#sadghost

i have a bunch of these saved up from @oh-no-another-idea @thegreatobsesso @reneesbooks @viscerawrites and @indecentpause, so here’s a tasty chunk from the end of chapter six of Awakened Witch, because i have, as mentioned, finally locked the boys in a room~

(additional context: the bars are solid bone, there’s no door or keyhole, and the room has one tiny slit window so there’s barely any light either. Sorrow has been kicking the bars for a while but it’s accomplished exactly nothing. vren's feeling claustrophobic because his ring of shadow teleporting isn't working, leaving him with no way out at all for the first time properly in literal decades)

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“Those bars aren’t going to break. She’s got more magic than us, and somehow she’s taken what we did have,” Vren said. He turned fully from the window, leaning heavily against the wall. “Most of which was mine,” Sorrow said. He touched the bracelets on his arms, mouth a thin line. There still weren’t as many there as there had been before they’d faced down Cidra. “Tell me, did she steal your magic, or just the power of whatever trinket it is that provides it?” Vren carefully didn’t touch his ring. “All that matters is it doesn’t work.” “But if it’s a trinket,” Sorrow said, slowly, as if talking to a particularly stupid child, “you could hold it out of the window and beyond her influence, and then perhaps it might work.” “If it was a trinket, I would already have tried that,” Vren said, for he had, and it had done nothing. “And I wouldn’t still be here listening to you.” “You’d leave me behind, little ghost?” Sorrow pressed a hand to his chest. “After all I’ve done for you? I’m sorely wounded.” Vren shoved away from the wall and slammed Sorrow into the cell bars, one arm hard across his throat, the other on the hilt of his knife. “Call me that one more time—” “And what? Will you kill me if I do, little ghost?” Sorrow retorted, exaggerating the petty nickname as much as was physically possible. They were so close Vren could feel the exhale of the syllables on his face, and the claustrophobia snarled into anger, and his hand tensed around the knife hilt and he pictured slamming it up beneath Sorrow’s ribs, a slower death than he usually granted, blood and pain and a body rotting across from him for hours or days or weeks until the lich came to play with her captive pets. He dropped his arm and stepped away. Sorrow rubbed at his neck. “Sensible of you—our undead friend would only bring me back, and then you’d have to kill me all over again.” “Shut up.”

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Sad ghosts are somewhat common, but I still wanted to let feelings go, and it was the only way I could express it. 

As if sensing his annoyance, Sorrow glanced over. He said one more thing to the proprietor, then unfolded himself and strolled across the room to take Rahmed’s place at Vren’s table. “Eavesdropping is a terrible habit,” he began, “but I simply couldn’t help but overhear your troubles.” “Unhear them,” Vren said into his coffee. Sorrow leaned forwards, stretching half his torso across the table with his chin in his hands. His tail twitched back and forth behind him. “If only you knew a group of highly skilled mercenaries available for hire who would happily go forth amidst monsters and ghosts—” Sorrow smirked around the word “—to collect that which your Zahin so dearly misses.” “If only.” “Oh, come now, avrai—hire me,” Sorrow’s cyan eyes burned into him, the bright glint that passed for a pupil like a star. “You’ll get your shipment, and I’ll get to see these Wilds of yours for myself. It’s not as if you can’t afford it. I have it on very good authority you have rather a fat purse these days.” Sorrow’s money hung heavy at his belt. Vren resisted the urge to touch the pouch. He could spend days or weeks fighting with Rahmed about the tunnels, or he could go in there himself, have Sorrow and his cronies collect whatever Rahmed’s people had abandoned in their haste to flee shadows, and be back in Zhirasea inside the month. “Fine.” He drained his mug and thunked it on the table. “If only because something out there might kill you.” “If you really wanted that, you’d do it yourself,” Sorrow said, smirking. “And then which rich idiot would fatten my purse?”

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