The Guardian Spell

Leon landed on the cliff from above, hardly giving his feet a chance to touch the stone before retracting his wings into his back. He was going to be here for a while. Either until he mastered the guardian spell or passed out from exhaustion. The guardian spell, he remembered, had shown up as a whole sphere around Feign when she'd done it. He wondered how minute his would be in comparison since he'd never done it before.

He sat down cross-legged. From his backpack he pulled his latin dictionary and the spellbook Ketsuta had given him, which he'd retrived from the tree at the mountains where he'd initially hidden it in a hurry. By now he knew for certain that it was authentic as he'd already found the guardian spell in it. Unlike some of the other spells in the book, this one had no fancy diagrams or wordy descriptions. Just the spell name and a short summary of what it was used for. It had been a pain to translate that and it held nothing really of interest anyway.

Leon knew he'd have to say the spell aloud for it to work. He rarely said spells aloud unless he really wanted it to have a kick. He was already so used to the ones he knew that he didn't have to. He held his right hand out in front of him, expecting the spell to appear beneath it.

"Custos spiritu." Leon pronounced the latin phrase clearly, correctly, and a bit loudly. It translated literally to "The Guardian of the Spirit". It wouldn't do to pronounce it incorrectly or mumble. Nothing happened though, and Leons eyebrows creased.

He clenched his hand for a second and he summoned a bit of energy as he opened it again, quickly extinguishing it. Maybe that would help. "Custos spiritu!" He repeated a bit louder.

This time a small blob of watery-looking energy appeared above his wrist. The location caught him off guard, and the moments hesitation cause the energy to dissipate into the air. Leon swore to himself, but didn't get too upset. At least it had appeared. It had taken him days to get the gate through matter spell to simply show up.

Rein was walking along the edges of the cliffs, like, literally the edge. His arms were out as he balanced on the ledge. His long strawberry brown hair whipped in the wind from the ocean, he hadn't even bothered to put it in any sort of tie, knowing it's rebelliousness would win in the end. He wore his usual grey skinny jeans and a black trench coat that hug off his thin frame, covering most of it. It wasn't that he was particularly cold, he couldn't change temperature, after all, but he liked this coat and it seemed a nice day to wear it.

His silvery purple eyes scanned the waves crashing against the rocks below as he hummed the tune to Bach's Cello suit. Finding the urge to jump a slightly bad idea, Rein looked up, hand rising to pull his hair from his vision. Hearing a voice, Rein turned to see a boy with a book, doing...well, something. Tucking his hands in his pockets, Rein let his curiosity lead him over to the figure.

"Hello." The androgynous boy called lightly, voice naturally echoing slightly as his eyes glowed.

Leon glanced up at the lanky boy, hardly meeting his eyes before looking back at his hand again. He could see his veins in the back of his hand. They were almost black from the energy that was still running through them.

Leon didn't look up again. "'Sup?" 'Sup, he scoffed to himself. Something else he'd picked up from this new generation he had to live in. Whatever. He flexed his fingers. He could feel the energy running all the way up to the tips of his fingers.

Leon repeated the latin phrase again, louder and this time more prepared for the results. The watery circle of energy appeared again over his wrist, but it was no bigger than a baseball. Along the edges it dissipated back into his normal fiery energy. It wouldn't do much to guard against anything. Not yet, anyway.

He lifted his arm a bit to see if it would move with his hand and it did. He flicked a finger against it and it remained solid. Now Leon just wanted to see how long he could keep it up, and he stared at the circle of energy as it gently spun over his wrist, looking like an oversized watch face.

Rein hesitated. The short greeting was obviously antisocial, and he was already so horrible at making friends, he didn't want to annoy the boy. After all, he was almost immediately disregarded in favor for whatever he was doing with that strange sphere. Practicing something, it looked like. Playing with some sort of power.

However, he was curious. And he was supposed to be researching new magics and gathering information and observations. This may be a good time to observe, surely the boy wouldn't mind as long as he was respectful and didn't bother him.

Glowing silvery lilac eyes watched intensely as the orb appeared and he tilted his head as the boy tested it, flicking it. Now, Rein didn't know what it did, but it appeared solid. Actually, it looked a little like his own powers, only darker in color. That thought in mind, Rein held up his own hand to study it. Focusing, eyes glowing brighter, a small ball of light formed in his palm, thought it was only the size of an acorn. He tried to make it grow, make it look more like the one in the other boy's hand. Straining, he grinned when it increased it's size marginally, sparks of silver electricity dancing over the small ball's surface. Suddenly, it exploded, zapping it's holder.

"Tch!" He made a noise of pain as the power bit back at him, and he quickly shook his hand out, small traces of electricity sparking over his skin. Right, lets not try to make necromancy do something it doesn't want to. He frowned, rubbing his hand. His power was always so fickle, especially since that recent accident. He glanced to the other boy again.

"How do you control it so well?" He gestured to the spinning orb.

Leon watched the circle of energy intently. Now that he had it solid and seemingly in control, he was focusing his efforts in trying to make it grow. The edges of the circle looked almost like burning paper and as he focused his energy into it the violet fire expanded a bit. Nothing solid was actually added to the spell, though.

The fiery energy continued to sread outward, but it truly did nothing for him in that form. He needed to make it solid, and he didn't know how to do that. Maybe if he repeated the spell...?

He opened his mouth to do just that, but was distracted by the other boy's... whatever-it-was exploding. In that instant the circle of energy picked up speed and tilted in its rotation, running against his skin as it did, before dissipating entirely.

"Dammit," He swore aloud this time. Leon flexed his fingers again, allowing the energy to retreat back to wherever it was it came from, presumably his heart. He looked at the boy who'd caused him to mess up and tried to keep the accusation out of his voice, "It takes a lot of concentration."

Looking back at his hand he noticed that the spell had cut him when it tilted. It actually left an open, bleeding cut on his wrist, as opposed to the burns he was used to. The edges of the guardian spell were sharp... that was something new. He summoned some energy to his other hand and held the flaming stuff to the wound. When he pulled it away again the only thing left of the cut was the small bit of blood that had already escaped from it.

He summoned more of his normal energy inbetween his two hands, testing a theory now. He got it spinning and flat like the guardian spell, a little larger too, but he couldn't get it to be solid. Moving his hands in close enough to the edges to touch them he saw that it still simply burned like it normally did. When his theory didn't work he extinguished the flames and looked back at the boy. "What do you want?" He asked, though not indignantly.

He smiled sheepishly at the boy, wincing at the cut on the boy's wrist. Watching him heal it though, Rein became excited.

"Oh! You heal as well!" He grinned, clapping his hands together. "I'm just observing. I don't know much about magic, I only recently got mine. I was curious as to what you were doing, I'm supposed to be collecting information." He shrugged, giving a somewhat lopsided smile that spoke of innocent curiosity.

He studied the way that Leon experimented with the edges of the power and decided that trying that himself wouldn't be smart. He didn't know the reason for forming the power in such a way, but it obviously didn't work exactly like his. Rein realized that studying Leon probably wouldn't help knowing his own powers any better, despite the fact they looked somewhat similar, but it was still fascinating. He raised his own had and watched sparks of electricity dancing between his fingers, comparing them to the energy the other boy had been manipulating. They were definitely different. Rein hummed.

"I don't want anything in particular, but I would be grateful if you could satisfy my curiosity and explain your power thing there a little bit. It's very interesting."

Leon looked back into the spellbook, though he knew there was nothing for him to see there except for a bunch of gibberish. He didn't really know how to continue what he'd been doing with an audience, but he didn't want to deny the boy either. His eyebrows creased but he said begrudgingly anyway, "Fine. The healing only works on me though. For anyone else the burns would be worse then the original injury."

Leon put his fists together. Maybe he'd have better results with both hands. He uttered the spell again and it appeared in the middle above both wrists, larger than the first. His eyes widened in satisfaction. He removed his left hand, finding a need to almost balance the circle over the other hand even though it wasn't even touching his skin. After staring at it for a few seconds he noticed it was beginning to spin faster. He didn't know what good it did though. Thinking to back to when He'd seen Feign perform the same spell, he remembered that hers hadn't spun. The flame-like edges expanded as it spun faster but still didn't solidify. Eventually it got to be the size of a basketball, but the actual solid part was still much smaller.

He shrugged it off internally. For now he'd focus on keeping it out. See how long he could hold it before it dissipated. When he first summoned his normal energy he'd only been able to keep it out for about ten minutes. Now he could keep it out almost indefinitely unless he was forming or particularly tired or hungry. The circular energy remained for less than a minute before the solid part gave way to more fiery energy and dissipated.

Rein hummed lazily in thought. Pondering as he watched silently as the boy tried again with a different tactic: using both hands. Unwilling to distract the boy again and destroy his concentration, Rein kept to himself, folding his hands behind his back.

Left to his own thoughts, Rein wondered over the power that would heal Leon. But the boy had said that it would burn anyone else. Obviously, he was attuned to the power, but really, the Lijk was too curious. He wanted to know the effect of the flames on someone. Would it destroy the flesh? Melt? Just blacken? Would it be a slow or a fast paced burn? Would it start at a first degree or would it immediately destroy the epidermis and hit the dermis, causing a third degree burn? Seeing Leon's power dissapate, he spoke up again.

"May I inquire as to what your power is supposed to do? You said burn, but...well, I'm curious. Would you mind terribly?" Rein held out an arm, rolling up his sleeve to reveal the expanse of pale white forearm. Raising an eyebrow he gestured it forward. "I would simply like to experience the effects of what it is you are practicing. It may help you as well." All he wanted was a small burn. Any damage delt would heal eventually. He didn't have his phylactery on him today, it was safely in the care of Neferure, back at the castle. He couldn't die until the object was destroyed, no matter what happened to his flesh so he figured why not?

(( feel free to godmod whatever hapens to Rein's arm if Leon decides to try the power on him. ^^ ))

Leon looked at the boys arm confused. He was asking him to burn him. He shook his head in a kind of "oh well" manner. Remembering what his energy had done to Jami though, he refused to do the same to this boy. He pulled up the sleeve of his left arm and summoned the energy to his right hand and held it up against his own left arm. Afterwards he held his arm up to the boy to show him the effects.

They weren't bad burns. Under normal circumstances it would probably take about a week to heal. Maybe it would leave a scar. For him though, they disappeared completely within seconds. "It does the same to me that it would do to anybody else. I'm just so used to it that I barely feel it anymore and the same energy that causes the burns also heals them. Sometimes it burns hotter. I don't know why, though. It's literally just pure energy. The same kind you would use to walk or run, and I can form it into spells like the one I'm trying to learn now."

Leon looked back at his hands almost in boredom. He didn't want to try the spell again. He'd already worn out the phrase to the point where it was already stupid to say it anymore but not so well known that he could activate the spell simply by thinking it. He shook his head. He was never going to learn it if he stopped now. This time he held his hand palm-up before muttering the spell. It was a process of elimination really. Find out what worked best, and then adapt on that. Palm-up seemed to give him the most control over the energy, but the circle had come underwhelmingly small. That was probably because he'd muttered the spell, though. He allowed the energy to dissipate and immediately repeated the spell, this time enunciating it clearly. It expanded to be about the size of his hand, fingers outstretched. Once he felt he had it under control he turned his hand over. The circle of energy followed the underside of his wrist as if. Leon felt as though he was getting the hang of it and his eyebrows rose in satisfaction.

Rein lowered his arm. He didn't really have to wonder why the boy had chosen not to burn him, although he was slightly disappointed and his lips turned down just the smallest amount to show it. He leaned in to observe what the burn was like, tapping a finger lightly to his lips.

"Well, not as good a test as on myself, but interesting none the less." Rein figured these burns would last only a couple minutes on his own skin, but it did look like it would hurt a bit. Even if the boy couldn't feel the burns anymore, it was still a fairly decent amount of damage. He listened carefully to the boy's explanation.

"It's strange, your power seems to come from the same base as my own." He smiled at the other boy. Both powers originated from the energy that supplied the body it seemed. The only difference was, Rein could only use his to supply other bodies, and could not manage the power to form spells as this boy said he could so with his. The long haired boy leaned back and pointed to the orb that Leon was now playing with. "Though, that's what I can't do. I can't seem to contain or control my energy. I would never be able to get mine to behave like yours." His smile turned sheepish and he shrugged in an 'oh well, what ya gunna do?' fashion.

"I don't believe I ever asked your name. I apologize. I am Rein van Roy, may I have the pleasure of making your acquaintance?"

Leon nodded at Rein's name and gave back his own, always simple introduction, "Leon Barner." He lifted his arm again and flicked the circle of energy in its center. Small waves rippled through the spell flaring up into the light flames that made made up its edges. He allowed the spell to disappear again.

"There's a bunch of things I can do with it." He pushed the spellbook over a bit so Rein could see it. The whole thing was in Latin so he didn't think Rein would be able to actually read what any of it said. Hopefully he wasn't fluent in Latin. There was one diagram on the page: a pen drawing of an eye. A lattice encircled the pupil, replacing the iris. "This book's full of them. It'd take a lifetime to master it all, though. So far I only know three of them. Four now," He added with a slight shrug.

"Nice to meet you." Rein smiled and nodded to Leon. He leaned over, looking at the book in interest. He loved books. He recognized the language and could pick out a few familiar words here and there, but it made no sense to him.

"I do wish I had paid more attention to Latin, now." Rein frowned slightly. "I had focused on old Greeks and Egyptian since they had pertained more to the dead and the afterlife...I guess Latin should be my next venture." He mused, looking over the strange diagram before glancing back to the other boy. "A lifetime, huh? Well, that's not so bad." Rein shrugged and went back to trying to pick out vaguely familiar words from the mass of foreign tongue. A lifetime, well, that was what his species was for. Lijk, made immortal in pursuit of knowledge. Sometimes it felt a little daunting, but he would not regret it. There was so much to be learned and preserved. A single spell book was pale in comparison to what he aimed to conquer. Of course, it was a shame, he was still in the languages department. Had to learn the language before you could read the information after all.

Rein leaned back, pondering what type of magic this was. It might be worth looking in to sooner rather than later, especially if the boy here was someone he could ask questions on things he found in his searches.

"Four is still good. I'm sure they're useful in any case. Everyone starts somewhere." Rein spoke in a light tone. There was a small movement under the tall boy's jacket, and out of the top near the collar a small whiskered nose popped up, twitching as it smelt the air. Next followed a head, revealing a small rat with glowing eyes the same luminous color as Rein's own. It's ears were perked forward as it stared at Leon curiously, the majority of the left side of it's face skeletal while the right still had skin and patches of brown fur. Rein raised a hand to pet it with a slender finger absently.

It never took much to make Leon angry. There was always something about any given situation that he didn't like. In this case, he didn't like that Rein seemed to be suggesting that he had a lifetime to spare in order to learn spells. Though, it also seemed Rein didn't have the capability to learn spells like the ones he could do anyway, so he ignored it without showing any facial distortion.

Leon watched as the undead rodent crawled out of the boy's collar, and he scoffed to himself. "Necromancy?" He guessed. What Rein had said about Egyptians and the afterlife seemed to make sense with this anyway. But a rat? Really? He looked at the creature with slight disgust on his face. "I think that thing was better off dead."

Having no idea he had irritated Leon, Rein was startled at the call to his power. Looking up sharply, he tripped backwards, falling rather gracelessly onto his butt. Wincing, he rubbed the side of his leg and glanced up to Leon.

"What?" The long haired boy raised an eyebrow before his glowing eyes widened in realization. "Oh! Uhm, yeah. Necromancy." He creased his brows in annoyance. "Why was he better off dead? He's adorable and really very nice. He's great at getting in to small places too, very useful actually."

Said rat was jostled slightly by the fall, and had tumbled back into the jacket. There was a small amount of movement from inside as it climbed it's way back out again, scrambling it's way up onto Rein's shoulder. It's brown body fur was matted slightly and a bit patchy, skeleton underneath very prominent under fragile and aged skin. It squeaked for attention and Rein gently picked it up. Smiling, he nuzzled it lovingly before holding it out to Leon as if asking if the boy wanted to see or even pet it. The rat looked up at the black haired being with a curious expression, nose twitching, as it sat on the long elegant fingers.

Leon looked between the the boy and the rat a few times with a single raised eyebrow. What did he expect, exactly? Certainly he wasn't offering Leon to touch disgusting vermin. If live rats carried as much disease as they did, he'd hate to think how much a rat that's been dead who-knows-how-long would have.

"It's a rat," He stated bluntly. Evidently Rein hadn't picked up on this extremely obvious fact. "It's rotting. It's probably diseased. It's probably rabid, and it smells like,-" he interrupted his sentence in search of the right words, since the ones he'd been planning to use could actually have been true for the rodent, "well, like roadkill. It probably would have been better off if you'd just left it to the vultures instead of making it suffer."

For a brief moment Leon saw himself as some undead zombie. A shiver ran through his spine, followed by a confused and surprised look on his face. He stopped himself from swearing aloud and shook his head, reaching for his Latin dictionary. It would suck to be a zombie.

Leon began sifting through the dictionary. He hated the complexity of the spells. If he didn't know the exact words used to perform it, it was practically impossible to figure them out. His sister had once performed a teleportation spell. Though he knew very well that he most likely wasn't powerful enough to perform the spell, it was one of the only other ones he knew existed. The spell names always seemed to be a literal description of what the spell did. His wings, for instance, were the gate to the heavens, ironically enough. He understood why it had to be that way, but it was still annoying nonetheless.

Taking the rat back to his chest, holding him lovingly, Rein rolled his glowing eyes at Leon as he frowned lightly.

"So negative, what do you have against zombies? Scared of them? And no duh, it's a rat. And it may be carrying diseases, but that's part of his charm really, just like the smell." He smirked cheekily. "and he's not suffering, I'd know, I'm the one controlling him."

The long haired boy huffed as Leon once again went back to his books. Well, fine. Rein returned his attention to the rat, eyes glowing brilliantly as small sparks of electricity danced over his hand as he pet the little animal. Like he did with Neferure, he smoothed out the skin as if he were a sculptor and the rat a thing of clay. The more he worked, the better it looked, though he could do nothing for the revealed bones. It still looked like a zombie rat, but a much healthier zombie rat if that was possible.

He glanced up from his pet to the boy again, brow creasing slightly.

"Perhaps you should sit and actually work to translate the books first?..."

Leon watched Rein out of the corner of his eye as he stroked the rat. A rat. He was stroking a dead rat's fur...

"I don't have anything against them. I just think it must suck to sit there and be a stinking, rotting heap of flesh and and bone with no purpose whatsoever. It's got to suck to be a living, normal rat without adding the undead part to it. And being under someone else's control? Well, that's suffering enough for me. Then again, it is a rat and doesn't have any actual independent thought anyway other than maybe: 'holy crap, that's a cat' or 'damn, I could really use some food right now'. The point is it's a rat. Nobody cared about when it was alive and nobody cares about it now that its dead." 'Nobody but this freak, anyway', he added in his head.

Leon then realized how long the rant he'd just given was and that it was about a rat... He shook his head. He considered Rein's idea about translating the book. It would take forever, and most of the spells in the book were probably too advanced for him to do anyway. He had to start with the ones he knew he could do first and then work his way up. He shook his again, this time in response to the suggestion. "It'd be a waste of time."

Making no outwardly reaction, Rein continued petting the rat in his lap. However, he listened closely to Leon's rant. As the other boy went on, Rein's hands stopped and his head hung lower, hair falling to frame his face. His eyes glowed brilliantly, lighting up in the shadows cast by his hair.

He didn't know this boy, they had just met...and yet...he wanted to hurt this boy. Rein was surprised at himself. The way Leon talked about the rat, Rein wanted to actually spite him. He scoffed a laugh.

"And what of you?" He tilted his head up to look at Leon from under his veil of hair. " How is this rat so different, hm?" The boy dragged himself to his feet, rat scampering up to his shoulder. "I don't see a difference, honestly. Who cares about you? No one can control you?" Rein scoffed again. "You honestly and truly are uninfluenced by everyone." The boy rolled his eyes and tilted his head, hair swaying to reveal a cold look directed at Leon.

"I just think it must suck to stand there and be a heap of live flesh and bone with self-idealized purpose." Rein shifted his weight, starting to turn away from the boy. "What do you know what it's like to be dead? Or a rat for that matter."

A smirk played across Leon's lips as the boy spoke. People didn't seem to understand that insults truly didn't work on him. Most of the time the insults were true, and he was perfectly okay with that. The self-idealize purpose bit was off, but he didn't care. Still, it was as if people said these thing and actually expected him to be fazed by them.

He lifted his head and looked out towards the ocean, not looking at Rein as he spoke. "You're calling me a rat?" He asked for clarification. "That's an insult, you know. You're using your dead rat insult me, basically acknowledging everything I just said as being true. Why don't you just say it then?" Now he turned his head to look after Rein. "It's a friggin rat and so am I."

Leon felt a need to add something. "But there are a few differences between me and that rat. One being that I'm alive and it's dead. That rat won't argue with you the way I am now." Here he gave a light shrug. "In that sense I can understand why you'd want to be friends with a dead rat. People like me get annoying pretty fast. Still, it is a bit pathetic that you had to bring a rat back to life to keep you company."

Rein looked back, eyebrow raised and apparently surprised at Leon's words. A grin broke his frown and he actually laughed with quite a bit of genuine mirth, the sound echoing seemingly in the air as if coming from more than one place at a time.

"Why, you're intelligence is amusing." He brought a hand to his mouth, trying to quiet. "Why would I call you a rat? I know you are not a rodent at all. That would be silly. I was saying that while you are equal to a rat, you don't know what it is like to be a rat at all. And actually, I do feel sorry for you. Life is so much better when you're dead." He smiled smoothly and tilted his head a bit. "But, as you've said, you are indeed very annoying. I brought the rat back because he is preferable company, not because I am incapable of making other friends. It is rude of you to presume I have no other company. In fact, there is someone I spend most of my time with."

Rein laughed again lightly. "I am doing pretty good actually, considering I'm about as dead as this rat. But even I am giving someone like you the benefit of the doubt. Someone must be able to tolerate you enough to be friendly. I would be...if you could handle the zombies. As it is, I think I find that we will not be of an entirely amiable acquaintance." The long haired boy nodded, as if regretfully, though his expression was too amused to really be sad about it. A spark went off at his left eye and he glanced down as it ran down his form and into the ground.

With wide eyes, Rein looked confused, then shocked and then extremely wary.

"Uh oh." He started back towards Leon, looking around at the ground as if something was going to explode.

Leon raised a brow at Rein. Now he was insulting his intelligence? It seemed to him that Rein was the one that lacked the intelligence to realize the insult in his own statement. Either that, or he actually thought very highly of the rat and considered his words a compliment. You couldn't deny the obvious negative connotation in what Rein he said. Leon wasn't about to start arguing the characteristics that made up an insult with this boy, though.

He didn't understand what Rein was talking about, being just as dead as the rat. Frankly, he didn't care either. That last bit about him spending most of his time with someone seemed like just like a weak attempt to say he had living friends. Leon found it disgusting that Rein had a preference to the dead over the living, and that was all there was too it.

"Zombies aren't something that everybody is readily willing to accept you know. In fact, most humans have a fear of zombies. Hollywood doesn't exactly make them out to be friendly." Leon put the spellbook and the Latin dictionary back into his back pack and stood, suggesting he was getting ready to leave. "Anyway, I'd rather not be acquaintances with someone that's constantly surrounded by the smell of death."

Leon's eyebrows creased as he watched the different expressions fly across Rein's face. Suspiciously he asked, "What the hell did you just do?"

Rein was really too preoccupied with searching the ground to give Leon his full attention at the moment and so the glare sent at the boy was short-lived.

"Most humans have a right to fear zombies. I apologize if I pegged you as a little more capable of handling yourself. It's really alright if you can keep them from biting you, or contaminating yourself. They are dead, they do carry diseases, and human immune systems are lacking..." He shrugged. "That's not a reason to hate them entirely." Then, he looked entirely affronted and turned to the boy sharply, placing his hands on his hips in a rather girl fashion.

"I'll have you know, I do not always smell like death. Currently, I smell like cinnamon and cloves from making breakfast this morning." Rein huffed and rolled his glowing eyes. He then looked to the side and slightly unsure.

"I didn't do anything." He sighed, dropping his arms and glancing around him again. He could feel....something. But it didn't have a great connection to him...He couldn't tell what it was entirely, he could't tell if that had even been enough to stir the corpse. "Sometimes...things just react. Necromancy is....funny like that." He shrugged.

Rather abruptly, the ground just a little bit off to the side of Rein, shifted. It bumped up and cracked like something beneath it was pushing up. Rein jumped and turned wide-eyed. "Oh crap." Now he knew that feeling. A human. Never very responsive to him. He quickly ducked around Leon, hoping that the zombie would not see him. He did not feel like being glomped right now.

A bulge came out of the ground, and slowly but surely, a head and an arm surfaced as the body clawed it's way out. It looked up with eyes glowing the same as Rein's, jaw open and groaning. There were patches of what had once been short brown hair, and the being's skin was tight and leathery, peeling off in some places to reveal bone underneath.

Leon raised an eyebrow at the feminine stance Rein had just taken. "Yeah, maybe you do. But that sick rat you're carrying around smells like the south end of a north-bound skunk. And that skunk would be of the dead variety."

Leon didn't want to acknowledge the sudden urge to do something violent in that instance, but there was no doubt it was there. Rein "didn't do anything" but he was currently scanning the ground like some kind of glowy-eyed ant-eater looking for breakfast, and it was really beginning to annoy him. Then, from the ground not far away from them, out popped a friggin zombie, and Leon could no longer deny his violent side.

His eyebrows creased as Rein moved behind him. "You know, for someone who claims not to be afraid of zombies, your reaction just now says quite the opposite."

Leon face the zombie now, the ugly rotting thing, and summoned some energy to each of his hands. He wondered how much effort it would take to completely break the zombie. If push came to shove, he could always throw it off the cliffside. Even if it didn't die from the fall it would certainly be left incapable of bothering him again anytime soon.

Rein scoffed and rolled his eyes. "Well, aren't you poetic." His brows furrowed, his back turned to Leon's back, though neck turned to look over both their shoulders at the zombie. "I'm not afraid of the zombie, I just don't control human-types very well, they tend to cling to me and are sometimes especially persistent. Hopefully, if it sees you first, it'll try to hug you instead."

Seeing the energy gather on the boy's hands out of the corner of his eye, Rein raised an eyebrow.

"What are you planning to do?" Then, eyes widening, he realized Leon must mean to re-kill the thing and he aimed a sharp poke to the boy's hip. "Hey! Don't hurt it. It hasn't done anything wrong. There's a very rare chance it'll be hostile. The most it might do is try to glomp you." Rein sounded exasperate, as if explaining to a kid you can't take the fish out of the water to play with it.

Leon let out a sigh. Rein would defend a rotting corpse. He didn't extinguish the flames though. Getting "glomped", another word Leon felt was beneath him, wasn't something he wanted right now. Besides, the zombie wasn't making itself useful in any other way. Leon figured he may as well use it for entertainment.

Leon released his wings, slightly annoyed at the poke at his hip. He hoped his burning wings would force Rein out of his personal, though, taking into considering consideration the boy's personality, he realized it could have the opposite effect. He kept his wings close, just around his shoulders, and ignored Rein. He kept his eyes on the zombie, hoping it would notice him.