In Times of Need
The girl stalked forward, gun aimed at the Warlord's ghost. "Don't do it," she said. Her voice sounded different, stuffy, a gurgled plea.
The ghost turned looking at her, then darted toward the Warlord, flashing out Light. The girl blind fired the revolver. It sounded out a crack, and she heard, rather than saw the ghost hit the dirt in a chiming peal of inert metal. Coughing from the Warlord's position.
The girl didn't take the chance. Her eyes were still clearing, but it was enough to aim. Two shots thudded into his back. "What a waste," said her ghost, floating at her shoulder.
"Yeah," said the girl, spitting blood out. Everything hurt. Her muscles felt like they'd been pulled to their breaking point, which she supposed they had, by the electric slam the Warlord had pulled. She looked blearily down at herself. Covered in blood. Her nose was streaming the stuff, and there were scratches on her face and neck and arms and… She glanced at her ghost. "Glad you're alright."
Her ghost affectionately bumped her head. "I'm learning bad lessons from you. Throw yourself in, figure out how to get yourself out."
"Hah," said the girl, pushing the Warlord's corpse over with a foot. "He had another ghost. Did he kill another Risen?"
"He did, I don't know, let me fix you up," said her ghost, and a steady stream of light began sifting into her wounds. Her nose squish-crunched back into place, and the girl felt a pain she'd just been getting used to vanish.
"Thanks," she said, feeling her face before turning her attention back to the Warlord's body. There it was, wrapped up in twisted strands of metal. She teased it loose. "Hey," she said. "You alright?"
"It's inert," said her ghost. "But not dead. Might have been hit with Arc Light enough to induce… this."
"Can you get anything from it, or the dead one?" asked the girl. It didn't feel quite like she'd managed it. When she'd taken down the Solar Warlord, the girl had known it wasn't permanent. The rationalization had seemed more sound then. "We did it," she whispered. "Killed our first Warlord."
"How does it feel?" said her ghost, hovering over the dead, cracked ghost, scanning it with blue light.
"I don't know," said the girl. She checked her revolver. One shot left. Her hands were shaking. She holstered the gun, feeling it slide into the leather before sitting down, head in her hands. "I don't know," she repeated. There were tears welling up in her eyes. "Why did they get chosen?"
"They wanted someone strong," said her ghost. "Someone who could fight."
"What did you want?" asked the girl, her voice muffled through her hands.
"I wanted someone like you," said her ghost, turning away from the dead ghost. "There's records of an armory here. And some sort of makeshift dungeon. It's fragmented, and the dates are all mixed up. We should check it out. When you're ready."
The girl took in a deep breath, and let it out. She stood, scooping the inert ghost up and pocketing it. "I'm still covered in blood," she said. "Matches the Fallen clothes, I guess."
Her ghost laughed. "Yes. I'll fix it. One second."
The girl turned toward the villagers, giving half-hearted thumbs up. They looked more horrified than reassured. Unsurprising, considering her appearance. "I'm going to check for any prisoners or traps," she said. "Then we can bury him."
She assumed someone would eventually nod as she turned and trudged into the Warlord's mansion. The inside was a mess. Crates of supplies cracked open and tipped over, or thrown against walls. Torn curtains, broken chairs.
"Why?" asked the girl. It seemed like such a waste of finery and resources. Of things she'd never had, destroyed for little to no reason.
"I don't know," said her ghost. "Maybe we can ask the ghost once it's active."
"Yeah," said the girl, walking forward. The tumorous rooms were composed of architectural nightmares. Like the Warlord had changed his mind halfway through, rejecting one material for another, or even rejecting the renovation entirely. "Seems… mercurial."
"I got the feeling he didn't trust anyone except his ghost," said her ghost. "Maybe not even his ghost."
The girl pushed through rooms, looking for the entrance to the dungeon or the armory. She missed a tripwire on the ground, and a shotgun took her in the chest. Her ghost rezzed her, and she took the rest of the rooms much more carefully. She took the shotgun too.
Opening a door, ever so slowly, she found the armory. There was also a thin wire extending from the door to something behind it. Her ghost floated through, then back. "It's a grenade," her ghost said. "Small explosive device, goes off after a pin is removed and a timer. I'll disable it. Don't open the door fully."
The girl waited a second, and then the wire snapped. "We're good," said her ghost.
The girl went in. "That's a few grenades," she said, looking at the one on the floor, and the box of other ones. She took off one of the Fallen shawls, using it to hold five, wrapping it around her waist. "What else is there?"
"These revolvers aren't properly maintained," said her ghost, looking over a crate of rusted metal. "Or stored. I'd be surprised if any of them worked at all. Poor craftsmanship. You're not missing out on much."
"What about the grenades?" asked the girl, looking nervously at her new sash of explosives.
"Those are newer. Weren't opened until more recently," said her ghost.
The girl poked around the room. There was another shotgun on the desk. A pump action, like the one she'd seen Iris using, but modified. Lovingly but clumsily. "If only he'd treated his people the same way," muttered the girl, inspecting the weapon.
"I think he made the barrel himself," said her ghost.
From the smoothed out dents, it looked like he had. Or had taken a barrel from another weapon. "Will it shoot, or am I risking…" The girl made an expanding gesture with her fingers.
"It should," said her ghost doubtfully. "It does seem like it held up to… the amateur gunsmith's attempts."
The girl took the Warlord's shotgun with a frown.
They smelled the way to the dungeon before they saw it. A trapdoor oozed the scent of sweet viscous rot. It was impossible to miss once they'd opened the door to the room itself, filling the room like a haze. The girl stared at the closed trapdoor itself. "Nobody could be alive down there."
"I don't detect anything living down there," said her ghost. "Putrescence. Rot. He might have kept prisoners here in the past, but now it's just a shallow grave. You don't have to look."
The girl sighed, shaking her head. "I think I do. What if this ghost's Risen is down there? Can you get this smell off me when we're done?"
"I can try," said her ghost.
The girl opened the trapdoor. The smell hit her like a physical blow, and she turned and emptied her stomach.
"I'll go down," said her ghost, "you stay here."
The girl nodded, backing up. There were a lot of flies.
"An engram," said her ghost, in the other room after it returned. "Multiple Fallen corpses. At the rate of decomposition, I'd say at least a couple weeks."
"What was he doing to them?" the girl asked. "Why?"
"Maybe he was trying to interrogate them," said the ghost. "Went too far, from the looks of it."
"Yeah," said the girl. "What else? What's an engram?"
"An encoded piece of golden age gear. We'll need to find a cryptarch to open it. Might have something nice. Or it might be a toy." Her ghost's shell shrugged.
"Fantastic," said the girl. "Just what I wanted to find. Anything that would help us rescue Stalker?"
"Not that I could see," said her ghost. "Dead Fallen, and as far as I know, they can't be Risen."
"Maybe he buried them somewhere else," said the girl.
"We're pulling at straws here," said her ghost. "We can't keep looking for nothing."
The girl raised a fist, almost striking the wall, then shook her head. "You're right. I was hoping maybe, just maybe, I could push in and find an ally. After the Warlord was a wash, the ghost. Then, after that… I keep pinning hopes on the idea it'll go our way."
"It will," said her ghost.
"A tattletale and an optimist, Stalker called you," the girl said.
Her ghost shifted irritably. "She has a certain ability to find points of annoyance and home in on them."
The girl chuckled. "Are you saying it's not true?"
Her ghost rolled her single blue eye.
The girl stood, grabbing shotgun shells off the armory table, and heading out. She took silent inventory.
Twelve shotgun shells. Four in each shotgun, four in reserve. One shot left in her revolver. Five grenades. Two shots in the wire rifle, when she got it back. The Fallen Captain's sword, and the empty shock pistol.
Her ghost fussed over her clothing, hopefully purging the scent from her. "Almost wish my nose had been broken for that," the girl said as she walked outside.
Iris was there waiting for her. "Here," she said, presenting the girl with her abandoned armor and weaponry. "Got these for you. What kind of rounds do your revolver take?"
The girl wordlessly opened her revolver, taking out the single bullet. "Whatever this is," she said.
"I'll go check," said Iris. "Thank you. For what you did."
The girl nodded, already starting to put her armor on. The corpse of the Warlord was gone. Taken elsewhere to be buried. The dead ghost wasn't. She scooped it up, cradling it in her hands.
She thought of bringing it over to wherever the Warlord's grave was, perhaps tossing it in to be with him. It seemed like an appropriate gesture.
"Can we repair any part of this?" she said instead, holding the dead ghost up to hers.
"No," said her ghost. "The spark of Light is gone. Only wisps left. You might be able to repurpose it for something else. What were you thinking of?"
"I don't know yet," said the girl. "Just wanted to try squeeze out any advantage we could. Another sight line or a dummy ghost. The Solar Warlord was stronger than us. She used her Light in the way she did because she didn't expect us to be a threat. If we're going in alone, I want to tilt the odds to be in our favor as much as possible."
"I'll work on it while we travel," said her ghost. "I might be able to rig something up. Don't expect miracles. You did shoot it."
"Do what you can," said the girl, removing a grenade from the sash around her waist. "I want to try make some surprises. She was throwing fireballs. I want to do something like that. Or about that."
Her ghost moved uneasily away. "You're planning on imbuing explosives with Void? Is that wise?"
"Probably not," said the girl. "But better to screw up here than there."
Thanks for clarifying it Riero.
