The Spectre of Spirits

by **Brodon Windriver** on July 28th, 2013, 5:43 am

48th of Summer, 513, The Mustering for Syka

Brodon was fairly certain that Mathias was not going to ask him to dance. He hoped not anyway. Just about every combination of partners had danced together at one time or another. It was the ones that had a second go that indicated more than a passing interest. Brodon had felt some such interest towards some of the women here. But his conversations with them always led to a point where he discovered they were far older than he.

It was true that, given the lifespans of some of the races, these women were as comparatively young as he was. But not only would they consequently outlive him by a century or more, but no amount of rationalizing could obscure the fact that he would be entering into an hopeful relationship with a woman older than his mother.

Then, of course, there was the reverse anxiety of looking TOO much like he was "targeting" women his own age. They would naturally assume that they "knew what he was after." He could not deny the element of truth in that concern. But then, neither could they. He knew he was tall and strong. He believed himself to be in good shape. He felt he could take care of himself. He'd certainly faced enough adversity to make a case for that belief. But was he handsome? Did he have that intangible "appeal"? They were going to start a new city, possibly a new culture! There would be pairings, there would be children, and there would also be simple physical attractions.

But while he had nothing against casual intimacy, as long as everyone concerned knew ahead of time that that's all it was, he hoped to find more, and was always looking for more. He'd had less often enough. He wondered if those women had been searching for more. Had he disappointed them, misunderstood the seriousness of their feelings and left them feeling used?

His thoughts continued to spiral down the endless 'if's' and 'but's' and 'why's' of relationships until he barked a sudden "Bah!" and tossed the whole chain of thought as he turned in the interest of another glass of ale.

...And nearly ran full into the brown-haired, grey-eyed girl, "Laciva...or Letissa?...I am being full sorrying, I am not being remember...ing...full...people's names...for very good. At least I am did not spilling of my ale all on you." He stepped out of what he assumed was her path to the wine tray on one of the side bars. "I am hoping I did not getting in your ways."

by **Levissa Certier** on August 4th, 2013, 10:10 am

Despite the fact that she was a capable fighter, Levi was not an excellent dancer. She had known it since a long long time ago - after humiliating herself in one of her family's parties. She cringed at the thought. So instead of joining the others on the dance floor, Levi wandered around the small garden, plucking out foods out of trays when one caught her eye.

It seemed to her that almost everyone here was an experienced traveler - just like her. She also noted the few people who seemed to possess useful skills. Well, basically everyone. Odd to think that all these people she never met before would be with her for who knows how long. That brought her to think about the people she did know.

During her haste in heading out to Riverfall, Levi had no time to contact her family and told of this quest of hers. She had thought about her family and she was sure they would not object. They would not worry for now, since she was used to traveling and letters were their only means of communication. But now that she realized they were heading out into some uncharted wilderness, it might be some time until she could return to Syliras. In two days they would be heading out and Levi still had things to take care of - she doubted she could spare the time to write a letter in all the haste. Perhaps it was possible to somehow send out a message during their voyage on the ship.

Allarde would be furious at her if he had known she simply left for a random journey without telling him. But he would worry and maybe even try to stop her if she was to tell him any soon. She knew for a fact that he was as enough to do so given the chance. Levi couldn't afford that. Something was telling her to go forward with this Syka thing and she could not have her brother ditching his Knight-training to drag her back to the capital. Her parents would be calmer, but after Marissa's death, Levi couldn't blame them to be reluctant of letting her go. With both Aelinore and Marissa gone, all they had left was her and her brother.

Her mind reeled, looking for others who might disapprove of her actions. Bryan, too, would be annoyed at her decision. He was her mother's latest effort to tie her down with marriage. A minor noble, slightly obnoxious but bearable. The handsome twenty-three year old man was arrogant, but he was smart and persuasive. Levi had put up with him for the last couple of seasons whenever she returned to Syliras. She would not miss him much.

As she dwelled on how to break the news to her family, she barely realized the figure heading straight at her. It was inevitable that they bumped into each other.

She straightened and glanced up at the man. Man might not be the most accurate word. He looked about her age. It took her a few short seconds to recall his name as he apologized. Brodon, the Drykas with a messy Common. His words were understandable, sure, but it needed much work. Levi smiled politely and graciously, as she was taught by her ever-so proper mother. "Levissa and I think a simple 'I'm sorry' would have sufficed."

by **Brodon Windriver** on August 4th, 2013, 4:12 pm

Brodon took a deep breath, trying to shake off the 'flustered' feeling that always made his common worse. The worse it got, the more 'flustered' he felt. It was a humiliating cycle at times. But her smile made him feel at ease quickly enough to break it.

" 'I'm sorry', then...Le-vissa." he said, the beginnings of a sheepish grin forming. He was not sure what made the word "suffice" different than "suffer", but he decided that she was not mad at him, so he continued. "If I am going...no..." he restarted, "If - I - go - slow - enough, I - am not - being - too badly."

He shook his head. "There is being my choosings. Of being how I am ruining a good talk. By - taking - long time - for - choices - of - words - and - make...ing - persons - wait too long...OR...talking faster for not being to wait, but having my bumping words together in messiness."

He gave her a look that combined amusement with frustration. "So...which - manner - is...no...are - you - wishing - I - use?" He knew that his common skill would improve with practice. The very fact that he formed more coherent sentences when he went slowly proved that. But practice time, with a skilled tutor, had eluded him thus far.

He had spent several bells with Joebel, his priest friend in Yahebah, working on it. But he spent far more with equally inept Benshiran conversationalists in the vineyards or in the caravan, and that time spent always seemed to undo any strides he made with Joebel.

He tried to find an acceptable middle ground. "I am hearing you - are being a - spirit - tess? spirit - ish? This is a one - who is being a - one that - deals with - spirits? Ghosts?" he thought back, with a shiver, to his encounter with a pair that were taking turns possessing their own daughter, down in The Burning Lands, just before he found the caravan announcing this expedition. "How are you liking for doing that? I am not dis...thinking of it as a not important - thing..." he stopped, unsure whether he had indicated that he thought it was important work or not. He started again, "It IS being VERY important, I am thinking, but how does it making you feel for...creepiness?"

OOCIf you read the linked story, the ghost part doesn't start until the second-to-last post on page one

by **Levissa Certier** on August 7th, 2013, 11:44 am

"Going slow is just fine and don't worry about it," she suggested lightly. Levi ran her fingers through her hair and smiled kindly at the Drykas. She had dealt with people who could barely speak Common before. Well not exactly dealt, more like listened patiently. The girl did not mind. Admittedly, she was having a bit of a hard time getting it. It at least took her another second to take in what he was saying.

"Yes, I am." Levi shrugged. She had gotten the question lots of times - if she didn't misunderstand. Even though a spiritist was not a rarity in Mizahar, people seemed to find mages like her a little mysterious. She smiled a bit at Brodon's effort in emphasizing just how important her work was. "I guess, you get use to it. I've known them all my life." It was true. Ghosts were everywhere and she was seeing them since she was young. They were mostly followed her around, some talked if they felt like it. In a weird way, she had never actually feel lonely. Someone was always around - alive or dead.

On a second thought, she added, "What about you? What were you doing before you came here?"

by **Brodon Windriver** on August 8th, 2013, 5:08 am

Brodon was relieved to hear this young woman tell him it was all right to take his end of the conversation slowly. She confirmed that she was indeed the one that dealt with ghosts. She seemed to appreciate his effort to state how important he believed her work was. It hadn't occurred to him that it was something a person could actually get used to. He had never been comfortable when a ghost was in the vicinity. They'd always struck him as some embodiment of madness and misery, come to suck the living away into the void.

His experience in Eyktol had both defied and confirmed this preconception. And though it had made him consider that, like different peoples and cultures, there were both good and bad within the same sphere, he didn't really want to discuss it. He wasn't really sure why he had approached her. Then she asked him what he had been doing before coming to Riverfall, and he realized he was fooling himself. He very much wanted to talk about it, despite the uneasiness it instilled in him.

He stalled a moment before answering, feeling unsure of himself. "I was...leaving...Eyktol. I..." He stopped and looked at her directly, starting again. "It is being...funny..for you...asking me of that." The memory of it seemed still to hover nearby, watching. "I was having my meeting...of my own...with ghosts. I was being apart from...separate...from my horse, Lovaak. I was following to be finding him. In the desert, being...not with a horse is being very bad thing. When I finded him...well, not ME, as much as it was being my hawk that was did the finding."

He started to get that skin crawling feeling now that he actually TRYING to recall the details. "Anyway, when WE finded him...Lovaak, I mean...we also finded...no...found...we also found them." He was unaware of the slight blanching of his complexion, or the widening of his eyes as he continued. "There were two...of them...ghosts. I am thinking they were mother and father to the child, the little girl. No, she was not being the ghosts, but they were being in her, taking turns making her being their flesh for them for doing things."

His voice quivered slightly, "Do you be understanding? My scared...ness? I did not be knowing at first, of them as mother and father, I am meaning. I could see face...things...of the mother...in hers...the little girl's, and in her voice...her laughing...the laughing of a woman grown up! Not a little girl!"

His chest tightened, and he was having trouble breathing. "I thought it was some monster from Dira! Some death...bringing thing...violating this poor girl to use as a weapon for taking my soul! I had to be away! Get away! Can you see my needing for it being stopped. I could not be letting it touch me!..."

Brodon was actually backing away from Levissa now, dropping into a chair, his head in his hands, muttering 'no, no, no...get back'. He took a deep shuddering breath, and regained most of his composure. He looked with eyes that Levissa might have expected to be filled with fear, they certainly had been a moment ago. But now it was shame that drove the tears to gather. "I was going to kill her!" he choked. "I was going for taking my iron staff and beating her head with it!"

He looked up. "I was so scared! I think to being defending my soul from being stoled from me! She keeps coming at me! And I backed from her, but the wall...I was...could not go further...and her laughing...her hands reaching! The horror of such a sweet thing, being for such a monster!" He looked up in anguish, imploring her for forgiveness. "Do the dead ones still be knowing how it is for being alive? To not want to be dead with them?"

by **Levissa Certier** on September 4th, 2013, 10:16 pm

"In a way, it's gratifying work. Those who linger usually have unfinished business and I do what I can to resolve them. So that they can have peace and move on. It feels good to free someone of a burden." Countless times, she had encountered ghosts still in-search for their long-lost love or someone they hate or simply trying to get a second chance to do something great.

The spiritist listened to the Drykas' story patiently, finding that the story quite fascinating, rather than scary. It was certainly disturbing, but for someone like her it was. As Brodon proceeded, he was getting noticeably hysterical, his voice carrying through the garden, his muscles tense.

At the mention of Dira, the Eiyon mark on her left palm seemed to buzz. Levi clenched her hand tightly, figuring that he might not want to know that she was in the service of goddess of death. She could not blame him. It was a scary experience for the common man. A pair of ghosts periodically possessing their daughter's body - the thought was horrifying. "Dira does not dwell with the living, Brodon. She simply escorts the souls and lead them to the gods they belong to. More or less. The goddess hunts them down, those who should've left the world." It might not be the best time, but Levi could not deny the need to defend her goddess.

Levi sat down beside the troubled man, a bit unsure what to do or to say. A couple of the servants seem to have noticed Brodon's outburst, she waved them away. "I . . . I don't know what to say. All I know is I do what I do to prevent from such things from happening. Not all the restless spirits are like that, but there are quite a handful."

by **Brodon Windriver** on September 5th, 2013, 3:44 am

Brodon took a deep, shuddering breath, held it a moment and exhaled a long sigh. "If we were going not...to...not going to...Syka, I would be thinking of you might be going back for seeing about them, for...escorts...for souls. I am thinking they might be going away-ed now, though." He breathed a little easier now. "I am thinking it is ended there...with them.

"The ghost...man...was the worst. Angry...so angry...The mother, if that is what she is...was being, was more...a normal...mother type...helping the girl...for learning...normal things. But she was...much angry too...at me...at first. I was so scared...and she saw my lifting staff...for attacking the girl...A force I could not see...pulled it away from me...pushed my head...into beating on the hut...wall of hut. many times."

He went on in his halting common, weighing each phrase to get it as correct as he knew how. Explaining the ghosts' division of the girl's time, the mother helping her to do tasks to run the little homestead, the father using her body to practice his reimancy. The mother eventually becoming somewhat friendly, and then requesting, through dreamed images and drawings in the dirt, her desire for Brodon to take the girl away from the situation.

He recalled the girl's refusal, telling her father, and his violent reaction. Brodon's voice shook as he repeated the story, the manifestations and possessions. Brodon felt shame that he knew was misplaced, but was present nonetheless, as he relayed his inability to deal with this spirit's aggression in forms he did not understand. Again he was dealt a blow to the head, by a fence post that seemed to strike of its own accord. The approach of the manic spirit, manifested and carrying a scythe in a weapon hold.

"I didn't know how to...being defensed for myself. Any times I am thinking I can be trying this or that, he is changing to new form, or possessing girl. I could not bring myself for hurting girl, even if am dying for...not hitting. I was dizzy brained, head hurting on ground, looking up into face of one wishing for my death." He focused on nothing, his eyes fixed on the memory running through his mind.

He described, hesitating on certain details, the mother coming to his rescue, obstructing the man-ghost, giving Brodon the time to focus his mind and get the girl on the horse. Tears started in his eyes as he recounted the father, hacking and slashing the manifested mother, the air filling with a milky mist, as she crumpled to the ground and vanished, the residue swirling in the air as they ran, the girl on Lovaak's broad back, Brodon on foot. He tried to describe his terror as he saw the father, stepping through distances in the blink of an eye, catching up quickly and attacking him with lances of icy cold, robbing him of breath, seizures of convulsions bringing him down, gasping.

He looked up at Levissa now, horror temporarily stealing his voice. His face paled as he tried to describe the ghost possessing HIM, using his own essence to form a cloud of sizzling energy overhead. The mental agony of hearing his own voice laughing at his own certain death. His own mind touching pure mad hate.

"When he...went out of me...I could not even be raising arm. I saw the streakings of death flash in cloud. But I remember my thought of it being good for girl was gone away. But then I heard her! She came back! Now ALL was a ruin. Mother dead...or weakened, I guess. I would be...ing dead. Father would be taking girl back. And all for no good thing..."

He paused for a moment and a look of strange wonder filled his expression. "I got so angry. Angry for all the suffering not bearing any good thing. And I...I am not knowing...I am only...being able to say I...Forgot...I was so spended, so tired. Strength I cannot be saying came from somewhere. I ran to girl and stuck iron staff in ground and pushed girl hard away. There was boom sound...very loud... am still hearing it...and then...I was...in a bed wagon...in a caravan...heading here....And the girl was with me."

by **Ragdoll** on May 26th, 2014, 1:25 pm

Grade Awarded!

Levissa, should you ever decide to bring your PC out of hiatus, you're more than welcome to PM me and I'll grade your portion of the thread.

Brodon :

Don't forget to edit your grading request! Though I try my hardest to award you what you deserve, I may occasionally mess things up! If there's something you'd like to discuss about your grade, then please don't hesitate to send me a PM and I'll be happy to work things out with you.

Skill	Points
Socialization	3
Observation	1