Javal Zarrias was sitting within the woods of Moonglade training himself against the trees and the wind attempting to hone his swordsmanship and his body’s instincts. He decided to use his day off for a constructive day of training and exploration of the forest so far he thought he had done a fairly good job training basic exercises and training his sword against the trees knocking a couple.



He then stopped for the day as the sky began to darken soon the sun would set and Javal was already too deep in the forest and would have to walk a decent amount before he would find civilization. His stomach then grumbled loudly, “Ugh you are right mister stomach I must find some food nearby or a place to sleep tonight, too bad I got too distracted and left my sleeping bag on board the ship".


He then laughed loudly, “Huzzah that’s alright I shall survive like I did as a child through curiosity and exploration”.



He then began searching for food nearby spotting a couple of small animals but not wanting to kill them he decided to look further for some berries. He cheered out loud as he found a large berry bush before spotting something large in front of him he stepped back to see a large mansion in the middle of the forest with strange candy-like designs and emblems on it. The place looked abandoned and unkempt from the outside with floorboards and broken windows. Although Javal felt bad about it he decided it was alright to enter the building and spend the night until morning when he could sprint away to his ship not before writing an apology note to whoever’s house this was.



He walked up the small set of stairs, opened the large doors that seemed to be on their hinges, and walked inside.

Dusk was nearly upon the glade as an elderly woman hobbled across the dirt path, completely alone. Her pace was unhurried, and despite the inherent dangers of such solitary travel, there was a smile on her face and a tune on her lips while she walked. She had briefly separated from her usual travel companion, Yasei, to make her way through the woods in search of a special herb unique to Moonglade for one of her dishes. She was not particularly worried about running into any beasts… though perhaps, on a night like this, she ought to have been.

And thankfully, the afternoon had been quite jovial and silent! Her wicker basket tucked under her arm laden with plants, back aching slightly from the act of repeatedly bending over, Kou had spent the day gathering. Oh! But as the sun slipped below the horizon, she realized how many hours had slipped away from her. How time flies when one is enjoying themselves! So Kou picked herself up and started making her way out of the woods back to the inn she and her friend had been staying at.

But the lower the sun sank, the less familiar these roads seemed to be…

Kou was lost.

Well, that was no big deal! If one spent their entire life knowing where they were going, they’d never find beauty in the new and unfamiliar. That was what made life so exciting and fresh. So if life wanted to take her in a different direction right now, what was Kou to do except follow? So she made her way along the path, making her way through copses of trees and bushes of delectable looking berries.

Eventually, the trees began to thin out, bringing Kou into a glade of sorts. More interestingly, though, was the grand home right in the center! Oh, my, how lovely! It was so colorful, decorated in a cornucopia of sweet treats. An avant- garde sort of decoration, she supposed, but how pretty and unique it was! Well, there was no time like the present to make her way up and rest her old bones - and possibly pay a compliment to the home’s owner. Kou made her way to the door, Sakura-wood cane knocking against the path as dirt turned to cobblestone. To her surprise, the door seemed to be open… no, off its hinges entirely.

How interesting. Was that a design choice?

Well, no time like the present to find out. Kou rapped her cane against the side while she stepped through the threshold, unguarded and unsuspecting of any dangers that might lay therein. “Hello? I hope I’m not intruding… I was just passing by and thought I might stop in for a quick rest and chat! You have a lovely home!”

---

Quest Name: Trapped!
Participants: Two or more
Location: Anywhere
Post Requirements: 5 posts per person, 200 words per post
Reward: +1 Mystical Archive Ticket, +1 Mysterious Reward
Description: You find yourself as the main character in a Black Harvest story! Write out a spooky or scary story where you find yourself trapped in a dangerous or suspenseful manner. The location, villains, and details of the story are completely up to you, as long as this year's theme is obvious and consistent throughout the topic.

Javal walked into the large candy-themed estate and shouted, “Hello is there anybody there? I’m sorry for barging in like this but it’s getting dark and I just need a place to stay”, he bowed to the floor before waiting for a response.



“Well it appears that this house may be abandoned then poor things too it looks in excellent condition. I wonder what happened to its previous owner, they seem like such fun”.



Javal then walked into the first hallway to his left searching for a nice bed or something to do before falling asleep. As he made his final step into the hallway he barely missed Kou’s entrance through the front entrance. As Kou entered and looked around the area suddenly Javal’s earlier voice echoed around the room somehow.

Over with Javal, he had entered a long winding hallway filled with candies and treats above doors and on the walls. He decided to open a nearby door only to find it filled with delightful candy butterflies that quickly disappeared into nothing leaving the room empty but filled with bright colors and wacky designs on the wall.

He smiled, “Woah this is amazing, I hope all of the rooms here are as delightful as this one but I still have to find a room to sleep in and I’d rather not sleep on the floor”.



The fellblood left the room but over with Kou all of what Javal was saying to himself was echoed all around her.

To Kou’s surprise, there was no one to meet her at the home’s entrance. Strange… she’d have thought a home this colorful and inviting would be filled with smiling faces. She’d not wanted to intrude, as she’d said, but Kou had a sneaking suspicion that this place was well and proper abandoned. Yes, that much was evident in the dust that had gathered in the corners of the room and the unlit candles. As, well that was no matter! With the hand clutching her cane, Kou tapped the ground twice, muttering a prayer to the spirits in her native tongue before the sakura-wood staff began to glow with a soft light, the color of the light from a hearth and with all the warmth of it.^[1] Ah, yes, this was much better - Kou’s old eyes were much better adapted to the dim light from her cane that guided her deeper into the foyer.

Only, as Kou stepped away from the door, there echoed a great SLAM where the entrance swung shut behind her, the force of it making the piece of candy-coated wood rattle in its hinges.

“Goodness!” Kou clutched at her chest, quite startled by the sudden and frightful sound. Perhaps tricky yokai lurked here, the spirits determined to play a prank on these old bones? Or perhaps in such an empty house, they were merely upset…

Or perhaps Kou was not as alone as initially thought.

The elderly woman’s hearing might have been failing her somewhat, but even she could still recognize the sound of a voice, echoing through the empty skeleton of this sweet and sour home. Kou tilted her head to the side, tapping gnarled fingers against the side of the cane. A visitor, like herself? Well, there was only one way to go from here, with her exit sealed (and an experimental twist of the knob revealing that there would be no leaving from the magically locked front door), and that direction was forward! With that in mind, Kou set down the dark and dusty halls of the ground floor, the smell of something sugary filling the air, and the sound of that stranger still echoing around her. Her cane tapped on the wooden floor in an unsteady rhythm, and a smile on her face.

“Is anybody there? Dear Solaria-sama, I hope I’m not breaking and entering…”

Though her voice was not as loud as Javal’s, in the absence of any other noise it carried all the same, alerting the swordsman to the fact that he was not alone.

---

1. Light

Javal looked around the sugary-filled hallway curious about where he would find an abandoned room with a bed where he could rest for the night before heading out in the morning.



He opened another door three down from the last one he entered with a lollipop sigil above it he turned the doorknob which almost stuck to his hand from the stickiness. He opens the door and peers into it to gaze inside. At first, it didn't seem very different from the last one he’d seen but there were some subtle differences. The wacky and colorful designs on the wall on the floor were all lollipop-themed, there was a small portrait of a lollipop with a top hat, an envelope, and a quarterstaff-sized lollipop that was leaning on the wall.



The fellblood turned his head, finding it odd, and spoke out loud not expecting anyone to be there to hear him, “What is this? Whoever lives here seems like they like lollipops, I mean they’re okay candy but to base a whole room around them is quite much. Although I can respect it, it matches very well with their house’s design so whom am I to judge”, his voice echoes around Kou loudly. 


Soon he tucks the envelope into his jacket pocket to read once he finds somewhere to rest before exiting the room and shutting the door behind him.



He whipped his head to the hallway as he heard a faint woman’s voice call out, he clasped his hands over his mouth and shouted, “Hello there? Is that the owner of this fine establishment? I’m sorry for entering but it was getting late. I offer a thousand pardons”.



He then started jogging towards the voice lightly seeing a red figure at the end of the hallway, as soon as he was halfway there the hallway seemed as if to expand. He sprinted as fast as he could go trying to make it toward the red figure in the distance but after about ten minutes of running through the small hallway, he had gotten nowhere. For whatever reason every time he’d reach halfway the hallway itself just seemed to stretch keeping Kou far away.

On the other side of the room, Kou could hear the sound of that same voice speaking aloud, describing the room he’d ended up in. Well, he certainly wasn’t the owner of this house! Kou was beginning to think that this house well and truly had been abandoned by its owners. At her end of the hall, she found a door decorated by what looked like chocolate bars, the sugary-brown scent sticking to the roof of her mouth.

“My oh my, is this all real?”

She reached out for the door paneling, wrapping a wrinkled hand along the side and tugging off a piece of the bark. It snapped away like real chocolate, melted like a marvelous confectionary in the palm of her hand. If it wasn’t real candy, then it was certainly a talented illusion! The stray thought crossed her kind to taste it, but Mama Kou was not without her own level of caution, and licking the dusty old sweets in an abandoned manor seemed a sure fire way for one to get poisoned…

She settled for wiping the partially-melted chocolate off on a handkerchief when she heard that voice again. This time, addressing her directly!

Kou shook her head, forgetting that the young man could only hear her, not see her.

She raised her voice as loud as she could, speaking in the same fragmented common. Her grasp of the language had grown leaps and bounds since she’d set off on the road, but it was still quite obvious that she could not quite understand the particulars of it. “It seems we’ve found ourselves here for the same reason, young man! I, too, wandered in here for respite; you’ll find no anger from me. Now why don’t you hold still and let Mama Kou come get a better look at your face while we talk.”

In the dim light cast from her cane, Kou thought she could just barely make out a blue figure on the other side of the hallway! It was difficult to make out much from here, and her poor sight behind round-rimmed glasses certainly did not help. And was it her imagination, or were they getting further away, rather than closer? Kou tried to hobble down the hall herself, but the room seemed to warp with an arcane energy that felt dark and strange to the senses. Almost the opposite of all this sugar around them! Kou liked to fashion herself as someone who held love in her heart for all things, but there was something about this place - its shifting rooms and slamming doors - felt unnerving to her.

Perhaps some manner of witch had once lived here? If that was the case, this adventure was shaping up to be much like the fairy tales in storybooks she read in her youth. It was as exciting as it was a touch scary. Kou was not certain she had the power within her to find a way out of this place. But perhaps the young cerulean man did…?

When it was clear neither was getting anywhere closer to the other, Kou rapped her cane along the side of the floor to catch the stranger’s attention, stop him from wasting his energy on all this endless running. Goodness! How was he not out of breath already…?

“Young man! I daresay we’ve reached some sort of strange enchantment here… it is as if this home doesn’t want us to leave!” Or to find one another. Was its purpose to ensnare travelers in its grip with the promise of such sweet delights, only to trap them in a maze from which they could not break free? If that was the case, how were they meant to get out of here? “Perhaps we ought to find some way to break the enchantment? There may be something in these rooms that contains a clue, or an escape!”

“Oh thank goodness, there’s someone there”, Javal shouted, “I thought I was going mad due to how nice of a home this place is or I thought I was dreaming the whole time. Yes, of course, I would love to meet you just give me a second to pass this hallway it seems to last forever”.



Javal continued sprinting down the hallway as fast as he could with everything inside of him fueling his energy into this one single dash hoping it would be enough to let him break through whatever magic kept him out. However, his efforts were once again a bust, for he again began where he started. He lets out a huge sigh of irritation and self-doubt before smiling once more and hearing the faint noise of a cane being hit on the floor.



He stood up with full attention at the faint red figure ahead of him, “Yes miss it appears that for whatever reason this hallway just won’t let us through. I passed it on my way here so I’m not too sure why it’s not letting me go now? Maybe I should ran super duper fast so fast that the enchantment can't catch me”.



“As for escape and clues that is a great idea, let’s go through all of the rooms around us looking for some sort of pattern or clue as you said, and come back together with them to figure this all out”.

Kou could not help but chuckle at the insinuation that the young man could simply outrun the magic, should he sprint fast enough. A valiant idea! Her old bones were incapable of such a feat, but she was quite curious to see someone else try! Oh, the athleticism and zeal of the youth…

Even though the idea was an amusing one, Mama Kou was still not certain it would work; the magic woven in this home of sugary delights was strong, and if the young fellblood would simply waste his energy trying something foolish and tire himself out before they even had an opportunity to figure out what was wrong with this home. The fact that someone had constructed a house such as this, with a lovely exterior and confusing magic, was… concerning, to say the least. She did not wish to dwell on the reasons that one might think to build a place intended to lure innocent people in and trap them within its candy-coated halls.

In truth, it was probably for the best that Mama Kou had been the one to fall for this trap, whatever its true purpose was. She was a hero, after all, and it was better that adventurers were the ones to take care of dangers! That was what she had signed up to do, after all. And Moonglade was part of her home, too. She wanted to keep it safe.

“Let’s shelve the running idea for later, shall we? No idea is a bad idea right now, but let’s start with clues first, shall we, dear?” She mused. “Who knows? It seems the house wants to separate us, but as we wander the rooms, perhaps we shall unknowingly stumble upon one another! I’ll start over here, shout for me if you need me!”

Hmm… now which room to start with?

Kou looked around her, picking a door at random. This one was decorated with what looked like spiraling peppermints and smelled just as sharp. As she stepped inside, gently closing the door behind her, Kou was once more bathed in darkness. Only the light from her cane guided her… Kou lifted it skyward like a beacon, sweeping across the dusty room that looked like it had not been touched in eons.

It was, to her surprise, a kitchen. The walls were lined with counters, and an old cauldron resided in the center. And what a lovely, furnished room it was? Kou could see herself cooking a meal in here, but there was a time and place for everything. Kou leaned against one of the chairs, catching her breath. Despite the inherent sweetness baked into this room, its perfume was only hiding something sour underneath. Kou’s wrinkled brow furrowed, concerned. What was that scent? For the life of her, she could not place it. Picking herself up, she hobbled over to the cauldron, getting on her tiptoes to peer inside.

She was not sure what she might find, as she cast her light over the contents, but to her surprise, the cauldron was not empty. Rather, it was filled with a congealed molten substance, something that smelled of chocolate and the tang of blood.

“How old is this…?” Kou breathed, starting to feel the traces of fear prickling on the back of her neck.

Javal coyly responded a little embarrassed at his stubborn running showing and responded to the red figure, “That sounds good, stranger, perhaps we’ll have to work as a team to meet each other. I’ve explored some rooms before that wielded some results but I shall continue to search even harder, see you in a bit”, before sprinting backward towards the end of the hallway to search.



As he ran he pondered his strategy earlier, “Hm, if we can’t run forward no matter what since the enchantment just makes this hallway longer, what if I ran backward? What if I started at the middle point and sprinted toward the end of the hallway instead of forward? Would the enchantment reverse and cause it to be super small?”, before shaking his head, “Nay that’s foolish, I must focus on finding any leads I can find”.



He looks at the end of the hallway deciding it best to start at the end and finds the door with a cherry bottle sigil on its doorway. He tries to open it at first but finds no luck that it’s locked, he places his ear towards the door and hears faint whimpering coming inside.



“There has to be something in there”, he whispers looking around and trying to think what to do before ashamedly realizing what he must do, “I’m so sorry whoever’s house this is there’s someone behind that door I have to help them”, he winds his fists back before sending it into the door quickly breaking it’s frame off with ease his hand now surrounded by candy door. He struggles to get the door off his hand before he gets tackled by a mysterious thing he shouts, “Hello is there someone there what are you?”.

Oh, dear.

This wouldn’t do.

Whoever left here left their pots all messy! Whatever they’d been trying to cook, something must have caused them to leave in a hurry - the rest of the kitchen itself seemed clean and dust-covered, nearly pristine in its absence. Only the strange substance congealed in the center of the pot. She could not tell how long it had been here, or how much time had passed since this place was abandoned. But Mama Kou knew one thing, an immutable fact that sent a shiver up her spine as she thought about it…

“Why, this cauldron is filthy!”

Surely it wouldn’t hurt for her to stop and clean it, she thought. They were unwelcome guests in this home; and perhaps if there were any unsettled yokai in this home, they were cranky knowing that their home was in such a state of disarray. Mama Kou could help with that. A little elbow grease and she’d get that rusty old bucket shining as good as new! If they were stuck here, there was no point in them both starving. Yes, there was much work to be done to make sure they’d survive. She had some ingredients in her bag - she’d not sustain herself on rations on the road when there was ample opportunity to forage and make meals! - probably enough to make a curry for herself and the other young man here.

Humming to herself, Kou turned around, rolling up the sleeves of her old, moth-eaten silk robe in preparation of the task ahead. Lost in her mind, she missed the sudden bubbling within the cauldron, a sloshing noise as the foul mixture rose from the pot, coalescing into the shape of a gangly limb ended in spindly fingers dripping with grime - and before she could hobble away, it reached out and yanked her bun in a death grip, attempting to pull her into the cauldron entirely.

“AH!” Kou gasped, thrown off balance by the sudden strong grip. Shaking hands released their grip on the cane, the cherrywood staff - a gift from her grandson - clattered to the ground a few feet away from her. Its light sputtered and dimmed, like a flickering candle, before plunging her in darkness.

Kou writhed, struggling to break free of the grip; but she was not a strong woman, and her withered muscles against the creature’s supernatural strength was no competition. Kou was helpless, unable to stop as she was dragged further and further to the metal inside!

“No, bad haunted cauldron!” Mama Kou gasped, kicking her feet in an attempt to escape. Was this cauldron cooking people within? Was it planning on cooking her? If that was the case, she was afraid she wouldn’t be very sweet! “These old bones are too bitter to be delicious!”

But the spirit did not answer. It merely pulled her deeper, intent on dragging her into the deepest pit. Kou would not let herself be devoured so readily! She waved her fist in the air, and though she was not physically strong, her spirit was as unbreakable as diamond - the heat of anger surged within her chest and spread outwards, creating a ring of brilliant flame that caught the creature’s hand.^[1] The pile of cauldron muck let out a squeal, releasing its grip on the elderly woman as it writhed in the air. Whatever it was, some sickly combination of oil and grease; apparently it was highly flammable. Kou stumbled for her cane, watching as the spirit dissolve into ashes with an agonized screech.

---

1. Flame Hoop

Javal lay on the ground struggling to breathe as whatever had come out of the door had headbutted him in the abdomen. He wheezed for a second before shaking his body and sitting up looking down at the origin of his pain. What he saw before left him with his eyes wide and mouth agape it was a small candy baby drake.



“Oh my goodness”, he chuckled as he held up the baby drake in the air as it giggled in delight, “Well aren’t you just the most precious thing in this world?”.



He then sets the little fellow down next to him as he gets up on his feet and looks around looking at his hand still stuck in the middle of the door he broke through. He grabs the door with his other hand and pulls hard and harder until he hears a breaking sound and looks down to see his hand out of the surface but the door itself has been broken into little candy pieces.



He then looks over to his new little Drake friend and squats down, “Alright buddy me and this other person are lost and can’t find each other so can I ask for your help?”.



The candy baby drake nods his head in agreement and walks over to the entrance where he came from. Javal follows closely behind into the shadowy set of stairs completely blinded but trusting the faint brightly colored candy creature in front of him.


“This couldn’t be a bad thing, can it? I mean look at him he’s just so adorable he’d never betray me”, the fellblood thought as the two made it down the stairs where they were in the middle of a strangely painted cellar with licorice torches lining the walls. The drake baby points its head towards the wall in front of him and cries happily and excitedly, Javal walks forward to examine the wall further but suddenly he feels the air from under him disappear as he falls through the floor.

Kou wasn’t as young as she used to be. Even in the prime of her life, she had often been considered a woman faint of heart; when she was a child, her father would be the one to kill chickens and crabs for their meals where her soft heart could not take it. Now, in the twilight hours of her life, Kou traveled and adventured because she saw a peaceful way to resolve conflicts. Where solutions were achieved through talking things out. Not because she was so naive as to believe everything could be resolved without death and bloodshed - but because she was hopeful enough to believe that there were enough people out there willing to try and make it work.

That was why, perhaps, stories of the yokai and tricky, meddling spirits had always scared her growing up. There was no reasoning with someone who wanted mayhem for the sake of mayhem. Much easier just to put them back to rest.

Even now, though, well…

She was not a perfect woman, either. As Kou leaned against her cane, catching her breath like she’d never known what air tasted like before now, she found that her goodwill had rather dried up for the nasty creatures that had made this place their home… and the tomb for those who were unlucky enough to wander in here.

This house was alive, but not in the traditional sense. Alive in that the artificial sugar that had seeped into this place had rotted through the manor’s bones, and its confections sought to infect everyone that roamed these halls.

“Serves you right for trying to eat innocent people!” Kou admonished, even though the cauldron spirit had evaporated in nothing more than a trail of smoke that smelled like burnt caramel candies, and could no longer rightfully hear her. She whacked the cauldron a couple of times with her cane for good measure - besides the hollow THUNK of sakura wood against rusted metal.

No response.

She tapered down the fear with a long swallow. She could not deny that the gravity of this situation was beginning to settle in. She was not especially strong; even battling that single spirit had rather taken the wind out of her sails. How was she supposed to cleanse the rest of this building?

The same way she always had, she supposed. With grit and determination. There was a young man somewhere in this building that needed her help. More than anything, she needed to figure out a way.

Kou pulled out a couple sticks of incense and a bottle, lighting them to rid this room of the smell of its sweet rot, and hopefully ward off any other spirits. Rolling up her sleeves and tying them off with a cord, she got to work.

The grimy cauldron took a few minutes to clean, and some elbow grease that Kou was… not the most equipped for anymore. It was a struggle. But she was accustomed to the struggle. Within the span of minutes she had that cauldron shining again, and as she straightened, wiping sweat off her brow, she felt satisfied, at least, that this particular spirit had been put to rest.

Alright. Now to figure a way out of this place.

Throwing some spices and pieces of dried meat from her bag into the cauldron, filling the room with aromatic spices. Replacing the sweetness with savory. Soon enough, the smoke wafting from her meal started drifting upwards, tickling the ceiling… and to Kou’s surprise, the ceiling began to melt, wood not even splintering as the panels morphed and changed, becoming more liquid than solid. Her eyes widened between round-rimmed spectacles as the wood dripped downwards, and created a small hole in the center of the ground.

Fascinating.

Kou readjusted her glasses, partially in disbelief as to what she was seeing.

“Is this manor made entirely of chocolate?”

“Ahhhhhhh”, Javal could only yell as he fell through the floor candied baby Drake on his abdomen smiling dopely, “What’s going on”?



He felt the air shift behind his ears and hair and his body felt the pressure as he continued to fall through, and continued, and continued. Eventually after what felt like ten minutes of just straight falling into the dark void Javal began growing tired and very confused.



“What’s going on little friend? Have you led me down a path of eternal suffering? But how you are too cute to even have evil thoughts in your mind”.



The baby just cooed and flapped its wings towards the walls signaling something to the fellblood.



“Hmm”, the fellblood said as he placed his finger on his chin to aid his thinking face, “There has to be a logical explanation as to why I’m falling without landing and breaking my bones instantly on impact. Blind faith? Luck? Is it like that time with Morrigan Moonweaver that I believed in myself so hard I did not die jumping off of a four-story building? It has to be! Well, how do I stop this? Do I not believe in myself, little one?”, he says as he pets the little drake.



The candied drake snorts in disapproval and giggles at the fellblood’s silliness not seeing the bigger picture of this trap of sorts.



It isn't until Javal looks deep into the shadows and spots a large metal fan on the floor under him that he realizes the hilarious trap, “Woah looks like someone left their fan down here accident”, he then turns to look at his side and spots the doorless entrances.



“Hm, little buddy? How do I get there?”, the fellblood says, looking over, thinking about his situation.

Kou knew, of course, that it was not entirely safe to stick a foreign substance in one’s mouth. But if it really was chocolate, as she suspected, then she should be okay. And nothing ventured was nothing gained, or so the saying went! With that in mind, she held her hand out to catch a piece of the collapsing ceiling in the palm of her hand. With only a touch of hesitance, she dipped her nail into the substance and licked it.

Yes, that was definitely chocolate.

Kou rarely cooked or baked with chocolate - the rare sweets that she cooked were dango and higashi and uiro, konpeito and taiyaki and red bean buns, or light bread with starberry jam. Sometimes she cooked hard candies, though she much preferred the softness of sweets with rice and paste. Chocolate was a commodity she’d not tried until her grandson brought her some to try. She liked it… though she much preferred the flavors of her home.

And now, after tasting it in the very foundation of this house, Kou was all the more comfortable saying that it was not her favorite.

But it could be useful, right now.

Kou cleaned the cocoa off her hand with a cooking rag until her hand was spotless before approaching the wall. “Hmm… I wonder how far this goes!” With an experimental scrape, she dragged her hands over the side of the bark… or what ought to have been bark. But it peeled away under her fingertips, melting from the warmth of her hand.

“How odd!”

It appeared that this entire room was constructed from the same material. Perhaps even the entire manor. But what purpose did it serve? This cottage appeared, for all intents and purposes, abandoned save herself and the other young fellblood. But it was clearly constructed by someone with powerful ties to the spirit realm and the guiding weaves of the universe. For what reason was their home made of sweets, to where enchantments separated its occupants, and remains were baked into the cauldron.

When she was young, her parents used to tell her stories in bed, of impolite young children being spirited away and snatched from their homes by vengeful spirits. There were abandoned houses in her neighborhood, its occupants having died and left behind only their estate, that Kou used to sprint past on her way to the market because she feared ghostly hands yanking her by her tail and pulling her into the darkness. Only when she was older did she learn to fear the kind of spirits who talked sweat and made false promises so you would spirit yourself away.

She could not help but wonder, though, if this was one such trap.

Mama Kou needed to find Javal; and fast.

Watching the dripping chocolate, though, an idea sprang to mind. If Kou could not get through the door, then she would just have to create one. Or, at the very least, take down this kitchen with her. It felt… wrong, to dismantle a home as lovely as this on the surface. Disrespectful. But nothing about this manor was right. Closing her eyes and whispering a quick apology to Solaria-Sama and whoever might have once owned this house, Kou moved to push the still-smoking cauldron to another part of the roof.

And another.

… And another.

She kept up with this small, steady movement, until the floor had begun to be coated with molten chocolate, almost like a lake. But Kou needed more. She tilted the cauldron until it leaned against the wall, the sheer heat bubbling and melting the chocolate until a pool of it grew, almost to her ankles, sloshing around like it was ready to be released. It was bearing into the door, and it showed no signs of slowing as the wall eroded.

Kou taped the words inscribed on the side of her arm in her native language in pitch-dark ink, a familiar saying she’d had tattooed after her husband left her and her son alone, and she returned to her home, a disgrace who’d eloped and brought misfortune on their name.

‘Slow and steady wins the race’.

The marking began to glow as she activated it, until the chocolate in front of her shimmered and a large, green turtle appeared in front of her.^[1] Kou wheezed as she pulled herself onto its sturdy shell, crossing her legs as she moved to pat its head. “Thank you for the ride, Kame-san.”

The turtle bowed its head in acknowledgement and started swimming through the chocolate river. The kitchen door melted, bringing her down the hall, which had begun flooding with chocolate. She pulled out a mug of tea and sipped at it while she lazily drifted deeper into the manor in search of the other fellblood.

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1. Turtle Tattoo

Javal thought for a second before the candied baby drake started to walk over his chest curiously looking down at the fellblood as he floated in place from the magical device’s enchantment. He then tapped his bright red cuirass summoning a pair of two red drake wings to his back causing Javal to float up now as he held the drake in his hands smiling.



“Woah little buddy that was cool, good job, I keep forgetting that I have access to that”, he then glances toward the two strange entrances next to him.



“Hm, which way should we go now?”, he thinks aloud before pointing his finger at both and reciting an old fellblood trick his mother taught him as a child, “Eeny, meeny, finy, foe. Catch an imp by the two. If they scream then let them go. Kooky, screamy, the way I know”, pointing at both as he sang before the last word pointing to the path right of him.



He then flew down towards the entrance and, lonely carefully as he held the drake, he tapped his cuirass again, returning the wings into his armor. He is then puzzled to see what lies before him, the walls lined with strange papers, graphs, and equations. The floor is peppermint in nature and a strange figure at the end of the hallway guarding the door. He walks before however is put on guard as the candy drake holds his leg as they walk. He approaches slowly before the lights in the figure’s eyes turn on and it roars alive; the figure now reveals that it is a gingerbread knight with a chocolate lance. The hall where Kou is on the other side of the door and she can most likely hear its roar.