Infiltrating the Human Isles

Once the morning actually came, an uneasy haze had settled over his chest.

For a long, long while he had woken up to green skies. Whether within the spiring plinths of the castle or from an upper floor parcel of the Time Master's domain. Floating within it's orbit from a long rod.

Dei could enjoy a panoramic view of shifting land forms, floating tribes of newly formed ghosts. Sometimes savage monsters hunting close by.

Dei packed from a simple rucksack. A souvenir of a now dim, dusted orb. Collected and pieced into the shape to portray the original owner. An inconsequential human soldier with an MK at his back.

Dei stripped the bed of it's sheets. Smooth silk stitched with golden ivy. Also packed was a gun.

It was some kind of ectoplasmic fuel weapon. The lifeblood turned to fuel and a fatal charge. Enough to kill a ghost with pink energy. Mid-level.

He waited along for Clockwork, fiddling with one of the many toys he may never get to see again.

From what he could gather, before the insides had become flooded with ectoplasm and ghost energy, the square was supposed to digitize some code in a disc and relay it as pictures.

And it also made a whiz and click noise at each push of one of the top buttons!

"Having fun Dei?" Clockwork asked softly.

He jolted, quickly grabbing his bag.

"Is it--"

"Yes child," he confessed. "However remember afterward there is good chance you will never come back."

He found that idea didn't wholly bother him. Never taking the throne, never... seeing the green sky.

Dei, was ultimately content with that fact.

Then again he had never been allowed to be loved.

Not when his Father was alive nor after when he was the only ghost left to punish for centuries of evil and vice.

Except for this elusive, suspect Master of Time.

Clockwork had defended him. Unconditionally. He spoke softly to him when he didn't have to, putting pain staking hours in each bulbous bloom of human knowledge... And willingly spit in the face of some unknown, begitten future with shit grin on his face.

Dei consumed Clockwork in a hug. "Thank you so much Father," he breathed into the purple robes.

All so he, a spoilt ghost Prince, could find it in himself what to do. Who to be.

With gentle, careful hands he returned the gesture of affection. Such a gift was... Solace Occasum.*

"You're welcome. My child."

"I'll make you proud!"

"I know you will."

************************

Dei roared in vexation, heavy temptation cutting into his insides to just shred the map!

Not only was he no more than wisp in his exhaustion of flying and weaving about under and over several lesions and regions, the destination, fabled ghost portal was a thirty miles off at least!!

Paranoid old ghost choosing a torturously circuitous route.

Studying close, all the while hitched in between spiked thorns of Orphelius Vera and some gelatinous strain of Woodrook sap, he found that a straight shot across, skirting all the most savage of lairs in that quadrant mind you, would afford him a much larger window.

Ha! Take that!

No one would get revenge for his Wanted posters on his watch.

Dei blasted ahead, ripping apart slabs of hideaways, homes, and foliage on his path creating a trail of gnarled destruction.

All of it gaining fast with an impressive snap of the wind.

Time to bounce.

He made a low dive, shielding his face with a grotesque, oversized sickle blade arm.

The slashing weapon was able to make swiss cheese of the worst.

The disgruntled howls and curses shouted at him were a whole other matter.

Until...

With a rush of air and condensed vapor the Zone split. A tear in the very fabric of it's existence requiring a moment of reverent awe.

Some stood stiff, paler than if the Final Death itself had come for them. The moment their cores would stop humming or rendered obsolete.

Sometimes, sometimes it even happened in the Living Born. Whenever they went to the place only allowed them; having Obsessions based on tangible matter and people, much less than any concept or idea no matter how much raw desire clouds that.

Once finished, they do not dissolve.

Only this one, Dei couldn't say so.

Oh he had the body of a Human. Legs and hands, upright on those two legs. Lanky and from what he could discern youthful.

All that ectoplasm.

Raw energy.

His map pulsed with green light in his pocket.

Time restarted itself, speeding past as he did so with the urgency and cutting precision of a bullet.

Core flaring with magnetic power, converting the energy from his usual fluid metamorphosis. Now a snapping, rigid conduit.

A boom of epic proportions went off in his skull.

Hands grasped onto warm, living flesh sending a shock through his system.

Cold, unliving flesh.

Living flesh.

Beating and bleeding.

Unfeeling in his chest. Numb and cold.

Veins pumping.

Dying. Burning.

Dei held on for all he was worth. This human, so young and so fragile, his own home left behind, so cruel and unfair. It's energy flowing into his core and expended just as quickly to undiluted substance.

The boy made an awful crack when he was thrown forward.

Slumping on a metal wall Dei had no sense of himself to discern any other detail.

In fact, he was much more focused on a body that could only be unravelling.

An electric charge ripping out nerves like faulty wiring, brain melting, and scream raised in such a pitch his eyeballs throbbed.

He was a monster.

He was a bull head.

Human.

Beast.

Mist.

The green conduit, languid but fierce then dispersed, bursting into photovoltaic spores.

Finally allowing a spasming Dei Dark to collapse in exhaustion.

"DANNY! Danny!"

"An-- an ambulance-- Jazz--"

The tone grated into his already pained skull.

"Oh god! Oh my God Sam he's spasming! What-- what do we--!"

Distressed and garbled. Utterly wild in it's urgency.

Until a female cut sharp into the disarray.

"Let-- just let. Me. Think."

"And what about the ghost!"

The frayed thread of a life fading made Dei watch the now named Danny's eyes open.

As they leaked a toxic green sap, the color of his eyes slowly burning away to visceral, gauzy white.

"Gh-- ghoooo--"

Only to cough ferociously, spewing bubbling and burning ectoplasm on already raw, rough skin.

*Original phrase is Solis Occasum and means, in Latin, "the setting of the sun."