driftfleet | { so have a little mingle }

[....

....

Well, it's not like he's the first... still, Mikleo can't help sighing.]

Why salt, out of curiosity? I've never heard of that method before.

[Back home you just smack them with seraphic artes until they're purified.]

[oh no don't ask him--]

Well actually, salt's been around as a way to purify for a long time -- in religion and in supernatural folklore. The idea is that salt is a natural element from the earth and was even used as an antiseptic; it's been used to combat demonic forces and to chase off witches, as a ward against evil or something not truly cleansed. For ghosts, it's essentially effective because they're unnaturally trapped in the veil between the living and the dead.

But for demons, it's likely... um...

I mean -- anyway. Salt rings are really helpful for protection, for hunters.

Hunters.

[Like. A profession?]

....So. You hunt spirits.

[He may or may not be j u d g i n g you.]

... I do.

[He gives a nod, but he doesn't look sheepish or ashamed; it's simply just a quiet agreement, as if a normal fact of life.]

We don't seek out just any spirits, but the ghosts of those who have gone vengeful. What a hunter usually does is find mysterious deaths and murders, see if it's something supernaturally caused, and stop whatever is causing it from killing anymore people.

For spirits, that means burning their bones or getting them to find peace.

Then they can move on to wherever they belong in the afterlife.

...I see.

[Surprise! He wasn't actually judging you. Actually, it's kind of a familiar story.]

So, really, it could be said that you're... purifying them of the negativity that's causing them to act violently, using fire...?

[He nods.]

Something like that, yeah. We salt and burn their bones because usually ghosts are tied to the living world through their remains. But there are a lot of instances where they're tied to something of theirs from when they were alive -- a ring, or a house, or maybe a painting. Some kind of tether to keep them from passing on.

But in my world, most ghosts can't exist like they are. Sooner or later, they'll either become shadows of their former selves, or they'll go vengeful.

Interesting. I ask because that's what I do, on my world. Not with spirits, specifically, but creatures known as hellions- we purify the negativity and set them free, in some cases from the world itself.

[He smiles at that.]

Hellions. Sounds a little like demons.

They're human souls tortured for a long time -- until they're twisted into immoral tormentors of sorts themselves. Not quite so easy to cure, but... it's possible.

Not quite the same, though I've heard the term "demon" before. Not all hellions are humans. Animals, plants, ghosts, and even seraphim have the potential to generate malevolence and become a hellion. Essentially, if something possesses a living soul, it can become corrupted.

There's a lot of similarities with my world there, definitely. Living souls take a pretty long time to corrupt in my world -- I mean, really corrupt, but once they are, it's pretty bad.

[He's so eager to talk about this, you got him all hyped, Mikleo. :'D]

Plants have souls in your world? Are they sentient?

[See, Sam, this is much nicer than throwing things at people.]

Not to the same degree as other living beings, but they have basic instincts that malevolence can only exaggerate. Tt can't create that from nothing. Most plant-based hellions are defensive in nature, too- they only attack if you get too close to what they consider their territory.

Oh, got it. We had some pretty malevolent plant-life in the last world I was trapped in then, I guess. Really annoying vines that wouldn't let you go; real fun.

[Haaaa. |D

ANYWAY.]

Does that mean you guys have an afterlife, too?

What with having spirits, and all.

Honestly? I don't know for sure one way or the other. Seraphim tend to be so long-lived that we don't spend much time thinking about death.

You could say that we are a sort of afterlife; seraphim are born from elemental life energy that's returned to the planet and made manifest. In some cases, a human will be reborn as a seraph after they die.

Wow, got it... Usually for us, any lingering of the dead on the earth isn't a good thing. But we also have a god who created souls and made a place specifically for them to go once their physical bodies passed on. There are even special beings assigned to take souls once the person's killed; reapers.

Interesting... we have nothing like that. Seraphim will sometimes keep a vigil over graves or certain important locations, and that can give off the illusion of the place being haunted, but the humans themselves are gone.

Huh... So... they don't go anywhere? Human spirits?

When they die, I mean. Is that just it for them?

Sorry, I don't know much about that, either. I have seen hellion ghosts- generally, in dangerous ruins and battlefields, where one might expect humans to have died carrying a lot of conflicting emotions. They die and their souls become consumed by malevolence, so they can't pass on peacefully.

Once they're purified, though, who knows where they go.

... Then maybe there is more. I didn't know there was a heaven until I actually went there myself.

... Well, I mean, I believed it existed. Hoped.

[this guy leads one hell of a weird life, clearly. So he's dead too? just how many are there around here?]

I... technically have someone I could ask, but it would be unkind to do so. I'd rather not know than make him feel uncomfortable.

[He's awkward enough around Dezel as it is.]

Oh, that's alright; no reason to bring up something negative like that. They're probably not like me when it comes to dying, anyway. It's kind of — a weird thing for me, I mean. It always seems to spit me out.

....Are you some sort of immortal?

[He's never heard of humans coming back from the dead. If they come back at all, it's as a seraph or hellion and nothing else.]

[He laughs in good humor, waving a hand dismissively at the thought.]

Nope. I just have a hard time staying dead.

I blame it on the higher powers and a pissy overprotective older brother.

[what the heck, he makes it sound like it's so normal.]

You're implying that your brother can cheat death, somehow?

[WHAT IS THIS FAMILY]

[He smiles, but his smile is so very awk as he shrugs.]

Kinda... We both tend to outmaneuver it. Or, um. Back out of it, anyway. The short of it is we were... fated to be something we didn't want, so for a while, we weren't allowed to die.

... And then after that, we learned how to escape it ourselves.

Huh. I don't know anything about fate, but humans are pretty resilient, there's no denying that.

[Fragile at the same time, but it's how they deal with it that's the admirable part.]

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