Heavenly Host Elementary School Annex – Nirvana
The slap of bare skin against exposed flesh was drowned by the rumbling of the world. Yoshiki ran through the annex. Turning right from the entrance, his bare feet sank into the dissolving floor. A cry like a wounded animal echoed from the bowels of the building.
The hallway was no longer rectangular. The wrinkled pink and red flesh of the Nirvana coated everything. Instead of a man made structure, the path he was running felt more like the intestines of some colossal monster.
"*Huff! Hah! Just a little more, hold on Shinozaki!"
The school groaned in reply. A cracking sound accompanied the deforming of a doorframe in his path, twisting from a rectangle into a deformed ellipse. Leaping through it he started running up the stairs which, by some miracle of engineering or fate, remained relatively intact.
He barely got up three steps before falling forwards and slamming into the wooden railing. Head spinning, he slid down the stairs, splashing slid into a pool of blood at the bottom.
"...! Cough, hack, cough, cough, dammit..." Cursing, he pushed himself out of it.
Although intact, the stairs were covered with a single massive river of blood, flowing from the second floor. It seemed that gravity still worked in this twisted dimension.
Grabbing onto the meaty railing, he grit his teeth in disgust as he dug his fingernails into the squishy mess that coated the wood. The flow of blood caught at his ankles, dragging him backwards. Each step caused him to grunt, as he dragged himself up with his hands and feet.
Finally reaching the top, he paused. Refilling his lungs with sickening air that caused him to wretch, and sank to his knees in exhaustion.
Recovering for a moment, he looked up, and his eyes widened in surprise.
"Wha... what the fuck is going on here!?"
The second floor hallway no longer looked as if it was in 3D.
Like a painting by M.C. Escher, it had been warped and stretched. Almost as if someone had grabbed both ends of it and twisted it, like a butcher would an uncooked sausage. A stream of blood flowed in a spiral, following the twisted floor, even when the floor became the ceiling. Droplets fell downwards, upwards, and sideways depending on where the directions up and down had been shifted. Yoshiki's exhausted mind overlapped the twisted image with a water slide for a moment; replacing it with a water park he had once gone to with his family. Sprays of clear liquid had been jetted into the middle of the plastic tube that formed the slide.
The laws of physics were warped by and warping this space, showing just how far this world had collapsed.
"Dammit! It doesn't matter. Where the hell is Mist?"
Pushing off from the railing, he splashed through the flow. Another quake accompanied a thunderous roar from the depths of the building, causing him to brace against the wall.
"Shit, I've got to hurry. Not much time left!" Righting himself again, he began running forward. He walked on the walls and ceilings which sprayed him from below and the sides with sticky liquid. When his path intersected with the floor, he jumped over it to dodge the ever growing stream that ran along it.
"...! Found it."
Mist's sneakers peeked out from a fold in the meaty hallway. Grabbing on to them, Yoshiki pulled out Mist's corpse.
"...?! ugh."
It was missing its head. The hood of his clothing was missing as well; the neck and collar were ragged as if something had violently torn at them. He couldn't figure out whether they had been smashed apart, merging with the background of the school, or removed by one of the many horrors that existed within it.
"Where did you hide them?"
Rifling through the pockets on the hoodie, Yoshiki pulled out a few coins and a piece of chalk from the right pocket. Sticking his hand into the left pocket, he felt two cold, smooth objects.
"This is it!"
Pulling out his hand, he looked at the two blue stones. The Ever After stones. "Now all I have to do is find Shino... Whoa!"
Another quake pulsed through the building, releasing the twisted hallway. The space snapped back to its previous form, like an over coiled spring, flinging Yoshiki face first into floor.
"...?! PFFFFT, COUGH, HACK, RETCH, DAMMIT I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS."
Spitting out the bloody stream he'd been dumped in, he began charging forward to what had been the entrance to the Girls' Toilet. It connected this hellish building to the insane world Satoshi and the others, himself included, had left. A world made only of blackness and illuminated by a dull red glow. The place where they had left Shinozaki behind; where she had ordered them to leave her.
"Urk! What the hell?!"
He barely took the first step before being brought to a sudden halt. Landing on his rear, he felt something holding him by the back of his jacket. His head whipped around.
"Wha?!"
Mist's corpse had grabbed him as he has turned around. The lower half was already gone, sucked into the floor like a noodle and his other hand was whipping forward to grab Yoshiki's head.
"Whoa, shit!"
Ducking out of the way, Yoshiki twisted out of his jacket like a lizard cutting off its tail.
"I don't have time for you, ya bastard!"
Leaving the thrashing corpse behind, Yoshiki ran down the hall. His feet slipped as he tried to stop in front of the last door, sending him to the floor in a heap.
"Almost there! Come on! Wait for me Shinozaki! Just wait!"
Grabbing the door frame for support, he wrenched himself upright with one hand and slammed the door open with the other.
"SHINOZAKI!"
He was back, back in this impossibly massive space.
Bits of floorboard stuck out from the doorway into the void, forming a net of planks splintering outwards from the flesh like some sort of horribly deformed nail. The sky glowed red; its light pulsed at regular intervals. Unlike before, part of the platform Shinozaki had been on had crumbled, forming a wooden mesh; like a mix of a slope and a ladder.
"Shinozaki, where are you!" Yoshiki called, running onto the planks.
'She was up there last time, next to that lump of flesh.' He thought. 'I can't see either of them now. Did they go further in? Don't tell me she fell!'
"Shinozaki! Shinozaki?!"
Still yelling, he reached the collapsed part of the platform and began to climb it.
"Almost there. Come on. Don't go doing something stupid while I'm not there you idiot."
Clambering up onto the platform, the Nirvana, or what remained of it, entered his vision. The huge masses of flesh were gone. Instead two piles of red were lying over the planks. One was a lot smaller than the other, about the size of a human. The other was about the size of a small car.
'Did Shinozaki eat this much already?'
Gritting his teeth, he pulled himself up onto the upper platform.
Shinozaki Ayumi had tried to seal the malicious dimension, the Nirvana, into herself by physically consuming it. Before they had left, the meat that represented the dimension was so massive it expanded as far as they could see. Now, only these two scraps remained. The space that had been filled by flesh was replaced by the endless darkness that made up the rest of this world.
'Where's Shinozaki?!'
The person he had run through the very embodiment of hell for was not here. Unlike the darkness, the floorboards did not expand endlessly, but he could not see the familiar twin tails or blue eyes of the class-rep.
'Where is she, goddammit?! Huh? Isn't that... the book?'
A brown book, next to the smaller pile of meat, entered his vision. Thick and heavy as an encyclopedia, its front cover was decorated with a bony face.
The empty sockets glowed red with malicious light and a long crimson tongue stretched from its toothy mouth; tasting the air lazily.
"Hey, where the hell is she! Where is Shinozaki?!" Grabbing the book he yelled at its grinning face, shaking it at the same time.
"MWA HA HA HA HA"
Laughing in his face gleefully the book doesn't answer him.
"STOP SCREWING AROUND, WHERE IS SHINOZAKI?!" Yelling at the book the knuckles gripping it turn white.
"Can you not see with your own eyes, boy?" The dead voice of the book echoes amidst the rumbling of the world, which has now dimmed to a constant murmur in the background.
"WHERE IS SHE! WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER?!"
Yoshiki did not notice the tears that had begun to run down his face, washing the blood stains from his cheeks. Neither did he realize how childish his screams had become.
"She is right in front of you. Do you not see my dear master?"
"Wha..."
His eyes look over the book.
In front of him sat a red hair tie with a few dark hairs still stuck to it.
Right next to the smaller clump of meat.
"...!?"
Swallowing, he drops the book with a thump. It laughs hysterically in response, but his pulse obliterates all other sounds in his ears. Slowly, he crawls forward to the front of the meat.
A single eye with a blue iris stares vacantly back at him.
"...ulp...ugh...ahhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"