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WHO: Eichi & Anyone
WHAT: Time for some old nasty tea
WHEN: Some time in July
WHERE: In front of a weird claire's-like store he has been sleeping in
WARNINGS: None!

Would you like to try some tea?

[No matter who happens to be passing by the overly-pink and purple store, Eichi calls out to them with a calm soft voice, smiling as he gestures to a counter he's transformed into a makeshift tea bar. It appears to be a central area that certainly used to be where the cashiers stood, but now Eichi is sitting at one of the old, hardly kept together stools, an assortment of chipped and peeled and faded mugs or cups lining the counter. There's a stand of what probably used to hold random pens and accessories that's now holding a handful of packets and tins of... tea? Their markings are difficult to comprehend, not just from the passing of time and whatever happened here, but from how much of a knockoff this tea place really was. Whatever Eichi has managed to heat up with a pile of debris and an actual tea pot smells like something faintly herbal... though it's difficult to place how.]

I managed to find some in the back of a store, but I couldn't make sense of any of the labels, so I'm afraid the exact blend is a mystery to me.

[The store around him looks even more chaotic. There's a mattress shoved surprisingly neatly into one side of the store towards the back, lined to one side with raggedy stuffed animals. There's a life-sized doll of a certain Wataru Hibiki that some might have met in person on top of the mattress and tucked into the scrounged up ripped sheets and blankets making the "bed," surprisingly clean compared to the rest of the items. The shelves are lined with folded scrounged up clothing (one or two outfits worth), and a few items. To the opposite side of the store is a coffin, neatly pushed up against the wall and left closed.

On top of the weird scenery, this tea is so old and such a knock off that it's going to taste bland and disgusting, though, and Eichi seems aware of it enough to have not taken a sip at all of his own cup.]

Unfortunately, there seems to be a lack of extra stools or chairs here. I hope you don't mind.

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(ooc: I just have this open prompt, but I'll probably use this as a catch-all as well! I'll put my hauntings threads in the comments. Hit me up if you want something personalized.)

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Wh— Harrowhark-san!

[He's so angry and alarmed, but it's not as if he can just let her march in there and leave. He caused that curiosity, in a way, and after what he'd done the last time... He feels responsible. He moves after her, pointedly avoiding eye contact with any of the mirrors even if they're everywhere, and looking only at her back.]

Are you doubting me simply because I'm frail? I hope you're pleased with what you've done.

( he chases after the dramatic ripple of the trailing hem of her robes, then. she doesn't seem particularly concerned whether he comes with her or not. though she has none of the experience with this place eichi does, harrow also avoids looking directly into the mirrors — she has always detested the things, using them only for functional necessity in tasks like applying the finer details of her face paint. still, the effect in here is an unsettling one. out of the corners of her eyes she can see the black hole that is her presence reflected in shards of broken and reflected light, disappearing into tunnels of infinity. she can see where eichi stands as well, a short distance behind.

as she turns to look at him, a reflection some distance away shows a different scene: her turning to lunge, a spear of bone leaping from the depths of one of her voluminous sleeves —

but the flesh-and-bone harrow who is here and present does no such thing, merely turning to face eichi. there's no real pleasure in this for her, no, but... ) I can assure you, Eichi, I doubt you just as much as every other individual here. ( as in: she doesn't give or take away points for those frail or terminally ill. you should have seen how nasty she had been to dulcinea.

when she continues, she does so with an almost beatific expression, hard-edged in her stubbornness. ) I have never been any good at keeping out of places I should have stayed far away from.

( says the only human being who had laid eyes upon the corpse of the Locked Tomb in ten thousand years.

she turns and continues walking — he either stays with her or he leaves, his choice. she keeps talking, assuming the former. ) Are you going to explain what has you so wary of this place?

[Ugh, that...

That sounds like a line from himself. Maybe that's what makes his stomach twist the most. For his own sake, for Wataru's too, he should step away from this and leave her to her own devices. But Wataru wouldn't be happy with that either, even after what had happened with them. So how could he?

No, it's not just the thoughts of others that's keeping him here. Maybe he also is concerned, even about this complete stranger. He doesn't want to be someone who discards the needs and health of others so easily. Not anymore.

So after some hesitation, he continues after her, fingers curling at his sides. That question registers, but he already knows what happens if he tries to answer. Even still, he does try. But all that comes out is unimportant:]

I wonder what has you interested in a store like this?

( she tracks the sound of his footsteps, sharp against what remain of the cracked and grimy linoleum tiles. he follows, which is either bravery or foolishness on his part. harrow isn't very interested to see which one — it would be from his frame of reference, regardless. she didn't see how anything in here could be dangerous.

well, besides her. therein lies the problem.

she of course notices the dearth of an answer, but as someone who is very picky about which stupid questions she decides to grace with an answer, she doesn't think too much of it. she merely thinks responding with another question to be a valid riposte. )

I wouldn't have thought you the type to become so comfortable in our new home. ( she says it in a tone that dances very close to mocking but never quite gets there; a venomous sort of sarcasm. ) It is a change. Any change is potential information. Even if it is nothing in the end, I will not leave it uninvestigated.

You do know what they say about cats and curiosity, don't you?

[Eichi sounds a little short, stepping after her insistently, eyes focused on her back rather than the number of mirrors in the shop. Small, large, medium, and Eichi realizes that he passes the very one he'd knocked over on accident and grabbed a shard from— and yet it's completely whole, on the shelf where it had been prior.

He doesn't slide his eyes over to look directly, for fear of catching his own reflection's gaze again. He has to watch Harrowhark, instead.]

Countless in search of knowledge with a mindset like that died with not an ounce of anything useful or shared to their name, you know.

( eichi might as well be speaking to a brick wall. harrow is a necromancer, and even more than that, she is harrowhark nonagesimus — she is a necromancer who had scoured the libraries of drearburh for hidden knowledge as soon as she was old enough to do so. before she had come here, she had been following in the footsteps of those who had come before some ten thousand years ago, plumbing the depths of what was possible with their magical art in order to give one what had been sought for ages: power and immortality.

and they had been close to figuring out the secret, too. but now she was here, and she will try to find out what she can about this place.

perhaps it's her own haughtiness that preserves her, for now. her eyes rove through the store but do not stop in any one place — odd flickers of movement on the reflective surfaces that don't seem to match what is happening are discarded, as visual or aural hallucinations were something she has long since fallen into an uneasy truce with.

she ends up stopping, however, turning on her heel to face him. her expression is written in the language of severity. in a dozen or two reflections, a harrowhark does the same, though a few smudge into divergent actions, either benign or violent. she doesn't notice. )

Perhaps, Eichi. But as you can see, I am still alive. I have never rested when there was something valuable to be obtained. ( and that's to a fault: this is an individual who has worked herself to exhaustion multiple times, and would do so again (and perhaps with even more reckless abandon now that her cavalier was missing). )

Now, ( and as she speaks, almost completely unbeknownst to her, her hand slips into one of the voluminous folds of her robes, fingers seeking out a familiar shard of bone — a cracked portion of the lovely curve of the iliac crest, ) if you are done admonishing me, I will continue my search.

[Ah, so this is how it's going to be. She's stubborn. She thinks she knows it all, because of a difference in some sort of power, he supposes. That's completely infuriating, and he's filled with so many angry thoughts about wanting to prove her wrong in his own terms, to have her face something to put them on an even field—

But he squashes those down. Besides that, things are at risk for turning dangerous at any point. He follows, but this time he lingers at least a foot behind, eyeing her hands as they move, adjusting the device he has around his wrist now.

Eichi smiles, even if he's incredibly annoyed.]

Shall I congratulate you for your recklessness and the fact that you're alive by pure chance? I'm afraid I can't do that. However, it's not as if I can stop you, either. I'm out of your way, so do what you must, then. I can say nothing else of any use, after all.

( stubborn? yes. that was a primary building block of what made her harrowhark nonagesimus, though she would prefer it called unswerving tenacity (and others might prefer to call it awful bullheadedness). it was virtually impossible to convince a girl who has very literally pulled all the strings of her life from age nine to roughly present (their current environs and circumstances notwithstanding) not to do what she had already steeled herself to do, or at least for anything besides an immovable object.

her lip curls at the words pure chance — it rankles at something that's not necessarily pride, though that's certainly tangled in there. harrow is still alive for a very simple reason: she decided to be. she continues to live because she decided to defy death at any and all costs, to the point where she had been actively stepping to the threshold of immortality shortly before she had been brought to this God-damned ruin. )

Your words are yours to choose. But that I am still alive has ever been on my own ability and volition. ( she stops in her warpath, having forged it down the main aisle of the store. they stand near the back now, and she looks about, eyes squinting even through the multiple layers of voile against the lights. the mirrors do not necessarily interest her, though she supposes it is odd that they are pristine when a great deal of glass in this complex has long since been pulverized. it's the lights — power is such a capricious thing in this place, so why here, why now, and why with such intensity?

her hand lowers from her robe, the shard of bone kept enclosed and hidden in her palm. she doesn't think much of this — she doesn't think about it at all.

what she does think about is the last thing he said. it sticks in her mind like a splinter of bone, and she finds herself turning slowly on one heel, gaze cast to the floor to the side of them for a moment before she looks over a shoulder to eichi. ) You do not strike me as someone who would think himself as having nothing of use to say. ( she says this with an edge of suspicion, her brow furrowing. there had been something which had pressed him into following her, even if he had dodged her questions of why.

the reason why things begin to make sense for harrow is because there is a necromantic technique within her own House which was so inherent to it that it gave it one of its titles: the House of the Sewn Tongue. to work a necromantic seal upon the tongue and the jaw, to prevent them from being able to speak of a subject of the caster's choice. she had learned how to perform such a feat before she was ten years old. her familiarity with the curse is why the situation seems to click to her all at once, even if it was well and truly too late.

and it's just as she thinks of this now that her hand flicks forward, tossing the bone fragment to skip across the dirty and cracked linoleum past eichi, coming to rest some ten or so feet away. her dark eyes widen in shock at the involuntary nature of the movement below her veil as the skeletal construct begins to rise from the shard of ilium — a macabre beanstalk having grown almost instantaneously from an osseous seed.

run, she wants to tell him. she tries to will her lips and tongue to form the word, to try to give him time to get away from her before the inevitable happens. but she finds herself in the unique position that she might have only ever forced upon someone else: she cannot say it as the red lights blink to life within the cavernous sockets of the skeleton. it brandishes a right arm which ends not in an anatomically-perfect hand, as it might usually, but instead an elongated and sharpened spear of the radius reinforced with a spar of ulna. )

That is—

[It's interesting, that she caught that, and he wants to follow it, to keep feeding hints until she can catch on. But it seems that it's too late. She throws something, and he's almost positive it must be a weapon, that he should expect something to pierce through him— but it lands on the ground and he takes a bewildered step backwards, instead.]

Bones...?

[Is that what those are? It's what they look like, despite the unnatural way they sprout upwards and branch out. Eichi's eyes dart back to her temporarily, but he can tell already that the same thing is happening.

Running would be smart. But it would defeat the purpose of coming in after her in the first place. He'd caused this.

Besides, he's not much of a runner. He steps back again, instead, eyes on the sharp point of that spear.]

You're strong, aren't you, Harrowhark-san? It's possible to resist... So if possible, I'd like you to try that.

[He sounds awfully calm but his mind is racing. Mirrors, he remembers it was the mirrors, and he glances to the side at the wood of one in thought.]

( in half a dozen reflections of her, harrowhark's mouth twists into an uncharacteristic and darkly gleeful smile, black eyes alight with the thrill of control and of power and of the utter freedom to enact such things over another living person.

as for her own flesh and bone, however, she is far more restrained. beneath the layers of face-paint, a distressed furrow creases her brow. her mouth forms a thin, bloodless line. there is nothing she can do to alter the murderous trajectory of the construct now: it was given form and function in the moment of its creation, and now, like a clock that had been fastidiously built and then carefully wound, it only had to do what it was made to do.

she cannot move her mouth to attempt to help him. not directly, anyway. ) A skeletal construct. Yes. ( there's something bright and desperate in her dark eyes; her brain is working furiously. he isn't running. the critical weakness of a purely skeletal construct such as this one is that they aren't very strong — strength came from weight, and weight came from flesh and blood — but they were fast, and she made them accurate, just as she is. in less than a minute, if nothing else was done, that sharpened lance of bone would find the aorta of his fragile heart.

she is actively trying to resist, but her own body is a steely tomb of foreign will. annoyingly, she cannot address what he says. not directly, anyway. but she addresses the clear problem to his logic that stands out to him currently, speaking with a dry, slightly stilted tone of someone reciting information from a textbook: ) Contrary to what the layman might believe, a construct is not controlled by the mind of its raiser. They are formed with consideration and purpose, and they will pursue that purpose until it is accomplished, until they are destroyed, or until the thanergenic tie which animates them is severed.

( as she speaks, the skeleton begins to approach. it does not shamble — no skeletal construct of harrowhark nonagesimus, the reverend daughter of the ninth, had shambled since she was just scarcely out of toddling age. it walks with poise and purpose, compensating for the additional weight of its malformed arm, raising it with deadly intent.

what she means to say is: she currently cannot crumble the skeleton back to atomic dust. the part of her brain which controlled her necromancy would not allow her to. so that leaves eichi the other options, as well as a third which seems obvious: either he dies, he finds a way to destroy it, or he escapes well out of her eye-line, where the construct's usefulness will fade.

or he finds a way to break her from this control. either way, in this very instant, he'd best do something else, because the skeleton was moving forward nimbly on clattering feet, thrusting with the spear-like right arm:

duck. )

[Oh. Oh no. So it's going to try to kill him no matter what she does, or how she might resist? It seems she's realized enough to help him by educating him on that, but how much more can she manage to say? At the very least, he's relieved she doesn't have to go through the work of explaining what's happening. If that were the case, he'd likely already be dead.

Instead, he has the chance to duck— and he does with surprising swiftness, like it's a performance. He can put all of his energy into his movements, like he's on stage, and strain it past what it should deal with.]

Then... I believe the mirrors are the key here.

[As he moves to the side quickly, he grabs onto a tall standing one and shoves it into the path of the new enemy, watching as it shatters and scrambling back to knock over more. As many as he can reach.

It's making a mess of glass, and he's not actually running enough to leave, but. Honestly, he's not even sure that would save him, and he'd be leaving Harrowhark in this. So... he won't.]

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