Published at 14th of October 2023 4:52 pm

Chapter 7 Howl of Death

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The mist was screaming.

The Ghoul wasn’t sure what to make of it, but there were voices in the fog. Desperate howls. Some sounded pleading, some were sorrowful, and others were angry. Most seemed angry. He couldn’t understand their words, but the emotions contained within them crashed against him like the tide breaking on shore.

He’d tracked his quarry into this slowly rotating dark cloud, and soon afterwards the mist began to visibly pick up speed. At the same time as this happened, the voices started.

Something was very odd about this phenomenon. The mist moved constantly, swirling by him, dark tendrils clinging to his body for moments before they were dragged away as if by a strong wind. But there was no wind: the air was utterly stagnant.

That was when the apparitions began to appear.

Faces and bodies flashed by him, shapes created by the uncanny fog. Sometimes, the figures reached out with a hand as if to touch him. The ghostly visions were scentless and didn’t seem able to harm him, so he moved onwards while ignoring them.

That was, until one harmed him.

A presence appeared behind him, but there had been many such sensations since he entered this mist, so he didn't pay it much mind. He felt a chill at the nape of his neck. This wouldn’t have bothered the already deadened flesh of the Ghoul, except that this coldness was clearly abnormal. In an instant, he felt his spine stiffening as if it were turning to ice. He lurched forward as he turned, sweeping his hand through the spot in the air where the presence came from, only to see a faint something retreating back into the fog. No, not retreating. It was almost as if it had been swept up in a cyclone and torn away against its will.

Lifting his skewer, he eyed his surroundings suspiciously. At this point, he noticed that Kalaki was nowhere to be seen. The old ghoul had gotten separated from him somehow. He spent a moment backtracking, but he couldn’t pick up Kalaki’s scent.

This development irked him. He’d gone to the trouble of getting Kalaki to follow him, only for the dim creature to disappear at the first sign of trouble.

Considering him a lost cause, the Ghoul quickly forgot about his companion and continued onwards. He knew he was getting close to his goal. He could sense himself nearing both the human and the woman who summoned him. The human he could detect through scent, but his mistress he could through some other means that he couldn’t quite place.

He growled at the fog. He was on the hunt now, and he dared the mist to stop him from advancing. As he continued, he remained alert to the shadowy figures.

The next one attacked him after he’d gone less than a hundred yards. A hand slowly extended towards his face. At first, the Ghoul simply watched, as many similar events had taken place already, but something about this hand was different. It looked more solid than the others, for a start. He leaned back just as the thing would have touched his cheek. Instead, it brushed against the bridge of his nose. The same bone-chilling cold enveloped him, and he felt his sense of smell suddenly grow faint. He quickly lashed out with his skewer, severing the offending arm. There had been practically no resistance to his attack. This didn’t stop the arm, however. The strange fog began to flow into the arm, healing it at a rapid pace until it was whole once more.

Reformed, it tried to reach for him again, but by now the cautious Ghoul had backed off several steps. The arm fought to approach him, but it was soon dragged away by an invisible force, becoming just another part of the collective darkness. He watched for a few moments longer, but nothing else approached him.

The fog healed them, but it also controlled their movements. This soundless and windless force was too potent for these apparitions to fight.

No, it wasn’t soundless or windless. The voices were the howling wind: the crack and boom of thunder. They tore at him, but he remained as a rock.

Paradoxically, his anger began to cool as he encountered these obstacles. He should be angry. In fact, a part of him indeed threatened to explode with anger. His forehead burned, and an unending wrath seethed within, but something stopped it from controlling him. It was similar to pain. As an undead, he felt pain, but it had no bearing on his actions. He couldn’t fear it. What pain was worse than that of experiencing death? The agony of losing all that was once precious?

Something about this fog and the voices within it itched at the edges of his consciousness.

Sensations from the world beyond danced inside him. True grief. True pain. The infinite Maelstrom that awaited all: the devouring of memories.

A familiar feeling took hold of him as he recalled these things, and reluctantly, he embraced it. As he did, he felt a strange oneness with this dark storm.

In that instant, a dark figure flew out of the fog at him. The Ghoul gave a roar of raw defiance, and the world fell silent.

His voice physically impacted the surroundings. This sound into which he’d packed his emotions became a wave of force that overpowered the fog, if for just a moment.

The mist billowed away from him, forming a bubble dozens of feet across. In the cleared space, the form of the figure was revealed. Its lower body was amorphous, but there were two clearly articulated arms, a torso, and a head. It was a specter which had taken the shape of a human. It was an indistinct thing comprised entirely of a gray vapor.

The specter, too, had been flung back at the Ghoul’s howl, but was still well within the bubble. It dropped to the ground as if the strings holding it up had been cut, where it pooled like a liquid and tried to wriggle away.

The Ghoul leapt forward with his skewer, in a race against the mist that was already closing back in. With a vicious thrust, he skewered it in the center of its mass.

The mist returned completely, and with it came the screams. The Ghoul narrowed his eyes, straining to peer pick out the slightly darker form of the ghost from within the fog. It was writhing on his skewer like a dying snake. Pieces of it sloughed away and rejoined the mass of the fog, but the majority of it remained pinned by his weapon.

But it didn’t die. The pieces that fell away were being regenerated. As the Ghoul gritted his teeth in frustration, he felt his skewer growing cold, followed by his hand. Still, he didn’t release the creature, not willing to let it escape like the others.

He stomped on it, but the damage this caused was light and doing so inflicted his attacking leg with that same coldness that threatened his hand.

He needed to get rid of this fog.

The Ghoul had felt something inexplicable from the mist earlier, and this inexplicable feeling had given his voice power. It had seemed a singular phenomenon, but on reflection, perhaps it wasn’t so strange. This feeling, he was belatedly realizing, had always been within him, he’d just been unable to recognize it.

It was finality. It was melancholy and acceptance and dread all at once. It was fuel. It could be used.

He touched on this dark force, and it seemed to him in this moment that it resided somewhere within his head. It was indistinct and blurry when he focused like this, like he was trying to turn his eyes around and peer into his own skull. By following the thread of his emotion, however, he was able to seize upon the energy, albeit clumsily. It felt almost as though his brain were being squeezed in a vice, and he faltered for an instant.

Instead of releasing it, he slowly relaxed his grip on the energy until the pressure on his head lessened considerably. His hand which held the skewer had grown so cold that he couldn’t even tell if it was still attached. With all the will he could muster, he directed the force to his throat. He roared once more.

What exploded from his throat was a twisted, horrible noise that shook the very air around him, destroying the mist like a tidal wave ripping through a sandcastle.

[Ability obtained]: <Miasmic Sight> (Lv.0)

[Ability increased]: <Howl> (Lv.0) -> (Lv.1)

This time, the fog was blasted nearly forty feet away in every direction. The noise, given a physical weight, even assailed the specter that he’d pinned to the ground, shredding it and reducing its bulk by over half until all that was left on his skewer was a shapeless, quivering mass. The Ghoul twisted his weapon, and the remaining bulk rapidly dissipated, bleeding away into nothing.

[Level increased] x 2

Miasma + 2

Something cold flooded into his head. He realized that the very force he’d just recognized within him not a minute ago had suddenly been increased twice over. His eyes focused intently on the blue runes before him, and he strove to memorize their pattern, equating them with this new energy.

Eventually, they faded away, and the Ghoul was left alone within the fog. His nose still felt frozen from the earlier attack, as did his right hand, though he maintained enough range of motion to attack with. Without his sense of smell, he was left to wander the fog in the direction he last remembered.

The specters continued to attack him intermittently, but with his howls, destroying them was simple enough. Without the fog to protect them, they were little threat. After two full-strength blasts of his skill, he found that he was forced to wait and recover his energy. Even then, by keeping his wits about him, the specters had difficulty closing in. In this regard the fog worked for and against him. It healed and protected the specters, but it also controlled their movement.

This latter phenomenon became more apparent as the Ghoul progressed. The storm appeared to be speeding up further, as the volume of the voices within it grew louder and louder. Few specters even seemed to have the time to strike at him, so quickly did they fly past, screaming eerie cries.

[Level increased]

Agility + 1

Miasma + 1

[Level increased] x 4

Agility + 1

Dexterity + 1

Miasma + 2

After executing his final specter, the Ghoul looked up. His last howl had cleared the fog in front of him, revealing a large black shape. It was the necromancer’s hut. He’d found his way home.

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