MAGE ; benny weir [1]

fifty-seven

Cautiously stepping into the abandoned hotel, Benny, Ellie, and Rory could feel their footsteps sinking the wooden floors beneath them as they crept to find the ambiguous Lucifractor.
"This place looks creepy enough to be it."

"This place is definitely haunted," Rory worried. "We should leave!"

"Rory, listen," Benny began. "On the monster scale, vampire beats ghost. You're the scariest thing down here."

"I am? Cool!"

"Wait, stop."
Ellie's hand vibrated as her energy detector started alerting her like crazy. "There's a whole mountain of supernatural energy here."

Scanning around the walls of the hotel, Ellie's eyes noticed a small lump protruding out of the cement wall. "What is this?"
She pushed onto the concrete lump, creating a chain event of the geeks jumping back as a small levered door launched open.
Inside the hidden compartment, Benny, Ellie, and Rory feasted their eyes onto a spherical crystal orb covered in dust and cobwebs.

Elie grasped the purple crystal ball into her hands, inspecting the item to see if it had any significance from the spellbook. 
"What does that thing even do?" Rory asked.
"No idea. I'm sure Grandma can figure that one out."

"You know, for something so important, you'd think it would have an alarm or something," Benny mentioned.

As if on command, the three flinched at the sound of their supernatural detector beeping rapidly.

"...You mean like that?"

A loud threatening growl erupted behind Benny, Ellie, and Rory, forcing them to slowly turn around and reveal a forbidding animalistic shadow ready to strike beneath them. "—GAH!"

"You two lied to me!" Rory shouted. "You said that I was the scariest thing here!"
 "Second scariest is still pretty good!" Benny argued.
"...Third scariest."

Benny and Rory glanced at Ellie from her counter, following her line of fearful sight to face the challenge of the pyromaniacal sorcerer standing before them. The wizard hid his identity behind the black depths of his hood, leaving the three to wonder how they could still sense its threatening presence.

"Thanks for finding that for me, kids," the sorcerer grumbled. "Now... hand it over."

------------

"Rory, you could have sped us with you!"
Benny and Ellie finally caught up to the geek vampire after several minutes of falling behind him running away from the Darkwood Hotel.

"You guys didn't ask!"

"I'll make it up to you two. You want me to hold that for a while?" Rory suggested.
Benny nodded and handed the Lucifractor to Rory, but the vampire instantly felt drowsy and trying his hardest to not lose his balance.

"Rory?" Ellie asked as she took it out of his hands.
"...That's a lot heavier than I thought," he groaned, rubbing his head.

"Let's not give that to you anymore, bud."

Feeling his phone buzz in his back pocket, Benny pulled out his cell to see an incoming call from Ethan. 

"Ethan, hey. So, we found the Lucifractor and—!"

"You found it?!" he interrupted. "Was there some kind of guardian thing?" 

"You could say that."

"Nevermind. You have to bring it to the restaurant now. Hurry!"
Ethan hung up the phone before Benny could say anything else. "That doesn't sound good."