Dragonborn Saga

Chapter 718: Hungry Ghosts

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Unlike what Jon had expected, there was much going on in this Shadow World.

"This is not the Shadow World."

But it isn't the Shadow World as Nefertiti stated.

"What is it then?" Jon asked.

"A Shadow Gate." She replied.

"Can't a Shadow Gate lead to a Shadow World?" Jon asked.

"Silly, hooman! Shadow World isn't a place for anyone to be in." She said and brushed Jon off her head, "Annoying!"

Seeing such a large cat, Jon couldn't resist the temptation of climbing on her back. He wasn't thinking about riding his beloved cat but what he really wanted was to take a dive in her overwhelming fluff.

"So, let's get serious. What exactly did you do?" Jon asked.

"We did capture a Shadow Anomaly." Nefertiti said.

"Like Greed?" Jon asked.

"No shadow anomaly is like any other shadow anomaly. What they are can be considered different things that are neither living nor dead, neither matters nor lifeforms." She said.

"Woah!" Jon approached Nefertiti's face and rubbed it closely, "When did our little kitty cat get so smart… URGH!"

"Let go!"

Just as he started hugging her, Nefertiti struck him with a horizontal paw strike that made him completely disappear from where he was.

"What the fluff! Hooman!" Nefertiti realized how hard she hit Jon and looked in the direction she hit him.

Indeed Jon was there at a fair distance planted in a wall. It seemed that Nefertiti's strength in her original form is way too much for him to contend again.

"You okay?" She ran to him and used her teeth to drag him out.

"Ah! My head!"

Lying on the ground, he started to move left and right while holding his head before attempting to stand.

"Remind me to never piss you off again!" He said and tried to sober up from the dizziness before looking at where he was just now.

The wall that he crashed into was regenerating slowly. Jon forgot all about his aching head and stared at the wall.

"Material Regeneration! It is not even mending itself from its broken pieces. How fascinating!" Jon completely forgot about what happened and got really worked up over some nerdy phenomenon.

"The nature of this place can afford that." Nefertiti said.

"Right!" Jon looked around at the place they were in and kept thinking about its structure.

It all looked like a large chamber in the Midden where many pathways led to other chambers. It was, of course, a reflection of the real Midden and Jon knew how the shadow world reflects reality.

The atmosphere of this place was also strange and stale as if it was felt with dust and soot instead of humidity and ice. There was an absence of temperature and air currents despite the ability to breathe. Also, it felt gloomy and depressing.

"It feels disconnected from the world itself and it is giving me bad memories from my time in the Chaos of Worlds." Jon said.

"We used the shadow anomaly you were holding as the base material for this place."

"As base material how?" He asked.

"Shadow is unstable. I had you hold the anomaly to anchor it to reality while I made a bridge for you to pass into this place. Do you know this area where the river meets the sea?"

"Yeah. You mean the boundaries between river water and saltwater."

"That's what I meant. You can think of our two worlds like river water and saltwater. They mix but not on the surface. What we did with the anomaly is to go behind the surface and create a shadow gate."

"Hmmm…" Jon couldn't seem to understand right away but the concept was enticing him to study it further.

But just as he was about to ask his questions, he felt a strange presence coming from the corridors around this part of the shadow gate.

"Something is not right." Jon said.

"Yes." Nefertiti sighed, "Other Shadow Anomalies seemed to have found this space."

"Other anomalies?" Jon frowned, "That doesn't sound good if my understanding is right."

"Since an anomaly was slain and its shadow energy was spread, they are here to devour that." Nefertiti explained.

"I see." Jon nodded as his thoughts were almost behind Nefertiti, "Alright then, go get them, girl."

"Why?" She asked.

"Well… obviously they are beings of shadow. They aren't really my specialty to deal with and since they are neither living nor undead, I have no idea how to deal with them." He said before pausing, "Unless I am wrong which doesn't make sense to be…"

"You're wrong." She replied.

"See? I knew I was wrong."

"Shadow Anomalies must materialize to enter a Shadow Gate and devour it." She said.

"Materialize, huh!" Jon made an understanding face as he looked around and saw the vicious-looking aberration creatures, "I love dealing with materialized twats. All you need to do is to find where the ass is and kick it."

The Shadow Anomalies materializing, it was a sight to fear. One can compare their appearances with the eldritch horrors from a Lovecraftian Japanese manga made by a mangaka with psychological issues.

"Ewww!" Even Jon was somewhat unable to make peace with what his eyes were seeing.

"Deal with them." Nefertiti said.

"No, you better deal with them." Jon replied.

"No, Hooman! My paws will get dirty again." She retorted.

"Fine." Jon shouted in impatience, "But I'm only using magic."

With the staff in his hand, Jon aimed it up with a fire spell and started shooting.

"Fireball!" "Fireball!" "Fireball!" "Fireball!"

"Shouldn't you just…"

"Nope! FIREBALL!"

Jon was sparing no effort at sparing no anomalies. Those hideous creatures looked like mishmashes of too many creatures coming together in all manner of nasty ways.

One can see a man's body with extremely thin limbs coming out with the head of a frog and fish gills lining his chest, another was a shark coming out from the torso of a troll and using many arms and legs to crawl around, another was like a bunch of human heads with large and small eyes linked up with multiple limbs and moving together like tumbleweeds.

Jon managed to understand that these anomalies are… or were shadows of real creatures before. The only incident that would cause a shadow to separate from its body is death and in the Shadow Word, many lost shadows roam the place in endless agony. This causes some shadows to entangle with each other and eventually go berserk to officially become known as Shadow Anomalies.

Since every anomaly is formed from several different creatures, they are inherently unique as Nefertiti stated. While it is unknown why the shadows would roam the Shadow World after the death of their owners and since it has nothing to do with souls, Jon couldn't really understand more than that.

But one thing is certain here, the Shadow Anomalies are like zombies, and the material objects, whether living or dead objects, are like brains to them. They just go for it mindlessly.

When Jon observed the behavior of the anomalies once they got attached to other things, he realized that even though they still keep their anomalous nature, they become very stable and eventually eat away the shadow of the object and fall back into the shadow world.

"Huh! So this is like… haunting?" Jon mumbled.

"Precisely, my well-educated friend!" And someone answered his question cheerfully.

"WOAH!"

"FLUFF!"

Jon immediately reacted and put a Fireball on the face of the person who just spoke to him. Nefertiti received that person as they flew over in her direction and hit them with her mighty paw returning them to Jon.

"Wait!" The person tried to stop their relentless attacks but…

"Fuck you! Who do you think you are to scare me?!" Jon hit the man with his staff.

"Fluff off! Stupid mortal!" Nefertiti bounced up and beat down the man as well.

"Stop!"

"No!" Jon kept beating up the man who was cowering on the ground.

"Hisssss!" Nefertiti rhymed her paw strikes with Jon's staff strikes and kept hitting him one after the other.

"Just… Enough!"

As for the man, he was already fed up with all the beating and shouted out loud realizing an astonishing amount of pure Shadow Energy.

Seeing the stranger this angry, Jon and Nefertiti kept their guard up and circled the man to his flanks.

"For fuck's sake, Jon. You and your cat hit like trucks." The man exclaimed.

"Wait!" Jon frowned as he saw the face of the man he saw only once before, "Is it you… Shadow?"

"No shit, genius! Who else would it be?" Shadow, who was in complete human form for the second time, cussed at Jon angrily.

"Shadow?" Nefertiti asked, "Your imaginary friend?"

"You tell people that?" Shadow asked Jon.

"I have to make an excuse, you know." Jon said.

"Hooman, which Shadow is that?" Nefertiti asked.

"The one from the Future." Jon said, "The others from the past and present feel more sinister. This is the one that saved me and Nurina in the Inverted Tower."

"Hmmm!" Nefertiti smelled the Shadow in front of her and looked away, "Smells alright, hooman."

"Heh! Glad I passed." Shadow grinned and looked at Jon, "So you finally stepped your sorry ass into my turf."

"This is your turf?" Jon asked.

"All Shadows are, I'm like the Divine of Shadows in your world." Shadow said.

"Talk more sense, please. Why are you here?" Jon asked.

"This is the first time you see me and not in an urgent shit. At least show some respect, you son of a gun." Shadow said.

He looked like a tall man with sharp features, golden eyes, and jet-black long hair. He was a head shorter than Jon but he was standing confidently in front of him.

"You were saying something about those?" Jon asked.

Shadow looked at the shadow anomalies and sighed.

"Where I come we call them Hungry Ghosts. They mostly get exorcized by narrow-minded folk but to me, they are the best ingredient for my sorcery."

"Shadows are Ghosts?" Jon looked at the sluggish entities and kept thinking, "Remnants of souls?"

"You can say that." Shadow replied.

"Damn! These are some ugly ass ghosts?" Jon repulsively looked away.

"Agreed."

"How do they form anyway?"

"So, when you destroy someone's life and lead them to their doom, their resentment becomes the thing that haunts you. The bigger the grudge, the bigger the resentment. The more grudges you make, the more resentments you accumulate. Once the people accumulating such resentments die, the resentment finds nowhere to go and roam the world before getting absorbed into this place."

"Shit! That's dark." Jon said before thinking about something and asking, "How do I know if there are any resentments rubbing off on me?"

Jon's question made Shadow astonished.

"Some people have special eyes that can see that kind of thing." Shadow replied.

"So, are there any on me?" Jon asked.

"There should be but that thing you have, you call it Greed, I think. It ate them all away." Shadow said.

"Guess I have to reward Greed someday." Jon said and then focused on Shadow, "And you, why are you telling me all this? And why are you here, anyway?"

"Oh, right. I had to say hey to you in person for the first time properly and there is one thing you have to know." Shadow said.

"What?" Jon asked.

"The city you're in, I don't know Winterfell or something…"

"Winterhold."

"Right." Shadow nodded, "It's under attack!"

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