He can find something suited to acting as a hitching post, most certainly, so Tommy will not be able to sneak up on him.

As for the cave, it's more of a grotto, or at least it seems to be at first glance: its entrance is small, amidst some rocks, enough so that you could definitely miss it if you weren't looking for it and weren't walking so close to it, and it really doesn't look like it should actually lead anywhere. But if he dips his head down and crawls into it and walks a little bit further it'll eventually open up into a very large gallery, really wide and much longer than that, long enough that the light of Arik's torch cannot reach the other end. The floor is bare stone, dusty more than dirty, except for the trails of proper dirt that presumably-the-dead dragged in for whatever reason dead people may have to go into the place. These trails, too, lead far enough in that his light cannot see where.

Oh, ruins. These are often interesting.

What if he turns the brightness up on his torch-stick. Maybe sends out a couple of extra lights to explore the room. (He'd really like to see the walls - and any hidden enemies, since witchlight is so helpful that way - before going anywhere.)

There isn't, actually, anything else in this gallery, as far as he can tell. Various bits of the "room" are caved in, with mountains of rubble taller than he is here and there. They seem to be hiding absolutely nothing.

Fiiiiine, he'll follow the corpsetrails. There is probably going to be an angry demon at the end of all this and it will probably have laid some level of trap for him. This, as they say, Is Fine.

The cave gets colder, as these things do, the deeper in he goes. Cold enough that his breath starts fogging up, though of course not enough that there's any actual frost anywhere. Or perhaps it's just the lack of humidity. And maybe the cold isn't just physical. But This, as they say, Is (probably) Fine.

Right?

It takes some walking, but eventually he does find something that might be in want of punching or burning or slicing or whatever: a kind of spiritual being in the shape of a floating ball of purple flame, bobbing up and down in the air. It's not, directly, attacking him, per se, but it does seem to be doing something to him that doesn't feel very nice? Sort of psychologically? It's hard to say.

How does it feel, psychologically, about his sword, which is also more of a spiritual than a physical entity, stabbing it.

It does try to lunge for him when he does that, but it's not fast enough, and it dissipates without fanfare. And it does feel better.

Probably.

It probably feels better.

The cold is probably somewhat less cold.

Wait, no, that's nonsense, why would the cold be less cold? It's just as cold. Isn't it?

The fact that he is experiencing cold, when he was not only raised in a hut in the mountains-where-your-spit-freezes-before-hitting-the-ground but is wearing a magical necklace that has allowed him to run around naked in those very mountains, is deeply suspicious. He presses onward.

There are more spiritual beings. Some of them were hidden, and become visible when touched by the light of his torch; some didn't bother hiding, and just wander around aimlessly. Some have shapes, like fire, or paper, or flowers, or air—wait, is being shaped like air a thing?—while others are shapeless, a hint of existence just barely this side of awareness.

They're not ghosts, or not straightforward ones at least. It doesn't seem like they're haunting anything, except themselves. But they're spirits all the same.

And they don't attack him, usually. They just hang around, and feel bad to be around, and once he kills them he feels slightly less bad (probably). Not all, though, a couple do lunge at him and try to do something to him.

None are very strong. None seem to be trying very hard. None take very many stabs to dissipate into the air.

And it gets a little bit less cold each time, except for how it's still cold.

It doesn't really take a genius to figure out, which is good, because Arik is an idiot with a sword.

These things affect an area around themselves. As he approaches, things feel worse.

Things already feel bad, even when he's not near one.

But maybe he's near enough. To a really big one.

(That's, uh, been doing something with corpses. Animating them remotely, maybe? He kind of thought something was going to be eating them. But necromancy isn't exactly new either.)

This is going to suck, probably.

He sees the first of the corpses at the same time as he sees the light. The light is, actually, pretty difficult to see, at first; it's far, or so it seems, and it's small, and it could be a trick of his eyes, or just another flame spirit. But it's different. And a lot closer-by is a corpse, the first one he's seen so far (wait, he thought that before, didn't he?), and it's lying on the ground, staring up at the (tall, tall) ceiling with empty eyes filled with light. Are they empty or are they filled with light? There are eyes, and it seems like there may be light, but it's not really there, and not really light.

Except for that one light over there in the distance. That light is real. It's the only real thing, here, even more real than the floor, solid under his feet. It's more real than he is. Doesn't he want to see it? Doesn't he want to know what being real is like? What being light is like? What being like is light? What light like is being? Doesn't he?

In a blissful daze, he staggers forward. His mouth is half-open, his eyes half-closed; his hands are twitching at his sides.

Until he's within reach, at which point his eyes are open again and his hand closes around his sword, and he drives it home with all his strength.

His blade is stopped, and the thing makes itself visible all at once.

It's big.

It's humanoid, ish, though sort of shapeless and of bizarre proportions. Its head is about half the size of its torso, and it only has eyes, no nose or mouth or ears. Its arms are short and its hands are huge—one of them is holding a lantern at the end of a stick, and the other is holding Arik's sword between its fingers a little bit like a toothpick. It's dark purple and its eyes are black as the night sky and filled with a terrible light, and it's looking at him with a tilted head, as if confused.

Then it's trying to pull him up into the air by grabbing his sword, as if assuming it's a limb of his and he'll just go up with it.

At some point in this process, there was a miscalculation. Arik isn't sure at the moment where it was, because he needs to not die, and that means thinking later, and acting now.

First of all: his sword doesn't exist, especially not right now. His arms go right back down by his sides, and he jumps backwards and flings a knife at its eye. (The knife also doesn't exist, but right now it exists.)

The knife seems to surprise it more than anything. It does land, and it does sink into the thing's eye, but it's not acting like it particularly hurt. Then again, who knows how the body language of this kind of creature goes? Regardless, it turns to face him more fully, its head tilting to the other side, and then it moves the hand holding the lantern so that its light is between Arik and the creature—

The light is more than he is. More alive, more living, more vibrant and happy and joyous and real. Doesn't he want to know how the light feels? Doesn't he want to be with the light? Be in the light? Be the light?

Doesn't he?

D̵̝͎̈o̶͍͙̅ë̴̼̻́̅s̶̝̼̋́ñ̵̡̺̋'̸̣̦̑t̴̮͋͆ ̷̡̾͘h̵̢͆ḛ̵̩̊?̸̣̳͘

He's already taken a step forwards, before he wrests control back and turns on his heel to run.

The siren's song of the lantern isn't completely gone—having looked at it up close, it's clear that it's been calling to him since he stepped foot in this place, trying to worm its way into his thoughts—but it's a lot easier to resist when he's not looking directly at the light. But the lantern isn't the creature's only trick, and it can get surprisingly fast for its size (although how surprising is it, really, given that it's more spirit than matter?). It's soon bounding after Arik, the shadows its lantern casts swaying wildly as it bobs side to side and up and down.

These halls are indeed ruins, though of what is not a question they can answer. But this means that Arik's way isn't clear of obstacles, and there is much to stand in his way, doors and walls and crumbled rock. And at some point he must've gotten turned around, maybe distracted by the light, but the direction of the exit isn't obvious at all.

And he will find the corpses, as he runs, but at this point it might start becoming clear that they, too, were just bait. The corpses were not the point; attracting prey who would want to know where the corpses went was. And Arik is very much prey, right now.

Arik has ways of dealing with physical obstacles. It admittedly involves switching between a lot of fiddly states of mind, but fiddling with his own state of mind is about seventy percent of what he does. Leap over the wall. Move-like-that through the door. Switch, at one particularly lengthy stretch of rubble, to running along the walls - that one always gives him a headache, but headaches are survivable.

And, yeah, sure he got turned around. Fuck off with that fairy-hill bullshit. He's of half a mind to turn around and just fight the thing like a man, but. He would die. Badly. So he'll keep fucking running.

Despite how it's mostly a spirit, the thing does seem to have enough matter that when it tries to clip around a corner or through a doorway it mostly causes a ton of structural damage to its surroundings. And this becomes very relevant to Arik very soon when a wrong turn sends him into something akin to a dead end, and the creature crashes against a wall when trying to follow him which causes the wall between it and him to come crashing down into more rubble.

On the bright side, the thing can't squeeze into the hole Arik's found himself in. On the less bright side, he is in fact. Kind of trapped. Right now.

Some would take being trapped like a rat in a... rat trap... as cause for despair.

Arik thinks of it as more of a grace period, in which to figure out what in the living, breathing fuck he is doing.

He can't hurt the lantern-spirit meaningfully - or at least, not enough to take it down. Maybe if he knew more of the Art; maybe if he worked out how to bathe his sword in holy fire, like he sometimes dreams about.

He dreamed about the healing magic, too. Before he could do it.

He was dying when it came to him. His necklace hadn't been enough to keep him upright, and he lay there choking on his own blood, and he felt his hand reach toward his own chest. And he rose, on shaky feet, hurting all over but alive. It was like a miracle, in his hour of direst need.

Father of the Sky, if you're listening, he thinks, and moves-like-that through the rubble, blade in hand.

It works! 

...well, kind of. His sword is bathed in holy fire, but just a little bit of it, and it does hurt and surprise the creature when he phases through the rubble, but just a little bit. Enough to give it some pause and look at the smoking cut on its hand, not though that it can't immediately try to retaliate.

It has claws, even though it didn't a moment ago, and it moves fast, though not blindingly so. It swipes.

It can fucking try!

...oh, Mother, it can really fucking try. The Hammer-Strikes-Smoke Mantra works so much better when you can be the member of the equation who is Smoke. He takes a set of vicious ethereal claws across his chest, and... oh, those are bones. That's a significant quantity of his ribcage. He slams healing energy through himself and presses on.

Is he sure he wants to do that? The creature is definitely capable of dishing more hurt than it's taking; being ethereal in nature, it doesn't work so much in a "has a body that can be damage in ways that impair it" way as in a "probably will die if sufficiently damaged but until then it'll just keep going" way.

What a fucking coincidence. So does he.

If that's how he wants to die, the spirit is ?happy? to oblige him. It's completely silent, creepily so, and it's relentless in its attacks. It also deals more damage per hit and has more hit points than he does.