"Did you guys hear?" William asks his companions, "That old training complex on the hill is haunted."
"I heard the Stone Fist boys went in and wet themselves in fear," Jeffries replies lazily.
Timothy added his own bit, "The Sour Pill gang also turned tail and ran after entering."
"Pauldric said his group encountered a giant flame golem with a thousand arms and seven heads," Jeffries adds.
"Cedric said it was a ghostly blue fairy that enchanted his group and drew them into traps," Timothy interjected.
"They're all so weak. This is the opportunity we've been waiting for, for the Flaming Spear guild to show that we aren't weak. We'll go in and take care of the ghosts and demons tainting that place." Lorenzo claims righteously.
"Not so fast, the scribe just returned from there. He says the building can't be cleansed and we should stay away." William adds, testing the resolve of his friends.
"It's just some weak scribe. He clearly doesn't have enough firepower. We'll succeed where he failed." Lorenzo boasts.
A chorus of cheers and "yeahs" echoes from the boys gathered in the wooden tree fort.
"That's what I wanted to hear." William proudly exclaims, "We'll enter the complex tonight and purge any beings that taint that place for the good of the town. Tonight, we're going to hunt ghosts. Get ready, boys."
None of the teens doubted the wisdom of entering a haunted ruin at night. Not even one that might possibly be infested with golems and fairies.
As the sky darkened, a ragtag group of seven young adult boys crested a hill overlooking the Siegrid Complex. The building was imposing against the landscape. A leftover relic from when the Siegrid family lorded over this region before they were purged by another noble family in a battle for more power and influence. The building was now only a hollow shell. The windows have long since been punched out, and the glass shards ground to dust. The door frames stand empty, and rotten wood posts are all that remain. Bricks and entire wall sections have collapsed throughout the complex.
Dark clouds swallow the twin moons, casting the world below into deeper darkness. The chill night air gives way to a fog that rolls out of the nearby forest like a tide of phantoms. Then the boys see it, a pale blue light piercing the gloom.
A dimly glowing figure occupies one of the windows on the 3rd floor of the complex. The boys watch with baited breath as the figure disappears behind a wall and then reappears in an adjacent window. They hold their position as the figure glides from window to window before disappearing deeper into the complex. William notices Lorenzo's legs are already shaking; his own legs feel like lead.
"Well, t-time to go inside," Timothy's voice cracks.
"Y-yeah, t-to purge the foul being that stalks those halls," William finds that his own voice is shaking.
No one moves for several minutes. William manages to make his legs move, finally, and stumbles down the hill. His group of followers starts to clamber behind.
William approaches the entrance where towering double doors used to stand. His sword is drawn before him, while his gang is all following behind like a bunch of scared school girls; it's a terrible formation. William wants to shout orders to his boys, but he can't find his voice. Silence seems better in this place, no, it is demanded. Inviolate. As William passes the threshold, the wind he clearly heard howling through the windows like a wolf becomes quiet. It's as if crossing the entrance into this building was crossing into another domain. A domain that commanded its subjects, even the various forces of nature, to obey its law.
William hears his traitorous heart beating in his ears; every breath he takes sounds like an explosive gale violating the commandment of soundlessness. William can feel it in every bone; this isn't the tranquility of peace, this is the stillness of the grave. This is not a place for the living. He is trespassing. This thought comes to his mind unbidden. Every cell in his being feels repelled by this place. It would be so easy to run. It would be right to run. But what would his gang think? William firms his resolve and steps deeper into the building. Each slap of his boots against stone announces his presence to the domain's ruler somewhere in the light-swallowing halls of this abandoned building. No, not abandoned, occupied, home to the silent dead.
* * *
I'm so bored! Bart left this morning, and there's nothing but dirt, stone, and mold here. I try that routine thing Bart mentioned. There's no point in doing it during the day, but I want to have my performance perfect by nightfall, can't have my cover as a dumb ghost blown.
I orchestrate an overblown plot of a noble wandering these halls, only to be betrayed by her lover and sacrificed to a cult to summon a deity of death. I repeat my performance several times until I think I've nailed it, then only every 2 hours after that. The performance itself only takes about 20 minutes, giving me plenty of time to do whatever else I want. If only there was anything else to do.
I'm beginning to think I need to invent the television here so I can be a couch potato ghost and watch dramatic romance novelas all day. Would this world even develop novelas, or would they develop some other genres? I'm now curious as to how the world of entertainment would develop in a world untainted by the filth of television I've come to know and love.
Is it just my imagination, or does it seem more ominous in this building now? I'm not accidentally summoning an evil death god with my performance, am I? Nah, that's ridiculous.
I look out a window to the setting sun as the world is swallowed in shadows. Soon after, the dark clouds that have been gathering all day also swallow the moon, and a fog bank rolls out of the forest. I would be impressed, but I've seen this nearly every day. This region seems prone to near-nightly showers, and the nearby river has geothermal vents underneath that cause the fog in the chill of the evening. Boring and mundane. I withdraw into the silence of the building caused by its thick stone walls to find my starting mark for my first official performance and manifest myself in front of a window.
* * *
William leads his boys deeper into the complex. The labyrinth halls are the remains of an expansive obstacle course, made more difficult by the collapsing architecture. They seem to have caught on to the trail of a presence in this building. A phantom blue light perpetually flickers around the next corner. The obstacles and their own unwilling legs make it difficult to catch up.
After scaling a wall that only had protrusions his fingertips could barely grip, William's group stumbled on a large amphitheater. On the stage is the glowing figure they've been pursuing, seemingly floating on a sacrificial altar.
William can't tell if his eyes are imagining it, but dark, hooded figures seem to surround the altar. A chant on the edge of hearing sounds in his mind. One filled with deathly intent. A much larger hooded figure towers over the altar, scythe in hand. Fear grips William's mind. He knows what he is staring at. He knows who he is staring at. The reaper of souls himself. This isn't something he and his cohort can handle, but his feet won't move. His pounding heart feels like it is in his throat. He truly had entered the domain of death. His every heartbeat, his every breath, a violation of the unholy commandments of this realm.
The scythe is raised over the reaper's head. The chants grow louder. Arcane gibberish fills his mind as William feels like he is about to slip into madness. The scythe begins its rapid descent, and the light is snuffed out. The amphitheater is plunged back into darkness.
The smell of urine fills the air, and a blood-curdling scream sounds from his side. William looks in that direction just in time to see one of his companions collapse to the ground, frothing at the mouth. Most of the rest of the boys are already running from the room towards a hall that seems less obstacle-oriented. William manages to get Jefries' aid to drag their soiled companion out of the amphitheater behind the fleeing boys. Looking into the deep darkness at the center of the amphitheater before withdrawing, William can no longer tell if the fearsome presence is there, but he doesn't want to find out.
* * *
Finally! My boredom is over. Some boys from town have braved the ruins. I have to say, they definitely have a way of announcing their presence. That scream could raise the dead. Though, just how timid are they? From their vantage point in the amphitheater, I'd just be a distant pale blue orb that disappeared. A little ominous, maybe, but hardly frightening.
What was truly frightening was that grim reaper figure I was imagining just a moment ago. That dude was scary as fuck. But that was just in my imagination; I got a little carried away in my role as the sacrificed noble girl. Nobody told me method acting was so intense. I feel like if I hadn't rolled off the altar, I would've been split in half by that scythe, real or not.
I wish the boys had shown up earlier, though. If they had approached me while I was still mid-performance, I could've gone aggressive ghost on them. But now I'm supposed to be dormant for the next hour and forty minutes. Patterns and routines, as insignificant as they seem, if I don't stick to them, then real trouble might come for a visit.
* * *
William and his team are recuperating in a room far from the amphitheater. They probably would've run all the way back to the village, but they couldn't with Tanner out of commission.
Now that he's seen that being, William can feel the death energy tainting the air. That was what was telling him to flee and never come back. He should've listened. Death energy was a poison that would have lingering effects. His cells were screaming at him because they were dying just from absorbing the latent energy in the building.
They had to leave the building as soon as possible, but the damned obstacle course made it impossible to carry Tanner out with the light gear they brought inside. All the normal halls to the outside had collapsed through the centuries. Some weren't impassable, but they were if you were trying to drag another person through.
"W-we have to cut off this death energy at its source, we can't wait for Tanner to wake up." William breaks the silence.
"You can't seriously be thinking of going back to the amphitheater with that … thing?" Morgan retorted.
That confirmed it; he hadn't imagined what he saw.
"So everyone saw it right? The soul reaper?" William asked. Nods greeted him in reply. "There are two possibilities: either that reaper is really here, in which case we're already dead. We can try to flee, but the reaper doesn't give up on his harvest. The only hope we have is that it was a manifestation of that ghost's death. If that's the case, we have time before the ghost repeats its death walk. If there's nothing in that amphitheater that will confirm it, and we can just walk out of here when Tanner wakes up.
It's decided that William, Jeffries, Timothy, and Lorenzo will return to the amphitheater, while Morgan and the other boy will stay behind to guard Tanner.