[PP - F28][ST][RH] Proven Guilty

[Lessa 1]

Raven Hollow
Jail
Midnight

It was the perfect night. A sheet of stars blanketed the black sky, twinkling prettily, their light rivaling that of the thin, crescent moon. The breeze that meandered through the woods was cool, but not unpleasant as it rustled the trees’ crimson leaves. In the distance, a whip-poor-will trilled its familiar three-note melody. It was the sort of night that featured prominently in poetry and love songs. A night teetering on the edge of eternity, where anything was possible, and everything could change for the better.

And none of that mattered within the walls of the Raven Hollow jail. The small, windowless structure allowed its residents no peak at the outside world. Situated right at the town’s heart, it had tortured its prisoners with a nearness to normal life. The sounds of the tolling school bell. Voices raised in prayer from the church. The call of nocturnal song-bird, singing songs of a freedom that the jailhouse’s occupants might never taste again. Their world had been shrunk down to two 6x8 cells, a key ring on a hook, and a wooden table where their jailor occasionally sat. The heavy door that opened and closed with his arrival had allowed them their only breath of fresh air. Maybe it still did so.

Spoiler

<<Storyteller System in Effect - Acting as Storyteller>>
True Level: 110 / True Tier: 11

 

[Reytac 0]

Dust swirled around Reytac's feet as he let the door close behind him, clinging to his feet as he stepped over the threshold. A part of him wondered if he should have tried to keep that door propped open somehow, but he doubted it would have been possible. Something about the heavy thud of the door had been very final, like anything that had tried to prevent it would have been placed in one of the cells for just the attempt. An echoing, perhaps, of the fact that that was the last sound that the people who had been kept here in the past had heard before their lives were stripped away from them, the last time they got to experience the outside world. 

The brunette lifted one arm and covered his face with the crook of his arm as his eyes scanned the room. It looked a bit odd, but it kept the majority of the dust that was stirring at his passage from climbing into his nose and mouth as he tried to breathe, the musty air thick with the scent of the dust, and something else hw couldn't quite place. Rey saw the jailor's table, sitting innocuously by one wall, and made his way over towards it, for now keeping his distance from the aged iron bars that comprised the actual cells. Reytac had come to investigate Ravens Hollow, and he'd picked the jailhouse to serve as the starting point. A place of regret, and literally meant to keep people imprisoned.. 

Now he just had to see if the jailor had kept any kind of notes about what had happened here. Or about the people he'd kept imprisoned. Anything that could serve as a clue as to just what was going on in this town. He would check out the cells last - after making very well sure that the keys worked and could actually open the cell doors. Testing out to see if the walls of a jail were [Immortal Objects] or being trapped in this place was about as low on his list of desires as it could get. 

[Lessa 1]

A flash of movement in the left cell heralded the ghost’s arrival. It was as if the air around the figure simply parted for her, dust particles and light bending around her silhouette as she drifted from the bench to the bars of her cage. Her form was far from solid - more like a slight distortion to reality, visible only if the viewer were to squint and tilt their head a bit. But the soft sobs that racked her were unmistakable, and very real. The sound of them, soft, shallow, and breathless, filled the small building. And with each second that passed, the source came into clearer focus.

The vague outline became a woman. A patched wool dress hung the entire length of her five-foot frame, and bare feet poked out beneath the hem. Tight copper ringlets framed a heart-shaped face and long, delicate neck, then spilled across thin shoulders. They shook beneath the weight of the woman’s cries.

Only when the ghost had fully materialized did she lift her head, salty tracks criss-crossing her flushed cheeks. Her red-rimmed golden eyes sought out the newcomer’s hazel ones. “You’re here,” she said suddenly, voice thick with emotion. “After so much time has passed. Have you come to deliver my sentence, or have you finally realized that I’m not guilty of the crimes you’ve accused me of?”

[Reytac 0]

Reytac waved one hand in front of his face, trying to clear the thick, choking dust that was hanging around him away. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted motion, and at first he thought he'd seen a rat or something, or a moth. He knew he was alone in the jailhouse, after all. So when he turned to look at it, and started hearing the faint sound of sobs - his skin got covered in goosebumps, and all the hair on his neck stood up sharply. Because drifting closer was something that was definitely not some kind of animal, or insect - it was a shorter figure, yes, but still human. If humans were translucent. 

Reytac staggered backwards, his hips thumping against the jailor's desk as the keys in his hand dropped to the table. While he knew that there were undead mobs on some floors, he hadn't run into any of them yet - and he was fairly certain they weren't this human - they were skeletons, zombies, not - ghosts that talked. Wait - wasn't there a floor-He took a deep breath as the ghost started talking to him. The short reddish-blonde haired figure, a woman in a worn dress, had clearly mistaken him for someone else. The jailor, possibly? 

He tried to calm his racing heart. Whether or not there were other ghosts somewhere else, this was the first one he had ever met, and it had scared the living daylights out of him. He rubbed his chest with his empty hand as he stepped back towards the imprisoned woman, his lips turning downwards in a slight frown. 

"And just what crimes were you accused of that you are innocent of, young miss?" His first instinct was to release this woman if she'd been forgotten in a jail cell - but he didn't want to accidentally unleash some heinous sub-floor boss or something because he was trying to be helpful. A crying woman was a weak point that he'd forgotten he had, trapped in this death game.