We dropped the twins off with Xantaire while clad in our civilian attire, and then ate our glazed bagels from Hontor and Sons as we flew towards Treetown, back in our masks.

She was coming with me to Timesnatcher’s. Did that indicate some slight shift in her attitude following our conversation? Was she willing to hear his side of the story?

I cast my gaze over to my left, stared at her chomping away.

She met my eyes. “Zis is actually as good as you said.” Her words were garbled, her mouth full of pastry and sugar.

“I know, right?” I replied, doing my best to avoid spraying bits of food into the air. I swallowed, and sighed. “Everything looks so tiny from up here, doesn’t it?”

“You’re flying better zan – than before,” she noted.

“Struggling to get into character?” I licked my teeth then grinned over at her.

“I mean, I cannot see this wraith you say you’re… wearing.”

I chuckled. “I’ve just got better at modulating it. Ah – you know – controlling the power. I’m still weird-feeling – have a go.”

I tried taking her hand, and hers went through mine – not quite like air, but still, like sand. She could only take the lightest touch without the flesh giving way beneath her fingers. I just smiled. It wasn’t painful. And somehow it affected my bagel just like it did my clothing, letting me cram it in my mouth without any physical ill-effects. Bonus.

She nodded in understanding, then gazed down and around. We’d crossed the Blackrush and were now coursing over Oldtown, back the way we’d come earlier. Oldtown’s winding, cramped streets, less smog-ridden than Sticktown had been, displayed the bobbing heads of thousands of people going about their business. Dead-ends avoided by most but clearly visible from up here, the moss-covered monuments and shrines from ancient days, surrounded by ruined walls that looked far older than anything Zadhal had to offer.

She looked back up and faced ahead at the forests on the other side of the Whiteflood, our destination, before responding to my initial question: “This gives us… perspective. We are tiny. Everything we make.”

Except your Maginox, I thought, looking out at the distant line piercing the heavens on the horizon.

I wouldn’t mention it.

As we approached the thick bank of trees beyond the Whiteflood something strange came to my senses. I’d been getting used to the subtleties of my eldritch-perception for some time now, and this struck me as odd.

“Hold on a sec,” I said, slowing and stopping; she halted in front of me.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“What is it?” She looked at me, then back at Treetown. “We’re going to be late soon.”

“Just a… an unbound undead. Ghost.” I pointed down at a house beneath us, just three roads into Oldtown from the Treetown bridge. A neat, small building, brick-built, well-tended yards to the front and back both filled with flowers. “There.”

She smiled. “How long will it take, do you think?”

I started sinking down through the air. “Less than a minute.”

“One.” Her smile was still on her face. “Two. Three…”

I used the wings to nudge me faster, and came to a stomach-churning halt two feet from the ground that I wouldn’t have been able to even conceive of trying without the wraith-form at my beck and call.

I manifested a little less of its power, and knocked on the door.

When there was no immediate response, I ignored the slack-jawed stare of the neighbour a few houses down and just floated through the wooden barrier.

The hallway was a cold, windowless space. Muddy boots by the door. A threadbare coat on the bannister of the stairs. I ignored the steep narrow steps and went up, through the wooden boards and beams and rug, into the bedroom above me in which I could sense the nethernal presence.

I came through the floor no more than two feet from the resident, who quite understandably freaked out and backed away to the wall – a chinless fat woman, mid-fifties, hair and homespun clothes looking more than a bit bedraggled. Freaked out more might’ve been a better way of putting it. With her panic-widened eyes and worry-lined brow, she looked like she’d sailed past freaking out days back and was soon to dock at the shores of insanity.

The thing on the bed opposite her – that would be the cause of it, I supposed.

Just going off the similarity in body shape, attire, I guessed this was her husband, perhaps her brother. Missing the key feature, though, of course: a corporeal form. This tubby, balding chap was purple-grey in colour, and lacking mass for all the pounds he appeared to be carrying. I could see the patterned quilt on which he sat through him.

I heard Em’s voice in my ear: “Twenty… Twenty-one…” The window wasn’t open, but its frame was broken.

She was getting really good.

In the five seconds it must’ve took me to take in the scene, the woman seemed to have come to her senses.

“F-Feychilde?” she breathed.

I looped a diamond about the ghost, pinning it there on the edge of my circle, before answering: “The very same, ma’am.”

“The – the L-Liberator of Zadhal, here?”

She sounded shocked, but I kept my eyes on the ghost. Something about it felt a little off. The balding man certainly looked macabre-enough. Ghostlike. But there was something more to it. Something… in the essence. It wasn’t bound, or unbound. It was…

“’Scuse me, but that’s mine,” came a girlish voice from behind me, almost so shrill that the North Lowtown accent didn’t come through.

I whirled, and looped another diamond out around her immediately.

She stood in the doorway to the bedroom. She was tiny – four foot ten, tops – and was swathed in a silvery robe, hood cast back to reveal short brown curls. The mask of polished steel and black iron portrayed a huge, elongated mouth full of huge, elongated teeth, wide open as if to emit a jolly chortle, stretched across her lower face – it was almost as though she had the missing part to my mask. Above its rim, I could see her hazel eyes, her youthful brow – not furrowed in anger or fear, but regarding me warmly.

“It’s yours?” I said. “It’s not even a ghost, is it?”

She just tilted her head at me, maintaining eye contact.

“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure…?”

“Then pleased to meet you, Liberator,” she chirped, tossing her head back upright, as happy as a pig in mud. She stuck out a hand, but stopped short of touching the diamond, as though she knew full-well it was there. “I’m Dreamlaughter. How’s it goin’?”