Network of Keys Chapter 6: Ky, First Floor/Level part 2

Wake up, wake up Ky, a voice whispers to me, wake up.

This voice seems to be everywhere, yet it seems to be more like a feeling than a defined sound. I am awake though, lying comfortably in the warm whiteness of the world. It doesn't feel like a dream at all.

"What do you mean?" I groan, dream or not I don't want to leave.

Open your eyes.

With that the world around me blurs and fades to reality. Sleepily I open my eyes and expose them to the ominous darkness. Where am I? I think, a bit dazed. Shifting, I realize that the warm, smooth rug doesn't possess the same coolness as the rest of the room. Trying to remember which room of the Old Man's house this is, I notice that I am not in fact in a room of any house. Faintly, I recall the past events that almost scared me to death. A sunny field, a huge metal creature, huge teeth, clinging to Cynthia's new outfit, this tight thing around my neck, and the bridges. It's after I pick at my collar that I see them.

Huge red eyes stare down at Cynthia and I. Instantly my fur puffs up. I turn to Cynthia and try to awake her by shoving my paws into her face. She looks more exhausted than I was, probably to the point where she won't wake up from mere shoving. I dig my teeth into her wrist with haste. Still, she sleeps on. Warm, little breezes tickle the back of my neck. Oh dear God and Goddess of Life and Death no. Totally freaking out now, I kick whatever with both my hind paws, claws out. Whatever is there gives a little laugh and it feels kinda...like super thick mist. I whip my self around. Wearing a smirk that exposes thin, long, sharp teeth the shadow thing leers at me. Chills race up my back and make me shiver. The heck is this thing?! It gets close to me to a point way past discomfort, and something soft and wet slides up my throat.

"EEEEEK!" I squeal, jumping back and slice at the shadow thing with unsheathed claws. My claws just go through it.

"HEHEHEHEHEHEHE!" it snickers.

"Heheh," I reply. Maybe it's friendly.

"HEHEHE."

"Ha. Ha. What's funny?"

"HA HA HO HO HE HE"

"Um...OK?"

"BWAHAHAHAHAHAHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHEHEHEHEHEHHOHOHOHOHOHHEHEHEHEHEHWEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE!"

I am torn between being freaked out further from the hysterical laughter or being annoyed. Just then it leaps at me and clomps its teeth into my rips. An unbearable pain explodes from the victim area, and I let out a deafening cry. Giggles bursts from my attacker as my blood leaks into its mouth. I have never seen such a red and so much of it in my life. From shear panic I discharge a huge burst of white-gold energy. When the light from my accident fades I warily look for the carnivorous shadow. Thankfully it isn't anywhere in sight. Once again fatigue doesn't hesitate to tug at my body. I shake my head to keep awake. Who knows when that thing will come again? Questioning how to wake Cynthia up before something else comes along or I run out of blood, I blankly stare at the motionless girl. Blond hair surrounds her hanging head and covers her face. Her back is only supported by the backpack she's been wearing since that fat guy gave it to her, but the backpack is leaning on the cave's stone wall. She looks almost dead except for the slight movement of her chest. It must be nice to be completely unaware of the buckets of blood leaking on that new black and red uniform. Speaking of her uniform, its colors remind me of that attack.

Succumbing to the sudden nausea, I turn around and puke up even more blood. I wail from the pain and try not to look at the red liquid that is gushing out of the holes in my body like a sprinkler.

"Help me..." I whisper to Cynthia, "Oh my goodness, help me."

***

"KY! KY! KYYYYYY!!!!!'' a girl's voice cries.

Blankly, I look up at the owner of the voice with her tears rushing down her face. My head has become too heavy to lift, and I can barely remember how I got here or why I am surrounded by pools of red liquid. I can't even think. No, I can process the feeling of numbing pain and the darkness that is settled around me.

"Ky!" the human says and picks me up, which doesn't quite ease the pain. She pulls me to her hot, wet face, "You can't go dormant on me now, Ky! We only just got here!"

I stare at her. How does she know my name? Wait, what is a name? What am I doing here? What is this place? What is a ryg? The thoughts scare away the fog in my mind, and everything comes back to me. I was attacked by something in the Tower that I was supposed to do a task in with my owner, Cynthia. After not being able to wake up Cynthia to make her aware of my injuries, I limped away to get some rest in a safer place, where I fell into a very deep sleep. I am awake now. Now she is here and we have to continue our journey. We're going on a journey, and I am finally not cramped inside a house anymore.

"OK,' I reply, the renewed thrill of adventure and danger taking the pain away from my wounds.

She looks shocked for a moment, but then a smile forms on her face.

"Don't ever do that again," she lectures, "I don't know what I would've had to tell Grandpa if you went dormant."

"Dormant?" I question.

"Yes, dormant," she responds, "If ryges get severe enough injuries they can fall into a deep sleep that can last hundreds of years. It is like a temporary death. It's called dormancy."

"Oh alright," I chirp.

Completely ignoring the wet holes in my body, both of us strut out of the little alley. Now that I am willing to observe the place, I see that it is not just darkness. It is made of slate colored stone, and it looks more like a kind of dungeon Old Man told me about than a cave. Cynthia starts heading right, so I follow her. I follow her blindly as she tries to navigate the place, even though everything appears the same throughout. Once in a while she checks back to see if I fell over or not. With every turn Cynthia seems to look more frustrated, but not ever too frustrated.

"This place smells dusty," I note aloud.

"Yes it is." She agrees apathetically.

"It smells more tasty to me, hehe," a third voice adds.

Out of curiosity, I look behind me. Instantly shivers race up my back. The extra voice belongs to a shapeless, shadow creature with glowing red eyes. It looks exactly like the first one. Eyeing both Cynthia and I, it licks some drops of blood off the ground. Gross. I wrinkle my nose at the thing. In return, it smirks at me, showing off piercing teeth. Sluggishly it slides closer to us. On instinct I rush behind Cynthia, but in the next moment something makes me run in front of her. Making myself look as scary as possible, I bare my teeth at the demon.

"Go away," I hiss, "Leave us alone!"

"HEHEHE," it retorts.

"Hachshshk!"

"HA HA HOO HOO HEHE!"

"Oh, quiet now," Cynthia says coolly.

In response I-Am-Annoying-And-Like-Torture-Ponmiks-Shadow-Thing backs away. Its "face" is contorted into a look of fear.

"Don't hurt him. Don't even approach him or me," Cynthia commands with a voice of power. Sparks of fire dance on her hand, her arm outstretched, "Or else. You don't want this, do you?"

"Heh. Heh," Blood-Drinker says. It doesn't sound so cocky anymore.

"Good. Now go away and don't let me see your face again."

With that Shadow-Thing vanishes. Cynthia turns around and starts walking again. I follow, of course. Our foot-steps make a mixed sound of pitter patter and step step. I am relieved to know I have Cynthia there, but the feeling instantly vanishes when I feel the unmistakable feeling of a glare burning into me. I whip around and sure enough those eyes are there. I have no time to act before the thing charges at me. I brace myself for the attack but it never comes. What does come, however, is a little squeak of shock from Cynthia. Whipping my head to see what's going on, I flinch when I see the blood gushing out of her abdomen. That monster has its teeth sunken around poor Cynthia's waist. For a moment, despair drowns my thoughts, but then it washes away leaving behind a feeling I've never felt before. This feeling is cold and fiery at the same time. A feeling much like annoyed but much deeper. It leaves me only with this sick urge to violently slash apart the beast that dare attack Cynthia.

Predictably, I tackle the shadow. I only sink through it though. Unleashing my claws, I allow a flow of energy into them. Some kind of light dances around said claws in a zig-zag motion. Not aiming for anything in particular, I tear at the blood-sucker's dark matter as if I have lost every ounce of control. Loud screams explode from the killer, but it only urges me to continue. A huge burst of flame flies out of nowhere and scorches the beast to death.

"Oh great," Cynthia looks disappointed at the holes that have been poked into her body and through her uniform.

"Did we just," I croak, "kill something?"

"Yes," Cynthia says, a slightly upset look etched on her face.

"..."

By this time guilt has completely overwhelmed me. I just took away innocent life. Okay, maybe that thing isn't entirely innocent, but did we have to end its existence?

Cynthia kneels down and pets my head gently, "It was going to do the same to us, Ky."

"Isn't there another way to get rid of it?" I ask. I have never even hurt a bug before (on purpose, I have on accident), and now I am massacring?

"I know," Cynthia soothes, though she sounds uncertain of her own self, "A lot of things are going to try to attack us. It doesn't seem right, but I'm sure this is how it works here. In order to avoid getting too hurt, we'll have to attack dangerous creatures. It is something we will have to just deal with it."

"Oh," I say. Well, if its apart of journeying and my stay out of the house, I can get used to it. Weakly, I try to make a smile at her to show false happiness. My muzzle does not allow me to use the human gesture.

Truth is, I am feeling a bit sick about how much I enjoyed the action. Yes, the killing, the pain, and the fear. I am elated in the fact that I had faced danger, but knowing such joy is something of the psychos on the Darkside, not something that a Sunnysider should feel. We continue on, dreadfully yet gleefully wandering the maze and blowing up more shadow demons until we reach something different.

It comes in the form of a stairway placed at an otherwise dead end. Cautiously, Cynthia treads towards the stairway. Not so carefully, I trot besides her. All of a sudden, Cynthia stops. In front of us a gigantic dark cloud clumps together from several pieces of dark fragments. We both take a few steps back, everything seems dangerous in this place. The cloud grows two huge shadowy arms and three huge shadowy legs. At the end of each arm is a clawed hand and huge clawed human feet at the end of each leg. More than a thousand neon purple ponmik eyes pop out of the cloud's "body". A smile bigger than Cynthia forms on the cloud-being's face with teeth of all different shapes and sizes.

"He. HE. HEEE!" the cloud-being roars. It's all I can do not to have another accident.

Unlike myself, Cynthia remains completely stable.

"Hello," Cynthia says in a civil tone, "How may I help you?"

"YOU CANNOT PASS," the mother of all shadows shouts, regardless of the question.

"Okay."

"LEAVE NOW, HUMAN AND PONMIK. YOU DON'T BELONG HERE."

"Where is the exit?"

"LEAVE."

"Meeewwwwwrp?" I interrupt. Maybe she'll respond better to ponmik speech.

"WELL, SINCE YOU TWO DON'T WANT TO LEAVE, I'LL HAVE TO EAT YOU. YOU SMELL MIGHTY TASTY." Shadow Mama's many eyes start eyeing us the most twisted way.

Immediately the whole place warps from a dungeon to one big room full of columns, but the staircase remains. Fur standing on end, I huddle towards Cynthia. Bursting from the walls comes human and ponmik looking things. They're all bald. Their bodies are thinner than physically possible to the point of being quite literally hollow in a way, yet their heads are of average size. Nausea bubbles up in my stomach as I realize that they don't have just empty black eyes, but that those eyes aren't eyes at all. Those are just black holes where the eyes should be. They don't have ears or noses either.

"La, la, lala, la, lalalala," their eerie hollow voices sing as they dance closer to Cynthia and I.

I'm shaking like I just swallowed a vibrator. Finally I have realized exactly what those white creatures are: skeletons, the things that appear on the Screen of Horrors. In real life they are much scarier. The mother of all shadows moves in the same rhythm as the skeletons. I'm paralyzed by everything around me.

"Ky, watch out!" Cynthia shouts pulling me out of the way of Mother Shadow's huge, sticky, spiky tongue, which has been stealthily approaching me to the beat.

Snapping into reality, I quickly shoot an energy ball at the shadow cloud monster. Every skeleton in the room stops singing and go into a frenzy. They rush towards us, tripping over each other and ignoring the occasional fallen limb. Cynthia pushes out her arms and incinerates Mama Shadow, which causes the skeleton crowd to turn hysterical. Leaping from every direction, skeleton ponmiks and skeleton humans tackle us to the ground. Desperately I push at them with all my limbs. I can tell Cynthia, too, is trying to push the snapping and clawing bones off of her, but with not as much success. She is too tired, I register. A leg from one of the skeleton's hits my belly. Without thinking I let out a huge eruption of energy. The bones are displaced and tossed everywhere.

Lifting myself onto my feet, I look around the scattered arrangement of angered bones. A slow groan oozes from Cynthia. She too, was pushed from the released power. Covering her face with both arms, she is curled up to protect herself. Rips and tears decorate her once clean uniform.

"Are you OK?" I ask, worried.

"Yeah," Cynthia moans, "Let's get out of here."

She gets up, and we both trudge up the stairs and out of that awful place.