Hitodama In A Cave [Job | Shigeo]

Job Info:

Phew… this place was cold. Good thing that the shaman wore his jacket and scarf on top of his usual wear. He would’ve gotten frostbite the moment that his blue, serpentine dragon approached the Silent Glaciers. To explain the situation, a quest had appeared on the job board back in Fairy Tail that came from people living near the Silent Glaciers. There had been rumors of hostile ghosts roaming the deserted cave that was located at the foot of a delta - a cave that went by the name ‘Cave of the Hitodama’.

Hitodama was a Midian term. They were, simply put, souls of the dead manifested as flaming orbs lighting up an area. If this cave was named after them, then it would definitely be filled with these hitodamas to the brim. However, Mura hadn’t met many hitodamas in his life - other than Kyuken and Zirconis, who both filled the terms for hitodamas - so it was interesting to see how a whole group of them would look like.

Mura had decided to give one of his companions, a serpentine dragon known as Azure, some fresh air by taking Mura to the destination as it flew him across the land. With its snake-like body, it slithered graciously through the sky and parted some clouds on its way. The quest handed to them by the locals of Silent Glaciers sounded simple at first - it was merely to exorcise some dangerous ghosts from a famed, historical area. Mura’s magic was the apex exorcist in and of itself, but there was more to being a wizard of Fairy Tail than being able to take care of things efficiently.

…

The blue dragon landed smoothly on the cold, snowy floor right in front of the entrance to the cave. It had slithered its body around as a cinnamon roll for more heat to be gathered, so it didn’t freeze down. Mura quickly stepped down from its neck where he had been sitting, and he would look up at the guildmate of his whom he had brought along for today’s mission. A calm, mild-mannered mage with a very gentle heart and an affinity to psychokinetic magic. His name was Shigeo Kageyama.

“Well, let’s get to work,” Mura suggested out, ready to dismiss the Azure Dragon as soon as Shigeo would step down from it, “Hitodamas are rarely harmful, so this should be an easy mission.”

WC: 403

Shigeo is very confused as to what is going on. He had just gotten done looking around the areas of the guild that he's allowed to look around when all of a sudden Mura came up to him and offered to do a job with him. This confused Shigeo since he doesn't know why the guild master would want to do a quest with someone who just joined up. He's an unknown for Mura (presumably) since all he showed off during his introduction was his telekinesis. After looking the job over Shigeo agreed since he could probably use the experience anyway, but he was still confused about the whole ordeal. When one of Mura's spirits turns into a giant spirit dragon Shigeo is surprised, but it barely shows up on his face. His eyes widen a little bit before they got back to normal. Shigeo wonders what else the dragon spirit can do other than just get really big. He gets onto the dragon when Mura tells him to and holds on tightly so that he doesn't fall off of the dragon. As it starts to get colder that closer that get to the location Shigeo starts to shiver from the cold. His outfit helps out a little bit but he's still pretty cold. As they are flying over the landscape, Shigeo looks down from the spirit dragon and looks the place over. He's never been so high up so he's never seen the ground like this before so the sight of it just flying by is pretty amazing to him. He's also never seen such a massive expanse of snow and ice which is pretty intimidating to him. He hopes that he won't freeze solid during the job since that would be rather unpleasant. When they finally get to the location Shigeo has to rub his hands together to keep himself even a little bit warm. Shigeo starts following Mura through the snow and trying to keep up with him, hoping that his dark clothing will be enough to keep him from freezing solid. "Um, alright. Though I must ask, why did you bring me along? I only just joined the guild." Shigeo normally flat voice is jumbled up a little bit from the cold causing him to shiver and his teeth to chatter. He really wishes he owned a coat. As he is now this place is pretty miserable for him.

WC: 403

Mura could barely handle the cold with his red jacket and scarf. His pants were the same as he usually wore, since this was quite a sudden call, but he could always use his magic to manifest heat in form of a flame. Looking back at Shigeo, Mura would rather want that his guildmate was able to stand without freezing solid. When they were entering the cave, they would have to watch their steps too - the floor, walls and ceiling were layered in ice. Ice! A thin carpet of ice, slippery and tough like whetstone.

Shigeo asked Mura why he had been brought along, which was something that Mura didn’t think of that much to begin with. Why did he bring Shigeo along with him on this quest? Well, bonding experience and responsibility. He would turn back to Shigeo and smile.

“This could be a great experience for you, Shigeo. I’ve seen your magic up close against you, so why not see how you do in an official mission?” he replied confidently, “Even if you’ve just only joined the guild, you’re still a precious member to me. So don’t feel down about it or anything.”

Once they both had entered the cave through the wide entrance, they would be met with still air, the sound of waters running along in a small river through the middle of the cave tunnel, and what looked like treasure chests encased in ice. Not only that, but the light from outside reflected on the icy surfaces, giving them quite a shine.

The treasures under the ice looked to have been there since the dawn of time itself. None had tried to dig them up for some reason, but since this place was part of the local nomads’ resting area, Mura felt too self-aware to even attempt to nap a piece of gold. That would be a dick move, really. “Now, keep your Magical Senses up. You never know where someone could come sneaking up from a blind angle-“

A neigh echoed through the room and caused the shaman to brake in his tracks, looking forward to spot what looked like a large, lone Reindeer. It was strolling towards them and waving its antlers furiously at them.

“A Reindeer? What are you doing here…?” Mura curiously asked out loud, approaching the Reindeer so calmly. He stopped once more in his tracks as he looked behind him, having noticed the presence of a pack of Dire Wolves. They were approaching Shigeo from behind, and Mura quickly warned him: “Behind you, Shigeo! Keep those wolves away from you!” The wolves looked drenched in cold water, seemingly having come from the river that crossed the tunnel and divided it in two sides.

WC: 455
TWC: 858

Shigeo doesn't have the luxury of being able to warm himself up with his magic, so he'll just have to go without warmth for a while it seems. He hopes that if they get paid enough for this that he'll be able to afford winter clothing so that the next time he has to go into the frozen tundra is doesn't feel like he walked into a place where they cool quantum chips. when they get to the cave and see that the floor is covered in ice Shigeo does his best to walks carefully so that he doesn't fall over and hurt himself or expose himself to any more cold. Though going into the cave does reduce the wind chill so he's happy that it's not quite as cold inside of the cave as it is on the outside. "I mean, if you say so, but how can I be precious to you if we've only just met? I get the first part about needing experience, but I barely know you and the same is true in reverse. I don't get it." As they walk through the cave and get glimpses of the treasure within the ice, Shigeo starts to wonder why it's all still here if it's so easy to take. "Hey Mura, why is all of this treasure still here? And decent fire or ice mage could just circumvent the ice holding the treasure, hell I could even get that treasure out of there. I don't get why no one has taken it. There are no guards, I don't know of any laws against it, and you said that these ghosts are supposedly not that difficult so why is it still here?" When Shigeo starts noticing strange things like he immediately goes on guard. He hears the steps of the wolves in the snow and turns around to see them, and is confused by what he sees. The wolves are all wet. But if they are wet then they should have gone into shock because of the cold. "Hey Mura, I think that these creature my just be corpses that are being possessed. They're drenched in water so the cold should have killed them." Shigeo doesn't intend to hold back against the wolves. His aura lights up and his hair seems to blow in an invisible wind. The same aura surrounds some stalactites that are hanging from the ceiling. Shigeo applies a little bit of pressure and then suddenly the large hunks of ice are rocketing towards the wolf corpses. If the ice lances don't impale the wolves then Shigeo applies some more pressure and makes them explode like frozen frag grenades, potentially sending tons of ice shrapnel to sever all of the muscles needed for the wolves to move and damaging the rest of their bodies in addition. And if somehow that doesn't work then Shigeo takes the ice shrapnel and starts spinning is rapidly around the wolves to act as a sort of ice blends and he rapidly makes the ice blender converge on the wolves, making sure to cover the top as well so that they can't leap out.

wc: 525

twc: 928

Good question… about the treasures, that was. Mura assumed that this place was unofficially some kind of memorial, but then again, no official notes about that. Besides, who would hold a memorial this far into the glaciers? Clearly, they were allowed to just take any treasures from this place… but first, they would have to deal with the wolves and the reindeer.

Another good deduction made by Shigeo was the note of the wolves being undead. Perhaps some entity was controlling them from deep within the cave tunnel, since the wolves didn’t react realistically to the cold waters. The reindeer had suddenly charged right at the shaman, and he used his hand to brake it in its tracks, sliding closer to Shigeo’s position with the reindeer trying to stab him down.

While the reindeer was temporarily bound by his free hand simply holding its forehead back from him, he answered: “Undead… you’re right. I don’t sense any life force from them… only magic.” He pushed the reindeer back with his hand, and before the reindeer could find its foothold again, he briefly manifested a wall of fire in front of it. That was enough to scare the living creature away, but the wolves were still trying to maul Shigeo.

With Shigeo’s telekinetic powers, he pulled down large chunks of the ice ceiling above them down towards the wolves, causing them to lose a few limbs but not knocking them out completely. With undead creatures, it’d take a lot to kill them, but Shigeo didn’t hold back. Right after the ice chunks had landed, he made them shatter into millions of tiny ice shards that rained down on the wolves, drilling into their bodies. And at last, they were turned into quite a mess with the ice blending technique, where Shigeo turned the ice shards into a cold blender and made short work of the wolves that were no more.

And with that, they were fairly safe once again… for now.

Some of the fleshy juice from the wolves had landed on Mura, but he quickly washed it off by turning a surface of ice into floating water, pulled the water up like waterbending, and washed his face and jacket with it. “Woah, there… I see that you’ve improved since last time. Good job, Shigeo!” he thanked the young Fairy Tail Wizard, “You had a good point about the treasures… maybe we can snatch a-“

The wolves had turned into a rather mushy pool of flesh. From the flesh, however, red flames emerged. They were small and bright, but they soon rose up and revealed to be orbs of fire - classic, wrathful hitodamas. So they had controlled the wolves from the inside, huh? The red orbs burst forth, turning into the ghastly bodies of fallen sailors who used to dock in this cave for shelter. Their faces were full of rage and anger.

Mura grabbed the handle of his ninjaken, Harusame, and in the meantime, Kyuken had merged into Mura’s body from his back. With the sword, he jolted it once just enough to reveal some of the sharp metal. From that metal, a wave passed by Shigeo without harming even a hair on his body, but it burst out as a small, windy shockwave once it hit the middle of the red, burning ghosts of sailors. The shockwave cut the ghosts down to good size - to dust that pulverized in the wind. That was the three of them.

Unfortunately, from the icy walls and floor, more hitodamas came forth; all red, burning and full of wrath, they turned into the fallen sailors who saw their end in this cave, all wielding harpoons and short swords along with angry grins on their faces.

“Might be a few more than I imagined,” Mura expressed, watching groups gang up on him and Shigeo separately.

WC: 643
TWC: 1501