"Oh, you poor thing!" said a woman's breathy, whispery voice. I just about leapt into the air and banged my head on the bottom of one of the lambs built into the fountain I'd dunked my whole head into as I tried to stand up too quickly! "It seems you've met a terrible fate as well! Poor dear!"
I shook off vigorously, and turned my muzzle to see... a ghost! A spectral woman floated about a foot off the ground, looking like a... disembodied woman's torso. She had hands, and arms, and an upper body, but everything below that, where she'd make contact with the ground for example, was made of some kind of... ragged cloth, or spectral matter I could not identify. Dumbly, I blinked at the figure.
> Ghost of Gelidia Windbinder, level unknown (??), empathetic, dreary
Her expression was not unkind - and not at all fearful of my appearance, despite the monstrous form I currently possessed. After all, she was a ghost! What could I reasonably do to her? And she was the first friendly... person(?) I'd actually encountered on this world, the first time I'd spoken to... anyone else, or even heard a voice. I tried to speak, to respond. I wanted to say hello, to ask what she meant, but all that came out was
"RArrro, hrarrarrrff snorff hruuh?" as my tongue and muzzle actively got in the way of any kind of coherent speech. She looked on me with confusion plain in her forlorn, spectral features. Gelidia turned to face me fully. and leaned towards me, nose to nose with my form as she rose above the ground to come level with me. My ears slicked back and I tried hard not to back away as her featureless white eyes drew close to my own, face inches away.
"Wait... you spoke." she looked stunned. "Can you understand me?"
I nodded. That much at least worked properly. Her eyes flew wide for a moment as understanding seemed to dawn on her features. She backed off, shaking her head a little "Not poor girl at all then, are you? You... chose this. You embraced your curse." She receded from me, but retained plenty of concern in her face.
I didn't quite know what she meant, but it was either subsume a core as the System suggested, or be 'Unstable' whatever that meant. Had I made a mistake doing what I did? Was I wrong to listen to the World? But... but that Red Hand core had been awful, a 'take what I want and do as I please' type class. This one so far, the werewolf core? At least it didn't seem to want me to reave campaigns of carnage across the country side and conquer the kingdom! The Peasant core just wanted me to lead a quiet life raising sheepies and goaties and chickens and bake pies in a cottage. The Lycanthrope core was the lesser of two evils, I figured.
I huffed at the ghost, a sort of canine chuffing noise, and sat beside the fountain, tail thumping the side, doing my best to relax in this strange shape I found myself in. The ghost of Gelidia Windbinder didn't seem to know what to do with that, so she sank back down to eye level with me. She stared into my face for a few moments, guarded, but clearly curious, and eventually said
"... Why? Why did you choose to become a... a Lycanthrope?" she asked, and I shook my head. I hadn't chosen to become one - it had just happened when I got here! I tried to relate that, but again, all that came out was a marly-rawrly sort of noise. I sighed with frustration - it was really, really hard to talk in this form! And I hadn't seen this ghost when I was human - would I find a person and be completely unable to have an intelligent conversation with them because she'd only be visible to me at night, when I was monster-shaped and mute? A thought occurred to me, and I sat up a little bit, dragging a claw through the dust.
THE SYSTEM TOLD ME I WAS UNSTABLE WITH THREE CORES
The ghost looked at what I was writing, and her look of interested concern deepened. She nodded at that.
"System... Do you mean... the World?" she asked, and I nodded. That must be what the people of this place called the... the thing giving me the quest, the thing giving me a menu, a status bar, skill updates. Was it the thing that had given me another chance at life, too? I could only assume so. I nodded more resolutely.
"I see... yes, three cores are unstable... but when you subsumed one of your cores into the monster core... you gave it that slot, and Monster cores... can't be removed from a core slot." she explained. I got a sinking feeling again, and a whine escaped my lips. I was stuck like this now? Not in this form, I assumed I'd change back at some point - Lycanthropy, in media back home, was like that. And, I'd gotten a skill for it - changing shape, I had to assume, would verymuch be part of my life from now on. But, I was stuck being a werewolf?
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She looked at me. "... You didn't know, did you?" I shook my head.
Gelidia sighed. "Well... too late now. I've... never heard of anyone doing that. Most people who get bitten by a Lycanthrope will pay a great deal of money to some Healer to get their curse removed" she explained "While it's in that third slot, it can be removed by such a thing... but once it's seated in a core slot-- wait, which one did you seat it in?" she asked. I was dimly aware of other ghosts around us. They were giving me a wide berth, and there weren't many, but they were... different from the woman beside me - less... defined, less visible to me.
I had no idea what she meant, and told her so. She sighed. "Goodness gracious, woman!" she said, exhasperated.
"Your first Core slot, the one to your left, is the Legacy core. Your legacy core is the one you inherit from your parents or the person who raised you. It's why we have apprentices and start them young - so the person we teach will inherit the core we were using to teach with. Blacksmiths, Tailors, Butchers, Knights, Wizards, we all do that, from the lowliest peasant to the highest royalty." she explained.
"The core to your right is your Destiny core - a gift from the world itself when you become mature and your cores come in. Your Destiny core is a bit less predictable, but it's just what the World thinks you'd be good at, given what you've actually been like so far, or... so scholars believe. There is a great deal of argument on that." I had chosen the Destiny core. My Destiny core... had been the Red Hand of Vengence. I had been destined... to be a conqueror? The World had been confused when I did what I did, when I subsumed the Red Hand core instead of the Peasant core, but... I also thought it had been pleasantly surprised.
'I SUBSUMED DESTINY' I wrote, and she sighed. "And chose... Peasant over that, of all things." she replied. A thought seemed to occur to her, and she looked up at me with a look that made me flinch a little.
"... What Destiny did the World give you that PEASANT was the core you preferred?" the spectre demanded!
Sheepishly, I wrote 'RED HAND OF VENGEANCE' as the ghost stared at the words I'd written, her expression flickered a little. Then... she looked up at me, stupefied.
"You chose Peasant? Why?" she asked, concerned and curious.
'RED HAND SEEMED LIKE THE EVIL OPTION' I wrote, and she smiled sadly in response.
"Yeah... I could see that." she said, and shook her head "... You're a Good Girl." she said with a chuckle, and I chuffed in mild irritation! What was WITH people calling me that? Like I was a dog?
"I think I like you, Emily Smith." she said almost cheerfully. "You're the best kind of stupid." In response, I felt my tail wagging, going thumpa thumpa thumpa against base of the well. I'd been called worse in my time, and the ghost... was nice enough! It was just nice to talk to somebody else, even if they were dead.
"... There's not much in this town, will you... be staying?" I shrugged a little in response.
'PROBABLY NOT' I wrote. She nodded at that, sadly.
'WANTED TO CHECK THE KEEP FOR SUPPLIES' I wrote, and Gelidia looked like she wanted to object for a moment before subsiding a bit.
"... That's my family's keep." she said "I think that would be fine... but would you be willing to take me with you? I'd like... to at least know what happened to my family. I died, but I don't know what happened to them - maybe they escaped?" I nodded at her - it'd be great to have someone else to talk to, even if they were a ghost! I was a werewolf, after all - we could be monster buddies!
She looked delighted, and pointed at the water of the well. "We just need to find my coin in here - it's bad luck to take a coin from a Blessing Well. Shades of the dead haunt them, and if you take money from one, the powers bind a ghost to you to torment you until you return the money! But that's what we want, right? I'll be able to tell if it's my coin! It's a gold one - I threw it in on my sixteenth birthday!"
It took some small amount of trial and error, but soon my fingers closed on a coin that felt ice cold, and the ghost of Gelidia Windbinder cheered! "That's the one!"
> [It is bad luck to take coins from a Blessing Well. The Powers disapprove of such action.]
> [The Powers lay a curse of Haunting upon Emily Smith until the coin is returned.]
"Only you'll be able to see and hear me most of the time" she said, her voice much clearer to me. I looked at her, and it was like she was... standing there near me, leaning on the edge of the pool. Her eyes were still... blank, pure white and wrong, but... she looked pink-cheeked and healthy, wearing a green night gown as she stood in the moonlight beside me. "But now, I can follow you at least!"
Monsterbuddies was a go!