“Clear!”

Gene’s voice called out from one of the deceptively numerous rooms in the house.

“Clear!”

And Itra was soon to follow as they all cleared the rooms in turn, finding nothing but completely normal rooms that one might expect of a completely normal person. Too normal, they were all finding. Walls that were white without being excessively so, linoleum flooring of completely mundane designs that only served to accentuate that occasional bit of obsidian.

Cormac and Ixia had only made it into one room after Cormac used his cell phone as a flashlight and used the bag full of monster head as a doorstop. It appeared to be the master bedroom, and like every other part of the house they had seen it was completely unremarkable.

“Well, there’s no pictures here.” Cormac said as he eyed the dwindling battery on his several years old phone with dingy case. “Then again, single people just don’t have photos around the house. And she was probably single. She seems like the kind to just eat her mates...hang on is that a thing?”

The redhead had caught sight of a guilty dryad avoiding his eyes as she searched through the Gloomfang’s closet. “...it is tragically common with monsters, yes.” She poked her head back out of the closet. “But that’s not a thing with Dryads! My mother and father were a loving couple through all their days and not once did she eat him or any other humans!”

Cormac breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay good to kno- wait your dad was human?!?”

“Of course!” She called, voice muffled from the depths of the walk in closet as she shoved aside racks full of clothes. Mid shove, she tilted her head at the clothes while continuing her conversation. “What else would he have been?”

“...wait are Dryads all female?”

“We are!” Ixia was recognizing plenty of the clothes shoved off to the side as clothes for men rather than women. Recalling the Gloomfang’s appearance and predilections, she didn’t think that the monster was one to dress in anything that wouldn’t highlight her figure. “Cormac? Come take a look at this.”

The Guardian pulled himself out from under the sink, searching for anything at all, and bolted over to the closet to find Ixia kneeled down and holding a rack of clothes open to reveal men’s clothing. “These don’t look like hers, and she wouldn’t have neatly hung up the clothes of her victims.”

“Good eye. Grab a handful and we’ll search pockets.” He kneeled down next to her and whispered. “That shopkeeper sent them here as well, but they never once mentioned how this was supposed to be the home of that supplier. From the way they were talking, I don’t think they know.”

“You think she sent us here for different reasons?” Ixia asked, eyes cast over her shoulder and trained on the doorway and watching for movement.

“I think there’s more going on here than we know.” Cormac put his hand on hers and gave a reassuring smile. “And until we know what is going on? We just won’t go spilling everything, and we’ll play dumb if we have to.”

Ixia thought for a moment, green brows pressed together as she realized she was just as much of a stranger here. They had gotten off to a poor introduction to this new group, and she had only a partial idea what some of them even were. She smiled again as her Guardian squeezed her hand. “Perhaps they could be allies one day?”

“I’d love nothing more than to have some allies, but until we know for certain they’re not a threat or part of some larger plot that even they aren’t aware of? It’s just us.” Ixia’s cautious glancing over his shoulder was infectious, and had even Cormac stealing glances as they conversed in hushed whispers.

Ixia looked off again, thinking for a moment before deciding that there was still far too much to do to be stopped now by these new strangers. “We should go before they get suspicious of why we were taking so long, I could say that I was seeing if any of her clothes would look good on me?”

“Hmm, nah.” Cormac shook his head and put a hand to his chin as he frowned in thought. “Too unbelievable. Your curves are too powerful for anything that bitch would have worn.”

The dryad turned in her kneeling position and sat before her Guardian with a wry grin. “Really? And would that have anything to do with that type you mentioned having earlier?”

“Probably.” The human pursed his lips and looked around the closet space as he kept a hand to his chin in deep thought. “When we first met I was very certain I was dreaming. The whole being green thing was a surprising twist, too.”

“But you did like what you saw?” She teased as she saw his face turning pink even in the low light of his cell phone light. “Since you do love green?”

“I-” Cormac looked down to his light green shirt and darker green canvas jacket. She was starting to turn this around on him and he couldn’t have that. “I mean, maybe-”

“I’m surprised you didn’t act sooner since it looks as though you love having green on you.”

Her smile was far too innocent for the devilish look in her eye, though the smile did grow as Cormac squirmed and felt this tiny closet get far warmer than he remembered it being while he resolved to turn this back on her.

“Yes, well...you see…”

Cormac had been in the middle of gesturing with his hands and shovel in some bizarre, interpretive demonstration of what he actually meant and what she would see. Ixia waited, perched on her knees with a widening smile until her Guardian dropped the shovel and pulled her into a kiss before she knew what was happening.

Which she returned with an even greater fervor, crushing her lips against his as she pounced on him to gently knock him back onto the carpeted floor. Her hand was in his hair, his hand was in her leaves as he hoped that wasn’t something of a taboo but was a bit too far gone to care now. Their lips parted and as his tongue met hers their kiss intensified as Cormac was now keenly aware of how she tasted like honeysuckle.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

He pulled himself back after a moment to gasp for air, and immediately answer the confused and hurt look on Ixia’s face.

“As much as fighting for my life has had me re-evaluating priorities let’s continue this later, when we don’t have people waiting on us and when we’re not in a haunted house and inviting death on us.”

Ixia pouted as they disentangled themselves, but then remembered some of the many movies they had watched together and had to give a sad nod. “You’re right, that horrifying monster or masked maniac was probably just around the corner…”

They both shot a look to the corner where the closet opened up into the bathroom, and then breathed a sigh of relief when no such monster maniac was present. Ixia climbed off of Cormac as the ginger groped around the floor for his trusty discarded shovel while Ixia quickly looked through the rest of the closet. His hand bumped into the handle of his shovel and there was a clicking noise as it tapped the floor moulding just below a forgotten shelf of the previous owner’s hung up clothing.

Both of them heard the click, and froze in place as they met each other's gaze. Cormac grabbed his phone, glimpsing the red battery bar, and aimed the light at that spot there hidden in a corner to reveal a small panel had popped open after being nudged by his shovel and half hidden by a rack of shelves that he had to shove out of the way.

The Guardian looked over his shoulder to Ixia crouched at the ready as he carefully pried the panel open to reveal a small black felt jewelry box with a light covering of dust. He angled it away from both of them as he opened it, and upon not having something explode or leap out at them they peered inside to see a thin golden chain attached to an arrangement of golden claws that upon further inspection seemed to hold something that was distinctly missing. Cormac tapped it with his shovel once then twice, and then gingerly tapped it with his finger. He picked it up and held it aloft to dangle.

“Any ideas?” He asked.

“Only that we should hold onto it.”

Cormac placed the necklace back in its box and stashed it in his pocket before putting his phone in battery saver mode. The windows of the entire house had been boarded up, which left absolutely zero ambient light to get in.

He cleared his throat. “Yeah I’m gonna need some-”

A green glow radiated from right next to him to reveal a glowing flower sprouting from Ixia’s palm. He went to grab it but she bypassed him to affix it to his hair just behind his ear in a makeshift headlamp. The redhead wanted to say something about how this wasn’t really his style, despite already having fully established that green was a good look on him. It was really more about the whole floral theme not being his thing. But creeping further into certain danger was a bad time to turn down the gift of light. From his girlfriend.

This was a lot to come to terms with in such a relatively short amount of time, Cormac thought to himself as he hefted the bag full of monster head onto his back with a loud squish and made sure it was secure and not leaking. “It’s not leaking, is it?”

“You were already covered in a shower of Gloomfang blood, which lucky for you is not hazardous but does make you look fierce my white lion of red mane.”

Cormac held up a hand in defense but relented into a finger to point at Ixia. “Alright that title is growing on me. Ready to go fight more evil?”

“Always.” She said as she took his hand and yelled “Clear!”

The pair made their way back to the agreed meeting spot in the living room where all but one of the twins was already waiting around on whatever furniture they could find. Ed looked them up and down as his arms remained crossed. “What took you so long in there?”

“Lots of clothes to go through.” Cormac said without missing a beat, leading into their planned story. “I think she took this house from someone because there was a lot of mens clothing in there stashed to the side that wasn’t covered in blood or other unspeakable fluids.”

“Hmm.” Gene leaned back on the couch as it creaked and groaned beneath him. “That confirms a theory I had. We’re past a threshold here but...I think she did that just to have better control over the place and used it as a plausible front in the event anyone ever came for a visit. But everything is…”

As he swirled his hand around in the air to search for the word, Itra finished the thought for him from the recliner sitting off to the side in the dark to make her glowing eyes all the more striking. “Untouched! It’s like she took someone’s home and turned it into a giant dollhouse! I know she wasn’t using the obsidian for anything but half crazed attempts at wards, so that workshop full of scraps sure as shit wasn’t hers. We didn’t find it yet but this wasn’t where she was actually living!”

“My sister may have our answer to that.” Akna hadn’t bothered sitting, only pacing about. “Wait...come quickly, she found something you will all want to see.”

Ixia and Cormac exchanged a final knowing nod at hearing about this supplier being an obsidian worker just before they all raced after Akna as she guided them to her waiting twin standing before an opened laundry closet in the middle of an otherwise empty hallway.

“It is an odd place for such a storage space, isn’t it?” Abha said, staring down the small closet. Cormac craned his head around and spied no washer or dryer. “And after my sister found the exact same closet in a different part of the house near the washer and dryer, complete with the same untouched sheets, towels, and detergents…a quick divination and I knew something was here. Please stand back.”

No one was about to question that and all gave her plenty of extra space as she swung the door shut on its hinges and let the handle click before pushing it to the side as though it was a sliding door. The door slid open to reveal a concrete passage lit at the far end by the faintest pale glow at the end where it turned a corner.

“I was really hoping that ‘something we all would want to see’ meant something like a giant sack of money.” Cormac broke the silence and heavy air to cut the tension of knowing that they were all going to have to investigate this new discovery. “Maybe where she kept all the cookies.”

“I found a bag of chocolate chip!” Itra offered before rubbing at her arm. “They were stale, though.”

Ed raised a brow at her with open jawed amazement. “You ate one?”

“No! I smelled it, and I know my baked goods. Oh!” She put a fist in her hand as her eyes went wide. “Since you’re new at this, don’t eat anything in these places! That’s how they get you!....wait, are you new at this or just b- I mean adventure!”

She tried to take a running dash into the door as Gene picked her up by the shoulders and set her down to the side once she stopped trying to run in the air. “Save the shame induced heroics, I can take hits better than all of you combined and you know it. We found what we knew had to be here, let’s not get foolish about it now.”

The silver skinned man led them down the passage as they all crept step by measured step until they were holding their breaths with their own individual mix of magic or weapons at the ready. After a final moment of steeling themselves, they rushed around the corner and into a vast night time desert valley beneath a sea of stars. Each of them stared with wide eyed awe at the sky, all looking for something familiar and finding nothing. No constellations they recognized, nor nebulae, nor galaxies.

Only shapes and arrangements never once seen before.