The Ghost Town

Dean gave an accusatory look in Zalio's direction. His hand also went for his bat, which was more than a little worrying. So Zalio did what he knew would best defuse the situation - he took his hands out of his pockets and held them up in mock surrender. Or actual surrender; it was hard to tell if Dean was planning on using the bat or not.

"I'm sorry," he apologized. "I was going to explain it before you and your friend came, but I didn't get a chance to. I'm Zalio. I accidentally spilled a strength potion on me, and I'm having trouble not destroying anything."

Dean raised an eyebrow. "A strength potion? I've never heard of those."

"They exist," Zalio was quick to reassure him, hoping he didn't pick up that bat. His daggers were in his bags, but he was terrified of what would happen if he so much as tried to block an attack.

He whipped his bat off the ground. Zalio tried his best not to gulp, but it was hard not to when he was so unsure of what would happen next. But instead of swinging it at him, Dean rested it across one shoulder and shrugged. "I'll take your word for it. My brother's the one who actually understands that sort of stuff." He gestured for them to follow him. "Now, let's get somewhere just a bit warmer - I'd start a fire in here, but this place reeks like alcohol."

He sniffed the air.

"Wait, that's just Lasan and Zalio. Still, this cellar is absolutely disgusting. There's bound to be a building here with a decent fireplace."

Dean turned and left the room. After a moment of hesitation, Zalio slipped his hands into his pockets once more and went to join him.

Lasan waited for Zalio to pass before heading up the stairs. For one thing, Lasan had never heard of something like a "strength potion," even if it did explain all the carnage Zalio had caused. Whether that potion existed or not, Zalio was still a bit of a threat, though Lasan was also relieved the human (or, possibly human, if Dean's comments were anything to go by) wasn't at the receiving end of a bat. For another thing, Lasan didn't want to sneeze and topple over. Not that that had happened before or anything.

"Where will we find the wood?" Lasan said, taking the stairs two steps at a time. "Everything's soaked with either water or alcohol." He somehow found himself trusting Dean. It helped that Dean was armed with the bat. Why would he need to lie, even concerning something like Zalio being "half-dead"?

Dean shrugged. "Zalio over here could always break apart one of the drier buildings," he suggested. Zalio wasn't very fond of said suggestion, but he would do what he had to make sure he got out of this.

He also wasn't very fond of Dean. There was something about people asserting their power that just seemed wrong to him. Maybe it was because he was used to leaders gaining their respect instead of demanding it - Hero had won him over with his kindness and leadership, not by ordering him to follow his lead. But if Dean was his best shot of returning home, he would just have to stay alert and follow his lead.

"Or," Dean mused, "I might have something kicking around in my bag. It's always easy to forget what I put in there - or what my brother puts in. He's likes leaving me helpful things."

The image of Zalio punching a building down stuck in Lasan's brain. Despite himself, he laughed. "That'll work," he said. He took in a deep breath. To his relief, the rest of the building was warmer and drier. Still, he hated how cold his clothes felt, or how much they clung to his scales. "Do you have any spare clothes in there?" Lasan said. "I'm wearing two coats and, uh, possibly not much else, but I'm freezing."

Dean took off his backpack and began to rummage through it. He doubted he had any spare clothes in the bag, though, in retrospect, that probably would be a good thing to carry in case he got into a particularly violent fight. But he did find something that could be of use - an old blanket that he had thrown in there ages ago.

"No to the clothes, but I do have a blanket," he answered, pulling said blanket out from the seemingly endless depths of his backpack. He held it out to Lasan. "That should help until we find a place to get a fire going."

Lasan eagerly took the blanket, pressing the fabric between his fingers. Thinner and more worn than he would've liked, but it was better than nothing. "Mind if I change?" he said to Dean, foot already inside the adjacent room. "It'll just be a second."

Not waiting for an answer, Lasan stepped into the room. He moved away from the door, heading to a corner without any cracks and leaks in either the floor or ceiling. Lasan quickly unbuttoned his overcoat and set it on the ground. Looking down, he saw that what was beneath - Zalio's coat and a loincloth - looked dry enough. He figured the coat must've soaked up most of the alcohol. And, really, if he took either off, the blanket wouldn't do any good. So, he wrapped the blanket around himself and headed back out, the overcoat slung over his shoulder.

The blanket only went down to his knees, but it felt warm enough. He gave a thumbs-up to Dean and went to his position at the back of the group.

Now that Lasan had changed, they continued their way through the building. He was unable to find a fireplace that was in a decent shape - the only one he had found was underneath the part of the rotted ceiling that had fallen into it. So they had to go outside if they wanted to get a working fire going. It wasn't his favorite plan, but it also wasn't like they had any other options.

He exited the building with the others in tow, scanning the street they were on for a building that had a chimney. Several of them did, but that didn't guarantee that the fireplace would be in a decent condition. He eventually settled on one that was relatively close by - just a minute or two down the street. He knocked the door open with the tip of his bat, hoping to ward off any potential ghosts that were lurking behind it.

And that was when he saw the boy.

He was sitting on the floor, scrolling through his phone as he held it up. It looked like he was trying to get a signal - Dean suddenly felt very stupid for not thinking of doing the same thing. When the boy heard them enter the room, he to his and looked at them with wide eyes.

"Hey-" Dean started to begin, but the boy cut him off.

"You're a gigantic lizard," he said, staring at Lasan. "You're not-you're not going to try killing me, are you? Because I'm absolutely terrified of dying, and I'm that would be the second time someone's tried to murder me this week."

"Huh-" Dean started to ask.

But before he could even get a complete question out, darkness shot out from the cracks between the floorboards and wrapped around his limbs. He struggled against their tight embrace, but it was impossible to break free. Even Zalio with his strength potion was unable to.

The boy turned to the room behind him.

"It's safe to come out now, Charlotte," he shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth.

A girl emerged from the room, her arms crossed as she looked the four over. "You do realize I didn't need to hide, right?" she asked, turning her attention to the boy. "The trap would have still worked even if I was out here."

"We had to play it safe," he said. "Just in case one of them managed to break free and tried attacking me." He turned to the four and gave an absolutely terrifying smile. "Now, it's time for some answers. Who are you, and why did you bring us here?"

Spoiler

Meet Charlotte and Levi! Here's their descriptions.

Charlotte: Her long, auburn hair is relatively straight and goes down to her chest. She's recently started throwing it into a ponytail. No matter what her hair looks like, she almost always has her red baseball cap on. It has her high school's name on it, but the letters are faded. She's wearing an oversized gray hoodie, jeans and the sneakers she had owned since she had since she was a freshman.

Levi: Has short, messy black hair and green eyes peeking out from behind a pair of glasses. He's wearing a collared white shirt, black dress pants, and loafers. His clothes look slightly disheveled, but not by much. Appears to be in his teens, and his height matches that.

As Lasan stared down at the bundles of darkness wrapped around his feet, with tendrils slipping through his blanket to grab his hands, he tried to look on the bright side - at least he wasn't outside. It had been frightening to be in that last building and know that, thanks to the lack of fireplaces, he had to go out onto the streets. And those streets had been as cold and wet as he'd remember them, if not worse. Now his blanket was soaked, he could feel a chill seeping into his bones, and the old sneeze started to make a reappearance. Fortunately, he figured he'd be dead before that mattered.

"Excuse me?" Lasan said, voice jarred by his tongue instinctively jumping out. Not only did the darkness make his snout rise in disgust, the smell was disturbingly familiar. "I don't kill people! I'm a healer! Maybe I'll sit on somebody to get them to stop shaking around, but that's about it." He sneezed. "If you're the exception, it's because you're tying me up in this dark stuff. The last person I knew who had a kid's body and fought with darkness wasn't a nice guy." Another sneeze, this time louder. "And now I get to go die." Sneeze. "Because some idiot." Sneeze. "Thinks I'm going to kill him." Sneeze. "And doesn't realize, or maybe he does." Sneeze. "That he can either kick my butt." Sneeze. "Or I'll freeze to death."

He crumpled to his knees. Lasan wasn't quite sure why he was reacting so strongly now, especially because this building was fairly dry. Perhaps it was the coldness of the binds, or maybe stress was making his symptoms worse. Either way, he was starting to feel sluggish. It wouldn't be too long - maybe an hour or two, fortunately enough - before he fell asleep.

And then he wasn't quite sure if he'd wake up.

The boy turned to look at the girl, whose name was apparently Charlotte, with an almost mischievous look to his face. "Do you think he's talking about your boyfriend? Because it sounds like him. He's a kid, he's got dark magic and he's not very nice-"

"We're just friends, Levi," Charlotte interrupted, keeping her arms folded. Dean could see two possible interpretations of their relationship - they were either friends, or they were only sticking together because they had to. It was hard to tell with kids these days. "And if he's a kid, then you're a kid too."

"Nope," the boy, Levi, countered. "Definitely not a kid. I've got years on him."

Charlotte shook her head. "If you look like a kid, sound like a kid and act like a kid, then you're a kid-"

"I don't act like a kid!" he protested, sticking his tongue out for good measure. Dean rolled his eyes at the sight in front of him. Out of all the people to get caught by, it had to be two kids who didn't even have the maturity to focus on the situation on hand.

Zalio cleared his throat.

The two kids, who had been in the middle of glaring at each other, turned and glared at the half-dead man instead. "Could you please let us go?" he asked. "We're just as clueless as you are about what brought us here."

"Uh-huh," Levi slowly said. "Nope, don't believe you. You're the only people we've run into so far, and I find it awfully suspicious for a guy like him-" Here he pointed at Dean, who honestly didn't see what he was talking about. "-to be in a place like this without some ulterior motive."

"But Lasan is going to freeze," he pointed out. "Look at him. He's dying. Do you really want to accidentally kill someone good?"

"We can just make a fire near him," Charlotte shot back, briefly glancing in Levi's direction. The boy gave a nod in agreement.

Zalio shrugged. "Oh well."

Levi narrowed his eyes. "Oh well?"

"Oh well," Zalio repeated. "I just wanted to do this the easy way, but it looks like you're not cooperating."

Small beams of light began to rise from the tips of Zalio's fingers, something that completely took Dean by surprise. The lights made quick work of the strands of darkness ensnaring Zalio, and soon did the same to the other occupants of the room. He casually reached into his bag and pulled out a pair of iron daggers.

He would be lying if he said he wasn't impressed.

"Now," Zalio said, "are you ready to talk with us?"

Levi and Charlotte looked at each other.

With a sigh, Levi held his hands up in surrender. Charlotte followed suit a moment later.

As soon as Lasan's bonds were broken - he honestly wasn't sure if the strands of light were some kind of hallucination or not; they reminded him of healing magic, but that was far smaller and less effective - he sat down and wrapped himself up in his blanket. "What's with you people?" he grumbled, pressing his knees against his chest. "Are you all crazy? I'm just trying to keep warm, but you've chased me with knives, doused me in alcohol, paraded me through the streets, and pinned me to the floor. If one of you set me on fire, I wouldn't be surprised. I should've just pretended to be a big, dumb brute, so none of you would've bothered me." He glared up at the teenagers. "I only trust you because you're both kids. At least you understand what it's like to not know what you're doing."



The smell of rusty metal. The sound of softly pouring rain. The coldness of the floor beneath him. Fingertips scraping against steel.

Aegeas opened an eye to find himself pressed against some kind of metal surface. He groaned, placing his arms on the metal and trying to pull himself up. Slick as the surface was, though, he ended up smacking his chin against it.

"Why?" he said, thinking back to the last time he'd woken up in a strange place. Sure enough, as he peeled his head off the ground and peered out into the rain, he realized he had no idea how he'd gotten here. Or where here was.

He used his claws to pull himself towards the rim of the circular surface. Despite where he looked - in front of him, to either side, or behind - all he could see was rain and the dim outlines of mountains. That made more sense when he reached the edge of the rim and peered down, seeing nothing but a small ladder leading down to a metal platform.

"Why!?" Aegeas said. He took a deep breath, gripping the edge of the ladder. In one fluid motion, he swung himself off the edge, feet flying out into space before landing among two of the ladder rungs. Aegeas took a few more breaths, laughing to himself. He hadn't quite expected that to work.

From there, it was easy enough to head down the ladder and jump onto the metal platform, which he walked around. Now he could see the faint outlines of buildings below him. A town. Abandoned? He swore he could hear noises, but they were too far in the distance and too drowned out by the rain to pick out. It didn't much help that he was nearsighted, and it was nighttime.

Still, he was soaked and freezing, and didn't want to hang around a creepy metal building. That didn't stop him from shouting, "Why!?" when his grip on the railing switched to a grip on yet another ladder. Not that he hated heights, or falling, but both happened to be huge concerns on his mind in these conditions.

There wasn't anything else to be done, though. He reached a foot down to the first step and began to make his way down the ladder.

Spoiler

Aegeas

Spoiler

I'm going to introduce one last character into this for now. You can call him Brian for the moment. Brian can come off as somewhat intimidating due to his stature, overall appearance and personality. He's somewhat on the tall side. He has short brown hair. His eyes are hidden behind a pair of sunglasses, and his outfit matches said sunglasses - a black leather jacket, black t-shirt, jeans and black leather boots. He appears to be unarmed, and also appears to be somewhere in his late teens.

"I know perfectly well what I'm doing!" Levi indignantly said, folding his arms and looking down at Lasan. "And I'm not a kid-"

Charlotte elbowed him.

Sulking at being called an age younger than he apparently was, Levi joined Lasan on the ground. He sent an accusatory look in Charlotte's direction, but said nothing else.

Zalio, who, despite his successful escape attempt, was still trying to wrap his head around what had just happened, turned to Lasan and attempted to apologize again. He knew it probably wouldn't help much. He had offended him, and it took a long time to heal a bond that hadn't even formed. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to act so rudely to you. I still don't have any idea of how I got here, and I thought you might have been responsible. And then with the alcohol - I didn't mean that, either. I've never used a strength potion before."

As Zalio tried to profusely apologize for a series of misunderstandings and accidents, Dean turned to other matters - the two kids whose magic had managed to catch even someone like him. He had to admit that he was more than a little impressed.

"So your names are Charlotte and Levi?" he asked.

Charlotte nodded. Levi refused to even look in his direction.

"I'm Dean," he introduced himself. "I'm surprised by how calm the two of you are being about a situation like this. Most people don't react like this to a supernatural situation-"

"Dean," Levi said, studying the dirt underneath his fingernails. "That's the name of that character in Supernatural, isn't it? Dean Winchester. Dean's not your real name. It's an alias, and you were stupid enough to use one that anyone with half a brain would notice."

"Dean" gave an impressed whistle. "You're the first one to figure that out here, kid-"

"Levi."

"-Levi." He grinned. "Now I'm really impressed. On a somewhat unrelated, are either one of you Christian?"

Levi raised an eyebrow and looked up at him. "The day I believe in a god is the day I forsake who I am as a person. So, nope, I'm an atheist."

"I'm deist," Charlotte replied. "Why? Are you going to try to convert us or something? You're wearing a cross, and if you're going with the Supernatural alias, there must be some merit to Christian things fending off demons and ghosts. If you do try to, neither one of us is going to."

"Er, no," he hesitantly said, having been very intent on doing exactly that. "I just thought it would be good to find someone who believed in God, you know? Anyways, it looks like we've all been brought here by some mysterious force. I'd say to follow my lead because I'm the most experienced with this sort of thing, but something tells me both of you are going to object to that."


When he awoke, he was laying on the cold, rotting porch of a building he didn't recognize. He hesitantly got to his feet and looked around the area he was in, trying to see if anything looked familiar. It was impossible for him to remember how he had even arrived here in the first place. The last thing he remember, he had been with Lorcan and Second while Charlotte was at school. They had been watching movies, hadn't they? Something must have happened after they finished the one they were in the middle of watching, but he just couldn't remember what.

Was it a rift? Was that it? But rifts only opened between his home world and Earth, not to another place that looked suspiciously like it was made by humans.

As he searched for something - or maybe even someone - he noticed a figure climbing down what looked like a water tower. Readjusting his sunglasses to make sure they covered his eyes, he left the porch and approached the figure.

It was only when he was a few feet away that he realized the figure was a bipedal animal. He had seen it once - maybe when they went to the zoo? - but that kind of animal wasn't wearing clothes, wasn't standing on two feet and definitely didn't have swords at its side.

But he had no one else to go to for answers.

He took another step towards the bipedal animal. "Hello," he said.

Cornyx, who has been silent until this moment, finally spoke from his quiet position in the back corner of the room where he'd remained mostly unnoticed, though his voice was soft. "Ex-ex-ex-ex-excuse me, b-b with all d-d-de respect, Mr D-Dean..." he hesitated for a moment, then continued cautiously. "I believe that assigning ourselves a leader when we neither know each other nor have any trust in each other m-m-may be unwise."

"Ugh," Lasan said, listening to Zalio's long and rambling series of apologies. He held a hand up to signal Zalio to stop talking. "I can't even find the dignity to hate you. You were scared of me; everyone's scared of me. They don't have any reason to, but they are. And I guess I'm in a weird part of the world, 'cause I've never heard of things like "strength potions" or "Christian." But you haven't killed me yet, and you've been willing to listen to me, so I'll believe you. For now, anyways."



Here was the welcoming party, and they were just as welcoming as Aegeas had expected.

The figure didn't move as Aegeas reached the bottom of the ladder and jumped onto the wet ground, which the otter took as a good sign. Still, he was staring up at a tall figure dressed in black clothes and sunglasses. As such, the figure half-blended into the night, making their appearance hard to make sense of.

"What are you looking at?" Aegeas said, crossing his arms, noticing how the figure focused on him. It made the fur on Aegeas's neck want to rise, though that was hampered by the rain.

Zalio sat down on the ground beside Lasan. He had understood his frustration at the sequence of events that had transpired and had to reassure him that he had meant no harm by said events, but now it was quickly becoming clear that it wasn't really the source of the problem.

Lasan didn't want people to be afraid of him.

He slipped his iron daggers into his bag, keeping an eye on them instead of Lasan as he spoke. He doubted he would be needing them in the near future. "I wasn't scared of you," he quietly said. "I woke up here, and I would have taken out my weapons and followed whoever I saw first. I know I don't look like much, but I've always terrified people."


Charlotte had been having a rough day. School was as horrible as it usually was, despite her best friend's attempts to make it better with constant teasing. Said best friend was currently sulking, which didn't help to improve matters. He could be a pain in the butt, but having his input in times of conflict was always good.

Especially when she had no idea how either one of them ended up here in the first place.

At the comment from the man that Charlotte had admittedly not noticed due to how quiet he was, Dean spun around to face said man. "Really, Cornyx? You're questioning my ability to lead?"

"I mean," her best friend helpfully pointed out from his spot on the ground, "you did lead that whole group into a trap."

Dean looked over his shoulder and glared at him. "I'm the most qualified to lead," he argued back. "I've got years of experience dealing with this sort of stuff, and a sorcerer for a younger brother. I know how to protect a group in a place that's filled with demons and ghosts-"

"How exactly do you know that?" Charlotte interrupted. "We haven't seen anything like that? Have you?"

The man hesitated. "...No."

"Then how can you say that's true?"

"Because I can just feel it!" Dean said. "Look, after you deal with these supernatural things for a long time, you just get a feeling when you're in an area they're in. And I'm getting that feeling right now."


He blinked behind his sunglasses, unprepared for the rudeness of the comment. He must have done something to offend him, but he couldn't figure out what. Whatever it was, he didn't have the time to worry about it. He had to figure out how to get back to the others.

"I'm looking at you," he said, crossing his arms. "You're the only other person here, so you must know something about how I was brought here."

Cornyx flinched a little as Dean snapped at him, like he was expecting a slap or something more than just words coming his way. When it didn't come he relaxed a little, though he was still tense and watching Dean carefully. "I-I-I-I'm merely st-st-st-stating that i-it may not b-b-be the best t-time to establish r-rank," he stammered.