37 Ashan 720 | Ulric and Arthur
That night Arthur and Ulric argued. Ulric didn't want to leave Syrio with any of his metal. Ulric insisted that if there was to be an extra ingot, that ingot should be forged into more weapons or another piece of the armor. Ulric did not believe Syrio's claims that the single ingot wouldn't be enough. If one ingot could forge him two greaves or two vambraces, it could damn well be turned to a pauldron or two. Arthur insisted they didn't have a choice because Ulric had no nels to offer in exchange. Ulric raged against the argument. Arthur dared to call him poor? Ulric died. His wealth was stolen from him with his life. It was not his fault he couldn't pay Syrio... but it was his circumstance. After a few breaks of what turned out to be a surprisingly calm discussion, the duo decided to return to Syrio and accept his offer.
But they encountered a problem. The metal had to come out of the chest to be worked and when it was out of the chest, it attracted ghosts.
So now Ulric and Arthur stood outside the shop in one of the commercial rings with their swords drawn. Ulric holding his anchor and Arthur his own blade. Inside the shop behind them, they could hear the sound of metal clashing against metal... ghost metal. Ulric and Arthur had not accounted on the ravenous hunger of some specters who'd fought in the war with them. Specters who recognized the metal and the power it gave them. Specters who wanted the metal for themselves. As a rule of thumb, Ulric didn't allow Arthur to carry copper weapons with him. It always made possession unpleasant. However now that those very specters they'd served with were descending upon them, it seemed like that had been a poor choice.
Syrio had no real way of defending his shop and so when a phantom had appeared in his shop, Ulric was quick to syphon it from existence. Ulric felt the same intense draw to the metal that the spirits around him did with one major difference, he believed the metal was already his. Arthur and Ulric agreed to guard the shop while Syrio worked and Ulric went out to defend it with the same ravenous drive as the specters coming to take it from them.
Arthur and Ulric found themselves in a battle with three ghosts. A phantom and two echos. The echos, wailing in rage and hunger, attacked with conventional weapons because they were not so far gone as to have forgotten their skill with a sword and learned to use their ectoplasmic bodies. Arthur parried a blow to one side. Ulric parried a blow to the other side. A tendril wrapped around Arthur's leg, the phantom's, and pulled Arthur off balance, allowing the echo he was fighting to land a glancing blow across Arthur's leg. Ulric was quick on the reprisal. He parried the echo he was fighting to the right and drove his materialized fist forward into the echo's chest. The connection was made, and Ulric opened his soul to syphon the ghost's ectoplasm as quickly as he could. The echo screamed, wailing in pain as Ulric ripped apart it's ectoplasm and absorbed it into himself.
Ulric's body flickered, the stability of his materialization waning to allow for the syphoning. The echo was slowly torn apart, too slowly for Ulric so Ulric broke the connection and slashed through the dazed specter with his longsword, dispelling the ghost for the trill. Then Ulric turned toward the two remaining ghosts fighting his friend with a fire-like rage in his eyes. Ulric charged with a war-cry at the phantom and slashed his sword wildly, causing the phantom to began retreating. The phantom ran for only a moment before it seemed to recall it was already dead. It turned and reached out towards Ulric, manifesting a tendril it wrapped around the far more experienced ghost. The phantom pulled Ulric close and Ulric let it. Then the phantom seized him by the throat and attempted to do to Ulric what Ulric had done to the echo... but Ulric was no echo.
His body hardened as the phantom tried to syphon his ectoplasm from him. Ulric raged against the phantom, commanding his ectoplasm to remain in place and further, commanding it to syphon the phantom. A battle of wills ensued that the phantom was far unprepared for. A trill passed, then another, and then the phantom began screaming as the echo had. Ulric ripped the phantom's ectoplasm away and joined it to his own soul. It took a full two bits to fully reduce the phantom to a whisper, but the deed was done. When Ulric turned, he found that Arthur had success fending off the echo... and he could still hear the smith working away on their armor inside.
Many of the dead had chosen to move on after the war, those who did not were on a path to become what Ulric was becoming... but not those who came for the ghost metal on the hundredth trial of Ashan. That would be their last trial as echos and phantoms. Arthur twirled his blade his hand and cast a sideways glance to Ulric, who stood outside the shop, scanning the area around them. "That's all of them." Ulric reported. Traveling between the Beneath and Idalos was not easy for many ghosts. You either needed to find an opening or manifest the power to push through on your own. To Ulric, that meant he'd notice any specter coming for them. They couldn't... well... maybe they could. "Stay out here and guard the door, I'll check on the blacksmith."
Arthur nodded in agreement and twirled his sword slightly before assuming a low guard towards the empty street. Ulric moved into the forge where he found Syrio almost finished with his work. He was busy working away on the final piece, the helmet. Ulric didn't watch what he was doing because he would not retain the skill so it would be a waste of his time. Instead he looked at the table where the bounty had been set.
There it was, a suit of armor unlike any other. It wasn't really a full suit, just a breastplate, vambraces, and greaves, but seeing it laid out before him made the sacrifice worth it. The blacksmith's apprentice came through the room and set Ulric's new longsword down on the table beside the armor. The ghost metal had been drawn to shape and yet it still looked like that ethereal indigo crystal. Ulric reached out for the steaming blade and took it in his hand. He felt a power wash over him that he hadn't felt since the war. Oh... this is good. He wanted more. He wanted to put the armor on now. Tendrils manifested from his back and began to pull pieces of the armor from the table when suddenly he heard a shout that restored his senses.
"Ulric, stop!" Arthur rushed into the shop and pulled the pieces of armor from Ulric, casting them into the chest and sealing it. Well... that was what had really helped Ulric come to his senses. The draw of the metal was muted and Ulric nodded to his living friend as Syrio re-entered with Ulric's helmet. Syrio set it, ever steaming, onto the table. It was fashioned into the rough image of a skull. Arthur looked at it curiously and Syrio shrugged.
"The ghost said he wanted it to inspire fear."
Ulric did. When Corvus saw this helmet, he wanted the man to know fear- the same fear he'd felt watching Marian's murder... and he would.
