Winding through the region, the path ground on. Slowly, the sky darkened, and the air thickened. Strange wisps of dark energy danced on the air, bouncing amid swirling mist. A mist unlike the wall of fog, but which nonetheless clung heavily to their bodies, cold and dark, an accumulation of the dark magic energy that made Oz almost choke with every breath. He covered his mouth with his sleeve, trying in vain to filter some of the dark qi all around them.

A narrow valley closed in around them. Beside them, a creek bed cut through the dirt, dry at this time of year. With steep earthen walls closing them in, there was only one direction to proceed: deeper into the darkness.

He cast a glance at Aisling. “We must be getting close.”

Aisling nodded. She glanced meaningfully at Roan.

Oz nodded. He looked at Loup, who nodded back.

The three of them leaped apart. Loup jumped back, blocking the retreat. Aisling stepped out in front of Roan. Oz crouched on the wall of the ravine, and the wolves circled around to Roan’s sides, closing off all directions of escape.

Roan blinked, startled. He looked around him. “What’s this?”

“The game’s up, Roan. Or should I say, whoever’s possessing his dead body?” Oz snorted derisively, looking down on Roan from his perch on the wall. “You haven’t acted like Roan for a single moment, not since we first found you, nor have you known anything Roan should have. When you fought, you didn’t use Roan’s light magic, nor did you touch the discs at his hip when you found yourself without a sword…and that’s because you don’t know Roan’s magic. I bet you didn’t even know he used those discs in combat, did you? Because you aren’t Roan. You’re someone under the necromancer.”

“What? Who are you to accuse me? A child? You all believe a child?” Roan demanded haughtily. He shook his head at all of them, disappointed.

“We do,” Aisling said firmly.

Loup lifted her lip in disgust. “You smell wrong, dead man.”

Roan lifted his hands. He turned from one to the other, slowly taking them all in. “All of you? No one is on my side?”

Loup sniffed. “I don’t even know you.”

“I didn’t expect you on my side, dog bitch,” Roan said, eyeing Aisling.

“And you expected me?” Aisling chuckled. She shook her head. “I’m not close with Roan, either. We’ve only talked a few times. I don’t know what you think of our relationship, but Roan wouldn’t have expected me on his side.”

Roan’s face twisted. “Fucking bitch! Bitches, everywhere I look. A bunch of spineless twats.”

As he spoke, his voice changed, and his facial expression twisted. Oz sat bolt upright. His eyes widened. Hold on. I know that voice! And I just saw him, walking around, speaking with someone else’s voice! “Baltair?”

Roan whirled. “What? Who are you? Why does some lowly member of the Black Blades know that name?”

Oz snorted under his breath. Yeah. That’s Baltair. “How did you end up in Roan? …Er. Bad phrasing. Why are you possessing Roan?”

Roan, or rather, Baltair possessing Roan’s dead body, narrowed his eyes. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“I would, in fact.”

They stared at each other for a few moments.

“If he isn’t going to speak, we should make him,” Aisling said, closing in. Fire sparked at the tips of her braid.

Before she could say another word, Baltair whirled around and lunged at Aisling. The black mist in the air flew toward his hand, balling into a bolt of dark energy. He thrust his hand toward her, and a flock of crows formed from the black energy and flapped toward her, baring their claws and beaks toward her eyes.

“Aisling!” Oz shouted.

Throwing her hands apart, Aisling unleashed a blast of fire toward the crows. The flames swallowed them up, incinerating their shadowy forms in moments. She closed in, unleashing a devastating kick at Baltair’s hips.

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Baltair stumbled to the side, directly into the low body of a wolf that crouched at his knee-height. Unable to regain his balance, he toppled over it. The other wolves jumped in, snapping at his flesh. One grabbed his head by the hair and pulled it off, running off with it as if it were a chew toy.

“Let go! Put me down!” Even as his voice faded away, bobbling in the wind, Baltair’s body jumped up and chased after his head.

Behind him, Loup and Aisling loomed. Loup grabbed his shoulders, sinking her claws in, and Aisling unleased a series of heavy kicks to his back, each one imbued with flame, her calves and thighs glowing through her soft leggings. Baltair’s body stumbled and fell. The two girls fell on him, beating him to a pulp.

A strange emotion welled up inside Oz. A grin spread across his face, unbidden. He touched his cheeks, feeling a little at odds with his own emotions. Hiding his thoughts from Fflyn, he frowned at himself. I wonder if these are leftover emotions from Ossian. Watching them attack Baltair would be cathartic for Ossian, wouldn’t it?

But if that’s the case, then…where is Ossian’s soul? If I’m really feeling his leftover emotions, that implies that some part of him is still nearby. Or, perhaps…he never left.

Oz clicked his tongue. He pinched his chin, then shrugged. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. Ossian summoned me here, and now I’m here. He brought whatever consequences upon his own head. If I can do something to make it better for him, I will, but maybe feeling emotions once isn’t enough to change my everything.

Besides, who knows? Maybe this is just normal for cross-dimension soul ascension, that I feel scraps of Ossian’s leftover emotions. I’ve seen bits of his memories already. This isn’t so strange.

In the middle of the road, Aisling and Loup kicked and stomped Baltair’s body, while the wolves chewed on his head. Baltair screamed pitifully, unable to escape their respective holds. Oz watched them for another few seconds, then turned to the books inside his head. Let’s see, let’s see. Nothing we’re doing is working, so how do you kill a dullahan? Surely there’s at least one book that covers killing undead like that.

Pages flipped by in his head. At last, a passage appeared in his mind. He skimmed it, then nodded. Pushing off his knees, he stood and walked over to Baltair’s head, still dangling from a wolf’s mouth.

Oz batted at the head until it turned around to face him. The eyelids drooped, face twitching. He slapped it gently a few times, rousing the head. “Baltair, hey. Hey! Is this a projection or a possession?”

“I… what?” Baltair frowned at him. “Huh?”

“You’re in Roan’s body somehow. How did that happen?”

“I…don’t know.”

Oz sat back. “Probably a possession, then. You’d know about a projection. Or rather, perhaps this is the side effect of a dark magic possession? Unlike a fey possession, that allows two souls to live in harmony, a dark magic possession would incur a cost. A cost, like requiring the original soul to be devoured…or perhaps, pushing the original soul out of its body into another vessel, never to return. In fact, it’s likely more of a soul replacement than a possession.” He nodded to himself decisively.

“What?” Baltair asked, shying away.

“Baltair, when did you wake up in Roan’s body?”

“I…” Baltair went silent. He glanced at Oz. “A while ago, but only for a few moments at a time. The tree kept eating my qi and sending me unconscious again.”

“Hmm. Then, basically, you’ve been in Roan’s body since he died. Since the last time I saw him or you, I can consider you to have possessed Roan’s body that whole time.” He pursed his lips and shook his head. “That’s not good.”

“What? What’s going on?” Baltair asked. A second later, his expression twisted. “Trying to fake me out? Make me doubt the plan? Ha. A bug like you—”

“You probably can’t go back to your body anymore,” Oz informed him, giving his head a forlorn pat.

Baltair blinked. “What?”

“Well, you’re using a dark magic possession spell, right? That kind of magic…it isn’t good.”

“Spare your lectures for the righteous mages—” Wolf slobber landed in his eye, and he blinked ferociously, glaring at either Oz or the wolves—probably both, Oz figured.

He nodded, leaning in. Adopting a comfortable squat, he looked Baltair in the un-slobbered eye. “I found some information on dark possession spells. The consensus isn’t good. Dark mages, didn’t really figure out exactly how to work the fey magic. Or was it a demonic spell they worked off of? The point is, you got it wrong. Possession magic shouldn’t corrode the soul, but dark magic possession spells do. After this long apart from your body, there’s very little left of your soul. Whatever you let in to replace you…it’s about to become the real Baltair.”

Baltair scowled. “You think I’ll believe you, and not my master?”

Oz nodded. “You should. One of us has a vested interest in getting you to believe you’ll be unharmed if you’re possessed, and it’s not me.”

Baltair’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “What a pitiful attempt to scare me.”

Sighing, Oz stood, dusting off his robes. Guess getting details on the necromancer is a no go. “I tried. Hey! Aisling, Loup! If you want to kill him, you have to destroy the head and pierce the heart at the same time!”

“What?” Baltair asked, panicked.

“You aren’t talking. You have no value to me alive,” Oz said.

“This is your friend’s body. Roan’s!”

“Roan and me…I mean, I like the guy, but ‘friends’ is a stretch. Besides…” Oz sighed. He shook his head, looking slowly at Baltair. “He’s already dead. He’s a dullahan. The original Roan has been dead for quite a long time, now. Did you think someone who had access to the entire collection of Madame Saoirse’s knowledge wouldn’t know that?”

Baltair stared. “You’re…Oz? How?”

Oz patted his cheek. “Don’t worry about that.” He walked away.

Loup bent over the head, grinning. She took it from the wolves and gripped it at either ear, her hands tensing, blunt claws on her fingertips digging into its cheeks. “Hello, hello.”

In the background, Aisling pressed the body to the ground with a knee on its sternum, her hand raised over its heart in a fire-licked blade.

Baltair took a deep breath, and his chest rose in sympathy, even though he could no longer breathe in truth. “Don’t—don’t—”

Oz lifted his hand in a jaunty wave. “Fairwell, Baltair.”

CRUNCH.