“There’s just one problem with the plan,” the shade observed, as Death and descended the hill towards the town, “by your own words, possession is difficult and invariably temporary; you’ll pardon me, then, if I’m vaguely confused as to why we should even want to attempt it in the first place.”
“Oh, no, make no mistake, possession is mostly useless. That mostly, however, is because however temporary it may be it has utility during its ephemeral moment of existence - ownership of a body lets you do all sorts of useful things. Like contacting an artificer to build you an artificial body, one which has no will to combat your own or an original soul to take your place after it evicts you.”
“Can’t we just do that without possessing someone?” The shade complained.
“Nahhhhh. It’s a little too difficult for me to manifest myself, nor can I commission a weapon of war - no killing people by implication, after all. You’d have a little more luck as a ghost, but even then, who’d listen to you? You’re basically a cobweb, if a cobweb could gain sentience and the ability to molest flies all by its lonesome. Besides, it’s way more fun to possess people.”
“Is it? I feel rather guilty about it, as a matter of fact,” the shade replied, as they came into sight of the town.
“If we picked just anyone, sure, that’d be justified and arguably contrary to our mission, but we’ll find a nasty jackwad for you to possess. Think of it as a minor inconvenience for them at best - you possess them for a day or two; they go on with their life; hopefully they will be less nasty, so other enterprising ghosts seeking artificial bodies don’t possess them in future. Badda boom, badda bing, everyone wins a ring a ding ling.”
They entered the town. It was a picturesque affair, lovely wooden houses arrayed to either side of a paved white road. The streets were well cared for, the gardens bright with spring flowers, tulips in the midst of flowering and trees bursting with blooms.
The celebration, whatever it was for, was in full swing. Lanterns hung from the roofs of buildings and from strings connecting the houses together. The townspeople were out in full force, and full costume, elaborate and fanciful masks matching equally elaborate and fanciful costumes. The shade saw all manner of animal masks, and what must have been mythical creatures, strange horns rising from masks with eyes that were just slightly too big, or with teeth that were just slightly too long.
Death had a point, he realised. However terrible and cockamamie her plans were, the pair of them would have stuck out like sore thumbs if anyone could actually see them. Not that having people walk straight through him was an especially pleasurable experience - not for him, and not for them, given the way they shivered and rubbed their shoulders after they strolled through where his chest was.
Of course, he thought to himself, this could have reasonably been allayed if they had celebratory disguises - it wasn’t such a small town that everyone could recognise everyone else by the contours of their bodies, so they could have snuck in well enough had they a mask and a funny robe.
Still, he had no money, and while Death carried a purse he wasn’t sure she had any mortal money in it. For the moment, then, he’d just go along with her plan, and see where it led.
As it happened, that was to the worst possible part of town, a side street with leaning buildings, cracked street tiles, and piles of rubbish to either side of the road. And why were they here? For one simple reason: Death had seen a sketchy dude, and decided they needed to tail him.
“You know, just because he looks like he’s troublesome, that doesn’t mean he is troublesome,” the shade had observed shortly after Death pointed the man out.
“Nah, trust me, with a face like that he’s absolutely involved in something dubious,” she replied nonchalantly. And truthfully, if there was anyone who, judged by his face alone, was involved in crime, it was the man before them. Frankly he was the sketchiest man the shade had ever seen, and the fact that he alone wasn’t in costume or participating in the celebration did not help matters. Still-
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“You can’t judge a book by its cover,” the shade remonstrated.
“Oh yes you can - absolutely so,” Death rejoined, and pulled a book out of her purse, waving it in front of the shade’s eyes. “What do you think this is about?”
The shade took one look at the girl on the cover, and a second look at her chest, and conceded that Death had a point. Sometimes you could tell a book by its cover.
“Still, just because he’s looking about shiftily, and keeps grasping at a suspiciously cudgel like object at his waist, and is wearing clothing covered in cryptic but clearly murderous symbols, and rather obviously does not take care of his appearance, and has multiple nasty scars, a squint, and a malformed jaw-”
“Pfft, and you transmigrators are always going on about your ‘superior past life knowledge.’ Clearly it can’t be that superior, since you know nothing of the science of physiognomy.”
“Physiognomy is not a science.”
“Maybe in your world, but it’s whatever. Let’s follow him,” Death observed, and raced down the street before the shade could retort that science was a method and applied equally across worlds.
The sketchy but likely completely harmless man turned a corner and proceeded down the dubious side alley mentioned earlier in this chapter, his eyes shiftily shifting about ever more shiftily, as if he was expecting, or worried about, someone.
In spite of the fact that they had clearly entered what passed for the bad part of town, there was no one off doing stereotypically bad part of town stuff like loitering or narrowing their eyes at passing strangers. This, unfortunately, did not help the shade’s case, as it made the unaccountable actions of the man all the more suspicious.
The man raced down the darkened path, the lights of the celebration shrinking ever further behind him. After him came Death and the shade; the one, trying to convince the other that he was clearly sketchy and was thus an ideal target for possession; the other, trying to convince the former that sketchiness was by no means a sufficient criterion to possess someone. Every now and then the man would look behind him nervously, muttering incoherently under his breath.
At last he paused in his mad dash, looking at a lighted but decrepit structure. He said something unintelligible, his accent too thick and concern too intense for whatever he was saying to make any sense to the pair of invisible spirits.
He looked shiftily about him one more time before finally making up his mind. Lifting his hands straight in the air he cried out something that sounded strangely like, “Came I hame I hey,” then clapped his palms together.
There was a burst of some sort of energy, and the door shattered. The din coming from inside the building instantly ceased.
The shade nearly doubled over, so great was his desire to wretch. He had never before experienced the energy of a demonic cultivator, but its signal was completely unmistakeable. It reverberated throughout and across his body, smelling of rot and worse, and seemed to howl silently in his ears.
The man strode confidently into the building, and a second wave of demonic energy washed over the poor pair of spirits as he called out confidently for a beer, the sound of which clearly identified the building as an inn of some sort. This was a little surprising, since it didn’t look like an inn or bar, but on second look there was a faded sign lying on the ground, marked ‘The Merry Meerkat,’ and a beam with some rusted chains where once it must have hung. The sign seemed vaguely familiar, its name and design unusually striking a chord in the shade.
“Aha,” Death cried, “see! I was right! He really was as sketchy as he looked.”
“Not the time,” the shade growled, rushing to the ruined entryway. “He’s clearly unstable and a threat to everyone within there - we should stop him.”
“‘We’ should stop him? I think you forget something very important; I can’t do jack, Jack. I’m Death. You need to possess the guy - the sketchy guy, who was as sketchy as he looked, thank you very kindly - then get him to stop all on your lonesome. By yourself. Without me.”
The shade looked back at her, unamused. She just gave him two thumbs up. “Think of this as your first big test.”
The shade raised one eyebrow, but decided not to say anything - the moment was too important, as yelling was coming out of the inn, and not all of it was from the obviously irate demonic cultivator. The shade reached the smashed door and went to enter the building.
At the sight of the inn entryway, however, the shade had frozen. He stared at it, pure dread etched along the lines of ethereal face. Dread, and a titch of confusion, as if he couldn’t quite remember why he was upset. “How strange… why do I feel like I’ve seen that inn before?”