To everyone's relief, the goblin's second key did work with the lock of that windowless warehouse – Chio and Porco were freed. Arabella and Friska told them what happened as they walked towards the dusty main street, where the goblin's body was. Chio crouched down by him, and closed the eyelids of his lifeless, googly eyes. She then began to cry, and the others just stood around her silently. Terry considered squatting down next to her and comforting her, but somehow he felt like that would have been pushy. It was a tender moment. They mourned this stranger who was unlucky enough to spend the latter part of his life (who knows how much time) alone and possessed here in this ghost-town. Paying a bit of respect by just taking in the sadness of this story felt appropriate for all of them, so they were all a little relieved by Chio's natural, unadulterated expression of that grief. Terry too shed a few tears, and he even managed to shoo off the little thought of “what if this ain't manly”. What did it matter, after all?

In due time, the angel stood up, wiped the tears off her face and sighed, then suggested that they should bury the little guy. They all agreed, but Friska proposed to try and find that alleged nest first. Porco, who felt a little lighter after his talk with Chio, stretched his body and said: “All right, let's try to figure out what on earth happened to this town!”

They walked to the dwelling of late Miss Guligang, and looked around on the ground floor. The goblin said that nest is beneath the house, but they couldn't find a trapdoor or anything like that. At last, Porco yelled for the rest of them from outside. At the back of the house, behind a thorny bush, there was a hole in the ground, and a big crack on the foundation, just about wide enough for a human to climb in under the building.

“Friska?” Porco asked.

“What?”

“You are the smallest one of us,” Arabella grinned. “It would be easiest for you to go in there.”

“You are the smallest one of us...” the little woman repeated in a mocking tone.

“But it's true,” said Porco.

“If you don't want to...” Chio started, but the fairy cut her off.

“I'll do it, damn you!”

After she walked in, the angel provided her with that warm, yellow light, shining it through the crack.

“Ew!” they heard her voice echoing from under the house.

“What is it?” Chio shivered.

“A bowl full of dry worms. Arabella, you want it? You could make a nice necklace out of them, I think it would fit you.”

“The hell are you on about?”

Friska soon reappeared with a broken silver watch which must have been that long-lost one of the goblin's father, and a rather old-looking book. “It's the diary of Stefan Springs. The major of Copperdust,” she said as she looked inside it.

“Huh, I suppose that's about the best thing we could come across to learn more about this place,” said Porco.

“The first entry here says it was written... seventy-two years ago, when this town was founded. I will start reading it later.” Friska slammed the book shut with both of her arms – it was half her size.

“Can we go inside somewhere?” Porco wiped his sweating forehead, and Terry nodded in agreement, glancing at the sun that was still quite high up.

They retreated in the inn, and sat down next to each other on the tall, old counter, swinging their legs. After a bit of sitting around, Chio had a sudden realisation, and asked Arabella to go with her outside, to dig out a grave for the goblin before his body starts to stink too much. It was a work better done sooner than later, and the two of them didn't mind the sun anyway.

As they walked back to the warehouse to pick up a shovel, the girl brought up the matter of Porco.

“Huh, he complained to you, didn't he?” Arabella asked.

“Uhm... he was just bothered, I could tell.”

“He complained to you. Weakling...”

“He is a man! You can't blame him!”

“Yea, and I'm a succubus. You know that I see all men as weak. Of course they can still be good people, it's not that I hate him or anything... it's just fun to mess with him to be honest.”

“That's fine I guess, but don't be too cruel with him, okay? He doesn't want to get too addicted to you.”

“Yea, he told me he wants to abstain from me every other day. I'll make sure to stick to that. Even if he comes around begging, I'll be sure to deny him,” she smiled mischievously. “You don't have to tell me twice.”

Chio suddenly stopped in her tracks.

“What?” Arabella turned back to face her, and the girl grabbed her arms and pulled her in, kissing her.

“You haven't really been messing with me lately...” she whispered. “Not in that way.”

“Hehe, is that your inner masochist talking?”

“Maybe.”

Arabella took a hold of Chio forcefully, and put her tongue deep in her mouth, making her gasp. She slapped her ass too, groped her, pushed her against a building's wall, overpowered her.

“We had a lot of things to think about lately, haven't we?” she asked as she took a break from kissing. “Your slut side was neglected... poor girl. Don't worry, I'll be sure to give you what you need!”

Chio stared at her lover with wide eyes, but then she got out of her grasp and shook her head.

“The goblin... his body is deteriorating by the moment. I'm sorry, we should do this later.”

“But it's not gonna be often that we will get alone time like this, no?”

“We can just ask for it. Not like the others don't know about our relationship.”

“Hmm, maybe the boys would even like to watch. That would be fun, right? Not even Terry saw you being properly dominated yet. What would he think?”

“Uhm...” Chio blushed. “I'm not sure...”

“We will see.”

They continued walking towards the warehouse, both a little lost in though.

“Really, it's just that damn fairy making things awkward for us,” the redhead said.

“She is just a bit sensitive, that's all.”

“Sensitive?”

“I think so. Sex is a touchy thing for her. That's not too rare, especially for women. You know, it's very much true that people are normally not as... daring with these things as we are.”

“People normally kind of suck.”

“It's just hard for them.”

“Okay, but it's hard for me too. All my life, being judged meant my head could end up on a spike. That's a pretty big deal.”

“Ah, my poor succubus love... but you know Friska doesn't really hate us, not anywhere near to that degree.”

“Sure. She still makes things awkward though. You can't deny that we would have all sorts of fun much more freely if she wasn't here.”

“That's probably true.”

“Definitely.”

“But in a way, I honestly don't mind it. It's like... she challenges us, and we challenge her, if that makes sense. We escaped from the world, but she still brings a bit of that disapproval. In a small enough dose that it's actually workable. And I feel like that might be a good thing.”

Arabella shrugged. “I don't know about that. She is sort of funny I guess. And she knows some shit, has some cool items. It's okay, I can live with her, I'm just saying.”

They reached the warehouse, and once again double checked that the key they had really works with the lock before stepping in. Just in case, Arabella propped the door open with a box too, and they grabbed two shovels.

“By the way, can't you use your power to create a grave?” the succubus asked as they began walking back.

“Oh.”

 

Back in the inn, Terry, Porco and Friska had a meal. They still had portions of salted beef and dried vegetables, as well as a couple of potatoes for later, but it was only gonna be enough for a few more days, which they reluctantly admitted.

“I guess we will need to hunt,” Porco said.

“Can you?” Terry asked.

“Maybe, but there's no need for it when we have our supernatural friends. There's surely fish in that river, so we should stick around it as we travel south. Chio could easily grab some with her power for us.”

“So we will be provided for by them, huh?” Friska looked up, chewing a small piece of meat. She was in the middle of re-examining her backpack that Stefan stole from them earlier. “Two men fed by and protected by two women, what a twist.”

“Hey, it is what it is,” Porco shrugged. “They are supernatural, we are just mere mortals. That includes you too, by the way. As for me and Terry, we also provide them with something. It all adds up, doesn't it?”

“It does, god damn it does,” the little woman admitted annoyedly.

She lined up all her bottles of potions and some other things she had on the counter, the two young males spectated her as they ate. Fortunately, nothing broke inside the bag, it had a fixed, stable wooden frame, the potions were secured safely in pockets in the inside, and the rest of the bag was filled with blankets. All that she lost were those two potions that the goblin – or the ghost possessing him – threw at them, and the majority of her sleeping powder, which spilled out on the rooftop (there was still enough for maybe two doses, she said).

“This is nitricium, it dissolves metal,” she lifted a vial full of that bright-green liquid they already knew. All of her potion bottles were large for her size, but kind of little for humans. “It's not really harmful for anything else, at least externally. You shouldn't drink it though.”

“Bummer,” Porco chuckled.

“This one is serpentium, a really special eastern formula,” Friska showed them a murky grey bottle. “If it's poured out, it summons snakes. I only have this one vial of it left.”

“That's pretty cool,” said Porco.

Terry did not agree, but he kept that to himself. He disliked snakes. Dangerous ones were pretty rare on Midridge, but he once heard that where they are more common, they can be a menace for livestock.

“This is donkey's tears, a potent healing potion.” The liquid was see-through, very clear, but with sparkly particles. “I guess that's not that remarkable now that we have an angel with us, but it's expensive stuff too, just like the others.”

“I think I know this one,” said Terry. “Someone traded four pigs for a bottle like this in my village. Wanted to heal his sickly mother.”

“And, was it worth it?” inquired Porco.

Terry shrugged. “She got fine, but she was a nasty old hag.”

Friska snorted, and Porco smiled too.

“Is it really just donkey's tears though?” the boy asked. “That ain't that hard to get, is it?”

“That's just an ingredient they used to put in it, and so they named the potion after it,” the fairy replied. “It's a funny name, I guess it's memorable. These days they don't even use donkey tears for it anymore, it can be simply replaced with apple juice. The mix also has blue emerald powder, and the spinal fluid of a deep-sea fish.”

“Impressive. And potion making is not even supposed to be your main forte.” Porco appreciated the knowledge of the fairy.

“No, but I like to know about the things I got my hands on,” Friska straightened her back proudly. “I used to be a librarian in Midridge's biggest library, information was at my fingertips. And I respect the art of potion making, it's like putting magic in a bottle that anyone can use. Same goes for enchanted items, who wouldn't find these things fascinating?”

“Hmm.”

“Anyway,” the little woman lifted up a vial of blood-red liquid. “This is the last kind I have, it's called dragonspike. If you drink it, it gives you temporary fire resistance. It's very spicy though.”

“Like Arabella's ability,” Porco noted.

“Huh?” Terry still didn't know that succubi have that attribute.

“She IS technically a demon,” Porco explained, “which means fire can't hurt her.”

“And I also have the sleeping powder of course,” Friska quickly changed the topic, “and lastly, these things!”

She picked up a small wooden case. Squeezed inside it was something wrapped in a white cloth, it had pretty much no wiggle room. The woman took it out and unwrapped it, revealing several pieces of light-pink minerals.

“Shatterlight,” Porco said. “This, I know well. We once used it to steal a bag of gold from a corrupt politician, way back in the day. Good times.”

“How shrewd. I hope he really was corrupt though,” said Friska.

“Trust me, he was. He worked the crap out of orphan kids in his outback farms, I had friends who escaped from there.”

“What does it do?” asked Terry, glaring at the mineral.

“What it sounds like,” Friska said. “If it's shattered, it emits a lot of light for a short time, and I mean a lot. It makes it impossible to see for several seconds.”

The inn's door opened, Arabella and Chio arrived back. “We buried him,” the succubus declared.

 

As they waited inside the inn for the sun to get a bit lower, Friska started to read Stefan Springs' diary out loud. The early parts of it were concise and clearly written; even if the wording was somewhat similar to the theatrical mannerism of the possessed goblin, it was not nearly as chaotic. The place really was a Cesanitian colony, one financed and arranged by several lords. Apparently, even a prince, the second son of the then Dandenar king was involved in the project. Stefan himself was from a lesser noble house, but he was a childhood friend of one of those lords, that's how he was appointed to be major. From his words, they found out that the premise of the settlement was the same as Newchance's was now, 72 years later: gold found in a nearby river.

“Was it that river, the one we bathed in?” Terry wondered.

“Probably,” Friska answered.

According to the diary, the early days of Copperdust were quite cheerful and optimistic. About a thousand people came here, most of whom previously lived in various Cesanitian villages near the south of the empire, in the domain of those founding lords. Stefan mentioned the bad luck these villagers had: their crops were damned by a series of unusually bad droughts in the recent years, and so they were happy to get a chance at a new life.

“Sounds like that was another reason for this whole endeavor,” said Porco. “Starving villagers are bad news for their landowners too.”

“So they made a gamble,” Friska nodded. “Cause people definitely knew already back then that the Scorched Lands is a dangerous place. You can tell that Stefan was kind of stubbornly trying to look past that. Oh, it's right here: 'Our arrival was smooth and the land we reached welcomed us warmly. If a bad omen was supposed to haunt us, it certainly did a bad job.' Heh, that didn't age well.”

Then there were a lot of words about the construction of the town, the logistics of it, how Stefan kept everything in check, how he led his people, all the while they got continuos support from their home country. The building process spanned over a decade, but it was well planned and effectively done, the people worked hard day and night, and they had the funds for it too. Meanwhile, they really did find some gold – not much, but the major argued that they would be able to focus more on that once the constructions are done, which was their first priority at the time.

“All this effort, and the whole thing gets completely forgotten by the world,” Friska said as she closed the book, finally taking a break. “That's fascinating in and of itself. Quite the discovery we are making here, guys.”

“I have the feeling that something must have went wrong, really wrong,” Chio worried.

“Obviously, we already know that much,” the little woman replied.

“Say, what did that goblin tell you exactly?” asked Porco. “How was he possessed?”

“How?” Arabella looked up. She was lying on the bar counter like a resting lion, lazily but with dignity, which was her usual attitude. The others sat on the wooden floor in a circle around the fairy with the diary.

“The same way any ghost possesses mortals I guess,” Friska shrugged.

“So... if the ghost of Stefan Springs is no longer inside the goblin, then where is it?”

Porco brought up the question that was at the back of all their minds (except Terry's, he somehow didn't think of it).

“Well, it's not that we know a lot about ghosts,” the fairy said, “They are pretty damn rare, and possessions are even more so. But from what we do know about them, it seems like they can't possess someone who is with a group of people. Their way into someone's mind hinges on that someone's sense of aloneness, something like that. The exact mechanic is still debated by scholars, if there even is one. Either way, I'm certain that we are in no danger.”

“But he might possess someone else eventually, no?” asked Chio. “Isn't it weird to move on from here knowing that?”

“I mean, what could we do about it?” asked Friska.

They fell silent for a moment.

“How come people become ghosts?” Terry asked at last.

Friska stood up, “For a while, the academic consensus was that ghosts didn't exist before the great demonic invasion, although now we have some evidence suggesting otherwise. Either way, the demons' dark magic definitely influenced the phenomenon, hence why there were much more ghosts here in the Scorched Lands. Entire armies of orc's souls can be found down here, from the era when hell eradicated their empire. Of course the invasion was fought back, but its after-effects still linger, it put its mark on the entire world, so to speak. We have a living example of that with us.”

“Oh. Hi!” Arabella grinned.

“Either way,” the fairy continued, “it is said that people who do become ghost are almost always very attached to their past lives, they have a hard time moving on. It's...”

“Wait!” Porco raised a finger. “How was it again? He said something like... I have a duty to protect this town for as long as a single building stands- no, sits here. He definitely used the word 'sit', I remember that.”

“What are you suggesting?” Friska asked.

“If there is not a single building left here, that soul might have no choice but to move on,” the man replied.

Chio jumped to her feet. “Arabella!”

“Oh yea, I get it,” said the redhead as she stood up too. She summoned a small flame in her hand, her eyes sparkling with passion. “I always wondered how burning down an entire town would feel.”

“Seriously?” Friska flew up to their face level angrily. “You get off on destruction and chaos, don't you? Demon...”

“Oh, calm your tits!”

“Friska, we just want to...”

“Come on, Chio!” the little woman resisted. “This is a huge discovery we made here, this place is a historic memorial! We can't just burn it all down, there are so many things we could still uncover! We haven't even read the damn diary!”

“But...”

“She kind of has a point,” said Porco. “I'm curious myself.”

“With this book, we could straight up find out what kind of people lived in most of these houses, we could attach names to these abandoned buildings, events that happened here. I could write an entire work on this place!”

“Uhm... you want to stay here for like... multiple days?” asked Terry.

“Yea, I'm not sure how I feel about that,” said Chio. “It's not the most... happy place.”

“That's also fair,” Porco conceded.

“It's not just about destruction,” said Arabella. “I think we should get that damn ghost out of this realm. Every day he still spends lingering here is a day too long.”

“I agree,” Chio nodded.

Friska stared at them angrily for a while, then she landed on the counter, and reached for her rum-bottle.

“We could vote,” Porco suggested.

“I would lose. It's at least three against two, it's already clear.”

“I'm sure you can find out a lot from that diary alone!” Chio said. “And you could write down your findings still.”

“Whatever. But we better go some place where there is alcohol next. I need my own little earthly pleasures.”

“We can get you some alcohol! Right guys?” Chio looked around, and everyone nodded.

“I guess that's it for our plan of going south,” smiled Porco.

“All right, then.” Arabella clapped her hands together. “Let's get this fire started!”