Eight 5.16: The Spirit King

I felt a drive to push farther into the hollow, yet I wasn’t willing to risk the skents turning undead. So, I moved from bird to bird to pull the cores from their bodies. The result was a collection of silver-speckled, black marbles, each about the size of half a jelly bean. The cores felt dense, though. They promised a healthy amount of light.

The skents’ ghosts had lifted free by then and were circling clumsily around me. The other spirits gave them wide berth. More than few glared at the birds, but none attacked. In fact, all of the ghosts were remarkably well behaved.

‘It’s getting chillier,’ Fala sent.

‘We notice it too,’ Yuki added.

Which was quite a feat, since they were both merged with their respective elements.

Fala attention shifted briefly. ‘My Conditions tell me that I have Influenced (4).’

What? I quickly checked my own Status and saw I was free of negative conditions. Then, swiping over to her page, I confirmed she was being influenced. And Yuki too, apparently. How do you feel? I asked the Deer God.

He responded with a mental shrug. There’d been something earlier, but he’d shaken it off like an irritating fly. I waited to see if there was any more information forthcoming, but there wasn’t. What I sensed was patience as he waited for the herd to proceed.

Fala popped out of the figurine, yet her spirit didn’t reveal anything new or dangerous. Yuki even sprouted a handful of their tendrils for me to examine, and they seemed to be in the clear too. Which should’ve been heartening news, but it put us all on edge instead. The thing you need to be most wary of in a fight is the hidden knife.

‘It could be someone messing with our senses,’ Yuki suggested.

‘But we’ll be careful, in case it’s not,’ Fala sent. ‘I’ll watch over our Statuses.’

“Okay, okay,” I signed. “Then we’ll continue.”

Which led to Fala pulling a handful of stone javelins from the ground. She set them hovering over her shoulders and signed, “Lead the way.”

We resumed our careful progress, the target of my authority coming closer with every step. The few remaining plants disappeared. The ground was empty of life this deep into the mist, though I saw runnels where water must’ve once flowed.

The mist grew denser, and visibility worsened. A commotion among the ghosts drew my attention—they seemed to be growing restless. A chliapp lion raised her mane of tentacles in a threat display. A boar pawed the ground, like he was about to charge. Even the recently dead skents got in on the action, their circling turning frantic. One shot at Fala, but Tenna’s Gift held and sent the bird careening.

Marks began to appear on ghosts, like a boil emerging from under the skin. I struggled to make out the shape and sank even deeper into the land. I focused my eyes to their utmost until I saw it—the outline of a crown of thorny vines atop a staff. Once emerged, the marks glowed with an unearthly light.

The boar charged, the tips of his tusks glowing with that same light. Instinct sent me spinning to let him pass by, and he missed me cleanly, except Tenna’s Gift tore where he went through it. Suddenly, the air was full of the cries, the shrieks, and the bellows of the dead.

Then, as if the boar’s attack was the opening salvo, all the other ghosts attacked. There were so many crowding each other.

What damage did a ghost’s attack do? Would the injury be something Healing Water could treat? These questions flitted through my head, as I spun and twisted. My bow was in my hands, so I infused the stave with spirit mana and struck with it.

There were hunter martial forms for that—not many, just a few—since most attackers knew to close the distance against an archer. The result was normally a broken stave, though, but Princess Lilly was dawn and the ghosts were immaterial.

Their forms distended where they were hit. I blew through the boar’s skull, leaving a two-inch gap running from the top of his head down to his jaw. The chliapp lion had her tentacles cut from her body.

Fala spun her javelins around us like the blades of a blender, and because she was my beloved, I could cast my magic through her, infusing the stone weapons with my Spirit Arts. The ghosts shredded themselves trying to get to us.

The blender was working! So, I dropped a load of granite to give Fala more stone to work with. She shaped more javelins and also sent circling, expanding the circle outward and above us too to create a dome. The air thrummed with the sound of them.

The ghost of a giant mole came up beneath me; her claw tore through my left foot. The meat, the physical, went icy cold in an instant and was left numb afterward, while the spirit shredded, the edges turning an ugly yellowish purple.

I drove Princess Lilly between the mole’s eyes, and it cried out. A beat later, she retreated back underground. Water poured from the Hoarder’s Pocket toward my foot, yet the Healing Water spell didn’t do anything, even after I reinforced it with my authority.

Worry threaded through the connections between my allies and me, yet when I tested the foot, I found I could walk. Do your best to avoid getting hit until we know more about the long-term effects.

‘That means not letting anything approach,’ Yuki said.

So I dumped more granite, which my beloved then shaped it into a floor that I could infuse with spirit mana, willing it to resist the efforts of any to pass through.

The hierophant of Albei had been able to do something similar. Yuki had gotten a look at that spell while it was in action, but they were still in the process of unraveling its components All I could do was hope my hacked version would at least work on the ghosts.

The flock of skents shot through Fala’s barrier, the majority tore themselves apart in the process, their forms nearly dissipating in the aftermath. Three made it through, however, and I knocked them out of the air, blasting them apart with Princess Lilly.

The ghosts continued to throw themselves at the barrier, only to be torn apart by it. Then, they’d retreat until they could re-form and try again. We were apparently at a stalemate.

The ghost birds fluttered on the ground, and for the first time, I saw them… panicked and desperate to escape. My eyes sought out the boar from earlier, and he’d gone too. So were the ghosts of any other creature whose mark had been either destroyed or disrupted by our attacks.

No mark, no control, I thought.

‘How many left?’ Fala asked.

Dozens, if not hundreds, I replied.

‘Want a door to let them in one at a time?’ she asked.

‘Eight’s will isn’t endless,’ Yuki said. ‘Reinforcing the stone is already a drain.’

I frowned at the hidden mind’s observation, but they weren’t wrong. Will was a resource like any other.

‘What about lifting the stone like a platform?’ Yuki suggested. ‘We can move the whole thing deeper in, barrier and all?’

To address the source, I thought.

‘Yes,’ they replied.

I felt Fala gauging her strength. More than that, she estimated the amount of control required to pick up the platform, get it moving, and keep the barrier dome going all as a set piece.

On her first attempt to lift the platform. The javelins lagged by a couple of seconds, and the lowest among them scraped, stone against stone. I also had to duck, since the dome lost a couple of feet in height.

Fala’s annoyance with herself came through, as did her determination to do better. Carefully, she moved the platform a couple feet; the lag this time was shorter. Then she did it again and again, each time the delay between platform and barrier decreasing. Eventually, we reached the point where I didn’t have to worry about taking a javelin through the head.

‘Where to?’ she asked.

I pointed the way, and she moved us at a sloth’s pace. Yet we were safe, the barrier chewing through the ghosts in our way and those throwing themselves at us from every other direction. We traveled with an inevitability the ghosts were incapable of stopping.

All the while, my Fala’s focus was exquisite, intense, and captivating. Don’t get me wrong—I didn’t become moony-eyed in the middle of a fight, but I did fall in love with her all over again.

Through the mist, a large outcropping came into view. At first, I thought it a duplicate of the Judgement’s Rock, but the shape wasn’t quite right—more like a gardening trowel than a sword.  The structure rose about twenty-feet high, with the top half roughhewn and the bottom polished smooth.

A giant bishkawi knelt at the base; his eyes were closed as if in serene meditation. Almost instantly, even before I could use my camera, I knew in my bones he needed to die.

Gergerol the Spirit King (Animal, Silvered)

Talents: Mark of the Ageless, High Spirited, Ghost Whisperer, Veil Sunderer, Incomplete

My sense of him told me he was at least Level 15, and he had to be ten-feet tall at a minimum. His baboon’s face was especially long, almost as if it had been stretched. His broad chest and thick limbs were covered with a thick, red fur. A staff lay by his side, glowing in my spirit sight.

This Gergerol had evolved his intelligence enough to name himself and use tools thoughtfully. To become intentional about how he lived his life. Instead of establishing a territory and leading a troop, he was here in Slaughter’s Hollow, adding ghosts to his collection and… what else? I didn’t know, only that there was a purpose to his madness.

I’d gotten all that, because he’d left himself open. A split-second’s worth of understanding before his eyes snapped open, and his spirit slammed shut. Gergerol’s expression became stern. His eyes flicked toward the ghosts destroying themselves against Fala’s barrier, and he reached for his staff.

He got up like a prize fighter.

The light from his staff flickered, and the ghosts stopped their tumultuous assault. They’d all become horribly disfigured by then, and they retreated to surround us in a circle, well away from Fala’s buzzsaw barrier.

Across the distance, Gergerol looked me in the eyes, and I saw my death in them. Not just death, but an eternal servitude. There would be no negotiations between us. The idea didn’t even occur to me at the time.

Instead, I took a steadying breath and drew Princess Lilly. Fala kindly opened a hole in the barrier for me to shoot through. By then, Yuki had already moved through my consciousness and passed everything I knew to her. She’d sketched out a rough plan that the hidden mind had carried back to me.

Suddenly, the giant bishkawi’s influence surged forward to hit mine like a truck. Yet I held, my authority contesting his. The two of us were unshakable and rooted firmly in our own rightness.

I thought I saw him smile then, and I certainly felt my own share of excitement. That chest of his must be so full of silverlight. How much stronger would I grow as a result of taking it?

Gergerol took a step forward, and then another, approaching with a stately lethalness. He didn’t seem bothered by the prospect of being shot, which was downright foolishness. It made me wonder if he’d ever faced a truly skilled archer before.

I let loose, and an unerring arrow flew at him, aiming for his eyes, then another and another. It sounded like a semi-automatic rifle—bang bang bang! Three attacks in the space of as half as many seconds.

Gergerol moved, a kind of slipping that left a spiritual afterimage behind him. And my arrows continued onward unheeding of his shift in position, striking against the outcropping instead. That gave me pause, and the next time I shot, I sent an arrow at him and another at where I thought he’d juke.

Both still missed despite my spells; he’d gone a different direction and another spiritual copy was left to dissipate behind him. I shot three more arrows at him, yet he went another direction still. Each step, however, brought him closer.

He smirked then—a self-satisfied expression that made me want to push his face in.

‘Focus,’ Yuki said.

He has a way to spoof my spells, and he’s reading my intent too, I thought.

‘So use his abilities against him,’ Fala sent. ‘The enemy’s weapons are ours if we control how they’re used.’

Right, I thought and emptied myself of everything, even intent. Which was damn hard in the middle of a fight, let me tell you. I had the example of water, though—the stillness that moved only when circumstances demanded it. And when those circumstances did so, the water’s motion was selfless, dynamic, elemental.

My arms moved like they had a will of their own, and Princess Lilly practically drew herself. Filled with emptiness, I pointed the nocked arrow at Gergerol. He paused, unsure of which direction to dodge. The bishkawi seemed rooted until I let loose.

A Spiral Pierce formed around the arrow, and Gergerol’s eyes narrowed, his focus concentrated on my every detail, ready to evade. He was completely blindsided when the Deer God joyfully gored him from behind.

My arrow flew toward the stumbling bishkawi. He was turning, his staff flashing, and the Deer God was sent reeling in turn. Pain radiated from the connection between us. My normal sight didn’t show any injuries, but his antlers had been set on fire, the flames purely spiritual.

My arrow caught the giant bishkawi in the meat of his shoulder. I’d pointed it at his throat.

Hit or miss didn’t matter to water. If there were obstacles, I would glow around them or wear them down. Another arrow, another draw, another release.

Gergerol scrambled to evade, dropping to all fours to move faster. The arrow shattered against the ground.

The Deer God, meanwhile, withdrew into the herd, but the pain followed him. I felt it spread, threatening to cross over through the connection between us.

The earth spirit immediately retreated back onto the battlefield, and the pain in my consciousness vanished. I wasn’t let off so easily, though. At another gesture from Gergerol, my foot that had been damaged earlier began to ache.

The ragged edges of my injured spirit glimmered, then caught fire with the same flames as attacked the Deer God. The ache intensified and spread upward into my calf.

Alarm sang through both Yuki and Fala, but for me, there was only the stillness I’d found among the fight’s currents. Water poured out of the pocket and down my body, my authority already infused within it.

The fire didn’t go out when the two clashed, but its advance was halted. A band of water circled my calf where they fought.

I drew another arrow. Fala, bless her, had been easing her obsidian knife across the ground, looping it around so that it might come at Gergerol from behind. She’d done it while also maintaining the barrier around us. I released, calmly noting the giant bishkawi’s evasion.

The Deer God attacked him too, attempting to use the flames on his antlers against Gergerol, but the giant bishkawi seemed immune. Our enemy used his staff to block, then kicked out to strike the earth spirit in the foreleg.

The ghosts watching the fight shuffled anxiously. The Deer God was outside Fala’s barrier, so they could’ve attacked him without being cut apart, but they didn’t. At the prodding of the Taoism skill, I dipped the next arrow’s head into the flames at my foot. It didn’t catch until I tried feeding the arrow some spirit mana. Then it blazed brightly, and I quickly nocked and shot Princess Lilly. Not at Gergerol, but the ghost of the chliapp lion.

She took the arrow in the chest, and the flames quickly spread to the rest of her body. The other ghosts stampeded. They desperately fought to put distance between themselves and the now-flaming lion. Her pained yowls tore through the misty night.

The sound disturbed Gergerol—more than it should have. He gestured, and the fire went out—simply disappearing. You wouldn’t have known it was there, except for the panting lion left on the ground.

She got up slowly, struggling to stand, and carefully withdrew. The mark on her spirit was gone, eaten by the fire.

At the sight of that, a handful of the other ghosts rushed to join the fight against the Deer God, but Gergerol halted them in their tracks. They literally stood frozen mid-step. So, I shot another with a spirit flaming arrow—a moose, and his pained bellows also seemed unbearable to giant bishkawi. Gergerol once again dissipated the fire, quicker this time, and the moose bounded away as soon as he was free.

I got another arrow ready, but the flames went out as soon as I drew my bow. The fire around my foot also disappeared.

The Deer God grunted in acknowledgement. While I’d been experimenting with fire, he’d been fighting the giant bishkawi, antlers and staff clacking against each other. He’d been holding up okay but was taking a beating across his chest and forelegs. Not only was he distracted by the pain, but fighting with a physical body was new to him.

Well, my antics had given him an idea, and he leapt back and away from the fight. He chose instead to charge through the mass of ghosts, his flaming antlers tilted down like a cowcatcher. He was obviously threatening to set them all on fire.

Gergerol wouldn’t let him, though. The bishkawi put out the flames, and as soon as the Deer God was free of them, he rejoined the herd. His relief to be free from the pain was immense, swamping our connection.

The giant bishkawi backed away carefully, his eyes darting around the battlefield. He must’ve thought the Deer God was camouflaged or had turned invisible. With a gesture, he set the ghosts to searching on his behalf.

‘Ready five for hidden knife, barrier fall, pin cushion,’ Fala sent.

Ready five, I thought, then suddenly an idea came to me.

Fala must’ve sensed it, because she asked, ‘Still ready?’

Five confirmed, I replied, my influence spreading into the mist. What you’ll see is mine. Attack as planned.

The beats counted down, and just before Fala set her plan into motion, a dozen figures charged toward the giant bishkawi. Each one was invisible, except they disturbed the mist as they passed through it, giving away their attack.

Clearly alarmed, Gergerol swept his staff in a grand gesture. The milling, confused ghosts became ordered once more, and they lunged at these new attackers, only to pass through the mist-covered figures.

It was just me, bending the mist to make it look like people were charging through it. The illusion didn’t hold up for more than a second or two, but that was enough for Fala.

Stone sprouted from the ground in a thorny briar as her Thousand Spears was cast. The obsidian knife hid among the shafts, cutting into the bishkawi’s side. I shot at him with Princess Lilly a beat later, and my Thousand Arrows took effect. About half of the attack was wasted against Fala’s spell, but the other half punched through the gaps, hitting my enemy.

The stone platform landed with a thump and the stone javelins clattered to the ground as Fala released her control of them. A beat later, the Thousand spells’ effects vanished, leaving a single spear lodged through Gergerol’s gut, another arrow embedded in his shoulder, and the obsidian knife buried in his heart.

The giant bishkawi fell to his knees, clinging to his staff. His eyes were narrowed, though, and the fight didn’t go out of him yet. So, the Deer God emerged to catch his head between his antlers. A couple of tosses later, I heard a loud crack as Gergerol’s neck broke. Then, the Deer God vanished as Fala and I sent another round of Thousand Spears and Arrows at the enemy.

In the spells’ aftermath, Gergerol lay on the ground, his torso twitching from the forcefulness of the obsidian knife still at work inside him. His ghost rose from his body, yet he still didn’t look alarmed. Instead, he stood a moment to survey the battlefield. His staff, I noted, was yet again in his hands—a spiritual version to match the physical one.

I got a bad feeling then, an instinct that the fight wasn’t over.

Hurriedly, I reached with my will to force his ghost out of the world. The Deer God acted at the same time and with the same intent. But as quick as we were, Gergerol reacted faster. His body rose up, and he slipped into it like putting on a coat.

His physical arms moved again. He raised the staff, then slammed the butt against the ground.

Fala was already in middle of casting Thousand Spears again. I had another arrow nocked. Both our actions were disrupted as the thump resounded. It felt like getting smacked across the whole of my body, and my spirit threatened to come loose from the impact. If I hadn’t been experienced with spirit journeying, it likely would have.

My allies’ spirits were disrupted too, but being merged with their respective elements appeared to shield them from the worst of the effect. Still, I felt them reeling, the sound reverberating across the connections between us.

The ghosts began to approach us once more. A few of Fala’s javelins rose in the air, but Gergerol thumped his staff again, this time like he was beating a drum over and over again. A dizzying nausea spread through me and my allies.

The mist slipped from my control as I fought to recover my wits. Slowly, shifting one foot ahead of the other, Gergerol puppeted his body closer, his staff striking the ground with every step. Then, when he was about ten yards away, he stopped to watch me struggle. For a crazy moment, I thought he’d paused to gloat, but no, I saw his spirit begin the process of reattaching itself to his body.

The giant bishkawi frowned. Fala had refused to let her control of the obsidian knife go, and she spun the weapon like a blender’s blade inside him, liquifying the interior of his chest. Whatever Gergerol was trying to do to heal the damage there was ineffective. He stood caught somewhere between life and death.

Yuki was the fastest among us to recover. ‘He seems to have played all his cards.’

I managed to shake my head. The hidden mind couldn’t see it, but a spiritual light was building at the tip of Gergerol’s staff. Suddenly, it shot toward me. The instinct from earlier intensified, and I knew I had to avoid getting hit at all costs.

Yuki teleported us behind the enemy. For a moment, Gergerol’s staff hesitated. The ghosts pointed at us behind him, and he began to turn. The staff swung with him, its impact with the ground delayed.

Letting go of Princess Lilly was faster, as was pulling Bearbane from the pocket. Yuki teleported us again, this time above Gergerol. He looked up almost immediately, yet drawing his attention upward meant that he again lost the impetus to slam the staff down.

Bearbane pierced his hand, and as I dropped, I used the point of contact to force it up. His other hand came at me like a freight train, so I twisted and manipulated the one arm against the other, letting Gergerol get in his own way.  Then, I caught sight of the obsidian knife’s tip stick out of his throat. Fala sawed it back and forth to separate the head from its body.

The giant bishkawi’s spirit slipped loose again, the body falling in a heap. Oh, how his ghost glared at me. Oh, how that expression turned into panic when he saw Bearbane being loaded up with spirit mana.

The Deer God caught Gergerol completely by surprise again. The points of his antlers pierced through the ghost’s torso. They radiated the fresh light of a spring morning and dragged the him away from his body. I followed and used Bearbane to cut away parts of the ghost—his feet, his hands, his calves. Bit by bit, I took him apart, the Deer God holding the torso in place for me.

While we did that, Fala emerged from her figurine to send the javelins circling around us again. The ghosts desperately threw themselves at the barrier to rescue their master. Yet they couldn’t pass through, and bit by bit, she dismembered the bishkawi’s body.

The rest of the fight took longer than we would’ve liked. None of us had an easy way to destroy the body completely, for example through fire or a strong enough acid. Fala’s solution was to pound the meat into mush and break the bones into small pieces, which proved effective but time consuming. His silvered remains resisted the everyday stone we lugged around with us.

Eventually, Gergerol’s ties to the living world weakened. His expression was dazed, and he couldn’t believe he’d actually, permanently died.

The mist gathered as I brought my will to bear. The ghosts nearby began to wink out, one by one. Some had managed to free themselves. For others, it was the mist’s touch that did it. This whole place needed to be cleansed, and I was finally free to do it.

Gergerol’s panic grew more apparent. His injured spirit leaked his distress at seeing the work of centuries erased in mere moments. The throngs of ghosts disappeared. The land lit with an otherworldly light from the passage of so many dead.

“I can hear them,” Fala said.

The ghosts were vocal in their gratitude, and beyond that… on the other side of the veil was chanting, the sound of which sent shivers up and down my spine. No human voices could be that pure. That… ethereal.

“A hymn to Tenna,” Fala said.

I nodded, having also recognized the song. Officially, he was called Tenna of the Wheel, and the orderly procession of life and death was his responsibility.

Normally, it was the loved ones and teachers of the dead who greeted them on other side, but I could see why he might want to be present for this.

“Any messages for me?” I asked the air, my voice cracking.

The chant continued unchanged, however, and maybe that was for the best—for the cycle to continue undisturbed and unchanged.

It was with great satisfaction that I exorcised Gergerol from the world. The chanting took him too, though the tone was more somber and more sorrowful.