Alton, of all people, came to Seaweed Man’s rescue.
The first mate slid towards the downed man and the ghost, grabbed Seaweed Man, and rolled them both sideways out of the ghost’s reach. He then pulled out a potion and forced it into Seaweed Man’s mouth. At first it didn’t take, but finally the strange man sputtered and burped up flames. Still unconscious, but alive.
“MUTINY!” the ghost screamed after them.
“NAKODA!” Lilian suddenly screamed with nearly as much volume. “WILL YOU ATTACK IT NOW?!”
“Okay, fine!” Nakoda ran back to get a running start and then jumped off of the cliff. The impact of him landing onto my saddle knocked the air out of my chest, but I was too busy trying to manage my own terror to mind. I called out to the magic, and it answered, flowing into us. Maybe Lilian was right. It was like a muscle. One I now had to put back to work.
To save Alton (again) and Seaweed Man, I charged and intercepted the ghost. It recoiled, as if repulsed by my magical aura, before then leaping at me.
“I’m sorry!” Nakoda blurted. He rammed his lance through one of the ghost’s hands and through the ghost’s left eye socket. Blue fire immediately blossomed out of the other eye and the ghost’s mouth. It poured across Nakoda’s lance, fighting against my aura. A terrible pressure pushed down against my mind. Blue-tinged memories that weren’t my own flashed across my eyes. The face of one woman in particular: Aeshamara.
This ghost desired her above all else. His treasure. The source of his inanity and misery. His obsession.
Maybe it’s crazy, but I suddenly found myself relating to the fire-breathing ghost. During the first few months after Mom’s kidnapping her, the thought of finding and saving her was the only thing keeping me going. It was only through Nakoda’s influence that I calmed down. Allowed myself to live…
Something that I wouldn’t be able to do if I let this ghost beat me.
A piercing neigh burst from my mouth as I rammed my will back at the ghost. White magic poured from Nakoda’s lance and popped the ghost’s skull. Newly headless, the ghost collapsed to his knees and then dispersed into floating sparks.
Breathing hard, Nakoda lowered his lance and stared at the dispersing sparks with clear regret…
“Why are you sorry, Drake?” Paco called over. He’d gone over to help Alton push Seaweed Man up onto Turtle’s back. “It was trying to kill us. Again!”
“Huh?” Nakoda threw his arms open. “I don’t know! Just seems like there’s a lot that we don’t know! That we need to figure out-!”
“Then you can carry the locket!” Lilian called down. On that note, I glanced over to where the locket had fallen. It’d stopped glowing. Nakoda did as well. He hopped off of me and then went over to it. Yet it disappeared into thin air when he started reaching out towards it.
Lilian cursed. “Of course,” she groaned loudly. She pulled the locket out of her coat and held it up for all to see. “Yep, it’s cursed!”
#
We practically limped across the mainland until the first bit of normal, green vegetation came into view. Once we reached the jungle’s edge, everyone basically collapsed. Paco and Alton fell asleep near immediately. Lilian and Belkross helped a now-awake Seaweed Man off of Turtle’s shell so that she could heal him. Using some of the tricks he’d seen Paco use, Nakoda successfully started a campfire. The group’s rations were cooked and passed around. At first, everyone ate in silence. There was tension, sure, but everyone was more relieved than anything to be alive. It also helped that Aycenia’s presence was more readily felt this close to the jungle. There were the sounds of various wildlife and the constant rustling of tree branches, but it was more comforting than unnerving. Especially after surviving hours with a fungus monster’s heart constantly thumping in my ears.
After healing Seaweed Man with her magic, Lilian sat next to me. Belkross leaned back against a nearby tree, keeping watch. Lilian rubbed at her eyes tiredly. “So,” she told me, “now that everything has calmed down…unicorn, huh?”
I snorted once.
She raised a hand towards my horn. “May I?”
I hesitated to respond, but not because I didn’t trust her. Mostly, I was confused as to why she was looking at me like this. As if was something special. All of my life I’d been regarded as a freak. Compared to the perfect guardian who’d been my mother, I was. I’d always considered my lopsided horn as the symbol of my freakiness.
…At least, it had been.
I snorted once again and leaned my head forward. Lilian’s fingertips were warm as she traced them along my horn. Her lips formed into a small, true smile. She suddenly looked so much younger. More innocent. She finally took her hand back and then scratched me behind the ear. In thanks, I nuzzled her face, making er her chuckle.
I looked from her to Belkross and back. I pointed at them both with my hoof.
She frowned. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
I sighed inwardly and looked around. My eyes landed on the campfire. Using my front hoof, I pointed at her, the fire, and then at Belkross. She touched her chin thoughtfully. “I think…are you asking if Belkross and I have a magical bond? If that’s the reason he was able to survive and weaponize the flames? Similar to Nakoda using your magic.”
I nodded my head eagerly.
“Belkross’ contract with me is magical in nature,” Lilian confessed. “This makes his body more…receptive to my spells. It makes both of us more effective in combat.” She shot the mercenary a glance. “It’s a…mutually beneficial-if not pain-free-work relationship.”
“So,” I suddenly overhead Nakoda say anxiously to Seaweed Man, “you’ve only been here a couple weeks. Where else have you been? Ooh! And what’s the craziest monster you’ve fought?”
Seaweed Man gave him the side-eye, his mouth a hard line. “Recently? A vengeful, fire-breathing ghost. An encounter that was both painful and preventable.”
Ah. Seems that Nakoda hesitating to strike the ghost down had reached him.
The halfling shrunk back, eyes falling to his bowl of broth. “Um. Yeah. Preventable.”
Seaweed Man shot him a look of disdain before deciding to go over to sit next to Belkross instead. The mercenary grunted but didn’t protest to the company. I glared at Seaweed Man, rage for Nakoda’s sake bubbling in my chest. Nakoda noticed. The Little Rider reached over, placed a hand on my side, and shook his head. He set his bowl aside, uneaten, and distracted himself with cleaning his lance.
Finally, maybe for my sake, Lilian scooted over to his side. She nodded over to Seaweed Man. “Y’know, if it bothers you that much, you could get him flowers or something.”
Nakoda sighed, not looking up from his weapon. “I…I don’t know. The ghost…it didn’t feel evil. Just lost and angry. Like it really just-I didn’t know it was going to…I mean, if any of you had died, I know it’d be my fault. I know that. But I wasn’t trying to get anybody killed.” He looked up at her with big, sad eyes. “You know that, right?”
“Yes, I do.” Lilian’s tone became firm. “But when there’s danger, you can’t hesitate just because you think the opposing party might be a good person deep down. If the rest of us are in danger, and you fail to act, that’s just like stabbing us in the back yourself.” She nodded again to Seaweed Man. “That’s probably how he feels right now. You weren’t the one who attacked him, Nakoda. But, in a way, you wielded the knife.”
I was distracted by rest of the conversation by Turtle. Carrying the now-sleeping Paco on his back, the lizard plopped down next to me. “Your pointy thing’s crooked,” he mumbled, glancing up at my horn.
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.” I waited for him to say more, but instead he rested his head on his front legs, his feet shifted the sand around him in the process.
Sand.
My horn!
Excitement fighting off fatigue, I stood up and bent forward, using my horn to draw in the dirt. I called upon the memory of the Monstrosity’s face. If I could provide a rough image of it for Lilian, maybe she’d know what kind of monster it was. We’d finally have a lead!
My movements stirred Turtle, making him look over to see what I was up to. Finally, when I took a step back to catch my breath, he asked, “What is it?”
“It’s the thing that took my mother and Nakoda’s father. We’ve been searching for it. For a long time.”
Turtle tilted his head. “So…not a jellyfish?”
My shoulders sagged. “…No.”
“What’s it supposed to look like?”
“It’s big. And fat. Has tentacles for a face.” As I continued to describe the Monstrosity to the best of my ability, Turtle found a sizable stick and used it to make his own drawing in the sand next to mine. Paco continued to sleep atop him, none the wiser. Afterwards, Turtle asked about his drawing, “Like this?”
The “drawing” was little more than lines sticking out of an oval.
“Um…” I titled my head. “Almost. But thanks for trying, Turtle. Really.” I plopped back down, and he followed suit. I looked my new friend over, asked, “What do you want to do? When we get off of this island, I mean.”
“Food,” he answered, as if it were obvious.
I nodded to Paco. “How’d you guys end up together?”
“I don’t really know. Paco just feel asleep on my back one day and we’ve been together ever since.”
His and Paco’s sleepiness was contagious. I lost the fight to my exhaustion not too long after that. There were nightmares filled with fungus, ghosts, and jellyfish, but that eventually all gave way to darkness. A darkness accompanied by the sound of tearing flesh-
‘LOOK OUT!”
Lilian’s scream yanked me out of the dark. I was already up on my feet before my mind could catch up. I looked up just in time to see something falling from the sky towards us. The object landed by the campfire, filling the air with sparks and…blood?
I had to blink away droplets of it before it really registered what I was looking at. It was half of a goat’s corpse. The spine poked out of the bottom, along with the torn remains of what might have been its lungs. I shook my head to regain my bearing and looked straight up. I just barely made out the outline of a dark shape flying through the night sky.
“The Flying Shadow,” I whispered, every hair on my body standing on end.
If it’s not one monster, it’s another.
Everyone else was on their feet, weapons drawn. Well, everyone except Paco. Nakoda had to go over to the gunslinger and practically shout in his ear, “Wake up, Paco! Um, uh, rations!”
Paco slowly blinked his eyes open and sat up. He spotted the goat’s mutilated corpse. He slid off of Turtle’s shell, and wordlessly went to work on skinning the dead animal, setting the useful bits aside. It was an almost hypnotic sight that continued on due to no follow up attack or reappearance from the Flying Shadow.
Belkross returned from climbing up the nearest tree to search the sky. “Gone now,” he grunted in response to Lilian’s questioning gaze. “But it’s heading south.”
“Aren’t we heading south, too?” Nakoda asked, frowning deeply.
“Generally,” Alton replied. He hunkered down by Paco and poked at the goat’s skull. “But if it was going to attack us, it would’ve. This was a message.”
Lilian nodded, glaring at the sky, after the Shadow. “We need to keep calm. Rest. The worst thing we can do is panic. There’s still a ways to go until we reach Aycenia.”
“Don and I could scout ahead,” Nakoda offered.
“Splitting the party is NEVER a good idea, Drake.”
I’m not sure if anybody else (except Paco and Turtle, naturally) actually got any real sleep after that. When it was finally time to pack up and get going, Nakoda and I took the lead, with Alton following close behind us. Flies buzzed around us constantly, only worsening everyone’s irritability.
Nakoda shifted nervously in my saddle before looking over his shoulder at Alton. “Pssst. Alton!”
Alton frowned up at him. “Why are you whispering?”
“Alton,” the Little Rider whispered loudly, “ask Lilian to ask Belkross to ask, uh, the seaweed guy if he’s met Aycenia before.”
“…What? Oh.” Alton rolled his eyes and then called over, “Hey, creepy guy in the mushy dress, you ever meet the dryad before today?”
“No. She never revealed herself to me,” answered Seaweed Man.
Alton nodded and turned back to Nakoda. He then asked, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Do you have any more questions for him, Nakoda?”
Nakoda blushed. “Uh, uh…! What’s that, Don!” He pointed straight ahead at nothing. “Let’s check it out!”
He wasn’t fooling anyone, but I humored my poor brother. I trotted a ways ahead but stayed within line of sight of the others. Once we were out of earshot, Nakoda released a heavy sigh. I waited, but he didn’t speak. Not then, and not even when we finally reached the edge of Aycenia’s clearing hours later. After the fungal nightmare that had been the Grey God’s domain, it hit me now more than ever how assuring and precious Aycenia’s touch was. I didn’t bolt up to her tree like I had the first time, but there was a pep in my step as hurried up the hill to meet her.
Yet my excitement died quickly the second I spotted the blood and gore decorating the tree. At the base of the tree lay the back half of a corpse. The goat’s.
Aycenia had stepped out of her tree to inspect the dead animal. She quickly slapped on a shaky smile at the sight of Nakoda and I. “You did it!” she exclaimed. “I’m so proud of you!”
“A Paco’s job is never done apparently,” the gunslinger grunted. He pushed her aside and went to work on the dead meat.
“Hello, Aycenia,” Lilian said cautiously. She pointed at the corpse. “When did this happen?”
“Last night,” answered the dryad. “It seems that the Flying Shadow is not a fan of me representing you. I believe this is a challenge.”
“Oh?” Paco said. “And here I thought he was just giving us free food.”
The sarcasm clearly flew over Aycenia’s head because she replied seriously, “No. This is a challenge to those who killed a god.” She gestured to all of us. “Now you have the Shadow’s interest in full. And as your-for lack of a better word-patron, I am apparently also in need of a…splattering.”
She stepped away from the mess. “But enough of this,” she said hurriedly. “I’ve never been prouder! I can feel nature so very, very slowly rebalancing itself up north. It will take decades, perhaps even a century or two, for all the damage to come undone, but you all did magnificently!” Her smiled trembled around the corners. “…By setting everything on fire.”
Seaweed Man held up a hand. “Hello there.”
“Ah.” Aycenia tilted her head. “I don’t think we’ve properly met. Who…?”
He looked past her, at her tree. “You weren’t here when I passed by before.”
Instead of replying to that, she instead asked, “Did you help them defeat the Gray God?”
“Well, they helped me.”
Aycenia gave the strange man a long, searching look. She reached over to touch Nakoda’s shoulder, asked the halfling, “Nakoda, do you vouch for this man?”
Everyone turned to look at him. Even Paco looked up from his work.
Nakoda looked back and forth between Aycenia and Seaweed Man, eyes wide and worried. He then looked to the rest of us for help. He locked eyes with Lilian. “…Yeah,” he finally said, turning back to Aycenia. “Yeah, he helped us. Without him we probably wouldn’t have gotten in the ship without getting infected by the all the goop. We needed the whole team. And he’s a part of the team.”
Seaweed Man nodded, his smile failing to touch his eyes. “Yes. I’m part of the team now.”
Aycenia nodded. “Then I will grant you visitation rights to my domain. Nothing within my field of power will harm you. I can’t stop all dangers, but it will make your life easier. Trust me on that.”
She looked to the rest of the group. “But staying here is not your ultimate goal, is it? You wish to leave this island.”
“First thing’s first,” Lilian said, reaching into her coat. “Can you break curses?”
“Curses?”
Lilian showed her the locket. The dryad politely refused to take it from her, though. “Can you open it?”
Lilian did. When nothing magical or scary followed, she closed it again. She then described our encounter with the ghost.
After the story was finished, Aycenia turned to Nakoda. “Afterwards, when you attempted to take the locket, it teleported to Lilian?”
“Yeah,” he said. “But when she first found it, we were able to pass it around. I even showed it to Mr. Pezock. Nothing happened.”
“Curious,” replied the dryad. “Lilian, try and hand him the locket again.”
Lilian tossed it to the halfling. He caught it and waited. Again, nothing magical or scary occurred. “Okay…so what does it mean?” he asked.
“I can only guess,” Aycenia said carefully. She pointed upwards, at the sun shining overhead. “The curse is likely weakest during the day. Because of this, the locket can change hands. And then, come sundown, the curse activates in full, summoning this vengeful spirit. When you aren’t within my domain, at least.” She turned to Lilian. “Outside of it, you and the spirit will be tethered.”
“Oh, no we won’t,” she said quickly, showing her hands. “It’s all you, Drake.”
“But!” he began, holding the locket out towards her.
“You and Don are the only ones who can weaponize positive magic against ghosts,” Lilian spoke over his protests. “If it comes at you, just kill it again. Or save it. Whatever. It’s your call, Rider of the Wing. You’re the only one here who can get the job done.” In the face of that logic, Nakoda’s eyes fell to the locket. He gulped. “…I guess.”