A/N Nothing to say again. Enjoy!
Chapter 12: The hands of dispair
Meanwhile
"Oh no... what do we do?" Frisk asked with a worried tone in her voice as she stared down into the abyss.
"I don't know... we can't climb down there." Chara replied as she pulled her sister away from the edge.
"There's probably another way. It wouldn't make sense to only have one way up or down." Six added as she looked into the intermittent darkness. "Seems like theres light here and there... just be careful where you step. Don't want to trip." The others nodded and kept close together, all holding each others shirts tightly as to not lose one another. They cautiously made their way through the hallways and rooms, making sure o go slow in the dark and observe all they could while in the light. This system did them well for a time. It helped them solve the many puzzles each room had until...
"What... is that...?" Frisk asked timidly as she stared at the horror in front of her.
"I... I think it's a body... what's left of it..." In the next light, they saw what remained of a cadaver, swollen and rotten with age and frozen mid-surgery. As to what surgery it was undergoing... none of them dared to guess. The body was missing its head and both hands, but everything else seemed to be intact. The sight made them very uneasy and didn't want to stick around for very long. They made haste out of the room and closed the door behind them.
"Well, at least there's a solid object between us and that... guy..." Chara said softly.
"Uh... you might not wanna turn around." Six replied.
"What? why-" She turned and went to let out a scream, but Frisk stopped her. Her heavy breathing was all they heard as they basked in the horror before them. Hundreds apon hundreds of hands either boxed or lying about the floor lay before them. "What is this...? What kind of horrific place is this...?"
"I don't know. It smells awful and I don't want to be here longer than we have to. Let's judt uh... step over them." Frisk said. And so they did. They made extra sure they didn't step on any of the disembodied hands, but this was not an easy task. There were several large piles of the hands scattered about that made traveling difficult. They didn't dare push any out of the way, so they either had to go around or really stretch their legs to get over them. They made it about half way through and even began to think they'd make it out okay... until a sickening crunch sound filled the room. Six and Chara's heads snapped back to see Frisk stepping on a hand.
"Hey, be more carful next time." Six chastised, but the pale loom of horror told her something was wrong.
"Guys... I'm one hundred percent certain that hand wasn't there a moment ago."
"What do you mean?" Chara replied. "It's not like they can just get up and walk around-" She then suddenly stopped her sentence dead in its tracks.
"What's gotten into you?" Six asked. Chara said nothing. She just slowly pointed at the top of Six's raincoat. Slowly glancing up, she noticed a single hand perched on top of her head. Sic gulped and held in her scream, but then the hand began to tighten and she couldn't hold it anymore. She let out a shriek as she swatted the hand off her head. It landed and immidiatly began to scuttle into the darkness as well as every other hand lying about the floor. The girls quickly huddled together, back against back to look in all directions.
"What do we do, what do we do?!" Frisk exclaimed.
"The door! Run!" Chara replied. The trio ran as fast as they could towards the door but was stopped by a small group of hands, who lunged at them. They managed to dodge, but only barely.
"Damn! Now what..." Six mumbled. The trio glanced around quickly. They saw no openings. No doors. No nothing. But then they got an interesting idea: Up. They didn't think about looking up. Once they did, they saw that the ceiling was made of segmented squares that looked easy to remove. The hands, being hands, could barely climb, but they had full mobility, so they dashed to the nearest shelf and started to ascend. Things went... poorly. Though they were little more than hands and were bad at climbing, they were great in leaping. This allowed them to jump and grab ahold of the kids. One at a time wasn't bad, but when they ganged up on them and several clinging on at once, it made climbing difficult. It didn't take much to shake them off, but they leaped faster than they could knock them off. They had to move fast and they had a lot of ground to cover, but they watched each others backs and helped out when each other needed it and eventually they persevered. They scaled the racks and shook off hands until they successfully reached the ceiling and crawled in. One tried to climb in with them, but they slammed the ceiling on it and it fell back down into the masses. After the excitement died down, they all stopped and took a deep breath.
"Well... That sucked..." Frisk said.
"No kidding... We should keep going. Gotta find that other elevator or staircase or something. Find the boys... I hope they're alright." Chara replied.
"They should be fine. I mean, what could be worse than disembodied hands?" Six asked. They picked a direction and began to walk, stopping every so often to check the room below them for what they needed before moving on, but none of them stopped to think... all those hands... those hundreds of hands... well, they had to have belonged to something. The question was... where were those 'somethings'?