Versunken Zeitlos Krankenhouse

(Versunken Zeitlos Krankenhouse)

rating: +5

11 votes (+8, -3) 3.6★

rating: +5+x

Limspace Classification

Difficulty 4/5 The lack of crucial resources, the dangerous entities, and the unstable time make this space highly difficult to traverse.
Entity Count 3/5 Entity encounters are rare but live in groups.
Chaos Gradient 5/5 Time is unbound from reality here.
Basset-Frazier Index 4/5 Space is extremely anomalous.

Description

sinking

fig 1.0 The tomb of water encasing the hospital does not allow any light to shine into its halls.

The feeling of sinking never dissipates during your stay in this pristine tower of wellness. This labyrinth of brick and mint would be imposing by itself if not for its rapid decline into the depths of The Sea of No Return. However, this amalgamation of medical facilities is not the only thing plummeting into the dark waters. Time itself has begun to sink into the depths along with the hospital. The sinking of time has brought about many strange occurrences in the sleek halls of the hospital. Time is no longer able to be calculated or trusted. To make matters worse, entities that mock humanity have found occupancy within the many rooms of the complex.

Everything is still and silent, yet a distant indecipherable noise beckons attention, a heavy slow noise like that of a drifting ship. This noise radiates throughout every hall and room as an omnipresent reminder that the hospital is sinking with no hope of salvation. By staring out the window, this truth is made further apparent through the vast emptiness of dark blue.

Looking closer at the signs littered along the walls, it is immediately apparent this hospital is of German origin. German flags, characters, and language dominate the signs but sparsely thrown about are fragments of other cultures. Since the hospital is German, the wanderers named the hospital and its inhabitants in German. As such, Versunken Zeitlos Krankenhouse, or Sinking Timeless Hospital in English, is the collective moniker for this sunken timeless hospital.

The hospital is similar to other hospitals in interior architecture with its many perfect white halls and interconnected rooms serving many specific purposes. Both elevators and staircases to other floors within the hospital can be occasionally found, but, in most cases, the elevators are destroyed or decommissioned. This destruction highly contrasts the rest of the hospital with its pristine halls and rooms. The staircases, while useful for accessing other floors, also reveal the imposing scale of the hospital as, no matter how far down or up you go, there is always another set of stairs to be discovered.

The many bedrooms connecting to the halls are identical in layout and furniture with only minor additions or subtractions in the form of objects and furniture. The same white and mint walls, the same glossy floor, the same emptiness. Cabinets within the bedrooms contain an assortment of pills and needles with no labels but clearly different appearances—some with no function and some with clear malicious intent. The medical beds may, at first, provide comfort, but quickly lead to feelings of despair as the feeling of falling closer to the end is perpetual. Strangely, a faint sobbing can be heard while laying in the medical beds. This sobbing's origin has never been found. These bland medical bedrooms are much tamer in content than the more specialized rooms intermittently placed along the halls.

Aside from the bedrooms are medical operation rooms that provide more questions than answers. This hospital is strangely outfitted with a multitude of medical appliances such as orthodontic, optometric, and medicinal machinery in vast amounts like some kind of all-in-one hospital. While the machines and tools found may be useful in the right hands, time does not allow proper usage of the tools.

Some floors have given up under the crushing weight of the sea and have let tons of seawater into their halls. These destroyed floors have little resemblance to the rest of the well-kept hospital. Traversing through the flooded floors is extremely difficult but oftentimes necessary to reach other floors. The seawater is not the only thing that has breached into the hospital through the shattered windows. Nightmarish giant isopods that have acquired a taste for human flesh infest every shattered floor. They remain motionless as they wait for their food to fall before them. Like a swarm, the isopods engulf their targets leaving nothing besides bones after their feast.

Time itself has somehow begun to sink with the hospital into the depths of the sea. This sinking of time has led to time warping in sporadic occurrences. These warpings in time are barely noticeable until it is too late. Random areas within the hospital will either experience slowed down or sped-up time. Everything within these affected areas is affected by this time warping. Everything except for the thinking within living creatures' heads and a few adapted entities. These warped zones are affected for random intervals with no connection to the amount of time that has been warped. The water that leaks into the rooms always brings with it the effects of slowed time.

As time is a delicate and powerful force, the warping of time has several devastating effects. Time can no longer be depended on within the pearly halls. Some rooms may not have the same flow of time as adjacent rooms. This leads to time differences of immense magnitude. Spending too long in a slowed or sped-up room disrupts the mind's ability to properly control its body. Lastly, time may move on and abandon areas. When time slips, the people are no longer protected and comforted by time and thus are lost to both infinity and nothingness. They could be lost without time for an instant or even forever in the void that exists when time does not.

Entities

The hospital is not abandoned. Roaming the stainless halls searching for their next patients are the Kranken and their Geschwister. Kranken translates to "suffer" while Geschwister translates to "siblings". In stark contrast to the well-kept hospital, the Kranken are revolting in appearance and terrifying in behavior. The Kranken resemble the typical staff within normal hospitals with their turquoise scrubs but the truth under the clothes is less friendly than the exterior would imply. The Kranken are metallic, sickly green, skeletal humanoids that have their flesh clinging loosely to their bones as their torn scrubs cling to their bodies. They move stiffly and sluggishly, but are extremely calculated and efficient towards their goals. Moving behind them like squires are their siblings who mirror their torn appearance but not their sluggish motion.

It is not their appearance that frightens those who have encountered them into telling their horror stories, but rather their methods of attack. The Kranken don’t kill their prey. Instead, the Kranken will take all that they can without killing their target. With extreme precision, they use their fingers like scissors and blades to make incisions and cleave into the flesh of their prey. After a successful involuntary surgery, the Kranken add the stolen mass to their own sickly body—replacing any flesh of theirs that has just about withered away. They then leave their victim to succumb to their wounds as they seek fresher targets.

As the Kranken are quite slow, they must be cunning in order to catch their prey. Their first method is based on the warped time zones. If they catch someone significantly slowed down they swiftly perform their surgeries unaffected by the warped time. A secondary method is performed by the siblings. Siblings may chase and cut off escape routes of their prey eventually being able to pin down for their Kranken to perform upon. Lastly, after performing on a target, the Kranken may wait in a nearby room for a fool to stumble upon their latest mutilation. They then surprise their new victim with the same procedure they performed on the bait.

The Kranken and their siblings are not the only entities that haunt the marble halls. Many pass these deceivers without realizing how close they were to become a hollow shell of a living creature. Mimicking the normally lifesaving IV stands are the life-draining Blutsauger. The Blutsauger are monstrous parasites that survive off of blood they acquire by forcing their catheters into unwilling hosts. Once the connection is made, the host’s body is slowly taken over by the Blutsauger as their blood slowly drains out. This forces the host to cling to the parasite's body to maintain balance but also leads to more blood being drained. If the connection is not split, the host will eventually die. The Blutsauger will then move on to their next meal.

Falling Forever

Despite perpetually sinking, the hospital has not reached the bottom of the ocean. The windows to the sea are only growing darker, yet the end has not occurred. The many who have been trapped in the stale hospital rooms have asked when the nightmare will end—when will their prison hit the bottom? However, their questions will remain unanswered for eternity. The ocean in which that envelops the hospital will continue to drag down the structure and its time into its bottomless depths.

The poor souls being dragged into the darkness will be lost forever, with no hope of ever seeing the surface again. The hospital has fallen too far down. Those who remain on the surface are left with an empty space where their sanctuary used to stand tall. They cling to their ships drifting along the waves of their destroyed world, the world of the second flood.

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