The screaming did nothing to deter the ghostly invaders' descent.  Just as visible within the dungeon's darkness as were in torchlight - like they represented an existence that conventional physics like light waves didn't apply to - the floating blobs drew ever nearer to Zoe.  As though relishing in the Dead Apostle's fear, they took their time to get there.  Whether she writhed upon her painful prison or laid as stiff as a board, they had their target.  Hers was a dead body, and they wanted it.

Surprisingly, the sensation of those things sliding down the piercing, wooden shafts and into Zoe's bloodstream was not wholly unpleasant.  It didn't feel [i]good,[/i] but...  The infectious anger each one of these opalescent entities was constructed from crashed against sealed skin and was repelled.  That's why it hurt so much when they touched Zoe before; they wanted to get into her and were unable to, leaving their rage to chew on her nerves like acid but not breaking her flesh.  The torture bed breached Zoe's body for them, so they no longer had a reason to unload their evil on her exterior.  They just... passed into her without resistance.  It was no worse than getting filled with liquid from an IV needle.

Zoe's very being, her soul, if you will, experienced a shove.  For just a moment something foreign pressed against her essence.  Imagine being fully conscious while you undergo heart surgery.  It felt like that, but the faceless doctor's hand was interacting with the very concept of "Zoe Aguirre Yggdmillennia" rather than any physical organs inside her chest cavity.

This pressure was momentary.  It let up seconds after it started.  The relief of having this invasive, external mind withdraw came along with all of the filmy, airborne things pulling free from Zoe's body.  They swam about above her, remaining grouped up but not moving with any discernible pattern.  It kind of looked like... they were having a group huddle and deciding what to do next?

Out of nowhere, one of the things chomped down on another.  It expanded in proportion to the "mass," if you could call it that, of its prey.  The other blobs drew back from this.  A few of them used the distraction to do the same as the predatory one.  Just like that, their semblance of order and civility devolved into a feeding frenzy from which one of these beings managed to escape.  What was left was a single, spherical distortion as large as all of the others, combined.  This wriggled itself into a long, thin shape that was narrow enough for it all to slide into the puncture wound in Zoe's stomach.

Even if she couldn't understand any part of what she was seeing, Zoe's instincts told her that this massive, singular ego was much more dangerous than the dozen smaller, individual ones had been.  She felt like she couldn't reject it from within herself as she had with the first usurpation.

The immaterial shimmer got the first third of itself into Zoe before she started feeling it.  it felt like--

It felt like nothing?

As hard as describing what exactly these ghostly dangers inhabiting the castle are, making clear what Zoe saw happening to the one attacking her is even more of a challenge.  From her point of view it looked as though the thing just fell apart.  It dissolved and it shattered and it vanished and it popped; all of these transformations seemed to be taking place within it simultaneously.  It was there and then it wasn't.  There was nothing left of it afterward.

The thing simply ceased existing.

[color=#D40000]"Goodness.  I though you were being underestimated, but apparently not.  Who knows how bad things would get if I was even two seconds slower?  An absolutely pathetic showing, little girl."[/color]

The sound of glass hitting stone floor and shattering followed this criticism.  Zoe hit the floor shortly afterward.  Every spike rammed through her just vanished all at once, not unlike the erasure of the monstrous drifter.  Because the horse's body shoved her far down the spikes, the drop to the ground after they were removed was only a few inches.

More breaking glass sounds underlined the harsh, [color=#D40000]"Get up.  Now.  You wasted enough time already.  We don't have any more to spend being layabouts."[/color]

By the time Zoe pulled herself together (literally) enough to wrap her head around (again, literally) what happened, the source of the tired voice was gone.  It had come from the same direction as that door Zoe spotted before.  Through the opening near the top of the door, firelight flickered.  It grew dimmer as Zoe watched, suggesting that it came from a torch being held by someone who was walking away from the room Zoe was in.  The rate of dimming was not great, however, suggesting that the torchbearer moved at a standard walking pace.  Whoever this person was, whatever their intention, they were at least giving Zoe a chance to catch up to them.

[align=center]- - - - -[/align]

And to think Silas' player had the audacity to suggest Silas wasn't the villain here!  The only 'heroes' who went around blinding and torturing their opponents got left behind in the 90s, and for good reason!  But fine, fine, you want to go the gritty, edgy antihero route, I'll let you have your sick kicks.  Ya freak.  Just gotta record what took place before Silas decided to flex the freedom this thread's new age-restriction tag offered him.

The defending android's trajectory was off by just a bit, it seemed.  It dented the falling toaster with its strike, but otherwise left it intact.  The appliance was sent spinning away by the glancing blow, and then bounced off the back wall instead of smashing against it.  It finally settled into the puddle with an electric buzz, but by that point Silas was clear of the danger zone.