Charlotte is ahead, with her glowing staff. Radiance is bringing up the rear, with her glowing everything.
Daphne isn’t walking in front of Ghostheart, even now. But she’s got questions, and they’ve apparently got answers, so at least she can pass the time that way.
“I took the metro bus to the edge of town, then hiked. How’d you get here? Teleport or something?”
“I … er, took a bicycle.”
“A bicycle?”
“I am not the most physically fit individual.”
Daph snorts. “No shit. Being a ghost hunter doesn’t burn much calories, I guess.”
“I was dead for a time. I’m still recovering.”
“Dead, huh? You recovered marvelously.”
The strange supervillain doesn’t reply to that, and Daph doesn’t feel like pressing. Instead she switches topics. “You’ve been pretty closed-mouthed about what you’re doing down here. If you need me to get here, I assume you need me to get back. Means I’ll be tailing you the whole time. Means I’m gonna know, right?”
“Your logic is sound, priestess.”
“Just like keeping secrets, huh?”
“Like life and death, secrets are allotted their own span of time, priestess.”
“Fine. Bike, huh? You own a bike?”
“It was one of those rental bicycles where you supply a credit card.”
“You have a credit card? 'Scuse me but that’s hilarious. Let me guess, an exclusive Mastercard Black Card, black like your soul?”
“My soul is burly wood, rosy brown, and dark sea green to astral sight.”
“I did not just hear that sentence come out of a grown-ass human being’s mouth.”
A light comes from up ahead.
“Whatever you’re about to see isn’t physical. You’re not seeing it with your eyes, but your souls.” Ghostheart presses ahead. “Palamedes’ blessing includes such spectral vision, in the land of the dead.”
“I guess robots do have souls,” remarks Radiance from the back, as her own light fades. Daph can hear a complex feeling behind her words, and turns to look.
This is Alycia’s roommate. I’ve never really interacted with her, I guess I just thought of her as … a person? Robot souls, huh?
Radiance catches the glance, and smiles brightly back at Daph.
The party emerges from a tunnel onto a large island, surrounded by a fog-obscured ocean. Other islands are visible in the distance. This one is inhabited and built out, with tents, buildings, and other signs of habitation everywhere.
“What is this?” Daph asks. At this point, she suspects anyone else can give her an acceptable answer.
“Some call it the Orphean Market,” answers Charlotte. “One of the many places a soul can go, after death.”
Daph sees indistinct but humanoid shapes gathered around tents. They seem to be customers, with more distinctly visible people promoting something or other as salespeople.
“The soul is the residual imprint of a conscious mind,” explains Ghostheart. “Its desires are like a ship’s sail, and the astral winds fill it and blow the soul to its desired destination. For some, that is this market or ones like it, where the gods and great powers offer them new destinations - for a price. For others, that is the Elysian fields, or other afterlives. Some souls dissolve, and their memories find new homes. And some remain in the world of the living, to trouble them with unfulfilled desires and impossible demands.”
Charlotte laughs gently. “Some of us, my dear fellow traveler, had no say in the matter.”
“Anything we should be wary of here?” asks Radiance.
Charlotte nods. “Accept no offers and ask no favors. Politely decline everything, even if it’s seemingly innocuous. Something like ‘show me the way home’ is a contract here, and the sellers would do it their way.”
Daph chuckles in Ghostheart’s direction. “Gonna be rough for you to get anything done here, ain’t it.”
The villain seems unimpressed. “I’ve contracted with demons. This matter will be simple enough.”
“Remember that you cannot bind your comrades,” Charlotte says with a smile, but Daph can hear iron in her voice. “If you seek to entangle us in your scheme, you will find that Magus is not merely a title bestowed upon me.”
Ghostheart bows with at least some sincerity. “You have my word, Ms. Palmer. What I do here will be to your benefit as well.”
Whatever that is, thinks Daph. But she follows the others, into the sea of souls.