The climb to the top of the keep’s wall was brutal, but whatever had been bombarding him on the ground stopped, so Victor was thankful for small mercies. He wondered if perhaps the defenders so high up couldn’t see him clinging to the shadows of the black stone monoliths, especially now that the mist seemed to have made a reappearance, crowding the light of his banner, making it difficult to judge his progress. In any direction beyond fifty yards or so, all he saw was gray. Still, he climbed, leaping from one narrow ledge to the next, devouring the heights with superhuman endurance, strength, and agility.

He'd been climbing for several minutes, perhaps longer, when he felt some agitation from his coyotes. Something was happening around his body, but Victor refused to leave, to retreat to the Material Plane, as one of Valla’s books called the realm of the living. He’d come too far to give up now. Distances were strange on the Spirit Plane; Victor had always found them to be shorter so long as he knew where he was going, a person or place he wanted to reach. He was beginning to understand that things could work in the opposite manner. Something the Death Casters, perhaps Prince Hector himself, had done to this place made it difficult to find the top of the keep’s wall. It wasn’t this high in reality, but here, in the land of spirits, it seemed to stretch endlessly.

“So,” he grunted, leaping to the next ledge, “is it a matter of wills? Is their desire to keep me away stronger than mine to end this climb?” He growled, stoking his rage, allowing his vision to tint red as he pulled himself up. “Bullshit.” This time, before he leaped further, he stared at the wall before him, not the ledge he aimed to climb. He focused on the wall and firmly planted his desired destination in his mind, the wall’s top, an area with no stone in front of him, only under his feet. Focusing on that image, he stretched his hands up, fingers ready to grab the top of the wall, and jumped. This time, he felt it, the familiar blur of passage, the sensation he usually felt when he was “walking” toward Old Mother on the many occasions when they’d met in this realm.

When his fingers found purchase and his knees bumped against the hard stone, Victor opened his eyes and pulled, a savage grin of triumph baring his teeth as he pulled a leg over the crenelation to stand atop a dark stone parapet. He yanked Lifedrinker from her harness and stalked toward a weird, flickering red and black shadow to his right. One of the guardians, if he had to guess, was standing with smoky hands atop the stone wall, leaning down in a posture that made Victor think it was searching for something. Was it looking for him? Victor didn’t have to wait long to find out. As the circle of his banner’s light fell on the shadow, it screamed and turned to him with wide-open, blood-red eyes.

The smoky shadows blasted away from it as though the light was a gale-force wind, and the ghost, as Victor had come to think of the keep's defenders, summoned a shadowy spear and charged. Victor met the spear haft with Lifedrinker’s shimmering, moonlight blade, cleaving through it like a twig, then he brought her up in a loop, arcing to the diminutive spirit’s armpit, and she lopped its right arm off in a spray of weird, luminescent black-red blood. The ghost was the size of an average human with weird gray-tinted, faintly translucent skin, and when Victor maimed it, its mouth stretched into a noiseless howl of agony.

The ghost tumbled back, stumbling in its haste to avoid another cleave. Victor’s moves with Lifedrinker were machine-like in their perfect execution, though, and he compensated for the ghost’s movement, slipping the axe through its shadowy black leather armor, disemboweling it as it fell. Shiny, slippery entrails fell forth onto the black stones. They were silver, red, and cloaked in smoky shadows, and the ghost thrashed, bucking in silent agony as the smoky red Energy spilled out onto the stones. It grew paler and more translucent, and then the spirit was gone. Nothing but a slippery mess of weird Energy remained on the stones.

“Not so tough, are they, chica?”

Simple pawns with weak Energy. Let us seek their master!

“Not a bad idea,” Victor growled, stalking toward the inner rampart and peering left and right, then down, wondering where the rest of the defenders were. His vision was limited to the circle of his banner’s light, however, and he couldn’t quite make out the stones of the inner courtyard. He thought he could see a gap in the parapet near the edge of his light. “Maybe some stairs there.” He was tempted to jump down, come what may, but decided he’d check the perimeter a bit further first.

Victor started around the corner, moving along the walkway, aiming for the gap he’d seen, but then a horde of silently screaming ghosts burst into the light of his banner, black smoke flowing off them like it was caught in a stiff wind. He tried to take stock, to count the enemies coming toward him, but it wasn't easy with them bunched into a crowd, obscured by the smoke as they were. He thought there must be more than twenty.

Victor took advantage of his much greater size, reach, and strength, stepping toward the throng and cleaving Lifedrinker in a wide, powerful arc, shearing through their weapons, armor, and ghostly bodies, breaking their charge. He stomped forward and used Project Spirit to send a wave of sickly yellow, twisted, inspiration-attuned Energy through the crowd. His cleave and the wave of anti-inspiration broke their momentum, and the survivors stumbled back, only to have Victor dance among them, weaving a deadly Lifedrinker through them like they were practice dummies.

“Pathetic!” he roared, ripping them apart, and then another crowd of the ghosts came from the other direction, and he was forced to increase the ferocity of his deadly dance, kicking, hacking, whirling, cleaving, grabbing, throwing, and utterly destroying the spirit-like assailants. To their credit, though he broke their momentum, smashed their comrades, and dashed their ghostly blood in a thick mist, they never fled. Pack after pack came at him, and Victor felt his movements forming a rhythm, his cleaves and chops the percussion for the roars, howls, and screams he and Lifedrinker let loose.

When he stood heaving for breath, Lifedrinker’s metal head blazing with ghostly light, engorged on the bloody Energy of his foes, the keep’s high, black stone wall was drenched in the weird, luminescent blood-like remnants of his enemies and the mist stretching away from his banner’s light seemed thinner. Many minutes had passed while he wove his dance of destruction, and he could feel the rage in his Core ebbing low. Victor let his Berserk fade, wanting to give his Core a chance to recover. As his size reduced and the slick, ghostly blood slowly misted away, he stalked toward the gap in the now much taller-seeming parapet. He could see it clearly; his banner was still burning brightly; only half his glory-attuned Energy had been spent.

#

Valla wrenched Midnight, trying to pull her from the ghoul’s skull, grunting with the effort as the bones clung to the blade and the creature’s undead body flopped along the ground. A shambler, as Victor called the giant, plant-and-corpse monstrosities, lurched toward her, and she ducked a shoulder, trying to present her armor to its claws as it raked at her while she struggled to free her blade.

They were surrounded, overwhelmed, the Naghelli outnumbered ten to one and falling back into an ever-tighter circle around Victor. Still, the undead broke through, and Victor’s coyotes, Kethelket, and Valla struggled to keep them from charging past to attack his freakishly serene body. In the distance, she could hear the horns of the Ninth, and she hoped it meant Sarl was pushing his soldiers into the mist, into the rear or flank of the undead horde. She didn’t know what position they held relative to the monsters; all she knew was that they were beset from every direction, and they were losing ground.

The shambler knocked her back, and she fell to the damp mulch, using the momentum to give another yank to Midnight, pulling her free from the ghoul's corpse. She jumped up, only to see two of Victor’s great coyotes pull the shambler to the ground, grabbing its arms and loose bits, yanking them apart with frenzied jerks of their necks.

Valla took the short respite to look around. The Naghelli were fast and deadly with their weapons, their coordination the polar opposite of the undead horde’s fanatical, mindless charge. She could see them fighting, shoulder to shoulder, in the nearby mist, moving like orange-lit shadows, slashing, stabbing, and hacking at the endless wave of monsters that pushed at their thin line. How long could they hold? Would the Ninth be enough? It seemed thousands of undead beset them, and Sarl commanded a mere six hundred. They needed Victor’s banner, its light, and its bolstering effect. Should she wake him? Could she wake him?

#

Victor started down the steps, noting the lack of any sort of Energy award from the hundred or so ghosts he’d just slain. He wondered if the System deemed his combat still ongoing or if the Energy wasn’t coming to him on this plane. He supposed it was possible the ghosts hadn’t been worth any; maybe he hadn’t even really killed them. The fog continued to retreat as he pushed forward with his banner, and when he reached the base of the steps, he could see a wide circle of black flagstones leading away into the courtyard. He felt something ahead, something malevolent and powerful, a different sort of presence than the weak ghosts who’d thought to challenge him. Was it their leader?

I feel it, my champion! Let us go! Let us fight what awaits! Don’t you wish to taste its blood?

“Easy, chica. Of course I do. Give me a minute to breathe, though. Let me get my rage back.” Victor looked inside himself, at his Core, and saw his fear and inspiration were full, his glory above half, and his rage slowly building, stoking itself from the ever-full furnace of his spirit. His Core was different from those like Valla’s; it fed on emotions, not elements or other forces that existed in the world. He could be in the vacuum of space, and his Core would recover, building up its power from the feelings that roiled within Victor’s spirit. Could other cultivators say the same? He honestly didn’t know, but the important point remained—he was recovering even in this strange place controlled by death.

As he stood there at the bottom of the steps, gazing into the fog at the edge of his light, a voice came to him, whispering sibilantly on the wind, “Why delay? Come to me, warrior. Come and let me behold you, who have slain my guardians. Let me feel the fury of that mighty spirit.” The voice was decidedly feminine and seductive. Victor knew that, had he a weaker will, he would have felt a powerful pull, an urge to obey and walk into the mist, releasing Lifedrinker to clatter upon the stones. His will wasn’t weak, though; he could detect the pull, ignore it, and grasp Lifedrinker’s haft even more tightly, twisting it between his hands as he stood there, watching his rage Core grow ever brighter.

He was feeling good, almost ready to charge forward, when a pang struck him, a pain in his heart that told him one of his guardians had fallen, one of his coyotes had succumbed and returned to the Spirit Plane. “They’re fighting, and it must be bad.”

Let us make haste, then! Slay the presence before us, and we will return to our corporeal bodies and lay waste to whatever threatens our mate!

“Our . . .” Victor let the thought drop; there was too much to unpack at that moment. Instead, he took Lifedrinker’s advice and began to stalk forward, revealing more and more of the courtyard as his banner’s light burned off the mist. The stones he trod upon were black and smooth, enormous like the ones on the walls. His boots clicked upon them, echoing oddly in the foggy space. He’d traversed a dozen yards when he heard the voice again.

“Good, come to me, angry one. Let me help you find peace in that throbbing heart of yours.” The words came to him as a husky, feminine whisper, and it sent shivers along Victor’s spine like the lips that uttered the words were just an inch from his ears. He swore he could feel the cold breath of the speaker on his flesh, and, despite his will, his love for Valla, and his simmering rage, he could feel his pulse quicken at the touch.

“I’m coming,” he growled, stalking forward toward the presence he could feel but couldn’t see. Lifedrinker vibrated in his palms, grounding him, and Victor opened his pathways, pulling some rage into them, letting it smolder through him, limning his body in waves of red, flickering light and tinting his vision crimson. As the mists continued to part before his banner, he finally saw her, the author of the whispers. She was a woman, ghostly in complexion, her flesh luminescent and faintly translucent. She was tall, lithe, and utterly naked, swaying back and forth on long legs, moving to a rhythm or tune Victor couldn’t hear.

Her eyes were piercing, bright, cobalt blue that seemed backlit by the Energy within the woman’s frame. Her hair, long and black, drifted behind her in the nonexistent breeze, reminiscent of how hair floated when a person was submerged in water. Victor tried to ignore her naked form, but his traitor eyes wouldn’t avoid a darting glance down, taking in the woman’s pale, bare chest and the dark triangle between her legs. When he jerked his head back to her face, she smiled seductively, spreading cherry-red lips to reveal white teeth that, like her eyes, seemed too bright. “Why so grumpy, warrior? Come, wouldn’t it be better to talk and take comfort in my hospitality? You’ve slain my watchers; surely you owe me the courtesy of a conversation.”

Victor stalked forward, Lifedrinker held crossways before him, her comforting buzz a reminder of who and where he was, something he needed as the woman’s mesmerizing gaze locked with his. He found himself looking her in the eye, that she was nearly as tall as he in his non-Quinametzin form, and he frowned at the realization. Was she so tall before? Wouldn’t he have noticed something like that? “A spirit then,” he growled.

“Aren’t we all in this place?”

Victor had to admit she had a point. Even Old Mother had looked young when she Spirit Walked. He knew very well that he could manipulate his appearance on the Spirit Realm if he tried hard enough. He’d simply never felt the need. “Where’s your body?” he asked before he realized the words were forming on his lips.

“Nearby. Does it matter? Tell me, angry one. Why do you come to my keep? Why do you attack my guardians? Now you stand before me, full of rage, murder in your eyes, and I have to ask, again, why?”

“This keep, these lands, they aren’t yours. You’re part of an invading army, and you’ve slain men of mine.”

“Have I?” She frowned, an expression that looked decidedly like a pout on her beautiful face. Victor, forced to stare into her eyes lest he look upon her nakedness, found they were pulsing ever-so-softly with pale blue light. “Who were they?”

“The Naghelli. Two men who came bravely to scout your keep, to have a look at the ghostly guardians atop its walls. Not only did your ghosts slay them, but you hung them from the walls. You shouldn’t have done that.” Victor’s final sentence was a growl, and he began to pump his pathways with rage again. His red, flickering aura surged intensely, casting a red glow that reflected from the polished black flagstones.

“I shouldn’t make an example of assassins that came out of the darkness to attack one of my guardians? I thought to forestall further violence. I hoped their display above my gates would deter further invasion!” She’d come closer as she spoke, and Victor was stunned to see her cool, pale fingertips resting on his wrist, just above his fist where it gripped Lifedrinker’s haft. “Wouldn’t you like to put that brutal weapon down? Sit with me and see what I’ve done with this special place. I’ve built it up here on the Spirit Plane, and there are wonders to behold within these walls. Can’t you feel them?”

Victor loosened his grip on Lifedrinker as he looked into her eyes. He wanted to stare into them, to plumb their depths, and to learn more about this mysterious, amazing woman. “What’s your name?” he asked, letting his rage recede, pulling back his aura and holding it close.

“I’m Victoria. And you, angry one? What do I call you?”

“Seriously? I’m Victor . . .”

“A fated meeting!” Her expression brightened, her eyes lit up, and Victor found himself letting go of Lifedrinker with his left hand, letting her fall to his side, loosely held in his right. “We were meant to come together here, Victor! Can’t you feel it? I think we could learn much from each other. Such strength flows through you, and now that your rage has ebbed and you’ve let go of that brutal aura, I can see there’s a great deal more to you . . .” She’d come close, just inches separating them, and Victor smiled into her face, his hot breath mingling with her cool, quick exhalations. She tilted her chin, staring into his eyes, and Victor felt like she wanted him to kiss her. He could feel her willing him to do it.

Victor brought his left hand up, brushed her wild, black, opalescent hair away from her cheek, and then let his fingers settle against her neck, the side of his hand resting lightly on her shoulder. “You’re beautiful, and I bet there is something interesting about you, but,” quick as a viper snatching up a rodent, he wrapped his fingers around her pale, slender throat, “I don’t like Death Casters trying to mess with my mind!” He growled, tightening his grip and flooding his pathways with rage again. He lifted Lifedrinker, and her edge burst into ghostly orange flames as she howled her fury.