Technomagica 51. Skullbound men (Patreon)

“I recognize that insignia!” The female Basq ghost yelped, pointing at Kliss. “She’s a redcape Equalist, bound by Vows!”

The four ghost legionnaires didn't hesitate, they opened fire on us. Kliss ducked and rolled. Time slowed to a crawl as the nearest spell struck Battie’s ward, the action accelerating Neurovista to its maximum power. Three Infoscopes flashed to the nearest spell, evaluating it.

[LV 20 illusion.] The answer returned to me.

I stepped in front of the spellfire, letting it wash over me and raised an eyebrow.

“Oh,” Kliss blinked, looking slightly nervous as she got off the ground and stood up next to me. “Right... they’re ghosts.”

The Basq legionnaires ceased fire.

"Look at the mighty Equalist, cowering in fear!" The bald man jeered.

"You're pathetic, redcape!" The female ghost added. “Scared of ghosts, are we?”

“Did you see her roll like a pangolin? That was hilarious. Too bad she didn’t fall into a hole, like this idiot,” a dark-haired legionnaire on the left smirked viciously at Klav. The hunter sighed, crossing his arms.

"Enough!" Kliss snapped. Her mana sword ignited. She leapt forward and swung it in a wide arc, demolishing the taunting spirits into wisps of mist.

“They will be back,” Klav commented. "They cannot die."

I turned to the hunter. “How sapient are you? What’s 12 plus 48... the sum multiplied by two?”

“One hundred and twenty,” Klav replied after a minute of contemplation.

“What lies to the South of the Silent Glade?” I asked in common Imperial.

“Magogenic fault 18,” the hunter replied in the same language with a slight accent.

“How do you know the language of the Gregarius Imperium?” I inquired.

“Learned it from Lord Ignatius,” Klav said. “The Overseer of Skyisle and I were friends. I didn’t have any Vows to Ishira hanging on me and he needed a local guide who knew a thing or two about the wilds.”

“Why are you bothering conversing with a mirage?” Kliss asked me.

"I'm a soul bound to this blasted island, not some mindless Astral beast or a mirage,” Klav said. “I need your help to move on.”

“Move onto where?” I asked.

“I worship Goddess Amari,” the hunter replied briskly. “She is the patron of the Wild and the Hunt.”

“She doesn’t require a Vow like Ishira or a pact like Equality?”

“Not like Equality or Ishira, aye,” Klav nodded. “Amari is fed by the kills, asks only for a small experience donation from each hunt..."

"Without a Vow?" I asked.

"Her angel lives in an amulet, passed to me by my father," he said.

"I see," I said. "So, do you know why haven't you moved on?"

"I...I don't know," Klav admitted, his ethereal form flickering ever so slightly. "I died very slowly and painfully, bled to death. I thought that Amari would take me to the vast wild lands of the hunters, but I'm trapped here, bound to this place by this domain's curse just like those blasted Basq Legionnaires.”

"And we're supposed to help you?" Kliss snapped. "After the stunt you pulled on us?”

"Perhaps not," Klav conceded. "But you are my only hope as you are the first visitors to this isle in twenty years who can resist the Silent Moths. I am unable to find peace, cannot touch anything and have no way to free my soul."

“Why did you come to the Silent Glade twenty years ago?” I asked.

“Beasts like Blood Elks get trapped in the mire and are quite easy to finish off,” Klav said. “I had the [Path-Sense] skill that allowed me to navigate the marshes.”

“And the Silent Moths?” I asked.

“Are easy enough to keep away,” the hunter said, pointing a pale finger at his thick, brown cloak. “I figured out that they hate the scent of fresh lavender. I had a goodly number of lavender leaves pinned onto my cloak to keep them from landing on me.”

“So you are fairly intelligent and you know the local wildlife,” I mulled. “I could use a man like you.”

“Use me?” Klav looked down at me. “Of what use am I? I am dead!”

"That you are," I acknowledged. "But you possess valuable knowledge and experience as a hunter. You could still have family in Skyisle after 20 years. Perhaps you’d be interested in talking to them?”

"I haven't... considered that," the dead hunter blinked, intrigued by my suggestion.

“You could even teach Skyisle children language, mathematics and hunting,” I said. “I really don’t like the current church instructor."

“What?” Kliss sent me a glare. She clearly didn’t approve of me recruiting ghosts for a teaching position.

“Do you have someone better maybe?” I asked her. "From what you've told me it's been a month and you've had no worthy candidates."

“Well, yes... but he's bloody dead!” Kliss waved her arm at Klav.

“I am technically dead too,” I pointed out with a small shrug. “Does that make me any less of a person?”

The Overseer blinked, looking somewhat stumped.

“So?” I turned to Klav, offering my hand. “Do you want to work for me? I'm fairly certain that I can bring you to Skyisle with me."

The hunter considered my words, his ghostly form wavering slightly. "Deal," he said after a moment, extending his hand towards me.

My hand passed through his slightly as we pretended to shake hands.

Kliss sent me a very annoyed glare, which I ignored.

We followed Klav across the rocky island to where one of my Infoscopes was already waiting for us. An old, rusted glider came into view. The front section was smashed in, most of the glass potholes broken during the impact. The once vibrant violet and gold paint adoring the magisteel hull had faded with time. It didn't look particularly air-capable, had no wings whatsoever. Infoscope 2 detected a massive, smashed crystalline structure beneath the deck, what I guessed was once a dragonheart engine that provided lift to the heavy, metal hull.

"This is it," Klav said solemnly as he pointed at a ravine nearby. “This is where I died. Quite a stupid way to go, really. Those four bastards suddenly appeared next to their glider and started firing spells at me. I fell into this ravine and cracked my skull on the rocks. By the time I came to, I had lost too much blood and the lavender leaves wilted, got washed away by the tide... so the moths came at me in droves."

Kliss shivered, wrapping her red cloak tighter around herself.

I looked into the rocky ravine. A skeleton half-covered in a rotting, brown rags was there. The backside of his skull was cracked open. From what Infoscope 3 showed me, the skull’s interiors were absolutely covered with crystalline remains of the Silent Moth eggs, larva and ossified pupae. An entire network of thin, crystalline webs filled the interior of the skull like false neurons.

“So, do you want to know why you can’t leave?” I asked Klav as I carefully slid down into the ravine and carefully pried the skull from position between mossy roots and flowers with my dad's knife.

The hunter nodded.

“The Aetheric field here, at the very edge of the magogenic fault... is warped, folded into itself several times. It acts like a giant soap bubble that traps dust particles, or in this case - human souls. The field kept your soul stuck here, next to your body. As the Moths consumed your insides, they bred, multiplied and perished, their webs and remains formed something akin to a crystalline recorder within your skull that further imprinted you to this place."

“I... see,” Klav looked at his skull in my hands.

“Same thing happened to the Basq Legionnaires,” I said. “Four of them died here when the glider crashed. Three of them drowned trying to leave the island. I guess that you found one of the drowned men with a pouch of silver twenty years ago a short distance from this island?"

“How do you know that?” The hunter blinked.

“Seven seats in the glider and seven names on the crew manifest tags,” I said as I slid his skull into a wooden basket. “Some supplies are missing too. Overseer Ignatius wrote in his journal about you spending the silver you found at the Fox."

Kliss shuddered slightly as I handed the basket with the skull to her.

“Hold onto dear old Klav,” I said. “I’ve got a glider to raid.”

“What’s in there that’s of use to us?” She asked as she peered into the broken portholes and mossy, overgrown interiors.

“Their armaci,” I said. "And skulls."

“Armaci are personal magical-focus tools made to match the unique, magical resonance of each person,” Kliss reminded me. “You won’t be able to use them."

She clearly didn't want to be here, didn't share my excitement for raiding the derelict vessel filled with ghosts.

“Eh, if I don’t figure out how to use them, at the very least I can make you slice them with your mana-blade and see what’s inside,” I shrugged as I slid into the cabin through a porthole.

The interior was a mess of broken things, vines and roots.

[EEEeeeeee! A genuine skyship!] Delta spun through the air, her threads twitching excitedly. [Make sure to memorize everything here! I want one just like it...]

I rolled my eyes at her.

[Ookay, maybe a bit smaller? It'll be easier to make a smaller version, yes? Just make it happen!] She insisted.

The bald solder manifested inside of the glider as I picked up one of the crystal-filled skulls.

“Filthy child!” he hissed with an accent. “Do you intend to sully our bones?”

"I intend to take you with me," I said.

The ghost soldier sneered, his ethereal form shimmering ever so slightly in the dim light of the cabin. "You have no right!" he spat.

"Try to stop me then," I retorted. "You're in no position to make demands."

"You'll regret this," he hissed. An illusory mana sword ignited from his armacus, pointed at my face.

I grabbed the sword with my hand, extending Phantom threads out of my fingers. My devouring threads shredded, consumed the offered magic… nibbled a little bit on the man’s soul.

[+2 soul shards.] The System dinged.

His name was Kopernii Acadia. He was an orphan, a contract-bound slave, born in an orphanage belonging to an Alchemist Alaric Milgrim who beat and abused him and fed him questionable potions. Kopernii grew up in a beautiful, white Citadel City in the Acadian Mountains. When he was eighteen, he unlocked his Soul Song and applied to the Legion. When he gained the rank of a Sergeant, he was sent across the void-crossing transit gate on a mission from the Basquenate Republic on Andross to the far smaller Basq colony of Novazem.

The Basq legionnaire hissed, his eyes filled with terror. He must have seen and felt that my blades stretched from my hand and chomped on his magic.

"You're... from another world?" I asked curiously.

"Abomination!" He growled, retreating away from me. The other three ghosts flashed into existence behind him.

"Yes," I said. "I am. I am quite capable of eating all of your souls, so pipe down and don't threaten me."

The ghosts grumbled as I collected their skulls and armaci from the floor covered in ferns and weeds.

"You know," Kliss commented as she eyed the basket on my back filled with skulls as I emerged from the ruined glider. "If I didn't spend nearly a month with you, building a hovercraft, I'd definitely suspect that you were a necromancer."

"More of an opportunist," I commented. "These ghosts have knowledge and experience. It would be a shame to let them go to waste."

"I never thought I'd see the day when I would be aiding and abetting grave robbing," she shook her head.

"I shan't tell you anything, villains!" Kopernii muttered. Him and the other three Basq silently followed us, looking dejected and terrified.

"Well, keep your secrets then," I shrugged, adjusting the basket on my back. “I’ll turn your skull into a battery.”

“What?” The ghosts grumbled.

"Let's get back to the hovercraft," Kliss said. "I've had enough of this freakish place where people won’t stay dead and moths eat human brains for breakfast.”

"Don't be such a sourcat, wasn't that bad," I said, leading the way back to our craft. "I wouldn't mind returning here to look for and collect more lost souls."