80 - Hunt the Haunt

When Joe refocused on the space around him under the massive trees, he found that half of the pack had vanished. He wasn't sure if the others had run off or been dismissed by Sougath, but Joe decided that he would make these five his.

All the way his.

Sougath had his pack of hunting wolves. Joe decided to form a team of his own. He thought through all the allies he would want. The Lord Barrister would be awesome, but Joe didn't know anything about the man. He needed beings he knew. Keith and Jan, he knew all too well, but he wouldn't want to pit his little brothers against the nightmare he was hunting.

Then it hit him. Joe knew exactly who he wanted at his side. He pointed at the closest wolf and unleashed his desire, empowering the wish with his Spirit and [Pack Master].

The beast sank into the ground. A moment later, a sprig of green burst up out of the soil. It grew and unfurled into a sapling, continuing to thicken until it shaped into a humanoid form covered in bark. With a loud groan, a treeman stretched out its arms and split apart its legs. He stood about eight feet tall, including the crown of branches that topped his head. This was one of Joe's oldest and longest-running characters. Capaluchu reached into the earth and withdrew a massive scythe that was waiting for him within the dirt.

Next to the ent-like being, a swirl of water engulfed the next wolfen beast. When the fluid screen fell, a sea-elven archer stood in his place. Seger glided around the tree, scouting for enemies, skating on a stream of conjured water.

Two wolves moved together and transformed. One grew into a towering, muscular man almost as tall as Capaluchu. The other shrank and darkened into a black house cat with strikingly purple eyes. One would have assumed that the hulking Porter was the powerhouse of the two, but the feline Felix was a master of shadow magic and spiritualism. As much as Joe was counting on Felix's gifts, he was also glad he'd have the steady henchman to guard his back.

The last was far from the least. A genie lamp lay on the ground where the final wolf had stood. Joe reached down and plucked it off the old leaves, giving it a good rub. The vessel transformed into a grapefruit-sized geode and released Caliban, the earthen half-djinn.

Joe couldn't help but hear the ghost of Robin Williams utter, "Phenomenal cosmic powers. Itty bitty living space." Of all of Joe's characters, the stone-skinned boy had more mojo at his beck and call than any other. He wasn't sure how much of that arcane potency would translate into this spiritual representation, but even a fraction of what Caliban was capable of could be what tipped the odds in this spiritual battle.

These five individuals Joe knew through and through. He had been them, brought them to life with his own imagination; he had thought their thoughts, dreamed their dreams. When he was done, not a trace of Sougath remained within this character squad.

A swarm of spectral cats appeared around Porter's feet and then dashed off into the forest. Felix, with his eyes closed, spoke up in his aloof tone. "The phantom you are looking for is relatively that way," the small feline exclaimed, pointing a paw off to Joe's left.

Geeking out at the fact he was actually talking to one of his characters instead of talking through them, Joe recalled the ex-familiar was cagey with information. "What do you mean relatively, Felix?"

"You are in the Spirit Realm, Joe. You have to want the specter to be somewhere in relation to where you are for that to be the case. You have to want it more than that thing wants to be somewhere else. Given the nature of the ether around us, the best chance you have to reaching this Sougath is to want to go that way," the cat emphasized with a more forceful paw-pointing. "And you have to want it a lot."

"Ok, let's go." Joe and Seger declared in unison. These beings were all variations of himself. Seger was his impulsive side, always ready to dive in, be it a raging river or a good fight.

"Why walk and risk getting split up?" the stocky, gray-skinned djinn asked. With a thought, the three-foot-tall geomancer tore a boulder from the earth and stretched it from a ball into a stone slab wide enough for all of them to stand on.

Everyone except Seger climbed aboard. The aquatic ranger was happier and faster on his own two feet. As the flattened boulder levitated through the trees following the sea-elf's trail, Porter laid a hand on Joe's shoulder to steady him. With [Steadfast] to anchor him, Joe didn't actually need it, but it was exactly the sort of thing the tall guardian would do.

At first, they stayed low to the ground, but soon, wolves began to launch themselves from between the mighty trunks. There were way more than ten now, but each wolf seemed to be weaker than the first ten had been, way weaker than Joe's five new allies. Capaluchu ringed the slab with a shin-high circle of briars, eviscerating any beast that managed to make it over the thorny barrier with the powerful scythe he bore. Caliban magically flicked the hunters away. Porter and Joe booted them off.

Seger just evaded any of the beasts that tried to pin him down, sliding across the ground on an endless watery carpet.

After a few minutes of this, Felix sighed loudly. "You are wasting time, Joe. The world beyond the Spirit Plane is crawling along, but it is still moving. Those people you want not to get eaten are going to get eaten if you don't end this. Stop waiting for Sougath to be found and find him. You have to want him right here, right now, or we will be looking for him forever."

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"Focuuuus," rummbled the impossibly deep voice of the treant. The tacturn Porter gave Joe's shoulder a squeeze to add his emphasis to the consensus.

Caliban pointed at the ground just beyond where they were hovering, and a round dais of stone slid up out of the loamy soil. It gave Joe a spot to muster his willpower onto.

Joe set his mind to bringing Sougath there. His Spirit was his strongest stat, but the Night Haunt was a level thirty-six elite monster. Joe could feel the wraith contesting him, marshaling its will against Joe's own. And Sougath's spiritual might was the greater of the two. Joe might as well have been a first-grader trying to arm-wrestle a bodybuilder.

Sougath replied with scorn and more phantoms. They watched as Caliban's dais cracked, opening to reveal a chasm underneath it. Out of the fissure burst a new swarm of spectral lupine predators. These were not the thick-furred beasts that had been harrying them until now. These were darker, malformed, and malicious. Scabby coats revealed sores that wept black ichor. Rotting fangs were coated in putrescence. Balefully glowing white eyes locked onto the group. The terrain mattered not at all to the creatures; they ran across the air to assault the floating slab.

Joe didn't let the onslaught of wolves distract him. That was what the Night Haunt wanted. It wanted him to focus on this new threat and delay until it could feed in the real world. Joe did not have the stronger will in this case, but he did have more training tricks up his sleeve.

One of the ways to train a dog to the behavior you want is to coach the command in line with the dog's own desires. Sougath wanted Joe dead or consumed. Ultimately, that desire was even greater than wanting him distracted. Distraction was just one avenue to destroying Joe. So, he changed the thought he was trying to impose on the Spirit World.

Instead of "I will find you," he switched it to "Come and get me, Bitch!"

He rammed that thought into the spectral realm, pushing on his Spirit and flaring [Pack Master] and [Crystal Mind] for all they were worth. The wildness inside him fully agreed with this sentiment and roared along with Joe, giving the provocation a predatory ferocity.

The primal wolf in Sougath responded, unable to resist Joe's brazen challenge. The tentacled, amorphous menace surged from the cleft. The spectral horde faded, each beast becoming less substantial. The Night Haunt was reclaiming its presence to bring all it down on Joe and his team.

"I need no conjured minions to rend your soul apart," the roiling black specter hissed. "I tested your mettle upon the stairs. You were no match for me then. Nothing has changed."

"Everything has changed. I am now twice as powerful as I was when you struck me down," Joe retorted, stealing a bit from Obi-Wan. "And you are a shadowy scrap of the beast I already killed. It's over for you, Sougath."

Before the Night Haunt could retort, Joe bellowed, "HIT EM WITH EVERYTHING, GUYS!"

Spears of living wood lanced through the nebulous form, clearly ripping deeply into its spectral essence. Explosions of rocky shrapnel detonated with the black cloud. Icy arrows froze sections of it solid. From Porter's protective back, Felix drew glowing symbols of exorcism in the air, unravelling swaths of shadowy darkness.

While these were all visual representations of Joe's fighting back, the real battle was unseen. Alone, Joe would have lost. Yet somehow, a piece of the Night Skinner was now part of him. The wildness was both part of Joe's pattern and something else. It was an unrelenting spectral essence that wanted the Night Haunt destroyed even more than Joe's conscious ego did.

Together, they chewed away at the wraith. Sougath had spread itself thin, maybe without even realizing it. It had shaped the world into the foreboding forest. It had conjured countless wolfen apparitions. It had wasted countless resources trying to break Joe with fear or domination. It had tried to subdue Joe physically and failed.

Above all, it had been decimated by Azbekt and the God of Order.

As the forest around them lost its twisted dark presence, the endless ghostly wolves seemed to be no more than a collection of wispy forms. Joe also noted the specter was considerably smaller and more eroded than it had been.

Not letting up, they ignored the minor phantoms and focused everything they had on the primary target. Rock shots, ice arrows, splinterbolts, and shadow darts tore through the black mass.

Joe realized this fight would come down to who could last the longest. Closer and closer, the battle condensed until everything else faded away but him and Sougath. Both of them had dispelled their conjurations. No more wolves or primal forest. No more character squad or conjured gear. They weren't needed anymore.

It was just Joe hacking away with his clawed hands at the lashing black clot. He felt like he was battling a team of bullwhip fighters. The flogging tendrils did not cut deeply, but each one was excruciatingly painful. Joe pushed through the hurt, noting that each stinging slash from Sougath just enraged the wildness more.

Thunder and lightning boomed through the sky as the Spirit Realm around them shaped itself to set the stage for their conflict. The two, or three if you included the wildness, were brawling atop a rocky plateau. Joe felt like he had been dropped into the middle of an 80s action movie climax: a stark, stone mesa under an ominously turbulent sky.

He could also feel the Night Haunt growing desperate. It should have been the more powerful being, and yet Joe would not go down. Behind his locked screen, Joe could tell his resource skills were going strong, filling his pools, exchanging mana for health and stamina for mana. Added to this, Joe had leveled up mid-fight, where Sougath had been badly mangled twice. He had made significant gains where his enemy had suffered multiple losses. In a realm where self-assurance was half the battle, Joe was riding high on his wave, while his opponent had wiped out more than once.

Pushing forward, Joe and the wildness drove their way into the churning miasma. There, in the center of the vile form, they spotted a literal black heart, pulsing with malice.

"Noooo!" Sougath screamed. "You are nothing. I was promised …"

"Then somebody lied to you, asshole," Joe barked back, grabbing the beating black blot. With a final rending twist, they tore the ebon mass apart.

The Spirit Realm unraveled around him, and Joe finally opened his physical eyes. He was lying on the ground outside the tower.

In the sky, he saw the dark, wraith-like form of the demon wolf. It hovered in the air, an inky cloud of venomous hatred and impotent rage. It seemed to be trying to gather itself back together, but as quickly as it gained any density, its edges unraveled into tattered wisps of ash. When the gritty specks landed on the old holy ground, they fizzled and popped, burning completely away. The ebon hateful stain grew smaller and smaller until it finally unravelled completely into a fading puff of smoky soot.

You have slain Sougath the Night Haunt.

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