Omnimage

by Simon Archer

  +death and poison elements

  +occultist job skill

  +healing from death element damage

  +monster subtype ghost ability: Bodiless

  -healing from nature element spells

  +??? (occultist Lv 13 required)

  Bodiless

  An undead without a body is bound to the physical realm by powerful magic, whether they were a potent mage with unfinished business or they were cursed by another with an equally potent death hex. Without their body, they cling to the shadows, hiding from the light. Their interactions with the physical are limited in several ways, both as advantages and detriments.

  +twilight elements

  +hex spell type

  +spiritualist job skill

  +possession power

  +invisibility power

  +immunity to physical strikes

  -20 resistance to light element spells

  -??? (spiritualist Lv 13 required)

  -??? (spiritualist Lv 13 required)

  “I have waited long enough!” The impatient guardian didn’t give me time to read the others before flying off the handle. The outline around Delilah’s invisible body disappeared as she became visible to me, colors, shape, and all. “Make peace with your gods.”

  Her ghastly skin was white as snow, with a muscle tone like she fought tigers every day. Her hair flared out as a wild mess of obsidian as if she’d just fallen from fifty feet out of her bed just a moment ago, yet still ready to go to a fancy black-tie event. The white of her skin only made her smokey eyeshadow and black lips pop, as well as the purely black eyes with a red ring for an iris.

  She wore plate armor that’d been bent and torn by something fierce and ripped leathers and chainmail underneath. One arm was still armored, but the other had been stripped bare, along with the matching metal sabaton on her foot. There was a cloth tunic overtop with the remnants of a coat of arms on it, so faded and tattered along with the tunic itself.

  Even in the armor, her hourglass figure could not be denied from showing itself, as her proportions were a bit insane, in the best way. She must have had to use half a body wrap’s worth of bandages to keep her breasts from kicking around in a fight. I’d have given half my savings to see more of her long legs, and those hips could have accommodated a baby’s head the size of my own. Not that I was paying attention to things like that. It was all part of the description. It would have been inaccurate not to include that.

  Anyhow, her wrists, forearms, upper arms, thighs, and legs had studded iron manacles latched onto them, pressing around armor and skin alike. Each dangled a chain hanging off of them that extended away for a foot or two before fading into invisibility. Despite not being able to see the length of them beyond where it seemed to just lose opacity, they were all obviously chained to something behind her.

  A crackle of lightning sparked between her raised hands, igniting them both in flashes of electricity. The sparks cloaked her feet as well, and she spun around in the air, turning sideways like a pinwheel of deathly limbs and bolts of lightning.

  On reflex, I jumped away from her, pulling off the first cartwheel in my life as the lightning of her fists exploded in a cloud of bluish-white energy. I somehow managed to get back to my feet, looking back to see Delilah coming in for a leaping punch. As I ducked underneath her lunge, I slammed against her stomach with my bone club still enchanted with light, throwing her into the air. With the distance bought, I dashed for the direction I saw Delilah’s spectral chains leading off to.

  She quickly recovered, seeing me making a break for it. With a roar, she followed behind me, throwing herself again with a torpedo-like kick. I jumped to the side, barely avoiding the lightning a second time as I made my way through the archway, enchanting the mace with more radiance in preparation for her to come at me again.

  In my pristine calculations, I’d forgotten to take into account the fundamental nature of the ghost which was incorporeal. As such, the juke I pulled to the side that I thought would have crashed her into the wall did not but instead sent her inside of it. While inside, she changed directions, and came at me from inside the archway, completely catching me off my guard with a direct magical jolt through my body, her hand straight to my throat. Like the combat novice I was, I closed my eyes.

  Realizing I wasn’t feeling the electricity in my throat, I opened my eyes, seeing the agitated ghost girl’s red rings on her black eyes stare into mine. I peered down to the spectral hand, now phased inside my chest. The sparks still struck the air, popping out of the place where her wrist was. A blue ‘-50’ continued to fade in and out right above it, over and over again in rapid succession. I still felt nothing. And since she couldn’t physically touch me, that meant that I was immune to her lightning attacks. Wasn’t that interesting?

  Delilah’s eyes widened as she realized what wasn’t happening, and she backed away from me. With a smirk, I placed my bone club on my shoulder, giving her a sassy tilt of my head as I pivoted on one foot towards the other room. She seethed as I walked away, growling at my seeming immunity to her powers. Thinking that the fight was practically over, I began searching through the next room for something that looked fancy and magical or could be some kind of anchor for all those chains on her, my floating light following behind me.

  In my back, a cold splash poured in, and a surge of chills flooded through my skeleton like a thousand ants. My body froze without warning, all of my muscles tensing against my subconscious directions. As I forced my eyes downward towards my body, the dark swirls of purplish energy wrapped themselves around me, forcing them to move without my express permission. No matter how hard I pulled against it, my body was slowly moving of its own accord.

  “If my lightning cannot attack you,” Delilah’s whisper rang through my mind, “then I will simply use you to attack yourself!”

  My hands slowly let go of the bone club, then curled back up into a fist while it moved to aim for a punch straight for my face. Using my own reserve, Delilah sparked my fist with lightning, and I saw my magic in the corner quickly begin to drain as the magic flooded from it. The magically charged fist reeled back, preparing to knock me out cold with my own strength.

  Now that I was looking at my own arms in this T-shirt, I took a better survey of my muscle definition. I had gotten pretty jacked. These levels were doing my body good.

  Wait a minute, why was I struggling against this like I was a regular human? I was a mage! I needed to use magic, or my other abilities, to get out of this. I couldn’t have just tensed myself until I burst a blood vessel. No ghost was going to possess me so casually and get away with it. Not when I had so many different types of magic to use. I just had to hope that my idea worked without an arcane conductor.

  With a little bit of focus, I channeled my magic into a radiant spell, creating an effect with an aura and within myself. If her ghostly booty was allergic to light, then I was going to keep myself nice and coated with the stuff, inside and out. The magic flowed through my veins, which were now visible and prismatically glowing. As the rainbow lights traveled through the blood pathways, my muscles relaxed, and the specter’s control over me disappeared little by little. I pushed out a glowing bubble of light around myself, an aura of radiant magic, that came out to about five feet around me on all sides.

  “AAAUUUGGHHH!” Delilah screamed, pulling herself out through the top of my back to escape the poisonous light I’d just poured throughout my body.

  Good to know! Some types of spells didn’t require an arcane conductor to cast, like those that were channeled through one’s own body. That was going to be handy later.

  “Okay, so here was a thought,” I said, turning to face Delilah and maintaining my light aura and self-enhancement, “since you’re at a bit of a disadvantage in just about every area now, how’s about you tell me where your chains lead off to, hm?”

  “You were lying about your fire explosion spell,” Delilah picked herself off the ground, or rather, from within the gr
ound that she’d sunken into a bit to float in the air. “You know more spell types for light magic than a paladin would. You cannot be a paladin, but a light warden. You have come prepared to face ghosts like me!”

  “I bet I know some light warden shenanigans, but no, not a light warden,” I informed her, “strictly speaking, I should say. If you really want to get technical, I am something completely new, Delilah LaBroque.”

  “How do you know my name?” She sparked her hands with lightning to attack me again. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Jeremiah Thorne,” I told her, “I’m not trying to hurt you. I just want to know how to get you out of here.”

  “What could you have to gain from freeing me?” Delilah breathed heavily, floating in the air with her sparking fists but not moving. “And how do you plan to go about that, light warden? All of your magics are designed to destroy those like me.”

  “Not all of them.” Dropping the light magics, I pulled my hands up, channeling the death element through them like Delilah had done with lightning. “I really have to thank you for possessing me. It helped me feel out the pathways that channel magic through my body. Now that I actually know what magic really feels like inside and out, these little tricks are getting easier. Let me take a look at you.”

  “How is that…?” Delilah’s hands lost their lightning sparks as her will was shaken, “How do you know so many spell types and can use three different spell elements? Are you some kind of… changeling mage? Adapting to whatever magic is around you?”

  “I’m a mage, and I can adapt.” I stepped closer to her. “I’m not quite a changeling mage, though. More of an ‘omni’ mage. I have access to every kind of magic, and every school of magic is inside of me.”

  “You must be joking,” she put her hands up, sparking her fists into lightning again, “No mage is capable of handling two schools at once, let alone all of them. There are hundreds of them. That is the most ridiculous claim that I have ever heard!”

  “Then how do you want to explain this?” I said, picking up the femur mace.

  Taking full advantage of the limitless applications of magic I was allowed, I focused as many different magic types and elements into the mace as possible. The bone’s enchantment flowed around it, coating it with light, fire, lightning, and death magicks. I also gave the enchantment an aura, along with myself, empowering myself with the same magics both inside my body and in the surrounding bubble. Just about every spell type and element was going into this display of my growing magical prowess. I probably was draining a lot of my magic, but by using the lowest level for all of these different effects, my magic salvage was taking care of it with no problems.

  “What…?” The spectral kickboxer knight was baffled.

  “I didn’t want to spill the beans on that to just anybody,” I shut off the presentation, “but if that’s the only way to get you to believe that I just want to help you, then there you go. I can do all of the magic things. I just don’t know how to yet.”

  “Did you learn how to use storms,” Delilah put her hands up again, almost as if she wasn’t paying attention to them, as they sparked with lightning again, “just by watching me?”

  “More or less,” I said. “Technically, I can already do all of these magical things, but I’ve never been taught a single thing about how. But, I seem to be picking the basics fine. Once I figure out how everything works at the fundamental level, I can pick up the fancy stuff later.”

  “How did…?” She knelt down into a sprinter’s stance, as if ready to rush me, but her eyes listlessly drifted around the room as she thought. It was like her body was moving on its own. “How did you come across this power?”

  “I was part of an experiment-- What are you doing?” I prepared some death magic in my club and in my hand. “Are you okay?”

  “I already told you.” Her hands charged up violently, the sparks arcing to a larger space around her as the power surrounded her in her own aura. “I am bound to kill any intruders. Regardless of what may happen to me, I must fulfill my duty. Take solace in the fact that your spirit will pass on from here once you are dead. That is a blessing that not all of us have.”

  “Even if it means dying?” I got in a defensive stance, turning my light aura on again. “Again, I mean.”

  “I am unable to control myself.” She dug her fingers into the ground, phasing them through the stone. “I am as trapped as anyone foolish enough to come down here.”

  “You can’t control yourself?” I raised an eyebrow, getting an idea. “How about I do that for you instead?”

  Focusing my magic into my bone club, I channeled a control-type spell for death magic, wondering how that would work on an undead with a will of her own. Delilah was a lot higher level than I was. If I was going to control her now, it was going to require a lot of magic to keep up. If I half-assed it in any way, then it was bound to fail outright. I had to drop my light aura in order to commit to this. If she possessed me again, I wouldn’t have had a lot of time to pump out some more radiance to cleanse myself before she drained it all to punch me to death with my own fist. One shot or I was screwed.

  She seemed worth it, though.

  The ghost girl roared, jumping towards me like a rushing bull, coated with lightning from head to toe. My club’s tip channeled some necrotic energy as I tried to imagine the same network of magic flow that was inside of myself inside of Delilah. As she got right to me, I fired off the spell, dousing the flaring electrical surges with my own heavy, ghostly mist.

  She’d been stopped in her tracks, cushioned by the flumes of deathly energy that I was gushing out of the femur club. Looking down at where I was holding it, I lifted it up higher and straighter, realizing the provocative nature of the imagery. As the cloud surrounded her, the lightning from her aura had all but disappeared entirely, leaving only the death mist fully coated on her from the grave spell.

  Suddenly, the lightning flared up again, piercing through the mist as Delilah let out another battle cry. More and more of my spell faded away as she resisted my magic. With curled fingers like claws, she ripped at the smog covering her body, tearing it off like it was balls of cotton that she tossed aside, dissipating them as they disconnected from the center mass.

  Oh, shit. I needed to weaken her resolve a bit. Maybe if I added just a touch of light and nature magic, she’d lose the will to fight against my spell. It couldn’t have been too much, or all of this would have been for nothing, and I’d have re-killed her either way, except more willfully. That wasn’t happening. And I had some magic to spare, what with my magic salvaging keeping up pretty heartily with the spell already. Granted, with so much charging up at such a low level, I’d pushed past my magic salvage’s full ability, and the actual drain to my magic was starting to kick in.

  With another surge of magic, plus the addition of a pinch of light and nature to keep her more subdued, I made another attempt at taking over her mind control curse. Another plume of magic fog smothered her, covering the lightning aura she’d generated once again. The light of the prismatic radiance, and a touch of leafy green from what must have been the life energy of the nature magic, joined into the death fog this time, swirling and twisting around her over and over again with more chaotic twisting.

  The lightning sparks still fought from the inside, pushing against the film of crypt fog with sudden and fierce jabs. Delilah screamed and pushed against the sides of her prison. I poured the fog thicker, pushing out every last bit of magic I had in me. My reserve reached near exhaustion, but Delilah was still struggling against the fog, pushing against it. I had to push harder and burned up the rest of my magic to compress the fog with some more focused control, death, and nature.

  Loudly and abruptly, the chains from all of Delilah’s shackles flushed out from the fog that flipped out breaths of clouds, the rusty metals revealing themselves completely as they were pulled taut and vibrated from the strain. Every link became exposed with color and form one-by-one, leading to an
ornate-looking tomb at the far wall on a raised platform. On the front of the tomb, at the ends of the chains, were iron spikes, each dug into the stone of the tomb and yet hadn’t so much as chipped the rocks with their incorporeal nature. When they had fully formed from invisible air, they were yanked free, retreating into the fog.

  In a bellowing snap, the death fog collapsed on itself, forming into a perfect sphere the size of a basketball that floated in the air. The sphere floated gently to the ground, melting onto the floor as it touched down. Instead of the expected perfect circle that would have come from a flattened sphere, though, the fog ball had sprawled itself out in an oddly oblong shape. As the sphere fully flattened out, about five or so feet in total length, the smog of death magic slowly rose, as if there was a smoke machine underneath the stone below us. With a hush of wind, the fog evaporated completely, revealing the poor undead girl, who’d collapsed without as much as a twitching leg or groaning stretch. After all of that, all that remained was Delilah, unconscious on the ground, and me, almost tired enough to join her.

  I fell to my knees, exhausted. Looking up at my magic, I saw that it had all but run empty, and nearly half of my health had disappeared along with it. I knew that the possession hadn’t hurt me, and I didn’t feel any gross feeling like I’d have imagined some stifling curse would have brought about. Along with that, the magic points weren’t regenerating with the rapid response time they had before or even a little. They’d all but stopped, leaving me with no power for any more spells for now. Good to know that overspending was a thing with magic. Better to learn now than later, right?

  Ow.

  As I got back up to my feet, barely making it, I hobbled over to her, kneeling back down as I bent over her head. With a victorious and completely tapped-out breath I accidentally directed at her face, I pushed her hair around as it danced about her eyes.

  Wait a minute… that wasn’t how ghosts worked. wasn’t she supposed to be…? I mean, she looked the same as she did before, smokey eyes and pale skin and all. But she was significantly less translucent than before. But that would have been crazy. I mean, seeing a ghost was crazy, but this was especially crazy. Crazy enough to be…