Elisa disregarded the onlooking man with a simple,<span class="fixed-color" style="color:rgb(184, 49, 47)">“I’m afraid not… but you never know these days. Unforeseen things occur left and right.”</span>Briefly, her head shifted to gaze upon the blindfolded figure. Smiling would do no good here.<br/><br/>She had read countless volumes on magical arts from a wide spectrum of sources, and she even had her own theories on the nature of death and the perplexity of the ever-expanding cosmos, but there was no clear-cut answer to be found. She had noted the walls between the sane world and that unplumbed dimension of delirium to be tenuously thin certain places, and it had spawned an insistent gnawing in the back of her mind, yearning, a thirst for discovery that could be neither numbed, nor sated.<br/><br/>Elisa wore a puzzled expression, taken aback slightly by the odd circumstances she found herself in, then, she began in earnest.<br/><br/>“<span class="fixed-color" style="color:rgb(184, 49, 47)">I met a man, some months ago...”</span><br/><br/><span class="fixed-color" style="color:rgb(184, 49, 47)">“From the shadows he had appeared, a hunched over figure, clouded beneath a cloak as black as the night. From the inky folds a withered hand extended, crooked and claw-like in nature. The ghoulish man was fighting a stubborn rear-guard action against baldness, an indeterminate mousy grey-brown scalp wobbling with jarring action. With his gaunt visage on display in the gloomy sunset, erratic and disastrous, hollow cheeks and sunken eyes… fleshless lips, he claimed that the end of an era was imminent. He roused the townsfolk with his wild speculations and prophecies and it was then that the guards decided to enthusiastically deliver their weapons into the deranged outsider’s back.”</span><br/><br/>A tingle washed over her, bone-deep, and as irresistible as a strong current, a chill ravaging her spine.<br/><br/><span class="fixed-color" style="color:rgb(184, 49, 47)">“Sensibly, I chose to leave at that instance, however, allegations would have you believe, that the filth returned weeks later, still boasting his detailed knowledge of otherworldly corruptions taking form beneath the surrounding acres. Sometime later, on his fourth visit, the townsfolk had watched triumphantly, as he tore his eyes from their sockets, and ran shrieking into the rumour-shadowed forest from whence he came - wailing maniacally that the end was upon us all…”</span><br/><br/><span class="fixed-color" style="color:rgb(184, 49, 47)">“The once proud village is barren and abandoned now, as if swept away by time itself, despite its recent upbringing. Supposedly, houses stand like hollow cages, mossy stone and battered wood the only remnants of former life. And though the prospect frightens me terribly, I can’t remain idle during a crisis of this magnitude. I must inspect the ruins, but entering all by my lonesome without the sufferable knowledge seems like a gamble that I’m unwilling to take.”</span><br/><br/>On occasions, after the incident, horrid daydreams crept through her resolve and left her in an inescapable maze, a prison without walls, cascading out of control, luring her further and further from the self she once knew. When she merged with existence again, slumped shoulders, wild eyes, stumbling gait, she always found herself sweating profusely, the process somewhat gruesomely poetic, like a brief insight into an unknown world. She widely ridiculed the hallucinations as simple lapses of concentration, but the pictures they painted were beyond comprehension.<br/><br/><span class="fixed-color" style="color:rgb(184, 49, 47)">“Now, my questions go.”</span>He slender frame nestled against the barrier between them, fingertips tracing the rust of the steely bars.<span class="fixed-color" style="color:rgb(184, 49, 47)">“Do have any information, whatsoever, that could prove me useful? You seem well-versed in your own little occult fever dream, you must know something. What was the man blabbering about and what happened to the town afterwards? I can offer you a wide array of services if you’re willing to assist me… if you can. Otherwise, I shall leave you two to your trifling.”</span>