CHAPTER 65: The Dangers of Wandering Alone

We passed through the door, only to see a hallway chock full of paintings and portraits. The hallway, too, smelled of death. I knew that this sounded weird, but I knew how to smell things other than ice cream and flowers. I could smell unreliability, liars, and evil. Now, the hallway's scent of death was mingling with the stench of evil, which made it all the more horrible . . . for me, at least. The single chandelier looked as if it was going to fall down, and bring the ceiling down with it, for every time I'd make it sway back and forth to keep the lights humming, the plaster on the ceiling appeared to crack. When I grew tired of keeping the lights on, I allowed the feeble glow to flicker on and off, which only added to the burden of fear that we carried in our minds. Finally, we arrived at a door with glass panels adorning it. Peeking through one of the panels, I saw zombies sitting there. Armed zombies, I should say, for they had guns and baseball bats strapped to their bodies. While Elias and Peater were waiting for the right moment to pounce, I was feeling pissed. I had no idea why, but I was pissed. My anger began to slowly build up, until I couldn't hold in anymore. With a scream that I knew scared the hell out of father and son, I swung my right leaf upwards, which brought about an unstoppable chain reaction. A jet of ice that was a mix of purple and blue ricocheted off a window, and onto the floor, which blew the armed zombies onto the ceiling. It began raining dust, plaster and blood as soon as that was over and done with. But a single thing remained. It was a small, white wisp. It was slightly distracting, considering that I was very attracted to white objects. As I reached out to touch the wisp, I received a shock. I looked back at Peater and Elias, and saw their faces had looks of pure fear on them.

"Elyssia, please . . . don't do that to us." Peater whispered.

Suddenly, the wisp began to grow bigger . . .

. . . Until it turned into a human with a bandage covering his entire face. The wispy human finally turned into a zombie that I was hell-bent on killing. This zombie had a blood-spattered uniform that was of military derivation. His fingers were gnarled, and every part of his face was covered, save for his bulging, red eye that glared into the deepest depths of my soul.

"Ursulo . . . we meet again." I growled.

The zombie named Ursulo simply laughed, a hollow, creepy, humourless laugh. He began to summon football zombies and Bucketheads. The small army charged at us, but I mowed them down with a few of my peas and a wave of my leaf. With another sweep of my leaf, I conjured the snowy wall that was protective. Ursulo began to summon a second army, then a third, a fourth, and even a fifth. We were probably going to die, by the simple weight of numbers.

"Look, you guys need to headshot the zombie, you hear?" I hissed.

Elias and Peater took aim and shot, only to have their peas miss the zombie. I sighed softly and said, "Keep going. I'll push back the army."

I started shooting at the army of Bucketheads and football zombies, but for every one that I killed, three or more took their place. But one of the football zombies had a canister on one of his rotting hands. With a triumphant grin, he dropped it, causing a cloud of gas to balloon upwards. The snowy wall began to become slightly shorter, causing me to start moving the zombies via telekinesis. One by one, I lifted them into the air, only to let them drop down onto the floor hard enough to kill them. But more and more of the undead had those canisters, and when they dropped onto the ground, all at once, gone was my protective wall. I felt like I was going to die after that happened, but I was still able to fight. I decided to confront Ursulo instead. He aimed a punch at my stomach, but I jumped out of the way, and grabbed his neck. Ursulo only smiled, and retaliated with his mind.

"Elyssia . . . you fear pain, don't you?"

Before I could reply to the telepath, I could see Ursulo light the room on fire. I screamed as I began to melt, and loosened my grip on his throat.

"And that should teach you how to not mess with someone like me." Ursulo snickered as he threw me against the wall, causing the back of my neck to start bleeding.

I gritted my teeth as the pain ebbed away and Ursulo went back to giving Peater and Elias a hard time.

But I had an idea.

Quietly, I leapt and flipped like a gazelle over to the bookshelf behind Ursulo. Ursulo then snapped his fingers, which gave some of the football zombies chainsaws, butcher knives, and thorny clubs. Sweeping my right leaf in a circle, I conjured an arrow, and sent it hurtling at his head. The deranged zombie, who never saw the arrow, exploded violently as soon as the arrow had speared the back of his head. With Ursulo dead at last, the Bucketheads collapsed, but the football zombies only became slightly weaker. But the terrifying thing was that before Ursulo was done, he had snapped his fingers,. The zombie leading the pack was wielding his blood-spattered chainsaw, which slit the wall that I was leaning against. With a scream, I instinctively pushed Peater and Elias out the door.

"Look, no time to explain, I just don't want you guys getting hurt. Nice knowing you, though!" I jabbered quickly, before I slammed the door and faced those zombies alone.

Meanwhile, I felt a cold, sharp object in my cheek. I turned right, and saw a zombie slowly digging his dagger into my face. With a yelp, I rolled out of the way, and started shooting at him, but my peas hardly did anything to them. The football zombie growled, and threw the knife, which I wasn't able to dodge. The knife found home in my forehead, and blood and dirt began to pour into my eye like gravy. The ringleader of the pack then swung his chainsaw at me, and landed a few slight blows on me. I began to growl as the chainsaw clipped my stem, my bulb, and my leaf. When I ducked the chainsaw for the 200th time, I slid between the football zombie's legs, despite the fact that I was being shot by the zombies, left, right and center. I simply scaled up the ringleader's back as he tried to fling me off. With a small smile, I shot at the zombie's head until the undead man collapsed. But even with him over and done with, there was still an army of at least 450 zombies to take care of. I smacked myself in the forehead ― why did I shove those two out the door when they'd be steamrolling the other zombies by now? Sure, it was to show that I cared . . .

But that was more important, wasn't it?

Protecting others.

Sacrificing for their wellbeing.

I then felt a light bulb go on in my head. Why? Because I had a HUGE plan in mind. Sure, it might've been slightly harebrained, but it was the sole, simplest way out of my predicament. I began to conjure an icy tornado that spun around me rapidly. I began to add things like arrows and knives to the tornado, which made it easier to kill the zombies that were swept up by the gusty wind. Before I knew it, I was slowly slumping onto the floor due to lack of energy, and I lost consciousness to the whooshing sounds of the tornado.

"Elyssia! Wake up!"

Those words being screamed at me had me flying off the floor and into a standing position. I saw Elias standing in front of me, but with an angry look on his face.

"Look, you almost got yourself killed in here! Don't do that again, all right? I'd have a good mind to slap the nonsense out of you! I mean, who does something this brazen?!" he yelled.

I gasped, and looked down at the floor.

"S-sorry . . . I just didn't want you guys to get hurt . . ." I stammered. Father and son then enveloped me into a killer hug.

"We care about you too, Elyssia! I mean, have you heard about self-preservation? You need to care at least a little about your own wellbeing!" Peater said as he wiped the blood off my forehead.

"It has basically no place in my heart. Not in this war, it doesn't. Here, we just gotta help each other, and if we have to, die or get seriously hurt protecting others. It ought to be a law in here." I declared.

"Elyssia . . . please don't make me start screaming at you. I mean, I've talked to you once about this! There are some plants who value your existence!" Peater exclaimed.

Elias nodded in agreement with his son.
"Sure, I don't want to admit it . . . but darn it, I care a lot about you, Elyssia. You've grown on me, and become very special. You were a bit of a spoiled brat when we first met, but . . . you've improved. I mean, you're like a daughter to me, now that you've shown your good side." I shrugged.

"That's nice to know. But . . . I'm dumb. I've made so many stupid decisions ― more than I could possibly count with the veins on my leaves!"

Peater cleared his throat, and slapped me. "You idiot! Now is not the time to go droning on about how little you care about yourself! But if you're going to be like that, then I shouldn't touch you with a 66-metre pole!" I narrowed my eyes, and turned away.

"Fine then. But remember ― I'm stupid, and I deserve nothing. Why, I'm even dabbling in a bit of evil myself. So there! Nothing to care about now, is there!" I huffed as I turned right and started walking along the dark hallway.

I saw a mirror that had faint hieroglyphs, and it was flickering on and off I looked into its two, bloody spirals, which caused me to become dizzy. Just as the dizziness receded, I heard something slither along . . .

Next thing I knew, I was being grabbed by a snake of some sort, and then the God-knows-what finally bit into my neck, which made my own scream pierce the air . . .