So good so far!

*not me forgetting I had this, no, definitely not. O_O  cough. cough.*

Thank y'all again for your lovely comments!!! They just made my day again because I had to skim through a couple parts to remember where I left off XD

Day 3, Part 6

Pangolin sat everyone down before she told them what they knew. "Mr. Dersir," she said.

"Who?" Luna silvermoon asked. The others nodded in agreement. No one remembered.

Contentment sighed, standing up. "Mr. Dersir. The only resident here you haven't seen. He's a Brsider Shdownster. And... yes, he's the one behind all this." She turned to pangolin, crossing her arms. "How did you know?"

"Well, the library doesn't have any windows!" pangolin said. "But remember when we all woke up in the library and there were windows??"

Everyone nodded, remembering the lifelike dream.

"In the library, while browsing through the books, I came across a chapter on Brsider Shdownsters. The few known in existence are capable of doing things like... that. They play tricks. They make people slip, trip, and sometimes..." pangolin trailed off, looking at Gloomy. Everyone caught her drift. "But, what I don't understand," they said, looking at Contentment. "Is that you said Mr. Dersir was sweet. Why would he do something like this?"

"He... he is sweet," said Contentment. "It's just..." she trailed off, then took a deep breath, regathered herself. "Mr. Dersir was here before any of us. He's the one who... gives the Inn its life. And before it was an Inn, when it was the Estate, he gave it life then, too. He chooses to give this building life, and we love him for it. Without it, we'd be just a run-down Inn. But with him... we're a home. If that makes sense. But Mr. Dersir... you know the quote, "with great power comes great responsibility"? He can create powerful illusions --  he gave us the Deck -- but he must pay a terrible price."

"Murdering the people who come here," said Riley, so softly that it could've been the breeze whispering. For once, xyr face was entirely without humor. 

"It's the Game," said Contentment. "Lux and I were too scared, in our first years here, to think that we could do anything to stop playing. People..." she choked. "I guess we were broken then. But we kept on, kept moving on, moving forward... it came to be too much. We closed last year. And we were determined to stay close..."

"You thought it was going to be different this time," remembered Silver.

"Mr. Dersir thought that maybe it could be. He's hiding away right now, watching, but not letting himself be seen. Helps him think. He thinks he's found a way to cheat the system -- if you all can find the murderer before you're all dead, he can stop. But... I don't know. I doubt it will work. I think he's just trying to instill some hope in us, some hope in himself, too. This hits him, maybe even harder than it hits us. We're desperate." Contentment looked up. "But maybe we can do this. Maybe it'll turn out okay. We just need to find out who the murderer is..."

Dead: 2 (CelineBurning Bright, GloomyBear)

Alive: 10

Uncertain: 1 (Lillagwaith)

The creatures: 

Coco - dragon

Cozy/ZZ/Z - baku

Critique/Tiki - wngetier

Sunbeam - goldfish - ghost 

Mr. Dersir - Brsider Shdownster - missing/in-hiding

~~~~

this is poorly written and smashed together to make some smidgen (is that a word? Eh.) of sense but it's 1:31 AM currently so good night y'all :D thank you for reading my terrible writing (and if you don't, it's fine, makes sense :) most of this is made up of late night sprints)

Note: I wrote this (and am currently writing this) with my mom being like "time to eat dinner!! Time to eat!!" the whole time* so it is very rushed--- okay I moved the bowl of pasta over to where I'm sitting to give myself more time to write before I have to eat and I was hoping that my mom would recognize that I moved the bowl of pasta over to where I'm sitting and so would realize that she can stop telling me to eat but apparently my mom says that I have to actually be eating it for her to stop telling me to eat?! *affronted gasp!* (also btw a big thank you to my mom---she made pasta and it looks really good and she really didn't have to make pasta but she happily did anyway <33)

*edit: I started eating between paragraphs and my mom is satisfied now :)

also, my sentences got really clumsy in here *winces* hopefully you can still make it through this part and read my writing! :)

Day 4, Part 1

No one had slept well that night. Actually, no one had been sleeping well, ever since the first death---but it was even worse now. The CBers had stopped sleeping in their respective rooms and instead opted to sleep on the living room floor with everyone else, where the sounds of breathing in their ears might make the prospect of death easier to ignore. But the unrealness of their situation was still very real; after all, they were living it, and no matter how they tried, they couldn't just stop, not really. It was funny, some of the CBers mused, how here they were all trying to go to sleep, and yet the only thing any of them really wanted was to wake up from this nightmare.

Someone else had died the day before. Pangolin, the CBers' very own determined Sherlock. The CBers supposed that Mr. Dersir had been making up for the free pass on the second day by delivering two deaths the day before.

The next morning, they awoke to cheery light filtering through the windowpanes and the smell of Taiwanese breakfast wafting from the dining room. Riley smiled and heaped piles of dan bing onto everyone's plates, taking a few for xemself also. "Good morning!" xe said, but xer tone was noticeably depleted.

Lux and Con were already at the table, taking big bites of the array of breakfast foods. It seemed that even though they were defeated and miserable, nothing could stand between them and good food, as was evident when they started squabbling for the last fan tuan. Upon noticing the CBers' entrance, Luxury gave the fan tuan up to Contentment and fell into their dignified pose. The CBers didn't comment on their red-rimmed eyes. Everyone had them, anyways.

"So," Lux said. "Let's get down to business. We have to track down who the murderer is."

"I don't suppose the murderer would be willing to just give themselves up right now?" asked Contentment, munching on her fan tuan.

You could practically hear the crickets chirping in the room. Except that you couldn't, since the crickets had all escaped the Sunbeam Inn long ago. Smart crickets.

"I didn't think so," Contentment shrugged, looking absolutely sorrowful with pieces of rice stuck to her cheeks.

"So... anyone have any ideas?" asked Lux.

Everyone glanced around, as if catching someone's eye could tell them who the murderer was, or reveal some genius plan for figuring it out.

"I don't have any ideas," Sempreverde said, shaking her head. The rest of the CBers nodded assent.

Lillagwaith sighed, pushing an oyster pancake around on her plate. "What did the invitation say? ' Escape from everything, the right way!'? Yeah, didn't really work out..."

Contentment winced a bit at the comment. "Yeah... sorry about that."

"It's fine Contentment, you didn't mean any harm!" Hawkstar said, smiling brightly. "Or, well, you did... but we're all in a tough situation right now, and..." she trailed off, at a loss for how exactly to spin this.

"And things might not be the best right now, but we still have a fighting chance!" Moon Wolf supplied for Hawkstar, catching her drift. "We can do this!!"

"Yes!!!" cried Hawkstar. "Okay, so how about we start by making a list of where everyone was when the people who got murdered, you know, got... murdered." Hawkstar hesitated with the last part, her energy fuzzing a bit as she remembered how horrible that had been, but she picked up her momentum again quickly. "Process of elimination, am I right or am I right?"

Parody cheered, stuffing the oyster pancake in their mouth and shouting a muffled "You're right!!"

This was what the CBers came up with after half an hour of discussing, using their combined scattered memories:

No one had really noticed that Celine was gone before it was too late, so it was hard pinpointing who could be ruled out for murderer based on her death because no one really knew when Celine had died. Only Moon Wolf could say for certain that pangolin had been with her the whole day, but that didn't help, since pangolin was already ruled out.

Gloomy's death was a bit more helpful. The murderer couldn't be Hawkstar or Cillian, as they'd both been in the library at the time.

When pangolin had died, Lillagwaith (who'd woken up btw ack I think I forgot to mention that---sorry Elles!!) had been washing Huan along with Moon Wolf, so they were ruled out as suspects too.

That left (in the order of how people signed up btw) Silver, BookGirl, Moth Silvermoon, Parody, and Sempreverde.

~~~

Another note: I'd planned to make this ski lodge more fantastical when it started but I got sorta caught up in the darkness of it all... I will try to make it more fantastical in future parts, if I remember to! After all, what's the point of having a dragon if you don't make full use of it?? ;)

Dead: 3 (CelineBurning Bright, GloomyBear, pangolin)

Alive: 11

Uncertain: 0 :)

The creatures: 

Coco - dragon

Cozy/ZZ/Z - baku

Critique/Tiki - wngetier

Sunbeam - goldfish - ghost 

Mr. Dersir - Brsider Shdownster - missing/in-hiding

Sorry, the sunlight was filtering through the windows, not the windowpanes, ack lol :) I accidentally pressed the submit button way too soon

It seems that filler text helps things top. Dadidadida, filler text! Filler filler filler! Over the garden wall! Amphibia! The Owl House! Gravity Falls! *takes deep breath* OHHHHHHH howww the gentle winddd, beckonss through the leavess, as Autumnnn colorss Fall... Lost in the crowded annals of history... to those who travel through the woods. Guided through the mist... by the milk-light of moon... all that was lost... is revealed... our long by-gone burdens... mere echoes of the spring... but where have we come... and where shall we end? And then the oh the gentle wind part goes whoops haha I got excited and did that first---I love that part :DD this probably feels incoherent, sorry. I'm just spouting (probably not super correct) lyrics to Into the Unknown because it's been stuck in my head all day (and certainly not because I was playing it on loop for an hour no indeed now why would I do that :P )

Okay woah that top with the filler text brought this from the top of the fourth page to the very first post :0 okay sorry @admins I will stop spamming comments here now :) thank you for reading all this!!