❖ FINDING FAITH ❖ (Ahote/Hifumi)

Midi was a place awfully similar to Sakuramori, or Sakuramori was awfully similar to Midi. Whatever the case, clean, cool air engulfed its atmosphere and pretty peach and sakura petals always seemed to find their way to people's feet no matter how far away they were from a tree. The people there dressed. . . modestly and were very quiet. It wasn't nearly as loud as, say, Fioreans, and it began to make the white-haired Ahote wonder if the volume he was so used to hearing was really acceptable or not.

But Ahote didn't stay among the Midian long enough to keep wondering this and found himself in a remote village very soon after exiting the nearest city. As he weaved in between trees and meandered through the open dirt roads he thought of Yuiisai and was certain that this was the country that they spoke of as their homeland—but he couldn't remember clearly. Now that he thought about it, he couldn't remember a lot of things that seemed to have happened so recently in his life. He couldn't recall some of the faces of Black Rose wizards at his doors or the sound of his toes tapping against the stone floors of Basilisk Fang fortress. He had difficulty remembering the pale and pretty features of his mother, Kanix, but his photograph burned bright in his memory for some reason. It was all inevitably becoming a blur to the somber man.

Right, the shrine—this is why he was here. There was a shrine here. . . he was looking for someone. Someone that died, suffered and lived a life imbued with great magnitudes of magic. They would become an essential asset to his studies and his magic, proof of achievement. Or, this is what he had told himself. If he were to have looked at himself with an outsider's perspective, despite his lack of humanity, his interest was the result of very human curiosity. A very morbid curiosity, but that in itself was all too human.

There were many remote villages Ahote visited and there were even more shrines that he had investigated, and all but one hadn't met his expectations. The one that did meet his expectations was located in a village populated mostly by the elderly. All the young men left to find work and all the young women left to find bachelors. Everyone who remained seemed bound to the shrine in some way, and the village was so small that Ahote reckoned there to be less than one hundred people there.

At the very outskirts of his village was a nearly abandoned shrine overshadowed by a newer, prettier one. It was clear by the dust on the doors and leaves that scattered around the floorboards that the shrine hadn't been visited in decades at least.

The cloaked man walked into the small room one could only compare to a closet and in its center, beheld a skeleton chained from head to toe against a wooden beam. Seals that might've covered their fleshed figures were littered over the ground next to their bony feet, and the dread that filled the room suffocated him as he walked in. It would've been difficult to convince anyone who saw this that whoever had died lived a fair and jolly life.

Ahote stared at the skeleton without sympathy or any hint of interest before he walked forward, holding out his black-gloved hand as flickers of blue, dark light escaped from his fingertips. The magic he had been casting was a spell he had only toyed with in his head, finally putting it into practice. He was anticipant of what would become of the skeleton, glaring at it expectantly as the magical energy spun around him and cackled like electricity.

Get up. the skeleton would hear, icily and without body, Wake up. It's time to wake up. . .

The voice the figure may or may not have heard was Ahote's deep, rich, and sad tones. But nothing uttered through his lips in reality—no. He'd rouse the corpse through a different, disembodied way. It was privacy that couldn't be invaded by anyone or anything else. It was incredibly intimate and unsettling.

The room seemed darker than before in comparison to the eerie blue light surrounding the two figures. Or perhaps one should call them both skeletons. Neither of them was human or would continue to hold and lick of their humanity after this casting.

The white-haired man stared at the naked one with his unchanging, blank expression. His eyes were dead and there was no color in his features. He looked ghoulish and regal in his icy, indifferent features. The hat he wore cast a deep and malicious shadow over his golden eyes, watching the petrified "young" man continue to bewilder himself with these images and sounds all probably brand new to him. His fabrics were dark and his demeanor was gloomy. No light flickered in his eyes even if candlelight were just in front of his face, and his resting countenance never looked friendly.

A success. . . Ahote thought to himself for a moment. His spell of resurrection not only restored the man's features but his vitality and vigor! His wet and withdrawn gaze, that look of fear that glossed over his features, his pale, cold skin. There was no mistaking it—the man before him had been successfully "restored," but he was very much an existence living on the thin line of life and death. He looked very much like an ill and unhealthy man, but it wasn't anything that couldn't be fixed with proper nursing. Well, a necromancer's version of nursing one back to their prime. If not for the spell cast on the man, Ahote was sure that he returns back to that of a skeleton.

"You're in a village in Midi. Do you have a name? How old are you?" Ahote asked plainly. His voice was soft and without weight, yet deep and full of icy undertones. Despite how light and enchanting it may of sounded, its lack of weight was unsettling to many others at often times. The solemnity it held was unmatched by any, and any sympathy he held for the troubled man was completely obscured by this.

Hifumi was his name and it sounded as feminine and delicate as he looked—twenty years old, too. These were all pretty things but the man himself didn't look the least bit pretty. His hair was too long and his lips looked like they were about the crack from how dry they were. He was skinny and looked as if he hadn't eaten in a century or five, which was probably true. He looked absolutely ghastly, and his complexion was bleached white with fear and uncertainty as he looked up to Ahote.

Ahote would pause for a moment, silently pondering Hifumi. He wondered if he had any real recollection of his life as a priest and the forest he defended. He could remember his name and age, but what of his past? The past was almost as essential as the name, the family, the hometown, the status, the everything of a person—without it, you were nothing. Without a past, there was nothing of essence to you, no one to remember you, and nothing marking you ever having existed.

It made Ahote incredibly melancholy to think about pasts since he could hardly grasp his own. The images of his childhood were both vivid and colorless, like a black-and-white silent film. He could replay scenes of his past, his feet against stone floors and agonized screams in the cold Mt. Hakoben air. The longer he remained, the more muted the sounds of his memories became, and he could feel them lose its sense of feeling—the smells he smelled, the sounds he heard, the clearness of what he saw. Soon, he suspected, he would only remember the chilliness of the floor or the pain of his arms being stolen from him.

The white-haired man didn't want Hifumi to be nothing but he was able to resolve that it might've been the best for him, too. Maybe Hifumi and twenty-years-old were the only real things he needed to not only be of use to him, but to live comfortably if he had decided to keep him alive at all.

"I don't know how you died. It doesn't matter. You're alive now, aren't you?" Ahote queried quietly. He felt the weight of his words, finally convincing himself that this spell was indeed a success and felt almost a duty in keeping Hifumi "alive". Here was a verbal, intelligent lich that could only be of use to him and danced his little life in the eye of his palm. Ahote wondered, what would Hifumi do?

Watching Hifumi sit there naked on the floorboards made him look like a languished animal—his skinniness, the bitterness that blanched his complexion. . . it was difficult to picture anything else. But it was a languished animal with words, and he used it to ask for garments. His request made Ahote crack a joyless smile as he mulled over it. It hadn't even been a minute since Hifumi's animation and yet he was already asking for things. He wasn't alive but suffered the consequences of living, like coldness and hunger. The man wouldn't die if he was without food or warmth, but it would surely make for an uncomfortable existence.

Ahote's smile finally returned to his indifferent expression which made him look like he was always frowning. He unbuttoned his cloak and swung it over the shoulder the naked Hifumi, leaving Ahote in nothing but his suit, tie, and gloomy hat. "Here."

The white-haired man didn't say anything after that and watched Hifumi in silence. He waited to see what else he might request, what else he would say. This lasted for a few moments until he sighed out his words, "This is. . . all very confusing, isn't it?"

Not being able to remember things he should or things that would've mattered—it seemed that Hifumi was painfully aware of his own amnesia and languished over the fact. But this helped nobody! Ahote had only the faintest clue of Hifumi's past and even if they had both tried to figure out just what that past might've been, it wouldn't have elucidated anything. But as the suited man mulled over this inconvenience, he was beginning to believe that it really wasn't an inconvenience at all. He didn't need his memories, and his magical power could be nursed back to health as could a muscle of the body or perhaps a sickly plant. If he remembered, great. If he didn't, even better. It truly hadn't made a difference.

"I see. Then listen well," he said icily, crouching down and staring sharply at the downed Hifumi from his own eye level and listening to his nonsense. Who or what was this Izanagi-sama? Were they important? "you are not human, Hifumi. You lost that chance a long time ago. Currently, you're a lich that's kept alive only by my kindness. . ." Ahote told him plainly. He wasn't intending to deceive him, as it'd be foolish to deceive something that belonged to you—like your dog or pet.

"I'm telling you this to save you some hardship should you ever feel like you're human. You're not and will never be one of them. . . you'll be with me and others like you. . ." Ahote reached out and grabbed the cheeks of Hifumi, squeezing them and raising his head to face his colder, glowering one, "Are we clear?" Ahote finished with a notable grumble.

While he spoke of kindness, there was not a lick of kindness in his voice or a shimmer of mercy in his eyes. Despite this malicious look, he truly did wish to save his liches the hardship of humanity by elucidating this fact. The inner turmoil of humans, their destructive natures, their problems—he and his subordinates did not need that. It wasn't necessary and they weren't entitled to it anyway.

Did he not like humans, was it? Disliking humans, is it? Now there was a question he hadn't asked himself in quite some time, and he was beginning to wonder if he had ever asked himself this at all. The more he thought about it, the less sure he was of his answer. He quickly began to realize that he had stopped identifying himself as human long ago, but where did that leave him? If he wasn't human, what was he? A lich? Well, that couldn't have been true—he hadn't ever died before, and his body was too different from that of a human's to ever be considered one ever again. So since he wasn't human and wouldn't ever be one again, he began to become cognizant of his own fault-finding pedantry he held for humans: their destructive natures, the violence, the insolence, their attitudes, the way they solved the problems, their gregarious tendencies. All of these things he criticised as if it weren't his own nature, too.

Realizing that he was mulling over the question too long and staring blankly into Hifumi's eyes in silence, he broke the icy quietness with a soft and yet rigid clearing of his throat and frowned, "Don't ask unnecessary things." Ahote grumbled paternally, now rubbing Hifumi's cheeks between his fingers like he was toying with a stress ball. The longer he squeezed, the quicker he found himself pulling and pinching his cheeks too, mesmerized by the stretchiness of his skin despite just being revived. It wasn't nearly as gritty and pull-apart like his other liches, so his dead complexion lit up with some sense of satisfaction.

"Now, get up and let's go. We have places to be, so don't waste our time. Alright?" Ahote finally released Hifumi and gave him two light slaps on the cheek, a sort of "wake up!" gesture.

Ahote would let Hifumi grab onto him as he stood up and steadied himself, feeling himself adjust to his new body. It was something like seeing a baby fawn stand up after being born, helpless and vulnerable if not for the mother supporting it. Ahote didn't like seeing himself as the "mother" figure in this situation, but watched him with a paternal expectation in his gaze.

His cloak was thick and heavy and would substitute for a full set of clothes for their journey. Ahote wouldn't need it since he had been fully dressed in a classy set of fabrics himself, but he felt awfully naked without his cloak. He began to shuffle towards the exit with Hifumi dragging behind him, a chilly Midian breeze racing past them as they stepped out into the space, "To Fiore."

[END]