A Caleb Carol

Stave 4: The Last of the Spirits

"Let me guess... future?"

The faceless man nodded.

Caleb looked upon the floating apparition. Its form was that of a lean man, no gargoyles or grotesque monsters here. He wore a long olive green raincoat with red stains at the ends of the sleeves, and dirty gray pants. Across his breadth he held a staff with a crescent moon at its end across his breadth. Through the coat his torso was uncovered by flesh. The body's protective rib cage was completely visible through the coat's slitted opening, encapsulating lungs, heart, and other vital parts. His entire head was covered in a white cloth, secured around his neck with a cord. Caleb wondered why his face was covered, if he could see through it or breathe, to say nothing of the fact he was floating in the air over him or appeared to have no skin.

"You really that ugly?"

The spirit said nothing.

"So what do you got to show me?"

The phantom slowly and smoothly took the staff from its prone position and pointed its crescent end out at the far wall. A faint beam of violet light streamed out at the wall and formed into a vortex, swirling purple and ebony, like a black hole. The phantom shifted his staff back to a resting position.

"Go in there, huh?"

The spirit nodded once.

Caleb let forth a sort of grumbling sigh and walked forward. The ghost floated along side him and the two walked through the rift. A shower of glimmering green sparkles and then they emerged.

A bitter chilling wind was the first thing he noticed. Caleb pulled up the collar on his shirt for protection. He was in a circle of stone pillars. The air was thin, like they were on a mountaintop.

"Where are we?"

The floating phantom pointed with his scepter below. There was a pile of ashes ahead of them on a slab of stone that looked like a funeral pyre.

"It's a rock," Caleb commented.

The phantom pointed onward to the pile.

"Don't say much, do you?" Caleb said as he approached the debris. Not quite sure of what to do, he looked down at the pile. Seeing nothing, he pawed through it. A glint of gold caught his eye. He picked it up. It was a brooch or a large amulet of some kind splotched with char marks. This had to have been what the silent spirit wanted him to find. Why, he had no idea. He didn't recognize it as anything special. Though it was the same size and shape as Oph-

"No... NOOOOOOO!" Caleb screamed as though he had fallen through the chasm of death himself. He threw the brooch down in the ashes and turned to face the phantom. "No, this is not true! This is not going to happen!"

The spirit did not respond vocally, but waved his scepter in an arc over their heads. The scene changed from an aerie to a cold underground lair, walled in stone. Cobwebs and clumps of spider silk coated the walls, clutched in every corner, every crack.

"What's this?" Caleb angrily demanded.

The phantom lifted the staff and pointed behind him. He turned and saw a gigantic cocoon nestled within a niche in the wall blanketed with sticky silk. The cocoon was split open, ripped down the middle in a gory bloody mess. Stringy entrails and blood-soaked strands of silk were spilt out. Caleb bent down to a knee in the dirt for closer inspection. There was one mass that wasn't just a random organ, it was a hand draped out of its prison, and despite the dried blood it was covered in, he could tell it was very muscular and had dark brown skin.

"Gabriel."

Behind him the spirit waved his scepter again. Before Caleb's very eyes, where he was still on the ground, the scene morphed into a fiery sulphourous grotto. The heat was sweltering as the lava pits to the left and right boiled and bubbled over. Instead of a bloody chrysalis, there was now a bloody stain on the rocky cavern ground. Giblets and bits of meat littered the floor, like some great animal had exploded here. In front of him he noticed a single dismembered finger, a finger with an emerald ring still around it. Ishmael's ring.