Corpse Party: A Glimmer of Chaos

Discord gritted his teeth as he struggled to force the door open. Both magical and physical strength were seemingly useless, but that didn’t stop him from trying. Straining against the impossible, he was about to blast a hole through the door when whatever was holding it closed suddenly disappeared and it slammed open. Almost thrown off-balance by the sudden lack of resistance, Discord recovered quickly and darted into the room. “Starlight?!”

The classroom beyond was empty. Starlight was nowhere to be seen, and there weren’t even any convenient holes in the walls or floor that would indicate where she vanished. Discord searched under the teacher’s desk and in the cupboards behind it, just in case. Starlight was gone.

“Horseapples,” Discord muttered. He had assumed that the malevolent will inhabiting this realm was ignorant to their presence, or at least was a passive observer, but that clearly wasn’t the case. Just in case, Discord tried summoning a lantern to illuminate hidden things, gave himself a bloodhound’s nose to sniff out secret magical trails, then pulled headphones and a sonar speaker out of an old desk to brute-force search without regard for what else might be listening, but nothing worked. “Darn, she must be on an alternate plane of existence within this reality. This complicates things.”

As he pondered his next move, Discord heard a floorboard creak out in the corridor. He froze, reaching out with every sense while pretending not to have heard anything, and scowled as he sensed someone creeping towards the door. Not Starlight, but someone else. “I can hear you out there, you know?” He called out in Japanese.

Someone squealed softly and opened the door. “S-sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

Discord turned around just as a teenage girl, no older than sixteen, stepped into the room. She was clearly a Japanese schoolgirl, at least according to the blue-and-tan uniform she was wearing, and had short brown hair with a ponytail on top of her head held up by a bobble with little pink spheres, along with two orange barrettes holding her bangs back. The girl froze when she saw Discord, her eyes widening at the sight of his horns, but before she could scream he whipped out a tv remote and pressed the mute button.

“It’s alright, I’m not going to hurt you,” Discord said quickly. The girl didn’t take a blind bit of notice, apparently more terrified of the fact that she couldn’t make any noise than of the draconequus himself. “Look, it’s alright. My name is Discord. Just take a deep breath, relax, and try not to freak out. What’s your name?”

The girl stared at him fearfully as he pressed unmuted her. “M-Mayu,” she stammered quietly. “Suzumoto Mayu.”

“Mayu-san,” Discord repeated, hoping the mix of personal name and honorific would put her more at ease. “What is this place? Do you know where we are?”

The girl stared at him fearfully, and for a moment Discord thought that he might have to fiddle with her mind a little to get anything else out of her, but finally she answered, “I-I don’t know. We were just messing around after school, then we did that weird little ritual a-and now I’m here and I don’t know where anyone else is.”

Discord bit back a sigh. It seemed to be a universal truth across realities that teenagers performing any kind of ritual or ceremony were going to get themselves into trouble, especially if the teenagers happened to be Japanese or from the USA. “What ritual?”

“Sachiko Ever After.” Mayu pulled a tiny scrap of paper out of her pocket and held it out. “I-it’s supposed to be just a little spell to make sure me and my friends stay friends forever. Did we do it wrong? Is that why we’re here?”

The little paper scrap did have some small whiff of magic about it, but it wasn’t nearly as dark or malevolent as the surrounding area. Whatever it was, it alone wasn’t powerful or dangerous enough to be related to Starlight’s disappearance. Seeing that the girl was anxiously awaiting his reply, Discord shook his head. “I have absolutely no idea. to tell the truth, I arrived here with a friend only a few minutes ago, but it seems that we’ve been separated. Why don’t we work together? Help me find my friend, and I’ll help you find a way home.”

“Deal!” The girl eagerly held her hand out, much to Discord’s surprise. Her earlier fear had apparently evaporated entirely. He bemusedly shook her hand, after which she smiled and offered him a curt nod. “Okay, how do we find your friend?”

Discord sighed and shook his head. “I’m not sure. I think we’re going to have to take a look around and see what we can find.”

Starlight groaned and curled up on the cold floor. She had no idea just how far she had fallen, but she didn’t think anything was broken.

Raising her head, Starlight saw that she was in another dingy old classroom, though the windows in this one were so filthy and damaged that barely any light got through at all. She got up and dusted herself off, grumbling to herself, only to realize that the hole she had fallen through had mysteriously disappeared. “Well that can’t be good.”

Starlight instinctively tried to teleport back upstairs, remembering a moment too late that she didn’t have magic in her human form. “Right, duh. Okay, Plan B.” Looking around, she saw that there were two doors in the room. One was blocked by a pile of smashed-up desks and chairs, but the other was mercifully clear.

Outside was another dingy corridor. Starlight glanced left and right, trying to figure out which way to go. Getting back upstairs to Discord was the goal, naturally, but the fall had screwed up her sense of direction. As she pondered, Starlight spotted a girls’ restroom a short way to the left. She didn’t need to go, but she figured it would be better to empty her bladder now rather than end up needing to pee right as she encountered whatever evil Discord had sensed.

“I hope you guys have toilet pap- what the?” The restroom door only opened halfway before it thudded into something. “Please tell me I didn’t just concuss a little filly.” Starlight poked her head through the gap, looking down to see what she had hit, then froze when she realized what it was.

The reeking pile of offal had probably been human once, as evidenced by the ragged clothes that it was still wearing, but it was so ravaged and decayed that it was impossible to tell anything else about who it had been.

Starlight retched and staggered back from the door as her stomach rebelled against the sight. She didn’t want to believe her eyes, but with the door open the stench of blood and rot filled the corridor and wouldn’t leave her alone.

As Starlight slumped against the wall opposite the restroom, she heard a voice call out curiously, “What are you?”