the ______'s coming for you

“Damnit!”

Zane tripped, stumbling and eating dirt for the millionth time since he started digging. As usual, Shay laughed. As usual, Zane bit back the urge to punch him, channeling that anger into another smack against the rock wall. Cracks formed—and a few more hits got it to collapse.

The mines, off the beaten path, held a massive amount of pockets likely formed by monsters since they first developed the habit of burrowing, thousands upon thousands of years ago. Other monsters must’ve reused these spaces, widened them—and, in the end, left them behind once the soil became coarse and the ore vanished.

Yet they saw no Sparks. No home for the queen to return to.

“How’d she get so far from the nest, anyways?” Zane muttered to himself.

Shay coughed. “How’m I supposed to know?”

“That wasn’t a question for you, man.”

Zane already exhausted himself from the fight earlier. After a bit more digging, he planned on taking a quick break before continuing. But the pace worried him—at this rate, it’d take hours, and even Vitam’s Avatar couldn’t keep a monster like a Queen Spark calmed for that long without immense concentration.

Still…

Lucian was right. It wouldn’t be right to kill her because she proved too troublesome to help. If it came down to it, Zane planned to fight and to kill for the sake of surviving, but if there was another way, he wanted to try.

Shay, on the other hand—

“Yeesh, you’re looking worse by the minute,” he said, scratching his beard. He held a glowing crystal in his hands, a back-up light he pulled out of his satchel (though he griped about how he wanted to save it for an emergency before facing the reality of having no other light source and caved). “How about we give up after one more cavern?”

“How about you go home yourself?”

“Hey, we’re here ‘cause of you! Don’t forget that!”

Zane grit his teeth and put his anger into another punch. Don’t make enemies with the guy you’re stuck with, don’t make enemies with the guy you’re stuck with—

The wall caved. He expected another empty nest. What Zane so graciously received was a ghastly wail, and some bright light lunging in his direction.

“Fuck—run!”

Zane’s instincts kicked in first, but Shay’s didn’t—that, or he’d never been in mortal danger and failed to develop a proper fight or flight reaction. The Dwim screamed, and the bright thing lunged for him next, appendages stretched towards Shay.

Concentrating, Zane boosted his feet and sprinted, shattering the apparition with a single punch. But that attack alone made him collapse, Shay trembling. For once, the haughty, opportunistic asshole had nothing to say, and Zane delighted in the silence. One, two—deep breaths, and the burning in his hands and ankles calmed to manageable levels.

Beyond the hole in the wall, more lights flitted in the distance. Some might have called them ghosts.

Zane knew better, though.

Sometimes he’d see these beings in the church. As a Guardian, his orders were to destroy them on sight. Mortal souls always returned to Vitam upon death (as the priests claimed), so these lights couldn’t be souls. Zane agreed with them about that, at least. These weren’t the living.

Emotions connected to magic, so it stood to reason that strong emotions evoked subconscious uses of magic. Apparitions of Happiness occurred sometimes, but oftentimes these globs of feelings formed in response to strong collective emotions such as grief, anger, pain. Sadness and Rage, to put it simply.

So these beings came to life. Feeling nothing but the emotions they’d been created with, they acted violently against whoever they encountered.

But if they were here…

Where the hell had Zane stumbled into?

“We must’ve—” Shay began, but Zane slapped a hand over his mouth and pressed a finger to his own lips. The lights watched, and though they lacked awareness, they reacted to sound with terrifying precision. Zane estimated they barely escaped notice.

Without complaint, Shay let Zane guide him back. Through all the holes they carved, and back to where Lucian was.

Halfway there, Zane released Shay. “You’ve ever seen those things before?”

“Ah… around the graveyard, maybe, but we always had soldiers to kill off those pests. Fake ghost looking pests—people always make a mess thinking we’re torturing the dead souls of their parents or siblings or what have you.”

“Yeah, those things aren’t ghosts. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs their eyes checked.”

Shay snorted. “Some people’re just born looking for fantasies. I can’t stand the type. Much rather focus on what’s actually gonna matter. What kinda afterlife prize for good behavior matters if it just a lie you feed yourself to your grave?”

“I can’t fault people for finding comfort in that stuff myself,” Zane said, shrugging, “it’s just not for me.”

“—Aren’t you with the church?”

“Was. And even then, I never really believed. But no one cares if you don’t, as long as you aren’t vocal about it. Just give them platitudes and they’ll let you go.”

“Huh. Good to know.”

“You’re welcome.”

Zane wondered if the near-death experience made Shay reflect, but in all honesty, he expected Shay to be back to normal in short order. Still, it made Zane think. A selfish Dwim, trawling around mines looking for ore, training his acumen and loudly atheistic…

Yet his father seemed to be someone of status in the community. A devout, no doubt.

“…So—” Zane began, but Shay began to run, the light of Lucian’s staff their beacon to safety. Zane hurried to catch up.

Lucian waved, the queen releasing the occasional chirp. He tapered off his song and gestured for the others to hang back as the queen shook off her grogginess and regarded the new opening with confused hisses. The trio watched as she plodded her way inside, leaving them behind.

“We should follow,” Zane said. “Saw some bad news up ahead.”

“Bad?” Lucian frowned.

“Apparitions of Emotions.”

Lucian put his hands over his mouth. Wordlessly, he nodded. At least the sheltered mage knew enough to take the threat of apparitions seriously.

And, as Zane expected:

“Wait, you idiots are going after those things? Not running away from them? If the queen wants to wade through the murder spirit room, I say we—”

“No!”