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76 - Bringing a Veil to a Hatchet Fight

  In the light of the fading embers of the foliage, I caught a glimpse of white tentacles emerging from the darkness of in the hexagonal corridor. A heartbeat later, I felt the wraith with my senses, drifting toward me like a cloud of radioactive gas. Okay. Deep breath. Time to test the power of my awesome new ... salt tier. A whole goddamn level-up named after a condiment. That didn’t bode well. I needed to reach sriracha tier before I could handle threats like--

   Princess murmured.

  Right. I was losing my train of thought again. Okay. Less internal monologue, more focus on the spectral monster approaching on horrible snaky leg-parts.

   Princess said.

  I didn’t ask how she’d guessed that. I just let the words calm me as I exhaled and poured spirit into my hatchets again. I felt them change in my hands when mana flowed from the hafts to the heads. One point, two points. They grew denser, yet also lighter. At least that’s what it felt like. Or maybe they were heavier but I was stronger? Or they’d gained layers of power, density of power, yet at the same time they’d also gained a closer connection to me.

  Yeah, let’s stick with that last one. My bond to my hatchets strengthened, scaling with their new power.

  A frostbite chill touched my face. The wraith spread wider as it neared, anemone-tendrils squirming to brush the walls on either side, to fill the corridor, to block my escape.

  I didn’t panic. I bared my teeth at the wraith and thought: I can punch your ass in the spirit world now, you milky can of worms. I shifted my weight. I didn’t have room to maneuver, but I couldn’t let that thing land a single hit on me, not if I wasn’t in my smoke-form. With a flicker of thought, I checked the hatchets were ready. Consecrated, empowered. Or imbued, I guess.

  I felt the mana, in them, solid and primed. And then I, um, attempted to strike through the veil and into the spirit world.

  In other words, I threw a hatchet.

  At that range, with a target spreading across an entire corridor, I couldn’t miss.

  My hatchet spun end over end, leaving a looping trail of smoke behind. A cord of smoke, so thick that even in the darkness my senses felt its braided thickness like it wasn’t vapor but was an uneven, sinewy cord.

  Oh! A chain of smoke.

  A solid chain of smoke issued from the blade, trailing behind the head.

  Or an--excuse the image--umbilical cord. Because I still felt connected to my hatchet, even in flight, like maybe if I concentrated right I could shift its trajectory.

  But I didn’t know how to concentrate right, and it didn’t matter at the moment: the hatchet spun into the outermost, ghostly haze of the wraith ...

  Then thunked into something solid.

  Or actually, it thunked into something spectral. It struck the body of the un-solid wraith and a moment later my other hatchet did the same.

  The wraith shrieked and trembled. Three tendrils slashed toward me, but the spirals of smoke still lingering in the air blocked them. The wraith shrieked again. In shock more than pain, I thought, at the contact of the blades and the chains of smoke.

  I returned my hatchets into my hands and said, “Not so much fun when your prey bites back.”

  The chains of smoke faded and an eel-like tendril speared at me.

  I blocked with a hatchet, but the tendril shot right through it and caught me in the right hip. Threads of pain spread into my thigh and stomach, then started clenching. Tightening. My body cramped. I felt myself squeezing sideways, crumbling like an aluminum can beneath a boot heel.

  I hadn’t imbued the blade! I hadn’t consecrated or empowered or charred the blade.

  Health: 33/60

  Almost half my health was gone in two seconds. Fear touched me again, but even as the pain distorted my body, I forced mana into my hip. Nothing happened except another pulse of agony, so with one last burst of effort I forced mana into my hatchet, feeling the charring blackness spread, and slashed at the tendril burrowing into me.

  My blade sliced through it.

  I chopped the tendril in half.

  The wraith recoiled and with a roar of pain, I fell toward the wraith, my right leg weakened, imbuing my other hatchet as I hacked. I slashed through its ghostly form then imbued and tossed my other hatchet underhand and the chain of smoke unfurled through the creature’s spectral form like a ribbon. A killing ribbon, a razor-edged ribbon that impaled the wraith.

  Its black mouth opened impossibly-wide and its piercing shriek clawed at my ears--but in return, my piercing hatchet stabbed its fucking face.

  It trembled and writhed until the smoke chain faded and then it fled. Without turning, it swiveled its now-cleaved face to its other side and started juddering away, retreating unsteadily toward the garden.

  Or trying to, but screw that. I leaned against the wall to stay upright and followed, my shoulder scraping the trellises, throwing my hatchets again and again, my blades and smoke-chains pumping forward like pistons.

  Every impact tore another hole in the wraith, dug another tunnel in its freezing, spectral cloud. Every impact tore another shriek from the wraith, too.

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  Music to my ears.

  Five feet from the exit to the garden, the wraith finally quieted--then died. Hundreds of spectral eels collapsed into a pile of goo that glowed briefly white before dimming.

  “Punch you in the ghostly dick,” I growled, weak from relief and victory.

  You couldn’t touch wraiths, you couldn’t fight wraiths, you couldn’t beat wraiths--except I had. Once they were no longer unassailably ectoplasmic, they weren’t even tough. Reach through the goddamn veil with hatchets and chop them into the little bite-sized Caspers.

   Princess asked.

  

  

   I bit off the swear. <...ovel. Bullshovel.>

  She let a glimmer of suppressed humor escape.

  “You’re teasing me,” I said aloud.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

   I said, at that outpouring of babble. Then I looted seven pearl beads from the death wraith.

  

  

  

  

  

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