by Karasuki 3rd October 2019, 3:01 pm
Karasuki had faith in Gaia's cards, understanding them to be for Gaia what her own summons were to her. If nothing else, even if they weren't always friends, they were certainly reliable. The cards would take them to the house without fail. As they walked through the forest, Karasuki could hear light whispers. She didn't say a word of them to Gaia, not wanting to seem crazy, but the voices and whispers got louder as they approached the gray house. "Go ahead in," said one voice, "Leave this place!" cried another. But out of all the whispers, she couldn't make out most of the words. It sounded like a different language. Maybe she was just anxious, given this place was filled with fearful sorts of beings and monsters and creatures... maybe her fear was just giving her conscious self a voice in the matter. Though, she had to fight to ignore the feeling that that was false because most of the whispers increased her fear without actually using words she could interpret.
She unzipped her pink sweatshirt slightly in order to get some fresh air, maybe slow down her beating heart. "Keep your wits too," Karasuki murmured standing behind Gaia upon the wooden porch. As the ace opened the door, Karasuki got a whiff of dust and coughed. "I'd have to agree with that. It's a lot of dust to come about for a place that is actively lived in." Unless whatever was here wasn't really living or didn't have a care for keeping the place clean. She wasn't ruling out mage zombies or vampire spawn or even magical ghost bears at this rate. Karasuki saw the ferret curl up around Gaia's neck and whispered, "It'll be okay, little guy." The whispers got louder and she bit her lip, finally uttering to Gaia, "Can you hear that? I.. I don't know where it's coming from but... I hear voices. Do you think there are others here?"
Karasuki walked around the room slowly, taking it in. She pulled off her glasses and rubbed the dust from them and then examined the main living area cautiously. A couch with grey cushions and dark green pillows sat in the center beside two large armchairs and a large flat wooden table. Books and papers rested haphazardly upon the table and some circular stains suggested cups of coffee or wine had once also been present. The female fingered the books, drawing a clean mark over where her lithe fingers brushed the spines. She used her thumb to clear the titles: "Photographer's Guide to Herbs and Trees", "Romance in the End of the World", and a thick encyclopedia called "The Encyclopedia of the Mystical and Strange: a Book on Fatal Phenomenons and Unexplained Disasters". A woven cloth rug led from the door of the house to the hallway behind the couch and sliding her body between the wall and the furniture only solidified her idea that this place belonged to a single person or a pair of mages at a time. A decent protective base but not a long term living arrangement. The hallway was dark and a single light on the wall made of wrought iron appeared to be covered in cobwebs and smeared with grime. It hadn't been lit up in a long time, Karasuki thought, as she stepped forward. The woman lifted up the dust book of matches and lit the light and it streamed throughout the hall. There were two rooms and a set of stairs leading down into another dark place also but from where she stood, Karasuki saw neither any evidence of critters or monsters or even the movement of shadows. A small hallway table held another stack of books and Karasuki moved to pick one up.
The book was thin with a small lock upon it and a symbol she couldn't quite place on the cover. It could have been a planner, a book of correspondence, a journal, or a magical version of any of the three. The pages looked somewhat water damaged and wrinkled, but without breaking the lock she couldn't tell what the book was. She wasn't sure if reading some poor league mage's mournful or bored script was going to be worth trying to break the little lock. "I don't see anything so far. Couple rooms back here though. I'm going to check the one on the right out." The book they were looking for had to be somewhere, but the more she thought about it, the less Karasuki believed it would be found right in the open. If it was still in the house, the mage hunter might have been smart enough to hide it.
Karasuki stepped into the room noting it looked just like a bedroom. There wasn't anything special about it to her eyes. As she walked little clouds of dust curled up around her legs. The bed was made and the single blanket was covered in a blanket of dust as well. A small bookshelf on the wall called her attention and she stepped around the bed to a tiny wooden table. She lit the lamp upon it as well and let out a sigh. There were dozens of books on the shelf and she would have to check each one of them to be able to rule out their usefulness. She read them out loud as she trailed her fingers over the covers, "Dynamics of Fire, The Ancient History of Magic, The Use of Glass and Stone in Magic Construction, Instilling Protective Barriers." The purple-haired woman grimaced. It was all old manuals and magical scripts. She went to the second shelf and groaned as she read them out loud as well, "Deep Water and Desire, The Fire and Flames of Love, The Duke and Duchess, Forbidden Seduction of the Mage of Hollow... these are all romance novels. Really?" She shook her head dismally. She supposed mage hunters kept up in the house needed some downtime to relax and restore but she wasn't much a fan of these trashy works herself. She couldn't appreciate the romantic fancies when her own escapades had ended so tragically.
She felt a cool chill tickle the back of her neck and turned in time to see the open mouth scream of a ghostly woman. Karasuki shrieked right alongside the screaming translucent phantom. Karasuki leaped backward into the case of books and the ghost dove towards her. The ghost flew through her body and Karasuki trembled. She shivered and called out again, "G-gaia! Gaia!!" Karasuki ran words through her mind, deciding on what spells to cast and what summon to bring forth. But the ghost was gone, vanished through the bookcase and the wall. Karasuki swirled around but still, there was no sign. She shouted again, "Gaia there was a woman.. a- a ghost woman! I felt so... cold..!" her body trembled a little more, filled with adrenaline. She felt somewhat tired and drained and the strange whispers got louder in her head, almost mocking her fear as her eyes sought out the ghostly woman.
WC: 1172+1206= 2378
