Seth’s fingers slipped on the smooth cloth around the body several times before he managed to work the knot his dad had tied loose. He threw back the cover and saw a mangled but familiar face.

“What happened?” Levi asked, worried. “What are you wearing?”

Seth didn’t answer, too deep in his own thoughts. The body was Landon’s. Of course. Why else would there be a corpse with pure Loss essence. But what had just happened? Why was he wearing the ghost’s clothes?

He couldn’t jump to conclusions. There were many aspects of ghosts that weren’t well studied. He just needed to go to the jungle clearing. Seth spun around and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” Levi tried to walk with Seth, but misjudged the doorway with a thud.

Seth was already halfway up the stairway by the time his dad made it to the landing. He ignored Levi and made a beeline out of the basement and off the temple grounds. As he approached the south gate, Seth realized that he didn’t know where Sheldon was, but he didn’t want to wait.

Impatient climbing a stairway in the wall a little ways from the gate, Seth approached one of the guards on duty.

“I need to go through the gate right now.” He said to the thin man.

“Sheldon’s on a rest day.” The guard replied. “We’d need the guard captain to approve a request to get him or another guard to escort you.”

“Thought so.” Seth replied with a sigh. This was going to hurt. “Sorry, but I’m in a hurry.”

He dove off the far side of the wall, hearing a shout of surprise behind him. There were no bushes below to break his fall, regular patrols of soldiers kept the jungle held back a hundred feet from the walls. Having no prior experience with long falls, Seth landed badly on his arm, which bent the wrong direction.

Seth screamed in pain, but the agony was already beginning to diminish. He forced his arm back into the right position, still screaming, and the incredible regeneration that his heightened Virtue gave him swiftly took care of the injury. Half a minute later, Seth managed to stumble to his feet and run into the jungle.

Belatedly, there was shouting from the wall behind him. The guards hadn’t expected him to get up from the fall so easily. Priests usually healed others and tended to stay out of harm's way, so their impressive personal regenerative capacity wasn’t widely known.

Seth ran headlong into the jungle as fast as he could, but clipped a tree with his shoulder after a few hundred feet and went down hard. Unsteadily getting back to his feet, he continued at a slightly more reasonable pace. After running for half an hour without stopping, he finally reached the clearing.

He stopped for a moment to catch his breath. Virtue essence had kept him going, but he was still out of shape. Tomorrow wouldn’t be fun. Scanning the clearing, Seth saw no sign of Landon. He pushed out his Virtue essence. Nothing. He listened with his new ability. Nothing but background noise.

Slowly walking over to the tree Landon always leaned on, Seth could feel the tight feeling in his gut getting worse. His eyes ached, but his healing had no effect. The energy that had been pushing him forward faded away, and Seth felt hollow.

He fell back against the tree and slid down, or tried to. Something on his back shifted, and he instead fell sideways into the dirt. Seth laid there for a minute staring sideways at a boulder. Finally working his way into a sitting position, he pulled the straps of the ghostly backpack off his shoulders and leaned against the tree.

Seth ran his hands over the unnaturally smooth material of the backpack. He hugged it to his chest and absentmindedly fiddled with the smooth plastic symbol on the front while staring into space, thinking about absolutely nothing.

____________________________________________

The first signal was the sound. A discordant, resonant clack that few people lived to fear. The sound of two smooth magnets striking one another over and over and over. Not a loud sound, not in a jungle, but one quite at odds with the organic landscape of rustling, screeching, and dripping.

The young man sitting in the jungle clearing didn’t notice.

The second signal was the silence. An unlikely, eerie stillness that had no place in the lush jungle. A jungle that dared not make a whisper as something new stalked the trees.

The young man enjoyed the moment of quiet, picking at his odd blue-white clothes.

There was no third signal. The young man barely glimpsed it as it entered the clearing.

It did not ‘see’ him. It did not ‘see’ anything. It did not need to. The black body of stony flesh and white-specked crystal had no eyes, nor ears, nor nose, but it had a vestigial mouth. And three strange limbs with too many joints. The tail was the longest, hooked and prehensile, while the arms were short and had no claws. It had claws enough in the forest of crystal needles that clogged its rough flesh.

The young man felt them as they tore through his arms before he could do anything. His bone was exposed within moments, but his flesh quickly began to heal. It began to slash at his torso. The washed out fabric was tough, but soon the sternum was exposed. The bone dust drifted into its hungry needles.

It couldn’t hear the screaming, but the scout could. He alerted the search party before following the sound. Entering the clearing, the scout saw as it wound its tail around the young man’s arm, scraping away more dust on which to feed. The scout whispered his last word, “Ain.”

Drawing his dagger, he crept towards it. It had known he was there before the scout had even seen it, but it didn’t care. The scout jumped forward and grabbed it with both arms, dragging it away from the incoherent young man and trying to drive his weapon into its mouth. The tail whipped along his leg, opening a deep, thin cut that ran from the back of his thigh to his lower spine.

The scout rolled with it away from the clearing, thousands upon thousands of crystal needles piercing through his leather armor and into his flesh, tearing off great gobbets. This man didn’t scream, his dagger continuing to scrabble across the thick flesh seeking purchase. It tried to move away, but the scout didn’t let it. He let go of his useless weapon and grabbed one of its arms, hampering its mobility.

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Three more men arrived in the clearing, led by a short, grizzled guard with a buckler and a shortsword. He pointed the other two to the young man lying in front of a tree, and positioned himself between them and the Ain. The scout’s efforts failed as it bristled its crystals and tore away most of his arm, freeing itself. Its progress back to the young man was impeded by the defender now between them.

It paused, then backed up to the scout who was trying to get to his feet. This time, its tail went deep, slicing open the abdomen and snaking through the hole in the pelvic bone. The scout finally screamed. It launched itself at the defender, who locked his back leg and caught it on his shield, rotating with its momentum to throw it to the side.

It hit a boulder, which cracked. Undeterred, it shot forward and was rebuffed the same way. This time however, it struck the defender’s unprotected arm. The man had been paying attention to its tail, so it used one of its own arms, targeting a gap between bones.

The razor-sharp needles effortlessly passed through the flesh of his arm, pliable enough to scrape the elbow down to the bone. The lower part of the defender’s right arm hung loose now, dangling by a patch of skin that had been the elbow.

The scout’s screaming had stopped, and the other two men had quieted the young man. The defender shouted into the quiet jungle.

“Retreat!”

It almost did, though it had no reason to, so forceful was the command it couldn’t hear. In the brief pause, Seth got his wits about him enough to start healing the defender as the group of four backed out of the clearing. It followed, shredding more and more of the defender’s flesh with each engagement. Then, after a few dozen agonizingly slow feet, it stopped. It backed away, and within moments, was gone.

____________________________________________

Guard Captain Samira scowled at the south gate. She’d known the cultists weren’t done causing trouble, and now they needed to ascertain what this new problem was. The young acolyte, now Priest, who had been doing surprisingly diligent work ameliorating the potential issues in the jungle was now being influenced somehow by one of the bodies.

The other two Priests were standing a few feet away, along with a tenth of the town’s garrison. Apparently, while purifying a body with a high concentration of Loss essence, there had been a reaction, and the boy was covered in manifested Loss.

The Priests had explained that Loss essence exposure caused immediate emotional destabilization, and could lead to other issues over time. Fortunately, Sheldon, the quiet yet reliable guard that had been accompanying Seth, said he knew where the boy had most likely gone.

“They’ve returned!” One of the lookouts on the walls shouted, then swore, “Bastard kings, that’s a lot of blood! They’re injured!”

Samira squinted up at him, taking a moment to figure out his name. Ah, Chandler, of course. She would have words with him about making political allusions while on duty later. Regardless of his thoughts on King Tomas Cruwar, they were inappropriate to mention.

“Let the Priests take care of the injured.” She said, raising her voice. “I will hear the report of the others personally.”

The stone gate ground open a few feet, and four people stumbled through. All of them had blood on their clothes, but only Sheldon and Seth appeared injured. She waved them over to the Priests and beckoned the other two to her.

“Where’s your scout?” She asked, not quite sure which one she’d sent.

“Jeremy is dead ma’am. Ain.” One of them said grimly. “He did everything he could. We might not have made it otherwise.”

And with that detail, everything changed.

“Close the gate!” the guard captain shouted, startling several nearby guards. She raised her voice often enough, but usually with a more measured pitch. “All combat personnel to the walls, non combat personnel to the temple! Everyone on full alert! Ain attack confirmed!”

The deep voice of the crier took up the call. “Ain activity confirmed! Non-combatants to the temple; combatants to the walls!”

As his voice echoed over the town, everything exploded into motion. Meanwhile, Samira pressed the two in front of her for details.

“How large was it? What form did it have?” She asked.

“It was moving a lot, ma’am.” The first one said, “It was black with white bits. Almost like the night sky, but more hostile.”

“I don’t need poetry, I need to know what kind it was.” Samira said, annoyed.

“Only three feet tall, I think,” the second one said. “It had three limbs, but I think one of them was some kind of bladed tail?”

“Is that what you saw as well?” She rounded on the first guard again.

“Yes ma’am.” He said sheepishly.

She nodded and dismissed them to head to their posts. It was an Ain Fen, the least of the Ain, for what it was worth. She couldn’t blame the first guard for his muddled assessment, the Fen were thought to have some sort of mesmerizing ability.

The guard captain strode over to the Priests, who were still healing Sheldon. Part of his arm had been nearly severed, and it looked like the partial stump had begun healing over instead of reattaching or regrowing. The boy had passed out, but looked physically unharmed now.

“What happened to his arm?” She asked the Head Priest, as the other one worked on healing.

“Seth is a new Priest.” Priest Joe explained. “He started healing once they got him to focus, which is the only reason Sheldon’s still alive, but he doesn’t know how to heal lost body parts yet.”

Samira looked Sheldon up and down. His clothing was torn and bloodied everywhere but his left arm, where he held his shield. Even if the Ain hadn’t hit something vital, he should have bled out, but his skin was unmarred if bloody.

“Can Priest Levi fix the arm now that it has partially healed improperly?” She asked.

“Yes.” The Head Priest replied. “The grace period for regrowing limbs is unaffected by other healing. Only time and mindset cause the Vital schema to adjust, which Levi will work to prevent.”

Indeed, the two parts of the arm were beginning to blend back together. The process was more unsettling than usual thanks to the extra skin rippling as it was pushed out of the way.

“And the boy himself?” Samira continued, looking down at him. His robes were torn, but the odd blue-white clothing on top of the robes was unmarked.

“The unusual clothing is composed entirely of Loss essence.” Priest Joe explained. “Separating it from him is ineffective, it just reforms on his body once it's far enough away.”

“Have you seen or read about anything like this?” She asked.

“I have not, no.” Priest Joe said. “Levi asked for leave to take Seth up to Estroma. The Temple of Virtue there has a Complex Orb of Explication that could clarify both the ability he developed a month or so ago, and hopefully this.”

“Given the circumstances, I would ask you to decline that request.” Samira said. “But Seth was the first one to actually encounter the Ain. As a Priest, he should go report it to the governor of Estroma personally. If he also visits the Temple of Virtue while there, so be it.”

“Levi wants to go as well.” Priest Joe reiterated. “It is bad timing, but he is adamant about going with his son.”

Samira was tempted to swear herself, but refrained. “The next supply boat doesn’t come for another three days. If there are no further incidents until then, that’s fine. But I want you to make that other acolyte girl with Virtue a Priest.”

“She isn’t ready for that responsibility, nor does she want it.” The Head Priest said.

“Unfortunate.” Samira replied. “Is she eligible?”

“In an emergency situation, yes.” Priest Joe relented.

“Then it’s my call. Make her a Priest.” She said flatly. “We aren’t going a month and a half or more with limited personnel when we just had the first sign of Ain movement.”

“Very well.” The Head Priest said expressionlessly.

“And once Sheldon’s arm is back on and Seth is awake, both of them are to report to the wall.” Not waiting for a response, Samira strode back toward her office.