House of Horrors

The third time we passed through the corridor, we made sure to check every nook and cranny, we inspected the wall for a secret passageway, we took out the paintings to see if they hid something behind them, but it was all useless.

“Arrrgh! What the hell is happening here!” I cried out in frustration. “I mean, seriously! Are we really just trapped here?”

“There has to be something we missed.” Louise said. “Let’s go again.”

Of course, the next time didn’t bear any fruits either.

“Okay, let’s think of this from another angle.” I suggested. “This has to be an illusion, or a trick of some sorts. We know for a fact that we aren’t backtracking, because the corridor is one straight line, yet we keep ending up back where we started. But how?”

“Wait, I have an idea.” Louise said as she motioned for me to follow behind her. “Follow my lead.”

We then went through the corridor again, but as soon as we reached the end, Louise then turned around and asked me to make space for her, to which I barely managed to do as she squeezed through.

“What are you planning?” I asked.

Louise didn’t answer my question and instead simply walked back the way we came silently. Eventually we returned to where we had entered from.

“It didn’t work…Oh well, it was worth a shot.”

“We can’t spend any more time here!” Louise exclaimed. “We don’t know when these masked men will start chasing after us! We have to figure this out quickly!”

“I have an idea.” I said.

“What is it?”

“You’ll see.”

I urged her to go through the corridor once more, and once we were completely out of sight of the first door, I tapped her on the shoulder and we stopped.

“What?” She asked.

“Keep going forwards. I’ll go backwards.”

This way even if we did still end up stuck, at least maybe we could figure out what was going on. I made my way back the way we came and surprise surprise, I reached the first door yet again.

I waited for a while, and eventually I saw Louise walking towards me.

“What the-how?” Her eyes widened.

“Did you turn back at some point?” I asked her.

“No-No I didn’t! I’m sure of it!”

“100%?”

“Yes, I’m telling you, the same thing happened when you were with me!”

“I see….but at least we know now that there’s some sort of mechanism that forces you to turn back without you even realizing it.”

“How are we going to bypass it, though?”

“I don’t know, you wanna try to brute force it?” I suggested.

“I doubt it’ll work, all that’s gonna do is drain us of our remaining energy.”

“Okay so what are our options? We could try going through this with our eyes closed, or we could walk backwards, or we could sprint through as fast as we can and hope that the illusion doesn’t take effect.”

“All of these ideas are dumb!” Louise said flatly.

“Well then, you come up with something, miss genius!”

Yo, need some help?

Yes, obviously!

Good, go back and start walking.

Wait, what?

Trust me.

“Louise, Arthur says he can help us.”

“Really?” She seemed to beam up. “How though?”

The illusion doesn’t affect me, I can clearly see what’s been going on.

“He says the illusion doesn’t affect him.”

“As expected from Arthur!”

“No actually, I don’t think this has anything to do with him, it’s most likely because he doesn’t have a physical form. Either way, let’s try this one more time.”

We then started yet another journey through this strange mystical corridor, waiting for Arthur’s instructions.

Okay, stop.

I repeated this to Louise and we both immediately stopped in our tracks.

What now?

Don’t you notice anything strange?

Uh….no?

Turn to your left.

I did as he said, turning to my left to face the wall right in front of me.

Okay, now walk right through it.

We already tried that, it doesn’t work, the walls don’t have any secret passages.

Just shut up and do it!

Okay, okay….

I walked right into the wall and phased right through it, coming out to another corridor similar to the first one.

“What the-how?” Louise exclaimed as she appeared through the wall as well. “Didn’t we check for hidden passages?”

You checked before the spell took place. Once it did, you were transported and made to return the way you came. The spell activates every time you two got close to the exit, which also created a door, since no trap can be without an exit point.

I see, that makes sense.

I then relayed to Louise what Arthur had just told me, and we started to walk up the corridor, hoping that this would be the final time.

“…How do you know my girlfriends name?” I asked Louise, breaking the silence that had settled between us.

“…I shouldn’t have said that. Is it fine if we talk about it later?” She clearly seemed uncomfortable with the subject, so I accepted. But I still wanted to know how she would even know something like that, after all she didn’t even know what Earth was until recently.

Silence once again befell us, until finally we reached an unfamiliar door, proving the end of this corridor trick.

“At last, we got out of this stupid trap!” I exclaimed.

We then opened the door and reached yet another large area, with two staircases on each side at the end of it that led to an upper level.

On the balcony of this upper level, Selphine sat on a chair, looking down on us with an object in her hand that I couldn’t quite make out.

“Took you long enough.” She taunted with a smirk on her face, as if having known the entire time that we would be foolish enough to strike at her in her own territory.

It was time to end this.