A muted sensation of fire prickling my skin announced the arrival of a specter.

  The bubbling of the lawn ahead and the consequent eruption of the grass and land made me stop and look at the direction of the specter.

  The only thought racing through my mind was a plea to the world. Please don’t be large.

  Please don’t be large. Please…

  The specter floated out of the fountain of fire. It floated up and looked at the sky.

  A wailing sound followed its arrival. It looked like my pleas had fallen on deaf ears.

  The specter stood tall at ten feet. And it floated three feet off the ground. It loomed over us.

  The only silver lining I could see was that it hadn’t noticed us just yet.

  I turned towards Ilya. I didn’t wait to explain anything. I rushed her.

  Picked her up on my shoulder and ran back towards the direction we had come from.

  Ilya grunted and croaked, “What… What are you doing?”

  “Running.”

  “Put me down.”

  “No.” I stopped listening.

  “Waa..aa..aa.” The specter screamed out its anger.

  This wasn’t good. Specters were not spirits, damned, or demons. They didn’t talk or taunt.

  They weren’t motivated by duty or the call of essence.

  They were souls tied to a place or an item, lingering in a spot both in the dark waters and the corporeal world.

  Bound by an unfulfilled purpose, they endured. Tethered by unfinished business.

  They were also extremely territorial and angered easily. With my action of freeing all those spirits from the essence tying them here, I had angered this one.

  I cursed myself internally. I should have known that my actions would have repercussions.

  I should have at least asked myself where the spirits got all that essence. But what was done was done.

  Right now all I could do was save my people.

  I reached the punishers and skidded to a stop. I dropped Ilya in front of them.

  She took a breath and hacked up more fluids from her mouth. She didn’t look so good.

  She was wan and pale. We couldn’t take on the specter in the state she was in. In fact, I didn’t think we could fight one if we were both a hundred percent.

  “Your Highness?” Grek asked.

  “We need to get out of this lawn,” I stated urgently.

  To Grek’s credit, he didn’t question me like Ilya. He shot a rapid series of hand gestures at his two people and began running.

  I picked up Ilya and followed the squad of punishers.

  Grek fell back to run alongside me. “Your Highness, what is wrong with Her Grace?”

  Ilya squirmed in my arms. “Nothing. I can fight.”

  We both ignored Ilya. I responded, “Not now, Grek. We have a specter wandering the lawn.”

  “Specter? Isn’t that like the spirits?” Grek asked.

  “No.” I shook my head. “Get us to safety and I will explain.”

  Ilya gulped and groaned. “I am going to be sick.”

  “I don’t care, sister. I can wash up later,” I tried to comfort Ilya.

  “Oh, blight no.” Ilya shook her head. “Put me down.”

  “Hold on, my lady. Just a few more minutes,” Grek said and ran past me.

  Grek’s legs blurred and he shot towards a wide building.

  He stopped in front of a metal door and took out the large ring of keys.

  He picked one and slotted it in. With a twist, he opened the lock and started to unlatch the door.

  “What the… Watch out!” The female punisher shouted.

  I ducked instinctively. A jet of blue fire shot over my head, hitting a tree instead.

  The tree withered and died instantly. I didn’t look to see the state of the tree.

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  I knew what I would find. A dried-out husk with blackened branches.

  Instead, I looked at the specter floating at us.

  The sputtering fires in its eye sockets had lit up into bright blue flames.

  Its mouth was spewing out fire with every clack of the jaw.

  And although it couldn’t move as fast as the spirits, it was slowly, like an unstoppable force, making its way towards us.

  “What in the blight was that?” The female punisher asked.

  “Soul fire,” I answered and watched Grek open the door. I nudged the woman. “Get inside, punisher.”

  “Yes, sir,” the female punisher said and ran towards the door.

  I ran after her. The last punisher brought up the rear.

  As soon as I reached indoors, I handed Ilya over to the two punishers.

  Grek swung the door closed and locked it. I didn’t stop; I began to pile everything I saw in front of it.

  A set of drawers. A log. A rake?

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “The stables,” Grek answered.

  I looked around and didn’t see any horses. But I did see tens of stalls with dirt and dust.

  I also saw an anvil. I rushed to it and with a grunt picked it up.

  Grek ran into a stall and found a thick heavy chain.

  I carried my burden to the door and slid it in place.

  Grek looped the chain on hooks, securing the door.

  We both took a step back and away from the door.

  “Will it hold, my lord?” Grek asked.

  “It shoots fire. It will burn right through the door,” the female punisher said while helping Ilya.

  “No, that is soul fire. It burns anything that has a soul,” I explained.

  “Trees have souls?” The last punisher asked.

  “Everything living has a soul,” I replied.

  “Even germs?” The same man asked.

  We all turned to look at the man.

  “Shut up, Whily.” Grek frowned at the man and turned to the female punisher. “Stone, take Her Grace to the office in the back. She can empty her stomach there. Whily, help her.”

  Grek turned to me. “Your Highness, if that thing cannot burn through the door, why did we just chain it shut?”

  I looked at the blocked door. “Because specters like to throw things.”

  Grek looked at me and then at the door. “I will go secure the other door.”

  He nodded and ran away.

  I didn’t stop Grek. Even if it wasn’t necessary. The specter was not after them. It was after me.

  It could sense the essence I had stolen from the spirit and it would follow me until I had digested it all.

  I took in a long breath and walked to the office where I could hear Ilya being sick.

  I knocked on the door and entered. In the back of the room was a small privy where the female punisher was holding Ilya’s hair while she threw up in a pot.

  The woman had untied Ilya’s armor and was massaging her neck.

  “It’s okay, Your Grace. Let the bad out and everything will be okay.”

  Ilya looked at me enter and glared. She turned to the punisher and smiled. “Call me Ilya. Anyone who holds my hair while I am vomiting my guts out can call me Ilya.”

  I looked at my sister and began, “Ilya…”

  “Not you!” Ilya pointed at me and asked, “What did you do to me?”

  “I accidentally healed you.” I sighed.

  Ilya narrowed her eyes and then went back to vomiting.

  I began to explain. “I checked on you while we ran here. The doom bringer you ran across had injured your soul. It left its thorns in you. The essence I gave you? Your soul began to digest it, repairing itself and rejecting those thorns. The sick you are vomiting is the doom bringer’s poison.”

  Ilya growled. “Why didn’t you do this when we weren’t fighting?”

  “I did not know.”

  Ilya picked up a bottle of water from the floor and rinsed her mouth. “When will this stop?”

  “I do not know.”

  “What do you know?” Ilya shouted at me.

  Before I could answer, a loud impact shook the building we were in. Followed by the cry of the specter.

  “Ilya, I need to leave.”

  “What?” Both of the women asked together.

  “The specter. It is after me. It will follow me. You will be safe here.”

  “Blight no,” Ilya shouted. “You won’t go running around alone, all over again.”

  “Ilya,” I stressed my sister’s name. “I will go. I will leave the punishers to look after you until you are fully healed. And then you can come and help me.”

  Ilya wiped her mouth and said, “Voss. There are damned, spirits, thorgs, and now a specter roaming around in this keep. You can’t take them on alone.”

  I smiled. “You forgot Shazed Voss.”

  “You find this funny?”

  “A little bit, big sister.”

  “You are mad,” Ilya said and turned back towards the pot.

  “And you are sick. Stay safe and keep the punishers alive.”

  Ilya wanted to respond; she opened her mouth, but at that moment the stables shook again.

  She turned her head away from me and looked at the wall.

  “Stay safe, brother,” Ilya said as I walked away.

  I walked out of the room and straight into Grek.

  “Your Highness. I am coming with you,” he announced while taking a step back.

  “No.”

  “I am sorry, Your Highness. It is not up to you. His Majesty’s commands supersede yours.”

  I opened my mouth to protest but Grek cut me off.

  “I also know a way into the keep. A secret route. I’ll guide you to the Shazed Voss taking the quickest path.”

  Grek smiled.

  I exhaled loudly.

  “I am glad you agree. Please come with me. We need to go to that stall.”

  Grek pointed at a stall and walked in and finished, “And underground.”

  The stall looked no different from the stalls around. Grek walked to a horseshoe on the wall and shifted it.

  The floor clacked and slid sideways.

  “Underground?”

  “It’s called the Underkeep for a reason, Your Highness.”

  I looked down at the dark opening and back at Grek.

  “After you, Your Highness.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Don’t tell me you are afraid of the dark,” Grek chuckled.

  I laughed. “No, I am just not sure that I will fit in there.”

  “You will. The ceilings in there are twelve feet high.”

  I nodded and jumped down.

  Grek threw in an amulet after I landed. It lit up the stone walls in a dim yellow light.

  Grek jumped down and took the lead. We began walking down a long winding path.

  “Who made this place?” I asked after we had walked in silence.

  “Shazed Voss,” Grek answered. “They say, it used to be above ground. Before the God Emperor slammed his continent into this one. The Vosses built the keep above over the buried one.”

  I looked at Grek’s back. “Do your people hold no grudges for his actions?”

  Grek chuckled. “The Emperor is the Emperor. Do you hold the sky responsible for rain, Your Highness? It would be like complaining about fire being hot and water being wet.”

  “Hmm…”

  “I know what you are thinking, my lord. You think that most people must hold resentment for what he did and I am an outlier among them.”

  Grek looked back at me and smiled. “I am not. Without the Emperor, we all would be dead. Humans, elves, and shifters.”

  “Not everyone seems to be pleased with Father. Like Senator Streton.”

  “That man is a blight on Voss. He is a xenophobe masquerading as a humanist. All he cares about is gathering power, both personal and political, to elevate humans. What he doesn’t say is that he wants to sit on top of the throne and remold Gaia in his vision.”

  The passage shook and Grek stumbled. I caught the punisher and steadied him.

  “What was that?”

  I looked back and saw the stone from the roof fall inwards.

  “That is a very smart specter.”

  Grek looked at me. “It can’t be. We are twenty feet deep.”

  With a loud boom, more stones collapsed to the floor.

  A fiery head lowered down to our eye level and looked at us.

  I pointed at the head. “Tell it to that bonehead.”

  Grek looked at the specter and asked, “Should we run?”

  I nodded. “Yes, we run.”

  We took off in the opposite direction to the specter.

  “Waaa…” The specter screamed and jumped into the underground passage. And began chasing us.