((A/N: Thank you for being patient, my beauties! I've been busy... Updating fics with new chapters is a lot of work, especially since my previous WIPs have been wiped from my writing program for some reason. This chapter was originally really good but now it's gone... sigh... This redo feels a bit shorter, hope you don't mind! I want the fun part to prolong just a bit more. X)
But you don't want to hear me complain! Let's keep heading forward!))
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It's been a few weeks, and Chara was getting impatient.
Not only do they just want to die already, but they wanted to finally see what Mother was planning all this time. They had played around with a few vague ideas in their head, but none of them actually made any sense.
Since all the ideas would require Mother to be evil, and she DEFINITELY wasn't evil.
They thought.
Mother must be starving them for a good reason, otherwise she wouldn't let it happen, right?
The teen tapped their fingers on the table with a free hand, the other hand holding a cup of herbal tea they made on one of their impulse trips again. The tea is probably the most filling thing they've had to ingest in a while, and their stomach seemed practically nonexistent.
That kind of feeling where if you don't eat for a while, at some point it doesn't even hurt anymore.
Satisfying food would still be nice to have, though.
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So, it's been a while.
At least two more weeks have gone by after that, and the only one that hasn't gotten any more frailer was the most recent child that found its way in the house. Chara also noticed how It still seemed to cower under their glare.
Good. Not like they could threaten It with strength or anything anymore.
All they had was seniority, and even that was dying down. Chara had the audacity to think that maybe Mother was just starving them, but they shoved that thought out of their mind.
There's no way. They don't believe it.
...
At any rate, the plan is going agonizingly slower than they expected it to be.
They spent a lot of their time sleeping to regain whatever energy they could get, since Mother had completely forgotten -or refused?- to restore any food to the cupboards anymore.
Back to where they were before, but at least there was still shelter from the rain.
Chara's expecting the day when even THAT would be taken away too.
A loud creak of the wooden floors brought the frail teen back to reality as they turned their head to the child with tired, blood-red eyes. It hid behind the edge of a peeling wall at first, then cautiously looked back at Chara when It realized they wouldn't go after It.
"Whaddya want, kid," Chara droned, knowing full-well that It wouldn't respond.
That's another thing: the kid doesn't even like speaking. Seems It can understand things just fine, but talking is forever a no for... whatever reason.
It pointed a small hand down the dark hallway, seemingly referring to the set of stairs at the end. Chara sighed and waved a hand dismissively, looking back to their tea.
"Only Mother is allowed down there. Leave that alone."
Sure enough, the teen looked up and the child was gone, footsteps that sounded like It was going down there anyway. Chara sighed.
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Now, it probably would have been in their best interests if they just let the kid go downstairs alone. After all, it was inevitable that It would be punished when caught. But... They were also curious, too, and eventually both children reached the bottom of the spiraling stairs.
It's a door.
Chara remembered seeing it from their first excursion there. Tall, threatening... just like how they remembered it.
There was also an array of puzzle-looking locks that didn't used to be there. They stifled the groan about to escape their throat, as they knew exactly why these were on the door. If there was one thing that could keep Chara out of a locked room, it was puzzles. They were no good at those.
It, on the other hand, seemed curious enough to try one of them.
After a few minutes, lo and behold, one of the locks opened with a satisfying click. The two children turned to each other with grins on their faces as It continued to complete the other two puzzles.
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Click!
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Click!
Chara may have hated the kid's guts, but they couldn't hide their admiration of It's puzzle-solving skills.
Opening the door with a grunt of effort, Chara and the child were blasted with a radiating heat. Purplish light filled the tiny room, and the repulsive smell of dried herbs and flesh wafted into their noses.
After a few minutes of carefully stepping around loose paper piles and unidentifiable liquid puddles, the two made their way towards the centerpiece of the room: a large, wooden table with several diagrams and circles engraved into it, covered in foreign stains and torn paper. Chara could recognize some darker brown ones as coffee (and blood?), but there was also a pulsing purple stain glowing obnoxiously in their face.
They decided not to question it and turned away.
It was lucky that both of them were old enough to not put weird things in their mouths, since a lot of the liquids seemed to emit magic in a way; who KNOWS what those'll do.
Chara felt grosser the longer they stayed near the table, opting to drift off closer to the door for a quick escape just in case. It remained near the table, poking at a dead spider with a stray feather.
Whether or not that decision had played a big role in Chara's downfall, they were not sure, but soon after they leaned against a wall of the room, a damp rag dipped in chemicals covered their mouth and nose and everything went black.
((Mld gsv IVZO ufm yvtrmh!))
