Eldin cautiously took a few steps forward. Nothing about the spirit gave off any warnings of danger. The fact that there was an absence of these warnings is what made him nervous. “Hello? Are you Alice?” He asked, his voice starting to shake from some unknown feeling.

  The female apparition finally looked towards Eldin their gazes locking. Her socket-less eyes bored a feeling of terror he had never felt before. She slowly smiled revealing what could only be described as a void. Tongue and teeth were unseen. She nodded slowly in response to Eldin’s question.

  Assuming that the spirit indeed understood him from its response, he asked another question. “The villagers are terrified to draw water from your spring. Why are they afraid of you?”

  Alice’s head tilted to the side, her ear moving towards her shoulder. Except that the ear went past the shoulder and her head was grotesquely in the center of her chest upside down still attached to the neck.

  Eldin felt his stomach churn as his heart rate skyrocketed. Was this why the water workers refused to visit the spring when a haunting was happening? He took a step back in disgust.

  Lumina wanted to run, she wanted to get away. The ice platforms she had walked on behind Eldin were already gone leaving her unable to get back to shore unless she plunged into the lake. An idea that was becoming more favorable by the second.

  Alice slowly started to approach the two on the water. Her head returning to its normal position and her mouth closed. She didn’t run, or float. Instead, she walked along the air. Her empty eyes never leaving them for a second.

  Adrok had never dealt with a ghost before. With what he gathered from the personal accounts of probable exposure from the spring’s residents. It seemed that Alice would drain the life of any living thing she touched. Her screeches could petrify the hardiest of men. Of course, he had shared this information with his friend’s children on the way to the spring. He was curious as to how they would react. They were after all facing a completely unknown entity that no one had any information about.

  Eldin continued to back up quickly, running into Lumina. “What do we do?” He asked.

  “You’re the expert in elemental techniques. Why are you asking me?” She retorted in almost a whisper.

  “Me? You’re the one with the ability to control energy. This is obviously a problem for you.”

  Eldin created a bridge of ice during their argument as they backed away from the ever-approaching spirit.

  “I don’t know what to do. What I did to Milli was a complete mistake. I still haven’t learned to control it.”

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  Finding themselves back on solid ground, their argument continued, neither one of them knowing how or wanting to have any interaction with the mysterious entity. Caught up in their bickering, they didn’t realize that Alice had finally closed the distance between them. Lumina reflexively grabbed Eldin by the shoulders and pulled him behind her while stepping forward.

  So sudden was the movement that Eldin found himself nearly falling face first on the ground. “What was that for Luma…” His words were caught in his throat as he watched Alice grab Lumina’s shoulder.

  A sudden wave of tiredness, much like the drain from restorative magic hit her like a hammer to her entire body. She wanted to fight back, but could no longer muster the strength to move her limbs, She slowly fell to one knee desperately wanting to flee. With stubborn determination, Lumina focused on protecting Eldin. She looked up and locked gazes with the beautiful but creepy spirit. It was at this point that her eyes closed.

  Both Adrok and Eldin stared in amazement. Eldin had initially prepared a spell that he hoped would work on Alice, but he held it back. Adrok took a few steps closer to get a better look. It seemed as if both Lumina and Alice were frozen in place, but without any ice. “Intriguing.” He said as he pulled out a pad of paper and started writing.

  Eldin couldn’t believe it. Something was happening to Lumina, and Adrok started taking notes in a fight! “What are you doing?” Was all he could ask.

  The primordius shrugged his shoulders, “Not like we have anything that can actually hurt Alice. Might as well get something from this.” He paused his writing and poked a finger into Alice. He immediately retracted it with a gasp of pain. As he feared, mere contact with the spirit actually drained energy at an alarming rate.

  Eldin eventually moved closer to check to see if Lumina was doing fine. As far as he could tell, she looked normal. Feeling a pulse on her neck, he could feel Lumina was still alive. “What is going on?”

  Taking a step back from the volatile ghost Adrok turned to face Eldin, though his focus was elsewhere. “It seems both Lumina and Alice took on more than they bargained for.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Eldin asked wishing for any shred of information.

  Turning back to face the spirit and motionless Lumina, Adrok nudged the Fereece with his foot. “I’m guessing that Alice’s unique nature allows her to rapidly drain energy from whatever she comes in contact with. What she did not expect was to come across someone who has direct control over energy. If my suspicion is correct, and it usually is. The two must be having a unique interaction in the energy plain.”

  “Energy Plain?” Eldin was sure he had learned pretty much everything there was for the natural order of the world, but this was his first time ever hearing the term.

  Adrok turned to face the young elementalist. “Elrin didn’t teach you this? No matter. It’s more a loose theory than anything else.”

  Eldin watched with amazement as Adrok casually sat down midair. Like he was sitting on the wind itself. “What’s going to happen to Lumina?”

  “Right. I should have finished explaining. Alice is a being of pure energy. Her anchor is in the energy plain. Ours is on this planet. Meaning that the only way to harm her is to use something that exists on same dimension as her anchor. Meaning energy is the only thing that will actually stop her.”

  Eldin easily followed along with Adrok’s explanation, “So the only way to take care of a spirit is to imprison it inside a device that holds energy or use energy to destroy it?”

  “Precisely.”