Shredder XIII
“Not going to like it?” Gerard replied, “I’ve backtracked into forsaken terrain to track a mindless killer back to its lair in the hopes that it does not signify the dark tidings of invasion. In so doing, I must confront the fallen bodies of those I failed to guide safely as is my calling. I don’t think there’s much more you could add onto an already heaping pile of dislike.”
“You must leave me here,” the quiet words issued from her, “My remains, I mean.”
Gerard’s mouth opened to reply, and then closed. Then he said, “Oh. Well. Points to you then for being right.”
Anibel looked at him with glum eyes.
“Um, why?” the ranger asked, trying to divert his own line of thinking.
“My work here is unfinished,” the reply came with sweet simplicity.
Gerard’s eyes shifted around at the untamed desolation, then gazed across the inert forms of the fallen and came to rest once more on the translucent shape of the Halfling woman before him. “Um,” he began in his droll tone, “I don’t know if you fully envision your predicament.”
Anibel made motion to comfort Gerard with a touch on the arm as she had done numerous times during conversations along their journey together. The fingers of her hand passed through the ranger’s flesh, and both figures pulled back with disparate reactions of horror. That same hand rose to Anibel’s mouth and lingered there as a fist.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “This is yet new to me.”
“You and me both.”
“That’s exactly the point I was going to make,” Anibel responded with a bit more emphasis, “Would you have envisioned yourself capable of having a conversation with a spirit until just recently?” Gerard shook his head, allowing her to continue. “Then would you grant me the possibility that there is more at stake here than you may grasp? That I may yet indeed have work to do here, and that I need my remains to, well, remain here?”
Gerard’s lips puckered in thought and he acquiesced with a nod. Then the wily Halfling quickly added, “And if I refuse?”