Endless Insanity

The smell of rot gets worse as I finally reach the bottom of the ladder and step foot into the tunnel, luckily or unluckily for me the fecal hound's stench seemed to have dimmed my sense of smell so the rot was easily brushed off. Heading to the right I enter a room with a chest, my luck seems to have gotten better as inside the chest lay a Bremen gas mask which significantly helped with the rot once I put it on. Searching the place I found two bolts which I didn't pick up as their only use was creating contraptions which I didn't know how to do. Leaving that room and going up I enter another room and pick up a gas canister in the back.

Finding that the rest of this side was a dead end I head back to the ladder and turn the other way, searching the shelves and lockers as I go I come up with seven shillings and a cloth fragment, I also found another gas canister beside the shelves. Taking both canisters I walked over to an emergency backup generator I had found and poured both the gas canisters into it, once the last drop fell from the second canister I hit a button and the generator turned on.

Going over to the top left of the tunnel I near a door that was previously locked due to an electrical lock, still seeing it was locked I concluded that I had to know how to wire to get past the lock. That's when I heard a loud banging coming from my left, the sound echoed all around the tunnels and as the banging grew louder a large smash of metal tearing resonated through the area. Twig looks at where the noise came from and whispers to me.

"That doesn't sound good hey buddy you've seen the future, any chance all that noise was just nothing"

Heavy steps reverberate in the tunnel as whatever caused that sound advances slowly toward us. I shake my head and whisper back.

"That wasn't just the wind Twig, the thing that caused that noise used to be one of us, it was on the train with us"

Chaugnar emerges from the darkness of the tunnel, a nearly seven-foot-tall hulking human with some kind of elephant head grafted to its head. Once it sees me it begins barreling towards me at high speeds.

"That's a nope for me, I'm outa here"

Saying that I turn to my left and start running, taking every turn I can to confuse the beast. Sadly though Chaugnar remains focused on me, even beginning to catch up. Twig shouts at me from my shoulder.

"BUDDY I HATE TO SAY THIS BUT COULD YOU PLEASE RUN FASTER IT'S CATCHING UP TO YOU"

Tuning out his encouragement I continue running, having looped behind where Chaugnar appears from I see a maintenance elevator with a green light over it, quickly squeezing through the cage I slam the button for it to go down. Luckily the door closes in time and the elevator starts to descend. Once the elevator touches down I get out and look behind me at the elevator.

"This isn't good Twig, we may have escaped that thing but pretty soon it's gonna tear through that elevator like the Kool-Aid Man, we need a game plan fast"

Twig also looks at the elevator, waiting for his answer I think about Chaugnar.

'I said before that Chaugnar used to be one of us, she was on the train too, she's Abella after the moonscorch got her. We don't really know what happened for the elephant head to get on her but some theories players gave was that that elephant head is similar to the Woodsman's appendage, and when she was strolling through the woods to get to the tunnel she ran into it and it attached to her face, and when she got into the tunnel she was moonscorched somehow and turned into the thing we saw.'

Twig breaks me out of my thoughts as he asks me some questions.

"Do you know any information on how she attacks? Also, how does your puppetry skill work, can you make your hands do complicated tasks with their fingers?"

Taking a second to think I answered Twig's questions, by now a few minutes had already gone by so my answers became a bit rushed.

"She will pummel us with her hands for a while and after a while she will try to grasp me, if she does she'll grab me by the neck and choke me, killing me almost immediately. Her elephant head will trumpet, causing us to feel nausea for a while and when it trumpets again the sound will rupture our eardrums and kill us. The hands I control can't do complex tasks like typing but I can move around the fingers a bit, maybe if I train the skill more I can make it so they can do more complex tasks but right now they can't do much."

Twig thinks for a second longer but is interrupted by a banging coming from the elevator, quickly he instructs me on the plan he came up with.

"Give your guns to your hands, one arm for the Lugr, and two each for the Trenchgun and rifle, when Chuagner comes through control the hands to shoot it with everything they have, while they're doing that kite it around in circles. When I was watching it chase after us I found it had a problem adjusting to its weight, every turn it would make would make it crash into a wall."

Nodding I hand my guns to the arms I have under control, making them float into the air so that Chaugnar can't reach them I prepare for the fight, after a minute the banging stops and it's quiet for a second, then it tears through the elevator doors as it runs straight towards me, turning to my right I dive and narrowly miss its charge, the beast runs into the wall behind me, unable to change its direction because of its momentum. The arms holding the Lugr and Rifle begin shooting, I wanted to save the single shot I have with the Trenchgun so that it can get in close to Chaugnar and do more damage, the bullets hit it and confuse the beast even further. It looks around before spotting the arms in the air, letting out a rage-filled trumpet from its horn Twit groans a bit from the nausea it produced.

'That's right the Breman gas mask I got protects me from nausea, it won't protect me the second time though so I gotta kill it soon'

The moonscorched form of Abella turns towards me and, deducing that I was the one controlling the arms, charges at me once more. Performing a textbook I-frame dodge roll I get out of the way of its charge. The beast once again crashes against the wall and the arms let loose a second volley of bullets. Backing away from it my back hits another metal wall and I prepare to dodge again. Once it charges I try to dodge roll once more but Chaugnar seems to have learned from its previous failures, it reaches out its arm and manages to grab the back of my neck.

"Shit!"

Was all I could let out as its hand constricted my airflow and slammed me against the wall, I control the hands to shoot it again, by now the beast had been shot three times with both the rifle and Lugr. My vision starts to close in as I have the seven arms that were doing nothing up till now grab its fingers and try to pull them off my throat. Sadly the beast was too strong and the effort was for naught, Twig screams from my shoulder.

"Don't die Sam! We have so many more adventures to go on!"

Chaugnar continues to slam me against the wall as I reach out my arm and pet Twig as I wheeze out with the last of my oxygen.

"Don't worry Twig, I got him right where I want him"

The arm holding the Trenchgun had slowly crept up behind Chaugnars head and as it pressed the barrel against its head the beast got a bad premonition and prepared to let go of me and get away, unfortunately for it I didn't give it any more time and the arm squeezes the trigger. A massive gunshot follows and the beast's head explodes into a bloody mist, blood splatters onto my face, covering it as Chaugners body goes limp, this time I'm able to pull away its fingers from my throat and I observe Chaugnars headless corpse. Twig shouts in relief.

"You're alive! I knew you had it in you buddy!"

I nudge Twig with my finger and compliment him on his battle plan.

"Thanks for believing in me Twig, if it wasn't for your plan I would have died to that thing, I would never have thought to have my puppet arms use the guns"

Twig blushes a bit and he shuffles his legs around.

"It was nothin pal you would have thought of it eventually, besides you were the one who thought of getting caught and shooting Chaugnar in the back of the head with that Trenchgun when he was distracted"

I stumble a bit as I scratch my check and look at Chaugnars body.

"Yeah… that was my plan all along, I meant to have him choke me so that my arms could get close enough"

Twig deadpans at me and I frantically try to turn the conversation away from the embarrassing situation.

"Anyways let's search this thing's body it might have some stuff we can use"

I take off its overalls and put them on, then I pick up a booby trap from its body. Those items didn't surprise me as I knew I would find them on its body, what surprised me was that in its smashed-up lump of a head lay a glowing stone. Picking it up I noticed it looked similar to a soulstone. Twig looks at the glowing rock inquisitively.

"What's that you got there buddy"

I look closely at the rock and coming to a conclusion I answer him.

"I think its the soul of Abella, in the future I remember seeing some contestants of the festival killing each other and absorbing their souls, using the soul to learn the abilities of the person they killed, the only thing I'm confused about is that her soul wasn't absorbed by me and instead became this stone, I wonder what it does"

Twig nods along and stays silent while he thinks, letting him think I pocket the stone and continue to take a closer look at Chaugnar, taking out my axe I raise it high and swing down onto its arm. The blade buries itself halfway into the arm and so I repeat the action, this time the creature's arm is cut off. I do the same for its other arm as I tie them both to my belt.

'These arms are quite strong and durable, I can use them better than the less muscular arms since I'll be able to create a stronger thread between them and me'

Once I do that I walk past Chaugnars body. After walking through a few rooms I see a weird machine.

"This is a Telectroscope, there are two others hidden in other tunnels, turning them on allows me to go into tunnel 1 and lets me come face to face with the newly born ascended god Logic, the telectroscopes also assist in the birth of Logic, giving it the necessary otherworldly power it needs to ascend"

After I finish explaining I walk up to it and hit a random button, turning on the machine. I then turn to my left and head into a broom closet, seeing another Rher sigil on the ground I walk inside the sigil.