Magdalyn hummed in thought, considering his words. "Well," she began, drawing the word out. Perhaps some of the man's flare for the dramatic had rubbed off on her after all. "My magic is limited to earthy stuff - beast taming, nature magic, that kind of thing." With a good-natured snort, she added, "I could try taming the ghost. Make a tree grow out of him. But that's about all I've got." Both hands rose to her face, and she rubbed at it wearily. The raindrops that pelted her flushed skin was cool, and the whipping wind only compounded the problem. It was easy to distract herself by talking with Cain, but when she paused to consider her surroundings, the shivers returned. It was cold. The smell of roasting meat had been both terrifying and horrid, but Mags still wished for the warmth of the flames the mage had created. "We've gotta assume this is some sort of quest, or randomly triggered event set up by the game. This definitely isn't the work of other players. From that, I guess we can deduce that there is some specific way to 'win.' I need to think of this as a puzzle to solve, and not some horror story." Thunder rumbled ominously overhead, as if the game-gods themselves murmured their objections. She ignored it. "I don't know the game mechanics well enough to make any definite calls, but..." She trailed off, eyes narrowing in concentration. Then, "What if we actually do have to die to meet some quest requirement? Do you think that is something we should even consider? Or am I going to psychological thriller?"
“Grow him some trees for his brothers to inhabit, perhaps?” Cain remarked, somewhat jokingly, “All forms of life being equal and all.” But his hand still twitched, ready to manifest another arcane bolt at the sound of visible danger. Beast taming, nature magic…the druidic and the harmonic magics that the two of them had were ill suited for an encounter with the unearthly kind, but if they were to get away from the narrative and treat this scenario as a randomly triggered special event, it wouldn’t make sense for there not to be an answer that required a specific combination of magics, right? After all, not all adventurers even chose to pursue the path of miracle making. Divine wrath cleaved the stormy night once again, but now that the two of them were fully drenched, miserable, and half deafened, the weather really wasn’t all that bad. The midnight haired muse was an oddly well adapted individual, and once the initial shock of weather and horror subsided…well, it was just something fun to experience now! Puzzles, stories, and the possibility of having to die? How absolute wild! “Dying’s out of the question,” Cain said curtly, vivacious declarations stripped away in that one instant, “Unless the world is absolutely out to kill us, with every path leading to death, there’s always a solution to be reached that does not require self sacrifice. Observe. Reflect. Investigate. Deduce. Strip you’re your preconceptions and sharpen your mind. Each piece of the puzzle is a world in and of itself, and the secret to this mystery is something as elementary and complex as the weight of the universe itself.” The storm above leveled out, softening as he closed his eyes, entranced by the flow of rain that had gone from disturbing to comforting. “The heavenly bodies above do not offer their wisdom to the dead. A miracle can only be obtained through guts and effort, Rider of Lightning.” He smiled then, even as the mansion creaked and groaned, a living anomaly, an aberration of spirit and stone. “So swallow your fears, Magdalyn, and let us show this shadowed phantom the inexorable radiance of the Sun!” A click of his heels, a readjustment of his hat, and Cain strode off, the tails of his coat fluttering in the wind that, for once, sought to repel.
Magdalyn pressed her flattened hand to her forehead, a make-shift visor to protect against the rain as she watched Cain speak. It was another dramatic soliloquy - maybe that was this guy's thing? Even if it were, that was alright with her, as she found it oddly charming. He was far more quirky than anyone else she had met in the game, and that made him far more interesting to be around. "Thunder Runner, Rider of Lightning..." Her voice trailed, but a grin blossomed like a flower refreshed by the storm's onslaught. "You definitely do give the best titles." Then she waggled her eyebrows at him and added, "I wonder what taking care of this spirit will earn me? I'll be disappointed if Ghostbuster does not come up at least once, in one form or another." Though she had a good inch on the man (when you ignored his hat, of course), he still managed to eat up the distance to the house far faster than she did. There was a little jog in her step to keep by his side, and when they reached the porch, Mags slipped through the door just before he did. Part of her hoped to demonstrate her courage by going in first. Part of her just wanted out of the damned storm. She shook a bit, then, like a dog trying to rid itself of the clinging water droplets. The attempt was made in vain, as she was soaked too thoroughly, and her mop of blue hair clung limply to her flushed skin. Oh well, came her quick dismissal, don't need to look good to hunt ghosts. "Alright, kid," Magdalyn said aloud, by way of greeting. It was not meant as a taunt, as rule number one of ghost hunting was 'don't provoke them.' But it was meant to get this boy's attention... supposing that was truly who they were dealing with. "We're here, and we're listening. Tell us what you want." There were no words spoken, but the rubber ball that rolled from an opposite doorway was far too compelling to be coincidental. It rolled first toward them, than pivoted and moved the other direction, as if turned by an invisible hand. "Guess we follow?" She spoke it as a half-question, just in case Cain had a better idea and wanted to object. He didn't. So she followed the ball down the dusty hallway, trying not to pay attention to the pictures on the walls. If they were as creepy as the photo in the main room, looking at them might make her lose her nerve. And she was far past fleeing in terror, at this point. If she ran away now, she somehow knew she would not be entering the mansion again. This thought alone kept her from crying out when the ball began to bounce itself up the stairs, in a way that sent her stomach rolling. She did bite down hard on her bottom lip, though, to keep her wits about her. The storm raging on the other side of the wall should have drowned out their footfalls, but the stomping of their boots and the creaking of the old wooden steps seemed impossibly loud in the empty building. Mags was already feeling her bravery slipping away when the ball bumped a closed second-floor door, then lay still. She cast Cain an expectant glance, hoping he might have some quip to lighten the mood again.
Well, it certainly wasn’t a smart decision to follow the ball-shaped avatar of some creepy ghost kid who wanted to do terrible, magical things to them, but when blowing up the entire house proved ineffective, it was clear that they would have to play within the rules of the game after all. So much for a fully immersive sandbox VRMMO with totally realistic settings, hm? A gothic house in a medieval fantasy setting was much too archaic for Cain to take seriously, and once he latched onto that humor, the midnight haired muse was alright. This was great. This was going to be an adventure! Impossibly enough, they had gone deep enough into the house now that even thunderclaps were quelled, under layers and layers and layers of plaster and wood. The floorboards creaked like nightingales, while the silence was so profound that his trained ears could hear the thump thump of Magdalyn’s heart. The pounding of his own as well. If this wasn’t such a rare event, if death wasn’t so temporary, he would have surely logged out by now and hoped that his respawn wasn’t in this same eerie building, so small from the outside, and yet large enough that even a raging storm could be silenced in its depths. He gave himself a moment to pause, to calm himself. Inhale through his nose. Exhale through his mouth. Dark eyes met Magdalyn’s gaze, and he grinned, half-forced, half-natural. “Well, I suppose we’re invited to the first real jumpscare event of the night, mm, Lady Magdalyn? I suppose I shall take the lead then, in opening up this Jack in a Box.” With impressive poise, Cain tossed back his dripping wet hair, grasped the handle of the door and p- The room shifted. It didn’t transform. It didn’t move. It didn’t seem as if anything had changed at all. But suddenly, his body felt a shift in gravity, as if a child had picked up this estate and rotated it ninety degrees. Unable to react in time, Cain fell right through the doorframe, into a dim chasm, no, a hallway lined with more doors. His shoulder groaned as he hung by the knob, swaying gently, but the rotting wood around the hinges would not hold his weight for long. Had the ghost child given up? Was it just going to do its best to kill them, using its spiritual anchor as the murder weapon? He looked upwards, hoping that his companion wasn’t going to crash into him either, but his eyes caught something far more menacing than merely the weight of his companion. Vases with wilted flowers. Oaken cabinets. Rusted coathangers. The shattered remains of a chandelier. A massive, gilded frame, descending upon the trespassers like a guillotine blade. “Magdalyn! Above!”
Her first instinct when Cain's body was pulled forward was to leap after him. Damn her first instinct, as she quickly realized it was the worst possible move she could make. The moment her rational side kicked in, a split second behind her gut, the tall girl was already teetering on the edge of this surprise wormhole-thing. Her arms windmilled, but the doorframe was simply not a feasible place to catch herself. Instead, Mags tumbled through, and panicked, grabbed the first thing she saw. Cain. As his warning rang out, she used the little momentum she had left to grip his waist tighter, and swing them both away from the falling frame. "Sorry!" came her response, though it was muffled by his damp shirt pressed against her lips. This was not the way she had expected, nor planned, to get to know Cain Darlite better. As such, even given the oddness of the situation they found themselves in, un-attaching herself from his torso was her main objective. Not only was it violating his personal space in a big way, that doorframe was unlikely to hold both of their combined weight. "Let me just..." Her voice trailed as she willed her already willowy body to grow a few more inches. Just below her pointed toe rest the handle of another door, the first in the long hallway. If she could reach it, she might be able to take some of the weight off of Cain. Besides, there might be safety beyond that doorway. "I think I can..." She couldn't. Or, at least, not the way she had intended. She had hoped she might open the latch with her toe, and drop gracefully into the newly exposed opening. Instead, she concentrated too much on reaching, and ended up losing her hold on Cain. With a startled yelp, Mags plummeted. Fingers slid along the faded wallpaper, scrambling for purchase, and her body jerked painfully as her arms suddenly took her entire weight again. She had found the decorative edge of the door, sticking only a fraction of an inch off of the wall. Before she understood what was happening, her weight slammed into the closed door, splintering the old jam, and sending her disappearing into the darkness. She struck the floor, hard. Or the wall, maybe. Or the ceiling. The games that gravity was playing with her were making her head spin. Blinking back the throbbing headache, she tried to get her bearing. The blackness was unnaturally thick, as if the room was hidden to her by more than mere darkness. The sensation made her shudder. "Hey Cain," she called, and then winced as her own voice boomed back at her. An echo? Why? There was no way such a room could exist, even in a house this size. But it sounded as if she was shouting in an abandoned warehouse. She had to fight to find her voice again. "I think - I think you can come in here."
More strain for his arm, more strain for the dangling doorframe, but Cain grit his teeth and held on even as Madgalyn added her weight to his own. A dangerous swing allowed the two of them to evade the avalanche of furniture, and the midnight haired muse watched as that gilded frame fell further, further, further down. There was never a sound of those ornaments shattering against the ground. He swallowed saliva, pursed his lips, and was almost relieved when Magdalyn released him that he couldn’t even get a word out before she leapt into an adjacent room, crashing through the wooden door and disappearing into thick, viscous darkness. For a moment, there was silence. For a minute, there was silence. For an extended period of time, there was silence. No response, no message from the communications channel, nothing. Was she dead? Was she brought elsewhere? Or did this heavy blackness blanket more than sight alone? The mansion began to rumbling once more, the Rubik’s Cube pieces that were the rooms swapping further. He could hear it already, the sound of china shatter, of paintings falling off their hooks, of coatstands and chairs toppling. Dangerous. That pain in the ass kid was building it all up, huh? But the miserable, psychotic menace wasn’t doing anything right now, and Cain took a deep breath, before kicking off the opposing wall and swinging himself into the same inky darkness Magdalyn did. As he passed through the boundary, there was a ghost of a giggle, the dread of a terrible decision falling over his mind moments before greater dangers presented themselves. Plummeting through, Cain almost ass-slammed Magdalyn, missing her head by mere inches as he crashed, bounced, and then rolled another good few meters on the cavernous room. Behind them, the door closed, an ominous click sounding. Another room? Another enemy? Another lair? Did they finally get to where they should be? He snapped his fingers together, a ‘pop’ echoing through the warehouse. Closed his eyes, listened to the reverberations. Outside of the Flagbearer and the Thunder Runner, it was a large, empty room. He breathed in deep, sucking in the dry air of the warehouse. Kept his eyes closed, scrunched his nose at the faint scent of rust. He slid his fingers against the ground, rubbing them together. Opened his eyes, felt the dusty grains. Bloodstains spotted the warehouse, marks of one-sided violence illuminated by orbs of amethyst from his fingertips. It was a nasty, disgusting business. Blood on the walls. Blood on the floors. Blood on the ceiling. Splattered against the concrete, it was clear that something or the other had been bashed against all available surfaces, like dice in a cup. Tumbling eternally, until naught remained but broken, scrambled pieces, beaten into submission. The execution chamber shook, as if two large hands had just settled over both sides of the locked room. Brandishing his flagpole, Cain narrowed his eyes, searching for the exit that had already disappeared within inky darkness. “Got any plans, Mags?” he asked tersely, even as he scrambled to come up with his own. "I can try blowing something up, but god knows if there's even anything behind these walls." No cutesy one liner was going to save them now. Now was the true test of wit. @Magdalyn
