Our third morning underground was marked with the sounds of singing. Claire, the self-proclaimed High Priestess, was again conducting her morning ritual from the steps of her temple. Again to the complete lack of sunlight.

  People slowly gathered around. Most moved slowly, shoulders slumped, and droopy eyes. Maybe she was right not to fear an angry crowd. By the time she needed to worry, everyone would be too exhausted to do anything to her. Some people refused to get up and remained motionless on the ground.

  I was feeling them. Despite Kenny's discovery and the infinite possibilities it opened, we didn't attempt to cast any more spells. We felt that our energy was low, as it were.

  Claire was vibrant as ever, her posture straight, head held high. Clean black robes contrasted the filthy modern wear of everyone else, emphasizing her special status. She vocalized in a clear voice conveying beauty and hope, emotions lacking in this cursed place.

  I couldn't exactly put my finger on it, but she looked different. Maybe she found a way to conjure up cosmetics, or the atmosphere and her stance made her look better, but her features were more delicate, sharper, almost Elvish in appearance.

  Nobody was heckling her anymore. Instead, the mood was more subdued and quiet.

  "We humbly thank the-" She started the familiar words of the morning ritual, only to be unceremoniously interrupted.

  "Okay, That's enough of that," Officer Douglas barged in on the gathering, surrounded by his followers. "We need to keep working. We can't stop now."

  For the first time, I could see real emotions in Claire. Her face distorted into a furious scowl.

  "What do you think you are doing?" She hissed at him.

  Douglas, for his part, ignored her. "Come on, people! We are so close, but we have to keep at it!" He started pushing people in the direction of the Pillar, even raising the sitting people that were close enough.

  Some people grumbled, but others followed along, too tired to resist.

  "We are almost here. One last push, and we'll find a way up," He continued to motivate while his people lightly pushed and shoved.

  The funny thing was that it was working. Many people were content with being herded around and told what to do.

  Claire angrily came down the stairs.

  "Stop it," she got in his face. "You can't do this."

  "Watch me, girly," he replied. "You don't wanna help? Fine! At least don't be a thorn in my behind."

  Douglas was looking awful. It wouldn't surprise me if spite were the only thing keeping him on his feet.

  She silently glared at him as his convoy left for the ramp. At least that answered whether she could kill with her sight. She couldn't, and not for the lack of trying.

  Most of the people were still gathered at the temple stairs, but it wasn't enough for her. She made a bee towards the inner part of the temple and confined herself there.

  ***

  On my insistence, we decided to sit this one out and wait for the others to finish the ramp construction for us. It wasn't very nice of me, but we were so weak that I weighed it above the mere minutes we would save by pitching in.

  Kenny and I were spitballing idea after idea. We didn't know what was possible, and of those things that were, what required a low enough amount of energy to be effective.

  Survival and safety. Those were the guiding principles of all our proposals.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Save more energy by Hibernating, as the motionless ghoul's behavior suggested.

  Or maybe find a way to meditate and gather energy from the world, forgoing the need for conflict. That one was tested immediately. Wasted time for all the good it did. There wasn't any free energy in the air or ground, just waiting for us to claim it.

  The idea of recharging our energy sounded like a critical possibility to entertain. So we settled on the most probable way of draining a killed ghoul of its energy. Most likely by doing the inverse of the already known restorations.

  But how were we to kill a ghoul? Or to protect against it? We had a plethora of options, from folklore to books, games, and movies. But we couldn't know what would work until we tried. Unfortunately, every attempt would cost us dearly.

  A cheer at the ramp got my attention. The ramp's highest point was still so far from the opening, but we could see a slight girl sitting up there, helping the following people climb up. Leave it for the cheerleader to save us all. The pile of rocks was just high enough for a human ladder of two to barely reach from the top of it to the base of the Pillars entrance.

  We came closer and waited for them.

  "It's too dark in here," one man showed his face from within. "I can't see shit."

  It was plain to see that all of them were huddled at the opening, venturing barely a few steps at a time only to return.

  Suddenly, one of the explorers barreled through the rest to jump out of there.

  "Ahh, fuck," he yelled. "A ghoul! There's a ghoul here."

  He fell painfully on the rocks, but his fear was overpowering, and he scrambled off the ramp, wildly shoving and thrashing.

  The rest followed in a disorganized stampede, crushing and pushing each other into a jumbled heap at the Pillar's base. Finally, no one obstructed our view, and we could glimpse the fearsome visage.

  It was not a ghoul. There was nothing human-like about it. Instead, it looked like an amalgamation of maws stitched together, widening and closing in a chaotic rhythm. It stood there for a moment and dissolved in the shadows with a slow glide backward.

  ***

  The officer managed to calm down the ensuing panic. As long as the maw monster didn't try to leave the Pillar to attack us, some semblance of order remained.

  "Well, that was a bust," I concluded.

  "Do you think it was another ghost?" Kenny asked, referring to the creature in the haunted villa. "It didn't catch anyone, and it's not attacking."

  "Maybe, maybe," I mused. "But I'm not going to be the one to check it out. We couldn't even put a scratch on one of those things," I remembered the last ghost we encountered.

  Kenny mulled it over.

  "About that," he dragged out. "I think I have a solution, but we'll have to be the ones to test it."

  I sighed at that.

  "I'll hear it out, but I'm not promising anything," I said.

  "The ghosts are probably less dangerous than the ghouls," Kenny said. "We never witnessed them do anything except move around."

  "Yeah, but we also couldn't do anything back," I countered. "Everything just passes right through even when it should've connected."

  "But we didn't use magic," Kenny pointed out. "We only threw stuff at it."

  "Kenny, I am so weak right now that I don't think we have the option to try to create a new spell," I confessed.

  "We already have one," He countered. "The same thing we wanted to try on a dead ghoul. We can try draining the ghost of its energy with the life spell."

  I thought it over. It was not a bad idea, but the devil was, as always, hidden in the details.

  "When we restored each other's energy, it required consent," I started listing. "And touch, and most importantly, it used up our own energy to do so."

  "It doesn't require consent or touch," he argued back. "It just made the spell more efficient. So it can still be enough."

  He was right. It was a calculated risk. If we failed, we just wasted our time and effort, but if we succeeded, it meant that we found a safer source of energy that would help us survive.

  I relented, and in preparation for the attempt, we prepared two rune stones with amateurly scratched Ankh symbols.

  We tried the drain on each other, and it worked. Kind of. While the caster didn't enjoy an influx of energy, the target most definitely felt the outflow, like an overwhelming pull that supped our power, and we hoped the ghost would feel it too. Too bad it was so damn tiring in our diminished state.

  We were leaving when we noticed the commotion in one of the buildings used by the guards around the plaza and decided to check it out on our way out.

  The sight inside was bone-chilling in a different way than I was expecting. It was a desiccated, drained body of an unfortunate victim. But that wasn't the worst part.

  The body was covered in bite marks.

  Human bite marks.