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Walden had practically made himself at home in every room of the Greyfield Hotel; at least five times, on all three of the four floors, from room one to forty-one. He even dwelled about the lobby floor of the building, in the library and the indoor swimming pool. He hung around the lobby, but not as often--for some reason, it depressed him. Also, it had too many windows spilling decayed sunlight into the room. The boiler room in the attic, however, was nice and dark, so he spent quite a lot of time there. He sat amongst the things the bellhop left and thumbed through his memorabilia and things. He barely remembered the kid, only faintly recollecting his red-haired, freckled form holding the elevator for him--Walden guessed he must have been living here with the boiler as company when he wasn't working, living off the grace of the widow owner's heart and getting scraps from the kitchen.

Walden liked the hotel's gardens--but after a decade or so, they had turned into a weed-choked jungle, and had become less of a pleasure to walk through. Never mind that stepping out of the hotel in the daytime gave him a bad case of the headaches.

He roamed around every inch of the hotel, but the only rooms he absolutely did not slip into were the rooms twenty-eight, and forty-two. His rotting body was still lying untouched and face down in the bed of twenty-two, and forty-two was where Harold 'Butcher' Burtlett had been staying at on the night of the murders. And Walden was convinced that Burtlett's spirit was still in there, and therefore didn't go near it.

Even though it was ridiculous. What had a ghost to fear of another ghost? Still, Walden kept away from that sociopath. He could hear his cackling sometimes throughout the entire house, and it thoroughly terrified him.

Walden didn't sleep, so his roaming was relentless. In life, he remembered himself to be always restlessly roaming—yet it had been different on the night he had died.

He had only spent half a night in the hotel, not looking anyone he saw in the eye or absorbing the details of his surrounding, which washed over him like water and yet never took a hold. He had been walking like the dead in his climb to his room, the gun stuffed in his briefcase in waiting to be stuffed into his mouth, and blow his brains all over Greyfield's clean wallpaper and bed sheets.

Now dead, he had all the time in the world to notice his surroundings. The architecture of his ‘prison’, he guessed, was a fake sort of French Norway style, and the inside was padded down with stone and rich wallpapers. It was like a gilded trinket, and modern for the thirties. He just hated when the flowers rotted on the tables and the lobby desk, which made the whole first floor stink of moldy roses. He hadn't had the heart to move them, or dump them out, so they just gathered dust and cobwebs like the rest of the place until they finally combusted into black decay.

--

Walden is my latest in character development. He's the ghost of a 1930s small time con artist and bank robber. He is mistaken as the serial killer believed to reside in the same place he haunts, and is captured (in a jar, lord help his pride) by a human. The human needs him to help them to take revenge on someone...I don't know if he gives the person directions, helps in fighting, or what. Haven't really tried for any plot.

Before the day was fully over, Porter found himself leaning out the window of his cell and watching the sun set over the forest below and the ocean beyond the village. The usual azure seas were tinted an inky navy beyond the fringes of the horizon, and the sky was painted with orange and salmon red from the summer sun. Few clouds heeded his view, as they cravenly held back into the star-blotted night bordering the epitome of the dying daylight's sky. A shy fingernail-thin slit of the moon hid behind barely a wispy end of a cloud; soon it would peak out and join itself with the rest of the heavenly bodies posing above. Port had to crane his neck to see it, but this brilliant sunset was worth the work. Inspiration crept into his mind as he gazed up. His notepad and quill were on the endtable that laid between his bed and the window--he grabbed it, and returned to the window to sit on the sill and write under the light of the setting sun.
'Sir Cornelius drew his sword and rallied his men to his side. They were vagabonds, thiefs, braggarts--barbaric tribesmen of the north and enemies to the good people of the kingdom. But under Cornelius's leadership, they were the only source of hope for the diseased ridden serfs of Lord Derpletom's lands below them. With these brutish men Sir Cornelius the White charged against the undead soldiers storming the valley--'
Beside his window, to his left while he faced the right, grew an oak tree that came from the monastery's walled in yard below. A branch, thick with the old oak's age, sprouted out and stood very near to him. Port didn't need to look up from his quill scratching to know who it was that was climbing up the gnarled oak, exumbing feminine grunts as they did, and perched themselves on the branch. A voice sprang up from behind his back, and he was not surprised: "Whatcha doin?"
"Does it look like any of your business?" Porter niether looked up or stopped writing. He dabbed his quill in his ink and continued on his line.
'--storming the valley, siezing them from whimpering maiden's and the homes of good people to tear thier limbs--'
"Is Fin here?" She seemed bored. And impatient.
"If he was, he'd already be making his presence known." Porter's voice was grating on annoyance. "It's not like I've tied him up in my room--if you wanna seem him, he's three cells over. Go do as you like."
'--thier limbs from thier bodies and burn thier rotting carcasses--'
The cropped black-haired girl behind him scoffed. "Tch, no need to be snappish. Just because you can read and write..."
"We're not having this arguement again."
'--rotting carcasses to dust. In great piles--'
"Oh admit it, fat monk! You look down on me--just because I'm uneducated..."
"No!" Port snapped, nearly turning around. "I look down on you because can't eat a meal without having food stuck to the nether regions of your face!"
The girl scoffed again--this time in surprised outrage. "You...so you do look down on me!!"
"We're not having this arguement," the monk repeated, grumbling and returning to his paper.
'In great piles the men layed these unholy undead whom they desecrated, and with thier torches did they light aflame these still moving corpses, releasing a smell so foul it fell the weaker stomached men among them.'
"Why won't you look at me?" She had said that after a long beat between them. It had all the childishness of an impudent small child wanting to know why it wasn't getting something from a store window it had passed by. He could hear the pout dripping from her voice.
He sighed. "I'm busy. Leave me alone--go back to bed where you belong."
He tried again return to his writing, but she was insistent.
"My wing's not broken anymore--I don't have to stay in that stinkin bed..."
"Cro, please..."
"You can't make me. You...and that wizened abbot. If I don't want to, I don't have to."
"You're being a brat." Port hadn't meant that to come out as a snarl, but it had.
Cro didn't say anything. He heard the smacking of flesh on wood--she was kicking her legs against the branch in thought. After a few beats of lag in the conversation passed, Port returned to his paper.
'Yet even as they ridded the blemished land of this hellish filth, Sir Cornelius knew his work was not done. There was still the fight with the Necromancer on top of Devil's Spine that he had to battle. Climbing the stairs of the twisting tower, Cornelius the Brave finally came to the top. The Necromancer was there--waiting.'
The sounds of wings beating in the air reached his ear, but he ignored it. Perhaps she was leaving--that would be a godsend.
'Cornelius drew his sword, Rag'nirin. He was not afraid--he had seen his death unfolded in the filmed over eyes of the blind Seer. He had fought hydras of the deep, and climbed through dark caves filled with only the imaginable evil that kept itself from God's light. He knew not fear when he faced the Necromancer, and bellowed with his great voice before the unspeakably evil sorcerer of death--'
"C..Corn...Bugger, I can't make that word out. Did you make it up?"
"BWAAH!" Porter reeled backwards from the window, spluttering ink all over his paper and part of his shirt. He cursed out loud, as usual forgetting his morals as a monk to have a spotless mouth. He looked up and glower at the girl hovering in the air by the window. "Cro!"
Cro looked sorry--for a moment. Then she crossed her arms and snarled, "Well...you shouldn't have been so bloody secrective! What's so great about that chickenscratch your making up from your head that you can notice company making conversations with ya."
'The last thing you are is company'. Port hissed through his teeth. "Get. Out. Now."
"Why?" It was an unsure counterattack. Part of her obviously felt like maybe she should go. She was inching backwards, even if it was a bit. Yet the fierce leer Porter sent straight her way made Cro make up her mind--with a heave of her black wings, she lifted herself into the air and flit out of sight.
Port looked down at his piece of precious paper--ruined. Utterly destroyed. And he couldn't even recall the tangent he had been thinking of. The sunset was nearly at its end--only a blood red blemished the night's dark now. Out of candles, and out of time for sunlight, Porter balled up the piece of paper and threw it across the room. He capped his ink bottle, stored his quill, then sat on his bed and whittled away the last of the day light hours in thought, before night prayer's and the monastery's bell sounded for curfew.

--

Actually finished. This is about a year or so old.

An enormous advantage in endurance was, as BeeCee was now realizing, a gift and a curse. When she was still a newbie, she had been thrilled to find that the local beasties surrounding Winwintar did little more than slap her wrists when striking damage against her Surgeon class. Therefore, she quickly spent all of the gold she aquired in starter quests to skip past the weaponry shop and enter the clothing boutique to improve her appearance. She also immeadiately afterwards took off from Winwintar, past the area that perhaps low level newbies like herself should have stayed leveling at, and straight into the dangerous mountain territory surrounding the data bubble.
She was quickly returning to the Data Bubble now...salivating herd of enormous Wereboars in tow.
"Whhhhhhhhy-" She shrieked, dashing desperately down the sloping hill of snow and ice. The Wereboars, extremely angry by her failed attempt to destroy thier den, bounded at her heels with disturbing squeals and bellows. That only made her run faster--sadly, she was not a class from Spa'ring, and the pig men were gaining quickly.
"Why didn't I focus on movement for a skill???" she screamed desperately to herself, mentally kicking her backside. The moment of distraction would be her downfall--just then, her feet flew over her head, as she tripped and tumbled down a sudden steep fall of the hillside.
"Fuuuuuuuuuuu-" was her exclamation the entire way down.
Finally, with an 'oomph' she hit the bottom. She winced, covered in snow that soaked her meager cloth armor--no wonder her stamina hadn't lasted her as long as she thought. Obviously, climate would be harsher outside the data bubble.
The data bubble.
BeeCee looked up, green hair crusted with snow--it was just a few yards away. Just a few yards. She tried to crawl to the safety of the bubble, at least to get out of this damn blizzard--seemed no such luck, what with her health and stamina bar being so low. What she wouldn't give for a potion right now!
The bellow of the agitated boars thundering down the hill made her snap around. They were going around the steep hillside--and they were quickly racing towards her. For the first time in the game, fear coursed through her. She fingered the hilt of the cleaver in her hand--a shamble of a piece of weaponry that she had bought after, what...three quests ago? Just as shambly as the slingshot at her side. A million curses stringed across her mind.
The only thing she had in reserve was what was strapped to her back, completely unused. It had been with her through the entire game--a heavy piece of cumbersome metal, not like the bonesaws and syringes she had seen on other Surgeons. She had an opinion that it was a glitch--some joke the game creators had given her. For god's sakes, it didn't even LOOK like a normal spirit weapon--it was a giant monkey wrench! For this reason, she had ignored it and bought a mediumly expensive cleaver to make up for its lack of use. Fudge spirit weapons. Tempermental things.
The largest of the wereboars, with blood red hair and dripping yellow tusks, was now so close she could hear it breath. Her cleaver would do no good to it--chopping attacks seemed to have little effect on its hide. She had nothing to stab or club it with, nothing to shoot at it except for pebbles. It was her last weapon...if she didn't do something, she'd be dead and have to return all the way back to her save point.
Which had just happened to be right back at the wereboar den.
Great.
"Alright," she murmured, slipping the bonds off the sledgewrench and carefully putting it in her hand. Yes, she was talking to an oversized monkey wrench; couldn't spirit weapons sometimes talk back though? "I've known we've had our differences...Sledgy. But, I think, if there was ever a time for you to prove yourself, Sledgy...now would definitely be the time!"
She screamed the latter; the wereboar was right in front of her, his tusks aimed at her throat. Luckily--or unluckily--she slumped back to be flung away from it, landing in the snow. She had dropped her arm holding the initially wieghtless sledgehammer to be sunk by it to the ground. The wereboar charged ahead unheeded a few yards, before it finally looked up and realized it had missed its prey. He turned back around, just as BeeCee lifted her head to spout out snow.
"SLEDGY!" she screamed, standing up. The sledgewrench stoically remained as heavy as a ton, making her look ridiculous as she tried desperately to lift it with two hands. This was how it must have been glitched--not only was it a monkey wrench, it had random tantrums in which it would suddenly increase its mass and drop uselessly to the ground.
"Sledgy, stop it. This isn't the--"
'Don't call me Sledgy.'
BeeCee blinked incredulously. Was...did she just hear a voice in her head?
Before logic could even step in to contradict this absurd idea, the voice returned. 'Yes, and you can keep berating me all you like, stupid girl. I am not getting up for nothing.'
Very male, she thought. And very sarcastic. Almost snooty.
The wereboar was upon BeeCee again.

--

Suppose to be a post for AntiVirus, til I learned that spirit weapons don't exactly have personalities and AIs. Kind of made me not to do it anymore after that.

Ragd perspired under the shade of the Zinn’nidid underbrush, as the sweltering southern sun beat down mercilessly on her pale blue skin. She hesitated in her crouched position, wondering if it was wise to shake out of her stealth for a quick fix to the sweat dripping down her squashed blue nose. It annoyed her intensely. Ignore it, Hunter tradition from her tribe commanded in her mind.
She snarled silently and did so. That’s right--what was mild discomfort compared to the aching of her legs and arms from her night long hunt? Ragd was just two feet from her prey, which she had chased all the way here. She had proven herself courageous (or foolhardy, as the other hunters of her tribe had jeered at her back as she had left) by not shaking off the chase when it had gone too far into Jungle troll territory, and there was absolutely no chance that she was screwing up this moment in her life; her first kill.
Therefore, she was just going to have to sit here and stand the veil of sweat dripping down her face. Yes, that was making it hard to see, that was attracting the morning mosquitoes to buzz and bite, that was making a stream from its salty spring on her brow to drip down her nose and wiggle on her upper lip to make it itch—‘damn it!’
With a quick dash, the young island troll wiped her brow and returned it to the ground. In a flash, she froze again in the shadows. Had it seen--??
The raptor did not even lift the feathered crest on the top of its head in attention at her abrupt movement. It continued to pace around the ancient wall it had cornered itself at, coughing in seemingly reptilian indignation at being trapped. Its striped back was to Ragd, and she smirked in mocking triumph. What foolish advice her elders had given her—raptors seemed smart, but this one had no more strategy than tiger cub fresh from its den. She didn’t fully understand why voodoo tradition was so tenacious on the fact that a hunter was only a Hunter when he or she had killed and skinned the mystical lizards of their region. Yes, truly this ferocious predator had given her an extremely exhausting chase, yet--look at it! As she stood spear in three-digited hand, Ragd watched amusedly as it jumped wildly about and sent a flurry of panicked whistles and squeals in every direction. What a dimwitted creature.
Slowly she slid out of the shadows—‘Time for it to face the inevitable.’ She entered the clearing and the reptilian beast swerved around and hissed. It backed itself against the wall and crouched menacingly, baring its razor sharp teeth. ‘Those teeth will look good as a trophy around my neck,’ she thought with near glee. Ragd tasted the sweet tension in the air and gripped her shivering fingers around her spear. Bloodlust intermixed with adrenaline—hunting always made her heart pump faster.
The beast vibrated a terrifying roar from its throat, almost a scream. Ragd felt her nerve slipping slightly as the sound hit her ears—somehow this felt different from the tigers. She poised her spear to stab it through the chest. When the beast made a desperate lunge at her—flying in the air from its amazing back legs—she parried its claws with her weapon and gave the side of its head a hard sweep with the other end. It was knocked to the ground, dazed from the hit. The next would be at its belly, as Ragd flipped her tool around to its stone cut point—
“RRRRRRYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAGGGGG!!!”
Ragd glanced up. ‘Oh crap.’
The lone raptor’s pack stood at the top of the crumbled building Ragd was in front of, glaring down at her with their menacing slit eyes. The lone raptor, Ragd’s ‘easy and dimwitted prey’, screeched at the sight of them. It screeched in feral triumph.
Ragd involuntarily took a step back, but kept her weapon pointed at raptor number one. It was too busy making short whistle noises at the largest raptor, obviously the leader. They were communicating. That wasn’t a good sign for Ragd—dimwitted beasts usually didn’t have such a sophisticated lingo between them. When the entire pack of less than eleven reptiles leaped from the crevices of the crumbling ruins, Ragd suddenly realized that she wasn’t just in trouble because she was in Jungle troll territory. This was also this pack’s territory—and she had been dumb enough to fall in their trap.
Ragd slowly tried to retreat back into the darkness of the jungle. Yet that plan failed; in seconds she was surrounded by hissing, ravenous, and infuriated raptors. They began to close in on her—she felt her blood curdle. Was this her moment of dying?
Such an intense thought made a wave of emotion swell in her—if there was ever a good moment for her to feel her first berserker moment, that time was now. She gripped her spear and tried to harness that rage as the reptiles edge closer. The bloodlust seemed to elude her grasp, as usual. She panicked. If she was to die, it was best if she died in the way of her people—taking as many body counts as possible!
An arrow whizzed inches between her shoulder and ear to pierce the hide of the raptor in front of her. At the end of the shaft were the bright red feathers of the lizard birds of this region, unlike the simple brown feathers of her tribe. The raptor screamed in pain, and as it writhed on the ground trying to get the arrow out, its comrades and Ragd looked up. Ragd’s jaw dropped at the figure crouched on the top of the ancient wall. Things had now gone from bad to worse for her.
This is what the elders had handed down in told history to the young ones like Ragd: The island trolls had landed on the western continent many years ago, after being exiled from the eastern jungles by war among their race and the elves. They were of a tribe that was known for being less larger and intimidating to the other trolls of the forest, jungle, and the frost—they were lithe, averaging in two hundred pounds and seven feet in height--yet they were also known to be craftier in their small numbers than the rest of their race. When they landed on the continent, the proud exiles instantly had conflicting differences with the trolls that already dwelled there—these were the jungle troll tribe, the Sabertusks.
Fighting broke out, but the elders of that time swayed the tribe to better judgment against their pride in order for overall survival. The island trolls, sacrificing better hunting grounds and supplies for immediate peace, settled where the Sabertusks tribe ordered them to dwell—in the small patch of barrier islands off the coast. The island trolls were unhappy that they constantly struggled to live on these strips of sand where little life grew, but they endured it as they waited for their time to come to seize the Sabertusks’ land and gain a true foothold on their new continental home.
Ragd glowered at the smirking green troll staring down at her. ‘Of all the idiots of the Sabertusk tribe, why’d it have to be him?’
‘He’ wasn’t alone. More green trolls appeared around him, their leader Throg’didd in the center. The hunting party notched their arrows and in an instant after Throg’s command, and set them loose on the raptors surrounding the blue island troll. Quickly, the screaming reptiles were silenced, with their bodies strewn on the bloody ground.
The jungle trolls leaped lightly from the wall, their hard muscles fluid for all their bulk. They aimed their arrows at the smaller female troll. Throg’didd casually stood up from his crouch and took his time making his way through the corpses and his men to Ragd. His direct slowness worked in annoying her, yet she refused to show it. He towered over her like his underlings, but she didn’t flinch at the chief’s son. Ragd frowned up at him.
Throg’didd grinned at her obvious refusal to be intimidated. “You back again, maggit?”
“You’d think t’ree times having yo fingers cut off would tell someone not to forget where te borders layed,” said one of the duller looking warriors, staring at Ragd with little interest.
Ragd locked her jaw. “I didn’t forget,” she spat, her cheeks flaming. “I’m not stupid.”
“Oh ho ho,” Throg’didd jeered venomously. “

--

Yeaaaa...Never finished this one. Sorry.