I Possessed The Worst Character In The Hellish Game
Chapter 36: Frozen in the Red and Blue Moonlight [2]

Chapter 36: Frozen in the Red and Blue Moonlight [2]

Alice had managed to slip away from the ballroom without anyone stopping her.

It was a small miracle in itself, given how many guards and servants were usually hovering around her at all hours.

But tonight, for some reason or maybe due to the banquet in full swing, most of the palace staff were occupied.

The corridors had been mercifully empty.

She had ducked past a distracted guard as she squeezed through a service door that the kitchen staff used, and emerged into the cool night air before anyone thought to look for her.

Now she stood on the gravel path through the royal garden as she wrapped her arms around herself against the night chill.

The hedges on either side of her were trimmed into neat geometric shapes that looked blue and red in the twin moons’ moonlight.

Somewhere nearby, a fountain was bubbling softly as its water caught the red and blue glow and scattered it across the stone pathway.

"Where did he go...."

Alice muttered as she turned in a slow circle.

She had lost him.

The garden stretched out before her in a dozen directions, with paths branching off into rose arbors, reflection pools, and quiet little clearings with marble benches.

She had been sure that he had come this way.

She had seen him slip through the side door, but suddenly a maid had appeared, carrying an armful of table linens.

It gave Alice no choice but to hide behind the pillar as she waited for her to pass.

By that time, Mikael was already gone.

She sighed and kicked at a loose pebble as she watched it skitter into the darkness.

This was supposed to be an adventure to find him.

Big Brother Kel.

She still thought of him that way, even though she’d been six years old the last time she saw him.

She really wanted to talk to him rather than exchanging formal pleasantries while her parents and sister watched.

"Maybe he went back inside."

She murmured and was about to turn around and retrace her steps when, suddenly..... a distant voice reached her ears.

It was very faint that at first she thought she might have imagined it, barely louder than the rustle of leaves in the evening breeze.

Alice held her breath and listened.

She heard it again; she wasn’t imagining it.

Something like words, drifting from somewhere deeper in the garden.

She knew she should go back —her mother would be worried, Elara would be furious — but the curiosity of a 12-year-old got the better of her.

So she gave in to her curiosity and followed the sound along a winding path that led away from the main garden and into a quieter section.

The hedges grew taller here and were less carefully trimmed, their branches tangled overhead to form a partial canopy that blocked out the moonlight.

The distant music from the ballroom had now faded completely.

Alice slowed her steps, her earlier curiosity giving way a little.

She could tell now that it was a woman’s voice.

She rounded a final hedge and found herself in a small clearing, half-hidden from the main path by an overgrown rose arbor.

A woman with blonde hair was crouched in the center of the clearing, wearing a lavender silk gown.

But her dress was rumpled and stained, the hem torn where she’d been stepping on it without noticing.

Her blonde hair had come loose from its pins and hung in tangled strands around her face.

Her shoulders were hunched forward as her arms wrapped around her stomach.

She was rocking back and forth in a slow, rhythmic motion that made Alice’s skin prickle.

"...he’s coming... he’s coming..."

Alice hesitated at the edge of the clearing.

Every instinct she had was telling her to run, to go find a guard, to get as far away from this woman as possible.

But the woman.... she looked so.... broken.

She looked desperate.

Alice was never the kind of person who could walk away from someone who was hurting.

"Um.... miss?" Alice took a step forward and asked in a tentative voice. "Are you... Are you alright? Do you need help? I can go get someone—"

The woman’s rocking suddenly stopped.

She slowly lifted her head and turned to face Alice.

Her face was pale and slick with sweat that gleamed in the faint moonlight, as dark circles ringed beneath her eyes like bruises, and a wide, trembling smile stretched on her lips.

Alice’s stomach dropped, and a chill ran down her spine.

"I... I’ll go get a healer. Just stay here, I’ll be right—"

"He’s coming. He’s coming. He’s coming."

She swallowed hard and took a step back.

But before she could, the blonde woman’s hand shot out and grabbed Alice’s wrist.

"Let go...." Alice tried to pull back. "You’re hurting me. Let go!"

But her non-awakened body of a child was far too weak in front of the woman--no matter how much Alice twisted and tugged, she wasn’t able to break free.

"You have to feel it."

She pulled Alice closer, until the girl stumbled forward as her free hand was pressed flat against the woman’s stomach.

Alice felt something move.... beneath her skin, her palm shifted and rippled.

It felt like pressing against a cloth pouch full of snakes crawling over one another.

"See...? He’s coming.... Can you feel it now....? My baby.... He wants to come out."

Suddenly, the woman’s stomach began to expand.

Alice watched in frozen horror as the lavender silk pulled taut, straining against the sudden swell of flesh beneath it.

The woman screamed, producing a sound of agony and ecstasy and something else entirely as she released Alice’s wrist.

Alice stumbled backward and fell hard on the gravel as the impact jarred through her tailbone up to her spine.

She tried to scream.

’Mother! Big Sis! Father!’

But no words came out of her throat; her voice was trapped behind a wall of primal terror.

She scrabbled backward on her hands as gravel bit into her palms and her legs refused to cooperate with her.

The woman’s stomach continued to swell.

She looked more than nine months pregnant now, her belly distended far beyond what any human body should accommodate.

The skin stretched translucent, and beneath it, Alice could see something moving.

The woman’s spine elongated with a series of wet, grinding cracks, and her torso stretched upward as her ribs pushed against her skin from the inside.

Her head lolled back, her mouth open in a silent scream, and her eyes were gone, and in their place were two dark, hollow sockets that wept something black and viscous.

Then, with a sound like ripping canvas, tentacles burst from her lower body.

The lavender gown ripped apart as dark, glistening appendages erupted from the woman’s nether region, each one as thick as Alice’s arm and covered in rows of suckers that pulsed and writhed with their own terrible life.

They unfurled into the night air like nightmare flowers blooming in fast motion, dripping with a sticky, wet substance.

The tentacles lashed through the air with extreme speed.

Alice’s legs refused to move.

She wanted to run.... wanted to scream.... wanted her mother, her father, her big sister, anyone, anyone to help her.

But her body had completely betrayed her.

She could only stare as one of the tentacles slowly turned to her, its tip flattened and sharpened like a blade that gleamed wetly in the moonlight.

It pierced straight at her.

Alice’s eyes widened.

*******

Elara pushed through the crowd.

She had finally managed to extract herself from Lord Joseph’s tedious conversation.

But by then Alice was already gone.

She was sure her sister had gone to the palace garden after Mikael.

She gathered her gown, walked as quickly as she could without drawing attention, and made her way through the corridors leading toward the garden, her heels clicking against the marble floor.

Alice had always been too impulsive and curious for her own good.

But wandering alone into the gardens at night, during an event that had attracted half the kingdom’s nobility.... that was reckless even for her.

She pushed through the side door and stepped into the cool night air.

The garden paths stretched before her in red and blue moonlight.

"Alice?" She called out. "Alice, if you’re out here, this isn’t funny. Mother will have both our heads if she finds out you’ve been wandering around alone."

No one answered.

She walked deeper into the garden, her fingers brushing against the hedgerows as she passed.

The paths branched and twisted, leading her past rose arbors and reflection pools and quiet clearings that she remembered from her own childhood, when she and Mik--

She stopped herself before the thought could finish itself.

Suddenly,

A woman’s high-pitched scream tore through the night, carrying a note of raw pain and ecstasy that it seemed to vibrate in Elara’s very bones.

The sound cut off as abruptly as it had begun, leaving behind an echoing silence.

"Alice."

She muttered and sprinted toward the source of the sound.

She prayed Alice was nowhere near it.

She kicked her heels off without breaking stride, as cool gravel bit into the soles of her feet.

The garden blurred around her--hedges and statues and marble benches all reduced to smears of green and white.

Then she rounded a final corner as her eyes widened.

The clearing before her was a scene from a nightmare itself.

A woman--or what had once been a woman--stood in the center of the gravel path.

Her body had been grotesquely transformed, her spine elongated, stretching her torso to nearly twice its normal length, and her skin had taken on a greyish, mottled texture that glistened wetly in the moonlight.

Her face was barely recognizable--hollow eye sockets wept black ichor, her mouth stretched into a rictus grin that split her cheeks.

And from her lower body, where the tattered remnants of a lavender gown still clung in shreds, a mass of dark tentacles writhed and coiled like a nest of serpents awakened from a long slumber.

"What the hell is that th--"

But the words died in Elara’s throat when her golden eyes found what she was actually looking for.

Alice.

Her little sister was on the ground a few meters from the creature; her face was extremely pale, and her golden eyes were wide open.

She was trying to speak something, her mouth forming words, the familiar shapes of ’Mother’ and ’Big Sis’--but no matter how much she tried, no sound came out.

Her legs were splayed awkwardly beneath her, her hands scraped and bleeding from the gravel.

She was completely frozen.

"Alice!"

Elara increased her speed.

But the distance between them was too great; she couldn’t even cast a magic spell from this distance.

The stretch of gravel path suddenly felt as vast as an ocean to her.

She wasn’t going to make it.

She could see it happening in slow motion-- one of the tentacles curled up, its tip flattened into a blade.

It was moving directly at Alice’s small, defenseless form.

She couldn’t stop it.

"No—!"

The tentacle shot forward.

When suddenly.....

.

「Siste!」

.

The single melodic syllable rang out through the garden, making the world stop.

The tentacle halted mid-strike, inches away from Alice’s face.

Elara’s body froze in place, her legs locked as her arms suspended in the motion of reaching forward.

Her muscles refused to obey her commands, held in place by something she couldn’t see or understand.

’What is this?’

And then she saw him.

He walked out of the shadows at the edge of the clearing with the calm, unhurried stride, his hair lightly disheveled, a few strands falling across his forehead.

His black formal coat was unbuttoned, the fabric rippling gently in the night breeze.

But it was his eyes that made Elara’s breath catch.

Those ghostly grey irises were now glowing.

He crouched towards Alice, picked her up, and asked--

"Are you hurt?"

Elara’s teary eyes widened in disbelief.

"Mikael...?"

*****