all wrapped in bones of setting sun, all dust and stone and moribund Who: Rictor Cassul and Elvira Treveil. What: An unlikely pair brave the Necrohol to clear out undead pests. Where: The Necrohol When: Backdated to March 24th, following this. Rating: PG-13 (violence, gore, corpses) Status: Complete.
Working with Elvira Treveil wasn’t his idea of a good time, but they’d been forced to acknowledge certain truths long ago: they did work well together. Where she slipped back and gave way in caution, he charged forward; where her magick blistered and flayed, his withered in preference to the clean blade; where the woman darted bird-like away from damage, the man soaked it up.
So it was on a pre-arranged evening that they met outside the gates of the Necrohol, their armour gleaming and clinking in the silence (it was quiet as the graves themselves, air heavy and still, dead). The moon hung high in the sky and the undead would be stirring and restless below.
Rictor checked and re-checked on his gear and ammo, fingertips running along the potions at his belt, the extra bullets arrayed within easy reach, the hilt of his gunblade waiting at his side. For a routine extermination tasked by his superiors, one could do no better than two holy knights.
“Ready?” he asked.
“As you are, Korporal!” Elvira chirped back, her hand floating over her own hilt. And they went, crossing the gates in the way of psychopomps, to the land for the dead. Though half a stride behind him, she flanked his left without relinquishing her desire to establish her authority.
Her breathing shallowed as the pair ventured deeper in as though her lungs rejected the Necrohol’s cold, death-riddled air. Hair at her nape stood on end, and he felt his spine tightening.
Echoes of footsteps in the distance indicated the presence of another pair. She reached for her sword, flashing him a glance and nodding in the slightest for him to make the first move. Rictor took the suggestion and the lead without hesitation, his stance adjusting, blade held high and ready. The glow of their magicite light bobbed against the walls and cracked floor of the Necrohol as it led down, down, deeper.
“This close to the fucking entrance?” he wondered aloud. No need to tiptoe and whisper: the basic undead were not creatures of subtlety, and the direct approach with guns blazing and white magic singing would be fine. So as they turned the corner, Elvira saw them a heartbeat after Rictor did: a pair of skeletons, thin scraps of flesh still rotting on the bone, jaws half-detached.
Just like last year.
But unlike then, he’d fucking murder her if she abandoned the field. The hallway lit up briefly with the flash of Rictor’s gunblade, and the Blade carved his way through the first skeleton. Its wound burst open, separating torso from appendages and revealing dried entrails. No stranger to decay and destruction, the skeleton’s detached arm reached out for the knights.
Elvira moved in without a word, her footwork moving in time with his. A dance, a battlefield. As he had said before, not different at all.
The lady knight slipped in between the empty space around him, her small frame navigating the tight hallway like a bird to pick pests out of Rictor’s thick bull-hide, the show of mutualism ingrained by nature, by guild. Her sword pulsated with magic and pinned the top half of their first victim to the wall. While it writhed there, the other holy knight stepped in to neatly bisect it across the middle. The pieces of the body dropped, hitting the floor with a thud.
Two down. Many more to go.
“The Hauptmann and Feldwebel said the tunnels were getting restless,” Ric said, wiping off his sword as they started walking once more. “It’s a pain in the ass, living on top of all these dead.”
The ambient magic of Emillion and the Grande Cathedral seeped into the endless tombs and vaults over time, the rows upon rows of unquiet dead. It wasn’t the same as the piles of powerful undead flung at the city by the Lich—few things could match that—but every so often the world seemed to tilt, decaying eyelids cracking open, the resident pests waking.
“Who were you in here with, last?” He couldn’t tell why the detail mattered; it simply did.
“Sir Wesson,” she answered promptly. “A few weeks ago in case you were wondering.’”
The memories chilled her, the shiver manifesting into (hidden by) a sway of her hips, a sashaying gait. Elvira was so very good at her masks, and so Rictor didn’t notice; he was, perhaps, too absorbed in keeping his senses primed for their surroundings, waiting for the next scrape of bone on stone, the rasp of perforated lungs in the subterranean darkness.
“Well, I’m better than her,” Ric said, and it was only half a joke. “Hopefully we’ll clear ‘em out today and not have to worry about it for another six months or so.”
“Ha!” A single bright laugh rang out of her throat, hollow as halls they tread.
“What’s—”
But then there was that scrape he’d been listening for, and the man’s grip tightened on the gunblade once more as did hers milliseconds afterwards. A swift gesture in the gloom, and they fell back into well-trained order: the two holy knights stepped out into a large burial chamber, the stone opening up around them, revealing row upon row of alcoves.
Before them, decaying corpses.
A muttered curse under his breath, and then the Silver Blade was already massing up a Hallowed Bolt, the electricity buzzing in the air and causing Elvira’s meticulously-primed hair to stand on end. She eyed him, the glimmer in her expression unfading as she goaded him on. A chill of death filled the knights’ lungs with cold, damp air as their enemies approached.
Elvira let out a soft breath which she saw rise in a small cloud. She stepped closer to him, her own sword beginning to glitter with a spark of holy magic unlike the thunderous power than pounded through his. Though both were of faith and Faram, the differences in their fighting styles magnified as they fell in sync: Cassul was all brute strength, his magic a searing white flame, and Treveil a creature of delicacy and accuracy and speed.
One rotting skeleton let out a low moan as it hobbled over with arms outstretched (not unlike a child looking for an embrace after a nightmare). The woman cast her partner a glance and swerved to avoid the attack. Rictor spun out of the way as well, instinctively giving ground and allowing Elvira the room she needed to maneuver.
As the zombie went for the blonde, the thunder spell lashed out as Rictor’s sword dug in, finding the weak fraying sinew in the shoulder, cutting the cords like one might snip a thread. Muscle ripped, tore, and gave way. Flecks of organs and skin and bone sprayed as the knights slashed; indifferent to the carnage, neither one of them flinched as their armor became peppered with pieces of death.
The air was musty and rancid with rot, which became more noticeable when their breaths came more heavily, adrenaline starting to lick through their veins.
It was almost soothing: easier to lose oneself in the rhythm of battle and this routine extermination, cutting down mindless enemy after mindless enemy, with no need for pause or consideration or to converse. It was easier to fight alongside Elvira than to fight with her.
She struck down another zombie, racking up their count of dead returned to death. Dried from decomposition, skin stretched over hollow framework, the skeletal bodies were robbed of identity and memory. They moved their creaking joints and groaned at the effort, meaningless noises to harmonize with the clinking of swords. Elvira maintained a thin smile (but a smile nonetheless), sucking in her cheeks as she pulled her sword out of the eye socket of a fallen body. She breathed; he breathed; the undead continued to fall before them.
Some indescribable time later, after various hallways and passages and rooting out their enemies like rats in a warren, the holy knights finally cast their white light across the crypts and saw that there were no more.
Their foes had been mindless, undirected, barely conscious, unlike the malicious intelligence imbued in the Lich’s stolen corpses. Mere garbage to be swept aside. But as they turned around, making their way up the long winding corridors and back towards the surface, Rictor felt the surging satisfaction of a job well done. (The Feldwebel might compliment him for this, he thought, and did not notice it was the first time he actively yearned for Violet Black’s approval and respect.)
“Good one,” he said at last, after the scraping silence had worn on for too long, nudging at Rictor like an unreachable itch.
“Oh, I would say,” the other knight responded more for the sake of agreeing than to pat themselves on the back. Her fingers twitched: a strand of her hair dangled out of place, unwilling to sully it further with a touch from bloodied hands.
Elvira smiled up at him, tilting her chin up to meet his eyes with a wink. His eyebrow rose at the cheeky gesture; it seemed distinctly unlike her, but then again, what did he know?
They kept walking the long slow trudge back towards civilisation. Rictor started mentally cataloguing his injuries as they went; there was an aching twinge in his side and he could feel slick blood trickling down his forearm, sweat between his shoulderblades. An open cut on his cheek seemed to leer at her.
“You know, you’re more tolerable in battle than conversation,” he said thoughtfully, after a moment. Elvira Treveil had always been an oddity: her mask often seemed to slip around him, a veil twitching out of the way to reveal something sharp and glinting, with edges. Ric had never been certain, but was sure she projected a slightly different air with others.
“I’ve never quite thought of it that way, Korporal, but what do I know?” She gave a shrug wave of the hand, a laugh ringing in the empty halls, the exaggeration at modesty like dangling a toy in front of her hound-like companion, teasing him with a preview before snatching it back. Only the slightest hint of danger leered behind the smile, like metal-razor in a red rubber ball. “Good that I’m tolerable somewhere, wouldn’t you say?”
“Funny. That seems like it should be one of my lines.”
“Then you agree?”
“That it’s good that you’re tolerable somewhere?” he echoed.
“Why yes, silly. I am grateful that you can tolerate me. What with being Faram’s knights and all, it would be smashing if we tolerate each other more often.” She punctuated that with a laugh, the glisten in her eyes hinting at something other than amusement.
He tried to parse that, falling into a brief, thoughtful silence as they continued their trek. For a while, the only sound was the clink of their armour, the shuffle of their boots in the dust. Normally, Rictor would have drummed up more quips, seeking more ways to dig and needle.
But exhaustion and blood was dragging him down, making each step seem heavier in these claustrophobic, stagnant hallways. He’d need to report to Black. He’d have to scrub the smell of rot out of his clothes again tonight, cleaning dead flesh from under his fingernails. He was tired.
“Agreed,” he finally said.
“Lovely,” she sang back, a stock reply, before steering the conversation into talk of cheer and church (to pair the gloom and death haunting the Necrohol).
The battlefield left behind them, their truce faded back into grudging respect and pointed repartee. Not quite shoulder to shoulder, the pair made their way out of the crypt in matching coats of blood.