After getting inside the building, Evarista clamped her ears spasmically. The piercing pain in her ears almost made her black out, it was as if two thick nails were being driven into her skull from the sides. For a moment, she almost forgot where she was, leaning on the wall next to the door to keep balance, her mouth opening and closing like that of a stunned fish. When she came to, the others were already inside, the blonde swordsman leaning against the doors as he clutched his injuries. So not only were they exposed to the destructive screech, the bat actually swooped down and attacked? This wasn't a game. Whoever owned this building was serious about defending it, and yet against better judgement, they went inside anyway. The meeting with whoever or whatever was hidden here seemed imminent and unavoidable. Clenching her teeth, the girl felt the severity of the situation set in for real.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden explosion just outside of the door. She couldn't hear the sound due to her ears already being out of commission, but the pressure wave seeping through the walls and the trickle of dust seeping down on her shoulder from the ceiling were decent indicators. Something blew up. Violently. Equally violently, something started banging at the door, each strike no less forceful. Something unspeakably powerful and bloodthirsty, with an intent to pulverize all of them, separated from them by one layer of wood.
While being the least physically harmed of the group, Evarista was the most terrified. Her teeth were chattering and her knees were shaking. She never asked for any of this, and it was starting to be too much to handle. The three figures that had seemed so imposing and enigmatic in the courtyard now looked as pathetic and powerless as herself, at the mercy of the chaos, at the mercy of the darkness. She trusted them to protect her as little as she would trust herself to protect them. Without thinking any further, the young aristocrat left the group behind and dashed into the darkness, as fast as her rigid legs would carry her. She had to get away. She didn't care where, she just couldn't stay put. Her fight-or-flight meter was screwed all the way to the left, and it demanded action.
Was the inside of the building any safer? How could she tell? Evarista's eyes showed her nothing, and her ears showed only pain. The secret vision stolen from the bat was her only effective sense, if only she could replicate it. The mechanism itself wasn't particularly complicated, and she'd be able to produce it smoothly if she was at home and relaxing in her comfy room. Unfortunately, she was not, and the stress showed early. When morphing her larynx to produce ultrasound, she accidentally put pressure on her windpipe. Choking suddenly, the girl tripped and fell to her knees, cold floor striking them mercilessly. After a fit of gargling and coughing, she regained a bit of composure, but not enough to get up. She still needed to modify her ears to receive the ultrasound, and her ears were busted. Fortunately, she was not unfamiliar with putting her morphed body parts where they weren't supposed to be. Pulling back the tissue of her cheeks, she created two ultrasound-sensitive organs where the jaws met.
All that was left was to try the mechanism. If it didn't work now, she'd be in trouble for real. Straining her throat as if to groan, she let out a wave of sound. Not a moment later, her senses were awash with feedback, albeit it was feedback she couldn't understand. Whatever the case, she seemed to have gotten the system right, at least as far as its primary function was concerned. Rising to her feet and rubbing her sore knees in the pitch-black darkness, the girl gave her 'voice' several more times, turning her head in different directions. The waves sent to the right and forward returned completely and instantly, while the one sent to the left took longer. That probably meant her front and right were facing walls, whereas on the left was a passage. Turning left, the girl ran, or rather shuffled, wherever her newly created sense guided her. She had no idea where she was going or what part of the building she even was in. The ultrasound was merely enough to prevent her from suddenly bumping foreheads with a wall or a monster, and in her situation, she couldn't ask for much more.
Walk, stop, bounce the sound, adjust direction, repeat. She couldn't tell how long she's been navigating the labyrinthine corridors half-blindly. There had to be a second exit somewhere, wouldn't it? Who the heck built such huge complexes without back doors? These damn people had no common sense. Or maybe the problem was her terrible sense of direction. Admittedly, she would sometimes get lost in the Nitrozian estate, her own home. Compared to that, getting lost in this nightmare was a matter of course, ultrasound notwithstanding. It was also a matter of course that her luck would run out sooner than it brought her to an exit.
Walking as usual, one of her feet suddenly met air instead of marble. There was a hole right in the floor, possibly due to unfinished construction, and Evarista had not been clever enough to point her echolocator downwards to guard herself from such hazards. Letting out a decidedly non-supersonic squeak, the young aristocrat felt her body slide into an even darker dimension than she was already lost in. Her hands caught the corner of the floor, and for a moment it seemed it like she would hang on, but the wet noodles she had for arms were too weak. After a mercifully short period of weightlessness, her rear struck a hard surface. It hurt, but not as badly as she was prepared for. Getting back up, she pondered her situation bitterly. Was this the floor below? The basement? How would she get back up? Her echo could tell her that there was a wall in the way, but her grip of the sense was not sophisticated enough for anything beyond that.
The hopes of serendipitously stumbling upon an exit faded rapidly. Evarista continued walking, but her body was beginning to feel very heavy. It was not the weight of fatigue, as adrenaline still pumped steadily through her veins. It was the weight of despair.
I want to go home.
Please let me go home.
She wanted to say it out loud, plead the invisible forces of this place to let her go, but she had no cheeks and no tongue. The phrases repeated in her head over and over as she shuffled towards the unknown with increasingly rigid movements.