NOVEL NEXT Chapter 39: Beach
The throne room of the Empire’s palace looms vast and imposing, each wall reaching toward the heavens, adorned with intricate frescoes depicting the triumphs of ages past. Golden columns stretch toward grand vaulted ceilings, where chandeliers spark with the flicker of a thousand candles, painting the scene in warm, ever-present light. The air hums with energy, alive with the jubilant murmurs of noblemen and women dressed in silks and velvets, their laughter mingling with the sweet melodies of a distant orchestra. Dandy stands just inside the threshold of a palace archway, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She’s too poor to even breathe the air in here. Shadows of the place she is hiding at coil around her as she takes in the spectacle — the swirling gowns, the gleaming armor, the genuine awe that lights the eyes of the assembled nobles as they gaze at Hero, who stands at the center of all this extravagance. Triumph glimmers in his presence as lineages of blood older than the city itself fawn at his feet, but for Dandy, the ambiance feels more nauseating than enchanting.
They’re here to have an audience with the emperor and the high-priest themselves. However, even if the world is at stake, they are being kept ‘in waiting’ in a massive hall just outside of the throne-room doors used for grand events and parties. It’s a political power move. Even the great hero of legend needs to wait his turn to see them — it’s important for the powers that be to remain seen as such. However, in the mean time, a great banquet and celebration have unfolded, and nobles from all around the region have flooded the palace, riding in by carriages and anqa in a zeal never quite seen before as they all try to get into his graces.
“Isn’t it magnificent?” one of the attendees murmurs, her voice a soft silk stitched with excitement. “The hero has graced us with his return! I should have never thought to see the day.” Sinking into the high walls closing in on her, Dandy pulls her cloak tighter around her shoulders, nudging toward the back of the assembly, desperate to escape the focused attention illuminating Hero. His laughter echoes through the great room, effortless and bright, feeding the jubilation swirling around them. She hates social situations, she hates being around people, she hates loud noises and flashy lights, and so — all of this — is just too much for her. Her brain is shooting sparks, and she can’t press her back any tighter against the wall to get away from the over-stimulation.
Dandy feels the weight of onlookers bearing down, their bright eyes probing for recognition, observing the lonesome priestess to discern her place among this opulent parade of weighty views. She seems out of place amongst it all in her plain robes, that she at least had the dignity of being allowed a fresh pair by the local church for the sake of this abrupt meeting. Nonetheless, she wants to slip away, melt into the heavy tapestries of the walls, and become just another whisper of shadow. “What could they possibly want from me?” she mutters, anxiety creeping in and curling tight around her heart. The hero is here. Doesn’t that mean she can go now? She’s done, right? There’s no point in her anymore in all of this.
Dandy nods. That sounds right. She has to get out of here. Her racing heart and mind tell her as much. Quickly, Dandy spins around and starts walking to a side door that doesn’t have many people near it.
“Dandy! Where are you going?” The sudden sound of Hero's voice cuts through the euphoria wrapping around her like a thick fog. She glances back, startled, and finds him striding with purpose, a gleam of mischief lining his features as he heads straight toward her. A thousand people trail after him, like a school of fish, as he leads them straight her way in both direction of body and eye. Everyone looks at her.
“…I was just…” she stammers, her heart racing as she realizes she’s not escaped after all. “I need to… go somewhere.” The words tumble out in a rush, but the truth feels frail, undercut by her instincts that urge her to avoid confrontation.
“What? But the ceremony has only just begun!” His beaming smile radiates warmth, a beacon thankfully drawing the crowd's attention away from her. “Come on! Join me,” he insists.
“I don't belong here,” she murmurs, stepping back and waving her hands nervously as she looks around at the massive, elegant room full of nobles. The admission drips with harsh honesty. She tries once more to shift away.
"Oh, come on!” he insists. “You're part of this too, Dandy.” Hero closes the distance between them in casual strides, grasping her hand, his grip firm and reassuring. “Come on, let’s enjoy the celebrations. You deserve a little break too after everything. This will be fun,” he assures her, nodding.
“A break?” she asks, lowering her voice and leaning in so that she isn’t overhead. “This is the worst thing I could ever imagine,” explains Dandy, looking at the room full of endless people, all looking their way. He, and by extension, she, are the center of an infinite wellspring of attention. “Everyone is here for you. They don't care about me.” Her voice trembles, caught somewhere between indignation and despair. “So I’ll just let you enjoy it, okay?” she asks, trying to pull away.
He nods. “Exactly! They ought to be here for both of us!” he insists, smiling, his tone insistent but kind. “You’ve traveled with me, fought alongside me. They should know the priestess who summoned me to this world.”
He starts pulling her into the heart of the celebration. She feels her pulse quicken, her nerves crackling like breaking glass. “Wait, I -!” She tries to pull back, but Hero’s enthusiasm is unyielding, and alongside it burns a flicker of boundless confidence. She feels like she’s been leashed to a curious, world-giddy puppy that is stronger than she is. As they weave through crowds, laughter rings like chimes in the air. The soldiers shout, hammering fists against the wooden tables laden with attendants bringing delectable feasts. Golden goblets, filled to the brim and overflowing, reflect the flickers of candlelight, creating an illusion of constellations that do little to replace the missing stars of the night sky outside. She opens her mouth to protest, but nothing forms except odd sounds in the back of her throat.
He gestures to the crowd, taking a moment to absorb their attention before calling out, “Everyone!” calls out Hero, ten thousand eyes turning their way as he breaks every noble etiquette that has ever existed by jumping straight onto a table, waving his arm out to the crowd without a single care in his eyes — the man who can get away with everything. “Thank you so much for the kind welcome!” calls out Hero to the nobility. “But please, let me introduce you to the person who really deserves your admiration,” says Hero. “The powerful, brave priestess who returned me to you!”
A collective hush blankets the room, anticipation crackling in the air as if the very walls hold their breath. Dandy falters. “No, wait! I -” starts Dandy, looking around in terror as attention drifts her way. She’s the only priestess in the entire crowd, so it isn’t a hard guess who is being talked about. There’s no way out.
He pulls her up to the table with him, Dandy letting out a terrified yelp as she finds her footing, knocking over several plates.
But the applause begins, a rolling wave of clapping and cheers that seems to shake the palace itself; it shakes her to the core, blending into a marr of sights and sensations spiraling around. The air vibrates beneath the swell of joyful noise, and the attention focused on her feels suffocating and uncomfortable. Dandy spins her head, looking around at a sea of bodies — faces — all of which are trained her way. Hero laughs and waves to everyone. But she can feel her brain cooking in her skull. There’s too much happening at once. Her arm nervously waves from side to side, but even that feels like she’s doing it wrong.
But she’s trapped now, woven into the tapestry of this moment of history, unable to disentangle herself from Hero. Blood rushes to her head. She feels like she’s going to faint. Hero throws an arm around her shoulders to reassure her, his expression one of endless encouragement mixed with irrepressible joy. “Don’t be scared, Dandy! This is your moment too!”
The grand doors, each as high as a tower, at the end of the hall open, and a parade of royal guards marches out on either side of them, clearing the way for them to enter. Dandy thanks the heavens for opening up an escape route for her that involves less social pressure.
The two of them look through the grand doorway, down the long hall, toward the throne on which the emperor himself sits, awaiting the two of them.
“Guess the fun’s over…” says Hero quietly, patting her on the back and then helping her down from the table.
He almost seems like he means it too.
The heavy rain of a lightning storm cascades down outside, splashing against the ground-level windows of the underground closet Acacia calls home.
A great wailing and moaning fills the air, the haunting cries of lost souls letting free their lamentations as the cry in wordless desperation for the levity of simpler times.
It is a week later.
— A week full of meetings, ceremonies, political engagements, monster hunting and the protection of the region, development of the city and the area, scouting out of potential dangers and threats, eyeing of the movements around the world, and contemplation as to how the shifting tides will affect them here.
Sleep and rest are both sparse, with the only saving grace being good food, prepared by a horde of servants — most of which are Sir Knight’s manifestations. Although at some point ‘real’ food was abandoned in favor of less stimulating things, like a perfectly normal loaf of dry, plain bread from the baker’s stall. It’s almost nostalgic.
But now, even the thought of having to eat is exhausting.
“The body wasn’t meant to sustain this kind of pace,” says Junis, her voice muffled because her face is lied straight down flat into the mattress that she’s lying around on the opposite way around, her side half-smushed against the wall of the small room below the adventurers’ guild. “Goodbye, Acacia,” says the elf.
“Goodbye Junis,” replies Acacia’s exhausted breath after a long moment of gathering inner strength. She’s laid down the other way, the two of them sharing the bed. “For your wages, you were acceptable,” remarks the princess, her eyes too tired to stay open but also too tired to blink.
From the side of the tiny room next to the bed comes a voice from a figure slumped against the corner, a hooded head lying against the nightstand. “You don’t pay Junis,” mutters Chicory, her arms folded together as she rests on the duck-pattern rug in a half-daze. “You don’t pay any of us.”
Acacia tsks, still not having decided what to do with her eyes. “Service to the crown even just once is a salary most would sacrifice a thousand lives to receive.”
The door to the tiny underground room opens as far as it can, given the filling of the room with far too many bodies. That is, it only swings open ajar a little way, just enough for a small body to slip through. Nobody bothers lifting their head to see who it is.
A high-pitched, deeply suffering wail fills the air — clear belonging to Hase. A second later, there’s a dull thumping sound, followed by a small vibration. She’s dropped down face forward to the last corner of the rug in a heap. “I’m done, man,” says a voice from down below a second later. “I can’t.”
“Did you finish your tasks?” asks Acacia.
“I’m the one who’s finished,” replies Hase in a breaking voice. Nobody has the strength to watch her, but a weak flailing can be felt as she slides her legs and arms around the rug in some vain act of desperation.
Acacia sighs, followed by Junis, followed by Chicory, followed by another half-groan, half-scream from Hase.
“Overexertion is a serious matter,” says a voice from the corner, behind the door that starts to close, as if by itself. An arm pushes it closed, coming from the foot of the bed. Fichtenholz is standing in the designated spot by the door, but facing the corner, as were Acacia’s orders. Lying at her feet, curled together on the ground in a ball, is the lanky Kaisersgrab. “Exhausted animals are the ones taken by the wolves first.”
She doesn’t want them in here, but it’s a bad look for her in the public eye to let her servants stand outside in the storm, so there wasn’t really a choice. But she did get to satisfy her urge to establish her power over them by saying that ‘dogs should lie at the foot of their master’s bed’.
Acacia considers it a clever save. She’s still proud of that one now, several minutes later.
There isn’t a single step’s worth of free space left anywhere in the room. Six people for a room not even designed for one person are clearly too many. It’s only working out because they’re willingly stacking themselves like corpses into a closet. The deep exhaustion runs through all of them. It’s been a long sprint. Even now, they technically don’t have time to be here taking it easy. The duties and responsibilities are growing in number by the day, despite their consistent exertion and ambition.
Acacia sighs, letting the sound travel from her lips like a siren’s mourning song.
The only saving grace is that Sir Knight and what’s-his-face aren’t here too.
“Hey,” says Sir Knight’s voice.
Acacia sighs again, reopening her eyes that had just managed to close for a single moment. “I was just thinking about you,” she says.
“I know,” he replies. “And it kind of hurts, actually,” says the gruff man’s voice from above them all. The ceiling of the room has vanished, being painted in black emptiness with a depth to it that makes it look like the roof and the building above had vanished, and they were all looking directly into the empty night sky above. “I only ever think nice things about you, you know.”
“I have my doubts,” remarks Acacia dryly.
“Okay, so maybe I think you’re kind of a brat now and then,” he admits. “But in a nice way.”
Acacia stares at the emptiness. “Junis.” A vague ‘mmurph’ from below is all she hears in acknowledgment. “Give me a cruel punishment for Sir Knight, so that he might be reminded of his place in this world as my lesser.”
“Mmru,” mumbles the elf from down below.
“Thank you, Junis,” replies Acacia. “You heard her, Sir Knight.”
“I didn’t, actually,” says the entity. “But maybe it’s time we took a few days to recover,” he suggests.
Acacia shakes her head from side to side, never lifting it from the pillow. “Sir Knight. In a few days of idle management and neglect without me, the people will become wolves and eat their own young,” explains Acacia. “Nobility does not rest,” explains the princess, resting her head against the fat stuffed duck she keeps on her bed.
“I’m basically a commoner,” says Chicory from the side, lifting a hand. A second hand shoots up from below the side of the bed. “I relinquished my family’s title to become a priestess, so I can rest.”
“Me too,” says Hase desperately, her arm shaking.
A vague mumbling come’s from Junis.
Fichtenholz, still facing the corner, chimes in, her gaze looking at the sleeping man, who is quite literally wrapped around her legs because there is no space for them behind the door together. “While we were raised with the proper etiquette of good houses, our blood is simple as well,” she adds, speaking for herself and Kaisersgrab.
“I guess that just leaves you,” says Sir Knight to Acacia. “You go back to it, and we’ll catch up to you in a little while.”
“I explicitly forbid you from enjoying life outside of my presence,” orders Acacia. “All of you.”
A collective groaning comes from around the room.
She lifts her nose, which really just means that Acacia tilts her head further back on the pillow that it already is. “However, I acknowledge the lack of stamina that the low-quality blood of their birth has burdened my servants with.” Acacia folds her arms over herself. “Perhaps it would be cruel of me not to allow you all a day of rest. A good coachman can only push his anqas so far before they tire.”
“You have such a way with words, Your Majesty,” remarks Sir Knight.
“I know,” replies Acacia simply. “However, I cannot let you all run free and wild like savages. I must watch you to make sure that you do not tarnish my good name. Especially you, Sir Knight,” says the princess. “As such, I suggest that we take some time elsewhere to recollect ourselves.”
“What a great idea,” says Sir Knight. “Your infinite wisdom humbles us all, Your Majesty.”
“And your uncouth snark does not go unnoticed,” she replies. “As such, we will all be taking a brief respite. And you, Sir Knight — as your punishment for your dull and misplaced tongue — you must take care of all critical duties here while the rest of us recover. It will do you good to actually engage in some work for a change.” She lifts her hands, lightly clapping her fingers together. “Take us somewhere nice, Sir Knight,” demands Acacia. “I should like to feel the sun on my skin again and silence of the quiet life once more within my ears.”
As the sound of the fingers striking together reverberates around the room, the darkness from above that stretches between the four walls like a new ceiling crashes down around them all, swallowing them whole in an instant, as six bodies and a thing that has no such binds to the corporeal world fly through a dark void, tumbling all of a sudden wildly in free fall as they hurtle to a light shining on the other side.
“I know just the place,” says his dark voice, floating around them in in the abyss.
The smell of salt fills the emptiness.
Everyone flies out through the void, some landing more gracefully than others. Acacia is caught by Sir Knight as they break through on the other side, with Junis and Hase hanging on to him. Chicory lands by herself in a practiced roll. Kaisersgrab is spared a sudden awakening by face-planting into the sands by Fichtenholz, who is holding the lanky, sleeping man in her arms with ease. Given his length compared to her size, he’s drooping over her out held arms like an empty sack.
An awe fills the air. Acacia covers her eyes, her sight adjusting to the sudden brightness all around them, as well as the drastic change of heat. It was warm at home, but here, it’s hot.
In seconds, she can feel the sun washing over her as her vision comes into focus, together with the clarity of the sound she can hear.
— The ocean.
“Wow,” says Junis, looking around. “I’ve never been to the sea like this before,” she says, taking in a deep breath and smiling with a sudden glow as she lifts her face toward the sudden.
“…These rocks…” mutters Chicory, scanning the coast. “The water. We’re in the south-west again, where we stole, I mean recovered, Acacia’s crown,” she says, expertly avoiding the sharp side eye shot her way. But then she scans more of the details, her eyes looking over the odd trees with many long fronds at their crown, but not along their base. Nor do they have branches like an oak might. Everything is flush with greenery, denser and more vivid than any forest she’s recalls seeing before. “No, wait… Where the hell are we?”
“South-west,” replies Sir Knight. “…But maybe a little further south-west than you’re thinking of.”
Sand rolls on toward the horizon, stretching along the coast of a massive island and creating a gentle descending border between the landing and the white, soft foam of cresting waves that then reel back toward an azure blue so vivid that looks more like paint than water.
“It’s an island, about three days off the coast by ship,” explains Sir Knight. “Lots of spice production here mostly,” he explains. “Continero,” he replies. “We have business here.”
“…I’ve never heard of that,” says Junis, grabbing Acacia’s arm and pointing down at a red, hard shape that is crawling over the sand. A crab scuttles by, the two of them kneeling down to watch it go along the shore.
— A slime leaps out of a hole in the sand, the gelatinous little monster landing right on the crab.
The two of them grab each other in surprise, watching as the crab dissolves inside of pink gel.
“…A pink slime?” asks Acacia, taken aback.
Junis and her watch it wiggle down the shore contentedly, before burrowing a new hole that it hides inside, indifferent to the cresting sea foam and sand that wash into its burrow as it waits there. “It must because of its diet,” explains Junis. “It’s a monster adaptation. It’s changed to live by the ocean, instead of our slimes that like the forests,” she says, making it up as she goes along. But it does sound right, so nobody questions her on it.
“How did you find this place?” asks Acacia, looking back at him. “What else have you been holding back from me in secret, Sir Knight?” she asks, rising back up to her feet.
The giant man lifts his hands. “Well. My favorite color isn’t actually black. I like green flavored things more than blue flavored things, and the first time I lived by myself, I bought gray bed sheets so they would look clean longer before I had to wash them.”
“Fascinating,” says Acacia dryly, her face not stirring an inch.
“…Somehow all of these were about color,” mutters Chicory.
Sir Knight shrugs, his body dissipating into mist piece by piece. “Anyway. I had work here, finding exotic spices for Her Majesty’s tea blends.”
“You mentioned we had business here?” asks Acacia. Junis and Hase have already pulled up their dresses, kicking around in the water at each other. “Sir Knight. I explicitly said that this was a time for us to rest,” she warns.
He vanishes, fading into powder that drifts through the air in the warm ocean breeze. “Don’t worry,” says his voice reassuringly. “It’s just a little errand I need to run to pick something up from the locals.”
Acacia watches him go and then sighs, shaking her head. “Undependable as always,” mutters the princess, looking around at the region that is actually quite beautiful. When she ascends to her throne, she’ll have her legions come and conquer it as an extension of her domain.
But that can wait until then.
— A loud splashing fills the world.
She looks back, water cascading toward the sky. Fichtenholz stands there, her arms now empty. A lanky black silhouette comes spluttering, kicking, and splashing out of the ocean, yelling in a panic that defies his otherwise always elegant presentation. Kaisersgrab presses his head above water, looking around himself in confusion as he hacks out the ocean from his lungs.
“We are playing,” says Fichtenholz in her blank, loveless, and empty tone as she looks down at the soggy man.
“What? Where are we?” asks Kaisersgrab, trying to access the situation, given that he was asleep until a second ago.
Fichtenholz turns her head to the side, looking at Junis and Hase, who are still splashing each other with water and laughing, and then turns her head back toward him. Her hands rest beneath the surface of the ocean, both of them standing knee deep in the sea. “We are playing,” she explains again.
Her hands push through the water, her incredible strength bashing a full wave of it his way in a deeply unnatural force, the man yelling as he’s washed out toward see.
A rustling next to Acacia comes to ear and a second later, servants and soldiers in black clothing who had appeared out of nowhere establish a little shaded lounging area with seats and tables. Even a small hut to rest in is created in the matter of moments by what may as well be a team of human-sized ants, given their efficiency. Acacia finds herself seated in a long chair, a ghostly soldier at her side fanning her with a frond and another servant pouring a drink into a glass that has just appeared out of thin air.
“Well,” says Acacia, sighing and leaning back. “What will you be doing, Chicory?” asks the princess. “Swim with the others, or would you prefer to stay here in the shade?”
“Can we afford to take a break?” asks Chicory. “Everything seems so critical. Taking a day… even two…” she starts.
Acacia doesn’t even lift a hand to cut her off mid-sentence. A servant does it instead, standing next to them. “Chicory, will you be so heartless and cruel as to ignore your dying master’s wish for a little rest?”
"Oh, come on,” protests Chicory. “I should at least -”
“- Ah, ah!” warns Acacia sharply. The servant wags a finger for her. “No work. I explicitly forbid it, by royal decree.”
Chicory stands in place, neither quite here nor there, as she can’t quite seem to make up her mind on the matter. Acacia sighs. The servant claps his hands together for her. “Servants. Throw Chicory into the ocean with the others.”
“Huh? Wait, no I -!”
— A loud splash fills the air, Acacia opening her eyes to look at Chicory floating to the surface. “- I’m wearing white!” she yells back at the shoreline, her head popping out of the water a second later as she wipes her hair out of her face and holds herself covered. Acacia starts laughing.
“Don’t worry, Chicory,” starts the cruel-hearted princess, holding her hand by her mouth to amplify her voice. “The water’s clean. It won’t stain!” she jokes, chuckling and leaning back again.
She smiles smugly.
The servant next to her stares down her way. “What?” The shadow flashes its hand at her, that it was going to use for her to direct her voice. But instead, she did it herself. “Oh, please. I can manage a few things my byseL-"
Dying woman or not, a pair of shadowy soldiers grab her, heaving her back like a battering ram, before launching her out past the others and into the water, where she connects with a belly-flop and sinks down toward the ocean floor. Chicory lets out a terrified scream, swimming after her and pulling her back up to the surface. Laughter fills the air as they take a little time off in the sun and the water.
By the time Acacia looks back to the shore in rage, all of the shadows are gone, having vanished to return to work — as she herself had ordered them to do.
But at least they left the hut and the furnishings.
A man scratches a marking into the crumbling, stony wall of the cell. Another day has passed. He sighs, pacing back again as he thinks.
He’s considered using his magic several times. He could well do it. But that would be… too much. Given the nature of his power, there’s hardly a safe way to go about it that wouldn’t lead to bloodshed.
Zabaniyah scratches his perfectly smooth, round face that for the men in the cells next to his, have sprouted thick and long beards that gain a stiffness to them from the salt in the air of the cliff-side prison.
“What’re you in for?” asks a voice next to him.
Zabaniyah jumps, startled, and looks across the tiny six-pace cell at the shadow of a man, sitting on a bench. “Heresy, if you would believe it,” replies the prisoner, relieved as he clutches his chest.
The shadow watches him, tilting its head. “That doesn’t sound like you,” replies Sir Knight. “What will Chicory think?”
Zabaniyah approaches him. “There was a… misunderstanding,” explains the inquisitor. “Regarding the mission.”
“Didn’t you get the spices?” asks Sir Knight. “Her Majesty needs them for her tea.”
Zabaniyah plants his hands on his hips, leaning in forward toward Sir Knight’s shadow that is sitting on a wooden blank chained to the walls, which is both bed and seating here. “Spices? I’ve been in here for four days,” he says. “You could have come sooner.”
“I didn’t think you needed help,” replies Sir Knight, looking around. “Aren’t these your countrymen?” The massive shadow scoots over, gently patting the spot on the bench next to him.
“I will remind you,” starts Zabaniyah, passing on his offer to sit. “That you found and left my nation in civil-war,” he says dryly.
The shadow nods, as if listening intently. “That is true. So where does the heresy come into play then?”
Zabaniyah paces over to the window. The sand floors of the prison are well grooved with little indentations of pathways where its obvious he has been walking for a while. He grabs the iron bars. “It turns out that there is a specific ritual the people here invoke when harvesting the unprepared leaves,” he explains. “Not doing so is a very serious offense,” says the inquisitor, staring out of the window at some white rocks he’s been looking at for days. He’s not sure if they’re rocks or skulls.
“Aren’t cultural quirks just the oddest?” quips the shadow. “Where’s Pepper, then?”
Zabaniyah shrugs. “Pepper? The anqa?” he asks. Sir Knight nods. “I assume working the farm,” he replies. “Last I saw her before I was arrested.”
“You’d better hope so,” says Sir Knight, the cell growing darker by the second despite the open bars on two sides of it. “Her Majesty will take personal offense if he’s hurt,” explains the emptiness that swallows Zabaniyah, and then, a second later, the cell is empty.
“So rude!” snaps Chicory, Acacia still laughing despite having been thrown in herself. “I put up with a lot, but this is too much!” she snaps.
“I didn’t know you were so easily embarrassed, Chicory,” says the princess almost accusingly as she looks at her. “That seems like a real weakness for a royal agent of all trades.”
“I’m not embarrassed; it’s just a matter of appropriateness!” she says, pointing to the side. “There is a man here!”
Everyone stops and looks the way she’s pointing, including Kaisersgrab, who then, seeing nothing further in that direction, looks back at them and then points at himself with a confused look. Fichtenholz’s hand comes from the side, covering his eyes.
However, she’s too strong and ends up pressing too hard, thrusting him back down into the water, his legs and arms flailing up through the surface.
“Oh, please,” says Acacia, leaning in with a knowing look toward Chicory. “I suppose you’re just lucky that your dearly beloved isn’t here right now to see you,” she remarks in a dramatic hush, clenching her hands together next to her face as Chicory fights with her wet priestess robe. “Or are you maybe actually sad about it?” she asks, pouting playfully as she makes the accusation to the priestess. After a second of silence, Acacia thinks out loud, scanning the area as if suddenly noticing something missing. “Actually, wait. Where is Zabaniyah anyway?” she mutters, looking around at the others, who shrug. “I think it’s been a week or so now since I last saw him…”
Chicory looks to the side, somewhat dejected.
— The sky above them opens up, a man’s voice coming down from above with a terrified scream. A second later, a flash of red falls down from above, cascading into the ocean next to them with a resounding splash.
Zabaniyah splashes up and out of the water, his red, droopy hat sagging down over the sides of his face as he collects himself on the spot, looking at all of them, before rising up to his feet in the shallow sea sea, grabbing his wet hat, and twirling it in a flair that loses a lot of its dramatic effect because of the sea-grass dangling from its soggy feather. “I have returned,” says the man, with the same confident flair as always, as if he hadn’t just been dumped here by a presence that has now already left without a second look back his way.
Acacia, perhaps maybe actually pleased with Sir Knight’s work after all, develops a scheme on the fly. “Good, good,” says the princess, half-waving Zabaniyah off as she scoots over toward Junis, crab walking through the water with both the poise and spirit of one. “Junis. Listen up,” says Acacia, formulating an entire plot in her head already about how she’s going to set up a complicated network of events and happenstances to get Chicory and Zabaniyah to stumble into each other here.
Junis nods feverishly, going along with the hushed mumblings. A pair of rabbit ears listen in from below, their tips just barely reaching.
However, Chicory is suddenly nowhere to be seen, apparently having dove beneath the water. Only a dissipating ring of bubbles and sea foam hint that anyone was ever there.
Although the local sirens and mermaids down the coast would speak to each other of a strange scream they heard coming from below the water that day.
A shadow materializes in the corner of an open stall, gazing out into a large plantation on the center of the island. Houses and simple roads line the fields in all directions, shadowed by tall, fronded trees. The heat of the midday sun has driven most people away back into their houses.
There in the shade below a few trees rests a black-feathered anqa, its long neck rolled around and its head resting on its back.
The creature clicks comfortably with its curved beak, yawning and then slowly opening an eye as it senses a presence nearby.
“Hey Bud,” says Sir Knight’s voice. The creature’s large, yellow eye opens wide and it sits upright, looking at the shadow. “You find a new job already?” he jokes, stroking the animal’s head. It clicks excitedly, rubbing its crown against him. “Right, I know…” he sighs, scratching it below the holes that make up its ears. They’re hidden below a tuft of feathers. “Never loan out anything to a friend that you want back, huh? Lesson learned.”
Sir Knight looks around the plantation.
“Gonna need your help with something. There’s no rest for us two, anymore,” he explains. The anqa rising up to its feet and shaking itself off.
It is later that day, well, that night.
Acacia slumps over, content, onto a bed in the hut, facing out toward the open ocean. Guards stand outside, having rematerialized sometime during the fun. It hasn’t ever really been in her station in life to just kind of play, at least not with others. Back as a girl in the palace, she would find ways to keep herself busy, playing make-believe games with dolls and toys — in a way, in the same exact manner she plays make-believe to this day with her and Sir Knight’s pretend game.
— She’s told anyone about it.
Acacia lies on her back, staring out toward the open water, the light of a single star cascading down over the ocean.
Night’s have gotten much darker lately, ever since the other stars vanished with Zero’s return to the world. Even after its destruction down below the mountain city, there seems to have been some lingering effect on the world that nobody can explain.
She had snuck away from the fire and the food after a time of it, having had her fill — as well as some drinks, which are normally not quite her domain of experience either. But it is a vacation, and it may well be the only and last one for a long, long time.
To play pretend… it’s something that one must often do in life. In some cases, more often than others. But for her, pretending was a survival mechanism. Pretending to be confident and strong, pretending to understand what the adults at the table were saying, pretending that she could keep up with her siblings, when really she couldn’t ever do it — not without magic.
She was a zero, pretending to be a number greater than that. Because if she didn’t, if she gave into that emptiness, then she wouldn’t have ever gotten to the life she is inside of this very moment. Is it perfect? No. Hardly. But she has things she’s never before — powerful things — that are perhaps misplaced within the cruel, wicked claws of the terrible queen to be that she is.
For her, these powerful things are Sir Knight, first and foremost. But then her friends.
— She never had friends before either.
Sure, she may be a conniving, wicked slave-driver of a master with the cackle and mean spirit of a witch sometimes, but that doesn’t mean she eats babies and kicks puppies. There is a healthy middle ground to be found, and sometimes, if one isn’t really strong enough to get there by themselves, it can help to pretend that you are.
After all, who is really going to call you out on it at the end of the day? If you believe that lie you tell yourself, that game you’re playing, and you get the results that matter, then there’s no harm done.
Junis peaks her head around the corner, smiling and waving with a few fingers, her face flush and red from too much wine and too much sun, both of them having combined into a deadly nectar that fills the elf’s blood.
Acacia used to hate Junis; she absolutely loathed her. She would have given anything to destroy and ruin Junis’ life, even if it was only for a single day.
And now, Junis wobbles around, laughing as she tries to balance herself with her arms outstretched. She trips, yelling and falling over Acacia, the two of them laughing.
— Now they’re the best of friends. She’d burn the world for Junis.
Isn’t the proof of the theory of playing pretend?
Acacia scoots a little to the side, letting the hiccuping elf who is too far gone to partake in the plan anymore lie there next to her, mumbling some utter nonsense.
The theory is that playing pretend matters. It’s real.
If her heart tells her she hates Junis, and she lets her mind follow that, then she will live in a world in which this creature now hiccuping and holding her is the most terrible monster to ever exist, a beast with ten thousand fangs.
But if she were to pretend that Junis wasn’t such a thing, if she believed it, then the world itself would change to allow this perception to be true. After all, Junis was never a black-and-white-issue.
So, if one’s perceptions change the world in regards to people, then what happens when you play other pretend games?
What happens when you pretend to be secure, to be whole, to be adventurous and boisterous and bold when none of these things are true in the least?
It seems likely, at least given the evidence that Acacia has witnessed, that then these things will fulfill themselves. You will, if you really believe in your pretend game, become as such.
— A guard comes marching over, holding Hase by the scruff of her neck. “Come on,” says the rabbit. “Just one more!”
She was allowed, by the grace of the adults in the room, a single small child’s sip of wine so as to try it and not feel left out. After that, it was juice only. She seems to have preferred the latter. But now she needs to be cut off before her body solidifies from the thick juices of the fruits of the island that are more like a syrup than a liquid.
The guard sets her down on a cot, where she crosses her arms.
“Did you do it?” asks Acacia, looking her way and stroking Junis’ hair. The elf mumbles some typical elven nonsense, drooling on her shoulder.
Hase looks her way. “I always finish a job,” explains the thief.
“Very well done,” praises Acacia. She lifts a finger.
A guard comes over, carrying one more glass to Hase as payment.
“Now what?” asks Hase.
“Now…” says Acacia, pinching the tip of Junis’ ear. She lets out a strange, long squeak of protest that sounds more like a vapid exhalation of a breath that she had been holding in for too long. “We give it some time.”
“Gotcha. So, I was thinking,” starts Hase, sipping from her glass. She leans back, crossing her legs and resting an arm behind her head as she enjoys the good life. “Isn’t this pretty unethical for a princess?” asks the thief. “I mean. You know? Not that I care, but. Yeah.”
“Please, Hase,” remarks Acacia indignantly. “You can refer to me as your queen,” she replies, not really answering the question. “And ethics are decreed to be acceptable or not by the rulers of the land.” Acacia looks her way. “I say it is okay, and that makes it okay.”
“These sound like mob rules,” remarks Hase. “Are we running a mafia?”
“We’re running a kingdom, Hase,” answers Acacia plainly. “You’ll understand the difference once your schooling commences.”
“Schooling?” asks Hase, taken aback. “I ain’t goin’.”
“In my kingdom, all children will be educated by members of my government,” explains Acacia. “So that they aren’t told any false narratives about my rule by any… misguided family.”
Hase narrows her eyes. “Over my dead body. That sounds shady as hell,” explains the thief. “Also, wait. Are we running a cult? This is a cult, isn’t it?”
“Drink your juice, Hase,” says Acacia.
“I’m not asking any dangerous questions, boss, just making small talk,” replies Hase, lifting a hand and leaning back on her chair.
Acacia stares quietly for a while out toward the ocean, and the next time she looks back, both of the two are asleep. It should be right about that time now.
Carefully, she gets up, covering the two of them with thin blankets, and then slinks around the corner, watching quietly from the darkness like a stalker in the night.
A little further out, a fire burns by the shore, already mostly burned out.
Sitting by the remains of it are two people, the priestess Chicory and Zabaniyah. “Come on, you creeps…” mutters Acacia, watching them intently. Ever since their first encounter when Zabaniyah interfered in the battle with Zero, there seems to have been some sort of… flair between the two of them. At first it was cute to watch, seeing the otherwise fairly loveless and independent Chicory stumble around as the rather dialectically passionate man came pretty much straight at her. Chicory isn’t the type to garner a lot of attention, let alone let it grow, because of her training as both a priestess and a royal agent. Both of these are solitary professions, dedicated to the loyalty and fealty to either God or master.
But there isn’t place in a life like that for a third party to fit in anywhere; hence, the walls erected there in the spirit to keep anything and anyone away are very, very high and strong.
So the first few cute weeks of watching Chicory bumble around like a fat bee in spring got old fast, because nothing ever happened. He just kept going after her and she just kept being weird and awkward. It was very frustrating.
Then after that, Acacia decided that maybe a little distance would make the heart grow fonder, so she began sending the man out on short missions that would take him away for a day or two, and then a week or two.
But it never worked.
Chicory would stare out into the world often during those days, but then he would come back and bring a little gift, perhaps, or an invitation to a dinner that Chicory would always decline in a frustratingly perplexing manner that began driving Acacia up the wall.
The princess’ fingers grip the edge of the hut as she narrows her eyes, watching them in the darkness, sitting there by themselves. “Come on,” she hisses in frustration, holding out a few fingers and pretending to squish their faces together.
She’s gotten very invested in the two of them actually becoming a thing every time she sees them around.
Acacia has seen enough to know that Chicory clearly likes him.
She knows that Zabaniyah clearly likes her.
So what’s the problem here?
She frustratingly squishes her fingers together faster, hoping to influence the universe in some way.
Of course, one could ask why Acacia is so invested in this matter. It’s not really her business, is it? No, probably not.
The fire crackles, a few loose sparks flying out this way and that way, the lost embers dancing over the sand like fairies running from a magic circle. Two bodies, one in white and one in red, sit there and stare out toward the last star in the night’s sky.
It should be just about time.
Come on.
She watches the tide impatiently, her eyes diverting as the sea foam comes closer and closer, the water rising somewhat together with the cresting moon — all of which was incorporated into her malicious, cruel scheme. A symphony may well be playing in the back of Acacia’s mind as her scheme comes together, a simple construction that in the halls of nobility, where complots range in the decades, would be considered a rudimentary child’s idea at best.
The water runs up to their feet.
And, with it — as they litter the beach — comes a small crab. She can see its red shell glinting even from this far away.
A second later, the wild slime that Hase had secretly buried near the two of them while they were distracted by not being distracted with each other, leaps out abruptly in an explosion of sand and sea salt.
Chicory lets out a quick, surprised yelp, pulling back and covering her face with one hand. Her other hand instinctively reaches over where she had her knife laid a little before — moved by Hase as well, and instead grabs a hand that had been there.
Yes.
Acacia leans in, watching as the two of them by the fire laugh awkwardly, watching the slime slip away back down the shore by itself, to find a new hole.
Come on.
Chicory plays with her hair, looking away for a moment and then back to him.
Acacia’s leg is bouncing, the wood of the hut groaning from the pressure she’s squeezing it with.
The fire begins to die out, the last embers bidding farewell, and two silhouettes in the dark begin to lean closer toward each other. It’s happening. Electricity is in the air.
YES!
— The sky opens up abruptly. A wild screaming filling the air as an animal hurtles through a void that had suddenly appeared, followed by a loud clattering. Pepper, her anqa, and bushels of exotic spices fall down all around the beach.
“NO!” screams Acacia, her fist striking the hut.
SHE WAS THIS CLOSE!
Sir Knight manifests on the beach, stroking Pepper’s head as he greets the others. Chicory and Zabaniyah both sitting sheepishly far apart from one another all of a sudden, as he walks back her way.
“You guys have fun today?” asks Sir Knight. “Sorry, it took so long. I had t -” Acacia’s fists batter against his armor, the princess nearly frothing in an unbearable rage, not able to form full words as she strikes his chest. “Okay,” says Sir Knight, looking down at her.
She may be a little too drunk, honestly.
And maybe this setup was a little amoral.
But she needed to do it. She needed for it to succeed. It was critical for her, her mission. Because she doesn’t know.
Acacia lifts her gaze, huffing in anger and panting for breath as she looks at Sir Knight.
— She doesn’t know what comes next. She’s never been around anyone who’s had a real functional relationship. Her parents passed when she was young. In the royal and noble houses, marriages and courtships were more official proceedings than matters of the heart. She doesn’t have any examples of what any of this is supposed to look like.
Sir Knight grabs her hand before it can hit him again, her face contorting into an angry pout that’s holding down a shout inside of it.
She wanted Chicory and Zabaniyah to make it work so that she could let them ‘go ahead’ with their relationship, so that she could watch them and understand what it is that she’s supposed to be doing here.
“You still know that I’m in your thoughts, right?” asks Sir Knight, the two of them staring at one another in the darkness that comes now that the fire has died and only one star and the moon remain in the night.
‘Shut up,’ thinks Acacia, narrowing her eyes, followed by some other choice thoughts that evoke a surprisingly vibrant clarity and creativity.
Gods, she’s so angry right now. Because of all the pretend games she’s played so far, this one somehow feels the scariest, even though it shouldn’t. She’s going to die. She’s not long for this world, given the rate the Consumption is progressing at. And so she wants the things she does before that day to be right, to be strong things that stand by themselves. The thought of doing something wrong with something like this arrow that pierces the two of them that only ever gets fired once in life — it’s more terrifying than anything else. Because what if she does it wrong?
What if she does it wrong, and then that’s it? She’ll never get a chance to make it right ever again.
“You’re going to be okay,” promises Sir Knight, letting go of her hand now that the fist has softened and her palm reaches up, holding the side of his helmet.
“You’re the worst, you know that?” she asks. “I can’t trust you to not ruin anything for me.”
“Sorry, Your Majesty,” replies Sir Knight.
She looks away for a second before turning back to him and lifting his visor. “Do you think that…” she stops for a second. “Do you think that tonight you could just call me Acacia?” she asks, and he nods. Acacia — just Acacia — smiles and follows after her eyes, finding herself floating closer toward him as she stands on the tips of her toes, her lips rising to the silhouette of a face that lies inside the armor. She closes her eyes, his hand holding the small of her back.
— Something squawks.
Acacia opens her eyes, staring at a massive, yellow pupil inches away from her.
Pepper the anqa is standing there, looking at her expectantly.
She gives up.
Acacia sighs, her shoulders drooping, and then laughs a desperately quiet laugh before her smile turns to the creature. “I missed you too,” she says, wrapping her arms around its neck and hugging it.
But her eyes look past it and up, toward Sir Knight, who is no longer there. His shadow drifts past her, a hand running down her back, before it vanishes into the darkness of the night.
After a moment, she looks around, doing a head count. Something is missing.
“Do you miss them?” asks Kaisersgrab, his hand held up toward the night as he looks through his fingers. “The others.” He is speaking in the tongue of the Empire, as is more comfortable for him and her when they are alone. Fichtenholz, lying next to him, says nothing. But her hand is also up in the air. The tips of their fingers are pressed together and they slowly roll them back and forth from digit to digit in a nonsensical little time waster of theirs. “I thought I would,” remarks Kaisersgrab, answering himself, speaking of the other werewolf kin of theirs from the holy-church. “I thought I would miss Father. But… I find that… I…” He doesn’t finish his thoughts.
They lie there on the beachhead a ways away in the other direction from the hut, having taken their chance to get some quiet before they’re given some more tasks or orders. Although, the embarrassing and cruel commands have been surprisingly lenient.
Her Majesty Acacia is certainly unpleasant to him, at the very least — if not coldly indifferent to Fichtenholz. But she, at worst, spills some tea on purpose or acts like a domineering brat. It’s nothing like what they had to endure back in the church.
Their fingers roll toward their ring fingers and then their smallest, before they work on moving them back the other way. Sometimes one of them misses the other one, but that’s fine. They just move on with the next finger, as if nothing happened.
“I’m still scared of the dark,” he admits, changing topic. “But I guess I was always right to be.”
“No,” says a voice from his side in an emotionless, empty demeanor, as she speaks a rare word to him. Her perfectly straight, green-hued bob is splayed down behind her head in the sand. She rolls her head to look at him.
Kaisersgrab shrugs. “That doesn’t really help…” he sighs.
“Wolves can be allowed to fear the dark. The forests are dangerous,” explains Fichtenholz. “But it is a dog’s duty to safeguard its master at night.”
“Hey!” snaps Kaisersgrab, sitting upright. “Don’t you ever call yourself that,” he says.
“Woof,” replies the elf.
“Fichte!” he warns, taking a serious tone but a pleading look. Fichtenholz doesn’t stir an inch. She never does, the creature that she was born as being locked away somewhere inside of her deep core and only ever speaking out to him through a window in her soul that he can’t really seem to see back into. Talking to her is like talking to someone who is very far away. “A hound, then,” she corrects. Kaisersgrab looks at her and then out toward the water for a while, until movement at his side gets his attention. She still has her hand there in the air, waiting.
He rubs the back of his head and then lies back down.
“We’re people, Fichte,” he says, his fingertips pressing back against hers.
“You can be people,” she explains, shaking her head. “But I would prefer not to be.”
The two of them watch the world’s last star for a while. She breaks the movement, looking at his hand and turning it over, spreading his fingers up toward the moonlight to examine them. They’re covered in deep, old burn scars that he received as his last punishment from the high-priest for his failed mission. “People hurt us, Fee,” she explains in a tone that never changes. “But wolves hurt us too,” she says. “They made us think we were what they were.” She shakes her head. “I’ve never been hurt by a dog before, though.”
“Fichte,” he insists.
“A hound,” she corrects and shakes her head, pulling his hand down toward her mouth and blowing on it, as if the burns were still fresh. A soft pressing of breath between the gaps of his fingers. “What else would you suggest, then?” she asks after a time. “Are we prisoners? Servants?” she asks. “Are we even people, or are we beasts that can’t accept it?” She continues to blow through his fingers. “What are we, Fee?” asks Fichtenholz and sits upright, looking at her own hands, her small finger still holding onto his.
“There was a lot of bad, but the church also taught us that we’re still children of God no matter what, Fichte,” he explains, grabbing her fingers and pressing them flat against his to make a unified praying set of hands from the two of theirs. “Maybe that could be what we become?”
She looks at him and shakes her head. “We pray, Fee,” she concedes and turns in the sand toward him, crossing her legs as they hold their palms together. “But we pray to the same God who made us as we are,” she says, looking back him into the eyes without a single change in intonation. “So why would he ever listen to us now, Fee?” she asks. “— To the things he hates the most. To abomina -”
Fichtenholz can’t finish her sentence, the praying hand between the two of them pressed flat together, the same as their lips, and then their fingers spread and interlink, the same as their lips — only for the latter to pull apart a moment later and the former to hold in place and a pair of eyes that have always only been open just enough to see, open a little tiny bit wider than before.
“Don’t ever say that again!” warns Fee Videlius Kaisersgrab, looking into her eyes. One hand is clenched together with hers and the other holds the side of her face, as it has never done before. “I don’t care what you have to say about God or me. But don’t ever use that word to talk about yourself ever again,” he says, shaking his head, but never break his eyes off of hers. “You’re the best thing in my life.”
“…How unfortunate for you,” she replies to his statement, her dry and plain tone not changing even a little in response to his kiss. “You poor wretch.”
Kaisersgrab sighs, his head drooping, looking only back up in time to see a small crease on the corner of a lip that wasn’t there before.
“— YES!” screams Acacia in an oddly guttural depth for her usually prim voice, pumping her fists and stomping through the sand like a proud bird of prey, peacocking around. She shouts random gibberish, degrading into a little dance that is most certainly not approved by the royal court or even by herself. But the wine has set in and so have the feelings of the heart.
Her scheme came to fruition. Sort of. Not really, actually. But sort of? It counts. In her head, it counts. The end goal of there being a single pronunciation of emotion more than zero tonight was met.
“Is this really what you do when I’m not around?” asks Sir Knight, looking over at her as she circles her hips around the air, bumping him with them and laughing.
“Did you see that?!” she asks. “Bam, straight in! I didn’t know he had it in his bones!” Acacia sighs, holding her hands together as she stares off into the distance toward Kaisersgrab and Fichtenholz.
Sir Knight and her are inside a veil of shadow, watching the two remaining souls on the beach stare into each others eyes. “I think we’ve invaded their privacy enough,” he explains, lifting his cloak and turning to obscure the two, to allow them some privacy.
“Wait, wait!” pleads Acacia. “I need to know what happens next!” she yells, trying to fight her way through the fabric, but it’s a futile attempt.
“Sorry,” he replies as he carries her away, as is proper for a knight to do with his princess. “I think it’s time for bed,” he says. She groans, leaning her head against his arm and staring up toward him, a smile finding her face as well. They seem to be spreading these days. She’ll need to take measures once she gets to the throne to make sure it stops.
But as for now, she has no choice but to keep there as she looks at him, her hand holding the side of his neck.
And as for anything else that happens that night between the two of them in the darkness to come before the sun returns, or any others on the island, well, who is to say?
Perhaps it’s really nobody’s business at all.