I guess it was fine to accept his offer and go get some nice sleep at his home after spending days on the streets. Since it is a wooden house with a chimney, there should not be any chance to get frozen, right? At the same time I realized that they got to know what winter actually means. Since my world had four seasons, it will not be an issue for me or Alex to get ready for the upcoming cold weather with all of its white snow.
"Sir, let me tell you something interesting now that we're finally at home" the young fighter commented. "Did you know that snow here is slightly blueish, sir?"
"No, I didn't. How should I know such things?" your servitor replied at once. "It's the very first time I've visited this strange world."
"Oh my..." he shouted. "Anyway, it doesn't really matter if you ignore many things about this place for we will be leaving as soon as we learn something about portals. There are many old guys living in this region that might have heard some ancient tale or read some dusty book on that subject."
After having some sort of tortilla filled with smashed potatoes, I left the living room and looked for any empty bed I could ever find there. My eyes closed in no time and I suspected I could finally get some rest. What a fool!
Being famous for being totally incompetent, Alex’s plan to ask for any local historian and storyteller’s help didn’t let me sleep peacefully that night. Still, we gotta admit it’s not a bad idea after all. Sometimes ancient technology or knowledge has been disguised as some crazy tale on purpose. Perhaps they weren’t able to fully understand any given phenomenon and they resorted to including supernatural characters, choices or events to make it easy to recall later on.
My problem was that his very first source was a translucent entity, namely some sort of specter! He had been calling him out for over an hour while I was busy complaining about my bad luck, hidden in his kind of comfy guest room.
How did I manage to find that out? Well, I had started shivering even if I was wrapped up in my blanket. OK, guys, I know it’s not mine at all but it felt like it were! Then I had the imperious need to go back to the living room to see if the fighter could lit a fire there.
“Say, Alex, did you call me late at night to finally take you to the afterlife?” asked the surprised ghost without caring to look at me.
The young swordsman quickly replied “Who me? You gotta be nuts, this brave fighter won’t stop fighting criminals any time soon”.
That statement baffled the undead critter that soon inquired of him “Then why on this stinking planet would you like to talk about a portal?”
It took the so called hero about an hour to just tell him how badly I needed to go back to my homeworld, the lovely suburbs where I have been living for years.
Fine, it sucks as hell, and people get robbed every so often or strangely stare at some lonely bridge as gray as a cloudy morning… Nevermind. I’ve got a life there that I can’t ever leave behind just because. Even then the ghost scratched his non existing head somehow for another thirty minutes without uttering a single word.
Letting him go on its own would have been a blessing, but he made me shiver when he grinned. He seemed to have come up with a ghostly idea of his and I was right to fear it.
“Well, you know, there’s some mystic place I once heard about when I was an actual human being” the strange creature stated in a ghostly tone.
Alex couldn’t wait any longer and yelled “So there’s a gate of sorts. I knew it, I really did this time!”
The last part truly made me turn pale as his cold guest indeed. Did it mean he had failed every single quest he had ever accepted?
“Wait! That happened many years ago, and I never had a chance to confirm that old guy’s rumor” the ghost explained in vain, since his host would never show interest in reading the fine print implied in all of his otherworldly sentences.
The living mock of a swordsman rushed it “Just say it, pal!”
After it finished laughing for a while, the ghost let him know “Alright, my valiant friend Alex. That exotic place is informally called the Miasma Marshlands, which probably was once the home to Lost Kingdom of the Banished Militiae. At least that’s what they’ve told me back then”.
It found it amusing to look at Alex’s eyes shining like the blue moon that was peeking through the window.
“So it seems like you were ready to pack your stuff right away…” the ethereal being commented before it had to remain silent. My happy-go-lucky host did listen to him and started looking for a bag, some food as well as some weird memento of his.
“Heck, I don’t know what a miasma is but it sounds like it’d be quite fun to explore, guys!” the blockhead fighter shouted suddenly.
The ghostly visitor got close to him in order to place his eerie hand on his shoulder before telling him “Good for you! Even so I’m feeling sad for not being able to join you in your new adventure, he, he.”
At that very moment I was glad he wouldn’t stick to us like a stubborn fly, but that didn’t make any sense. Since when do specters leave their victims alone? Terms like haunted wouldn’t even exist if there wasn’t a good reason behind it.
What was hiding the ghostly guest from us? It had to be deliberate or he wouldn’t mind informing Alex about it since they did seem to be the best pals that ever lived… or no longer lived on earth. Of course, I didn’t feel confident enough to face some wraith that emerged out of thin air for I was still recovering and had only eaten a single meal in the past week or so.
Man, don’t you hate life when it comes back at you to bite you, making your spine shiver like never before? He had really frozen my very last brain cell with just a single revelation in regards of his past life as a normal human being. What a bastard Alex got to be!
Even so I had to ask myself this silly question. Why does he not look like some ghostly man of sorts?
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