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Upon the hill roosted a house. It loomed too large and grand to be merely built. It dwelt there like a great bird of prey protecting unhatched young or a guardian beast hoarding dark secrets. It had an aura of its own and it dripped with malice.
At least that’s how Master Ren put it. Maika insisted he was just being dramatic.
“Miss, I don’t like this place either.”
Maika did her best to ignore how tightly Kippa hugged her tail - tails - tail to her body. No glow to her eyes, at least. Whatever she saw should be visible to Maika as well.
The manor house dominated the bleak landscape they’d been trudging through, but other than that came across as fairly ordinary, if fancy. Maika couldn’t for the world figure out what had gotten the two of them so worked up about the place. It was merely a house. Probably owned by someone with a frightening amount of power and influence, sure, but whoever they were they’d left a long time ago.
Not the first abandoned house they’d come across. Likely wouldn’t be their last either. Very likely. As soon as they passed the next village, they’d-
Wait. Where were they, exactly?
“Zinn?”
A moment’s delay before the reply came: “Here… I… am here.”
“Not all here.” Maika had meant it as a taunt, but too much unease bled through into her voice. “What’s going on? You’re strangely,” she chewed on the word before spitting it out, “distant.”
A bizarre way of speaking of someone who’s literally inside of you. Then again, when had anything about Zinn and her made sense?
“Is Mister Monster hurt?”
Good question. “Are you, Zinn?”
“Lady Halfwolf, is this truly the best place to stop for a conversation?”
“Lord Corvin?!”
Kippa’s shout of surprise helped Maika stifle her own yelp. Corvin. Standing right there, across from Ren, as if he’d been there all along.
Had he been traveling with them? “Wait. When did you-?”
Deep unease wound itself around her ankles like an overly affectionate cat under deep cover. The obvious source of the mounting disquiet would have been Corvin slipping her mind, in combination with how faint Zinn felt, and yet…
They’d moved up the hill. They must have been walking as they talked. But if so Corvin’s comment didn’t add up.
“Something… is… wrong, child.”
“You think?” Maika gritted her teeth against the urge to lash out. No one around her deserved that, at the moment. Not even Ren. “Does anyone know where we are?”
Far too long silence followed that question. The manor house loomed closer still.
“I must confess,” Corvin said, even stiffer than usual, “that I don’t even recall what day it is.” He fidgeted with the sleeves of his fine shirt. “How long have we been traveling together?”
“A fair question,” Ren finally rejoined the conversation. He kept his eyes on the manor house, a concerning frown furrowing his brow. “My memories are hazy on that front. I remember a recent battle, but where and against whom is less clear.”
“Things...bleed in and out… of each other.”
“Mister Monster is right.” Kippa’s tail (tailstailstails) had to pain her at this point with how she was manhandling it. “It’s all a mess. All of it.” She freed one hand to clutch at her head, as if a sudden headache had overwhelmed her. “It’s the house,” she let out in a shaky whisper. “The house is looking at us.”
“Houses don’t have eyes, little fox.”
“Things don’t always need eyes to see, Miss.”
No child should be saying ominous things like that as if they were normal words to string together. But no child should be traveling with her, either. Normal got erased right quick when you rode along with Zinn and her.
Huh. Zinn and her. That too had an uncannily normal ring to it. When had she begun to think of herself as a unit with Zinn? Not merely a temporary partnership, but a semi-permanent package.
She shied away from it. Too close to what she’d once had with Tuya, that sensation. She couldn’t trust it.
Must be that cursed house.
“Whatever is influencing us, it has a clear source,” Ren said, echoing her thoughts. “I for one do not remember walking up this hill.”
The manor house had once had a garden. Its remains held little of beauty and all of the sharp things nature had to offer. Rose bushes without blooms, fountains full of ice, trees without leaves displaying branches as barbed as thorns. The doors of the manor had an equally foreboding look to them that made Maika want to tear them off their hinges.
Corvin flapped his wings once, slowly, in what Maika read as a sign of nerves. “Do you sense ghosts, Master Ren?”
“Not ghosts, no…” Ren said, still frowning. “But I do sense something.”
That is when the house swallowed them all whole.
*
Being watched by unseen eyes had become a familiar, if unwelcome sensation. Not even being on better terms with Zinn - when had that happened? - had fully removed the unease of never being truly alone and unobserved.
That unease mounted tenfold as Maika took in the receiving room the house had encased them in.
Corvin stood with his back to her, wings low enough to touch the floor. Gaudy and expensive furniture took up most of the space around them and the walls were equally crowded with oil paintings of various sizes. Turning in a slow circle, it didn’t take many steps for Maika to note the glass wall bisecting the room.
Ren and Kippa were on the other side of the glass. Fuck.
“You hurt?” Maika called over her shoulder to Corvin, moving closer to the glass. With her luck, the polished wood floor would open up or a mine would trigger.
“No. Lady Halfwolf.” Her name and title tacked on to the end like an afterthought. Whatever had him distracted, it had taken a boot to his usual habit of politeness.
On the other side of the glass wall, Kippa waved at her. She appeared to be speaking too, but no sound came across. Ren, meanwhile, had his attention elsewhere, facing away from her.
“Zinn, you still with me?”
“Why… would I… not be?”
A good question under most other circumstances. “A house just ate us.”
“I see… your point.”
“Hopefully Ren and Kippa do too.” She put both hands on the glass and, enunciating carefully, said: “Stay calm. Don’t touch anything!”
Kippa nodded in reply, putting on a brave face. Poor kid.
“We need a way through this glass wall and a way out. Corvin, you listening?”
He hadn’t moved. He stood staring at one spot among the myriad of paintings, wings still slack, posture oddly defeated.
Maika bit back a growl. “We don’t have time to look at pretty pictures, ravenborn.”
No response.
Reluctantly moving away from the glass, from Kippa, Maika took in the image that held Corvin’s attention.
The painting focused on a heron and raven arcanic, both in expensive dress reminiscent of Corvin’s robes. Between them towered an intricately carved door; markings like a helmet with shining yellow eyes. It took Maika a second to notice the winged boy in the lower right of the image.
He smiled brightly, holding up hands dripping with blood.
“Well, that sure is a sign of hostility.” She meant to say more, but her eye caught on another painting.
A painting of Tuya.
It was a wedding scene. Tuya wore fine clothes worthy of a royal union and was seated across another figure, both of them bleeding into the ceremonial chalice.
The other figure was Maika’s aunt, was Maika, was her aunt, was her, was-
“No! This… invasion… is not welcome… or needed!”
Maika’s shoulder erupted into familiar tentacles.
*
“Miss? Hello?”
“I don’t think she can hear us, Kippa.”
“But she can see us.”
Ren barely registered her words. All of his attention was caught by the horrific paintings above the mantle piece, a stark contrast to the cozy fire burning in the hearth.
“Miss says to stay put and not touch anything. Master Ren?”
Ren Mormorian, written in swirling gold at the bottom of each frame, underlining scene after scene of betrayal. He stood over Maika’s cradle, bottle in one hand, dagger in the other. He stood in a temple, surrounded by the dead. He stood on a battlefield, in more places than he should be able to at once, whispering into arcanic and human ear alike.
“Master Ren!”
A soft hand on his shoulder helped him to finally pull away. Kippa wore an expression of concern and bravery, one that shouldn’t suit a child so well.
He couldn’t place what, but something was off about her tail.
Kippa scrunched up her face in either fear or concentration or both. “I-I don’t think this place wants to hurt us. It’s trying to show us something, but I’m not sure what.”
The realization dripped into him, water hollowing out a stone. When the fog of his mind cleared he let out a hiss from the depths of his chest.
But he wasn’t the one to speak. No, it was Kippa, eyes glowing a faint orange, that exclaimed:
“This isn’t a house. You’re not a house!”
The paintings shifted one by one. Not only did the people pictured in them change, their mouths twisting into mocking grins, but the placement of the frames shifted. With the sound of nails dragged against wood, they moved to create the shape of a bow across the wall, like a giant smile across the wallpaper.
The glass wall came down in a shower of shards and tentacles.
*
Maika didn’t have a throat for howling, but despite that, one tore out of her. She battered her arm and the green strands of Zinn against the glass. The tentacles hammered against the see-through surface without any sensory feedback coming her way.
Had it always not-felt like that?
The glass shattered in a satisfying crescendo. Quickly Zinn reached out and wrapped tentacles around each of their companions. Cold, numb fear spiked through Maika, but for once the worst didn’t happen.
Gentle tentacles wrapped around Kippa, Ren and Corvin, ushering them to the center of the room that wasn’t a room, pulling them close. Safe.
A satisfied sigh. Maika hadn’t heard one, but somehow one still echoed between the walls around them. It hadn’t come from Zinn, so where-?
“I didn’t think Dracul could be houses,” Kippa said, awe coloring her words.
A rumbling like a laugh shook through the floorboards.
“Who did this to you?” Kippa said, as if in conversation with someone. All Maika heard was the shutting of distant doors and the crackling of logs in the fireplace.
Hackles raised, she waited, anticipating signs of danger, of attack. Her other companions weren’t fairing much better. Unlike Kippa, who sat in her cradle of tentacles as if they were the lap of a beloved relative, Corvin and Ren stood frozen in place. Whether they barely dared breathe because they expected Zinn to drain them dead and dry, or because they were expecting worse from the house, or both, was anyone’s guess.
“I get… your point…” Zinn this time, leaving Maika feeling like she was listening to the rehearsal of a play with a few actors missing. “I still… do not approve… your methods.”
“Please. We’ll help you, but you’ll have to let us go.”
“We will… endeavor… to follow… your advice.” Zinn’s tentacles gave Kippa, Ren and Corvin a sudden squeeze, and then withdrew back into Maika’s shoulder. If Maika hadn’t known better, she could have sworn they’d been clumsy attempts at hugs.
Did she know better?
An odd, distant look crossed Kippa’s face. “Goodbye, Mister Monster. Hope I’ll see you soon.” Blinking that away, she said: “Miss, you need to destroy the paintings. It’ll help.”
As solutions went, this one pleased Maika more than most.
She started with the wedding painting.
*
Maika woke up in a prison cell.
Maika woke up in a tent next to Tuya.
Maika woke up alone on a beach.
Maika woke up on a ship, in a cabin, bedded down next to Kippa.
The receiving room of the manor house faded quickly. A few years ago, even after Constantine, she’d have brushed the whole thing aside as a strange nightmare. Now, she watched paint fade from the tips of her fingers and did her best to not wake anyone.
Her chest hurt.
“Putting our home back together,” she muttered to herself, half caught in the still fading memory of paintings and an earlier - or later? - memory of a conversation with Kippa. “I plan on keeping that promise, little fox. I swear it.”
Zinn she’d expected. Ren she’d grudgingly accept. Corvin, that was a bit of a surprise. But whatever it’d take to give Kippa the future she deserved. That they all deserved.
If Maika stayed up until dawn pondering what message the portraits of Tuya had meant to convey, only she would know.