VALORANT: GO!

A Few Life AND Death Experiences Later...

"Omen, here."
          Fade and Omen had roamed throughout the enclosure, the sun seemed all too much for them, they considered heading to the mountains to find some cave Pokemon but thought it'd be too much work. However, nothing out in the open seemed to match their peculiar taste, Fade didn't expect to find some eldritch horror like the ones her Nightmare had shown her, but at least something scary... at least something... mostly not cute.

"So... bright... the sun of this world drains my energy..."
"Mine too, so hurry."
          Fade paced about the forest with Omen. Hidden creeks and illuminated glades didn't pique their interest in the slightest.

"Something... something sinister draws- closer..."
          Omen's warning alongside dark whispers in Fade's ear didn't seem coincidental, Fade looked around, the rustling in the bushes suddenly becoming hostile, the eyes in the trees, stalking their prey, stalking them. Fade curled her lips into a wicked smile, pushing through the wilted leaves of dying bushes, facing the wrath of nature head-on. Or more over, lack thereof. Fade exited the forest, the alive part of it anyway, and had uncovered a dark, burnt, willowed down portion of it.

"Seems like this place doesn't get much maintenance"
          Fade looked around as Omen joined her, she felt the presence of a million things yet she saw none. Spirits maybe, spirits... good or bad...

"The cycle of death seems untainted here... natural..."
          Fade had strayed off from Omen, thinking about Breach's nickname from earlier, 'Black Cat', it suited her; mischief, nasty plotting, malefic warnings. She felt something, something in the air, drawing ever closer... Everything was silent yet- she could hear something telling her to find them. She smiled, accepting the challenge, letting herself follow the shadows in her vision and the voices in her head.

          Minutes passed as she paced about the ruined forest, everything covered in charcoal or ash, her fingers blackened from searching, stained. Then she felt it, a vibration in the ground, the stillness of the air, the world slowing down around her... She scanned everything around her, the trees, the sky, the-

*RUSTLE*
          The bush- she walked toward it, dismembered and burned, wilting, decaying, dying. She watched it age a thousand lives yet remain unchanged, unturned. Each step she drew closer was another line she shouldn't have crossed, another warning she ignored, another nightmare.

"Show me what you are~"
          Fade postured herself next to the bush, closing in on her prey, getting closer to the ground, 'Black Cat' she thought, she had found the mouse. She dug her hands into the bristled branches of the push, pulling aside the twigs, ripping apart the leaves, opening Pandora's box to find- nothing. It was empty, it was all shadows and dead leaves. She got up, disappointed, staring at the once menacing bush, she turned around an-

"GHA!"
"AUH!"
          Her heart rate doubled, her blood ran cold, the air was sucked out of her lungs, the life was sucked out of her body. She fell to her knees, weak, afraid, startled - she looked up at the spirit, at her assailant, the ambush. A purple orb, shrouded in a shadowy, thick fog, its face the kind that would be carved into a pumpkin.

"Gha! Ghastly!"
"You, my friend, are truly something."
          Fade lifted her hand to touch it, her hand phasing through it instead. She let it rest below it, prompting the Ghastly to let itself fall, hovering above her palm, it sat floating above her hand even as she moved it. It was a real ghost, one of these creatures' spirits, it was dead, it was alive, it was hers.

"I'll show you the ropes. And you'll go from startling, to scary~"
"Ghas!"
          Omen paced about the wasteland, the area seeming completely rid of all life, but the energy... he could feel it... it loomed in the air. He couldn't sense anything... at least not anything physically there... he had been ripped apart many times before, so he wondered if the void where his mind should be was playing tricks on him again.