The Trickster’s Hat

Trick's eyes creased in unbridled fear as the melancholic eyes of the moon gleamed red rays of disdain into Trick's soul.

Then suddenly, he felt a strange rumble course through his body as he was sent whistling backwards, away from the sight of the scowling moon.

Trick felt as though he travelled through endless worlds at an infinite degree of speed.

He felt his body dragged backwards, stretched behind him in a swift fashion.

He then shut his eyes from the pressure that weighed on his body, slipping into the deep depths of darkness once more.

Feeling the bizarre motion of his body stop, Trick then finally opened up his weary eyes, gasping at the bewildering sight that awaited him.

Trick was now back to the same position with which he once stood when first entering into the otherworldly realm.

The frowning moon, the scarlet skies, the bloody corpses of beasts, and the strange singing woman—

They were all back, unconsumed by the floods that once desecrated the grim realm.

Trick stood still, bewildered but unmoving, as he tried to puzzle exactly what was going on right now. It seemed like the more pieces he played out of the chess board, the more pieces resurfaced back into the horrific game.

'Did—Did that moon just speak?' Trick wondered as his eyes shakily shifted to the crescent moon's direction. But it wasn't there anymore.

BOOM!

A loud explosive sound echoed across the world, sending large gusts of wind that held onto the bloody soil, billowing through the realm.

The cause of this calamity sat upon the sorrowful world, the crimson moon resting upon the soil without regard for the chaos it had wreaked.

WHOOSH

Suddenly the skies seemed to grow darker, clothed with a more wretched bloody hue as the moon suddenly began a riveting convulsion.

The ground quaked, and the winds raged as the moon began to morph into a dreadful figure.

A wave of ominous aura then washed over the quaking realm as the moon had faded away, creating something horrendous just before creeping out—

A ghostly body.

Trick's heart sunk into the innermost parts of his chest as he observed the body that now floated mysteriously, a few feet above the ground.

It was no regular body, rather it just comprised of a chest down to the belly, the eerie body lacked hands, legs and most shockingly—

A HEAD.

Another wave of sinister aura then pulsed over the desecrated realm. 

This was the second wave.

The bloody corpses of beasts that littered the ground stretching as far as the eyes could see suddenly began riveting. 

They shook slightly, before levitating upwards and whistling straight for the eerie body forged by the moon.

The air was littered by the ghostly carcasses that swayed around the grim body, casting a pungent odour in the air as innumerable corpses started to merge, one to another.

In a spark of red, the grim body was set ablaze by a scarlet flame as the multitude of corpses began being absorbed into it.

Trick couldn't believe his eyes, he planted his feet firmly into the ground employing his elbow to ease the gusts of wind that assailed him. The wind being caused by the aura that blasted from the grim body.

Like a cloud that kneaded itself to adopt any shape and form it so desired, the grim body polymerized with the endless carcasses of beasts and monsters alike, creating appendages for the formerly bare body.

First, hands bubbled out from within the body, it then started a slow descent unto the ground, the floor meeting a pair of legs as the body stood firmly on the defaced realm.

Trick swayed and turned, trying so hard to regain his balance as the entire realm began to violently quake, sending magnanimous levels of aura billowing in Trick's direction.

This was the third wave.

The darkened sun which had been cast down, stripped from the leisure of ever observing the world from the scarlet skies was the cause of these catastrophic judders that spread across the realm.

The ominous sun became entrenched from the holdings of the realm's soil, speeding desperately to be conjoined with the grim body.

It spun around the body, decreasing in size with every revolution it made across the body, before finally resting on the before headless body to offer it…

A head.

However there was something horrendous about the head that was tightly bound to the figure's neck—

It had no features, eyes, mouth and nostrils being nowhere to be found.

As quickly as the before exiled sun rested on the shoulders of the body, a gust of ominous energy was spread across the otherworldly world once more, draining the sky of its scarlet colour.

This was the fourth wave.

A gathering of a mysterious red aura then stood jittery in the air, growing larger with every speck of the scarlet sky's red energy, until a terrifying red ball of aura was formed.

It cast an intimidating shadow over the realm as it headed straight for the nigh completed body that stood boisterously with its arms spread wide.

Resembling a bolt of lightning that struck from the very heavens of the sky, an eminent ray of light descended into the figure's before featureless face, drawing eyes, nostrils and smirking lips where none were, and swaying a ball of scarlet energy around the figure's face.

The ball of energy radiated with a red gleam, condensing to form a dreadful pair of glistening red eyes.

The eerie figure then lifted its hands up high, its sight still firmly set above.

Suddenly, the world pulsed, trembling under yet another wave of aura that washed over the realm as the woman's strange lullabies were cut short.

Trick took a step forward, instinctively stopping himself in his tracks as he was left shuddering from the horrific sight which played before his very eyes.

The woman's body was stretched and overturned, forming a dark mist of shadowy black aura.

Like an abyssal shadow that sought out an even greater darkness to reside, the ominous aura hung in the air but only for a moment, blitzing in the figure's direction as quickly as it was formed.

The shadowy energy then encircled the crown of the figure's head, sinking into his skull to form two horrid pitch black horns.

And then—

A FIFTH WAVE WAS RELEASED

A mysterious aura that swayed endlessly across the grim figure then radiated with a scarlet glow, adorning the figure in an otherworldly apparel.

'It's that same feeling of unease!—' Trick's eyes widened in shock as he observed the now fully crafted figure that stood across the realm menacingly.

'The same one I had that night.' Trick was finally piecing every shard of the nigh unsolvable puzzle together.

'The same sinister presence…'

'I felt after the show!'

He was getting the answers that screamed in question beneath the depths of his mind, the reasons to why a grim feeling now overtook him, and the reasons to why exactly he stood constantly overtaken by fright in this ominous world.

And the reason for all these multifarious questions…

Was the powerful and yet dreadful entity that now shook the very foundations of this grim realm.

Now fully complete, the intimidating figure withdrew his eyes from the skies above, casting a disdainful gaze into the deepest innards of Trick's very being and freezing him in place.

A scornful scowl then spread across his face as he contorted his lips to speak.

"CHILD—"

"HOW DID YOU DECIPHER THE LOOP?"