It was lonely being dead. Well, at least Faisel thought so anyway. With a sigh, he passed his insubstantial finger through the rook on the chess board before him. What he wouldn’t give to just be able to play again, just once more.

Being a ghost wasn’t even half as much fun as he had imagined it to be, no way. In fact, it was pretty much the direct opposite to quite literally any situation he would ever have even associated with being a phantom. Whilst he was still alive, he had thought being a ghost would consist of a lot of floating, groaning and making people jump, maybe even spending a spell in the women’s baths… for scientific research reasons obviously, why what else could his intentions ever be?

Unfortunately for Faisel, what it actually consisted of, was a lot of sitting around, no floating, strictly walking only, and being very, very lonely. On top of that, the aches and pains he had whilst a member of the living, followed him right into death. His back hurt, his teeth hurt, every single one of his joints ached, and hell, even his vision was still failing.

Faisel glared over at his body, hunched over forward in the chair in front of the lonely chess board, his bald, wizened old head lolled to the side to crush his substantial, long white beard against his frail shoulder.

The Ghosts lips moved as he cursed himself for his folly, but being dead and all, no sound emerged. For a week he had been here now, silently pacing the very room in which he had died, back and forth, up and down, round and round. He hated it. A room full of books, tomes and scrolls; being a wizard and all, these things were expected in any standard wizards lair. Most of which he hadn’t even read, they were quite literally just for show. Books made people look smart, scrolls made people think of the arcane. He was a wizard, owning these were just requirements of the trade.

Right now, he hated them. He hated the multitudes of objects that cluttered the room, the vast amount of knowledge just waiting to be discovered. What good was all this, when you can’t even open the damn things? Try as he might, his fingers just passed straight through, without fail, every time. One of the books in particular was of special interest to the dead wizard, a tome titled “Espookio de Ghosite.” Which was Zingding for “Scary Ghosts” One of the few he had actually bothered to pick up during his seven hundred year life span, solely because the name was fun to say. Right now though, the interest the book held, was not because of it’s funny title, no… It was because he was almost certain that there was a passage in there that mentions “Touchiefeelius” ZingDing For substantiality, to make oneself substantial as a ghost.

What idiot makes a book about becoming substantial, which you obviously need to become substantial to get at the info about how to become substantial. Obviously either an absolute tool or an evil genius.

With a huff, the grouchy old ghost plumped himself down in the chair on the other side of the board, opposite his own dead body, and promptly passed through the wooden object to land on the cold stone floor with a silent thump, his vision obscured by the inside of the chair’s back rest that his head was in the middle of passing through.

Dammit.

Another major annoyance, was the fact that he seemed to be imprisoned within this very room. Sure, his hands would pass right on through the objects he actually wanted to touch, but should he try to walk through a wall? Bam. sore nose. Typical. What was worse still? Well, wizards lived in towers… Right? Right, it was mandatory. But Faisel, being unique and a total non-conformist, deliberately build his tower, upside down. A loophole, which of course the Triage Wizarding Association Tribunal Selective (Or “T.W.A.T.S for short), absolutely despised. His tower was a full twenty-five floors high… Or, well… Low. twenty five floors deep into the ground. So, as you can imagine, windows were entirely redundant. Which of course meant that not only was he stuck in this blasted room, he didn’t even have anything to look at.

Dammit, Dammit, Dammit.