The ghost next to him moaned piteously at the sound of his name, but seemed unable to do anything more coherent than to whimper apologies and beg for help. It was a big change from the bossy, casually violent man who hadn’t thought twice about trying to kill Riordan. Anger and pity warred inside Riordan and he backed away, swinging down off the ropes to splash into the muck below again. He let the light surrounding him fade down to just the form of his badger armor again. Draining the pack well and his own while he needed to think wouldn’t do Riordan any good.

Part of him was glad Jimmy was dead. The fucker was a murdering remorseless scumbag. The other part adamantly screamed that no one deserved being a victim of this ritual, for any reason. That was a sentient soul being squeezed dry of all the power it contained, taking great damage to its sanity and identity in the process, just because someone was evil enough to consider it justified.

Nonetheless, Riordan had no idea how to free the ghosts. The ropes that represented the ritual were beyond his ability to break with sheer brute force and he lacked the training to figure out a more nuanced approach that might actually work. Theoretically, he might be able to add them to the pack bond and pull them through his gateway without breaking them out of the cocoons, but joining a pack bound required the consent of the person being added and for the pack as a whole to be generally willing to accept new members. He’d had to wing it pretty badly when he formed the pack out of non-shifters in the first place. Riordan could only imagine trying to weave new non-shifters into the already existing pack would be worse, even if he did manage to get consent out of those poor bastards somehow.

As much as Riordan hated to admit it, this excursion had to be a scouting mission and not a rescue, not yet. He’d get as much information as possible and then consult with the experts, which would probably mean Quinn, though Riordan might need one of the shaman to help him translate his information out of spiritual symbolism into something more practical.

So what could he tell about the ritual from here?

With grim determination, Riordan shut out the human side of him, ignoring the suffering of the ghosts in the ropes and the oppressive corruption of the death energy scratching at his emotions, and forced himself to view the situation objectively. He knew what it looked like, what the spiritual representation of the ritual was, but what was it really?

From what he’d been able to tell, it was a repository of power anchored on a tree spirit to keep it from dissipating. The energy here was a mix of the shadowy death magic energy and the oily death corruption that came from harvesting and using it. The percentage of corruptive taint seemed higher than his admittedly scant previous viewings of death magic, resulting in the thick goop that filled the space. Riordan wasn’t sure if that was because of the method of harvesting or the fact that the ritual continued to drain energy from the trapped ghosts as well.

He wondered how common that was. This was the only extended death ritual he’d ever observed, but the ghosts had continued to bleed death magic into the goop even when he first got here and now the ropes were aggressively extracting it from the remaining ghosts. Riordan had been taught that the core of the souls was unbreakable, down under all the layers of experience that made up a life. He wondered whether the ritual would crush the ghosts down to that remaining core and then stop or if the core kept making energy that the ritual would harvest instead.

So, it was a repository, but also a ghost harvester, which was why it bound their souls for the duration of the ritual and potentially afterward. Riordan had no idea what this would look like when it ended. He thought about how high the goop had reached on his legs now compared to before. Had some aspect of the ritual been changed to bring it closer to fruition?

Frankie had said that it was probable that this ritual was going to be used to give either one person or many people a boost in power, perhaps a permanent one, or to be used for a single massive effect. In theory, that meant that there was a structure to this ritual that connected to the recipients of that power, whether it was active yet or not.

What was here? The tree spirit. The ghosts. The death energy. The ropes, which represented the bonds of the ritual spell itself. There was no sky, no walls, no features to the place, just a foggy swamp of-- The fog.

Riordan had ignored the fog as some atmospheric horror element conjured by his overwrought brain, but as he focused on it, he realized it had a depth of potential that lay dormant and easily overlooked. The fog was the connector of the ritual, just waiting to be given shape so that it could funnel the power contained here into some directed path. No wonder it had gotten thicker.

As he watched the fog swirling near the tree, Riordan willed himself to look deeper, to perceive its form and nature, to break past the surface and see--

Riordan stumbled forward, fighting a sudden wave of vertigo that nearly knocked him on his ass. He dropped to his knees, squeezing his eyes shut and willing his sense of reality to stabilize. He wasn’t ready to see the truth of spiritual reality without the handy metaphorical filter, even with Frankie’s safeguard boosting his tolerance.

When he next blinked his black eyes open, Riordan thought he was seeing remnant illusions for a moment. He was kneeling in the muck, the fog clinging to him strangely and obscuring clear vision, but it appeared like someone was standing by the tree now. It was only a vague person shape outlined in the fog and shadows, not even a full ghost or anything. He hoped he hadn’t sprained something in his brain.

The figure got more solid the longer he stared at it, not less. Riordan struggled back to his feet, hating how wet and cloying the death energy felt, even as it slowly dripped off of his spirit armor. Cautiously, Riordan drew closer to the ghostly shadow person, trying to pick out any details.

About ten feet away from it, the figure wheeled around, its form flaring like a cloak or robe with the motion. In the darkness under its hood, Riordan could feel its eyes lock onto him.

“Well, well, what’s this?” the figure said in a surprised female voice. The sound was a bit echoing, as if coming from a far distance away. “I feel something touching my ritual and now my scrying shows me you. Aren’t you an interesting creature. You practically glow with life and power.”

Riordan pulled back, growling and dropping into a combat stance as he registered the words. His eyes slowly discerned that the figure was some sort of featureless ghost shell draped in a robe of pure death magic. Slices of shadow gashed across the face as if cut there by an inexpert sculptor, serving as a mockery of eyes and mouth. This thing was an abomination, one created by the death mage, though Riordan couldn’t tell its exact purpose. To monitor the ritual perhaps, after all the damage he’d done before?

“Fuck you,” Riordan spat back at the death mage, his voice feral and distorted by his mouthful of sharp badger teeth.

The figure laughed delightedly. “You talk! Are you a ghost or a spirit then? You aren’t like any ghost I’ve dealt with so far.”

Riordan realized that however she was perceiving him, she saw his leather battle armor covering his features and form, the honey badger mask hiding his face and making him seem inhuman, especially when combined with his partial shift. As the connection with the caster strengthened, the proxy ghost began to take on human features, transforming bit by bit into a woman. As much as Riordan knew he should run, to not engage in a fight inside her domain, he wanted to see the face of the woman behind this.

“Are you a monster in body or just in mind, you sick fuck?” Riordan asked back, circling around as he tried to see her true face. As much as his urge to fight was up, he knew better than to engage her right by the base of the tree, in the heart of the ropes.

The woman did not respond this time, a frown clear even on her hidden features. The expression began to slough off of the proxy’s face, melting and fading as whatever connection she had wavered. Tension rippled through Riordan, fury running hot in his veins. This whole macabre shitshow was her fault. Daniel and Duane and Cole and even fucking Jimmy and all the rest of the ghosts were dead and trapped because of her. He had nearly died because of her.

“Show yourself,” Riordan roared, reaching one hand out in front of him and then yanking it back towards him, trying to summon her appearance. No more hiding in the shadows. He cried out in Yiddish as he tossed intention out at her, past the safeguards on him. “Be seen!”

At his words, her appearance slammed into definition. The ghostly form gave way to the color of a living spirit and the robe of energy took on the appearance of cloth, clinging to her body. She stared at him with hazel eyes framed by long lashes, her mouth tight in a moue of surprise and annoyance. She looked… ordinary. Once again, Riordan’s desire for people to look as evil on the outside as they were inside was thwarted, though the dark evil cultist style robe mollified him slightly.

She was average height for a woman, maybe five and a half feet tall, with long dark brown hair poking out from under her hood and trailing down her chest to almost her waist. The robe showed off a body that had some muscle definition, but mostly was soft and a bit overweight. She stood with shoulders back and chin held high, staring up at Riordan without fear despite the significant difference in height and body mass.

Instead, her eyes locked on the rope tied around Riordan’s left arm, visible over his spirit armor, and broke into a broad wicked grin.

“Oh,” she said softly, her voice clear now, the distance gone. “I see. You’re the one who got away.”

She raised her hands, going through a series of hand motions and chanting in Latin. Whatever she was doing, Riordan had no plans on letting her finish. He launched himself forward, cursing the poor footing in the muck but managing to close the distance between them without tripping or slipping.

Then he pulled his fist back and ploughed it forward into her face.