(Dovakiin)

The library was, as to be expected, grand.

Natural sunlight filtered into the room through one giant wall of windows. A second story balcony ran along the opposite wall, allowing readers to access the bookcases there that were stacked so high, a single floor was not enough to contain them. Large bookcases ran parallel along the centre of the room too, simultaneously leaving the centre of the room open while providing numerous little secluded reading nooks to find some privacy in.

Dovakiin walked into the room with three of his companions. Helga and Marion were apparently having their orientation separately.

Bran O’Faolain gave an appreciative whistle. “Now tha’s a pile of kindlin’ if ever ah saw one. Hey,” he said grinning, giving Fledinem a friendly punch on the arm, “good thing you didn’t ha’ ta fight a troll in here! You'd ha' burned the whole place down!”

Fledinem didn’t look like he appreciated the joke. Or maybe he was just sullen because apparently Walter Vance did not allow wolves inside the library. Dovakiin wasn’t sure.

Solstice stalked to the centre of the room, apparently angry (as usual). She glanced around. “He’s not even here!”

One day, Dovakiin thought, we are going to have to do something about that bad attitude of yours.

“What’s he like, do you think?” Fledinem asked.

“Well, y’know what his pappy is like,” Bran answered. “Genteel, an’ a wee bit intense. Probably like that.”

“Arrogant, then,” Solstice contributed. A real team player, that one.

“Well, if you like,” said Bran in a placating tone. “But ah think the aristocracy like ta call it ‘confident’.”

“I wonder why we’ve none of us heard of him,” Dovakiin said, trying to divert the conversation away from anything too insulting. He was a little wary of badmouthing a man who might walk into the room at any moment. “I mean, if he’s Jezediah’s son he must be, what, in his late 40’s? How did the town not know about him, do you think?”

Bran’s eyes lit up. “Ooh, maybe he’s crazy!”

Dovakiin sadly sighed.

“No, ah’m serious! Ya know tha kind. Maybe he’s one of those ‘shame ta tha family name’ types, so his pappy locked him in an attic until he was 42!”

They seemed to have caught Bran in that rare window between when he was hung-over and when he was drunk. Apparently, this is what he was like naturally.

“…Do people do that, here?” asked Fledinem, looking slightly horrified.

A new voice cut hesitantly through the conversation. “Um, no, fortunately. We don’t.”

The group turned.

The newcomer waved nervously. “Just in the cellar. Haha. Er, that was a joke. Um. Yes. Hi!”

Apparently, Walter Vance had been behind one of the bookshelves.

For starters, he was younger than Dovakiin had expected. Walter was clearly in his early twenties. He wore glasses like his father, but these were transparent, allowing people to see his clear blue eyes. His sense of dress was odd. Dovakiin wasn’t entirely up to date with the fashions of Heldsgard high society, but Walter’s clothes seemed both formal and exceptionally dated, by centuries, not decades. Was that a ruff?

The final odd thing about Walter was the mystical blue hand  disembodied floating slightly behind him. It was carrying a book, but as Walter smiled at them all, the hand closed the book and put it back in a shelf to his right.

Dovakiin decided to be polite. “Hi there,” he said, reaching forward to shake hands. “I’m Dovakiin,”

The disembodied hand – a Mage Hand – shot forward and intercepted the handshake, gripping Dovakiin warmly. Walter smiled weakly. “The pleasure’s all mine. Sorry, I’m not much of a touchy person. I’m Walter, by the way. And, um, I’m probably not crazy.”

He sounded almost apologetic, as if it was his fault somehow that Bran had accidentally insulted him. So much for arrogant, Dovakiin thought. He felt the strange, grandfatherly instinct to give the young man a hug.

Bran sniffed.

“Yer dead,” he said.

“Bran!” Dovakiin said, shocked. But Bran had not said it aggressively… more as a statement of fact. And as Dovakiin glanced back at Walter and his floating Mage Hand, and his aversion to touching things, he realised that it was probably true.

“Oh, gosh, bother. That was fast, haha,” Walter said nervously. “Well, I guess that is what we’re paying you for.”

Solstice and Fledinem looked lost.

“He’s what?” Solstice asked.

As Dovakiin took a closer look at Walter, he noticed one last odd thing. The man was ever so slightly transparent.

“He had no scent. He’s a ghost,” Bran said evenly. He wasn’t antagonistic, but was suddenly… cautious.

“What’s a ghost?” Fledinem asked.

“Ah, yes, I’ll tackle that one,” Walter answered. “They don’t have us on your plane, do they?”

With a kick of his heels, he took to the air, floating a few inches off the floor. The group took a little bit of a step backwards. Walter looked happy to be explaining something, and didn’t seem to notice. “You see, normally, when us fleshy humans die, our soul – the bits of us that are energy and personality - travels on to one of the various afterlife’s, depending on what god we worshipped and how well we lived up to their commandments. However, sometimes we don’t do that. We… get stuck here. It’s a bit of a breach of the laws of nature, to be honest, but it sadly does happen to some people. At least until we can figure out how to fix it.”

This was obviously news to Fledinem, who was looking increasingly aghast. “You’re contrary to the laws of nature?!...”

Then his face darkened. “Are we supposed to kill you?”

“Oh, ha, goodness no!” Walter said. “I mean, yes and no. Yes, I suppose I technically am a breach of the laws of nature, although I can assure you it wasn’t intentional on my part. No, you are most definitely not meant to kill me. Quite the opposite, in fact, haha. Oh, um, I’m not explaining this all very well.”

“Can we put our hand through you?” Solstice asked, having apparently overcome any initial shock at Walter’s arrival.

“Er, I mean, you could, but, er, I’d rather you didn’t…”

“Is it rude to ask how you died?” Dovakiin asked.

“Um, not rude exactly, but I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Why?” Solstice asked. “Was it embarrassing?”

“No, not quite, but, er, well it’s hard to explain…”

“Are you the thing that threw Fledinem across the room on our first day?” Bran asked.

The adventurers went silent. 

Solstice suddenly looked less eager to put her hand through Walter’s ghostly form.

Walter sighed. The hand behind him drooped slightly. “No, that was… my sister Clara. She’s not quite as… friendly… as I am. Er, but this is very important, actually, she’s the reason none of you are allowed upstairs. She tends to haunt up there. It’s very important that none of you go up there. She will almost definitely try to kill you.”

The room remained silent.

“We’re working on it,” offered Walter apologetically.

“…So,” Dovakiin said carefully, attempting to avoid the sudden awkwardness. Because how did you ask, Why do you have a murderous sister who’s a ghost upstairs in your house? “I’ve been an adventurer before, but we never really… encountered too many undead. We’d tend to fight-.. meet more of the toothy kind of mons-.. being. So I’m not too familiar with… er…”

Walter seemed glad at the chance to change the subject. “Ah, you specialised in Bold-kin?”

“Bold-kin?” Dovakiin asked blankly.

“Yes! Oh, sorry, did you use the Mordekainen’s method of monstrous classification? Monstrosity, aberration, things like that? I always felt that Albrecht’s was a better system for specifically Heldsgard, so bold-kin, mask-kin, bone-kin… Ok, I can see that I’ve lost you.”

Walter’s Mage-Hand zipped away, and returned a moment later with a large binding. A second later it was thrusting it into Dovakiin’s hands. Dovakiin looked at the large bundle of papers in front of him. It was full of…

Pamphlets?

“Don’t worry,” Walter said, “I’m going to explain everything.”