On a camping trip, a group of young adults might have bitten off a little more than they could chew when messing around in The Ravenwood Forest… where it’s rumored that a monster hunts… But surely that’s just an urban legend… right? ~ Hope yall enjoy this spooky season audio!! I had a lot of fun writing and voicing it, and of course, thank you so so much to the fantastic cast:
Like a heartbeat, the words pulse in her mind as she struggles to carry herself forward, frayed string of a chipped shell dragging after her in shame.
Maybe she did, deserve this. Every branching, blooming fracture- a cruel reminder of each and every last soul sold for her own life. Bloodstains that shall never wash out. She is become one with the ugly memories, the bad dreams, the intoxicating veil.
Maybe she did, deserve this.
Least she could do was buy them time.
Offer some recompense for the trouble.
Face the beast of damnation.
Alone.
It was her it'd wanted all along, after all...
right?
"... Oliver..? I-it's... me. I... I've learned your name. We don't have to do this anymore."
Silence follows the petering out echo of her voice, steadfast as ever, yet... watery with regret.
She breathes- and carries on.
"I... I'll come with you. I'll give you what you want. Please, just... let them leave. Leave the others alone."
"Many, have entered... no, BODY, leaves."
"Ollie..? Please-- they were only doing what I'd asked them to! It's me, it's all me, you can blame m--!" What'd been perfectly still suddenly swept down from above as stolen, gentler hands snaked around her delicate form, lifting her into a ginger embrace that cradled the doll's broken shell like water in a parched man's palms.
Watching her- inspecting her wounds.
Carrying her back to safety.
"This MAY come as a shocker to YOU, Poppy... but, believe it or not..?"
Her wide, ashen blue eye meets gilded amber, blinking pleas unsaid up at him.
"-This, is not, about, you."
Too late does she realize- she's made a terrible mistake in asking such of them.
Too late, does she realize she'll get exactly what she wanted in the worst possible way yet again.
The flower fights that grasp to try and resolutely shake her head- uncaring for sting of worn out velcro against open seams, raw torment dealt to her by different hands not at all siding with her on that argument. "... they have failed."
High, up high it crawls- to a surveillance office. Out of reach. "Now... they HAVE to go."
"... what..?"
"... and I'm afraid the only way out-" Its head snapped aside, staring down the corridor where they were hiding.
"... is through."
Protective paws set her down, out of harm's way... only for hooked talons to reach skyward, pulling its FULL weight through a hole in the wall at momentous velocity.
"Wait-- WAIT!! NO-- RUN, PLEASE! RUN!!"
Tiny hands grasped jagged edges of torn concrete and shattered glass, looking down with dawning despair.
Could those cameras even transmit?
Could she help somehow?
She had to try, to look around, to-
not look away.
Mortal hands toiled away at something, hastily finishing up an incomplete mess of chemistry in a glass flask... until they were abruptly overpowered and ripped away from their work- as half the entire room began to cave in under what had charged through, toppling them to the floor, Angel barely remembering to take the compound with them-
"-AND THERE you are! A human of merit INDEED..!" Swearing and yelling fell on deaf audials, drowned out by wicked laughter as talons pierced and broke.
"-Not only did you open her case... but you gave a girl who knows no limits a false hope! Although my followers had tested you at MY behest... I suppose one can only hide their OWN nature for so long..." It cooed- before lurching down to give chase... grabbing the Angel by its ankle and dragging, backpack full of forbidden files getting tossed aside in the commotion.
They flail, legs kick- one landing a cruel blow to its mask, knocking few of those horrid teeth out- "... strike me again, and I'll--!!" Until a glass object flew, splintering the white shell-
And the world went dark.
Until it went up in flames.
It didn't work.
Nothing worked as it should have.
Death Angels were about as brutal as they were reckless.
And long ago had suffering been reduced to silence, stillness.
Broken, she approaches.
Timid, regal, fearless.
Only his eye flicks about to watch her as she nears. Nothing else cares to move, body trapped beneath its own weight- heated chemistry obscenely roiling, volatile pulse of heat deep within.
Garbled static is all he can muster once she stops down by his side, watching its battered systems slowly rise and fall.
"-Speak, clearly."
Gears fight to turn- gagging on hot Ichor, elements disturbed before clearing.
"Once... again, I... proved it, to you... Poppy."
"... you chose a means to an end, not to a proof. All you ever do is seek chaos in hearts just for the sake of winning some dumb game. How sad and pathetic." She gathered crushed filth in her palm, letting shimmering dust filter through artificial godrays.
"Ah... but if, not, for the purpoSe of... winning... why, deb-ate at all, over means... and ends..?"
They fell silent once she looked away- as if she would somehow get up and leave.
Surround walls reek of disease and torment.
"... where are they?"
"-G-one." That dull look in his surviving eye painted the rest of an unseen picture.
"Y-you... oh, god... you didn't have to."
"I'm... sorry. They went, too- far. So I to-o-ok them, b-b-beyond."
"I could've talked to- reasoned with them!"
"They HURT y-- c-ouldn't go unpunished."
"And what does that make you?!"
"... Poppy-"
"Shut up... leave me alone."
"It was y--who came to m-me, w-s it not."
"Stop talking--"
"... an--ther... WILL, fall. I'm su-re o-of it."
"I DON'T want to hear your LIES."
"I'm n-t ly--"
"SHUT UP!!! Just, this once..! Shut up."
And she bitterly hugged the base of his giant metal thumb... pieces trembling.
Grieving what she now knew.
Mourning two hollow graves.
EVERY memory now tainted.
"They're ALL the same..." They lamented.
"I know, their kind. They see something that scares them... something they do not understand- and they burn it. Like the mindless animals that they are."
I missed messing around with Audacity, dang.
I really hope the audio doesn't kill anyone's eardrums now, I had to decompress a lot of sound effects here and then, ahah! Let me know if it works good for you too, I appreciate any type of feedback! :D
Sound effects I used -> https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1shBzjbI5l0sOQC5J2wDVR4fUEmaZHA2b?usp=sharing
