#[ senno is endlessly confused why someone would exacerbate their curse for someone else's sake. why would you do that. no. stop it. ]

[txmehunting]

At first it was the deceased that was drawn to the reaper; now, it is the reaper who comes for the deceased.

“ ...Forgive me if I'm meddling or incorrect in some way. ”

The reaper extends his hand out, but what that thin-fingered claw does is not take but instead gives. It gives in a green, pulsing light, warm in its touch where death is unforgivably cold, and the ancient tongue slips between Pelleas's lips, words that sound familiar yet not quite right.

He speaks it twice, different incantations each time, but when he has finished, the healing glow gone, what has been left behind for Sennō is a charge of a particularly potent Recover and Restore spell both.

Pelleas's free hand clutches for the space over his lungs, feeling his own chest constrict and the air too difficult to breathe in for a moment, a sharp pain striking him, but that too eventually passes. The stench of blood hits the air, a new wound opening up on Pelleas's side, but the scent is all he allows to be open to the naked eye, the site of it hidden beneath his robes and attire.

“ I'm not entirely certain what is going on with you, but... I know I look like you do sometimes because of my own choices long ago, ”  Pelleas admits.  “ If I'm correct, what I did can never solve the root of whatever ails you, but... I hope it helps you handle it more easily tonight. ”

yet again the wounded animal is visited. just construct a cage for him and charge an entry fee; if he's going to be gawked at in his hole, then he might as well get paid for it.

the character that meets him now is the meek reaper, though for a moment sennō believes it truly is his time. his thoughts are slow and meaningless. slop, to be crass. just take him while he's at his lowest. it's not like he'll remember.

but the reaper does not. instead, he does something weird.

he chants something in a language wholly foreign to sennō ( which doesn't require much, given the state he's in ), twice over with different sounds. his mind struggles to make sense of it, gives up, tries again, gives up a second time, then suddenly

things have returned to him.

not completely, perhaps, but he can understand the common tongue better. his mind begins to restock its arcane knowledge; the script for fire, the casting strokes for elwind. the way ink smells on the pages of nosferatu, how the leather on thoron tomes feel different from other elements of its level. it's coming back. it's coming back.

but what confounds sennō the most does not come until the reaper recoils from his own spell, wheezing and suddenly smelling keenly of blood. and the choices.

the choices the reaper has made. the choices the phantom has made. they both exist in this painful space. how is that possible?

" are you, " sennō pauses, feeling words in his mouth. for the most part, all seems well. " are you meaning to suggest that we share something? " it is odd to hear someone attempt to relate to him. nobody would ever bother. it makes him feel... gross.

" if what you have done to me has caused this... scent i am smelling, " this blood now in the water, from reaper to ghost with no expectation of return,

" then you must be " too willing to give to people unwanting " an incurable idiot. you had better not ask me for anything as compensation; i did not ask for your help, so i shall not pay. "