Hello and thank you for reading!
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Chapter 28: A Primer on Ghost Law
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"Right," said Danny. "Right. So, three Taboos, Murder, Rapine, and Sacrilege. Those could be rephrased as serious crimes against the body, serious crimes against the mind, and serious crimes against the soul. None of which really gives you any new information... Great. Give me a second here."
Danny ran a hand through his tangled hair. "So, crimes of against the body," he began. "The basic crime would be destroying, or trying to destroy someone physically. Like, if you were trying to end a ghost, or murder a human. But, just like with humans, there are a lot of reasons that doing so might be considered justified. Loopholes. If you're at war, if they attacked you first, they attacked someone else first, and you saw them, if they stole your stuff, if they were trying to steal your stuff, if they were breaking or trying to break another Taboo, if it's part of your obsession, if they caused your death, if you have a persistent reciprocal rivalry with them, if you're defending your haunt, or a vassal, if you did it while you were still alive... The list goes on for a while, actually. Typically, humans are exempt from being tried for Acts of Murder, especially if they only killed other humans. But there are, like, reverse exceptions, too. Killing a relative is usually prosecuted, regardless of other circumstances, even if those prosecutions fall through. People who commit genocide while alive who become ghosts when they die are also often tried. Because, you know, a lot of their victims become ghosts, too. Also, putting one of the Dead through whatever killed them is usually considered an Act of Murder. Some people want it to be considered an Act of Rapine, but since it can happen accidentally, and not all ghosts are Dead..." Danny shrugged. "My understanding is that there were politics involved." He looked down at his plate. His pancakes were probably only lukewarm now. "Can I finish my pancakes now?" he whined. He wanted to eat. Everyone else was getting to eat, and this wasn't important right now. It wasn't fair. To prove his point, he tried to shove an entire pancake into his mouth.
(It was childish. So what?)
(Regret was for losers.)
((People who shoved whole pancakes into their mouths evidently fell into that category.))
"I think that I can answer some of that," said Jazz as Danny surreptitiously removed most of the pancake from his mouth. "Like Danny said, Acts of Rapine are crimes against the mind. Ghosts tend to take these seriously. Their mental state affects them physically, even more so than a human's. Threatening their mental state threatens their existence." Jazz licked her lips and looked over at Danny. "Am I doing okay, so far?"
Danny paused mid-chew to look at Jazz. He'd been alternating eating pancakes himself with feeding them to curious wisps. They seemed to like it.
"Yeah," he said, "you're doing fine."
"Another aspect is that ghosts consider the mind to be more important that the body. I wouldn't go as far as to say that they don't care about the body, the first Taboo makes that clear, but it's much less important to them. Then, also, to make an effective attack on the mind, you usually need to be close to the person in question. There are exceptions, but not many. This makes violations of this Taboo betrayals as well as assaults. I believe that talking someone into committing suicide counts as a violation of this Taboo. Right?"
"Right," said Danny, shooing some wisps away so that others could get their turn at the syrup. Greedy, sugar-loving snowballs. They were lucky they were so cute. Like kittens. Or baby seals. Or some other cute little soft fuzzy thing. He sighed. "I guess that it's my turn again," he said.
"Afraid so, little bro."
"So. Sacrilege. There's a lot in that category that is kind of weird, that doesn't have very severe punishment, in and of itself. Some of the stuff is in there just to be a loophole for murder, as far as I can tell, so the punishment is mostly that they won't stop people from killing you. The rest of the stuff, though, is super serious. Super, duper, serious. That thing you made up there? That's in the second category. Unlike with the other two, they will go after humans for violating it. They go after anyone who goes after it. Always. Execution is the least of your worries," grumbled Danny. He put a pancake in his mouth and chewed it angrily.
"But... Why?" asked Maddie. "I don't understand why what we did is considered to be so awful. We didn't even manage to do what we set out to do."
"It's not about what you did," said Danny. "Not really. It's about how you did it. That's why I had to ask about it. The metaphysical connection between a ghost and their lair." He sighed, and explained, for the benefit of the other students. "If a ghost has a lair, and that's not a given, by the way, then they have a psychic link to the lair. Like you see in stories. The ghost can affect the lair, that much is a given, that's the point, but the effects can go the other way, too. There are other links like that, too, and because you can't control it, because it isn't something conscious, it's a point of vulnerability," said Danny, trying to explain it in a way that his parents would understand. It was so much more than that it was a point of vulnerability. Messing with these links, these bonds, was called a crime against the soul. That wasn't meaningless. It wasn't just words. "What actually happened- The thing with the shadow. That's incidental. Comparatively. It's still not a good thing, and I'm not sure that it wouldn't be Taboo by itself, but some lairs do have shadows naturally. Not this one, though. Not according to these guys." He gestured at the wisps, who were licking (Was that the right term? They didn't have tongues.) syrup off his plate. He smiled, and retrieved another pancake from the stack at the center of the table. They were almost all gone. It was good that they were all able to eat. Now they just needed to sleep.
"How worried do we need to be about that?" said Valerie, suddenly.
"Sleeping?" asked Danny, caught off guard. Valerie had been quiet since they started down the stairs. "Why'd we have to be worried about that?" He yawned, barely covering his mouth.
"What?" said Valerie, lips drawing back in surprise and confusion. "No, the shadow. How worried do we have to be about it? It sounded like it had a grudge against Mr and Mrs Fenton, and you said that it was still hanging around. How worried do we need to be?"
"Um. Not?" said Danny, tiredly. "It's not-" he yawned again. Even if he was used to pulling all nighters, this was above and beyond. "The shadow, he's still part of- of Phantom, he's gotta follow the same rules."
"What, the Taboos?" asked Ricky, muffling a yawn of his own.
"No. Well, yes, but no. Like, m- his obsession. You can't act against that. Or, hmm, frailties, or natures, or stuff like that. Y'know. How are you guys all so awake?" Danny's last sentence had a distressed waver to it. He was too tired to be talking about this. He was starting to slip.
"We're all kind of tired, right now," said Jazz. "I think that we should all try to get some rest, now. I think there were some beds in the room over this way..."
Jazz took control of the conversation. She slid out of her chair as she spoke, and stood behind Danny, pulling his chair back, even as he tuned out the beginning of a dispute. Something about not sleeping in ghost beds and who was going to stay up to watch.
Sam and Tucker steered Danny into a bed while Jazz and Mr Lancer herded the rest of the class.
Danny fell asleep almost immediately.
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The shadow picked one of the round red fruit off the shelf in the cold room. It had enough form to do that now, and it- no, he- was fascinated. He turned it over in his hand, watching as his fingers became progressively more defined. He raised a black-nailed finger to his lips. He had lips now, and sharp teeth. It was wonderful, he decided.
He lowered the finger to touch the fruit. Softly, at first, then he dug his sharp nail into the skin, digging his finger in, and then pulled back the rind to see the dark, purple-red seeds that filled the interior. He plucked one out, and popped it into his mouth, enjoying the texture. Flavor was a little beyond him, at the moment, but his shape was patterned after Danny's ghost form. A sense of taste would come eventually. He popped another seed into his mouth, and licked his thumb.
Just then, the boundary of his hand flickered, and the fruit fell through, landing softly on the shelf beneath it. He frowned. Clenched his fist. He hated having to wait. He hated being passive like this. He wanted to do something. He wanted to open their eyes and make them see.
There was a rise in the pitch of the conversation happening out by the bedrooms. The shadow tilted his head. It would be interesting once they were asleep.
