Chapter Text
"Oye!"
We just stood there, confused. The one who had spoken was a red goblin thing sitting on a chair in front of a wooden crate. There was another chair facing the crate, and sitting on top of this one was a human skeleton. the skeleton was being swarmed by flies, but the goblin didn't care, or didn't show it. On the left of the room was an alcove into the darkness, but there were glowing white eyes and a few tentacles coming out of the darkness. There were a few more wooden crated forming a semi-circle around the alcove with the creature with cushions on top. There were two white ones, a red one and a yellow one. On the wall above it all was a sign. It simply read; 'Jeff Shop' Except the S was backwards. The tentacle thing, presumably Jeff, waved at us and placed items on the cushions. There were some standard lockpicks and a bottle of vitamins, but there was also a strange key with a skull engraved on one end, and a simple wooden cross. There were values above the signs, showing their worth in gold. The lockpicks and vitamins were one hundred, the skull key was three hundred and the cross was five hundred.
"I'm El Goblino!" He said. "That's Bob." He motioned at the skeleton.
"The uhh." Aero said slowly. "Dead guy?"
"No düd, he's not dead. One time, me and Bob were in the greenhouse. He stepped on one of those spiky-plant-things, düd. Scared him so bad... haven't heard a peep out of him since. Speechless!
"Oh."
We walked over to Jeff and examined the items. Max bought the lockpicks and vitamins, just kind dropping the gold on the cushions. Jeff swiped it quickly and put it into his alcove. Aero purchased the skull key, leaving the cross. I had enough money for it, and it was expensive, so I thought why not? It was either pretty valuable, or I was getting scammed. I bought it, then walked over to El Goblino to talk to him. When I walked up to him, I accidentally swung my cross towards him.
"Oye! Watch where you swing that thing, hombre! Uff!"
"Sorry, sorry." I said.
"It's all good düd. Just don't do it again."
We talked for it bit longer about the hotel, and then Max arm wrestled El Goblino, and lost. Eventually, we decided we needed to leave.
"Oye, I hope you enjoyed your stay."
As we were walking through, I decided. we needed to come up with a name for the meat creature.
"Hey guys." I said. "What should we call that big flesh creature?"
There was a pause where we thought about it.
"The Figure." Max said.
"Figure?"
"Yeah. It sounds pretty cool."
"Alright then."
A few doors later, Rush came by, we all hid, but then I had a thought.
"Do you think everyone at the shop is okay?"
"Probably." Aero responded. "They look like they've been here longer than us."
A few more rooms later, there was a room that had no doors on it, but there were four paintings on the wall, with the Guiding Light showing us where they needed to be. There were also Eyes in that room. When trying to get all the paintings to the right places, we looked at the Eyes several times, but we got all of the paintings to the right places and the fireplace went down into the floor, revealing the next door. We opened it and the eyes disappeared. The next room was dimly lit, and Max's lighter ran out out fuel. He chucked it at a wall, and continued through the dark, Screech attacking us several times. The next room was big and dark, but in front of us was a gate, meaning we had to find the lever in the dark. Unfortunately, the basement was much larger than the other ones had been, meaning it took us a long time to search. Screech was everywhere, too. Finally we found it with the help of guiding light, and found our way out of the room. The room after that was a long ominous hallway, but the seeking thing didn't come chase us. I opened the door and behind it was the closet man from earlier.
"OH!"
We all fell backwards as he disappeared.
"See!" I said. "That's the closet man!"
We got back up and entered the room, which was covered in blood. The floors and walls were covered in it, and when a drip of blood got in Aero's hair, we found out that it was on the ceiling. We walked through the room, the blood getting on our shoes and in our hair.
"This is gross!" I whined. "Can we move faster?"
They didn't listen, and I didn't care. I ran to the door and opened it. Thankfully, the next room didn't have any blood in it. Aero was still in the room, taking his time, while Max was trying to... catch blood on his tongue.
"Tastes like blood." He said.
"Wow!" Aero said sarcastically. "Really?"
They entered the room I was in, and we kept going. A couple rooms later, Rush came by, and forced us to find a key in the dark. It took a while, but we found it. The next door had a pile of gold and diamonds on a table, and Max lunged at it, shoving it into his pockets.
"Money!" He screamed.
We walked into the next room, and all the lights were out, pus there were Eyes. We all looked away and passed by it. But then Max got a screech, so he looked behind him and at it, but also right at the eyes. He screamed and fell over, his eyes pouring blood. The gold spilled from his pockets.
“Oh god.” Aero said. “Well, I’m talking that gold.”
He reached down and did exactly that. I was in shock. It was just us. The others had died.
"Oh god." I said. "Oh god, oh god, oh..."
I fell to my knees, careful not to look at the eyes, and put my face in my hands.
"I can't." I whispered. "I can't take it anymore."
I wasn't sure how I was still alive after everything that happened, and I didn't feel like I deserved it. Life was turning into a mess, and I was completely unprepared.
"C'mon." Aero said. "Let's go."
I wiped my eyes and stood up. Aero opened the next door, which was covered in eyeballs.
"Oh no" I said.
I knew what that meant, and I wasn't exited for it. The seeking thing, or as I decided to call it, Seek, was coming back soon. The next room was quite strange. It was some sort of hospital room, with lots of hospital beds. We looked around, then ran in to explore. There were lots of drawers and boxes in all the various rooms with lots of gold in them. As we went into a side hall to check for loot in some of the rooms, I saw one door that looked different from the others. Approaching it revealed that it had a skull shape on the front, but one of the eyes was a keyhole.
"Well now this is kind of obvious." Aero said, and inserted his skull key into the keyhole.
He twisted and both the door and key instantly evaporated. The room behind it was rather small having only two desks, both with sets of drawers. One desk had a typewriter on it, and Aero started trying to type.
"Please help me." He said as he pressed the buttons on the typewriter, then looked at me. "Out of ink."
The other desk had a strange potted plant on it, so while Aero was looting the drawers, which had a lot of gold in them, I was examining the plant. It seemed like a normal plant until I touched it. The instant I did, some sort of power went from it, into me. It flowed through my fingers, then my arm, then through the rest of my body until it got to my heart. For a moment I thought it was poison, and that it was finally over, but it felt like quite the opposite. My heart felt like it was beating stronger, and my wounds started to heal.
"What is this?" I whispered, brushing dust off of the pot.
There was a plaque on the pot, and in small faded letters I could read; 'The Herb of Viridis.'
"Huh." I said. "Hey Aero. Come touch this plant."
He looked confused, but did as I said. His eyes widened as he felt its effects.
"Oh wow." He said.
"Yep." I said. "It's called The Herb of Viridis."
"That means?"
"No clue."
We exited that room and continued, and the next room was a hallway. I had a feeling I knew what was going to happen, and getting to the end of the hallway revealed that I was right. The goo rose up from the ground, and Seek emerged from it. I knew he was going to be back, but he didn't expect him to be back this soon. He ran. And so did we.