Fortunately for the vigilant who had been rendered unconscious, the ghost didn't seem inclined to do anything to him. Instead, its attention was drawn to the Spiritualist as several thumb-sized spiritforms manifested around him before they flew at the ghost a high speed. They slammed into the ghost, and holes were torn through its body, spiritform spraying out of the ghost's back like flesh.

  The ghost vanished, the house suddenly becoming quiet, and Loren realized he'd let the ghostlight torch move too low. He hastily raised it, just in time to show the ghost charging at the vigilants with arms spread wide. The Thaumaturgist rose into the air covered in a shell of red venefluid as the Spiritualist grabbed the table on top of the fallen vigilant. A layer of spiritform quickly coated the furniture, and with a cry of "Rocket!" the table launched itself at the ghost. There was a sound like wet meat hitting a door, and the ghost was thrown back as the table broke in half. It flew back and through the rail of the second floor, flying straight towards the opposite wall. It slammed into the surface, sticking there like a piece of clay. For the first time in a long while, the ghost had stopped screaming, and something close to blessed silence fell over the house, save for the ringing in Loren's ears that had gotten used to constant noise.

  Loren realized he had stalled, leaning against the wall to take weight off his feet and forced himself to move. Keeping the torch up so they could see the ghost—the table leg was down to a foot and a half long—he pushed himself up the stairs. He couldn't collapse yet. Not until he got out of this house!

  The ghost peeled itself off the wall, and its gaze fell on him. For the first time in hours, Loren saw its face clearly again. Its face had contorted, and the mouth had grown three times as wide. Keres that covered its form had been burned off, but more seemed to have taken their places, most of them the toothy ball slugs—

  And the screaming was back. "Where do you think you're going, help?-! Clean this place up! When my parents get back, you're in trouble!" The ghost dove down, grabbing one of the armchairs—it and other furniture had been thrown multiple times already, leaving few still intact—and threw it towards Loren. After hours of doing this, he'd become pretty good at eyeing the parabolic arcs of thrown furniture, and threw himself back down the stairs to avoid the armchair. Before it could reach where he'd been standing however, a barrier of red veneplate snapped into place in front of the projectile, stopping it in midair and sending it crashing to the ground, the floppy armrest that had cracked earlier finally breaking off.

  Oh, right.

  Up above, he saw the Spiritualist picking up their downed comrade and running back to the front door as the ghost chose violence again. The mangled remains of a side table were thrown at the Thaumaturgist as the ghost rushed at Loren, face contorted in a caricature of hate. He immediately replied with a spray of fire, which the ghost actually rushed through before darting back to get away from the feeling of heat. Before the ghost could recover, a red disk of veneplate slammed into the ghost, pushing it back towards the far wall, where the ghost partially sank in.

  Loren pushed himself up, climbing the stairs again. The Thaumaturgist descended, helping him up. "Let's go, that won't hold it for long," she said, her hand reaching down towards him. He accepted the help, wincing at the different flavor of headache that was starting to throb. The hours had left him dangerously low on Flame, and he suspected his body was starting to consume his body fat for both magic and calories.

  He kept glancing back at the ghost, keeping eyes on it as best as he could. It was still screaming and kicking its feet, even as it tried to pry and push the disk off of it. Loren reached the top of the stairs, keeping his grip on his torch. He needed to see the ghost, otherwise it could be anywhere—

  The ghost sank completely into the wall, leaving the disk of vene pressing against the dirty white stucco.

  Fuck.

  "Go, I'll be right behind you," the Thaumaturgist said, also seeing the ghost vanish.

  He didn't need to be told twice. Loren tried to run for the front door, but could only manage a pained shuffle, the ache of his feet and tiredness suddenly making themselves very known. Lungs, burning in the not-good way. Sides, aching. Other places, also aching as well as bleeding. Feet, in agony. But he was getting out. He was moving down the corridor that the ghost had blocked, passing by a now-open door that from the smell contained the bathroom with the water the ghost had been using to put out his Flames. Loren stepped over a book on the floor that the ghost seemed to have overlooked in its attempts to throw stuff at him. He was at the open door, and he could see the Spiritualist hurrying towards them, he—

  A cold pressure wrapped around his foot, giving him a split second to be terrified before the foot was yanked out from under him. He fell forward, knees, elbows, and palms screaming in protest as they hit the hard marble floor, the fingers holding the table leg adding their own addendum. It felt like his foot was being crushed by an industrial strength blood pressure cuff as a screaming he hadn't missed suddenly erupted from the wall. Before he could react, he was flung as violently as one of the furniture back into the house.

  He slammed right into the floor to ceiling windows. Fortunately, it still refused to crack, meaning he didn't go flying out into the view of the lake. It also meant that he dropped straight down to the floor on his side, and the rest of him exploded into more agony, but falling on his side had given him the leverage to not hit his head, although his shoulder hated him for it.

  Loren got up as quickly as he could, even as it made every part of his body ache in protest and made everything hurt more, repressing the urge to scream. He was back here! Why?-! He'd already been leaving, why would the ghost throw him back?-! Did it just want to kill him?

  "Where do you think you're going, help?-! You're supposed to stay here and clean this place up! Do your job or else!"

  He looked around frantically, but he couldn't see the ghost. Where—?

  The table leg with the ghostlight flame. He'd dropped it when he'd hit the window—ow—and it had fallen several feet away, the flame now burning quickly and enthusiastically, scorching the white marble floor. Loren made a grab for it, even as he realized that he'd lost his grip on the fire because of the impact, and reached out to claim it again. The former failed as he stumbled and the latter almost did as well when a headache throbbed through his skull at the effort. He dropped to his knees, and apparently the previous abuse wasn't enough to desensitize them to pain, because it still hurt just as much.

  Cold pressure wrapped around his left bicep—and feeling even more like a blood pressure cuff—compressing it so harshly he felt like it would break just. Before he could wrap his hand around the burning table leg, the ghost lifting him up to leave him seemingly suspended in the air. Grimacing, Loren drew magic from his soul—he had so little left—and moved Flame to his left arm. This time he didn't bother keeping it internal.

  His left bicep erupted into Flames, a mix of ghostlight and heat Energy, and he smelled burning cotton as his sleeve went with it, the ghost abruptly coming into view. That actually helped lighten the load on him as the Flame consumed the cloth for fuel, even as the ghost screamed in pain and he was just barely able to anchor the fires to the ghost's hands before it dropped him. Fortunately his poor, abused feet and legs were ready to take this beating, and he was able to grab the fallen table leg with his left hand.

  With the ghost now on fire with ghostflame, it couldn't disappear, at least not as long as the fire was on it. Although now it would—

  "It's going to head into the bathroom!" Loren cried as the ghost turned to rush back up, hoping the vigilant would be able to do something with that information as he painfully struggled back to the stairs. At least, he tried to struggle. He'd run out of adrenaline a long time ago, and it didn't seem like his body was producing any more, so he was feeling that impact and drop. It was a surprising he hadn't broken anything, considering how he'd fallen… although given the pain, he actually couldn't be sure of that.

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  The Thaumaturgist and the returned Spiritualist were trying to contain the ghost, but were having difficulty, since it kept diving into the walls to break their line of sight and block their spiritforms and vene. It hadn't done that with his flames, but to be fair, he'd been fighting it in the open space of the living room.

  And now he was back to where he started: in the living room while the ghost blocked the way upstairs. Even with two vigilants in the house now who seemed to be intent of rescuing him, he still couldn't get out! What the fuck did he have to do to get out of this house?-!

  …

  Carefully, deliberately, he bent down and picked up the table leg. With a small bit of Flame, it came alight in his hands, and he carefully absorbed the heat, feeling his reserves filling as the wood burned to ash. Then he turned and looked around at all the objects that had previously been thrown. He dismissed the books out of hand. They were too hard to burn, he might actually use up more Flame than he got back.

  The broken armchair next to the stairs was more promising. It was covered in faux leather, but the stuffing was foam, and even with flame retardant additives, that would burn. So would the faux leather, with enough heat. The frame, however, was made of wood. Very traditional fuel for fires.

  Loren slapped a hand on one of the exposed wooden beams, setting it alight. The armchair burned, the filling and upholstery letting off noxious smoke composed of what he couldn't force to burn cleanly as he drew in all the heat from it. When it had all burned to ash and chemical smoke that he took care not to breathe—it stank, but wouldn't actually poison him—his reserves were… well, higher than they'd been. He no longer had a headache. Well, not from magic, anyway. The other headache was still there.

  He picked up the broken arm of the chair and burned off the upholstery and foam, leaving only the wood. Holding the longest beam left, he burned the rest, then wrapped the remaining club in ghostlight and heat Energy. Loren heard the change in pitch of the screaming as the ghost came through the wall between the bathroom and the dining area and charged right at him, and his hand tightened on the wood, holding the two by two as best as he could.

  After more than an hour of this shit, he was tired, but with properly used Flame, he might be able to push through that. He hurt, but could still move, and while he was out of adrenaline, he was very willing to experiment with a replacement. As the ghost came into view, Loren let out a scream filled with hours of frustration and pain and swung the flaming club at the ghost with as much strength as his aching muscles could manage.

  He missed.

  Fortunately, the spray of Flame from his right hand was a lot more accurate.

  ––––––––––––––––––

  Loren had suspected, but the following half hour—hour?—made it quite clear: the ghost seemed to be focused on him. It was probably the Flames he'd used. The Spiritualist and Thaumaturgist attacked by applying physical forces to the ghost's spiritform and perhaps directly attacked the ghost's stores of imbuement. His Flame, however, had imparted physical sensation… and that sensation had been being burned by fire.

  He supposed the ghost had taken that personally.

  The vigilants did their best to try and draw the ghost's attention, but despite their best efforts the ghost mostly ignored them except to yell and throw increasing smaller pieces of furniture their way. Screaming at Loren to clean up and do what it said, it had kept grabbing and shoving at him—or at least, it tried to. Loren tried to give as good as he got, swinging his Flaming club to burn the ghost as well as he could and no longer bothering to try to anchor anything to it. Instead, he did his best to keep it out in the open as a target to the two vigilants, until the two finally got the hint.

  Given how much the ghost was concentrating on him, the two had plenty of opportunity to attack the ghost from behind, and had done so with enthusiasm. With Loren had nearby, their options had been limited, but sharp veneblades sheathed with pseuo-Flame veneplasma had ripped at the ghost's back and more than once removed an arm coming towards Loren. The Spiritualist had been more basic, drawing out a knife and baton from their belt and wrapping them in spiritform to do the same.

  He didn't know how well they were doing. The ghost showed no sign of pain from their attacks save for the veneplasma one, the damage seeming to reform almost instantly. Loren didn't know what it was supposed to do, but since he'd seen vigilants doing that to keres in movies and news footage—the former of course looking cooler and more cinematic than the latter—it was probably supposed to do something debilitating. It didn't seem to do anything to the ghost though. He expected having whole pieces of its body should at least be depleting the ghost's imbuement, but the ghost didn't seem to be slowing down at all!

  Loren really wished he'd thought of making a flaming club earlier. It was so much easier to time and control than trying to blast with magic, but it was noticeably less effective at making the ghost back off and giving himself breathing room. However, he didn't really need that breathing room, because he wanted the ghost to get close so he could hit it repeatedly with a stick! A stick that would cause it pain, and maybe make it shut up about assuming Loren was the help and what it's parents would do to him. And if it wouldn't shut up… well, Loren would relieve a lot of stress trying!

  Occasionally the ghost would dart back and try to throw things at him, which the two vigilants managed to shoot down. Unfortunately, the ghost was able to continue keeping itself between Loren and the exit, and while that gave him the chance to move up the stairs and sometimes back to the dining area, the ghost immediately charged back in, pressuring him even as venefluid spilled out across the floor, pouring down the stairs like blood.

  Unfortunately, there was a limit to how much well his tiredness could cover up his anger.

  The ghost reached for him, and as he'd done several times before Loren swung his flaming club to deflect the hand away to the side. He missed, but that had happened before, and he quickly swung the club back in the other direction, trying to get the ghost on the backswing. However, before he could do so, the ghost's reaching grip managed to grab onto his arm. Cold pressure wrapped around his limb, but before he could will fire to his arm, his head throbbed, costing him precious moments.

  Moments where the ghost was able to shake its hand violent, liked a dog worrying something in its mouth. There was a snap, followed by an explosion of pain that made Loren gasp and caused to lose his grip on the club. He felt a horrifying slackness to his arm, and he instinctively tried to send Life Flame towards the injured limb.

  The ghost's screams changed tone into something that might have been triumphant. "Now, you're going to start—!"

  A knife cut.

  The ghost's face turned to glare at the Spiritualist, the man's knife still glowing from the spiritform he'd wrapped and heavily imbued around it, making the blade look like it was wrapped in glowing crystal. The arm was already starting to regrow—

  And the venefluid beneath the ghost exploded upwards.

  Spiraling, liquid-like flows wrapped around the ghost's legs, and it made a sound of surprise—possibly the least annoying verbalization the thing had made all day—as the flows solidified into veneplate. Thorns suddenly exploded from the red vene, stabbing into the ghost's body even as what looked like a collar of spiritform wrapped around the ghost's neck.

  "Let me go! Let me go, help! I said let me go! Do what I say!" the ghost cried as more cuffs of spiritform wrapped around its wrists and ankles, slowing it down and holding it in place enough so more red venefluid could wrap around the ghost's body, driving thorns in to anchor the suddenly solidified vene in the ghostly mass.

  Loren's left fist slammed into the ghost's still-exposed face. "Oh, shut up!" Brilliant flames exploded from his fist, hot and bright as they anchored onto the ghost. Human flesh that wasn't a Flame mage's, he'd once read, started to burn at 44C. At 70C, human flesh started to be destroyed. Oni flesh was a bit more durable at 56C and 80C, but even so, flesh started to die well before boiling point. No one could really experience being burned by temperature hotter than that, as third-degree burns would quickly mean the nerves would be destroyed and leave them feeling nothing.

  No one living, at least. Loren let the Flame burn very hot, giving the ghost all the tactile sensation it could want.

  The ghost's cries became screams of pain as more venefluid solidified into veneplate, wrapping around and trapping the ghost like an ant in cooling hot glue.

  Loren suddenly pitched forward as his vision swam, and it was only the Spiritualist suddenly dashing around the ghost and coming to his side that kept him from falling. Unfortunately, this also nudged the Flame mage's right arm, sending a whole bombing run of pain as agonizing explosion after explosion wracked his forearm. He could feel his magic, dangerously low, and realized he might have put a bit too much into that last…

  "Hey, stay with me! Don't fall asleep!" someone was saying.

  "The ghost is caught, get in here with the stretcher now," another voice was saying. "I heard something break, it might have been his arm…"

  He might have lost track of things after that. Something was wrapped around Loren's arm, which made it explode again before becoming a resigned ache joining the rest of his pains. Loren was laying on something, something soft and springy and—

  "Lor! Lor, are you all right?-!"

  That voice…

  Through heavy eyelids that almost refused to move—when had he closed them?—Loren looked around, his eyes seeking—

  There. Suntanned dark skin, hair just a bit too long and fluffy to be a proper pixie cut…

  His left hand flopped up, even as his eyes closed again, leaving him in the darkness of his soul.

  He was safe.

  Harmony was here now. She'd take care of…