Marisol is jolted back to reality by the feel of a warm sticky liquid splashed directly onto her face, causing her to wake up with a loud gasp and sit up abruptly. But instead of her room, she finds herself out in the open, on a desolate land, adding to her shock.
Her features are immediately pulled into a confused frown. She looks around as she tries to regulate her breathing. Footsteps hurried away, and loud snickers went with them.
Marisol wondered what was happening this time. Had the people of Redwood finally come to their senses and let her go? Or maybe this was another one of their schemes coming into play again. What sick and twisted game did they have in mind this time? She wasn’t excited to find out.
More sinister laughter comes as the air starts becoming misty, and only now does she realize how whatever liquid she had just been doused with oddly sticks to her face and drips down slower than she would have liked or expected. Naturally, as natural as being woken up with liquid on your face goes, water would be expected, but this liquid felt more viscous. With that, Marisol looks down at her drenched body only to feel her heart drop all the way to her feet at what she finds.
Blood. She’d just been covered in blood. Marisol doesn’t get enough time to process the fact when arms suddenly grip her from all over and begin to wrestle her back down to the cold, hard ground. Oh yeah. She didn’t wake up in a bed either.
Marisol struggles and fights against it to no avail. She scratches and flails, wheezing as her throat and chest begin to clog up. With a final burst of strength, she screams as she pushes herself away and breaks through.
She rolls away from the horde, panting as she forces her knees to hold her weight. She squints, trying to examine her surroundings, and she finds it to be a run-down and weird-looking landscape. She squints her eyes further, trying to figure out just where exactly this was, but it didn’t look to be working. She had no idea where this could be.
Looking down at her now blood-covered clothes again, a drape of realization is cast over her as she stares down at her fingers, bathed in a stomach-churning red. Marisol grows a lot more livid than she’d been over the course of her stay in Redwood. These people really never just stop, do they?! They’d intended to sacrifice her? Marisol was certain that this was a ritual. There was no doubt about it.