The ghost is the strongest of the standard incorporeal undead. They are also the only one who can retain a clear memory and sense of self after becoming a ghost. While their grasp is draining, and harms the living they are able to suppress this and interact with the living without causing harm. The ghost is also unharmed by sunlight and can act in broad daylight if they so choose. Some ghost has been known to interact directly with the physical world.

A ghost is always tied to something, be it location, object or another being. An emotional tie pulling them back to the realm of the living, should this be resolved a ghost will pass on the rest of the way into whatever fate awaits the dead.

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

Anthony Ravnos

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

These past few weeks have been horrid, firstly brother and me have been sick. Then of all things those who were banished from this world forced their way back in. This was supposed to be an easy life. Just be the little brother to the only new Ravnos; born to an outsider mother. At least my twin managed to get the same job and we should be able together to at least hold off any foes who find us.

A few days ago the two of us followed ‘mother’ into the cellar to hide from the roaming banditry. She used a different wording, however the sense of it is the same. My twin and me could have just killed any who went for the house but I doubt that my newest mother would handle it well. She does not know about magic, nor do I think she would like her twelve year old sons slaughtering a group of people.

The worst part of all of this is that Adrian is not here. He was at school when this conjunction of planes came into being. If only any of us still had the strength to teleport or any of the other great twists. Geldath can still do some of the greater twists but we have spent the spark, little remains of our potential.

We, the twins of the storm, weatherweavers and windwalkers are little more than apprentices in power now. Even so we have lost less than others of our bloodline. Fabricio or Frank as he is named in this life can tell that our big brother is still alive but we have lost the power required to tell more than that. Our family has made two great mistakes in the past centuries, the losses we take with each reincarnation and the removal of nigh all supernatural elements of the world.

Mother is terrified of losing her eldest son, she keeps checking the cellphone for Adrian to contact her, even though it has been discharged for days. It is unfortunate but the electricity has run out and as we are locked in the cellar there is no way to charge it. The gasoline generator is outside and mother did not grab the keys for the cellar in her rush to protect her 'babies' from the bad men running around town.

I can only hope that Adrian makes it back to our homestead, Fabricio and me could blow the door open together but Kathrine, our mother, is unlikely to believe such a thing as possible. At least there is still a week’s worth of water and even more food to sate our needs.

As I am wandering within my own musings, a sense of wrongness fills the air and Fabricio walks over to me. We can barely see each other from the sliver of sunlight passing through the cellar's doors. The light is growing, it should be morning and there is a lot of noise coming from outside. There are people out there but they are not family.

The sounds of a fight soon can be heard, at least if you are close to the door. I doubt that Kathrine can hear what is going on. She is too busy making food for our breakfast and checking her discharged cellphone. I sigh and turn to my twin.

“What do you think is happening? Should we break out and look for Adrian?”

“No, even with his lack of skill and training he is as strong as we are. Besides how would we prevent Kathrine from being a trigger for a backlash?”

I sigh, there is not too much we can do about that. The woman has little acceptance of weirdness. Perhaps while asleep we could but as soon as she wakes we both know the damage caused by us breaking out would be rejected by her. Why did Rynald decide he wanted to marry her? Was it because in his last returning he spent the last of his spark? No one cared at the time, he was no longer a Ravnos as he had no spark left. Were it not that his firstborn began to awake as a Ravnos as a small child, no one would have bothered him in the last life he will live as himself.

A large explosion and a torrent of eerie green flames end my thoughts. Fabricio rushes to me, there is no time to waste, something hostile is here. Kathrine is screaming and rushing to us. The flames die down as swiftly as they came into being. A man half again the size of a normal human is at the top of the stairs leading down into the cellar, red batwings, a demon's tail and horns are attached to the body. A demonified mortal possessed by a legion of fiends, a pox on whoever did the conjunction.

Fabricio uses what little telekinetic force he has to push Kathrine back from us. Adrian will need her, we cannot risk her life.

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

“Sorry Kathrine, the Ravnos family has a few secrets that you did not know about. Let your boys protect you.”

She is still screaming, she has not realized what Fabricio said. She is trying to rush at this clearly hostile man, who is licking his lips as he begins to slowly move towards us. I reach a hand out to my twin and he grabs it.

We may have only a fraction of the power we held when the disjunction was performed, but we can still deal with a fledgling demon who has only had a host for a few days at most. We begin to use each other as a focus for our twists of reality. Chanting in a tongue that is a dead language of our ancestors we use every crutch we can to boost our powers to fight our foe.

The demon fledgling lunges at us after approaching, but it was already too late to stop our synchronization. We roll to the side in perfect mirror parallel, our minds have meshed together and we draw on both our powers to form the next thing we need. Weapons to fight and harm the fiend. I create a blade of solidified lightning while Fabricio makes one of its opposite charge. One blade of condensed negative electrical charge and one of positive.

We can feel the building backlash but the minor spirits we have set to be familiars should be able to handle it for a bit. Just long enough for Kathrine to accept the fight before her, at least we hope. The demon seems amused by us, does it think that we are real children? It is ignoring Kathrine, so she should be fine.

Our minds joined, Fabricio and me begin the fight the demon fledgling in perfect tandem. Each attack of the fiend is parried and a counter attack made by whichever of us did not perform the party. Each set of exchanged attacks releases a discharge of lightning whenever both our blades strike the demon.

Kathrine rushes at the fiend but Fabricio releases another minor burst of telekinetic force to keep her back. She is pushed back and finds herself close to the box with a handgun inside. She begins to try to open it, and in her frenzied state of fear is having trouble to do so.

By the time she does we have pushed the fiend back out of the cellar. The creature laughs as our lightning is doing little per strike. Ice or Sonic effects would be better but neither of us twins were ever skilled in those kinds of twists in reality. Storms of lightning and fire are our forte though we lack the power to create them now.

Kathrine begins to fire the pistol at the demon, the thoughts of Fabricio race through my mind. The bullets will do nothing to the demon, they have no way to enforce the idea of weapons hurt on the fabric of reality. We can do that for them though, and Kathrine will not deny it as she does with the blades of lightning.

We pull upon the concept of weapons in the Primal Sphere, the weapon should hurt and we put our full power into it. The energy weapons dissipate and we dodge another claw strike from the fiendling. The bullets from the pistol begin to pierce the flesh of the demon and it finally feels true pain, not the numbing tickle of what little lightning we can summon.

Soon the pistol ceases to fire, only a click as the magazine has run dry. The demon is bleeding from several holes and is being pushed back. Though even if we had another magazine ready the damage is unlikely to be enough to destroy the physical form of the demon. It is a fully changed body, far more resilient than any normal creature of the same size.

Both Fabricio and me can hear another battle nearby. This fiends hoard must be holding off others, maybe they can kill the demon? Fabricio and me do not mind death, we still have another life or two before our spark and soul will wear out, but we need to keep our 'big brother' and those he cares about alive and well. Fabricio glances at me, I know what he wants.

I rush to Kathrine and begin to run to the other fight nearby. Fabricio holds the demons attention and takes a slightly longer path to the whoever is fighting the hoard of this demon. Once we turn around the corner of the house I can see a youth that looks like Adrian save for the hair color in melee with an oversized quasit. His spear work is pathetic, but he is faster than a human should be. A twist in Time? Maybe, he feels like he should be Adrian.

Kathrine shouts Adrian's name and he does turn and subsequently get a claw to his arm. I rush to his aid but before I arrive the injury has closed itself and aside from the blood loss the claw ended up doing nothing. How does he have the power to heal himself like that? Does he have enough control over the tapestry of reality to kill demons?

As I approach I can see all of his allies in this fight: his friend Bryan, a blonde girl who Bryan is guarding, two elves with red hair and another human girl with silver? hair. Aside from the first human girl the others must be from the world that forced a conjunction. The elves are no longer on Earth and the human woman is far too competent of a fighter to be from here unless she is from the military. I doubt that as she would have been fighting with guns then and not a sword that is wreathed in magical fire.

At least they are fighting on his side, though should they turn against us I will see that they die before ending the Ravnos's chance for new blood to come forth. I reach them and Adrian says something I tuned out as I take his spear and skewer the quasit he was fighting. It may be faster and stronger than a human, certainly so for this prepubescent body I have but I have the skills of my prior lives still. It’s own strength drives the spear deeper as I reinforce the idea of weapons hurt onto the spear itself. A single blow will not destroy this lesser demon but it will not last too long.

Adrian looks at me in confusion, he did not know I took the spear until the quasit was already skewering itself. His eyes are also off color and the shape of the iris is abnormal. What has happened to him in the last few weeks?

There is no time to ask as Fabricio arrives trailed by the demon fledgling. A spear appears from nowhere in Adrian’s hand. Must be Geldath's Translocation Grasp, but since when did Adrian have to power to pull something so large through space? He would need to have half again the power I now retain to do that.

I find myself smiling, he must have the might to twist reality enough to fight a demon fledgling without too many issues. At least if he knows how to make things hurt them.