"I just think dragons get lucky in finding treasure. Sure, some of them pillage and raid for it but I have heard accounts of some having fully fledged mining operations and agents who trade in whatever they find precious." – Kritsi explaining the reasons draconic species hoard treasure.

The second wing of the manor-like rift was a near carbon copy of the first. There were ghouls milling about but not grouped up like they were in the first wing. There also wasn't vampire in a ball room at the end. Instead, there was what appeared to be a kitchen, which was empty except for a countertop and a fridge in the middle of the room.

"I really hope this rift is based on an actual house." Val said as she finished checking the pantry which was more of a narrow hall than a proper food storage space.

"Why?" Kurt asked.

Val shut the pantry door gently and turned to him. "Because I want to find out who put a massive counter in the middle of the room with an icebox taking up half the space like this." She gestured to the strange floor plan. "Why would you do this? It makes no fucking sense."

"And what are you going to do if you find them?" Kristi asked from her position at the doorway as she kept an eye on the hall.

"Throat punch them. This shit is dumb as fuck." Val said with more than a little disgust in her voice.

"Allllll-Right." Kurt said and made a mental note to include Val in any renovation projects in their home. "Feng shui aside, let's move on."

They began to form up behind Kristi when she waved her hand behind her and snapped her fingers softly before gesturing them forward. Kurt moved up beside her and peeked out over her head down the hall.

"What?"

"Thought I sa- There!" She hissed in a whisper. "Second floor balcony, fifth pillar from the stairs."

Kurt looked, squinting slightly as he caught movement on one side of the pillar. He saw the slight protrusion from the right side of the marble column as it disappeared. A second later, a figure emerged from the opposite side, walking toward the stairs.

From what he could see, the figure was a woman, looking to be in her late twenties and dressed in a very similar fashion to the first vampire they killed. She was wearing the almost exact same black jacket with the only exception being the different cut. That was over her long, pleated maxi skirt that swished and flowed strangely around her.

She walked slowly, moving at a leisurely pace that a ninety-year-old grandmother with a walker could keep up with. As they watched, she moved to the top of the stairs, stopped, surveyed the area below and then kept moving around and out of sight, likely to somewhere on the balcony on their side of the atrium.

"Vampire?" Kurt asked. He thought her eyes looked red but also didn't get a clear look across the rather long distance.

Kristi nodded and placed her palm on the ground. "Definitely, also I don't think she is walking."

"What do you mean?" Val asked as she backed away to let Kristi bend down and put her hand on the floor.

"I mean that I can't detect any footsteps. There is no vibration, so either the manor somehow absorbs it, which I doubt since I picked up all the other movement, or she is actually levitating." She took her place back on the frame of the door.

"Ok, then we keep our eyes peeled." Kurt said. "Stick to the plan. Val, take us out and to the area behind the stairs."

The kitsune led them along the wall, making sure they only had one direction to cover with the unknown creature in the area. At the corner, she stopped and poked her head around to look through the archway before leading them onward.

The area behind the stairs was one and a half stories of floor to ceiling windows. The space was littered with more benches and planters that had nothing in them. Even the ones along the windows were empty, highlighting the lack of reality that the rifts had.

Behind the stairs was another elaborate double door that led down to a basement. Kurt was naturally nervous about what the basement of an undead infested rift-born manor would look like. Who knew the horrific sight that awaited them in the depths of this hellhole. It turned out to be worse than he feared.

Office cubicles filled the room from wall to wall. There were narrow pathways between the rows, barely wide enough for them to walk single file and leading to nowhere but the back wall where a giant clock with eight hands but no numbers hung on the wall. A flickering series of fluorescent lights ran over each aisle but somehow only illuminated the paths and not the walls or interior of the cubes which remained in shadow.

The furniture was all tans and browns with faux wood grain metal desks that sat on multi-colored carpet tiles which had a strange geometric pattern. He assumed it was patterned since he saw repeating lines and angles, but the colors made it impossible for him to tell if it was diamonds, or triangles around the circles of color.

"Fucking creepy." Kurt murmured as a shiver ran down his spine. "I swear there is an abandoned office building in Seattle missing one of its call centers."

The girls agreed and they quickly back tracked since the room led nowhere. They stopped under one of the arches and tried to survey the second-floor balcony. They couldn't see much but they waited for several minutes to insure that the vampire wasn't making a circuit. When there wasn't any sign of her, they began moving to the foot of the stairs.

Their formation was a staggered line with Val at the front covering the direction they moved while Kurt and Kristi both covered the balcony above them. They were moving quickly across the open area, not wanting to be to exposed to anything that was waiting in the wings or shadows above.

As they moved around the banister at the foot of the stairs, Kurt felt a sudden weariness. It was like all the stress and exertions of the day had abruptly caught up with him as he looked at the staircase. He was able to thankfully push most of it aside, relying on his elven heritage a little. Val suddenly stumbled, misplacing her foot and barely keeping herself from falling. He thought that was very unlike the normally extremely coordinated and agile woman.

An intense burning rage engulfed his mind a split second later, once his other aspect realized what was happening, and pushed the lethargy off. He cast the first spell he could think of and made a hard, translucent barrier spring to life above them. The dome was actually the second thing to form in the air overhead as a wave of force caused the air to ripple upward just on the other side of his spell.

A hissing screech could be heard as a vampire was deflected off to the side, impacting a planter and crushing it from the force of the blow. Kristi had sent a wave of force out in umbrella that pushed everything away from the center and caused the aerial ambush to be deflected. The shield spell didn't even get touched by the attack.

Kurt and Val didn't waste any time in pumping rounds into the stumbling form of the female vampire, perforating her with the thirty caliber projectiles. She vanished in a blur amongst the cloud of debris from the crushed stone.

A quick burst of fire from Kristi and the blur that was racing away from them suddenly resolved into a stumbling vampire with the lower half of its leg dangling from a shattered knee. The trio quickly oriented on the downed monster and proceeded to empty their magazines into her. The muted clacking of suppressed gunfire combined with the smack of subsonic projectiles on flesh and stone alike to create a horrible racket as they made sure the vampire stayed down.

The body twitched, shaking violently as both Kurt and Val ran dry leaving only Kristi to continue shooting. She stopped a moment later when her rounds skipping off the marble floor had turned the blood sucker's head into little more than a tattered stump sticking past the shoulders.

"What the fuck." Kurt grumbled after completing his magazine change. "Was that some mental magic or something?" His skin was crawling as he thought about the sensation that had numbed his mind. He didn't like the idea of mental magic. His opinion having always been that it was a perverse violation of a person's privacy.

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Kristi stomped over to the corpse and kicked it hard. Her boot connecting with the ribs with a crunching noise that sent a shiver up Kurt's spine. "It's one of their filthy vampiric abilities. A natural adaptation to help them secure food that doesn't struggle so much." She said then returned to the base of the stairs and orienting her muzzle toward the balconies.

Kurt raised his eyebrows and glanced at Val who just shrugged when he made eye contact. "I take it you are familiar with them?"

"Not firsthand." Kristi said. "But I have seen the effects enough times in others to understand and recognize the signs." She took a breath before explaining a bit more. "It seems that my draconic heritage makes me immune to mental domination and manipulation spells. I saw how you two were acting and knew something was wrong."

Reaching out his hand, he placed it on her arm. When she glanced over to meet his gaze, Kurt spoke softly. "Are you ok? Need to talk about something?"

The look of anger and hurt on her face softened slightly as she shook her head. "I will be fine." She said in a much quieter tone before amending her statement. "For now, at least."

Val was casting the illusion over them again when she brought up a good question. "Where did it come from and for that matter, how did it see us under my illusion?"

Kurt wasn't sure on either front, but Kristi apparently had the answers. "Third floor, through the gap between the second flight of stairs and the railing. I think she was lurking in the shadows up there." She glanced to Val before answering the second question. "I think your illusions are not going to work on a creature so innately skilled in mental magic."

The ears on Val's head flattened and her eyes narrowed. "Mother fucking…" She began to mutter, switching languages suddenly when she ran out of English expressions to show her displeasure. "I'll keep it up for the ghouls then." She huffed and they began making their way up the carpeted stairs.

The slanted ceiling above them resolved into the split of the second staircase that straddled the first one before reconnecting and flowing up to the much smaller third floor of the atrium. The portrait that hung on the wall at the second-floor landing was both amusing and hideous, causing them all to stop and stare at the well-lit disaster of artwork.

Kurt would describe it as someone asking for bad AI to generate an image of modern abstract art that was created by Salvador Dali using MS Paint with a ball mouse. It was hideous. It was grotesque. It was also so horrible that they couldn't look away.

"What is that supposed to be?" Val asked, shining her weapon laser on the bit of gold that looked halfway between a stick figure leg and a half-erased line on a etch-a-sketch.

Kristi grimaced. "I hope it supposed to be a tree branch."

"Why…" Kurt had to swallow as his mouth had suddenly gone painfully dry. "Why is it coming out of that clown's belly button?"

"THAT'S A BELLYBUTTON?" Kristi gasped, suddenly looking very ill.

"Why else would there be lint?" Val asked, once more using her aiming laser to point out the fuzz that seemed a little too real for the painting.

Kurt forced his eyes closed as he turned to look away. He took several deep, calming breaths and fought back his urge to look at the painting again. He could feel the pull of the core coming from the third floor and tried to focus on the reason they were there.

"Come on." He said and shook the girls by their shoulders. "We need to clear this floor."

Val was first to snap out of it. "I swear if we find a house like this, I am burning it down." She vowed while storming off down the balcony.

"I wish I could give my eyes a bath." Kristi commented while taking her place behind Kurt. She glanced back at the artwork for a moment before adopting a considering look. She was pulled out of her contemplation a moment later as Kurt responded to her.

"You can borrow my bleach when we get home." Kurt said and began leading them along to the rooms on that floor.

The first door they checked was just that, a door. They opened it to find a blank wall on the other side with only enough room for the handle to not get in the way of closing. The remaining doors on that side were all the same until they worked their way around to the side opposite the stairs.

The first door of the four on that side of the atrium opened into a library of sorts. The walls were all covered in bookshelves that extended the full twelve feet to the ceiling and at first glance seemed to be filled with books.

Unfortunately, the room was also host to a dozen ghouls that had all been facing the doorway when the trio entered. The undead all lurched toward them as soon as the door opened, despite them being covered by Val's illusion. It seemed that the motion of the door was enough to attract their attention.

Thankfully, the ghouls were all easily put down with short bursts of gunfire and the room was once more still. As a group, they entered and began to search the room. Val moved to a roll top desk on the far side of the room while Kurt went to examine a globe and the shelves in one corner while Kristi kept an eye on the door.

Kurt noted that the globe was just a blank ball and didn't actually rotate in its stand. The books were also not exactly books. He would describe it as a textured block that looked like rows of books but was actually a solid chunk of what felt like balsa wood. He was about to comment on it when Val started laughing and he turned to see her standing by the desk.

She was batting at the roll top portion, and it appeared to be moving but in a strange way that he couldn't quite put his finger on. He walked closer and finally saw what was wrong as the lid just kept rolling.

"It's like a giant hamster wheel." Val said as she batted the segmented section of desk again, giggling like a maniac.

"Well, I know what to get her for Christmas now…" Kurt muttered to Kristi as they watched her playing with the mock furniture.

"I was just going to get her socks." Kristi said.

"She doesn't wear socks…"

"That's the funny part." She said with a smile.

Val finally gave up and smashed the segmented rolling cover, confirming there was nothing inside. With a shrug, she walked over to the others, and they made their way to the next door on that wall.

The next room was a repeat of the previous except there were a few less ghouls. Once more they tossed the room only to find nothing except the same mimicry of furniture.

Working their way back around, they confirmed that the last side of the second floor was also a bunch of false doors. They once more found themselves standing in front of the ugly painting.

"Hmm." Kristi said and stomped her foot. "Interesting…" She trailed off as she approached the hideous artwork. She reached out and grabbed the frame of the painting and gave it a little wiggle.

The frame barely moved but it seemed that Kristi found something since she quickly moved to the other side and repeated the motion. The second wiggle was accompanied with a click that was followed by the entire painting swinging outward on a hinge.

Kurt and Val quickly dodged the painting and looked at the locked door that was revealed to them. It was not a solid door like a vault, but a barred cell door that one would expect to see in a prison. Running through several loops was a series of pad locks, only one of which actually did anything.

"I thought there was something strange when we walked past the first time." Kristi said. "I was just so distracted by that abomination of a painting to follow through."

"How did you know this was here?" Kurt asked, amazed that she had found it. He couldn't see inside since it seemed that the interior room was intentionally kept very dark, and light wouldn't enter through the bars. These strange phenomena reminded him how weird rifts could be.

"The vibrations." Kristi said as she tore off a lock and waited, listening after the loud clang of metal. "I got the feeling there was a space here that was different than the rest of the house. There wasn't as much feedback like there is on normal walls."

She then ripped off the other three locks, despite them not doing anything, and pulled the cell door open. Once it had passed the ninety-degree point, the interior suddenly became visible and revealed a shallow but wide room with several rows of shelves. The room was still dark but they could now see more than shadows through the bars.

There was a desk directly next to the door with a ghoul sitting at it, holding a pen over a blank notepad. It looked up just in time for Val to put a bullet in its face which caused it to topple from the chair. With the official greeter gone, the three of them pushed into the room.

Kurt found a light switch on the wall beside the door, opposite the desk, and flicked it on. A few banks of florescent lights lit up and revealed the contents of the room. Other than the desk and dead ghoul, the rows of sturdy shelves were loaded with wood boxes of varying size.

Val moved over to one and lifted the lid. "Holy fuck." She gasped before closing it and opening it again. It looked like she was making sure it wasn't a trick as she blinked several times.

"What?" Kurt asked as he approached. He had quickly swept down the width of the room, finding no more ghouls or vampires before letting his guard down a little.

"Gold." Was all she could say as she opened the lid of the box, and he looked inside.

Laid out in a padded tray were rows of gold bars. It wasn't the typical trapezoidal bars that he saw in movies but one-kilogram ingots that were, more or less, the size and shape of a cell phone. He quickly moved and opened the other boxes and revealed that each one contained ten bars.

"One, two, three, four, five. Times that by two makes ten bars per box. That by four is forty. Then one, two three shelves is one hundred and twenty kilograms of gold." Kurt quickly counted the bars, then boxes then shelves under his breath.

"And silver." Kristi said as she flashed another ingot from the next row over.

Val had already scampered over to the next row of shelves and lifted the lid of a larger box. Kurt saw the look on her face go from excited to disappointed before turning to confused as she pulled out a strange looking emblem.

"What's that?" Kurt asked as he stored all the boxes in his ring and moved to see what she had found.

"I have no idea." Val said while holding up the large, disk like object. "It looks like a symbol made of bronze or something."

The logo was of a set of scales. On one side was stylized drop of what Kurt assumed to be blood given it was a cut red gemstone. The other side of the scale had what looked to be treasures in a pile. The side with the droplet was the lower side showing it had greater weight, or what he guessed to be value, over the treasure.

They took turns passing it around before just storing it for them to take back to Penny. The other boxes on that shelf were filled with papers. The only problem being that the papers were all blank except for a letterhead that showed the same logo in a two-dimensional picture.

In the end, they took everything and even checked the desk, but all the drawers were just solid blocks of wood. Kristi confirmed there weren't any more hidden rooms, and they stepped back through the door and formed up at the base of the stairs.

"Alright. One more floor." Kurt said while doing a quick magazine check.

"The core is up there." Kristi said.

"Our pay day is up there." Val corrected.

Kurt sighed heavily while Kristi rolled her eyes. "Yeah, let's also remember there is probably more than just that. Val, lead us up."

Once more, the kitsune cast her illusion, this time putting a little more force into the spell. And with a quick nod to each other, they began ascending the stairs, anxious to finish out the rift and get home.

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