InsaneJournal

Who: Tas and Clover
What: Exploring Asetenarra's Haunted Caves and not understanding a single pop culture reference
When: Around Halloweenish
Where: Asetenarra's Haunted Caves
Warnings: Nah


Clover had never in his life heard of haunted caves the way he’d heard about these, so the concept was novel and at least mildly intriguing. If it was interesting enough, maybe he’d see if he could nudge Qrow into coming with him again. He’d never actually encountered a ghost before, but he’d heard about them since arriving. They were a very important part of this time from what he could tell from the decor alone and the various “haunted” attractions.

“Have you actually encountered one of these so called ghosts?” He glanced over at Tas. It was nice to be around someone that was a little more upbeat. It reminded him of being around Marrow and, strangely, he missed the other ace operative. Not that he severely minded Qrow’s company. He didn’t. He was confused about his feelings about it for the most part, but he did have a habit of being negative. Mostly toward himself. Clover was working on it slowly. He didn’t want Qrow to feel like he was being shoved into positivity, but he wanted him to see himself in a better light anyway.

He distracted himself from his thoughts by staring at the first cave. The label next to it said Nightmare on Elm Street. The decor was definitely something and there was what appeared to be an animatronic person, but was, according to the man named Onyx, a mannequin that had been temporarily brought to some form of temporary “life” with blood magic. He’d never heard of it, but it seemed an unusual sort of magic to him. He moved closer to inspect it, but jumped back when it moved forward and a voice that seemed to be coming from the mannequin said, “Come to Freddy!”

“Well...that’s definitely something.”

“I have!” Tas said, excited for the chance to tell the story of how he and his friends had spent the night in Darken Woods, which was supposed to be an evil wood filled with the spirits of the dead, and then the spirits of the dead found them and talked to them through Raistlin, who used to be a friend but wasn’t anymore on account of him being evil, and not the fun kind of evil but the awful kind of evil, and Tas was the one who got to talk to the ghost and prove to it that their purpose wasn’t evil. Because they weren’t evil, the ghosts lead some centaurs to them, and they got to ride the centaurs (it had been amazing), and then they met the Forestmaster, who was a unicorn and fed them a great feast.

“Oh, and then there’s Lord Soth, who’s a Death Knight who hangs around with Kitiara; she’s Raistlin’s sister. I think he’s a ghost, maybe? He can kill people just by pointing at them and saying ‘die’ though, which is kind of interesting. I wonder what that feels like. Oh, but I was told there were no actual ghosts in the Haunted Caves. They’re just decorated to be spooky! Which is kind of a shame, I guess, but it still sounds fun!”

He didn’t want to complain, since it wasn’t like actual ghosts grew on trees (even if they did seem to prefer dark and spooky forests), and obviously people put in a lot of work to the exhibits. And anyway, going to see Haunted Caves with a new friend, even if they weren’t actually haunted, was a lot of fun.

He let out a peal of delighted laughter when the mannequin spoke, and he did, in fact, ‘Come to Freddy.’ “Look at his hands!” Tas exclaimed, leaning in close to examine them. “They’re all knives! And his face. It looks like he was in a fire or something! Imagine if you had to fight him or something!” He leaned back on his heels, peering up at him. “Well, I guess it wouldn’t be too hard, maybe, so long as you kept your distance. Even a sword would have longer reach than just his finger knives.”

Clover listened to the story, smiling a little at parts. He understood having a friend who ended up being less of a friend than they were meant to be. Even if he still had conflicting feelings about James, the man had saved his life. He owed him a debt. But James, he didn’t consider to be evil either. Just...emotionally misguided. Things were scary and it made sense to not know how to react or to react poorly. After everything that happened, Clover couldn’t say that he didn’t understand. Still, James should have trusted them all to help. He wished things hadn’t played out the way they did, but they did. He didn’t mention it outloud, though, because it seemed complicated.

“Lord Soth. That’s a name for sure.” But the power to kill someone by pointing at them seemed like a weighty sort of ability. “Kind of glad we don’t have Death Knights back home. I know too many people that would take advantage of a power like that.” Salem would have found a way to get ahold of them or at least tried to.

Clover stared at the mannequin for a moment. “I don’t know much about the stories here. I think Onyx mentioned they were based off movies, but I haven’t had a chance to watch many movies since getting here. Maybe something to look into.” But he didn’t figure the man would be difficult to fight either. “Kingfisher would be easy to use in a fight like that and after fighting Tyrian, I think I could manage with a team.” He paused for a moment before explaining. “Tyrian has a scorpion tail.” He was also the reason he died, but he didn’t feel like he needed to say that.

“There’s a sign here that says not to fall asleep. I’m not sure what that means.”

“Lord Soth is the only one I know of,” Tas said. Of course, the best thing about life was that there was always new and exciting things for Tas to discover, so maybe there was an entire Death Knight Society or something.

“Oh no, I tried to watch a movie once, but it was boring,” Tas said. Not the movie itself - it had seemed like it could have been interesting, there was lots of explosions and yelling and stuff - but just sitting around not doing anything was the worst. Almost as bad as reading books.

“I think the sign just means that you shouldn’t fall asleep because they worked really hard at this thing. And also that sleeping is the worst.” A lot of lying down and missing out on all the exciting things that happened when you were sleeping. Sometimes his dreams were interesting enough to make up for it, but mostly it was just a regrettable waste of time. But he liked the sign, and while it was too big to fit inside one of his pouches, he thought it might fit under his fur vest. He started to work on getting it off the wall.

“He has a whole scorpion tail? Is it poisonous? Or venomous, I guess. I always get those two confused. Raistlin tried to explain it to me before. Something like if it bites you then it’s something and if you bite it then it’s the other thing, but green dragons breath a poison gas, so does that count as you doing the biting or them doing the biting? Did you get stung? By Tyrian, I mean, not by a green dragon; green dragons don’t have stingers.”

Clover chuckled softly. “I was stuck in bed for a while when I first showed up because of internal bleeding.” He’d nearly died, had died at home, but he showed up here instead. “It was definitely the worst couple weeks of my life. It’s really the only reason I watched anything.” Having only known Tas for a very short amount of time, he was already certain that he could not have handled that. At least there seemed to be people who could heal things rather quickly here.

“I suppose that’s possible,” he said, watching for a moment as Tas tried to take the sign off the wall. He opened his mouth to say something, but focused on the second line of questioning. “Venomous, I believe. But no. He didn’t ever sting me. It is metallic, but I believe it wasn’t before.” He tried to understand the part about the dragon with poisonous or possibly venomous breath, but he had to admit, he wasn’t sure what to respond to it.

“I’m not certain that you’re supposed to take their signs, though. So probably leave it.”

“Oh, bedrest is the worst,” Tasslehoff agreed. Bedrest for kender was typically not a good time for anyone, given the fact that there were few creatures on Krynn as annoying or as dangerous as a bored kender. “I guess that would be a good use for TV though. Do you have TVs in your world? We don’t in ours. If you’re stuck on bedrest, all you can really do is talk to people or read books and reading’s pretty boring too. Unless it’s a super secret book of spells that you’re not supposed to read or you’ll get cursed.” Of course, Raistlin had never let Tas read his spellbooks. “I’m glad you got better though and I’m sorry you were nearly dying when you came here.” At least, that’s what Clover had said over the network.

“Oh, that’s not as interesting as venom. Then again, being poisoned - venomed? - isn’t very fun either, so maybe that’s for the best.” He sighed, giving up on the sign. Clover was probably right. People tended to get pretty upset when you walked away with their signs sometimes.

It was probably for the best that Clover didn’t respond about the dragons: if people responded to everything a kender said, they’d likely never stop talking. Tas moved on passed the Freddy display, taking it all in, and when the lights flickered and a strange sort of gurgling sounded, he stopped and looked around, wide-eyed, until he spotted the strangely contorted girl coming out of a static-y television.

Clover smiled and nodded at the comment on bedrest. It was, in fact, the worst. He was hoping to avoid it in the future. So far they’d managed well enough. “Better than staring at the wall at least. It doesn’t work as well if you have a concussion, though. No screens.” The comment about the cursed books was a little less surprising than it might have been at the beginning of his Vallo journey, but he still made a small noise to signal his surprise. “Don’t think we have cursed books. Kind of a relief.”

Clover had to agree that being poisoned or venomed wouldn’t be fun. He’d never experienced it before, but he couldn’t imagine it was a nice. He wasn’t sure if it was worse or better than being run through with a blade and he wasn’t sure it was worth it to find out. “You experienced being poisoned?”

The next cave was definitely something. He was almost curious enough to look into the movies to fully understand what the hell all of this was. He got a little closer to the display, studying everything and listening to the strange gurgling. He noted the controlled water around the TV that didn’t seem to go anywhere, but definitely was there. “I’m not sure if this would be more or less enjoyable if I fully understood what it was.” Upon closer inspection, it seemed like the water was coming out of the TV. “I don’t know much about the TVs, but I feel like water and electricity in general is a bad idea. Doesn’t seem to be bothering anything right now, though.” He looked over at Tas. “They have anything like this where you’re from? Traveling through TVs or anything?”

“Oh no, that sounds even worse. Hopefully someone would be able to tell you stories though!” Tas didn’t know what a concussion was, but it sounded horrible. “And oh yeah, I got poisoned a couple years ago when I was trying to unlock a door. I didn’t manage to disarm the trap that was in the lock. It was terrible. But luckily my fr- someone came and healed me. And I had the plague not long ago, and that was even worse.” Raistlin had healed him from the poison, but had terrified him when Tas had the plague. Tas still couldn’t reconcile the man he’d been friends with for half his life with the person he’d wound up becoming, and was on the verge of becoming melancholy before Clover managed to distract him again.

“Oh no, we don’t even have TVs where I’m from!” Tas said. “I guess sometimes you might have a magical item that’ll show you something that’s happening far away, or in the future or the past or something, but nothing like television. Or electricity, unless someone’s shooting it at you because of a magic spell. Why doesn’t it go with water? Do you have people that can travel through TVs where you’re from?”

Clover shook his head at the question. “We have different technology. This is much less advanced than I’m used to.” But it wasn’t any less interesting to see where things had been once and where they were now. “I’d definitely be concerned if anything traveled that way. Especially looking like this.”

He moved back, studying everything a bit more before moving onto the next display, which was a display of what seemed like a man with a chainsaw for a hand? He was a little confused about that, but he also had a weapon aimed at a terrifying looking woman that was attempting to come out of a door in the ground that was chained down for the most part. When they walked in, the man said something about a boomstick. “Any ideas?”

“Oh yeah, she is creepy.” If travelling through a television did that to people, maybe it wouldn’t be so fun after all.

The next room confused Tas just as much as Clover, if not moreso. He didn’t know what a chainsaw was, though he assumed it was some sort of weapon. He didn’t know what the tube the man pointed at the woman was either, though inched closer to get a closer look at the woman. “Well, she clearly has leprosy,” Tas said, nodding as though he knew exactly what he was looking at. “And the boomstick… Well, it must be some sort of magical device. People with leprosy have very sensitive hearing, you know, so when the stick goes boom!, then it’ll scare her away and he won’t catch leprosy. He had it once before, you see, and that’s how he lost his hand, and he vowed never again.”

Clover had never experienced leprosy or what it did to someone. They didn’t get too sick. Either way, he probably was just going to accept it as a thing. “Yeah. That sounds…reasonable.” He stared at it for a moment longer. “I think I’ve seen all I need to for now. Maybe we can go see if there’s anything to fight in the forest? Could be fun.”

“Oh, that would definitely be fun,” Tas said. “You wouldn’t believe the kind of things people drop in the forest too! Come on!” he said, and reached for Clover’s wrist so that he could drag him, if need be, toward