Solitude can help you to know yourself better.


"Flippy… How… What is going on?" One moment he held Flippy in his arms, the green bear began to become transparent. The specter floating next to him vanished along with his friend. "What the…" Just a few seconds and he is completely on his own. "Hello?! Flippy?! Where are you?" But no response came. He got up from the bed and walked towards a desk. A page of paper lies onto it with something written. "Huh…" Ian grabs the page.

Today is my birthday! I finally turned twelve! Finally, my so called "Youth" or "adolescence" as my provider calls it, is about to happen to me! I can´t wait! I will turn strong and independent! Just like him.

"That… That sounds so familiar… I was happy when I turned twelve back then…" Ian looks around the room, but the witch and Flippy are still gone. He heads towards the room's door and leaves. Once outside, he recognizes the mansion as it was when he first entered it. "A door next to our room… Maybe they…" But the door won´t budge. "Locked… I can´t remember that door… Nor can I remember that any door was locked when I entered her house…"

A clicking sounds from below the stairs, catching his attention and followed by the creaking of an opening door. Ian heads downstairs on calm paws, to be as quiet as possible. "I don´t like this…" He enters the room the door leads to. It is a small room with no furniture in it. On the bottom lies another note, only enlightened by the weak light of the torches attached to the wall.

My birthday was great! Not only did my friends visit me the entire day, but also my provider presented me with a staff, he says its called "Bo". He promised to teach me how to fight with it! I can´t wait!

He hears something falling behind him, causing him to yelp in surprise. As Ian turns around he sees a wooden stock lying on the ground together with a golden key attached to it. "My… Staff he gave me back then… How is that possible? It got confiscated as they caught me…". He picks it up, he remembers the happy days back then and feels the warm solace of the good days rising in his chest.

"This key… It can´t hurt to try it…" The key fits to his surprise to the locked door. The room is filled with a warm atmosphere, conquering him on an instant. There is another bed, resembling the one of his childhood. "All of this… What is this doing here?" Despite the serene mood filling him, he feels tears welling up in his eyes. "Why had all of this to end? Why was I forced to live in agony? Why did he have to die back then?" On the pillow of the bed lies another note.

I will remember today forever! My life is so perfect right now! Damn, sleeping will become hard today, how am I supposed to sleep? I want to learn to fight right now!

"I was so eager those days… So full of energy and enthusiasm. He sure didn´t have it easy with me. But he bore through it, he… Loved me as his own child… I am and was so grateful for that." As he left the room the stairs vanished, leaving a great but short hallway. At the end of it stands another door. Ian heads to it, but the door seems to be locked too. "The lock is pretty weak, maybe I can smash it open…" He throws himself at the door and it immediately gives in, revealing another small room. Amid the room stands a single pedestal, with another note on it.

"In times of sadness, remember how you are when you´re happy." He told me that every time I was feeling down and gloomy. But how are you supposed to feel happy when you currently have no reason to do so? But he always tells me that the distress we´re currently feeling is just a mere illusion we keep telling ourselves. "There is no distress, just a challenging situation for us to handle." I wonder what takes him so long right now… He told me that he will gather some herbs from the jungle, but it never took him that much time… I´m starting to get worried… Maybe I should look after him…

"That was the day… The day everything should go downhill for me…" Ian places the note back on the pedestal, screeching and screaming sounds are clouding his mind. He gets down to his knees and screams in pain, the sounds in his head increasing to an agonizing volume. As he opens his eyes, his surroundings have changed gravely. The wooden walls seem as if they´ve completely decomposed and a foul miasmatic odor is littering the air.

The smell makes him feel queasy. Ian scratches his back, noticing that his supposedly blank shoulder is covered, he looks down on himself and perceives that he isn´t in his underwear only anymore. "My kimono… How is it still fitting on me? I surely have grown since back then!" His body is covered with a tedious white kimono, but it is fitting tight onto his body like a soft tunic. He hugs himself in need of comfort, the reminiscence of the past and the fact that he has no clue where Flippy and the witch are evoke a feeling of solitude in him.

A shuffling sound from the end of the corridor is tearing him out of his melancholy. He grabs his bo and approaches the source of the sound carefully. Right before him he sees a fleshy creature, covered in some sort of mucus. "What the…" But the creature immediately spits its vitriolizing acid at Ian. He dodges it by jumping aside. A swing at the legs of the creature cause it to fall, Ian spins around and swings the staff down at the spot he assumed was the creature's head, causing it to splatter open. The thing only twitches a bit until it stopped moving completely.

"What the hell is that thing?" But the creature begins to melt, slowly dissolving into nothingness. His surroundings begin to change their shape. The stairs reappeared but the banister was greasy with fungal blight. "I surely won´t touch that…" Ian looks down, noticing the acre before the living room filled with the same sort of creatures he just encountered. He descends the stairs slowly as the rotten wood suddenly gives in, causing him to crash down.

Ian gives a short, surprised outcry and lands on the bottom hard. The creatures noticed the sound and swiftly head towards his direction. He rolls away quickly and hides behind a drawer, breathing into his abdomen, being as quiet as possible to cover the sound of his breathing. One creature peeks around the drawer and Ian readies himself to attack it.

"Remain calm and still. These creatures can´t see, they only hear and smell you."

Ian knows the girlish voice somehow, but he can´t recall exactly from where. He trusts the voice and tries to be as calm and quiet as possible. The creature indeed just passes him unnoticed. He quickly gets up and sneaks past the abominations towards the living room, closing the doors quickly but silently. On the table lies another note.

They killed him! They… They just slaughtered him before my own eyes! He told me to run but I couldn´t! I wanted to save him I wanted it so much! But I couldn´t… That cruel pig-lady told me I can try to revive him with my so called "gift". But I failed! It failed me! I couldn´t do it and now he is dead! Dead forever… What are they going to do with me? I´m scared! I´m so scared! What will happen to me from now on?

"I remember the scene perfectly… Not shortly after I went looking for him I found what terrible fate was about to come after him… But I just don´t understand why… What were their motives?" The scorching sound of burning planks startles him. Ian turns around and sees an inscription burning itself in the rotten walls, reading just a single word.

Sacrifices

He approaches the inscription but as he got closer another door shaped itself before him, opening directly. "An invitation, huh?" It is a large circular room with torches emitting a strangely bright light. Amid the room kneels another person resembling himself. The person covers his own head with his hands mumbling the same word over and over to himself. "It´s my fault… It´s my fault…"

"Hey bucko… Are you alright?" As he taps the person on his shoulder but instead of a face he gets greeted by a mirror right at the place the face is supposed to be. "What the?!" The mirror instantly cracks and blinds him with illuminous rays of light. The torches blew out suddenly while the creature simultaneously jumps up to the ceiling, hooking itself to the walls with its claws. The only source of light left are the rays from the creature's face.

"The things happened in the past weren´t your fault, Ian. Defeat your sense of guilt, you carry no complicity to the things that happened."

Again, this voice. "Who are you?" But the voice refrained to answer. The creature crawls along the walls with its nails clicking. Ian readies himself for a fight with a feeling that the creature is hostile. The creature jumps before him and stands up on its hind legs. "Holy shit you´ve definitely grown!" It readies its claws to strike Ian, but he quickly dashes aside while swinging his bo at its knees.

Its screaming affirms that the hit was somehow painful, but the creature jumped back and swings its long claws, sending several swipes at him. Ian has no other chance than dodging backwards but is soon greeted by the wall. The creature readies itself to finish him of. Ian swings his staff desperately at the cracked mirror, causing the thing to fall back while it covers its face.

The light of the mirror emits in a mixing on-off pattern and Ian uses the moment to hide in the shadows of the room. "So… The mirror is your weak spot huh? Could have thought of that…" But his attempts to hide proved to be vain as the creature instantly turned towards him.

"You cannot hide from your guilt! You have to face it, to overcome it!"

"What the?!" Several swipes at him hinder the opportunity to wonder about the mysterious voice talking to him. Ian dodges backwards once again and tries to thrust one end of his staff against the creature's face. However, the thing saw that coming and grabbed the stock with one of its claws, pushing it to the ground while grabbing Ian at his throat with the other.

The thing slowly pulls a gargling Ian up close to its face. Ian looks at it with dread and recognizes his own, dreaded face in the creature's reflection. Thoughts of self-doubt harass his mind and the guilt tries to win him over. "Your fault… Your fault… You could´ve done something!" The voices are echoing in his mind but every time he hears it he identifies it as his own.

The cacophony in his head drives him crazy and he kicks the creature's face in exasperation, causing it to let go of him. The kick at the cracked mirror caused one of his feet to get cut open which he realized the moment he tried to step forward. "Shit…" Ian picks up his staff and supports his stand with it. If the creature attempts another attack, he sure won´t be able to dodge it. He must face it right now to defeat it.

The thing slowly approaches him, and Ian looks directly at the mirror with a stern look on his face. The mirror shows his fragments torn to several pieces. Ian holds his stand nonetheless, waiting for the thing to be close enough. As the creature stood directly before him he makes a forceful swing at the face, smashing the mirror into many pieces. With a loud crackling sound, the torches on the walls light up again.

The body of the thing shrinks in size, the face and extremities get another shape. Before him lies an exact copy, shivering on the ground. "My fault… My fault… My fault…" Ian approaches him slowly, rising his staff and swings it down rapidly, smashing the skull of the shivering doppelganger. The squeezing feeling around his chest vanishes as if his heart got unburdened. The spot where his doppelganger lied revealed another note as the corpse vanished.

I´m caged… I´m caged and afraid… I don´t want to be here. They said I´m just a sort of experiment to them, they want to experiment with my gift… Several people from different villages got captured by them… I´m so scared… What will happen to them? What have I to do with it?

"I remember it… Not only I was scared… I had to look into several faces of anguish and fear. They just locked me in a tiny crate, giving me just the necessary amount of water and food to survive, sometimes days and months without just to look whether my gift would keep me alive… Sadly it did and every hope for mercy and freedom proved to be futile with every passing day…"

Tears of rage are watering his eyes. "That was not fair… No one deserved any of this! What gave them the right to treat us like this?" He remembers the face of his punishers. "We… Had no chance… I don´t know how but we were powerless against them…" The ground before him begins to crash, leaving a big hole in it. Blood is pouring out of the spot above the hole, writing something on it.

Bottomless wrath

He stands before it as if he was in trance. With a slow step forwards Ian falls down the pit, his velocity of the fall increasing with every second. A black void engulfs him.

"Anger will lead you to nowhere. You have to accept what happened to you and move forward. It is much to ask of you indeed, but you don´t have to overcome your troubles alone anymore. Look around you and count all the blessings you gathered."

He stopped falling at once and the void got filled with a bright blue light. "this light… It gives me a strange feeling…" An endless hallway took shape and he gets greeted by several familiar faces. A certain fedora wearing raccoon, together with a similar looking one right next to him smiles directly at him together with a green bear who happily crossed his arms.

"Lifty, Shifty! Flippy!" But it doesn´t seem that they´re actually here, just as if they´re part of another illusion, giving him comfort regardless. They stare at each other in silence. Ian wanders his gaze from his brothers to Flippy, their smiles giving him solace and strength. The grab of the illusions startled Ian, they rest their paws on his shoulders, giving a reassuring nod to him before they vanish. "A chance to start it all over… Leaving the gruesome past behind… I even told Flippy that I don´t care about the past, yet I still let it haunt me…"

To his surprise, the hallway bends over, and he begins to fall all the way down. Screaming in fear, Ian sees no opportunity to stop the fall, his eyes widening in dread as he sees the bottom. Although he fell extremely fast and landed hard, he only feels the air pressed out of his lungs, causing him to wheeze a little. No bones were broken however. An attempt to stand up only resulted in another fall as he was still dizzy from the ride.

"Ugh… My head…" He looks around still a little dazed. Right before him is another door. "So many doors… Where the hell even am I?" As he slowly manages to get up, another inscription on the door gets his attention.

The only true guilt.

"Wh… What…" Ian's hands begin to tremble as he reads it. He thinks through all what happened back then, but he fails to recall any event in which he got his own hands bloody. Reluctantly opening the door, a single note lying on a rack and covered in specks of blood is getting his attention. He hesitantly picks it up.

They told me today that they wanted to test my volition. The balance of my will to rescue someone in comparison to my will to save myself… For that they brought a little girl to my cage, her name was Grace… I had to spend the night with her. She was an intriguing little girl. Despite all the gruesome acts she remained calm as if nothing could shatter her harmony. She told me that she always likes it to sing, so I asked her if she could lull me to sleep. What was supposed to be a little joke turned out to be something truly amazing. She had the voice of an angel and made me forget the hell we lived in for a brief moment.

The next morning, I was forced to make a decision. They told me either to let her escape, or myself. All the blood… All the screams of pain… Every single life I failed to resurrect… I couldn´t take it anymore… I came up with the idea that if I would go, they wouldn´t need to kill anymore to test my gift. But it proved that this thought was just an attempt to justify the decision I made… Just to be betrayed shortly after. They promised they would let me go! But they kept me, forced me to watch her bleed just to throw me back in the cage…

"They gave me the choice… they pretended that I had the decision to save either her or myself… I´ve chosen myself, my life over hers… Her screams… She didn´t deserve this… I should have suffered instead of her!" He balls his hands to fists, his self-esteem degenerating with every passing moment. The guilt is overpowering him once more, sending him down to his knees as he begins to cry. "I was such a selfish disgrace… I wish I could tell her my apology…" But the once so familiar voice is greeting him once again with its calm nature.

"You still can tell her that, Ian, please stand up and look at me."

Ian lifts his head in surprise. Right before him stands the source of the voice in his head, another one of the fallen children. An owl with feathers so white that they only underline the purity of her intentions. She stands before him naked, just as she was when she got killed right before his eyes. "How… Grace, it´s you!" Ian got up fast, almost enthusiastic at the sight of her but he backs away in shame.

"You must hate my guts… And I can´t blame you for that…" Grace, however, keeps gazing at him with her eyes wide open and a bright, genuine smile. "Ian, I do not, and never began, to hate you. You suffered exceptional circumstances. You may say to yourself that it was your weakness that you decided to save yourself back then, but I´m sure that nearly everyone would have decided that way in your condition."

Ian was speechless, he never encountered anyone capable to fathom the sheer agony he had to suffer. "You finally have to forgive yourself. Yes, the thing that happened may be the only one in which you can consider yourself guilty, but please know that I never accused you for the decision you´ve made. All of this doesn´t have to be a matter of guilt, but if you really need a culprit, think of the ones who started all of this."

He watched her as she finished her speech. "Please know that I forgive you, and I ask you to forgive yourself. Please Ian." Ian is overwhelmed by a couple of feelings and only musters the strength to stutter. "Th… Th… Thank you… so … Much…" His eyes get watery again. "An overactive mind where a thousand thoughts come floating by will not be able to slow down at time. Please rest until your friend finds you. I will make sure that I will be the next he encounters."

He wipes his tears away. "What will happen now?" But she only smiled as she gently stroked his head. Ian gets overwhelmed by a tremendous exhaustion filling his body. He was put to sleep. "Please rest… I will meet your friend. After that I fear we won´t meet ever again." The rack on the room turned to a small bed with hay as a mattress. She gently puts him onto this bed and covers him with the soft sheets. "You suffered long enough Ian… You have to move forward from now on…"