Night 58: Courtyard

[princeofthemoon.livejournal.com]

[ from here ]

Sesshoumaru had judged, from the trees and bushes and outdoor benches, covered in snow, that the snow was not intolerably deep, and that he would not be attempting to jump onto a sheet of ice covered in snow. Happily, both assumptions appeared to be correct - the ice covered snow, burying various plants and dirt, was the only thing waiting when he staggered upon jumping the rail.

The view from the courtyard was much the same as the view from the patio, if understandably more restricted in scope. On the very positive side, the movement had distanced him from the scent of blood.

His head was pounding, he was trembling from some combination of cold and exhaustion, and the sharp pain in his side had been thrown into relief once more by the impact of his landing.

Irrelevant. It was irrelevant.

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[ultimagi]

The girl landed about a yard north of her companion, her breath coming out in a hard hiss once she hit the ground. The belt had been adjusted and her items more tightly secured, so nothing slipped from her this time, but the shock of impact was an unfortunate stress on her injured leg. Her breathing was for the moment irregular as she tried to force down the pain and avoid falling over, until eventually she was able to rise unsteadily to a straighter posture.

Being closer to the ground, and shaded on three sides by the massive building and the forth by distant tall trees, it was significantly darker down here than up above, though at least there were no bird carcasses. The girl pressed one hand against the makeshift bandage on her leg, and with the other she retrieved her flashlight, the steady beam of light illuminating the dark patch.

Behind, to their right, and ahead of them were simply more walls of the building; to their right, however, stretched on the corridor of the outdoors until it flared out into a wider area -- even without her light she could see the glitter of the moon across the water, and far off a wall. Neither the moon nor her light could illuminate it well, but it did not seem to have the same flat, clean-looking surface the others had.

She gave a glance to her companion, shifting her weight onto her good leg. "Which way?"

[princeofthemoon.livejournal.com]

To their right there were only the walls of the building - taller, it seems, than perhaps they should be. Hn. Intriguing. To the left was an open stretch of snowy ground, and some sort of little hut.

Sesshoumaru cocked his head a little in consideration and made his way across the open ground towards this.

There may be a door in the other direction as well, returning to the main building, but as long as they were already out here it was likely expedient to examine everything they could.

[ultimagi]

The girl followed, without a word, but with a slight limp. It hurt, putting all her weight on that leg, but there was little for it. Sure, she could seal it up and relieve the ache with cure, but... after how much power she spent on the two beasts, she was hesitant to use any more magic than necessary. If they fought something else, she'd need power enough to battle that -- and to recover from those wounds, too. She could suffer a little while.

The corridor ended after a short few yards, and the pond stretched out long across the courtyard. The water was dark, murky and still, the sky empty and the area quiet. Aside from the wind in the trees and their uneven steps, the girl heard little.

[princeofthemoon.livejournal.com]

Thin sheets of ice crept out from the banks of the pond, glittering with a different sheen than the water in the moonlight. But for the faint rushing of water that seemed to be from the pond - curious - the courtyard was very still. The smell was somewhat muted by distance and the cold in the air, but was not gone - going to the shed meant crossing back closer to it. Sesshoumaru shuddered slightly but did not react beyond that this time - odd that he should react at all, but....

The door was locked. The thought of it was enough to make him want to collapse, but he still summoned the poison to his claws and let that slide across the lock. And couldn't, he found, do more. Maybe in a minute....

[ultimagi]

The trek was not long in the traditional sense, but for the ache of fatigue and the wariness prickling at her skin where blood did not the snow seemed to expand out beneath them, endless white in the darkness. There was something familiar about this, she thought. About the sound of snow crunching underfoot, and how that texture changed as the ground beneath the white changed. Familiar in the cold and the dark, marching onward to some desolate place, the destination looming forward.

It was missing a cloudy sky, and falling snow, and distant lights in a cold city, but the girl thought not of these things.

When they finally arrived at the door to the small shack, she held her flashlight steady at the lock. Her companion smeared that strange liquid across the metal, that shining corrosion. There was no hidden bottle in his sleeve, no hidden mechanism to create it; the liquid emerged from his fingers as easily as tears from the eyes. How...?

But for how the metal was eaten by the sweet-smelling syrup, he did not break it. Confused, she looked between the lock and his face, and there saw the pallor of the latter. She thought it strange, how weak he suddenly looked in expression. True, they had just fought two great monsters, but they hadn't been targeting him as much as they had her, and certainly he hadn't been injured worse. Why was that? Why did he seem so weak now? And why had they seemed more intent on killing her? Was it her magic? Or... something else?

Did those beasts, like her companion, think her something other than human?

The girl frowned, but did not betray her thoughts with spoken questions. Instead, she handed her dazed companion her knife, moving her flashlight to her dominant hand. It seemed sturdy enough. With careful aim she brought the handle down against the body of the lock, each slam ringing out like an attack from a hammer, until finally the lock broke away.

No sound chased that of the cracking metal or the quiet thump of metal burrowing into snow. With a glance over her shoulder, she pulled open the door, shining her light into the deeper darkness.

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