Chapter Text
Faintly did the trickles of water hit the surface of the lake, and, if Quirrel peered deeper, he could see ringlets lap over each other languidly.
He could join such a wonder. Lay his aging shell to rest at the bottom and let the nail wedged into the sands mark his clandestine existence.
It was a bit curious–if he were to submerge himself right now. Twice a lifetime he lived, family and companions and scholars he knew were now all dead, some even haunted by the radiant growth. Not even his teacher, formally eternal, could remember.
And the short one too, would probably soon be gone, swallowed by the temple it seeks.
In death for its cause, would it recall him in its final moments?
Perhaps it would. Even behind the stoicism, the unreadable void beyond its mask, it sat down with him in his respite.
And perhaps that would be enough for closure.
Tentatively, he stands, leans on his nail and winces at cracking legs resounding through the vast cavern. Then pulls himself toward the lake’s edge. For such clear waters, he couldn't exactly see the bottom. Only himself. Only his own fate.
Dark blue suddenly emerges from his peripheral, sudden enough to make him consider drawing his blade.
“You make yourself a fool. Leaving your nail like that.”
Quirrel could only say nothing, standing astounded at the new company.
“Such a ferocious thing goes to waste in your claws. Pitiful.”
This stranger was certainly provocative. “You’ve a sturdy shell in your hand. I take that you're a warrior of some kind?”
“One that is looking for battle. If you're not a warrior, you'd be better off watching my victory in the arena. It's far from this dull place.”
Quirrel squinted, not that the hooded bug could see the gesture through the pallid mask.
Insulting the lake he was set on marking as his resting place? It stirred something in him, but he wasn't sure what.
“Your stance changes. You know some things about combat after all?”
“I may know more than you.” Quirrel slips a bit more bite than he had intended, then realizes his own ire. “But I only carry this nail to protect my shell. I am a mere traveler who came to see this decaying kingdom–”
“Show me.”
“Pardon?”
“Your skill.” The shell on the stranger’s arm is drawn, fracturing into rotor blades, thin and metallic and akin to a petal. “I want to see it.”
“I'm afraid I will not. I have no intention or reason to fight you, nor do I find it necessary to fight one of the few clear-minded–”
“You've scorned me, pitiful one. You claim that you are better, yet you throw your nail away like a fool.”
So this stranger's stubborn too. Quirrel refrains from sighing and picks up his weapon.
“...Alright, if it is to appease you. Do know that I will hold back.”
A blur of steel dangerously soars past his mask, fortunately curving around him instead back to his wielder. At that cue, Quirrel lunged forth and aimed to strike the shield. Daringly did he angle his nail in the hopes to fling it off the bug’s arm. It reverberated, the metal clanging together, out into the lake and walls of the hollow.
Though he couldn't see the stranger's face, he could sense the stagger in his legs. The shield was likely light then, if he could add more weight…
He steps backwards, lifting his weapon, pushing harder and harder till the other would fall to the ground. Weirdly, the other let himself fall, shell tumbling off to the side.
“It seems I've disarmed you.” Quirrel pointed his nail, “Now if you'd please–”
A subtle whirring. Quirrel leaned back, though he lost his balance, and found himself on the floor too. Over his head, the flowering shield revolves and flies fastly, nearly slashing his mask.
“You wield quick reflexes, but you'll never match my own.” He looms over, now standing. Him and the shadow that veils his face.
“Mmm, is that so?”
“You are on the ground.” One step closer. A blade juts out from the shield and presses against his neck. “I was nearly excited to see if someone could actually challenge me, but it seems you are another pitiful squib.”
Yet the stranger doesn't apply more pressure, only letting the petal linger. Quirrel scans the stranger, waiting, watching, to see if he'd do anything else, and when he doesn't, he stares at the dirt beside him.
This could work.
He sweeps his hand along the sand, hurling it at the bug. He retracts his arms to rub at his eyes, dropping his shell in the process. Quirrel knocks him down even further, to his level, with a mere kick of his leg.
“Weh!”
The dirt settles as the stranger's back hits the ground. Nail still in his claws, he rushes to the other and pins him down.
“You use cheap tricks, old one,” He groans as Quirrel holds him down with his weight. “Do you really call yourself a warrior?”
“Traveler. I believe I called myself a traveler. Now would you stop this silly fight?”
That received a grumble, but it didn't seem like he'd persist, so Quirrel removed himself quietly.
“...” The stranger got up, yet instead of heading off, he stands and stares.
“...Are you not going? I do remember you saying something of an arena, no?”
“Again.”
“Pardon?”
“I do not want to be bested by a fossilizing runt. Again.”
Quirrel waved his hands. “No, no, I clearly stated that I am a traveler. I truly do not wish to fight.”
“...Old one.”
“Aged one.”
“Vintage one.”
“Ancient one.”
“...I have a name,” Quirrel huffed.
And was ignored. “My name is Tiso. I hope you remember the name of the warrior who will strike you down.”
“...”
“What?”
Two lives I have lived and I have never met a bug so incredibly rude…
“I am sorry, Tiso,” he made the extra effort to enunciate his name, “but I'm afraid I'll have to decline. Because I–”
–have plans to throw himself into the lake once alone? Could he really burden a stranger with the knowledge of his fate?
Quirrel shifted in place, the other waiting for his hollow excuses. He noted how the bug would rhythmically tap his fingers in the air as his hands lay idle on his sides.
“…”
Suddenly the lack of weight on his head becomes apparent all at once. His regrets. His purposelessness. Though all those sorrows he had felt were all fading retrospections, the corporal emotion still wormed its way to the present. And at that pain, Quirrel clutches where the mask used to be.
“... I'm sorry,” he says instead, “Please… leave me be. I just want to rest.”
The bug lurks around a bit more before finally leaving. Quirrel stares, assuring himself that he wouldn't return for some kind of ambush attack.
“...”
The water. Quirrel bunches sand in his palms as he sits down. Leakage from the cracks in the cave drips again. Drips louder.
What now? There couldn't be anything else to do. He was certain that he had done everything. His teacher's wishes. Seeing marvels. Studying them.
And yet there was a deep hesitance, and at that, he chortles to himself. Laughs at his own instinct, the root nature that haunts all of existence, all insects, all creations, though he still feared the other option of slow decay and the decomposition of his shell, where it'd be refined into finer grains and be taken by the lake to inevitably join the city's tears.
He should've let the visitor kill him. There would be no complications, no rising regrets.
“Old one.”
Quirrel peered over his shoulder. The stranger was there yet again in the dark.
“Tiso.”
He drowned the urge to reach for his nail. ‘You're either alert or dead.’ Was there meaning to those words anymore?
“...” A look of confliction seemed to trouble his face, yet Quirrel couldn't clearly tell with the hood. “I want you to join me.”
“I'm sorry?”
“Come with me to the arena. I would like you to see me at my best.”
“...”
He's had no memory of ever going to that coliseum. The only idea he's had of such a place is danger and grime.
“You’re a traveler, are you not? Does a ring of glory and fervor not beckon you?”
“…”
He could live another day. See another wonder. He didn't have anything to lose, not time, not his own shell. Did he have any reason to decline?
“I suppose. Though I'll let you know that my combat skills have dulled with my age.”
“That is fine. Let us go already. I want us to be away from this sickening place as soon as possible.”
Quirrel lets himself be dragged by the stranger, into the shadows, and again he notices the tremors in the other’s claws.
It was peculiar. For someone so seemingly passionate, he presumed it'd be easier to read Tiso’s thoughts, yet he couldn't tell if his actions were out of an unwanted perceptiveness or persistence.
But he buries the matter for now and follows, not wanting to make the situation more awkward than it already is.
They don't share a word between them as they trek their short walk through the cemetery, letting the anguished grunts of husks and sentinels speak for them until they reach the maws of the elevator. Quirrel takes in the design, the intricate metalwork and the king’s crest as its main accent while Tiso simply steps toward the lever.
“I'd appreciate it if you'd hurry up.”
Quirrel pauses, giving one last glance back to the cemetery, to the looming tunnel leading to that lake. He steps backward into the mechanism, never taking his eyes away from the waters.
“... Sorry, I seem to be quite out of it. Shall we go?”
Tiso suddenly looks away, as if he too were attentively staring at something.
“...Yes.”
The metal doors shut them in with a pull of a lever, the silence of the resting grounds now replaced with the beating and chugging of the elevator chain. It descends deeper and deeper, taking them farther away from that tunnel.
And yet Quirrel kept his gaze fixed, never looking away until the lake was fully out of sight.