Ethereal Fate

Damien followed behind Satish as she led him though the scene and over to the bathroom. As they got close, he caught the scent of blood on the wind. Fred shivered as they approached. Impressive. Whatever this guy did he made a ghost shiver.

Damien approached the doorway. Inside was exactly what he expected of a dingy fuel station restroom on this side of the city. A sink hung on the left wall with a dirty mirror above it. On the left was a toilet that looked as though it were cleaned sometime around the Third Era and never again since. The scent of blood was made apparent when Damien saw the bodies. One was an old Dwarvish woman with a thick nose and sagging features. She didn’t have any silver rings in her hair marked for children but had two iron rings that denoted two separate marriages. She was incredibly old with four copper rings, one for every 50 years of life, down one long braid on the side of her head. Her face was locked in a silent scream of terror. From what Damien could make out it looked as though her throat was slit, which explained the thick spatters of blood across the walls of the restroom. The other body was slumped against the wall underneath the Dwarvish woman. It was a human man probably in his mid-30’s. His hair was light. Almost a sunny tan color kept out of his eyes by some thick paste. The man’s cause of death seemed to be similar to the Dwarvish women. Knife wounds.

“Satish, is this how they were found?” Damien said. He looked around and didn’t see the tiefling woman. He heard hacking coming from just around the back of the fuel station. “Satish?”

Damien let out a sigh as Fred drifted past around the corner. Damien followed and came around the building just as Satish slumped against the wall.

“Looks like it might be her first set of dead bodies,” Fred chuckled, “She lasted longer than most people I’ll give her that.”

“Not everyone is as used to death as we are,” Damien pulled a soft cloth from within his inner jacket pocket and handed it toward her. Satish took it wiping her mouth and looked around confused. The only thing she could see was the fence on one side of the alley and the building she leaned against on the other side. The closest people were the CSI team still gathering blood from the fence.

“Who are you talking to?” she said.

“His name is Fred,” Damien replied. With a surge of power, he manifested the ghost. A portion of Damien’s power went into Fred causing his body and clothing to become more vibrant as it drifted into the Prime from the Ethereal plane. Satish jumped back dropping the cloth and reaching for the gun holstered on her hip.

“That isn’t going to do anything, sweetheart,” Fred smirked raising his hands, “but you are more than welcome to try if it makes you feel better.”

Satish cursed in Fiendish, removing her hand from her gun and picking up the cloth. She handed it out toward Damien, “Detective Morchon told me you Necros liked to play tricks.”

“No. That is yours now,” Damien said gesturing to the cloth, “and Fred is not a trick. He’s just dead, but he means well.”

Satish looked back to Fred and her eyes flicked to his wrists. Now that he was manifested into the Prime, they were soaked and dripping with crimson. Her eyes softened, “Oh…oh no.”

Fred lowered his hands quickly, “Doesn’t hurt anymore.”

As if sensing how uncomfortable he was, Satish pointed to Fred’s shirt, “I like the Pixies, even if they took their sound from Daemon Grin.”

“The Pixies…... Daemon Grin…. Took their sound?!” Fred stammered through his words, “Why you little…” Fred let out a series of curses in the flowing speech of the Elves that ended with something that loosely translated to ‘You can wipe a hog’s ass with that’ in the common language. He folded his arms around his chest and became extremely interested in the nearby trash piles.

Satish raised her hands and responded in Elvish, “Sorry I did not mean to offend you.” Even with fangs she spoke the language well.

Damien leaned closer to Satish, “It was his band.”

“Wait,” Satish looked from Fred to Damien, “You’re Fre’Davish Castinoregula? The drummer? I thought you….” Her eyes flicked back to Fred’s wrists, and she nodded as if something she had been working out for a while suddenly made sense. “You just keep him like a pet? Serving you?” Satish said.

“We should get back, murders to investigate and whatnot,” Fred said. Damien pulled the manifested energy back into himself causing Fred to fade back into the Ethereal. “The chortling of those devil’s wishes it sounded as good as the Pixies,” Fred affirmed once he was back behind the veil.

“He volunteered,” Damien said. He was used to this type of judgement. History portrayed necromancers as evildoers who dug up loved ones and forced them to kill for no reason. Admittedly with good reason. Damien changed the subject, “Were the bodies found like that? Piled in the corner I mean?”

“Uh…yeah,” she said steadying herself again, “The fuel station’s manager found them shortly after the shooting occurred.”

“So strange,” Damien said in thought.

“I am going to ask you why that is strange, and you are going to let us know why it’s strange, right?” Fred said.

“What do you mean?” Satish said.

Damien moved back toward the restroom with Fred and Satish following. “I just don’t see any sort of reasoning behind the killings. Even the first man seems entirely random.” Damien pointed to the bodies in the corner. Satish held the cloth up to her mouth and gagged a bit. Damien moved into the restroom gingerly stepping to avoid the blood that had pooled near the center. “I don’t know. Hopefully, I will know more when I speak with them.”

“Ok. You do your thing. I am going to go back over here for a moment,” Satish said as she scurried back to the side of the building. Damien shook his head and sat on the ground. He took care to avoid the blood on the floor and placed his back against a relatively clean portion of the wall.

“It’s actually surprising,” Fred said, “I don’t see any deadies wandering around here. It’s like they just stopped a couple of blocks back. You sure you will even be able to summon one of these guys back?”

“Hopefully. Otherwise, dear old Leo out there will have even more of a reason to dislike me,” Damien said. The restroom illuminated with a vibrant purple light as he summoned energy up into his hands. He twirled the energy into a circular glyph. Damien closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. When Damien breathed out, the glyph solidified in the air. As Damien opened his eyes they glowed a light blue. He stood up in the restroom and looked down toward where his body slumped against the dirty wall. His head had slid down along the wall and some of the Dwarvish woman’s blood was smeared into it.

“Aw man,” Damien protested, “Every time.”

Fred laughed, “Welcome to the other side.” He held a massive fist forward and Damien slammed his own against it. Fred mimicked an explosion with his mouth before dragging his hand away. This caused Damien to chuckle. Fred enjoyed human contact. It had to be rough for someone like him to be unable to interact with the world and to live in such a subdued place as the Ethereal.

The Ethereal acted as a veil over the Prime Material Plane. This place was where the restless dead lived. Those that did not or could not move on to Limbo and then be ferried to where they would rest for eternity. Everything seemed the same but dull here. The color from the glyph patterns the inspectors used were muted. The voices from the Prime Material drifted, muffled, through the landscape. Damien had become familiar with the cold feeling that washed through him while here. The feeling kept him on edge as if he were constantly being watched by something he could not see.

Damien inspected the two corpses in the corner. Nothing stood out to him in the Ethereal. He focused energy through his feet up into his hands and drew an intricate glyph pattern in the air. The Ethereal made summoning the necromantic magic much easier and Damien had to fight not to force too much through the glyph. Breathing out slowly he forced the glyph pattern out toward the two corpses, and it turned to mist on contact with their skin. The mist slowly dissipated and……nothing happened. Normally fresh spirits could be pulled back to their corpses where Damien could speak with them. Damien let out a heavy sigh.

“We took too long. I think they already moved on. Old Leo is going to have to get someone else to call them back from Limbo or wherever they ended up if he wants to question them,” Damien said.

“We? Looks like he is going to have more of a reason to dislike you,” Fred smirked.

Damien made his way out of the restroom and looked around the immediate area for any sign of ghosts. He thought for sure any one of these four would be restless. Their deaths were exactly the type of force that would drive one to become a Wanderer.

As if sensing his thoughts Fred said, “I told you. The deadies stopped a couple of blocks back. I’m not sure what they don’t like about this place. But I have had an uneasy feeling sense we got here. It makes me want to run.”

“I feel it too,” Damien said. He made his way toward the two tieflings near where Edi stood. As if sensing his presence in the Ethereal she looked toward where he stood, but did not see him. He attempted to summon the same glyph pattern he used on the two corpses in the restroom and as the mist faded once more there was still no sign of any spirits in the nearby. “This doesn’t make any sense!” Damien said, “These two aren’t old enough to have found their way to Limbo.”

“Check this out,” Fred motioned to something dark splattered on the ground near the bodies.

As Damien approached, he noticed that it looked like blood. Possibly the blood of the killer where he had been wounded. However, in the light of the Ethereal the blood seemed to have tendrils of smoke rising up from it. Damien knelt next to the blood and watched the wisps of eerie smoke drift up and disappear into the air a couple of inches from the small spatters.

“That’s odd. Essence in the blood.” Fred mused, “Are we thinking necromancer? I don’t know of anything else that causes corruption like that.”

“Possession maybe,” Damien said, “and let’s hope not. A rogue Necro is the last thing we need to deal with.” He slowly followed the blood, and the trail indeed led to the fence where the other inspectors worked just as Detective Morchon stated. Damien drifted through the fence and ended up in the backyard of a small two-story residence. He continued on the trail following the blood all the way around the side of the house, through the gated fence and out into the street beyond. From there the blood seemed to disappear. The street was quiet in the early morning for the living and even quieter in the Ethereal. How bizarre, Damien thought.

Both Damien and Fred made their way back to the fuel station lost in thought. Damien would need to request samples of the blood for some testing of his own. Corruption in the blood was a sign of some dark magic at work. Essence is a substance found in the Ethereal. Typically, it is harvested from the left-over remnants of a spirit that had been manifested to the point of overload. This would destroy the spirit and cause some considerable damage to anyone in the vicinity. There were no scorch marks here in the Ethereal. So, no one had been exploded, Damien thought. The corruption was in the blood of the killer which would happen if a caster was channeling a heavy amount of necromantic energy. That suggested a Necro was murdering people.

“If this is a Necro, why would they use a knife? That doesn’t make sense.” Damien snapped his fingers, and a small purple flame sparked to life, hovering above his palm. “This is easier and less messy.”

“For you. You have been doing this for a while now. A new Necro wouldn’t have that level of control,” Fred replied.

“Which means they wouldn’t be able to channel the amount of energy that it would take to cause corruption in their blood.”

“So, a vengeful spirit? That could cause the left-over essence.”

“No, the killings are random. Wrong place wrong time. None of this makes sense!” Damien let out a curse.

“Either way you know this means we have to inform the O.S.A. right?” Fred said.

“I know,” Damien grumbled. Dealing with O.S.A. and all of their regulations was frequently akin to pulling teeth. “I just don’t want to get them spun up for nothing if we are wrong. Let’s take a day or two. Let me run some tests.”

“Sounds like a good plan. In the meantime, I think our date is getting restless,” Fred gestured over to Detective Morchon who was pacing back and forth near the bodies and looking to his bracer for the time. With a quick twist on his heels, he turned and began stampeding toward the restroom with the other two bodies.

Damien also made his way in that direction. He moved up to the restroom entryway and looked inside to see Satish squatting near his body. Damien reached a hand up and squeezed Fred on the shoulder. “I’ll see you on the other side.” With a deep breath Damien focused his magic into another circular glyph and sucked in a deep breath to seal the energy.

With a deep gasp he sucked in air feeling the frosty night air once more. He shot upright and grabbed his chest. The sudden motion caused Satish to shout and fall backwards. With a wet splat she landed in the puddle of blood in the center of the room. All of this happened just in time for Detective Morchon to move around the door and look over the scene. Several other people shouted outside and began to crowd around Morchon in the doorway trying to figure out what the shouting was about.

Damien stood with a bounce and looked toward Satish. “Oh Satish. I’m sorry. Sometimes returning is a bit of a process.” He held his hands down to her. She took them and he pulled her to her feet. She attempted to wipe the blood from her backside and her hands came away with red smeared on them.

“Rookie! Stop rolling around in the evidence and get yourself clean!” Morchon boomed.

Satish quickly rushed for the door. Morchon shifting his mass backward and forcing the others out of the way. She stopped once outside and suddenly dry-heaved. Luckily, there was nothing left in her stomach for her to expel.

A couple of patrol officers came and helped get Satish settled. They had a series of blankets and made an effort to clean up her skirt to no avail. Damien made his way to where Edi stood and waited for Morchon to approach. He then explained what he and Fred had seen while in the Ethereal.

“The strangest part is that there are no ghosts around. Not even the usual suspects,” Damien finished.

“You think it was a Necro?” Morchon asked, his eyes discerning.

“I can’t confirm that right now. Only that there was essence in the blood. Potentially essence. I need a sample of that to take back to O.S.A. to confirm,” Damien replied.

“Not so quick to sell out one of you own I see. Never-the-less we should keep that to ourselves for the time being. We don’t need the public up in an uproar,” Morchon turned to Edi, “I expect your report on my desk in the morning.” With that he turned and began to bark orders at everyone to close down the scene.

Damien turned to Edi, and she looked at the blood smeared in his hair, “Gods you’re a mess.” She led him to her own void rock car and tapped her bracer. With a sudden vibration of magic, the car hummed to life and began to float gently off the ground. She opened the door and reached in, returning several moments later with a series of napkins and a bottle of water. She began to clean the blood out of his hair and Damien just watched. For a moment he let her just take care of him.

“We should head home,” he said.

“Yeah, it’s been a long night. I can get up early and take the paperwork over to Morchon.” She balled up the napkins and took them over to an inspector to dispose of them. Then made her way back to the car and got in the driver’s seat. Before Damien climbed in the car he looked back toward the fuel station. He realized he still had the cold feeling. The same one that he had in the Ethereal that made him feel as though he were being watched.