[M] Unleashed (1/2)

Somewhere in the depths of the Southern forests, hidden in the bushes and days away from the next village, there was a building. Even during its prime days it must not have been a magnificent sight, but now multiple stories which had once resembled carbon copies of the nondescript main ground were now differentiated by the various states of decay. Cracked windows, withered rags adorning those windows which were still intact for the most part, and thick vines slowly ate away at anything they could reach.

Chanyeol's eyes shone brightly at the sight. Finally they had found it. It had taken days of combing through the woods, but here they were, about to explore the infamous place they had heard so many rumors about. Ready to unravel the truth - whether or not the people inhabiting this place centuries ago had actually discovered something. A cure to some mythical sickness, maybe, or just another, dangerous virus - whatever it was, it must have been dangerous enough to have officials send forces and put an end to it. Quite violently, if the few bullet holes strewn across the wall were any indication.

Chanyeol turned to the side, facing his partner with fresh determination.

"Ready?" he simply asked, and even though Luhan was obviously tired from all the walking they'd done, he nodded, obviously just as eager as him.

"Let's take a first look at things, as long as the sun is still up." he suggested, rubbing a few streaks of dirt off his face, only to wince when it got into one of the fresher cuts on his arm. Without thinking, Chanyeol reached for the washcloth in one of his right pockets, like he’d done so often since he'd placed it there around noon. It was more dry than wet at this point, but still sufficed to roughly wipe away at the dirt on his partner's hands, before it could stick to the superficial wound. They'd been traveling for about two years now, and yet it never ceased to amaze him how delicate Luhan's overall appearance was. The blond wasn't weak at all, neither physically nor mentally, but somehow, his outer appearance seemed determined to keep up the innocent facade. He received a thankful grin in return, and without words, they both staggered down a slippery slope and towards the building.

Even in its deteriorated state it was still rather imposing in height, and if the rumors were true, it was rooted deeply into the ground. They were cast in shadows when the massive walls blocked the last specks of orange light flooding the ground, and the air grew chilly. FInding an entrance wasn't too hard, considering that one wall had half-collapsed, but where Luhan's expertise lay in ancient languages, Chanyeol had a very keen eye for buildings, and this one seemed safe to step in.

Chanyeol took the lead and heaved his heavy backpack off to place it at the side of the entry, proceeding with nothing but the absolute necessities in the bags strapped to his heavy traveling pants. There were both advantages and disadvantages to not carrying everything with you at all times, but Chanyeol was an inherently clumsy person, so he greatly valued the increased freedom to move. He cautiously stepped inside and down a hallway, eyes darting around to take everything in. The air turned even chillier, making the tell-tale smell of an abandoned building -a mix of mold, dirt and maybe deceased animals- more bearable. A few steps were all it took for both of them to realize that there wouldn't be a monetary treasure awaiting them anywhere - whatever remnants Chanyeol could make out under the thick layer of oblivion didn't look like it had any value at all. Just split tiles, broken candleholders and many doors left and right. If they were lucky, they might find a few medical instruments that they could sell off in order to get back some of their investment, in case there were no real revelations to be discovered.

Yes, this might not be the most promising of journeys, but somehow Chanyeol had felt drawn to the story whispered in the taverns of the closest village, and as always, Luhan indulged his enthusiasm.

"This looks like it was   a nightmare since the moment it was built," Luhan whispered from somewhere behind him, and Chanyeol agreed with a hum as they paced down the main corridor.

"I don't think asylums are meant to be anything but," he replied absently, while trying his hands on a doorknob. Locked. They could still try to force their entry anywhere later, so he let it go.

There was a quiet sound in the distance that had both of them freeze in their tracks to listen. It sounded like little stones or debris raining from a gaping hole, but it was oddly echoing, as if they were in a cave. Chanyeol couldn't help the odd feeling being magnified by this. Something about this place was... off.

"You think the ground is unstable?" Luhan asked, one hand on the wall as he remained rooted to the spot. Swiftly, Chanyeol crouched down to feel up the ground, knocking it and the nearby wall, before shaking his head.

"No. It's safe."

His blond partner didn't seem all that convinced by the quick and easy assessment, but Chanyeol was sure. They continued their first assessment, passing by a few rooms that gave them chills. There was a reception desk in one room, almost buried behind the fallen furniture. Papers were strewn around everywhere, soaked and molding in one corner of the room. It would have barely unsettled either of them, if not for the generous streaks of dried blood on both the counter and the tiled walls. With a dry gulp, Chanyeol's eyes flitted over the bloody tracks that looked like fingers on the shelves. The chair. The doorframe.

They decided to advance, but the mood had definitely dropped a bit. Would they find corpses in here somewhere? It wouldn't be the first time, but that didn't mean there was any looking forward to it. There were explorers who liked this type of thing, but neither of them belonged to that category.

The air was changing, somehow. It was probably his mind playing tricks on him, making him imagine the metallic taste of blood lingering in the air, settling on his tongue. The blood here had dried ages ago, and yet the air was so suffocating-

"Strange, don't you think?" Luhan asked, and Chanyeol was ripped out of his thoughts. He inhaled deeply.

"The way the rooms are left behind, I mean. That doesn't look like abandonment. It looks like the patients clawed their way out, one by one."

He was right. Sure, sometimes a shelf would fall, and animals would rip apart curtains in years of abandonment. But these rooms were a different story. Something... or someone had taken the room apart in what looked like a wave of fury. Or maybe desperation. His eyes flew to the side, to his partner. Luhan made a show of shuddering, answering his gaze with a small grimace.

"Ugly story."

"Yeah..." Chanyeol agreed quietly, and finally, a door opened under his fingertips, presenting a staircase. It went both up and down, and was almost completely dark, save for the faint light sneaking around their own silhouettes. With a sigh, Luhan reached for one of their torches, clever fingers lighting it without doing so much as look at it. Instead, he looked at Chanyeol.

"You wanna go up or downstairs?"

Downstairs. Down, down, into the basement.

Chanyeol blinked.

"Uhm. Downstairs?"

Luhan shrugged, offering him the torch while lighting one for himself.

Chanyeol barely paid him any mind as he began to make his way down, careful to light the steps. The fire wasn't strong enough to show more than four steps at a time. It wasn't the first time he had descended into darkness, but it was the first time he felt this wary. Usually, it was Luhan who avoided complete darkness, ever since that time he'd been preyed upon by a wild animal. This place felt completely dead though. Maybe more than dead. Could something be so dead that it was alive again?

He tried to focus, shaking his head ever so slightly. Nonsense, what was wrong with him today? One hand trailed down the railing, ready to hold on to it, but the building seemed stable enough. He eventually set foot into another corridor with doors left and right, ceiling not as high as the length of the staircase suggested. The rooms were probably higher-

There was something. There, at the far end of the corridor, something glinted. Chanyeol held out his torch while shielding his eyes from getting blinded by the direct flame.

Another two steps revealed that it was a wheelchair. It looked like someone had crashed it into the wall, where it had tipped over. Now it lay there, dead and forgotten, and the shadows it sent where oddly clear and... looked like the shape of a person. Involuntarily, Chanyeol's heart rate sped up, though his posture stayed calm. Sometimes, your eyes would get adventurous with dark silhouettes, forming all sorts of ludicrous threats. Fantasizing about huge birds in dry tree branches, looming and waiting. Imagining the eyes in tree trunks staring at you with terror. But light would lift the veil, and make you sigh in relief and embarrassment over yourself.

Slowly, he inched closer, and the shape remained a human silhouette. Closer and closer he went, but his mind wouldn't come up with any different possibility - if any, the silhouette got more refined, slim shoulders, the tips of hair strands-

Chanyeol froze in his tracks, maybe six steps between him and the wheelchair. And the person standing next to it. This was not some fallen piece of furniture or medical device, it really was a person. A young man, dressed in a stained hospital gown, with a roughed up appearance, face averted to stare at a spot on the wall, right above the wheelchair. Fleetingly, Chanyeol followed his gaze. There was nothing. The light flickered

and it looked like the tiniest twitch in the person. Chanyeol jumped back, shocking himself by his own, violent reaction.

"I hate ghosts..." Luhan murmured very quietly next to him, and Chanyeol felt sorry for him. Luhan was a good explorer. He was adept in many common languages and smart enough to decipher those he didn't know about. He was patient and both daring and careful when he had to be. But he wasn't without fear, and his greatest weakness might be spiritual happenings. Anything related to ghosts, really. Luhan was good at proving stories and myths wrong, to pen it down to rationality; but if he couldn't, they left him recoiling and shuddering.

Yes, Luhan truly loathed ghosts, and Chanyeol was the one able to see them. It had only happened twice before. Once, he had seen a spirit in a sea, nothing more than odd light and fog-like swirls resting right below the mirror-like surface. Another time he had seen a snake curled around thick branches, its skin shining unnaturally, almost like metal. Luhan hadn't been able to see either of them, and maybe that's why Chanyeol had called for him. Because he felt safe around his oblivious partner.

"You still see it?" Luhan whispered, and he agreed, equally quietly. With a sigh that yearned to be a full-blown whine, Luhan took the lead, exploring the corridor himself, while Chanyeol's eyes stayed glued to the figure.

Luhan delegated both torches to him, and with an audible gulp, he strode down the corridor. Chanyeol followed him, stomach dropping with every step they took towards the person, who hadn't moved an inch. His insides cramped up when Luhan came to a halt right in front of it, one hand absently reaching out for the wheelchair. The moment his fingers grazed it, the pale man's head twitched and his glassy eyes flitted to fixate on the fingers instead. Chanyeol's breath hitched loud enough to startle Luhan, who looked at him in mild alarm.

"What?"

But Chanyeol only shook his head and urged him to keep going. When he walked past the figure, fingers shaking around the torches, his heart was pumping so violently that it hurt his throat. But the body didn't move again. Still, Chanyeol felt sick in the stomach from knowing that the threat was right behind them now, caging them in.

"Are you alright? It's gone now, right?" Luhan asked with a worried glance back into the seemingly deserted hallway, wrenching one of the torches out of his stiff hands.

Chanyeol wanted to reply, he really did, but the light of the torch woke more glints in the darkness of a nearby room, and he gasped instead. Before he knew it, his feet had carried him inside as he took in the sight of more dirt, more dried blood, and mirrors. White tiles covering the floor, the walls and ceiling of this odd, circle-shaped room. And so many mirrors fixed to the wall. Chanyeol turned in a circle, counting them. At this point, Luhan had entered the room, experimentally closing the door, to find a mirror on the back of the door as well.

Twelve, like a clock.

Every hour of the day, one mirror.

Bloody fingerprints on one mirror, cracks on another.

Cracked at one hour, whole at another-

Chanyeol screamed in shock, tumbling back. He heard Luhan yell something, saw the second flame dancing along his vision, but his eyes were fixed on the girl in the mirror, who had one palm on the glass, the other over her bloody eyes. He slipped and hit the ground, head turning from his position on the floor as he frantically looked around.

"I wanna leave," he uttered out, words sounding distorted to his own ears, but behind which mirror was the door? There were only glossy, white tiles and the mirrors kept blending into each other in an endless circle. Behind every mirror was a girl, and one was smiling-

"I wanna leave! Luhan, I wanna leave-"

A hand grabbed his arm and roughly pulled him up.

"Shh, we're leaving now. I'll lead us out, hold on. Breathe, Chanyeol," he heard his partner instruct him, and only now did he notice that his breathing had become sharp and irregular. Chanyeol closed his eyes tightly and gasped for air, blindly following Luhan, tugged along by his endless string of calm words.

"It was too late to do much anyway, time to retreat."

A door opened and Chanyeol stumbled over something, but when he opened his eyes, the white tiles were gone.

"I'm really tired from all that walking, the trip here was exhausting."

They paced down the dark, dirty hallway, past the wheelchair. Chanyeol saw feet from the corner of his eyes, but Luhan was quick-paced and merely pulled him past it.

"We both deserve a break, don't you think? Eat something, drink something - let's go for the soup today."

Up the stairs, up into the natural type of darkness that beared dull silhouettes, down the main hallway. There was a vague light in the distance where moonlight filtered into the entrance.

"I'm sure we can light a campfire, this forest is completely harmless according to the villagers."

Out. He wanted to leave, he had to. Now.

They stepped out into the fresh, clean air and Luhan put out one of the torches, pushing a bag into Chanyeol's hand. Right, his bag.

Without thinking, Chanyeol followed his partner, concentrating on the rustle of leaves and twigs beneath his feet, trying to take them and fill the void in his head with them. Shortly after, he was sitting on the ground, leaning against a tree. A blanket was slid around his shoulders, and arms were rubbing his, slow and strong. There were words, something about dinner. Luhan's words. Right, he was with Luhan. His partner. His friend. It was alright to close his eyes for a bit. To think about the scent of prickling fire and soup, about moist leaves and tree roots, and the way Luhan had complained about them all day.

"Are you feeling better?"

Chanyeol blinked, eyes focusing on bright orbs. He nodded slowly.

"Yes," he croaked out. "Sorry."

The shining eyes smiled, and his lips did so, too. Only then did Chanyeol notice the steaming bowl of soup offered to him.

"Finally you're talking to me again. I was getting lonely."

Luhan didn't say more than that, simply slipping into place next to Chanyeol with a bowl of his own. Luhan's recipe repertoire consisted mostly of soup, but by now he had gotten the gist of what he called 'throwing ingredients into a pot with water', and the result usually tasted good. Every spoon of the hot liquid helped chase away the scratchy feeling in his throat, calmed down his erratic heart into a lazy, content pace.

"What happened? More ghosts?"

Chanyeol nodded again, and after remembering the other's previous words, he added a small "Yes". The blond made an unhappy noise. Spoons clanked against the metal bowls, sound dulled by the liquid filling it.

"We can just leave, you know."

He quickly shook his head. But he did want to leave, right? What was holding him back?

"It's alright. I just need some rest..."

He actually twitched when a hand was placed on his shoulder. Sensing this, Luhan rubbed his thumb into the blanket above his shoulder, hoping to offer some comfort as he sought his eyes.

"I mean it. It didn't look too promising, anyway."

No!

"W-what?" Luhan uttered in surprise, making Chanyeol realise that he had said this out loud.

"Uh. It's just. I don't know, I feel like there's something to uncover. It's an odd place, don't you think?"

The blond eyed him strangely, but complied. Soon, the campfire was put out and they were both huddled together under their blankets, sharing warmth like they usually did.

And Chanyeol dreamed.

Maybe he shouldn't, because exhaustion had the habit of painting your dreams pitch black, but Chanyeol looked up, realising that he'd merely stared into an abyss. Standing at the edge, his eyes roamed stone and tiles, seeing the hands. All those hands that were drawn on the wall across him, reaching out of the abyss. Curving, and grabbing, dripping with the blood they were drawn in. Resembling the spirits of the remains down there. Down, where it wasn't pitch black, after all, and not even particularly deep. There were things down there. Glistening pieces of flesh and glossy, white bones, and Chanyeol tumbled back in terror, turning to run down the hallway, but he had to go through the room with the mirrors, sneaking past the screaming girl that scratched at the mirror, where her other self was mocking her. Was almost hit by the person in the wheelchair that was being slammed into the wall by someone.

The exit was so close, but then there was this cat calling after him. Chanyeol turned to see a black cat sitting there, chained to the wall and mewling out to him. Tiny, pitiful, and with such pretty, blue eyes. A shiny collar was fixed to a leash, keeping it chained to the wall. Chanyeol wanted to help it, but he was also scared. Scared of the cat, scared of the rooms, scared that he'd take too long to free it and that the exit would be gone-

Being ripped into reality was blissful, and almost physically exhausting. Black vanished into green, pale blue and rose colors. Clean, fresh air drizzled on his racing mind like a cool balm. He was lying on his back, looking up at the morning sky in between the tree branches.

He was wrapped up warmly, as Luhan had thrown an arm around Chanyeol, one leg wedged in between his, knee rubbing uncomfortably against his groin. With a hearty exhale, Chanyeol relaxed his muscles, determined to enjoy the peace a little longer, and yet apprehensive of falling asleep again. The terror still had an icy grip on his insides, but instead of granting it more attention,

he reached around until he had one arm placed over Luhan's, absently stroking the warm skin. They were like that. They were something and yet nothing, in a comfortable way. Or maybe they were everything one person could possibly be for another.

"Ah, you mean split personalities?" Luhan asked around a mouthful of bread. The sun had risen by now, though it hadn't reached its zenith just yet.

Chanyeol nodded.

"Yes. She had as many of them as there were mirrors, and she'd stand in this room, turning and talking to each of them. It drove her mad."

"I'm pretty sure she was mad to begin with."

"Maybe, but it went to the point that she broke one of the mirrors, and used the shards to take away her eyesight," Chanyeol argued, and Luhan grimaced around his breakfast at the image.

"Nasty. How can you be so sure though?"

That was an uncomfortable question. The good ones usually were.

"I dreamt about it. I don't know. I also dreamt about that wheelchair," he continued, trying to avoid answering the original question, "it belonged to a young man. But some angry staff member shoved him, and he hit his head on the wall. There was also a leash and a cat..."

"A cat?" Luhan asked, the doubt clearly written into his features. Chanyeol hummed in agreement, absently picking at his loaf of bread.