Issue 1 Downtime

Regan waited in the gardens quietly, just as she'd been told to. Apparently her individual power control lessons were going to take place at night. It didn't bother Regan much. Honestly, she felt better at night. Like she had more energy.

She floated through the garden, watching the moon rising overhead as she waited. Lying in mid-air on her back, she reached her hand up for the glowing silver orb.

You can almost touch it.

"Ah, there we are," A voice said. There was a snap, and a thrum... and then a shimmering circle appeared around Regan. "First things first, I suppose," Victoria said, walking around the circle with a disinterested look.

Regan didn't even have to test the barriers. She felt trapped. The very concept of moving beyond the boundaries slipped out of her mind, like struggling to remember a word you never learned.

"Fuck."

"Mmm... stuck that securely? I guess that answers the question," Victoria said. "Quite the interesting phenomenon you are, my abrasive little spectre. A ghost, but... not quite. Don't have quite the right feel. But it doesn't seem to matter, because it appears that most of the rules of ghosts still apply."

"Congratulations, you cunningly figured out what I constantly tell everyone," Regan says.

"Yes, because no one at this school ever lies," Victoria said dryly. "All right, I'll humor you. Tell me what being a ghost even means." She folded her arms, looking at Regan with an amused look... and notably not taking the binding down.

"Well, apparently it means being put into bondage by Sabrina the Teenage Slut," Regan says, sounding a bit more evasive than usual.

"M-hm. Want to see something interesting?" Victoria's eyes flared with a ghostly light that only Regan can see. "Now answer that again. Truthfully." And oddly... Regan would find that she couldn't disobey.

Regan shivered, struggling to resist for a moment.

"It's cold," Regan says, "It's cold, lonely, and you forget things."

"Hm. And here I was expecting an 'I don't know,'" Victoria mused. She walked closer to the circle. "Which would have probably come up if I kept pressing you, which I could completely do, any time I wanted." She snapped her fingers, and the circle came apart... and Regan would find herself free to drift and lie again as she pleased. "So I think the first item of business is to get you set up so that I, and anyone else, can't do that to you. What do you think?"

Regan stares at Victoria for a long moment. At first, she looked embarrassed and even ashamed. Then she just looked thoughtful, like she was considering something.

"I think I would like that," Regan says.

Victoria looked back at the girl, the wary look in her eyes clearly showing that she was weighing the sudden change in demeanor for something that she was going to regret. Still, she went on. "It's going to take some doing, but I think we can pull it off. There are a few ways to do it... I'm going to have to look at what methods aren't going to be... hm, restrictive. Although I suppose a few 'what the bloody hell is going on' questions might be bubbling to the surface waiting to pop?"

"A few," Regan agreed, "You said I'm different from other ghosts. How?"

"Right to the heart of it, I see," Victoria said. "Well, for one, a ghost is usually a fixed occurance. Tied to a house, tied to an object, tied to a place. And usually... their entire existence centers around an event. Usually, but not always, their death. Well, you're free-roaming, it would seem, and you don't seem to be reliving any particular moment in your life. You're also... hm, for lack of a better way to say it, more substantial. A bit less than I thought, if you're suffering some memory loss, but that part does make a bit of sense."

"Well, I'm pretty dumb so you might have to explain it to me," Regan says.

"Mmm, not dumb. It's not something people think about much. You won't ever really lose anything that you know. If we went and found any faded near-mindless ghost, I could make it call up anything that it ever knew. Knowledge never disappears. But creatures on the physical world are meant to have a physical form to store it in. You can keep it in a disembodied state, but it doesn't work quite as well. As you seem to have been noticing."

"So the problem is that I don't have a brain anymore?"

"Well, I didn't want to say it like that because it sounds insulting, but... yes. Exactly."

Victoria stretched and looked up at the moon, apparently tracking its position. "Fortunately? We can take care of that, too. But first, there's a question that I need you to consider very, very seriously before you answer. Can you do that, or do I need to wait for a night when I haven't rather rudely bound you to my will to make a point?"

There was a look of hunger in Regan's eyes as she answered, "I can be serious, if you can help me."

Victoria nodded, then turned back to her. "All right. You're a ghost. I can get you set up... make you not so fragile in your existence, anchor your substance so you don't become some mindless shade that barely knows it's there... but let's look at it all the way: I'll be condemning you to life as a ghost. Possibly forever." She shrugged. "I won't mince words... you're dead. You have every right to the afterlife, and some fluke kept you here." She took a deep breath. "I can keep you here, or I can send you on, but that isn't my choice to make."

Regan pauses, looking up at the moon as she thinks carefully about the question.

"...I want to stay here."

"All right, then," Victoria said. "I suppose binding you to a house is out of the question. Rather boring, that. So the only question is... hm. Here. Touch my hand," Victoria said, holding out her hand, which was glowing faintly red.

Regan reaches out, a bit hesitantly, touching Victoria's hand.

And Regan would find that, surprisingly, she could touch Victoria's hand. That one, at least. "Ah, good. There's potential, at least. So... hm. Something small, but suitable." Victoria smirked somewhat wickedly. "How would you like to go shopping on the universe's gold card, dear?"

"When you smile like that it makes me very uncomfortable," Regan replies.

"Oh, come on, who wouldn't smile at little moments when none of the rules apply to them," Victoria said, smirking as she set a small bowl of shadow onto the ground, filling it with water from a flask at her hip. "It's simple. Watch what appears, tell me when you see something you like."

When Reagan looked, the bowl would scry out various rings, all of a rather sturdy design, and all with sizeable round gems on them.

Regan watches the rings carefully. Each one seemed to have a different feel. Some felt wrong, even repellent. Others just felt uncomfortable or awkward.

Finally, Regan speaks up, "That one."

And when she did, Victoria reached into the bowl, and plucked that very ring out of it. "Mmm, there we are. Now... I suppose this is the moment for the long explanation of what I'm about to do, yes?" Victoria asked as she looked the ring over.

"The short version would be nice," Regan says.

"All right. You have two problems that need correcting. First of all, you're too fragile. Any sorcerer can bind you and control you just like I did, just like any spirit... and you're all too easy to destroy. Permanently. Second, I'm sure you don't want to have your memory ebb away." She looked at the ring. "It's small enough that you can probably learn to move it yourself eventually. And the gem is the right shape to hold the memories of lifetimes inside it, when it's properly enchanted." She set the ring down on the ground, looking up at the moon's position again. As it hit exactly midnight, the moon exactly overhead, time just seemed... to stop. And across the ring from Victoria, her avatar formed. "Sadly... the proper enchantments are going to hurt quite a bit."

Regan lifts an eyebrow, actually looking impressed for once.

"Pain really doesn't scare me anymore," Regan says.

"Hm? Oh, no, I didn't mean it would hurt you."

And that was when Victoria's avatar lashed out. The ensuing ordeal was... rather surreal. A brief spell-battle broke out, all in the space of time that it took Victoria's avatar to wrestle her to the ground. And even though it had been her idea, even though she obviously had known what was involved, Victoria fought... well, herself, tooth and nail, spell and curse, as she was pinned down to the ground, magic shackling her there as her avatar picked up the ever-present (but rarely noticed) dagger of shadow, drawing a line down Victoria's chest that didn't touch her skin, but seemed to pierce her soul, eliciting a scream that left no doubt as to the fact that it hurt.

As she writhed on the ground in agony, the avatar patted her cheek in a comforting way, then cleaned a small glowing blob from the tip of the dagger. She chanted, the words from this body actually appearing as glowing glyphs that only seemed to travel a half-inch from her mouth before dissipating, and as she chanted she spread the little bit of soul residue over the gem on the ring.

Then with a snap of magic that Regan and Victoria could both feel, time reasserted itself, the avatar vanishing and Victoria apparently freed to curl up on herself... the ring lying on the ground, the glow on it slowly, but noticeably, fading. "Touch it," Victoria gasped. "Fast. God damn, girl, don't make me do that again, touch it."

Regan reached out, grabbing the ring quickly in one hand.

Regan would find that the ring was just as solid to her as anything else in the world- that is to say, it wasn't. But when she came into contact with it, she could feel something happen. She was suddenly more aware of the ring: where it was, how it was lying, who was wearing it... she could feel it like she could (or at least had been able to) feel her own hand.

"That... will do, I think," Victoria grunted, pushing herself up as she reached for the ring. "I'll... hang onto it until you can move it yourself. Which might happen, yes. But in the meantime... at least you can't possess me while I'm wearing it unless I let you," she said, smiling weakly as she painfully straightened.

"That looked like fun," Regan says, "Can you teach me how to do that?"

"Can you pick up a dagger?" Victoria countered.

"Point," Regan says.

"Let's... make sure this works," Victoria said, slipping the ring on. Can you hear me?

"No. I can't."

"Wisearse," Victoria chuckled. "I... think that's enough for tonight. We can pick up after I've had a chance to get stitched up again."