More cries. More voices abruptly stopped in the midst of their last pleas for life. The cold metal of his blade was the end for them, and following after every metallic swing was their abrupt silence.
"Oh god." A blanching Nancy placed a hand over her mouth.
Freddy cackled. The chorus of his voice and those who could still scream, still cry out, filled the entire cavern.
Luigi thought he would be sick if Nancy did not throw up first.
Soon it was not the shrieks of Subconians that filled the cave. It was Freddy who overpowered them, leaving a bloody trail in his wake, all fun and games in his eyes as their numbers dwindled.
Worst of all, Luigi wholeheartedly believed it had all been his fault.
Freddy's last murder was a clean slice, almost professional. Too fast. The victim never had the chance to scream in their final moments.
Then there was nothing. No revelling in sick self-worship from Freddy, no screams or horrid moans from the few Subconians left. Only weeping. Gentle weeping, frail as a shard of glass.
Luigi never had to stomach the corpses. But between that and the visible evidence of Freddy's bloodletting, a crimson line trailing out from the hideaway that gleamed in the light of the cave, he was unconvinced that he had the lesser option.
Freddy emerged. One hand rose up, his wet tongue dragging against the glove until no red spots remained. Gripped on the other hand was the head of a Tryclyde. This particular Tryclyde had seen Freddy coming, realization written across his face. But he had been powerless to stop the monster, and that, to Luigi, was the most horrifying part. That there was no rebellion from the Tryclyde, given just enough time for his eyes to bulge out, not enough to scream and make a vain bid for escape.
Nancy retched. Luigi sensed a shift in his own stomach, guts churning.
"You've been a real help, kiddo. And you." He raised a single blade in Luigi's direction. "Now their souls are mine, forever!"
He did not think at all. Did not ponder the what-ifs or the possible ramifications of his actions. Either he took the shot and risked it all or he fell back into cowardice, their deaths serving no greater good, only furthering a madman's evil.
Luigi simply acted. Nancy tried to stop him with an outstretched arm but he moved too madly, an animalistic instinct to retaliate propelling him forward. The stride took him directly in front of Freddy and he balled his hand into a fist, barreling it towards Freddy's stomach.
The glove swiped in a downward arc. Unprepared, the blow struck him in the side and Luigi cried out, jerking backwards from the hit. The second he spent flailing around gave Freddy all the time needed. He tossed the Tryclyde's head without any care for where it landed. Nancy screamed as the severed stump flew past her.
Luigi rubbed the spot where Freddy had wounded him, alarmingly close to his ribcage. It was warm to the touch. Blood.
"What's he doing?" He asked.
Freddy resembled a scarecrow with his arms forming a 'T', his raggedy sweater, a fedora covered in years worth of dust.
"I don't know." Nancy appeared beside Luigi, speaking in hushed, grave tones. "But it's too late to stop it."
Above him swam a tide of all the fallen Subconians. Each one had been reduced to their purest form - a soul, a blue wisp with a face. They all made a beeline for the way out, towards the only exit, and Luigi felt them as a chill that lingered above his head.
As a collective, the tide breached Freddy's grasp by some distance and there was a moment where they were inches away from freedom, floating towards the greater darkness. Luigi dared to think, then, with all his heart, that they might make it.
But it was never meant to be. An unseen force from Freddy pulled them back, like tendrils invisible to the human eye, and it did not matter how loudly they groaned, or how desperate their cries to be saved were, it was impossible to escape the grasp.
Luigi could only stand there, glued to the spot as he watched the first wisp pass through Freddy's sweater and disappear within. Soon the others followed. Until their souls ultimately were theirs no longer, only existing to serve the greater whole that was Freddy Krueger.
Freddy lifted his shirt up, and though he was not surprised, Luigi flinched on reflex when he revealed his stomach. In order to accommodate the Subconians, it had expanded, becoming a bloated bag of grilled flesh with heads of Birdos and Sniffits and Mousers all writhing within. Mouths gaped open in horror, forever sealed in that state.
Rumbling laughter came from blackened gums.
"Run," she said. Luigi did not move, did not think himself capable of movement.
So much death.
All his fault.
"RUN!"
Nancy acted on her own accord, spinning around to move in a flash.
Luigi's body forced himself to move, on instinct rather than any want to survive. He never looked back. Not once. Not when Freddy's laughter was everywhere, on the walls, bouncing off of surfaces.
Fright could always be relied upon as a source of motivation. Fright meant he had no trouble keeping up with Nancy, the both of them running. The light fading more the further they raced through the cave. Other than the laughter, no physical sign of Freddy presented itself. Still, doubt persisted, and he did not permit himself to think he was ever more than a few steps away.
They're all gone, Luigi thought, looking around while his lungs worked in overdrive, They're all dead.
"We're just gonna leave 'em behind?" Luigi shouted.
"You think I want to?" Nancy shouted back, equally overworked. "We don't have a choice."
Luigi wished he could believe otherwise, but he knew she was right.
He remembered this part of the cave. They were going back the same way he came in, the same grooves and unique impressions made in the rock. Maybe that meant an advantage. Maybe an advantage meant escape.
A tall figure jumped out from behind a Freddy-shaped rock formation tailor-made to hide him. Luigi recognised Freddy just as he made an attempt on Nancy's life, striking her with a grin of sick pleasure on his face.
Nancy jerked her arm upwards. Instead of cutting open her face, the blades shattered her lantern, their only light source slashed in two.
The momentary reprieve was only that. Everything had gone dark again, and in the last faint traces of visibility, Luigi made out Nancy's footsteps and the impressions they had left in the dirt. She had changed paths, veering off to the right. He angled his body and did the same.
Luigi felt the cave a lot more than he looked at it. The walls had gotten narrower, squeezing together, and an acute sense of claustrophobia washed over him.
Not that it stopped him from trying. He had to keep on running. Had to get away. If not for himself, then for everyone else who tried and failed.
Had to. No matter how terrible the odds were.
"Think you can get away from me?" Freddy roared, Luigi not sure he wasn't reading his mind. "You should know better, Nancy!"
Then, something happened to where Luigi feared he was imagining things, dreaming within a dream.
The cave itself seemed to shift and become malleable in form. The straight line he had been travelling along turned into a hill sloping upwards, a struggle he forced himself to climb, huffing, gasping, virtually out of breath and nowhere near a light source.
It almost came as a relief when the denouement of the slope came, and he could run in a straight line again, able to hear Nancy not far ahead.
Almost.
A sudden curve in the path caused him to wobble as he turned, almost falling over, until he adjusted himself and rushed on.
They were neck and neck now; him and Nancy. The path had opened up enough for them to run alongside each other. Luigi had his suspicions about how that had come about, but his main worry, now, was getting out. Away from him.
He spotted one of Subcon's main means of transportation up ahead. The head of a falcon-like bird, maw open in the ebon void.
"Look," Luigi said, breathless in his relief. "It's ol' Birdface!"
The head remained stationary, only a few paces away. Luigi pushed his chest forward so as to enter that much faster.
And then he sensed a rumbling. But not from Freddy. A noise much grander than any human or demon was capable of producing, a noise that shook the cave to its core, causing hunks of rock and cone-shaped stalactites to fall.
A cave-in.
Nancy pulled her head to the left to stop a boulder from dropping on it. Behind him, behind them, the entire cave gave way to destruction, and very soon, the piles of rubble would be the ceiling.
A few seconds, and then he would be free.
Nancy shielded her head as she ran into the falcon's maw. Luigi followed her in not half a footstep later. The bird closed its beak as if to swallow them whole. And that was it. They were gone.
And not a moment too soon, because right after they disappeared, the cave ceased to exist. This great structure that ran for miles, there since the dawn of time, buckled to gravity and folded in on itself.
For a time, Luigi and Nancy existed in liminal space, not quite here or there on one plane of reality or another.
The falcon spat them out back into existence from the side of a building, some sandy structure, and then they were airborne with their legs dangling in the air.
Luigi made the cardinal sin of looking down. He would have screamed, had the altitude not been so high, the lack of air in his already depleted lungs stifling.
"Nancy!" He reached out a hand and bridged the distance between them. "Grab on!"
"There's no need!" Nancy gasped.
Luigi screwed his face.
"Huh?"
"We're not gonna fall! We'll be fine!"
Luigi supposed he couldn't be too surprised. Nancy had already displayed an unreasonable amount of courage against Freddy, and it wasn't her fault. Lack of air could affect anyone's thought processing.
He himself, however, was in the interest of self-preservation. And so, while still in freefall, Luigi closed his eyes, cowered behind his hands, and hoped the worst came fast.
He was no longer falling. He went from moving at a high velocity to…nothing. And whatever he had landed on made for a comfortable seat.
Slowly, Luigi opened his eyes. He was on a flying carpet, which explained the comfortability, embroidered with gold sequins and an ornate pattern around the perimeter. Piloting the carpet was a-
"Pidgit!" Luigi blurted. "Let's leave what happened last time as water under the bridge, huh? I don't want any trouble."
"Forget about it," the purple bird assured, talking to the air with Luigi behind his back. "Couldn't just let you go splat, could I? Best to stick together when you can."
"You mean," Luigi spoke with great deliberation, "I'm alive?"
The Pidgit nodded. Luigi stared at his hands, adjusting each gloved finger, sensing new vitality.
"I'm great too. Thanks for asking."
Nancy was behind his back, on the furthest end of the carpet. Any further and she risked falling off.
Luigi opted not to address her at the present moment, instead getting an idea of where "Birdface" had dropped him off. He tried not to think about where it had taken him between the swallowing and the spitting out.
That sandy structure was a pyramid, one of many that towered over the landscape. Every cluster of sand had at least five Cacti to it, bobbing their heads to the beat of the wind. Pokeys, they were not so affectionately called, due to the spikes that covered their bodies from bottom to top.
Luigi knew he was overdressed when it reached a point where the air itself vibrated.
They crossed over a stretch of desert, Pokeys and palm trees passing by, footnotes on the ground.
"I'm sorry about what happened, Nancy."
Luigi thought she had taken it well. That was until she lashed out, shouting:
"Your sorry isn't going to bring any of them back! I never asked for your help. And I definitely don't want it, that's for damn sure."
A pause. Nothing from Nancy, the driver, or Luigi.
"Do you think," he hesitated, Nancy cooling down behind him, "do you think he's still out there?"
"Think? I know he is. It's like I said. Freddy doesn't go down easily."
There was a cold reassurance to Nancy's words that unnerved Luigi, from a girl about half his age no less. But he also sensed, in the silence of the moment, a chance to bridge the rift between them. A chance to learn more.
"Seems like you and this Krueger guy go way back. Sure know a lot about the slimeball."
"It was a few years back," Nancy said, after a long pause that Luigi did not see necessary to fill, "when he started targeting us. The Elm Street Kids. First he got Tina. Then Rod. Then Glen."
Some part of Luigi's brain buzzed at the mention of an Elm Street, but he couldn't narrow the signal and figure out why.
"Did you know 'em? The other kids?"
"They were my friends. The best in the world," and Nancy chuckled, an attempt at adding some levity for herself.
Luigi saw her life for the tragedy it was, all the while thinking my God, this poor, poor little girl. It was no wonder, in retrospect, why she had the Mallen streak in her hair with all the stress she must have undergone.
"Sorry for your loss," the driver said.
"Yeah. I had no idea, Nancy." Luigi looked down as he mentally sifted through the words. "Jeez. You're a real trooper."
"I'm still fighting. I can't tell if that means I'm brave or plain stupid, but I guess it means I'm still around." Nancy shrugged, smiling helplessly.
The smile only made her seem more dour. The gleam that had shone from their escape from Freddy was getting dimmer by the minute. Attempting to salvage some of it, Luigi pondered another avenue of conversation.
That was when he had his 'eureka' moment, where his mind and his lips formed the connection with Nancy's Elm Street and his own memories.
"Elm Street in Springwood?" Luigi asked, already knowing but relieved when Nancy hummed in agreement, giving him complete clarity.
"The Springwood Slasher! You couldn't not hear about that guy. He was in all the headlines. I didn't even know there was a Springwood before that."
Luigi paused for a moment.
"Was he…"
"The very same," Nancy slowly nodded, confirming that yes, the Springwood Slasher and Freddy Krueger were one man. Naturally, Luigi had a lot of questions about how Freddy could come back to life through dreams, beyond the demonstrated fact that he could, but he doubted Nancy was in the mood to share such details, if she ever would be, and so he settled for lighter ground.
"Y'know, where I'm from, we got our own brand of crazies."
"Really?" Nancy asked with genuine interest. "Where's that?"
"Brooklyn," Luigi said, the mention of his hometown enough to inspire pride and an accompanying smile.
"I never would have guessed." Nancy could not have sounded more deadpan.
"Yep. My brother used to call it the capital of craziness. Of course, that was before we got sucked into the Mushroom King-"
Luigi stopped. A raindrop fell on his hat, so clear, the one raindrop, that he had to take notice.
Another raindrop followed. Pitter.
And then another. Patter.
And then the pitter patter of the droplets doused the desert like a shower with the pressure turned all the way up. There was still the warmth, but the sharp contrast of cold rain against skin, Luigi's hat was not enough to protect him. He was going to wring it out the first chance he got after the Pidgit flew his course.
Pokeys hopped along, jumping with no legs, to the nearest pyramid or under palm trees that shook like flailing hands.
Very quickly, the desert went from a bright array of colours to dull greys and blues.
"Oh no."
It was Nancy, and when Luigi turned around, something had taken hold of her, her eyes open but terribly vacant.
He knew what she was going to say long before she managed to say it.
"It's Freddy," Nancy said, giving life to his worst fear.
"He's found us."