The Quick and the Dead

[Raithwell]

Underwood.

The words of the mortals who walked in the firmament were as blurry and distorted as everything else about them, but Erik Raithwell could understand that much.

This place is called Underwood.

Death was not what Raith had thought it would be. He had listened the words of the traveling preachers who occasionally chose his fishing village to rest and preach their gospels. They had spoken of death as a gateway, a great burning pyre that would cleanse the unworthy of the stains of their lives that they may be born anew to seek salvation in their next life. They spoke of pleasures and torments far exceeding anything the mortal mind could dream of. They spoke of all these things, and Raith had listened. And then he had died and none of it had been true.

At least, Raith couldn’t remember if any of it had been true.

He clearly remembered how the weather had worsened that afternoon, clearly remembered taking in his lines because he didn’t like the look of the clouds on the horizon, and he clearly remembered how quickly the storm had whipped up as he sailed, desperately, for his home shores on Corone. He remembered the sensation of the wave rising up over him, tall enough to blot out the sun and the sky, tall enough to blot out the world. He remembered the cold, wet darkness and the burning weariness that caused his limbs to stop struggling. He remembered all these things clearly; but he couldn’t remember his death.

Everything around that point went hazy in his mind, like the last wisps of a dream that was fading with the light of the morning sun. He had walked in that wispy, dream state forever, nothing more than emotion and thought held together by his will. He had walked, confused and alone, in search of something he didn’t even have the cognizance to know that he had lost. And when he awoke, when he came to out of the endless dream, he was dead and twenty years had passed.

Raith didn’t dream anymore.

[Raithwell]

What Raith did do was think about his death. A lot. It was, after all, the most defining moment of his existence to date.

What would they do differently, Raith questioned, watching the blurry shapes of the mortals conducting their day to day business in the markets of Underwood, if they knew what I know?

Perhaps they would change their lives, live more free and vicarious, or perhaps not. It didn’t really matter anyways. Raith hadn’t met any other spirits since coming back and didn’t know why he was different or why his spirit remained anchored in the Anti-Firmament instead of going to his final reward. All in all, he found it hard to believe that what had happened to him was a common post-life occurrence.

Idly passing his time in observation, which was how he now spent most of his time, Raith watched as the grayed-out figure of a young man stopped to rest at his bench. It started slowly, as it always did, but the man eventually experienced all of the inevitable stages that Raith’s presence caused. First came the unnatural chill, and then the uncomfortable fidgeting, and finally the paranoid looks searching for the unseen eyes upon him.

Raith silently complemented the man, who lasted a full three minutes before jumping to his feet and hurriedly moving on his way. Perhaps he was finished resting, but far more likely he had just been overwhelmed by the creepy, unnatural feeling that had suddenly come over him. His subconscious had somehow picked up on Raith’s proximity and, like everyone, had reacted in an unsettling fashion. But it wasn’t a lasting effect and within minutes of leaving the man would be laughing at himself for his unwarranted paranoia and going about his business as if nothing untoward had happened.

Raith was used to it. There were a lot of things about him that had changed since his death, and there were a lot of things about his new existence that he had been forced to come to terms with. It hadn’t been easy learning about the new restrictions and boundaries his spirit form imposed upon him.

Not really my fault though, Raith sighed, it’s not like there’s an orientation package and a how-to guide specifically for the dead.

It had taken quite a bit of time for Raith to learn how to control the thoughts and emotions that made up his new form, and how to interact with the Firmament through imposing his will upon it. Fortunately, time was the one thing that Raith had in abundance. Raith had lost himself in the task and, without the need to eat or sleep, had gone for days just focusing on a simple thing like being able to echo his voice off the Anti-Firmament. It had paid off however, and though he was still extremely weak, Raith was now able to make his presence known.

All of that focus and training had only been the first step in Raith’s plans, and once he could make it known to the living that he was still around, Raith moved onto the next step, tracking down his family. Twenty years had passed, and while Raith knew that things would be different back at home, he knew that all of his training, all of the focus and control he had learned, would give him the strength to face those changes.

He had been wrong.

[Raithwell]

Everyone has their dark side, Raith thought, sweeping his ghostly eyes over the crowded streets of Underwood. His gaze sought out the displays of cruelty and malice that normal people, living people, tended to gloss over as just another harsh fact of reality. But for Raith, a being made up of pure emotion, it was impossible to lie to himself or turn a blind eye.

Along one side of the street a man smacked his child for stopping to beg for treats in front of the candy store.

In the outside dining area of a nearby restaurant two men had their laughs by taunting a hungry dog with scraps of food and then jabbing it with a stick when it came too close.

A male shopkeep offered smiles and appreciation to a young boy who had just made a purchase and then gave lusty, hateful stares at the boy’s departing backside.

Sometimes it was too much for the spirit, who had been a kind, generous soul before the sea had taken him and whose empathy, unbound by the constraints of flesh, had increased tenfold after his death. But his kindly emotions weren’t the only things in his life that had been unbound. Everyone has their dark side and Erik Raithwell was no exception. Raith’s mind turned to his journey back home and the darkness he had found there.

It had been quite apparent that his small, quaint village had grown into a thriving community in the twenty years since his demise, not that he had found that surprising. He hadn’t really expected the fishing village to remain static just because he had died, but there was still something depressing about seeing things around him grow and change while he was condemned to be static.

Even with the new development, it was been easy for him to find his way home. There was a guiding sensation that pulled him along, as if he were somehow bound to the location, and each step taken towards the place had lifted a little bit of his gloomy mood and brought him that much closer to feeling alive again.

The house itself had been in good condition, older but still well maintained. A wellspring of emotion had rippled through him when he had sighted the building, the place where he had grown up and lived out the all-too-brief years of his happy marriage to Annastia. But even amidst the chorus he had felt in his soul, there had been a slight edgy feeling of wrongness that echoed through his thoughts leaving him eager and frightened as a nervous boy approaching the house of a pretty girl for the first time.

He had paused at the front door, pushing against the object’s hazy outline. As a spirit, he could not interact with anything in the Firmament, but that didn’t mean that they didn’t exist. Raith had learned a trick to deal with just such a situation, it was a way to bypass the solid nature of the world he couldn’t interact with, but it was a way that left him emotionally drained.

Summoning up his courage, Raith had seized his emotions and pulled, thinning out his ethereal gauze, and had walked through the solid wood door.

[Raithwell]

Looking back on it now from the streets of Underwood, Raith supposed that his arrival to his former home at that exact moment had not been coincidence. It had been too painfully exact, too precise a pivotal moment for his fragile state to have just stumbled upon the scene when he did.

Perhaps that’s why there aren’t more spirits like me, he thought, moving from his bench seat to flit through the crowded streets, leaving shivers and turned heads in his wake. Perhaps they all break like I did but never get a second chance to come back.

It was a gloomy thought, and one that plagued Raith as he continued his mental journey through that fateful day.

He remembered his first thought upon passing through the front door of his house, thinking that this place couldn’t possibly be the home where he had once lived. It was more akin to a foreign country than it was to the place where he was born and raised. In fact, the only thing that had been even remotely familiar to Raith was the general shape of it all, filled with enough bare furniture and half-empty bottles of alcohol and narcotics to give Raith the impression that he had entered the backroom of a Salvarian tavern instead of his own home.

But for all the changes to the house, it was the three strangers in the living room that grabbed Raith’s attention. No that wasn’t quite right; only one of them had been a stranger. Though the other two were visually unfamiliar, Raith had immediately felt the same emotional anchor binding him to them as he had felt to the house.

The first one to draw his attention had been a middle-aged fat slob of a woman with greasy, graying blonde hair and the glazed eyes of substance abuse. Somehow, Raith had instinctively known that the woman had once been Annastia, his wife, but aside from that the woman had been as alien to his mind as the interior of the house.

Shifting his attention to the other, Raith found himself looking at a slender young woman. She had a thin, hard look and distant, haunted eyes. Her short brown hair was poorly traced with blonde highlights, as if she were trying to change the very person that she was. This, Raith knew, was who his lovely baby girl, Celeste, had become.

“You’re such a fucking psycho,” the third person, a thick, balding man, had shouted at Celeste just at Raith entered the room.

“And you’d be one to know Dennis,” she had spat right back as she had grabbed what looked like a sweater and shoved it into the waiting maw of a well-worn backpack.

“You’re Thaynes-damned right I am,” Dennis had hollered back, grabbing her backpack with a jerk and throwing it across the room, “I’ve been out there in the real world. I was a soldier in a war, girl. Means I’ve seen plenty of people with fucked-up delusions in my time. But tell you the truth, I ain’t never seen anything half as bad as this daddy hard-on you got going.”

Dennis’ words and overtly hostile manner had startled Raith. Who the hell is this guy? he had yelled to Annastia, and why the hell are you letting him talk to our daughter like that? But he could have screamed himself into nothingness and Annastia wouldn’t have heard his voice as she lolled on the ratty couch, left a broken toy doll by whatever substance she had had flowing through her veins.

“Fuck you Dennis,” Celeste snapped back as she had headed to retrieve her backpack before the bulky man had blocked her path, “I know my father is out there somewhere and I’m going to find him.”

The pain and sorrow and hope that Raith had seen in his daughter’s eyes would have left him weeping if he had still been able to shed tears. It dawned on him then that Celeste believed that the father she never knew was alive, a hopeful delusion that had defined her life. Dark voices had risen up in the back of his mind, the twisted, shadowy feelings of his hate and loathing that had pointed out how all of this was his fault. They told him that he had been that had brought all of the pain and misery to his family and their words struck him in the gut like a ton of bricks. But Raith had fought through it, knowing how his shadow contorted and twisted his emotions like a perverted puppet master.

Raith had sworn that he would not give in to his spite.

“The fuck you are,” Dennis roared and had roughly pushed Celetse to the ground. “You want a daddy so bad, girl? I’ll be your daddy.”

Raith’s shadow laughed, a dark liquid sound, as the horror of the situation had rippled across Raith’s consciousness. Do something! he had yelled across the room at Annastia, who remained too lost in her own bliss to do much more than watch with blank eyes as Dennis reached to undo his pants.

This isn’t happening, Raith had wailed, this can’t be happening!

It wasn’t until he saw the sad resignation in his daughter’s eyes, the resignation that told him that she had been through this countless times before, that Raith snapped, grabbing onto the darkness of his hatred and pulling at hard as he could.

And then, fueled by his spite, Raith had stepped into the world.

[Raithwell]

Raith let his reverie fall to the wayside when he remembered manifesting for the first time. He had spent a lot of time going over every ghost story he could remember hearing and focusing his will on achieving the same results as the spirits in the stories with mixed results. Some of the things, like his ability to move small objects or make himself heard to people he touched, he had learned how to do with relative ease, but many ghostly actions eluded him. Despite that, and despite all the things he had thought up to try, manifesting in the Firmament hadn’t been one.

It’s a little funny, he thought, considering how simple it is. Truth be told, Raith felt like a little bit of an idiot for not having come to it sooner.

What would they do if I just manifested right here? he pulled on his emotional vigor as he mused, looking at the crowd that swirled around him. How many of them would freak out, and how many would just rationalize me away?

Raith let his vigor slip back through his mental fingers. Randomly manifesting was an interesting idea, but while it was a thought that Raith often had while he was bored, it was one that he never got up the will to act upon. Not that it was difficult. In fact, as difficult as it sounded, manifesting in the Firmament was a surprisingly easy process. But, just like phasing through solid matter, it was an emotionally draining process. Not to mention that doing so would just invite a horde of amateur monster hunters and other adventurer wannabe’s down on his head.

Not that I’m completely incapable of taking care of myself, he mused, turning his thoughts back to his trip home.

He had been extremely shocked when he had first manifested in the center of his old home but, as silly as it sounded, he wasn’t surprised. And while Annastia’s eyes had merely only briefly in his direction before returning to their dead stare, Dennis and Celeste couldn’t say the same. After taking a look at himself, Raith had been hard pressed to say that he wouldn’t have been the same in their shoes.

Fueled by spite, Raith’s normal spiritual form had taken a become ghastly. Instead of being a vision of seafaring health, his flesh had become sunken and wasting. His plain clothes now appeared tattered and shredded, and his hair hung limp and tangled. Worst of all was the seawater, dark as night and smelling of corruption, that streamed down his body as if some invisible container were constantly pouring over his head. It pooled at his feet and splashed with every step, leaving a slick, sickly trail in his wake that insistently persisted for several seconds after his passing, only to dissipate into thin air.

As horrific as he had been however, he had strength and form and could interact with the world around him at will. It was not without cost however, and he could feel the spite that he was using to manifest building in the back of his mind, stacking the dark emotions that he had used to cross the boundaries of life and death. Even with the small amount of time he had used, he had been able to feel the creeping fingers of his shadow clutching at his mind.

“I’ll kill you, you bastard,” he had snarled, not wanting to waste any more time.

“Hu…wha,” Dennis sputtered, still in shock. Celeste merely followed his movements with her wide-eyed stare.

Driven by his anger and urgency, Raith had leapt upon the bulky man, using his body as a shield to break the plane between his daughter and her assailant.

“Run Celeste,” he had shouted, using the girl’s name to break her from her stupor. The young girl came to her senses, grabbed at her pack, and ran.

“No fucking way,” Dennis yelled, broken from his stupor as well. Despite his current lack of physique, Dennis had once been a soldier and the body flying at him kicked his fighting instincts into action. Refusing to let this unknown creature take his plaything from him, Dennis had grabbed Raith and thrown him into the wall, and had followed with a ham-fisted punch to the midsection.

Without a real body, Raith had felt no pain from the bigger man’s blows, per se, but had found that each successive strike made it harder for him to focus on keeping his form together, causing his body to split and dissolve around the edges. Unwilling to leave Celeste at this monster’s mercy, Raith pulled every ounce of emotional reserve he had left and then some.

“No,” he had screamed, drawing on his spite to pull his form back together, “you can’t have her!”

[Raithwell]

Raith’s fingers, his mental representation of fingers anyway, twitched with the memories of his struggle with Dennis. It hadn’t been a long fight, at least not by the standards of some of the stories he’d heard from Radasanth’s Citadel or Scara Brae’s Dajas Pagoda, but it had been long enough.

Dennis had the training and experience which, if Raith had been a normal man, would have been enough. But Raith was emotion given form by thought and channeled by will. Raith screamed in the bigger man’s face and, driven by his darker emotions, grabbed a hold of a nearby discarded bottle.

Realizing his supernatural foe’s intent, Dennis had tried to get away from the creature, but Raith had wrapped a dripping arm around his midsection, pulling him in close.

“Die you bastard,” Raith had screamed as he smashed the bottle against the side of Dennis’ head with enough force to shatter the heavy container, causing Dennis’ knees to fall out from under him. But despite the sudden weight, Raith had maintained a firm on the man and had kept him upright.

“Please,” the big man had stammered, “I give up.”

Raith was a kind-hearted man, despite his outrage, and had accepted Dennis’ submission. But to his surprise he had found that when he willed his arms to release the staggered man, they wouldn’t respond. Inside him, the anger had continued to build up and had almost reached the point of overflowing. Raith had realized that he had reached his emotional event horizon and, with a shudder of pleasure, his shadow overrode his command. Dennis’ punch-drunk slur turned to a sickening grunt as the edge of Raith’s broken bottle found a new home in his gut.

The spreading stain on the front of Dennis’ shirt finally woke Annastia from her drug induced stupor. Fully coming to, the woman had emitted an ear-piercing shriek that rattled off the cluttered interior of the small house like a frenzied pinball. Laughing darkly at the woman’s struggling motions, the Shadow kicked out at a nearby incense burner, spilling hot coals into the piled refuse.

Flames jumped from the spot where the coals had fallen, spreading quickly through the debris littering the house. Within seconds, the entire interior of the house was ablaze. Annastia continued to scream as the fingertips of flame gripped at her greasy skin, surrounding and engulfing her. Dennis’ silent form remained still, slumped in a heap to serve as nothing more than fuel for the flames. Even Raith’s Shadow was not immune, the heat of the inferno shattering his will and breaking apart his manifested body. Only Celeste, shocked and in terror, managed to break free of the house’s front door, her eyes never leaving the laughing madman who stood, laughing, as the fire broke him into nothing.

[Raithwell]

Raith shuddered as he came to the end of the memory, a purely reflexive action that lingered in the very back of his mind, where he still didn’t know that he had no body. That had been the first time that his shadow, the ultimate expression of his loathing, self-defeating side, had taken over. Taking everything as a learning experience, Raith considered it to be a costly, but enlightening, lesson.

First, it had taught him that he needed to manage his emotional reserves much more carefully. Both his positive and negative emotions were pools from which he could pull strength to bolster himself, but doing so from either had consequences. Taking too much from his vigor would leave him listless and unmotivated, while taking too much from his spite would bring his Shadow that much closer to the surface. It was a fine balancing act that he would be forced to play for the rest of his unliving existence.

However long that will be, he thought, wondering.

The second thing that he had learned was that to be dead didn’t mean to be immortal. His body had been scattered, discorporated by the fire that his Shadow had set, and it had reformed. But when he reformed, there was something different about him, something missing. He had felt a connection to his house and his wife, a line of vitality that anchored him and made him feel alive. When Annastia died in the fire and the house burned down, both of those anchors were severed, letting Raith drift that much closer to true death.

That, he felt, had been the reason that the Shadow had urged him towards home in the first place. The darkness in the back of his mind wanted to sever his anchors, wanted him to have nothing left binding him to the world, wanted his final, permanent discorporation. Fortunately for the spirit, his shadow hadn’t managed to sever all of his connections that horrible day.

When he concentrated, Raith could sense his anchors, he could sense the love and attachment that bound them to him, and in turn him to the world they existed in. Celeste, obviously, was one, and the other, the fishing boat that he had inherited from his father, was no less surprising. He had no idea where his old boat currently was, only that it had been sold by Annastia after it had been found on the sea, empty and adrift. One day, preferably soon, Raith was going to have to track it down to make sure that it was safe.

But right now his primary concern was with Celeste, who he had managed to track down after the days it had taken him to re-form. She had taken what little belongings she had managed to stuff into her backpack and had headed for a small forest town in the middle of the Concordian Forest.

That town was called Underwood.

[Raithwell]

Underwood wasn’t a large city by any standards, but it had nevertheless taken nearly two weeks for Raith to track down Celeste. After all, he had only ever seen her that one time and knew nothing of her habits or the types of places she liked to frequent. Fortunately what he did have was his emotional anchor to her, like a thin line steadily guiding him through the shadowy afterlife towards his final destination. Perseverance and determination had finally paid off, and meeting his daughter was once more within his sights.

The Peaceful Prominade, Raith read off the sign hanging in front of the largest inn and tavern in Underwood. From the snippets of ghostly conversation that he had picked up during the days he had silently wandered Underwood’s streets, this was supposed to be a world famous establishment. Raith found it hard to believe that any place in the small Coronian town could be famous throughout Althanas, but he did come from a small fishing village and had no real experience with what life was like outside of Corone.

Raith was so eager to get inside the drinking establishment that he drew on his emotions to phase himself right through the Peaceful Prominade’s outer wall. While he was normally an advocate of being patient, of conserving the slight amount of vigor that he could build-up, this was one of those situations where he couldn’t control his impulses. This was one of those situations where he just couldn’t wait.

Once inside, Raith released his vigor, solidifying back into his normal composition. The world snapped back into clear focus, at least as clear as the view from the misty Anti-Firmament ever got, and Raith was instantly struck speechless at the sight of the tavern’s cavernous interior. The place was the epitome of an organization that almost bordered on chaos. Neat walking lanes wound around countless tables, filling the drinking floor to the point that Raith wasn’t sure if it was possible to rearrange the furniture to milk any extra space out of the room. As it was only early afternoon, there was only a small two man musical number playing a pleasant melody for the late lunch crowd. The building’s marvelous interior architecture equally carried the sound of their string instruments through the entire tavern, and Raith knew that any sound on the stage, no matter how slight, could easily be heard from anywhere in the room.

Ok, maybe I was wrong about the world famous thing, Raith admitted, highly impressed by the Peaceful Promenade’s insides. But the tavern’s pleasant nature meant that there was quite a crowd inside, making it difficult to find specifically where Celeste was.

Realizing that it would take some time for him to search all of the shadowy crowd, Raith let his patience settle back upon his shoulders like a mantle.

Here we go, he mumbled, beginning his search.

[Raithwell]

As he had suspected, it was difficult to pinpoint a single face in the crowded tavern of the Peaceful Promenade. It would have been a task for any normal person, but it was doubly so for Raith, given that all he could make out were hazy outlines and blurry masks through the fog of the Anti-Firmament.

Too short, he thought, discounting another woman, too heavyset. She’s not at this table.

And as if that weren’t enough of a problem, Raith could hear his shadow whispering in the back of his mind. The scornful voice, like liquid darkness, mocked him ruthlessly, reminding him that he had only seen Celeste once and that he had no guarantee that she would even look the same anymore. Raith mentally waved the voice off but couldn’t shake the message.

What if I don’t recognize her, he worried. What if I just pass her by?

But Raith hadn’t needed to worry. Almost as soon as he had got within sight of the billiards tables, he felt the same familiar uplifting sensation that he had felt upon entering his former home. It felt as if his soul were being elevated and infused with new life and purpose. It was Celeste.

To his relief, the young woman look relatively the same as when he had first laid ethereal eyes upon her. Her hair was a little longer, and her figure had fleshed out some, but she was still the girl he had found back home. Only her eyes really betrayed any difference in her. Back at home they had been fractured mirrors showing her inner torture, but not anymore. The torture was gone, the cracks healed, but there were scars, jagged lines that made her gaze into twin points of cold, hard ice. They were haunted eyes, eyes that had seen too much and felt too much to ever look back with fond remembrance or innocence.

Look what you’ve done, the sibilant whispering of Raith’s shadow breathed just behind his ear, look what you’ve turned her into.

A wave of self-loathing rose within Raith, like fetid water rising in a wash tub.

No, Raith snapped back, I didn’t do this, this isn’t my fault.

Really? the shadow laughed in reply, She wouldn’t be this way if you hadn’t died, if you hadn’t taken what little life she had left and burned it to ash. You should let her go, let her live her get her life back on her own. She doesn’t need you.

As much as he wanted to argue, Raith could only smile wistfully, no, she doesn’t.

Kneeling down, Raith stared into Celeste’s steely, unblinking gaze and then reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. He could already feel the emotional tie that bound them thinning, fading to nothing.

[Raithwell]

Raith could hear his shadow’s triumphant hiss as his anchor to Celeste began to fall away. It would be another victory for his dark side, another step closer to final death, another step closer to oblivion, but Raith just couldn’t find the will to care. After all, look at what had happened to his little girl, his only child, because of his absence. There was so much he wanted to say to her, so much to explain. But, staring into the scarred lines of her unwavering gaze, Raith understood that he could only bring her more pain.

“Hey there, pretty lady,” a man’s voice broke the stillness in the air, tearing Raith away from his downward spiral of self-pity.

“Huh?” Celeste was slow to respond, as if she too had been lost in thought.

Raith looked up at the man, his unseen eyes taking in everything that he saw. The man was five and a half feet tall with an open shirt and a cocksure grin, and was most assuredly trouble.

“It’s a little chilly over here,” the man said, Raith’s supernatural presence registering in his mind, “why don’t you let me loan you a coat. I’d hate for those pretty lips to turn blue.”

“No thank you,” Celeste whispered, averting her eyes from the man, “I’m not cold.”

“Really?” the man pressed on, sliding closer, “well then why don’t you join me and my friends for some drinks.”

“Really, no,” Celeste mumbled, more weakly this time. It was obvious that she wanted nothing to do with the man, but years of abuse and being mentally broken down had left her unable to do anything but acquiesce. Seeing this, Raith felt a sudden flare of emotion in flow across his body, and felt his anchor with Celeste snap firmly back into place.

What are you doing? his shadow snapped in his ear.

What does it look like I’m doing? Raith snapped back, I’m going to help her.

But I thought that only a moment ago you agreed that she didn’t need you help, his shadow argued, reminding Raith how close he had been to letting his daughter go.

Raith saw then that all of his perceptions of his daughter had been clouded by his shadow in an attempt to break his anchor. Her eye’s hadn’t been hard and unwavering, they had been blank, searching and waiting for someone, something, to show her the way.

And that someone is me, Raith announced, getting back to his feet.

If that’s the case, then let’s do this together, his shadow reached out a hand, offering assistance. Raith could feel his spite, strong and filling, roiling just beneath the surface. It reached out to him, called his name, offering him the opportunity to intervene on his daughter’s behalf.

No, Raith resisted, turning away from his shadow’s siren’s song. Not that way.

Raith reached out, letting threaded tendrils emerge from his body and connect to the man’s coin pouch.

This way, he smiled, pulling against his ethereal threads. He was still inexperienced, and his will couldn’t manage to hold the pouch for more than a second or two before the pressure he exerted snapped his threads. But even so, the few pounds of pressure that he had learned to exert on non-living matter in the Firmament was enough to displace the pouch, dropping it to the floor and spilling coins everywhere.

“Damn it,” the man swore sharply, dropping to the floor to retrieve his money.

[Raithwell]

Ducking to retrieve his fallen coins merely put the man right where Raith wanted him to be. Moving a ghostly hand across a half-empty mug of ale, Raith bonded his form to it with the same threads he had used drop the man’s coin purse. The mug was heavier and required multiple attempts for Raith to move completely off the table. He caught sight of Celeste’s wide eyes watching the mug’s jerking progress to the edge of the table and smiled.

Fortunately, Celeste was the only one to catch sight of what he was doing. The man himself was too busy snatching up coins and shoving them hastily back into his open purse. Thus it was a total surprise to him when, on Raith’s third attempt, the mug tipped over the edge of the table, spilling the remainder of its liquid down the back of his shirt and cracking him squarely on top of the head.

“Ow, what the hell?” the man looked back at Celeste with annoyance. “N’jal’s tits lady, I was just asking you over for a drink.”

“I didn’t do it, I swear,” Celeste replied, still in shock.

“Whatever,” the man finished retrieving the last of his coins before returning to his friends, sodden and alone.

“What’s going on,” Celeste wondered aloud, suddenly sounding frightened. Raith knew that she was starting to feel the uncomfortable effects that came with prolonged exposure to his presence and that he needed to fin a way to calm her down.

Walking over to her, Raith extended his ethereal hand and put in on her shoulder, using the physical contact as a way to bridge the gap between into the Firmament and let the girl hear his voice.

“Don’t worry,” he told her. “You can’t see me but I’m the one who did that.”

The words only seemed to make Celeste more agitated and she pulled herself in, attempting to curl into a ball on top of her chair, “who … who are you?”

“I’m,” Raith hesitated, wondering if he should really tell her the truth, “I’m your father.”

“No,” Celeste’s head shook in fear, “no, my father died twenty years ago.”

“Yes, I did,” Raith sighed. He had spent so much time in the last weeks thinking about how he would connect with his daughter. He had forseen this line of questioning and had planned all the right things to say, but somehow, being here and actually doing it, every thought he had scattered. “I was on our fishing boat when a storm swept me overboard, and drowned. You were just an infant. Somehow though, my spirit came back as a ghost and it took me twenty years to find you.”

“Y-you’re really my father?” Celeste asked, finally calming down.

“Yes,” Raith nodded, though she couldn’t see him, “yes I am.”

“Were you the one that killed Dennis?”

“I,” Raith hesitated again. This was another one of those topics he had wondered how to approach, “yes, I killed him. But I didn’t mean to.”

“You didn’t mean to?”

“It’s a long story,” Raith would have shrugged if it wouldn’t have broken contact.

“Tell me.”

And he did. He told her everything.

[Silence Sei]

Just for the record, this thread almost made me cry.

Onto the judging.

STORY ~

(20/30)

Continuity (7/10)

Setting (5/10)

Pacing (8/10)

CHARACTER ~

(23/30)

Dialogue (6/10)

Action (8/10)

Persona (9/10)

WRITING STYLE ~

(27/40)

Mechanics (4/10)

Technique (6/10)

Clarity (7/10)

Wild Card (10/10)


Total (70/100)

Raithwell gets 760 exp, 155 GP, and hopefully the newfound love of his daughter. Also, I am unfamiliar with how the reputation works. Nayeli can figure it out when she returns.

[Taskmienster]

Exp and GP added.