Very, very carefully, Wendy closed the door and thanked the powers that be that the doors were well-oiled. While she could probably handle it if she had to, she'd prefer not waking that giant snake up in the first place.
"A dead end. At least this place looks safe." The white Exceed noted. Having gathered their wits a bit and moved on from the hallway, the two had emerged into a much larger gallery area with three floors… and a giant snake lounging right next to the door, leaning out from a canvas much like the madwoman that had attacked them earlier. Thankfully the beast was too busy sleeping to try eating them, but it also blocked up the corridor, so the two wayward visitors had to sneak along the other way upstairs if they wanted to go around it without risking waking it up.
The Sky Dragon Slayer sniffed the air once the door clicked quietly shut. "…Is that tea?"
"Yeah, I smell it too. Looks like it's coming from that painting." Carla said, pointing at one of the paintings on the wall. The room was a small hall with several small paintings hung on one side, very simple works that didn't even have names, so simple they may as well be one single piece of art together with their different colored frames. One of the paintings happened to be a cup of tea, with smoke continuously wafting off the surface and all the way out of the frame.
"Oh, so it is." Wendy blinked and walked over for a closer look, sniffing the air again. "Ahh… It smells so rich and fresh, just the smell alone is helping me relax. If only I could actually drink it…"
"Considering what we've seen so far, you probably could just reach in and take it. Wait, no, don't do that!" The cat silently cursed herself for that slip of the tongue as her human friend gave her a confused glance, a hand already poised to touch the painting. "It could be dangerous, so don't."
"Dangerous? But it's just a cup of tea?"
"And those are just roses." Carla pointed at the bag in which they decided to keep the roses, then at the cut on Wendy's belly for emphasis, "Who knows, it could be poisoned or something. We've already been attacked once and had our bodies bound to these flowers, this place and everything in it can't be trusted."
Unable to argue with that logic, Wendy sighed with disappointment and retracted her hand. "You're right, sorry… Is there anything else in this room then?" She pondered, and the two checked the room and its paintings once more. Red balls, an open book with the words 'Everyone goes to sleep at night' alongside scribbly lines for text, a shark's head, the cup of tea, and finally what looked like a hole in a dirt ground.
"…If they're supposed to mean something then I don't get it yet. Let's keep going for now."
"Okay." Wendy nodded, and the two left the side room and headed up the next flight of steps to the top level. Turning the corner though, they found their path interrupted by a missing segment in the floor; looking down into the hole, all they could see was pitch darkness...
"Huh. Good thing I can fly, and you can just jump over. Let's keep going- Wendy, what're you looking at?" The flying Exceed looked back at her partner, who had switched from looking into the chasm to looking at something else on the floor.
"…I found an ant."
Carla blinked and furrowed her brow. "…An ant? That's what you're… Ugh, leave it, let's just go already."
"But it's bright white!" Wendy argued, still staring at the little insect which had stopped scuttling about to look back at the human. "I just feel like it's special somehow… Umm… Hello? Mr. Ant?"
The flying cat facepalmed and sighed. Really? They're trapped in some twisted art gallery and the kid's wasting time chatting with an-
"Hello, human."
The little chittery voice cut off her thoughts. W-Who said that? No way, it couldn't be…
"O-Oh, you really can talk!" The young Dragon Slayer blinked and widened her eyes in surprise, but was much less shocked than her feline friend and actually overjoyed that her hunch was right. "Umm, hello, do you live here, Mr. Ant?"
"No. I don't know where my home is. I wanna go home." The ant replied.
"Aww, you poor thing! Don't worry, we'll help you!"
"Wendy, we don't have time for this! We have to find our way out of here and regroup with the others, remember?" Carla argued, still a little annoyed she was wrong about the ant, but the girl was insistent.
"What if he can help us though? That door wouldn't open until we took the roses, maybe this is something we have to play along with too?" Wendy countered, leaving Carla with few things to retort with. "Plus, I really want to help him find his way home…"
"…Fine, you were right that it's special, maybe you're right about this too." The Exceed conceded. "Let's see then, an ant's home should be an anthill, right? That'd probably be a painting somewhere. If we find a picture of an anthill we'll bring it back, o- Wait, that one of the hole in the ground. Was that…?"
"Yeah, that must've been an anthill! Quick thinking, Carla! Let's go get it!" Wendy cheered, and soon the two returned to the ant with the painting in tow. "Mr. Ant, is this your home?"
"Oh, there's my home. Put it down for me over there, over the hole." The little white bug confirmed, and Wendy did as asked, bridging the gap with the canvas. "Thank you. There's a way home now. I'll go home then."
The two watched as the white dot crawled over the coffee-colored floor and onto the painting, disappearing into the anthill, and waited. And waited.
"…Well that did absolutely nothing for us." Carla scoffed in annoyance. Wendy herself was a little disappointed, but nowhere near as upset.
"It was still a good deed, so it's not that bad… Let's keep going."
Jumping/flying over the anthill and chasm, the two quickly came across another branching path; to their right is an orange door, and the only things between it and them were two giant rose sculptures, one pink one blue, swaying back and forth to the sides.
"The Stubborn Twins…" Wendy read aloud the nameplate. "Heh, they look kind of silly waving about like that. I think there's just enough room for me to squeeze past to the door, let me see…"
"Be careful, Wendy, I have a bad feeling about this…" The feline warned, but Wendy was already on her way, crawling past the leaves of the first rose and keeping low so the swaying flowers won't bump into her. So far so good, just a little more…
"Huh?" The girl looked back; the first rose had curled a root around her leg.
Then without warning, the second rose suddenly smashed its flower straight down on the Sky Dragon Slayer's back, crushing her against the ground. The girl shrieked in pain and tried to crawl out of the way as the stone flower lifted off her back, but her snagged foot kept her in place, and the weight came crashing back down all too fast, this time with a sickening crunch. The living sculpture smashed down again, and again, and again, until the girl lay still.
"WENDY! !"
"H-HUH?!"
Wendy spun around to look at her friend, both frozen in horror. It took a few seconds for Carla to realize the young Dragon Slayer was still there, crouched as if about to start crawling forward, if the feline hadn't just screamed bloody murder. That was… a vision from her clairvoyance? Oh thank heavens… W-Wait!
"Stop! Get away from there!"
"O-Okay!" Scared and confused, Wendy quickly complied and scrambled away from the sculptures. "What's wrong? You look like you just saw a ghost!"
"Worse, a vision… Of you getting crushed to death by one of those things…" The Exceed explained, eyes still wide in fear from what she saw, and soon Wendy had much the same haunted expression. "We should destroy these things, they're dangerous."
The Sky Dragon Slayer hesitated, looking at the giant swaying flowers with newfound fear, then shook her head. "Let's just find another way."
"What if there's no other way?"
"…Then we'll see if it comes to that. I just don't think destroying things here is a good idea…"
Carla shook her head and sighed. That child sometimes… "If you say so. Let's keep looking then."
"Beware of edges… The heck does that mean?" The Salamander stared confused at the sign before him.
"Exactly what it says I guess, but edges of what?" Lucy pondered as well, though she was more interested in the bug paintings on the side. The three of them had unlocked the blue door and entered the next room, a gallery hall painted entirely green instead of blue. The path was split into two, one straight ahead with a pillar and the sign standing in the middle, another to the side with lifelike paintings of various insects on the wall, almost like taxidermy samples.
Natsu tried to figure out what the warning's about for a few more seconds, then shrugged. "Eh, I bet it's nothing to worry about! I'm gonna go check up ahead!" He gestured down the hallway he's facing and Lucy gave him a nod of acknowledgement, so the young man casually strolled past the pillar and kept on going. A few steps down the hallway though…
"GAH!"
"NATSU?!" Hearing her friend's cry, Lucy (along with Happy) hurried around the corner to see what's happened and found Natsu backed up against one wall, glaring in shock at the disembodied arm poking out the opposite wall, seemingly made from shadows, its clawed hand thrashing about wildly before it settled back down. "W-What the hell is that?!" The blonde recoiled upon seeing the shadowy hand as well.
"I think that's a hand!" The flying cat tried to be helpful despite being just as surprised and scared.
"I know that, Happy! That's not what I- Wait, Natsu, are you hurt?"
"Nah, I'm fine." Natsu shook his head, having dodged out of the way in time thanks to his battle-trained reflexes and the hand's extremely limited range.
"That's a relief. So what happened?"
"I dunno, I was just walking along and then that thing popped out and tried to tear my throat out." He explained rather nonchalantly for someone who just narrowly escaped severe injury. The three continued to observe the disembodied appendage and gradually calmed down when they figured the thing couldn't hurt them as long as they stayed away.
"Huh… Maybe that's what the sign meant, the walls are the edges. There's probably more than one arm, so I wouldn't stick to that other wall neither if I were you." Lucy noted, and Natsu quickly moved back out of the hallway altogether, "That one doesn't look like it can reach very far, assuming they're all like that, if we stay along the middle we should be fine. Still, let's try the other way first…"
"Fine with that." "Y-Yeah, I don't wanna go anywhere near that thing…" The Salamander and his feline companion agreed, and the three went down the path with the insect paintings instead, still staying alert and a healthy distance from the walls just in case.
After the first four nameless paintings of random bugs, the fifth was a bit different and had a nameplate.
"Prologue…" Lucy read it aloud, looking at the strangely empty painting featuring only a small caterpillar hatching from an egg and a lot of blank space.
"What's with all the bugs?" Natsu raised an eyebrow.
"I dunno. I never even knew these paintings existed, they might be early experimental works that he never bothered to have displayed. Oh my god, I wonder how many works Guertena kept here that no one's ever seen before?" The thought of being in an exclusive viewing session of the famed artist's secret paintings brought stars to the girl's eyes.
"If even that guy himself didn't show 'em to anyone then they can't be that interesting. I mean look at this, it's practically blank!"
"Well that's true, but looking through some of the random stuff he painted is still an experience! Might even let me learn things about him that no one else knows! Besides the fact he has an entire pocket dimension of living art of course!" Lucy shrugged, refusing to let her spirits be dampened, and the trio continued on.
The next few paintings were apparently continuations of Prologue; a fully grown caterpillar, a chrysalis, and a butterfly fluttering away, labeled 'Chapter One', 'Chapter Two', and 'Last Chapter' respectively.
"Aww, that's cute~" Lucy said with a smile, feeling a little warm and fuzzy inside. Her friends were evidently less impressed.
"Isn't that something a preschooler would draw for biology homework?" Happy creased his brow, not getting why a supposedly renowned artist would draw something so simple even he could do it, minus the details. The Celestial Spirit mage just ignored him and kept going, opening the door at the end of the path to reveal a really small corridor with another door on the other end, except there's a hole in the floor in the middle. The three stopped at the edge and carefully looked down into it.
"…Natsu, do you see anything in there? All I see is an endless abyss, it's like none of the light from up here even reaches the bottom…"
"Nope, absolutely nothing."
Deciding falling down the pit would be a bad idea, the three stepped back and jumped (or flew) over the gap one by one and continued on. The next room was a small one too, if bigger than the corridor they just went through, with a painting on the wall, and a headless black stone mannequin in a red dress and high heels at the end.
"Hey, I remember seeing one of those headless things in the gallery." Natsu noted, walking closer to it.
"Yeah, there were three of them together called Death of the Individual." Lucy nodded, "Their headlessness and matching clothes represent-"
"Save the art lesson for later, Lucy."
The art enthusiast pouted but shut up all the same, walking over to the painting while Natsu inspected the statue. "…Now it's not so cute…" She grimaced and shivered as she examined the painting labeled 'Epilogue': The same butterfly from 'Last Chapter', being devoured by a spider. "…Why do I feel a sense of foreboding?"
"Hey Lucy, check it out, it's a key!" Her companion called from behind her, crouching in front of the mannequin and picking something up. The key had been hard to notice since it was small, flat, and the same green color as the floor, but it couldn't escape the Dragon Slayer's keen senses. At the same time though, his feline friend also noticed something less pleasant.
"Uhh, guys? I think that statue just twitched…" A nervous Happy warned, staring warily at the headless mannequin. The two humans' eyes immediately darted to it too, but the statue was as still as it should be. Lucy wondered if the mannequin was actually alive and dangerous too, she wouldn't put it past this demented gallery after those shadow claws. On the other hand, both the roses and the hands came with warning signs, but there's no warning here-
Fairies caught in a spider's web.
"…I don't see anything. You sure it's not your imagination, Happy?"
"Umm, maybe-"
"NATSU, GET BACK!"
At the same time as Lucy yelled her warning and backed away from the statue herself, the 'spider' struck, lunging at the one in front of it with sharp fingernails. The 'butterfly' was ready for it though. Or so he thought.
"Fire Dragon's Iron Fist!" The Salamander shouted as he threw a punch at the statue's torso. In the heat of the moment he forgot his flames had been sealed off, but the physical force alone should've been enough to shatter stone. Except it didn't. The attack was only enough to make the living mannequin stagger back with a cracking sound before it lunged again, this time swinging with a fist. Expecting the statue to have been in pieces already, Natsu was caught off guard and sent reeling back by a strike to the face.
"Natsu!" Lucy cried out as she watched her friend get punched hard and retrieved the Fleuve D'etoiles from her belt, summoning forth the whip of sparkling water. A split second before the statue swung again, the whip coiled around its winded arm and yanked, using the momentum of its own punch to make it miss and topple over.
"I'm fine! Nice one, Lucy!" The Salamander grinned and poised himself for combat while the statue slowly got to its feet, ready for a proper fist fight. "Alright you chunk of rock, let's-"
"Natsu, we have the key already! Let's just get outta here!" Happy suggested, but the glutton for battle wouldn't budge.
"No worries Happy, I can totally take this guy!"
"It's not whether you can, there's no point to it!" Lucy pointed out as well, eager to just get away from the possessed mannequin, "Save your strength for later, let's go!"
"You too? Oh fine, if you say so." Natsu finally relented, and the two humans (and cat) turned tail and sprinted for the door while the unnaturally strong mannequin screeched despite having no head and lumbered after them. Thankfully for all its strength and durability, the statue wasn't very fast, and the three were over the gap and back out to the main room before it even got to the door. Lucy slammed the door behind them and kept running, until a crashing sound from behind them gave them pause.
"What was that? …Did it fall in the hole?"
"Maybe? Guess it's not bottomless afterall."
"Hmm. Let's not go back and check…" The girl sighed with relief, then remembered the danger's far from over. "Alright, only one way to go now. Remember, stay away from the walls…"
"Got it." "Aye…"
"Is… Is this a clock?"
Wendy gazed up in wonder at the giant structure on the wall before her, fitted above a blank nameplate, a clocklike contraption surrounded by colorful designs of the sun and moon and other geometrical shapes, and two pendulums beneath. They were what tipped her off on what it was, because the clock was missing its face at the center, making it entirely useless.
"I think so, if a broken one." Carla examined the clock several times her and Wendy's sizes too, flying up to check the hole where the clock's face should be. She could see something inside, but didn't dare reach in unless necessary. "I'll admit it's impressive, but we've got no use for it. Let's keep going."
The two of them had gone past the killer flowers and took the stairs back down, which led them to the other side of the first floor which the giant slumbering serpent had blocked them off from previously. They'd be more nervous around the beast, but if it hadn't woken up from Carla's earlier scream it probably won't wake up as long as they keep their voices down. Besides several more paintings, they had come across two doors on either side of the clock.
Wendy nodded and headed for the left door first, opening it warily to find…
"…I-It's so dark in there…" The young girl shivered, looking into the pitch dark room. There's something unnatural about that darkness, almost as if it absorbed what light seeped in from the corridor.
"I can't see a thing in there neither. Let's try the other door." Carla suggested, and the two headed for the door on the right. To their relief, the room beyond was well lit, with stacks of sealed cardboard boxes scattered about. To the right, they could see the other end of the snake hanging out of another painting, as if the paintings were some kind of portal between the walls, as well as some yellow scrawlings on the wall.
"'My heart goes to art, my spirit goes to my creation'…" Wendy read the words aloud, "I wonder who wrote this…"
The Exceed didn't respond, but she was starting to get an idea on the answer and what this place was, as much as she still didn't want to believe it was possible.
Checking the left, they also found another interesting painting. It was of a gray flabby humanoid, a little unsettling in its color and proportions but not very noteworthy on its own, except for some reason the face of the being had been messily scrawled out by black paint, and the work was titled 'Mistake'.
"Mistake, huh. I wonder if it was drawn like this on purpose or if Guertena actually framed a failed painting." Carla furrowed her brow and shook her head. "Artists, an incomprehensible bunch…"
"I just think it's sad, being created only to be called a mistake…" The Sky Sorceress looked up at the painting with sympathy, even if the bloated figure was still unnerving.
"No mistakes, only happy little accidents?" Carla smirked a little, "Well, let's keep going before it jumps out of the canvas and tries to strangle us." She said, her smile fading as both she and Wendy hurried away from the painting. She had said it as a joke, but then quickly remembered it's an all too real possibility in this enchanted gallery.
The two continued further into the room to a short flight of stairs and a narrow corridor; a sign outside read 'Collection'. "Collection of what?" The Exceed pondered aloud, and her human companion shook her head to say she didn't know neither, so they simply kept going.
They got a hint soon after turning the corner.
*thunk* "KYAAHH!"
Wendy screamed and backpedaled, while Carla quickly spun around, more composed, but only because she didn't know what flew past her wings until she saw the giant needle as long as a knife embedded in the wall.
"T-That was close! You almost- AGH!"
"WENDY!" The Exceed immediately rushed over to the Sky Sorceress, who was wincing and reaching down to pull out the giant needle stuck in her thigh. Another needle shot from the wall and narrowly missed the feline's tail. "Damn this place! Wendy, can you-"
"I'm okay! Let's go, hurry!" Wendy yanked the needle out with a restrained cry of pain and ran ahead, followed by a frantic Carla. As they dashed along the twisting corridor, needles continued to shoot from the walls, but now the two of them were ready, ducking and weaving between the sharp projectiles, the Sky Sorceress even swatting a few out of the air. The further they went, the more needles they had to dodge, until they turned a third corner to find a large black rose sitting on the floor in front of them. At the same time, another needle fired from the wall straight at the flying cat, who had just turned the corner and only just registered the large pointy lance heading for her.
Instead of being nailed to the wall though, Carla found herself unharmed, and the needle nowhere to be seen, only some dust that smacked against her and fell away.
A split second before it struck, Wendy had accidentally kicked the black rose, scattering the petals and disintegrating the needles. No more shot out after them.
"…I think that stopped the needles." The sapphire-haired girl looked around warily to make sure, and breathed a sigh of relief once she was certain. "Phew, we made it! Carla, are you- Y-Your ear!"
"Yeah, one of them clipped me, but it's nothing serious." The Exceed replied, ignoring the stinging from the small bleeding hole at the edge of one triangular ear. "I'm more worried about your leg. How bad is it?"
"It hurts, but I can still walk and run just fine… Here, let me heal you first." Ignoring her own pain, Wendy beckoned, and Carla drew nearer so her friend could use her healing magic. The Sky Dragon Slayer placed a gentle hand on the injured ear and channeled her power, creating a soft blue glow from her palm. It continued for a few seconds, until Wendy made a horrifying discovery. "C-Carla? It's not working…"
"Huh?"
"I can channel my magic as usual, nothing feels wrong, but the wound's just not closing…" She explained with increasing dread. The Exceed wasn't happy with the news neither.
"Seriously? First Natsu and Lucy, now this, just what's going on in this place?" Carla grumbled and tried to think of an explanation. Wendy's magic itself isn't hindered, so in this case it shouldn't be the caster's problem but the one it's casted on. Were the needles enchanted to block healing, or was it something else this place did to her? …Wait. "Wendy, check our roses."
"Umm, okay?" The girl blinked in surprise at the unexpected request and unzipped the bag she'd been keeping Carla in before, now used to store the voodoo roses. To her horror and as Carla guessed, a petal had dropped from each of the flowers, leaving Wendy's with 7 and Carla's with 4.
"I figured as much…" The white cat looked at the roses grimly. "They're worse than voodoo dolls. Every time our own bodies get injured they'll lose a petal too, making the damage permanent, and if we get hit enough, even if it normally wouldn't be lethal…"
Wendy gulped.
"Let's be extra careful from now on." Carla sighed and stepped back from the bag. "What did we even go through that to get? It better have been worth it…"
Wendy zipped up the bag and looked around too. They've ended up in a small dead end chamber with very little to see; on one end was a painting of blue skies and clouds, on the other end a butterfly with wings of orange so vibrant it was almost like flickering flames. The insect was pinned to the wall by a needle in each wing, and the nameplate beneath read 'Imprisoned Flame'. Upon closer inspection, it was even still alive, fluttering weakly in futile attempts to free itself.
"Oh no, poor thing!" The Sky Sorceress gasped in horror and immediately (but carefully) pulled the pins out, releasing the fiery insect. While the young girl watched with joy as the freed butterfly flittered about and eventually landed on her head to rest, Carla happened to remember the 'Collection' sign outside. The grisly image of her and Wendy pinned to a wall like that butterfly by those giant needles flashed through her mind, and she quickly shook it away.
"Nothing else here, huh…" The Exceed looked around the small room once more and found little of interest, "I hope that butterfly does something… Let's go back."
"Alright~" Wendy said, in a particularly good mood after freeing the butterfly despite the multiple wounds on her body, and the two retraced their steps through the winding corridor, minus the needle barrage this time. Just as they exited back out into the rest of the room though, they heard the sound of glass shattering, and a certain fat gray humanoid with a scrawled-over face blundered into view. Carla was almost not surprised.
"…I hate this place so much."
Author's Note: I did say the updates were going to be slow, though even I didn't expect them to be quite this slow, sorry about that. Thank you very much for the encouraging reviews! I suppose I'll take this chance to answer a few curiosities.
As I've said before, there are minor AU elements for the Ib storyline compared to canon, in that Ib and Gary escaped, but Mary wasn't burned. As far as I know that's not an impossibility, Mary's death isn't necessary for them to leave, so if Gary for one reason or another chose to ignore the vines and keep going, Mary can survive. Also as you can tell from this, the missing child and night guard aren't Ib and Gary since they already escaped. As for what happened to said child and night guard, all will be revealed in time. ;)
Again, thank you for your support, and see you next chapter!
