My party returns to the common room of the inn, carefully stepping past the spiderwebs that cling to everything. After thoroughly searching the room and comparing our maps to the size of the building we’d seen outside, we locate a door on the right side of the room from the entrance that’s concealed behind thick cobwebs.
Before trying to cut them loose, we let Burdock try using Thaumaturgy (Parting Hands) on them. It doesn’t fully clear the door, but it tears it enough that we can get it the rest of the way.
Meadow takes point up the creaking staircase, carefully testing every step along the way. None of the steps give way, though, and their ominous creaks are nothing more than ambience.
The upper floor contains 100% fewer spiderwebs than the ground floor, which hopefully correlates to there being 100% fewer spider monsters. The hallway is eerily quiet, not even letting in noise from downstairs or outside. Were I staying at an inn like this, I might appreciate having excellent sound blocking, except if I were staying at an inn like this I’d be afraid people wouldn’t hear my screams as I’m being murdered or eaten by monsters.
The figure before us is no monster, and the green outline around her clearly indicates that she’s not hostile. And if I didn’t have [Aether Sense], I might have entirely missed that she was here. I don’t expect humans to be made of aether, after all… but this is no living human.
Category Reincarnator Race Human Gender Female Status Dead Rank Heroic Class Necromancer Disposition Friendly Mood Cheerful
[You didn’t mention the friendly Heroic Necromancer ghost,] I send to Anise.
Anise lets off a coy grin and only answers in emotion. She does so love to mess with me by not telling me things when they’re not dangerous. Clearly, she didn’t feel like spoiling this one.
“Visitors,” rasps the ghost, turning toward us and becoming more visible. “Welcome! Welcome, welcome, come in and have a seat. Join me in my atelier.”
The ghost snaps her fingers, and all the candles in the room light up at once. Proper lighting makes this place seem so much less grim, although it does also highlight how long it has been since anyone properly cleaned in here. I’m sure she could just snap her fingers and clean up all the dust, too, but she clearly hasn’t bothered.
“I would have made you tea, but I do not require food and drink any longer myself and it is so difficult to convince every passing adventurer to bring me things that I do not send them to fetch trivialities I don’t need.”
We give a round of introductions and take seats around the room. Unlike the common room downstairs, this area has fancy chairs and small tables. Painting and writing supplies scattered all over the room in a manner of organized chaos that a fellow creative type like myself can immediately recognize.
“Asphodel Treharris was the name given to me when I was incarnated in the first year of the Age of the Green Fox,” the Necromancer ghost says, then speaks into my mind, “But Asphodel is dead. If you wish, you may call me Estelle. I don’t get many visitors here.”
“You might get more visitors if it weren’t for the giant spiders downstairs,” Rowan says.
“Oh, them?” Estelle says. “Pff… Basic rank monsters might as well be an unlocked door.”
I suppose there’s a point to that, considering I have no doubt Anise could have easily torched the whole house by herself. A 7-year-old child armed with a stick can kill these things.
“In that case, is there anything we might fetch for you?” Rowan asks.
“All in good time, young Rowan,” Estelle says. “I’m certain that your companion there is bubbling with questions first.”
“I don’t know about ‘bubbling’…” I say.
“You are no doubt wondering about my current state. You might even be thinking that it’s not polite to ask a ghost why she is a ghost. Be assured, I have heard all the reasonable questions, most of the foolish ones, and a few that were quite off-the-wall.” She turns to Rowan. “This is a puzzle floor, and I have left many things to discover scattered around its various rooms.”
“And there are no more spiders on this floor?” Rowan asks.
Estelle chuckles. “Perhaps.”
Anise laughs. “Rowan, I thought you were the one who wanted the combat practice.”
“And to those who can answer my riddle, I will offer training in unique skills of a Hearth that was and is no more.”
“What’s your riddle?” Rowan asks.
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Estelle gives an enigmatic grin and rasps, “You will need to discover that as well.”
She fades from my physical senses as she stops projecting an image of herself, but I can still see her in [Aether Sense]. Her ghost winks at me and she heads out of the workshop and down the hallway. I follow, and send to my party that they ought to start doing puzzles as I’m going to chat with the ghost.
Estelle glides into the musty room at the end of the hallway, with the large window I’d seen her looking out of when we approached the old inn. Although there’s room to walk, the collection of junk in this room is astounding. Several large bookcases are weighed down with rows of books and trinkets. A few sigil-covered display cases hold items that look cursed, with sinister spikes and metal that gleams red as blood. Three easels stand near the window, each of them displaying a radically different interpretation of the view outside.
[I take it you are here for Enhanced Soul lessons,] Estelle sends to me telepathically. [A 7-year-old Psychic Child shows up, and I expect that’s what you’re looking for.]
[I didn’t even know you were here,] I reply. [This was my mom’s idea and she just wanted Rowan to get some relatively safe combat practice.]
Estelle is amused. [Have you done many dungeons already, then?]
[The Hedge Maze a few times, the Wisteria Garden, Wonderland, and here. Not counting a jaunt into the Witchwood while escorted by a Legendary just to meet with three Legendary women who asked me the silliest riddles I’ve heard yet in this life.]
[Who are you, what is your quest, what is your favorite color?] Estelle asks. [Yes, they do that to all the reincarnators. What did you answer?]
[Drake Corwen, exploration, and blue.]
[You don’t seem concerned about keeping secrets,] Estelle observes. [So then, who were you?]
[Alexander Fizzlesnipe,] I reply. [But I’m Drake Corwen now. And no, I see no point in being secretive. I have no secrets I’d care to hide from you.]
Estelle peers at me intently, and I can practically feel her gazing into my very soul. I suddenly realize I am alone with a Necromancer two ranks above me who may very well be capable of faking her disposition meter. I tamp down on the spike of panic. If she means to do harm to me, there’s not terribly much I can do about it.
[Relax, little reincarnator,] Estelle assures me. [I cannot harm you. My core is a vassal of yours.]
[Oh.]
[So, what is your first question?] Estelle asks.
[How did you become a ghost? If you were a purchase and died, you would have been respawned, wouldn’t you? Did you use Necromancer to do it deliberately?]
[You are surprisingly well-informed,] Estelle replies. [Most people start off with asking how I died.]
[I met Liz. She just told me you’d died. I didn’t know you were still around in some capacity. She didn’t even suggest that I might be able to go to you with lessons. But then, she didn’t stick around very long to talk and I hadn’t exactly prepared a list of questions to ask her.]
[Liz probably figured you would find me soon enough,] Estelle thinks. [Then let me explain what happened to me. I was young, and the domain was young, and no one knew much about how soul magic worked yet. I took it upon myself to experiment and learned many things.]
[And I take it something went wrong?]
[You might say that,] Estelle replies grimly. [Or you could take it that something went horribly, horribly right. I created a phylactery to bind me to this life. We were doing dangerous things and the insurance seemed reasonable at the time, but I was young and had never even had children yet. I experimented with using the souls from my past lives to perform various tasks. I had them possess animals to do scouting for me. I stuck them into monsters to fight for me. I even tried putting them into other people to see what would happen.]
[That sounds like the sort of Necromancy people get leery of,] I observe.
[Oh, yes, very much so. Particularly when cores started issuing quests to slay the evil Necromancer.]
I wince. [Did someone eventually kill you, then?]
Estelle nods, staring wistfully out the window. [It was only after I respawned at my phylactery that I discovered how badly I’d made it. I didn’t know what I was doing and could hardly test dying repeatedly to get it right. I reappeared as a ghost without a physical body. That part was expected. I hadn’t come up with a way to reform a body yet, but assumed that my core would be able to do so as it had spawned me to begin with.]
[So why didn’t it?] I wonder.
[It turned out that all my experimentation had destabilized my soul. When I died, most of me went on to reincarnation, while only the smallest sliver of me came back to my phylactery. As a Necromancer with a Soul attribute of 1, my options are… limited. And my core couldn’t just make me a new body because human bodies are expensive to create and it was low on essence to do so after everything. We wound up resorting to vassalage to Corwen just to survive. At least your ancestors were strong enough to protect us.]
[Did anyone else try to come after you?] I ask.
[I can’t go more than ten meters from my phylactery. I laid low in this house for many years and gave the impression that I was simply an undead monster the core put here for ambience. I still respawn if anyone tries to kill me and I don’t degrade any further. But Treharris, a Hearth that could have been great, instead became the Spooky Grove.]
Rowan pokes his head into the room. “Is… is she in here?”
The ghost becomes visible again. “I am here. Have you figured out my riddle?”
Skills increased: Clairvoyance (Telepathy), Clairvoyance (Aether Sense), Enhanced Soul (Fractal Consciousness)
Rowan sighs. “Well, we analyzed a bunch of poems and tried to figure out the symbolism in some paintings and I’m still not sure we’ve got it right. You have a lot of stuff. But I’m going to say… Time?”
Estelle tilts her head. “Your answer is… acceptable.”
Rowan groans. “Let me guess. There was a better answer I didn’t figure out?”
“I’ll leave that for you to determine,” Estelle says. “Now, I believe I promised you training. Did you see any mention of skills I might know that you would be interested in learning? Or are you burning with the desire to do something in particular that I just might know?”
“I want to get to Elite rank and do magic, but you can’t help with that,” Rowan says.
“Don’t discount how magical enhanced attribute abilities are,” Estelle says. “If you seek to use a sword and shield, young Guardian, there are many such skills that would prove useful to you. Tell me, do you know Enhanced Muscles (Spirit Barrier)?”
Rowan shakes his head. “What does it do?”
“It will let you block magical and supernatural effects as well as physical blows,” Estelle explains.
“That does sound useful. Can you teach me?”