Faye was crouched in the lee of a stony outcropping, shivering in the frigid air despite the protection her stats were giving her. Taveon was drawing marks on the bare stone in front of them and even his hands shook.

Gavan, however, was perfectly calm in the chill air. He had the grace to be quiet about his ability to stay warm. It was a side-effect of focusing on ice magic, he had said, plus some passive abilities.

Faye knew that she was focusing on insignificant details to draw her mind away from the stark reality presented to her now.

The mountain fortress was before them.

They had taken another two days to get here. Approaching from the east was a treacherous journey, but there were paths to take. Shepherds and other hardy, isolated mountain folk used these paths occasionally — evident from the carefully stacked stone cairns that marked the way. They had not met one of these elusive mountain folk, but Taveon had said he was not surprised. They would hear their trio coming well before they were able to see or sense the mountain folk.

It was these people that had originally mentioned a dangerous place in the mountains to the Guild, apparently. The adventuring team that had gone missing had been sent into these same mountain passes. Faye was almost certain now that it was them she had stumbled across, or rather their bodies she had stumbled across, on her first foray into these mountains.

The massive grey blocks of stone that made up the fortress walls looked as formidable as they had the first time she had seen them, though it was clear that time and weather had reduced them down from whatever external shape they had once held. Corners were smooth, arches collapsed, and some walls were simply mounds of stone and rubble.

Taveon cleared his throat.

“The ritual is unclear. There is something there, but I cannot tell what it is. Faye, Gavan, do your senses tell you aught?”

Faye had gotten so used to flicking [Mana Sense] on and off during their travels, she barely had to consciously think about it. The ruin was practically dormant.

There were tiny threads of mana that wove through the stone and air, just like there were anywhere.

“Nothing more than usual,” she said.

“No,” Gavan added.

Taveon sighed. He turned back to them. “I am concerned. If the spirit that Faye encountered before is still there, it is able to hide from us very easily. That means it is much more dangerous than we were led to believe.”

“What would we normally do to defeat something like this?” Faye asked, looking between the two.

“Call in reinforcements.”

Faye almost chuckled.

“Alright, let’s pretend for a moment that we can’t do that…” she said, “how about we target the ruins from here, deal damage to whatever is in there, and mop up afterwards?”

Gavan grimaced. “Spirits are not actually there until they decide to manifest. My spells would not harm it from this distance. Neither would yours.”

Taveon pointed down at the marks he had made with the stick of chalk. “And a ritual would need more preparation, probably a design that spanned the entire fortress. I’m not sure we have the space or ability to scale the walls enough for that.”

Faye frowned. As she looked at the fortress, the overwhelming sensation of dread and anxiety that she had been dealing with all this time rose up and threatened to pull her under. A hand on her arm helped steady her but she could not look at them, for fear that their looks of pity would undermine her last shreds of self-control.

“Okay,” she said, sniffing and standing. “There’s nothing to be done from out here. I have to go in closer to figure out what I’m up against.”

“It is not just you,” Taveon said, “we are here to help.”

Nodding to show she had heard, Faye moved to the steep path that she needed to scramble down to reach the same height as the old fort.

As she scrambled down the scree, Faye could not help but wonder who had made the fortress and why it was in such an inaccessible place. Fortresses like this were expensive to create, as far as she knew. Why would someone go to the trouble of paying everything to create a fort so far away from anywhere?

Unless it was meant to stay out of most people’s way?

Further down the side of the mountain, Faye could see the calm waters of the lake that stretched out into a rough oval shape, filling in the contours of the depression of that side of the mountain path.

Dragging her eyes back to the walls of the fort, Faye noted there were marks and stains across the base of the walls, some reaching as high as six feet, but she could not decide what caused them. The obvious, and horrifying, answer would be blood but from the shapes they made against the stone she was not convinced that was what was marking the stone.

Then, she had little time to consider it as the path ended and she was level with the fortress again. Scrambling from behind her told her that Taveon and Gavan were close behind. She was thankful for their support, but also worried about how she was dragging them into a mess of her own making.

I am stronger, faster, tougher than I was the last I stood on these stones, she told herself. I’ll be okay.

The sensation of impending doom mounted.

She took a shaky breath and stepped forward. Her hand naturally found the handle of the sword she wore, and she drew it for the mental support it gave her. [Mana Sense] told her, still, that there was nothing inside the ruins, but she knew better. She would be cautious.

The archway at this side of the fortress was collapsed, but from this angle, she could see other, intact, entrance and wondered what it was that had caused the building to only partially collapse.

The rock of the mountainside gave way to the carefully cut stone of the outer yard. Once, it would have been a smooth, unblemished surface, she was sure, but the ravages of time had allowed for grasses and even a tree or two to break through the cobblestone. The courtyard was half-wild. In the darkness of her first visit, Faye had not realised just how large the fortress had once been. But now, with the frosty winter sun weakly shining overhead, it was clear that in its heyday, this would have been a large fortress capable of hosting many warriors.

The entire outer yard area was empty of bodies, enemies, or spirits.

Of course, it had been the inner section that jutted out into the empty air of the mountains that had been the site of her ambush. She looked up the broken, jagged steps and into the space beyond that, from her point of view, looked to jut out into the open air.

She took a careful look around with [Mana Sense], then drew back and returned to the outer edges of the fortress alongside Taveon and Gavan.

They spoke with lowered voices.

“Cannot sense anything,” Gavan murmured. Taveon nodded and smiled tightly as Faye approached.

“We have nothing out here, and obviously you met nothing in the outer yard.”

“Yeah, nothing so far,” Faye replied. She shook her head, looking over her shoulder. “Place gives me the creeps still, despite it being the middle of the day it felt… dark.”

Taveon looked into the area between the ruin’s walls. “It does not seem so to me, perhaps your previous encounter has further effects on you than a simple bane?”

Faye half growled. “Let’s get this thing killed so we can go back, eh?”

After preparing as best she could, Faye stepped onto the first step up into the open area of the fortress. Its stone floor was still smooth after all this time, despite the walls falling away as they had.

Of course, the moment that Faye stepped onto it, she felt a tremor start up her leg. She swallowed nervously before taking another step and crossing the invisible threshold between the outer and inner parts of the ruin.

This time, with [Mana Sense] active, Faye was able to immediately see the streams of mana as they wound through the worked stone under her boots. The mana all coalesced into a humanoid shape in the centre of the floor.

Without waiting for it to get the drop on her again, Faye levelled her hand at it and gave a mental command.

[Scorching Lance]!

The thick bar of almost solid flames erupted from her hand, striking the still-forming spirit in the centre. An ethereal wail pierced Faye’s ears.

At her back, Gavan muttered something that she could not make out. Not wanting to give the spirit much chance, she lit her sword with her mana, engulfing the blade in flames that cast orange and red light across her features.

The spectral figure finished forming. This time, it did not come straight at Faye, but it rose in the air two, three metres. Its skeletal arms spread wide, coming up to meet above the spirit’s head.

There, it seemed to pull something apart with its hands. From the space it had seemingly opened, it thrust in a clawed hand and pulled out a sword long enough to split Faye in half from outside of her own sword’s reach.

“Shit,” she cursed.

Before the spectre could finish drawing its blade, Faye lifted her hand and let out another [Scorching Lance]. This one only caught part of the spectre’s body, though, as it dodged aside from her attack. The translucent skin at the impact site simply glowed before returning to its otherworldly pallor a few heartbeats later.

Something screamed in Faye’s mind, and she jumped backward. A moment later, the spectre’s form displaced forward, fading in and out of reality to slide into range of Faye. Its sword sliced through the air that had held her neck a moment before.

It screamed, a sibilant hiss that crawled up and down Faye’s spine in horror.

She raised her hand again, but the spectre seemed to expect it. It slid aside, using the same technique but moving from in front of her to her right flank, away from her casting hand.

Throwing herself backward, Faye dodged the swift downward blow that followed the spectre’s flanking manoeuvre. She teetered on the edge of the steps. The spectre glided forward, its sibilant screech echoing throughout the ruins.

Just before it was in range to impale her on its sword, she stopped feigning imbalance and swiftly danced down the steps at her back. The spectre came for her, its follow-up thrust just as swift as its other movements.

If Faye had been on her own this would have been her end.

The spectre’s sword, as it passed the top step leading up to its room, threw sparks from seemingly nothing and bounced back in its face. The spectre screamed once again.

Biting off another curse, Faye wiped sweat out of her eye, then danced back a few more steps. Taveon and Gavan were nearby. Taveon muttered a few words so that his ritual would hold as the irate spirit slammed its massive sword against his ward. Gavan touched Faye’s arm and sent a blast of invigorating energy through her.

“Okay, we drew it out. Now what? My spell didn’t really touch it.”

Gavan nodded. “It seems resistant. Let us hope it despises ice.”

With a few gestures, Gavan conjured a razor-sharp shard of ice that hung in the air above the spectre for a second before slamming down into the spirit’s incorporeal form. As the ice ripped through the spectre’s form, it broke apart and swirled tumultuously in its wake as if made from fog.

The spirit vanished.

Faye frowned and flicked on [Mana Sense] automatically.

The spectral form had retreated to the far side of the open room it had formed in.

“It’s retreated,” she said, “I bet it heals by the time it returns to form.”

Taveon had stopped reinforcing his ward. He was digging through his backpack now, and with a triumphant shout, pulled out a small phial.

“What’s that?” Faye asked.

“Spirit’s bane,” he replied. “Apply it to your sword, you will damage the spirit… in theory.”

Faye paused a moment. Gavan just gave Taveon a look. The old man held up his hands. “Give me some credit, I am fairly sure it will work. The problem is that I have never had the opportunity to test it.”

He held out the small bottle. It was corked and waxed to ensure the contents would not leak. Faye took it and looked through the glass. Then, she looked down at her still-flaming sword.

“Will I burn it away?”

Taveon grimaced. “Aye, child. I would extinguish the sword first, and—”

But whatever else he was going to say was lost as the spectre materialised beside them with a shriek, its ethereal form sparking and guttering in the wind as it if were a candle’s flame in a draughty room.

Faye screamed and threw herself at Taveon. The old man was not looking at the spectre as it came into being, so his body simply reflexively hunched over but stayed relatively motionless. Faye collided with him and tackled him to the ground.

The spectre’s blade swung through the air lightning-quick, and she felt its ice-cold bite in her shoulder as she rode Taveon down to the ground, and relative safety. She cried out in pain.

Gavan had shouted, and she heard the cracking of ice shards as they formed and screamed through the air. Tackling Taveon to safety had meant dropping her blade, though she still held onto the bottle of spirit’s bane in her right hand.

Twisting to see the spirit, she thanked her lucky stars that Gavan’s quick casting had caused it to switch focus. She pushed up from Taveon’s form, he was breathing, she could tell because he was grunting in pain, and she shoved the phial between her belt and her clothing.

Pushing as much mana as she could into her spell, Faye lifted her now free right hand and aimed.

[Fire Dart].

Four, five darts of flames erupted from the air around her hand as the mana ignited. They streaked forward, leaving smoking black trails in the frozen mountain air.

Gavan had raised a wall of ice shards, forming a barrier for the spectre to deal with. Fortunately for him, the spectre was unable to attack through it, and spent a moment moving around it. In those scant few moments, the darts hit in rapid succession.

Each one caused the spectre to scream and twist as it attempted to evade the spell. As it turned its baleful gaze on Faye, Gavan popped out from behind the ice wall and cast his own cascade of [Fire Dart] spells. He was the one that had originally shown Faye that it could be overloaded, so she was not surprised he was able to replicate her signature spell.

Not only did his [Fire Dart] spell split into eight darts, each one arced and spiralled through the air in a pattern designed to strike the spectre from all directions at once. It was impossible for it to evade.

As the darts from Gavan’s spell homed in, the spectre screamed and thrashed, but it was pure luck that caused one of them to strike against something in the midst of the spectre’s ghostly robes and body and erupt into a blast of flame and force energy that Faye had come to expect from the spell.

It had hit something solid.

The spectre did not give them much time to think about what had happened. It rose three metres or more into the air once again and seemed to suck in mana from the surrounding area.

“Faye!” Taveon screamed, “stop it from finishing whatever it is attempting to do!”

She did not need telling twice.

Thrusting her good arm into the air, she called forth another casting of [Fire Dart], pushing mana into it until it exploded into action with five darts screaming for the spectre’s form. Gavan did the same from his side.

Their darts filled the air with stinging smoke that clogged their eyes and lungs, but neither of them wanted to stop.

The spectre’s wail rose in pitch, causing physical pain. Faye grimaced and tried to cast again through the noise but could not bring herself to activate the spell. The sound cut off, and the spectre launched itself for Faye once again.

She saw its swoop begin. With no other weapon to hand and her spells not wanting to activate, she did the only thing she could think of: she took out the phial of spirit’s bane and threw it forward.

With a swing of its blade, the spectre smashed aside the potion phial, shattering it into a thousand pieces.

It screamed and lurched forward again. Forward through the cloud of glass and potion.

Each piece of glass seemed to tear massive, jagged holes in the spectre’s robed form. It aborted its dive for Faye, but it was too late. It thrashed in mid-air, trying to rid itself of the glass barbs.

Faye’s ears stopped ringing, and she felt her spells return to her. She pointed her hand at the spectre.

[Scorching Lance].

It ripped through the being’s form like hot steel through snow. But it was as the beam flicked to the side slightly and the spectre moved in pain that happenstance brought the beam of the spell into contact with something at the spectre’s core.

With another ear-splitting shriek, something exploded at the spectre’s centre. With that explosion of sound and energy, the spectre ripped itself apart.

Congratulations! Your party has defeated a level 18 [Ancient Spectre].

You have been awarded experience.

And, with the notification of the spirit’s death, came too another message.

Three innocuous words. Those three words battered down Faye’s defences more easily than anything else she had ever experienced. She dropped to her knees, instantly sobbing. She was not sure how long she sat there, slumped to the stone, but when she slowly found herself coming back to her ordinary self, she realised that she was wrapped in a warm blanket, and her arm did not scream with pain when she moved.

Taveon stepped up to her.

She looked up and sniffed, smiling weakly. “Are you okay?” she asked.

He laughed. “Yes,” he said, “I am fine. Well done. Very well done.”

Handing her a mug of water, she sipped from it as she fully absorbed what they had done together. But in the end, it came back to those three words.

Congratulations! Bane removed.