by Nikita Thorn
There was perhaps a theme to this. “Uh, haunted well?” Seiki guessed.
“It’s obvious,” said Koharu. “And you know exactly what’s going to come out of there, right?”
To be honest, Seiki did not.
“Let’s fight some ghosts, then,” said Mairin, before Dashing off toward the well. Seiki followed her. The white fox ran a quick circle around it, before jumping lightly onto the edge. She then took a quick glance, giving no overt reaction, and tried bursting smoky Fox Dust a few times.
“Nothing,” said Mairin, as she turned back into her human form. Seiki was not sure if she sounded disappointed or relieved.
Seiki followed suit and looked down into the well, where the pale moon was reflecting in the still, dark water. If there was a ghost, it was not appearing just yet.
Attached to one side of the edge was a simple pulley with a small bucket and rope. Seiki noted as he lowered the bucket into the well that, like lighting fire with a flint, drawing water was another simple thing he had never done before.
The full bucket was heavy as he turned the wooden wheel to bring it back up, and the metal pulley screeched in protest. This bucket only filled half the one Dairi had given them, so he lowered the well bucket again.
Koharu, who had been standing at the edge of the clearing, said hopefully, “Maybe this is going to be one of those don’t-spill-water-while-running things after all.” She took a step closer.
Seiki was starting to feel something strange. The weight of the full bucket was different. This time, it was even heavier, to the point of being unnatural. His mind immediately leapt to a hundred possibilities, none of them pleasant, on what they could be drawing up from the well.
Right then, something yanked the rope, and the wheel handle slipped off Seiki’s hand. The bucket dropped back into the well with a distinct splatter. Koharu gasped.
It was all still again. Seiki took a deep breath. It did not feel like the rope had gotten accidentally caught in a groove or crevice. Something had tugged at it on purpose. That much he was certain. Mairin was looking at him, and so was Koharu. And despite knowing it was a bad idea, he slowly peered down the well.
The moon was still reflecting in the dark water. Except that, this time, it had a face. Just beneath the water surface was a pale woman’s face, made whiter than white by the moon above. Her eyes were open and she was staring straight at him.
Slowly, the face lifted out of the water as if drawn up by an invisible force. Seiki let out a curse and tore himself away from the edge of the well. He had never been afraid of ghosts, but then ghosts did not exist in the real world.
Against the silence of the night, the pulley let out a shrill shriek as the rope was pulled taut from within the well.
Koharu had gone very pale, and Mairin glanced at Seiki nervously. The pulley shrieked again. Then, there were some splashing noises as something wet left the water, followed by another metallic shriek, and the sound of something hitting the side of the well deep down.
“She’s climbing up,” said Seiki, drawing his sword.
“If,” muttered Koharu, “if this is what I think it is, it’s totally not worth the twenty points.”
Mairin had also taken a step back as the pulley screeched again. Then, a pale, wet arm appeared clinging to the rope, before dragging up the body of a girl in tattered white, her long black hair dripping wet, covering most of her face.
“This is to be expected, isn’t it?” said Mairin. “Dead girl in a well.”
The dead girl exhaled a quiet hiss as she reached the top of the well. She slapped one arm over the edge and started to crawl out. All along, Koharu was letting out soft curses.
The white fox Dashed past, and the dead girl snarled and held out her hand, shooting out a stream of dark fog at Mairin.
Well Ghost [Level 12]. HP 60/60. Energy 1188/1300.
Without stopping to wonder why her health was so low, Seiki ran in with a sliding Focused Strike. His blade pierced right through her, yet there was no impact as the Hikari was met with nothing but air.
It took him a second to realize that she had Dispersed at the perfect moment, turning herself into nothing but a shadow of herself. His attack, however, had gotten her attention. She swung herself toward him in a gravity-defying manner, her right hand shooting out the dark fog that Seiki recognized instantly as Life Drain.
“She’s a straight-up obake,” said Mairin in surprise.
Seiki gritted his teeth, as the sickening drain rapidly sucked away his life, and he hit her once more with Focused Strike. Again, she Dispersed and took no damage. The Drain stopped for a split second as she paused, before resuming almost immediately.
He grimaced. Yamura was right. The receiving end of Drain was pretty horrible.
Mairin’s Spirit Mend landed on him before his health dropped below half, and Seiki struck out again with a normal Sweeping Blade, perhaps as a trial, at least to conserve energy.
Nothing connected.
Well Ghost [Level 12]. HP 60/60. Energy 987/1300.
It was an energy race, Seiki figured out. It did not help that the ghost had almost twice the amount of what was considered normal. They needed to stay alive long enough to force the ghost out of her energy, and then a single regular move would take care of her.
“No specials!” Seiki said to his friends, in case they had not noticed. “Save your energy.” That was when Seiki became aware of another thing: all obake abilities required energy. Which meant there was nothing really useful Koharu could do right now.
Mairin apparently had the same thought. “Stay on the edges and don’t die,” she said to Koharu.
He struck out once more, and the Drain eased off for a brief moment. But the dead girl was playing it with perfect precision. Even before he could catch his breath, it started again, engulfing him with its terrible suffocating blackness. There was no way to dodge magic, and coming from his background it was sometimes difficult to get his head around a completely different kind of mindset.
This was what the tall grass was for, he realized all of a sudden. The grass had grown taller and taller on their way here, and the best way to counter Life Drain was to run out of sight—since, once broken, it had a decently long lockout penalty on it.
Turning around, Seiki was about to make a dash toward his right, when the air around him froze and weighed down on his limbs. That, too, seemed to be slowly eating into his life from all around.
There was a real reason he hated fighting against magic. He recognized this as Nether Chills. She apparently had the full arsenal of a Level 12 obake, and she visibly knew how to use her abilities.
Seiki forced himself forward. Even with the Drain and the Chills on him, which significantly slowed him down, once out of range he would be able to survive this.
Strangely enough, the Drain stopped. There was no reason for her to pause, and Seiki knew somehow it was a bad sign. Again, he wished he had Brace, when her Life Steal reached through him and yanked out a quarter of his life. The abrupt loss of health brought him below ten percent, and he staggered.
“She has a mod,” Seiki heard Koharu say, as if too dazed to do anything else.
Seiki felt another bout of Spirit Mend, which brought him up to almost half again. The white fox was jumping at the dead girl from behind, and the obake turned around and stretched out her left hand. Seiki thought he caught a brief flash of what looked very much like a smile on the dead girl’s face. It was clear that they were going to be in deep trouble very soon.
The white fox froze and gave a shudder.
Mairin [Level 10]. HP 395/472. Energy 128/252. Possessed.
“Oh no,” said Koharu.
Possess could not be used by a player against another player, but then the well ghost was not a player. In this instance, maybe everything was fair game.
The white fox had now turned toward Seiki. She let out a soft growl, and shot forward at him with her Dash. Seiki warded
her off with Parry, using the flat side of his sword. “How long does Possess last?”
“Twenty seconds,” said Koharu.
Seiki blocked Mairin’s next assault, feeling a little relieved that a possessed Mairin was not a very good Mairin—or he would have been in more trouble. The Drain had fallen off him, and the dead girl was now standing idle as she waited for her energy to recharge.
Well Ghost [Level 12]. HP 60/60. Energy 1300/1300.
Seiki stared. “How is her energy full again?” he said. He was almost out of energy, and you could not outrun a kitsune. So, if Possess did not expire in a few more attacks, he would lose his Hikari.
“The mod,” said Koharu. “Life Steal gives her energy instead of life!”
This was a complete mess. The way obake abilities fit together was a mystery to him and, in that instant, he felt entirely out of his element. “Uh,” said Seiki, racking his brain for anything, but he found nothing useful. “Just do something?” he suggested.
Koharu shot her own Life Drain at the dead girl on the edge of the well, and Dispersed as the girl returned a bout of Drain.
“Don’t bother Dispersing!” yelled Seiki, as an idea flashed through his mind. “Run into the grass.”
“Right,” said Koharu, finally grasping what he meant. But this well ghost was close to being the perfect obake, and she stopped her Drain before it could be broken. Around, the grass was rustling as Koharu ran through it, before popping out to hit the ghost with a very brief Drain, just to get her to Disperse.
The possessed Mairin was making another leap at Seiki, when she stopped in mid-air and turned back into human form. For some reason, she was giggling.
“What?” Seiki asked.
Mairin’s Spirit Mend filled Seiki’s health and she dashed toward the dead girl and tried to bite her, forcing her to waste more energy on Disperse.
Once Koharu was in on the action, and Mairin was no longer possessed, things got into a better rhythm. They slowly whittled away at the girl’s energy without taking too much damage. A ryoushi would have had a much easier time with this, Seiki thought, as he ran in and slashed at her with normal moves.
He took the Chills that she had put down, before running out of its relatively small range, which forced her to spend more energy to cast another one. Possess had a long lockout, and it was still recharging.
It was still chaotic, but Mairin was keeping them up, and Koharu’s surprise attacks were helping.
“She’s almost out!” Mairin said.
Seiki needed no warning, as he had been waiting for this. As soon as the ghost’s energy dropped to a single digit, he rushed in with Sweeping Blade. Even without energy, it caught her in the sternum and knocked her off the edge of the well onto the ground.
Well Ghost [Level 12]. HP 1/60. Energy 11/1300.
The girl snarled at them.
One health point, dang! They had made the rookie mistake of not following the instructions. The task was to fill the water bucket, not kill a ghost!
The dead girl was on all fours and she slowly looked up at him, her wet hair dripping water onto the ground below her.
Koharu had peered out of the tall grass to check what was happening, and the well ghost pinched a quarter of her energy with Life Steal.
Koharu gasped and, at first, Seiki expected her to be dead. But since Life Steal took a fixed percentage, she still had three quarters of her life left intact. “Oh,” Koharu said, equally surprised. The dead girl held out her hand again, and Koharu escaped back into the tall grass.
“Distract her?” Seiki said to Mairin, not quite knowing how they would pull it off.
He rushed to the wheel and started turning it to draw up the well bucket. Mairin was running past and taking snips at the dead girl, forcing her to Disperse again. Nether Chills landed on Seiki, freezing the air and making the bucket seem impossibly heavy. Although the Chills dealt no significant damage, when it came from a Level 12 it was still enough to make standing in it a real pain.
Seiki could hear the faint explosion of a dispersing potion from Mairin, and a group of white phantom kitsune burst out all around. He still had to learn how Kindred Spirit worked, but he welcomed the heals and the small energy bouts they gave him. Mairin was again Dashing around. She was also taking a lot of damage from Life Drain and the Chills, and the phantom healing foxes were barely keeping them alive.
They only needed a few more seconds to fill the bucket and they would make a run out of here. The bucket was within reach now, and Seiki stretched out his hand, when the dead girl spun around and grabbed his wrist.
Seiki gasped, discovering that there was nothing worse in the game than a point-blank Life Drain. He almost let go of the bucket, as the sickening cold spread through his arm. Thankfully, Mairin rushed in and seized it before it could drop back into the well.
Mairin’s timely Spirit Mend—together with one of the last phantom foxes left running around—kept Seiki lingering for a bit longer.
The dead girl’s attention was fully on him, and he could feel another Spirit Mend bringing him back up to half health. He had no idea how long he could last. He did not even know when he had dropped his sword. But he was trapped in a very awkward position, where even a bare-handed Focused Strike was not possible.
“Koharu!” Mairin was yelling, and the obake ran out from the grass and filled the old lady’s bucket with the water. “Get out of here.”
Seiki had to grab the side of the well to steady himself, as he tried to pull away from the girl’s grip. However, she had welded her hand firmly around his wrist. Her grasp was iron-clad and bone-chillingly cold, and the drain was terrible, as if it was aiming to draw all warmth out of his body.
Seiki struggled again, huffing and puffing as he fought against the rapidly draining life. His strength was failing him. Her hand was skinny and pale, yet so incredibly strong. She was gripping so hard that her knuckles were even paler than the colorless moon. And she was trembling.
For a moment, Seiki felt like she was a scared child hanging on for dear life, or afterlife, for that matter. Seiki glanced back in surprise and met her eyes, which were almost hidden behind her long wet black hair. This was the first time he had had a good look at her. She must have been beautiful once, and very young. Seiki was not sure if it was water from the well or something else, but it seemed that her wide eyes were bloodshot and wet with unshed tears.
It was horror. It was sorrow. It was torment.
He stared at her, forgetting all about the drain. She seemed to be seeing right through him. It was despair. He recognized it. He understood that look. She was crying for help.
Suddenly, Mairin’s Dash broke between them, and the girl’s grip loosened. Seiki stumbled to the ground, the coldness leaving his wrist. From the corner of his eyes, he could see that Koharu had already made it out of the clearing with the water bucket.
“Run!” cried Mairin, as she followed the obake.
The unexpected interruption seemed to shock the dead girl, and her eyes hardened and started to burn with hate and anger once again. She hissed at him and held out her right hand for a Life Drain that would finish him off.
“Seiki!” Mairin was yelling.
Seiki scrambled to his feet, snatched his Hikari from the ground and raced out of there. The Life Drain took hold of him, but Mairin’s Spirit Mend landed at the same time.
He felt the hard ground under his feet; he felt the wind against his face, and the tall grass as he brushed past it. His life hovered steadily at a low but safe level. Then, the Drain slowly lost its strength with the growing distance.
“That was close,” Mairin said.
Koharu was pondering something. “Maybe that’s how you play an obake,” she mused.
Mairin giggled.
Seiki’s heart was still beating fast, and his health was slowly recovering.
“You all right, Seiki?”
He nodded. It was probably in his head,
since no one else had noticed anything.
The mysterious wind did not trouble them, and the way back was uneventful, and much shorter than he remembered. The light of dawn was creeping up on the sky, and Seiki had a feeling that the mission was pretty much over.
The old lady was waiting for them in front of the house and she thanked them for the water.
“Did Hiwa-chan give you any trouble?” she asked, casually, as she took the bucket from Koharu. “I’ve heard that sometimes she doesn’t like strangers.”
Mairin stared. “You knew the well was haunted?” she said. “And you even have a name for the ghost?”
The old lady knitted her brow. “Why? It’s Hiwa-chan. She used to live here with me.”
“At least, she’s got this name straight,” commented Koharu.
“What happened to her?” asked Seiki, as the girls continued to talk about whether it was disturbing or not to drink from a haunted well.
The old lady sighed. “Poor thing. It was terrible, truly terrible. First, it was terrible enough to lose your home. I was older, and I could bear it, but then she heard news of Imagawa-sama, her fiancé. That was her last hope, and when she heard he had died…” She shook her head. “She could not bear it. That morning, she came to me and said she was going to fetch water. When they found her…” She shook her head again. “She had dressed in funeral white and drowned herself in the well. Poor thing, and so young, too.”
“I’m sorry,” said Seiki. The old lady seemed to have descended into sorrow now and started mumbling something about poor Hiwa, and something about her late husband, and how she had been alone all this time. “And she never asked. She never told me,” she said. “When the letter came, she only wept a little, and went to her room, and she said nothing about it for a whole week before she decided to take her life.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Seiki again. He really was, and for a lot more than this. He thought that if they ever gave him this mission again, he would come here and help fight her demonic futon all she wanted.