No, I'm not dead. I've just been disinterested in Mario for a while...

Chapter 11: Lost and Divided

"Duck!"
Sharp and Jainen hit the ground so hard that they managed to get the black, crumbly soil in their eyes.
Just above them, a large black box the size of a shipping crate hurtled through the air, landing ten feet away from them, before bursting with a nasty crunch. Wisps of dark smoke rose from the crushed material, shrieking and howling in agony.
Neither of them knew what it was, but had the sense to run in the opposite direction. The only problem was that in the suffocating darkness and the featureless landscape of barren, crumbling soil, they had no clear idea of where they were going.
Behind them, the howls continued to multiply and grow even louder. Sharp risked a glance back and paled.
"I don't know what that is but it's following us!" He yelled.
They put on a extra burst of speed, trying to put as much distance between them and their pursuers as possible.

Felix was starting to freak out.
He, Bilic and Valge were lost in an endless labyrinth of caverns, each tunnel branching into ten ten others, looping around into each other, not giving even the slightest hint as to where they could head or to escape. Bilic was still as angry as he had been above ground, sullen and refusing to talk apart from ordering Felix to follow him. Felix could feel panic, cold and consuming, well up inside of him. Everytime he saw stalagmites, razor-sharp like spears, he was reminded of how close to death he might be. And there were a lot of stalagmites.
The only positive he could draw from all of this was Valge. Ever since they had woken up in a dank part of the cavern, Valge seemed more alert, less distracted. He still wasn't saying anything to his friends, but his body language showed that he wasn't letting whatever memory he wasn't telling pull him down.
Soon, the three Hammer Bros. emerged in another crossroad. Seven smaller tunnels veered off in a different direction, each exactly identical to one another.
"Where do we go now?" Felix asked, trying to look over his friends' shoulders.
Bilic pondered the options, or was perhaps gambling with the choices.
"That one, third to the right."
Felix glanced up at Valge, who had a look of certainty in his eyes for the first time since they had arrived in Rougeport.
Bilic wasn't swayed by his friend's vote of direction.
"And how are you so sure?" He asked, not buying into Valge's choice.
Valge said nothing, but locked eyes with his friend and stared at him with absolute certainty.
Bilic wrung his hands in the air.
"Fine. Lead on." He muttered, clearly upset.
Valge managed the smallest of all smirks and led the way.
'You will die at the hands of the people you least expect, your friends. Even your closest friends will turn their backs on you when you need it most.'
'Shut the fuck up.' Valge retorted to himself.

Elise was fed up with her surroundings already. She had woken up in a different place, no longer a prison cell but a maze of concrete hallways lit by torches of a more natural red flame.
The worst part was not so much being lost, as it was being separated from Riley. Though he was just a Chain Chomp, he was one of the few things her brother had left behind.
Her brother. Just thinking about him formed a knot in her stomach. She tried to convince herself that his death wasn't her fault, even though her gloves bore evidence of the opposite. The caked blood on the cloth told the entire story.
Elise tried to fight off the growing sense of guilt and push onwards through the claustrophobic hallways that grew wider and thinner the further she went.
Something started buzzing in her ears the further she delved, growing louder and less repressive. She tried to distract herself, but she couldn't think of any ways to with the buzzing going on in her head.
"Go away, you annoying pest." She muttered, the hallway now growing so thin, she had to turn sideways and move in the same direction. The lights from the fires were becoming fewer and further between.
Soon, she was walking completely blind, and the ringing in her ear was almost deafening.
That's when she heard it. Or it rather a lack of hearing. It was that dreaded period when there was no sound, before she heard what felt like an inhale, amplified on a scale of 1000. She instinctively hit the ground as something roared past her. She risked a glance through her hands and saw the vague silhouette of a huge jet of smoke blast overhead. Bits of solid, rocks?, rained down from the hissing blast, smoking and giving off a horrid smell.
Elise coughed, now struggling to breathe through the suffocating stench.
'What's the point of this?!' She thought angrily. 'Why do they insist on this but they won't kill us?'
The smoke then wrapped around her, and she inhaled the noxious smoke, fainting immediately.

Ms Mowz just wanted to believe she was in a dream. Unfortunately, this was the torrid reality.
Surrounded by darkness. the ground beneath her littered with the remains of the old world that now mixed in with the wasteland that the demons had left for them. Hissing and smells of burning harassed her senses, while her eyes were nearly redundant because of the thick smoke that clouted out most light in this darkened hell of a world.
Sky fought through the haze alongside her, trying to fan away some of the smoke with his elements, but the haze just pressed back at them.
Sky cursed and wrung his hands. "Dammit. It's useless." He growled.
Ms Mowz barely heard him over the faint screeches of some horrible beast somewhere in the distance. Perhaps the smoke was veiling them from whatever monstrosities they couldn't see.
Something zipped by between them, a long, narrow shadow only visible to them for a split second.
Ms Mowz inhaled sharply. "What was that?" She asked nervously.
Sky took in a combat position, but dared not to move.
"I don't know." He whispered. "Stay still."
Something hissed from outside their little circle withing the smoke cloud. Judging by the position of the sound, it was circling their own circle rapidly.
"Oh no. Not those things..." Sky muttered, getting nervous.
Before Ms Mowz could ask what it was that was scaring the Yoshi, another hiss joined in. Then another. And another. The two trapped partners realized that a swarm was building.
Without any further notice, Sky struck out hard at the the cloud of smoke, winds splitting the circle open.
"Run for it!" He yelled, which Ms Mowz promptly obeyed. The two of them took off like shot cannonballs, with no clear direction but away from the shrieks of outrage from what was behind them.
"Lepakots." Sky shouted over the shrieking monsters. "Bad news. Really bad."
Ms Mowz didn't question why. She had risked a glance back and nearly yelped with terror.
Black monsters, with a snakish body and bat-like wings, shrieked among themselves as they spotted their prey. Their beady black eyes sparked malice, while their teeth seemed to glisten with venom, which dripped from their frothing mouths like their forms, which seemed to crumble off of them as they flew, though more matter came to replace what was falling off.
"Trust me, the dead skin that they shave is even more deadly than the venom!" Sky yelled, the shrieks growing louder behind them.
The two of them were starting to ache from the full-on sprinting, sweating profusely as well. It felt like only a matter of time before the ever gaining Lepakots either caught up to them or outlasted them.
That's when the ground beneath them gave way. Ms Mowz and Sky screamed as they fell through the earth and into darkness, the Lepakots pursuing them as they fell.
Somewhere below them as they fell, a light, dim and muddy yellow, started to grow bigger. And rising above their screams and the shrieks of the monsters behind them, a female cry of pain sent chills down their spines.
Ms Mowz's keen ears picked up the voice instantly.
Jane. And she didn't sound good.

End Of Chapter 11.

A/N: Don't question me about my plans for this story, or the time I take to write them. I'm busy and not always that interested, and you won't make me any more interested by asking. I have to work on my own schedule.
Anyways, I'm signing out. Thank you for reading. And there will be more to read, I promise.