User blog:Stormlilly/XIV. Screw this. You aren't letting a bad night of drinking, weird hallucinations and this - this thing guide your path...

Spindle recoils in surprise as you yank the spade out of it's needle-thin grasp and cut into your shoulder. The pain is intense, but you ignore it, clenching your teeth and fishing around in your exposed flesh until you find it. It's about the size of a drinking straw and you shudder at the fact this strange, root-like growth was burrowing into your body... But it's out now. Throwing it onto the floor, you stomp on the thing until it stops writhing.

But... Why - you could have been... Something so much greater... The disappointment in Spindle's voice is palpable, but even though you imagine it could easily kill you - it makes no attempt to do so. In freeing yourself, you have more effectively killed Spindle's hostility then any violence against it.

"No need." You say, savouring the taste of your words against open air once again. Spindle winces, but it doesn't matter right now. "Now, free my friends."

''But... They are safer here. I - ''

"Free them. I've got no quarrel with you, but whatever is out there - no matter how bad it is - we'll face on our own. Hell, we just got back from a night of drinking like you've never seen. And NOTHING is more intimidating then a room full of people trying to mask how unhappy they are through drinking way too much."

Spindle is mute for some odd minutes, before scampering to the elevator. You follow it, and the elevator heads up - up to a sub-building that reminds you of nothing more then a large greenhouse. Your friends - and countless others - are withering away, rooted into the soil like some sort of organic IV.

You glower at Spindle - and it scampers over. Ten, twenty - fifty people finally pull themselves out of the soil, life slowly returning to them as you and Spindle cut away at the parasitic plant-like-objects inside of them. Finally, your friends and many others are free - and Spindle is rocking back and forth, the paper bag covering it's head wavering wildly.

But you are free. With a curt nod, you carefully shephard the still-dazed and drained group down the elevator, then up to the surface. A large gate bars your path here - chained, locked, and bolted. But it is nothing against the strength of your group, angry and desperate to see the surface again.

And as you step into the cold bite of reality and the surface, the green haze fading around you, you realize that whatever nightmares came tonight, and still lurk in the obscure corners of the world - you have triumphed here, and done a good thing. You manage to find your car - largely responsible for the acrid smoke - and fish free a cell phone.

Within a few moments, the local police have arrived and are returning missing people to their rightful homes. You turn to direct them to the strange, bunker-like hole you walked from - but it is gone. Well enough - you think that whatever Spindle was, it is dormant now. Perhaps forever. As it should be.

This is not the age of monsters or nightmares - this is the age of humanity. And so long as you can remember that, you will fear no nightmares - for you are free.

Ending:

HUMANITY