Spirit Lords

1. Akentri

The spirit stroked the horse's mane, speaking gently as she groomed the animal.

Eruda watched this moment from her perch above in the loft. It always made her sad, witnessing spirits outside of the Citadel. The living world was too different for them, confused them too much. It made it much harder to let go of their old lives.

That's why Eruda felt it was her duty to transport this lost spirit to the best place for her. Being enclosed inside the Citadel with their own kind encouraged spirits to move on quicker.

Eruda nimbly climbed down from the loft, quietly approaching the spirit. She was quite young, her body just beginning to mature before her death. The spirit must not have lived in these parts, for she wore the traditional braids of the Akentri and bore their horizontal line markings across her exposed shoulders. The girl had to have been poor, however, her dress plain and ragged, barefooted feet filthy.

"Do you like horses?" Eruda asked, her husky voice breaking the peaceful silence.

The spirit did not jump. Spirits didn't startle, blink very often, or smile if it had been a while since they died. It was like they slowly forgot that they were once human. On the other end, spirits who had just died were often times mistaken for human, until time inevitably nibbled their humanity away.

The girl turned to face her, revealing forlorn ebony eyes and a frowny mouth. Eruda had a feeling the girl was quite serious even before she became a spirit. "Of course. Look at this creature and tell me you don't."

Well, Eruda was typically indifferent to horses either way, only paying attention to them when they were taking her somewhere. But it did look like a fine horse, lean and strong, the owner obviously attentive. "I suppose I like the horse," Eruda agreed.

The spirit was quiet for a long moment, deep eyes intense as she studied Eruda. "You think I'm going to the Citadel with you, do you? You're wrong, tracker. I won't be put in a cage!" She suddenly gripped the horse's mane and swung up skillfully upon its back.

Eruda reacted quickly, reaching for the horse's harness, but she was just a little too slow. The horse reared, the spirit goading it to run out the open barn doors. The tracker cursed before running after them, finding her own horse patiently waiting, tied to the nearby fence with a rope. It took her just a few seconds to undo the tie before she was on her own horse, chasing after the fleeing spirit.

Spirits outside the Citadel had all the essential functions. They could speak, hear, see, taste, and feel. The most prominent difference between spirits within the Citadel's walls and the ones outside of it was matter and mass. Spirits outside the walls had bones, muscles, sinew, weight-unlike the wispy, immaterial souls within the boundary created by the Necromancers.

Eruda had tracked this spirit across several farms in the Bitverd lands, which were made up of grassy plains and scattered cities, mostly rural farmland. Eruda figured she was crossing Bitverd to enter her Akentri homelands, though she didn't know if that was in fact true or if the spirit had another purpose for traveling in this direction.

The spirit urged her horse faster, hooves thundering against the flat ground. There wasn't a house for miles, save for the one with the barn where the horse had been stolen from, and there weren't any trees anywhere nearby either. In these lands, it was difficult to hide.

Eruda smirked, knowing she finally left the spirit with no other options. Either they kept running to see whose horse fell to exhaustion first, or the spirit would have to willingly turn herself over. And the Akentri girl had seemed awfully fond of the beast.

This proved to be true, for the spirit slowed the horse to a trot. Eruda caught up easily then and pulled up to keep pace with the spirit. "You don't have to be afraid, you know."

Eruda was startled to hear a breathy sob. She whipped her head almost painfully quick, finding the spirit in bitter tears. Tears were the worst. She understood it, of course, knew that it was sometimes scary for a spirit to move on from their fear of completion of death. She just wasn't very good at handling crying people or spirits. Even though she had been a tracker since she was sixteen and had been doing this for two years now, she never really got any better at comforting.

The waterworks turned into seething rage quickly enough. "Why would I want to go to the Citadel? Where I'll eventually lose my senses one by one. Where I'll forget all my memories, all the things I love and hate, any desire or dream I've ever had. Tell me, what's not to fear about that?"

Eruda picked her words carefully. That was necessary in this line of work. "You're not really living. You may have a solid body and a solid soul right now, but you're going to lose yourself no matter what. Soon enough, you'll just be roaming without any purpose because you forgot everything. Some other tracker may pick you up then and take you to the Citadel to continue the expiration process peacefully, like it should be. But if nobody gets you to the Citadel...you'll become a wraith. Angry, violent, without remorse-you'll hurt people."

The girl let out another gasping sob. "It's easy for you to say. You're alive. You get to go on as you always have." She gripped the horse's mane with trembling hands.

"Someday, I won't be," Eruda replied, squinting against the orange rays of a lowering sun. "Someday I'm going to die, and I'm going to have to go into the Citadel as a spirit. And you know what? I may run far away because it's scary. I don't want to lose myself, same as you, and no other spirit who has crossed those walls ever wanted to either. But it comes down to a choice-do you want to disappear from this world with no blood on your hands, or do you want to go down a raging monster?"

A painful noise escaped the girl's throat. They traveled on for a long time without any words. Eruda knew that when the girl finally decided, they would have to turn back the other way, back through Bitverd, through Hallovale, into Lenro, where the Citadel was located. Presently, they were heading toward Akentri's northern borders.

"I have something to do," croaked the girl in a small voice. She looked at Eruda dead in the eyes then, seriousness ever-present despite wet cheeks and reddened eyes and nose. "Let me go back to Akentri to right a wrong, and I'll go with you to the Citadel. I swear it. It's just..."

Eruda nodded. "Spirits often feel this way. Most have something they want to do or say to find some closure. Spirits with no ties holding them back to this world have a much smoother expiration process."

"I hate that term," the girl spat, dark eyes blazing like coal in the dying light. "Don't say it again. 'Expiration process,' like I'm meat going rotten."

The tracker shifted on her saddle. "I won't if you don't like it. Where are we going in Akentri?"

"I-I didn't expect you to accept this deal. I thought you'd drag me to the Citadel no matter what I said."

Eruda sighed. "Honestly, if you'd met a different tracker, they might've done that. But if it's within my means and the situation, I don't see why we don't make it as easy as possible for you and the rest of the spirits. You're not far enough gone where you'll become a wraith at any moment, and we're close enough to your homelands."

"We're going to visit my family. My name is Toril Akentri."

Eruda didn't think anything of the name until a second later, when she blurted, "Akentri? Like the royal clan of the whole kingdom of Akentri?"

Toril smiled for the first time, though wan. "That's right. I'm the second daughter of the Akentri line. I'll forgive you for your impudence."