Chapter Text
“This is the new thing you dragged me all the way through these woods to look at?” Mae asked, mildly perturbed and maybe a little bit afraid. It was night by the time they had climbed the all the way up the mountain, and the moon cast a silvery glow on the graves, many of which were broken. Some even had the dirt beneath them disturbed, as if someone had dug them up and refilled them.
“Yes, well, I’ve already shown it to the queen, maybe done some light grave robbing-”
“4C!” Had he learnt nothing? He already had his soul on the line, he didn’t need to go angering any more spirits!
“-and we’re both fine,” 4c barreled on, ignoring the human’s protest. “So I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say you’ll be fine too.”
“How do you know you’re fine? What if the people whose graves you stole from are still haunting you?” She asked incredulously. 4c really did play with his whole life on the line, didn’t he?
4c did stop for a moment, hesitating slightly. “Well, I don’t think so. Shan knows all about haunting, and she doesn’t seem to think I’m haunted.” Mae didn’t want to know what he meant by that first comment, and therefore decided she could just ask Shan directly later. 4c might not even really know what he was talking about.
“Well, if you really think so…” Mae followed the slime into the cemetery, and the two started looking at the engravings and nameplates.
4c had already seen them all and, for some inexplicable reason, seemed to understand the layout of this place like the back of his hand, so he led her around. Occasionally, he would dig into the graves and pull stuff (like skulls, flowers, banners, and so forth) out, quickly putting them back in and resetting the graves when Mae scolded him. Did he really want to be haunted that badly? He was in trouble with the literal God of Rogues, for heaven’s sake!
———
“Louis?” Mae asked, gently grabbing and tilting the hanging plaque, trying to see the words better. It didn’t help that they were written in black ink on dark wood. “‘Never forgotten’...” She read out, pitch raising into a questioning tone at the end.
“Hey, 4c?” The slime bounced over at her call, tilting his head curiously. “Do you know who this ‘Louis’ person was?”
Whoever they had been, they seemed important. They got a whole blackstone building, just for their casket, not to mention the chains on the hanging signs being made of pure silver. Mae was also pretty sure there was even some Nether gold built into the bricks, as long as her eyes weren’t deceiving her.
“No-eth,” 4c answered, voice jokingly mourning his lack of knowledge. Mae punched him. “Hey, what was that for?”
Ignoring his question, Mae opened the door into the building. “They might have been a monarch…” She muttered, looking at the silver lamps on the walls. Nearly everything here was silver.
“Yeah, that’s what Shan and me were thinking,” 4c agreed. “Oh, that reminds me—I do want to ask Owain if he knew about this place. It doesn’t make too much sense for it to be so far out.”
As he spoke, 4c had walked in past Mae toward the back wall. For a moment, he just leaned on the casket, writing something in his diary, while Mae lit the lamps. She didn’t suppose it would do any harm anyway, surely, and she wanted to be able to properly see the magnificence of this burial spot. It truly was quite pretty, and Mae couldn’t help but feel like there was something about it. It felt a bit like what the Necromancer felt like to be around.
Just as Mae was about to say something, 4c began lifting the lid of the tomb. “I- 4c, I don’t think that’ll be a good idea,” Mae said, forcing her voice to sound calm. 4c was only calm if everyone around him was too, in an oddly childish manner that would usually make Mae snicker.
“Darling, I don’t think we should open this one, we’re already disliked and spat on enough.” The human grabbed the slime by his cloak, pushing him away from the tomb. They both jumped slightly as the lid slammed black close, the heaviness of the stone plate and the tightness of the room making it sound way louder than it probably should be. “Shhh.”
“Don’t- don’t call me that. And that doesn’t work on me, I’m not a child,” 4c protested, wriggling out of her grasp and climbing to stand on the tomb. Mae snickered slightly, and he jumped on top of her, pushing her to the floor. “I’m not!”
“Okay, okay, you’re not a child,” Mae conceded, trying her best not to laugh. “We still shouldn’t open this one, though. If Louis was so revered that their grave is this extravagant, we could be shunned for tampering with it.”
4c deflated slightly in the corner he had moved to stand in, his slime going slightly laxer. “But we’re already hated on just for being rogues,” he pointed out. “Also, I’ve already opened it once, Mae, and nothing happened.”
“Y’know, maybe you really shouldn’t be testing fa- What’s happening?”
“NO, NO, NO! PLEASE, GOD OF ROGUES, I’M SORRY, I PROMISE I WON’T- I WON’T-!” It seemed Mae wasn’t the only one who had been blinded, the little bit of vision she still had fading in and out like the tides, making her dizzy.
“4c! What did I say about not testing God again?” Mae asked, failing to keep the panicked edge out of her voice as her whole vision was suddenly fully gone. 4c continued to yell and plead to the God of Rogues, begging for forgiveness.