Incredibly enough, this brings me to the end of our challenge prompts. Plus, I'm back at college now (hence the delays in responding, sorry), so I think that this is it for the summer.

I've thoroughly enjoyed the ride and hope you have too. A huge thank you to everyone who reviewed, favorited, or alerted this collection! I love getting feedback on these and have really been encouraged and inspired to write more than I have in years.

For that, I thank you. :D

(Post Scriptum: haha- my word count! XD)

Ancient Town

Week Three: August 4, 2011

.

No place to hide dreams / In crying faces / Nowhere to turn to / In Ancient Town / No names to follow / Some empty stations / No one remembers / This Ancient Town
No trees to shelter / A night for sleeping / No love to silence / In Ancient Town / No voice confesses / The heart is broken / No time tomorrow / In Ancient Town
Seantithe briste bearnacha (The ruins of old houses)
No street to find you / Just falling circles / No way to answer / For Ancient Town / No road to guide me / The signs are drowning / No way to trouble / This Ancient Town

.

Marie Brennan – Ancient Town - from Two Horizons

Danny was zooming through the Ghost Zone, flying so fast that he wasn't sure where he was going. In fact, he didn't really care. As long as wherever he was headed would get him away from Skulker, or at least gave him a reprieve from the upgraded arm cannons, it was good with him.

Even a few seconds would be good. A minute was more than he could hope for, but he wished for it all the same.

He had passed many landmarks that he had recognized, going by Skulker's skull island, Youngblood's twisted forest, Spectra's counselor's office, and Ember's door—conspicuous for the musical note adorning the front in flaming aqua. But that had been many minutes and miles ago. He was now far beyond the familiar landmarks and even past regions he had not fully explored. Now he was surrounded by new and unrecognizable sights. He did not know where he was, and every moment he was flying faster and still faster.

It was an uneven match between Skulker's steady and unflagging speed, thanks to his suit, and Danny's flight, even though it was adrenaline driven, as it began to fail. The length and intensity of the chase was already starting to wear the halfa down. He would not be able to keep this up much longer. Soon, he would be at the ghost's mercy.

Still, he was determined to make it hard for Skulker. Danny still had a few tricks up his sleeve.

While they gave him a few more minutes to live, however, they also had their downsides. A left turn here, a dive there, some crazy diagonal to escape a cannon-powered trident knife and Danny realized that he had no clue where he was.

He could be anywhere in the Ghost Zone, really, passing anyone's lair, not knowing whether the spirit was friend, foe, or indifferent to him. He had nothing to rely on, nothing even to guide him home from this point, and still, nothing to give him shelter from the hunter on his tail.

"Get back here, whelp!" Skulker shouted angrily, the demand accompanied by a mechanical whine.

Danny gave a quick laugh which he trusted carried back in the wind since he didn't dare look behind him. He couldn't afford the lost time.

"In your dreams, Skulker." Danny's voice was hoarse, but unmistakably defiant. The situation wasn't looking good for him, but his fighting spirit was still there.

Despite running for dear life, Danny decided it was high time to chance a taunt. Witty banter always made him feel a bit more confident in situations like this.

"I thought you were the Ghost Zone's greatest hunter. But I guess I heard wrong, 'cause I'm right in front of you and you still can't catch me… whoa—!"

He swerved just in time to miss the shot his comment had provoked.

Skulker smiled. The whelp was slowing down. He barely moved quickly enough to get out of the way with that dart. And that pleased him. "Ah, that's just what you think, ghost-child. Very soon your head will be mounted on my wall."

Danny tried to ignore all of the urges that made him want to cringe and go 'eww' at hearing that boast and instead concentrating on keeping as much distance between him and the ghost as possible.

"I'm enjoying this part of the game," Skulker continued as he crept up little by little on Danny's tail. He wasn't concerned at all about what Danny might do now. The outcome of this day was set in steel. "A little cat and mouse, wouldn't you say?"

"Yeah, well…" Danny faltered and fumbled for words, straining with the exertion of trying to be witty and fast at the same time. He could just hear the smirk in the hunter's voice, too. He hated it and hated the fact that he wasn't able to do anything about it. The whole situation was getting out of hand. "The mouse normally gets a head start or a hole to hide in at least, doesn't he?"

"Perhaps," Skulker replied lazily. "But you are not a mouse. You are a different kind of prey. You have different rules."

Different rules. Danny paused for a moment, wondering if he could steer this conversation and what Skulker had said to his favor somehow. He thought that he should be able to. It was just so hard to think while flying at top speed, though.

"So, since I'm supposedly such a great prey, don't I deserve a little more of a head start?" Danny called back over his shoulder. "You know, just to make this more interesting?"

He heard Skulker's laughter behind him, rolling in waves past him it was so hearty.

"Ah, ghost-child, you are too amusing!"

Danny could almost see him wiping his eyes of imaginary tears with those huge metallic hands and decided that then was as good a time as he would find to make his move.

Giving himself no time to think about or double guess his decision, Danny dove steeply downward and to the right, heading for something he had seen in the distance. He couldn't tell what it was yet, but any sort of structure or obstruction would give him a better chance to face Skulker than having to keep his retreating back to him all the time as he raced blindly through the Ghost Zone. And if Skulker had actually been wiping his eyes of crocodile tears, it could take him a few seconds to look back up and discover that he was gone—a few seconds that Danny would make the most of.

Danny put on an extra burst of speed, hoping to make it to whatever that was in the distance before Skulker saw what he was doing. It was a long shot, but he tried anyway.

The hunter hadn't expected anything to change while chasing the halfa and so it took him long, precious moments to figure out the slip his prey had given him. But he smiled when he recognize the trick that had been played. Danny was still too close to get away from him completely, so he could afford to be amused and follow at a leisurely pace.

Skulker quirked a large metal eyebrow when he realized where his quarry was headed. He took his time flying down to the ancient town, knowing full well what its ruins contained.

The child had wanted to make this chase a little more interesting; well, it had just gotten much more interesting.

Unlike Skulker, however, Danny did not know anything about the place he had escaped to.

Once he had landed, he found himself staring at the ramshackle buildings that stretched to touch the green clouds that hovered in the stale air of the Ghost Zone. The structures were so odd that he found himself gaping at them lost in thought. Snapping himself out of the trance-like state into which he had fallen, Danny realized that he couldn't let Skulker catch him standing around gawking at the architecture.

His priorities were clear and the consequences for not following them in the right order were deadly. He needed to get to safety and he needed to do it now.

Even though a glance over his shoulder showed him that Skulker hadn't doubled his pace to catch up with him, he needed to get out of sight and put as much space between them as possible. Every yard gave him an extra moment to maneuver; perhaps it would be the difference between making it behind some cover and being blasted to smithereens by the next round of darts to be fired.

And he did really want to get home alive instead of turning into one of the ghost's wall mountings. Danny swallowed as he thought about it, but quickly pushed the gruesome image from his mind. It would not help him now.

While he needed to find a good hiding spot, however, Danny also needed to get a feel of where he was and on what kind of terrain he would be fighting. That information would become invaluable to him over the next hour or so, so he dared to stop and look around him in what was almost awe as he made his way through the streets of this place.

It was… strange.

That was probably the best way to describe it. Everything around him seemed… odd. Just a little bit off, as if something was almost but not quite wrong with it. There wasn't anything Danny could specifically point to when he tried to figure it out. Maybe an angle off here or a proportion that wasn't quite possible there, but when he did a double take to really looked closely at anything, it seemed fine, perfectly normal.

The longer he stayed there, however, the more he realized the town was far from normal. It wasn't just the age of the ruins, either. The place felt twisted.

As Danny passed corner after corner which led into narrow street after narrow street and alleyway after alleyway, he saw that the place was rather like a maze. He didn't know where he was going. There wasn't a safe spot he could make for… he was just going along and hoping for the best. There was nothing except for the crooked street signs to point him in any direction, but these could not help since he was not familiar with the layout of the town in the first place. He had no clue which streets ran in which direction or led to which places. If he had known that, he wouldn't need to blindly choose which turns to take based upon how the names of the streets read.

Left on Caillte.

Left again on Gaiste and a right on Ait just to mix it up. He seemed to be heading in the right direction but as he came to a dead end, he closed his eyes and prayed that turning right would not go wrong.

The buildings had been constructed too close together, nearly on top of one another, crowding and greedy for ground. They towered above him and leaned out above the streets as if to block him from the light. They somehow managed to cast long dark shadows on him no matter in which direction he was moving.

Every door he passed was shut and barred. After a while, he realized that it was a waste of time to even try them.

The walls were pale and colorless with large dark windows that looked like dead eyes following his every move.

It was creepy.

It took him all of sixty seconds to come to that conclusion. Before Danny had been running through the place for five minutes, he wanted to be far, far away. But he couldn't. That was the killer. He couldn't just leave now that he had gotten here.

This place, odd as it was, was the only thing keeping him head on his shoulders.

Skulker had since descended into the town; the arena, as he began thinking of it in his mind.

It would certainly be interesting to see how the whelp fared here…

Smirking, he flew around much more cautiously than his young prey had, taking special notice of where he had landed and what was around him.

While slowly walking along the main thoroughfare leading into the ruins, trying to decide how best to go after the boy, he passed by two streets, not following them because of the interlocking circles engraved deep but fading on the drab grey walls. On the third, he decided it was safe to turn, making his way toward the middle of the ruins, where the buildings stood the tallest.

He shook his head as he imagined the haphazard way Phantom would have flown past all of the derelict buildings, ignoring the signs. Who knew what he had gotten himself into already, in just a few minutes time?

It would certainly put a new layer onto this hunt, in one sense making it easier for him because the ghost-child did not know what he was doing in a place like this, as he did, but in another sense also making it harder to catch the whelp. He would need to be wary while chasing down his prey, taking care lest he be so eager to get close that he would be swept up into the same pitfalls as the idiotic hothead he was chasing.

Meanwhile, Danny was looking around him in dread and apprehension.

Everything seemed dead and empty, far too empty even for a town in the Ghost Zone. It just seemed drained of all life and spirit. There was barely any color around him. There was no movement except for a few derelict pieces of cloth fluttering over what at one point in time must have been a market stall for fruits or jewelry. It was the only open space he had seen; the rest of the buildings were cut off to him, running far up above him in sheer walls that shut him out from whatever was inside.

Danny shivered, not sure that he wanted to know what was inside.

He just wanted to get out. He wanted to get out of this place and away from Skulker.

Right now he should be in bed. Or maybe in Lancer's class. Perhaps school had even let out already and could well be on his way to milkshakes at the Nasty Burger. He had lost all sense of time, except for the fact that now he thought about it, he was a bit hungry. But no matter what the time was or what else he had been planning on doing today, he would rather be almost anywhere but here.

Every nerve in his body screamed at him to go, to get away from this creepy place. Like a hunted rabbit cowering in tall grass, he had the urge only to move, even if it would get him killed. He couldn't just walk along down here in this forsaken place where his feet made no noise on the ground. Flying wasn't much better for his nerves and no matter how far he tried to go, he never seemed to get anywhere.

This place seemed to go on forever. He had already been walking for a nearly an hour and he didn't seem to be any closer to the other side of the town than when he had started. The place hadn't looked that big when he first flew to it…

He hadn't seen sign of Skulker yet, but he knew that he must be around here somewhere, lying in wait. If he just continued walking, he might turn a corner to race into the ghost's outstretched sword at any moment. He couldn't risk it, continuing like this, but what else was he to do?

It was when he passed that same stall again, somehow having come in a full circle that he panicked. Throwing his eyes to the street sign on the corner, he knew that this wasn't another place that looked eerily similar but the same one he had passed. No, it was the same one.

He was walking in circles.

His mind had barely processed that fact when he did follow his instincts. Without pausing to think at all about the dangers of doing so, Danny shot straight up, hoping to rocket out of that town and continue his high speed chase across the empty green air of the Ghost Zone. That was better than this freakish place. It was far better than this.

He raced blindly up to the rooftops to get away, but he did not even get close to getting out.

Instead, he flew full force into something blocking his path. It wasn't like a ghost shield; it didn't tingle or sting when he hit it and it was cold, unfeeling, unyielding, like glass. He hit it with a loud thunk and proceeded to fall, only managing to catch himself inches from the ground.

Danny put his hand to his head until the stars stopped swirling and then looked back up, struck by the sudden realization that he was stuck, stranded in this place. That shield or whatever it was, was keeping him in here.

There was no way out.

Skulker was aware of the precise instant that Danny had crashed into the invisible barrier. Besides the loud noise made on impact, at the moment the ghost-child had hit the shield, he had triggered or activated something. Everything around the hunter began to change.

He was wary enough of this place to be on his guard and levitate when he saw the place was taking on a mind of its own. That quick thinking was the only reason Skulker wasn't sucked into the ground when the pathways disappeared and the cobblestones were swallowed by the oozing dust that replaced them.

From all around him came a low rumbling. He whipped around, trying to locate the source of the noise with the various gadgets built into his newly upgraded metal suit. Their readings were disrupted, though. There was too much interference. It seemed like the noise was coming from all around him; he couldn't locate a single source.

Was there still an inhabitant of this ancient town prepared to defend its home from intruders? He hadn't heard of such a thing, but then again, no one had heard much of this place.

He understood what the noise meant, however, as the buildings themselves began to shift around at the same time the paths and roads between them vanished.

The place had come alive.

The circles on the wall which he had barely been able to notice before now etched themselves in the walls so that they were deeply carved and distinct. That was odd in and of itself but then in addition to that, the symbols began to glow in an ancient ghostly green.

From somewhere above their heads, more shields like the one Danny had run into in his aborted flight descended from somewhere and snapped into place around the new city. Unlike the previous one, these were visible. Skulker gasped as he saw what looked like a deep blue field of stars descending upon them. Everywhere he looked, it was twilight, even though the Ghost Zone had never known sun or stars.

There was only one small break in the starry shield ceiling. Far above them, in what appeared to be a magnificent constellation set in deep space, was a small green spot.

A hole that led out.

Danny could see it, just a few hundred feet above him and over a few rows of buildings, an opening of soft green light that looked strangely welcoming as it poured through the twilight barrier.

It was the only way he could escape from this town, Danny was sure of it. He tried for a second time to fly upward toward the hatch to freedom, but yet again, he did not make it there. In fact, he did not make it as far as he had during his first attempt. Instead, he was stopped as soon as he tried to go over a roof. There was an invisible wall, like the one he had flown into earlier to activate all of these changes that stopped him.

After recovering from the second blow to his head that day, he put his hand out to press against the partition. Danny didn't care any more about the fact that he was exposed to any enemies floating up here without a thought to creating a shield of his own.

All he wanted to do was find a way out.

Hand over hand, he discovered that the wall went all the way up to the starry canopy and there was no way through it. There were no cracks, no seams, not even where the wall met the ceiling. Neither ice nor ectoblasts nor the raw power of his punch could crack it.

He wasn't ready to risk a wail since his other powers simply bounced back at him the moment they hit the invisible or starry walls.

Finally, in desperation, he let out a scream, slamming into the shield with all of his might even though he knew it would do him no good.

The sound pierced through the air, venting all of his frustration, but abruptly disappeared moments after he let it loose. It was simply gone. It had not died out and he had not finished—his mouth was still open, in fact— but the noise was not there. It was like a gust of wind had whipped it out of existence, only, there had been no wind.

His mouth closed and his eyes went wide. His scream… was gone… and it scared him, scared him more than anything else had so far.

Nothing that happened in this place was natural. He had walked in circles, been trapped by shields that wouldn't break, the whole town had rearranged itself, and now the sounds vanished?

But… the noises weren't gone. Danny was slowly becoming aware of other sounds, new sounds. Ones that he hadn't heard before.

Movement. Whispers. Fragments of whispers that floated past him, caressing his face.

Biting back a scream of fright, he looked around, trying to find where they were coming from. He half expected to see ghosts of the people who had lived here appearing around him, faces peering out of the soulless windows. But nothing.

Shivers ran uncontrollably down his spine.

There was nothing there, yet these whispers continued, singing to him, warning him, urging him to do… something.

He felt like he was being suffocated by the voices that didn't belong to anyone or anything. Danny swung around, as if somehow able to swat the whispers away like they were so many flies.

And then there was a long, low laugh, one that made his hair stand all on edge. But it was one he recognized. His first response surprised him. He felt a flood of relief to hear the real voice of someone he knew and recognized.

Turning, he saw Skulker on the ground many yards away. But after the first rush of relief had passed, Danny realized that the ghost was laughing at him.

Angrily, Danny turned to blast the metal hunk of a ghost, only to have his blast ricochet to him yet again, stopped by the shield above the rows of houses separating the spirits. He avoided the stream of green energy and looked down to growl at the hunter who seemed even more amused at this newest turn of events.

"What is this, Skulker? Where are we?" He demanded, his voice torn between fear and anger and the desire to cover them both.

Skulker just smiled, sounding all too pleased with the way Danny was emotionally cracking. He drew out his words for as long as possible, just to torture the boy even more. "This, ghost-child, is the Ancient Town."

Danny paused, thinking. He couldn't place it. "Which ancient town?" he finally asked.

"Not 'which ancient town,'" Skulker scoffed. "The Ancient Town. It is one of the oldest places in this half of the Ghost Zone."

Surprised at first that Skulker was willing to talk about this place, Danny realized that it really wasn't that odd since neither one could hurt each other now. They had both lost the chance to blast at their opponent because of the partitions. Danny was safe from the ghost for the moment, if not from his surroundings. So he figured it was his best bet to find out about this place while Skulker was still in a talkative mood.

"Where did it come from? Who lived here?"

"I do not know."

Danny's mouth flew open. "What? You don't know? How do you not know, Skulker? You know everything about weird places like this, old legends and stuff…"

"I know all there is to be known about the Ancient Town," Skulker interrupted to save his reputation, rising to come to eye level with the halfa, though they were still separated by several streets and layers of shields.

Danny tensed at the movement and drew himself into a fighting position until he realized that Skulker wasn't going to try anything. It wouldn't have worked anyway.

"But there is little to know," Skulker continued. "No ghosts entered this realm with the ruins, so there was no guide to tell its history. No one remembers this place. Few were adventurous enough to venture into the town's walls and the stories of those who did were enough to discourage many from trying who otherwise might have done so. For those truly curious enough to learn about its appearance, there is little here to give any clues. Most of the names, papers, artwork, records, anything that could link it to a place or time in history has long since disintegrated."

Danny thought hard. Was it really possible for an entire town to disappear into the Ghost Zone without anything to link it to the real world? There must be something left. And that was when he remembered.

"But there are the street signs," he pointed out.

Skulker's answer was not what he expected.

"Are there?" the ghost responded cryptically.

Danny was puzzled by the question.

Yes, there were the street signs; he had used them to try to make his way through the labyrinth of streets just minutes ago. When Skulker's face gave no more information about his mysterious question to him, Danny flew down to look at the signs to see if he could tell what the ghost meant.

He gasped when he saw the wooden plaques. The writing was gone, the names vanished, the ink dripping down the background as if it had been washed or eroded away by a thousand years of constantly dripping water.

There were no street signs.

Danny had to keep himself from trembling. He came back up to eye level with the ghost ready to demand what had happened, what was going on. Skulker stopped him by answering his question before it was asked.

"It happened when you so foolishly tried to fly up out of the streets, ghost-child."

Danny bristled. "Who are you calling foolish?"

"You activated the system." Skulker stated calmly.

"What… what do you mean?" Danny found it hard to mask his puzzlement and growing fear. 'Activating the system' didn't sound good, even if he didn't quite know what it meant.

Skulker gladly expounded on his earlier troubling comment. "You brought the town to life."

Danny was suddenly aware again of the presence of the whispers and the feeling that things with eyes watched him from the empty windows. The place certainly was alive and it was making his skin crawl to think about it.

He remembered that all he wanted to do was to get out of here. He was done talking.

Danny turned to go.

"Where do you think you are going, ghost-child?"

"I'm leaving."

Skulker quirked an eyebrow.

"Oh really? And just how did you intend to do that?"

Danny looked around him, seeing nothing that would help direct him to the right path. He needed to get out of the hole in the shield that he could see right over there. He wished he could just fly above the rooftops. It would be easy then. But he couldn't do that because of the shields.

He needed to figure out how to get out of here.

"I'm just… going to start flying and hope I get closer to that…" He pointed to his exit.

Skulker began to laugh.

It made Danny stop in his tracks and turn around to face the ghost. "What?" he demanded.

"Have you looked around you?"

"No, not really, why?" the teenager jutted out his chin in an attempt to put on a mask of defensive bravado.

Skulker was only too happy to enlighten him.

"All of the streets and paths are gone. The signs guiding you are washed away. The buildings themselves have picked themselves up to form a new pattern which in turn created more loops."

"Loops?" he asked quietly, dreading the response he expected to hear.

The ghost smiled.

"Yes, I believe you found yourself in one earlier. A street that continues endlessly in a circle so that when you think you are moving forward, you are walking a path you've already traversed."

Danny gulped and that was answer enough for Skulker.

"The shields have locked into place and there is only one way out. Only one road will take you to the center of the town and to the exit of this maze. It could take days to find it, even if you don't find yourself locked in another loop."

"You…" Danny swallowed nervously. "You seem to be taking this remarkably well considering that you're in the same boat as I am."

"Ah, but I'm already a ghost. I have all the time in the world to find my way through the labyrinth." Then Skulker smiled, a ghastly grin that made Danny's blood run cold.

"You, on the other hand, whelp, you are running out of time. You have nowhere to turn, nothing to guide you. You don't even know the twists and secrets of this place."

The halfa stood stock still for a moment before gulping and flying forward. Placing both hands on the transparent shield as if he could reach the ghost, he exclaimed, "But you do! You do, Skulker! You can help me out. You can tell me!"

Danny was practically pleading with him as he began to panic.

This was not good. Not good. Not good.

His brain couldn't handle an endless maze that shifted on him, even if his body could handle the strains of flying without food for however long it would take him.

Maybe if Skulker just warned him about what to expect, he would be able to…

"I could," the ghost admitted. "But I don't think that I will. You wanted a hole to hide in and a head start on this hunt, ghost-child."

His smile widened.

"Now you have one."

The street names (Caillte, Gaiste, and Ait) are Irish for lost, trap, and nowhere.

Again, would love to know how this went. I haven't created new places or tried much with Danny exchanging banter before (there seems to be a first for me in every one of these stories… man…). Since the only other thing I could think of for this prompt would be an over-used and over-dramatic, dripping-with-tragedy-so-that-I-couldn't-handle-it post-Dan-or-other-apocalyptic-force story where-everyone-but-Danny-is-dead, hopefully you can deal with my adding to cannon. :) But was the Ancient Town just kind of blah, or was it actually interesting? I had a hard time with it and would really appreciate any feedback.

While this is the last chapter for this collection, I have some more ideas up my sleeve... so stay tuned!

Thanks again, everyone!

Bonus Feature:

Below is my original idea and "screenplay" for this chapter. It changed quite a bit...

(( Danny runs through the GZ. Skulker is following him and he has to try to get away. He tries to find shelter and gets to an ancient town that is abandoned and dead. He goes inside and everything's weird. There are circles everywhere. No echoes of his voice, but of some things that weren't sounds to being with. The road disappears. The signs get wiped out with water even though he doesn't drown or get swept away. Then, realizes he should go, he's spent too much time there and he's lost. He doesn't know which way is which or where other landmarks are that he knows. He talks out loud, "this way to _, that way to _" as the signs disappear on him. Then a voice from behind him. "No way to trouble". Skulker charges an ecto blast and barely misses his head. Danny gulps and begins flying again. Yep. That's where he was. Trouble. ... Witty banter throughout. ))