Emma Duluth scampered past the grating wolfish accents of the Germans, leaving the intoxicating sight of the pub stapled in her soft, square mind. The eyes roamed but they didn't linger and no one seemed to shout out the slim, ghostly deviant among them. No German bothered to notice her simply because they didn't care, a remnant of the old crowd. Instead they spent their time talking about the speech that Casper had given.

An assailing speech, if Emma ever heard one. She bit her lips. Did Casper really mean it? Was he truly going to win with those cagelike methods? The more she thought about it the more it took her back to that dim, amber colored stuffy room fraught with sweaty, bitter Germans. Perhaps she had been just as sweaty.

The road was starting to clear up but to a declined enthusiasm. What filled it instead were eldritch, motionless bodies. Blood dried up them like expired cherry cake and their eyes remained open like mutilated mannequins. Stabbed, waxy, ghastly mannequins. Emma came upon an intersection where the number of bodies only compounded. For a moment, for a slice of a moment, she thought she had seen a figure standing on top of the gray disfigurements. She was a pink haired being with a milky Japanese profile. She had been sporting a longbow and something silvery and pointy was aimed in Emma's direction. But when Emma stole another blink, the figure had disappeared like a watery mirage.

Emma was back to the unsettling, yet inspiring proliferation of flesh. Inspiring, yet humbling. Emma not only had to acquire money through the cruel eviscerating means of the game, but she also had to trek through the slimy red troughs of Satan's House. Hell would not be her new chamber and her soul would not be grasped by that swarthy hellish deity. Yes, humbling indeed.

She remembered, as if it was not long ago, that she was back in her tiny little shop in Northampton, a tiny, forgetful town–among the many antiquated parishes–swallowed under the pale, ashen colored skies of gelid England. The icy environment of the place was part of a custom that Emma had been sorely converted to since birth. England, a flashy monochrome populated with pasty soulless denizens caged under the provincial loftiness of their jobs.

Emma was twenty two and owned a plant and antique shop, just down the way from her squat cobblestone house. Walls and walls of the place were silvery glass and polished shelves. Shelves replete with pots of Devil's Ivy, Dracaena trifasciata, Venus flytrap, orchids, peace lilies, roses, cacti, and Zanzibar gems. Across the floorboard, the other shelves would display burnished metal bracelets, rings, and necklaces as well as some wooden clocks, pendulums, colonial wardrobes, attire, checks, and other very outdated vintage miscellaneous items. Barely anyone had ever dropped by for a sale or to even filch a look. None but the occasional dregs that came to ask for the products for free. Sure she would if she hadn't been so starved for cash. It was becoming increasingly harder to earn a single pound under the belt these days.

There had been a customer who didn't come to buy anything but instead sat and read. She was young, around her mid-teens, with flashing red hair. While she was reading she had been eating a pasty with some biscuits and tea. But then her mother called her and she left. Surprisingly enough she had taken her food with her but left the book. To this day, Emma could never figure out why. Perhaps she had plenty of copies of the book which was why she couldn't be bothered.

It had been a Harry Potter book, the Order of the Phoenix. Emma had to snort. Who was still reading Harry Potter in this day and age? Especially the worst book in the series. But perhaps it was just a reflection of herself. It wasn't that she never liked it considering she'd read the damn books, but more akin to the fact that she never got it. A toothless boy who goes to a silly wizard school to fight a bald guy, I mean, it was a bit childish, but also any old crone could have written it. Why did it have to be so popular? Was it because the main character was British? So what. Here she was and she hated the whole damn thing about the country. From it's posh assholes, its rigid class system, its dry food, cold bitter weather, and, oh yeah, how could you forget those delicate royal taxes. Emma picked up the bulky blue book and tossed it in the bossed. Nonsensical escapism wasn't quite palatable anymore.

The one thing she did like about living in England among its messy bureaucracy was its education system. They still reigned best at it. And of course, you can never really run out of books and sweaty overexhausted authors when you were here.

Then one day a generous old hag had come into her hollow, verdant store and offered a strange trade. Five of her best plants for a ticket. It was a red glowing ticket that had the strangest imprint of a bloody A. Emma filched a stare at the woman. She was surely a witch. She could tell. The woman reeked of strong herbal like perfume, her black eyes twinkled earnestly every time she looked at Emma, and she donned a pearly necklace with the pendant of the inverted cross. If her long nails and crooked teeth didn't fall into the picture as well then she might as well have just bewitched Emma and hitched all her belongings on the spot. But she didn't. She just grinned and waited patiently on the ambiguous offer. Emma, desperate to see what would become of this, excepted and took the ticket. The rest had been written.

Emma hummed. She wondered what had become of the old hag now. Why had she been so eager to sell the ticket? Especially such a valuable ticket. Of course she knew the monetary potential it held, otherwise she wouldn't have accepted such an ominous offer. There had been adverts all over Britain about the game Chaos. But it had never crossed Emma's mind that she would be the type of person to play it. Naturally, she wasn't a gamer. More of an idle, tea drinking, thinker. A whiskery grin played across her face. Or perhaps...a manipulator. Had the witch known this and therefore set the trap for her to play this game? But how could that be if she mutually agreed? Maybe she was one of those primordial kinds that could read minds and force your will upon your cheek. Maybe.