Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

For Margaret’s first semester at Selphia University, calling the building she lives in a dormitory might be a mild exaggeration. She feels like, for it to be a dormitory, there needs to be more than one student living there. Also, there’s a restaurant on the bottom floor, which might also serve to disqualify it, even if the one running it is also teaching. And lives here. And has no division between restaurant and personal foods.

It’s not a normal arrangement, is what she’s trying to get at. It’s the kind of thing a lot of people would point at and ask her why she’s here and not at the Elven Conservatory. The sort of thing that literally nobody asks Daria, and Unity Point isn’t even run by anyone particularly impressive. The dean of Selphia University is literally a Native Dragon.

But then, people don’t really ask why Daria does things in general. Margaret’s just unlucky enough to be the reasonable one.

“Do you think this is enough space?” Porco asks, like the floor space of each room isn’t bigger than some houses. The only real downside is that there’s no way she’s getting a piano up these stairs.

And the only alternative within her budget was a house overhanging a cliff, and she knows herself well enough to know that can only end in disaster. Really, that’s probably why it was so cheap.

…Well, there was also that one dorm, but it’s well known to be literally haunted, so it was never even in consideration.

“It’s perfect.” She can fit a desk over there, and her harp in that corner, and there’s even enough space for a mini-fridge so she can actually have her own food. There’s also a window, for if Daria’s friend Raven stops by with anything. Dragons forbid her sister send her a package in the mail like a normal person. “...But you need to stop keeping food in the potted plants.” How had he fit an entire bowl of rice in there? What was the point of it?

Something to consider later, as she unpacks. As she gets her closet together, and remembers to ask for the Wi-Fi password so she can check out Iris Noire’s new hit single.

As she plugs in her headphones, so she can pretend this building, after closing, isn’t as empty as her life in general. Just her, Porco, and the occasional text from Daria. For an elf living among humans, that’s a perfectly normal amount of social interaction.

Perfectly normal.

For Margaret’s first semester at Selphia University, her classes aren’t particularly interesting. That’s the issue with general education credits, and prerequisites, and required electives, and the limited number of hours in the day.

The people are slightly more interesting. On her first day, she’s learned that the Dragon Knight position still exists, and is still hereditary, for some reason. The current one is in her world history class, and keeps taking breaks to chug from a thermos of union stew.

“The duty of a knight is to be prepared for anything,” Forte explains, slipping a pair of chopsticks into the thermos to pull out a mushroom. “There are simply… fewer combat applications.”

Margaret has known Forte for half an hour and can already tell she feels disappointed about this. She wouldn’t be surprised if her phone background was a picture of herself with a giant sword. That’s just the impression she gives. “Fewer?”

“Sometimes, we need to save students from themselves. Thankfully, Marionetta and Ambrosia are fairly docile at the moment, but there’s always someone who thinks that translates to Thunderbolt.”

It takes a few moments for Margaret to figure out what she’s talking about. For as important as they are to the land’s supply of runes, the Guardians aren’t talked about very often. Something about the most recent one learning just enough about the Etherlink process to trick an Earthmate friend into doing it on her. No one’s been allowed near knowledge of the spell since. The history of the Guardians themselves is a bit of a casualty of that.

Maybe it’s a bit different in Selphia because one of them is sealed in a dormitory basement. She’s not sure. That’d require her to ask about it.

There’s nothing about it in her textbook’s table of contents. She supposes the scope of the class is a bit too broad for that. “No one tries anything with the other one?” There are four of them, right?

“That would require them to enter Leon Karnak. Most people have enough self-preservation not to do that.” Okay, she needs to look up Leon Karnak later, and why going there is apparently a death sentence.

But… later. Once they’ve finished going over the chapter about how the Native Dragons chose their territories, and discussed how trustworthy those accounts are- sure, they come from the dragons themselves, but nothing’s binding them to honesty- and actually written something down. That’s what she’s here for, after all.

…Well, okay, she’s here for the world history credit. But that requires doing all of these things, so… it counts.

She thinks this might be what a normal college experience looks like.

For Margaret’s first semester at Selphia University, Frey seems like a perfectly normal person. For the most part. She’s majoring in rune studies, which is offered due to tradition more than anything, but some people just have niche interests like that.

Margaret isn’t sure what a major like that entails, exactly, but given by the glimpse she caught of her schedule, it involves a lot of math. That’s about as much as she cares to learn about the topic.

There’s one other thing about her that might be considered slightly out of the ordinary. “Hey, Meg? Do you think I could stay over with you this weekend?”

“You wouldn’t be bothering anyone.” Porco would jump for joy at the chance to feed someone else, except it’s a coin flip as to if he’ll be able to hold himself back from eating the food first. And no one else has moved in, so the two of them have the only opinions that matter. “Something going on?”

“Movie night. Pico likes to bring Marionetta out for it. It feels weird enough when she’s just under the floor.” This was why ghosts shouldn’t have been in charge of university locations! Especially when they looked like six-year-olds! Especially when their souls were tied to a giant puppet monster! “I don’t know how the Royal Earthmates could stand it.”

“The Royal Earthmates didn’t literally live on top of the Rune Spots?” And also they weren’t inviting the Guardians to movie nights, because those weren’t invented until over a decade after Guardian Amber was… she’ll say sealed, because the alternative is admitting that the only thing keeping Ambrosia in place is her own good nature.

“...That might be it. I’m not sure she’d like me, anyway. I’ve never been in the same room with her, and when I said I was an Earthmate they made me sign a bunch of liability forms. Nothing about the seal, just… in general.”

Well. If that’s not a bad sign, she doesn’t know what is.

But then, she still thinks the first red flag is that they converted a haunted mansion to a dormitory in the first place. As far as she can tell, the only students living there are edgelords and people with no budget.

If it’ll get Frey out of there for even a little while, Margaret is more than happy to help.

For Margaret’s first semester at Selphia University, sleepovers are a subdued affair. The way her friends’ schedules work out means, between Forte’s ceremonial duties and Clorica’s night classes and Xiao Pai’s family business, there isn’t the time for anything bigger.

But she and Frey can sit down with a Dragon Priestesses CD- she can never tell if that’s just the name of the group, or an actual title, and the internet’s not helping- and it’s still less lonely than it is most nights.

Not that she’s lonely or anything. Porco’s great, and she gets to see all kinds of people during the day! It’s just… quiet, that’s it!

If they shared a lot of classes, they’d be using this as an opportunity to study for midterms. They should probably still be doing that. Margaret just can’t bring herself to suggest it.

Besides, Frey’s stories are so much more interesting. “You know how Vishnal and Clorica invited me for breakfast the other day?”

“Did something happen?” Did it involve Volkanon? Ventuswill’s personal assistant is too busy to make a lot of appearances, but everyone knows he has a rather large personality.

Frey nods. “I ran into Venti- into Lady Ventuswill. I… might be moving into the castle over break?” She sounds like she can’t believe it. Or maybe it’s just that Margaret can’t believe it. It’s not very believable that those two things might go together.

She can sort of see how it might happen. There are rooms set aside in the castle for particularly exceptional students, and there’s also some language in the charter referring specifically to Earthmates. Either one is something that could be easily noticed by a Native Dragon like Ventuswill.

It’s just something she has a hard time seeing. “The castle? Are you sure? You aren’t just misinterpreting something?”

“I have no idea. She said she wanted to get to know me better. I’d say she was offering to be my mentor or something, but…” But the last person she filled that role for was Guardian Amber, and everyone knows how that ended. “I feel like I should accept, just because it’s a big opportunity- even bigger than being accepted to the Royal Magic Academy.”

“Do you think it’s a good idea?” Sure, Ventuswill is one of the more predictable Native Dragons. It might be to balance out the fact that Terrable is so secretive it’s only possible to tell the current incarnation is new because she’s gotten smaller, and also the last one identified as male. But that doesn’t mean they know enough about her to be sure it’s safe. “I know you can handle yourself, but-”

“It’s the best opportunity I’ll ever have.” Frey flips a notebook open to lines and lines of equations Margaret will never understand. “It’d be nice if my brother could visit without having to sign a bunch of liability waivers.”

…Well. When she puts it like that, it sounds sort of obvious.

For Margaret’s second semester at Selphia University, the first sign that things are about to change is when a prince moves into the restaurant fleeing nepotism. She writes it off as strange, but not a problem. It’ll be nice to have someone new around.

It just gets weirder from there.

Chapter Text

History is a fickle thing. What is remembered, how it directs future events… few can say what far-reaching effects a given action will have. Ventuswill is one of those people, to an extent, and even she can be surprised in hindsight.

A few simple observations on the state of education in Norad, and less than two hundred years later, Selphia is a bustling college town. The industrial revolution was definitely part of it, too. Even if most technology uses at least a little magic to function, purely physical inventions like phone lines have done a lot for encouraging people to travel, and to educate themselves somewhere else.

As for her position in it all… that’s a bit harder to explain.

Early in the morning, she yawns and stretches her wings. It’s important to stretch them, even if she doesn’t use them nearly as often as she used to. Especially if she doesn’t use them nearly as often as she used to.

As soon as she’s sure her draconic body is still functioning properly, she takes a small bottle from a nearby shelf, screws it open, and breathes in deeply. Her body shrinks, her claws turn to hands, and soon she looks like any other human with horns and wings.

There are stories of dragons who could do this without outside assistance. They might even be true, though the dragons in question disappeared when Venti was very young. By the time Leon was born- not quite when time becomes worth keeping track of, but close- they’d vanished near-completely from human memory.

So. Potions it is.

She doesn’t do this every day, of course. Her natural form is a good one, as long as she doesn’t plan on doing anything that requires doors. Or roads. Or hands without claws. Those days don’t happen anywhere near as often as they used to, but they still happen. Today is not one of those days, for one specific reason.

Today is pancake day.

It’s the biggest event in the castle. A monthly all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast for everyone who lives there, student, staff, and visiting nobles alike. Or whatever they’re being called since King Gilbert turned the monarchy into a bunch of symbolic figureheads.

Whatever the last group is called, there aren’t a lot of them around at the moment. Some of the students invite their friends from time to time, but no one really cares as long as it isn’t the same people every time. There’s enough pancakes for everybody now that Venti has a human form that can’t consume an entire buffet table at once.

And, more than that, it’s a chance to meet new people. They still aren’t likely to just go and strike up a conversation with her, but she can watch, and listen, and feel like she’s being included. Hear if anything interesting is going on in either the school or the town proper. See if there’s anyone worth keeping an eye on.

There usually isn’t. As interesting as humans are, not much comes up over the course of a single breakfast. But she can always be surprised.

Venti puts the potion away and waits to see what humans will visit her castle today.

Today, it seems, is a day she’s pleasantly surprised.

Vishnal and Clorica are some of Volkanon’s favorite people. They’re enthusiastic, reasonably competent, and know how to hold an interesting conversation. Ventuswill has a bit of a soft spot for Clorica. She brings her pancakes, on the occasion that she’s made a few too many for herself.

It’s not surprising that the two of them have a number of friends- they’re always bringing someone to these breakfasts, and it’s a different person each time. And the person they brought today is interesting.

Even if she does get Ventuswill’s attention by literally bumping into her. “Sorry, sorry, I-”

“It’s fine. This happens all the time.” Buffet lines are just like this. She considers an event successful so long as it ends without any broken plates. They really shouldn’t be using the good plates for this, but they just have so many of them. Dignitaries keep sending them as gifts, for some reason. They have enough plates.

“I- …Okay. Okay.” The panic quickly recedes, which is great. Probably wouldn’t happen if Venti was in her real body, which is another point for the human form. Or maybe it would, because she’s known enough Earthmates in her long existence to understand that sometimes they’re just like that.

She hasn’t seen a lot of Earthmates like that in a long time, or Earthmates in general, but she knows they still exist, they just haven’t spoken to her since Amber traumatized that poor boy from Fenith. Which is perfectly reasonable! She doesn’t have a problem with it at all!

…It is nice to see one again, though. Most mortals wouldn’t recognize it at a glance, but there’s something about this girl’s eyes that betrays her connection to the earth. It’s the sort of thing a place like Selphia needs. Even a well-tended window box would be enough.

It’s not something she can ask if she’s doing, because she can’t just tell someone she knows they’re an Earthmate. It makes things weird.

Maybe she can work her way towards it? It’s been a while since she’s attempted a truly casual conversation with someone new, but there’s no harm in trying, right? What kind of god would she be if she got tripped up just by trying to talk to someone? “Have you come here with friends? I haven’t seen you here before.” She did see who she came in the door with, but saying that would also sound weird.

The girl nods. “Vishnal and Clorica. The guy they originally wanted to invite made an excuse not to come, and I’m not going to turn down a free breakfast.” She lifts a steaming pile of pancakes onto her plate. It’s one of the ones with little Runeys etched around the edges. Venti hasn’t seen one of those in a while, she’d thought they were all broken. “It’s that or try to make something edible out of one onion.”

…It’s working. They’re actually talking to each other. Venti would be grinning, except that wouldn’t be dignified. She has a reputation to maintain, after all, both professional and otherwise. No one respects a god who gets all giddy just by holding a conversation with a random person.

She just has to keep going, and learn more about the girl, and why she’s in a place that people like her have been avoiding for centuries.

It’s actually not that interesting of a story.

The girl’s name is Frey. She’s in Selphia because she thinks a place so connected to the world’s runes is the best place to be studying them. She’s so convinced of the logic of this she has no idea why nobody else is doing it.

If not for how people these days mostly care about runes for their use in technology, Ventuswill would say this is blisteringly mundane. Frey’s genuine love of the subject is a breath of fresh air.

Her willingness to talk normally with her, even more so. “So, what about you? I always thought the gods were supposed to be more… distant?”

They weren’t always that way. The other three who were around at the time claim that they learned their lesson after… well. And Terrable is following in her predecessor’s footsteps.

Venti’s never been able to do that. If she was, she wouldn’t have let the Bastets build their village on her land, or let it remain for this long. Sure, she could just lock herself up in the castle all day, but…

“I find this gives me the perfect amount of distance, actually.” If it didn’t, she would have stopped this after the first decade or so. "People are more casual with their teachers than gods. They also tend to be less willing to sacrifice themselves for them." Of course, then the administrative side of things started to grow out of hand, but that’s what she has Volkanon for.

The Earthmate flinches. “That makes sense.” Ventuswill has no idea what she did wrong. It’s not like the Guardians existing is any sort of big secret. The existence of the internet makes that sort of impossible. “You know how many conspiracy theories there are about that?”

Too many. Not all of them directly involve her. Some are about her, but not entirely about that.

One of them, an idol group from Fenith took to social media to disprove. She isn’t sure anything’s come of that, but it’s hardly the weirdest thing she’s seen while mindlessly scrolling.

It’s a good thing this is a conversation over pancakes. She can focus on that and not on how her friends loving her too much led to a select group of people vehemently hating her. “Are there any new ones, or is it just more of the same?” There was that time Sechs accused her of murdering a whole tribe of dwarves at a time when she was clearly visible at a televised event, that was interesting, but it faded off really quickly because it was so stupid. And Ethelberd’s personal correspondence was leaked to the press shortly after.

And also the soldiers doing the actual killing posted videos to social media. Really, it was mostly interesting due to the sheer incompetence of everyone involved. They just don’t do cover-ups like they used to.

She’s not going to say it’s a bad thing. But it’s really, really stupid.

Frey shrugs. “Does it count if they’re merging theories that already existed?” This is why Venti never posts anything on social media. “I wish they wouldn’t come up when I look for plant care advice. How is any of that relevant to the growing time of a tomato?”

There. An opening for even more interesting things.

It should probably concern Ventuswill that someone who has an education to worry about agrees almost instantly to spend a bit of time each week tending the castle farm. Maybe it’s just that she wants a place to live that hasn’t been haunted since before Dolce became a Guardian. That’s a perfectly good reason for people to do things nowadays, according to Forte.

But she needs to know this Earthmate. To see if maybe that’d make things better. If she can find someone who treats her as something close to an equal.

She hasn’t had that in so long. It’s always been just a bit too risky. But that was before the university. And as long as she’s in human form, the Guardians there are are more than sufficient for her to keep going.

Maybe this time, it’ll end differently.

Chapter Text

It takes less than two hours for Frey to have all her stuff packed. Half an hour to actually do the packing, the rest to inform everyone who she wants to know where she lives.

Most of that is devoted to her brother. “You know our parents are gonna say you’re dead to them.”

She rolls her eyes and drags her sword out from under the bed. It isn’t anything special, just a hunk of relatively-sharp metal with a Tamitaya enchantment, but it’s a better weapon than anyone else at the dojo has except Forte and Kiel. And they’re from the lineage of Dragon Knights, so they don’t count. “They’ve been saying that since I came here instead of the Royal Magic Academy.”

It almost made sense at the time. Even if the two schools were at relatively similar levels of prestige, their whole family had attended the Royal Magic Academy.

Then Lest hadn’t got in, and Frey hadn’t even applied, and the two of them became an immeasurable disappointment to their family. Frey moreso than Lest- He’d at least tried, and while Alvarna Academy’s method of education was experimental, that didn’t make it a bad school.

Really, she had no idea what they had against her going to Selphia. It was a good school, and the first proper university in all of Norad. What was wrong with it?

“Yeah, but… you know how everyone gets about Ventuswill.”

“I don’t know why they care so much. Venti’s nice.” It wasn’t her fault that the two youngest Guardians had been sealed under incredibly controversial circumstances. “If they’re blaming anyone, you’d think it’d be…”

Well. She knows why no one wants to talk ill of Guardian Amber. Everything she’s ever read about her says she was a nice person, except for the actions she took to take her position. And thanks to the lifespans of the elves, it all technically happened within living memory.

It’s just always felt really unfair to her. Basically every historian’s account agrees that Ventuswill never had a choice in any of it. She’d said no more Guardians, after the mess that was Guardian Dylas everyone else agreed no more Guardians, and then all of that happened anyway.

And her parents, for no visible reason, hold all of it against the Native Dragon.

“I’m not sure I know why your parents do anything.” Lest’s roommate’s voice filters through the phone. “They showed up last month, and Mom had to chase them away from harassing Aria about the Omnigate thing.”

To be fair, everything Frey knew about Omnigate implied it was something that shouldn’t have been rediscovered by someone under the age of ten, but… that sounded about right. One of the best things about Selphia was not having to deal with them in person, because there was no way they’d ever set foot in the town. “Not Aaron?”

Roy laughs. “Aaron saw their car and ran straight out of town.” Smart kid. She can hear Lest groan on the other end of the line.

“Maybe I should have gone with you to Selphia…”

It might have been feasible. He hadn’t gotten into the Royal Magic Academy because he completely failed the practical spellcasting part of the entrance exam, and Selphia University doesn’t have one of those.

But what’s done is done. Lest is in Alvarna, Frey’s in Selphia, and their parents can fuck off to Sechs with all their money as far as she’s concerned. She’s going to the castle, and she’s going to get in touch with her roots as an Earthmate, and it’s going to be great.

She refuses to let it be any other way.

Moving in is even simpler. Vishnal takes one of her bags- the one without anything fragile in it, she’s not stupid- with all the enthusiasm of someone who’s been retaking the exact same cooking class for three semesters in a row and sees Volkanon as a role model.

Either of those by themselves would be enough. With both combined, Frey’s just glad he hasn’t accidentally flung her suitcase through a window. Neither of them has the money to pay for that.

“Right this way!” If she didn’t know better, she’d say his eyes are literally on fire. She still isn’t convinced they aren’t. “The Earthmate-slash-Royal Quarters are on the east side of the castle.”

It was a thing, historically, where Earthmates were treated with the same respect as royalty. That might be somewhat the case still- a couple members of a recent branch family are Earthmates, and they’re some of the most respected public figures in Norad. That might be more to do with being war heroes than the Earthmate thing, but no one’s looking too closely at any of it.

Still, the idea of having quarters fit for royalty feels… mildly unsettling. Frey’s never been a particularly good Earthmate, that’d require having access to more than just a few pots and whatever seeds she could convince the vegetable ghosts at the dorm to give her. She hasn’t brought the pots with her, but she did bring the seeds, because otherwise she’d be expected to start from scratch with turnips, or something. “Is that really necessary?”

“It is the quarters Lady Ventuswill assigned to you.” Well. No arguing with that. “I’m led to believe it’s tradition for whoever’s tending the fields to have the quarters closest to them. It’s more practical that way.”

So practical, in fact, that it survived the castle’s conversion to a school building. Or maybe no one’s thought about it in that time. It’s not like it would have come up after. The wing would have been more or less empty this whole time, aside from the occasional member of royalty. They aren’t holding any weird grudges on behalf of someone who’s told them multiple times to stop.

Not that there’s been much royalty, either. The king’s sister attended once, but then she dropped out after her first year and ran away to reform the nation’s public library system. This whole part of the castle has just been gathering dust since then.

Lots of dust. She’s surprised the neglect hasn’t left room for Gates to form, but maybe that has something to do with Venti hanging around. “Do you know if there’s a vacuum anywhere?” At least the place has been updated to have electrical outlets. Part of her was a bit worried about that.

“I’m sure there’s a supply closet somewhere. Otherwise, Clorica said she’d be willing to help.” Of course she did. She’s just that kind of person. She’s also someone who’d sleepwalk her way through the entire thing, which maybe isn’t ideal with a new location. Maybe they could keep her awake with some apple pie, but… even if she had the ingredients, the kitchen is another area that desperately needs a good cleaning. She’s not sure that counter knows what soap is.

Just another reason to get started as soon as possible.

Once the cleaning’s done and her friends have left for the night, Frey turns on her phone. It’s flooded with the expected number of irate texts and voicemails.

How dare she accept an offer from the Divine Wind. How dare she betray her ancestors like that. How dare she be willing to set foot in Selphia to begin with. She isn’t their daughter anymore. They’re putting conditions on her brother’s inheritance that he loses it all if he shares any of it with her. You know. Normal things.

She isn’t sure how legal that last bit is, but it’s not like there’s anything substantial to inherit anyway. They aren’t exactly the de Sainte-Coquilles.

Honestly, she should have gone all the way and taken a selfie with Venti in her dragon form. Maybe she should still do that. See if she can get them to actually explode with rage.

There’s also a bit from Lest saying he’s made the social media post she wanted him to, but the angry bombardment of her phone’s told her that much already. She hasn’t even listened to the voicemails, they’ll just be more of the same. She’ll have to take a look at the post proper, see if it’s been made as innocently inflammatory as she wanted.

My sister just got a position as Selphia’s castle Earthmate! I’m so proud of her!

…Yeah, that seems good enough. Rage in the comments, a lot of regular people being confused at the rage in the comments, a like from the person the other Earthmates are supposedly doing this to honor… If anything, it’s gotten a better response than she could have ever expected.

Will this be enough to make people realize they’re being stupid? Probably not, but it’ll be great if she ever does something worth writing an autobiography about.

Her account’s getting a fair bit of flames, too, but that’s easy to deal with. Block a bunch of people, set everything to private for a week or so, and it should all die down on its own.

…And she’s gotten friend requests from half the population of Fenith. This isn’t how she expected to become internet popular, but she’ll take it.

She turns her phone off. Plugs it in. Wonders if there’s any way she can ever top this. She doesn’t think there is.

…Asking Venti for a selfie it is.

The picture blows up so fast. At least fifteen people so far have gotten their accounts suspended for at least five different TOS violations. She’s surprised the mods are acting so quickly, but… well, the alternative is angering a dragon, even if she isn’t a dragon all that often these days.

The fact that Lest already riled everyone up probably doesn’t hurt. “How much time do these people have on their hands?”

“Too much.” Venti’s voice is a bit deeper as a dragon, but not so much to be unrecognizable. “I suppose they’ve never had a direct target for their vitriol before.”

They haven’t. The closest thing Venti has to her own social media is the official account for the university, and that’s just for making announcements. Frey can’t imagine a bunch of people flaming a school’s official account would end well at all.

She turns off the phone. She has class in less than an hour, and it’ll take at least three times that long to get through all of these notifications. She’ll probably just mark everything as read once she gets home. And then set everything to private like she initially wanted. The picture will be visible just long enough to make everyone mad, and then it’ll be gone, and then it’ll be back up once she feels like letting the general public see what she’s doing again.

“How did people rebel against their parents before phones?” She asks. The best part of this is there not being a chance of physical consequences. She’s a legal adult, so they can’t pull her out of school. Coming up to do anything to her would require them to set foot in Selphia. They can threaten her inheritance, but again, there isn’t anything to inherit.

“Sex and drugs, mostly.” Yeah, that’s about what she expected. “I saw someone graffiti their own storefront once.”

…Well, that’s probably a short enough story to hear it before class. “Why did they do that?”

“Oh, the usual reasons. They liked someone their parents didn’t approve of, and things escalated more quickly than anyone would have wanted…”

Chapter Text

People say that Norad’s royal family is a bit larger than it needs to be. Arthur can’t bring himself to disagree with that. While it’s better than the situation in Sechs- Ethelberd is eighty-seven years old, childless, and has yet to name an heir- he can’t even remember the names of half the relatives he meets with regularly.

He can, however, have his further education decided on the basis of his father wanting to make up for the embarrassment that was Aunt Selphy. He doesn’t know his aunt very well, that would require her to be invited to family gatherings, but he’s heard time and time again that her dropping out has badly damaged their family’s relationship with Ventuswill.

He personally doubts that. She’s spoken a lot of praise of Selphy’s systems, much more than simple politeness requires. If she disapproves of anything, it’s that they attempted to push her into a political science major to begin with.

He can’t say that out loud, of course. He can’t be seen to defy his father while still living under his roof. But he’ll think about it all the same.

All things considered, it could be a lot worse. Selphia University might not be the Royal Magic Academy, but that’s really the only point against it. They accept new students throughout the year, instead of just during fall semester, so he can graduate high school early and dive right in. Everyone agrees that Lady Ventuswill is a responsible authority figure, if one ignores a certain fringe group on the internet, and so things can be trusted to run smoothly.

As the only way he’d ever take the throne is if something went horribly wrong- there are memes about his father not knowing what a condom is- he’s not even being told what to major in.

He can follow his dreams in a way the aunt he’s supposed to be making up for couldn’t.

Finance, maybe? Even with as many siblings as he has, he should inherit enough for money to never really be an issue, but that’s still an important skill for running a business. If he wants a position overseeing international trade, which is one of the possibilities he’s keeping a close eye on, it’s a good first step.

Law is also a possibility, but… at least two of his siblings have mothers involved in the court system, and it’s awkward enough running into extended family members he’s actually related to.

There are other options, too. There’s good old political science, political history, maybe rune studies if he feels like calling back to that era…

…He’ll have to see what things look like on campus before making any sort of decisions. There are tours running at this time of year, right?

People say that Norad’s royal family is a bit lackadaisical about its heirs’ safety. Arthur doesn’t really agree with that, because unless something goes horribly wrong, he’s never going to have a chance of taking the throne. And that’s fine. He doesn’t want it.

He also doesn’t want to tour the campus of Selphia University accompanied by five or six armed guards. No one else needs to talk their families out of that, it’s just him.

At least he can comfort himself with the fact that he did successfully talk them out of it. People might say it’s irresponsible, but again, no chance of taking the throne. He’s not even considered to be one of his father’s favorites. The last time he was mentioned by mass media at all was when his mother relinquished her parental rights. If anything, bringing guards into this would be more likely to cause trouble, because no one’s going to recognize him.

As proven when he gets off the bus with a bunch of other prospective students, and no one gives him a second glance. Here, he’s just another kid.

“First, we have the center of our illustrious institution.” He’s not sure Volkanon normally does stints as a tour guide, but as far as potential special treatment goes, it could be far worse. “Through the center door is Lady Ventuswill’s chambers. They are open to the sky, so she can stretch her wings as she pleases, though she does have some enclosed spaces for storage and conducting meetings on rainy days.”

Everyone oohs and ahhs an appropriate amount. “To the right are the quarters for Earthmates and the higher nobility. Most of you won’t have much reason to enter at any point.” Most. he tries telling himself it doesn’t mean anything, but can’t bring himself to believe it. “On the left, we have more general living quarters, if you will follow me…”

Something moved inside the right-hand window. Arthur looked up, and inside, he could see a face. Probably someone cleaning the area. Maybe someone who was there for another reason.

He couldn’t think of what reason anyone would have for being in that part of the castle if they didn’t live there. Perhaps all the empty space would be useful for something, but…

He already wasn’t looking forward to it. Even if he didn’t necessarily get along with his siblings, there was something reassuring about knowing they were there. This castle wouldn’t have that.

Not that side, at least. The one Volkanon led them through seemed to be trying its very hardest to make up for it. It just didn’t matter when there wasn’t space there for him.

People say that Norad’s royal family have no sense of self-preservation. Arthur’s not really sure where they got that idea. Throughout history, there have been knights, and then security forces, but it’s not because any of them are particularly reckless or anything, recent wars aside. An accident of birth shouldn’t make any course of action more dangerous than for anyone else.

Even if it did, most of them are just fine with their guards. He simply doesn’t want to make them expend the extra effort for someone with little political value. Everyone knows who his father’s favorites are, and it’s not him.

And Selphia, despite its proximity to the border, is one of Norad’s more secure locations. If he wants to go for a walk after the tour, get a more personal look at things, there shouldn’t be any problems.

The first place he goes to is the castle field. For the most part, it’s… overgrown. There is, however, a small section that isn’t, with a climbing tomato vine, a row of onions, and a little patch of toyherb in bloom.

He’d say they’re growing surprisingly well for such a cold time of year, but it shouldn’t be a surprise. This field is meant to be tended to by Earthmate. Growing things out of season is one of the more common powers they can have. It’s the first thing a child learns about the agricultural industry.

The earthmate in question comes out with a light pink watering can, her hair tied up with white butterfly ribbons. “Oh! You’re from the group that was touring earlier!” She doesn’t ask for his name, or what he’s doing here, just gestures for him to sit down on a nearby stump.

He does, and it’s only then that he realizes just how tired his feet are. “Is this your work?”

She nods, and leans over to brush a leaf with her fingertips. “It’s still pretty new, but I think it’s coming along well. All it takes is a bit of time, and it all just falls into place.”

He’s never spoken to an Earthmate about the nature of their powers before. He’s related to some, he’s not sure how, but they don’t visit the capital. “You’d think more people would be…”

“They would, if they were here. Alvarna’s gardens prove that pretty well.” He isn’t sure how she knows exactly how much water to apply to the soil, but maybe he doesn’t need to. She’s an Earthmate. That’s just how they work. “I think I’m the first Earthmate to attend since… ever.”

“That’s sort of surprising.” He should be thinking before he says anything, but this girl doesn’t know who he is. She will eventually, if she’s living in that part of the castle there’s no way she won’t, but not yet. “With how much work the Earthmates are doing to try and free the Guardians, you’d think they’d want a closer look.”

The girl flinches. Arthur thinks he must have said something wrong. Sure, their standards of technology had only gotten as high as they did by continual failure to achieve one thing, but even if they have yet to get what they wanted, they’ve still accomplished several good things.

But water spills out of the top of the can, and he realizes she must think differently.

He doesn’t know why.

He’s not going to find out until the rest of the world does.

People say that Norad’s royal family doesn’t always know what’s going on in their kingdom. This is easy to agree with, at least on the level of individuals. After all, there’s always something new to discover.

After the tour, he keeps in contact with the Earthmate. Her name is Frey, and she can list the runic structure of a crystal flower from memory, but her attempts at chemistry ended in a toxin so potent they had to evacuate the lab. She was never expected to go to Selphia, but she did it anyway, and she finds her work there fulfilling.

“Sometimes, you just have to realize the adults in your life aren’t what they’re cracked up to be, and you don’t need to listen to them all the time.” Arthur wonders if she’d say that if she knew he’s Arthur D. Lawrence, and not some random guy who shares the same first name.

He can’t ask, because that would mean telling her. Exchanging phone numbers is one thing, nobody knows enough about him for that, but… he likes that she talks to him like she would anyone. “How do you know when that is?”

“You usually figure it out after they’ve called you something horrible for not being what they expected.” Well. They haven’t gone quite that far yet. “If they can’t accept you’re a person, instead of just another part of them, you can’t trust them to ever do the right thing. A bad idea becomes their reality, and you just have to roll with it until you can get away.”

“...If you can get away.” Aunt Selphy managed, somewhat, but because of that, they’ve never met in person. Even if he doesn’t really get along with his family… it’s a massive step to take.

He’s never really thought about what an alternative would look like.

He just knows it doesn’t look like him moving into Selphia Castle. In some ways, it’d be easy, because that’s not really something he wants to do.

He hears Frey’s fingers drum against something. “I think there’s always a chance you can. Even the king doesn’t have unlimited power. As long as you’re smart about it… you could get away with lying about so many things, and they’d never realize.”

He has no idea what she’s referring to, and won’t for a while yet. But her words resonate with him all the same.

When the call ends, Arthur looks up Selphia University’s website. He likes the idea of the school itself, but if he can just find literally anywhere else to live, but one that looks respectable enough no one outside the family would think twice about it…

A name catches his eye.

Porcoline Tulle de Sainte-Coquille.

Chapter Text

The lifespans of Native Dragons are not a set thing. It all depends on the needs of the land, of their strength upon rebirth, on how much their power is called for.

The world is full of corrupted runes that need to be replaced, and has been for a very long time. In those conditions, Ventuswill has been alive for far longer than she should. Seen more things than she should have been able to. Met people that should never have known she existed.

Gathered stories of a world that keeps slipping by. Stories that she doesn’t have much chance to tell anyone.

Stories she desperately wants to tell, just so she knows at least one other person is aware of them.

She and Frey work out a deal. Frey will deliver what she grows straight from the field, and in return, Venti will tell her a story. She’s sure she can come up with more than enough anecdotes to fill a human lifetime.

Today, Frey has a specific request, as well as a bright, round tomato. “Tell me about Aden. He’s from Fenith, right? So how did he…?”

It’s not a story with a happy ending. But then, she supposes humans like sad stories sometimes. Venti turns the tomato over in her hands, and tries to think of how to phrase it.

As if on cue, a certain song comes on on the radio. “Well. If you know that much about him, you must know about Sonja. There was this order of priestesses over on Fenith, lineage based, died out after the wind bloodline vanished and the other three got completely tangled together.” She has no idea how that happened, but that’s an issue for other dragons. “Most of them couldn’t visit the dragons they’d dedicated themselves to, but the wind lineage could. That was Sonja’s family.”

She likes to think they’d liked each other. Remembers a little girl with pink hair, who happily proclaimed that their birthdays were close to each other. It wasn’t when heiresses to the lineage were typically born, but part of her thinks it should have been, if it made more children like Sonja.

Not that it matters anymore. She hasn’t received so much as a letter since the last time she returned home. She found out the other end of the time portal had opened in a newspaper.

But it had been nice while it lasted.

“They came together?” Frey prompts her, and she nods.

“Basically every time. Whenever they were here, the two of them and Amber were inseparable. She was a few years older than them, but she always got excited when meeting people from other lands, and they seemed to like her. They’d go out in the mornings talking about adventure, and come home at sunset with their hair filled with flowers.” As that time of year approached, Amber would stand by the windows, staring out in anticipation.

The final year, she’d been even more fidgety than usual. Venti hadn’t been able to keep her thoughts together long enough to notice.

She wonders if it would have changed anything if she did.

Frey knew from the start that this story doesn’t have a happy ending. She still looks like it hit her harder than expected. “If they were such close friends, why did she ask them to…?”

If only she knew. If she could find the part of herself that inspires such devotion, and tear it out, she would. “He was the only Earthmate in Selphia who didn’t know better.” He wasn’t raised to know the consequences of the Etherlink, that it meant he’d never see his friend again because of his own actions. She offered to wipe the relevant parts of his memory after the fact, but he turned her down.

That suggestion might have been a slight mistake, given the political shitshow that came right after.

Everyone saw Amber’s short stature, and innocent appearance, and decided she couldn’t have chosen to do such a thing on her own. That Ventuswill, bedridden and waiting for death, must have had something to do with it. Aden and Sonja left Selphia and never returned. The Earthmates themselves wandered out over the next fifteen years.

“...I don’t know what I’d do if someone asked me to do that,” Frey admits. “Punch them? Just say no? Tell them I’m not going to be party to their suicidal urges?”

If only Aden had known enough to say any of that. Or to just ask what the unfamiliar spell was meant to do.

At least Venti doesn’t have to worry about that with Frey. She seems relatively sensible. She just needs happier taste in stories.

The next offering isn’t a vegetable, but a crown of toyherb that has to be carefully maneuvered around Venti’s horns. It might have been easier if she first put them on in dragon form and then took the potion, but hindsight can be annoying like that.

“I’m thinking of what I want to do for my thesis,” Frey says instead of prompting her for a story. “I know it’s a long way off, but if I want it to be something really impressive, I need to make a decision early.”

Some people might have interpreted that as a call for suggestions, but there’s nothing Venti wants to see happen in particular that Frey can achieve on her own. She’s not going to send her chasing after the impossible. “And you think growing flowers will help with that?”

She shrugs. “It was the best idea I had at the time. Say, can you tell me what it was like when the battery was invented?”

“The battery?” Venti has no idea why anyone would take an interest in that in particular. But it is related to rune studies, so if anyone’s going to ask about it, it’ll be Frey. “Well, it changed a lot of things very quickly. We knew what electricity was by then, there’d been a few experiments with using it, but we were using monsters for generation at the time, so mass distribution wasn’t exactly… feasible.” And the rarity of Thunderbirds- the only ordinary monsters known to use that sort of magic- wasn’t helping.

She remembers receiving a petition to try using Thunderbolt for those experiments instead. She dismissed it instantly, of course. Thunderbolt is a dangerous creature, the experiments could have impaired his function as a Guardian… and Dylas would have hated every moment of it, which was the real deciding factor.

She never mentions that last part to anyone.

“They first discovered the concept by cycling runes through Thunderbird feathers, right?” Well, if she already knows this, why is she asking about it?

“Yes, and then they realized they could get something similar with much less magic by using a potato. When that happened, everyone involved looked very silly.” She doesn’t say that she spent that entire afternoon wondering what a potato battery would taste like. Even if the two of them can speak casually… she’d like to at least pretend she has dignity. “Between that and the invention of wires a year later, electricity became a lot more widespread.”

“What did you think about it?”

“It was a genius invention. It still is. Look at everything we wouldn’t have without it!” She gestures at her phone, the portable gaming device Pico gave her for her birthday last year, and the clock hanging on the wall. “I don’t see any downsides.”

….Okay, so she could have done without the satirical article comparing her best friends to batteries, but she knows humanity well enough to understand that was never not going to happen.

Frey nods, her face closed off. “I guess not.”

The next morning, Frey arrives so early Venti hasn’t finished her daily stretches yet, carrying a basket of onions. It’s not the most pleasant smell at the best of times, especially to her dragon nose, but they look vibrant and well-grown.

She is going to caramelize them and lump them onto so many salmon burgers. If she’s feeling particularly extravagant, maybe she’ll go fish up the salmon herself. “Well, what brings you with such a large offering?”

Offering. Bribe. The longer she lives, the more she realizes they’re just two words for the same thing.

“I’m thinking of going on a walk through Yokmir Forest.” That’s a popular activity at this time of year. It’s a summer area, so the actual season doesn’t have to matter. It’s a great way to get out of the cold. “But I know Marionetta gets weird with Earthmates sometimes, so if you have any tips for if I run into Ambrosia… that’d be nice.”

Ventuswill has never once heard of Ambrosia getting involved in trouble someone else didn’t start, for a given definition of starting trouble. She also hasn’t encountered Earthmates since her creation, though, so maybe a bit of caution is advised.

She knows what should work for a regular person, though. “She likes flowers. If you have any toyherb left from yesterday, it should at least convince her you mean well. Or… wait, I have a better idea.” She went through another period of turning her molted feathers into accessories recently, where did they go… ah! That drawer over there! “Wear this.”

The charm falls into Frey’s hands, and she runs a finger over the clasp. “You think this will help?”

“Of course it will! If you’re wearing one of my feathers, it says you’re my friend. I wouldn’t expect it to save you from, say, Thunderbolt, but Ambrosia’s an agreeable monster. She shouldn’t bother you.”

“...Thank you.” It’s a more genuine smile than she’s seen from Frey in days. She clips it to the front of her shirt, like a weird, overdone bowtie. The only way it’d look more pretentious is if she was using it to hold a cape together.

Still, if the goal is visibility, she’s certainly achieved it. And it’ll definitely do its job in telling Ambrosia they know each other.

Frey slips out the front door, saying something about being late to class. It takes Venti about half an hour to remember it’s not actually a school day, but whatever. Everyone makes that mistake at some point. There’s no reason one of her friends would be an exception.

She comes home at sunset with her hair filled with flowers and her notebook with scribbles she won’t let Venti see.

Chapter Text

Frey’s first meeting with Norad’s thirteenth prince comes with the realization that her entire hometown is defrauding the government. And a deity. It’s hard to tell which one is worse.

She… doesn’t really know what to do with this information. She should probably report it, except she has no idea how she’d go about doing that. If anyone would believe a newly-disowned college student whose only claim to fame is having the ear of Ventuswill.

It still feels like she should do something.

Idly, she pulls out her phone and composes a text to her brother.

Did you know our parents were supposed to be trying to free the Guardians?

…No. Too confrontational. Delete it.

You know how everyone we grew up with is weirdly hateful of Ventuswill?

…That’s not working, either.

Did you ever wonder where the research lab back home gets all its money?

Closer, but not quite. Frustrated, she shoves her phone into a drawer where she won’t have to look at it. She doesn’t think she can talk to Lest about this.

She also can’t talk to Venti about it, because telling her the people who said they were going to try and give her her friends back have been lying about that for at least two hundred years, without having any other ideas, feels… bad. She can’t crush what little hope she might have like that. Not while looking her in the eye.

But what else can she do? It’s not like a solution is just going to magically present itself, it’s been evading rune scholars for…

…For not as long as she’d thought, if they haven’t even been thinking about it. If they haven’t been trying. If it’s just a front so they can get unlimited funding.

It doesn’t have to be. Maybe they really are trying. But she can’t bring herself to believe it, with all the cruel things they’ve said about the Native Dragon they’re supposed to help. But if they’re not trying… if two hundred years of technical innovation haven’t actually been considering this…

There’s something she has to do.

Yokmir Forest contains one of Selphia’s most popular hiking trails. There’s a nice waterfall, a cliffside with a view of the town, monsters that can be dispersed with something as simple as an enchanted fishing rod… It has a lot of things going for it even without considering what makes it unique.

For just a feather, Frey’s new charm catches the light surprisingly well as she searches the treetops for that one unique thing. “Ambrosia? Are you around here somewhere?”

She hears high-pitched laughter, and a swarm of bright blue butterflies lifts off a nearby bush, flying deeper into the forest as if they were one being. Given that all the travel brochures she’s read say not to follow the butterflies for your own safety, she’s going to assume that following them will bring her where she wants to go.

They lead her to a clearing, and in the center, there is a girl with red wings as large as she is tall. Their eyes meet, human to insectoid. Ambrosia stands up.

Monster speech is a language of its own, and it’s technically possible to learn to speak it. There are entire were-animal civilizations that only communicate in the monster tongue. None of it is something Frey’s had reason to learn before.

Maybe it’s an Earthmate thing, maybe it’s just that the concept being expressed is so simple, but she still understands the Guardian of Yokmir Forest perfectly. “(What do you want?)”

She doesn’t approach right away. It’s like with any other wild monster. “It’s- there’s a few reasons. I guess the easiest one to start with is… I brought you flowers.” It’s nothing like she could get from the history department, the head there is very passionate about flowers, but it’s something she grew herself, and that has to count for something.

Suddenly, there’s a giant butterfly girl in her face. She hands the flowers over, and takes just enough steps back to reacquire personal space. “(What else?)”

“That depends.” She runs a finger along the soft feather in her charm. The only evidence there is for her suspicion is the words of a desperate ghost, but… “Do you remember… being Amber?” It’s not a good choice of words, but it’s hard to believe such a thing can even exist.

Ambrosia raises a hand to her chest. “(Amber is here.)” She takes a step back, eyes narrowed, wings vibrating faintly. “(What do you want from her?)”

“She’s the only person nearby who knows anything about how Etherlink works.” In theory, she could also ask Aden, but given how their only contact is as a spot on each others’ online friend lists, she maybe doesn’t want to ask him how he accidentally condemned his friend to spend eternity as a butterfly monster. “I need to know everything you remember about it.”

“(Why?)” The vibration turns into buzzing. A butterfly lands on the Guardian’s head.

Frey doesn’t back down. Basically everything she knows about monsters says showing weakness is a bad idea. “Because the people who were supposed to be trying to fix this think Venti deserves to suffer.” Her hand falls, and Ambrosia’s eyes move towards the charm. “Personally, I like Venti, and I’d like her to not be sad all the time, so I’m just going to have to step in. And the first step is knowing everything I can about Etherlink.”

“(...Ven…)” Ambrosia’s fists clench. Despite her not technically speaking, her metaphorical tone of voice changes. “(Those people… why would they want to hurt Ven?)”

She’s not going to tell her it was her fault. This is going far too well, she doesn’t want to jeopardize it. “I don’t know. I wish I did, then it’d be easier to tell people who can actually do something about it.” Just why do people buy into conspiracy theories like that?

“(We want to help Ven,)” the Guardian declares. “(How do we start?)”

“You’re literate, right?” She feels the need to check, just in case. Ambrosia nods. “Great, this makes things a lot simpler. Here, I’ve got a pen somewhere…”

Ambrosia’s handwriting is terrible. She supposes that’s what she gets asking for help from someone who lives in the woods and hasn’t needed to write anything down in centuries.

With how much of it she’ll have to rewrite, dictation might have been simpler. It’s just that Frey can only understand her if she’s looking directly at her, and that’d make writing things out difficult, and it’d still probably need to be rewritten.

Still, she takes the notebook back, and charts out a few diagrams of how magic moves around the Rune Spot, and that’s a starting point. She’s sure certain people already have access to this sort of thing, but they won’t open it up for anyone, and no one involved wants to actually do their job.

“(Bring those people here,)” Ambrosia requests, and it’s no small relief to be able to tell her they have no intention of ever visiting Selphia, and there’s no way she can force them to. Murder averted at least until they figure this out.

Hopefully averted forever, but if her function as a Guardian can be replaced without canceling the Etherlink… Frey can bribe a monster not to attack her with flowers. She doesn’t think she can do the same thing for other people.

“Frey?” She runs into Margaret just as she enters Selphia proper. “Were you just out for a walk?”

She nods. “Yokmir Forest is nice this time of year.” And every other time of year. It’s a summer area. But it’s especially nice when everything is cold outside. Some mornings, she wakes up to a thin layer of frost coating the windows.

It’s not a great time to have a field that hasn’t fully established itself, but once spring arrives, that should clear it all up.

A gasp. “Yokmir Forest? The monsters didn’t give you any trouble, did they?” Like monsters do a lot of bothering humans who stick to the main path. To be fair, Frey was not sticking to the main path, but it’s not like Margaret has any way of knowing this.

“I’m not sure most of them could hurt me if they tried.” She actually knows how to use a weapon, which is more than a lot of people can say, they just put Tamitaya on anything they can and throw it at the Woolies until they go away.

…Well, maybe not Woolies. Messing with livestock monsters is a good way to get yourself sued by an angry farmer. The point remains.

“It’s not those monsters I’m worried about.” Well, she didn’t ask if Frey was having problems with butterflies. And usually, the only people who have problems with Ambrosia are the ones who are already doing something stupid. It’s just that a forest trail provides a lot of chances for people to do something stupid. “Did you see-?”

“Ambrosia? Yeah. Good news, she doesn’t get weird about Earthmates.” Or at least not Earthmates who are trying to help Venti. Even knowing why the Guardians were created, even knowing that the internet is flooded with people taking selfies with her and not getting mauled, it sort of surprises her just how cooperative she was. “It’s one of the better things that’s happened recently.”

She didn’t mean to say that last part. It just slips out, possibly as a reaction to her body finally realizing it’s actually winter.

Margaret glances away. “Your parents?” Oh. So she saw that mess.

She hasn’t considered what she wanted to do when people from her actual life inevitably stumble across it. And it’s already happened. “I’ve known for a while that they weren’t the best people, but it feels like every time I turn around, they’ve found a way to get worse.” She’s not even sure whether the grudge or the fraud is more important to them. She’d hate them either way, but she feels like that might be an important distinction to somebody.

She doesn’t get any advice from Margaret. She wasn’t hoping for it, really, because then she might have to explain how deep this mess goes.

Margaret worries about things like sword practice at the dojo, where everything’s under control and everyone’s been taught the very basics of healing magic for safety reasons. Frey doesn’t want to see her reaction if she says she’s planning to free the Guardians.

She doesn’t even know if she’ll get that far.

She just knows it’s plausible enough to believe she can. And that, by itself, is the most horrifying thing she’s ever realized.

Chapter Text

The Guardian of Yokmir Forest, if asked to describe her existence, wouldn’t be able to give a good answer. When the human part of her is lucid, she says it’s sort of like a dream. The monster part of her isn’t entirely sure what she means by that, but that might just be because the two of them haven’t really slept since becoming one. She doesn’t really remember what dreams are like.

It doesn’t help that there’s not much about existence worth remembering. Things happen, and then they slip away from memory like they never did, unless it was particularly interesting.

She remembers the day she was created, of course. Ambrosia remembers being called from the Forest, and greeted with a meal of flowers and honey. Amber remembers hugging a little caterpillar close to her chest, promising they’re going to do something great together.

They both remember the way her friends screamed.

Their next clear memory is of pupating. Of seeking out the Rune Spot’s exact center, so their chrysalis could most efficiently feed the earth. They can’t figure out if they were conscious for any of it, they don’t remember it if they were, but they can’t remember a lot of things, so it doesn’t matter.

They remember the important things, and that’s what matters. Amber knows that Ven needs her, and Ambrosia’s seen enough of her memories to agree that keeping her alive is a noble cause. To make the other part of herself happy, if nothing else.

They both remember the day they emerged. They think they might have been ready for it for a while before it happened, but what triggers it is noise. Amber-and-Ambrosia claws her way back to daylight, and a bunch of humans holding up strange boxes.

At some point, she learns that those boxes are called cameras. Neither part of her remembers when or how she learned it, but it’s knowledge they didn’t used to have, so she must have learned it at some point.

After that, there are a few small things that stick out enough to remember. Causing a landslide so less people will wander into the nearby cave system and die. Tricking a bunch of people in white coats into stepping on a nest full of Ants, using nothing but her butterfly friends. Following an annoyingly-loud noise to a picnic, where she proceeded to take the offending device- based on what they were shouting at her, she’s pretty sure it’s called a radio- and throw it into the river.

Not much else. If she focuses really, really hard, she can remember that humans come by a lot. If she focuses even harder, she remembers that’s where all the flowers in her clearing come from. The knowledge vanishes as soon as both parts of her stop thinking about it.

Oh, well. If it vanishes that easily, it can’t be something worth remembering.

When an Earthmate carrying one of Ven’s feathers enters the forest calling for them, both parts of her know this is something she’s going to remember. It’s impossible not to, when so much happens at once.

She brings them flowers. This isn’t special, but they smell nice, and it lets her realize that the girl’s hair ribbons are also butterflies. Ambrosia likes that detail, and is happy to realize she recalls it later.

She tells them that there are people who are refusing to help them, all for the sake of hurting Ven, and Amber realizes she feels angry for the first time since she found out Ven was dying and didn’t want to tell her. There’s nothing she can do about it, no one she can yell at, and she thinks the monster part of her might be a bit too fast to jump to violence as a solution, but… she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t tempted.

For the first time in a long time, Amber-and-Ambrosia has something to do that isn’t just exist and make runes, and maybe that’s why the memory’s so clear. They write so much their wrists hurt, and keep hurting, and neither of them can remember the last time they felt pain like this.

Neither of them will say it’s a good thing. Pain sucks. But they both feel more real than they have in… however long it’s been… and she thinks that might mean something.

The girl leaves, and she comes back, and neither of them know how much time there is between. She has more paper, more diagrams, more flowers, pens in all sorts of pretty colors.

Pens look different than they used to. They write better, though, so it’s definitely a good thing. She talks out loud about the ideas she’s going through, and tells them to stop her if they know she’s going in the wrong direction.

They don’t think they’d be able to tell if she is. Amber only knows enough about the spell to make it work. Ambrosia can think of a way to make it end, but that’s not going to be relevant for a while. They need a replacement first.

But they like feeling included, and the girl lets her doodle on herself, so she’s pretty happy. She won’t remember when the rain washes the ink off, or when she realizes it’s gone, but flowers and butterflies cover her skin, just for a few days, and even in the moments her minds don’t register, seeing them makes her smile.

Perhaps these meetings can be called the beginning of the end. But they can’t say for sure, not until they know an ending is definitely coming.

On the third visit- and they know it’s the third, they aren’t sure if they will forever or if it’ll all blend together after a while, but for now they know for sure this is the third time they’ve seen her- the Earthmate looks over her notes, pauses, and pulls a device out of her pocket. “...Wait a minute.”

Amber asks what’s wrong. They’ve figured out she’s the one the girl understands better, even if she can’t actually tell Amber’s the one talking, so she has to be the one to ask.

She doesn’t answer immediately, pulling the device out of its light green case. “...I can’t believe I forgot about this. I even asked Venti about it.” She pries the whole thing open, and a bunch of small rectangles pop out. “...That’s going to be a pain to fix, but look!” She holds up a shiny rectangle.

Amber-and-Ambrosia peers at it, and the paper right beneath it. The metal, and the diagram right next to it.

They’re the same.

Both parts of her say as much in unison.

“Right? There’s a lot I’ll have to do to make it self-perpetuating, but the fact that the underlying technology already exists…” Is it safe for humans to breathe so heavily? “And it’s existed for this long already, because as long as they say it won’t work for this, people are going to believe them…”

For the first time either of them can remember, it occurs to her to ask how long she’s been this way. She doesn’t, the Earthmate clearly has more important things to worry about, and she isn’t entirely sure she wants to know the answer, but the question hangs in her minds all the same.

“The good news is, I should be able to use this to prove they aren’t doing what they said they would, and this’ll be wrapped up a lot sooner than I thought it would, but… I don’t think that outweighs the rest of it.”

It’s probably for the best that they don’t really understand what she’s talking about.

It’s not like she’d be able to remember any worrying they do, anyway.

The stars are bright tonight, and she doesn’t realize that this is the start of her next memory. She’s sitting in her clearing, surrounded by flowers. Some came from the Earthmate, and she assumes she must have replanted them at some point. Some came from elsewhere, from humans with no faces and indistinct voices all blurring together.

She hopes that doesn’t happen with the Earthmate, especially if this works. It would be really embarrassing to not know who the person who helped her is. Sure, neither of them ever thinks to ask for her name, but her face is nice and memorable and needs to stay that way until-

The realization hits.

If this works, things are going to change. There won’t be a need for Guardians, anymore. Amber-and-Ambrosia won’t need to exist. They can be just Amber, just Ambrosia. Two beings where there used to be one.

By itself, that isn’t bad. It’s how they started, after all, how most of their clear memories have them. It’ll be a bit weird to go back to, but they can do it, if it’ll make Ven happy.

It’s just how they’ll get there that has them hesitating. Because no one’s ever broken an Etherlink before, but they know the theory of how it works. There’s exactly one thing they know of that can almost definitely break the spell, so long as it has the power of an Earthmate behind it.

Retornen. Tamitaya. Whatever they’re calling it right now. Back before they were one, nobody could seem to agree on a name for it. The name doesn’t matter, anyway, so much as what it does.

The magic temporarily dispels the runes forming a monster’s body, sending them to the Forest of Beginnings to put themselves back together. It only affects monsters, but affects them utterly, the only ones not being sent having bodies so unstable they wouldn’t live much longer anyway, so it simply speeds up their demise. There are stories of a previous incarnation of Fiersome resisting it, but… the story also says that’s the reason it was a previous incarnation. The returning spell is absolute.

It will take everything that is Ambrosia away from the world, leaving Amber on her own for the first time in… she doesn’t want to know how long. She will, eventually, there’s no way she won’t, calendars exist, but she isn’t going to be happy about it.

She can’t remember the last time she was truly alone.

Ambrosia tells her she won’t be. She’ll have Ven, and the Earthmate, and all the new friends she’s inevitably going to make. And Gates still exist, so there’s always the chance they can find each other again. That it’d be nice if that happened, so they could live together in a more normal way. They can be friends without needing to literally be part of each other.

They both want to believe that can happen.

They both know how unlikely that is.

The Guardian of Yokmir Forest doesn’t have tear ducts, and cannot cry. She’s pretty sure she can’t, at least. If she can, she never remembers doing so.

She spends the next days looking through the forest, trying to take the whole place in while she can, but she never remembers it.

Chapter Text

Exams come and go, winter break dawns, and roughly a quarter of Selphia’s population goes home to their families to celebrate the new year. When Forte’s parents were alive, they’d give her and Kiel little glass jars to paint and light candles inside them. This year, she’s not sure she can find the time.

When she gets home, her brother has his laptop open on the kitchen table. Checking his finals results, probably. Even with their parentage, he needs to keep his grades up if he wants to get into the university next year.

He wants to go into either history or rune studies, or maybe a double major of the two, which is a unique goal that Frey’s stories of how hard the subject is has made impossible to dissuade. If anything, her presence in the town has encouraged him to work even harder, which is… probably a good thing? He’s still remembering to make meals, and sleep at a reasonable hour, so Forte isn’t going to get too concerned just yet.

“Oh, Forte!” He grins at her, and tosses a caramel pudding cup in her direction. She catches it without a second thought, peeling the plastic top open. Delicious. “You’re home early.”

“Things were more peaceful today.” She knows she doesn’t need to patrol, doesn’t even have a vehicle to do it in, or the ability to drive one legally- she did get her learner’s permit, but then their father had died with his car mangled beyond recognition and it sort of stopped being a priority- but it’s nice to see the town. “I suppose, with the term being over, it’s only to be expected.”

A lot of her friend group is out of town at the moment, anyway. Doug and Margaret are visiting family in Sharance, and she doesn’t actually know where Vishnal and Clorica are from. Xiao Pai has gone on vacation with her father. She thinks Frey might have stayed in the castle over break, but even if her position gives her the right to be there, it feels weird to just go up and knock on the door.

If there’s no one to stop and talk to, patrols- walks, really, she’s not even fooling herself- go by a lot faster. Give her more spare time, not that she knows what to do with it. She could check in on Uncle Bado, make sure he’s actually remembering to clean his house and occasionally open his store, but then she’d have to deal with what he thinks is a business plan.

Or claims to think is a business plan, which is the case more often than not. Just another reason she doesn’t have time to deal with his shenanigans. “So, how were your exams?” Now that she and Xiao Pai have graduated high school, the only way to know what’s going on is to ask her brother about it directly.

Fortunately, Kiel’s the kind of person who doesn’t need much prodding. “I did pretty well. After we were all done, we were supposed to watch a movie, but then the internet…” One of these days, people are going to realize that they need to download these things ahead of time. People elsewhere might not need to worry about it, but their proximity to Leon Karnak makes these things unreliable. “I remembered the title, though, and picked up a copy on my way home! Maybe we can watch it together.”

It’s the best idea she’s heard all day. She’ll dig a tub of ice cream out of the freezer, and then they can see about remembering which input channel they plugged the DVD player into.

Forte gets her confirmation that Frey is still in Selphia when she walks through the town gates holding a broken phone on top of her pile of notebooks. “Are you all right? Did something happen?”

Well, clearly something did happen. She broke her phone. But is there something else? Something she might need a knight for, or at least someone with nominal authority and a big plastic sword? Or an actual sword, if she can have fifteen minutes to run home and grab it?

She laughs. “First Meg, now you. I’m fine. I just dropped my phone on a rock.” She must have dropped it very hard for it to be in so many pieces. They’re all shoved haphazardly into the case, and the least terrible thing Forte can say about it is that the screen looks to be completely intact. “It should be fixable, I think… Does your uncle do phone repair?”

“He will if you give him enough money for it.” So many talents, and stated his goal in life was to use as few of them as possible.

“But will he do it well?”

“Bado doesn’t make a lot of sales, but most of the things he sells do work.” She still wouldn’t recommend buying anything if he’s having a yard sale, those items range from ‘nonfunctional’ to ‘only not actively dangerous because it requires a certain kind of person,’ and Frey’s exactly the kind of person those things would be actively dangerous around. But in everyday life, he’ll at least provide something that fits the literal title of what he offers.

She saw him reading through a book of puns, once. She confiscated it before he could get any ideas. She now lives in fear of the day he realizes he can buy an electronic copy.

“All right, I’ll stop by after I drop the rest of this off.” One of the notebooks is open to… is that a diagram of the inside of her phone? Is she really so fascinated by runes that she’ll take an unfortunate accident as just a new way to see how they work? …It’s Frey. Of course she will. “...I really hate that it’s a summer area out there sometimes.”

“Is it that bad?”

“If it was a spring or fall area, it’d be safe to wear a coat.” She’s never thought of that before. The only time she really leaves town is if something’s gone wrong at the Water Ruins, and in that case Volkanon drives her, or she takes the bus. “You just go from one extreme temperature to the other.”

The two of them start walking together towards the castle. There’s a little bird nest at the edge of the roof by the east door, and as they approach, Frey leans over the top of her notebook collection until the pieces of her phone are obscured. “Do you need me to get the door?” Forte asks. She’s not sure why Frey isn’t going through the central section of the castle if she doesn’t want to use the door, everyone’s done it once or twice, and Ventuswill never seems to mind.

If there’s a reason for it, Frey doesn’t say it. “Yeah… That’d be great.”

The central heating is a relief. Forte enjoys it while she helps Frey get into her room with minimal fuss, and watches her slide the notebooks into a drawer and slip the remnants of her phone into a bag. They part ways soon after, as she has a patrol to continue.

Sure, she doesn’t really need to do it. But it’s a knight’s duty to everything they can for the community, and this is the one thing Forte knows for sure she can do. It’s at least less of a disaster than that time she volunteered at a soup kitchen.

Whatever Frey’s doing, she doesn’t need her help. There are, however, hypothetical people out around Selphia who do, so she has to keep an eye out for them.

The fact that this keeps her on the opposite side of town from the Obsidian Dorm is definitely a coincidence.

One day, close to the start of the new term, Forte actually finds someone who requires her help.

This isn’t a surprise. It isn’t! There are plenty of people who need help in some form or another, and as a knight, it’s her duty to give it to them! This happens plenty of times!

…Mostly right at the start of a new school semester. Because they’re asking her for directions. But it counts, and anyone who says it doesn’t can find their own way to class.

She’s not actually being asked for directions to a classroom, this time. Sort of. How Porcoline organizes and manages his properties is something meant to be known only to him, but he did run a cooking class out of the restaurant until he could refurbish another building to his specifications.

Usually, people who want to go to the restaurant just use GPS for that, but… well… the runes around Leon Karnak are acting up again. If the other Rune Spots become like that after long enough, she fears for the future of Selphia’s internet connection.

He might not be able to use his phone, anyway. His hands are sort of full with suitcases.

“I said I’d send a text when I got here, but unfortunately…” The worst thing is, they know why it’s like this, and there’s no chance of it being fixed in the near future. They just have to hope it doesn’t get too much worse, or else they’ll have to go back to using physical cables for everything. And they still wouldn’t have access to GPS.

She takes one of the suitcases. She has no idea what’s in it, but it isn’t any heavier than some of the swords she carries around. Maybe a bit less. “So you’re moving in?” She knows the place is theoretically open to new residents, but it’s only ever been Margaret and Porcoline.

He nods. “It was… surprisingly simple to arrange. I hadn’t expected him to sound so enthusiastic about the idea when I first contacted him. He said it wouldn’t be any more trouble than making breakfast.”

…Oh. Oh, this man does not know what he’s getting himself into.

Forte doesn’t really know how to explain Porcoline’s extreme whimsical benevolence, and that might be for the best. He’ll figure it out himself.

Either he’s the sort of person who can handle proximity to Porcoline, or he’ll flee the whole town in shame. She can’t decide which it is yet. “My friend Margaret also lives at the restaurant. She should be back from break by now. I’m sure she’ll be excited to meet you.”

Excited. That’s… probably the right word. When they have their sleepovers, she’s always saying that the place feels too quiet, that’s why she puts on all that different music. If that’s the case, having someone new around should help with that.

Or make it so she can’t listen to her music quite so loud without headphones anymore, but as someone who’s walked right underneath her open window, that might not be a bad thing.

“In that case, I look forward to meeting her.”

They reach the restaurant. Both of their hands are full, so Forte walks up to the large metal button by the door and… nudges it, just a little. It swings open, the two of them have half a second to soak in the warm air, and then Porcoline descends like a Weagle that’s spotted a tasty-looking fish.

Forte leaves soon after, but the guy hasn’t tried to run yet. She thinks that means he’ll be just fine.

Once wireless stuff is working again, she’ll have to ask Margaret what she thinks about this.

Chapter Text

If there’s one thing Ventuswill’s figured out about email, it’s that the whole point of it is for things that don’t need an immediate response. She likes that, because that means people can’t use it against her if she wants to spend time as a dragon. If it’s really urgent, she has a phone with the most obnoxious ringtone known to man.

Given the most frequent cause of loss of cell service also causes internet outages, she sees exactly zero ways this can go wrong.

Still, she does need to check her email occasionally. Ads, viruses disguised as porn, an obvious scam from someone claiming to be Ethelberd’s secret heir… a request from the IT department for more funding, this may be a hostage situation…

…Official correspondence from the king of Norad, encrypted in five or six different ways that she can never remember the password to. Fortunately, she has Volkanon for that. He always huffs and reminds her she should be remembering her passwords herself, but she’s a god. She has so many more important things to do than remembering passwords all the time.

Besides, it’s not every password. Just the ones where she has to remember a lot of them at once. That doesn’t come up very often, even when it comes to missives from the king.

She can at least understand why this message is so secure. Apparently, he plans on having one of his children- she has no idea how many of them he has, she lost count long ago, but the birth announcements have actually stopped by now, so it’s probably the final number that he’s going to acknowledge- attend the university. It won’t be a child high up on the line of succession, she knows they’re all old enough to have graduated by now, but an important political gesture all the same.

And it’s absolutely a political thing. Most members of the royal family attend the Royal Magic Academy aside from the rare few who end up being so completely inept at magic that not even nepotism can save them. And those don’t usually go anywhere special, but somewhere out-of-the-way where people won’t remember they exist.

He’s blatantly trying to curry favor, and it’s adorable. Did he really think she wouldn’t notice? She was old when the current calendar hadn’t even been conceived of. She’s seen every form of political machination under the sun.

Well! No reason to deny him, if only because the last time a royal attended was a while ago and she was genuinely fun to have around. It didn’t work out in the end, but it was good while it lasted.

Still, she’ll also tell him that, if he really wants her happy with him, he should find a way to have one of those big events held in Selphia. Bribe all the politicians he needs. It’d be nice to actually get to attend for once.

She fully expects the whole thing, on her end, to be some sort of bureaucratic mess. At least she dug out the forms for the east side of the castle fairly recently, so that simplifies things a little, but…

And then Porcoline informs her that Prince Arthur has actually reached out to him requesting slightly less extravagant accommodations, and she almost bursts out laughing. How nice! A royal with a backbone. And it makes the whole thing significantly less her problem.

She should still probably give him perpetual invitations to pancake days. And a warning not to bring Porcoline with him to pancake days. For the sake of everyone else getting to eat, if nothing else.

She has no idea how his father is going to respond to this, but he also hasn’t responded to her request for a party she can actually attend, so she finds she doesn’t really care.

Frey spends winter break in the castle. Venti’s aware that she has problems with most of her family, but she hasn’t gone out of her way to tell her what the reasons are, and she’s polite enough not to ask.

As the weather gets colder, their conversations move from veggies and storytimes to hot cocoa and cheesy holiday movies. It’s a fifty-fifty shot on if the day is saved by the power of love, and half of those involve literal Love Magic, and they’re all so, so stupid. Anyone with the slightest hint of magical ability could tell them it doesn’t work that way.

Maybe if it was a dual-typed spell, but those are complicated to the extreme and more likely to kill the caster than anything else. Still, as unrealistic as these movies are, watching them is apparently traditional.

“The kids back home are probably having their big, town-wide snowball fight by now.” Frey’s drinking from a mustard-yellow mug with a simple turnip painted on. Venti’s not sure if it came that way, or she did it herself. “That’s when you know school’s out, the streets are full of people throwing things at each other.”

“Are you planning to do something like that here?” Some years, Volkanon takes all the snow in the castle courtyard and builds a giant snowman out of it. There’s a giant scarf in storage just for that occasion. If that happens, a good place for a snowball fight might be hard to find.

She shakes her head. “Most of my friends go home for break. There’s only a few who live here year-round, and some of them are off visiting relatives anyway.”

She supposes that’s the downside of one of the town’s biggest attractions being a school. Students and tourists make up a surprisingly large segment of the population.

Still, Venti doesn’t regret that decision. Among other things, if not for all the students learning chemistry, she wouldn’t be able to take a human form like this. They don’t exactly make dragon-sized marshmallows. “So, what are you doing over break?” Besides watching silly movies on a couch that needed to be replaced years ago, anyway.

“I have this project I’m working on. I don’t think I can tell you the details yet, but it’ll be really impressive once it’s done… possibly…” She isn’t sure she’s meant to hear that last word. “I’ll have to show you the results once I’m done.”

She’s looking forward to it. Especially as Frey keeps slipping out of town saying she wants to work on the theoretical side of her project somewhere warm. If there’s a practical side has yet to be explained.

She’ll just have to find out when it’s finished, just like everyone else.

There’s something in Frey’s pocket.

Venti isn’t sure how she can tell this so immediately. Sure, there’s a slight bulge in the jacket where the mysterious item is, but she wasn’t looking there when she came in. She was focused on her email, where she’s already started getting early birthday wishes. She swears they come earlier every year.

There’s usually nothing important there, but she did get a fun icon she uses as a profile picture on websites that prefer anonymity once, so it’s always worth a peek.

Still. Whatever’s in Frey’s pocket isn’t important, really. What’s important is that she’s brought in a bushel of fresh turnips ready for pickling and a story request.

“How did you meet Amber?” What brought that up all of a sudden? The confusion must show on her face, because Frey continues. “Anytime I read about her, it’s all ‘Aden this’ and ‘Ventuswill that.’ At least with the others, their names actually come up from time to time… mostly.”

She doesn’t think it was always that way. Aden reappearing just made things weird. Or maybe it was, and she simply didn’t notice because people don’t normally tell her these things.

It’s one of the nicer stories she has, at least. So long as she can ignore how things ended, anyway. “Well, Amber’s parents worked here in the castle. Her mother was a cook, and her father would assist the Earthmates on the farm, usually delivery work. The two of them were incurable flirts when their paths crossed while doing their jobs, so no one was surprised when they said they were going to marry. Amber was born about a year later.”

It had been tradition at the time for her to be the one conducting the ceremony. She’s still technically qualified to marry people, but no one ever goes to her anymore. It’s a shame, because the party afterwards was one of the few times she could just relax with the townsfolk. She’d like to see what it’s like as a human.

“Most of the castle children were scared of me. When offering days came, they’d hide behind their parents. And then there was this tiny little girl who toddled up to me and stuck a charm blue right in my face.”

Her parents had hastily tried to apologize. But it was the most heartfelt gift Venti had been given in a long time, and she was just so cute. It really hadn’t been a bother at all.

Frey laughs. “So flowers have always been her thing?”

“By the time she was five, she could identify the most common flowers in the area.” She wasn’t quite as good at saying their names just yet, but that would come in time. “Every season, around the harvest festivals, the pious would offer something from their trades. And every season, without fail, she’d have another flower, no matter what her parents did to try and stop her. Eventually, they stopped trying, and she started visiting me on other days.”

The two of them succumbed to a plague just two years before Amber became a Guardian, one that made its victims waste away until there was nothing left. Sometimes, Venti wonders what would have happened if the medicine from the capital arrived sooner. If maybe that would have changed things.

Every time, she concludes that it’s for the best she doesn’t know. Either she’d be dead, or she’d live with her friend’s parents hating her for taking their daughter away. She’s not going to say this is a good result, but… she can at least hope it’s one Amber’s happy with.

One of them needs to be.

“So the way to make you open up to people is to give you flowers. Got it.” Frey cheerfully mimes the act of writing something down. “I’ll have to tell everyone to do that, then.” And then she skips outside, presumably to give the impression of doing just that.

Six hours later, announced by the most obnoxious ringtone known to man, Venti gets a call from the hospital.

Chapter Text

…It’s so simple, it makes Frey want to scream.

All of the basic principles already exist. Rechargeable batteries, phone lines, that thing they used in Trampoli to replace and stabilize their Runey population after they went insane and started eating each other… All it needs is a few adjustments related to the spell she’s trying to replace!

And she does them, and puts it all together, and it remains just as simple, if requiring a little- okay, a lot- more precision, and she knows exactly what that means.

This could have been dealt with at least a decade ago.

It’s not as bad as she was afraid of. Trampoli was the first time one of those disasters was fixed before the land it happened on died completely. This is relatively new technology. But it’s been ignored ever since the state of emergency was declared over, just like every other piece of the puzzle.

The orb sits on her crafting table. At a first glance, it just looks like a very smooth dark blue rock, but closer inspection shows a myriad of lights dancing inside. Lights like the runes generated from a simple day’s work in the fields.

She doesn’t entirely remember how she made it- her mind went into a bit of a haze. Fortunately, she saw this coming and set up a camera to record, so the process should be repeatable once she’s gone over the video.

Hopefully, she got the scale right the first time. She doesn’t want to think about needing to make it even bigger, or a larger amount. She already has to make at least three more of them.

She has no idea how she’ll do it. She started before sunset and it’s almost midnight and there’s just one orb and she’s exhausted.

But she’s done it once. She can do it again.

She makes a mental note to never make the attempt on a school night.

And then she passes out on the table and sleeps through her alarm completely.

In a way, it’s fitting that she figures it out when she does, because Venti’s birthday is coming up. What better present could there be than going up to her and declaring she’ll never see another friend be turned into a monster, for real this time?

Of course, first she needs to be absolutely certain it works. Fortunately, she knows of a location that should be perfectly safe to run a field test.

So, after she’s delivered Venti a bunch of turnips- it’s one of her favorite vegetables, apparently, which explains why they’re the default veggie everyone grows around here- she stops by a cafe for breakfast, ducks back into her room to grab her sword in case something goes wrong, and heads off to the Yokmir Forest Rune Spot, ready to see how well it works.

When she gets to the forest, the butterflies are waiting for her. She doesn’t need to follow them anymore, she knows the path well enough, but the jewel-toned wings against a clear blue sky will never be anything but beautiful.

Thinking quickly, she snaps a picture to use as her phone background, or maybe her computer wallpaper. She hasn’t decided which yet. And then she follows them. Past the cliff with its clear view of the town, over the painted wooden bridge right next to the waterfall, past a pile of crumbled stones that a Chipsqueek is carefully nudging its way out of… and then she arrives.

The Yokmir Forest Rune Spot is by far the easiest one to overlook. Mostly because it’s the only one with nothing built on it. But it’s easy to see the place is special, just by the number of flowers filling it, of all shapes, sizes, and colors.

From where she’s standing, Frey can see a patch of cherry grass with individual flowers the size of her head. She hadn’t even known they got that big, but apparently they do.

She pulls the orb out of her pocket. It fits snugly into the palm of her hand. “What do you think?”

“(It’s pretty.)” It is, but that’s not what she’s asking about. “(...It feels like me.)”

Great. Exactly what she was hoping for. “Okay. I guess that’s a good sign, since it’s supposed to do the same thing. Let’s plug this in at the center of the Rune Spot and we’ll see how it-” The ground shakes. Small creatures, bird, butterfly, and monster alike scurry out of the bushes and run straight past Frey and Ambrosia, paying neither of them any heed. “...What was that?”

Ambrosia lifts off the ground. “(Danger…!)”

That’s… not a good thing to hear from what’s supposed to be the strongest monster around.

The ground shakes even more. No more wildlife flees past them, because that would imply there was wildlife remaining.

An apple flies out of the trees at high speed, a bright red blur that turns itself into mush the second it comes into contact with Frey’s sword. She really should have sprung for an upgrade at some point. It might be helpful.

“(Run.)” But by the time her brain’s sorted through even that one word, it’s already too late.

A pair of trunks are pushed aside, and fall to the ground, like a pair of poorly secured beach umbrellas in a windstorm.

The Dead Tree steps through the gaps.

There are many myths of where Dead Trees come from. Fruit trees used as a seal for malicious spirits. Trees that become ghosts, and haunt their bodies stills. Corrupted runes taking on a plantlike form. Servants of Fiersome, though his flames burn them more than they do others, come to test if the world is ready to die.

Frey isn’t sure which, if any, of these stories have merit. But all of them agree on one thing, in the end.

A Dead Tree is malicious. It is a creature that seeks to make other souls into twisted beings like itself. It knows no mercy, and so cannot show it. If seen, contact local Monster Control so they can dispose of it as safely as possible.

That… isn’t exactly an option at the moment, since there’s no chance they can get away.

What no one ever says about Dead Trees, and probably should, is that their greatest weapon is their fruit. It grows, and is flung, and Frey likes to think she’s doing well at dodging them. Mostly because she’s actually trying.

Ambrosia isn’t.

She doesn’t need to.

Ambrosia flies through the storm of apples, buzzing loudly, the vibrations turning the apples into pulp that falls to the ground. Kicks the tree directly in the face.

The apples briefly stop. Frey whips out her phone and starts searching for an online spellbook while she has the chance. According to the stories, a bit of fire magic should work wonders. Better than whatever they’re doing now, at least. She hears the Dead Tree get kicked again. And again. And again. All accompanied by a loud buzzing that she probably doesn’t want to translate.

And then a completely different sound, as the Guardian is swatted out of the air by a massive branch. She hits the ground with a loud crack that’s never meant anything good.

Satisfied it’s not going to get kicked in the face again, the tree looks up. Frey meets its gaze.

…Oh. Her webpage is done loading.

The satisfaction of casting a successful fireball is only mildly undercut by the apple she receives to the shoulder half a second later.

Frey has learned several things she did not expect or want to learn today. That Dead Trees can sleep. That getting hit hard enough with an apple makes her head ring. What Ambrosia looks like with a broken arm on one side, and a dislocated shoulder on the other.

This is the sort of thing best handled by a qualified medical professional. She… just can’t think of what sort of medical professional that would be. Or how to get one all the way out here.

There’s a light buzz. She can’t understand Ambrosia as well, maybe because she can’t move as much, but the most important part gets through. “(Rock?)”

She pulls out the orb. It’s shimmering just as much as it was when it was made, and casting all those fire spells didn’t exhaust her at all. Not the initial field test she wanted, but it’s a good sign. “You know, I should probably think of a name for this thing… but the only thing that’s coming to mind is Rune Sphere.”

It’s not a bad name. A bit generic, but it’s not like she wants to trademark it or anything. It just… feels like she should be a bit more creative than that. If she managed to make it in the first place, surely she has the ability to come up with a better name.

“(Nice… name.)” Ambrosia flaps her wings, cries out in pain when that inevitably jostles her shoulder, and successfully lands on her feet. She walks to the center of the clearing, and kicks at a clear spot of dirt. “(Here. Rune Sphere… here.)” Apparently, that’s just what they’re calling it now.

Walking is… sort of painful. She’s sure the online spellbook she found has some kind of healing spells in it, but nothing that’d go beyond basic first aid. She thinks they might both be beyond the reach of basic first aid right now.

But she follows directions, because she just had to fight a giant tree for this. And won. No way she’s turning back now.

When she made the Rune Sphere, she didn’t think of how she was going to connect it to the land. But it seems to handle that part on its own, sinking just a little into the dirt before lighting up like a fresh bulb. Runeys drift into visibility around them, mostly trees, in a way Frey only sees a few times a year.

“(...It’s stronger.)” She knows what Ambrosia’s saying, what those words are supposed to mean, but it takes a moment for it to fully sink in. “(That’s good.)”

Part of her tries to laugh, but she’s so tired it comes out as more of a sigh. “I almost didn’t think it was going to work.” But it did. She’s going to be hailed as a genius for this, probably. She doesn’t feel as good about it as she should, but that might just be the head injury. “So, next I…” Call an ambulance, probably?

Ambrosia finishes the sentence a bit differently. “(Help Amber. Tamitaya.)”

When Frey woke up this morning, she did not consider the idea that she might have to deal a normally-fatal blow to someone she considers a friend. Especially when that friend has a grand total of zero working arms. The first part she probably should have thought about a little, but it's too late now. “Right now?”

“(It hurts.)” She tries to move her broken arm, and then cries out in pain. “(Make it stop!)”

She’s confirmed a world-changing discovery and is still having the worst day ever. She didn’t think it was possible.

When the Etherlink is severed, Amber still doesn’t have any working arms. She’s also barely conscious from a combination of pain and what looks like severe rune depletion, which Frey really should have seen coming. Her still existent wings- it’s too bad there’s no ethical way to test how exactly that happened- flutter, she lets out a sob, and she passes out completely.

…She thinks she might actually have made it worse. At least they can probably both see a doctor for humans now? But they need to get to a doctor first, and that’s… that’s going to take some effort.

Frey searches the online spellbook for a teleport spell, casts it just well enough to get the two of them to the side of the road, and dials emergency services.

Hopefully, Venti’ll be too happy to be mad at them.

Chapter Text

Hospitals in a college town are no stranger to weird injuries at inconvenient times. There’s always someone who celebrates being legally able to drink by going way too hard and jumping off the roof of an electronics store. Or doing something inadvisable in the chemistry labs. Or eating certain other students’ cooking.

In Selphia, there are a few other likely injuries caused by particularly ill-advised actions. Someone who poked Marionetta one time too many. Multiple poor decisions that can be made in the Water Ruins. The occasional lucky soul who escapes Leon Karnak alive, rather than being eaten, falling from too high up, or vanishing between worlds.

One would think ‘dragon nesting grounds, also space doesn’t always work right’ would scare people away from going there in first place. To be fair, very few people actually try it once it’s explained to them in graphic detail. But there’s always somebody.

All of these are things that the staff of Saint Eliza Hospital have seen time and time again. They believe they will see them many times more. It’s unfortunate, but it’s how life is in Selphia.

The first sign that at least some of this may change is a distress call from the entrance to the Yokmir hiking trail.

By itself, that’s not particularly strange. It’s a hiking trail. Accidents happen, especially when people do things like trying to gather nice rocks from beneath the waterfall. Nancy made the attempt herself, once, and couldn’t so much as look at a body of water for months afterwards.

There’s no reason to think there’s anything out of the ordinary until the patients arrive.

One of them is… actually pretty normal. Student at the university, mildly disoriented from being hit in the forehead with an apple from a Dead Tree. Bruises in other places, also from those apples. She insists it’s been sent to the Forest, but Monster Control is still alerted, just in case there’s more.

How she got the injuries is fairly novel- there’s never been a Dead Tree reported in Selphia before- but none of them are anything particularly uncommon. They can just treat the visible wounds, keep her overnight to observe her head injury, and move on like usual.

But there’s another girl, and that’s where it gets interesting.

Nancy has seen patients of all shapes and sizes. Part of Selphia University being so widely acclaimed is that it attracts a diverse student population. Elves, merfolk, were-animals… She's even encountered one or two who were half monster, though whether they came to Saint Eliza or the local veterinary clinic depended entirely on what form they were initially injured in.

None of those things describe the second girl. Thinking back to everything she learned in medical school, she can’t recall reading anything about butterfly people, not even a blurb saying they exist and that they should be referred to a specialist. Fortunately, the injured parts of her are more or less human, so Jones should be able to treat her without issue.

But there is one place she has heard about butterfly girls. Her wings are smaller, and her hair is lighter, and her antennae are shaped differently… but she came from Yokmir Forest, and her body’s runes are drained in a way that doesn’t just happen for no reason.

She asks the first girl what her friend’s name is.

She knows the answer before she says it. “Amber. Her name’s Amber.”

The two are taken away for immediate treatment. She knows they’ll be perfectly fine in her husband’s hands, so it should be a bit before she’s needed for anything.

…Well, anything medical. “...Someone needs to tell Lady Ventuswill about this, don’t we?”

‘Someone’ ends up being Nancy, because she was the one who brought it up. This isn’t in her job description, it’s nowhere close to being in her job description, but apparently she’s the one person in the whole hospital who isn’t either currently needed for something or deathly afraid of the Divine Wind. After this, she’s asking for a raise.

She thinks she got the wrong number at first. Surely, a god would have a more dignified ringtone than that. But she holds out for a few seconds, twisting the phone cord around her finger, and someone picks up. “This is Ventuswill, the Divine Wind. State your business.”

It is, in fact, Ventuswill’s voice. Nancy’s seen her on TV enough times to be sure of that. “This is Saint Eliza Hospital, and we’re calling because…” How does she say this? She glances helplessly around at people who actually have this in their job descriptions, but they all look pointedly away from her. “Because we’re concerned about your health, and about…” Soon, she and Jones will have the money to open the small family clinic they’ve always dreamed of. Soon, she’ll be free of unhelpful coworkers and emergency situations. She just has to get through this phone call first.

“My health? Why would you call me about something like that?” She sounds annoyed. She’s wasting her time. She needs to know about this.

That last part is the only thing driving Nancy forward. “Because a girl with butterfly wings has been checked in with severe injuries. And she answers to the name Amber.”

She’s not quite sure what Ventuswill says next. She needs to hold the phone away from her ear in order to not be temporarily deafened. It’s either an utterance of shock or some kind of profanity. Maybe both.

This, she knows the protocol for. Wait until the person has calmed down before continuing. “I think you understand why we might have been concerned about your well-being.” She’s not paid enough for this. She took this job so she could flirt with Jones on their coffee breaks.

“I don’t feel any weaker than I did this morning.” Okay. Great. Everyone would be upset if she died, and then there’d be the matter of finding a new dean for the university, and Nancy’s seen enough political dramas to know it may end in blood.

And Jones would hate that. He can’t stand blood. So as interesting as it would be to watch one of those stories play out in real life, she supposes it’s for the best it doesn’t happen. “Well. That answers at least as many questions as it raises!” She’s not actually sure it does, but being cheerful is good for keeping patients’ spirits up. It can’t be too much different for dragons. “You’re the closest thing Guardian Amber would have to next-of-kin, if it really is her, and you’re also the best person who could identify her, so…”

She doesn’t know how to finish that sentence. It’s not her job. The next time someone whose job it is snickers, she’s going to throw the phone at them, landline or no landline.

Breathe, Nancy… Once everything is in order, she’ll never have to talk to any of these people again. She just has to remember that.

Still, the horror ends quickly, for a given definition of ‘ends.’ “I’ll be over right away.” Ventuswill hangs up.

Nancy places the phone in its cradle, and takes a deep breath. She can’t panic now. She has work to do. Hopefully, work that takes her as far away from calling people as possible.

…She makes a mental note that, when she and Jones finally get their own clinic opened, they need to hire a receptionist.

Volkanon has one of the most recognizable cars in Selphia.

It’s old, for one thing. The model was discontinued while Nancy was still in middle school, watching her teachers try and fail to use electronic whiteboards before shoving them into storage and going back to actual markers. Selphia’s general population can be a bit slow to pick up on new technology- a consequence of Leon Karnak being Leon Karnak- but that sleek black car is something no one else in town has. He must love that thing, to have kept it in peak condition for this long.

For another, Selphia in general is walkable enough that there aren’t usually that many cars around to begin with. Any that have been around for longer than the average student’s university career tends to stick out because of that.

Finally, he uses it for all official business, which is usually escorting Forte places, but of course his employer counts, too. Ventuswill is a naturally recognizable person, what with the horns, the fluffy white wings, and the faint smell of maple syrup coming from the styrofoam box she slides into the trash can on her way up. The car drives away, leaving just the woman-shaped dragon behind, and again Nancy thinks about how she doesn’t get paid enough for this.

She thinks what’s happening might be a good thing. That it might make Ventuswill happy. But seeing a deity stalk up to the automatic doors is one of those things she’ll be seeing in her head for the rest of her life.

The changes in air pressure don’t help. It’s hard to be sure if she knows she’s doing it, or if her status as the Divine Wind means that the air just does that sometimes. With how it suddenly becomes difficult to breathe, it’s all anyone can do to point her in the right direction.

It dies down soon after, and none of them can decide if that points to it being on purpose or not.

Their suspicions of the butterfly girl’s identity are swiftly confirmed- not that anyone thought they wouldn’t be. Ventuswill takes one look at the girl on the bed before asking, “What happened to her?”

“A Dead Tree attack, apparently,” Jones replies. He, unlike the rest of their coworkers, is not a coward. Nancy thinks that might be the main thing she takes from today’s events. “From that, she suffered a broken arm, and her other shoulder is dislocated. Her runes are severely depleted, but given her circumstances, I’m inclined to say that part is completely unrelated.”

“A Dead Tree…”

“Don’t worry, it’s gone now!” That girl should not be in this room, she should be resting somewhere else, but no one moves to stop her. They probably should, but everything went insane soon after lunch and shows no signs of getting any better.

Besides, she shows no apprehension when Ventuswill turns to her, so she might just be the most qualified person here. “Frey, what happened? Why is Amber…?”

“Dead Tree attack. I am a genius. Happy early birthday.”

“That doesn’t explain anything!” Nancy is going to walk away slowly. Nancy is going to try to pretend this never happened. Nancy is going to contemplate the wording of her resignation letter, and urge Jones to do the same as soon as his shift is done.

And then none of this is going to be her problem ever again.

She hopes everyone else can grow enough of a spine to handle it.

Chapter Text

At first, Margaret isn’t sure what to think of the new guy in the dormitory-in-name-only. Apparently, he’s some kind of prince, because Norad still has a monarchy, even if it doesn’t have as much power anymore. She’s not really sure what that means in practice, particularly since he’s going out of his way to avoid staying in the castle.

She does, however, know that one of his suitcases is completely filled with glasses, and she’s not looking too closely at his choice of magazines to cushion them. “Where are you going to put all of these?”

She isn’t going to ask where he got them. If there’s one thing she’s learned from the Unity Point theater department, it’s that you can buy frames online for cheap. Why someone would want to buy so many, in all different shapes and sizes, is another question entirely.

“They don’t all need to be on display.” Red, shaped like a heart. Something made of a shimmering metal that Daria would absolutely love. A little plastic pair clearly meant for children. The goggle-like loops used by were-animals. Gag glasses. Sunglasses with enough spikes on them they’d be a safety hazard to put on. “Just the most interesting.”

Margaret has no idea what sort of designs Arthur finds interesting. Part of her thinks that she doesn’t really want to know. Maybe this guy’s weird collection is something to be kept between him and his magazines.

She doesn’t say any of that out loud, because she thinks it might just make her explode in mortification. “But where will you put the rest of it?”

He points at the space under his bed, which doesn’t make this seem any less like a fetish thing. Even if the extra glasses all stay in the suitcase. Maybe especially if they all stay in the suitcase. She’s not going to ask if they’ll stay in the suitcase.

“I’ll have to see if I can get some proper shelves in here at some point, though. They’re all too cute to hide away forever.” Not making this any less weird.

She isn’t actually sure anything can salvage this. She’s sure that, by the time she’s woken up tomorrow morning, she’ll have forgotten enough to not want to die, but in the moment, this might not be something she can fix unless she changes the subject completely.

“I think I know someone you can buy them from.” Okay, this isn’t a complete change of subject, but it might be the closest she’s going to get. “You’d have to talk him into making them, but you could probably just buy them off his walls, if you wanted.” Bado likes money, he likes doing minimal work… it’d be a reason for him to either make something himself or buy new shelves for his store. Either one would probably make Forte happy.

Arthur nods. “I’ll have to look into that.” And then they don’t talk at all until everything’s in place, and Margaret can go back into her room and tell herself that people can have strange hobbies without it having to mean anything.

She wants to think that’s the weirdest thing that will happen this week.

Something happens in Yokmir Forest. Margaret’s not sure what it is, but an ambulance goes roaring through the front gates of town, and takes an immediate left turn. She assumes something must have gone wrong on the hiking trail, and hopes that whatever poor soul it was makes it out okay.

That evening, she orders a pizza, and is prepared to eat the entire thing on her bed by herself, when Arthur knocks on her door and says she needs to come downstairs because something insane is happening on TV right now.

She takes her pizza downstairs, because there’s no way she’s leaving it to get cold when she hasn’t saved up enough money for a microwave yet. Lets Arthur have a slice, which he devours so quickly she needs to wonder if he’s eaten anything else today. Term doesn’t start for another three days, why is he so hungry?

The TV is showing a news report of a broken machine somewhere in the depths of Yokmir Forest. A part Margaret doesn’t recognize, so it can’t be part of any hiking trail. No one at the scene seems to know what it is, or what it was meant to do.

It’s… intriguing, but she’s not sure what part of it Arthur’s so worked up about. Maybe it’s just a littering thing?

She asks him, and he doesn’t look away from the screen. “I’ve never seen one outside a museum before, but… I think that might be an artificial Gate.”

“An artificial Gate?” Those exist? That never came up in world history class!

He nods. “You don’t see them very much, as their creation is… not strictly legal. The last time they were in use was back during the war, in order to terrorize civilian populations. I can’t imagine why anyone would set one up in the middle of the woods.”

Margaret can’t, either. It’s the woods. It has lots of Gates already. If they want something specific, apparently the Omnigate spell has been rediscovered, so you just need a cooperative Earthmate. And you still wouldn’t need to do it in the woods.

It’s baffling. She can’t blame anyone on TV for not knowing what it is. She’s heard exactly one theory, and it doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense.

What purpose could anyone have for summoning monsters in the middle of nowhere?

After the fact, she learns that the machine was discovered while investigating reports of an unusually dangerous monster. She doesn’t think much of it.

It’s the only information provided about the incident for a while.

She never quite connects it to the ambulance she saw earlier that day.

Or how she doesn’t hear anything about Yokmir Forest for a long time after.

The day before term starts, Margaret has to hold Porco back from eating silverware. She has no idea why this keeps happening, and is dreading the day she has to tell the culinary arts students class is canceled for the foreseeable future because he cut his stomach open eating knives.

Thankfully, this time doesn’t last as long as all the other times, because a distraction appears. Lady Ventuswill walks through the door, they both turn to greet her, and she asks to speak with Porcoline in private.

“Is this about you?” She asks Arthur, who is drinking something that could charitably be called coffee, but more accurately be described as a mug of sugary sludge. She thinks she’s starting to figure out what she thinks of him, and what she thinks is he’s a human disaster.

If the rest of Norad’s royalty is like this, it’s no wonder they’ve lost most of their power.

“I don’t think so. He said everything was sorted out already.” Well. There goes her only idea of what this could be about.

Part of her wants to listen in, but the rest is sensible. Eavesdropping on a deity is one of the worst decisions out there, along with going to the Obsidian Dorm’s movie nights.

So she sits. And she waits. And Ventuswill leaves through the other door, so she can’t see how things went from that.

Porco isn’t letting anything on, either. He just laughs and says that they’ll see eventually, if things go well. He doesn’t say what those things are, no matter how much anyone asks. Curse his ability to keep a secret despite being one of the most talkative people in Selphia.

But it doesn’t matter. It’s an eventually, something for the far future, at least in human terms. Margaret isn’t sure what that means for her, but she still has more immediate concerns. Like how classes start up again tomorrow.

By the time she finds out what all of this was about, she’ll have completely forgotten this conversation.

The first day of term dawns, and, aside from the experience of finding a new set of classrooms, everything feels like it’s going to be just fine. Absolutely normal. She greets all of her friends who are back in town, politely ignores the faded scratches on Doug’s face that he says are from running through a bunch of thorns, and prepares to forget the names of half of her classmates before the week is out.

At lunch, she picks up a package of onigiri from Blossom’s convenience store, makes light conversation as the transaction goes through, and takes a seat at a picnic table just outside.

It seems like Frey has the same idea, though she has a couple of jam rolls. “Good morning. How’s your day going?”

“It’s been great so far.” She has everything sorted into colored folders, which if she’s lucky will last her for multiple weeks this time. With labels, everything is possible. “What about you? What happened there?” She gestures at a fading bruise on Frey’s forehead.

“Oh, that’s…” She pauses, and bites into a jam roll. The filling oozes out all over her hands. “Someone threw an apple at me.”

“What? Who did this!?”

“Meg, it’s fine! I dealt with it already!” She’s trying to make it sound like it’s no big deal someone was going around throwing apples at people. Something that should absolutely be considered a big deal! “They aren’t around anymore. I think they were just in town for the break.”

School breaks are a touristy time of year. Margaret just has a hard time imagining someone using their best chance for a vacation on visiting a town best known for a school.

But then, there are all sorts of people. She has to regularly remind one of the people she lives with that plates aren’t edible. So she really shouldn’t be surprised at all.

It just bothers her that her friend is treating this so casually. “You weren’t hurt too badly, were you?”

She shrugs, and that is concerning. “I think other people got off worse than I did. A night of observation, a bit of recovery potion, and everything turned out just fine.”

It doesn’t occur to Margaret to ask exactly when this apple-based assault took place. That’s not important compared to the fact that it happened in the first place.

When the question does occur to her, shortly after they part ways for their afternoon classes, she figures she wasn’t going to get an answer anyway. That’s how this whole week has been, after all.

She thinks this might be the weirdest week she’ll have until summer.

She has no idea how wrong she is.

Chapter Text

The first thing Amber is aware of is that she’s alone.

Not physically, she can hear voices and stuff, but the inside of her head is empty for the first time in… she has no idea how long it’s been. Most of it’s just a blur, and she isn’t sure how she feels about that.

She knows she hadn’t minded at the time. It was just the way things were. But it does mean she has no real idea what sort of world she’s going to wake up into.

And, at least on the inside, she’ll be doing it all by herself.

But she has to wake up eventually. She doesn’t remember much, but she remembers the Earthmate who wanted to make Ven happy. She remembers being told there are people who hate Ven so much, they didn’t want her to ever come back to herself.

Out of a combination of love and spite, she opens her eyes.

Ven looks different now.

Everything does, really, from the lights to the fashions to the material used for the ceiling, but Ven’s one of the things Amber thought would always be the same.

Apparently, she was wrong. Ven’s human now, can be human whenever she wants, and it’s apparently a potion thing, and Amber doesn’t understand half the words anyone uses to explain it.

Given all the new things around her, she thinks she might have to get used to that.

Ven tries to hug her. It’s really awkward, because of her wings, and neither of her arms being great- one of them hurts to move, the other she’s not supposed to move for a week even with healing magic being a thing, and it’s wrapped up nice and tight to make sure she doesn’t- but it’s nice.

“What were you thinking?” Her voice is the same, at least. A little higher, maybe, but she’s a lot smaller, so it makes sense. “Why- why would you-?”

“I didn’t want you to die.” She’s not sure why she’s asking this. She left a note, didn’t she? “And- and Pico said the only way anyone knew to help you was…”

“...You took advice from Pico!?” Somehow, she sounds more upset about that than her running away into the woods to become a butterfly.

“It wasn’t advice…” It wasn’t not advice, either, but Pico explicitly did not tell Amber that any of what she did next was a good idea. Just that it was possible. Amber just trusted that a ghost that old knows what she’s talking about. Apparently, she does, and that’s something to keep in mind for the future. “I just asked if she knew anything, and she said yes!”

She’d hope this won’t cause Pico any problems… but Pico was ancient long before Amber was born. She should know how to deal with the consequences of her actions by now.

Somehow, despite the awkwardness, the hug manages to get tighter. “...Never do anything like that again.”

“...Okay.” It’s an easy thing to promise, because with the thing Frey made, she’ll never have to do something like that again. She can just live her life, whatever that ends up looking like.

Given the room she’s in now, there’s no way it’ll look anything like she used to imagine.

One of the nice things about this time- she really needs to ask what year it is, but every time she tries, the question dies before her mouth can open- is that juice comes in little boxes. The doctors are telling her to drink it because she needs the energy, and she goes along with it because it’s juice and it’s even yummier than it used to be and the straw means she doesn’t have to use her arms.

They leave her alone with the juice and Ven and the Earthmate. And then the three of them can talk by themselves.

The Earthmate is named Frey, and Amber commits that to memory in a way she hasn’t been able to for a while. She thinks everything feels more real than it did yesterday, but it might just be that she doesn’t really remember yesterday.

“I’m not sure we should tell everyone about this right away,” Frey says. “Maybe we want to up security around the Rune Spot first? The one good thing about Guardians is they can fight back if anyone tries something…”

Ven shrugs it off. “I’ll ask Volkanon to handle it. He’s good at this sort of thing.” Amber sort of wants to ask who Volkanon is, and why Frey suddenly pales and starts muttering something about bridge repairs. Sort of. If it’s someone Ven knows, she’s sure she’ll meet him eventually. “Although… it would be nice not to have to deal with the press right at the start of term. You know they’ll never be able to stay away once they hear about it.”

Amber doesn’t know what half of those words mean, either. She knew she missed a lot, but it hadn’t quite hit her how annoying it’s going to be to catch up. She thinks it might be starting to. She wants to know what people are saying.

She takes another long sip from the juice box. “Is it a bad thing if they know about…?”

“Not bad,” Ven says. “More… tedious.”

“The internet’s going to explode, too,” Frey adds. Amber’s sure she’d be able to appreciate this better if she knew what an internet is. “I’m not sure if it’ll be in a good or bad way.”

“Both. It’s always both.” Okay. So an ‘internet’ is something dangerous and helpful. Probably. “...Amber, do you have any idea what you want to do next?”

She doesn’t even know what’s going on right now. She’d like her arm to feel better, but she knows that’s not what’s being asked. She’d like to know what the world is like now, but that doesn’t feel like it’s what she’s being asked, either. Or maybe she’s overthinking it just a bit now that she’s able to for the first time in… in… “I’d… like to know what year it is?”

It’s 1612. Just a couple centuries, and the world outside Yokmir Forest looks completely different than it did when she left. Not just inside, the room they’re in has a window, and there are weird metal things moving around on the roads. Apparently, they’re called cars. Except for the big one, that’s called a bus. It’s weird.

…If it’s weird for her, it’s going to be even worse for the others. There’s three more, right?

She doesn’t envy them in the slightest.

And then she’s alone again. For real, this time, as Ven goes home and Frey goes into another room for observation and the hospital staff- she does know what the word ‘hospital’ means, so that’s nice- tell her to call for them if she needs anything.

She doesn’t think she’s going to need anything. Not that they can give her, anyway. She’s human again. Ven’s doing okay. It’ll be a bit before her arm’s useful again, but they’re already helping her as much as they can with that.

They can’t bring Ambrosia back.

It’s funny. She barely remembers any of their time fused together, but she still feels like she’s lost something precious. Maybe it’s just that, even if she lives as long as humans are expected to, they’ll still have spent more of her life together than apart.

Maybe she’s just worried about her. They were both really hurt in the fight, enough to carry over to a human body that hadn’t entirely existed at the time. The body they were using was mostly Ambrosia’s, so… she must be even worse off. And she’s on the same plane of existence as the tree that hurt them in the first place, so… so…

…Amber decides not to think about that for a bit.

Maybe it’s just that there’s not much left she remembers. Ven’s still there, Pico’s probably hanging around, but aside from that? Selphia’s gonna be made of an entirely different set of people. She’s sure most of them will be great people, she can’t wait to meet them, but they won’t be anyone she knew before.

If Ambrosia were here, that’d be at least one more person she actually knows. Someone who started off knowing her as her and not as the Guardian of Yokmir Forest.

Someone who knows why she did things without her having to tell them. Who understands why she couldn’t let things go any other way, or else she’d end up alone.

Just like she is now.

…Or maybe, just maybe, it’s that Amber doesn’t want to be alone with her thoughts. She thinks that might be it. It’s easier not to think about bad things when there’s someone else there to distract her.

But there’s no one else. There’s just her, and a room that isn’t as dark as it should be, and the thought that apparently she hasn’t properly slept in centuries.

Maybe that’s the issue. Maybe she’ll feel better in the morning. Maybe she’ll wake up having at least one arm suddenly be in reasonably-usable condition. That’d be nice.

It’s the only thing she’s really able to try, anyway.

It doesn’t feel that much better in the morning. The lighting’s exactly the same as it was, her arms hurt, and her head is so empty she can hear her thoughts echoing.

But it is a bit better. For breakfast, she discovers that all sorts of food now come in fruit flavors, so there’s a bunch of things that now taste like strawberries. And she gets some actual strawberries, even if eating them is a bit awkward.

They say her not-broken arm is just sore now, so it should be fine if she uses it. So she can pick things up and look at them more closely, even if it mostly just confirms it’s nothing she recognizes.

She’s given all sorts of instructions on how to take care of the other arm, including not flying until she has the cast off- so it’s called a cast, good to know- and as long as she follows them and stays with Ven, she’s allowed to leave.

That’s completely fine with her. She’s been away from Ven for far too long.

She’s introduced to Mr. Volkanon when Frey and Ven usher her into his car. They show her how seatbelts work, and how the window goes up and down, and she stares through it as he drives them all back to the castle.

Everything looks different. The buildings have signs in front of them, but they go by just a bit too fast for her to read them. Even Ven’s room is different, once they get there, because there’s a bunch of smaller rooms attached to it.

But she does know what a couch is, and she’s told the thing on the other side of the room is a television. Ven taps on a small, black rectangle a few times, and then there’s someone on the screen talking about all sorts of pretty flowers, and Amber likes that.

She still has no idea about anything that comes next, but if fruit flavor and flowers are this easy to come by, Amber thinks this world might be a pretty good one to live in, after all.

Chapter Text

Venti eventually manages to get something resembling a proper story out of Frey. Apparently, this is something she’s been working towards since a bit before the break started, because she wanted to see if she could. It’s definitely not the full reasoning, but it’s the only one she’s giving, so they’ll all just have to go with that.

“I know I can make more of them, it’s just… going to take a bit. Some of the stuff I was using is sorta expensive.” If it’ll bring her friends back, Venti would be willing to pay for all of that. She doesn’t have that much to spend money on, it’d be completely worth it. But Frey seems to want to do this herself, and she can’t force her to do otherwise. “And classes are starting again, so… I guess it’ll be a weekend thing.”

That’s fine. She can take as long as she needs. She’s already accomplished the impossible.

Venti has spent more than sixteen-hundred years waiting for this to happen. She can handle a little longer. “Classes are what you’re concerned about? Not the possibility of being injured?” Sure, her current wounds weren’t Ambrosia’s fault, but Marionetta has something against Earthmates for some reason, climbing Leon Karnak is itself considered a death sentence, and Thunderbolt…

The monster forms of the Guardians have always existed as monsters. But if Venti didn’t know better, she’d say Thunderbolt was all of Dylas’ frustrations come to life. She doesn’t even know if she could approach him safely, these days.

Frey pauses, just for a moment, but shrugs it off. “...Oh, yeah, I’ll need a better sword, too.”

…It’s something. As far as idiot friends with no self-preservation go, at least this one is mildly interested in defending herself. Compared to certain people, this is an improvement.

“That’s your plan?”

“Well, I haven’t decided where to go next. I know it’s not going to be Leon, I know better than that, Dolce would need to wait for summer at this point since people are moving back in… okay, maybe I do know, but I’ll have to make another Rune Sphere first.”

If she’s being entirely honest with herself, Venti’s glad these highly tentative plans are working out this way. What happened with Dylas… she doesn’t think there was a single person involved who didn’t regret it. The least anyone can do is correct the situation as quickly as possible.

That ‘as quickly as possible’ was apparently ‘four and a half centuries later’ is unfortunate, but that’s just how things work out sometimes. As long as she gets to see him again, as long as she can tell him it’s not vain or egotistical to value his own life, that’s what matters.

“Well, don’t overwork yourself. They’ve all waited this long.” She doesn’t even know what she’s going to do with Amber. It’s the sort of thing she can probably get away with ignoring until the cast comes off.

For now, she’ll try to be happy with what she has.

Between her and Frey, someone has to. “...But that’s why I’m working so hard on it.”

The decision to keep Amber’s return quiet comes after the investigation of Yokmir Forest reveals not a colony of Dead Trees, as they’d feared, but something much worse.

Ventuswill wasn’t involved at all in the last war. Selphia is close to the border, but Ethelberd was more interested in Terrable, figuring that a reclusive Native Dragon is an easier one to control. He was wrong, and Norad hasn’t seen much trouble from him since. Not militarily, at least.

Still, Selphia is close to the border. Even though the fighting never came particularly close, Venti kept an eye on the news, just in case. She remembers the story of how a town with very few monsters, completely devoid of Gates, was almost overrun, because the Sechs built machines with the same effect. All of the photos she saw were of destroyed machines, so she didn’t get a very good look at them, but she’s positive that’s what the search team has just discovered.

She’ll have to tell the king about this. “Do we know what parts are used to create this…?” She’s never thought of a way to describe them. The creation of Artificial Gates was outlawed as soon as anyone realized they’re a thing that exists. “Where did they come from?”

“We’ll do our best to investigate that.” She doesn’t actually know the names of anyone here. The helmets aren’t helping. “In the worst-case scenario, we will petition Sir Ivan for assistance.”

Venti’s never actually met Ivan in person. At one point, his family was reasonably close to the succession, but then Gilbert’s son proved to have an impressive capability for impregnating his mistresses, and now it’s safe to say that’s never going to happen.

Last she’d heard, he’d retired from active military service, but there is something to be said for bringing in an expert on the subject.

Everyone goes off to continue the investigation, and she slumps down, letting the effects of the potion wear off. It’s either admit her exhaustion or drink another cup of coffee, and she’s drunk enough that she’s starting to hate the taste. Next time she’s out, she’ll have to pick out a few kinds of tea.

“Are you all right, Lady Ventuswill?” Volkanon asks.

She’s fine, really. If anything, she has a bit more energy than she did this morning. “...We can’t let the people know about Amber.”

“...Pardon?”

“Frey said the Rune Sphere needs security. I was already willing to admit that it does. But an artificial Gate was activated at some point, a dangerous monster attacked Yokmir Forest, and now Ambrosia is gone. This may not be a coincidence.”

Part of her wants to think it is. That no one is bold enough to attack her friends in an attempt to get to her. But she has to admit… to most, it would seem like the simpler option. She has no idea why they’d try to use summoned monsters for it, aside from maybe cowardice, but…

She hopes she’s being paranoid. But she’s seen the leadup to enough wars to know this may be the start of another one.

At least, between difficulty of access, heaviness of the machines, and distance from the border, the others won’t be under immediate threat.

The Guardians are going to be freed.

Her friends are coming back to her.

They’re going to have no idea how to function in modern life.

These three facts have Venti going to visit Porcoline, because it’s best to get the groundwork started before it needs to be there. As open and friendly as he is, he knows how to keep a secret, and that’s exactly what she needs right now.

“This is strictly confidential,” she tells him the second they’re in the back room. Theoretically, it’s where he keeps office hours, but most people who want to talk to him just go up to him at the restaurant. He makes a point of being available to every student at every time, so formal office hours aren’t that important. “If you tell anyone before it’s time, I may just decide to eat you.” She wouldn’t, really, but she would be very displeased, and she’s sure he knows that.

Porcoline nods very seriously. “I promise, Venti, not a word leaves this room.”

“We’ve found a way to free the Guardians.” She can see, in his eyes, the moment he regrets making that promise, and the moment he decides to keep it anyway. It’s one of the things she likes about him, along with his passion for his subject and his pancake recipe. “Their returns are going to be somewhat staggered out for practical reasons, but all of them are going to need assistance in adjusting to the modern world.”

Amber’s… not doing horribly. She hasn’t really gone out, due to the need for secrecy and the cast and everything, but she has met Clorica. The two of them quickly fell into a discussion of the merits of apple pie versus baked apples versus apple juice. If that’s any indication, at least her social life is going to go well.

“And you wish for my assistance?” He doesn’t need to sound so surprised. He’s the most helpful person Venti knows. Except for maybe Volkanon and his proteges, but he’s going to be very busy with securing Rune Spheres, and they’re just students who really don’t need any more responsibilities. “How is it that I can help you?”

“Well, they could all do with learning the basics of how to feed themselves with modern appliances.” She expects the length of the time between Amber’s cast coming off and her discovering blenders to be very, very low. She fully expects this to come with needing to clean fruit pulp off of the ceiling. “But if you could watch out for one of them on a more… personal level…”

She doesn’t really know what she’s trying to say here. Porcoline might understand her words better than she does. “Are you thinking of one in particular?” he asks, and then she realizes she is.

“I’m sure you know Dylas’ story by now.” It’s only covered in basically every relevant history book as ‘the reason we were supposed to end with three Guardians.’ “I’m confident that the other three can find things and people they enjoy in this world, but…”

The thing is, she knows it was never going to go any other way. No matter what, one of them was going to lose their only friend in the world.

She still wonders what would have changed, if that hadn’t been the case.

“Dylas… yes, I know who that is.” She’d hope so. There’s only four of them. “If there’s anything I can do to help, I will, but…”

“Start with just being yourself. I can guarantee he’s never met anyone like you before.” If someone like Porcoline existed back then… no, she needs to stop thinking about things she can’t change. It’ll be better now. “And… staying in the castle probably isn’t going to work long-term.” She’d love it if it did. Having all her friends in one place would be amazing.

But she has to be realistic, and her quarters just aren’t big enough for herself and four other humans and a ghost. She can’t think of a single other way she can make space for them unless she wants to bring back the Dragon Priest position as a thing that mattered, and the position itself was retired when Leon became a Guardian- well, ‘retired,’ on paper she does technically still have a priest, it’s just that the position will remain Leon’s until she sees his body, and no one’s tried to argue with her about it- so she doesn’t think she can make it work.

“I do have an empty set of rooms… should I set them aside?” She was just going to ask him for help coming up with ideas, but that works.

“You don’t have to, if it’d be too much of an imposition…” Worst case, she can refurbish the old monster barns to be livable, right? No one’s using them right now…

“Venti. You asked me for help, and I can give it. I am going to help that boy.” Has she ever heard him sound so serious before? He hasn’t made one joking attempt at a marriage proposal yet. Has she stepped into some weird alternate timeline or something? “Or any of your other friends, if you need me more. I’m sure Arthur and Meggy will love all of them!”

Okay. Crisis averted well ahead of schedule. This is just weirdly normal, and she needs it to stop. What’s a good joke…? “And you have an excuse to stop hosting family reunions with the building full?”

“That, too!” Okay. Good. Scarily-normal Porcoline interaction over. Now to head home and forget that ever happened until it becomes relevant.

And then probably figure out something similar for three other people.

She promised Volkanon she wasn’t going to take up drinking, she’s not even sure alcohol will do anything to her, but some days, she’s sorely tempted.

Chapter Text

Now that Frey’s figured out a solution, even if it’s going to be a long, drawn-out process due to annoying little things like ‘physical needs’ and ‘class schedules,’ she should probably tell someone who can actually do things about her hometown’s plan to scam infinite money out of the government.

She doesn’t strictly have to. Now that the thing they’re supposed to be working towards has happened, they’ll have to either admit they just want to invent things, or watch the money dry up on its own. And the first option doesn’t require them to admit to the scam.

Maybe she shouldn’t be so invested in bringing down the place where she grew up, but to be fair, they started it.

She still hasn’t decided how she’s going to go about it when her brother calls her. “I think you got off lucky.”

Well, that’s ominous. “Realized they still need an heir to their legacy?” Not that there’s much of a legacy to worry about, either. They don’t have a lot of money, it’s been a bit since the last time a direct ancestor did anything impressive… When they find out about the Rune Sphere, they’re going to either double down or suck up, and she doesn’t really want to deal with either.

“Something like that. They kept trying to tell me I should cut you off, but I just set my online friend list to private and they assumed I went along with it in a way that’d make me still look good.” Sometimes, she seriously wonders what’s wrong with her family. But they buy into the same conspiracy theories about Venti being evil as everyone else, so maybe they’ve just never thought for themselves in their lives.

“Well, I’m sure they’ll regret it soon enough.” She wants to tell Lest what she’s just accomplished. Being in Alvarna, it shouldn’t matter that much if he knows. But he has enough to deal with without knowing just how bad things are. “Maybe they’ll leave you alone once they have to explain to people why…”

They won’t explain it properly. They won’t even try. They’ll lie, and sink even deeper into the conspiracy, and claim that her undoing a whole calendar’s worth of human sacrifices is betraying their family values. That whole town’s been feeding each other’s convictions since before she was born.

“Why what? Frey, are you planning something?”

“I’m not going to tell you, so you can deny knowing anything if asked.” That might be one of the kindest things she can do for him right now. “Just… you’re saving up your own money, right?”

“Yeah, but why are you asking this now?” She just said she wasn’t going to tell him. She’s going to hold herself to that.

He can find out when everyone else does. It’s the safest thing for everyone involved.

After everything, just going back to class feels sort of anticlimactic. Frey listens to the teachers droning off the syllabus, figures out which textbooks are actually necessary versus only on the list because every class is technically required to have them, and begins her struggle with translating the castle’s system of mailing addresses into something the online bookstore will accept.

In a lot of online storefronts, this would make sense. The whole thing’s sort of unique. Still, she thinks the official online bookstore for a school with the castle at the very center of it should be prepared to take orders from that very castle.

The reward for being an exceptional student is complications in ordering textbooks. She feels like she shouldn’t be surprised.

“So, did you hear about what they found in the forest a few days ago?” Doug asks as class lets out.

Doug’s sort of weird. He’s a refugee from Sechs, though, so he has plenty of reason to be. All she really knows about him besides that is that he has some sort of relation in Sharance- he doesn’t sound too sure himself when he talks about it, but he cares enough to visit in person, so maybe it doesn’t matter- and he has digestion issues related to wheat flour, which he constantly denies in favor of insisting that everyone else is weird for thinking bread is edible. It’s not a particularly complete set of information, but it is an interesting one.

Xiao Pai nods. “Mama’s worried it will worry the guests.”

“It’s crazy that no one knows what it is, right? Or if they do, they’re not telling us about it.”

It’s an artificial Gate. Frey knows this, because she overheard Venti talking about it, and also she’s been to the war museum in the capital.

She’s pretty sure there’s two reasons they’re not saying as much out loud. It would make people panic, and they’re trying to keep attention away from Yokmir Forest while security around the Rune Spot is sorted out.

She hasn’t been told not to talk about it, but she also doesn’t want to deal with making that explanation. “Why would they need to tell us about it? It’s not like there’s much any of us could do.” She does sort of hope some sort of official explanation comes out before anything happens like bringing the military in- a real possibility, artificial Gates are that illegal- but maybe it won’t need to happen. Maybe this is just a weird one-off.

And maybe Leon Karnak will suddenly become a perfectly safe tourist destination.

“The conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day with this.” Doug sounds far too happy about this. “I bet they’ve started already.”

He doesn’t pull out his phone to begin looking for such theories. That’s good, because Frey doesn’t think she could hold herself back if he did. Amber’s presence in the castle- and, more importantly, how she got there- needs to be kept as secret as possible.

“It’ll die down once they don’t get any more information.” Or it’ll be replaced by whatever they make up to say why Amber being back is actually a bad thing for the world in general, and a sign that Venti is the root of all evil. She thinks she knows exactly what words they’ll use for it, too. “...So! Spring sports are coming up! What do you think?”

“Whoever came up with the stereotype about dwarves being good at baseball had no idea what they were talking about.”

Xiao Pai reaches over and pats him on the shoulder. “There, there. Running the bases can be difficult.” She says that like that isn’t the one time she can reliably do something without tripping. Frey’s seen recordings of her high school performance, and it’s like she’s an entirely different person.

Doug must know that, too. He doesn’t seem at all comforted.

Or maybe he’s just decided that he regrets doing an elective math class. It can be hard to tell with him.

There was once a fad where mailboxes would be shaped like Saint Eliza. This fad lasted for about two decades, before it was discovered that such effigies would gain a sort of life, and proceed to talk the ears off anyone who could hear them.

‘Anyone who could hear them’ ended up being mostly Earthmates, and Earthmates have been avoiding Selphia for ages, so getting rid of them was less of a priority here than anywhere else. Frey doesn’t usually mind, since most of them are out of the way, and they grumble less than some of her classmates.

But the one at the castle is used for packages too big to fit in individual mailboxes, and packages that big include textbooks, and holding out a digital receipt to an inanimate object is one of those things she hadn’t thought she’d ever have to do in her life.

She wonders if everyone else feels even more weird about it than she does. At least she can hear enough to know there’s a purpose for this.

Maybe they’ve just gotten used to it. She’ll have to get used to it, too. This is her life now.

At least she can trust that the mailbox won’t be able to blab her secrets to anyone. “Say, Eliza, you’ve seen all sorts of things come through here, right?”

“That’s right.” Every Eliza has a different voice, which somehow raises even more questions than their existence did already. “Everything from postcards, to love letters, to bicycles- you name it, it’s come through here.”

“How about correspondence with government institutions?”

“...I feel like I shouldn’t be answering that.” That means it’s a yes. If the answer was no, there wouldn’t be anything to hide.

Or it’s just tax stuff. But that doesn’t feel important enough to want to hide it.

“So I guess you wouldn’t know how to go about reporting…” It’s hard to even think about the scale of centuries of fraud. Saying it out loud feels impossible. “I know government websites have forms you can fill out and stuff, but I’m not sure how to word any of it, or if any of the pre-existing forms apply.” She’s not sure why she expects a mailbox to be able to help her. Maybe she’s just that desperate to say something to someone.

She needs to deal with this soon, anyway. She hasn’t talked to Amber about it, but if there’s even a chance she remembers being told about it, the information could get out at any time.

“Try filling out the closest one you can find and see if you get a result,” Eliza advises. “That is a real thing people do. Sometimes, it even works! Or you could fill out everything that might possibly apply. Eventually, you’re bound to hit the rightish one.”

So, as soon as she’s freed her textbooks from their cardboard prisons, she’s going to be filling out at least five or six different kinds of form and hoping one of them gets the attention of the right people. It’s not a glamorous job, but it’s that or she tells everyone when this whole thing inevitably goes public, and they’ll be more likely to believe her if she’s done this sort of groundwork.

If all the money is gone, everyone in town can do what they like. The prospect of being disinherited will mean even less than it used to. Maybe it’ll help a few more people become brave enough to leave.

Failing that, she can at least remind people that their weird vendetta is against a literal dragon. Or maybe they know that already, and the whole reason they stay out of Selphia is they’re afraid of getting eaten.

If she can get someone to admit to any of that, she’ll consider this something akin to success.

Chapter Text

Xiao Pai’s mama always says that things have a tendency to work out.

Xiao Pai isn’t convinced.

Oh, things do seem to work out a lot for Mama. Even her mistakes have a way of becoming something fortunate. But that’s a Mama thing. Papa sometimes says that he thinks someone cast a good luck spell on her that never wore off right.

If that’s the case, Xiao Pai is victim of a bad luck curse. Plates break. Vacuum cables lie around where she can trip on them. Attempts at fixing a button lead to the unraveling of the entire shirt.

After so much time, she knows this. She has reached acceptance of it. It is a thing she can work her way through.

Shoes without laces, so there is less to trip on. Mechanical pencils, so when the tip snaps, she will not spend several minutes struggling with the sharpener. Microwavable food and enchanted plastic plates remove many dangers of cooking.

But one cannot live on pizza rolls alone. Fresher food, cooked on stovetop, is what she really wants in life.

With equal parts dread and anticipation, she schedules an introductory cooking class.

On the first day, her alarm doesn’t go off. She wakes up in time for class, but not in time for breakfast, which smells delicious. Mama promises to save some for later, but Xiao Pai knows it will not reheat well.

By following signs, she successfully does not get lost on the way to the classroom. At first, she thinks there must be a mistake, as Vishnal is present, but then she recalls that Vishnal, though full of enthusiasm, is not very good at cooking. Every semester, he gets ever closer to a passing grade, but it seems he has not slipped by just yet.

In truth, she’s sort of jealous of Vishnal. Even as things go wrong around him, he always picks himself up again, sure that this time it will work out. Maybe one day, he will even be correct about that.

It may even be this semester. According to Clorica, last week he shared something with her that was edible, if tasting like a wet sock.

Forte is here, too, and this gives her relief. However badly this goes, she may not be the worst in the class, at least in certain areas. Forte can set things on fire that should never have gone near a source of heat. It is very impressive, in a very bad way.

She takes a deep breath. She has entered the classroom, and disaster has not begun. It’s the first day, so there shouldn’t be much chance for things to go wrong. It should be fine.

No. It will be fine. Mama always tells her to be more positive, after all.

Class begins. She gets a papercut from the syllabus.

As expected, the remains of breakfast do not reheat well. She has a math class in the afternoon, and should be worrying about that, but instead is poking at a sad pile of eggs with a plastic fork.

Papa is the cook in the family. If he were here, she could ask, and he would make the most delicious shrimp dumplings. But Papa is a successful businessman, always traveling to do meetings for his company. It will be two weeks before he is next home.

In that time, she hopes to not embarrass herself too badly to show her face in cooking lessons. Maybe, she will achieve cut vegetables without a cut hand. That is a good goal for two weeks, she wants to think. Yes, others do it faster, but they do not have her luck, nor should they.

For now, it is sad egg time. She will eat, and attend afternoon classes, and hope not to cut herself again too many times.

As she eats, she receives a message. She is being asked if she is interested in playing baseball this weekend. Her reply is a yes. She isn’t much good at a lot of things, but she can hit a ball better than half the high school, and people seem to think that means something.

To her, it is a back-up plan. If cooking goes bad, there is always baseball. It will distract her from her failures.

Failures she has already begun to anticipate.

On her second day of cooking class, Xiao Pai trips over nothing and a plate is shattered. It seems her hopes are already falling to pieces. Everyone asks if she is okay, and she can just mutely nod.

It’s fine. This happens all the time. She is used to it.

“Here.” Vishnal moves her hands away from the broken shards. None have jumped up into her hand, so this is one of the better breakings. He has a dustpan in his other hand, along with a very small brush. “Here, I can-”

“I can clean up after myself.” She is used to it, after all. “You have enough problems without worrying about mine, no?” She is not going to cry in front of people who have known her for less than a week.

He isn’t dissuaded at all, though. “Helping you isn’t going to make my problems any worse.” She can’t even disagree with that. She has seen his attempts at curry, and they are blasphemously terrible.

Literally. Lady Ventuswill has tried them. She used those exact words.

That didn’t make Vishnal give up, either. He has, however, eased up on the curry just a little, to everyone around him’s relief. His attempts at other things are less unsuccessful. “No, but you will not have time to work on them. My luck is…” She is certain he knows about this already. She does not need his pity, but also, it seems, cannot stop him from giving it.

“But do you know where the cleaning supplies are stored?” She does not. She is sure Porco would have mentioned it at some point, but she simply cannot remember. “...Besides, maybe if I show you what I’ve learned, it’ll help me do better.”

He has already said that he does not think it could make things worse. “Why do you sound so sure?” How can someone be so confident, despite doing everything wrong?

“I have to live up to my motto, don’t I?” She blinks at him. “Don't give up! Keep on trying!” …Oh, that motto. The last time she heard it was when Frey invited her friends to go fishing together in early fall. It ended poorly, as none of them know how to fish. They caught nothing. Margaret saw a squid and spent the rest of the afternoon screaming.

None of them have gone fishing since, at least that Xiao Pai knows of. Perhaps they simply did not invite her after seeing her get tangled in the fishing line, but if so, they have never spoken of it. It may as well not exist.

She wonders if Vishnal has been put off of the activity for good, or if he really will keep on trying. Today feels like a bad day to ask.

Given how he is still in this class, perhaps she already suspects the answer.

Compared to the difficulties of cooking, baseball is a relief.

There is still fear that she will trip over one of the bases and fall on her face, but she knows she can hit the ball. There is still fear something will get in her eye, and the ball will hit her in the head while she is distracted by that, but she knows she can throw it where it needs to be.

It is not a useful skill, nothing that will make the inn more desirable to guests, or her a more desirable person. But it is something she can do, and that is a welcome change.

Today, however, misfortune strikes again. They need one more person, as something last minute came up for Doug. Everyone hangs around, poking at their phones, trying to see if anyone is willing to drop everything for a silly little game.

And then, Xiao Pai sees a familiar face. “Oh, it’s Frey! Haloha!” Next to her is a girl she does not recognize, with a large hat and larger cloak. Very little of her body can be seen beneath it. Perhaps she is cold- the weather is warming, but it is not there yet. “Is this a new friend?”

“Um… yeah. She just arrived a week ago.” Oh, a new student, then? There aren’t many new students in the middle of the year. Or perhaps she moved in with family related to the school.

If there’s one thing Xiao Pai knows, it’s that this girl has not come by the inn at all.

“Haloha!” The girl’s hat slips down a little, and she hurriedly pushes it back up again. “What are you all doing?”

“We are… trying to get enough people together to play baseball.” They have not yet become desperate enough to invite Rob from the Obsidian Dorm, that never ends well, but it is starting to feel like there are not a lot of options.

“Baseball?” The girl repeats. It is like speaking to an echo.

“How long do you want the game to go?” Frey asks, before anyone can wonder why her friend sounds so confused. “I’m not very good, but if you just need someone who can stand in the outfield for an hour, I can do that much.” She pauses, and turns to her friend. “Are you okay with watching, or would you like to go home now?”

“I want to see.” It’s really no problem to have someone watching, they can set her up at a bench in the shade and hope she doesn’t get too hot. It is unlikely she will, the weather is still only just warming up, but it is the sort of thing Margaret would worry about, and Xiao Pai does not think she is wrong.

Now that they have enough people, the game can start. Frey will not do much, and Xiao Pai can enjoy herself.

And she does.

Frey’s friend watches them from the bench the whole time. She cheers the one time Frey successfully hits the ball, even if she doesn’t actually make it to first base. Sometimes, she doodles little baseballs on a notepad in blue ink. She then draws patterns on the baseballs.

No one thinks to introduce themselves, or ask the girl her name. She is just there, and she seems fascinated by how the sport works.

“Maybe I can play next time!” She suggests as they all prepare to leave.

“You’d probably do better than I did,” Frey admits. “We might have to check for rules specific to you, though.”

Xiao Pai doesn't think anything of that, either, though very few types of people have special rules they need to follow in sports. She does not care to. She cares to take her bat and go home for the day.

As if the spell keeping her moving well enough during the game has broken, she trips on the stairs on her way in.

Chapter Text

Initially, Arthur doesn’t expect his time at Selphia University to be anything special. He’ll attend classes, he’ll keep his head down enough to avoid creating scandal for the family, and hopefully graduate four or five years down the line, depending on scheduling. He knows some majors take longer than others to complete not because of courseload, but because the required courses are only offered once a semester in overlapping time slots, but he’s hoping business isn’t going to be one of them.

Among other things, if a major this common was dragged out by something so small, it would reflect poorly on the competence of the institution. A university this highly acclaimed should absolutely be at least that competent.

His expectations are not immediately thrown out the window. It takes a bit more time than that. He arrives in town on the expected day, Porcoline is immediately welcoming to a frankly frightening degree, and he’s pretty sure everyone feels this awkward moving in with people they don’t know. He’s willing to believe this is what normal looks like, or something close to it.

And then the wreckage of an artificial Gate is found in Yokmir Forest. It’s… unfortunate, but what he expects to come of this is a bit of political tension that won’t instantly impact life on campus.

In that assessment, he failed to account for the fact that people gossip.

He especially failed to account for the fact that, for some people, it is their job to know these kinds of things, or at least to be in a position to learn. Less than twenty-four hours after the incident, he father sends him an email saying not to embarrass the family.

…He wants to think it’s related to the incident, anyway. It could be about other things.

He doesn’t ask for clarification. This semester, he is going to focus on his studies. He won’t have time to do anything that might reflect badly.

What happened was strange, but there’s no reason to think it will immediately impact his life. There will be some amount of buildup to keep an eye out for if this becomes something, and the good thing about the gossip he never anticipated is that keeping track of that has never been easier.

“I think you’re right about what it was,” Margaret admits. She sets down a book she must have checked out from one of the libraries. A whole page is filled with pictures of artificial Gates in various states of brokenness. “They really do look the same.”

Some of the photos on the page, Arthur suspects, were taken because everyone involved knew no one was going to believe they’d managed it otherwise. Like the one that Sir Ivan’s brother- he can’t remember his name, it’s not listed on the page, but he can at least recognize old photos of him- broke by hitting it with a watering can.

He’d love to know more of the context behind that image. There’s absolutely zero chance of him ever getting it. “The image on the news wasn’t clear, but I don’t think it was broken in any of these ways.” It looked more like it was crushed underneath something. “I suppose it being broken is the thing that really matters here.” For now, they will not have to fear a steady stream of hostile monsters flooding out from Yokmir Forest.

That’s the only important part, really. It’d be very inconvenient if that sort of thing impacted the start of classes.

The first day of classes goes about as anticipated, and once the last one lets out Arthur goes to pick up some shelving.

He doesn’t really know how to describe the store he commissioned the shelves from. Margaret gave him the address and told him he can get basically anything he wants, so long as he offers enough money to break past the proprietor’s laziness.

It’s convenient, because what he wants is shelves with little Woolies painted on them, and money is less of a concern for him than it might be for some people. He thinks the wood used might have been cannibalized from some old tables that are now nowhere to be seen, but this doesn’t have to be anything special. It just needs to be cute.

Bado even lends him a wagon to take the shelves over in, so long as he brings it back by the weekend. He’ll probably drop it off early tomorrow. It’ll be easier that way.

When she sees him with the wagon, Forte offers to assist him again, if only to be sure the wagon doesn’t lose a wheel over one of the canals. Selphia takes pride in its water features, and especially that they’re clean enough fish can swim through them. They are, however, mildly inconvenient if you have a tendency to drop things.

“I can’t decide if this is better or worse than if he decided to try making deliveries,” Forte admits. Arthur remembers Bado’s beat-up old pickup truck, and thinks he might feel the same way. It’s hard to believe that thing is still safe for the road. “It would be good for him to get out more, but I’m sure the engine would give out and he’d use it as an excuse not to work until he had a new vehicle.”

He can’t tell whether her opinion of the man is positive or negative. Basically every other sentence, her tone towards him changes. “You seem to know him well.”

“He was my father’s best friend. They used to ‘go on adventures’ together, which mostly means they’d go bother random monsters just off the Yokmir hiking trail until Ambrosia got tired of them.” Is that a typical pastime for young people in this town? Arthur did his research on the school, but not on the people living there. “When my brother and I were young, he’d make toys for us. He still had something resembling motivation back then.”

He’d seemed plenty motivated when Arthur told him all he had to do was make something that wouldn’t fall over and had some cute details. But then, he supposes it’s a relatively simple job for…

…He actually doesn’t know what Bado’s business is supposed to be. There’s a sign in the front, but it didn’t do much to clarify matters.

He’s starting to wonder if that might have been the point.

No point worrying about it. He has his shelves, they seem simple enough to put up, and then he can have his entire collection on display, just the way he likes it.

Forte takes the wagon with her when she leaves. For Arthur, this is incredibly convenient.

He wonders if Bado might not feel the same way.

His father tells him not to interfere with the official investigation into the artificial Gate that was discovered, which is the first Arthur hears about such an investigation occurring. The discovery dropped out of the news cycle basically immediately, and if something’s currently happening, it hasn’t yet reached the attention of the people most likely to spread these things around.

He says he won’t, because he was never going to have any interest in doing so, and he doesn’t even know where he’d start.

Still, with all the ominous emails, he figures it couldn’t hurt to inform himself of what might be happening. He opens a web browser and starts trawling the internet for stuff about the last war. He’s been to museums, but the whole thing was just a bit too recent to be included in his history classes, so he’s aware there may be a few gaps. Maybe the missing information will even be relevant, or interesting.

Mostly, it’s something he can do once there’s no homework left to focus on.

What he already knows is that the war took place back in the 80s. What he learns is that the whole thing started with espionage- the mechanical Gates just appeared one day, no one’s exactly sure when, and people only found out where they came from when Ethelberd announced his intentions over a year later.

He wonders if the same might be true here. He’s certain that other people have come to that conclusion, at least, and that might be all that matters in the immediate future.

What he already knows is that Terrable got involved at the end of it. He knows Ethelberd was pleased by it, because he wanted to take her power for himself. What he learns is that she ended all the fighting by conjuring vegetables.

He can’t imagine Ventuswill doing anything of the sort. It feels too undignified for her. He has a standing invitation to eat his fill of pancakes with her every month, but he still can’t bring himself to imagine her dropping a giant turnip on a tank.

Nor would he want her to. It’d be a waste of a good turnip.

What he already knows is that the whole thing took place in a remote country area, somewhere that had only just installed phone lines. What he learns is that Kardia County was vehemently anti-technology even before the war, and to this day shuns anyone who enters with anything more recent than an automobile.

Kardia County also has a much lower population than when the war ended, with not even a de Sainte-Coquille to its name. Arthur suspects those two things might be related, but it’s really nothing he should be concerning himself with. Country towns die all the time, for all sorts of reasons. It usually isn’t anything special.

Just as he’s about to click on a supposedly-related article about the origins of pink turnips- mostly to try and figure out how these things are related- there’s a knock on his door.

“Porco wants to know if you’ve eaten yet today.” Now that Margaret mentions it… he didn’t have a very big lunch. His classes are scheduled just a bit too close together for that, so he’s going to have to get used to it. “We have sandwiches… or, we did when I was downstairs…”

They do still have sandwiches when Arthur gets downstairs, if not very many of them. Porcoline has apparently gotten tired of the texture and is moving on to soups. It’s certain when, if ever, he is going to stop.

This is apparently his life now. It’s not what he thinks most would call normal, but he isn’t sure how much Selphia fits into that in general.

He isn’t even sure this year is going to fit Selphia’s definition of normal, and it’s best he admits this to himself before things start to happen. He can prepare, that way, so his education escapes unscathed.

So he can enjoy these peaceful moments while they still last.

Chapter Text

There’s someone new in the castle.

Clorica doesn’t think she’s supposed to know this. But she suffers from the very annoying combination of sleepwalking and narcolepsy, and wakes up in places she’s not supposed to be, and sometimes she learns things. It’s part of life, at least until she can find medication that actually works for her.

She isn’t entirely sure anymore that that’s going to happen, so she just has to live with it. Not that she knows how someone’s supposed to live with learning secrets against their will. The last time she tried asking the internet for advice, she was called a liar because ‘no one actually sleepwalks during the day.’ It’s still better than asking her family would be, she can just roll her eyes and move on with nothing in her life changing, but it means she has to figure everything out herself.

She could just ignore it and move on with her life. She probably should. Venti is nice and likes to share pancakes, and says she doesn’t like to think of herself as a vengeful god, but… she’s still a god. Still a dragon, like the creatures living on Leon Karnak.

But… she’s curious. So she thinks it over a bit, and eventually decides to see if she can take a look.

She finds a girl wrapped up in a flower-patterned blanket with an arm in a cast, sitting next to boxes of at least five or six kinds of fruit gummy. Her name is Amber, and she wants to try every sort of flavoring, starting with apples.

Clorica likes apples, and says as much.

With how the girl’s face lights up, she thinks it must have been a good decision.

The thing about Clorica is she’s not usually very quick to make her decisions. She waited a whole year before declaring a major just so she could try a bit of everything and figure out what she liked. People judge her for it sometimes, her parents said she was wasting tuition on credits that didn’t matter, but that’s just how she is.

And those credits weren’t wasted. They’ve filled up a lot of her elective requirements quite nicely. Her siblings complain about electives being pointless, that they add time to a degree in a wasteful matter, but she thinks they may be taking things a bit too seriously.

Still, they don’t stop questioning her decisions, purely because of the time she takes to make them. So. She’s glad introducing herself to Amber is something she can be confident was the right decision. She can’t imagine she would have told them if it didn’t turn out this well, but it’s nice to not have to make that choice.

Everything’s worked out so far. She can just go along with the conversation, as Amber leads her through discussing the merits of apples, and oranges, and grapes.

…Well. Grapes are a slightly more convoluted topic. “I’m… not the biggest fan of grapes.” She doesn’t have a problem with artificial grape flavor, but the real thing just doesn’t agree with her.

“Why not?”

“It’s… hard to describe.” She thinks and thinks about it, and eventually comes to a decision on what to say. “My parents refuse to buy any kind of grape that doesn’t have seeds. They get stuck in my teeth.” For most people, that probably wouldn’t be enough to taint an entire species of fruit.

Most people, when asked what they want for a snack, aren’t just handed a bunch of grapes before they can come to an answer. To Clorica, grapes taste like lost agency and confusion.  Now that she’s thinking about it, this is probably something to discuss with her therapist.

Amber blinks at her. The little tassels on her head quiver, just a little. How do they do that? “There are grapes without seeds?” Is that really what she’s taking away from this?

“Yes, but… I can’t say much about how they taste.” She could run out to the general store and buy a bag now, but… at this point, she can’t see herself enjoying the flavor at all. There’s no point. “If you try them, you’re going to have to tell me about it.” Maybe they’ll taste really different, and it’ll be something she can enjoy.

She’s not getting her hopes up.

Still, grape-flavored fruit gummies are tolerable, and Amber likes to share. That’s just going to have to be close enough.

It takes until Amber’s cast is off for Clorica to realize she has wings. Mostly because it’s the first time she sees her not wrapped up in that blanket. At this point, she thinks it might be a bit late to say anything about it without making things weird.

In front of her, there is a pile of books. She can’t make out all the titles, but they all seem to be some flavor of nonfiction.

“Ven showed me to the library earlier.” Is she talking about the castle library, the official university library, or the little public library squeezed between a pair of houses? She wants to say it’s one of the latter two, but… well… on second glance, she recognizes some of those covers from when she was desperately searching for sources for research papers. “She said it might help me with… um…”

She doesn’t finish the sentence. Clorica doesn’t mind. It can be hard to talk about what you want.

“Do you… know where you’re going to start with this?” It’s not something she’s happy with herself for asking. She remembers bringing home big piles of books like this one, and falling asleep right in the center. Eventually, she was told to just pick one, and… from there, it quickly stopped being a choice at all.

She’s not going to do that. She’s not. The question is bitter on her tongue.

“Well…” Maybe the reason she didn’t have books while the cast was on is because someone needs both arms to move the giant almanac of baseball. “Do you know if this has rules for… for people with wings?” Her own pair flutters, just a little, and it is definitely too late to ask for any sort of details about that.

“...I don’t know. Let’s see if it says anything.” Sports usually have rules for accommodating all sorts of different species, but they might not all be written down in the same place. That feels more like a job for a web browser and ‘find in page.’

Still, if Amber wants to start her search with ink and paper, there’s no reason to stop her. Books this big tend to have two things- a table of contents and a carefully-assembled index.

It’s actually pretty easy to find the relevant bit of text, and what it says, in hindsight, feels obvious. ‘ Players capable of flight must remain grounded. Those who float as their main method of propulsion may hover no higher than the tallest player’s kneecaps.’ Short, simple, possibly an excuse to sell branded measuring tape. Clorica knows it exists, but until now, she’s never thought of the reasoning behind it. Maybe other strange sports equipment has its own reasons for existing.

“Okay, this makes sense.” Amber nods along as she reads it, even as she reaches towards a book about… the history of fertilizer? Clorica isn’t sure what’s going on there, but it isn’t any less confusing than realizing her friend has wings in the first place.

It isn’t until she’s almost back to her room that she remembers another human--shaped butterfly that occasionally answers to Amber and is known for having been close with Ventuswill.

At this point, it is absolutely too late to ask about it. It’s not like she was meant to know she was in the castle, anyway, she just woke up there and had to overhear.

…When she considers that, she really hopes that the next set of pills works better than the last five.

Since right before classes started up again, Volkanon has been incredibly busy.

Clorica doesn’t think much about it. Volkanon’s always busy. He’s Venti’s personal assistant, after all, which means he needs to do a lot of things. And he needs to do them well, so it’ll take a while.

She doesn’t realize just how busy he is until Vishnal asks her if she’s seen him. “...No? I don’t think so… The last time I saw him, I was half asleep.” She can’t actually remember what day it happened on, except that it probably wasn’t today.

“...Oh. I was hoping he’d give me advice for my public speaking class. We all have to do an introductory speech and…”

Clorica thinks Vishnal will do just fine in his public speaking class. He’s confident, and she’s led to believe that makes up at least fifty-percent of the final grade, unless someone can prove they have a medically documented speech impediment, or something. Whether or not this is connected to the online job postings saying Selphia University wants new teachers for that subject, no one can say except Venti, Volkanon, and maybe the school’s legal department.

With that heavy a weighting, he really has nothing to worry about. “You’re supposed to talk about yourself, aren’t you? I’m… not sure he can help with that.” Maybe in reining in the enthusiasm in the first draft, but that’s not going to change the actual presentation.

“Maybe, but he speaks at graduation every year. And he watches every other speaker. He can at least tell me if I’m doing it wrong.”

It’s hard to tell if introducing himself needs that much preparation, but better he’s overthinking it than not thinking at all. She can’t imagine it impacting his enthusiasm once he’s actually in front of the class if having to retake introductory cooking four times hasn’t.

Part of her feels like she should suggest he take a semester off of that if he fails again, just so he can build up credits in other areas. Also, it’d be a break from taste testing for him. She just doesn’t have the heart to do so.

“Why not ask Venti? She does a lot of public speaking.” Sure, she’s also pretty busy at the moment, but at least it’s easy to tell if she’s in the castle.

“Clorica, if I go to Lady Ventuswill with such a simple assignment, I think I might die.” So that’s his limit. She can’t believe she actually found it.

“Why not? You already have her eat your cooking.” And Venti is completely honest with how much she hates Vishnal’s cooking.

“That’s different!” She isn’t sure how it is. Maybe it’s just that he hasn’t thrown his whole heart into his assignment the way he does with food. “If it’s just food, I don’t have to say anything! And… you know… if it’s bad, I’m used to it.” And if it’s good, he gets praised by a god.

It’s not a bad strategy. Clorica’s been using Venti to iterate upon her pancake recipe. It’s just that she already had a workable strategy to begin with.

She takes a moment to consider if Frey or Amber, also in the castle, might be good suggestions, but Vishnal’s already run off to search for possibilities himself. He’s a decisive person like that.

As long as he doesn’t annoy everyone by shouting his speech from the window of his room, she thinks he’s going to get on just fine.

Now, to figure out what she wants for dinner tonight…

Chapter Text

There are a lot of things Doug isn’t sure about.

He isn’t sure how he’d tell anyone who asks what his relation is with Zaid. They aren’t particularly related, really, at least no more than the rest of the tribe was. It’s just that, with the tribe gone, that’s as closely related as he’s going to get with anybody.

Sometimes, that’s the only reason they put up with each other. They’re just a bit too similar in all the worst ways, complete with falling down two completely different conspiracy dungeon flowers back in high school. They then overcompensated in an attempt to prove they’d gotten over themselves, and now they’re going to two completely different schools.

None of this is stuff he likes to talk about with other people, because that would mean admitting his entire college application is based on wanting to prove he no longer holds any ridiculous beliefs about Ventuswill.

Or… it was, at first.

Another thing he’s not sure about is how he got into this situation.

In his defense, it started off perfectly normal. He works part-time at a little general store. Quiet place so he doesn’t have to do much, the owner is a sweet old lady, basically the best gig he could have landed while still having to work. The customers that come in can ask for all sorts of weird things, and he always just shrugs and goes along with it.

So, like, in hindsight, those guys were really shady. He hadn’t thought much of it, because he was in Customer Service Mode at the time. But who needs to have literally every battery in the store delivered by hand to somewhere in the middle of Yokmir Forest, just off the hiking trail?

Weirdoes, that’s who.

He figured out the whole thing was a bad idea after he’d already handed the batteries over, at which point all he could do was walk away as quickly as possible. Through a tree, because ‘quick’ and ‘careful’ are pure antonyms to his personal philosophy, but as long as nobody saw him with those guys, he can deal with a few cuts on his face.

So there’s one thing he’s sure about- he thinks he knows how that machine they found was powered. Why anyone would want to power something that big with triple-A batteries, he’s not sure, but that explains why they needed so many of them.

He can’t believe the people doing weird shady stuff in the woods can’t be bothered to just hook up a generator, but that’s really not the weirdest thing here. Selling batteries should not turn into ‘there’s a weird thing in the forest where people were investigating for unspecified other reasons.’

One last thing he’s not sure of is what he’s supposed to do about it. Should he report it? Can he report it, without getting into trouble for letting it happen in the first place?

He spends so long thinking about it that he thinks he must have missed his chance completely.

…If Zaid finds out about this, he’s going to kill him.

It takes him a bit to notice, but after that day, even as classes are only beginning, a lot of things change. When he sees Frey, she seems a bit more distractible. Clorica talks about having a new friend. Completely normal things that he doesn’t need to think about.

And then those guys come back, just before he was about to pack up and head out to play baseball with his friends. He’s not really any good at baseball, but they need a place-filler and it’s a chance to do nothing for an afternoon. He feels bad about having to cancel on them.

He sends them the vaguest text he possibly can and hopes that literally anybody decides they want cheap jam rolls before this can go too far downhill. “Um… Can I help you?”

He thinks saying that might be where he went wrong.

“You did well with the last delivery,” One of them says, like he didn’t just take way too many batteries into the woods and run away as fast as he can. “But there’s still more we have to do.”

At no point did Doug agree to join in on their weird conspiracy. That’s the whole thing he came to Selphia to avoid. Apparently, they’ve decided he’s stuck with them anyway.

If only the security camera hadn’t died, maybe he could report them to the authorities and get out of this mess.

Or maybe it’s just a bit too late for that.

Doug doesn’t keep up that much with the news, but he eventually figures out that Clorica’s friend Amber is that Amber, with all that implies, and soon after, he receives an ominous text.

The itinerary’s moved up.

He has no idea how these people even got his phone number. He can’t remember ever giving it to them. Mostly, they just use it to tell him he’ll be taking the fall if they fail, which is basically the only thing keeping him from turning them in. He wants them to fail. He just wants it to happen in a way where it’s clear he wants nothing to do with this.

He can at least tell them there won’t be more batteries for another two weeks. It’s the truth, they cleared out a whole month’s supply. He’s surprised no one’s asked about that yet, or why they aren’t roping in someone from an electronics store, but far be it from him to question the shadiest people he knows.

The one time he tried, they sent him a photo of Zaid. Zaid’s fine, he’s trying to work out a way not to be dragged into any theater productions this year, sponsored by Aquaticus or not, he’s pretty sure the picture was actually edited down from the Unity Point homepage, but just them knowing about him rubs Doug the wrong way.

Well. Everything about them rubs him the wrong way. This is just more than usual.

He tries going online and looking up what to do in the face of blackmail, but basically all the results are contradicting each other completely, leaving him with, if anything, less idea of what to do than before.

Still. No batteries for two weeks. They physically will not exist. Surely, they can understand that much.

Two weeks to figure out a way out of this mess.

Two weeks to consider if they’ll leave him alone if he transfers somewhere else.

Two weeks to try and tell someone about it.

Somehow, he never seems to manage.

Two weeks for something to happen to the battery shipment, ideally forcing those guys to find someone new to bother.

That doesn’t happen, either.

The next place they want batteries delivered to is the Water Ruins. It doesn’t take any sort of genius to figure out.

It’s not a place Doug goes to, ever. They effectively slapped a history museum onto the entrance of someone’s tomb, and that’s a slight bit too morbid for him, even ignoring that he’d have to pay for both admission and a bus ticket.

Sure, Marionetta living in a dormitory basement is weird, but there aren’t, like, dedications or anything. Also, she’s perfectly nice as long as you give her cheesecake. She’s basically a normal person who can’t form long-term memories.

Thunderbolt isn’t. There are rules against bringing in food or drinks already, but those rules go double for carrots. It’s funny the first time you hear about people getting mugged by a horse, but after a while, it just starts getting sad. Also, the ruins themselves are dangerous enough without pissing off the local Guardian, especially since he already doesn’t seem to have a setting lower than ‘mildly irritated.’

It’s not somewhere he wants to be, is the point. And now here he is, walking along the road because he’s not spending any money he doesn’t need to on something he doesn’t want to be involved in to begin with.

At one point, it does cross his mind to tell someone about this, but at that point, he’s halfway to the ruins already, and doesn’t have his phone with him for a variety of reasons.

At that point, he figures it’s too late, and continues on.

Usually, entering the ruins requires going through the museum. They say it’s for safety reasons, in case anyone goes missing, but sometimes Doug thinks it’s just a way of making more money. Forte’s uncle Bado is good at recognizing scams, so he could ask him about it, but… it’s not like they have much of anything in common. Also, he might ask to be paid for his opinion.

Still, there are other ways in. Mostly involving someone else going in before you with a ladder or something. It’s just that no one ever does that, because then they’d have to swim to the ladder, and the most dangerous monster there uses lightning magic, so getting wet is an altogether terrible idea.

Also, Doug’s carrying a bunch of batteries, he’s not sure any of this is safe, but he’s come this far.

The weird guys brought a boat, at least, a tiny little kayak that only one person can use at a time, and if it drifts away they’ll be stranded. It’s bright orange, like someone scribbled over it with a highlighter, which opens the question of how they haven’t been caught yet. When he questions that, one of them starts loudly berating the other.

…Maybe, if he’s lucky, all this noise will attract Thunderbolt, and he can run away and have this no longer be his problem.

That doesn’t happen, and soon they’re in a remote-ish corner of the ruins. There’s no one else around, because no one goes out this far. It means there’s no way of knowing if Thunderbolt is in this area a lot, which sucks, because Doug did think ahead a bit.

He brought a carrot. If the Guardian shows up, he’s going to throw it at the guy who looks actually competent and run. That should buy him enough time to get to the boat, and from there, away.

…In hindsight, he should have just learned a teleport spell, but he’s not bringing his phone to a place full of water and electricity to do something probably highly illegal. It’s just a bad idea on so many levels. If he dies here, it’s his own fault for not printing something out while he had the chance.

This time, they show him to the machine. They don’t tell him anything about how it works, but they say they’re going to show him, since it’s not like he can leave. That gives him a worse feeling than he’s gotten about any of this so far.

It’s the same as the machine from Yokmir Forest. Just intact, and now he can see there are more slots for batteries than anything should ever need. At least in someplace this wet, he can see why they wouldn’t just hook up a generator and be done with it.

They let him install one. He considers doing it backwards, but for all he knows that could blow up the entire thing with him in the blast radius. He’s not doing that.

They don’t tell him what it does.

He figures that out on his own when they flick the lever, and something resembling a Gate appears. As something steps through it, staring straight at him. Licking its lips, and revealing some very sharp fangs.

Panicking, Doug throws the carrot.

As far as distractions go, it’s not terrible.

His brief stint with high treason ends with him fleeing the area in a shitty orange kayak as the people who started this mess are torn apart by the very Chimera they summoned. Zaid is definitely going to kill him.

Chapter Text

Amber comes home excitedly chattering about baseball, and Ventuswill knows she won’t be able to keep her hidden in the castle for much longer.

Really, part of her’s surprised it’s lasted this long. Amber’s the kind of person who flourishes most when she’s surrounded by other people. And she’s not going to learn much about the modern world if she just stays inside all the time. She needs to get out more.

Were it not for her wings, this would be easy. But they draw attention, and that means people will be paying attention, and that means they need to address it.

And that means making announcements, and dealing with questions, and all that other tedious stuff. The longer they wait, the worse it’s likely to be, because there’ll be more they’ll have to say, and more people to say it.

Besides, it’s a minor miracle no one who was at the hospital that day has leaked it yet. Patient confidentiality or not, it’s probably a good idea to head that off while they still can.

“How much do you want people to know about your part in this?” Venti asks Frey. “We could try to anonymize your part in things, if you wanted.”

Frey takes a deep breath. “If I go in front of cameras, I’m going to say a lot of things. Some of them won’t be things anyone wants to hear, but… they’ll need to hear it anyway.” She rolls something invisible around on the top of the table. “I may as well get it over with.”

Venti’s old enough to detect when someone’s trying to be ominous. If they are, it doesn’t have any bearing on whether or not it works.

But when someone isn’t trying, like Frey isn’t right now, that makes it come off so much worse. Because either they don’t realize how they sound, or things are just so bad there’s no way of mitigating it.

In this case, she’ll figure out which one it is pretty quickly. “Perhaps we should make the initial announcement during pancake day.” There’s a lot of people around, several of them vaguely important in some way or another, all likely to have at least heard rumors. They can do something a bit more proper, with cameras and reporters, once everyone is done eating. Nice and simple.

She knows enough about event planning- and, more importantly, tabloids- to know it’s not going to stay that way. But in this stage, it looks doable, and sometimes that’s all that really matters.

The breakfast part of the plan goes off without a hitch. The trick, she’s found, is to let the attendees eat while she makes the announcement. People don’t like it if their food gets cold while waiting for someone else to finish talking, and by extension, will not try anything if they’re still in the middle of their meal. It’s one of the most effective distractions there is.

The part right after is where it goes completely out of control. There’s no one person to blame, but Venti is willing to say Frey had the biggest part in it, and not just because she enabled this to happen to begin with.

The one way to distract from something as historically significant as the beginning of the end of the era of Guardians is to drop an even bigger scandal, such as how said era should have been over by now. Such as how it’s been artificially dragged out, or at least heavily suspected to be, to the point where people are now asking about a criminal investigation.

Social media has exploded. That, at least, has gone as expected.

Honestly, she’d be concerned if it didn’t. It’d mean that something even bigger and more interesting is going on somewhere else in the world, and she’d like to only deal with one massive unprecedented event at a time, thank you very much.

There’s a bunch of people reposting old selfies they took with Ambrosia. There are questions about how this is going to impact tourism, despite how people are always told not to poke the Guardians to begin with.

At least one new conspiracy theory attempts to be born, only to be shot down near-immediately by that person’s entire following. It seems that there is, in fact, a limit on how wild those things can be, at least while something related is making the news. Maybe it’ll get more traction if it’s reposted in a few days.

It’s exhausting. She didn’t get enough pancakes for this. Amber’s starting to flag a little, and she’s one of the most extroverted people Venti knows.

Maybe, with the initial announcement made, they won’t have to go through all of this three more times. They can just put out a little bulletin or something. Let the internet figure it out and blow up on its own time. Or maybe the novelty will just wear off entirely.

Neither of these are things she wants to be relying on completely. She just doesn’t see any other options.

…This whole thing can’t be over soon enough.

Her inbox is flooded, too.

Various politicians insisting they didn’t know they were being scammed. Demands to know why she didn’t reveal any of this to them before the rest of the world. The usual political yammering that never actually goes anywhere and can be safely ignored, especially if she makes time soon to go flying and remind people that she is actually a dragon. That tends to make the humans quiet down for a bit.

And then, for some reason, a message from the official Dragon Priestesses email account plops its way into her inbox.

Her first instinct is to discard it as a scam, but looking up the group’s website tells her that the address matches. Peering at it as closely as possible, she can’t see a single character that looks like it’s been replaced.

She opens it.

It’s not any sort of personal missive, or anything. Just a request to maybe have a concert in Selphia sometime this summer, or maybe early fall. The school has the facilities to make that sort of even possible, so it’s not entirely out of the question.

The timing probably isn’t a coincidence, given her personal history with one of the group members. She isn’t really sure what to feel about that.

She can’t decide whether the photo of the group included at the bottom is a normal part of their signature or something else. She supposes it doesn’t matter.

…On her end, at least, she sees no reason not to approve it. Apparently, that’s the closest she’s likely to get to a party invitation for a long, long time. She may as well make the most of it.

Illuminata is… a force of nature. That’s the most accurate way Venti can describe her, in both good and bad ways.

She’s the head of the history department, because she’s old enough to have lived through history, and says that’s a good reason to be the one teaching it. That’s just her job, though, and arguably it’s one of the least interesting things about her.

The big one most people know about is she’s obsessed with mystery novels, and more specifically the detectives that star in them. She brings that obsession into her everyday life, and has more than once derailed a faculty meeting because of it. Her teaching is engaging, and her students love her, so the only thing anyone can do about it is sit her down and ask her to explain the massive leaps of logic she takes trying to find a conclusion.

She writes fanfic. Complains about nobody reading it. Given that none of her explanations for her own actions quite make sense, Venti thinks she knows why. For someone who loves puzzling out logic within the books, she sure is bad at stringing together a coherent plot.

More successful than her fanfiction is her online business. She grows flowers, presses them, and sells them on the internet. Sometimes, she gives seeds out to students, which is another reason for her popularity.

These three things also lean into why Venti is turning to her in particular. She’s lived long enough to describe how and why things changed the way they did, she has the energy to keep things going as long as they need to, she’s good enough at teaching she might actually be listened to, and worst case at least she and Amber can bond over flowers. It’s not perfect, but it’s the closest she’s going to get.

“So, none of this has anything to do with that machine they found?”

“Nothing that can be proven.” She doesn’t really think it’s a coincidence, but she doesn’t need to be bailing Illuminata out of jail for interfering in a government investigation, which could very easily be where this is leading. “If there’s any conspiracy going on there, it’s not directly connected.”

The word ‘directly’ is doing some very heavy lifting there, and both of them know it.

It doesn’t receive any further questioning, though. Good. She doesn’t feel like entertaining any of that today. “So, should I set some time aside in fall semester? I’ve already committed to teaching a lot of summer classes this year…”

Mostly online, because Illuminata’s physical presence, in summer, is for the flowers, but Venti understands that can be a full-time job by itself. The only thing keeping her garden from having things like emeries and crystal flowers is their lengthy growth times, and the seasonal fields being taken over by industrial agriculture.

“That should be fine. For logistical reasons, Dolce won’t be freed before summer anyway. She could use some time to acclimate.” Arranging a specialized history class is one thing. Throwing them all directly into it is another. It also gives them all summer to figure out what to do about Leon, because that tower was a death trap when it was first built and has not been getting any better. “It might be good for you to take this time to get to know them. I know Amber would love to see your pressed flowers.”

She may have just made a terrible mistake. Amber won’t get pulled all the way into the detective obsession, she actually has other interests already, but the chance of some sort of cosplay happening is greater than zero, and that thought is as terrifying as it is adorable.

…At least, compared to Illuminata, she might end up writing better fanfiction.

Chapter Text

Right before she goes over to participate in pancake day, Frey un-privates her social media profile. She isn’t instantly buried in a swarm of hatred, which is a good sign.

It might still just be because everyone who’d do that is still asleep, but it’s not like she has any way to be sure. She’s taking it off private because things are going to happen today, and she wants to be able to gauge the reaction in real-time.

Her big moment in this is going to happen as part of the ‘cameras and reporters’ stage of things. She’s glad for it. It means breakfast can be something vaguely resembling normal. She gets her food, and sits down next to Arthur, who probably wasn’t expecting something like this to happen the very first time he shows up.

Hopefully, this doesn’t scare him away. Margaret’s here, too, and she says she encouraged him to come because she wasn’t sure he’d eat anything for breakfast otherwise. She says she’s come here before, which means she’s definitely not expecting anything like this.

“Is this why Forte says you were in Yokmir Forest all through break?”

She nods. “It was the best way to do any observation. Everything was going fine, up until…”

Venti’s told her the Dead Tree attack wasn’t a natural occurrence. She feels like she should have been more surprised by that. It makes it harder to tell people about it.

Sure, a lot of them will have been able to do their research about it by now, but they don’t know what was summoned, and maybe it’s for the best she keeps it that way.

“Until?” Arthur asks. “Did something go wrong?”

“Not with the experiment itself, just…” She needs to keep quiet about this until an official statement is made, assuming it ever is. “I’ve been busy with a lot of things, and it takes time away from this.” It’ll take a couple of weeks to get what she needs together, certain components aren’t even found in this part of Norad, and attempting to simplify it further is for when there aren’t any more actual people at stake, if ever. But now she has classes to worry about, and homework, and it’s really for the best she figured out most of it while school was out. “It feels like it should be the top priority.”

They don’t ask her why she feels that way. They probably just assume it’s for the same reasons anyone else would. She likes to think they’re mostly right about it.

There’s just a little personal edge to it, that’s all.

“Why does it all have to fall to you? Even if it requires an Earthmate-”

“I don’t know if I can trust anyone else with this.” Maybe her brother, maybe Aden, maybe someone from Alvarna, but… even then, there’s one major issue. “I definitely don’t trust the postal service that much.”

It works fine most of the time! But most of the time it’s not transporting something this important. The fate of the land’s runes is not something she wants getting lost in the mail.

“Yeah, it could get lost, or broken, or…” She wasn’t even thinking of them breaking. Margaret really is good at coming up with potential issues, even if she goes overboard sometimes. The Rune Sphere isn’t any more fragile than the crystals that sometimes appear when Gates are dispersed- the really little ones. “And then what would you do?”

…She’d try to fix it, probably. Or just keep making new ones by herself, that’s already her plan.

She bites into a pancake. It’s hot and fluffy. “See? I have a reason for this.”

The bigger one, she’ll have to explain once she’s nice and full.

And explain she does, in front of flashing lights and microphones and questions, so many questions it’s hard to decide what to answer first.

But Frey does know how this started, and starting from the beginning is a good way to do things. “I did this because I knew no one was going to.”

They ask for clarification. It makes sense. The lab back home has great PR so long as you don’t look at anyone’s personal accounts. Something most people don’t care to do, because who cares about a bunch of researchers?

Maybe they should care just a bit more. “I grew up with the people who were supposed to be in charge of inventing this sort of thing. They never said it was anything about the Guardians, but they did spend a lot of time telling me that agreeing to do anything that would benefit Ventuswill, even just going to school here, was a betrayal of our family values. That really isn’t a good sign, is it?”

She’s asked why anyone would lie about something like that. It’s all she can do to keep herself from laughing.

“Because it makes them money.” Surely, they understand why that might be a factor. “As long as they say it’s about the Guardians, the government gives them all the funding they could ask for. And they’ve got a monopoly on that line of research, so no one was able to call them out on it.”

Nor did they want to. Everyone back home benefitted from having the lab nearby, if only because it brought in money.

The thing is, Frey thinks the lie could have gotten them even farther so long as they just didn’t get weird about Ventuswill in their personal lives. Maybe they just didn’t think members of their own family would be willing to rat them out.

“They expelled me from the family because I was on good terms with the person they were meant to be helping. Maybe because they were afraid I’d figure out the truth, but…” All they really did was cement it.  She wouldn’t have questioned it at all if they just shrugged and went on with their lives. “The best way to get someone to cover up for you is to not lie to them. Definitely don’t scream at them for daring to do something they think is normal. That’s just an incentive for them to bring you down.”

They ask if there’s been any actual investigation into this. She tells them she submitted requests, but the forms said to allow up to thirty days for a response. Fraud isn’t the most time-sensitive thing in the world, it seems.

Maybe this will move it up the itinerary.

She hopes so. The less time they have to prepare, the better.

“Anyway, I can’t tell you everything about how Rune Spheres work just yet, I really want everything to settle down first, but I can say that none of the things that went into it, physically or equipment-wise, are inventions younger than fifteen years old.” She’s pretty sure it’s about fifteen. She had to look it up to find where to purchase it, why isn’t it sticking. “Some of it’s so simple you use it every day.”

At no point does she tell anyone to break their phone open. No matter how good of a visual aid it might be, it’s not worth the cost of repairs.

…She does have to admit, though, it would be very funny.

Frey is discovering a whole litany of phone numbers that need blocking.

She’d handled her parents ahead of time, of course. They say she’s not in the family anymore, that means they don’t need a way to contact her.

Of course, their own phones not working isn’t enough to dissuade them. Other relatives, neighbors… Lest tells her he’s taking a speedboat out to Blessia Island, just because they’ll never think to look for him there.

He doesn’t ask her how long she knew about the whole thing. It doesn’t make it any easier.

The messages, or the snippets she hears of them, are the usual. Apparently, she’s trying to ruin everyone’s lives, and it’s a mistake she was ever born.

That last bit is new, but Frey shrugs it off. They’ve been trying to get worse and worse every time, why wouldn’t they go there?

She then lets a few of their messages go to voicemail, just to be sure she has a recording to send to whoever ends up investigating. If they want to create massive amounts of further evidence right after being revealed, who is she to stop them? It might actually be more solid evidence than anything she had before.

None of this surprises her.

“I’m not sure I’m disappointed, really,” She admits to Forte. “That’d imply having some kind of expectations.”

“I wouldn’t be sure.” She cracks open a boiled egg. “My uncle is always finding a way.”

“Yeah, but… you know he can do better.” Sometimes, he even does, just for the sake of being able to pay his property taxes. Or because he’s gotten so bored with laziness he needs to do something for a change. It’s hard to tell which one happens more often. “It’s technically possible, so you’re able to get your hopes up.”

Forte glares at a nearby cameraman until he wanders away. It’s been multiple days, and yet they’re still here. This isn’t a good sign for any of the others. “It’s always possible to be pleasantly surprised.”

But she won’t be. She just can’t see them ever acting in a different way.

None of this is how she wanted to appear on TV, but it’s what she has. “You mean, because your expectations get so low it just takes the bare minimum to exceed them?”

“...Well. You said it, not me.”

Forte still has it slightly easier. Just a few days later, Bado is bragging about successfully selling a kayak.

Frey, meanwhile, has stopped reading her notifications for the time being, and is considering turning them off entirely on her computer. They were useful for a while, but now the constant pop-ups are just getting annoying.

Still, someone’s got what they wanted, and she’s going to try to be happy about it. “What would someone want with a kayak around here? The lakes are nice, but they aren’t really where you want to go boating.” The closest good boating lake she can think of is far west from here, and close to the border on top of that. And also it has its own boats.

“Dunno. Didn’t ask.” That sounds about right. “They paid, and that was it. Never saw them before, so they might’ve been just passing through.”

Huh. She shrugs it off as weird, but the normal kind of weird and nothing like what she’s been doing. What she’ll be doing. She wants to rewatch that video and get started on a new Rune Sphere by next weekend, since that’s when the packages should be showing up.

This time, she thought ahead and bought three times as many materials. Even if actually implementing them won’t happen for a while, it’s nice to be prepared.

Chapter Text

Dylas and Thunderbolt are in agreement that only one of them should be conscious at a time. This is because they cannot stand each other, and unfortunately not interacting is very difficult when you share a body. Taking turns is the closest thing they can manage to peaceful solitude.

Well. Theoretically taking turns. In practice, Dylas has very little interest in any sort of consciousness. He can never remember anything that happens when he’s awake, anyway, so what’s the point?

He doesn’t get upset when Thunderbolt doesn’t try to argue with that. He doesn’t. Really.

Either way, it’s a perfectly good solution. Thunderbolt can do whatever he wants. Venti gets to live. Dylas can sink into blissful oblivion. Everyone’s happy.

…Okay, Venti might not be, but she’s made friends before, and she’ll make them again. It’s fine. She’ll be fine.

Everything’s fine, except maybe for the occasions where Thunderbolt shakes him awake, says it’s his turn now, and not to wake him up for at least ten years. Which would be easier if Dylas could keep track of the passage of time, but Thunderbolt can’t do that, either, so he just mills around until he gets sick of milling around and insists that it’s definitely been long enough to trade off again.

He’s never called out on it, because that would require being able to track the passage of time. Neither of them can even remember if that pillar fell over yesterday or fifty years ago.

So time passes. Things presumably happen. Dylas does his best to remain completely oblivious to all of it.

He can’t see any of this ever changing.

For once, he’s woken up for something less to do with Thunderbolt needing a break, and more with him wanting a second opinion on some strange noises coming from a different part of the ruins. It takes a bit for Dylas to figure that out, everything his counterpart says comes out as passive-aggressive at best, which is sort of impressive when there’s no actual words involved.

…Also, he has no idea what help he can give. He has no idea what those noises are, so all he can do is recommend not going near them, because they have no idea what they are.

Thunderbolt calls him a coward.

Dylas says he’s not any better if he’s refusing to do this without backup. And then realizes that he’s probably just volunteered to be the backup. So. Today’s not going great. He can’t wait to forget this.

He doesn’t.

He can’t.

He knows what a Chimera looks like. He’s heard far too many stories not to, that used to be the standby for keeping problem children like him in line. He still never expected to actually see one.

The dead bodies it’s tearing into are slightly less unexpected. This place is crumbling apart around him, it was bound to happen eventually. The method is slightly more brutal than he expected, but…

Thunderbolt points out a carrot sitting in the corner. Dylas points out that this is a terrible idea, they can absolutely just leave, maybe collapse the entrance to the room for safety reasons, there is absolutely no reason to do this.

Thunderbolt calls him a coward again. Runs into the room in a cloak of lightning, utterly obliterating some strange metal thing that neither of them recognize or care to remember after the fact. Immediately attracts the Chimera’s attention, which anyone could have seen coming if they just thought about it for five seconds.

If Dylas says ‘I told you so,’ it’s not until after the memorable part has ended.

The rest is mostly just the normal blur. Presumably, there’s a lot of running, because they’re somewhere completely different when the Chimera catches up to them. Presumably, he was unable to fall asleep, because he’s still conscious despite desperately wanting to not be.

The fight itself isn’t that memorable, because monster from cautionary tales or not, Thunderbolt gets into fights far too often to be worth remembering, and Dylas, again, is actively seeking unconsciousness, and failing to get it.

He does remember when a pair of humans run in to help him. They’ve never done that before. Thunderbolt thinks the blue one with the big sword looks familiar, though he doesn’t put it in such polite terms.

He remembers, after the fight, the green one with the shorter sword turning to him. She promises it’s all going to be okay. He doesn’t know if he wants to believe her.

And then the world comes into painful focus. Good news, Dylas’ head is empty again. Bad news, everything else. Why does his leg hurt? Why can his leg hurt? Why does everything sound just a bit off?

“Do you think you can sit up?” The green one asks. She reaches over and nudges his shoulder. His shoulder. His. That’s not right. “It’ll be easier to take the antidote potion that way.”

He’s not sure he can. The only thing keeping him conscious is a combination of pain and the shock of having found the Chimera in the first place. Without asking, she helps him up, and the blue one hands over a small purple vial.

“It won’t taste good,” she warns. “But it’s far more effective than chewing on grass.”

Well, if those are his options… She’s right. It tastes horrible. But his leg is already starting to hurt less, which is nice. He works up the courage to look down.

…He’s not going to be able to wear these pants again. That’s fine, though, he can’t even remember putting them on. One would think being asked to dress up nicely before they sacrificed him would stick with him better, but by that point, he’d thoroughly stopped caring. He can’t even remember what he ate for breakfast that day.

If he’d bothered to eat. It’s not like it would have mattered.

“Why…” He can’t get any more words out. Whether it’s because of how tired he is, or not knowing what to say, he can’t tell.

“We found a better way. We can feed the land without having to use anyone’s life.” That’s a good thing. Something to be happy about.

Dylas just feels numb. Or maybe that’s the potion. Or the exhaustion. Or the shock of being alive. There’s a lot of things it could be. “...Venti?”

“Lady Ventuswill is perfectly fine. The only reason she didn’t come along is that none of the platforms here can handle a dragon.” The one thing he can think, looking at the one who says that, is that apparently the Dragon Knight can be a girl now. That’s probably not what he should be focusing on. “She assigned the three of us to bring you home.”

…Three? As if in response to his unasked question, a third girl flies across a nearby patch of water, shouting something he can’t quite make out. Literally flies, with a pair of pale yellow wings. She says something to the others, and they say something back, and Dylas realizes he’s too tired to keep up with any of it.

He keeps his eyes open just long enough to catch a sight of his reflection in the water.

For a moment, he thinks all of it was just a dream. He’s resting against Venti, with her wing draped over him, just like when she’d sneak him out for the night. Maybe, just maybe, they’re still at the river, and none of it actually-

A feather rubs against his ear, and reality comes crashing back in. Complete with whatever numbing agent was in that potion wearing off, or maybe he’s just conscious enough to register pain again. He opens his eyes.

They’re in the castle. He probably should have expected that part, it’s just that it’s hard to believe he’s here after spending half a year locked in a shed. And then… however long that was, in the place he was sealed. Long enough for it to fall to ruin.

At least he’ll never have to face any of those people again. Even elves don’t live that long. He doesn’t know what he’d say if he did. Or what they’d say.

Avoiding awkward conversations by outliving the other party isn’t something he thought he’d ever be able to say he did, but here he is.

Venti mumbles something in her sleep. It’s nice to see she still does that. He wonders if she’s actually admitted to it yet, or if it’s still something she denies to everyone, even people who absolutely know better.

A door creaks open. A girl with pale yellow wings slips out. She was at the ruins, too. “Good morning!”

Venti mumbles something, and drapes her other wing over her face. Apparently, she does not want it to be morning yet.

Dylas doesn’t, either, but unfortunately he’s in just a bit too much pain to be in denial. At some point, someone did get around to bandaging his leg, and he’s not looking forward to what he’s going to see when he takes it off.

At least the girl is a welcome enough distraction from that. “So… my name’s Amber. I wanna say Ven’s told me a lot about you, but…” Her antennae twitch, just a little. “...I don’t think she wanted me getting any ideas.”

Left unsaid is the fact that it didn’t work. He has no idea how, but he can tell this girl is like him. He thinks he’d be able to tell even if she wasn’t part butterfly. Which is weird, but he’s not going to think about it too hard.

“And it would have worked, if Pico just kept her mouth shut.” Venti’s face is still hidden, but she seems to have accepted the inevitable. “...If you’re going to be awake, you can at least tell Volkanon we’re ready for breakfast.”

“Okay!” How is her smile getting brighter every time he blinks? Soon, she’ll be painful to look at. “What do you want?”

He can’t remember the last time anyone asked him that. He wants to respond, but the words just won’t come. “I- I…”

“Would you like some milk porridge?” Venti asks, finally lifting her head. He nods. Yes. He’d like that very much. “Milk porridge it is, then.”

“Okay! I’ll be right back!” She actually runs across the room instead of flying. That shouldn’t be surprising but somehow it is.

Once it’s just the two of them, his voice comes back. “Where did you find her?”

“She found me. That’s usually how this sort of thing goes. Especially since…” The open space at the end of the sentence could mean a lot of things. Dylas thinks he might know what it’s about, and that makes it worse. “...I don’t know if you remember me saying it last night, but… welcome home.”

Is this home? He isn’t sure what that’s supposed to feel like.

But he’s with the one person he’s ever trusted to care about him, and maybe that’s close enough. For once, the words don't try to fight him. “I missed you, too.”

Chapter Text

Kiel spends most of high school debating between majoring in history or rune studies, before meeting Frey at the start of senior year and deciding that a double major is perfectly attainable. In Selphia, the two subjects are incredibly related, so there’s a lot of overlap.

It does mean it’s a good idea to brush up on the topic a bit ahead of time, so he doesn’t get overwhelmed right away, but that bit’s easy. Even if he’s not a student at the university yet, being Forte’s brother means he has free access to a lot of its resources.

Like its library. And the library coffee machines.

…The second one is a lot more of a draw than he’d like, but as long as Forte doesn’t find out about it, it’s fine. He’ll have all of summer to get his sleep schedule back on track, anyway. It shouldn’t affect anything that’s actually important.

He’s in that library when the news breaks about Amber. There’s a little TV over in the coffee area, but the sound is turned off completely and no one can find the remote to turn on captions. So he doesn’t really understand what’s going on.

But given the reactions on screen, it’s probably something important, so he pulls out his phone to double-check.

…He’s glad he didn’t accept Vishnal’s breakfast offer. Maybe another time, it’d be nice, but that looks like a massive hassle to get caught up in.

Besides, if he’s not physically there, he can liveblog his reaction. Since he lives in Selphia, and can fill in some of the historical context of why this is so important, a lot of eyes are going to be on him.

…He can also get a head start on blocking the conspiracy theorists that come crawling out of the woodwork every time this sort of thing happens. The best thing about times like these is being able to figure out who’s joking about things and who actually believes it.

The second list is… a lot longer than he’d like, and apparently includes the people who should be least likely to entertain this sort of thing. Do these people not think about the words they’re saying as they’re writing them down?

…This is probably why Forte tells him not to pass on things others say unless he’s typed them out himself and they still make sense, isn’t it? It hasn’t completely stopped him from looking stupid, but it did prevent what he can only assume would be major disasters after he had the time to think about them.

And then there’s cases like this, where it’s just so nonsensical he can’t even entertain the idea while looking at the post.

He’s not getting any studying done today.

That evening, he asks his sister what she thinks about the news.

“I’m happy for Lady Ventuswill,” Forte says, picking at her egg bowl. They’re going to need to buy more eggs soon. They’re always on the verge of running out. “I don’t think I’ve seen her this happy in a long time.”

Kiel isn’t sure he’s seen Ventuswill this happy ever. He doesn’t see her very often. Maybe his sister’s seen something a bit more comparable.

That’s not what he’s going to ask. Bringing up knight stuff is always a bit of a minefield. “I can’t believe Frey did something like that so easily.” Well. She said it was easy. And she’s the only one who’s done it, apparently the only one who even tried, so he’ll just have to believe her.

“You haven’t heard her talking about her family before.” Her voice is weary, like it’s a subject that’s come up many times. “She had plenty of motivation to prove herself. Even if… that part… was new to me.”

Of course it was. He can’t imagine her hearing about it and not gearing up for war.

Really, when he thinks about that, Frey simply announcing it to the press was one of her more restrained options. “They’re going to be in a lot of trouble, aren’t they?”

“Being shut down might be the best they can hope for.” And Forte would know better than he does. She’s currently in pre-law, since it’s the most knight-related program on offer. Maybe not how that decision is meant to be made, but as long as she can keep up with it, it’s probably fine.

He wonders if they’ll see how it all turns out on the news in three or four months. That’s generally how these things go.

Until then, rumors will fly, some fun, and some not. That’s also how these things usually go.

In this case, they know the people at the source well enough to keep track of it in real time. “Do you think she’s going to be all right?”

“She’s not the sort of person who says those things without thinking about the consequences.” She’s looking far too closely at him. Look, he’s not as bad as he used to be! He actually catches some of the dumb stuff now! “I’m sure she had a plan well before she was called upon.”

He can’t help but think she shouldn’t have needed it. Frey’s too nice to have to deal with all of this.

But the world doesn’t ask Kiel for his opinion very often. It just asks him to spread everyone else’s. Saying anything about Frey would be… he’s seen the post her brother made. More than that, he saw how others responded to it, including people who should have been close to them.

In that respect, it makes perfect sense why everything from this morning happened. It just makes him feel really bad whenever he thinks about it.

The egg bowls are starting to get cold. Maybe that’s enough thinking about bad things for today.

The next time Kiel’s in the library, he meets Amber. The first thing he thinks once he sees her is that he’s jealous she can actually reach the top shelves, even if she needs to hover a little. There are step stools around, but they keep getting lost in random corners and he can never find them when he needs them.

She doesn’t have that problem, and floats down with a book that he thinks keeps getting assigned for literature classes, something about a voyage from Alvarna to Fenith that ends up going horribly wrong and killing most of the people involved.

“Do you know if this one’s any good?” She asks him. “I’ve seen a lot of people reading it.”

Kiel is not qualified to explain the existence of school assignments. “I know the teachers think it’s worth reading.” He’s personally holding off on it until either a class he’s in assigns it or he graduates, just so he doesn’t end up sitting around in that class with nothing to do for a month. He learned that lesson after the play they read last semester.

They didn’t even get to watch a recording of it in class because the internet gave out.

“Oh. Okay.” He’s also not going to ask if she’s allowed to check things out. She’s friends with Ventuswill, they can definitely work something out.

He’s also not going to directly ask if she’s looked it up at all beyond just the cover. That’s a lesson everyone has to learn the hard way.

All in all, the whole thing comes off as a lot more normal than he was expecting.

That’s hopefully a good sign for how the rest of this is going to go.

Forte says she’s going to be busy tomorrow.

Forte being busy isn’t an unusual thing. She has college, and her ceremonial duties as the Dragon Knight, and she likes to get her daily exercise by saying it’s a patrol she simply has to do, no other options. It’s such a normal thing, in fact, that she usually doesn’t feel the need to announce it.

That’s Kiel’s first sign that this is something big. “Is it a big test you have to study for or something?” That’d be the normal, simple thing.

But, again, it’s something so simple she wouldn’t have to mention it.

So he’s not surprised when she shakes her head. “No, Lady Ventuswill…” She trails off, like she wasn’t supposed to say that much.

Maybe she wasn’t. In which case Kiel should probably keep quiet about this until he inevitably finds out what it is after the fact. His sister can keep secrets in the moment, but after, it always comes spilling out.

He just has to wait. “Oh. It’s not going to be anything dangerous, is it?” It shouldn’t be, there’s exactly one thing in Selphia that requires any frequent use of martial prowess, and apparently that’s not going to be the case for long.

“It… shouldn’t be any moreso than usual.” The fact that Forte clarifies it in that way tells him he might have an idea of what this is going to be. He was just thinking about how only one of her duties frequently puts her in the line of danger, after all.

He hadn’t thought it was something she’d be involved with, though. After all, she had no idea about Amber until anyone else did. “Do you want me to pack you a lunch?” They don’t have the ingredients for anything special, but some boiled eggs and a pike sandwich is absolutely something he can do. Maybe with a side of fruit slices, so she can have something nice and sweet.

It’s that or a slice of pound cake from the store, and he does not have time to run out and buy anything today.

“That… that would be nice. Will it remind you to actually eat breakfast, too?”

That’s not really fair. He eats breakfast more often than she does, with her schedule packed tighter than Uncle Bado’s suitcase whenever he comes home from vacation. “Of course I will!” Unlike some people, he actually notices when he gets hungry. And he can feed himself if that happens. All Forte can do is cut vegetables.

And maybe fish, she’s starting to realize that the idea is to get the meat off the bone, that cooking class she’s taking is working wonders, but it’s still slightly worrying that it took that much.

So he makes her a lunch. Shoves it into her hand as she’s leaving for the day, with a promise that she will actually remember to eat it when she gets hungry. Hopes there won’t be too much news coverage of whatever comes next.

Keeps an eye on his phone just in case she messages him.

She doesn’t, he has to find out everything later. But he does tell Doug he has no interest in buying a kayak anytime soon, and that’s just as important, right?

Chapter Text

Lady Ventuswill has a request for Forte.

It’s the sort of thing she always wanted, as a child. She grew up on stories of knights going on wonderful adventures, and part of her couldn’t help but imagine something like that for herself. Even now, she can’t help but hope for something slightly glorious.

In reality, the requests are never anything special. And that’s what she goes in expecting, even knowing that the world is changing around her.

“I want you to escort Frey to the Water Ruins tomorrow.” Lady Ventuswill’s desk is covered in newspapers, some of more reliable quality than others. Half of them have pictures of her, Frey, or Amber on the front page. Apparently, all that still hasn’t died down quite yet. “It’s not that I don’t trust her capabilities, but you have experience with the area.”

With the area, and its most famous inhabitant, which is what this is actually about. Navigating the ruins isn’t that hard, if you just stay away from the edges and don’t bother the goblins and can tell the difference between a rock and a Tortas.

There’s just one exception, and Thunderbolt’s what the ruins are most known for, so they have a reputation for being dangerous. Not an entirely unearned reputation, but it really does say more about the Guardian than about the area.

It’s a real job, at least, and that means it’s the most interesting thing that’s happened in weeks. “I’ll do it.”

There was never any real chance she’d decline. No matter what it is, Lady Ventuswill is a figure worthy of respect. Not even for her position as a Native Dragon, but how much she’s done for Selphia as a whole.

That it’s a chance to be part of something historically important is just a nice side effect.

Part of her thinks she should be excited about this. It’s what she’s always wanted, after all. It’s the kind of responsibility that most people in her position just don’t get anymore.

All she can bring herself to feel is hope that it doesn’t all go wrong somehow.

The start of the morning resembles something almost normal. Kiel gives her a lunchbox on her way out the door, where Volkanon is waiting with the car. Amber is there along with Frey, because she wanted to see the museum, and that area of things should be safe enough to visit.

They actually maintain the walls, for one thing.

Volkanon drops the three of them off in the parking lot fifteen minutes after the first bus of the day has already arrived. He says to call him when they’re ready to leave, which could be at any point between now and this evening. Forte stows her lunchbox in the glove compartment, hopeful that things will be wrapped up around lunchtime. It might take that long just to get the unofficial sightseeing portion done.

They go inside. Frey and Amber pay for museum tickets. Forte doesn’t have to, because this is theoretically official business. She might have to start paying soon, but…

Well. That’s if she ever feels the need to come back. She knows this place like the blade of her sword. She thinks she could quote some of the exhibits from memory, if she has to. Still, she can see why Amber’s so interested in the place.

It’s partially about her, after all.

Over the years, people have questioned this museum’s existence. Not in the sense that they think dedicating a location to information about the Guardians is a bad idea, but that maybe the place where one is literally sealed isn’t the best location. It’s only the fourth or fifth most controversial thing about the subject, but some amount of information on all the other controversies are stored inside, so it’s like a singularity of uncomfortable topics.

Take the dedication stone to Guardian Dylas. It was originally in the center of the room, and on special occasions, it still is. It’s written in Earth Script, with the translation on a plaque for those who don’t feel like learning a language that was dead when the text was written to understand one exhibit.

Most of the time, it’s against a wall with just that part showing, because Guardian Dylas’ last message is on the back side, and looking at something that can be construed as a suicide note tends to make people uncomfortable. The gaping hole in the floor when it’s not there is only mildly less uncomfortable, because everyone knows what’s supposed to be there, but every bit counts, right?

Forte… isn’t entirely sure what the point of it is. Sure, it can’t be prettied up like the historical reconstruction of Dragon Priest attire, or memoirs from Guardian Dolce’s family, or old photos, equal parts colorized and black-and-white, of Ambrosia’s chrysalis, but it’s a story about the people of the time performing a human sacrifice out of feelings of obligation and immediately regretting it. ‘Comfortable’ is not something she’d see as a priority in the retelling.

Also, again, everyone knows it’s supposed to be there. All it’s doing is averting one possible conversation parents might need to have with their children.

Despite what they’re here for, Amber mostly seems interested in her own section. Frey is looking as closely as she can at the ceremonial fans without touching them. They’re reconstructions based off of Lady Ventuswill’s memories, the bird the feathers used to come from went extinct centuries ago, and the only original that might still exist is the one Guardian Leon took with him to the tower, which is obviously unavailable. But they are, admittedly, very pretty.

“Have you not had the chance to come here before, Frey?” Forte asks, just so she’s not standing around doing nothing.

She shakes her head. “I kept meaning to do it when I found the time, but then that didn’t happen. Even during break, there was always something more important.”

At least she’s getting the chance now. It’s the best circumstances for it, really.

They stay there for a while, just observing history. They might have stayed there a little longer, if not for the sound they hear in the distance.

“I suppose that’s our cue.” She has her sword, and that’s always been enough, so she thinks it should be fine.

Frey hesitates. “Does he… normally sound like this?” She asks. Now that she’s thinking about it, there is something different, but…

The sound echoes once again, and this time, Forte recognizes it for what it is.

A cry of pain.

That’s really not a good sign. “We need to go now. For the Rune Spot, what do you need to-?”

“Amber can handle it. She knows how to tell where it goes.” She hands off a small, shimmering object, and Amber flies away without a second thought.

It’s up to Forte and Frey to see what’s happening.

The truth is, Forte doesn’t mind not being needed all that much. When the alternative is things like fighting a Chimera, she’s perfectly fine with where she is.

Forte doesn’t go back with the others. She instead takes her lunchbox back from Volkanon, eats at a nearby picnic table, and then goes back in.

Like Amber said, the center of the Rune Spot is filled with Runeys, so it’d be easy to locate even if it wasn’t its own building. It is, so that makes things simpler.

“We’ll have to lower the center for now,” She declares, since wrapping this up will be her job until someone more qualified- probably Volkanon, he’s ridiculously competent- can come out and do something a bit more permanent. Keeping people from accessing the central chamber should serve that purpose just fine.

Given how Thunderbolt spent most of his time there, it’s not like people ever went in, anyway. All this is doing is adding a bit of walking time for people who want to see the whole place. There aren’t a lot of them, but they exist. The Selphia Tourism Board pays them for pictures to use on their website.

They probably won’t be paying quite as much now, but that’s a thing for those people to worry about. Not her.

“Is this safe?”

She shrugs. “It is safer than if we just let anyone wander in.” Maybe they could fit the doorway with a panel of glass so people can see inside? She’ll have to make that suggestion. While there’s a lot of people she’s sure wouldn’t mind watching this place crumble into the sea, it’s still a part of Selphia’s history that deserves to be acknowledged.

“Yes, but if the mechanism breaks-”

“Then it will be as secure as possible.” Besides, just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s impossible to maintain. She’s seen vehicles that were harder to maintain than the central lift, and most of them still work just fine. Even Uncle Bado’s truck is capable of the occasional camping trip, if he puts his mind to it.

Not that that ever happens, anymore.

The staff make a few more arguments, but the Rune Spots remain purely in Ventuswill’s jurisdiction. If she doesn’t want one accessible, especially for reasons involving her own safety, there’s not much they can do about it.

The stone platform creaks, and slowly sinks into the water. Waves rush over it as it descends, and if Forte looks very closely, she can even see fish sucked into the suddenly-available space.

Part of her’s surprised the mechanism still works. It was created to keep Thunderbolt contained while people were doing other things in the area, but not a lot of those things happen, he never really ventured towards the museum even while it was being built, and with the hindsight of- she’d say centuries, but even at the time, people were complaining about it- with some amount of hindsight, the idea of locking up a large horse in a room that small felt really wrong, so it hasn’t been touched in over a hundred years. They have respect for their human sacrifices here in Selphia.

No one’s seen the ruins like this in… she wants to say ever. The last time it would have been this quiet is when it was new. And the goblins wouldn’t have moved in yet, that happened back in the 1300s. That bit came up on history tests more often than when the ruins were built.

This, by itself, could be a historic moment. She’s living through a lot of them, though after the Chimera, she thinks she might be okay with not taking part.

If she tells Kiel about this, it’ll be all over the internet by the end of the day.

She texts him a picture of the submerged central plaza and lets him come to his own conclusions.

Chapter Text

Ventuswill, in her true form, is big. This wasn’t always the case, when she was but a Grimoire, she was the smallest dragon in the nest, but time has allowed her to grow well beyond what should have been possible. It’s a marker of her old age, and some dragons would boast pridefully of that.

She doesn’t, for a wide variety of reasons. For one, she didn’t get this old under her own power. For another, being this big in her true form provides a variety of challenges.

She can only leave town for short bursts at a time, and having to be human to fit places is a massive inconvenience. She gets places faster when she’s flying, and that means more time to spend at the place itself. But if she won’t fit, she won’t fit, and Volkanon refuses to break traffic laws for her. So the places she can go are limited.

She thinks she might be able to visit the Water Ruins as a human. The drive’s short enough, and there’s a bus heading in that direction roughly every hour or so. She probably should visit sometime, most of the museum’s collection is old stuff of hers she donated after running out of space for it, but… that can wait until her friends are home.

But the construction was not made for creatures of her true size, and she wants Dylas to recognize her right away. So she can’t go.

Frey has to go. She’s the only one who can definitely break the spell, and that’s the whole point of this. Venti asks Forte to go along, since dealing with Thunderbolt has basically been her job ever since her father died.

And then Amber says she wants to see the museum, and in a lot of circumstances, that would be just fine. But today’s going to be important, and she can’t help but worry. “If something were to happen, would you be able to keep yourself safe?”

“Well…” She hovers off the ground, just a little, and buzzes loud enough to make the ground vibrate. “...Yeah, probably.”

Ventuswill supposes that’s more than most people who go out there on day trips can say. And she’s not saying she wants to get involved in the fight.

If she does… well, she has better options to retreat than most people. “In that case, let’s take a look at how much tickets cost right now.”

They’re unusually expensive, because they need to offset having just become incredibly relevant somehow if they don’t want to take time to explain things like ‘occupancy limits’ to a bunch of disgruntled tourists. She’s skeptical of how well that will work, but she supposes every bit counts.

It’s still an amount of money she can easily provide. The list of things that might be out of her budget is not very long.

She sends Amber off to the ruins with a promise to call if anything goes wrong.

They don’t call her when things go wrong. Not right away, at least.

To be fair, apparently the only one with the time would have been Amber, who has neither a phone or any idea how to use one.

But Frey starts off with, “Good news, the Chimera didn’t hurt anyone too badly.”

“The what!?” She remembers to back away. The phone is on speaker, it’ll pick up her voice well enough. She’s gotten complaints about that in the past, even if the courts decided she wasn’t liable to pay for anyone’s hearing aids.

“Yeah, um… there was a Chimera. Forte brought antidote potions with her, though, and there’s a medic station just at the entrance to the ruins proper, so it should be fine!”

Another monster that shouldn’t have been anywhere near the area. Shouldn’t have been anywhere near her friends. “How’s Dylas?”

“The Chimera got him in the leg pretty badly. They said to take him to the hospital if he gets a fever or bleeds through the bandages too quickly, but otherwise, they think he should be fine? He’s also unconscious, but I think that bit might be normal.”

It might be. That doesn’t make it any less worrying. Also, she isn’t sure those people are qualified for Chimera attacks.

…Then again, neither would the local hospital. Chimeras live on tropical islands far from Selphia, and there hasn’t been one sighted since the one on Blessia became too dangerous to let stay. How long ago was that?

No, there’s no one in Selphia qualified to deal with Chimeras. “Are you on your way back now?”

“Almost. The parking lot’s a bit of a mess right now.” This is why she sent them over early. “At least the traffic’s only going in one direction. Once we’re out, it should go a lot easier.”

While Venti has her phone set up to easily accept calls in her true form, doing anything else is overly complicated. Usually, she has Volkanon handle that part.

But he’s driving everyone back from the ruins, so she’s just going to have to live with not being able to look up how long it will take. And resolve to keep tabs on whoever ends up with the job of investigating why there was a Chimera there to begin with.

She has a suspicion of what they’re going to find, and she knows she’s not going to like being right.

Venti doesn’t know what to expect when she sees Dylas again. The circumstances of their parting were terrible enough, and then there’s the time between. He shouldn’t remember most of it, having runes drained from you is well known to be bad for someone’s ability to form memories, but it’s still been four hundred and sixty-three years, a decent portion of which he spent locked in a small room.

…She needs to make sure to get all his favorite foods prepared in the near future. None of them would have been available to him, and she doesn’t actually think Thunderbolt was capable of digesting any of them except carrots. She isn’t sure it can make up for any of it, but it’s what she can do.

But that can wait. It’ll have to wait, because no one’s in a state for any of that. Volkanon slides into his personal parking spot- at exactly the right angle from the window that Venti can’t actually see what’s going on- and all she can do is wait for everyone to come inside.

Dylas is standing, sort of, leaning on Frey and Amber, but she wouldn’t exactly call him conscious. His left leg is extensively bandaged, and that bit of his pants has been cut off below the knee. She can think of at least one historical clothing society that would throw a fit if they saw it.

“Bring him over here.” She stretches out on her dais, glad it’s a nice, sunny day. Sure, the roof can be closed, she got everything installed ages ago, but it makes such a terrible noise she only uses it when there’s a storm heavy enough to summon a Typhoon. If it’s warm out, and there’s no risk of flooding, best to leave it open.

Once he’s safely tucked away next to her, she takes a closer look. His injuries seem fine, at least as much as they can considering how dangerous Chimeras are.

He looks about the same as she remembers, minus a few obvious details. Of course he does. It hasn’t been possible for him to change in hundreds of years. She wonders if his eyes will look any different.

And then she realizes she wouldn’t know. Their final meetings all took place at night. She can’t even remember what color his eyes are.

But when she brings him closer to herself, he mumbles something and moves into a familiar position without opening them at all, and she remembers that. It’s good enough. “Are the rest of you unharmed?”

Amber nods. Frey lifts a slightly burned wrist. “I got clipped with a bit of lightning, but I think it was accidental? If you’re going to worry about anyone, it should be Forte, she was, uh… not dodging. But she was up and doing things when we left, so she should be fine, too.”

The thing is, Forte’s not here to worry about. They might need to have another talk about how she can’t protect anyone if she’s dead, but that can wait for her return.

Venti also isn’t sure how useful it would be. She regularly brought a giant metal object to deal with a monster with control of electricity when a sturdy wooden one would have done the job just fine. There’s a certain point where she just has to admit defeat.

“In that case… rest up, you’ve both earned it. Volkanon, tomorrow we’ll need to decide what we’re going to tell people.” If what happened with Amber told her anything, it’s that Dylas isn’t going to be lucid before then unless she goes in with heavy-duty healing magic, and she hasn’t done that in a long time. While it’d be nice to get back in practice, maybe her closest friends shouldn’t be her test subjects unless something else is going horribly wrong. Dylas's condition is stable, so it shouldn’t need to come to that.

She just needs to wait for him to wake up. And then… she isn’t actually sure what comes next. She’s done what she could to prepare, but that’s different from it actually happening.

She’ll just have to figure it out as she goes. That’s what everyone else does, so it shouldn’t be that hard.

…Well, she knows one thing she’ll have to do- increase security around the Obsidian Dorm during spring break. But that’s only a semi-related issue.

A bit after everyone else has eaten dinner, Dylas gains just enough consciousness to ask for water. He’s not lucid enough to question the sippy cup- absolutely no one trusts him to safely drink from anything else in his condition- so it’s safe to say he probably won’t remember this in the morning.

They should probably give him a slightly more energizing drink, some juice or a bit of hot milk, but that would require rummaging around in the fridge. Venti reminds herself to send Volkanon out to buy some milk before bed tonight, just to be sure they have some.

But he drains the cup he’s given, and lets them take it back, and doesn’t really respond to anyone else, so it’ll have to be enough. “...Venti?”

“Welcome home, Dylas.” She drapes a wing over him, just like she used to. She can’t remember if his hair was always quite that shade of blue, but she does know this is what makes him feel safe, and she can give him that much. She has to.

She’s not sure there’s anyone else who can.

He doesn’t respond. He’s already fallen back asleep. No matter. They can talk all they need to in the morning.

For once, they have plenty of time.

She still needs to remind herself of that several times before her mind lets her get to sleep.

Chapter Text

The Guardians are a fact of life in Selphia, and not much talked about elsewhere. Frey’s always found that discrepancy surprising, though knowing what she does about the people she grew up with, it makes a bit more sense now.

It sort of makes her assume that the main reason the museum can operate is because of the school. Students come in, learn a bit more about the Guardians than ‘they exist’ and then go off to the Water Ruins to learn even more. How that’s going to change with everything else remains to be seen.

But she’s sure they’re aware that things will be changing by now. Both because the initial announcement was made weeks ago, and because they just brought Dylas in for medical attention.

“I’m sorry, what did you say happened?”

“There was a Chimera. I have a picture, if you need to see it.” People had enough problems believing her about the Dead Tree that pausing to take a photo before finishing it off felt like a good idea. “It attacked Thunderbolt from behind, and you can see some of that carried over… we did have an antidote, though!”

She… isn't entirely sure why Forte had that potion on hand. It’s probably something to do with the mushrooms that like to hop around the roadside- there’s a pretty big one that turns up on the weekends, for some reason or another- but that’s not really an issue when they took a vehicle here.

Whatever the reason, it’s good they had it.

“I- I think we’re good.” The medic sitting at the desk opens a laptop and starts typing something into a search bar while the other two dig out some bandages. This isn’t a good sign, but Frey can’t think of anything that would be. “This might take a bit… how much gauze do we have, again?”

Part of Frey wants to check on Dylas the next morning.

Unfortunately, the rest of her remembers that it’s a school day. And she slept in late, because when she’s asleep she doesn’t have to worry about things like moving her wrists. It’s her dominant hand, so writing is going to be hell.

She isn’t sure what she’ll say to anyone who asks about it. It was simple enough the first time, because nobody thought there was anything deeper to look for. Now, everyone knows what she spent winter break doing, and they might realize it was something else.

…Also, anyone who was at the museum would have seen them leave, so there’s not much secrecy to be had to begin with. Maybe people will decide they know enough not to ask questions, that’d be nice. She can go about without having to explain any of it.

This hope lasts up until she runs into Vishnal. She knew she should have worn longer sleeves today, but then the fabric would rub against the burn and make things worse.

She already made that mistake once after an unfortunate pizza accident. It’s not happening again.

“Frey? Are you all right? I heard something happened yesterday, but-”

“I’m fine. Really. Given what I was doing, it’s almost surprising I got off as easy as I did.” If not for how complicated it made everything after, she’d say the Chimera did her a favor. “If you want to worry about anyone, go check on Forte.”

“In that case, I will ask how she is doing when I see her in class today!” Right. They’re both taking cooking lessons together, she heard that from Xiao Pai. Perhaps having someone to look good next to will be what propels him forward into qualifying for Intermediate Cooking, or whatever it’s called.

Or maybe he’ll actually have finally improved enough. He tries hard enough she’s willing to believe it’ll happen eventually. “If she’s not feeling well, give her a cookie or something. Kiel says that helps.” While not everything Kiel says is properly researched, his sister is one subject he’s an expert in.

Even if he wasn’t, Frey’s seen Forte scarf down entire mini-cheesecakes while she thought no one was looking. Giving her something sweet is the safest option there is.

Vishnal nods, far too seriously. “I will buy her the best cookies I can acquire.”

“...So, from the vending machines.”

“I know a good bakery!” He insists. He does not try to claim he can make the cookies himself, because they both know she wouldn’t believe him.

Questioning about her wrist, safely deflected. Hopefully, the rest of the day can go the same.

She gets around to meeting Dylas properly that evening, after she’s finished everything for the day and has nothing better to do than seek out people to interact with.

Right now, he’s on Venti’s ancient couch. She’s trying to explain the concept of television to him, but he doesn’t seem to be getting it. Perhaps that’s not the best introductory piece of technology for some people.

He doesn’t say anything when Frey comes in. He gives her a nod of acknowledgement when Venti introduces her, though, and that’s a start.

“Is Amber not here?” She asks, because if the two of them want to have time to themselves to get to know each other again, she’s not about to get in their way.

Venti rolls her eyes. “Illuminata wanted to show her something. I think I may have introduced them a bit too early…” Frey hasn’t started on her history requirements yet, so all she knows of Illuminata is what her friends have told her. She can still tell that this will end either really well or terribly.

Hopefully, it goes well, and she can tell Forte there’s nothing to worry about in that part of Kiel’s planned double major. She’s not letting her hopes get too high, though.

“I’m sure she won’t do anything to risk her job…” She isn’t sure where that particular line is drawn, but hopefully the people it’s relevant to do.

“She won’t do anything she thinks will risk her job. Her connection to reality is like Selphia’s cell service- it works well enough most of the time, but when it goes, it’s gone, and who knows when it’s coming back.”

That’s another thing that might change soon. Maybe, once they’ve worked out what to do, Leon Karnak will stop being a place where the edges of reality are blurred and occasionally turn the entire town’s radios into a screechy mess.

At the very least, whatever they end up doing can’t make the situation there any worse.

None of this is anything Dylas seems to understand, either. Not that he asks about it.

When she turns to leave, he finally says something to her. “Hey, um… your hand…”

“It’s fine. I’ve had worse. Sometimes on this wrist.” Most of it inflicted by taking stupid dares back in elementary school, which she thinks might actually be a concept he’d get if she didn’t know saying anything about it would be handing Venti ammunition.

She doesn’t know if she’d call this much of a conversation, but she does successfully negotiate her way into borrowing Venti’s dumbest movie to watch with Vishnal and Clorica, so she’d say she’s managed to get something out of this.

For dinner, Frey makes some dumplings with her steamer. She’s not sure why the room came with a steamer, it’s not one of the more frequently-used kitchen appliances, but now’s a great time for her to learn how to use it. Once she’s mastered the basics, she can have pumpkin flan at any time of year she wants.

For now, basic dumplings. The recipe doesn’t call for any particular filling, so she uses cabbage because it’s what she has on hand. It’s that or run out to buy shrimp, and this late in the day, she’ll only be able to buy it frozen, and she’s not taking the time to defrost something this late on a school night.

Once she’s sure she’ll have something to eat, she goes over to a news site to see if word’s gotten out about yesterday yet. It’s the sort of thing she needs to keep on top of, since she’s in the center of it.

There’s nothing about a second Guardian being freed. There is, however, a bulletin about the ruins of another artificial Gate being found in the Water Ruins. They even acknowledge that that’s what it is, and it’s not just a mildly suspicious thing that exists.

Frey can’t decide if the reason they weren’t doing that before is them not wanting anyone to panic, or the people on the scene at the time genuinely not knowing what it was. To be fair, it looks like the battery type has changed… for the massively less efficient, but the bulky power source is one of the more recognizable parts of it when it isn’t in more pieces than a glassware shop after a Buffaloo’s run through it.

Apparently, this has become a big enough deal that a team of experts in the subject is being sent to investigate. The war was two and a half decades ago, so she doesn’t know who those experts would be, but they’re probably mildly famous to people who care about that stuff.

She hopes this isn’t going to impact her classes too much.

Naturally, in the comments there are people trying to connect the artificial Gates appearing to the fraud the people from back home are doing. Frey can think of a bunch of more likely theories than that which aren’t actually any less dire if they’re true, but of course people jump on tying together the things they’ve seen most recently.

If a dangerous monster appears in the western part of town, then maybe they’ll figure it out, but, well…

There were dead bodies discovered by the Gate as well, torn apart by some kind of predator. The news just glosses over that part, because it’s less interesting than the Gate existing to begin with.

But if those were the people setting it up… maybe it’s over, at least for now. If someone was paying them to do this, they’d have to find new employees, preferably who’d have a way of escaping when they inevitably summoned something they couldn’t control.

Which they should have had from the start. Basic teleport spells aren’t that complicated! She managed to learn one in less than five minutes with a head injury! It might be for the best that the weird people summoning monsters are incompetent, but there’s a point where it makes her wonder how they even lived long enough to get caught up in this.

Still, nothing that’ll draw attention to her. She can just eat her dumplings in peace for another day.

Chapter Text

Consistently, Porcoline’s life has had two great loves.

The one most people think of when they think about him is food. And it’s true, he does love food, both cooking it and eating it. There is no kitchen appliance he doesn’t know how to use, no seasoning he can’t find an application for. One day, he will make flan in a giant bucket, and there is nothing that will be able to stop him!

…Okay, maybe gravity. That might stop him, at least on the first attempt.

Regardless! Food is a wonderful thing that he will never pass up the opportunity to indulge in, aside perhaps for when someone else wishes to indulge in it. Maybe. Sometimes. If they pay him enough.

Yes, food is one of the things that defines his life. But there is one other thing, one less likely to come to others’ minds, but is why he took the path is on today.

The one thing Porcoline Tulle de Sainte-Coquille loves almost as much as food is helping other people. He believes that emotions are at least somewhat transmissible- watching someone cry makes you feel sad for them, after all, and seeing someone burst out laughing might just bring a smile to your face! He wants to bring more joy into the world, and the best way to do that is to instill it in others, or at least to keep them from feeling so miserable it brings down the general mood of the area.

When he puts those two things together, he feels like teaching the culinary arts was the only natural path for him to take. He can indulge in his students’ culinary experiences, while also helping to navigate what for a lot of them is their first time away from their parents. From his experience, people at this stage of life tend to be the perfect combination of needing help and being willing to accept it.

No one ever seems to understand it when he tries explaining with words alone, but none of his students are ever confused by it. He tends to take that to mean he’s doing a good job.

Some students, of course, need more of a helping hand than others. Students like Meggy, who desperately needs some kind of permanent connection in her life that won’t paint rainbows all over her walls. Daria’s a good kid, but theirs seems to be a relationship nourished best by keeping a healthy distance between their living areas at all times.

Sort of like most of Porcoline’s family! If they were to all live together, there would be food-related murders by the end of the week. This is why they only get together once a year, and ideally stay in separate hotels the entire time.

So he gets it. It’s only a minor inconvenience to set things up so she can stay close to him, but she settles in near-instantly, and part of him wonders if this is what having a daughter is like. They’d been looking into adoption, back before… Well, things didn’t work out that way. But he likes to think it would have been something like this.

The restaurant’s always felt pretty empty, anyway. It still feels sort of empty, now, though it’s better now that only half of the rooms aren’t being used for anything.

For some reason, though, no one wants to apply to live above a busy restaurant that fills up at lunch, any evening there’s a sports game, any major holiday, and also whenever there’s a new special being advertised. Which there is a lot. Porcoline likes to experiment.

But there’s always someone out there who needs his help, it’s just a matter of them finding each other. And that is how Porcoline invites a prince of Norad- he can’t remember which one, probably not high on the line of succession, but wanting his help regardless- to live with him.

Basically as soon as the details for that are settled, the king sends him a request to encourage his son to get a social life. Not in that many words, of course, but he’s more than capable of reading between the lines. He can make no promises of that, this is the sort of thing Arthur needs to grow into on his own, if that’s even something he’s interested in, but he can do his best to make it feel possible, and that’s really all anyone can do.

He thinks it’ll work out. Meggy needs more people her relative age to talk to, anyway.

He’s right. It works incredibly. Meggy gets someone new to worry about, and Arthur gets someone who reminds him to eat, and they seem to get along well enough beyond that. It’s always nice when these things go the way he thinks they will.

Maybe he’ll bake a cake to celebrate this success. Lots of cakes. Maybe enough that someone else can have a slice.

But celebration can wait. Right now, Venti has a request for him.

He knows the story of the third Guardian, of course. It’s the one most people least like to tell, which naturally means certain kinds of people online like to dredge it up like it’s some kind of dark secret and not the centerpiece of an actual museum. The only reason it’s not the most infamous tale is that it’s not the most recent, and that most people, before it was declared that a new Guardian was necessary, hadn’t even known his name, while Amber and her friends were beloved members of their communities.

This story, as with the others, starts with Venti making a friend. Historically, this has never worked out well for her, and Porcoline can never help but find that depressing. This is why he gives her free pancakes whenever she stops by.

Like with the others, Venti starts to weaken. Her friend asks if there’s something, anything they can do to help her. And this is where the commonalities between the four stories end, because while they have the same ending, the paths they take to get there are all different.

In Dylas’ case, how consensual his part in things was is a frequent subject of academic debate whenever the local historians get bored enough. On one hand, the place he was confined was designed to be as escapable as possible. On the other hand, him being confined at all may have been a point of no return. Porcoline doesn’t like getting involved in these discussions, they’re far too serious for his tastes, but he knows they exist.

He knows that, while Venti hasn’t asked it of him, making sure Dylas himself isn’t dragged into that argument before he’s ready is something he’s going to have to do.

Still, he has time to think about how he’ll do that. Best to start small. “Meggy, Arthur, do you think you could help me clear out that last room on the second floor?” No one’s stayed there since that time his nephew Max visited Selphia while on honeymoon with his wife, and it’s collected quite a bit of dust. Porcoline can’t even hide food in there- even candy bars, he’s sure the dust will find its way through the wrapper.

In hindsight, probably a sign he should have cleaned the place up before this. But that’s time he could be using for cooking, and eating, and teaching. So there wasn’t any point.

“Oh? Are you going to need it for something?” Arthur asks.

Porcoline carefully thinks about how to put this. “Not immediately.” He doesn’t even know if he will be needed, maybe a better option will present itself, but the best way to make sure everyone is helped as much as possible is to always be available for it. “But it’s always good to be prepared!”

“...Prepared for what?” Why does Meggy sound so nervous? It’s only an unoccupied room! Dust isn’t going to kill her unless she has a major allergy she hasn’t told him about!

…He hopes she’s told him about any allergies she has. There’s a major food-based operation right below their feet. Not doing that would be a major safety concern!

…Well, there’s no point in worrying about things people don’t tell him about. “Anything! Family reunions, Woolies falling from the sky, you name it!”

“...I should never have let you read that script.” But she’s smiling, so it worked.

They don’t even ask if this has anything to do with what Venti wanted to talk to him about. Clearly, an unmitigated success.

Official announcements are made, the town flares up in excitement, and then starts to settle down, and Porcoline again focuses on things closer to home- or to his classroom, which is just as important.

Vishnal is improving. It’s not fast, by any means, or enough to declare him competent, but his outcomes are starting to taste slightly less horrible, be presented in a way that almost looks good, and are created with much fewer kitchen safety violations!

While it’s still early in the semester, the increments he is improving by have definitely grown. Porcoline could endlessly wonder about what it might be, or he could make a hypothesis.

At the start of the semester, Vishnal began working closely with one of the local girls. Xiao Pai, he’s pretty sure her name is. Lin Fa’s daughter. He can’t say why this has caused such an improvement, though if anyone asks, he’ll make noises about young love because it’s funny to see their faces turn redder than tomatoes.

Or strawberries. Xiao Pai doesn’t like tomatoes. There are plenty of foods that make for good comparison, he’s not going to limit himself just because everyone else has.

Either way, it seems having someone to work with has been good for Vishnal. Porcoline makes note of this information, to pass around to anyone else who has him in one of their classes. He tries so hard, it’d be a shame to let him languish.

“F-Forte, that’s not the right burner…” He’s also generally helpful in the classroom. This isn’t the sashimi lesson. Forte will not get a good score if she turns in uncooked fish.

…Charred black fish isn’t much better, but at least it’ll tell him she remembered to cook it. And that she put the skillet onto a burner that was actually turned on. That is a good first step!

But her and Xiao Pai combined might be a bit too much for one person to handle. “Don’t worry too much about her, Vishnal. Some people need to learn by making their own mistakes.” At least, when she inevitably turns in a plate of charcoal, it should have an interesting taste. One useful tactic he has found is that, if he eats even the truly terrible food, sometimes the one who makes it will feel guilty enough to throw themself wholeheartedly into improvement.

Vishnal looks at him skeptically. “And if she sets off the smoke detectors?”

It wouldn’t be the first time. It wouldn’t even be the first time if they had to evacuate the building. Though, they aren’t using any lamp squid, so that shouldn’t be an issue.

He thinks Vishnal might even have been there for one of them. “Then we can have a picnic outside! The weather’s good for it, don’t you think?” There’s a crash from the other end of the kitchen. “...Could you check on your friend? I can handle Forte.”

Perhaps Vishnal could do with a refresher course where he’s the most experienced person in the room? Porcoline will have to consider it. Assuming he can pry the boy away from Volkanon, at least. It might be good for him.

…At the very least, he can’t imagine it making the situation in this kitchen look any worse. “Forte, we need to have a talk about the amount of sour drops and oil you’re using… Also, I bought these smelts as fillets, how does yours still have eyes?”

Forte sputters, and so does the stove, and it’s only quick thinking that prevents the kitchen from catching fire. Just another day in the classroom really.

He’s not sure why Venti thought he’d have a problem with teaching her friends. He loves his jobs, but they can’t possibly make things any more complicated than this.

Chapter Text

Pico still can’t believe Ven stole her favorite tenant.

Well… she sort of has to. The room is empty, and she’ll be listing it as available for next year, because apparently the best way to maximize attendance is to make sure the students have somewhere to live. And it’s probably good there’s an Earthmate in the castle.

But still! “Can you believe it, Dolly?” She asks, floating upside down in front of Marionetta.

“(Believe what.)” Okay, she should have expected that. The Guardian of the former Obsidian Mansion has two brains, and neither can hold information for more than thirty-three minutes.

It’s exactly thirty-three minutes. She checked once, using a stopwatch. It makes movie nights a bit awkward, but no one’s going to make a fuss so long as there’s enough cheesecake to go around and no Earthmates in the room.

…In hindsight, that might be another reason Ven stole her favorite tenant.

“Frey left! And she was so nice to have around! She kept things clean, she didn’t scream profanity at introverts for existing in common areas, she didn’t call people slurs for expecting her to abide by quiet hours… She was perfect!” She has had to deal with multiple people insisting that the only reason someone might file a noise complaint against them is racism when she exists in the same building as them and knows exactly how loud they’re being. People like Frey are way too few and far between. “She even managed to tell Rob no one had to put up with him without punching him in the face!”

“(Which one was Rob again?)” Has she really complained about him enough for it to stick?

And yet, she doesn’t know how to describe it. “He, um… he’s the one who calls himself a playboy.” It’s weird, because most people don’t boast about how sleazy they are. “It just means he’s bothering all the girls, all the time.”

“(Oh. So he’s like you,)” Dolly says. It’s definitely Dolly, because Marionetta doesn’t really act like she knows her despite how long they’ve been together. It’s the one way Pico has of telling them apart, and it’s barely ever relevant. She usually just assumes they’re both listening because they won’t remember any of it long enough to prove her wrong.

“No, no, he does it with everyone! I only have eyes for you, milady!”

“(That does explain why you’re allowed to work at a school.)” She’s starting to consistently remember that this is a school dormitory now! It took well over a hundred years, but they’re getting somewhere!

Now, if they can just get her to remember the name of more than one movie… “And Ven just had her move out without even bothering to ask me! Can you believe that, Dolly?”

Marionetta doesn’t answer. “Dolly? Dolly, can you believe- ack!” Where does she keep getting these plushies? That’s not a normal monster power, is it!? Why can they actually hurt her!?

…First, Frey left, and now Dolly’s upset with her. This really isn’t Pico’s day…

This might not be Pico’s year, actually.

She can’t really point to anything and say that’s why it’s bad. Dolly’s been this way forever. College students have always been kind of meh. Things are the same as they’ve always been.

Maybe it’s just that she’s turning a thousand this year. She’s never really felt old before, but there’s a first time for everything. One thousand years old! She hadn’t expected that to happen while she was on the mortal plane once her soul bonded with Dolly, but here she is! In charge of a whole college dormitory!

…Where no one really respects her, since she looks like a kid and all. And everyone expects that her chronological age means she should have figured out a perfect way to get around that already. And also she’s not sure what her official job title is. But still! It’s an important job! Especially since she has to make sure Dolly doesn’t kill anyone doing dumb hazing rituals.

At least that only happens after whatever previous group of idiots did that have all left the school, for one reason or another. Most of them probably graduate. The rest hopefully just drop out.

Pico knows this isn’t always the case, but it’s important to think positive! Maybe everyone is surviving long enough to leave the school under other means! Maybe it’s a completely different set of people who poke at Leon Karnak, never to be seen or heard from again! Anything’s possible!

One would think Amber coming back would make things suck less. There’s a new way to replenish runes to the land. She can have Dolly with her and actually mentally present for more than half an hour at a time. It’ll be great.

There’s just… one little problem with that. “It’s not safe to do this while the students are here.” Curse Ven and her relative sensibility! “Once summer break begins, we’ll get right on it.”

She believes her. Ven misses Dolly just as much as she does. Sometimes, Pico tries to get her to come over for movie night, but she can’t promise Dolly will recognize her, or that Marionetta won’t make things weird, so she never goes along with it.

She pouts anyway. “But Dolly-”

“Isn’t any worse off than she was at the start of the year.” Well, no, but- “Also, we need to consider what that will mean for your current employment. Dolce may not want to stay in the former Obsidian Mansion once she’s returned to herself.”

And the reason Pico has her job is because she really can’t leave.

She doesn’t like her job all that much. The idea of leaving shouldn’t really bother her, especially if it means she has Dolly back.

It’s just that, after this long, she can’t imagine being anywhere else. “Isn’t it your job to do things like that?”

“Pico. I have so many jobs. Right now, I’m trying to find a way to announce Dylas’ return that won’t have the history department descending on him like a pack of wolves.” …Oh, they would absolutely do that, wouldn’t they? Pico doesn’t remember Dylas very well, they only met a few times and the Water Ruins is so far out of range it isn’t even funny, but she has secretly attended conferences while invisible and apparently some people are very interested in him.

Why can’t they be this interested in Dolly? She’s an interesting person. Her parents wrote a lot about her, surely that’s enough to make anyone curious!

But there’s nothing there for them to get mad about, so they just… don’t care. She doesn’t get it. “What if you just never tell them?”

“Have you seen Amber?” No, but she’s not going to admit to that. “At best, we might be able to claim that he’s a rare type of were-animal, but that would only last until people realize that Thunderbolt is gone. We need an actual solution.”

And, apparently, finding that solution is more important than finding an excuse to clear the students out for spring break entirely so Dolly can be home faster. Which… okay. She gets it. She’s waited this long, this summer isn’t far away at all in comparison. She’s almost a thousand, a single semester- just a bit less, technically- shouldn’t mean anything.

When she gets back to the dormitory, she tells the students not to bother her unless someone’s dying and lets herself phase through the couch in the first-floor lounge.

She wakes up when someone tries mixing illicit substances in their room and proceeds to set the wardrobe on fire.

Maybe some new clothes will make her feel better. She’s been wearing the same thing for a few decades, after all.

It’s not her fault, really! Moths just got at her stockpile of alternate outfits and she’s been stuck with her default ever since. Whenever someone asks her for fashion advice, all she ever tells them is to be sure that, if they die in it, they’re okay with their ghost wearing it for all eternity. She likes her default clothes enough that it’s been a while since the last time she went out of her way for a change, so it’s probably good advice.

Maybe it’s been a bit too long. Maybe she should check out what the local fashions are like this decade.

…Maybe she needs to figure out who’s in charge of children’s fashions this decade and send them a glitter bomb. Pink, expensive brand, pink, expensive brand, cosplay of that princess who’s player two in some massively popular video game series or another… which is also pink…

…Times like these are when she missed Dolly the most. She was good at resizing clothing, or recreating it, and then Pico didn’t have to mentally map out any adjustments herself. It works fine when she only wants to wear a thing once, but she’s not doing that as a regular thing.

It’s just that the alternative is logos for brands she doesn’t know in colors bolder than some sports cars.

…And she went to all the effort of being corporeal enough to bring her credit card, too! This is why she does most of her shopping online. That and no one ever asks her for ID. All she has to do is click a checkbox and she’s able to do whatever she wants and no one tries arguing about if the ghost of a child can ever be mature enough to play video games rated for teenagers.

Here, all she can do is stare at a rack of unappealing clothes before sighing and going outside.

If she were alive, or had been trying to do literally anything else, she’d say it’s a nice day. But the sunlight streams right through her, which feels weird when she’s trying to stay solid. One would think she’d be used to it by now, but she’s not because she tries to avoid it. It feels weird. Staying in the basement with Dolly is easier.

The people seem happy about it. Kids are running along the sidewalk. There’s a guy washing his car. Over by the corner, a young couple is hanging up the sign for their new business.

The kind of life most people dream of living.

Meanwhile, Pico is walking back- walking, because she isn’t sure how fast she wants to be about it- to a place where she’s the main authority, and enforcing it requires people to look past the fact that she needs to hover her entire height off of the ground in order to make eye contact. A place where she needs to explain to people that they shouldn’t abuse their roommates if they don’t want them to rat out their drug stash.

A place where chaos reigns above, and Dolly lives in the basement, and she keeps being dragged between the two. And picking up a conversation where they left off is basically impossible.

The place she’s been tied to for the majority of her long afterlife.

…Even if she did find another outfit, she doesn’t think it would have fixed any of that.

Chapter Text

The Rune Spot smells like salt.

The whole place does, really. Amber’s pretty sure the body of water the building sits on connects to the ocean somehow, but she never learned the specifics. It wasn’t important, because no one ever went here, and no one ever said why.

The water is higher here than in the rest of the ruins. She’s not sure why that is, either. Maybe it was a design choice, but why make designs for a place no one’s meant to see? What’s the point of all the statues? This is why she never told anyone what she was planning, this whole thing makes her feel weird.

Maybe it’s just that they’d clearly made a very specific choice on what monster to use for this, and it was a choice that definitely shouldn’t have been locked in a small room. What were they thinking?

At least the Rune Spot’s center is easy to find. The people who did the pattern on the floor did very good work, it lines up perfectly. All Amber has to do is put the Rune Sphere down and…

Runeys. So many Runeys. The little blue bodies of Water Runeys dive in and out of the pool of water as small numbers of the other types float about the ceiling.

It’s the sign of an area in full prosperity.

It’s something she was never able to replicate, in all her time as a Guardian. She thinks, no matter how hard it was, she would have remembered it if she did.

…Maybe that’s why there needed to be four of them.

She shakes her head. This isn’t the time to think about that. She should go check on everyone else. Ven would be upset if something bad happened to them.

She leaves the room. The sunlight feels nice on her wings. She can hear a lot of noise to her right, so that’s probably where everyone else is.

Just a few steps, and it stops being loud. Amber figures that means she should hurry, since at least one person’s probably gonna need to see a doctor, and takes flight.

“Are you all okay!?” She calls out as they come into sight. There are three of them, which is definitely a good sign, but from this distance, she can’t tell anything else.

“As much as we can be!” Frey calls back. This doesn’t actually clear anything up, Amber didn’t see what situation they were in, but they probably don’t need to go directly to the hospital? Which is good. She didn’t like the hospital. “Did you get the Rune Sphere in?’

She nods, and then realizes she might still be too far away for them to see that. “Yeah! All the Runeys showed up and everything!” She flies across the last channel, and touches down right in front of them.

They… don’t look great. Dylas- given the ears and tail, it can’t be anyone else- is completely passed out, and also she doesn’t know how blood mixes with the water that occasionally splashes the platforms, but the amount puddling around him cannot be healthy. Frey’s wrist looks redder than it should be. Forte’s clothes are torn.

The knight pushes herself to her feet. “In that case, we should get to the medical tent. Although, transportation might be…”

Frey waves off her concerns. “Don’t worry. I know a teleport spell.”

Dylas eats three whole bowls of milk porridge, and Amber tries her best not to watch too closely.

It’s not weird that he’s hungry. Hungry is a natural state for people to be in, especially if they haven’t eaten in a period of time longer than their species’ natural lifespan. Her first day in the castle she drank five smoothies.

She’s just… realizing that maybe other people need solid food more often than she does. And she’s really not sure what to think about that. Or if she wants to think about that.

She’s saved from having to consider how far the permanent changes to her body might have gone by an elf marching into the castle. “Amber! I have something to show you!”

“Hi, Lumie!” Amber’s only met Lumie once before, but she likes her. She gets excited about things easily, so it makes it easier for her to get excited, too. And she likes flowers! You can’t be a bad person and like flowers!

Dylas glances up from his current bowl of porridge, then shrugs and goes back to eating.

It’s enough to snatch Lumie’s attention. “Wait, is that-?”

Uh-oh. Ven’s glaring this way now. Distract, distract! “You said you had something to show me?” She puts on her absolute best smile, hoping it’ll get Lumie’s attention back on her, and not on anything that was mentioned in the museum she visited yesterday.

“Right! Follow me!” She darts out the door without checking to see if she’s actually following her. She is, because she’s curious, but she thinks she could have stayed behind and Lumie wouldn’t have noticed until she got wherever she’s going.

If anything, that just makes her even more curious.

She follows Lumie to a house. The bottom floor is completely filled with flowerpots. There’s a bit of space clear on the walls for bags of fertilizer and stuff, but mostly it’s more plants.

A little marsh has been recreated in the bathroom sink. That’s… not a thing people do on a whim. Amber likes the idea, but she’d never try it herself.

“I promise the upstairs is cleaner than this.” She doesn’t believe her. “Really! That’s where my kitchen is! This is just… Well, back when I was a student, it was a store all the time, but now it’s just where I grow my stock unless there’s a special event going on, or something.”

She understands at least half of the things Lumie is saying. “You sell these flowers?”

“Yeah. I don’t usually sell live plants outside summer break, there isn’t a lot of time for that, but I can press them, and those I can sell online without it turning into a shipping disaster.” Okay, she’s starting to lose her a little now. “Anyway! Would you like a job?”

“A job? What kind?”

“You can help me grow these flowers!” …So she’d get to be around them all day? Like with her clearing, except this store hasn’t been destroyed by a tree with anger issues and an Earthmate throwing around fire spells? “And if I have someone physically there to handle customer service, we can sell live plants year round!”

Part of Amber questions why this is so important. Lumie has her teaching job, doesn’t she? Why does she care so much about selling flowers all the time?

The rest of her is resisting the urge to fly up and poke the ivy on the walls. Is that meant to be there? Is that safe? “I… I guess that sounds fun.” It’s more of an idea of what to do next than she’s had since waking up in the hospital, but she doesn’t know if she can say any more than that.

And then Lumie sweetens the deal with an offer of having her own bedroom and not having to stay on Ven’s couch, and at that point there’s really no reason not to go along with it.

…Besides. She’s sure someone else is going to need that couch more than she does.

Moving’s easy. Amber doesn’t actually own anything to move, aside from some clothes Ven bought saying they’d look good on her. They fit well enough, after altering them to let her wings through.

It’s nowhere close to enough to fill out her new closet, but it doesn’t have to be. Lumie shows her where the instructions are printed on the laundry machine, and that should be enough to get by until she has some money to spend on new clothes. Getting anything made in her old style is apparently going to be a bit expensive, there isn’t much of a market for late 1300s-early 1400s casual wear, but she can wait.

She likes her clothes. She wants more like them. She’s sure people will understand why she only has four or five different shirts until then.

Lumie also gives her a nice blanket with butterflies printed on them. She doesn’t think they look much like her wings, or Ambrosia’s, but she remembers that Yokmir forest had a lot of other butterflies, and this reminds her of that.

Ven makes her promise to visit. She will, no matter what, it’s just a matter of determining what the shop hours will be before she can make out a schedule for it. They’ve decided to limit it to just mornings or afternoons, but choosing which one hasn’t been a big priority. First they need to have a clear enough shop floor for people to walk around in.

And maybe a cash register. Amber doesn’t know what that is, but Lumie makes it sound important. Just another thing she’s going to have to learn.

Today, she’s focusing a bit on lamps. The one in her new room is adjustable, and that means she can find the perfect setting to read by! The book she checked out from the library the other day is just getting to the interesting part.

…She’s starting to think it won’t have anywhere near a happy ending, because the whole story is taking itself seriously but the ship’s crew are suggesting trying to catch Aquaticus with a fishing net, and while she knows Ven too well to be particularly religious, she also knows how these sorts of things tend to go.

Also, in her experience, it might be a requirement of the seafaring genre to kill most of the cast. Amber isn’t sure how well that maps to reality, but that’s why she’s never going onto the ocean. It doesn’t matter that she can fly now. Aquaticus might not actually like there, but Behemoths and giant jellyfish definitely are. There’s no way anyone’s getting away from one of those without being the same size.

It takes a bit of fiddling to get the light just how she likes it. It reflects off the plastic over the cover, obscuring the picture of ocean waves and a title that she thinks is supposed to be shiny on its own.

The pages are an almost blinding white, in contrast to the subject matter. She thinks maybe she’s holding the book a bit too close to the lamp, but if she holds up her blanket just right, it’s easier to look at.

…Maybe she should do a bit more fiddling.

Eventually, she’s forced to admit that there’s no single perfect setting on the lamp, and that she’s just going to have to resign herself to changing it from time to time. Like with the sun, except it’s within her control and she doesn’t have to worry about being rained on.

…There! Perfect reading light! Now, to see exactly how that group of sailors goes about annoying a deity…

Chapter Text

Margaret knows her sister’s heard about the Guardians when a flurry of texts finds its way to her phone. For a moment, she considers trying to answer them individually, and then decides that all that time spent typing is overrated and actually calls. Daria doesn’t usually answer her phone, she says that’s how you get scammed, but tonight she picks it up almost instantly.

“We can’t talk about this too long,” She warns before her sister can get a word in. “I have a test tomorrow.”

“That’s fine, I’ve got a project I’ve been procrastinating on, too.” Whether she’s actually gotten the point or not is something Margaret accepts she’ll only be able to understand in hindsight. “Come on! We need to know all the details!”

We. “...How many people are with you right now?”

“That doesn’t matter!” She’s just going to assume it’s the whole friend group until proven otherwise. Not that there’s ever been any chance whatever she says isn’t going to make its way to the entirety of Unity Point. “Tell us everything you know!”

“I can’t really tell you that much, basically everything I know comes from the TV.” She’s not going to mention being friends with Frey. “You did watch all of that, right? I know the internet went insane trying to speculate. Please tell me you saw the actual thing.”

“The real thing, and three or four streamer reactions!” People stream their reactions to these sorts of announcements? That isn’t something she ever thought would happen when she was a kid… but then, when she was a kid, the internet hadn’t even been a thing yet. Computers might have been, but the two appeared in her life as a matched set, so she never actually looked it up.

…This makes her feel old. Is she old? There’s no one she can ask about that without making things exceptionally weird.

Instead, she places her phone on her pillow and tries to ignore that she can hear Pia and Sakuya chattering in the background. “In that case, you probably know more about it than me. You know. Assuming those streamers do history stuff.” She’s not actually sure who Daria would have been watching. Updates of her life outside art are… functionally nonexistent. “I mean, Clorica mentioned having a new friend named Amber, but I think that just happened because she lives in the castle.”

“...So you have other people to talk to about it!” This is about when Margaret realizes what a spectacular mistake she’s made, as Sakuya takes over the phone. “I have an assignment for you! Gather more information, and we’ll send Raven over with a bunch of the snacks I ordered from overseas!”

…Snacks do sound nice. It’s just that they come with the inevitability of having to sweep feathers out of her carpet. One day, someone living around the restaurant is going to get around to buying a vacuum instead of just borrowing one from the inn down the street, but that day is not today.

She takes a deep breath, and wonders how much she’ll have to say to avoid disaster. It might not be very much. She might be able to get away with just saying the most superficial things possible and hoping they never fact-check. “You’d better cover everything in chocolate.”

She ends the call before any attempts can be made to argue terms further. After all, it’s not important. She has a test to study for.

Forte meets her for lunch one day, and Margaret tries not to stare at the cut on her cheek that hadn’t been there three days ago. First Frey with weird bruises, and now this. It’s like her friends are trying to give her a heart attack.

“It’s nothing,” Forte insists, pulling out her study material for the day- old questions from previous bar exams. It might be a bit early for her to be worrying about that, but Margaret knows what it’s like to fret over something you can’t change. That’s sort of what she’s doing right now. “It was just a job for Lady Ventuswill.”

Maybe she doesn’t realize how much that says. “Since when did those jobs leave you hurt like this? Did you take a metal sword to fight Thunderbolt or something?”

The awkward silence tells her that, even if that isn’t what the current situation is, it’s something that’s happened before. Several times. Possibly while everyone was trying to talk her out of it.

Before any sort of arguing can be done about this, their drinks arrive. Despite being cheap fountain soda, Margaret thinks it might be one of the healthiest things Forte’s had to drink in a bit, just because she hasn’t had the chance to add extra caffeine. “I don’t know if I’m allowed to tell you anything about it.”

Like that doesn’t tell her a lot already. “You know I can only think of three things Ventuswill might keep secret?”

And three’s sort of pushing it. Ventuswill doesn’t go out of her way to hide things, and there’s not much relevant to keep secret anymore. Most of the people she’d be theoretically covering for are dead by now.

“And you don’t know which one it is.”

“I guess I don’t.” But she can make a very good guess. It was all over the news at one point. “Have you been doing anything that’s not super top secret?”

Forte flinches. She doesn’t quite gag on her terrible orange soda, but it’s a close thing. “Well… you may recall that I said I… I was going to try to learn how to cook.”

She remembers. She remembers sitting next to her in front of her laptop, helping her find a way to fit the class into her schedule. She’d sounded relieved just to have it listed, and that relief is completely gone from her voice now. “Is it not going well?”

Part of her thinks she could ask Porco about this. But Porco’s surprisingly good at keeping secrets when he needs to, and this is one of those things, probably. There isn’t any point.

“I… used the wrong ingredients.”

She doesn’t elaborate. Margaret doesn’t ask her to. It’s still probably not the worst kitchen disaster that Porco’s ever seen.

Saying that won’t make things any better.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll do better next time!” When will their biscuits get here? This place does the best cheesy biscuits. “I’ve been pretty busy, too. Porco’s having me and Arthur do small jobs, have I told you about that?” It started with clearing out a spare room that still sits empty- ominously, maybe, or perhaps inviting, maybe like it’s waiting for someone, but whatever it is, it’s not something she understands- and it sort of expanded over time. The two of them mostly go along with it because they’re worried he’d start eating plates if they didn’t.

“Can’t he hire someone for that?” Forte asks, which would be a perfectly reasonable question if Porco was a completely reasonable person.

He’s not, so Margaret doesn’t take it too seriously. “I keep telling him to, but he says the right person hasn’t come around yet. I’m not sure if he’s actually looking for someone, or if he’s just messing with us.”

She doesn’t think she’d mind too much either way. She just wants to know which it is.

Maybe then that empty room at the end of the hall will stop feeling so strange.

Knowing doesn’t actually make it any less weird, because it turns out that what Porco had in mind for that room was hosting a mildly important historical figure.

Probably mildly important. Maybe a lot more. It’s complicated. Whatever the answer, Dylas is here, as out of place as any newcomer to Selphia, and they’re all just going to have to live with that.

“So, how did Porco talk you into coming here?” He hasn’t said a word to anyone aside from maybe a short greeting when he came in, but if there’s anything Margaret knows can get people talking, it’s Porco and his inexplicable… Porco-ness.

He shrugs, looking like he doesn’t quite understand it himself. Which… yeah. That’s Porco for you.

“I don’t remember how he talked me into it, either,” She admits to him, because the great thing about introverts is you don’t need to worry about them spilling your secrets. “It only happened a year ago, so you’d think I’d remember it better, but…” Well. She’d had more important things to worry about at the time. “I think what sealed it was being the perfect amount of distance away from my sister.”

She’s not sure things would have gone any better if Daria hadn’t been so far away at college. It’s just as likely they would have gotten into a massive fight and made things worse. But now they’re at a distance where visiting during tough times is an option, and she thinks that does help, at least a little.

She doesn’t know if it’ll change anything in the moment, and she hopes she never has to find out.

“That does seem to be something that drives people here.” Arthur appears with a plate of onigiri, only barely managing not to drop it before it makes it to a table. “...Porcoline said this would be our appetizer. I’m not sure we’ll ever see the main course, but I’ve been told it exists, so you can yell at him if it doesn’t happen.”

“At least you’ll be eating something…” Margaret doesn’t mean to say that out loud, but it’s a genuine concern she has. Porco must have noticed, too, with all the meals he’s been pushing them to eat together. “So, Arthur, how did Porco pull you into this?”

“I actually sought him out myself. I was looking for alternative living arrangements, and his name came up. I was prepared to try and make a bargain with him, but he was… unusually accommodating. I could have done with questioning it more at the time, but I’d been so sure I wouldn’t get anywhere it just… felt like I could go along with him without any trouble.”

He has that impression on people, too. They’re lucky he means well, someone with his talent for people turning to evil would probably signify the end of the world, or something.

Dylas takes an onigiri. Rolls it over in his hands. “...Where does Venti find these people?”

It’s the first full sentence he’s said in their presence, and it’s something Margaret can actually kind of agree with. “Well, presumably he had to apply for a job here, so I guess he found her?” That’s how job searches work, right? It can’t be that different for rich people.

“Selphia University is one of the most prestigious institutions of higher education in Norad,” Arthur adds. “It’s not surprising that anyone would seek a job here.”

Dylas doesn’t respond, but he does actually bite into the rice ball, and that’s a start. And when Porco comes up announcing that he brings some very nice- and expensive- sashimi, his eyes light up, and Margaret files that away as the first thing she’s actually learned about him beyond how he’s clearly not good at people.

If she wants her promised snacks, she’s going to have to tell Raven about that. Maybe it’ll keep her from looking more closely at anything. Keep a massive airship from Sharance from dropping a bunch of young adults on Selphia over spring break.

…Once she’s pushed that thought out of her brain, it hits her that this is her life now.

It’s not anything she would have called normal two years ago, or even when she moved in. She doesn’t think there’s any chance of her life ever going back to that. Not when she’s lived with a prince in the room next door, and a Guardian that’s moving in at the end of the hall.

But… she minds it a lot less than she did when she moved in. It’s weird, and she doesn’t know how much she’ll ever tell Daria, but she could get used to this. There are worse neighbors to have.

The rooms above the restaurant are all full, and she’s still not sure she can really call it a dormitory. But whatever it is, it’s hers. That’ll have to be enough.