Rain soaked leaves swept out of their way as the two walked further into the forest. Tai had withdrawn his hand from the woman's grasp after they had made it past the worst of the crowded masses, instead letting Charity follow him at her own pace. Fairly certain that no one would be around at this point, he started unwrapping the turban as they continued on down the mushy walking trail.
After the last couple days of wearing it around the city, he had decided that the garb just wasn't quite the disguise he was looking for. It’s not like the tight cloth binding really bothered him since his perception of heat and cold were so muddled in undeath, rather, it just felt kind of wrong to him. Not that it helped that he had only worn the foreign piece since it was one of the few options left after ripping through the Brent lord's wardrobe. They were running dangerously low on masks after all the fights Dei and Xei had been getting in, and Tai had been fairly certain that he never wanted to wear one of the local servant masks that they were so fond of around here. Though now that he thought of it, hadn't he seen a rather beautiful mask hidden within Charity's bags recently?
Absent thoughts past the time away as Tai led them to a small clearing in the forest. A single stone Monolith stuck out from the ground in the middle of a strangely perfect circle of trees that now surrounded them.
Tai turned around to watch Charity look around the area, focusing on the large stone slab as he had once done when he first found the place on a nightly stroll. Her eyes traced the plain rock edifice, so obviously artificial in the middle of the woods that it looked all the more striking for it. Put perhaps the more important question was whether she would realize what this really was.
Charity reached out to touch the rock, hand passing over the wet surface as she slowly made a circle around the outcropping. When she had made it back to the starting point she looked at him curiously. Squinted eyes and tight, hunched shoulder blades either meant that she was still apprehensive, or that she was just struggling with the cold and damp. He wasn't sure, even now.
“It's a beautiful place, isn't it?” She said
Rain pattered against the top of his head, rolling down over the exposed bone into the crook of his neck lined by a collared shirt. He didn't reply to her, couldn't really while his logbook was still safely kept in its waterproof belt pouch. Perhaps it was for the best though, since it was going to force the girl to think.
‘Why did I bring you here Charity?’ He let the words ring out along the tethers that bound him. Better to let them know ahead of time what he was about to try.
She turned around in a wide circle, avoiding some deep piles of leaves scattered about the clearing before looking up to the sky. The rain seeped into the roots of her hair, washing away the stress of the last couple days as the never ending drizzle fell down on her. Then, she suddenly sat with her back up to the rock and her eyes up in the sky.
‘And maybe my expectations were too high.’ He thought to himself.
He had wanted her to-. It didn't matter now. She just wasn't getting it. A few steps forward brought him up to her side where he looked around for something to sit on. He wanted to share the moment with the girl, but that didn't mean he had to debase himself in the act.
Charity watched him, waving his head back and forth, so obviously searching for something that a raised eyebrow turned into a chuckle, which turned into a full body laugh as the girl watched him struggle. His thin green eyes settled back on the Charity which seemed to only make her laugh even harder. Hands clutching at her stomach, Charity actually rolled over onto her side to slap at the ground with her hands while she continued laughing at him.
He waited there in front of her. Half annoyed that she wasn't offering to help him with the obvious problem, and half of him relieved. She was crying again, something he was starting to get used to seeing from her after the last couple days of failure after failure. But this time it was different. Her tears were washed away now in a drizzle that leaked into her open smile.
‘Well, at least it wasn't such a waste to bring her here after all.’
She took a couple minutes to let the laughter die down at its own pace, almost bursting into another fit when she started to look back at him again.
“C'mon Tai! Can't you just - take a seat in - one of these piles of leaves or something?” She couldn't even get through the full sentence without laughing halfway through.
She patted at the nearby pile of leaves, obviously ready to continue the joke when her hand disappeared deep into the recesses of the packed vegetation. The laughter died out in her throat, turning to pat at the bottom of the shallow dip in the ground that Tai knew she must be feeling right now. It would be a loose layer of soil instead of the grassy forest floor they had been walking on for the last hour, and now he knew he had her.
“Tai. Is this?” She looked up at him. “Is this a graveyard?”
He nodded back at her, allowing the thin layer of bone marrow between his teeth to glow down at her in what he hoped was a warm smile.
‘I think you'll do just fine Charity. With a bit of help of course. RESTRAIN.’ The words echoed out both near and far as he felt his brethren gather at this call.
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A hand burst out of the ground to clasp Charity by the wrist. She couldn't see it of course beneath the muddy pile of sopping leaves, but she knew what she was feeling, had almost feared it would happen sooner. Memories flashed before her of a time long past, of fitful nights of sleep the first couple of days she spent with Dei and her brethren.
She always wondered why the goddess always tried so hard to keep them alive. Sure, everyone knew the shard-bearers drew strength from worship, not from death. But with Dei, with this specific variation of magic, couldn't it be different? She did come so much later than all the rest, so what else was going to be unique about her?
The hand gripping her dragged her out of her thoughts as it began withdrawing deeper into the wet ground. She braced her knees against the ground, rounding her back to try and fight back against the assault for just a moment of panic. But then she forced herself to relax. This was the goddess's will, was it not?
Charity looked up and Tai, standing across from the monolith with thin green flames that hissed in the drizzle of rain. His fine suit clung to him in odd ways while wet, making his already thin arms and legs look almost nonexistent as they stuck to the bones underneath. He looked like a paper cutout of a prince that they might have used in a shadow puppet show back in the town's they passed, and Charity couldn't help but start laughing again.
She didn't resist any longer. Merely re-adjusted her arm a bit so it felt like it was at a better angle as the hand slowly pulled her down into the ground with it. When a second hand burst from the pile of leaves to the other side of her body, this time she even offered it her other arm of her own accord. If the goddess no longer needed her, then what was the point of her life anyways? She had already failed. hadn't she?
Her second hand disappeared into the mud, pinning her to her knees in a precarious bowing position as she kept her legs bent behind her. She felt rather than heard as the ground started to shake all around her. A deep rumbling and shifting of dirt and mud as the myriad piles of leaves around her bubbled up with some strange movement from beneath. More skeletal hands popped up out of the ground, dragging up their soil stained bodies a few seconds later as three more skeletal individuals formed before her sight.
“Xei?” The sight of a pair of orange eyes erupting from the ground was so surprising to her that she didn't even question it when another pair of purple eyes came next, followed by the burning blue that marked the true goddess. It was somewhat strange to see them like this, practically naked save for the odd bits of soil that was caked into their joints. So when they started moving towards her in a confident walk, she watched the brilliant flashes of color echo through the thick air.
Their movements were so hard to process now that she could actually see under the clothing they always wore. The faint light of their presence rippled through one leg then another in practiced rhythm as they marched up to Charity through the leaves. It was all at once beautiful to Charity, both the way the colorful lights seemed to glint and catch on the bones of the surrounding skeletons, but also the fact that they had all come here together just for her. For her…execution.
Charity smiled up at her goddess in all her many forms as four skeletal figures looked down on her from varied heights and builds as different as their personalities. The Herald reached out a single hand between the four of them and rested it on Charity's head. A bolt of fear shot through charity a\when she felt it settle on the top of her hair as memories of what happened back in the golden kingdom came back to her, but this felt different somehow.
Xei and Fei reached out a hand to clasp Charity by one arm each, while Tai walked around her back and rested his hands on her shoulders. Then she felt it start to happen.
The bones within her started to move, just a little bit, vibrating back and forth in place but not really going anywhere. It felt warm, then hot, then burning as every bone in her body started to shake and move under their glowing hands. She screamed into the ground, eyes shut as she willed her body to stay still under their grasp. Her jaw stretched open as far as she could make it go, willing the pain to leave her as though just a little more noise echoing out into the clearing would be able to help her now.
She couldn't escape. She couldn't even move if she wanted to, as her bones started to feel like they belonged to someone else. To something else. This wasn't her body, this was their body, and she just happened to be stuck in here with them. Her voice broke into heaving sobs as the bones danced around her body with no reason or logic.
‘If I die here today, I want to die looking at the goddess.’ She thought, finally willing her head to look up into those cold blue eyes that always seemed so distant. But when she looked up she realized the girl wasn't touching her any more. Her arms were back at her sides, fingers interlocked behind the back of the pelvis that Charity could see right though. Even Xei and Fei were standing back too, Xei slightly bent to get a better look at her while Fei had collapsed to a squatting position that left her head at eye level.
She could still feel the hands on her shoulders as her bones continued to vibrate and sway back and forth with every movement that she made. The pain was dying down, becoming more of a dull ache in the back of her mind as she turned teary eyes back to look at Tai.
Was he the one that was still doing this to her? Was this all his plan, just to punish her for her failures? But then he let go of her, hands withdrawing slowly from her shoulders almost like he didn't want to do so.
They were all watching her now. Waiting as she felt everything. Every terrible, horrible little movement of her body felt like she was moving through a bed of knives. Every bone hurt, and a strange white cloud was starting to blot out the horizon as she felt her vision going strange.
‘I must be dying.’ She thought. Eyes looking off into the distance to take in the bright light that was taking her in from all sides. She tried to accept it gracefully. Tried to allow herself to fade into the great white expanse. To leave the pain behind, to leave the goddess to use her as she wished. To leave the crumpled bodies holding her down to the ground.
She looked down at the skeletons holding her arms in the ground, crumpled up in a fetal position except for the single arm each that dragged her down. But how could she see them? How could she see through the leaves and mud that still covered her hands? Not only that, but she could feel them too. Like some strange appendage that was both connected to her and not at the same time.
“You. You aren't here to kill me?” She asked.
Tai shook his head in response as he walked over to join the rest of them.
“I-, please. Let me go. RELEASE me.” she begged them.
The hands gripping her arms obeyed her command as four sets of burning eyes looked down on her with pride. She would be their first. Their scion of death.