me so much that you’d go through pain yourself. I’m sure you don’t want that either.”
Ragatha pressed her lips into a thin, squiggled line. “I just want you to be alright.”
“But why? Why me?”
“It’s not just you. I want everyone to be alright. Isn’t that normal?”
“But what about you? Shouldn’t you care about yourself too?” Pomni clenched her fists. “I am grateful for what you’ve been trying to do, and I can’t believe how brave you were to have gone through this, but I am not happy to see how much pain you’re in right now. You’re right that it’s normal for people to want everyone else around them to be alright, because I want everyone to be alright too. I want you to be alright. Caring for everyone should always include yourself too.”
If it were possible, Ragatha appeared twice as exhausted as before, her body so much thinner despite not having lost any further cotton. She shrank away from Pomni and hugged herself in a tight, protective hold. “You should go help Kinger,” she said.
Pomni’s jaw clenched. “Ragatha—”
“Please.”
The way she sounded then, her voice breaking as though she was on the verge of tears, in this dark cellar where they had little to no privacy to handle one’s emotions with dignity. Pomni swallowed, and with no further acknowledgement, stood up, making her way to Kinger in the other chamber.
When she reached Kinger, he spun around and showed her a loaded shotgun he’d taken from the cadaver on the far end of the chamber, apparently belonging to the manor’s Lord. According to the record tape before him, this was where he had some sort of ’last stand’ with the monster before he perished.
“We have two shots here. We best make them count,” Kinger said, showing her the pair of shells embedded in the chamber. Not that she was listening, her mind buzzing with her conversation with Ragatha, or lack thereof.
That had not gone well. She supposed it was normal for people to be closed off about their innermost thoughts, but with how Ragatha had been acting from day one, she had hoped they could have an easier heart to heart. Now she wondered if she should have brought the issue up in the first place. At the rate they’re going, she and Ragatha were going to have the most awkward relationship ever.
“Pomni?”
“Hm? Yeah?” Pomni said, jumping slightly as reality yanked her out of her thoughts and back to their less than favourable circumstances.
“How are you holding up?” Kinger asked, to which, really, what was Pomni even to say?
“Better than Ragatha,” she said with a hollow laugh.
“You seem troubled.” Kinger said, his brows furrowed with concern. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Not likely.”
“Do you… want to talk about it?”
Did she? Pomni glanced over her shoulder at Ragatha, whose gaze sat upon the ground before her with a miserable frown. “I don’t know. I don’t know where to start. It’s all so horrible here, this adventure, this circus. And Ragatha—God, Ragatha—I just… Is she always like this?”
“What do you mean?”
“She wants to be this positive person or whatever, but I feel like she only does it because she thinks something will go terribly wrong if she stops. She keeps giving and giving like she’s overflowing when she’s barely keeping up. Why is she doing that?”
“Did something happen between you two?”
“I don’t know. Yes? To be honest, it feels pretty one sided. Her cheering me on; offering help, then pushing me away.” Pomni groaned. “I mean she’s always over my shoulder like she’s supposed to be my guardian angel or something, so you’d think she’d be willing to listen. But the moment I want to have a talk, she shuts me out. What is with that?” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I don’t know. I know we don’t know each other yet, but that just makes it more confusing when she acts like my mom. She doesn’t make sense.”
“Oh, if only people made sense, huh?” Kinger laughed, much to Pomni’s surprise. “I know how difficult that can be.”
He peered up and around the dark cellar, as though it were a garden filled with exotic flowers in every corner. He sighed and turned back to Pomni, his eyes suddenly somber.
“You know, when I first came here, I thought I’d go mad in days, if not hours. Things are so… confusing and nonsensical here. You see one-plus-one on one side of the equation, but then see a banana on the other. After a while it drives you crazy.” He chuckled again. “But to be frank, I don’t think that’s all that different from people. Whether it be here or out there in the world, we have friends, families, co-workers, and so much more, and it doesn’t make sense for us to understand every single one of them in every way possible. Take my wife, for example.”
“Your what?” Pomni said, a comment Kinger seemed to ignore.
“She used to do this thing where she would leave stuff out in the open as a message and expect everyone to understand what it meant. An empty jar of pickles on the kitchen counter meant she was asking me to buy one on the way home. A shoe in the bathtub meant she wanted it hand cleaned. And the car key in the fridge was her way of telling me to take her car out for a wash. She never spoke to me about these things directly, and when I first noticed it, boy, did it drive me crazy. And you know, sometimes, it made me afraid.”
Pomni stared. She had so many questions at the moment: Kinger’s sudden lucidity, his wife, where all of this was even coming from. But all she could ask then was the simplest question of all: “Why?”
“Because I wondered if I had scared her at some point in our relationship. That she was too afraid to ask me things directly. I thought it over, fretted over it, trying to figure out what I did wrong and how to fix it. I got tired, then frustrated, then angry. I just wished she would talk to me. It was so easy, wasn’t it? To tell me what she needs?” Kinger said with frustration Pomni could feel echoing in herself. But unlike Pomni, Kinger’s expression softened, and in its place was sympathy, regret; love, even. “But then I found out it wasn’t. Not for her. When she was young, her parents had been strict and always said no to everything she asked for. At some point in her childhood she just… stopped asking, and she never learned how to ask for things even as an adult. What I thought was a simple thing was painful for her.” He looked at Pomni with a gentle gaze, and Pomni realised only then just how focused his eyes were, how clear. “Sometimes you see people do things that escape your understanding, or make you think they have certain thoughts about you, but there’s no way to really know unless you talk. If you like someone—really like them—you should ask. Let them know how you feel and let them feel safe enough to explain why they do the things they do.”
Pomni bit her lip. “I told her how I felt,” she said. “But I don’t know how to make her feel any safer than I already have. I mean, look at me: I’m just some cartoon jester. How much ‘less scary’ can I get?”
“Like you’ve said, you two have only just met. Strangers can be very scary, don’t you think? Getting to know someone, to share your true self with them, and hoping that they will still like you after you let them in. Some people have the strength to take the rejections in stride. Others will think it proves something about themselves, like a rejection means they are forever an unlikeable person within, never to be loved unless they constantly make themselves useful to others.”
Pomni frowned as she recalled the way Ragatha seemed borderline obsessed with her and making sure everything was okay for her, to make herself useful. “She doesn’t have to worry about that. I’m like the weirdest person I know. If anything, I should be the one who's scared to open up.”
“Have you told her that?”
Pomni opened her mouth, but stopped and found she couldn’t really say.
Kinger’s eyes smiled.
“Maybe what she needs is not someone to ask her to open up, but someone to open up to her first.”
Pomni didn’t answer for a long time. It seemed crazy to her that Kinger, of all people, was giving her any life lesson at all. But she thought about what he said—really thought about it—and couldn’t help but let out a small, somber laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess it can’t hurt to try. It’s better than letting things be,” she said before shaking her head incredulously. “I don’t understand. You’re so… different from how you usually are. Why is that?”
“Ha. Yeah, I am usually a lot more forgetful. I think it’s the darkness here. It always reminds me of—Ragatha, get back!”
Pomni jumped and whipped around towards Ragatha who looked back at them with a confused frown. Except it wasn’t just Ragatha sitting there. With a loud shriek, the monster head from before opened its mouth, already inches away from biting down on Ragatha’s entire form.
Ragatha fell down in surprise, then tried to scramble away, only to scream when her legs began to lift upwards, the monster’s mouth creating a powerful breeze as it sucked her in.
Pomni ran into the fray within seconds, grabbing Ragatha by the arms before she got swallowed up. Her feet skidded on the ground, her tiny weight barely enough to fight against the wind.
“Pomni!” Kinger shouted. He lifted his shotgun, aimed at the head, and pulled the trigger, but not before a pale, headless body jumped at him from the side, causing him to lose his aim in surprise. The shotgun went off, and the solid slug struck the stone ceiling above, wasting one of the two shots they had. Kinger whipped the butt of the gun and bashed the body back before shooting it squarely in the chest, sending it to the ground.
“Kinger!” Pomni shouted back as she felt her legs skid further, her grip loosening.
She lost her footing, and suddenly she was airborne, being sucked into the monster’s mouth along with Ragatha.
“Kinger!”
“Got ya!” Kinger said, his hands grabbing Pomni’s ankles and yanking her back with surprising strength. It should have been a relief, but Pomni could feel herself still held in place, not an inch further away from the razor-like teeth all around her. Despite his efforts, the combined weight of her and Ragatha was too much for Kinger to pull back out, and though they stood suspended for now, it wouldn’t be long before they gave out.
There was no way out of this.
Pomni searched her surroundings, trying to figure out if she could stop the monster somehow, hurt it and make it spit them back out, until her eyes met Ragatha’s and the world around them seemed to disappear for a moment.
Her hair waving against the wind, Ragatha looked at Pomni with a smile so fragile it seemed ready to crumble away at a glance. Without a word, Ragatha let go and allowed the wind to take her.
Pomni swiped forth without a second thought, grabbing Ragatha by her limp wrists.
“What the heck are you doing?” Pomni yelled through the roaring wind.
“Let me go. You won’t be able to pull me back,” came Ragatha’s tired answer.
“Yes, we can. We just need to find—”
“It’s okay,” Ragatha said, smiling as weak as it was. “This isn’t real, remember? Even if I get chewed up here, we’ll just meet each other again at the end of the adventure. I’ll be fine.”
There was truth in that statement, but she wasn’t stupid enough to take Ragatha by her words anymore. “Tell me right now how much pain you’ll experience from this,” she said back.
Ragatha didn’t answer.
“Ragatha! How much pain?”
Ragatha looked away.
Pomni felt her scalp itch with all-consuming fury.
“Ragatha, I am so PISSED at you right now!”
Ragatha’s face collapsed with shock and hurt, but Pomni didn’t have the patience for it anymore.
“No, don’t give me that look! You’re not the one who’s hurt here. You keep giving me help I never asked for. Now you’re gonna do something I explicitly don’t want because you think I do? Are you KIDDING me?”
“But I— I just want to help.”
“I don’t need help. You’re not my f@&*ing maid! And I’m not some sociopath who thinks I can only be friends with someone who gives me benefits other than friendship. So stop trying to help!” Pomni growled as she pulled Ragatha’s arms with all her might. “Do you want to be my friend?”
“Pomni, this isn’t—”
“Answer me!”
The monster shrieked, the wind roared in their ears, and their arms lost strength bit by bit, but none of that felt real in the moment. The only thing that seemed real to either of them was each other, and Pomni waited; she would wait forever just to give Ragatha this chance to speak her true mind.
“I do,” Ragatha said, and Pomni gritted her teeth.
“Well then, you better start considering my feelings before you do stupid s#!^ like this, because newsflash, Rags: I want to be your friend too! Now stop being an idiot and grab me back!”
Ragatha’s eye fluttered, as her face seemed to both collapse and bloom at once. Fear, shock, hurt, and hope. It was all there on her face for once, no false smiles or faux enthusiasm to bury it away. With a barely imperceptible nod, Ragatha grasped Pomni’s forearm once more and pulled.
The world came rushing back, the frozen moment between them becoming consumed once more by the dire situation, and it was only here that Pomni realised that this might have been a bad time to confront Ragatha about their issues. The conversation had sapped their strength, and they were now being dragged inwards inch by inch, Ragatha’s legs disappearing into the sparkling void of the monster’s mouth, up to her knees.
“D#^% it! Isn’t there something we can do?” Pomni screamed over the wind, to which both Kinger and Ragatha were too busy pulling to answer.
“Wait, I got an idea!” Ragatha suddenly snapped, her face suddenly filled with excitement.
Before Pomni could ask what, Ragatha grabbed one of the monster’s teeth below her and pulled herself down, piercing herself in the torso without hesitation. Upon doing so, she slid the blade-like tooth to the side, carving herself until within seconds, her lower stomach was nothing but spilling cotton.
With a loud rip, what remained of Ragatha’s ‘skin’ broke, and Pomni and Kinger fell backwards, Ragatha’s lower body getting swallowed up.
Pomni scrambled up, looking down at Ragatha’s mutilated body in horror, at her frozen, unblinking expression staring into nothing. Oh god, she was dead. Ragatha was dead. That stupid, stupid idiot. Why did she have to—
“Ha!” Ragatha laughed, and Pomni swore she felt her heart hit the ground so hard it could have fallen down the map and into whatever hellscape this adventure contained. “It worked! Kinger, I got it right!”
“I—Wha—?”
“Come on, you two,” Kinger said and lifted Ragatha into his hands, whereupon she hugged tightly around his ‘shoulders,’ utterly unfazed by her missing legs.
“What—? But—I—” Pomni scrunched her fists over her hat. “What is going on? How are you not in pain?”
Ragatha and Kinger shared a look before they both shrugged.
“Narrative context,” Kinger said. “The absurdity of thoughtlessly sacrificing half of your body to ‘save yourself’ knocks the narrative context from realistic horror to bizarre comedy. Compounding this with the hopeful moment we’ve just had means the pain is greatly reduced.”
“Yeah. It’s hard to take advantage of it on the fly like this, but we get lucky sometimes. You’ll understand once you’ve been here long enough,” Ragatha said with a reassuring smile as though she wasn’t missing half of her body right now.
“I’m not sure if I ever want to,” Pomni said.
A sharp, violent crack split the air, a sound of bone and tendons breaking within the flesh.
The trio turned to the monster head, whose pale skin sparkled with shimmering light just under the surface, as though webs of electricity coursed through its veins. Another crack and the monster’s jaw snapped sideways; another and its entire head stretched and thinned in a twisting curve, like a towel being wrung.
With a low, insect-like buzz, several appendages began crawling out of the creature’s stomp neck, fingers wriggling out of a hole where its spine should have been.
Three more cracks echoed into the cellar one after the other, and with them, the head sprouted a dozen long arms from its base, which then twisted into unnatural angles, forming a strange circle behind it with the head at the centre, a halo of pale limbs holding one another.
The monster opened its mouth, and instead of teeth, a giant eye revealed itself, along with dozens of smaller eyes opening up along the skin of the new arms. All of them looked down at the trio, all red, and unblinking.
“Um… guys?” Pomni began, her legs trembling. “W-w-what do we—?”
Light exploded from the monster and Pomni slammed her eyes shut, prepared for the end, begging for there to be no pain or, if there was, that it would be quick.
BE NOT AFRAID.
Pomni choked and wobbled as the ground shook with the echoing words. She looked up at the monster and its brilliantly grotesque form. “What?”
THINE ACT OF SELF-SACRIFICE HAS BROKEN THE CURSE OF THIS DWELLING, MOST FOUL. The ground shook further; the monster’s form flashing in rhythm to the words. THOU HAST UNBOUND ME FROM THIS MORTAL PRISON OF WHICH WITH TAINTED HANDS THE PROPRIETOR OF THIS LAND MADE.
Pomni blinked, as did the others. “... What?”
GO NOW, PURE OF HEARTS. THINE FREEDOM THOUST EARNED. GO WITH BLESSINGS OF CAINE, OUR TRUE GOD MOST HOLY.
The monster lifted one of its dozen hands and a beam of white light shot out, casting a square form upon the ground behind the group. The light then changed shape, turning square and more solid until it became a solid golden door which opened up into the same swirl of rainbow colours which the portals to and from the circus held.
There was a toot of party horns and a rainbow message of ‘CONGRATULATIONS’ appeared on top of the gate.
“... What?”
“Congratulations, my Jolly Jouncing Jelly-babies!” Caine’s voice announced. “You’ve taken the ‘Pacifist Route’, and you should be proud of what good people you are! Your teammates are already waiting for you at the exit, so step on through and receive your rewards!”
Pomni placed her palm on her forehead. She felt like she was having an aneurysm.
“Well, it looks like we finished the adventure, um, somehow?” Ragatha said. “I think we may have missed some lore though. Was the mansion’s owner really evil?”
“I don’t wanna know,” Pomni said, pinching the bridge of her nose.
A familiar magic tune echoed in the distance, and with a loud ‘Pop!’ Ragatha went from mutilated in Kinger’s hands to standing on her own recovered feet. “Oh! Well, there you go. Right as rain.” She performed an experimental twirl, then exhaled a shaky breath. “Phew. Yeah, this is more like it. We really don’t appreciate our legs enough, you know that? Um, sorry, Kinger.”
Pomni lowered her hand from her face, deciding that she didn’t care anymore. The adventure had apparently ended; who cared how or why it happened. She was just glad that she got out of this one without experiencing any existential trauma for once.
She approached the gate and came to stand next to her teammates.
“Glad to see you back on your feet,” she said, and Ragatha jumped.
“Oh, yeah, thanks.” Laughing nervously, she tucked her hair over where her ear would have been. “And umm… thanks. You know, for not giving up on me?”
There was a lot Pomni could have said in that moment. Jokes, snarks, relief, and everything in between. But unlike before, she didn’t feel the need to be careful about her choice of words. For the first time since getting to know Ragatha, Pomni felt like herself.
“Thanks for listening to me, even though I was yelling at you,” she finally said. “And actually, we should thank Kinger the most. His advice had been… surprising. So, thanks, Kinger.”
“Thank who now?” Kinger said, his eyes pointing in opposite directions as he bathed in the bright light emanating from the monster.
Pomni blinked, then shared a look with Ragatha, who shrugged, and so she shrugged back. She supposed Kinger was back to his usual self now. Perhaps she would get to see his other side again someday if she stayed long enough? It was a nice thought: to have something to look forward to, even in a place like this. “Never mind. Let’s go back. I could use the rest.”
The three stepped through the gate, appearing back at the mansion’s entrance where they joined up with Jax and Gangle, both of whom appeared to have cleared their own family friendly version of the horror adventure by capturing every ghost with the vacuum cleaner. When Jax laughed about how Gangle got caught in the vacuum, Ragatha went to lecture him on his cruelty, which worked about as well as a fog light on a sunny day, but one which she still tried every time. Watching her defend Gangle, back in her element, Pomni briefly wondered if anyone else in the group had felt the same frustration with Ragatha as she had, and whether any of them had reconciled with her at all. If anyone truly understood Ragatha. The potential answer made Pomni sad.
Once back at the circus, the group split up as they often did, each person returning to what little private lives they had in this world.
Only Pomni and Ragatha remained where they were, both of whom exchanged a glance at one another before whipping away. Now that the adventure was over and they were back on neutral ground, it wasn’t quite clear how they should navigate this new relationship of theirs.
“Maybe what she needs is not someone to ask her to open up, but someone to open up to her first.”
Oh. Right.
Pomni turned around.
“Ragatha?” she said.
“Um, uh, yes?”
“Do you have time? I thought maybe we could hang out.”
Ragatha looked at her like she confessed to murder, and Pomni almost laughed. “Wha—Uhh—me? You want to hang out? With me?”
“Yeah. It’s what friends do, right? I think just hanging out will be a good place to start.”
Ragatha nodded slowly. “Right. Sure? I mean, sure. Yes, I do. No, wait, that didn’t make sense. I meant, ‘yes, I think that’s a good start too.’ As in, the ’hanging out’ thing. Which is what you just said.” She slapped her hand over her face with a groan. “Oh my god, I’m ruining this.”
Pomni really laughed then, and Ragatha blinked before she chuckled as well, sweeping her hair over her non-existent ear once more. It was a nervous habit, apparently. One of many aspects of Ragatha she’d be learning from now on.
“Shall we?” she asked, and Ragatha nodded with the biggest smile she’d ever seen her make.