Once a grand cathedral dedicated to the Holy Triumvirate, all that remains now are ruins ever since the religion was rejected strongly in 1823. While the religion is back in favor, the cathedral was never restored. (+3 Defense, +2 Offense)

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Re: .: A Spooky, Scary House :.

Postby crow » 11/05/2016 9:29 PM

It had been nearly two months since that awkward first run-in at the hospital room, and she still couldn't quite figure him out. He just seemed so... 'Normal' wasn't really the word she was looking for, but the more time she spent with him, the stranger it seemed to think of him as a boy looking for death. He bickered with her nearly every moment they were together, and he was dragging her off to see something all the time.

... But then she never saw him with other kids, or with his family. There was a story there too, one he wasn't telling her. And she wasn't about to press him if he didn't want to say.

Today was one of the drag-her-off-and-show-her-things days. He'd told her it was a surprise, though since it wasn't possible to blindfold her, she had seen it from a pretty good distance.

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Re: .: A Spooky, Scary House :.

Postby crow » 11/05/2016 9:32 PM

The house had been pretty crowded near the entrance, but as they'd wandered deeper into the property, the people thinned out. Here, in the small reading room, they were alone, though the bustle elsewhere was still apparent from the muffled voices that filtered through. Melody found she liked it better this way. Being among the living in crowds made her feel strangely out of sorts, since she was so used to watching them from above, and stepping in only when the need arose--- which was when someone died.

Actually, come to think of it, she was more used to hearing people scream than anything else. It was a depressing thought. She shoved it aside, and focused on the room instead.

"It's not really haunted," said Tanner, taking a seat in one of the chairs. The place looked clean, or at least a heck of a lot cleaner than the dining room had been. Really, it was more a question of Tanner's costume dirtying his seat than vice versa.

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Re: .: A Spooky, Scary House :.

Postby crow » 11/05/2016 9:36 PM

He kicked up his feet to rest on the coffee table in front of him, then turned around to grin at Melody. "They just set it up this way to scare people. Usually there are guys in masks wandering around and popping out of hiding places. There weren't as many this year... I wonder what gives." Most of the scares so far had been mechanical in nature. He'd seen them coming and laughed them off, though a few had managed to genuinely startle Melody, which was even funnier.

"Say... What would you do if there really was a ghost?" He arched an eyebrow at her. As if she could tell what he was thinking, Melody scowled.

"I'm not scared of ghosts," she said indignantly. "I told you, it's my job. I'd just escort them, or wait for the assigned reaper to do it." She motioned towards her tome. If it wasn't alerting her to anything, that meant it was someone else's responsibility, more likely than not.

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Re: .: A Spooky, Scary House :.

Postby crow » 11/05/2016 9:46 PM

In such cases, the assigned reaper in question was never a long way off, especially when the tome acted as a portal to wherever they needed to be. And reapers operated in something like assigned territories anyway. A lot of the time, she was near enough to where she had to be that using the Tome wasn't even necessary.

"Really?" said Tanner casually. "What's that hand on your shoulder then?"

"Very funny," said Melody, not even bothering to look. "That's such an old trick." Rolling her eyes, she was about to say something else, when she caught sight of something out of the corner of her eye, and froze. Wait, was that a hand...?

Reapers didn't have blood, but she felt a sensation not unlike blood running cold. There had been something pale and spindly right where her shoulder was. Did she turn around to look? ... Did she dare?

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Re: .: A Spooky, Scary House :.

Postby crow » 11/05/2016 10:08 PM

She whirled around before she lost her nerve, curious and apprehensive all at once... only to discover that it was a skeleton, sticking out from a shelf. Its bony hand was jutting into the air just where she'd been hovering. Behind her, she could hear Tanner laughing, and she felt mortification creep into her chest. "It was just a skeleton," she said, trying her best to sound nonchalant. "What are you laughing at?"

"You fell for it... You really fell for it," he said, snickering. She crossed her arms in consternation, searching for a rebuttal, but no words came to mind. In the end, she huffed, and settled for drifting away. That caught his attention. "Hey, wait!" he said, rising to his feet. "Come on, it was just a joke."

"Yeah? I don't think it was very funny," she said. She was aware that she was being petty, since it really was a small thing. But the wound to her pride was still there, and she didn't feel particularly forgiving.

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Re: .: A Spooky, Scary House :.

Postby crow » 11/05/2016 10:14 PM

"Okay, I'll stop laughing," said Tanner, but that wasn't enough.

"Grant me a wish," said Melody immediately. Tanner frowned.

"What? A wish? Wait, shouldn't it be the other way around? You're the one with the magic. I'm just a human." He looked incredulous, but he hadn't said no either.

Melody shook her head. "Reapers don't grant wishes. We just take away the dead. All our powers exist for that, and we can't even force them to go... If we can't convince them, we have to watch them become evil spirits anyway, and then..." Come to think of it, who dealt with them once they did become evil spirits? She was sure her mentor knew, but it wasn't something she could just ask lightly. She sighed. "Well, anyway. If you're really sorry, you should grant me a wish."

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Re: .: A Spooky, Scary House :.

Postby crow » 11/05/2016 10:18 PM

Tanner frowned, as if mulling it over, before shrugging and saying, "Yeah, alright. What is it?" He was curious despite himself. Melody said all these things about being a reaper, and how they were held apart from humans, but so far she seemed a lot like a normal girl to him. Granted, of course, the floating and the vanishing and the strange book were undeniably strange, but otherwise she wasn't anything like what she made reapers out to be, all business and strangeness. "If it's something like 'buy me an ice cream'---"

"I can't eat, dummy," she said. She paused a moment, one finger tapping her chin. "I don't know what I want yet. I'm going to hold onto it."

"You know, making a wish with a human really isn't that exciting," Tanner said, slightly exasperated. "There's not a whole lot I can do."

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Re: .: A Spooky, Scary House :.

Postby crow » 11/05/2016 10:25 PM

Strictly speaking, he wasn't as limited as he was making himself sound. Tanner's dad was rich. A lot of people had tried to befriend him on the weight of that alone. It wasn't so bad now that he was in the school that he was in. By high school, he'd been packed away to an exclusive enough place that being rich didn't really mean much. You couldn't throw a rock without hitting some heiress or a pampered doctor's son in the hallways during break. But outside of school, if they knew who he was, all bets were off.

But things like free snacks or a car wouldn't have interested Melody. At least, he didn't think so. She hadn't been interested in flashy objects before, and like she'd said, she really couldn't eat.

"That's not true," she was saying. "You can do lots of things that I can't." Hearing those words, he wanted to laugh. It was so absurd. Here she was, a real bona-fide supernatural entity straight out of a movie, telling him he could do things she couldn't.

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Re: .: A Spooky, Scary House :.

Postby crow » 11/05/2016 10:31 PM

"Yeah?" he said. "Like what?"

"Like... reading this book, for example." There was a book sitting on the coffee table, beside where Tanner had placed his feet. She trailed a finger along the edge of the spine. Tanner's first reaction was to wonder whether she couldn't read, but that was clearly not it. It wasn't the reading, but the picking up, the flipping of the pages... Come to think of it, Melody was a bit like an apparition herself. She couldn't interact with much in the world of the living. Maybe that was why reapers didn't care much to make friends here, forever being reminded of things they couldn't do.

"I can read it for you, if you want," he offered. She perked up slightly at that, though she didn't say anything. Slyly, he grinned. "Is that your wish?"

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Re: .: A Spooky, Scary House :.

Postby crow » 11/05/2016 10:44 PM

"You wish," said Melody. "I told you, I'm saving it. I want to think of something good." There was something in the way that she said it that suggested a vindictive ploy, but Tanner thought she was just bluffing as far as that went. She was really placing more importance on it than he thought a wish from him deserved... but he was kind of happy about that. It was a stupid feeling, but the thought of it brought a smile to his face.

"Alright, alright," he said. "Here, I'll read it for you anyway, since I'm such a nice guy." She rolled her eyes at that, and he laughed outright.

When he went to pick up the book, however, it jerked away from his touch, and rose about three feet into the air. It was his turn to yelp, and hers to laugh as he flinched away.

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Re: .: A Spooky, Scary House :.

Postby crow » 11/05/2016 10:47 PM

That was right, this was a haunted house. It might not have had live workers as spooks, but it was still rigged with mechanical scares. And that one was so obvious too, in retrospect: a single book lying on the table, just waiting for an unwary observer to brush up against it. He'd been an idiot not to see it coming. "You can stop laughing now," he said to Melody. As per usual, she didn't listen to him. That was mostly what their relationship was--- not listening to each other. But... listening to her laugh wasn't bad either. He just wished it wasn't at his expense.

He waited until the book drifted back down, resetting the scare, before inching closer again. He wasn't scared, but he didn't exactly want to set it off again. He grimaced as soon as he saw the title. It was written in an old spidery script, with that inconsistent old age spelling... Something about demonic rituals. Of course.

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Re: .: A Spooky, Scary House :.

Postby crow » 11/05/2016 10:52 PM

"Hey, demons don't exist, do they?" he said offhandedly. That got Melody's attention, and she drifted by to peer over his shoulder.

"Not as far as I know, but... My mentor said there's a lot he still has to tell me." That was kind of funny, if Tanner thought about it. Not even the real spooks knew whether the others existed or not. Well, not that he thought Melody was going to scare anyone, and she certainly wasn't offering to give him anything in exchange for his soul or anything like that. "This is a fake book, isn't it?"

"I guess," Tanner said. He wanted to get a better look at it, but he didn't think he'd be fast enough to hold the book down. He also didn't want to be responsible for accidentally breaking something and getting thrown out.

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Re: .: A Spooky, Scary House :.

Postby crow » 11/05/2016 10:56 PM

As much as he played at being a hellion, he didn't want to go about wreaking havoc in a place like this, where people had worked hard for everyone's enjoyment. That was a kind of low he wouldn't have stooped to. And truth be told, it wasn't like it was fun being chewed out all the time either. It was just... Sometimes, he just really needed to do it. He couldn't even put his finger on why. He just... needed them to look at him sometimes, even if it was with anger, with contempt. It was better than just letting them deny his existence because it was convenient for them.

Melody's face suddenly came into view, snapping him out of his thoughts as she drifted close. Too close. He took an involuntary step back. "What are you thinking?" she said, frowning.

"Don't worry about it." He brushed her off, and forced himself to grin. It was nauseating, how easily it came to him.

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Re: .: A Spooky, Scary House :.

Postby crow » 11/05/2016 11:00 PM

It spoke of... of something, he thought, that she still didn't look convinced, but she didn't press the matter. She simply drew back herself and said, "Alright." The doubt in her voice was obvious, but it wasn't enough. He wondered if she was trying to be considerate. He felt... relieved and disappointed, all at once. He wasn't entirely sure why.

But he didn't want to linger on those thoughts, or on this topic, now that it had been dismissed. "Let's find a book to read," he said. "Maybe some of the ones in the library are real." They'd glimpsed the library when they'd wandered in, though they'd opted to stay in the reading room at first. It had looked pretty massive. Tanner felt certain they'd find one in there. It was easier, and cheaper, to get real flea-market books than to fill a big room like that with nothing but fakes.

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Re: .: A Spooky, Scary House :.

Postby crow » 11/05/2016 11:04 PM

It was funny how that worked, when he thought about the amount of work that had to go into the creation of one book. He'd tried writing essays before, back when he still thought school might be worth putting some effort into. It had been like pulling teeth just to get out three or six pages of material. He couldn't imagine writing enough to publish into a book, and yet there were always so many titles in the fifty-cent bins at libraries and garage sales and the like.

The books in the library they were in now didn't look like they'd come out of those bins though. Everything was neat and well-kept, and the books were in good condition, even though a lot of them also looked pretty ancient. Most were hardcovers, and many had titles he couldn't read. "Are these foreign?" he said aloud, squinting at one.

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