@Dauphin DaGlobster
A bitingly cold wind whistled down out of the mountains that rose up before her and Maka hunched even further into her heavy, oilskin coat, scowling down at her feet. Gods, she
hated the cold.
What I wouldn't give for a hot drink, she bemoaned to herself, rather uselessly. It hardly did her any good to simply bitch about the cold, even if it was only to herself.
Because like it or not she really only had herself to blame for the position she was in. This is what she got for taking jobs without reading the fine print.
Well...not
literally, of course. Honestly after spending a few weeks in with the man she had begun to doubt if the man was even literate. But the pay was good, and it had been too long since her last real job, so here she was, playing delivery girl. Trekking through the snow. Cursing herself.
How much further was it to Hyoite anyway?
"After this, no more jobs up north," Maka muttered to herself. "I don't care how good the pay is."
Outside a cave framed by wind-swept snow, a harsh cold wind blew. The snow was misted into the air and from the snowy breeze emerged a horse with an armored rider on top.The rider wore antiquated armor, a coat of mail with a tattered, burgundy tabard and tall greathelmet. He had more modern components to his armor, however, and these included a breastplate, spaulders, arm plating and gauntlets. He had drained much of his power using the cold winds of winter to travel swiftly across the land, and thus stopped to spend a night and recover.
He liked to spend his springs and summers in the colder regions but once winter started to take hold he would travel the winds down to the greener lands to exact his eternal task. He'd killed one necromancer last year, tracked him halfway across the continent and slew him like a dog his fourth so far, and he still felt the satisfaction to this day.
"Here's perfect, Karvar," he said, and he slipped off his horse, giving the barded steed a stroke on the neck. The horse was regaled in a similarly colored mail coat as Seussal, although nowadays it hung a bit oddly on the horse, what with his skeletal nature. Karvar snorted and entered the cave, and Seussal followed.
Only for the both of them to stop, greeted by a curious sight. Mummified by the cold, the ancient corpse of a warrior sat with its back against the wall. His chest was torn open, armor splintered, suggesting that something mighty had slain him.
Out of habit, he knelt by this warrior, and was relieved to see that his soul had moved on. He took the old sword that laid by him and placed it on his lap, and nearly jumped when the old corpse grabbed his wrist, and started whispering.
The words of a dead man, to many, might seem untrustworthy. But to Seussal, those whispers he'd heard from an abandoned corpse in a snowy cave rang as the truth. Someone had rested here who had the powers of death about them, someone among the living.
A Necromancer.
He spent the rest of the night in quiet contemplation, and in the morning he set out from the cave with Karvar and took to the winds, turning back towards the cold north. This poor fool was going into HIS territory...
And so, riding upon a howling, snow-flurried wind, he was off.
Finally having decided to settle down and make camp for the night, Maka suddenly drew up short from the process of crouching over a bundle of reasonably dry sticks, attempting to light a spark with flint and the hilt of her katana.
Her eyes snapped around the tiny shelter she'd managed to fashion out of a rounded outcropping that offered a sort of semi-cave, two and a half walls and ceiling of stone. Something was...wrong.
Dead.
Clenching her teeth, she tried to shove the feeling out of her mind. She could sense death within a near half-mile radius, but most of the time she was better at ignoring it. Her guard must be down after the long day of travel.
I can't feel anything, she told herself firmly, ruthlessly. I can't hear anything, I can't see anything, I can't. Feel. Anything.
She was so absorbed in her mantra and trying to get the fire started that she wasn't quite as alert to the rest of her surroundings as she perhaps should have been.
The wind howled outside her shelter, and as it picked up and the flurries of snow obscured much beyond her shelter's protection. Then, against the natural wind a particularly biting cold blew in straight in towards her.
If she could sense death, then perhaps through her intensive denial she'd be able to notice that this particular signature was getting closer, and closer still. It didn't take him long to find necromancers. Once he was able to find some of their residual energy, it was a matter of tracking them down. The snowy, mountainous terrain also allowed him the luxury of travelling the icy breezes.
Outside her shelter, two icy blue points of light faded in very suddenly, and Seussal didn't hesitate to go straight for her. The points of light moved and after a few seconds Seussal came in close enough for the points of light to reveal themselves as his eyes. His sword, already drawn, was lifted unceremoniously.
He might've had a burning disgust for this random woman, but the fact that he was a knight still shone through in the brief words he spoke.
"Defend yourself."
And even though he'd given her the barest amount of a warning, there was zero hesitation in his movements as he just came straight up to her out of the blowing snow and fog. He hoisted his greatsword up with both hands (even if he only needed one to swing it) and swung it straight down on her from the other side of the fire.
"What in--?!"
Instinct drew her dual blades more than conscious thought, the staff swung around into a guard stance and clicked open so she could draw the katana and wakizashi in a matter of heartbeats. She was still barely in time to fling the blades up in a crossed stance just above her head to catch the great sword before it separated her head from the rest of her body.
The impact was jarring, shivering through her whole body, and she just barely managed to skate his sword off the edge of her longer blade before rolling away and leaping to her feet.
"Who the hells are you?!" she demanded, sinking back into a defensive crouch with her back to the stone wall, blades once more held in a crossed guard in front of her. Almost as soon as the words were out of her mouth, her "death sense" snapped through her; now that she was distracted with combat, her control over her magical abilities had begun to slip.
Her lip curled and she narrowed her eyes at him, gaze going flat and cold. "Undead," she answered her own question in a low, disgusted hiss.
"The last you'll ever see," he spit back, unable to hide the venom in his voice, and he didn't want to give her a moment's reprieve. With her back against the wall like that, she was open to a magical attack.
He balled up his free hand and then thrust it forwards to unleash a blast of piercing cold towards her, then he advanced through the lingering frost in the air and went in for a downwards cleave.
She felt the air chill an instant before the blast of icy magic was released, and it was just barely enough of a warning for her to drop and roll out of the way, sprinting back up to her feet with her blades still crossed as he came down again with the sword.
"Stop!"
Maka had never embraced her powers, never used them when she could at all helpnit. So the most she was consciously capable of doing was seeing and speaking with restless spirits—but she knew that a natural-born necromancer could actually control the dead. With a little training, at least.
She had none of the training, but nearly twice as much natural ability; so she threw her power out toward the creature in a bid of desperation, trying to exert her will over the thing. She had no idea if it would work, but gods she could hope.
"Return through the Veil," she all but begged, panting as she twisted away from the attack. "Rest."
As soon as those vestiges of necromantic control were extended towards Seussal, he let out a genuine roar of anger, and that energy she'd thrown towards him doubled back and went straight back to her as lashes of magical feedback.
"You cannot control me. Accept your retribution!"
He lost a bit of his composure at that, and what was usually a knightly figure that fought with a sense of martial propriety turned into a bellowing striker. He came barreling in for a quick, two-handed thrust. He still had mind enough to keep his combat wits about him, and was ready for her to defend herself...
Retribution for what?! she was tempted to shout. She might have, if she hadn't been forced on the defensive again by him rushing at her.
"Just stop!" she tried again, just barely managing to throw up a mental block in time to stop the worst of the magical backlash before she had to pivot on her back foot in an effort to evade his next strike. "I don't know who raised you, but I can send you back if you let me! Stop!"
She had no idea if what she promised she could actually do, but she was desperate.
[Lol just realized Maka is fighting something that basically amounts to a dark souls enemy lol]
He said nothing else for the moment, taking the time to readjust himself. He stepped closer to her fire, and the sheer chill of his presence caused the flame to dwindle and die out. He didn't need to answer her pitiful begging, merely kill her and move on.
And so as she busied herself calling for him to stop he rushed forwards and swung his icy great-sword downwards in a heavy cleave. A slow move that he would follow up by then stepping in and making a wide swing sideways in an attempt to catch a dodge.
[Oh jeez, let's hope she doesn't die as many times as I would lol]
Maka had no chance against this creature in a show of pure strength--but she might be faster.
Quick as a snake, she dropped under first swing, falling onto her back with her hands still clutching her blades braced behind her, then flipped back to her feet. She only narrowly managed to avoid his wide swipe at her side, and only because she'd ducked under rather than around.
"Why are you doing this?!" she screeched desperately. The thing was clearly sentient--not simply a raised corpse with a half a spirit shoved back into it so it could serve a necromantic master. Maybe, maybe she could reason with it?
Long enough to send the spirit back through the Veil, anyway.
In his heavy armor, Seussal definitely was at a disadvantage when it came to mobility, even though his physical form's skeletal body was a lot more agile and lithe than the average person. They parted after the last bout of attacks, and Seussal raised his greatsword to point it at Maka.
"I protect the dead of the world from your corruption, Necromancer," he said, spitting the last word out with the vitriol of a dead man eternally scorned.
"You're not the first I've buried!" He said, surging forwards again, this time wantonly stepping across her campfire, raising his sword only to tuck it back in at the last moment and make a quick swing with the hilt and pommel guard of his weapon, aimed at her side.
"Protect--?!"
The exclamation was more an indignant squawk, one that maybe didn't belong in such a severe fight. She had to drop to the ground again to avoid his swing, eyes going wide as she nearly fell for the feint and narrowly avoided losing her head.
"Protect them from what?" Her voice rose in fear and anger. She shouldn't be speaking with this thing--but clearly banishing it hadn't worked, and she had no idea how long she'd be able to keep up the fight. "I want nothing to do with the dead! I just want to be left alone!"
The last words rose to a desperate shout, and the power that she still didn't understand bubbled up in her chest.
And for a moment, just a moment, there was a flicker. A thinning in the Veil. A hand on her shoulder, the scent of clean grass after a rainstorm and spiced rice wine in her nose. Her eyes widened and she faltered in bringing her longer blade down toward her attacker's shoulder.
Grandmother...?
It was gone in an instant and she staggered, her strike going wide while her shorter sword sparked against cold stone.
Even Seussal had his limits. There was a period of his life where he cut people down without pity, but ever since he'd been cursed with the return of his free will, he was now a man caged within a monstrous form. The spirits and dead of the world had been his sole comfort, and the eager spirits of warriors past were his most frequent comrades, either as ghosts or inhabiting their old bodies for one final fight.
But to deny someone their rest just to use them as a slave? That was the most despicable act of all, something that took evil. Something that this girl didn't have, or that was what he was starting to suspect.
Her swing went wide, sword hitting the stone, and in that moment he could've very well run her through with his greatsword. But something in his eyes changed, and they seemed to blaze with less fury than before as he merely stepped forwards to shove her onto her rear and pin her down with his boot on her chest.
He held the point of his sword down at her, but much of the menace had left his movements.
"Speak, then."
Fighting for breath as his boot came down on her chest, Maka glared up at him. She had been reaching for the sword that was knocked from her hand when he threw her back, but it was just out of reach, and she needed to focus her energy on drawing in enough air to actually speak.
"Who...are you?" she demanded, struggling to lift his foot to no avail. Her eyes burned up at him, rage and confusion nearly--but not quite--masking the fear that hid behind them.
It was nice to be talked to like a person, he had to admit, and the weight on her chest eased lightly at her words. Seussal was silent for a few more cold moments before he spoke.
"I am freed, once a servant. I ward the rest of the fallen from those who would disturb it."
Then, a little fire came back.
"I seek to eradicate necromancy. Thus, I was drawn to you."
"Eradicate--what?!"
If she'd had more air, she probably would have been shouting at him. As it was, a mildly irritated hiss was pretty much all she could manage, even with the weight on her chest slightly eased.
Her own eyes snapped violet fire at him as she shoved at the boot again. Her other arm stretched out, reaching for her sword once more, though she knew it was probably futile. "I'm not a necromancer," she spat at him--and despite the fact that it was ostensibly a lie, something in her voice rang true. Maka had never once used her powers willingly.
"And yet the dead tell me of your passing. However..."
And then finally, he took his boot off of her, surprisingly heavy, given what he really was underneath the armor. He kept his sword out, not quit ready to fully trust her, but...
"...You're clearly not malevolent. Despite your feeble attempt to command me."
"Command you?"
Maka glared at him even as she darted for her own blade once his foot was lifted. She didn't attack, just fell back into a guard stance with the two swords crossed in front of her body, her eyes flickering over him warily.
"I was trying to release you, you icy bastard. I thought you were a revenant or something."
Alright, so maybe she wasn't a practicing necromancer. Didn't mean she hadn't done her research.
...Some research, anyway.
He huffed a bit at her terminology. He didn't even move when she popped up and crossed her swords at him, and he lowered his greatsword to his side.
"I don't need your release. There may come a time for me to rest, but not now."
He hoisted his sword to change the grip and slide it down into the long scabbard on his belt. He crossed his arms, but overall his demeanor pacified and the winds around her small shelter didn't seem to blow as fiercely now. She'd be able to make out the silhouette of his horse nearby, eyes glowing as it waited patiently in the blizzard.
"If you are not a necromancer, then who are you?"
"I--"
She snapped her mouth shut and glowered at him. Damnit, why should she tell him anything? He'd been trying to kill her a minute ago!
Still...probably better to try to stay on this creature's good side, if at all possible.
"I'm...nothing," Maka answered on a sigh, finally rocking back out of her defensive stance to sheathe her swords. To her surprise, it was about as honest of an answer as she'd ever really expected to give. "I'm not important. What the hells are you?"
"I am nothing," Seussal echoed, and he cast his eyes down towards the ruined campfire, before gazing out into the snowy night beyond her camp.
"I had a life. I was a champion of prestige and prowess, I had titles and gold and... a lover..."
He sighed, letting his menacing surface chip away a little with the human gesture.
"Now I do what little I can for the dead."
Maka just continued to stare at him in silence for several long moments. She didn't relax out of her guard stance, but she did huff out a small breath and flick her eyes to the snow still blowing outside the small shelter.
"...Sorry."
Another sharp exhale and she finally slid her foot back to stand in a more relaxed pose. "Well...are you satisfied, then? I'm not harming any dead. In fact, I want nothing to do with the dead. Yourself included, honestly. No offense."
She looked to the snow, the strange mount out in the white, then back to the creature that had attacked her. She sighed. "But if you need to rest...this is the only shelter for miles. I'm not going to kick you out of it. Just don't come at me with that sword again."
At her offer of shelter from the cold, he stilled. It wasn't much of an offer but to a dead man, even the intent behind that shone through. He gave her a considering look, only to look back out into the storm towards the blurry shape of his horse.
"Come, Karvar."
Immediately, the creature approached, and now that it was closer Maka would be able to see that it was armored head to hoof in old-style chain barding, arraigned with plates on the shoulders and back, and over the head.
The horse's eyes glowed the same color as Seussal's, with the same kind of chilling intelligence. Seussal knelt down to put some of her scattered logs back onto the fire in order to keep it from going out.
"You may not have disturbed any dead, but you do not deny that you harbor the powers of necromancy."
He took up his sword, and sunk it into the campfire. It sprung up into bright blue flames. Not warm, but it seemed to repel the cold all the same. Finally, he set himself down in front of the fire, and slowly started to work the buckles on his gauntlets.
"How did the power come to you?"
Maka hissed quietly as the...horse moved into the small bit of shelter. That thing was just unsettling.
As was her new guest, though she supposed it was her own fault that he remained.
She hissed again when he thrust his sword into the fire and the blade caught light, skittering back and muttering a few choice curses under her breath in her native Thanati before snapping her gaze back to glower at him.
"No point in denying something you can probably sense as easy as breathing," she muttered as she began to settle again. She linked her swords together once more, keeping the staff in a relaxed position near her side--but still close enough to grab easily if he came at her again. Looking away from him, she shrugged and added, "It didn't. Come to me. I...always had it. Far back as I can remember."
...She'd never actually told someone that before. It dawned on her how strange this conversation was, and she almost had to fight down a sudden urge to giggle. So many years avoiding the dead, even the friendlier ones, and now here I am chatting with a revenent that tried to kill me.
Wait. Was that right?
"What are you then, exactly?" she asked abruptly, not bothering with any sort of tact. He certainly hadn't, when he attacked her out of nowhere. "I mean, you're not just...a raised corpse. You have memory. You can think. So...revenent? Or something else?"
"You were born with it?" he said, sounding genuinely surprised. He'd never encountered someone with a natural affinity for the dead. All the necromancers he'd encountered so far had always learned their trade, or made some kind of pact.
Never a natural.
"I... I'm not much now," he said, letting his head fall a bit. Finally, he worked his gauntlets off and thy fell to the snow beside him. His hands were translucent and blue, like a spirit holding a human form. He held them out towards the eldritch flame, which seemed to writhe in response to his proximity.
"But in life..."
Images sprung forth from the fire. A man wearing Seussal's armor, proud and handsome atop his mighty horse.
"House Veno never had a more faithful defender as I. Though of common birth, I exceeded over all others, and even caught the Baroness' eye... Stygia, my once eternal lover..."
An image of Seussal and a staggeringly beautiful woman holding each other emerged from the fire, but his fist clenched and the image faded to smoke, all save for the woman, who's eyes started to take a menacing, reddish glow to them.
"She sought too much. Reached too high. She... she did what all thought unthinkable, even heretical..."
The image of a castle exploding from within. A titanic black dragon emerged from the chaos, and then Seussal was depicted again, crushed under rubble, lifeless. A pair of draconic claws picked him out of the rubble, and magic started to flow.
"I was only ever there to serve her, our love... the eternal bond we shared, was hers to use. Devoted, I came eagerly when she raised me. She blinded me with servitude, made me slaughter and... and the rest of House Veno fell by my blade. Her family, her guards, anybody who'd ever doubted her..."
He was quiet after that, thought unfinished but seemingly lost in the memories.
The young necromancer nodded, once, as her only reaction to his surprise. She'd gotten that a lot, when she first came to the mainland. Even as a child she'd known better than to act as though she was asking more than hypothetical questions, but pretty much no one she'd spoken with had heard of someone being born a necromancer. Born with a natural aptitude toward learning necromantic arts, even born with the talent to speak to or summon ghosts, but born with the ability to raise and control the dead?
That was apparently quite a rarity.
Which meant she had no idea how to control it. Had never bothered to learn anything beyond what it took to keep the power contained, hidden. At least as best she could manage.
When the creature sitting across from her fire removed the gauntlet, she actually skittering back a bit, eyes going a little wide.
"Wight," she hissed. She didn't know how she knew it, but she did.
He made no move to attack again though, so she subsided, eyeing him warily as he began to speak. Her eyes flickered between the flames and the shapes therein and his face--or at least what little of it she could make out. Her gaze flickered to the undead animal at the mouth of their shelter once or twice as well.
When he'd finished talking, she just looked at him in silence for several long moments. Then:
"Uh-huh. So why'd she bring the horse back?" She jerked a thumb in the direction of his mount, voice dry.
Internally, she was reeling. Whatever he was, whoever had raised him... That was power like she'd never even heard of, much less actually come up against. So she fell back on quips and queries in an effort to keep him on the defensive while she tried to process what was happening.
"And I mean, no offense meant or anything, but it kinda seems like you've got questionable taste in women, Master Wight." She shrugged. "I'll grant she was a knockout, but not exactly stable, apparently."
"I didn't know." Seussal said. It was the simple, brutal truth. He didn't know she was trying to turn herself into a dragon until the day it succeeded... and the whole castle was destroyed.
At the mention of his horse, Seussal looked back at the beast, which seemed to be curiously studying Maka with an intelligence not altogether horse-like.
"Karvar's mine, I brought him back myself," he said, speaking fondly. Karvar seemed to notice and approached to stroke his armored muzzle against his helmet. Seussal responded with pets.
"He came back to me. Necromancers force and rip, but Karvar chose to rejoin me."
Still, his mood sobered and he looked back over to Maka.
"And yes, I am a Wight. I am impressed you can tell, even through my concealment," he murmured as he flexed his ghostly fingers.
"Do you know what a Wight is? Truly?"
"I..."
Maka looked down at his hands, then at the horse, then warily to his face once again. "I...don't," she admitted at last with a frustrated sigh. She reached one hand up to rake her fingers through her hair, disheveling it quite effectively. "Honestly, I didn't even know I knew that word until I just... I could just feel it. You. Whatever. I can't explain it."
She shrugged a little helplessly. He had no reason to believe her, but...well, it was the truth. Her "gift" had always been like that: instinctive, automatic, and almost entirely inexplicable.
The horse though--that was interesting. And maybe she could direct conversation away from her own discomfort about her powers. "How'd you manage that, then? I mean... Look, I'm not exactly well-versed in this stuff, but how does a spirit choose to get...resurrected? I was under the impression that wasn't really a thing."
"The world of the dead lays much closer to our own than most people realize."
He looked up to meet her eyes, eyes glaring with an icy blaze. He clenched his fists, and the illusion fell away, revealing clean, white bones suffused with the bluish-black glow of death.
"Wights are the commanders of undead legions. By my very creation, I am a pathway from the world of death to the world of the living. My other talents are... more apparent," he said, gesturing to his sword, still embedded in the fire.
He lifted his head a bit and undid the clasp for his helmet, and slid it off to reveal that while he was still wearing the padded hood, he was in fact a bare skull with brightly burning eyes.
"Through me, the dead can return willingly to this earth. When I have needed help in the past, I've reached out to old soldiers. Offered them a chance to fight once again."
Finally, he crossed his arms.
"Only the willing."
"...Okay, but how can you talk?"
It really shouldn't have been the first thing out of her mouth. That probably should have been, "Holy shit" or maybe a solid "fuck".
But as she stared at him--his skull--him, whatever, all she could think was--
"You shouldn't be able to do that with just bones. You--you need lips. And a tongue. And..."
Well, vocal chords, for one thing.
Growling under her breath, Maka dropped her head into her hands. "Gods, I hate magic. Nothing ever makes sense." She snapped her head up to glare over his shoulder at the horse. "You don't make sense." Her eyes moved back to the Wight. "You definitely don't make sense." She gestured to the cold fire that still somehow kept them from freezing. "That doesn't make sense!" Her hand slammed into her chest. "I don't make sense!"
She was nearly panting before she realized, glaring at him. Then she seemed to sort of snap out of it and jerked her eyes away, jaw set. "...Right. So you're a commander of undead legions. Fine. Just peachy. Congrats. You still don't make any fucking sense."
"What makes you think I've got a fucking clue?" Seussal said, sitting up a bit straighter. He paused a moment to recompose himself.
"I couldn't tell you the properties of what animates me. Why I've been allowed to speak, but crafted in such a... a hideous shape..."
He passed a hand across his cheek and bare teeth.
"But it comes to me naturally. All of it. Calling to the dead, or killing with ice. My power is strongest during the winter. Icy wind and snow are my roads and current."
And then he extended a hand to point a bony finger at her.
"It seems we are both bearers of a power we cannot quite understand."
Maya blinked at him. Then, slowly, she started to smile.
“So you can talk like a normal person.” She sounded almost smug, smirking at him a little. But honestly...it was weirdly comforting. Even she wasn’t entirely sure why.
With a huff, she shrugged and sat back a bit, bracing one hand behind her. “Yeah, I suppose we are. Funny that...”
She looked up at him sidelong, then took a fortifying sort of breath. “...You’re not hideous, you know. You’re...odd, but not hideous.” She shrugged. “Plenty of scarier things in the world than a couple of bones. Trust me.”
"I suppose so," came Seussal's curt reply. After a few moments, he slipped his helmet back on and sheathed his arm in a ghostly form as he put his gauntlet back on.
He didn't quite know what to make of that look she was giving him. It was odd to be looked upon with familiarity like that, especially since the only one who'd ever looked at him like that after his death was... Her.
Her words made him chuckle, and now that he'd been disarmed of his air of mystery he wasn't focused on looking all intimidating, either.
"Many would beg to differ. They don't have the same perspective that we do."
Maka's eyes shuttered, her expression going carefully blank. "Many are idiots." She glanced away, over his shoulder out to the snowstorm that seemed to be steadily gaining power. "Small-minded, fearful idiots."
She blinked, then released a sharp breath and shook her head, forcing herself back into the present. Looking back to the Wight, she cocked her head and considered him for a moment before asking, "So...what are you doing out here? Other than accosting perfectly innocent mercenaries who happen to be able to talk to ghosts?"
The words were dry, almost biting, but there was the barest hint of humor behind her deep amethyst eyes, and a very slight curve to one corner of her mouth that bordered dangerously on playful.
Her question left him a little embarrassed, and even though his icy eyes and helmet-covered skull betrayed no emotion, he couldn't meet her eyes when she finished it. He had a moment of quiet, and then looked back to her to answer.
Then, he saw the playfulness in her expression. The warmth. Somehow, the gaze in his eyes softened, and he made an amused huff.
"I was on my way out of the mountains when I happened upon a corpse in a cave," he started, and he straightened up where he sat and rest back on his palms.
"He told me of a death-touched human travelling into the mountains. There are... places of death here that should remain silent and untouched. It is why I make my home here, to guard them."
"I came charging in to stop a necromancer but all I've found so far is a mercenary with a smart mouth," he said, retorting her playfulness with some teasing of his own.
"Oi. How dare you say things that are entirely accurate," Maka huffed mildly, leaning back on her own palms and tipping her head to the side so she could look between him and the spectral horse still hovering near the entrance to their little shelter.
She pursed her lips. "I...don't know if I'm a necromancer. Honestly. But I am a mercenary. I'm on a job." A sudden gust of wind cut through her words, lowering the temperature in the cave a few degrees and making the ghostly fire flicker. She shivered, huddling in on herself a bit. "And I'm fucking freezing, gods. Suppose that's at least one advantage you've got, huh?"
As far as she understood it, at least, the dead didn't exactly get cold.
A job.. interesting. What could be going on in his stretch of Kilanthro that warranted a visit from mercenaries?
"You carry the mantle of death," Seussal commented, falling still until she spoke once again, which drew his concern.
"Nothing is colder than death. The frost of the mortal world seems like warmth in comparison," he said, and with a motion of his hand, the wind ceased to invade their shelter.
"There are barrows not too far from here. They would make adequate shelter, and in return I only ask you what your purpose here is."
"Huh." Maka uncurled slightly as the wind died down, blinking. "Useful."
She glanced toward the wight, frowning slightly. "Barrows," she repeated, with no small amount of distaste. Great. Just what she needed. More ghosts.
Still, he was probably right, it would be better than a random, shallow cave. She sighed and let her head fall back, eyes closed.
"Honestly? I don't ask too many questions. A friend of a friend needed a favor, some sort of...delivery. Up to Hyoite." She nodded toward her pack, shoved up against the stone wall near where she sat. "I'm not supposed to open it. Small though, and doesn't feel magic, but..." She shrugged. "I'm--mostly good with dead things. Sensing-wise, anyway, so I'm not really sure."
She realized that she'd started to reach up to play with her pendant as she spoke, and quickly dropped her hand back down again, flushing a little. That was a nervous habit she'd thought she'd broken herself of years ago.
Another shrug. "Whatever it is, it's important enough that they wanted someone who could hold her own in a fight delivering it. Which is not usually my job, but..." She sighed and rolled her eyes at herself. "Pay's good, and a girl's gotta eat, right? Er--" She glanced toward Seussal a little guiltily. "No offense."
"None taken," came Seussal's curt reply.
He couldn't help but notice her disdain for barrows, but knew that ultimately his suggestion was a good one. After all, the winds outside were only a portent of the razor-cold gusts that the dark night would bring.
And he wanted to be polite, and pay attention to the answer that he'd asked for, but that pendant around her neck distracted him. He could feel the animating energies of death thrumming inside the deceptively passive object. As one of the dead, it was like a beacon of pure essence to him.
Fortunately, he tuned back in time to catch her admittance,
"I could examine it, if it pleases you. I have a strong eye for intangible energies."
"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?"
"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."
"...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.
"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."
"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.
"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."
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."
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?"
"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.
"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.
"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.
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.
"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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
"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.
"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.
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.
"It's cold, so cold, I don't understand—
Not now, please, not now, not yet...
—in the sun, and she said...she said...
Mama, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, please don't leave! Mama, Mama!
—of the battle in the west, we cannot—"
Maka didn't seem to hear the words that she babbled rapidly, eyes shut tight and her arms wrapped around her middle as though she was trying to hold herself together. Her voice changed subtly but quickly between each gasped protest, each lament. The dead of this place were so numerous that the entire Veil was weakened. Enough that her mere presence had ripped a thin tear into the fabric of it, and every voice she'd been shutting out for the last decade was suddenly clamoring to be heard.
Then there was a hand on her shoulder, reminding her of her body—she had a body, she had a life—and she sucked in a harsh, ragged gasp as the suffocating presence of death receded slightly.
With Seussal suppressing the sudden surge of lingering spiritual energy, her pendant seemed better able to shield her. That same warm, soft blanket of security settled around her magic—a presence she had not even realized was there until it suddenly wasn't—but when the faint pulses of light began to fade back to its usual, subtle shine, the tiniest crack could be seen in the stone.
Maka was too thoroughly distracted to notice. She'd fallen to her knees in the snow, keening quietly as the voices finally began to fade. And only then realizing that she had been the one speaking.
"I..." She drew in a painful breath, relishing the cold sting in her throat. "I didn't...that's never..."
She looked up at her undead companion, eyes vaguely glassy, as though with fever, but the sudden surge of magic at least seemed to have evened itself out, once more held at bay by whatever small power her pendant offered. She licked her lips; when she managed to speak again her voice was hoarse, but the tone and inflection were hers.
"Thank...you..." she whispered, too rattled by what had just happened to be embarrassed yet. In the wake of it, all she felt was relief. And gratitude. "That...that's never...happened before..."
When she looked up at him, she'd see Seussal's eyes blazing with that ghostly, ice-blue energy that seemed to permeate from the joints in his armor. He was observing the Veil around them, watching as the restless dead here pressed and even clawed at the boundary.
They all had desperate, longing looks in their eyes, focused less on Maka and more on the mysterious amulet that dangled from her neck. He had seen that look before, knew what it felt like to drag your nails against the world of the living, wanting nothing but to feel air on your skin or something hard against your fingers.
His gauntleted hand tightened on the scabbard of his sword.
Go back. You will not find your escape here. He projected, his words rippling through the veil around them.
Sometimes, just the acknowledgement was enough. Those whose grasps on the living world were based solely on desire quickly receded back into the veil at that, and the remainder couldn't hope to stand against him as his anti-magic effect pushed the veil farther and farther back, no matter how tightly they held onto their unfinished business.
He had a feeling that Maka would not mind the veil's absence, at any rate.
"It's not common," he said, looking down at her as he more securely rest his gauntlet on her shoulder. She'd find that even through his armor, the natural paralyzing effects of a Wight's touch still shone through in the form of a slowly spreading numbness that was independent of the cold.
"The Veil here was patched, and I sealed this tomb myself after attending to the dead here. Something's wrong," he said, finally directing his vision back towards the circular door, sealed over with ice.
"Something's wrong," she repeated, groaning quietly as she forced herself back to her feet. "Lovely. Just what we need."
What in all hells just happened?!
She kept the frantic question to herself, trying to appear nonchalant as she dusted snow off her legs—then paused, frowning at his hand on her shoulder. Was the numbness...supposed to be happening?
With a sharp exhale, she gave her head a little shake and took a step back, shoulders hunching forward protectively as she adjusted and readjusted her grip on her staff. There was a sort of hunted quality to her eyes as she looked around the frozen land surrounding them once more, then back to the door.
"So...do we have a plan of some sort?"
Seussal was quick to retreat his hand once he'd realized it lingered too long. He'd wanted to ensure she was steady enough on her feet, but of course he'd overdone it. He glanced down at his hand, and then gave his wrist a shake to dust off the snow gathering on his arm.
"We enter," he said with an air of grave finality and took several long steps towards the sealed tomb. "You may need a place to wait out this storm, and I may need assistance in mending this wrong."
He drew his sword, and held it down by his side. His grip tightened and ice formed around the blade. Seussal shouldered the pommel and thrust forwards, burying the blade into the ice covering the tomb's door. Flecks of magic spider-webbed across the ice's surface, and after a series of loud cracks the tomb's door rolled several feet to the side, allowing Seussal to duck slightly and peer into the darkness within.
He looked back to Maka, and gave a genteel wave of his hand into the tomb.
"Shall we?"
Maka quirked an eyebrow and waved her hand in a sweeping gesture toward both him and the door. "After you," she murmured, shaking away the last vestiges of discomfort from...whatever the fuck that nonsense with the Veil had been. She settled into a more comfortable, confidant stance, weight mostly in the balls of her feet and her staff loosely gripped in one hand, easily wielded should it be called for.
"So...what kind of help am I supposed to be giving you with this, exactly?" she muttered with a sidelong look at the Wight. "Not sure if you noticed, but I don't exactly have a lot of...practice with...all this...sorta thing."