A/N - So, uh. Homestuck ended recently. That was a thing. I may have cried like a toddler a bit. A lot. HUSSSSIIIIIIIEEEEEEE. Stop making me feel emotions. :(

Also, sorry for the delay. We're back on track!

So on the topic of this fic, this little arc I'm doing should take about two or three chapters, counting this one, depending on how long each chapter is and how much I want to cover. Like I said in the A/N of last chapter, I'll be working on a chapter of Tempus Fugit in between this chapter and the next one, so chapter eight miiight be a bit slower to release, depending on how fast I can finish that chapter.

Thank you to animexxfreakxx, Z0mbieMart, and Derples for leaving lovely reviews!

animexxfreakxx: Aww, why thank you! It's always awesome to hear when I have readers in other parts of the world. Sometimes me and my sister go over the views page and marvel at all the various places I'm getting hitcounts from! I'm also glad you like Brandy's magic, as figuring it out exactly was quite a fun little adventure. I wanted to create something that was unique, but still felt like it could fit within the setting. I asked myself, "what's an obscure thing to draw magic from that other people probably haven't used much of?" And then I settled on ink! Eventually that led into the tattoos, as tattoos are made from a variant of ink and all that. And yeah, there are lot of Dragon Slayer OCs around, aren't there? Not that I'm complaining, and I can totally see why. It's called "Dragon Slayer" magic, for chrissakes, that's just awesome.

Z0mbieMart: Hahah, thank you! ^_^ To be fair, it's not surprising that I don't have a lot of reviews; Tempus Fugit didn't start out with a lot of reviews, either. OC fics are hard to sell on people, you know? I do hope I make enough people want to keep reading, and I'm glad to hear that people seem to really enjoy Brandy so far.

Derples: That's a mighty big compliment, coming from you! ^_^ I've been a big fan of The Ice Slayer for a good while now, and it's actually the fanfiction that spurned me to start posting chapters of Skin Deep! (I had planned to wait until Tempus Fugit was done and over with, but that's probably not happening any time soon.)

Chapter Seven - Ajisai

The Ajisai mountain range was a small offshoot of the cluster of mountains to the west of Magnolia, somewhere between the city that Fairy Tail was located and the heart of Fiore itself, Crocus. It wasn't that far of a carriage ride from the guild; Brandy and Emmett left the city at nearly noonish, and by mid-afternoon had reached the first roll of land that heralded the mountains growing steadily in the distance.

It was a quiet carriage ride for the most part; only near the end did Emmett speak up. "So, what did happen in Hargeon, anyway? How'd you get wrapped up in a human trafficking ring, of all things?"

Brandy raised an eyebrow at him. "How do I get wrapped up in anything?" she quipped. "Either Gray or Natsu end up dragging me along on some wild and crazy adventure, or Mom sends me a vague letter. In this case, it was both." She leaned back against the seat of the carriage, folding her arms over her chest. "Like I said, we didn't find Igneel. But we did find some dude who was pretending to be Fairy Tail's Salamander. He was using charm magic to trick women into admiring him and going to a 'party' on his yacht, where he drugged them so they would fall asleep and he could take them to Bosco. Natsu and I actually met Lucy in the crowd that Bora - that's the dude who was pretending to be from Fairy Tail - had drawn. Anyway, I snuck on board the yacht to figure out what he was up to, stuff happened, Natsu redefined the term 'party crasher,' Lucy summoned a celestial spirit that conjured a tsunami to throw the boat into port, and then Natsu kicked a bunch of dudes' butts. And also I summoned Fenrir, which is always fun."

But Emmett was only interested in only one part of her story; he had jerked his head up at the mention of the tidal wave, his brows knitting together over his piercing, concerned gaze. "Wait, Lucy summoned a who to conjure a what?"

Oh, boy, here we go. She should have left that part out. Her and her big mouth. "Master Torhearth, it's fine-" she began.

Emmett cut her off. "It's not okay," he insisted. "You were on a boat over the ocean, Brandy. Why didn't you mention this sooner? You didn't get knocked into the water, did you?"

He had gone Full Dad Mode (something he managed to do surprisingly well, considering that as far as she knew he had no children), and while Brandy generally appreciated having a concerned fatherly figure in her life as her father had died a good decade and a half ago, she didn't really want to get a lecture on safety measures in a cramped carriage traveling across a particularly bumpy patch of road. "Well, yes, but it's totally fine!" She held up her hands to keep Emmett from launching into a session of asking a million unnecessary questions. "Like I said back at the guild, there weren't any incidents, and I had my cloak on, so most of my skin didn't even get wet! My face itched for a while, but that's not really a big deal since that's not where the root of the problem lies, anyways!"

Emmett didn't seem wholly satisfied with that answer, and unease laced his expression even has he settled back into his seat. "If you say so. Does Lucy know?"

"About my skin sensitivities?" Brandy's intense stare all but bored a hole straight between Emmett's eyes. "Or the reason behind them?"

"Both, I guess."

"She knows that I have some sort of issue that causes my skin to react poorly to stuff like salt water. She assumed that it was because of the tattoos, and I didn't see any reason to correct her. Why, do you think I should have told her?"

"That's up to you. I do think that you should at least give her a heads up before an incident occurs, but in the end it's in your hands and it's up to you to decide when and how you want her to know, if at all. You're not a ten-year-old hiding in my cloak anymore. You're a grown woman, Brandleif. You can make your own choices."

Brandy turned red and stared down and her hands, clasped neatly across her lap. It was a far cry from the patronizing missives she got from her mother. She wanted to say something, anything that would let Emmett know how much she appreciated his lifelong support of her, but before she could the carriage jolted to a halt, jostling the two wizards. "Looks like we're here," Emmett said. "The miners will be able to tell us more about what's going on in the tunnels. Come on."

He stood up, stooping a bit to avoid knocking his head against the carriage roof, and made his way to head outside. Brandy lingered behind for a second before blurting out, "Master Torhearth?"

Emmett turned around. "Hm?"

"I… Thank you. For sticking around."

A soft smile stretched across Emmett's face, and his reached out to ruffle Brandy's short, dark hair. "Of course, kiddo. I wouldn't just up and leave you to fend for yourself, would I?"

No, Brandy thought, mirroring his expression. No, you wouldn't.

"Slow down. What happened?"

The miner blinked away his tears, still clutching at his pickaxe the way a small child clutched at a security blanket. "W-we were digging for ore, and we broke through to this s-sort of… cave-y like thing, a-and there was a door at the end and we opened it and… and…" He broke into horrified sobs once more.

Emmett reached forward and placed a comforting hand on the man's shoulder. "Hey, it's okay," he said quietly. "Fairy Tail's not gonna let anything else happen to you or any of the other miners. Just tell us what happened and we can go take care of it."

"R-r-right. We opened the door and then there was this… s-some form of dark energy. We didn't understand it, but it scared the heck out of us, it was like there was something in there, just… waiting." The miner shuddered at the memory. "It felt like our hearts were freezing over. So we ran, and contacted all the guilds we could reach."

Brandy exchanged a glance with Emmett. What sort of presence lurked inside the ruins, so malicious that it could terrify this miner so? Why had it been locked underground, and by whom? There were surely defenses keeping it from escaping, assuming it was a thing that could hypothetically escape; how difficult would they be to surpass? With so little information, how could they possibly be prepared for what lay underneath?

But it was all they had, and there was no use in turning back simply because they didn't understand the threat. Fairy Tail had a reputation to uphold, and it wasn't a reputation of being a bunch of cowards. "Thanks," Brandy said. "We'll take it from here. Don't worry; your mine will be back to working order before you can so much as say 'hello!'" She shot her most confident smile at the miner, and he seemed to relax at her conviction. "Now, which way is the mine?"

"That way." The miner gestured to the eastern side of town. "P-please be careful. We don't know what's in there If something happened to you..."

Emmett shook his head. "It won't," he said. "And nothing will happen to this town, either. You have our word on that." He turned and headed in the direction that the miner had pointed towards, with Brandy trailing fast on his heels.

As they walked through the streets, Brandy noticed just how gray everything was. It was if a giant had come and spread a bedsheet of soot over the whole town, staining the wood of the buildings and the stone of the surrounding mountains. There was various bits of machinery everywhere, most prominently from the large ore refinery in the center of town, chugging out smoke as the metal bits and bobs inside did their work. She didn't sense a whole lot of magic being used; this vital little town had relied on self-made technological advancements to get to where they were now. Machinery without magic… it's impressive, in its own strange way.

She had also noticed how many of the townspeople had come out of the homes to witness the two wizards pass by. The people were gray too, sallow and washed-out with dull clothes and dull eyes. "They're watching," she murmured, barely loud enough for Emmett to hear."

"Well, barely any wizards pass this way," Emmett replied just as quietly. "Actually, this town doesn't have any magic or magical devices in it at all. We're probably the first real wizards they've seen in years. We're a novelty."

"Mm." Brandy was still disquieted by the people staring at them. Everything was silent for a few moments until a young boy with silvery hair broke free from his mother's grasp and came running towards them. "Hey!" he shouted. "Heyyyy!"

Brandy and Emmett stopped as the boy skidded to a halt in front of them. As he did, he kicked up a cloud of dust and dirt large and thick enough to make Brandy grateful for her anti-irritant cloak. "Is something okay, kid?" Emmett asked.

"Well.. it's just…" The boy, suddenly afflicted with a terrible case of shyness, stared down at his feet. "Are you really wizards?" he blurted. "Like, can you do magic?"

Emmett smiled softly at this. "Yes, we really are wizards," he said. "We come from the magical guild called Fairy Tail, where lots of wizards hang out and go on jobs like this together."

The boy looked back up. His eyes (which were a startling shade of green that stood out against the grays of the town) were wide with wonder. "No way!" he shouted. "That's so cool! I've never met a real live wizard before! What sort of magic do you guys do?"

"We're Construction wizards," Brandy said. "We create magical beings out of various substances to do our bidding for us."

"Whoa!" She hadn't thought it would be possible for the boy's eyes to grow any larger than they already were, but grow they did. "Can you show me? Pleeeease please please please!"

"Albert Hollyhock!" the boy's mother scolded, her hands on her hips. "Leave the wizards alone, they have a very important job to do."

"Aw, but mom!" the boy, Albert, whined. "It'll only be a second! Pleaaaase?"

On the one hand, the longer they let the problem in the mines fester, the higher the chance of it causing the town real trouble was. On the other hand, Albert couldn't have been older than nine, and it would have been a terrible shame to disappoint him like that. Brandy snuck a peek at Emmett's face and had to repress a giggle as she saw the distressed look on his face. He was always such a softie when it came to crying children. Perhaps that was her fault; she had been such a shy and anxious little girl that seeing a sad child nowadays seemed to trigger something in him.

Sure enough, he caved mere moments later. "I suppose one demonstration couldn't hurt," he said, rubbing at the back of his head sheepishly. "Brandy, do you wanna do it, or should I?"

"I think yours would be a bit more impressive to the crowd, don't you think?" Brandy said, gesturing to the cluster of people that had gathered around them.

"Good point." Emmett directed his attention back to the boy. "You're going to want to move out of the way, okay? I need a bit of space if I'm going to show off."

"Uh, okay!" Albert nodded and scurried off to a safe distance, and Brandy moved a little ways away herself, giving her mentor the room he needed to work his magic.

Once he had the necessary space, Emmett rolled his shoulders and dropped into his stance, with his body bent low and his feet spread wide apart. A magic circle sprung to life at his fingertips, a stone-gray in color and rapidly spinning about. "Here we go," he muttered, and then slammed the palm of his hand into the ground. "Construction Focus: Stone Soldiers! Come forth, Stone Pikeman!"

The ground began to rumble, with tiny pebbles dancing and jumping across the shaking street. There was a series of gasps from the crowd as the villagers searched for the cause of the disruption. After a few moments, the ground immediately in front of Emmett burst open and a stone figure clad in stone armor rose up, a pike gripped tightly in its gray hand. The figure best resembled an old stone statue, with a nondescript but still recognizable human face and a weathered look to its pseudo-armor. With a sound like flint striking flint, the Stone Pikeman turned around to face Emmett and dropped to one knee, awaiting its general's commands.

"Whooooaaaa!" Albert's jaw had dropped. "That's so cool! And it does whatever you want it to?"

"To an extent. Each Construction has its own specialty. The Pikemen work well for holding off an enemy force; you wouldn't want to find yourself on the wrong end of this guy's weapon, let me tell you." Emmett focused his attention on the expectant statue. "Stone Pikeman, return!"

The pikeman nodded before sinking back down into the earth, its features melting away into smooth stone as it returned to the rock it had once been. All that was left behind was a bizarre little crater in the dirt road where the stone below was visible. "Sorry about the mess," Emmett said with an embarrassed grin. "In any case, neither me nor my apprentice will have any problems handling whatever it is that your miners uncovered. We'll have the problem solved and your town's livelihood restored in a matter of hours."

"Speaking of which," Brandy said, taking off at a brisk jog towards the mine. "We should hurry up." She beamed over her shoulder at her mentor. "Ancient dark presences don't eradicate themselves, you know!"

"So this is it, huh?"

The doors were tall. Really tall, at least a good forty feet, made of solid, age-blackened iron with what looked to be gold inlayed into them in an elaborate swirling pattern. "Looks like it," Brandy said, folding her arms over her chest. "Didn't the miners say that they had opened it up? It's closed now."

"Hm, you're right. It's possible that the door closed of its own accord, or that something inside closed it."

Ah, good, Brandy thought. Not only was there some sort of evil presence lying in wait beyond that door, but it was an evil door-closing presence. How intimidating. Guess it hates getting a draft. "How do you think we'll be able to get in there?" She asked. None of my Constructions can open that door..."

"And it's probably a bad idea for me to summon too many of my Constructions right at the start," Emmett finishes. "After all, who knows what's lying in there. We'll need all the magical energy we can get." He glanced over at her. "Well, it is your evaluation mission, and you're the one who spends all her time around the guild's most destructive members. Surely you've got to have some ideas for how to destroy it?"

"I'm generally not the one destroying things, Master Emmett. That's usually Natsu." Brandy thought for a moment. "Or Gray. Or Erza. And Lucy did summon that tidal wave."

"Hm, point taken. Alright, kiddo, stay behind me. I'm going to see if there's some way to get it open." Emmett moved towards the door. "There's got to be a lever or a button or some sort of mechanism we can trigger. There's no way that whoever made this door was strong enough to open it on their own."

"Unless they were a bunch of giants," Brandy supplied. "Or wizards with strength-altering magic, like Makarov."

"Now's really not the time to be a wise-ass, kid."

"Sorry."

"It's okay. Just watch where you step and stay behind me. I don't want you getting hurt if something goes wrong." He began to run a scrutinous dark gaze across the doors, searching for anything that would get them inside. "I should have asked how the miners got in. Steel is heavy. Then again, I suppose they have experience with heavy metals, and there were likely more miners in here at the time then there are of us right now." Emmett tentatively reached out, and Brandy couldn't help but tense up, trepidation creeping around in the back alleys of her mind as his fingertips grew closer to the age-dulled metal. He touched the door…

...and nothing happened. Emmett's shoulders visibly relaxed; Brandy hadn't even noticed how nervous he'd been. "All right," he said. "Poking the door didn't work. And I don't see any sort of switch mechanism, so I guess I'm going to have to call forth some Constructions and hope that your magic can pick up the sla-"

Creeeeeaaaakkk. The doors swung open, slowly and lethargically like an old man getting out of bed. An icy draft hit the two wizards, sending goosebumps and itches spreading across Brandy's skin in equal amounts. "Or that could happen," Emmett said. "I'm honestly not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing."

"Let's split the difference and call it creepy as hell." Brandy slid her hands underneath her cloak and brought them to rest at the bare skin of her shoulders underneath. "I'm going to call forth the twins so they can scout ahead. That way if there's a trap, we won't be stumbling into it blind."

"That's great thinking. You've become quite the strategist, Brands."

Brandy quirked an eyebrow. "Well, isn't that part of what makes a good Construction wizard? Creating a variety of different blueprints to cover a plethora of scenarios, and then being able to judge which Construction would work best for which scenario."

Emmett chuckled and clapped her on the back. "Very good. I think a lot of younger Construction wizards forget that, underneath all the other complexities that Construction involves. I know I certainly wasn't any master planner when I was your age, after all."

"It's one of the first lessons you taught me, of course I'm going to remember it." Brandy closed her eyes and focused her energy. "Magic Concealment Ink: Dispel. Construction Focus: Ink Tattoos." Her voice raises to a shout as she speaks the final words of the conjuration. "Come forth, Twin Scouting Ravens, Huginn and Muninn!"

She cast her hands outward, and two ravens burst from her cloak, their paths of flight intertwined as the weaved through the air, only to turn around and come back to rest on her outstretched arms. They both stared at her, silently awaiting a command. "I need you two to go inside and look for anything worthy of notice," Brandy informed the Construction. Huginn and Muninn were an oddity; it was technically one Construction, with a singular pseudo-consciousness that obeyed Brandy's will, but it manifested itself and moved about as though it was two bodies, albeit two bodies that moved so synchronously that they may as well be one and the same. Then there was the matter of what she could do with it. "You're going to keep me steady, right?" she asked Emmett as the Twin Ravens flew off to perform their assigned task.

"Of course," Emmett said. "I'm not gonna let you fall."

With that assurance in mind, Brandy blessed her eyes and let her mind give way to her subconscious. Immediately an image began to form across the inside of her eyelids as she began to see through the eyes of her Construction. Huginn and Muninn were soaring through room after room, taking great care to catalog each hazard laid out in front of them.

She felt Emmett's heavy hand come down upon her shoulder. "Are you ready?" Emmett asked. While her vision was occupied, the rest of her senses were not, and she could hear his voice as clear as she would in any other circumstance.

She nodded. "Yeah."

With that answer, Emmett began to slowly guide her forward. She felt a rush of cold air that set her skin crawling as they crossed the threshold, and then they were in the darkness.

A/N - A few things to mention in this chapter.

More development for Brandy and Emmett, as well as being a total tease about their backstory. I'm aiming for them to have a father-daughter relationship, as Emmett's been Brandy's personal magical trainer since before she even joined Fairy Tail. There's a lot of history there, more of which will be revealed as the story progresses.

Fiore is a pretty diverse country with a lot of variance in its technology (there are some elements that are almost feudal in design, but then there are also cars and stuff?) and a lot of it is very much reliant on the magic that permeates Earthland. I wanted to explore the idea of a non-magical town in a magical setting, so that's where the concept for the town came in. The town doesn't have a name; it's just the town in the Ajisai mountains.

Brandy's second-revealed Construction, the Twin Scouting Ravens, Huginn and Muninn (and yes, that IS its full name) is based off of the ravens of the same name that Odin used to watch the world for him. So Drachegirl14 was correct in the assumption that Brandy's tattoos are all named after beings in Norse mythology. We'll be seeing two more before this mini-arc is up, making four out of six. Try and guess them!

I'm using singular pronouns because while the Twin Scouting Ravens is split into two halves, it is technically a single Construction with a single purpose, which is why she can summon it as is. Speaking of, Emmett has six Constructions as well! His are all basic medieval military positions, like the Infantryman.

Chapter Eight will be out after I update Tempus Fugit, so if you follow that fic, keep an eye out for that in the near future! In the meantime, feel free to favorite and leave a review!

-Diana "Nocte"