Review reply: Feather-chan! Thanks for reviewing this story. I rather like writing fantasy (and unique fantasy at that), so how could I resist writing once the thought of crossing a game system and X popped into my skull? Thanks for your encouragement. Here's more story! (rings gong) BTW, I'd love to read your idea for a Fuuma-as-a-dragon fic should you write it!
Disclaimer: I in no way own X or AD&D. Don't sue; I'm simply an E5 in the USN, therefore I have no money. Ha.
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A sigh leaked from his lungs.
Staring down the long road he was traveling, the young man in his time-worn cream-colored tunic and dust-graced beige breeches lifted a slender hand to wipe beaded sweat from his pale brow, lifting damp black bangs from moist skin. His dark brown boots continued their ceaseless journey along the path that had been his companion and home for the last few weeks he'd been making his way steadily north from the summer-beat city of Waterdeep, each heavy and tired step stirring the dust he trod upon without care. As the sun washed him in its hot waves without a single cloud present to give him a shred of relief and the closest forest already three days behind him, the young man laden with his backpack in which he carried his life's possessions and his satchel with its precious tome, his belt pouches with their oddities and the few coins he'd garnered in his travels, his saya with its katana hanging upon his hip, he grumbled tiredly and without joy at the seemingly hopeless state of his situation.
The trail had already gone cold. He would never catch up with the murderer he pursued.
All he would do was hope to clean up the mess that was always inevitably left behind, freeing those spirits killed by his prey's dagger from their servitude to the demonic entity he served. All he could hope to do was destroy their connection to the physical world - the grip of that which held those souls was far stronger than he, making it an impossibility for him to send those doomed spirits to their proper resting place.
For nine years now he'd been tracking the man who served that which set its wraith servants against the living, tasked to catch him before he'd kill again and end his life-long work. He'd been tracking the assassin he sought restlessly since he'd learned the truth behind the man who was once his dearest friend, his most precious companion.
It was his job as the head of his clan to put an end to the murderer's actions. It was his job to eliminate any threat to the land his nomadic clan chose to call home.
And as their leading expert in necromantic magic, he and he alone was assigned to hunt the creator of wraiths, to stop him before he killed again and created anew.
For so long now he'd failed. Trailing the slippery assassin for over nine years, he'd always been one step behind, one day too late to save those who were his prey's targets. And while he could put those hapless wraiths created by their induction to the demon tree that demanded their souls and blood to rest from their constant vigil over the physical world, he could do nothing to free them from its branches and its roots, nothing to usher them to the destiny they longed for, nothing to stop that man who committed them to the beautiful, wicked plant that dominated the center of the isle his clan had been calling 'home' for the last two decades from killing again.
To make matters worse, every time he encountered the man he lost to him.
It wasn't as if he was so inferior or his prey so experienced. Indeed, they were equal in strength these days, if his battles last winter against the assassin that had rang through the snowy night in Scardale when they'd met had any inkling of truth behind them in matters of true skill.
Once he'd been weaker in magical fortitude. The last nine years of study, of practice and manipulation of the Weave to thwart the man he hunted, had placed him as being vastly greater in the Art than the assassin. Only the killer's clever plots and plans, his speed with the dagger and willingness to abandon magic for the blade kept him from defeat these days.
And while their different schools of specialty placed them entirely at odds with one another, their sheer inexperience due to restrictions placed upon their study of their opposing schools making them weaker to one another than any generalist mage would be facing either of them, they both had enough magical strength and confidence in their own studies to be remarkable. Necromancy, while a powerful school devoted to controlling life, death and undeath, had no protection or response for the school of Illusion, and vice versa. They were opposites. They once had been equals. Now that was no longer true.
The assassin, however, had far greater skill with the blade. While his hunter was not at all inexperienced utilizing weapons and was indeed an impressive specialist with the rare eastern katana who's art was more than capable of putting the most experienced of warriors to shame, the prolific murderer had been utilizing his deadly daggers and practicing his two-handed style for as many years as his stalker had lived. He was deadly swift with his double blades, so very accurate that he was able to stay on par with even the specialist, parrying and attacking every time their blades whistled towards one another. Indeed the young hunter had to remain on his toes whenever his prey drew steel and abandoned his illusions, for it was then that he lost his advantage and, despite his far greater strength granted him by his heritage, was forced into defense.
So had their rivalry gone on for nearly a decade - the hunted allowed his hunter to catch up with him when the snows began to fall from the heavens to challenge him to a test of magic and might. Every year the assassin won. Every year he playfully spared his stalker's life, encouraging him to gain the strength that he lacked, to become someone worthwhile of his caustic sight.
That, perhaps, was what made the young necromancer's hunt so painful.
The fact that every year he was spared, that he was yet an entity worthy of being a proper adversary to dispose of, that he was not so worthy of the assassin's time as his own dear twin sister had been nearly one decade past, continued to kill what remained of his soul after every encounter.
Nine years ago, he'd unwittingly fallen in love with the one he now hunted.
Nine years ago, when the murderer had destroyed his soul with his sinful smile and his whisper of 'you mean nothing to me,' the man who now hunted him had slipped into the deepest recesses of his soul, unable to face harsh reality. Alone in the dark grove, unwilling and unable to move in his catatonic state, he remained buried in the depths of his heart, his body and mind so detached from one another that he felt nothing - no cold, no wind, no fall of snow upon eternally opened eyes and lashes, no passage of nearly a week's worth of starvation and dehydration. The man had left him to die at the mercy of nature, not considering him worthy of death by his own wicked daggers, then slaughtered his sister and abandoned him to the wretched snows of their isle home's mountain passes with her body as his only companion. Adding insult to injury, as the catatonic state he was trapped in dissolved with her slaughter, the blood-tainted man had proclaimed that she was indeed a worthwhile addition to his demonic lord's collection of souls, worth enough to fulfill the pact his clan had made with that terrible entity a thousand years ago and provide him with its full power.
After the necromancer had been forced to lay the soul of his own precious sibling to rest, condemning her forever to the flowered boughs of the enormous sakura that was the isle's center point, he'd made the decision to pursue the one who'd killed her, who'd abandoned him, who'd pronounced him unworthy of even death by his hands after a year of falsified love and illusory emotions.
His boots scraped over cobblestone.
Startled by the sudden change in pitch created by his footfall, the young man lifted his emerald-eyed gaze to observe his surroundings.
He'd come upon the town that had been marked as his destination more swiftly than he'd suspected he would.
He glanced about the sprawling town, his eyes taking in the sights. He had passed just a couple feet beyond the tall gates that guarded Neverwinter from those murdering forces that would seek to rape and pillage its sanctity. A nicely paved road snaked before him, lined by trees, market stands, carts, two stables, twin inns, small permanent shops and torch lamps. The street was filled with the throngs of summertime merchants and customers, busily bustling about with their daily business. All in all, the town looked wholly undisturbed.
The young man decided to head towards the closer of the two inns.
Pushing the doors of the establishment open, he stepped from heated cobblestone to shade-cooled wood, his worn boots thumping hollowly upon the old floor. Letting his gaze rove once more, he sighed softly, his voice filled with mixed relief and disappointment. Relief at the realization that the journey he'd been one was finally at a temporary end. Disappointment at the realization that this town would very likely not readily welcome him with lowered prices on room and board in exchange for his services, this being the height of the trading season and the beginning of the profit push before winter's chill, now only three months away in these far northern reaches of the continent of Faerun, settled over the town's inhabitants.
Walking towards the bar, the young man was instantly swallowed into the pulsing crowd that flooded the inn's common area. Dingy yellowed light flung from torches held in economically designed iron brackets danced over the establishment's inhabitants and the randomly scattered tables that served both as dining benches and meeting areas, filtered by the heavy smoke that seeped from both torch and pipe. Loud rowdy laughter and bellowing conversation smothered any soft sound that tried to survive the crowded environment, slaughtering the playful tunes of a local bard's lute to all save by those within his immediate vicinity - and judging by the numbers that were massed as far from the neonate musician as they could be, one could be thankful for the racket. Ale spilled upon tables and pooled on the floor, seeping slowly into the wood, adding its circular stains to those that had made their permanent declaration of existence over the inn's long life. The thump of a hand on a back, the squeal of a barmaid having her bottom groped, the laughter of companions at an old adventurer's comical tale of journeys long past, the barking of the hefty bald barkeep's voice ordering the cooks hidden behind the kitchen's walls to hop to it and get orders out assaulted the young man's ears as he slipped unmolested to the counter that was the barkeep's domain.
Clearing his throat, he waited patiently until the burly man turned his way. "Excuse me," he began with a voice softened and weathered by his long journey, "but might I inquire about the price of a room for the night?"
The huge man's thick brow furrowed slightly, the lines that had worn their way into his flesh deepening and rippling through folded sun-touched skin. Heavy hands, one gripping a glass stein yellowed by repetitious work and the other holding a stained, dingy cloth, made quick work of swiping out the inside of the glass before it was dunked into the opened barrel of cheap yellow ale that stood protected behind the bar's age-touched wooden counter. Setting the filled stein down with a heavy thud onto a waiting barmaid's tray and shooing her off with a wave of a short-fingered hand, the barkeep meandered towards his newest customer, his stained apron swaying about his legs even as it bunched at his thick middle with his walk. Lifting a hand to stroke his hanging, stubble-lined jowls, he frowned. "For you?" he grunted, his voice as thick and deep as the rest of him, his hand not busy moving the loose flesh of his face balling into a fist and resting upon an unmarked waist denoted only by the band of his pants hugging tightly to his body in that position. A chuckle oozed from his lips, the belly that hung over those brown pants' waistband jiggling. "I'll cut you a deal. Only three copper a night for the cheapest room I got open."
The thin young man in his road-dust stained clothing sighed quietly, his emerald eyes focusing on the counter rather than the man who had stated the price of a high quality room in every other town of similar size he'd visited. "I see. Perhaps, then, I shall go to your competitor down the road. I thank you for your time."
Shrugging once, the barkeep looked with distrusting dark eyes at the satchel at the young patron's side. "You can do that if you like, lad," he grunted, "but I'll tell you that he likes the money of wizards even less than I do. Worthless lot, the whole of you. And when you discover that his prices are higher than my own by 'least double, you'll find my price will have gone up a copper. Your choice."
Resisting the urge to put his pale-skinned forehead down upon the stained and dusty counter he sat at, the young magician sighed. Yet another town that was distrusting of magic, that saw wizardry as a false profession or as the practice of madmen bent on overtaking the world. Just his cup of tea. Looking at the man, he frowned. "Indeed. Very inhospitable of you, considering that I'm in this town to help."
"To help? What can a wizard do to help any of us?" the barkeep grunted, his frown deepening. Some of the other customers nearby quieted their conversations, turning to regard the newest inhabitant of the inn, wishing to hear what he had to say.
"I understand that you've had some murders in this town within the last week."
Instantly the entire bar fell silent.
"And what have you to do with that?" the barkeep all but snarled, his teeth bared and clenched.
"I know who did it. And I know that the dead he's left should have risen by wraiths by now."
The inhospitable atmosphere thickened around him, smothering him like a pillow held by an assailant over his mouth. The young man shuddered as he felt the eyes of the inn's customers boring into him, feeling the hostility towards him deepen and darken like rain-laden clouds preparing to unleash their fury upon the land below them.
The barkeep's eyes narrowed. "You have no holy symbol. What can you do?"
"I'm not a cleric. I'm a necromancer."
The burst of fury and rage was deafening. Shouts of hatred, screams of fear, accusations of being in their town to turn their dead to his own will accosted him.
Bowing his head, inviting whatever would befall him for his choice of profession, the young man sighed. "I'm not here to create more undead, or to wrest control of your loved ones who've recently risen. I'm here to free their souls. I can destroy the wraiths that haunt this town. All I ask is a quiet place to sleep, some food to eat, and a torch to read by for a reasonable price."
The barkeep snarled, "You'll find nothing here. If you come to this town with any intent towards our loved ones, necromancer, you can leave. Take your business to my competitor. Maybe he'll run you through with his daggers! Bloody damned good he used to be an adventurer, so he can dispose of the likes of you!"
Shaking his head, his emerald eyes closing, the young man gathered himself and walked out the door, his stride purposeful and dignified despite the shouts and taunts that hovered at his back.
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He slid another log onto his campfire and sighed as he stared at the flickering flames that were his source of warmth.
The necromancer ha been chased from the town that so desperately needed assistance, forced to set up the same camp he'd been establishing since he'd left the comfort of the city of Waterdeep once more. His small tent, barely large enough for one or two people to lie down in and lacking the headroom to sit fully upright inside of it, rose behind him, barely held up by the poles that were driven as far into the ground as its clay consistency would allow. The campfire rested a mere five feet from that tent's entrance, far away enough to prevent it from catching the dried fabric with its licks of flame yet close enough to bestow at least a little heat to its dark interior. A stick was shoved into the ground beside that campfire, its tip over its heated tongues and baring upon it an apple he'd purchased before he'd left the town by way of its southern gate.
Located a mere fifty feet from the road that led into the now barred town, he watched dismally as traffic moved in and out of its gates, the gatekeepers dutifully manning their station and letting only those with proper authority into their town.
He was torn between resenting the town for shoving him from its interior and pitying those people inside for their irrational fear brought about by vivid and horrible tales of necromancy utilized to butcher the living and dishonor the dead.
Thus, he stayed close enough to the town to be able to race into it should they have any problem that he could assist with. He'd already gotten the gatekeepers to give their word that upon seeing any creature of undead stature within their city walls, they'd open the town's portal for him and allow his assistance.
It had taken only a few words to frighten them into rational realization that he was there to help rather than harm accompanied by a gold piece to each of the two guards to be granted their word of honor.
Therefore he sat, banished and alone, on the outskirts of town waiting for something to happen.
He didn't have long to wait.
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The magician was startled cleanly out of his meditative state, the tome of magical spells he'd been studying sliding cleanly off his knees to land with a heavy thud before the fire that was his light source in the early night when a wailing scream roared through the night. Hopping immediately to his feet, the young man grabbed the belt pouch he'd removed from his waist and hastily ran towards the town entrance, not bothering lashing it to the simple rope line he used to hold his pants up upon his nearly nonexistent hips.
The gates swung open, the gatekeepers keeping their good word. Passing a glance at the two men that manned that heavy wooden portal as he ran past, the mage felt his eyes widen.
Their faces were sheet white, their eyes huge in horror, their lips trembling with effort to keep their horror from leaking audibly into the night. One of the men had soiled his breeches. Both had swords held in limp hands, drooping hopelessly as if the two realized that their only method of defense would be all but useless should that which had terrified them return.
A short run down Neverwinter's main market street brought him to that which had so frightened the guards.
He was ambushed from a side alley as he looked wildly, running still, for his adversary.
As unnaturally cold fingers grasped his sleeve and a hand raced towards his face, fingers black as the night and wispy as a breeze billowing with sharp claws and deadly intent, the mage swiftly ducked and ripped himself free of that trapping grip.
His adversary howled at him angrily from shadow-formed jaws, its gleaming red eyes glowering with hatred for his escape, for his possession of life.
The young necromancer calmly stared at the creature before him, his feet taking him a comfortable distance from his attacker.
It was a mass of billowing blackness, darker than the night that surrounded it, its form crafted of smoky air that hovered upon the edge of solidity. A skull-like face with grinning jaws gnashed black cloudy teeth as ruby pinpoints of light that served the creature as eyes glistened through the raven-pitched evening. Clawed hands wispily clenched at the undefined waist of the monstrosity even as it slowly oozed forward, its lower body having been lost with the onset of undeath and replaced instead by shifting, swirling, smoldering black.
He had no fear. After all, this was hardly the first time he'd faced a wraith.
With all the clam and quiet of an older magi, his stature and crystal pitch of voice denoting his immense experience, the young mage scooped a pinch of dust from the ground while chanting the words of the Arcane, drawing the might of the Weave to his mind and bending it to his will.
The wraith screeched its horrible cry and charged the casting mage, its clawed hands reaching for him, intending to strike him, knowing from its recently gained experience that its very touch would drain his life from his thin body.
Flinging his acquired dust at the rushing mass, the necromancer calmly completed his chant. "Distort Undead," he finished, naming the spell with the termination of its chant.
The cone of destruction burst from his palm, the dust that he'd thrown magically twisting into a ray with the ability to distort the very forces that held undead to the world of the living.
The wraith screamed in pain and terror as its very substance was ripped to pieces.
Watching without emotion, the young man simply narrowed his eyes, awaiting the termination of his spell and its results. Hands calmly dug into his pouch in the singular second that the magical spray was in existence, reaching for a spell component to be used to craft another wave of magic should the undead creature somehow make it through this initial attack.
His experience and power proved itself in that single spell. The wraith disintegrated completely, its billowy smoky form fading.
The spirit whose gentle nature had been warped by its transformation smiled merrily at the necromancer who'd released it, its delicate features highlighted by the night's slivered moon. "Thank you," the little girl that formed whispered, her wavy hair swaying over her face as she bowed her head with her words and faded entirely from view.
A sigh leaked from the magician's lips. The girl's spirit would no longer be forced to serve and destroy upon the physical realm, but she still was trapped within the boughs of the demon his prey serviced. He'd done naught but transfer her from one prison to another.
His only relief was that her tender soul would no longer be forced by that domineering tree to kill, to create more of her own doomed kind to feed it power and blood.
Movement in the alley the wraith had burst from instantly drew his attention. Narrowing his eyes, he stared purposefully into the darkness.
Magic had been woven into his very being by the woman he knew as his Grandmother during his sixteenth year of life after his sister had been mercilessly slaughtered, endowing him with the ability to see the truth behind all beings, to see what was hidden by illusion or similar magic. It was a measure meant to protect him from the master illusionist who now was the Sakurazukamori, the mortal enemy of his own nomadic clan.
It was something that was quite an assistance when he hunted his prey and the wraiths he left in his wake.
However, it also lent itself to reveal some rather shocking surprises.
The necromancer very nearly let the screech that bubbled in his lungs pass through his lips as he spotted the long silvery form in the shadows of that alley.
Blinking a few times, staggering back a few feet as he did so, he stared.
The form, nearly forty feet in length, folded its massive wings along silvery flanks and pawed at the ground with long metallic claws. Huge jaws turned with a smile that spoke of relief. Large eyes, closed to the world, did not open to view him. Shaking its head, its serpentine neck writhing with that motion, its silvery frill swayed in the night as its tail lashed back and forth like that of a dog wagging its hindmost limb in happiness.
Swallowing roughly as the shadowy form tromped forward, barely visible to even his own mystic sight and obviously obscured from the vision of reality by magic, the young man hastily berated himself for his reaction. Drawing the strings of his pouch taunt to close it, he lashed that bag of magical spell components to his rope belt and calmed himself while awaiting that creature's emergence from the alley. After all, silver dragons were known for their kindness and their good natures, for their adherence to law and their fondness of humans as friends and companions. He had nothing to fear, so long as the dragon that approached him was no derelict of its species.
He was nearly as shocked as the dragon's human form emerged from the alley as he was when he'd initially seen the creature itself.
Standing barely an inch over five feet and appearing to be no older than fifteen, the pale-skinned boy flashed him a brilliant smile that was reflected by the dragon faintly superimposed over his frame. Bright amethyst eyes stared at him, framed by thick, dark lashes and heavy locks of shimmering black bangs whose rough cut lent to compete wildness in their fall. Running slender fingers through shaggy hair that was beginning to grow out of its close crop at the base of his skull, the demure boy bowed. "Thank you so much! I thought that thing was going to kill me."
"Eh?" the necromancer stated, his astonishment with being faced with a dragon still pounding at his brain.
"That thing. The ghost?"
"Wraith," the wizard corrected.
"Wraith, ghost, whatever. I don't know. I've never seen one before tonight. But anyway, thanks again!"
"You're welcome," he cautiously stated even as his mind whirred wildly. Why would a dragon fear something so pathetic in comparison to its own power and grandeur as a wraith?
"So, um, what can I do to thank you?" the boy asked, his bright purple eyes locked on the mage.
"Nothing. It's my duty," he quickly replied.
"Nothing at all? Are you sure? Not even get you dinner or something?"
A huff escaped his thin chest as he looked at the boy. "They won't let me into the inn."
"Oh, I don't mean at that place. I meant at my house. Mom's making spaghetti tonight!"
The mage blinked his emerald eyes once again. The dragon's house? It's mother?"
"Please?" the small boy prettily begged.
"... Sure," he replied after a moment's consideration.
His curiosity was eating him alive.
The dragon's mother? His house? This he simply had to see.
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It was nothing like he expected.
A simple house seated near the northern wall of the town, the homestead spoke of an establishment purchased by a retired adventurer or a merchant who decided to make Neverwinter his home. It was well furnished if not expensively so, warm and comfortable within its walls. A cheery fire burned in a stone-built fireplace, lighting the common meeting room with its thick rug and its couch and accompanying paired chairs. A cabinet with knick-knacks completed the ensemble. A simple kitchen with a stove and paired pantry cabinets with a dinette set and four wooden chairs, a hallway that led to two doors behind which were undoubtedly bedrooms, a door to the small back yard that housed the outhouse completed the household.
And the dragon's 'mother' was nothing more than an ordinary human.
They'd enjoyed spaghetti, just as the boy had promised, the woman more than happy to serve the magician who was responsible for saving her precious boy. After the boy had fled the room to escape the responsibilities of washing and drying the dishes and to fetch his prettiest things from his room to show his rescuer, the woman who posed as his mother smiled at her guest.
"Thank you again for helping him, Mr. Sumeragi," she humbly said, bowing her head.
"It was no problem," the necromancer calmly said. "It's my duty to dispose of them."
"Duty or not, I thank you. Kamui does as well."
"I'm well aware that he does, Magami-san."
"I'm certain you have questions?"
"Many," he truthfully replied. "He's a dragon."
"How do you know that?" she questioned, a bit surprised at his forwardness.
"I see it."
"Oh," she simply replied before she quietly sighed. "'True Seeing'. No wonder. Should have expected it from a mage powerful enough to destroy a wraith with one spell."
The necromancer just arched a brow at her, waiting for her to explain the situation surrounding herself and the 'boy.'
"I found him on my last adventure with Seiichiro Aoki, a servant of the God of Wind. We were making our way home from helping a band of adventurers kill goblins near Cromyr. We were taking a shortcut through the forests near Waterdeep's trade roads when we'd come across the site."
Taking a sip of the wine he'd been served, the mage simply nodded.
"Whoever had been there before us had slaughtered the entire lot. The mother, the father and the babies... even the eggs were cracked open so the newborns inside could be butchered. They'd ripped scales from them, pried out their eyeballs, cut pieces of their wings and torn out teeth. It was horrible."
"Sounds like a spell-component hunt," the wizard quietly muttered into his glass. "But to hunt silvers denotes that whoever performed the act was quite wicked."
Shaking her head, the Magami woman continued. "I don't know who it was or why they were there. All I know is that they'd left destruction in their wake. It was so disturbing that I couldn't even bring myself to loot from the lair, even though it looked like the people who'd attacked those dragons hadn't even bothered with it."
"So how did you find Kamui?"
A little smile lit her lips. "I insisted we go into the lair and see if anything survived. When we went in, a pile of gold shifted and squeaked. Apparently his egg had gotten covered when the parents charged out to confront their attackers."
"And the first thing he saw when he came out of the egg was you," he finished, smiling himself and shaking his head at the cuteness of the story.
"Yes," she said happily. "He bonded instantly to me and was so cute I simply couldn't' abandon him to the wild to die. But of course my parents would never approve if I brought a dragon home. We paid a mage to polymorph him into a baby human."
"The dragon agreed to it?"
"Kamui wanted to come home with his Mommy, no matter what it took. That's what he told the mage before he was changed," she said with a nod.
"And this happened fifteen years ago?"
She nodded, smiling. "Yes, it did."
Sipping his wine once more, the mage arched a brow. "Does he even know what he is anymore?"
"Doubt it. I don't mind, though. I like having my son."
Reflecting on the odd situation, the Sumeragi mage simply drank his wine in silence.
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He'd been offered the couch in the Magami house, which he happily accepted. The boy had even accompanied him out to his camp with its still burning fire to haul his belongings to his home.
However, the necromancer's rest did not go as well as he'd hoped it would.
It was near midnight when he awakened, feeling the chill of mist seeping through his bones.
After a quick glance about the establishment to ensure nothing was out of place and a hasty dressing and grabbing of spell components and sheathed blade, the necromancer made his way outside. As he shut the door behind himself quietly as to not disturb the still slumbering woman and her 'son,' his sharp ears caught the jingle of bells behind him.
Instantly relaxing, the wizard turned and bowed respectfully before even bothering to lift his gaze to view the person who'd found him. "Hinoto-hime," he politely addressed.
The Vistani elder nodded to him, the mysts of her home domain roiling about her. Blind red eyes stared in his direction, her tiny lips pursed into a small frown as the moonlight glimmered off her white skin and ivory tresses that spread out upon the mat she was seated on.
To any who would have traveled the path towards the Magami household, it would have been an odd sight. Gray mysts billowing calmly about a huge wagon, its sides open to the atmosphere through the space behind its singular inhabitant was shielded from open air by a hanging bead curtain infused with symbols of mystic power and protection. Dominating the wagon's floor was a huge, thickly woven mat sporting the image of the Evil Eye that was the Vistani clan's fame surrounded with swirling runes calling for obscurity from prying visions. That wooden vessel was lashed to two identical giant steeds, black furred and heavily built who stamped their hooves impatiently onto the cobblestone path, flung their heavy raven-pitched manes and gnashed at their bits, froth gathered at the corners of their mouths and dark eyes glaring petulantly at the road. A thin figure obscured from view by a loosely wrapped beige robe who's excess fabric was draped over its head held the reins of those magnificent beasts in a nearly skeletal hand, glowing red eyes peering without distraction at the road before the myst-enshrouded wagon.
It had no effect of awe or surprise upon the mage. It was something he'd seen many times, his position as head of the Sumeragi clan lending him towards many meetings with the Vistani prophetess who was often called upon for aid in hunting some particular creature who escaped from her demiplane's recesses.
"Subaru-san," she addressed him telepathically, her lips unmoving and mute as she bowed her head, the bells woven into her incredibly long locks that swirled in gentle circles upon the mat around her ringing delicately, "I have news."
"About the Sakurazukamori?" he instantly questioned, all formality thrown to the winds with the hope of information that would lead him to his prey.
"Such is why I address you and not your Grandmother, the twelfth head of your clan."
Waiting patiently, Subaru bowed his head.
"He has struck a bargain with a force darker than that which he serves, at the direction of the demonic sakura he treasures. He has struck a bargain intent on the destruction of all life we treasure. He has struck a bargain with the Lord of Shadows, drawing him from the Demiplane of Nightmares from which my tribe hails. He must be stopped."
Swallowing his nervousness, he felt himself pale. When Hinoto of the Vistani delivered bad news, it was always tenfold worse than she made it out to be - experience had taught him that.
"There is one here who can help you. One who is key to the banishment of the Shadow King, who can drive the Beast back into the Mysts from whence he was summoned. Take him to Threeswords. Take him swiftly."
Knowing better than to refute orders, the necromancer bit back his anger at being forced to include another in his hunt of the Sakurazukamori, to include another target into that quest. It was his personal mission that he wished to adhere to, to find his prey and fulfill the wish he'd garnered in his heart for the last nine years, not a mission thrown in his face by the Princess of the powerful Vistani tribe involving forces of darkness and the fate of the world. "Who is this person?"
"One who is unknown to himself. One who will need your protection," she softly whispered even as her wagon began to clatter away, the horses that pulled it whinnying heavily as the mysts encompassed it.
Once she faded into the mysts that draw all to the demiplane her tribe hailed from, the necromancer scowled.
A new mission had been set upon him.
A mission he didn't care about had been forced into his hands.
And of all things, it was forcing him to accept what he loathed, what he feared, what he avoided with a passion.
He was going to have to have help.
tbc...