We return to the present. The demonic cultivator (and master of sketchiness) had just kicked in the door and, striding into The Merry Meerkat, demanded a drink. The patrons quieted instantly as they felt the wave of demonic energy wash over them, and saw a demonic cultivator walk into the room. They knew what was coming. A couple looked surreptitiously at the exit, although the demonic cultivator was yet blocking the door.
The middle aged couple who ran the restaurant immediately went to get the demonic cultivator a drink, offering apologies all the while for their lack of immediate promptitude in serving him, having failed to give him hospitality while he was yet outside the restaurant.
The demonic cultivator accepted this hospitality in good grace, sitting down at the bar and adding a whole roast duck to the order (none of which he intended to pay for, thank you kindly). A couple of the guests stood up and began to sneak to the door, but the demonic cultivator silenced their revolt with ease, raising his beer tankard to the sky and offering to buy a drink for all of his new friends, who would stay in the bar and drink it with him.
This was not merely a threat intended to make them afraid and remind them that they were omnipresently within his mercy (though it was certainly that). It was also a safeguard, to protect him from whoever or whatever was after him.
“Who the heck was that talking behind me?” The cultivator murmured nervously. He had voices, standing in stark contrast to the silence of the night, as he walked down the alley, and these had convinced him that he ought to speed up and seek refuge and take shelter to avoid whatever nefarious plot they had in store for him.
Of course, he had no direct proof that they intended him malice - he had caught none of their words, for they were some distance behind him and their discussion no more than murmurs in his ears - but it was a generally sound principle, in his experience, not to sit there complacently when strange disembodied voices from the midst of nowhere emerged behind you, and he had reacted to their presence in the most sensible fashion he knew: finding a bunch of mortals to use as meat shields.
His meat shields sat there nervously as he knocked back one drink, then another. He could hear the disembodied voices quite clearly - most of the bar arguably could, for the customers were sitting in terrified silence and there were none speaking save the demonic cultivator and the two disembodied voices, although the demonic cultivator wasn’t altogether sure that the voices were intelligible to a normal mortal - one never could tell, with monsters and ghosts and whatnot, what their metaphysical effects would be.
At last the cultivator grew tired of waiting for them to grow tired and leave, and decided to take matters into his own dark hands. He belched, and slammed his tankard upon the table, smashing it to pieces.
“Bring me another,” he called, “on the house - this one was terrible in quality.”
The cowed innkeeper’s wife rushed to fill him another glass, much to the demonic cultivator’s amusement. He was in the middle of enjoying a good chuckle at her expense when the preteen voice piped up.
“You cannot bully my mother like that.”
The small child - he couldn’t have been older than twelve - stood at the base of the stairs, hands on his hips, glaring at the demonic cultivator. “She is doing you a service and you will treat her with respect.”
The innkeeper’s wife immediately rushed over to the child, her voice placating but her bearing directed at the demonic cultivator, implicitly begging him for mercy.
“Now honey, this man is a customer, and as a customer is entirely within his rights to-”
“He’s within his rights to do the right thing,” returned the boy.
There was a clatter as the stool the demonic cultivator had been sitting on fell to the floor, the cultivator sneering as he stood up and advanced slowly towards the child. The innkeeper himself tried to get in the way, making some excuse for the boy on account of his age or maturity or intellect or something equally irrelevant to the fact that the demonic cultivator had power and was prepared to use it; for the innkeeper’s pains, he found himself tossed across the room, slamming into a wall and laying still.
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The demonic cultivator slowly swaggered towards the boy, staring down at him in naked triumph and pride. “And who are you to tell me what the right thing is to do?”
The boy, uncowed, put his hands on hips. “I am the innkeeper’s son.”
The demonic cultivator leaned down, a vile grin plastered artificially to his face, and the boy struggled to avoid wincing as the rancid breath of the demonic cultivator washed over him.
“And why do you think you can tell me what the right thing is to do, boy?”
The boy turned his head up, and raised one eyebrow, as if the demonic cultivator’s maleficence no more bothered him than did that of the average street bully. “Please. You’re not scary - I faced the monster under my bed, and he was scary. You? Average. At best.”
The artificial smile on the demonic cultivator’s face faded, and was replaced by an entirely (i unfortunately) sincere sneer.
***
“What are you waiting for? What more proof do you need that this guy is as sketchy as he appears?” Death hissed.
“It’s not a matter of proof. It’s a matter of capacity - how in the ballyhoo am I supposed to possess him?”
“I don’t know. You’re the ghost, why don’t you know?”
“Up to three hours ago, I didn’t even know possession existed - or ghosts - or leaving to the land of the living - or, well, any of this, really. The idea that I can possess the dude is frankly ludicrous. Do I walk into him? Put my presence into him? Seize control of his qi or something? I’m a total novice, in case you forgot.”
“His qi? Why not his meridians directly?”
“Why his meridians? And wait a moment, why are you asking me? Aren’t you Death?”
“Death, yes. A ghost, no. I don’t know the first thing about hauntings or possessions,” Death replied, her tone venomous and face mirroring her words. Her expression immediately changed, however, as she saw the expression on the face of the shade and realised that the pair of them had greatly messed up.
***
The sound of someone screaming and roars of laughter interrupted the magician’s meditation, and he sprang into action. That does NOT sound like friendly laughter. It took him a moment to disapparate his new form - something the manual had told him he could do - but once he had successfully resumed the form of a ghost and not his new, improved form he floated through the attic and into an upper bedroom. There he looked around quickly for something to disguise his ghostly half a body.
Come on, come on… a scholar’s robe? No…a dress? No… a suit? That doesn’t even match the setting!… wait, this one is perfect…
Downstairs, the demonic cultivator was still hard at work, doing his best to bully a child. The uncertainty and panic of the two spirits was music to his ears, their inability to figure out how to stop him an impetus to his continuation.
“What’s wrong? Does it hurt?” The cultivator sneered as he twisted the little boy’s arm. There were panicked cries from the boy’s parents, but the boy herself was silent. He simply glared into the cultivator’s eyes, and spit.
“I’ll never beg from the likes of you.”
The demonic cultivator’s mouth formed a mock pout, and he bent the limb even more out of shape. “We’ll see-”
BANG
THWACK
“Och, crickery!”
THUD
“Buggeridoos!”
KKKKEEERRRRASSH
The entire bar watched silently as a figure wrapped in a bedsheet fell down the stairs. As he reached the landing he managed to execute an awkward donkey roll, sliding down the rest of the stairs before rising to his feet in an amateurish fighting stance. (Maybe. It was hard to tell because of the bedsheet.)
“Brigand! Unhand yon innocent child at once.”
The demonic cultivator froze for only a moment at the sound of the man’s voice, which was wispy and crackly, but with a heavy Avalonian accent. Then he shrugged. Probably a travelling merchant here on business, who thinks he can be a hero. He dropped the boy’s arm and slowly walked towards the newcomer. Reaching to the sheathe at his side he withdrew his club, casually swinging it about in a circle before pointing it at the man’s head.
“Fair enough: I suppose if I hurt him too much, he can’t work. So I’ll have him serve me dinner, and you serve as my example.” The demonic cultivator mocked, and with a burst of daemoniac energy swung his sword down on the man in the bedsheet.
The bedsheet was slammed into the floor, revealing… nothing at all.
And then the cultivator exploded.