Soul and Maka rematerialize into images of themselves as they walk through the modified black room, on their way to the next. At this point, they can fully take in each other's appearances. Soul's attire was a tux, although it held his usual outfit accents, like his shoes were very similar to ones that he always wore. His tie had strong resemblance to his headband he used wear often. Maka was absolutely breath taking, a black dress that had similar buttons to her jacket she always wore. The dress itself was much more flowing and clingy than that of her usual black room dress. She had a pair of heels that had her usual white straps of her combat boots just in the form of gladiator sandals.
Soul could only cast so many glances at her before they stepped into the next room and both their setting changed, as well as what they were wearing.
Their current attire whisked away by a breeze and new clothes illuminated themselves to existence. Olive branches materialized tucked behind their ears. White togas materialized around both of them. Maka's back was completely uncovered in the middle, from the way it was wrapped, revealing the ever glowing tattoo of, "MONS" and Soul wondered if that would become a permanent thing.
Meanwhile as Maka watched a white piano build itself in the middle of the room, she was glad Soul was walking a bit behind her. She wasn't a hundred percent positive that this piece of fancy cloth was fully covering both of her breasts.
Maka steps aside as Soul sits down and raises his fingers above the piano keys only to all of a sudden freeze. Maka catches this and questions worriedly,
"What's wrong?"
"I uh..." Soul begins, "Just had a brain fart. Do you uh, perhaps remember the poem for this room?"
Maka smacks her forehead. As Soul looks over to his meister he questions if he should inform her that the fabric hanging only from her left shoulder was clinging on for dear life. As his sight drops a couple inches to unusually bare skin and she sighs trying to remember the poem he decides that no,
He should definitely not tell her.
Soul could feel his ears under his hair heating up, so as soon as she unsticks her palm from her forehead his eyes snap up to hers and lock on for dear life. He prays that his toga fabric was thicker than hers, but he can't give it much more thought because suddenly her toga starts to bleed from that same shoulder.
The rich red fell like spilled wine to the bottom of the toga, and Maka is just as surprised by it as Soul was.
She lost her olive branches as a red cloth covered part of her hair.
"Why did mine change?" She questions.
Soul takes a long hard look at her, before he snaps his fingers and with a bit of an accent says,
"You look like an Oracle of Delphi. A young, virgin priestess that would live her whole life once chosen in the shrine of Delphi, anyone who came to her could ask a question, and she would tell a prophecy in a riddle of a certain meter."
He mumbles that he can't remember what the meter was called but he continued on,
"Present day is unsure of what gave each priestess the knowledge to answer each question, some think they were constantly kept high, or drunk, or the natural thermal activity that the shrine was built on released fumes that she lived in."
As Soul finishes that sentence the room's floor suddenly cracks, and steam is released from these crevices. A very high stool forms in front of the piano as well, a bowl and a branch of a plant sitting upon it.
"I'm dressed like a senator too... This room is making it like—"
"You've come to me as the oracle for a prophecy?" Maka cuts off; her own unique foreign accent was coming into her English.
Neither paid this much attention.
Soul nods, and watches as Maka makes her way over to the stool, climbing upon it and holding the items. She slouches forward, an elbow propped on a knee, and Soul has the epiphany of how she looks like a stunning replica of a painting he's seen before. Maka feeling settled interrupts his thought,
"If I'm supposed to be the oracle, ask me the question again and maybe I'll give you the riddle needed."
Soul pauses for just a moment, before restating if she knew the song to move to the next room. Maka then takes a deep breath and blinks slowly. Her eyes glossed over, and she began to speak the poem. The meter she said it in was indeed weird, but as Soul followed with keys, the runes began to light up golden white again.
She shifts while under the trance for reciting the poem; her eyes were glazed and lidded in a way Soul never seen them before. This trance was like she was actually being controlled by a higher power to answer his question.
His face reddened as she sits up straight, toga falling from her shoulder. Her chest was fully out in open and the trance fades as the walls blocking the hallways do as well.
Her skin was ethereal in light of the glowing inscriptions.
Soul could tell the exact moment in which Maka was fully self-aware again, as her hands shot up to her chest and his hand shot up to his nose to wipe away blood. His eyes darted to the oh so fascinating ceiling.
"It fell while you were in the trance, and whoever possessed you didn't seem bothered by it."
Maka grumbles, "I bet you didn't either..." under her breath as she pulls back up the bunched cloth; face bright red.
As she hops down from the stool, Soul walks past her and quietly slips,
"Not in the slightest."
Maka's face shot from looking at the floor to him, and he turns his head over his shoulder, winks, grins, and then darts forward. It didn't register in his mind fast enough on how bold of a flirt that was. If they were in America—no scratch that—if they were anywhere else but this place and in this circumstance, he wouldn't have dared.
This place really does pull another side out of him.
He steps in to the next room and turns to face Maka who is catching up, still flushed. His attire transforms again, and she watches as gold was practically poured over his chest and hardened to make a chiseled chestplate. He was given entirely golden armor, a reinforced battle skirt like thing that Maka couldn't exactly explain, as well as a fancy sword with a very long and elegant shield. He also had that strange hat that had bright scarlet bristles in the shape of a mohawk, but he promptly ripped that off and threw it to the side.
As soon as she stepped into the room however, her attire morphed to something much more ancient...and hell, Soul wasn't even sure if was Roman. She looked fantastic though, just like her usual uniform. Battle attire was what she was most comfortable in as well.
Both were caught off guard as the room around them morphed into a forest and they heard a roar. Soul whipped around to were the piano has been in the two rooms prior, however in its place there was a cow lying on its side.
"Are we supposed to kill the cow to get a piano?" Soul questions confused.
Maka shakes her head no, because something was familiar about this. This wasn't originally a Roman story... Maka's mind conjures, in a voice she did not like.
The professors.
"This is following a Greek story, which is why I might be dressed differently from you. The city of Thebes was founded after some guy (Cadmus) went to the Oracle of Dephi, and she told him to follow a cow and found a town where it rested." Maka continues, Japanese accent thickening.
"But do we kill it?" Soul questions and Maka replies,
"We try to sacrifice it to Minerva (also known as Athena.)"
Soul questions why she said try, as if it couldn't work. He was also bewildered by why this was a Greek setting and not a Roman. Perhaps it was because of Romans took many aspects of life from Greeks, or at least they have striking similarities. This doesn't explain why either of them were in the specifically Greek setting though.
He was of pure Roman heritage and her ancestry was probably of pure Asian origin noting her birthplace.
Soul mindlessly questions how to sacrifice to Minerva and Maka replies for him to fetch water. The room expands; fading into a dimension much vaster than what the room originally seemed to be. The musician could hear wear trickling nearby, so he follows that direction.
It was only behind a few meters of forest from the clearing with the cow, before said stream was found connected to a spring. There was a strange shallow dish nearby, perfect for his task but something about all of this appeared to be a bit off to Soul. He goes to dip the dish in the water yet right before it touches the surface he drops it due to a startling noise: a roar, from multiple creatures.
His head shot up and what stood before him was unexpected.
Instead of several creatures it was one, a hydra.
It hissed for him to not touch the sacred water and Soul would have happily complied but he made the mistake of retrieving the submerged bowl in the process of retreat. Thus the multi-headed creature attempted to bite off his head. As a face lunged for him he began to brace himself, when suddenly a shield lands directly in front of him, knowingly. He hears her voice, he hears her request to become a weapon and he does so without hesitation.
"This is all according to plan, 'cept this is a kishin rendition of the tale." She states quickly and Soul manages a, "Quid?" before his blade slices through several necks.
She gives a swift final strike to the main body and what was unusual about this kishin, apart from the ya'know several heads was that with the red orb, two teeth were also left behind.
Soul ate the orb and brought the teeth over to Maka, assuming that she would understand the purpose of them. They stroll back to the cow; a noticeable crescent shape on its side has come to Soul's attention. Maka speaks up,
"These might explain why we have this tale instead of a more Roman one, and I don't think the cow will be of use after this."
Soul watches as his pulchra drops to her knees and buries the teeth in dirt.
"Echion, Udaeus, Chthonius, Hyperenor and Pelorus. These were the sown warriors of Cadmus, only five are recognized but I think since we have only two..."
Maka pauses and turns to face Soul: her outfit changing into something much more familiar to him, and his armor was changing as well,
"The two teeth represent us as the Spartoi instead."
That would explain their now fully morphed spartoi uniforms. This would also explain why the scene changes. The cow disappears and the inscriptions on the ground are in place again instead of grass and dirt. Where the cow rested circular inscriptions were revealed as the animal was nowhere in sight. These inscriptions were almost identical to runes underneath the pianos in the other rooms.
So where was the piano for this room?
Now on top of that, the magical cow's disappearance would been all fine and dandy if the bushes and forest also hadn't taken up a new form of being prekishin. The piano forgotten as Maka and Soul battled the first wave of enemies; blood splattered everywhere as these vile creatures came from all directions in the clearing. There was a sky above them, they were still in this temporal dimension of the founding of Thebes, yet aspects of the original room began to show through where blood dripped.
Maka dared to compare the blood to dish soap of all things as she genie-hunter'd a group of five. Soul also voiced his notice of how inscriptions of the wall could be seen where blood dripped. They then began to purposely spray the blood; to an outsider it looked like absolute insanity to be using the prekishin for the purpose of coating walls in blood.
What neither of them did though was ever look down.
They walked in puddles of blood sometimes, the runes on the ground stood out much more when each letter pooled with blood. It was beginning to pool in said underground room, with no means of drainage. Red orbs also littered the floor, but the worst has yet to come because Maka was beginning to tire.
She misstepped and one of the vermin hit her.
This left her defenseless and this is what led soul to untransform to block an attack much like the one from Crona. His black blood hit the red on the floor, and all of the blood within any inscription on the wall echoed the color. Then blood from Maka's wounded leg dripped down her calf before also hitting a patch of blood that pooled in the letter "L" in "BELLUM"on the ground. Hers had an opposite effect of Soul's: all spilled blood rippled a golden white.
The sky above dissipates to a dusty ceiling, the prekishin fall to dust, and they are left with luminous bloody Latin. A piano just like the prior rooms finally materialized.
The rooms were getting more complex.
This one required corrupted blood, family blood, and then a third unique kind of blood that harmonized with the family.
Even as they both were in spirit form, as Soul didn't feel all the light headed sensations and other symptoms associated with blood loss, he still felt a shit ton of pain. The wound was a slash directly over where Crona struck. However his black blood was unusually calm, not boiling or burning to heal. It wasn't really healing like it should either though.
Soul stares at his bleeding chest for a minute only to conclude wasn't healing at all and in all honesty Soul was not surprised.
After all they were just outside with the forest and water and a fucking cow, yet they never ventured more than a couple meters in any direction. They never left the vicinity of the room, a cave deep underground, to reseal an old evil.
Maka was mentally questioning if any fumes from being the Oracle of Dephi were still in her system as Soul sat down. A melody rung out among the room of the weapon poem—and nothing moved. Maka suggested that this room was of fighting and to try the war poem. The first key that illuminated the room wasn't the only thing that illuminated though.
Not only did Maka gain a third glowing word on her back, something within her brain went, "Fuck it," and decided to put to sleep a certain area of said brain. She felt this shift and decided to voice this Soul.
Only for him to stare bizarrely back at her.
She was speaking Japanese; his mind acknowledged this however he couldn't translate like he normally could. He had no idea what she was saying, and when he tried to voice this in English he was speechless. He couldn't think of how to form a sentence in English. Now that he thought about it, this he could not think of any English vocabulary.
"Pulchra mea, Latino mihi dices."
—Maka, speak to me in Latin.
Maka chews on her lip, it dawning on her that she wasn't speaking English even as she was trying to. Her thoughts conclude very quickly to Soul's, and that they probably couldn't verbally understand each other unless they were speaking Latin. She moves close to Soul as they turn to head into the next room, the encryptions above the entrance were larger than most and illuminated a corrupted purple amongst the purified runes. These unusual ones translated to,
"Proceed no farther without a means of talking."
Oh my god is this an update? No way, the evil author of this story totally didn't have this entire thing just kinda sitting in her documents... all but full proof read... I mean psh, she updates frequently right? *nods head vigorously* Most definitely. All of the elements that sound kinda realistic are actually realistic. If you ever decide to google images of the Oracle of Dephi you can see instantly what painting I am referencing. The Founding of Thebes story with relation to the sown warriors of Cadmus aka the Spartoi (hm, I wonder why I chose that story) are all 100% legit to the wikipedia article I found while writing this! Whenever that was...
Oooh what rooms are left? Weapon, Love, and Uniqueness before they can reseal the witch wavelength!
Like this story? Hate me for rarely updating it? Leave a comment about it because I thrive on responses!