Quote Originally Posted by LKWayvern View Post
I'd like to go to the Mercenary Guild and head down those Dissonant Tunnels.
Daniel has avoided the followers of the Abyss...

With the dawn, you head out to the Mercenary Guild. It still feels a bit colder than you remember it first being, and it seems like there are fewer daylight hours, but you try not to think about it too much.

You make your way to the Mercenary Guild and manage to talk your way past the guards with your charisma. They don't question your motives and you head into the cold stone hallways, heading toward where the tunnels are. As you draw closer to them, you see fewer and fewer Pokémon in this area until you're the only one here now.

When you head toward the Heavy Gate, you feel that same uneasy feeling of dread wash over you as the tunnel seems to get darker and darker. The insidious shadows still lurk here, lashing at you as you try to leap your way past them.

Daniel has suffered 2 points of Purity damage.

Following Lillian's report, you take the tunnel to the left, informed that there was some kind of shadowy, void-like barrier that persisted here. As you walk down the dark hall, alert for anything that might be lurking within the shadows, you find the tunnel getting darker and darker until you reach the shadowy barrier. While other Pokémon might be deterred from this, you find its presence to be within your grasp to harness.

Focusing on your dark energies, you pull back the barrier and dispel the darkness, allowing the dim tunnel light to naturally drive the shadows away.

{Dissonant Tunnel: +Dark Type+}

Curious to see what was being protected like this, you head down into the hall and arrive at a black door, seemingly slick and covered with a greasy black substance that you swear could be oil. After grabbing the gnarled metallic handle, you swing the door open, and step into the dark room.

However, upon stepping inside, you behold a h̻̖̗o͇̥̠r͓̝̳̝͕̥̪͝r̬̙̗̹͎͝i͓͟f̣͖y̗̜̬i̭̜̞n̦͓̹̝͖̜g̪̫͔̩ ̮͎̯ sight unlike anything you've ever seen before...

Daniel has suffered 1 point of Purity damage.
Daniel has suffered 1 point of Sanity damage.

Everywhere you look, there are dead Pokémon, impaled, skewered, stabbed, and riddled with stabbing weapons. Besides you, a Clefairy has spears and sharpened poles jabbed in her body in all directions, causing blood to ooze down her chest. To your right, a Gloom remains suspended to the wall, impaled like a badly-improvised makeshift crucifixion. And all across the floor, you find yourself chin-deep in the dead, seeing a freshly-decaying Crobat, a bloody skewered Glameow, and perished Bunnelby that was stabbed and impaled three times from the back. You make your way around them, gawking as how horrifying the scene is.

But it isn't until you get to an impaled Linoone that things go from bad to worse. You look at her, stabbed with a spear through the chest with other, smaller nail-like spikes driven into her, causing her brown and beige fur to have become matted with blood. At first, you think she's dead like all the others. But then, to your absolute terror...

...she slowly opens her eyes... and you realize she's still alive...

"...P-ple...ase... h...h-elp... m... m... me..." she mutters.

"What's wrong?" You ask her, realizing she's trying to warn you of something. "What happened here?"

You try to get a closer look, but the situation is pretty bad. Trying to move her even just a bit might kill her.

"...N-Nooo... no... d-don't... d..."

And then you foot lands on a pressure plate that isn't like the others, and your mind quickly does the math.

#Arrow Rain Trap 4H, Fighting# Dodge Rate: 30%
Daniel rolls 23% to dodge! You quickly leap out of the way!

You aren't surprised by the click you hear and you know it's a trap the second you hear it. You swiftly jump to the side, narrowly avoiding the hail of arrows that showers the area you were just standing in.

However, to your absolute dread, while those arrows miss you, they hit the dying Linoone instead, and you gasp as you see her get hit repeatedly with them. And then... seconds later, you see her die right in front of you, crumbling to the floor l͟i͏̟͔̭f̠̱̙͕ͅe̩̰̞l͈̞̻̭e̸̤͓̙̗̼ͅș̢̠̜̟s̝͠l̼̖͎̰͉̗̬y̡̟ ͔.

"NO!" you scream.

Daniel has suffered 2 points of Purity damage.
Daniel has suffered 2 points of Sanity damage.

But there's nothing you can do. Fresh blood soon oozes all over the dried blood that was there before as her body is now almost unrecognizable from all the objects currently sticking into her. You watch grimly as a blood of crimson blood pools around her body, filling in the grooves of the stone floor before the puddle soon follows them.

You make it your priority to find whatever is lurking here and get out before anything more like that happens. Making your way around the blood-splattered impaled body of a Politoed, you find something causing a faint amount of blood-colored illumination in the center of the room, and when you take a closer look at it, you see it, glowing back at you, surrounded with bloody, hellish scrawl as the stone surface around it lies caked with dried blood.



=Abatis Maze= has been noted in the Team Records.

It looks to be some kind of demonic cipher or pattern. You pick up the tile-like slab and figure it has to mean something, but you don't want to waste any more time here trying to figure it out right now. You take it and head back to base, backtracking through the dimly-lit hallways and back out through the Mercenary Guild. The whole time, you race as quickly as you can, feeling like you're trying to wake up from a nightmare.

After getting to the exit, you run out back into the sunlight, winded, panted, and with your heart still racing feverishly.

As much as you want to forget what you just saw, you find it difficult to...

Daniel the Umbreon (M: Dark)
Health: 9/10| Sanity: 5/8 | Purity: 5/10
Battle Stance: Flee
Perk: Seinaru
Trait: Charming