"Stop killing people, boss.
Thier geist have been hauting our tents for weeks now. The food have been spoiled, the tends have been burned.
And the contortionist have been possesed. I think she is in the woods now.
---Geronimo, "magician" of the cirque Biilzie.
I let out a sigh as I read over the note. I thought I had been more careful. But, clearly there was some sort of failure, and I am, perhaps, responsible for cleaning up this mess. Besides, the first step is just a little shopping trip. Who doesn’t love that?
When I get back to my circus, I am prepared. I put my people to their tasks, the minotaur is setting up a network of foxfire candles in which any spirits who may exist beyond mortal vision will be cast into stark relief. The Walking Anatom—lovely artist—is repainting the wards and sigils meant to keep ghosts from becoming such a problem. A batch of performers, a mix of clowns, knife throwers, stilt walkers, anyone with an arm for weaponry or an eye for the spiritual, have been called to arms and armed by me. The contortionist would be a help, but not until the trapeze artist can get her back. While it was quite annoying to learn the tricks of Innistradi spirits, which turned out vastly different from Ravnican ones, there is value in knowing how to handle them.
Once I have given everyone their job, outfitting them with foxfire headlamp, iron blade, Avacynian staff, what I could collect of the old Boros grounders, we head off. Personally, I’m not carrying much. My Riteknife is enchanted to rip the souls out of the dying. The restless dead are no different.
Brognik is our minotaur. He’s got a relatively cushy job, as the minotaur is an entirely new species to the various yahoos of Innistrad. He started off merely standing, posing, and being gawked at by a crowd too shocked and disbelieving to put any thought into him or into who slipped into and out of the crowd while they weren’t looking. When he decided he wanted to learn the fiddle, they were a wonderful audience to practice with, too impressed he was intelligent enough to play at all to care when he messed up.
As of right now, he’s busy turning the lights on. Well, off, then replacing them. Foxfire candles cast a dim green light, very useful for making anything look creepy, made even more useful because the normally invisible spirits of Innistrad become quite clear when exposed to their light. He is going through the tents, box of candles in hand, setting each one down and alight in a network built to maximize distance between candles without sacrificing coverage. Any geist who enters should be visible and stay visible until the clinging foxfire light fades from them entirely.
The Walking Anatom is a favored freakshow for those with strong stomachs. We found him a few months into the founding of the Cirque Ziebub, a wanderer who had apparently been cursed by a bog witch of some kind to have entirely transparent skin and mostly transparent musculature. He has no name, or at least has refused to tell us his name or take on a proper new one, which I assume implies some dark and tortured backstory he has elected not to tell us the details of. The relevant thing is, he walks out in front of people in nothing but a loincloth and they scream and vomit and nearly faint. It’s a very profitable time for quite minimal effort. The relevant to right now thing is that he has a bucket, a brush, and is painting various runes and sigils onto the walls of, at the moment, the same tent that Brognik is lighting up. The sigils and runes he is painting now are fairly simple spirit snares. They should trap any poltergeist, regular geist, banshee, eidolon, specter, revenant, phantom, phantasm, apparition, rusalka, niblis, woundseeker, haunt, or just plain ghost that passes into a building, tent, or cart inscribed with one, turning any warded space into a cage. Once we’ve cleared out this infestation, they will be edited into wards to keep lost and misplaced souls outside, but for now, we’d rather they get stuck in an enclosed space than be able to fly around wherever they’d like outside of one.
When a geist shows up in that tent, it’s not actually a surprise. There’s an infestation, of course they’ll come to call. It enters in a gout of flame, and they quickly realize that the foxfire may not have been quite so necessary as we had assumed. This is a skathul, a beastly and fairly small spirit of flame, the last remnants of a violent death, an incarnation of revenge. The Anatom sees it first, and shouts for Brognik. Brognik drops the candles, readies his staff, and settles into a fighting stance. Most weapons are quite ineffective against spirits on all planes, as a physical object tends not to touch the immaterial. Iron always has at least some effect, though I’ve never been sure why. A symbol of faith, depending on the plane, depending on the faith, also works well as a deterrent. An iron staff topped with the collar of Avacyn, and one that was used by Avacynian priests back when she was alive? As the skathul descends, Brognik readies his staff. As the flaming geist rushes towards him in an inferno, Brognik takes a swing. The metal glows with heat and energy as it cleaves through the invading spirit. The end of the staff hits the ground, ringing out like a tuning fork. The skathul is gone.
“Why did the ghost cry himself to sleep?”
“I have no idea, Klaus. Why?”
“Do not encourage him, Elga.”
“Oh, have you heard this one? Alright, then why was the clown soaked in blood?”
“Annoyed knife-thrower one too many times.”
“The real joke is that he thinks he can hit me.”
“Is that challenge, clown?”
“Boys!” Elga snaps her fingers, and they both look up at her. “Do not fight. We have task to accomplish. Spirits have been causing trouble. Is time they see Blessed Sleep, yes?”
“Yes, Elga,” their voices ring out in unison, and she squats down to give both their heads an exaggerated rub.
“Good boys.” She nods approval and stands up to full height, which is something like twenty feet with her stilts. Dressed for battle, with the foxfire headlamp glowing, Elga makes something of a lamppost in the dark of night. Unfortunately, judging by the ring of living flame none of them saw approach and encircle the trio, it seems she makes a good beacon as well.
“Think those knives the boss gave you will work?”
Instead of actually answering, Hans performs his job description. His thrown knife, a fun little iron alloy with some mizzium and… additives, slices through a skathul, which dissipates with a choked scream. “Yes.”
With a laugh from Klaus, they get to work. Hans’ knives dissolve the skathul into a vaguely noxious mist, laughing as he breaks through the spirits. Klaus dazzles and distracts masterfully, slipping in and out of their view fast enough to twist them around without getting burned, setting up grounders to capture and dissolve them when he can. Elga’s stilts, capped in iron, split the skathul apart as she stomps on them.
“Alright! Is that all of them then?”
“It seems all. Elga, do you see more?”
“... not exactly.” Elga’s voice is deeper than normal, and echoes in the night air like a scream over a frozen lake. Hans turns to look up at her, confused, but anything he might have to say is interrupted by the slam of a solid oak stilt dislocating his jaw, quickly followed by the slam of his own body skidding across the grass and dirt.
Klaus’s gasp is loud enough to easily draw the attention of the skathul currently occupying Elga.
“Elga! How could you? You know Hans is fragile!”
Elga’s initial response comes in the form of a low growl, flames filtering out between her teeth. “I never liked you, Klaus. You have always, always annoyed me.”
Klaus lets out an exaggerated sob, stumbling backwards just in time to dodge a swung stilt. Elga only growls more, beginning to give chase as Klaus dodges, jumps, all but dances around the swinging stilts.
“You are PATHETIC! You are RAT! You! Are! UNFUNNY!”
This last jab gets a look of what seems briefly like legitimate rage out of Klaus, but as the skathul puppeteering Elga moves to kick again, it finds her leg is immobile. Klaus grins, and gives a yank to the string of multicolored handkerchiefs now tying the stilts together by the ankles. Elga’s mouth opens in a scream of wrath as she falls, backwards, at the perfect location to fall directly onto Hans’s chest.
“Klaus, you-! Ah.” He wraps his arms around Elga, holding her tight and immobile as he pulls another knife and, with a gentle “You will forgive for this, Elga,” slips it into her stomach. The skathul screams until Elga sobs, gasping for air, her lips dry and cracked.
Theo has pushed off on their own. They wanted to as soon as they heard about Vanya’s possession, but knew they would not be able to fix it on their own. So, they waited to get tools from me. Once outfitted with a headlamp and appropriate weapons, they all but sprinted into the woods to find Vanya. I was smart enough not to stop them. So, they’ve got the best Orzhovan anti-possession locket I could grab, all the weapons they could carry, and a girlfriend to find.
The good news about skathuls, apparently, is that they leave quite a bit of trail. Shattered branches, smoldering twigs, a very clear path through the woods and to Vanya. As of now, Vanya is shaking and rocking in a small clearing, one eye glowing with phantom flames as several of her limbs tie themselves into a knot. She only growls as she sees Theo approach, but they maintain a soft smile, spread hands, a slow and gentle pace towards her.
“C’mon, Vanya. I’m right here. I’m here for you.”
Vanya hisses, head twisting far too far around her neck. But, she approaches. Her skin is hot enough to burn. But, Theo holds her hands. The skathul is raging inside, screaming in the pain and wrath of a ghost of revenge. But, between the two of them and a Boros puzzlebox, the skathul is expelled.
The skies of Innistrad are beautiful. And yes, if you get me in a conversation about that, I’ll say the night skies in most planes are beautiful, but guess what, dipshit? The sky being pretty is not unique to any one plane. Especially when you aren’t some sucker stuck looking at cloud ass instead of the actual stars. But I’m not stargazing tonight. Tonight, I’m watching my circus from above. The ghosts, or as we’ve now realized, the skathul, are being handled. I’ve ripped several to shreds with knife and fang, the weapons I provided are working well, I’m pretty sure Theo even found Vanya by now. The issue, of course, is that means most of my time up here will be spent thinking. Mostly, my mind keeps going back to what Leta said. Murder is, for most people, uncomfortable. Part of the note that let me know about this little infestation was a request to do less murder. Obviously, we are not going to suddenly become one of those boring, generic, casualty-free circuses. But. I have been trying to rein in my own killings. People who want it, people who deserve it. As I cast my Riteknife into a skathul on the ground like an iron thunderbolt, I can’t stop myself from thinking. How much of the killing is because that is what I think this is supposed to be? How much am I letting myself ape my father, how much of what he wants for me, that I’ve always thought is what I wanted for myself… isn’t? By the time my hooves touch the ground again, I have a policy change. We kill those who want to be killed, and those who have earned it. Hopefully, the new wards won’t be necessary again.
(Dividers by @jasper-graphics)
