The Wight's question hung in the stale, thousand-year-old air, a perfect fusion of ancient gravitas and utter bewilderment. Its glowing blue eyes were fixed on Deadpool, who was still craned over the edge of the sarcophagus, trying to get a better look at its feet.
Deadpool slowly straightened up, a thoughtful expression on his masked face. He tapped a finger against his chin.
"That's a fantastic question, and I appreciate your engagement," he began, his tone that of a patient university lecturer. "To answer it, we first have to establish what we mean by 'doing.' Am I physically interacting with your socks? Not yet. Am I spiritually communing with their historical essence? Absolutely. I'm currently in the appraisal phase. They appear to be a ceremonial-grade silk-linen blend, possibly with enchanted thread to prevent mildew. Remarkable condition, considering. 8/10 on the preservation scale."
The Wight stared. Its jaw, which hadn't moved in centuries, worked silently for a moment. It had dealt with powerful heroes, cunning thieves, and bumbling necromancers. It had never dealt with a critic.
"A WIGHT!" Kazuma finally shrieked, breaking the spell of absurdity. "That's a Wight! It's a high-level undead that can drain your life force and command lesser spirits! Everyone, get ready! This is a boss fight!"
"A heretical creature of the night!" Aqua declared, her initial shock turning into righteous indignation. "How dare you defile this sacred ground with your unholy presence! Well, it was sacred before you showed up, anyway! Prepare to be cleansed by the light of a true goddess!"
"Its aura is terrifying…" Darkness whispered, taking a step forward. "Cold, ancient, and filled with a despair that could crush a mortal's soul. Please, o dreadful lord of this forgotten tomb, focus your terrifying power on me! Let me be the vessel for your ancient hatred!"
The Wight's gaze shifted from one lunatic to the next, its cold intelligence trying to process the sheer volume of dysfunction it was witnessing. It was like waking up from a long nap to find your house had been invaded by a circus troupe that had recently suffered a collective head injury.
Its eyes finally settled back on Deadpool, who had now produced his magnifying glass and was trying to get an even closer look at the socks inside the sarcophagus. This creature was clearly the ringleader. The source of the madness.
"You have defiled my tomb. You have pilfered my worldly treasures," the Wight rasped, its voice like dry leaves skittering across pavement. It raised a desiccated, bony hand, which began to glow with a sickly black aura. "For this transgression, your very life force is forfeit. I shall feast upon your soul."
It lunged, its movements impossibly fast for a creature made of dust and bone. It thrust its glowing hand toward Deadpool's chest.
"Life Drain!"
The black energy enveloped Deadpool. Kazuma cried out, expecting to see his mercenary crumple into a dried-up husk.
Deadpool, however, just stood there. He shivered slightly, like a man feeling a sudden draft. "Ooh," he said, his voice thoughtful. "That is… weird. It's like, tingly and cold, but also kind of minty? Like sticking your soul in a freezer full of spearmint gum. My cholesterol just dropped twenty points. Can you do my other side? I feel unbalanced."
The Wight retracted its hand as if it had touched a hot stove. It stared at its own glowing fingers, then back at Deadpool. The life force it should have drained, the vitality it should have consumed, was not there. Instead, it had received a horrifying feedback loop of pure, chaotic energy that tasted faintly of preservatives and chimichanga grease. Its own magical energy felt… violated.
"What… what are you?" the Wight hissed, taking an involuntary step back.
"I'm complicated," Deadpool said with a shrug. "I contain multitudes. Mostly sarcasm and scar tissue. Now, about those socks. Are you willing to negotiate? I can offer you a slightly used pouch and a half-eaten bag of trail mix. That's a good deal. That's primo trail mix. It has the little chocolate bits in it."
The Wight, enraged and utterly confused, decided to change tactics. If it couldn't drain the main threat, it would eliminate the distractions. It raised both hands and chanted in a language of forgotten dust and shadows. The bones of the skeletons they had defeated earlier began to rattle and reassemble, pulled together by the Wight's powerful necromantic will. Within seconds, a new squad of skeletons, their eyes glowing with the Wight's malevolent blue light, stood ready.
"Destroy the others!" the Wight commanded. "The red one is mine!"
The skeletons charged. Darkness met them with a joyous war cry, her sword swinging wildly and missing completely, allowing the skeletons to swarm her exactly as she'd hoped. Aqua began shrieking and firing off useless jets of water. Kazuma yelped and started casting his Steal spell at random, managing to acquire a single skeletal rib, a rusty pauldron, and, for some reason, the concept of the color beige.
While his party engaged in their usual tactical train wreck, Deadpool hopped up to sit on the edge of the sarcophagus, crossing his legs casually. The Wight was standing a few feet away, its chest heaving with ancient, dusty rage.
"You know, your minions are really giving my friends a run for their money," Deadpool commented conversationally. "It's a real nail-biter. But let's you and me have a real talk. Just one ancient, undead horror to another."
"We are nothing alike, you abomination!" the Wight snarled.
"Oh, I don't know," Deadpool said, leaning forward. "We're both stuck in bodies that aren't quite right. We both have a killer fashion sense, love the high collar, by the way, very Dracula-chic. And we're both just looking for a little peace and quiet, right? You, in your eternal slumber. Me, in a world where people don't constantly try to kill me before I've had my morning coffee."
He hopped off the sarcophagus and started pacing in front of the Wight, who watched him with growing alarm.
"But here's the thing, Mr. Wight," Deadpool continued, his voice taking on the cadence of a therapist. "You're lonely. You've been down here for, what, a thousand years? No one to talk to. No one to appreciate your sock collection. That's got to be tough. All that anger? That's not malice. It's a cry for help."
"I do not need help! I need you to perish!" the Wight insisted, though a flicker of doubt entered its glowing eyes.
"Do you, though?" Deadpool stopped pacing and stood directly in front of the undead priest, completely ignoring the battle raging behind him. "Or do you just need someone to see you? To appreciate you for who you were?" He pointed at the hieroglyphs on the tomb wall. "I see you. High Priest of a forgotten god. A man of taste and distinction. A man who understood the importance of quality foot coverings. You're not just a monster. You're a legacy."
The Wight was stunned into silence. Its entire existence had been about inspiring fear and commanding undeath. No one had ever tried to psychoanalyze it before.
Deadpool saw his opening. "Let me help you," he said, his voice soft and sincere. "Let me… preserve that legacy. Let me give those socks a new home. A place where they will be honored. Worshipped, even. I'll build a museum. Your socks will be the centerpiece of the 'Ancient and Eldritch' exhibit. People will come from all over the world to gaze upon their magnificence. Your name will be remembered not as a Wight, but as a fashion icon."
The Wight's cold, dead mind tried to process this. A museum? For his socks? It was the most insane, idiotic, and strangely compelling offer it had ever heard. The battle rage, the ancient malice, the necromantic power, all of it was being short-circuited by the sheer, overwhelming force of Deadpool's nonsense.
While the Wight was frozen in a state of profound mental confusion, Deadpool moved. It wasn't an attack. It was a delicate, precise operation. With the speed of a pickpocket and the reverence of a mortician, he reached into the sarcophagus, past the Wight's stiff legs, and his fingers closed around the ancient silk.
He gently slid the priceless, millennia-old socks from the Wight's dusty feet.
The Wight looked down. It saw its bare, bony ankles. It looked up at Deadpool, who was now holding the socks as if they were the holy grail.
The last thread of the Wight's sanity snapped. It let out a single, long, drawn-out scream that was not of anger, but of pure, existential defeat. The blue light in its eyes flickered, dimmed, and then went out. Its body crumbled, not into dust, but into a pile of fine, inert sand and tattered robes, its will to exist completely and utterly annihilated.
The skeletons it was controlling immediately collapsed into heaps of bone.
The chamber fell silent.
Deadpool held the ancient socks aloft. They were so fragile they were almost translucent.
"Item #003," he whispered, his voice trembling with emotion. "The Spectral Silks of the Sad, Sad Sucker."