Veiled Machinations(1)
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My eyes were fixed on the hands of the antiue-ish clock to the right of my bed, after keeping this up for three hours the ticking hands on the device finally centered on the appointed time. Rising from the soft comfort of the welcoming bed, I made my way over to the window on the opposite end of the room, for something so intricately designed, it was surprisingly easy to open.
Climbing through the window I made my way into the open space, the cold night air rustled both my clothes and hair in a sudden updraft. The moon cast a silvery glow on the surroundings, revealing a landscape shrouded in shadows. As I stood there, the echo of distant city sounds, and nocturnal creatures created a haunting symphony in the background. Jumping off the high-rise construct, my feet landed firmly on the lawn cut grass, sending the rippling shockwaves from the impact running up my body, but after reinforcing my body with mana the rash motion I'd taken just now had little in the way of any lasting effects. Being outside when the land was covered in a shroud of cascading darkness felt strangely nostalgic, it was the perfect way to set the stage for what I was about to engage in. After adjusting my vision, the world once again took on a monotone color scheme, and what awaited me on the other side of my own concentration was a scenery that filled me with even more nostalgia.
Roaming the streets right now were countless silhouettes emitting an azure glow, they passed me by on each street, parading around and engaging in all manners of horseplay that only I would ever witness. No matter how loud they got, no one would ever hear them for they weren’t beings that belonged to this realm. These silhouettes had no shadow or legs, they simply floated above ground as they made their way through the now empty streets of Zale.
“Look, that kid over there, he’s staring at us!”
“He’s a druid.”
“Where?”
“For real?”
It seems my presence had been discovered by sone of the passing specters, after noticing my gaze fixed on him, and the unconscious smile on my face, the ghastly specter drew closer.
“Y-you...can you see us?” The man pointed to himself out of shock.
“Yeah, I can see all of you.”
The moment those words left my lips a crowd of these specters had immediately assembled in front of me, firing off an endless torrent of questions and queries that I just couldn’t attend to right now.
“Sorry I’m in a rush, I can’t help you all right now, but I’ll come back some other time. There’s someone I'm looking for. Do any of you know the old swordsman that used to live here? He hasn’t been dead for very long.”
A brief moment of silence followed my question.
“Ohh you mean that old guy, he always stops down this main road around this time, you shoul-”
“Thanks!”
I darted off the moment I confirmed my own suspicions. I already had a vague feeling he would still be somewhere around here, but the confirmation I got just now only served to cement that fact. I raced down the brick laden street that had become all too familiar to me at this point, I’d been here countless times over the past few weeks so there wasn’t the slightest hint of uncertainty in my mind right now. ‘He’ would definitely be at that spot.
My bare feet slammed onto the stubby road one after the other, creating a strange symphony of ‘pitter-patters’ to echo from behind me, the harder I ran and the further I went that strange sound only seemed to increase its intensity, almost as if it was trying to match my pace. The eeriness of the now empty town was exaggerating the sound effects of my sprinting motions, the echoes travelled along the alleys and branches of the main road I was now sprinting down. The closer I got to my destination, the more familiar the scenery unveiling before my eyes became - The plants, trees, buildings and intersections were all things I'd taken careful note of in the past but now that my destination was in sight, a single oddity began to stand out.
No – Calling it an oddity wouldn’t exactly be right, it was always here, he was always here, even from the very first time I’d visited this place. Firmly placing my right foot in front of me, it began acting as a sort of anchor to my momentum as I abruptly halted my sprinting charge. The backlash for using up all my stamina in one go just now was starting to catch up to me, I slumped forward, placing both hands on my knees and began concentrating on controlling the series of ragged breaths now leaving my mouth.
“Haah....haaah...haaah...”
Even in my current state, the figure floating right in front of me paid no heed to my perilous condition. He was staring at the stall in front of him, almost as if he was lost in a tranquil daze. After finally catching my breath, I stood upright, allowing the beads of sweat on my forehead to effortlessly glide off.
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“Nice to meet you, Lennon Ashwell.”
A few seconds after those words reached him, his eyes widened, and his neck slowly turned to face me like it was operating on rusty gears.
“You...you can see me?”
“Yeah, I’ve come all the way here to meet with you.”
“Meet me? I don’t think we’ve ever met before child. Who are you?”
A more appropriate name came to mind, but that wasn’t the role I was serving right now.
“I’m Liam, Emma’s little brother.”
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Certain rules from my old world still applied to this one.
The first thing that struck me was how the souls here operated. Souls were hardly active during the daytime; if they were active any at all, they would be reduced to small orbs of light that aimlessly floated around with no sentience behind their actions. During these hours the majority of them were confined to the realm of the dead, the place housing the souls of the damned - ‘Limbo’.
After nightfall, during the hours of two a.m. to four a.m., the boundary between the realm of the living and the dead was at its weakest, that was a coveted rule in my old world, and it seemed to hold even more weight here. Given the number of regretful souls I saw floating around just now, the boundary keeping the world of the living and the dead separated was far weaker here. I couldn’t say for sure why that was, but something was certainly amiss here.
It was during these opportune hours that the souls with particularly strong desires would cross over into the world of the living and regain some semblance of their original appearance as well as their sense of self through their lingering attachments. A soul without any lingering attachments couldn’t take on their original form and they didn’t remain in the realm of mortals for very long either, they simply just passed on.
Still, even though souls couldn’t act with any sentience during the daytime, their unconscious actions were still being guided by old habits, which was why they tended to linger and lurk around the places they held strong attachments to when they were alive.
I noticed it the first time I came to this stall, even in broad daylight Emma was being orbited by one particular soul. No matter how many times I revisited the place, that looming soul was always close to her. It was even following her around town, with the only exemption being places that were too far from this exact location. It made sense for wandering souls to be attracted to someone like Julia because of her strong life force, but Emma on the other hand was a completely different case. She was just a regular human girl, one that couldn’t even use magic, let alone compare to a druid in terms of her life force. The only thing extraordinary about Emma was her cooking skills, and yet, that one soul was only interested in following her around, not Julia.
That soul had in fact belonged to this man, Emma’s father, Lennon Ashwell.
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“Emma’s little brother?....” Lennon absent-mindedly repeated my own words.
“Ah!” It was only after a few seconds had passed that I finally realized the absurdity behind my own statement, Emma had made me repeat that line so many times over the past two weeks that it was now being cemented in my memory. Julia was right, that girl really was making me learn from her.
“Emma doesn’t have a little brother.....wait, are you telling me Beatrice has found another man already!? It’s only been a year! Or wait...maybe time is passing differently for me since I'm dead now....” After clutching his intangible face in a panic, Lennon started to speculate on and on in an effort to rationalize my existence.
“Calm down, I’m four years old there’s no way she’d have a child as big as me in that short period of time.”
My reasoning had somehow got through to him, he paused for a minute before coming up with yet another absurd theory-
“So that means time is passing normally for me then, so that means.....infidelity!? Has this been going on the whole time, even while I was alive? But that would mean....”
Despite his initial stoic impression, his actual personality was a far cry from the stoic demeanor he initially projected. This man seemed to go off on endless tangents at the drop of a hat, it was similar to how Oliver acted when talking about magic, but the conditions necessary to trigger Lennon’s self-centered ramblings seemed a lot more vague. I’d have to tread this conversation carefully, or else we’d both end up just wasting time here.
“Ahem, sorry for the misunderstanding, allow me to reintroduce myself. My name is Liam Rocco, I’m friends with your daughter Emma.”
“Emma is twelve years old you know, aren’t you a little too young to be friends with her?”
“Is that really what you want to ask after finally getting the chance to speak with someone that’s still alive?”
My question just now must have sparked something in his mind, he finally turned to face me head on, so this was in fact signaling the actual start of our conversation.
“Liam, was it? You’ve got my attention kid. The fact that you can see and converse with a wandering soul like me must mean you're not just some ordinary brat. You’re not human, are you?”
“You could say that, I am part druid though.”
A thin smile appeared on his transparent visage; he floated over to me before staring me down and posing his next question -
“So, what brings you here? I’m sure didn’t sneak out bare feet, in your pajamas and ran all the way here just to have a friendly chat.” His tone had now grown more serious, and in response to the tension now in his voice, my face formed an unconscious smile.
“I’ll keep this brief; who killed you?”