Wherever Here Is

Fuck.

I’ve been using that word a lot lately. I never used to. I tended to avoid obscenities, feeling they were much too crass and uncultured. But now it seems to be the only thing which adequately describes my feelings.

Kal and Michenab screwed up whatever protection stuff Setoth had given them, and Slendy was starting to break through. So Setoth and I had to bail them out with Setoth magick.
Setoth again came up with the plan. What it boiled down to was, we were going to try to forcibly drag Slendy all around Austin. You see, we already knew that Setoth’s summoning ritual had some kind of effect on him; that was how Setoth got into this whole mess to begin with. So what Setoth wanted to do was to set up recordings of the ritual all over the city. They would activate and pull Slendy to that spot. His presence would cause the electronics in the recording to break, but by the time that would happen, the next recording would activate, and he would be pulled to someplace completely different. During that time, Kal and Michenab were to grab the girl and make a run for it.

The plan went amazingly smoothly. We set up each of the recordings sights and turned on all the devices without any interference. No proxies, no Slendy, nothing. Given how rare success is in our field of business, we naturally assumed that this meant something unspeakably horrible was happening on the Father of Light side. The two of us rushed back to Setoth’s apartment, where he called Kal. Kal reported that everything was fine; the instant we’d started the recordings, Slender Man had vanished. We suspected it might have been a trap, so Kal remained in contact with us through the escape. The atmosphere was tense as he told us that he’d grabbed the girl, and Michenab had gotten his car. Then we got word that they were driving away from the apartment, and still hadn’t seen any sign of Slendy. It sounded like victory; the summoning gambit had worked, allowing Kal and Michenab to escape.

Then Slender Man appeared in front of us. I had only a brief moment then, not long enough to act, barely long enough to think. All I felt was incredible rage emanating from the creature, directed at me. Then I blacked out.

When I woke up, I was here. Wherever here is.

It looks like Austin…. Kinda. The basic geography has remained the same; streets and buildings are where they should be. If you can call them the same streets and buildings. Last I checked, the buildings of Austin were not gigantic monoliths that stretched above the clouds. Seemed like a new feature.

I haven’t seen anyone since appearing here, not even Setoth. Everything is gray and quiet. I can shout, but there’s no echo; just my voice falling dead in the air. Even the sound of my footsteps is muffled. I don’t know where the light is coming from; there’s no sun in the sky. No shadows anywhere, not from the buildings, not from myself. Only a gray light, without any source or direction.

I tried entering one of the buildings, but the door was locked. So I tried breaking it down, but was thwarted by its unnatural resilience. All other doors proved similarly difficult to penetrate, and even the glass windows appeared invulnerable. So it would appear that I’m stuck here on these empty streets.

This, though, is par for course when dealing with Slendy. What confuses me is the WiFi. I’m still able to connect to the internet; hell, the connection here is better than the one at Setoth’s place. Now, excuse me for sounding paranoid, but I doubt Slendy would set up a router inside this place just for me. Which means that he’s not only fine with me connecting, but he wants me to be able to access the internet.

Beyond appearing in this place, there’s little else for me to talk about. Everything I’ve seen in here is static and boring. I’m going to be looking for a way out, as I would prefer not to spend the rest of my life in boring town.

There had better be a way out of here. I will be filled with an excessive amount of anger if there isn’t.

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