Chapter Text
The floor gave out from under him, sending his tired and aching body plummeting into unknown darkness. Twisting pipes cast in an eerie greenish glow followed his descent; Wriothesley only narrowly managed to dodge the few bisecting the tunnel by sheer luck.
Desperation was a funny thing, clawing at the inside of the mind, howling at the top of its lungs to find a way to survive, to live. It knew no master, and wailed its incomprehensible discordant tune, begging him to do something, anything. If he didn’t act, surely he would die. One simply could not fall forever.
One gauntlet-covered hand reached out, grasping desperately for something that could be grabbed to stop his rapid descent. The first pipe burst upon contact, showering him in an endless stream of briny seawater that slicked his fingers and sent him sliding once more towards his demise.
A vast pool loomed below, the dark surface rippling invitingly as it grew bigger and bigger. Wriothesley dragged his hand against the nearest wall, ice blossoming upon contact, in a piss-poor attempt at slowing his trajectory. A piece of his gauntlet broke off, spinning in midair before it pinged off several metal surfaces and disappeared with an ominous splash below.
Wriothesley followed it, unwillingly, aching from head to toe as icy water enveloped his body, the impact with the surface tension alone shocking his nerves unpleasantly. He flailed amidst the murky liquid, legs kicking out uselessly, trying to keep himself from sinking further into the inky black depths.
The green light above was his north star as he clawed his way back to the surface and breathable air, to the lip of a stone platform that he hoisted himself ungracefully upon. Chest heaving, body shivering, Wriothesley collapsed on his back, taking a moment to breathe and calm the racing panicked thing in his chest.
When finally the world righted itself and the edges stopped darkening with spots of various colors, he assessed where he was. The cavernous space was rectangular, the ceiling and walls comprised of the twisted pipes and metal panels characteristic of the core of Meropide.
A constant dripping of water tickled his awareness, at varying depths and paces all around, as if the entire inside of this space were drenched or leaking somehow, from somewhere.
Never had Wriothesley seen a space such as this, without entrances or exits, within the walls of Meropide, and he’d been there for more than a decade himself. Head on a swivel, he looked for any path forward, and seeing none, his focus narrowed in on the source of illumination that cast deep shadows between each twisting iron fissure and column.
That eerie glow drew his eyes, dragging it along faintly illuminated rusted chains anchored elbow deep into foundational stone blocks of the platform he laid upon. Each connection boasted tension reminiscent of a violin string wound taught, prepared to rend shrieking sound throughout the room at the slightest brush of a finger.
Suspended by those foreboding chains was a simple iron box with a door on the front, locked with a large padlock with no keyhole.
Big rusty hooks skewered through inch-wide iron rings on all sides except the front. The perpetual tension strung the item up at chest level, where it pulsed faintly with that chartreuse hue of unnatural light.
He was not supposed to be here.
With a grunt of pain, Wriothesley rolled to his knees, cautiously testing his shaky legs to make sure nothing was horrifically broken, only bruised and battered, before he stood. Sea water dripped from every crevasse, his tattered button-down shirt and grey trousers soaked through, clinging uncomfortably to him like a second, too-wrinkly skin.
“Where in the fuck –?” he wondered aloud in no more than a whisper, wandering forward with two uncertain, meandering steps, head inclined backwards as he peered up at the ceiling comprised of myriad twisting metal pipes, like so many coiled serpents. It made his head pulse angrily the longer he stared at it, the edges of his vision distorting until the structure stretched, further and further away with each step.
Disoriented, he stumbled over his feet, nearly crashing back to the damp stones below until he caught himself on one of the thick chains. It rattled in his grasp, vibrating up towards the haunting box. Wriothesley stared, frozen in place like a fly in a web, as he watched the single thread give away his position to the hunter in its home, sat patiently at the center. Waiting.
Waiting for what?
Waiting for you…
It beckoned him closer, not with words, nor with sound or gesture, but with intention and purpose.
The box demanded his presence.
No, that wasn’t quite right. The box drew him in, like a moth to the flame of a candle, but the hand holding that candle was the entirety of the room around him.
No, not just the room; the Fortress. It pressed down from all sides, above him, below him, on either side of his head, oppressive in how it perceived him from every angle.
He was inside it. Whatever it was.
“What are you?” he asked, firming his voice only from years of practice doing just that in the face of unfiltered fear. Don’t let them see you flinch; it was one of the first lessons Wriothesley had learned down in the bowels of this prison.
It was one of the things he hoped to change about it.
The very room trembled, debris splashing into the water, the shriek of pipes grinding on metal forcing Wriothesley to cover his ears. A rumbling, a deep discordant sound from below and above, filled the room. He didn’t hear it speak, because it did not know words, but the meaning injected itself into his mind between cracks he’d not known to exist. It wormed its way through hairline fractures of memories and past experiences, settling deep in his mind where it sank teeth into his consciousness.
Black blossomed across his vision; like ink spilling across parchment it traveled from his left eye towards his right, accompanied by a splitting headache that stole the air from his lungs.
I am the trenches of the ocean, the murky depths where the damned reside
“I understand!” Wriothesley shouted against the cacophony of sound and pain, his teeth pressed firmly together as his vision failed him, consumed by pitch black nothingness.
In an instant it stopped.
The headache eased; the room became still.
Without realizing it, he’d hunched over the box, gripping the chains on either side to steady himself as his vision returned. The metal was warm to the touch, his cold hands becoming clammy under the differing temperature.
A sound beyond the gentle lapping of waves and the creak of ancient metal reached him, through the sides of the cube-like structure staring him in the face.
Ba-dum, be-dum, ba-dum…
Like a terrified animal, it beat a steady but quick pace.
“This is…” Wriothesley swallowed around the fear in his throat, tightening his grip on the chains to prevent his hands from shaking.
His vision distorted, twisting and warping until he saw himself reaching for the lock on the door; it popped open when his fingers made contact. The mechanism clattered to the stone beneath, and with it gone, the rusted door slowly creaked open.
Settled inside, wrapped in a blood-stained cloth, was a fist-sized lump that jerked in tandem with the rhythm pounding inside his skull. Against his will, he reached out; the hasty tempo of the thing wrapped in gauze increased fervently as he approached, as if it were afraid.
Afraid of him.
“Who is…” He couldn’t finish the question, throat closing around the very sounds as his mind whirred and he put two and two together.
The man lying on the floor of the office far, far above, where he bled out slowly and painfully, face shattered by Wriothesley’s gauntlets. The administrator of Meropide, the tormentor of so many, and one no longer sitting within that seat of power.
It couldn’t be…
The Administrator is part of the whole.
No.
“No.” Wriothesley said again, aloud. He’d not realized how close his fingers had been to touching the still-beating heart in the box and he withdrew them as if burned, gasping as he broke free of whatever was twisting his mind.
He blinked, cleared the fog from his eyes and focused back in on the box before him. It was shut, locked tight, entirely undisturbed, but that panicked drumming continued. There was no denying that what he’d seen was real, even if all of this felt like a nightmare.
“I will not be your puppet,” he declared on a heavy exhale, unflinchingly despite the beginnings of displeased rumblings he could hear from every direction. That same pressure took root in his mind once more, as if a fishhook had been embedded in the center of his forehead, under his skull and into the meat of his brain.
Water, dark and murky, lashed over the sides of the platform, reaching in long, tendrilled fingers towards his boots. The walls began to shrink inwards as steam escaped from the pipes all around, creating a hazy fog that felt too thick to breathe. Moisture collected on the inside of his lungs, choking him as he stepped away from the edges.
The light emanating from the box, the heart, turned a harsh red, illuminating the space, refracting across the fog to fill the room with a angry burning glow.
Shapes moved within the fog, bodies with faces he recognized, each of them walking, drawn towards the box, before the fog would envelope them and he would lose the visual.
The Fortress must have an administrator.
A sea of distorted faces stared back at him, their bodies misshapen, like someone had drawn them with their eyes closed, only vaguely getting the lines mostly correct. The message was clear, their focus unwavering as they extended hands towards the box en masse.
Wriothesley wavered, frozen in place by the odds stacked against him.
Never in all his years had he thought the Administrator was merely a puppet, that something far more sinister than the greed of man pulled strings deep within the walls of the place so many of them called home, willingly or not.
If he did not agree… someone else would be made to.
Someone less compassionate. Someone who didn’t care. Someone who wouldn’t even think twice about a decision such as this.
The red light dimmed, and the figures faded as the fog dispersed.
Wriothesley considered himself a gambling man, a good one at that. He knew when the chips were stacked against him, when he’d been given a bum hand, and when the house was cheating.
This “house” was definitely cheating, and the pot up for grabs was none other than Wriothesley’s life and the lives of all who resided within the Fortress of Meropide.
“Sonuvabitch…” he whispered, dragging both hands down his face. His knuckles ached, he was tired, and he felt the all-too-familiar fire of spite light itself inside his heart.
He’d never known when to give up and call it quits. “You need an administrator, right? I’ll be your fucking administrator.” His ice-cold gaze narrowed, focusing over the tips of his fingers once more upon the box. Two steps brought him before it, and with a ferocity he didn’t really feel, he yanked the lock free and threw open the door.
“But you mark my words…” Wriothesley’s hand closed around the warm, damp, beating thing within. It squelched unpleasantly in his unrelenting grip, wriggling with each frantic thundering pulse as if to try and scramble away.
Somewhere far off, a man, or what remained of him, writhed upon the floor of a bloodstained office, scratching at the scar over his chest as it burned, drool and blood leaking from his lips as shadows descended from the corners of the room and reached for him.
Wriothesley unwrapped the heart, and stared down at it, his grip solidifying with determination and anger.
“I’m the last damn administrator you’ll ever have.”
He brought the organ to his mouth and sank his teeth in deep. Instinct was a powerful force, and it drove him through the bile rising in his throat, as he chewed stubborn bloody meat that burst upon his tongue and swallowed.
Once he’d begun, he couldn’t stop.
Each bite was agony.
The cut of his teeth through organ mirrored by the tearing open of his own skin. Blood pooled upon his chest, dripping like hot wax from a steadily-growing wound, his skin peeling apart in a line.
He didn’t dare look down, hot tears streaking his cheeks as he ate, and ate, and ate, until the very last bit of heart in his palm disappeared between his lips and down his throat.
Wriothesley sank to his knees, dizzy, chilled to the bone by the wet clothes clinging to his skin. He kneeled in a pool of his own blood, a gaping wound in his chest, an emptiness that filled instead with a consciousness not his own, as hooks sank deeper into his mind.
He peered upwards, the box looming high above, a heart sitting once again inside of it. Transfixed, he stared as it iced over, turning to a solid block. There was a displeased screech in response and the box trembled from its position.
The new Administrator smirked as the door slammed closed, a lock reappearing to seal it shut. Frost crawled over the box itself, traveling the length of the chains, turning the green light into a tundra blue: a mark of his own stubborn will.
“Home sweet home…” Wriothesley whispered to himself, before he felt his grasp on reality slipping away, the room turning sideways as cool wet stone met his cheek and the world went dark.