Five

"Where is Asher?" Estoria asked, and everyone's expressions could tell her that no one knew of his whereabouts.

"Has anyone seen him today?" Ria inquired.

The unanimous answer was the same: "No."

"I'll see all the guests out. Eston, you rest too, and I'll ask around for Asher," Isaac said, leaving the room after patting Eston's back.

"Eston, weren't you in a lot of pain? Why would you go down there?" Estoria asked, surprising herself.

"It wasn't that bad," Eston smiled gently. He was only glad that Estoria wasn't the one in pain instead of him.

"Can everyone please leave now? I would like some rest," Estoria suddenly requested.

"Of course Estoria, we'll see you in the morning," Ria said and took Eston to his room to rest, with Tyrion following them.

"You too, Aluxio," Estoria pointed out Aluxio who hadn't moved a single muscle yet.

"Do I have to leave now? You're not going to sleep this early, are you?" Aluxio pouted.

"That doesn't concern you, Your Highness. Please leave my room," Estoria glared at him.

"Fine, I'll be the first to see you when you wake up," Aluxio stubbornly left.

As soon as everyone leaves the room, Estoria gets out of bed, locks her room door, and starts searching her room in hopes of finding something Asher might have left for her.

It was weird for Asher to have disappeared without a word, knowing how clingy he is to Estoria, and she rejected to believe he would leave her like this.

Estoria, having searched the whole room, sits back down on her bed, not having found a single thing related to his disappearance.

"I know he won't leave... he must have left something behind. Should I check his room too?"

Estoria ponders for a bit.

"If I were Asher, I would have left a note or something by the bed where only I could find it."

Estoria trashes her bed, and there it was, a letter underneath her pillow. Seemingly leaving her destroyed bed sheets behind, she gets up to read the letter.

"I knew it; he definitely left for something important he couldn't tell anyone else about."

Estoria opens the envelope, taking the one-page letter out.

'This is a letter for Estoria Stallion only, so please deliver it to her if you're not her, and if this is Estoria, I knew you would be able to find it, but if you didn't... Do I have to rewrite it? No, let's just get to the point. If you haven't noticed, I have left for good. I am not sure if me being related to you will cause a problem for you if I disappear, but I can't do much about that either. I'm not very helpful, am I? Sorry I couldn't fulfill our deal and put you in danger, but with your loving and warm family by your side, I'm sure they will keep you safe, and you probably won't miss me much. I wanted to say goodbye in person, but I don't think you'll let me go, or I might change my mind, so...

To Estoria,

From Asher.'

Estoria laughs after reading the letter for a good few minutes.

"You think you can leave, breaking our deal, not even telling me about your destination." Estoria crumbles the letter in her palm.

"We might not have a written contract, but I remember clearly that I didn't state that the deal can be broken by you, Asher." Estoria emits small little black particles as her head starts to burn, and she loses her consciousness.

After a long while...

Estoria, thrown down on the hard ruined stone floor, starts to regain her consciousness and slowly opens her eyes, holding her throbbing head.

"Again? Where am I now? Did I die again?" Estoria gets up from the floor, dusting off the dirt on her dress.

She finds Asher's letter laying on the ground too, catching dirt but straight out and not crumbled.

Estoria takes the letter, patting it, and puts it in her dress pocket.

"Why is it so dark here? Am I underground?"

The dark hallway had a few light emitting floating orbs here and there, but it was still hard to see clearly with no windows connecting the place to the outside. It was eerily quiet.

"I want to go home."

Estoria starts walking down the hallway, looking for an exit of some sort.

"I hope there aren't any spiders here."

She reaches the end of the hallway with a dead end.

"Great, now I have to walk all the way back."

Estoria pauses for a moment before turning back.

"But it's so strange how the hallway is a dead end, but it's being lighted, and there are no spiderwebs here either. For an old building like this, it's really well kept too. This isn't just a wall, is it?"

Estoria's sharp thinking strikes her, and she takes a few steps back to observe the plain old stone wall.

"It doesn't have anything on it. Should I just break it?"

Estoria kicks the wall to see how hard it is.

"It's definitely a wall," Estoria says, her feet throbbing from pain.

"Well, what better way to test out my new powers? This is perfect for some practice since I have to control them either way."

Estoria tries to use her powers by doing all sorts of different poses and positions.

"So this isn't it? What do I have to do then if only I had read more about this world?"

Estoria tries to gather all the information she knows about using powers from the other works she has read.

"Most of them just went ahead and did it without doing anything special."

"Okay, Estoria, you're also a character with overly and abusively strong powers. You can do whatever you want if you put your mind to it."

Estoria hypes herself up in little jumps because she tossed her heels a long time ago and wore her loafers because they can't be seen under her dress anyway and were a whole lot more comfortable.

"Let's do this." Estoria looks up at the stone wall intensely, imagining the wall being broken by her powers.

This goes on for an hour or so.

"FUCK IT, I GIVE UP."

Estoria only swears when she has really reached her limits.

"I'm going back."

Estoria turns back to look at the dark hallway she had to walk back to. She stares in anger, turning again, punching the wall with her right hand fist.

*A LOUD THUD*

The wall instantly breaks down from her punch, leaving Estoria's mouth open.

"It was that easy?"

Estoria steps over the stone debris on the ground.

"I can't see anything."

Estoria looks at one of the floating lights.

"Come here."

The floating light quickly moves over to her side.

"That's much better."

Estoria starts walking around and notices a white door with a number on it.

"One?"

Estoria looks ahead to see another door and another...

"There are 7 doors here with a number 1-7 each. This isn't a coincidence."

The 7 numbers were clearly the ones Asher talked about, with number 7 belonging to Asher.

"I should enter the door with 7 on it first. Asher might be there."

Estoria moves over to the door to open it, but there is no handle to open the door.

"Should I break the door too? I was being careful to not make too much noise, but I'm too thirsty and hungry to do this shit."

Estoria punches the door with her full might, only leaving a dent.

"....."

Estoria continues to punch the door, but to no avail. The door only gets some more dents.

"Whatever."

Estoria moves over to the other door which had 6 engraved into it and no handle to open it either. She punches the door one time with her left hand this time because her right hand had cuts on her knuckles from punching so many times.

"This is the same too."

She moves to the next one, number 5 this time. This door seemed a bit different; the other doors had somewhat of a glow to them, but this one was just dark—a white door with a dark aura.

Estoria tried to punch the door, but this time, the moment she pushed the door...

IT OPENED!

The room was dark and spacious, with no walls in sight, just two chairs placed in the middle with a small circle table in front of the chairs and two floating lights surrounding them.

"Oh! Hello, my lady. Are you here to play with me?" The little boy smiled upon seeing her.

Estoria stood in the doorway, her head tilted to her left in confusion, with a raised eyebrow, blood dripping from her right hand.

"Who are you?"

The little boy was wearing a white suit with a white diamond butterfly brooch attached to his left side of the suit, white hair touching his shoulders, and big bright yellow eyes with long white eyelashes. He seemed like a pretty little doll sitting on a chair.

"From the way you entered and how you're still holding up your guard, you must know about me already, though." He pouted and swung his legs—the chair being big for him, he was sitting with his hands placed behind him to support his back.

"Number 5, right? You also don't have a name?" Estoria took the chair beside him.

"It seems like it! Enough with the questions. Let's play now, hmm?" He pleaded.

"What do you want to play? I'm kind of tired right now, and I'm still looking for someone."

"Are you looking for Number 7? I'll tell you where he is if you play with me." He looked at Estoria with a creepy smile.

"He's in his room, isn't he?" Estoria looked at Number 5 for his reaction.

The little boy's smile dropped immediately; he searched his pocket with his hand and pulled out many different candies, handing them to Estoria.

"Here. You're hungry, right?" He seemed sad but wanted to help her in some way.

Estoria looked at him bewildered for a bit but took the candies, as she couldn't ignore his little hand in the air holding the candies for her.

"They're normal candies; you can eat them." The little boy said, putting one of the candy in his mouth.

Estoria was still hesitating on whether to eat one or not; she opened one to eat, noticing that she was getting a little dizzy.

'Some sugar would be better than nothing!'

She ate it. It was just a normal sweet apple-flavored candy.

"Do you have a name?" The little boy looked down at his feet, continuing to swing them instead of staring at her this time.

"Yes, it's Li- Estoria." She replied, also staring at his swinging feet.

He was wearing white shorts and black derby shoes with white crew length socks.

"I wish I had a name too..." He said in a creepily low voice.

"Do you want one? You can just name yourself, then." Estoria provided a simple solution but for him, it wasn't as simple as that.

"What's the point in naming yourself? No one will remember it when you're gone anyway, but if I receive a name from someone else, at least the person who named me would remember forever, right?" He finally looked up to Estoria and smiled again.

Estoria was thinking that it wasn't that deep for her, but if he wanted one so bad, she could just give him a name herself.

"Should I give you a name then?"

"Really? Are you sure?" He looked genuinely happy this time.

"I'm 100 percent sure, so now what would suit you." Estoria gets up from her chair and examines the little boy.

The little boy was waiting patiently, unable to hold his excitement.

"Oh, I know. Your name is Faye!"

"That's such a pretty name! Are you really going to give it to me?" His eyes almost sparkling.

"Yes, it's yours now, Faye." Estoria felt happy for him too.

He got up from his chair with Estoria noticing his socks stained wet with fresh red blood; he said, "Finally, now I can kill myself."