10- Fellowship
"Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another." – Proverbs 27:17
There was no telling how long it had been until she felt her ear scrape against the floorboards. Her new companion had gripped her left leg in both his arms, dragging her sharply backwards like the rope in a tug-o-war. A heavy groan rang in her head alongside the pain.
She had made a mistake. She let her guard down. She had become too trusting. She shouldn't have thought she could be even remotely safe with him. She was so stupid. She-
She heard something down the hall.
Now that her head was out of the hallway, he hastily shoved her into the nearest corner; he practically tried to squeeze her in like her body would and could melt to fit the sharp angle, but the best that was done was a tight, uncomfortable standing lean that ached her backbone. He pushed down on her toes with his feet to pin down the kicks and flails. Then one arm at a time he held her wrists. The touch that slipped past her sleeves was indescribable.
The prophet's cracked head came within an inch of hers to whisper-
"Stay still…You need to stay still…"
She soon understood why, but the explanation left even more unanswered.
As she stared at him, a sloshing noise grew louder and louder…nearing where they hid. It was rhythmic, like…walking. So compressed in this position, she had barely noticed past his open scowl that something was manifesting behind him.
She would later be grateful to not taste ink as one of his hands moved to cover her mouth, the vibration of her yell bouncing back onto her own tongue.
The upper half of a man- head, arms, and torso alone- dragged itself down the hall, made of ink and only ink. Remnants of itself were left in a trail of gooey clumps that dissolved into the floor within seconds.
Harsh and strained with intent, Sammy instructed her, "Let me know if it chooses to leave or to turn around." He felt the impression of the word "what?" upon his palm.
Then her eyes widened even more as the monster rotated once it reached the pool and slid to confront them.
"Around! Around!" came an urgent, muffled cry.
Sammy shifted his body once again to cover the being from her view- its view from her. Even though she no longer fought back, he hardly lightened his pushing. It sent her in a panic to hear her spine crack as he did so; it wasn't anything more than a noise, but it was a noise that might have been heard. She could feel the tension within him and it seeped into her, only adding to the discomfort.
A choked gargle was heard as it came closer; it seemed to be a communication of aggression and belligerence. She fleetingly could see past the man as this beast lifted its dripping arms and a hole opened in its head- a mouth that could hardly stay open as flesh melted back into itself.
It had seen him through the doorway. If it had seen her as well was left to be shown.
Sammy replied to it as he often had to her; he remained as he was, not looking, not reacting- only facing ahead at the person in his clasp.
There was something etched into his face- an expression she could not name but one that pierced her all the same. Her heart sank into her stomach when she glimpsed over his shoulder that the monster suddenly reared back.
…and then she heard a shuffle that grew quieter and quieter.
Soon there was nothing more than the blood in her ears.
Relief and a harsh pulse flooded her extremities as he finally removed himself from her. Her heavy gasps for air were accompanied by his silent acknowledgment- his patience; this was only a sliver of what the prophet knew waited for her, and yet it was still so much. He had earthly fear and vulnerability wash off him long ago, but as her mortality dirtied his pristine acceptance of Bendy and his embrace…there began a symbiosis- an exchange of sensations and emotions.
He had grown to fear for her; it was an unfamiliar and anxiety-ridden experience that he loathed to recognize.
Even in the dark he appeared was almost inhumanly tall as he stood over her, allowing her time to recompose. Yet again, she could not to his expectations.
"What the hell was that?!" Her hands slapped the sides of her face as she loudly begged for even a hint of rationality.
One side of his mouth stretched in agitation and she then covered her own as a child would, suddenly aware that such volume was deadly. And as he judged her, questioning his sympathy so soon after finding it, she abruptly realized what had happened- what he was doing.
Her ungratefulness was horrific to her.
"I…th-…" She sighed, squinting at him in weariness and shame. "…Thank you." It felt wrong to say; the adrenaline that believed he was assaulting her was still coursing in her veins. But there was still something left to fear.
His expression laxed only slightly at her new awareness, shifting from alarm to focus.
"My sheep…it seems we aren't safe here." He already knew that; it had been ignored throughout the blinding light of cognizance up until now.
Her brow deepened into her skin at how he addressed her, but there were more pressing matters at hand. "Wh-where-?" She couldn't finish her sentence as she discovered in her own words that she was again at his mercy or even lack thereof. But she had no choice.
He kept his gaze at her momentarily, but it soon went to the hall. Down the corridor, he saw no sign of the searcher nor any other. But he knew that they would come anyway like drops of rain in a cloudless sky.
There wasn't another pentagram nearby.
And then- he saw lord's blessings. He had forgotten. Sammy turned his back to her and walked to the office, filling her with dread until she saw him walking back with something decently large in his grip. Why was…he only walking back, not running?
She didn't know that it was mortal blood that the searchers craved, he having listened before as they surged over flesh and tried to engulf from the inside out.
And yet very soon, this wouldn't be the most urging thought in his mind.
Slow footsteps followed his in what have been a signal of mice to the cat that they came to be chased. She jumped back with a small yelp as he turned to look at her.
"Stay close…until I tell you to stay," he hummed.
Her cheeks pulled back to question him, but he had already put a glistening finger over the hole in his guise as a motion of hush. She chose to comply.
She noted he seemed…lighter. There was something. Something was in him she couldn't place, and it made her almost as uncomfortable as what seemed to be the possibility of seeing that- that THING again. It didn't fit what she saw so far; in the past hours she had only known his anger, his misery, his loss. This was…dang it what was it?! Fuck it! Fuck this guy!
She didn't dare say any of that, of course.
Her unease grew louder and louder with every step nearing the end of the corridor. She hardly even noticed the offices they passed along the way. This wasn't nearly as far as she had made it before on her own; she was more than anxious to see what else would come. Sammy would have worded it less kindly, but he too knew this of her. That was the precise reason why he didn't speak any more than he had to, lest she panic and lose what little agency was left in her.
It was brighter here; the size of the gallery ahead allowed for less shadow. Music mutely fuzzed through a nearby speaker and even though it was anything but sudden and had sung for them this whole time, she was still caught off guard.
Music. Even as it mocked her with childish pep, it was an instinctive relief, at least mildly so.
It was enough to finally oil her neck with courage and she slowly peered side to side. There was a wall just in front of them, but to the right seemed to be a large entryway connected to a staircase. To the left was hung a dull sign that spelled "RECORDING" just beside a room she could not yet see into; it was barricaded by a metal wall, the kind she'd see at an auto shop or at a closed mall store. The prophet chose the dead end.
There must have been open space under the sheet she had not seen as it lifted slightly with a push of his foot. Then with a catch in his palm he heaved it upward and held it there to allow entrance.
An old metallic rumble sifted through the air and drifted across the black field that lay ahead, their figures solid against a backdrop of radiance as it looked upon them. As soon as the rumbling ceased a thud came from overhead accompanied by blinding light. The sign they had passed now flitted with a dim, shivering glow.
The arm she used to shield her eyes slowly lowered, passing over her face as a magician would to reveal a slight of hand. An expression of foreboding disappeared and left behind one of awe.
It was a square tavern at least two stories tall. Like the rest of the studio it was fashioned from old wood swamped in dust and dreariness, and yet there was somehow less of both. It was less…dead, even as it sat empty of life.
Three directions, one at a time, came to her.
Forward like watching a movie screen from the back of an empty theater was a windowed box cut into the wall. It was far and indiscernible, but the woman could see a strange, tall silhouette within.
A…familiar one.
Right, a gallery. A small opening where a Bendy- oh god, let's not think about that word- stand peaked far above as if a spectacle lay before them. She soon found there was.
The left.
The left side did something neither of them expected, in the end.
Archaic microphones dangled from the ceiling like fairy lights over elevated rows of chairs. Their arrangement filled her with nostalgia even before she comprehended what she was looking at, but soon she did.
The ghost of an orchestra was stringed with instruments here and there as if band members would reappear behind them any second to reclaim their thrones and rise the bells of their horns to the sky. They all-…
She mindlessly walked through the gate past her shepherd and rested two fingers gingerly on the violin; it seemed to sit wordlessly in tension, waiting to be plucked.
Smooth. Scratched and even chipped, but…unlike every inch of this place, there wasn't a single spec of dust that kept her prints from sticking to the surface of the wood.
Realization once again rushed through her but in an entirely new manner. Taking a half-step, the human looked over her shoulder to see the ink man just…standing there, hand still raising the tin plates over his head while the other still dangled his lord's manna. With his true expression again hidden, she still somehow knew- could feel- an aura about him different than before, as if he was showing her something.
That was it.
"This is all yours, isn't it?"
He inhaled with a grunt- a laugh. He had laughed.
"It has been gifted for me to use, to use so I may sing the old songs that overflow my heart."
Despite these words sounding like they were ripped from a poetry book, she was dumfounded to see once again that he was a person. Unknown to her, it was all the more human of him how he was behaving earlier, how he relaxed. Once he had noticed that by Bendy's grace- or power- the searchers were keeping to themselves, he had lost his whim. He lost it to whatever was found traced along the edges of his instruments. It happened so often and yet as it happened now, excitement ran through him with unmatched stamina.
After all, it isn't every day that someone asked him about what he spent his life doing, fulfilling his purpose to Bendy. Not even his spite of her could take that away from him, not even his newly broken identity that lay crushed in her hands.
She now had traced with her fingers the hymns these instruments begged to release; they were never before allowed anything but the worn strums of a cursed prophet. This was new, sharp, and strong like a finely tuned harp that stood next to an impassioned church choir, bequeathing them its youth. They begged for her, the old strings; he heard them do so. There was a small shimmer next to his lips as two dents appeared by each cheek.
Now mind you, this woman had walked straight into torment and agony.
She had seen the depths of unholy reanimation- of both this studio and herself.
She had discovered within that same day that not only was her baby cousin still missing but that she had sought for him here for no reason at all, only leading to her pointless demise.
She had been given no hint of mercy or hope that she'd ever leave; she hoped all the same, but something in her soul tried to console her as if this man before her was still truly enveloped in delusion- that this "he" would never help her leave, "set us free" as her captor had said. That her visions and his words were all machinations of pain and insanity as she lay dying on the floor, under the spotlight so close to the exit. Or worse yet, maybe it was entirely the truth. It felt like she was waiting for a sucker punch to wake her up already. And yet it might all be what really was.
She found herself being held by the hand by a man with no memory into his abyss, a catacomb flooded with death.
And somehow, impossibly, she smiled back.