Ghent’s nod went unnoticed by Elayra. Her gaze shifted fearfully to their surroundings and to Drust. She could not decide which fate she feared meeting more: the ghost's cold, deathly fingers, or the wrath of a Curse-driven Drust.
	She looked back to Ghent when the boy suddenly moved. A scowl on her face, she almost expected him to have passed out. Instead, she found him sitting on the ground in a meditative position. 
	She glanced to the dagger he had dropped, and her eyes narrowed. She could yell at him for that later. As much as she hated it, Ghent was their only hope at getting out of this mess.
	“No matter what, Ghent,” she began in nearly a whisper, struggling to keep a tremor from her voice, “focus on contacting them. Nothing else. I’ve got your back.”
	She stepped so she stood squarely in front of him. She held her sword at the ready, standing guard. Her eyes darted vigilantly about the trees. The light was already nearly gone. The grayness of the approaching night quickly replaced the last golden streams that had pierced through canopy, threatening to snuff out what little light remained beneath the thick foliage above.
	She glanced to Ghent, his eyes shut tight and arms wrapped around himself. Her attention snapped back to Drust as he stirred yet again. He groaned heavily and his arm twitched. It rose jerkily toward his chest.
	He was waking up.
	Thinking quickly, Elayra swiftly shrugged out of Drust’s large pack and let it drop to the ground. She knelt beside it, her gaze shifting to Drust every other second. She stuck her saber in the ground beside her, then unbuckled the pack. With the visible innards nothing more than a gaping hole, she reached inside. She dug around frantically, searching for something, [i]anything[/i] she could use to tie him up.
	She pushed aside metal gadgets and wooden boxes. She thought she felt a scabbard that did not belong to his katana, but she spared it little more than a fleeting thought and kept digging. She reached in until even her shoulder was nearly consumed by the pack. 
	The rough, woolen fabric of his cloak brushed against her hand. Her fingers closed around it, and she pulled it out. It would have to do.
	She grabbed her saber then hurried to Drust. She knelt at his feet and once more fed the blade of her sword to the ground, the metal resting between a couple of the vines snaking their way about the forest floor. Scrunching the cloak so it created as thin of a length of fabric as possible, she set to work wrapping it around him.
	Instinctively, his legs pulled away. Gritting her teeth, she trapped his legs with the garment then forced the cloak around them.
	Drust moaned, the sound long as consciousness sluggishly returned to him. One hand reached up to his forehead, and the other formed into a fist, his fingers scraping lines into the dirt.
	Cackles and echoic battle cries began floating through the woods. Unlike the indistinct whispers of the day, these echoed about the trees loud and clear. As she worked, flashes began to appear steadily, yet randomly, between the trees. Wispy figures in the shapes of people appeared and vanished in the blink of an eye. The gentle breeze turned into a stronger, freezing wind. It sent a shiver down her spine as it mussed with Elayra's tangled hair, making it billow about her face and adding another difficulty to her task. Yet, the spirits still kept their distance, as if waiting, watching. But for what? To see if Drust did their job for them?
	She shook her head and clenched her teeth harder. It did not matter. She could worry about that when she needed to.
	With the garment wrapped around his legs a couple times, Elayra tied its ends together near his knees as tightly as she could. Though it would not hold him for long, she hoped it would be enough to at least trip him up and give her—and Ghent—a few precious extra seconds.
	Still kneeling, she turned to face Ghent. She opened her mouth to snap an impatient, ‘Well?’ but she froze, her mouth going slack.
	Ghent still sat where she had left him, her dagger embedded into the ground beside him. Only now, his body was as see-through as the spirits that haunted the forest.

[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/olp6rXf.png?1[/img][/center]
	Time is a cruel thing, especially when it seems to be working against you. For Ghent, time was not something he had to waste, yet still it moved treacherously around him. Despite his efforts, it felt like nothing was happening. With Elayra’s order to concentrate no matter what now faded, only the quiet surrounded him as he conjured the best mental image of a ghost fox as he could.
	An excruciating moment passed after he called out. Nothing. A whole lot of nothing. Or, perhaps, [i]too much[/i] of nothing. Even the gentle breeze that had ghosted through the woods did not disturb him. The temperature had even settled into a lukewarm state, making the air unnaturally still and empty.
	Without warning, sensations flooded over Ghent. A cool mist brushed against his skin, and a scent somewhere between smoky incense and festering rot toyed with his nose. Foggy white tendrils pulled from the mist and whipped around him amidst a world that had turned slate gray. Voices rushed by his ears, there one second and gone too fast to make out what they had said before another replaced the last. Should he try, no matter how much he may strain, he would find his legs frozen in place, unable to stand, to move anything below his neck.
	The emotions seeping through Hallow Forest intensified. Terror and rage soaked into his very soul as if their only purpose in life—or death—was to see him torn asunder from the inside. The tendrils swirled dizzyingly around him, moving faster and faster until the many blurred into one.
	“Enough.”
	Though the feminine voice was soft, it sliced through the cacophony of thousands of disembodied words. The tendrils recoiled, cowering away from Ghent, and the emotions receded into the depths from whence they had come. A calm settled around him, the tendrils twisting irritably a few yards away from him.
	“Not exactly the customary greeting,” the voice echoed around him, “but under the circumstances, I suppose it will suffice.”
	Further away, the spectral fog parted, forming a path. A glittering emerald mist swirled amidst the clearing. It condensed before him, until it formed a translucent figure striding slowly toward him. A flowing green dress hugged the figure's curving bodice. She held her dainty fingers steepled in front of her, her long sleeves draping toward the ground. The hem of her dress swirled and shimmered impossibly around her feet, the fabric rustling like windblown leaves.
	The closer she grew to Ghent, the more corporeal her form grew. Yet, it never fully shed its pale, ethereal beauty. Her hair, its front drawn behind her head, nearly glowed with the fiery colors of autumn. Her skin was white and as powdery-looking as freshly fallen snow.
	She stopped a few feet from Ghent. Her eyes, greener than spring’s fresh buds, stared down at him, their fathomless depths filled with unimaginable anguish. She unhurriedly separated the tips of her fingers, turned one hand toward him, then waved it in front of her in a slow, fluid motion.
	More of the emerald mist swirled around Ghent, a cool breath of a wind rising within its spiral. It lasted only a couple seconds before it sunk toward the ground and vanished into the grayness beneath him, the invisible force immobilizing him melting away with it.
	The woman returned her hands to their steepled position.
	“Welcome, young vinifcium.” Her head nodded fractionally in greeting, her voice simultaneously sweet and sorrowful.