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Take Allisons' hand again, wink, smile reassuringly and catch up with the ghost!

Okay, Ichigo vote!

Is the ghost friendly, recognised us, and wants to help us by giving a book?

Or is picking up a book from this library (or even looking at a bookshelf with interest) how all these ghosts were trapped here in the first place, and this ghost is merely luring us to share that fate?

I think both interpretations are valid.


((Aww, flustered Ichigo from the first two panels! *^_^* ))

Luck is for those too weak to make their mark.

Reaching deep into your cut stomach, you find what you were looking for, and pull the items from the fleshy sockets in your gut: Three small clear glass balls, filled with swirling colours. Carefully, you set aside the one seemingly filled with smoke, tiny tendrils of pearl-white and night-black streaking through it. Instead, you focus on an angry orange ball that pulses with strands of brown. The strands' shade reminds you of the fur of Great Northern Bears from your youth; do any of those magnificent beasts still live, you wonder?.. Focusing your will on the tiny ball in your palm, you crush it in your hand, and immediately shape the released contents into a spell:

"Come, predator, come, there is a weak and lonesome prey here! Tasty prey, lovely prey, rich in soul-fat and magic! Enough to ease your woundless pains, enough to sate your empty heart and stomach!.." 

You chant the spell in a guttural language for a little while more, until you are sure that the spell has been cast, and settle to wait. Shadow magic has always been your forte, even earning you your present nickname of the Night Wytch - a title and fame that you carefully cultivated in your followers and enemies both - but you have picked up a few other tricks in the centuries of your un-life. Like this spell: few vampires would consider learning magic that strictly affected living animals.

You could have consumed the glass sphere's magic, of course. You can still drink the essence in two other marbles. However, they are rather small, the magic within worth about a large mouthful of pure mortal blood each, a gill; and unlike blood of the living, the magic within is pure and specialised, much better suited to spell-casting, and far more difficult to obtain. Instead, you bargained one good mouthful of magic for a chance at a full banquet of impure and magically poor bestial blood. You hope whatever comes for you has hunted well lately.

. . .

Night's Dark Masters, ultimate predators... Isn't it ironic that vampires would be completely oblivious and deaf to this magical call? Even mortals might weakly feel the tug of this lure, in some savage, animal part of their subconscious mind. That is the second reason for this spell: when you miss the rendezvous, Gurnen should start looking for you, the most loyal and dependable half-soul servant that he is. And even if he doesn't notice the pull, his hulking beast of a hunting dog, Pavl, should be straining at the leash at the magically-carried scent of prey. You swear it has an almost prescient sense of soulful prey at times, that Pavl; A trait as that was probably a result of a random mutation, common in predator animals after the Severing. Almost all living species had to adapt in some way...

. . .

Your idle, lethargic mind wanders to those who caused your current predicament. The Red Baroness will pay the price for messing with Malakar the Night Wytch, Lord of the Cursed Bell. Your sweet bookworm Alexis... It is almost endearing that she has finally schemed to betray you. Does she plan to take your place now, to be the new Lady of the Cursed Bell? Or will she present it to the Red Baroness, who has long coveted its economic powers? They seemed almost intimate at the meeting, right after she stabbed you with the silver dagger you presented to her for her birthday, four centuries ago. Yes, in fact, it should be four hundred and thirty-seven years that she owned it, a weapon against her own kin in this dark age, as you intended it. Is she now aiming to become the Red Baroness's next consort, to court the shadow puppetess, playing at her own game? You wonder.


You are roused from your thoughts by the sound of massive wings in the air. How long have you been waiting? Has it been days since you cast the spell? With your eyes closed and senses dulled, you can't even tell if the outside temperature has changed. It seems you have attracted a much stronger predator than you had hoped.

You are in luck.


What winged predator beast have you attracted, and how will you kill it?



...What is the colour of essence in the third glass ball, by the way?

1.  -1 to shouting “Booo!”.

2.  We don’t *need* anything here.

3.  I don’t think we can sneak past them.

4.  They appear to only be interacting with “ghostly” versions of things.  I think they might be spirits and might have the ability to “rip” the spirit version of something from it’s corporeal shell.

5. +1 to getting the hell out of here (and doing so in such a way as to avoid being detected).

Right! Thanks for pointing out, I missed that they're holding the ghostly copies of books.

Maybe then sounds are the only way of truly rousing their attention (it's a library, after all), so if we remain completely silent they might not notice us walking past. At least, I believe Ichigo's head is in the lower-left corner, so we should already be very close and theoretically in plain sight of the nearest ghostly readers, if they ever bothered looking up/away from their research. Let's not give them any reason to.

(I knew there was a sound-related mechanic to this puzzle! )

Put a finger to our mouth and indicate to Allison that we have to be entirely quiet. Hold her hand firmly and reassuringly as we go.

Silently and unobtrusively cross the room to the exit up the stairway, never coming close to or standing in the path of a ghostly figure.

Love the suggestions so far! I'll try to fit as many of them as I can into the setting and the game idea constraints. We'll see.

(Also, hehe: I expected a small animal ambush as one of the variants, though filed it under "lucky" options. You'd be lucky for a living vulture to show up in this area of the world - or would have to wait a very, very long time. But you can afford to be patient, can't you?..)

A small poll on the character's title: What is the meaning of 'Night' in the Night Wytch? Is it Darkness/Shadows or Necromancy/Death, or perhaps something entirely else? It is also rich irony that a day-enabled vampire would be named after night, but perhaps the title is just *that* old.

Close the cell door, then leave. A wide open cell door looks immediately suspicious, while mere absence of cell's occupant might not be noticed so quickly. After all, we made sure that the jailor didn't see us in the cell, and it didn't immediately check on us when passing by, did it?

We closed our own cell's door, right?

No need to linger our current mission requires us to leave.

+1. Leave and quietly make haste looking for the exit from the dungeon.

Come on, that doesn't mean anything. This creature would love anyone, from saint to war criminal to landlord. Shouldn't you be focused on taking care of yourself? They're not your responsibility. At most just open the door and run away.

-1. They do look like our responsibility now. I mean, how much older are we? Haven't we been sitting in a cell, powerless and afraid, hugging ourselves and definitely not holding back tears just a few minutes ago?

We are adult (if barely so). They are not. We must take care of them.

(And the little critter looks wiser than us. Maybe we should give it a little credit, if we are using it as a detection device.)

Quote from: A_Curious_Cat on December 23, 2022, 02:26:59 am

Quote from: saki on December 22, 2022, 05:10:39 pm

Thank you! It did take a lot of time and it was frustrating, but I'm trying to manage it. I'm glad someone noticed how tedious it is ^^;

Your art looks amazing!  Have you considered using screentones to speed up shading your work?

Thank you! I actually did, but I decided against it. Because in a way, the drawings I make for Cure are studies for my university exam (environments, people in environments, perspective, hatching, etc.). And in my university exam I won't have any tools to use, so I try to limit myself to drawing just by hand.

Ohh, that's smart!

For what it's worth, your art (especially that corridor! very fancy!) strongly reminded me of an acclaimed and commercially sold web graphical novel, so you are definitely slowly shaping up for the professional league, IMHO. Hope our silly suggestions will eventually help you pass those exams with flying colours!