The dank air clung to her like a second skin, adding another layer of discomfort to the already unpleasant pitch darkness of the partially flooded tunnels. Usually she’d conjure lights to help her see, but she needed to save all her energy to deal with whatever Cailyn might try to do to break this seal - assuming she came for this one. Instead, she used a flashlight for illumination - though the narrow beam did little to push back the gloomy darkness, while casting eerie glimmers off the knee-high water that filled the room.

She perched on one of the intact crypts within the large burial chamber to avoid standing in the cold, stagnant water. Getting sick right after getting her dream body wasn’t exactly what she would call ‘ideal.’

Unfortunately, the tunnels didn’t have the decency to be quiet in the eerie, damp darkness. There was an ever-present keening chorus reverberating in the distance, amplified by the presence of the water. Occasionally, a fragment of speech, a moan, or a scream would echo in the nearby darkness, prompting her to swing her flashlight around to try and catch the source.

Hours ticked by, and with no signal on her phone, she had no way to check on Aiden. Nathaniel hadn’t even reached out via communication spell to keep her informed.

She dreaded the feeling that she might have been forgotten, though that was a fleeting worry. Greater was the fear that if something happened at the Underground, she’d have no idea for hours - days, even. She’d been told to wait here… but not for how long.

 

As time slipped by, losing meaning, the wailing became almost a comfortable background noise. The shrieks and moans became like birdsong breaking the monotony. Voices became more frequent. She swore she could hear conversations, could even participate in them, though her attempts seemed to startle the ghostly participants.

The darkness had almost become meditative at a point. Until she heard a new sound. The sudden slosh of water from the far end of the chamber. It was faint… but might as well have been a thunderous boom for its peculiarity. She whipped the beam of light over towards the sound, finding ripples in the water. It would be easy to write them off as something falling into the water - loose masonry perhaps - but the ripples were trailing in a way that suggested they were following movement.

‘Great,’ she thought, ‘now I have tunnel gators or something. Hopefully it’s just some super lost fish.’

Another sloshing sound, this one louder, and uncomfortably closer. Again Ashe swung the beam towards the sound, catching ripples. Except now they were moving in a different direction. Not closer… it wasn’t advancing towards her, at least. But that meant it was playing with her.

Or she was just going crazy down here, thinking a stray fish or something was this menacing enemy.

Yet another slosh, but this one came from the opposite wall. This time her light caught something - an arm, just before it vanished into the dark beyond the beam. 

Not a fish. Not a tunnel gator.

A person.

“Cailyn?” she asked nervously.

A voice chuckled back. A male voice.

A familiar male voice.

Another slosh. This one was closer, and as she swung the beam over towards it, she landed upon a face.

 

A familiar face.

 

Her old face.

 

She screamed, and nearly dropped the light.

“Well that’s no way to greet yourself,” Christian snarked.

‘This can’t be real. This can’t be happening. How is he… I…’ Her thoughts went into an uncontrolled tailspin descent into chaos.

“What the fuck is going on?!” Ashe demanded, standing up on her dry vantage point.

“Glad you asked. You see, our special friend needed someone to take care of the last seal, since his pet stopped replying to commands a little bit ago. It’s a shame, really, Cailyn is hotter than hell. If she’s still alive, I look forward to getting a piece of that.” Chris cackled, taking another sloshing step forward.

“No, you can’t be here, you can’t be me. This is an illusion, a trick or something!”

“Oh, I’m no trick, sweetheart, and I’m definitely not you. Not you anymore, at least. I’m all the little pieces of you that our mutual friend collected over the years. A little here, a little there. The reason you were always so run down, and here you were thinking it was just run of the mill depression!” He laughed again.

“Our… mutual friend? Who are you talking about?”

“Oh, I think you know… tall, dapper fellow, bit of a Louisiana accent.”

“Boucher!” she shouted in sudden realization.

Of course it was him. All the little touches over the years, all the strange instances of chills up his spine, and the fact that he always felt a little worse after each visit to the bokor’s shop. 

“Bingo!” Chris laughed. “So… about that seal. I don’t suppose you’re just going to let me break it, huh?”

“Over my dead body!” she snapped.

“That can be arranged.” He thrust a hand out towards Ashe, causing the shadows to curl around his fingers before firing off a blast of concentrated darkness.

Ashe almost immediately lost sight of the projectile, then felt it slam into her chest and send her backwards off the crypt into the water. 

“Oh, don’t make this too easy for me, now…” 

The water around her took on a life of its own, compelled by magic, trying to hold her down, trying to force its way into her lungs.

Chris easily waded over to her like the water was no obstacle at all, looking down at her. “Well, this certainly wasn’t as fun as I hoped. Oh well. I’ll take good care of your life, promise.” With that, he turned back to the seal - the crypt upon which she’d been standing

He raised his hands, tapping into the power from Boucher and channeling it into the crypt. The sound of stone cracking and crumbling preceded the splashing of the stones sloughing off into the water.

Ashe struggled to force the water out of her lungs and propel herself to the surface. Whatever her double was doing, it wasn’t something she had ever known how to do.

There was one trick she knew though… and it was going to hurt like a bitch. She tapped into her magic, twisted it, and released it as a surge from her body.

An electrical surge.

Chris felt every muscle in his body immediately tense and set his nerves on fire with inescapable pain. He couldn’t even scream.

Ashe would be writhing beneath the water if her muscles could move. Thankfully, the water had stopped trying to drown her, and was now succeeding in drowning her as she could no longer hold her breath.

As the current began to fade, Christian felt his body struggling to remain standing, exhausted from the severe shock. If it wasn’t for his magic, he’d never have remained conscious. He whirled angrily to face down the roiling water where Ashe was drowning. He reached under the water and grabbed her shirt, pulling her up out of the water.

“That… was a very stupid trick, Ashleigh, or Ashley, or whatever your full fucking name is… but it didn’t work. I got your fucking seal anyway. Now the Underground is wide open.”

Ashe’s vision was starting to go dark. She couldn’t get air into her lungs. She was going to die here…

“Not here, not today…” a voice whispered in her ear - or perhaps in her mind.

She felt pressure on her chest, pushing down into her ribs… compressing her lungs. A violent spurt of water burst forth from her mouth, and she began coughing up the rest of it. The scant light, being what it was down here, returned to her eyes.

“Oh? You’re not quite dead yet… but I can take care of that,” Christian gloated. “I’m stronger than you ever were or will be, thanks to Boucher.”

“You’re… wrong…” she gasped out, trying to catch her breath after having nearly drowned.

“Oh? Is that so?” He laughed. 

“Yeah… cause I can do something you never could… as a guy.” Ashe grinned sloppily, aware of how delirious she sounded.

“Oh really.” It was a statement, not a question. “What is that? Drown?” he mocked, shoving her back under the water.

Ashe reached out to the darkness around them - to all the malcontent spirits with whom she’d spent so long becoming eerily familiar.

She remembered being able to talk to ghosts as a kid. Being able to ask them to do things. Then she remembered being sealed, and all that went away.

But the seal was gone now. And she was older, stronger.

Her mind called out, pleading. ‘Please, save me…’

His hands left her shirt, and she was free to break the surface once again. A dim blue glow now illuminated the burial chamber as a number of pale orbs swirled around Christian, who swatted uselessly at them.

“What the fuck is this?!” he barked, swinging at the orbs with a hand shrouded in shadow.

“My gift…” she sputtered as she shakily rose to her feet. 

The swarm of lights grew more intense as more orbs joined in, one after another until dozens swirled around Christian.

“You think this little light show illusion will save you?” Chris shouted, swatting another few of the orbs away.

“Yeah. I do… because they aren’t lights or an illusion.” Her gaze hardened. “They’re spirits… and you’ve made them angry.”

The spirit orbs began piercing in and out of Christian’s body like spectral bullets, swarming violently. He started screaming as they dragged away piece after piece of his soul - the stolen fragments of it twisted by Boucher.

Before long, the body began to dissolve, turning gray and lumpy - like overworked clay. The screams faded, and the swarm of spirits calmed until it was just an almost serene cloud of firefly-like lights.

“Thank you,” Ashe said, leaning on the broken remains of the crypt for support.

The spirits gently floated down to surround her, and began to pass through her. Unlike with Christian, they seemed calm, slowly drifting through her body as if moving on an unfelt breeze. She expected pain, but instead… she felt a strange sense of wholeness that she hadn’t realized she was missing. 

‘What’s going on?’ she wondered as the warmth filled her body.

‘The pieces that were lost have been returned, fraulein,’ one of the spirits swirling through her ‘replied.’

‘You are whole again, junge hexe,’ another spirit added.

“Thank you,” she said, barely above a whisper. “Is there… anything I can do to repay you?”

The spirits swirled lazily through the air in front of her… and she felt their response more than heard it.

‘Put us to rest.’

She had no clue how to do that. How do you put a spirit to rest? She couldn’t tell them that, though… not after they had helped her. She closed her eyes and focused on the spirits, on her gratitude to them for saving her life, for restoring her… and she bid them rest. Rest peacefully, in whatever fashion they choose to do so.

The spirits pulled away, swirling in a large cloud of lights, before flickering and dispersing. The eerie sounds from before didn’t resume, and the crypt felt suddenly… peaceful.

Sadly, there was no more time to linger and look for other spirits to send on to the afterlife. Her seal had broken. She had failed. Which meant she needed to get back and find out if Aiden was okay, and if she could help him.

She hoped beyond hope that he wasn’t hurt.