The moment Red had taken off toward the clearing the trees and land itself seemed to have inhaled with anticipation.
Keeping his pace steady he walked through an archway of dead branches that seemed to reach out with need.
The moment he stepped past the liminal space to an unnaturally circular clearing, the little wind that was blowing ceased, along with the ambiance of existence.
It was more than simple silence, it was isolation.
His eyes narrowed. 'This clearing is unnatural. Too circular. Too quiet. No wind. No stars above, only a blanket of low clouds pulsing faintly with violet veins.'
Red stepped forward in silence, his boots brushing ash that shouldn't be there.
The wagon half a ridge behind him was hidden and sealed. Jane and the twins slept inside. 'I can't let this thing get any closer.'
Standing in the center of the circle Red scanned not just with his vision but with the ambient pressure waves one can tap into as a Vector.
Sensing it before seeing it he shifted ever so slightly into a readied stance. Bending the knees ever so slightly and readying the balls of his toes to pivot.
When he saw it, it wasn't real. It crawled out of a half sunken dead trunk. One long multi jointed limb at a time. On limbs that weren't its own.
Its body was all wrong, shifting from deer to jackal to bloated man in jerks and spasms.
This entire time, there wasn't a sound.
Watching this abomination in silence. Red was assessing.
'mmh a depraved spirit…star 4.' with a tension forming in his forearms 'this will be annoying.'
As the specter crawled its pale purple rice cloth skin hit the moonlight. Morphing it into spirals of dust and light.
it's very human like eyes still visible as they now float looking at its prey.
There was deep ripple sound that was followed by whispers of sweetness and plea. "My dear Red, you've come."
The abomination swept left into a more intense beam of moonlight, dust trailing.
The specter squared off against Red's position. Its face gets caught between a beam of light and a shadow cast by a creaking limb letting you see it's now beautiful face framed with silver hair.
"Can I have your soul light." it said while tilting its head.
A flicker in the shape of Jane smiling. Holding Anecus, blood on her chin. Red didn't hesitate. He stepped forward and sliced through it with a vertical vector splice. The illusion curling like paper against fire.
Red's ears were violated by a deep vibration and what followed gave him a little pause, "my dear Red."
One to never let emotion dictate a fight, he was getting angry. Somehow this depraved violation was tapping into his memories. Red being a 5 star thought at incredible speeds.
Spirits that can talk are rare, especially those who kept their intelligence after falling into Depravity.'
Tracking the spectators eyes and watching with hidden disgust as its face took on the form of Jane "Can I have your soul light?"
'That does it.' Red with a craning of his neck, a flick of his thumb and middle finger shot out a clean vertical line that took on the look of heat ripples. The illusion shattered.
The specter moved on instinct diving right and low. But it didn't need to because the Vector splice passed right through it, to travel tens of meters cutting down tree tops.
Keeping its coaxing demeanor it lunged at Red, one of its long limbs protruding from its back turned corporeal revealing a 4 foot long curved blade covered in shadows. Its curved blade aims for Red's neck with the intent to maim.
Red shifts his weight on the ball of right foot, leaning forward to let himself fall.
Twisting his hips to face the sky and using Vector to push off the ground to cancel gravity, he watched as the blade passed inches above his nose.
Continuing with momentum Red twists his hips and shoulders mid air gaining distance and orientations again.
Now standing he watched as the blade once again became dust and light. In that short exchange Red had come to an understanding.
'One, The creature becomes incorporeal in moonlight.'
The Spector rushes Red and tries to gut him with a shadow coated corkscrew like blade on its lower left arm.
'Two, it can't be hit while in the moonlight…but neither can it strike.' The specter lets out a grunt of frustration that sounds like Jane.
Then it laughed a ripple in space bending the trees inward. The spirit spoke, but not aloud, not from one place. Its voice came from too many mouths at once.
"You wear the skin of a killer. But you hide behind children and lullabies."
Red didn't flinch.
It goes above Red, its moonlight dust body backdropped by the moon making it sparkle.
It dives at Red, its face covered by a shadow of a branch becomes encased in shadow. Jane's face contorts her mouth opened wider than any human could, and a stinger with a barb connected to a long tongue shoots out, aimed at Red's left eye.
Red with a look that was almost of boredom had a hint of intrigue. It had been a while since he had to problem solve a fight.
When he ducked the first attack he noticed the veil, it hummed ever so slightly, so he took note of it.
Then again when the specter tried to gut him and he diverted the strike with a Vector field. He felt the hum.
Now as he looked at it attempting to resemble Jane he found the answer. With its stinger blitzing towards him, a small smile forms and with a tilt of the head.
'Three, the veil is part of it. Every time the Specter attacks , a beam of shadow coming from the veil attaches itself to the limb turning it corporeal just enough to strike but not leave itself open.'
The stinger nicked Red's cheek, drawing light blood. With no panic, he stepped into the center of the clearing and exhaled slowly.
Both palms rose, fingers curled slightly. The space around him tensed. Like pulling string taut between fingers.
Vector compression.
Red didn't just move through space, he folded it inward creating a kill zone that spanned meters in every direction. But it only worked if the thing had a body to cut and this... didn't.
The Specter appeared again, this time twenty feet behind him.
Jane's voice. Soft. "Redgwrick... help... please..."
He didn't turn. Instead, he bent his knees and stepped into a Vector shift, reappearing to the left and above the spatial compression twisting the air beneath him.
He lashed out, not with brute force but precision. A diagonal cut through the dimensional shell. The spirit flickered Its incorporeal form wavered.
He'd clipped it.
A psychic pressure that crushed the lungs and blurred the eyes washed over the clearing. Red landed in a slide.
Then came the real strike.
The trees melted.
The world blinked sideways.
Suddenly he was standing in the middle of a burning city he hadn't seen in months. Bodies, Empire flags, the shattered watchtower. A memory, not an illusion built from memory. He tried to move but his legs wouldn't obey.
A flash of silver…Jane, running toward the fire, Then gone. Then there again. Then gone.
He heard a cry. 'Anecus? Cassia? Not too far.'
The illusion was swallowing him and he knew it. Falling upon old instincts he gritted his teeth, crouched low and drove both fists into the dirt.
Redgwrick with a low growl and popping veins, "ENOUGH."
The Vector Lines snapped all at once, the spatial seems he laid collapsed inward, ripping the fake world and the physical to ribbons.
The ground itself shredded, racing to the edges of where the veil met the ground, making it shutter.
The spector reappeared gasping even though it had no lungs, snarling without a nose, and flickering.
Half solid now, too damaged to vanish fully, it forms cracked and warped like wet glass in fire.
Red didn't wait, he stepped into its blind side, standing over it he drove a compressed strike through its core. No blade, no flash. Just pure Vector sheer, folded space like a knife to the soul.
The spector shrieked as its form collapsed inward like a shadow caught in a whirlpool, until only ash remained. Then, the sound returned.
No victory roar, no satisfaction. Just Red standing there, stilling the mind. Eyes scanning for a second he didn't have before he sheathed his vector, turned and walked back toward his family.
When the beast died, it left behind a hole in the world. A tear of absence where even the wind refused to pass. He didn't tell Jane the next morning.
Later that week and the ones after a 5 star level magic beast stalked them at night, it never approached directly, but Red could feel it, pacing outside the reach of his vector, watching.
It never attached, It just learned.
It knew better, it knew that Red was aware of it and that a fight would result in certain death for one of them. He never slept more than two hours at a time. Jane slept curled up in the wagon, both twins pressed against her chest.