It seems fairly wooded outside, an empty dark sky above the forest. There's no stars. In the bushes are some weevils just hanging out. There's more missing posters hung up on the trees. She gets a little excited seeing the weevils, little heem heem whimper cuties. Luna goes to investigate the missing posters. Parker Kelly. Looks like a fairly well-built guy, wearing leather jacker and wifebeater. Missing around 2018 as well. The rest are either faded or too scratched up to make out. She continues to walk around and look around for anything notable.
As she walks, she eventually comes across a beach. There's a couple of docks lit up by lanterns. The water looks dark, though otherwise normal. She looks at the docks, wondering if there are boats or anything else eye-catching. Nothing. Just the crashing of the waves, only visible due to the lanterns. There's faint whistling coming from the water, though. It starts to gently rain.
"Whistling? Hm. Lemme see here, if this is all one massive poorbus, what would be in the water?" She shines her phone's flashlight into the water trying to make out what's whistling. There's nothing in the water. The whistling stops, and becomes soft chittering from near the shore. There's a jetty of rocks near where the whistling is coming from. She goes over to the jetty, trying to decipher what that chittering is.
She can see two bright white, glowing eyes poking out from the water. The chittering sounds like a noise that would be made for echolocation. Feeling like this is a wild goose chase, she shines her light at the water trying to get a better glimpse of whatever definitely not crawfish has the glowing eyes.
It looks like. A person?? Kinda?? Wearing black and navy blue rags over their skin, only showing their eyes. One of their arms is holding onto the rock, and they have pitch black skin with claws at the ends of their fingers. It whistles more, before chittering again. Luna jumps back in fear before taking a deep breath and trying to get them out of the water. The thing easily walks up onto the shore. It's mostly covered in the rags, wearing them like a gown and facial covering, though they appear to be plastered to its skin due to the water. They're thin, and their skin looks smooth. Their hands and feet appear webbed with claws on the fingers and toes. Their eyes continue to glow as they chatter and whistle.
Luna gets back before saying "Hello?"
The Sea Witch tilts its head, whistling before looking back at the forest.
She just watches the Sea Witch, wondering what it's trying to do. It begins to walk into the woods, its eyes darting around quickly as it walks. It's very obviously not used to walking on land, as it occasionally has to go on all fours and crawl. Luna follows behind, hoping she made the right move in saving it from the water. Even if, seeing all of its webbed features, perhaps it was used to it.
They soon find themselves back at the hospital building, near another door to enter it. The Sea Witch seems reluctant to enter, looking back at Luna.
"Hm, um, it's safe I think?" Luna opens the door for the Witch. It slinks inside, waiting for Luna to enter with it. Inside seems to be another hallway, this time filled with TV screens. They're all off. The hall itself is narrow, but could definitely fit both Luna and the Sea Witch. She enters the building and follows the Witch. At some point, the hall forks into two paths. Left, or right? She internally flips a coin and it's tails. Left path. They find themselves at what looks like the stairway in a maintenance tunnel, made up of metal beams and such. It's faintly illuminated by lights attached to the railings on the stairs.
"What the fuck is this?" She goes on up the stairs while waiting for the Witch to follow. The Sea Witch follows her as they go up the stairs. After a bit, the walls seem to. fade? into nothingness. They're walking up a staircase attached to nothing but the dark now. The lights only illuminate the stairs.
"Oh wow, this is cool!" She keeps walking up stairs. At the top of the stairs, they can see another hospital hallway. The Sea Witch begins to walk the hall, beckoning Luna to follow. Luna follows, not like there's anything else can do. Her senses are on high alert though, curious why the Witch is beckoning her. The Sea Witch walks down the hall swiftly, removing its hood and facial covering. It has finned ears and neon blue, luminescent, shoulder-length hair(?). Its face looks relatively human aside from the bright white eyes and its sharp teeth.
The hallway's shiny, tiled walls are colored a light pink and the floor has white tiles. The ceiling is concrete, with hanging light fixtures. The hall has seven doors.
Luna feels like she has to jog to keep up with her. When she gets a glimpse of its looks, she can't help but think the Witch is very very attractive, aside from all of the stuff that could rip Luna apart. "Seven doors. Um. which way do we go?"
The Sea Witch chitters some more, looking to Luna. Luna wishes she could translate and then picks a random door, slowly opening it up, and carefully looking inside. She chose door four!
The Sea Witch follows her inside. It leads out to what seems like a nature trail with a boardwalk over some marsh. It appears to still be nighttime.
"Oh my gosh, this place is beautiful. Shall we walk?" Luna smiles to the Sea Witch and walks down the path. The Sea Witch follows Luna, staring out into the foggy distance. Something slithers through the water, but it doesn't give off vibes of wanting to hurt anything. Just a slithery lad. Luna hears the slithering, but seeing how this is a nature trail in a marshy landscape, she thinks nothing of it. She continues her walk with a relaxed pace.
They come across a board with basic wildlife information, including animals that don't seem familiar to Luna. Such as:
- Amphibious Maleficus
- Herbal Homunculus
- Agaricus Aranea
There's also more missing posters. The Sea Witch picks at one
She internally notes the various unknown species, then goes to where the Witch is at. Luna tries to read the poster it's picking at. It seems fairly new. Roger Milton. Date, 2022. There's others, too. All in the Milton family. All disappeared the same day. One mother, Jennifer, two kids, Roger and Melissa.
"What the hell? First off, it's so far the only 2022 poster, and then three Miltons disappeared?" Again, she notes all of this internally and tries to see if there's anything else noteworthy about the board. Nothing else, really, aside from a few moths buzzing around the light illuminating the board.
She checks out the informational posters.
Herbal Homunculus: "Small creatures that are known to grow to look nearly identical to artemisia absinthium. If you see any artemisia absinthium, it is best to stay away from it, as it may be an herbal homunculus. They are known to be hostile and will attack humans."
There's a small diagram at the bottom of a small, human-shaped creature with light green skin and clothes made of plants.
She takes out her phone looks up what Artemisia Absinthium is. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand it's Wormwood. The plant. Great.
"Okay, so it's hostile wormwood. Kinda cute, but yeaaaaaaaaah we're staying the hell away from that." Then she looks for information for the Amphibious Maleficus on the board.
It's a perfect description of the Sea Witch she's standing right next to. Luna looks over the witch. Makes sense it would be called Amphibious. The name coming from Malefic, meaning capable of causing harm or destruction by supernatural means, gets her a bit worried however. Even so, she removes that fear from her mind temporarily and reads over the entry for Agaricus Aranea, predicting it'd be some kind of spider. And she'd be right! The poster details a spider that can look nearly identical to a mushroom when standing still, including releasing toxic spores.
"...okay, this place is my personal Hell" she mutters, before looking around the area looking for some other point of interest. The boardwalk continues on into the trees. Luna sighs and takes a deep breath before heading forward on the boardwalk. Her senses are even higher on alert than before, especially after reading about the mushroom spiders.
The woods seem relatively fine, safe on the boardwalk. There's the occasional hum from the trees, where more missing posters are scattered around. The humming sounds draw Luna's attention to the various missing posters. She reads them over as she continues her trek. A mushroom skitters across the boardwalk and the Sea Witch snatches it up and eats it in like three bites. The boardwalk soon ends and turns into solid land, leading into more woods.
"Holy shit. Thanks for the save!" She notices the boardwalk is done and looks to the Witch to go first into the woods. Luna swears she's a brave person, but deep inside, she is but a scaredy cat. The Sea Witch walks into the woods. Her hair, as well as the occasionally placed streetlamp, in the middle of the woods for some reason, are the only things providing any light.
Luna keeps right behind the Witch, staying in her light though extremely confused about the streetlamps placed haphazardly in the forest. They soon find themselves at a well. The Sea Witch stares down into it. It seems deep. Luna looks at it too, definitely becoming more and more worried as time proceeds. As Luna looks down, she feels the taste of her own mouth become slightly bitter. Luna pulls away from the well, hating the taste within her own mouth. "ughhhh what the hell?"
The taste goes away. The Sea Witch looks at Luna and starts to walk again. She follows right next to the Witch, keeping within her light. They soon come across a large stone structure in the side of a hill, appearing to have a large metal door. There's lights attached to it, two pointing inwards to the door, and two pointing outwards at the woods.
"Right, alright, I guess we're going in.." Luna slowly opens the door and looks inside.