Unleashing What's Within
JP with Jaxx, Redsword, Trustno1 and Cindy
Agent Powers quickly aimed his golden holy shotgun and began blasting flaming holy ammo at the children. Ekaterina quickly followed Agent Powers as she began blasting as well. It was hard to hear now with all the weapons blasting away.
Sung was not going to get in the middle of all that gunfire, but with a silver mist around him, in a blink of an eye he appeared in front of Alyssa. He stood defiant to the children. (edited)
Alyssa averted her eyes but it wasn't the easiest thing to do. She stayed down, figuring moving was not advisable considering the gun fire. The hacker didn't know how Sung was suddenly in front of her but was grateful for it.
The stairwell was a yawning chasm of shadow and suffocating silence, a place where light had long abandoned its dominion. The air was thick, each breath clinging to the lungs with an oppressive, sepulchral weight. The occasional flicker of Agent Powers' shotgun illuminated brief, grotesque tableaus—the crumbling plaster walls streaked with dark stains, the sagging handrails coiling like skeletal fingers. But even the sanctified radiance of his golden blasts seemed to retreat, swallowed whole by the encroaching abyss.
The Black-Eyed Children stood motionless, their pallid faces etched with a waxy, otherworldly sheen, their obsidian orbs betraying no hint of life or humanity. They seemed carved from the very darkness that consumed the building, their forms shifting in and out of focus as if the fabric of reality rejected their presence. The roar of gunfire reverberated in the confined space, but the projectiles found no purchase. Each golden flare was a futile scream into the void, the creatures slipping between the shots with a serpentine grace, their movements too fluid, too unnatural, to belong to anything bound by mortal flesh.
Ekaterina's barrage added to the chaos, but the infernal children moved with a balletic malevolence, their silhouettes twisting and elongating in ways that defied human anatomy. Shadows surged around them, tendrils of inky blackness that seemed to rise and fall like waves in an invisible tide, swallowing the blasts of holy light before they could reach their targets. The bullets, sanctified and burning with righteous fire, hissed as they struck nothing but the void, their flames extinguished as though suffocated by the sheer malevolence of the air.
Alyssa crouched low, the cacophony of combat above her a deafening storm. Her heart thundered in her chest, each beat a desperate countdown to some inevitable doom. The hacker's eyes darted, catching fleeting glimpses of Sung—a ghostly silhouette wrapped in a shimmering mist. His presence was a tenuous beacon in this storm of terror, his defiance a fragile bulwark against the crawling dread. He stood firm, his figure haloed in the faint silver glow, but even his resolve seemed dwarfed by the oppressive enormity of the children’s silent presence.
The stairwell groaned under an unseen weight, the sound of the building’s decay now mingling with something far more sinister. A dreadful chill seeped from the basement door, a miasma of despair that crawled up the stairs and gripped the soul. Each breath tasted of mildew and rot, the faintest tang of copper slicing through the air. And still, the children came, gliding forward with a deliberation that mocked the frantic blasts of their assailants. Their movements were a cruel dance, each step imbued with a terrible purpose.
As Alyssa clutched at her chest, willing herself not to look at the children, she became acutely aware of the utter absence of sound from the creatures themselves. Not a footstep, not a whisper, not a breath. They were phantoms in the dark, their silent advance an affront to every instinct that screamed for her to run, to hide, to fight. But there was no sanctuary, no hope. Only the black eyes—two endless voids that promised oblivion to any who dared meet their gaze.
The lights above flickered once, casting the stairwell in a strobe of sickly yellow before extinguishing entirely. The gunfire faltered as the oppressive darkness grew absolute, the void swallowing sound, sight, and hope. In that instant, Alyssa felt it—a faint brush against her mind, a whisper of despair that threatened to unravel her very essence. The children’s presence was no longer just physical; it was in her thoughts, her dreams, her soul.
The basement door creaked open, a slow, deliberate sound that reverberated like a death knell.
If Alyssa believed in prayers, she'd probably be praying right now as it was all the young woman could do was hope, beyond hope that whatever or whoever had opened the door was there to help.
If Alyssa believed in prayers, she'd probably be praying right now as it was all the young woman could do was hope, beyond hope that whatever or whoever had opened the door was there to help.
The stairwell was a crucible of darkness and fear, the air choked with the acrid tang of sweat and smoke. The sporadic flashes of light from Agent Powers’ holy shotgun momentarily carved grotesque shapes into the blackness, revealing peeling walls and the twisted forms of the advancing Black-Eyed Children. Their movements were liquid, unearthly, their silent grace a mockery of human motion as they closed in with deliberate, predatory intent.
Alyssa Wilson’s breath came sharp and shallow, her petite frame trembling not with terror but with the raw force of adrenaline coursing through her veins. She was no soldier, no warrior, but something primal surged within her now, a spark of sheer, unrelenting survival. Her body moved before her mind could protest, small hands clenching into fists as she hurtled toward the nearest child with a ferocity that defied her slight build.
The first child reached for her, its claw-like fingers curling toward her throat. Alyssa dropped low, her movements deliberate, her mind sharpening to a singular focus. Her hands shot upward, seizing its bony wrist in a crushing grip. In one brutal motion, she wrenched its arm backward, a sickening snap reverberating through the stairwell as its limb broke at an unnatural angle. The creature staggered, its void-like eyes momentarily flickering as if disrupted by pain, but Alyssa gave it no reprieve. She drove her knee into its midsection, the impact crushing with bone-shattering force, the hollow thud of its collapsing ribs echoing in the confined space.
Another child surged forward from her flank, its shadowed form a blur in the dim light. Alyssa turned with mechanical precision, stepping into its momentum. Her foot stomped down on its shin, a calculated strike designed to buckle the limb. The child’s leg gave way with a sharp crack, and as it fell forward, she delivered a vicious blow to its neck with the edge of her hand. The force crushed its larynx, and though it made no sound, its twisted form convulsed in a grotesque, silent parody of a scream.
Her ivory skin glistened with a sheen of cold sweat as her chestnut hair clung to her face, a wild halo framing her expression of grim determination. She moved with unrelenting purpose, her every motion guided by instinct sharpened to a lethal edge. The children were fast—inhumanly so—but Alyssa’s strikes were faster, each one precise and devastating.
A third child lunged at her, its fingers spread wide, its claws glinting faintly in the brief, strobing light. Alyssa ducked under its reach, her hands locking around its narrow waist. With a surge of force that seemed impossible for her diminutive frame, she slammed the creature into the concrete floor. The impact cracked the tiles beneath them, and before it could rise, she dropped her knee into its chest with a bone-crushing finality. Her hands moved with brutal efficiency, twisting its head at an unnatural angle in a motion as cold and detached as the creatures themselves.
The stairwell was alive with the sound of combat—the dull, meaty thuds of her strikes, the wet cracks of breaking bone, and the faint, almost imperceptible hiss of the children’s recoiling forms. Each movement was raw and visceral, each attack a testament to the fragility of the human body, even when warped by unnatural forces. Blood—dark, viscous, and somehow wrong—spattered her hands and the floor, marking her path through the chaos.
Her small frame shuddered with exertion, every muscle screaming in protest as she moved to face the remaining children. The pain was irrelevant. Her hazel eyes gleamed in the faint light, fierce and unyielding, a testament to the iron will that drove her forward. Though the children still surrounded her, their eerie silence unbroken, their advance had faltered. Alyssa stood amidst the carnage, her slight figure casting a shadow over their broken forms.
In the depths of the darkness, she was no longer the fragile hacker crouched in terror. She was something else entirely—an unyielding force of survival, a blade honed in the crucible of desperation, her small hands now instruments of brutal, unflinching determination.
Sartre could barely get the words out. "Alyssa, was that you?" He smiled. He was frozen in awe. That was not like her.
Alyssa looked down at her own hands, in disbelief. Not out of guilt or thinking what she had done was wrong, but more the feeling someone gets when they suddenly do something, even, they didn't themselves know they were capable of. "I... yes. I suppose it was." A small smile fell on her lips. She didn't know where that had come from, or when it would manifest again but she now knew it was inside of her.