Reborn as the Black Knight

 

The capital city of the Empire thunders with life and fervor, a cacophony that masks the shadows creeping at its edges. Streets lined with mother-of-pearl buildings echo the buzz of the parade, where citizens pour out like a tide, their faces radiant with anticipation, desperate hope glimmering in their eyes. Dandy, the priestess, rides atop the grand float, her heart a fluttering bird caught in a snare of silk and satin as she feels way, way too many eyes on her. She’s never been the center of attention like this, and she kind of hates it. She glances sideways at the brave soul beside her — the true hero, whom she had summoned from the last flickering star.

“Can you believe this?” Dandy’s voice quivers, barely carrying over the excited shouts and laughter of the crowd below. A soft breeze ripples through her lavender robes, pulling her thoughts back to the ground below. “All these people… it’s overwhelming.”

Hero’s jaw rests in thought, his golden eyes scanning the crowd. His brow furrows slightly, a mix of apprehension and determination. “You get to used to it after your third parade,” he replies, smiling to her with an unbothered confidence that really can’t come from a world like this one. After the events of the monastery, the two of them had traveled together toward the capital. It didn’t take much walking before they were collected up by the local regiments and then, after a moment of shocked verification of the Hero’s identity, ferried to the nation’s capital as the most honored guests in history. She’s never seen things like she’s seen these last few days — wealth peeking through in the most unimaginable places. They make undergarments that cost more than all the money she’s ever seen in her life for a single pair, and yes, there is a noticeable difference. She doesn’t think she can ever go back, and that’s not even speaking of the bigger items like food and pampering baths and rituals. She met with the high-priest only yesterday, an honor she would have never known to be possible. He ordained her, the Hero insisting that she accompany him — as is tradition for all heroes in all of history — to have at least a priestess at his side, if not an entire party of hand-chosen adventurers. “I understand being afraid of a fight,” he says. “But why fear celebration?”

She, always finding a way to hide behind him or some covering, gestures vaguely all around her at the thousands of cheering, hollering faces. Colors and magic fly through the air that is thick with exhilaration, as palpable as the shimmering banners that dance around them, fluttering like excited spirits. The sweet scent of jasmine perfumes — a specialty of the nation — wafts through the air, intoxicating and familiar, mingling with the burning fragrances of incense from temples lining the streets that have filled to the brim like never before as the people reinvigorate their faith because of the proof given to them of heaven by the hero. “Do I really need to point it out?” she mutters quietly, sweat running down her face that was painted by a team of royal handmaidens just an hour ago. Dandy's fingers tremble against the velvet of her robes. Her eyes drifting to the streets where faces of ecstatic joy surge upward, rippling with the hope that Hero might be their salvation against the encroaching gloom of the Black Knight. The specter of despair has hung heavy over the Empire for a long time now because of the war, because of Herr Ritter. “I don’t think you feel the pressure here,” she remarks quietly, waving back nervously at some young girls who run after their open carriage, waving to her. “Not all of us are perfect, like you,” she says, almost snidely.

He laughs, his barreling echo carrying even over the sounds of thousands of calling voices. “You will find me very flawed,” Hero ponders, his tone shifting to a softer timbre. “Once you spend a little more time around me,” he smiles to her.

Dandy raises an eyebrow. “Huh?” she mutters in disbelief, looking at a man who may as well be a fake human, created as a template of man by the gods before they created the actual imperfect, disgusting thing that is a real human like herself. “What, do you say mean things in your dreams at night?” she guesses. “No, wait, I got it.” She leans in. “I bet you forgot to tip the tavern girl at the guild once,” she says. “Probably lost a lot of sleep over that one, huh, Mr. Perfect?”

He laughs again, his head leaning back as he pats her consolingly on the back with a hand that stretches across both of her shoulder blades at the same time. “You called for me,” he explains, looking at her reassuringly. “That means your heart is dignified and pure. Perhaps more than mine.”

A shadow crosses Dandy’s face, the weight of that past moment pressing in again. “Are you kidding me?” she asks. “I actually wet myself when I summoned you because of how scared I was.” She swallows, sensing the darkness lurking at the corners of her mind. “Very dignified…”

Dandy flinches as a bouquet of flowers hits the side of her head, flopping down on the bench at her side. A second one follows, but Hero catches it and spares her a second hit, waving back to the fawning crowd before taking an overly dramatic whiff of their petals like a real showman.

Hero turns to her, sincerity etched into the contours of his strong face. “We’re here together. I won't waylay your worries, but I choose to believe we can make a difference. You summoned me for a reason, perhaps, and maybe it’s that -”

“- Just dumb luck,” she counters, interjecting her voice barely a whisper. Dandy looks down, watching a child wave a small flag, their laughter slicing through the tension that bubbles beneath her surface. She can’t shake the feeling that something darker looms in the distance, waiting hungrily to extinguish this flickering flame of hope.

“Aaah,” he says in a tone of realization that she doesn’t like at all because of how sure it sounds. “I understand,” he adds consolingly. “That’s why you’re afraid of this little parade.” He nods to himself, a hand on his chin below a sure smile that she’s getting very annoyed by because of how flawless it is. Being next to him is the most insecurity-fostering thing imaginable. “You’re afraid that your ability to summon me does mean something about you and your fate, and that you won’t live up to it because of the mistakes of your past.”

Dandy holds out her hands, gesturing into all manner of lost directions as she glares at him with a disgustedly confused grimace. He’s right, actually. But she doesn’t want him to be because he just said out loud after a single afterthought a condensation of a feeling she’s had for a week, but has been unable to piece together by herself. Damn Hero.

She sighs, her shoulders slumping.

“They don’t have to know what you think is the truth,” he assures her, his eyes fierce with determination that locks in as a silent promise. “You just need to believe in what they think is the truth, Dandy. In yourself, in me, in what we can do together.”

“Gods, you make me sick,” mutters the priestess, looking at him with an agape mouth. “Who talks like that? Ugh,” she looks to the side, waving to the crowd. A rustling comes from down below, and she looks at the second bouquet of flowers he’s holding out to her, the one he caught before. She sighs, taking it and adding it onto the stack. “Is this a bribe?” asks the priestess.

“A gift for a friend,” he explains. “A dandelion ought to be with other flowers.”

She’s going to vomit. “...Are you sure you’re even a real human?” she asks, looking at him with that same mouth-agape puzzled expression.

He laughs, his thundering holler traveling across the crowd like thunder, his hand striking her on the back again as if she had told the greatest joke he’s ever heard in his life. “I’ve been told so, at least,” he explains to her.

She bites down on her lip, not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough for it to hurt. “What if we fail?” The question spills from her lips before she can stop it, cowardice simmering beneath her. “Herr Ritter… the war… so much is at stake.” She looks back at the people; all of them are counting on him — her. That’s terrifying. He’s right about that. Although he sure doesn’t seem to have any problems with the pressure himself.

He shakes his head. “Failure isn’t the end; it’s just a step, and each step we take forward pushes the darkness in this world just a little further back, Dandy,” explains Hero, talking once more like he’s been pulled straight out of an old tome. Hero gestures around them to the crowd. “Look at them — even in this dark time, your being here has brought them a joy they did not have before.” Hero lifts a hand, pressing a finger against her forehead lightly. “You, Dandy, are the real hero today.”

Dandelion lifts a finger. “Excuse me a second, Hero,” says the priestess dryly, turning around toward the half-covered back of the carriage and covering her mouth, letting out a loud retching sound.

A loud, barreling laugh comes from next to her.

It’s going to be a long adventure.

 

---

 

 

“I don’t want to~” howls Hase, her fingers scratching grooves through the sand as a blackguard drags her by her legs across the beach. She looks over. “Can’t we stay just a little longer? Come on, man!” she cries, a few crabs scuttling the other way past her.

Acacia shakes her head. “It’s time to return to reality,” she says. “I didn’t take you for a slacker, Hase,” says the princess, trying to provoke her.

“I’m only working to retire! Just give me some money and leave me here forever!” yells the rabbit girl, pounding holes into the wet sand of the beach and crying as the guard pulls her away. Her fingers leave long claw marks in the sand.

“An understandable sentiment,” replies Acacia. “But I think you would grow bored here, without the tumult and the action of the big city life,” explains the princess, lifting a finger. “This is for your own good, Hase.”

A sigh comes from next to them. “It was nice while it lasted,” says Junis, her eyes closed. One might think that it was so out of contentment. But the reality is that she has a killer hangover from the wine and doesn’t want to look at the bright world around her. “Perhaps we’ll come back again one day,” she says, trying to sound upbeat. “Once we’ve worked our way up to another vacation.”

“It might be a while,” says Chicory. “I dread to think of the work waiting for us when we get back.” She turns her head, looking over toward Sir Knight.

“Don’t worry about it,” replies the giant man, holding his cloak out to the side, the emptiness billowing inside of it like water. “I made fake shadow copies of you all to handle the work.”

They look his way. “You did what?” asks Acacia.

He shrugs, gesturing into the cloak. “It’s fine. Don’t be such a worry-wart,” says Sir Knight. “They’ll go away once we’re back home.”

A scream fills the air, sand, seashells, and tears as salty as the ocean cresting through the air like sea spray as the blackguard spins a few revolutions and then lets go of Hase’s legs, barreling her through the void. Her sharp scream is cut off in an instant as she flies into the cloak.

Chicory and Zabaniyah walk in, pulling Pepper after them, which always requires a little finagling. The animal doesn’t ever like traveling through the void for one, meaning a bit of pulling is involved, and secondly, the logistics of it are troublesome given its massive size and its having to fit into the out-held fabric of the cape.

“See you on the other side,” mutters Junis, rubbing her face as she stumbles toward him. Sir Knight puts a hand against her upper back, lightly pushing her forward in what may be seen as a consoling gesture but is really just so that she doesn’t stumble in her haze and fall face first into the ocean.

“Why do you two look so tired?” asks Acacia, her hands on her hips as Kaisersgrab and Fichtenholz walk by. A smug smile is painted across her face.

“The ocean air is too invigorating,” replies Fichtenholz dryly. “Bad for sleep,” explains the monotone elf, the two of them vanishing into the void, shuffling like a pair of zombies.

Acacia watches them go, then looks back at Sir Knight, raising her eyebrows with a look suggesting that she had just won a game they were playing and she was rubbing it in. “Leave them alone,” says Sir Knight, waving into the cape. “Kaisy boy isn’t that bad a guy,” says the giant. “Hard childhood.”

Acacia lifts her nose, smiling. “Please, Sir Knight. If anyone can sympathize with difficult childhoods, it would be me.”

He nods to her. “I’m sure growing up in the royal palace in unimaginable wealth and luxury was very difficult, Your Majesty.”

She thinks out loud as she walks. “Perhaps I should make you walk home, Sir Knight…” ponders Acacia.

“We’re on an island,” he explains to her as she stops next to him. “There’s three days worth of ocean between here and the mainland.”

“I know,” she replies in a confusingly loving coldness, her hand consolingly patting his chest a few times in a gesture of feigned pity.

The terrible knight stands there, looking around one last time at the contrasting landscape that he really doesn’t belong to. It’s much too bright and cheerful here for a creature like him. He prefers the woody, forested landscape of back home more to the tropical paradise. But it was fun for a day.

The shadow starts eating itself and her, his body contorting and flowing into a whispering swirl that then simply begins to vanish into thin air, together with all of the manifested structures around them, barring a few soldiers who stay behind to keep the plantation going well.

However, as they merge, he can feel a sudden unease in Acacia’s core, and his melted visor rises up, looking into the same blue sky.

Snow falls from the far, far clouds — now in the middle of a tropical summer.

But because of the sweltering heat of the air, the crystals melt on their way down, turning into confusingly cold rain that drips down around them, running down the nearby fronds of the jungle trees.

“Sir Knight,” says Acacia, her eyes narrowed with a familiar venom as their demanifestation falters.

“Yeah?” asks the entity, Acacia turning back into a full person again.

“…I think it’s time you met the rest of my family,” she remarks, a glint coming from the suddenly grayed midday sky, like a reflection of light off on the horizon.

— He grabs her, the two of them flying out of the way as a conjoined shadow that reforms near a house, as a sudden explosion rocks the city. Sand and water fly, hurtling together toward the sky in a sudden explosion that rocks the island.

Acacia lands nearby, Sir Knight holding her shoulders from behind, his cloak billowing behind them as two shapes materialize in the sky. Two human bodies hover in the air, holding hands as they look down to the world below. Their pink hair, the same exact shade and tone as Acacia's, is flying in the breeze as they look down toward the two of them.

“Hemlock. Parsley,” hisses Acacia through a viper’s glare, her hand reaching over to grab Sir Knight’s sword herself. “I should have expected you sooner,” she remarks coldly, as melted snow and tufts of ash drift down together at the same time.

“So you’re all just named after plants, huh?” mutters Sir Knight idly, an elbow hitting him in the side.

The two figures up in the sky look down their way, holding hands as they spin in a downward corkscrew, like a falling waltz. “Sister,” says one of them.

“Sister,” says the other.

“We’ve missed you,” says Hemlock, wearing a thick coat, despite the tropical weather.

“Quite a lot,” adds the other, Parsley, dripping with sweat despite her more generous summer clothes that are very fitting to the region.

Acacia rises to her feet, a hand gesturing to the smoldering crater that crackles. The sand has been glassed by a super heated spell, but the edges of it crackle and crinkle with ice. “I can see that,” says the youngest princess. “I assure you, that I have not,” she explains.

The two twins hold a cheek together, looking their way with one eye each as if they were a conjoined entity. A smile rises on one face, but a frown on the other, and the two together look like a single, winding line.

“Let me guess,” says Sir Knight. “You hate them too, like your other siblings?”

“I hate everyone in my family, Sir Knight,” replies Acacia, pulling free his sword for herself to take. The hilt of the blade quivers, wavering as the shadow turns and shifts into the shape of an elegant rapier, fit for her stance and posture. “They’re just not as good as me.”

Four legs of two bodies hover just over the ocean before them, never quite making contact. The water below them is disturbed, pressed away as if by a powerful downward force. He’s never seen anyone fly before. It must be some powerful royal magic they’re using.

“Why are you two here?” asks Acacia, pointing the sword their way. “I’ve rebuked Manchineel already. I suggest you two learn her lesson and leave,” she warns. “Before I must repeat myself.”

The smile on one of them turns into a frown. The frown on the other turns into a smile. The curve along their faces rotating the other way.

“You’ve become troublesome to Brother,” says Hemlock.

“It’s time that you stop,” adds Parsley.

“— Acacia,” say both of them together at the same time, holding out one hand each their way, the other holding on to each other, as if they were both stopping the other from falling. Ice and heat crackle around their fingers, the magic growing in a second to a size so powerful that it’s beyond anything musterable by any adventurer or simple knight. The conjoined spell swirls forward, two streaks of icy white and burning red spiraling toward them in an instant, wrapping around each other like wound serpents pressing together into a single thread that needles their way.

A black hole forms between them, drawing the spell in at once, the void swelling and warping as the magic pours into it. The twins look behind themselves, pressing apart from one another but not releasing their one hand, as Acacia’s blade cuts between the gap they’ve just created — having appeared out of thin air behind them from an empty pocket of space. Two faces look down her way in that second as she falls back toward the ground, her sword having missed cutting either of them.

A smile and a frown fall her way, but have little time to form any other shape as Acacia’s cloak billows behind her in her descent back down toward the sands and the water. And in that gap between her and the fabric, a massive emptiness fills the space — blackness.

Sir Knight lunges out in both directions at once in the shape of the heads of black wolves that snap out from behind Acacia’s back like snarling wings toward the bodies of the two on either side of her.

— A flash of magic from the ocean below them, all of this happening in the same second.

A spire of ice shoots up, launching both twins up higher into the air. The wolves’ maws breaking through the columns, shattering them like fragile bones and sending fragments flying in all directions as shrapnel. A stream of fire blasts down in contrast, the flames arching toward Acacia in a dragon’s breath.

Time slows, but Acacia falls as fast as she would have had it never done so and rolls to the side as its flow reverts to the natural state. Fire arcs after her, leaving a long, glassy trail of black in the sand that streaks up toward her feet, before then dying out.

The youngest princess points her sword up toward the two, as they spiral back down again like a drifting, windborne, spinning seed from a tree.

She hates the two of them so much.

Her brother stole the throne that wasn’t his.

Her oldest sister, the perfect princess, is easily dislikable because of her delusion-bound and naive personality. But these two…

— Sir Knight remanifests at Acacia’s side.

These two are the worst. Because while her older sister and her brother were both lost in their own worlds, the twins Hemlock and Parsley very much lived in the same one Acacia did. However, they had no space in their hearts for anything other than their sick, strange bond with each other that the court healers attributed to an overabundance of magic in their mother’s womb, fusing the two of them on a spiritual level. They have separate bodies, separate souls, but their magic… For Acacia, her internal magical affinity had always been blocked because of the circumstances of her birth, but for these two, it’s tied together as if it were the reservoir of one single body.

They’re never separate, never apart. She’s never seen one without the other. She would not even be sure sometimes of the stated fact that they’re two different people, if not for the matter that they spent much of their childhood personally tormenting her a bonding exercise between the two of them.

“Our little Acacia,” says one.

“She has magic,” says the other.

They look at each other, pulling back together. “But is she still worthless?” asks Hemlock.

“I think that she is,” replies Parsley, the two of them giggling, holding a free hand over their lips as if feigning trying to hide a cruel smile.

“What of the knight?” asks Hemlock, the two of them turning their heads to look at Sir Knight.

“He should be ours,” suggests Parsley.

“Agreed,” say both of them at the same time, nodding and holding out their free hands toward him. “Herr Ritter,” say Hemlock and Parsley, beckoning him forward. “Come to us.”

Sir Knight looks at them and then down at Acacia. “…They’re kind of weird, aren’t they?” he asks.

“You have no idea…” replies Acacia with venom, stepping forward and then arching her sword back. A second later, a black slash cuts through the sky, a line of emptiness surging across the ocean surface, pulling in thousands of tons of water in a second as it carries off toward the horizon.

The two twins, having dodged, float there on their stomachs, still holding a hand as they beckon out for him. “We could have the crown,” says Hemlock.

“Just cut it in half,” adds Parsley.

“We’d share,” they say at the same time. “Two queens is better than one king,” they add, and both of them look toward Acacia. “She doesn’t deserve you, Herr Ritter.”

They float past them, now fully ignoring their youngest sister as they begin to circle him.

“She’s just a worthless, sickly thing,” says Hemlock, smiling a smug smile, ice crackling behind her as they drift.

“She’s just a useless, weak runt,” says Parsley, frowning in disappointment, flames and ash flowing behind her.

The two of them shake their heads at the same time, opening their mouths to say something else. “— Don’t,” warns Sir Knight sternly, feeling the specific word to come floating in the air like an electrical charge. But the two of them, lost in their revelry as they tell him everything Acacia is and has ever done that they can make fun of, aren’t even listening to anyone anymore but each other.

Two hands touch his helmet, one from either side, from either twin, as they look into his visor, floating down in front of him. “Serve us instead, Herr Ritter,” says Hemlock.

“We’re better than she is,” adds Parsley.

“At everything,” says the two of them together.

“Loser!” calls Hemlock, looking toward Acacia. Parsley starts laughing.

“Whimp!” throws in Parsley, and Hemlock starts laughing.

And the two of them count down everything they can think of there on the spot. “Weak. Dumb. Ugly. Trash. Whore. Snake. Disgusting. Worthless,” they rattle off together one after the other as they build a tower of every word they’ve collected to describe their youngest sister over the decades of their lives, and then they finally run out, and they finally hit the bottom of the list and reach that one word he felt coming from the get-go.

Hemlock and Parsley, holding their hands out past his shoulders toward Acacia, who is standing there behind him, both speak at the same time. The look on their faces is that of something so far gone, so inhuman, that even if they waltz in the bodies of people — the same as he does — they are also the same as he is in that they aren’t such a thing anymore. They have left the safe boundaries that the concept of personhood affords them — not in the eternal kingdom of the crown of Odofredus Krone, but by the laws of the era of screams that never stop found within the domain of the der Schwarze Ritter. “— She’s a ZERO!” they both call out at once, the laughter on their face etched in deep, the grooves there long since formed and still present since the days of their shared childhood.

And then the world goes black.

Before the span of a single second ends, the sun is consumed by darkness and the sky is hidden from the eyes of men, as if ancient prophecies of the apocalypse were coming to pass. The ocean recedes, retreating, and the air itself stops flowing. Everything becomes dark, everything becomes void, and everything becomes him as they incant the forbidden word.

Acacia has become stronger than ever before, but every beast — no matter its grandiosity — carries somewhere on its hard shell, somewhere between its armored scales — a weakness. A sore spot. An old wound that never fully healed.

And now, the two of them had just stuck their fingers straight into it.

The world is no more, not as it once was. Now, there is only darkness, and in this darkness is a great gnashing. In this darkness of the abyss that made up everything before the birth of the first man, the first monster, float endless horrors and terrors — things of tooth and tendril, things that bite and scream, things that claw and dribble and gash and devour and all do so without ever killing, because death itself has yet to come to exist in a place so empty as this one.

The two of them, swallowed by the true abyss, by the total emptiness of the thing that came before all things, look around in bewildered surprise, lasting only long enough for them to then share a scream as a crunch fills the air. Their hand that had held them together was being swallowed by a silhouetteless thing that is as black as the eternal nothing all around them. It has no shape, no form. It’s just teeth. Bones crack and blood splurts as things grab them from all sides, pulling and tearing at bones — wrenching them out of the loose meat left behind in fingers, legs, and arms. Pulling and biting and ripping at chunks that stick out, leaving even more pieces that do so and offer a place for a new horror. The two of them are ripped from each other's arms by cascading devourers that fight to consume and gorge on their flesh as organs and gore splash out. There’s no crying as their eyes have been eaten while watching the other be consumed, and no screaming as their mouths and throats have been bloated full with chewing things that eat them from the inside out but never seem to finish.

“Enough,” says a firm voice — Acacia’s, resounding through the infinite horror. “Sir Knight.”

The blackness stops. The terror stops.

The void vanishes.

The four of them are still on the beach that they had never left. Sir Knight has his hands pressed against either of the twin’s foreheads. He never really ate them. That would have been unethical and also a little strange. They’re not his family, after all. He just pushed around a little in the empty, dark corners of their own minds to make them imagine a few things.

Two unharmed bodies fall to the ground, landing at Acacia’s feet. The state of their mind is another matter.

Acacia kneels down before them, roughly grabbing hold of their hair in either hand to pull their heads up. The two pairs of their crying, glassy eyes look at Acacia in an unimaginable fear that will perhaps never reside, trying to discern her shape as something other than a wavering silhouette of a monster. Their minds, having experienced the illusion as real, fight with the signals of their body that they’re just outside on the sand and perfectly fine.

“Go home,” orders the youngest princess. “If you ever say that again, then next time, I’ll leave you in there forever,” she warns and then lets them go.

Acacia rises up to her feet, wiping her hands on the sides of her clothes as if they were dirty.

“That’s it?” asks Sir Knight, looking over at her. “Are you sure?”

Acacia looks at him and then down at the two nearly catatonic creatures that are her middle sisters. They crawl together, each trying to help the other up off of the ground in a display of pity and accommodation for the other’s pain that would almost be heart-wrenching to watch, if not for the fact that she knows their love and worry only ever extends to each other and never to anything or anyone else. She can see it in their eyes as they stare at each other, each of the two more worried about their counter-part then themselves. They have no remorse for the hurt they caused her; they have no regret for anything they’ve ever done, except for anything that hurt their twin.

“They don’t live in the same world we live in, Sir Knight,” says the princess, the shadowy rapier demanifesting itself as she hands it back over to him. She taps the side of her head, shaking it. The two middle princesses hold each other’s faces, watching with a care so deep that it’s perhaps disturbing in its own way. “So how can I judge them by our laws?”

“You just don’t want to kill your sisters,” he says in an almost childish singing candor.

“Believe me, I do,” says Acacia. She swipes the hair back behind her ear, gesturing for him to follow her. “But even sick animals have a right to live within my perfect kingdom.”

“You’re too gracious, Your Majesty,” says Sir Knight. “A wellspring of mercy and love.”

“And don’t you for-”

“Hiii~!” calls a shrill voice from the distance. Acacia jolts together, her hair standing on end as if she were an angry and surprised alley cat. The two of them look back toward the distance, seeing a little boat coming toward the shore. Further out at sea is a large ship. The oldest princess, Manchineel, surrounded by a group of golden-armored knights, waves their way, laughing and smiling.

“…Fuck…” says Acacia.

Sir Knight gasps, covering his mouth as if he were a surprised and shocked noblewoman at what he had just heard uttered in his delicate presence.

 

---

 

It turns out that Manchineel was here on an outing just by happenstance. She comes here often, enjoying the spice and the island.

“What happened to them?” asks Manchineel curiously, looking as her knights carry off the two wordless and motionless twins back to the ship, who refuse to let go of each other’s hands as they’re carried away.

“Too much fun in the sun,” replies Sir Knight dryly, sparing her the details of the matter. Manchineel, perfectly capable of not even seeing the craters, the smoldering fire that runs through the jungle, and the partially frozen ocean, laughs playfully as if believing very well that she just missed out on a great little time. Her typical delusions seem to be running her life, as always.

The oldest princess squeezes Acacia’s cheeks, rubbing their faces together before kissing her on the forehead. “Are you sure you have to go?” she asks. “Spend some time with me too!” she pouts. “It’s no fair if you play with Hemlock and Parsley but not me!”

“Not all of us have unlimited time to goof off, Manchineel,” replies Acacia, as if she hadn’t spent the last day doing just that. “Did you tell Brother what I told you to tell him?” she asks.

“Oh, come on! Just a little swim maybe?” asks Manchineel, pouting and fully ignoring the question.

Well, no. It’s not ignored. Given that Acacia’s message was a threat for her brother to step down peacefully before she is forced to kill him, Manchineel simply has repressed it like she always does. It just doesn’t exist in her own personal world.

“Goodbye Manchineel,” says Acacia, as Sir Knight opens his cloak for her to step into. But then she stops, thinking for a moment and looks back. “Oh. Before I go, I need a favor, actually.”

Manchineel lights up. “Okay!” she agrees in a bright, ditsy tone, without even knowing what it is that she’s going to be asked for. “But you have to say, ‘please, my beloved, favorite big sister, who I adore and cherish and cannot live even a moment without, mwah-mwah-mwah~,’” bargains Manchineel, making a playful kissy face toward Acacia. “And it’ll also cost you a swiiim~!” she tacks on gleefully in a sing-song voice, a wagging finger raised into the air.

Acacia’s eye twitches as she processes these most terrible concessions. But what choice does she have in the matter? She needs this from Manchineel. She has an obligation to fulfill.

Some fights you win, but others you have no choice but to surrender to.

“Sir Knight. Cover your ears,” orders Acacia. “I don’t want you to hear this.”

“I don’t have…” Sir Knight stops talking, feeling Acacia’s glare his way, and then just obliges anyway, covering the side of his helmet with his hands.

 

---

 

The first thing they feel, returning back out of the portal to home, is the weather, as they return to a familiar grayness of the city. It reminds Sir Knight of winter, when the snow and the cold air made everything seem so lifeless and dull.

“You will never speak of this,” orders Acacia, her face vividly red as they step back out into the city. Water drips down her wet hair, over her shoulders.

“Yes, Your Majesty. Mwah~ mwah~ mwah~,” replies Sir Knight.

“Oh, hey, there you guys are,” says a curious voice — Junis. The others are either scattered away already. But a few of them are still here. “What took you so long?” she asks.

Acacia shakes her head, walking by. Droplets flying out. Junis covers her face. “Oh, you know, just saying goodbye to a few things,” she replies. “Hase.”

“Huh? What?” asks Hase grumpily, sitting there with crossed arms and an annoyance on her face as she looks around the city she had managed to escape, even if only for a day. Acacia holds out a hand, dropping something into her palms. “Payment in full, as promised,” says the princess, walking off together with Sir Knight. Junis spares a curious glance, but then catches up after the other.

Hase sits there by herself, looking at the golden, gem-encrusted ring in her hands. It’s a ring worth an unimaginable fortune, belonging to the actual oldest princess of the nation, let alone considering its raw material value.

She’s seen it before.

It caused her a lot of pain.

Her fingers clench closed around it, turning pale from the tightness of her grip as she looks back behind her shoulders, over the market place, toward an alley there on the other side of it.

Hase gets up and walks.

This ring is worth the money of a thousand lifetimes. Being verified as real and legitimate, with her as the actual owner rather than a thief, she could sell it to anyone for any price imaginable. No fences, no shady deals, nothing of the sort. She’d have enough money to get away from this city forever. Hell. She could buy her own city somewhere else.

The rabbit-eared thief walks across the market and toward the alley, stopping a ways there, water splashing nearby.

She looks down at the thing, and then over the popular ornamental fountain that drunkards and adventurers light to pee in at night, after they get thrown out of the taverns and guilds.

Nobody in the city pays a second mind to her standing there and dropping in a shiny thing, thinking its just another obol thrown in by a girl making a wish.

The priceless ring sinks into the water, tumbling along until it hits a grate and vanishes into the underbelly of the city.

Hase stands there, watching it go, and then turns to leave herself — walking over the streets now, not through the sewers and tunnels like she used to do.