Ruthless V5-Interlude-Possession

Zora let out a sigh and rested her back against a tree.

“Time for a rest?” Alice asked.

“I think so,” Zora said. “Since the System, sometimes I feel like I could walk forever. Then I remember that forever is a very long time. My energy isn’t what it might be.”

“We’ve been walking for weeks now,” Alice said quietly. “We take little breaks, but… are we getting to a point where it makes sense for us to give up?”

Zora gave her a sharp look. “Give up?”

“James might need us back in the Kingdom, if this Panther Queen is attacking soon,” Alice said. “Actually, given how much time has passed, I can’t help but wonder if they’re not already in trouble.”

Zora shrugged. She reached into a pocket of her robes and drew out the hand monster that James had made to allow himself to communicate with them. It simply lay there in her hands, still as the grave—a very well behaved monster.

“Still nothing from this guy,” Zora said. “If James needed us, we’d hear about it.”

“And we’re sure that thing’s actually alive?” Alice asked, raising an eyebrow.

In response, the monster twitched to life in Zora’s hand. It flipped so that the palm faced up. Like “Thing” from the old “Addams Family” cartoons, it snapped its fingers. Then it lay still once more.

“I think that answers that,” Zora said, giving a small, weary smile.

“Yeah, that’s a neat trick,” Alice said, frowning.

“We probably won’t be back to fight the Panther Army, anyway, Alice,” Zora said. “Not that James needs our help anyway. I think he can figure out beating up a big cat. The Queen didn’t seem especially tricky, and I think those physical fights are his specialty.”

Alice bit her lip and nodded with obvious reluctance.

“I am a little surprised you would be ready to give up so easily, though,” Zora continued. “After you insisted on coming out here with me. And considering the monster we’re pursuing.”

“You did say you had a clear idea of where we were going at the time,” Alice said. “And the most important consideration for me was that I wasn’t going to let you go off and get killed on your own.”

“I did have—I do have a clear idea where we’re going. My Mystic Divination gives me a heading every time I use it. The problem is that the enemy is moving. Either fleeing from us or following us or else hunting prey of its own.”

“That doesn’t give me a lot of confidence, honestly…”

“I know it doesn’t,” Zora said. “Listen, sweetie, why don’t you go and get me a fresh leaf from an oak tree? I’ll get a fire going and start cooking. Once I have a fresh leaf, I can try Mystic Divination again and see if we get something more useful. We’ll talk about this again on a full stomach.”

“Sure, Mom. Whatever you say.” Alice walked away with a skeptical expression on her face.

As she stepped out of sight, beyond the fringe of trees and shrubbery that surrounded the little clearing where they had stopped, Zora gritted her teeth and shook her head.

“Can’t be,” she said quietly. “Can’t be. I would have noticed already. Right?”

She opened up her Small Bag of Deceptive Dimensions, drew out a leaf and some bark that she had purchased through the System Store before they left the Kingdom, and then went around the space, scratching little symbolic markings into the trees.

Zora broke off some low-hanging branches from a few of the trees, then returned to her previous position. She laid out the sticks in a small, loose pile, muttered a quiet incantation, and instantly had a fire going.

Then she drew a pot out of her Small Bag of Deceptive Dimensions and placed it over the fire. With the pot slowly heating up, Zora opened it, conjured some water to fill it, and placed the lid back on. She threw the leaf and bark she had taken out into the fire beneath the pot.

A bitter odor wafted out immediately from the flame, but Zora waved her hand, and the heat died down slightly, suppressing the smell as the materials burned more slowly.

A few minutes later, Alice stepped back into the clearing. As she passed the trees with Zora’s symbols carved into them, the symbols flashed, giving off a fiery orange light.

Alice clearly noticed. Her head turned to face them, and her brow furrowed slightly.

And Zora watched Alice.

Then Alice sat down across from Zora, eyes still on the wards, though they had quickly stopped glowing.

After a moment, Alice looked at her mother, silently questioning.

“Those are my wards,” Zora said. “They’ll keep us safe for the night. I think we’re closer to the Obayifo than we realized before. It might try to come for you this evening. We just can’t leave this clearing for the rest of the night.”

As she spoke, the flames flared up slightly, and the bitter smell of the burning plant matter floated up again.

Zora found the odor mildly unpleasant but bearable. Alice began coughing as soon as the smoke reached her.

“What’s for dinner?” Alice asked. “That smoke smells like shit.”

“Sorry about that, I’m making a soup But. I accidentally dropped some herbs on the fire while I was getting the ingredients in. I’ll conjure a wind to control the direction of the smoke.”

She started whispering a quiet incantation. Alice started to rise at almost the same moment.

“Okay, I’m just going to—”

“No,” Zora said, breaking her chant. “Remember, you can’t leave, sweetie, the wards.”

“Right.” Alice sounded annoyed, and the word was broken in the middle by a cough.

“Let’s talk about our next steps,” Zora said. “It might take your mind off it. And come sit near me. I’m not coughing, so maybe this position is upwind.”

“Fine.” The word came out a little coldly.

The two women sat beside each other.

“Oh, your leaf,” Alice said. She dropped it into Zora’s lap, and the Necromancer had to move her fingers quickly to grasp it before the wind took it away.

“Thanks,” Zora said. She stuffed the leaf into her right side pocket and regarded her daughter again. “Better?”

Alice coughed but nodded. “I think so. Good call.” The two sentences were broken up by a cough as well.

Zora showed no reaction to the noises.

“Good,” she said. “Now, you wanted to go home, and I wanted to stay on the hunt. Why don’t you make your arguments, and then I’ll make mine?”

Alice nodded eagerly. “Right, so it boils down to this—what’s the best use of our time? We could be helping James, and we could be leveling up by fighting whatever monsters live in the border regions of the Fisher Kingdom. Instead, we’re focused on this one monster. Like we mostly just want revenge for what happened to me back in Orientation. That doesn’t seem smart, in a world where these levels matter so much. I don’t—I don’t have much else.” She swiped the back of her hand across her forehead, which had begun to sweat quite noticeably.

Her mother looked unimpressed.

“You know why this particular monster is especially important to kill, though,” Zora said firmly. “It’s not about a grudge. What do you remember from last time? Just retell it as best you can.”

“I remember being confused, hungry—this feeling as if I was suffocating—dreading the next moment, afraid to sleep, worried that if I tried to talk to people, I’d pass it onto them somehow. Even before I knew what it was. I felt unclean.”

“When did that feeling go away?” Zora asked.

There was a long pause, and then Alice said, “After you rescued me, Mom. Don’t you remember?”

“When exactly? Right after, or sometime later?”

“This is a rough memory for me to revisit, honestly, Mom. I—is there some reason why we need to go into this in so much detail?”

“You’re not my Alice, are you?” Zora asked bluntly, sighing as she spoke.

The monster wearing her daughter’s skin finally spoke in its own voice.

“What gave it away?” it asked in an inhumanly deep voice.

And it smiled, showing far too many teeth for a human mouth.

The intimidating effect was ruined slightly as it went into an even bigger coughing fit.

“Seriously, what the fuck is in that stew?” the voice asked.

“It’s just water,” Zora replied, smiling slightly. “What’s in the fire is more pertinent.”

Alice’s body began convulsing as if she was suffering a seizure, and Zora’s expression turned sad. The convulsions brought the monster possessing Alice to its knees, and finally, it vomited directly into the fire, extinguishing the flames.

“What was that, seriously?” the Alice monster asked.

“Nothing that will permanently harm you,” Zora replied. She reached out instinctively to wrap an arm around her daughter’s shoulders. The Necromancer thought better of it while her hand was in mid-motion, but before she could draw back, the creature spoke up.

“Don’t touch me, Zora,” the monster said menacingly. “Remember, this is still your daughter’s body. The only one she gets, in this life. I can have several at a time, if I wish. If you hurt me…”

“Actually I was going to put my arm around you,” Zora said. “Silly of me, under the circumstances, but old habits die hard.”

The Alice creature drew away from her, crawling backward on all fours, eyes suspicious and hard.

“Do you really think I could kill someone who was wearing my daughter’s face?” Zora asked. “Just tell me what you want in exchange for giving her back. If it’s reasonable—”

“Darn,” the monster said, twisting Alice’s features into its eerie inhuman smile. “I wish I had known you would ask that. Haven’t had the time to make up a good lie. Why do you assume I’m open to giving her back, though? I enjoy her so much.”

“I’ll bet. And you’ve been feeding off of my energy, too. I can tell now. A good situation for you. It’s non-negotiable, though.”

“Sweet that you’re so determined, despite being out of your depth, old woman.” The creature had regained its breath and now spoke in a calm, clear voice, the effect of the burning kola nut bark and bitter leaf having partly worn off by now.

“I tried to negotiate,” Zora said. “I would have happily left you alone. Now I’ll have to find your real body, too. Last chance to give Alice back willingly.”

She let the words hang in the air for a moment before she began to sing, a haunting melody.

Before a handful of notes had been sung, the creature sensed what was happening. Deep down inside, it knew the next parts of the song would not go well for it.

Alice’s body lunged at Zora—and bounced off of a forcefield that suddenly appeared to protect her body.

I am not wandering the land unprotected, Zora thought. There was no joy in having repelled the assault, because she could see that the wall of solid Mana had broken Alice’s nose. If the Obayifo recognized the nature of the situation before the song really got going, it could do great damage to Alice before Zora could do anything to it.

That was Zora’s big fear here. If the Obayifo tried to slit Alice’s wrists or cut her throat, Zora would not be able to continue trying to expel it. It would risk destroying the Obayifo’s own vessel, but that was better from the monster’s perspective than simply being forced to leave.

For now, however, the monster did not seem to consider such a drastic strategy.

Instead, it hurled itself at the barrier protecting Zora once more—again to no avail.

Zora ignored it and sang with ever greater force. Her voice moved in strange ways—by turns harsh and sweet, soprano and bass. This was not her natural vocal range. At moments, it sounded like more than one person was singing in concert. The performance produced an eerie, off-putting effect—like listening to a chorus of the damned.

The words to the song were taken directly from The Book of the Dead. The Necromancer text had much in it to aid in situations where the spellcaster was forced to deal with malevolent spirits.

As the song continued, the possessed Alice covered her ears.

After a minute of this, the monster turned her body around and made a break for the tree line.

It made it as far as the trees. The symbols that had lit up when Alice entered the circle in the first place flared to life once more. The orange-lighted wards burst into bright orange streams of energy that formed ethereal cables of burning orange and black. Those cables wrapped around Alice and bound the spirit that inhabited her—and Alice herself—by the substance of their souls.

Zora winced as she saw Alice’s body writhe in agony at the touch of the mystical tethers. She knew that the pain of them, though mostly borne by the spirit, was also shared with her daughter. Another reason she had tried to talk the Obayifo down, to negotiate.

She continued the song, carrying on despite the cries of pain that rang through the air—in Alice’s voice again, causing Zora additional discomfort.

As the music reached a crescendo, the cries turned to screams.

Zora kept going until she hit the end of the song and then started over.

The first repetition witnessed the screams intensify, until Zora could imagine that her daughter and the spirit were being tortured.

During the second repetition, Alice started to lose her voice from her constant agonized wails.

After that third round of singing, Zora did not need to sing anymore. The song continued after number three, without her voice to carry it, propelled by its own magic and the power imbued by those first three instances. The music resembled what Zora imagined a choir of ghosts singing would sound like.

Zora was finally free to approach Alice.

She did so.

Still held by those orange ethereal bonds, the spirit possessing Alice nevertheless managed to twist her body until her head faced Zora.

Please don’t snap her neck, please don’t snap her neck, please don’t snap her neck…

But the entity did not appear to have its full wits about it.

It looked at Zora with an expression dulled by both hate and pain. Perhaps the first significant pain the spirit had ever experienced itself.

“What have you done to me?” it croaked, speaking in its own voice once more, the tone one of desperation.

“Made you some music,” Zora replied, making her voice cold. “Is it not to your liking?”

“It burns me,” the spirit groaned. “Burns your daughter, too, bitch!”

“You’re free to leave any time you wish,” Zora said carefully.

“But these infernal—”

“Just you. My daughter’s body and soul are bound to this location for the night. It is impossible for them to depart this space. The wards are not meant to hold your disembodied form. As soon as you vacate—”

There was a monstrous howl from between Alice’s lips, and then her eyes glowed a ghostly white—and Zora felt it as the creature fled through the air.

She had won the battle.

Zora waved a hand, and Alice’s body tumbled free of the orange energy bindings. Her mother caught her before she could hit the ground.

“Oh my God,” Alice breathed. “Thank you.”

“I wish I’d figured it out sooner,” Zora said apologetically. “Was it… as bad as what you described when you were under?”

“It was mostly letting me speak in my own voice the whole time,” Alice said. She spoke in a raspy voice that made it obvious how her vocal chords had been damaged by the constant howling. “I wasn’t aware that there was something inside. There was a feeling as if I was being watched, strange dreams—besides that, I mostly just told you what it actually felt like when you asked earlier.”

I can’t believe I didn’t recognize what was happening to you, Zora thought.

Mother and daughter embraced.

When they parted, Zora saw that Alice was crying. Zora touched her own eyes and realized she had shed a few tears too.

“What do you want to do now?” Zora asked. “If you want to go home—”

“The hell with that!” Alice exclaimed. After a moment, she added, “I mean, I appreciate you saving me, Mom, but I really want to get this thing.”

“Even if you might be safer in your brother’s territory? I think you must have been possessed when you entered the Kingdom, but if the Obayifo is separate from you, I expect James’s powers would detect it trying to enter the Kingdom again.”

Zora wasn’t entirely certain of this, but she felt fairly confident. James’s powers stretched into the world of dreams—the avenue through which the Obayifo invaded. And she didn’t want to endanger Alice any further. Zora had clearly already underestimated the monster once.

“I don’t care,” Alice said. “I don’t want to be a prisoner in my brother’s land. If we don’t kill the Obayifo, I’ll always be looking over my shoulder. I… Honestly, I don’t even know why you tried to make peace with it earlier.”

“For you! You’re still in danger. Anytime I take my eyes off of you, I feel like it could try to take your body again. Even if I’d be torn inside, letting it live and prey on others, if it was willing to abandon you… well, I’d still have you. The most important thing.”

“That’s sweet, Mom. That’s really sweet.” She swallowed before continuing, “Let’s make the world a little safer. You and me. If you think your divination will work to find the Obayifo.”

“I do,” Zora said. “I’ll try it now. I’m pretty sure the spirit world will be clearer on its location this time.”