GHOSTRUCK

THUNK! goes the arrowhead into the spine of a tree, mere yards away.

━━━the prey within it, has yet to be determined. after all, this mage dragon is simply a guest beneath the canopy of branches and leaves above the forest ground. but it seems as though the same can be said for the student, caught beneath the taut hook of a rope which, despite the dragon's preference for more self - sufficient teachings, could not be snared with jutted - out, cut glass.

brushes bristle when it stalks closer, claws snagging the dagger sheathed beneath the shadow of its skirts. past the spines of the forest, where trees have begun to loom their branches overhead, dangles the still, poised body of strung - up prey. and this dragon, as gracious as it is yearnful for the thrill of the chase, does not seek the importance of lunging now. instead, it kneels to cover itself behind the wealth of bushes before rearing its claws back.

to bleed is to become receptive to pain, and pain, darling pain, is the greatest motivator to send any animal into a sprint.

the dagger flies from its hand when it abruptly flicks its wrist forward, yet it does not lie to wait there to see where the blade cuts. its claws break the bark of wood as it rises, slow and patient. and, off, again does it stalk, rounding the clearing and waiting once if only to snap a fallen stick between its claws; as much a warning as it is a statement.

Silver flashes, misplaced in the shadows, but should a predator seek to stalk him, it will not find him a willing prey. They will take him screaming and fighting and snarling or not at all. He kicks wildly with his free leg, sending his dangling body into a dizzying spin, but the blade that might have made a home in his arm instead merely grazes skin and draws blood as it flies past.

A hand tightens around the shaft of the arrow in hand, redoubling his efforts to cut through the rope holding him aloft. Pain sings up his arm, ripples uncomfortably through the rest of his body, but he will not be made an easy prey. He had not been raised to quit at the first opportunity. If death seeks to claim him again, then it will work for his second life.

At last the rope frays, then snaps. He braces himself for the fall, tucks as close as he is able into a roll as he hits the ground. A hand drags across the ground to pick as many of his fallen arrows as he can before he raises, shoving them haphazardly into his quiver.

He understands the warning in the piercing snap of a stick, with no need for any words to be said.

He must get far enough, fast enough. A hand closes around the grip of his bow, an arrow drawn as Kleine picks a direction and bolts.

This is not the first of such supposed ghost sightings he'd dealt with, nor will it be the last. The people of Garreg Mach seem particularly susceptible to rumors of this sort, and all too often, it causes enough uproar that people feel the need to either investigate for themselves, or enlist the help of others.

(The cause, whatever it is, has never been supernatural thus far, and, to be honest... he doesn't think it ever will be. Mere human paranoia can make so many things out of shadows.)

But there is motion, now, next to the statue, and Andrei follows the movement of someone clearly human, fingers curling around his bow as he takes another step forward. Not a grave-robber, by their actions. No, more like—

Thunk.

The arrow hits the trunk next to him and the snarled warning that follows confirms his suspicions. "You are not the rumored ghost, I take it," Andrei says, stepping out into the clearing, his own bow held in his hand but not yet raised. Another ghost-hunter, most likely, even though the other's face is still framed in shadow.

“Uh-huh,” comes the flat response, voice raising to carry toward him. Gaze snags on the bow also in his hand, lingers there before she tightens her grip upon her own. Should it come to that, then Kleine will simply be quicker on the draw. “So, what are you here for?” A sneer punctuates the question. “Don't tell me you actually believe in ghosts.”

A wild animal, perhaps. Or one of those beasts that Fódlan's shores harbor, which she's heard whispers of upon the wind. That had been Kleine's hypothesis before setting off to investigate. Terrifying enough that the fallible human mind makes monsters out of shadows, but something that can ultimately be hunted, shot, and killed.

There are no ghosts in the darkness. Indeed, Kleine has faced things far more terrifying than them in the shadows.

“My dear lady,” the Duke replies smoothly, hands raised as though to soothe, “I'm quite sure I don't know what you mean.”

Kleine had done his best to play nice. He may not have Reese's talent for magic, but he knows how to make himself useful, carting ingredients back and forth through rooms and juggling whatever task their host had seen fit to provide him. If anything, he had been exceptionally patient all things considered, with all the secrets he was clearly hiding.

He didn't know what he meant? Oh, please! He doesn't have the patience for these games. He whirls toward Thrasir, jabbing a finger toward their host with a venom barely concealed. “Tell him. You saw it too, right?”

It looks like it had been expensive a long time ago at least, though now it's just broken marble playing at being a man. There's the crooked bend of what might have been an arm, fingers curling around it as she partially lifts herself up, then pulls her body the rest of the way onto its elevated platform when it does not give. The vantage point isn't much better than it had been on the ground, but whatever height Kleine can take, she will.

What is she even doing here? Hunting ghosts— ha! How absurd. But even rumors are not made from nothing. If not ghosts, then something lurks in the forest, terrifying enough to be called a ghost. And her bow has been itching to be shot.

She finds her perch at the edge of the platform, going through the motions automatically— take her bow, draw an arrow, nock it— gaze sweeping back and forth through the darkness. This is familiar to her, eyes more adjusted to shadows than they have ever been to the light. The sunlight strains, a dull pounding in the back of her head that she's rarely ever rid of.

But in the moonlight, her gaze snags on even the smallest of motions, bow swiftly raised and an aimed slightly to the left of it before she looses the arrow. Kleine will disprove the rumors of this ghost and be on her way. “Show yourself!” she snarls, already reaching for another arrow. “Or the next one will be in your skull.”

Memories are vignettes for one’s past, and often times, they are very telling.

Kleine was always braver, more decisive; if Lady-- ...if Eremiya had ever commanded them to kill her, she does not doubt it would have been done. Some part of her thinks she might not have even minded back then. After all, who among them could have denied her? They belonged to her, existed for her -- and when she compelled them, they could but act.

"...Kleine..." Murmured softly, and to herself. It feels, at times, as though to love her is to suffer; to be loved by her worse still. The liege she serves even now bears an ugly scar of her making; the best friend whom she adores inflicted with cruelties time and time and time again; the little sister she had wanted to protect had died under her watch; and the once-but-never-after mother, the lady she once held in the highest, slain by her own hand.

Perhaps Kleine might have lived, if she'd found courage sooner; all Katarina knows is that the fact they stand here now is only despite her.

Their anger sparks, flashes, and fizzles out, though she can't tell why. Her efforts had been as ineffective as they were pitiful; the lowered weapon says enough of the ruined chance, and Kleine has every right to be angry, but if they are they do not speak it.

"Oh... I came to catch them alive. I thought no one else would..." It goes without saying that this includes Kleine -- between them, it is Katarina who is aberrant, who failed to both become and avoid becoming what she was made to be. Yet she had found others that would fight for her in spite of this, cherish her in spite of this...

"...Let me come with you," Katarina pleads softly. Had Kleine been alone all this time? Alone -- the thought echoes in her chest, constricting. "I don't need their bounty... you can have it." She has money now, modest though it is, and freedom; she could take them to a bakery, watch them pick their favorite and buy it twice, if they'd accept it. How many little joys and old dreams... "Please..."

But it is a question, still; it is always a question. Say no, and I'll leave you be...

Reese seems ill-inclined to ask the questions they would have, reduced to repeating their name like a broken record. Kleine, Kleine, Kleine...! It's enough to make them sick of the sound. (Though it sounded so nice, your name upon her lips, when you thought it was the last thing you would ever hear. You would have done anything to hear it once more. Just to pretend it wasn't the end yet.) But it's better this way, rather than faltering in the face of the truths of existence they do not know. Better that she asks if they are all right, instead of how it is that they are.

So, Kleine lets it lie, like the coward they told themself they would never be.

She offers them the bounty, and teeth gnash together. Is there any fulfillment in having it simply handed to them on a platter, unearned? Hadn't Reese said she came for them too? Why can't she be selfish, for once in her life?! Don't just let them have it! Find your backbone, fight for it!

They want a fight; it's the only thing they know. How to snarl and growl and bite, words spoken through blood and flesh and steel. But Reese, they suppose, can never be provoked if she doesn't want to be. Hadn't they tried? Yet she had stood and taken every harsh insult and barbed word they hurled at her throughout their lives without complaint— and in the name of what?

They will never understand her. Kleine never would have stood for that, would have sooner driven a knife into the opposing individual's throat than withstand the abuse.

A bitter laugh slips between bared teeth. Yet they still won't say no, even if their pride wants them to. To reject or to accept— it would smart either way, but at least one option will line their pockets will gold. They're not foolish enough to ignore that.

“...Let me come with you,” she also says. A plea— an offering? There is something unnatural in the stillness in them that follows the words for a beat before it shatters. In smooth, practiced motions is the arrow returned to its quiver, the bow slung across their back. Kleine brushes past her, almost as though to leave her behind, and yet—

The dark is his first home, whose edges and contours he knows intimately. The shadows had been his friends, ones he'd played with in his boyhood, twisting shapes into monsters, gods, kings! The limitless imagination of a child— when, indeed, he imagines he had still been one— who had little else for company.

Now, it hides them like an old friend. No one can see him there. They cannot witness the way he twitches slightly at a scar pulled at with every step, a reminder that his existence is now to haunt, a miracle he does not believe in and never asked for. And so is the misstep a betrayal, another vicious reminder:

It is not his darkness; this is not his home. Foreign land betrays him. Kleine hadn't missed the whistle of wind, the glint of silver in the dark. One foot shifts behind the other without thinking, body twisted smoothly out of its path. TRAP! his mind screams, a second delayed. But he is not fast enough— never GOOD ENOUGH.

The cut that slashes across their cheek is not deep; the blade hadn't even been particularly sharp. But he feels the damned rope snare around an ankle— the real trap, one he should have known was there, had missed anyway— arms flailing to snag an arrow from those spilling from his quiver as he is yanked away into the air.

Body curls upward as soon as his momentum slows, arrow's metal tip touched the rope holding him aloft. Kleine knows as well as any what manner of beast might stalk the shadows. He'll not wait for one to find him—

The faintest of sounds splits the silence of the night and he stills.

—unless one already has.

Criminals are made as often by circumstance as they are by their own hands, besides. It may be the more difficult thing to bring unwilling quarry-- captured criminals, she reminds herself-- but she owes it to the person she was and the people who believed in her not to shy away from the hard path. ...albeit she is neither judge nor jury; she is only one person hoping to be swifter than the rest.

And for a moment she fears that she has failed, a bolt of blonde ribboning in the air. One elbow pulls back into a perfect mirror of a stance Katarina knows too well -- rather, how could she ever forget it? More than striving to duplicate it every time she picks up her own bow at the academy, she recalls it every time her fingers run over that old beaded ornament, colors faded not for a lack of upkeep, but for the inexorable march of time. No matter how tender the care, it seems to tell her, nothing gold can stay.

Yet the sun catches glitter-golden on the archer and the arrow they turn on her, painting the expression on their face as clear as the daylight. The mirror shatters, but the ghost on the other side remains.

"Kleine...!" A single forward, unsteady step. Though she halts, one hand curls over her heart, fingers scoring into fabric as if to hold something together; the other remains between them, palm upturned as though she had always been waiting to hold their hand again.

"You're... alive...!" Katarina sniffles, or Reese sniffles -- no matter what she is called, the part of her that loves them always remains. Still, her reaction is an ungainly thing, as heavy and overwhelming as the tears that already threaten to spill. "You're..." A suspect pause, though not quite another sniffle; she presses the back of a hand against her eyes, attempting to keep her voice and its slight quaver quiet enough to go unnoticed. After all... They seem to be in pursuit of the same target, the two of them, and she would not want to undo their work.

"...Ah..." Her teeth leave marks on the inside of her lip, but she regains her composure (too slow; what kind of big sister is she, to let Kleine see her like this? Or... will they forgive her if they can see it for the joy it is?) Come a slow exhale, her expression strengthens, steadies into what can only be a smile.

Their bow is slowly lowered, string guided back to its resting position, though they keep the arrow nocked, pinned between their fingers. It's not for her; Reese wouldn't strike them— she never had the heart for it, did she? Not like Kleine. Something had been carved from their chest a long time ago, steel taken to skin to cut until bone, then further still. Until they cut into their soul and something important spilled out, slipped through their fingers as they tried to catch it and keep it inside.

Only Lady Eremiya's warm praise had been enough to fill that void— but now what? They failed and were disposed of, and there is only emptiness left in the wake of it. They always thought Legion weak, but at least he had died laughing. They always thought Reese weak, but Kleine had died first.

“Obviously I'm alive,” they say, but it's no better than being dead. Their grip upon their bow tightens until their knuckles turn white. “So quit sniveling already or you're going to get me caught.”

“What do you think? I'm clearly fine.” (Why are you happy to see me? Shouldn't you have been glad I was gone? Am I happy (??) to see you too?) Without another word, they turn back toward the edge, bow raising to try the shot again, but the other half of the pair has long since returned. It's ruined now. Kleine grits their teeth and turns sharply back to Reese, a flash of anger sparking in their eyes.

Anger at her? At themself? At yet another failure? Even Kleine doesn't know anymore.

(...Why did you come back when I asked you to stay? Why didn't you just leave me to die? It would have been kinder to die alone, to die not knowing you didn't hate me. Your kindness is cruel, Reese.)

The living will struggle to their last breath for escape, even if lambs for the slaughter should know better than to resist their fates when their clock has run out. Corpses may be inconvenient for them to drag back alone, but they are ultimately easier to deal with than the foolishness of the human mind.

The wanted poster flutters away with a breeze, hands busy pulling their hair up to tie off with a band to bother catching it. It doesn't matter; they already know who they're looking for. The problem with causing trouble is that it makes you loud, easy to track. Towns of people who know your face, tracks left behind in the dirt in your wake.

Kleine learned early that you don't leave survivors— witnesses will talk. These two will not live long enough to learn from their error.

They kneel at the edge of the cliff overlooking the pair's encampment as they raise their bow, string slowly drawn back. One had wandered off into the trees minutes ago, leaving the other behind. It doesn't matter which one is who— soon enough, they'll both be dead— though Hag is an appropriate name for this one, with a face not even a mother could love. In easy, practiced movements, they guide the point of their arrow to align with her skull, fingers slowly relaxing—

Movement in the corner of their eye, a flash of purple— and the arrow is quickly turned upon the intruder in turn, lips pulled back to snap a warning to back off, only for it to falter on their tongue.

That's impossible. (Impossible— ha! Says the ghost.) Why is she here? Their tongue ties at the sight of her, jaw clenching and gaze hardening as their fingers tighten once more upon the bowstring. What is there to say? How to explain the life breathed back into their lungs when they had no words for it themself?

Their chest is tight and it's hard to breathe and Kleine has no words for it. A weapon is meant to cut, its purpose beginning and ending at the point of its blade. They've never been good at voicing their feelings. You'd have to pry it from their dead body— and she had, in the end, hadn't she?

In the end, Kleine only manages to bite out her name, the single syllable somehow quiet and confused and strained all at once: Sister...? “...Reese.”