The hut served as their current place of business. It was an old brick building with only one room, probably because the owners had abandoned it before finishing the inside walls. It had no door. They used it as a place to store all the charms they collected, since no one wanted the associated remnants bothering them all day. They were kept in an earthenware pot over to one corner of the hut. It was a typical piece of pottery in both color and shape, though it was painted with misspelt kanji for decoration.

Next to the vase, there were several unopened bottles of prune juice sitting on an old-timey woven blanket. On the wall above them was soviet style poster of a tiny old woman holding her arms out—Captioned simply, “Grandma loves you.” Similar posters were scattered about the rest of the hut: “Give granny a kiss”; “I’m too old for sports, dear”; “I’m not dying ‘till you get married.”

On the other side of the room, away from the remnants loitering near the pot, there was a plastic tarp they used for sitting and on it there lay a stack of pamphlets titled, “Get to know your grandparents!” in colorful lettering. Floating above the tarp, there was a pair of knitting needles, filling the otherwise silent room with a soft, clicking sound as they knit a sweater out of a nearby pile of yarn.

Luckily, spirits never seemed to be offended by the sparseness of their surroundings (or the extensive grandma memorabilia) when they came over for business; most of them didn’t see much of a point in luxury, it seemed.

Dan was already inside, sitting encircled by blueprints, when Sarah and Nathan came in.

“Dan!”

“Welcome back! I was just—”

“All of you will die,” interrupted an emotionless monotone,

“And hell shall seem to you a mercy. Grievance demands retribution.”

Spirits, no matter how they may appear, are always in pursuit of a single desire. To them, this desire is an almost carnal pleasure they will chase after unfailingly. The life of a spirit is, in summary, the eternal pursuit of their own unique brand of hedonism.

The spirit that had just spoken seemed to enjoy attempting to inflict mental anguish. It followed the trio often, splitting its time between them. It had the vaguely disturbing shape of a grey balloon, floating absolutely still a few feet above the ground.

The harassment had been going on for years. The balloon's behaviour was strangely formulaic, after its initial long winded monologue about how they had been destroying human souls when using the remnants and faced divine punishment, whenever it appeared it would usually spout out some ominous one liner followed by one of its taglines: “Defilers are in turn defiled,” “Grievance demands retribution,” and most famously, “The cloak of delusion protects not the damned.”

“Frankly, I haven’t been able to take that thing seriously since it spooked me in the shower that one time,” said Dan abruptly. The surprise had caused him to slip and fall, injuring his shoulder. Since then, he’d been quietly seething at the thing, but the absurdity of the situation had wiped away most of his fear.

“Honestly! That thing is just the worst! If we were any worse at using Sight we might actually believe this garbage, and then where would be? At home crying?” Sarah complained.

“Your fate defies escape. The cloak of delusion protects not the damned.”

“And having to listen to this bullshit all day long fucks with my head even if I know it isn’t true! The stupid thing is vauge enough about the whole thing that it sometimes scores a hit and it makes me miserable for hours and then I feel bad for falling for it! DAMN IT!”

“Eternity awaits. Grievance demands retribution,” It said, seeming to pounce on her weakness. Sarah felt like it had a smug expression at getting a rise out of her, but she was sure it was just her imagination as balloons didn’t really have faces.

At this point, Bitey came into the room and the Balloon left. Humans could neither meaningfully touch nor bespell spirits and the rule held vice versa. Both humans and spirits could do whatever they could get away with to their own kind, and Bitey, while generally loving, was in no way a fan of the Balloon.

Nathan shot Sarah a sympathetic look while Dan looked on in obvious discomfort, he was neither good at dealing with displays of emotion, nor particularly bothered by the Ballon. It mostly left him alone after the shower incident. Both of them gave her a minute to compose herself.

“A spirit came by while you two were out,” Dan started tentatively.

“Besides the... you know?” replied Nathan.

“Yup, one of the ones that can talk well too. He said he’d heard about us through the “rumor mill” and that he wanted to do business.”

“If he wants to do business, we should probably ask him about it when we talk,” Sarah contributed, “We already know there’s some other magic group nearby, but we don’t really know anything else. Spirits don’t usually have loose lips, which is good for us too, I suppose.”

“Did he mention any specifics?” Nathan asked.

Most spirits took mana from the remnants as barter, It made them smarter and expanded their awareness. Remnants count as men, which spirits are unable to interact with until they dissolve into mana naturally; this is a process that takes a long and variable amount of time and spirits generally don’t want to spend their time babysitting remnants for several weeks at minimum. Humans, though, can grind remnants into mana immediately.

“He said he had an unusual arrangement in mind, that he didn’t want to barter with mana. There was also something about buying his services on a case by case basis.”

“So, something like Grandma, but hopefully without all of... this?” asked Nathan, gesturing vaguely to the rest of the room.

Grandma was the eccentric spirit that gave them Knit in exchange for a few remnants worth of mana and a small percentage of any profits obtained therefrom. Of course, they had to be the ones to spend it for her, since spirits could neither carry money or talk to people.

Grandma’s goal was apparently to become a celebrity grandmother. It was a weird thing to want even for spirits, and honesty, it was suspiciously in line with her spell, which usually had nothing to do with whatever it was the spirit wanted. Despite her eccentricities she was very nice and easy to work with. While not quite famous yet, spirit-wise, she was probably living the dream. Pictures of the fliers she’d made them give out had even been shared all over the internet! She had a disgustingly satisfied expression for days afterwards.

“I guess. He agreed to a meeting tomorrow at noon; we’ll see then.”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Right, that’s sorted. I’d like to try using Shape now. Pass me the stuff?” said Nathan.

Dan passed him a metal cube.

“Try making the gear on this blueprint would you? I’ve emailed some car repair shops and this seems to be the simplest thing that we might conceivably sell any of.”

Nathan sent a pulse of mana to the ring on his finger and activated Shape. Instantly he felt his awareness expand. Spells usually felt like gaining another limb, they were clunky at first, but with practice you could refine them. Having a lot of widely different and interchangeable limbs probably wasn’t too healthy. They’d thought about how this worked in their brains, but concluded that however it was it was probably harmless enough since other magic users existed and they were totally fine—presumably, that is.

He tried to mold the metal using his newfound power, and having felt a large drain on his personal mana almost immediately, he started to use up the remnant in the needle charm that was still safely wrapped up in his bag.

After a minute or so, he had obtained a… gear-like object. The body had multiple ingressed bits and the teeth were of really inconsistent size. After several more attempts. Sarah suggested he try making sticks of fixed length. Each rod came out a different length. It seemed he couldn’t really make anything to a tighter tolerance than 1 or 2 inches, which was unacceptable for car parts. Suffice to say, they were terribly disappointed with.

As Nathan put the half used needle charm into the pot with the others, he took a moment to consider how overcharged they’d been when they bought the spell. They’d let slip to the spirit that they wanted it—badly. The spirit had charged them thrice what they usually paid, and what they got in return appeared to be a cool, but basically unusable Spell.

“That took a lot more mana than the test run with wood. Much slower too,” said Dan.

“Guess we're sticking with knitting. It’s a mana hog but what can you do?”

Knit used a remnant or two a day and made about as many sweaters. They had a lot of remnants stored up when they acquired the spell, but by now they had already mostly cleared out the town and had to mill around waiting for someone new to die. The obituaries really helped with keeping track. All in all they’d managed to earn four thousand or so dollars in the year they had Knit available, but that was mostly during the first few weeks. Nevertheless, it made them sure that they could do this for a living, if only they put in the effort to get the right spells, or if they found a way to gather more remnants.

“Maybe we could make some furniture, or strangely shaped food if it works better on softer stuff? I’m sure there’s a use for this thing!” Dan said optimistically, even though all of them knew no one would want to buy lumpy furniture or ameboid steak.

They hung out a bit after that. Joking around while sitting on the tarp. Dan left first, saying he had to send some apology emails to business who he’d promised to send samples to before he forgot.

After a bit, Nathan turned to Sarah.

“We should probably get going too, it’s late out.”

“Yeah,” sighed Sarah.

“I know you don’t like Bitey overly much, but do you want to take him home with you? I’m sure he’d be happy to bark at the Balloon some more.”

Bitey nodded, keeping his mouth tactfully shut.

“Sure.” said Sarah.

----------------------------------------

Near the end of the woods, Sarah tripped.

“Defilers are in turn defiled.”

Bitey growled, and Sarah looked upwards. The balloon was there, floating above them. Bitey lunged at it. He could jump two or three meters high, but the balloon floated higher. How physics worked with regards to spirits was ever a mystery. On a whim she activated Sight.

“The coat of delusion protects not the damned,” warned the Balloon.

It said that same line every time she used Sight near it. She couldn’t say it didn’t bother her. She was the best at using the spell amongst the trio, much to Nathan’s chagrin. He only used it for the basics, and Dan didn’t really practice magic in his spare time. Using any spell would give you the ability to see spirits to some extent, but Sight made it much clearer, and if you practiced, you could see more beyond.

It let you see a lot of things: emotions, memories, thoughts, desires, even intentions. The experience was akin to synesthesia, really. She’d always liked the spell, using it often even in her spare time. After the balloon had appeared, she used it compulsively. Always checking for anything out of the ordinary in the remnants. The results were always the same, decaying memories. No intent, no thoughts, but the notion that she might not be seeing the full picture persisted, even though she had been as thorough as humanly possible. She was an anxious person by nature.

When she looked at the balloon now, she could only make out its intent. It disturbed her. Did the balloon really not have emotion? Was it hiding them somehow? Was whatever intent was, metaphysically speaking, sufficient to explain its behaviour? If she couldn’t even read the Balloon fully, was she wrong about the remnants?

The others weren’t bothered by these thoughts, as they couldn’t use Sight as well as her. She didn’t share her thoughts on the Balloon, even though she knew they’d most likely take it in stride.

“I have been sent to collect the damned,” it said on the day it had appeared and never again.

Seeing the Balloon always played with her emotions, and right now her anxiety changed to anger and anger to hatred.

“I’m going to kill you; you’ll be gone forever, unable to bother anyone ever again. You’ll have achieved nothing, ending up as nothing but spare mana in a spell, and I’ll know that your whole spiel about damnation had been a lie all along, since I doubt you’ll be collecting souls from beyond the grave,” she said. It was a habit that made her feel a bit better, at least for a little while. She knew that hatred was not a healthy way to deal with her emotions, but that was all she could think of. She figured that was about as good a threat as she could give the thing.

The intent behind the threat was very real, but humans could barely even touch spirits, and even then only lightly while channeling mana. If she could harm the stupid thing, she would’ve done so already. Spirits generally refused to kill each other, she’d tried to convince a few, but they found her offerings wanting in proportion to the task. She didn’t think the balloon would harm her even if it could. After all, that would ruin the game.

“Damnation is inevitable. The cloak of delusion protects not the damned.” it called out as Sarah faded into the distance, continuing the trek back home.