I was taking damage just from having the door into the ghost’s room open. It wasn’t much, but it was just fast enough to see that I was draining out health at about one point every two seconds. If I wasn’t wearing my armor, I would quickly have died. As it was, I had enough time to look at what was going on.

The ghost had stopped talking and started to glare at me. Kasidy was shouting something from behind me as I tried to understand what I needed to do. The ghost wasn’t attacking me directly; it was just floating there like a bad Hollywood ghost just slightly above the ground. Somehow it was lifting armor that appeared to be cared for.

I spun up a quick casting of Lay-To-Rest, dropping my personal mana down. As the spell took hold, I saw a shimmer around the door. The ghost just turned its head towards me slightly, and the wailing kept on going.

I went to take a step into the room when I felt Kasidy’s hand on my shoulder. I looked back at her and could tell that she was in pain and was trying to say something to me. Over the wailing, I couldn’t make out what it was, but she was also pointing back down the hall.

I looked back at the ghost who just floated there in its room like what we were doing outside didn’t matter. Then I felt her pull on my hand again. I shook my head and backed away from the door. As soon as I cleared the path of the door, Kasidy slammed it shut.

The wailing cut out at once, and I saw blood coming down from her ears. I fired off my Minor Healing spell. As it formed up around my hand, I watched as Kasidy slid down the door crying. At the three-second mark on the spell, the blue-white light moved from my hand and floated over to Kasidy, falling on her head.

As the spell hit, Kasidy looked up and smiled. “Thanks, Arn. That was close. I almost lost you.”

I tilted my head to the right and asked. “What do you mean? I was going to use Lay-To-Rest. That should have ended it and we could have been done.”

Kasidy reached her hand up to me. “Give me a hand up. That thing is a Haunting, normal ways of defeating non-corporal undead won’t work on it.”

I pulled her up, and as she stood, she wrapped her arms around me and gave me a hug. Then she stepped back and rubbed her ears. When she saw the blood on her hands, she turned and walked into one of the other rooms.

I followed up behind her and asked. “So tell me about what a Haunting is.”

I saw her grab a bit of cloth out of one of the footlockers and start to wipe away the blood. “Well, you know how I told you that you can’t know what you are going to face in a lair. That’s kind of true but not fully. See there are several types of lairs that produce different things. This is a Haunting. All the other lairs that had Hauntings got beaten the same way. Well, at least the ones in the songs did.”

I nodded. “So how do we kill it?”

She shook her head. “We can’t kill it we have to free it. We have to find out what it is still bound here and then either fix what is keeping it here or tell it so that it can leave.”

“So why did you keep me from stepping into the room?”

“The songs say the same things. In different ways mind you so that people will listen to them. But most of them talk about how only the smart and caring get out of Hauntings. The brash warriors perish and even the priests who don’t know what they are dealing with die. I don’t know what would happen if you went in there before we knew why they are stuck here.”

She sat down on the bed after she finished cleaning her head from the blood. “Did I get all the blood?”

“Looks like you missed a bit,” I said as I picked up the rag and finished wiping it free.

Then I asked. “So what do you think would happen?”

“Well from the songs they say that in lairs once you enter the room of the one that created it you can’t leave until it is defeated. So I figured since this is a haunting unless what you need to fix is in that room you would get stuck in there. Also, I would be willing to bet you would run out of mana before I figured it out.”

I nodded and reached up to my ears. “So now the other question why did you get hurt so much more than me? I know I was losing health but I wasn’t bleeding out the ears and I was closer than you were.”

“My guess is either your armor blocked it for some reason or because I am a bard I am more susceptible to bad sounds.”

I couldn’t help myself and started to laugh. “So bad music or in this case a bad voice will cause you damage? I guess I shouldn’t sing.”

She smiled. “Oh, I don’t know if your singing would be that bad. We might try a few songs together sometime.”

I got myself under control and pointed out of the room. “I guess we need to figure out the rest of this place. Do your songs tell us if we should be worried about anything else in the lair other than the one haunting?”

Kasidy pushed herself up from the bed and shook her head. “The songs don’t go into that kind of detail, I wish they did but none of them talk about other fights which would make me think that we won’t find anything else to fight.”

“Then I guess we need to figure out the clues as to what happened here. Why that ghost is still around.”

Kasidy shook her head. “For a necromancer, you sure don’t know much about the undead. Ghosts aren’t Hauntings. Hauntings are tied to a place and can move things, they also tend to preserve everything around them. Ghosts, however, can’t move things and are completely a spirit. They aren’t tied to a place as much as to their body.”

I pointed to myself and said. “Remember not a necromancer.”

She smiled and walked out of the room. “I love mysteries. Let’s figure this one out!”

We headed past the haunting’s door and down to the last one. This one had its door beside the stairs facing the hallway. Like the other doors, it was locked, which made me slightly happy. Kasidy knelt down and got to work.

A few moments later and Kasidy opened up the door. I stepped in and was greeted with a larger space than the other rooms had been. It still had two beds, but there were also two desks and a second wardrobe.

I smiled a bit as I walked in. “This must be for an officer. Desks for paperwork. We might be able to find something saying what happened here.”

Kasidy headed right over to the footlockers while I moved through, pulling things out of the wardrobes that I thought might be of value. It wasn’t long before we had opened everything up and pulled out the little things of value. The wardrobe yielded a small statue and book.

I focused on the statue and got the item description.

Statue of Zer, the hunter

This is a statue to the god of the hunt

+1 faith to Zer while praying in front of it

Increased chance to find your prey for 12 hours after prayer

As I tossed the statue onto the bed, I asked. “Hey Kas, do you know who the god Zer is?”

She paused for a moment as she was pulling things out of the footlocker. “I think he is one of the forgotten gods. I know that the role of the hunt is filled by Pammiala the goddess of the hunt now. So Zer had to have been before her.”

“So no sense in praying to Zer anymore?”

She shook her head as she started to tap on the bottom of the box. “I don’t know perhaps those gods who have left can still hear you and help. The current gods wouldn’t be happy if you started to worship someone else… Hey, take a look at this!”

Kasidy pulled a large board out of the footlocker she was working on. She flashed me a smile and tossed the board on the bed. Then she pulled out two hand-sized money bags. The first, she threw over to me, and the second she opened.

Kasidy’s smile grew to a grin. “This one’s full of silver. That’s a lot of pay.”

I opened mine and nodded. “Looks like this one is too.”

“We keep them with us. No need to leave money behind.”

I laughed and nodded. “Agreed. Anything else down there?”

She knelt back down and pulled out a small stack of papers. She waved them at me and then sat down. “Looks like things that I need to read. Bet you are glad I am with you now aren’t you?”

I shook my head. “Yes, picking locks has been helpful. Though I might could have knocked the doors down and broken the boxes.”

She huffed and turned to the papers. As she read, I started trying to pull up information on each item. I didn’t find anything that I didn’t expect just by looking at them. Shirts were shirts; boots were boots; I could even tell the item quality by feel more than anything. As I was finishing up, Kasidy lowered the papers down.

“Well, this silver is payment. 1 silver a month for troop movements. This guy was in the pay of someone to know where and how this outpost worked. Looks like he had been at it for a few years too judging by the amount of silver.”

I sighed, “That might explain some of the story of this place. If he let whoever it was, know about the patrol then they might not have come back from it.”

Kasidy nodded. “Perhaps but I don’t think that’s what is going on with the haunting. At least not fully after all he said something about dying as he did. The place is called the lair of the Forsaken guard.”

“Survivor’s guilt?”

Kasidy scrunched up her face and asked. “What’s that?”

“Survivor’s guilt, it's where someone feels guilty for being alive when someone else died. If the whole unit got wiped out then he might be upset that he wasn’t with them. Let’s move upstairs and see what’s there.”

* * *