>>> What happens to a wisp when it dies? Why does it keep coming back? What happens to
a spirit, released from its earthly tethers? What happens to the essence of us, when
our will is greater than our selves and refuses to let go?

***

The drifting snow, already bright beneath the sun, vanished in a blazing flash of
light. I felt the yearning sorrow in my heart, near to bursting, suddenly release. All
that had mattered, all that had torn me in different directions, all of my worries and
insecurities and fears and joys -

Erased.

Far below, I saw my body fall quietly upon the riverbank, and the snow blanket it
until it faded from view. I watched it only, thinking and feeling nothing. It was
strange how little connection I felt with it. That face, with its well-worn wrinkles.
Those eyes, the crimson sparks released at last beneath the half-closed lids. Those
hands, with their familiar calluses and scars, relaxed at last. I said goodbye to it,
to all of it.

It was so silent. So blissfully, transcendentally, heavenly silent.

I was at last, at peace... and then I heard a voice calling me from *somewhere else.*

"The door bein' open," the too-familiar voice said. "Be wipin' yer feet and comin' in
-- welcome home." I turned my face from Serin then, and a portal was there. A wisp
flitted through it, a rambunctious purple one I might have swatted without a second
thought before I had learned anything about wisps, or Acadia, or Serin, or Water. But
I knew instantly that it was her. Lumubella! I willed myself towards her, and found I
had also been transformed into a tiny being formed of light - a delicate white one. I
suppressed the urge to laugh, wildly, suddenly free in a way I had thought impossible.
All of this was hopelessly impossible! I followed her incredulously through the portal
into the magenta sky.

If anyone had been there to witness, they might have watched two pinpricks of light in
the grey, colorless Winter sky swirl about, mysteriously, then vanish.

***

Vevier's Stomach
| You are standing waist-deep in stinky stomach acid, which
| is beginning to eat away at your clothes. Muffins and furniture
| and gruesome half-digested bits are floating all around you,
| half submerged and bubbling in the acid. Boxes and barrels
@ | and sofas and crates and beds and chairs and empty soup bowls
| and the occasional wisp bump up against you in the gentle
| tide as the pink folds of the stomach walls squish nauseatingly.
| A rusty metal sign hangs off an oozing ulcer to your east.
|
---------+

[Exits: none]

Vanisse struggled and battered her way about in the squelching, acidic darkness. As
with all of the ascended, her gnome captor's stomach had become an infinite and
impervious void. Vanisse had, of course, eaten her fair share of sentient beings
herself, but had always given them an escape. It had been only a bit of fun. She had
only ever liked to joke about and play pranks.

What kind of prank was this? She had always trusted Vevier, and seen her as a fond
sibling. Any rivalry or ribbing had been only good-natured, or so she thought. Had she
really been so blind? Could she have accidentally fostered fear, followed by hate?

Vanisse thought back over the eons that she had spent watching silently over the
realms, here and there appearing (as a mirage might) to muddle about and cheer a few
faces up once in awhile. She thought about the generations of Heralds with fondness,
from her own mortal days to her ascension and the many, brilliant Heralds she had seen
surpass her own effort and creativity since then. She thought about the time when she
had been bitterly forced to evict her beloved Heralds, construct the Ivory Towers, and
rebuild the Traveller's Rest in the Holy Grove. The awakening of the monks at their
doorstep, the rise and fall of waves of Mystics. And then, at last, about the
Consortium, to stitch their halls together and soothe the ancient rivalries away,
knowing they could be so much greater together.

Vevier had been the Mystic Immortal once. Did she bear a grudge from that? Or from her
gnome eating? Surely she would have said something over all these eons. Were they not
friends?

Vanisse stopped her perturbed pacing in the air and settled down upon a box floating
in the darkness. Several other wisps were there with her, flickering with their own
weak light. One approached her shyly, and she reached out her hand comfortingly.

"Come, young one, do not be afraid. It seems we are all in this boat together."

The wisp rested on the soggy arm of a half-submerged sofa and regarded Vanisse
quietly, and the others shortly gathered around it, lining the back of the sofa in
sparkles. "We're just surprised!" the first little creature blurted out in a chiming,
tinkling voice. The others nodded in agreement, murmuring.

"Surprised about what?" Vanisse asked.

"That the demon... the demon-god... could eat another god."

Vanisse blinked.

"Demon? What demon? Vevier's not a demon, she's a gnome."

The wisps looked at each other and whispered furiously in conference before answering.

"Demons always try to eat us wisps. It's why we started fleeing from Acadia."

"Why do they eat you?"

"It gives them power. The more of us they consume, the more powerful they are. We are
vessels for souls, you see... When a body dies, its soul takes the form of a wisp to
travel between the worlds."

Vanisse frowned. "I've seen plenty of wisps that stayed right here in Serin." She
mulled over the thought of it. "Mostly in the graveyard, actually."

"They do not all choose to leave. Some of them cannot bear to part, or they feel as
though they have unfinished business and hope to be able to complete it someday."

Vanisse looked down at her own form, a silhouette barely distinguishable in a glowing
golden aura. Somehow over the eons she herself had lost her half-elf body and taken
the form of a wisp. It had been a strange shedding sensation when she had lost her
body - one too many Death tarots drawn by her eternal rival, Resatimm - but she had
not missed it or thought anything much of it when the corpse simply vanished. Nothing
surprises immortals anymore after so many countless years. Or so she had thought.

"I've never traveled between worlds before. Only at the undiscovered edges of this
one, carving new life into it." She laughed ruefully to herself. "Imagine being
trapped in the one area I never thought I'd look."

The little wisps giggled and held out their hands to her. "Would you like to come? We
wisps are never trapped."

"Oh?"

They began to sing a strange little song. Vanisse winced. It was too dissonant for her
musically trained ear. All the tritones in the world were beautiful compared to this
travesty. And yet, there was something alluring within the discord. As they sang, the
wisps began to float about in circles, trailing wisp essence behind them as they
moved. And then suddenly light poured in...

"Acadia!"

The name had just escaped her lips when a clawed hand reached through the portal and
grabbed one of the wisps in a cruel fist. The wisps began to shriek in fear. But which
death was preferable, an inevitable slow death in the acidic, pressing darkness or the
risk of a quick one with a possibility of freedom? Each soul made a split second
decision. The wisps dived, one by one, through the portal. With a deep breath, Vanisse
followed suit.