"That's it? I was expecting a little more destruction or... something bad. Maybe some disgusting monster made out of ectoplasm on the walls or like corpses walking the streets, hungry for flesh! Oh uh... Sorry. I didn't mean it like that."

Daisy smiled nervously as she shrunk slightly in embarrassment, looking towards Scar and Cynthia. Scar off-handedly brushed it off, but a mischievous smile spread across Cynthia's face before morphing her body.

Taking the form of a terrifying monster, she waved her hands in the air dramatically and let out exaggerated growls and wails, clearly unable to decide if she was a monster or a ghost.

Daisy let out a playful scream, before running off with the ghost monster in pursuit, her playful giggles mixing with the confusing noises of the undecided ghost monster.

While the two of them played, Scar and Alexandra remained standing on the edge of the sheer rock-face that overlooked the small town that was reported to have 'ghost pirates.' However despite the considerable distance they had from the town, giving them a perfect view of the area around for at least a mile - half of which was just open ocean - there was no sign of any ghosts of any kind of variety.

Well, other than the one that was being chased by the slime monster. But she didn't count.

"She's right you know." Alexandra let out a deep sigh, turning to Scar with an irritated glare, "It's such a cliche to say, but it's too quiet. Even for this far away from the big cities, there should be beasts around at the very least. But look at it. It's so... normal.

Do any of your creepy minions down there see anything suspicious?"

"There aren't any down there."

"What? But I thought... You said you conquered every city that was left and took it into your glorious empire."

Scar could feel the sarcasm dripping off of the term 'glorious empire' but he didn't care. It wasn't his anymore. He freed himself off the burden of that stupid thing when he put on this mask and truly assumed his new identity.

He wasn't Seth, the puppet master, or Corvus, the glorious Lord of the conquering empire, anymore. He was just Scar, the man that existed to kill. What a glorious life that was.

"Yeah... That does sound like something I would say, doesn't it? Seems like I was wrong. Read me the reports again while I get a closer look."

Alexandra frowned at the request, wondering how he was going to go over there and still listen to her. She didn't see anything around for him to puppeteer, not unless he was planning on making a golem out of cliff rocks. But as someone made out of rocks, she knew that didn't exactly scream subtly.

Nevertheless, she sighed and pulled out the communicator to get the reports once more. While she worked, Scar squatted down and held his hand out towards the ground, palm facing upwards as if he was coaxing something into his hand.

He was coaxing thin air and yet, something still responded. A long spindly leg touched against his finger, followed by another and then another. A small black body formed out of nothingness, acting as the middle point of all of those creepy, spine tingling legs.

A pair of fangs decorated the creatures face, as did dozens of beady black eyes.

The black spider crawled its way out of nothingness and onto his hand without complaint, settling into his palm as if it was returning home after a long day at work.

"Ugh... What is that?!"

"This is my Spirit Animal."

"You're spirit animal is a spider? What's wrong, were the dung beetles not available? Couldn't have taken something less creepy, like a koala or something? Not even a dog? Everyone loves dogs."

Scar let out a soft chuckle as he stood up straight, cupping the [Spirit Animal] in one hand while he stroked its back gently with a single crooked finger. It was a fun quirk of his ability.

He was able to turn his body into a soul, and his soul into a body. The Spirit Animals were parts of his soul, in a sense.

They were his secondary mutation, the way his soul adapted to keep itself stable when he shattered it apart. If his three bodies were like planets, then the spirit animals were like countless moons orbiting those planets. Formed from small bits of rock that broke off from the main planets.

So, by using his ability on them he could give them physical bodies.

"What's the matter? Is the invincible stone giant afraid of a harmless little spider?"

"No! I'm not afraid. I just... don't like them. No one likes them. No one sane at least. They are creepy and gross with all of their legs and eyes. Just the thought of them crawling on me makes me..."

Scar didn't think it was possible for stone to turn green without the addition of moss, yet Alexandra somehow managed it as she dry heaved in the air and had to look away from the Spirit Animal.

A devious smirk was hidden behind Scar's mask as he thrust his hands upwards, pushing it right in front of her face, causing her to yelp in horror and fall backwards.

Scar cackled wickedly, unable to stop himself, until his belly was hurting. Although for some reason Alexandra didn't share his opinion on the hilarity of the joke and simply glared at him from on the ground.

With a snap of his fingers, the spider's body twisted and warped, all but two of its legs disappearing as its body ballooned in size. Its fangs stretching out into a razor sharp beak, its wiry hairs sprouting into feathers and a pair of pitch black wings erupted from its side.

The raven in his hand let out a caw that sounded like it too was laughing, before taking to the skies and heading towards the unassuming town.

"You could have done that the whole time?!"

"No, of course not. Only when it was funny. Now read the report." Scar answered with a chuckle, leaning forwards to avoid the ball of mud that was thrown at his head, before Alexandra stood and started to read with a grumble.

The report that Alexandra read was made by a single pair of individuals. Calling it a 'report' was a bit too formal. It was more like a tall tale. They had no official affiliation with the kingdom of Ravenkeep or any of its newly acquired cities, in fact the report came from before they did most of the conquering.

Regardless, it told the tale of these two individuals as they were on a hunting trip, trying to strengthen themselves as most do. They stumbled across the town, which neither had been to since the apocalypse began, finding it being attacked by the aforementioned 'ghost pirates' in the depths of the night.

The streamer and social media life style of the before world had at least trained them to record video of everything they did, allowing Scar to see everything they saw on that fateful day. But that was part of the problem.

What he was seeing in the video was not matching what he was seeing through the eyes of his [Spirit Animal].

He saw houses burning down, people slaughtered in the streets by spectral pirates looking like they had been plucked from a Hollywood movie about the Caribbean. Instead of the pale azure light he was used to with spirits like Daisy or his own apparitions, these ghosts were a sickly mossy green.

Seaweed clung to different parts of their bodies, hanging off their arms or wrapped around their legs. Barnacles and starfish clung to their transparent skin as if they were corpses that had been freshly dragged from the depths of the sea.

On the videos, Scar watched as their pirates, in their fanciful Hollywood get ups, took absolute glee in the murder and chaos they were spreading. When the people tried to fight them off, unable to hit their spectral bodies and only to end up run through by their barnacle covered blades, the pirates would laugh with malevolent glee.

Scar shifted his vision from the video being played in front of him, the scene showing the chaos from the perspective of one of the two hunters. The hunter watched in horror was an woman had a whaling harpoon burst through her chest, before she collapsed to the ground with the terror stuck on her freshly dead face.

And yet... Through the Raven's eyes, Scar could see that exact same woman standing outside of a store, holding up the ice cream cone that she had purchased as she took hundreds of selfies with it.

The light of her phone flashing dozens of times a second as her pose barely changed, the girl seemingly blissfully unaware that she was supposed to be dead.

It would have been easy enough to chalk this up to some kind of healing ability, but unfortunately that was far from the only strange and utterly illogical thing about this town.

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