The pungent odor of burnt marshmallows verges on overpowering as they step beyond the arched gateway, and the enclosed area looked like something straight out of a horror movie: a foggy old burial yard with a small grove of sagging sour worm trees in the center. The overgrown tufts of withered mint grass that sprout out here and there featuring clumps of prickly Nerds candies that cling unto Vanellope's clothes and socks when she walked past them, as if the very earth were against her being here.
Wynnchel, oblivious to his charge's surmounting fear, stops and takes a breath of relief as he puts his gun back in its holster. "Now let's see what we can do about that bite."
He snatches Vanellope's jacket and tears off a sleeve.
"Can't you just use that thing to heal me?" She motions with her hand to the pendant, the chain of which was still draping out of his pocket.
The doughnut pauses mid-First Aid and stares at her with his eye doughs pulled, giving him an agitated look. "Just how many marbles did you lose when those guys strung you up like a chocolate moose?"
She gathered he was referring to whatever lead to her pleasant experience with zombie Candlehead and the dead Malarkey so she asks about it, but Wynnchel refuses to answer as he applies the makeshift bandage.
"Perhaps it's better we didn't sit and chat right at this moment." He says with a slight laugh, and the matter is dropped like a cluster of cotton candy from clammy claws on a circus wheel...for now.
They get moving again, but navigating between the tightly packed grave markers is not easy for the exhausted Vanellope. And the pain of her dino-bitten arm - despite Wynnchel's assurance that the wound looked worse than it actually was - did not assist matters either. Most distracting of all though, was that other THING that still weighed on her mind.
"You saw that? In this graveyard?"
"As opposed to the graveyard next door?"
The Chief's calm demeanor undergoes a complete switch when she tells him about the entity with the gigantic sword and triangular dome covering its head.
"I'm pretty fudging sure it wasn't one of those derpy dinosaurs." Vanellope adds, shifting her eyes around nervously. "If there's only one unlocked gate, it's still gotta still be in here, right?" Although by the looks of that thing it could probably cleave through one of the locked gates as easily as if they were made of buttermilk biscuit.
"Keep your eyes open, and holler if you need me to shoot at something." He says, discreetly mumbling about something about her being 'crazy as an inside-out Oreo'. "Sticky's just over that hill, a little ways into the complex."
Sticky. Vanellope could hardly believe she was now this close to meeting with the person behind the voice that pulled her into this world to begin with, and she was already had a growing list of things to ask about.
But when she thought about it, Vanellope was not even sure of whether to refer to Sticky as a he or she anymore. Could there exist a simple explanation for why Sticky's voice sounded distinctly masculine on the phone, or had whatever was afflicting Sugar Rush change her dear friend as well?
In any case, Vanellope had experienced enough change lately, and she could not help but think how peachy it would be if things just returned to the way they were after the reset.
Vanellope...
Wynnchel leads her up a barren hill, where rows of undisturbed ancient jawbreaker mausoleums stood like glucose gilded guardians of the dead. From somewhere among them concealed within inky black shadows, Vanellope heard a voice call her name. A light and airy, girl's voice.
Vanellope...
She closes her hand around the pendant in her pocket tightly, trying to contain the flow of red, sticky liquid pouring forth from its 'eyes'.
"President?" She can hear Wynnchel ask, but he might as well have been talking through a glass of champagne cola.
For a split second, the image of a girlsweet with neon green hair being cornered by three formless, unidentifiable monsters against a small campfire flashes in Vanellope's mind.
Your friend is in danger...
"Earth to President Von Schweetz..." Wynnchel says as he lays a hand on her shoulder, which jars her back to reality.
She whirls around, looks at him with eyes as big as caramel apples.
"Sticky's in trouble."