Yeesh, three months went by before I updated this O_o Sorry about that, guys! Plus FanFiction was giving me a problem because it wouldn't let me upload my chapters, so...it's really late XD


Malik looked up at Yusef, then to the priest that wore white robes and held many candles that gave off strange scents. Malik and Yusef were to stand by and let the priest do whatever it was that he needed to do. They had no clue how an exorcism worked, but throughout the entire time that the priest was there, nothing seemed to have changed. Worse yet, there was an eerie feeling Malik received whenever he went into the Bureau's bathing room.

Altair had always hated water. He had hydrophobia, as a matter of fact. Malik never really understood it, but no matter how hard he tried, he could never manage to get him in a bath. He always took buckets of water and washed himself outside of the bath unless if the water was so shallow that it was up to his ankles, which, for a bath, was insignificant. Anything higher than his ankles would stress him out. Anything higher than his shins meant that he wouldn't even dare get close to it. His intense fear of water had even interrupted training during his novice years.

Malik had never gotten such a strange feeling upon entering any room. He wondered why it happened. Perhaps it was lingering emotions from Altair? But, after a few days of getting a horrible feeling every time he entered the bathing room, he noticed that he started to get it in the basement too. That was a real problem because all of their food and special supplies were in the basement. Malik no longer dared to go into the subbasement. He remembered Al Mualim becoming angry at Altair when he was fourteen and punished him by locking him in a subbasement back at Masyaf. Malik remembered Altair being freed from there only a couple hours later after Al Mualim decided that his punishment was too harsh. When Altair was released, he was so frightened that he could barely walk.

It had nothing to do with weakness. He had been forced into a dark, dank place that was literally a basement's basement. Apparently Altair had said something to Al Mualim that angered him, and after that, he only spoke when it was necessary. He never said anything unless he was spoken to and he always kept his mouth closed because of what Al Mualim had done to him.

Trapping him in a basement's basement alone, in the dark, and then leaving, despite Altair's pleas to be released and despite his fears and despite the fact that he beat his hands against the walls until he was bloody…for Al Mualim to have done that as purely cruel, unnecessary, and evil.

It took half the day for the priest to finish the exorcism and after he left, Malik headed to the bathing room. He still had the bad feeling. Malik decided to brush it off and figured that it was only his imagination. Shaking his head, he turned around and twisted the doorknob to leave. For some reason, the door wouldn't open. He tried to open it again- this time with more force -but to no avail.

"What?" Malik said. "What is going on? Yusef! Open this door please," he said. "It's jammed."

When he got no answer, he said, "Yusef, I do not find this humorous. Open the door at once."

He turned around when he heard something odd. He saw something crawling out of the mirror. It was black, almost as if it had been charred, and two hands reached up from the piece of reflective glass. A head came next and all what Malik could see was a red mouth.

Malik leaned back against the door and knocked on it frantically. "Yusef! Open the door! Yusef!"

Still, there was no answer. Then something started to crawl out of the baths. They were bloody vines that snaked out like worms and started to spread across the floor. The colors of the floor and the walls disintegrated and were replaced with blood spatters and rust. Dark-red blood started to pour down the walls and stained them, giving the room and sickening, metallic scent.

Malik watched the bloodied vines spread to the walls, where they crawled up and started to dot everything in blackness. The baths began to overflow with blood and Malik closed his eyes, repeating to himself that it was a dream even though he was convinced it wasn't. Everything became black and quiet.

Malik was there for the longest time until he decided to open his eyes and saw just how dark everything was. There was still some blackened figure trying to crawl out of the mirror, which was giving off a gray and gloomy glow. When Malik took a step forward, the floor was squishy and spurted out some unknown liquid. Malik decided to stay still.

"Can't save him…" something said.

Malik deduced that it was struggling figure in the mirror. "Altair?" he asked.

"Can't rescue him. He's drowning in his own blood."

There was a flash of red light and everything was suddenly back to normal. The floors and the walls were untouched by rust and blood and everything was clean once again. The thing in the mirror was gone.

The door- which still had Malik leaning against it -was opened by Yusef and the Bureau leader nearly toppled backwards before he managed to catch him.

"Is everything alright, my friend?" Yusef asked.

Malik shook his head. "The priest didn't do anything. There was just a…a…haunting, I believe it would be. There were these…these vines and blood and there was something in the mirror and it spoke to me and…" Malik stopped talking and calmed himself. "Altair is still here. The exorcism did not work."

Yusef shrugged his shoulders. "Then what are we going to do?"

"I don't know, but I have a feeling that only you and I can free him. We now know that a priest cannot do anything about this."

"But what exactly is trapping him, master?"

"I…I don't know. I'm pretty sure that he's trapped in Purgatory, though. I really do not know. It could be something completely different, but I just don't know. Only you and I can deal with this. Altair needs us in order to pass on."


Otherworldly things are slowly going to be leaking into Malik's world.

Wow, three months passed and I give you guys the world's shortest and uneventful chapter ever known to mankind XD Okay, it may not be entirely 'uneventful' but I really need to work on it a little more.