[PRP] Boneitis

[Smerdle]

sorry this not actually a prp, it is my storage thread for rando-generated solos thanks for visiting heart

boneitis rules

x x

 

[Smerdle]

the haunted library

He returned to school confused but defiant, well aware that something larger than himself had happened while he had been home, something that involved the odd lock that had taken up temporary residence on his chest and a head full of painful, embarrassing memories. Too painful. He knew his mother was capable of lying in order to keep him from doing things she didn't approve of, but not even on her most possessive days did he think she had it in her to be so deliberately cruel. His rational mind knew this, but he still couldn't put aside what she had said. Brenley might have dwelt on the whole situation indefinitely had he not awoken the next morning to find an assignment of indeterminate origin slipped under the door to his dorm.

"The Haunted Library?" He'd never even heard of the place.

He began the project almost immediately, hurrying to the school library after showering and arranging his hair. For most of the rest of the morning, Bren sat in a low traffic section of the building, gathering as much information about the other library as he could. He closed his last large, informative text just after noon, confident that he had done enough research to continue his studies in person. Ejection-happy librarian? Not a problem if he was polite. Questionable fungus? Easy to avoid. Giant spiders? He had a spell for that. There was only one last place to stop. Brenley swung by the creepeteria on his way off campus, picking up a dry cheese sandwich to eat as he strolled.

- - -

The reaper took his time getting to his destination, enjoying the uncharacteristically warm weather as he walked and ate. He had originally thought he might base his paper around the history of the library, but now he was beginning to worry that topic would be too generic. Perhaps if he seemed knowledgeable enough, they would allow him to explore some of the secret passages on his own. If nothing else, that would make his paper more entertaining to read.

He was still deep in thought when he turned the corner and entered into a madhouse.

Boogeymen crowded the streets, blocking the road and searching all of the cars that tried to pass. The cloaked figures were detaining people too, gathering them into little groups for questioning. Whatever was going on, Brenley wanted no part of it. He had places to be and libraries to research. Scanning the area quickly, the boil ducked into a nearby bush, sighing moodily as a particularly persistent branch caught on his pants and tugged a jagged hole in them. Determined to continue on no matter how irritating his surroundings became, Bren headed in what he thought was the approximate direction of the library, eventually emerging from a stand of bushes right across the street.

"Finally," he sighed. Brushing off his clothing, the boil jogged across the road and entered the building. He approached the front desk, expecting resistance when he asked to enter the nearest hidden corridor, but he was quickly ushered right into the nearest hall instead, a hall which was hardly hidden at all. As the door slid shut behind him, Bren reached into his satchel and pulled out a thin notepad and a flat, blue stone. With a whispered word, the stone began to glow. The dim light reflected off of a number of small, shiny objects that resembled marbles. The only difference was that they were hovering in the air. And, well, they were moving.

"Oh."

Brenley dug into the belt pouch closest to his hand, but he was too slow to stop the giant spider as it bounced toward him. It wrapped its legs around his torso and squeezed until he blacked out.  

[Smerdle]

drip drip

When he awoke to the sight of foxfires falling from the sky, Brenley grew swiftly convinced he was coming down with something. He was, but seeing foxfires was not a symptom of his illness. With a sigh and an unamused dip of his brows, the reaper rolled over and went back to sleep.

Bren got up the second time because he felt something dripping down the side of his face. He was warm and contented and didn't want to move, but when he opened his eyes and saw why, those last two sensations fled entirely. Somehow he had been transported from his bed and encased in a shoulder-high vat of slimy, green goo.

One valiant struggle later, he managed to wiggle free and pull himself out of the slime trap. He stood there, wide-eyed and panting, while he examined his surroundings. A little more than a week ago, Professor Halcyon had assigned him a paper on some place called The Dripping Staircase, and while he generally attended to academic demands immediately, Brenley had been distracted recently. He had put the paper off, and now he supposed this was his punishment. He was standing on the very staircase he had been meant to research, and he didn't have a single scrap of paper to take notes on.

Closing his eyes to momentarily block out the reality of his situation, the reaper tried to come up wit ha realistic course of action.

Grab some paper and a pen out of the muck and plug ahead, taking notes with them? No.

Enchant some of the slime and ask it the way out? A scareling's fantasy.

The only thing he really could do was steel himself and press forward, looking for a way out or dissipating in the attempt. Bren shuddered. He didn't want to dissipate anymore, or at least, not so soon after the last time. He took another look up the length of the staircase, then back into the slimy void around it, and began to climb.

* * *

It had been a little over an hour, by his estimation, when he noticed the first pink spot. As if glaring down at the thing that marred his wrist had activated it somehow, his skin began to itch, subtly at first, then irritatingly, then abominably. He thought back to the foxfires and how they had fallen so placidly from the sky. How he'd thought they were a symptom of something bigger. Was this it?

He pressed on, wishing for his belt, some smooth stones, anything.

* * *

Brenley didn't know how long it had been since the last time he'd contemplated the time. All he knew was that he was feverish, achy, and fed up with this entire unwanted adventure. When he found the ones who had brought him here, he was going to... well... not kill them. Never again. Maybe he could just breathe on them a little. Whatever this odd illness he had contracted was, it would make a suitably annoying form of retaliation.

He was so caught up in his own miserable wallowing that he failed to notice the faint whirring emanating from farther up the stairs. The hum was low and ominous, announcing a presence the boil did not want to meet. Still, he pressed on, oblivious, muttering to himself as a pack of unmentionables gathered around him and rubbed at his slimy, pajama-clad legs.

"I have not yet sworn off harming minipets," he warned, not quite meaning it. He wouldn't actually kill an animal either, but kicking one was not out of the question. The whirring persisted, growing louder now, and the minipets scurried away with a series of worried chirps.

"Better. Thank y—"

All of a sudden he heard it, but now it was too late. Too late to retreat. Too late to muster the courage to fight. And he was too exhausted for that anyway. Brenley backed away...one step... two... and then he fell. The vacuum raced after him as he tumbled down the stairs.  

[Smerdle]

not quite

Life at Amityville was busy, or at least it was if you arranged it that way. Brenley liked busy. The more information he came across in a day, the more he had the potential to absorb. He regularly took on the more obscure assignments his teachers offered, not because he was in any hurry to graduate, but due to that same desire to learn. Most of the tasks were a bit boring, even to him, though informative and dangerous excursions like the ones he had taken to the haunted library and the dripping staircase were starting to become more numerous these days. He hoped this trip to Finkelstein's old labs would inspire him with regard to the new object of his curiosity: the haunted house.

Prior to his most recent visit there, he had thought the place itself harmless. Strange, but harmless. Now, after fighting the hunter with the gun and experiencing an overwhelming anger that hadn't seemed to stem from either of them, he was beginning to think that the house was more nefarious than he had given it credit for.

Bren pushed open the door to the lab, sighing in relief at the comparatively cool air inside. He might have been raised near the desert, but today was the most unbearably warm day he'd experienced in town since he had arrived here, especially compared to this time last year. Disappointingly, the temperature was one of the only things that appeared promising about this location. Instead of a working lab, this more closely resembled a museum with its endless floating display cases and tiny plaques categorizing and organizing. It might have made him happy on another day, but the haunted house could not be explained by a tiny plaque. He would find no answers here.

Deciding soon after to try to make the best of this trip anyway, Brenley continued farther into the darkened lab, examining the sign nearest the door.

"Invisible cat: Limbless," he read with a measure of distaste. Removing the limbs from an animal wasn't an experiment as such, it was simply a rather morbid diversion. Sure, it was probably a bit of a trick to keep the limbs from regenerating after a time, but beyond that, the beast likely just... well... sat there. Bren would have vastly preferred to see a pair of animals spliced together or, even better, a Halloween citizen and...

"Scareon demon boil." He smirked. All right. Maybe the limbless cat had been a false start.

He navigated the museum at an exploratory pace, taking written notes and slightly out of focus pictures with his phone until he began to feel out of sorts. He ignored the nasty prickle that poked at his insides, subtly at first, but soon with an insistence he couldn't ignore. His frustration grew and twisted until his stomach finally let out a mocking growl he was certain anyone within a square mile must have heard. It was an idiotic necessity, food. There had been a time, very recently in fact, when he hadn't needed it at all. Technically, he supposed, that was still the case, but the divide between need and want had closed rapidly since, twining the feelings together until he could no longer separate them.

Bren turned from the Fully Functional Fetus toward the smell of lunch, and he followed it all the way to Finklestein's Fantastic Cafe before he realized he didn't have any money. He had brought some, to be sure, someone had stolen it from him in the interim.

"Lose something?" A diminutive, cloaked figure slid close to the boil, a hood hiding its darkened features.

"I was robbed, more like." Brenley's stomach growled again.

"Hungry?"

"No. I'll be fine."

"If you say so. I know of an easy way to get lunch around here that doesn't involve the Craptastic Cafe."

"Hm." He was beginning to suspect he now knew who had stolen his purse, but he really wasn't in the mood for a fight. Not that he ever was. "Fine. What do I have to do?"

The figure motioned for Brenley to follow, taking him on a haphazard journey through the labs that culminated in a back room somewhere, a space that stank of science and discovery. This was what he had been looking for when he had come here. Tidy rows of tables held experiment after experiment, all of them bubbling and gurgling like contented scarelings.

"We have been watching you today and we believe that you are our only hope... the only one who can be our intern."

"What?"

"Look. We need someone to feed the fern. Do you want free lunch or not?" The hooded figure pulled back his disguise, revealing a nerdy undead in his early twenties.

"What does it eat?"

The young man held up a foxfire.

Brenley uttered a low hum of disdain as he looked between the animal and the undead. On the one hand, there probably wasn't even an internship. On the other, he really was terribly hungry. He stared at the minipet for a long while, reveling in the fact that this stupid vampire's arms were probably starting to hurt, then he sighed and reached out to take the creature.

"Fine. Where's the fern?"  

[Smerdle]

resolutions

The last time he had stood in front of the Haunted Library he had just returned from a trip to Nel, much as he also had a few days prior. This time, however, the journey to the library hadn't been by choice. For the life of him, he couldn't recall exactly how he had arrived here at all.

The building loomed in front of him, a great deal larger than he remembered, though it was conceivable his subconscious had shrunken it in his mind, displeased with what he had found here. A leather satchel heavy with notes and vials sat against his hip. He didn't remember packing that either.

For a time Brenley considered heading back to his dorm, but ultimately he relented, pushing through the heavy metal doors into the lobby. He failed to notice the too-steep curve of the sky outside or how the snow fell in slow motion, like plastic confetti through water.

The front desk was unmanned, in fact, the entire place seemed deserted. The silence was deeper than mere courtesy, his footfalls the only sounds that broke it. Something mysterious and playful tugged at his interest, encouraging him forward even as he considered fleeing once again. Avoiding the spider-infested hallway, he entered the brightest one he could find instead. Something was wrong. At the very least, he could keep away from obvious traps.

Deep in the stacks, a blanket of calm enveloped him. The books were just as eerily silent as everything else, but their nearness was soothing, not claustrophobic. He didn't know why he trusted them. They were likely to be the first things to attack him when everything went wrong. Bren reached out a cold hand and lightly dragged his fingers across their spines. He shuffled farther, pausing when he caught a flash of light out of the corner of his eye. One of the tomes glowed a searing violet in response to his touch. Brenley snatched his hand away, frowning when the book went dark. Of course he would need to keep touching it for it to work.

The boil paused, considering what might happen if he reached out again. The book could kill him. It could bind him or turn him into a mindless slave. It could transform him into another creature entirely. Or... it could do nothing. That seemed the most likely response. All it had done prior to this was glow, after all.

Bren reached out and grabbed the dormant book, wincing as it flared to life. He pulled it from the shelf with only a moment's hesitation, then turned it so he could see its cover.

DEFEND YOURSELF
MASTER ADVANCED PHYSICAL AND ARCANE
BATTLE TECHNIQUES IN JUST THREE WEEKS

"Oh." That was something. He narrowed his eyes. Three weeks, hm? It was almost as if this place was making fun of him.

Moving on with book in hand, Brenley tentatively touched the spines again, running his hand over each one until there was another familiar flare, orange this time.

SPELLS AND POTIONS
WITH DAHLIA CLOVERHORN

Yes. There was some definite mockery going on here. He might have vehemently denied possessing any interest in taking the old reaper up on her offer publicly, but deep down becoming her apprentice was something he yearned for quite badly, despite her embarrassing requirements. Besides the Haunted House, Bren had never encountered a building that seemingly had conscious thought. He wasn't sure he was enjoying this little trip down "Things Brenley Wants" Lane, but his curiosity wasn't letting him make any attempts to escape. Not yet.

He continued forward, fingers grazing book after book, but none of them illuminated like the others had. The shelves went on and on, and after a while Bren began to worry he was trapped. He broke into a slow jog, sped into a run, then a messy sprint, the way ahead remaining the same no matter how fast he moved. Was there something he wasn't seeing?

Maybe he wasn't meant to be moving forward.

With an impulsive kick, the boil knocked one of the cases to his right into the abyss beyond. A lone scrap of paper fluttered toward him out of nowhere, the same shade and size as the one Dahlia had printed her list on. It curled near his feet. Brenley picked it up, skimming it quickly.

FINAL EXAM
TOMORROW

What? It was winter break. He didn't have any—