Adventure of Dante the Demon Hunter 2

The sealed white scar remains silent. Across the pale chamber floor, black roots spread in branching lines, their tips probing beneath Dante and Powderpuff like searching fingers.

A faint human voice rises from the wall, distorted by layers of living tissue. It calls Powderpuff's name once, then again, from somewhere impossibly close.

The roots tighten around Powderpuff's hooves and jerk her sideways. Her small blue body skids across the slick floor as the branching mass pulls toward the veined wall.

Powderpuff lowers her head and strains against the pull, pink mane spilling over her face. The voice calls her name again, now carrying Edy's frightened cadence.

Dante steps into the tightening roots and swings his long sword. The blade cuts through every strand binding Powderpuff, severing the black growth without touching her.

The severed roots snap back across the pale floor. Powderpuff tumbles free, slides through the slickness, and catches herself beside Dante as the wall shudders.

The roots withdraw into their branching cracks, leaving dark stains that pulse beneath the floor. The distorted voice falls silent, but the wall still seems to listen.

Dante examines the pale wall where the voice emerged, tracing its seams and listening between the slow pulses beneath the living tissue. Powderpuff stays close, watching the cracks.

A faint smear interrupts the black root-veins near the floor. Beneath it, Dante finds three shallow marks shaped like fingertips, and a loose thread of dark blue fabric caught in the tissue.

Following the marks, Dante discovers a narrow warm patch behind the wall's membrane. A muffled breath answers when he taps beside it, followed by Edy's unmistakable frightened whisper.

The search takes long enough for the chamber's pulsing stains to shift beneath Dante's boots, blurring the exact path of Edy's voice. He has found her location, but not the precise place to reach her.

Dante draws a sharp glyph across the pale membrane. Its lines drink the chamber's dim light, then flare as the wall gives a hollow, inward tremor.

The glyph explodes without flame. The membrane bursts outward in a ring of white force, tearing a clean passage through the living wall and scattering black root-filaments across the floor.

A Edy Cones stumbles through the opened breach. Edy wears a dark blue coat torn at one sleeve, her pale face tight with fear, one hand pressed against a fresh occult burn across her palm.

The glyph's remaining light crawls backward into Dante's fingers, leaving them numb and ink-black for a moment. Behind Edy, the wall whispers in a voice that is no longer hers.

Get everyone out of the root chamber