Asuna

At 8:20 am on a rainy December 29th morning, Asuna, Kirito, and Koharu began their plunge into the catacombs of Karluin.

The trio returned from watery Rovia to rain-soaked Karluin moments ago and made a beeline to the main entrance to the catacombs. Asuna assumed she, Mito, and Jaymes would join them in completing the few quests they have down in the catacombs: "Little Lost Jenny," in which they search for a lost pet; "The Tasteless Collector," involving finding a certain relic; and the 'Thirty-Year Lament," which involves finding a ghost.

When Kirito mentioned the target of the latter quest, Asuna squeaked, "Nyet!"-"No" in Russian-and fended off his questions by saying she didn't want spoilers. Far from the truth, but she wasn't going to admit in front of Kirito and Koharu that she was afraid of ghosts, spirits, wraiths, apparitions, whatever the appropriate term was. Kirito was convinced, but she was not sure Koharu was. But the raven-haired girl remained silent on the matter, only offering Asuna a smile that could break the darkness of the fifth floor.

Thankfully, the staircase descending into the catacombs was not eerie. It is a large room with several dozen players sitting around, meeting, and eating breakfast. Some were still sleeping inside sleeping bags. "is this a safe room?"

"On the contrary, we're still in the safe haven," Kirito answers. "The notice never appeared, right?"

"Oh...r-right." Tense about a ghostly encounter, she feels her shoulders relax. Looking around, the players don't look to be of ALS or DKB. Their gear is, at best, from the third floor. Some are unarmed. No one here is from the frontier, meaning they're here for another reason. "So they're all here to find relics."

"That's what I expect. They're probably picked this room clean and are now heading down into the subterranean ruins nearby."

Kirito's face suddenly fixes with a stern look, prompting Asuna to glance back quizzically and Koharu to ask, "Is something wrong, Kirito?"

"The first underground floor was within the safe haven in the beta. So no monsters and no traps. I'm guessing they've all come here to gather relics based on the news about that, but..."

"Is something wrong with that?"

"...No, sorry, just overthinking things. C'mon, let's keep going. Jaymes and Mito are up ahead to the north." He gestures for the girls to take the lead, and Asuna leads them to the hallway along the north wall. It is a dark hallway, and the rain from outside seeps down, echoing as droplets land in puddles or on her. The walk sends constant shivers down her spine to the point she needs to make some noise. They're still in the safe haven, after all.

She turns to Koharu, who walks beside her, and the lagging Kirito to start a conversation. "So I guess it does rain in Aincrad."

"It's rained before," Koharu responds, tugging on her damp green cloak. "Well, in the beta, it rained here and there, but now that you mention it, has it rained since we've been here?"

"I don't recall it. I know there was snow during Christmas, but..."

"Oh, right. Well, it's true that it happens only rarely. In MMORPGs before this, rains and storms were a regular occurrence, but it's just a lot more unpleasant in a VRMMO. Like you saw, it ruins visibility, makes your gear heavy, your clothes stick to you, and it's really cold. As Koharu said, it rained a lot more at the start of the beta, but they lowered the probability when the testers complained."

"Ahh, so that's what happened. It's too bad. I like watching the rain from the inside."

Koharu nods. "I do too. It's calming, in a sense. I wouldn't mind one day just staying inside while it rains."

Kirito chuckles from behind. "Sorry about this, then."

Feeling better, Asuna puts her mind on the goal. Take care of some quests, level up, and prepare to engage the floor for real. One hand on her hilt, she used the other to navigate the mostly empty map. They're making good progress toward the quest marker, where Jaymes and Mito will meet them. The path leads them to a side branch of the main corridor, forcing them to crab-walk through the foot-wide path, then crawl through a two-foot tall tunnel. Kirito, of course, went first there.

Soon, Jaymes and Mito were in sight, seated at the entrance to a chapel in ruins. Long pews made two columns along the length of the church leading up to a crumbling statue. While there are some candles, the corner spaces are blanketed in darkness. Aside from Mito and Jaymes, no other players are around despite the potential for relics.

Something feels off. "What quest happens in this spot?"

"Huh? You want spoilers now?"

"Just tell me that much."

"Well, if you just want the title...it's the 'Thirty-Year Lament'!"

Asuna somehow manages to keep herself from revealing how horrible her luck is. She glares at Jaymes and Mito, who got here first, and wonders which one is responsible. If she had her guess, Mito selected this one first, but part of her believes the red warrior learned Asuna's fears and had to witness it for himself.

The "Thirty-Year Lament" story goes like this: a middle-aged bachelor is disturbed by odd noises at night in his new home. The party initially investigated the basement of his house, but nothing was found, not even a mouse. The quest log suggested that they had to delve deeper, which leads them to now.

"So that means this chapel is directly beneath that man's house?"

Kirito answers with a grin. "It'll make sense if you switch your map." Asuna does so by pressing the arrow buttons that alternate the vertical levels. The quest marker perfectly lines up the underground chapel and the man's home.

"They do line up," Koharu sighs nervously.

"Ah, I see. So this is where the gho...the mystery vibrations are coming from." She scans the chapel, seeing nothing physical that could bother the home above. Meanwhile, Kirito says nothing back, just observing her and Koharu like a master to his disciples. Mito and Jaymes do the same thing. If they were doing anything, they made Asuna and Koharu figure it out themselves.

Koharu picks that up and brings a hand to her chin as she scans the area again. "A strange phenomenon is creating noises at night at the man's home. The source is most likely here...but what could it be? It could be a ghost or a supernatural occurrence. If I had to guess, we'd need to...find or provoke the cause. What time does the rattling start again?"

"Didn't that man say the house would rattle at around two in the morning?"

"He did," Kirito confirms.

"Then...we'll need to come back here at two o'clock to ascertain the nature of the sound, right?"

"A sound idea, Asuna," Jaymes remarks. "There are quests that are time restricted in this fashion. Much like the boat quest down in Rovia. So yes, we would need to return here at two in the morning."

"I appreciate the compliment, but it's only nine o'clock right now. Are we just going to stand around here waiting until two in the morning?"

Mito grins. "That's a possibility, or we could come back later. Or we can take a shortcut. And any moment now... Ah, here the hint is. Come." Asuna is pushed back by Kirito and Mito, and her demands for an explanation of this "hint" goes unanswered as a creepy scraping sound fills the chapel. Holding in her scream, she darts behind Kirito.

From the chapel, entrance enters a small NPC no larger than a child. Its body is mostly hidden underneath a grey coat, but she can see the person's feet. For the NPC's size, those feet are quite large and long. A sack that's seen better days and a bright candle is in its hands. Besides those things, she cannot determine the NPC's humanity-or lack of humanity.

She watches as the being squats at the candle piles around the chapel. It takes a fresh candlestick from the bag, ignites its wick from the nearly depleted one within the pile, and places the fresh one on the ground. It repeats this process repeatedly, making Asuna think it's the caretaker of the ruins.

He doesn't seem hostile, and if he's the "hint", there must be a way to expose it. Maybe if she talks to it, she'll find out. Turning to her right, she eyes Koharu, nodding to her. Mustering her courage, she steps out from behind the swordsman in black and strides to the hooded being, Koharu on her heels. "H...hello."

"..." The being stops. Slowly and awkwardly, he faces the pair of girls, revealing a pair of glowing eyes underneath the dark hood.

Koharu gulps and says. "You... You take care of the chapel, right? The candles, you keep them lit?"

The being stares at the girls for an uncomfortable length of time. Koharu faces Asuna, worried her questioning wasn't inappropriate to receive a response from what Asuna assumes is a man, then he breaks the pause with a dry voice. "I don't come here at night. I wake up in the morning and light candles. During day, I add candles. At night, I put out candles and sleep." Nothing more to say, the girls watch as the being shuffles out of the chapel.

"Lights them by morning, adds them during the day, puts them out at night... Asuna, I think I get it."

"Ah, me too." The chapel is dark when the man comes to put out the candles at night. If the man's house rattles at two in the morning, it's safe to assume the chapel is not lit at the time. A simple experiment requires one to replicate the conditions of their hypothesis, and the best way to do that is to replicate the chapel's lack of lighting at night.

Asuna glances at the trio of experienced players, still silent. She ventures over to the nearest pile of candles and blows out the fresh and aging flames. The chapel gets eerily darker, but Asuna pushes her fears for the answer at hand. "Blow out those candles, everyone!"

Less than a minute later, the chapel is in total darkness. Asuna can barely see a foot in front of her, so she starts to open her window when a pale blue light brightens her hands. "Th-thanks," she says to whoever is the source of the light, but Koharu, the closest to her, doesn't have a lantern or torch out. Neither does Jaymes, Kirito, or Mito. The light comes from the center of the room. It was unlike any natural luminescence from before. As Asuna stares at it, she doesn't feel warmth but frigidity to the very fiber of her existence.

"Hyoooo..."

Asuna's body stiffens as the sound of rustling branches echoes from the light, leading to the appearance of a twig-like hand. She prays to the heavens that her worst fears are just that, fears, but the gods above don't answer her. The wailing hand becomes an arm, then a shoulder, and an upper body. It's a woman with a frail appearance and long, string-like hair. Her eyes spew red fire, and her teeth are sharp and fang-like.

It's not an NPC or a simple monster. This is a ghost, and it announces its full presence with a chapel-shaking shriek. The pews overturn one after the other like dominoes, and the walls and ceiling crumble. Asuna tries to maintain her footing, but her body disobeys her. Her senses are dull, and she somehow begins to topple over-right into Kirito's arms.

"Whoa there. Oh, you didn't like it? I thought it was kind of a cool haunted house effect... You okay?" Asuna tries to reassure her partner, but her mouth is frozen. However, he senses she's terrified, calmly wraps an arm around her, and leads her to the wall. The ghost, uncaring of their predicament, continues to shake the chapel harder and harder with her wails.

It finally ceases fifteen eternal seconds later. Asuna, cradled in Kirito's arms and her eyes shut tight, believes the ghost to have calmed or, best case scenario, gone. Realizing her embarrassing predicament with Kirito, she starts to open her eyes as soon as she feels her body reconnected with her mind and opens her eyes...to the pale blue ghost's face in front of hers.

"Yaaaaaaaaah!" comes three girlish shrieks that might as well have eclipsed the ghost's. Mito and Koharu huddled up with Jaymes beside Asuna and Kirito, and all three were frightened to their core about the ghost's sudden appearance in front of them. Asuna clutches her partner's clothes tighter than ever.

She's not afraid of the supernatural in general, but ghosts are in a league of their own. Their bodiless forms, ability to appear and disappear within walls and floors, unable to determine if they're present or not, those got to her. No monster thus far was noncorporeal. Even when Kirito mentioned "evil spirit" earlier, she wanted to believe it was anything other, but sure enough, there's a floating apparition inch from the five teenagers' faces. And here she was, trying to be independent of Mito, Jaymes, and Kirito for once, trying to complete this quest with Koharu. That fell apart quickly.

After an eternity of silence, Jaymes shatters it with a mumbling, "You girls okay?"

"I-is the ghost gone now?"

Kirito's voice answers her. "Umm...no, it's right here..."

"Yaaaaaaah!" Asuna yelps alone this time, shaking her head in her partner's jacket. "Make it go away! Drive it off right now!"

"W-well, we have to move the quest onward for that."

"Then move us forward!" Kirito attempts to do as he's told, but that requires him to move. Asuna clutches him tighter and yells, "No, stay like this!"

"G-gotcha. J-Jaymes, will you?"

"We gotta Scooby-Doo this quest, huh? Ahem... Hey, ghost-lady? Do you mind explaining why you're...here in this chapel?"

It takes a few seconds, but the ghost's echoing voice sends an icy breath down Asuna's neck. It takes her all not to scream again. "...Because...I cannot leave..."

"Wh-why not?" questions a brave but shaken Mito.

"I am locked...inside of this place..."

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Things progressed smoothly afterward. The apparition explained to Asuna's party (more so Kirito, Jaymes, and Mito, who knew the proper conversation pattern) that she was trapped in the chapel thirty years ago by her former lover. Her hatred of him kept her tied to this plane. Once she told them everything and the quest log was updated, the ghost disappeared.

Afterward, a stern conversation between Asuna and the boys took place for them to forget that she, Koharu, and to a degree, Mito were frightened by the ghost, that they're not to mention it at all in the future, and most of all, no childish pranks. Kirito readily agreed though he sounded like he was scolded; Jaymes was pushed into agreeing by a silent glare from her and Koharu.

The ghost left behind a pendant, which the five returned to town to get appraised by an NPC. It turned out it was a signifier that belonged to a wealthy mercantile family in town. The party headed there next and met the head of the family, a fifty-or-so-year-old man. He admitted his terrible deed; he grew tired of his betrothed and trapped her in the chapel under the guise of relic hunting. But she tore off his pendant, leading to current events.

After being held back by Kirito before she got physical with the man, they led him back to the chapel and summoned the ghost again. He got down on his knees, groveled, and begged forgiveness, and the ghost disappeared for good. They escorted the man back, received their rewards, and left the mansion-but not without a bone-chilling end as the door to the man's office mysteriously rattled.

But the fright and troubles Asuna will experience in the catacombs have only just begun...