In retrospect, “recruitable” does not explicitly mean “friendly.” Lots and lots of games have you fight some god-tier enemy only to recruit them afterwards. Inevitably, they still have all the brain damage you gave them during your fight and now throw hands like a narcoleptic snake.

Mrs. Hungry lead us through the woods like an implacable ghost. Somehow I knew that she would be more than a handful in a scrap, and her daughter probably wasn’t anything nice either. I’m thinking she is a support. Poison incense as a debuff. Something unpleasant like that.

We kept following her, of course. What else were we supposed to do? The arrow pointing towards the plot was aimed straight towards the Heartless Clearing. I tried to put the pieces together, and they weren’t fitting. Hidden Moon Mountain had fewer pieces to it than Gradden March did. Could I find more things if I searched intensively? Maybe. But I doubted it.

Call it an instinct. Miyuki and Rikka weren’t volunteering anything, and refused to be drawn when I tried to dig out more of their past. The number of landmarks were really limited. The resources on the mountain were all very straightforward. We didn’t have the opportunity to pick up rewards as the clear progressed. This seemed… not half assed, but like they were going for something very, very specific. I’d bet it was about the new units, and, for lack of a better word, vibes. You get a feeling for these things by your twentieth freemium mobile game.

There was that one game that I played for a hot minute called Reverse 1999. The gameplay was fine and the aesthetic was fantastic, but the story made me want to rip out my own eyeballs and sacrifice them in exchange for illiteracy. This felt like that- an aesthetic and mechanics served by just enough story.

Except this game used real people, carefully pruned to fit the narrative requirements of this place. All their memories and personalities snipped, snipped, snipped away. Looking at Yoko and Mrs. Hungry, I wondered how much of their traumas, the horrors that made them, had been exaggerated. How many happy memories did you have to remove to make a monster?

I looked over at Rikka. Her outfit was looking a little scuffed but not terrible. She got smacked around by the Hollow Person, but the monster never really got its spear into her. I could move forward with her in this condition. But just to be safe, I’d set up a contingency.

“Rikka, Rache, with me for a moment.”

We came on Heartless Clearing with an unsettling lack of drama. One step took us from the wood to a wide patch of grass. I’ve never stood on a football field, but maybe they were about the same size.

The Clearing was perfectly round and perfectly flat. I didn’t trust it an inch.

“Didn’t you say the hunters were trapped here as hungry ghosts?” I asked Mrs. Hungry.

“They are.”

I looked around, but couldn’t see them. “Let's stick together and start… The clearing is filling with fog.”

“It does that.” Mrs. Hungry nodded. “Even if there isn’t any fog in the rest of the forest. The cold fills the clearing, and with it comes the fog.”

The clearing was so hungry, it even ate the warmth in the air. There was motion within the fog, clouds suddenly pulled into points and darting through the near impenetrable dark.

“Hungry ghosts. Hungry for everything. Food, human warmth, emotional connection, anything that can be consumed.” I kept my eyes on the moving mist, making sure I was never more than half a step from Versai.

“Yes. Mother says that’s when you really become part of the mountain. That the Hollow People are even closer to the mountain than the demons that lived here first. The demons have more desires than just hunger, mostly. And the Hollow People don’t.” I couldn’t make out her face clearly in the fog and darkness, but I could imagine her serious face nodding along to what she was saying.

“A hungry mountain. And even though we haven’t seen any sign of them, the monsters must be involved somehow.” I murmured. “Do the Monsters eat people?”

“Yes. Though I don’t think they do it to live. I think they just enjoy it.” Versai’s voice was darker than the night. I didn’t blame her.

There were lights in the darkness now. Faint, flickering blue dots. Like fireflies. Or will ‘o wisps.

“I keep coming back to the hungry mountain. All the stories about hunger. All the demons and people with their various hungers. Even the patron Saint of the mountain, Lord Welcome, was a cannibal spirit. But it’s not Hungry Mountain, it’s Hidden Moon Mountain.” I murmured.

No need to scout, I felt. The monsters would come to us. I did make a point of keeping Mrs. Hungry and her daughter at more than arms-length. Mrs. Hungry didn’t seem to care about the fog or the lights. She stood next to her daughter, her long silver hair hiding her face. Long arms hanging loose at her side. Yoko seemed to be standing casually too, but I was having a hard time making her out. She was just a blob in the dark, next to her mother.

I half wondered if she was like an angler fish’s lure- something pretty to lure in the gullible. But then, if you followed the route of the story, you would meet Mrs. Hungry first. Maybe she was supposed to inspire that White Knight instinct- rescue the pretty girl from her controlling witch of a mother.

And then Mr. White Knight will look really surprised when she adds him to the soup pot. Quite possibly using the herbs grown in her own garden for additional flavor.

“Do you have a way to detect poison? Or some kind of immunity to it or something?” I whispered to Versai.

“No.”

Well. That wasn’t ideal. Maybe I should just…

I restrained the urge to slap my forehead. I don’t need to breathe. I don’t have blood. What is poison going to do to me?

The attack was perfectly silent. There was a twist in the fog, and a hunting spear lunged for Miyuki’s back. She hadn’t seen it coming at all. Rikka spun, knocking the spear point up with her kunai, standing between Miyuki and whatever was hidden in the fog.

The spear retreated as silently and instantly as it came. We closed ranks. Even Rache, useless as she was when not in motion, had her saber out. My scouts had their heads in constant motion. Miyuki was right there with them, determined not to be caught out a second time.

“Yoko, any advice on dealing with the ghosts?”

“The sooner you handle them, the better.”

“How should I handle them?”

“Oh, I really couldn’t say. Divine power to purify them? Finding some way to end their hunger? Perhaps enough violence might work.”

There were an awful lot of hooks hanging from that ‘Perhaps.’ Which was a shame, because if violence didn’t work, I was screwed. I have exactly one spell caster and I’m not risking her being ganked by a ghost assassin.

Kim could have given the weapons a flame buff. She could have been crucial. Damn, damn, damn!

“Yoko, can your incense drive them away?”

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I lost her answer, as two spears came out of the mist, one going for Rakim’s neck, the other for Rache’s belly. Rache made a decent parry, but the spear pushed through and ripped along the side of her hip. She yelped, and her clothes tore.

My Awakened Souls didn’t bleed, but the more injured they were, the more damaged their clothes got. A good sized tear over the hip told me that what landed on Rache wasn’t a light blow. Which, since it looked like a glancing scrape, was alarming.

Rakim had been walking with her carbine in the low ready position. She cleanly stepped back, brought the rifle up and fired in the direction the spear came from, all before the spearpoint could reach her. All comfortably inside of one second. She wasn’t speed hacking. She was just ready for it.

What she wasn’t ready for was the follow up thrust. The hungry ghost jabbed out, not giving Rakim a chance to reload. She used her carbine like a short club, deflecting the thrust but leaving herself open for the next. That was when Rikka jumped in with her Kunai.

“Rebuke!” She swept the blade out fast. Her little dagger shouldn’t have been enough to stop the spear, but the thing recoiled like it had been bitten. I could see the little netsuke at her waist glowing, but only for a moment. The spears retreated into the fog.

I froze up for a second. “Rikka? What was that?”

She slid onto one knee, shivering. With a panting breath, she said- “I am a hunter of Hidden Moon Mountain.”

“Yes, I know. But I’ve never seen Miyuki or you use that netsuke to do anything before. Or use that ‘Rebuke’ power.”

“Netsuky?”

“The little figurine on your belt. Miyuki didn’t even have one until she got her new costume.”

“I am a hunter of Hidden Moon Mountain.”

“I know. I…” Oh damn. It’s her script. “Rikka? Can you use that ‘Rebuke’ light whenever you want?”

“No.”

“Does it work on Monsters? Like the monsters at the Tower?”

“No.”

I silently sighed. I shouldn’t be surprised. This whole scenario is a “very special” collaboration with some eldritch fashion house, including the recruitable characters. Integration with the rest of the setting be damned. Horrible thought- did they find a ruined world and build from there, or did they build this whole place from scratch?

I mean, the demi-plaines the Towers are on are way bigger than this mountain, so creating this setting from scratch wouldn’t be that big a lift. But then, where did the people come from?

“Senior.” Miyuki’s voice was very soft. Still cool, but there was something fragile and vulnerable in there. “Senior… on that day…”

Rikka glanced away, unwilling to speak.

“Are the ghosts dead?” I asked.

“No, just driven away, for the moment. They are ashamed.” Rikka muttered.

“Ashamed?!”

“Yes.”

She did rebuke them, I suppose.

“Ghosts can feel shame?”

“With the power of the saints, yes. They remind them of who they were. For just a moment, they remember virtue.”

The netsuke didn’t look like Lord Welcome. It looked uncannily like a Jizo statue from Japan. You see them in anime all the time- the little bald guys standing on the side of the road, constantly praying. They usually have a round head and look calm. Red bib around their necks. Jizo-Sama looks after… I want to say… travelers?

I rubbed my temples, trying to make the connection. This wasn’t Japan. I had no reason to think that these little figurines had anything to do with the stories I knew. But something was yelling at me, and I tried to run the thought down.

“My Neighbor Totoro!”

That got me some weird looks, even through the darkness, the fog and the creeping, murderous cannibal spirits.

“The Jizo statues, especially right at the end. There is an urban legend that Mei actually dies when she goes missing at the end of the movie, and the Jizo are a visual foreshadowing. Because the Jizo guards travelers, and the spirits of dead children.”

You don’t notice how everyone is constantly making slight shifts around until everyone stops moving at the same time.

“I haven’t seen a single kid on this mountain. Younger adults, but no kids. Not one.” I took a deep breath. “Rikka-”

“I am a hunter of Hidden Moon Mountain! That is all!”

“Miyuki?”

“I, too, am a hunter of sorts.”

“Yoko?”

“Yes?”

“How do you feel about children?”

“No particular way. I’ll have some, someday, I suppose. Or perhaps not.”

“Would… solving the Mountain’s hunger affect that?”

“It very well could.”

Ahahah. Haaa.

I looked at the little figurine again. The longer I looked at it, the more differences emerged. It wasn’t a Jizo. but it was close enough to make the connection. Which raised more questions for me, but it wasn’t the time.

“The mountain is hungry. It feeds on the hunger of others. Mostly literally, but also emotionally. And it eats kids.”

Miyuki looked away. Rikka did too. Her hand crept to her stomach. I couldn’t throw up. Somehow, I still felt the sick rise up my gullet.

“It eats people from the inside out. Hollow People. And then there are the Hunters. How do you fit in? Because being a vigilante on Hidden Moon Mountain is about as useful as a fire marshal in Hell.”

They didn’t want to answer that either. Seemed like the ghosts weren’t interested in waiting any longer either. This time it was a half dozen spears plunging out of the fog, cutting at us. I stayed close to Versai and let her do her job- guarding.

There were yells as my summons fought back, but this wasn’t going to end well. Ghostly spear heads ripped past Rache’s weak parry and tore her up. Rikka was dodging well, and Miyuki wasn’t helpless either, but she wasn’t built for this. Neither was Rakim- her CQC training didn’t include spear-wielding ghosts. I forced myself to look over at Yoko and Mrs. Hungry. Not a specter on ‘em, though I couldn’t see them clearly. There was a story there, or a trick.

The spears were ganging up on Rache. I could make out the ghosts now, gaunt shapes in the mist. Almost naked, slouched, bulging bellies and xylophone ribs. Driving their spears with an unending need. Rache was losing clothes fast, which meant she was dying fast. My range-focused crew wasn’t built for this at all.

“Versai?”

“I cut its hands, but it didn’t seem to do anything!”

Right. I’m not eating a party wipe, and I’m definitely not losing someone here. The Hungry Ghosts knew they were winning. They moved faster, thrust more wildly. Rache went to her knees.

“EXIT! EXIT! EX-”

We were back in my Throne Room.

“Exit.” I let out a juddering breath. “MEDICS!”

“It’s not too complicated. Wasteful, but not complicated.” I smiled tiredly at Versai. “Once we use up the orders invested in the expedition, we are immediately returned to the Tower. I couldn’t guarantee it would activate in the middle of a fight, but it seemed worth taking a chance on.”

“How did you use up the orders? Nobody did anything.” Versai wasn’t giving me a look for once. She seemed shaken.

“I told Rache and Rikka that if they heard me yell “Exit!” they were to move any part of their body. Each movement was a separate order. They were to keep moving body parts until we returned to the Tower.”

Versai snorted, and half smiled. It was a thin looking smile- she was still on what happened on the mountain. I didn’t blame her. So was I.

Ghostly enemies. What am I supposed to do about enemies that are immune to physical damage? Find supporters who can buff elemental damage, obviously, but with Kim gone, my only Support types were the Blue Roses, and they flat out refused to buff anyone but Carousel. In fact, it was better to consider them as a single entity along with Carousel, because without them she was just a decent mid-range DPS. And there was absolutely no way I could use all my all my expedition slots on Carousel and the Roses.

I needed new summons. Or something from one of the shops, but right now, my pockets were almost empty and the expedition wasn’t providing a steady trickle of loot the way Gradden March did.

I threw myself back into my throne and closed my eyes. Did I have to just… go straight to the next wave and hope for a good wave reward? I hadn’t built any roads yet, and what's-her-name… Alliana, from Cutthroat Clothiers, said that roads were important. Would something change if I built a road out to the Mountain relic site?

I couldn’t see how it would help. But doing something was almost always better than doing nothing. Doing nothing was a Rascal Scooter ride to depression, and I’d spent enough time in that gray room.

No. I’m freaked out, have no good answers, and one order’s worth of time to get myself set for the next wave. I’d give up on Hidden Moon Mountain until I had an answer to the Hungry Ghosts. And my untrustworthy allies.

And speaking of… it was time to clean up Gradden March a little. I didn’t have bodies to spare, but… what’s the line? Better a godly enemy than a pig-like ally? He’s more of an… involuntary servant… than an ally. No, it’s the fable of the farmer and the snake. I don’t want to be the one getting bit, and Osain was one hundred percent a snake.

“Carousel, come here please.”

“Other than Osain, who would be a good fit for the Economy Counselor position?”

“He isn’t a good fit. Anyone capable of adding two and two and landing on an even number would be an improvement.” Her voice was wonderfully warm. And venomous.

“Do we have anyone who fits that description and isn’t named Jim?”

She thought it over, then shrugged. “Leaving the slot empty might be better than filling it with an incompetent. To say nothing of the stain he will leave on the office. Jim won’t do it?”

“Jim has refused any job in the Cabinet.” I spread my hands helplessly. “He would rather punch a bag in his basement.”

“Odd. He wasn’t a business genius, but I would have imagined he could see the benefits to holding an official position.”

“No pay.”

Carousel’s cheek started to twitch. “Somehow I hadn’t thought of that.”

Yeah, I bet you didn’t. God this game worked her over. Worked all of them over. It must have worked me over too, because I am only just now realizing that I can, in fact, pay them. I don’t know if they can spend anything I give them, but I know summons can pick up Runed Bones from the battlefield and Sebastian is going to be collecting my taxes and rents. So presumably he can handle Sky Gold.

I was drifting off again. I was trying to escape the conversation I knew we needed to have.

“So. Lay it out for me. What exactly did Osain do that was so awful that even you and Sebastian, two people who seemed to run a good piece of the Floating Quarter, want him dead?”

Carousel tilted her hat back and looked me straight in the eyes. The languid seduction was gone. Rabid fury had taken its place. “He turned people into animals, Tower Master. He turned people into animals, and sold them for every awful purpose you can imagine. I don’t want him dead. I want him to experience a lifetime of agony, and I want him to live forever.”