Chapter 12: Chapter 12 - Ghost in the Shower

Svel was an inch from his face when his eyes opened. He flinched back, cracking his head against the wall behind the bed. She laughed then rolled off the edge, landing on her hands and feet before rising to saunter over to the single window, her chains a gentle clatter against the wooden flooring.

“Do you have to be so… strange?” Daniel asked, rubbing the back of his sore skull.

“No,” she admitted. “But I’m bored. You’re the only slice of life I get to experience.”

”That doesn’t sound very godly.”

”It isn’t,” she sighed, planting her hands on the window sill and peering out of it. The longer she looked out the window, the wider a silent grin grew, until she cracked, caved in on herself, sinking to the floor in a hysterical pile of unrestrained laughter.

Daniel didn’t know what to do. Any comfort he could offer felt like a joke, and she was laughing enough.

“Are you trapped?” he asked. Stupid, he thought, bad question. Obviously she was.

But the question broke her hysteria, and her grin settled back into something resembling a genuine smile that waxed and waned in a cycle Daniel didn’t understand. “Most of me.”

He thought about the heart Axen had retrieved, the copy of Svel’s, and she nodded the affirmative. “Yeah, we’ll need to get that back at some point. It can wait for now.”

”But there’s another part of you trapped here? With the Primordial Beast?”

She nodded again and Daniel rubbed his eyes until he saw stars on the inside of his eyelids. “Svel how the fuck am I supposed to kill something no one has managed to find in hundreds of years?”

”Thousands,” she corrected, pulling herself to her feet and dusting off her filthy robes, a quiet clang accenting the motion. “The Beast has been here much longer than Mast has. But don’t worry so much, I’ve learned the issue isn’t really in finding its location.”

“You know where it is?”

”My last Chosen found it. You will too.”

Daniel sighed, a growing frustration in the limited information his antagonistic patron would offer him. He looked down at his hand, wondering if a command for truth would be worthwhile, or a wish for eyes like Axen’s.

“Have you decided what you want?” she asked, covering the space between them in a few strides.

“Did the Beast kill your last ‘me’?” He avoided her question entirely.

“It did.”

“And you, what, just gave up on them? Because they failed you?” Daniel pushed. He stared up at Svel from his position on the bed, animosity and fear layered in equal thickness across his shoulders. She would trap him here, put him in an unwinnable position, deny him any true freedom, then abandon him? Somehow this proposed abandonment was a far greater sin than any pain she had inflicted thus far.

He expected anger to match his own, but instead she sank to the floor, lowering herself to her knees. She looked up at him, not wearing extravagant sadness and tear-dotted eyes, but a solemn expression, a heavy weight of regret weighing down her features. “I have never given up on my Chosen, they’ve only given up on me.”

He believed her, and she knew it. He felt pathetic for it, like a kicked puppy that kept returning to its owner’s side, but her own wounded nature softened him.

“I wish you hadn’t brought me here.”

Svel stretched a finger up to his forehead. “Bad wish.”

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Daniel was awake before he opened his eyes, and their subsequent opening was heavy and reluctant. His hand twinged with pain. The first streaks of day had just started bleeding into his small room, and he understood the efficiency Svel was offering. No wasted daylight.

He groaned to no one, or to Svel, he supposed, and sat up, stretching out on the scratchy wool bedding he had fallen asleep on, rather than in. For the best, given the state of his hygiene.

Opposite of him, near the door, the DS hummed quietly, a gentle blink to its forest-colored runes. He stood, the beacon luring him close as designed.

When the alcove was within reach, his hand extended towards it, the runes lit up in uniform brightness. A small pile of clothes appeared, along with a note.

‘The bath is at the end of our hallway. Cleanliness is also a virtue.’ – Mayline of Inso’s Light

The only thing stopping Daniel from stripping and changing out of his ragged clothes that second was the knowledge he could be clean for the process. He tucked Mayline’s note into his bag, additional information to add to his notebook later, and scooped up the clothes she had sent him.

He was a step from the door when the weight around his neck made him pause. It felt strange to bring the rib with him, but wrong to leave a piece of Svel behind. But then, he was leaving her tongue shoved into his bag. Of course, her tongue wasn’t a valuable weapon. After a moment more of deliberation, he tucked the chain-linked rib under his shirt and stepped out of his room.

The hallway was empty, lit dimly by uncovered windows that let in the earliest morning sun and an occasional runic light, holstered to the walls. He followed Mayline’s instruction, heading opposite the direction they had entered through last night.

The hallway ended in another set of heavy double doors, a metal material Daniel registered as steel, but likely wasn’t. The warmth and moisture was palpable in the air before he passed through the door.

The other side was smooth marbled rock, the floor made of tiles that matched the walls. Stalls lined the entire room, narrow and seeming to function like showers, though they had no doors. Modesty was a privilege not given to the dungeon divers, apparently.

Fortunately, no one else was in the room. In fact, the entire building had seemed remarkably empty, an unnerving stillness to the place. He could see by the runes on the doors he had passed many were occupied, but their occupants remained to be seen.

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Shaking the concern off, he approached the nearest stall, setting his clean clothes on a little stand next to the stall. His dirty clothes were added in a crumpled pile next to it, undeserving of a table.

He stepped in, eyeing a black slab of stone on the wall that greatly resembled the DS in his room. It hummed when he entered, green glyphs lighting up, and lukewarm water sprinkled from a near-identical stone above him, absorbed by another at his feet.

Daniel had no soap and the stall offered him none, but the water was a glimpse of heaven, and he set to work rubbing the grime off his skin with just his hands. It was a tedious process, but much better than nothing.

When he was done he took a step back out of the stall, the realization he didn’t have a towel a problem solved quickly by an ungodly blast of wind. The source was a previously unseen dark stone at the edge of the stall, and the air it blew at him was a cruel chill from the depths of hell.

He let out a string of profanities and swore he heard a giggle from somewhere in the room, but he saw no one.

Cold, observed, and missing soap, Daniel hastily pulled the new clothes on — clean black trousers, a thick leather belt, and a collared white shirt. He pinned the collar between his fingers. Did they have ties here? Did collars on shirts predate ties? Was this another unusual bleed through of familiar traits in a foreign world? Why were there daisies?

The shirt, unkind as it was, didn’t answer him, so he finished getting dressed and left the baths.

He stopped at his room to toss his old clothes in, then trotted down the hall to the center staircase. Before he could reach the first step, though, a voice called out.

“Hi, just a second, please,” a feminine voice said, an uncertain waver in it, an awkwardness.

Daniel rounded, circling the room with his eyes, stumped by the emptiness. “Uh, hi?”

”I’m going to touch your arm, if that’s okay?”

”Sure?”

A large hand pressed against his arm and a woman blinked into existence, absolutely towering over him. He flinched back and the skin contact was broken. She vanished again.

“Sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you, it’s just, I’ve been accidentally following you for like twenty minutes now and it was starting to feel a bit weird, and I didn’t want to scare you in the baths, and also I felt like a bit of a creep, and—“

Daniel cut off the long-winded ramble of an apology, a rush of heat in his face at the one-sided nudity. “It’s okay,” he said and pushed his arm forward, making contact again. She reappeared, a long sheet of black hair hiding most of her face and shoulders. She was skinny as a twig, but several heads taller than himself, even with the stoop she seemed comfortable holding. While her hair draped over her like a jacket, a portion of her neck was exposed, revealing a black circle marked on her pale skin, its interior empty – the same mark Theo had on her neck.

“You came in with Tyn and Henya right? You met Axen? You were with his group? And came back with them? Did you meet Theo?” she asked, each question leaving no room for the last to be answered. Daniel settled for recency.

“Yeah, I met Theo. She came to Mast with us.”

”That’s great!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands together, resulting in her disappearing. She hastily grabbed his arm again. “Oh my goodness, so sorry, I’m not very good at this. Such a ridiculous power, can you imagine? I told my patron — my first patron, not Irel, she’s been very kind — but I told my first patron ‘I want to be seen only when I want’ and I was thinking — oh, he’ll let me become invisible, but no! No, he makes me invisible all the time, except when I’m touching people, which is just absurd because, I mean people can touch me without my consent, so it’s not like I’m only seen when I want. It’s like he wanted to misunderstand me, but then he didn’t even do it in a clever way! Just a proper arsehole!”

She blinked, a sudden wideness to her eyes, brought on by her own absurdity. “I’m so sorry, I’ve had barely anyone to talk to since the Crown issued all those board missions, basically all the other Crawlers have left and they don’t usually take me because, well I’m a bit of a niche use case, y’know, and rather easy to lose, and that’s happened more than once! Well just the twice, but that’s still more than once and really more than any fully grown adult ought to get lost, particularly in a bookstore.”

She clasped her free hand over her mouth.

“I’m Daniel,” he greeted with a smile, tapping a hand to the left side of his chest and extending it to her. She repeated the gesture with enthusiasm and they shook hands.

She looked like she would start again, the part of lips paired with a monumental suction of air, but she caught herself. “I’m Ghost.”

He didn’t dare to ask if that was a name native to her original world, or second, or a translation quirk between Reborns — he feared he’d never escape the verbal onslaught. But he did have a question, and Ghost seemed much friendlier than the woman at the front desk.

“Do you know where the mess hall is?”

”Of course!” she exclaimed, an eager hop to her step as she took off down the stairs, pulling Daniel with. “A great choice to ask me, not a lot of talkative folk around here, at least not right now, most of the Crawlers being out on missions and all, it’s just a few social recluses — weirdos that they are. That was a joke, I’m joking, I’m the weird one I know, it’s okay to think it, but a much better idea to ask me, Kali isn’t a friendly one like me, a little mean to be honest, but I think it just comes with the territory — customer service jobs and all. Did you have customer service jobs in your world? I know this is your first rebirth, you’re the newborn that came with Tyn, Daniel you said, and he said, patron is Irel, like me! Blessed be our fruitful mother.”

Ghost paused at the bottom of the stairs to press a hand to her chest and smile warmly upwards at an unseen sky. Then she took off again, guiding Daniel towards the wing opposite of the infirmary on the first floor.

“Good patron to have. She’s very kind, sweet, sweet, lady. Lady? Is it appropriate to call a goddess a lady? I’m not certain, but I don’t think anyone’s ever corrected me.”

Daniel wasn’t sure she’d noticed if she had been, but his irritation measured equal with affection for the gangly, quirky woman. Ghost pushed open another set of double doors, to the right of the main entrance. A narrow walkway opened up to allow access to the courtyard, but continued straight to a side building with many large windows that revealed several empty tables.

“And here we are! Well, not here, exactly, this is the courtyard, obviously. Lots of training tools here, you should practice! Lots of practice is good, best way to not die, I find, second only to being invisible at all times,” Ghost laughed, covering the distance from door to door in just a few strides with her long legs. Daniel struggled to keep up.

“And here we are again, for real this time! Right here, in this little slot here, you can drop in a token to enter, the mess hall is a buffet, so eat your fill.” She paused and looked expectantly between Daniel and a small metal mechanism on the door.

He looked back towards his room, realizing he had left his coin pouches in his room.

“Oh! New clothes, new pants, no tokens, huh? No worries, I can cover you this time, wouldn’t want to make you hike all the way back up, just get me next time. I won’t even charge you interest, not like Kire. You met Kire right? Proper scoundrel he is. Not really, but he can be quite rude, even when he’s nice. He gave me some money when I first got here, real gentlemanly, and then he — you’ll never believe it — he made me steal something for him! Like I’m some sort of thief! Just because a lady happens to be invisible does not mean she’s cut out for a life of thievery. But I owed him, and he knew it, and he tells me — well just snatch a little necklace for him, and then we’re right as rain. Well I got caught, because I’m not a common thief, I’m not even a poor thief, I’m not a thief at all, and I spent a month in the keep’s prison! Well, it was to be a month, but they let me out two weeks early, I’m not sure why, the guards never said, which is a shame because I thought we were just becoming friends.”

Ghost’s words trailed off and she stared at Daniel for a moment, who stared back. “Oh!” She blurted out again, fishing for a token from a pocket on her gray pants. “Right, right, of course, enjoy your meal!”

She dropped a token into the slot on the door and something within it clicked. Daniel tried the door, pushing it open. “Thank you Ghost, I really appreciate it.”

”Any time!” she said cheerily, waving until their skin contact broke and she vanished again.