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The cupboard in the far corner of the room seemed to be the source of the thud. Bringing out his sword, James was ready, even if his leg was wounded. The ice however managed to help soothe it somewhat, as he put more weight on the right leg. Another thud came, this time making the doors of the cupboard rattle. The raptor flinched slightly, gripping the blade handle tensely, eyes glaring with a warrior's fury. Soon the doors flung open, and out came the scissors, ready to stab the nearest living creature. "Oh, welcome back Scissorman, you ready for a li'l duel?!?! Yeah, I know another name of yours now, you got a lotta names for such a little shit!" He wielded his sword strongly, keeping the tip facing towards the boy's warped face. "Hehehe, you a li'l worried now arentcha? I got me a...Daikatana! And I'm gonna make you my bitch!" The two circled around the room slowly, judging each other, staring the other down. Or rather James was since he wasn't even sure if there laid eyes behind that face, resembling a melted rubber mask. Taking the first shot, he slashed at the demon hard, the sword clashing against the scissors with a rather disturbing shudder through the body, as a chip came off the blade. The scissor-wielder saw this and immediately began to hack through the sword, which not only was in the hands of an inexperienced wielder, but was also far weaker than the scissors. Regardless, James kept up his efforts to guard against the heavier weapon, blocking blow after blow, trying to thrust and stab whenever he got the chance. At one point he slashed hard enough to scratch a sofa in his upswing, and almost toppled himself over.

Scissorman would have killed him, or at the very least seriously wounded him if it hadn't been for James dodging away in time. But in his panicked evasion, he tripped over the small table, hurting his leg worse as he limped and stood up once again, snarling with the sword in hand now rather cracked. It only took a few more deflecting blows from the scissors to eventually shatter it, into nothing but a handle and the length of a short sword. "...god dammit. Useless broken piece of SHIT!" With his fury restored, he charged forwards to stab the broken blade into the boy's neck, but he didn't go down as the raptor frantically pushed him towards the cupboard, trying to knock him out. The scissors did not make this easy when they swung at him, crazily trying to cut his face, before James grabbed the cupboard door and pushed the child's head inside, slamming it repeatedly into his face. The scissors tried to stop him, and sometimes they did, but he kept trying his hardest to smash Scissorman's head against the cupboard until it was breaking up, his head going through it even. Hoping he had at least weakened the killer long enough for a headstart, James ran out of the room, limping frantically towards the hallway where lied the unclean bathroom. He ducked into the bedroom with the mirror and bird cage, scrambling under the bed to hide. Waiting for what felt like half an hour, he rested on his back upon the floor to let his leg heal up more, as well as recover some of his energy. Soon he slowly got out from underneath, listening for the telltale signs of scissors and shoes, slowly walking back to the foyer with broken glass. He also remembered the silver key he took from the room with the phone, and remembered the door on the upper landing.

Heading upstairs with all the strength and care that he could muster, he prayed fervently upon the key to open the door that he had his eye on, tenderly limping over, feeling safe for now. To his delight once again, it worked. Unlocking the door with the silver key, he came upon a disturbing scene. A small library or study of some sort, with two bookshelves and a painted mural on the wall to his right, depicing a scene partially covered by one of the bookcases. Three people in odd robes on the right, praying to some sort of dark purple cloud rising from a black square pit. The shadow of a red-eyed bird spread its wings over all, with two fires burning above to the left. James felt a shiver in his spine. In the far right corner, directly opposite the door, was a small table with a couple of books, a candle, and a chair. A note had been left out, poking from one of the books which James read. "Time will cause...adherence? The clock tower's clock stopped...the hell does that mean, what clock tower?" As he thought on how he had never seen anything like a clock tower in the place, something occurred to him just then. In all the time he had spent in this house, he had never seen a single clock in any of the rooms he visited. "...wha...that's weird...why would nobody have any clocks?" With this mystery in hand, he decided to leave the room for fear of being cursed, or something else just as sinister.

The pain in his foot was getting worse, and he realised he had to get some better medical treatment. With that in mind, he recalled the clean bathroom from before. Getting his bearings right, he kept walking along the upper floors back to where the mannequin room was. He realised now that sometimes the identical layouts of the first and second floors actually did have their uses, when he headed down from the second floor just outside the mannequin room. Finding himself outside the trophy room full of jars, he walked straight along to find the three-doored corridor and found the bathroom once again. Happy to be in what he considered to be the most pleasant room of the mansion, James found the bandages once again and began to tie them thickly around his ankle to cushion them. Using up practically half a roll of them, the pain was thankfully not as bad when he put a little weight on it now, sighing happily and leaving the bathroom. Checking the other two doors for sake of curiosity, he found the next one along to be open, which confused him. He was sure it had been locked before. Inside was a scene even more unsettling than the mural room. A room with a black curtain covering the right wall, with flowers in a green vase which were arguably the only soothing thing there. An altar of candles laid before him, one shelf above the other, around some sort of ghastly painting of something possibly human. But the centrepiece of the room was a large pentagram inscribed upon the middle of the floor. "Okay now I KNOW there's a cult underground."

Checking the altar, he saw an iron disk with a cross engraved into it, as well as a book propped up on a certain page. "Time will cause...adherence? What does-wait...I saw that back in the room with the creepy mural! So...what, then?" Another thing he noticed to connect with the mural was the corpse of a crow next to the book, its neck completely severed. "What the hell they want with these crows?" Thinking over possible theories, he put his hands into his pockets to find the Demon Idol from before. An idea struck his mind as he placed it upon the iron disk, almost certain that it had a connection to this whole affair. Soon he heard a click, and a slow rumble from the floor. The centre of the pentagram revealed a hole with a ladder downwards. James was hesitant. Whatever laid down there wasn't going to be welcoming. But he had to get to the bottom of this. He had to find out whatever laid behind the mystery of the Scissorman and to destroy it once and for all in order to escape. Traversing down the long ladder, struggling to mind his ankle, he found himself within a cavern. It was large yet somehow naturally formed, stalactites and stalagmites lining the place haphazardly.

A stone corridor stretched out before him as he walked. The sounds of the cavernous winds unnerved him, seeing a bright light at the end where a small half-circle of candles had been placed, surrounding a dead body that had somewhat deteriorated. James couldn't even tell the gender of the human too well, just that it had short red hair and rather boyish clothes. It was also the first dead body he'd seen that wasn't an animal's. "Poor guy...or girl..." Looking back along the way, he saw two candlesticks around one entrance that was hard to see against the dark wall, walking into it to find another corridor of a different layout. Another door was more clearly to his left, and further along was what appeared to be a slope heading downwards into a dark green pool of water. Floating upon it was a huge dark pile of mulch, which stank horrendously of turpentine and burnt flesh, making James back away and look elsewhere. Above this slope was some sort of rock shelf that acted as a passage across the water, which James climbed up onto carefully to walk past the mulch, and reach the deepest part of this inner sanctum. Much to his surprise, there was a bed in the far back. A beautiful red four-postered bed, enormous too, fitting for a king he presumed, and with such an amazingly soft blanket. Yet the only thing that pulled him away from it was the strangest aura.

It wasn't a smell or something like that. It was more a sense in the air, of something that had been here once that made James' entire body shake unconsciously. A part of him wanted to get away very quickly. Yet the rest of him felt woozy and unable to focus. He assumed that he was just tired, as he tried to shake himself awake. But that did no good. "Nnngh...wha...what's happening?" As he tried to clear his head from this strange feeling, he began to hear strange whispers from all around him. Tiny at first like the scuttling of mice, but soon building up into voices. The cave around him slowly faded into darkness. It felt disturbingly familiar to the fear gas that he had inflicted upon him in Arkham. "Wha-what do you want!? Who's doing all this to me!?! I just wanna leave this place, I don't care about your stupid rituals, just let me leave!" The voices continued to chatter through his mind, both familiar and unfamiliar, threatening to drown his senses amongst them, feeling himself fall to the floor as he felt a sensory overload come to him. He tried his best not to black out, struggling to get up and walk away from the cursed bed. But he could barely get five steps away before he fell unconscious, splayed out upon the cold cavern floor.

When he opened his eyes again, he found himself within the living room of a large but normal apartment, enshrouded within a hazy cloud that blurred most of the finer details. The world was silent around him, even his own footsteps could not be heard when he tried walking from room to room. The living room itself was quite sparse with possibly a couch in the centre and a TV in the left corner near a large window. A kitchen stood all the way behind James through an arch in one rectangular room, complete with dining table in the middle, surrounded on two sides by cupboards and appliances. Something about this place was strikingly familiar, yet he couldn't tell what. He looked around to other rooms, seeing a hallway down one way to find the front door which was locked, all the way down the left of the hall. A linen cupboard behind the wall of the kitchen was to his right, and two bedrooms were to the farthest right. One room had noises from within. The sound of a baby was inside what appeared to be a nursery. Soft blue walls with charming clouds, a few toys here and there as well as some simple books. A cradle laid in the middle, watched over by two raptors. A couple presumably, holding hands. James felt something warm in his heart, yet he could not think why. He couldn't see the baby, but the couple turned to see him. Their faces were blank. No eyes, no mouth, not even the nostrils on the end of blank muzzles. "Wha...w-what the-who are you two!?"

Something made him feel they were familiar, but he thought maybe it was just because they were raptors like him. They said nothing to him, staring blankly at him. Unmoving. The longer they stood watching, the more scared he became, before slowly walking out of the room to leave them be with the still-gurgling little one. As he walked back along the hallway, suddenly everything exploded. A rumbling thud shook throughout the place, accompanied by someone's scream from the living room, piercing deep into his heart. Heading around quickly, he saw that a huge pile of twisted metal had crashed into the room, the place now slowly consumed by flames. His fear rose on the back of his neck as he desperately tried to run somewhere, but nothing opened for him. All the doors were closed, trapping him with the fire as it slowly encroached upon him. Backing himself up against the wall as the flames rose above him, charring the entire apartment, he tried to look for a way out. As appliaces crackled and fizzed, even exploding with the heat. In the midst of it all was a shadow. A shadow of a raptor standing amongst the flames, unaffected by the heat, turning around to gaze at James blankly. "Who are you!?" And then it spoke, with the whispering voice that he had heard from his hallucinations before. "I am a shadow." "Uh...I see that but...WHO are you?" "The true self." "Wh-what!?" "I can't stop the demons...and neither can you." It walked towards James, faceless and stiff, the raptor having nowhere to run as he was forced to push up against the wall. The shadow pressed against his body, feeling like an ice cold wind so thick that it could freeze his heart. "What do you want!? L-leave me alone!" "Freedom." "F-freedom?! From what?!?" "Your cowardice...how long you have been running with nothing but your claws, yet you are wounded and useless. You will die soon, even if you survive this. Don't you want to be free before that?" "You...you know how to get out of the mansion!?" "Both of the switches...in the clock tower..." "Wait, what clock tower!? I never seen one in the place!" "Go up to the tower...the demon shall be slain. And you shall have the key to your freedom." "Will...will that get me out of here?" "Yes." Despite the seemingly kind advice of this shadow, he was still suspicious. "...but...who are you? How can I trust you?" "I have said already...the true self." "Are you...like my conscience?" "I am a part of you, who wishes to be free. Don't you want to be free?" Something about those words spoke deeply into James, the whispers slithering into his ear as he felt his need for freedom grow, to an extent that he hadn't felt since he was a teenager. He knew one thing above all else. He needed to escape. And if this shadow had an answer, he was going to take it. "Yeah...yeah I wanna be free!" "Remember the switches. They are the key...to your freedom."

The shadow slowly embraced him, smothering him in its folds, blackening James' vision and he woke up once again. He was still inside the cave. Slowly getting up with care for his ankle, he looked along back the way he had gone, remembering his vision. "That...that was like the other times, but...it talked to me...maybe...maybe it's trying to help me? Why did it take me back here the first time from the forest? And why that bullshit with the mannequin? What does it mean!?!?" Frustrated with not knowing enough, he knew that all he could do was to follow its kinder advice. He reasoned that perhaps it was a previous victim of the Scissorman, trying to exact revenge upon him by finding another victim-to-be who just happened to wander onto the scene. With this in mind as a logical conclusion, and having no real reason to trust the voice anymore than the Scissorman as the only other presence in the mansion, James headed back the way. Climbing the rock shelf to avoid the water with great effort to climb without hurting his ankle, he checked the other candle-lit door to find a long rocky corridor with a metal door at the end. A button stood to one side. Curiously pressing it, he found it to be an elevator. "...seriously? Wait...this what he meant by going up?" Trying to ignore the oddity of an elevator in a cavern, he walked in and pushed the button for the third floor, which mystified him as he had no idea the mansion had a third floor. The elevator slowly chugged its way upwards, gears grinding away as he wondered on what the third floor could possibly contain, and where Scissorman had disappeared to. Surely he hadn't given up. As he thought on this, the grating in the elevator roof suddenly fell, nearly hitting him, and he heard a sound that terrified him more than anything else. Snip. Snip. "Oh god...n-no, not here, not now..."

Indeed it was here that the Scissorman had decided to show his face, leaping down with scissors into the small elevator. It was already full enough with one raptor in it, and he desperately grabbed the scissors first to prevent being stabbed, grappling it wildly with all of his panicked strength, buying as much time as possible before the lift would reach its destination. He wrestled with the scissors and their owner, swinging them left and right, trying not to let go, trying to keep the blades away from his body and scrape at the walls. He wasn't even able to move around in such a small space, roaring at the boy's face in both fear and fury. The walls became scarred with the slashing of the blades that James did his utmost best to avoid, until he heard the doors open behind him. With one desperate move and the fear of twisting his ankle worse, he allowed Scissorman to thrust forwards, but dodged to one side and kicked the boy in the back to knock him down before leaping over him towards a tall ladder. He headed upwards past an entire wall of gears behind it. This would have been an easy opportunity to get ahead of Scissorman were it not for his bad leg, but he had to do it. Bracing himself, he clambered frantically upwards with all of his speed, the shorter human surprisingly able in climbing up towards him, even though the raptor was slowed down from his usual pace. But he managed to reach the top, only to find himself upon a wooden platform amidst an entire room of gears, turning evermore. Their clunking grinds were an unending drone upon his ears. Bells hung lifelessly among them like solemn watchers over all. Then it came to him.

This was the clock tower. He almost forgot about his unholy assailant in the few moments of admiring the ingenuity of the place, before the spell of awe was broken at the sound of footsteps behind him. James had nowhere to run now. The humanoid before him merely grasped the wickedly smiling scissors tightly, knowing in pre-emptive glory who his next victim was. The raptor could already tell it was probably imagining the wondrous scene of a coming execution, and pondering on how best to claim it. Snip off the head, or perhaps half of it? Slice in half at heart level, or go at the limbs one by one and watch the raptor crawl ever more slowly until he was a bleeding begging torso? James was going to make sure none of that would happen here, growling with fearful anger. "Alright thassit. I'm tired of running from you, you fucking FREAK! YOU WANT ME!?! COME ON, TRY AND KILL ME!" The remark made the boy launch forwards with his scissors wide open for the scaly neck. In desperation, James grabbed the blunter sides of the blades, near the base of the handles and backing away as he did so. He struggled to pull his neck back as he forced them to close before they could reach him. It was a close shave, perhaps 3 inches away from his neck as they grappled with the blades. He threw the tips together to close them again, then went left or right, one blade opening now and again by the Scissorman's strength before eventually striking one against a bell. An odd expression came over Scissorman's face. A sort of painful expression at the clang of the bell, as if he'd been punched in the gut but not enough to make him go down. As the sound went away, his strength renewed, the two sidestepping around the floor like crabs in a duel. James was soon thrust against a switchboard with two large levers, the scissorblades trapping his neck. Nowhere to go. His arms grappled wildly at both sides as he stared at his killer with a panicked scream, his mind racing for a solution. Then he remembered the words of the shadow when he felt the switches. Without a second thought, he frantically pushed the switches downwards. As he did so, the Scissorman stopped, the blades tense against both sides of James' throat. The bells started to chime with a deafening volume all around them.

His face suddenly looked more anguished than usual, a sense of intense pain awakening within, dropping his scissors and clutching his ears with its deformed hands. The bells began to clang off each other, slowly building into a biblical cacophony, each one sending out a different wavelength of agony through the boy-demon's twisted mind. He began to lose his control, his balance, even his sentience perhaps, and was soon dangerously near the edge of the tower against the wooden railings. James had no intention of stopping him. And so the Scissorman fell from the tower, groaning an unearthly cry into the navy-blue night sky, spattered with rain and lightning that had covered the land within the time the raptor had been in the caves. James stepped carefully to the edge, but couldn't see the ground for the mist that had surrounded the mansion. The mechanical apparatus around him reverberated too strong for him to hear a single thud. But he knew one thing. He was never coming back anytime soon. However, the giant scissors had remained. Lifelessly abandoned upon the ground. They did not move an inch, lying there, glinting softly, somewhat...alone. Out of a deathly curiosity, he walked over to them and picked them up tenderly at arm's length, as if they could magically come alive and impale the raptor without warning.

Nothing happened. Even when he gripped the handles with all of his claws, nothing happened. In essence, the Scissorman's weapon had been turned against his master. It saved the raptor's life rather than ending it by the idea of the bells. He briefly reflected on how a weapon was not necessarily good or evil, but the user was. The pair of scissors now seemed lost and confused, their crooked angled points glinting tenderly in the light of the moon, like a steel blood-stained claw, their handles warming to his touch. Maybe he was being too emotional in the relief of not being hunted down anymore, but he still felt some pity for the now abandoned weapon. He slowly began to admire it without its murderous intentions from the owner. Its wondrously carefully polished surface despite the rust of age, the reflection of a raptor's face in them split apart by each blade, to give it a sad look. And he did seem to make it a habit of taking a memento of the world with him. He was too scared to be unarmed with just his claws. He felt as if he needed these. "Guess I'm taking a part of the world with me again." he said blankly, the realisation of surviving having not sunk in fully. Despite his anxiety of the weapon, he took it in his hands and walked towards the other side of the clock tower opposite the ladder. There was a small balcony. And all there was beyond that, was air. Fresh untainted air, where beautiful forests spanned wide across the darkness. It felt such a relief. He could finally leave. And so he did, with scissors in hand. He realised through all his time here that even though his body was fast and strong enough, he needed a weapon. A gun runs out of ammo, and when it did in a world where its ammo did not exist, he would be screwed. But a weapon like this. If he could wield this, he could defend himself far better. Something he could fully wield and control every facet of. With this in mind, he realised what the shadow had been saying.

Roaring towards the sky itself in an almost exhausted cry of victory, he prepared himself mentally to travel once again, until he realised that the scissors would be hard to hold onto through the abyss of dimensional-space travel. Looking around to find some rope at the very least, he found instead an emergency spare belt for binding the gears together. Taking it, he laid down on top of the scissors carefully, and wrapped the belt around his waist, firmly enough that it felt like the beginning of a corset. The scissors set tightly against his back, feeling like a samurai's sword. Making sure the scissors would not be able to loosen themselves and stab him in the back accidentally, or in any way be separated from his person without his own hands pulling them out, James readied himself for teleportation upon the balcony of the clock tower. "Welp...looks like his time ran out." God that was a bad pun, he thought to himself, but when you leave a place like this you have to do it. Regardless of how bad the joke was, he looked up at the clock itself, gazing upwards from the balcony upon the huge looming face slowly ticking away with the loudest of vibrations. He started to wonder about time before noticing an inscription upon the clock face's rim. "O chronos tha prokalesei tin tirisi...hmm...chronos..." The word stuck out to him for some reason, and with no other word on his mind to think upon, he focused upon it, repeating it in his head. Soon he began to teleport once more, much to his relief. The scissors felt like ice against his scales, as the nanos began to swirl around him strongly. A shudder resonated through him as his back straightened in reflex, before he was sucked in once again into the cold dark embrace of dimensional-space. Traversing to another world, beyond time itself, yet well within its domain.