A lone figure made its way through the forest, keeping his arms held firmly around himself to ward off the winter’s chill. The closer the figure actually got to his destination, however, the colder the air seemed to get around him. So cold, in fact, that any sensible traveler would take it as the elements themselves warning any potentials explorers that this was a place that was best left fled. This particular traveller, however, had never been described as sensible for the twenty-two years he had been alive. He had been described as dim and charmingly oblivious, among other things, but never sensible. The point was, no castle, keep, fortress, or any other sort of building would make him turn back from his goal, and that was why young Derreth still had a job at “J.R Terrance & Sons Supernatural Mediators”. J.R Terrance was a man who prided himself and his employees as being rather good at their job of “mediating” spirits, vampires, and other supernatural difficulties, and a lack of fear proved to be a great help in doing so.
Derreth had hauled himself all the way out here to make a certain vampire who had holed himself up in a nearby castle “go away”, to use a professional term. From the job description the nearby village had given, the vampire had been going out at night, committing various misdeeds and enchanting his castle with a multitude of traps once the villagers decided they wanted a stop to all this. And so his employer had sent him off with little more than the standard vampire hunter’s equipment. A couple of cloves of garlic, which Derreth had to reminded weren’t for eating, a stake and hammer, and a pouch of unmarked silver coins.
Derreth eventually made his way out of the forest surrounding his destination, the full moon above illumating the castle that stood in front of him. Going by the sudden frigid wind blowing into his fur, the bodies of previous adventurers scattered across the ground in various states of decay, and the “Keep Out” sign that had been painted in a suspiciously red color, Derreth figured he had found the right place. He made his way closer to the entrance, staring up at the keep before him. Years of architectural neglect had left the castle in ruins, with overgrown weeds twisting and snaking their way around piles of stone that littered the ground. With all the missing pieces, the castle almost resemebled some sort of claw, forever grasping upwards towards the sky, seeking to raise itself out of the ground in the same sort of shambling unlife that the rest of its inhabitants existed in. Something about being turned into a vampire gave you the urge to live in the most dramatic possible fashion, apparently.
The fox stepped closer towards the moat the surrounded the castle, taking a careful look without letting himself getting to close. The water itself looked to be about as black as the night sky itself, with something bubbling just below the surface. Swimming was out, then, Derreth supposed. The drawbridge, however, looked like it would make a safer way in if he could just find a way to get it down. A plan started to form in his head, and after performing a brief mental checklist, Derreth put it into action. “Hey!” he called upwards into the sky. “Can somebody let down this drawbridge? I have to go kill a vampire in here!”
For a long while, there was nothing but silence. Just as Derreth started to turn around to try to find another way in, he could hear something creaking. He craned his head behind him, noticing that the drawbridge was indeed starting to lower itself rather quickly. It was at this point the fox noticed that he had very much misjudged the distance between him and the drawbridge. By the time he managed to lift his leg to get into a run, he heard a sickening crunch before everything went black.
He awoke some time later, sprawled across the ground and feeling rather bruised. He quickly ran a paw over his coat, checking for bruises and broken news. While he was relived to find out nothing was actually broken, he found himself rather concerned that none of his body parts actually seemed to be there. In fact, everywhere he touched, his fingers passed right through his body. “Still getting used to it, I see,” a voice whispered. “Don’t worry, it takes everybody some time.”
Derreth cocked his head towards the source of the voice. It seemed to come from a figure in a heavy gray cloak which covered his face completely. “I’ll be with you in just a minute,” he continued, scribbling something across a sheet of paper. “To be honest, that was probably a rather poor decision you made. If it were me out there, I would have tried something else. Then again, I’m not you, which is why you’re in this situation in the first place.” The figure had a whisper that was loud enough for Derreth to pick up perfectly clearly, with nothing about its voice giving any potential clues to its gender or identity.
“Wait, though,” Derreth said, picking himself off of the ground before attempting to dust himself off before remembering that he was transparent. Still, at least he wouldn’t need to take baths anymore. “Why am I invisible? Can you see me?” He didn’t remember doing anything that would make him invisible. First, he had a drawbridge fall on him, then he ended up here. Obviously, somewhere between these two events, he must have ended up invisible. He quickly took a look around where he currently was, not seeing anything as far as he could see except for sheer darkness. It was as if he, the mysterious figure and its desk were the only things left in the world.
“Yes, I can see you,” the figure explained, taking the paper and slipping it into one of the drawers in the desk. “And no, you’re not invisible.” It gave a long, drawn out sigh, placing what looked to be a talon upon where its face would be if it weren’t covered in a cloak. “Think about it. If you were invisible, would you be able to see yourself? You’re incorporeal. There’s a rather distinct difference.”
“I’m not a corporation, I’m a fox,” Derreth pointed out. “And we’re a local business.” He was finding himself getting annoyed with the figure for trying to confuse him with all those big words.
“And the sad thing is you’re one of the brighter ones I’ve met,” the figure admitted with another sigh. “Allow me to be blunt with you, then.” He waved a talon back and forth across the air, creating what looked to be a small window. “Watch.” The window filled with the scene of a fox staring behind himself, before a rather heavy looking drawbridge toppled over onto him, crushing him flat. “Am I making this clear to you, now? Or do you need me to slow it down?”
Derreth stared at the scene for a moment as it played out, before perking his head in confusion. “That’s weird, that guy looks just like me. Did you end up talking to him, too? Did he end up becoming, uh,” he paused for a moment, trying to remember the pronunciation of the word the figure used. “Inn-core-pee-all?” He beamed at managing to pronounce the word, showing off his two rows of ghostly fangs.
The figure said nothing for a moment, before growling out and slamming his fist into the desk. “That is YOU!” he yelled out, banging his fist into the desk a few more times. “That is you, because you are dead! Dead, dead!”
Derreth thought about his situation, before nodding slowly. “Oh. I guess that would make sense,” he admitted. “Mr. Terrance told me this would probably happen, so he gave me these.” The fox reached into the pocket in his coat and pulled out a pouch that was just as transparent as the rest of them, shaking them around with a jingle. Derreth pulled out a single silver coin, tossing it over towards the figure. It picked it up, staring at it for a moment before a glint of light from the coin made the figure squawk out in surprise, quickly tossing the silver piece over to Derreth.
“If you were trying to bribe me,” the figure growled out, shaking its head to get the flash out of its hidden eyes, “I don’t even know what you were trying to do it with.”
“I think they’re enchanted,” Derreth said. “I think I’m supposed to give them to you if something bad happens to me, so you’ll bring me back.” The fox shrugged his shoulders. “He said I would probably need a lot of them, but I don’t know what he meant by that.” The figure gingerly leaned in and picked up the coin in its talons, this time holding it far away from its face while the strange creature examined it.
“Some powerful magic in this, I have to admit,” the figure whispered, throwing it back towards Derreth. “How many of these do you have, exactly?” The fox responded by opening up the pouch and preparing to overturn it over onto the cloaked figure’s desk. “Stop, stop!” he whispered out, covering his hands in front of his face before the shiny coins could spill out. “You’ll run out eventually, I suppose. Who is this Mr. Terrance person, anyway?”
“Oh, he’s my boss,” Derreth explained. “See, I work for J.F Terrance & Sons Supernatrual Mediators. We find ghosts and vampires and stuff like that who go around bothering people, then we make them, uh,” he paused for a moment. “You know, go away. And I was at that castle because there’s this vampire hanging around it he wants me to go get rid of.”
The figure suddenly leaned in, listening intently to whatever the fox had to say. “Vampires, you say?” he asked curiously. “Hmm, maybe we can discuss this. The thing about vampires, boy, is that they don’t die like most people, say, you for example, should. And that makes my job more difficult on me. And they tend to spread around, and I don’t need to tell you having vampires running around all over Quentaria,” the figure paused, sucking its breath in before finishing what it had to say. “Well, it would be bad. Very bad. Since you want to find that vampire, and I want you to find that vampire, I’ll take one of those coins off of your hands and we’ll just forget this little meeting.” The figure waved a talon upwards, and Derreth felt himself being pulled upwards. “For both our sakes, though, try not to make this a habit…”
A moment later, Derreth found himself standing on top of the drawbridge that had fallen on his head a few minutes ago, the way into the castle proper now clear to him. Before he went inside, though, he stopped a moment to consider the experience he just went through. He wasn’t sure if he was the first or not, but he had just managed to find out what had laid beyond this mortal coil, the secrets of life, death, and the universe itself revealed to him. “Weird,” the fox concluded, before venturing forward. He slowly made his way over the drawbridge, careful to avoid the more rotten looking spots in the wood. The coins were handy, sure, but dying, as it turned out, was a bit of a pain in the tail.
The entrance hall of the castle was in just as much disarray as its exterior. A long red carpet, soiled with stains from things Derreth cared not to think about, led off in several different directions. It snaked its way up a stone stairway, while sturdy looking wooden doors led off towards the unknown. A few hundred or so years ago, it might have been a decent enough place to live. With how dark and dismal Derreth’s surroundings were now, however, the whole room seemed to have an aura of fear that would have most people running in fear. And Derreth, to his credit, actually did know the meaning of fear, being only a four letter word. That didn’t, however, meant he actually felt any.
With no real indication on which way to go, Derreth pulled one of those silver coins out of his pouch, placing it onto his thumb. He flicked it up into the air, shortly before remembering that these particular coins didn’t have any sides. “Well, darn,” the fox said to nobody in particular, trying to think of some other way to go. He puzzled over it for a moment, before making his way to the door on the right end of the entrance hall, figuring the door on the right had to obviously be the right choice. With a confident stride, he stepped towards the door and gave it a tug. The door responding by easily swinging open, revealing a hallway. Along with, as it turned out, a large metal blade hurtling towards the fox’s neck.
Derreth awoke in the same place he had ended up after being crushed flat by the drawbridge, with the same mysterious character staring over a bunch of scattered papers. Oddly enough, however, everything seemed to be much taller than it had before. “Hey, cloak guy, when did you get a new desk?” the fox asked. The man, if it was a man, anyway, Derreth couldn’t entirely be sure, seemed like he was doing just fine with the desk he already had, at least in his own opinion.
“I didn’t,” the figure responded simply, before sitting up and moving himself closer to Derreth. From where he was standing, the figure seemed to tower over Derreth. He actually managed to get a glimpse of what was under the figure’s hood, although the inside of its cloak seemed to be made of the same inky blackness that made up the rest of the strange place he had found himself in. It reached down and grasped Derreth by the head, quickly swiveling around so he could notice his now headless body, tapping its foot impatiently to be reunited with its missing piece. “You should count yourself lucky I’m not much for puns,” the figure whispered, plopping the fox’s head back onto his body. “Is that better?”
“Much, thank you,” Derreth said, wiggling his ghostly neck around to test how it worked. It seemed to be firmly attached once again, at least as much of any of him was attached in his current state of lack of living. He fished another coin out of his pouch, dropping it onto the desk in front of him. “Well, that vampire isn’t going to slay himself!” he said with a grin, letting his bushy tail wag behind him. “See you later!” By the time he realized what he had just said, he had already felt that pulling sensation dragging him upward.
“Probably,” the figure simply replied.
Finding himself standing on top of the drawbridge once more, Derreth strided confidently into the entrance hall. It looked much the same as it did the last time he had entered the room. The only major difference was the rather morbid addition of the results of his previous attempt at storming the castle decorating the floor, with a large metal pendulum having embedded itself into the nearby wall. Gingerly stepping closer, the fox stared down at himself, quickly running a paw across the pockets of his deceased self to see if he was carrying anything. Understandably not wanting to spend too much time searching his body, the fox grabbed a clove of garlic off of his own corpse and popped it into his mouth, hungrily swallowing it down before continuing past the door. Technically, it wasn’t his garlic anymore, anyway.
Derreth carefully stepped through the entrance to the hallway, keeping himself low to the ground in case anything else might decide to pop out and do him in. This particular hallway wasn’t as decorated as the entrance hall, with only a few torches that had been extinguished ages ago to add some variety to the doors embedded inside the walls. The way forward led to another staircase that led into darkness. Figuring that the vampire would probably hole himself up as deeper underground as he possibly could, the fox carefully started making his way down the stairs, taking each step slowly and deliberately.
It seemed to be going pretty well until a ghostly apparition floated in front of Derreth to block its path. Its bony face, which looked like it might have belonged to some sort of canine at one point in time, was trapped in a mocking grin. “I am the guardian of the vampire,” it said, spectral claws just barely scratching against the fur on Derreth’s arm. “If you seek the death of the vampire, you must solve my riddle. Fail, and you will join all the rest.” It paused for a moment, letting its threat sink in, before continuing with its riddle. “What has four legs in the morning, two in the day, and three in the evening?” Then the apparition grew silent, waiting for its answer.
Derreth paused for a moment, thinking it over. A few answers popped into his head before he quickly dismissed them, and eventually, he settled on an answer that satisfied him. “A table,” the fox explained, a smug grin forming on his face. “A table owned by a really clumsy guy.” The apparition opened his mouth for a second, gave a sound like it was barely restraining itself from bursting into laughter, and charged into him, sending Derreth spiraling into the darkness below.
“A table,” the cloaked figure mouthed, drumming its talons across the desk below. “A table. Really, now. I know it’s you you’re dealing with, fox, but… a table? Really?” It didn’t sound upset, at least, but then again, given the monotome whisper the figure always spoke in, it never sounded like much of anything. “I’m not sure whether to be more embarrassed for you or that ghost. I’ve heard that one about a hundred times before you were even born. In fact, I’ve heard it before your great, great grandfather was born.”
“Well, think about it like this,” Derreth explained, peeling himself off of the darkness that served as a floor. “So you’ve got this really clumsy guy. He has a table, which has four legs. In the day, he trips over it and breaks a couple of legs. The table’s legs, not his. Well, maybe his, if he falls really badly,” he continued, his voice trailing off.
“It’s not a table,” the figure replied. “Think. What moves on four legs a lot, but some of the time?”
The fox scratched the back of his ears. “Uh… a baby?”
The figure made a motion that almost made it look like it was nodding. “Right. It crawls on four legs in the morning. And then what would it do in the afternoon?”
“Walk on two legs like an adult?” Derreth guessed.
“If I had any gold stars to give you, I’d give you one,” the figure responded with just a touch of sarcasm in its emotionless whisper. “And in the evening?”
Derreth blushed slightly, giving a nervous giggle. “Well, then he gets three legs, but I don’t think that’s really polite conversation…”
The figure suddenly stood up, grabbed Derreth’s coin pouch, and yanked a coin loose before hurtling Derreth upwards towards the surface once more. “A person! A person!” it called out after him, only moments before Derreth found himself standing on the drawbridge again. The more he thought about it, the more he’d have to see about settling down on this drawbridge, giving how often he had been finding himself back here. Without skipping a beat, the fox made his way back to the stone staircase, careful not to trip over his own corpse on the way there.
The apparition appeared once more in front of Derreth, a hint of confusion appearing on its rictus grin. “I’ll not ask how you survived the fall,” it growled. “Neither will I ask my riddle again. Do you have my answer?”
“A person,” Derreth replied, feeling very proud of himself. The spirit paused for a moment before letting off a long sigh, which felt like an icy chill against the fox’s fur. It slowly floated off into the distance, leaving his path unbarred. Derreth quickly made his way down the rest of the staircase, carefully stepping over yet another of his own corpses that found itself flattened at the end of the stairway. The stairs twisted into a catacomb, a thick scent of decay overwhelming the fox’s nose. The bones of unfortunate souls that had long passed any chance anybody could identify them laid across the ground, with a large wooden coffin placed in the center. Derreth grinned, reaching for his stake and hammer. It had felt like he had been in this rotting old castle for ages, and with what he had went through, maybe he had. But in just a few moments, he’d be able to put this whole unpleasant experience behind him. And him. And him.
The fox grabbed the coffin lid and wrenched it open. Inside, a horse clad in regal attire laid as if it were frozen solid, not reacting in the slightest to having its rest disturbed. Derreth let off a sigh of relief, careful not to breathe too loudly and push his luck. After his last visit, the last thing he wanted to do was end up facing the wrath of the cloaked figure once more. Carefully placing his stake and raising his hammer high above his head, the fox prepared to finish the job.
Meanwhile, the cloaked figure was busily poring over its seemingly near infinite supply of paperwork, only just now noticing it hadn’t seen the fox in a while. It took a deep breath and sank back into its chair, letting itself relax. As much as one with its sort of strenuous work could let itself relax, anyway. And then it glanced up, seeing another deceased soul staring up towards it. “I’m just about ready to take those coins and shove them…” it paused for a moment, letting itself get a good look at the person in front of it. To his surprise, it wasn’t the usual fox, just a gaunt looking horse in a noble’s robe staring back, with a rather large stake jutting out of its chest. “So, he finally got you, eh? I’m surprised he didn’t up trying to pound a piece of meat inside you.”
“Eh, can’t say I didn’t try,” the horse responded, yanking the stake out of himself with a loud pop.
The figure nodded, scribbling a few more lines onto its paper. “I trust you’ll make this less of a hassle then the fox? I really to deal with this ‘enchanted coins’ business, I can’t handle this sort of thing.”
“Actually, now that you mention it,” the vampire admitted with a sheepish, fanged grin, “I did find this one pouch of coins off of that fox’s body while he was down here…”
