"Death is a door; you are the one with the key…"

-Anonymous

To say the least, how they got here was without a doubt the worst thing that Mack Freeley had ever suggested in the short years that the teenagers of the Ashford Krewe knew each other. Honestly, the blonde seventeen-year-old high school athlete had done some dumb things before, but going into Stygia, past the outer barriers of the Underworld and into the Supernal itself… all on a quest to find a Lead Coin.

"I want to apologize." He finally spoke up. They were still in Stygia, having managed to get a small fire going with the meager supplies they brought with them. There was barely anything in Stygia, no natives, no wild-life, no anything to be honest, but a lot of dead trees that seemed to burn well enough. "This is my fault, I think. Us being stuck here." He looked over at his cohorts. Tyreese, who had his aluminum baseball bat with silver bands precariously close to him, the half-black teen looking at the fire with a disinterested look. Jane, the granola girl that managed to get the fire started properly. Annabelle, the quiet one who didn't speak unless she absolutely had too.

"Don't take it too hard on yourself, Freeley. Not like I have a better idea, yanno?" You could always trust Tyreese to at least try and say the right thing. And it was true, they were stuck in Stygia and the only idea any of them had was to try and swim upriver and see what would happen, but everything about that seemed like a bad idea. Unfortunately, it was the only idea the four of them had.

Which meant that as soon as they broke camp, with packs and bags sealed and ready for the swim… well, it wasn't technically swimming. The rivers in Stygia were a lot like the rivers in the Underworld, they weren't made out of water. But they still had a current, and while it may have looked calm and swimmable on the surface… the four soon found that it was anything but as soon as they stepped in, sucked under the surface of the water, deposited to parts unknown.


This was the third time in about three days that Mack Freeley had awoken, on his back, completely disoriented by the transition from reality to unreality. First from their home, Ashford, to the Underworld. Then from the Underworld to Stygia. Finally, from Stygia… to wherever they were now. Of the four man Krewe, he sat up and looked around. The good news, was that they were no longer in Stygia, but nor were they in the Underworld. Life… didn't do well in the Underworld, and the green trees were certainly alive and more importantly, real.

"Where the hell are we?" The trees back home didn't look anything like this, though to be honest, Mack didn't spend as much time out of doors as Jane did. Speaking of which, the blonde girl was stirring next.

"Hey, Janey…" He had a little nickname for each of the Krewe members. Annie, Ty, Janey. "Do any of these look familiar?" He gestured to the various trees, and the blonde took a look around.

"Sorry. I never seen anything like these trees before, nor…" She examined one of the trunks. "This does look like it was done by… I guess it was done by an animal, but I can't think of anything large enough." She looked over to Mack, shrugging slightly. She was their out-of-doors type and if she couldn't tell what the animal was…

"Werewolf…" Tyreese had woken up, who knows how long he had been up, but he was right behind the blonde, bat in hand once more, placing a hand in the long gouge. "Has to be, can't be anything else."

"You sure, Ty?" Mack backed down as soon as he got that… glare from the other man. "Right, right... you would." For the briefest of moments, he had forgotten how Tyreese Wade had died the first time, when he took a wrong turn down an alley back home in Ashford, and met his end at the claws of feral werewolf.

The stare down was only interrupted by the fourth member, the quiet redheaded Annabelle Rossi, tugged on the sleeve of Mack's jacket.

"What now, Annie?" He turned to look at her… then looked past her. "… Ty, I ever tell you I hate it when you're right?" Right at the forested edge of the clearing they were at… were several bipedal wolves… they didn't look like traditional lycanthropes, but Mack wasn't the expert on them, that was all Ty.

"I know you do." The kid has a smirk on his mouth, as he shouldered his bat, taking a deep breath as he manifested the Primeval Caul, Tyreese Wade and his Geist, the Rotting Trapper became one being. He took on a more feral look, his finger nails growing into claws, his canines become more pronounced. Honestly, he looked like the meeting of wolf and man to Mack, but he wasn't about to tell Ty that he looked like a sort of werewolf, that just wouldn't fly. Nor could he get a word in edge wise as the boy took off with a running leap, slamming his bat into the side of one of the bipedal beasts' head.

"Well, no stopping now." Mack said with a shrug, as the ethereal fire of a Pyre-Flame Shroud manifested over his body, the flames pulsing with his heart beat, even as he brought up a hand towards the one that Ty had attacked first, ghostly fire leaping from his hand as the Pyre-Flame Rage blasted the beast.

"They ain't werewolves." Was Ty's shout, near growling as he brought his bat against another one. The silver bands weren't having any effect, but the force he could bring to bear with the metallic object was enough to leave them staggered, one howling just before an arrow seemed to appear in its eye.

"They certainly aren't normal animals!" Jane shouted as she nocked another arrow in her bow and fired off another shot. Annie, of course, was staying back. She wasn't a fighter. Not like the rest of them and she was more of a medium then anything, dealing with ghosts and how to send them on their way… or convincing them to move on.

She never felt useless, and they never treated her as such, but she just wished she could do something more as she watched the other three fight the monsters. They could work as a team, and as long as she stood back, she didn't have to worry about them having to look out after her. But she was paying attention to the fight. She was the one that first noticed as the bodies dissolved as soon as they expired, the others too busy fighting to pay it any attention.

"You alright, Annie?" Mack finally approached her, the Squire's Saber in hand, three feet of smoldering rattan on an iron basket hilt, which he dropped, the weapon dissolving into smoke as it re-entered Twilight. She nodded, and pointed to one of the bodies that fell and started to sublimate.

"Well, I'll be damned!" The corpses were vanishing into… particles or some kind. "What the hell are these things, then?"

"They weren't afraid of people..." Jane was collecting arrows. "Which means that people should be around, in some manner. But… if that's the case..." She looked around.

"Where are the ghosts?" Mack had the same thought, finishing the sentence. If the creatures weren't afraid of people, that meant they had a history of possibly attacking people. Which means they may have killed people. This whole forest should be haunted, but the fact that it wasn't, did not bode well.

"We need to find out where we are. There has to be some kind of civilization, where ever we are." But… that lead to an even greater question, as soon as the athlete was finished talking. Were they actually anywhere on Earth? The obvious answer would be, of course. But they got here after exiting Stygia without any real control. That meant there was a chance, however small, that they weren't on Earth.

Perhaps they went and crossed into another Supernal realm. Or worse, more than one world was connected to Stygia (and the Underworld) and they managed to find themselves there because the Supernal was stupid like that sometimes. And of course, Death was completely universal.

"Wait, I'm gonna try something." Tyreese said, as he crouched down, taking a hand full of the soil. He let his soul expand, taking his senses as he established a Boneyard across the forest.

"Ah-ha! There's a hole in my boneyard, about half a mile directly north of us. Means it's man-made." The Primeval Boneyard, able to see all that which dwells in a forest, except that which was made by the hands of man.

"Well then, I know which way we're going now."

"And who nominated you to be our fearless leader, Freeley?"

"Boys! We can have your macho posturing and dick measuring after we get out of the forest inhabited solely by shadow monsters, please?" If there was one thing that Jane did not like, it was when Mack and Tyreese got into it. Mack was the captain of the Varsity Wrestling Team for Ashford High (as well as co-captain of the Track and Field team, and had a say in the Football team despite being just a Tight End), and took it upon himself to go and make leadership decisions.

All that being said, they did, of course, head towards the man-made structure directly north of the clearing they were in.

"I like it, from an architectural standpoint, it looks like some recreated Stonehenge with Minecraft..." Tyreese commented. The mixed youth's father was an architect for the largest firm in Ashford, and helped design almost every new building in the tri-state area back home.

"If it's supposed to be Stonehedge, maybe it's a similar purpose? Maybe we can find a ghost that can tell us what's up?" That Jane, ever the hopeful one.

Unfortunately, as originally stated, there were no ghosts at the temple, nor were there any people. There were, however, several pillars ringed on the inside of the ruined structure, empty.

"Well… plenty of people were here… lot of these foot prints are fresh. Maybe an hour, maybe a day." Tyreese, or more specifically, the Rotted Trapper, could tell the little signs of people having been here, which did mean that there was people around, obviously not in the infested forest, but it was a good start from there.

"So there's people, not the builders of Minecraft Stonehenge, but visitors? Why would you visit a place in the midst of a forest filled to the brim with slavering monsters?" He rubbed his chin as he figured out just what the hell were they going to do. It was in this thought that he felt a tug at his jacket.

It was Annabelle. She didn't talk unless she absolutely had too.

"What's up, Annie?" She was pointing off into the distance.

"Well, don't I feel like a super genius." Annabelle was pointing out a structure in the distance, past the forest they were in. It was a compound, with a large central structure.

"Onward and upward, honestly? What's the worst that could happen?" The other three looked at Mack, sheer looks of horror plastered upon their faces. Did he really just say that? Did he even know he just did?

"Dude, you're talking like the male lead in a second rate horror movie! Did you even hear yourself?" And, as if to punctuate the mixed youth's statement, a loud roar broke the silence.

"Nothing but yourself to blame there, Freeley. Go on, most fearless leader. You summoned it. You can take care of it." Jane motioned for the youth to march forward and face his destiny.

"The three of you suck…" He shook his head, as his smoldering sword of rattan appeared in his hand with a puff of smoke, as he rested it upon his shoulder. The weapon was an extension of the Giest that resided within his soul, and such it was an extension of his own self and did not burn him at all, as he went to see to the monster he seemingly summoned.


Glossary of Terms

Bound: Human who has died and become bound to a Geist

Geist: One of the Little Gods of Death, a ghost so bound up in the way it died it becomes an aspect of that death.

Sin-Eater: One of the Bound that takes it upon themselves to help out ghosts and those affected/haunted by them.

Krewe: Group of Sin-Eaters that share a common territory

Underworld: The realm of the Dead

Stygia: The Supernal Realm of the Dead

Boneyard: Manifestation in which the Bound channels their plasm into the very ground itself, extending their senses into an area.

Caul: Manifestation where the Bound is possessed by their Geist, and becomes of one being.

Manifestation: Powers of the Geist bonded to a human soul manipulating the world of the living and the dead.


Authors Notes

Hi. You ever had an idea so out there that it kinda changes the way you think? Inspired by two sources and you were like: You know what? Imma merge those two somehow and see if it works. And it just hangs onto you for days and weeks and months and then you just like: Alright, let's do this. Let's finally write it all down and let other people take a look at it and see if it's great or terrible.

This is my idea for that, a mixture of what I originally thought was a FotM series (to be fair, I thought the same of MLP, hohohoho, yes I enjoy being the wrongest man on earth) that when I finally got down to watching it, I thought it was an interesting universe and they had some great ideas and the next thing I know I'm browsing the RWBY section of and at that point, I realized I was coalescing this idea. This, if you read the summary, is a crossover with the World/Chronicles of Darkness, specifically the Geist: the Sin-Eaters game line.

It is, without a doubt, my favorite game line in the World/Chronicles of Darkness setting. I won't exactly sum up what it's about, but as the story goes along, you'll probably figure it out due to the characters talking about who and how they are. Anyway, drop a review, tell me what you think, and we'll see how I can improve.

Hold on tight, we're having an adventure.