The Wraith Woman (3)
Vanish……
Vanish……
Vanish……
As the illusory shadows cloaking the ghost subsided, the ash-gray woman from the brief first glimpse reappeared.
Andy ran with me on his back, circling the ghost. She kept hurling masses of fog. A single touch from those things would have torn a body to shreds — but none of them could reach us. Thud. Thud. Thud. The earth shuddered as massive boulders surged upward, intercepting the fog and snuffing it out. Fresh stone kept rising alongside Andy as he sprinted across the fields, knitting itself into a solid wall.
"Hah…! Hah…!"
"Andy. You all right?"
"Hah…! Still good, sir! Hah…! Hah…!"
At a distance from both us and the ghost, Clara stood with her hands stretched toward us. Mana poured through her; her hair and the hems of her clothes whipped in the empty air.
Clara was a World Mage. In Luke's Biography, that was the term for ordinary mages — neither clerics nor dark sorcerers. Her rank was 2-Star. Only one step above the lowest tier, but even that was more than enough to handle some rural ghost.
Clara. Against a ghost, you have to use earth magic.
I had told her as much when I laid out the plan. World Magic divided into earth, sea, and sky. This ghost only ever appeared at the center of these fields — which meant she could not defy the binding of this land. That made her vulnerable to earth magic cast upon this ground. Not that Clara could actually hurt her with it.
Andy had already put considerable distance between us and our starting point. Clara had not moved. The result was a formation with the ghost positioned between Andy and Clara.
……
The ash-gray woman began drifting slowly toward Clara. She must have realized that as long as Clara was there, her attacks would never land. Masses of fog flew at Clara in a concentrated barrage. Clara swept her hands, wrapping herself in walls of stone.
"Now, Andy!"
"On it!"
Andy clamped me under one arm and charged straight at the ghost. The moment the distance closed, she turned our way and loosed a mass of fog. A boulder erupted directly in front of Andy — and he hurled me over it with everything he had.
…I was flying.
How many meters up, I couldn't say. But it had worked. Andy had insisted he could do it, yet this single moment had been the most uncertain part of the entire plan I had devised.
The ghost did not immediately notice me above her head. I surrendered my body to the pull of the stars and reached toward the ash-gray woman.
My hand never touched her. A ghost who could erase her own substance at will — my fingers passed straight through the crown of her head. But my ability did not require actual contact. What mattered was the psychological sense of being close enough to touch. A distance at which you were certain the other party could not escape.
A scream that shook the brain — and like smoke caught in a violent wind, the ash-gray woman vanished.
Altering.
I had laid hands on the structure of the Curse of Illusion and remade it into my own power, one that could force illusions onto others. What the ghost had seen did not matter. An illusion was not frightening in itself — the mere act of seeing it injected terror. And that was far more effective on a ghost than on a living person.
A ghost was a spiritual entity. Something without substance given form. Deal it a severe enough mental shock, and the form itself collapsed.
A rush of wind caught me just before I hit the ground — sky magic cast by Clara.
"Ugh… uurgh… bleeeagh……"
The moment I landed safely, I started retching. Using the altered Curse of Illusion always left me feeling as though my insides were turning inside out. I had forced it down in front of Maria, but after moving this hard, there was no holding it back.
"Brother!"
Clara came running toward me, her face crumpled with distress.
"I—I'm fine, Clara. Thanks to you. It's nothing."
"What do I do?! Brother, you're bleeding!"
Bleeding?
Only then did I notice that the hand which had passed through the ghost was shredded. A stinging pain I had not registered until now came flooding in. Even in Luke's Biography, simply touching a ghost had dealt damage. I had kept that in mind — I simply hadn't been able to think of another way. At least the wound was not deep; it seemed to be only the skin.
"Hold still! What am I supposed to—"
"Ah—! I've got bandages!"
Clara had been about to tear her own skirt when Andy hurriedly produced a roll of bandages. She all but snatched them from him and wound them tightly around my hand. Red blood soaked through the white cloth.
"You said if we just followed the plan, it wouldn't be dangerous!"
My little sister glared at me, eyes bright with tears, her face full of accusation.
"Clara…… among country men, a scratch like this hardly counts as dangerous."
"B-but you're a noble, Brother……!"
"Hasn't Cain gotten badly hurt before too?"
"He has, sir. Sir Cain still has a scar on his back. That was when—"
"Don't take his side!"
"Yes, ma'am."
Clara shot Andy a withering look, and he — who had been warming up to a lively story — promptly shut his mouth.
Once the bandaging was done, I brushed the dirt off myself and stood. I looked around. The earth magic Clara had cast had completely torn up the fields.
"The ghost will come back before long. Let's find what we need and get out of here."
"Understood, Brother."
"What exactly are we looking for, sir?"
"The curse that creates a ghost is a little different from ordinary curses. But a curse is still a curse. There will definitely be a catalyst."
"A catalyst? You mean a dark mage used some kind of hex?"
Andy looked completely lost, but Clara, who had magical knowledge, seemed to be following along well enough.
"Not necessarily. Hexes often activate by accident when the conditions line up, even without the caster intending it."
"……How do you know all this?"
"……When I was at the sanitarium, I learned from a friend who knew a great deal about curses. I wanted to do something — anything — about my own."
"A friend……?"
"Uh… young master? Forgive my ignorance, but……"
"Ah. For now, just find the woman's corpse."
The body was definitely here. A ghost could not stray far from its own remains — that was almost certainly why she could not leave this place. Finding the corpse might give us a lead on the catalyst.
It did not take Andy long to find it. She had not been dead long enough to become bare bone, but the decay was advanced enough that you could barely tell she had been a woman.
"The stench is overwhelming."
"Clara. You probably shouldn't look."
"What are you talking about? I can't be the only one who— I'm sorry."
Clara stared at the corpse for exactly two seconds, then fled. Andy snickered at her retreating back.
"Well. We should check for jewelry or personal effects."
"I'll do it, sir!"
When I moved toward the body, Andy stepped in front of me. Without the slightest hesitation, he turned the rotting corpse this way and that, examining it thoroughly.
"She's wearing a ring. And there's a knife stuck in her back."
Andy pulled free the ring and the dagger, wiped them roughly on his clothes, and handed them to me.
"……A gemstone ring, and a silver dagger."
This woman had almost certainly been murdered with that dagger, and become a ghost afterward. And the moment I touched it, I knew. The catalyst was definitely this dagger. This body of mine, gifted with exceptional talent for dark magic, could sense the hex formula inscribed upon it — a feeling similar to the pendant around my neck, the catalyst of the Curse of Emotionlessness that had once belonged to Maria.
"Both the ring and the dagger are far too fine for something from a place like this."
"They are, sir."
"B-Brother!"
Clara came rushing back, her face drained of all color.
"There's another body!"
"……What?"
One ghost. Two corpses. Was the second a victim of the ghost?
Andy and I followed Clara. Wedged in a gap in the stone walls she had raised lay a body — or rather, part of one. Unlike the woman's corpse, which had been relatively intact, this one looked as though it had been mercilessly torn apart by magic.
"Andy. Let's find the rest of the pieces."
"Yes, sir!"
"J-just tell me where they are… I'll move them with magic……"
Clara was trembling, her face pale as chalk. It wasn't fear — not after facing a ghost. She was simply overwhelmed by the sight and stench of rotting flesh.
"You don't have to push yourself."
"I'm fine……"
Before I could find a single piece, Andy had already located two sections of torso and the lower body. Clara raised a wind with sky magic and gathered every fragment into one place — then squeezed her eyes shut.
I was no expert, but the degree of decay looked similar to the woman's corpse. You could just barely tell it had been a man. There was one peculiar detail, though.
"There are two right arms."
"Huh? How is that—"
"Simple. There's still one more body."
"What?!"
While Clara recoiled in horror, Andy lit up with enthusiasm and dashed off again to hunt for pieces. Clara gathered the fragments with hands that shook violently — then simply sat down hard on the ground.
"Ugh… hhk……"
"Good work, Clara. This time it's really over."
Without thinking, I reached out to stroke her hair — then stopped when I saw how filthy my hand was. The other one was soaked in blood through the bandages. But Clara caught my hand where it hung in the air and pressed it to her own head.
"Uh… my hand's dirty……"
"It was already covered in dirt from fighting the ghost……"
I stroked her red hair with my soil-caked hand. One moment she was every inch the stubborn young noblewoman; the next, she was just a sweet kid.
"Young master. The other one looks like a man too. Shall we try matching them up?"
Andy pointed at the jumbled fragments of two corpses.
"No. We're not medical experts — it wouldn't help. Any jewelry that stands out?"
Once again he expertly pawed through the pieces. Young as he looked, if he had followed Baron Manfred across enough battlefields, corpses would be familiar territory.
"Hmm. Here's a hand wearing a ring. Same as the first corpse's."
"Two of the three might have been lovers."
"And here's an arm with an armband. Definitely the kind they use in Grat Village."
"One arm with a ring, one with an armband — both left arms. So the ring and the armband belonged to different people."
"That makes sense, sir!"
If we brought people out and searched the area thoroughly, we might turn up more. But we had already found the most important thing — the curse's catalyst. With no telling when the ghost might reappear, there was no need to dig any further.
Judging by the armband, at least one of the three corpses was from Grat Village. Once we got back, I could shake down the villagers for answers……
No. I could have an honest conversation with the people of my domain.
That ought to give us a lead on the ghost's true identity.