Chapter Text
When you wake up, the first thing you notice is the flickering, coming even through your closed eyelids. You sit up, looking around in confusion. It... looks like your room, but it definitely isn't. Something is very wrong here.
The whole place is dark and gray, the only colour being your own. The door is boarded up with planks of wood, on the wall opposite the door is a big square of static, flickering into the darkness with a silent crackle. Your window has blinds, although it never had blinds before as far as you can remember. Everything looks eerie and otherworldly. But the strangest thing has to be a huge number of identical hammers spread around the floor. All of them seem a tad bigger than they should be and there must be at least a hundred or two.
Yarnus scans the room for any movement before attempting to maneuver around the hammers. The surrealness and the static makes his head hurt so he moves to the window to open it for some fresh air.
The hammers make a silent metallic clicks when you cross over them.
You unroll the never before present blinds and open the window... only to recoil back in shock.
There's nothing outside, only darkness. Looking up and down you see... that the space loops? Though most of it disappears in the darkness, you could swear you see yourself far up and far down, always facing away, with the same position you lean out the window. A deep hum echoes in the black void, making your periosteum crawl. You notice an ever present faint smell of old paper and petroleum coming in from the outside.
Yarnus sockets dim for a moment before deciding that window would be best left shut. "Well that explains why the door is boarded up" he says to himself after the window is securely closed. Turning he examines the door, the hammers, and the static in turn. Thinking for a bit he picks up one of the hammers and weighs it in his hand before gently lobbing it in the direction of the static like a sack-toss game. A second thought later he shifts to the side incase of rebounding.
The hammer goes through the static and disappears, making little waves on the static like on water surface. Nothing else happens.
He waits for a while before letting out a deep sigh. The thought of walking into some weird static portal crosses his mind and is placed in the back. He re-inspects the boarded door, trying to see through the cracks around the door and sniffing.
You're filled with hope when you manage to catch a glimpse of light from behind the door. Sticking your face as close to the crack as you can you inhale and your skull is filled with a pleasant smell that you can't really name. Smells sorta like... strawberries in a baked good. Sorta.
In any way, it seems that whatever is behind the door is better than here.
Yarnus contemplates the meaning of the hammers. Whoever's room this is may have been trying to send some sort of message with them. If the portal, what he's convinced is a static-y portal, was a one-way trip, then whoever made it wasn't able to come back to remove the boards themselves....but then how'd the hammers come this way? Before he could get a headache thinking about that conundrum the want of food made up his mind to start to remove the boards of the door.
You grab onto the closest plank and begin to tear it off. It's a slow and tiring process, but you’re getting there, slowly but surely. You use a hammer as a wedge a few times, slowly getting closer and closer to opening the door, already thinking up what-
You flinch in shock when a metallic thump rings out into the room from behind you. You turn around at the speed of light, staring at the floor. The hammer you threw into the static portal has returned. You don't know if that's how the static door works or if... somebody threw it back in from the other side.
There's only one plank remaining on the door now.
His eyes dart from the door to the hammer and back before a growl of frustration courses through his body. Having to make decisions without knowing all the facts grinds at the very core of his being. His face would have a yellow blush that no one would notice as he gets angry that his hunger almost made him make a possibly wrong choice. Thinking of testing the static again he would go to rummage in the desk for some paper and then head-desk at his oversight for not thinking of this first. "Heh. I guess I'm just not a morning person," he mumbles to himself.
You open the first of three drawers. There's a few pencils with teeth marks on them rolling up as you do, filling the room with wooden clacking. Even if chewed up a bit, they are usable.
The second drawer has a huge amount of paper in it. Incredible amount of paper. Impossible amount of paper. The moment you open it it puffs out and just continues to do so until you finally manage to forcefully close the drawer, leaving outside more than enough paper to use.
You have all you need, but just out of curiosity you open the last drawer. Two tin cans roll up. Intrigued, you take them out to read the labels. One is labeled "Peas". The other... "Rope"?
After the experience of the paper, Yarnus eyes the can-o-rope wearily. He gently places the two cans on top of the desk followed by some of the previously unruly paper. He collects his thoughts for a while before starting to write;
Dear Sir, Madame, or Other Entity;
It seems I may have found myself in your domain by some strange twist of fate. Please accept my apologies for the intrusion, but I do believe I may need your assistance to remove myself. I do not understand my situation, nor the massive amount of hammers that seem to cover the floor.
I await your response.
Signed,
Yarnus the Great Justicar.
The handwriting is neatly printed and he looks proudly at it after blowing off the graphite dust. Placing an empty sheet of paper over it he grabs one of the hammers and rolls the papers around the shaft before attaching it with homemade twine made from a sheet of the copious paper. He tosses this into the static and waits while examining the can of peas.
The idea of the peas in the can seems appetizing to you. Too bad you don't have a can opener.
You sit on the bed, waiting. Nothing happens for a long time. You stare at the static door, then down at your feet. Eventually you get up and kick some hammers around to clear the room a bit.
As you stop for a moment, you pick up on a sound. You didn't hear it over the hammers but now that you hear it... holy shit does it terrify you. It sounds like muffled radio voices talking over one another. And it's coming closer...
Yarnus quickly grabs one of the hammers to defend himself and backs up to the door. The sound makes his bones shake uncontrollably for a while before he can calm himself down. "I don't have all the facts" he speaks to himself to help ground him in reality. "It's just static, it might be normal of the other side. The door WAS barred from the inside, not the outside...not that I know of..." He inhales deeply. "If something was dangerous on the other side of the door, it would have made itself known by now. This could all just be one big misunderstanding." He puffs out his chest and stands tall, "I AM YARNUS, THE GREAT JUSTICIAR! AND I SHALL HEAR YOU!" he directs his voice to the static.
It all goes silent for a second. Then it comes, back, louder, closer.
From the static wall slowly emerges a being that makes your knees shake. A mass of multicolored goop, faintly resembling you and what looks like... other versions of you. About a dozen of heads clings onto one body. Long, grotesque, misshapen arms stick out at the sides, twitching, reaching around and grasping onto the surroundings as if trying to keep on its feet. You can't even see its legs over the pulsing goop dripping down its body.
It focuses all of its misshapen eyeholes at you, it's irises shifting like oil rings on a water surface. The moment it spots you the terrible sounds stops again, all of it's jaws closing with a click. It stares you down, holding onto the table and the edges of the static door. You stare back, not knowing what to do, holding the hammer in front of you in a futile attempt to look imposing.
You flinch with a pathetic whimper when it lifts its long crooked arm. It holds the hammer and the note you threw in, then tilts all its heads in question.
Suddenly, it doesn't seem so dangerous. Especially since you're sure that if it wanted to it would've attacked you already. It just stares at you, awaiting an answer.
His own mouth drops at the sight of the amalgamate. He had been the judge for the former Royal Scientist when they had been discovered in his world. But something about staring at one that shares your own face is disturbing enough to leave him speechless for a good moment. "I-I see y-you got my m-message.", he couldn't help but stutter as globs of goopy flesh drip off of the creature and reform. He lowers the hammer and lets it fall to the ground.
The amalgam blinks with all of its eyes at the same time, making a disturbing clicking sound. It turns around until it spots the pile of papers, reaching in and smacking them onto the table. It pulls the top drawer right out, getting a pencil. You just stare as it begins to write.
After a moment it picks up the papers and presents them to you. In a squiggly and almost illegible lettering, a simple question is written for you.
"YOU NEED LEAVE?"
"Well this isn't my room," he gestures around. "And I'm pretty sure that wherever I am right now is nowhere near my home." Yarnus looks towards the door, "I'm not even sure that I'd be safe or welcome to stay here."
The heads follow your movements curiously. After you finish talking they stare at you for a while, in silence. You begin to get nervous again, then suddenly it raises its arms towards you. You flinch and step back, but they don't care for you. They grab onto the door and before you know it they tear it out off its hinges like it's nothing.
The gentle light from outside shines in as the warm pleasant smell blows right in your face. The creature drops the door and slowly begins to step back into the static, having trouble walking backwards.
You stare out the door, unsure what to make of the situation. Just as you're about to step forward and look outside, the creature emerges again, holding something in its deformed hand. Before you even know what it is it hands it to you, then once again leaves, this time for good.
You look into your hands. The amalgam has given you a sturdy looking backpack. It looks pretty good, although it has a few sticky stains on it from the melting creature. The only thing inside is a can opener and pieces of old lint.
Yarnus just stands there staring at the backpack for a while before picking up the can of peas and placing it in the bag. "I'm not stealing, they gave me the can opener on purpose." He looks around the room a final time before leaving, his eyes fall on the questionable can of 'rope'. "Might as well," he sighs and places it in the pack along with two hammers before stepping out of the room. "Looks like I'm going on an adventure," he half giggles to himself.
The room you come in looks like it belongs in the ruins. The bricks are a washed out yellow colour with a light blue stripe at about the height of your hip. In the middle of the room is a tree, covered with crimson red leaves. It's white and looks segmented, like a spine. The tree is not actually on the ground, instead, it hangs in the air over a hole, unmoving.
Three hallways lead out of the big room, forward, left and right. Including the hole under the tree that makes four possible ways to go.
As you stand there looking around, the light just goes out for a split second, putting the whole place into absolute darkness. At first you think it was just your imagination, but then it happens again. It seems like it goes dark about twice every minute.
Puzzled that he wasn't standing over the kitchen in some semblance of his own home, Yarnus takes in the sights between the blinking darkness. Reaching out his left hand, he keeps it on the wall as he walks to the left. "Something tells me I'm not in Caledonia anymore..."