[SWAMP 2]

The chirping swirls through his hearing and he slowly opens his eyes.

Taking a slow, irritated breath of the swamp air, he sits up in the mud and just stays there a moment.

Once again, there’s mosquitos, but once again, the dragonflies are present to protect him like guardians of blood and justice.

He blinks a few times, and shakes his head.

“Tsk. This bullshit is getting on my nerves.”

He takes a moment to close his eyes and check on his RES. It takes him a moment, but it appears clearly:

RES: 27/100

“Took quite a hit,” he says, opening his eyes to look around.

“Is it really just based on my emotions, my motivation?” he adds in the back of his mind.

Without expecting an answer, he gets up, and this time he remembers to look over to his briefcase.

The chirping insects sing in rigid choruses as he finally shrugs, and picks it up. Opening it, he finds nothing but blank pages.

“Really?” he asks before tossing it back into the mud. “Garbage.”

The word slips out, but the mere sound of it irritates him as he waddles out of the mud and up to the grassy road.

“Garbage!” he laughs. “Bullshit, man. How do I beat someone like that?!”

He thinks about Valerie’s rifle, but he totally failed to shoot the one time it was in his hands. Even if he did know how to shoot it, he’s sure that The Knight would have just dove to the side or ignored the hit like some kind of cheating loser.

He grits his teeth as his footsteps become heavier and more irritated, disturbing a kaleidoscope of butterflies at the side of his path.

“I’ll figure this out… I’ll figure this out. This isn’t even close to Twin Kings,” he mumbles.

Masaru’s not even a minute down the trail when he sees Valerie, sitting in a particularly lush patch of grass as a squadron of dragonflies orbits her.

Her pale fingers wrap around the bolt of her rifle like a lifeline as he approaches. She looks up to him with an expression like broken ice.

“Hey,” Masaru says, stepping up, “We have to find the lake to get to the cabin, right? It just redirects us until we find it and then it gets crazy?” he asks.

Valerie looks away into the depths of the cypress trees, and nods.

“Yeah. Seems that way,” she says.

He sighs as he looks her over. “Alright, so are you ready?”

She’s quiet, her chest rising slowly with her breaths.

“Yeah,” is all she answers with as she gets up to her feet.

Valerie gets up before Masaru can get a good read on her [RES] stat.

Masaru nods and the two step down the shaded paths of the swamp.

Distant bird calls provide the backdrop of their travel as the ways of the sun cut through the leaves like gilded blades.

It’s only a minute more until they see the lake.

At the shore, the two stop and look at the cabin on the little island in the center.

“So… what’s the plan?” Masaru asks.

Valerie blinks at the abandoned-looking cabin.

“I’m not sure,” she says.

Masaru looks over to her and focuses. Her [RES] is all over the place! He sees it as low as 12, but in the same second it might jump as high as 40. It’s like she’s leaping into the depths of despair and recovering back with her thoughts.

“Is that how my RES works too?” he wonders. “Is it based on how we’re feeling?”

“So…” he sighs, getting out of his head. “Once we go away from the lake, The Stranger notices and comes after us?”

She nods, her dull gaze still trained on the cabin. “Sort of. I think it tracks us slowly if you don’t trigger a trap, but if you do hit a trap, it’ll come running. It loves to taunt us with the hopelessness of it all, I think.”

Masaru squints. “You’re sounding a bit like Sato.”

Her grip tightens on her rifle. “I’m nothing like him. If you had half a brain you’d understand that.”

“Tsk. You don’t have to be annoying about it, is all.”

Her eyes sharpen.

“Well, let’s go find the cabin,” she says, turning around back to the swamp. “Maybe it’ll be quick this time.”

He rears up and steps into her path.

“No,” he says.

Valerie, her eyes waiting at his tie, takes a long, calming breath.

“No what?” she asks.

He leans in. “You’re not giving up on me, are you?”

She says nothing, cuing him to continue.

“The only way we’re going to get out of here is if we believe we can. No matter how many times we get slaughtered.”

“I’m not made for this kind of thing,” she says. “Kenji was a soldier, death doesn’t phase him.”

“And it doesn’t phase you, either! You just let that whore get into your head.”

Her fingers turn ghost-white as they tighten over her rifle again.

“Look,” Masaru snaps, “This might not be a video game, but it works the same way.”

Her breath becomes uneven. He can see her [RES] fluctuating like rain in a storm. “This is not anything like a video game, Masaru. Grow u-”

“The boss has to kill us every time for it to win,” Masaru says. “We have to win just one time.”

He watches the jump:

[RES] 41/100

Her breath doesn’t level out, however. In fact, she seems to be excited by the idea.

“Just… one time,” she repeats.

He nods as he grabs the shoulders of her furry jacket, causing them both to pause, and look at each other.

“Did… you just,” Valerie stops herself as her expression flashes. “That’s right… with The Knight.”

“And last time here at the swamp when you supported me with your shoulder,” Masaru adds.

The two look at each other for a moment, and it’s clear that, for a brief moment, something other than “survival” leaps up in their minds.

“A-anyway,” Masaru coughs. “Just one time. That’s it. We just need to figure this out one time and we get the mark finished, right?” he reminds, pulling back to point out the black circles along his wrist.

She looks at his wrist, closes her eyes, and then opens them again with a renewed spark.

“…It hurts so much to die,” she says.

“But it’s better than giving up,” he says.

A packed silence joins with the buzzing, chirping cacophony around them. Finally, she nods.

“Yeah. Okay. Let’s go get killed and learn what we can,” she says.

The two stand in the backdrop of the lake for a moment, staring into each other’s eyes.

And just as quickly she turns away to the path.

“Right. Right. Let’s go,” he coughs.

They enter the swamp and hold a steady pace.

And once again, he can barely hear it: the shutting door in the distance.

As soon as they enter the treeline, he feels it. He wasn’t paying attention last time, but the change in the air is so sharp that it almost feels like they’ve been transported somewhere else.

Crickets and katydids chirp in chorus with treefrogs, bullfrogs, toads, and more as the light immediately gains the slightest hint of growing red.

Despite the previous warmth of the day, Masaru can feel an unmistakable chill twist up his spine like a twine of barbed wire.

The two relish the short moment of peace they have left as the last dragonflies retire for the evening.

“So, back then,” she starts, her eyes turned on the path, paying especially good attention to where she’s putting her feet in the grass, “at the… city.”

Masaru raises a brow. “What’s up?”

She purses her lips. “Did you… mean all of that?”

He blinks. “What? Not turned towards you, of course. You’re not a whore,” he explains.

Valerie breathes in and lets out a short sigh. “Ah. Okay.”

“Why?”

She shakes her head with a curt smile. “Nothing. Thanks.”

Masaru takes a moment as he scratches the stubble on his chin. “Am I… missing something?” he asks.

She shakes her head again. “No. It’s fine. Forget I said anything.”

He hums at her words. She’s using the sort of tone that Masaru’s mother used to take with his father. Little Masaru could usually piece two and two together to figure out something was wrong between them, but he could rarely figure out just what she was irritated about.

Masaru scoffs.

“What,” Valerie snips.

“You remind me of my mother, is all,” he says as he carefully steps over a log, looking around for any looming killers in big coats.

Her eye twitches. “And just what is that supposed to me-”

“It’s a good thing, I swear,” he says with a chuckle as he points to a spot in the ground. “There it is.”

She looks down to where he’s pointing. “There what is?”

“The spot I stepped into last time. Now we can just step around.”

“Masaru, no,” she starts, “This one isn’t like The Knight. It cheats.”

Mister Abe addresses her with a look bordering between irritated and smug. “Yeah? I’m pretty sure that’s just because we unlocked his next phase. We shot The Knight a ton, and he suddenly unlocked that spell, right?” he explains, slimly dipping his foot into where the trap is. Sure enough, his shoe slides through into the pit, and he pulls it back up.

“I don’t think it did that based on injury. It was probably something else, like something we did?” she says.

Masaru’s smirk gets a little crasser than even he’s comfortable with. If he saw himself walking down the street from the harbor he’d assume he was some drunk loser. “Okay, but like what else could it be? What’s the point in changing a challenging fight if they’re just trying to demotivate you?”

She squints at him. “Uh, to demotivate you, maybe?”

He scoffs. “Then what would be the point of The Knight having the same opener?” he says, motioning his foot to step past the pitfall. “It’s obvious this thing uses patterns. Probably too lazy to think up something new every t-”

His foot goes through the patch of ground past the pitfall, for it is also a pitfall.

Shoe or not, the metal-tipped stake punches up through his foot, and he screams at the top of his lungs.