The Balance of Nature (Glob!)

[DragonSong]

"Ah--yeah, sure. If you want. I mean, if you can do that without breaking the seal on the package." She shrugged. "I don't get paid enough in general to look into things, and I don't wanna lose coin for opening that when I wasn't supposed to."

Still, she toed the pack toward him, allowing it to fall open to reveal her sparse belongings and a package wrapped tightly in thick cloth, tied with rope and sealed in wax.

She cocked her head at Seussal, frowning slightly. "So is that...a like, pre-death thing, or post-death? Seeing intangible energies?"

[DaGlobster]

"Hmm, how to put it..."

He took the pack and turned it over in his hand a few times. Then, he lifted his other hand and it turned ethereal and ghostly.

"the ethereal traces of the dead occupy the same layer of existence as pure mana. Magical residue and signals are very plain to a creature that can occupy that layer." Seussal's eyes magnified in brightness, and he cast a powerful blue glow over the package to see inside as he then used his ghostly hand to reach inside without disturbing anything.

"I can occupy either the physical or so-called "spiritual" realm. It just takes energy to switch."

[DragonSong]

"...Huh."

Maka resisted the urge to lean back when his eyes suddenly glowed brighter and he seemed to be peering into the package. Alright, she'd seen a lot of weird things in her life--most more related to bones than she would have liked--but that was...unsettling. More than seeing his skull through his face, somehow.

Still, she managed to keep her reaction under lock and watched him a little warily. "Well that's...handy. So, ah..." She cocked her head the other way, reaching up to fiddle with her pendant again without realizing that she was doing it. "Find anything interesting?"

The blue stone settled against her breast pulsed subtly--she didn't even seem to notice, but each time her fingers skimmed the edge of the pendant the glow flared and shrank again, as though reacting to her touch in combination with proximity to...something. Perhaps the wight, perhaps the wrapped bundle he held.

[DaGlobster]

"Whatever it is, it's magical. Whoever packed it away put some wards on it and I cannot pierce any further," he said, and he pulled his hand out of the package. His skeletal hand lost its ethereal tint and he rubbed the tips of two finger bones together, as if to inspect some unseen residue.

"It resonates with this place, with the cold and death. Curious."

Maka's fingers skimmed the edge of her amulet, and Seussal's head turned rather tellingly, almost as if he'd heard it somehow.

"That's a curious gem. I've never seen anything like it, but it seems so familiar."

[DragonSong]

"Yeah, I thought so too, but the go-between didn't give me much detail on the wards on it," Maka replied with a shrug. She cocked her head as he rubbed his fingers together--then froze.

"Oh." She looked down at her pendant, then back up at him. Her hand closed around the gem, tight and instinctive. "It--it does?"

That was...concerning. Wasn't it? She had always assumed the pendant her parents had given her was more to calm her and give them some peace of mind than...well. Than anything real. It was meant to suppress her powers, or somehow make them easier to manage, but as far as she knew it had never actually worked.

If something like a wight recognized it, could it be doing the opposite?

She set her jaw and forced her hand away from the stone. The blue glow didn't fade, but with the strange light from the magic fire Maka couldn't be sure how much of that was from the stone itself and how much was reflected light.

"Familiar...how?" she asked cautiously, staring into the fire again as she dropped her hand into her lap.

[DaGlobster]

"Like... we're related, somehow. And the chiming..." he said, not realizing that Maka herself could not hear the gentle chiming and twinkling of light within the pendant's crystal. That it was something only the truly dead could perceive.

"No push or pull, just... recognition."

He realized he wasn't exactly making a lot of sense, so he reconsidered his words with a downwards turn of his eyes.

"It's nothing, I think. Just a curiosity. We should get moving before the storm worsens."

[DragonSong]

Maka's frown deepened as she continued to stare into the fire, trying to make sense of that. She wasn't having much luck.

She gave her head a quick shake and looked up at him again. "What? Oh. Oh, yeah, we probably should."

She glared out at the snow and grumbled to herself about the cold and the wind as she pushed herself to her feet and gathered up her pack. "How much of a trek is this gonna be, anyway? I mean, how much time do you think we have before we should really worry about being caught between shelters."

[DaGlobster]

She posed her question and Seussal could not help but to chuckle a little.

"Do not worry. Ride close to my side and we'll make time well enough," he said, finally stirring from his seated position. He rose to his feet, casting his eyes around Maka's small shelter.

"You... have a horse, yes?"

[DragonSong]

"Ah..."

Maka looked around the tiny shelter, then widened her eyes dramatically. "Y'know, I did, but he seems to have run off. Or turned invisible. Damn."

Dropping the sarcasm, she eyed Seussal's mount warily, then looked back to the wight. "Will he, uh...carry two?" Or I could just stay here and not ride the terrifying undead pony.

[DaGlobster]

"Will he carry two..." came Seussal's reply, loaded with a little sarcasm of his own. Still, it was rather interesting that she'd travelled so far into these mountains without a fast way around. That being said, Seussal had it pretty good when it came to horse travel.

He crossed his arms and looked back towards Karvar, which tilted one side of its head to regard Seussal with a similarly lifeless look.

"Will you?" he asked, and Karvar snorted and dipped his head in a knowing nod, then turned so his side faced the two. Seussal simply crossed back into the blizzard and mounted up in one smooth motion, then offered a gravely cold gauntlet down to Maka so she could swing up.

[DragonSong]

"Fantastic," Maka muttered, giving Karvar another wary look as she edged closer. She'd never really been much of a horse person--she didn't dislike them on principle or anything, but they were large and expensive to care for, and so she'd never really gotten used to being around them. And while she could ride, she wasn't particularly accomplished at it.

Suppose it's good thing I'm not riding alone, then.

Gods, how had she ended up in this situation? She'd spent almost her entire life trying to avoid the Dead.

Lingering with bemusement on that particular thought, she huffed out a breath and took Seussal's hand, letting him help swing her up onto the undead horse behind him.

"Oohhhhhkay. High," she muttered as she settled herself onto the animal and realized the snowy ground was much further away from her than she'd been expecting. Instinctively, and completely illogically, she tried to grab at her riding partner to steady herself, like she would have with a more typical companion. She nearly pulled back with a yelp, but fear of falling off the horse kept her in place. "Sweet gods, you're freezing," she grumbled, feeling awkward and more nervous than she liked.

[DaGlobster]

Seussal didn't seem to react to any of Maka's trepidations until she made that yelp and complained that he was freezing.

"Were you expecting something else?" Seussal said with a glance backwards. He shifted forwards a little so she could support herself on the saddle's cantle, but there wasn't much space to share, she'd have to wrap a limb or two around Seussal to get any form of solid grip.

"Use my cape so you're not just touching the metal. You're going to want to hang on," he started as Karvar began at a slow trot.

[DragonSong]

"Right. Cape. Right. Ohhhhhh okay okay okay." Maka spent a few seconds trying to figure out the most appropriate and comfortable way to go about doing this, but then the horse started moving and she just lurched forward to grab a handful of fabric and tossed it haphazardly wide across his back before wrapping her arms around his middle. Tightly.

It wasn't like she was in danger of cutting off his breath, after all.

"This is so, so weird," she mumbled to herself, trying not to think too hard about what exactly she was doing. She'd spent so long avoiding the dead that this situation just felt...surreal.

[DaGlobster]

Indeed, unless Maka could squeeze hard enough to compress plate metal, then she could cling and squeeze to her heart's content and Seussal probably wouldn't even notice the difference. Once Karvar got going, the undead horse seemed to have an absolute mastery over the uneven, snow-covered terrain that would have slowed any other horse to a crawl.

Aside from the rythmic rocking and the occasional jolt, Karvar was basically gliding across the ground, using the frost to travel and leading a wide trail in his wake more akin to that of a carriage than a single horse.

In short, they were moving.

"Weird?" Seussal called back.

"Have you never ridden on a horse before?"

If he had lips, he'd be grinning under his helmet, but he preferred to let his even tone veil the sarcasm.

[DragonSong]

"Of course I've ridden a horse before," Maka snapped, either too nervous to pick up on his sarcasm or ignoring it entirely. "Just not...this kind of horse." A dead one, specifically.

As they picked up speed, she bit back an anxious noise and found herself clutching a little tighter to the rider in front of her, her arms moving down from his chest to wrap around his waist instead--always careful to keep the cloak between her and his chill--to offer a more secure anchor.

She shivered, wishing she had on another layer. She'd bundled up as well as she could before trekking out into the snow fields, but there was only so much her coat and gloves could really do against the cold of Death combined with the now biting wind as they glided through what was quickly turning from a flurry to the threat of a storm. 

[DaGlobster]

Unfortunately, there wasn't much Seussal could do in regards to keeping Maka warm. The only thing he really knew how to do was lower the temperature, so to speak, never the other way around. What he could definitely do was stir Karvar into a brisker run, and held up a hand as they sped along in order to break the flurry around them and offer Maka some form of reprieve.

[DragonSong]

Maka actually did notice the effort he took to try to offer her a bit of respite from the biting wind, and found her stomach clenching slightly. She wasn't really used to even basic consideration from other people, and to find it in a situation like this was...unsettling. Not bad, just odd. She didn't really know how to react.

So she kept quiet, watching the snowy landscape speed by them as Karvar picked up speed. There was something...strangely timeless about traveling like this, and she honestly wasn't sure exactly how long they'd been moving when she noticed faint, dark shapes jutting through the swirling white.

"That our destination?" she asked, raising her voice a bit to be heard over the wind.

[DaGlobster]

"That it is," Seussal said, raising his head to take in the cyclopean burial monoliths that marked the entrance to this particular barrow, which was set into the mountainside itself. Clearly ancient, most likely from the days of whatever empire ruled Fell.

As they rode up to the large circular door that led into the tomb complex, Maka'd be able to see that much of it was iced over. The worn statues of armored guardians stood nearly barren and covered in sideways icicles from the brutal winds, while the door itself was covered in an almost mirror-sheen layer of thick freeze.

"It should be safe here. This is a place I've sealed in the past," Seussal said, and he pat Karvar's neck. The horse dipped its head so he could swing his leg over and hop off the saddle, turning to Maka and offering an upturned gauntlet. It was an archaic, gentlemanly gesture that the undead knight performed without any conscious desire to.

[DragonSong]

"Sealed?" Maka found herself asking, curious almost despite herself. She'd actually started to dismount when she realized Seussal was offering a hand, and a small, vaguely surprised, "Oh..." slipped from her.

She hesitated a moment, then took the offered hand carefully as she hopped down from the horse. "Ah, thanks. That--"

An overwhelming sense of death struck her in the gut and she doubled over, gasping. Apparently, being on an undead mount had somehow blocked or at least muffled her senses--once her feet were on the ground, she could feel the suffocating miasma of the Veil pressing in on her from all sides.

Well, shit. They weren't even in the barrows, and she could barely see straight, vertigo dragging at the edges of her vision and turning her stomach. Her pendant, which had slipped out from under her tunic when she bent forward, pulsed with a quick flash of that eerie blue light.

[DaGlobster]

Seussal felt a small spark of warmth in his chest when Maka humored his gesture. Maka's tolerance of his starkly undead nature was refreshing. That being said, all she had to do was not instantly revile him, and it still would've been nicer than his usual encounters.

His warmth quickly turned back to ice when she doubled over, seemingly agonized by... something. He was unsure of what to do, right up until he saw her pendant slip from her tunic and give that small pulse of light.

To Seussal, that pulse was like a fiery supernova, and he shielded his eyes as it sent a pulse of energy rippling through the Veil around them, though him. Once he knew that was the issue, he opened his eyes to the Veil around them. He made sure that places like these had stable, healthy pathways to and from the Veil, but to see it twisting around her like a maddened octopus, when this place had known peace for so long...

Against what felt like his better judgement, he stepped closer to Maka and focused on his ability to dampen magical energies. With a steadying hand on her shoulder, he went quiet as he tried to push the Veil away from her, to give her at least enough space to breathe.