Right, so now no matter what I made myself look like, my Incubus/Succubus power would force that appearance into a more attractive version. There had to be a way to control the power and make it knock that off, but I had no idea how. Not yet, anyway. And something told me Ehn wasn’t interested in spending time on that sort of training, so I was on my own. Or, well, at least I’d have moral support from Percy and Cerberus, but I doubted either of them knew how to help me control it either. Even if it was really fun to think of Cerberus playing professor. I was just going to have to go along with this for now and worry about it later. At least I didn’t have anyone else I knew in this time period with me right now to tease me about it.
Trying to push that thought out of my mind, I followed Ehn to the apple tree and down that trail to follow the creek that had been mentioned. On the way, I tied one of the colorful ribbons around each Cerberus’s necks, fashioning them into bows. Percy took out a mirror and let him see how he looked, and from the noises each of his heads made, he really liked that. So, of course, Percy and I both played up how handsome and pretty he looked with his colorful bows. Ehn’s contribution to the whole thing was a simple, “Good” when asked how it looked. But hey, it could’ve been worse. And even getting that much praise from the Dragon-Bonded was enough to make Cerberus positively glow with pride. He even skipped. Yes, the giant robot dog skipped cheerfully along the trail with all three heads held high. And yes, it was absolutely adorable.
Eventually, we found the cabin that had been mentioned. Ehn checked it for traps before we went anywhere near the place, but found nothing. So we went closer and I looked inside, only to see that the place was empty. Well, empty of people. There were clear signs that someone was living there.
“I guess he’s on the creek panning for gold, like the sheriff said,” I noted, lifting a hand to my forehead to shield my eyes as I looked that way. “I don’t see anyone though. He must be further down, so I guess we can start walking–hey wait can’t you just fly up and look for him from the air?” In the middle of that, I’d remembered who I was talking to and turned to squint at him.
The man offered me a faint smile. “Yes, I can. And I shall do so. But while I happen to be busy locating my old friend, I believe it’s time for another test. Somewhere in these woods is a place where a coffin has been buried. It’s quite well-protected. In that coffin is a source of great power. Defeat the guardians and take the object of power. You will know it when you see it.” To Percy and Cerberus, he added, “You are allowed to step in if need be, I know quite well insisting you stay out of it entirely would be a waste of breath. But should you step in too much, Felicity will fail this test. Allow her to succeed on her own as much as possible.” He paused briefly before amending, “Of course, the manual labor sort of help is allowed without any penalty. Lift and carry as much as she requires. Provide assistance in simple ways. But allow her to do the important parts herself, please. The decisions must be hers.”
I wasn’t sure what sort of special Dragon-Bonded training amounted to telling me to go do something on my own while he fucked off to do something else without even watching me, but whatever. If he wanted me to check things off his to-do list, who was I to complain? I was here to follow his instructions, and at least he was allowing Percy and Cerberus to play backup.
“Okay,” I found myself replying, “so how am I supposed to track down this place with the special coffin in it? ‘Somewhere in these woods’ is a bit vague. Or is that just part of the test?”
Again, Ehn smiled. “You are very quick, Felicity. I’m certain you’ll be able to work something out.” With that, he turned and began following the creek once more. “I shall find you when it’s over.” Somehow, his voice sounded ominous.
Watching him go for a moment, I exhaled before turning to face the other two. “Right, so what are the odds that he’s just sending me off to do something else because he doesn’t want me to know what he’s saying to this Caitiff guy? Or what he looks like, or… anything like that.”
Percy’s head bobbed quickly. “It is very possible that he wishes to keep certain details from you, Flick. Perhaps he would prefer you not raise objections to his method of extracting the information he requires from Caitiff. You would feel obligated to object, which could escalate.”
Giving a long, heavy sigh, I frowned to myself. “Yeah. Or maybe he really does just want to kill two birds with one stone by having me go get this thing he wants while he focuses on the other guy. I think I’m going to choose to focus on that possibility, because I’d rather not think about what sort of things he might be doing that he doesn’t want me to see. Not that it matters either way, I suppose.” With a shrug, I added, “I couldn’t stop him if I wanted to. So let’s see about this coffin.”
Percy stepped back, lifted one hand, and drew two fingers along her mouth, then made a twisting motion with both of them. Right, zipping her lips and locking them. She wasn’t going to offer any suggestions or aid unless she had to. This was my test, I had to solve it.
Cerberus, meanwhile, expressed the same general idea by laying down, putting his heads close together, and covering all three snouts with his two front paws while staring at me pointedly. He wasn’t going to jump in and offer any suggestions either, apparently.
Thinking about it for a moment, I spoke aloud. “I guess the best way this makes sense is if he wants me to use my Necromancy to find this thing. That’s what he’s trying to make me improve, after all.” Giving a little nod to my own words when neither of the others expressed any reaction at all, I sat down right there in the dirt. Folding my legs under myself, I rested my hands palms up on my knees, closed my eyes, and focused. If this was about using my Necromancy to find something, it had to be death. This place I was looking for was supposed to have a coffin in it, after all. So finding a big source of death energy was probably the way to go.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t all that easy. It turned out there was a lot of death in this forest, of both the animal and sapient kind. Even as I stretched out my senses, I felt it all around me. Animals were being killed for food by other animals, and by the people in the nearby village. Speaking of which, I could feel death there too. Not a staggering amount, but it was still there. People dying of old age, from battles, even accidents.
More overwhelmingly than that, however, was the massacres I could sense in these woods. So many people had died here over the years. I wasn’t even sure how far back I was sensing, but their deaths lingered. For some reason, this area seemed to have been fought over for centuries. At least, if the amount of battles I was sensing was any indication.
Hold on, since when had I been able to sense individual fights? It wasn’t just a matter of knowing that a lot of people had died here, I could tell that they had taken place at different times, and that there were years in between those battles. I was able to literally pick out individual deaths in the same area and say that they had taken place many years apart. I could focus on one small clearing two hundred yards to my left and know that three of the deaths I could sense in that spot had happened four decades earlier than two other deaths I could sense there as well.
Was all this just a product of me getting better at all this? Or was it a product of my taking power from that Incubus guy? And for that matter, why had I gotten two different powers from him? He wasn’t a Boscher Heretic, obviously. So what was that about? I really needed to see if Ehn would actually give me some answers about that when this is over, assuming he knew anything. And I was going to go out on a limb and say he did.
“Are you okay, Flick?” Percy asked, before quickly amending, “I mean, in a strictly, ‘figure out the solution to this puzzling problem on your own’ sort of way.”
Smiling a little despite myself, I nodded. “I’m fine. Just distracted.” Then I explained the whole bit about being confused by how many powers I seemed to have gotten.
“Oh, that is simple,” she informed me, seeming pretty happy that she could actually explain something to me without violating Ehn’s rules. “The Tartarus power you’ve taken from Manakel combined with Fossor’s own power has made the Reaper skill you use to harvest gifts see you as… what was the term your people use? A Natural Necromancer. It sees you as a Natural Necromancer. Thus, whenever you kill another Necromancer–that is, anyone of sufficient Necromantic power, it will treat you as though you were a Natural Heretic killing one of that same species.”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
That made me give a double-take. “Wait, hold on. You’re saying my Necromancy is so strong right now that the Reaper power thinks I’m a Natural Necromancer–whatever that is–so it’s handing me a full download of powers from anything I kill that happens to be strong enough in Necromancy?” I reeled backward a bit as she nodded. “Oh… oh.”
Okay, yeah, that was going to take some time to adjust to. But right now, I had to focus. And whatever the reasoning for my power boost, it was helping me get plenty of information when I reached out with my power. Too much information, honestly. I knew all this stuff about people dying here in these woods over the past centuries, but not where this special coffin was. There was so much death energy around me that I couldn’t narrow it down. I was overwhelmed by all of it. I had thought that I could reach out to find the thing by sensing a ghost around it, but these woods were chock-full of ghosts.
Wait, full of ghosts? Oh, duh.
Focusing a little more, I tried reaching out to those ghosts and gave them a little tug. I made it clear, at least as much as I could, that it was an invitation and not a demand. I wasn’t going to force them to do anything they didn’t want to. I may have had Fossor’s power, but I for damn sure wasn’t going to turn into him.
It took a minute, but I soon sensed an answering feeling of curiosity. Several of the ghosts were responding to my silent invitation by approaching through the woods. And boy was that still a strange feeling. When I was a little girl sleeping outside in the backyard I had been kind of terrified of the idea of ghosts watching me. And that had been in complete safety. Or at least, what I had assumed was complete safety. As it turned out, my backyard had been more of a hotbed for supernatural activity then I’d ever have believed back then.
But now I was sitting out in the middle of these woods, cut off from almost everyone I knew, and in a time period hundreds of years before I had even been born. Woods that were full of ghosts, literal ones rather than metaphorical, and I was summoning them to me. Because I wanted their help.
Pushing that thought out of my mind, I spoke quietly toward my two companions. “I have some friends coming, don’t overreact.” I was mostly directing that toward Cerberus, considering he had literally been created to fight and kill ghosts. I didn’t want to get this whole thing off on the wrong foot by having the very good dog simply try to do his job when he saw these guys arrive.
A moment later, the presences I had sensed made it to our little clearing by the creek. Opening my eyes, I stood up and looked toward what turned out to be four figures. All ghosts, of course. Two were dressed like old Native Americans, though one of those appeared to be a cross between a human and a large bear. Another was a small goblin-looking creature dressed in fine clothes with a Tricorn hat, who actually reminded me of Fancy the Kobold back at the Atherby Camp. The last one appeared to be some sort of European settler with a musket. They were all staring at me curiously.
Taking a breath before letting it out, I held up both hands. “Hey there, thanks for coming.” Oh boy, this seemed awkward all of a sudden. But I pushed that feeling aside and focused. “I’m looking for some sort of special coffin that’s supposed to be in these woods. There should be a lot of dark energy coming off of it. That’s really all I know for sure. Do you guys think you could maybe help me find it? Or maybe you know someone else who can?” Relatedly, I added, “Oh, sorry. My name is Felicity. I’m… Well it’s a long story. Could I get your names, please?”
If anything, the four ghosts seemed even more confused about the situation. They looked at one another and seemed to confer silently. Then the goblin took a little step forward. “You are the strongest Caller we have ever felt in these woods. And we have felt many over these years. All have tried to find this thing you seek, and have fought many battles over it.”
The bear man in the Native American garb gave a soft grunt before nodding. “My people were killed to the last for protecting its location. Men, women, and children all murdered, and none breathed a word of where it was.”
Before I could respond to that, the European guy and the other Native American gave their own agreements with that. Which just made me even more confused. Just what the hell was in this coffin that I was supposed to find? All those battles I had sensed had been over people fighting to find it? And yet, they never had?
“It’s magically hidden, isn’t it?” I realized that belatedly. “Something’s masking it so they can’t just scour the woods and find the place.”
There was another brief moment of silent discussion between the four. Then, rather than directly answering the question, they introduced themselves. The goblin was named Kehchul (it was pronounced catch all), the European settler guy was Francis, the bear man was Elsworn, and the Native American man was Avonaco. They had all lived in very different time periods, but all had died here in these woods. For centuries, or decades in the case of Francis, their ghosts had lingered here along with many others.
Another thought came to mind after introductions were exchanged. “Hang on, when we first arrived here, we were attacked by a bunch of zombies.”
“Yes,” Avonaco murmured, “the protective magics here would have sensed your intentions and attempted to drive you away.”
So Ehn was right about us not changing the future by fighting those things, and that they’d only attacked us in the first place because we were here. Still, I shook my head. “They weren’t my intentions, I didn’t even know about this coffin until a few minutes ago. But the guy I came with, he’s the one who wants me to find whatever is in there, and he’s not someone you want to disappoint.”
Considering all that, I asked what these guys knew about the coffin and why it was so important. Unfortunately, they couldn’t remember. Yeah, I thought that was weird too, but I believed them. It seemed like the knowledge of what they were actually protecting was wiped from their minds somehow. All they knew was that it was incredibly important and their job, the job of every ghost in this forest, was to make certain that it didn’t fall into the wrong hands.
Kehchul the goblin continued after I had absorbed that much. “We have waited for the right one for all this time. Maybe that is you, and our watch over these woods may be ended.”
“Let me get this straight,” I managed. “Whatever is in this coffin is super-important and powerful. Everyone who dies out here while trying to find it somehow magically becomes a guardian stopping anyone else from getting to it. But the coffin itself is magically hidden so no one knows where it is. You can’t even find it by looking for it, right?”
Elsworn the bear man gave a short nod, his eyes seeming to glimmer as he watched me. “Only those who have died may know its location, and only they may lead the living to it. But the magic of this forest guards against any attempt to force our compliance.”
Right, so it didn’t matter how strong the Necromancer was, they couldn’t force these particular ghosts do something they didn’t want to do. That was useful for protecting the secret of where the coffin was, for sure. But did it really mean that no one who came to this forest looking for that thing had ever just tried having a civil conversation with these guys and asking nicely?
We talked a little more. I felt anxious, but didn’t want to push the issue too quickly. Instead, I told them about myself. I even said that I was from the future and that I had been brought back here for training to learn how to stop a great evil force from massacring everyone in the universe. And yes, I felt like an idiot the whole time I was saying it. Or at least like a self-absorbed narcissist. Who was I to claim that I had any ability to stop the Fomorians? Saying it out loud like that felt wrong.
But at the very least, these ghosts listened and seemed interested. In the end, they agreed to lead me to the place I needed to go. Apparently they had become convinced that I was the person they were supposed to wait for. Which just made me even more uncertain. What if they were wrong? What if whatever was in this coffin was meant for someone else? Why would a whole spell have been put together to protect what was in this thing until I got here? That was just weird.
All those doubts and more filled my head while I followed the ghosts on a long hike. Cerberus and Percy trailed behind, staying out of the way but within sight just in case things went wrong.
For over an hour we walked. I had realized very soon that we weren’t going in a straight line. We were taking a meandering, circular path. I wasn’t sure why, but there were many more ghosts along the way. I sensed them watching us, judging me. They were probably checking to make sure I wasn’t tricking them or anything. Or maybe they just wanted to see how I would react to being led in circles. Whatever it was, I kept quiet about it and simply followed. I didn’t care how long this took. If Ehn was in a rush, he could just deal. Which just made me wonder what he was doing right then. Had he found the man he was looking for and gotten whatever he wanted out of him? Hopefully I would find out soon enough.
Eventually, we reached a literal hole in the ground. It was surrounded by bushes and tall grass, which the ghosts moved out of the way. Yeah, they moved physical objects even though I hadn’t given them any power. They were given energy by the forest itself, which was interesting all on its own.
Standing there over the hole, I crouch down to peer into the darkness. I couldn’t see how far it went, but it obviously wasn’t a short drop.
“There will be other tests,” Elsworn informed me with a grunt. “We will wait here to guide you back should you survive what is to come.”
Cerberus made a whining sound and I nodded to him. “That’s okay, buddy. You don’t have to fit in this hole. Wait here and guard it with these guys, all right? I’m trusting you.”
He gave a hard woof of agreement and straightened up, all three of his heads looking in different directions. He was going to make absolutely certain our way out remained safe.
So, Percy and I exchanged looks and nods. I had no idea what we were going to find in there, but I was glad I would have at least some company. Pulling out my staff, I looked down and breathed for a moment.
Then I took a step forward and dropped into the hole, plummeting through darkness.