It had been one of those hot, humid, sweltering days of highsummer, that thankfully only came to the Silver Star Tower for about two weeks out of the year. According to Pendennis's Old-Fashioned World Gazetteer, the Ring Islands got five months like it. Tahlea Grande marveled that that society had invented the hoop skirt in that climate.
"Uggghhh," moaned Hibiscus the fairy, sprawling out over the windowsill in the hopes the bricks would cool her. "I feel like someone set the dragons loose in here. I swear, if it wasn't for the magical larders keeping cold water and juice available, I'd ask Professor Gammel to release me back to Faerie and just resummon me when the heat breaks."
"Father was the one who invented the cooling device," Tahlea told her friend. She couldn't help but let a little pride creep into her voice. She herself was one of Dr. Chartreuse's creations, a homunculus built around the spirit of a fairy as its "soul."
"Really? Then I hereby promise that I won't make any sarcastic remarks about Alchemy for the next month, no matter how deserved. He has definitely earned it."
"Yay!" Tahlea cheered, doubly so since it was her Alchemy, not Dr. Chartreuse's, that tended to feel the edge of Hibi's tongue. She was, after all, still an apprentice, and alchemical apprentice mishaps tended to be…dramatic.
"I'm surprised that you don't like the weather, Hibi," said the lightly accented voice of the second apprentice in the room. Asahi no Fuyuka's appearance gave away her fairly exotic origins more than her speech, with her long, black hair, dark eyes, and colorfully patterned kimono. "I would have thought that as a spirit of nature, you would be more in harmony with the seasons."
"Nature isn't necessarily friendly, Fuyuka, even to things that are part of it: a wolf hunting a deer, lightning starting a forest fire, a sweeping pestilence. Fairies may be closer to nature than humans, but we still have bodies that can feel and suffer from the elements.
"Oh, I see. That is too bad."
"Says the ghost. You have no idea how jealous of you I am right now."
It will be noted that Fuyuka's foreign appearance was only made more dramatic by the fact that she was translucent and slightly glowing.
"Of me?"
Hibiscus rolled over onto her back.
"Yeah! I mean, you're not hot and uncomfortable at all, are you?" she…well, "accused" was really the only word for it.
Fuyuka held up her hands in front of her face.
"Well…I suppose that's true. I don't really feel the changes in temperature."
"Lucky!"
"That's odd, though. I wonder why?"
"I think it's because your body is Astral," Tahlea said. "Raising and lowering its temperature really doesn't have any effect. Why don't you try using Astral Change, Hibi?"
"Oh, good idea!" Hibiscus got a look of intense concentration for a second, and then her body faded to pale blue light. She hopped to her feet at one, then spun happily through a loop-the-loop in the air. "Ohhh, this is so much better! Thanks, Tahlea! It's too bad I can't hold this form for hours on end, but it'll help for a while, at least." She gave a long, blissful sigh.
"It's too bad that you can't take on Astral form too, Tahlea, especially since you thought of the idea. Do you want me to try summoning a skullmage to Astralize you?" Fuyuka suggested.
"I'm not sure. I think that might be going too far. I've heard it's sometimes tricky to undo the effect, and since I'm a homunculus I'm not sure if it would affect my body structure or my connection to my flask."
"Whoa, and if Tahlea is saying something is too risky to just rush into, then you know it really needs to be tested first."
"Hibi!"
"Hey, the truth is the truth."
"You're probably right," Fuyuka said. "I don't think it makes sense at all to risk yourself."
"It feels so weird to hear someone besides me saying that," Hibi said. Tahlea just rolled her eyes.
"Do you know, this reminds me of a game that we used to play at home."
"Really? A summer game from the Isles of Scarlet Dawn?"
"Uh-huh. It's one of our customs to tell scary stories during the summer months." She smiled and said, "You know how when you're frightened, you say that something gives you the chills?"
"The way it feels when I've got a Substance body, I'll try it," Hibi decided. "But that doesn't sound like a 'game' as such."
Fuyuka shook her head.
"Oh, no, the game is just based around that. It's called Hyaku Monogatari, One Hundred Tales. You gather a group of people together at night, you light one hundred candles or lanterns, and you take turns telling scary stories. Every time that a story finishes, the person who told it gets up and puts out one of the lights, then comes back to the circle, so that as the night goes on, the room gets darker and darker. It works best in a large room, or better yet an L-shaped one, so the person putting out the light has to go away from the group out into the shadows by themselves."
"We could try that," Tahlea said. "There are plenty of unused rooms in the Tower. We should get some of the other apprentices to join us, though. A hundred stories is a lot for just three people to tell."
"We'd better pick something like a Saturday night, then, since even at five minutes per story it'll take around eight hours. A bunch of magic students with no sleep going to class the next day sounds like a recipe for disaster. By the way," Hibi added, "what happens when the last story ends and the last light goes out?"
Fuyuka grinned.
"That's the best part! They say that once all hundred tales are told, there will be one extra person in the group. Telling so many stories will have blurred the lines between this world and Purgatory, and a ghost will have joined the players!"
Her revelation didn't have quite the impact she was expecting; in fact, Tahlea and Hibi just stared at her, and definitely not in the way that meant amazement. It took a couple of seconds for Fuyuka to catch on, and when she did she flushed, her skin starting to twist itself into the image of a rotting corpse with her agitation.
"I didn't mean me! I wasn't dead the last time I played it!"
~X X X~
A/N: I wrote this fic back in 2015 within a couple of weeks of finishing "Restless in Peace," and while I'd have more easily posted an omake humor short with Fuyuka regardless of quibbles over the appropriateness of it, the readers wouldn't have been able to appreciate it without knowing who Fuyuka actually was, so it remained on "Exiled to the Couch" only, in the same thread as "Restless," until now. And yes, I did a stat block (it was the style of the time) for Hyaku Monogatari, since in-universe I decided that the game actually can work as a summoning ritual drawing on the magic of the players, with the creature summoned being of Glamour (monsters), Necromancy (ghosts), or Sorcery (demons) based upon the primary slant of the stories told.