Imp nearly kicked herself when the priest shared the truth with her. She had even asked plainly if he was not a priest, a question that he had deftly avoided. He had spoken of his kind, of his service, but never of his faith. The priest was simply a guise that Imp could perceive. It was a mask worn by the reaper taking count and care of the souls left behind in the destruction of Delden Town.

  The priest had stayed for minutes after revealing the truth. He waited for a question from Imp that he could answer. No questions came and he eventually faded away to return to his duties.

  At the moment, Imp felt like nothing really changed except that her frustration with herself had a new facet. After interacting with the priest on several occasions, she still had not discerned his nature. Assan would have been ashamed.

  She was wandering around a haunted town without real intentions or motivations. At first, she came to see the destruction. Then, when she arrived, she stayed to see if it was true. After encountering the soul of the child in the chapel and the soul of the arborist, Imp wanted to stay to help the souls in her own way. Then, the bandit’s soul revealed the truth of the destruction to her. There were more souls than just townsfolk haunting Delden Town.

  The dark specter had been another piece of the puzzle. At first, Imp had thought about banishing it or destroying it. After all, she watched it attack the arborist and then she had seen it tear into the bandit. That desire felt unsteady now that the priest had revealed that it was not some evil spirit, but the soul of a field tiller that had watched the state raze the spice fields.

  If there was nothing but corruption separating the dark specter from the motes of light that floated around Delden Town, what could she do? The priest, or the reaper as he revealed himself to be, would be taking care of the souls that had not been corrupted yet. However, he made it seem like there was nothing that he could do for the corrupted soul.

  Imp took to wandering the hillside. She was loosely headed for the orchard, to pick some fruit before going into town to see if there was at least some bread or preserved cheese left in a larder. The gnawing at her soul was pacing alongside her rising hunger. It had been at least a full day since she arrived in Delden Town. Her goal was simple: secure food for now, then find the pack that she had brought with her.

  Vaguely, she remembered having it when she entered the chapel. Yet, after she woke from the encounter with that first soul, Imp had not even thought about her gear. While most of it was plain and mundane, there were a few trinkets that she did not want to part with not to mention the few days of trail rations that she had stowed in the pack.

  As she gets closer to the orchard, Imp is distracted by a flicker of light coming from Delden Town. Around the perimeter of the town, a stone wall was erected as a barrier against foot traffic and the potential of a flooding stream. Just beyond the stone wall, between it and the nearest stream, a dark mote of light hovered. Silver flickers passed through the mote at irregular intervals, like a coil of wire sparking in the middle of a thunderstorm.

  Instead of a silver mote of light, as the other souls appeared, this one was made of obsidian shards and ashen smoke. The faint remnants of silver passing through it were the only commonality this soul had with the others. Before she even approached it, Imp knew this was the corrupted soul. Each inky black shard of obsidian had grown over the silvery light to block it out like a film of mold growing over soup left unattended for too long.

  Imp had been circling the hillside, so there was a stream between her and the soul still. Yet, she sat down at the edge of the stream and waved gently to the corrupted soul. It caught her motion and swayed through the air to hover opposite her location. The stream was all that separated them, five feet of slow-running water. Assan had always talked about water as a barrier for spirits, but in Imp’s mind, this soul could easily float right over it and get to her. Though… it didn’t. It just mirrored her and hovered barely above the grass on the other side.

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  After a minute, Imp spoke, “You should not have had to watch the fields burn.”

  A flicker of silver circled the corrupted soul.

  Imp continued, “The Regent has been fighting more than just wars, it seems. I wish I could tell you that Delden Town was the only place affected.”

  The corrupted soul offered no response. Imp couldn’t even tell if it was hearing her. She continued to talk anyway. While this was not a proper alternative to banishing the dark specter or destroying it, she wanted to at least let it know that it was not alone and that the weight of its burden would not be lost.

  Imp spoke across the stream to the corrupted soul.

  “I traveled for a while… decades. At first, the lands were peaceful. It was hard to find work. I did everything from delving into dungeons for treasure at the commission of rich nobles to trekking through swamps to hunt monsters threatening commoners trying to travel. It was not just the current Regent that changed things, the land started to die before then. I think it was a pilgrimage that I was guarding… maybe it was a merchant caravan…”

  Imp took a deep breath, the memory was fuzzy, but she could recall enough. “Either way, we were traveling through mountains to the east, a place called Dandelion Spires. A beautiful name for a treacherous string of cliffs, snowdrifts, and narrow caves. A demon attacked, possessing one of the other guards, and no one knew what to do. Eventually, we threw the guard off a cliff.”

  Imp paused, remembering the scream as her fellow guard fell hundreds of feet. There was no visible collision with the ground. Eventually, the guard had disappeared into a snowy cloud and the scream had faded out as the wind whistled louder.

  Imp continued the story, “We got back to town, reported the encounter and the local knights brushed it off. Later, demons started to harass the nearby towns. I was part of a guild then; we were called back to deal with it. I feel like everything started to burn from there.”

  Across the stream, the mote of obsidian and smoke faded slightly and took on the form that Imp was familiar with. A shadowy figure sat in the grass across from her, leaned forward and listening intently.

  “The knights called it a campaign, but it was a slaughter. My friend did everything he could to stop it from turning into a witch hunt. The demons were vanquished. We left the Dandelion Spires for the last time. Then news came of an avalanche, it wiped the town off the map and the surrounding villages all starved to death… cut off from the world while they waited for the state’s aid.”

  The shadowy soul seemed to snarl at the mention of the state.

  Imp nodded in agreement. “It wasn’t until a few years later that we realized there would have been no aid for them. Just like your spice fields, just like the copper mine of Azamkell and the fisheries of West Yarrow… as soon as the state lost its grip on something, it made sure that no one else could hold it.”

  A gravelly voice caught on the wind, “Fools…”

  Imp sighed, “Some could call them that… Whether it was greed or folly, the state kept up its scorched earth campaign. Any time something was lost, it was destroyed before someone else could overtake it. That is what happened here… After the bandit attack, someone came by and determined that Delden Town was lost.”

  The shadowy soul’s voice screeched, “Heathens…”

  Imp nearly laughed at the accusation. Instead, she nodded her head, “They did not honor the fallen or the land, only the Regent and the state. That… is not the fault of these other souls though.”

  The shadowy soul faded slightly and grew quiet.

  Imp continued, “Even the souls of the bandits… they were just a different set of victims of the state. They were soldiers that were abandoned when things grew difficult… just like your spice.”

  The shadowy soul let out a frustrated breath and said, “Yes… we knew…”

  “Can you stop attacking them? Can you find a way to pass on?”

  A flicker of silver light shot through the air between them. The shadowy soul shook slightly and then said, “No… the hunger… grows.”

  “I’ll have to stop you then.”

  The shadowy soul faded more. Its form was barely visible now. A soft voice caught the wind just as it vanished completely, “As… you… must…”