Fable - Ask Grievances & Regrets

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From threatening and ominous to needlessly vague, if the whole mission was going to play out like this then Gaage was about to have one hell of a long assignment. Longer than it already was going to be, considering he was going to be riding into the heart of Elf Land.

"I hope you're more personable than this when I drag your spooky ass back into a body, lady." Gaage quipped, pulling his gear back on and cutting the meat down for the wildlife to chow on now that it wasn't entirely fit for the mess hall. "Now, you said 'I' should be going. Are you not joining me? I thought this was gonna be a two-person deal?"

Not that Gaage minded a solo mission, but he'd been under the impression that the whole point of this was for Chasmine to determine whether or not she could rely on him moving forward. The redhead began to walk around the ghostly woman towards the stables, waiting for some kind of answer under the slim chance she gave him one.
 
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"I was personable before," Chasmine replied listlessly, "it did not work in my favor."

Her current state of being was testament to that.

"I have learned to travel using the Ley Lines of the world like the fae do," she continued, "it is much faster. I will arrive at our destination well ahead of you which will give me time to prepare."
 
It was an amazing feat that Chasmine had accomplished, learning to tap into something so incredibly convenient and complicated at ley lines. Gaage had heard the term, but he didn't pay much attention to Fae bullshit. As long as they weren't in his way; Gaage gave less than a single fuck what those frilly painted weirdos did.

That also might be why he wasn't particularly impressed by her revelation.

"Alright then. Do what you wanna then. If something kills me on my way to..." He takes the time to put up some air quotes as he recites the needlessly vague instructions. "An hour north into Falwood, then I guess it's your loss, isn't it?"

Not that he was worried. No, the feeling that filled him as he left to mount the horse Gendry had prepared and depart was more that of irk than of dread. Here he was about to put his neck out for Ghost Girl and she wouldn't even do him the courtesy of riding with him. Surely, they could find a ghost horse or some shit?

Regardless. he rode. Away from the camp and towards the northern region of Falwood settled just above them.
 
Gendry would, upon handing the horse over to Gaage, supply him with a map to his destination. Ruins of a Vel Anirian outpost from the second war. Chasmine made no effort to explain herself, though it was something she would have put too much effort into a year ago. Gilram had taught her a great deal in the short amount of time she'd spent with him and one of her lessons had been to keep important things close to the heart.

You could never really trust anyone with all the information.


CITADEL DREARWOOD

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Chasmine arrived several hours before Gaage would or might. Though he'd given his word of assistance, she held herself to the tune of not expecting him to follow through ... like all the others before him. It was not impossible to do on her own, what she set out here for, but it did make the matters quite a bit more difficult. Regardless of the outcome concerning the redheaded exile, she set to work.

The fourth level chamber's spiritual nexus called to her, and so to it she went.
 
Despite all the mystery and vague bullshit surrounding the task she apparently had for him, Gaage did feel some small sense of excitement: A mission that only involved himself and a Ghost who didn't like talking? It was just about the closest thing to a solo mission he'd ever gotten, not for lack of trying on his part for the past who the hell knows how long.

Hopefully Chasmine wasn't as much of a stick in the mud as some of the stiffs back home.

The ride went fine, no hiccups or roadblocks. Really, that should have told him his luck was going to run out, but Gaage was in pretty good spirits, it felt nice to get some air and get way from the hidden base of operations on his own, and for all the shit he gave Falwood, the air amongst the trees felt incredible; He hadn't realized how dirty and dusty the Academy had been until he'd left.

If it weren't for the looming tower that stretched far above the trees in the distance, he might have even gotten lost in the scenery. Just like always, though, the mission trumped everything else in his life.

"Gah, maybe Gloom Girl is rubbing off on me, boy." He muttered down to his hardworking stallion at the rather depressing anecdote he'd made in his head as the two of them approached the tower, pulling up to slow his mount as he kept his eyes peeled for any sign of Chasmine.
 
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His arrival to the stone tower would give him a proper view of it before the forest at its base devoured the sight completely. The thick tree canopies blotted out most of the sunlight left in the day, and as his horse descended the remnants of the road once taken daily by guard shifts, he would enter what felt like another realm altogether.

Not quite the truth, but history had a tendency to linger in ways it aught not around places of such ... horrific happenings.

The path before him darkened and the air grew stale, and despite the trees in the vicinity seeming quite healthy, there was a vague scent of old decay on the air that only dead and diseased forests ever gave off.

At the bottom of the path the shadow of the past shifted uneasily and there upon what might be the brink between temporal lines stood Chasmine. She stared, unmoving, and only faintly visible to the living eye.

Though she did not turn to acknowledge him, her voice drifted to him distantly, "Are you feeling strong?"
 
'Sensitive' wasn't a word people usually busted out to describe Gaage, but he wasn't oblivious either. You'd have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to feel the foreboding pressure that seemed to drip from every surface within a certain distance from the strange tower. It sure as hell wasn't the first place he'd felt it, either. Gaage took one step back, grimacing as his nose twitched up at the scent of death.

Some awful shit had happened just up ahead.

Hitching his horse to an old post buried beside the road, a good distance from where the darkness reached, Gaage opted to walk the rest of the way up. Vibes like this would spook a stallion to the point of running off without him, and then he'd be really fucked.

It wasn't as difficult for him to push through the ominous miasma of death and decay. It wasn't his first rodeo, and it wasn't likely to be his last. If he'd stared death in the face before, he could follow in its footsteps just as easy. Of course, the ghost waiting for him just up ahead didn't leave footsteps, but then she was barely perceptible anyways, looking further ahead of them as she awaited his arrival. Gaage stopped next to her, following her gaze as he scoffed lightly at the question.

"You really don't know me that well. Trust me, whatever's lined up for me, I've got it."
 
There was an inherent sadness that clung to this place like a heady summer day that clung and soaked to skin and fabric. Even as she was, Chasmine could feel it. Perhaps moreso than she might've were she alive. The morose nature moved her enough to frown. Many people had died here over a long span of years, if the story Gilram told her about the location was the truth. Even if her own present tangle with death and the afterlife created detachment, it was still sad to think about.

"I don't know you at all," Chasmine corrected him without shame and a glance over at him, finally. Gaage's passion and self assurance stood out here like a flame among fog.

"The veil is very thin here," she continued without preamble or further discourse on familiarity, "and I believe there to be many open portals to another realm. I sense they are small, but there is an ethergate here as well."

And within that ethergate her target. The ghost took a steadying breath that to Gaage might just sound like the stale breeze.

"Do not step through the ethergate. I cannot promise I will be able to bring you back if you do."

With that warning hanging in the air, Chasmine's ghostly form shimmered with rising energy as she withdrew a spectral colichemarde from a now visible sheath hung at her hip. Gaage might recall watching her flounder and fail spectacularly in sparring sessions to the point that the attending Proctor's often made her sit out or play target dummy for the others. Chasmine often left those lessons defeated and bleeding profusely.

Now, however, she held the weapon with confidence as she strode forward into the open archway of the crumbling perimeter wall surrounding the ruined tower.
 
"I don't know you at all,"

There was actually a pang of guilt that ran through him then, something he hadn't really expected to feel more than once over the ghostly woman. She was right in that they had never been chummy, but it was only just beginning to dawn on him how he'd alienated so many of his classmates. Now that they were all so divided, Eberwhit realized he'd taken them for granted.

It didn't seem to be bothering Chasmine that much though, and she went on to start talking about veils, portals and ethergates. Gaage's brow creased as he looked over at his spectral partner, suddenly unsure of why exactly he'd come here. "Now... hold on a tic..." He tried to recall her as she pulled out what looked like a small rapier and began moving towards the archway.

"You can't just start talking about other dimensions and whatever the hell an ethergate is when you haven't told me what I'm doing." His tone wasn't angry, more he was trying to stress the importance of the information. He'd a feeling she was witholding it at least somewhat purposefully, but for what reason...? "I get that you're testing my trust, but trust goes both ways. I need to trust that you aren't going to send me blind into a mission."

Fully aware that might have made it sound like he didn't trust her he added with a nod back to where he'd hitched his horse. "And I wouldn't have ridden this far out if I thought you'd do that, so I'm trying, alright?"
 
"I cannot tell you what I do not yet know," Chasmine replied. She did know more, but the issue lie not in Gaage's involvement so much as it lie in the separation of realms or lackthereof here in this tower. Not even Gilram was fully informed on the nature of things here, only that there was something here Chasmine could help him with and what that something would be up to her to discover.

"You should stay close. I do not know what these entities can do to you but I know you cannot stop them."

Confidence, assurance, bravery. Things still feeling somewhat new to her. They had not come easily, but her time spent locked into the realm between realms had afforded her a great deal of time and opportunity to learn how to survive. These things that once tormented her around the Academy to the point of painting her own blood across the walls of her dorm now faced something no longer willing to run from them.

"The ethergate is on the fourth floor," she told him as she entered the open archway of the broad tower. Inside it was fashioned like a mess hall that had long since seen any fresh mess beyond that of death. The carcasses and skeletons of the long-since-dead-and-decayed remained here. Chasmine looked upon them with a detached weariness as she approached one near the entrance to the staircase that wound upwards along the inner wall of the tower.

Kneeling down by the bones of a man who had fallen countless decades ago, she held a glowing hand out just over its form. Her gaze then shifted from him to another nearby, then another to the opposite side. She stood, her hand still hovering loosely in the air, "Their spirits have been severed."
 
For somebody who liked to brood about not being able to trust anybody, Chasmine was doing a real bang-up job of being... well, untrustworthy. The line between redeeming himself in his own mind and sticking his neck out for her was quickly approaching, and even a Ghost had to know that his patience wasn't going to be infinite.

Whatever, he prepared himself for a fight if it came down to that, not convinced in the slightest that there was anything that couldn't be killed beyond the archway as he followed her through it. "Right. Ethergate. That thing you're avoiding elaborating on." Gaage rumbled, taking a minute to scan the ruined dining hall they came into. It looked about as gruesome as he'd expected. That didn't make him wince any less at the sight or the stench. "Gods." He coughed, "That's fuckin' unpleasant as all hell."

It looked like a flesh tornado had ransacked the place, leaving a coat of mincemeat on every surface. Whatever had done all this was a bad motherfucker, and Eberwhit admitted to himself that maybe Chasmine wasn't totally full of shit about the danger of it all.

Chas floated over to a skeleton and seemed to inspect it. Something about his spirit being severed, whatever that meant. He didn't bother asking, knowing damned well he wouldn't get a real answer. "Yeah? Well given the state he's in I'd say he ain't missing it much."
 
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She couldn't smell it, but the pervasion of death echoed through all the realms here, passing through the veil from one to the other like a breeze through gauze curtains. It distorted the image of Chasmine's ghost, casting the ghoulish girl in an even darker frame. One moment a shift of decay was there, the next she was as he knew her. Chas felt this at her spiritual core and knew that she could not waste time here or the journey would have been for naught.

Just what, exactly, a severed spirit meant she could not really say. Her knowledge on the spiritual beings of the world was vast, yet limited at the same time. There wasn't really anyone out here with initimate knowledge of how this stuff worked because one generally had to be dead to really understand. If only she could maintain a journal, she might make her own death worthwhile.

There came a shift in the air from the wrap-around stairwell and she felt the emergence of entities above. That hadn't taken long.

"If you feel your soul begin to rip," she began as she drifted toward the staircase, "think of the thing that matters most to you. Hold on to it like your last breath of air in water."

Up the stairs she went. The stone steps echoed strangely, as if the sounds of Gaage's boots and movements (because ghosts make no noise) were being swallowed up by the darkness. Even the light that filtered in through the slitted openings within the stone walls barely cast beyond the shade. It was silent as they entered the second floor. This area seemed housed what appeared to be an old armory. Littered with general purpose relics of weapons, most of them were coated in layers of dust, long-dried blood, rust, mold, oxidation. A few pieces appeared to still have maintained some shine but everything in here looked as though it might shatter upon first conflict.

Off to the side stood an old mirror, reflecting nothing when it should have been reflecting the beds across from it.

"That is the first portal," she told Gaage as she quietly turned her sword hand to face it, "they will sense your presence-"

She did not even get to finish her sentence before the mirror expelled what sounded like a deep and guttural exhale. Coldness seeped out and the room darkened. Chasmine watched the first one embark from the portal, tall and lean and black as pitch.

"Can you see it?" she asked, while a second one peeled from the darkness that clung to the back corner behind Gaage.
 
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Chasmine seemed to ponder something about the pile of bones in front of them, or perhaps about what Gaage had said. Like her, he had no idea what having your spirit severed actually meant. Shit like spirits and souls ventured into that weird metaphysical territory that he left for the bookish types. Far as Eberwhit was concerned, if he bled, he was alive. If he didn't, he wasn't. Not much more to it than that.

"Hey." Gaage wasn't sure why he thought he'd ever get through to her, but the silence seemed a good moment to prod. "I don't know what happened to you, but dwelling on mortality can wait until we figure out what the hell is going on. Worst case scenario I end up floating around too, though I don't plan on it." If he died, he knew a certain woman who would end up doing something stupid, and he didn't want that.

Chas seemed to hear something on the floor above them, and Gaage briefly looked up as well. "Aright, I'm no ghost, but I felt that. The fuck is going on up there?" He wondered out loud as he followed Chasmine to the stairwell. The ghost had some advice for him, but she needn't bother. Eberwhit had been holding onto his reason for fighting since he'd entered this forsaken place. "Thanks. If I feel that oh-so-familiar sensation, I'll be sure to think happy thoughts."

The room the came to on the second level wasn't as gruesome as the one below them, but it was still off-putting. Whereas the lower floor had looked to be the aftermath of a slaughter, this one more resembled a place where everybody had simply vanished into thin air in the middle of their day; he could practically place where they all should be standing in his mind's eye.

A small shiver ran down his spine.

"That is the first portal," Chas gestured towards an old mirror. No sooner had she done that than had it begun to make sounds. The reflective surface showed nothing, and he could have sworn he heard breathing. Eberwhit winced, taking a step back towards the staircase as some horror emerged, long, black and featureless. Like a living shadow. "Can you see it?"

"Chas, now really isn't the time for stupid questions..." He took another step back, but stopped cold as he felt a strange tugging at his chest. No, not his flesh or his bones, but something else, buried deep within him. Gaage hadn't a clue what it was, but his brain seemed to, and it pumped a hearty dose of adrenaline as he spun around, eyeing the one he'd been backing up towards.

"Shit, there's two of them."

If he hadn't noticed the second one he'd have gone right to him. Quietly, he decided not to think about what that would have done.

"Alright then, what do we do?"
 
A frown settled onto her lips. She had not considered her question to be stupid at all - very few people had ever been able to see what she could see while she was alive. The things she could see now that she was dead? Well, there was really no way to know what of the spirit realm might appear to those of the living. But at the very least he could see death before it took him.

That was a small mercy rarely granted to others.

"I must destroy them and the portal before more come through," Chas answered him, "you must think pleasant thoughts and stay alive."

Ah, the power of positivity.

Chasmine shifted into point-guard as she faced the fiend exiting the mirror then moved swiftly, her ghostly image shifting in and out of sight with a sudden stitch of glowing light as her colichemarde made contact with her quarry. It thrummed a sickly blue-green color, the blade emanating a sharp sizzle of ether as it cleanly slashed through what appeared to be a shadowing appendage reaching toward her.

"Keep moving!" she yelled over her shoulder to Gaage, but her voice faded and echoed strangely in tandem with her own misty self forming and dissipating as she actively ducked a lashing strike, "They are slow!"
 
Happy thoughts. Right.

Gaage couldn't help but wonder for a split second how exactly Chasmine had met her end. If she was messing around with batshit things like this, her current state suddenly made a lot more sense. Nevertheless, he shut his mouth and stopped sassing her for now. These things were very real, and Eberwhit had no intention of being taken by them.

Following her advice, Gaage kept light on his feet and moved to evade the slender black beings. True to her word, they struggled to keep up with him, especially with Chasmine going to town with that colichemarde of hers.

No, it was the happy thoughts part that was a little more difficult. There hadn't been a whole lot of happiness in his life for the better part of a year now, and while he'd agreed to help Chasmine to give him an excuse to keep going, it wasn't exactly a jolly friendship between the two of them.

That struggle inside of him was taking its toll. Even out of reach, he could feel them sucking away at him, draining the warmth from his body, leaving him with a cold and hollow sensation that left him more and more sluggish. Eventually, he tripped up, stumbling over an overturned table and slamming back against a wall with a muttered swear.

"Pleasant thoughts... fuck, come on... pleasant..."
 
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Struggle did indeed feed the appetite of the fiends, and the more they fed the more their ability to keep up increased. Chasmine, however, was still faster and far less effected in her state. She pressed forward on the fiend between her and the mirror portal, attempting to corral back through the doorway whence it came. A horrible screech that seized the ears and rattled bones sounded from her quarry as she slashed at it again and again.

Behind her the other fiend closed in on Gaage, the rattling draw of its siphoning breath like the howl of a hurricane. It took from him warmth and optimism, making it ever harder to keep his feet beneath him and more impossible to seize that good thought. It was upon him at the wall, taking everything and more through the abyssal mouth that gaped at its dark and cowled front like a festering wound. Should Gaage attempt to struggle against it, he'd find no true purchase of the physical realm. Fingers and limbs would pass through a miasma of bitter cold, and would he begin to give in he would feel that untenable pull on his very soul.

Death's kiss and embrace was upon him. Life and magic and spirit, filtering away...

"Gaage!" Chasmine called after him as she struck against her foe again and again, its screeching a bewildering sound that began a crack in the glass of the mirror. One more strike and it retreated back through the portal. Chas swung her sword back and around to spear it straight through the mirror which exploded into a hundred gleaming pieces.

A glowing hand then skewered out of the gaping mouth and reached directly at Gaage's face, pinning his soul to him, "One pleasant thought - just ONE!"
 
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Gaage Eberwhit wasn't in the room with Chasmine. He was somewhere else, a darker place without a light to guide him.

Proud and confident as he'd always been, that was in his physical ability. When the strange phantom drew near him, sucking every bit of optimism out of him, extinguishing the fire in his heart that had gotten him this far, he crumbled quickly. Mentally, Gaage was weak. He always had been. Now, he looked into the maw of death and saw not an end, but an escape from failure.

To die would redeem his betrayal of Zael Castomir.

To die would redeem his unworthiness of Delaney's love.

To die would redeem his ignorance of Chasmine's past pain.

To die would redeem his taking Ysobel's adoration for him for granted.

To die would be a fitting end for such a worthless fight.

The glowing hand reached out to meet him, to pull him away to another place where he didn't have to fight or kill, where he could forget. Where there were no regrets or pains to keep him up at night any longer. He didn't struggle against that clammy hand. He smiled. He invited it to free him. Oh, and he felt it pulling, stripping him of the humanity he was through with.

"Gaage!"

A voice? Yes. Chasmine. A friend, he thought to himself.

Friend? You barely know her.

She's not as bad as she seems.

She doesn't trust you and you're about to die for her cause.

No. She does trust me. She wouldn't have brought me here otherwise.

"One pleasant thought - just ONE!"

Wait, I'm forgetting something. A promise. I made her a promise, didn't I?

What does that matter? You're dead. Not the first one you've broken.

No, I'm not dead yet. I don't want to break another promise. I don't want to fail her too. I can still help her.

You can't.

I...I can!

Gaage inhaled sharply, the first breath he'd taken in nearly two minutes as the world returned around him, vision clearing and color returning to his face. The ghostly hand was inches from him now, clutching at invisible strings to pull his humanity from him. Shit! Fuck! Dicks! Absolutely not like this!

Pleasant thoughts...! He squeezed his eyes shut, gritting his teeth as he tried again.

He remembered everything he could that brought him joy. Hanging out with Zael, over a spirited game of Lunk Toss. Flirting with Everleigh Ebersol and getting smacked for his efforts. The look on Edric's smug face when Gaage hit his buttons juuuust right. The one that came most vividly to him though, the thought that prevailed over the rest... it wasn't something he'd expected.

Ysobel, blushing at him like a damned idiot with bandages around her midsection, handing him some frozen cream on a waffle cone. Yeah... he remembered how she'd gone on and on about this fucking ice cream stuff, how pissed she'd gotten when he made her eat the chocolate one. Who the fuck doesn't like chocolate? What a strange fucking girl...

The pressure surrounding him, the cold numbness that permeated every pore of his body began to lessen. The hand that sought to take him stalled, hovering but not proceeding.

Chasmine
 
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There was very little she could do to intervene. If she struck down the fiend while it had ahold of Gaage's soul, there was no telling what damage it might inflict upon him or how it would effect his life. Chasmine had witnessed what became of people who'd had their souls ripped from their corporeal selves and she did not wish that upon anyone.

Holding herself there just out of range, her colichemarde prime for a rending strike upon their ghastly foe, she stared intensely and never let her eyes waver from her target. It was in that moment that Gaage seemed to wake up and find his will to live again that Chasmine moved in. She could sense the fiend's hesitation, now she just needed it to release its breath and expel what tether it had taken in...

She heard Gaage's inhale.

The fiend shuddered at the taste of warmth and positive emotion, attempted to reaffirm its siphoning and fully choked on the surge of feelings that Ysobel's memory grew in him. With a horrible, guttural gurgle it spit out the tailing vestiges of spirit and in that moment Chasmine drew in to eviscerate it with a calculated lunge. A blood curdling screech split the darkness of the chamber as the fiend's black mass turned to wisps of tattered black like abhorrent streamers at a party of the macabre. As it dissipated from the air, the coldness of the room mellowed and the darkness eased.

Chasmine stood silent and alert for several moments longer before lowering her weapon and turning her attention back to Gaage.

"Whatever morsel of goodness you found, hold it tightly. There are many more of those on the levels above..."

And something far worse than the fiends, but she did not speak of it.
 
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Eberwhit had no idea how long he'd been in his fugue state, or how close he'd came to having his very soul devoured by whatever these nightmarish bastards were, but he did hold a renewed appreciation for Chasmine's ability to combat them through more conventional means; Watching her smite the unholy thing brought him some level of satisfaction, even as he clutched at his chest and leaned back against the wall to catch his breath.

With the last wayward tendrils of darkness scattering to the wind at the end of Chasmine's colichemarde, the pressure that seemed to weigh down the room with a layer of despair eased immensely. Gaage carefully stepped away from the wall, keeping his eyes locked on the strange gateway they'd come from.

"Right..." He nodded along to her warning. "Shouldn't be as hard now that I've got the hang of it." It was a hopeful wish on his part, but he did believe that experiencing the sensation of having his soul sucked out did lend him some extra incentive not to let it happen again. "I'll get them chasing me while you pick em' off then."

He followed her to the next set of stairs, oddly more confident than before that harrowing ordeal he'd just survived. Gaage knew why he felt better, but he didn't want to admit it-- He'd distrusted Chasmine. She'd shown no indication she cared for his existence for any reason besides convenience, but when it came down to it she'd pulled his ass out of the fire, even at her own danger.

Stopping at the base of the stairs, he winces.

"Hey Chas?"

He couldn't afford to doubt the few friends he had anymore.

"Thanks for saving my ass."

Chasmine
 
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The geist paused on her way up the stairs, half gliding, half stepping as a living person would. The trouble with being a ghost was the flux of how things existed within the living realm verses their spiritual reflections. They didn't always line up, and it became ever more convoluted on buildings that had been altered or rebuilt in any way. Chasmine did not generally think about it much anymore, navigating the two realms as a apparition had become second nature.

Akin to learning to see and function with crossed eyes, she supposed.

What did not come second nature was hearing earnest words from another directed toward herself. She did not immediately look back down at Gaage, but held there near immobilized by the surprise of it. Empathy was not an ability she had developed in life, nor in death, but for whatever reason she felt certain he truly meant what he'd said. No sardonic or insincerity detected. That she had saved him was, indeed, for her own benefit. She needed his physical body to complete this task and he could not do so if he were but a husk without a soul.

Hadn't expected a thank you. Didn't find that she wanted one either. For Chasmine, this was business.

But there it was.

"You're welcome," she replied at length, giving the red-haired man a wary look, "I will do what I must to ensure you return home safely."

She did not even consider the thought that Gaage did not think of Gilram's base as home, but it was home to her. After a moment, Chas returned to scaling the stairway on its slow arc up and around, "I must focus on destroying the portals first, otherwise we risk more coming through. Keep moving, if you are caught or get trapped, alert me at once."
 
Gaage didn't prolong her suffering with more words of gratitude. Instead, he let out a chuckle as he continued up the next flight of stairs, ready for another literal dance with death on the floor above now. More than he had been last time, anyway. "Don't go making promises on me now, okay?" It was kind of funny, hearing something resembling a commitment from somebody who'd been so gloriously vague with him.

When the pair of them did make it to the next landing, Eberwhit was far more careful about where he stepped, making out at least two of the 'portals' like the one he'd seen below. He still couldn't perceive them very well, but the thin tendrils of darkness emanating from them as more of the nightmare creatures sensed his presence was a pretty reliable giveaway.

"Alright," Gaage muttered, stepping off to the side and shimmying around a stained, tattered bed. "Same plan as before, but with less me almost dying. Sound like a plan to you?" This room seemed to be where most of the people who'd been in this tower slept, beds and floor chests arranged along the walls, moved askew and soiled with old blood and turmoil. It didn't have quite as much open space as the last floor did, so he'd need to be selective about his steps.

"I see two portals, and..." He quickly counted the number of shadowy figures emerging. "Four of the spooky bastards. Am I on the money or am I missing some?" Chas seemed to have a sharper eye for these things, so it was entirely possible he was looking past something. Better to confirm than be caught off guard.

Chasmine
 
She did not respond to his amusing remarks, distracted as she was on the task at hand.

"There are three portals," Chasmine responded distantly, her gaze drawn upward to the ceiling above their heads. Gaage would not, of course, think to look in such places considering that was not a normal place for a doorway for the living. One resided in a back corner, another within what appeared to be an old wardrobe.

"This one is quite large," she stated with an almost upbeat amount of surprise, as if she'd found an oversized grub in one of her gardens, "I suspect it will not be easy to close."

Larger portals also meant more visitors of the unwelcome kind, and did their visitors ever arrive quickly! The chaos on the floor below had already alerted them to the presence of a living entity, and as she looked around Chas could see there were already four fiends stalking within the shadows. To work, then.

She shifted across the room, through beds and other physical obstacles, colichemarde drawn and glowing as it plunged through the open doors and into the darkness of the wardrobe. The blade shattered the darkness within and with it barred the entry of another ghastly thing that had attempted its arrival in tandem.

The scream of it filled the room and drove the other fiends to action, setting them upon Gaage with vigor. Chas did not waste time and immediately ghosted over to the second portal in the back corner, finding a fiend in her path as it exited just before she could reach it. The thing lashed out, tearing across her front with its ghoulish claws and rending her metaphysical self with a soulful agony she had by now become intimately familiar with. Chasmine let out a yelp of pain, her figure fizzling from sight as the fiend passed through where she'd been to set its horrible gaze on Gaage instead.
 
Fucking hell, the size of that last portal.

Gaage wouldn't have even noticed it if Chasmine hadn't corrected him on his count. Not only was the room already crowded with the soul-sucking phantoms, but now he was going to have to keep an eye on the sky for more of them coming from up above. "So much for quick n' easy." The exile grumbled. It's almost like whatever had put these gates down had been reading the Battle Tactics textbook from the Academy, the way they were strategically placed.

Oh well, nothing to be done about it but keep the rabble busy while Chasmine beat up the furniture. As she floated away to begin her work, Gaage hung back, waiting until they took notice of him and his apparently delectable spirit. It didn't take long, two of them completely ignored Chas and went right for him, but he was able to duck down in-between them and move to the other side of the room.

A scream rang out as Chasmine took out the first portal, and the poor sunuvabitch trying to climb out of it. So far so good. Gaage valted over a bed to his right, sidestepping a third asshole to come to the side of the room without any portals on it. Chas was headed to the next portal when...

She took a hit?

Somehow it hadn't occurred to him that she could be hit by these things. She hadn't given him a crash course in ghost physics, so he'd just assumed any attack would phase through her, but the cry of pain told him otherwise. Going on instinct, Gaage jumped onto the bed to draw more attention to himself.

"Over here, never-was!"

Chasmine
 
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It took her a moment.

Two moments.

Three moments.

Chasmine's spirit manifested with a rattling gasp for air, black miasma hissing in the slashes across her front as she surged forward from where her assailant had abandoned her at Gaage's insistence for attention. What he was doing was a bad idea - a proverbial alarm bell to the two remaining open portals on the floor. Chas reached the portal in the corner just as another fiend had furled outward and with determination shoved it back through, bodily and spiritually. The pair of them disappeared through the gaping black doorway and a moment later her colichemarde plunged through it from beyond, shattering the opening around it.

"Gaage!" her voice called out for him, though it seemed distantly echoing downward from the last remaining portal on the ceiling, "Do you know any sea shantys?"
 
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"Sea shanties?!"

Gaage was too busy trying not to get his soul sucked out of his body by actual fucking spirits to even begin processing the question she'd just called up to him, let alone rake his memory for an actual sea shanty. The fuck kind of question was that?

His confusion aside, these things were getting more and more aggressive. Gaage had verbally goaded them in an attempt to draw them away from Chasmine so she could do her thing without having to take anymore damage, but they really didn't fucking like it. Eberwhit was tucking and rolling underneath the damned things, narrowly weaving between claw and gaping maw just to stay in one piece.

Oh for the love of... fine!

"WHAT WILL WE DO WITH A DRUNKEN SAILOR, WHAT WILL WE DO WITH A DRUNKEN SAILOR, WHAT WILL WE DO WITH A DRUNKEN SAILOR EAR-LIE IN THE MORNIN'?"

It was the only one he knew, and he didn't really know if it was considered a shanty or not, but he'd do anything to get some breathing room from these ethereal bastards, even if it meant subjecting them to his less-than-stellar singing voice.

"WAY HAY AND UP SHE RISES, WAY HAY AND UP SHE RISES, WAY HAY AND UP SHE RISES EAR-LIE IN THE MORNIN'!"

Chasmine
 
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