Chapter Text
One second, there had been nothing. Then a smothering, dark presence blanketed them.
“Too late. This is the end for you.”
The hero’s party sans Eisen turned; each of them more than competent at detecting evil and yet all having been taken aback at the tall, horned, suited figure suddenly in their midst.
He raised a hand, motes of light gathering swiftly at the call of his mana.
At the last second, there was a brief instant of hesitation as he recalled he was dealing with the Hero and the Great Mage, Frieren. He altered his spell instinctively, changing its composition so that it would lock their minds into a chronologically frozen state. They’d be powerless to interfere, then.
Paradise Guidance Magic - Anschräh Schehler Chronubí
The magic flared out, everything fading to white for the hero’s party as they fell.
~.~.~
“Now then, it is impolite to keep the bride waiting.”
“Bride?” asked Himmel, trying to see past the fog in his mind. It felt like he’d just awoken. He must have fallen asleep on that bench somehow; that was odd. Why would he be sleeping here, of all places?
His confusion was instantly swept away and replaced by amazement as he took in the sight before him. How had he not seen her? How had his mind not been consumed by the vision of beauty before him?
The flowing white dress; the flowers cupped in her dainty, small hands; the beatific smile on her face.
She...she was…
The quick tongued hero found himself speechless.
“My beauty has robbed him of his words.” said Frieren with a note of teasing in her voice as she stepped forward. She reached up and gently pushed his chin up, closing his mouth. He hadn’t even noticed when it had fallen open. “Come, my Hero. Our guests await.”
Himmel trailed after her in stunned silence, following her lead through the massive oaken doors as she walked towards the front of the room. He couldn’t shake the feeling of wrongness that pervaded him; the sense that something wasn’t right.
But when he looked at her, it became very, very difficult to focus on that feeling.
“If I were a thousand years younger, your captivation would make me blush.” said Frieren, looking away from his intense gaze with a small smile.
Himmel was the one blushing instead as he tore his eyes away to look at the priest, who was smiling knowingly at him.
“You may now kiss the bride.” he said.
At his words, Himmel looked back at Frieren who had turned to stare up at him with those magnificent, green windows she called eyes. She leaned forward, her eyes slowly falling shut. She angled her head up, pursing her lips expectantly.
She wanted him to kiss her.
The thought rang in Himmel’s head, the falsity of the moment becoming almost crystal clear. He smiled wanly, a small sigh escaping his lips as he placed a finger onto Frieren’s.
“Frieren. I’m sure there is a way out of this.” he said, his smile dropping as he felt his mind scream at him. “What should I do?”
Frieren’s eyes cracked open, just barely, and he saw something in them that surprised him. Before he could place the thought, it passed and Frieren frowned at him.
“If this is a joke; I find it in poor taste.” she said quietly. “We are meant to kiss, are we not? This is our human wedding, after all.”
“It…it is?” he asked hesitantly, looking out at the onlookers who had started to murmur in confusion. He saw Eisen lean towards Heiter, one hand stroking his beard as he said something. They all seemed to wonder why Himmel was hesitating.
He felt the feeling of falsehood try and reassert itself. Something was wrong. Things didn’t…
He felt her grab his hand and his mind went still as his heart beat strongly in his chest. Frieren smiled up at him.
“He that has faced down the great Demon King cannot be afraid of a little, old elf.” she said fondly. “Now, kiss me, my Hero.”
The invitation was one that he found too strong to ignore. He looked into Frieren’s eyes and he could see that she was real. He would never mistake her for anyone else.
His mind quieted as the false feeling faded from his notice, settling into the far reaches of his mind to be ignored and forgotten.
He raised a hand to cradle her cheek and he leaned down, his lips meeting hers. She was soft and warm; things he would not have once associated with the brusque and stoic mage. He felt her return his kiss, with the strength and emotion of a woman in love.
This was real. This felt right.
~.~.~
5 years have elapsed since the marriage of the Hero and the Mage
“You’ve been poring over that thing for weeks now.” sighed Himmel as he stepped into the cabin, wiping his forehead. He had a stack of logs in a carrier over his shoulder, freshly chopped and ready for the fire.
Frieren hummed distractedly, her eyes not leaving the page in front of her as her finger traced along it. The grimoire had been a lucky find; the product of a chest that she and Himmel had found in the dungeon that they had cleared at the request of a neighboring village. Himmel had bet her a full evening of head rubs that it was a mimic and had been shocked when she’d pulled a dusty book from its mundane inside instead.
“This magic will take me years to decipher but that simply means it must be worth the wait.” she explained. “Perhaps this will finally be the Secret Magic I’ve been searching for, for all this time.”
Ah, the Secret Magic.
Frieren had first mentioned it almost five years ago, after she returned from a trip to the capital. Serie had told her of an ancient elven legend; one long lost to time, which meant much more when talking of races as long lived as theirs. She had refused to tell Himmel exactly what it was, but had only said that she now had a new goal in mind and it was to find this Secret Magic and master it.
He’d asked her how long this goal would last and she’d gotten a faraway look in her eyes.
“Decades. Maybe even a century, with some amount of poor luck, but no longer.” was her soft reply and she refused to say anything further, distracting him with her infamous seduction technique whenever he tried to glean more. It had a one hundred percent effectiveness rate on him, even after years of marriage.
“Shall I get dinner started then?” he asked, shuffling logs into the wood stove. Frieren nodded without looking up but Himmel caught the motion out of the corner of his eye anyway and began preparing. He had come to truly enjoy cooking in the years since marrying Frieren. It helped that, for all her other talents, Frieren still managed to be a rather mediocre chef at best. It baffled him how exactly she managed that and part of him wondered if she didn’t affect the weakness as an excuse to eat his cooking more.
Soon, a hale stew was ready and simmering in the pot. Himmel served them into two bowls, placing one in front of Frieren and taking the other to his seat at the dining room table. They sat in amicable silence, Himmel eating and Frieren reading until Himmel softly admonished her to eat before her food got cold.
“It is ironic that you would be the mothering hen of our relationship, my Hero.” she said with a roll of her eyes as she picked up her spoon.
“One of us has got to take care of your body, my Wife.” he replied with an easy smile.
“You have a vested interest in it, isn’t that right?” she asked, raising a white eyebrow. “I should’ve known marriage would not change your perverted ways.”
“I am who I am.” he said, making it a point to roam his eyes up and down Frieren’s body. She wore a white nightdress, one of several she owned. It wasn’t particularly frilly or lacey or revealing but it was a nightdress and that was, in Himmel’s own words, enough.
Frieren felt a familiar urge to smack Himmel with her staff but she brushed it off with ease. Years into their marriage and she still found that her old instincts would sometimes take umbrage with Himmel’s crassness even as a newly awakened part of her mind now reveled in his attentions. She had come to savor the look in his eyes when she flashed a bit of leg or traced a hand along his jaw.
Elves were not completely immune to the concept of desire, after all. It was simply far from a biological imperative, the way it seemed to be for most mortal species, and thus the vast majority of them went most of their lives without ever engaging it. They rarely had any incentive to do so.
Frieren found that Himmel had grown…adequate at providing that incentive.
She shut the grimoire with a snap, getting to her feet.
Himmel watched her walk resolutely towards the door to their bedroom. She turned to look over her shoulder at him.
Wink. Kiss.
Himmel jumped to his feet and followed after her.
~.~.~
17 years have elapsed since the marriage of the Hero and the Mage
“You’ve got dirt in your hair.” she remarked, pointing at Himmel’s head.
“Do I?” asked Himmel, frowning from where he sat on their couch, whittling a piece of wood. “That’s odd; I bathed just an hour ago.”
Frieren reached forward, brushing at his head. She blinked as she saw the dirt refuse to move, regardless of how much her hand brushed back and forth over it. She got closer to Himmel’s head, squinting as she tried to make out what she was seeing.
She pinched a hair in between her fingers, lifting it up and free from the rest of his blue mop. It was a bright white.
“Oh.” she said, feeling a lead weight form in her stomach.
“Did you get it?” he asked, glancing up at his wife.
“Hm.” said Frieren, not answering his question as she continued to stare in between her fingers. Without much conscious thought, she pinched them together and yanked, prompting a small wince from Himmel.
“What was that for?” he asked, scratching at his head.
“It was a particularly stubborn piece of dirt, that’s all.” she said, patting his head with one hand as the other went behind her back. “That reminds me. It’s almost time for your birthday, is it not?”
Himmel tapped his chin thoughtfully.
“I suppose that’s true. That means we should be expecting Heiter any day now, I suppose.”
Himmel laughed.
“I’m turning forty. Oh dear. He’s going to make such fun of me; I’ve given him no end of grief over becoming an old man and here I am, well on my way to being one.”
“You are not old.” said Frieren gently but insistently. “I am old. You are…aged. Like fine wine.”
“Is that a compliment, my Wife? Be still, my beating heart.” he said with a self-indulgent smirk. Frieren did not deign to respond to his arrogance; choosing instead to pose a question.
“I haven’t been out to search for the Secret Magic in some time; I am thinking of heading out on my own after your birthday to explore a few new leads. Is that alright?” she asked.
“Of course. How long will you be gone?” he asked, placing his half-finished carving down.
“I cannot say for sure.” she said with a shrug. “It could be weeks. It could be over a year. I want this particular expedition to yield results.”
“I see.” said Himmel, pouting slightly. “How will I survive without my beloved wife for that long?”
“Don’t human men have something for that?” said Frieren, miming a weird grasping motion into the air. Himmel looked confused for several seconds before realizing what she was trying to imitate. He blushed brightly as he looked away from his wife’s sly smirk. She had grown entirely too confident in her teasing.
~.~.~
18 years have elapsed since the marriage of the Hero and the Mage
Himmel thanked the woman at the stand, taking the collection of trinkets from her and placing it into his basket. He frowned as he looked over the collection of items, wondering why something felt odd. It was the same grouping of items he typically got from…from…
He looked up at the brown haired woman’s smiling face.
“Is there anything else, Hero-sama?” she asked.
“There is no need to call me that.” he said gently.
Nonsense; you are owed my respect.
“Nonsense, you are owed my respect.” she said, bowing her head.
Himmel kept his frown internal, nodding at the woman before heading off. He looked down at his basket again, trying to understand why he was feeling this way.
He was likely just out of sorts from missing Frieren. It had been over a full year since she’d left on her expedition. Another man would’ve been fraught with concern but Himmel felt nothing other than mild impatience. He was sure that she was fine and part of him wondered if she hadn’t simply lost track of time as she was so wont to do.
His questions were answered when he arrived home to a sweaty, dusty short woman that he called his Wife. She greeted him with a beaming smile; he had rarely seen her so bright and he could only respond in kind, rushing forward to wrap her in his arms.
“I’ve missed you.” he said softly.
“Nonsense; it was barely a year.” she replied in kind.
He rolled his eyes good naturedly, releasing her.
“So tell me, where did your journey take you?” he asked as he walked her into their home, his hand on her back.
“It took me many places.” she said. “Some near and some far; it’s hard to say. I just kept searching because I didn’t want to give up. And I believe that I was rewarded.”
She reached into her well-worn suit case, opening it with a snap and pulling out a scroll that seemed almost ready to fall part into so much dust and particulates.
“Oh wow. That may be the oldest looking scroll I’ve ever seen.” said Himmel, cocking his head.
“It may be the oldest recording in existence.” she corrected. “I’ll know more once I’m done deciphering it.”
“Could this be it?” he asked. “The end of your hunt for your Secret?”
“I sincerely hope so.” she said, smiling down at the bundle of bound pages in her hand. “I have been searching for so long; it had started to feel like nothing but wishful thinking.”
She looked up at Himmel and he saw a melancholy in her eyes that made him want to reach out and hug the elf. So he did.
“You’re amazing; do you know that?” he asked, holding her with care to avoid putting pressure on the bundle in her hands.
“As you always say.” she said, smiling in his hold.
“I’m serious.” he insisted. “You just found something that no one living has ever laid their hands on. That’s amazing.”
“Motivation makes for a powerful force.” she said cryptically. “Now, off me. There is deciphering to be done.”
Himmel laughed but released his wife, patting her on the head fondly. He saw the smile his touch elicited and he knew, in her own way, she had missed him too.
~.~.~
24 years have elapsed since the marriage of the Hero and the Mage
“It is finished.” said Frieren, the last rune falling into place as she ended the sentence she was scribbling down. She leaned back, stretching as she felt her back limber from where it had been hunched over for hours. She had done it. It had been one of the most trying decryptions of her life but she had managed it, often forgoing sleep and caring for herself, requiring her husband to nag her into it.
She’d seen more and more of the white hairs beginning to populate his head. She wasn’t sure if he had noticed.
Who was she kidding? Of course he had. Age had done little to change Himmel’s vanity. He had likely noticed them before she had. He just didn’t say anything about them, which was unlike him. He loved to complain; to give her an opportunity to tease him and correct him. If he hadn’t mentioned them, it was on purpose.
After all, she hadn’t mentioned them and it was certainly on purpose.
“My Hero!” she called, her voice carrying up from the small basement and up into the house proper. Their home was small enough that he could hear her from anywhere, as long as he wasn’t outside, and a minute later, she heard his calm, measured footsteps at the top of the stairs.
“You summoned me?” he asked, adjusting a misplaced lock of hair so that he could sweep it back and away from his face dramatically. It did make him look rather dashing but she feared feeding his ego too often would cause his head to explode so she simply huffed and gestured for him to approach her.
“It is finished.” she said, holding up her notes. “I have successfully deciphered the ancient text.”
Himmel’s eyes brightened; Frieren had been working for years on this task, at a feverish pace that had often worried him. He’d scolded her frequently, telling her that she had no need to rush but that had only made things worse, as far as he could tell.
“Does this mean you’re going to start showering again?” he asked. “It’s tiresome having to settle for sponging you off down here, you know.”
Frieren pouted cutely. She showered. Maybe not as much as she could’ve. But she did. You ask for a sponge bath ONE too many times and this is the treatment you get.
“Shower me with praise instead, for I have done a great deed.” she insisted, waving her papers again. “My instincts were correct; this was the magic that I have been searching decades for.”
She shuffled the papers around, pulling the title page of her research forward as she wrote a single line of text at the top in bold, capital letters, indicating the magic’s purpose.
Magic of Eternal Youth
~.~.~
109 years have elapsed since the marriage of the Hero and the Mage
“I do wish you’d found this magic before I’d gotten quite so many grey hairs.” Himmel lamented, tugging at his hair carefully in the bathroom mirror.
“Six hundred and forty seven.” was Frieren’s only response. She was brushing her hair beside him, the task making her feel nostalgic for reasons she had long given up on trying to place. She just knew it was a comforting task, for all that it was a mundane one. “I wonder if you’ll have repeated yourself a thousand times before your two hundredth birthday.”
“Two hundred.” said Himmel bemusedly, shaking his head. He flexed his hand, marveling at the sense of strength in it. It wasn’t quite what he recalled feeling at his physical peak but then he’d been in his early forties when Frieren had spent that spell on him.
He’d felt guilty, knowing that the magic was not reusable, its effects bound in arcane manner to the grimoire it was bound to, which would be consumed in the ritual. Frieren had convinced him over the course of months, shooting down his every argument that the gift should go to someone else.
He was the Hero. He was her Hero and it was her magic. She had paid for it with decades of time and research.
Besides, if there was one instance of the scroll, there could be many. That, above all else, convinced Himmel and thus he was magically ensconced and preserved, kept eternally young.
He had gotten an inkling of what elves must go through, having buried Heiter long ago and Eisen only a short while ago but even then, it had not filled him with the sadness he would’ve once thought it would. He had fallen out of touch with his lifelong friends, rarely ever seeing them as he continued to eke out a blissful existence with Frieren in their home.
Even their brief conversations had felt…off. It felt stilted and almost rote. It made him uncomfortable and so he had taken to seeing them less and less. They did not seem to hold this against him, which did not surprise him. What did was the lack of guilt he felt over that; it just seemed wrong.
They were his treasured companions, were they not?
“You are getting lost again, my Hero.”
The comment broke Himmel from his reverie. Frieren was looking up at him with a knowing smile.
“That is a challenge of being long lived that you will need to grow accustomed to.” she said. “It will only become easier for you to get lost in your memories; take care to not let them drag you down. You can only live in the present, not the past.”
“Of course.” he said, returning her smile. “You are almost as wise as you are beautiful.”
Frieren preened under his praise.
“In the interest of speaking on the present,” he continued, stepping over to wrap his arms around Frieren’s shoulders. “Have you reconsidered what we shall name them?”
Frieren looked down at her middle, where the barest of bumps could be seen through her dress. She had been surprised when she had found that she was expecting. Elves were notoriously infertile, even when they deigned to be occasionally sexually active as she did with Himmel. She would’ve guessed it would’ve taken another two centuries before they had to concern themselves about children.
“No.” she said. “If it is a girl, it will be Fern. If it is a boy, it will be Stark.”
She could not explain why; they had been brainstorming baby names when she suddenly alighted on these two and had remained steadfast in her decision. Himmel had been oddly insistent on Himmel Jr. for a boy and it had led to one of their rare fights, which had ended only due to Frieren crying for almost two days straight.
“I see.” he said, sighing. “Oh well, I suppose I have several months to try and dissuade you.”
“You are welcome to try.” she said. “Tell me again, how many of our arguments have you won?”
Himmel didn’t answer. They both knew.
~.~.~
109 years have elapsed since the marriage of the Hero and the Mage
Frieren couldn’t sleep. She found her dreams beset by visions. It was far from the first time but their frequency and intensity had grown along with the size of her stomach. She would see a purple haired girl with a sad, closed off expression and a red haired teen with fearful eyes holding an axe that almost seemed too big for him.
Who were these children? She had never met them in her life; she was all but certain.
And yet the dreams continued, night after night. They only intensified and grew more vivid the further along she became.
It was during her sixth month of pregnancy when she was able to finally recall their names.
It was then that she knew that something was terribly wrong.
She told Himmel about it the very next morning.
“I see.” said Himmel with a small frown. His fingers were laced together as he looked at his wife, who had just finished recounting her dreams to him and telling him about the mysterious boy and girl. Stark and Fern. Names her brain could not know but her soul did.
“I do not want to entertain the thought.” Frieren admitted, staring down at her midsection. It was quite rounded, pushing up against the fabric of her nightdress. “But with each passing day, it weighs on me more and more. I can’t keep it out of my mind.”
These children. She knew them. She didn’t have a single recollection of them, regardless of how she combed through the thousands of years of memories she possessed, but she knew them. She knew them in the same way she knew her name or her mana. They were a part of her.
She pondered what it could mean and she did not like any of the conclusions that her mind drew. It was Himmel that pointed out the most obvious one.
“This isn’t real.” said Himmel.
It felt odd to say out loud but once he did so, he felt things click into place. A thousand and one oddities suddenly flew to the forefront of his mind, suppressed for so long by the lull of the magic that had held him in its grip.
Frieren thought, looking back at the years and years she’d spent. She focused, trying to parse the sensations she could recall and the things she’d seen, looking for any trace of oddity or distortion. Her mind found none and that frightened her.
“In my eyes, every bit of this world looks real.” she said, looking down at where her hand traced the curve of her belly. “My five senses, recollections, and even Mana Detection, tell me that this place is undeniably real.”
“I had felt moments over the years.” admitted Himmel. “Moments that just didn’t seem right; that seemed out of place but I couldn’t hold onto that feeling.”
“We must be in a truly miraculous magic for that to be the case.” she said, looking back on her memories once again and finding no flaw. It was difficult, sifting through thousands of years of stored experience. She had lived for so long; it was like trying to search an ocean. “The seam must lie somewhere. You have always had an indomitable will, my Hero. Look back. Can you find it where I have failed?”
Himmel closed his eyes, trying to look back over the century of memory. With the dissonance now so clearly pointed out to him, he could see the faint tinge of falsehood that laced so many of them. His exchanges in town. His conversations with Eisen and Heiter. All laced in a murky, barely visible taint.
He found his memories with Frieren were radiant and that made him smile, for it told him what he needed to know.
He opened his eyes.
“It was our wedding.” he said with utter confidence. “That is when we were placed in here.”
Frieren reviewed that memory with renewed interest; the direction providing her the extra bit of insight she needed to observe that Himmel was right. She examined the events before their wedding closely, sifting back through Himmel’s proposal, their courtship, and their battle with a band of Great Demons and thus, she was able to latch onto the divergence. The seam where reality met falsehood.
“I have found it.” she said, opening her bright green eyes.
“So what do we do now?” Himmel asked. “Can you break the illusion?”
“I cannot.” she admitted. “This is a true miracle. I can only imagine it was perpetrated by the Miraculous Grausam. Caught as we are, I am unable to thwart this magic in any way. It must be you.”
Himmel had always been one to do the impossible.
“What should I do?” he asked, ready and willing to do anything. He had lived over a hundred years but he had never stopped being the Hero.
“It is simple.” said Frieren. “You must die.”
Himmel blinked, considering her words.
“Oh, is that it?” he said with a small smile.
“The illusion is being maintained on us both. If you were to die, the illusion would attempt to reassert itself over us. That will give me an opening in which I can interfere with it and disrupt its mana flow, giving you time to break yourself free in the outside world. You would then simply need to attack Grausam, breaking his concentration and freeing me as well.” Frieren explained.
“I see.” said Himmel, nodding. “That makes sense.”
Himmel got to his feet, walking over to the mantle to retrieve the sword that above it. He inspected the edge, noting that it was as keen as it had ever been before placing the blade at his neck.
“Wait!”
Himmel paused, turning to face his wif- Frieren. She had a hand held out and he saw a pinched expression of grief on her face. After a few seconds of silence, her hand fell and her expression calmed though her eyes remained alight with emotion.
“I could be wrong.” she said, with a note of desperation in her voice.
Himmel shook his head.
“You are not.” he said, with the utter confidence of the Hero, Himmel.
“These visions could be falsehoods; they could be a result of illusion magic themselves.” she tried.
“Frieren, please.” he said, smiling wanly. “Delay does nothing but risk us falling under its sway once again.”
“And would that be so horrible?” she asked in a soft, vulnerable tone that he’d rarely ever heard from the elf. Both of her hands cradled her midsection, her fingers grasping desperately.
Himmel took a breath, allowing himself to feel a wellspring of chaotic emotion as he walked over to where Frieren sat. He bent down and placed his forehead onto hers, closing his eyes so that he could not see the tears that ran down her face.
He knew that this lapse in judgment was temporary; he knew Frieren cared far too much for her future to allow it to dissolve to satisfy their own selfish whims. Sacrificing those children was a price that neither of them would ever pay, even for a thousand years with each other.
They were heroes, after all.
“We will see each other again.” he said.
He kissed Frieren, the salty taste of tears mingling with the soft, light feeling he’d come to intimately know. He lightly brushed one hand over hers, resting it atop her rounded belly for a brief second.
He stood to his feet, leaving the room lest he be drawn into more hesitation. He hardened his heart to the quiet, barely audible sobs that followed him.
~.~.~
Thirty seconds have elapsed since Himmel and Frieren were trapped in Paradise Guidance
Himmel’s eyes opened and he took in the situation instantly; his battle hardened instincts coming alive as he saw Heiter kneeling on the ground, a demon holding a sword up high ready to bring it down upon him.
Himmel moved swiftly, a cool rage giving him new strength as he all but appeared in between the demon and Heiter, the creature’s eyes widening in surprise as it moved back far too late.
Himmel’s sword rose in a flash of blue toned silver, slicing through the demon’s sword bearing arm completely. There was a sharp burst of black and red magic as the demon grunted softly, the spell losing form and shape as the hand that controlled it faded into particles.
Frieren opened her eyes and Himmel saw them alight with a fury he had never before seen.
The battle ended as quickly as that, the demons being overrun by the returned might of the Mage and the Hero. Within minutes, the monsters had fled and the heroes found themselves grouped, battered and bruised, in front of the Goddess’ monument.
“I suppose this is goodbye then.” said Eisen, nodding brusquely. “May your future be bright.”
Heiter looked between Frieren and Himmel; his empathy seeing what his eyes could not. He didn’t quite understand but he took Eisen by the shoulder, softly urging his friend to follow him as he took his leave, wishing Frieren well on her journey.
Frieren and Himmel continued to stare into one another’s eyes; the weight of a century behind their gazes as they stood, separated by a few feet that may as well have been a chasm.
“My Wife.” he said, smiling sadly.
“My Hero.” she said, returning it.
She reached forward but hesitated before she could make contact with him, drawing her hand back.
“It was all fake.” she said. He saw the way her hand went to touch her flat midsection. “A fiction wrought by a malevolent creature’s magic.”
“That world may have been a falsehood.” he said. “But our reality was as real as anything can be, Frieren.”
Himmel brushed at his eyes, refusing to let tears fall.
“Perhaps there is-”
“No.” she said, that one word resounding out across the space between them. The pain in her voice was only barely kept in check. “I cannot abandon them. You would not ask me to. If you were to do that, then you would not be the Hero I love.”
“I will wait for you, even if it takes an eternity.” he said instead.
“In my time, you are long dead. I remember nothing of this, which means you can never tell me.” she said and the pain in her voice was raw, this time.
Himmel shrugged.
“If heaven is anything like Heiter tells it, I’m sure the Hero will get a few concessions. Live long and live happily, Frieren. I will wait for you.”
Frieren smiled at the easy confidence with which he defied the very concept of death. She should’ve expected nothing less from her Hero.
With her heart aching in her chest; she placed her hand on the monument.
Fiala Toll
In a flicker of light that didn’t even register on her Mana Detection, Frieren found herself kneeling before the Goddess’ monument. It was no longer tall and complete; it was instead the half wrecked pillar of stone that she remembered finding with…
“Frieren-sama, are you alright?”
Frieren turned to face the voice; it belonged to a tall girl with long purple hair and deep purple eyes.
“My Mana Detection senses something amiss.” said Fern, looking down at Frieren with that familiar look of concern. Her look only deepened as she saw the tears running down her master’s face.
“I am fine, Fern. It is good to see you after so long.” she said. “And you as well, Stark.”
The red head tilted his head at her, his rugged arms folded.
“It’s been like ten seconds.” he said. “Are you sure you’re alright? I have never seen you cry.”
She wasn’t. She was far from it. But she would not burden these children with that; not today, at least. For now she would simply think of her Hero and remember his last words to her.
“Come, let us go.” said Frieren, getting to her feet and wiping at her eyes.
She ignored their repeated questions, walking away to lead them back into the forest. She felt the ghost of a touch on her shoulder and she looked back to see something standing over her.
She thought it waved at her before she blinked and it was gone.