Elevate | ONC 2021

10. Friends or Foes

Sintra was seeing red. Literally.

The colors of her clothes, the torchlights, the gems, her skin. Everything had been tinted scarlet and she couldn't tell if it was just her eyes or the room.

"W-who said that?" Sintra asked, scoping the cavern to find the owner of the voice.

She rubbed her eyes while blinking rapidly as she tried to get rid of her newly colored vision.

"I'm a ghost," the voice replied, a British accent echoing throughout the room.

Sure enough, a transparent figure shimmered as it emerged from a dark corner of the cavern, grabbing the attention of the quartet as it seemed to float over the floor of remains.

She had brilliant orange hair or at least it looked that way to Sintra who had no real idea since her vision had turned scarlet.

The woman was wearing a tank top and jeans, her shoes missing and her cheek slicked with blood all the while a ghostly bedazzled dagger stuck out of her chest, the same place her heart was located.

"We can see that," Jesse snorted before holding a hand up at an excited Felix. "Don't start with the I told you sos, Granger or I will wax you."

"Whatever you say, little Miss Buck." He snickered.

"That's a new low even for you!" Jesse hit him.

"Jolly lot you are," the ghost woman said. "It's a shame really. You're all actually friends."

"What are you talking about?" Vante hissed at her.

"I was a participant in Elevate. Just like you. This was the second task for me. I was all by myself as my teammates had drowned in the Caribbean sea. They couldn't swim you see," she said, her eyebrows furrowing as she seemed to recall the memory.

"I found a topaz with my pass. Brought it inside and placed it there on the stone tablet. I killed myself a moment after since I was the only one here," she finished, her tone melancholic.

Sintra was confused. She had long passed the stage of being surprised at anything during this game. There were so many other incredibly terrible and unbelievable things that had happened to make a ghost actually seem somewhat normal. It pained her still, that she herself had decided to drive a dagger through her own heart. The pain must have been horrible.

"How would you know?" Jesse asked. "How would you know we'll turn against each other? You said you came here alone."

"Because she's seen it," another voice said behind them.

Sintra's head snapped around so quickly, she was sure to have a crooked neck by the time this was all over.

"Great! There's more of you! Where did you all come from?" Jesse questioned.

"We were always here," the man said as he looked around the floor of the cavern, his light colored hair matted with blood.

For the umpteenth time, fear rose inside Sintra's throat as she too took a glance at the corpses again, realizing what the man was hinting at.

"She saw us—my team and I that is. All 4 of us made it to the 3rd round. All 4 of us turned our blades on each other. My own sister bashed my head in with the handle of her torch," he finished.

"I was stabbed in eye," another voice echoed within the room.

"My throat was slit," said another.

"Strangled."

"Burned."

"Beaten."

"Mutilated."

All around the room spirits echoed the cause of their deaths, filling Sintra's head with endless agonizing and disgusting visions of murder, blood and gore.