43 A Pickle

"Oh dear... it seems as if you've got yourself in quite a pickle here Mister Monster."

The ice and ruby eyes of Asta widened, flickering to her quiet Patron, before she quietly moved to rest by his side, Leviathan wrapped around her arm almost like a bangle bracelet. She settled behind him, as she often did, peeking over his shoulder with a faint sense of dread while Jörmungandr began to glower at Anubis—annoyed that he made Asta scared.

Anubis on the other hand was quite intrigued. He hadn't expected to see a wandering soul that managed to escape from the underworld, and even return to the side of her Patron; it was truly fascinating, and made Jörmungandr easier to read, if by a miniscule margin.

Usually, when souls were unfettered by their mortal remains, they were swept away into the collective "underworld", where they would receive a judgement that would rule where they would rest within the afterlife.

As an agent of Ma'at, he himself had witnessed such proceedings for years, and had even seen a few cases in which the souls were able to return to life, reincarnated in response to their exceptional lives—but a soul that returned and regained proper contact with the world without any evil intent?

That was a true miracle. The World itself had to accept them in order for such a fate to occur, and that naturally implied a great suffering unknown to many during the course of the soul's life, as well as extenuating circumstances.

His hazel eyes flickered to the pale serpent wrapped around the spirit's wrist, his gaze highly analytical as he did so.

"Little Child, that snake—are you contracted to it?"

Asta jumped a bit at the sight of a 13 year old calling her a child, but she answered anyways, "Y-Yes. Levi... Leviathan contracted... w-... me."

Her gaze was stubbornly diverted from the Jackal's, and if she was alive, she'd be sweating and shaking profusely, her shoulders curled in from the interaction. Asta had a hard time talking with people due to the trauma she experienced as a child, and when she did, she was a stuttering mess that skipped over words and looked for the closest possible exit to initiate her escape.

Not only that, but the form that Anubis was in right now... he looked, a little like her older brother, between the haircut and the hazel gold eyes. It made her uncomfortable, seeing eyes like her brother's with a gaze and face unlike his boring into her.

Jörmungandr could easily see this discomfort, and as he already knew of her life from the Asters, he understood why she was uncomfortable around Anubis. Perhaps it was a sick joke on the System's part, as after killing Asta, it decided to create an avatar that would remind her of her painful past.

"...Why're you asking?"

Anubis snapped out of his revere, to be greeted with a cold look from the Serpent. The old god tilted his head, his golden hoop earrings tinkling as he did so; now, what was this reaction? Understanding to a human's plight? After being asleep for millennia, he was able to understand another creatures suffering?

'Fascinating...'

If he didn't know better, he'd have thought that the Serpent had lived the human's life with her...

'Wait... lived her life? Her life?' Anubis' eyes slowly widened, his pupils sharpening a bit and his gaze slowly becoming more earnest. Then, the hazel turned a dark, dark gray, the color of storm clouds over the horizon, and the shadow of graves hewn from stone.

The world turned black and white, the strings of life and death connected to everyone in the camp, from the thoughtful child to the inquiring ghost, and even to invasive priestess; who would die, who they would kill, who they would meet, who they would lose... the strings of connection varied from the black oblivion of death to the white of life and memories.

It was disturbing really, the threads that made up the Serpent and the Wolf; the Wolf seemed to be tangled in them, a black vortex that pulled life towards him.

He truly was a monster of the end.

And, Jörmungandr... well, he was a bit... odd. A similar darkness drowned him, but unlike his brother, there curled white strings that were almost invisible to the eye around his heart:

Memories.

He carried the memories of so many people, of so many lives, souls and losses that at a quick glance, Anubis couldn't even count them all.

The scene of him in the flower field came to mind, the silent pain upon his usually apathetic face whilst he held the small petals, as if cradling a wounded child.

"'...Are you going to disturb the children?'"

As his eyes followed the interlinked threads around his heart, and even a bright red one that connected him and the spirit, he felt his heart slow and his body begin to tremble. Slowly, his eyes regained the hazel color, but the dazed and hauntingly confused expression remained upon his now paled face.

"...Okay... are you...?"

The strings had faded from view, but the impact of the sight of them remained etched within his mind.

"...Yes, yes, I was just using a little skill I have to try to understand the connection is all. Ahem, yes, so it seems that your Priestess is tied to the baby serpent; it acts as a conduit, or tether for her to remain in this plane. Now, typically, this applies to certain places or objects, locking the spirit in the spot where the conduit formed, but since this is a living being..."

While it seemed as if Anubis was fully focused on explaining how the tether worked and what was different about it from other tethers and etcetera, etcetera, it was not the main thought in his mind. In fact, there was only one thought in his mind, one that refused leave it, and could only repeat indefinitely, akin to a broken record:

'...A monster... has learned to love... a monster had learned to love—how terrifying... Heaven help the poor fools that harm those whom he loves... heaven help us... heaven help us...'

It was funny; he hadn't supposed that when he came to figure out Jörmungandr's 'pickle', he'd have jumped straight into one himself.