The Decrepit Mansion (Open)

In the mountains of west Germany there is an old, run down mansion. The shutters are broken, the roof sags in the middle. The air around the old house is cold and still, it has not been touched by the living for decades.

But...

Recently, the sound of a Grand Piano can be herd echoing through the valley that this run down palace overlooks. Though the valley is often not traveled, there are frightened whispers among those few and far between that do pass through, that the old house may be haunted.

No one has dared to venture close yet, but perhaps the brave and daring, the reckless or those with something to prove, might have it in them to march up to the chipped mahogany doors and investigate.

((OOC: Here is the song that echoes through the valley ))

Ooc: hoping this is open....

Mania gazes at the mansion with curiosity [what sorts of shiny bits are inside? Do you think the ghosts their did cry? When they died did they sigh? Did they lose all their pride?] his odd, poetic thought process rebounded in his skull. [is that music? Did I lose it? Are there pizzas and brunettes?] huh? What? He couldn't think straight. Oh right! He could never think straight.

OOC: It is! Thanks for the reminder, I've added the tag to the title.

The music stills during the day but returns every night. For hours and hours, it echos through this long abandoned place.

The mansion is easy enough to get to, if one is willing to follow a winding path from the valley floor, up to one of the lower hills. One could imagine that before something sucked the life out of this place it was a beautiful view.

The faded doors of the mansion are shut, but with enough persistence and force they can be motivated to opening. Inside everything is covered in a thick layer of dust. The silver fixtures are tarnished to a dull grey, and cobwebs stretch out in the darkened corners of the rooms.

The closer one gets, and certainly the further inside one ventures the louder the music becomes.

Mania lurched up the hill, his mad, uneven pace making him look like he could fall over at any minute.
Of course this behavior was normal for him, the odd swaying part of some dance only he knew.
He kicks the doors open, letting the cold midnight breeze waft in.
"It sways and it hums, yet the keyboard still thrums..."
He mutters to himself before giggling uncontrollably. This was his kind of building.

Some of the spiders populating the mansion skitter away in the wake of Mania's steps.

The source of the music can be traced up the winding, battered staircase to a once opulent sitting room.

There is a young woman, a study in madness herself sitting with her back to the doorway. Deft hands move up and down the ivory keys, pulling her whole body with them in lurching motions. Her hair is wild, out of place. She looks rather ill taken care of all together.

She is enthralled in her music, her madness, so much that she makes no acknowledgement of Mania's rather rude arrival to her home. There is not even a second's delay in the howl of regret that she voices through the aging piano. The large spider sitting to her right atop the piano also makes no indication that it has noticed the other demon weapon in the room. It simply continues to listen.

Her thoughts flit through her mind at breakneck pace, "Music. Madness. Mother. Death.... Kishin. Asura! Where was I? Where was I when the web came crashing down!? Where was I, mother? Mother, what do I do now?"

Mania makes his way to the room from which the music came, and there was.....a girl?
"Yep that's a girl alright. But what's it doing here?"
He says aloud, even though she could likely here him.

"I'm not sure what I should do with it...." He says, once again speaking like she was an object. He tilts his head to the side, as though listening to someone "yes.yes... Speak to it? Ok....." He turns back to the girl "hello uuuuh.... Person."

Arianne ignores him at first, focusing solely on her playing. The song rockets through it's crescendo and begins to slowly peter out within a few moments.

Her hands still on the keys when she is done and she sits up, a slight pause before she looks over her shoulder. She is pale, her eyes shot red from crying. Scratches run down her face, gouged there by her own hands in a fit of grief.

"You're not one of Mother's children..." she begins. Her head tilts to the side a little as she considers her fellow demon weapon, "And yet you are."

"My....mother?" He begins to think of the fire all those years ago. He began to giggle a bit "she screamed so loud....or was it just the wind chimes? Could wind chimes crash that loudly?" He goes completely still, not even blinking, lost in thought.

Arianne simply stares at her guest for a long moment. The interaction is slowly pulling her back to reality, very, very slowly.

"Why are you here?" She asks after a long silence. The large spider on the edge of the piano begins to skitter away.

Mania is really confused for a minute, he furrows his brow "why...am I....here?" He says pointing to the ground "why AM I here?" He asks himself. With that he unceremoniously falls on the floor.

Arianne furrows her brow in turn, "Not quite the scope I had in mind." she says, lifting her hands to at least somewhat smooth her hair.

For the first time in over eight hundred years she is not alone with her grief She's still remembering how to act. "What do you want?"

"To find the tune that made me swoon, and light all ablaze!" He says in a singsong voice, still not bothering to sit up. He gets up and hugs Arianne tightly. Then he unceremoniously shoves her away from himself. "I needed a hug, I'm done with you now." He snaps his fingers and a tiny blaze forms between them like a lighter, he begins to take a breath, about to light the building on fire.

A gust of darkness puts out his flame, "Thats not very nice..." Jericho says softly, stepping in through the open door. "Your music is lovely, he says looking at the stranger behind the piano.

Insane or not, aggression is something that Arianne understands. She is on her feet in a second, eyes flashing bright to show the spider-web pattern in her iris, and her hand forming into a pure black and pointed blade.

"And it would seem I am done with you. Such a shame, you seemed like you could be so much fun. I needed a bit of a hug myself, thanks for waking me up." Aware and awakened by the rush of the combat and violence she grew up seeped in her soul begins to pulse through the room.

For now she completely ignores Jericho, choosing to remain focused on the fellow Demon Blade standing across from her.

"What's with these two?", Jericho wonder's to himself. He prepares himself for a surprise attack, unsure of what he just walked into, or who he is dealing with.

Mania is completely baffled by her actions, and does not seem to react to the blade pointed directly at him "you....don't like fire? But it glows! Glowing is pretty, and its nice and warm...."

"It also burns and twists flesh on bone in writhing agony. And, while your fire is not much of a concern to me, many of my brothers and sisters live in this house and I will notlet you harm them."

She leans her weight forward onto her front let, pushing her soul wavelength into the ground. It reverberates through the wooden floor before exploding out of the ground under Mania in the form of a clutch of strait, razor sharp black blades.

Mania tries to stand up quickly, but his natural unsteadiness cause him to slip. He catches himself on his hands when the blades burst forth. The largest one quivers a quarter of an inch away from the tip of his nose. He has numerous small cuts on his body where blades came uncomfortably close. "There are more of you? Do they play to?"

Jericho looks around, wondering where the others are, or if they are as skilled as these two. After a quite look over of the room, he quietly walks over to the piano, sits down at it, and continues to watch the fight.

"They're a little small to play the piano, but they are impressive in their own ways."

Arianne lifts her leg off the ground and the blades recede. Her eyes flit back to Jericho as he takes a casual seat at the piano. Slowly she starts to to realize that she might have overreacted, that Mania may not have meant to harm her.

As she speaks about her siblings, small spiders start to come out of cracks in the wall, maybe a dozen or so, hardly enough to be a pandemic. The large one that could be seen sitting on the piano with her before reappears, skittering across the floor to her feet, then climbing up her body until it is perched on her right shoulder.

"Though you are both my brothers as well, unless I am mistaken. You both feel like weapons to me and we all share the same mother."

There's a twinge in her very soul at the mention of mother, something like madness and regret vibrating through the room, but Arianne manages to at least look stable... for now.

"My mom liked barbecue." Mania says in a flat tone, his eyes gaze off into nothingness. "Then she turned into barbecue, but the fireman said we couldn't have that barbecue, said it was bad." With this he nods matter-of-factly and stands up, his long coat and natural height making him seem enormous "wwwwwwwwhhhhhhhyyyyyyyy mansion?" He jabs a finger at the ceiling "I wanna go have French fries!!! You. come." He grabs her arm and makes for the doorway

"They're wavelengths are both dark, and what does she mean by mother...?" Jericho asks himself pondering, standing, and following the strangers, no longer fearing them. "If they wanted me dead, they would have killed me, or at least tried."

Arianne was not sure what to make of Mania at this point, though if he had burned his own mother alive... which seemed to be the case, then it would only be a matter of time before he turned on her as well.

Besides there was still the other, "Hold a moment, I do have another guest." she says to her fellow demon weapon.

She turns to face Jericho, "You. Who are you? Why did you come here? Perhaps you can give me clearer answers than this boy can."

"I'm Jericho, I'm a weapon from DWMA..." He said softly, walking over to the piano. He sits slowly, playing a faint lulliby he could barely recall, yet played so clearly. "This lulliby, you play it before you play anything, its like a warm up for you. I came here because you played it before you were playing Mozart..." he says slowly. "It reminds me of a faint memory, from long ago. It reminds me of my parents, before I was abandoned... How do you know this lulliby?"' he asks softly, yet sternly, with a veil of darkness surrounding him.

Mania starts laughing when he says he is from the DWMA. "Oh yessss we get some of you back at the carnival every now and again. You tend to die more easily than most.