It felt good to move again. The uneasiness I felt earlier was gone, replaced by the more familiar feeling of aching muscles and fatigue. Emily would sometimes come into my view, trying to distract me by doing exaggerated gestures of what I was doing. Under normal circumstances, the effect she would have had on me would have been negligible, invisible even.

THUM! DHAK!

But these were not normal circumstances.

THUM! DHAK!

My opponent’s attacks devastated the surrounding area, the ground rife with widening cracks and deepening rifts. I ran as fast as I could to avoid the newly made environmental hazards, not forgetting to keep an eye out for other dangers.

THUM!

“Ahahaha, run Alex, run!”

Emily’s head poked out of my chest, laughing at my disheveled state. I saved my retort for another time as I made myself roll backward. Heaving and panting, I congratulated myself when I saw that it had stopped. Knowing that I’ll have a few minutes before it starts its next set of attacks, I took a good look at my opponent to try and find its weakness.

I was hard pressed to find one, however, what with how not even a crack was visible on its marble surface. Though human in shape, the golem’s real weight was apparent with each step it took. Its arms—more glorified pestles than actual arms, really—were only distinguishable from its legs by the sharper angle of its joints, and the fact that they were closer to the head.

The tips of said arms were chipped, which would make my death more painful were they to connect with my body. Any further assessment I could make was interrupted by the golem moving again.

“If this goes on any longer, I’m going to keel over,” I thought to myself and looked around to find some place I could use to my advantage. Somewhere narrow, with a lot of hiding places.

THUM!

I changed my mind.

With the amount of force that the golem delivered with each blow, it could blow away any hiding spot, and myself along with it. I needed to stop it from moving. I needed something that was sticky, plenty in amount, and immediately available. But what I saw was not encouraging.  

The place we were sparring in was quite magical; it looked like a small room from the outside, but contained an entire landscape within. A rather arid one. Not a good place to find something sticky. I was about to give up when I noticed water seeping up from the cracked ground.

An idea started to surface in my mind, but I needed to be sure.

“What’s wrong Alex? Afraid already? My opinion of you won’t be lowered if you are, you know. Nobody can defeat Emi.”

Emily puffed her chest out, a display that would have been impressive if she had Hel’s proportions.

“It certainly seems that way,” I replied with my most mocking tone. It was just for a moment, but I could see Emily’s eyes twitch with that remark.

“What do you mean by that?” Emily frowned.

“Well, this is just a guess of mine, but I’m guessing that-”

“That?”

I did not answer her as I was busy directing the golem’s blow to certain points on the ground. Emily finally noticed why I had stopped talking, and halted the golem.

“Now, talk.,”

Her eyes were no longer cheerful, though they still contained vigor. I prayed nothing else would creep into them.

“This is something I just thought up, so please bear my ignorance. 'Emi' here was around before you died, and through a series of events, you managed to make 'Emi' your body. Now, following that line of thought, it means that there was a period before you found 'Emi' in which, there’s a pretty good chance that 'Emi' had fought before, and lost.”

I kept track of the fractures underneath the golem. They were spreading slower now and the water had receded a bit.

Not good.

I bit my lip, hoping that I was on the right track.

“So what if 'Emi' lost before? I’ll just make sure she never loses again.”

Emily’s statement made me pause.

“So you admit that ‘Emi’ lost before?”

“That’s not important!” The golem shuddered.

“Ah, but it is important. You said it yourself that ‘Nobody can defeat Emi’. But if you’re admitting that there was a time before ‘Emi’ met you, you’re admitting that your claim ‘Nobody can defeat Emi’ is not true.”

THUM!

I jumped.

“You’re noisy.”

The situation was at a tipping point.

One blow was all that was needed to end this.

The question was whether that blow would come from me, or from the golem.

“You’re avoiding my statement,” I concluded.

“Am not.”

Emily’s eyes were fixed on mine.They were scary.

“You’re definitely avoiding my statement.”

“Am not!”

The golem bent over slightly, as though preparing to charge. I responded in kind, preparing to jump backward to avoid its reach.

“There’s no shame in admitting you were wrong, Emily.”

“Wrong about what?! You were talking nonsense!”

“No, I was talking some sense into-

THUM! THUM! THUM! THU-

It was quite a sight. A golem that was as large as a tree, swallowed up by ground that was more slurry than solid. Even though it was something I planned, the end result exceeded my expectations. Well, what mattered was that it worked.

It was my win.

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

Or so I thought.

“Ah, having a body is still the best thing ever!”

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Emily stood proud and happy, while I was lying on my back, completely exhausted. Suffice to say, my plan of trapping the golem by making it turn the ground it was standing on into mud had failed. Though perhaps it had something to do with the fact that Emily possessed my body. She dug the golem up, made me do embarrassing poses,  and afterward, proceeded to unload all of her displeasure on me by making me punch myself. Repeatedly.

The only reason I was left without a wound was that the room I sparred in, this magical room, had a peculiar property of reverting everything inside it to its original state after one hour.

Her proclamation made me wonder if that’d be my fate in the end. I followed that line of thought for a few seconds before dismissing what my mind came up with. No use in thinking about things that hadn’t happened yet. But, if I were to die while fighting Azeol, would I be satisfied with such an end? Half my life spent on one goal, only to fail.

“You don’t want to spar anymore?”

Emily’s question woke me up from my musings.

“No, I mean, yes. I still want to spar one more time, but I want to eat lunch first. It is noon right now, right?”

Emily frowned and looked at the room’s ceiling, which was also where I got the notion that it was noon. Instead of the constant and rather dreary light of mushrooms that lined the shaded hallways and stairways, this room had crystals as its source of illumination. The ceiling was encrusted with these crystals, forming a bumpy and colorful mosaic of day and night. A yellow orb hung over the top of a larger, gray orb inside the mosaic, while an indigo orb dangled from the gray orb’s bottom.

“...You’re right. I didn’t think you could read that. How did you know that was the sun and the moon?”

Emily narrowed her eyes.

“Isn’t that how things worked?” I answered honestly. Though I’m not well-versed in the matters of the heavenly bodies, I did know that the sun and the moon moved around the earth.

“...alright, if you say so!”

Emily reverted back to her carefree attitude from before. I regretted not prolonging the trivial matter from before. At least she won’t open her mouth so easily.

“So, the matter of lunch?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really need to eat, and neither do the others. How do you eat again?”

The clueless ghost girl rested her head on one hand while thinking. A ridiculous gesture, but one that I find endearing for some reason. A brief look around my mind revealed to me why I felt so. Emily’s gesture reminded me of what my daughter used to do, though instead of resting her head on one hand, my daughter would put her hands over her eyes. When I asked her why she closed her eyes, her answer was very simple:

“I don’t want to lose sight of what I was thinking!”

And then there was her angry face, which is really just her pouting and frowning while her eyes squint until they’re barely visible. I had to resist the urge to laugh as she wailed on me about whatever was bothering at the moment, usually about the other kids picking on her.

There was one event in particular that really stuck to my mind. I had just finished my work and was heading home when she came running into view. My first thought then was how nice of her to go out of her way to greet me. I was about to greet her when my eyes inadvertently caught sight of a black mass clutched in her left hand. It was twitching.

“Father!” she cried out and tackle-hugged me. The black mass felt disgusting even through clothing, but I resisted the urge to turn away.

“What is it this time?” I spoke with my most reassuring tone.

“Father, they made fun of this thing I found by the river! They say that it’s poo! Look at it and tell me it’s not true!”  

She showed me the black mass, which upon closer inspection, revealed themselves to me as leeches. A squirming group of leeches. By some miracle, none of those abominations had managed to suck her blood.

“Where did you find it?” I asked her with a straight face, not wanting to alarm my daughter.

“I found them in a really mucky part of the river. All the other kids were avoiding it, but I didn’t because I was curious what was in there, and then I saw these things.  I thought “Wow, that looks interesting!”, so I scooped up as many as I could. But then the other kids laughed at me and said “You got poop on your hands! You got poop on your hands!”, which made me really sad, so tell me, father, is this really poop?!”

She waved the nasty things at me with the face of an angel.

“Well…”

I wavered between telling her the ugly truth or a small lie. It might not seem like something worth considering, but there’s a definite distance between “things as they are” and “things as people think they are”. Too often have people mistaken one for the other, and the result is nothing short of a tragedy.

“It’s not poop. But it’s not a nice thing either. Can you do your father a favor and throw it away right now?”

My daughter looked at me blankly, then put on her thinking face. After a few anxious seconds, she opened her eyes and smiled.

“Okay, father! I’ll throw it away now!”

I half-expected her to carry through with her words right then and there and braced for flying projectiles, but she simply dropped them off onto a nearby puddle. She then accompanied me home while talking about everything she did.

She was my future.

She really was ...

“Alex, why are you crying?” Emily’s question brought me back to the present.

“I …” I closed my eyes and closed my heart, determined to never let the latter affect the former.

“Just remembered something sad. It’s nothing now.” I opened my eyes and told the lie.

“...if you say so!”

Emily went on a rant, but I listened to none of it.

I was hungry.

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

“Dhak!”

I flinched on instinct when I heard something striking the table. Though my spar was already an hour old in memory, I still couldn’t get the sounds of the golem’s attacks out of my head. Thankfully, I had a firm grip on my spoon, so I didn’t spill the soup I wanted to try. I sipped it a bit and marveled at how refreshing it tasted.

Missfit was to my right, and a displeased Emily was to my left.

“Sorry about that. I thought my spoon would slip.”

Emily’s lie was acknowledged by a nod from Missfit. I tried my best to ignore her piercing gaze, which really just makes her look petty rather than threatening.

She was eating some soup, though her hand was trembling as it came closer to her mouth.

“Was she not accustomed to eating soup?” I thought. But then again, it was already very weird to see Emily eating, despite being a ghost that’s inhabiting a golem. I had assumed that everyone besides me in the Lady’s home didn’t need to eat. Or maybe they really don’t have to eat, but they ate anyway because they could?

That line of thought made it sound like eating was some kind of luxurious activity, which disturbed me. 

Not enough to deter me from doing it, though.

“How … is … it?” Missfit leaned towards me.

“They're wonderful, Missfit. I can't get enough of them.”

“I … see. Thank … you. I was … afraid … it might not … be suitable … for humans.”

“You cooked all of this?” I gestured to the various meals laid out upon the table, each one a high-class delicacy on their own, but grouped together, they became a feast fit for royalty. And they were all just for lunch.

“Cooked … not … exactly. But compliments … accepted.” Missfit bowed.

“It’s really fortunate that you came by just as you did. I really have no bearings in here, and Emily is-

“Takt!”

A butter knife implanted itself mere centimeters from my right cheek.

“Oh my, I’m really sorry about that. My hand slipped.” Emily apologized with the face of an angel.

Missfit nodded, then looked back at me.“You … were … saying?”

“Uhhh… I was just about to say that I’m really enjoying these sausages. They’re very good!” I demonstrated my point by using my fork to get three of said sausages and ate them at once.

She was still mad!

“I see. Well … just … take your time...” Missfit’s words trailed as it looked up. Curious to what it was looking at, I followed his sight. It didn’t look like anything had changed. The mosaic was still there, representing the movements of the sun and the moon with eerie accuracy. But as I kept looking at it, I began to see a vague outline of something over said mosaic, a device of some sort. It was perched over the mosaic with thin, spider-like legs. My curiosity piqued, I continued to stare at it until the details finally came to me.

It was a clock. A clock that shifted to and fro on three, unbalanced point legs. The longest one was longer than the other two combined, and the shortest was only half the size of the medium one. It was scratching at the mosaic, chipping and digging with a frenzied, but disordered drive. Large numbers were bolted to the legs, starting from one and ending at twelve. Lightning would sometimes shoot out from one of its parts, which was when it would do a crazed “dance” before returning to its usual routine.

I was about to ask Missfit what the thing was when I noticed Emily gesturing for me to be quiet.

“... … … …” Missfit’s arms swayed in the air like falling snow. Something about the patterns it was making gave me goosebumps.  I looked again at the clock above, trying my best to see if something had changed with it. Time passed, and I was about to give up when it happened. The clock, carefree in its movement before, suddenly became rigid, as though it was trying to resist an invisible force.

A loud hissing noise came from the clock’s center, and metal creaked on the clock’s legs. I braced myself for the inevitable, and I was not disappointed. With a loud tear and crash, the clock was torn asunder. Pieces fell, but none touched the floor. 'Emi' saw to that, moving in a form that was infinitely more lithe and agile than when it was sparring with me. Every time she touched a piece, it turned into white powder, which dissipated into nothing.

“It … is … done.” Missfit lowered its arms. I turned to look for Emily, but she was nowhere in sight. Thoroughly confused by this turn of events, I contemplated my next move while staring into my plate. The answer to my plight was very simple.

I continued my lunch.