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Anima couldn’t help but feel her smile try to falter, for a moment, as she heard about this ‘ghost’. Of course, it was likely that they existed; but the meat of the story was… Something else. It was almost ominous sounding, the way one of their servants offered to ‘show them’ what happened, only to never be seen again. And then, for her parents to have told her she had to let go… Perhaps, then, was the Servant the ghost in the story, and not the grandfather? Or had the parents been responsible for the Servants’ grandfather’s death? Or, perhaps even more... had the servant been planning to kill Anneliese…?! Only the first concept seemed remotely… Interesting, from a supernatural perspective. The other two aspects, however… Anima was only taken from this state of mind, as Jacklyn arrived to greet them… And immediately mentioned the man in the mask. She frowned, for a moment; visibly, before nodding. “...Actually, I will… Definitely believe you,” Anima chuckled lightly, rubbing at the side of her neck. “His name was Brady, and he was weird as…” she trailed off, letting the others carry on the conversation for a moment as she set to softening her expression. It was then, of course, that Jacklyn suggested they take a photo of them with the ‘first major landmark’ of their journey… The weird, half-sunken statue. “Oh, er... Right, of course, I can take your photos!” Anima almost immediately jumped in, voice a bit more enthusiastic than it should have been, as long as she didn’t have to… "Oh, I'll take one for you guys if you want too!"  “Huh?” Anima paused for a moment, before shaking her head slightly. “No, you, um, you don’t have to do that,” she murmured, grip on Confi tightening ever so slightly as she gave an apologetic smile. “I, er… Confi’s camera-shy,” she tried to excuse herself; even if it was a flimsy lie, it was one that couldn’t easily be contested… And if she didn’t want to admit, or didn’t want to voice that she wasn’t comfortable having her photo taken, she didn’t have to. Instead, without waiting for any further prompting, she knelt down and put Confi down. She then rummaged through her backpack for a moment, to pull out her PokeDex. It was scratched up, been repaired, had buttons replaced and had been bashed several times… All by people who had owned it before Anima, and before she had gotten it, but it was hers; and the camera, at least, functioned well enough to take some pictures of her friends. It stalled for a moment as she opened the camera, but after a second, she saw a reasonably clear picture come onto the screen, and set about lining it up to catch both Anneliese and Jacklyn… Even as their faces scrunched up. “Ah… Right, that thing...” she murmured, before spamming the picture button roughly ten times in quick succession. It was always best to go for quantity, and then pick out the best one to have printed, she had been told. After that moment of repeatedly taking photos, she quickly folded the PokeDex back closed, before stuffing it back in her backpack. “Well then--” she began, acutely aware of the pounding headache the statue was likely giving her friends, and hoping to alleviate that pain for them. “We should move on now, we, uh, we don’t want to burn too much daylight on this leg of our, er, adventure, after all!” she explained, already beginning to move on herself. Hopefully, if she was lucky, they’d follow without questioning the strangeness of the statue-- For as long as they didn’t question it, she didn’t have to question it.

Adding a 5th of my own Lufia & the Fortress of Doom Which puts us at just 5 away now

Quinn flinched the moment when Route One Oh Two became the smallest bit wet. It was not enough to keep from carrying on, but she kept thinking about it as it took further and further steps. Quinn was intimately familiar with mud, for reasons they rather kept to hirself. As Route One Oh Two became a full-on bog, Quinn spent more time looking for the safest places to step than zir stated goal of hunting for Pokémon. Cassiopeia had to help with a few of those jumps, putting all her effort into pulling upwards, giving Quinn just a few extra moments of airtime to navigate safely. It did not always work, and every piece of clothing below Quinn’s knee suffered the consequences, but there was still entertainment in the process, so Quinn did not mind. There were wild Pokémon to encounter, of course, and for those, Quinn did faer best to stay in place. Normandie did not seem to mind the environment fighting with her trademark ferocity, and Cassiopeia was unaffected by most terrain in general. The Pokémon that truly caught Quinn’s eye, however, was a Bearble standing stock still and facing away from her as it approached. Quinn recognized it immediately. “Peat? Where is your friend Nathaniel?” Quinn asked. But the Bearble did not respond, still looking ahead and growling under his breath. “Ahead, then? What is he doing without you?” Quinn made a move to continue, but Cassiopeia suddenly jerked its hand back, pulling the rest of the young ghost back with her. “Oh!” Quinn said, in more of shock than actual pain. “What is with you, you silly balloon?” That was when xe heard the whispers. In all likelihood, they had always been there since first stepping into the marsh, but it had taken breaking focus to notice them, and now they were impossible to ignore. The whispers in the back of Quinn’s mind were incomprehensible, but in the sort of way that promised comprehension if one only listened harder. Quinn tried again to approach the statue -- the whispers had to be coming from there, right? -- but Cassiopeia once again refused. “Do you want to go back into your Pokéball?” Quinn asked. That seemed to be an acceptable compromise for Cassiopeia, who practically opened her ball for Quinn as ze took it out. Approaching the statue alone made staying clean a practically impossible task, but Quinn no longer cared. The statue’s aura was awesome in the literal sense, with all the terrifying implications that that implied. It was no wonder that both Cassiopeia and Peat were not interested in such a place. Nathaniel was also there, hesitating just before placing his hand on the edifice. Quinn did likewise but overcame that final mental barrier to find out what the statue felt like. The statue was warm, but not in a way where the rock had absorbed sunlight all morning and was now radiating excess heat, nor was it warm because Quinn’s skin, as a ghost, was naturally cooler. No, it felt warm because it felt like it was alive, an impossibility in itself, but that was what it felt like. Even more, it felt like it was breathing, too. There was a pulse of energy in the statue. Its rhythm was slow, but it was there and it was consistent. Quinn could tap along with it if they didn’t feel compelled to keep his hand on the rock. “Material or Astral, I have never encountered anything like this,” Quinn said, Quinn’s voice soft. The voices in her head got louder, and faster too. And yet, Quinn still could not understand it. “What secrets do you hold?” Quinn mused. Still keeping faer hand touching the rock, Quinn began walking clockwise around the base, searching for more phenomena to experience -- an irregularity in the rock, perhaps, or a change in the statue’s beat.