The base for the Thousand Ghosts was in one of Gene’s slightly less debauched, slightly more upscale red-light districts. Their current home away from home, was a big building.

Judging from the huge main room, its curtains, its seating, and the ceiling mounts where the video projectors must have once sat, it might have once been an old world theatre. Either that or a hotel.

All that really mattered when they were buying it was that it was private and sturdy and had enough rooms for their growing organization to support new members and house those who’d yet to get their own places to stay. As well as spaces for meetings  and training.

The Thousand Ghosts returned here after coming away from their seemingly successful talks with the Bone Tree Company. Though nothing was down on paper yet or written in stone, it looked like the plan was going to go through.

The boss was happy, which meant everyone else was happy too, because the man’s moods were fairly infectious. Possibly because he was also a big believer in misery loving company.

Matthew was in one of the break rooms, zoning out in front of an old recording of an old world cartoon. A cigarette dangling from his lips. He watched the lieutenant known as the Tyrant Queen, walking down the hall in one direction.

Then fifteen minutes later, she walked back in the other direction. A duffle bag slung across her shoulder. He would have let it pass, without comment or interest, but then he saw the boss sprinting.

Running in the direction that she’d gone. Curiosity got Matthew up off of the couch. He and several other members of the Thousand Ghost peeped and eavesdropped on the conversation that was being carried on by the Boss and one of his senior lieutenants. Listening from various place. He, Matthew, was one of the few who could dare do so openly.

The boss was wearing his sad and glad face, the paternalistic one he wore when he was playing the role of a mentor and caretaker. The Tyrant Queen wasn’t wearing any face at all. When they were on the job she wore her mask and when she wasn’t wearing her mask,  her face ‘was’ a mask.

Wooden and unmoving until it was suddenly not. The perfect kind of face to hide her extreme levels of impassioned madness. Which was yet another reason why Matthew had ended up putting that tall guy from the Bone Tree Company in his list of people to handle with caution.

“Are you sure about this?” said Jermaine.

“....Kinda.” said the

“Are you really sure?” said Jermaine.

“Pretty much.” said the Tyrant Queen.

“No way I can talk you out of this, girl?”

“....Mhm….Annoying.” said the Tyrant Queen.

Jermaine just chuckled, scratching at the side of his cheek.

“Well, girl. I can’t say it wasn’t a blast having you around. Go with the gods, girl. May the Trixter look after you. And if you ever need us know that the Thousand Ghosts have got your back.”

“Thanks...Right back at you, Jerry.”

“You know I hate that name.” said Jermaine. Breaking out of character with a small chagrined, grin.

The Tyrant Queen walked off with Thespian Gray, boss of the Thousand Ghosts staring after her. Matthew called out to his boss.

“Hey, what the hell’s happening, Jermaine?”

“Tyrant Queen just quit the Gang.”

Not a word was said, you could hear a pin drop. You could hear the rats fornicating in the walls.

“Fuck... Are you for real?”

“Yeah, it’s cool. I know where she is if we need her. Same for her. Once a ghost, always a ghost.” said Jermaine. Looking a little lonely as he returned to his office.

*****

Rewind to three hours ago. Shortly after the big meet and greet between the boss of the Thousand Ghosts and the bosses and sole members of the Bone Tree Company.

Jermaine had already gone his own way, accompanied by his aides. The other members of the Thousand Ghosts slowly leaving the bistro after finishing their meals. With everyone having some errand or the other to do.

Edna and Billy, of the Bone Tree Company, were no different. They had other plans today as well, though theirs were mainly of the resting and meditation variety. They were headed home towards their part of the city, when suddenly they heard some footsteps trailing their own.

They both stopped and when they turned around they found a young woman in a swirly white mask, and a crown. In her hands was a trident with an explosive spell stamped onto the other end. Their hackles went up almost immediately.

Edna had a gun in her hand before she’d even really thought about it. The AW already pointing at the stranger before a second had gone by.

“I’m not sure what you want, but if I were you, I walk away before I have a very bad day.” said Edna.

The mask fell, the crown fell, the trident fell, and then the girl lunged. This would have been the point where Edna did her best to give the strange assailant some new not-so-healthy holes, but Billy’s hand on her arm, made Edna hesitate.

She froze just long enough for the stranger to come in close, and by then it was too late. Billy was knocked off his feet and tackled to the ground. Time slowed and then sped up again.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Edna whirled around, a set of three AWs hovering over her head, trained on the head of the figure that was on top of her Billy. She was going to shoot but she heard Billy shouting. Billy who never shouted was shouting. Saying,

“It’s okay! It’s okay! Everything’s okay!”

The girl was shouting too, saying the same words over and over and over.

“It’s you. It’s you. It’s you. It’s you. It’s you. It’s you. It’s you. It’s you. It’s you. It’s you. It’s you.”

*****

Rewind back even further. Way back. Back to Garland.  Back to when the Maddoc clan still had good leadership in the form of one Cassius Maddoc.

Back to when Billy was still just as young as he looked. Back to when he was just a shy, stupid, little kid. The youngest part of a junior triumvirate. A group of three friends that started with Billy who always hated being pulled into trouble. Was Moderated by Edna, who’d secretly loved trouble. And was led by the other one, who was pretty much trouble personified.

Their hyperactive, charismatic leader. A protagonist-esque individual who would rightly later awake to a protagonist-esque power. They would get into endless types of trouble and have endless types of fun.  

Their childhoods, both manic and depressive in equal measure. Filled with adventure and wildly brilliant for the time that the three of them were together. Then Cassius died and Edna’s father, Linas was hung out to dry for the family’s sake.

The cruelest thing that could ever happen to a hero would be for them turn around and find themselves turned into a villain. One unfortunate young girl would find this out. She’d learn it right around the same time that she got to find out that a villain’s child was also a villain. Implicated and stained by their parent’s sin.

Marked as dangerous and someone to be wary of by those who stood by the side, watching them. Making comments about things that they didn’t really know about. It would have been fine if things only stopped there.

Though the change in fortunes had caused a stop their adventures and forced two of the friends to distance themselves as they were hurriedly pushed towards adulthood, the three would have eventually made up. And once they made up things would have been better.

Unfortunately it wasn’t meant to be, the triumvirate was broken. The youngest, the one she’d loved to tease, and kiss and bully, was tragically lost during a bandit attack.

Similar to the one that took his parents. The peacemaker was lost, traumatized and for a time locked within her own mind. Rendered catatonic by the memories of what happened to her family and what had happened to her the sole survivor.

The young Protagonist could only sit by the wayside, seeing to her care. Availing on her demon of a daddy to see that the girl she’d called friend was treated instead of discarded. Begging for the best healers and medicine their money could buy, so that her second best friend could at least be whole in body if not in mind.

Fortunately for both of them, in those days even that demon, Brutus Maddoc had a soft spot. That soft spot was his daughter. She loved him, he loved her, it was a pure thing. Perhaps the only pure thing about the man.

Back then she could ask him for anything. The only price was that she be his little girl. His little star. His little scion. A cause for pride, a thing to brag about. A thing to further his status.

The one surviving friend would be seen to with no thought for cause if she did all this. Winning every contest. Acing every test. Flying high enough that even real wings would burn.

Friendship between the remaining two members of the triumvirate was made impossible because the price of the healing was the heroine’s endless toil. She went to tutors and trained in armies and eventually joined a certain academy with a certain tighty relationship with a certain sect.

All for her friend’s convalescence. All for her father’s glory.  He pushed and she pushed and together they pushed ten times harder and faster then they should have  

Then the impossible happened and her mother gave birth.

The mother that wasn’t her mother, because her real mother was some, long forgotten, half-orc woman, who smelled strongly of perfume. Working in one of those houses that were often visited by lusty noblemen, wandering merchants and soldiers on leave.

Just like that the string was cut. The Father who’d taken all that he could take, let go, now that he had a fine proper heir. Pushed into doing so by his shrew of a wife. By this point the friend was forgotten, by this point everything was forgotten.

By this point flying high was all that young heroine knew anymore and without that strong she went out of control. Like a kite let loose she was carried off by wind and again like a kite she was dropped.

There was a fight, and a scandal and there was blood. They took her arm. They took her arm, they took her leg,  and they broke something inside her. She was discarded. She should have died, she wished she’d died, but there was that damn power.

It wouldn’t let her die. It kept her heart beating regardless of what she wished or how hard she wished. It kept her alive no matter what she drank, no matter what she shot into her veins.

She once walked into the sea to see if she’d drown. Something swallowed her but she was still able to come out from the dung heap that resulted and walk to the shore.

Time went by but she wasn’t there to watch it. Bad things happened to her. Bad things were done to her. Eventually though, she started doing bad things back. An Ogre was born and she was well on her way to becoming a demon when a fast talking ghost got her. Tricking her into its service by making use of her very strong, if vestigial sense of right and wrong.

She spent the next three years, being tool, sometimes enjoying it. Enjoying having a focus for her rage. Using that focus to recover a fair portion of her humanity. She’d eventually come to peace with it. She’d made new friends. None quite as good as her first ones but still good all the same.

She laughed. She talked. She learned. She grew stronger. She grew satisfied content. She didn’t need anything else in her life. Or so she thought...then “he” walked in through the door of the bistro. The boy who’d died, accompanied by the girl who’d been shattered.

The boy was different now, She could see it. She’d been far enough, close enough to the edge of everything to see. She was able to look inside him and see it it was still him, but yet it wasn’t him.

A different him. A him that was older and far more vast than the cutie that she’d loved to hug and bully and kiss and tease had been. If she’d been on the edge than he’d gone beyond, past, surpassing it in every way.

If she nearly lost her mind and had to find it, then she imagined that he must have had to build an entirely new one. The whole thing built from the ground up. She imagined doing. She could faintly see what would need to be done, but dared not try it herself. The consequences of failure too scary.

It was like watching the dead walk again. Eerie and strange and utterly mind buggering. If the peacemaker had been shattered and she the leader had been broken and burned, then he, their loveable stooge must have been atomized. Vaporized, reduced to his base components.

At first she doubted her eyes, she doubted her senses, back when things were bad, back before she found herself again she used to fantasize of such things. She’d sit in wretched holes  that stank of piss and shit and fear.

Dreaming of either him, or the other girl, or her father, or her training instructor or one of her father’s nicer mistresses coming to find her. To bring her back home. To help her find her way back, because by then she was already utterly lost.

It was impossible for ‘him’ to be here. He was dead. She knew that. She’d been told that. She’d gone so long believing it to be so.

She hardly remembered it, but she’d even once conversed with his soul when both of them were lost within an icy gray nothing and she was closer to death than she’d ever been before. He couldn’t be here. She couldn’t understand how he could be here.

Then suddenly, true to her nature, she stopped caring too much on the how and simply verified that it was. Once she knew that it was, she could only accept it and once she’d accepted it, her mind was as good as made up. Her actions already as good as decided.

*****

“It’s you…” said the girl, her tears spilling down her cheeks. Her breaths leaving and coming to her, too fast.

“It’s you...It’s you…”

“It’s me I know. It’s okay Elena. It’s okay. I’m okay. You’re mostly okay. Edna’s doing great. Say hi, Ed.”

“....Hi, Ell.” said Edna. Feeling a bit like a side character, in the midst of the two’s reunion.

“Mind getting off me now, Ell? This isn’t very comfortable you know.” said Billy, not quite lying. To remind the girl of where they were.

She got a hold of herself, standing, whilst still quietly crying.

“You’re alive...How? I thought….the bandits…”

“There were bandits, but I was sold to them, not killed by them.”

It wasn’t a big logical leap and even if the devil had loved his daughter, she still eventually came to understand that he “was” indeed a devil afterall. Why there was still love mixed in with the hate, she knew what her father was.

“I’ll kill him!” said Elena, tears still running though her face was now contorted in anger.

“No you won’t. If anyone gets to kill him the order goes Ed and then me and then you. But he still gets to live because it’d hurt ‘you’ more than it’d hurt him. Besides, something tells me he’s not going to get to enjoy himself for very long. Let’s just say the faction that help put him in charge of the family aren’t very business savvy and leave it at that.” said Billy.

“Mhm...Unsatisfying.”

“So much of life generally is, Ell.” said Billy.

She looked pensive and then she sighed, her face smoothing over, the flow of her tears gradually stopping. They sat with her, while they waited for her to get a grip on herself and clean herself up, with Ed lending her a handkerchief.

Then once she’d done so, she looked over at her friends, took a long shuddering breath and laughed the first free laugh, she’d had in seven years. Leaning over and kissing her William full on the lips.

Startling her two friends, who then sat, with complex looks on their faces. She walked a short distance away and then stopped, turning in place, pointing at the two of them.

“You wait right here. I have something I have to do, but I’ll be right back.”