Chapter Text
When Soul was figuring out what to do with his newly discovered blade-sprouting ability, he assumed that what the DWMA application website and info brochure showed was an extremely stylized cartoon of the grim reaper. As he learned at new student orientation, it was pretty true to life, cutesy mask, foam finger hands and all. He made his appearance through a giant mirror in an auditorium at that time. This would be Soul’s first time seeing him in person.
The Death Room was a mind-bending space. Sand and blue sky stretched seemingly forever ahead of them, far beyond what should fit within a mere school. A path led through several of those red Japanese gates he was sure Maka would scold him for not knowing the word for, each offering the mortal threat of a chop from a guillotine blade. Further out, crosses were planted into the ground as far as the eye could see. A handful of windows were fixed in the air, and Soul spotted a puffy cloud slithering behind one inexplicably.
The path brought Soul and Maka to a large platform, where the motionless, statuesque form of Lord Death stood waiting. He was seemingly made of exactly two parts: that cartoony skull mask, and a cloak silhouetted in jagged edges and made of darkness itself.
“Lord Death,” Maka addressed him, her head held high and her voice unwavering. “I’m scythe meister Maka, reporting on your request with my partner Soul Eater.”
Half of Soul was irritated that she commandeered his chance to introduce himself when he was kind of the reason they were there in the first place, while the other half admired and thanked her for representing them both so confidently. This guy was basically a god, right? Not even “basically,” he was a god. It was more than a step up from the handful of high-society bigwigs his parents were known to rub elbows with.
Despite that fact, a nasal, chipper tone greeted “Hiyaaa! It's always good to see my students!” from the headmaster as they stilled before him. “I hear you’ve gotten into a bit of a pickle with a black dog?” he asked, not unlike how you’d talk to a five-year-old.
“As his meister, I apologize for the trouble he’s caused,” Maka jumped in again before Soul could answer.
“No need to apologize,” Death reassured. “Really, a new E.A.T. student is one of the best people to get cursed like this. You two are expected to work together daily, so Sid was alerted to check your soul when something went awry. A civilian, or even a teacher may not have noticed in time!”
“… Yeah,” was all Soul answered. Someone in this room having a positive attitude about all this was objectively better than both Maka and Death both jumping down his throat, but that didn’t stop the designation of “best person to get cursed” from leaving him disoriented.
“So-o-o? Tell me how it happened. In full detail, please.”
Soul scratched at the back of head. “So. It was 10-ish last night when I was coming home from Black☆Star and Tsubaki’s place. There’s this alley I usually take for a shortcut when I walk. When I got there, there was this…” Ugh, did he really have to admit this part? “This, weenie dog, laying down in front of it. I crouched down and told it that it looked normal, but I didn’t touch it or anything. And it didn’t seem bothered by me. So I did the thing of knocking three times before you pass a threshold. It barked at me after I walked away but it didn’t chase or attack me or anything like that.”
“And you didn't look back while passing through? Not even when it barked at you?”
“I…” He blinked. “I did but, I had already passed by it at that point.”
Maka groaned an unhelpful “Seriously?” at his side. Lord Death answered more congenially, “I see the confusion now. You were supposed to cross the entire alley without looking back. By ‘threshold’ we mean something more like transitional or connecting zones. Ah, I think the kids have been calling them liminal spaces now!”
“S… seriously? But it barked at me! I was doing fine until then!”
“Yep! Black dogs are known to trick people from time to time to test them.”
“Hey… the word choice ‘tricked’… You mean I was…”
Death finished a singsong, “Outsmarted by a dog!”
Now Soul groaned aloud. “Couldn’t it at least have been something cool like a Doberman or a pit bull?”
“You should give dachshunds their credit, too. They were quite valued in their hunting heyday for being some of the most tenacious dogs out there, willing to dive straight into strange, dark places without looking back! And that’s precisely the quality that spectral doxies test, waiting around dark passageways to catch ghosts who are avoiding death.”
Lord Death could deliver an endorsement to rival commercials for any kids’ comic book hero, but that didn’t change the fact that not only did Soul get outsmarted by a dog, but apparently it judged him a coward because of it. He chose not to voice this part aloud when another groan perfectly communicated his frustration.
“But, Lord Death,” Maka cut in, “what exactly did it do to him?”
“Judging by the method and the way his soul looks… I’d say it used spatial magic to snag him into the next world.”
“What? But how can that be when he’s right here?”
“Paradoxical, isn’t it? He’s in both the world of the living, and the world of the dead. Or you could say he’s in neither. Imagine you had a nice knitted sweater, and a thread got caught on a thorny bush. The world of the dead has a kind of pull that prevents souls from leaving it, and as we speak, it’s tugging that thread and unraveling the Soul Eater sweater.”
“It sounds like someone needs to be getting rid of those things,” Soul commented. Maka jabbed him hard with her elbow.
“Don’t get the wrong impression,” Lord Death said, “they’re not trying to prey on the living. They’re mediators of death who patrol all over the world for spirits of the departed who either refuse to move on, or can’t find their way. But it also seems they’ve designated Death City as a holy site, so they get a bit overzealous about protecting it from intruders, too.” His giant, blocky hands sprung forth from the total blackness of his body to show his shrug.
“Then do you really think it’s smart to let your dogs roam free if they’re this dangerous?”
“Soul, show some respect!” Maka chastised him.
“Easy there,” Lord Death said, waving his hands in a calm-down gesture, “he’s just curious. You see Soul, they’re not my dogs to begin with. I don’t think they’d stop even if I wanted them to.”
“You don’t want them to stop?”
“Heavens no! The thing about the departed is that they need to depart. Black dogs perform an important job in that regard.”
“But don’t I have to kill the dog that cursed me to break the spell?”
“You can’t. They’re immortal.”
Soul buried his face in his hands.
“You don’t need to do anything so extreme in any case. You just need to find the dog that got your soul all turned around and ask it to bring you back to the world of the living. Leave a 42-piece offering tonight and something with your scent. Then whistle out of your window four times to get its attention.”
“Wouldn’t someone be screwed if they couldn’t whistle?”
“Hm… I suppose they could bark. Maka, you should be able to help with the offering, yes?”
She answered a squeaky, uncertain, “Y-yeah!”
Lord Death continued, “On the third night after your encounter, meet the dog at the same alley where you first saw it, and follow it all the way down until you’re on the other side. I’m sure it goes without saying now, but do not under any circumstance look back until you’re on the opposite side of the alley.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve learned my lesson about that last part,” Soul mumbled.
“And there’s one last little detail…”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want to scare you, but if you don’t get sorted out by the end of Friday night, your soul will be carried too far into the world of the dead to get it back.”
“You mean he’ll die?” Maka cut in.
“Isn’t that kind of important to start with?” Soul asked.
“I’m sure you’ll do just fine now that you have all the information! Even better, now we’ve found how we can better inform our new students and visitors about black dogs. For that, I thank you, Soul!”
“Uhm… you’re… welcome?”
“The two of you are excused from classes for the rest of the day to get your offering together. Gooood luck!” He sent them off with a giant peace sign.
After they left the Death Room, all of the wind had been taken out of Maka’s angry sails. It didn’t suit her to hang her head and squeeze her hands together like this as they walked the halls. Still, it wasn’t like Soul was freaking out any less about it. How was he supposed to take the news of his soul apparently drifting further into hell with each passing second?
“So. What’s this 42-piece offering we’re supposed to do?” he asked after they exited the building, only growing more anxious with the silence.
“It’s a type of ritual sacrifice you do for spirits aligned with death,” she answered, voice uncharacteristically meek. “Everyone from Death City has to witness one.”
“Then a know-it-all like you ought to be an expert on it, yeah?”
“It’s been a long time,” came her defensive murmur. “They make all the kids get together to see it in the first week of kindergarten, but no one ever expects to have to do one on their own.”
“Kindergarten!?”
“What?” Maka stopped a few steps down the academy’s massive staircase after noticing Soul had stopped. “Some places do things like baptisms when their kids are still babies, you know.”
“Yeah, but…” She stared up at him, mouth drawn tight. “I mean, you gotta admit it’s pretty hardcore, having ritual sacrifice between nap time and your ABC’s.”
“Hmph.” She continued descending the steps. “I have a book at home that should have details on how to do it. We’re gonna have to hope our ‘hardcore’ offering saves your butt.”
Soul drove them home on his motorcycle. It was a rebellious splurge pulled off with guilt money from his parents that always seemed to lift his mood, but now the ride did little to ease the tension between them. Maka headed for her bookshelf as soon as they were in the apartment, but before making her selection, she folded her arms against herself. “Soul.”
“Yeah?”
“You need to know you can’t die to this. You’re not allowed.” She turned to him. “We have a lot of work we haven’t even started yet, so you’re not allowed to get taken away–” Her mouth clamped shut, and even he could sense that her angry stare was the dam holding in something both fragile and turbulent.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he said. “How the hell are you gonna make me a death scythe if I’m dead?” He reached for her shoulder and felt it relax the tiniest amount.
“Good. Just so we’re clear.”
She found her reference material, an old-looking hardback with blank front and back covers and metallic lettering on the spine that read Psychopomps and Spirit Guides. Maka flicked her thumb across the faint trace of dust on the page edges and opened it up.