A/N: Because sometimes life just makes me want to cry...so I write fic XP
...And blast Korean pop, lol.
Yet another in the saga of Kizzy fic. These two are just too fun not to write ;)
Thanks for reading!
0-0-0-0
Betrayal is an Itch
Kain and Izayoi were two solitary figures tromping their way through tree and shrub and vine—away from the Holy City and into the wilderness of Mysidia's rugged mainland.
"Why did you decide to come along, anyway?" Kain asked over his shoulder, annoyed at having a companion on a journey that, by all rights, was his own. "Your cousin didn't ask you to keep an eye on me, did he?"
Izayoi chose her footing, like her wording, carefully. "I'm offended that you think I had no choice in the matter," she retorted, hopping over a gnarled tree root as she followed after him. "I wanted to keep an eye on you myself."
At the raise of his brow, she added: "Betrayal is an itch with you, after all. I'm simply here to make sure you don't scratch."
Kain halted, and stared ahead. "I told you," he grumbled, glancing at her. "I forgot something on the mountain. I'm not running, if that's what you think."
She stopped as well, gazing at him sidelong. "What could be so important that you'd walk the whole way?" she wondered aloud, suddenly unsheathing her sword to deal with a Zu that had flown down from the canopy.
"Why can't you wait until we get there to find out?" Kain asked, stepping out of her way.
"I hate surprises," she muttered, springing forward and leaping off of a tree trunk to gain leverage against their foe. She carved an arc of feathers out of the air, twisting her body as well as her blade, slicing circularly into one of the Zu's wings. The avian plummeted to the ground where it shrieked piteously and beat its ruined wing, stirring up leaves and blood. Izayoi landed gracefully beside it, the blade in her hand glinting as she adjusted her grip for a death blow.
Instead, it was Kain who pivoted, driving his spear into the fiend's body to still its cries. The Zu croaked out a final death cry before its long neck and beaked head fell lifelessly to the dirt.
"Get used to disappointment," he told her, prying the spear out of the fiend's prone body and casting her a steely look.
The ninja glared back at him, irritated. "The fact that you couldn't at least ask for an airship is suspect in and of itself. It practically bespeaks guilt," Izayoi complained, wiping blood from her blade before sheathing it again.
"I am not running," Kain repeated, heat rising to his voice.
"Like hell you are," she retorted. "We only save the world a second time; everyone talks of marriage and happy tidings, and you take off to the most remote corner of the world."
"To retrieve something."
Izayoi hummed, unconvinced.
"Shouldn't you be in Eblan guarding your cousin during his upcoming nuptuals?" Kain asked acidly, starting off again.
Izayoi sighed, keeping in step. "To be honest, I'd rather be anywhere but. Romance makes me ill, and Gekkou and Zangetsu are more than capable."
"Has Cuore adapted to Eblan yet?" Kain asked, deciding to be conversational.
Izayoi arched a brow as she stared at him, and Kain finally had to turn around for her answer.
"Cuore? Adapt?" Izayoi asked.
Kain grinned a little sheepishly. "Mm," he muttered. "I should have known better."
"It's more likely that everything else adapts to her and not the other way around," Izayoi explained, taking the lead from him. It was the first time she had managed to out-pace him this entire journey. He walked suspiciously fast, she noticed, but it was a welcome change from those who, all-too-often, walked at a snail's pace.
They had already traversed much of Mysidia's greater continent. Now it was a matter of the maze of forest and rugged terrain that spanned between them and the peak of Mount Ordeals.
"We couldn't at least have paid for a chocobo in the town," Izayoi complained, running a Sword Rat through with her katana before it could needle them with spines.
"The journey is the nobler endeavor. It builds character," he answered, stepping over the corpse.
"In whose estimation?" Izayoi quipped, glancing at him with annoyance.
"You could have just as easily stayed in Baron or gone home to Eblan."
Izayoi made a face. "Staying in one place is stifling. But if there's to be battling, I'd rather it was sooner than later."
Kain grinned, shaking his head. "Okay, Edge."
"I take offense to that," Izayoi snipped. "I'm not nearly as irritating as my cousin."
Kain snorted and made a point of avoiding her stare.
"Keep this up, dragoon, and I'll let the zombies eat you," she huffed.
"Zombies don't frighten me," he replied.
"Is that so?" she asked with a smirk.
"Above!" Kain suddenly shouted, skewering a Zu out of mid-air with his spear. Izayoi ducked, just as she was showered by the monster's blood.
"Pleasant," she muttered, batting at her garments as Kain yanked his spear free.
"As I said, builds character," he rejoined.
Izayoi rolled her eyes. "Let's get to that mountain, shall we?"
It wasn't to be a long journey, she discovered. They stopped at the foot of the peak when night was spreading its dark cloak across the sky. They both paused to catch their breath and to appreciate the distance they had traveled.
"I might not be afraid of the undead, but even I'm not foolish enough to climb the peak after nightfall," Kain admitted, staring up at the mountain's craggy face.
Izayoi was contented with this decision and slipped her pack from her shoulders. She unhitched her bedroll before she stalked off to gather wood for a fire. Kain retrieved what little there was of their traveling rations and threw her a piece of bread that was three days hard once she'd sat back down.
"Mm, hard tack," she said, gnawing on the end.
Kain shook his head with a pathetic smile. "It's no palace fare, I'll admit."
"At least it's not rice," she replied, munching on the bread.
"It will take us a day, maybe less, to reach the top," he informed her, tearing at his own piece of bread with his teeth.
"Back in Mysidia by week's end?" Izayoi asked.
"Sounds about right."
"So what was it you left here that you wanted back so badly?"
Kain appeared diffident, avoiding the question, and Izayoi stared back at him across the fire. "That interesting, is it?"
"I never asked you to come on this journey," he repeated.
She groaned, leaning back on her hands and staring up into the inky black sky. "So evasive," she sighed. "You should have been a ninja."
Kain nearly laughed. "I'm sure your cousin would have words about that," he said.
She shifted her gaze, studying him properly.
He noticed her regard and returned it. "What is it?" he asked.
She shrugged. "You're really not so different, the two of you. You're both stubborn and do foolish things for foolish reasons."
His expression disintegrated. "And I'm to tolerate such abuse?"
"I'm simply saying that you might not be so ill-at-ease among my people. My cousin would tolerate you more than some others."
"Some...others," he repeated, staring at her incredulously.
She grinned mischievously. "Well, he appreciates your sarcasm more than he appreciates Edward's music."
Kain laughed quietly, not sure whether to be amused or insulted.
"Anyway, you're not young anymore," she informed him. "Perhaps it was time you took on a student and made yourself useful. Moping is not a very good use of one's time."
He looked at her, perplexed by the path of their conversation. "Perhaps I will."
She fell silent after that, turning over onto her bedroll and curling into the blanket. She had all but declared their discussion over.
Kain watched her for a short while, finding it odd that she had followed him here. Surely, she had more important things to do. Perhaps she was right on the one account, however—taking a student would give his days more meaning than dwelling on the past. It was worth giving thought to.
By morning when it was time to move on, Izayoi had already doused their fire and packed her things and stood waiting by the mountain path for him to join her.
"So eager to be done with this quest?" he asked her.
She grinned. "As eager as you are to be rid of me?" she replied.
Kain groaned and led the way up the narrow path.
Izayoi had never visited Mount Ordeals before. She had heard of it, of course, and she knew of its many dangers, but experiencing it was far different. The path was little more than a single-file track carved into the mountainside. The bridges were ancient and precarious, and the promontories were riddled with fiends.
They fought their way through dens of Ettin snakes, a small paddock of Mortblossoms, and the bent and withered Treants pretending to be trees. Those, they burned.
"I thought this mountain catered to a different breed of fiend," Izayoi commented, as she brushed ash off of her shoulders.
"They've moved south over the years. Mythril lies to the north and with fewer competition for food and space, the stronger fiends have found a foothold here."
"The world is changing," Izayoi sighed. "I wonder if anything we did was for the better."
Kain looked at her, somewhat amused. "Storm clouds have more optimism than you."
At this, she smiled. "When you grow up in the shadow of Babil, you get used to being in the dark."
Kain pushed a pile of burnt logs out of their way. "I shouldn't have to remind you—but we're on a mountain. There is no Babil here."
Izayoi shoved him off-balance as she hopped over the remains of the burnt Treants. "Don't tell me you left this item of yours on the very top peak."
He was oddly silent, and Izayoi looked back at him for her answer. His expression was sheepish.
"You did," she realized, staring back at him flatly.
His grin was quick and mischievous, but he said nothing else.
0-0-0
Izayoi soon came to realize why Kain had wanted to stay away from the mountain after dark. Out from the shadows and the dark crevices, came the Ghouls and the Revenants. They were shambling, disgusting creatures who reeked of death and decay. The flesh slipped from their bones, and ivory skulls leered underneath wasted skin.
"There is a trick to the undead," Kain instructed her.
Izayoi merely grinned. "Off with their heads? I know."
She lunged forward and slashed, easing her blade through the air as an extension of her arm. The grinning head of a Ghoul fell neatly to the ground, tumbling to rest near her foot.
She glanced at Kain with a shrug and he nodded back, approvingly. The dragoon took the opportunity to advance, sweeping at the shambling corpses with his spear to keep them at bay, while Izayoi slashed at another Ghoul, catching it just beneath the jaw. It crumpled to the ground without its head, while Kain's spear plunged into the face of a Revenant behind her. She turned just in time to see what was left of its skull. Brain leaked from the crater that had been its nose and mouth, and Izayoi frowned.
"Why on earth did you live here for seventeen years?" she asked, throwing a shuriken with a flick of her wrist into the head of another Revenant, crumpling it to the ground.
Kain shrugged. "I found the daily perils a delightful change of pace," he answered mid-strike.
Izayoi laughed. "A delightful change of pace from what—Rosa's meddling?"
"Cecil's more than Rosa's," he replied. "She has Ceodore to fuss over, after all, and not an old bachelor like myself."
They both grinned at each other.
"I suppose that's a fair enough reason," she admitted, stabbing the last of the undead right between the eyes. "Still, your mountain is obnoxious."
"Noted."
They continued their climb, cutting down all manner of fiends. Izayoi was glad for her sharp blade, as it made decapitating efficient and effortless.
The spirits, on the other hand, gave her fierce annoyance.
When her sword went clean through them without doing a thing, she cursed.
"I hate it when the dead don't die!"
Kain yanked her out of the way of the fiend's retaliatory fire spell. "Do you see how it changes, becomes more easy to see?" he said, pointing to the belly of the spirit.
Izayoi squinted, and sure enough, it seemed to be wavering in and out of her sight. When it became more opaque in appearance, she saw a shining flame in its center.
"That," Kain told her, "Is it's soul's whick. If you can see it, that means the spirit is among the realm of the living, and not the realm of the dead. Strike it now."
Izayoi dodged the spirit as it lunged for her, trying to touch her with its deathly flames. It was a nasty business, dealing with the dead. Every touch from one of them was a drain on the mind and the soul. She pivoted on the balls of her feet, coming up from underneath and behind the fiend, her katana slicing vertically through the spirit's vaporous form. It's flame was extinguished as if her blade was a gust of wind and not a corporeal sword of metal. The spirit returned to the nether world, and the path was left clear as it was before.
Izayoi sheathed her sword. "Why do they all come to this place?" she wondered.
"They dwell wherever lives have been lost," Kain explained. "This mountain was not always a place of redemption. It was once a cursed peak, a place of dark sorcery."
"How do you know this?"
He glanced at her.
She rolled her eyes. "Seventeen years. Right."
"The path ahead will be particularly strewn with the undead," he went on. "More battles have been fought on the peak than anywhere else on the mountain."
"What a merry chase you've led us on," Izayoi droned.
"Come on," Kain grumbled, leaving her behind.
They reached the final climb of the mountain, where the rocks jutted upward like ancient teeth. The path had narrowed and steepened and the air had grown thin.
There were unearthly groans on the air, and Izayoi crept ahead to scout the area. She could see the undead before they saw her, and she jumped down from her perch and gestured Kain around a lower but treacherous ledge that was out of sight of the fiends.
They followed the ledge until it intercepted another bridge, then followed the bridge across to the next outcropping.
"There's a warding ahead," Kain said, keeping an eye on the zombies now behind them.
"This is our choke point?" Izayoi asked once they had stepped within the ancient stanchions that kept non-humans at bay. She gave it an approving once-over and then stared at the path that rose above them. There were two final rope bridges suspended between two peaks. The farther peak was flattened by time or by human hands, and a shrine stood in the waning light.
Izayoi knew what it was without having to be told. It was the shrine where one worthy of the Holy Light was given the mountain's blessing.
"Is that where we're headed?" she asked.
"It is. Stay close," he said, climbing the stone stairs beyond the warding.
Izayoi followed him across both bridges and onto the second peak. Kain touched the surface of the shrine, clutching Izayoi's hand, and the both of them were transported inside.
A room of mirrors surrounded them and Izayoi was careful to avoid them. She had heard the stories of heroes confronting themselves to great tales of personal triumps and defeat, and she had no desire to fight her darker self. Instead, she watched Kain walk to the center of the room and pluck a beautiful spear from the floor. Its wooden shaft glistened a pale color she had never seen before, polished and wrapped with intricate filigree. Its double-pronged tip was pearlescent in the light. What manner of metal it was, was undoubtedly of Lunar design.
"This was what you left behind?" she asked curiously.
"The Holy Lance," Kain replied, running his fingers along the length of the spear. "This will come in handy."
"On the way down," Izayoi complained.
Kain looked at her, perplexed. "And?"
"Are you mad? Why did we come here for that?"
"One never knows when they might require a Lunar weapon," he replied.
Izayoi sighed loudly and shook her head. "Are you satisfied? Can we leave?"
Kain grinned and returned to the exit of the shrine. Before either of them were to leave, he stopped her. "For reasons I've never understood, the undead are drawn to this weapon more than they are repelled by it. Prepare yourself."
Izayoi arched a brow, not sure how their leaving the shrine would be any different from when they had entered it. When he refused to leave until she drew her weapon, she obliged him, readying her sword. Kain touched a panel on the wall and they were deposited onto the promontory—in the center of a horde of the undead.
"You weren't joking!" Izayoi cried, immediately rolling to escape the teeth of a Revenant as it lunged to bite her.
"I never joke," he answered succinctly.
Izayoi dodged and rolled until she had carved a path around herself wide enough to stand in. "In that case, let's be rid of these nuisances, shall we?"
Kain was already ahead of her, skewering Ghouls and Revenants with the Holy Lance until he had quickly amassed a mound of corpses.
Izayoi was not to be out-done, and danced between shambling husks, biting teeth, and clawing fingers; hacking and slicing as she did. She lopped off heads, sometimes several with one stroke, and found herself enjoying the challenge.
"Fourteen!" she called out to Kain.
Kain replied by sweeping his lance into a pack of undead, twisting the lance's bladed tip and launching into forms that were brusque, precise, and deadly.
"Eighteen," he called back, unimpressed.
Izayoi narrowed her eyes, uncoiling a strike that cut down a swath of fiends in a circle around her. She leapt into a series of graceful movements, stringing them together as she had learned to do in training. Flying swallow, piercing viper, whooping crane, and howling wind.
"Twenty seven!"
"You'll have to do better than that!" Kain goaded her, impaling the skulls of four Revenants together and using their bodies as a shield.
"You'll have to tell my why retrieving that weapon was so damned important!" Izayoi countered, surgically removing the hand of a Ghoul that had strayed too close.
"It bothered me knowing someone else might come across it," he answered.
She hacked off the head of another Revenant and glared at him over her shoulder. "Are you serious?"
He grinned back at her. "And because I knew this would happen."
Izayoi ducked beneath the windmilling arms of a Ghoul, taking the fiend's arm off on an upstroke as she stood. "You wanted to fight an army of the undead," she confirmed.
"Some might call it training," he answered.
"Some might call it insanity."
He lunged with a grunt, lancing through several more undead. "And others might call it a cure for boredom."
Izayoi laughed despite her annoyance. "All of this was a training mission. Now it makes sense."
"Do you remember the warding?" Kain reminded her.
She looked at him and nodded.
"They're going to keep coming until we're beyond exhausted. It would be wise to fall back."
Izayoi agreed with this plan, already feeling weakness creeping into her arms and shoulders.
"To me!" Kain shouted, pointing to the bridge.
Izayoi sprinted over the fallen corpses to reach him, but found herself lurching forward unexpectedly as something wrapped around her foot. She twisted on her way down, and noticed a surviving Revenant with its bony fingers coiled around her boot. Kain's lance quickly flashed across her vision, crumpling the zombie's head and causing it to release its hold on her. She looked up, gratefully, and then sprang to her feet, thrusting her sword past Kain and into a Ghoul at his back.
"This must make us even," she said, her sword arm still tucked between his arm and waist.
"Do you know how not to turn everything into a competition?" he asked.
She looked up into his blue eyes, still uncomfortably close. "No," she answered and then flashed him a grin, disentangling their arms.
"Keep close," he instructed her, using his lance as one might a broom, pushing Ghouls and Revenants off the precipice near the bridge while Izayoi defended their backs.
With no small amount of effort they reached the warding and sat down on the cold rock as the sun dipped below the horizon in the west.
The undead beat and clawed at the invisible barrier of the warding. They bounced off ineffectually, and Izayoi casually swiped the back of her hand across her forehead as she watched them.
"It's kind of sad, really," she commented, staring at the zombies with a bemused expression.
"A little entertaining, actually," Kain admitted, tilting his head as one zombie swiped at the barrier and then lost its balance, falling over.
The both of them chuckled.
Izayoi finally stood and began to unpack her gear. "Never thought I'd be spending a night surrounded by walking corpses."
Kain began to unpack his own equipment. "You get used to it," he told her.
She laughed softly. "You are so strange."
He shrugged nonchalantly. "Takes all kinds."
Izayoi cast another glance at the zombies surrounding them. "They won't find a way through the warding, will they?"
Kain remained unconcerned. "Eventually they'll run out of energy and stand there lethargically. By morning the sun will burn away what's left of them."
Izayoi nodded slowly. "How many times have you done this, exactly?"she asked.
Kain fussed with his gear for a moment before staring back at her .
They looked at each other without exchanging a word, and that was all the information Izayoi required. Kain completed unrolling his sleeping mat and spread his bedding atop it.
"Goodnight," he told her gruffly, wrapping himself into his blanket.
Izayoi glanced one more time at the shuffling zombies and then flipped over so her view was of the uninterrupted eastern sky instead.
Foolish dragoon and his foolish errand, she mused before falling asleep.
0-0-0-0
The next morning Izayoi drew her blanket back from her face and squinted at the sunlight. She shifted and looked around, noticing that all that was left of the zombies were piles of rotten and steaming flesh.
She scanned the warding for signs of Kain and saw none. His pack had been stowed and he was nowhere to be found.
She scrambled to her feet, annoyed. She hurriedly gathered her things, strapped on her sword, and sprinted out of the warding, over the steaming corpses, and down the mountain path. Several switchbacks later, she caught up to him.
"You left without me!" she scolded.
"Well," he chuckled. "You said it yourself. Betrayal is an itch—today, I felt like scratching."
She ran up behind him and kicked him in the back of the knee. He grunted as he stumbled, but he simply looked back at her bemused.
"Bastard."
"You're the one who decided to tag along in the first place," he pointed out.
She smiled ruefully. "Indeed I did."
He picked himself up, brushing the dust off his trousers. "I suppose it wasn't so terrible," he admitted, shrugging.
Izayoi narrowed her eyes at him. "What are you saying, exactly?"
"I don't find your company as irritating as some," he said, continuing on down the path.
Izayoi grinned with a sigh. "I feel the same."
When they had descended half of the mountain's height and battled more of the standard fiendish denizens, did Izayoi turn to Kain again.
"I take it we can be traveling companions again?" she asked.
He looked at her and smiled cautiously. "Depends. How often do you find yourself bored?"