Silence.

Lights around the stage lit up and John's vision blurred. For a moment he could see his teacher waving happily from the platform and then Mr. Langley's figure was gone. Other things had changed too: a set of plush red curtains were closed across the front of the stage, a pair of curled stone gargoyles were inlaid along the facade above, shadows of people filled the seats, clamoring noiselessly as they waited for a performance...

John rubbed at his eyes and looked back out the window of the sound booth. The audience was gone, but the rest of the theater's changes remained... and a popup clarified why:

Illusion Barrier - Natural Phenomenon
Eden - Carcosa

The quiet was broken by a drawn-out creak from his right, where the door to the sound booth slowly opened. He instinctively switched to his armor and felt the weight of the Thorn materialize in his hand, staring at the opening. He waited... and waited... and waited... Each second that passed only tightening the tense coil of suspense that gripped his pounding heart. He swallowed. Alright, fine; if they weren't going to come to him, he'd take the fight to them.

He exited the sound booth, looking around the theater as he did. The entrances and side-doors were all gone, replaced by damp cave walls that rose on every side and wrapped around the ceiling. Lights along the aisles provided a dim illumination, leading towards the darkened stage. He started down the seats and nearly jumped at the loud noise of an overhead spotlight slamming on. It cast a brilliant yellow ring of light onto the red curtain, which fluttered slightly in a non-existent wind. Whoever lurked in the shadows certainly had an appetite for dramatic flair...

John gripped the Thorn's hilt tightly and walked up the steps to the stage proper, the spotlight sweeping off the curtain to nearly blind him. He winced and held up a hand to keep it out of his eyes. The brightness made it almost impossible to see out into the audience, turning the seats into rows of vague black blobs. As his vision adjusted, things came back into focus slightly.

Behind him, the curtain shifted and began to raise, and John braced himself for whatever lay beyond. Somewhat unsurprisingly, it was a set. Past the cloth, the wooden stage transmuted into mildewed stone; carved tiles, eroded with age and the dampness that still clung to them, spread to the similarly constructed walls. There were only two, giving a view into the fictitious room. Rusted iron bars were set into the left, showing only blackness beyond. On the right, an ugly ring protruded from the stone, trailing chains attached to an unwieldy pair of manacles. It was a prison cell.

He eyed the rusted metal with growing disquiet. There was a twisted sigil burned into it, only half-visible. Before he could get a closer look, something inside him recoiled with utter, inexplicable terror. John turned away from it, some things were better left alone... He refocused on the situation to keep his mind busy.

Considering how he'd been treated like an actor thus far, John wasn't enthusiastic about playing the role of prisoner to whoever ran this show. He summoned up his courage and shouted into the darkened audience, "I've played along, now quit lurking about like a coward and fight me!" It echoed off the cave walls and rebounded to him, distorted and eerie. Maybe it would've been better if he kept his mouth shut...

Something moved in the dark, a figure, crawling over the backs of the seats towards him like an animal. It moved slowly, but just fast enough to duck out of sight before John could throw a dagger into it. His taunt had attracted some attention, at least. As the echoes of his voice faded the theater descended back into an oppressive silence that he felt the urge to fill.

"Well? Are you not entertained?" John shouted.

As though in response to his taunt, spindly black fingers curled over the lip of the stage. Their owner emerged, pulling itself onto the wood with horribly elongated arms. It had black, rubbery skin, stretched across a gaunt and skeletal frame from which a pair of wings and barbed tail emerged. The creature's face was featureless and smooth, eerily bereft of detail save for the vaguest outline of cheekbones and brows. Two horns curled back along the sides of its skull, covered in the same slick skin as the rest of its body. It crawled along the stage on all fours, utterly silent.

Nightgaunt
Level 13 Aberration
Corrupted nightmares of the Dreamlands; the guardians of Ngranek; servants of Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss and Yibb-Tstll, from whose black breasts they suckle amidst the thrice-cursed witching hour. They know secrets which mortals dare only whisper to their hideous mirror-kin in fits of disquieting sanity.
190/190 hp
66/66 mp

John's skin crawled just looking at it, and the nightgaunt wasn't alone. Two more of its kin crept down from the rafters, along the slick walls of the theater and down towards him. They silently surrounded him, the closest reaching out with its unsettling digits.

He responded with a lash of the Thorn, a sweeping arc that slammed the head of the weapon into the aberration's arm for 29 damage. It tumbled to the side without a sound, but the other nightgaunts used that opportunity to leap from the walls towards him. The Thorn's chain met one, knocking it from the air with a well-executed Whirlwind Sweep, but the other landed a foot away from John. It lunged again, claws scraping along the mail of his armguards.

-5 hp.

Another claw came out of nowhere, dragging down his back and throwing John off balance. He spun as he recovered, striking out against the attacker, but the nightgaunt easily jumped over his attack with a beat of its wings. It caught a cast of Rend to the face for its audacity, clawing at the magic tearing into the disgusting skin. Wings lost their rhythm and the nightgaunt fell to the ground with a heavy thud. John immediately followed up with a brutal overhead slam to the creature's chest that sprayed black ichor across the stage. He reared back for another and remembered too late that there were three...

While he'd been pounding one aberration into the cracked floorboards of the stage, the other two had crept around his sides, and both jumped onto him at the same time. They didn't claw at his armor, but instead wrapped their fingers around his wrists. He struggled against them, thrashing as they pulled him along the stone with a strength that ill-suited their thin bodies. John didn't need to look to know where they were taking him, he had a good enough guess.

He wasn't eager to discover what fate the nightgaunts had in store for him, and fought with every ounce of strength he could muster. With herculean effort, John ripped his right arm free and whirled around to punch the other as hard as he could. The Thorn's collapsed form made for a solid bludgeoning weapon and he left a deep indent in the creature's skull. It released him immediately, leaping back to land on all fours. Black ichor wept from the aberration's wounds, but, if it felt them, the monster showed no sign.

The other nightgaunts began to circle him once more, only momentarily **** backwards by a Whirlwind Sweep before they regained the distance and continued to close in. John needed to get off the stage, to get as far away from the faux cell as possible. He eyed the aberrations, waiting for the one with the injured chest to be between him and the audience. John ran at the creature, barreling it out of the way as it tried to grab at his shoulder and neck. The other nightgaunts went for his legs, one grabbing onto his left ankle. A dagger materialized in his fingers, thudding into the creature's forearm and forcing it to release him.

With nothing else in his way, John sprinted for the edge of the stage, leaping off it and landing heavily in the aisle between the seats. All three aberrations followed him, taking to the air on silent wings and soaring towards him. The Thorn vanished back to his inventory and John let loose with Lerna's Jaws and Starfall. He missed with the first throw, but the second knife sank into the muscle of one nightgaunt's wing, sending the creature tumbling into the seats. He landed another two daggers into the chest and leg of the least-injured monster, but it seemed totally unaffected by the damage. They were relentless in their advance, the fallen one crawling awkwardly across the seats towards him. Even a wave of falling stars did nothing to stave off the aberrations.

John backed up, throwing a final dagger and missing the closest nightgaunt as it lunged towards him. Fingers closed on his left arm. He switched to the Thorn and tried to strike the aberration, but another hand grasped his right arm and twisted painfully. His weapon clattered to the ground as John was **** to his knees. One of his captors leaned in, face given scarred features by his spell. The nightgaunt's head twisted slowly, rotating until it was completely upside-down.

Unwilling to look for even another second into that horrid 'face', John closed his eyes and struggled futilely against the spindly fingers that gripped him. His mind raced, trying to think of a way out of his predicament, a spell, a skill, an item, anything! It dawned on him that this might be it, whatever these creatures wanted with him... he was entirely at their mercy...

"By the Lady!"

Brilliant white light lit up the insides of his eyelids and John opened them just in time to see the nightgaunt's face smash into the floor of the theater. Its head crushed like an egg, black ichor spraying everywhere. He closed his eyes as it hit his cheeks, then re-opened them to look up at his savior.

To his surprise, it was Moira. Chainmail covered the redhead's chest and arms, looking hastily shoved over her visible uniform. The armor didn't reach her hips and, from his position on the floor, John could see perfectly under her skirt; naturally, he couldn't resist the perfect opportunity. He was completely unprepared by what he lay beneath. The wrought iron chastity belt that was locked around her hips was a considerable few steps further than even his most conservative expectations. Maybe that explained a few things...

With a squelch, Moira's hammer pulled free of the obliterated nightgaunt and whipped overhead. John felt the weight of the aberration holding him vanish, fingers torn from his wrists by the paladin's swing. She brought the weapon back to her side, head glowing with a deadly purity that made him nauseous just looking at it. Moira thrust an armored hand down at him, and John looked up at her face.

She was furious, but her anger wasn't directed at him. Not entirely, at least. John grabbed his weapon and was pulled upright by the paladin without any visible effort. He staggered, getting his balance a moment before she punched him in the shoulder.

"Fucking hell!" John swore, grabbing the closest seat to remain upright. It dawned on him that his choice of language was probably not ideal.

"Do you have any idea, any idea at all how much trouble I'd be in if you died?" Moira stomped closer and hefted her weapon menacingly. "It's my job to keep you alive, despite your insufferable attitude!" She pushed the head of her hammer against his scale mail and John backed away from it, "Don't just run off by yourself!"

John looked past the furiously ranting girl to the seats. Crawling along them, wing dripping ichor was the third and final nightgaunt... it was still alive. He backed away as the paladin waved her sacred hammer in his face and tried to warn her, "Moira..."

"Don't interrupt me! And another thing, you don't listen to anyone!"

"Moira!" John shouted at her; the monster was only a row away now. Magic swirled at his fingertips and the paladin looked from it then back to him. Her fury doubled, and she drew back her weapon. The head of her hammer burned bright and she swung towards him at the same time that John threw his final spell at the nightgaunt behind her.