Spawning another sigh from the countless he’d poured out already, Elmer arrived back into the warm and cozy comfort of his living room. His mind, though, was still wandering about in the seas of his brain, trying to find a reasonable explanation as to how any human being could survive in Esmer based on what Rachel had said.

If the weather in the City of Love is not as loving as its inhabitants, then what sort of living conditions are there…? Elmer spoke inaudibly to himself, his steps long halted right in the center of the door-less partition that led into his home’s living room. Surely the blizzards and sandstorms I thought of can’t be real…? Were the waters frozen…? The streets made of ice and the sort…? He almost laughed at his fantasies which were rearing their heads. He could not believe all that was possible; that a city in the same empire as Ur could have such a varying climate.

But was it? Taking into consideration the variety of people he’d seen in the Black Market, was it really?

He could not put it past the possibility of each city having a different culture, climate, way of life, than the other.

It fascinated him, if that was truly the case.

He knew the basics of each city, such as their crests and names, but he knew nothing deep about them.

Since the orphanage only accepted children not more than the age of six, none of those who came were able to enlighten him on how exactly the city they’d come from fared, or rather, he’d never had any friends from the other cities he could ask. Pip had been his only friend, and he had lived in Meadbray all his life.

Surely, Pip would have known about some things he didn’t since he was the kind that always sought out information of all kinds in taverns, but Elmer had never been inclined to ask him anything about the other cities. All besides Andhera, of course. But Pip always told him that none of the traveling tourists or merchants had anything to say about the city. It was almost like it was covered in a thick veil. And from Elmer’s interaction with Craig Wiley, he had come to discover the likelihood of even their citizens barely leaving its confinements.

Then why did those despicable priests come all the way to the countryside to perform a ritual…? There’s really something fishy about that city…

Elmer sighed, realizing that maybe it was time he put aside his hate for history and studied everything he could about Fitzroy.

Yes. He really should do that. Find a free day to grace a library with his presence and see what he could scour on each city and the empire as a whole.

He might be able to learn something on how Andhera operated, and even the other cities. No knowledge was wasted after all.

In fact, why had he not thought to do that until now?!

It should have been obvious to him that he needed to read about Andhera. Study its terrain, its climate, the way of life of the inhabitants there, garner as much information as possible, since that place was his final destination to retrieve Mabel’s soul. He should have been prepared to do all that right from the first day he’d decided to face the God of Souls himself.

Well, compared to when he had just arrived in Ur, he was now a bit familiar with its ins and outs, and as well settled on what his life forward entailed. He was the most sure of his purpose now, so he could calm down and figure it out a step at a time; though a hastened one.

Elmer scoffed at that moment.

Sometimes, he honestly wished he was not an extremely curious person, but this was what the countryside did to people.

Maybe if he had grown up in a city he would have been less bothered about trying to figure out the answers to every single question that wandered into his head. Maybe he would have just plunged forward toward his enemies. Attack them while risking his life as powerless as he was, hoping that he would prevail but at the same time knowing that he would lose. Just maybe.

But that was not who he was—who he had become. His death meant Mabel would never wake up, and so he had to be careful with some of his decisions. At least the most important ones.

“What happened?” Elmer heard Pip say, the words instantly causing him to discard his ponderous expression. He looked up from the floorboards and saw Pip staring at him from the dining room with the same expression he had just discarded. “Who’s it?” Pip was perched on the edge of his chair, his body angled toward the direction of the living room and his attention fixed on his friend who was standing within it.

“Nothing,” Elmer said after another sigh. “It was just a neighbor. A new one. She came to exchange pleasantries.”

Pip’s eyes sparkled. “She?” Elmer shook his head with a silent pinch of the bridge of his nose. “Why didn’t you start with that? Don’t tell me… You didn’t invite her in?!” Pip’s eyebrows furrowed with that question, his fixated gaze turned into a spear-like piercing one.

“I did,” Elmer said with a smile. “She was just busy, and it’s late. Told me until next time.”

“Oh…” Pip had an expression that notioned his doubt. “Did she, or did you?” Elmer’s lips twitched. “You seem to forget I know you, you know? You’re too much of a scaredy-cat to invite a lady in. What’s so hard about engaging in conversations with a lady?”

Elmer laughed awkwardly then leaned on the top of the cushion directly before him. “I’ve changed. I speak to ladies now.” He glimpsed Mary standing before the kitchen’s partition watching them with her mouth moving, her bowl of mutton stew in hand. “See, Mary for example. I talked to her before I hired her.”

Pip wheezed a high pitched cackle while slapping his thighs as traces of tears formed in his eyes.

Elmer was left dumbfounded. He could not understand how what he’d said was so amusing. Was there a joke somewhere in there? Some he didn’t know about and had cracked obliviously?

He scoffed in that regard. “What? What is it? What’s so funny?”

Pip paused his cackles then. “Really? You don’t know?” Elmer made a gesture insinuating that he didn’t, and Pip stopped his laughter completely. “You interviewing Mary doesn’t count.” Pip took a glance at the young maidservant in the house. “Right, Mary?” And she nodded, seemingly already lost in their discussion.

“What are you both insinuating?” Elmer queried as he jerked his head back with squinted eyes. “Interviewing is the same as talking. So when I interviewed Mary, I engaged in a conversation with her, which means I talked to her. It’s that simple.”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Pip snickered. “It’s that simple,” he imitated Elmer’s way of speech, mocking him. “How can you be older than both Mary and I and be so clueless, Mr. Floyd Edgar?” Mary nodded once more, now completely engrossed in the conversation between her master and his friend.

“You don’t know what you’re speaking about.” Elmer straightened up with downturned lips. “I’m quite sure I know what talking is, you monkey.”

“Yes, yes. I’m sure you do.” Pip folded his arms and nodded scornfully. But Elmer was done engaging in the conversation, so he shifted the subject to something more important after a few seconds of silence and an exhale.

“Let’s go,” he’d said abruptly, and Pip was now the one who possessed a countenance laced with ignorance. “What’s with the look? You said I should tell you about something, didn’t you? And also, don’t you want to see Mabel anymore?”

“Ah…” Pip blinked owlishly while nodding. “Yes. Yes. Let’s do that.”

He rose to his feet immediately and followed Elmer out of the parlor space and into the personal room bestowed to the Hills siblings.

There, in the dim glow of the warm light flickering from the two oil lamps flanking the walls of the room, his point of view was instantly invaded by the sight of Mabel in a white gown and thigh-length socks lying as lifeless as a corpse on the only bed in the space.

Elmer noticed the downcasted expression his friend had grown to have as he closed the door behind their entrance, but he was not particularly surprised. After all, it did not matter how many times Pip had seen her that way, it wouldn’t make it hurt any less.

And when he thought about it, there was only one person who had actually been of a vastly different reaction to seeing Mabel the way she was.

Patsy Baker.

He’d concluded that she was an anomaly when compared to the reactions of either inquisitiveness, shock, or sorrow every other person who’d come across Mabel in such a state usually possessed. Therefore, he did not dwell too much on thoughts about her.

Elmer bent down and pulled open the lowest of the two add-on drawers of his cupboard as Pip walked further into the room, approaching the bed where Mabel lay.

With a fairly audible exhale, Pip said flatly, “She looks—”

“Worse…?” Elmer cut in, his hands now with four blessed gray candles, leaving only one last batch remaining in the drawer.

I have to go back to the Black Market to get more materials… Elmer intoned with a sigh as he rose to his feet and began to set up an altar. I should have just bought a new set today… Being in a hurry while exhausted is anything but good…

“No. Not that,” Pip said after a while of gloomy silence, the quiet whooshes of the cold wind coming in from the opened window making the scene even more morose. “Gah…” He scratched his black curly hair with a grunt. “She looks like a sleeping corpse.”

Elmer’s altar arrangement halted noticeably at those words, but with a quick close of his eyes, he tightened his lips and went on with it.

“You’re in fact right,” Pip continued. “She does look worse.” He gestured around at no one but himself in frustration. “Why? Why does she look like she’s fading away? Her skin’s turning more pale and all, you know? It’s like… It’s like…”

“…She’s a mannequin. Yes, Pip. I can see that.” Elmer’s stress mingled with his words.

“Well, then, what have you been doing? How long’s it going to take—” Pip swerved halfway around, and immediately put a stop to his own words as he found Elmer’s thumb serving as the base of a fire. He was lighting up a set of candles which were arranged in a diamond shape. “What’s that?” Pip’s brows furrowed visibly.

Elmer took a seat and brought out a paper from the right drawer of his reading desk. He was not concerned about shutting the window of the room at this point in time, as the world of High street had already gone completely dark. Everyone was indoors, away from the possibility of being victims of the curfew, and so his actions were safe from the eyes of strangers.

“You said you wanted to know about the supernatural, well, I’m trying to be practical.”

“Is that… Are you trying to perform a ritual? Some sort of dark magic? What in the world did you learn, and where did you learn it? You didn’t even attend the Church’s college.” Pip barraged Elmer with questions, his tensed countenance and the nervousness his body language passed as clear as day.

“Relax,” Elmer pushed his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. “Just calm down. I’m only trying to show you something.”

…And test out if my emissary can deliver physical objects to non-Ascenders… When I think about the late Ms. Edna’s emissary, and the way she had passed a message through it by writing the words on its palm, I can’t see how that would work for a normal person who doesn’t have the ability to use spiritual eyesight… I just hope mine isn’t that way…

“Alright.” Elmer took a glance at Pip as his friend heaved out a deep exhale. “Go ahead with your ritual then.”

“It is not a ritual.” Elmer emphasized on that, though didn’t remain too long on the topic and instantly summoned his emissary, his mind already resolved as he awaited the feather like weight that would grace his thighs.

But through Pip’s shock at the abrupt arrival of the warm and cold winds mingling in the room, Elmer felt something different.

It was not the soft sensation of an elegant lady sitting on his thighs. Nor was his breathing stifled because the back of a person’s head was a bit too close to his. Instead it was the feel of a foot being placed upon his right knee. And because of the difference in result compared to what he’d gotten during the day, Elmer activated his spiritual eyesight as quickly as possible.

He saw the veiled-lady holding a female doll in her arms the same way as his prior summoning, but this time she was seated cross-legged on the edge of his reading desk, her tall height made obvious.

So different apparitions results in different positions…? Hmm… I see you like to make your entrances just as classy as yourself, Maeve…

Unlike Pip at the sight of the unmoving flames sprouting from the candles making up the altar, Elmer was only shocked for a moment.

He instantly took the plain piece of paper he’d brought out from his desk’s right drawer and handed it to Maeve. “Pip Willows,” he said silently, his words avoiding Pip’s ears, and prompting the elegant emissary to fade away as soon as her doll had eerily swallowed it.

Then he quickly put off his spiritual eyesight in order to naturally view how his friend would receive the plain paper he’d sent.

And he was not disappointed.

He noticed the air around Pip’s right shoulder warp ethereally and beautifully, forming something like a portal, and out of it emerged the paper he’d given to Maeve.

A hearty laugh poured out of his mouth at that, though not because Pip had been shook and forced to fall to the floor in fright, along with the paper, but because as the ethereal portal vanished he had confirmed the workability of his method of relaying messages to his employers.

As he’d thought before, this method would make him seem more mystical and enigmatic; at least to those who had little to no knowledge of the supernatural.

Yes…! To make this job work as well as possible, I have to make myself appear more frightening…

“What… What just happened?!” Pip exclaimed in a very low tone where he was seated on the floor, staring dazedly at the blank piece of paper before him.

Elmer chuckled, his laugh long subsided. “I sent that paper to you through the supernatural realm.”

Pip’s eyes widened, and he quickly looked over his back at Elmer, his countenance instantly shifting from the one of shock to that of amusement.

“Wait, really?! What more can you do as an Ascender?”

Elmer smiled. “Much more.”

But I’ll only be telling you a little, just because I’m a bit excited at the moment… Don’t be expecting anything deep, especially not on the basics surrounding Ascenders and ascension… I will not have you in that world…