Inside the wooden fence that stood well above him he saw the last thing he honestly expected. To explain that he has to describe what he did expect. Which was a small village or maybe even a few small houses that looked rough around the edge. Normal things one would expect in a world filled with murderous squirrels and dragons.

  Instead, what he found was a massive garden that had clearly once been carefully manicured and taken care of. Even now, the cobblestone pathways seems able to control the wild greenery that was everywhere. And wild would be the only way to describe the plants that were everywhere. He saw trees covered in crawling flowers and vines.

  But what truly stunned him was the building everything led up to, the cobblestone pathway that he was standing at the start of now led to this building. It towered above everything else inside the fence. Not even the trees seemed able to grow as tall as it. Indeed, the building demanded that every plant bow in its majesty.

  And majestic it was. At a glance Thaddeus could see that it had at least five floors to it. He would have to go closer to see if there were more, possibly basements and even an attic. The walls were tall and apart from what looked like a few cracks in the paint, they stood resolutely. They had once been pure white, but now reflected the midday sun in a yellowish red.

  Each floor had several windows, and on one side Thaddeus could see that the wall of the mansion had windows from top to bottom. The doorways was not flush with the ground either, instead, several steps rose to meet it, and rising would be needed indeed. The doorway had two large dark doors in it. Each somehow gleamed even from the distance Thaddeus stood.

  Measuring how long it would take him to walk to the mansion, he realised that it would probably take 20 minutes of walking. Which was shocking, because even so far away the place looked impossibly large. Looking at the overgrown garden, he made a silent prayer that whoever the Lost had been, that they did at least plant some types of fruits or vegetables.

  He started walking down the cobblestone path and to his trepidation, he found that it wasn’t as untouched by the plants as he had first thoughts. Instead, he felt how the stones were loose as roots slowly started growing beneath them. Unfettered by whatever people used to stop plants from growing where they weren’t wanted.

  He appraised some of the plants as he went and got notifications of rather mundane sounding trees and flowers. Even to his ears, everything sounded like what he would expect someone with a garden to have growing in it. He got bored of doing this after a few minutes and instead focused on the building in front of him. He would appraise it too, but only once he got closer, so he could focus on specific parts.

  As he drew closer he saw actual damage to the building, what he had thought was a strange shape to one corner was actually the roof caving in. And the windows had cracks spreading through almost all of them. The doors that looked gleaming from a distance were swollen at the bottoms where water had clearly flowed down the stairway. All in all, it looked like any of the picture he used to see of abandoned mansions that were impossibly far away from any type of civilisation. After what was only 15 minutes of walking, with some stumbling he arrived in front of the mansion.

  The cobblestone here was more untouched as the sheer size of the area meant roots would struggle to reach. It was clearly meant for things to park, now he didn’t know if cars or carriages would park here. The mansion looked like it had been built with some advanced techniques. But at the same time, all Thaddeus had ever built in his life was a stack of cards. That also happened to fall over the moment he thought it was stable.

  Taking a deep breath he looked at the mansion again and used appraise, imagining his skill focusing only on the building. With a soft clink and then two sounds of notifications going off he got some good news and some very disturbing news.

  The first was a level notifications.

  Congratulations! Your skill, Appraise, has levelled up.

  Closing that basic notification he saw that his readout now gave more information, which is where the disturbing news came from.

  Mansion of the Lost.

  Current occupants: 2

  Thaddeus “Bennie” Poundsworth

  Alice Mourning (deceased)

  Why the system thought someone that was dead counted as an occupant immediately rang alarm bells in his head. But he was also unwilling to go back to the clearing he had started in. This was important, because he knew he would have to find a place to spend the night, and who could say not to a mansion? Even a ruined one.

  So with some trepidation he swallowed his fear and went up the few sets of stairs to the door. Not really knowing what to do, he knocked using the simple brass knockers that hung on one of them. The banging against the door was loud and thunderous, seemingly silencing everything else that could make a sound.

  To his surprise the door moved with each knock, slowly opening in front of him, even as he expected the bottom to scrape against the floor. Careful not to rush anything, he poked his head through the doorway, announcing himself.

  “Thaddeus Poundsworth, if possible, I would like to spend the night. I ask permission from anything that may live in here.”

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  He felt stupid and then he felt his face flush as he heard his own voice echoing in the silence of the mansion. There was nothing alive in there, he knew this, just one girl that was dead. He resolved himself and went in. There was still no response, he pushed the door open all the way to get more light and air flowing in.

  The inside was remarkably clean, he was standing in a foyer, with a fireplace to one side. There was no furniture and he decided to go explore the next morning. For now, he went back out and started scrounging for any wood he could find. The fireplace was ash free, but he would change that, and hopefully not set the entire building alight.

  At least he could sleep that night without fear of some other animal sneaking up on him.

  The man entered the yard without any manners, he stared at her plants, seeming to stop every now and then to examine one. He had knocked on the front gate and the gate had given in to his touch. She didn’t think that anyone lived this far away from humans but here he was.

  She kept an eye on him from one of the attic windows as he walked closer to the mansion. To her mansion. He would probably try to pilfer something, like all the others that used to appear here so long ago. To her surprise he stopped just outside, looking intensely at the mansion. After a few minutes of examining her home, he walked up the stairs.

  She was ready to completely bar him and force the doors locked. When he did something that she hadn’t seen someone do in what felt like forever. He knocked.

  Three times he knocked, and as was custom, without even thinking about it, she let the door open for him. What confused her even more and stayed her hand completely was when he poked his head in and announced himself. The man seemed to have good manners, even though she knew the mansion must look completely abandoned.

  He went into the foyer, once of the places she liked to keep clean because the roof didn’t leak and the windows while cracked kept the cold out. He surveyed everything for a few minutes and then turned around, walking back out and into the wild gardens. She never went outside the mansion, so she tried to follow him as he went and started picking up twigs, then branches, then other dead tree limbs she thought would be too large.

  The man made a pile just outside the doors, using the stairs as a way to sort everything. He was going to make a fire in her mansion and she felt her blood boil, or whatever flowed through her now. She was about to try and chase him away when he started packing the fireplace with wood.

  First small pieces here or there, then larger ones on top. After a few second of concentration she saw a small flame light up and start the fire. She could not remember how long it had been, but there was a fire in her house, slowly warming up the centre, making it more welcoming.

  The man was strange, he didn’t even peek into any of the other rooms. He simply sat and stared at the fire until the suns set. And then he went to grab a few more logs and piled them next to her fireplace. He also closed the door and even attempted to push out some of the twigs and sand he had stomped onto her clean marbled floors.

  As darkness overtook the gardens, and the last light faded from the attic she kept an eye on him. He simply stared at the fire until it became late, stoking it every now and then. Finally, at what she recognized as the apex of the second moon, he simply curled up where he was and fell asleep on the hard ground.

  Only then did she brave getting closer, to study him. He looked rough around the edges, like he had been living in the forest and he didn’t quite know how to keep himself fed or even clean. His chin was sharp underneath a thin layer of stubble, his beard and hair were the same light brown colour, flecked with spots of white hairs. Not quite grey, but almost there.

  Even curled up she saw that he was tall with broad shoulders. The man that had entered her mansion for the first time in over a thousand years let out a grumbled and rolled onto his back. With an unceremonious announcement, he let out a loud fart followed by a deep snore.

  She immediately jumped back and felt her head hit the far side of the wall from the man. She didn’t know what to do. Be angry at his lack of manners. Or be perplexed that someone had entered her mansion and felt comfortable enough to fall into a deep sleep.

  She spent the rest of the night watching him from a distance. Unable to decide what she would do if he tried to take her things like all those others had.

  He woke up just after the first sun rose in the sky, shining through one of the windows with pinpoint accuracy onto his eyes. At some point in the night he could have sworn he felt someone close by but as he looked around the doors were still closed and there was nothing amiss.

  He checked the fireplace and was pleased that the ash had all stayed inside, no mess for him to clean up immediately. Seemingly the smoke had also escaped cleanly and since he didn’t see a raging torrent of fire around him, the chimney clearly worked fine too.

  Going outside he sat at the top stair and watched the morning progress. He had to admit, that even with the wildness of the garden, he enjoyed the view immensely. The place would probably have looked amazing at one point, but even now, the flowers growing wildly definitely had a certain charm to it. What’s more, from the mansion the wooden fence, that he would probably call a wall, was barely visible. Even the gate he had used to enter seemed like nothing more than a pinprick in the distance.

  He was eating the last of the squirrel, unsure if it would have gone rotten if he waited longer. After the entire front of the mansion was being hit by sunlight, he went back in. Standing in the foyer he did another Appraisal. Only to receive the same information.

  Appraising the floor he learned that it was made out of hardened marble. He didn’t quite understand that, how one would harden marble was beyond him. So he looked at the stairs and the two open doorways on each of his side. With two smaller doors that were closed beneath the stairs. It looked almost like one of those regal palace paintings he used to see.

  Why someone would need a place this large was also beyond him, so many things were just beyond what he understood. So, still feeling rather foolish, but needing to use his voice he said in his best impersonation of a booming voice.

  “I will be exploring the mansion, I shall try to leave only footprints and take nothing unless permitted.”

  Again, he heard his voice echoing what must have been a few dozen empty hallways and then he snorted at himself. Choosing left this time, because he knew the big windows were on that side of the building. He hummed a tune as he started walking.

  The doorway led to a hallway that stretched out rather ominously, lined with closed doors on either side. As he walked the gloom became thicker, and he observed that there were paintings on the wall. It was just too dark for him to see more than that, he could make out what they were there and not much else.

  After a few minutes of walking, he reached a closed door at the end of the hallway. It would probably have been smarter to just go to each door individually, but he decided fuck it, and just went to the very end. The one where the treasure would always be.

  He knocked on the door, for a reason he still could not figure out, and then opened it.

  He immediately felt every muscle in his body tighten and his eyes felt like they would fall out of their sockets. The room was large, clearly meant to be used as a ballroom or entertaining space. The walls on one side were lined with tables and chairs, all remarkably clean. The windows, while cracked didn’t leak a drop of water.

  None of this is what made his blood run cold.

  No, in the middle of the room, looking at him quizzically, was a girl. With long, brownish blond hair that floated ethereally around her. She was dressed in a dark blue dress that wasn’t tight, but it did reveal her figure. She had piercing purple eyes that bore into him. Her eyelashes were long and well kept, complimenting the rest of her face. She was awe inspiringly beautiful in a way he would never be able to fully explain to another man.

  All of this on its own would have made him have a heart attack. But the thing that rooted him to the spot while simultaneously making him want to shout, run, scream in terror, just do something. Were two distinct facts.

  He could see almost cleanly through her and she was floating almost one meter above the ground, her bare feet dangling lazily.

  Thaddeus “Bennie” Poundsworth met a ghost on his fourth day in a world where squirrels killed men and dragons laughed when you tripped.

  Still, at least she looked at him quizzically instead of the rage ghosts usually have in stories.

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