Chapter Text
Kurogane didn’t appear again for a week.
Fai waited up the first two nights, pacing and desolate.
The third, fourth, and fifth days, Fai sought out Syaoran and the castle’s library, and Sakura’s family histories, and they all three worked to search out any trace of knowledge that might help. Fai wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he hoped they would find something. He had vague thoughts of finding a grave, of perhaps picking up on some resonating thread in the pattern of reality that would lead him to Kurogane’s lost spirit. But there was nothing useful to be found, not even any mention of Lady Tomoyo. Fai continued to stay up each night, and Sakura and Syaoran both watched him with concern as he grew more frantic.
The sixth night, Sakura begged Fai to rest while she and Syaoran kept vigil together in the sitting room for him, and Fai was exhausted enough to allow it. He regretted it when by morning the ghost had still not reappeared, and Sakura looked utterly crushed. She hugged him fiercely before she left, and told him not to give up hope, and Syaoran brought Fai a tray of food, having guessed correctly that Fai was unwilling to leave the rooms or interact with any of the other castle staff to feed himself. Fai forced himself to eat, but only because Kurogane would have wanted him to.
Fai dozed off again a couple of hours before sunset, napping fitfully with his head on his knees in the armchair by the fire. He startled awake frequently to distant sounds, and dropped back into semi-consciousness each time Kurogane was not there.
Sunset neared, and Fai roused himself. He wandered over to the desk and thought bleakly about the unlikeliness of being able to modify any of the seeking spell variants he knew to seek out apparitions, or to even function at all with far too little magical power behind them. But it was still worth trying. He sat down and stared dismally at a clean page. He lifted his pen, trying to order his thoughts.
Kurogane strode through the door, eyes furious.
Fai’s vision swam and his head pounded with something that might have been thank you thank you thank you such that it took him a moment to focus again on Kurogane. He held the ghostly sword, Fai saw, afraid of what that meant. Fai opened his mouth to say – he wasn’t sure what. But before he could utter a word, Kurogane held up his other arm. His hand was in a tight fist around the throat of a feebly struggling, ethereal beast that would have been invisible to anyone without mage sight. It looked like a cross between a star-nosed mole and an eel, with too many eyes, and was dripping a pale yellow ichor.
“Mage. Tell me what these things are.”
Fai stood up in shock. “Where did you find that?” And then, with dread, “There are more of them?”
Kurogane gave the thing a final wrench, and it burst in a cloud of unwholesome smoke. “Not anymore,” he said, satisfied. “I started seeing them on my patrols awhile ago. Just one at a time, and not often. Maybe every few months. Nothing since you showed up, until now.” He grinned, sharp and dangerous. “When I spotted the first one, it went after me. I didn’t need a sword to kill something that weak. That last one made five that I’ve killed.”
Fai was deeply disturbed. “It’s an animus seeker, a magical construct. Somebody made it, to hunt for souls that have a weak connection to their body – dreamers, people recovering from a long illness...children…” He felt sick. “Creating one is a capital offense.”
Kurogane’s expression darkened. “Can you find where it came from?”
“Yes. But—” and there was something he had to know, he couldn’t move without knowing.
Kurogane forestalled him. “I don’t know. I was following Tomoyo, and don’t look at me like that. She wasn’t just a memory this time. I think it was her actual soul.” He frowned, thinking. “All I know is that I woke up someplace dark. There were no stars, and she led me to the edge of the dark and said that I wasn’t done yet. And she gave me back my sword. When I stepped across I was in the town, and that thing was there. So I killed it and came back.”
That wasn’t what Fai had wanted to ask. He wanted to know if Kurogane was alright. He wanted to know if he would be ‘done’ soon, and if that meant that he would disappear again.
If it meant he would disappear for good.
Kurogane would just say, truthfully, that he didn’t know. He would say that it didn’t matter, because he was here now. Kurogane had accepted the boundaries of his curse long ago and worked within them. Fai was the one who was afraid to lose somebody again.
Instead of voicing any of that, Fai closed his eye and nodded, throat tight. He sat down again and took up the sheet of paper. An idea came to him, and he began to write. He covered it with tiny flowing runes, and folded it into a little paper bird. When he was finished, he activated it with a crumb of magic and watched it stir and then glide from his palm. It fluttered against the door and Fai opened it, and the bird made its way slowly down the hallway, following the miniscule traces of foul magic that remained of the animus seeker back to their source.
“Follow me.”
“Wait.” Fai stopped and looked back. “If somebody made those things with magic, what do you plan to do about it? You can’t use enough magic to battle some evil wizard, and I can’t defend you from anything I can’t touch.” Kurogane still held his sword, but he waved it harmlessly through a chair for emphasis.
Kurogane was right. Fai thought for a moment, torn, and made his decision. He went into the bedchamber, and reached under the bed to pull out his travelling case. He opened it, feeling inside the dimensional pockets for the only item remaining inside apart from the chest of Yuui’s things, and withdrew the staff of a High Wizard.
He had intended never to hold it again. But the staff would augment his available magic enough to let him hold his own against an average opponent, and if there was somebody in the castle town using souls to power spells, they had to be stopped.
Fai looked Kurogane in the eyes and nodded. Kurogane gave him a look of pride. “Let’s go.”
Fai’s tracking spell led them out of the castle, and down into the sleeping town. He’d not ventured there often during his time in Clow, and the streets were dark and unfamiliar. The paper bird fluttered unhesitating before them down the quiet lanes, and Kurogane and Fai followed. The crescent moon illuminated them both: a dead warrior with a sword that could cut nothing and a determined pace that made no sound at all, and a one-eyed wizard with crippled magic and a staff he had given up, walking in perfect step together.
The paper bird took them, eventually, to building with a sign beside the door reading, “Kyle Rondart: Apothecary”.
Fai could see lamplight through the glazed windows. He sensed no spells, no wards, no magic at all. He knocked.
A voice inside called, “It’s open!”
Kurogane and Fai looked at each other. Fai pushed open the door to the sight of an empty shop front, and an open doorway to a back workroom. He walked to the doorway, wary, and scanned the room. The workroom contained long shelves of neatly labeled jars of powders, dried herbs, and things preserved in spirits of alcohol. Dominating the middle of the room was a long counter, covered with complex assortments of flasks, glass tubing, and balances. A man sat behind the counter, polishing something that looked like a strange cross between a wire parasol frame and a weather vane.
The man was no wizard. This was alchemical equipment, Fai realized.
“Are you Kyle Rondart?”
The man gave a polite nod, blinking mildly behind round spectacles. “Apothecary, at your service – potions and remedies, for both men and beasts.”
There was something about the man that made Fai’s skin crawl, despite the friendly appearance. He decided to waste no time.
“Good evening!” Fai said with false cheer. “By my authority as High Wizard, you are under arrest to be tried for creation of animus seekers.”
The man wore an expression of confused innocence. “I beg your pardon?”
“It’s him,” Kurogane said definitively from behind Fai. “I can smell that thing’s stink all over him.” This close, Fai had sensed the residual energies around the man as well, and he nodded.
The alchemist did a double-take, looking sharply at Kurogane. Rondart’s jaw dropped for a beat, and then his expression changed to one of manic glee.
He laughed wildly. “Is that what’s been happening? A ghost has been destroying my seekers?”
Fai frowned. Rondart was not reacting the way that someone should when confronted by a wizard who knew he had been using forbidden magics. Something was wrong. He wasn’t a wizard, yet he could see Kurogane, and had admitted to making the animus seekers. Fai leveled his staff and released a spell of binding-
And the spell was diverted neatly into the vaned rod next to the alchemist and conducted impotently away. Fai realized as it was happening and began another casting, but Rondart had already pulled a stick of wax from a pocket and was scrawling something on the wall. The shape sparked and flared into a rapidly expanding disruption field. It passed through Kurogane, who had the briefest of moments to look surprised and pained before fizzing out of existence.
Fai hadn’t even had time to shout a denial before it was done.
“No,” he breathed. He sank to the ground, his staff clattering uselessly beside him, and his vision was blurry for some reason.
The alchemist was adding something to a flask and speaking again.
“That thing has been an incredible inconvenience for me. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to create an animus seeker? The rendering process is expensive and extremely long – no time to sleep for days or you’ll miss one of countless crucial steps! I must have lost half a dozen of them to that damned wraith since I came here. I was running out of ingredients, I tried everything, and I’m nearly out of time.” He gave a little laugh. “Five hundred years of uninterrupted success! You have to renew its effects, you know. And you have to move every decade or so, too, or people start asking questions. And nothing went wrong until I came back to Clow!” The alchemist gritted his teeth for a moment. “You know, I almost left when you showed up, too. A high wizard, on top of my failing animus seekers. But I did a little digging. Punished for something, as it turns out, with most of your magic sealed away, and no threat to me. You couldn’t curdle milk with the magic you have access to now, could you?” He cast a triumphant glance over Fai. “But I’m so thrilled that you’re here now. All I needed was one intact soul for my elixir.”
Rondart paused, clearly expecting Fai to ask, what elixir?, but Fai wasn’t interested in any part of the proceedings. He kept seeing Kurogane’s face in his mind, twisted in a noiseless scream before he dissipated.
Rondart tsked. “Typical of a wizard, I suppose. Those fools at your college rejected me, too. They said there was no way I had discovered the secret to eternal life. Your sort is wrapped up in your precious innate magical power, manipulating reality by wresting it into different shapes. It’s truly brutish, I’ll have you know.” He held up a flask to the light, admiring the colorless liquid within. “Nothing like convincing reality to change itself for you through the elegance of alchemy.”
He looked over to Fai, kneeling on the floor, and gave a chilling smile.
“Luckily for me, you got here just in time for me to show you exactly what I mean.”
He was uncapping a small brown glass bottle as he spoke, and let three careful drops fall from it onto the floor. There was a burning smell, and then the air filled with a thick, cloying scent. Fai tried to cover his mouth, but found to his horror that he couldn’t move his limbs. It was all he could do to simply remain upright in the paralytic vapors. Specks of black floated across Fai's vision. He had the feeling that some amount of time had passed with him held there on the floor, but he wasn’t sure.
The alchemist was kneeling on the floor next to Fai, untroubled by the gases, and cupping the side of Fai’s face. He had a little crucible and a long, slim dirk. “I need your vital force for my Elixir of Life,” he was saying. “But first, a little bloodletting, before we siphon your soul. It will tear if we don’t weaken the physical connection. One of the first things you learn!” He took Fai’s limp hand and drew the point of the knife across it, holding the crucible to catch the bright droplets. “Don’t think of it as dying! Consider it a necessary contribution to my work. Why, a soul as powerful as yours will make an elixir potent enough to last me another century, alone! Think of all the good your vital essence will do for science! And I’m very excited to learn what I can do with a wizard’s blood. After all, I’ve already discovered the Elixir of Life. Just imagine what I’ll be able to discover in another hundred years.”
Fai felt dizzy with misery and nausea and pain. There was something. Something he could do...
Using blood as a magical medium was one of the most basic, simplistic forms of magery. No wizard of any standing would dare be caught using something so prosaic. Even so, blood magic was extremely potent.
Fai focused on the feeling of blood welling out of his palm, and released every last scrap of magical energy he had into it. The alchemist could utilize magical energy, yes, but he couldn’t sense it. Within moments, the crucible was filled to capacity with Fai’s magic, and the parasite sealed within his eye socket could smell it. It scrabbled, frantic to get out, and Rondart was standing, walking back to his workbench. Fai recalled the vision of Kurogane using the last of his strength to stand in battle, and tried to find that same resolve within himself now, to fight against the fumes. He forced a weak, trembling hand up to his face, and pulled the seal off.
Rondart had reached the counter filled with alchemical apparatus, and set the crucible down next to the stoppered crystal phial waiting for Fai’s soul as its final ingredient. The alchemist reached for an empty flask to decant the blood into. He didn’t have a chance to start.
The soul-leech boiled out of Fai in a space-defying, expanding mass of writhing claws and mouths, and slammed into Rondart’s back to get at the power-infused blood. Together they crashed across the countertop. Glass and wire and unidentifiable potions scattered across the room, and Fai crawled away across the fallen debris as best he could.
It was chaos behind the counter, and Fai closed his eye. The ache made it hard to focus on anything, although the vapors were finally starting to clear. He could feel his magical strength replenishing itself slowly without the parasite sucking it dry, but he knew the thing would be back for him as soon as it had finished his bloody bait and anything else it found edible. Fai didn’t know if he could re-seal the thing now that it was loose, either. It had already grown more in size, and he wondered where his staff was. Would it consume him entirely if he failed, then tear through the town, seeking anything even slightly magical to devour? Would it make it to the castle, find Sakura and Syaoran?
His eye snapped open. He hadn’t even thought of that possibility, and he cursed himself now. He pushed himself to his feet and tried to decide how to act.
Sounds of destruction were still coming from that side of the room as the creature feasted itself on alchemical energies, but to Fai’s horror, he saw Rondart crawling out from around the end of the counter, bruised and furious, with a handful of small cuts, but otherwise uninjured.
Rondart's spectacles were cracked and askew, but he was still holding the vicious-looking knife, and he advanced on Fai with murder in his eyes. Fai backed away. He was still too weakened for a physical fight, and his magic was renewing itself too slowly to be of any use yet. Over Rondart’s shoulder, Fai saw the alien creature climbing noisily back over the counter towards them, mouths questing among overturned glassware and shattered jars for more magical energy.
He tripped backwards over debris on the floor as he retreated from them both, and Rondart lunged, with the blade aimed at Fai’s heart. Fai steeled himself against what he knew to be coming, and-
Kurogane lept through the open doorway, with his sword in one hand, and – was that their game board?? – in his other hand. He struck Rondart an utterly savage blow across the face with the solid board. The twin sounds of wood and bone cracking echoed above the clamor, and Rondart dropped like a string-cut puppet. The splinters of the board fell from Kurogane’s grasp, the barrier spell hopelessly disrupted, but he gave no heed. He gripped the sword two-handed, snarling, and charged the advancing rift-beast.
The creature had grown to the size of a man, and it struck back at Kurogane with dozens of clawed legs with too many joints. It was physical in form, yet Kurogane’s ethereal sword slashed into it as if it was just as solid as the beast. The creature straddled the border between material and ethereal, and it bled tar-black at each bite from the ghostly blade. Likewise though, it could rake Kurogane in return, and motes of spirit energy scattered where it caught him.
Fai watched Kurogane do battle for the second time. The last time had been nightmare enough, and things now were all too real. His heart was in his mouth, but. But. Kurogane was winning. He drove the beast back, hacking at it and leaving dismembered bits of it strewn across the floor. The thing screamed as Kurogane impaled it through one of its mouths. He darted back to avoid a slashing claw, then pierced it again through another mouth.
From the corner of his eye, Fai saw Rondart’s fingers twitch.
The alchemist propped himself up on his hands, swaying. His jaw jutted at a grotesque and bloody angle.
Rondart pulled another stick of wax from a pocket and started slowly drawing his dispelling symbol again.
Fai cast about for something, anything to use to distract him. The lab was in shambles. Fai’s staff lay nearby, but he was still too empty of power for it to help, even with the alchemist’s grounding rod a twisted wreck on the floor. Fai’s searching hand fell upon the little crystal phial of elixir, forgotten in the wreckage of the workroom, and his heart leapt. “Rondart!” Fai shouted, holding it up.
The alchemist’s eyes went wide. He screamed something unintelligible, and Fai threw the phial at the wall.
It would have flown true to shatter against the stone wall, but blood made Fai’s grip slippery, and the phial’s arc was a little to one side of what he had intended it to be. Across the room, Kurogane was crouching, sword plunged deep into the now-motionless bulk of the rift-beast, and he straightened at that exact moment.
The phial passed entirely through Kurogane’s form. The elixir within it passed through Kurogane as well.
Rondart’s Elixir of Life had been prepared for weeks. It had lacked only a soul’s vital essence to be complete.
It had a soul now.
Kurogane howled.
Time slowed for Fai, watching. He saw the dormant matrix of the formula inside the vial alter itself the moment it contacted Kurogane’s spiritual energy, watched it consume itself in that instant and flare outward into a complete pattern around Kurogane. He could see the pathing of magical energy as it tried to flow into alignment, and the points of strain where the magic sought to affect a physical form that was not there.
The elixir had absorbed a great deal of Kurogane’s ghostly essence immediately. Fai wasn’t sure why it hadn’t absorbed all of it, but Kurogane was only faintly visible now, one knee on the ground and his head bowed beneath the magical forces acting on him. He clung to his sword, the only part of him that still looked as solid as before – Fai thought there might have been a faint violet tint to it – but was immobilized by the power centered on him.
Kurogane was simultaneously the elixir’s source of fuel and its target. Fai could read the intent of the interlaced arrays of transmutational fields – they were meant to rejuvenate an imbiber’s body, to calculate and restore it to peak youth and health, perfect homeostasis. It was a work of art, incredibly complex. Fai could even see functions within the matrix to detect bodily integrity, that would cue the reconstruction of missing flesh or organs. Magic pulsed within those sub-functions now, identifying the total absence of a body, but with too little power behind them to begin building one from nothing.
The magic shook, suspended without a way to release itself, and Kurogane looked even more diminished as it drew from him, trying to do what it was meant to. It would continue to draw more of Kurogane’s remaining spiritual energy trying to power itself, until there was nothing of him left, not even the faintest ghostly smudge on the pattern of reality. The energy of a single soul would have been enough to rejuvenate a reasonably-intact living body. To create a body to rejuvenate would need many times that power. If Fai could feed power into the active matrix… If he had more power…
His despairing glance fell on the body of the rift-beast. Something both material and ethereal...
Adrenaline and hope drove Fai to his feet. He snatched up his fallen staff and tapped into the reservoirs within the magic-engorged parasite. There was a staggering amount of energy there, and Fai wove a channel to conduct it into the elixir’s matrix. It sucked up the available power like a thirsty sponge, and Fai had to shield his eye against the resulting brilliance. Fai, linked to the flow while he maintained the channel between the creature and elixir’s field of effect, felt a faint jerk within him. But it didn’t matter. Energy hummed audibly as the magical functions identified Kurogane’s residual pattern and began reconstructing it.
It seemed to go on forever. Fai leaned on the staff and panted, not sure how he was still standing. But he stayed, until the last trickle of power flowed along his channel and he allowed the last bits of his own magic to go with it. The blinding aura faded, and Fai let himself approach. Kurogane lay facedown and motionless on the ground. Fai knelt beside him, feeling sick with anxiety.
His sword was gone. But he was there, naked, but whole, and breathing.
Fai let out a shuddering breath of his own. It was more than half sob, but it was part laughter too. He reached out to touch Kurogane’s shoulder, and he could touch it. Kurogane was solid and warm beneath his hand, and Fai marvelled. He reached for Kurogane’s forehead, smoothed his hair away the same way Kurogane had tried to do for him those times he was bedridden. He wanted to laugh and he wanted to cry, he was crying, he could feel the tears on his cheeks.
Kurogane stirred. His brow furrowed, and he blinked slowly several times. He managed to push himself up a little, and caught sight of Fai’s face. They stared at each other.
“What,” Kurogane breathed, “the fuck.”
Fai helped Kurogane to his feet, and, good gracious, the man was heavy, tall and broad and solid with muscle. They needed to find something for Kurogane to wear back to the castle, but Fai was deeply reluctant to take anything of the alchemist’s. And he was deeply reluctant to stop looking at Kurogane, who didn’t seem to care in the slightest that he was entirely unclothed. Kurogane was more interested in the feeling of his arm across Fai’s shoulders, and didn’t seem inclined to let go. Eventually they settled on taking the rectangular woven rug from the front room, and wrapping it around Kurogane’s hips for public decency’s sake. Kurogane had insisted on tearing a strip of curtain off, first, and bade the mage hold still, while the same hands that Fai had seen break men and monsters both wrapped the cloth with infinite gentleness around Fai’s head to cover his missing eye.
Speaking of the alchemist, though.
The alchemist was lying prone where Fai had last seen him. Kurogane rolled him over with his foot. The knife stuck out from the center of his chest, and they regarded him for a moment. The way he had lain, there was no way he could have simply fallen on the blade, and Fai didn’t like it. Someone like Rondart could very well have had contingencies set up, some way to let his corroded soul flee to a safe location. Fai absolutely did not believe he was dead for good. But they had time for now – soul manipulation magics were generally slow going, and Fai would have sensed if anything was happening in the immediate area. Fai wasn’t sure what sort of creature Rondart had made himself into beneath centuries of spiritual rot, but he was certain they had enough time to rest for awhile before hunting him down.
For now, he only wanted to get Kurogane back to their rooms at the castle. Fai was beyond exhausted himself, and though Kurogane tried to hide it, it was clear he was still shaken and having to adjust to having a body. Fai’s magic wasn’t replenishing itself properly, and he recalled the tearing feeling from earlier with some concern, but no regret. There was a little power there. He would live. Kurogane would live, and Fai felt a flutter in his heart at the thought.
Together, they stepped outside of the apothecary shop. The sky overhead was starless, the dark of night a faded, lightening purple in the first blushes of dawn. Fai had found the key to the shop in the front room as well, and he locked the door and hung a ‘closed’ sign on it. They could deal with cleanup later. He looked over at Kurogane, and sudden worry gripped him. The man had gone rigid beside him.
“What? What is it?” Fai asked, with mounting apprehension. He stretched out his senses, feeling for anything to indicate what was wrong. Kurogane was staring east into the blue and gold sky, the sun still low and more than half-hidden by a barn. A rooster somewhere was crowing noisily, and a fresh morning breeze stirred Kurogane’s dark hair. His eyes were watering in the rays of first light, and he brought the hand that wasn’t holding the rug at his waist up to shield them, but he didn’t turn away, drinking in the sight.
“It’s fine,” he said, to ease Fai’s worry. He lowered his hand to rest on Fai’s shoulder again, and continued staring rapt at the horizon.
This was Kurogane’s first sunrise in over half a millennium, Fai realized, and found he had to blink back tears of his own.
“It’s fine,” Kurogane repeated, and this time he was looking at Fai when he said it.
Fai swallowed the lump in his throat, and smiled up at Kurogane. He reached up to cover Kurogane’s hand with his own.
“You’re right. It is.”