"So then I had no choice," Autumn said in a performative grim voice as she told her story lit by the flickering campfire, "I grabbed him by the suspenders and threw him in the moat!"
Iris made crude splashing sounds from beside Autumn.
"What about the alligators?" Titus gasped.
"His fate was of his own making," Autumn said solemnly, slowly shaking her head.
"They ate him?" Iris asked in shock.
"Unfortunately," Autumn sighed, "no. He rode on the back of one of them until someone threw him a rope, it was actually really cool. I hate that guy."
There were a few more laughs and a few more questions, but the joyous atmosphere soon calmed to a comfortable silence. After a few minutes, Victoria spoke up.
"I have a story," she said.
"Oh?" Autumn asked, "let's hear it!"
"It's from when I was growing up in Everveil. This was before I ever met Eli, and before I even had my first thread. I'd only been through a few years of training at that point, but I had been invited on a monster hunt to observe. Everveil has regions of wilderness that are closely monitored and managed, so it's usually pretty safe to take trainees out there as long you stick to certain parts. Anyway, two of the adventurers with us were low level Heroes, both had only had their powers for a few months, and one of them bet the other that he could take down a wooly hog with his bare hands."
"Oh, I remember this story," Eli smiled fondly as he recalled the details.
"Shh," Autumn said, shoving him slightly.
"Wooly hogs about what you’d expect from the name; big, hairy wild pigs. The instructor knew it wasn’t going to go well, of course," Victoria continued, "but when the two boys actually manage to track down a wooly hog, he looks over at me and whispers 'sometimes it's better to let lessons teach themselves.' So we sit back and watch. One kid's on a tree branch while the other, this scrawny level 3 or 4, marches out in front of a wooly hog twice his size. He stomps and drags his feet in the dirt, and baits the hog into a charge. Of course, as soon as the hog actually charges he immediately panics, turns away and tries to run."
Victoria struggled to contain her smile as she approached the end of the story, "the hog catches up and headbutts him right in the ass. The kid gets picked up and thrown into the air, where he slams right into his friend in the tree and knocks him off the branch. On the way down they both get tangled in vines and stuck hanging upside down. The best part is that we were gonna help them down, but we were laughing so hard the wooly hog turned and started charging at us, so we had to leave them there while we--"
The words froze on Victoria's lips. Her eyes glazed over and she shot to her feet, whipping around to scan the forest's edge beyond the clearing.
"What is it?" Eli asked, grabbing his staff and standing quickly.
Before Victoria could answer, they all saw it. A glowing pale blue specter floated out of the trees. His long flowing robes trailed off into swirling tendrils, as did the long beard that hung from his face. His eyes were glowing an intense white, and long nails extended from his fingertips like claws. He outstretched a hand and pointed at the party.
"Vic," Eli said fearfully, "what is that?"
"I-- I don't know," she stammered, "I mean, it's a specter, but I thought I got them all--"
"You!" a ragged and raspy voice carried across the clearing like a gust of cold wind that extinguished the fire, "you ruined everything!"
"Titus, get a perimeter of spears around us," Eli commanded, "be prepared to blow them if the specter charges us."
Titus nodded and spawned six vertical floating spears of light evenly spaced around the party.
"It's after me," Victoria turned pale purple and translucent as she spoke, her final words echoing like several voices layered over one another, "I'll be back."
"Wait!" Eli shouted, he reached out to grab her but his hand passed through her shoulder as if she wasn't there.
The specter screamed a hideous sound that echoed through the woods, scattering wildlife for a mile and forcing everyone but Victoria to clamp their ears as they winced in pain. Victoria moved instantly, punching off towards the trees away from the specter at an angle that wouldn't draw it near her party. Her spectral form was incorporeal not just to solid matter, but to air as well, and she flew silently through the night without causing so much as a breeze. The specter gave chase.
The ground zoomed by beneath her in a blur and she reached the trees in seconds, she instinctively weaved through the trunks and branches even as the specter gained ground on her. It required a deliberate effort to force herself into a straight line and fly through the trunks rather than around. Her mind screamed at her to avoid them each time, even though she understood she would pass right through. She glanced over her shoulder, the specter was still gaining.
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Back at the camp, Eli was barking orders, "there's no use going after them, we'll never catch up. Titus, keep the spears up. Autumn, Iris, we need a plan to kill that thing if they come back this way. Magic and silver are the only ways."
"I've got nothing that can hurt a ghost," Autumn said.
"Me either," Iris said, and then remember something, "wait!"
She reached into her bottomless bag and grasp the handle of a weapon, pulling it out hand over hand until she reached the blade. It was the glaive a shock wizard had tried to kill her with, the silver blade glimmered in the moonlight. It was unnaturally heavy and her skin tingled where her hands touched the handle.
"I took this from the shock wizard I killed," it was the first time she had said she killed someone so matter-of-factly, and she quickly pushed down the thoughts and emotions that came with that realization, "it's hard to even hold, I don't think I can wield it."
Eli reached out and grasp the polearm handle with a single hand and frowned at the sensation, "that's a Champion's weapon, none of us will be able to use it."
"But Victoria can," Autumn suggested.
Eli nodded, taking the glaive from Iris. He flipped it upside down and drove the blade into the dirt, "you two need to hide, Titus and I will wait here and be ready to fight."
Victoria veered to the left in hopes of shaking her pursuer, but it only served to help him reach her. The specter crashed into her, their incorporeal bodies colliding as if they were physical. They tumbled and rolled through the air, passing through trees and rocks as they grappled. Victoria gripped the wrists of the specter and struggled to hold them back as her attacker reached out with his long, sharp nails. His scream was unending, his face locked in a permanent contortion of rage. His nails grew closer to her throat.
She activated her Soul Cage ability and pulled on the specter's soul even as she desperately held his hands at bay. His scream intensified and his eyes grew even wider. There was no hope of capturing his soul like this, he was too powerful and she was far too weak. The closest nails were about to brush against her.
His scream paused only long enough for him to rasp a few words, "you took my godhood!"
She shifted back to her physical form, instantly slipping free of the specter's grasp as his hands and arms passed through her flesh. A chill shot through her veins and she felt half her mana drain in an instant from the specter’s touch. The momentum of her spectral form carried over to her physical body, but without flight she quickly arced towards the ground. He grabbed at bones, but she fell out of reach before he found purchase. She twisted in the air to land in a backwards sliding crouch, but her foot caught on a root and tripped her into an awkward backwards roll. She soon salvaged the unplanned tumble and landed once again in a crouch, just as the specter completed a circle overhead and swooped low to charge her.
If it touched her again, it would take the last of her mana. It might even possess her. She knew she had to time this perfectly. She stared down the specter as it rocketed towards her with arms outstretched and still maintaining a perpetual scream. A last second shift to her spectral form dropped her beneath the surface just as the specter would have reached her. Its screech became muffled and her vision went black.
She activated her auravision and the pitch blackness of the soil she phased through was replaced with glowing auras of the tiny organisms, insects, fungi and plant life within it. Stronger, individual auras flew by in blurs as she moved at speed, while crossing large swaths of collective auras was like flying through clouds. She moved through the frequencies of her auravision and scanned until she saw the distant but unmistakable glow of her companions' auras, then oriented herself towards them. A glance behind her revealed the specter's aura chasing after her and quickly gaining.
"There!" Titus shouted as he spotted Victoria's spectral form rise out of the ground in the distance.
Just behind her was the specter, the volume of his scream suddenly increasing as he rose from the ground. They flew in a wide arc around the camp, circling the clearing as the specter closed the gap between them.
"Now!" Eli shouted.
Titus outstretched an open palm towards the specter and the floating spears of light were flung forward into horizontal flight. Titus spun in place with his hand outstretched as the spears joined the circle to chase the specter, while the specter in turn chased Victoria. Eli tracked ahead of Victoria with his staff, charged a blast of red magic and released it into the night sky. The magic bolt bathed the space around it in an ominous red light as it streaked across the clearing. The bolt passed between Victoria and the Specter, just a few feet ahead of its target, and slapped into a tree in the distance.
One of the flying spears of light grew near to the specter and exploded in a blast like pure white lightning, blowing the specter off his trajectory from force alone as large sparks of light reached out from the explosion to strike at him. He dodged the strikes, further losing ground on Victoria. Eli released another blast, this time catching the slowed specter in the head. The resulting explosion was dominated by red hues from the bolt, with undertones of pale blue as the specter's head erupted into wisps of magic. The headless specter tumbled through the air momentarily, but did not stop. It recovered quickly and banked to fly towards Eli and Titus. Rather than give chase with the remaining spears of light and risk skewering himself or an ally, Titus diverted them into the ground and conjured a new one in his hands.
Eli didn't have a visual on Victoria, but he hoped she was paying attention. He pulled the glaive from the ground and hoisted the heavy weapon awkwardly over his head, holding the blade out towards the specter as it closed in on him. When the specter was only feet away, Victoria shot past over his head, shifting from spectral to physical form just as her hands reached out to grasp the handle of the polearm. Her momentum carried her forward, ripping the glaive from Eli's loose grip as she met the specter in the air and buried the blade in his chest.
The spectral form turned to cold, solid flesh where the silver blade touched it. The colliding momentums of the combatants pushed the blade through the tough flesh to erupt out the specter's back. In an instant the specter's entire torso had turned to flesh, and slid down the length of the polearm to slam into Victoria. With their momentum canceled out, the two dropped to the ground. Victoria landed on her feet and moved her grip to the rear of the handle to move the headless corpse away from her. It was now fully flesh, and its hands gripped tight around the polearm as it died for good.