2) Rising Action
10 Years Later
Why isn’t she home yet? Why isn’t she home?! The thoughts bounced frantically inside Night Light’s pounding skull. Ever since 5:00 PM passed, he had degraded into a nervous wreck. He supposed it started sometime during noon, when he suddenly heard a whispered voice snarl ‘It’s here’. Night Light hadn't been able to sit still, and had tried to divert his attention by obsessively cleaning the house, shifting furniture around onto coordinate points of whole numbers, and staring through the door’s peephole.
And then... there! The moment Twilight Velvet came into his field of view, he wrenched the door open and yanked the befuddled unicorn in, sobbing on her shoulder.
“Wha-?” she started.
“You weren’t home on time! I thought you got hurt! I don’t want you to get hurt. I can’t bear the thought of you bleeding out in some alley, nopony around to help you,” Night Light babbled, reflexively squeezing his wife.
Velvet stared dully at the clock on the other side of the room. “Um, Nighty? I was only five minutes late.”
The stallion looked up, an utter lack of comprehension in his tear filled eyes. “I know!”
“Um. right.” Velvet pulled a hoof out of his embrace and rubbed her head. Night Light took the chance to glance behind her, scanning the street. Several singles wandering the street. Kids playing on the corner. A bit of trash blowing in an alley. My trash can needs to be dumped. Vendors at the end of the street. Nopony looking this way. Everypony is appears to be living out their own unimportant lives. So far, nothing. Good
“Look,” Velvet said, “I have a bit of a headache right now, so can you let me relax for a bit? Some of hot chocolate or something would be nice.”
Night Light spun and pushed her gently into the hallway. “Of course! Let me lock the door.” He took one more glance outside. Sun normal. No loiterers. Walkers are all different. Foals are still playing. Suspicious, but normal. Some clouds in the sky. Shadows are shadows. Some new pegasi appear to be in the sky. Not too interesting, but must remain cautious.
He turned around and followed Velvet into the house as she turned towards a couch to sit. He darted around her and sped into the kitchen. He floated over a pot and filled it with water and coffee grinds. After fifteen minutes of nervous pacing, the coffee was finished. He levitated a mug over and poured the coffee into it. Velvet had just settled down onto the couch when he exited the kitchen with the mug.
She widened her eyes in surprise. “That quickly? Did you warm one up before I even got home?”
Night Light thought about him warming a cup of coffee before Twilight Velvet got home. “Yes,” he said simply. He let her take the cup, then stood beside her, alternating between staring at her and at his surroundings. His pupils remained constricted.
Velvet shot him a worried glance. “Are you okay? If you need to rest, go ahead. I can take care of single cup of coffee.”
Night Light jerked, a breath catching in his throat. “Ee! Um, sure. I’ll do that.” He slowly backed away from her, keeping a line of sight for as long as he could. “You take care now. Rest... and stuff. Bye! See you later. Maybe an hour or so? Do you-”
“Go to sleep.”
“Alright,” Night Light said, making sure to yell loudly enough for Velvet to hear from across the room. He pranced in place for a few seconds before finally turning in. Somehow, the stress of waiting for his wife knocked him out completely instead of forcing him to stare at the ceiling for hours. The quick trip into dreamland wasn’t much better at maintaining his sanity, however.
Night Light stood in a never ending hallway. Night Light ran down the never ending hallway. A black cloud swept past him, chasing after the light gray speck Night Light knew was his wife. He pushed his legs as hard as he could, but despite every sensation telling him that he was accelerating, he never got any closer to the miasma.
Giving up was not an option. So, he persevered by increasing his speed even more. Soon, the beat his hooves made against the Dream!Wood floor was fast enough to produce a low hum.
Faster. Faster. Faster!
A pulse of rage burned in his heart, sending green flames burning off his back. Fifty meters. Forty. Thirty. The cloud “looked” back and gasped.
Night Light howled in insane laughter.
His bloodshot eyes shot open, sweat drenching his body. Stabs of pain flickered throughout his limbs. He quickly glanced to his side and was relieved to see his wife sleeping peacefully. All of the sweat was contained on his side of the bed.
He sat up and carefully slid off the bed, placing the dry sheets over his wife. There shouldn’t be anypony up this early. I’ll grab some food and place bits on their counters. Nobody would care, right?
He put on his saddlebags and tightened them as he walked out the door.
The Next Morning
Slam!
Night Light barreled through the door and stared at Velvet, sweat dripping down his face. When he could focus both eyes on her, he nearly collapsed in relief and grabbed her like a teddy bear, shuddering. Velvet was honestly worried, and really wanted to help him, but her groggy brain inhibited most emotional responses and his actions only ended up irritating her.
It was difficult, but she managed to calm herself down enough to act like she didn’t have a migraine. “What happened, Nighty? Did-”
“I could see through them!” he cried out, tears falling from his face. “My right eye can see them just fine, but they all look like ghosts from my left. You’re the only pony I’ve see that’s still normal from both.” He buried his face in her chest. “Please don’t leave me alone with them. I feel like there’s a demon in my mind. Its taking all of my willpower to not just electrocute them all to see if they vanish. We rarely take vacation days. Please. Can you maybe ask your bosses for a week off your writing job or something? I promise, if I can’t figure out what’s wrong with me, you can send me to see a doctor. I know you’ve thought about it.”
Velvet winced slightly, but patted his back. “Of course. We weren’t accomplishing much anyways. I can send them a message that I need a short break. We still have enough food in the pantry.”
So the pair spent the day just being together, though Night Light did let Velvet finish her sleep first. They read a few books, and Night Light gave some commentary on the half written outline of Velvet’s book. She managed to finish a few drafts that she could show to her editors. Night Light seemed to be able to hold himself together as long as he avoided the windows, so Velvet decided to just drop the blinds down and use candles.
They cleaned up the papers at the end of the day, and hit the hay a bit earlier than normal. Night Light was still a bit clingy, but considering the terrors he seemed to exhibit the day before, Velvet allowed it. It felt pretty nice, anyways.
The Third Day
Night Light had the same dream again.
He was trapped in a never ending corridor, running after the miasma that he knew in his heart was going to kill his beloved Velvet. No matter how fast he ran, no matter how high pitched the sound his hooves generated, he couldn’t get any closer. He couldn’t get to Velvet before the cloud could, and he knew it. But giving up was not an option. A mile flew by in seconds, and still he ran. A hoof snapped off and tumbled away, yet still he ran. His tail ignited from friction, and still he ran. His left eye melted in its socket, and still he ran.
Faster. Faster! FASTER!!!
A seed of rage so hot that it could summon wendigoes erupted from his heart, sending flames around his body. Jagged teeth that looked like shards from a shattered mirror erupted from his gums. Scythes cut their way out of what remained of his hooves, digging into the dream world and hurtling him forward. Orange flames mixed with green as he obliterated imaginary particles and blew past the surprised cloud. He came to a near complete stop, clusters of scythes and claws shooting out of his bones clinging to the edge of the hallway, blocking off the cloud from his beloved. An alien, ghostly green eye regrew in the molten eye socket.
He gave a jagged grin. Too slow.
In the real world, Night Light’s heart accelerated beyond normal limits, nearly reaching the speed of a mouse’s. His blood heated from the mere friction of rubbing cell walls. His muscles fibers tore as they reached their limits, and soon a twitching mess was all that was left underneath his flooded lungs. A slow trail of foamy blood trickled out of Night Light’s final breath.
His eyelids snapped open. His right eye was still golden, but his left eye was a swirling green vortex surrounded by black. Sometime in his sleep, he had grabbed Velvet and held her like a teddy bear. He flicked his hooves, sending her crashing into the ground.
“Oof,” she grunted. “Nighty, what are you-?”
“GET DOWN!” he screamed, rearing up. The wall behind him imploded. A massive claw slammed down upon his raised hooves, shattering the bed and cracking the floor.
You will miscarriage... ?
Night Light smiled, blacks smoke flowing through his jaws as he breathed in deeply. A massive black spike had sank partway into his skull, but he gave no attention to it. A small, white coated unicorn filly with emerald eyes tilted her head at him curiously, the claw spiraling out of her outstretched hoof. Black, sticky tar were sucked out of the spike, swirling around the point of impact. As it spread around the left side of his skull, a flickering line of boxy text lit up somewhere deep inside the dimensionless substance.
For a brief moment, it stabilized enough to read “ONLINE.”
“Ten years,” Night Light rasped. “Found you.” He casually slid down the spike and swung a hoof. A sonic boom blew the dust away from his limb, causing a building across the street to implode.
He gave a cold glare toward the horrified mare on the floor, even as the snapped off spike sank into his head. “Run girl, if you want to live.” His normal pupil suddenly constricted. A thrown brick blasted him head over heels across the room, crushing furniture and causing more property damage. Velvet finally got the memo and sprinted from the collapsing house and into the dark of the morning.
A holographic wire frame weakly sparked and died. Exasperated, the buried body of Night Light kicked the rubble off of him and stood up on his rear legs. It took him a moment for him to notice he was a quadruped. He glanced at the emotionless face of the not-a-pony jumping through the hole and sniffing the air.
Night Light, with Wireframe controlling the corpse now, leapt across the room and with a hoof slammed the intruder’s head into the ground. “Thank your unlucky stars, you only gave Wireframe enough energy for a few eye spells.(1)” He yanked the creature’s mangled yet angered face out and pulled it into a headlock. Before its smoky tentacles could attack Wireframe with some furniture, Wireframe slapped his own head with a free hoof. Sparks danced across his iris.
With a snarl, he yelled, “Amaterasu!”
Despite the destructive flames consuming the Outsider’s body, it managed one last hit before succumbing to the pain..
Wireframe bounced away from the inferno he had created. “Ow,” he muttered as he sat up. A table leg was embedded in his right arm. He gripped it with his teeth and carefully pulled it out. There was a bit of a hole there, so he shoved a hoof-full of rubble and dust into the wound. A bit of spit wet it, and the flames burning the house beside him dried it.
Technically, this was a corpse, and a borrowed one at that, but for the moment, he didn’t have enough energy for another body. Might as well do his best to keep it from falling apart around himself. “Now, where did she run off to?” he grumbled. A spark danced along his left green iris. The weaker atoms of reality became translucent, leaving the important creatures left on this plane of existence: the main characters and the targets. Through the haze of slightly transparent non-essential buildings, he saw a glowing, very important magenta spark crouched behind a dumpster. “Found you, Velvet. Let’s see if this works.”
He raised a hoof and swept it in a horizontal line
-------- - - ___ _ _ -------------- --- -- ---------- __
Wireframe froze, every single muscle in his body cramping. A second later, he collapsed to the floor, sparks dancing across the cobblestone. “Dammit, still can’t do a screen wipe.”
He slowly pushed himself back to his feet and sighed, running towards Velvet’s position. Dangit. I don’t know how long those flames will hold, might have messed up the mixture. Damn them all.
Velvet collapsed into a trash covered alley, gasping for breath. She cowered behind a dumpster. Her entire body shivered from the adrenaline burning through her veins. Her nerves barely had time to settle before hearing a set of hooves pausing on the other side of her cover. “Are you Miss Twilight Velvet?”
Velvet shivered, but said nothing.
“Of course you are. Now, I was told to recite this, so here we go. ‘A changeling queen from the future has illegally summoned an Outsider to kill you. I have been summoned to kill the Outsider before that happens.’ Hmm. Yep, that’s it. Now come with-”
Velvet poke her head out, saw his face, screamed and ran away into the alleys.
Wireframe paused, his jaw still open. The eerie green light in his eye flickered for a moment as his expression went from bored, to disappointed, to annoyed, and finally restrained anger within a matter of seconds. “How... inefficient,” he spat.
Velvet sobbed as she ran through the streets. The blank, alien expression on her husband’s face continued to haunt her. Gone was the loving glow of warmth whenever he looked upon her. Even during the few days where he seemed to have lost his mind, Night Light was still full of life. Underneath his fear, Velvet could still feel his love. Now? It was like looking at a corpse.
“Velvet!” she heard her husband’s voice call out. “This way! Hurry!” She nearly snapped her neck the way she spun around, tears of joy replacing tears of despair. A door was opened, his hoof and shadowed outline hurriedly waving her in.
“Night Light!” she called out, skidding into the doorway. “You don’t know how much I’ve missed -”
A glowing, ink stained grin floated in the darkness of the doorway, right underneath a glowing green light. A hoof reached out and poked her in the chest as she skidded to a stop.
“Boop,” he said, stepping into the moonlight. Wireframe stood casually in front of her, the black tar swirling around his skull in agitation, mirroring the fake smile on his face.
Velvet felt the freezing grip of terror clamp down on her spine, and tried to run, only to find her hooves warping slightly, then pull her back down, as if held down by an invisible force. She tried to gather some mana to fling, and looked ahead for a target. A moment passed as her mana slowly drained away.
Beside the corpse’s head were floating text, slowly evaporating; reading them made Velvet lose any form of concentration she had left as she tried to understand what was going on.
It read “... as if held down by an invisible force. Her mana pool suffered an equally unusual fate, evading her attempts to locate it.”
Wireframe stepped away from the doorway. Behind him, inside the shadows of the room, stood a glowing outline of a pony. Words, descriptions of something, flickered within the outline’s static. A donut hovered in a cloud of the ghost’s static colored magic.
Wireframe continued smiling his plastic smile, leisurely walking around her. “Sorry for the ... inconvenience, but it is very important I tell you some very important things. First off, you simply have no idea how easy it is to kill you. In fact, if I had less moral - no, I don’t have much of that left. If I had less ... restrictions, yes, you would be dead. In fact, worse than dead. You wouldn’t exist.
“Instead, I have been ordered to simply keep you alive long enough for me to figure out a way to exterminate the Outsider permanently from this plane, which takes more effort than simply killing it,” he lectured. “It doesn’t require you to be comfortable, nor for you to like me. In fact, normally, I don’t even give them the option of free will.” He stepped up closer to her side, leering with suddenly jagged teeth. “Much less chance for variables.”
He shrugged and walked in front of her, dropping the monstrous look and returning to a tired, disinterested expression. It didn’t make his appearance any less frightening. “Instead, I’m stuck with limited resources. They like testing me like that. Makes it much harder to save - keep the universe running smoothly. The enemy we’re going to face has none of our limitations, besides a slightly more limited amount of power to exert with.
“We have similar goals.” He pointed at her. “You don’t want to die, and most likely want me out of your husband’s body.” He pointed at himself. “I don’t like you, and want to get out of this place with as little fuss as possible. Can I get your promise to help, or at the very least, not hinder me?”
He stared at Velvet’s froze form, who stared back with shrunken, panicked eyes. “Oh, whoops, sorry about the inconvenience.” He prodded her chest, drawing out a sliver of black smoke into his hoof. “Normally, I have a lot more energy, and then I -”
Velvet scrambled backwards, sweat beading down her form as she cowered in the shadows of the wall behind her. Wireframe slowly turned his head over to her, accompanied with a loud grinding noise. He pursed his mouth and spat out a small cloud of white powder. “....yes?” he asked.
“What did you do to my husband?”
Wireframe nodded. “Such ... loyalty.” He stared off into space. “Oh right, you were expecting an answer. Trying to corral two intelligent beings into a defense with my resources is too difficult, and so they stuffed me in your husband’s body. He’s dead, I get a free body until I leech off enough energy to make my own.”
“WHAT!?” Velvet screamed.
Wireframe waved a hoof at her. “Oh, stop making such a big deal about it. If you live, everything goes back to normal. If you’re lucky, you might even not remember any of this.” He paused and glared at her. “Mess with me, we both die and you won’t exist long enough to regret it. You don’t have my experience, nor my resources. You are nearly helpless against our enemy. I don’t need you to like me, and the feeling is mutual. My purpose here is to protect you, and as long as you follow my orders, I will complete my task. Are we clear?”
Velvet shivered, but managed a shaky, “Loud and clear, Mister....”
He snorted. “I’m a Shtik, speed specialist. That’s all you need to know. Now move. You’ve wasted too much of my time. We have less than forty-eight hours before we’re utterly screwed.” He turned around and walked, Velvet meekly following him. The pair stepped out into the silent, darkly lit city streets.
Only a few ponies were awake at this hour, but everypony seemed to be blind to Wireframe’s presence. If he looked like he was on a collision course with someone, he or she would move to the side at the last second. Velvet decided to just walk behind him, using Wireframe like a shield.
“Um...” Velvet started.
“What?” Wireframe snarled.
“What happened to the pony behind you back there?”
He sneered. “He held quite a weight in this place. Made a great snack.” He relished her shocked expression. “Whatever I have to do to win, I take it. Remember that. You might get to do something like that too.”
Velvet decided that the less she knew about him, the better.
After a few minutes of walking, they arrived at one of the side walls of the Royal Castle.
Wireframe gritted his teeth as a few golden and green sparks jumped out of his horn. “Dammit,” he muttered. “This horn is still as dead as a rock. Looks like all I have right now is my eye.” He grumbled unhappily and went towards the main entrance.
Velvet raised an eyebrow. Wireframe gestured at his body. “Corpse, remember? I’ll explain more when I get to the safehouse. For now, just know that zombies aren’t known for magical ability.”
There were two armored pegasi at the gate, and they also seemed to ignore him, but jolted to awareness when he moved to push their spears away. “Halt, citizen,” one said. “State your business. The Castle is not receiving visitors at this time.”
“Ooof course,” Wireframe mumbled under his breath. The guards looked curiously as he whacked the side of his head, the iris of his left eye fluctuating between multiple shapes and symbols. It stopped on a strange red bird symbol, superimposed on his green iris
Wireframe opened his mouth. Stand. Aside., To Velvet’s surprise, she felt an unknown force compelling her to step away from Wireframe, but managed to resist it for the few seconds it lasted. The guards, on the other hand, stared blankly into the distance and raised their spears for a few seconds, enough time for Wireframe to grab Velvet and drag them through the gate.
Velvet was going to ask Wireframe what he did as they rounded a corner, but he collapsed, gasping and sounding like he was suffering a lethal asthma attack with his eyes clenched shut in pain. It took him a few minutes before he was able to slowly unclench his muscles.
“Are you alright?” Velvet ventured. She lifted a hoof towards him, then hesitated.
“Good enough,” he hissed, ignoring her hoof entirely. He took a deep breath and focused, pushing the pain by sheer force of will. He slowly pushed himself up by using the wall and continued trotting into the Castle, waving his hoof at her to catch up, grinding his teeth each time he bent a joint. He looked back over his shoulder at the awkwardly shuffling mare. “Move it.”
He shuffled away without turning to look if Velvet followed. She did so anyways, and decided that her question probably wasn’t worth knowing in any case.
He led her to trapdoor barely visible in the wall. He pushed at it and for a moment, his hoof sank into the wall before reality noticed something was wrong and hastily corrected itself. Strangely, the room did not seem to be part of the castle, clearly being far too big to fit inside the wall they passed.
Velvet waited in silence for a bit, then asked, “So... what is this place?”
Wireframe tapped his head. “A bit of subconscious meddling. I’ve been to a lot of copies of places. Most of them have a location that stays relatively similar wherever and whenever I end up, and so I set up an automatic subroutine that will quietly generate a safehouse if I am to have an extended stay here. The default saferoom for Equestria in particular is this fake nursery I ... stole from elsewhere.”
Wireframe shuffled over to a beanbag chair and collapsed onto it. Velvet meekly followed him in and sat on some threadbare cushions. He stared at the ceiling quietly for a few minutes, slowly exhaling. “Alright, listen to this carefully, since I only have time to say it once. As I mentioned and demonstrated earlier, I don’t have much to work with. I only have enough energy for a few minutes of sustained combat at the moment, and most of it are attacks I associate with my head and eye. Difficult to use in a brawl. For whatever reason, my bosses have striped me of the rest of my energy.”
Velvet slowly raised a hoof. “Why? Aren’t they invested or ...?”
“I don’t know.” A slight tenseness overcame his hooves, gripping the edges of the beanbag. “They never respond. In all honesty, they probably don’t care too much about me. I’m replaceable, like everyone else. They have enough power to erase me, so I don’t dare talk back.”
“Are there anypony else you can call upon?”
“Sociopaths, all of them,” Wireframe growled, grinding his teeth. The fabric twisted under his grip. “They think nothing about you Insiders, unless it threatens their Feeding. No good can come from there.
“The Gre - I mean, Outsider, has to break through what plot armor you do have with imaginational energy, this black stuff” Wireframe pawed at his face, trailing sticky black goop. “In layman terms...” Wireframe created a quill from the matter bleeding off his face and scrawled an extremely detailed portrait of Velvet’s head onto the stone floor. Shimmering, barely legible text fluttered somehow behind the image.
“This is what you look like. To Outsiders.” He stabbed the quill down, spilling ink all over the picture, making Velvet startle. The ink flowed away back up his hoof, leaving a slightly different picture behind. “Slightly different eyes. Different choices. Different thought patterns. Remember when I froze you earlier? This is the same, but permanent.”
Wireframe slowly leaned forward, squeezing the beanbag chair and staring straight at her eyes. She was confronted with eyes filled with barely restrained anger, and curiously, and undercurrent of fear. “I can not stress this enough,” he continued. “No matter what circumstances happen, do not let yourself get touched. Once you do, its all over.”
Velvet hastily nodded, only then realizing that Wireframe was somehow only a foot away from her face. Wireframe sat back down, once again somehow teleporting back to the other side of the room, huffing. “Good. Now, recall when I said I will do whatever necessary in order to win?”
She nodded.
“The second reason for these hideaways. Old places have weight. Memories. Souls that have come and gone. Very energy dense. I will soon prepare to consume as much of it as possible before he detects me. Celestia is quite a catch herself ... I know that look, and I know what you’re going to ask.” Wireframe mashed a hoof against Velvet’s lips. “You are the only thing that’s important. Everything burns if we I don’t succeed.” He settled back into his seat.
“The bugger that summoned this Outsider has no feasible grasp on what kind of horrors she's unleashed into your universe.. For now, it is bound to her command, which is to alter the future. It can do whatever it wants after that. If she ... suddenly changed her mind and decided to simply send a normal, time traveling assassin after you, you’re on your on.” He shrugged. “Sucks to be you.”
Velvet shrunk a little at the emotionless tone he had.
“Any last minute questions?”
Velvet closed her eyes and took a few breaths, trying to calm herself. After a moment, she opened her eyes and said, “Two things. First, What about the Bumblebee effect? I mean, won’t - ”
“Quiet!” Wireframe cut her off, frantically waving his hooves. This in turn made Velvet start in her seat, looking around, but not sure what to look for. “We don’t want to be giving anyone any ideas!” He worriedly flicked his eyes back and forth for a minute before signing in relief. “That is indeed a good question, but answering that is ... problematic. Us Outsiders... and please don’t think too much about this, somebody might hear it and get ideas, we ... questionably exist. We can both alter Reality and be altered by it. The only reason why protecting the stability of this universe is relatively simple is because people don’t tend to think too outside the box.
“Outsiders and our world are little more than unruly ideas who refuse to die against the onslaught of worse ideas. There is a code, an invisible script we follow. We follow the rules, and hopefully everything goes in our favor. Its a setup that worked for us for several cycles, barring a few mishaps here and there. Introducing new stuff like what you suggested will complicate our plans roughly ... 1000 fold, at minimum.”
He raised an eyebrow and Velvet’s dropped jaw. “Look at what we had to go through to ensure I ended up near you and without detection,” he said. “I’ll admit, this is an abnormal one, but if your situation was in effect, we would have to focus on entire populations. Shielding one is easy. Shielding everything is damn near impossible.
“But for now, you’re in luck. We only have to worry about you. As your importance rises, others’ fall, making collateral damage less of a problem. As long as that stays true, that “Bumblebee” won’t be a problem. Now what’s your second question?”
Velvet stayed silent until she realized he was addressing her. “Oh, yes. Um, not to say that I don’t trust you, but what should I do if I have to defend myself? I really don’t like the thought of not being able to do anything.”
Wireframe nodded. “Another good question. I’ll be honest, there isn’t much you can do. We’re a kind of extradimensional creature, and can only be hurt by things from the Outside. I, and by extension, they, have a lot of annoying tricks to catch their targets. Running away might not actually accomplish anything besides tire you out, since it can sort of lock your distance and slowly drag itself over to you no matter how fast you move. That said, bright flashes of light might be able to disorient them for a brief moment. If the event comes where you are alone, delay it as much as possible. I will come to protect...”
Wireframe looked at a doll, observing the reflection in its eyes with perfect clarity.
“Go to sleep, child,” he growled, a grimace flashing across his face before he managed to project a face blank of emotion. “We don’t have much time. Rest now. We go to battle in the morning.” He started drawing a circle made with black liquid dripping down his arm and sat in the center, meditating. Velvet sighed and floated over a stuffed bunny to herself to use as a pillow. She wondered what he was thinking about that caused him to look so worried and disappointed.
She woke up sometime later and was greeted with a dinner roll sitting on the floor in front of her. Wireframe was still sitting across from her inside the black circle he drew. Strangely, the stone looked bleached in a radius of a few feet, as if it forgot what its color should be. Most of his skull looked like it had been drenched in ink. His right eye no longer held the golden iris of her beloved, and was instead just a black dot.
“Hurry,” he ordered, standing up. “I feel trouble coming.” Underneath his breath, she heard him whisper, “Too fast. It recovered too fast.”
Moments after Velvet managed to scarf down the bread, the wall besides them exploded, sending stone flying everywhere. Wireframe leapt to her side, his silhouette visible in the dust cloud. “Hold on,” he whispered. “The room is destabilizing.”
Cracks appeared on the other three walls around them, causing enough shaking to feel like an earthquake.The back wall bent forward, and when the stone finally couldn’t handle the increasing strain, the side walls collapsed, sending the back wall and the pair forwards into the hallway. Under the cacophony of crumbling stone, Velvet heard a surprised “Hurk!” above her, followed by a cold, sticky liquid splashing onto her face.
“Huh. Normal stone.” He coughed wetly. “Clever.” Velvet wiped her eyes and gasped at the stone pillar impaling Wireframe to the wall.
A sense of rising panic crept through her stomach and she quickly stood up, prancing in place. “What do I do? Can I help? Please, don’t leave me here!” Her eyes darted to him and out into the dust cloud, wondering whether being able to see something standing outside was a good thing or not.
He wearily opened an eye. “Not... fatal. Recoverable. You... run. Hurry... I will... catch up.” He weakly slid forward, trying to move towards the end of the spike.
She gave one last horrified look at her husband’s corpse, then sprinted through the castle halls.
Wireframe looked tiredly at her retreating backside, then at the chunk of stone protruding from his chest.. Oh, this is gonna hurt. I really should’ve figured out how to cast magic from this bone earlier. With a sigh, he inched forward, wincing whenever a particularly sharp point pressed into him. Black sparks leaped from his horn as he tried to levitate himself.