Phantasm

I froze.

It can’t see me… can it?

I was invisible, and inaudible as well, so staying frozen in place wasn’t doing me any favours. I raised my gun and took the shot.

I was using one of the guns from the third floor. We only had a limited number of shots left with the things, but they were quieter, and I didn’t want to alert the civilians downstairs. The bolt hit its target, which said good things about its defence total, but passed straight through the… being. There was a hole, but it didn’t seem to bother the elohim at all.

There was also no damage notification.

It seemed distracted, looking at the wall where the bolt had embedded itself, so I took a step backwards and closed the door. Perhaps it would stay there. Perhaps it had to stay there. It didn’t have hands, so I wasn’t sure how it had gotten in there, past the closed door.

I took a few steps backwards and paused, waiting for something to happen. I holstered my gun and pulled out my two daggers. Holding them gave me bonuses to Agility and Dexterity, but they also had a greater chance of hurting the thing. Enchanted weapons had an extra depth, that often helped damage ethereal beings.

I took a breath, then another.

I’ll give it a minute, I told myself. I need to tell the others before I go any further.

Then the light changed.

I looked up at the light stone doing a good impression of an old-style incandescent lightbulb. Something was coming out of it, a glowing form that I was pretty sure was the abomination.

Lightstones or lightbulbs were better light sources than the lanterns or torches that were normally used in this world. The nearest shadow was in the abandoned labs, the closest entrance to which was the broken window. My instincts twitched at the thought of jumping over, possibly through, sharp, jagged glass, but I had skills. I could probably do it. I took a step in that direction.

The elohim abomination came all the way into the corridor and floated there, slowly rotating. Its eyes looked everywhere, but they didn’t seem to see me. I drew my daggers, felt the surge as their bonuses took effect.

Am I really doing this? I wondered. It’s a demon!

But I didn’t want to leave it behind me. I didn’t want to leave it alive to do… whatever it was doing. And it wasn’t that hard to hit.

It started drifting toward me. Not an attack, I thought, or even an acknowledgement. We were in a corridor, there were only two ways to go, and my end was the longer one. But it meant I had to make a decision. Fight or flight.

I chose fight. Dashing forward, I aimed a vertical slice at its edge.

You have inflicted 200 damage!

The dagger sliced through the floating disc with only a slight dragging resistance. The damage was promising, but it was the shriek of pain that made me think I was getting somewhere. It didn’t seem to come from any kind of mouth, it just… emanated from around the thing.

I staggered back from the sheer volume of it and then moved forward to attack again. Before I could close, though, it curled up into a ball, and then… kept curling. In less than a second, it had curled in on itself until it wasn’t there any more.

My eyes flicked to the one shut door in the corridor. It had likely fled back to there…

Oh, wait, Shadow Sense.

I quickly determined that the room behind the door was now in darkness. Not there, then. I cast my net wider. I sensed shadows, not light, but a moving light should be noticeable… There. One floor below.

I should—no, wait. First, I should call it in. That meant cancelling my invisibility. Which… wasn’t safe, particularly if that shriek had attracted attention. I shadow-stepped up a level and pulled out my phone.

Borys answered on the first ring.

“Trouble?” he asked.

“I just ran into a demon,” I said. “Elohim abomination. Unknown everything. It ran, made some noise. Is there any movement?”

“Some,” he said. They were watching the lower floors through monoculars from the third floor. Monoculars weren’t telescopes exactly, they were… more techy. “I think they heard you, but they don’t seem to be moving up.”

“It’d be a brave goblin that ran toward that shriek,” I said, “But it might not matter. It headed down.”

“Noted. Are you aborting?”

“No. I don’t think it can see me, and my daggers seem to hurt it,” I said. “Bullets seem to pass right through, though.”

“Great,” he said sourly. “What does it look like?”

“A big floating platter, about a metre across,” I told him. “Eyes on the bottom, and the whole thing glows.”

He grunted. “Easy to see coming, then.”

“It came out of a solid light source,” I said. “I think it has the opposite of my shadow step.”

“That isn’t a spell that exists,” he mused, “But… demon.”

“Demon,” I agreed. “There might be more weirdness that I haven’t seen yet.”

“There might be more abominations that you haven’t seen yet,” he cautioned. “Stay safe.”

“I will,” I said and dropped the call. Then I sighed, cast [Greater Invisibility] again, and headed down the stairs.

The abomination seemed to have stopped moving, which made it hard to tell where it was. I had a guess, based on the shadows, but the third floor was more lit up now. At least I knew where it wasn’t.

The third floor had been offices. Proper offices, not a cubicle farm. It gave the squatters rooms of their own, so this floor had been pretty much taken over. Goblins— German civilians— were moving about cautiously all over.

I soon overheard the reason for all this activity.

“It got another one, boss!” one of them said to a less-raggedly one. He sighed.

“Let’s see it,” he said.

Morbidly curious, I followed the pair, taking care to avoid anyone else in the corridors. I did have to search this level, at a basic level at least. Any one of these offices might have papers left by an occupant that had what I needed. From the quick looks I took as I passed open doorways, what hadn’t been cleared out had been repurposed as bedding.

The pair of squatters led me to one of the offices where we were treated to a fairly gruesome sight.

“Just like the others,” the better-dressed goblin said.

It looked like the dead goblin had been attacked in his bed. At least, I assumed it was a goblin. Small humanoid was about all I could tell from looking at it…

[Identification]: - Goblin ashen remains - Quality: Poor - Properties: None

I stood corrected. What made it hard to tell anything was that the corpse was completely black. Almost vantablack. It drank in the light, making it hard to make out details. It seemed to be still solid, rather than a pile of ash, but without touching it I couldn’t be sure.

I wasn’t going to touch it, and the goblins seemed reluctant to.

“That’s the fifth this week, boss! What are we going to do?”

The boss-goblin harrumphed to himself. “Normally, I’d clear us out, but I hear that these kinds of corpses are popping up all over. I’m putting out feelers for someplace to go, but everyone’s looking.”

“We’re not going to do nothing?”

“Try and work out how to kill the damn thing, is the only thing I can think of right now,” the older goblin said.

Well. That wasn’t my concern, and this room didn’t hold any papers, so I left them to it. I resumed my search.

The civilians weren’t defenceless, I spotted several guns around the place, either stored or carried. They looked more like WWI guns to my uneducated eye. Or hunting weapons maybe?

In one, empty, room I found a locked filing cabinet. That had potential. I carefully eased the door to the room shut. Passing goblins might think it odd, but I’d at least have some warning before they came in.

I examined the cabinet. It looked simple enough. I could see the tab that held the drawer in place through a small crack. And it was a steel cabinet.

One of my darksteel knives sank into the steel as if it were butter. There was a slight twang as the locking mechanism was released. Inside was…

Nothing. Just some letters, some bottles of alcohol, and a bundle of German bank notes.

[Identification]: - 300 x 20 Reichsmark Bill

[Identification]: - 900 x 10 Reichsmark Bill

[Identification]: - 1000 x 5 Reichsmark Bill

[Identification]: - Total Reichsmarks: 20,000

There was that feature I’d found so useful when starting a bank. That was a lot of money! I was sure I’d find a use for it.

I had the satchel in my hand when I heard the squeak of the door handle starting to turn. The satchel was visible and would remain so until I recast my spell, so I dropped it back in its drawer.

There was a pause, long enough that I started to doubt that the handle was turned. Then three goblins burst into the room, pointing guns in every direction at once.

I stepped back to an out-of-the-way corner but didn’t otherwise react. The goblins were babbling a chorus of “Can’t see it!” “Clear here!”

It took them a bit of examining and pointing guns at every inch of the room’s ceiling, floor and walls, but they eventually calmed down. Fortunately, they didn’t seem keen on going too far into the room so I was in no danger of being run over. Finally, one of them called back to whoever was outside.

“There’s nothing here, sir!”

The boss goblin pushed his way in.

“Then who the fuck closed the door!” he snarled. “Everyone should know it likes closed-in spaces!”

Ah, he’s talking about the abomination, I thought. That’s what it likes.

That was where I had found it, of course, in a closed-up room. Not a dark room, since everywhere it went was lit. Some place that could hide the light.

I was pretty sure I knew where it was, now. I hadn’t checked out every place on this floor, but there was a lit-up area just outside of the inhabited sections. Probably a utility shaft. Not normally lit, but it was now. For some reason.

“Hey!” the boss goblin exclaimed. “Who’s been going at my files?”

He bustled over, shooing away curious guards.

“Damn, look what they did to that lock!” one of them said. The boss ignored them, checking each drawer for missing items. There was a chair he had to stand on to look in the top drawer. I hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but now I shook my head at the lengths Axel had to go to pretend that these goblins were supposed to be here.

“Nothing’s missing,” the boss said reluctantly, “But someone’s been at the lock.” He looked suspiciously at the guards and slammed all the drawers shut.

“What’s in that thing?” a guard asked.

“Just correspondance. Private correspondence,” the boss said.

“Why are you worried someone’s going to steal your letters?” another guard asked. I marked him as the smart one.

“They broke the lock!” the boss said. “Never mind why, someone is going through our stuff. They must have closed the door as a distraction while they rifled through your possessions.”

All three of the guards immediately burst out with outraged exclamations.

“Yes, go, find them,” the boss said. “I’ll stay here, we know it’s safe.”

The three ran out of the room, promising to murder anyone who messed with their stuff. The boss stayed behind, looking at the damage I’d done to his cabinet.

“That thing doesn’t do that,” he muttered to himself. “Someone else is here. But why…”

He took the satchel out and stuffed it under a pile of clothes sitting in the corner. I thought about killing him.

[Identification]: - Grunwald Schmiedtrog - Threat: 18 - Properties: Skilled

Even with surprise, he probably had too many hit points for me to take out in one stab. He’d get to warn the others. It wasn’t worth killing him for some Reichsmarks I’d never get to spend.

What I was looking for wasn’t on this floor. I’d have to keep going down.