"Stop."

She freezes immediately, every muscle locking in place like she's a statue. Her palms are both turned towards the training dummy, at a slight angle from each other, one right above the dummy's left breast and one to the right of its center, only a few inches away from its surface. Her hits were sufficiently powerful that the sudden stop caused a small clap of air around her hands.

The Fist starts to walk between the apprentices in the yard, examining their form critically. He issues wordless corrections here and there, lifting someone's arm by half an inch or adjusting the angle of their stance by a degree. 

Annika's form is perfect, as usual. 

"Continue," he says, once he's done a full round of the yard.

One-two-THREE...

"Good job out there."

The Fist usually leaves before all of the apprentices, ostensibly to let them unwind and socialise without the pressure of an instructor around, but Annika usually leaves right after him because she wants to do neither of those things. Still, she's surprised to see him waiting for her like that. 

"Thank you, Fist Joo Tae-seo."

He resumes walking and motions with his head for her to follow.

...sure.

"A little bit too good, though, don't you think?"

She blinks. "Fist Joo Tae-seo?"

"Why have you not taken the test to move to the next belt?"

"—I am not done with this belt yet."

"No? That seemed like very good form to me. I didn't correct you once."

"It's still not perfect."

"What's perfection, to you, Annika?"

...what kind of philosophical question is that. "May I think about it for a few seconds?"

"You may."

It transpires that the location he's leading her two is one of the gardens, the one with the weeping willows. It's the season for them to flower, so the gardens are particularly pretty right now. He walks along the babbling brook, arms folded behind his back, looking up at the trees and sky, seemingly perfectly content to wait however long she needs.

She watches him for a bit. He's wearing the instructor's gi, loose around his body except for the belt keeping his trousers up. He's extremely muscled under the gi, the kind of person you might say "built like a house" about, and his head is shaved. That's someone who has spent decades honing their body until it became a precisely controlled weapon. 

"...your footsteps, Fist-nim."

"—hmm?" He pauses and turns around to look at them.

"They're regular. The distance between them is always the same. The angle is always the same. Mine aren't."

"And so you would say that I walk perfectly, and you do not?"

She nods.

"Why do you want your footsteps to be perfectly regular, Annika?"

She blinks. "Because it means I am in full control of my body."

"Elaborate?"

"It means no wasted movements. No misspent energy. Everything goes where I want it to go, every time."

"And why do you want that?"

...where's this line of questioning even going? She's not at all sure how to answer this question.

He catches that confusion. "Surely you don't just want perfect control of your body for itself? You walk to get places. You talk to be understood. You fight to defeat your foe. What are you perfecting your body for?"

"To drive away Surt." If that's how far he wants to go, that's her end goal.

Fist Joo Tae-seo raises both eyebrows in a rare display of surprise. "I would not have expected that from you."

She quashes the instinct to make an annoyed noise. It'd be disrespectful. "There is nothing more important in the world. I don't want... glory or fame. And I'm not... I don't talk about it because everyone thinks it's childish. That I'm just saying it. So I don't say it. But I want to do it. It's only going to be people who want to do it that will do it, so someone has to."

His surprise is replaced by understanding while she speaks. "You want to be perfect to defeat—"

"Drive away," she says, then winces. "My apologies, Fist-nim."

"Think nothing of it. But elaborate?"

"...I don't know that Surt can be defeated. Odin tried. Thanatos tried. But he can be sealed, and driven away. ...if it is possible to defeat him, I want to defeat him. But what's important is that he's gone."

"I see."

...if he's not going to say anything she also won't.

After a few thoughtful seconds he resumes walking. "So you seek perfect control of your own body to use it in a fight against a terrible foe. You have an overriding goal in service of which you do all other things."

"Yes."

"That is the way of the monk. Nothing more, nothing less. It is to live in service of your goal, work in service of your goal, train and fight and eat and sleep in service of your goal. Every movement must be in service of your goal."

She nods. She knows that; that's why she chose to be a monk in the first place.

"And so your movements should not be about themselves."

"...I'm not sure I understand, Fist-nim."

"You said you did not want to advance to the next belt until you perfected your form. Do you believe the forms of your next belt will use nothing of what you have learned and practised here?"

"No."

"Tell me, if you could walk up to Surt right now and kill him with a single touch, would you do it?"

"Yes."

"Yes? Would you not want to perfect your body first?"

"...maybe afterwards."

"If you believed that you did not need perfection to defeat Surt, only to know the bare minimum of each form, would you rush through your lessons instead?"

"...yes."

"Do you believe your current forms will be the ones you will be using against Surt and his minions?"

"No."

"So the reason to learn your current forms is to learn your future forms. The reason to learn your future forms is to learn the ones that come after. And the reason to do it all is to drive Surt away.

"And the reason to seek perfection in your current forms, then, must be because they will somehow help you defeat Surt. But if they are already perfect enough, if your instructor is telling you that you should move on..."

Okay see this is kind of disconcerting now and she's not sure how to respond.

...he starts laughing. "You think, 'Fist Joo Tae-seo is not trying to fight Surt, I am. My instructors are not trying to fight Surt, I am. I may be perfect enough for what Fist Joo Tae-seo has in mind but if that were enough then Surt would no longer be here.' Is that about it?"

She nods, a bit, trying not to feel too mortified. She knows that's a very arrogant thought, but...

"That may be so, but regardless of whether I want to defeat Surt or not, my footsteps are perfectly regular, and yours are not."

...oh.

"I see you understand, now. Do not focus on perfecting every single aspect of everything you do. Do not focus on perfection at all, except in service of your goal. In fact, seek to work as little as possible, while still reaching your goal. The necessary perfections will be achieved on your way there; you will know what to do next, not because it perfects you, but because it brings you closer to your goal."

"...you."

"Me!"

"Why are you here?"

"To see you."

".......why."

"Can't I just have missed a friend?"

"We're not friends."

"No? Who are your friends, then?"

"So do you wanna be my friend?"

She starts to walk past him. "I don't have time for this."

He blocks her way. "You don't? I thought you were done for the day."

She stops and glares at him. "Have you been following me?"

"No, I'm just guessing." He nods in the direction of the other monks leaving the practice yard right after her. "Is Georgina here?"

"Who."

"That girl who wanted to be a mage then changed her mind and decided to be an elemental monk instead."

"I don't know."

"No, I think she hadn't left the Academy by the time I did either so I'm not sure what happened to her. But I imagine it must've been quite a readjustment, at that point, to try to become a monk after spending so long preparing to be a mage."

"...I guess."

What's up with the non-sequitur?

"Do you wanna come with me to Prontera to grab something to eat somewhere?"

"Why."

"I told you, I wanted to see my friend."

"We're not friends."

"But we will be. Come on, it's not going to hurt, relaxing sometimes is good."

"Not for me."

"Yeah? Do your instructors look like they're wound up all tense the same way as you all the time? Because they all look pretty relaxed to me."

Well, they're not trying to deal with Surt.

"...and I'm pretty sure you're going to need more than just your physical form to be a proper monk. You haven't gotten your first Spirit Sphere yet, have you?"

"...how did you know?"

"Guessed. I really think you won't regret it. Come on!"

"Fine. Let me wash up first."

Prontera, capital of the Kingdom of Rune-Midgard, is not as cosmopolitan as an Eden Group lounge but it's definitely aiming for something like it. It's by far the largest city in the Kingdom, and it is, to a large extent, "where it's all at". The palace, the guard and the army, the Cathedral of the Church of Odin, the Prontera Merchant Strip, Odin's Plaza, the Blacksmith Guild. Adventurers have Eden, but everyone else has Prontera.

And the St. Capitolina Abbey, where prospective monks can train their bodies and minds to razor-sharp points, is a short walk from it, and it's where Annika and Taharqi are coming from.

Even when not training she's still dressed like a monk: handwraps and footwraps and chestwraps and the loose trousers tied to her waist and ankles. The only concession to casualness she's made was a loose tunic and a satchel over her shoulder. "Where are we going?"

"Aren't you from Prontera? You should tell me."

She gives him a look.

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding. There's a—oh, but I should ask, do you have any dietary restrictions?"

"No."

"Likes or dislikes?"

"No."

"Then, there's this restaurant with Amatsu cuisine that is to die for, I hope you'll like it."

"Hm."

Another advantage of the restaurant is that it's reasonably close to the eastern city gate, so they don't have to walk that long.

They don't exude Adventurer Energy™ yet, but Annika in particular has more than enough "I will mow you down" energy to make up for it; no peddlers try to bother them, and no urchins try to pick their pockets.

The restaurant is decorated like the owner wanted to cram in as many elements of Amatsu culture into a single place as they could: paper lanterns, cherry blossoms, tiny trees, ideograms painted in fake inkbrush, serpentine dragons, the whole shebang. It results in an atmosphere that you can't quite find anywhere else—certainly not in Amatsu itself—and it has its own charm.

(Laying it on a bit thick if you ask him.)

Annika looks... curious. There's a spark of interest in her eye as she takes in the environment, her gaze barely moving but nevertheless looking at everything.

(She can't do the thing Fists can, where they only need a single glance at something to know almost everything they need to know about it, but she's been practising, and she will resist the urge to move her eyes every which way.)

...that's kind of adorable, actually. He grabs a table for the two of them and asks, "Are you familiar with Amatsu—in general, culture and cuisine and all?"

She's brought back to reality by his question and tries to settle back into her usual scowl. "Not very."

It's weird that the table is so low and that they have to kneel rather than sit, but interesting.

"Then I'm honoured to introduce you to a small part of it."

...she doesn't like his smile. It's too, too... she doesn't know. But it makes her feel uncomfortable.

He doesn't think it does, actually. 

"So what have you been up to?"

"Training."

"No bounties?"

"No time."

"I'm sure you could find the time. How about we do one together sometime soon?"

"...maybe."

A waitress chooses this moment to show up with the menus. "I come back to collect your orders in a little," she says in a pretty strong accent. "Please make yourselves comfortable." She bows and leaves.

Annika accepts the menu and starts scanning through it. "...I don't know what any of this is."

"Raw fish with rice."

"No, I mean it, most of it is raw fish with rice. We could get a sampling platter if you would like to try it out."

...you know what, sure, why not, she's here already. She's not sure why she's here, but. She nods.

"And I assume no rice wine?"

"I don't drink alcohol."

"Mandarin juice?"

"...sure."

He calls the waitress over to order that, then, before turning back to her. "So. Surt."

Her eyes turn sharp as she stares at him.

"He's the reason you're doing all of this, right?"

"Was that another 'guess'?"

He shrugs. "Kind of. From the way you reacted around the topic, whenever it came up. And from how you usually dodge it."

"Why are you bringing it up?"

"I want you to be in my party, and I want my party to kill him."

"He can't be killed."

"Seal him. Drive him off. I want revenge."

"Hm."

"My father was the pharaoh."

Wait what.

"I didn't care about him, understand," he says, which is only about 70% true. "But I cared about my sister. My aunt. My friends. Everyone Surt took from me. From everyone else. And I don't want him to take anyone anymore. And I want to drive my dagger through whatever passes for his skull and watch the light go out of his eyes, even if just for a moment. And I don't want him to take anyone, anywhere, anymore. It's been too long."

She... doesn't think she's seen this guy be serious like this before. But it starts making sense of him, a little bit, of how he seemed to be... good. Driven. Skilled. She didn't understand what drove him, when he was coming off like a spoiled boy with nothing at stake, but this? She can get behind this.

"Why do you want me?"

"Why do you want to kill Surt?"

"...I don't have a story like yours."

"What story do you have?"

"I don't."

"And so?"

"So I don't need one. He needs to be stopped, he needs to be—gone. There's nothing more important in the world, I don't need to have lost anyone to know that—"

"This is true of everyone. He's not more important to you than he is to everyone else. He'll kill everyone just as dead."

"I'm not everyone else. I'm me."

"And that's why I want you. Because you didn't have a story, you didn't have a reason, you saw the biggest problem in the world and you decided that it could not stand and that if no one else was going to do anything about it you would. You looked at your options, you thought about it for a long time, and you decided on the path that was most likely to get you what you wanted and you went for it. Nothing will stand in your way."

...that's all correct, yes, and she's a bit annoyed that he knows so much about her but she guesses it might have been obvious? Fist Joo Tae-seo didn't think it was so obvious a few weeks ago when she told him about it but maybe it's obvious when you pay attention to the right things. "You could've said all of that earlier."

"I could've."

"So why this?"

"Because if we're going to be in a party we should be friends."

"I mean it. You have trouble trusting people, trusting that anyone else wants this as much as you do. You have a hard time connecting to people, when everyone else looks at the same problems you do and doesn't see what a screaming emergency it is and why we should all be pouring everything we've got into it. And so even if you believe my words with your head right now, I'll still need to win your heart. I want you to be comfortable with me."

...okay, she sees the logic. "I don't think dinner is the best way to do that."

"If we're going to party, there are going to be many dinners in the future! We should get used to it. But no, I think it's only nearly dying together that'll do it."

"...I don't understand you."

"Really? I thought I was being pretty clear."

She shakes her head.

"Don't worry about it, you'll have plenty of time to get used to me."

"I didn't say I was going to join your party."

"No, I know, my job here will be to convince you to. And I think at the very least you're sufficiently interested that you'll agree to more dinners."

"...you'll pay for the teleport."

"Really? You'll benefit from the training, too."

"I can get training elsewhere."

"You drive a hard bargain."

"Why are you even interested in a bounty in Payon?"

"Because I found out about it though the grapevine, not the bounty boards."

"So?"

"That means it pays better and it's more likely to be interesting."

"Why?"

"Anyone can accept a bounty from a board, so there's no filtering—"

"That's what Eden ranks are for."

"—kind of, but they are not really very, ah... discerning?"

"Discerning."

"Anyone can earn ranks, if they do enough bounties, but someone who is better networked and has people vouching for them is likely to be a cut above the rest."

"Then increase the rank."

"Yes, I suppose you can reduce it to that, but then they're also forced to offer compensation that matches a higher rank bounty."

"So they're cheap."

"That's... a possibility, yes. Another possibility is that it's not dangerous like a higher rank bounty would be per se but it requires a more delicate touch or carefulness."

"So which is it?"

"I don't actually know. I wasn't told what the bounty is."

"...which suggests it's the latter, right? Anyway, fine, I'll cover your teleport in case it's not worthwhile but I think it will be."

"Alright, fine."

"Atta girl, let's go."

Payon, the Mountain Village, earned its moniker from the fact that it's situated at the foot of a mountain (though people from the Republic of Schwarzwald would argue that it's more of a hill), which distinguishes it from most other settlements in the Kingdom of Rune-Midgard. That's far from its most notable feature, though: you can barely see the mountain, as the village is embedded sufficiently deep within a forest the trees and the canopy block its view, and the Archers' Guild is located there, too. The more relevant feature for Annika and Taharqi, though, is the cave.

Directly north of the village is a seemingly-natural cave that leads underground, but not into the mountain, and in recent times—the past two or three hundred years—this cave has been used by locals to bury their dead. Over time, they've had to go deeper and deeper, and eventually they found... a city. Or the ruins of one, an earlier version of Payon that got somehow buried underground and forgotten after centuries. And even before magic resurfaced in the world a hundred years ago, there were spirits and demons there, if only a few. 

Magic resurfaced in the world, and now there are more than only a few.

"The seals are sufficient most of the time," the old priestess says, gesturing at the lip of the cave, which has a couple of pieces of paper attached to it with runes on them, as well as several more remnants of what were probably other pieces of paper that got burnt to ashes. "They get worn out, over time, and have to be put back up, but we have strapling adventurers coming over to train against the zombies all the time, and it's usually not a problem and they can hold the zombies back."

"And when you say 'most of the time'...?"

She sighs. "It's been... worse, recently. More zombies, reforming more quickly, being stronger. We've had to replace the seals three times over the last week, when it used to be once every month or two. The adventurers aren't enough to stem the tide, anymore. And we don't know what changed."

"So you would like us to figure out what changed and maybe deal with it?"

"It... could be very dangerous. Even learning of the origin of the disturbance would be good enough, for us."

"Why didn't you put up a public bounty? If it's a problem."

"It's... a delicate matter. Adventurers are not..." She is talking directly to two of them and should not be disparaging. "Most adventurers are not respectful of the dead, and we fear what they'd do, if they came in higher numbers for more than just training against some undead." Even that is disrespectful, in her opinion, "training". The point of it is to help those souls find rest, not becoming stronger. But she's too practical-minded to complain, and they don't have enough hands to deal with the problem without adventurers to help. "We want a lighter touch, and discretion and care." Which she doesn't know if these two can offer, but, well, it's probably still better than anyone who happened to see a bounty ad, that these two came well-recommended.

"We understand. And I believe we can do this, Mother Ga-in. I am very used to matters that require discretion," what with how he's a rogue, "and my partymate is from the St. Capitolina Abbey and will be careful and respectful."

Oh. That... actually is pretty reassuring. Especially the second thing. "In that case... I will have someone guide you to the lower levels of the cave. Was there anything else you would like to know before I do that?"

"Actually, yes. Do you happen to have a map, even if not totally accurate, of your best reckoning of what the cave is like? And may I have a look at your seals, as well as, if possible, a record of the rates of their decay over time and how many undead have been emerging? Also..."

"This is about as far as I can go," says the person Mother Ga-in got to serve as their guide. According to the map, every other path in this cave leads to a dead end, and this corridor is the only one that'll take them further down. And rather than just a few paper seals taped to the walls, a proper wooden fence and door were built there, with multiple seals hanging from ropes attached to the ceiling and walls.

All but three of the seals are completely burnt off.

Taharqi whistles, low and long. "Something's gone down here, huh? I suppose we'll have to find out what."

"Good luck, and may the light of the Goddess guide your path," he says, before bowing and turning back the way they came.

"Did you hear that capital-G Goddess there?" Taharqi says in an undertone to Annika when their guide is gone. "'Cause I heard it. I did not expect this place to be Feyjan."

She shrugs and turns back around to examine the door and the remaining seals. The undead they've dealt with so far have not been particularly dangerous, and while unlike some monks she is not particularly specced for Life- and Light-elemental attacks she can modify her stuff on the fly to include it and that makes her punches hit the zombies quite a lot harder than they otherwise would, which was already pretty hard.

They were really very numerous, though, and she can hear the vague echoing of their collective shuffling in the distance.

"These seals are more powerful than the ones outside."

"That's probably why they've held this long, yeah. Seems like they've been under assault for a while."

Annika nods then closes her eyes and concentrates for a second... and a ball of blue flame bursts into existence in front of her and starts orbiting in circles around her, slowly.

"What's the duration?"

"Indefinite."

"—really?"

She tsks. "Thirty seconds, but I can renew it indefinitely."

"Understood. The range is as far as the light hits?"

"Seven meters around me."

"Alright. And you can except me?"

"Yes." She's said all of this to him before but she supposes it's good to confirm it before it becomes necessary or any of them makes an assumption. "Your poison affects spectral targets?"

"Yeah. Don't ask me how, but Vallynn definitely had a point when he said all of this is magic so I'm just not questioning it. Magic poison that hits ghosts, sure."

"Hmm."

"Ready to rumble?"

"Yes."

"Then let's go."

And he steps into the shadows.

...that was very strange to witness. It was like he walked somewhere except it wasn't anywhere and then he was gone.

She pushes the door open and steps through.

She felt some of this when she stepped into the cave but past these seals she feels it a lot more keenly: a sudden drop in temperature, like she just got past some invisible barrier that was keeping the cold isolated from the outside. Except it's not cold—they were deep enough in that it had already been very cold—but rather something like the absence of a more fundamental kind of warmth, like the feeling of being surrounded by life.

Annika isn't surrounded by life, here. She is surrounded by its distinct lack, and her soul is pushing against its boundaries to try to fill the negative space left by it, and that feels... cold.

Her soul is very well-secured, thank you very much, so she's going to ignore the cold. Her clothes are enough to keep her actually physically warm, and everything else is a matter of skill.

There are more undead here, shambling zombies and skeletons aiming for the adventurers as soon as they notice them. Despite Mother Ga-in's worries about the resting places of souls, it is deeply unclear if anyone's souls are still in there, with the way these creatures don't seem to respond to any stimuli and just mindlessly attack. And they go down easy, as easy as the ones closer to the surface, even if they're more numerous.

The first new thing down here is horongs: small floating purple balls of flame that often hang around haunted sites and cemeteries. No one really has an idea of why they exist or what they are—people have theorised that they might be ghosts, but most scholars and priests agree that they're probably not—and they tend to not be very aggressive—except when they are. But that doesn't mean they're harmless; even when they're not being aggressive, just their presence starts draining the vitality of any living thing around them, and spending too long near one will make you feel cold and lethargic and tired until you either waste away or (more often) are picked off by something more dangerous nearby.

None of this is particularly dangerous, though, and more importantly, none of this is enough to justify the rapid decay of the seals. This is still all downstream from whatever's happening.

They need to keep going.

The next new thing is proper spirits. Dressed in burial clothes, with burnt seals attached to their foreheads, intangible and (until Annika's holy fire lights them) invisible and filled with regret and a desire for vengeance.

Okay that's more concerning. Actual ghosts are actually reasonably rare, and the seals used in the burials are most often meant to keep dark influences away from the dead rather than the other day around. The dead are supposed to find their way, on their own, and it usually takes rather a lot to keep them here. 

(The image that comes to mind, then, is that of the Lord of Glastheim. If something like that found its way into this cave—or maybe was buried here all along—the whole village might need to be evacuated. She hopes it's not that.)

They're noticeably stronger, too, and clearly capable of seeing Taharqi despite his cloaking. Their attacks tend to be psychic in nature, but they're not beyond summoning ghostly weapons to do some decidedly non-ghostly damage to their targets.

So they can now try to implement the strategy they planned on earlier. Despite the fact that they can see Taharqi even while he's cloaking, he's still mostly too fast for them to deal with if they're not directly focusing on him.

And Annika's main job is making sure they can't do that. She does this by being right up in their faces and distracting them with inescapable blows, while being able to soak up a lot of damage raw, in addition to having decent self-regeneration. Plus, she's less affected by the psychic aspect of the ghosts' attacks, inhabiting a nearly unshakable meditative state of mind.

(Monks are bullshit.)

...is that the sound of a bell?

Taharqi and Annika both stop to look in the direction the sound came from, once the ghosts are dealt with.

There was only a single jingle, coming from over yonder, but the weak lanterns and torches lighting the way and the light of Annika's Ruwach are not enough to pierce far enough through the darkness.

"...that sounds promising."

"Mm."

"After you, milady," he says, and steps into the shadows.

There are more undead, and dead, and spirits. Every now and then, they hear a bell, and they follow its sound. And as they do, these ruins become stranger and stranger.

The ceiling is high—very, very high—their path goes further underground, and the ceiling doesn't follow, until they can't see it anymore. There are trees, petrified somehow, their leaves gone. The buildings get less and less ruined and dilapidated. These lanterns were probably not lit by the living.

It's like a whole village got teleported underground, unchanged, and preserved in stasis, except for all of its inhabitants.

The feeling of negative pressure intensifies the further in they go, and after enough walking she stops and raises a hand.

"What's up?" he reappears to ask. He's trying to project his usual aura of cheer but he's clearly being affected by the spiritual pressures a lot more than Annika is: there's this tension in the corners of his eyes, and a vein in his neck is pulsating, and he's doing his best not to wet his lips too often even though his mouth feels dry.

"There," she says, pointing at a specific point in the darkness. "It's not moving. But it's powerful." Which is obvious, given the givens, but she felt it worth reiterating.

He squints. "I can't see it."

"Me neither." She looks at him out of the corner of her eyes. "Are you... feeling alright?"

"No. But there's nothing to it, we have a job."

"Mm." She'll teleport them away if necessary.

Taharqi swallows dryly and nods. "Alright. Lead the way." And he's gone again.

Annika hasn't managed the trick of maintaining five spirit spheres up, but she can do two, and that'll have to do. She closes her eyes, breathes in, and finds her center. This isn't difficult, as she's been maintaining close focus on it in order to resist the influence of the demon or spirit, but now she needs to look directly at it and it takes some concentration. 

Then she splits two pieces off her soul and externalises them. It's about as unpleasant as it sounds. They'll regenerate, eventually, and they're being propped up by mana, but she can definitely feel the lack. They take the shape of small blue spheres floating lazily around her, available for her to eventually use when needed and useful.

And she resumes walking, slowly, paying attention to her surroundings and trigger happy about her defences.

The dead and undead become rarer and rarer until they stop appearing altogether, and the unease grows heavy enough that Annika herself will start feeling unsettled. The jingles don't become particularly more frequent, but their spatial source starts to become more obvious as they get closer.

Taharqi appears again and lifts a hand, breathing heavily. "I need," he says, taking in a shivering gasp, "a moment." His skin is glistening with sweat and he's no longer managing to keep his face cool—probably some of the water on his face is tears rather than sweat.

...he's wide open. Anyone could sneak up on him. 

She guesses the thing she's feeling but multiplied a hundredfold might explain it? But it seems like a very maladaptive reaction, to become worse at surviving when he needs it most.

Still, she can wait for him to get over whatever it is he's going through, and watch his back for him.

If he were on his own he wouldn't have let his guard drop this far. It's only because she's here that he's allowing himself to show this much vulnerability.

Being visible... helps. Annika having visible reactions to his presence helps. He had been starting to feel intense amounts of unreality, like he didn't exist and the world was just moving on without him, like he died at some point and didn't notice and his soul just kept walking. This, here, feels more like he's part of the world, even if there's still constant external pressure to convince him otherwise. There's another person right here and it. Helps. A lot.

He takes another deep, shuddering breath, tries to focus on the feeling of the air in his lungs and the dirt under his feet and the clothes and sweat on his skin, then nods. "Okay. I'm... ready."

She peers at him. "Are you sure?"

That makes him smile. "Yes, but I appreciate your concern."

"...you are my party member. If you die I will need to teleport away."

Whatever you need to tell yourself, buddy. 

"Lead the way," he says again, and vanishes into thin air, trying to hold onto the feeling of being alive as he does.

A few more steps forward, still slowly, still making sure to be ready to fight at a moment's notice—

"Wait."

"Again?" she asks, impatiently.

"No. Can you see her?"

Her? She looks in the direction they've been walking towards and... yeah, actually. She can vaguely see a silhouette she could believe is a woman. ...girl? It's small. "That's the source of the disturbance. A ghost?" A really powerful one, if so.

"I think so." He doesn't vanish again, though, and starts walking towards it. His discomfort seems mostly forgotten, or ignored, in favour of getting to the ghost quickly.

"—what are you doing," she says, catching up with him after a dumbfounded moment.

"I think she needs help."

"...it's a powerful spirit that has been agitating and empowering the dead."

"Maybe. Those things aren't contradictory. And I don't want to not even try to help."

"That'll get you killed."

"Then I guess I'll die."

This is really stupid. But he's her party member and she shouldn't abandon him, even if he's being really stupid.

He's not sprinting—his sprinting speed would require Annika to actually run to keep up—but he's walking at a brisk pace.

The silhouette does eventually resolve into a young teenage girl, sitting cross-legged on the ground.

...a teenage foxgirl sitting cross-legged on the ground.

She's holding a long wooden stick with a bell at the end, and the bell's jingles happen whenever she adjusts her sitting position. Her chin-length, golden hair hides the spot where ears would be on a human, but a furry pair of fox ears poking out of the top of her hair suggests there wouldn't be any. There are various patches of golden fur on her body, and her hands and feet are replaced by digitigrade paws (with opposable thumbs in the case of the hands). Her eyes are red and slitted and reflect light like a cat's.

She has nine fox tails, each about as long as her whole body.

...some kind of cross between a ninetails demon and a ghost? She really doesn't think they're prepared to take that on, and gets ready to teleport the both of them out at the first sign of trouble.

Taharqi seems to have, if anything, dropped his guard completely, seemingly completely ignoring that this might become a fight. He slows his steps, too, and extends his hands slightly out, palms forward. This of course doesn't make him any less dangerous, it takes a fraction of a blink of an eye for him to have his daggers in hand, but it's the thought that counts.

The girl is hugging her knees and staring off into the distance, rocking back and forth slowly and looking very distracted. The mounting pressure of unreality morphs into sharp spikes pushing against the skin of their souls, almost turning into physical pain in their hearts and lungs, making it feel like they can't breathe. 

And then the girl notices them and spins around, dropping to all fours and baring her teeth. Her ears press flat against her head and her tails stick out back, taut. A high-pitched sound comes out of the back of her throat, a long continuous whine on the verge of becoming a scream.

Annika's metaphorical grip on her Skills tightens, but she won't initiate hostilities.

"Easy, easy," he says, in a low voice, not showing his teeth, and spreading his hands a bit farther away from his body. "We're not here to hurt you, we're not enemies." The previous tension he'd been showing has almost entirely evaporated, though he's still sweating. The feeling isn't gone, but he's focusing on something more important, now.

The whining sound she's making starts to fade out slowly as the two newcomers don't advance nor do anything else threatening, until she's completely silent—except for the nervous jingle of her bell, which is twitching slightly from her tense grip.

"I'm not going to get any closer if you don't want me to. I can just sit down right here. Would that be okay?"

...she doesn't say anything but she doesn't seem to be getting more hostile?

"Easy, slowly," he says again, dropping down to a crouch and then to a cross-legged seat.

He's making himself more and more vulnerable. A cross-legged seat is a lot harder to jump out of and wastes precious time, in case it becomes a fight.

"Annika, could you sit, too? It won't mean much if I'm the only one doing that, you're just as much of a threat, if not more."

...he cannot be serious. 

He's serious. Seriously?

"Please?"

Fine. But he's covering her resurrection if they die to this. She sits down, in a lotus pose.

"There's a girl, thank you Annika."

The foxgirl watches this warily, not dropping out of her ready stance herself. 

She looks terrified.

"We can be patient. Take as long as you need, we're not going anywhere unless you tell us to. We just want to chat."

...she's going to trust him, on this, because it does seem like it might be working. Or doing something, at least, since they're not being attacked.

It also gives him time to readjust himself, psychologically and spiritually. The foxgirl's strong reaction is also grounding, though perhaps less than it could be, since she's the source of the feeling and if anyone would be able to perceive someone who doesn't exist it would be a fox spirit. Still, he can try to, as Annika does, find his center, and ground himself in his body.

After several minutes of watching them she does start to relax, hiding her teeth again and slowly letting her ears perk up and point at the two of them. Her tails are still mostly held rigid, but there's some give, now, a couple of them being a bit more relaxed than others, their tips flicking here and there.

That's promising. "My name's Taharqi, and my friend's is Annika." The girl probably caught it but it bears reiterating. "What's yours?"

"Moonlight," she says, after a few more seconds. "My name is Moonlight Flower."

"It's nice to meet you, Moonlight."

She looks down at herself, then carefully lowers down to a seat, again, with her knees once more pulled close to her chest. "It's... nice to meet you too.

"Mum says I shouldn't talk to strangers."

...oh no.

"We're not strangers, though, are we? Now you know our names! We're acquaintances."

"I don't think that's how it works."

"It's a little bit how it works. But you're right, you shouldn't trust everyone who shows up. We're going to stay away, though, and if we do anything scary or dangerous you could kill us."

She tilts her head a bit, and three of her tails start swishing from side to side, then she nods. "That makes sense."

"Do you live here, Moonlight Flower?"

She shakes her head, and her bell jingles. "I'm waiting for Mum to come back. She told me to wait here until she got back."

"Have you been waiting long?"

She nods. "It feels like it's been forever. But she said she'd be back soon."

"Where did your mum go?"

"I don't know. There was an attack, I think?"

"An attack? Is your mum a powerful adventurer?"

"My mum is powerful, but I don't know what an adventurer is. She's a priestess at the temple."

"Ah, that makes sense. She protects the temple?"

"And the village. Everyone counts on her. She's really important." Moonlight Flower starts tracing circles on the dust with her right lower paw. "She's always busy because of that. But this time it was really important, because we were attacked."

"Was it an attack on the temple? Or the village?"

"The village. I think. She told me not to go outside."

So... this is meant to be the temple? Taharqi looks around and, yeah, he can see the open area being a temple's garden, now that he thinks about it. There's a dry pond with a petrified tree over there, there are walls or fences roughly surrounding this area, and the main temple building would probably be farther into the cave.

"And you don't know who the attackers are?"

"I think it's the fox demons. The village elders offended them, mum said, and she's been trying to make things better, but maybe they got impatient."

...a story starts to form, then.

"Are the fox demons usually peaceful?"

Moonlight Flower nods. "They come here sometimes to ask for food or jewels. There was a girl, a while ago, that they took. My mum said she was going to become a princess of the foxes." She sighs wistfully. "I wish I was a princess."

"Really? I'm not sure it's that good. I was a prince, you know?"

"You were? Where?"

"A country called Morroc."

"Oh. I know that country. Mum said that we're at war with them."

...shit.

"Oh, we used to be, but actually we're at peace now. I came here to see how the village was doing, now that we aren't at war anymore."

"You're not... a spy, are you?"

"No, not at all! Like I said, I used to be a prince, I'm not anymore, so I don't do things for Morroc at all. I just came here because I was worried, on my own, not because anyone told me to."

"Oh. ...what's it like, being a prince?"

"It's... honestly really boring."

"Really?"

"Yeah. We have nice things, but we can't really do anything. I had to take a lot of lessons about how to speak and what to do, but I really wanted to go out and help people and fight evil."