36 Miasma

After walking for some time, the skull that had collected himself, had caught up with Foo. Sticking to him, as if even the threat of death were to prefer over losing the opportunity to speak to a human again after so many years.

Having given up on chewing on his legs, the skull instead fired a barrage of words in his direction.

"Hey! Are you really sure that you should go there?"

However, Foo were ignoring him.

"I have never seen a soul as pure as yours before, how come that you got banished? Based on the fact that your soul is still so pure, and that you are still alive, it must have been really recently, right?"

At the notion that he would have been `banished`, Foo could not help but to ask: "What do you mean with banished?"

Stunned, the skull answered: "How else would anyone come here? This is The Abyss; the ancillary world for banishing the greatest fiends through history. When they want to get rid of something evil, they dump it here, banishing it to never return."

This information made Foo confused, and thus he asked: "The Abyss? I thought this was the spirit world?"

The skull almost rolled his eyes on the ignorance that Foo showed. In fact, if he had eyes, he would definitely roll them.

"Of course this is the spirit world. The Abyss is a special sealed section of the spirit world, made so that nothing can leave once inside."

This statement made Foo frown, if the portal were used as a gateway, why would it lead to The Abyss? And how should he get back? As soon as he stepped through the portal, it disappeared. He had thought that the spirits would know the way back, but now he was told that one could not leave after they go here? Was this perhaps not the intended destination? Had the portal acted up somehow?

Interrupting his thoughts, the skull continued his barrage: "It takes a humongous amount of mana to be able to open a portal through the seal to The Abyss, so you can imagine my surprise that someone deemed you to be such a threat that they just had to banish you."

Not knowing what he should make out of this information, he asked the skull: "Then why did you get banished here?" This skull did not seem too evil, so he wondered why it was here.

The skull then sighed in indignation, and lamented: "I was unjustly banished! They are just running around playing gods, why the hell did they have to banish me?"

Seemingly depressed at the thoughts of the past, he explained: "There was this woman that I liked. I had a rare and beautiful flower that she would come over and look at every day."

"But one day, the flower was beginning to wither. As the flower were the only way that I could see the woman, you can imagine my desperation."

"Thus I desperately began to look for ways to resurrect it. In my pursuit, I managed to come over an ancient tomb, which contained the art of resurrection."

"Thrilled, I followed the instructions, sacrificing a few thousands of villages. And when I finally was able to execute the resurrection, I returned to bring back the flower."

"Who would have known that the woman had already saved the flower, by changing the dirt to a more nutritious one? And how the hell could one know that the resurrection spell were ineffective on flowers in the first place?"

"And when we stood there and looked at the flower together, she told me that she was happy that she could save the flower; otherwise she would not have an excuse to see me every day."

"You can imagine our happiness, as we decided to get married that moment, only to later have our wedding crashed by some self-proclaimed saints that just had to banish me!"

"Then stuff happened, and now I am just a skull."

Facepalming at the stupidity and tragedy, Foo regretted that he ever asked.

However, it brought the benefit that the skull were silent for some minutes, reminiscing about the past.

...

After a while, they reached a forest. A creepy one. The trees were made of some kind of pulsating black mass. In fact, Foo was quite unsure that they were trees.

The tree-lookalikes that did not look like trees stretched out for Foo when he passed.

Curious about this, Foo asked: "Are the trees here alive?"

The skull let out a creepy laugh, sounding more like a clattering of the jaw, and answered: "Alive? Nothing here is truly alive. Except for you... for now..."

"Well, you can't really call them dead either. They are like all of us, something in between. Although they are more dead than most of us. Or rather, they were never alive."

"It is creatures that have been born by the corruption of the miasma in The Abyss."

Corrupted trees? Foo agreed that that might be a fitting description. But this also led to more question: "Then what is this miasma?" The word itself were familiar to him. It was basically an aura of evilness, or something like that. Often with the capability to corrode life, turning stuff evil.

"Ah, you see. Normally there are lots of mana stuffed in the air, right? Mana don't really have any intelligence, but it can contain feelings."

"Normally, this does not mean much. But when exposed to an evil aura for a prolonged time, it can turn evil itself. This is called miasma."

"Of course, it does still not have any intelligence, it is just that it corrupts things like souls. Basically transmitting the evil over to other mediums."

"The miasma can also give birth to strange and evil creatures if it gets in high enough concentration. For example the trees here. Due to the heightened concentration of miasma from the big-shots that resides over here, they have become what you see now."

"Miasma is highly infecting, you must surely noticed by now that it is creeping into your body, munching away on your sanity."

Noticing nothing of the sort, Foo just responded: "Not really."

Stunned, the skull's jaw was threatening to fall off. In an unbelieving voice, he asked: "Really? You feel nothing at all? Nothing can resist miasma! Well, there are some exceptions, but it is rare!"

Realizing that miasma was just a type of mana, and that it thus were rejected by his body, Foo had no need to worry about it.

The skull then continued: "It is all around us! The air is totally oozes with it!"

Foo then realized that the gloominess that he saw when he entered, and the inexplicable light, probably was this miasma, filling the air.

Then he exclaimed: "Interesting, I wonder if everyone can produce it?"

The skull then answered: "Impossible, one have to be evil as hell, and with that pure soul, it is basically impossible!"