Leo's ears rang, the screech of the streetwalker had echoed in the small room, making the noise many times louder. Leo held his ears in pain and tried to keep his eyes on the streetwalker. It made no attempt to move, only standing there screeching. Deciding that any longer under this assault would leave him deaf, Leo rushed forward and tried to kick the creature.
The streetwalker made no attempt to dodge or even brace for the impact. Leo's leg connected and tossed the small creature into the wall. He felt the streetwalker's skull cave in from the force of the kick and knew immediately that it was dead before its body had even crashed into the wall.
Shocked at the ease at which the streetwalker was killed Leo moved to pick up his torch.
That... it was that easy?
Leo was left dumbfounded as his hand wrapped around the smooth metal of the torch. Something felt wrong about the situation. The sense of being watched didn't cease, rather it intensified. Leo could still resist the feeling due to the pure masks influence, but he was concerned that the death of the streetwalker had not ended the feeling. Like the streetwalker he had killed was merely a prelude.
Turning off the torch just to be safe, Leo listened before he left the confines of the room. At first there was nothing, just the empty basement and a soft breeze that flowed hauntingly.
A breeze?
Leo had never felt a breeze in the basement before, not during Tom and his first visit, and certainly not in their journey tonight.
Something had changed, and Leo was certain that he wanted no part in learning why. Taking a step out of the room, he turned towards the path that he had come from. Now outside of the room, he felt the breeze coming from his side.
If his intuition was right, it was coming from the locked door that Tom had found during their first exploration. Greed and curiosity almost made him want to explore, but Leo knew that this was a situation where time was of the essence.
A split second later and Leo began to run full speed through the garbage towards the basement, relying heavily on his memory of the pathways. Leo hit the piles of trash a few times as he ran and was covered in the slimy rot that covered the basement. He thought about turning on the torch for a brief moment, but his largest concern right now was alerting the source of the presence to his current location.
Running through he eventually passed by where he and Tom had separated at. Leo cursed and hoped that the old man had made it out already. Then Leo felt the wind shift towards him and jumped to the side.
A loud crash could be heard throughout the cavernous basement and Leo took a deep breathe realizing he narrowly avoided death. Leo knew he couldn't face whatever had just attacked him in the dark and turned on the torch.
Before him was a streetwalker with thick clublike arms, a thin face and extremely stunted legs. The creature's sickly skin was stretched beyond it's normal mean and had frayed in multiple locations of its arms and chest, leaving stretches of muscle exposed to the air. Its arms were grotesque mountains of flesh and covered in dried blood.
Leo looked on in disgust and realized even though he was trying his best to avoid detection, running had created just enough noise to allow the creature to find him. Something felt wrong though, and Leo couldn't quite figure out what was so off about the situation. At first Leo thought about trying to fight it but remembering how his first fight with a streetwalker went, he thought better of that.
He could tell that this streetwalker was not the source of the presence he and Tom had been feeling since they had entered the basement. Trying to fight this creature here was tantamount to a death sentence.
Keeping his eyes on the grotesque golem Leo started to run once more. Unfortunately, the disfigured monstrosity followed him with disproportionate grace. Its massive club-like arms were used as pseudo legs, helping propel the streetwalker enabling it to reach high speeds in stark contrast to its stubby legs.
Leo had the slight edge in speed, and the noise being generated by the streetwalker made any attempt at staying unnoticed completely useless, so he didn't bother to turn off his torch. The creature speed was impressive, but Leo had a suspicion that it wasn't able to turn quickly and as soon as a fork in the pathways presented itself, Leo jumped right.
It slowed the beast down for a moment and Leo gained some breathing room, but the bulky arms provided a better pivot than Leo thought, and it was still hot on his trail. Oddly, as he kept running, Leo didn't feel the presence increase or decrease. Was it running a parallel path?
Leo snapped back to the task at hand and not a moment too soon he saw a sickly arm enter the light of the torch and heading straight for him. Jumping over the new streetwalker's outstretched arm, Leo couldn't see where its body was located. The arm then seemed to retract as another arm tried to pierce him while he was in the air.
Crap!
Unable to avoid the attack directly, Leo attempted to call upon the power of the mask and imagined a small disc hovering in front of the attack. Suddenly the feeling of blood loss made him lightheaded, as he felt the blood flow from his nose. The feeling wasn't unexpected, but just drawing upon the power gave him a sense of exhilaration.
A small disc of blood formed and deflected the attack just enough to miss Leo's side. Blood splattered around the floor of the basement, and very little remained of the original disc. The hidden streetwalker screeched in anger at the failed attack and retracted its arm.
It seemed that the amount of blood determined the strength of the manipulation. If Leo used too little blood, he doubted that he would even be able to pierce a simple piece of cloth. An important lesson to remember if he wanted to survive this encounter.
His mind racing, Leo pushed those thoughts aside as he prepared his body to land. As he landed, his footing stumbled on the slime that coated everything within the basement. The small loss of speed from landing allowed the larger streetwalker to approach, as it raised an arm to crush the pesky human before it.
Realizing the danger Leo rolled to the side and narrowly escaped the creature's fist as the ground shook from the force. Managing to keep his footing Leo turned flashed the torch towards where he last saw the arms reach from but saw only the piles of trash.
Taking a moment Leo burst forth away from the large streetwalker behind him in an attempt to gain some distance. As he began to run, Leo kept his head and the torch on a swivel, trying to locate the hidden streetwalker to no avail.
The large beast followed shortly after, and Leo could feel its bumbling arms shake the basement as it ran. The hidden streetwalker was nowhere to be found, and Leo understood this couldn't continue. He would have to kill one or both of the streetwalkers if he wanted to live.
Running through the pathway and dodging the piles of trash, Leo thought he saw something moving between one of the piles of trash. Then a brief whistle of air and a turn of the torch revealed the location of the hidden streetwalker as it ran in parallel with Leo. At least, Leo thought it was running.
The streetwalker's upper body was a lanky mess with arms that coiled around its body and would uncoil when it needed additional length. Its legs merged into a single tail that it was using to slither through the trash like a snake.
Overall, the creature shared very little in common with a human figure. Leo could somewhat determine tell that one of the arms was still coiled tightly around its body before realizing that one of the hands wasn't in view, and that the arm it was connected to was rapidly uncoiling from the body.
A moment later Leo felt the wind whistle and quickly tried to jump out of the way as he had done before. Unfortunately, the streetwalker had expected exactly this, and by the time Leo realized his mistake a claw had slashed at his side, ripping a chunk of flesh from his body.
Landing roughly, Leo stumbled and felt the larger streetwalker closing in. Reeling from the pain, Leo pushed through and continued to run. Now knowing where the serpentine streetwalker was, Leo kept the torch trained on its twisted body.
Leo could feel his clothing begin to soak with the warm sticky embrace of blood. Gritting his teeth he ordered the blood to stay inside his body. Leo suspected he was going to need every drop.