Skye is dead.
How she perished is a mystery. All she knows is that she is trapped in After, a makeshift city of souls surrounded by infinite darkness and terrifying monsters that tear ghosts apart.
But while all other ghosts accept the eternity of...
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There I was, waiting at the threshold of the crew's quarters while the Prince of Light and Shadows, the Great Deceiver, After's enemy, kissed each one of his baby birds goodbye.
"Farewell, my little Albrecht," he whispered to the very last chick as he returned it to its nest. "I will return to you soon. I just have to lead some idiot fledglings across the desert."
"Weh!"
He let the chick nip at fingers for a moment, the softest of smiles on his face beneath his hood. Then he skulked past me through the door. "Alright, let us leave," he hissed to me. But he paused with an ear turned to the doorway at the sound of his little birds crying.
I considered laying a hand on his shoulder, then thought better of it. "They'll be okay."
"I know."
He left the lights in the room on for them, and with a swish of his cloak, he and a handful of crows followed me out of the submarine.
I lifted the hatch at the top of the ladder. The wind that instantly buffeted me carried Vale's voice from below the bridge. I climbed out of the porthole, then peeked over the edge of the tower beneath the fins. Vale was painting over Webb's whale while he looked on, sulking.
It turned out the prince was quite the scavenger himself. He shared with us his buried hoard; fruits of his many centuries of existence. After some digging in the sand, he presented to us an armful of lux for fuel. But when Vale tried to take them from him, he retracted them from her reach, tutting, "You must be kind to them!" At that, he whispered to the gems in his language. Their red glow blossomed brighter. "See?"
"Okay, okay," the taller ghost said. And into the fuel tank, they went. She had found more than enough scrap materials to repair her bike. There was even a new trailer hitched to the bike.
And yet, the loner accompanying us still didn't bother to arm himself.
That didn't stop us younger hollows from clutching our unsheathed weapons tight. All of us, no doubt, vividly remembered how he'd very nearly and very easily almost killed us all, empty-handed.
Crow, of course, sensed our weapons pointed at him. "You do not need to do that." Then, in a more mocking tone, added, "I can still kill you faster than you can swing those blades."
Webb scoffed. "You don't scare us."
"Oh?"
The shrouded man lunged for us, yelling with arms raised and fingers curled into claws, like a stereotypical cartoon ghost.
I screamed. I couldn't help it. Webb and Vale both shrieked, too.
Crow just smirked in our direction when we shrank away from him. "Brave little heroes," he muttered, pleased with himself. One of his crows guided him toward the trailer.
