Tales of Midbar: Religious Intolerance

I had an uncomfortable night’s sleep full of images of burning goats and Yoho and Tianamet arguing about who I should worship.

It must have been shortly after midnight because only yellow light from street lamps was coming through the small windows, high in my bedroom wall. I was shocked to see two children, I think girls, standing in the corner of the room. They were both dark-haired faharnis, dressed in clothing with lots of patches and different colored bits, with wide, floppy collars and baggy trousers. In hindsight, I’m not sure how I could have seen them so clearly in the dim light. The smaller one was clinging to the bigger one and they both seemed very frightened.

“Please help us!” said the bigger girl.

Then they vanished.

I sat up in bed and screamed.

The Benai Haprihagfen arrived as I was having breakfast, feeling terrible.

“You look awful,” said Cloud.

“I didn’t sleep well and then I saw two ghosts this morning,” I said.

“Do you mean two ghosts or one ghost of two people?” asked Breeze.

“What?”

“Technically a ghost is an image of a past event ...”

“Usually,” said Cloud.

“... it can have more than one person in it or perhaps be an image of a building or animal or something.”

“Although we see ghosts all the time,” said Irvis, “and ... well never mind.”

“Do you have to talk about such creepy things?” said Mum. “No wonder you can’t sleep although I don’t think Yoldasia and your grandmother putting spells on her helps.”

“Grandma Ice has never put a spell on her,” said Breeze. “She just tried to remove Yoldasia’s Old Magic spell but as there’s no way to detect Old Magic, we don’t know if it worked.”

“Can you just try to avoid upsetting her with religion," said Mum, "Old Magic, associate magic, ghosts, psychics, magi, magises, whatever!”

“We didn’t say anything about magises,” said Breeze.

“This ghost wasn’t two girls about your age,” asked Cloud, “perhaps a bit younger, dressed like they were from around the end of the Cataclysm and one asked you to help them?”

“Cloud!” said Mum.

“How did you know?” I asked.

“That’s what I saw this morning,” said Breeze. “I had Mum and Dad check the records and they weren’t Benai Haprihagfen and Minris was pretty much deserted at the end of the Cataclysm apart from the Vineyard so it didn’t really make sense.”

“Oh,” I said, “wow, that’s weird.”

“Most likely it’s an effect of the Old Magic,” said Cloud.

“You were both hit by those fire things,” said Irvis.

“It just seems a very strange way for that to affect us,” said Breeze.

We got to school and found a lot of the other kids, mostly girls standing in a group in the playing field.

“This is your fault isn’t it!” shouted Rigar.

“What is?” asked Cloud.

“Why we’re all seeing ghosts.”

“Well it’s mostly the girls,” said Tenenet.

“The girls saw them in their rooms in the night,” said Rigar, “I saw them when I was walking here across the park.”

“Two faharni girls dressed in late Cataclysm clothing who asked for help,” said Tenenet.

“And you’re two faharni girls,” said Giruka, pointing at me and Breeze.

“Most the girls in Minris are faharnis,” I said. “And we’re still alive!”

“They both had black hair,” said Breeze, pointing to her head.

“How do you know?” asked Rigar.

“We saw them, it, I think it’s technically just one ghost,” said Breeze.

“Actually it clearly isn’t a normal ghost,” said Cloud. “A normal ghost is restricted to a very small area, usually just one room of a building, and is only seen by one or two people at a time on odd occasions.”

“You weren’t hit by Yoldasia’s summoning spell,” I said, “were you, you weren’t in the theater and most the bits of the fireball went east?”

The rest of them stared at me as if I was a lunatic.

“May I point out that a ghost is merely a psychic image of a past event,” said Narim. “Also there is such a thing as ghost magic.”

“It reveals past events as ghosts,” said Breeze, “and it doesn’t work very well. This ghost doesn’t seem to be an image of a past event as the only children in Minris at the end of the Cataclysm were Benai Haprihagfen and they didn’t dress like these girls, they wore pre-Cataclysm clothing like we do on tourist duty.”

“This is almost certainly the effects of forbidden Old Magic by the mage, Yoldasia,” said Cloud.

“Can you just stop scaring us?” said a first year girl.

“Nobody uses Old Magic any more,” said Narim.

“Yoldasia does!” me and the Benai Haprihagfen all said together.

“As the town’s greatest mage,” said Narim, “this is clearly the result of the Winemakers messing with forces they don’t understand!”

“Reading magic books doesn’t make you a mage!” said Breeze.

“If you’re such a great mage,” I said, “and you claim that we did this ghost, then you do something similar!”

Narim stared at me for a moment and said, “We’re not allowed to bring artifacts into school.”

“That wouldn’t stop a real mage,” said Breeze, “they have associates bound to them so they don’t need artifacts.”

“Well you do something then!” said Narim.

“Don’t!” said Dren. “Remember what happened with Pardnis’s arm!”

Narim looked at Breeze and then me with horror as the rest backed away.

“If you don’t attack us nothing’s going to happen,” said Breeze.

“You can’t be magi,” said Narim, “I’m the mage but I didn’t do Pardnis’s arm!”

The yellow light from the street lights was starting to be tinted red by Aleph. Again the ghost, I had trouble thinking of it as just one entity, was in the corner of my room.

“Please help us!” said the bigger girl.

This time I didn’t scream. Most ghosts were harmless and Ice had told me that Yoho would protect me from the rest. Well I had Tianamet with me!

The idol!

You know what I mean!

I’m explaining how it seemed to me at the time!

“How can I help you?”

They just vanished without saying anything else.

“Grandma Ice says this ghost isn’t behaving like a normal recording type nor a minion of Streculic,” said Breeze.

She’d seen it again as well and we were discussing it as we walked to school.

Perhaps I should explain that Winemakers believed that Streculic existed but didn’t consider him to be a god.

“Streculic’s minions are very deceptive,” said Cloud, “so it could be them being unusually sneaky.”

“The other possibility is Old Magic,” said Breeze, “perhaps interacting with a real ghost, although it doesn’t make historical sense.”

“If it’s a recording of a past event it’s possible the girls weren’t killed,” I said, “and nobody thought the incident worth recording.”

“How do we know that Eleprin and Breeze aren’t being influenced by the Old Magic thing?” asked Irvis.

“Or it could have been girls who’d been brought to Minris without anybody knowing,” said Breeze.

What seemed like all the girls from school, along with Narim, Rigar and a couple of other boys were gathered on the playing field waiting for us.

“You’ve all seen the ghost again haven’t you?” I asked.

“Every girl in town between about five and twelve,” said Tenenet.

“And several other people,” said Rigar. “I saw them in the park on the way home and again coming here. Perhaps I shouldn't take the short cut.”

“Have these done anything apart from asking for help?” asked Cloud.

“And disappearing,” said Rigar.

“The odd thing is,” said Narim, “the girls see them in their rooms at about three in the morning ...”

“I’ve also seen them in the park,” added Dren.

“So have I,” said a girl from Cloud’s class whose name I didn’t know.

“Everybody else sees them in Fortress Park at different times,” said Narim.

“Can I just say that I’ve never seen one, proving that I’m more grown up than the rest of you,” said Nendia.

She was in Cloud’s class but looked too old to be in beginner school. She already wore a bra and needed it. Nobody much liked her because she was always cranky.