“Right,” Riordan said to himself, trying to refocus after his gateway closed, this time with Daniel on the nicer side of it. He turned back to Mark, the young shaman having watched the interchange between Riordan and Daniel with that intense unending curiosity of his. Riordan cleared his throat and then continued to Mark, “I’ll show you the ghosts and maybe you can help me think about how to target them past the ropes and safely move them to the other side.”

Approaching the tree after being tied so tightly to it in his fight evoked memories of Riordan’s so-recent near-lethal hanging, the moment that started him down this new and twisting path of his. Riordan took a deep breath and steeled his will to his task. He got through his trepidation with gritted teeth, marching up below one of the cocoons. This particular bundle of rope and ghost lay still, not even wriggling or whimpering, aside from the slow drip of blood squeezed from its tormented occupant.

Riordan pointed up at it, careful not to stand under the blood. "In there."

Mark looked upward and gawked in dawning horror. "Dear lord," he whispered, "No wonder you sent Daniel away first."

Uncomfortable at being seen so clearly by an outsider, Riordan shrugged a shoulder, refusing to look towards Mark. "I just need a way to target the ghosts for spiritual transport without using the pack bond as a medium."

"Why no bond?" Mark asked, his tone sharp with that focused curiosity, obviously sensing the layers hidden behind Riordan’s request. The apprentice was sharp in his observations, as always.

Riordan jerked his chin up defiantly, still too keyed up from all the fighting to take that as anything but a challenge, even though he knew Mark didn’t mean it that way. "Because first,” he explained, “most of these ghosts refused it when I offered them a chance to join the pack before and, second, I am not adding Jimmy to my pack."

"Jimmy?" Mark asked, his head tilted in thought as he tried to place the name. Then it hit him, his eyes widening. "Wait, as in the Jimmy who tried killing you? The one from earlier today?"

"That's the one," Riordan affirmed. "Someone on their side clearly did not react well to his part in our confrontation today."

"And you still want to save him?"

Riordan stabbed a finger fiercely upward at the rope webs and their horrific cocoons. "No one deserves that. No one."

Mark grinned despite the situation, his freckled cheeks dimpling and his sincere gentleness shining through both his shaman attitude and his aggressive-looking spirit mantle. He waded closer through the swampy muck and looked up at Riordan. "You are way nicer than you let on,” Mark said kindly, “under all that gruffness and pretending it's all just because of practicality. How did you end up as an exile anyway, being such a softie inside?"

Riordan's own expression shuttered immediately, slamming into blankness, his body tensing. His mantle resummoned the badger mask, further hiding his face. "I deserved my exile. It was very generous, given the rest of my pack was executed for what we did." His voice was cold and invited no further questions on the subject.

Even Mark wasn’t going to push Riordan when he shut down like that, no matter how curious. The shaman changed the subject back to the business at hand.

"I'm not a ghost expert,” Mark said thoughtfully, glancing between the rope-wrapped ghost above them and out into the void of the spirit realm around them, “but Frankie said that guiding people through a keyed gateway requires intention. We mostly talked about it in terms of the intention of each individual person going through, combined with the intention of the key holder to allow them passage, but she did mention using it to capture spirits and send them back to a different part of the spirit realm, all without their permission, and she hinted at some shaman being able to weaponize gateways in shaman versus shaman duels to pull a living soul away from their host body and the physical fight temporarily. So it's possible to move spirits without their acceptance, at least with a keyed gateway. Which is what we have here, so that's good."

"And how do you target the spirits?" Riordan asked, contemplating having to climb up the ropes again and traverse the web if the method required either physical contact or line of sight on the specific target. He'd do it, of course, but he really didn't want to.

"Ah," Mark fidgeted, hands fluttering in front of him as he tried to work through the problem in his head, "I'm not sure. With spirits, you usually instigate a basic connection via talking. Even without going full spirit-speech, the intention of communication establishes a link. That basic link might be strong enough to pull them out of the cocoons, but it also might not be. I really don't know how well my knowledge correlates with ghosts."

Riordan grimaced. As far as potential methods went, it was flimsy but didn't come with that many risks, beyond having to climb the ropes. Theoretically, he could even talk at the victims from down here and hope, but even Jimmy, who was the freshest to this suffering, was almost insensate. He needed to make the link as clear and personal as possible if he was relying on such a fragile connection for targeting.

Then there was the other problem. He was going to help these fuckers, but he trusted them about as far as they could throw him, which was to say, not at all. That meant Riordan needed to keep them separated from his pack, but the tree spirit’s glade was the only place he could take them that Phenalope and the ritual weren't going to be able to just suck them right back in. Riordan’s own left arm throbbed, the rope feeling hot and tight over his spiritual bruises. The ritual didn’t let them go easily if they didn’t have a safe place to hide.

Maybe he could just shove them in a pocket of the forest wall. Riordan had no idea how the forest wall really worked though, which meant higher chances of side effects. And Riordan so loved all the side effects of the spirit realm.

Therefore, the first person Riordan needed to talk to was actually none of the ghosts, but the tree spirit itself. Maybe it would know where or how he could do this safely. The tree might not have been the spirit to give Riordan his damn spirit void gateway thing-- thanks so much, Mother Bear-- but the tree was tied to him through the pack bond and it had assisted in the creation of the glade and its defenses. Riordan suspected its influence in the nudges towards shamanism with the garden maze he added, since that came after Mother Bear's changes to him. He wondered about the symbiotic relationship of spirits and shaman, each feeding power into the other as they drew it from the world.

What effect was he having on the strong and strange blackgum tree spirit?

What effect was the tree spirit having on him?

If there was some method for answering that, Riordan didn't know it and he didn't trust either the skill, honesty or discretion of the other shaman he might ask to assess his situation. He'd worked alone for too long. Even if he hadn't, Riordan knew that their loyalty as pack shaman must be to their pack first and foremost, above themselves and certainly above outsiders like Riordan. He was still shifter enough to expect nothing less and to respect them for sticking to those priorities.

"I'm going to talk to a tree," Riordan said finally, a bitter laugh slipping from his lips. He wished he had a few good weeks to get a handle on everything. He needed real rest, enough to catch up from the constant drain on him. He needed lessons and practice to be ready to handle the crisis without risking making things worse. He needed time to process his recent trauma, ponder his changing self-identity, relearn shifter culture and mentality, and then reorder his life goals and priorities to match the new data.

Too bad there was no way in hell he was getting that time before shit would hit the fan.

Mark seemed discomfited by Riordan's declaration of intent about talking with the tree. The young shaman eyed the bare branches, dripping with liquid death energy, wrapped in magical ropes, and smelling like death. Its green and red heart beat in the shadows, peeking through the ooze on the trunk to light the fog in sickly glows. It was hardly a spirit that seemed healthy or inspired confidence.

"Is that wise?" Mark offered carefully.

Riordan snorted at that question, remembering his resolution to do whatever he thought might help, even if it was stupid. That's what had gotten him into a duel with a death mage in the spirit realm while standing in a pool of death energy and tied to a tree. He clearly came up with the most excellent ideas.

"I think it's wiser than just talking to the ghosts first and hoping for the best," Riordan answered, picking his way closer to the tree trunk, wary of hanging ropes and dripping goop as he approached.

Idlely, Riordan wished spirits had names of their own. Some did, the rare spirits that arose from a strongly named concept. Other spirits had names given to them by the shaman they interacted with, like Mother Bear and the Guardian spirits of the Sleeping Bear Pack. Most, however, were nameless, existing only as a concept and not an individual. The tree spirit had no name of its own. Riordan could give it one, but he feared the result. Names had power. They were the summation of a person in a single word. For a spirit, a being that was already so singular, the name could literally change their identity. Riordan struggled enough with the concept of naming a pet. He shivered at how badly he'd fuck up naming a spirit.

Which, of course, probably meant Riordan was going to have to do it at some point, given how his luck had been. He should give the matter some thought. He would wait for that until after he had this next conversation though. He didn't want to name it something by accident in that strange invasive communication style of spirit-speech.

“Smack me if I seem in trouble or something,” Riordan told Mark, “Or, well, I suppose you are a better judge of how well spirit-speech is going than I am. Use your initiative.”

“The one order that you can trust will be obeyed,” Mark quipped back with a nervous half-smile. The shaman looked back to where Zeren still stood staring at the proxy ghost, probably reassuring himself that he had back up if Riordan truly messed things up again.

“Only with the best partners,” Riordan replied absently, his mind already reaching out for the tree, “Always look for a team that thinks for themselves, even when following your lead.”

And then he felt the tree reach out for him in turn and Riordan slipped into that strange surreal space that was spirit-speech.