The Stirring Anger
The spell of sight was fading – Mikoto was losing her focus. And Munak was not.
Robin wanted to cry. When death's chill swoops down on raven's wings, she puts tears in people's eyes. Death's chill had arrived, and Robin could taste it. It tasted of nothing. The smell of damp earth thrived maliciously until it swallowed the swordsman whole and became part of her. It tore her throat, stung her eyes, crumbled her hands and dried her mouth… This was a new, disgusting, sharp kind of dread and something so human as crying wouldn't help.
Munak approached, and Robin watched. She couldn't attack, she couldn't defend and she couldn't run. She could do nothing. Nothing.
"Robin, move!" Mikoto was screaming. Robin barely heard her. The spell of sight spluttered.
Robin could do nothing. She did nothing. Munak raised her hands, and thin elegant fingers flexed and tensed like eagle claws.
"Robin!" The word "in" was repeated several times in one violent exhale and collapsed into a strangled sob. It was a horrible. She drew in her breath sharply and screamed something completely inaudible. With an outraged shriek, she bellowed, "Move!"
The world swung precariously. Strong hands with an iron grip wound around Robin's neck and tightened, and her feet left the ground. But the tightening didn't stop.
Breathe!
I can't.
You must breathe to live!
I can't breathe though.
Do it the way you've always done it! Please! Just breathe!
I can't.
The air was thick enough to submerge her. Her ears rang and sweat prickled while her lungs starved. It ached, it hurt, it pounded like hammers. Munak's ruthless hold bruised her neck, squeezing flesh and bone into one. Robin's vision tumbled erratically. All the while, the mage's scream raked the air, and floated further and further away…
There was a rush of air, and Robin lifted her head, choking dry muddy air into her lungs like water. Breathe! Breathe! Panic was erupting in tides of fire. She found damp earth crumbling against her hands and knees, and the iron grip, though gone, continued to pound against her neck. Her ability to hear crashed back into her like a bruise.
I'm alive! she realized. How? she wondered.
The cave was flooded with a spell of sight, but it didn't throw amber shadows over the stark rocks – it was a distinctive icy blue. It belonged to an acolyte.
A very important question erupted violently in her throat – she wanted very much to shout it but she'd forgotten how to move her mouth – What the Hel happened?
"Stay calm, Robin," a very still voice said. Robin found something soft and kind of squashy thrust into her hand and she found herself clinging to it. "Hold him, and squeeze him when you get scared."
The tone was so calm and soothing, and somehow familiar. Her left arm circled the "him", and her right hand tugged at someone else's. She looked around the cave and saw a warp portal – it certainly looked like one, but this was just too good to be true. A Holy Light incantation rang savagely, and the source of the spell turned out to be a fierce-eyed priestess. Mikoto stood wailing next to her.
And Dante… She had to return Dante's body. What would happen to him if they just left him?
Dante's corpse lay sprawled and wide-eyed some twenty feet away in it's cold rocky den. Munak was still around somewhere, but a quick sprint…
"Robin, wait!" An unknown wind roared in her ears instantly. The word "wait" didn't register. The little squashy thing whatever it was lay lodged tightly between her arm and her chest; clinging to it with white knuckles, she somehow closed the gap between Dante and herself.
She wasn't sure how she was supposed to pick him up. His arms were thrown behind his head and his legs were jumbled rigidly as they had buckled and collapsed beneath his dead body. Her hands pawed the air. She wrapped her arms around his waist and lifted. She expected him to hold onto her, and when he didn't she stumbled. She suddenly felt very lonely.
But the mystery priestess with the sharp glare slung Dante over her shoulder with one hand and yanked Robin up into the air and back onto her feet with the other. "Through the portal," she snapped fiercely. The swordsman was half-led and half-carried to the warp portal, and nearly fainted when she passed through.
Mindless autumn sunlight greeted her. Birds sang. She became aware that her mouth was very dry. The air was so cold and clean and fresh that it seemed the caves had drowned her like an earthy ocean; she wanted a drink and, for some strange reason, a bath. She stood straight and found herself swaying.
"What happened? Where am I?" she gasped. Her mouth was working again; she was dimly aware of the little squashy thing. She clutched it with both hands.
"This is the garden in the Wolf's Sanctuary," replied the priestess. She had a sharp voice and bright gold eyes; there was a traditional tenderness and fierceness that suggested that this woman was a mother. She had an arm around the violently shaking Mikoto and was fussing over Robin. Hand on forehead, check pulse, pinch cheeks… "You're still in Payon. Your friend here came and fetched me, and I warped you two out."
Somewhere in that sentence was something quite unbelievable, and it took a few seconds for Robin to work out what is was. She felt like a rock. She looked at the squashy thing in her arms and saw that it was a faded black colour. She turned it around, and was met with the friendly vacant gaze of the little black cat doll.
"Here are your swords," Ghost said as if nothing had happened. She held out two short swords without any sign of emotion. In the caves she looked normal, and now drenched in sunlight, her acolyte's robe was dull with dirt and the rest of her was snowy white. With light streaming down on the white hair and passive rosy eyes, Ghost looked like a strange angel.
Two things happened in Robin's mind at once. The first was that the full weight of what had happened in the caves flashed across her memory like a portrait she'd looked at all her life. The second was an obscure cauldron of the angry shock that struck when she thought the acolyte had left her, and a new painful gratitude. She was certain she was feeling too much.
The result was that she walked past her swords, clung tighter to the cat doll, and hugged Ghost with her free hand. Then she let herself cry.
-X-X-
"Sis! You didn't tell me they were them!"
Whoever it was encased in the sharp black armour didn't react to the little sage. Ruriko darted behind Taiken and a little squeaking noise became audible in her throat periodically.
Draco smiled. "Well, at least you know now, sweetheart." Ruriko had of course heard of the Sentinels Guild, but when Draco had explained it to her, she had done so in a mixture of common-tongue and the Language of the Making, for a six-year-old Ruriko's convenience. So the Sentinels became the To-Pali – the iron puppets.
"You're supposed to be giving them orders," Oshi sighed casually. "They won't budge an inch unless you tell them to."
"I'm supposed to be giving orders to them?" Ruriko spluttered, wearing a facial expression that suggested that something very heavy had just fallen on her foot. Six yes noises replied. "… Can't Taiken do it?"
"The prince said the Sentinels would only obey the guild mistress of the God's Cry; do I look like a guild mistress to you?"
"… Fine, but I'm still getting this weird feeling that they're going to beat me up…"
"They'll do no such thing, so get on with it!" Hawk's patience was drying rapidly.
"OK, OK! Oré yo kestata-so… Could you please take us down to the bit where the… bug is?"
"Could the guild mistress be more specific," replied a voice in the armour.
"The buggy one…! The golden one."
"At once."
The long trek began. Ruriko tried to sidle back amidst her guild, but the sentinel made sure that she was always in his shadow. Or her shadow. It was impossible to tell. Whoever it was, they were a disconcertingly rigid, calm presence.
The route through the Pronteran Sewers was not an easy one; had they not had their terrifying Guide of Honour, it would probably take days to reach the lower levels. Draco didn't know how many of the others had been to the culverts before, although she was willing to bet that none of them had. If she hadn't been, Ruriko certainly hadn't. Taiken passed his childhood well away from the vicious capital of Midgard. Chisel may have done. Kyo most probably never even conceived the idea of the place. If either Hawk or Oshi had, then they weren't telling.
The group received a lot of apprehensive stares. The entrance was filled with skinny youngsters of all walks of life, all varying in efficiency. The time spent traversing the spider network of bridges passed in ice ages, and Draco could feel the sides of her feet prickling.
"Ruriko, ask the sentinel what the prince told him."
"Um… what are your orders from Tristan?"
"We are to escort the God's Cry to the lower levels, and protect them if need be."
Ruriko turned to Oshi.
"Tch!" His characteristic dry snigger. Draco stared at him straight in the face, and found nothing. That meant he was brooding.
Then there was the climb down the ladder, which felt like a dive into the ocean. The torches spluttered in their brackets.
When Draco reached the bottom, she saw the sentinel stood statically, as if to attention, and a flash of steel shot back into a sheath. Two small splashes signalled something cut in half.
"Familiar," Ruriko explained shortly.
"You've shrunk again, Ruriko," said Taiken. Draco fought back a laugh; the sage did indeed look a lot shorter when stood nervously next to their escort, who had to be at least a healthy foot taller than her.
If the entrance of the culverts was difficult to navigate, then this new place was impossible. Draco, and everyone else by the sound of things, learnt to follow the sentinel's footsteps exactly. The passage wormed randomly into different shapes, and there were several instances of people falling down walls. Glistening, murky green thief bugs sprouted in abundance. They scurried from the walls and toppled from the ceiling. Hawk sniped them nonchalantly, and after twenty minutes of it, his face was heavily lidded in a dark-eyed frown and his mouth was drawn in a tight horizontal line. Soon, as his arrow struck true, and the ever-familiar shrill death rattle rasped the air, he snapped, and in a loud angry voice, expressed a wish for "those bloody buggery things to just sod off and die quietly".
What seemed like a small age later, they came to non-descript stone tiles that were the same size, shape and colour as the pit that would take them lower. A pair of torches framed in an archway promised a more worthwhile passageway about ten feet away. Chisel sighed wearily and said that the architects had been cheating when they designed this place.
Draco tugged at a loose strap on her armguard before descending the ladder. It was very high, and she gave a tired warning to the others to not look down. The others descended without a word. She found three other sentinels stood at the base of the ladder, next to a pile of human skeletons and insect hides. Their escort joined the line, and the four looked identical.
The new environment came as too much of a surprise. It wasn't murky like the levels above, but it was bathed thoroughly in an amber light, and the assassin received the impression that she was stood in a barrel of ale. She paced the base of the ladder lightly, and the soft pad of Oshi landing trickled like a breeze behind her. Her head snapped around instantly to find him scanning the place. Hawk's falcon swooped down and glided silently over the landscape.
The others followed shortly after. Taiken had his guitar propped carefully over his back. Chisel had been persuaded to leave his cart in Prontera Castle. Kyo had rested her chakrams over her forearm. Ruriko nearly fell off the ladder, making a great deal of fuss in the process.
Hawk looked to Oshi and beckoned. He took off on a hasty prowl, which Ruriko referred to as "the hunter thing". He had two arrows notched over his bow, and he kept his movements swift and small, following some unknown trail. Oshi padded silently after him, and Chisel, tapping Draco gently on the shoulder as he went, followed.
The source of the intoxicating light was hordes of lanterns, swaying like church bells from the ceiling. The water was pearly clear, and the bridges over them were rickety. Their footsteps crackled over damp sand.
Hawk relaxed to a halt. Chisel walked into Oshi's back, issuing a weary snarl from the assassin. But Hawk was drawing back his bow and aiming. Draco scanned the horizon for the target, and found a little flaw of gold some way into the distance. A couple of hundred yards and a channel of the moat separated them. The bow creaked weightily as the hunter pulled it back with one fluid movement. Draco had tried to fire a bow of relative size, and she'd only ever managed to hold it back for about a second. Intense concentration was written into a meticulous, calculating glare, and the muscles tensed visibly over his arms.
The arrows whistled shrilly as they flew. The healthy crack of metal embedded into metal and flesh quaked, and a shriek of rage tore after it. The golden thief bug stampeded into view, arrows sticking out at very odd angles.
"Ah, should've known it wouldn't be that easy," the hunter sighed, smiling apologetically.
"Yes, you should have," replied Oshi with a smirk. His katars sprang out of their sheaths.
The canal separating them was wide; this should've had some kind of tactical advantage, but it didn't. The bug quickly reached the edge of its designated ground and leapt dramatically into the air – there was a rather awed silence as it soared – landing some way in front of Hawk, causing an impressive crash of stone.
It made to lunge at the hunter. It stopped when Chisel's axe fell on its back. Oshi's katars followed, and Draco ran in for a dropkick. She watched it skid backwards, and slipped back into Hiding, and saw Oshi melt out of view also.
The rain-like pluck of Taiken's guitar, and his gentle tenor voice soared with swan grace in a savage song. Kyo stamped furiously, and she joined the bard with an angelic chant. The tune swelled, and a strange violet dust surrounded the pair as they sang of a fierce, forgotten battle. Draco had the sudden urge to charge straight at their foe and pound it, lots, with this wonderful new feeling of strength and an odd sharp-toothed swashbuckler confidence.
Chisel succumbed to the urge; the axe collided with the ground. He met the glutinous clicking pincer with his weapon and again with his gauntlet. The axe swiped, left, down, and the blade slipped past the bug as it leapt back. The blacksmith swerved narrowly past their foe's lunge.
The bug was quick – its pincers were aiming for Chisel less than a second later. What they found was the heavy katars of a short angry assassin. Oshi didn't Cloak when he attacked, and the flash of his blades pounding into the golden thief bug was a very vivid sight. He brought them crashing down, threw his arms into the air and brought them down again, and again…
The echo of a spell burst out – casting circles appeared around the bug, and the runes drew themselves in flames as they were named. Ruriko was a quick caster. A rain of fire followed, lighting the cave red rather than amber for a moment.
But the casting circles were still around the bug, and they were constricting – that wasn't right… The arrows of fire stopped a few inches short of their target, continuing to burn mindlessly. The bug was casting now. The fire obeyed its new orders; a wall of flames sprang in front of Oshi. Both he and Chisel back away warily.
"Hey! That's cheating!" spat Ruriko indignantly. Draco grit her teeth, and tasted the song that made her heart race. She clutched her daggers, and with a light leap, caught up with the bug. She stabbed, and it slipped beneath her dagger. She swiped and it jumped back. It lunged at her. She left her Second Self where she was standing and sprang back deftly.
That was lovely and unsuccessful…
She eyed the slightly translucent copy of herself for signs of an attack; there were none. The bug was going for someone else… Draco instinctively looked for Kyo, and found her dancing to the brave music. Several frantic whistles from flying arrows hinted at Hawk becoming very agitated – it was definitely going for Kyo.
Oshi leapt in front of it and mimicked Draco's tactic. The bug didn't pay attention to the Second Self. Casting circles signalled another fire bolt spell from Ruriko. The spell struck, but the bolts bounced off the gold shell in blossoms of fire.
"It's a bug!" Ruriko shouted. "It should burn really easily!"
"Since it isn't, try a different element!" Hawk yelled back impatiently.
Draco barely heard it; she was sprinting to intercept the bug. Kyo was doing nothing to move away. The assassin immediately had to sidestep away from the pincers. She underestimated it. She felt something like a hammer bash into her stomach. She found herself staring directly at the swaying lanterns, and her back hit something. She figured out a second later that she'd just been knocked over.
A little silver line appeared out of the corner of her eye, and she found casting circles directly beneath her. The bug was heavy, and perched imperiously on her torso – she couldn't move. She could hear a chant, like a hiss in a pit, and she recognised the words spoken. It was another fire wall. Her mind refused to put two and two together.
Another chant rang – the Spell Break. The casting circles broke, and footsteps pounded, along with a chant that Draco knew. Beyond the golden glow of the thief bug, a katar, glowing with a poison enchantment. Oshi sprinted over, swung his arm across his chest, and swung it back around the other way in a dramatic horizontal sweep. The enchantment left the blade and struck the bug with the force of a hammer. It flew. An arrow followed. And so did several shards of ice.
"Are we even making a dent on that thing?" shouted Hawk from his sniping position.
Draco leapt back into an upright position, and Oshi stood protectively in front of her; she frowned indignantly. Chisel sprinted past, with his axe raised heroically. Hawk shot at it again. To ease her feeling of inadequacy, Draco threw a couple of knives.
Before Chisel could reach it, another fire wall flared, and it directed a fire bolt at the assassins, which was dodged easily. A bolt struck Oshi directly on the arm, leaving a furious red mark. He winced without the tiniest noise.
Following prior instructions, Ruriko proceeded to do her "sage thing". A few gemstones adorning her wrists glowed. She swept her arm down as she yelled, "Eno va shi stai," and a cloud of gold and blue dust exploded into a shock of white light. It curled itself into a mist and planted itself to the ground, giving the impression that the place had been subjected to a storm of diamonds. The amber glow died and became silver.
The bug was beginning to cast another fire wall. Draco smirked as the casting circles appeared – she knew what the ground here had been infected with. Runes were being named and they were taking form, but the bright white enchantment was thickening around the spell. Some of it thinned, leaving hand shapes in the light. The hands surrounded the casting circles and gripped it; then they tugged, and the spell snapped instantly.
"Ta-ah!" shouted Ruriko gleefully. "That won't work against Magnetic Earth!"
The bug screeched. Since it's protective wall of fire had failed to come, the assassin running at it didn't stop. The katars darkened with their poison enchantment, and the same hammer-like impact sent the target soaring. It began another spell, and Ruriko broke it eagerly. Hawk's arrows struck it's back. Its pincers clicked as they met Chisel's axe.
The grapple was surprisingly short; the blacksmith and the bug shook with concentration as they battled for about a second. Then their foe sighed, almost sleepily, and toppled back. That was too easy… it might've been planning something. Draco sprinted forward and dropkicked it away from Chisel for good measure.
It landed none too gracefully, but it was stable again, and it lunged back at her. She stepped lightly away. It was thrown off in some other direction, and Draco turned to find Oshi recovering from an attack.
He glared after it suspiciously, katars gripped tightly in front of him. Then he lowered them and smirked. "It's poisoned," he said with a light chuckle.
"It can't be," Draco snapped back instantly. "You know as well as I that bugs have more tolerance against poison than humans."
"Sorry, Draco, but he's right," Hawk interjected, bewildered.
Draco stared at it grimly. It was showing the signs of one suffering from poison… It staggered, and the pincers clicked irregularly. It looked very different. There was a heaving like a wind that couldn't blow – it's breathing was becoming heavier.
The insect legs danced beneath it, and it was turning. With a horribly mismatched pace, it started after Kyo again. Another fire bolt spell was broken by Ruriko. Encouraged, Draco whispered a poison enchantment on her left dagger, Eris, and sprinted after the bug. She swung Eris in a vertical sweep, and span around to follow it up with a heel drop into the insect's back. A dent appeared in the gold shell.
Taiken was grinning, and he strummed a different chord on his guitar. Kyo looked at him, and her dance immediately went from the furious scuffing and stamping to a graceful twirl. The song was mournful and dramatic, and it made Draco feel frail and weak.
"Attack! Attack!" Hawk was shouting, notching his bow and firing at disconcerting speed. Oshi ran ahead of Draco, and her throwing knife struck before his katar. Chisel's axe toppled last. This time they had actually done damage…! The daggers, the arrows and the ice had penetrated the shell; a deep slit from a katar oozed the strange black blood; and Chisel's axe had left a very satisfying dent.
But the golden thief bug continued to stagger. Like Phreeoni, it had lost. It was finished, dying. But it continued to go for the dancer. Draco frowned incredulously, and her mind spluttered. What kind of determination possessed them to do that…? To trail the Arien girl so incessantly? To their dying breaths, they pursued her…
"Kyo, move!" Hawk was beginning to panic. Draco was still dumbstruck.
Kyo remained completely calm. She just… carried on with her dance…
The bug lunged. She swirled lightly out of the way, with such tranquillity, as if it were merely just part of her routine. She stood completely still, poised like a doll. Her left leg was lifted from the ground, the toe pointed. One arm was thrown out to the side, a chakram suspended on the wrist, and the other was held in front of her chest.
Time slowed, in a hot, stewing mix of sickness and dread. The bug crawled after her, the strange gasping rolling with it. She closed her eyes, and the corners of mouth pointed up in a sharp smile.
"Ka… ya, torishi o so, keste ka…" Draco gaped. She didn't understand the words, and the dancer didn't either. Kyo appeared to be whispering them. They tumbled from her mouth like the hiss of a snake, and filled the cave. "Vasa stai. Isa stai o. Estra pi vassari… iika…to youx tari… aste stai."
Draco wasn't sure what strange movement Kyo did to finish it. One moment, she was stood gracefully as a dancer should be. The next, an ear-splitting crash of metal screamed coldly. Draco flinched as if it were nails on slate. The bug was a mess of glutinous black and gold. A pair of chakrams was embedded deeply in its back, breaking it like a mirror. It was difficult to tell what shape her foe had been before.
Kyo blinked several times, as if clearing her eyes of something. When she was done, she stood up straight, and looked at her blood stained weapons. She frowned, confused. With genuine confusion. She looked at the golden thief bug.
"Oh," she said.
Oshi was walking up to it. He was going to cut its heart out, as he had done with Phreeoni, and Draco didn't particularly want to watch that. She'd been a little apprehensive of Kyo before but… The dancer was actually becoming quite frightening. She was odd, even by the God's Cry standards. Ruriko only ever went into fits when she was casting a very out-of-the-box spell. She and Oshi were quick, but they didn't see things before they happened. Hawk had keen vision but he couldn't see through Hiding without help.
"Kyo?" She wanted to ask if the dancer remembered saying whatever it was.
"Yes?"
"Nothing." She didn't want to worry the girl.
-X-X-
"Any student caught out of bed in the middle of the night should be reprimanded and hit over the head. Do not let students out on the old playgrounds, we have new boring ones for them…"
"The where what?"
Orius delicately recounted a rather unsavoury meeting with Meron and some of the parents of his students, the basic outcome of which was a new set of health and safety regulations. There were several rules relating to the height and depth of stairs, the height of banisters, but more to the point, it meant very boring playgrounds. Arche herself had accumulated many injuries from break times of delinquency, as had any student of Yuno.
"Climbing frames you can step over, swings that take three hours to strap into, that sort of thing…" he finished primly.
Arche was Orius's only living relative. Orius had not and would never marry for a reason that he seemed to find very amusing. "I've got enough "children" as it is, and this little handful here…" The second part only applied if Little Ruriko was in the vicinity. There was some truth in this. Just about every student as well as all of the teachers of the Yuno Academy of Magic considered Orius a father, and the more exceptional of Geffen looked at him as a favourite uncle.
Orius was the older brother of Arche's mother, a sage also. Arche's father was a monk. They disappeared somewhere beyond the northern border. Arche didn't feel any particular pangs about it, having been living under Orius's attentive upbringing for over three years, in which she received a good set of values, stocky morals, a few whacks to the head, and a grand total of eight replacement pairs of glasses. She didn't miss them unless she had to think about them. So she didn't think about them. She never thought of what life was like before Yuno, she never wondered where they were, she never thought to go looking for them… A new reason to dive into books with her heart and soul, to drown herself in her education, to make the Language of the Making sink into her very skin – outside the musty world of musty books she had to think about her parents. Sod that, she decided with a pout.
Here was something new to dive into with her heart and soul – teaching. Marius's instruction was mercifully short ("You've either got it or you haven't"). Erita's dictum of a good teacher was quite lengthy. Orius's was approximately the same length as the distance between Yuno and Prontera. And Arche had a lot of spare time in which to listen to it.
-X-X-
The Pronteran Sanctuary was a very unique environment. Excel watched the crowds nervously. There were always a lot of people. Healers were always in high-demand. The church's inhabitants led a very packed life – they were needed for emergencies, such as the alchemy school's monthly explosion in which at least a dozen people were injured; travellers needed them to… travel, safely; they had to prepare services for the Lord's Day; they had to host weddings and funerals; the choir always had a new hymn to learn; on top of all this, they had to… live. Live their daily lives. Eat, sleep, take care of the Sanctuary, listen to people's woes, and learn.
There was a large white marble wall covered in blackboards. On them were written all the names of every acolyte living at the church, arranged in age order, along with their schedules. On the ten-year-olds board, Ghost was late and was currently supposed to have returned from Payon and now be attending a lesson with High Priest Melchiorre. She should have been back two days ago.
Damn right, she should have.
Excel was gripping her hammer very tightly, and the constant twang of teleport spells was beginning to annoy her greatly.
"Stop growling like that, Exce-…"
"I'm not growling."
Tone paused as if something had just flown past his head. "You are."
"What will Excel grow up to be? An alchemist? A blacksmith? Or a barbarian?" Hyatt giggled.
"Where did barbarian come from?"
"Oh, they're normally… not very nice."
"A lot of them have very big axes."
"And terrible lisps. I reckon that's why they're so aggressive."
Tone was shaking his head, and frowning. "It's 'cause their teeth get knocked out."
Excel blinked, and found herself smiling as her brain caught up with her. "Really?" she burst out with genuine amazement. She couldn't stop herself from laughing as she tried to form her excuse. "I thought it was just a coincidence!"
Then something very unexpected happened. Being the nerve centre of the priests in the capital of Midgard, naturally there would be warp portals bursting into existence all over the place. Excel didn't expect to see Ghost step away from one.
The acolyte was now quite tall for her age. She moved the little black cat doll, now a bit more faded than when the merchant had seen it, from the crook of her arm to the top of her head, where it remained perched benignly. The girl's dress was quite filthy, splashed with mud all over the place, and it made the rest of her quite a shock to behold. Large, round eyes, made to be dark, stared around the place with their pale red gaze.
Hyatt pointed her out to Tone, and he called to her.
"What a coincidink-…" Hyatt's sentence disintegrated into a disconcertingly violent coughing fit, signalling her Lunchtime Collapse.
Ghost turned, shielding her face from the sun as if she were allergic to it. She gestured for them to wait, and a strange-looking, slightly intimidating priestess appeared next to her, arms around a swordsman Excel vaguely recognised, and a mage.
"I did it," Ghost said to the priestess, "but it would have been nicer if I could do it before."
"Don't fret yourself, child," replied the priestess dotingly. "You saved two lives today."
"It should've been three," Ghost said in her usual flat tone. She took the two steps to close the gap between herself and Tone. "What did you need me for?" She tilted forwards and backwards as she shifted from the balls of her feet to her toes. She grew an inch taller then curled an inch backwards in a gentle, constant lullaby sway.
"We just need a healer to go with us to Payon."
Her expression didn't change. She continued to sway backwards and forwards, but her arms became stiff, stationary, and ended in tiny little fists. Her colourless lips drew themselves into a tight grey line.
"Are you very intent on going?" she asked. Her voice also remained the same, but Excel heard her answer through come through gritted teeth.
Tone replied in the affirmative. If he found her at all strange, he was doing a good job of covering it up.
"Even if I do not give you my consent?"
Tone repeated his previous answer.
Ghost swayed slower. Her fingers flexed awkwardly. "Meet me here at the tenth bell tomorrow. I have lessons today."
With that, she turned back to the strange priestess with the golden glow, and they set off, apparently in search of the high priests.
Excel should've felt very happy. A click in her skull signalled that her teeth were grinding against each other. She would've stopped, but it was oddly comforting, though what she needed to be comforted about would remain a mystery for the next few hours. A break in the cycle of boredom… but…
Her mind was abuzz with some kind of distraction, and when a time came to put down her hammer, she found she didn't want to. Darkness settled at speeds never beheld before. She revived Hyatt twice, apparently automatically. She bid the alchemists good evening in a daze. Her appetite at dinner became very dainty.
Only when she was lying on her bed, wide-eyed, staring at her plain bedroom ceiling did it really click.
You saved two lives today.
Ghost was a good healer, but saving two lives…? Why hadn't Excel thought to look at the swordsman and the mage? They seemed to be in a bit of a state…
It should've been three.
Excel buried her face in her pillow. Something had happened in Payon. Ghost had been late. Someone had died. She had saved the other two. Ghost was weird… but… she was accompanying them to Payon, no doubt against her will and better judgement…
… To make sure it didn't happen again.
And so began Excel's regard for the acolyte as one of the bravest and compassionate people she knew.
x-x-x
Melchiorre and Canth had begun to remonstrate Ghost for being late, until they were interjected by the arrival of a golden-eyed priestess. The woman was only an altar-girl in a small reclusive Payonese church, but she had a bitey voice and two distraught youngsters with her.
"… Oh." Canth wound up his lecture awkwardly.
"I do have something to say," Ghost said. It was odd looking down on Ghost – it was everything that looking down on a child was and more.
"Yes. Sorry, Ghost." He couldn't help looking down on her, but talking down her, or anyone else, was not acceptable. Canth was very careful with the way he talked to people.
"We encountered Munak. You told me the legend."
"Yes, but it should've just been a legend," Canth pleaded. "You're certain it was Munak? What did s-… it look like?
"It was a she," the acolyte replied, and he felt himself wince, "and she wore red. She had this huge hat, with a talisman over her face. She got really close to Robin, didn't she."
The swordsman, her face a sheet of horror, swallowed and began her account with difficulty. "We couldn't get near her. There were all these barriers. She just… floated towards us. She looked real calm. Then she'd be like a few inches from you and her hands would just… shoot up. And… I could see her. Behind the talisman, I mean. I saw her face through the talisman. She was… she were…"
Robin's articulation crumbled with her composure. Ghost walked over and put a hand on the girl's shoulder.
"Angry," the mage breathed as if she had been meaning to for a while.
"And you!" Robin recovered into a teary rage. "You! You filthy stinking little coward! Why didn't you light a spell!"
"Don't call me a coward!" the mage spat back with a storm-cloud shriek. "Don't you call me anything!"
"Dante was being killed and you sat there like a lemon, you stupid-…!"
"And there was nothing we could do!"
Robin didn't retaliate. The storm had swept away any words left within her.
"If we could've helped, I would've lit a spell of sight. But we couldn't!" The mage was choking now. She sniffed loudly. "We couldn't do anything. Dante was going to die, and I was not going to watch…"
"But-…"
"No! We. Could. Do. Nothing! And don't you dare call me a coward!"
The narrow chamber echoed with their shrieks, and the mage's threat lingered like a sword hung over a fireplace.
Ghost stood quietly. "It was definitely Munak," she added.
"Goodness…" Melchiorre whispered reverently.
"Yes," Canth said stiffly. They didn't stand a chance. "You can't touch a dark priest."
Dark priests were some of filthiest human beings in existence. They had no regard for life. They sacrificed people to enhance their own power. They strived for power for the sake of being powerful, and nothing else. No one knew their goal. They had a ceremony where they blinded a child with wooden stakes in order to enhance the sight of one of their own, permanently. Insontis Oculatus, innocent eyes, they called it. Canth shuddered.
-X-X-
The sun seemed to always be behind a cloud, and the night was too dark. The shadows looked solid. Geffen Tower loomed taller.
Runa was staying in the camp, but she was more annoyed than anything else for getting stabbed. She was the sort of person who got quieter when they were annoyed, and she was completely silent.
Khan stayed near the gates. He found he was feeling very odd. He was summoned by Shigeru twice, and went both times with a very firm desire to be elsewhere. He was getting paranoid. Who was that dancer?
"Khan?"
He looked up. It was Runa. She winced with each step. She was stood right in the middle of the western bridge. She looked a lot stiller than usual.
He hailed her back. "Are you feeling better?"
She nodded primly. "I just fancied a walk," she replied.
She smiled in an inviting sort of way. Then she turned and started walking into Geffen.
"Whoa! Runa! What are you doing?"
He wasn't sure what made him follow her: the delusion that it was her or the hunch that it was not. There was something very different about her. Runa was friendly, but definitely not… seductive, as it were. She would never be this forward.
And he couldn't see her sword. Her armour looked quite different too.
The bridges in Geffen, at the death of Ivas, had become the rickety things they actually were. Runa walked over them, with her hands clasped behind her back, as if they weren't. Khan wondered why no one else thought it odd that he seemed to be lurching into Geffen by himself. He had his lance in one hand and a crossbow over his back, but it only had four bolts.
Runa stood framed in the tall gates for a moment, watching him. She was wearing her rosary. She let him get nearer, then turned with a swoosh of dark hair, and walked off into the deserted streets.
The second he set foot on stable ground, he broke into a run after her. If it wasn't Runa, then he wanted to know who she was. If it was her, then he had to bring her back. He ran past where the gate sentries would've stood in the living days, found nothing to the left, and found Runa swaying serenely ahead of him to his right. She came to another turn, and twirled slowly around to check his progress. She gave the same man-eating smile and started off further into the city.
He pursued. He shouted her name occasionally for good measure, though the sparse hope that it was her dimmed very, very quickly. The bolts of his crossbow giggled.
The white rabbit chase hurtled by; he ran, and though she kept to her sweet little saunter, he couldn't catch up with her. She would still face him and tilt her head, waiting for him to catch up.
He rounded a corner to where a market square should have been bustling. The stalls had been crushed to splinters, and their merchandise and merchants were a black and charred mess. He stopped running when he realised she'd stopped. She turned and smiled again. Her eyes were blue… they should've been grey.
"You're not Runa," he said, and the fact sank in.
She laughed – an annoying giggle he had and would never hear from a woman like Runa. "I am not," she said, dusk blue eyes twinkling, "but then that raises a point: if you knew, why did you follow?"
He didn't know.
"I thought you would. Humans have a strange trait that they just can't accept loss. They can't just stand up and move on. Do you really think you couldn't live without Runa?"
"I'd rather keep her around," he replied carefully.
"Why though? What kind of person does it take, what traits must they have, how much significance must they have to you, that they are totally essential for your well being?"
"I can't say."
"Really?" The not-Runa was shuffling now. She took a couple of steps right, and a couple back, beginning a pointed-toe pacing. She looked as if she were deep in thought. She bit her lip, which was the wrong colour for Runa's complexion. She looked… faded around the edges.
"You're Doppelganger, aren't you?"
She didn't reply, but the false grace was collapsing into a childish skip. She fixed Khan with a quizzical gaze, frowning. Then, the armour began to melt away, and underneath it were lean arms and a tall, skinny frame. The black waves down her back shrunk into a new messy, boy's hairstyle, one who couldn't quite be bothered to find out what a comb was. The eyes lightened to a piercing icy blue, the skin darkened to a healthy tan… The false Runa changed into a false, enigmatic wizard, distinctly payonese.
The wizard folded his arms. Khan looked closer and saw that he was one of the high wizards. The youngest of them was very famous for this tall, distinctive appearance…
"No, I don't understand it…" the false wizard said in a false deep voice. His hair looked a bit overly messy. His pacing consisted of wide, eloquent strides.
"Why this wizard?"
Doppelganger looked up from his brooding. There was a wide-eyed curiosity about him. "I was about to kill one of them, and this one ran over cracking off ice spells far too quickly. He looked really angry. I still got the over one though; the spell just knocked me off a bit. He probably bled to death…"
"What are you?" Khan repeated. He could've been fierce if he wanted to, but it came out like an inquisitive child.
The wizard's height and presence melted away like rain, and the blond swordsman stood perfectly still, like a keen-eyed cat with a twitchy tail.
"Doppelganger."
"No, not who… What."
"… There's a difference?"
"There is. Don't ask me to explain it," he added quickly.
"Well, this boy… I killed him, and I am him."
"You killed him, and he became part of you?"
"His memories. What's left of him. I didn't have a form of my own. This isn't him. This is what's left of him."
"Why do you want to understand humans?"
"I am not human, but I have human memories," Doppelganger said in a melancholy murmur. He smiled as if remembering something very dear to him. "So strange… They fought to the end. All of them. And for what? There was no hope for them – and what is the point of killing a human who has no hope?"