The interior of Whitmore Manor was somehow worse than the exterior. The entrance hall was covered in dust thick enough to write entire novels in, cobwebs draped from the ceiling like decorative curtains, and the furniture was arranged in ways that suggested someone had given up halfway through moving and just left everything where it fell.
"Okay," Rick said, pulling out a card for light.
His Flame Card flickered to life, casting dancing shadows across the walls. "Let's split up and search for the source of the haunting."
"That's how people die in horror stories," Ace pointed out.
"I'm immortal. Death is more of an inconvenience than a threat."
"What about the rest of us?"
"Stay close to me. If something attacks, I'll die first and you can run."
"That's not reassuring."
They moved deeper into the house, their footsteps echoing on the wooden floor. The first room they checked was what looked like a sitting room, complete with furniture covered in white sheets that made everything look like a convention of ghosts having a meeting.
Rick approached one of the covered chairs, reached out to pull the sheet off, and immediately regretted it when the chair lunged forward and tried to bite him. Actual teeth appeared where the seat cushion should have been, snapping shut inches from his hand.
"The fuck?" Rick jumped backward. "Since when do chairs have teeth?"
"Since always, apparently!" Fortuna said, looking delighted. "This house is amazing!"
"This house is trying to eat me!"
The chair pursued him across the room with surprising speed, hopping on its legs like a demented wooden frog. Rick threw his Banana Peel card at it, which caused the chair to slip and crash into a wall, but two more sheet-covered pieces of furniture immediately came to life and joined the chase.
"Coralia, tentacle duty!" Rick shouted.
Coralia's tentacles shot forward, wrapping around the possessed furniture and holding them in place. The chairs struggled and snapped their teeth, making sounds that furniture definitely should not make.
"What do we do with them?" Coralia asked, straining to keep her grip.
"I don't know! Throw them out the window!"
"The windows are boarded up!"
"Then throw them at the wall until they stop moving!"
While Coralia dealt with the murderous furniture, Rick moved toward the next room. The dining room was worse.
The long table was set with dusty plates and silverware, and sitting in each chair were translucent figures that looked vaguely human. They turned to stare at Rick in perfect unison, their hollow eyes somehow conveying both menace and boredom.
"Uh," Rick said. "Hi?"
The ghosts stood up simultaneously, their movements jerky and unnatural. Then they all pointed at Rick and screamed in harmony, a sound that made his ears ring and his soul feel personally attacked.
"Okay, that's rude!" Rick threw an Ice Card at them, which passed right through and froze the wall behind them instead. "Ace, how do I fight things I can't touch?"
"I don't know! I've never fought ghosts before!"
One of the ghosts lunged forward, passing through the dining table like it wasn't there. Rick tried to dodge but the ghost went through him instead, and suddenly he was the coldest he'd ever been in his life. His teeth chattered, his breath came out in visible puffs, and every nerve in his body screamed that this was wrong.
Then he died. Death two hundred and fifteen, caused by supernatural hypothermia, which was a new one even for him.
He respawned in the entrance hall thirty seconds later, immediately checked his new card (Spectral Chill, which inflicted cold damage on ghosts), and ran back to the dining room to find Fortuna and Coralia surrounded by the screaming spirits.
"New plan!" Rick threw his fresh Spectral Chill card, and this time when it hit the ghost, the thing actually recoiled. "I can hurt them now!"
"That's great, but there's like twenty of them!" Fortuna said. She was trying to punch the ghosts with mixed results, her divine power letting her make contact but not doing much damage.
Rick started throwing cards rapid-fire style, mixing Spectral Chill with his other offensive cards to see what worked. The combination of cold damage and explosions seemed to do the trick, dispersing three ghosts into wisps of ectoplasm. But more ghosts kept appearing, emerging from the walls and floor like the house had an infinite supply.
"This is getting stupid!" Rick threw his Hydra's Curse card to multiply damage across multiple targets. "How many ghosts does one house need?"
A chandelier fell from the ceiling, missing Rick by inches. He looked up to see more ghosts floating near the roof, and one of them was holding another chandelier, clearly preparing to drop it.
"Oh, come on!" Rick dove to the side as the second chandelier crashed down. "That's just mean!"
The ghost made a sound that might have been laughter, then threw a chair at him. The chair had teeth again. Rick was starting to hate this house with a passion that transcended his usual grumpiness.
Death two hundred and sixteen came when a possessed mirror exploded and sent shards of glass through his torso. Death two hundred and seventeen was when the floor opened up beneath him and he fell into what appeared to be a basement full of more angry ghosts.
Death two hundred and eighteen involved a possessed portrait that reached out of its frame and strangled him. By the time he'd died five times and cleared the dining room, Rick was thoroughly done with supernatural nonsense.
"This house is worse than the Vault," he declared, checking his newest cards.
"At least the Vault's traps made sense. This is just chaos with furniture."
"I think it's entertaining!" Fortuna said, somehow still enjoying herself despite being covered in ectoplasm.
"You have brain damage."
They moved to the second floor, which proved to be even more haunted than the first. The hallway was lined with portraits that watched them as they walked, their eyes following movement in ways that made Rick's skin crawl. One of them whispered his name as he passed, which was deeply unsettling.
"Okay, that's it." Rick threw a Flame Card at the whispering portrait.
It caught fire immediately, screaming in a voice that sounded disturbingly human. "No more creepy paintings."
"Master Rick, the fire is spreading," Coralia pointed out.
"Let it spread. This house deserves to burn."
"But we want to live here!"
"Right. Forgot about that." Rick threw an Ice Card to put out the fire, which worked but also froze half the hallway.
"We'll fix it later."