“Master?” Kaz’s quavering, groggy voice told him the imp had just woken and recognized that they were surrounded, though he was equally unsure by what.
A figure stepped forward from the mist directly across from where Damien stood, body white and glowing. Tall and slender, limbs thin as bones and floating at its sides, the waif-like being glided another step closer. Then there was another and another, popping in at Damien’s peripherals and filling in all around them. These remained amongst the thickening fog that rung their small clearing, but their presence was pressing in on his wavering spell, overwhelming it. He knew this kind of blood, but the source leaked out of his grasp in his still bleary state.
Though it glowed, the one that stood nearest him had features obscured, eyes only hollow, black pits in its skull, and when it opened its wide mouth, there was a rattling, breathless sound that swept down over the small clearing, and all at once the dying fire went out.
The knoggelvi were broken of Damien’s command to be calm, one rearing up to fall back with a flurry of leaves. Amma rustled at his feet with a sleepy word and curled into a ball. Of course she would remain asleep throughthis,though that may have been better: he hated that it was beginning to look like she was right, and if they survived, she’d never let him forget it.
All of the figures were advancing now, the distant silhouettes of more scattered throughout the forest. Each was thin, practically skeletal, emanating some arcane light that shimmered off of the gnarled branches and dead leaves coating the ground. His heartbeat quickened at the sheer number, and if he were honest, the way they looked. Paler than even he, and with missing eyes and craters for mouths as their jaws dropped open to hiss out words in some ancient tongue, the forms froze him.
But Damien was the son of a demon lord. He had seen far worse, he had summoned far worse, and wasn’t he himselftheworst? There were many of them, but what was an army of the spectral to a blood mage? They didn’t even belong on this plane, and who better than Damien to send them elsewhere? Well, a divine mage, actually. One of those fucking imbeciles with a dominion for a parent would prove useful right about now, but Damien could banish displaced souls off to the infernal plane just as well as he could call them up.
Taking the dagger to his palm, he cut in quickly, squeezing his blood into a fist, and whispered the Chthonic words of banishment. If these were just dead spirits, they should be easy enough to send away. The bravest of the ghosts had gotten closer, and Damien, stalwart, strode right up to it and with the extension of his arm, released the palmful of blood. It rained across the figure, and the air about the form crackled, fissures drawing themselves in space to absorb away the apparition.
But then the portals fizzled out, closing up without pulling the incorporeal forms around them inside. Damien glanced to his palm to check he had done things correctly. He did feel quite spent, but the wound was already healing, and he had seen the rift in the planes, the silvery noxscura flickering inside, and he had even felt the infernal energy reaching out to take what didn’t belong, yet the spirits persisted.
“Oh, that wasvile,” a lofty if quiet voice remarked from somewhere in the glowing, white crowd.
And another answered in kind, “Terribly distasteful.”
The figure before him raised its thin arms, the spatter of blood leaving a dark trail across its front, blotting out its sheer form. Damien knew that if ghosts were real, they wouldn’t be corporeal, yet he’d stained one. And, really, the blood should have transformed itself with the spell if it had worked, not remained a dripping mess down the front of its target.
The specter let out a disgusted sort of noise, its eyeless holes looking down and then back to him. “That is never going to come out.”
And then there was a shriek, loud and piercing and right beside Damien’s boot. Amma threw herself behind his legs, grabbing onto him and giving him a fright all his own. She attempted to use him to pull herself up, falling as she blindly grabbed at his thigh, his hip, his—Damien snatched her hand off of him, and with little effort pulled her to her feet. If anything would snap him out of whatever had struck him so dumb, it was Amma inadvertently grabbing him exactly where he’d wanted her to hours earlier.
Blood. He had felt the blood of these beings through his now-defunct spell, and ghosts should have none of that.
“What are you?” he called, pumping authority into his voice, a hand wrapped tight around Amma’s wrist as she flailed about to try and hide behind him.
“They’re ghosts, obviously! Oh, Itoldyou, Damien!” Amma gathered herself just enough to slap his arm then shrieked again when she turned to see the ring of other lithe, shimmering bodies behind them.
Kaz had also run up, his little claws digging into Damien’s leg, and the knoggelvi backed toward them too, the five in a circle and surrounded.
“Really? All of you believe this nonsense?” Damien mumbled, casting a glance at his cohorts then back to theghosthe had spattered with blood. “Out with it—what are you really?”
“You heard the girl!” The voice came raspy this time, so unlike it had been a second before. “We are the spirits of the slain, felled here in the Gloomweald thousands upon thousands of years ago.”
“Well, then no wonder you came to greet us; this seems a bloody boring eternity to endure.” Damien’s grip on Amma relaxed. “That banishment spell had no effect on you. You’re of this plane.”
“No, we’re ghosts,” another watery voice called from the crowd behind.
“Yes. Boo!” cried another.
The figure before them craned its neck, twisting its head, black pit for a mouth lengthening as it hissed.
“Enough of this.” Damien reached down and grabbed Kaz about the excess, leathery skin on the back of his neck, holding him up. “Give us some light.”
The imp gurgled, flicking his tail to shoot a burst of flames at the being. Thin arms went up to protect itself as it jumped out of the way, the others parting, and the infernal flame caught on a bush. The light fell on a handful of faux-spirits to reveal actual eyes and lips and teeth and hair and, most interestingly, long, pointed ears.
“Goodness!” The being closest to him hopped and batted at the robe they wore, the edge of it set aflame. Two others flocked over, thinly-fingered hands slapping at the burnt edge to assist.
Amma had stopped her flailing, and so Damien released her. She’d given up cowering too, standing beside him, eyes narrowed, head tipped. “Elves?”
“No!” cried out a voice from the crowd. “Ghosts!”
“Oh, it’s no use,” said the original one miserably, holding up the tattered end of the silky fabric to examine the damage. “As if the blood stains weren’t enough.”
“What in the Abyss is going on?” Damien ground his jaw.
