Bloody Knuckles

He is going to hate lilies forever, he thinks.

There will be a bouquet of them somewhere, bright blooms, collected so neatly in a little glass vase and put proudly on display, and he will see the softly curling petals and think of Sasume, screaming, bleeding and bleeding and bleeding. Even his own blood doesn’t look so red, drying to rust on his shoulder.

When the petals melt away like early spring snow, and the scent of lilies fades to nothing more than an aftertaste, a bitter note on the back of his tongue, he finds a Bible, stark against the white. The cover is flecked with red and all he can think is I hope the pages haven’t been stained. God would be displeased to see it in such a sorry state.

Time moves forward, inexorable.

The priest remembers himself, remembers where they are, remembers what his mother did. He lurches toward her, finding purchase for feet that threaten to fall out from under him. There’s nothing but copper and he wants to retch but he swallows it down as he thrusts his arms out, catching her in her slow fall forward. She’s not heavy, but in this state–she’s a dead weight, and he falls with her, solid ground giving way to his knees in red snow.

Didn’t they do this last time–only all the pain was in the heart, enclosed, not spilling out all over the clearing–Dogma chokes out a rough sob, pulls her close. The wound is deep, a broad and fearsome gash, and the world feels like it’s ending. He can’t lose her here–he only just met her–it isn’t right, she’s so young–

“Sasume,” he manages, strangled, “Sasume, please say something. Say something. I’ll take you home. Please.”

Her senses take up a shrieking whiteness before she’s dropped to black, out, slower yet all at once compared to when her side had been ripped— no, cut; her back will have a proper example of torn flesh, now—but unlike before it doesn’t last.

Sasume feels herself wretched free from unconsciousness like a drowning victim who’s finally gotten their head over the waves, aware and feeling but distant from it all no matter how the waves seemed to be ingrained into them down to the bone.

She gasps, shudders; is thankful she doesn’t cough because even she might not be able to hold back her vomit after this. She feels Dogma, against her and around her, crying, and she wishes she had an even better handling on pain so she could address him quicker.

She feels her hands, white knuckled in their grip of him, one in his robes one on his arm (she hopes she hasn’t hurt him); her skin, getting colder by the minute without the flames of the illusion, her discarded coat, and all the blood spilling out (at least the cold will keep her from dying from blood loss); her entire torso, one mass of near-blinding pain from the canyon carving through the flesh of her back (it missed her hair, it seems; thankfully his rosary, too).

But—

Sasume grits her teeth (noting the lack of blood on her tongue; no internal injuries to worry about) and plants her hand on Dogma’s shoulder, holding back a grimace at the blood rolling off the soaked shirt its continue to spread through (she hopes it’ll stay off his rosary, fuck).

“I’m fine,” she rasps thickly (a complete and utter lie, even she knows, but the effort ought to count, here), keeping her gaze low and away from his because now of all times she can’t risk giving way to vulnerability; every pull of a wrong muscle or pump of her heart that sends more blood spilling out keeps her from ever doubting it.

“Where’s—” fuck, it hurts to breathe; maybe it’d been on her back, but the trunk was the trunk and the entire torso moved with the very mandatory motion of getting air. Her vision blurs or spins, here and there, but Sasume ignores it—and Dogma, in a way, as much as she can—along with the pain in favor of focusing on the task at hand.

She looks around, stomach churning anew at the ice—glass?—bursts of crystal like frozen bombs, mostly scattered against the ground but one dripping with crimson and still holding onto a tatter of her shirt.

She breathes in, carefully, exhales before she can start to lose her consciousness to it again. She wonders if she can even carry her sword in her arms for long with how her back’s been mangled; she wonders if Dogma will remember it in the blind panic she knows too well.

She can’t leave it, and they’ll never find this place again if they did—nor would they ever want to, after this.

A wind blows and she shivers, nearly collapsing anew but forcing her muscles rigid until she has a hold on the waking world again; the wound isn’t that deep, at least, not nearly as deep as it could’ve been, but it still feels like it’s giving the cold direct access to all her shudder-inducing crevices with its bloody shortcut.

(Maybe the blood’ll start to freeze or coagulate, even without her sword working or the cold lowering her core temperature too much?)

“Sword,” is all she can say, between her cold- and pain-clogged mind and how she can’t speak much at all with how much of a ripping pain just breathing is. She thinks of her discarded coat (and sheathe and even weapon, now), shed to counter the now-gone heat, but something Dogma will surely not forget, and grimaces.

Up this close, the scent of lilies is dizzying. It seeps into his pores and lays itself like a heavy blanket over his shoulders. There is red sap twining its way up his legs like something living, a vine seeking out a new life to choke away, and all he can smell is this one-tone bouquet, and for a moment he feels like he’s going to pass out. The world spins, sways, goes dark at the edges.

“Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name–thy kingdom come, ah–I am your loyal servant, as always, your vessel, thy will be done–” The prayer comes out broken, distracted, but it helps to piece the world back together, familiar words and familiar fervor stitching him up into something approaching stable. It won’t last long, but–it doesn’t have to. She’s so close. Just reach out, and–

From here, he can think about it like a warrior would. The clasp of her sundress–if he had a blade, he would aim for that, drive it through her ribs, angle the steel up into her heart and be done with it. The pale skin of her neck is unprotected; if he had the strength, he could choke the life from her, slow and vindictive.

Dogma does not do either of those things. He stands there, trembling, tears streaming down his face like a dam somewhere broke wide open, and he thinks about how much he misses her, and how sorry he is to have left her all alone–and then he flings himself at her, wrapping his arms tight around her. It feels like he’s five again, like the first day of school, where he sobbed and clung to the hem of her dress because it felt like the last time he would ever see her.

The priest breathes in lilies, pollen filling his lungs, nearly enough to make him sick with it. “Mother,” he whispers, just a boy, just her son, “poor thing. You have to go home, now. No need for a prayer.”

“No need… for a prayer,” she says, a faltering echo, and there is one last snap of magic in the air, and then she is nothing more than white petals in red snow.

She doesn’t know if she’s doing any good, if she’s doing anything by keeping herself out of the very danger she’s put herself in. But if Sasume can do anything she can do this, deflect blows of crushing void with the sound of screeching metal as they ricochet off her blade, because she’ll be damned if she does nothing.

She watches Dogma like a hawk as he approaches the Burying One, one part tense anticipation three parts fear she can barely work into her muscles without bolting toward him. It isn’t his mother, it isn’t, but it is to him and that’s all the Fields care for, she thinks.

She hopes.

The Burying One’s spells have stopped by the time Dogma has embraced her, all raw tears and aching heart, and again Sasume can barely keep herself in place. Maybe, if the illusion is anything at all like the mother it was made in the image of, it, too, is struck immobile by her son’s grief.

Sasume can’t imagine losing a child, losing her sister, but if Shida were to suffer even after the fact—

The Burying One disappears. It smells of lilies, still. No, stronger? Then the air flickers and—

No.

No!

Her stomach drops with her sword and she’s already running, running, shoving all her strength into each pound of her feet she can’t think, can only focus on how fucking far away Dogma is and how short her legs suddenly are and the bright motes like static flickering in the air and—

“DON’T YOU TOUCH HIM—!” she shrieks without thinking, praying to the Burying One or Theama or Diaidem or whoever behind this that he won’t be taken from her that she won’t lose him, she can’t—

Sasume’s hands plant firmly across his chest and shove him clear back, away, safe—

She feels herself relax, lets herself enjoy the relief—

The air turns even more cloying in the same instant, just in time to miss him—

(And she’s thankful, oh, she’s so thankful—)

She forgets about it, almost, until a blinding light sears her retinas from just outside her peripheral, and—

Copper meets the smell of lilies and she screams.

The force of the magic is enough to jolt them both, a shudder running through with all the immutability of an earthquake–like the Burying One’s tearing the world open around them. It lights something in Dogma, some low simmering fire; not the dramatic, confident blaze he’d expected–nothing confident at all–just a glow, fanned by the fear of Sasume getting herself hurt into something that might survive a gale. This is his trial. He’s supposed to be the one risking life and limb, not–not some poor soul he coerced into coming along–

The priest lets himself rest in the haven of her touch for a breath longer, and then pushes her away–gentle but firm, long fingers gripping her shoulders tight before letting go altogether.·“Right. I–right.” Everything feels fake, from his manufactured resolve to the very air around them, but he can only pray that it holds together long enough for them to finish this.·“You’re right. Of course you are. Here–”

There’s a lull in the attacks, like the Burying One is holding her breath, playing the part of the strategist, and Dogma takes the chance to slip his rosary off his own neck and lower it onto Sasume’s, instead. “It’s a blessed charm,” he bluffs, hoping the stricken look on his face is enough to excuse the hesitance with which he lies to her. “No harm can come to the one who wears it. Bring it back in one piece, please. Can you keep her busy? I can’t hurt her, but I–we shouldn’t have to worry about that.”

And he leans up to kiss her on the forehead, a fleeting touch. It means thank you and I’m sorry and goodbye, for now all at once. When he takes off again, it’s less of a mad dash–he’s circling around, making for the fallen tree, keeping an eye on where he plants his feet because if he falls again that’s it.

“Lord, be with me through this ordeal, give strength to my hand and to my heart, please, God, protect her–”

He finally reacts, finally, and if they had the time for it Sasume might have wept with relief—but the Burying One is still there, hovering about all too calmly with god knows what up her sleeves, and her chest feels cinched despite the pounding of her blood for the sake of a single warning: it’s not over yet.

It’s not over, and yet and yet—

Dogma’s fear is real, it is now, and her own visceral fear for his sake makes her unsure if she has superhuman limbs or no limbs at all. She is the fighter, she is, but she’s the one who gets Dogma’s dear rosary over her head even with the distress clear in his face.

“I can, but—” Sasume grips the little wood cross until an arm digs itself into her palm, much like the healed gash, and it’s not what she wants but when she tries to reach for the man himself even his robes have fluttered past her reach.

Her forehead burns, and she feels she can’t breathe between the pressure in her throat and the heat from the flames. She can’t she can’t—

No.

No. Sasume shakes herself off and staggers to her feet, shucking off her sheathe and jacket and grabbing her sword as she does. She grips it, hard, with both hands, and glares at the Burying One with a quickly suffocating rage that she can barely push back enough to keep herself in control.

She breathes in, steadies her stance, ignoring the patches of flames and how sweltering they feel even without her heavy coat; ready to snap against her much more vulnerable if not exposed skin if she moves wrong.

She breathes out.

She will not lose him. She won’t.

“Usually, I am. Been a while since I’ve been up this early,” And if he knew there wasn’t too much to do so early in the morning, he probably would have tried to go back to sleep.

Slowly, his gaze moved around the village. Touya didn’t seem too surprised with the lack of people around- in fact, he would have been more surprised if there were others wandering about.

Truthfully, he did wonder why the other was about as well, yet didn’t bother asking. He didn’t particularly care. Yet to be honest, he was a little more curious about the weapon, eyeing it for a few brief moments.

“You… train as well?” Touya didn’t know of too many people skilled with a sword or other similar weaponry. While there were some exceptions, his own family included, most people he knew prefered to use magic for a weapon- or machinery for those unable to use magic.

“Mm, right,” her eyebrow slides back up at that, but she doesn’t comment further nor inquire. Maybe adjusting here has been hard and he hasn’t gotten much time to be up early, maybe he hasn’t been up at this time at all since before he came to Eidolon.

It’s an odd thing, this place, especially how, by nature of this place, someone could be everything, anything, or nothing and they’re all none the wiser to it. Sasume doesn’t know about this man, for example, but for herself Cú had presumed she was a warrior with one meeting.

Which is... debatable, either way; it doesn’t help she feels herself perk at the mention of her own sword by the stranger. It’s her sword, after all, even if its meaning for her is unconventional.

Rosary sounds like an absence; rosary sounds like the sudden onset of a storm, dead air and pressure. When the magic lances through him, all he can hear is Sasume calling his name, a landmark in the deafening nothingness. Dogma, Dogma, and her hands are fluttering around his shoulder and coming away with red-stained fingertips, and only then does he realise that it hurts. That’s his blood–there’s a gap in him, skin giving way to flesh giving way to empty air and pain–and he’s felt this before, of course, been knocked down a hundred times facing the monsters in the dream, but this isn’t a dream.

This isn’t a dream. Sasume is here and he looks at her, lets the haze clear from his eyes and really looks at her. She’s crying, again, she’s crying for–him. It doesn’t make sense. He wants to scream. He doesn’t deserve these tears, he doesn’t, he doesn’t–

“But I don’t,” and it’s a strangled cry, more emotion welling up than he knows how to deal with at the best of times, let alone now. “Sasume, she’s alone, I can’t–do this to her–we were all she had, and now she’s left with some charred bones in a flowerbed, Sasume–” He curls into her, hiding, like he’s ten years old again, waking from a nightmare and finding comfort in a warm body when he hasn’t yet learned how to find it in God.

It took four of them to beat her, last time. Him and Cody and Russell and Kantera. Even then–even then they came out bloody and bruised, even then she nearly won, bearing down on them with holy fire. How can Sasume expect him to fight her alone? He’s a healer, not a warrior. His magic is sealed behind stone walls and the closest thing he had to a weapon was taken away from him, day one.

He can’t do this. He’s bleeding, trembling, a breath away from fainting. He can’t do this. He’s alone, despite Sasume’s closeness, and solitude was never his strength. “I can’t do this,” and it’s the voice of someone who’s already given up.

He’s alive, she thinks, but the thought doesn’t help as much as it should because that thing’s still there, waiting like a goddamned reaper, and Dogma’s alive but he is broken and he is hurting and damn it all she can’t fix him—

“I do,” Sasume repeats, eyes burning hotter with the pain of his grief and the grief to be found in her own pain. She’s crying already but still she feels like she’s ready to cry, feels like breaking over him like dried out dirt or maybe wailing and somehow hiding in him despite how he’s hiding in her, like there’s ever a way to wash off the blood of the people you care the most for. “And that— that’s not your mother. I swear it, Dogma, please, it’s just the Fields. It’s not—”

The air starts to pull and twist and she swallows back the urge to vomit and instead uses her panic as fuel instead of a cripple—fumbles, shifts an arm off of Dogma, unsheathes her sword, moves it to her other hand, and—

She shoves the blade out, more like a brace than a sword, and it shoves the warping space of the spell away by its epicenter, and—

C L A N G !

It implodes against the steel with an ear-splitting grate of metal against metal, the force simultaneously pulling and shoving her arm with it and making her idly wonder how she kept her arm, but—

Sasume drops the blade, palm stinging, the weapon still within reach, and refocuses on Dogma to run her hands soothingly—yet frantic all the same—up and down his arms, his back.

You want your second chance, here in Eidolon?

How does he say no? His lips won’t move, won’t shape the word. He should act grateful, should hang his head and insist that of course he wants his second chance, of course he won’t waste it, but the fact is that any good servant of the Lord knows that the dead should stay dead. He’s been trying to ignore it, to pretend that his very existence isn’t a slight against God, but there’s something about seeing his mother here like an avenging angel, here to put the world to rights, that snaps him like a twig–

There are tears sliding silent down his cheeks, cool against his burning skin. “Isn’t she beautiful?” he asks, eventually, leaning into the touch of her hand on his hair, on his shoulder, firm and reassuring. “I was always so proud to call her my mother… Please be careful, Sasume. God will protect you,” and he nudges her hand off his shoulder, and he plants his heel in the dirt, and he takes off running.

If he’s going to die here, he’ll die alone. Maybe Sasume will get the hint–maybe his mother will forget she’s even here–this is his trial, after all. If the Fields turn their gaze on anyone, they will turn it on him.

“I buried you who were burnt up. Alone, I prayed to God. I made graves. Dogma… don’t you see? It’s time for you to rest, poor thing. Poor thing.”

Her voice rings through his head like nails on a chalkboard, and the steadily-building ache in his skull spikes–the priest stumbles, winds up on his hands and knees in the dirt, wrists aching from the fall. Come on, Dogma. Come on–he heaves himself back to his feet. The Burying One is close, close enough for him to see her laugh lines, little leaves caught in tangles in her hair–had she been gardening? Tending the flowers that grow on their graves?

“Poor thing,” he repeats in a whisper, and he’s too close to her to get out of the way when she calls on rosary once more.

Dogma, is all the mess of her mind can make out from itself. It’s desperate and hurting to match the look on his face and it’s pleading, Dogma, please—

“Dogma—” she feels her voice break under the strength of him having none, of trying to hold him up and keep him together but the absolutely insufferable little priest just slips through her fingers and— “Wait—”

And he’s gone, air beneath her fingertips, off without a plan, off to his fucking death, and she can feel the world splinter out from underneath her again. Again. It’s happening again and she wants to scream already, not again not again not him not again—

Sasume runs after him, knees weak to match her shaking hands, and no matter how much her focus narrows on Dogma she can’t think, dammit. She can’t move fast enough, another spear of light sending her stumbling, blinded and reeling and slowing her down just too much slow too slow—

Red spatters across the dark and dank soil and she shrieks, incoherent and visceral and raging, closing the distance between them all and swiping once she’s close enough—the Burying One either avoiding or phasing through her blade on her own hand, the other gripping Dogma around the waist and sending them both tumbling far away from her.

“Dogma, Dogma—” she isn’t sure if she feels eight or thirteen again but she’s crying, first time in a long time, feeling like her heart’s been ripped out from her chest along with everything good in her life, third time coming far too soon but far later than she’d expected.

Her hands flutter about, nervously, flitting against the wound only to yank away even faster, slightest tough against the blood making her want to vomit. It’s small, she thinks, but the thought far too soft to be anything but swept up in the panic. Odd, notably, and maybe not close to severe, but—

His mother is hardly moving. Her arms shift to move the cross in great, imposing arcs when she makes to strike, and her skirt billows in the wind as it picks up, shrieking through all the sharp angles of the labyrinth, but her eyes never blink, and her feet do not move an inch from where she stands, red to her ankles. Behind her, buried in the corpse of the fallen tree, is a mirror.The clearing reeks of lilies, overpowering.

Dogma wants to cry. Dogma cannot let himself cry. Dogma has forgotten how to cry altogether.

“Return to your grave at once. It’s time to sleep, isn’t it?”

It takes Sasume striking him for his head to clear–he blinks, horrified, gasps something unintelligible–yanks Sasume back unceremoniously as there’s a flash and a spear of light strikes the ground nearby. It smells like ozone–like the inside of a crematorium–like lilies, stronger than anything else. There isn’t–he doesn’t have a spell like that, doesn’t know how to counter it, never saw her use it in the dream. What have the Fields done to her, he wonders, taking her for its own purpose, warping her with barbarous magics, it’s not right, it’s not right–

“W–We called her the Burying One, in the dream,” and all his words are coming out in a rush, “and she is weak to magic that draws on darkness but I–that was never my area of expertise, and they took away my magic when I came here–” He buries his face in Sasume’s chest, clinging to her like a child. “I can’t fight her, Sasume, not again, I’m supposed to be dead, she just wants to put me to rights–”

Dogma pulls himself back with a great shuddering breath, pressing down a sob that threatens what little of his composure he has left. “I don’t know what to do,” he whispers, and his voice is hoarse with honesty, and that hurts more than the heat does.

Now is not the time, is all she can think, over and over and over again as methodical as footsteps—Sasume doesn’t want it to ever be time, not for this. Not ever for this; Dogma deserves as little so as to not have to strike down his own mother, again, to not have to deal with any of it, at all, but—

He’s not a fighter, and his damned status as a Priest is enough to show it. He isn’t he isn’t he isn’t, and she’s so used to the acrid burn of blood that murder hadn’t been something she’d ever hesitated on nor looked back on to doubt.

She’d do this for him, if she could. She wants to, oh, she wants to—wants to pull him close and protect him and slay this abomination one-handed and without her powers if need be—but—

This is Dogma’s trial. His. She can’t do it for him, and she knows the Fields wouldn’t let her even if she tried.

Still—his Trial or not, Sasume will hold him up and hold his hand as much as she fucking can through it all, no matter what this place tries to fucking pull.

So she holds him close, doesn’t even go for her sword, yet (and really, what use will a blade do against something with such ranged magic, anyway?), one hand gently running through Dogma’s hair as if he’s woken from a nightmare; continues the gesture even as she twists them both away from another blinding bolt with a disgusting aftertaste of flowers.

“...You focus,” Sasume whispers firmly, running her hand over his head once more before settling her grip on his shoulder. “Focus. You’re here, now, and that’s all that matters. You want to get rid of that disgusting bastardization of your mother? Then beat it. You want your second chance, here in Eidolon?”

He can’t tell if the snow is picking up or if he’s trembling from something other than the chill. Not that he can feel the cold at all–he should, with how this most recent flurry is sticking to his his eyelashes and the soft, sparse hair on his jaw–it’s all warm, too warm, a horribly familiar heat.·“Hopefully you’re right, and God shows us a little of His mercy. The sooner we can get out of this place for good, the better.”

(…Yes, those children burned as easily as flower petals.)

Not for the first time, he finds himself thanking God that Sasume was willing to come with him. He’s sure he could have dealt with this on his own, but–what would be the outcome? Bent and broken with some little trinket from the dream to show for it? No–better not to wonder at all, better to look ahead, to the curve in the path, to the looking glass, to the journey home.

They round the corner, Dogma gripping Sasume’s hand nearly tight enough to bruise.

“Dogma… welcome back. Where did you get to? You weren’t in the grave, so I was worried…”

She looks the same as she did in the dream. The neat blue dress she loved to wear on Sundays in the summer, the broad golden cross clutched to her chest, red eyes as lifeless as his should be. There is the tree behind her, ancient and felled from a cruel gash right through its trunk, bleeding scarlet sap into the dirt, lifeless branches reaching for the sky.

It’s strange, really. He’s fought her twice before, weathered her blows and dealt her a few of his own–he knows that her face never shifts when he brands her with rosary, despite the pain–but this time he finds that he misses her. He’d called her a blasphemer, once, the ruin of Darcover town, but–but she’s his mother. He can’t find such stern words, this time. He can’t find anything at all.

Rational thought tells him to shift his gaze and squint through the illusion like he did last time, parse it as something false·and harmless, but he is stuck there–staring at her, lips moving soundlessly in something that might be a prayer and might be a eulogy–

When she raises her cross, the metal glinting with the familiar magic of rosary, he cannot so much as flinch.

She almost loses any concept of her hand being held at the shock that punches through her like a boot to the gut. Her mind reels and she isn’t sure why because she doesn’t know this woman she doesn’t and yet Sasume’s mind is screaming at her like nails on a chalkboard.

Brown hair, red eyes, both like Dogma’s but on her, not in a damned looking glass not a bit of ice suddenly anywhere in fucking sight, the woman’s voice alone grating on her ears as her own thoughts shriek with the reasoning for it: This is wrong.

And yet and yet and yet— wrong as it is, disgusting as the Fields’ use of Dogma’s own other, it isn’t fucking false. The woman is here, before them, and despite the sudden freedom of the area around them Sasume feels more trapped than she ever had in the maze.

“Dogma,” she finds herself rasping, fear grasping at her throat because he is doing nothing and she already can’t bear to see him do this, to have him need to, but—

The very air around him shudders.

“Dogma!” panic takes over and she yanks, gripping his opposite shoulder with her free hand and whirling to shield him with herself as the space near-invisibly crushes in on itself where he’d just stood. Her stomach churns just with the glimpse she sees. “Dammit, Dogma—”

Sasume pulls back and stares him down, gaze hastily flickering back and forth between Dogma and the woman—his mother—as she prays for him to get his head back on. She claps her hand against his cheek.

@fighting-instinct​

It is snowing over the Fields of Theama; restless flurries that wax and wane with the shifting of the wind and manage to find their way into Dogma’s robes no matter how tight he pulls his little cloak around his shoulders. He’d gotten Sasume out of bed far earlier than he really had any right to, noting the dreamcatcher hanging by her head with resignation–at some point in the night before, sleepless despite his best efforts, he’d gotten it into his head that if they reached the Fields early enough they might catch it by surprise. For the first stretch of the labyrinth, it had actually seemed like he was right. Glass had stayed glass, and the priest hadn’t caught a single glimpse of anything better forgotten.

(Maybe, in hindsight, the way he lowered his guard after long minutes of peace was the reason for the worst of it. Maybe he should never have let himself breathe easy.)

He’d worn the letter thin through folding and unfolding, forced to leave it tucked under his pillow back at the bunkhouse, but he knows he doesn’t need it, every word memorised like scripture. Travel well, search well, believe well. He doesn’t know what he’s following, exactly, only that there’s a cord wound tight around his heart pulling him deeper in. The draw of the final looking glass, perhaps; somewhere different, some other spire–he doesn’t recognise any of these paths from Sasume’s trial.

“I don’t recall us venturing this deep last time,” he grumbles after a while, giving up all pretense of optimism and good cheer. “Honestly, had I known, I would have packed us both lunch…”

(Return to your graves.)

Dogma jumps, startled, steps closer to Sasume and grabs blindly at her hand. They’d started off with fingers intertwined–like before–but when the Fields showed no sign of hostility, he’d let her go, content to have her at arm’s length as they meandered through the glass. “Sasume–did you–?”

(You are already…)

The voice seeps out of the ground underfoot, mingles with the snowflakes and lays itself down on every patch of bare skin it can find, and everywhere the snow falls blooms red, fever-hot. His head is starting to ache. Deep breath, Dogma. In and back out, a sigh like he’s taking the weight of the world on his shoulders. “…Never mind. We should not let this trickery distract us. Surely we should be close. Around that corner, perhaps…”

(Dogma. Don’t you want to see her one more time?)

The fields are... unnerving as ever, even with Dogma at her side; he’d clearly remembered the feeling too well, despite how it hadn’t been his Trial or his memories the Fields had used or even him it’d targeted at all.

Really, without poor of an actor he is, him waking her himself had been a dead giveaway of his nerves. If it had been any other time, or anyone else (like Cú, in which case she’s sure Dogma might have a heart attack hearing about it), he’d settle for waiting and babble about how important it was to not intrude and the like.

But priest or no priest, even the soundest of faiths can’t protect him from threats, not really, and Sasume isn’t sure if she prefers him being aware of that fact. Ignorance is bliss, after all, and she’d rather not have him stressed or upset... if it were a possible or at least safe mindset at all, anyway.

“Mine was easier,” she can’t deny, loathe as she is to admit instead. It’d been a “Trial”, after all, and yet hers had felt more like a painfully nostalgic gift than anything. “Please, I’m perfectly ca—“

Then, Dogma all but jumps out of her skin and she feels her heart mimic the action. Sasume goes to reach for his hand and finds his already scrambling for the silent reassurance. She frowns, worried, and resists the urge to hide him close as if he’s younger than her or otherwise in need of her. Her brow furrows.

The wind blows through the ice, clamoring—

The labyrinth had finally decided to wake up, it seems; between the look on his face and how this is called a Trial, she isn’t sure just how good this is supposed to be. She squeezes his hand and carefully tugs him along, remembering as he’d done before and running her thumb across his hand in idle patterns.

—but it’s not gentle it’s low and angry and hating—

A shudder passes through her and she hopes it’s in time with an actual breeze, her stomach suddenly dropping like a stone as if she’s actually back home, running around as if she’s playing and not running for her life because they all want to kill her for what she did but what did she do what did she do—

“Well, come on,” Sasume says seamlessly, thankful for all her practice at that damned place. She looks around, casually as she can, but the lack of inexplicable angry townsfolk does nothing to quell her sudden nerves. Damned Fields. “Then that means we’re almost there, right?”

With all the people to see out there helping with the festival, Ryan should have known that he’d see at least a few familiar faces, but he hadn’t expected one to come with such a sharp jab at him. His instant reaction is for the grin on his face to melt into a scowl and offer a retort of his own, immediately incensed at her accusations.

❝ Excuse you, I’m not some kind of buzzkill! Unlike somebody, apparently. ❞

He takes a short moment to collect himself - relax Ryan, she’s not the enemy - before helping with the wood; whether she understands it or not, it’s his form of passive aggression. As he continues talking, though, he has the sense to sound a bit more sheepish; maybe he does take the nature guardian thing a bit too far, but it’s not like he’s like that all the time, even if it’s one of the only parts of himself that he really ever shows.

❝ It’s not like I don’t think humans should take anything. I don’t really get it, but this is kind of like a nature festival, right? So…..it’s not bad. ❞

(Although he will be the first to admit that a giant fire in the middle of the city isn’t exactly his idea of a ‘good time’.)

Her stern gaze turns into a withering glare as he points out the obvious—she’s more than aware exactly how much of a “buzzkill” she is, and she sure doesn’t need this guy of all people reminding her. Really, it’s times like now Sasume wishes her sword could work at all; glowing yellow snake eyes whenever she got pissed sure would emphasize the message of fuck off.

Still, she has to settle for little more than a sneer, barely able to keep herself from stacking the lumber with excess force... or, too much of it, anyway.

And at the boy’s logic (which she won’t admit he even has, least of all now) she has to give a sharp scoff, unwilling to blatantly agree at all if she can help it.

“You just like keeping it on you.” Kingu echoes, as if to internally solidify that explanation. It seems troublesome to lug such a thing around all day, but at least she’s prepared for any kind of situation. It’s something that Kingu doesn’t have to worry about; his body is the weapon, after all. “Well, that’s fair enough. It doesn’t hurt to go about your day well-equipped for whatever the tundra has to throw at you.”

The smirk infuriates him. He doesn’t take well to teasing; especially from people he’s just met. Kingu straightens himself up some, as if to make himself look taller and assert some kind of authority to combat Sasume’s jests.

“Did you not hear me?” He questions, taking a step towards her. “I asked for you not to call me that. Kingu, or nothing at all.” He may not be the child of Tiamat that he once believed he was, but he still expects respect from others. 

Sasume may know nothing of him or what he has accomplished in his past, but he desired some basic decency. Not to be treated like a child or a childhood friend, and definitely not someone inferior.

“Since I ask of you not to use a nickname for me, I won’t use one for you. Sasume it is, and it will stay that way.” Such things are reserved for people he’s “close” to, but even for those few people, such a thing didn’t exist. So, for Sasume, it was off-limits.

“Mm, right,” perhaps he wasn’t exactly wrong, but he wasn’t at all accurate, either. However, “better safe than sorry” was a better motive for her to have and people to believe than feeling all but fucking naked without the damned thing around. “Your weapon is an extension of yourself” was a saying used for fighting with it, sure, but she takes it to a new level.

Well, at least Sasume has a pretty damned good excuse for it, anyway—need to feel “safe” aside, she’s sure even here that having a sword respond to your emotions like it actually was a part of you is damned unthinkable.

“Alright, alright,” she relents with a sigh, biting back an even wider smirk and instead even holding up her hand in a gesture of defeat. She wonders how much of his insistence is a sensitive ego, and how much it is just simply being unused to being treated as anything but superior. “Just Kingu it is.”

If it wasn’t for the one in front of her (well, more off to her side, really), Sasume would think such god-awful pride would always make her bare her teeth and spit nothing but venom. However, whether it’s the... almost naive aspect to it, simply how calm Kingu is being about it, or something else she can’t place, she doesn’t mind it, with him.

If nothing else, if only for right now, it’s something fun rather than nerve-grating.

“Not like there aren’t worse things to be called than my own name,” Sasume remarks slyly, looking back to the small plants in front of her. She reaches out with a stray finger again, and dares to hum out: “...Want to sit, Kingu? I won’t bite if you won’t, and standing’s no easier in the cold.”