Chapter 18, everybody! In which we discuss the Dens….Scared the bejeepers out of me when I first stumbled on one. :O
Don't Starve © 2013 Klei Entertainment
Portal © 2007 Valve
Ah, finally! We can start officially testing!
Joy.
Now, since you were in stasis so long, you've probably suffered some brain damage, so we'll start things off simple. Well, simpler.
She just employed her old technique: stony, absolute silence.
I see it affected your vocal abilities. Not that it hurts my feelings. Welp! First test—knock yourself out. Literally.
She hated him, she decided. No, wait—she had hated him before. Now it was somewhere along the lines of pure loathing.
She took a deep breath, forced herself to focus—one test at a time, keeping an eye out for an escape. Take it one step at a time, just like Wilson would chide….
Oh please be alive, she silently begged.
Five tests later—five tests filled with his jeering, insulting, and badgering.
Willow could not say that she missed it.
The worst of it, however, was the worry that he was exactly right about her having some form of brain damage. A few tests ago, she could have sworn she had seen Wilson peeking out from behind a panel before it was pulled back into place—but that was silly, right?
Hey, quit your daydreaming! I've got work to do here!
She scowled at the camera before looking away angrily. No. She was not going to give him the satisfaction. Not an ounce. He thought he was so great? He thought he could just take everything of hers, her freedom, her life—
Her friend….
A heavy sigh. I suppose I could clean up some more—this place really is a dump. I wonder why….Maybe because I wasn't able to tidy up for forever. Gee, I wonder whose fault that was.
Oh, shut up.
And then some garbage bonked her on the head.
Oops—sorry.
Yeah, right. She tossed her head and walked into the next test.
Please don't mind the garbage lolling about uselessly.
She didn't—she was too busy looking at some long black panel with an illustration on it. Like she was supposed to stand on it….
Oh yeah, I suppose I should explain that—the friendly aerial faith plate: perfect for launching useless garbage into the air, although I don't think that's what it was developed for….Wait, what was it developed for?
She decided to examine the room while he busied himself with looking it up—he'd do that, then come back with some horrible story about how some test subject used the device and then was horribly mauled. She had long ago learned to ignore him.
Let's see….Ah, what was that over there?
She fired a portal against the wall and then another one to the wall near her so she could peer through. Another Den. But how to get to it?...
Ah, here it is! It was developed to launch useless garbage into a wall so it would go splat. I like that description much better, don't you?
She'd like it a lot better if she could test it without disgusting acid to fall into. Yeesh.
Hmm….maybe….
She kept her finger on the blue portal, ready to shoot at a moment's notice, and stepped on the aerial faith plate.
Instantly, she was launched into the air, only a split-second portal launch saving her from the exact fate he had described. She flew through the blue portal, out the orange one, and went tumbling into the Den, exhilarated by her accomplishment. Give her a test like that any day of the week.
She dusted herself off and examined the room.
She had found several of these odd Dens over her testing career, each one filled with odd writing that made no sense, pictures of cake and companion cubes, poetry….
It had been an interruption in the normal smooth, white walls, and that was what piqued her interest.
A companion cube had been wedged between two panels, preventing it from pulling back all the way.
Behind the panel was a room.
What are you doing? Don't go in there, he had commanded as she clambered over the cube. What if you get stuck, huh? It'll take me forever to get someone back there.
She ignored him, too taken up with the companion cubes pasted over the faces of people in a photo, a scrawled mantra of "The cake is a lie," and some pastiche of one of Emily Dickenson's poems. On the floor were cans of beans and disabled cameras….
And what looked disturbingly like a handprint of blood.
She wasted no time in getting out of there, away from the pictures and the poetry….
And occasionally, drawings.
This one, like usual, was beyond weird, drawings of the phases of the moon, with some doodle of something that looked like a pile of squid ink noodles—Grue was written beneath it. A few lines she recognized as being from The Pit and the Pendulum, and then a reference to something called a Nightmare Throne before it devolved into the usual gibberish.
Willow sighed, then did her usual futile effort of examining the Den for a way out. If whoever made these Dens managed to evade his gaze for so long, then there had to be a way out—but she had never been able to find anything. And she certainly wasn't going to ask him about these Dens.
She sighed again, then went back to the test.