NOVEL NEXT Interlude one – Ghost Hunting – part 2/2
As we entered the mansion we were surprised to see someone waiting for us since we hadn’t been told we would be getting further help. As soon as they saw us they spoke up ‘Oh, you must be the adventurers that my mistress sent for.’ She was quite plain looking, wearing a standard maid outfit, had short brown hair that wouldn’t get in the way of their tasks and was average height. ‘My mistress sent me here to take you to where the sightings were most common, just follow me.’
At this she turned around and started walking off before Monsoon stopped her ‘Hold on a minute, Lotus didn’t say anything about someone helping us.’ I had the same thought and would have said something but Monsoon got there before me. At this the maid turned back around.
‘Oh, it must have slipped her mind. I am terribly sorry’ The servant said, ‘She hides it well but she is still mourning her father and so is quite forgetful at the moment.’ The explanation didn’t sit right with me but I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong with it. No one else said anything so after a minute of silence Monsoon just said ‘ok then. Well, thanks for your help, please lead the way’
At this the servant once again turned away from us and started walking deeper into the mansion with us following close behind this time. The mansion was quite dark as all the curtains had been shut but luckily they still let in enough light that we could still see what we were doing. The servant led us down a maze of corridors and stairs for a good five minutes until we came to a door into one of the bedrooms.
By the looks of it this was probably the late master’s bedroom as it was larger than any of the bedrooms we had seen in the mansion so far. It had a king sized bed with luxurious covers, bookshelves that covered two of the four walls and a massive walk-in closet covering another one of the walls. The last wall was basically one huge glass window that overlooked the courtyard, unfortunately we couldn’t see into the courtyard as the curtains had been closed like everywhere else in this mansion.
‘This is it, just step in and the ghost should show itself quickly’ The servant said while waiting at the door ‘I will wait for your return at the entrance.’ Something about the way she said this made my instincts flare up once more but I still couldn’t put my finger on what was causing it so I didn’t say anything as we all walked through the door.
Once we had all entered the room I felt magic go off behind me so I looked to see what it was only to find that the door now had a transparent barrier blocking us in and the ‘servant’ had transformed into something else. The only thing that I could tell by looking at her was that she was clearly undead of some sort.
Her skin, that was previously a plain white, had turned a sickly grey and was now sunken into her bones, as if all her muscles had atrophied away. Her eyes were now completely white, not having any pupils or irises. The maid outfit she was wearing had changed into tattered clothing that would have left her with no modesty if she had been alive.
While we were walking into the bedroom she had pulled out a short wand made out of dead and rotting wood that she was now using to channel some sort of magic as a sickly green vortex started to surround the end of her wand. I saw that it was pointed at Galan and I tried to push him out of the way but I was too slow as the vortex became a laser that hit Galan and wrapped around him slowly causing him to wither.
Luckily it didn’t kill him out right but after the beam had stopped he still looked heavily injured and on death's door. ‘It’s nothing personal, I just can’t let anything hinder my experiment’ she said, her voice now held a gravelly tone that made my skin crawl ‘If you had come even a day later you wouldn’t have found me but now you will all need to die. I would say sorry but I don’t care.’
In a rage I turned into a bear before striking at the barrier as she just stared at me with uncaring apathy. The barrier didn’t even flicker as I hit it as I was too weak to do anything to it. As I was doing this I heard Monsoon from behind me exclaim ‘Shit, Stryf we have more immediate issues than the barrier, we need you help with the ghost.’ They stopped talking for a second to think before continuing ‘DD, you try to blink outside of the room and deal with the ‘servant’.’
Over the year that we had been travelling together I had learnt that Monsoon was a great tactician so I trusted his orders and, even though I didn’t want to, I turned around and swapped positions with Dust. I located the Wraith before charging at it as I felt my claws get stronger due to Galan at the same time I heard the telltale
pop of Dust activating her blink.I quickly reached the [Wraith] before swiping at it twice, both hit as it didn’t seem at all interested in trying to dodge, thinking that because it was a ghost that we wouldn’t be able to hit it. Unfortunately it didn’t seem like I did much damage even with Galan’s enhancements. As I went back down to all fours Monsoon finished casting the spell he was most experienced with as a lance of water went through the [Wraith]’s chest leaving a huge hole in its chest.
Now that I was next to the [Wraith] it started to wildly attack me, striking me three times in quick succession. Thanks to my enhanced hide, each hit didn’t deal much damage by themselves but I could tell that I wouldn’t last long like this. Galan was enhancing our strikes but if he went down the buffs would disappear so he used his magic to wrap a barrier around himself that made him harder to hit.
Since my claws weren’t doing much damage to the [Wraith] even while being enhanced I used a minor spell to coat them in acid before taking two more swipes. The [Wraith] was all in on attacking me while leaving itself open so I got two pretty deep swipes on its arms, causing it to recoil slightly. I couldn’t afford to look behind me as I had to give the [Wraith] my full attention but I trusted that DD would be fine.
This was helped by the fact that none of us had received any more attacks from the doorway and I could still hear pops every few seconds. Monsoon acted next by sending out two whirlpools at the same time, they converged with the [Wraith] in the middle of them. I could tell that the Wraith had clearly received heavy damage as it started to slow down its attacks a bit.
This didn’t stop it from swinging its longsword at me three more times. Two of them hit which made me wince as each hit hurt even through my thick hide. As the sword went down to hit me a third time I rose up and bit its hand with my mouth, causing it to drop the longsword. While it was disarmed I quickly scratched it two more times. By this point the [Wraith]’s bright blue shine had dimmed considerably which, I hoped, indicated that the fight would be over soon.
DD was still fighting alone so I wanted to get to her as fast as I could and I was getting close to going down myself. Now that it was without a weapon I thought the hard part was over but I quickly realised I was wrong as it created an exact replica of the longsword it had been using before striking me three more times.
Monsoon started to cast another water lance but they used the [Minor Fire Magic] skill that they had received almost two weeks ago for reaching level 20 to take away the heat in the water and freeze it before shooting it out at the [Wraith]. Usually the lance would just fall to the ground when the attack was finished but freezing it caused the lance to explode on impact making it deal even more damage.
I could see that the [Wraith] was almost finished so I decided to end the fight here. I started to channel the rest of my mana into my strongest spell as I struck twice with my claws to conceal the spell. Just before I had to go back down on all fours I roared as I finished casting my spell and a streak of lightning shot out of my mouth and hit the Wraith dead on causing heavy damage. It also wrapped around the [Wraith] and made it start spasming as if he still had muscles.
Monsoon and Galan both quickly realised what I was doing and started to combine their magic to cast a single, devastating, attack. Monsoon made the base spell and Galan poured his mana into it causing it to grow into something that neither of them could cast by themselves at their current level. Just as the Wraith was about to break free of the lightning they finished the spell and a huge tidal wave appeared in the room that went from one of the walls to the opposite wall.
The tidal wave washed over me as if it didn’t exist but it picked up the Wraith before slamming it into the opposite wall with such force that it instantly vanished. Seeing that the battle in the bedroom was finished we all turned around to see Dust still fighting the ‘servant’ that tricked us. They both looked heavily injured but the undead creature was worse for wear than DD.
As we rushed to start attacking the barrier the creature turned towards us before speaking in its guttural voice ‘It seems like I have failed once again. You all are extremely lucky that what I was doing here wasn’t important enough for me to have backup.’ The undead creature didn’t look angry, just slightly annoyed that its work had been delayed, ‘well I can see that I won’t take any of you down if I stay here and there is no point in my dying so I will be saying goodbye now.’
With that the undead creature channelled another spell for a second and before any of us could stop it they vanished. As soon as they were gone the barrier dissolved and we rushed to check on DD. She was quite hurt, but nothing life threatening, we rested for a good ten minutes while Galan healed us up before we went back to Lotus’s house to see what the fuck just happened.
‘I am extremely sorry for what happened to you, I swear that I didn’t know anything about this.’ Lotus said, clearly distraught, ‘I will need to get another autopsy done on my father to see if this thing was actually the cause of his death. Once that is done I will send any information that I find to you. But until then,’ she paused as she opened a drawer from her desk and grabbed two bags filled with coin, putting them on the table in front of us
‘The first one is the previously agreed upon reward for this Quest, the second one is compensation for your troubles.’ No one said anything as we studied her to make sure we weren’t getting tricked again.
Once we were all satisfied Monsoon grabbed one of the bags and started to count what was in it while saying. ‘You won’t mind if I just check to make sure you aren’t swindling us, right? We don’t know if you were involved in this trap after all, even if your involvement is highly unlikely.’ Monsoon quickly finished counting the coins before saying,
‘It is all there, pleasure working with you. I will be looking forward to seeing what you find out.’ Before accepting the second bag and turning around before leaving with the party following him. As we were leaving the Lady’s residence we received a notification that none of us were expecting.
