Symon's response to the skeleton was quick, considering he'd already had a theory of why it was separate from the others. "Well, you must have been the last one to die, putting all your pals in their beds as a sort of--"

Symon cut himself off with a gulp, slowly turning his head to look at the lone skeleton. Its empty sockets were staring straight at him. He pushed himself to his feet and backed up as fast as he could, raising his fists like he'd seen boxers do. Damn, he really wished he had a proper weapon right now.

"Oh quit your panicking, I couldn't move even if I wanted to. Which I do. Very badly." True to its words, the skeleton hadn't moved, still staring at the position Symon had been sitting in. That didn't prevent it from speaking in a surprisingly normal, lilting accent. If he'd had his eyes closed, he would have thought the voice belonged to a living man.

"What the fuck?" Symon asked, not that it was much of a question. He stopped backing away after gaining a couple extra metres of distance but kept his fists raised.

"A spirit of the restless dead, obviously. Didn't your mother ever tell you the stories?"

"No, but I can imagine the moral of the story was something like 'do not trust mysterious talking skeletons'." The skeleton in question was so old he could probably snap its bones with little effort if he had to, but he wasn't planning on getting close enough to find out.

"Hmm, smarter than you look. What's your name, boy?"

Symon considered his situation. Someone to communicate with and hopefully answer some of his questions would be great, but he trusted this skeleton about as much as he'd trust the dead bearcat outside. Maybe friendly talking skeletons were a common occurrence here, but he wasn't going to take that chance.

"It's Simon, but with a Y."

This, of all things, seemed to throw the skeleton off his groove. It paused for only a few seconds, and yet it felt much longer. "Wait... your mother named you Yimon? What kind of a name is that?"

"It still starts with an 'S'!" he responded, exasperated. "You pronounce it the same! Is this the most important thing we could be talking about? For one, I want to know who you are and how you're talking to me." If the skeleton was going to talk peacefully to him, Symon would do the same no matter how creepy it was. He lowered his fists too -- no need to escalate things -- but kept himself at the ready.

"Yes yes, I suppose our time is limited anyway. You can call me Captain. As for how I'm talking to you, your guess is as good as mine."

"Captain? What type of name is that?"

"The only one you're getting."

Symon sighed. Why did the first person he met have to be so difficult?

"Well, Captain, I suppose it's nice to meet you. Why is it that we have limited time?"

"We spirits burn through life force to stay here in the mortal realm. I was peacefully hibernating, until someone woke me up, so now I'm going to die a true death. Thanks for that, by the way. How should we spend my final hour of unlife?"

Ah, so they have sarcasm here too.

If the circumstances were reversed, Symon supposed that he wouldn't have been in the greatest mood either.

Although... if the issue was a lack of life force, wouldn't Symon be the perfect person to help?

"In that case, I'll cut to the chase. I've got healing magic I could use to give you some vitality, but I'm lost in this desert and don't know, uh, anything at all about this world. How about we help each other out?"

For the first time, Symon saw the skeleton move, its head rotating in place to look directly at Symon. "You can do that?"

"Erm, full disclosure, I've never done it before, but the ability description makes it seem like I can transfer the energy to others. I might have to check the exact wording though."

"Huh, some power you've got there kid. Ain't many healers 'round these parts, so it must be my lucky day. You've got yourself a deal." The skeleton -- Captain, apparently -- extended a hand, the first time he'd moved his body.

Simon approached slowly, carefully eyeing over the skeleton. All of its clothes had rotted away, so there was nowhere for it to hide any weapons. The skeleton shifted its head, and Symon felt like it had tried to roll its eyes at him, but he felt perfectly justified in his paranoia. Zombies would try and eat his brains or flesh, but what would a skeleton want to do? Collect his bones or something? Still, he needed guidance, especially with nightfall rapidly approaching.

He elected to give the skeleton the barest sliver of vitality he could; if it immediately betrayed him, he'd be able to use a similar tactic as with the bearcat and simply outrun it until it collapsed. He carefully reached forward and clasped the skeleton's hand.

"I guess we've got ourselves a deal," was what Symon began to say, stopping when the skeleton collapsed into itself, whatever magic holding it together suddenly ceasing. He was so shocked at this that he reacted too slowly when a ball of blue mist shot out of the skeleton and impacted his chest. Whatever it was, it wasn't solid, but Symon scrambled backwards with the impact all the same. "Goddammit, of course this creepy ass skeleton would pull something weird..."

came the voice of the spirit, the words appearing in his mind instead of being spoken aloud. Were it not for the chaotic situation, he would have been vaguely cognizant that this wasn't the first time something had spoken to him like this.

When the skeleton's attack had impacted him, it seemed to sink into his chest like a stone dropped into a lake. Immediately, a sense of wrongness invaded his being. Something intimate inside him had been exposed, and it seemed like his sense of his vitality served to make him aware of just how deep the violation ran.

There was something other inside of him, a parasite latching onto his vessel and gorging itself. The identity of this intruder was clear to Symon.

As if justifying himself, the voice continued.

Symon chose not to respond, scrambling backwards and out of the room. Distance from the skeleton didn't help considering that thing was already inside him, but he didn't know what else to do. Fighting centipedes or skeletons was a simple concept, hit them hard enough without getting hit yourself and you win. But Symon had no idea how to beat something that was inside of him.

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It was uncomfortably reminiscent of his illness, and he felt that familiar mix of panic and hopelessness. This time, however, he couldn't just ignore his problems and hope -- already, he could feel himself getting weaker, his muscles sluggish and his mind fuzzy. He didn't have time to call out to the sand, but his vessel tattoo looked almost empty.

Stumbling, he made his way through the mostly empty second room and back into the main one filled with sand and bones. With one hand on the wall to support himself, he trudged his way to the half-collapsed entrance. All the while, his chest was feeling like it was slowly filling with stone. He was too dizzy to balance across the rubble, so he went down on all fours, landing on his knees harder than intended as he began crawling his way out.

Symon maintained his position even when he made it to the warm sand outside, too shakey and weak to stand. His heart was hammering in his chest, his lungs took only shallow gulps of air, and he felt simultaneously too hot and too cold. It hadn't even been a full minute since the magical attack started, and if he was this weak already, his wouldn't last much longer.

He wasn't sure why he'd done this. Some small part of him said he was panicking, that he needed to calm down and think of a solution. It was drowned out by the pounding in his skull.

The voice of the skeleton seemed legitimately confused, as if it didn't understand why Symon wouldn't just give in. He'd struggled through years of pain in various hospitals, had been a burden on others for so long. How ungrateful would he be if he let all that effort go to waste? He wasn't going to let some --

His trail of thought was washed away in a sudden surge of weakness as he vomited onto the pristine white sands. He pushed himself to the side to avoid his mess, but the motion proved too much for his battered body and he collapsed onto his back.

Just stop struggling... That's what the voice had said. Symon didn't even know how to struggle against this, and yet the voice had seemed quite sure that he was. His body wasn't working properly right now, barely responding to his commands -- just like when he got stung by that centipede.

Wait a minute...

His magic hadn't needed commands against the centipede! His magic had been draining its vitality without him even telling it to, then using that vitality to heal him all by itself. He'd even blacked out completely in that fight, and it had continued working on its own!

Once again, his powers were doing their best to save him while he was unaware of the true battle raging inside him. The trickle of vitality from unintentionally draining the centipede hadn't even been noticeable at the time, but compared to when he'd manually manifested his thread and used it on the bearcat, the flood of Vitality was almost overwhelming.

With an idea in mind, Symon screwed his eyes shut to better concentrate and manifested the grey thread of his Seize ability. Oddly, even with his eyes closed he could still faintly make out the twisting form of the grey thread, slowly swaying in the air like a snake getting ready to strike. In his half-aware state, he wasn't sure how long he stared at it before refocusing. This would have to be a mystery for later, as first he had to survive.

He could pinpoint the exact area of intense wrongness in his chest; the right side, in the mirrored position of his heart. It felt like there was a whirlpool inside his body, the energy swirling around before getting absorbed by his parasite. His vessel was empty by now, but it was still being ravenously pulled at, like a dog trying to get every scrap of meat off a bone.

He felt his vessel shudder painfully as a feeling of cold emptiness spread out from it. Even though he'd lived 20 years without the magical organ, he felt as if it was something vital to his very being, something no one else should ever touch. It was like someone had reached into his stomach and started rearranging his intestines into a shape more preferable to them.

With a monumental force of will, Symon raised the thread to his chest. Previously the thread had just passed through his body as if it wasn't there, but this time it was different. The thread found something inside him and greedily latched its teeth into it in a flash. Instantly, the pressure partially abated, as the stolen vitality was siphoned back out before spreading back through the rest of his body and reinvigorating him.

With one hand held against his chest, he shakily stood upwards, leaning against the dark stone of the collapsed tower. It was painfully hot from the suns, but he was too focused to care.

The voice was soft and confused, the previous mocking bravado gone. Symon felt no pity. He was still weak, but he felt the scales tip.

"Shut up! I'm lost in this stupid fucking desert, attacked by stupid fucking monsters on another goddamn planet, and the first guy I meet decides that working together is too good for him and that he'd rather just kill me. So no, I'm not going to monologue about my powers, I'm just going to use them to rip you out like the parasite you are!" True to his words, Symon focused on the feeling of his thread wriggling around in his chest.

It should have been an extremely odd feeling, and he was more than a little uncomfortable with what was happening in an abstract sense, but he didn't actually feel much of anything beyond the flow of vitality. Symon pushed all his attention into the thread, forcing it to pull as much vitality as possible from the... ghost? He still wasn't entirely sure. He figured that his mind being clear enough to wonder exactly what the thing was should be a good sign.

Although operating more on instinct than a plan, his actions were still clearly effective as he felt the invader reacting. Its screams reverberated into his mind as he ripped the stolen vitality out of it and returned it to his vessel. It would in turn then be siphoned back out by the invader, causing the vitality to flow between the two in a loop.

After half a minute of this, they reached something of an equilibrium. The spirit in his chest had fully engulfed his vessel, and was no longer losing or gaining any ground in their battle to steal each other's vitality. It seemed that as it shrunk down, it had an easier and easier time holding on to what it still had.

After holding this stalemate for a minute with no one breaking the balance, Symon wracked his brain for anything new he could do. It wasn't painful for Symon but clearly was for the other guy, so he was happy to take some time to think. He still focused on locking down the stalemate, but it didn't take much physical effort, his ability doing most of the work once he'd shown it what to do.

Symon wasn't a violent person, though he felt perfectly justified in doing whatever was necessary to stop this ghost who was actively trying to kill him. The problem was he had no idea how to do that.

Hmm, why not try the simplest option first?

"Hey dickhead, how about we walk back to your old skeleton and you just hop back? Things clearly aren't going how you expected them to. We'll both just go our separate ways and forget this ever happened?"

The response was a scream, a moan of pain, then another scream as the spirit abruptly stopped pulling in Symon's vitality. Symon held the thread to the spirit for a few more seconds like he was using a tazer, to ensure no funny business of course, before slowly retracting the magic. It pulled back reluctantly, although he kept it nearby just in case the spirit tried to take this momentary lull as an opportunity to launch another attack.

Like someone being interviewed mid-marathon, the voice sounded exhausted and out of breath, despite not needing to breathe.

"Yeah, it sucks, I'm well aware. Now answer my question, will you get out and go peacefully?" To punctuate his statement, he wriggled the thread threateningly.

Symon could feel the spirit wriggling around, but it still encircled his vessel. He moved the thread closer.

"What the hell do you mean, you're having a bit of difficulty? I think I've been more than reasonable about having a ghost try to possess me, so I'm just going to go back to poking you with the pain magic until you leave, okay?"

Symon rolled his eyes and gave the spirit another little brush of the thread, painfully ripping out a chunk of its stolen vitality. "Seriously man, I'm alone and confused in a strange land. Either leave now or start making sense. I'm not giving you any more time to work on whatever plan you must have thought up."

"What?" Symon had no clue what this guy was talking about and was growing more convinced by the second that he was just stalling for time.

"Ah, right, yeah." Symon found the name a little odd, but he knew what the spirit was talking about. "Sand! Got anything new for me?"

Symon was too distracted by the words etching themselves into the sand to listen to what the spirit was saying.

[You have acquired a new ability: Essence Bond]

[Essence Bond (0): Permanently bind your essence to that of a spirit's.]

Symon dropped to his knees in the white sand. "P-permanently... I'm going to be stuck with a ghost in my heart forever..."