In the Shadows We Fight (for justice and ourselves)

Why do you cower in fear?

Reverie wasn't sure what he was expecting. Alyssa, the disappearing lady of the Badlands district, had died giving him this piece of paper. Her last moments were spent making sure that Reverie understood something beyond his current comprehension. Reverie was hoping to find the base of operations for the villains in the Badlands district or maybe to discover a superweapon that the hero in charge of the district was hiding. Perhaps, Alyssa was revealing where she had left the item that she stole from Banshee. As Reverie came to the end of the street, he discovered that Alyssa had not spent her dying moments confirming the existence of any of his previous assumptions. The address had brought Reverie to an abandoned mansion that was dilapidated enough that most of the walls had come crumbling down. There weren't any occupied buildings around it, meaning that Alyssa hadn't slightly messed up the address, but Reverie didn't know why she wanted to make sure that he came here.

Reverie stepped underneath the archway that must have created the entrance a long time ago. Reverie took his first step onto the part of the cracked marble foundation. As the cracked piece began tilting, Reverie elected to walk along the solid ground peeking through the cracks with overgrown plants making a fake carpet. Reverie looked around what must have been the anteroom. There were a few pieces of broken glass or shredded bits of painted paper, but anything that could have possessed monetary wealth had been stolen when the building was first abandoned. Reverie didn't know the history of the estate, but considering how thoroughly wrecked the main building was and the overgrowth of the surrounding gardens made it clear that no one had lived here in a long time. Reverie wondered what had forced the owners to vacate their home. He looked for archeological clues in the rubble but nothing substantial came up. Reverie supposed for those reasons it would have been the perfect place to hide something, but he had no clue where Alyssa would have stashed away whatever she was hiding. Reverie lifted fallen rocks that must have been the eroded wall to see if there was anything underneath. All he found were some bugs minding their own business in the damp soil. Reverie placed the walls back onto the ground. He climbed over a few rocks to find a crumbling staircase. The stairs held firm, but the railing fell down with a resounding crash the moment Reverie touched it.

Reverie looked through what remained of the second floor, but he had about as much luck with it as the first floor. Most of the rooms had fallen to the ground, collapsing on their own weight once the supports had rotted away. The rooms that remained were drowning in dust that made Reverie cough and sneeze enough that he felt dizzy from lack of oxygen. Luckily, the rooms were mostly barren so Reverie didn't have to look around anything. He went back to the first floor after he almost puked from how much dust he had ingested. Even his mask couldn't keep the worst of the dirt out of his mouth when the air was thoroughly soaked in it. Reverie sighed as he looked around. He almost left the mansion when he saw a flicker of a light in the corner of his eye. Reverie turned to look for the light, leading him to a side hallway hidden behind a fallen pillar. Reverie lifted the pillar with his power high enough for him to worm his way through.

Reverie followed the hallway all the way until he came to the end. On his right, a painting had remained on the wall. It was a watercolor of a spider resting on a leaf with dewdrops surrounding him and parts of the sky showing through the bright green leaves and darker colored stems. The fact that a painting had remained when the entire house had been ransacked was suspicious enough, but Reverie found that his gaze lingered on the frame. It was a gleaming gold color, shimmering despite how dark the hallway was. It should have been covered in dust. In fact, the entire hallway was surprisingly clean for an abandoned building. Reverie could believe that the pillar had kept thieves from reaching the still-life, but there was no reason that the hallway was spotless. Reverie held onto the edges of the painting. He tried to take it off the wall, but it was securely fastened to the wallpaper behind it. Reverie tried with his powers, but he felt a push-back against the chaos that made him give up. He placed his hand against the spider to see if there was some hidden message. Instead, his hand went right through the painting. Reverie snapped his hand back to his chest. His mouth parted slightly as he pulled his entire body through the painting.