Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Himmel is seven years old when he gets lost in the woods.

His mother had sent him in here with three simple rules, rules that anyone who goes into the Old Forest should know by heart. "Stay on the Path," Rosmarin had first said, "it is worn because many before you have taken it." That rule is perhaps the easiest to follow, and the first that Himmel broke to pick some fairy fern from inside a ring of mushrooms with bright red tops and white speckles.

She'd kissed his forehead after that, smoothing down the wrinkles in his shirt. "Never stay past sundown, the trees are not kind to those who overstay their welcome," she'd said next. Himmel had thought that one funny—stupid, even—but now he can almost believe it. Hours have passed since sundown, and nothing lights his way but what little moonlight can filter through the canopy overhead.

The shadows cast by the tree trunks seem to loom larger than they maybe should, bleeding together until darkness all but swallows most of what Himmel can see. He remembers seeing an eagle hunt down a leveret one spring, and he feels much like it did, trembling all over and almost frozen in place. He feels like the trees might hate him, and he wishes he'd listened more.

His mother's eyes had darkened before she'd imparted her third and final rule. "Those who go into the forest looking for trouble will always find it." Himmel doesn't think he came here looking for anything but herbs. Everyone always says he's a very good boy with a good head on his shoulders, even though it's filled with clouds—whatever that means—and good boys don't go looking for trouble.

There are dark things in the Old Forest. Himmel has heard stories of trolls and goblins and orcs and all sorts of horrible creatures that call these woods home. He's heard stories of horses that wear human faces, of silver-haired witches that turn people into toads or other equally accursed things. These stories always fill Himmel's stomach with a charm of hummingbirds.

He feels excited when he hears them, and that's perhaps the wrong emotion.

After he loops through the forest to find the same willow tree for the third time, Himmel feels pinned down by the weight of a thousand invisible eyes. A cold hand clenches around his heart and pulls at it through his ribs, and he surrenders to his shaking knees.

"Papa?" he asks, mostly on instinct, even though his parents are back in Anfang. "Mama?"

He gets no answer.

He realizes then that he's lost—really lost—and the Old Forest will swallow him whole, bones and all. Himmel tries to be brave like the heroes from the stories his mother reads to him every night, but he can't. The tears fall like rain, and there's little he can do to stop them. There's no saying how much time has passed when he hears the rustling of leaves that accompany movement.

Himmel lifts his chin to see a woman standing there. She has long, white hair tied in two ponytails that waterfall down her back and wears a simple dress under a raggedy cloak, cinched at the waist with a brown belt. Strangest of all, though, are her long and pointy ears, which stick out on either side of her face.

He frantically wipes at his eyes and sniffles, even as his eyes stay stubbornly wet.

He meets her eyes and finds them empty, like he's staring at a lake that's supposed to be full of life but finds nothing but clear water. Even as she points in a direction that should lead him home, Himmel is gripped by the certainty that of all the creatures that call the Old Forest home, she is perhaps the coldest and the cruelest.

The forest seems to know this too, suddenly quieting as though obeying an unspoken command from her. Himmel feels the weight of all those sightless eyes lift, but his chest is no lighter for it.

The woman watches him, expression not changing one bit, and sets down her basket. With a flash of golden light that's an assault on Himmel's dilated pupils, she summons a golden staff about the sight of a broom. Himmel's blood runs cold. She's going to turn you into a toad, or a frog, or a gingerbread cookie. She's going to put you in her oven and—

But none of that happens.

The earth beneath his feet comes alive instead, wildflowers in almost every color he can imagine taking root and springing up out of nothing. They open their bright faces to the moon, faintly glowing with something Himmel knows must be magic. Each next breath becomes easier as he inhales their sweet scent. A gentle breeze kicks up a flurry of petals, and for a moment they linger in the air, catching moonlight like crystals.

She is smiling at him now, small and faint like the first sliver of a crescent after a new moon, and Himmel knows then that this is the most beautiful thing that he has seen in his entire life.

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The Old Forest is kinder to Himmel, after that. He can't tell if it's because the trees are sorry for him—that's an odd thing for trees to be, sorry—or if it's because of some spell that white lady cast. Or maybe it's a secret third thing, that they're all just itching for him to leave. Whatever the case, Himmel cuts through the foliage with much more ease than he did while entering.

He walks until the trees start to thin out, some even cut down for lumber, and he sees the fern and moss of the forest floor fade into the familiar, light-green grass of the meadows where they graze their cattle. Himmel finds the air easier to breathe, and that's how he knows he's almost out. And just as he nears what he knows to be the edge of the forest, he hears it.

His mother's voice, calling out his name.

Himmel startles, standing still for just a moment, then breaks out into a run. He moves as fast as his feet can carry him, tripping over a thick root and then scrambling to his feet. Ignoring the bruises on his palms and knees, Himmel keeps running and running until that voice no longer sounds like the faintest whisper on the wind.

"Mama?"

Her blue hair is messy and unbound, and her amber eyes are brimming with tears when she turns to face him. Rosmarin drops the oil lamp she's carrying and drops to her knees to pull him into the tightest hug she can muster. "Oh, my darling. You're safe."

Himmel presses close to her and breathes her in. She always smells sweet, like the flowers the grows in her garden. "Mama."

"The Goddess brought you back to me." She kisses his forehead, then his cheeks, then his eyelids, sobbing all the while.

"You didn't listen, Himmel. None of this would have happened if you'd—"

"Don't be so stern, Holz. The Goddess—"

"I know," Holz says gruffly, before scooping his wife and son in a hug. Himmel presses up against him to feel the sandpaper of his rough brown beard. He feels warm and safe and just a little guilty, because his father is right. He didn’t listen, and that's what caused all of this in the first place. But then he thinks back to the White Lady and her magical flowers, and he can't say he would have wanted this day to go differently.

Because if it had, he wouldn't have ever seen her.

"Will you read me a story, Mama?" Himmel asks that night when she's tucking him into bed.

"It's late, Himmel."

"How 'bout I tell you a story?"

She laughs. "Alright. Make it quick. Your father insists on us being up at sunrise."

Himmel thinks long and hard about all the stories she has read to him over the years, then starts. "Once upon a time, a boy got lost in the Old Forest."

"Did he, now?"

"The Old Forest was mean and scary, and it didn't like him very much. It-it got really dark really fast, and I—the boy—got lost."

"I know that part."

"Then, outta nowhere, the White Lady appeared. She was a witch, you see, but good—"

"No such thing as a good witch.”

 "She was different. She pointed the boy back home and made him flowers with magic. What do you think, Mama?"

"I think," she yawns, "that this White Lady sounds very kind."

"…kind?"

"She didn't just make sure that you got home safe. Anybody could point you home—everybody ought to—but she grew you flowers to make you feel less lonely and scared. That's all there is to kindness, really."

Before Himmel can ask any more questions, Rosmarin blows out the lamp and tucks back into bed. When exhaustion finally takes Himmel, all he can dream of is flowers.

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Nothing ever happens in Anfang.

As a village, it is nothing remarkable or special or even memorable. It has its farms, its wells, its unpaved roads, and its church. Anfang is normal, almost aggressively so, keen on being nearly identical to every village north, south, east, and west of here. No traveler might remember this place for anything other than perhaps the occasional knot of tumbleweed that the wind blows in.

To Himmel, who spends more time in his head than he perhaps ought to, this is a worse fate than being sentenced to a thousand year sleep by a wicked witch after pricking your finger on a spinning wheel.

"It's so boring, Mama," Himmel says, sprawled on his back while his mother milks the cows instead of helping her like he's supposed to.

"It's peaceful," Rosmarin corrects. "You'll learn to appreciate it when you're older."

Himmel blows a raspberry. "Nothing ever happens here."

"That's not true! Just last week, Mister Krank came down with the dragon pox, and Mother Abhilfe healed him."

"It wasn't a real dragon," Himmel murmurs.

"Dragon pox has got nothing to do with—" She sighs, pinches the bridge of her nose. "You're incorrigible, Himmel."

There is nothing special about Anfang, except that it sits right at the edge of the Old Forest. Himmel wonders, sometimes, if everyone in this village tries so hard to be normal because of that forest, because everything in it is so, well, not. He knows what's inside there, now, knows that the air there feels like the space between two pages of a storybook.

"D'you think there's a dragon in the Old Forest, Mama?"

"If there is, I'm glad it's staying in there and leaving us good folk alone."

But Himmel just stares up at the barn's thatched ceiling and wishes it were a canopy instead. "Has the White Lady ever seen a dragon before?"

"Why don't you go ask her?"

Himmel sits up as though he's just been struck by lightning. Yes. Why doesn't he go ask her? It's a thought that stays with him through the afternoon and well into the night, even as he's supposed to be asleep.

Himmel just closes his eyes and valiantly fights off the urge to sleep as his mother traces gentle circles into his forehead. As she blows out the lamp and closes the door to his room behind her, he springs to his feet and grabs the cape she once made him from an old curtain and his father's pocketknife.

With no small amount of effort, Himmel hefts his window open and slips out, staring at the ten feet or so between the ledge and the ground. The brackets holding the storm drain to the wall make for convenient footholds, he finds very quickly, and in the dark of night, Himmel sets off into the forest.

Sure enough, he finds that willow tree once more. Its purple flowers are still in bloom, though Himmel can see more bright green leaves starting to take their place. A field of wildflowers still stretches out in front of him, like a sea of paints all mixed together to make something bright and happy.

"Hello?" Himmel calls out, heart beating fast in his chest.

No response but the sound of a distant nightingale.

"A-are you here?"

Himmel starts to feel a strange pressure build up in his lungs, a creeping sensation that comes with the weight of being watched.

"My n-n-name's Himmel. Y-you never told me yours!"

Something doesn't want him here, something wants him gone. There is a sound of rustling in the bushes behind him, and Himmel whirls on his feet so fast he trips over the edge of his cape and lands on his bottom. That something looms over him like a storm cloud casting shadows over a valley, its eyes shining, and Himmel's knife slips out of his trembling hand.

Himmel screams as the moonlight reveals the shape of a horse with a man's torso attached to it by the waist. He has enough wits about him to recognize him as a centaur. He lowers his face to Himmel's level, and lets out an exhale that smells a little like the grass a real horse might eat.

"You are a fool of a boy, human foal."

The sounds of Himmel's distress just die, swallowed by the shadows around him.

"Your kind never stray far from the Path," the centaur continues. "You must be a particularly ignorant one."

"Wha—?"

"Leave, boy. The Old Forest is no place for your kind."

The centaur draws himself up to his full, impressive height and gallops away, leaving Himmel to his thoughts and the silence of the woods.

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Himmel finds himself thinking about what his mother said more than he does the White Lady herself, about how she made those flowers for him about kindness. He comes to the conclusion, then, that kindness isn't about just being good or doing what you ought to do. Kindness is going above and beyond to make someone happier, even if it's just by a little.

He comes up with a game—one to see how to make somebody even just a bit brighter—and plays it first with his mother. Not that she knows, of course. Himmel watches her carefully as she goes about her day, cooking and gardening and tending to the livestock.

"Mama," Himmel says one day, completely unprompted. "What makes you the least happy every day?"

Rosmarin taps a pensive finger against her chin. "Cleaning up after I cook," she replies. "I enjoy watching you eat like the bottomless pit you are, my darling boy, but the kitchen is always a warzone after."

So one day, after she's done preparing a dinner of tomato soup and garlic bread, Himmel slips on one of her aprons and joins her in the kitchen. His mother seems surprised, but she doesn't turn away the help, instead directing him to a bar of soap and a knot of steel wool to wash all the dishes.

"What brought this on?" she asks him after it's all over.

"I'm trying to be kind," Himmel replies, washing his soapy hands in a basin of chilly water. "Like the White Lady."

Rosmarin presses a kiss to his forehead and sighs. "I wonder what I did for the Goddess to bless me with such a son."

He plays that game with his father too. He goes out of his way to do more chores, especially the ones Holz hates—cleaning drains, cobwebbing, anything that involves rotten grain—and sees him get happier by the day.

It leaves him feeling warm and happy on the inside, and stores it away like a squirrel hiding acorns for the winter.

That feeling lasts well into the afternoon, when he's jousting with a scarecrow in the barn instead of sweeping it like he's been told to. When he hears the tread of heavy boots and the sound of his father clearing his throat, Himmel lowers the broom he's been using as a lance.

"Sorry, Papa," Himmel says before anything else. "I'll—"

"That's, uh, not a problem." Holz looks like a slug is stuck in his throat. He gets like that a lot when he wants to say something but can't bring himself to. His mother always says he's never been the best with his words. "I, well. I just wanted to say that I'm proud of you."

Himmel's eyes widen. "You are?"

Holz does not repeat himself. He instead procures a wooden sword from behind his back. "For you."

People always react like that to kindness, Himmel finds. When he helps their neighbors raise a barn or helps the old baker by carting orders for her around town or gives the May Queen a crown of blue moon weeds after the festival, they all seem so happily perplexed. At this, he comes to the conclusion that few enough people are kind for its own sake that it comes across as a surprise, and he reckons he ought to do something about it.

"You're a proper hero, aren't you?" Mother Abhilfe tells him one Sunday after he helps her pass around warm soup to all their town's poorest.

The heroes in the stories his mother reads to him are always good, but rarely are they kind. But the White Lady makes Himmel wonder if simply being good is enough, because nobody who doesn't read these stories even knows who those heroes are. She was good, no doubt, but it's her kindness he can't forget.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

An hour before sunrise every morning, Heiter receives a single kiss to his forehead, light as air, before he wakes up to an empty house. At least, that's how it goes on most days. Today, though, Heiter somehow finds himself awake as his father gets ready to work in the mines.

For someone who finds himself covered head-to-toe in soot and dust after just a single day's work, Vogel can be a particular man. He wears a linen smock and a belt with all his tools, carries a pickaxe in one hand and a lamp in the other. And always, always, he affixes their canary to his hip in a small wooden cage. It lets out an indignant squawk, which prompts Heiter's question.

"Dad," he says groggily. "Why d' you always take Ringel with you to the mines?"

"Heiter," Vogel startles. "You should be asleep."

"'M not."

Vogel sighs at his son's beady-eyed look, knowing that he isn't going to go back to sleep until this line of questioning has been answered. "Because they sing."

Heiter frowns. "Isn't it annoying?"

"Quite the opposite," Vogel laughs. "Sometimes a day'll take everything out of me, and I'll think to myself—what do I even have left to live for? Then Ringel," reaching inside the cage to stroke his finger along Ringel's head, "will start singing."

"That makes no sense."

"You'll understand someday." Vogel always says that when he makes no sense to Heiter. "You're a smart one, aren't you?"

It makes Heiter preen, just a little.

"Go back to bed, son. You have school soon."

Heiter yawns. "Don't wanna go."

"You won't be as smart if you didn't go, now would you?" Vogel barks out another nonsensical laugh. "D'you think your old man would've taught you how to read?"

That, Heiter thinks, is the only useful thing he has learned there. It lets him read the Scripture before dinner so that they can give thanks to the Goddess, and his Dad always seems so radiantly happy when he hears Heiter read prayers aloud.

"Canaries are a gift from a Goddess, son."

Heiter's eyes go a little wide, and he looks at the bird with newfound appreciation. "Ringel's a gift from the Goddess?"

"She sure is." Vogel presses a second kiss to Heiter's forehead, and tucks him in more firmly. "Sleep tight, son. I'll see you in the evening."

Heiter cranes his neck to see the door to his room close, and with that, his father is gone. He finds it hard to go to sleep, so he just stares at the ceiling and tries to ignore the drip, drip, drip of the leak as water seeps into the bucket they placed under it.

They could live in a better house, but Heiter's father has always insisted on him going to school. You're going to go far, son, he always says, when Heiter just asks why they can't use the money they give the schoolmaster and put it towards something better, like a ceiling with no leaks, or a house with more than one room. Nobody goes very far, especially not in Anfang.

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Every night before he goes to bed, Vogel insists that Heiter read to him from the Scripture. It makes him radiantly happy to see Heiter stare at the ink that's undecipherable to him and turn it into words. Heiter always offers to simply teach him. "It's not that hard, you know."

"That's asking for more than my lot in life, son," Vogel sighs, scratching Ringel under her chin. Heiter wonders why she bird never flies away, even with her primaries unclipped and her cage open. "We have to learn to be happy with what the Goddess gives us."

Heiter just sighs. "What do you wanna read today, Dad?"

"How 'bout the Creation?"

The words mean little to Heiter, but he reads them nonetheless. He finds it odd why so many people bother with it. Almost everybody in Anfang keeps a copy, even though precious few of them are literate enough to read it cover to cover without stumbling over every other word. And reading these words makes Heiter feel… odd. It's a frightening feeling, and he never tells Vogel for fear that he might call it a gift from the Goddess too.

And he never, ever dares to tell his father about his dreams. They are the same, nearly every night. Blinding golden light from nearly every direction, consuming his senses to the point where Heiter thinks it should hurt, but it never does. In his dreams, the light is always warm and inviting, like he's being hugged by the mother who died as he was born.

But then Heiter wakes up in the dark and reaches for it, aching for something he doesn't understand.

So he just ignores it.

He starts with how the Goddess created the world in six days, the Stars, the Sun, the Moon, the Sky, the Ocean, and the Earth. By the time Heiter finishes the passage about how the Goddess painted the sky with her pearly tears and breathed life into the clouds, Vogel is weeping. He murmurs a prayer, touching his right hand to his head and then his heart.

"Thank you, Goddess," he says, "for gifting my son so."

"Dad."

"You're going to do so many special things," Vogel insists, ruffling Heiter's hair.

"If you say so."

"Have faith, son. Be true and have faith."

For all his dreams of light and gold and warmth, Heiter has always found that particularly difficult. What kind of Goddess would have her devotees work from sundown till sunset only to barely put three meals on the table? What kind of Goddess would create a world with demons and leaking roofs and canaries that exist only to die before their owners do?

But he says none of this to Vogel, and just keeps reading, and perhaps it will be enough.

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Heiter thinks there is a canary inside him. It sings when he sleeps, filling his dreams with golden light, and right now, it is trying very hard to make even the slightest bit of sound. He can feel its heartbeat slow to a screeching halt, as though someone is reaching in his chest and squeezing all the air from its lungs.

He hasn't dreamt of the light in a long time now, too long. There is a knock on the door, and Heiter rises to his feet. Darkness is gathering on the other side, and the bird inside his chest is screeching out a warning that rings in his ears. He opens the door slowly, carefully, and the old, rickety hinges creak.

Vogel is there, smiling and covered in soot. Heiter wonders, for a moment, if he is being crazy.

And then his father coughs.

It's barely anything, could simply be chalked up to working for hours in the mines. But Heiter knows. He knows, deep down, that this is the beginning of an end—the end—though he is too scared to think about what exactly might be ending. Or, far worse, what might be starting.

"Dad?" he asks weakly.

"You look like you've seen a ghost, son," Vogel laughs, and pats him on the back. His hand is firm and strong from years working the mines, and Heiter thinks it won't always stay that way.

He shudders a little and dispels the thought, watching Vogel cook a simple tomato soup over the stone stove that they have, and cut up what's left of the loaf of sourdough they bought from Mistress Torte's bakery just down the street into little slices. He looks like the picture of health, save for the occasional cough, and Heiter wonders where all these morbid thoughts are coming from.

"Are you feeling okay, Dad?" Heiter asks.

Vogel coughs into his open palm. "Just some dust in my lungs. Nothing for you to worry about."

Heiter doesn't miss the smear of blood across his father's tunic when he wipes his hand against it. "'Course."

He tries not to worry, he really does, but it only gets worse from there. Within a day, Vogel is unable to get out of bed, shivering under the covers no matter how many blankets Heiter piles on top of him. His breath is short and his chest aches, and every hacking cough  expels more blood Heiter things should firmly be in his veins.

Heiter refuses to go to school, no matter how much Vogel urges him to, spending the day pressing a wet cloth to his feverish brow in a vain effort to cool his body down. He heats up leftovers of the soup they had for dinner just last night, but Vogel is unable to swallow without coughing up even more blood.

It isn't just Heiter's father that is suffering. They call it the Black Death, a plague that is tearing through Anfang, according to the snatches of a conversation Heiter hears when he goes to spend what little money they have buying tonics from the apothecary.

"I heard little Opfel barely lived three days after she started coughing," he hears someone say.

Heiter clutches the little glass vial closer to his chest, but he has a sinking feeling that it won't work. He empties it into his father's mouth anyway, and falls asleep on the floor beside his bed, too exhausted to move to his own. He wakes up in the morning to Ringel singing, but it's strangled somehow.

There is a canary inside his chest, and right now it is dead.

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Heiter doesn't know what to think when he starts coughing as well. It's been a week—a week he has spent eating leftovers when he feels like it and lying in bed when he doesn't, which is more often than it should be—since his father…

Well.

Since his father died.

Even in his head, it is a hard thought to articulate. Hieter has never really felt his mother's absence. What little he knows of her, it's only through Vogel's reminiscing. She had brown eyes that Heiter inherited, and mousy brown hair to match. Heiter reckons that you can't miss something you never really had in the first place. But he had Vogel. Every day since the day he was born, he's had Vogel.

He has never been one for Scripture, but he hopes at least that Aureole is real. He likes the idea of it, a warm, golden place where he and Vogel can be together with his mother, no mines, no plagues. Heiter takes comfort in this thought—of their eventual reunion—when the plague doctors come.

They wear black, beaked masks and long robes that cover every inch of their skin, and hats that Heiter would find funny if they weren't omens of his imminent death. The plague doctors herd everyone in town who is sick and getting sicker into the church refectory, now stripped clean of tables to make room for all of the plague's victims.

Heiter feels a chill run through his body, a knot forming in his chest that makes it impossible for him to breathe. It is far too cold, but there aren't enough blankets to go around. The three priests from Strahl make rounds, murmuring passages he vaguely recognizes from the Scripture that leave his body tingling but somehow not much better.

He finds it odd, though, how he can sense their desperation. How he can hear their pleas to a Goddess he isn't even sure exists anymore. Heiter is so exhausted he can barely move—the spoonful gruel they feed him once a day is barely enough—but he can feel a strange sense of kinship with them.

He just wishes he didn't.

"I don't see the point, Mother Superior. He's going to die."

The barest touch against Heiter's forehead. "There is always a point."

And then, delirium.

Heiter's fevered mind conjures up the light again, but this time, there is no pain. Is this Aureole? Will he see his parents again? Will they be together under a roof that doesn't leak, with as many singing canaries as their hearts desire instead of the one he and Vogel rescued and hatched together from an egg?

It feels like a mother's embrace, or what he thinks a mother's embrace should be like. Warm, safe, whole. Heiter has never felt so singularly happy in his entire life. He feels something reach inside him and pull, violently rearranging every one of his constituent parts, and he wakes up sweating.

Heiter's headache has cleared, and none of his breaths are labored. He can put a name to what just happened, but he doesn't want to.

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The Scripture does not have much to say about death outside of useless platitudes. Heiter remembers a time when these words used to mean much more to him, when reading them made him feel like something inside him was sparking and burning, but now he just feels empty. That light is still there, somewhere, but he thinks looking at it might blind him.

He finds himself thinking, strangely, of the day he and his father found Ringel. She'd been pink and wrinkled like a dried prune, not a feather in sight to make her even the slightest bit beautiful, making weak, strangled noises instead of anything that vaguely resembled birdsong.

Vogel had taken her in, but even after days of careful care, Ringel hadn't improved one bit.

"She's going to die, Dad," Heiter had said.

"Not if we pray hard enough," his father had replied resolutely.

And he had. Each night before bed, before every meal, Heiter put his hands together and prayed. For the first time, he hadn't prayed for a roof that didn't leak or enough money to buy real meat instead of hunting pigeons, instead devoting all his thoughts to Ringel and her health. Despite the odds, she'd lived, grown golden feathers and learned to sing the most beautiful songs.

He remembers watching Ringel fly for the first time, wings stretched to catch the summer sun, and thinking that the Goddess must be real for something so rare and beautiful to even exist. He remembers feeling his heart soar with her, up and up until it scattered to the sky.

He remembers believing.

Heiter can't say that he does, anymore.

He stands at the edge of a cliff that overlooks the mines where his father used to work. The sun has yet to rise, but already men are digging holes into the earth with their pickaxes. Heiter wonders if they carry canaries into the mines, too, if they sound as sweet as Ringel did. Heiter remembers returning home in a haze, just as his fever had started to wear off, and finding a clump of cold feathers where his bird once used to be.

Heiter wonders what the point of it all is, waking up before sunrise and working past sundown, earning barely enough coppers to buy food and pay for a flimsy roof. He comes to the conclusion that there is none, at least not for him.

If there's no point to life, is there a point to death, then?

Heiter takes a step towards the ledge, unsure of what he's searching for.

"I suggest you take a step back, young man."

Heiter startles. He knows that voice from the snatches of his fever dream, which perhaps wasn't a dream at all. He turns around to see a woman with crescent-shaped glasses, dressed in an abbess's habit.

"It's a dangerous fall," she says. "It could kill you."

Heiter feels like laughing, inexplicably. "Could it?"

"I'm not going to repeat myself. Step back from that ledge."

"What's the point? It's not going to make much of a difference if I do."

"There is always a point, young man. Always. The Goddess has a plan—"

"Did that plan involve my father dying?"

Heiter feels his eyes well with tears he stubbornly refuses to shed.

That shuts her right up, and Heiter wishes that she would choke on her condolences. "What is your name, young man?"

"M-my name?"

"Did I stutter, or are you incapable of understanding simple questions?"

"Heiter."

"Hello, Heiter. You may call me Mother Abhilfe. Would you do us both a favor and—?"

"Step back from the ledge, I know."

 Heiter finally listens to her, and scoffs when she lets out a small sigh of relief.

"You asked me what the point is, and I must admit I don't have an answer for you." Mother Abhilfe opens her palms and bows her head as though in supplication. "But I can perhaps offer you a way to find them on your own, through the Goddess's grace."

Heiter gasps when a dim blue light forms above her heart. Glowing butterflies spring forth from the space between her palms and trace twisting paths as they chase the rising sun. He watches, and feels something in his chest come undone. He watches and thinks that there isn't a point, but maybe there doesn't have to be one.

Maybe.

"It's beautiful," he says very quietly.

"Do you want to learn how?" Mother Abhilfe offers.

He has little choice but to accept.

Chapter Text

Heiter meets Himmel for the first time when he is ten years old, and he thinks he is very strange.

There is hardly ever enough food to go around, and though it is bartered evenly, everyone is always a little too hungry and a little worse for wear. Heiter makes a point of complaining about this once when he's in line to get food at the refectory, and his bowl of gruel away by Sister Fessel.

"You ungrateful little wretch," she snarls, with more venom than a woman of the cloth probably should. "Be thankful that the Goddess chose to spare your poor soul."

"I find Her judgement a little lacking," Heiter replies, "seeing how She chose to spare yours."

The kids in line behind him snicker, which doesn't help much considering how he spends the rest of the day hungry.

He hasn't dreamed about the light in a while, but he still feels a little warm inside every time they go to Sunday mass and recite the Scripture. Vogel would call it a gift from the Goddess, but Heiter just thinks it's a curse. He should be with his parents right now, not stuck here with week-old gruel that's too cold to be edible.

Not a lot about this place is bearable, but at least he's not alone in his suffering. They have all lost their parents, and have nowhere to go but here. They have all, on some level, experienced a lot of the same suffering, like being whipped with a belt, or being forced to spend hours in a tiny pantry, or being deprived of meals.

He sits down at the far end of a table, staring at the empty tray in front of him. Heiter's stomach grumbles despite himself, and he plants his face in his palms while morning prayers are recited.

"Psst. Are you hungry?"

Heiter stiffens, then turns to his side. "What do you think?"

The blue boy—his hair and his eyes are blue, isn't that a little excessive?—just shrugs. Heiter will learn, later that his name is Himmel. "Is that a yes or a no?"

"Yes," Heiter says through gritted teeth.

Nothing can prepare him for the boy carefully emptying half his gruel into Heiter's tray. He just stares at him with wide eyes, unable to comprehend how idiotic this is.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Himmel is eight years old, two years younger than Heiter, but already has a reputation of being a martyr willing to help anyone in need. They call him Himmel the Hero because he shares his gruel and lets the littler kids sleep in his bed when there's thunderstorms outside and always does the worst chores without complaint.

He spies Himmel leaving the orphanage every day noon sunrise and returning a bit before sundown with blisters on his hand, and more stories to brag about a new sword move he's learned or a monster he's slayed, and Heiter is never sure how much of it is true and how much of it is an exaggeration. Himmel is always tight-lipped when Sister Fessel questions him, though, and he always gets whipped for it.

But what takes the cake, after weeks of this, is the rumor that Himmel has somehow found the Hero's Sword.

"A merchant gave it to me after I saved him from a sphinx," Himmel replies, slashing the sword so that its movement through the wind makes a sharp sound. "He said I'd be a great hero one day."

Kids have gathered around him like moths drawn to a flame. Heiter wonders how long it will be before one of them gets burned.

"What does that say?" one of them asks, and Himmel just shrugs.

"How would I know? Can any of you read?"

Despite his protests, Heiter is dragged by the sleeve of his tunic towards Himmel. Being around him is like staring at the sun, so irritating that he wants to squint and sneeze, and a blight on his eyes.

"'Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil is rightwise the Hero who shall slay the Demon King,'" Heiter reads aloud from the metal.

Himmel smiles. "Hear that, guys? I'm going to slay the Demon King!"

More clamoring, more stupid adulation, and Heiter feels like he could tear out his ears. "Are you an idiot?"

"What?"

"Simple question. Are. You. An. Idiot?"

"…no?"

"Then how do you not know that this sword is a fake?"

Himmel frowns. "A fake? But—"

"According to the Scripture, the Goddess put it in a stone and imbued it with special magic. But you got it off a stupid merchant on the street, and this is just metal."

Himmel's face falls for a moment, but then he just shrugs. "That's alright," he replies, sunny as ever. "I can still be a hero."

"A fake one, maybe," Heiter snorts. "A real hero would have a real sword."

Himmel says nothing to that, just stares at his reflection in the sword and runs a hand through his tousled blue hair to make it fall at a more pleasing angle on his forehead. Heiter has never once met someone so remarkably shallow, or so remarkably idiotic.

"Say, Himmel the Hero. I've heard rumors that there's a monster in the Old Forest that's been attacking people on the Path." Heiter points at the distant treetops. "It's eating them up, bones and all."

"What do you want me to do, slay it?"

"A real hero would."

Himmel grins. "You're right. I would."

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Evening prayer is one of Heiter's favorite times of day. The light of the setting sun is always a pleasant shade of orange as it filters through the frosted glass windows of the chapel, and something about it is gentle enough for Heiter to find it more bearable than usual.

It makes him feel as though the Goddess is extending one of Her rosy fingers to touch the world. It makes him feel as though She is real, more than his dreams or the Scripture or Mother Abhilfe's lessons do combined. It makes him understand, briefly, that the Goddess is more like the sun than he would have imagined at first.

The sun might flood a garden with its warmth and light, but it's hardly responsible for the plight of each individual flower. It might watch them from its perch in the sky—love them, even—but that power is contingent on distance. Moments like this, Heiter doesn't resent Her for it.

"You think the Goddess is smiling down at us?"

"Shut up, Himmel."

"My Mama used to say that the Goddess was smiling at 'er when I was born."

He sighs. "Of course she did."

But the worst part is, Heiter can imagine it. He can imagine the Goddess smiling down at Himmel, even if it's not at him. Even if Himmel has been orphaned by misfortune and eats the same miserable gruel that he does every day. In the light of the setting sun, Himmel looks blessed.

And Heiter has never been angered by anything as much as he has this.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Lesson's with Mother Abhilfe are supposed to be the brightest part of Heiter's days. They are precious hours he can steal away from chores, away from the other kids in his too-crammed room, away from Sister Fessel and her hungry whip. Mother Abhilfe is nothing if not exacting, and she expects more from Heiter than anyone has in his entire life.

They have spent two weeks now analyzing a story about how the Goddess's ninth human incarnation held a feast with Her closest followers, turning wine from water when a faithless barkeep refused to serve her any.

She gets so caught up in the minutiae that Heiter finds himself wondering, more than once, if there's a point to it at all.

Maybe there isn't.

Maybe there doesn't have to be.

But when his progress with a particular section is to her satisfaction, she shows him how to do wonderous things. Impossible things. Miraculous things. All just with words, with the Goddess's words, and a good dose of carefully channeled mana.

"Repeat after me," Mother Abhilfe says. "Wine from water."

Heiter watches with round, wide eyes as the water in the glass cup in front of her turns a deep red. He raises his hand and does the same, directing the flow of his mana like she taught him to, and cracks open one tentative eye.

"Remarkable," she murmurs. "You have a mana pool deeper than most mages I have known."

But remarkable isn't enough.

As the sun begins its descent down the sky, Heiter slips away from afternoon chores. Though parts of the Old Forest are quite close to the orphanage, the Path is almost an hour away, and Heiter never has any mind to stray far from it. There's a rock around forty feet away from him, separated by a glade, and marked with a bright red "X".

Heiter opens his copy of the Scripture. It's old and worn, passed down to him by a father who hadn't been able to read a word of it, but he's never had the heart to replace it. If there isn't a point to any of this, Heiter will find one. He will make one. Mother Abhilfe can't have saved his life for no reason.

"Three spears of the Goddess!"

The spell is cast, but it always fizzles out in the air just moments before hitting that rock. It drains his mana more than it should, nearly knocking him to his knees as though he's been punched in the gut. But he still has enough to cast it a few more times, to become more than simply remarkable.

Heiter readies himself again, but the sound of flapping wings behind him makes his blood run cold. He turns around to see a large, open beak ringed with teeth, an orb of darkness forming in front of the tongue.

He wonders what death feels like.

Maybe he'll find out.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"You're remarkable, Heiter."

"..what?"

"I've spent all day looking for the gryphon, and you just killed it like it was nothing."

"I what?"

"Don't be modest," Himmel says. "Looks like it was quite a fight."

Heiter blinks, his blurry vision slowly coming into focus. He becomes vaguely aware of the feathered body he's sitting up against. "I didn't kill it, Himmel."

"I mean, it's quite dead."

"I didn't kill it!"

The message finally seems to make it through Himmel's thick skull. He turns on his heel and raises his sword, barely blocking the swipe of another gryphon's talons. Heiter finds himself completely and utterly in awe of how fast Himmel moves, less like a boy and more like a blue blur in the wind.

The gryphon, completely unfazed, rears its wings and screams, the sound so forceful that it makes the earth and trees shake. Its mana is less like a pool and more like a hurricane, swirling like a vortex when yet another dark ball starts to form in its mouth. Himmel barely rolls away from the beam of energy it releases, leaving a scorching trail in the grass.

This isn't a fight, Heiter realizes when he sees Himmel's own mana flickering like a candle in the wind. It's a stampede.

Even Himmel's prodigious skill isn't enough, and the gryphon leaves him with a sharp gash across his forearm. He ought to run. He ought to run now. But that knucklehead just takes another stance. Heiter thinks about why Himmel is even bothering to stay, and comes to the obvious conclusion.

"Y-you should go back and warn the others," Heiter forces out through winded lungs.

Himmel just hums, barely an acknowledgement.

"I hate you sometimes, you know? There's no point in trying to save somebody who hates you."

Himmel clambers onto the back of the downed gryphon, and gives him a most gallant smile "You're my friend, Heiter. Isn't that enough?" He jumps, bringing his sword down in a heavy, strong blow that barely makes a scratch on the gryphon's neck.

The gryphon catches Himmel with one of its legs and slams him into the ground so hard that it makes a crater. Heiter winces, realizing that his life will forever be a litany of people to whom he owes thankless debts.

"This monster's impossible for you to handle alone," Heiter says, drawing himself up on his feet. "It's got too much mana."

"…mana?"

Heiter pushes his glasses further up his nose. "You—we—really ought to run."

"Nonsense," Himmel huffs. He uses his sword to get up on one knee, looking to all like he's posing for a sculptor. He'd make a wonderful statue. "If I run now, I'll be a fake."

He knows there isn't a point, even if Himmel insists otherwise. As Himmel throws himself at the gryphon again and again, Heiter thinks that perhaps he ought to make one instead.

"Make no mistake," Heiter says. "I'm not fighting for you."

Himmel grins at him. "Sure."

Heiter opens his book, and casts a quiet spell. "Himmel, now!"

Blade sharpened, Himmel swings his sword up and hacks off several of the primaries on the gryphon's right wing. It retaliates, leaving him with a deep gash on his forearm as he crumples to the ground, nearly dropping his sword as he cringes with pain.

"Run!" Heiter screams, grabbing Himmel's good hand and yanking him to his feet.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Himmel watches in awe as his cut is stitched shut with golden thread, leaving the barest scare in his wake. "This is incredible," he murmurs. "What more can you do?"

"Not the time," Heiter whispers insistently.

"Right. Are we good on the plan?"

"I can't do this," Heiter says. "The Goddess's magic isn't made for combat, and the spells take too much toll on my mana, and I—"

"Heiter." Himmel takes his shaking hands and smiles up at him. "There's no one I know who believes in the Goddess more than you do. There's no one I know who works harder than you do. If anyone can figure out how to pull this off, it's you."

"I..."

"And if you find it hard to believe in yourself, at least believe in me."

Heiter nods, even though he's never felt more unsure of anything in his entire life. Himmel meets his eyes and gives him a dimpled smile that does nothing to soothe his fears, because he's less a hero and more a madman, then walks straight into the angry gryphon's path. Watching Himmel fight feels like reading a fairytale, because he moves like he's just as much a part of this forest as that monster is.

His stance is sure and strong, like he doesn't even know what the word fear means, and there's not a single piece of doubt behind the curtains of his ironclad belief. But Heiter isn't like that. He's riddled with doubts, with holes, like rotting, termite-bitten wood that's about to sink a boat. Even though Mother Abhilfe is training him to be a priest, Heiter has never been the best at blind faith.

But Himmel is right in front of him, and perhaps that makes it easier for him to believe.

Heiter opens his book, presses two fingers to the page. "Three spears of the Goddess!"

He's standing more than forty feet away, surely, so he puts all of the mana he can spare into the attack, and then some. Three beams of light burst up from between the pages of the book and zero in on the gryphon. As planned, Himmel neatly dodges the attack, and the gryphon is still for the barest moment. Heiter can't tell if it's because the attack hurt it or merely stunned it, but whatever the cause, it's all Himmel needs.

The sword that isn't the Hero's Sword is driven into the gryphon's heart, and it lets out one last screech before it dies.

Chapter Text

Heiter is eighteen years old when he is ordained as a priest. Mother Abhilfe anoints his palms with oil and wipes them clean with linen before granting him his vestments. No one but Himmel is there to witness the moment when the Goddess's blessing descends upon him in the form of a glowing, golden dove. It's funny that he can remember a time when Himmel would've been the last person he wanted there.

Heiter is also eighteen years old when he discovers that the bartender in Anfang's only tavern won't turn him away for being too young.

"Your strongest drink in your tallest glass, please," Heiter says with far more glee than is perhaps appropriate.

Himmel frowns. "Should you really be—?"

"Oh, hush. We can't all be paragons of heroism and chivalric goodness." He exchanges two copper pieces for a wooden mug so large that it might be a bucket, frothing with something so strong that it almost smells like the liquid they use to clean the chapel's glass windows.

"Do you smell that, Himmel? That's the scent of a good, good night."

"That's the scent of alcohol poisoning. Besides, why do you even bother with a tavern, can't you just—?"

"It's about the feeling," Heiter insists. "Magical wine doesn't taste the same as good, real whiskey."

That's the last thing he remembers saying before downing his entire drink. At its best, the right drink at the right amount leaves Heiter feeling like he's floating in a lake in summertime, losing control of his limbs as he surrenders to the most pleasant sort of warmth. This is not one of those times. The floor is rudely pulled from underneath him, and his eyelids refuse to blink when the lights get too loud.

Somewhere between hearing tastes and seeing smells, Heiter loses consciousness.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

He wakes up to the scent of wood-smoke and pine needles and immediately retches. Himmel's hand is on his back, patting as he empties his stomach of the leek tart he had for dinner.

"There, there," Himmel reassures. "You're all good now."

Heiter's eyes slowly come into focus as he's able to parse his surroundings. He's in the forest surrounded by yurts and open fires. There are centaurs sharpening arrows or carving bows or grinding herbs with mortar and pestle, young foals playing with wooden balls over nets made from woven grass.

Heiter closes his eyes against the feeling of a nail being hammered into his forehead. "How long have I been out?"

"Five hours," Himmel says brightly before forcing the contents of a wooden cup down Heiter's throat. "Reh made this for you."

He coughs, choking on bile. "What's in this?"

"Sparrow droppings, pickle juice, charcoal—"

"You didn't have to answer."

"Why'd you ask?"

"Perhaps this might not be as much of an issue if you simply abstained," Master Wachturm says, judgmental as ever. "You will not find salvation at the bottom of a bottle, boy."

"'M not a boy," Heiter mumbles indignantly, at which the centaur just shakes his head.

"I've spoken with Master Wachturm, and he said you can stay the night."

"How magnanimous of him."

"I figured you wouldn't want Mother Abhilfe to see you… Well."

Heiter says nothing in response, because he doesn't have much to say. He's never known his mother outside of what he's been told, so the only picture that comes to mind when he imagines that face is Mother Abhilfe's. The last thing he wants to do is disappoint her, because he owes her everything.

"I'll accompany you to the parsonage in the morning to help you pack," Himmel goes on. "We can leave by noon if we—"

"Pack? Leave?"

"For our quest, remember? We discussed this."

"…we did?"

"You were probably too drunk then, but it's fine. I can remind you of everything we agreed to."

Heiter can do nothing to stave off that growing sense of dread, but there's no point to it. Wherever Himmel goes, he will follow, even if it is to Ende. But Himmel seems to think it's possible, and he has always had a way of making impossible things happen.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Heiter has always found centaurs to be a strange lot. Though they worship the Goddess too, it's so strange to him that it might as well be alien. They call Her by name—which would be blasphemous in a human church—and read Her words from the constellations instead of the Scripture.

His most notable recollection of the farewell ceremony, though, is how much they all love Himmel. The foals seem heartbroken to see him go, and even the infamously pricky Reh gives him a bone-crushing hug. Wachturm blesses Himmel's sword and the prophecy it holds.

"May Äther guide your journey, my apprentice," Wachturm says, drawing an eight-pointed star on Himmel's forehead. "May there never be a fault in your stars."

Heiter feels an echo of the warmth carried in his dreams of light, and he stands very still as Wachturm echoes those same words with him. They show up at the parsonage well past dawn, and Mother Abhilfe takes in the sight of them with a most nonplussed expression.

"Another night with the centaurs?" she asks, looking up from a letter she has been writing.

"They gave us a farewell ceremony," Himmel replies. "We're leaving on a quest to—"

"Slay the Demon King, I know. Don't we all?"

Himmel has enough wherewithal to look a little flushed. "I'm just here to help Heiter pack, Mother Abhilfe."

She sets down her quill. "Heiter, a word?"

When Himmel shuts the door to Mother Abhilfe's office behind him, she rises from her seat to cup his cheek with the most unreadable expression he has ever seen on her face.

"You really are leaving, aren't you?"

Heiter tries to look happier about it. "I am, Mother Abhilfe."

"The best priest I ever met, going off to the gallows to play hero."

"Himmel thinks we won't—"

"Himmel may be a hero, but he's also a little bit of a fool."

She has always been like that, devastatingly realistic in the face of Himmel's unflappable optimism, but never to his face. Master Wachturm is exactly the opposite, reading all sorts of hidden meanings in everything from the willow to the wind. Even though Himmel's sword is a fake, he somehow got it in his head that the real one is destined for Himmel's hands as well.

They're exactly the same type of delusional, a trait Heiter doesn't share with either of them.

"Do try to stay alive, young man." She tips down his head to kiss his forehead. "After all is said and done, may the Goddess guide you home."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

If Heiter thought Himmel was beloved by the centaurs, he never once considered how much the town of Anfang might love him too. When news of them leaving spreads, nearly everyone in town gathers in the streets.

"We're getting quite the sendoff," Himmel says as the baker piles his hands full of more jelly tarts than he can hope to carry.

"You're getting quite the sendoff."

"Is there a difference?"

Plenty, though Himmel probably won't see it that way. He's the town's beloved hero, who slayed the demon that ravaged their farmlands and has been keeping the dark things in the Old Forest at bay ever since. He's less a person and more a fairytale, so of course they adore him. Of course they worship Himmel the Hero. But Heiter knows how vain and shallow and stubborn Himmel can be, and he follows anyway.

That's got to count for something.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"Himmel," Heiter ventures very carefully. "Do you have any idea where we're going?"

He isn't even sure what brought this on. Himmel navigates the Old Forest like he belongs there, completely unnerved by the sheer hatred the trees seem to feel for those they consider interlopers. He strays from the Path as much as he follows it, paying no heed to the three rules most everyone in Anfang has drilled into their heads.

But it turns out to be a prudent question, because Himmel just turns to him with a very red face.

"…you don't know, do you?"

"It's the journey that matters, not the destination."

"Neither matters if we don't have a destination. I'm way too sober to have this conversation a week too late."

Heiter has spent the past week following Himmel, because that seems to be what he's best at. They make camp in dry clearings, gorge on foraged food and jelly tarts, and sing stupid songs they heard in the tavern before spending nights under the stars. He hasn't hated it, but not even a moment of that has contributed to Himmel's grandiose goal of slaying the Demon King.

"Heiter, I—"

"Not to mention, we're almost out of food! How in the world are we supposed to—?"

"Heiter, listen."

He's never been able to explain it, but sometimes there's a sharpness to Himmel's voice that just compels people to listen. Heiter knows that Himmel is probably just as lost and clueless as he is right now, but something about the way the firelight illuminates his face makes him sit up straighter.

"We need to find other party members," Himmel says. "A warrior and a mage, at the very least."

"Why a warrior? Isn't that your job?"

"I'm quick and light on my feet, but that's very different from being strong."

"And where are we going to find a warrior and a mage crazy enough to go on a suicide mission?"

"If you think this is a suicide mission, you shouldn't have come at all. But I'm sure we'll find plenty of madmen when we reach the Royal Capital."

Heiter raises an eyebrow. "You've thought about this a lot, haven't you?"

Himmel just shrugs, and neither of them have anything more to say.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"Himmel, am I sober?"

His friend just shrugs unhelpfully. "I don't know. Are you?"

Heiter blinks once more, then pinches his forearm to make sure he isn't in some dream. Ouch, nope, this is definitely real. "…are you seeing what I'm seeing?"

"What even is reality?" Himmel says sagely, and Heiter has never wanted to strangle him more.

"The village with the little people," Heiter says, gesturing widely towards said village. "With the little cottages and the little ponies and the little water mill?! Tell me I'm not going mad."

One of those little people—a pudgy, bearded man with a comically large calla lily somehow growing from his skull—turns to shoot him a very dirty look.

"You're not going mad," Himmel laughs. "They're gnomes, Heiter."

Heiter rubs at his eyes.

"…did you not think they were real?"

"I didn't think centaurs were real either until you dragged me to see Master Wachturm," Heiter mumbles, feeling his cheeks warm when Himmel chuckles to himself.

Even Himmel, who is at best average in terms of height, towers over even the tallest gnomes. Heiter, who is at least a head taller, attracts so much suspicion that he straightens out his stole self-consciously. He's a little comforted by the presence of a bite-sized church, thought he door barely comes up to his chest.

The streets are laden with stalls, selling all kinds of food—but mostly sweets as far as Heiter can tell—under colorful canopies. Himmel drags Heiter to where a crowd of gnomes are gathering, if only to see the spectacle that's catching their attention, and he feels a sharp kick against his shin.

"Watch where you're going," snaps a woman with apple blossoms sprouting from her braided red hair.

"Sorry." He raises his hands in a placating gesture and prays she can't tell how amusing he finds all this.

She just scowls at him. "You find it funny, don't you? Trampling on the livelihoods of decent folk like us, especially on a day like this."

"Is there something special about today?" Himmel asks softly, kneeling to meet her eyes. "Miss…?"

"Apfel," she offers very reluctantly. "If you must know, today is the day Blumental was saved from a great and terrible evil by the greatest warrior in the world."

Heiter's eyes widen. "The greatest warrior? What a bold allegation."

"Oh, shush. The show is starting."

A large dragon puppet made from balsa wood and cloth rises like a kite when it spreads its blue wings to catch the wind. It casts a jagged shadow that bisects Heiter's face and easily spans the narrow street, eliciting gasps from all those who watch. A group of robed gnomes with large toads in hands stand on risers, and they make popping noises that blur together to create the effect of raindrops.

"I can't see," Apfel complains, then squeaks when Heiter hoists her up so she can get a better view. "I really hate you, you know that?"

Heiter chuckles. "I can tell."

The choir hisses and stomps and claps, sounding to all the world like lightning, and then they start to sing.

"Father Thunder has nine sons:

Three strike, three rumble, three ash lightning.

Thunder had nine lightning bolts,

With them bolts he struck the oak,

Three bolt axes chopped the stump,

Six lightning ashes split the top."

All the while, a gnome wearing a horned helmet—which honestly looks more like an upturned bucket—hacks away at the strings holding up the dragon with an axe. The dragon deflates and everybody cheers, and Heiter is beginning to understand why.

This great warrior did the impossible. This great warrior slayed a dragon. Heiter still thinks their quest is a little impossible, but with someone like him in their corner, perhaps they could succeed.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"Father Thunder had been terrorizing our village for four centuries when I was offered to him as his latest sacrifice," Apfel says conversationally to Himmel with none of the bile she directed at him.

Heiter thinks he's going to be sick. "…sacrifice?"

"Dragons like young maidens. It was tradition, you see, to dress the most beautiful maiden of that decade in a bridal train and offer her to appease him."

"And it worked?"

Apfel shrugs. "We did whatever it took to keep him away. It was a dark time."

"So this warrior saved you, then?" Himmel guesses.

A smile breaks across her face, sweet and shy, her cheeks pinking just a little. "Mister Eisen stepped between me and the dragon just as it would've swallowed me whole. 'Begone', he said, and Father Thunder listened." Apfel stares up at the sky, holding up a hand to block out the bright sun from her face. "It's been fifty years now, and he hasn't dared attack us since."

"He sounds incredibly brave," Himmel says.

Apfel nods resolutely. "He is. He's a good man, too, as good as they come. Mister Eisen has been serving us a blacksmith ever since that day. He asks for nothing in exchange, of course, but I make him some of my signature pie whenever I can."

"That's very sweet of you," Himmel observes, and Apfel's cheeks redden even more. "Say, Miss Apfel, how would you feel if we accompanied you the next time you deliver a pie? You see, we're—"

"Is that why you came here?" she gushes. "To meet the greatest warrior alive?"

Himmel blinks. "I suppose so."

"Mister Eisen isn't very fond of visitors, but I'm sure he'll make an exception for such a strapping young man." She shoots Heiter a withering glare. "And you, I suppose."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's settled then," Himmel slings a hand around Heiter's stiff shoulders. "We'll all go see this warrior together."

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

"I like the gnome's version of a sendoff better," Heiter whispers to Himmel.

"I do too."

He's reminded very much of the jelly tarts that the baker back in Anfang gave him, but the gnomes are much more generous with their food. Mushroom stew, sourdough bread, a whole wheel of cheese, various apple-flavored baked goods courtesy of Apfel, and—of course—hamburg steak. They're barely able to fit their food into three travel bags, and Himmel is glad that he really owns only two sets of clothes.

Despite Himmel's original plan of maybe leaving earlier, they have lingered in Blumental for three weeks now. Between Himmel helping various gnomes with their chores and Heiter busying himself with clearing Eisen's store of dwarven ale, the days have simply rushed past him faster than he could have anticipated.

He's learned a lot in the span of these few days, first that there exists a  disturbing tradition of cooking and eating a downed dragon's heart.

 By rights the meal should've been Eisen's, but he insisted on both Himmel and Heiter each eating at least a quarter.

"No thank you," Heiter had said. "It's not very good for my digestive system."

"All that dwarven ale isn't good for your digestive system either, but I didn't see you complaining when you ran my whole store dry."

Heiter had taken a small bite of what used to be Father Thunder's heart. "It tastes…very unlucky."

Eisen had simply snorted. "There is no greater honor than eating a downed dragon," he'd said sagely. "We can learn from their eons of wisdom through this."

Himmel himself had retched. "If that's what wisdom tastes like, I want no more of it."

Eisen then served them with hamburg steaks, cooked and spice to utter perfection, which almost makes up for it. "A meal fit for only the bravest warriors," he'd explained. "I haven't made it in over fifty years."

Himmel also learns, courtesy of Apfel, that magic can do a whole lot more than grow a field of flowers or create spears of violent, holy light. She insists on teaching him how to make a perfect apple pie, if only for Eisen's sake during their journey.

"So he doesn't forget the taste of home," she'd said, a little red in the face, and Himmel had wondered when that big lug will realize that she's sweet on him. "I usually cook with magic, but you should be able to make a decent pie without."

After they load two pies in the oven, she'd summoned a wooden staff decorated with a pale pink ribbon and apple blossoms before stamping it on the ground while murmuring spells under her breath. All of her utensils had neatly sorted themselves into their proper place, and the aprons they'd worn were scrubbed clean of flour by invisible hands.

"Say, Miss Apfel," Himmel had ventured. "You're quiet a mage."

"You're much too kind, Mister Himmel."

"Our party's lookin' for a mage."

"I'm not cut out for anything but baking," Apfel had replied with a bright laugh. "What would you expect me to do, throw pies at the Demon King?"

"I know I'm just a coward," Eisen is saying to Apfel as she takes his calloused hands in hers. "But I do hope that this journey makes me the man you've always believed me to be."

She just sighs. "You really are an idiot, aren't you?"

"Miss Apfel, I—"

She presses a light kiss to his cheek, and all of Eisen's words die in his throat. "Come home safe, sweetheart. I'll be here, keeping a hearth warm for you."

"This journey could take years—"

"I've waited five decades. What's one more?"

Himmel doesn't think he'll ever understand how anybody can talk about a decade like it isn't a lot of time, but he figures it's because he's only sixteen years old. Maybe he'll live long enough that a decade is just a fraction of his life instead of a lion's share. If this quest doesn't kill him first, at least.

What a frightening thought.

What a thrilling thought.

When they finally leave, Eisen is red in the face with an apple blossom pressed to his coat pocket. Himmel has no idea how long that flower will last, but something tells him that it is only the start of something sweet and wonderfully bright.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

One of Master Wachturm's most useful lessons to Himmel was in navigating the Old Forest. The key, he's learned, is treating it as a wild creature rather than a place. A being with its own will, with the same capacity to be benevolent or capricious as a person might have.

For all his years of living right at its doorstep, Eisen does not seem to have figured this out.

He stares, wide-eyed, as Himmel unsheathes his sword and lets a few droplets of his blood splatter on the mossy ground. The effect is almost instantaneous, with the trees murmuring in quiet acceptance before Himmel feels the weight of their malice lift off his shoulders Heiter rolls his eyes before reluctantly allowing him to cut a line across his palm.

"You've been in the Old Forest before," Himel tells Eisen. "How does it feel?"

"Strange," Eisen replies. "Like it doesn't want me there."

"Think of this as a tithe, so that it knows to trust us."

"Is this something humans do very often?"

"I don't know," Himmel admits. "My master said it was an old ranger trick, but centaurs never needed it. The forest trusts them on instinct. Us, though, it's a little more wary with."

He's old enough to understand why, at least conceptually. The tribe of centaurs Himmel is so acquainted with would have never settled so close to human civilization if not for pernicious loggers driving them out of their ancestral homelands. He doesn't know what grave sin the Old Forest thinks dwarves might have committed against it, but he knows how wood can be used in mines.

Eisen cuts his thumb on his axe and kneels before pressing it to the soil. A nice touch, though wholly unnecessary. Himmel has gotten so used to this that he hardly thinks it's a big deal. Besides, he has Heiter to heal their wounds, making it so that no blood was ever really shed.

"Thanks," Himmel says, flexing his now healed palm.

"You don't have to say that each time," Heiter replies, but Himmel takes his smile as a victory.

"You're simply remarkable! You must explain to me how—"

And so it goes.

Their nights making camp are more fun with dwarven ale—at least according to Heiter—and a deck of cards. Eisen's company is also a blessing, because his century-long tenure as squire to Sir Brav the Dragon Night was filled with the most colorful tales indeed. He paints a picture man deeply dedicated to protecting the innocent, though not without his vices.

"How many human women did you say were in his room?" Heiter asks.

Eisen frowns, then starts counting.

When he lifts four fingers, Himmel chokes on the salted caramel frosting of his apple cupcake. "Really?"

"Heroes are very popular with the ladies," Eisen shrugs.

"You would know, wouldn't you?"

On nights like this, Himmel wonders about the White Lady. What might she say, if she saw him now? In most of his dreams she is still and silent as the surface of a lake, but in some his mind gives her a voice—soft as sea foam—that he never seems to remember. In those dreams, he tells her that her that she's the reason he spent the past several weeks doing chores in exchange for too-small mittens and baked goods.

In those dreams, she always smiles back.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

The centaurs have never been a very trusting bunch. They hide away from interlopers inside an invisible barrier that instantly incinerates anyone it perceives a threat. Everything from squirrels to gryphons to poor woodcutters have been the victims of that barrier's bloody quest to keep Master Wachturm and his tribe safe.

"I still don't understand why they like him more than me," Heiter mumbles dejectedly when he sees how popular Eisen is with the young foals.

"I think it's because they've never seen a dwarf before, and they rarely see you outside of when I drag you here because you don't want to be hungover in front of Mother Abhilfe."

Heiter kicks him in the shin for that, and Himmel accepts the momentary pain.

"Himmel," he says, a strange note to his voice.

"Yeah?"

"What are we doing back here? Shouldn't we be heading to the Royal Capital to find a mage?"

"Can't you just accept that I wanted to pay my master a visit?"

Heiter narrows his eyes. "No, I can't. If I'm going to be spending years of my life following you around—"

"—you don't have to come if you don't want to—"

"—then I deserve to know where we're going."

Himmel sighs. "You wouldn't understand."

"Try me."

"You laughed, Heiter. I don't think I want to deal with that again."

"…I laughed?"

"Do you really not remember?"

"Is this about the White Lady again?"

When they were younger—much younger—Himmel kept venturing out into the forest in an impossible quest to find her. He remembers dragging Heiter along on some of those nightly excursions, only to be faced with the worst kinds of ridicule.

"You came all the way back to Anfang for a fever dream," Heiter realizes. "Unbelievable."

"She wasn't a fever dream, Heiter. She was real, as real as you and me."

"Even if the White Lady is real—which I'm not saying that she is—what makes you think you'll ever find her again? Does anyone but you and I know she might exist?"

"What if—?"

"You think Master Wachturm is friends with a silver-haired elf you once saw while lost in the woods when you were eight?"

Himmel scowls at him. "Why do you have to say it like that? You make it sound impossible."

"I'm just telling it like it is."

"I just…" Himmel sighs. "I wish Master Wachturm would just answer my questions, for once. He's always so frustratingly vague that it makes me—"

"Makes you what?"

Himmel sighs. "It makes me seem like a fool."

"What's so wrong with that?" Heiter smiles. "Everyone knows that's precisely who you are."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Himmel was eight years old when Master Wachturm brought him to the centaurs' sanctuary for the first time. The building blocks of his reality had been ripped away from him in the cruelest way possible, and nobody had really known how to comfort a freshly-orphaned human they barely trusted. That was until Master Wachturm gave him a basket of tangerines from his own garden. Himmel remembers how he'd scarfed those sweet, sticky fruits down one by one, careless of the eyes that were watching and judging, because he'd all but forgotten his hunger and exhaustion.

Himmel remembers that act of kindness almost as well as he remembers the White Lady.

"Fancy a tangerine, Master Wachturm?"

The centaur smiles down at him. "You know me too well, my young apprentice."

They sit side by side, watching even Reh listen, fascinated, as Eisen regales them all with tales of how he slayed Father Thunder.

"You've found quite the warrior for your party," he observes.

"It's strange. I just took one look at him and I knew, you know?"

"Destiny has a way of guiding us exactly where we need to go."

Himmel believes in that more than most. "Say, Master. Has the wind ever told you anything about a witch in these woods?"

"Stars above," Wachturm laughs. "How long has it been since you last asked? Three years? Four?"

"Five."

He just eats a tangerine and wipes his sticky fingers on the grass. "There is no witch in these woods, Himmel. You must have been delirious or dehydrated, or—most likely—both."

Himmel has heard some variation of this since he was a much younger child. "I know what I saw that day."

"You know what you think you saw."

He's not so easily discouraged, and he has spent more as much time searching for the White Lady as he has been dreaming about her. "Master," he ventures very carefully. "The barrier around camp—is that your work?"

Wachturm blinks. "It's a fine bit of spell craft, and I'm flattered you think me capable of it. But no, it isn't."

"Was it hers?"

Silence.

"My party needs a mage, Master, and I don't know where else to look," Himmel says. "You just said that destiny guides us where we need to go, and my destiny guided me back here."

He knows precisely the type of person Master Wachturm is, because he cut from the same cloth. He's the sort to look for answers in everything from tarot cards to tea leaves to the swinging of a pendulum. He's a dreamer first and everything else second, and he speaks the language of destiny. Himmel is of a different sort, but he sticks to pennies in wishing wells and scattering dandelion seeds to the wind.

"Is this what you want?" Master Wachturm asks.

"More than anything."

"Then listen to me, and listen close. The mage of which you speak has been a friend of this herd since I was a foal, but in all the decades I have known her, we have exchanged but a dozen words. Elves are as strange and reticent as the Old Forest, and just as dangerous."

Himmel feels as though someone has let loose a sparkle of fireflies in his heart.

"If you wish to make her acquaintance, follow my instructions to the letter. And remember, beyond anything, why you set out on this quest. If nothing else, that should convince her."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"I don't know what I was expecting," Himmel admits. "But it certainly wasn't this."

"It looks ominous," Eisen says gravely. "It feels ominous."

The Old Forest hides all kinds of secrets, but the last thing Himmel expected to find on his search for the White Lady was a spinning wheel. It thrums with a strange kind of intention—not malice, exactly—and brings to mind the story of a princess who fell to an eternal slumber by pricking her finger on a spinning wheel.

He's not the only one with apprehensions. Heiter, of course, has turned to his best friend—the bottle—and Eisen's hands are shaking. Himmel knows that he's probably just as scared as they are, but none of them share the excitement he feels when he stares at the slowly rocking chair by the wheel, begging him to come sit if he so dares.

"My mother used to spin when I was young," Himmel says. They're too stunned to stop him when he takes a seat, pressing down on the pedal to spin what looks to him like straw. He stares, wide-eyed, as the thread that gathers on the bobbin gleams like liquid sunlight, glowing faintly.

"Is that gold?" Heiter gawks.

"Don't touch it," Himmel warns. "That's not the point."

"Then what is?"

Himmel just spins and spins until he pricks his finger, drawing just the smallest bit of blood. He leaves the bobbin of gold-like—golden?—thread alone and moves to draw water from the well. It's completely empty, leaving Himmel with nothing with which to wash his wound. That's alright; just like the Old Forest, the elves must need their tithes.

"Alright, my good fellows. Destiny awaits."

Heiter stares at him blankly. "Do you expect us to jump? Into that?"

"I know the centaurs to be wise beings, but what exactly did your master tell you to do?" Eisen asks.

Himmel just smiles at them and presses a finger to his lips.

Chapter Text

Himmel remembers asking Mother Abhilfe, at eight years old, what the Goddess looked like. "Close your eyes and think of the most beautiful woman you can imagine," she'd replied. Even today, when Himmel closes his eyes and thinks of the Goddess, he still thinks of her.

The White Lady haunts his dreams, though her presence there is neither uninvited nor unwanted. Some nights she's floating in a silver lake, surrounded by lilies, staring up at the sky. Some nights she's standing over a field of blue moon weeds, a subtle smile on her face, private and only for him. Some nights she's descending from a moonlit sky with large, white wings on her back.

Himmel has been dreaming of her—her kindness, her grace, her beauty—for eight years. And now, he is getting closer to her than he ever has in his entire life. He can feel it in his teeth, his blood, his bones. He can feel it in the air, in the bees that skip from flower to flower, in the reeds that bow quietly to the wind.

Eisen and Heiter, unfortunately, do not.

In their quest for the White Lady, they have come across various tests of character. An oven filled with bread, close to burning. An apple tree so laden with fruit that its branches were weeping with unspoken pain. Himmel unloads the oven and shakes the tree free of some of its burdens, but when Heiter asks if they're free to eat any of it, he staunchly refuses.

"But what's the point of fresh bread if we can't eat it?"

"There is a point," Himmel replies, relishing in the joy of a joke nobody else seems to be in on.

Heiter just gives him a very pointed look. "Whatever you say, Himmel the Hero. Whatever you say."

Eisen gives the fresh, warm bread a longing sniff. "Wouldn't the White Lady like it if we delivered this to her?" he asks. "Perhaps we might all break fast together…"

"It's closer to lunchtime now," Heiter notes dolefully. "We've been out here for hours."

"All in good time, my friends. All in good time."

What will she say, when they meet? What will she do? Himmel tries to imagine the look on her face, the sound of her voice, the recognition in her eyes. His heart beats wildly in his chest, quickening with every step they take towards her.

"How do you even know which way we're going?" Heiter demands. "Are you following—? What made those tracks?"

"Oh, these?" Himmel carefully sidesteps a three-pronged footprint that looks, to all the world, like that of a chickens, except for the fact that it's nearly four feet across. "Just a hunch."

Eisen clenches his fist, but Himmel still catches the tremor in them. "Is this hunch worth following?"

He grins at them both. "Only one way to find out, right?"

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

The White Lady almost looks real, in the daylight.

She doesn't glow like he remembers, doesn't move through the world as though suspended in water. She simply picks stinging nettle and tucks it into her basket. Her dress seems less like woven starlight and more like simple linen, tied at the waist with a thin brown belt. Himmel is honestly a little underwhelmed. He then remembers Master Wachturm's words, though, and his warnings. Surely, there is more to her than meets the eye.

When they approach, the White Lady pauses, and looks up at Himmel with the blankest expression he has ever seen on anybody's face. "What are you doing here?"

How can somebody's voice be so flat, so devoid of emotion? Himmel never thought it was possible to enunciate words this tonelessly. "We heard that a seasoned mage lives in these woods."

"Seasoned?" She turns back to her stinging nettle, shuffling it about her basket. "Then you must be in the wrong place, because I can assure you that I'm quite plain."

"Something tells me I'm exactly where I need to be," Himmel says.

She meets his gaze, and Himmel notices for the first time just how green her eyes are, and how uncommonly beautiful. How could he possibly have missed this the last time they met? Surely his recollection can't have been faulty, because he's dwelled on that moment for years now.

"Himmel. She has a fifth of a mana that I do. I'd call her mediocre at best, not seasoned." 

"That's an astute observation." She waves at the air dismissively, as though dispelling a fog. "Hurry along, now. You have places to be."

"No," Himmel decides.

"We'll have better luck in the Royal Capital," Heiter insists. "Please. You've wasted enough of our time."

"You might just be the most powerful mage I've ever set my eyes on."

The White Lady's pupils dilate ever so slightly, and she emotes like a ripple breaking across the surface of a still pond. "What makes you say that?"

"Just a hunch," he shrugs."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"A hunch, you say?" Himmel might call her amused, had he thought her capable of it. She starts plucking bright red mushrooms with white spots this time instead of nettles. "I might entertain a conversation with you, should you fulfill one request."

His answer is too quick, too immediate, too eager. "Whatever you want."

"Catch me an owl by noon tomorrow."

"Dead or alive?" Eisen asks.

"You may do as you please," she says airily, and Himmel sees right through it. Another test of character, another challenge they must overcome.

"Sounds like a plan."

Heiter stares at him like he's gone absolutely mad, but nothing has ever made more sense to Himmel than this.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"I have always been incredibly patient—"

"No you haven't," Himmel says.

He watches Eisen tear off a mouthful of the bread they found earlier in the oven. Himmel is coming to suspect that they weren't a secret test of character after all. But this one request—this challenge—absolutely is one.

And Himmel is going to show the White Lady that he is exactly the sort of person she seems to think he isn't.

"Why won't you just let me rant in peace?"

"Rants are counterproductive," Himmel shrugs.

"And heroic speeches aren't?"

"They boost morale!"

Eisen shrugs when Heiter gives him a pointed look. "I'm inclined to agree with the hero, I'm afraid."

"Where are we going to get an owl from, then?" Heiter says. "The sun's already set, and it'll be noon before we know it."

"Heiter."

"No respectable mage in the Royal Capital would ask us to catch an owl. For the Goddess's sake, can't you see how mad this is?"

"Heiter."

Heiter snorts. "It's always 'Heiter, do this' or 'Heiter, do that' without any explanation. Does this amuse you, Himmel? Do you pity me? Because I do. I pity me plenty."

"Heiter, will you please shut up and turn around?" Himmel bursts out.

There's an owl perched on the branch of the tree they're sitting under, feathers white as fresh snow, and its green eyes are staring at Himmel with more intent than he thinks a bird ought to have. Heiter is quick, snapping his fingers to produce a glowing spell, but the bird is quicker, leaving them behind in a flurry of white feathers.

There's an owl perched on the branch of the tree they're sitting under, feathers white as fresh snow. Heiter is quick, snapping his fingers to produce a glowing spell, but the bird is quicker, leaving them behind in a flurry of white feathers.

Himmel picks one up, examines it closely in the sunset. It's a beautiful thing, each strand as delicate as spider silk, yet the whole somehow feels strong in his hand. He just knows that he has to be stronger.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

They find her once more the next day, collecting more herbs in her basket. Himmel recognizes some by appearance, but he can't remember all their names.

"I told you to catch me an owl," the White Lady says, not even bothering to look up at them.

"We found one," Himmel says, "but it kind of flew away."

"Birds do tend to do that."

The silence that follows is so awkward that Himmel feels compelled to leave, and leave they do.

"It isn't too late to reconsider," Heiter says, so smug that it borders on malice.

But Himmel knows his heart, and he knows where it is leading him. He clenches the feather tucked safely in his pocket, stronger than steel in his resolve. "No. We catch that owl, and we catch it tonight. It can't be that hard, can it?"

It is, in fact, that hard. They spend all evening chasing the owl through the Old Forest, clambering up trees and landing in the muddy soil below when they inevitably slip and fall. Eisen tries once, very valiantly, to cut it down with his axe, but he only manages to butt helmet-first into an oak tree so hard it cracks in two.

They have nothing to show for it the next day, and the White Lady's condition still remains the same.

"An owl by noon," she says, and Himmel would think her amused if it weren't for how blank her face is.

Their third night, they try to set a trap. Among them, Himmel is the one with the most experience hunting birds, but even that is limited to helping the sisters in the orphanage catch pigeons to make pies when food ran low in the winter. They pile berries, nuts, and wild chives in the clearing they last saw the blasted owl and spend hours waiting for it to arrive.

"How far is it to the Royal Capital?" Eisen asks, and Himmel just groans.

"Let's call it a day," he says instead of answering him. "We can have this discussion tomorrow."

That night before he goes to sleep, he can see the owl staring down at him with more intent than he thinks a bird ought to have. If he were an archer, he'd shoot his sharpest arrows into its beady green eyes.

The White Lady comes to mind, unbidden. Himmel should probably listen to Eisen and Heiter, but the stubborn instinct that she is the last piece they need to be complete just won't leave him. So he thinks about her green eyes, how sharp they are despite their blankness, how he somehow missed that detail about her the first time they met.

Green eyes.

Green eyes.

Himmel sits up as though struck by lightning, and holds the owl's feather up to the moonlight. As a thought begins to form in his mind, he smiles.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"Have you ever wished upon a star before?"

It's an odd question to ask an owl, and Himmel has never felt more like a madman in his entire life. But the moon is gone and the night is young, and he can't bring himself to say anything else.

"Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might; have the wish I wish tonight. That's how the words are supposed to go."

The owl just blinks its beady green eyes, feathers ruffling slightly with the night air.

Himmel thinks about what Master Wachturm told him, to remember why he is on this quest. Suddenly, the words fall like raindrops, blooming when they hit the ground. "I used to make wishes like that nearly every night when I was a kid. Mama used to say I had more faith in the stars than the Goddess herself."

It cocks its head to one side. Carry on, he can imagine it saying.

"The stars were out when a demon burned the farm to the ground. I remember looking up at them and wishing this was all a dream, that I'd wake up safe and sound in my parents' arms." Himmel snorts. "Didn't happen, obviously."

He picks up a dandelion from the grass next to his crossed legs and blows, letting the white seeds scatter with the wind.

"My master asked me, that night, what I wished for more than anything else in this life. I told him that I never wanted anybody to get hurt like I had, that I wanted all the pain to stop for everyone. He just laughed and told me that was impossible, because I'd have to kill the Demon King for that to happen. Sounds like a foolish wish, doesn't it?"

The wind picks up, so cold and chilly it feels like a slap in his face, and Himmel has to close his eyes momentarily.

"Sounds like a death wish, if I'm being honest."

He smiles at the White Lady, who's sitting where the owl once was with her knees drawn to her chest and a distant look in her eyes. "Hello," he says. "I was wondering when you'd come talk to me."

"What gave me away?" she asks, a bit peeved.

Himmel carefully tucks the stray feather he picked up earlier behind her ear, and she shows no visible reaction. "Your eyes."

"I didn't think you'd notice." She almost sounds impressed. "Are you an adventurer's party, then?"

"Why? Is it that surprising?"

"Not really. Most adventurers are just children with death wishes."

"…thanks?"

"It wasn't a compliment."

He figures. "Will you join us, then?"

"I don't see any reason why I should," the White Lady says. "I wouldn't add very much to your quest, seeing as how I've done precious little with my life."

"Come on. We both know that's not true."

"Your party members don't seem to agree you on that front," she points out.

"Heiter's nothing if not a contrarian. He'll come around."

"Heiter? Is that the priest's name?"

"Yep! And our warrior's name is Eisen. I'm Himmel, by the way."

"Ah," she says, as though she has just come to a groundbreaking realization. "You must be the hero."

"What might your name be? It's only fair; I told you mine."

The White Lady considers this. "Frieren."

"If you can't think of why you ought to join our party, let me help, Frieren." Himmel stands up and extends a hand towards her. "Let me be your reason."

Against all logic, she reaches out and takes it.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Frieren.

It's the most beautiful sound Himmel has ever heard, as though everything from a songbird's call to a church bell's ring has been poured into a single word. Himmel repeats it again and again, so soft it might be called a prayer, and he thinks he has never heard such a wonderful sound. No longer is the White Lady; she is real and she has a name, and that name is Frieren.

He feels a little giddy every time he says this, and he whispers that name to himself like the world's most precious secret.

"I'm too sober to deal with this," Heiter mutters, taking a gulp of wine from his flask.

Eisen squints up at him. "Why do you always keep saying that?"

"We've been following gigantic chicken tracks since sunrise. I think I'm allowed to be a little drunk."

"So?" Eisen asks. "Is the White Lady joining our party?"

Himmel has cracked open an oyster to find a pearl, and he might as well share it with the world. It feels wrong, to hoard it to himself. "Frieren," he says. "Her name is Frieren. And she hasn't said yes yet, but she will."

He feels inordinately proud of himself. After passing every one of her hidden tests, Frieren has finally invited their party into her sanctum. Himmel isn't so delusional that he thinks this means she's already said yes, but he's feeling optimistic. After all, today is a bright and happy day, and he's allowed to feel bright and happy things.

"Have none of you ever thought about what might be able to make tracks like these?" Heiter mutters. "What if it's some kind of, I don't know, monster bird?"

"Or perhaps this Frieren just has a fondness for large chickens," Eisen suggests. "Do you think she has other animals? I could make hamburg steaks as large as shields!"

"I'd kill for a hamburg steak," Heiter mutters.

"There must be some kind of rule against that. You're a priest."

Heiter just snorts and takes another sip. "That never stopped anyone worth their salt."

Ever since Himmel saw Frieren in the forest, his life has been filled with strange and wonderful things. Centaurs, gnomes, dragons, magic. But nothing in any of the stories he has heard or read could prepare him for what he’s seeing right now. The giant tracks have lead him to what looks like a house hoisted up on two large chicken legs, covered in tawny feathers.

He is, before anything else, a farm boy. The last thing he should be scared of is a literal chicken. Or a house that very strongly resembles one. The round windows on either side of the door gleam like beady eyes, and a beak is sticking out from the slanted roof. Himmel has no reason to be frightened, none at all-

“I don’t think I’m drunk enough,” Heiter laments, then sets to correcting that mistake immediately.

Eisen rubs at his eyes like he’s just woken up. “Nothing in the last hundred and fifty years could have prepared me for such a sight.”

He’s not scared, he reasons, just deeply unsettled. Heroes don’t get scared very often, and when they do, they must face that fear with a thousand times more courage. So Himmel does the only sensible thing he can, even when the chicken house seems to blink at him with its window shutters.

He knocks.

Chapter Text

Frieren has never been particularly fond of mornings.

They are loud and bright and arrive with no warning at all. Why every single day must start with one, she never understands. Even after more than a thousand years filled with mornings, Frieren has yet to become accustomed to the way daylight seeps in through the veil of her shut eyes and rouses her from sleep despite all her best efforts.

"Intruders! Intruders!"

A thousand years, and that shrill sound still makes Frieren's ears ring. She blearily blinks her eyes open to stare at a floating mare skull with eye sockets that glow a shade of red she still finds ominous.

"What 's it?" Frieren mumbles, rubbing at her eyelids.

Schrei unhinges her jaw—it can't really be called a mouth with no flesh or skin to speak of—and screams again. "Intruders at the door! Intruders outside the house! We must rend them to pieces, Mistress, and bake them into pies."

"We're not baking anybody into pies, Schrei."

Schrei droops a little. "Can we at least rend them to—?"

"No."

Frieren has never been much bothered with the semantics of the law, but she draws several lines at senseless murder—which unfortunately seems to be Schrei's favorite sort—because it reminds her uncomfortably of how demons conduct themselves. It was a late night, and Frieren had expected to be in bed till noon. But thanks to the rude intrusion of, well, intruders and Schrei's inability to shut up, that plan is but a distant wish.

"Stay in the room while I deal with this," Frieren orders."

Frieren smooths her nightgown and summons her staff, and the house obligingly opens the door to her bedroom to add one less inconvenience to her life. She holds her staff at the ready and lets the house open her front door too; something inside of her wilts when she realizes who is on the other side.

"Oh. It's you."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Frieren has had the misfortune of meeting several beings over the years, and she must say that humans are among the strangest. Himmel perfectly encapsulates what about them she finds strange. He is as loud and bright and uninvited as the morning, and he seems to be happy about it.

"What are you doing here?" Frieren asks.

"You did say that you'd be amenable to a conversation if we caught you an owl by noon." Himmel smiles, then, teeth glinting like the metal of the sword strapped to his back. "And I did catch you."

"Oh, right."

Truth be told, Frieren had almost forgotten. A lot tends to slip her mind if it isn't an interesting spell from a grimoire with enough dust that turning each page makes her cough. She should have told them to come back in a week, sent them hunting for a unicorn, or simply had her house move somewhere else. It's too late to do any of that without being rude.

"These are my friends, Eisen and Heiter," Himmel says. "I mentioned them yesterday, but I'm sure it helps to put faces to their names."

"Come in," she sighs, then looks to Himmel's companions. "Would you care for some tea?"

"Do you have something stronger? Maybe some vodka?" It's an odd question for a priest to ask, so Frieren simply assumes that he must be uniquely corrupt.

The house dutifully kneels, rearranging several bricks to form a flight of stairs that the three interlopers take into Frieren's house. The living room grows a couch and a tea table covered by beige cloth speckled with small, mauve flowers. However reluctant, the invitation has been extended. Frieren picks up a grimoire from the ground and settles into her favorite rocking chair, opens to a bookmarked page, and begins to read.

"You know, I thought you'd be happier to see us," Himmel says.

"Why in the world would I be happy to see you?" Frieren asks, not looking up from her book except to tear off a piece of her toast and dip it into some spiced apple and pear compote in a floating bowl.

The dwarf clamps his hand over his grumbling stomach. Frieren has never bothered much with polite society or its rules, but she remembers that the  basic principles of hospitality demand her guests be fed. She snaps her fingers, and three cups and saucers with earl grey tea march out of the kitchen and land on the table. "Would you like some sugar with that?"

"No thank you," Himmel replies brightly.

"Some vodka would be good though," Heiter asks..

"And some steak," Eisen adds.

Frieren closes her book and narrows her eyes at them.

"Do you know them, Mistress?" Schrei asks, rounding the corner. "Do you think they'd taste good in a pie?"

"Didn't I ask you to stay in the—?"

But Schrei isn't listening, too busy sniffing the warrior, who is curled up into a fetal position and trembles like a floating skull is the single most frightening thing he's ever seen in his entire life.

"It talks," Eisen says very weakly. "Goddess help me, it talks."

"It can also smell bread on you," Schrei says darkly. "My bread."

"Schrei," Frieren warns.

"Do you have any idea how hard it is to bake bread without hands?" Schrei screeches. "Do you have any idea how long I've been growing that sourdough starter? Do you and your stupid, mortal friends want to be minced and mixed into pie crust?"

"Schreien Schrill."

It's much too early for this kind of discussion, for any kind of discussion, and it sets her teeth on edge. The room darkens even though daylight is streaming in through the windows, and Frieren winces when she hears something shatter in the distance.

"Go back to the bedroom," Frieren orders, "before I put a muzzle on you for the next century."

Schrei has the gall to look sad. "But Mistress—"

"Now."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Frieren cannot remember, for the life of her, why she agreed to go on this quest. Her guests—if they can be called that—have been here for three turns of her hourglass. She doesn't know what to call this sinking feeling in her gut if not disappointment, but it isn't like she had any expectations of them to begin with. She had hopes, though, that perhaps this would be a good way to spend the next decade or two.

She doesn't anymore.

"Whuf iff thiff?" Eisen asks between mouthfuls of roasted peafowl. He swallows, then starts licking the gravy off his fingers. "It's really, really good."

"Roasted peafowl. I told—"

"But what's in the gravy?" he insists. "The notes of sweet and spicy, the perfect balance of smoky flavor. It's simply marvelous."

Frieren warily eyes the growing pile of ceramic plates gathering by Eisen's feet. "I haven't a clue. You should ask the house."

"It's a very good house," Eisen remarks, before wiping his grubby hands on her couch. Frieren feels, at that moment, thousands of years of the ancestral hatred her people once held for this, and thinks that it is completely and utterly justified.

Perhaps she should have just let Schrei have at him.

"Sorry about him," Himmel says. "We ran out of the supplies the gnomes and centaurs gave us."

"Hmm."

"Do you have anything stronger?" Heiter asks the house when it fills his teacup with a glittering purple wine that's almost as old as Frieren herself. "Like vodka?"

"You've asked a dozen times," Himmel murmurs through his teeth. "The answer isn't going to change."

"Just give me water, then," Heiter sighs. "Some whiskey ought to do."

"I thought priests weren't supposed to drink," Frieren says. "Don't you have vows?"

"I like to think of them as suggestions," Heiter replies with a wink.

Of the three of them, though, the one that confuses and vexes her the most is perhaps Himmel. "Do you have a reason you want to come with us?" he asks.

"I don't have anything better to do." Which is, unfortunately, true.

"…nothing else?" He looks at her strangely, like trying to read a book in the dark, and Frieren is never sure what he sees.

A memory rises in her mind like the tides. The smell of burning flesh fills her lungs, screams ring out in her ears, and her hands clench around the ceramic cup she's holding.

"Not particularly. A quest is a good way to spend a decade or two, and I'm bored."

"Hmm." Himmel smiles to himself, and for the life of her, Frieren can't figure out why.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"Can we keep him?"

Frieren ignores Schrei, balancing on the rungs of her ladder to reach the highest shelf of her library. She grabs her favorite herbal—the one with watercolor illustrations—and lets it float into her open valise, light as a feather.

"The blue one," Schrei insists. "Can we keep him?"

"I thought you wanted to eat him," Frieren says absently. Her twelve-volume set about hunting spells would be useful to take with her.

"I want to eat the dwarf. I like the humans just fine, thought the priest smells too much of alcohol to be a healthy meal."

"Hmm."

"And I like the blue one. He knows how to bake apple pies and he thinks I'm charming."

"So?"

"So, we should just keep him."

"…like a pet?"

"Exactly!"

"People aren't pets," Frieren sighs. "Or snacks. Besides, he'll be dead before we know it."

Schrei droops her head. "Of course, Mistress."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

There is something familiar about Himmel's sword.

After a week of traveling together, it is the only thing about him that really catches and holds her attention. Most of Frieren's thoughts are occupied by Schrei and her house, the latter because it has separation anxiety and the latter because the last time she let Schrei loose, she started to hear stories about a Grey Mare wassailing poor villagers into giving it treats, lest they be eaten alive.

It's not a very pleasant image, opening a door in the dead of night to see Schrei on the other side. Frieren doesn't exactly believe in the Goddess, but she hopes somebody is watching over their poor souls.

Frieren stares at it over the pages of her grimoire, the pleasant sounds of conversation and a crackling campfire fading into the background. She tries to sort through a thousand years' worth of memories to figure out where exactly this sword fits into it, so she reaches out and runs a finger along the blue gemstone embedded into the hilt.

"Is something wrong?" Himmel asks her.

She doesn't respond, unsheathing the sword to see words in the metal.

Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil is rightwise the Hero who shall slay the Demon King.

Something warm ignites in her chest and spreads like honey. For a moment, Frieren can imagine it, the glorious fate Mistress Flamme always told her she was to achieve. "Someday, this girl will defeat the Demon King," she'd said with one of her secret smiles. Maybe, maybe, that can finally happen.

Frieren turns back to her grimoire, lit a pleasant shade of orange by the firelight. The crackling of burning wood, the chirping of cicadas, the whistling of the wind, and, strangely, the sound of Heiter snoring all seem to form the layered chords of a four-part harmony.

"Do you really not have any questions for me?" Himmel asks, his voice jarring against the almost-silence she was just beginning to enjoy.

She dog-ears a page with a beautifully illustrated spell-circle on it so that she can come back to it later.

"…I'm just beginning to think you're not very chatty."

Himmel has, in the few days they have traveled together, tried and failed to include Frieren in every inane conversation he has with the other party members, even though she has expressed no desire to do so. Sometimes she just wishes he would stop, but his persistence is what convinced her to take this quest in the first place.

"Is that the same book you were reading earlier?"

Frieren finally looks up to meet his eyes. "Grimoire," she corrects. "Have you had no magical education whatsoever?"

"No," he admits. "My Master says I have about as much magical potential as a lump of coal."

She squints at his mana signature, which clings to his skin like humidity after rain. "Your aptitude is painfully average. You're not incapable, but even I would say it isn't worth the effort."

"Even you, huh?" Himmel seems amused by this. "What's this grimoire about, then?"

"It details a most fascinating folk spell that involves turning cats into glass cup. The principles of magical transmutation—" She cuts herself off and turns her attention back to the book. "I doubt it would be of much interest to someone like you."

He probably isn't listening anyways; people seldom do.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

They follow the North Star for about a week before Himmel makes the decision to cut to the nearest village. It is, for the most part, Eisen's fault, because that oaf of a dwarf has somehow cleared through most of the food Frieren packed with her from her pantry. His tiny body seems to be concealing a bottomless pit where his stomach should be.

The village they arrive at is indistinguishable to Frieren from the hundreds of thousands she has seen over the course of her very long life. Farms, water mills, wells, a church. It looks lived-in, if a little quiet, and it seems like the right kind of place to accomplish their goal.

Himmel opens his mouth to say something, but a piercing scream fills the air. He runs towards it without hesitation, Heiter quick on his heels. Eisen seems a bit more unsure, but he joins them soon. Frieren doesn't bother with rushing, a pointless endeavor for someone who has all the time in the world to do as she pleases.

It's around then that she begins to notice the small things that are wrong with this village. A barn door scratched by deep claw marks. A cow with a large bite where it's throat should be, maggots clamoring around it's rotting corpse. Faint, bloody prints shaped like a goat's hoof leading towards what looks like a hayloft.

Most unpleasant, though, is the sight of several wounded humans taking shelter behind a low wall. More bite marks, more claws, more blood. And, eventually, more death. Frieren feels strangely disconnected from her body when she finally joins Himmel and the others, feeling almost like a bird viewing the world from up above. She has to remind herself that her feet are still connected to the ground.

"I'm too sober for this," Heiter says, fingering through the folds of his robe.

"If you reach for your flask, I'll chop your hand off," Himmel warns darkly. "Go, now."

Heiter nods, procuring his copy of the Scripture instead, and starts chanting prayers over those with the deepest wounds.

"Eisen, you come with me. We'll help move everybody else behind here."

Himmel simply seems to have forgotten her presence, so Frieren sits down and opens her grimoire again to the page with the spell circle. She sketches it out in the ground with her finger, marking each sigil with as much care as she can.

"Aren't you coming?"

She looks up to see Himmel frowning at her, somewhere between frustration and an emotion she can't be bothered to name. "Would you like me to join you?"

"Would you like to join me?"

"Not particularly."

Himmel returns to helping the villagers cart over more of their wounded to safety, so Frieren simply turns back to her grimoire, admiring the detail of the transmutation spell. It seems like the kind of thing Flamme would have enjoyed, if only to take it apart and analyze it. She only looks up when she hears the sound of Himmel calling her name.

"I'm almost done, if you would just be patient."

"Your book can—"

"Grimoire."

"Your grimoire can wait. We have more pressing matters to deal with."

Frieren finally recognizes the second emotion in Himmel's face. Disappointment. She has been on the receiving end of many such looks, mostly from Flamme, that it adds small pebbles of guilt that make her gut feel like it's sinking.

"It's not too late for us to find another one," Heiter suggests.

"There won't be a need." Frieren stands up and dusts off her dress. "What seems to be an issue?"

"A monster's been attacking this village," Himmel explains. "They were able to drive it into the hayloft, but none of their pitchforks and cutlasses have been able to make a single mark on its pelt."

"And?"

"And we're going to slay it."

Just the kind of thing an adventurer might do. "When do we get started?"

Himmel, despite everything, smiles at her. "I thought you might never ask."

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

It is a Monday morning when Himmel drags them all to the beach.

He insists, of course, on waiting for Frieren. But no amount of gentle pleading will stir her from her sleep, and when Heiter suggests screaming at her or perhaps playing a banjo, Himmel shuts him down immediately.

"Whether she wants to join us or not is her prerogative," Himmel says, so it is a party of three that he leads to the beach.

Long stretches of sand are strewn with old, wrecked ships, and up-close, Heiter can see colossal bite marks etched into the slowly-decaying wood. He tries to imagine what the monster that made that mark might look like, but his mind draws a horrifying blank.

"Himmel," he says, pulling at his robes so that he doesn't trip over a piece of driftwood. "Do we, um, know anything about this Hydra?"

"I spent this morning asking around, so I have some clue," Himmel replies. "From what I can tell, it's a really big, really ugly snake."

"A reptilian creature, then," Eisen says. "Not too dissimilar from a dragon."

"Except it has nine heads."

"Nine what?"

Heiter tries to imagine it, Father Thunder with eight more heads twisting away from its neck, throats glowing as they spewed ash and lightning into the sky. He feels around for his flask in his robe and lets out a sigh of relief when he realizes it's there.

"Remind me why we're doing this again?"

"It's the right thing to do," Himmel replies.

Heiter narrows his eyes. "Not good enough."

"We're heroes, what more do we need?" Himmel says.

Himmel leads them to a jetty built from a daisy chain of wooden planks that make extremely unpleasant creaking noises with every step.

"This isn't natural for a dwarf," Eisen mutters. "This isn't natural at all. I'd much rather—"

"Be in the mines, I know," Himmel says. "But if it's any reassurance, the mayor is offering two pay us two hundred copper coins for this."

"Two hundred?" That is, quite literally, more money than Heiter has ever seen in his entire life. "How do we kill this thing?" he asks eagerly.

Himmel stops at a sailboat with jolly red sails and flourishes his hand. "Meet Captain Milchig," he says.

Heiter has never before in his entire life felt, this strongly, the urge to send Himmel on the low road to Aureole. Captain Milchig looks, for the most part, like a man who should be in charge of a sailboat. His burnt orange beard is haphazardly braided into five sharp points like a crooked star, and he wears a jaunty straw hat with a red ribbon atop his head. Everything from his woolen doublet to the knife he keeps in his scabbard fits.

Everything, that is, except his eyes.

He wears eyepatches over both of them, and though Heiter is the first to come to the devastatingly obvious conclusion that follows, Eisen is the first to voice it.

"Himmel," Eisen says. "Has there, err, been a mistake? This Captain doesn’t seem to be capable of—"

"I'm blind, you bony-eared assfish, not deaf," Captain Milchig snaps. "I'm also the only one who has the guts to take you stupid sea squirts past Seahorse Rock. So you'd better get on my boat, or swim all the way there."

"…we'll take the boat," Eisen says.

"What's past Seahorse Rock?" Heiter asks, staring at the aforementioned rock formation. It is, he must admit, quite aptly named.

"The Hydra," Himmel says.

"Most ships that go out that far never make it back," Captain Milchig says gravely. "And the ones that do only come home in pieces."

Heiter thinks back to the shipwrecks strewn all over the beach, and permits himself a hearty gulp of wine to calm his nerves. The sky overhead is grey and cloudy, though Milchig reassures them that the weather should be perfectly pleasant. Heiter watches the boat's bow cut through waves, sea spraying against his face. He can spot the occasional fish under the lake's surface, little slivers of moment that are too quick for him to catch.

"Here it is," Captain Milchig says. "Seahorse Rock."

Heiter's heart pounds in his ears as they sail through the looming shadow it casts before coming to a stop. He measures time only in the desperate prayers he whispers to himself as the boat gently rocks with the waves. He waits and he waits for a pair of colossal jaws to snatch him from the depths, but nothing comes.

"Huh. Guess it isn't in the mood for confrontation. Count yourselves lucky."

"What's the point in coming out here if we're just going to turn around?" Himmel asks.

"That wasn't our deal, barnacle. This boat goes where I say it goes."

And that is roughly that.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

It is a Tuesday when they encounter the Hydra for the first time.

Today, Himmel tries to coax Frieren awake with the scent of Merkur pudding. It's a recipe he learned from a farmer's wife in the town the Buer ravaged, and is apparently something she is very fond of. Heiter doesn't know what to make of the fact that he noticed this about Frieren, or cared enough to make some for her.

"Go 'way," she says instead, turning around in her bedroll so that her face is muffled by the pillow.

Heiter holds his breath as they sail past Seahorse Rock, heart still beating like a war drum, and he prays to the Goddess that the Hydra will decide to be just as lazy as Frieren. For someone so undeniably blessed, Heiter really ought to reconsider his faith in Her, because that prayer is summarily ignored.

One long neck breaches the water's surface, scaled nostrils flaring as it pivots a serpentine head in their direction.

"It's a lot smaller than I expected," Heiter says.

Then eight more of its heads follow, and he lets out the most undignified squeak when he realizes he spoke far too soon.

"Remember the plan," Himmel says, not the least bit frightened. "Hack at it until it dies."

Heiter is quick to cast his spell, and he's pleased to see the Three Spears of the Goddess leave blackened marks against its shimmering green scales. With each hit he lands, he becomes more convinced that this is a monster they stand a chance against.

"Himmel," Eisen says tremulously. "I can't…"

"We've talked about this before," Himmel says. "One cannot be brave who has no fear, remember?"

"That's not what I…I can't—"

"That thing's, like, half the size of Father Thunder. One blow from Eisen the Warrior's axe will end it for good!"

"I can't swim, Himmel."

Himmel freezes like a deer just about to be mauled by a lion. "You what?"

The Hydra lunges a head towards it, and Captain Milchig sharply changes the trajectory of the already rocking boat.

"Would this not have been relevant information to share earlier?"

"I always told you I preferred the Mines of Runter!"

"Turn the boat around," Himmel orders. "We come back tomorrow."

"This boat goes where I say it goes," Captain Milchig says. "And you said you only needed one chance."

"I will give you my share of our winnings when we kill the Hydra," Himmel says. "Now, please."

Captain Milchig snorts. "Whatever you say, sea louse. My wallet, your funeral."

 ✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

It is a Wednesday morning when they discover, in the worst way possible, the full range of the Hydra's capabilities.

“Okay,” Himmel says as the Hydra rises above the water, one ugly head at a time. “Let’s go over the plan one last time. Eisen, you strike first.”

“A-are you sure?” Eisen asks, giving the length of rope tied around his waist a squeeze.

“Yes, I am. And once you get a hit, Captain Milchig will reel you in.”

Milchig inclines his head in acknowledgment, tightening his grip on the other end of the rope. “I won’t let this goblin shark drown.”

“Heiter, I want you to cast that sword sharpening spell and hold it for as long as you can.”

“I’ve got it,” Heiter says, opening his prayer book.

“Before we begin, remember why we’re all doing this for,” Himmel says.

“To get paid,” they all reply in unison.

“I was going to say ‘for the good of this town’, but I guess that works too.” Himmel draws his sword, and Heiter isn’t sure if he’s striking such a dramatic pose on purpose. “Leave the rest to me.”

Eisen vaults into the air with more strength than his little legs should carry and hits the Hydra’s middle head, bone cracking with the  force of his blow. He falls into the water quite unceremoniously and sinks like a rock, Milchig frantically reeling him in as he scrambles for breath.

“Bring the boat closer,” Himmel says.

Before the Hydra’s weak, twitching body can recover, Himmel jumps onto one of its many necks. Heiter casts his spell, letting Himmel cut through flesh and scales as though through butter. As the Hydra gathers up its strength, lunging at Himmel with its seven remaining heads, he all but dances through them.

“Is  that cuttlefish actually doing it?” Captain Milchig asks, tilting his head at the sound of heads splashing into the water.

Heiter lets out a breathless, exhilarated laugh. “He really is.”

Himmel swims through the choppy water, then hauls himself up onto the boat. He runs a hand through his soggy wet hair and lets out a most triumphant laugh.

"Oh, by the Goddess," Heiter pants as he helps Himmel out of the water. "We did it. We did it."

"We killed that thing," Eisen says, jubilant. "And I still can't swim."

"Fifty copper coins," Captain Milchig says. "Oh, the things I could do with that much money."

"…Heiter?" Himmel asks.

Something is wrong with his voice. It should be confident, happy, not shaky and uncertain. Himmel the Hero is never uncertain.

Himmel has been facing the Hydra's limp body this whole time, so Heiter turns to look at it too.

"Oh, by the Goddess. It's growing another head. It's growing another head."

"One, two, three, four…" Eisen trails off, counting on his fingers until he's shaking so much he might be on the verge of tears. "Eighteen heads?"

"Eighteen heads?" Captain Milchig squeaks.

Heiter feels like he's going to faint. "I'm too sober to die," he laments.

"Turn the boat—"

"Around, I know!"

 ✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

It is a Thursday morning when it rains.

Stormclouds gather at the horizon, rain falling from them in thick, dark sheets. They weave together so tightly that not even a single ray of sunlight peaks through them, and Heiter almost forgets that it has risen at all.

With sailing out of the question, they finally take a chance to recoup. Though not too grievously injured, Heiter thinks that the mental damage of seeing the Hydra's heads double in number should be counted as a fatal wound all on its own.

Heiter seeks Himmel out anyway, and finds him and Perle sitting at the edge of the outcropping Miss Auster's cottage rests on, staring at the storm together, uncaring that the rain is drenching them both.

"We'd have more money if Ma just didn't send me to school," Perle says glumly.

"Oh?"

"It's useless. All I ever do is study stupid things, like letters and numbers. I don't understand why she insists on it."

"Have you considered that she just doesn't want you to follow the same path as her?" Himmel says.

Perle frowns. "What's so wrong with pearl diving?"

"It's dangerous," Himmel says. "She said so herself, remember? She wants more for you."

Heiter is reminded forcibly of when he was that child on the ledge, staring out at the mines and wondering if that was where he belonged.

"There's no point to any of it," Perle whispers.

"Sure there is. Your future's gonna be bright, Perle. This is your Ma's way of ensuring that."

"But what if I don't…?" She draws her knees up to her chest. "I just want her to be proud of me."

"She will be," Himmel promises, then smiles and turns to Heiter. "My friend here's the smartest person I know. He's read the Scripture forwards and backwards a hundred times over, and he can do magic with it."

Heiter just smiles at a very wide-eyed Perle before taking a seat next to her. "None of that would've been possible if my Dad didn't send me to school."

"Really?"

"Heiter," Himmel says. "Can you show her that spell? The one with the butterflies?"

Heiter does as instructed, and Perle smiles up at them with so much awe that he might as well have just hung all the stars in her sky. He wonders, then, what might have happened if he'd been the one to find her out on the ledge. If he would've known the right words to say, the right things to do.

Himmel stares as the clouds collide, trading sparks. Lightning strikes, forming a brilliant, blinding pillar before dancing underneath the water's surface. Heiter watches along with him, trying and failing to discern what about it he finds so fascinating.

"What are you thinking?" Heiter asks him.

Himmel opens his mouth to say something, but thunder follows, swallowing his words whole.

 ✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

It is Friday morning when Frieren, against all odds, wakes up in the morning. She's in her nightgown, sprawled on her bedroll, licking her finger to flip through a grimoire that looks far too old to be treated so carelessly. It's still rainy out, so this miraculous occurrence is of no real use to them.

"Say, Frieren," Heiter says conversationally. "I'm hosting this, uh, birthday celebration for Himmel, and I wanted to know if you could come."

"I'm uninterested."

"He would really appreciate it."

"Birthdays are merely stepping stones towards your eventual doom," Frieren says coldly. "I don't understand why each must be punctuated by a celebration."

Heiter feels his face fall, even though he doesn't much like her, because her absence will no doubt pain Himmel. "Suit yourself," he says, not bothering to push further.

The guest list is admittedly small, and has exactly five people on it, but Heiter still feels excited by the prospect. Auster volunteers to host, insisting that she and Perle will surprise Himmel with a carrot cake. Eisen, of course, spends hours grilling hamburg steak. Even Captain Milchig shows up with bowls of greasy noodles bought from a restaurant of questionable quality.

When Himmel enters the cottage after an afternoon getting all of Auster's now-wet clothes from the clothesline, Frieren's is the only face that is missing.

"You did all this for me?" Himmel says, almost in disbelief.

"It's your birthday, Himmel. What else is there to do?"

Without warning, Himmel folds Heiter into a warm hug, and he knows then that wherever one goes, the other will also be there.

 ✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

It is a Saturday morning when Himmel finally loses his patience.

Up until that point, Heiter had thought it something he was absolutely incapable of. Himmel is as affable as he is heroic, always bright and sunny without a single cloud to mar his sky. No matter how much Heiter poked and prodded at wounds he knew Himmel had, he never once got even the slightest bit angry.

But there is a purpose to his step as he walks to Frieren's door, a weight to the way they thud against the ground. Heiter, who has never once heard Himmel yell at someone in anger, feels excited despite himself. This, he thinks, is like the space between the clouds before lightning strikes. The moment before Frieren's much deserved reckoning.

"Rise and shine, Frieren," Himmel yells, trying and failing to open the locked door. "Today is a lovely day."

Then, suddenly and without warning, he kicks the door to Frieren's room as hard as he can. Himmel is the kind of person who looks, for all intents and purposes, like he would never hurt a fly. And if he inadvertently did, he would probably give said fly a funeral with the most moving elegy. Even someone who has seen Himmel fight as much as Heiter has, it's easy to forget that he can be forceful when the need arises.

The door bends and nearly breaks, splintering around an indent left behind by Himmel's boot.

"I thought you were giving your share to Captain Milchig," Heiter says. "How are you going to pay for that?"

Himmel smiles, though there's no humor in it. "I'll just use our dearest mage's instead."

"'S wrong with you?" Frieren asks sleepily after finally opening the door, face pinched in irritation instead of her usual blankness.

"We have a Hydra to slay," Himmel replies. "Pack what you need, we're sailing out now."

Frieren blinks. "Is this an order?"

Himmel does not smile. "Yes."

Hair uncombed and still wearing her nightgown, Frieren joins them in the foulest mood Heiter has ever seen her in. It's a strange thing, seeing her express any sort of emotion other than the blankness he has gotten so used to. It's also mildly amusing.

"There it is," Himmel breathes as the Hydra breaches the surface, lifting one serpentine head to loom over them.

"'The Hydra, a monstrous serpent of the deep, in its first guise, doth possess but nine heads," Frieren says as it continues to rise. "'When unwise foes dare to sever any of those heads, behold! Two more dost spring forth in their stead.'"

She summons her staff in her hand and bangs it on the boat. A layer of frost begins to spread over the wood, and Heiter—who had thus far been holding onto the boom for dear life—lets go with a yelp.

"Whatever you do," Frieren says, "do not let go of the boat."

Heiter obeys, flattening a hand against ice and flinching at the chill.

Then Frieren, almost bored, points her staff at the water and says but a single word. "Judradjim."

Lightning traces bright blue spiderwebs underneath the water's surface. The Hydra screams from all of its mouths as those same patterns climb up its several necks, a sound that sends physical shock-waves through the water and nearly knocks Heiter off his feet. He closes his eyes and prays as the boat is pushed backwards.

"Are you satisfied?" Frieren asks dryly.

Heiter cracks one eye open to see the Hydra floating limply in the water, evaporating into grey dust, the tell-tale sign of a dead monster. "That was absolutely brilliant. How did you do that?"

Frieren doesn't respond. "Turn this boat around," she orders instead, then yawns. "I have a nap to get back to."

Chapter Text

When Eisen was young, he heard a fairytale about a dwarf who happened upon a dragon and its massive hoard of emeralds, diamonds, rubies, and all manner of precious things. The dwarf said to the dragon, I will give you half of my treasure if you give me half of yours. The dragon agreed, and when the dwarf returned home wealthier than he'd ever imagined possible, he found the left half of his dear wife's body gone.

The moral of that story is simple, be careful what you wish for. Eisen thinks that it's an important lesson, and one that Himmel the Hero has yet to learn, because the beach is on fire, and nobody knows whose fault it is. Hungry flames lick across corroded wood, leaving behind a thick, musky smoke with a horribly pungent aftertaste in his mouth.

"Frieren," he says, voice thin and tired. "Why?"

Her blank face is cast in an almost eerie red glow. "Did you not order me to help you clear the beach?"

"The beach is on fire!"

"And?"

"Do you really not see what might be wrong with that?"

"I personally think she did a splendid job," Heiter says with a chuckle. He reaches out to pat Frieren's head, but she swats his hand away like one might a gnat in summertime. "Isn't that right, Eisen?"

Eisen feels a little guilty, being so amused at Himmel's expense, but it simply can't be helped. "All Frieren is doing is following orders," he says, biting the inside of his cheek to hold back a guffaw.

Himmel looks like he's going to tear his hear out strand by strand. "Goddess give me the strength," he murmurs.

"Wait!" Heiter cries, closing his eyes and turning to the sky. "I can hear Her!"

"What's She saying?" Eisen asks, playing along.

"She hereby declares that Himmel the Hero is getting exactly what he deserves."

"I'm going to gut you open and roast you over a campfire, you bony-eared assfish," Himmel says darkly, which is so out of character that Eisen does laugh this time.

"I'm afraid that only sounds impressive when the good Captain says it," Eisen says.

"That's not good," Frieren says with a frown. "Loyalty is an important trait in a good party member."

"It'll be alright," Heiter reassures. "My dear friend here is all bark and no bite. He can also do tricks when properly motivated."

Himmel scowls at him. "I really hate you sometimes, you know that?"

"Please. You wouldn't trade me for the world."

"I would trade you for a bowl of Sister Fessel's gruel."

"Ouch." Heiter clenches a hand over his heart. "You wound me, Himmel."

Himmel gives the fire one last, troubled look before straightening. "Eisen and Heiter, you come with me to pack our things at Miss Auster's. Frieren, please put out the fire."

"Is that an order?" she asks blankly.

"Yes."

Frieren gives him a terse nod and summons her staff. The flames start to die down as the wind picks up, yielding to her unblinking gaze. Eisen can see the makings of a soldier in her obedience. She doesn't question Himmel—doesn't care to—and follows his orders to the letter.

"Brilliant, isn't she?" Heiter whispers to Eisen once they're out of Himmel's earshot.

"I do admit that Frieren is an excellent mage, especially when compared to—"

"That's not what I meant. I've never seen Himmel get so worked up about anyone or anything. Ever." Heiter chuckles. "Isn't that just brilliant?"

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"I'm sorry," the innkeeper tells Himmel, "we don't have any rooms with three beds. Why don't you just book two rooms with two beds each?"

"I call dibs on rooming with Eisen," Heiter says. "That leaves you and the witch."

"Mage," Frieren corrects absently, turning a page of the grimoire she has been reading since they began their trek through the forest.

Himmel sputters at the suggestion, and when his cheeks turn a very undignified shade of pink, Eisen can't help but notice how young his face looks. "That's indecent and ungentlemanly."

"Your sleeping arrangements will only ever be as indecent as you are," Heiter replies with a honeyed smile. "Now will you please book us our rooms?"

Himmel sticks out his tongue at Heiter and does as instructed, dropping the appropriate amount of coins into the glass jar at the desk. Heiter steps in to write all their names into a logbook when Himmel proves to be far too slow at it for the innkeeper's thinly wearing patience. After Eisen and Heiter retire to their allotted room, the priest empties all of his things onto the bed on the left.

"Someone's impatient," Eisen notes.

"We have money, and there's a bar a building over," Heiter says, like that's enough of an explanation.

Knowing him, it definitely is.

"Apparently she's halfway through a riveting grimoire about, uh, repairing clocks," Himmel says glumly when asked why Frieren isn't joining them this time.

"Shame," Heiter says. "Real shame."

Himmel narrows his eyes at him. "If you're going to be sarcastic about it, please don't bother."

"I'm not being sarcastic. I think Frieren is absolutely brilliant, especially at raising your blood pressure."

"You know, for once I think that you might be too sober for this," Himmel says.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Though Himmel never drinks himself, he adores taverns, mostly because the other patrons there serve as a wonderful audience for anything and everything he has to say. He's a bit of a braggart and prone to exaggeration, and it makes Eisen wince when he talks about the monsters they have faced.

"And then bam," Himmel brings his hands down on the table, spirits sloshing against the walls of their cups as they rattle, "I cut off its last head! We thought that was the end of it, but you'll never guess what happened next."

"What happened?" The most rapt audience member by far is a human man with all the eagerness of a freshly born puppy. He's leaning forward on his elbows, hanging on to Himmel's every word as though his life depends on what the hero says next.

"Each one of its distended necks grew two new heads," Himmel replies. "When we first fell the Hydra, it had nine, but when it rose again, it had eighteen."

"Eighteen?" The man is so shocked that he spills his drink over his purple doublet and shaggy auburn hair, giving him the appearance of a cat that's been soaked by a sudden rain. "How did you kill it?"

"Our mage did," Himmel replies. "She zapped it with lightning like it was nothing!"

"Marvelous! Absolutely marvelous!" The man starts clapping, and Heiter rolls his eyes when Himmel takes a bow.

"Yeah, I know," Himmel says. "She's this elf who—"

"An elf? Incredible."

"'S a choice word," Heiter slurs. "A very, very choice word."

"Aren't you the one always calling her brilliant?" Eisen says.

"And what other word would you use instead?" Himmel demands.

Heiter belches. "Bizarre. Real bizarre." He laughs to himself before smiling like the drunkard he is. "Bizarrely brilliant."

The conversation is cut abruptly short when Heiter all but melts onto the table in a drunken heap. Eisen and Himmel exchange a look before hosting him upright.

"W-wait, where are you going?" their most rapt listener says. "You weren't done with the story!"

"I'm glad you liked it," Eisen says, "but we have to get going."

"I'm Löwen, by the way. Löwen the Bard."

Himmel gives him a sunny smile. "Guess that makes me Himmel the Hero. These are my friends, Eisen the Warrior and Heiter the Priest."

Löwen procures a stringed instrument from where it's strapped to his back. "This is a mandolin," he says, "which I play, because I'm a bard."

"…I can see that," Eisen says.

"You must take me to meet this elven mage. I've never met an elf before, you see, and I could really use the inspiration for my first ballad."

"I'm not sure that's the best idea," Eisen interjects. "We—"

"A bard would make a wonderful addition to your party, don't you think? We could go on all kinds of adventures together, and I could immortalize you in the most melodious songs."

"Maybe tomorrow," Himmel says, betraying none of the reluctance Eisen thinks he ought to feel. "We're at the inn right next door. I'm sure the proprietors can point you in the right direction if you want to see us again."

Löwen's eyes gleam with eagerness, and Eisen finds it more amusing than frightening.

Perhaps he should have thought differently.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

A warrior must always sleep with one eye open. Eisen, though an admittedly heavy sleeper, still has enough wherewithal to rouse himself when he hears commotion from the adjacent room where Frieren and Himmel are sleeping. He always sleeps in his armor, so all he needs to do is grab his axe from under his pillow and begin his advance.

The floorboards creak with each step Eisen makes, and he tries to step on the cracks to make less noise. He raises his axe, fully ready to tear the door down, when he remembers that they essentially lost a quarter of their prize money from the Hydra for just that reason.

"Himmel?" he says. "Are you alright?"

The door opens to a perfectly unharmed Himmel wiping at his sleep-encrusted eyes, wearing a cotton nightshirt and loose trousers. He looks perfectly normal, save for one key detail. "Eisen? Why d'you have your axe?"

"The same reason you have your sword, I reckon." Eisen hefts the axe's weight over his shoulder. "Was it a ruffian? A thug? Do you need me to split someone's skull in two?"

"Frieren took care of it."

"Oh, that's a relief."

Himmel winces. "It really, really isn't."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"Let me get this straight," Heiter says, rubbing at his aching temples and squinting against the harsh daylight. "We went to the tavern last night and ran into this bard named Löwen."

"Yes," Himmel says through gritted teeth, as though even he can't believe this particular turn of events.

"And after hearing about how Frieren defeated the Hydra, he wanted to come back to our inn to see her."

"Yes."

"And he knocked at your door in the middle of the night, at which point you opened it."

"Yes."

"And this Löwen's first instinct was to open Frieren's suitcase—"

"—valise," she corrects sharply.

"Valise, whatever. After which he became a toad."

The only response is a feeble croak.

"I'm too sober for this," Heiter says.

Eisen is generally more committed to preserving his sobriety than Heiter, but never before has he resonated so much with that statement. "You and me both, my friend. You and me both."

The toad that used to be Löwen the Bard is not particularly offensive, as far as toads go, with a decent number of warts and a bright pink tongue. It—he—blinks a pair of beady eyes up at Frieren, as though asking what he possibly could have done to deserve this plight.

"A curse," Heiter says at last. "Wow. You really put the 'wicked' in 'wicked witch.'"

"It's not a curse," Frieren replies primly. "Curses are defined as magic cast by monsters and demons for which we have no present explanation. I've merely warded my valise with a simple transformation spell."

"Hex, then."

"Spell."

"Curse, spell, hex—doesn't matter what it's called," Himmel says. "You need to reverse it."

"I can't," Frieren says.

"What?"

"It can only come undone early under two specific circumstances, one of which being my death, and the other being the spell simply running its course." At the roomful of aghast glances she receives, Frieren just sighs. "It'll wear off in just a few months."

Eisen stares down at the poor, poor toad. "Isn't that a little much, Frieren?"

"I'd say the punishment fits the crime," she replies primly. "My valise is filled with far too many precious grimoires for Löwen the Bard to get his grubby fingers all over them."

"That's where all your share of the money's been going," Himmel says.

"Besides, a few months is barely any time at all."

"To an elf," Himmel says. "That's, um, quite some time for a human."

"You mortals and your clocks," Frieren mutters to herself. "You never make any sense."

Himmel's face twitches.

"Goddess preserve us," Heiter murmurs, touching a hand to his forehead and then his heart. "Especially Löwen the Toad."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"So…are we just taking him with us, then?" Eisen asks.

"I mean, he did ask to join our party," Himmel says.

"He did? How come I don't remember any of this?" Heiter knocks the side of his head as if it'll make his memories come loose.

Himmel just huffs. "You don't remember agreeing to come on this quest, either."

"I don't remember if I agreed."

"Are you just going to sit there reading?" Eisen asks Frieren.

"I doubt I'll contribute much to your discussion, or your decision," she replies, not looking up from her book. Grimoire. Whatever.

"Thanks so much for your help," Heiter says dryly.

"Why would you thank me?" Frieren asks with a frown. "I didn't—"

"He's being sarcastic," Himmel cuts in. "It's settled, then. We're keeping Löwen the Toad with us until he transforms back."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

As far as traveling companions go, Löwen the Toad is quite tolerable. In some aspects, he even surpasses Eisen's people-shaped companions.

They've been trudging through the Old Forest for weeks, stopping twice to resupply at two towns, saving one from a nest of horrendously large spires and the other from a sphinx with a stutter, and Löwen has yet to complain once. When Eisen brings this up as a shining example of how a party member should be, Heiter just points out the obvious.

"I don't know if you've noticed, but he can't talk. That's, like, the main component of complaining."

"Exactly," Eisen says. "It's wonderful."

"You really can't hear him?" Frieren asks. "He's quite irritating."

Himmel just gawks at her. "You can?"

Frieren simply refuses to elaborate, just stares at him like he’s the strange one and not her.

They set up camp in a clearing surrounded by aspen trees that have nearly lost all their orange leaves. The air is damp enough that they can't start a fire without one of Frieren's spells. Even that is promptly put out when it starts to rain, thick and fast, soaking through the tents they so painstakingly put up.

Löwen lets out a pitiful croak.

“I know,” Eisen tells him.

Himmel decides quickly that they should seek some kind of shelter out, and gets no significant protests until the first sign of civilization that breaks up endless stretches of the Old Forest turns out to be a manor that cuts a most ominous silhouette against the rain-dark sky.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Heiter asks before sneezing violently into the sleeve of his black robes.

“No, but there’s no villages for miles, and we need to get somewhere warm before your cold worsens,” Himmel says.

Eisen stares up at the large iron gate between them and the manor. It seems to be built with aesthetics in mind more than functionality, with far too much space between delicately thin bars, tracery in the shape of grapevines creeping along either side to meet in a wide arch overhead.

There are two armed guards posted at the gate, though their slouched backs and relaxed postures scream of more laziness than this position likely calls for. Even as Löwen lets out a tremulous croak, Eisen pats the top of his head to reassure them.

“Two swings of my axe and they’ll fall like trees,” he says lowly.

“I’m not paid enough for this,” the guard on the left sighs. “Who goes there?”

“Hello!” Himmel gives them a bright wave and a smile much sunnier than the stormcloud covered sky above them. “I’m Himmel the Hero, and this is my party. We’re looking for shelter from the storm—"

“Sorry, you’re a little out of luck. We’re running an estate here, not a bed and breakfast.”

“Wait, Linke,” the right guard says. “Isn’t Lord Kasper looking for adventurers?”

“Whatever the job is, we’ll take it,” Himmel says.

“Himmel,” Heiter says. “Maybe we should ask—"

“We’re very good at what we do.”

Löwen makes a very distressed noise, and Eisen pats him on the back.

“I don’t think Himmel knows how to turn away someone who needs help,” Eisen says. “But we’ll be somewhere warm and dry, won’t that be nice?”

His soggy beard and wet socks would certainly agree.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

As Sir Brav’s squire, Eisen had the fortune of visiting the abodes of many a noble. Sir Brav was quite right among them, regardless of if they were dwarf or human or otherwise, with his opulent tastes and general disdain for those he considered beneath him. Eisen, on the other hand, held the firm opinion that no one person should reasonably have this much money, and he still believes it.

He sees peasants working tirelessly even in the relentless rain, their raggedy clothes soaked with water and dirt. There are farms and gardens and a decently sized quarry, all built to support one man who likely did nothing to deserve it.

“Don’t you think it’s strange?” Heiter says. “Why would they do all that work on land they don’t own?”

“Not a clue,” Himmel shrugs. “My parents were freeholders.”

“I think it’s just a matter of greed and power.” Eisen stares up at the manor against the mottled grey of the sky. “Most things are.”

Frieren says nothing, just wringing the water from her long hair and scowling as though the sky has personally offended her.

A maidservant leads them through halls filled with brightly colored oil paintings and up winding staircases before they reach what Eisen assumes to be the guest quarters. There are four rooms, one for each of them, and it’s assumed that Löwen will be in Eisen’s.

“Lord Kasper will see you at dinner,” she says stiffly. “Do try to make yourself presentable.”

Chapter Text

Dinner is an idiotically ornate affair, but Eisen’s stomach grumbles when they bring out plates and plates of roasted beef. It’s no hamburg steak, but it’s warm and filling in a way foraged food never has been. The tres leches cake is some of the finest and sweetest stuff Eisen has ever eaten in his entire life, and it melts in his mouth with every big bite he takes.

“‘S wnerful,” Eisen says, mouth full of game pie with beautifully flaked pastry.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself,” Lord Kasper says. “I never knew someone so little could be quite so gluttonous.”

Eisen gingerly pushes away the third slice of cake he’d cut for himself.

“Lord Kasper,” Himmel says. “Thank you so much for dinner. We really appreciate it.”

“I can tell,” Kasper says, face sour as he keeps glancing over at Frieren, who has somehow cleared through half a loaf of bread and a whole wheel of cheese, all while reading a grimoire.

“Do you have anything stronger?” Heiter asks, lifting his empty glass. “I’ve had nothing but sacramental wine for weeks now.”

The Lord looks sufficiently disturbed, and it makes Eisen snort into his napkin. “…sacramental wine?”

Heiter sneezes, his glasses nearly ricocheting off his face with the force of it.

“Bless you,” Lord Kasper murmurs, then takes a dainty sip of white wine from his own glass. “Now, my guards tell me that you are adventurers.”

“We are,” Himmel says.

“What, may I ask, is your quest?”

“We’re going to slay the Demon King.”

Lord Kasper spits his drink back into his glass. “That’s…a lofty goal.”

“I know,” Himmel says, serving himself some cake with what Eisen thinks is the soup spoon. “But we’ll get there one day.”

Löwen croaks from his perch on Eisen’s helmet.

“How very undignified,” Kasper says to himself. “Perhaps this was a bad idea after all.”

“Whatever your quest is, I assure you that we can handle it,” Himmel says.

“Oh, it’s nothing as impressive as slaying the Demon King, merely finding a deer.”

“…a deer?” Heiter asks.

“Most adventurers consider it beneath them, but I suppose it might be right up your alley.”

Eisen clenches his fist, uncaring that it leaves a dent in the table below.

“Alright,” Himmel says. “When do we get started?”

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

“I have always prided myself on being a good father,” Lord Kasper says, lingering in front of a portrait belonging to a woman with fuchsia hair and dark green eyes. “After all these years, I have yet to refuse my daughter anything.”

Eisen snorts to himself, not wanting to imagine the kind of spoiled brat she must be after a lifetime of that.

“Chrysantheme is a wonderful young lady with a most loving spirit. Whatever her heart desires, I simply make it so.”

“Lord Kasper,” Himmel says. “What’s that got to do with a quest?”

“It has been some months since she spotted the most beautiful creature from her bedroom window.” Lord Kasper knocks on a chestnut door. “Darling? Can you open the door?”

“Not of you don’t have my deer,” comes a high-pitched voice that makes Eisen flinch.

“Darling, we have some adventurers here who are going to go get it for you.”

A young woman not much older than Heiter, almost a spitting image of the portrait, opens it. Mascara-stained tears mark her cheeks with black tracks, though the rest of her—with her periwinkle dress and pearl necklace—is as put together as one might expect of a lady of her stature.

“Are you really going to get my deer?” she asks Himmel.

Himmel puts a hand to his heart and bows. “I’ll do my very best, Lady Chrysantheme.”

Chrysantheme purses her lips. “That’s not good enough. Can’t you get me better heroes, Father? I don’t want these scruffy peasants.”

“We’ll just let our results speak for us instead,” Himmel says, completely unfazed.

“Splendid.” Lord Kasper presses a stout kiss to his daughter’s forehead. “Darling, I know it isn’t ideal, but please bear with them.”

Chrysantheme very reluctantly opens the door to her room, which is so cavernous that Eisen feels he’s deep within the Mines of Runter. There’s a canopied bed big enough to fit all four members of his party, but what catches his attention is an oil painting of a deer with golden fur sipping water from a shallow pond, snout buried between water-lily leaves.

"My, that's simply beautiful," Eisen says.

"Thank you," Chrysantheme replies, preening just a little. "I made it."

"You're remarkably talented, my lady," Himmel says. "The paintings around the manor, were they your work too?"

Her face turns the same shade of pink as her dress. "Father says it's a gift from the Goddess."

Himmel smiles at her. "On that we're inclined to agree."

"Oh, isn't she just the most darling thing," Chrysantheme suddenly gushes, turning her attention to Eisen. He stills, preparing for the worst, but she simply scoops Löwen up from his helmet and cradles the toad to her face.

"Lady Chrysantheme," Eisen ventures. "The toad is a—"

"I'm calling her Liebling," Chrysantheme decides, pressing a stout kiss to warty skin. "You and I are going to be best friends."

Heiter snorts to himself, and Himmel elbows him sharply.

"My lady, if you would just return the—"

"Father," Lady Chrysantheme says, on the verge of tears. "They're not letting me keep Liebling."

"Is someone making my darling girl cry?" Lord Kasper says, and Eisen realizes then that getting her to recant her decision isn't just going to be difficult, but impossible.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"Are you sure we can't just go without her?" Heiter asks. "It's almost noon."

"We're a party of four, Heiter, not three," Himmel says. He stares very intently at the door, as though his piercing gaze alone will rouse Frieren from hibernation.

"Elves are lazy creatures," Eisen says. "How someone can be so devoid of industry, I'll never know. No wonder our people never really got along."

"If you really want her up, you could kick down the door again," Heiter suggests.

"We don't have any money left," Himmel says. "Any other ideas?"

"What if we made some kind of loud, unpleasant noise?" Eisen says, which on its own seems like a stupid idea, but is better than anything else they've come up with thus far.

With the help of a very bewildered servant, they're able to procure a trombone none of them know how to use. When Heiter brings it to his lips and blows, the sound that comes out is so warped and twisted that it rattles the floorboards and shakes the air. It wakes Frieren, though, which is all they really needed.

The Old Forest is almost pleasant this time of day. The air smells mildly of petrichor, and the clouds overhead have parted to let just enough sunlight through that the puddles formed from yesterday's rain gleam like silvered mirrors.

The good mood, Eisen reckons, is almost infectious. Himmel makes a point on jumping in as many as he can, his boots and brown trousers splashed with muddy water, dragging Heiter with him. Frieren watches a butterfly with lemon-yellow wings trace spirals through the air, mouth open with an almost girlish expression of awe. Even Eisen finds himself humming old work songs they often sung in the mines.

"I have a good feeling about this," Heiter says with an almost uncharacteristic smile.

Himmel touches a hand to Heiter's forehead, only for it to be swatted away.

"What was that for?"

"Just checking to see if you were sick," Himmel shrugs. "You never have a good feeling about anything."

"I'm allowed to have a good feeling about a deer. They don't fly, don't spew fire, don't grow two heads for—"

"Shh." Frieren cuts him off sharply, every muscle in her body pulled tight like a drawn bowstring ready to fire. "Someone's following us," Himmel murmurs, drawing his sword and striking before any of them can really react. It isn't long before their stalker is caught on the business end, the sword's sharp point almost cutting into porcelain skin.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Eisen does not believe in the Goddess, but if She is real, he certainly thinks that She might be punishing them.

"What are you doing here?" Himmel asks, sheathing his sword once more.

The chords around Lady Chrysantheme's ankles, holding her in place like a bola, come undone with a snap of Frieren's fingers. "You've ruined my dress!"

"You didn't answer my question. What are you doing here?"

"Liebling and I were bored," Chrysantheme replies stiffly, turning her nose up at Himmel. "Besides, it's my deer you're searching for. Don't I deserve to be here?"

Heiter closes his eyes and lets out a frustrated sigh. "And to think I could make it through today sober."

Eisen just shakes his head, not knowing what else he expected. "You really should be home, young lady."

"I'm not letting a stunted peasant tell me what to do."

"It really is a shame that in his efforts to deny you nothing, your father denied you an introduction on basic decency," Eisen says.

Heiter barely hides a snort behind his palm.

"Father would mount your head on a spike if he knew you were speaking like this to me," Chrysantheme says, and though she's probably trying to be threatening, Eisen is just reminded of a very petulant child.

"I would really like to see him try."

"Must you always be so loud?" Frieren snaps. She genuinely looks angry, or as close to it as her blank face can muster.

"Is something wrong?" Himmel asks her. "We're sorry about the trombone. We'll figure out another way to—"

Frieren holds up a finger and closes her eyes for a brief moment. She inclines her head to one side as though listening for a song nobody else can hear. Her staff materializes in her hand, and there's a grim set to her jaw Eisen has only ever seen in the faces of warriors.

"I didn't think demons wandered this far south," Frieren mutters to herself. "Pestilence really knows no borders."

"…demons?" Himmel asks.

Eisen's blood runs cold, and he feels his hands start to tremble.

"I'm to sober for this," Heiter mumbles, reaching for his flask.

"It'll be alright," Himmel says, almost conversationally. "A demon can't be that much harder to handle than anything we've faced so far, can it? I mean, Eisen killed a dragon—"

"You can't face a demon with shaking hands," Frieren says. She drags her staff through the ground, enclosing all of them in a loose circle. Frieren then closes her eyes and starts to chant, the red jewel on her staff glowing faintly as a flimsy iridescence starts to envelop them all like a bubble.

"W-what are you doing?" Himmel asks.

"I'm going to go deal with the issue," Frieren replies. "I have no use for cowards, drunkards, or fakes."

Coward, he thinks to himself. How appropriate. Eisen clenches his shaking hands into fists. "I see," he says to no one at all.

Himmel touches a hand to the claw marks on his collarbone. "I'm not letting you go alone," he says decisively.

"Is that an order?" Frieren asks. "I suppose having a vanguard wouldn't hurt, but the rest of you cannot leave this barrier under any circumstance."

"Himmel!" Heiter calls as the barrier closes around them. "Himmel, wait. You can't just leave us here."

Despite there protests, that is precisely what happens.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"Unbelievable," Heiter mutters as he stares up at the raindrops bouncing harmlessly off the top of the barrier. "Frieren could do this the whole time and she never once offered."

"Perhaps she had her reasons," Eisen says.

Clouds are covering the dusky sky, muffling what little light remains left over after the sunset. The passing hours have sharpened every deep shadow. Eisen can almost feel something watching them, something that really doesn't want them to be there.

"Is it always this scary after dark?" Chrysantheme whispers, clutching Löwen tighter to her chest.

"Demons love the dark," Eisen says. "That's when they prowl, looking for fair maidens in pink dresses to snatch up and eat for dinner."

She whimpers, drawing her knees up to her chest and holding the toad tighter, not even bothering to offer any kind of rebuttal.

It is not restlessness that makes them disobey, though both Eisen and Heiter feel it in spades. Heiter's solution is to dull the edge by emptying his flask, and Eisen helps him in this endeavor, but what makes them snap is the sound of Himmel's voice.

Screaming.

"Help!" It echoes through the trees, coming at them as though from every direction. "Somebody, please!"

"We were under very strict instructions not to leave," Eisen says when he sees the steely look in Heiter's brown eyes. "Frieren made that very clear."

"My leg," Himmel groans from nowhere they can clearly see. "I-I think it's broken. It hurts. It hurts."

"I have go to heal him."

"But Frieren—"

Heiter glares at the shimmering fluorescence of the barrier separating him from Himmel. "Frieren couldn't care less if Himmel lived or died. We can't afford to do that. I can't afford to do that."

Eisen remembers times when he used to struggle to reconcile Heiter's constant friction with Himmel and his fierce loyalty to him, but he can see now that they are simply two parts of the same whole. Heiter will, even when Himmel is too blind to see it, do what is best for him.

"Make it quick," Eisen sighs. "I'll watch over the lady and the toad."

Heiter's shoulders sag with relief, and he slips through the barrier with only the slightest wince. He rushes headlong into the forest, chasing after their friend's desperate pleas, while Eisen assumes a stance with his axe.

"Stay behind me, young lady," he tells Chrysantheme. "I won't let any harm come to you."

He is steady in his resolve, even if his hands aren't, a sentinel made from the same stone his people so love to carve. Eisen paces around the border of the barrier, wearing restless circles into the damp ground underneath, when he hears another screaming voice call his name.

Eisen nearly drops his axe.

"Help," Heiter calls. "Help. T-there's something in the dark. Something's coming to get me!"

Eisen closes his eyes as the voice rings out in his ears, and his mind's eye helpfully supplies him with the vision of Himmel and Heiter's mangled corpses, blood dripping from a demon's open maw. His heart quickens in his chest, beating fast, fast, fast.

His orders were to stay here, and he can follow orders. A good squire follows orders. But it's been more than half a century since Eisen was a squire, and that time has taught him something even a hundred years with Sir Brav couldn't; good warriors do what is right no matter the cost.

"Stay here," Eisen tells Chrysantheme.

"Y-you're leaving? What about me?"

"I'm afraid I can't leave my friends in danger," he says. "This barrier should protect you."

"But my deer…"

"Your deer can wait, young lady. Look after yourself, and the toad."

So he goes, following the sound of Heiter's voice. It is warped both by distance and by the queer ambience of the forest, distorted as though he's hearing it through water. Eisen jumps when he senses movement, but all he can hear are crickets. The weight of the axe in his hands is no comfort, even though he knows full well how to brandish it.

"Please, help me."

The voice splits in two like a river pouring into tributaries. In his left ear, Eisen hears Himmel, and in his right, Heiter. Both frequencies overlap in a way that leaves his skull ringing, and he realizes then with growing dread that someone has tricked him. Something has tricked him.

"Who goes there?" Eisen asks, and the Old Forest swallows his words and spits them out in front of him.

He hears laughter, wild and hateful, and it sounds like Sir Brav. Eisen closes his eyes when he hears his dead master, tears prickling the corners of his eyes.

"Help me."

"You can't fight a demon with shaking hands," he whispers to himself, willing the trembling to just stop. "You can't…"

"You can't!" the voice taunts. Now it sounds like nobody in particular, just an out-of-tune lyre, a jumble of haphazard chords trying and failing to emulate something alive. "You can't, you can't, you can't."

Eisen raises his axe and throws it in the direction he hears the loudest sound, not caring, but then he hears a piercing scream that sounds like Apfel. He falls to his knees, unable to stop his sobs, and he imagines her corpse, wreathed in apple blossom flowers, and—

But Apfel is in Blumental, safe. It can't have been her.

He wipes his eyes and staggers to his feet.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Eisen follows the warpath of his axe, marked by splintered trees—some cut in half and cursing him for it—to the end of a parabolic trajectory. He finds it in a clearing, churned earth gathering on either side like the swell of water left behind by a boat. The air smells as though it has been misted with the heady perfume of a corpse flower, like blood and death and all kinds of unpleasant, rotting things.

Strangest of all, though, is the sight of a corpse Eisen immediately recognizes as a demon in the shape of a woman, with golden skin and branching horns, ears rimmed with white fur, rolled-back eyes glowing faintly in the dark as its body slowly evaporates into grey dust.

"Took you long enough," Himmel says, giving him a wan smile.

"Your foot," is the first thing Eisen can say in response. "It's not broken."

"Never was," Heiter supplies. "A stellar performance by our leading lady convinced us otherwise."

"Look on the bright side!" Himmel says. "At least we don't have to find our deer anymore." 

"That was her?" Eisen asks, a little aghast. 

He stares at the dead demon, Himmel's sword skewered through her chest. Her motionless eyes are shot through with branching red veins, and they look so humanoid that it makes Eisen's stomach churn. She slowly disintegrates into nothing, and he feels the knot of fear coiling around his heart start to give.

Chapter Text

"Do all demons smell this bad?" Heiter clamps a hand over his nose, barely holding back a violent retch.

"The one that killed my parents did," Himmel says. "But that's only two, so what do I know?"

"Demons reek of all the souls they have stolen," Eisen says gravely, which is so wrong that it finally piques Frieren enough to speak up.

"Monsters and their ilk only smell bad to us because it's an evolutionary defense mechanism." All that's left of the demon's body are its branching antlers, too large to reflect the dimorphism of the species it was trying to imitate. Most demons are just that, cheap imitations of life.

"What are you, some kind of demonologist?" Heiter asks, raising an eyebrow at her.

"Demonology is a useless pursuit," Frieren replies. "All you really need to know about a demon is how to kill it."

Heiter whistles. "Damn, that's cold."

"Why would it be cold?" she asks. "I just said that trying to understand demon taxonomy detracts from effort that might be better spent eradicating them."

"Sounded cooler when you last said it," Heiter says.

"…is that different from sounding cold?"

The priest just shakes his head and wraps his stole around his nose and mouth like a scarf.

"You really are idiots, you know," Frieren muses aloud.

Himmel smiles up at her like he's proud of that fact. "The three biggest idiots you've ever met; that's what you said, right? We're very aware of that fact."

"Nobody with this little experience fighting demons should be marching into Ende."

"I mean, you also called us children with a death wish," Himmel says. "What about all this surprises you?"

"And you couldn't have picked a worse priest, or a worse warrior. One's a barely functioning alcoholic—"

"Hey!"

"—and the other's a coward."

Eisen's expression is completely unreadable underneath all those extraneous layers of facial hair

"You really shouldn't keep calling him that," Himmel says, tone chiding in a way that reminds her unpleasantly of Flamme. "It isn't very kind."

"Haven't you heard?" Heiter cuts in. "She'd much rather be right."

At this, they all chuckle to themselves, and Frieren just stands there letting it ring out around her like the sounding of a bell. She doesn't understand their mirth, or what Heiter said to trigger it, so she simply watches like an eagle soaring over a prairie, not caring for each individual blade of grass.

"You should have chosen better party members, is all," Frieren says.

"Oh?" Himmel asks. "Why?"

"They're not very loyal to you."

Heiter snorts. "You think I'd be here breathing in demon dust instead of whiskey if I wasn't loyal?"

"You're incapable of following simple instructions. Loyal party members follow orders."

"Obedient party members follow orders," Himmel says, emphasizing 'obedient' like he's correcting her.

Frieren frowns at him. "Is there a difference?"

"Sure. Heiter and Eisen followed us into the woods because they were loyal, not despite it." Himmel smiles at them. "They're good friends."

"So you chose them for sentimental reasons," Frieren realizes. "I suppose I couldn't have expected much more from a fake."

Himmel looks, briefly, as though he's just been stricken. Not that she cares very much. It's hard enough to read between the lines of a book, doing the same with people she's going to outlive by millennia is never worth the effort anyway.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Lord Kasper is absolutely horrified by this turn of events. Frieren knows this because his mouth is stretched and both his eyelids and eyebrows are lifted, all telltale signs of fear.

"My word," he says when Himmel hands him a pair of antlers in the living room of his sprawling manor. "The deer my daughter so craved, was it truly a demon? How could I have missed this?"

"We didn't know either until we  actually killed the thing," Himmel says. "It's ears were furred 'round the edges, and it's skin was gold."

"How supremely unprecedented," Lord Kasper murmurs, setting the antlers down on a gold-rimmed glass table. "A shapeshifting demon."

"It's not," Frieren says. "Though not all demons develop magic of their own, the ones that do tend to gravitate towards powers that make them better hunters. Spells for tracking, illusions, self-defense. The unprecedented part here is how this demon managed to create two completely different forms of magic, one for changing forms and one for—"

She stops herself when she senses everyone in the room staring at her. Frieren can discern as much from their faces as she can a page of smudged ink—which is to say she can discern nothing at all—and she remembers then that she forgot to watch herself. People, as a rule, don't like listening to her talk about grimoires, and this naturally extends to demons.

"Nasty creatures," Lord Kasper says before grabbing one of the mini baked haloumi and prosciutto bites he has piled on the table between them.

"On that we are all inclined to agree," Eisen says, his grubby hands reaching for what must be his twelfth or thirteenth serving.

Frieren glowers at the empty plate he leaves in his wake until Lord Kasper summons a servant to refill it, at which point she scoops at least six to place on her lap, uncaring that her off-white dress is somewhat stained by the end. It's perfectly alright—she has a spell for stains on off-white clothes, which doesn't work on any other color for whatever reason.

"You rid my lands of a demon and you saved my daughter's life. However might I repay you?" Kasper says.

Said daughter isn't paying them any mind, too busy tying a pink bow on her new pet toad. Löwen's mind is a constant stream of I love you and I would die for you and  I am going to marry you in the Royal Cathedral with the Goddess as our witness, sentiments that confuse Frieren but don't quite bewilder her.  Occasionally, he tries croaking out ballads, not caring one bit that they are absolutely horrid.

"However you wish," Himmel says. "Though we would appreciate some food for the next leg of our journey."

"And some whiskey," Heiter chimes in.

"And that tres leches cake, if you can spare any," Eisen says before belching.

Lord Kasper's nose wrinkles, his eyebrows pulling down and his upper lip peeling backwards. "Of course."

"There's one final matter we must discuss," Eisen says. "You see, we really must insist on taking the toad back."

"Liebling stays here," Kasper says, with authority vested in him by nobody in particular. "I can promise you that she will be very well cared for."

Eisen looks deeply distressed by Lord Kasper's insistence. "But he's not a—"

"He doesn't want to leave," Frieren tells him, pressing her palms over her ears in a vain attempt to keep Löwen's next I love you from reaching them. "He's being very insistent about it."

Kasper blinks at her. "He?"

Löwen croaks appreciatively, then thinks something about the neckline of Chrysantheme's dress that further convinces her of what Flamme once said about men being pigs.

"Well, I suppose I should warn you that you're in for quite a shock," Himmel says after a moment. "Our dearest Liebling here is full of surprises."

What shock?

He makes eye contact with Heiter, and they both snicker just a little.

For the life of her, Frieren can't figure out why.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

They leave the next morning, though Frieren would have liked to spend more time in a place with a bed soft enough that she can melt into it. She's awoken from one of the best night's sleeps she's had since this journey began by the horrendously loud sound of a trombone playing just outside her door.

As they head out into the Old Forest, Frieren begins reading a grimoire about the principles of magical stenography. Though she already knows the basics of enchanting a quill and an inkpot to record the spoken word, this grimoire specifically outlines recreating those enchantments on charcoal pencils instead. There's also an appendix about life drawing she can't wait to read.

Frieren has not been counting their journey in days—there's never been a point to counting the days at all—but she knows that she is on her fourth grimoire. She pays little attention to what happens outside of its yellowed pages, safe in the language of a world she understands. A world of sigils and glyphs and runes that always say precisely what they mean.

Even as they all roast unsalted trout over an open fire, it is into this world that Frieren retreats. She almost succeeds in shutting out everything but the mark of ink against paper.

"You ever worry about Löwen the Bard?" Himmel asks.

"Constantly," Eisen replies. "That poor thing must be frightened."

"Really? I think he must be having a splendid time as Liebling the Toad," Heiter says. "Shame it'll all end in a couple of months."

She wants, very briefly, to say that she agrees, because she heard Löwen's thoughts on the matter and found them to be dreadfully maudlin. But the words dry up in her throat before she can even think to voice them, and they keep talking around her as though they've simply forgotten she exists. The conversation moves on, and Frieren turns the page.

The spell circle uses a most fascinating combination of runes, and it reminds her of a scroll she once read almost two hundred years ago. What part precisely made that connection, she can't tell, but she has all the time in the world to figure it out.

Frieren can hear them laughing about something, a bright, happy sound that echoes around her but never in her. It's like watching a fireplace in a house on a cold winter night through a glass window, separated from the heat and light.

What would it be like, she wonders, to feel warm?

She returns to her grimoire, knowing that even if there is an answer, it wasn't meant for her.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

The Holy City of Strahl has changed since Frieren last visited. She does not remember there being a basilica, so tall and proud that she feels like she's back in Eiseberg again. Most of the new buildings are in a cheerful shade of orange, standing out starkly against older edifices of white marble or brown brick.

"Home sweet home," Heiter says, taking in a deep breath.

Himmel squints at him. "You've quite literally never set foot here before."

"Irrelevant. Any home of the Goddess is a home of mine."

"Don't let the bartender hear you say that," Eisen says. "Are there any bars here?"

"There weren't the last time I came here around two hundred years ago," Frieren replies. "Clergy are quite strict about alcohol consumption, especially when they're not corrupt, though I suppose that might be beyond you."

"Thank you for that dazzling piece of information I couldn't have figured out myself," Heiter replies.

"You're welcome."

"That's not what I—" Heiter sighs, runs a hand through his ashy blonde hair. "You know what? A place can change in a century or two. Maybe the people here stopped being killjoys somewhere along the way."

Himmel stares at him. "You're a priest on hallowed ground. Why in the world is that your first thought?"

"The difference between us, my friend, is that you see your sobriety as a moral imperative, while I know it to be a problem that's up to me to fix. Eisen, shall we?"

The two are off, and Himmel shakes his head, muttering to himself under his breath. "Guess that leaves the two of us," he tells her.

"Hmm."

"We should probably go look for a place to stay."

"Hmm."

"And maybe some kind of work for when we run out of Lord Kasper's money."

"Hmm."

"…are you even listening to me?"

Frieren looks up from an illustration that demonstrates the angle at which a pencil should be held for the spell to best work and frowns at him. "Sorry, did you say something?"

"Just come with me."

"Is that an order?"

"Frieren," Himmel says. "Is there a reason you're always on about, you know, orders?"

"What?"

"Why do you always ask me if something's an order before deciding to listen?"

"Good party members are loyal," Frieren replies. "And loyal people follow orders." They're simple rules that have defined most of Frieren's interactions with adventuring parties, and she has found that following them tends to lead to the least amount of friction.

"Huh," Himmel says. "So you do care about being a good party member."

She frowns at him. "I never said that."

"Sure, you didn't."

"Glad we're in agreement," she says, even though it feels like they aren't.

When the language of people gets too vexing to untangle, Frieren tends to retreat back into the familiar language of magic. Her grimoire doesn't speak in double meanings or convoluted metaphors. Even though magic can be finicky and have a mind of its own, it's a mind that Frieren understands. The terse countenance of a beast that refuses to be caged.

Somewhere between page twenty-five and forty-three, Himmel is able to secure both their residence at an inn and an odd job hunting some kind of strange woodland creature that has been terrorizing Strahl's populace. Frieren's only notable memory of that stretch of time is formed when a lamppost rudely interrupts her reading by colliding with her forehead.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Though Frieren is given the luxury of her own private tent when they're camping, she's usually forced to share a room when they find themselves in inns. She would usually not mind such an arrangement, but since her most regular roommate is Himmel, she's come to find it quite bothersome. But this room comes with a cushioned alcove by the window, the kind of place she can curl up in for hours and read.

"I'm going to go join Eisen and Heiter in this one restaurant they found, by the way," Himmel says suddenly when she plans to do just that.

"Hmm."

"Do you want to come?"

"Hmm."

"…is that a yes or a no?"

"I will if it's an order."

"Why are you here, Frieren?" Himmel asks her.

"It's far more convenient to be indoors, especially as the weather turns colder."

"That's not what I meant. Why are you here on this quest?"

Frieren closes her grimoire, displeased by his line of questioning. "I was bored, and a quest is a good way to spend a decade or two."

"Really? Because I doubt someone who's just on a quest because they're bored would care 'bout being a good party member."

"I never said that I—"

"They certainly wouldn't care if the others were being good party members either." Himmel smiles again, like he's found a legendary grimoire inside of a mimic. "It's funny. I didn't think you ever would."

"Care?" Frieren huffs. "I don't have an emotional attachment to the outcome of this quest. Isn't that what care is?"

"Hmm," he says. "That really is a shame."

But the ends of his lips quirk up even as he shakes his head, and the cognitive dissonance between what he's saying and how he's acting is not a bog Frieren wants to wade through. So she simply turns the page and ignores him, words and all.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

There is a difference between being alone and feeling lonely, Frieren thinks, because she has lived with the former for nearly a thousand years now, but the latter is alien to her outside of being a vague concept. Knowing the facts of a lack of people and feeling it are quite different.

Is solitude the natural state of her people?

Certainly not, for they wouldn't have gathered in villages or built cities if it was. But Frieren thinks solitude comes easier for elves than it does to most others—certainly humans—because it seems as though they cannot function without the constant validation of having somebody else around. It must be cumbersome, to have so much of your peace of mind rely on the presence of others.

It isn't just about peace of mind, but survival as well. Frieren has always fared well by herself, but most humans cannot fathom such an existence. They need each other to live in a way she never will, and that need is dangerous to them. She thinks that she has met some self-sufficient humans before—if she has, she's likely forgotten them—but the fact that they are exceptions proves that there is a rule.

So the quiet that Himmel leaves behind when he leaves their room doesn't bother her, not really. She's used to the quiet, used to being alone, used to not feeling lonely. It's how she's spent the last five hundred years. When Frieren finishes the grimoire, nobody is there to listen.

It's quite alright.

People don't like listening to her talk about grimoires.

Chapter Text

"'It'll be an easy job', he said," Heiter says. "'We'll be done before you know it', he said."

"Do you have a point you want to make?" Himmel snaps.

"Yeah, I do!" Heiter takes a heavy sip from his flask, forces it down his throat. "I am far too sober for this."

"We've fought a monster with nine heads before!" Himmel says. "We can handle a single boar. Right, Eisen?"

"My hands are shaking," Eisen murmurs. “Oh, Goddess preserve us, my hands are shaking.”

They are hiding behind a thicket of bushes while a monstrously large boar is on the prowl for them, tusks gleaming in what little light filters in through the cloudy sky. It kicks up dust with one of its powerful, hoofed legs, nostrils flaring as it snorts. A strange, foamy substance drips from its jaws, hissing like acid when it hits the ground, leaving scorch marks in the fern below.

"Thought you didn't believe in the Goddess," Heiter says.

"Not particularly, but I don't see the downside of appealing to a higher power when our deaths are so—"

"Eisen." Himmel lets out a longsuffering sigh. "Did you find anything useful in that book of yours, Frieren? The one with the monsters?"

Frieren tears her eyes away from an appendix about the medicinal properties of unicorn horns. "Bestiary," she says, hastily turning to a dog-eared page. "'The Twrch Trwyth, a shaggy and untamed boar of great mass and foaming jaws, doth prefer thickets deep and dost abhor the clamor of loud sounds.'"

Frieren looks up to see Heiter frowning at her. "The twitching treacle?"

"Twrch Trwyth," she corrects. "Can you really not pronounce it?"

"Okay, so this thing hates loud sounds," Himmel says. "Frieren, do you have any spells for that?"

"I have forty-nine, though I know of thirteen more that could be modified to fit that purpose."

"Great. So you're on distraction duty. Eisen, strike from above. Heiter, sharpen his axe and my sword."

"What about you?" Eisen asks.

Himmel draws his sword and grins. "You take the high road, I'll take the low road."

"And here I was beginning to think I was the drunk one," Heiter mutters.

The spell Frieren casts is a simple one, meant to mimic the layered melody of a chorus that usually commented on the events of a play. The boar turns its head, almost making a whimpering sound, and in that brief moment of hesitation, Eisen and Himmel strike.

While Eisen lands a debilitating blow on its forehead, so hard she can hear bone cracking, Himmel drags his sword through the thick fur of its underbelly. The Twrch Trwyth hits the ground with the sound of a felled oak several centuries old.

Himmel kneels by its side like he always does with every monster they slay—a habit she finds entirely unnecessary—fingers interlaced by his chest and eyes closed as he bows his head. When that moment of quiet reverence passes, he lets Heiter pull him and Eisen into a tight, tight hug as they whoop in unison.

Frieren watches them like she's wiping her fingers through fogged glass, getting just the barest glimpse of a picture she isn't a part of.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

For as long as Frieren can remember, there has been an invisible barrier separating her from the rest of the world.

It was there when she was a child in her village, when everyone would spend sleepless weeks dancing around a bonfire that burned a hundred thousand vibrant colors. They'd sing songs at the tops of their lungs that she can no longer remember because she spent more time finding quiet places where she could escape all of it.

It was there when she was Flamme's student, when every single participant of a research meeting would turn to affix her with unreadable looks she never registered as irritation until Flamme herself pointed it out. Not everyone likes listening to you ramble on and on about grimoires, Frieren, she'd said tiredly, a rule she still holds herself to even today.

It was there when she traveled with eleven different adventuring parties, each with different means and different ends but always the same outcome. Sometimes Frieren will look at the world around her and wonder if they're the ones being strange, their impermanence driving them to actions that she can never hope to understand, but deep down she knows the common denominator is her.

See, the strangest thing about this barrier is that even though it's invisible, everyone else seems to know that it's there as well. A moat forms between herself and the outside, so wide and deep and ridden with crocodiles that no flimsy wooden bridge can hope to cross it. Not that she minds much, anyway.

Even if solitude is not the natural state of her people, it's become a way of life for her. Frieren likes it alone, because nothing can overwhelm her when she's sequestered away in a private corner of the world. People are exhausting, their nuances even more so.

She remembers Flamme asking her why she'd simply stopped attending research meetings altogether. "You've got a brilliant mind," she'd said. "They'd love to hear your thoughts."

Even though Frieren was just as good as reading people then as she is now—which is to say, not at all—she'd understood rejection intimately. "I think I prefer it by myself."

Flamme had still maddeningly chased that chain of thought like it was the only way out of a labyrinth. "Why?" Flamme had asked, over and over and over, until Frieren gave her an answer she deemed satisfactory.

"It's like…like everybody but me was born with this secret grimoire of rules about how to…" Frieren had struggled to find the right word. "Interact, I suppose."

Flamme had pondered that for no more than a moment. "Do you want me to tell you a secret, Frieren?  All the world is a stage, all the rules are a performance, and all these idiots," she'd gestured vaguely to nearly every single person in the room, "are performers."

"Wow," Heiter says, staring at the boar—or more accurately, what's left of it—with wide eyes. "You really did gut that one like a bony-eared assfish."

Frieren does not know what a bony-eared assfish is, or why it makes Himmel and Eisen laugh quite so much.

"It only sounds cool when the good Captain says it," Himmel says. "Remember?"

Captain? Frieren realizes, then, that they have become aware of the barrier too, because she has once again found herself on the outside of an inner circle that formed without her knowledge. They are all performing, reading lines from a rulebook she was never afforded, not realizing that there are other audience members besides each other.

"Right, sorry." Heiter removes his glasses and covers both his eyes. "Good job, ye cuttlefish. I knew ye could pull it off."

Frieren can't remember ever being bothered with that. Performing. It feels disingenuous to her even as a concept, and though she's not a singular genius like Flamme was, she's hardly an idiot. So when she watches Himmel, Heiter, and Eisen, it's from a distance.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"Hey, Frieren," Himmel says, rapping his knuckles against the doorframe of their inn. "Do you have a minute?"

"I have all the time in the world," Frieren replies. She turns her bookwheel to switch to a grimoire about changing the suite of a card in a standard deck.

"Do you wanna join us in the gardens? I hear that there's this fountain that—"

"Not particularly."

"Oh."

"I will if it's an order."

"Just a suggestion," Himmel says, an odd note to his voice she can't quite name.

While Himmel, Eisen, and Heiter wander Strahl aimlessly, Frieren puts her time towards more productive pursuits, like learning a spell that can mend torn elbows, but only in a complementary color to the original fabric.

The days slip by quickly, and they settle into a kind of routine. Himmel always begins with a "Hey, Frieren" followed by a suggestion so dreadfully inane that she always turns down. Some days there are orders that can't be ignored, like when he takes them to stop some pixies from stealing ale from a local tavern.

"A woman after my own heart," Heiter says, gingerly holding up a very small, very drunk pixie by her iridescent orange wings when they catch her emptying a bottle of vodka five times her size.

"I was there when you took a vow of celibacy, Heiter," Himmel reminds him.

"You were also there when I took a vow of sobriety."

"If Tenebrous is real, then the Goddess certainly has a place for you there," Eisen says, which has them all laughing for no particular reason she can discern.

Another day, they're hired to capture a troll for a local mage to study. She's a wizened old woman who runs a shop filled with all kinds of sketchy things. Among other things, Frieren finds a scroll with a spell that summons extra-dimensional creatures with something called a Shadow Dragon's horn.

Most of Himmel's orders, though, are inane chores that make even Frieren feel like she's wasting her time.

"We should be moving north at a faster pace," Eisen says, when they're helping a merchant carry wooden crates of his wares across a river of sheep. "The threat of the Demon King grows day by day, and we've squandered more than a month here."

A month. Huh. It barely felt like it.

"Himmel the Hero is always like this about things that have no point," Heiter quips.

"Nah," Himmel says, smiling like he's posing for a statue. "This is the point. If we ignore the people who really need our help, can we call ourselves heroes?"

"You're the hero," Heiter says. "I'm just the—"

"Alcoholic?" Eisen offers.

More mirth, more laughter, bubbling like the froth that rims a tankard full of beer.

Not that she minds very much.

She's never been much of a drinker.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

There are some forms of social interaction that Frieren cannot unfortunately escape. Whenever Himmel hosts meetings to take stock of how much money and food they have accrued, she's not only required to attend, but also set aside her grimoire.

"These are important," he says. "I want you paying attention?"

"Is that an order?" she asks, hoping he'll say it's a suggestion instead so that she can go back to her reading.

"This time, yes."

Frieren lets her mind wander anyway, rolling a copper coin between her fingers to feel its corrugated texture against the crook of her thumb.

"By the Goddess," Himmel says. "We're rich."

"I'm going to buy so much whiskey," Heiter says.

"Not before I get my armor shined," Eisen cuts in. "I need a new cloak as well."

"Well I need to get fitted for a new set of robes." Heiter lifts a gangly hand. "These barely come up to my sleeves anymore."

"Well I—"

"How 'bout this?" Himmel suggests. "We all go shopping for new outfits. Shall we take a vote?"

He raises his palm, and so do Eisen and Heiter.

Frieren worries the hem of her dress, threadbare from decades of use. "I suppose a change of clothes wouldn't hurt," she muses.

"Splendid. I'm gonna set aside some money to take with us on the road, but Strahl's our oyster now!"

"But Strahl isn't an oyster," Frieren tells Himmel. "It's a city."

"…I just meant it figuratively."

Frieren looks down at her coin once more. "Oh."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

It doesn't take very long for Frieren to find what she wants from the modiste. She's always been decisive when it comes to selecting garments and has little patience for dawdling, which used to be one of her few areas of tension with Flamme, who would insist on trying at least ten different outfits before selecting the one she wanted.

Frieren examines her appearance in a floor-to-ceiling mirror, if only to appraise her newest set of clothes. Between the gold trim on her white jacket and skirt and the red jewel accents, she looks almost like a high priestess or a court mage. The only thing that really disrupts that image are the jaunty stripes black-and-white stripes on her blouse.

She realizes that the shade of red on the jewels is quite close to a pair of red earrings she owns. Frieren has never had much cause to wear them before, but perhaps now she could—

"You're lookin' dapper today," Himmel says, his arrival announced by the ringing of a bell above the door.

"Hmm."

"So? Do you think you got your money's worth?"

"The fabric is of exceptionally high quality," Frieren replies. "With the right enchantments, this might last me centuries."

"It's funny how you and Eisen talk about time, in decades and centuries," Himmel says.

Frieren turns to face him. "Funny?"

"It's like a day is nothing to you."

"It isn't."

Himmel looks pensive for a moment before twirling in place. If he were wearing a gown, it would flare out around him in a perfect circle.

"What do you think?" he asks.

"I don't see what's so funny," Frieren replies. "I just experience time differently than you do, seeing as how you're mortal and all."

"That's not what I…" Himmel sighs. "Do you not notice anything different?"

"Not particularly."

"My outfit, Frieren. What do you think?"

Himmel has traded his usual ensemble of a white shirt and brown trousers for a dark blue tunic with a white trim, laced up with several white frogs. He wears a flowing cape held in place by a silver buckle with black engravings that seem to be a heavily stylized rendition of the Church's symbol—a pillar with two wings.

"These things are usually beneath my notice," Frieren admits.

"So if I hadn't pointed it out to you, you wouldn't have noticed how dashing I look?"

"No."

"Ouch."

"Are you in pain?"

"Of course I'm in pain!" He clutches his heart as though he's experiencing a sudden bout of arrhythmia. "Here I am, dressed to the nines, and my friend won't even give me a second glance."

My friend.

Since when were she and Himmel friends? Is this yet another social contract she doesn't know how to sign? Are these decisions supposed to be bilateral, or does one person simply decide? Will he stop being her friend if she breaks any of those blasted rules he and the others know so well?

Frieren's mind races with questions she has no real answers for. Friendship is a line she doesn't know how to draw. She's never had a real reason to learn, especially when it comes to mortals whose lives amount to barely a few drops in the ocean of time.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"Something wrong?" Himmel asks, canting his head to one side.

"I didn't know I was your friend," Frieren says.

"Why wouldn't you be? We've been traveling together for ten months."

Is friendship a function of time, then? Or is that just how Himmel sees it? "That's hardly any time at all."

"Do you think you're my friend?" Himmel says. "Or that you're mine?"

Frieren stares at the octagon and square tiles on the floor. They form a perfect tessellation, covering the flat surface with no overlaps or gaps. "I wouldn't know," she admits. "I've never really had a friend before."

"You've been a part of eleven parties. Couldn't they be called your friends?"

"Not particularly," Frieren says. In fact, several of them insisted otherwise.

Himmel stares at her intently, like she's the unknown variable in this equation and not him. "What about your village, then?"

Her eyes sting. It must be the cold; the oncoming winter must be getting to her. "I don't see how that's relevant to this discussion."

"Sour spot, got it. What about, uh, Schrei?"

"Schrei is my familiar, not my friend."

"Huh."

"Would you consider her yours?"

"Eh, not really," Himmel shrugs. "More of an acquaintance. I barely knew her for a day, but her charming personality and excellent taste in food left an impression."

So it is dependent on time, then. "I think you might be the only person who has ever called her that."

"I refuse to believe it. Schreien Schrill is a gift to humanity—"

"Schrei is a necromantic abomination who uses the line between life and death like a jump rope," Frieren says flatly. "I don't see how anything about that would be charming to you."

Himmel, for some reason, finds this astonishingly funny, and several minutes pass before he stops wheezing. "So you've really never had friends before?"

"I never saw the need," she says.

"I can't say I don't find that sad," Himmel says.

There is a difference between being alone and feeling lonely, and Frieren has never felt lonely. "I don't understand why anything about this is sad to you."

"Never mind that, then. How 'bout a change?"

"…a change?"

Himmel smiles, then holds out a hand to her. "Hello, my name is Himmel, and I want to be your friend."

"I already know your name."

"Indulge me?"

Frieren sighs. "Hello, Himmel. My name is Frieren."

"Do you, then?" he asks, raising an eyebrow.

"Do I what?"

"Do you want to be my friend?"

Frieren doesn't need to ponder this question. "Seems like a waste of time. You'll be dead before I know it."

It's strange. Over the ten months Frieren has apparently spent with Himmel and his party, the only concrete opinion she has formed of them is that they are children with a death wish, and that they're incompetent enough to see that wish be granted. There is no rational reason for Frieren to take his hand and shake it, like they are really friends, even when they're barely acquaintances.

Somehow, even that isn't enough to stop her.

Chapter Text

When Himmel cooks, he thinks of his mother, long blue hair done up in a bun while her amber eyes sparkled with mirth, twirling through the air like the seed of a silver maple. He remembers watching her intently, astonished by how supernaturally resistant to heat her hands seemed, and how she never once measured an ingredient before cooking a dish to perfection.

"The quickest way to a person's heart is through their stomach," she'd reply with a wink when he asked her why she loved it so much, and over the years, Himmel has found this lesson to be particularly useful in showing the people he cares for that he loves them.

More than once, he has wondered about all the things she wanted to teach him and never could. Would she be proud of him, happy with the life he has chosen for himself? Probably not. Even the thought of roaming the Old Forest after dark would give her an aneurysm. But she'd be quite pleased, he thinks, that he can read all the recipes she carefully wrote on stiff cards for the sole purpose of passing them down to him. Every last one of them has been reduced to ash before he could, but Himmel wants to believe there was a point to it anyway.

If he hadn't been so stubborn as a boy, perhaps her lessons would have taken root.

"Are you sure that priest of yours wants white bread for his birthday instead of cake?" Brot asks.

Himmel carefully tucks the ends of his proved dough into a mold. "You would be surprised," he says. "There's nothing Heiter likes more than stale white bread and butter."

Except maybe wine.

Mister Brot is a kindly baker who has allowed Himmel to use his kitchen to make whatever he needs for the party—if it can even be called that, seeing how there will only be two guests, maybe three. But Eisen will make his signature hamburg steak, and Himmel will surprise him with a bottle of whiskey. It cost him the money he'd originally wanted to put towards a pair of silver gloves that went wonderfully with his outfit.

Not that it matters. When Himmel catches sight of his reflection on the glass pane covering the oven, he's almost shocked by how handsome the face staring back is. Cape flowing regally behind his back, bangs casting perfect shadows on alabaster skin. He examines his jawline from multiple angles and wonders if it was always this finely sculpted.

"I must say, Himmel, you are quite a dashing young lad," Brot says, clearly in awe.

"Why thank you, Mister Brot." Himmel gives himself a dimpled grin. "I was thinking the exact same thing."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"Hey, Frieren."

This is becoming a little bit of a habit. Himmel will lean against the door frame of their room, watch her reading something intently while being perched in the alcove like an owl, then start their next stilted exchange with this inane phrase.

Frieren doesn't look up from her grimoire, doesn't even blink. "Hmm."

"So, uh, I'm hosting this birthday party for Heiter."

"Hmm."

"Eisen's making hamburg steak," he continues. "I'm making this white bread Heiter used to be obsessed with at the orphanage, but I promise you that the steak is to die for."

"Hmm."

"I'm probably going to ask Mister Brot for some cake, even if Heiter said he didn't want any."

That word makes Frieren affix her unblinking gaze on him. He half expects her face to turn all the way 'round—who knows, maybe it will. "Cake?"

"I mean, you can't have a birthday party without cake, right?"

"I never understood that particular mortal tradition," Frieren says, turning the page on her grimoire. "It always seemed so dreadfully morbid."

"What's morbid about a cake?"

"You measure your fleeting years in candles even the slightest breeze could blow out in an attempt to cope with your inevitable mortality."

"Sounds pretty bad if you put it that way," Himmel admits. "But birthdays are a celebration of life, not…that."

Frieren doesn't respond with anything other than a noncommittal hum that makes Himmel wonder if he's just a waste of time for her. By and large, that's how Frieren treats him—treats them all—and when he asked her if she wanted to be his friend, she'd just said, You'll be dead before I know it.

But despite everything, she took his hand.

That can't have meant nothing.

"You should come," Himmel says. "It'll be fun."

"Is that an order?"

"No," he relents, then wonders if this is how she behaved with all her other adventuring parties.

"Hmm."

Himmel is kind of beginning to understand how she made not one friend after a life that, even by Eisen's standards, is ludicrously long. Irritation is never an emotion he thought he'd feel towards the White Lady, but this is not how he imagined the mythical figure that saved him from the cold, dark woods would be as a person.

"Alright, enjoy your book."

"Grimoire," she corrects stiffly.

Befriending Frieren might just be a lost cause. Unfortunately for her, it's his favorite kind.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Himmel remembers Sister Fessel as diametrically opposing any kind of joy, chief among them being birthday parties. "What makes you think that you putrescent little brat deserves a birthday party?" she'd asked before whipping a poor little girl black and blue for the crime of asking for a slice of her chocolate cake on her birthday.

In staunch opposition, Himmel had made it a point to throw his own party, putting cake batter into tangerine peels and cooking them over a fire and stealing bits of candlewick from the prayer room. He'd woken her up at midnight, along with every other child at the orphanage, and asked her to make a wish.

The scars from the whipping he got the next morning—and on the mornings after every illicit birthday party—have yet to fade, and Himmel wears them like badges of honor. He still feels a thrill when he, Eisen, and Heiter head to a tavern after a hearty meal of whiskey cake, white bread, and three full hamburg steaks.

(It strikes Himmel that Eisen didn't deign to make a fourth.)

"I'll have your strongest drink in your tallest glass," Heiter says.

The bartender scans Heiter's black robes with her hazel eyes. "Are you sure?"

"Absolutely."

"What's the occasion?" the bartender asks.

"My nineteenth birthday," he replies with a very self-satisfied smirk.

"Sorry, kid. No can do. The legal drinking age in Strahl is twenty-one."

"Twenty-one? But it's eighteen everywhere else!"

"Take it up with the Church," the bartender shrugs.

"But—"

"Scat."

Heiter sighs. "Alright, can I just get some water instead?"

"Heiter, don't," Himmel warns, but the bartender fills up a tankard and hands it to him.

"I don't care what any law says. I am not spending my birthday night sober."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"Are you really letting your priest drink?"

Himmel looks up from his cup of hot chocolate to see a woman in a brown leather tunic with a navy blue cloak 'round her neck. The claymore strapped to her back is so large even Himmel wonders if he might be able to swing it with ease.

"It's his birthday," Himmel says with a shrug. "And he's my friend, not my hostage."

"Sure, but he's also your party member," she points out. "He's your responsibility too."

"Responsibility? That's a big word."

"It's an accurate word. Most heroes learn that at one point or another."

"Are you one too?" he asks.

"In a sense." She holds out a gloved hand for him to shake. "My name's Dame Adeln. Pleasure to make your acquaintance."

Himmel's eyes widen, just a little. "Dame Adeln? Like a knight? That's incredible."

"Don't worry." Adeln laughs to herself, and it's a surprisingly bright sound. "The King touches both your shoulders with a sword and you kiss his wrinkly hand. That's all there is to it."

"You make it sound like it's nothing," Himmel says.

"Oh, please. I hear that you've been on quite a few adventures of their own."

Himmel feels his face flush, and he takes a sip of his hot chocolate. "Just here and there."

"Almost everyone in this bar knows your name and face, Himmel the Hero," Adeln says. "A word to the wise? A real hero's reputation precedes them, not the other way 'round."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

While Heiter makes a mockery of the Church as an institution and Eisen helps him, Himmel accepts Adeln's offer to go sit with her and her table. It's in a well-lit corner of the tavern, and the only one covered by a red tablecloth, lit by candles, and served with ceramic plates instead of tin.

When Himmel points this out, Adeln just winks at him.

"One of the many, many perks of being part of the King's Guild," she says.

"The what now?"

"The King's Guild? The one he made for adventurers by royal edict? Do you really not know what that is?"

"…uh, no?"

"Then who's funding your quest?"

Himmel worries the edge of his cape with his right hand. "Um, no one."

This appears to be somewhat of a shock to Adeln. "Oh. That's alright, every adventurer has to start somewhere."

"How did you start?" Himmel asks, leaning forward on his elbows.

"King Löwenherz sent out a missive to find the finest adventurers in the land," she replies with an air of nonchalance that makes even Himmel believe it isn't a big deal. "He then gave us his most important quest, finding the Fountain of Youth."

"That's his most important quest?" Himmel balks.

"The King's monomaniacal obsession with immortality drives most every decision he takes," says a man with long white hair done in a neat braid. His eyes are an icy blue, and every breath he takes crystallizes in front of him like it might on a much, much colder winter day.

"Diamant, quiet. That's treasonous." That comes from a nun with sunken beige eyes and dark habit, looks almost exactly like someone Himmel might see in the orphanage, save for the fact that she wears gleaming metal armor and holds a barbed spear like she knows how to use it.

"Stop being a hardass, Sister Karitas. You're not even from around here," Adeln huffs. "Besides, you're the healer. Think of all the people you could save from the Rot with just a few drops of that water."

"You should watch your tongue," Sister Karitas says. "In the Empire, even talk of dissent can get you executed."

"You're lucky that your priest isn't allergic to any and all forms of joy," Adeln tells Himmel. "And that your warrior isn't so large that she scratches the roof of every tavern we go to."

Himmel wants to say that's an exaggeration, but the woman sketching in her leather-bound book at the far end of the table is indeed that tall. She wears iron vambraces and greaves along with a brown corset, white blouse, and black slacks. Her hair has been shaved down to a severe buzzcut, and her pointed canines stick out from beneath her upper lips.

But when she pouts, she looks less like she could tear a horde of wildebeests apart with her bare hands and more like a petulant child. "Hey," she says indignantly.

"Sorry, Vieh, I know it ain't your fault that your Ma did a giant."

"I could tear your head off for that," Vieh grumbles. "I really do hate you, sometimes."

Adeln just chuckles to herself and shakes her head. They all seem so very close to each other, like four well-oiled parts of the same machine, and that digs a pit in Himmel's stomach so deep that freshwater bubbles up from the bottom. Even though they're traveling together at King Löwenherz's behest, they're all friends with each other. They fit with no friction, a feeling Himmel has only had with Eisen and Heiter.

Even subconsciously, he doesn't want to admit to himself who the outlier is.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"Team building exercise?" Adeln levels Himmel with the most nonplussed expression he has seen on anyone's face, and Himmel feels ridiculous for having asked in the first place.

"Yeah," he admits. "Some of my party members are, uh, having teething issues."

"I mean, ten whole months into your quest? Isn't it a late for teething issues?"

"Apparently, that's nothin' to an elf," Himmel huffs.

"An elf?" It's Diamant who interjects, blue eyes wide with surprise. "How on Erde did you find a real live elf?"

"In the woods," Himmel replies. "'S a long story."

"The Goddess has given you a gift," Sister Karitas says. "Some of the most powerful mages in all living memory were elves."

"I guess so," Himmel says, thinking about how Frieren killed that Hydra with just one wayward spell, how her valise turns would-be thieves into toads, how every brick of her house hums with magic. "I just wish she got along better with the rest of us."

"It's alright," Adeln claps him on the back, "all party leaders face these problems at some point. I mean, Sister Karitas is such a hardass that it took me four months to see her smile."

"Language," Sister Karitas mumbles.

"Sure, Ma. Sure." Adeln turns back to Himmel. "You need to find something that'll force the best and the worst out of every one of you. After all, it's pressure that makes diamonds."

"And it's rest that lets bread rise," Vieh says. "Not everything will work for everyone."

"Ignore our unpaid counselor. You, my new friend, need to take your party on a dungeon raid."

"…a dungeon raid?"

"There's one three miles north of Strahl," Adeln says, reaching inside her satchel to pull out a marked map of the Central Lands. "Teeming with mimics, monsters, and all kinds of horrible things. If you want to stress test your party, this would be it."

"I have no idea how to thank you," Himmel says. "If I could borrow the map—"

"Keep it. We've cleared five already, I'm getting a little bord of dark and dreary dungeons," Adeln winks.

Himmel locates Strahl on the map and traces his finger to a red "X" a centimeter or so above it. Maybe Adeln is right, and this is exactly what his party needs.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

The dungeon is as dark as Himmel anticipated, lit only by what sunlight is strangled through the small square windows in the high stone walls. All around them are strange inscriptions of horses, brilliant rubies set into their eyes and enameled gold forming curling flames that emit from their mouths.

"Are you out of your mind?" Heiter snaps. "A dungeon raid? Really?"

"Come on, Heiter! It'll be fun," Himmel says. "Think of it as a team-building exercise."

"But we're not even getting paid."

"Dungeon raids are quite customary for adventuring parties," Frieren says, not looking up from her grimoire. "I don't see why you're acting so surprised."

Himmel smiles to himself. Maybe this will work after all. "Thank you, Frieren."

"Do you have any thoughts?" Eisen asks him.

"Was I really always this handsome?" Himmel wonders aloud, examining his own reflection in the pane of one of the many doors.

Eisen's brow creases like a used napkin. "Any other thoughts?"

"I don't know. I think this place used to be some kind of barn," Himmel says, fingering a broken padlock. "These were stables, at some point."

Heiter kicks one of those doors so that it swings on creaky hinges. "I don't think it's much of anything now."

"It's a breeding ground for pernicious filth," Frieren says, tone completely flat.

"You mean monsters?" Himmel guesses.

"Yes, that."

"Okay," Himmel says, trying and failing to take stock of their situation. "Which way?"

He is greeted with three blank stares, all pinning him down like thumbtacks.

"What's everyone lookin' at me for? Frieren, won't you help us? You're the only one here with actual dungeon raiding experience."

Frieren, who has been squinting at her book as though the darkness is personally offensive to her, barely acknowledges him. "Hmm?"

"Fine," Himmel sighs. "There's only one door that isn't the entrance, so let's just go there."

The darkness opens like a pair of curtains shielding the actors from an expectant audience. To the tune of absolutely no applause, Himmel and the other step through.

Chapter Text

"I'm too sober for this," Heiter laments, reaching for his flask, and for once, Himmel is inclined to agree.

Thanks to Himmel's aimless wandering, they have found themselves in what looks to be a very large chicken coop, built out of iron like the stables were. Himmel found himself wondering when they first arrive what exactly this place could contain, only for that question to be answered in the most horrible way possible.

"'A cockatrice be a creature with the form of a fowl and the wings of a wyvern, being the accursed progeny of both. With but a single gaze, it hath power to petrify the very souls of hapless onlookers for the span of an hour,'" Frieren reads aloud.

"Maybe this would have been useful information before it got Eisen," Himmel suggests.

"But you didn't order me to—"

"How are we supposed to fight something like that?" Heiter says despairingly. "We can't keep hiding behind crates of chicken feed forever."

"It's alright!" Himmel gingerly taps Frieren on the shoulder. "Do you have any ideas, Frieren?"

"Hmm?"

"On how to defeat the cockatrice."

"Why would they be relevant?" Frieren asks, canting her head to one side. She seems to have meant it rhetorically, because she immediately cracks open the grimoire she brought in here with her.

"What's that one about?" Himmel asks.

"Applications of hydrokinetic magic in irrigation systems," Frieren replies, eyes bright as moonlit glades before she forces herself to turn away from him.

"Uh, Himmel? Can you quit with the talking and think?"

Himmel racks his brain for ideas, and lands on the worst one he can find. "Heiter, do you remember that one time when Mister Krank's chickens stopped laying eggs?"

"Mother Abhilfe had me bless it to—" What little of Heiter's expression Himmel can make out in the torchlight is absolutely horrified. "You can't possibly expect me to make that thing lay eggs."

"Chickens sit down when they need to nest. I can't think of any other way to make it stop."

Heiter is about to say something, but is cut off by the most horrific cluck. He very reluctantly pulls out his prayer book, and Himmel closes his eyes to have his own dialogue with the Goddess. All of a sudden, the clucking and the rhythmic scrape of the cockatrice's talons against the floor with each step both stop.

Himmel warily peeks out from behind the stack of crates they've been using as a shelter, glad that its unfocused eyes don't meet his. It's sitting down like a nesting chicken about to lay eggs, if only for a moment. Himmel tears off a piece of his cape, ties it around his eyes, and vaults off the crates while swinging his sword. He lands on skinned knees, but he's also greeted by the satisfying thud of that monster's head hitting the ground.

"That was brilliant!"

"Himmel, I—"

He doesn't give Heiter much time to respond, scooping him into the most bone-crushing hug he can offer. "I couldn't have found a better priest for my party."

"Yeah, right," Heiter snorts, but he returns the hug anyway.

"Frieren!" Himmel calls, waving a hand. "Do you want a hug too?"

"No thank you," she replies primly, still engrossed in her grimoire.

Eh, it was worth a shot.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Heiter looks absolutely horrified. "How on Erde are you still alive? You have to let me heal you."

"There's no need," Eisen says. He dislodges a pick mattock from his thigh without so much as a flinch, ignoring the vaguely nauseous sound Heiter makes. His body is riddled with farm implements because the last room they were in, which turned out to be a barn that launched sharp tools at them when they stepped on floor tiles that let out notes in minor key.

"Warriors really are a strange breed," Frieren murmurs. She pauses in front metal door and raps her knuckles against it one by one, starting at her pinky and ending at her index.

"Eisen?" Himmel asks.

Eisen takes that as a cue to tear the metal away like it's little more than paper.

"Looks like a grain silo," Himmel says, covering his nose to shield against the sharp, sour smell of rotten grain. "Smells like one too."

Heiter approaches a wooden box with an arched lid, held in place by a padlock. "…is that a treasure chest?"

"Could be a mimic," Eisen warns. "This is the kind of place they might lay in wait. Best we err towards caution."

Frieren ignores him and kneels in front of it, skimming her fingers over the grain of the wood.

"Did you hear what Eisen said?" Heiter asks. "It could be a—"

"I did. While your concern likely comes from a place of good intentions, all it shows is that you're an amateur." Frieren summons her staff. "Mikheit."

The chest glows a faint red, pulsing ominously.

"…that doesn't look very good," Himmel says.

"It's alright. The spell isn't always accurate."

Heiter frowns, the dim light creasing the wrinkles in his brown. "I didn't know magic could work like that."

"Suppose you have a thousand treasure chest, with each having a fifty percent probability of being a mimic." She draws a grid in the floor, filling the top-left and bottom-right squares with "CDXCV" and the other two with "V". "With the spell's average accuracy, this is roughly what the false positive and false negative rates would look like."

Eisen and Heiter look as perplexed as Himmel feels. "The what now?"

"This is a confusion matrix," she says.

"We're all very confused," Eisen says. "So I suppose it's accomplished its purpose."

"If there's a fifty percent probability of any chest being a mimic, about half of all those chests would not be mimics, so five hundred." Frieren points to the bottom-left square. "Out of those five hundred, the spell would falsely claim five of them to be mimics even if they weren't."

"So it would work, I don't know, ninety-five percent of the time?" Heiter guesses.

"Ninety-nine," Frieren corrects. "There's still a nonzero chance that this is a false positive. No mage worth their salt would ignore it."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"Help!" Frieren screams. "It's dark in here!"

Himmel tries very hard not to panic at the sight of teeth closing around his very tiny teammate's body, pink gums showing with each bite the mimic tries to take out of her. Frieren flails her legs about helplessly, kicking and screaming.

"That doesn't look very pleasant," Eisen says gravely.

"What do you think it'll be like when it swallows her?" Heiter asks. "Do you think it has a digestive system?"

"Stop standing there and wondering what'll happen when she gets eaten alive and help me save her!" Himmel barks. He grabs onto Frieren's right foot, and Eisen takes the left. When they pull in unison, Frieren starts whimpering for a different reason.

"Hurts."

"How else are we supposed to get you out?"

Heiter raises an eyebrow. "I don't know, give the mimic an emetic to make it puke her out? Wait, do you think the mimic has an uvula?"

"The thought of it having any reproductive parts disgusts me," Eisen winces.

"An uvula is just the fleshy tissue in the back of your throat. It's possible to cause a gagging reflex when stimulating that part of your mouth."

"I didn't understand a word of what you said," Himmel says, "but if it helps Frieren get out…"

"It will," Heiter insists. "Just push her in as hard as you can."

"It's scary," Frieren laments before Himmel and Eisen follow Heiter's instruction. The mimic pops open, making a retching sound, and a fully intact Frieren lands on the floor in a saliva-covered heap. Before it can close back up again, Himmel skewers its tongue with his sword, watching it twitch until it stops moving.

"Are you out of your mind?" Himmel asks. "Why would you even do that?"

"Treasure chests often have grimoires in them," Frieren informs him, as though it is a perfectly logical explanation.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

They run into the dragon when they're in a corridor bracketed on either side by thick lead pipes. Himmel can hear the sound of rushing water behind the metal, and he guesses that this is some kind of sewage system for the dungeon. Not that it seems to have been very effective, though. All around him, he's surrounded by what look like mounds of brown feces, but they smell odd, like coppery flesh rather than sun-dried wheat.

It isn't a very pleasant scent.

Himmel pulls up the high collar of his tunic to cover his mouth and nose, and winces when he feels something wet squelching beneath his shoes. "Frieren," he ventures. "How 'bout you cast that light spell?"

Frieren had thus far been illuminating their way with a ball of light that circled her head like a halo. Now, though, they're only guided by faintly flickering torches on sconces. Instead of answering in words, she presses her fingers against one of the strange, crystalline stalagmites growing up from the cave floor. They glow a bright yellow under her careful touch, and she keeps lighting their way as they go.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Heiter says. "I can't even sense anything with my mana."

"It's probably fine," Himmel says, after which point it proves too late to recant the words.

He hears a low growl that he feels in his teeth, and he draws his sword on instinct. When he closes his eyes, he can hear the scrape of taloned legs against the stone floor.

"D-d-dragon," Eisen stutters. "There's a dragon here."

"Why would something that flies be so deep in the dungeon?" Heiter says.

"It's alright." Himmel assumes the same stance that he did when facing Father Thunder. "This is the first dragon we're facing as a party. It might be intimidating, but if we work together as a team—"

"Himmel?"

"What is it?" Himmel asks Heiter. "Can't you see that I'm in the middle of an inspiring speech?"

A pale-faced Heiter points to the empty spot where Eisen used to be. The dragon roars, and Himmel feels the heat of its breath on his back.

Himmel smacks the heel of his hand to his forehead. "Oh, Goddess preserve us."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Himmel can see a bit of red cloth peeking out from underneath the swell of a pipe. He pulls up the high collar of his tunic to cover his mouth and nose. Eisen pulls the cloth back, and Himmel sighs.

"I know you're here, Eisen."

He walks around the mounds, careful not to let his cape get even more sullied—adventuring is not kind to nice clothes—until he sees the dwarf pressed to a wall, knees pulled up to his chest while his whole body shakes.

"What's wrong?" Himmel asks, kneeling in front of him.

Eisen says nothing.

Heiter takes a seat next to them and opens his flask. "Want something to take the edge off?"

"No thank you, my friend," Eisen says feebly.

"What happened back there? I've seen you face dragons before like it was nothing."

"Your faith is a precious gift, Himmel the Hero," Eisen says. "I just wonder if you should be vesting so much of it in a man who left his village to burn when a dragon attacked."

"He's right." Frieren, who has thus far been occupying herself with making the crystals glow bright yellow for nothing but her own amusement, just shrugs. "There is no place for a coward in a battle against monsters, or in a dungeon. You should have chosen a better warrior."

Eisen squeezes his eyes shut, and Himmel sees all the tears he stubbornly refuses to shed.

Every monster they have faced thus far, every mission they have gone on together, Frieren insists on digging her sharpest knife into Eisen's rawest wound. He thinks he knows enough about her to assume that she's merely being clueless rather than intentionally callous, but there's only so long he can let this continue.

"Would you please stop?" Himmel tells her.

"But I'm just making an honest observation," Frieren says, frowning as though she's confused.

"It's quite alright, Himmel," Eisen insists.

"That may be, but there's a difference between one honest observation and repeatedly saying something you know is unkind."

Frieren opens her mouth. "I—"

"It's cruel, Frieren," he says, as gently as he can. "And if you keep insisting on it, you're cruel."

Himmel turns to Eisen, gathering his shaking hands in his. "And Eisen? Next time you feel the urge to run, we'll run together. All of us." Despite everything, he feels himself smile. "We are a party, after all."

The dragon gets closer, scraping sharp talons along the lead pipes to create a sound that makes Himmel cringe.

"Cast a spell," he says.

Frieren touches her finger to a nearby crystal, feels it light up. "I can't."

"That one about redirecting water flows for irrigation," Himmel insists. "There's water behind these pipes. I need you to—"

"These are magic-nullifying crystals have internal lattices that disrupt the flow of energy around them," she explains.

"Anti-magic crystals?" Himmel asks. "You could've mentioned this before!"

"People don't like listening to me talk about grimoires."

The dragon is getting closer, its serpentine head smearing into a ruby blur in Himmel's eyes. Fire blooms in front of him in brilliant shades of orange and yellow, and Frieren stands right in front of it, every muscle in her body frozen for reasons Himmel doesn't understand. He wraps an arm around her waist and hoists her over his shoulder, surprised that she feels as light as a pillow stuffed with feathers.

"Grab Eisen and go!" Himmel yells at Heiter.

Fire at their heels, they go as fast as their legs can carry them.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

One day, bards will write entire ballads recounting the day Himmel the Hero singlehandedly slayed a dragon. There will be stories told over campfires with shadow puppets, far too many poems that rhyme "fire" with "dire", and at least one gouache painting made by an aspiring artist trying to gain admission into the Royal Academy.

"Heiter," Himmel says between pants. "How attached are you to your flask?"

"Reh gave it to me, so not at all," Heiter replies, tossing it to Himmel.

Himmel tears off a strip of clothing from his cloak and unscrews the flask's lid, dipping one end in the wine inside and wrapping the other around the side. If he can just light the cloth on fire, he reckons it should act as a fuse.

"What are you doing?" Eisen asks. "You can't go face that beast on your own."

"There's only so far we can run," Himmel says. "Eisen, would you do me a favor? When I give the signal, I want you to hit one of these pipes as hard as you can."

He grips the bottle between his teeth and draws his sword, charging before they can even think to ask him questions. The dragon roars, a plume of fire escaping from its open mouth, and Himmel ducks and rolls, though the cloth on the bottle catches fire. With the next stroke of his sword, he blinds the dragon on its right eye, blade barely making a dent on its scales.

When he dances within its grasp, it snaps its jaws to get a bite out of him. In that split second, Himmel throws Heiter's flask down the dragon's throat and slashes once more, the edge of his blade dragging through its left eye and leaving a deep, bloody mark. "Eisen, now!" he shouts, running away from the struggling dragon as fast as he can.

Eisen cracks both the pipes, and the whole corridor floods with rushing water. Soon, they're all on the run once more. The dragon's throat swells up as though afflicted by a malignant tumor before bursting like an overripe flute.

"Eisen, get that door!"

Eisen tears a wooden door off the wall with his bare hands, and Himmel places Frieren onto it before the other two climb in. The water rises all around them, sweeping the world's most rickety raft away on its white current. When Himmel looks out the side, he can see the crystals Frieren lit up still faintly glowing a warm yellow, almost like flecks of gold in a river.

From his vantage point, it's almost the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

When the corridor opens out into a vast room, their door-turned-raft stops sailing and starts falling. Himmel sees the ground rushing up to meet him, then shields his head and neck with her hands before he feels his body spasming with pain on impact. Sitting up is a painful process, only exacerbated by his eyes refusing to adjust the bright lights around him.

"What is wrong with you?" Heiter asks, and Himmel lifts his head to see that Eisen has somehow made a crater five times his size.

"I'm a warrior," Eisen replies, as though it’s a perfectly logical explanation when it really isn't.

Himmel stares up at the vaulted ceiling, covered with glowing white orbs that illuminate the space in light and warmth. Gilded vines crawl up the marble walls. Apple trees dig their thin but stubborn roots through the tiled floor and every fruit they bear glitters like the fraying edges of the midday sun.

"It's beautiful." A small gasp escapes Himmel's lungs.

"Are these gold?" Heiter gawks.

Eisen walks up to the nearest tree and plucks a fruit, sinking his teeth into it. "No," he replies. "But it tastes like honey, if that's even possible."

Heiter's face falls. "So we can't sell these."

"That was never the point," Himmel insists. "We're friends, and we made it here together."

"Whatever you say, melodramatic sap," Heiter grumbles, ruffling Himmel's hair and Eisen's helmet.

"Frieren!" Himmel calls, tossing Frieren an apple. "Wanna join us?"

She lets it fall by the wayside, not sparing him a single glance. "No, thank you."

Chapter Text

Frieren remembers being roughly half a century old when Flamme dragged her to the Library of Eiseberg and placed a pile of old tomes and scrolls in front of her. To someone who derived the greatest joy in the pursuit of magic, it had seemed like paradise, until she unrolled one of those scrolls to read its title.

"'De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum,'" Frieren had read aloud with a frown. "What do the ends of good and evil have to do with magic, Mistress?"

"Everything," Flamme had replied. "I want you to read all of this by the time we meet for dinner."

As any good student would, Frieren had obeyed, though the exercise had struck her as strange. She spent hours reading everything from the strict codes of ethics used by dragons to the works of human moral philosophers to the honor system on which giant society operated.

"Tell me," Flamme had said after. "What makes someone good or bad?"

"I don't have enough information to come up with a satisfactory answer. There's far too much inconsistency."

Flamme had smiled. "That's right. Laws change, Frieren, and for someone who's life is as long as yours, measuring morality by those laws is a useless pursuit. What might be a better metric?"

Frieren had pondered that question, stacking the books end to end so that their edges lined up. "Cruelty," she'd decided after some time. "Intentionally causing pain for its own sake is bad, and good exists relative to that."

The Library of Eiseberg has long since burned, but Frieren has still kept those lessons with her.

She has never even considered herself good, but one thing Frieren has always been steadfast on is not being cruel. When she fights monsters and slays demons, it is with apathy instead, and she has never caused pain for its own sake. Demons do that; their cruelty has plunged the world into darkness, and Frieren is nothing like them.

So yes, it stings a little when Himmel calls her cruel. That is something Frieren can admit to herself. But the months he has known her can be counted on both her hands, and if friendship is a function of time, he hardly knows her at all. By no reasonable metric does his assessment of her matter.

The choice of word, Frieren reckons, is what makes a sense of malaise cling to her like a stubborn morning fog. Had he called her anything else—callous, spiteful, heartless, evil—she knows that she would have hardly paid the comment a second thought. But it stings like a splinter under her skin she can't find, and all that is left for Frieren to do now is ignore it.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

The winter has trapped the Old Forest in a deep slumber. The trees—covered in hoar frost until they resemble glass sculptures—barely mind the intrusion of passersby. Strange critters make stranger marks on the fresh snow, disrupting its once perfect blankness. Though Frieren finds the winter quite beautiful, she prefers to enjoy it with a windowsill standing between her and the cold, a good book and a warm hearth by her side.

"Frieren," Himmel says, his bright voice shocking her from her thoughts. "Do you want to build a snowman?"

Frieren looks over his shoulder to see Eisen and Heiter packing snow into what look to be crude approximations of each other. Heiter uses fern to make the warrior's beard and mustache, while Eisen carefully arranges sticks to mimic the priest's glasses.

"Would you rather we make a snow-elf instead?" Himmel says. "How would that work? Stick two holly leaves on either side for ears?"

That is, admittedly, exactly how that works. It never snowed in the Summer Court—the elves and their magic kept the weather perpetually trapped in the golden haze of summertime—but Frieren has fuzzy memories of Flamme helping her pack fresh snow into larger and larger balls, much like Eisen and Heiter are doing right now.

"Okay, so you're not a snowman person. What about sledding? There's a slope a ways from here that looks quite fun."

Frieren digs her fingers into her opposite forearms, clutching herself to ward off the chill.

"I'm guessing you're not very fond of winters," he says, then removes his cloak and sets it on her shivering shoulders. "Better?"

She wants to nod in assent.

"Is this about what I said earlier?" Himmel guesses. "I'm sorry if I was too harsh."

"You were making an honest observation," Frieren says, taking a sudden interest in the way her feet sink into the fresh snow covering the Path until they reach frosty soil. "I can't very well fault you for that."

"So it's water under the bridge, then?"

She frowns at him. "What bridge?"

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Winter in the Central Lands never gets cold enough to freeze large bodies of water, so ships continue their passage through the Granz Channel relatively uninterrupted. The sky looks like it has been rendered with oil paint in shades of cobalt blue and titanium white, and Frieren wonders what it would be like to find it beautiful.

"We'll spend some time here to wait out the worst of the winter," Himmel says. "It's inconvenient to travel in the snow by foot."

"Is that a tavern I see?" Heiter asks, at which Himmel grabs him by the high collar of his black robes. "Come on, Himmel. What happened to the two hundred coppers we got after the Hydra?"

"It was one hundred, actually, and I think your flask knows the answer to that question." Himmel turns then to Eisen. "And don't get me started on all the meat you keep eating, you big lug."

"I might never get a chance to have veal cutlets with prosciutto and sage again," Eisen says.

"At least we ate what we bought! You just got yourself a new cape to feel pretty," Heiter says. "You're a country bumpkin on a death quest, not a statue model. We wouldn't have such a big hole in our pockets if you could just get over yourself."

Frieren summarily ignores all this and turns to an atlas with annotations on how the stars' power could potentially be channeled to cast different kinds of spells. What excites her most about this book is that she just acquired it fifty years ago, and it's so outside the purview of what she usually reads that she stands to learn a lot of new things.

"Five coppers a night for two rooms?" Himmel asks when they reach the inn. "Are you sure you're not underselling yourself?"

"Never question the Goddess's blessings," Heiter says. "We'll take it."

"Don't mind the price, dear boy," says the innkeeper as he hands them each a ring of keys and a wooden door hangers with the words "Do Not Disturb" on one side and "Room Service Needed" on the other. "It's always low during Swooping Season."

"Swooping Season?" Eisen asks.

"When the rocs from the foothills decide we're their favorite breakfast," the innkeeper says. "You seem like you've got a good heads on all your shoulders. Don't stay out past sundown if you want to keep 'em."

"That won't be an issue," Himmel says brightly. "We'll take care of the roc problem before that can happen."

At this, Frieren looks up from her atlas. "Do you even know what that is?"

"No," Himmel admits, "but we can improvise. I think we've gotten pretty good at that."

"What are you, some kind of hero?" the innkeeper laughs. "I'll be, you're not joking."

"He never is," Heiter laments, "but what can you do about it?"

"If you crazy kids manage to make the Swooping Season a distant memory, I'll return every copper you've paid me."

Himmel shakes the innkeeper's hand and grins. "You have yourself a deal."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"We're too tired to do much of anything today," Himmel yawns. "Let's turn in and see if the innkeeper was right about the Swooping Season."

Even through the fogged window of their room in the inn, the spectacle is much too distracting for Frieren to miss, even with thoughts of her newest read on her mind. The streets are empty before the sun starts to set, so when winged beasts descend from a sky with shrieks so loud they might give Schrei a run for her money, there is no real damage done except to property and one poor stray cat.

This room doesn't have an alcove, so Frieren lies down beneath a thick comforter and levitates her atlas so that it hovers just above her face. She lets the book lower to her chest when she feels the uncomfortable pressure of prying eyes.

"What?" she asks Himmel.

"Nothing," he says, smiling to himself. "I've just never seen you read like that before."

"It's cold, and the blanket is warm. Nothing about this should be amusing to you."

"Who said it was amusing?"

Heiter often says one thing and means another, and he seems to take great pleasure in Frieren's cognitive dissonance. Eisen often says nothing to her at all, leaving silences in his wake that she couldn't decipher even if she wanted to. But of the three of them, Himmel is the one that vexes her the most.

"I'm not amused," he says. "We have a big day tomorrow."

"Hmm."

"We've got to be up bright an' early."

"Hmm."

"…do you want to come with us?"

"Not particularly," Frieren admits, "but I will if it's an order."

Himmel says nothing to this. He goes about carefully draping his cape on a rocking chair in the far corner, smoothing out the lapels of the blue tunic he just spent hours ironing the creases out of with a kettle.

"You know," he says. "You really ought to be kinder to Eisen."

"Niceties are a performance I haven't bothered with in a thousand years," Frieren says. "I don't see why I should start now."

"I said be kind, not be nice."

"Is there a difference?"

"It's kinda like you said. Being nice is saying stuff like saying 'please' and 'thank you' and 'excuse me'. Being kind is 'bout making the effort so that someone else can be a little happier."

"Why would I want to make Eisen happy?"

"You really don't get it, do you?" Himmel sighs, then snuffs out the candle on the nightstand between them with his pinched fingers. "It's alright. We have time."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

No matter what opinion Himmel holds of her character, he regrettably finds her useful. So at first light, she finds herself awoken by him peeling her atlas off her face. With Himmel's cape on her shoulders, she forces herself to trek through the sludge lining the streets and up the slow-covered foothills.

"Does that beast book of yours say anything 'bout rocs?" Himmel asks.

"It's bestiary, not beast book."

"Are you always this pedantic?" Heiter asks.

Frieren looks through the alphabetically sorted index to find the right page number. Radande. Revenant. Rephaite. Roc. "''Hark, the Roc, a fabled avian of monstrous size, whose shadow doth eclipse the sun like a very cloud, and whose beak can rend a crocodile asunder with a single, fell bite,'" she reads aloud.

Eisen's gloved hands shake, but he hides them behind his red cloak. She wonders if Himmel notices, but then remembers what he said in the dungeon. It's cruel, Frieren. And if you keep insisting on it, you're cruel. She does not care for what Eisen thinks of her, or what she thinks of Eisen, but for once she keeps her mouth shut.

Himmel brings a finger to his lips and gestures for them all to join him in hiding behind a pile of jagged grey rocks. Frieren stands up on her tiptoes to catch a glance of what he is seeing. Just beyond, slumbering rocs rest on a nest made from driftwood and bone.

"We should strike now," Frieren says, "get this over with."

"No," Himmel insists. "It isn't fair to strike a sleeping enemy."

"We'll be overwhelmed if they wake up," she says, frustrated that he doesn't seem to be getting it. "I'd rather deal with a nest of dead rocs than ones that are alive.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but Frieren makes a good point," Heiter says. "Stop getting your knickers in a twist and listen to what she has to say."

"Fine," Himmel sighs. "What's your plan?"

"Destroy them," she replies simply.

"With just one spell?" Eisen gawks.

"What? Like it's hard?"

Himmel interlaces his fingers and brings them to his brow, eyes closed, when one of the rocs awakens with a flap of its wide wings and a screeching cry. It descends without warning, and Himmel is barely able to hold it off with his sword.

Though Eisen's hands are shaking, he still picks up his axe and strikes. Though Heiter is halfway through his flask right now, he still casts a spell that creates three brilliant beams of light. Between them is Himmel, who moves much faster than Frieren thought would be possible without the use of a spell, but no matter how many pinions are cut on the blade of his sword, it isn't enough.

Frieren tugs on the sleeve of Himmel's tunic. "Tell them to get back," she tells him, before putting as much distance between herself and the rocs as she can. Himmel barks out an order and they follow, gathering behind her as she brandishes her staff.

"Zerua hautsi."

She puts as much mana behind the spell as she can, and the rocs gathering above them like the shadow of an angry storm cloud are swallowed by a shattering sky. As far as spells go, this one has always looked spectacular, leaving cracks overhead as though a mirror has been broken by a hammer. Heiter and Eisen have the wide eyes of idiots who have never seen a competent mage before, but Himmel simply interlaces his fingers and bows his head.

"Why do you keep doing that?" Frieren asks him, more peeved than curious.

"If I don't mourn 'em, who will?"

It must be terribly inconvenient, she thinks, to feel anything for a monster incapable of the same.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"It's almost New Year's," Himmel says, leaning against the wooden fence between him and the water in the channel. "Do you have any resolutions?"

"The years are far too many for me to have a resolution for each one," Frieren replies.

"The people 'round here host a sunrise festival. You should come."

"Is that an order?"

"No, but—"

"Then I have no reason to obey."

"Eisen and Heiter will be there," Himmel says as though that will convince her.

It doesn't. Waking up early in the morning is never worth the trouble.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

She finds a certain comfort in reading about the stars. For as long as she has been alive, they have been fixtures in the sky. No matter how many generations pass, no matter how many different stories are told, the stars in their circles are uncaring as ever.

"It was a beautiful sunrise," Himmel says. "You're the kind of person who would've loved it."

"Why?"

"What do you mean? You're my friend."

From what little Frieren has ascertained of friendship, she has come to the conclusion that friends are those whose company one finds pleasant. "You called me cruel," she frowns, mostly in confusion at the dissonance.

"I've called Heiter far worse." Himmel kneels in front of her, looking up. "For the record, I don't think anybody's inherently cruel."

"Huh?"

"People are capable of kindness and cruelty in equal measure. And you are one of the kindest people I know."

"I see."

"The only thing I can't seem to figure out is what makes you tick."

"I'm not a clock. I don't tick."

"Nonsense, everyone ticks." Himmel stands up and pulls a stool towards them so he can speak to her at eye level. "Eisen is on this quest because I believe in him, and Heiter is on this quest because he believes in me. But you? You're still a mystery."

Frieren's hands clench in the fabric of her skirt. "I've told you this before. I was bored, nothing more."

"I don't think I believe that," Himmel says, so she simply turns back to her atlas.

"Hmm."

Himmel then dangles a grimoire in front of her. When Frieren reaches up to grab it, he yanks it out of reach.

"Nuh-uh. You've got to do something for me first," he says.

Her answer is immediate. "Anything."

"Golly, I should've tried this before," he chuckles. "Fly kites with us."

"…what?"

"The people of the Granz Channel used to fly kites at sundown each New Years' before the Swooping Season became a problem."

"If I did, would you give me the grimoire?"

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Slabs of frozen sand crack under Frieren's boots when she makes her way through the beach. The horizon blooms with bursts of pink and purple, colors reflected on the choppy waters below. All around her, humans have gathered with wooden spindles and kites, turning the sky into a mosaic of bright colors.

"You came!" Himmel says, smiling so widely that she wonders if his cheeks are hurting.

"I just want the grimoire," she says, and Himmel's face falls for no real reason. "Where is it?"

"I'll give it to you after we're done here." From behind his back, Himmel procures a kite and a spindle wound with kite thread. "So? What do you think?"

"The craftsmanship is a little shoddy, but it seems functional." Frieren looks past his shoulder to see Eisen and Heiter flying kites of their own, jostling into each other while yelling obscenities about who's going to cut the other's kite down first.

"You could at least pretend to be thankful," he grumbles.

"Why would I do that?"

Himmel laughs as though she's just said something exceedingly funny. "Do you need any help?" he asks when Frieren tries to fling her kite into the air, but it just flops to the ground.

"If Heiter and Eisen can fly a kite, I have no reason to see why it should be beyond me." She's about to cast a spell when Himmel steps beside her, putting one hand on the spindle and the other on the string.

"Like this," he says gently.

On the wings of an updraft, her kite rises. She watches it get lost among a hundred more, and wonders how long it will take for her to forget this ever happened.

Chapter Text

Heroic rescues are quite par for the course on an adventure, Heiter finds. He does not usually mind the aftermath of these rescues, namely being treated like royalty by villagers who correctly assume they're famished from weeks of traveling through the Old Forest.

It's during one of these rescues that Heiter finds himself crouched behind a blackberry bush, hoping that the dark green of the leaves won't clash horribly with his hair. He carefully peeks his head to see the monster they are to face standing at what must be at least thirteen feet tall, with the legs and torso of a man but the head and leathery black skin of a bull.

Crushed in the bend of one of its elbows is a little girl who can't be more than five, brown hair done up in pigtails and pink dress smeared with blood. It was her helpless screams that drew Himmel here, and the possibility that they might hurt her during their attack that makes Heiter feel like his head is on a chopping block under a guillotine.

He reaches for his flask with shaking hands and begins to unscrew the lid.

"Would it be cruel of me to call you a corrupt priest?" Frieren asks.

Heiter narrows his eyes at her and tucks it back in his robes. "I don't know, would it?"

"Himmel implied it would be cruel of me to call Eisen a coward," she says. "I was wondering where it would be appropriate to draw the line between an honest observation and an unkind one."

"I'm perfectly fine with you calling me whatever you want," Heiter says through gritted teeth.

Frieren's blank expression doesn't change one bit, and she nods in a way that makes Heiter wonder if she understood anything at all.

"Frieren, what does your book say?" Himmel asks.

"'With head and haunches of bull, and torso of man, the Minotaur is a most—'"

"Does that say anything about how to kill it?"

"No," she says, then flips to what Heiter assumes is random page and starts reading.

"Now seems like the perfect time to be reading," Heiter mutters darkly to her.

"It is," Frieren says. "I'm quite bored."

"Put the book down," Himmel orders. "There's a life at stake here."

Himmel's explicit orders seem to be the only thing that make Frieren resemble a functioning member of their party, let alone society. Heiter doesn't know why she stays if she's going to treat even saving lives as a passing inconvenience.

"Sorry, I can't make this one give birth to quintuplets," Heiter says before Himmel can open his mouth. "I can bless bulls to be more virile, but I don't know how much help that'll be here."

"Okay, never mind. Frieren, do you have any binding spells you could cast on its ankles? Like, I don't know, a bola?"

"Sure," she says blankly.

"Perfect. Heiter, three spears. Eisen, take the head. I'll get the girl. Frieren…you do you."

Heiter steals a drink from his flask and opens his prayer book, wine-wet fingers smearing on one of the worn pages. He casts his spell with all the mana he can spare, three golden spears cutting deep gashes across the Minotaur's cheek. Even though it knocks all the air from his lungs, drawing a monster's blood is always worth the cost.

Himmel moves next, so fast that Heiter can't even see him draw his sword, and soon the Minotaur's hand falls to the ground with the thud of a felled branch. He stands between her and an angry swing that the Minotaur makes with its other free hand.

Frieren summons her staff and stands, pointing its golden tip towards the monster. "Estekatu."

Eisen's hands shake when he grips his axe. For once, Frieren makes no comment about him being a coward, just stares with the most soulless eyes Heiter has seen on anyone. When the monster trips backwards, Eisen takes the opportunity to land a blow with a crack so deafening that Heiter could've sworn it was bone.

Then, girl in one hand and sword in the other, Himmel beheads the beast with one smooth stroke.

"Is it dead?" the girl asks, clinging to Himmel like a barnacle.

"It is," Himmel reassures, smoothing her hair back in an easy gesture of affection and pressing a kiss to her forehead. It reminds so Heiter of his father that his stomach twists into knots. "You're safe now."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

The girl—Helle, her name seems to be—has dragged her parents from the nearby village to introduce them to the hero that saved her life. Himmel is perfectly happy with this arrangement, kneeling to engage in an animated conversation with who now seems to be his most fervent admirer.

"Thank you, Mister Himmel," Helle says, draping her arms around Himmel's shoulders.

"You're very welcome, Miss Helle. I'm glad to have been of service to you." Himmel kisses her knuckles like he's a knight in shining armor, and Helle giggles with unadulterated delight.

"You must come back to our village," Helle's mother says. "We owe you a debt we can't repay with simple words."

Himmel stands up, and when Helle lifts her short arms, he hoists her onto his waist. "My party and I would deeply appreciate that."

On the way to the village, Frieren tugs at the sleeve of Himmel's tunic.

"What is it?" he asks her.

"You keep asking me why I'm here," Frieren says. "What exactly makes you tick?"

Himmel looks confused. "What…makes me tick?"

"Everybody ticks," Frieren says. "That's what you said, right? What evidence do you have to substantiate your claim?"

"Did you forget already? I've told you this before," Himmel says, patting Helle's head when she rests it in the crook of his neck.

"But if boredom isn't enough of a reason, then vengeance isn't either."

"Who said anything 'bout vengeance? I just want to leave a mark on this world that nobody will forget. Don't we all?"

"I can't say I see the point to an impulse like that. The mortal urge to outlive your meaningless lives will always be somewhat alien to me."

"Frieren," Heiter says, feeling quite inspired by the way Himmel's face falls. "Can you do something for me?"

"If it's a reasonable request," she says, "I might consider it."

"Put your hand on your chest and tell me if you hear anything."

Frieren does as instructed. "Just my heartbeat."

"Strange. Didn't think there was anything there for you to hear."

"Heiter," Himmel says. "Can you please stop that?"

"Stop what?" Frieren asks, canting her head to one side as if she's confused.

"Yeah, Himmel. Stop what?"

"We're talking later," Himmel says in a stern tone that reminds Heiter too much of Mother Abhilfe for comfort. "And Frieren, no matter what Heiter says, you're not heartless."

"Why would I be? Any being with a working cardiovascular system has a…" Frieren trails off. "Oh. You simply wanted to call me apathetic."

Worse, actually, if Himmel would permit it. For what it's worth, Frieren doesn't seem to care at all, and Heiter wonders if she's even capable of it. Her face is as blank as the surface of a frozen lake, and Heiter wonders what it would take to cause even the smallest ripple.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Heiter does not like traveling with Frieren, but he is learning to tolerate her. It reminds him of the time when he and Himmel first started to share a bunk bed. Between constant snoring and nightly requests to read to him from The Heroicke Adventures of King Gewählt, it took Heiter months to ignore the urge to strangle Himmel.

Over time, though, Heiter has become used to a tolerable level of permanent unhappiness. As the days they spend in this village turn to weeks, he discovers that the best course of action is simply to avoid Frieren. She seems much more interested in her strange books than Himmel's relentless efforts to befriend her, and she seldom joins them unless she's explicitly ordered to.

"You really ought to be kinder to her," Himmel says after they're done weeding a cornfield, a chore Frieren couldn't be bothered to help with.

"She doesn't seem to mind one bit," Heiter points out.

"That may be, but—"

"If she doesn't care about what I say to her, then why should you?"

Himmel sighs and runs a hand through his hair in a way that makes Heiter wonder if he's posing for someone.

"You should be glad I'm talking to Frieren at all," Heiter says, "unlike present company."

Eisen is silent, as he usually tends to be in matters concerning Frieren. Whenever Himmel invites her to go shopping or play cards or cook hamburg steaks, his silence is much louder than Heiter's constant—and altogether harmless—quips.

"Aren't you going to tell Eisen to be kinder to her?" Heiter asks.

"Nah. That one's genuinely Frieren's fault, even if she doesn't see it that way. You, on the other hand…"

"I get it, Saint Himmel. I'll be nice."

"I'm not asking you to be nice, Heiter. I'm asking you to be kind."

"Alright," Heiter sighs. "If it means so much to you, I'll try my best."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

One of Heiter's favorite parts of traveling the world is learning what people celebrate and why. After all, people celebrate what they hold sacred, and even if Heiter doesn't always understand, he tries to enjoy with them. It's just that this village's yearly celebration of something called Friendship Day feels much too on the nose.

They exchange bracelets made of wooden beads, colored with egg tempera paint. Heiter has managed to paint several beads a pale yellow, and he is stringing them on hemp cord when he sees a throng of kids gathered in an agitated line under a jacaranda tree.

Heiter expects to see Himmel at the heart of that crowd, but is utterly shocked to find Frieren there instead. Her face is blank when she is handed wooden bracelets, and Heiter finds himself wondering why anyone would even bother until the beads start to change color. Some sparkle like diamonds, some glow like lanterns, some are matte but bright.

Frieren doesn't seem to find the least bit of joy in this, her face blank as ever, but she accepts each request with a patience he thought beyond her.

"It's not your turn with Mistress Frieren yet," says a boy at the front of the line, glaring at him as he cuts through.

"We have important party stuff to discuss," Heiter replies thinly.

"No, we don't," Frieren says. "Would Himmel not have asked us to convene if—?"

"We do."

Frieren dismisses the crowd and turns to him once they've dispersed. "What seems to be the pressing issue?"

"It's just…" By the Goddess, why is this so hard? "It isn't that big a deal."

"Alright then." She pulls a grimoire from where it's tucked into her wide, black belt and starts to read.

Heiter scoffs. "Are you just going to start reading?"

"You did say it wasn't a big deal."

He did, didn't he? "Look, I…I just wanted to say I'm sorry."

"Sorry?" She sets her grimoire down on her lap. "Whatever for?"

"What I said earlier," Heiter grits out. "Uh, I wasn't being very kind, you know."

"It was an honest observation, and you aren't the first to make it." Frieren turns a page of her grimoire. "I must say, your use of metaphor was quite creative."

"What metaphor?"

"Insinuating that I must have no literal heart since I lack a figurative one," she explains. "Or would it be irony?"

This, more than anything, makes Heiter feel a stab of guilt so potent that he might have been struck by a poisoned needle. Heiter isn't Himmel, and he never knows what to make of her perpetually blank expression, but her words all but tell him that she's been mulling over this for hours. It isn't a very happy picture.

"Neither, really," Heiter says, wringing his hands. "I, uh, was just trying to be sarcastic."

Frieren snorts, and it could almost be a laugh. "Humans are always so creative when they come up with ways to be disingenuous. The best lies I've told have never been with words at all."

Heiter sits cross-legged next to the rock she has claimed as a perch. "Metaphor, irony, sarcasm—I shouldn't have said it. I…I'm sorry."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

The silence that follows is so awkward that Heiter feels it beginning to strangle him. "Did Himmel put you up to this?"

"Up to what?"

"The kids' bracelets, I mean."

"I didn't see the point at first, but he offered me a grimoire," she says, and that kind of explains everything.

"Is there a point to that spell?" Heiter asks. "Aside from making things look pretty."

Frieren pulls at the elastic string of a blue-beaded bracelet Himmel no doubt gave her and watches it snap back into place when she lets go. "Not particularly," she says, lips barely quirking. "Does there have to be?"

As far as sentiments go, on that they are inclined to agree.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

The Goddess must have a wicked sense of humor, because the world not only reinforces Himmel's vanity, it rewards him for it. Two weeks into their stay, Helle's father gathers all the villagers together to commission a statue of Himmel the Hero. Somewhere between killing the Minotaur that had been plaguing them for a decade and helping them with every chore they could think of, he won their hearts and their purses.

"Does this look okay?" Himmel asks, putting one hand on his hip and resting the other on the hilt of his sword, staring at the rays of sunlight filtering in through the window.

"It looks perfect," the much harangued sculptor says. "May I finalize this sketch?"

"Before you do, would I look better if I tilted my—?"

"Please, Himmel the Hero. I beg of you."

"I'm too sober for this," Heiter says when they're well into their third hour in the sculptor's studio. He knows in his heart of hearts that they would've been done much earlier if Himmel was as decisive about his pose as he seems to be in his boneheaded dedication to futile quests.

"Heiter, would you mind if I asked you a question about linguistics?" Frieren asks.

"Sure. It's got to be more interesting than watching Himmel spreading his feathers like a bloody peacock."

"I've never been much interested in anthropology, but I was thinking about what you said to me earlier in an effort to call me apathetic—"

"You're still thinking about that?" Heiter asks. "I'm really sorry, I mean it."

"You were simply making an honest observation," Frieren replies. "That hardly calls for an apology. But the verbal irony you used to convey that sentiment was quite unique."

"Verbal irony? I was just trying to be sarcastic, and I know I shouldn't—"

"Define sarcasm for me," Frieren says, frowning like a scholar hunched over a thick tome.

"Umm. I guess it's when you say one thing and you mean another."

"But isn't that just a lie?"

"Not in this case," Heiter says. "People around you can usually tell you're trying to be sarcastic."

"How?"

"I don't know, inflection? Tone? Or the thing you say is just so ridiculous that everyone knows you mean the opposite."

"And to what effect?"

"Humor, mostly," Heiter says, feeling absolutely rotten for trying to make that kind of joke at the expense of someone who clearly doesn't understand it.

"Hmm." Frieren looks contemplative, tapping her chin with a slender finger, eyes narrowed at roughly nothing.

"I'm sorry," Heiter mumbles again, mostly to himself.

"Himmel!" Frieren calls out. "You look exceedingly handsome."

Heiter chokes on his drink.

Himmel turns his head, lifting his chin with his index finger as though he's examining a diamond for purity. "I really do, don't I?"

Then, Frieren turns to Heiter. "Did I do it right? The sarcasm?"

He pauses for a moment before he bursts out laughing until his knees shake with the force of it. Heiter clutches his aching stomach with one hand and wipes the wine that's spilled down his robes with the sleeve of another.

"That was perfect, Frieren," Heiter laughs, noting with no small amount of pleasure how stricken Himmel looks. "Absolutely perfect."

Frieren's face is as blank as ever, which makes it hard for Heiter to picture her smiling. But he can imagine her amused—perhaps even pleased with herself—she must be. Even Eisen, who has thus far been steadfast in avoiding Frieren as if even eye contact will infect him with the Rot, is smiling so widely that his thick mustache does nothing to hide it.

Heiter pats her on the head, and she tenses like a feral cat allergic to humans. It's exactly the opposite reaction Himmel has, who always leans into the touch like a much too happy dog with a fondness for being scratched.

"My head is not for patting," she grumbles, at which he withdraws his hand.

"What are you going to do? Turn me into a toad?"

The look Frieren gives him is so dirty that Heiter feels it cut to his bones. He thinks back to poor, poor Löwen and decides there are lines that he can't risk crossing. Still, he gives her a bracelet with bright yellow beads, painted to resemble what Heiter remembers Ringel's plumage to have been like, and when he catches Himmel smiling at him out the corner of his eye, he smiles back.

Chapter Text

They have been traveling through the Old Forest for days now, and Eisen has spent enough time in the Central Lands to understand the manner of dark creatures that call this place home. The shadows seem to be the many fingers of one deeply cruel organism, and today it reaches out to them with a lindworm.

"Remember the plan?" Himmel asks.

He can handle a lindworm. It is smaller than Father Thunder was, and the Hydra, so though his hand shakes, Eisen assumes a wide stance and brandishes his axe.

"You look like you swallowed a frog," Heiter says to Frieren.

Frieren has one hand clamped over her mouth and shakes her head.

"If you want to say something, just spit it out," Himmel says. "We'll have time for dramatic monologues later."

"That's rich coming from you," Heiter quips.

"Still. What is it that you wanted to say, Frieren?"

"You were the one who ordered me not to," she blurts. "You said it would be cruel."

Ah.

Another unsolicited comment, most likely about him.

"It's alright," Eisen shrugs. "I have thick skin."

"Your hands are still shaking," Frieren says, tone so inflectionless he almost forgets that it's a person who is speaking.

"Frieren," Himmel chides sharply. "I told you—"

"But he said it was alright!"

Eisen grew up hearing a great many things about the elves. Some said that they could only be hurt by the sting of well-forged iron. Some said they were demons under careful veneers. Some said they were bright and beautiful, but that meant nothing because they were equally cold and cruel. Some even said that they were incapable of lies.

He really hopes that last part isn't true.

"I just think someone with shaking hands has no business being anywhere near a battlefield."

He does not know enough to distinguish fact from fiction when it comes to Frieren, but what he has been able to discern about her is this much: she means every single thing she says about him. Eisen's hands get clammy and his knees lock, and when the lindworm looms above them, ready to strike, all he can really do is stand there.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Even as a young squire in Drachenfort, Eisen always hated sparring. They always dueled in cylindrical pits that were so deep and dark they might as well have been wells, the sharp sounds of clashing axes echoing so tightly against the stone walls that it made him feel claustrophobic. As he trades blows with Himmel in a grassy clearing wet with dew, that feeling lingers in trace amounts.

Himmel, in a stark contrast, loves it. It's probably because he has only ever done so in the pleasant air of early mornings, just as the sun begins its arc across the sky. Though they have yet to eat their first meal, Himmel is so quick and light on his feet there seems to be something fey about him.

It is, quite frankly, exhausting. Because while Himmel is certainly his inferior in raw strength, he tries to make up for it with his speed and agility, landing the right blows in the right places. And it almost works. Almost. But Eisen has discovered that the trick to beating him is to simply endure, to stagger to his feet even in the face of an overwhelming maelstrom.

Before long, Himmel is panting and on the ground. "You got me," he says, grin too jubilant for someone who has just lost.

"I always get you," Eisen says, helping Himmel to his feet. "Sometimes I wonder why you bother."

"How else am I supposed to get better?" Himmel winks. "Besides, there's no point in only fighting opponents you know are less powerful."

Eisen has entered a kind of symbiosis with Himmel, where he learns to be a little quicker and his friend learns to be a little stronger, and each morning they both learn to be a little better. He never really had that with his contemporaries in Drachenfort, because every time he entered that arena, he won.

Sir Brav's philosophy was much like Himmel's. You won't learn a thing against those weaklings, he'd say before throwing Eisen in an arena with a dragon. Some with armored spikes, some with thorned tails, some with wings that flapped faster than heartbeats, some with multiple heads that spewed toxic fumes. Each time, his hands shook. Each time, his grip faltered.

"Should we wake Heiter up?" Himmel asks when he sees the shallow cut on Eisen's forearm left there by his blade.

"I'd rather not take my chances," Eisen admits, wincing slightly at their friend's pallor.

Even though Hieter will be sober now if they wake him, he will also be groggy and disoriented, which they've learned—the hard way—are bad things for a healer to be. With both him and Frieren out like snuffed candles, Eisen is left alone in Himmel's company.

"You've been awfully quiet these days," Himmel muses, sitting by the remains of the fire they lit last night. "More than usual."

Eisen has nothing to say to this, so he just prods at the dead coals with a long wooden stick.

"You know that you can tell me anything, right?"

"I do," Eisen says. "Would you believe me if I said it was nothing?"

"No, but I'm willing to wait till you're ready to be honest," Himmel says. The silence they lapse into is not entirely comfortable.

"I'm afraid you're going to spend the rest of this journey looking for the Eisen that felled Father Thunder."

"Why would I go looking if you're right here?"

"But I'm not," Eisen insists, unsure of what to do with a gushing wound he once thought closed. He does not want to admit what opened it, but it is hard to ignore the root cause when it is sprawled over a bedroll like some strange starfish. "Twice over I have let my people burn. Perhaps your mage was right about, well, me."

Your mage, not ours. He wonders if Himmel notices the distinction.

Himmel, who is usually quick to jump to Eisen's defense, even against himself, says nothing for once. "Hmm."

"I…I'm sorry."

"Do me a favor, next time," Himmel says. "I want you to imagine everything and everyone you've ever loved on an unlit pyre, with that monster holding a match."

"…what?"

Himmel winks. "Trust me, it'll work wonders."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Though Himmel is a young man of many admirable qualities, focus is not one of them. Sometimes Eisen forgets why they are on this journey in the first place, because their path takes them meandering through the Central Lands almost at random.

"Do you still have a plan?" Heiter will ask him, tone always bitter and accusatory.

"Go North 'til the sky turns starless," Himmel will reply, then take them in every direction but.

They are to somehow defeat the Demon King, but they have only met one demon in their travels. They are to somehow reach the northernmost tip of the continent, they have yet to leave the Old Forest. Eisen is secretly glad for the pointless diversions, a rotten truth he keeps buried deeper than the Mines of Runter, because that puts more distance between him and what awaits them in Ende.

This time, what catches Himmel's attention is a clearing marred by black scorch marks, the tops of all the surrounding sycamore trees burned off by some unknown creature. Eisen's heart seizes in his chest, and he frantically looks around for talon marks.

"Do you think this could have been a dragon?" Himmel asks, standing by a pile of ashes that was once juniper.

"It could be," Eisen admits.

Himmel takes a pinch of ash between his thumb and forefinger, then lifts his head to look at more blackened trees and scorched grass carving a second Path through the Old Forest. "New plan," he says. "We find the monster made these marks, and we kill it."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

The burning trail of the creature Eisen hopes isn't a dragon leads them to where a river has carved through layers and layers of earth to sit at the bottom of a deep ravine bracketed on each side with black cliffs crawling with moss and stonecrop. Eisen does some quick math, and figures that the drop isn't too big to be dangerous.

All the others, who insist on carefully lowering themselves to the ground with pickaxes and rope over several wasted minutes, seem to disagree. When they're nearly at the bottom, Eisen simply strides off the edge and plummets to the ground.

"What is wrong with you?" Heiter asks, gawking at the crater Eisen left in his wake.

"Was that supposed to be a rhetorical question?" Eisen asks.

Heiter refuses to elaborate and starts checking him for wounds, muttering prayers under his breath while his palms glow faintly gold. "You should've broken every bone in your body!"

"Just thank the Goddess that he didn't," Himmel says, voice winded, likely from the climb down. But that doesn't account for his pale face.

Frieren, as usual, makes no comment.

Eisen follows Himmel, sweat gathering in the palms of his hand as he tries in vain not to imagine what kind of dragon they might be facing. He still remembers the slit pupils of the Hell Emperor Dragon's indigo eyes, each so big they could cover the entire entrance to Dunkel's labyrinthine cave system.

"If this really is a dragon, I'm going to need something stronger," Heiter says, then gives Eisen a dirty look.

"I'm not the one who drained the whiskey we got as payment," Eisen points out.

"No, but you did spend a third of our money buying swan meat. Who on Erde needs to eat swan meat?"

"I was getting tired of eating pigeon pie every single day."

Heiter huffs. "You've eaten a dragon's heart before. I don't see why eating a few pigeons is beneath you."

"It isn't beneath me, I just wanted some well-deserved variety! And no grown man who refuses to eat his vegetables should comment on anyone's eating habits."

"Will the two of you please shut up?" Himmel asks, ire hidden by a flimsy veneer of politeness, as they near a bend in the river.

Just around the corner, Eisen sees something let out a forceful breath that coalesces into flames like the white that follows exhales on frosty nights. His heart stops, and he slowly shuffles along the rock wall, peeking to see horses that tower over the glyptodons that the Dragon Knights used to ride into battle. Their eyes glow an eerie red as they graze on carrion so bloodied Eisen can't identify it anymore.

One of the horses neighs, and a plume of flame forms in front of its mouth.

Eisen thinks back to the lindworm, and decides that this will be his redemption. Though he makes up his mind, his hands vehemently disagree, and each time he tries to draw his axe, his fists refuse to clench.

Was I ever better than this?

The answer turns out to be a resounding no. For all of Himmel's gallantry, they are quite unequipped to face a whole herd of flesh-eating, fire-breathing horses. Soon he finds himself hoisted over Heiter's shoulder, and together, they run.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

If there is one thing Eisen has mastered by now, it is the fine art of running. He was but seven years old when Dunkel burned from the flames that danced between the Hell Emperor Dragon's open maw. Not ninety years later, the black walls of Drachenfort blazed red with much the same. Both times, Eisen had run and run and run, and if there is one thing he has learned, it is that the things you are running from will catch up to you.

Always.

He barely notices that the river whose banks along which they are running has been going upstream, and it isn't long before they are backed up against a waterfall, black cliffs smoothed down by the spray and glistening like garnets. Heiter sets Eisen down with no grace at all, and slumps on the ground next to him before opening his flask.

"Now is not the time," Himmel insists between pants.

"Look, if I'm doomed to go to Aureole young, at least let me go drunk." Heiter punctuates that sentence with a needlessly loud gulp.

The first sign that their doom is near is the sound of the ground vibrating like a war drum as the monster horses gallop towards them. Though the river stalls their progress somewhat, there is enough dry ground provided by the banks for them to move otherwise unheeded.

One of the first things he was ever taught of this world was that the Goddess had died to create it. Flesh became earth, blood became seas and rivers, bones became mountains, apples became trees. With Her last breath, She gave them life, abandoning them to wander Erde alone and shepherdess.

Without Her to guide them, they were all doomed to Tenebrous, an endless sea floor burning with magma and hydrothermal vents. It fell to each one of Her children to earn their way to Aureole, and when Eisen tries to tally all the good he has done in his life, he knows that it is not enough.

Eisen can barely hear the orders Himmel is barking out, all the water in the river freezes into a mighty dam so high that he can't see the top even if he looks up. He feels the chilly certainty of relief spread out from his chest, but piece by piece, that wall crumbles.

Eisen's vision fills with fire, blooming like a field of poppies, and he starts to wonder what Tenebrous will be like.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

(Himmel gives her grimoires. Frieren does not know how he came up with this idea, or what he expects to get out of it, but he never complains because she is patently getting the better end of this strange deal. This grimoire is made from worn, russet leather with a distressed finish that makes her fingers twitch with longing.

"Not yet," he says with a small smile. "You have to answer a question for me first, honestly."

"I'll do anything," Frieren readily admits.

"You know, it's struck me as strange that you barely bring up that my sword is fake, or that Heiter can't go through a fight sober."

"Hmm.

"Why is it that you judge Eisen alone so harshly?"

This again? "I don't know what you're—"

"I told you I wanted an honest answer."

There is something incisive in Himmel's gaze that sets her teeth on edge. His constant alacrity has all but evaporated, leaving behind a face so grim it could have been cut from stone. "Is that an order?" she asks, even though she knows what he will say.

"Yes."

"He's a coward who admitted to leaving his village to burn," Frieren says. Even though the afternoon air is clear, her lungs fill with the scent of smoke. Her eyes sting, most likely from the dryness that accompanies the changing seasons. "You trust him far too much."

"It isn't fair to criticize someone unless you know all the facts. He was a child."

So was I.

"And it doesn't matter what happened back then. The Eisen I know now is always brave when it counts."

Not for the first time, she is hard pressed to believe that. "Hmm."

Himmel's sigh is colored with something that could be exasperation. "Alright, let's try a different tactic. Define 'coward' for me."

"But you implied you'd give me the grimoire if I answered your question," she says crabbily.

"I never said it, did I?"

She obliges. "A coward is someone who lacks the courage to endure things they believe to be dangerous."

"Can you honestly say that you've never done the same?"

"There is a difference between being pragmatic and lacking the will to do what must be done," Frieren says. "And I…"

She wants to finish that sentence, but the words die in her throat like mayflies. Through her jacket, Frieren feels the scar on her right shoulder flare violently with phantom pain. It had not been a clean cut, or a painless one, but it had been necessary, and as had the five centuries of solitude that followed. If she tells herself that over and over, it will one day start to feel like the truth.

It must.

"Sometimes I find that people who find it hard to be kind to others aren't kind to themselves first," Himmel says softly, placing the grimoire in her lap. "Maybe you ought to start there.")

 ✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"Are you scared?"

The last thing Eisen expects to cut through the sound of his beating heart is Frieren's voice, but perhaps there is a strange logic to it. She is, after all, far colder than the flames picking through his insides like hungry carrion birds.

Her green eyes are blank as ever, but the cant of her head is decidedly curious. "Always," he admits.

I want you to imagine everything and everyone you've ever loved on an unlit pyre, with that monster holding a match.

Eisen sees the glint of Himmel's sword and hears the rustle of Heiter's prayer book, and the pressure in his chest comes undone like a butterfly knot. It's comically easy to remember why he had stepped in front of Father Thunder all those years ago, because he hadn't wanted Apfel to burn. He still has a chance to be that man.

Just like that, drawing his axe the simplest thing he has ever done.

"I didn't think you'd admit it so readily," Frieren says.

"Why wouldn't I? My fear is what brought me this far." For better or for worse, that has always been true. "And one cannot be brave who has no fear."

Her eyes widen ever so slightly. "Himmel really was right about you."

Coming from her, strangely, makes Eisen believe it even more. He lifts his axe high above his head with trembling hands and charges.

Chapter Text

Eisen takes first watch that night—as he does most nights—and is amusing himself by throwing pine needles and bits of the steel wool they use to clean their dishes into the fire. He listens to the crackling noises and chuckles to himself as though the firewood has whispered to him a supremely funny joke, and this is the last thing Himmel's drooping eyes see before sleep starts to set in.

"There surely must be spells for that."

Eisen's gruff voice startles Himmel awake, but instead of sitting up, he just turns on his side and cracks his eyes open. He sees Frieren engaged in a death match with her hair, trying and failing to wrangle it into two braids, but that doesn't really surprise him. It's the fact that Eisen is talking to Frieren of his own volition for the first time in months that truly shocks Himmel.

As much as Himmel intellectually knows that eavesdropping isn't a very kind thing to do, this is too momentous an occasion not to.

"None of them are very good," Frieren grumbles. "They're always either too tight or too loose."

"Would you like me to give it a go?" Eisen asks.

Frieren blinks at him owlishly. "You know how to…?"

"A very special friend once taught me."

She snaps her fingers, her hair coming undone with a wordless spell. "Make it quick."

Eisen grunts as he settles behind her, parting silver strands in two like a jutting rock might a waterfall. Frieren tenses for a moment as though she expects to be scalded, squeezing her eyes shut, but she slowly relaxes when he finishes with the right side and ties it off with a pink ribbon.

"Eisen," she says haltingly. "Do you think I might be a coward too?"

"I can't say I know you well enough to make that kind of judgement."

At the word judgement, Frieren goes very quiet. "I haven't had a fair fight in a thousand years."

This seems to give Eisen as much pause as it does Himmel, and his drowsy mind races to try and understand what she could possibly mean by that. "That seems like a cowardly thing to do," Eisen admits.

"Hmm." Frieren draws her knees up to her chest, and the way the firelight dances in her green eyes makes her look almost like a girl.

"But I can't say it's wrong, either. My master used to tell me that fairness is for duels, while the only real rule of a fight is doing what it takes to survive."

"That still doesn't mean I'm not a coward."

"True," Eisen chuckles. "Do you want me to tell you a secret, from one coward to another? We're the only ones who can truly call ourselves brave."

"One cannot be brave who has no fear," Frieren recites. "You keep saying that."

"Because it's true. There's a world of difference between having no fear to begin with and overcoming it," he says. "You've got to be born with temerity, but even a coward like me can learn to be brave."

"Hmm."

"There you go," Eisen says, tying off her left braid with a butterfly knot. "Is it alright?"

Frieren gives him a vacant nod in response, touching the pink ribbons in her hair as though even this simplest kindness has bewildered her beyond measure, and it makes Himmel wonder just how much of it she has actually received in that unfathomably long life of hers. His last coherent thought before he goes to sleep is that he'll make sure she gets used to it if it's the last thing he does.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

It is during their second spring as an adventuring party that they reach the edge of the Old Forest. The old growth trees start to thin, making way for a bright green meadow speckled with butterfly weeds, asters, and purple coneflowers. The moment Himmel steps out from the shadow and into the light, he feels a most acute sense of relief.

"Thank you," he whispers to the trees, "for not swallowing me whole and spittin' out bones."

They are not fond enough of humans to truly respond to him, but he can almost hear something whispered over the wind. He expects it to be something polite and affable, like you're welcome, but it's much closer to please leave before you are forced to.

"We should really get moving," Frieren announces, wincing as though someone just dragged nails against a chalkboard. "They're getting impatient."

"…who's they?" Heiter asks.

"They're getting rude, that's what it is," Himmel huffs.

Heiter stares between them, eyes widening behind his glasses. "You know what? I'm much too sober for this."

He reaches inside the pack he is carrying for a bottle of whiskey they got in exchange for weeding a field of screeching mandragoras for a little old lady, uncorks it with his teeth, and lets the wooden cork fall to the forest floor. Moments later, a bird decides to relieve itself above his head, and a thin trickle of white drips down his forehead.

"Forget what I said about the rudeness," Himmel says with brightness he definitely doesn't feel. "We'll, uh, get going. See you never!"

They are but a few paces into the meadow when Himmel realizes Eisen has been lagging behind. He turns around and raises an eyebrow at the dwarf in a silent, are you coming?

"I have a question I want to ask," Eisen says haltingly, "regarding our next destination."

"I mean, the plan is to reach Waal by summertime."

The dwarf wrings his hands. "Is there room in that plan for a wrench?"

"Plenty," Himmel promises.

"I have some unfinished business I have to take care of," Eisen says. "It'll take me south once more, and I understand if—"

"Alright, let's go!"

Eisen blinks at him. "That's it? You're not even going to ask me where?"

"We spent a week fighting weregeese at Himmel the Hero's behest," Heiter says dryly. "I don't think he's in any position to question our choice of detours."

Himmel, who just missed the opportunity to deliver a perfect line, just pouts.

"It may take a while," Eisen warns. "We won't be in Waal until autumn."

"And? We have all the time in the world to do as we please." Himmel gives him the warmest smile he can muster. "No time is wasted if we spend it together."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

The day Himmel turns eighteen is, by far, the happiest he has had since this journey started. He wakes to the bright air of springtime and the sweet song of a distant thrush, the crumbling cathedral they are taking shelter in painted in brilliant shades by the sunlight streaming through stained glass windows.

Before Frieren can say something about the pointlessness of birthday parties, her eyes go round like saucers at the colossal size of the Hamburg steak Eisen places in front of her.

"Apparently, it's a birthday tradition among warriors," Heiter says.

Frieren frowns. "But strictly speaking, I'm not a—"

"Anyone who works hard is a warrior," the dwarf says gravely.

Frieren shrugs and seems to accept this explanation. In the blink of an eye, her steak disappears, and she daintily wipes her mouth clean with the sleeve of her shirt. "Do you have any more?"

"Eisen only made four," Himmel says with a chuckle when she casts a furtive glance at the half-eaten steak on his own plate. "You can have some dessert if you're hungry."

"But you said birthday parties were supposed to have cake," Frieren complains, picking up one of the tangerine peels filled with sweet batter that Heiter cooked over open coals.

"Don't be so picky," Heiter says, at which Himmel just snorts. "What? Did I say something wrong?"

"No, it's just ironic that you'd be the one to say it," Himmel says.

Frieren looks between them and tilts her head to one side. "Wait, why?"

"Heiter has a very, uh, particular palate," Himmel says with a wince. “You must have noticed that he always throws his vegetables into my plate."

Her expression doesn't change, but her ears droop. Huh. "I didn't."

"He's just a spoiled brat," Eisen says. "No respect at all for the hand that feeds him."

"Excuse you," Heiter snaps. "I am perfectly capable of feeding myself!"

Himmel closes his eyes and listens to them bicker, and there is something almost pleasant about the sounds of their raised voices. He's felt proud before—of his immaculate face, of his charm, of his skill with the sword—but he much prefers being proud of them instead.

Then he looks at Frieren's blank expression as she rolls a small rock between the ridges of her fingers, and his face falls. Heiter and Eisen certainly consider her a friend, as does he, but he has no way of accurately discerning what she thinks of them. It's alright, he thinks. We have all the time in the world.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"Do you know Eisen and Heiter got me a copy of The Heroicke Adventures of King Gewählt for today?"

"Hmm," Frieren says, which is a stock response he's come to expect.

"How come you're the only one who didn't get me a birthday gift?"

"I didn't know today was your birthday," she says, "and even if I did, I wouldn't have bothered with getting you a mortality trophy."

"…mortality trophy?"

"Is that not what it is?"

Himmel blinks. "Never mind that. Could you cast a spell for me? I'll buy you a grimoire if you do."

Frieren looks at him curiously. "Did you have something specific in mind?"

"Is there a spell to, I don't know, make a field of flowers?"  It's a stupid request, a selfish one too, but he has an idea he desperately wants to try. See, the last time he ever saw her smile was more than eleven years ago in the woods, and if he gets her to cast that spell again…

Well.

He can hope for the best, can't he?

Her expression doesn't change, but her whole body tenses like a drawn bowstring, and Himmel wonders if he has made a grave mistake. "Alright," she says stiffly, and his heart sinks.

Frieren stands up and strides past a decrepit statue of the Goddess before reaching what would have been the cathedral's threshold. Himmel calls for Eisen and Heiter to follow, and she stares out at the swathes of tall grass outside.

"What flower do you want?" Frieren asks, summoning her staff.

"You can make any kind I ask for?"

"Provided I have seen it before," she says. "So? What will it be?"

Himmel makes a show of deliberating this question, but there is really nothing to think about. "Blue moon weeds."

"Blue moon weeds?" Heiter asks. "What are you—?"

"Frieren's making me a field of them as a mortality trophy," Himmel smiles. "Isn't that right?"

"I can't," she replies. "I've never seen them before."

"Really? Cobalt blue, four or five petals apiece, about this—" he holds his fingers apart to approximate the size— "this big?"

"No."

"What about apple blossoms?" Eisen suggests, at which Himmel just gives him a very dirty look. "They are a most beautiful—"

"You know what, Frieren?" Himmel cuts him off. "You pick."

Frieren does not respond in words, but she closes her eyes and tightens her hold on her staff, and Himmel's heart seizes in his chest.

The earth beneath her feet comes alive, brilliantly colored flowers taking root and springing up out of nothing. They open their bright faces towards her, faintly glowing with something Himmel knows must be magic. A gentle breeze kicks up a flurry of petals, and for a moment they linger in the air, catching daylight like crystals.

Heiter lets out a hearty laugh and runs out into the field, spinning his arms out like a windmill, and Eisen follows close behind. Even though not a single one of the flowers he can see are blue, Himmel feels his heart soar.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

While Eisen and Heiter make each other flower crowns and frolic through the field, Himmel finds Frieren reading under one of the seven stained glass windows along the church's side. The one right above her head is a depiction of Lady Vendredi, a mortal incarnation of the Goddess with a scroll in one hand and a peacock feather quill in the other.

"I thought it would make you smile," he admits, sitting down next to her.

"Hmm?"

"The spell, I mean. You seem to love magic."

"Only somewhat," Frieren says idly. There are three things Himmel knows she loves for sure: magic, sleep, and food, in exactly that order. He isn't sure why she is trying to convince him otherwise. But he's starting to get the sense that the person she's really trying to convince is herself.

"It’s a shame you haven’t seen ‘em before," he says, plucking two flowers by their stems and twisting them together. "Blue moon weeds, I mean."

"Hmm."

The flowers that grow there are gorgeous, and as are the heroes, if I do say so myself." Himmel rearranges his bangs, but her nose still remains buried in the grimoire he gave her.

"Hmm."

"My Ma didn't care for them very much, you know. She tore them straight from her garden like she did with crabgrass and ground ivy, but Pa loved them." Himmel's fingers tremble as he continues braiding more flowers into a crown. "He said the only reason we call 'em weeds is because they're too stubborn for their own good, that no matter where they grow, they always find a way to the sun.”

"Like you."

Himmel hadn't even expected a response, so all that really comes out is a strangled, "Huh?"

"You're an extremely quick thinker, especially when it comes to battles against monsters," she says idly, picking up a white flower and stripping it of its petals. "You come up with most of our plans and you always see them through."

"Oh," is all he can say in response. He puts a hand to his heart and feels a charm of hummingbirds right where it should be, wing-beats thundering in his ears.

"None of that would be possible if you weren't half as adaptable or as resilient as you are."

"I think that's the kindest thing anyone's ever said to me," Himmel says quietly.

Frieren gives him a perplexed look. "I was just making an honest observation."

An honest observation, huh?

"I'll take you there to see them one day," he promises, placing the crown on her head.

"Hmm," is the only response she gives him, and a smile tugs at his lips for reasons he can't entirely place.

She keeps reading as though she didn't hear him at all, and he wonders if she will forget this just like she forgot their first meeting. So Himmel folds his wish into a paper crane and tucks it in the most secret corner of his heart. One day, she will see his favorite flowers, and one day, they will make her smile.

He's sure of it.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

The underground city of Dunkel was—still is—an architectural marvel. Several corridors are carved into tuff rock, with large rolling stones sealing the round cave entrances. It is also nothing but a burnt husk of the place it used to be, and this weights heaviest on Eisen.

Grotesque creatures have taken up residence in the homes of the dwarves that once used to live here, and Himmel can't find any enjoyment in this exploration. They fight their way through goblins, trolls, and a diamond-eyed snake called a Grootslang by Frieren's bestiary before they reach their destination.

It's almost sundown when they make their way back up to the surface, and their mood is somber as Eisen buries the charred remains of his parents under domed piles of stones, carving the names Rubin and Kessel on wood before staking the ground with them.

"I don't have any dynamite with me," Eisen says, "but I think magic should do."

"What do you need dynamite for?" Heiter asks.

"Do you have any colors in mind?" Frieren asks, staff materializing in her open palms.

"Something loud and bright," Eisen replies. "A shieldmaiden and a nurse nothing less."

Loud and bright?

Himmel is about to ask what he means by that before the domes explode into vermillion and hot pink clouds. He's barely able to shield his face from flying pieces of shrapnel with his cape, and he coughs away the detritus from his lungs.

"Would you pray for them, Heiter?" Eisen says, voice muffled by a lump in his throat.

"Wait, really?"

"How else are they supposed to find their way to Aureole?"

Heiter gives his friend a solemn nod before obliging. His head is bowed while he chants something Himmel can't hear, and the clouds overhead part just to allow two bright beams of sunshine to fall on the rocks. Himmel tenses for a reason he can't quite name, straining his ears for the distant sound of a snapping twig.

"Are you going to join us?" Himmel whispers to Frieren.

"I've seen far too many editions of the Scripture go in and out of print to take any of it seriously," she replies in kind, arms crossed over her chest instead of steepled in prayer. "But you're entitled to your beliefs."

His mind is reeling just a little at the idea that there might be editions to the prayer book Heiter always carries, but this service takes precedence. As much as he wants to close his eyes respectfully, his senses are telling him that something is watching. Someone is watching.

It isn't long before that someone is trapped between Himmel's blade and the ground. He's a man with tawny skin and straight brown hair, dark eyes blown wide with fright.

"You are a hard man to find, Himmel the Hero," the stranger pants.

"Who are you?" Himmel asks, loosening his hold when his sword draws blood. "What do you want?"

“I come bearing a message from the King." From within the folds of his brown tunic, he produces a scroll sealed with a gilded wax lion, which makes Himmel flinch away as though burned. "For your sake and mine, I suggest you listen.”

Chapter Text

"What do you mean you have a message from the King?"

The look on Himmel's face considers the exact proportions of consternation and bewilderment that Heiter feels lancing through his gut like a pear of anguish. Not for the first time since this Goddess-forsaken journey started, he laments, "I'm too sober for this."

"Aren't you going to do anything about it?" Eisen asks, impish behind the thick bushels of his mustache. "You ought to relieve yourself, if that's how you feel."

"Not in the middle of a funeral service we're holding for your parents!"

"So the corrupt priest does have standards," Frieren says while Heiter sputters. "Good to know."

"Couldn't you have waited just a little?" Heiter snaps. "We were clearly in the middle of something."

"Apologies, Father Heiter," the strange man says, rising to his feet and dusting dried leaves and grass off his thick brown pants. "I fully intended to wait until a more appropriate moment, but your hero made that quite difficult."

Heiter summarily decides that if anyone ever calls him that again, he will not be liable for the damages that come from strangling them until their vocal chords give out. He doesn't say this out loud, of course, because this is still a funeral service.

"How do you even know who we are?" Himmel demands.

"Where are my manners. I am Wandern the Ranger, and I have been sent here by King Löwenherz, fifth of his name, son of King Löwenherz the Fourth and Queen Placare, scion of Gewählt Pendragon, Commander of the Round Table, Defender of the Faith, Thrice-Blessed by the Goddess, the—"

Himmel sheathes his sword and raises both his arms in a placating gesture. "As decorated as our great king is," he says, "that wasn't an answer."

Wandern hands Himmel a scroll, one sealed with golden wax shaped like a lion's head. "I'm afraid only you can answer that question. I was forbidden from opening this letter on the pain of death."

Eisen frowns. "How?"

"It's enchanted to kill anyone but the intended recipient if they try," Frieren supplies. "It should open if you say your name."

"I'm Himmel the Hero, and I—"

The lion's head opens, and the letter unfurls in front of his face. Himmel does not yelp—even in his shock, he seems incapable of appearing undignified like the rest of them mortals—but he does stare with eyes rounder and wider than Heiter has ever seen before.

"Heiter," Himmel says, a little sheepish, "could you…?"

"On it." Heiter steps up, wiping the fog from his glasses to read the curling golden script better. They should really use an ink color with more contrast. "'To the most esteemed Himmel the Hero, I, King Löwenherz, son of King Löwenherz the Fourth and Queen Placare, scion of Gewählt Pendragon, Commander of the Round Table…' Wow, that is a lot of epithets. Are these all necessary?"

"Our Majesty's glory cannot be expressed within the confines of brevity," Wandern huffs. "Deeming them unnecessary is as good as treason."

Heiter gulps and reads a whole paragraph's worth of epithets out loud, which has Frieren burying her nose in a grimoire and Eisen yawning into his palm.

"Okay, we're getting to the not boring part. 'I have heard a great many things about your exploits, and I am pleased to invite you to my court in Tausend Seen, the Royal Capital of the Central Lands, to present you with my most valuable quest.'"

Himmel starts vibrating with so much excitement that Heiter is scared he's going to burst. "Did you hear that, Heiter? The King wants me for his most valuable quest!"

"It could be a scam," Heiter says, ever the cynic. Himmel's face falls into a pout, and he's suddenly reminded of the three-hour-long argument they had over whether a glass of water was half-empty or half-full, which only ended when Mother Abhilfe poured it out on both their heads.

"It isn't," Frieren says from where she's cross-legged on the floor, turning a page of her funny magic book. "The spellwork on that scroll is too gaudy and needlessly ostentatious to not belong to a court magician."

"That's quite rude." Wandern's chest puffs out like a bird of paradise, and it makes Heiter snort. "If you must know, insulting the King’s courtiers is tantamount to treason as well."

Frieren's standard "Hmm" seems to infuriate him even more, and for the first time ever, Heiter is amused by her stock response.

"It's settled then," Himmel says, smile so blinding it gives Heiter a headache. "As soon as we're able, we start for the Royal Capital."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Eisen does not like Tausend Seen very much, and it's clear to see why. The Royal Capital consists of concentric circles of water and land, connected by bridges built on arching stone. When they cross one, Eisen always walks as far away from the parapet as he can, casting furtive glances at a boatman who waves up at him.

"Why humans seem so obsessed with water, I will never understand," he grumbles. "You don't even have gills."

"A swim can be really nice on a hot day," Himmel says brightly. "You should try it some time."

"I want to say I would if I could, but I wouldn't." Eisen stands up on his toes to peer over the capstones lining either side of the bridge, then shudders. "I don't need any reminders of hell while I'm alive."

"I'm sure hell is a little different from a canal that's barely a few feet deep," Heiter says, shaking his head.

Heiter has never been one to castigate others for their beliefs, especially when they are different from his own. Unlike Himmel, he has never been the sort to believe in miracles, so he always understood the difference between knowing the Goddess is real and believing in Her, and he always chalked Eisen up to be one of those sorts.

Since the start of his journey, he has found that Eisen does indeed have religious convictions, and that they revolve around dead Goddess and a crippling fear of Tenebrous. And Heiter, with his dreams of blinding light and a prayer book tucked in his robes, has never known what to make of it. But he is no stranger to the world's cruelty, so it makes sense that some might believe the Goddess has left it behind.

They step off the bridge and onto cobblestone streets so overfull with life, that it almost overwhelms him. A confectioner selling blue lollipops the size of fists, a mage in a green cloak conjuring animal-shaped bubbles out of thin air. But what gives Heiter the most pause is a winding line of men so long that it curves around the block and out of his sight, punctuated by armed guards.

Some are so old that Heiter can count the years they have lived in their wrinkles and grey hairs and hunched spines, and some are so young that even he thinks them boys. Regardless, each one recites his name to a scribe and stamps his fingerprint in a book.

“What’s happening?” Himmel asks with a frown.

“It is nothing, Master Himmel,” Wandern says. “One man from every common home, that was the King’s order.”

Heiter winces. “That’s…not…"

“It is our pride and honor to be the first line of defense against Qual,” Wandern insists. “When our armada marches, we march for all of the Central Lands.”

"Common home," Eisen huffs. "Not one mention of your nobility. Bloody cowards, the whole lot."

"Do you mean Qual, the Elder Sage of Corruption?" Frieren asks.

"Of course! Who else—?"

Frieren turns the page on her grimoire and snorts. "Sounds less like they're making an armada and more like they're throwing fresh fish at the demon."

"Fresh fish?" Himmel asks.

"It's a turn of phrase used for expendable soldiers," Frieren explains. "Though in this case, they won't be soldiers at all."

Wandern huffs. "What are you insinuating about my King? That he cares not for his people?"

"That he's cruel," Frieren shrugs. "That's just about the worst thing anybody can be." Then, she bumps her forehead into the next lamppost, glaring up at it as though she's not the one at fault.

"That's treason," Wandern says, so tense that a visible vein pulses in his forehead.

"Maybe," Himmel says, "King Löwenherz called us here to be the first line of defense against this Qual."

The ranger relaxes and smiles down at Himmel. "Glorious as this war may be, I wish for my daughter to have more of me than just memories."

"She'll have all of you, I promise," Himmel says. "And I'm nothing if not a man of my word."

Wandern's smile turns rueful. "For your sake and mine, I hope that is true."

Eisen does not like Tausend Seen very much, and honestly, neither does he.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

When Himmel starts counting through the dwindling coins in their shared wallet to see how much they can afford to spend on a proper dinner and two rooms at an inn, Wandern informs them that King Löwenherz has arranged for his newest guests to have a meal at the Royal Palace.

"It's nothing much," Wandern says, and Heiter has never before felt such undying fealty for his lord ruler, "just a gesture of goodwill for such fine heroes."

The palace's white edifice cuts a stark figure against the summer sky, roofs painted a royal blue and windows accented with gold. Dandelion yellow flags flutter in the wind, emblazoned with the logo of King Gewählt and all his descendants: a lion with its teeth clenched around a bleeding heart.

They are led past a moat crawling with creatures with brutal jaws, whip-like caudal fins covered in iridescent feathers, and ivory tusks. When Himmel asks, Frieren identifies them as makara, and Eisen clings to Heiter's foot when she idly mentions their taste for flesh. They swim between the roots of blue lotuses, tearing lily pads with their sharp teeth as a warning Heiter is very careful to heed.

Heiter has to pinch himself several times to confirm that he isn't dreaming, and he triple-checks his flask to ensure he hasn't drunk himself into a stupor. He made a promise to himself when he was ten years old that wherever Himmel went, he would follow. Never in a million years would he have thought that his friend's boneheaded quest would lead them here.

The servants here are much nicer than the ones at Lord Kasper's estate, though Heiter has an inkling that this has something to do with the fact that Himmel forced him to spend an arm and a leg on new vestments when they were in Strahl. We're going to be the greatest heroes Erde has ever known, he'd said, don't you think we ought to look the part?

Himmel certainly does, striding into an empty banquet hall like he ought to own the place, cape fluttering behind him like he paid the wind to help him look more dramatic. He sits by a placard with his name on it, Heiter at his right and Eisen and Frieren right across from them.

"As far as human rulers go, I think this one might be one of my favorites," Frieren says when they are served glazed pig.

Eisen, mouth too stuffed with roasted peacock to speak properly, just nods in agreement.

Thanks to the servers, the plates on the table are filled with chopped eels with gilt quatrefoils, coulibiac gilded with what looks to him like actual gold, three different colors of jellies with flavors Heiter can't quite place, a savory white sauce, and crisp potato fritters he downs by the plate. He passes a dish of chopped apples and peaches dipped in sweet syrup to Himmel, who responds with a black look.

"These are supposed to be good for you, you know," Himmel says. "You really should try eating 'em."

"No, thanks," Heiter replies, turning his attention instead to the mulled wine.

The best part, though, are the buttered ciabatta rolls, and even after dinner ends, Heiter is allowed to carry a plate back to his allotted quarters.

"They're expecting us at sunrise," Himmel says. "I want all of us to be on our best—"

Eisen cuts him off with a loud belch. "Sorry," he mutters. "Do carry on."

"I want all of us to be on our best behavior. That means being there sober." Himmel gives Heiter a very pointed look.

"With the Goddess as my witness, I swear I will do my best," Heiter says solemnly.

"Good, because if your best isn't enough, I'll let Reh's hangover cure speak for me instead."

Heiter shudders. "Not touching my flask till noon."

Himmel gives him a smile much too innocent for someone so devious. "It also means being there awake."

Frieren's brow furrows just enough that it might be a pout. "But it's so early."

"I'll give you a grimoire if you do," Himmel promises, "and I'll be outside your door with a trombone if you don’t."

She blinks as though she's confused as to whether she should be overjoyed or dejected, but her face settles for its usual blankness instead. "I don't understand why you're going through so much trouble for a monarchy that has only stood for four hundred years."

Eisen balks at her. "Only?"

"It doesn't matter," Himmel says. "We're going to find out what our quest is, and when we leave this place, it'll be as heroes."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

In the end, Himmel does not need to do a thing. As the sun rises over Tausend Seen, they are led into the court of King Löwenherz the Fifth by ushers in loose silk trousers and royal blue robes, golden lions with hungry jaws pinned over their hearts as symbols of their loyalty.

Heiter, still a little disoriented after a mostly sleepless night of discovering that a bed can indeed be too soft and too comfortable, has the wherewithal to smooth out a barely-visible wrinkle in his dark robes. Everything in this room is made from white marble, from the floors to the vaulted ceilings, scrubbed so clean it almost makes his eyes hurt.

To his left are seven vast tapestries that cover the entire wall, and Heiter can count the Goddess's incarnations on them, one for each day of the week. He also counts fifty-two paces on the plush blue carpet beneath him before they stand at the foot of the stairs leading up to the King's throne in a mostly futile effort to calm himself without reaching for his flask.

The interactions between the King and his lowly subjects are governed by three simple rules, and Heiter feels as though he is back in the depths of the Old Forest, weighed down by invisible eyes and poorly concealed hatred that he did nothing to earn.

While the herald starts reading the never-ending list of King Löwenherz's titles, Heiter is very careful to follow the first such rule. Kneel. Of the four of them, only Eisen seems uncomfortable, but obey he does.

"It truly is an honor to meet the Hero Party," the King says, voice rich as ichor, and Heiter dares to barely lift his eyes to see a man with greying auburn hair, drowning in velvet and gold.

"The honor is ours, Your Majesty," Himmel replies in accordance with the second rule, never speak unless you are spoken to.

"There are those in my confidence who hold you in great esteem. I truly hope you live up to that reputation."

"As do we," Himmel says. "Whatever you want us to do, we shall do it." In answering the King's letter, they agreed to his fourth and final rule. His wish is your command.

"I wish to entrust in your hands a quest to the far reaches of the Continent. You will face untold peril, yes, but you will come back to more glory than you can imagine."

Heiter's heart thunders in his chest, because he can imagine it. A roof that doesn't leak, three warm meals a day, enough money to make his pockets feel heavy. But above all, he imagines what that glory will make of an orphan like him.

Moments from now, the King is going to send them after Qual. Moments from now, Himmel the Hero and his party will be poised to write their names in the stars, quills wet with demon dust. Moments from now—

"At dawn tomorrow, you will seek out the Philosopher’s Stone."

Huh?

"It is a magical artifact created by Flamme over a millennium ago, which grants immorality to—"

"Immortality?" Himmel bursts out. "I thought you were sending us to slay Qual!"

That was rule two, Heiter thinks with wince, and he can hear the sharp pull of metal against metal as one of the King's knights draws his blade.

"Do not bother with the sword, Sir Schnell," he laughs. "The conscription notice must have confused this poor boy. Fear not, Himmel, for you are much too fine a hero me to send you to your death."

"But you would do the same to the rest of your people."

Himmel's voice is so low that it makes Hieter's blood run as cold as the runoff from a winter's snow.

"You know what they say about kings and dragons," Eisen says darkly. "In the end, they're just rotten with greed."

Himmel rises to his feet, either unaware that every armed guard in this room has drawn their sword, or uncaring of the same. Bathed in the golden sunlight streaming through the windows, he looks like the hero that has drawn the sword Lady Lundi drove into the earth, the sword that has not been touched since King Gewählt used it to win the Hundred Year War.

He looks like he ought to be the one on the throne, not this pompous charlatan with designs too grand for his mortal life. For a moment, Heiter can believe that the Goddess is smiling down at them, but then that moment passes, and all he sees is the son of a farmer and the grandson of a postman who spent hours ironing the wrinkles from his tunic with a kettle.

"Löwenherz," Himmel says, voice like thunder, and Heiter has lost count of all the rules he has broken. "You really should be ashamed of yourself."

Chapter Text

Most torture devices, Himmel thinks, are quite intuitive. He can understand, for instance, how a pear of anguish might devastate a bodily orifice, or how an iron maiden might make someone as riddled with holes as a sieve. But the use of this vile contraptions in this dank dungeon with them eludes him.

"What do you think that bull is for?" Himmel asks Eisen.

"You will be placed inside while a fire is lit beneath you," he replies gravely. "Your screams will then be heard like the bellows of a bull as they echo through the hollow nostrils."

Himmel shudders. "Did you have to tell me that?"

"You wouldn't have learned if you were capable of keeping your big mouth shut," Eisen snaps. "That's what landed us here in the first place."

"If I recall correctly, you were the one who called the King greedy."

"The only reason we're in this blasted city with its blasted canals is because you had to brag about your glorious adventures to every poor sod who was willing to listen."

"You can't know that."

"How else could Löwenherz have—?"

"Will you both shut it?" Their torturer—a woman with dark green hair done up in a neat, netted bun—stops sharpening her many, many knives to glower at them. She wipes her hands off on her apron like a butcher ready to carve up some venison.

"Hey!" Himmel calls out, at which Eisen lifts his chained hands to clamp Himmel's mouth shut.

"Are you out of your mind?" Eisen hisses.

"My big mouth got us into this mess," Himmel says. "At least let me try to get us out of it."

Eisen narrows his eyes.

"Do you trust me?"

"Unfortunately," he grumbles.

"Hello! Do you have a minute?"

The screeching sound of stone against metal halts for one blissful moment. "Is there anything you want, boy?" she snaps.

"We just have three questions to ask before our tongues are cut," Himmel says. "Surely, you won't deny a dying man one last wish."

"Spit it out, boy."

Himmel takes a deep, steadying breath, measuring his words like a tailor would a ream of cloth. "When our glorious King's armada goes out to fight Qual, who are you going to lose?"

For one moment, the woman looks like she wants to be the one to execute them both instead. But she sets down her whetstone and the sickle she is sharpening with it and wilts, the grit in her features melting like candlewax.

"My brother," she replies very quietly. "Can't find his way out of a paper bag for a pot of gold."

"Is there a reason you couldn't go instead?" Eisen asks.

"Apparently, it's this old law from when we used to be part of the Empire. When the draft comes, men go to fight," she grumbles. "If you ask me, it's all poppycock."

"What's your name?" Himmel asks.

Her hands clench her apron. "Rau. My name's Rau." She stands up to her full height, casting an ominous shadow in the dim firelight, but Himmel finds that he isn't the least bit afraid. "And I've got some questions for you."

Himmel grins at Eisen's disbelief, then inclines his head towards Rau. "Shoot."

"Did you really tell the King to eat shit and die?" she asks.

"Well, not really, but the sentiment—"

"Are you actually going to defeat Qual?"

"Yes, we are."

Rau closes the shuttered windows of their already dim cell, and locks the small panel of the rusted door. "And just how good are you at feigning agony?"

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"We have one last request," Himmel says, "if you're willing."

Rau raises a skeptical eyebrow—not in total agreement, but at least a concession. "What is it?"

"I want you to repeat what I told you in here to as many people as you can." Eisen gives him a horrified look, at which Himmel just shushes him.

"The King will have my tongue for that," she says.

"He will have one tongue, perhaps, or even ten. But a hundred? A thousand? He can't smother a wildfire with a blanket."

Rau says nothing.

"There are so many people out there who think nobody's looking out for 'em. I just want them to know otherwise, that's all."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

The sky is bright and warm, but Himmel can barely enjoy it through the confines of his pillory. The wood clamped tightly around his neck and sweating wrists is not particularly conducive to looking up and beholding the first real summer day of this year.

A herald clears his throat and starts to read aloud.

"We gather here today to witness the execution of Himmel the Hero and Eisen the Warrior, two dangerous charlatans with tongues more venomous than the deadly basilisk's. By decree of King Löwenherz, fifth of his name, son of King Löwenherz the Fourth and Queen Placare, scion of Gewählt Pendragon…"

"Do you really think they're coming?" Eisen asks.

"Have faith, friend." Himmel tries to wink at him, but the awkward angle strains his shoulder.

"Then their heads will be planted on spikes for all the world to see, vultures stripping their skulls bare of skin and flesh so that the Goddess might smite their bleached bones!"

"…that was needlessly graphic," Himmel mutters to himself.

"Let the pelting commence!" the King commands, rising to his feet, but his voice is swallowed by the yawning silence.

Executions usually begin with, uh, offerings of everything from eggs to tomatoes to bricks. But the crowd gathered today does nothing, and in their inaction, Himmel sees the first curlicues of woodsmoke. He lifts his chin to give the King his most winning smile, as if to say, here is your wildfire.

"Off with their heads," King Löwenherz orders, dejectedly slumping back in the plush cushions of his throne.

The executioner leans in so close that Himmel can see the sun glint against his glass eye. "The name's Erlegen and my son has seen just fifteen summers," he whispers. "Can you swear to me that he'll live?"

"On my life."

Erlegen rises to his feet and throws back the hood of his billowing black cloak. "Eat shit and die!" he shouts, staring up at the King, casting his scythe aside.

That is, roughly, when all hell breaks loose.

A pelting does commence, but every egg and tomato and brick is directed at the man who called for one in the first place. Clouds of powdery, pastel-colored clouds erupt out of nowhere, sending Himmel into a violent coughing fit. Someone helps him out of his pillory and to his feet, and the familiar weight of his sword is back in his hands.

"Frieren told me to tell you that no matter how much it hurts, you're not actually on fire," Heiter says.

"...what?"

"It was either that or the gargoyles," Frieren says glumly. "I liked that one better."

"A veto is a veto," Heiter shrugs.

"Hmph."

"Why do you look so confused?" Heiter asks Himmel. "Did you doubt we'd come?"

Himmel feels a rush of warmth in his chest. "Not even for a moment."

"I want all four of their heads on my wall," the King bellows to his knights. "You swore unto me your undying fealty. Prove it!"

"We don't want any unnecessary bloodshed," Himmel says, drawing his sword. Four against twenty aren't the best odds, but they've fought through worse.

"Bloodshed? I'll show you—"

The King looks just as dumbfounded as Himmel feels when the gentle sounds of a mandolin's strings fills the air like the candlelight would a dark room. One by one, the knights fall like puppets with their strings cut, and Himmel feels nothing but abject horror at the sound of their clattering armor.

Standing there with his purple doublet and windblown auburn hair, strumming a mandolin with the most daffy smile Himmel has ever seen on anybody's face, is the last person Himmel would have expected to see anywhere, let alone here.

"Löwen?" all four of them say in perfect unison.

"Leave them be, Father," Löwen says. Father? When did that happen? Himmel doesn't think that King Löwenherz would ever make a habit of fathering stray bards, but one can never really know with men of status.

Löwenherz.

Löwen.

Oh.

"I summoned them to your court as my guests, and you have no right to touch them." This was all your fault?

"I have no right? I have no right? I let you leave this place in the hopes that you would learn something useful about the world. Just how many of your harebrained requests will I have to entertain?"

Löwen smiles beatifically. "As many as I want. If you'll excuse me, Father, the five of us are late for a spot of tea."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

"Why?"

There are so, so many things Himmel wants to say, but that is the only question he can bring himself to pose.

Löwen takes a dainty sip from his enameled cup, which looks like it's worth more than the sum total of everything Himmel has ever owned. "Would you care to be a bit more specific?"

"Let's start with why you thought it would be a good idea to call us here," Heiter says. He has yet to touch his meal of fresh fruit suspended in crystal jelly except with a barely serrated butter knife.

"Father dissolved the previous party of adventurers in his employ after their quest for the Fountain of Youth yielded no results," Löwen replies. "When one of our historians translated an old tome about the Philosopher's Stone, I could think of no better party to recommend for that purpose than you."

"That can't be right," Chrysantheme says with pursed lips.

When Himmel was younger, his mother used to tell him that his head too full of clouds to have room for more sensible things, and he thinks that is more true about Löwen and Chrysantheme than it ever was about him. After all, Löwen was the one who tried to sneak into Frieren's room in the middle of the night and got himself turned into a toad, and Chrysantheme hijacked a demon hunt to find her precious golden deer.

Then again, Himmel isn't thankless. They are sitting in Löwen's sunlit solarium, having what Himmel believes to be a tea party. If someone had told him just yesterday that Löwen was the crown prince of the Central Lands, he would have laughed like he was trying to expel poison from his stomach.

But now…

"It is a shame that you missed our wedding," Löwen says, reaching under the lacey tablecloth to squeeze Chrysantheme's hand.

"It really isn't," Eisen grumbles, and Löwen is either too empty-headed to register the slight or too nonchalant. Knowing what he does, Himmel would wager that it's the former.

"These have been the two most magical months of my life," Chrysantheme sighs, and despite all his frustrations, Himmel can't help but feel his heart warm for the both of them. "Not even in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that my Liebling would have turned out to be a prince."

"I think you're perfect for each other," Heiter says with a smile that gives nothing away.

"I have to thank you for that, Mistress Frieren," Löwen says. "If you hadn't turned me into a toad, I never would have met the love of my life. I even had the chefs prepare this in your honor."

He gestures towards a loaf of bread carefully fashioned in the shape of a toad. Its surrounded by lemon macarons, coronation chicken, and a million other things Himmel never would have thought to serve at tea, but seeing as how Löwen's home makes Lord Kasper's estate look like a hovel, he isn't too surprised. Frieren gives no response but stuffing her overfull cheeks with another fruit scone.

"Is there any way you could talk the King into giving us more than ten coppers a piece?" Heiter asks. "Inflation has been driving up the price of whiskey, you see."

"I think Father would be more amenable to that if you actually got him the Philosopher's Stone," Löwen muses.

"Are you being sarcastic?" Frieren asks. "It isn't very funny."

"…what?"

"I can only assume that you're trying to insinuate something ridiculous that we all know to be untrue for humorous effect."

A pregnant pause follows that nobody is especially eager to fill.

"…you do know that the Philosopher's Stone isn't real, right?"

"It isn't?" Heiter bursts out.

"Why didn't you say anything to the King?" Himmel asks somewhat despairingly.

"I assumed he was being—"

"That's not what sarcasm is," Eisen says.

Frieren blinks, then swallows a scone whole.

"How do you know?" Löwen asks, eyes bright with much of the same eagerness with which he approached Frieren's valise.

"When I knew Flamme, she—"

"You knew the Great Mage Flamme?" Löwen's eyes look like they're going to explode out of his head.

"You know what that means, right?" Heiter nudges her with his elbow. "You, my friend, are officially an old hag."

"What did you just call me?"

Before Frieren can turn Heiter into a toad for that slight, Himmel cuts in. "We're going after Qual at first light tomorrow," he says. "We should get packing as soon as we can."

Löwen’s expression turns grim, and for a moment Himmel thinks that if he were on the throne, he actually wouldn’t make a bad king. “If that really is the path you choose, then I have no right to stop you. Before you leave, though, I do have one thing I want to show you.”

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Löwen leads them from the solarium where they just had their tea party to what looks like his personal study, with a large portrait of him and his wife hanging from the southern wall just over a chestnut desk drowning under piles and piles of sheet music. He pushes them aside and unfurls what looks like a map of the Central Lands with a thick line drawn through it.

"This is the Crimson Trail," he explains, "the path Qual has been taking from Ende. For a decade now, he has been burning through the Central Lands and all those who call it home. Every time we send our best fighters and mages after him, their bodies burn and rot."

"That's why your father instituted the draft," Himmel realizes. Because if they are going to die either way, the King would much rather send the cobblers and bakers and farmers to their deaths than the doctors and lawyers and knights.

"With each passing hour, he nears Tausend Seen, and we will be doomed without our armada to stop him."

"There's no need for an armada." Himmel touches the rich red ink and half expects his hand to come away bloody. "We can handle this."

"Do you think you can do what a thousand men can't?"

"I do."

"Then I insist on helping you."

Himmel blinks. "Really?"

"Even through the eyes of a toad, I could see just how incredible your party is," Löwen says. "I saw you kill that demon like it was nothing."

"That demon was ordinary by most standards, perhaps even weak." Frieren swallows one of the many macarons she smuggled from the tea table. "Qual is the last of the Elder Sages. Even though he does exist, this quest might just be more futile than seeking the Philosopher's Stone."

"Last of the Elder Sages?" Himmel asks. "What happened to the other ones?"

Instead of answering, Frieren eats another macaron, and Himmel recognizes this blank expression as a carefully painted veneer over something she is trying to hide. His mind guesses at its shape, but she tenses under his scrutiny, so he lets it go.

Eisen tugs at Himmel's cape insistently. "There's a chance that we'll fail, then?"

"There's a chance we won't. We'll miss all the shots we won't take, Eisen."

Himmel stares at the map, at the red ink creeping towards Tausend Seen like a tornado tearing through a crop field, but he feels not one drop of the fear that he thinks he ought to. He has promised his defeat to the people of Tausend Seen, and he is nothing if not a man of his word.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

King Löwenherz is much too miserly for his fat coffers, only offering them ten coppers a piece and their lives, but at least his son more than makes up for it with his generosity. When they are seen off at the city gates, it is with new leather satchels filled with fresh food, perishable and not. He even sees to it that they are brought four of his finest steeds from his stables.

"I don't actually know how to ride," Heiter admits sheepishly.

"And I've only ever ridden a glyptodon," Eisen says.

Himmel turns to Frieren. "Do you—?"

"Of course I do. I'm not an ignoramus."

"…a what?"

"That's exactly what an ignoramus would say."

Himmel just shakes his head. "We can make do with two. Heiter will ride with me, and Eisen with Frieren."

"Splendid," Löwen says. "I will obtain a third for Chrysantheme and I."

Himmel's first instinct is to dismiss them outright, but he forces it down. Everybody, he has learned, is more than what they seem. "Can either of you use any weapons?" he asks.

"No," Chrysantheme huffs. "That's what we hired knights for."

"I was trained somewhat as a child, but I much prefer my mandolin."

"That's something we can work with! Does your magic affect demons?"

Lowen frowns. "No, but why would that be relevant?"

Though Himmel took great care to be as kind as possible, they both look like they're on the verge of tears, and he comes to the admittedly unkind conclusion that they might be idiots, though he does not voice this. "Taking the two of you would just fill our quest with… complications. It isn't safe for you."

Not for the first time, Chrysantheme sniffles. "You sound just like Father," she says bitterly. "Nobody thinks I can do anything on my own."

"My lady, I—" He watches her face fall. "May I speak frankly?" Himmel asks.

"Of course!" Löwen says, much too quickly.

"Your father is a horrible king."

Löwen frowns. "He can't be a—"

"They were throwing bricks at him during the execution," Chrysantheme points out, which is an astute enough observation that Himmel feels his country isn't doomed to imminent collapse. He remembers the detailed paintings that adorned the wall of Lord Kasper's estate and thinks that of all the people in the world, an artist would know a thing or two about seeing it.

"If the two of you want to help—really help—then figure out a way you can be better than him."

He half expects Löwenherz the Sixth to send him to the gallows for the second time around, but he just puts a hand over his heart and bows his head. "Trust that we will, Himmel the Hero."

Himmel is pleasantly surprised at his reaction, and he feels a smile tug at his lips. "We'll be off then, Löwen the Bard."

Chapter Text

Between proud mahogany and ironwood trees, large swaths of the Old Forest have been cut away as though by the stubborn force of an eroding river. Over the bodies of the other creatures that once called this place home, a field of blood roses blooms in the early morning light.

Flamme once told her that their roots are fond of the taste of flesh, and when Frieren sees them, she wonders just how many armies were laid to waste at Qual's feet for them to flourish with so much abandon. Their petals glitter like rubies, though she knows just how sharp their barbed stems can be, a twofold warning for anybody who knows how to listen.

It is both a curse and a blessing that Himmel is not one of them. His horse whines when he shifts his reins, refusing to even set one hoof on the meadow. "Sometimes," he whispers into the horse's white ear, runs a soothing hand through its golden mane, "the only way out is through."

The words were not meant for her, but she hears them anyway and finds that she is inclined to agree.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

They find Qual in a glade it cleared with its own wrath, the surrounding treetops shorn off by the lightless heat of its spell. A nest of passerines, fledglings and all, has lost half its knotted twigs to something that leaves the rest of it blackened and burned. Frieren thinks she can hear one last, desperate chirp as Qual crushes it underfoot.

It stands at roughly three times her height, roughly hewn black cloth draped over its legs and held in place by a belt adorned with sharp teeth. Its white hair contrasts starkly with its iron grey skin, and its pitch black eyes impossibly brighten when it sees them. When it smiles, it is with row upon row of jagged teeth, all glinting with the surety that it will win.

Frieren hates the aftertaste of its arrogance, but she deliberately dampens her urge to shove it down its throat and see the demon choke. Half the battle is in your mind, Flamme had once told her, and unless she keeps it clear of everything but the battle, she will lose.

"Fresh meat," it says, forked tongue licking its grey lips. "I will enjoy the taste of your singed flesh."

Himmel keeps one hand on the hilt of his sword, not yet drawing it. "We don't have to fight," he says. "If you turn around now, we can resolve things peacefully."

Resolve things peacefully?

Frieren usually considers herself a patient person—she certainly isn't an impatient one—but at that she feels something snap inside of her. Demons cannot be reasoned with, and Himmel is speaking to this one as though it is a person capable of doing more than simply toy with him. She doesn't have time to make him and his bleeding heart see sense, so she summons her staff and strikes.

Himmel is barking orders at her, but she doesn't have time for his incompetence, for Eisen's hesitation, for Heiter's sloppiness. If there is one thing she has learned in the past thousand years, it is that she has nobody to rely on but herself, and if she wants something done, she has to be the one to do it.

Qual raises its hands as though in a gesture of benediction, but from its lips falls a word spelled in the letters of their doom. "Zoltraak."

Bright blue sigils form around the demon's wrists, and she lets it cast its spell unimpeded if only to study it. As far as spells go, this one is deceptively simple, but unlike anything she has ever seen before in her entire life. She feels the first branches of fear pierce her lungs, but she stubbornly ignores them to pour her mana into erecting the most powerful of the shields Flamme taught her to cast.

Instead of trying to counteract the magic, Zoltraak simply pierces, like the ruthless arc of a meteor through the night, and leaves a burning mark on her shoulder. Qual raises its arms like the conductor of an orchestra, smiling once more, and the sky is awash with the burning black of its magic.

The rest of the world falls away as Frieren resolves to make Qual the sole victim of her attention. Molten diamonds fall from the clouds like rain, dust devils tear redcedar trees by their roots, burning auroras tear the dusk asunder. No matter what spell she casts, Qual's response is, invariably, "Zoltraak."

The worst part is that it works, because while her mana reserves are trickling to nothing, Qual remains stalwart as an obsidian statue.

Himmel is saying something, but Frieren simply wipes a single drop of blood from her nostril and stands her ground.

The earth shatters into a bowl that Zoltraak cuts through, reality itself is warped into a single black point that turns inside out and explodes in brilliant white. And through it all, Qual just laughs, and she needs to tear that sound from its throat with her teeth, see it bleed, see it die.

She does not notice when Heiter's prayer book goes up in flames, and though he is able to graft new skin over the burn marks, he can cast spells no longer. She does not notice when Eisen's left shoulder is torn by a stray jagged rock from one of her own spells, and without his dominant hand, his attacks lose half their power.

Himmel is able to duck and weave through Qual's impeccable offense and hack off the demon's arm. But his momentary triumph withers when the demon simply picks up its dismembered limb, licks the wound and reattaches it. Frieren can tell from his horrified expression that he didn't know demons could do that, and she almost pities him.

"Zoltraak," Qual says again, and Frieren turns her attention to the anatomy of the spell itself. There are smaller sigils nestled within the larger one, runes arranged to tear souls from bodies and evaporate them like dew in harsh summer afternoons, so she tears it apart.

Or she tries to.

It drains too much of her mana too quickly, and she feels the force of it like a lance through the heart, and Qual sees it and knows that she has lost.

"We have to run," Himmel tells her when she coughs into her palm and leaves behind blood.

"No," she spits, because Qual is going to die if is the last thing she does, and she knows hatred is wasted on demons that are simply incapable of acting otherwise.

"You should have died with the rest of your kind," Qual drawls, and her lungs ache for the mana she has expelled from her body, and she can feel the pressure building up, up, up inside her, and—

Himmel hoists her over his shoulder, and she bites and kicks and screams. "When we run, we run together," he says firmly, but Qual is laughing and laughing and laughing and she needs it to stop.

It is the last thing she hears before the dark maw of exhaustion claims her for its own.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

The summer rains paint the canopy overhead in shades of viridian and grey. Moisture gathers in the treetops like cotton trapped in a loom, woven together into heavy clouds that weep with the monsoon. Squirrels and woodpeckers watch from the safe shelter of the nests they build in hollow trees. Deer hide out under the fragrant pink flowers of a summersweet bush.

Some creatures seek out the heavy rains instead of hiding from them. Salamanders with gold marks crisscrossing their ebony skin gather in shallow pools. Earthworms dig to turn their eyeless heads towards a blackening sky. And underneath it all, the Old Forest sings. It is a steady, onerous melody, one that lulls Frieren to sleep even as she she fights to stay awake.

When they flee from Qual and there is enough distance between them that the cold grip fear has on her hear loosens, she kicks sharply at Himmel's thigh and demands to be put down.

"We've got to get back to the horses," he says as she squirms, too spent to cast any of the spells that would free her from his grip.

"Put me down."

Himmel lets out a longsuffering sigh before ultimately relenting. "Whatever you want to do, be quick."

This magic is the kind that lay beyond even Flamme's understanding—old, powerful, and much too fickle to be meaningfully redirected. What little Frieren remembers from the lessons her mother tried to impress upon her when she was a much, much younger child she can describe as trying to grasp at water with a sieve.

But when Flamme's methods, mathematical and precise—almost to a fault—fail her, these ones do not. Frieren does not consider herself a singer, but when survival stipulates that she cut away the pieces of her that do not fit and grow them anew, she has no real choice.

She slips her fingers in between the cracks in the bark of a sequoia tree and closes her eyes. Threads of mycelium tangling under her feet, minerals flowing through a network of tree roots, a burrowing owl careful to avoid the raindrops for fear of wetting its brown feathers, Qual's heavy footprints crushing feathers underfoot.

Much deeper than all of that, she feels the voice of the Old Forest.

It is not a spell that she casts, not exactly, but the trees shift to accommodate her will. Grass springs up over old, worn paths while others are paved by the tread of well-worn boots that have never once set foot in these parts.

"That," Frieren pants, "should hold him off."

She does not intend to collapse like a puppet with her strings cut, but Himmel catches her all the same.

"C'mon," he orders. "We don't have a moment to waste."

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

Frieren knows, logically, that there must have been other times where she was so drained of mana that her body was nothing more than a husk clawing towards life, nails chipping and bleeding as she did so. But the only memory her mind can offer in supplication is of a swing rocking back and forth against a backdrop of hungry flames licking over everything she knew.

A thousand years have passed, but the taste of ash is still so fresh and heavy on her tongue. Inhaling the thick scent of petrichor around her does nothing to dull it, so she simply reclines her back against the sturdy bark of a willow tree and tries very hard to read the grimoire in her hands.

It's an old treatise of dousing from three centuries ago that she has read and reread more times than she can count, and though every swoop and divot in the ink is as familiar to her as the lines of her palms, not a single word registers. And then, improbably and in no way helpful to her headache, a voice.

"I thought I would find you here."

Frieren snaps the book shut. "How did you find me?"

"It wasn't very hard," Himmel says, taking an invitation she did not extend to sit by her side.

"That can't be true." It's not in her nature—the nature of any elf, in fact—to leave footprints behind, whether it be over bluegrass or fresh snow.

"I followed you," he admits, which also should have been impossible.

"Hmm."

"Are you doin' okay?"

The question is so sincere it almost catches her off guard, but Frieren realizes that he isn't asking it out of any concern. She is his mage, a piece on his side of the chess board, and it would not do for her to be broken. "I am perfectly capable of recovering," she says stiffly.

"'Cause Heiter said he should check you out, and—"

"I just told you that I will recover. What more do you want?"

Himmel's eyes soften with something that can't be anything but pity, and it makes her want to retch. "Heiter also said that Qual has more mana than all of us combined. You shouldn't beat yourself up for not winning the first time 'round."

You don't know the half of it. Frieren's unrestrained mana would eclipse Qual's like the sun swallowing the moon, but it wasn't, isn't, and never will be enough. If her mana and raw power was the sole determinant of every fight, she never would have spent a century trying and failing to turn her arm from gold to flesh.

"Do you plan on leaving?" he asks, inclining his head towards the valise she packed after a sleepless night of stacking the odds and cutting her losses. It was a surprisingly difficult decision, deciding not to follow these fools to their imminent graves, but the last person she will ever admit that to is Himmel.

"What, pray tell, is the alternative?"

"I think we both know the answer to that one."

"You are a spectacular fool, Himmel the Hero."

"And you give up much too easily, Frieren the Mage."

She scowls at him. "Do you think that was easy for me?"

"No, but I think it would've gone better if you'd just listened like you usually do."

Frieren usually makes it a point to obey direct orders, if only to avoid conflicts that she never has enough energy for, but Qual was—still is—much too important a foe for her to rely on anyone but herself. "I fear that your usual strategy of 'hack at it until it dies' would simply not have sufficed."

Himmel doesn't dignify her retort with a response, just stares at the clear creek that flows by their feet. An axolotl is snapping at nearby larvae and tadpoles, deep pink gills fanning out in the current. Himmel flinches when a passing carp closes its jaws around one of the axolotl's feet, but Frieren is unperturbed as it simply swims on.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

The most frustrating thing about humans is that they never seem to learn, and perhaps it's a little hypocritical for an elf to make that observation. Because in the course of their endless lives, they stagnate instead. They spend entire eternities in familiar patterns—more cycles that never seem to break.

But unlike a human who has nothing but stories of what their forebearers might have gone through, Frieren has the memories, the scars, the lessons. She could have learned. She should have learned. But here she is, her shoulder burned with a second scar from a demon she could have eclipsed, should have eclipsed. As far as spells go, Zoltraak is brutally simple and simply brutal.

Yet nothing in an arsenal carefully honed over a thousand years could—

"How come you never tell me what any of these are about?" Himmel asks.

Frieren stiffens.

"I mean, you always insist people don't like listening to you talk about grimoires, but has anyone actually said it?"

"Yes," she admits tersely.

"…has everyone said it?"

She blinks. "What difference would it make?"

"I remember something you once told me 'bout claims and stuff." He snaps his fingers as if trying to pull an idea from the air. "Ah, right! What evidence do you have to substantiate your claim?"

"Enough."

"'Cause for all you know, I could love it, and you'd go your whole life not knowing there was even one exception to your rules."

"You have the magical acumen of a lump of coal. I doubt that—"

"Indulge me?"

Frieren is much too tired to refuse his eagerness, and the weight of the grimoire in her hands is the only thing that fully anchors her to reality. So she turns the page to read, and the strangest thing happens as she does. The whole time, Himmel listens, like she's gathered all of his attention like a thread wrapped around a spool.

"Can you cast it?" he asks. "The drowsing spell, I mean. I-if you're not too tired."

"Dousing," she corrects sharply, but she doesn't refuse him.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

The spell leads them to a sunlit pond surrounded on all sides with meters of sheer rock wall. Sightless guppies swim at the base of a spiraling staircase, and a mastodon skull is half-submerged in its teal waters. Rainwater seeps in from overhead cracks, coalescing into a misty waterfall Himmel catches with an outstretched hand.

This is not the first cenote Frieren has seen in her entire life, and it certainly won't be the last, but it is beautiful enough to give her a moment's pause. There are so few things she truly considers beautiful, because the long years of her life have desensitized her to beauty, if not jaded her completely. But Himmel seems to have no such compunctions, because his eyes widen to drink in the splendor around him.

It must be nice, she thinks, to see this place for the first time.

"Is all your magic like this?" he asks, as though he hasn't witness her rend the flesh of a hundred monsters with her staff.

"More or less," Frieren answers, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back against the rock wall.

"It's beautiful."

How long has it been since she used that word to describe it? "It is, isn't it?"

(It won't strike her until it's much, much too late that he was looking right at her when he said those words.)

"Next time you read up 'bout a spell, promise me you'll tell me all about it."

She feels a smile tug at her lips despite her best efforts. "That seems extremely unnecessary."

"Really?" He nudges her gently with his shoulder. "I think it's the exact opposite."

"If it means so much to you," she sighs. "I will, on occasion."

"Promise me."

"Fine."

"And how do you plan on keeping it if you leave?"

Frieren gives him a very sour look. "Do you still intend on facing Qual again?"

"Yes, but—"

"Then I'm afraid our paths must diverge. You can face your death on your own. I intend to survive."

"Shame," Himmel says, mouth twisting into a wry smile. "I think you'd be much happier if you tried to live."

"…is there a difference?"

He sighs and shakes his head. "Never mind that. You told me once that there was a difference between pragmatism and cowardice. How am I supposed to know that this isn't just you lacking the will to do what needs to be done?"

"There isn't a single spell I can think of that will counteract Zoltraak, even if it is deceptively simple," she answers, even though her stomach fills with leaden shame at that admission. "All magic begins with visualization, and I can't even imagine Qual dead."

"What can you imagine then? Innocents slaughtered by Zoltraak, blood roses blooming in the thousands?"

Frieren doesn't have an answer, not one that will satisfy both of them.

"The most important step we can take from here," he says, gently taking her hand, "is the next. So tell me. What can you imagine?"

"I…I don't know."

"Can you try?"

While a futile effort is futile in nature, it is also effort, and she thinks back to a much younger girl in a burning village who refused to run from Basalt the Throne and did the impossible, and decides there is nothing she wouldn't do for her sake.