A STUDY OF SPIRITS

A STUDY OF SPIRITS
By ——————
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THE GHOST
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	The dead of winter had come; the Architect’s light felt at its most distant and unkind. The forests had fallen silently into the grip of death as the solstice had come to pass and the clock struck an hour to midnight. The tolling of a mournful bell sounded from the heart of the town, the striking of iron against brass howling unusually balefully in the night that drew families to the beds of the infirm and the beleaguered to check that they still clung to the world. Though some slept soundly, for most, the night would be long and unkind, spent fighting against the sweeping tide of death that beckoned the weakest among the community beyond the shores of reality.

	But for some, the pull of Death itself was not enough to draw them past the veil, even as their body laid bare in a grave somewhere far. Though its very essence was dormant, subtly woven into the fabric of the reality there, the owners of a certain home remembered well its tortured howling in humid summer nights, and its frenzied fits that would leave disorder in the home each time they dared to leave it.

	Left with no other options, they sent a desperate plea to a miner far across the world. The town’s administration had records indicating the last resident in the home was a certain Arkhet Mel, a gruff and unkind Khesil grizzled by years spent toiling in the heat and danger of copper and iron mines. Married to a colleague who fell ill due to a strange dust in the caverns, he sought the aid of alchemy to keep him from tipping past the veil at the strike of midnight a solstice many moons ago.

	Having received his call weeks prior, he arrived in town, heralded by hoofbeats breaking the heavy silence of the snowy solstice night. Clambering out of the back of a modest carriage, and giving a nod to his escort, the scarred and weary draconic man met with a small Wildkin woman in the town center, snow gently building up on his broad shoulders as he looked down at her.

	“You… you are Arkhet, right?” she asked, her voice hopeful. “Did you really come all this way to help us?”

	“No,” he said sharply. “But, take me to your home.”

	A look of confused concern struck her face, but scanning over the harsh man, felt no need to protest. He’d clearly had a long journey, and drawing out this process seemed unwise. She just nodded, turning on her heel with something bordering on inappropriate giddiness at the prospect of ridding her home of its intruder. She led him to a small home at the edge of town, fit to be host to no more than a family of three. It was of sturdy construction, but tight on space.

	He stopped at the doorway, taking a deep breath. He could already feel it, reaching out to him. His concerned host looked back at him, but was wise enough to give him the space he needed to prepare. He sifted through a few implements in his jacket, tools he would need to do the job. Warily, he passed into the home, the roiling, brushing clamor of a spirit rolling over his deep blue scales almost like a fond caress.

	As his host began to speak, he shushed her. “Go,” he demanded. “I will be alone when this happens.”

	Without another question, she disappeared deeper into the home. Bathed in warm candlelight, in a cozy and quaint living room, he knelt. Carefully, he laid out a pouch, four candles of deep blue wax, a single black match, and two colorful rods of incense. With precision uncommon to a brute of his sort, he withdrew a fine, deep purple powder from the pouch, and spread it evenly across the floor between each candle. Striking the strange match against the floor, a white, wispy fire sparked at its head, and he lit each candle. With the light of the candles, he began to burn the incense, leaving one stick at either side of the gate he’d created.

	The exotic smell wafted through the room. It reminded him, and it reminded his partner. They rarely had any wealth, but his partner indulged himself once in a while in the exotic spices and incenses brought from a caravan that had stopped passing through town months ago, and the smell thus could not be more unique to his partner. Deep blue smoke rose into the air, and the wispy fires of the candles began to spark up the powder on the ground until it roared with power. There, calmly, knelt Arkhet, waiting.

	The faux-flames rose, defied by the form of a person that stood in them. Though no fine details showed, the body of negative space that stood over Arkhet was more than familiar. Softly, Arkhet reached into the flames, letting them lick at his dark scales, and offered his hand to the figure.

	Gentle fingers brushed across the hand, taking hold of it. “Arkhet…” a gentle but deep voice intoned. “You came back for me?”

	“I did. I didn’t… know you were still here, Garren,” he spoke, contrition dripping from his usually emotionless voice like blood from an old wound, opened anew.

	“You disappeared when I passed. I—” paused the spirit, the emotions welling up within itself starting to cause the flames to billow brighter and hotter. “I didn’t understand. I thought… you simply took your opportunity to leave.”

	Arkhet’s hand slipped from his, and fell upon his lap as he looked down. “Perhaps I deserve that. But that wasn’t why I left… I don’t know how to handle…” He paused, his vision growing bleary as he tried to choke down his feelings as he always did. “I don’t know how to handle death. I have always been alone, and when you died, all I could do was run away from it. I didn’t want to stay and face it.”

	The figure knelt. The flames coalesced, their sound quelled as they formed fully, giving the spirit definition and shape. He insistently slid his hands underneath Arkhet’s, clutching them tightly. “Will you spend the night with me? I don’t… I can’t be alone when midnight comes.” The bright eyes beneath the flames peered into Arkhet's, afflicted with a quiet fear of the coming hour.

	“Of course,” he quietly assured.

	“We have much to catch up on, anyway,” the spirit said, punctuating it with an awkward titter.

	…

	The morning after the solstice came, and the cold light of the Architect barely peered through the clouds, a gray quiet hanging over the town. Under the cover of gentle snow, the carriage and its visitor vanished into the woods. Stepping out of her bedroom into the heart of her house, the Wildkin woman felt it truly empty and vacant for the first time, a pleasant calm after a long and tumultuous storm. For most, the dawn after the solstice was either a time of mourning or relief, and it was nice to be on the latter side for once.