A/N: I just realized I never put this chapter here when I uploaded it to AO3! Oops! One more chapter til this fic is complete too, just gotta get my brain to wrap it all up nice and pretty-like.
As always, thanks to everyone who takes the time to read my fics, hope you enjoy!
The cultists want to kill him - something about being a heretic and harming their lord and how they'd be blessed for getting rid of him, Reborn honestly doesn't care beyond keeping an ear out for anything useful.
The Lackey whimpers, and Reborn resists the petty urge to kick the idiot. Let him bring attention to himself, Reborn wants no part in it.
The chains are still a smothering weight, burying his magic and making him fight for every spark. But he's already heard the cultists making arrangements for that 'favored fool' from Minstrel, which means he's on his way, which means Zeref is on his way, and Reborn refuses to be trussed up like a turkey when he arrives.
There's a trick to everything, and Reborn doubts Zeref was exaggerating when he said that.
So he takes his magic, those few sparks he can dredge up through the weight of the chains, and pokes around.
It's sluggish.
It hurts, like straining his muscles on a weight two classes heavier than he can really handle.
Magic has never felt so physical before, and he wonders at that. For the magic to feel like a physical weight, he's pretty certain that's not normal, even for forms of spell-binding.
So… how far does that go?
Magic without intent is just energy, with no matter or physical presence. It can't be detected casually unless interacted with by other forms of energy on the same wavelength - or, effectively, other types of magic, which means that without magic, magic without intent cannot be detected.
People who specialize in sensing magic, the way Zeref does, have learned to train their own magic to interact with other forms of magic, regardless of whether or not they have intent behind them, in order to read, measure, and understand them.
Magic that has intent behind it is easy to read - and can also be picked up in many cases by entirely non-magical devices, as many forms of intent give magic physical presence, and even a certain amount of matter depending on the intent behind it.
For skilled sensors, magic with intent is basically an instruction booklet clearly detailing everything there is to know about it.
Zeref doesn't need intent to fully understand a form of magic, as he proved by so perfectly mimicking Reborn's own natural state of magic, before he applies intent to it, and while Reborn's skill in the art is nowhere close to the immortal's, he's getting better.
Just because Zeref fucked off and skipped all their lessons doesn't mean Reborn decided to follow him into slacking off.
So.
He has a set of chains, binding his magic.
Only magic can interact with magic.
Ergo, the chains are magic. And unlike his own native magic, they have intent behind them.
He has the instruction booklet. He just needs to read it.
Reborn explores, carefully, refusing to show the strain to anyone who may be looking at him.
The thick weight of the chains, as heavy on his magic as they are on his limbs-
Wait. That can't be right-?
Reborn shifts his weight, grimacing at the loud clinking that draws attention to him, and re-sparks the insistence that he should be sacrificed to their god-
But it proves what he needs.
The physical weight of the chains is equal to the magical weight.
It's an echo chamber.
The chains are weighted, and enchanted with a sympathetic binding. They take the weight on the body and effectively copy and project that same level of weight onto the magic.
The chains aren't actually binding him, they're just making him feel bound.
Because they feel weighted.
It's a trick. It's a head-game taking advantage of the fact that most forms of projection magic affect a person's mind, but since having their magic bound already makes most magic users feel sluggish, it counts on them not realizing the artificial level of the binding.
It's brilliant and useless for anyone who thinks it through longer than a few seconds.
Sure, his magic feels heavy. But magic doesn't have matter as long as it doesn't have intent, which means that it can't actually be heavy.
Of course, with the chains all but impressing their own intent onto him, scraping enough of his magic free of that to use the spells he wants will have to be done carefully. He can't quite be certain shrugging off their mental component won't trigger an alarm, and better safe than sorry.
So. How to shake the chains' intent off his magic, without tipping everyone off?
Well. It's been a while since he's tried his hand at distraction, it wouldn't do to get… rusty.
"Did you know your god's a masochist?" he offers laconically, and it's more of a struggle than he'll admit not to grin into the cultists' scandalized faces.
…even the Lackey's panicked attempts to tell him to shut up are more amusing than annoying.
How much would it take to get them to kill each other in a fury, hmm?
Zeref gets dragged into an underground ritual chamber a little roughly, which is really getting quite annoying.
Even if he had a favorite acolyte, what on earth do these cultists think they would get from treating him like this? Zeref doesn't really want a favored acolyte, or any acolytes, and wanting to understand what's going through these idiots' heads is probably asking to be inundated with stupidity, but-
He just cannot understand. He tries to work out the logic of it, and consistently fails to come up with an answer that makes sense.
The absolute best he's been able to come up with is that maybe the Avatars aren't a cult at all, but are in fact members of the magic council pretending to be a cult in order to keep a better eye on his followers, and therefore they don't care about roughing up his 'supposed' favored acolyte because they don't actually worship him or value his opinions at all.
…it's even a pretty good reason, if he can be permitted to say, but Zeref gets the feeling it's also completely wrong.
Somehow, he just has cultists so stupid and power-hungry that they both profess to worship him and also have absolutely no regard or care for what he actually wants.
….actually that's probably exactly what's going on. Even with the many real gods in the world, there have been hundreds and thousands of accounts of people getting furious and upset when they invoked their gods only to find that the beings they worshiped weren't what they expected.
…Zeref paid respect to the gods, once.
He didn't worship them, but he made the traditional offerings and prayers.
Until Ankhseram.
So. A bunch of cultists who care more about his image than who he actually is.
Which means it probably would be a bad idea to go with plan A, which may have just been 'find Avatar and than reveal himself as Zeref and see what happens', because they won't care to respect anything he says that isn't in direct support of their ideals.
Lovely.
…He did not have a plan B.
Zeref may have slightly miscalculated something.
Somewhere.
…does he want to die enough to be able to count on his immortality if something goes wrong, or would he just actually-die?
…probably best not to risk it, Reborn would be furious if Zeref went and died to someone other than him.
Okay so plan B's out.
What's plan C?
She's so lost. She's lost, and confused, and scared, but her mama isn't coming and she doesn't know why-
She remembers her egg. Nice, and warm, a big hard shell to protect her from the world. She remembers her mama, always talking to her, promising to look out for her, telling her how much she loved her and can't wait for her to come out-
But then she came out.
And there was no mama with her nice voice, no warm paws and gentle tongues to lick away the sticky coating that kept her warm in the egg.
She was alone, and scared, and there were so many things around and she didn't know what they were but they were so big and some of them moved and she was so scared-
And then there was a lady. Not her mama, and the lady was so big and so bright and she scooped her up and took her away and then dropped her somewhere else, somewhere soft but just as big with strange, big things moving all around and saying things and they were so loud and everything smelled weird and a bit dirty somehow and she couldn't help but sneeze.
She just wants her mama. If that big lady was going to take her somewhere so weird, why couldn't she take her back to mama-?
She cries, all the way until one of the strange big-moving-things picks her up.
And then he talks to her, warm and soft and kind of like her mama but different, and he cleans her up and gives her food.
She wants to go home, but she's stuck, and she's lost, and she doesn't know how to find her mama, but the person who isn't her mama keeps giving her food and keeps talking to her nice and quiet and soft, even though he talks to the other big-moving-...people… kind of mean-like.
He's not mean with her.
She tries to touch his magic, she can smell it, so strong and so warm even though for some reason she can't feel it, so she keeps trying because if she could just feel it maybe it would be warm like her mama's and she wants that, it smells so nice-
But then more big-moving-people come, and they take him away, and when she tries to chase him they shove her in a box and take her away too and it's tight and closed up, like her egg but not because she doesn't feel safe, she doesn't feel warm, she's just scared and lonely and she wants her mama but she can't have her-!
Someone opens the box, and she lunges out with wings and claws and what little magic her tiny body can manage.
She's so tired of being cold.
Reborn barely has a moment to realize that Zeref didn't pick a cultist to sacrifice for information, that instead the idiot just infiltrated a cult himself, before a screeching ball of fury launches itself at the face of one of the cultists and causes the best distraction he can hope for.
Shaking off the chains with negligible ease, Reborn steps out of the cell and into the fight.
Zeref watches with casual interest, not bothering to lift a hand himself, as Reborn and… the cat? Do all the work.
"None of those guys seemed important enough to run this thing," the Black Wizard offers idly, once they're dead, face torn between admiring and exasperated as he looks around.
Reborn's got a half-formed reply on his lips when-
"Hey wait how'd you get those off so fast! You just got lucky didn't you?! Got the defective chains, but instead of saying anything, nooo, just leave Skull to panic himself to death, you could have said something asshole-!"
Reborn groans. "Lackey, it's a gods-be-damned illusion, the chains just trick your brain into thinking you can't do magic, just shrug it off. Admittedly I thought you were immune, considering you seem to lack a brain in its entirety, but I suppose this is proof that you have at least some semblance of one…"
"Wha- HEY YOU TAKE THAT BACK-! AND I'M NOT YOUR LACKEY!" the Lackey screeches, struggling fruitlessly with the chains for a minute before sagging back.
"...but I think they gave us different types of chains so maybe you could help me out-? Just this once. Since it is your fault I'm here and all."
Reborn scoffs and walks off, ignoring the Lackey's shouts as he brushes past Zeref carelessly to investigate the rest of the building.
He can't say he's very surprised when Zeref shows up with the Lackey in tow, though he was really hoping his steadily-building theory was wrong.
Reborn doesn't do mercy killings, as a general rule.
Either the cowards need to kill themselves or just suck it up and live, in his opinion.
Now, of course, he has a bit of a mess on his hands.
The little cat's following them too, tiny, ineffectual hops as it struggles to keep up with them.
How did his life come to this? It's almost the start of a bad joke - a hitman, two immortals, and a cat wander through a cult hideout-
…either a joke or a bad horror flick where they're going to hear a suspicious noise, only for it to turn out to be the cat, but when they turn back around they're actually surrounded-
"Hey! What are you doing here?!"
Reborn groans.
"Oi, you take care of this, I killed the first set."
Zeref nearly trips at Reborn's curt order, confused for a long moment. I need to-?
Oh. Right. The assassin's head-wound is still leaking a bit of blood, he probably doesn't want to be doing all the work-
And it's not like Zeref's never killed someone on purpose, he just-
"Do you think Oodako's okay?" Skull-the-immortal badly whispers to the little cat he'd picked up when he realized she couldn't keep pace with them.
Right.
Skull, the fourteen-year-old kid experimented on and made immortal by his cultists because Zeref never cared to keep track of what they were doing.
He wishes they were harder to kill than they are, wishes they'd put up any fight at all-
Killing a dozen men in a single spell just makes him feel like a monster, really.
Reborn didn't need much more than that, some piece of him thinks, but-
That's different.
Probably.
The next group of cultists who try to stop them from exploring the impressively large underground complex, Reborn annihilates with a new spell that Zeref's pretty sure was meant for him, originally. He tries not to be impressed.
The group after that, Reborn cocks a challenging brow his way, and that's when Zeref realizes it's not about the head-wound at all.
Reborn's trying to play a game of showoff with him - taking turns on one-upping each other's spells as they kill the cultists who try to stop them-
Zeref shouldn't indulge. He never wanted to kill people, that's not who he is-
But.
Well.
Reborn's challenging him so blatantly and Skull doesn't seem to think they're monsters for it, quite happy to chat with the cat in his arms while cultists die around him-
And it's hard to be cursed to murder people for hundreds of years without it affecting his ability to really care when it comes down to it.
Zeref just doesn't want to be a monster.
Strangely, neither of the men next to him seem to think he is.
But if anyone ever asks, Zeref will refuse to admit to how much fun it was.
He's not a child.
He absolutely did not preen when Skull voted him the winner by the end of it.
Reborn kills him for it anyway.
Reborn stalks into the room they'd suspected the cult leader was hiding in, ignoring the Lackey's flailing complaints, absolutely not annoyed that he lost a game to the Black Wizard.
He's just- keeping to their agreement.
He's supposed to try and kill Zeref every time he sees the man.
He's not a sore loser.
The three cultists in the small ritual room go down screaming, magic lashing out of control as they lose their focus on the spell they were preparing.
The guy kneeling in the middle of the circle panics, scrambling to his feet and screaming prayers to his so-called god.
Reborn can't help himself. "Your god's busy being a corpse right now, I'm sure he'll come back in a couple hours. For now, I've got some… questions for you."
Reborn smirks, stepping carelessly through the wild magic, keeping a straight face through the pain and discomfort as he strides up to the cultist.
The man whimpers and prays harder.
For all the good it does him.
The warm magic is running away from her.
The man with the yellow-bright-danger magic got upset at her warm-dark-safe person, and hurt him, and now his magic is trying to run away from her.
She only just got to feel it, and now it's trying to leave and the cool-heavy-purple magic won't let her go so she claws at his eyes, and bites, and beats her wings in his face until he does, and she runs awkwardly to warm-dark-safe magic and grabs.
He's not allowed to leave.
He's not allowed to leave because he's the only warm she has, and the strange warm lady sent her to him, and he's not her mama but he's still there and still warm and he's not allowed to leave!
So when something tries to pull his warm-dark-safe magic from her.
She pulls back.
And somewhere, someplace she doesn't understand but can feel, something snaps.
The warm-dark-safe person is hers.
And she's not letting go.