Rising from his seated position, Vaile opened the door to his room and let the unnerving feeling of being watched flood his senses. This was the most recent day, and by now he had mostly gotten used to that rather uncomfortable sensation. What he couldn’t get used to was the fact that he would almost always spot one of those weird dog-like things out of the corner of his eye. However, it seemed that something else was now trying to keep just barely in the corner of his view.

He was not exactly sure what this newest addition to the irritations he had to endure from now on was and given that it constantly kept just barely out of sight, Vaile assumed that he would, at most, ever manage to get a few moments of clear vision at best. What he could tell about this new follower was the fact that, unlike the dog-like things, this creature tended to just kind of hover in the air slightly above the ground and just a hair’s breadth from being visible in his peripheral sight.

He knew it was behind him, he knew it was watching him, he knew it was following him, but he could never see its reflection in any surface, nor could he get a concrete idea of what this mysterious floating humanoid actually looked like. He just knew that it was tall, gaunt, and pale-skinned and wearing clothes that were obviously too small for it. He knew this because, unlike the dog-like things, the newest reason for him to experience paranoia was far less experienced in keeping just barely out of sight.

In essence, if he turned about fast enough, he could catch a far better glimpse of the thing than if he was trying to view one of the more bestial critters here. But, as much as he wanted to finally catch a good look at one of the things that were after him, he knew that, in Horror Movie terms, doing so would almost certainly mean his end. After all, what horror monster worth their salt wouldn’t go through that much trouble to be both ominous and stalkerish and then not immediately strike when fully seen? It was probably for the best that he kinda knew what it looked like and that he hadn’t managed to get a good look at it.

Anyway, it was time to go back to the random gap in the endless sea of flat roofing tiles and see where the door at the bottom of it took him. He shut the door behind him and left the inn, completely unaware that there was now something standing in the middle of the room on four ‘legs’ that bent at angles that should have been utterly impossible. Well, he would see his unwanted visitor sooner or later, and the eldritch creature standing there in the center of that room had all the time in the world to wait for Vaile to return.

…

Standing in the bottom of the hole, Vaile approached the door that he had seen yesterday. Unlike all the other doors in the city that he had seen so far, this one felt… off. It wasn’t as though it looked any different, it was just that it felt different. It was, to put it a certain way, like looking at a door that looked like a sliding door that was, instead, a push/ pull door. Looking at it you just had that feeling that it was not what you thought it was before even bothering to touch it. That was the kind of feeling that he was getting, and it bugged him.

Vaile’s hand grasped the handle and he pulled. To his surprise, the door opened rather easily, making him feel rather silly for thinking that something out of the ordinary would occur. He was about to chastise himself for letting his nervousness and anxiety get the better of him when he managed to catch a glimpse of what was on the other side of the door.

He had to admit, he was not seeing what he had expected to see. He expected to be given a jump scare, or maybe see a path that led to some dark and foreboding place.

NOPE!

What he bore witness to was something he honestly should have expected but hadn’t. On the other side of the door was more of the strange city, but this time he wasn’t in the section that he had originally found himself in. He wasn’t perfectly confident in his assumption, but he did have a hunch that he had just escaped one part of the city, only to end up in another. If the previous section had a kind of Partially Modernized Old European Town vibe, this one had a more of a late 1900s Docks District vibe.

The smell of seawater was even heavier here, and with it came the smell of fish and the fishing industry. It would seem that he now had yet more city to map out, and yet another inn to find so that he could get a room and then proceed to fortify it and wait out the night. He marked the place he was at on his growing number of paper maps and began to search for someplace to set up and wait out the oncoming two hours of madness.

…

The dog-like thing in Vaile’s room waited and waited. The sun had already set by now and the fog was starting to get to the point where it touched the ground, and yet Vaile had not shown up at all. The creature actually began to worry if Vaile was stuck out there while the two groups of people in this entrapped land threw themselves at each other over their desires, and if he was out there then it could only hope that he managed to avoid the both of them.

The Hounds had never really gotten along well with those they were supposed to be allied to, mostly because of the issue that they could escape the mind-fuck that came after those two hours of freedom. Still, it and its kind were on their side, and it had hoped that Vaile would be back by now, even if only so it could try and explain the situation. It figured that Vaile would open the door and rush inside any moment now, forgetting to take a closer look and ultimately leaving him face to face with it.

However, as the hours ticked by, the Hound found that Vaile was not coming back, at least not anytime soon. It was still stuck standing up straight in the same position it had been in since Vaile had closed the door, and while this didn’t cause any discomfort it really wished that it had simply decided to lie down instead of standing at attention. Well, at least Vaile would be back tomorrow, right?

Right?