Chapter 98: Character Development, I Guess?

As Freya caught her breath, the death had been painless. Her replica’s death, of course. But she had still felt a shiver, perhaps due to her body’s new rank or to something else entirely, a jolt at the back of her neck, like an electric breath brushing past her skin.

Beyond that there was the mental side of it, and that was surely what weighed the most, far more than any physical pain.

Because she might have known perfectly well that it was only a replica. She had still just come face to face with her own death. She had felt the blade, she had felt the moment everything cut out, and her mind had no reason to tell the difference.

By the time she had fully pulled herself together, which didn’t take her all that long given the circumstances, perhaps because she had already been through it a hundred times before, she lifted her eyes and murmured.

"Perfect Replica."

And the quantimanas took shape into a second version of herself, naked, standing right there. She understood everything immediately, sharing her thoughts, her intentions, her sensations, everything her body felt, before walking over to the outfit waiting a few steps away and putting it on.

This time it wasn’t a peasant’s clothes or anything of the sort.

It was a ceremonial kimono cut from Silkweaver silk, woven by the Mycfox, finished with other fabrics and materials Aria had brought back from Evangel last time. A deep blue covered in silver floral patterns, shoulders bare, a wide sash tied into an imposing bow at the front.

On her feet, platform sandals provided by Kyiara to match the whole thing, lacquered in the same blue, with embroidered straps picking up the patterns in the fabric.

The real Freya circled her replica, lifted a sleeve to look at the lining, and stepped back to take it in.

"I really am gorgeous! I’m starting to understand more and more why Aria fell for me~!"

But as she said it, she also remembered what had happened down in that cell, and her thoughts turned a little grim. They were swept away a moment later, when a crack opened in front of her inside the dungeon, a hand pushing it aside.

Kaguya came through.

It was her ability, the one tied to space, which she could summon at will and which linked two positions together like a kind of portal. As far as Freya knew, there was only one restriction on it. She had to have already visited both places she was connecting.

That was why she had sent Kaguya to Evangel along with Aria, so that she could set up exactly this kind of portal and make every operation easier.

Once again, between her ability to stop time and this one, Freya understood more and more why Aria had brought her to the dungeon. And on top of all that there was Nymeria as a whole, which opened up a great deal to her, and promised a great deal more for the future.

And then, looking at her with a smile already on her lips, she couldn’t help thinking that the woman in front of her was also simply endearing.

"You took your time, Kaguya!"

"Well, I was busy wondering why Aria was angry at me, so I didn’t notice you’d already died. I suppose I got lost in my own thoughts!"

Freya was lost in hers as well.

So she reacted the moment she pressed down on the sword? Isn’t she taking this a bit far?!

It was only a replica, after all...

She had known from the start that this mission could never have been given to Aria, not even as an order from her own mistress. She would have been incapable of hurting her. So she had handed it to Kaguya, the only other person in all of Evangel who could have done it.

Although, with Absolute Jackpot, maybe Amélia could manage it too?

She didn’t get to follow that thought any further, because Kaguya had already closed the distance and thrown herself at the Freya in pyjamas.

"So? So? Did you see? I carried out the mission! Is Big Sister pleased?"

Freya reached up and ruffled her hair the way you would with a child, which made for a fairly strange sight. She practically had to raise her arm to reach, the dragonoid standing a good head taller than her.

And while she was doing it, something else caught her eye behind Kaguya.

Her tail was sweeping back and forth, fast, without her seeming to notice it at all.

She looks like a happy little puppy~! So cute~!

Faced with that much cuteness, she couldn’t stop herself from pulling Kaguya against her and wrapping her arms around her.

"You were a tremendous help, Kaguya! Good Mission! I’m sincerely glad to have you as a little sister."

Kaguya went still.

She looked up at Freya without understanding, completely lost. Something in her chest had tightened at those words, something warm rising up that felt like nothing she had ever known.

It wasn’t unpleasant. It was quite the opposite, in fact, and that was exactly what threw her.

She didn’t know what it was, she had no word to put on it. But she was happy right there, in her big sister’s arms, and she didn’t want it to stop just yet.

Freya saw it. Knowing how much moments like this mattered for her emotional development, she left her like that without hurrying her, without saying a word, simply letting her sit with something she was feeling for the first time.

I wanted to hurry so I wouldn’t miss any of the Final Act, but well, this isn’t so bad either.

She ran her hand through her hair once more and stayed like that with her, until Kaguya finally pulled away on her own, her face still a little lost but pleased all the same.

Then she took the hand of Freya’s replica and drew her along into the crack.

"See you shortly," said Freya, waving the girls off as they stepped into the portal.

When Freya’s replica came out the other side, she was standing on a raised balcony above the city, in a place she had promised herself she would reach and had promised she would take. Frarken’s castle, beneath the red sky.

The wind caught her hair and blew it across her face, and she pushed it back with one hand without taking her eyes off the city.

A flying creature passed at her height and came apart before it had even seen her, Kaguya’s fist punching clean through its skull beside her.

Down below, Evangel was red.

The flowers were red on the window ledges, in the gardens, on the doorsteps, all the way down into the gutters where the wind had pushed whole handfuls of them.

And all across the city, they were fighting.

On the great northern avenue, a line of tanks held the entrance to an entire district, shields locked, while three mages threw sheets of fire over their heads at the things coming down.

On a square further east, a party of adventurers had formed a ring around fifty or so civilians and was falling back with them toward a gate, one step at a time.

Archers were firing from the rooftops. Priests were dragging the wounded inside the houses. One man in heavy armour held the mouth of an alley alone and would not give it up.

But Freya was looking at the square.

"Ah..." she breathed. "So I missed the opening..."

Down there, knights lay sprawled across a sea of blood, in numbers she couldn’t count. Not because there were more of them than she knew how to count, but because their bodies had been torn into several pieces each, soaking in a pool of it.

In the middle of all that, the demon with eight eyes stood facing Aldric.

Aldric was sitting on the ground, blood running from his mouth. Not in bursts but literally, in a continuous thread that ran off his chin and down onto his breastplate, caved in across the chest.

His eyes were fixed on the soldiers lying on the ground in front of him.

"..."

Not a word came out of his mouth anymore, not even a cry of pain.

Nothing.

Just that empty stare, on the comrades who had stood with him, simply crushed by a strength he would never reach.

Useless.

Powerless.

Any number of words were turning over in his head when the demon’s foot took him in the ribs.

His body left the ground and crossed the entire length of the square before hitting it. It bounced once in the pool of blood, then a second time, sending spray far out around him, and he rolled several more lengths before coming to a stop on his side.

He tried to get up. His arm gave out beneath him and he went down face first into the red.

Get up...

His stare still empty, he brought a hand under his chest, pushed, and made it.

Blood fell from his mouth with the effort and stretched all the way to the ground in a long thread that didn’t break.

He walked back toward the demon all the same, one step at a time, every footfall dragging a tremor up through his shoulders, one hand clamped over his caved-in side.

The demon didn’t move. It watched him come, and it began to laugh.

Aldric reached it, drew his fist back, and struck it in the stomach.

The blow landed. It barely scraped across the dark skin, slid off it without going in, and left nothing behind but a smear of blood, Aldric’s own, spread across the demon’s body.

Feeble.

The demon lowered two of its eyes toward the smear, and the other six stayed on the young hero’s face.

"I was promised a hero, and this is what I’m given. And here I thought I might have some fun on my return to the surface."

The backhand came without the arm seeming to move at all.

Aldric left the ground, turned over in the air and came down far behind, rolling several more lengths before stopping face down.

The demon turned away from him and walked toward the soldiers, its four wings dragging behind it.

"If you can’t entertain me with your fists, hero, at least entertain me with your tears."

And as Aldric pushed himself up yet again, he saw the unforgivable.

The demon had bent over the line of bodies, and it was eating.

It took them one at a time. The ones who had stayed to protect the people alongside him. The ones who had turned back mid-run to take their place at his side while everyone else was leaving. The ones who had held the line long enough for the evacuation to get through, and who had never got out themselves.

It lifted them by whatever stuck out, an arm, a leg, a piece of breastplate, and put them away without hurrying, its jaw opening far wider than any face should have allowed.

The armour didn’t slow it down. It gave way in its mouth with a sound the whole square threw back.

It stopped on one of them, held him up in front of two of its eyes, turned the body one way and then the other, the way you inspect a piece of fruit before eating it.

Aldric recognised him.

He was the one who had come back first. The one who had shouted at them to hold when the line had almost broken.

The demon lifted him to its mouth.

The tears came all at once and ran from Aldric’s eyes, mixing with the blood on his face.

"..."

His mouth opened, and nothing came out.

"..."

He tried to run. He put everything he had left into that leg, everything that hadn’t already been broken.

It folded under him.

He fell forward, scraped across the stone, his face in the red, and he didn’t stay there.

He drove a hand into the pool, found a grip between two cobblestones, and pulled.

Then the other hand. Then the first again.

He crawled.

He crawled weeping, losing blood from his mouth and from his side, toward a thing he could not reach and never would, moving forward an arm’s length at a time and leaving one long red trail behind him across the stones.

And all the while, the demon went on eating.

It watched him do it as it swallowed, and said out loud exactly what Aldric was thinking.

Pathetic.

"Pathetic."