Chapter Fourteen: Ghosts, Ghosts
Lilith’s spell took like winter claiming a valley. White snow sifted from the sky, each flake carrying White Dragon might, freezing everything it kissed. The hidden attackers had nowhere left to hide.
A bleached ghost got caught in the drift. Blue-white crystals crawled up from its trailing legs like frost ivy, the freeze needling its form. It let out a diva’s shriek, razor sharp, trying to shatter her magic.
She felt the sting first, then steadied. After that fight with the fox, Little White Dragon didn’t fear sound anymore. Lilith packed her ears with Taint, two dark plugs that shut the world out.
She kept her focus like a lantern in wind. From the cloud she’d condensed, clean snow kept falling. Every place her snow touched a ghost turned to ice. Five or six were already frozen stiff. The rest decided this wasn’t working, showed themselves, and rushed Lilith, hoping to finish her.
“Been waiting for you.” She cut the blizzard, raised her Astrolabe, and leveled the sea-blue gem at the pale ghosts.
She gripped marble like a spear. She slid half a step back, bent low, and a ghostly blue whirl of Star Energy gathered at the tip.
“Try this. Ice Spikes!” Her voice rang bright. Blue-white spikes, mixed with shrapnel of broken ice, drove into the ghosts. The icicles pierced through, and the enchantment froze their bodies solid.
“Ahhh—” Screams rose and fell like torn banners in a gale. Even with earplugs, Little White Dragon heard that grief, a chorus scraping bone.
Soon the last ghost glazed into blue-white glass. The din finally died. Lilith drew back the Astrolabe and glanced at her companions.
To her surprise, Abaddon and Nidhogg were fine. Only Litt clutched her ears, her little face puckered like she’d bitten some uncle’s ugly dishcloth.
“You two aren’t bothered by the noise?” Lilith crouched, taking Litt—tearful and crumpled—from the little Demon. She patted her back to soothe her and asked Nidhogg and Abaddon, “Even with earplugs, they almost killed my hearing. They were so loud.”
Ghost howls were brutal. Even normal ears wouldn’t stand it. And this pack was a mixed lot—men, women, elders, children—all gathered like a village fair in the dead of night. To Little White Dragon, it sounded like a chaotic choir. If they weren’t fighting, she might’ve laughed.
Then the problem hit: frozen or not, ghosts stayed bodiless. Her tentacles couldn’t touch them.
“So how do I absorb the Moonswallow Mist?” She blinked, wide-eyed.
“Leave them for now,” Nidhogg said after a moment’s thought, choosing the simplest path—abandon the attempt. “Check the bestiary for a method. If there’s nothing, it means adventurers never managed it.”
“So we just leave them like this?” Lilith murmured, soft and sore. “The other Undead can be carried out. Only they have to endure Moonswallow Mist forever. That’s not fair.”
“If we find the rampaging Reaper Fragment, the calamity should resolve on its own,” Abaddon said, calm as a shadowed altar. “We didn’t know what Divine Fragments inside disaster zones did. Your mess in Morris taught us they accompany local natural disasters.”
“All right. Let’s hurry.” Lilith remembered Black Sun Devouring had been swallowed by Litt. If Little White Dragon found the Reaper Fragment beneath the Grand Mausoleum, she could ask Him to sweep out the drifting Moonswallow Mist.
If He refused, she’d reason first. If He hated reason, that was fine. Lilith was better at persuasion by other means.
“I’m sorry. You’ll have to wait a bit longer,” she told a frozen ghost gently. “I’ll rush down, find the Reaper Fragment, end it, and lift the Moonswallow Mist for you.”
Guilt first, then the gesture. She reached to stroke the nearby Wraith, but her palm met nothing. She hovered her hand above the ice and pretended the touch landed.
She felt bad, but she wouldn’t let later entrants get ambushed. Lilith gathered all the ghosts together into one place.
They weren’t touchable, but certain Astrolabe arts could herd them. With the Disjunction Seat she could blast them a stretch. With the Void Command Seat, she could push their drift like wind moving leaves.
It took some doing, but Little White Dragon corralled every frozen ghost. She placed a huge block of ice beside them, packed with a mountain of mana, the kind that wouldn’t melt for days. Then she set up a little sign by it: “Watch out for ghosts here, OVO.”
After all that, Lilith dusted her hands and followed Nidhogg onward.
The annoying fog the ghosts had stirred thinned a lot. Little White Dragon finally saw what lay ahead.
“Nidhogg, we’ve reached the town,” Lilith breathed, staring at low, green-tiled roofs.
—
Public intel: Every calamity is accompanied by a Divine Fragment.
