By this point, Harry was in a very bad mood.
He'd gotten the needed items to start the machine, only to find out that it wouldn't start until he'd fixed the flow. He'd seen the switch during his earlier exploring. Tucked into a corner of a projection room. On the other side of floor.
If Harry hadn't already been cursing Drew's name, he certainly would have started then.
"This place is really started to get to me." Harry muttered, peering into the various rooms he passed. "I keep expecting something to- !" Harry let out a startled yelp as a Bendy Cutout popped out from behind a corner before ducking out of sight once more.
"Oh no you don't!" Harry snapped, taking the last few feet at a sprint and stopping at the doorway (almost slamming into the wall in his haste). There was no one there, the room was empty. There was a large puddle of ink next to the cutout, but no marks of it being moved or footprints on the floor. Not a single sign of someone being there. Harry bristled. "What in the world?"
He went down the single step into the small room, jolting when the projector turned on without him touching it. A simple animation of Bendy smiled mischievously at Harry, bouncing playfully where he stood on the projection screen. Normally he would have laughed at the sight of the playful demon, but with the down right eerie atmosphere he only made Harry nervous.
He carefully moved around the projector, peering into the corner behind it to the flow switch. And no hint of whoever had turned on the projector.
This was getting to be too much for his peace of mind.
"Well, found the flow switch. Now I just need to turn it on," he muttered, choosing to put the strange happenings aside for the moment. He hadn't encountered anything malicious yet, so he would give the prankster the benefit of the doubt. For now, at least.
Harry leaned over and pushed the first sized button with a loud clunk. A loud rumbling broke the silence, along with a loud crash as the pipe in the room with him abruptly burst, spaying ink with the force of a fire hose all over the floor. The wizard swore vividly as he was suddenly ankle deep in rubber ink, which quickly soaked his shoes and started seeping into his socks.
"Oh, just what I needed." He grumbled irritably, trudging out f the room, down the winding halls and back to the power room (studiously avoiding looking at where Boris lay), his steps squelching the entire way. He shoved the switch to the "on" position with a little more force than necessary, allowing some his frustration to be vented. "That blasted machine better be working now, or I swear..."
Harry stormed to the room with the machine, he could figure out where he would go next once he was sure it was working again. He could feel his magic roiling as the ink rumbled through the pipes woven through the building, pulsing like a demented heartbeat. He could hear a dull sloshing ahead of him and groaned.
Of coarse, he forgot the blasted thing had an opening on it. It was probably dumping ink all over the floor. As if he needed yet another mess to clean up. He turned the corner, and faltered in his step.
Someone had boarded up the room while he was gone. But when? He hadn't heard the sound of anyone hammering the boards into place. And why? Harry couldn't think of any reason to barricade it. The only thing in there was the machine, right?
He carefully approached.
"Hello? Anyone there?" Harry let out a startled yell as a black and white dripping form lurched up and lunged at him from behind the boards with a twisted white, toothy grin. A small, detached part of his mind wondered how a muggle could have made any of this possible, while the rest of his mind was howling that he was in danger HE SHOULD BE RUNNING RIGHT NOW!
He blindly pelted down the darkening halls that were quickly filling with ink (ceilings, walls, it was closing in on him!), bouncing off of walls and leaping over fallen objects as fast as his feet could carry him, racing back to the door he'd come in through.
For moment, Harry had forgotten something very important. He'd forgotten about the weakened floor in front of the side door. The one that needed repair and creaked dangerously when he'd put his weight on it. It had managed to hold up under his own weight before, but with the additional weight from the rubber ink, it shattered as soon as his foot landed on it. And the wizard fell with a terrified scream.
Years of Quidditch practice kicked in as Harry twisted mid-air, pushing his bag so that it wasn't underneath him, and trying to land in a way that wouldn't result major bodily harm. He hadn't entirely succeeded on that front, but the gallons of ink that had tumbled down with him did an excellent job of breaking his fall so that he didn't snap an arm or a leg. He'd still let out a pain filled cry when he slammed into the ground, stars and ink filling his vision as he clutched his throbbing side. He was fairly sure he'd gotten ink in his mouth too (he really hoped his magic was strong enough to keep him from being poisoned by the stuff), but it was the stabbing pain from hip that held his attention.
"Of all the things I had that I could land on, why did it have to be my keys?!" He swore, writhing from the pain of his fall and the pain of his side. He laid there for a few moments, waiting for the pain to fade enough for him to move. He slowly rolled out from under the dripping ink, hissing in pain, and looked up the shaft he'd fallen down.
A shaft. He had fallen down a shaft. Why the hell would there be a shaft in- Oh, wait a moment.
This was an old mill building, of coarse there would be shafts to get the heavy equipment from the lower and upper floors to ground level. Drew must have covered it with cheap wood to turn it into a hall after deciding he didn't need the shaft in question. That made perfect sense. A perfectly reasonable leap of logic.
What didn't make sense was the... Thing that had chased him. It had looked like a warped, half-melted version of Bendy, with it's shredded (melted?) tie, wide grin and it's dripping form. But that wasn't- Bendy wasn't supposed to be like that! The little devil was supposed to be a friendly character, barely taller than most ten-year-olds! He loved kids and pulling pranks and never liked hurting people unless they had done something to deserve it! He shouldn't have been...
Harry didn't know what to think about any of this.
"I-I need to get out of here. This-This is way beyond my skill level." Harry said, his voice shaking as he slowly climbed to his feet. "I need to get out and have a proper team of Aurors handle this."
He toyed with the thought of Apparating out, but he didn't think he could pull it off right then without splinching himself. And he liked having all his limbs attached thank-you-very-much. Well, that and he wasn't quite skilled enough to apparate all the way back to the house he'd bought from the studio basement(?).
He'd just have to make his way out the old fashioned way. There were multiple ways to get out of the building, and there being a shaft in a former-mill this size implied there were more of them that had been in use. Ergo, he could probably find more doors that had been boarded over that could be quite easy to open and therefore escape the studio. Having a plan of action (no matter how theoretical) helped calm Harry's anxious mind, clearing his thoughts and letting him focus.
He carefully moved out the closest door (the other was barricaded for some reason, he didn't want to find out why) and limped down the stairs beyond. The lower floors looked to be flooded with ink, and Harry cringed at how deep it was (there would be ink in his undershorts! He was sure of it). Gritting his teeth, he waded into the cold, thick liquid making his way to the next door.
Which he couldn't open because of the weight of the ink. How delightful.
"There's gotta be a way to drain this stuff." He muttered to himself. "I just need to find it."
Thankfully there was a valve nearby that could drain the ink away, making it possible for him to keep moving. He couldn't help wondering just how often the pipes burst when he encountered more flooded hallways that also had drainage valves.
In one room there was an ax hanging up on one wall, and Harry was quick to snatch it. He wanted to have more than his wand to protect him in this place. (Along with the phrase "The Creator lied to us" written on one of the walls in ink at the height of the monster he'd seen earlier. He really didn't want to think about the implications of that)
It wasn't anything special, just a simple fire ax made from old wood and probably wouldn't survive for very long, but it would do for now. Any delay to let him make use of his wand was a good idea. And it would be smart to have a close range weapon if that monster tried to get the drop on him.
It was quickly put to use, hacking away boards that blocked doorways and forcing jammed doors open. (He would only admit to himself that the violence was actually rather cathartic to his tense mind and wound-up muscles)
Progress was slow through the lower levels, but Harry was just glad the monster he'd seen hadn't decided to follow him down. Or try to spring a trap. He would take what he could get in a situation like this. Forcing open another door, Harry's heart sank to his knees at what he found inside.
Like many of the other rooms he'd made his way through thus far, it was small (barely bigger than a sewing room), and cramped with clutter that made it feel even smaller. But it was the contents of the clutter made the wizard feel cold.
Slowly burning candles, haphazardly placed furniture, and and a disturbing number of coffins were strewn about. The center of the floor had been left clear of objects, but it was not left unmarked.
Rituals weren't really on Harry's list of skills, but he knew enough to recognize a summoning circle when he saw one. And the coffins left a very good hint at the kind of magics being used with it. He could practically taste a fresh wave of bile building in his throat but managed to swallow it down.
"By Morgana, what was that fool doing here?" He edged closer. He'd picked up a lot of his skills and knowledge from Hermione about this branch of studies, so he knew a fair bit about it. Maybe, if he could decipher some of the symbols, he could figure out how to counter the magics that had been used.
Harry scratched through his limited knowledge to get a handle of what was there.
A simple circle with a five point star inside. At first glance it looked like a pentagram (a simple, protective seal, meant to heal, protect and purify), but there were other marks that weren't meant to be there. A circle in one section, a triangle in another, and a curious quarter circle in a third section. Those weren't supposed to be in a pentagram. What was it Hermione said about foreign symbols affecting the nature of a spell?
Kneeling next to the seal, Harry pulled his wand from the holster hidden in his sleeve and started pulling on his magic. Perhaps he could cast a few scanning spells to find it's flow and undo it from there. He raised his wand.
He never got the chance to cast a single spell. A wave of magic roared from an unknown source, possibly reacting to the build-up from Harry himself, and slammed into the wizard with all the force of a proverbial freight train. Images flashed through his mind (not unlike the one time he'd managed to turn the legilimency spell back on Professor Snape), spurring a pain like someone was trying to drive an ice pick into his skull.
Harry howled in agony, clutching at his throbbing head, wand falling to the floor with a clatter. He curled in on himself, clawing at his hair as though he could rip out whatever was hurting him like this.
The pain reached a crescendo black spots seeping into his vision, and the world fell away from him.