The Silence
The colossal explosions shake the mansion's very foundations. The floor was dancing drunkenly to some frenzied waltz. The windows were rebelling against the imprisonment of the walls. The furnishings had mostly scattered – in a most delightfully chaotic manner – all over the floor so that there was no safe area to walk upon. That is, if one could walk under such circumstances.
The murderous, diabolical twins were nowhere in sight. That – and that alone – was why Alice had wandered from the relative safety of her chamber. Another wave of explosions struck the crumbling mansion. Crying out, Alice staggered and collapsed on a heap of ruined wooden furnishings. Her hands splintered with a flourish of velvet vermillion at once.
The window quaked with an unearthly might. Shadows darted just at the edge of Alice's view. The glass shattered. Its razor fragments leaped to the far wall before a further explosion seemed to throw the mansion to its side. Alice threw her hands up over her head, craning her neck forward. She screamed.
Knives. They were as knives. The blades were as ice. Blood came to cloak her. Eyes wide, she found herself unable to move. Her hearing had lessened. A strange, muted quality hung about the strange, strange world – but there were voices. She didn't recognise them. They were… malignant, at best. Thus, hands bleeding more so than ever before, she rose on quivering legs and took tremulous steps.
The near constant sway brought on by the explosions swept her unerringly from side to side. She crashed against wall after wall, stumbling, and then falling atop, the shattered remains of the mansion's splendour.
Yet, despite the carnage, despite the unequivocal danger, she found herself with only one thought: Blood is not going to be happy.
When she finally came to a room deep within the mansion she was slipping in her own blood. Her eyes were weak; her vision hazy. Her hands, grasping the walls for support, felt nothing. She could feel neither the heaviness of her limbs nor the desperation of her lungs to garner oxygen.
Her approach, she found, was loud and clumsy, for Blood emerged from the door soon after she had noticed it was there; that it was – indeed – open. He rushed to her, gathered her up in his arms. She tried to scold him for bringing her to such a place. She tried to call out insults.
As the strange, strange world grew more and more distant, she found her earing restored (in part), her sight also (equally, in part).
"So, it is now," Blood murmured to her with a low voice and carefully composed expression. "You have decided to leave us."
She tried to open her mouth, to speak. She tried to stop his edges from blurring. Blood filled her throat. She coughed. She wheezed and gasped. Yet, no panic arose.
Then, softly, perhaps with concealed care. "So soon, too."