Them

Cleo opened her eyes, slowly, light flooding through. Clouds floated above, red sun in the sky partially obscured a jungle's canopy. A gentle stream trickled nearby, the sound of flowing water massaging her soul, blocking out any other noises which came from afar. For a brief moment, she had forgotten about everything, about the entity, and the theatre, the four demons, and the facing of her past struggles. Then, as if awoken from a trance, she jumped in a panic. "No!" The entity was nowhere, and the otherwordly dimension, gone, much to her relief. When she got her bearings back, the play

There must have been a clue, some indication of which apparition was the real inner demon. The clones surrounded Cleo, encircling her. With malice in their eyes, she would notice that they all moved in a counter-clockwise fashion, overtaking each other, trying to throw her off. However, one of them strayed from the pack, running clockwise. Could it be that obvious? The player snapped toward the target, focusing, anticipating the moment that it would stop stalking in the distance and approach, rusty dagger at the ready. It broke formation and made toward her with an attack identical t

"Well struck!" The demon sounded amused, almost delighted. "Now, I'll show you what a real attack looks like!" The demon bent its knees, lowered its weapon, and concentrated. A clone of itself formed, kneeling next to it, and another. Encircling the player, an army of the demon's clones stood up in unison. "Which one is the real one? How would you tell?" Cleo stepped back, spinning, trying to follow the real one. "You said no more tricks!" The clones all started toward Cleo in unison before diverging into separate paths, circling in on her position. She tried to predict which on

Pleasantly surprised yet entirely expecting the trickster to go back on its word, she signaled her agreement with a nod and prepared for an attack. This time, she led a charge on the demon, which must have taken it by surprise as she made a clean slash across its chest, scoring a critical hit. The foe countered with a wild swing at her arm and chunked the player a portion of health, which she panicked upon noticing. It was Cleo's lowest health yet, with just over 75% of her life force remaining. Were the game's highest level players not consumed with anxiety from watching their life drain

"I would be done with you if you stopped running away." "What fun would that be?" Cleo, amused, shrugged. "Fair enough, I guess this keeps the fight interesting. The whole pac-man thing is starting to get a little bit old, though." It disappeared again and reappeared behind her. "Shall we fight fair and square, then? No tricks?" She jumped, backing away. It stood still, to her relief, finally staying in one spot for more than a few seconds. Curious as to whether it would honor the request, she asked. "Would you have it in your heart?" Its purple, solid eyes looked to t

Its sword aimed forwards, the demon charged in hopes of a piercing attack, but Cleo was fast, stepping aside at just the right time. She attempted to counter with a slash at its chest, but the distance was too far and her dagger swung out of range. Overcalculating the dodge, she stumbled a few feet further than intended and slipped to the floor with a thud. Meanwhile, the demon recovered in an instant and fled further into the void. Heart racing, Cleo struggled to her feet and recovered her senses, but by the time she could see straight, the fickle demon had disappeared once more. Wh

The two came to a stand-still, neither taking a chance to attack the other. Able to take a closer look at the assailant, she studied its body. The demon was tall, shoulders broad. Its hair was like hers, if not slightly longer. Its eyes were hers but solid, inhuman. Unlike hers, though, its voice was deep and toed the line between masculine and feminine. The weapon that it held, a basic iron sword with no stand-out characteristics, swayed gently, matching the movements she'd made with her dagger. As she leaned left, so did the demon. And then to the right. In raising her dagger, the

Cleo made chase for the demon, its silhouette standing out among the darkness. She was closing in despite the wound from her leg and, readying another attack, began to focus on the target once more. "What?" It ran into the darkness and disappeared. Cleo tried to make chase but slammed into an invisible wall upon reaching the point where the demon disappeared. "How?" There was no visible distinction between the edge of the room and the area she could run in. All around her was the void, no points of reference to know which direction she was looking, and no way to see where the newly d

Door number four opened and Cleo passed through, slamming it shut behind her. The player came out into the darkness, but this time, it was different. There was no floor, no ceiling, no torches lining the walls. There was no furniture from her old dorm room, no living room decor, and no puddles littered throughout a cavern. There was a void everywhere, forever—a vast expanse of nothing. She tried to feel her way around, sticking an arm out, touching the floor below, jumping to touch the ceiling. Besides the solid plane which she stood on, there were no other sensations to be had, noth

"Some things are beyond fixing. We've tried to put our differences aside in the past, tried to be around each other without going for each other's necks. It didn't work out. It's what it is." Cleo, now glaring at the entity, balled her palms into fists. "She was never willing to put her work down for a few hours, so I'm not willing to give her any of my time. She loses out on me, not the other way around." The entity leaned back into its chair and, for the first time, smiled visibly wider. "Whatever." She got up in a huff, grabbing her dagger on the way up. "Enough games. I know

"Onto the second demon, then; my mother as a wendigo. Entirely accurate, by the way." She spoke lightheartedly, without second-guessing herself. She frowned when the realization struck her. "That was the point. You depicted my mother as a monster because, deep down, that's how I see her." Cleo's relationship with her mother was complicated, broken, and, in her eyes, was as such through no fault of her own. She hated the woman for never having time for her, always being consumed by work, and leaving the parenting to her father. It was a bitterness that grew out of control, went untend

The portal to the third inner demon's sanctum vanished, leaving just one final door when Cleo returned to the stage for the last time. She chose to rest. Though barely a nuisance, in the end, the previous fight had taken a lot more out of her than she first realized, having to be on high alert for so long. She sat down, legs dangling from the edge of the stage, and set the dagger down beside her. The entity, who sat in the front row just ahead of Cleo, no longer clapped. Its smile, a white zigzag stretching across a void, stared at Cleo with its piercing gaze, and she stared back at it.

Again, for a time, there was nothing. The demon was gone, without a trace. However, this time, she had something: a clue, a possible solution to the puzzle. Just before the aggressor appeared, she had caught it from the corner of her vision, its reflection shifting in the puddles on the floor. Was that the key? It was worth a try. The first time, she'd gotten the drop on it, or perhaps it was luck. The second time, it hadn't given her a chance. She knew what to do the third time. Eyes closed, she stood, dagger at the ready, her breaths steady. A droplet of water fell from the ceiling

In the shadows, hiding in the dark, the demon lay in wait. Cleo had only seen it for a moment, a beast with no fur and an almost gaseous appearance, so plainly depicting a wolf or another woodland predator. Its fangs were long, sharp, streaking from its mouth like wisps of smoke, with two red singularities where its eyes should have been. Cleo, glued against the wall, stood prepared, dagger at the ready to strike. Ten seconds passed. Then, a minute. The player's attention never wavered from the shadows, eyes reading the left side of the room, then the right, then back to the left. Sh

Cleo had prepared for the worst, but it didn't seem to pass. The knocking had subsided for what felt like an age but must only have been a couple of minutes, and she let up her defense with an exasperated sigh. She shifted forwards from her back and into a seated position, pulled her legs to her chest, and planted her chin between her knees. All of the games, the messing around, began to get to the player, and she could all but stare forwards, blankly, waiting, wondering when this would end. A puddle shifted from the corner of her eye, but she brushed it off, knowing it must have bee

As soon as Cleo spoke out, the knocking stopped. She stood, waiting, ready for it to start up again, but it didn't. A cautionary glance at her surroundings revealed nothing had made its way inside yet, and so, carefully, she crept towards the portal, her back to the wall. When she finally reached the door and leaned over to twist the doorknob, it didn't budge. Figures. Her attempts to push and pull yielded equally bleak results. After a little more waiting, she grew uneased. Was something wrong? Was the quest broken? Could a quest even break? Something, perhaps desperation, compelled

Cleo spent a few seconds trying to gather her thoughts. She'd anticipated a boilerplate response to what was quite a generic opener, but she wasn't ready for the verbal poetry delivered by Krysta. "Wow." For one so inclined toward the performing arts, she struggled for words. "I know many in the Town of Beginnings that have people like you to thank for saving their lives. So, thank you." It was poor, but it was all that she had. "I'm lucky to have never been in a life-threatening situation before. Not in this game, anyway." Inadvertently reminded of a bad memory, of being hospitalized just mon

Cleo was ready to tackle her next demon. Loneliness had just edged out over the fear of the unknown, as at least she knew what to expect when facing her loneliness. The room centered around the unknown might just be blindsiding and would be better to fight last, to make sure it was the last bit of nonsense she'd need to endure for the quest. Door number three creaked open. Inside was dark, cold, and wet. Illuminated by torches in each corner of the room, she saw puddles scattered across the rocky floor. "A cave?" Water dripped in the distance, creating an occasional splash that would

With a huff, she got up to her feet. The fatigue she'd felt earlier was gone, which was a welcomed development, but that meant she would need to get back to the task at hand—fighting demons. And that would mean choosing which door to go through next. To her left was a two-panel oak door with a brass doorknob and illustrations engraved into either panel. The top panel depicted a Melpomene mask floating above the silhouette of a lone person, whose tears collected in a puddle beneath them. In the bottom panel, a Thalia mask watched over the profiles of a group of people linked by their

She rolled onto her side and, both hands to the floor, mustered the strength to push up from the ground. On her knees, she spent some time checking her essential motor functions to make sure nothing had broken. Hands are moving? Good. Neck still turning? Check. Clap. Ahead, she saw the formless Entity with its wide, white smile, clapping from its seat in the audience. She grimaced at the sight of it. "You know, you're gonna get blisters if you don't stop showering me with applause." Her little quip had no effect on the being, which annoyed her that she couldn't get any reaction out o

Sometime later, Cleo awoke, feeling not the soft leather of the sofa behind her head but hard, cold wood. She groaned, trying to prop herself up, but the stiffness in her back prevented it as she fell to the floor with a clunk. Her muscles ached, or so thought. It was her first time dipping below half-energy and experiencing physical fatigue in-game, so all she could relate her current state to were real-world feelings of exhaustion. Perhaps she was fine, and it was all in her head, mental fatigue induced by the last two fights with her demons. In any case, she couldn't move or didn't want to.

As Cleo moved closer to the beast, she saw subtle changes to its appearance. Sharpened claws, shrinking, dulling, became hands. The jagged antlers disintegrated from end to base, leaving behind a pile of ash. Once wolf-like, its legs shrank, the bone structure morphing to that of a person's. The transformation was gradual, lasting long enough so that when it finished, the player couldn't pinpoint exactly when the image of the wendigo vanished and the manifestation of her mother appeared. The woman lay there, wounded, a hand pressed to her neck, and the other extended toward Cleo. "Myy Cle

There was no longer any trace of the beast in that voice. The sound of the wolf, the bear, and the mountain lion, gone, leaving but one thing behind, the human. "Cleo." The wendigo, the creature, winced, covering its wound with a claw. Its legs writhed in pain, sprawled out across the tiled floor, and Cleo, dagger in hand, stood by its feet. "Mom?" She wanted to move, but her legs felt heavy. She tried to move her arms, but couldn't, weighed down by the consequences of her actions, and struck by the realization, by horror, of what was happening, she stood there, paralyzed.

A shallow, airy breath trickled out from the room behind, a warning of its approach. Cleo hid, barely darting behind the wall in time to avoid its notice. Her breaths were narrow, her mind racing. That thing, whatever it was, was not her mother. But the pain in its eyes, hazel, like her mother's, was human. And again, familiar. Could she run? The door to the theatre, to the entity and, just maybe, freedom, was open, unlike in the first fight. The risk of being caught and struck by a force of unknown power was high. No, there wasn't enough time. Steady, Cleo hid beside the wall, waiti

Door number two crept open. This one, Cleo knew before getting close. The front door to her family home. A glass door with a curtain on the inside, obscuring much of the room behind, besides a few inches. Past the hallway and into the lounge, one of the sofas gave just the right vantage point to see the edge of the front door open and close, where her mother would always be sitting—waiting for Cleo to come home from a night out. Her mother was there. But different. Grotesque, the imitation of the middle-aged woman, had long, jagged horns, beast-like legs, and elongated arms, which sc