Somehow, I think this is less dark than my other stuff

It was October 31, the traditional night of horrors for the anthros. In this holiday, they celebrated how far they had risen above nature where they could now intentionally scare themselves and be perfectly fine. Yes, it was technically a human adapted holiday, and Rex didn’t like the humans in general, but a lot of their holidays were pretty fun.

In the early afternoon, the were all called into the lion’s office, or rather a substitute, as his current office was under renovations. He had gotten pretty into decorating it, there were cobwebs hanging off every imaginable surface, and a skeleton in the corner.

“Gooood afternoon” said the lion, in an actually kind of racist impression of a vampire bat’s accent.

“Hey.” Responded Dan.

“So, do you all like the halloween getup?” the lion asked. “This is an old abandoned closet. Locked up years ago.” Rex became a lot more nervous about all the cobwebs and spiders around. Some of them were moving, now that he got a closer look.

“And don’t worry about the skeleton” the lion laughed. “He was just an intern, nobody who actually mattered. Makes a pretty creepy decoration, though. His family’s been trying to get his body back for years, but I say a loved one is worth far less than a really good night of horrors decoration.”

“You should have seen him when he first died” said Dan. “It was actually really gross.”

“Oh, stop messing with us” said Rex.

“Come on Rex, don’t be such a spoilsport” said Dan.

“Anyway…” said the lion, “we just so happen to have a thematically appropriate mission for the night of horrors! People in a small town not to far west of you have been complaining about mysterious going ons at night. We want you to go and investigate,” said the lion.

“Mysterious goings on? Like what?” asked Dan.

“Oh you know, pretty standard stuff. Furniture moving around, electronics turning on and off, weird noises, mysterious, unexplained disappearances, and cryptic messages written in blood, you know that kind of stuff. You’ll probably want to ask around town for details. Oh, and you’ll need these uniforms. You’re going in disguised as paranormal researchers. We fear these activities may be related to human ruins in the area, so we're sending you five to check things out,”

When they went to their ride, instead of the usual black van, designed to look as much like a stereotypical government van as possible to avoid drawing suspicion that it was actually a government van, it was made out to be a fictional paranormal investigation company.

When the lion meant close, he meant close. The drive was over before Rex and his friends had time to make any sort of pointless small talk. They got out at the house that first called in the problems, and Timothy knocked on the door.

A woman came out, clearly tired looking. “Hello?” she asked.

“Hi!” said Timothy. “We’re paranormal investigators. Got a call that you were having some paranormal issues.”

“Oh thank the humans! I thought you would never come. I called in like a week ago, you said you would have been here four days ago. What happened?”

“Uhhh…. Lots of prank calls this time of year. Sorry, we got a bit backed up.” said Rex, eyeing Dan suspiciously. Dan shook his head.

“Well come on in. The hauntings usually don’t start until night, so make yourselves at home, I guess. Though I must say, you seem ill prepared for ghost hunters.”

“Oh no no no,” said Timothy. “It’s actually quite the opposite. You see, we don’t want to look like ghost hunters, so we do everything with smartphones. Wonderful inventions, those.”

The lady nodded. “If you need to do any setup, there’s a guest bedroom that’s not being used for anything, you can.” Rex, Dan, and Thrasher took the chance to escape the conversation and left.

“So,” asked Timothy.” What are the exact details of what you’re dealing with?”

“We have an awful poltergeist. Furniture is moved around overnight, weird messages appear on the wall in blood, and my electronics turn on at night, even when they’re unplugged. Do you know how much that costs me in electricity bills?!”

“Do you mind if we see one of these messages?” asked Timothy.

“Sorry, I clean them up. Don’t want to risk a guest coming over and seeing them. But you have to solve this mystery! Please! For my electric bills!”

“Please ma'am, remain calm. We’ll sort this out, or your money back!”

“But I haven’t paid you yet,” she said
“About that…” said James

“Our rates start at $150 plus a -”

“James!” scoffecd Timothy.

“Sorry about him, he’s a bit of a joker. We’ll collect our payment after we’re finished. We’re going to join the rest to set up now, we’ll tell you about the results in the morning.” said Timothy, before he and James headed back to the room.

“Really James? Not only are you trying to scam some woman, but you're doing it on official government time?!” What is wrong with you?!”

“I wasn’t trying to scam her! I was just trying to make things more realistic! And if we made a little bit of extra cash on the side, well then…” said James.

“Look,” said Rex, “let’s just investigate these rumors, and I’m sure we’ll get paid well for what’s probably just some weirdo trying to gaslight her.”

“Or it could be a ghooooost,” said Timothy, stifling a laugh.

“Yeah, and then we just rough it up, and make it go away.”

“Or,” said Thrasher, “we help it move on without any violence.”

“Well yeah, I guess if you want to be lime” said James, thinking that his idea was better.

The group sat around for a while, until they heard the first evidence of supernatural occurrences, when a late night TV show started playing, at 11:53 PM.

“Really?” said Timothy. Couldn’t wait until midnight to make it scarier? Dumbass ghost.” The five grabbed their flashlight and headed downstairs. Sure enough, the TV was showing some terrible sitcom from like twenty years ago.

“Man,” said James. “This ghost has terrible taste in television.” The ghost didn’t seem to like that remark, as a mug that was sitting on the coffee table flew into James’ head and shattered on impact.

“Doesn't seem to like you much either.” said James. Thrasher decided to enact his plan.

“Oh spirit, why do you haunt this dwelling?” There was no response.

“Yeah, great job. Really solved that mystery” said Rex.
“Okay” said Dan. “Now that you’ve both tried your plans, let’s get back to focus. Let’s see if we can find one of the bloody messages the ghost is leaving around.” Lucilly for the five, the ghost had made one earlier.

“Hey!” said Rex. “This isn't blood at all. There’s an open can of red paint right next to the message. See, nothing supernatural here.”

“Uhh, Rex... “ said James “Sorry to burst your bubble, but this is written in a human language. I can’t read it, but it contains several distinct linguistic markers. That clearly indicates that this something weird is in fact going on, given that humans died like three and a half million years ago.”

“Wait,” said Rex. “If it’s a human doing this, then they, like, by definition have to be a spirit. That means that if I do spirit fusion with Timothy, I can see it!”

“Finally!” said Dan. “An actual, workable plan. I’d like to get to sleep sometime in the next hour, so hurry up and get that fusion out.” Rex and Timothy did so, and sure enough, Rex could see the form of a human outlined in the magic fields, sitting on the couch. It was a sure sign that there was a spirit there.

“Yep. Human.” Said Rex. “James. You go talk to it.”

“Uhhh, he doesn't seem to speak a human language i’m familiar with. But I’ll give it a shot.” James said, walking into the living room of the woman. “Hey you! Get out of here. I know magic, I can kill you again if I want to.” The human got up and fled, muttering something that James couldn;t make out, beyond a phrase he was pretty sure meant disguise..

“Wow, James!” said Rex. “That thing left the house super fast after you spoke, what the heck did you say to him?!”

“Oh, nothing much. I just politely asked him to leave and go back to his ruins. Polite chap, that spirit.”

“Well, whatever.” said Dan. “My cybernetics have been yelling at me to sleep for a while. I don’t want to know what happens if the battery of my robot parts dies. It sounds painful,” The other four agreed, and decided to head to bed.

The next morning, Rex and his friends went down to find the woman, but nobody was there. “Hello, nice old lady?” called out Rex. They looked all around, but she was nowhere to be found. Soon enough, their search was interrupted by a call from the lion.

“Hello my ghost hunters! Any good news to report?” he asked.

“Yes.” Dan responded “The spirit was a human spirit of all things. The woman whose house this was seems to have vanished though.”

“A human spirit? Now this is getting interesting. Well, go investigate the nearby ruins. They should be labeled on the map that you were provided. And keep me updated every morning. Assuming you all come back alive that is.” The lion laughed. Really hard. Like he was some sort of super villain or something. Dan hung up the call before he could finish.

“Well, I guess we don’t have any choice but to look into those human ruins” said Rex. “Hopefully we don’t like find the mangled corpse of that woman though. I was looking forward to having a mission where nobody ended up dead for once.”

“To be fair, I don’t think a ghost would mangle a corpse,” said Dan. “They’d probably just make her disappear completely if they were up to something. And if anybody’s corpse got mangled, it would be James, he was the one who talked to the human. I was looking forward to nobody dying though, would have been a nice change of pace.”

The human ruins were not very far away, and they were actually open for once. There was however, a mysterious blue light pouring out of the entrance of the ruins. Rex and his friends were apprehensive, but they didn’t really have a choice but to enter the ruins.

The entrance had clearly been open for a long time, it had not held up well. Wires hung out everywhere, and it looked like they were about to collapse any moment. Rex hoped they would at least hold out until the group was done in the ruins. The last thing they needed was to draw attention to the mysterious, blue tinted ruins.

Suddenly, James yelled out in pain and fell over. Soon enough, the rest followed.

“What the hell is happening?!” shouted Rex. “Timothy. Try to get over to me. We need to fuse, I think that humans might be behind this. Or else we are like horribly beyond screwed.”

“Oh, can’t see us. Just like all the rest. Your spirits are weak. Let me fix that for you” About a dozen figures faded into view. They were humans. All of them. Surrounding the anthros. And it looked like they were casting some sort of binding ritual on the unfortunate group.

“Hey!” shouted Timothy. “I’m like literally the strongest anthro spirit around. What the hell are you talking about, too weak?!”

The same spirit as before spoke out. He was standing directly in front of the group, and appeared to be the leader. “Seriously? Wow, I know anthros kind of suck in the technology department, but this pathetic being your strongest specimen? Ha!” The other humans laughed in unison. “Anyway, cast a binding ritual on them and take them in.

Rex’s vision went dark. He assumed this was the blinding ritual. Soon enough, he felt himself being dragged down a smooth metal hallway. Sure, he was a captive, but couldn’t they at least be a little considerate. When he came too, he was sitting in a large room. Crowds of humans, hundreds, if not thousands, were sitting in seats surrounding the chamber. Cheers erupted from the crowds. James, Thrasher, and Dan were near him, but Timothy was on the other side of the room, tied to a glowing, purple rock. The purple of magic was always so distinct, Rex knew instantly that it was an incredibly powerful object, likely what was keeping the spirits around after all these years. Standing with them was a human, holding a worryingly sharp dagger in his hand. The humans were talking. James couldn’t understand what they were saying perfectly, but he was able to give Rex and his friends a rough translation

“Long have we waited for this day!” shouted the human in the middle. “We have finally found a suitable sacrifice and vessel. A vessel who didn’t flee at the first sign of chaos. Finally, the ultimate being of chaos, Stoloko can be summoned. By binding the bird’s spirit to the spirit stone, he can be revived to power once again! And the bird’s friends shall be the first to experience his chaos!” The humans cheered even louder. All of those humans, cheering for some unspeakable chaos god to do who knows what to them. Rex wasn’t looking forward to it.

The human raised his knife, paused for a second, and plunged it into the woman’s chest.
Nothing seemed to be happening, and then something did. Timothy was surrounded by a deep red aura. The bonds that held him to the stone were torn as Timothy’s unconscious body was lifted into the air by some unseen force. The red mist entered Timothy’s body, and he opened his eyes.

“Fools” boomed out a voice, that while coming from Timothy’s body, was clearly not Timothy’s. “Who dares summon me!”

“I do!” said the human, displaying remarkable confidence considering the situation. “For thousands of years we have worshipped, you, and now we summon you to bring about chaos to the world! We offer you these toys to experiment with!” he shouted, gesturing towards Rex and his friends.

“Wait?” said Stoloko. “You summoned a being of chaos, and expect him to do your bidding? You do know the meaning of chaos, right? Why in the world would I listen to you? In fact, I’m gonna ask these weird animal...monstrocity...things what to do with you. Well, weirdos? Any ideas?” Rex and his friends said nothing, they couldn’t have, even if the wanted to.

“Oh, you’ve got a binding ritual on you, don’t you. Wow, shoddy craftsmanship on this thing. Kinda pathetic you can’t get out, really.” The being undid the ritual. “So, genetic abominations, what do you wanna do to these guys. And be really evil. Come on, it’ll be fun. Tear their limbs off, doom them to eternal madness, force them into couples that have no reason being together! The sky’s the limit!”

Rex shrugged “I don’t really want to do anything to them”

“Yeah” said Thrasher. “Just let us have Timothy, the guy you’re possessing back, and we’ll go on our way”

“I don’t know” said James. “He did kinda kill that woman and kidnap us. Some sort of revenge might be justified. Nothing serious, but would a bit of fun at their expense be that bad?”

“Ah, see! Sharkboy here has the right idea. Just a little harmless fun. They’re spirits. Do they really even need those limbs?”

“No, no, nothing that severe.” said James. “I just kind of like want to punch the leader in the face or something.”


‘Oh come on, you’re no fun.” said the spirit, throwing James back to the ground. “Now get out of here before I change my mind and mess with you along with these spirits.”

“Wait.” said Dan. “You’re possessing one of our friends. Can we have him back.”

“No. Seriously. Get out of here before I start doing chaos. I don’t know exactly how it’s gonna go, but let me tell you it is not going to be pretty.”

Rex and his friends decided to comply and got out of the ruins. At that point, it had gotten pretty late, so they went back to the woman’s house and slept in it. Kind of weird, but it was about the only option they had.

The next morning, the called their boss. “Timothy was what?! I don’t care what it takes. You are going to get that ancient being of chaos out of him and you’re not coming back until you do!”

“Well,” said Dan. “Looks like we’ve got no choice. Things seem pretty normal around here, so let’s go back to the ruins.”

Stoloko had clearly been busy. The entrance to the ruins had been made out to look like some crappy carnival haunted house. Metal turned into rotted, il-fitting boards, windows added, and subsequently broken. Cobwebs summoned everywhere. “Welcome!” said the spirit, pouring out in a cloud of smoke. “I knew you would come to try to get this bird thing i’m possessing back, and might even succede, but i’m at least going to have some fun with ya. Come in, come in, I have lots to show you,” he said.

Rex and his friends entered. Beyond the door, they all stepped in a small room.

“So I sped things up. Stuck an elevator right after the entrance.” The elevador groaned and began to slowly travel downwards. And then quincy travel downwards. There was a snap, and Rex’s worst fears were confirmed. The cable had snapped, and the elevator was falling. Everyone screamed out. Rex even began to pray to the humans, even though he knew it was of no use. Old habits are hard to break.

The elevator hit the ground with a mighty crash. Of course, since it was all an illusion, nobody was actually injured.

“Ahahaha, I can’t believe you guys actually fell for that! The first thing I tried, and it got all of you. I’m pretty sure I even saw one of you praying. Just a little tip from something higher up on the cosmology scale than… whatever you are. Your religion is probably wrong. Don’t bother praying, it won’t help you.”

“Rude,” Said Rex. “And for what it’s worth, I know it’s a lie, it’s just habit.”

“Yeah, keep thinking like that scaleface. Don’t worry. Some day your minds will be as evolved as us mammals. Anyway, onto my next trick.”

Rex and his friends walked down the hallway, and entered into a room.

“Wait…” said Rex. “This looks familiar.” He looked around. None of his friends were there. But the sight couldn’t be mistaken. It was the river that he would always hang out near when he was younger. Where he first met Timothy. In the back of his mind, he knew it was all an illusion, but it was still nice to be back.

“Hello? James? Thrasher? Dan? Anyone? Is anyone here? Can anyone hear me?”

“Don’t worry Rex. I’m here for you,” It was Timothy. Not talking with the voice of Stoloko, but back to his own, normal voice. It was a sound for sore ears, for sure, and Rex was happy to hear it.

“Stop it Stoloko! We’re not just some toys for you to play with. Just let us go! ” shouted Rex.

“Rex? What are you talking about? Who’s Stoloko? It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m here. Just sit down on this rock and relax with me. It’s just us.”

“Look, you asshole, I know it’s you. Stop messing with me. This is that bird you’re possessing, if your big mammalian brain can’t figure that one out,”

“Rex. Calm down. I’m not being possessed. I’m fully me. I may have been created by some sort of chaos god, but I’m still me.”
“Yeah,” Rex sighed. “You’re right,” come sit with me. It’ll be a nice break. Timothy sat down next to him.

“Hey, wait a minute,” asked Rex. “How did you know that the being that created you was a chaotic thing. I mentioned the name, but nothing else?”

“Well, uh, you see… there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for that. I was uhh…” Black smoke began to pour out of Timothy’s eyes and mouth.

“Uh… Timothy? Are you okay?” asked Rex, despite the fact that Timothy was clearly not okay. Timothy’s only response was a low droning noise. Rex wasn’t sure what that meant. His feathers began to burn and fall off.

“Timothy” asked Rex, but there was no response. Following this, Timothy’s flesh began to melt into a liquid. “What the hell!” shouted Rex, turning around, as he could not bare to watch Timothy anymore. Unfortunately, Rex was sitting downhill from where Timothy was, so the puddle that used to be Timothy flowed back onto him. Rex screamed and began to cry, he didn’t really have much else to do.

“Why?” asked Rex. “Why are you doing this to me! What did I, or any of us do to deserve this!” The vision faded away.

“Oh man, that was great,” said Stoloko. “If it makes you feel any less traumatized, and I hope it doesn't, you were by far the best reaction I got out of the group. Oh man my sides,” he said.

Rex looked around. The rest of his friends were back, and looked shaken as well. Dan was sadly looking at his cybernetic arm. Had stoloko shown Dan what is life would be like without his cybernetics, Rex wondered.

The group headed into the next room. It was the main room, with the purple glowing machine in the middle. “Well, I’m impressed” said Stoloko. “I didn’t really expect you to get this far. I thought those hallucinations would have driven you insane. I guess your puny non-mammalian brains are a bit stronger than I gave them credit for. I don’t really have anything else ready, so I guess this is it. Good luck getting Timothy back. If you can identify us,” he said, Splitting into multiple copies.

James lunged at one of the copies, but it vanished into smoke, only to be replaced by another seconds later. “It’s useless,” he said. They’re not real, we can't destroy them. We have to figure out some other way.”

“ I could try sending electricity through all of them,” mentioned Dan “but that would probably kill the real Timothy. It’s an option if things get really bad, but let’s not jump the gun here.” Everyone else agreed.

Rex looked around. Maybe the human spirits would be of some help. He didn’t see many, and those he did see appeared to have gone insane. Stoloko must have been too distracted messing with them to have actually made more than a few security measures to keep Rex and his friends out.

“Wait,” said Rex. “The human mentioned something about using that machine over there to expand Timothy’s spiritual power, right James?”

“Yeah, that’s the gist of it,” he said.

“Then, naturally”, said Rex, “If we destroy that machine, than it stands to reason that it would take Timothy’s spirit down to where it wouldn’t support Stoloko anymore. Plus, if I had to guess, that’s how the humans survived this long. Taking care of that would also get rid of the human spirits.”

“Makes sense,” said James. He hurled a quick fireball at it, but the spell was dissipated when it got near the machine.

“Not gonna be that easy,” said Stoloko. “At least give me some credit.”

“Anti-magic shield, huh?” said Rex. “Well, you with your big mammalian brain must know that you can’t cast both an anti-magic and an anti-physical shield on something at the same time. The way the magic field aligns doesn't work out! So let’s just get up close and personal, shall we?”

“Oh, let’s do this!” said James, taking off towards the machine. He was stopped about five seconds later when brick walls appeared around him, trapping him.

“Yeah,” said Stoloko “but good luck getting there.” James tried to punch the wall a few times, he even tried to use magic to break it, but the most that he was able to do was crack it a little bit.

“Looks like it’s my time to shine,” said Thrasher, Making a sprint towards the machine. Stoloko tried to summon walls again, but Thrasher was able to see them coming and jump on top of them before the walls had fully risen. Failing this, the clones of stoloko began to attack Thrasher. Large cuts appeared all over him. Fireballs soared past his head, screams echoed around him, begging for help. But Thrasher ignored it all.

“I might not be able to fight you, but I sure can keep myself alive!” he shouted, doing a quick healing ritual to patch his wounds. The screams were the worst part. He knew it was an illusion, but his base instinctual mind wanted to stop and help. But he didn’t. He was almost there. Just a little more, and then he reached the machine.


Thrasher lunged forward, and thrust his fist into the machine. The glass broke, and sparks flew everywhere. The purple light flickered, and then faded.

Stoloko clapped. “Well done. I guess you won out little game this time. But trust me. I’ll be back, and maybe next time you won’t be so lucky. Or maybe you will. That’s the nature of chaos after all,” he said. The signs of possession faded from Timothy’s body, and he fell to the ground.

“Timothy!” shouted Rex, running over to where Timothy had hit the ground. “He’s unconscious, but breathing”

“Well, that’s good, but what about us?” said the leader of the human cult, coming out of the dark corner that he was hiding in. “You destroyed the spirit stone. Without its power, We’ll fade back into the background magic,” he said

“And?” said James, who had managed to get himself out of the bricks. “You did kind of kidnap us, murder some woman, allow a demon of chaos to possess our friend, and from what i’ve heard, terrorized this town. I’d honestly like to do more to take care of you, but I can’t really do that much. Come on guys,the spirits are taken care of. We’re done here.”