Richard Baker - Farthest Reach

“Araevin, what’s it saying?” Starbrow asked in a low voice. He kept his sword raised before him in a guard position.

“I can’t even begin to guess,” Araevin replied. The elves exchanged looks with each other. “I have heard stories of travelers dying in portal networks, which their ghosts then haunt. Let’s just leave it alone, and try the stairs. Move away slowly.”

Maresa carefully backed away, feeling her way along the wall toward the stairs leading up out of the vault. Filsaelene followed close behind her. But before the two had moved more than ten feet toward the door, the ghostly wizard muttered something else in its incomprehensible tongue, and attacked. It flung out one spectral arm, blasting at Maresa with a sickly purple-white bolt of crackling lightning.

The genasi cried out and dived away from the bolt, which gouged a fist-deep scar across the stone wall behind her. Smaller side-bolts stabbed out at Filsaelene and Araevin. Araevin managed to parry the lightning bolt before it struck him, grounding it with his staff and a quick defensive spell, but Filsaelene was spun around and knocked off her feet.

“That was a stupid idea!” Maresa shouted.

The genasi scrambled to her feet and snapped off a quick shot from her crossbow, which passed clean through the center of the ghost’s chest without leaving the faintest mark-though it made Starbrow curse and duck on the other side of the well.

Ilsevele whispered a spell as she put an arrow on the string of her bow. The arrowhead burst into cold silver flame as she loosed it. The missile tore a dark hole in the ghost’s torso. The ghost howled in its forgotten tongue, but it did not recoil or crumple as a living person might have done. It simply ignored the wound, even as streamers of mist blossomed from the ragged hole and faded into nothingness.

The ghost seemed to gather itself for a moment, glaring at Ilsevele, and its eyes flashed with a pale and terrible light. Ilsevele screamed and raised her arms to shield her face, but her hands and arms turned dead white and smoked under the ghost’s awful gaze. Her bow clattered to the floor.

“Ilsevele!” Araevin shouted as he wheeled on the ghost.

He hurled a spell of his own, riddling the spectral figure with a barrage of glowing blue darts. Like Ilsevele’s arrow, the magic punched black holes in the silver image. More missiles followed an instant later, repeating the attack as Araevin threw his best effort at the specter. But the ghost, though hurt, kept its baleful eyes fixed on Ilsevele, searing her with its chill gaze.

“I can’t reach it!” Starbrow snarled. Keryvian glowed in his hand, a shining blade of holy fire, but the ghost hovered over the center of the well, outside any conceivable sword-reach. The moon elf reversed the enchanted sword in his hand, cocking his arm as if to throw the blade, but he hesitated. Ilsevele wailed again, writhing under the ghost’s cold-burning stare, and Starbrow muttered a curse and straightened up.

With calm deliberation, he walked over and interposed himself between the ghost and Ilsevele, turning his back on the apparition and shielding his face.

The pale glow surrounding Ilsevele faded at once, only to spring into existence on Starbrow’s back. He groaned, but keeping his back to the monster, he seemed to avoid the worst of it.

“Araevin… somebody… kill this damned thing!” he gasped.

“Maresa!” Araevin cried. “Use your wand!” Then he seized one of the wands at his own belt and snatched it out, blasting the ghost with dart after dart of glowing energy. Maresa dropped her useless crossbow and did the same, pelting the ghost from the other side.

The ghost howled again, and wrenched its gaze away from Starbrow and Ilsevele. The moon elf crumpled to his knees, collapsing on top of her. Then the specter intoned another spell, and blasted Araevin into senselessness with a mighty word of power. Araevin staggered back and tumbled to the hard stone floor, eyes seared white, ears ringing, blood streaming from his nose. He could see nothing, hear nothing, could scarcely even move as his thoughts reeled drunkenly.

His vision cleared a little, and he looked up through unfocused eyes as Filsaelene picked herself up off the floor. She steadied herself with one hand on the wall, and presented the star-shaped holy symbol of Corellon Larethian, shouting out a prayer that Araevin couldn’t hear through the ringing in his ears. A great ring of golden light burst from her raised hand, racing through the chamber. When it touched the ghost, the apparition’s substance simply boiled away into nothing. The same golden glow washed over Araevin and the others, bringing vigor, strength, and renewal.

Buoyed by the cleric’s spell of healing, Araevin climbed to his feet as his eyes focused again and his ears stopped ringing. He groped for the magic wand he had dropped, closed his fingers around it, and hammered the ghost again with more of the magical darts. The spirit’s whole form flickered and danced uncertainly, as if it was having trouble keeping itself together.

“Keep after it!” Araevin cried. “We can destroy this thing!”

The ghost drifted down toward the floor of the chamber, reaching out with one spectral claw for Filsaelene. The cleric quickly recoiled, backing up as the apparition drew closer.

“Shield me, Corellon!” she cried, and she spoke a prayer, guarding herself with a shining golden radiance that the ghost could not seem to reach past.

She whirled her long sword in front of her, but the weapon simply passed harmlessly through the ghost.

Araevin tried another spell-a bolt of fire-but the ghost’s otherworldly body simply wasn’t affected.

Think, he told himself. What other spells do I have that might destroy a ghost?

Before he could determine the next attack to try, Starbrow scrambled to his feet and charged at the ghost’s back, Keryvian in his hands. The ancient sword burst into brilliant white flame as he slashed at the specter. Unlike Filsaelene’s sword or Maresa’s crossbow bolts, Keryvian proved quite capable of damaging the spirit. One slash dragged Keryvian through its torso from shoulder to hip, and Starbrow’s spinning follow-up drove the point of Demron’s last and greatest blade through the center of the ghost’s forehead.

The ghost groaned horribly, a sound that chilled Araevin to the bone, and it slowly dissolved into nothingness. Starbrow held his sword ready, in case it re-formed, but the phosphorescent mist simply dimmed and vanished.

“Thank the Seldarine that’s over,” the moon elf breathed. He looked around. “Is everybody all right?”

“Thanks to Filsaelene’s spell, I am unhurt,” Araevin replied. He hurried over and knelt by Ilsevele, who still crouched by the floor, broad swaths of her flesh dead-white and ice-cold to the touch. “Ilsevele is injured!”

“S-so c-cold,” Ilsevele gasped.

She locked one of her hands around Araevin’s forearm, pulling herself close. Araevin hissed with the cold of her touch. Then Filsaelene hurried over and knelt beside them. The cleric spoke the words of a healing prayer and set her own hand over Ilsevele’s injuries. Beneath the warm golden glow of her touch, the pallor of Ilsevele’s wounds faded, and her shivering stopped.

Ilsevele shook herself and stood up slowly.

“Thank you, Filsaelene,” she said. She rubbed her arms vigorously, and the color returned to her face. She retrieved her bow, and looked over at Starbrow. “And thank you, too, Starbrow. You risked your life to shield me from the ghost. I don’t know what to say.”

Starbrow said with an awkward smile, “It just seemed like the best thing I could do, since I couldn’t reach the ghost as long as it hovered up there. I couldn’t stand there and do nothing.”