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Chapter Text

A drop of dark coffee slips from a precisely articulated tube hinged above a rusted black cauldron, nothing but the spark of friction as a result of the collision causing heated, powerful steam to erupt.

The cool, controlled air of the room met with crazed stacks of paperwork and notes are sent near toppling from the blow— and the message is received, slender fingertips reaching a small button at the head of the machine to initiate a stop. A sigh of exhaustion is all it takes to cut through the heated air that remains.

A dark-skinned man with curled brown hair and grays swirled into it akin to the careful creamery of coffee art curls his finger around his lips, pressed into a slight frown of disappointment. A moment of thought passes by before he makes way for a notebook hard-pressed with sticky notes and labels, flapping it open to the next blank page and etching messed handwriting between the lines.

He only gets so much down before he slaps it hard against the free space on his desk, burying his head into his propped up elbows.

Despite his knowledge for impeccable work ethic, for the first time in what felt like moons, Espresso was facing a struggle. Beside him were mounds of notebooks full to the brim with intense examination, but to no avail, his experimentation was for naught.

Needless to say, the poor man was faced with a rut. But who was he to turn to, being the greatest mage and alchemist of the kingdom? No one but he himself could efficiently solve this scientific mystery… especially in the face of constant war and famine.

It wasn’t easy living in a joint kingdom. After the Dark Flour War, the founder and long-standing ruler of the Hollyberry Kingdom, Hollyberry herself, took the remains of the Pure Vanilla kingdom under her wing and worked to reconstruct what they’d lost, though so many of their civilians had been missing. In turn, she signed a treaty to gain its every responsibility, with the help of her fellow royals.

It did them no favors. There is not enough order to maintain both kingdoms under one union, no republic established to pass laws and keep the citizens in check. If matters couldn’t get any worse, the kingdoms have been attacked by mobs upon mobs of monsters, demolishing the wildlife and construction they’d taken so long to assemble, making providing for everyone twice the task to uphold with no abundance of resources. No one knows where they came from. No one knows what can be done to stop them. Not even Hollyberry’s Soul Jam was enough to fend them off.

And there Espresso was, refused the opportunity to contribute, trapped in his constant work cycle of chemistry, notes, reagent report and repeat.

Just then, a knock pounds at locked doors, and Espresso shoots up from where he’s peeled over in disappointment. He takes a moment to regain composure as he plucks at a few stray hairs and straightens his tie before opening it.

A smaller woman with reddish pink hair slicked back into a bobbed ponytail stands politely— however unable to withhold a look of irritation— with her arms bent behind her back and bows. “Good evening.”

Espresso clears his throat. “Good evening, Raspberry. You look troubled.”

“Yes, well, I’ve had a most displeasing day,” she coughs into her fist. “But that’s not what I’m here for.”

Raspberry curtly draws a scroll of parched royal paper from behind her and encloses it into Espresso’s free palm before continuing.

“In the midst of an alliance with our high House Raspberry, it is by official decree that you intend a royal meeting at the palace tomorrow at sundown,” she discloses with her head high. “Your attendance and compliance with all further order is crucial.”

Espresso blinks in surprise. It isn’t the first time he’s been invited to the palace for both battle and alchemic matters, but on such short notice? And, seemingly, for something so fiercely important? It wasn’t often letters were passed on to him by doorstep, you see.

Espresso unrolls the letter before her, which earns a strange gargle from Raspberry, but he earns no other elaboration that she hadn’t already given.

“Pardon me if I’m prying, but is there no else I can know about this meeting?” Espresso says at last, rolling the scroll back up and dropping it into his satchel. “It isn’t every day I am so ambiguously invited to the palace for things like this.”

“I’m afraid that’s confidential,” is all Raspberry says before backing away. “You will find out when the time comes, rest assured. Hollyberry’s blessings!”

As quickly and questionably as she came, she was gone.

Right away, Espresso begins to fret. What if the nobles had grown impatient with his project and decided to give him a deadline? What if, perchance, they deemed him no longer worthy of his position and replaced him with a coffee mage more skilled than him? While the perfectionistic man managed to come off with so much confidence in person, it was no impossible feat for him to come apart at the seams in private.

Ah, well, he figures, taking a few calculated steps back and promptly shutting his doors back. The night would grow colder, and the raisin crows would screech and sing throughout the darkness, and life would simply go on. The least he could do was try to get a little rest.

He is foolishly wrong. Espresso, the workaholic? The insomniac?

He got two hours in, at best.

- - ┈┈∘┈˃̶༒˂̶┈∘┈┈ - -

White and raspberry pink flags meet ashy violet skies devoid of certain moonlight as Espresso makes way for the palace entrance. The building was distinguished as always, the towering dough-colored castle complex surrounded by numerous gardens and statues constructed to offer praises to Hollyberry, her excellency. The fields were just as vibrant pink as her royal highness herself, pathways lined with berry bushes trimmed to the point and effortlessly blooming flowers alongside them. Espresso must admit, as used to the palace entrance he may be, his pale eyes would never fully adjust to such a bright contrast to his hollowed laboratory.

The second he reaches the grand bridge, which is rolled over a bubbling river guarding the castle walls, guards are at his side, bowing to embrace him.

“Dr. Espresso,” one says, arm pressed against their chest with established honor. “We are pleased to make your acquaintance. Right this way.”

The mage has no troubles complying with the motion, heeled boots clicking against the red-rolled carpets as he follows the knightly brigade. As he passes, maids headed elsewhere and other pleasant guests nod with acknowledgement, and for a moment, all of Espresso’s previous worries subside. He is beloved, here; how could they possibly reject his always successful studies so easily?

After a long time of walking, the knights pause before a doorway to bow once more, and the head knight— presumably the highest ranking one— moves to open the door for him.

The first thing Espresso notices is a table, stretched out long across the room, head of it pressed close to the entrance and extending to the end wall, a seat radiating much more power and eloquence than the rest, for which he assumes is Hollyberry; not to disregard the other two, less easy to be drawn to yet notably of more importance than the rest, which are clearly meant for the two princesses. What follows is the realization that none of the three royals appear to be present, and Espresso has to hide a smug look for his most desirable earliness.

Otherwise, amongst the decor lining the table are other guests, of which most are chattering amongst themselves quietly as he moves to his designated seat.

He yawns into the palm of his hand as a butler moves over to pour him a coffee, and Espresso offers a tired smile of thanks before he folds his fingers around the handle and takes a sip. A perfectly balanced taste.

Just then, the large, enclosed doorway is pulled open once more and all eyes turn to the new arrivals, their presences impossible to ignore.

Hollyberry walks at the head of them, strength and dominance in her movement, as expected of the great warrior. Behind her walks Princess, the successor of Hollyberry’s daughter-in-law Jungleberry, only with a more stout state of being and shorter but similarly as eye-drawing as Hollyberry herself. Espresso figures she would have made a promising ruler, despite her adventurous and eccentric nature.

Beside Princess is Raspberry, dressed up in uniform with her sword at her side. Raspberry once served Hollyberry at an earlier age, but today she stands at the side of Princess and protects her from any potential harm, as one of the greatest knights known to the kingdom and potentially beyond it.

However, the three are not the only ones in the group, parting ways around the table to take position. Raspberry shoots Espresso a brief glare of understanding before he takes in the sight.

Shining golden armor with hints of royal blue struts across the sturdy wooden floors, a long cape flowing behind them to the rhythm of nonexistent wind, the will of some unthinkable magic making the entrance. The man fastens his winged mech head armor and flips his abnormally long, blond-white hair behind him before striking a pose.

Espresso scowls.

“Well, if it isn’t Espresso!” he calls out, smiling wide like one of Red Velvet’s overexcited cakehounds with a tongue lolling out of its mouth. “I hadn’t expected to see you here!”

“The feeling is mutual,” Espresso utters, and mentally he can’t decide if things all make sense now or make even less sense than before.

The two stare at each other very intensely for a moment before Hollyberry, standing at the head of her throne, interjects. “Madeleine, Espresso. I humbly welcome you to my palace,” she stands idly as a butler rushes forward to pull out the seat for her, but she motions her hand for him to step aside and pulls it out herself. “I would indulge you in small talk, but we haven’t the time. Please, take a seat.”

Madeleine steps out from where he is posed and takes a vigorous seat in the chair across from Espresso at the table. He immediately clicks for the butler to fill up his glass with berry juice, taking an elongated sip when it’s done. For a sacred knight of the Divine, Espresso is unpleasantly surprised he hasn’t yet been taught proper table manners.

Hollyberry takes a swig of her own glass. “Now, I’m sure the two of you are wondering why you’ve been invited here.”

“Just the two of us?” Espresso says, taking her silence as permission to speak. “If this is about the time I personally mailed him one of my failed coffee experiments, I assure you, it’s all been cleared up.”

“You did what?” Raspberry splutters.

“You did what?” Madeleine says in close synchronization with Raspberry.

“Ah, not that, then,” Espresso takes a quick sip of his coffee. “Never mind.”

Hollyberry clears her throat in surprise and continues. “As you know, the kingdom has been long at war with unstoppable forces for roughly a century now,” all attention is now completely directed to her solemn voice, “And it has resulted in a terrible loss of rations and of lives. The royal guard has been doing everything in its power to stop this and bring peace to our land once again, but alas, it has been no easy battle.

“However, it has been unveiled by an anonymous adventurer that the key to ending this war can be found far beyond our kingdom, within the deep depths of caves submerged with crystal. Per close consideration, it has been decided that the two of you will be traveling together to acquire it.”

“What?” Espresso blurts, his dark coffee colored skin flushed with a deep red. It takes him a quick instant to regain calmness before he opens his mouth again. “Could you not have selected another, more efficient knight to take this trip in his place? Or perhaps left me out of this mission entirely?”

Raspberry pushes up from her seat. “You dare to question the intellect of her highness? After she has cordially invited you to our abode?”

“Relax, Raspberry,” Hollyberry outstretches her arm  from where she’s sitting and rests her hand on the knightess’ shoulder. “I anticipated this reaction. Allow me to explain.”

Espresso shifts his gaze to Madeleine for a moment as Raspberry hesitantly sinks into her seat, and to his surprise, the expression on the larger man’s face is unreadable. In the midst of the quiet Espresso finds himself wondering if he’s being immature before ravaging the thought. A controlled man like himself must make sacrifices for his pride.

“I am sure you both know that you have gone on missions together in the past,” Hollyberry proceeds, unpursing lips, head raised. “But we all know they haven’t gone well. It is within my personal belief that the two of you— as well as being some of our finer options in the matrix— are best suited for this venture to mend your relationship.”

Mend their relationship? What were they, a pair of squabbling academy students? Espresso bites into his left gum as he processes her reasoning before Madeleine stands up from his seat and bows. He bows, hand to his heart, fist crossed behind his back, eyes closed in solemn compliance. As much as Espresso hates to admit it, it’s true- Madeleine shines brightly, with or without the slickness of his armor or the noble glint in his eye when he speaks. Inferior knights and even civilians are drawn to him like a moth to flame. Something Espresso could not do.

He opens his eyes once more, smiling directly to Hollyberry as he does so. “I accept this noble request, your highness. We will not disappoint you.”

“I expect you won’t,” she returns the gesture as she speaks before parting ways with their shared tie of agreement and eyeing Espresso. “And you?”

Espresso frowns, lip twitching. If he declined this, what would be the cost?

Well, there are a number of consequences, such as a lack of trust in his cooperation and, thus, his studies- or the knowledge that he would eventually be replaced, and at some point in time he would be living in the shadow of a more intelligent, more collaborative mage and alchemist.

Or even the risk that is the mission being disbanded in its entirety, the fate of the kingdom and beyond made clear as everything he knows and cares for crumbles to dust.

“Very well,” Espresso says, taking initiative to intertwine his forearms behind his back and tip his head with piety. “I also accept your request.”

- - ┈┈∘┈˃̶༒˂̶┈∘┈┈ - -

Espresso and Madeleine are issued to part ways with the kingdom strictly at the following sundown— so, naturally, the second the blazing yellow light dips from the horizon, Espresso has arrived at the border.

As an alchemist, Espresso travels often, so he doesn’t tend to get too comfortable at home. Because of this, aside from basic needs such as food, drink, and magical material (ex. his spellbook, potions, etcetera), he doesn’t have much to pack. Besides, in the great knight of the Divine’s company, he’s not certain how long he will last.

Alchemist, a younger girl also skilled in their craft who sometimes takes place as Espresso’s apprentice, accompanies him before Madeleine and the royal guard have arrived to send them off. The older man sighs, leaning up against a firm wall of stone as they wait.

“Are you sure you have everything you need?” Alchemist asks quizzically, not-so-subtly peering into his back and examining the contents. Espresso waves her off.

“Perfectly in order, as it should be.”

“…Of course,” Alchemist releases an almost nervous laugh. “I would expect no less from you, professor.”

“Precisely,” Espresso smiles with contempt, shrugging his shoulders back to ease his stiffness. “You should know better than to suspect such things from me.”

“I know, I’m just… worried,” Alchemist admits. “I know this is a crucial course of action, but the route up ahead is dangerous. You’re exploring land no individual has ever covered.”

“Aside from Adventurer.”

“Adventurer doesn’t count,” Alchemist grumbles. “He fled the scene the moment he saw a threat, and here he is, getting all this praise from the civilians. It’s natural someone wiser should take the credit…”

“Which will be me,” Espresso inserts, meeting eyes with Alchemist. “I am almost offended you worry so much for me, although I know you mean well. I am far more capable than what you’ve seen.”

“I apologize, sir.”

“Good.”

Just then, the two can hear the clacking of powerful footsteps marking their territory as they march up the hill, invisible horns sounding in Espresso’s mind as they approach. Eyes narrowing, he turns to face the battalion, at the head of it being Raspberry before she draws them all to a halt. The knights move in formation, planting their feet down at the same time so loudly the sound booms throughout the fields. Espresso blinks.

“Greetings, Espresso,” Raspberry bows. “How were your travels?”

“They were just fine, thank you,” He replied, observing the crowd. “Have you brought the foolish one?”

“Y—“

“Have no fear; I have arrived!” a familiar booming voice sounds from behind the lineup, and the inferior knights part to make way for him. “I am pleased to see you are in good shape, Espresso.”

“Yes, I am doing quite well, thank you,” he replies, tipping his head once more in acknowledgement. “Now, we have no time to waste. Have you prepared your luggage?”

“I have indeed. Butlers!” Madeleine calls, and beside him comes two servants lugging bags upon bags behind them.

“...You cannot possibly need all of that for our trip.”

“The more prepared we are, the better.”

“Well!” Raspberry interrupts, raising her fist to her lips. “You two had best be on your way. Safe travels!”

Madeleine salutes, smiling in the direction of the butlers as he takes hold of the bags, one over his shoulder and another in hand. He then looks towards Espresso, arching his brow before approaching and turning beside him. “Let us be off, great coffee mage.”

“You first.”

Without an instant of hesitation, the larger man parts from the station and hops onto the rear end of the Bear Jelly Train, situating his luggage once he’s done so. Before Espresso follows, however, he turns to Raspberry for final words of departure.

“For the record,” she says, “I can’t stand him either. Farewell!”

- - ┈┈∘┈˃̶༒˂̶┈∘┈┈ - -

Espresso flutters his eyes open, eyelashes tracing gently across the panes of his glasses. It takes a moment of close thought to indulge remembrance, that being that at least a few hours prior Madeleine and Espresso had boarded the freight train and propelled off on their journey. When he readjusts to the environment, the scent of heavy smoke huffed from train pipes infests his nose, and the realization that the train was already reeling to a stop subsides with him.

He also comes to realize that Madeleine is still fast asleep, leaning limply against Espresso’s shoulder.

“Gah!” Espresso shouts as he flinches,, but Madeleine remains unmoving, seemingly plagued with pleasant dreams and surprising levels of comfort. When he’s awake, it’s apparent to Espresso that he’s always on guard, however easygoing he comes off. However, in that moment, he looks entirely vulnerable— like anything could touch him.

Unfortunately, Espresso isn’t a man of sympathy. As the train is pulling into its parking slot, he heaves upward, sending Madeleine collapsing against the dusty hardwood of the train’s caboose, which also sends him jerking awake.

“En guarde!” He shouts, jumping up from where he’s fallen and yanking his shield before his chest. “Who goes there? Show yourself!”

“Squirrel.”

“Where— ah, it is just you, Espresso.”

Espresso straightens his tie. “Yes, you appeared to have so carelessly fallen asleep during the train ride. How knightly of you.”

“Ah,” Madeleine’s face flushed, red stinging at his cheeks and spreading to the tips of his ears. “My apologies. I had simply seen you asleep, and…”

“There is no time. We’ve reached the village.”

It’s true. By then the Bear Jelly Train had successfully reeled to a stop, and the conductor was already pulling doors open as he walked past, sending neighboring men to redistribute the goods sent from the kingdom. They worked like their lives depended on it, alliances scarce but valuable in such a time of desperate need.

Madeleine then flawlessly and effortlessly leaps from the back door, his boots planting with ease into the soft grass. Espresso grabs hold of his bag and moves to follow.

Madeleine has his arms flung open. “Do not fret, I shall catch you!”

“I’m perfectly fine on my own feet, thank you.” Espresso scoffs, proving just that. What kind of frail being did he take him for?

After he’s landed, the two shift attention to the village beyond, bustling with smaller and plumper beings crowded with equally as small homes and buildings to match their statures. In spite of their shortness both in height and in resources, however, they appear as upbeat and content as possible with their minimal life, bustling groups of people circling around the town center.

“To my knowledge, the forest we must pass through is cutting through a trail in this village,” Espresso observes, reading over a row of labeled signs at the head of the village as workers pass by. “We have no time to waste. Do you see anyplace to acquire a map?”

“Afraid not,” Madeleine replies, “but they have Bear Jelly Burgers! Look!”

It’s true; not far down from the village entrance, built just beside the pier was a jampie food stand serving specialty Bear Jelly Burgers.

Espresso is not amused.

“We have plenty of rations packed,” Espresso inserts with great hesitance, his annoyance unfathomable. “Did—Did you not just hear me?”

“But there is nothing quite like a Bear Jelly Burger, great mage,” he says, “Don’t you agree?”

“Such foods are below me.”

“Haven’t you ever had one before?”

“Of course not.”

“What?” Madeleine cries, much too loudly for Espresso’s comforts. “Now we most definitely must purchase one.”

“I must admit it perplexes me as to how you would have had one.” Espresso refutes scornfully, crossing his arms as he walks.

“I had them all of the time when I was just a young lad, devoid of royal knightship!” He inquires “But since the Divine chose me and I was elected to the castle, I haven’t had even a nibble.”

“Terribly unfortunate, but my point stands. We must—“ Espresso began, but his word wasn’t enough from that point forward as Madeleine grabbed him forcibly by the wrist and guided him to the stand, from which he paid for two with coin. As much as Espresso wanted to object by then, it was simply no use.

After the coin has been paid, Madeleine swiftly dropped the finest burger of the patch into his hands. “Have at least a bite. If you do not like it, leftovers.”

Espresso sighs and lifts the burger to his slightly quivering lips as they part, Madeleine already digging in with equal as much grace as he had with his grape juice the previous evening (which was little). The quicker you eat it, the sooner we can move on and gather directions, and he takes a bite.

And then he takes another.

“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” Madeleine manages to articulate through chews, face flushed, smile wide. “It is no wonder it’s such a specialty, even in these parts.”

Espresso swallows, and like a spiteful, hateful plague, guilt infests his mind. Madeleine… you are too bright. The cold blue sky above is absent of clouds, and as he looks up again, he winces. Tell me, could you part the sun for my view?

“Well,” He interrupts his thoughts, scraping his palms against each other, and Espresso realizes then that he’s already finished his burger. “It’s just like you said, isn’t it? We have no time to waste. Now, let’s— oh, oh, is that a caricature stand?”

It was going to be a long few weeks.

Chapter Text

“This map is… supremely unhelpful,” Espresso admits, doing everything in his power not to clench up his fists and have it out with the nearest tree.

Madeleine is walking beside him with a visible look of satisfaction in his eyes, three bags full now of things to carry along with them. Things of which, per Espresso’s belief, are completely useless to their travels and if anything only slows them down. He was compliant with the distraction for a while, but Espresso’s patience can only stretch so far.

“For a village so small,” Madeleine offers at last, “they have much to provide.”

“Indeed,” Espresso says, “And since it is already our second sundown, we must get through this forest and settle in the nearest village— or tribe— for rest as soon as possible.”

“Precisely,” Madeleine inserts before hoisting up one arm and throwing his sword out in front of him. “Onward!”

And they went. The two traveled in near silence through thick and thin, into a sea of severed evergreen and wilted, uncared for flora, across dirt pathways overgrown with moss and tall grasses. The more they surpassed, though, the more they found they had to overcome obstacles, and the more Espresso came to realize no one had really touched these woods in a long, long time.

“Ouch!” Madeleine yelped all of a sudden, the bottom counterpart of his leg dangling and shaking midair.

“What?”

“I near tripped over a tree branch; but not to worry, I am safe and sound!”

“Trust me, I was not worrying.”

When Espresso refocuses his eyes to the ground below, he finds it’s astonishingly more severe than he first anticipated— a plethora of extended branches are entangled in an intertwined mess, writhing slightly as if they are sentient, and as he trails his vision up the turmoil and along the slope of the bark they’re sprouted from, he finds the tree is of substantial size.

Not only was it large and overgrown, but it was true… it moved. It almost trembled, even, as its roots rolled dice for new shapes and threw tantrums when such forms deceived them. When Espresso came to realize it withheld something larger, something audibly more alive, he knew it was no good omen. 

Something growls in the distance and instinct kicks in. Espresso grabs Madeleine by the wrist, earning a flinch, and yanks him into a nearby bush. 

“Owth…” Madeleine utters, words muffled as his cheeks press against thorny twigs. “My hair!”

“Be quiet!” Espresso hisses. “Or else I’ll pull your precious hair out myself.”

From the darkness of the burrowed cave emerges a figure twice the size of them, a beast walking on all fours. It flicks its ear to the side, alert, and when it hears nothing in the vastness it bares its teeth, drool slipping from its fangs and landing promptly onto the still writhing branches. Its crimson red eyes glow, fur bristling, claws sharpened. Espresso guesses this creature doesn’t get visitors often— and when it does, they mean business.

The bush is crammed, no room for movement as Espresso can feel stifled hot breaths down his neck, slipping down his spine. He tries not to squirm from the closeness of their position. “We need a plan,” He whispers at last.

“I will slay this beast with my sword, blessed by the Divine!” Madeleine whisper-shouts. “You stay here.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Espresso grabs the new moving man by the collar of his shirt, restricting him from movement. “We don’t know what this beast is capable of. At least, we will need my magic, and at most we will need to attack it in a way that does not involve blindly diving for it.”

Madeleine hesitates. “And there are no means of escape?”

“Have you not seen that tree?” Espresso grumbles. “From what I can tell, it bends at the will of the beast. There is no way out without the branches taking hold of us.”

Madeleine seems more calmed down by now, compliantly quiet and picking sticks and leaves out from his long blond bangs in the midst of the quiet. Espresso bites his lip in thought before slipping his hand into his satchel, rummaging through for a second and pulling out a slip of paper— a glyph. The glyph is sketched as the familiar shape of his most well-known attack, an almond nut doused in yellow flame. He then peers out from the bush, eyes narrowed to a slit as he observes the curious creature.

“I will take offense and you will take defense,” Espresso proposes at last. “Understood?”

“You intend to attack this beast alone? Are you certain?”

“Perfectly. Just follow my lead.”

Espresso dives out of the bush into one on the other side of the disordered path, particularly in closer view to the beast. He slides his satchel off his shoulder and leans it promptly against a patch of bark, safe and sound from the heat of battle and nothing but his magical initiators in hand. 

The creature thumps its tail against the rocky floor, impatient with its opponent’s lack of movement. It seems to almost hesitate, eyes filled with uncertainty as if perhaps it misjudged what it heard— and even still, it stands strong, not quite yet harnessed of its motivation for battle.

Espresso takes this as a moment of weakness perfect for strike.

He launches from the bush, succeeding to advance close enough to land his first blow on the beast before it notices. Madeleine follows close behind, brow furrowed with his shining sword and shield drawn. Espresso’s power sends him spiraling into the air, dark wind supporting his essence as a gust of coffee-colored magic thrusts out of his hand, beast flying back into the stone wall as a result. 

The beast is already vulnerable, back to back instances of a lack of guard providing Espresso an easy opportunity in combat. When he moves to land his second blow where the creature is most weak— straight for the furry, exposed stomach— he can almost feel bubbling elation in his ribcage. 

This would show Madeleine. This would show him that he was powerful; that he didn’t need help, that he didn’t need protecting. What a foolish knight to believe otherwise.

Suddenly, a low, increasingly frustrated growl sounds from the floor below, and from the corner of his eye Espresso can see a newfound fighting-urge in the beast’s essence. Before he can react, Espresso can feel his body plunge into a tree, the roots gripping around his feet and shoulders. He claws at the bark, nails digging into the crevices, but it’s no use. He seemed to have severely miscalculated this beast’s determination.

Damn it, Espresso growls to himself, anger churning in his stomach. What is Madeleine going to do now? He looks to the other for a sign, any sign of vigilance, of attentive battle tactic to save them now.

Madeleine blinks, dumbfounded.

Espresso groans.

The beast lunges, sending Madeleine stumbling back with only the persistence of his boots in the dirt to sustain him. He pushes out his sword, the point up to its upper lip as if to silence it, and when it raises its claws to remove it, Madeleine’s shield hoists it out of the way. The battle is much more pushing than full combat.

Espresso wriggles around more, more and more branches making way for his limbs. He needs a new plan, but their grasp grows tighter and the world feels smaller each second that passes. He frantically searches the area for a means of escape, but there is none. 

Until he realizes something.

The cave. Behind the tree he’s trapped against is a cave, the one the beast emerged from, shadows prevailing this discovery, but Espresso could see it now. Three smaller, quieter, mewling little versions of the beast they were fighting. 

This ‘beast’ was protecting her babies.

When Espresso looks back, Madeleine has propelled away from the creature, his sword on the ground with his newly free hand gripped around his bleeding shoulder. He grunts as a droplet of crimson red falls to the surface.

“Madeleine!” Espresso shouts at last, earning a side look as he kneels to pick up his sword. “We mustn’t fight this creature!”

“You— agh… said it yourself, didn’t you?” Madeleine replies, regaining posture. “We can’t get out of here without a fight.”

“That isn’t what I—“

The creature charges again, moving to slash its claws across Madeleine’s chest before he just barely protects it with his shield. This was a dangerous game, both sides with good intentions but poor execution. Espresso needed to escape.

Sweat trickles down his forehead as he squirms and squirms, and then he realizes. His glyph is discarded just a few paces away, a tousled branch curled over it. If only it were close enough for Espresso to use it.

He wriggles more, but this time with a purpose. He arches his back and reaches what remains of his hand to the right, and as expected, the branches move with it, causing the glyph to hoist up with it. Now!, and he summons his magic to the paper, the spell coming undone with the tight coiling of the branches. He uses what remains to expel them, the straggling roots wilting and dying by his hand.

When Espresso reclaims his satchel and reenters the scene, Madeleine is attacking with twice as much ferocity, gashes in both his arm and the nape of his neck. But he’s losing. His movements are weaker, more fatigued. 

He’s weak.

The creature, however, is stronger. It charges, its eyes glowing a vibrant red, brighter than blood shed in the moonlight. Madeleine sways in place.

“Madeleine!” Espresso shouts, louder this time, breath in his ears, running through the grasses faster than he has since the war. “Move out of the way, you idiot!”

“…Espresso?”

“Madeleine!”

A gust of magic strikes him through the chest.

Golden armor echos as it hits the floor.

Espresso pauses, stricken with shock as the creature falls with him. It’s unconscious, collapsed due to power at stake and Madeleine’s own final hurrah. Their punctures match.

Espresso rushes and falls to Madeleine’s side, panickedly slipping his arm up behind his head to support it. It was only their second day of travel and here he was, pain stricken with a coat of red downpoured across his front.

His eyes are pale. Espresso pushes up his bangs, dropping his headpiece to the dirt as he looks to get a better view.

“Imbecile,” Espresso hisses under his breath, exasperated. “I told you to move, did I not? What happened to following my orders?”

Madeleine blinks, clearly there but unresponsive. He opens his mouth to reply but doesn’t.

“It does not matter now,” He continues, pulling the fallen soldier to his feet and hauling his arm over his shoulder as he does so. “What matters is getting you to a clinic. After all, I am no healer.”

“But… beast?” Madeleine sputters at last, struggling as he moves to his feet.

“She will be seen to as well. Now let’s go.”

In spite of Madeleine’s confusion, he follows.

- - ┈┈∘┈˃̶༒˂̶┈∘┈┈ - -

It took a long hike— and Madeleine nearly collapsed a variety of times— but eventually the two reached a village nearby and located a healer, who Espresso explained their situation to and managed to form an alliance with.

The healer explained that Madeleine was very lucky; one more blow from that beast and he could have died, just like that. That breed of mammal in particular is known for its raw and insatiable power in battle, especially when defending their babies. Expectedly, the other man bandaged from the chest to the stomach, wasn’t taking it well. 

The moment the medic leaves, Madeleine plants his reddened face in his palms and whines. Espresso rolls his eyes.

“Not only could I have lost my own life, but I nearly took the life of an innocent creature…” Madeleine murmurs, clawing at his cheeks. “I have been blind and foolish. The Divine will never forgive me.”

“And yet here you are, alive and stubborn as ever,” Espresso inserts from where he’s sitting, arms crossed against his chest as he watches from the visitor seat. Madeleine is just beside him, scrunched up in the clinic bed. “We haven’t the time to mourn our failures this evening. We have already wasted too much time.”

Madeleine sighs, now resting his hands in his lap. “Fervently efficient as ever, Espresso…”

“You should start taking my example.”

“Well, correct me if I’m wrong, coffee mage, but I believe you are more stubborn than I,” Madeleine huffs accusingly, eyes piercing. “I lay here injured from my forehead to my feet and you’ve yet to acknowledge my sacrifices.”

“That is because your sacrifices were needless,” Espresso hisses. “If you had simply listened when I told you to cease attacks, we could have avoided casualties for both parties.” 

“Perhaps so… but you could have been in my place right now, or worse!” Madeleine refutes. “It was my duty in that moment to protect you, as I would with any other civilian in the kingdom.”

“I’m offended you compare me to any other civilian,” Espresso says, wrinkling his nose with disgust. “Besides, I have already told you I do not need protection. If not for the longevity of my position I could have prevented all of this.”

“What else was I meant to do? Allow the creature to pummel me dead?” Madeleine leans to hover over Espresso before Espresso can hear a crack and Madeleine yelps. “Ouch!”

“The medic told you not to make any sharp movements for 24 hours, idiot,” Espresso scolds. “Don’t make it 48.”

“I apologize.”

“Good.”

“Knock knock!” the medic says, opening the door without warning anyway. “How’s it going?”

Madeleine switches up instantly. “Splendidly, thank you!”

“Right, right, that’s good,” he says, handing Espresso a sheet of paper. “Here is your bill, sir, and your expenses in coin. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Espresso clicks the tip out from his pen and scribbles a signature. “Yes, actually. Might you have a place to stay for the night in this village?”

“A place to stay… hmm,” he replies, curling his finger over his chin in thought. “Well, you see, we don’t get visitors often… but there is a place down the street if you’re okay with a walk.”

“We’ll manage,” Espresso says, pulling a drawstring bag of coin out from his satchel and tugging it open. “Where is it located?”

“Just across the fountain near the entrance, if you turn right down that street it’s the first building you see,” the medic instructs. “You can’t miss it.”

“I see. Thank you.”

Espresso slides the paper with coin atop it to the healer, from which he rolls it all up and slides it into his belt. “No problem. You all have a nice night!”

“Thank you as well— ouch!” Madeleine shrieks, clutching at his semi-exposed waist. “No sudden movements. My apologies.”

As the medic heads out the doorway, Madeleine moves to grip at the headboard for support and balance himself on his feet. He wobbles slightly when he takes his first step, but after a few more he is good as new.

“Try not to trip and fracture your legs as well,” Espresso mutters sarcastically, motioning out the doorway. “Let’s go.”

- - ┈┈∘┈˃̶༒˂̶┈∘┈┈ - -

“What do you mean, the only room available consists of a single bed?” Espresso hisses, his heart thumping erratically in his chest as his eyes grow wild. He clears his throat to regain composure before continuing. “Surely you can make arrangements for more space?”

“I’m afraid not, sir,” the clerk murmurs, both visibly and audibly devoid of a care to give for Espresso’s minor tantrum. “You are free to migrate to the next village if our selection doesn’t suit your tastes.”

Madeleine shifts uncomfortably at Espresso’s side, silent. Espresso pinches the space between his eyebrows with his fingers and heaves a sigh.

“…Fine. I will pay what you inquire with coin.”

The hotel is, expectedly, run down from its old age and general lack of use— as the two span the hallways, Espresso can spot a variety of scrapes and stains on the florally patterned walls, dust on the floors and even cobwebs strung across the corners. It was no five star hotel, clearly, but important missions mean persevering, and Madeleine was clearly not in the state to go exploring another untouched forest.

“Room seven,” Espresso whispers to himself before flipping the key he was given between his fingers and twisting it around in the lock. He has to pry at the door for a moment to get it open.

Surprisingly, the room itself is of mediocre quality, the bed at the center of comfortable queen size. Aside from the bed itself, the enclosure is accompanied by two nightstands with yellow lamps, a dresser, and a doorway at the opposite end Espresso assumes leads to a small bathroom. 

There is also a small sofa. 

Espresso sighs in relief.

“Alright, here is the plan,” he declares, dropping his satchel to the open space on the dresser, Madeleine dropping what remains of his own belongings beside it shortly afterward. “You need room for settlement with your wound, and we cannot afford you falling off a closed surface, so you will take the bed. As a result, I will take the sofa. Deal?”

“The sofa?” Madeleine stammers, glancing at the small and admittedly uncleanly green seat. “Surely you do not wish to sleep on such an unsuitable settee?”

“I do not, but we cannot consume this bed together tonight, so I am offering courtesy. I suggest you take it.”

“The bed has enough room for the two of us, surely?”

“Preposterous!” Espresso’s face flushes intensely at the thought. “Do you even realize what that implies?”

“I mean no such thing!” he argues, flapping his hand out towards the murky pink comforter. “You sleep on your side, I sleep on mine. We will be equally comfortable.”

“I refuse.”

“Hrmph… this is what I meant when I said you were stubborn, Espresso…”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing! Let us commence—“

“No, I heard you loud and clear.”

“Let’s just go to bed.”

“You know what? Fine!” Espresso says at last, discarding his boots and coat to the seat as he walks. “I hope you sleep well, next to me, knowing how much of a foolhardy annoyance you are.”

“Eh? Well, if you are going to behave that way, perhaps I don’t like you so much either!”

“Fine.”

Madeleine halts as Espresso tumbles to the left end of the bed, tugging layers of blankets and sheets over his shoulder and shutting his eyes in an instant. “I… Espresso, I didn’t mean—“

“Lights out. Bed.”

“…Alright.”

After a brief few moments of frozen silence, Espresso hears shuffles to the last glowing lamp, then eclipsed from nothing but a small flick of the fingertips. Then, the other man discards of his own overlaying armor and rolls into his own side of the bed, taking what remains of the bedclothes and blankets himself in them. The silence is, needless to say, deafening.

What Espresso failed to admit to the other is that he truly had no need for sleep at all. Most nights at the kingdom he spent wide awake, avidly absorbing himself with his studies. The more he supposes he should attempt to get himself some rest, the more time he spends not working, watching the perpetual static buzz along the ceiling, allowing the emptiness to consume his being. And when he does sleep, the memories return. He fears that experience more than the plights of life itself.

Espresso exhales, the last of his wake slipping away the more immersed in the comfort he becomes. As much as he’d meant his words in their argument, he hadn’t meant for it to inflict such a heavy impact on their dynamic, even to the point of earning such an unintended ferocity from Madeleine. He can only hope, as he lay still in the overwhelming darkness, that it doesn’t trouble their trip. 

No. It is not the time for you to feel guilty, Espresso scolds himself sullenly, clamming up the little devils in his brain who deceive him so. Your aggression is completely warranted, and it’s about time that imbecile learned his place.

Espresso is a thinker. There is nothing he values more than the knowledge he possesses, both for practical matters and to contribute to his power, including alchemy and magic. But he must admit that in moments like these he wishes he didn’t think at all.

It doesn’t end until finally, at last, a final blanket of exhaustion takes over and brings him to content slumber.

Chapter Text

When Espresso’s eyes reopen ever so slightly and the world returns to view, he can hear the gentle song of birds in unison in the distance, and for a moment the world seems peaceful. Soft white-gold sunlight sheds through the gaps of the curtains and casts color onto the dark floors, the cool air of the ventilation below sending them blowing like tender white sheets in the wind.

It’s pleasant, he thinks, to sleep so soundly for the first time in a long time. Sleep for Espresso means thinking too much of the work to do the following day, and tossing and turning in the enclosure of the blankets, and waking up from terrible nightmares of loss and failure to pitch black emptiness nothing since the accident could cure. Sleep was a waste of time and a destruction of carefully collected composure, and often he simply couldn’t afford it. He expected the same emotion taking breaks for rest on this mission, but to his surprise his position was… comfortable.

Abnormally so.

Espresso shifts where he lay on the bed, sheets askew, bedding rolled up to his chest. The warmth is unusual, especially, considering how much the bed had been messied in the passing hours. He tries to roll around to recollect the loss of bearings, but he can’t.

It takes a minute to realize the position he’s in— a point buried into the crook of his neck, warm breaths down the slope of his shoulder, stomach pulled back into a firmer surface, bandaging with tight cloth strips beneath it pressed to his back… and then it all hits him at once.

Espresso rolls right out of the other man’s clutches and onto the floor, clumsily landing on his feet as he does so. His pulse is drumming rapidly in his skull, the possibilities whirring and spreading into each other in his head like wildfire. Exactly what Espresso had worried would happen had happened, but of course, the foolish bastard that is Madeleine simply insisted that couldn’t be the case. He had to.

Meanwhile, Madeleine is more disturbed by the lack of warmth than the recurring presence of it, eyes flitting open gently as Espresso stands with a craziness in his eyes. When he notices him standing there, he yawns and stretches his body up and out of the remaining sheets.

“Good morning…” Madeleine manages in the midst of the yawning.

“I hate you, I really do.”

“…Pardon?”

“Don’t ‘pardon’ me. Get up and let’s get going, we have no time to waste.”

Madeleine frowns, visibly confused, but he’s clearly too tired to argue. He rolls out of bed, stretching once more before making note of the previous night’s bandaging.

“I was merely meant to wear this overnight, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Then… shall I remove it?”

Espresso exhales and turns away. “See to it that you do.”

The room holds a tenseness in the air as Madeleine bends his elbows back and slowly unwraps the bandaging. It comes in several carefully tightened layers, and as Espresso watches them fall one by one in his peripheral he figures Madeleine knows what he’s done. The tension is so thick one could cut it with a knife, but Divine above knows he’s not skilled at the craft. Espresso is ashamed to be so cowardly as to not reach out and confront the other man, just as he’s ashamed to have actually enjoyed the embrace he hasn’t felt since he was cold and secluded in the wilderness, but who was he to let down his pride? 

It isn’t fair, he thinks absently as he grunts, realizing he’s grown too distracted by the slowly revealing curvature of Madeleine’s bicep, the sedulous undoing of white cloth with hands larger and firmer than Espresso could understand. It isn’t fair that after all this time Madeleine thinks he can switch up his attitude and everything will go back to normal. And he hates to admit that his methods are cunning, letting down that arrogant pride Espresso knows so well and backing him into a corner like this, forcing concentrated guilt down his throat, pouring into his heart. Espresso would give anything at all just to leave those emotions in the dust and teach Madeleine who’s superior between them, and if Madeleine truly were just the same, he would relish the challenge.

But he isn’t. And it isn’t fair, and it doesn’t make sense. 

Damn it, why was he thinking about all of this now?

The bandaging was then thrown into a heap, having previously been balled up in a fistful of its own tangled mess and discarded. Madeleine blinks as he registers that beneath those layers and layers of convoluted bandaging was another, firmer layer. It seems he didn’t consider Espresso could have seen it at any point during their trip— or he forgot it was there entirely. His ears flush. 

Why was Espresso looking anyway? He turns away and regathers the last of his things, knowing it wouldn’t be fair to ask about the binding regardless of their withstanding rivalry. Not like it was his business. They had far more important matters ahead of them anyway. 

He stands silently as he listens to Madeleine shuffle behind him, tugging his top over his head and his bruised but ever glistening armor soon after it. Espresso was no sociologist, but he’d always found it fascinating how humans can so easily determine who is moving by the sound of their breath, the oblivious technique in the way they walk, the way they move. It didn’t take long for Espresso to know it’s Madeleine each time he approaches— he presents himself like no other, his steps always determined and confident, the hushed air of his breath always hoarse and firm with sovereignty. Despite his sudden shift in nature, this aura hasn’t changed at all.

Up until now.

Madeleine was… hesitant. Uncertain. As if he were dancing on ice, and if he made one wrong step everything would come crumbling below him. Espresso thought he was mistaken when he saw this within him during their battle, but it was especially prevalent at that very moment. It was unsettling. It made Espresso want to crash headfirst, straight against the icy surface.

“My bearings are all in their place, so I am ready as can be! Except…” Madeleine gestures to the exposed turmoil of his bangs as Espresso turns to assess him, bare in a way he himself cannot place. “My headpiece. It is nowhere to be found.”

“Are you sure you haven’t dropped it somewhere in this room?”

“It is my most valuable asset of armor. I would not lose it so easily,” Madeleine says almost frantically, and in that few seconds of nothingness Espresso realizes it’s true. This item appears to be unusually important to him. 

And then he remembers. 

“Ah,” is all Espresso can muster, burying the lower half of his face in his hand. “We left it behind. In the forest.”

“What?” Madeleine yelps, rushing up to Espresso’s side, luggage in hand. “You noticed it fall from its enclosure and did not recover it?”

“Admittedly, I am the reason why your headpiece detached from you,” Espresso offers, “but we haven’t the time to travel all the way back to the forest to retrieve it. We’re already behind schedule.”

“But—”

“Silence. Let’s get going.”

Madeleine pouts at the demand, but he knows there’s no convincing Espresso when he’s set on something. For the Divine’s sake, why must so much go wrong? Nothing under the coffee mage’s control could or should be going South, and yet there they were, the crimson red strings tying them together growing thinner and weaker the more the tides thrust against them. Everything is rigid, and as the two make way to exit the inn, Espresso can feel his honor hanging from a heavy lilt in the sky.

- - ┈┈∘┈˃̶༒˂̶┈∘┈┈ - -

The very instant the two set foot along the trail’s entrance, the medic from before comes rushing over. A scroll of thick parchment is in hand, dampened slightly with his sweaty fingerprints from running.

“Madeleine and… Espresso. Those are your names, are they not?” he says between stifled breaths, extending the scroll out to Espresso’s hand. Espresso nods dubiously as he takes it. Of course. He is practically Madeleine’s mother by now. “We’ve received a mysterious shipment of mail to our village just this morning, and it has your names on it.”

Espresso takes it and unrolls it momentarily to view who it’s addressed to— sure enough, it is for them, loopy letters etched with black ink across the top of the page, ornate with elegance. It’s almost mesmerizing. He’d never seen such beautiful writing.

“Who delivered this?” he asks as he rolls it up once more.

“We’re not certain, sir, but it seemed important,” the medic replies, swiping the back of his hand across his forehead to rid it of its moisture. “They were masked, and they took off before we could ask any questions.”

Espresso frowns and glances briefly in Madeleine’s direction for even an ounce of thought or suspicion. He’d been still and silent this whole time, and before he meets his eyes Espresso wonders indignantly if things will remain this way, and furthermore if it’s his fault. The prospect brings him to feel an unspeakable thing, a squirming pulsation in his chest he can’t quite place, and it aggravates his soul so much he wants to destroy it all in one blow. To do something so cruel and crazy that not even guilt could make way into his soul. 

Madeleine only cocks his brow in curiosity, so Espresso turns back to the medic and offers a curt nod. “Many thanks for delivering this to us. Safe travels.”

“Safe travels!”

Espresso waves with a fake smile plastered across his face before redirecting attention to the paper in hand, pinching his fingers into the upper slope of his nose and unrolling what remains. Madeleine trots over to read along with him.

Espresso & Madeleine

Conjoined Hollyberry and Vanilla Kingdoms

Elderberry Kingdom

Earthbread

Sworn by the royal penmanship of this scroll, we cordially and graciously invite you to attend the Elderberry Ball to commemorate kingdom tradition, from dawn to the strike of midnight. It is with great prestige and understanding from which you should arrive. Please entertain by wearing your finest regalia and tuning in for the signature waltz of the ancients.

Now that all of that is out of the way, listen closely. We know of your mission, and we know where you’re headed in kind— and we aim to help you as we can— but only if you cooperate. It may sound par for the course, but believe me, this resolve will benefit the both of us.

After all, we have something that belongs to you.

With love,

The Elderberry Ball Committee

“Something that belongs to us?” Madeleine exclaims instantly, giving Espresso a shock as Madeleine’s completed the reading earlier than he has. “Do you think it could be my headpiece?”

“What exactly would they gain from taking your headpiece?” Espresso hisses, scrunching the scroll into his satchel. “Besides, if it truly were your headpiece I would want to attend even less. Let’s get going.”

“Wait, wait, you’re going to turn down an invite to a royal ball? ” Madeleine pries, rushing after Espresso as he turns along the trail and begins walking, map sprawled out promptly against his chest. “One that comes from afar, no less? This is a once in a lifetime opportunity!”

“Your lack of sense both amuses me and infuriates me,” Espresso replies bluntly, making a left as he continues. “Is this not even the slightest bit suspicious to you? A kingdom we have never heard of even once, not even in ancient myth, and they are ambiguously claiming to have something we seek? This is clearly a trap, Madeleine.”

“I think you just have trust issues,” Madeleine declares, sending several invisible arrows of straightforwardness striking through one ear and out the other. “I mean no disrespect, but you cannot let the ‘better safe than sorry’ lifestyle dictate you. Adventure is about taking risks, and with risk exemplifies bravery!”

“We don’t know what these complete strangers are capable of. I am not about to die before we’ve ever reached the peak of our destination.”

“Espresso, I am the blessed and capable knight in our empire, as you the most powerful mage,” Madeleine explains, exerting his hands and shaking them to dramatize the point. “As a duo, we can take on anything! Even a couple of ‘Elderberry’ guards. Eh?”

Espresso sighs. Perhaps he was just as blindly confident as ever. 

“Even if we had decided to go,” Espresso begins, drawing out the colored replica of the world surrounding the forests. “we have no directions, and it’s too late to rush back and ask that measly village now. We might as well just—“

“There.”

He blinks. “What?”

“There,” Madeleine repeats, extending his muscled pointer finger to the paper and drawing a circle around a castle labeled Elderberry Kingdom. “It is a mere pit stop on our path to glory, just up ahead of us.”

Espresso’s eyes fly across the paper desperately. He’s almost certain that wasn’t there before. Did his eyes truly deceive him? Or was this Madeleine’s doing? Ah, no, all those years of ‘harmless gifting’ were about to nip him in the—

“—already know where I’m headed! What do you say?” Madeleine is saying, propelling backwards into the gloomy wilderness, ill-lit green blocking them out from the sun’s view. Just a little longer and it would all be clear again.

“Are you suggesting we split up? No, we cannot possibly.”

“Precisely! Which is why you will be accompanying me as my suitor. Onward!”

“Wha—“ Espresso sputters, scarlet nipping at his cheeks as Madeleine rushes on. “Stop this immediately. Cease, I say! Slow down!”

- - ┈┈∘┈˃̶༒˂̶┈∘┈┈ - -

Espresso isn’t a man of much virtue when it comes to owning up, but he has to give credit where it’s due; this kingdom was nothing short of magical. It was magical in darker tones, with scuffed trails of grazed stone, violet street lamps with colorful lights strung from one to another, and elegantly styled, pointed buildings as tall as skyscrapers. If this ball was as prestigious and indebted to the ancients as they claim, they certainly showed it, the festive decor spread about every inch of the Elderberry land material made of dreams. Madeleine walks excitedly beside him, and judging by equal parts his expression and the way he exerts himself as he ambles by, Espresso figures he isn’t upset anymore. Possibly because he truly does believe they carry that winged headband he holds so dear, and personally Espresso himself almost hopes they do— just so he doesn’t go on complaining beyond their attendance.

Shortly after their withdrawal from the neighboring village, the two feasted on bread they both packed in their luggage (finally they were putting something they brought to use), but the pride in that course of action doesn’t last long, as the moment they reached the Elderberry gates Madeleine dashed for dessert comprised of fruits and vanilla cream. Espresso decides to no longer care. Once Madeleine ran out of coin, he’d come crying to Espresso for support he wouldn’t be giving. 

“Just because I’ve agreed to attend this ball with you, doesn’t mean we should let our guard down,” Espresso retorts as Madeleine keeps his shield stocked away. “This committee means business, and if we make even one mistake…”

“Relax, Espresso,” Madeleine replies, head held high. “Look around! The city is alive, and the people are in high spirits. Why should we not be owed the same justice?”

“That’s not my point.”

“I promise you, nothing bad will happen under my watch,” Madeleine assures him. “I am the noble knight Madeleine, my legacy guided by the Divine. We cannot fail.”

“I don’t trust you,” Espresso states plainly as he planks out a map again. This map, however, navigates the Elderberry Kingdom itself more closely rather than the land surrounding in its entirety. They would need it to find where the ball is being held, where they can rest for the night when it’s done with, etcetera. “It’s 1 o’clock sharp and the ball is said to be held at dawn, presumably circling the chateau. What exactly are we meant to do in the hours until then?”

“Explore?” Madeleine suggests, earning a sigh. “It doesn’t have to be all for naught. Perhaps the civilians here know of our journey as well and can give us some pointers?”

“...What kind of ‘pointers’?”

“I do not know! But we can’t knock it until we try, right?”

Espresso draws in a breath. “Why on Earthbread would the Divine’s fates pair me with this imbecile for a journey at the sake of its safety? Have they a death wish for it all? Have they a death wish for me ?”

“What are you mumbling?”

“Nothing. Look, a squirrel!”

“Where?” 

Madeleine spans the area, to no avail. “You fool me twice.”

“Proof that you are easily fooled.”

The two walk in a huff of silence for the following minutes until they approach a peculiar but familiar building, an off white and black striped tarp serving as an overhang, with dignified architecture to match it. Mannequins line the open windows, peering into a most promising workshop of cloth-work mastery. At the head of the building stands a woman, rummaging through a cardboard box at the front.

“Mont Blanc,” Madeleine says, dashing up to her to offer greetings. “I hadn’t expected to see you here!”

Mont Blanc turns around from where she’s kneeled in a shock, but once she sees Madeleine and his good-natured face she smiles, moving to her feet. “You too! Though I am a traveling salesman, after all.” she bows, as does Madeleine to exchange respects before meeting eyes with Espresso. “Espresso as well! Quite the dynamic duo. What brings you two to these parts?”

“Delightful of you to ask!” Madeleine starts. “You see, we were selected by Queen Hollyberry herself to find the source of our troubles and end our ongoing war once and for all! Though we aren’t quite sure what to expect, I digress…”

“Ah! Well, then, I find this a most perfect task for the two of you, then,” her smile spreads wide, and Espresso only almost can’t believe she thinks so. While Mont Blanc was a woman of kindness and sincerity, she could also be rather sadistic. 

“What brings you here?” Madeleine asks in kind.

“Well, delightful of you to ask,” Mont Blanc says, mimicking Madeleine’s former response and approaching her box once more. “As you know, I am a well regarded seamstress and proprietor, and while I most often run the Maison Marron in our empire I am also wanted elsewhere for my skill. Since there is an esteemed ball tonight here in the Elderberry Kingdom, I am making my profits where they are best received!”

“Clever of you,” Espresso interjects, examining the shop. “Have you been here for this ball before, perchance?”

“Oh, yes! Several years of collaboration with the committee, and more to come!” she asserts. “The Elderberry Ball is like a holiday to these people, and I am graced with the opportunity to help make it the best it can be.”

“I see.”

“Are you two attending?”

“Yes!” Madeleine says in correlation with Espresso’s “Unfortunately.”

“Oh, fantastique!” Mont Blanc shouts with excitement, gesturing them inside her temporary parlor and setting her box down onto the nearest desk, crazed with crumpled blueprints and sewing material, occasionally infused with fabrics snipped up to the point. Espresso silently hopes there is some method to Mont Blanc’s work infested madness, like his own. “Then I assume you both have suits already tailored for you and ready to go?” She points her black-tipped fingernail up to her cheek in wonder. “Or gowns, of course. C’est une nouvelle année, Mont Blanc...”

“No, we do not,” Espresso replies, pulling at the fold of his overcoat. “I don’t believe it’s necessary to spend coin on something new when we can attend in what we wear regularly, is it?”

Mont Blanc is still for a moment. “Oh, no, that won’t do.” she shuffles to her desk and wipes it of every minor project atop it, clearing the way for a brand new project. “You must allow me to handle this for you!”

“Ah,” Madeleine spouts, rummaging through his pocket. “For how much coin?”

“None! I earn plenty this time of year, anyway, don’t even worry,” she rambles, smiling even wider. “Consider this a discount between friends.”

“Tonight is a busy one for you, is it not?” Espresso takes into consideration, arching his brow. “Surely you have other projects to focus on.”

“Worry not, I say! I have just enough time to deliver your outfits to you accordingly,” and without even giving the two a chance to interject, she’s urging them out the door empty handed. “Enjoy your day in the city! Adieu, mes amis!”

Just like that, she’s shut into the enclosure of the parlor, the sign at the head of the doorway flipping to the words ‘Sorry, we are closed. Come back later!’

Espresso sighs, dusting off his shoulders. Now they had professionally tailored outfits for the ball in progress, but they were learning nothing from observation and five hours at least to kill. He wasn’t so easily entertained as to watch Madeleine make a fool out of himself in public, repeatedly. He would almost rather watch paint dry, or take a swan dive off from the nearest iron railing.

Likewise, Madeleine looks discomforted at his side. It seems that even in the midst of something that would normally excite him, fragments of the past remain sharp in his skin. After all, you can never return a shattered delicacy to its previous state.

What were they supposed to do now?

- - ┈┈∘┈˃̶༒˂̶┈∘┈┈ - -

After lots of idle walking before settlement, Mont Blanc came rushing over with two neatly but tightly wrapped boxes she ordered them not to open in front of each other. While the two didn’t quite understand the request, they complied and rushed to the changing rooms in time for the ball.

So there Espresso stood. Not only in full suit, but paired with Mont Blanc-specially purchased boots and accessories.

It was a bit tight around him for his tastes, but it wasn’t shabby, and it suited his palette. He’d been given an off-white, almost pinkish undershirt that collars his neck, including a more muted pink tie rolled up and strung from it. Over top of this is a coffee brown, button-down waistcoat, tucked into dress pants of matching coloration, and for a third, final layer, he wears a darker brown (almost black) overcoat with a lapel, just as he likes. Aside from that, however, he wears crystallized diamond shaped earrings of rosewood coloration and thigh-length black boots, of which also happen to possess four inch heels.

He has no problem with heels, of course. He’s worn them before, would wear them again and enjoys the metaphorical and literal high ground they give him. However, had Mont Blanc any idea of their plans, he’s certain she wouldn’t have given him boots with heels for him to wear in a potential battle, with as often as he jumps and swipes his hands around to initiate attack spells. He walks in a few concentrated circles to test his skill, and sure enough they prove no difficulty, but would he be better off changing into his usual shoewear?

Eh. It was no use changing them now.

The partitions of the outfit officially layered and ready to go, Espresso strides out of the changing closet and curls onto the nearest waiting bench, the sound of a run-down but still kicking vintage clock ticking above. It takes only a couple minutes more for Madeleine to crack open his.

Madeleine approaches wearing a collared white undershirt of his own, but instead with a bow tie, bold blue complimentary to his eyes of sapphire. The tuxedo and pants follow a similar palette as a navy sort of blue, with shining golden buttons and shoulder pads to add up to the knightly look. His hair, being so long, is now drawn up into a high ponytail, draping just to the length of his shoulders. The airy exposure to his ears reveals a matching pair of earrings to Espresso’s, only this time yellow in a clip-on variant.

Espresso stands from where he’d sat and wipes down his upper legs, and it becomes overwhelmingly clear that with the extra few inches of heel Espresso was the same height as Madeleine. 

Madeleine notices this as well and snorts.

“Special request?”

“Shut your mouth. I had no say in this,” Espresso argues, to which he realizes that Madeleine has been given a completely average pair of black cap-toe flats. “These suits are… workable, so let’s hurry ourselves and get going.”

“As you wish.”

Once the two depart from the changing rooms, their previous wear discarded into their bags, they stop by the parlor for a minute to thank Mont Blanc for her services and wish her well on their way to the chateau. She was right when she told them the Elderberry Ball was like a holiday— the city was alive, and the kingdom beyond presumably twice as much, the people on the streets all migrating in the same direction like a flock of birds, but of entirely different breeds each. Every outfit is unique and elegant, courtesy to seamstresses like Mont Blanc herself for making it such. Espresso has never been fond of social gatherings, but for one so vivid and artistic, he could find some appeal. Not that he didn’t still have regrets to have assented to Madeleine’s wishes.

No matter, of course. They were attending this ball for one reason— that being to retrieve what is supposedly theirs. Once that was done they would leave. Casualties were out of the question.

Finally, they reach the building, and it’s brilliant. The mansion is composed of sections upon sections of artfully designed architecture, white walls curled at the ends with molds of unknown gods submerged with it, arched over with pointed roofs of dusky violet, just dark enough not to camouflage with the vastness of the night sky. In terms of sectioning, the building takes three parts, resoundingly resembling a grand castle, illuminated at its edges by the most starry sky. The entrance is pillared and paved over the surrounding waters with a bridge to wide open doors, more crowded than Espresso would have liked, but not unexpected.

Madeleine, meanwhile, has stars in his eyes, utterly enraptured by the sights.

“Remember what we’re here for,” Espresso utters under his breath, steady on his feet as they near closer to the doorway. “We cannot get distracted by any means.”

“While I agree with you,” Madeleine begins, clearing his throat. “I haven’t the faintest clue where exactly we are meant to go from here.”

Espresso wagers that this is true. They’ve received a completely ambiguous invite from someone described as ‘masked and far too quick’, so to speak. They must have something planned if they’re expecting this to be an easy transaction. 

“Just keep your eyes peeled,” Espresso manages at last, swallowing the lump in his throat. He couldn’t explain it, but this sidequest’s promises seemed… tantalizing.

The ballroom is just as crazed and crowded inside as it is out— to which, Espresso presumes, will only increase as those following behind make their way in— and although Espresso likes a nice, confined space, they were only even remotely satisfying when he was alone. The moment the two step inside, Espresso is thrusted straight into it, no sign of enclosure to keep him secluded. Instinctually, Espresso feverishly scours for Madeleine, panicked by his absence until all of a sudden a larger hand grabs him by the wrist and jerks him into a wall. He makes an aborted noise from the impact.

“Almost lost you there,” Madeleine says somewhat teasingly beside him. “Not a fan of crowds?”

Espresso wipes the sweat off his skin and heaves a sigh. “What do you think?” 

He lifts his head, only to find that the crowd isn’t nearly as thronged as he thought. It’s been long since he’s encountered such an environment, so it’s natural to be shaken, but to that extent? That was just embarrassing.

Madeleine, however, didn’t seem to care. He had other priorities. 

“Thethe tarths are great, Ethpretho,” Madeleine says between chews.

“What? Hasn’t anyone ever taught you table manners?”

He swallows. “I said the tarts are great. Here, try one.”

“I will not eat off of your plate.”

“Why? I haven’t touched it.”

“You’ve touched your fork and now your fork is touching it. You might as well keel over like a mother bird with her babies and spit in my mouth.”

“Cripes! Well, I suppose you’re right…”

Just then, the lights dim, none but the glittering yellow lights of the chandelier above and the freckles of light gleaming from windows to keep everything in sight. At the head of the room, Espresso can now see two twin staircases leading up to a pier, and on the pier stands a woman with raven colored hair and a long, dignified violet gown, three masked guards behind her. She pursues her lips up to the microphone at her chin. To this, the room goes collectively silent.

The microphone squeaks and echoes throughout before she leans down and begins. “Welcome, visitors from near and far, to the 60th annual Elderberry Ball!”

The crowd cheers and roars, so Espresso and Madeleine join in with the applause. Madeleine perks up a little from a thought and leans over.

“Masked… did that medic specify the sort of mask they were wearing?” he mumbles in questioning, eyeballing the trio of guards with close intensity.

“No, I don’t believe so.”

When the noise dies down, she continues. “I am your queen, Elderberry, honoring this great tradition for the 60th time in my leadership and onward,” she continues. “But I don’t intend to keep you all here for long, listening to a boring speech. You want an experience like no other— and that, my beloved people, is exactly what you will be having here tonight.”

More cheers, more roars. Espresso tilts his head to the proposal.

“If you’d like to know more about our rich history, please do visit our Elderberry Museum of the Ancients just down the hall from this ballroom,” she instructs, and another masked guard nearest to another corner of the room waves their hand. “With that, here and now, for our highlight of the night… is our waltz!”

People immediately begin pairing together— couples of varied sexes, parents with their children, friends who’ve yet to become more— and take position, all spaced out in the circle. Meanwhile, Espresso and Madeleine stand awkwardly.

“Umm, excuse me…” a puny voice says, and Espresso turns to find a young woman around their age standing at Madeleine’s side. She clears her throat. “This is embarrassing, sorry… I was wondering if you would be my dancing partner?”

Madeleine nearly chokes.

“I don’t know how to dance, you see, and all of my friends have partners already…” she continues, tugging at the rim of her dress. “You look experienced, is all. And handsome.”

“Ah,” is all Madeleine says, flushed in his cheeks, and he glanced at Espresso searching for something Espresso himself cannot place. Insight? Approval? “Well, you see, I… do not know how to dance, either.”

Espresso’s eyes widen. Madeleine, the noble knight, who has been to many balls and sought by many women for courtship? Of all people, Espresso wouldn’t have anticipated him to lack such a field of knowledge.

“Oh! Oh. That’s… a surprise,” the woman musters, redder than a rose field. “I’m sorry to have bothered you, then.” 

And then she scurries away.

Espresso can’t help but smirk when he meets eyes with Madeleine, who is his own shade of red. He looks away in an instant.

“Not only can you not waltz, but you cannot dance, period?”

“My knighting process was so fast, I… never had the chance to learn,” Madeleine retorts, sheepish. “Stop looking at me like that.”

This is the moment Espresso loses complete sight of himself. All of the stress, the anxiousness, the guilt— it withers away, right that moment. 

The world fades to black as he bows, a silent promise to a coliseum that doesn’t exist, and when he looks on from the stage there is no crowd to witness him, no light. Everything around them disappears, and it’s just the two of them as the curtains draw back. What was it that they were there for, again? What was it that he wanted? 

‘To do something so cruel and crazy that not even guilt could make way into his soul.’

He blinks, everything coming back into focus. And then he dips down, so he’s just a foot shorter than Madeleine again, and extends his hand.

“Why don’t we change that?”

Madeleine flinches, his eyes squinting when they meet Espresso’s, a clash of blue and pink hues intermingling and fleshing out to paint something more beautiful than they could imagine, like the sunset sky after the sun’s risen, and in spite of the darkness, it has . He’s never even looked at Madeleine before, has he? It was a dangerous game; if he looked much longer, he’d melt, just the way the rivers look when they meet the open air. 

Or perhaps he’d catch fire.

“Are you…”

“I am inviting you to a waltz, Madeleine,” Espresso states firmly, and for once he doesn’t waver, doesn’t falter. “Let’s see just how much you know in action.”

Slowly, Madeleine takes his hand. It was all just a show. Madeleine knows this. So Espresso runs his free hand along his shoulder blade, a thousand unspoken words in the motion, and they advance to the dance floor.

The music fades in, a subtle violin followed by a bass rhythm seeping into the room. Espresso sighs, bringing Madeleine’s hand from his grasp to his waist. 

“A waltz is a dance of guidance,” Espresso murmurs to his neck, “so once you catch the drift of my movement, it’s very easy to mimic it.” He takes one step forward, and Madeleine takes one back, a joint procedure. “This should be no problem for you… right?”

Madeleine says nothing, but his expression says just enough to fathom. 

They continue the motion, twirling in and out of the room’s center, every pairing doing the same. One step in, the adjacent foot follows, and flipped. Their movement gradually begins to take formation as the music steadies, so Espresso takes things up a notch and leans in, rising on his toes with his back foot before landing on the ball of its end, and repeat. Madeleine is stiff, but follows.

“Just like that,” Espresso mutters in a heavy breath, sliding his hand down his back from where it was settled on his glistening shoulderpads, admittedly not a very comfortable place to grip. “To a simple tune like this, one must continue a simple three count tempo. One, two, three… one, two, three…”

Madeleine gulps. He’s nervous. He’s vulnerable. Espresso can’t help but feel like he’s cornered his prey, and it’s cruel, and it’s crazy, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing but in a state like this he’s bound to reel in and strike.

As the tune quickens its pace, Espresso takes their simple in-and-out to a new level and whirls them into a circle, and for a moment it feels like the citizens of Elderberry around them are nothing but background dancers in their choreography, and it’s all so surprising that by accident Madeleine steps straight on Espresso’s foot.

“Sorry!”

Espresso doesn’t reply in the passing time as they continue, because they have no time to take a step back in that direction. “You’re anxious around me, Madeleine. Why?”

“What?” Madeleine jolts. “Falsehood. It’s just the waltz… I mean, I’ve just messed up already.”

“That is your falsehood,” Espresso argues, whirling again, and this time, just because of how tight a grip of control he takes, it’s successful. Pushing the limit, Espresso pulls them to a turn and reels over to his ear, sparkling diamond above his jaw as he speaks. “You have been behaving this way from the start. I’m not dense. What is it?”

“I don’t understand what you want me to say,” Madeleine responds, initiating the next turn. Oh, things are getting good now.

“I want you to tell me the truth.” 

The air is hot and tight, and even more so between the two, growing closer and closer one moment and much farther the next as they step into the center of the waltz circle, the music rapid and intense unlike anything Espresso expected. One, two, three, one, two, three— things weren’t as simple as that anymore, but he liked the change just fine.

“The truth?”

“About how you feel,” Espresso continues, pulling him in for a whirl. This time, he jerks Madeleine’s arm upward for an underarm turn, twisting clockwise around his back and against his chest again. Four, five, six. “Last night, you said you didn’t like me. I bargain that this is true.”

“No!” Madeleine shouts in the most hushed way acceptable, pulling him around for another turn. “That’s not the truth. Far from it.”

A majority of the room’s eyes were on them now, Espresso was sure of it. They continued to turn, but in a hurry with the swiftness of the choreography, each swipe of the bow along the strings equating a step. One, two, three, four, five, six. This wasn’t a coliseum, this was a carousel. 

“Don’t lie,” Espresso hisses, spinning and spinning until he stops, pressing as far into Madeleine’s chest as he can as he pushes, his teeth gritting. “Just say it.”

“What is your goal right now?”

My goal?

The lights. They were supposed to be dimmed. Why were they strobing?

“I don’t understand what you want from me.”

What I want…

“Just say… that you hate me.”

Right at that moment, Madeleine steps straight on Espresso’s shoe once again and sends him falling backward, but he doesn’t move to save himself. There was one little thing he forgot to tell Madeleine when they began the waltz, when he was actually instructing him— the last and final important factor to remember.

The trust fall.

Madeleine grips Espresso by the shoulder and harnesses him from where he’s angled, rescuing him from the impact as the music finally slows to its end. A dip.

As the lights flutter on, one by one, the crowd begins to roar. Was it because of them, truly, or was it an applause of juncture? Espresso could never tell, and quite frankly, as he comes to his senses, he doesn’t want to.

Madeleine hoists him up and pulls away, refusing any advances for eye contact. Instead, Espresso moves his gaze to an approaching guard, masked and swift as a mouse. They smile.

“Madeleine and Espresso of the joint Hollyberry and Vanilla kingdoms,” they say, lowering their mask as they speak. “I’ve been expecting you.”

The background noise numbs as the chatter succumbs to nothingness, reality coming to check. Right, they were there for a reason. So what were they doing just then? 

No, what was Espresso doing just then?

“So it’s you,” Espresso says, observing the still closely concealed individual. “Let’s cut to the chase. What is it that you have for us?”

They smirk and extend from their palm a measly two items— a second scroll and a potion. Hesitantly, Espresso offers initiative and takes it. 

“The scroll is a clue,” they say, “And the next, a potion of good fortune.”

“Good fortune?”

“Upon a serving of a half, your immune system is mass boosted in health. One of the most infamous remedies.”

They shuffle in place slightly, but not another word from their mouth erupts. They merely stand there, almost expectantly.

“…Didn’t you say you want something in return?”

“Bingo,” they continue with a sly aura in their motions. “What I want is information.”

“Information?”

“About your cause,” they elaborate, almost as if they anticipated the response. “What are you planning to do when you reach the depths? How do you intend to beat whatever protects the ruins? I’m a very curious journalist, you see, and personal interviews are a must.”

“…Fine,” Espresso manages at last, placing the items into Madeleine’s hands when he approaches. “But to be frank, we haven’t much to tell you. Adventurer hadn’t elaborated on his findings that day, but our committee is certain that by harnessing its power, we can achieve great things.”

A silence. “And you intend to simply… run in there with no plan of action?”

“We have no other choice.”

Madeleine, in the meantime, is already popping the potion’s cork cap off, then slowly and cautiously leaning in to smell it, a steamed whiff flowing in through his nostrils. Espresso near rolls his eyes until his previously (once again) unreadable face fades into one of awe— the unsafe, we need to get out of here kind.

“Nightshade,” is all he says, in a low whisper just into his ear, and it’s all he needs to say. Espresso turns politely to the anonymous guard and bows.

“My deepest apologies, but we haven’t much else to offer and we really must be going,” Espresso informs them, backing up as nonchalantly as he can think, but it’s too late. They know they’ve messed up.

They know what they have to do.

All of a sudden, they slam their foot to the ground and yank down a lever in the wall, initiating a blaring red fire alarm and festering the room with unforeseeable gas, sending Espresso and Madeleine apart to no avail and coughing in place. Just as the smoke is fuzzing away, the two can hear an explosion in the distance.

The crowd is screaming as they stumble away, some bomb Espresso’s never seen before in hand. As a result of the madness, Elderberry rushes up to her microphone at the pier and yells, “We are undergoing a terrorist attack, I repeat, we are undergoing a terrorist attack! Everyone get to safe ground as quickly as possible!” She then jerks the microphone as close to the edge as possible, looking Espresso and Madeleine directly in the eyes as she says, “You two appear to be the prime targets, so your safety is now my top priority. Just out that emergency exit to the right of the fields is a river, and the most inconspicuous way out is to cross it, understand?”

It was distraught, and by the Divine it was informal, but for once that night there was a truth Espresso had faith in. So, following Madeleine’s lead, they dip from the scene, running for the hills faster than Espresso would have wanted to run that night.

Especially in heels.

Chapter Text

The fields out by the river are quiet, only the gentle buzzing of a hushed dragonfly harmony present to remind them it wasn’t completely deserted. The forest beyond is coated with willow trees, mellow shades of green with the occasional pink tracing the branches as they fall, floating through the air with the steady wind in the hollow. Likewise, as they approach closer and closer to the open field in extended silence, they find that many of these willow trees circle to humble a roofed building along the edge of the river— a gazebo, to be more precise.

Underneath its pointed roof are two adjacent benches coated with a surplus of leaves and petals carried throughout the air and promptly landing there like the airport of nature. It gives the inward stature an untouched, overgrown look as they approach it, a stillness in the distance between them.

What happened back there?

Regret stings at his heart like a poison. It was as if Espresso had completely lost his mind. There was no way to explain the mishap, or excuse it, and he hated the lack of philosophy behind it like nothing else; what was he meant to say to pardon himself when Madeleine questioned it? As Madeleine collapses against the closest bench, all of his weight heaving downward, Espresso stands still with his mind spiraling out of control; a tsunami of anxiety windblown in the liminal confines of his mind.

Control. That was what he needed, control. ‘Everything in moderation,’ a final promise of sorts to Alchemist before he boarded the train and left the last of his dignity behind, disheveled on the tracks. So, to regain control, he stops to think, to put his savage and untamed emotions in their place. 

The lights blared. The shifting and stirring of the room ushered to a stop, the dancers situated at their spots in silent waiting. He’d watched the girl go, red in the face, her scintillating yellow gown flying in her dust. He’d watched Madeleine stand watching as well, eyes sickeningly sapphire as always, vanilla curls draped down his face. Everything was bright, wasn’t it? Something Espresso wasn’t, something he’d always wanted more of. The atmosphere, the tapestries, the attire… Madeleine himself… it was ravishing. So he outstretched his hand, foolish as it may be, pernicious at worst, and took it all in for himself like a drug so alluring he couldn’t deny it. Everything was just so bright it blinded him.

And they waltzed. They waltzed per Espresso’s every instruction, every step an encouragement to follow, each one Madeleine mimicked almost flawlessly in kind. But of course, for the first time since Espresso could remember, he miscalculated, and they plunged. They reeled back, attached at the hip, and dove straight into a cavernous void of unspoken words and false expectations of truth. A spell no one but a coffee mage like himself could have cast.

He’s determined the ‘what’ of the situation. The ‘who’, the ‘how’. But the one question he could never seem to get to the bottom of when it came to his more deep-rooted emotions was why?

Espresso turns to Madeleine, waiting for him to scold him, for him to up and turn his back on their quest entirely because Espresso was just too much. But he doesn’t. In fact, he’s more silent than Espresso thinks he’s ever heard him.

Say something, Espresso ushers himself, standing up straight. “So, this… letter,” Damn it. “The messenger said it contained a clue, though I assume by now it’s privy. Shall we at least take a look?” 

Madeleine winces as Espresso lowers himself onto the bench, straightening his tie as some visible way of fidgeting. He reaches into the pocket of his belt to acquire the scroll, running his fingertips along the paper parched with a layer of silicone before he tugs it out. It takes a few picks at the scarlet candle-waxed seal to get it to unroll.

Before they can manage to read— no less interpret— the writing, they come to realize the text consists entirely of an unfamiliar language. 

At least to Madeleine.

“Is this French?” 

“Hmm… ah, connaissance… puissant machine… sacrifice?”

“You can speak French, Espresso?” Madeleine prompts, surprise in his eyes. Espresso pinches his fingers together.

“Peu,” he answers, readjusting his glasses, tracing circles of vision around his eyes as he continues in his endeavor to understand it. “Little. But either this attempt at French is vastly misinformed or this is some kind of… pidgin language.”

Madeleine stares blankly.

“A conjoined language between two different languages to form a simplified, more comprehensible variant,” Espresso explains. “But the second language here clearly isn’t the one we speak. I can only barely make out words composed primarily of French, but they don’t help much, I’m afraid”

“But,” Madeleine says before pausing to process, scrunching up his face and frowning as a result. “Why would they write to us in a language we can’t understand?”

“It could have been with the intention to slip us up. Or,” Espresso says, pausing. “This letter wasn’t originally intended for us.”

“Does it specify who it’s addressed to?”

Espresso observes the slightly smudged ink at the header, withered puddles of liquid withholding any possible contents. “No. Nor does it possess a place of delivery.”

Madeleine makes a face. “Now why would they hand us a letter not especially addressed to us?” he tips his head in thought, scratching at the stubble on his chin. “Especially if their intentions were to smother our progress?”

“I am no walking book of secrets. This mysterious ‘guard’s’ motives are lost on me as well,” Espresso retorts without thinking, rolling up what remains unsheathed. “But as stated, I find it highly likely this was a plot to throw us off our rhythm. It may be in our best interest to pay it no mind.”

“If you say— ah!”

Before Madeleine could finish, a sudden gust of wind comes pushing through the gaps of the gazebo’s pillars and straight into Espresso and Madeleine’s backs, sending the scroll in Espresso’s hands flying down the staircase and out by the shoreline. As it happens, both of them burst up from their seats, but only Madeleine is swift enough to knock it from the flow of the breeze and into the muddied rocks along the water.

Espresso exhales with relief. Though he claimed it most likely meant nothing in their grasp, the relic was too valuable in itself to lose.

Madeleine scurries over to the paper where it’s dipped in water before pausing, squinting to observe something Espresso can’t see. He overturns the sheet and parts his lips, like he’s just had a thought but hasn’t acquired enough information to articulate it.

“What is it?” 

He hums for a moment. “There is something on the back of this scroll.”

Sure enough, tinged at the corners of the wetted parchment is a slight coloration, though abstruse considering how little the waters have revealed. However, Madeleine props up with a newfound determination, picking up a rock with a sharper point from beneath the grasses and crouching over the ivory wood of their pit stop. Espresso watches closely, overcome with curiosity.

Madeleine then proceeds to scratch along the slowly fading silhouette, the rock’s point moist with fresh reservoir, melting through the formerly noted silicone along the back. As he does so, Espresso begins to understand the picture, like pieces of a puzzle coming together without the box’s front reference image to ease the process. He can make out trees, pathways, small shapes of buildings, and the more that unveils the more Espresso comes to realize what exactly they’re seeing.

“It’s a map,” he states simply, peering around to sit beside the other man, hard at work. “The one we’ve been using to navigate our path, to be precise.”

“No,” Madeleine shakes his head, stooping over to set down the rock. “This map… this map entails a new route. A route we haven’t seen before.”

Once again, it’s true. Just around the Elderberry Kingdom displays a brand new pathway, looping around any potential obstacles. In comparison to the map they’ve been using, it makes the journey appear so much more… straightforward. But how could that be possible? Nothing alongside the village map appears to have changed. 

Regardless, the existence of this map filled in a lot of gaps. So fluently that the knowledge could go unspoken, Madeleine hastily transactioning the scroll to Espresso’s hand so he could tuck it away. After this, the two go silent, watching the waves rise and fall along the coast. It’s almost suffocating.

“How did you learn to do that?” Espresso finally blurts, curling his fingertips along the ridge of the staircase. “That rock maneuver. Or was it a mere spur of the moment?“

Madeleine shakes his head. “It’s something my father taught me when I was young, back when we lived impoverished.”

Espresso sucks in a breath. In a few seconds’ passing, he questions whether or not he should pry into the matter, but the worry subsides when Madeleine continues on his own.

“My father was a kind-hearted, righteous man, even when he owed others no kindness at all. He was pious when he owed the gods nothing. He was many things, unapologetically, and for that I have admired him eternally, even in adulthood,” he spoke, unmoving. It was just the two of them, all alone— alone together— in that field, coated with dandelions, wisped willow and petals. “I was a teenager when he died. Just before his passing he taught me how to detect masked parchment, a common trick he’d found amongst the more devious type. The first time I used it was to uncover the will he left me… a fortune, so I could train and enroll as a knight.”

Madeleine gazes at Espresso, straight in the eyes, arising a flush along his neck. There was that look again. Permission. 

Espresso bites his tongue and nods.

“It had always been my dream to become one, having come upon many posters and tapestries promoting it in my time. So I bought myself a sword and I trained. I crafted dummies out of recycled cardboard and pine sap, made them swords out of sticks. They couldn’t fight back, but in my fantasies real life enemies wouldn’t stand a chance either,” he continued. “Every few days, however, I added another touch of protection to the dummies, so they were more difficult to strike. After months on end of doing that, I enrolled for the competition.”

“…And how did it go?”

“Well, look at me now and take a guess,” he says almost cockily, managing a smile. “I bested every single one of them and scored first place in line.”

There’s another silence, but this time Espresso doesn’t want the chance to slip by. 

“It’s funny,” he begins, clutching. “My origins are quite similar to yours.”

The other man perks up. “Really?”

“Yes… if I may.”

Espresso understood, then. Madeleine had just needed someone to confide in. So many years lacking a place to call home and all he truly wanted was a person for the same purpose. Someone who could understand, if even a little. Espresso would be lying if he said he hadn’t always longed for the same.

“I had– I mean, have a sister-in-law, named Latte. For as long as I can recall, we lived homeless as well, no one but each other to protect and keep us company. Since our parents’ disappearance, we desperately clung to each other amidst the colder nights, and by day we travelled together. Never apart,” he selects his words carefully, almost frightened to slip up and reveal more than he is comfortable with. “One night I made her promise never to abandon me like they did, and our pinkies interlocked, a silent contract. As the nights grew harsher, that was all I had left.”

He stops, realizing that his voice has been quivering as he spoke, his hands a little shaky. He was losing composure– coming apart at the seams, but for the world to see, for the nightbirds and his reflection flows in warped wavelets across the waters. The moon ripples across its ominous surface, the sun having finally set, blanketed by a mirrored sea of clouds. The breeze is cold on his cheeks.

For Madeleine, too, to see.

Madeleine unites his pinky with Espresso and he flinches, harshly, but strangely his instincts tell him not to move away. A silent contract. A promise.

“But… one day everything changed. One day I awoke from within our shelter, a coveted cave of rock to find that Latte wasn’t there. Her arms… not wrapped around me to protect from the cold, her steady breaths no longer in my ear, a lullaby lulling me to sleep,” he trails on, “Except, she left no fortune behind. She left no trace of her absence at all. I had reason to believe she had simply wandered off to collect supplies and gotten lost, or worse been taken. So for a longer time than I could possibly count, I scaled the forest and the mountains for any sign of her presence, longing embrace, longing sisterhood… until…”

He bites back a familiar substance. It tastes of melancholy.

“I found the scale of her footsteps in that deep and treacherous snow and I remembered. I remembered my eyelids half open at night, her placing a kiss to my forehead and whispering, ‘I’m sorry’. She up and left, voluntarily, and never came back,” a gulp. “Those are the last words she ever said to me.”

Madeleine says nothing, but he squeezes his pinky, a reminder that he’s there. Sometimes, words were just too much. Sometimes no words at all were enough. 

“I was alone out there in that wintry climate, nearing closer and closer to the Frost Queen’s wrath. I’m certain that if that traveling alchemist hadn’t found me, I would have died without a single trace left to commemorate me.”

Madeleine hums. “A traveling alchemist?”

“Indeed,” Espresso verifies, heaving another exhale. “He found me curled up by a tree and rescued me. After that, I resided in his abode for some time. In turn for his generosity I was to do his chores, and with those chores I earned the coin to survive minimally in the future… at least, that was the plan until I went and fooled around with his laboratory materials.

“That was when I discovered my talents for alchemy– and for the development of coffee magic.”

Pinpricks of warmth build in his chest as Espresso beholds Madeleine from the corner of his eye, the pale moonlight making his skin glow a softer porcelain. For a moment, all of his former worries ebb away. How could one unusually silent man radiate so much warmth, a hearth to contrive the other’s embers?

“I see…” is all he can muster, eyes adrift along that river, dappled and gleaming. “And you have never met your parents?” 

Espresso clears his throat. “Unfortunately, I have no recollection of their existence.”

“I must admit I feel culpable for bringing this to attention. I apologize for speaking about my father so suddenly.”

He winces. “I did not mind, nor do I now. C'est la vie.”

“…?”

“‘Such is life’”

The silence, though windswept, was solace.

“My headpiece.”

“Hm?”

“I forgot to mention. My winged headpiece,” he continues, “It was one of the last things my father left me before his passing. He wore it proudly in war, before he died with it.”

Ah.

“It’s like a relic to me now. To lose it is… ruining,” he admits, his thick, tousled eyebrows furrowing. “When I joined the knights and switched gear, the one thing I would not allow them to craft for me was a helmet.”

If only Espresso had known, he would have abandoned their mission and scoped the land just to return it. But he didn’t know, and his harshness had been cruel, unyielding.

Shame was a kind punishment, sometimes.

“What’s worse is that I am responsible,” Madeleine says after a pause, invoking awe. “Nearly everything I do is for his pride in me. To have lost such a vital fragment of his life, I feel I have failed him.”

“That’s not true,” Espresso blurts, burying his cheeks into his palms, a touch paler than the expanse of his skin, pigmented of melanin. “It only fell to the ground because I dropped it there. If not for my ineptitude, this would not have happened.”

“You were observing my wound,” Madeleine refutes, shaking his head. “I would have done the same for you. Besides, it was due to my needless sacrifice upon fighting that… creature that it happened, considering I lost so much consciousness.”

“But if I had known, I would–”

“You did not know,” Madeleine says firmly. “It was due to my failure to communicate and nothing else. Do not attempt to shift blame you do not harbor.”

This keeps the other man’s mouth shut.

“...Furthermore, I… when he entrusted the item to me, he intended for me to wear it upon my transition,” he admits, averting his shimmering blue eyes. “Having been a knight himself, he knew of the curriculum for female knights and intended for me to oppose it. I value it immensely for being my first step into masculinity. Although Raspberry always made fun of it during our sparring sessions…”

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Espresso inserts, intent to not pry into a sensitive subject any further. “Are you acquainted with Knightess Raspberry? You appear to have a history.”

“Somewhat,” he answers with a hesitant sort of half smile. “Having been a knight much longer than I, we often trained together by sword, much to the kingdoms’ disapproval. It was certainly a challenge compared to those handmade dummies.”

“Shocking.”

“There was even a point before the war when the kingdoms intended to marry us in order to maintain peace. It was quite a surprise.”

Oh.

“Not to worry,” he says immediately, waving it off with a swift gesture of the hand. “We both profusely declined. Raspberry has no interest in men, and I myself had other priorities in mind.”

“I wasn’t worrying,” Espresso scoffs, his face heated to the touch. “What makes you think I’m worried?”

“You looked appalled.”

“Nonsense.”

“Are you certain? Not to mention you’re burning up…”

“Quiet, you!” Espresso shoves him, just lightly enough not to do any real damage. “The two of you simply don’t seem compatible. Bumbling fool.”

Madeleine gives a gallant laugh, which Espresso knows is genuine because when he truly laughs, he laughs with his whole body, clutching the fabric of his chest as he keels over. Espresso merely sits and stares, dumbly. Such a laugh– it’s pathetic looking, and it’s silly, but it’s real– and what could be more beautiful than that?

“Anyway,” Madeleine manages with a gasp, poorly attempting to regain composure. “As I said, she never liked it. She even brought herself to inspect the old headband once… told me it made me look like the kind of young deity cast aside for his ugliness and incompetence.”

“Brash, but not untrue,” Espresso utters. “Do the two of you still associate outside of governmental affairs?”

“Not if she can help it. I’m almost certain she hates my guts.”

So I’ve heard. “Why is that?”

“I’m afraid I can’t say,” he admits, frowning. “Although I can guess a fragment of reasoning rests upon my pompous ego.”

Ego was a kind descriptor, Espresso silently figures, recalling all the times in the past Madeleine had made such a powerful presence for himself and shoved aside anyone in his path to maintain it. He was a man of strength and unrestrainable exertion, both on the battlefield and in any room he entered, large in size and commanding with his words. He was the kind of person so comfortable with himself to the point of conceited snobbery or even patronization that it made Espresso sick. And yet, as of late, Espresso had witnessed a gradual shift in Madeleine’s aura, trickles of growth in his scars. 

At first, Espresso couldn’t put his finger on it— what did Madeleine have to gain in losing so much of his character? Could it be that he had manipulative plans against the coffee mage to get just what he wants from their mission, whatever feeble thing that may be? But while he still harbored suspicion for his behavior, in that moment, he almost came to understand it.

The only question left was why.

“That would make sense,” is all that came out. Perhaps it was something he was owed, after giving in to that faulty emotion that night. After waltzing with a man he once considered an enemy and so foolishly confronted, shattering the thin ice they danced over. 

“I know,” Madeleine replies after an extended nothingness, tilting his head to view Espresso from the peripheral. His eyes almost appeared… pleading. What was it again? “That is precisely why I have been trying to change.”

Oh.

Espresso gulps, swallowing a foam in his mouth he didn’t know he was gathering.

“As I attempted to explain before, Espresso… I do not hate you,” Madeleine speaks slowly, unsure. “In fact, I’ve spent this whole time fretting that you hated me. I don’t want our mission to go awry because our emotions keep getting in the way, so I… feel the need to apologize to you. For bringing you to think such a thing, because I have been too blind to see it until now.”

“Wh—“

“I want to be… friends, at least for these next few days,” Madeleine blurts. “And perhaps, if you can come to see the good in me, we can work from that… but that is only if you allow me.”

Espresso is silent, but for the very last time. He leaves no time to contemplate, or even argue about who has been in the wrong the whole time. A chance like that couldn’t be passed up. 

Just like last time, Espresso takes his hand and tugs him up to stand. His hands are muscled, rough and calloused but warm to the touch. They slide into Espresso’s like a lock and key, opening doors to something new but not so unfamiliar. “If you’re looking to correct former traits, I have one— I am not as stubborn of a man as you think.”

Madeleine smiles, squeezing his hand. Espresso allows it, looking serenely to the moonlit pool. 

For a moment, Espresso thinks maybe that emotion he perceived as guilt had been something else all along.

- - ┈┈∘┈˃̶༒˂̶┈∘┈┈ - -

After a brief nap on the benches of the gazebo (well, Madeleine slept. Espresso did not) the two gathered what little they had left from their adventures and set off to assess the chateau’s damage. Upon closer inspection of the scroll, it appeared that the address name pointed directly there, and while they did intend to assist with the situation’s cleanup their priority this time around was to get answers. 

Luckily for them, the moment they reached the confoundingly mild ruins, Queen Elderberry stood in watch, her studded heels messied by dirt and dust. Even at her worst, the queen could take anyone aback with her splendor. 

Madeleine takes the lead for social interaction. “Queen Elderberry!” he shouts to alert her of their presence, kneeling to bow in brief. “I apologize sincerely for last night. For the day we are at your service. Is there anything we can do for you?”

“Ah, it is the peculiar couple from last night… what was it?”

“Madeleine, Divine knight of the Hollyberry and Pure Vanilla kingdoms, m’lady,” Madeleine introduces himself with his usual valorance, either ignoring or simply not noticing the bold assumption. “This is Espresso, a highly acclaimed alchemist and coffee mage from the same kingdoms. We come to break from travel, on a mission for treasure.”

“Treasure?”

“Something like that.”

The woman narrows her vivid green eyes to slits to study them, but she says nothing. Instead, she sighs and removes her constructional attire.

“I would not dare order passing guests to engage in such busywork they aren’t responsible for,” she says, dropping her helmet to the muddied concrete. “Although I do wish to have a discussion with you both about our situation… follow me.”

Exchanging a look of uncertainty, the two crossed the path and followed Elderberry into what remained of the mansion, which thankfully was quite a lot. As they walked, they came to pass the museum mentioned before, decorated with a wide variety of relics and artwork on display, astonishingly breathtaking murals along every wall. They displayed what is picturesque of just about anything imaginable in history; family, courtship, daily life, and naturally the struggles of life back then, including dark magic and war. Espresso lines his fingertips across a particularly articulate soldier on the wall as he passes, tracing circlets around the man’s head. Their conversation naturally lingered in his brain, and with such a view he couldn’t help but imagine such a knight as Madeleine in their place, only larger… perhaps his father. 

Or an unfortunate day in the future, in which the knight repeats history because they’ve failed.

“Something wrong?” Madeleine’s voice interrupted the scene. Espresso jerked away instantly.

“No. Let's get a move on.”

After surpassing the museum center, they traverse a hallway and climb a staircase to reach what appears to be the queen’s office. It’s a rather simplistic and even small room, which comes as a surprise considering Espresso didn’t take her for the minimalistic type. 

“As I’m sure you’ve noticed already, I am not one for wasting time,” Elderberry interjects, already sitting cross-legged at her desk with her head held high. “Have a seat.” 

Conveniently, there are two seats at the opposite end of the desk. They comply without question.

“We caught the persecutor,” Elderberry explains immediately. “However, when we brought him in for interrogation, they appeared sworn to secrecy by life. No amount of bribery or even torture could convince this man to fess up.”

Espresso blinks, adjusting to the very proposition of torture. Madeleine looks to be in the same spot.

“So we’ve left him to rot and sent our histologists to work in uncovering his identity,” Elderberry continues. “And to no avail, we’ve still yet to find any leads at all. His identity is completely unknown to the books or any form of magic, dark and light alike. I’m assuming neither of you know much else either?”

“No ma’am,” Madeleine replies, a bead of sweat trailing down his forehead as he’s speaking. “When we received our letter of invitation on his behalf, it was said to have been delivered by the Elderberry Ball Committee.”

“A faulty letter… was it handwritten?” 

“No ma’am.”

“Print,” she scoffs, smiling with disarray. “Clever. But surely not clever enough.”

Elderberry leans back in her seat once more, her chin rested against her fist in thought. Espresso does the same, wagering the possibilities. A completely unknown identity slipped into the chateau’s quarters and disguised as a knight with no inspection managed to explode the place in the face of thoughtfully planted steam, then rushing away with only the traces of his scrolls left behind. Was his aim to trap them, maim them, help them or some twisted mixture of all three? Moreover, who could he possibly work for to have no trace of his existence tracked?

“On the subject of letters, ma’am, the subject in question did offer us a second scroll before the stunt was pulled.” Madeleine says all of a sudden, straight to business. “I don’t suppose you’d wish to see it?” He gazes down to Espresso, motioning him to grab it. “It is addressed in your honor, after all.”

“Is that so?” she says quizzically, instantly sparking her interest. “Do show me, then.”

When Espresso hands it over and Elderberry undoes the prompt spool of the scroll, her eyes blow wide. It would appear she knew exactly what it was. 

“Did he mention where exactly he found this scroll?”

“No, ma’am.”

She studied it, tracing the sharpness of her dark violet fingernails across the slope of its back. She reads with an expression of concern, of misplaced worry. Then, it vanished, blanketed with a look of foreboding near-prophecy.

“Why,” she begins, wrapping it up and sliding it across the desk to be reclaimed, “The writing in this letter is none other than the work of your queen, the great Hollyberry.”

Madeleine leaps up from his seat, sprung with disbelief. “With such a map and information disclosed inside, set for the Elderberry Kingdom? Surely you’re mistaken.”

“I have never been more certain of anything,” Elderberry answers calmly. “This is precisely her penmanship. We are old friends, after all.”

“Do you think this scroll letter correlates with the invitation letter?” Espresso finally speaks. Elderberry shakes her head with ease. 

“The timelines are far too different. I’m certain the persecutor scryed for this with the intention of diversion.”

Madeleine sputters. “Then, do you at least understand the contents of this letter? What she was trying to get across when it was written?”

“Hardly,” Elderberry mutters, standing up from her seat in turn. “This old code is lost on me now. I’ve decidedly rid it from my knowledge. I could name a few words for you, at best.”

“Then… what could it mean?” Madeleine looks… hurt. Betrayed. Espresso doesn’t dare try to reassure him. He doesn’t even know how.

“I cannot say with confidence,” she speaks carefully, a pointed clacking with each step as she’s straying from her seat, waving the two to follow her as she does so. Unintentionally, it was clear they had provoked her with the idea of such perilous memories, and they no longer had any resources or support to provide her as it follows. “But it seems to me that your dearest Hollyberry has been hiding something dire from you. I do hope you can crack the code.”

Espresso close behind, the two men make their way out of the doorway, quickly as they came. Elderberry huffs. 

“In the meantime, do contact me if you find anything else, and I will repay you in kind. After all, you’ve just shown me something very important,” she clutches the doorknob with her free hand, balancing the posture of her stance against a nearby table with the other. Her movements are staggered and almost awkward in essence. Her final words before shutting the door without so much as a farewell are easily twice as mystifying. 

“Ah, and do not forget— I have no need for  formalities. To you two dears… it’s just Elderberry.”

Chapter Text

This was a mistake.

This was a grand, monumental mistake was all Espresso could think as they crossed the border, the tall fences shielding the forest a glimmering silver in the sunlight. Stepping across the line felt oddly resemblant to a descent into hysteria; the dirt and flora below the leaves untouched by the light, wilted miserably like an omen. Every little sign felt as though it pointed them straight to failure… or so Espresso’s subconscious made him think.

If there was anything to gather from their meeting with Elderberry, Hollyberry was hiding valuable information from the two of them, more specifically the kind that succeeded their travels. The two never would have even considered crossing the Elderberry Kingdom if they had known such a curious route to their destination existed, which no less would have been safer in comparison. If Elderberry’s claims were true, the tracks of the narrow pathway beyond the station should not be engulfed by the walks of time, nor replenished by renovation; being so close to their kingdom, it just didn’t make sense. Not to mention every obstacle on their trip so far had sullied their progress and led to nothing but complications.

And Hollyberry once marked that route, dripping blood red ink and all, with her own two hands.

Why?

“What is it?” a familiar voice inquires from beside him, snapping him out of his spiraling trance. That’s right. Upon exiting the Elderberry Kingdom once and for all and allowing their mission to ensue, they’d agreed to halt at a checkpoint between the two itineraries and cross a rather well-known city to discuss their next move. It was bustling with chatter, the roads coated with salesmen promoting their craftsmanship and customers intrigued by every calling. Unlike the streets on the night of the Elderberry Ball, this place was cast with warmer tones, lights shining a soft yellow onto the ginger-colored stones of the marketplace. “You’re making that face.”

“What face?” Espresso jeers, crossing his arms and attempting to unscrew whichever expression he was making before. 

“You know, that face you make when you’re deep in thought,” Madeleine continues, gesturing to his chin with his gloved pointer. “Like this.” Madeleine makes a face almost offensively too accurate for comfort.

“I make no such face,” Espresso huffs, throwing his head away to avoid eye contact. “And even if I do, how would you of all people recognize it?”

“We have known each other for a long time now, Espresso, whether it be as rivals or as friends,” Madeleine says, a chill slipping up Espresso’s spine at the word ‘friend’. He isn’t quite used to having friends, no less being friends with such a character as Madeleine. It arose an emotion he couldn’t quite place, but it subsided warm in his chest. “And I am more observant than you may think.”

Espresso turns back and offers him a face to remember– a hard-earned cringe. “I’ll spare you the title of ‘stubborn’, but by no means would I ever call you ‘observant’.”

Contrary to the previous day’s breezy weather, this day is borderline blazing hot, the glowing medallion in the sky highlighting the darker tones of his garments, clearly unfit for the morning’s fire. It leaves his skin sun-torched and drizzles a golden circlet along the tufts of his hair, bringing out a natural glaze Espresso often forgets he possesses. Consequently, as they cross the oregold-yellow stonepath, the heat grows tiresome and Espresso gestures Madeleine over to a booth with a spinning fan attached at the headboard. The salesmen in this corner of the marketplace are offering higher quality products, ranging from professional blacksmiths with lines of weaponry to jewelers stringing up necklaces and bracelets of the finest pearl. Espresso absently wonders if even an esteemed proprietor like Mont Blanc stops by to advertise here. 

He vanquishes the thought as he browses the selection. Espresso hasn’t forgotten their mission, of course, so he has no interest in making purchases, but he must admit he finds the row of objects fascinating. A standard marketplace would more commonly sell day-over fresh vegetables and appliances made of wood or straw, considering when you’re impoverished like Espresso once was your top priority is maintaining a safe and healthy eating diet, but the people here were anything but– he can’t decide if he should feel lucky to afford such an honor or ache with the remembrance of what once was.

Any feeling he could pick apart diminishes, however, when they trail past a stall lined with armor, golden like the sun on his curls, like the glistening of Madeleine’s demeanor, metaphorized and itemized in a way he didn’t know was possible. From shelf to shelf, they withheld the simpler necessities like shoulder-pads and chest-plates to masks and… headpieces. Headpieces like the novelties of soldiers, like the ones in the pictures painted in grayscale across a many stone walls he’s witnessed in his time.

And they were winged, because every pawn of battle knows– from mage to knight, friend to foe– that only the most distinguished fighters know how to fly. 

They don’t come in bulk, however, so Espresso’s eyes naturally gravitate toward the most eye-catching of the few; a two piece set of the highest burnished gold, wingpieces separate to an emblem just above the forehead. It’s just like the previous, he remembers, the one they dropped and left behind in the forest of fig. Except, this one beholds a glimmering blue crystal, sapphire concealed by clear polish. The color was familiar in an unfamiliar sense. 

He wonders… no, never mind. 

“Espresso, look,” Madeleine interrupts, his mind clearly focused on other matters (as Espresso figures it should be). “Perhaps we should settle down somewhere to discuss our next move… there is a bar up ahead? I hear the patronage expresses great approval for the service.”

“We are not going drinking before battle.”

Madeleine flushes instantly. “That- that is not what I was suggesting!”

“It was written all over your face, believe me.”

“What face?”

Just like before, Espresso mimics his expression to the best of his ability. Judging by the look that follows, it’s effective. “Touché…”

A silence hangs in the air before Madeleine dips out of the crowds, raising his hand to wave to the coffee mage. “There appears to be a wait outside, so I will make us a reservation. Don’t get lost!” and just like that he disappeared amongst the sea of people, no longer distinct by height like he always was. Espresso slips away from the tidings of the crowd’s movement as he does so, dropping beside a pillar sculpted with birds and vines of naturally brown leaves to rest. His mind wanders again, a brewing potion of worry and temptation to breach a more bizarre taste than he’s comfortable with. 

Elderberry, Hollyberry, the kingdom… nothing was going to plan, not in the slightest.

And Espresso and Madeleine have no one to trust but each other.

- - ┈┈∘┈˃̶༒˂̶┈∘┈┈ - -

In the blink of an eye the two are seated at a table, and Espresso finds the bar equal parts lively and repulsive, something he’s found the majority of the locations they’ve stumbled upon anyway. The place voices hundreds of stories told in a range of octaves, competing with the clinking of glasses and the dubstep of heels on the clacking wooden floors. Classy in atmosphere but pungent in presence. Espresso swishes a crimson-colored liquid around in its glass idly.

“You refuse me ale, yet you allow yourself wine? I don’t believe that’s very fair,” Madeleine harrumphs from across him, a dim lamplight overhead as Madeleine cards through his bangs. Espresso takes a sip and exhales.

“This is liquor-free wine, Madeleine. I don’t even like alcohol,” Espresso says plainly, dabbing a small handkerchief over his lips. “Besides, we have more important things to focus on. Do you still have the map I entrusted to you on hand?”

“The map… ah, that one,” 

Promptly, Madeleine sprawls the scroll out from his belt and onto the planks of the table, coating a central portion of its room. The map is almost exactly as he expected, except it lacked a fair portion of the qualities he’s been familiar with before the war, like forests upon forests of greenery that no longer exists, waypoints that have toppled in flame and an absence of monuments they’ve lived through, like the confines of their home. To confirm this, Espresso unrolls their previous map for reference and immediately begins to note a surplus of major differences, their castles veiled by a now demolished field of pine. Above all, one thing was clear– this map was ancient, olden by the passage of time.

Their thoughts seem to intertwine as Madeleine leans over to point to the location. “This scroll was manufactured a long time ago… it must be from the first war. But if that’s the case, why does this route exist?”

The scarlet ink is thick with intricacy, strung through artfully painted green like a red string of fate, guiding their path. And at the end of the path stands the mountain, tall and barren, overlooking the lands of Earthbread as they know it with a cave burrowed deep inside. If something really is in there, Hollyberry must know what it is. But why wouldn’t she tell them? 

“Surely it hasn’t been covered?” Madeleine continues. Espresso shakes his head, discontempt in his gaze.

“Where the path is marked, the map is the same. That forest has always been there,” Espresso explains. “What I fail to understand is how exactly they made it through. Considering our experience with that forest before our encounter with the village, this one should be no different.”

“Do you suppose they traveled over it somehow?”

“With what? Do you think they sprouted wings?”

“Alright, alright…” Madeleine half-laughs awkwardly. “Well, I suppose our only means for discovery now is to see for ourselves. But considering how our messenger attempted to sabotage us… should we even trust it?

“It could very well be a trap,” Espresso agrees. “If only there was some way we could decipher Hollyberry’s ink from any other. If it’s any more worthy of our persuasion.”

It’s an outbreak neither of them wanted to induce, but it had to be said. Hollyberry was hiding something, something crucial to their mission, and their one defining issue was that they didn’t know what. If what she was hiding was endangering them, what reason did they have to follow any leads, no less continue their mission at all? 

“I… want to trust Hollyberry,” Madeleine admits, his head held low with somber solemnity. “Even if she isn’t my queen. I have known her and her charity long enough not to give up on her. I’m certain she wouldn’t do anything to hurt us, especially not on purpose.”

Espresso merely nods. He understands. In truth, he hasn’t entirely known Hollyberry until a recent point– only that she rules his now kingdom of residence and that she could by some beliefs be considered one of the Divine. Alongside Pure Vanilla, who Hollyberry once knew and passed tragically in the first war, there are three other live and immortal deities walking their land, whether they are ruling personal claims or living privately in their own decisive seclusion. Espresso could very well be considered lucky to live in her regards, but if she wasn’t the person they thought she was… well, that would have the tables spinning. 

“So we’re going to try it, but more importantly…” Espresso continues, tracing his fingertip across the greenery of the paper. He remembers what that anonymous messenger said at the ball after they waltzed, placing the scroll into his palms. ‘And you intend to simply… run in there with no plan of action?’ “...we need a plan. I don’t know if you recall, but our last battle side by side was not rather unsuccessful.”

“I mean, you weren’t being very communicative…” Madeleine begins to mumble under his breath. Espresso groans, like he should have anticipated this.

“I gave you orders and you didn’t follow them.”

“You were being strangled by a tree!”

“I was doing just fine! I escaped on my own in the end, did I not?”

“Ahh… alright, whatever you say…” Madeleine twitches before smoothing his hand through his hair to calm the nerves. That absolute lion’s mane of hair, tousled but somehow soft-looking. Espresso absently wonders what it feels like before taking that thought and hurling it out the highest window. “Although that was more of a run-in, you are correct. But how can we construct a plan when we don’t know what to expect?”

“We’ll have to work off of what Adventurer described, which arguably isn’t much.” Espresso says, sipping up his glass until it’s near halfway empty; or halfway full, for lack of perspective. “The beast laid deep within the cave, shielding something beaming with violet light, likely some variant of dark magic. Whatever that light is may be considered the ‘core’ of ending our war, but the issue is we don’t know how to obtain it, no less how to take down the beast in our efforts to do so.”

“But neither of us are experienced with dark magic, especially the old forbidden kind,” Madeleine counters as he looks to his sword, a steel-encrusted hilt sloping down to a deep blue pommel. The grip is a stiff cream color, just like the variety of his palette. He’s always had a taste for aesthetics. “Unless you yourself have studied it?”

“Preposterous,” Espresso hisses, but there’s no real malice behind his tone. “I care not for any magic but coffee magic. While I can learn to respect it, I have no interest in grasping its mechanics.”

He sighs. “Right. So we don’t fully know how it operates, nor do we know how to stop it. What about attack formation?”

Espresso sets down his glass, downed to its very last pulp. “Formation?”

“When we fought the creature in the woods, our only plan of action was offense and defense, and because of that we got… jumbled, for lack of a better word. It’s possible we need to consider the value of our movements.”

“That’s true,” Espresso considers. “Hollyberry seems to think we’re compatible, more specifically in terms of battle technique. But while I agree that my plan was vague, it’s not untrue or ill-advised. I am a man of close calculation– miscommunication aside, it’s still an optimal recourse.”

Madeleine stares. “Meaning?”

“You are equipped with a sword and shield, alongside your diligence and passion to protect on the battlefield,” Espresso explains. As he does so, he waves for the bartender to refill his glass. “Meanwhile, I am equipped with inner-focused abilities and written spells, making me more the sort to strike from a distance. That gap lies in our alliance; if you can fend enemies off, I can attack them with more powerfully charged blows, giving us a natural high ground. Understand?”

“Haha,” Madeleine laughs again, a drop of sweat slipping down his forehead as the server slides Espresso’s drink down the table. “You are more of a battle strategist than I, so I’ll take your word for that. However…”

The fans spin lazily around them, the bar considerably quieter than it once was, vanquishing the warm afternoon weather of the outdoors. Within the quiet hesitance of the moment, the recumbent light of eventide seeps from the windows, simmering onto the map’s destination like a spotlight. There they were again, on a stage, acting out some emotion they didn’t truly feel, a simple scripture of the ‘right’ words to say, the confident facades they needed to appease a crowd. But there wasn’t a crowd anymore, and the lights were slowly dimming, so Madeleine decides to speak the unspeakable for the very first time. 

“What if there’s something Hollyberry truly was wrong about? What if I–” he stops, but he can’t afford cowardice in the name of a deity. “What if I can’t protect you like I’m supposed to?”

Espresso gulps, biting back any clever words he could have thought to say. The great knight of the Divine, the confident light in any room that the simple folk have always known they could count on to be lifted up, Madeleine didn’t think he was good enough. Didn’t think he could protect. For someone as withdrawn and unforthcoming as Espresso to invoke this emotion out of Madeleine could very well be the greatest crime to one’s pride imaginable. 

But the truth is, Espresso doesn’t know how to drop his script. He isn’t ready for the stage, to let his emotions falter and fester and take over his soul like there was never a script in the first place, like the most infamous actors do. Not again. 

Not if it meant breaking the unbreakable.

“I can hold my own just fine, Madeleine,” he says, pushing his brows together in some attempt to display dubiety and sympathy at once. “So long as we stand our ground and keep our guards up, everything will be just fine.”

Espresso almost fears Madeleine’s blue, blue eyes will become a treacherous ocean, flooding his heart, but they do no such thing. In fact, they’re the emptiest the other man’s ever seen them. And then he smiles.

“You’re right,” he declares, waving the server over himself. “As a knight sworn to the Divine, I cannot let them down! Not to mention, there’s no way I can fail with the work of Espresso’s genius to my aid. One non-alcoholic ale please!”

He broke it anyway.

- - ┈┈∘┈˃̶༒˂̶┈∘┈┈ - -

The air is cold as frost, sending waves and waves of swift gusts down Espresso’s neck. White light begins to expand in his peripheral, opposite to his dark surroundings like a train closing in on an abandoned station. There is no gap against the surface to crawl out of, no sunlight… and for some reason, as he stares down into his achingly empty palms, he just can’t bring himself to move. As if he knows the danger is coming, knows that something is about to strike him, and yet he is simply too tired to stop it. Too fatigued to step off of those tracks and escape the endless hell, a constant marching of untrackable time. Distantly, he wonders if it’s going to finally come hit him or if the sounds only echo and delude him into believing it is. Sometimes the insomnia does that to you.

“Espresso,” a voice says. The situation is dire, but Espresso can’t help but wish it were a bit more enthusiastic in his final moments. “Espresso, can’t you hear me?”

He doesn’t reply. Not because he can’t or he’s forgotten how, but because he’s scared. Scared his final words will be the wrong ones. Scared he’ll spend his final seconds in regret. The light doesn’t waver.

“Espresso, I know you’re in there,” the voice persists, stubborn in essence. He knew stubborn, once. He was a cruel, merciless man. “If you can hear me, please, just send me a sign. Anything.”

He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. Just a cold, white huff of breath emanating from it, a ghost of something he once was slipping away. He’s always known of loss, but not his own; for years, he’s always been the same, incapable of growth without some sort of academic gain to be had. His mind, his heart, his mannerisms… he couldn’t recall the last time they’d been swayed. He could only imagine how painful it would be to stand on those tracks with him. To lay in wait, waiting for a shift to finally unwind. 

Perhaps he deserved this fate. Perhaps he always has.

“Damn it,” the voice says, strained by yet another unknown force. Espresso hates not knowing things. However, this time the voice rings out within the walls, and when it does so the source of its calling comes falling from the skies and tumbling against heavy rock. How could that be possible? There was no sky there, he was sure of it. “Espresso! Can you hear me now?”

Madeleine.

That’s right, they were in the caves. The deep, deep depths of the mountains, ever unturned by the expansion of humanity. This time, he tries to speak, but he can’t. He can’t move at all. 

Completely frozen over by the frost.

“That light…” Madeleine trails off, gaping amidst the glow. When Espresso’s eyes manage to glaze back over it, the white is tinted a dark, poisonous violet, plunging the caves in even more impenetrable darkness. Yet somehow the flash brightens the cave in an all-seeing surge of visibility, a flashlight of opportunity. That’s when he sees him.

That unrestrainable demeanor, that almost magical head of vanilla hair, those twinkling eyes, that unbreakable shield of armor. The great hero of the Pure Vanilla kingdom, the sacred knight of poor manners and lacking common sense– and even so, there he stood, brighter than anything Espresso’s ever known. So you’ve come to my rescue, just like you said… 

“—esso. Espresso !”

What?

And then it hits. The oncoming light, the train of karma, flew in, whirring tremendously faster than it ever was when he could change his fate. And against all better judgment he could have conjured up in that state, he stands and allows the force pushing him away from its blast to steal his fate.

He collapses onto his knees, a puff of dust staining the leather of his trousers and scraping his knees. But he doesn’t care about the wounds. He pushes up to his feet and trips immediately to fall against the larger man, who laid stricken by the unbeatable force of the oncoming blow, coated with red from the face down, tinting the cream-and-white of his garments and the slope of his jawbone. He speaks no words, offers not even a hairsbreadth of movement to indicate a sign of life. “No,” Espresso finally manages, keeling over to examine the damage, searching for any sign of hope. It was supposed to be me. 

You were supposed to be me.

His ears begin to ring, and the waters rain down his face, and if he lays any stiller the ice-cold air will freeze him over again, but he doesn’t care. He’s never cared about anything, or so he thought. 

Stubborn, too, was an old friend. 

- - ┈┈∘┈˃̶༒˂̶┈∘┈┈ - -

Espresso jolts awake, his heart racing ceaselessly in his chest. When he readjusts to the world around him, his senses are accompanied by the sound of nightly birdsong and the view of the glowing orb of a moon hung heavy in the sky. In the distance, he notes the sound of firewood crackling by his feet, a backdrop for the little twits of the nocturnal. It was just a nightmare again. He sighs, tracing his fingertips along the space where his scars were plastered in his headspace. You’re used to this. But the words hold no meaning to his thumping heart and his hyperventilating breaths, time slow albeit his senses increasingly fast. He’s had plenty of nightmares in his time, yet they were usually recurring– none of them were ever like that.

“Espresso,” the voice– no, Madeleine, speaks from beside him, his hand tight on his shoulder. He speaks with worry, but he asks no questions. No ‘What happened?’ or ‘Was it a bad dream?’, or even such a feeble question as ‘Are you okay?’. “It’s going to be okay. Tell me what you need.”

Recompose. Upon leaving the tavern in the evening, they had decided to camp out near the forest route they agreed upon, more particularly due to a lack of coin for investment. They arranged a pair of cots and tossed together sticks and rocks in abundance to power a fireplace in order to keep warm. Espresso said he would keep watch for the night, assuring that the fire would remain ripe and nothing would come to harm them, and he went and waded off to sleep anyway.

“We’re safe. Try not to overthink,” Madeleine’s voice is impossibly soft, low with a fondness Espresso didn’t dare dwell on. He trails an arm down the other’s back, tracing circles along his rightmost shoulder. Espresso doesn’t stop him. “I kept watch while you rested.”

The thump of Espresso’s heartbeat begins to slow, his breaths dropped to a steady, careful pace. Crickets sound in the far distance as he settles, moonlight spilling onto the stream they descend from, bubbling with the presence of koi fish and other curious water creatures awake in the slowly receding night. Too high off of his terror, Espresso surrenders and sinks into the touch, too tired still to sit up and wait for sunrise but too awake to allow sleep to reclaim him and abuse him like that again. The worst off his plate, he simply nestles in and sighs.

“There is something I meant to tell you earlier, before we parted,” he says, slitting his eyes painfully. Madeleine tips his head with curiosity. “You… you said you were worried, that you could not protect me like you’re expected to. Like you are with anyone else.”

Madeleine doesn’t respond, but his expression speaks more words than he would be able to. “Well, I do not want you to protect me.” he continues, hesitant but firm. “In the face of danger, I want you to fight not for Earthbread, not for Hollyberry, not for me, but for yourself. Got it?”

Madeleine’s eyes widen, like he never would have anticipated those words in a thousand lightyears. When was the last time you weren’t so selfless? “Ah.” 

“Swear to it.”

“Huh?”

Espresso heaves upward, finally meeting Madeleine’s eyes in full. Once again, they’re thick in the unreadable sort of way that makes Espresso uneasy. “I’m telling you to promise not to be reckless. That you won't do something foolish that gets you killed, especially not for anyone else’s sake. Got it?”

It comes off like a threat, but in Espresso’s case, the clouds of concern are always clear. Right then, in such a moment of vulnerability, there is no way for the other man to say no. 

“Alright,” Madeleine laughs, looking up to the starlit black sky overhead. “I promise.”

Chapter Text

The fields. The fields beyond the horizon were coated in yellow, chrysanthemums sending flakes of petals through the afternoon air and decorating the pine ahead like ornaments. Such a pretty, pretty sight for a venture so foreboding.

It makes Espresso sick to his stomach.

After a week’s worth of impulsive spending, waltzing and fleeing from their doom, they’d finally arrived at the ‘x marks the spot’. But unfortunately they remained at a standstill. Could the invisible map bestowed upon them have been a fake all along? What if it was a trap? These fields were much too pretty to be colored in bloodshed.

“We’ve followed the trail marked here, down the riverside…” Madeleine speaks at his side. Some time ago, Espresso would have taken Madeleine’s noble silence for confidence or certainty; to stand so tall as they walked straight into what felt like a mouse trap. A mere hour had passed by of nothing but hums and low mumbles to himself as they traversed the terrain, his head held high, but each moment of quiet brought Espresso to the simple conclusion that what he once thought could not be held true. The man who stood at his side, once so headstrong, was without a doubt completely fraught. “This should be our location, is it not?”

He wasn’t any better.

Sure enough, the fields burnished in aerate radiance cast by the spinning glow in the sky, stopped just at the head of a forest– the hilt of a sword drawn from the grip of comfortable rubber to a rain-guard for a wall, toppled to meet the blade. The evergreens stand impossibly tall, though oddly they refuse to converge, patching the sky from the unbearable sun. After all, the coffee mage hated all things built on light.

“This is it,” Espresso replies solemnly, grazing the open grasses with his eyes. “But as expected, there is nothing in sight. What now?”

Madeleine simply frowns. “There must be something we’re missing.”

He walks slowly and considerately down the red line, the back of his glove pressed against his forehead, bidding good riddance to sweat he could no longer prevent. The pointed trees sway in the distance, beckoning them to turn back, to forget their mission entirely and return to the confined gates of their home. But Madeleine pays no mind, crouching against the undergrowth and grazing the soil with his fingers, slick along each crumb of dirt. Interest piqued, he scales across a patch of mud, supposedly, and raises it to his nostrils. His face goes stone.

Espresso recoils. “Should I even ask what you’re doing?”

“It’s solid,” is all Madeleine says in response, pushing up from the grassy floors and rounding the clearing. “I… I daresay this entire field is faulty. A veil of illusionary magic.”

“What?”

Madeleine trudges off, unimaginably focused for his usual demeanor. No word from Madeleine’s assessment, Espresso takes the analysis into his own hands. He’s fairly familiar with the art of illusionary magic, but only in practice on small creatures and humans for tactical infiltration. That said, he was admittedly unfamiliar with the practice on entire meadows of land, especially to conceal what could possibly be a pathway to the heart of their journey. How exactly could Madeleine so easily recognize such an art…? He doesn’t dare to ask this time. There were many unusual things Espresso had to learn in his own troubled childhood, after all.

As Espresso searches the field himself, he suddenly stumbles over some sharp object struck out of the ground, sending him doubling over with only a tree branch to latch onto and break his fall. Madeleine preoccupied with his own unexplained foraging, Espresso peers over where he tripped to identify what ed to be some questionably placed block of metal, bent unnaturally in a hoop shape. He reaches out to pull at it, causing a block of land coated with leaves to shake, clanging as if it were some kind of locked trapdoor. 

“Madeleine,” he calls out, sending Madeleine in the distance to look around frantically. “In the forest, you miserable dunce. I found something.”

Determined not to be a miserable dunce, he strolls over to the forest’s possible entrance and spots Espresso from the bushes. He climbs over and bends down on one knee to inspect it. “A latch?”

“I would assume so, but it’s fused with the land and I can’t open it.”

Madeleine gives it his own shot, tugging violently at the rusted metal with his spare hand with all his might. To no avail, he shakes his hand around to brush off any semblance of pain. If Madeleine couldn’t lift it, gods above, who could?

“Brush off the rest of this dirt,” Madeleine says decidedly, pushing away his own miniscule piles of it as he does so. Espresso sighs with exhaustion before joining in, conjoined efforts clearing the slate to uncover something expected and slightly unexpected at the same time. “A steel door…” Madeleine whispers, tugging at the flippable latch below his fingertips. “…but as suspected, there’s a lock.”

Espresso scrapes down the knees of his trousers, stained faintly by a dusty warm gray. “Unfortunate. So what now?”

“Not to worry,” Madeleine smirks. “In our youth, Raspberry taught me how to pick locks. Have any hairpins or paperclips?”

Espresso rummages through what remains of his satchel and throws out a silver clip, which Madeleine catches in kind. To that he unwinds the stiff steel wire until it makes a point, marginally curled at the end which Espresso assumes is to form a sort of wrench. He inserts the curl through the keyhole, applying a torque as he rakes the inside like there’s no tomorrow. Then, in the blink of an eye, the latch snaps and sends the entire keyplate falling down and down into the pit of darkness below. Madeleine blinks.

“That’s not quite how I meant that to happen,” he musters, eyes wide, “but it worked?”

Espresso lifts up the trapdoor by the open latch and pulls it open, revealing nothing but the pitch-black tinted rock below. Madeleine instantly rushes for their torch, which he lights using their slowly dying patch of lit firewood. He then hovers it over the open patch in the ground, illuminating the cracks of leaves above casting shade onto the stone. He casts his hand out.

“Any small objects we can drop down?”

“You brought all of that luggage with you only to lose it and end up asking me for everything,” Espresso scoffs, scoping his back yet again and handing out a laboratory notebook. “Be careful with this. If I get it back I want it in mint condition at worst .”

“As you wish…”

He takes the book in hand and drops it, sending it plunging into the darkness. And they wait.

It takes around 3 seconds for the book to hit the ground, echoing from the impact.

“Seems safe enough?” Madeleine says with uncertainty, staring a little awkwardly into the void. He steps forward determinedly  to make the first leap before Espresso restrains him, pressing a palm into the glistening armor of his chest. “Hm?”

“I will go first,” he declares, swallowing the lump in his throat as he approaches the opening. It’s never been much of a problem taking risks this way, but suddenly Espresso’s vision begins to grow dizzy from the view. “Once I’ve assured that it’s safe, you drop down after me with the luggage. Understood?”

“But I–”

“You have brought us this far,” Espresso says, halting his protests once and for all. “If you truly think me capable, let me do this one thing.”

Madeleine is anxious, and Espresso wishes he could ease the tension he so often wrought this way, but Madeleine steps back anyway and nods. Trust. Moons upon moons of being at odds with one another (unless perhaps it was a one-sided rivalry) to finally form a strong mutual trust. All that time ago, Espresso thought he’d never see the day.

Shedding off his bearings, he drops his foremost leg over the gaping hole of unbeknownst mystery and, with one final look to Madeleine who gazes with anticipation, he swings his whole body over and allows himself to fall.

Espresso has always been a man of close calculation. In alchemy, his work required precise measurements, just the right dosage in every brew to exact the experiments, each and every number recorded meticulously through press-on notes and graphs that seemed to go on forever. But when his being drops, he can’t bring himself to calculate precisely how long it takes for him to hit the ground. The wind, swaying the fabric of his silken cape and sending chills down his exposed skin, serves as his muse; and it’s a foolish expectation for something so inanimate, but his travels thus far have taught him to believe otherwise. 

And just like that he hits the ground, tumbling into dust and smooth, mossy rocks below. He staggers as he props himself up. An unpleasant but savory surface to break his fall. 

“Espresso? Are you safe? I heard a grunt!” Madeleine shouts worriedly through the window in the sky. 

“Yes, I’m completely safe,” he sighs, brushing off the remnants of the surface on his trousers. “Toss down our things before jumping yourself. Be careful with the torch.”

Madeleine's silhouette nods, understanding, and obediently drops down the baggage one by one. It’s dark, but Espresso can sense the area surrounding him is wide and almost hollow. He trails his fingers along the nearest wall, a fair distance away from the patch of light spilling onto the gravel, and feels the crags of rigid rock pointed out from their roots like obelisks. How long has it been, he wonders, since another human set foot in this cave?

“Alright, I’m hopping down!” Madeleine calls again, releasing a boom for a warning cry and plunging down into the blackness– 

“Wait–”

–and straight down into where Espresso was standing.

The larger man slams against his chest and sends them both collapsing against the rough slate of the grounds below. Espresso cranes his neck, having nearly gotten whiplash from the panic of the sudden collision, groaning with equal parts irritation and exhaustion. He has to push back against his shoulders to not swallow a mouthful of soft, cream-white curls.

“…You dolt.”

“Well, what do you know!” Madeleine says, more exclamatory than interrogative. The freshly lit bark illuminates the cave, dousing the rocky walls in gilded copper. “Do you suppose this could be the pathway marked on the map, Espresso?”

“Your knee is pressed to my—“

“How peculiarly hidden! And here I was thinking we were headed down the rabbit hole from those fairytales, ha.”

“Would you mind getting off of me, now?”

“Ah,” Madeleine finally comes to his senses and pulls up, pressing up on his knees. He brushes something nonexistent from his peach-toned cheeks. “My apologies.”

Espresso stumbles to his own feet, assessing the road ahead in its new light. Although if he’s honest, the environment is no different from a cave eroded by nature’s dissolution of limestone after a rainstorm. Either their former explorers had no taste for self-preservation or they were headed down the completely wrong route of passage. Even so, it was no joke just how hollow the environment was from how much area the space occupied— could such a place truly have been torrentially formed when a massive trail of this caliber may as well have been bulldozed? 

“Well,” he sighs at last, gesturing his hand for the other to follow. “We have no time to waste. Gather the rest of our things and let’s go.”

For even more countless moments, Espresso and Madeleine spend their time in silence, observing the mystifying road ahead as it grows brighter and brighter to visualize. They tread in a straight line, no turns or particular dangers to encounter; which should be a good thing, but it makes Espresso uneasy. Since when had he become so unaccustomed to silence? Back at the kingdom, he spent nights on end wallowing in nothingness, cramped up in his laboratory buried in crumpled paper and half-eaten castella. Nothing was more orthodox to the man than that.

“Es,” Madeleine spoke suddenly from beside him. He considers scolding him for the nickname before he realizes he sounds just as precarious as himself. “What do you plan to do when we get out of here?“

What? “Why do you ask?”

“No reason. Does it hurt to break the ice?”

Espresso can’t bring himself to believe the words, but he shrugs anyway. “I’ll return to my experiments. I’ve had much to catch up on prior to our expedition.”

Madeleine hums. “As expected from the great pioneer of coffee magic. Ever the hard worker.”

“I’m just doing my job,” Espresso asserts, his arms crossed against his chest. “Besides, I’ve hardly the time as it is to take breaks like this. Once we’ve established peace across Earthbread, I wouldn’t dare return to anything else.”

To this Madeleine winces and furrows his brow, the only readable shift of expression detectable. It’s one he has made more and more often. “You know, the castle is welcoming. There is plenty of space for your presence if you require… company.”

“Company?” he huffs out a breath at the proposition, though he isn’t sure why. “My apprentice Alchemist visits for research purposes and the officials seek me out for experimentation updates. I have plenty of company.”

“Not for work-related reasons. Just to see you,” Madeleine replies, surprise stilling Espresso into silence. “Is it hard to believe one might enjoy your amity?”

It’s somewhat of a teasing jab, but it’s just like Espresso to be so incredulous, he admits. Even as a student he wasn’t the type to make friends or be invited outside of the house– and if he was, naturally he declined to pursue his studies. This habit to overindulge and isolate himself only reflected into adulthood. He wonders, if he exerted himself more back then, would things be different now? Would his accomplishments have been made now?

“The kingdom folk and the officials trust you immensely. If they hadn’t, they wouldn’t leave all these responsibilities and projects in your capable hands,” Madeleine continues, seeming to have picked up on his insecure train of thought. Shame on himself for being so easily readable. Or was it just Madeleine who was so well-versed with understanding others? “But that doesn’t mean that’s all you’re good for. Far from it. You…” A tint of blush softens across his features. “If anyone took the chance, to get to know you like this, they would see what a captivating person you are.”

Espresso stares. “Captivating?”

“We have made a lot of progress in this week alone. More than I could selfishly hope for,” he says, his progression slow, weighing what he says carefully in his mind before speaking. It doesn’t elaborate on his word choice as much as Espresso had hoped. “When this is over, and we return home, I… don’t want that to change.”

It is then Espresso is attentive to his surroundings; the  archways of aggregation overhead, the sound of liquid mud reverberating against the rocky floors, the echo of their footsteps across the tunnel. They could be marching to their deaths and neither of them would know until it’s too late. And there Madeleine was, flattering him in hopes of a bond in the near future. A future he knew they both were fretting they would not face. I wish I could study your mind, the same way I study the world;  his forlorn thoughts of mourning. Academics come so terribly facile to me. Why aren’t you the same? “I don’t deserve your kindness.”

“Of course you do.”

“I have been nothing but heedlessly cruel to you,” he insists. “If not for your efforts, you would not have seen such a side to me.”

“That was my choice to make.”

“The people adore you. You’re their knight. And the royals have invited you amongst their ranks without a second thought,” he says. All of your abandonment is self-inflicted. “You could dedicate yourself to so many things more worth your time.”

“Espresso, I am perfectly capable of deciding what is worth my time,” Madeleine is more firm than before. “The very same way I decided to accept this mission. I serve the castle first and foremost, but I would be lying if I did not also agree to this for the chance to work with you. To prove myself to you.”

Espresso stops in his tracks. 

“Prove yourself… to me?”

Madeleine seems progressively more flustered having to face his own words. “More or less.”

And Espresso laughs.

It isn’t a conceited laugh, one he would make in the face of some underlying mage’s foolishness or a foe’s simple miscalculation. He completely laughs, uncontrolled, keeling over to face the floor below and almost dizzy with his revelation. Because in some strange, inconceivable way, that was all he needed to hear. Because that is what Espresso himself had been trying to do this whole time. Because the two of them were more alike, pitted against the worst of their flaws and the sameness of their inherent natures than he would ever have liked to admit.

Madeleine, in turn, is eminently confused. “You– is this laughter of mockery?” 

“Aha… your words put my mind at ease, that’s all.”

“That doesn’t quite sate my bewilderment,” he shakes his head, smiling all the same. “But as long as you’re happy.”

All of a sudden, a low rumble sounds throughout the cave, the hollowness causing a boom to echo and ring through his ears. Madeleine stumbles, imminently off guard, but he catches himself just in time. There’s no knocking the concern he flashes now, but this time it’s different from before. He has never faced a battle with so much uncertainty in all the time Espresso has known him.

“Do you think that’s—?”

Espresso nods. “Let’s hope so. But, ah, first,” he hesitates for a moment, but it’s briefer than it may have been before. There is no need for shame. “I have something for you. You can accept or decline.”

Madeleine perks up as Espresso twists to his satchel, fumbling around until a lightweight bag appears. Slowly, he places it into Madeleine’s waiting hands. In turn he looks up, visible acquiescence in seeking consent. With a gesture, he begins to unwrap the fragile contents, sandpaper and cushioning falling apart at the seams.

Within lies the headpiece he saw at the market, shimmering gold even amidst the darker shades of the underground and glistening at its centerpiece sapphire. It’s not quite the spitting image of his previous, but it was too reminiscent for him to pass by. Madeleine’s eyes match, but he isn’t certain that’s the reason they are sparkling.

“I understand your prior headpiece held a history and sentimentality this one could not,” Espresso says at last, Madeleine’s agape expression having grown uncomfortable. “But only thanks to the resemblance was I driven to purchase this. I understand if you do not want it and deny—“

“Es,” Madeleine interrupts, looking forward and straight into his eyes. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”

Espresso’s heart thumps so loudly in his chest he wishes he was deaf to it. 

As Madeleine slips it up through his bangs and they progress even further, the booming sounds grow even more blustering as they happen, to which it becomes more apparent they’re from the wake of the beast. This is no coincidence, Espresso figures. Most larger creatures in Earthbread can sense your presence from afar, whether you approach or it confronts you itself. Although this beast overpowered the space so violently he almost worried the entire cave would come crashing down upon them.

At last they reached an impasse, the exit arching into an opening shrouded in some olden shrubbery. From the gaps between the leaves, a huff of smoke suffuses the air. When Espresso turns back to Madeleine, his ambience has vastly changed. Wrinkles form beneath his eyes when he shuts them, visibly reluctant as he opens his mouth to speak. “We should hurry.”

Espresso feels like he should say something more. Something reassuring or encouraging to ease the tension. But something tells him nothing he could possibly say would change their circumstances… no matter how deeply Madeleine looks at him from a distance, no matter how reliant they may have felt on each other for guidance, for validation. This was their curtain call— and they had a final act to perform. 

Peering through the bushes, the space inside was surprisingly luminescent, walls coated in specks of gold and effervescent dust. Thankfully, the ground was also disordered with eroded rocks from the impact, the closest being a worthwhile hiding place as they crawl their way in.

It’s when Espresso peers over the cragged surface that he sees it; a beastly creature roughly akin to an abyssal dragon, only twice the size. Its frost-white body manifests dark within the shadows of the cave’s surface, overbearingly monstrous wings meeting its back downward for a veritably hollow black intensity. Beyond this, from the sharp polish of its claws to its backward-sloped horns and scales, the dragon is an exceptionally deep violet.

Mystic aura aside, the very garment they’re looking for is impossible to miss. Right there, caged upon the beast’s chest, ‘submerged with crystal’ shone the most vibrantly pearlescent gem Espresso had ever laid his eyes on. It was alluring, in a way, the way men at sea are drawn in blindly by a siren’s song and decimated for their foolishness. At the very least, there were no fools in their midst.

He hoped.

“I suppose this is it,” Madeleine says, drawing his sword and shield with a focused expression. “We can’t dwell for long, after all. Lest it strikes first.”

There is no courageous smile. No affirmative eye contact. No reassurance that he will be protected, nor that he will protect himself. The knight trains his focus anywhere but to his partner. It was nothing like the way he behaved before, however sullen it came across.

“Don’t forget what we discussed,” says Espresso at last.

“Our attack formation, yes, I know,” Madeleine says boastfully, to one’s relief, though no less avoidant. “I’ll listen this time.”

“Not that,” Espresso says abruptly, which finally catches Madeleine’s attention. He seems wrought with both the nerves of their situation and his concern for what Espresso will say next. “You haven’t forgotten your promise, have you?”

It takes him a second to process. “Ah! No, I…” the dragon roars again, shaking dust and pebbles from every corner. “I haven’t forgotten, and I won’t. I swore to it. Now, what kind of Divine knight would I be if I allowed such a monumental battle to take me down, especially for the coffee mage to see?” He extends his hand, pulling the two up from where they’re crouched as the dragon’s back is turned from their direction. “We’re more prepared now than ever. Let’s give this our all!”

Espresso turns to the beast, extending his unrestrained palms as they glow. “After you.”

For the prospect of battle, Madeleine’s eyes finally shine again. His grip on his sword tightens as he charges in, the rush of air propelling the blade from his side. Despite its large size, the dragon is visibly not very swift, as its head turns stagnantly when the other man comes close enough to sense. Flaxen shield drawn secondhand, he leaps straight into the air, slashing the weapon across its wing, raised by the dragon to protect itself. It staggers back as Madeleine lands and Espresso slides in from the corner, gusts of wind whirling the beast inward by coffee-bean flame. Madeleine takes this opportunity to slash again across its neck midair, rebounding from his sabaton-boots when it cries out. When it collapses, both of them have to dodge from the impact.

“Hah, it’s not even fighting back,” Madeleine musters, grunting as he recomposes himself. “But its size alone is enough to reduce the impact of our blows.”

“Let’s not make any close calls.”

As the dragon sways into place, Espresso makes note of the artifact’s condition. While its protective shield is almost glasslike, not even a crash into barren ground was enough to shatter it. But in turn, the dragon waves a pointed wing over its chest area where it’s imprinted, keen on protecting it regardless of their intentions. Would that be necessary if it weren’t possible for them to seize it?

”If this beast has a conscience… it must also have values, like the creature in the forest we encountered,” Espresso says, as if putting pieces together in his mind. “It must be protecting the gem for a reason.”

“Is the gem not what we must acquire coming here in the first place?” Madeleine replies quizzically. “Adventurer was drawn to it here, and the map was marked for this location. Hollyberry told us herself.”

“Yes, but why does the dragon protect it? Moreover, why is such an important object sealed within this dragon in the first place?” Madeleine is silent. “It’s almost like protecting it is its job. It’s despondent to battle because using its power to attack would lower its defenses.”

Espresso looks to Madeleine for some sign or agreement, or thoughts to build upon his own. Nothing. “Forget it.” The dragon begins to tread closer once more, its claws unsheathed and on the ready. “Here’s what we need to do,”

But before he can continue, Madeleine is already across his vision, a blur of light pouncing over the dragon and across its protective wing, another slash across its uppermost front leg and through the tattered edge of its mainsail. It’s a direct cut. One sharp and deliberate enough to leave a doused scar. 

The beast does not bleed. 

Instead it only crouches, pushing itself into the air and waving powerful winds across the open area, this time crashing them just close enough into the wall not to collide further to their untimely deaths. Espresso watches as it tumbles back into position, again, a formidable instinct. “Doesn’t attack, doesn’t bleed, movements are calculated…”

“This lab rat can only experiment, agh, so long before he collapses, you know.”

“This beast isn’t a beast at all,” Espresso exhales. “It’s a creation. This is no dragon, it’s only built to look like one.” He turns to the other man, almost crazed. “Someone created this thing solely to protect the artifact.” 

“Espresso—“

“But its abilities match up with the gem’s power, like it’s powered by it. Not only was it created to protect it from other forces, but to utilize it against us.”

“Espresso,” Madeleine nearly shouts, exasperated. “While I, ngh, don’t fully understand… I believe I have a plan.” 

Espresso refocuses, stunned into realization. There he went again, isolating from the world around him to pace his own mind instead, dissecting everything internally rather than paying any mind to the world, or people, around him. Madeleine was injured, already worse for wear from overexerting himself in combat, but he also appeared hopeful. Propitious, even, for the first time since yesterday at the bar when he shared his doubts, or that morning every time he averted his eyes or gave in to trepidation. At his very worst, he looked ever so much like himself again.

And for some reason, that sick feeling escalated from within again.

“But you have to trust me.”

Intent not to extend those concerns, he only scoffs. Madeleine himself had been distant prior to his proposal. “That depends entirely on what your plan is.”

“If I told you the whole plan, you would say something like, ‘Preposterous! Is there Bear Jelly in that skull of yours instead of a brain?’” 

“Then perhaps your plan is just absurd.”

“If what you’ve concluded thus far is correct, I’m certain this plan will work,” he insists, looking on to the dragon-machine wistfully as it bends to its stationary flooring. “I understand in a situation like this it may be unfavorable to do as I ask so blindly, as difficult as it’s been simply to tolerate one another, but… I believe in my own capabilities. The Divine entrusted my position to me for a reason, and I wouldn’t pursue anything if it meant letting them down. Or letting you down.

“I may be reckless, impulsive, egotistical. But I have things I believe in, and I believe in this.”

Espresso sighs. It serves an unfortunate nothing to what remains of his own. “Alright,” he says. “I am not keen on following orders without context, but I… trust you. I suppose. Tell me what to do and I will make sure it is done.”

Madeleine acknowledges his agreement with a gentle smile as he turns. His vanilla-blond hair sways graciously as the breeze cuts through the gaps of the cavernous walls within, his cape fluttering underneath, his gloved hand propped at his side with his shield cast needlessly to the ground. He was the picture of something Espresso couldn’t place. “I want you to use your whirlwind to hold the dragon in place. It needs to be as restrained as possible so I can access its chest. I do not believe it’s possible to strike it open directly, but I do believe it’s possible to obstruct it from within.”

“And may I ask how you are going to do that?”

He looks dazedly to the gem, in all its unavoidable light. “I sense something all too familiar, regarding what we seek here. It would be traitorous of me to ignore my instincts, for the sake of my faith.” his smile remains unwavering. It is, painfully, far greater than any shining stone they could ever inquire for. “For the sake of those who blessed me.”

Espresso’s heart drops. Since the day of his abandonment, he had not been tied to anything; not to family, not to faith, not even to his own passion. Madeleine was effortlessly tied to all three.

All of his pieces were in order. It was all of the things he hated so much that he loved about him.

A faith that was not his own was his only hope now.

“Tell me when,” he says, “I will wait for you.”

Madeleine begins to walk onward towards the light. “May the Divine protect you.” Espresso could swear he heard something spoken under his breath after that, but the moment passes too quickly for him to digest it. 

The beam of the machine’s core does not overshadow him when he approaches. It traces around the edges of his silhouette, casting shadows to the ground beneath him, but Madeleine could never be dimmed in the face of what he is so familiar with. They almost seem to merge with each other, a synthesizing force unable to be satiated, phosphorescent. It did not diminish even as Espresso slipped from behind him and across the vastness while it remained distracted. The absence of open light or air from his position made the stance feel more vacant than ever before. His eyes are drawn to the scene like a moth to candle flame.

Once his stance is secure, he looks over to Madeleine. Permission. He is at his will, and he doesn’t feel any weaker for it.

With a brisk exchange of understanding, Espresso raises his hand above him, allowing the absorbent blaze to swirl and grow from its source. He breathes, as if to summon all of his strength in kind, and powers the wind straight to the machine’s heart. 

It slams against the walls, thoroughly shaking the subterrane like never before. It feels as though sparks are flying from every corner as Espresso braces himself from the collision, propping his elbow over the crook of his nose. A mere few seconds pass before Espresso realizes the shaking and tumbling of their foundation beneath the field would not cease. 

Madeleine trudges forward, the aftermath of their travels thus far visible through scars across his torn and ruptured back, scratches down his jaw, the way his hair has grown disheveled and mangled with soot. Espresso cannot tell if he’s trembling or if it’s only the tremors from the earthquake around them. 

Their opponent oscillates back and forth like clockwork, mercifully unaware if there was an awareness to begin with. The closer Madeleine advances, the more the structure glows, pulling him in with some unimaginable friction. The distance closes quicker, and quicker, the same pace as everything around them, and Espresso doesn’t know how long he can keep this up, surging the machine into place, because—

And just like that, he stops.

Madeleine swings his weapon over his shoulders, his shield cast at his side. “I was never really the sort to cross swords with my own kind,” he says, looking more like a warrior from the murals than Espresso could have ever imagined. “But I suppose I’ve done it before.” 

And when he soars straight into the light, time stops with him.

Everything transpires in a single force. The explosion. His scream. The mass of sunlight shed across the scene, no longer a crack or two in the ceiling to peer within. Everything, all at once. 

He doesn’t know how much time in itself passes before he crawls from the depths, pushing a boulder off from his leg and embracing the world around him; how traitorous it was. It takes a moment, or several, simply to come to his senses and grasp what had just occurred in the first place. A sense of déjà vu washes over him.

“Madeleine?” The smoke burned so heavily in their air that it may as well have been an inescapable fog. “Madeleine? If… if you can hear me, send me a sign.” A pause. “Anything.”

Just then, he spots a blur of shining gold and royal blue from the corner of his eye, sprawled within a burrow in the disrupted ground. Figures his glasses would break. “Madeleine!”

He rushes over, relieved that he hadn’t been reduced to ashes and embers by the explosion at least, but aside from that he isn’t yet sure what to think… until he sees the particles shedding away from his person. 

He kneels down as quickly as possible, a familiar feeling, laying Madeleine’s head gently onto his upper legs and swiping the filth from his shoulder pads. His heartbeat is completely still, unmoving. He was a haze of translucent intensity. 

“No, no, this— this doesn’t make sense. What is this? Madeleine, what didn’t you tell me?” Espresso shakes him, given up on being gentle. “Come on now. Wake up. You have to wake up. You have to explain this to me. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. You promised me it wouldn’t.” Not a single thump. Espresso was never so obsessed with a person’s heartbeat until his own was racing, until a completely lifeless one was beneath his palm. “You— you promised, you… Madeleine, you promised.” 

He was fading away. How? Why? 

As the clearing opens up for them, the smoke resurfaces, and that treacherous beacon of light shuns itself upon him, as unwelcome as ever. But it isn’t quite as treacherous as usual. Pressing his free hand to his forehead, the other remaining close to Madeleine’s heart, he gazes up to the open sky. 

The sun parts.

Chapter Text

Years ago

“Isn’t that Madeleine dashing?” 

It wasn’t common for Raspberry to agree with the noblewomen of the citadel, and this was no exception. In fact, if Raspberry heard those words from another swooning maiden on guard duty one more time, she might just hand over her position and show them how wrong they were. From firsthand experience.

Normally the comments on Madeleine’s métiers wouldn’t bother Raspberry so much. She was used to it; isn’t Madeleine handsome, and oh, he’s so strong, and with him as commander, there is no doubt our kingdoms will prevail! She heard it everywhere she went, whether it be within Hollyberry territory or Pure Vanilla territory, from women, men, the few and far between alike. Honestly, for as often as he received the senseless flattery, his self-importance and narcissism were no surprise.

But it was particularly irritating today. Why? Because she, whom it seemed was the only person on all of Earthbread who wanted nothing to do with him, was proposed to marry him. 

As the prized representative of House Raspberry, Raspberry herself swiftly fenced her way into a placement of humble nobility among House Berry’s highest parliament. Day by day, she brings the utmost honor and pride to their name and strengthens the ties of the Hollyberry Kingdom unlike any other; and yet, from the day she competed to inscribe with their ranks, the outlander Madeleine had been there.

Madeleine had set foot on their grounds, no promise of victory, not a coin to his name, unruly and unkempt beyond repair and earned himself the title of Commander like it was nothing. He had entered their cathedral, already blessed with such a prestigious role, and kneeled down for his Oathtaking to receive a sword and shield of celestial light unmatched, like it was nothing. He had trimmed his hair, plated his chest with blinding armor unavoidable in any room and made himself one of the most influential paladins of their order, like it was nothing. The citizens crowded around him on the streets, and their one question to him every time was, “How did you do it?”, and he said, “It was nothing.”

She hardly felt like his equal. To the proposition of matrimony she made herself ridiculous, sure, but she was even further in his shadow at his side than as an heiress, the only chance she had left to surpass him being that scarlet-crested seat at the table. If they wanted an official treaty between the two joining kingdoms, fine, but she would sooner be laid before her gravestone than do so by marrying the man.

Raspberry had to prove herself somehow. She had to show them she was better than this.

“Raspberry, wait up—“

“—You!” she twists around in her tracks to the man of the hour himself, all fancy clothes unfit for a knight and ridiculously flowing hair. “Spar with me!”

“Eh?”

“You heard me. I want to see if your swordwork is as powerful as your audacity. Not up for a challenge?”

Madeleine looks visibly bewildered by this, able to assess Raspberry’s irritation yet unable to grasp why exactly it is, even less why she would request another sparring match as a result. They sparred rather frequently, whether it be to burn off steam from the demands of royal life or to effectively practice techniques issued by the elder professionals of their order. But Raspberry was never the first to command a match on her own.

“Don’t just stand there and gawk. Come.”

So he follows.

- - ┈┈∘┈˃̶༒˂̶┈∘┈┈ - -

The Hollyberry Kingdom was undoubtedly picturesque of scarlet, and the training grounds of the citadel were no exception. Only that it wasn’t always for the reasons Raspberry had hoped.

The freshly trimmed grass of the fields were annulated with silvery iron fences garmented with neatly hung garlands, a simple wall to withhold the ferocity of combat within from the berry bushes outside. The grounds were only accessible from the citadel’s training quarters, an extensive hallway with blades and armor of many kinds hung from the opposing walls. The sharpest of blades were reserved for showdowns; legal countermeasures taken to resolve moral disputes, the loser’s end of the bargain being to accept the defeat of willpower. Instead, Raspberry and Madeleine were permitted only the trainee blades, those not salient enough to draw blood. Raspberry herself opted for a rapier, a longsword with a small point and a fashionable cross-guard that touched the pommel. It was underwhelming and easy to wield, sure to knock Madeleine down swiftly. 

Madeleine selected a longsword as well, only it was bulkier and more fitted for his physique and initial training, considering his weapon of choice was the Sword of Radiant Light. That’s what Raspberry liked about sparring with him— the Divine couldn’t help him out here. It was just the two of them, a couple of rusty blades and an open field untainted. They were equally matched.

Once they swore the oath of a fair and equal duel, their swords crossed and they began. Their styles for combat were different in every which way, and that was precisely what made their dynamic so exhilarating. Raspberry was precise, elegant and calculated, her footwork quick and instantaneous. She noticed weak points easily and used it to her immediate advantage: an opening at the waist here, an opportunity to match his attack there. Having been raised on the art of fencing, the dance of swords was like a second language to her. 

Contrarily, Madeleine had the forward and domineering style of a common ancestor, only it wasn’t quite as brash or impulsive as it appeared. He merely seized opportunities as he saw fit because he was never without a reinforcing plan, and each time Raspberry struck at his weak points he would retaliate in kind. It was plain to see, really; his swordsmanship was no different than that of his father, the sort he practiced with dirt on his face and the wooden forgery of forest bark. It was clear the day he stumbled into the kingdom and battled through the tryouts like his life depended on it, and it was clear even now. 

It’s when Raspberry blocks a particularly jutting strike and sends him stumbling back that the focus is broken. “Ras,” he pants, his face flush with exhaustion, “Is this… really necessary?”

Raspberry uses this as leverage to rush forward and knock him to the ground, but Madeleine blocks with the fuller of his sword just in time and regains composure. She scowls. “Don’t call me Ras.”

“Sorry,” he says, grunting again as they scuffle. “Just… can’t we talk instead of… doing this?” 

“We can talk if you defeat me,” she says simply, skillfully matching his every move. “I have a score to settle with you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Less talking, more sparring!”

They continued their combat as it was, only with more intensity, which was clearly draining their energy as time went on. Raspberry grows agitated, her blows increasingly fierce. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t—

And there it went. Madeleine’s longsword powered her own to the side swept below her calf, knocking her to the grass with her rapier thrown to the side. Madeleine lowers the hilt to her chin. It’s deathly quiet for a while, the two stopping to catch their breaths, their open skin slick with sweat. Raspberry pinches the bridge of her nose and shuts her eyes. It was too sunny for this.

Madeleine clears his throat to speak. “I win.”

“I noticed.” 

“Can we talk now?”

“Perhaps if you remove your sword from my mandible first.”

Madeleine flushes, this time out of embarrassment, drawing the sword away hastily. “Right.”

Raspberry pushed up onto her feet, dusting the dirt and fuzz from her trousers, which were now off-white from their roughhousing. She spins on her heel, swiping her sword from the ground and sheathing it into its protective guard, making way for the training hallway again. Madeleine follows behind almost sheepishly.

Once they’ve both returned their weaponry to their respective hooks, Madeleine speaks. “I’m sorry.”

“What, for beating me? It’s not as if I’d prefer you let me win.”

“No, not that,” he stammers, averting his eyes. “You’re upset with me for something. I’m not sure what, but I’m assuming it’s my fault.”

Raspberry stifles a laugh. “Wow, the prized Madeleine taking accountability. I never thought I’d see the day.”

He doesn’t reply, settling on a bench nearby and hunching over himself. Raspberry isn’t sure why, but she feels almost… guilty. Was this fair?

“It’s just,” Raspberry breathes, feeling the last of her remaining suppression dissipate. “So irritating! Why you? Why me? What have I done to deserve this? I don’t want to be wed, I want to be a paladin! Of course you as a man and the ‘one and only Madeleine’ would be relieved of any marital duties, but me? I would be trapped in that haughty sort of lifestyle forever! Not to mention I…”

As Raspberry rambled and paced the room, flailing her arms about, Madeleine watched intently as if he expected this to come. And when she trailed off and paused to look at him again, he simply tilted his head, an invitation to continue. 

“…I don’t want to marry a man.”

To this revelation, Madeleine smiles. “A man.” The words are so quiet they nearly fall on deaf ears.

“Ugh, of course,” she crumbles, dropping to the floor and burying her face into her knees. “Madeleine, if there was anything for me to hold against you, it wouldn’t be that.”

“I know,” he tilts his head to get a better view of what remains conceivable by the light. “You have supported me like no one else. My only wish is to support you the same way.”

“I know. That’s what… that’s what makes this so hard.” Raspberry repositions her torso, scooting across the tile slightly to lean against a utility cabinet. Why was finding the words for her emotions so hard? Alongside all kindred etiquette, Raspberry was instructed fervently on her rhetoric and how to establish a respectable character. She was to remain polite and decent, with a strong head on her shoulders and pride for House Raspberry that would be carried on for generations. But this came with the sacrifice of her self-expression. 

She was not allowed the verbosity and passion she craved. She was not allowed to extend her true thoughts on political matters. She was not allowed to explore suitors and choose her own legacy. Raspberry wanted nothing more than to make her ancestors proud, but waging war against the many beats of her heart was dangerous. 

If she wasn’t careful, one day she would lose her composure.

“I shouldn’t have said those things to you. I apologize,” is what Raspberry settles on, refusing to meet his eyes. She can hear him shuffle down the bench beside her. 

“I understand. It was surprising for me to hear as well.”

“Just surprising?”

“And scary,” Madeleine exhales a breath that materializes in a cloud of hot air. “I’m fearful for my future if I must continue to hide. For the sake of the kingdom.”

“What do you have to hide?” Raspberry’s words escape her with more bite than intended. “I just don’t understand you. Everything has been handed to you on a silver platter and I…”

She curls up to herself even closer, as if the room were far too crowded and she needed to shroud herself from harm.

“I don’t want to be a failure.”

The two sit in complete silence for a while, Raspberry because she can’t bring herself to say any more and Madeleine because he can’t decide what to say. No one enters the hallway. Nothing disrupts them. The time wastes away until a few minutes later, when Madeleine finally answers.

“Do you remember the day of the knights’ tournament? That day we had a draw?”

Raspberry sighs into her knees, feeling the warmth spread across her cheeks. “How could I forget?”

“Initially, I dressed as a man in search of opportunity. My father’s teachings from the Vanilla Kingdom were heavy on the teachings of how he and his men fought in the Dark Flour War… so, when he died, I aimed to follow in his every footstep,” he explained. His voice had grown low and husky the more the images seemed to play out in his mind. “And I disguised myself, with the assumption that things would be the same. The same way he remembered it, all those years ago.”

Raspberry’s hands trailed down her legs, fingers tight on her calves. Madeleine smiled again.

“But before I made it to the finals, I saw you. I witnessed the way your reputation precedes you, and later I would slip my way through the crowd to watch your matches. I thought I was no match for you,” he admits, “That I was sure to fail. And if I did, I wouldn’t know where to go next. I wasn’t sure what my purpose was.”

Raspberry chuckles, shaking her head because the thought was so profound. “I know that feeling well.”

“The only reason I’ve made it this far is through sheer willpower. Once I have what I want, I can’t get enough of it. And I would do anything in my power not to lose it,” Madeleine swallows. “Lest I lose sight of who I’m supposed to be.”

They make eye contact for the first time since Raspberry hit the floor, and suddenly, she feels trapped. Trapped in a choice to either leave the conversation estranged and one-sided, or to yield the emotions she’d been trained to keep pent up since youth.

Madeleine simply tilts his head, her expression telling enough. “I feel as though there’s something you want to say.”

“You’re a pompous, egotistical moron.”

“Ah,” his eyes flutter. “Hah, you’re not wrong about that.”

She looks down to her shoes, golden-plated heels to accentuate her uniform. “But… that’s not what I should be saying, is it?

“I’d rather you have said so,” he says. “You’ve had to keep quiet for a long time, haven’t you?”

“Don’t we all?”

“Well, sure.”

“But we aren’t all blessed with the vision of the Divine, are we?” she murmurs. “You claim our pasts are similar, yet there must be something within you that I don’t possess. Something within you that has earned you such a fortune.”

Madeleine looks down. “I’m not sure myself.”

“If it’s willpower that has driven you, is that what I lack? Surely not,” Raspberry shudders in her confusion, grasping at straws for something that might make her worthy. “Or is it that you have someone above, watching over you?”

“But you have a long lineage of ancestors in the Raspberry family. You have done nothing they wouldn’t have.” 

Raspberry doesn’t respond. She couldn’t expect Madeleine to understand what it means, to be more of a pawn with high expectations than a knight of free will. He hasn’t seen his family in a long, long time— nor was he familiar with the ancestors that lead him to the present. 

That was the difference between the two of them. Madeleine was still finding himself. Raspberry had her entire life ahead of her planned before she was even born.

“I have often wondered why they chose me. I dare not make any attempt as consolation for that feat,” Madeleine continues, shaking his head. “All I know is that when I accepted it, and I decided to pursue my legacy of protecting the kingdoms, I felt more fulfilled than ever. What can I do but assert myself so forwardly, should I be forgotten and fail the gods watching me otherwise?” Finally, he leans over and pushes onto his feet, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead to watch the sun on the horizon. “Until it made me wonder… could this be all they laid out for me? Our destinies seem so simple, but perhaps this is because we consider them from our own stagnant worldviews, rather than the view of possibility.”

The knight’s stance was painfully statuesque, even as Raspberry sat hopelessly behind him, feeling infinitely small. His hair has grown longer since they’d gone to cut it, the length of it flowing past his shoulders. She exhales a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. “You have no need to be philosophical. I’ve considered this many times.” Madeleine continues to watch the sky, infatuated by it. “We don’t get to choose our path in life. Not when we have people in our corner.”

Madeleine laughs, and Raspberry furrows her brow. “Are you laughing at me? Does my strife amuse you, you complacent bastard?”

“No, no, my deepest apologies…” he swipes a tear from his furthermost eye, a faint glow along his cheekbone. It reveals the faintest of freckles. “Raspberry, if you had the choice, what would your future look like?”

She squints, carding a hand through her roseate curls. “If I had the choice? I have chosen to become the heiress of House Raspberry. I swore an oath of my own, you know this.”

“Was that truly your choice?”

“It’s the choice I’m obliged to make,” she says. “There’s no use considering anything else. I am proud to represent my family.”

Madeleine frowns, unsurprised yet disappointed with her unwavering nature. “Give it a try?”

Raspberry signs, then, folding her arms over her knees and looking up to the ceiling. As she considers, her eyes flit across the ornate and intricate archways of the corners and doorways, as if she were searching them for purchase. Those pristine spirals were all she’s ever known. “Sometimes, I don’t want things to change.”

Madeleine tilts his head.

“I want to remain a paladin. I want to settle in my days fencing and working hard at Hollyberry’s side.” she decides, the top of her forehead still flush against the cabinet. “I’ve never had aspirations of my own. I have no reason to. But something about inhabiting the throne… perturbs me, at times. I want to continue protecting my family’s honor, but the restraint I’d be compelled to endure as royalty is something I don’t enjoy considering.” Then, she looks forward once more, fastening her bun in place with her raspberry-garmented hair clip. “House Raspberry’s culture and wealth is something we’ve built from the tips of our swords alone. Our philosophy is my life’s guideline. So… even if I feel this way, even if the pressure deters me, I refuse to let it knock me down.”

Madeleine watches intently as she rises to her feet, inviting him to follow with the gesture of a hand. “Nonetheless, I know my own boundaries. I would not have spoken so passionately against marriage if that were something I believed I could stand.”

“I got that much.”

“I understand you may deem me adamant in my ways, but there is also much about me you don’t know. I ask that you respect this.”

Madeleine hesitates for a moment, but he nods. He has hardly moved from his stance, swayed by her unyielding ideals. “As you wish.”

“Don’t think I’m letting you off so easily. I’ve answered your question. What would your future look like?” 

He simply chuckles. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m serious!”

“I can’t believe you would push me to admit all of that and tell me nothing in return!”

“Okay, okay,” he focuses for a moment, contemplating. “There are matters in which we are similar and in which we are different, I suppose.”

“Elaborate.”

“Well, it’s just as you said; ‘We don’t get to choose our path in life, when we have people in our corner,’” he quotes. “Except, I don’t have a long line of family to look out for me directly. I only have my father and the expectations he left for me before he passed.”

Raspberry waits expectantly as he pauses, casting his gaze back down to the floor.

“When I was blessed by the Divine, I took this as the sign they saw purpose in me. I’ve taken every opportunity I can to prove myself and find what it is my sword and shield are destined to protect,” he continues. “I don’t believe I’ve found it yet… but for now, I’m content remaining aimless. It is the little things that make Earthbread a better place. And while I remain a commander, I will give the quests I’m given my all, just the same.” 

“At what expense?”

He smiles, solemn. “Even if it kills me.”

Raspberry shakes her head and scoffs. “ Tch. You should know better than to get yourself killed so easily. Hadn’t your father taught you that much?”

“I don’t plan to die! I am the sacred knight of the Divine, after all. Taking me down would surely be suicide for my own enemies!”

“There’s the Madeleine I know…”

He laughs again, and the atmosphere feels lighter than before. Raspberry had the feeling they had long lives ahead of them. Not free of struggles and responsibilities, surely, but they would never be alone. Not like they had felt in the past. The air had grown cooler as the cool mist of dusk pooled in, and the sky had faded into a wispy silver to accent the disputes and strife they’d leave behind. Contrary to what one would believe, it was Raspberry’s favorite time of day. 

Instinctually, the two start out the castle’s open doorway, greeting the halls rolled with carpet of reminiscent color and paintings framed in gold. On one end of the hall, photographs lined with every inheritance of the royal heredity were positioned in a sort of chronology.

Save for consorts.

Raspberry clears her throat. “I have another question, if you’ll indulge me.”

“Go for it.”

“Earlier, regarding our marriage. You said it was scary,” she said. “Something about continuing to hide. What did you mean by that?”

“Oh,” Madeleine’s arm bends towards his neck, massaging his calloused hands along the flush of its lateral end. “Well.”

“Don’t tell me,” Raspberry grins, poking at his shoulder, “Someone’s caught your fancy?”

“Don’t say it like that!”

“How else should I say it?”

“I… don’t know,” he gulps. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Do I know them?”

“Most likely. He has quite the reputation.”

“He, you say?”

“I assumed you caught on to that—“

“So, is he a knight like yourself? If not, what does he do? Did you meet him before or after becoming commander? Where does he live?”

“I allowed you one question!” Madeleine nearly shouts, the flush spread across his cheeks by then. “Now I’m embarrassed.”

“Don’t be,” Raspberry rebuts, “You don’t have to answer my questions. I’m simply looking out for you… not to mention, it’s all the more reason for us not to get married.”

He exhales, the color draining from his face. “I’m in no rush to pursue him, considering we harbor an unusual sort of relationship. But I digress,” Madeleine’s gaze grows notably softer, and it’s an expression Raspberry had never seen on the man before. “Every time I think he and his profession couldn’t be more fascinating I am taken by surprise all over again. I had never realized, before, that our world possessed so much magic. So many possibilities.”

Just like before, Raspberry has a feeling there is more he wants to say. So she remains silent. 

“It’s silly. Part of me wants to follow him. To run away and see what lies beyond the kingdom, or what is left of my family. The Divine prophesied something for me and I’m intent to discover what it is,” he says. “But I’m certainly not as knowledgeable as he is. Nor do I believe he’d wish to aid me.”

After a while of walking through the expanse of the building, trudging up staircases in quiet exchange and passing by a surplus of servants and guards engaged with busywork, they slipped past the doors of the reserved hallway. Within it were primarily the private chambers of certain high-ranking officials and locked-up rooms of artifacts and riches untouched for nearly at least a century. They hadn’t entirely planned their route of passage through the castle (nor was their duel quite to their plans, either) but it was the instinct of exhaustion that led them to the familiar corridor.

In a matter of hours, they would return to the Great Hall and meet with the higher-ups to explain themselves and their lack of submission to the convenience of being wed. And to that, they would have little explanation to give. But if they were fortunate enough, they would someday be free. 

Raspberry’s quarters stood at the far end of the hallway, so until then, they would have to part ways here. “I suppose I’ll be seeing you.” Raspberry says.

“Ah, Ras,” Madeleine attempts before quickly shaking his hands in correction. “Raspberry, I mean.”

“…Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay,” he says. “I wanted to thank you.”

She frowns. “What is there to thank me for?”

“You don’t have to like me,” Madeleine gathers his bearings, twisting the embellished doorknob with his free hand. “But I’m glad to see that for the time being, you will tolerate me. And I couldn’t even begin my journey to improvement without you.”

Raspberry hums at this, suppressing a smile goodness knows she deserved. “Should you find yourself at the front lines someday, I will aid you. Never convince yourself you are alone.”

He waves, and for a moment, time seems to stop. “I know.”

- - ┈┈∘┈˃̶༒˂̶┈∘┈┈ - -

A neatly arranged bouquet of forget-me-nots fell to the grass, a patch of meadow iridescent and motley with dew from the rain. Raspberry would enjoy such a day if not for the headstone at her feet and the fog that infested her lungs. 

Earlier that day, shortly after noon, the people of the joint Hollyberry and Vanilla kingdoms gathered for the funeral of Madeleine, knight of the Divine, hero of many and second to none. They huddled around the substandard burial rite, tears stinging in their eyes, umbrellas and parasols above their heads forming an elaborate canopy. Hollyberry herself stood among them, doing her best to ease the crowd and reassure them of the situation (to no avail) and naturally performing her own speech on his many achievements. It went on for a long, long time, some segments in confused chatter and others in desolate silence, nothing but the fierce wind and the rain coming down as a backdrop for their mourning. 

In the end, when the coffee mage returned from their quest, he reported no trace of the man’s body to return with and was never seen again. Thus his gravestone was situated with the many soldiers of history whose remains were lost in the passage of time.

Raspberry herself did not attend the funeral. She was well aware that the people would talk, mistaking her absence for some unbound jealousy for Madeleine or not having enough of a heart to mourn the dead, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to care. She watched from the balcony of her chambers as the funeral went on, absently wondering what could have happened for his body to be ‘untraceable’. Was he heaved into the deepest depths of the ocean? Set upon the royal pyre of a bygone kingdom? Completely and savagely mutilated? Raspberry didn’t want to consider that, but none of the possibilities she pondered gave her any closure.

When the funeral finally came to a close, and the graveyard finally cleared, the kingdoms seemed to fall silent. It was the first time the world had felt so quiet since Raspberry’s childhood, when she would roam the halls of the Chateau at nightfall and slip outside to watch the dandelions sway and the fireflies flutter about. So she eased her way through the castle’s halls to visit the graveyard on her own. It was also the first of many times she would allow herself to be impulsive.

Raspberry stood motionlessly for a long, long time. She suppressed any thoughts that managed to take shape in her mind. She suppressed any tears that threatened to stream from her hazy eyes. If someone happened to pass by at this hour, the last thing she wanted was for them to see her so undignified and prone to emotion. 

Her eyes passed over the words on the headstone countless times, trying to make sense of it. ‘Madeleine’ followed by his lifespan and a scriptural verse of the Vanilla Kingdom in italicized font. Madeleine. Madeleine. Madeleine.

She hears footsteps in the grass. Her sword slung from her waist and unsheathed from its scabbard to point at the intruder, only to realize the individual was no threat at all.

“I’m sorry,” Princess stammers, a laced pink umbrella in hand. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Raspberry doesn’t respond, unable to find the words to. She returns her sword to where it holstered at the hip.

“I’m sure you’re out here because you want to be alone. But, well…” Princess trails off. “It’s pouring outside, and you’ve been out here for a while, and I just wanted to check on you.”

Raspberry returns her eyes to the grave, avoiding Princess’ searching eyes. She didn’t want to speak at all, but she swallowed her pride for the sake of decency. “I’m fine. You needn’t worry about me.”

“You and Madeleine were close, right?” Princess continued, her shoes planted firmly in the soil. “You argued a lot, but I could tell you were fond of him. I’m really sorry.”

“I already told you I’m fine. I’m merely here to pay my respects, and I’ll be on my way,” she bites back. Everything would be fine. Everything was fine. “You should get back inside. It’s late, after all.”

“I can at least fetch you an umbrella, and an extra coat. If you’re out here like this for much longer you’ll catch a cold—“

“—Enough! What can I possibly say to make you understand?” Raspberry lashes out, twisting around to see Princess again and freezing in her tracks. Princess’ eyes were wide and she flinched back a few steps when Raspberry turned, her footwork notably clumsy. “I didn’t…”

“You’re right,” she surmises. “I crossed a line. But please, take my umbrella, at least.” She places it firm into Raspberry’s grasp and smiles, softly. Her hand lingers on Raspberry’s own, a featherlight touch that leaves a trill on the fabric of her glove. “I’ll be on my way. Take care.”

Just as she turns to leave, something fierce and unrestrained overtakes the knightess as she tugs her arm forward and latches tightly onto Princess’ hand. “Wait!” Princess is still, tilting her head to watch the other woman with reticent patience. Her next words came out before she could stop herself, too weak to restrain herself any longer. “Don’t go,” she whispers, “Please.”

The rain steadied overhead, each droplet making a low sound as they hit the umbrella and slipped off the edges. Princess offers no more than a brisk nod. “Okay,” she turns and settles at Raspberry’s side, leaning in when she shifts the umbrella between them. “I won’t.”

Raspberry clenches her fists, feeling the last of her walls crumbling around her. She couldn’t decide which would be worse after what just happened; to allow everything she’d been withholding to flood through in waves, more powerful than the pools amassing the courtyard, or to push Princess so far away she would become permanently and painfully alone. “It’s not fair,” she murmurs, tears stinging in her eyes. Oh, it was far too late, wasn’t it? “It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair.”

“I know,” says Princess.

“I shouldn’t have allowed this to happen. I made my pact,” her words are suffocating, each one a strain on her senses. “Had I only known how dangerous this mission was, I would have extended myself to accompany them. I would have done something. Anything.”

“This isn’t your fault, Ras. There was nothing you could have done, nor could you have predicted things would turn out this way.”

And, oh, there they went. Raspberry sobbed, her tremors descending into trembles as the tears intermingled with the rainwater on her cheeks. Her open hand slid up and down her arm, a futile effort to coax herself into composure, but no simple dinner table coping mechanism had the capacity to save her now. Raspberry wept like there was no tomorrow, and for a passing moment, she wished there wouldn’t be. She wished, almost selfishly, that Hollyberry had sent her on that quest to die instead. The Kingdoms would mourn her passing, of course, but she was no man so one-of-a-kind he was chosen by the gods– and even then, he never had the chance to fulfill his destiny. Time did not stop to illuminate her the way it did for Madeleine.

All the while, Princess draped her arm sympathetically around Raspberry’s back, an embrace she couldn’t help but lean into. “It’s okay to be vulnerable,” she says, her voice barely audible like a shared secret between the two. “It’s okay to cry. The more you bury those emotions inside, the more you hurt yourself. You deserve the same relief as anyone else.”

Raspberry sniffles, the crook of her nose buried into Princess’ shoulder. “You and I are not the same.” 

“No two people are the same,” she says. “But I know what it feels like, not being allowed to be yourself. Wishing deep down you could just be free. It’s a terrible feeling.”

“I wouldn’t be where I am today, if not for the habits I’d sacrificed,” Raspberry insists, departing her chin from the warmth and returning her focus to the grave. “If I reinhabited them, I would surely lose what is most important to me.”

“But is that really true?” Princess asks, a touch more scolding. “Sometimes you have to decide how much of yourself is worth sacrificing for others… for your own sake. If you keep giving yourself away, you allow yourself to be shaped completely by what your family expects of you.”

Raspberry chuckles, but it comes across with more force than anything else. “I feel as though I’ve received this lecture before.”

“Then whoever said so was right. Besides, you’re already Hollyberry’s right-hand. When you’re with us, you shouldn’t have to feel that way.”

Raspberry sighs, turning away. “It’s even harder to maintain my place now. Now that he’s gone.”

Princess gives her a questioning look.

“I was envious of him. I envied that whenever he entered a room, all eyes drew to him. I envied that he entered my life and claimed everything I ever yearned for deep within for himself. I envied that he was allowed to make all of the choices I never could,” Raspberry began to divulge her thoughts in all their complexity, the unchanging environment one she found welcoming. After all, when she spoke, she watched the headstone below her and figured perhaps he could hear her, too. “But eventually I realized our destinies are different. His purpose was one far greater than mine. Yet here I am, living and prospering as the paladin I always wanted to be, and he ceases to exist.” She shudders, unsure if it’s a response to the frigid weather or her overwhelming revelation. “I refuse to believe his purpose was to die.”

“Of course not,” Princess agrees. “The story isn’t over yet. There’s still time to find the gem and restore the kingdom. Madeleine will empower the people to fight.”

“Will he? Or will he be a complete loss of hope?”

“My grandmother made her speech because she didn’t want the people to be discouraged. It had to have reached them,” Princess insists. “She’s our Queen Mother, after all. No one can empower them like she can… even after something like this.”

Raspberry’s gaze held steady on the forget-me-nots once more, significantly less blooming and well-organized as before as they lay doused in the rain. A single petal had been cast aside, blue as the morning sky, caged in the blades of grass ahead. Raspberry shuts her eyes.

“It’s funny,” she says, her words residual and enduring of her languor. “Madeleine is the kind of person so admirable you don’t want to admit you respect them.” The knightness turns on her heel, extending the umbrella for Princess to hold. “And you never realize how important someone is to you until it’s too late.” 

Thunder rumbles in the courtyard.

“Ras—“

“I’ve finished grieving. We have work to do,” Raspberry tugs on her coat, repositioning it over her shoulders for the shoulderpads to rest comfortably. “We have a meeting with the officials tomorrow. It’s best we head inside and get some rest.”

“Are you sure?”

“Naturally.” Raspberry gestures for Princess to follow. “Come.”

Raspberry makes way for the castle as Princess scurries behind, rushing to remain at her side and keep the umbrella overhead for their short distance. The weather would persist throughout the night and into the morning, and in truth, the grief would not have faded. 

Not until Raspberry had her chance at vengeance.

- - ┈┈∘┈˃̶༒˂̶┈∘┈┈ - -

The castle was more awake this afternoon. Raspberry had tied her hair into a high ponytail and changed into predominantly white attire, save for her usual House Raspberry signature symbols and dark knee-length boots. The gathering was scheduled to be held in the Great Hall, a short distance from the specialized dining room they met in for Espresso and Madeleine’s assignment. The tables there were larger, more plentiful and nearer to the kitchen where the chefs worked, so it seemed natural to overture the space and distance for the faraway royal visitors. It was also notably more opulent, roses organized in vases and strung by the vine across the walls, not to mention well lit by the overhead chandeliers. 

Inside, rows upon rows of royal officials had already begun getting seated. They all whispered and chatted quietly amongst themselves, the only distinguishable voices being the servants and maids attending to their arrangement. Raspberry quickly spotted Royal Berry– Hollyberry’s son, the king– and Jungleberry, his wife who formerly served as a figurehead ruler during Hollyberry’s absence. In the present, they are both considered executive queens of the Hollyberry Kingdom, though Hollyberry herself takes the reins on the joint kingdom as a whole. She can also spot Princess beside them, bouncing her leg under the tablecloth anxiously.

When Raspberry entered the hall, Hollyberry and her personal bodyguard Wildberry stood at the doorway. Wildberry instinctively veered to the side, allowing leeway from his larger figure.

“Raspberry, there you are!” she booms, patting her on the shoulder. “Listen, the meeting is about to start and there’s no sign of Espresso. If he doesn’t show, I haven’t a clue how we’ll convince these folk.” Was it just Raspberry, or did the older woman seem… nervous? “I have you to count on, don’t I? You’re a smart cookie.”

Raspberry straightens her posture and nods affirmatively. “Of course. I am always at your service.”

“Wonderful,” Hollyberry elbows Wildberry to get his attention, the sound of his thick iron armor making a clang sound. “Wildberry, fetch me a glass of berry juice, won’t you?”

“Are you certain that’s a good idea, your majesty?” he asks with a deadpan expression. “This is a meeting of great importance. Once you have one, is it wrong to assume you’ll continue?”

“You are one tenacious nag. Yes, I’m certain. Shoo, shoo!”

Wildberry clambers away with a roll of the eyes, disappearing behind the doorframe of the kitchen. Meanwhile, Hollyberry motions Raspberry to follow her to the head of the table, at which the Hollyberry Kingdom’s highest officials are always designated to sit. When Hollyberry rests in her seat at the very end of the table, all falls silent, and every pair of eyes present turns to her. Jungleberry and Royal Berry’s eyes are ones glazed with concern.

“Greetings, those of the Hollyberry Kingdom and the Vanilla Kingdom alike. I must thank you all for coming,” Hollyberry began, grinning when a glass of berry juice slid to her front. “As you all know, for nearly a century now we have faced a multitude of ongoing forces, resulting in the loss of many. Although we have lost Madeleine, there is still work being done behind the scenes to cause this, and I believe that we as a unity can overcome this threat once and for all. But in order to do this, we must first consider our remaining options...”

Raspberry felt her bottom lip twitch.

“As you all also know, the man to accompany Madeleine on his journey was Espresso, a highly skilled mage and alchemist of coffee magic. He is…” Hollyberry looks around the room once more. “…not with us today. However, on the day of his return he shared with us some valuable information that is sure to bring us closer to the truth.”

Hollyberry goes on to detail Madeleine and Espresso’s adventure into the cave and against the beast, which was explained to be merely mechanical rather than a living, protective being. The conclusion to be drawn from this was obvious; someone didn’t want the Kingdoms in possession of that gem, and they were willing to create a monster to protect it.

But the information given about their journey was limited. Raspberry could easily identify its holes, and she was sure the other officials were clever enough to notice them as well. If things went on like this, unease would rise even more significantly than it would without the prior details. 

“Pardon my interruption,” a woman Raspberry doesn’t recognize says from down the table. “But were there really no traces left of their unknown messenger? How could they have gotten ahold of such a map?”

Hollyberry audibly gulps. “Ah, well…”

“I must agree,” a man a few seats down chimes in. “Invisible parchment ink? A ruse of a flower field with a metal trapdoor underneath? It’s all too unusual to comprehend.”

“I understand that. How about we…”

“And what of Espresso?” another woman asks. “How are we so certain we can trust him?” 

“Everyone calm down,” Hollyberry’s voice projects loud enough to make herself heard. “I would not have sent Espresso on this quest if I did not trust him. Do you doubt my judgment?”

“Of course not, your highness.”

“I daresay I agree with her,” someone else says. Raspberry can’t distinguish anyone’s voices anymore. “The man left the scene to fetch help and his body was completely gone? Something just isn’t right.”

“Has anyone even seen him?” another says. “As far as we’re concerned, that man hasn’t left his laboratory since he arrived back here!”

The room erupts into chatter, a downward spiral of more questions than answers. Raspberry had told Hollyberry she could count on her, but even she was stumped on how to calm the situation. Her eyes almost frantically searched the room; to Princess, whose leg was bouncing with twice as much fervor than before. To her parents Jungleberry and Royal Berry, who exchanged worried glances. To Hollyberry, whose mouth was hung open as if she wanted to reply to every conviction but words wouldn’t come out. Everything was too, too much. At this rate, how could they ever convince the civilians they had things under control? 

Suddenly, the massive twin doors of the Great Hall flew open, causing every voice in the room to die off as they turned to witness the commotion. The man at the doorway strided in, his long, umber-brown coat flowing behind him as its collar accentuates his head, only his round spectacles for glasses to draw any light to his person. Beneath the glasses, however, his eyelids are heavier than ever, dimmed with dark bags— from numerous sleepless nights, Raspberry assumed.

It was almost amusing, the stunned silence Espresso’s presence left everyone in when he entered. He didn’t even say a word. He simply smoothed the strap of his satchel, overflowing with what appeared to be research paperwork, and approached the table with an almost captivating aura about him. And suddenly it all hits Raspberry at once. 

This is him, isn’t it, Madeleine? she thinks, resisting another smile. The man you’ve always loved.

When Espresso reaches the opposite edge of the table, he drops his satchel upon it and an excess of the papers come sliding out. The way he looks at Hollyberry is the look of a man gone completely mad, if his disheveled hair and crooked glasses were any proof.

“I have a plan.”

Chapter Text

The truth was, Espresso had never fully gotten used to the Hollyberry Palace.

There was a reason the man denied any inclination to the royal atmosphere unless absolutely necessary. On this particular evening, even as the sky grew dimmer with dull blue tones, the world beyond was aglow with the pale pink streetlights and every window of the building occupied beneath him. Looking down from the balcony he stood on, everything was twice as dizzying. 

When he arrived earlier, the royals welcomed him with utmost courtesy: but he could tell all pitied him. Their true feelings couldn’t escape his eyes. Not when the visitors from afar cast judgmental glances as they left, or when the king and queen exchanged guilty looks, or when the knightess Raspberry’s eyes searched him endlessly for something he couldn’t possibly estimate. It was shameful. The last thing he ever wanted was for people to pity him. 

Not that it mattered. Soon enough, he would prove there’s no need to fret for his well-being. He was certain the plans he’d devised would bear fruit, and eventually his regularly scheduled bouts of genius would proceed without interruption. 

“We have made a lot of progress in this week alone. More than I could selfishly hope for,” Madeleine’s words echo in Espresso’s mind, causing his heart to throb against his will. “When this is over, and we return home, I… don’t want that to change.” 

Espresso was a fool. He was a fool thinking he was destined for anything more than a life alone in his laboratory, experimenting endlessly with chemicals and watching as the journals and paperwork pile up around him. He was a fool for clinging to a passing thought, one that would soon fade from existence along with the man’s very being. He’d chosen to rely on someone once before, and they left him behind the very same. 

He should have known by now that warmth was fleeting. And after all this time, after everything he’d worked towards, he was a fool. 

Elbows bent over the balcony railing, he carded a hand through his hair and buried his face into the other. The gloaming wind caused his cape to flutter behind him, the only force making the dawn any less suffocatingly quiet. Even with the spiraling thoughts in his head, it wasn’t enough.

“Espresso,” a voice sounded from the doorway, nearly slipping past Espresso’s consciousness. He flinches. “Jumpy, aren’t you? You really ought to cut back on the caffeine, kiddo.”

Hollyberry approached at his side, no longer dressed in her business attire, but in her usual gown and slippers. Espresso sighs. “You’re one to talk,” he manages, straightening his posture. He cared less about his appearance than usual given the circumstances, but she was the Queen Mother. If she was approaching his temporary quarters at this hour, it wasn’t without reason. “Speaking of, haven’t you been drinking? I’ve no interest in discussing business with you while intoxicated, if that’s what you’re here for.”

She shrugs, her teasing grin falling. “Only a glass or two. Or three. But rest assured, I’ve been sober all night.” Perching her hands over the sturdy bars, she leans over the railing alongside him and watches the city meaningfully. “It’s strange. The nightlife is not usually so absent of… life.”

“When a life is lost, that tends to happen.”

Hollyberry stills into a respective silence. The comment appeared to reawaken an underlying sorrow, the kind she often suppressed to be strong for her kingdom. It was even more necessary for her to do this now than before, given the state of the kingdoms at large. 

Even so, it doesn’t last long. “I wanted to apologize to you, Espresso,” she says, her voice low and almost hoarse. “If you’ll hear me.”

Espresso raises a brow, resorting to shrugging noncommittally in the few moments’ passing. What is there to apologize for? What is there to say? He’s never entirely understood the motions of idle conversation, but he couldn’t help but find their current exchange forced. Do you pity me, too?

“You have every reason not to trust me,” she admits, something of a chuckle escaping with her words. “I sent you on this journey, only for it to reap devastating results. As if that wasn’t enough, I kept you in the dark about my motives and sent you ambiguous information, in hopes that you would perceive it correctly and succeed.” Espresso listens intently. He finds it difficult to frame his thoughts, even now. But he knows where he stands, and he knows what he must do. “I have plenty of explanations to extend. But this all depends upon what you’ve learned already, and what you wish to ask of me.”

Espresso doesn’t respond. The view from the Hollyberry Palace was still so mesmerizing, after all.

Her lips twitch into a smile, dimples forming at the corners. “I may be a stubborn old crone, but now is no time for my misplaced priority. I’m going to do everything I can: for this kingdom, for Madeleine… and for you.”

Espresso sighs, shifting himself so he can be more efficiently attentive to Hollyberry. His pale eyes search her for a moment, and he cannot help but see a familiar face. A narrow line below shadowed eyelids, a rosy tint spread across the cheeks and heavy over the nose. A tinge of redness surrounding the sclera, poorly veiled with drip irrigation. 

She was only human. And hell, weren’t they all? 

“I only have one question to ask of you, first,” she says, beginning to stand firm and alleviate. “Please understand that this is integral to our mission here. Before you departed from the ball… did you meet Elderberry?” 

Espresso turns away once more, the moonlight glimmering across the panes of his spectacles. “Momentarily,” he mutters. “But I believe what you would like to hear occurred after.”

- - ┈┈∘┈˃̶༒˂̶┈∘┈┈ - -

If not for his determination in seeking answers, their exchange on this day might have completely slipped his mind— in the face of his renewed sleep deprivation, that was. 

Returning to the Elderberry Kingdom shortly after the events of the ball was certainly an experience. Given the event was both widely known and anticipated among locals and adventurers alike, the cobbled streets felt significantly empty in the aftermath. Although no doubt this was partially a result of the terrorist attack. The perpetrator was caught, but who knew when their organization would strike next?

That was the word of the street, anyway. Espresso had little time to exchange pleasantries with the vendors or eavesdrop on passing conversations. There was only one individual who had the answers he sought, and he would find them no matter what the cost.

Approaching the mansion, he is also made well aware of his appearance. He wavered in a sort of intermediary semblance of care, no longer dressed in formal attire nor his laboratory uniform but a more honest outfit. His glasses were still cracked from the explosion, given he had no time for a fixing, and while he did comb his hair the frizz and flyaways were apparent. He couldn’t afford to waste any additional hours to make himself appear anything more than ‘adequately presentable’, because contributing no effort when meeting royalty was just asking for ridicule. Regardless, if a former version of himself saw him now, he would surely have some choice words to say.

At the very least, the mansion’s entrance was less daunting than his prior experience. He approached two guards, stated his credentials, and was swiftly led through the corridors without any casualties. He hadn’t established a name for himself in the Elderberry Kingdom just yet, but the fiasco of the ball’s influence and Elderberry’s exclusive permission for his entry was enough to assure he be let through smoothly (not to mention he was renowned with the alchemical and aristocratic crowd). Except, this time is different from when he met Elderberry with Madeleine at his side; he was alone, and he would make sure their exchange now would be strictly business. No offhanded commentary or ambiguous remarks would pass without the proper inquiry.

When he’s dropped off by the two guards at her quarters, they are quickly dismissed. Now, Espresso wasn’t entirely certain of her motives by then, but one thing was for certain– Elderberry had expected him to return. Whether it be with Madeleine, or standing alone.

“Good evening, Your Majesty,” Espresso greeted her with a courteous bow. “I trust you’ve been well in our absence?”

Elderberry is seated at her desk, fiddling with one of her rings as one hand is drawn over her lips. “Good evening yourself. However, I do believe I’ve endowed you with the right to call me Elderberry, no? You and that adorable escort of yours… ah, his name escapes me.”

“I loathe to disappoint you, but I’m not here to play mind games,” Espresso drops his pleasant expression. “I have questions for you, and I expect that you answer them honestly. I am only willing to negotiate at a reasonable expense, but I expect that won’t be needed. Information has lost its value on your market.”

Elderberry tilts her head, unfocusing from her jewelry and looking him in the eye at last. She changes her posture, leaning forward as a more upfront show of interest. “Go on, then.”

Espresso approaches the desk and lays down the scroll yet again, rolling out onto the letter side. “It is within my belief that you know the context of this letter,” Espresso says, watching carefully as she takes it into her grasp. “It’s the same one as before. Nothing has changed. I ask of you the full and complete history behind its existence.” One hand on the scroll, Elderberry’s free hand drums on the desk, sharp nails leaving a distinct and consistent rhythm. A sort of background tune to his whirring thoughts, to his demanding words, to the scattered sense of it all. Hell, even the mess of paperwork on her desk reminded him of his laboratory back home, someplace that felt worlds away now. A place that wouldn’t feel the same returning to, if only to drown in his former habits and lose sight of his ideals all over again. “When was this letter written, and why? Furthermore, how is this related to the Que– no, Hollyberry, in the first place? I cannot successfully do my duty until I understand every last bit of the history behind this, you must understand.”

Once he’s finished, the room stills into silence. Elderberry looks almost… pained. There was a distant sorrow in her eyes that was yet to be uncovered. She opens her mouth and closes it a couple of times before standing up from her seat, rolling up the letter entirely. “Walk with me.”

Espresso blinks. It is practically audible. “Excuse me?”

“I’m not escorting you out, dear,” she shakes her head. It had grown difficult to tell if her exasperation was feigned or not, but Espresso would give it the benefit of the doubt. “Follow me, and you will learn all it is you need to know.”

Espresso initially hesitates, but he eventually follows her out the door and down long-winded staircases he realized were familiar. Sure enough, she was leading him to the Museum of the Ancients. Apparently it was the kingdom’s most notorious tourist attraction, although they had few particular attractions to begin with, and due to the disaster at the Elderberry Ball, no one was permitted entry due to renovation. The intricately painted walls and structures were the very same as Espresso remembered them, passing through here with Madeleine to meet Elderberry cordially for the first time. Only, when he gazed upon the soldiers on the battlefield with their brazen swords and shields and shiny armor, he was met with a wave of hopelessness. Often soldiers pass away as pawns of war, mere victims of a catalyst’s trial and error. Mere etched names in a sea of tombstones, just as they were once corpses in a sea of fallen people with their own wills and lives to protect. From the very start, Madeleine had sworn to protect Espresso as if that were his only purpose, his only aspiration. Would the kingdoms weep for him, knowing his sacrifice? Or would it have all been for nought?

“Many who visit see someone familiar within these walls,” Elderberry says, knowing. “Sometimes it is a friend, or a family member. Sometimes it is a loved one. Often, it is more than one of these. Yet no one expresses their familiarity in the same way.”

“Is that so?”

“This is because what they experience is not strictly one emotion. The once brutal reality depicted here is a striking one, and our curators were directed to paint history precisely so. The issue is, most have a complicated approach to reality,” she pauses before the centerpiece of the mural– the Ancients themselves. “In this world, people aren’t made to confront fate. You are forced to accept it. Believe what you wish, the gods will seldom answer the call before one’s light inevitably dims, and they fade from existence.”

Espresso crosses his arms, subconsciously aiming to look anywhere but at the common soldier. “This sounds personal to you,” he ascertained. “What is your point, exactly?”

Elderberry, for all her talk, only sighs. “When I visit here, everyone is familiar. I have been in every position on this battlefield and witnessed every walk of life,” she reaches upward, drifting towards the beaming light of the Ancients, only to quickly withdraw it. “Including that of the Ancients. When I come here, I am filled with nothing but contempt for these ‘heroes’ of our world. If you came to see things from my perspective, you would surely feel the same.”

Espresso attempts to wrap his head around this, what with the minimal information he’d just been given. “You worked closely with the Ancients?”

“I didn’t just work with them,” Elderberry replies, a scorn and distaste in her biting voice. “I was one of them.”

Espresso looks directly at her. This woman, who ran her own self-proclaimed kingdom of Earthbread, of whom he had never heard of prior to their invitation, certainly not in any ancient texts or scriptures… was once one of the Ancients? It couldn’t be possible, rationally. None of the Ancients he’d spoken to directly had ever mentioned her, no less Hollyberry, and there were only five Soul Jams of the purest essence. There were few explanations that could compensate for her in the grand tale of the cataclysm. But what reason did she have to lie about something one would find so clearly preposterous?

“During the war, the five ‘Ancient Heroes’ and I were acquainted. Each of us had ascended from our common lives and become the most prominent powers in fighting against the Dark Forces,” she continued, persisting in her journey across the room. “I fought bravely and diligently on the sidelines, just as they did. The war bound us together, even as we seemed so far apart. But our discoveries of the Soul Jam are what destroyed everything.” Elderberry’s voice has grown choked up. Although she had turned her face away from view, it was apparent she was reliving terrible memories. “Their Soul Jam… they were of the ‘purest kind’. Blessed by their foundation, they had discovered themselves more powerful and deserving of reverence than any other. All of them, except for me. They all gained denizen of their own kingdoms, and all I could do was serve one of them or fend for myself, the same way we had all endured before.”

“But their Soul Jams have been shattered and disappeared. They haven’t been seen since,” Espresso mutters. “If this is true, why do you have your own kingdom now? You’ve managed to mold your own fate entirely without taking the Ancients’ notice.”

“I was determined for us to be equals in every possible sense, so I built my own kingdom from the ground up. This way, I would prove I have my respective place in history,” she says. “If the Divine wished to call me filthy, to kick me down into the soil of a field of nobodies, I would just prove them wrong. I didn’t need them. And yet… I gaze upon this museum I’ve commissioned, with certainty my impact would carry through, and there is not a trace of my existence. Not even here.” At the center of the room stands a sculpted replica of the five Soul Jams, each one glowing with unavoidable radiance. Elderberry approaches it, her voice trembling and raising to a shout as she faces it head-on. “The truth of this war, Espresso, is that the Divine have betrayed me! They are unimaginably cruel, blessing the ‘chosen’ folk with gifts of protection while all others can only foolishly praise their magnificence and allow themselves to be protected, or suffer helplessly in the shadows! Thus, the fate of this world.”

Espresso is rooted where he stands, unable to formulate a thought. The words rang in his head like a perpetual echo: Thus, the fate of this world. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I’ve observed you quite closely, Espresso, and something tells me I have finally met someone who can understand,” her voice softens, approaching him once more. “That companion of yours, Madeleine. He was blessed by the Divine as well, a chosen benefactor for their will as a Commander. But you had to fight for your legacy, the same way I did, isn’t that right? We spite the Divine because in our time of need, we were cast aside by those we cared about and left behind.

“People like us are never, ever blessed. The light turns its back on us, so we turn our backs to the light. Success is something we must earn, and only when we witness the Divine Will fail do we understand what it means to have purpose.”

She’s right. It is an undeniable truth. Espresso can distantly remember the morning he woke up, abandoned by his sister and left on his own in the cold. Nights that winter were the most painful to endure because it grew colder, and without the sun’s light, there was no source of heat without a steady fire. His sister would always handle the sticks and rocks for him. She tried to teach him how to rub them together, in case she was ever away, but the sensation of the materials in his hands and the scratching sound they made were unbearable for his younger self. He recalls the days after, praying desperately for some understanding of light magic, just to make that fire, nothing more. He didn’t dare ask for his sister back, after having searched far and wide across the forest to no avail.

He never learned how to make the fire. If that alchemist hadn’t found him in time, he would have passed away in the snow and ice.

Why was it that only a select few were offered Divine Empowerment? It’s not that he, nor anyone else, were any less worthy. It’s not that he hadn’t prayed enough, hadn’t tried all kinds of foolish ways to get their attention. He cried to the taiga, “Please, please, just heal me. Help me warm my kindling a little, soothe my aching bones a little, lessen my pride a little so I can accept that she’s never coming back. I ask you for so little.” Espresso hadn’t once considered that he wasn’t worth returning to. He had always thought, surely, they will spare him a shred of mercy, just to allow him a longer life.

But they didn’t. Mercy came in the form of a man traveling for wintry herbs, stumbling upon a shivering young boy freezing himself to death in a cave. Mercy came in the form of learning coffee magic, of being taken under one’s wing and raised to health. Mercy came in the form of scientific experimentation, exploring the world as it’s been generously offered for his observation. Mercy followed in death, when the very same man died and entrusted the entirety of his will to this boy he discovered fading away in the outskirts of the Dark Cacao Kingdom.

He could easily confide in this woman, embracing the ideals he’s always known and expressed to the world without relent. In his current state of being, it would be so easy.

But then he remembers what he’d left behind: a vanilla-blond mane of hair, coasting through the wind with a royal blue cape and sash, adorned with golden armor and a brilliant grin. He remembers many things, all at once. Dining on Bear Jelly Burgers, tending to Madeleine’s wounds, waking up from his first restful sleep in years wrapped in Madeleine’s arms, waltzing at the Elderberry Ball until they lose sight of themselves, opening up their pasts and insecurities, the hearts they’ve kept closely sheltered from one another until that moment. He remembers it all. The Divine may be to blame for making him an insufferable idiot, but he was a man of his own making. Madeleine, the Vanilla Kingdom’s Commander, simply couldn’t have been avoided.

He wasn’t finished here. Not until he’d gotten his vengeance. 

“Elderberry, why did you invite us to the Elderberry Ball in the first place?” Espresso asked. He was coming to his senses now. “Moreover, how did you know we’d embarked in your direction in the first place?”

Elderberry studies him for a few seconds before chuckling, like it’s a silly question. “Word spreads fast out here, you know. Especially for two people so infamous in their field,” she shrugs the weight of their prior conversation of, which Espresso assumes she was intent on being finished. “I must admit, I was hoping to stop you while you were ahead. A mission like this is dangerous, and if you ask me, that Hollyberry is undeserving of your trust.”

“The letter, then.”

“As I said, I can barely read in that old tongue. We penned this language so the Dark Forces couldn’t surpass our language barrier, and to unite with external forces to defeat the greater evil,” she says. “But handing that scroll off to you was clearly a recipe for disaster. Not even those old witches were so crafty. Whatever the purpose was for sending it off to you, I would watch your back.”

Espresso tightens his grip on his waistband, where the scroll had returned. “Thank you, Elderberry. I believe it’s time I return to the Kingdoms and decide what I do next.”

After they’ve bid their farewells, Espresso turns to leave the mansion and return with the news. But before the grand doors finally shut, he hears Elderberry’s final statement: “I trust you’ll consider your fate carefully, Espresso.”

- - ┈┈∘┈˃̶༒˂̶┈∘┈┈ - -

Hollyberry was still for a prolonged period of time. She listened intently as he recounted his exchange, and yet her stature was unmoving, unwavering. Many times did Espresso consider if it was appropriate to pause, allowing her to share her peace, yet within breaks of explanation she was respectfully silent. Once he’s finished, her first words are not quite what he anticipated. 

“Espresso, I must know,” she begins, “Is it true? That the two of you were uncertain about trusting me?”

Espresso hesitates. If he told her the truth, it was possible that her trust for his prowess would no longer be reciprocated. If there lacked mutual trust between colleagues, after all, how could they efficiently work together in the future? No less in regard to the brewing conflict that was sure to arise. Even so, Elderberry would have no reason to attempt allyship with him if she wasn’t at least relatively certain he may potentially enlist at her side. 

“At first, we had our doubts,” he affirms, offering an impromptu shrug. “The more information about our target we gathered, the more uncertainty we harbored for the cause itself– and when Madeleine passed before my eyes, I felt unable to trust anyone at all. However, as I departed from House Elderberry territory, I gathered a few things of potential importance.”

“Oh? And what might those be?”

Espresso adjusts the rim of his cracked spectacle. “Soul Jam doesn’t strictly represent our genes, but also our character. It is the very premise of what makes particular Soul Jams more pure than others. So, as I observed the city’s various products, I considered what her imperfections may reflect, and it made her situation abundantly clear.” He gestures his hand to a sample stashed away in his coat pocket. “While Elderberries themselves aren’t inherently toxic, the bush they grow from contains many toxic constituents. With this in mind, the people of the Elderberry Kingdom consider unusual and less favorable berries to be delicacies– Nightshade being one of them. Nightshade was the poison used in the potion you supposedly delivered to us with the letter, which doesn’t add up, because Nightshade doesn’t grow or deliver in proximity to our kingdom.

“It was my conclusion from that point that this was created not only to divert our trust from you as our ruler, but to strain us from reaching our goal altogether. Whatever was inside that cave… that mechanical beast or what have you, is protecting the gem we need to end this crisis, and Elderberry herself is doing everything in her power to keep it at bay. For a cause greater than I alone could fathom, she is willing to do anything: including blackmailing our messenger and infiltrating our plans to protect it.”

Hollyberry nods, appearing solemn, but her expression quickly morphs into one of quiet amusement. “You have always been quite the problem-solver. It is no surprise to me that you’ve managed to deduct this with clues hidden cleverly in plain sight.” 

“Even so, I believe I am within the right to ask,” Espresso continued. “Why did you really send us on this mission? Why have you left us ambiguous hints to deduct, keeping us in the dark this whole time? Have you known all along what we would face at the end of our path?”

Hollyberry beholds him, seemingly working out which bits of information are acceptable to share. But Espresso told her everything. If this wasn’t proof that he was prepared to establish trust again, he wasn’t sure what was. It was an unfamiliar concept to him, after all. It had taken so long for him to trust the man who took him in… and Madeleine. Where both bonds led him made it exceedingly difficult to uphold the charade. 

At last, she takes a deep breath and begins. “From the beginning, the dragon was constructed and mechanized as a weapon of war in the Dark Flour period. Once its purpose was served, we sought to conceal it from the world where no one would find it, including our enemies, past or future. It is an exceedingly dangerous machine, as I’m sure you’ve become aware, and it is eternally bound to the gem it protects and uses to power itself. Aside from we Ancients, Elderberry is one of few allies aware of where the machine has presided all these years.” She shakes her head, gaze now retrained on the city of mourning. It was apparent that the woman experienced beyond her years was facing a mass of nostalgic memories at once. Espresso would pertain to the same patience she provides him, now and in their impending future. “Initially, my intention was to challenge the two of you. Although you have never gotten along, you are both the most skilled people I know in your respective fields. I delivered resources to you to assure you would be alive and well, as well as willing to work together. I’m sure you understand by now… the two of you in unison have the potential to be stronger than even the Fates could have predicted.”

“And yet.”

“And yet, I made a mistake. I made a detrimental oversight, one that has caused great danger to you both and will cause great danger for the Kingdoms. If I had known Elderberry has been keeping the dragon activated and with enhanced power all this time, I would never have sent you both alone. I refuse to let another life be lost,” Hollyberry’s breathing has become hitched, caught in her throat to choke. “She has betrayed our root cause at the expense of the Fates we cannot control. And I have foolishly given her power beyond what was once our own comprehension. I am sure she will stop at nothing to achieve vengeance, now that she knows we are weak and losing hope. A plan very much like her.” 

Espresso keeps his mouth shut for the time being. A bitter part of him yearns to speak with bile in his words, to remind her that it hasn’t simply endangered the two of them, but left one of them to wither away in a flash of light. It wants to let her know that it is for this reason, among few others, that the Kingdoms have loosened their grip from the upper hand to begin with. But he allows the moment to pass, because surely she knows. Hollyberry was just the type to become overwhelmed with guilt, to let it consume her and make her powerless, allowing the situation to worsen beyond her control believing that’s what will be best. They say it takes an army, and for a woman retired to ruling two kingdoms at once, she may as well need two.

Besides, he’s already had quite enough watching the people of his home wallow in grief, an oncoming threat treacherously unknown to their feeble hearts. The very threat that eliminated Madeleine was approaching, and they completely lacked the “when” or “how” to deduct just how to stop it, making the process of planning and preparation a nigh incomprehensible one. Espresso was many things, after all, and a quitter was not one of them. 

Just a stubborn old bastard. 

He sighs, standing upright. “That does not mean there is nothing more we can do.”

“Of course. You did approach our meeting with a multi-faceted range of plans, after all,” Hollyberry replies with a chuckle. “You have so graciously laid out the groundwork, and our forces will work from there. Even if you believe you’ve failed this mission, Espresso, you have done so much more than I could possibly request of you.” 

“Have I given you the inclination I’m doing this out of, say, the kindness of my heart?” Espresso drawls. “With all due respect, Your Highness, this mission resulted in the death of our strongest soldier, and I have a score to settle. I will stop at nothing to assure I have done so, whether our foe pulls me down with them or not.”

Hollyberry quirks up her lip, dimples creasing with mischief, but she says nothing. Espresso continues. “What? Not going to scold me for suicidal tendencies?”

“Haha, not any more than the servants scold me for alcoholism!” She shakes her head. “I was merely thinking… no matter what you do, or which path you choose to follow, I’m sure Madeleine would be watching proudly from the sidelines.” The lights illuminating the windows of the floor below flicker off, dimming the surface of the balcony. “You’ve come a long way, Espresso.”

“Pah. ‘Watching proudly’? He’d sooner rush ahead of me himself than remain on standby, that impetuous fool.” 

“You call him a fool, yet you say it so fondly.”

“You’re hearing things.”

“You calling me old?”

“And now you are putting words in my mouth.”

“Sure,” she shakes her head. “Nevertheless, given he cannot lead our soldiery as a Commander, he would gladly witness you in leadership otherwise. His eyes would always wander during training when you visited the palace. Perhaps against his better judgment, he was perfectly content surrendering attention to you.”

Espresso furrows his brows, unimpressed with her deductions. “Dead men tell no tales.”

“Is that what you believe?”

“It is.”

“Well, I disagree,” Hollyberry says decisively. “Even when one has passed, the memories of their presence— even the most subtle intonations— live on through other means. Whether it be something tangible, like… a foundation they have built for the world, or a headpiece they once wore…” Her eyes glance past Espresso and to the nightstand in his quarters, a winged golden mech resting by the lamp. Like the first day of their journey in the forest, Madeleine’s headpiece slid off his head before he withered away to nothingness. Espresso couldn’t bring himself to leave it behind this time. “Or something that exists only in our reminiscence, someone’s soul cannot simply die with them. I am a hall of stained-glass windows depicting everyone I have ever known. When I approach the panorama of his existence, I can only see through the lens of his affections for you.”

For once, Espresso is taken aback. “You… what?”

“I didn’t pair the two of you strictly for strategic purposes, goodness, no,” she says. “While it wasn’t out of the question for you both to refuse working together and come back empty-handed, I had faith that you would put aside your differences and realize what lies underneath. And you did, didn’t you?”

Espresso glares at her and makes a hmph sound, averting eye contact. “We managed. I would not have left there alive without his sacrifice, nor without efficient planning to utilize our abilities collaboratively,” Espresso is reminded of the many other things they did collaboratively, heart thumping in his chest, but he doesn’t say them aloud. “I will suffice to say we don’t— didn’t hate each other. If I had known his untimely plan would result in his passing, I would never have allowed it. I have lost something I didn’t know I could have.” Something I never thought I could want.

Hollyberry smiles, completely and unapologetically. “You love that man, don’t you?”

Oh.

Oh. 

Stolen glances in the palace halls. Indulging in each others’ warmth. Waltzing with so much intensity the ball’s attendants couldn’t pull their eyes away. Talking under the gazebo. Feeling safe sleeping in his presence despite the horrors the nightmares often bring. Being unable to see him disheartened, his heart thumping and racing when he looks at him, looking at him in the cave and wishing he could just throw his arms around Madeleine’s neck, pull him in and— oh. He’s in love with him, isn’t he? 

He’d never felt anything like it before. Espresso didn’t grow up with an example of romance to go by, and once he was employed, he made the choice to abandon such frivolous concepts as family and romance, ideas that once failed him and struck him with the fear of abandonment. Had he ever truly hated Madeleine, or did he build walls between him to protect himself from the consequences? 

Not that it mattered anymore. Loss followed him like a flock of crows to a bad omen, a drop of mixture to his experimental brewing. He was destined for this from the very beginning. 

So he settles for this: “Yes,” he says. “I suppose I do.”

“Then don’t throw that aside, kiddo,” Hollyberry offers a playful shove, watching the fall of the horizon. “Take that love and direct it inwards. Internalize it. I guarantee you, if Madeleine were here, he would want you to take care of yourself and love yourself more than anything. That’s what gives us power. With that, we can finally have hope.”

Espresso flutters his eyes shut, feeling the waves of dread wash over him and retract. “I hope so.”

- - ┈┈∘┈˃̶༒˂̶┈∘┈┈ - -

A few days later, Espresso returns to the Hollyberry Palace for extended preparation. He watches idly as soldiers adjust themselves to armor, spar with devices intended to replicate their approaching enemy, and chatter apprehensively amongst themselves. He hadn’t gotten any sleep the previous night (which is no surprise), and all morning he had been operating solely off of straight espresso (the coffee itself). Hollyberry insisted that if he wanted to contribute to their root force, he would have to observe and oversee battlefield training… but he knew nothing about these sorts of preparations. Not all soldiers were capable of wielding magic, after all.

Beside him, the knightess Raspberry he encountered on his doorstep that day barked out orders to various operating allies. Frankly, she looked just as exhausted and sleep-deprived as he was, only that she was better at hiding it in favor of commanding their soldiery. Given their Commander wasn’t there to lead their forces, she had taken charge of his duties, and from the looks of it she was wrought with uncertainty. As if she was caught between feeling honored for the opportunity, wishing to prove herself wholeheartedly, and feeling unworthy of the position entirely. 

Just as she was relieved of making commands, she punched the bridge of her nose in irritation, and what better time to catechize?

“Raspberry, wasn’t it?” he asks, knowing her name quite well by now but still seeking to be courteous. “Might I assist you? I must say, you look positively agitated.”

Raspberry looks up from her scroll, considering for a moment before shaking her head. “I’m alright, thank you. This isn’t usually my job, so I’m still adjusting to its demands, that’s all.”

“You don’t drink your coffee with milk or cream, do you?” Otherwise, we might not get along. “Otherwise, I can brew you a cup on my way back.”

“I’m not a coffee drinker,” she says simply. “I prefer tea. Namely steeped in distilled water.”

“Respectable,” he replies. So she wouldn’t offer him another job, nor a way out of this by fetching his speciality beverage. Just lovely. “I apologize if I’ve interfered with your duties, then.”

“It’s fine. I’m off the clock until one of these fellows hits the ground or gets blasted by our mechanics anyway,” she assures him, heaving a rather audible sigh. “I cannot imagine your end of this situation.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if you don’t mind me being crass for a moment, you returned from your journey alone and empty-handed, only to continue working your ass off and returning with detailed, extensive study and planning for our next countermoves. You are responsible for the entirety of our foundation in this war, and yet there isn’t much you can do now, is there? You’ve been standing in that corner with a steaming mug and a stiff look on your face for the past hour.”

Espresso, despite his tactical conversationalism, was unable to counter that. He contemplates for several seconds before smirking, taking another sip of his pitch-dark brew. “I wasn’t aware you were observing me. But yes, you would be right.”

“It was difficult not to. Your presence is an energy completely opposite to the common soldier or nobleman.” 

“Fair enough.”

Raspberry hesitates as silence approaches in waves before settling on her next words. “I admire you, y’know. How you’ve managed to provide your unrelenting intelligence and intellect after what you’ve witnessed is beyond me. Even so, I…”

She stammers over her words, uncertain all over again. Espresso cannot look her in the eye.

“Even so, when I look at you, part of me believes we are the same. That you must understand me the way I understand you, even at a glance.” she frowns, squinting her eyes closed. “The only difference between you and I is that perhaps I don’t deserve my position here at all.”

Before Espresso can process her words, a ringing sound blares throughout the courtyard. Soldiers collapse on themselves, servants freeze in place, and Espresso winces, covering his ears. Raspberry whips her head around, shock apparent in her features. “It’s the emergency alarm.”

All of a sudden, each and every soldier gathers at the entrance, forming a single-file line and awaiting orders. Espresso was aware of this practice, but he’d never seen it in person before. Raspberry leaves his side to walk down the line, seemingly scanning each individual to assure all are accounted for. Shortly after her attendance-taking is complete, the Queen Mother herself marches through the doorway, an array of common guards accompanying her at both sides. Not only that, but a raven nestled into her forearm appears to have an envelope clamped between the jaws of its beak.

“Comrades!” Hollyberry bellows, gently tugging the envelope from the raven’s grasp. “We’ve just received a letter from Queen Elderberry of the Elderberry Kingdom. If my assumption is correct… the message inside will most likely be a warning for our kingdoms— a declaration of war.” 

Shocked reactions ripple throughout the field, be it a panicked exchange of glances, widened eyes or a sharp intake of breath, but no one dares say a word as Hollyberry unfolds the letter within.

“Subjects of the joint Hollyberry and Vanilla Kingdoms,” Hollyberry reads, “I expect that the mage Espresso has swiftly returned to you, and with no shortage of information regarding our encounters and what resulted in your precious Madeleine’s passing. Likewise, it would be well-advised to prepare yourselves for impending bloodshed, because this war is far from over.

“Worry not, Ancients and former allies alike, I have made certain to preserve our creation. After that little incident, the Dragon has been restored to its fullest capabilities and endowed with the Gem of Efflorescing Splendor it previously lost. Yet once I beheld the machinery of our glorious making, I couldn’t help but wonder; why must such power go to waste? Although the Ancients are far superior to the commonfolk in purity and competence, that doesn’t mean a fragment of their abilities must go untouched, sealed away to never again see the light of day.

“To this I say, let us renounce our fear of equality, our blissful ignorance to the will of the Divine! Subjects, prepare yourselves to witness power beyond what mere Soul Jams can predict! You may choose your path, igniting the flames of vengeance at our expense, or meet the Divine yourselves in your futile efforts. By nightfall, all will become clear.

“I cannot wait to see what you choose ,” Hollyberry finalizes the letter with lingering eyes. “ Cordially, Elderberry of the Elderberry Kingdom.” 

“By nightfall,” Raspberry breathes, casting her head towards the sky. “We’ve no time to lose!”

“Soldiers, gather your equipment and meet at the front lines! Guards, sound the formal alarm and alert all subjects of what approaches!” Hollyberry orders, turning on her heel to storm through the palace. “This is our final battle. We will need all precautionary defenses in order, now move out!”

Espresso stood in place as dread flooded his senses. Everything flashed into motion at once, everyone he’d watched in relative stillness and skepticism rushing by like their lives depended on it, because they did. The alarms persisted, only louder and from every possible speaker in the kingdom, overwhelming his mind and body. He wasn’t sure when, or how, but in the blur of his quickening heartbeat and the haze obscuring his vision, he’d resulted on a battlefield with two thoughts on his mind.

One: if they lost to Elderberry and the destruction she had promised, he would lose everything he had left. Not only had Madeleine slipped away, but he would lose his studies, his home, the people of this kingdom— these kingdoms— that he’d learned to call home, because he’d never had one before. All of it in one day, one nightmare presented as reality.

And two: the only one to blame for this catastrophe was himself.