Collected
Chapter 12
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It was some reluctance that Kamali let herself open up to the sensations of the Collector’s body, seeing through his eyes. Still a blue sky outside — probably an hour or two had passed. Maybe she could’ve summoned herself to make sure of the sun’s position, but she didn’t feel like leaving Freya.
“Will she get better?”
The childish whisper startled her. It took Kamali some willpower not to snap her head toward Myra, who sat next to Dahlia and Nina. The threesome had joined her at some point, sitting together with the prone, mumbling Freya. The yellow spirit’s eyes stayed skyward, almost heedless of the world, but her ears remained grounded, listening to what the others said.
Dahlia had raised a brow at Myra too. The girl seldom spoke thus far, using only short, terse words like ‘okay’ or ‘yes’ or ‘fine’. Never a question. “Whatever is intended for her, she will receive,” said Dahlia. “But we are doing our best.”
Myra was like a tightly woven ball, legs pressed against her chest. Kamali had only now paid attention to her bluish color as a spirit, a somber and fitting hue for the girl. Her gaze lingered on Freya like a lifeline, apparently fond of the woman who had escorted her when running from Beastmaster. Freya too watched her, like she was everything to her.
Girl. Danger. Have to protect.
Her lips never moved, her words only spoken as surface thoughts, projected to the other spirits. Kamali heard further, however, feeling the emotional agony within the woman. The tenderness she felt for Myra, the anguish she had, and the paranoia within her that she would fail to protect her from phantom evils. “She’s safe and sound now,” Kamali told her. “You don’t need to worry.”
Hurt. Hurt in the head.
“Whatever bothers her, we’ll be there for her,” Dahlia chimed in, her voice soothing. Apparently she had a Rule of some sort for placating people, probably from her former Caretaker life. “We’re protecting her, Freya, don’t you fret.”
Must protect! Must repent—
“Shh.” Dahlia squeezed Freya’s arm, the woman accepting the touch. “You did it, Freya. She’s not with Beastmaster anymore, thanks to your help. It’ll all be okay now. She appreciates what you did, you know.”
Myra gave a tiny nod. “P-please don’t worry, miss Freya.”
Freya quieted at that. It probably wouldn’t last for long, and she’d relapse again, but Kamali could sense that the girl speaking herself had done something to Freya. There was a confusion in her, a sense of denial, mixed in with a fluttering warmth. A tiny shred of peace as well, finding solace in Myra’s words. Kamali hadn’t done too poorly with keeping her from losing it altogether, and Dahlia had been a natural at keeping her afloat, but now, it looked like maybe—
“She’ll bounce back.” Nina scooted over, the rosy spirit beaming as if Freya’s recovery was all but guaranteed. “She was always pleasant to talk to, you know? All her stories as a Scout, serving in a local militia and then as part of an adventurer group, it was fun to hear. Soft-spoken too. I’d miss her if she joined the Broken, you know.” She directed her wide smile at Myra. “I think you’ll love her too. You’re doing a good thing for her, kiddo.”
Myra squirmed a little, muttering the quietest “it’s nothing” Kamali had ever heard. The young girl was healing a little too, Kamali sensed. She was still reeling from everything that happened, and it would be a slow recovery for sure, but at least the seeds had been planted.
They sat there in silence for a good while. Many of the other spirits who’d been with Freya had moved a short distance away, Earl at the front of their party and quietly observing Kamali’s. Charon was a mystery, Kamali getting no sense of where he was right now — she couldn’t even begin to sense him in the spirit network, like he’d all but vanished without a trace. She looked about, then frowned as she caught wind of Jarsh, out in the seas with his head hung and arms behind his back. His eyes were duller than rocks, but they had a weight to them still, pupils laser-focused on Myra. Or her? Hard to tell.
Strange to think that man was the real Collector. A monster whose killings had earned a bad reputation that Avrom had been left to inherit. How much of his evils had been a matter of insanity? How much had been of his own nature and volition?
“Dunno,” was Nina’s response when Kamali asked her. The girl gave Jarsh the stink-eye, but there also seemed to be a flicker of pity as well. “I mean, he practiced creepy soul magic that made him crazy in the head, so I’d think the guy was a real piece of work, but nobody really knew what he was like before his descent into the whole Collector business.”
“I personally have assumed he was unprepared for the side-effects of soul collection,” Dahlia said, appearing more conflicted than Nina. “If you look at him now, he seems regretful. Yearning for something. From my interactions with what’s become of him, I get the strange feeling he hadn’t meant to do some of the actions he’d taken.”
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“He does look at certain people a little differently,” Nina admitted. “He seems hurt whenever we cross paths, for one. Charon though, he frowns at a lot.”
Myra had seemed a little engrossed at the conversation, tilting her head to better listen. Had she done so as well when Kamali had spoken with Avrom the Collector? Did the existence of a previous Collector catch her interest? Kamali had a feeling she might bond with her in time, she seemed like a person she could enjoy being around with. And Myra could probably use another friendly face to comfort her too.
They’d be here a long while after all. A dull, technically unending life with the Collector, at least until Kamali could figure out a way to free spirits from his body. She still wasn’t quite sure how to approach that, though she had some ideas with Spirit Call. And putting up with the Collector was its own challenge.
But it wasn’t the absolute worst. “It’s odd,” Kamali found herself saying. “The Collector likes to talk about giving back to his spirits, but he really did give me a new leash on life, didn’t he?”
Dahlia and Nina eyed her with raised brows, and Myra with a little bit of curiosity. Even Freya, she could’ve sworn, was paying more attention to her. “Cause I wouldn’t have gone back to my Shaman side otherwise,” Kamali said, letting herself bask in old, burned up memories for once in her life. A wistful smile touched her lips. “Shamans were a common thing in Eseelis Village, you know. Father had taught me a few things himself. He had a spirit creature that was this really cool raptor bird made of wind and stuff — I remember begging him all the time to show me how you can make a bond with spirit creatures.”
The smile cracked. “Kids would sometimes bully me about my village, how the ‘creepy magic hippies’ couldn’t do so much as stop a monster swarm. They didn’t understand. They never faced so many monsters bunched up together and setting the night itself on fire. T-they—”
Kamali took a moment to breathe — not that she needed it, but it did wonders for calming her. Dahlia had gotten ahold of her shoulder, her grip strong and reassuring, and Kamali nodded to her in appreciation. “Shamans never really had a place in Virala Town,” she went on. “The people there got superstitious about it and jobs didn’t exactly exist for that Role. So it’s odd, that I’m getting a job with a Calamity Walker suffering from gray morality, isn’t it? That I have a reason to like the stupid Role that wasn’t good enough to protect Father, or my village?”
“I think,” was Dahlia’s swift response, “that your lovely Role deserves to be cherished. And that rude people who think otherwise can stick their heads in a pile of poison ivy.”
“Yep!” added Nina, flashing Kamali a smile. “You don’t even need to bother with the poison ivy, honestly! I’m sure those jerks got their just desserts anyway when the Fervent—”
She paused instantly, lips pressing together as Dahlia glared daggers at her. Kamali grimaced at the terrible thought, and Myra, the poor girl, had her bluish spirit body turning a pale shade.
“Me and my big mouth,” Nina muttered, before perking a little. “But hey, you really didn’t have to share that with us. So I’m touched that you did anyway.”
To Kamali, it was just something she felt like getting off her chest. Whom she spoke to hadn’t exactly mattered at the moment — the Collector and the other spirits could overhear anyway. Though judging from how Myra seemed to look at Kamali, like she was a kindred spirit to her, she had a feeling her talk had found the audience it needed. Poor girl knew a little something about trauma herself, probably more than Kamali did. The two of them might get along in no time.
In any case, though, talking about old wounds had done something to exhaust her. Freya seemed alright for now, so Kamali excused herself, leaving Dahlia, Nina, and Myra to stay with the half-maddened woman. She drifted around on the large rock island, observing the other spirits grouped together in their own inner circles. Jarsh still lingered on the horizon, half-shrouded in mist over the violet spirit sea. No sign of Charon.
Kamali huffed to herself. Getting an Academic Role had been helpful in rebuilding her new life in Virala Town. Villages didn’t have quite the same curriculum as a proper town, and she had worked hard to stay afloat. It’d been a fixation for her cockroach side, something to keep her going after Father’s death. Poverty in a town that didn’t exactly care for village refugees was a miserable existence, and she had worked hard to help keep herself and Mother afloat. Anything to survive. Anything to not be like Father with a useless Shaman Role that couldn’t save him from an outbreak of fire salamanders. What good was a Role that could hardly fight and had little practicality, compared to a non-combat Role that could actually get her a decent life?
But a Shaman wasn’t useless. It only was in Virala Town. Not here, where she had a mission and a reason to fight on. The power to free souls from the Collector would be a great accomplishment — but it would be a long, uphill road there. And atrocities like what happened to Myra could always happen again. Innocents, taken against their will, forced to spend who knew how long until Kamali could finally give them freedom from the Collector.
“So why not break the cycle?”
Kamali quite literally flipped backward, Charon stifling a wheezy laugh as she found herself floating upside-down. “I- you—” she stammered.
She brought herself right-side-up again with a little effort, to Charon’s mirth. The cloaked, masked spirit of gray hovered before her like an eerie poltergeist, summoned for a deed most horrible. “B-break the cycle?” Kamali repeated, before turning her head about. “Wait, where did—”
There was mist around them. Not the violet mist of the Collector, but a gray, suffocating mist, covering her and Charon. More mind-boggling was the deep silence in Kamali’s head — for once in her unlife, she heard absolutely nothing in her head. No, felt absolutely nothing. The spirit network wasn’t there, and the Collector was but a too-distant tether.
Charon gave another chuckle. “Just a trick of mine. This isn’t the kind of talk you can have with him listening on, after all.” He leaned back, lounging in midair with a hand resting against the cheek of his nondescript mask. “Don’t tell me the thought never crossed your mind?”
“W-what thought?”
Yet another chuckle. A slow, grim, conspiratorial chuckle. “This cannot go on, kiddo,” Charon said. “I’ve been planning this for a long time, and now the Collector’s broken the last straw. It’s about time for us to do the honorable thing and kill him.”