Author Note: Once again, this chapter is going to be broken down into a series of small mini-chapters to help me focus on description and micro-manage content in case I need to edit or add anything to the following areas as the school gets explored. These will all be reassembled at a later date and become one full chapter once I finish the "creative stage" and switch gears to the full "edit/format/assemble" stage of my work habits.

Feel free to wait until you see Chapter 21 to read these, if such a formatting bothers you at all.

The moss under her bare feet was cool and slightly damp, making walking on it slightly difficult as it tried to slip and slide as Rebecca slowly worked her way across it and towards the classroom. The air had a stale, almost swamp-like odor to it that wrinkled the nose and left a sour taste in her mouth as she eased into the classroom. Chairs were overturned, will mossy vines growing up and around the metal bones of their legs and stretched spiderlike from mossy green mound to mossy green mound.

“This place is ruined,” Rebecca whispered, glancing back over her shoulder nervously. “Matthew? Matt?” Glancing up and down the hallway, she swallowed back a deep lump that was forming in the back of her throat. She was all alone; Matthew was nowhere to be found in either direction.

“Matt?” Her voice barely able to croak out his name, she felt her heart pounding frantically inside her chest. Where was he? Where did he go? Her first instinct was to scream his name and frantically yell for him to come back, but she struggled to stop that impulse. Who knew what troubles screaming could bring down on her head?

Blinking back tears that threatened to leak down the corner of her eyes, Rebecca slowly eased into the room and shuffled around inspecting everything. The bodies of her friends were covered in the thick moss now, so at least she didn’t have to see them again as she snooped around, but she really had no idea what she should be looking for. “Dungeon heart, my ass,” Rebecca murmured softly to herself. Would she even know one of the damn things when she saw it?

A quick trip around the room didn’t reveal anything of major interest to her – the vines and moss had covered over everything in the classroom, apparently fed by the fertilizer that was her fellow classmate’s corpses – and only a thick moss and vine graveyard remained to mark their passing. As she was leaving the room, Rebecca realized that something was subtly wrong. Something was making the hair on the back of her arms and legs stick straight up in warning.

Standing completely still, barely even moving except for the shaking of the sword in her hands, she focused all her senses to try and hone in on the problem. For several long moments, she simply stood and strained her senses, and with each passing second, the lack of anything standing out somehow made her nerves scream ever louder.

She saw nothing but vines and moss. She heard nothing that sounded dangerous or threatening. The only thing she could smell was just the stale putrid stench of sour swamp. The air was warm inside the school, but not overly so. The feel of the moss on the bottom of her feet was slick and slimy, but not painful in any way. The more she stared, the more she waited, the more she worried when nothing happened.

And that’s when she realized what was bothering her – it was the sheer heavy presence of nothing. No sound of cars driving by outside. No sound of kids laughing or joking. Not even the sound of the wind blowing through an open window, or the hum on the air conditioner. Absolute silence had settled on the school, and now that she was aware of it, it made her want to scream to break it.

“H… Hel…. Hello?” Barely able to croak above a whisper herself, Rebecca stuttered several times just to hear her own voice. “M… Ma… Mat… Matthew? You… You around?”

Only the deafening silence answered her nervous call as she stood and trembled in the doorway for what felt like an eternity all alone.