I slowly looked around at my surroundings, searching for any signs of danger before my eyes went to the ground in front of us again. So far, I hadn’t seen any threats. That didn’t mean that they weren’t there, just that they hadn’t made themselves known just yet.

We were currently walking through a dark and spooky woods, made even spookier by the fact that it was ‘night’ out and that everything was lit by a bright full moon. A light fog was spread out around us, though it wasn’t nearly as thick as it had been back in those ruins. This fog was much lower to the ground, rising up only about a foot or two.

I hoped that nothing jumped out at us. Not now. None of us was in good shape. Not after that last fight.

Turtle was marching in front of our group, as usual, except that he was now without his shield. One good hit from Raze had cracked the thing and bent it so badly that it had become useless. Fortunately, Turtle still had his ability. I just hoped that it would be enough.

Bunny was limping and leaning on Ace, relying on him for support. She’d sprained her ankle in that fight, and worse, she’d broken her arm. Now her arm was splinted and in a sling.

Olivia had been hit with some flying shrapnel, enough to give her a few cuts that needed bandaging, but her worst injury was to her pride. Godiva, the shaper, had captured Olivia in stone and had her completely helpless. She would have died if Wolf hadn’t lured the shaper away.

And then there was Ace, who was the least injured of all of us. He’d been bruised a bit, but nothing more. But in spite of that, he was being morose and oddly quiet.

My own injuries were spread out and not severe, for which I was thankful. Most of my body was bruised from being thrown into that dune, but I was more annoyed by the monster bites. Wherever one of those tiny monsters had bitten me on my exposed skin, I was swollen and itchy. The swelling and itching were slowly fading, much to my relief, but not fast enough.

What annoyed me the most was the loss of my mace. It had only been a basic weapon, but I’d been using it since I first crawled out of that respawn pool. It felt comfortable in my hand and reliable. Then Mad Mike had destroyed it with some kind of ability.

I absently reached for my knives, comforted by the fact that they were still there. I wasn’t unarmed. I still had weapons to fight with. Then I snorted, knowing that if I was going to rely on my knives, I would have to slot more points into agility and dexterity, and I didn’t want do that for the same reason that I’d never slotted anything into strength. Those stats, while useful, didn’t do anything for my abilities. Those weren’t stats that my class relied on.

A moment later, I opened up my status page so that I could plan on where to assign my next couple points.

CLASS: INVOKER
LEVEL: 13
FREE STAT POINTS: 0

FOCUS: 11
PERCEPTION: 8
PRESENCE: 10
STRENGTH: 8
VITALITY: 13
DEXTERITY: 6
AGILITY: 7

TALENTS AND AFFINITIES:
-PRIMAL MAGIC
--DIVINE TYPE
-KNIVES

ABILITIES:
-INVOCATION OF SPITE
-INVOCATION OF THE WISP (37 USES REMAIN}
-BLESSING OF AVEXIS

I noted that I had gained an extra point in strength from swinging that mace around so much. However, I also knew that even if I still had my mace, that I probably wouldn’t be able to earn more that way. The higher your stats were, the harder it was to earn new points by hard work. If I wanted more free points in strength, I’d probably have to dedicate time to serious weight training.

“Hmmm,” I mused. “Free points…”

I was looking at my agility and dexterity scores, which were now my two lowest. With as much running and dodging as I’d been doing lately, there was a good chance that I’d get a free agility point soon. And if I continued fighting with the knives, I might earn a point or two in dexterity too. I closed my status page, feeling a little better about that plan.

“This place is creepy,” Bunny complained. “I can’t wait until the sun comes up.”

“The sun won’t ever come up here,” Turtle reminded her. “We’re in the Labyrinth. In fact, I think its closer to noon on the outside.”

“How can you tell?” Ace asked, saying something for the first time in an hour. “Its not like clocks work in here…”

“Of course they do,” Olivia told Ace, giving him a look of annoyance. “At least, old-fashioned ones do. Gears, springs, and flywheels work perfectly fine around the Labyrinth. It’s just the digital ones that don’t work.”

“Usually,” Turtle corrected, not bothering to look back at her. He continued marching ahead as he spoke, looking for threats. “I’ve seen watches that do work in the Labyrinth… The old-school kind you wind up. But I know someone who brought in a real fancy one, and it stopped working pretty quickly.”

“The Labyrinth is like that,” I said, adding my own two-cents. “Even if you do something that follows the normal rules, like using springs and gears, once you try getting too clever with it…” I gave a dramatic pause before adding, “Well, the Labyrinth doesn’t seem to like anything once it gets too complicated.”

“So, a basic clock will work fine,” Ace asked with a skeptical look. “But once you bring in a Rolex…”

“Pretty much,” Turtle agreed.

I chuckled at that. “We… The Wardens once set up a train around one of the Labyrinth entrances. We even used an old steam engine. A real antique. It worked perfectly fine at first, but then it started to break down almost constantly. Things didn’t break. They just…stopped working quite right. The boiler just wouldn’t build up enough pressure anymore, no matter how hot it got.” I shrugged at that. “If you get too clever, the Labyrinth changes the rules on you.”

“Something to remember,” Bunny said with a sigh.

A moment later, Turtle came to a halt and the rest of us stopped as well. I stepped forward and took a good look at the intersection in front of us. There were three different roads we could follow, and our enemies hadn’t been considerate enough to leave us a trail of bodies to follow this time. This time, they seemed to be in a bit of a hurry, not even taking the time to stop and slay the roses.

“There,” Bunny announced, using her good hand to point to the marking that had been etched in the middle of the intersection. It was pointing to the road on the left. “It looks like we go left.”

“Looks like it,” I agreed as we all started following the directions.

After our big fight in the desert, we’d found an arrow drawn into the ground and pointing straight at the stone arch, the passage to the next area of the Labyrinth. It didn’t take much to realize that Ramirez had followed our enemies, and that she’d been leaving us a trail of breadcrumbs ever since.

“No telling how far behind we are,” I said with a bit of annoyance.

In some ways, it had been a lot easier to follow a trail of monster bodies. For one, the state of the bodies told us a lot about how far ahead the other players were, and for another, it gave us a warning about the type of monsters that were in the area. Now, we had to follow them without any of that additional information.

I was a bit concerned about the fact that we could no longer tell how far behind we were. The Labyrinth had a tendency to change things, to shake them up without much warning. If we got too far behind, I had no doubt that the Labyrinth would get rid of the markings, leaving us without any breadcrumbs to follow. This was just another example of the Labyrinth changing the rules if we tried getting too clever.

A few minutes later, Turtle stopped again. This time, he pointed off to the side without saying a word. There was a body beside the road, one that looked like it had been dead for a long time.

“It looks almost mummified,” I said, noting the sunken and dried flesh. “Or desiccated.”

I crouched down beside the body while the others backed up, looking a bit uncomfortable. “Baseball hat and combat boots,” I observed. “So, he was a player and not just decoration.”

“His staff is broken,” Turtle offered, indicating the weapon which looked like it had been snapped in half.

“There’s another body over there,” Bunny said, pointing down the road. “It looks to be in the same condition.”

“Maybe members of the same team,” I thought aloud. “If their team got wiped out down here…”

“Then we’d best look for what killed them,” Olivia stated grimly.

“Good point,” Bunny agreed.

Sir Fluff gave Bunny a quick solute and then stepped in front of her while her horned rabbits surrounded her like furry little bodyguards.

I moved closer to the next body and confirmed that it was in the same condition. Dried out and desiccated. This one had a war hammer in hand. Not one of those big mauls that people sometimes called war hammers, but a real one, with a curved metal spike on the back side in the bec de corbin style.

“Sorry about this,” I told the corpse as I picked up the weapon. The hammer had a comfortable weight to it and it felt solid in my hand. This would do just fine for now. “But you don’t need this anymore and I do.”

A low moan suddenly filled the air, coming from the fog and darkness. A chill ran down my spine at the sound. Then it came again. Closer.

“We have company,” Bunny said unnecessarily.

Several seconds later, the monster finally appeared. It was humanoid in shape, about eight feet all, and appeared to be covered in so many white rags that I couldn’t see what was beneath them. However, it was all completely transparent. I could see right through the thing.

“A GHOST!” Ace exclaimed as he backed away.

Three more ghosts appeared, though they didn’t look like the first one. Instead, these ones looked like humans, just transparent and glowing. One of them wore a baseball hat and had on a pair of combat boots. He held a broken staff in his hands. The second one was a man holding a war hammer, a hammer that was identical to the one that I now held. And the last was a large woman who held an axe and shield.

“Ghosts of the people who died,” Bunny gasped, glancing towards the bodies.

As the ghosts moved forward, Turtle stood in their path. He glowed for a moment as he activated both of his abilities, then he swung his sword at the nearest ghost. His sword went through the ghost as though nothing was there.

The ghost swung his hammer at Turtle, and it passed through Turtle just as easily as Turtle’s sword had passed through him. However, Turtle yelped in pain and stepped back.

“My arm,” Turtle gasped. “It’s cold and numb…”

“Don’t let them touch you,” I called out in warning.

I’d heard about ghosts before, and not just from old ghost stories. I’d read reports on them, and I’d heard from players who’d encountered them inside the Labyrinth. I didn’t know if ghosts were real or not in the real world, but in the Labyrinth there were two different kinds.

The first kind were just a different type of monster, one that had been created by the Labyrinth itself, just like it created all the others. The second kind were a bit more complicated. They were real, but they weren’t what people thought. They weren’t the spirits of the dead. Instead, they were primals. A type of primal known as spectrals or wraiths.

Most of what I knew about spectrals had come from my conversation with Wolf, and according to him, spectrals were obsessed with people, memories, and strong emotions. They’d assume the forms of people, even taking on their identities and reliving powerful moments from their lives.

However, I didn’t feel any primal energy from these things, which meant that they were the first type of ghosts. These were Labyrinth made fakes.

“Stay back, Turtle,” I ordered. “These things should be more vulnerable to magic.”

“Good to hear,” Ace responded before opening fire with his scepters.

Ace’s attack hit one of the ghosts, the one with the sword and axe. The ghostly woman staggered and then stood there for several seconds with gaping holes in her chest. Then she slowly started moving forward again.

Olivia and I joined the fight, firing arcane blasts and an ‘Invocation of Spite’ at the ghosts. Her attack created a massive hole right through the middle of the ghost she’d targeted, and for once, my invocation did even more damage. The ghost I hit started to break apart. Cracks appeared through the entire body.

“Okay,” I announced. “That seems to be our best weapon yet. Too bad it takes too damn long to use again.”

Bunny used her scepter on the first ghost we’d seen, wrapping it up with chains of energy. That seemed to hold the ghost for only a couple seconds before it moved through them. All of her rabbits, including Sir Fluff attacked the ghost, but none of them could hurt it at all. It swung its arm, and suddenly, Sir Fluff and two of the horned rabbits all faded away and vanished.

“Maggie,” Ace exclaimed, pausing to fire two more blasts from his scepters. “Use your dagger.”

“My dagger?” I asked blankly. “Physical attacks don’t work on these bastards.”

Ace grimaced at that before saying, “Trust me.”

Since I didn’t have anything to lose, I did as Ace suggested and drew my dagger. With war hammer in one hand and a dagger in the other, I faced the nearest ghost, the one who resembled the former owner of that hammer. It swung for me and I stepped back, feeling a cold dread on my skin where it had barely touched me.

I lunged forward and drove my dagger into the ghosts chest, being careful not to actually touch him with my hand. To my surprise, the blade went right into the ghost just as if he was real. I followed that up with a good swing from my hammer, but that passed right through him without connecting.

“I’ll be damned,” I muttered, looking at my dagger with a new appreciation.

With that, I dropped my hammer and shifted the dagger to my good hand. A moment later, I lunged forward and hit the ghost again, this time slicing right through his arm. The ghost dropped his weapon, which vanished as soon as he let go of it. I followed that up with a knife strike to his throat.

“Did you just cut a ghost’s neck?” Bunny asked in surprise.

“Looks that way,” I responded with a grin.

The ghost that I’d been fighting had already begun fading away and soon vanished entirely. I looked from him to the other ghosts, trying to decide which one I would target next. Both of the remaining small ghosts looked ragged, with multiple holes through them.

Olivia fired an arcane blast and hit one of the smaller ghosts again, removing its head entirely. That seemed to be enough to finally take down the thing, as it began fading away a couple seconds later. Ace followed her example and fired two scepter blasts at the other smaller ghost, hitting it in the head and destroying that one as well.

I turned my attention to the last ghost, the one that seemed to be their boss. It had been stalking towards Turtle, who was staying just out of reach. In spite of his current limitations, he was still working to keep the monster’s attention off us.

Since the ghost monster was distracted, it was easy getting up close and then stabbing it several times in what would have been the kidneys, had it been human. It snapped around and howled in pain, even as it swung its long arms at me. I leapt back, dodging the attack and then slicing at the arm.

“Over here,” Ace called out, right before firing a couple blasts at the ghost. One of them hit it in the head, which seemed to cause some damage but not enough to take it down.

Just as the ghost was about to go after Ace, I activated ‘Invocation of the Wisp’ and sent off one of my illusions. The ghost immediately pounced on it, or at least tried to. It seemed confused when it grabbed the illusion, but nothing happened.

I took advantage of the distraction to rush in and stab it a couple more times, dodging back out of the way before it could fully recover. It howled and started coming for me, only to get hit by one of Olivia’s arcane blasts.

“This stinks,” Bunny snarled. “I feel useless right now.”

“Maybe your next rabbit will be a magician,” Ace joked.

I braced myself for the pain, then fired an ‘Invocation of Spite’, hitting the ghost right in the chest. It staggered and let out a howl of pain and rage. Cracks spread over its body, much as they had the previous ghost I’d hit. And then, the ghost hunched over, as if trying to curl into a ball.

“Gotcha,” I snarled, rushing forward and then driving my dagger upwards, under the jaw and into the brain. If it had one.

A moment later, the ghost collapsed to the ground like a puppet with the strings cut. Then, it began fading away. I watched it intently, holding my breath until it had vanished entirely. Only then did I let out my breath in a long sigh of relief.

“I hate fighting something I can’t hit,” Turtle grumbled. “And when that thing hit me…” He shuddered. “It was like it was sucking out all my energy.”

“It probably was,” Olivia stated, gesturing towards the dead bodies we’d previously found. “I think that is what got them.”

“I’m just glad they’re gone,” Ace said.

“We can all agree on that,” Turtle said long sigh. “I don’t think I ever want to hear another ghost story for as long as I live.”