Who Let the Ghouls out?

I spat out a bunch of nonsense words that were probably deities and scrambled back. “You have zombies out here?!”

Well, they are undead, but you’d only become one if they killed you. And they don’t want your brains, they’re just a little rabid.

“Don’t give me the politician’s answer, just say yes,” I hissed, backing away as it lurched towards me. Was it getting warmer in here? Hell, how was I supposed to kill this thing? If playing the occasional survival horror had taught me anything, it was that panicking only lead to wasted bullets. Something I wished I had. What was I supposed to do, stab it?

It moaned, oozing closer, and I could feel sweat sticking to the back of my neck. If I took a chance and whacked it with the blade straight through the head, would that do it?

They’re really not. They’re just souls that got trapped in Despaar. It’s like a giant tar pit full of misery and bad vibes. The energy’s necessary for familiar summons to keep running—they find it quite tasty. Personally I prefer elf blood. Angel is a little over my level, and human blood is alright—

“I don’t care! How do I kill it?!”

Oh a good fire blast through the head should do it.

I twisted a gritted grin to myself. Shoot it through the head, eh? It didn’t matter what he called it, this thing was just a zombie. He could call it an oozer or a moaner, or even the brain-muncher 3000, and it wouldn’t make a difference. “Great, where do I get the fire?”

Er, summon it through your hands?

“What?” I bumped back against something. Hittz, the countertop. I was running out of leaky room. The thing gargled at me, its ink-black hands half-dripping to the floor off what looked like talons instead of fingers. “How?”

You’re already steaming. Huh? Damn, he was right. Just lift your hands and push it at the ghoul. And please don’t get rot on my clothes. It’s a pain to wash out.

“You complain more than my sister.” Growling, I threw my hands up, no idea what I was doing, and imagined a fireball hurtling straight at its head and incinerating it.

A pathetic puff of steam drifted at its warped ugly face.

“Hittz! Bloody hell!” What, ‘hell’ was working again? It lunged towards me, howling like a damn banshee, and I couldn’t waste time thinking about that.

I threw myself out of the way, scrambling up and yanking my knife out instead just as it reeled back from half-splattering itself over the dirty counter. Screw fireballs. We’d do this the old-fashioned way.

Wait—

Except when I drew it out, the knife glowed red-hot, hissing angrily against my bare fingers. Hittz. I swore stupid meaningless words, my only weapon clattering to the wood floor just as budget-zombie lurched straight at me, gurgle-howling and swiping at my head.

Dammit dammit dammit. I snarled, ducking out of the way again and throwing my hands out like a character from a bloody Road Brawler game.

And this time, this time, a surge of molten lava shot straight through my veins and crashed into the ink monster’s upper half.

Holy despaar. I sagged as the vaguely leg-shaped, steaming bits left collapsed in a puddle of ooze. How the hell had I even.... I took a look at my shaking hands, which didn’t look so otherwise human anymore with the volcano effect still pulsing through my skin. And had my gloves disappeared? It looked almost like jagged rock chunks were half-melded up through my sleeves, like a bad texture mesh. What the—?

Oh oh that was so close!

Gh, I felt dizzy. The molten effect faded off in a rush as I stumbled onto a knee, saving myself from faceplanting on the floor. Fantastic. I could shoot fireballs from my hands now and the owner of the body I was stuck in was a pyromaniac.

I took a moment to catch my breath, flexing my fingers and checking for anything strange left behind. No marks, no nothing, and my fingerless gloves were back. I could also see the stupid fringe of the hair I was holding hostage flopping down again. And feel it tickling my ears, making them do that weird muscle twinge thing.

Hehe, you should get stressed and angry more often. I might actually take form early!

I slapped at the side of my head to stop the twinging, mentally squinting at my mind-share mate. What the despaar was he talking about—?

That was when I discovered I had pointy ears. That moved.

The tip of an ear longer than it had any right to be flicked away from my startled fingers, and I reflexively caught it with the tips. Which meant my claws stabbed straight through. Hrnngh. I gritted my teeth around my tongue, somehow not managing to pierce that too. “You have— fricking cat ears?”

Hm? They’re perfectly normal ears.

Yeah right. Perfectly normal ears trying desperately to escape my grip while the other one attempted to fly off in sympathy. “Yeah, so vampire ears move?”

Oh, you were human. Yes, mine move, but they’re not cat ears. They’re just like yours but pointier, longer, and they move. As they should. Human-aligned ears are just silly decorations.

...Sure mate. As if having twitchy ears wasn’t the second most distracting thing on the planet when you had hair this bloody long.

The sound of shattering glass played through a low-quality laptop speaker cut off the argument before it started. That was genuinely what it sounded like.

I threw myself back up to my feet. What now? More coming through the windows? Did this place even have glass windows? I felt like I hadn’t seen anything like that—

I came face to face with a ghost.

“Hittz!” Crap— I stumbled back into a shelf before it could take a swing at me, a heat-prickle lifting the hairs on my neck again. First zombies, now ghosts. What, would they start wearing funny hats and swinging swords next?

I had random fire powers and— claws that glowed. Huh. Ghosts were always weak to magic attacks. I could take this.

Oh, it’s the materialise!

I frowned, putting pause on the attempt to summon another fireball. “It’s a ghost?”

Well, it’s called a materialise, no?

“What are you, French?” I’d never heard anyone talk like that in my life. Anyway. “So it’s not hostile?”

Oh, no. It’s very friendly! It’ll fill up Mussy in no time and then we can get back on the road.

It was just floating there, a kind of dead-eyed stare looking at about nothing fixed on its face. It also had a classic cartoony mist tail. Yeah, this thing was harmless. “...You said someone had let the zombos out. Isn’t that a problem?”

I thought you wanted to get back as soon as possible. You want to help instead?

“No, I’m saying if your pet road-kill machine runs on them and they’re all out committing murder, we won’t have anything to feed it.”

As we discussed this, the ghost drifted along towards the ooze staining the floor, summoning what looked like a big hose that disappeared into nothing. I squinted at it. What...?

Oh. Well, hopefully they won’t all be gone?

Casually, the ghost vacuumed up the zombie remains, complete with a disgusting sucking sound. Like it was just another Saturday at the retail store, keeping the floors clean.

Temporary Nerraw junior?

It took a minute to suck at a particularly stubborn inky chunk. I took a moment to unstick my eyes from whatever... this was. “Let’s ask the CSR.”

I kept out of the way of its vacuum nozzle, waving my hand in its face and failing to catch its attention. “Oi, can you fill up my meat-truck?”

It slurped up the last puddle of ooze and put its hose back in whatever void it came from, turning to me. And flashed red with what I could only describe as an error sound, a single word appearing in front of it: “Insufficient.”

I was starting to think I’d made it home and cracked a few spiked beers. Passing out while playing HazChem 2 would do it. “Well there’s your answer. You can’t just throw whatever you vacuumed up at it?”

It pulsed for a moment and threw up another info-display. 1/2 part stored. 10 parts needed for full refill. Entire capacity of storage: 100. Current: 0.5%

Classic sidequest material. Kill ten, or twenty if I didn’t get more accurate and vaporised half of them every time, and I could leave. Great. That was doable. At least I wouldn’t run out of rotting ink-monsters to kill if there were a hundred out there somewhere.

“Well, guess I don’t have a choice. Time to become a zombo hunter.” I tracked back to my useless knife and stuck it back in its sheath.

Well I suppose it could be worse. Just don’t get any stains on me. It would be embarrassing.

“Yeah yeah, buttercup. I’ll paint your nails while I’m at it.”

Really? Thank you! I’ve never had that before, is it good for strengthening?

“That was a joke.” I narrowly avoided stabbing my nose as I squashed the urge to pinch it. I’d be glad to get back to my own body if it meant never having to interact with this fruitloop ever again.

The ghost floated up to me , holding out some kind of stone on a mitten-hand. Some kind of quest item? I took it, because whatever it was couldn’t mess me up more than I already was, and a ghostly hosepipe appeared out of thin air. For sucking up the remains? That’d be useful.

“Right.” I put it in one of my pouch-pockets, and the ghostly vacuum-cleaner disappeared. “Any place I can buy a gun out here?”

What’s a gun—? Oh. Weapons of mass destruction, ooooh. No, we don’t have those. But we can do similar things with summoning! I’m quite precise with fire shots, myself, though it might take you some time to figure it out from your pathetic attempts earlier.

Alright, it might’ve been true, but he didn’t have to rub it in. I scowled, striding over towards the back where there was hopefully another door out of here. “Keep up the comments, mate, and I’ll start thinking about a trim.”

Ah, I didn’t say anything. That shot earlier was very good, very powerful! I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it in no time!

Wuss. I shoved open the creaky, warped door buried in the shadowy back of the fuel station, stepped outside...

...And a crowd of moaning, shuffling ink-zombies turned to gape at me.

Dammit.