"I would like to join you, if you would not mind," Thanatos says. "Perhaps their knowledge could shed some light on the happenings here."
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
It was hard figuring out where his friends had gone. He had an idea of what they might have done, but had no way to communicate with them to see if his guess had been correct. After what felt like an eternity of searching but had probably only been a matter of minutes, they turned onto a street that had several people on it. He immediately recognized the tall and lean form of Engel; it was hard to miss a suit of armor. And he could see Sebastian's bright blue uniform, too. They were with two unfamiliar people, a man and a girl, but he paid them no attention.
Artemis jumps at the sound, already nervous and now more spooked. She doesn't run, however, just goes back on edge.
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
The first thing Bo noticed was Artemis’s reaction.
“Hey, Sebastian. Tell your friend not to yell. I think Artemis doesn’t like that. We don’t wanna scare her,”
The secong thing he noticed was a person. The four armed, tall, glowing person following behind the two. Now that, he didn’t have a grid for. But the dude certainly wasn’t a harpy or an ogre or anything like that.
Tottan followed behind quietly, noting the reaction of the others. Recognition from two of them- which meant they’d found the fellow’s frends. And then some.
Sebastian's eyes first go to the boy who could only be Geist. It had been some time since he had last assumed the form of an Ishvalan boy, but it was undoubtedly him from the shouting. Engel visibly straightened at the sound of Geist's voice. If a suit of armor could smile, he certainly was.
He glanced over at Artemis. Following Bo's suggestion, he put a finger to his lip and gestured over at the girl. When the request registered, Geist hesitated and then nodded. He hated being quiet but had a thing for kids. If a kid was scared, he would do everything to calm them down.
Then his gaze traveled to the other two people that Geist was with, if they could be called that. One was a terrifying sort of man, though he couldn't put his finger on why. And the other...well, the other wasn't anything human. He must have been a spirit of some sort.
Artemis watches as they approach, eyes widening as they fall on Thanatos. No...it can't be. He died. And yet...that colorless gaze, the pale hair, the skin that's all but transparent. His tall, gaunt form - but most of all, his scent.
Thanatos eyes the group, analyzing it carefully and trying to decide what he thinks of it. There's the man in the suit of armor - likely brawn, though it's hard to know much without seeing his face - then the one in the blue uniform. An alchemist, if he remembers correctly. Then there's the very large, muscular man with scars running across his face, who at first glance appears quite intimidating before one takes into account the look in his eye.
Then there was the girl, no more than sixteen. Black hair that is choppy and short. Yellow eyes, pointed teeth, a solid metal left arm. How was she here? How did she manage it? It seemed almost impossible, and yet...here she was, in the flesh.
She runs towards him as they approach, stopping a couple feet away from Thanatos. They stop, looking at each other for several moments before either one speaks.
"Artemis?" Thanatos asks. "Is that you?"
"Pleoh!" she reaches a hand out towards him, hardly able to believe it, nearly touching him before seeming to realize something and withdrawing her fingers. "Pleoh...you not die."
"No, no I did not. I'm already dead, remember?"
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
Bo stared at the exchange. It was obvious that the girl knew the guy, whose presence was oddly unnerving. A reality that was only amplified by his most recent words exchanged with Artemis, therefore only tripling his overall confusion.
"Wait, uh. What?" He asks, eyes still drifting back to the four armed, clearly not human dude. He was trying not to stare. He was trying not to be rude. "Who is - uh - do you know all of these people?" He asked Sebastian.
Meanwhile, Tottan watched the exchange between Artemis and Thanatos with interest and steady grin, happy to see the reunion of more friends. Though he was beginning to wonder now just what exactly he was doing there, and if he too might run into anyone he knew. There were still many unanswered questions that needed answering, but none of them seemed to know anything useful to learning more about how and why they appeared here.
She frowns, thinking - then her face falls with realization. "You...you left me."
"Artemis, I had no choice in the matter," he says calmly.
"Always choice!" she retorts, ears back against her skull.
"That is not true, as you well know," Thanatos replies, watching her metal arm carefully. "Please don't punch me, I do not want to accidentally hurt you."
"You left!" she repeats, getting more worked up by the moment.
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
Sebastian gawked at the words that the girl had spoken; he had been doing it for the past few minutes. The rest of the conversation had most escaped his notice - he had tuned out the moment the man said that he was already dead. How could such a feat be possible? Human transmutation was a taboo for a reason. He had seen what had happened to the Elric brothers. They had never said that human transmutation was the cause, but anyone with a basic knowledge of alchemy knew that was why Alphonse was a hollow suit of armor and Edward had automail.
"How did you...how did you do it?" Sebastian asked. "How did you come back from the dead-"
Tottan simply stared, his eyes glowing many different colors as he paid close attention to each word spoken.
Bo lifted up a hand, looking around at the others. "Uh, for the record," he cleared his throat. "I have no idea what a necromancer is. Or how it's even possible to be dead but not dead. But uh, in any case, let's not like, stress out Artemis even more, cause it sounds like she's got a lot uh, going on. Or whatever."
He starts to answer Sebastian before he's cut off by Artemis again. "Why leave?" she demands.
"Artemis, to have gone back in would have been folly," he says. "It was impossible. Had I done so, we would've been back to square one and it would've made escape even more difficult."
She just looks at him with an injured gaze.
"Your concept of loyalty is one I do not possess. You know this. I don't understand your...anger."
She just shakes her head, ending the conversation. He studies her for a couple moments before turning to Sebastian.
"I do not know how I was made. What I am is not something that should be possible. However, I am not alive, though I possess many characteristics of living creatures. By the my understanding of the term, at any rate - alive requires the possession of a soul, which I do not have."
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
"But-but the laws of equivalent exchange...how could something like that even work..." Sebastian muttered to himself, head hurting at the thought of how someone could be brought back to life. He doubted even a philosopher's stone could be used for that purpose, so how was he talking to someone that should have been dead?
"Well," Geist said, "I think you broke our alchemist."
Engel sent a worried glance in Sebastian's direction.
"Spirits 2.0, if what Issac says is right. Poor guy does terrible when something is the least bit magical-" Geist began to say, only to be cut off by the alchemist in question.
"We talked about this," Sebastian interrupted, "there's an explanation for how spirits work and I'm going to find it after I'm done in the military. You just think they're magical because you don't know how they work."
Geist shrugged. "Just saying it as it is. Magic is real and you're just a stubborn idiot."
Engel sighed; Geist and Sebastian fighting was not a rare occurrence, and he was always either stuck on the sidelines or in the middle. Then he turned his attention back to the others - the strange being that wasn't a spirit, the dead man, the guy Sebastian had been talking with and the girl.
"I'm Issac," he introduced himself, warmth bubbling in the voice that reverberated within his armor. "I'm sorry for how my friends are acting...their friendship is a bit of a rocky one."
Engel perked up. "I've never met a human that could use magic before," he said, ignoring the bickering friends behind him. They were too absorbed in this conversation to notice the new one. "I've been-I've heard of alternate realities before, but none of them had humans wielding magic."
Bo’s eyebows raised and he looked at Isaac with a small grin. He lifted up a hand and a trail of blue lightning began to dance around wiggling fingers.
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