This part covers some of the ninth volume of the original “Re:Zero” novels.

In the previous part the protagonist finally confronted the Witch of Frost after he fucked up bad at the royal summons in one of the first entries of this retelling. We learn that the world sucks and that it hates the Witch of Frost because she was born. I don’t like the village chief.

This entry is the last one covering all the events that became the first season of the anime adaptation.

GPT-3 is a cutting-edge language processing algorithm used in the premium version of the online site AI Dungeon.

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The plume of black smoke raising from the burning corpses widens and dissipates in the afternoon air. All the dead that your people intend to bury with honors are loaded in the carriages, and thankfully the combination of Crusch’s army’s carriages as well as the merchants that stayed behind are enough for everyone to travel back to the capital. However, some of the villagers, particularly those whose loved ones have died, refused to leave, and intend to bury their dead in the local graveyard. Nobody wanted to force those to leave despite that some cultists might remain in the proximities, so Ram just approached you near the entrance of the village to inform you that she’s staying as well.
“Someone needs to make sure that the mansion won’t suffer any harm, and Beatrice isn’t going to move any finger for it.”
“Ram, you have barely recovered from spending all your mana, right? The villagers that won’t come with us are the angriest, and they are grieving. What if they attack you?”
The pink-haired servant snorts as she holds your gaze with a smug expression. However, a faint smile appears on one corner of her mouth.
“In your mind it must be a miracle that we survived until you appeared in our lives.”
“I just don’t want you to die.”
“I accept your concern, but you should worry about your own defenseless self.” She looks towards the gathered carriages, a couple of which are already moving up to the road that leads out of Roswaal’s domains. “Get going. I’m sure you have planned to celebrate that your gamble paid off, and you should. Don’t let my sister drink too much, she can barely handle it.”
A warmth fills your chest, and you want to cry.
“Can I get a hug?”
Ram narrows her eyes and steps back.
“You just love pushing the limits of indecency, Barusu. Any of these carriages must be waiting for you. Farewell.”
After Ram disappears past some house, you move towards the empty carriages and the people gathered nearby. Some of the half-beast mercenaries are talking animatedly with some of Crusch’s soldiers. The mercs’ mounts, a species of big wolf, are either hanging out excitedly or being driven around by the half-beasts that are sitting on them. You haven’t seen neither Ricardo nor Mimi for a while, and you figure that they must be handling things on the nearby road to make sure everybody can leave in an orderly group.
Emilia calls you from behind. She’s standing there with a shy smile and holding Puck with both hands. The magical cat is licking his paws while eyeing you with an amused expression.
“Which carriage should we get on, Subaru?”, Emilia asks.
You both walk around for a few seconds until you spot a familiar face near one of the empty carriages. It’s Otto. That unfortunate bastard has stayed around after all. You approach him while a smile grows on your lips.
“So you survived, Otto, and even waited around for us to finish. That’s very considerate of you. Can we get on your carriage?”
Otto nods, but then looks weirded out.
“Wait a second, I don’t recall ever telling you my name, general. Did I?”
“Of course! How would I know it otherwise?”
Otto shrugs, and then smiles with gratitude.
“I couldn’t abandon you people after you saved me from being roasted alive, could I? Even though I admit that I thought there was no way that we would survive a full-on assault by those crazy cultists. A couple of times I looked out from my tarp, there were pieces of houses hovering in the air and being thrown around! I should have braved the mist last night. I wouldn’t have been caught in such a mess!”
“You certainly wouldn’t have been able to. Well then, old pal, I’m getting on your carriage and sleeping like a half of the way back to the capital.”
Otto is a bit puzzled by your words, but he agrees and climbs into the driver’s seat.
You nod to Emilia and then get on the back of the carriage. It’s empty and in shadows thanks to the tarp covering it. There are two benches on opposite sides. You sit close to the back, and before you realize it Emilia has sat next to you, so close that your thighs almost touch. She looks at you with a smile in her gorgeous face, and your breath thickens. You remind yourself that you have a girlfriend whom you love very much.
Puck walks down from Emilia’s arms onto the bench, next to his protegee.
“What do you think about all this, Puck?”, you ask. “You have remained in the background ever since we arrived. I miss the sound of your cat voice.”
Puck narrows his eyes suspiciously.
“I wanted Emilia to stay hidden until you people killed every last one of those freaks. You would have done so, as you have proved. But I couldn’t stop her from surfacing and then having to deal with people who hate her.”
“Puck…”, Emilia begins.
“It’s all done, can’t change any of it. I just don’t want to expose you to that kind of stuff, Emi. The world is much harsher than you think.”
Emilia lowers her head slightly.
“I knew there are plenty of evil people out there. I just thought I had left it all behind…”
“Nevermind that, Emilia”, you say with a conciliatory tone. “We both need to sleep, and we’ll be able to in a short while. Just imagine it, closing your eyes and feeling the carriage moving through that very long stretch of road while knowing that everything is over. Just like being a child again and sleeping in the back seat of your parents’ car as they drive you to your aunt’s.”
Emilia offers you a calm smile, although she’s arching her eyebrows in confusion.
“What’s a car? A kind of carriage where you come from?”
“Ah, yes. Pretty much.”
“I want you to tell me about your country, Subaru. I’m really curious about how you lived there, and also how you ended up coming to Lugunica.”
You sigh and close your eyes.
“Yeah, a long, confusing tale for another time.”
As you hear how a couple of carriages maneuver towards the road, a bunch of excited voices approach the back of your carriage. You haven’t closed the tarp, so you see a few children, two male teenagers, and a skinny tween with reddish-brown hair down to her shoulders. One of the male teenagers asks whether they can get on the same carriage, but the younger people from their group are already occupying the seats. The skinny tween girl with reddish-brown hair attempts to squeeze herself right next to you, even though the bench can’t hold her entire ass, and both you and Emilia are forced to shift yourselves further down the bench. You suddenly find yourself on the shaded back of a carriage surrounded by excited and loud non-adults. Your body hasn’t technically reached adulthood yet, but around these people you feel like you need to worry about the mortgage payments on your house. Damn it, they won’t let you sleep!
“I saw you got on this one, sir, and Petra decided that we should join you.” You recognize the male teenager as the guy you gave that sword to, shortly before you discovered that Petelgeuse had occupied a blonde teenager’s body. This guy isn’t topless anymore, he’s wearing a worn shirt torn in a couple of places that show that they’ve bandaged his torso. “We will feel safer, I think”, the teenager adds. “They say it’s a long way to the capital, and that road is dangerous.”
You are beginning to feel dizzy, and look to your right to the adoring eyes of the tween looking up at you.
“I must thank you again for saving my life, sir!”, she says excitedly. “I’m Petra. I don’t think I ever told you my name…”
This Petra person reminds you of some archetypal girl next door type that you would have during middle school, a girl that would come up to your room without announcing herself, and that would make you worry about the location of your porn mags.
You must have stared at her in silence for a moment too long, because she looks down and she tries to hide the hurt with a soft smile.
“It’s okay if you don’t remember. I’m sure you have saved many other people in this battle and others.”
“No, I do remember. It’s just… It’s been a long day.”
“That’s for sure”, the male teenager says.
“What’s… that about saving her life?”, Emilia asks softly.
You turn your face towards her to figure out how to explain it, when you stop with your mouth open. Emilia is worried, her pupils are trembling. You would have rather stayed in a carriage that only contained you and Emilia, and of course the driver, but in her case she has found herself surrounded by villagers that at any moment might explode against her for being a half-elf, a witch, or a combination of both. Her anxiety must have skyrocketed. Puck has vanished as well, you guess to avoid getting fondled by these children.
You grab Emilia’s hand and squeeze it.
“I saw them being pursued by a cultist, and I charged into the guy with my dear ground dragon. That poor girl was miserable before because I preferred to get on a carriage and sleep than ride her. My ground dragon, I mean.”
“You are a true hero, Subaru”, Emilia says without a hint of sarcasm.
“I just did what needed to be done.”
Petra leans forward to look at Emilia’s face.
“You are so beautiful! You are the witch that lives at the mansion, right?”
“Y-Yes…”
“That’s so cool! I wish I could do magic too.”
Other children agree. Emilia closes her eyes and squeezes your hand tighter.
Otto turns around from the driver’s seat.
“Everything well back there? We are departing. Hopefully we won’t run into mist on the way to the capital. Fingers crossed!”
You hold your breath for a few seconds as you feel the structure you are sitting on vibrate. The view of the village is receding. You suddenly feel yourself about to melt into the bench. How is it possible to be so tired and yet remain conscious? At least Ferris focused her healing magic on your face for a few seconds and that’s all it took for people to stop asking who beat you up. You just want to be gone for a good while, free from your consciousness, until you feel you can face another full day again.
Maybe fifteen minutes later the caravan is passing through a small village. Its sounds of people living their normal lives feels so incongruous with the carnage that the people almost next door lived through, or died in, for hours. Your gaze falls on the male teenager’s for a moment, and it seems like he was waiting for an opportunity to talk.
“Sir, do you remember that teenage girl, the blonde, pretty one?”
It ruins your mood, and you feel your chest caving in. Please, leave me alone, you want to say.
“She wasn’t from the village, right?”, you ask with a hollow voice.
“No, we had never seen her before. She barely said that she had come yesterday from another village, but she didn’t explain why. We don’t get those kinds of visitors… We also never saw her again after she fled to those woods.”
“She was a cultist.”
The children look at each other, while that male teenager’s expression sours.
“You are sure… I had wondered if that was the case, after such as sudden attack. That’s terrible. What happened?”
“She infiltrated the village, so…”
You can’t deal with talking about it. Your throat is closing. You suddenly realize how shady it looks. For these people you are one of their lord’s employees, and you were the last person who saw alive that beautiful teenager. For all you know this guy suspects you raped her, killed her and buried her in the woods. Certainly the staff of some other lords in this world would have done so. And you have a reason to feel guilty, because you did order Patrasche to kill the girl, although Petelgeuse had already raped the girl’s entire self.
“I am sorry, but… she’s gone.”
The teenager nods, rests his forearms on his knees and hangs his head down.

You must had dozed off for about twenty minutes when a tumult wakes you up. You hear someone shout some instruction, and it evokes the sudden panic that you felt when you first saw that army of half-beast people mounted of huge wolves as they ran towards your caravan.
After this bad nap, you look around confused in that half-conscious state during which you can barely tell what’s real. Some of the children are asleep. Emilia has rested her head on your shoulder and remains asleep, breathing deeply and drooling a bit out of the corner of her mouth.
“Where is the general? Has anybody seen in what carriage he got on?”
You have to think for a couple of seconds to realize that you just heard Ricardo. You pat Emilia’s cheek a couple of times, and she rouses slowly, blinking and drying her lips.
“It seems that the mercs are looking for me, Emilia”, you say. “I’ll come back in a bit.”
“Ah, sure…”
You move aside the opening of the tarp and step down to the road. A couple of mercs who were looking around while mounted on their wolves spot you, and they whistle over their shoulders. You turn around the carriage and spot Ricardo, who heads towards you. Thankfully the two meters tall wolf man doesn’t look troubled. As he approaches you, you look at the scenery. You don’t recall ever seeing this place, but given that towards the horizon in the direction of your caravan the ground goes flat, loses all trees and bushes and a seemingly endless desert of grass begins, you suppose this is the start of Flugel Road. Before the road you are standing on links up with what you suppose is a highway in this world, a couple of signposts and some half-rotten buildings seem to indicate that there’s a different road to follow, and indeed a narrower road heads in perpendicular.
Seemingly all the half-beast mercenaries except for those looking for you have gathered near the crossroads. A few of the carriages that have maneuvered that way are carrying the corpses of half-beast people.
“It looks like you are leaving us, Ricardo”, you say.
The enormous wolf man stands a few meters from you, and you realize that his frame was hiding both Tivey and his psycho sister. When you let your gaze linger on Mimi for a moment, you want to grimace. Her mostly matted, orange fur is dirty with blood, and her mouth is surrounded by dried blood and vomit. Apparently her half-beast friends see no problem with this tiny creature walking around and interacting with people even though she looks as if she’s just gobbled down a bunch of human remains. They might as well hang a board from her neck that reads ‘cannibal’. These people must look at Mimi and think, ‘yeah, this is an acceptable way to live’, while you want to dunk her head into a bucket of water. Don’t look at me, please.
“Yes, it’s time to part ways, general!”, Ricardo says with some regret. “The fighting is over, and now we ride for our headquarters so we can honor our dead brothers and sisters.”
You want to hang your head low, but you force yourself to look up at the guy, even though his huge mouth full of teeth is in the way.
“I am really sorry about every one of them that died. In particular about that half-sloth guy, for some reason. I suppose he was symbolic for this whole operation, you know?”
“I told you it was alright. I told you, didn’t I? I’m not sure. They fight because that’s what we do best, and what we love. And we can change the world for the best, can’t we? It just takes cleaving through enough people. That’s how it’s always been!”
“You know, Ricardo… Despite the constant terror and the waking nightmares that I was about to get ganged up on by a bunch of cultists who would make a pincushion out of me, now that I’ve survived and I can look back at those hours, I enjoyed that whole teaming up to murder people thing. It was a bloody good time!”
Ricardo snaps his head back to laugh loudly. Some of his merc pals laugh as well. You spot both the half-boar mercenary and the fox scout, and you point at them.
“I’ll miss you guys as well, mainly because I talked to you. You did a good job.”
They both thank you. Ricardo offers you his hand to shake. Although you try to, you can’t close your human hand around his. It also feels like it’s made of iron.
“Ricardo,” you say, “I’ve set my goal in life to be able to cleave a guy in half just like you.”
He closes his eyes and grins, and then he grabs you and messes up your hair while he almost bursts your eardrums with more laughter. When he lets you go, it feels as if your scalp has detached.
“You’ll need to eat more meat, general!”
Tivey raises one index finger and takes a step forward.
“G-General, something else…”
“Ah, yes. I’m also glad to have met you, Tivey Pearlbaton. You are the only person I’ve met in this world that I can say with absolutely honesty that I would never want to do your job, under any circumstances, and yet you do a great service for mankind, and I suppose for half-beastkind as well.”
Tivey adjusts his monocle and seems confused about your words.
“Th-thank you, sir. It’s also interesting for me to learn a-about how people different than me d-do things, and think.”
Mimi moves forward so she stands next to her brother. She avoids your gaze, and her tiny psycho eyes are secreting some terrifying, mostly transparent liquid. Ah, those are tears. She’s also sniffling.
“What’s the matter, Mimi?”, you ask nervously. “Does your belly hurt because you ate more people?”
Mimi shakes her head and then she rubs her eyes with her tiny fists. Tivey puts a hand on her shoulder.
“M-Mimi, the general is about to l-leave. You wanted him to do something, d-didn’t you?”
You swallow as Mimi looks down and wrings her hands. Tivey shrugs.
“S-She wanted a hug, general.”
You shiver, but it’s not as if you can afford to disappoint her. You crouch in front of Mimi to lift this little psychopath up to your chest. There are even globs of human meat caught in tangles of her fur. Her stench invades your nostrils and it makes you dizzy and nauseous. She stinks like a wild animal forgotten for weeks in some basement.
She looks at you with teary eyes as her pursed lips tremble, and she opens her arms. Best to get this over over quick, you think. You squeeze Mimi a bit, and against your best judgement you feel sad.
“I guess that if I disregard that you belong to an opposite camp, that you have the hygienic sense of a years-long hikikomori, that your favorite thing in this world is murdering people through supersonic booms coming out of your mouth, that you are a cannibal, and that whenever you are near me I fear for my life, you are pretty sweet.”
Mimi sobs close to your neck.
“I love you too, mister!”
When you lower Mimi to the ground, she runs up to Ricardo and hugs his leg. The wolf man picks her up and sits her on his shoulder. Mimi cries softly.
You clear your throat.
“Well, I guess that’s that.”
You stick around as they mount their differently sized wolves and they organize another caravan. Emilia has also stepped down from the carriage and is observing the whole situation likely feeling out of place. It seems that Wilhelm, Ferris and Julius have already said their goodbyes, because they merely nod or wave a hand as the others leave.
You suddenly remember, and run up to Tivey while he’s shifting on his saddle to get comfortable. You point to his big satchel.
“Shit, Tivey. I completely forgot. You are still holding on to it, aren’t you?”
“W-What…? Ah, yes. Though I don’t know w-why anybody would want to keep this thing…”
He takes out Petelgeuse’s Gospel pinching it with two fingers as if he wants to touch it as little as possible. You grab it confidently.
“We have the best library of magical tomes in the kingdom. If these things should remain in the world, they should be stored in those bookshelves.”
You stand there and wave as the Iron Fang diminishes in the distance. Up to the moment when you could no longer tell the details, Mimi had looked over her shoulder towards you as if she were about to turn back. You pray to Satella that you never cross paths with that little monster again.

You dream that you are walking through a forest under a thick canopy that keeps you in the shadows. You wander for a long time while you smell green. You are looking for something, or trying to find your way back to something. If feels like you have been walking around for an hour, but then you come across a clearing. Maybe twenty meters from you, some worn out stone steps climb to a raised platform on which stands an old ruin, some megalithic temple covered in vines. Its entrance is like a wide open mouth, its insides black. Maybe you will find her if you venture into the ruins.
When you open your eyes, the sunlight is entering through the half-open tarp. Must be a few minutes after sunrise. Everybody else is still asleep. Petra has hugged your right arm and is resting her head on it, Emilia and you have rested your heads on each other’s. You listen to her breathing softly.
For a moment a surprising thought enters your mind, one you would have never expected to feel again: you are home. You belong in this world. You have met far more people that you appreciate here than in your previous world, although you try not to think about your parents. You don’t feel the need to go back. You don’t want to go back. You were lucky that some freak mistake, or Satella’s inscrutable decision, snatched your miserable bones from that dreary world to drop you in this one. You can see yourself enjoying a long romance with Rem, marrying her, having children and then raising them to carry some sort of legacy in this world, not knowing a thing about where you truly came from.
Your chest swells with warmth, and before you know it a few tears are running down your cheeks.
“Subaru, why are you…?”, Emilia begins to ask softly, but she yawns.
You dry your eyes.
“Nothing. I was thinking that it’s alright, you know?”
She rests her heard on your shoulder as she seems to think about it.
“We survived. We see the sun rise again. I suppose that remaining alive is something to celebrate, even though we get used to it.”
You turn your head to look down at her as you feel the weight of her head on your shoulder. She holds your gaze with her beautiful purple eyes that reflect nothing but trust. She separates her wet lips slowly to smile. You realize that you’ve held your breath for a moment, and that not only your heart is beating fast, but you feel your blood concentrating in your crotch. You might as well have woken up next to her in bed. I’m doing this to Rem, you think.
You clear your throat and straighten your back. Emilia seems to sense that you’ve become uncomfortable, because she sits properly as well.
“We… should have never fought, Subaru”, Emilia says as softly as she can, maybe hoping that none of the sleeping children can hear her. “You are the only person I’ve felt truly comfortable with. I should have understood your intentions at the royal summons no matter the shame I felt at the time. We could have argued about it without punching each other verbally. But it’s alright from now on, okay? You will remain by my side, and after this is over we will return to the mansion.”
You swallow. You don’t think you are imagining that characteristic warmth in her tone, and for once you don’t like that your pants feel much tighter.
“Listen, Emilia, ah… After Roswaal decided that Rem should stay in the capital to secure allies, we grew really close to each other, to the extent that we started dating. It’s pretty serious already. We had been harboring thoughts and feelings of that kind for a while…”
Emilia’s brow is trembling, and she looks down at her lap as if thinking. But then she shakes her head and looks at you confused.
“But she didn’t stay behind. And besides, she’s done nothing but berate you, treating you as close to an uninvited guest as she could. Did you really… I mean, I don’t understand what you are talking about.”
“Ah, you thought I said Ram.” You chuckle. “Yeah, that’d be fun. Dating her would imply getting stepped on verbally every time you shared a room with her. Despite the occasional thrill that could provide, in very small doses, I meant Rem, her sweet sister.”
You shake your head while you smile, but when you look back at Emilia, she’s arching an eyebrow.
“What do you mean, Subaru…?”, she asks.
“Well, like Ram put it, her sister loves useless and broken things. We were meant for each other.”
You begin to scratch your head when the confusion in Emilia’s face makes you shiver. You hold your breath until she speaks again.
“Subaru, Ram doesn’t have a sister. Who is this Rem?”

Some observations. With this entry I’ve finished what you could consider the first season of this retelling. I will write a post-mortem regarding how the retelling turned out so far, and how it compares with the original as well as with the anime adaptation. I’ll also reread some of the entries to retouch them a bit, and then I’ll upload them to my more public blog. Although I hardly doubt anybody is reading these words, hanging the retelling for the public at large means that strangers might come across it and enjoy it, instead of the people I have on my friends list on here.

If someone would have told me just on the first of November that thirty days later I would have written a novel-length retelling of the entire first season of one of my favorite fictional series, I would have told that person to quit smoking crack and to lose my contact info. Although I tried my best to publish a couple of books around two years ago, the whole process burned me out, particularly because virtually every writer I met in person made me sick to my stomach in one way or another. I couldn’t connect with any of them. After I uploaded those two books and they barely sold any copy, I drafted the entire first volume of a next novel which due to its complicated plot, or what passed for it, had to be divided in two. After I finished that first draft I realized that I had gotten out of it psychologically as much as I needed, and there was no point in continuing further because there was no audience. I didn’t write any fiction at all afterwards, until this month. At least working on this retelling has made me rediscover the joy of writing fiction for the hell of it, to inhabit those fictional worlds, hang out with cool characters and explore interesting conversations and/or situations. So I call that a success as far as I’m concerned.

Worst part about this is that I’ll likely get recalled back into work next week. While I’m working full time I can barely do anything else but rest when I’m not at the office. I do want to continue and retell “Re:Zero” up to volume fourteen, which is the latest translated, but it will be hard.

In any case, I have posted the following video a bunch of times, but it’s still fun, and summarizes in eight minutes humorously all the events that this retelling has covered so far (with edited footage from the anime adaptation): Re:Zero IN 8 MINUTES. As it becomes obvious, though, some of the stuff has happened so differently in the retelling that although they lead to the same result, more or less, some steps in between are completely different.

This part covers some of the ninth volume of the original “Re:Zero” novels.

In the previous volume, the ancient ghost that called itself Petelgeuse Romanee-Conti finally got to meet his beloved. The protagonist realizes that he can’t delay confronting Emilia, and therefore his regrets, any longer.

The part after this one is the last that covers all the events of the original novels that became the first season of the anime adaptation.

GPT-3 is a cutting-edge language processing algorithm used in the premium version of the online site AI Dungeon.

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You turn around and walk back towards the house that Petelgeuse had picked. Once you open the door and step inside, you hope that Emilia has decided to follow you. Feeling your hands tremble like this should be comforting after you nearly lost control of your entire body, but you can only remember Emilia’s face back at that clearing, what feels like so long ago, and how impotent you had felt every time you thought about travelling to Roswaal’s domains and attempting to save the half-elf’s life.
When you clear your throat and turn towards the door, Emilia is inside and closing it. She’s eyeing the shelves you half-broke when you threw yourself against them, and the random stuff that fell out of the shelves. Spatters of your blood have stained the wooden floor all the way from where Emilia is standing to the shelves, as if you paced back and forth while having a nosebleed.
You scrutinize Emilia’s expression, her half-frowned brow, her tense lips, and the pain and worry that glistens in her purple eyes. You are struck by who beautiful this half-elf is, in a way that you had forgotten. Although her anguished face was amongst the last things your brain tortured you with when you tried to sleep back at the duchess’ mansion, when you stand a few steps from Emilia and have to hold her gaze to explain why you came back, her otherworldly beauty makes you feel as if her having invited you to live in the mansion of her absent clown lord was a mistake, a temporary lapse of judgement in the half-elf due to how happy she was that you both retrieved that medallion that she should have never lost. This woman is as close to royalty as it gets in this kingdom, and you are an idiot who has embraced death a few dozen times only because you needed to experience that pain again.
“Did they beat you up?”, Emilia says, worried.
“… What?”
“Your face. When I came to the plaza I noticed you were there, and you hadn’t received those injuries. I see you exit this house while holding on to those two, one of whom is the knight that beat you unconscious back at the royal summons, and your face looks as if one of them held you as the other punched you repeatedly.”
You let out a nervous laugh while you dismiss the notion with a hand gesture. You grin to alleviate her worry, but you realize that you are probably showing your bloodied teeth.
“Nah, I did it to myself! I figured it was about time, you know? Besides, that cat-girl will heal me after she rests, so maybe in around half an hour, or eight.”
Emilia sighs. She covers her eyes with her palm as her shoulders slump.
“It’s all so confusing. I don’t understand, not a bit.”
“That knight, the captain of the Knights of Lugunica, is not that bad of a guy after all. We’ve been helping each other ever since we arrived at your lord’s domains and had to handle the cultists’ units. He even told me I have the qualifications to become a spirits user!”
“I… I asked around and they told me that you organized this whole operation, that you had found out that the Witch’s Cult was going to attack today, and that they would have killed me as well as everyone at the village. You allied with two royal candidates so they would lend her armies to save me.”
“It was both Rem and me. The organization part, I mean. I couldn’t have done it on my own. But still, yeah. And their leader turned out to be far more dangerous than we had imagined. I can hardly believe we managed to kill that guy…”
Emilia lowers her head slightly as regret shows on her face. You want to know what she’s thinking, but like Puck told you, she must have barely slept these past few days, mostly because of the argument you both had and that ended with Emilia exiling you from Roswaal’s camp. Added to such a determined assault on her life, her thoughts must be spinning.
“I don’t know what to say… It doesn’t sound like something that the person I fought with, and told I never wanted to see again, would do. I did… tell you to never come back, that we were never to see each other again.”
You step forward and hope that the dried blood clogging your nasal passages won’t prevent you from speaking.
“Emilia.”
She lifts her face towards you, apparently surprised by your serious tone. She has separated her lips slightly, and her eyes are moistening as if she’s holding back tears.
“You will have a hard time believing some of the things I’m about to tell you, but please have in mind that I’m telling the honest truth. I can’t get into it right now, but that first time we met at the inn, when you thought I was involved in stealing your medallion, I was seeing a half-elf for the first time. I hadn’t either seen a full elf, or any percentage of elf. Furthermore, the name Satella didn’t mean anything to me, except that if I heard it it would have reminded me of a fattening chocolatey treat from back home that I used to enjoy quite a bit. When I first saw you, beyond how remote you felt because of your extreme beauty, you were wary of me beyond that you thought I might have contributed to stealing something so valuable. You were trying to hide who you are, what you are, that you were born a silver-haired half-elf in a world where almost everyone reacts with irrational hate at the very sight of you. You believed that I would repudiate you as well. Why wouldn’t I, from your perspective?”
Emilia’s pupils are trembling as if she’s forcing herself to hold your intense gaze, and her chest is rising and falling faster.
“You didn’t know who Satella was…? You aren’t from Lugunica, but I have a hard time believing that she wouldn’t be known in any part of the world.”
“It’s the truth. After we talked for a bit, I wanted to help you. You seemed to be in serious trouble, and I also was in serious trouble, so I guess we could relate to each other. But you kept your guard up. You constantly expected anyone to damage you, or betray you. You must have thought for a while that I would manipulate you along the way and then throw you in the dirt, stealing your medallion.”
“I-I did think that, yes. I shouldn’t have, because that’s not how you are, but…”
“But then again, that’s what you had to expect. Why wouldn’t I have betrayed you? Why would I care about hurting a half-demon?”
Upon hearing that insult, even though you are making a point, her eyes water. Although she dries them slowly with her clenched hand, she sniffles a bit. You don’t expect her to talk, so you continue.
“We retrieved that medallion from the teenage thief far too easily, particularly in comparison with these nightmares I’ve gone through later on, but in any case we enjoyed a meal together. You must have been thinking that I was some great guy because I let myself be seen in public with you, right? That I didn’t care about the reproachful glances that other patrons likely cast at us.”
Emilia stares at you in silence as if she’s wondering how you can read her mind.
“I’m not as good as you thought back then”, you say with some sadness. “I had found myself having to exist in this world with nothing but the clothes on my back. I brought a few more things, particularly my cellphone, but a bunch of thugs beat me up half to death during my first day in Lugunica, and stole it. I was happy to interact with you, to do something good for someone I felt sympathy for. To reduce even a little the pain of the stream that flows through every dimension. Truth is, you could have bid me farewell that very same day and returned to Roswaal’s mansion as if you had never met me. My life wasn’t your responsibility, I was just someone who had helped you. You could have thrown me away. Most people would have. But you brought me home with you and gave me a new life.”
Emilia opens her mouth and attempts to speak, but she closes it immediately as if she’s afraid that she’s going to let a sob come through. Her lips are twitching.
“During the period I had your trust,” you go on, “before I ruined everything at the royal summons, I met the Emilia that everyone in this world would know you to be if they could look past the conditions of your birth that they can’t tolerate. You are kind, sweet, honorable, sensitive and loyal to those who deserve it. You are someone who doesn’t deserve in any way or form to be hated, let alone by most of the world. And your friendship was what made me able to be a person again. It’s what anchored me in this world. Even for that reason alone I will forever fight for your sake, and help you achieve whatever you set your mind to.”
“Subaru, I…”
She bursts out crying both out of her eyes and her nose. She tries to stop it with her palms, but her back is convulsing and her legs trembling. An aching pain pierces your heart, and you walk up to her and embrace her tightly. Surprised, she stiffens for a moment, even though her tears are dripping on your neck, but then she frees both of her hands, that you had trapped between you both, and she hugs you back.
Although you have more to say, and she must as well, you don’t want to burden her with more words to consider. This poor girl had to suffer you almost ruining her only chance to move up in this world, you angered her even more when she gave you a chance to explain yourself, and after failing to sleep properly for a few days because you had screwed with her emotions, a terrorist group murders a bunch of people because they were trying to get to her, kidnap her and torture her to death. Knowing her, she must feel guilty about all of it. She already hates herself for having been born a half-elf, or at all. You wonder if there’s anybody who deals with mental health in this fantasy world, because Emilia might be headed for a psychiatric institution. If she allows you to remain by her side, you’ll try to make her life easier as she recovers both emotionally and mentally. In comparison you feel that you’ve had it easy.
After some time she ceases to tremble, although her silent tears keep running down your neck. She’s breathing softly against your skin as she lets her body lean on you.
“Emilia,” you begin quietly, “before I came here I regretted stuff, mainly being unable to find the strength to do what I needed to, what everybody else seems to do effortlessly. But I never regretted my actions towards another person. However, ever since I broke that promise to you and not only I attended the royal summons, but I even butted in to insult those old bastards, there hasn’t been a single night that I haven’t wished to go back and respect your decision. I think I believed that above your promise there was another one that I made with myself, that I wouldn’t allow any harm to reach you, that I would stand in between and get hurt so you wouldn’t. But you didn’t need my help. Even if you couldn’t defend yourself, that magical flying cat of yours has your back. Still, when I learned that it wouldn’t be enough, that the Witch’s Cult would launch such an attack that you would almost certainly die, I couldn’t stay put, because above all I couldn’t deal with you dying. I had to become someone else, someone capable of earning the respect of the people who could help me save you.”
“I have heard enough”, she says with a soft, tired voice.
Emilia’s silver hair is tickling your face. She breaks the embrace and steps back. You open your mouth maybe to apologize, because she must have grown sick of hearing your excuses, but she’s breathing softly through her mouth and she looks relieved. She pulls out a tissue from somewhere inside her dress and blows her nose.
You swallow.
“If you still want me to leave, to never see me again…”
“You are a dummy, Subaru.”
That silences you. Emilia lifts her head towards you and smiles. Then she turns towards the house’s main door.
“I already spoke with the injured sir Wilhelm. Maybe the merchants that have stayed will be able to carry all the remaining villagers, as well as the fallen, back towards Crusch Karsten’s mansion. Sir Wilhelm explained that the duchess agreed to take care of the wounded and organize proper burials for her people, and now also for the villagers that the cultists killed to get to me. We better get things moving as soon as possible, because I need some proper sleep.”
Your breath thickens. You catch up to Emilia as she’s stepping into the street.
“Besides,” you say, “why would it bother me that my friend is a half-demon? I’m already in love with a full demon!”
Emilia turns her head sharply towards you.
“What? Who is that person…?”
Rem must be on her way to Crusch’s mansion through the abnormally vast and flat stretch of grassland that Flugel Road cuts through. In less than a day, you figure, you will return to that mansion, and all the fighting and the fear of getting murdered at any moment will have ceased.
“Many things have happened at the capital ever since we last saw each other. Way too many… I’ll try to convince Crusch to let us ransack her wine cellar for a proper party, both to celebrate that we survived and to honor the dead.”

As Emilia and you were returning to the plaza you came across two of Crusch’s soldiers who were hauling the remains of two villagers towards a line of corpses. Everybody seems to have understood that the fighting has ended, because there are already four distinct areas where corpses are either lining up or piling up. In the opposite area of the plaza you spot Ricardo carrying under each arm the limp body of a half-beast comrade. In an area close by shine the armorial bearings of the House of Karsten in the bloodied corpses of the human fighters. The cultists, all identifiable by their black robes, or sometimes just because they are chopped in half, are getting thrown into a pile that you guess someone is going to burn before you leave. It seems that nobody is bothering to gather the lumps and globs of meat and bones that remain of those people, some innocent, that the tiny psycho has blown up. That means she likely won’t be processed for war crimes, which would end up with the half-beast lieutenant blowing up everyone in the court.
As you accompany Emilia, who is trying to avoid looking at the corpses, your gaze falls on two people that are standing near the center of the plaza and chatting amicably: Julius and Wilhelm. The old man is standing by himself without anguish in his aged face, and you can only tell that he got seriously injured because his military uniform is torn horizontally in the abdomen, showing the bandages underneath. You walk towards them until a few seconds later you realize that Emilia either hasn’t noticed or preferred to speak with someone else, because she’s beelining towards Ram. The pink-haired maid, whose servant uniform is also stained with flowers of blood where she got stabbed, is quarrelling with some concerned villagers. You realize there’s a small white figure perched on Emilia’s shoulder and staring back at you. It’s her great spirit guardian, Puck. When he holds your gaze, he nods, turns around and fades away again. What’s with that self-satisfied face?, you think. As usual, you didn’t do shit!
Neither of the knights have realized you are approaching them. Wilhelm should have by this point, so he must be interested in the conversation enough to have lowered his guard.
“Sir Wilhelm!”, you say animatedly, “I should have known you are too tough for something as minor as getting disemboweled to stop you.”
Both Julius and Wilhelm turn to you. Julius offers you a small smile, although Wilhelm looks tired from up close.
“Mr. Natsuki. It seems there’s life left in these old bones of mine. Julius explained your confrontation with the Archbishop. It seems you defeated him as he were taking possession of you. For all the decades I have trained, I don’t believe I would have been able to best the madman in those circumstances.”
“Well, as you saw during the royal summons, maybe my biggest talent is pushing people’s buttons until they’d rather implode than keep pursuing their lifelong goals.”
Wilhelm nods, and in his eyes you sense that his respect for you has grown to the extent that he may consider you close to an equal. You feel like contradicting that impression. If it weren’t for Satella and the power she gave you, you would have never been able to pull off any of this. You would have had to witness the people you came to care about getting killed one by one. No, most likely you would have died even earlier. You are a bystander tangled in events you have no business handling, starting from the day that, for no apparent reason, you were snatched from your own world into this one.
You are startled by a loud cry of sorrow coming from some streets away. When you turn towards the source, even though the nearby houses are blocking the view, you try to focus your hearing so you can tell whether there’s another attack underway. Even above your quickened heartbeat you pick up from what you had discarded as background noise that quite a few people seem to be either arguing with teary voices or even crying somewhere in the village. When your gaze returns to the knights, Wilhelm seemed to be waiting to explain it to you.
“After an assault of this magnitude, the survivors return to their abodes and some, or many, find out that their loved ones haven’t outlived the danger. We will need to deal with it on our way back, given that Ferris believed that enough merchants stayed when the fighting broke out at the plaza.”
“Ah, Ferris has gone to organize the evacuation with the merchants.”
“That is correct.”
You have gone cold, and suddenly you want to sit down, grab your knees and hide your face behind your forearms. Without really wanting to, you gaze at the corpses of villagers lined up nearby. You recognize some of the faces from the people that were guarding the bottlenecks while holding on to their worn swords and pitchforks, but there are also women, and a few teenagers and children. You never cared for these people, not to the extent that you kept them in your thoughts and wished to visit the village, but they didn’t deserve any of this. A fouler thought creeps into you: you could have prevented those deaths. You can prevent those deaths. You just have to grab the nearest dagger lying around, hide in some house, plunge the dagger into your throat and wait for a while. You would have to start the fight from zero, but maybe next time the lines of corpses belonging to your side would be smaller. If you repeated the fight long enough, the accumulated foreknowledge could make it so you wouldn’t lose any. You contemplate pursuing that idea, and your legs tremble and your mouth dries. You want to be alone.
Julius’ serene voice returns you to the present.
“Tell me you have received good news, Subaru. Lady Emilia has embraced you back into her camp, hasn’t she? I can’t imagine she wouldn’t after this operation succeeded.”
“She wasn’t… that clear about it, but after the fight we had back at Crusch’s mansion the last time we saw each other, she’s certainly more receptive to me coming back. Wilhelm… have we truly won this?”
“If you are referring to the amount of soldiers and innocents caught in the way that we have lost, I must say, as callous as it might sound, that there’s hardly any mission or battle that doesn’t end with regrets such as these. I will turn the question around. You had correctly deduced that the Petelgeuse I killed years ago wasn’t the only one, and you are the person he attempted to possess last. Would you say that this time he has been thoroughly vanquished?”
“Ah, you mean that the ancient ghost might have jumped to another one of his Fingers. Maybe the remaining vessels lay on that pile of corpses, but even if any of his Fingers remain out there, I have no doubt that Petelgeuse is finally gone. I saw him inside of me, I mean I witnessed his true inhuman form, and he dissolved into nothingness. Petelgeuse is gone.”
Julius sighs, while Wilhelm nods and narrows his eyes.
“Then the threat is extinguished. We have victory.”
From a corner of the village, a man’s voice screams with a mix of sadness and anger, and you recognize Ram’s voice attempting to placate the source. You turn towards them. Although you can’t tell many details from this distance, a man with long sideburns and a wart under his nose, who is holding a dead child in his arms, is shouting at Emilia even though Ram is attempting to stand in the way. You excuse yourself to Julius and Wilhelm, and walk quickly towards Emilia’s side.
The villager is crying his eyes out even though he’s frowning as much as those muscles allow him to, and veins are bulging on his temples. As he shakes, the male child’s arms swing limply. You dare look at the child’s face. His eyes and his mouth are open, but his skin looks cold, and he must have gotten some mortal wound on the opposite side of his body given how much it has stained the villager’s shirt.
You faintly remember having spoken to this kid back when you lived at Roswaal’s mansion and you came to the village, even though all those memories seem hazy and distant now. Your throat is closing up.
“This is your fault, witch!”, the villager screams at Emilia. “My wife and child! They are dead because of you!”
Emilia is trembling. You can only see her profile, but she has gone even paler, and tears are jumping from the corner of her eye.
“I-I know it’s my fault… I’m sorry…”
“Sorry!? Sorry doesn’t mean anything! If you hadn’t appeared in our lives, Witch of Frost, the cult wouldn’t have attacked us! If you weren’t here, my family would be alive! Your tears don’t mean a thing!” The man throws the dead body of his son at Emilia’s feet. After sobbing for a second, he looks up at her with disdain. “Are you going to run back home to your lord’s mansion now that my family is dead?”, he says, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
Emilia attempts to talk, but she chokes. She presses her trembling fists into her eye sockets.
Ram lifts her palm and addresses the villager with a stern voice.
“Your losses are regrettable, and yet that doesn’t give you the right to berate lady Emilia. She isn’t in charge of the Witch’s Cult. Those fiends are solely responsible for the mayhem. I assure you that all the villagers will receive the appropriate compensation from our lord.”
“Appropriate compensation!? What amount of money is going to solve this!? And where is lord Roswaal!? He chose to present that half-demon as a royal candidate, painting a target on this village!”
“He has left us to die!”, some other villager shouts from behind the bereaved man.
Some of the villagers that were wandering around and even helping the soldiers haul corpses are gathering close by. Amongst them is none other than the shithead chief of this village, whose wizard costume, more appropriate for Halloween than for any corner of this fantasy world, remains unblemished as if he’s hidden himself in a cellar for the entire fight. So many good people have died but this fucker survives unscathed? There’s no justice in this world.
You are about to intercede when you catch the expression on Emilia’s face as she turns away from the man. It’s a close echo of how lost and devastated she looked that day at the clearing, what now feels like so long ago, when she had believed that you had betrayed her, that you belonged to the Witch’s Cult and that you had manipulated her all along to deliver her to the Archbishop so she could be sacrificed. It didn’t take much longer for her mind to break.
As sharp pains pierce your heart, you rest your arm on Emilia’s shoulders and force her to walk away from Ram’s stone wall. After you have separated her enough, you hug her tightly holding the back of her head. She’s drenching your neck in tears.
“T-This is w-what I have done,” Emilia mumbles almost out of breath, “b-because I exist…”
You press your cheek against hers, and her shivers run through you.
“Nobody is at fault for anything just because of their condition of birth. These people don’t feel like they can blame something as faceless and monstrous as the Witch’s Cult for their actions, so they need to pin the blame on whoever they believe provoked the cult. You are the victim in all this, Emilia. The cultists intended to torture you to death. You don’t need to carry this guilt.”
Emilia tries to contain herself from wailing.
“But I feel it… that it is my fault…”
You have made her walk slowly until you reach the a nearby rock formation, which makes you feel that you aren’t as exposed to everyone’s gazes. After a couple of minutes her back has ceased to convulse, and her eyes are like a leaky, silent faucet. You hold Emilia’s beautiful face between your palms, and she looks up at you with her reddened eyes as she sniffles.
“Emilia,” you begin with a shaky voice. “if you could go back in time and you knew that this attack would happen and all these people would die, would you return and do things differently?”
“How does a hypothetical situation matter…”
“Please, Emilia, I’m asking you seriously. Please… Would you return again and again until nobody died?”
She closes her eyes tightly to try to stem her tears, but when she opens her eyes again the tears come back.
“Would I be a goddess in that scenario? Would I be free from my emotions? Maybe I should say that I would return… But I’d have to live through every minute of this nightmare again, fight every step of the way, and accrue every wound in my mind. There’s only so much I can take, Subaru. I feel… like I’m about to break. I feel it down to my bones. Maybe this is the best scenario. Maybe in all others the Witch’s Cult caught me. I can’t… go through something like this ever again. I want to be at peace.”
She leans forward as if she wants to hide her face, and you embrace her again. As her heartbeat pounds against your chest, you remember Roswaal, that clown bastard who you haven’t faced for a long time. You doubt that Emilia would have gotten tangled in this fight for the throne of her own volition. He must have manipulated her somehow. This girl can’t tolerate continuously a world that seems designed to wound her, even kill her if given the chance. Even if she can defend herself with her magic, and her familiar is powerful enough to destroy the entire world, you feel the need to keep Emilia safe, to fight until you secure whatever conditions are necessary so she can be happy.

Cards on the table: I don’t believe that this confrontation with Emilia is a proper payoff for the setups back at part four of this retelling. Back then I felt like writing a sort of wild parody than anything internally coherent. I love their idiotic argument so many parts ago, but that Emilia doesn’t sound like the person who she solidified to in this retelling. Emilia has always risked losing her mind because of all the hate she has to tolerate, added to her terrible past and her sensitive nature, and that’s something that I’d rather explore with her character.

Also, that damnable village chief keeps popping up. The AI made him up entirely maybe as early as in the third part of this retelling; in the original I think the chief or leading elder is some old woman.

I have already written most of the following part. I wished I could have finished this one yesterday, but my entire afternoon was wasted on me nursing a migraine, and today I still have to deal with a residual headache from it.

This part finishes covering the eight volume of the original Re:Zero novels.

In the previous part, Julius handled the current boss battle mostly by himself, until Emilia came and stole his thunder through blowing Petelgeuse’s head at point-blank range. Then that whole setup of the Archbishop having recognized the protagonist as a Finger comes into play.

GPT-3 is a cutting-edge language processing algorithm used in the premium version of the online site AI Dungeon.

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You barely pay attention to where you are running, nor can you focus with how dizzy your mind has gotten. You step on puddles of blood and almost trip on a few of the corpses. The dirt you are leaving behind passes in a blur.
“Where are you fleeing?”, Petelgeuse says in your head. “Where is the ally that will fight this battle for you, undeserving champion? But I understand now Satella’s will, the brilliance of her design. A simple book, no matter the greatness of its predictions, can get lost or stolen. A living Gospel? That’s another matter! With your predictive blessing and both my diligence and my authority, we will scour this world until we find a stable vessel for our witch. You will witness it, you will see it through to the end.”
As you run and red pinpricks cloud your vision, you wonder whether to stop next to any of the weapons, most of them blood-dyed, that lie on the dirt. But Petelgeuse is already inside. What if you die and wake up in Crusch’s bed only to find out that Petelgeuse has returned with you? As a fear you had never felt makes you tremble from head to toe you realize that you might be about to lose all control of your body, and that you will be jailed like any of those Fingers were, doomed to witness this ancient spirit puppeteering you to murder anyone he wants or needs, probably including the people you appreciate, until he resurrects Satella and that witch consumes the entire world.
You can barely feel your legs, as if you had woken up suddenly from a terrible nap in a bad posture. You stop in the middle of the street. No, you haven’t stopped, your body has stopped. Your body turns to the door of an open house, and it calmly opens the door and closes it behind you. You manage to separate and move your lips to let out an anguished shout, and as you recover the feeling in your hands, you pound them against a table. You are in someone’s living room.
“The process is irreversible”, Petelgeuse says calmly. “In a few minutes you will be fully under my control. You, your consciousness, your spirit, will be trapped inside, and I will have to listen to you first complain and plead for a long time, but eventually you, Satella’s champion, will realize the futility of it. I fell out of grace because I shut my ears and my eyes to any but the choices I had already made, and our witch decided to correct it through reorganizing Sloth with a bicephalous leadership. I accept her decision! Misjudging that half-demon was but a minor hindrance in our plans!”
Your back tries to straighten itself. You fight against it not because you want to stay hunched over, but because you need to reassert the control of your own body. Anguished noises escape from your lips, and tears brim from your eyes.
“I’m still here”, you say with a raspy, wavering voice. “You won’t be able to make me disappear while I still fight.”
“You are indeed here, you troublesome believer, and in a way you will remain in this body forever, as I said! No matter, I will listen to your pointless lamentations! Our many interactions up to this point must have prepared me to tolerate, despite your shamelessness and foul demeanour, our impeding living arrangements.”
The door opens forcefully and hits the wall as if someone kicked the door in. You hear labored breathing, the footsteps of two people.
“Subaru! Are you well!?”, Julius asks.
You turn towards them. No, your body turns, and also your mouth moves, forming words and pouring a voice by itself.
“This body isn’t Natsuki Subaru anymore, but the Archbishop of Sloth, Petelgeuse Romanee-Conti. Despite the disgraceful nature of you rotten unbelievers, I am glad to make your acquaintance again, spirits exploiter. You have found me in a good mood!”
You witness the horror in both Julius’ and Ferris’ eyes. The knight unsheathes his sword as his face twists in anger.
“Leave that body immediately, fiend! Subaru, I know you are still in there. Don’t stop resisting!”
Your lips open to talk again, but amongst the points of your body that haven’t gone numb, you find one thread of control in that area of your face and you pull. You manage to close your lips, to purse them so no sound escapes. Your hands move to your mouth and forcefully stretch it open. You regain control of your legs and stumble backwards as if drunk.
“This is… still… my body… you piece of…”, you slur with your mostly numb lips.
Julius is pointing his sword forward as if to charge at any moment. His cheeks are twitching. Your eyes are already failing to obey you, and from the corner you can feel more than see Ferris trembling.
Petelgeuse’s deep, slimy voice talks inside of you, and it feels like being bound, gagged and blindfolded while your kidnapper leans in your ear.
“Never has possessing a Finger felt so difficult! Then again, all the others understood and believed in our plan to resurrect our witch, while you, despite having been blessed, keep struggling against it! Which were the words you used to disparage Satella’s endless love, back at those woods? You said that if Satella embraced you, you wouldn’t be able to do or be anything ever again, didn’t you? Satella, in her everlasting love and comprehension, has designed our bond! As I command your body, you will learn, you will get accustomed to pursuing Satella’s love without hindering yourself with the sloth of what you consider free will, which only serves to increase pain and despair! Don’t you worry, I will work diligently to return our witch back to us, and you will be rewarded for eternity!”
Most of your body that had tingled like numb limbs after a bad nap now you can’t feel anymore, and only some other parts of your body, that you can barely locate, allow you a restricted control. It reminds you of the time you failed at that clearing, when Emilia’s face of betrayal burned inside your eyelids, and after she died, the gargantuan physical form of her great spirit looked down at you as he froze you to death, along with the rest of the world. You don’t know what to do, you’re paralyzed, imprisoned, guided and denied of free will, all at the same time. You can only yell inside your mind to stop this, to no avail. Petelgeuse has accrued hundreds of years of experience in possessing human bodies, and for all you know there’s no way to reverse it. You can’t win.
That sword’s tip, that Julius holds aimed at you, is close enough that maybe you could regain enough control of your legs to drag your body into the weapon. It would only take it piercing a carotid artery, and hopefully Ferris will understand, accept your decision and avoid healing you.
You concentrate all your willpower, while yelling inside your head, until you locate your leg muscles and coordinate them to move as if you were breaking the shell of ice that had fastened them to the ground. One step, another. Julius stares at you with the expression of someone who witnesses a zombified friend lunging towards him. The sharp point of his sword is a few centimeters away.
“You are trying to die!”, Petelgeuse shouts in your head with an amused tone. “Even though Satella has designed this possession, had intended your use as a Finger, you hope that her blessing will send you back to a past where you will regain your free will! My fellow believer, you are ignorant to the end! I assume you picture the safety of whatever point of the past you have returned to every time you fled because you wouldn’t fight, but this time you will bring me along with you, and you will have undone your allies’ diligent efforts to massacre my fellow believers!”
As you keep inching forward with a shambling body, you keep arguing with yourself frantically. If you impale yourself on the sword, will you be playing right into Petelgeuse’s hands? Will you truly wake up back at Crusch’s bed only to find that your body hosts two souls, and only his in control? Petelgeuse can’t know that for sure, he is just interpreting this possession as Satella’s will because he needs to believe that he never lost his witch’s favor. Just a few inches more, and that sharp point will plunge into your carotid. Your vision is getting blurry, but you can sense in Julius’ fearful eyes that he understands, that he won’t retract his weapon.
“You were born in a body that would betray you at the worst times,” Petelgeuse’s deep voice says quietly in the chamber of your mind, “that one day, when you had barely begun to walk in this world, would cease to function, and your spirit, likely failing to remain behind, would disappear into an abyss where nobody would be able to reach you. Give up on this life, on this pointless diligence, you irrational creature. Why hold on to something that only brings you pain? You were meant to give up control here, so has our witch willed it. Accept it. Move on.”
Without realizing it you’ve regained control of your teeth, only to clench them. If you could only lunge forward, that sharp point would impale your neck right through your carotid. You locate some muscles in your back, then you concentrate your willpower in pushing yourself forward. As your body was about to impale itself, Petelgeuse’s retrieves the control from you as if he had been playing around until that moment, and instead of piercing your neck the point slices your cheek open. You feel the burning sensation, as well as the wound bleeding, like hazy memories of a distant injury.
“You intended to die, didn’t you, Subaru?”, Julius asks as both his lips and his brow tremble. “Don’t give up. You are courageous, someone who does what is right no matter how much it will jeopardize the rest of his life. Remain and fight.”
Petelgeuse moves your eyes to glance at Ferris. The cat-girl’s shoulders have slumped, and her arms are dangling. She holds your, or Petelgeuse’s, gaze, but when the tears that had grown in the corners of her eyes fall down her cheeks, Ferris looks away. She has the expression of someone waiting for a veterinary to give her pet the final injection.
“He’s already gone”, Ferris murmurs. “Can’t you see that? It’s not Subaru anymore.”
Thank you for the vote of confidence, Ferris, you think. If you managed to impress a snob like the captain of the Knights of Lugunica with your talent to annoy people until they lose their minds, even if Petelgeuse eventually wins, you will twist his balls to the end.
You locate all the points of your body that can respond to your control to any degree, surrounded by tingling oases of numbness, and you pull those threads as hard as you can. Your body stumbles backwards. When you sense that you are about to hit some shelves, you throw your body into them. A bunch of stuff crashes around you or fall on your head. You wrestle control of your lips, but Petelgeuse steals it and shouts out loud.
“You shameless moron! Do you intend to damage this body? Do you prefer to injure yourself to the extent that we will both be trapped in a broken shell, with only my authority able to move us around while our corpse-like body hangs limp? Is that how you would prefer to keep existing? You lack any common sense! I must have truly disappointed our witch for her to punish me to this extent!”
You find the threads that move the fingers of your left hand, even though you can’t feel it at all. You close your shaking hand into a fist and focus all your willpower into launching it against your nose, hitting it with a loud crack. While Petelgeuse fills the chamber of your mind by yelling something, you launch your fist against different parts of your face over and over. The vision of one of your eyes has narrowed and reddened.
Petelgeuse, who hadn’t ceased to shout at you while you ignored him, seizes the wrist of that hand with your other.
“You won’t stop nor listen to reason no matter how much you inconvenience even yourself!”, the ancient ghost shouts angrily. “You aren’t even a person, you are a wild animal! What a horrible curse I must live through. Blessed be Satella, I must regain her favor as soon as possible!”
You snatch some control of your lips.
“Suck… my balls… you bit-“
Petelgeuse purses your lips and shakes your head.
“Enough with this farce!”, he shouts in your mind. “You shameless beast… I allowed all the other Finger’s souls, my fellow believers in Her love, to remain next to me as I commanded their bodies to further our cause. I listened to their advice, I soothed their concerns. Their loss, having been murdered either by you or the barbarian fools that chose to follow you, fills me with shame! Now, shackled with you, I see the true extent of how those believers had blessed me with their diligence! You cannot be reasoned with like an intelligent being that deserves any modicum of respect, so instead I will punish you and train you like a wild beast! You despise giving up the control of your body, even though I share the eyes and the ears for you to experience along with me? Then you will find out the alternative!”
You feel as if you are falling, or being pulled down, and suddenly everything goes dark. You are plummeting, have been plummeting, for what feels like a few minutes through a thick blackness. You were already panicking, but now you just need to yell out incoherently.
“There’s a chamber inside all of you perishable creatures,” Petelgeuse begins, “a solitary cell that houses the essence of your soul, from which it escapes once its shell finally succumbs to time and decay. Can you imagine how small that place is, how dark, how disconnected from anything you have pointlessly held on to in that painful world outside? There will be nothing but time and your consciousness for you to contemplate the disgraceful decisions that you have pursued up to this point. How long do you think it will take until despair breaks you and you accept what you should have from the beginning, that you are nothing but an agent for our witch to help her return to Her world? But don’t you worry, once you understand, I will allow you to join my side as a fellow believer!”
You cease to fall without hitting anything, as if you had never plummeted to begin with. You are surrounded by an opaque darkness. In your terror you can’t understand nor notice anything else, but in a few seconds you feel it enveloping you, seeping inside of you, filling you. A nurturing, loving warmth as if you floated inside a womb. Have you died? No, you remain alive, at the very abyss of your self. You know this place.
“What… What is this?”, Petelgeuse says with a trembling voice. “My entire self is being caressed, like someone wants to extricate me from all the pain!”
Petelgeuse’s surprised voice comes from your side as if he were standing next to you, and when you turn towards the source, although you don’t feel like you possess a body, you see a shadowy being darker than the surrounding black. It’s a spindly humanoid with knobby joints and an elongated head in which three hazy red eyes glow, one slightly above and in between the regular ones. This guy had never been a human being, he just likes wearing them.
You don’t feel fear any longer. Fearing anything down here feels like an absurd waste.
“What, you don’t recognize it? You can’t feel it down to your ghostly bones? You claim to have worked for it for hundreds of years, to have focused diligently on a plan that would eventually distribute it to everyone, whether they wanted it or not. Weren’t you her favored at one time? So how come you aren’t able to tell?”
The shadowy figure grows closer until all three of its eyes glow like Julius’ minor spirits.
“It cannot be Her. Satella’s essence would have to be woven to…”
He shuts up, so you speak in turn.
“I did tell you that whenever I wanted I could meet our witch. Every time the mind-killing pain of dying had passed, I found myself dunked in her love, and I could speak to her, in what passes for having a conversation with our beloved Satella. I don’t understand it either, Petelgeuse, but there she is.”
Petelgeuse turns his head sharply to your right. Maybe around four meters deeper into that opaque darkness, the tips of claw-like fingers, darker than the surrounding black, emerge slowly as if floating towards you. You see the rest of her elongated hands, and then her arms as she opens them slowly like inviting you to embrace her. First two pale, half-imagined lights in the distance, her hazy, glowing purple eyes show up in the silhouette of her face. Her long black hair floats as if underwater.
“The queen of your fantasy world, in her ghostly flesh”, you announce.
Petelgeuse has stepped towards Satella. His shadowy figure trembles from head to toe, and from his mouth escape weird noises that first sound like some incantation to you, but you realize that he’s crying.
“My beloved, the light of my existence”, he says with a quivering, teary voice. “Even though I have fought for so long so one day I could meet you, to my depths I doubt I believed I would achieve it, that any of the vessels would be worthy of you. I had nothing else but you in my mind, and yet I failed to understand that you didn’t entirely approve! I disappointed you! Forgive me, please, my witch, my beloved! I will do anything, anything in this world to please you!”
As the ancient ghost inches closer, the witch’s extended hands have floated past Petelgeuse’s sides and slowly move to bend until they meet behind his back. If Petelgeuse stepped forward a step and a half, both of their faces would meet.
A bell-like, soft voice floods this dark womb, enveloping you.
“I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I lo-“
Petelgeuse’s mouth emits a moan-like noise of rapture.
“I-I love you too! I knew you would, despite it all! I knew that you would love me! I had kept doubts, I had kept fears, and yet I should have never ceased to believe for a moment! Of course you, my beloved witch, would accept me!”
“I love you I love you I love you I love you I-“
Petelgeuse barely manages to speak between his sobs.
“I had spent so much time waiting for nothing, watching the world pass me by, because I had convinced myself, in my disgraceful sloth, that I wasn’t to interfere, I wasn’t to meet, I wasn’t to touch anybody else! I was never wanted, never needed! I wondered for so many centuries why I came to exist! But you appeared. I watched you as you moved through this rotten world blessing it with your love, and then, in your final act of goodwill, you gave your love to half of the lost, pained creatures that were, unknowingly, asking for you to save them! And you keep loving them, and will love them for the rest of time, even though those left behind will forever hate you! My witch, my love! You see my shame, you see my pain, and yet you love me!”
“I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I lo-“
Satella’s elongated arms have crossed behind Petelgeuse’s back, and is drawing his face near as if to kiss him deeply. Petelgeuse hugs the witch while his legs wobble. He is wailing like a child.
“I love you too, Satella. I have always loved you more than anything in this world, and I always will!”
As if floating in slow motion, the Witch of Envy hugs Petelgeuse tighter. Her face touches his, and her long, suspended hair rests on his shoulders. Petelgeuse’s shadow is seeping into the witch, merging with her. The ancient ghost’s wails cease. Every spindly, knobby limb dissolves into shadowy shreds that are attracted to Satella’s body like water pouring down a drain, until nothing of Petelgeuse’s remains and the witch floats in place, embracing herself with her claw-like hands.

The sudden light blinds you. As you blink, one of your eyes sends pangs of pain, and it shows your hands resting on your lap as if through a red filter. You feel your head, your torso, your arms, your legs, your feet. The sensations return to your body in a shocking flood. Your clogged nose as you try to breathe through it. Your bruised cheeks. The metallic taste in your mouth. A burning area on your lips. Your back aches as if you’ve pulled something. The knuckles on your left hand are bruised and bloodied, maybe broken. Numerous painful scratches in your torso and your forearms assert their presence. There’s a faint pain in your testicles. You are so tired as if you’ve kept conscious through sheer obstinacy. Everything hurts, everything bleeds.
You let your body go limp as you sigh deeply.
“Goodbye, Petelgeuse Romanee-Conti, Archbishop of Sloth”, you say with a thin voice. “What a fucking freak.”
“Subaru!”, Julius shouts.
It startles you. You lift your head to realize that Julius and Ferris are standing a couple of meters away from you, bewildered and scared. You had forgotten. How much time has passed?
“I guess that’s that, guys. If you don’t mind, I’ll rest here for a moment.”
Julius steps towards you, but Ferris crosses an arm in front of him to stop the knight.
“This must be an act. That ancient spirit must be trying to pretend he has left Subaru’s body.”
Julius stares at you with his trembling pupils. Sweat has beaded on his forehead. Even though he’s still wielding his sword, he has lowered it.
“We haven’t known that great spirit to behave in such a way, but still, if that’s you, Subaru, will you allow Ia to enter you? A possessed body should reject her immediately. We would know for sure.”
You swallow the blood in your mouth, and then contain a cough.
“Go ahead, you can put inside me whatever you want.”
“… I will ignore the connotation of your words, and yet they reassure me. That wouldn’t have come out of Petelgeuse’s mouth. Ia, please check if our friend is in the clear.”
The small ball of red light flies out of Julius’ chest and, after an unnecessary dance, it plunges into yours. You don’t feel any different, although at this moment you doubt you can feel anything but terrible.
You cough a couple of times, and when you look back at the knight, he’s staring at you wide-eyed.
“A great spirit was taking possession of you, and you defeated him… with your willpower.”
His voice sounded like he witnessed you picking up a mountain and placing it somewhere else because it obstructed your view. You would rather hear him, or anyone else, scolding you, and that makes you a bit sad.
“Help me up, will you? I’m so fucked I’m surprised I haven’t pissed myself.”
Julius sheathes his sword quickly, and both him and Ferris lift you back to your feet. The knight keeps staring at you as if you are some display in a museum.
“C’mon, it wasn’t as easy as you think”, you say. “While trapped inside myself, I opened a portal to another dimension and I dragged Petelgeuse into it. I had to pursue him through many worlds made possible through different, incomprehensible laws of nature. I fought monsters and met gods who granted me powers capable of destroying whole star systems. After aeons of the same embittered fight, I managed to pull my final move on Petelgeuse, who dissolved into the ether. Then I came back to meet you fine people again after such a long absence.”
Julius shakes his head and laughs softly.
“I see your previous experience has served you well.”
You turn both Julius and Ferris towards the house’s entrance and then put your hands on their shoulders.
“Let’s get out of here and figure out what remains to be done until we can finally sleep. I won’t get up from my next bed for a fucking week.”
“I agree”, Julius says.
As you walk towards the door, you notice Ferris is averting her gaze while drying her eyes and her cheeks with her furry hand.
“Sorry for worrying you, Ferris”, you say softly.
“Shut it.”
The light of the sun falls on you again. You let your pals walk in front of you for a moment as you try to steady your legs. This must be it, then. Petelgeuse is gone, so the Sloth branch of the Witch’s Cult has ceased to operate until someone else occupies that seat, maybe in like a couple of weeks. You found your determination after you had settled for guillotining yourself like a hundred fifty times, you went on a road trip, you bonded with cool fantasy people, you witnessed and partook in a bunch of gruesome murders, your team killed the same person over and over, you almost lost your testicles, one of the leaders of seemingly the worst terrorist group in this fantasy world is dissolving inside a ghost, and half of the village is dead. That worked out pretty well.
“Lady Emilia”, Julius says.
The silver-haired half-elf is standing next to a puddle of blood and the upper half of a cultist’s torso. She’s wringing her hands in front of her waist while staring at you as if she can’t figure out what to say. Julius looks at Emilia and then back at you. He nods, and speaks to Ferris.
“Let’s give them some space.”
As Ferris walks away, she talks over her shoulder.
“Those wounds in your face aren’t life threatening, and I’m squeezed out of mana. I will take a look at you after I rest.”
“Sure! Don’t worry about it.”
As both Ferris and Julius walk slowly towards the plaza, occasionally glancing at the corpses and trying not to step on the bloodied dirt, you clear your throat and step closer to Emilia. Your heart is pounding so hard you feel nauseous.
“Let’s get inside that house over there, and we’ll both say what we need to.”

Some observations. If you have either read the original novels or watched the anime adaptation, you know that’s not how Petelgeuse’s story ends. In fact, that whole continuous life that included convincing two royal candidates to grant him his power, then travelling towards Roswaal’s place and stopping along the way to murder a legendary monster (they manage to slay the White Whale in the original, the motherfuckers), then killing plenty of Petelgeuse’s units and his Fingers, ends when Subaru gets possessed and he, realizing he won’t be able to control it, demands both Julius and Ferris (who is a guy in the original) to kill him. They do, and Subaru goes back to a moment in his past where they had gathered to talk strategy right after they killed the White Whale (thankfully he didn’t have to wake up again back at Crusch’s place). He does nail his second run through, with barely (if any) casualties. I don’t like how they dispatch Petelgeuse in the original, although I won’t mention the details, and I prefer my version. Ending with him meeting his witch, which is all he had genuinely wanted to do, pays off the setups better as far as my tastes go.

This link to a video is a heavily edited compilation of Petelgeuse moments from the anime adaptation. The version of the guy in the original novels is a bit more unhinged than mine (and a lot more at certain points), but the fantastic voice actor really upped the game for the anime adaptation. Plenty of ad-libbed stuff made it to the animation, and he became a very memorable antagonist. Particularly that whole stretch in the cave back in episode fifteen of the first season, I think, is stuff that nightmares are made of.

So goodbye, Petelgeuse Romanee-Conti, you fucking freak.

This part covers a bit of the eight volume of the original Re:Zero novels.

In the previous part, the protagonist finds out that some people he likes remain alive. His future sister-in-law christens him with a new name. Also, Wilhelm should have gone for the head. Another one of Petelgeuse’s Fingers dies, and the following boss battle ensues.

GPT-3 is a cutting-edge language processing algorithm used in the premium version of the online site AI Dungeon.

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Before you realize it, you have left Ferris behind and moved further into the plaza to get a handle on the situation. Petelgeuse has a fresh new body, but Wilhelm, the only fighter who could deal with the invisible hands due to his mad skills, is having trouble keeping his guts inside. You get the sense that you have already lost, that none of the previous tricks you pulled on the Archbishop of Sloth are going to work anymore.
Julius is retreating backwards from the house, a street over, that Petelgeuse popped up from. The captain of the knights is wielding his sword, and you suppose that his sense of honor will force him to face the enemy, even one whose numerous weapons Julius cannot see.
You approach Julius from the side to avoid adding to the general panic that the guy is likely containing.
“You intend to face this crazy fellow, I’m guessing”, you say cautiously.
Julius is staring intently at the opening of the street that this new Petelgeuse is likely to come through. Only a slight frown betrays his nervousness.
“Someone has to defend these people and end the threat, and we can’t count on Ricardo or that lieutenant either. However…”
“I forgot to tell you. When Petelgeuse was occupying that teenager’s body before, I interrogated him about his nature, because I had gotten the sense that we weren’t dealing with a human being. He admitted that before he had been occupying human bodies for hundreds of years he was already conscious. He emphasized that he regretted being detached from the world’s affairs, and he suggested that he had seen cultures cease to exist during that period.”
Julius shoots you a knowing look.
“Most likely Petelgeuse is a great spirit, then.”
“Does that help you? I mean, you are a spirits user. Don’t you have some spell to banish the guy to another realm, or trap him in a container?”
Both of you snap your heads towards a loud crash that came from a street over. Petelgeuse’s ghostly arms surface over the roof of the closest houses, and they sway like the grass as the madman, still hidden from view, makes his way calmly to the plaza. Julius repositions himself to keep distances with the madman before he shows up, and you imitate him.
“No such spell exists, I fear”, Julius says. “Subaru, I’m not Wilhelm, but I believe I would be able to best this madman if I could see the invisible arms.”
“We are fucked, then.”
“Not necessarily. I do have a risky spell that would require your help.”
“What can I do?”
“It’s an uncomfortable and intrusive procedure. It consists on connecting our senses. We would feel, hear, and most importantly see what the other sees. In this case I would limit the sight so only I can see through the other’s eyes, meaning that I would fight an enemy whose attacks I can anticipate.”
“You had me at uncomfortable and intrusive. Fire it up.”
Julius exhales in amusement, and offers you a small smile.
“I appreciate your eagerness, Subaru. I hope you will tolerate it. And I will also retrieve Ia, as I will require her help for this fight.”
He makes a gesture with his hand, and the red ball of light exits your chest and flies in an arc into the knight’s own chest. Julius closes his eyes and murmurs some incantation. In a few seconds you feel as if another body had overlapped yours. You feel the striations of a sword’s grip pressing against your hand that is grasping it. You feel yourself wearing a fitted uniform, tighter than the clothes you would prefer to wear, particularly in the crotch area. You feel yourself wearing warm boots. You feel long hair touching your neck. You taste another guy’s saliva. You feel another heart beating next to yours. Julius wasn’t kidding around. It feels like having a stranger’s hands all over you.
“Right there, I see them!”, Julius says. “Focus on those ghostly arms, and try to blink as little as possible. Also, although it’s too late to mention this now, your body feels awful, Subaru. You should have told Ferris to check on you.”
“Thank you for the validation. So I had a reason to whine for feeling like utter shit.”
The ghostly arms move past the last house that was hiding Petelgeuse’s fresh Finger, and she comes into view. It’s a woman maybe in her late thirties or early forties, with long, black hair and already quite wrinkled. She looks more like a librarian than your Beatrice. While she keeps her head turned towards you both, she walks further into the plaza.
“Your most competent ally, despite how quickly he’s approaching the natural end of his perishable container, can no longer fight your battles for you, Satella’s champion!”, Petelgeuse shouts with a voice that sounds as if his Finger was a long-time smoker. “Who else are you going to sacrifice in this pointless effort to stop us from bringing our witch, your own benefactor who has granted you such a blessing, back into the world that belongs to Her?”
You point with your thumb towards Julius. Although the knight has his eyes closed, he sees your gesture from your own eyes, and takes a few steps forward while holding his sword in a fighting stance.
“This guy”, you say. “A kind of stuck up knight slash spirits user who might, fingers crossed, surprise you with his talents he’s trained so many years to hone.”
Petelgeuse snaps his head back.
“A spirits user!?”
Julius murmurs some words you don’t recognize, apparently directed to his spirit groupies, because all six of them multicolored balls of light exit his chest and fly around him like debris in a tornado.
“That’s right”, you say with a snarky tone. “One very well acquainted with dealing with lazy, slothful spirits who have spent longer than the span of human lives watching the world’s affairs pass them by. I figured that you two would have plenty to talk about.”
Petelgeuse clenches his teeth as his ghostly arms wave nervously. He looks like he suddenly regrets having stuck around after giving up on using Emilia’s body as a vessel.
“By the way, Petelgeuse, what was that move you wanted to pull and that you were anxious for me to witness?”, you ask. “You really made me curious there.”
“I already told you we had spoken enough, and that my actions would speak for me! But I assure you, undeserving champion of our beloved witch, that for all your hollow boldness, you will regret that tone!”
Before, you had found Petelgeuse unbelievably annoying and you wanted to yell at him to shut his fucking mouth, and now you just want to poke him until he gets so annoyed that he’ll start talking again. This is bad. You have no clue what he intends to do.
“Hey, you are the one who started talking the moment you showed up in the plaza with your new Finger.”
Petelgeuse takes a deep breath and shakes his head. He opens his mouth as if he is going to launch into another tirade, but he ends up groaning and swings some of his ghostly arms towards Julius. The knight isn’t moving, and for a moment you think of lunging forward and pushing him to safety, but at the last moment he pirouettes out of the way of two incoming arms that were about to slap him away, and as he twists he slices one of those arms at the wrist.
“What!?”, Petelgeuse shouts. “Another one of your allies can sense my authority!?”
“I already told you that Satella is doing all she can to nullify your blessing. You should expect no less.”
“Blessed be our witch for choosing the most pestiferous jester as her new champion”, Petelgeuse says with a scowl. “You make me regret I didn’t pull your head off when I didn’t yet know!”
“Plenty of people have told me something to that effect.”
Petelgeuse hunches his shoulders and focuses on swinging his ghostly arms as quickly as possible, as if he couldn’t wait to dispatch Julius. The knight has managed to jump or pirouette out of the way so far, although in some of the swings way too close to the approaching arms. At one time he had to jump between two of them as if he were in an obstacle course in a television show, but he managed to slice through one of the ghostly arms as he passed in between. The detached smoky arms twitch in the dirt for a couple of seconds before they dissolve. The remaining arms aren’t regrowing faster than Julius can cut them. Your eyes are already getting irritated by how little you are blinking.
A few seconds later, as Julius was twisting to avoid a swinging arm while at the same time slicing through it and closing distances with the madman’s body, you feel something burning across the side of your torso, as if something had scraped your skin. No, not your torso, Julius’. He had cut it too close this time, and the ghostly hand had hit him. You feel his teeth clenching, but he recovers and twists around to slice though that smoky arm as well. Petelgeuse has now fewer intact than usable hands, but it would only take a good swing for Julius to be flung out probably to his death.
“General!”, Ricardo’s loud voice comes from somewhere behind you. “You were here all along? We had been looking for you!”
You were about to turn your head when you remember that under no circumstances you should do so.
“Yeah, we’ve been a bit busy, having to kill different versions of the same ancient spirit and all.”
“You survived, mister!”, Mimi says from a few steps behind you. “If you had died, I couldn’t have dealt with that! I would have exploded every bad person I saw!”
At least if you die you won’t have to see Mimi go on a rampage against whoever she considers a bad person at that moment. Having the lieutenant so close but being unable to pinpoint her exact position makes your body tremble. You hope it doesn’t distract Julius.
“I’m helping the captain of the Knights of Lugunica with this fight, even though it looks like I’m not doing anything. Any chance you guys can try to kill Petelgeuse’s new body as well?”
Out of the corner of your eye you see Ricardo wielding his enormous slab of sharpened iron. His arm looks as big as a construction beam.
“Sure, I’ll chop that woman in half!” After he takes a couple of steps forward, he stops as if he just realized something. “Wait a second, she’s using those invisible weapons, right? That cowardly… That’s no way to wage war! I am sorry, general, but I can’t fight something I can’t see!”
“I understand that much. Well, wait around from a safe distance until we get some sort of opening, I suppose.”
You hear a quiet slithering sound behind you and know that Mimi is moving, but in which direction? As Julius has managed to close distances to the extent that if he found an opening he might manage to sprint to the madman’s body and chop his head off, because you hope he witnessed Wilhelm’s mistake and he isn’t eager to repeat it. Another swinging arm, this time from above as if trying to slap a mosquito against a surface, wounds Julius again. You feel his left shoulder muscles tearing, and you end up having to blink away the surge of pained tears in your eyes.
“Watch me, mister!”, Mimi shouts. “I will take care of this bad woman real good!”
The lieutenant is running almost in parallel to Julius’ position, as the ghostly arms focus on the knight. The half-orange, half died red with blood furry image of the tiny girl, one you can’t focus on, jumps as she opens her mouth wide. The bone-scratching tone she emits distorts the air in a wavering cone towards Petelgeuse, but in less than a second the madman, startled, uses one of his half-sliced arms as a shield. The ghostly arm explodes like a cloud that was punched through.
Mimi has landed and is standing confused.
“What? That didn’t do anything!”
“Mimi, get out of there!”, you shout. “The bad guy has invisible weapons, remember? Despite how terrifying you are, I don’t want to have to see him grabbing you and squeezing you like a lemon!”
The half-beast lieutenant was taking her time to think about it while Petelgeuse, annoyed, diverted one of his regrown arms from Julius towards Mimi, but Ricardo sprinted up to her, grabbed the lieutenant and carried her away.
You were about to yell at the mercenaries to stay further away, when something punches you hard at the height of your kidney. No, not in your body, Julius’. As you fight to steady your breath, you see that the knight has fallen on the dirt and that a ghostly arm is sweeping towards him. Julius reaches for his sword, and in a movement he jumps to his feet and then over the ghostly arm, slicing the already handless arm at the height of the smoky elbow.
That day at the royal summons, even though Julius’ beat you up to a pulp, he was restraining himself. That makes it even worse; given his ability it must have felt for him like fighting a toddler.
“You don’t throw a single ally at me, but two at once!”, Petelgeuse yells at you angrily. “You disrespect our witch with your cowardly actions!”
“You can’t pretend to be that surprised after you’ve repeatedly called me shameless in most of our conversations. If I had an army full of these superpowered pals, you can be sure I’d make them pile up on you.”
While sharp pains run through Julius’ body, the knight keeps inching closer and closer. Only a quarter of the ghostly arms remain, but you hardly call it winning when Julius needs to offset his left shoulder, which isn’t rotating right, and that it would still only take any of the flailing arms grabbing him to lose the knight. You would regret sacrificing this guy to go on with your life.
Some people shout first surprised, and then some angry, from the opposite side of the plaza, from which a couple of streets lead you to the uphill road that ends in Roswaal’s mansion. The shouts increase to become a clamour. Sharing your senses with Julius is making you a bit dizzy, which gets combined with how tired your body was from before, and from the pains that run through Julius’ body as his remaining healthy muscles help him evade the ghostly arms. You want to turn your head towards the clamour. Will you have to deal with a new batch of enemies?
Julius cuts off another limb, and as the detached part dissolves next to him, the knight holds his sword so it points forward as if he were about to charge.
“I’ve had quite enough”, he says with an irritated tone.
An energy surges through you, through Julius’ body, something that feels close to Ferris’ healing magic, but that instead activates your body like a few coffees hitting at once. The multicolored minor spirits that danced around Julius slide towards his front and orbit Julius’ blade quicker and quicker, tracing circles of light. Then Julius jumps forward while shouting something you can’t make out, and the multicolored lights blend and gush into a stream towards Petelgeuse. The madman lets out a noise of surprise, and as he jumps backwards, he folds his ghostly arms to shield himself. However, when the stream crashes against them they all dissolve from the point of impact to the swollen shadow coming out of Petelgeuse, and the madman is thrust backwards. The body he’s occupying rolls on the dirt until it hits the wall of the closest house behind him. However, she quickly stands up.
You end up blinking from confusion. You can’t see the ghostly arms any longer? No, they don’t seem to be there. You have no clue what kind of final move the knight has pulled off, but it must have worked. Still, you doubt it will take long for Petelgeuse’s authority to recharge.
As the clamour from the plaza gets closer, from the sideline appear both Ricardo and Mimi. The wolf man is grinning, and he lunges forward towards the defenseless Petelgeuse while holding his enormous sword at the beginning of a swing.
“There’s my opening!”
Julius is also charging, but Petelgeuse curses, and he shouts some incantation as he kneels and pounds the dirt with his fists. In a rumbling of rocks scraping against each other, the bedrock under the dirt bursts out from around Petelgeuse and closes over him, forming a solid cocoon.
Both Ricardo and Julius stop their charges. Ricardo almost falls forwards. Both fighters as well as you stand confused, trying to think about how to overcome this development.
The clamour only got louder and clearer. Some of the onlookers are yelling, and they sound just like the villagers who you had to argue with before this madness started. Witch, it’s the witch, they shout.
“That I can see!”, Mimi says.
She giggles. After running a few meters towards the rocky hemisphere, she shouts her cone of distortion. The rock explodes in a plume of debris, and the rest of the rock that hadn’t been affected either falls or crumbles. The black-haired woman jumps over the remains of her defensive spell. Mimi’s explosion must have shot rocky debris into the hole, because Petelgeuse’s current Finger looks injured as if she caught half of a shotgun blast. A dozen wounds mostly on her torso but also on one side of her neck are bleeding. Petelgeuse opens his mouth to talk, but he coughs first.
“Despite your unfair assault, I remain blessed by our beloved witch, and I’ve rested as much as I needed!”
The Finger’s body trembles, and her shoulders begins to extrude a churning shadow. Julius lets out a noise of surprise and prepares himself to charge again, when suddenly something crystal-like crashes into Petelgeuse, tearing out his right arm. He stands there surprised, and barely staggers for a moment before he turns to look at whoever injured him. Another projectile, a shard of ice, plunges through his abdomen, impaling it and remaining in place. Petelgeuse groans in pain.
Emilia is walking from the opposite side of the plaza towards the madman. She has extended her arm, with her palm facing forward, and in the blue-white aura emanating from it float ice particles.
“You came and killed all these people because you wanted me”, Emilia’s clear, bell-like voice sounds both angry and teary. “I won’t hide from you any longer, evildoer.”
Seeing Emilia shocks you. That long, silky silver hair. Her otherworldly beautiful face. You hadn’t faced her for so long, ever since Puck froze you to death and then you couldn’t find the strength to reach the mansion again, that the silver-haired half-elf had become a mythical figure in your mind, more like a character in an allegory to illustrate your regret. As you snap out of it, her use of the word evildoer echoes in your head, and you want to facepalm. This girl needs to get out more.
Petelgeuse coughs blood. Only the fingers of his ghostly arms have grown out of the churning shadow over his shoulders. His legs wobble, and he collapses on his knees as he closes his remaining hand around the shard of ice, as solid as a crystal pillar in some cave, that has impaled his body.
“The unfortunate half-demon, the volatile, unworthy vessel that doesn’t deserve to host Satella!”, Petelgeuse slurs mockingly. “You are right, we wanted you, we moved diligently to find you, and added to the pain of the world because you were born for a single reason, one you can’t even fulfill any longer! Worthless creature!”
Emilia’s frown deepens as she gets closer. She shoots another shard through her hand, and it skewers the black-haired woman’s throat.
“That’s true. I’m the half-demon whose existence only causes pain, only arouses hate.”
As blood pumps from Petelgeuse’s throat, he is about to fall on his back when he supports himself on his one hand, and then he searches for you amongst the onlookers. He stares at you intently as a smile grows on his mouth. That’s not the face of someone who has lost. A shiver shakes you.
Tears are running through Emilia’s cheeks and dripping on her fancy white and purple dress as she walks forward. Petelgeuse’s authority is elongating into defined arms that end in long, claw-like hands, but Emilia stops next to the madman and shoots a shard right through the Finger’s skull. The shard flies a few meters above the dirt before it falls and breaks into pieces. Petelgeuse twitches in place for a moment as darkened blood pours from the opened hole in his head, but then falls backwards slowly until he lays on the dirt.
You find yourself retreating step by step. Emilia is standing there looking down at the corpse. Although she just killed someone who would slaughter anyone on his way to kidnap her and torture her to death, she’s crying even more, without letting a noise pass through her pursed lips. Her anguished face is clawing at your heart. It’s your fault, you feel. I’m responsible for that unending pain. Your breath thickens, and suddenly the state of your body, after so much running around, so much fear and a few sustained injuries, is dragging you down as if you are about to pass out at any second. You open your mouth to speak, but at the same time you don’t want to draw her gaze towards you.
Julius sheathes his sword and steps forward.
“Lady Emilia, we-…”, he begins to say, but Ferris reaches him and forces him to turn around. She’s lighting her healing magic on her palm and focusing it on the wound in the knight’s abdomen.
“I’m about to run out of mana,” Ferris says while looking as if she hasn’t slept for a couple of days. “but this wound is serious. Please don’t move until I say so.”
You realize that Julius has deactivated his ability, and you only receive the information that your own senses process. Your mind is a mess. You feel nauseous, and your dizziness is increasing. You feel yourself reeling backwards. Your vision has gone blurry, the hazy figures of your allies grow distant. Suddenly a foul, nauseating feeling overwhelms your body as if you had fallen in a septic tank. As you struggle to breathe, a deep, slimy voice whispers in your ears. No, inside your head.
“Fellow believer in her love, chosen of Satella! I told you, didn’t I? You must have kept it in the back of your head as your allies fought for you, as you witnessed your half-demon friend murdering that Finger of mine. I told you I wouldn’t leave without a Gospel.”
You turn and lift your hands slightly, with your palms to the sky. No, your hands moved by themselves. A tingling sensation is spreading to your limbs as if your body is going numb. You look up and your gaze falls on Julius as he’s waiting for Ferris to cure his wound. He must have seen something in your eyes, some terror, because he snaps his head back and his expression distorts into worry.
Most of these people you have grown to consider your friends. You don’t want them to see you like you fear you will end up in a matter of minutes. You turn away and run.

This part covers a bit of the eight volume of the original Re:Zero novels.

I have felt like shit since I woke up this morning, for some reason, and I didn’t think I was going to get anything done today. Thankfully I’m a masochist, so instead of resting I got to writing.

GPT-3 is a cutting-edge language processing algorithm used in the premium version of the online site AI Dungeon.

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As soon as you and Patrasche leave the woods you realize two things. First, Patrasche’s ribcage on one side is bloodied and some of the ribs must have broken. In a couple of parts the skin and the muscles beneath have split, showing the white bone underneath. You regret that you chose to ride her again, after she got flung out by one of Petelgeuse’s ghostly arms. The ground dragon’s breathing is labored and she isn’t running as fast as she has accustomed you to. You try to order her to go slower as you return to the village, but she either doesn’t understand your request or she ignores it. Although you can only guess about the anatomy of ground dragons, you figure that getting their ribs crushed isn’t beneficial for their health. Second, Petelgeuse’s flailing, ghostly hands stick out over the roofs of the houses that hide the view of the village’s plaza. The bastardly ancient ghost must have brought over all his Fingers for the assault, and he had only kept a low profile until he found you. Now that you’ve messed with his head, he might have no qualms about killing whoever he comes across, even if just to spite you.
You guide Patrasche to return to the village from the main entrance instead of jumping a fence again. You don’t want to force a beast this injured to jump. As you pass by the carriages that you were supposed to use for the evacuation you catch sight of someone’s eyes peeking from a slit in the tarp. The merchants must be waiting for the battle to end, at least those that have decided to stay, because you recall having seen more parked. You can’t be sure of much at this point, given how you are pushing your mind and your body beyond the point where you would have supposed you would have passed out.
You ride Patrasche retracing your steps around the corpses and puddles of blood. A loud crash comes from the village center, and you spot a ghostly hand that has grabbed a piece of a house. A moment later, that arm throws the piece somewhere in the plaza. You imagine that only Wilhelm would be skillful enough to deal with an enemy that attacks with unseen weapons, but you don’t know if he remains alive.
As you reach the frontline where you had parted ways with Ricardo before, the corpses of cultists, plenty of them chopped into pieces, form a sort of barricade. At the side of the street, somewhat hidden from the source of the flailing, ghostly arms, you notice Ferris. The cat-girl is standing on her two legs, and next to her, the tiny quartermaster glances anxiously at the mayhem in the plaza. Only when you dismount Patrasche and bring her closer to the cat-girl she realizes you have appeared. Despite her worry she seems relieved to see you.
“Ferris! It seems like your leg works properly.”
Her black tights are cut around the break-off point as if she had used scissors, and the magically created flesh that shows in the gap looks barely better than smooth scar tissue.
“I’ve done all I can for now. If we survive, I’ll have to keep treating it for a few days at home.” She gives you a reproachful look. “I was sure we would have ended up finding you amongst some random corpses, Subaru.”
“You need to trust me a bit more. I’m not that squishy.”
“I stand corrected.”
You realize the absurdity of holding this conversation while ghostly arms flail around, possibly squeezing the guts out of people.
“Is anybody handling Petelgeuse right now?”
“Wilhelm. He’s striking the dirt towards Petelgeuse so he can locate the arms and cut them at the wrist. They don’t seem to regenerate that fast. I doubt anyone but Wilhelm would be able to pull off that move.”
“Yeah, I don’t know what we would have done without that terrifying old man. Listen, Ferris… Could you take a look at my ground dragon? I don’t want to bother you, but she got hit real bad.”
You had expected Ferris to argue, particularly given how exhausted she looks, but she nods. You order Patrasche to lie down resting on her healthy side, and the cat-girl lights up her palm with her magic.
“Thank you”, you say. “I’ll move up to see what I can do.”
“You will do what you want as usual, but your luck is going to run out eventually, Subaru”, Ferris says.
You were about to walk briskly towards the plaza when you realize that Ram is sitting on the dirt and leaning against the wall of the house next to you. She looks at you with her usual self-assured expression, but her servant uniform has been ripped in parts, and the dried blood around the holes suggests she got stabbed. As you crouch next to her, she turns her head towards you slowly.
“Ram, you look as if you are about to pass out. You are going to make it, aren’t you?”
She closes one eye.
“I am finally safe now that my future brother-in-law has made an appearance.”
“Beyond your sarcasm, you really don’t look good.”
“Ferris has taken care of my wounds. I ran out of mana after defending the plaza so valiantly, and in case you haven’t noticed, no regular cultist remains standing.”
“I don’t want to return to the capital and have to tell Rem that you died. Fortunately I didn’t come across your beheaded corpse this time. I’m sick of storing nasty shit in my head.”
Ram narrows her eyes and then shakes her head slowly, as if it takes her too much energy.
“You make no sense as usual, Barusu.”
“Subaru.”
“Barusu suits you better. Embrace your new name.”
You stand up and brush some dirt off your pants.
“I was going to say that you can’t be a terminal case if you keep speaking like that, but you’d probably spend your last energies demeaning people.”
“This senior servant has a reputation to uphold.”
Although you get the feeling that Ram intended that interaction to be reassuring, it just soured your mood. You move up to the plaza until the source of those flailing and swinging arms that a couple of houses are obstructing come into view. Petelgeuse is occupying a man wearing the Witch’s Cult’s uniform this time. From the few details you can make out from your position, the guy is in his early thirties, and his messy hair and his somewhat tanned skin make him look like he lives in some beach town. He’s standing near the opposite end of the plaza, and his ghostly arms, some of which have been sliced at different heights, are targeting the incredibly fast figure of Wilhelm as he maneuvers to strike the ground, showering the air around him in dirt so the way the particles glance off the invisible arms reveal their positions. His speed suggests that he has a supernatural power of some kind, because you can’t imagine that a human being can possess such a speed and coordination no matter how many years he trains, and much less in a man maybe nearing seventy.
Like Ram said, every other black robe you spot covering a body belongs to a corpse of the many strewn about. Their corpses as well as those of both armies’ soldiers you brought with you, and some villagers, paint the previous battlelines in bodies and blood. If it weren’t for Petelgeuse, maybe your people could consider this a victory. Although the madman is grabbing debris or pieces of houses to throw them at Wilhelm, which could bounce and crash into the onlookers, there are plenty of villagers and soldiers staring at the confusing spectacle, and simultaneously guarding the bottlenecks from which new threats could arrive.
“Subaru!”, Julius’ surprised voice reaches you from your right.
The purple-haired knight, who is wielding an expensive-looking sword and whose white uniform of the Knights of Lugunica is splashed with blood, stares at you as if you’ve come back from the dead. You walk towards him, but he snaps out of his surprise and moves to meet up with you.
“I guess you also thought I would have been killed by the first danger that came my way”, you say.
“Ferris mentioned that you had been involved in the blast and almost killed, but that despite her trying to keep you safe you had left to locate others. We asked Ricardo to find you again. Their lieutenant also went along. I guess you came back by another route.”
“By the same one, actually. I don’t know where that wolf man and that tiny psycho must have gone. Nevermind that, I admit that if it weren’t for Ia, that red minor spirit groupie of yours, I would have satisfied your expectations. She saved me a couple of times!”
Julius smiles slightly, although a glance at Petelgeuse still fighting lowers the corners of his mouth.
“Do you feel Ia in you, as if your body’s temperature had risen and it was fighting a foreign object?”
“Not at all. I had to question if Ia was still there.”
“You must be highly compatible with spirits, Subaru. That isn’t a common occurrence. With years of training you could become a spirits user.”
“Well, for now I would be content if talking with the great spirit in Roswaal’s library didn’t take my head for a spin.”
A loud crash startles you both. It seems that Petelgeuse had grabbed a mercenary’s corpse and thrown it against Wilhelm, but after failing to hit him, it had broken a window in one of the houses. The mangled remains of the half-beast are sliding from the window frame to the dirt, leaving a trail of blood.
Julius stares at the ongoing fight while frowning, and widening his nostrils.
“Subaru, I fear we might have failed. With the Witch’s Cult having assaulted the village, and so many people having fallen, maybe Emilia has been slain as well. Nobody seems to know where she is. Failing to save lady Emilia is a regret I would carry for the rest of my life.”
“I already told Crusch about it, but I assure you, Emilia is alive. I suppose I’m being dumb for blabbing about this, given that you back another royal candidate and all, but there’s a safeguard measure in case Emilia dies, and it hasn’t triggered. I cannot tell you any more than that, except that it means with a hundred percent certainty that my friend is alive somewhere around here.”
Julius looks at you inquisitively.
“I have only questions about your explanation, but you seem sure about it. I am glad. We might win yet, to whatever extent such a carnage could be considered winning.”
You look at the crowd of onlookers, at the villagers who had survived this onslaught, some of which you recognize, like one idiot with long sideburns and a wart under his nose. They are holding on to their swords and pitchforks and kitchen knives.
You remember the beautiful teenage girl you decided to kill, and a pang squeezes your heart. Lucius notices your expression and seems about to ask for your well-being when you interrupt him.
“Lucius, that isn’t the first version of Petelgeuse that has appeared in the village. When I was looking around while riding my ground dragon, he revealed himself as occupying a girl’s body, who wasn’t wearing the cultist robe.”
“A girl? You mean a child?”
“A teenager.”
“But she must have died, right? Otherwise he wouldn’t have been transferred to this new body.”
“Yeah… What a waste.”
“Did you slay her? How did you manage to achieve it, if you don’t mind me asking, Subaru?”
“I confused her a bit until my ground dragon took position, and then my mount headbutted her against a tree. My point is that she wasn’t dressed as a cultist. Petelgeuse must have ordered all of his Fingers to come to the village. The moment Wilhelm kills this one, if he manages to, we’ll find ourselves facing another. We might need to figure out if there’s any possible cultist hidden amongst the onlookers.”
Julius nods energetically, and looks around to spot every group of villagers that are witnessing the fight.
“I’ll go around asking if someone doesn’t know any of the present members. I prefer you don’t do it, Subaru. If one of them is a cultist, he might attempt to kill you or someone nearby.”
“Good. I’ll see if I can help Wilhelm in any way. I managed to annoy Petelgeuse to the extent that he cried. Maybe I can distract him enough that Wilhelm will be able to cut off his head.”
You run hugging the side of the plaza towards some spot that will give you a clear look of this version of Petelgeuse. You confuse a bunch of Crusch’s soldiers and half-beast mercenaries you pass in front of, given that you are moving closer to the madman while unarmed. Wilhelm severs one of the ghostly arms at the wrist, but he still doesn’t find an opening that would allow him to behead the madman.
You put your hands at both sides of your mouth and shout.
“You are the most annoying person in the world, Petelgeuse! No wonder Satella doesn’t love you!”
Petelgeuse snaps his head to look at you, and he frowns in disgust. Wilhelm could have taken the opportunity, but you have distracted him for a moment and he looks surprised that you are still kicking. It seems that nobody has any confidence in your ability to stay alive. Wilhelm seems to understand your intent, because he increases his efforts to close distances with the madman’s body.
“Our beloved’s shameless champion makes an appearance!”, Petelgeuse yells mockingly. “Only our witch in her eternal love and acceptance would have granted one of Her blessings upon someone who uses others to slay his foes!”
“Too bad she didn’t give me like a bunch of invisible hands to slap ground dragons with. But it seems that we both wasted our time talking in those woods! You haven’t learned a thing!”
Petelgeuse has fixed his gaze on Wilhelm, who keeps striking dirt towards the ghostly arms. Talking to you at the same time doesn’t seem to be screwing with the madman’s coordination that much. You wouldn’t have guessed this bastard was such a good multitasker.
“You are mistaken about that, yet what a fool I would be if I expected such a hollow man, a production of this broken world, to comprehend without having the truth explained to him! I took heed of your revelations, which belong to our beloved Satella, and I understood that I may have fallen out of favor with our witch due to my single-minded diligence! I would no longer contemplate alternatives, I would have discarded any vessel but that of your half-demon! However, I will regain Satella’s favor by resurrecting her in a vessel and allowing Her to drown this rotten world in her endless love!”
“I told you the ritual will fail if you use Emilia! You just don’t listen!”
“Shameless idiot! Didn’t I just share with you that I accepted your revelations!? There was truth in those words, despite their venom and your naked attempts at hurting another fellow believer, one as diligent in his service of our witch! That half-demon, a spirits user whose past is fraught with despair and destruction, would make an unstable vessel, and I would be foolish to risk the ruin of the world as per your revelations! She shall not host our beloved! The half-demon is not worthy of Satella!”
You let out a noise of surprise. Did you actually manage to convince this guy to quit? And you didn’t even have to lie, beyond Beatrice’s role in calibrating the piece of herself that Satella implanted in you.
“Great! Then why are you wasting your time? Pack up and go home! Leave us alone already!”
As Wilhelm inches closer and most of Petelgeuse’s ghostly arms have been sliced at the wrist or even near the elbow, the madman’s mouth cracks into a devilish grin.
“It would be so easy for you, wouldn’t it, Natsuki Subaru? If I left now with nothing, I would have wasted my diligence! Would you ask me to fall into such sloth? You should have know better! Occupying this new Finger has freshened my mind. I will fight your allies until I can leave with a Gospel!”
For a moment you are tempted to get his greasy book and throw it at him, in case he just picks it up and makes his exit. However, this madman would take the opportunity to slaughter everybody you appreciate, just to assert his power over you.
“I left the Gospel back at that clearing, Petelgeuse! Not only I couldn’t read it, but it had been stained with liquids other than your blood! You got that mad at me suggesting how I prayed with my imaginary Gospel, but what have you been doing with yours?”
Petelgeuse distracts himself to shoot you a self-satisfied look, as if he held a revelation greater than those he had learned from you.
“I believe we have spoken enough, current chosen of our beloved! My actions will speak for me! I am anxious to witness Satella’s champion react t-…!”
Wilhelm had sliced through another ghostly arm, and the madman’s focus on gloating about some trump card had slowed the invisible arms to the extent that Wilhelm had found a unhindered path to Petelgeuse’s body. The old man burst into a charge that skewered the madman’s heart. The onlookers cheer.
“We have suffered too many deaths at the hands of you and your devils”, Wilhelm says with a tired, angry voice. “You will run out of Fingers.”
Although Petelgeuse’s body trembles and blood pours out of his mouth, he smiles.
“You are no longer the king’s dog that terrorized my fellow believers and could have prevented the return of our witch. Your body has decayed on its way to the grave, and so has your wit.”
Petelgeuse grabs Wilhelm’s wrist with his left hand, preventing him from pulling out his sword, and with his right hand the madman produces a cross-shaped dagger and plunges it into Wilhelm’s guts. From your position you see the shock and the anguish contorting his face. Although the old man reaches with his free, trembling hand to prevent the dagger from slicing further, with his last breath Petelgeuse cuts open Wilhelm’s abdomen, disemboweling him.
Petelgeuse’s current body collapses on his knees and falls backwards, resting on the tip of the sword he’s impaled in.
You stand there in shock, as if you couldn’t comprehend what just happened. No way that can happen to Wilhelm van Astrea, the most terrifying old man in the world, someone who would defeat every enemy he faced and eventually, not too many years later, would die a coward’s death on his bed back at any of Crusch’s properties. You shake your head and run towards the old man while yelling his name.
When you crouch next to him your body turns cold. Wilhelm’s bloody intestines have spilled out of the huge horizontal gash, and are now caked in dirt. The old man’s face is beaded with sweat, and he has the look of someone who realizes he’s fought for the last time.
“Mr. Natsuki”, he says with a surprisingly calm voice. “I feared you had perished.”
“I fear you are the one who is going to die, old man. Ferris will have to take a look at you.”
You gather his viscous intestines, brush the dirt off a bit, and try to pile them up over the wound. You move behind the old man’s head and grab the shoulders of his uniform to drag him backwards.
“Please, someone help me! We need to get him to our healer!”
Some of Crusch’s people, who by their shocked expressions know Wilhelm, grab the old man’s legs and you all haul him back towards Ferris.
“That wasn’t the last Finger”, Wilhelm says with a tired voice. Blood is leaking from the corners of his mouth.
“I know, man. We’ll figure something out. The duchess is going to wait for you, so you better not disappoint her.”
As soon as the cat-girl realizes what’s happened, she runs up to you and orders to lower the man to the ground. She motions for Tivey, the Iron Fang’s quartermaster, to approach her.
“Tivey, give me some water to clean the wound.”
You look over her shoulder to see Patrasche looking at the wounded man with a lucid, healthy expression. It doesn’t relieve you enough given that Wilhelm’s life is leaving him by the second.
Tivey pours water on the dirty intestines as Ferris wipes them a bit with some sort of bandage. As she pushes the intestines inside, she focuses her healing magic on his pierced insides. Ferris lifts her head towards you and had opened her mouth to speak when the roof of a house a street over explodes as if a fireless detonation had gone off. Then, a segment of the wall of that second story breaks apart and falls to the dirt below. The smoke clears up around a woman with long, black hair, who is also wearing a black-robe with its hood down. Rising from the swollen shadow above her shoulders, around ten ghostly arms wave nervously, and after a moment they coordinate to lower their owner to the ground.

This part covers a bit of the eight volume of the original Re:Zero novels.

The previous entry was centered around Crusch’s camp’s healer, Ferris, and the protagonist dealing with the aftermath of a blast that almost killed them, and that seemed to signal for the Witch’s Cult to attack. Ferris has ended up significantly injured to the extent that the protagonist needs to save her ass. We also learned that the half-beast lieutenant of the Iron Fang is an automatic turret.

This entry ended up becoming an almost seven thousand words long beast, and one of my favorite ones in this strange retelling I’m doing.

GPT-3 is a cutting-edge language processing algorithm used in the premium version of the online site AI Dungeon.

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You have wandered a couple of streets away from Mimi’s kill zone, following the tumult of clashing metal, war cries and pain. They seem to come from the village’s plaza. Even though you clutch the dagger you stole from that cultist you killed, you doubt that it will help you at all if you come across anyone who intends to kill you.
You are leaning around a corner of a street that if you follow it to the end, you’ll get a glimpse of the fighting at the plaza. You are surrounded by plenty of corpses, of black-robed cultists, of Crusch’s crew, a few mercenaries and some villagers. Blood is flowing downhill from numerous puddles. You look around in case you recognize any of the corpses. One of the dead villagers is a meek woman that had asked you a question when you spoke to them; someone had stabbed her in the heart.
After you swallow and try to concentrate on your intention although your fast heartbeats demand that you run away, you choose to exchange your small dagger with one of the dead mercenaries’ swords.
As you were shaking the blood from your new weapon, you hear the noise of big mounts pounding the dirt. You attempt to hide, but three half-beast mercenaries riding their big wolves are coming towards you, in the direction of the village center. When the wolves come close enough they snarl at you, blowing saliva. However, the mercenaries tell them to calm down.
“General”, says a half-boar mercenary you recognize.
You wouldn’t have been surprised if the rank and file of the Iron Fang would have run you over without caring a bit if you survived. You are the person who pushed for this battle to happen, and it has resulted on quite a few of their comrades-in-arms dying.
“Glad to see you well”, you say warily. “Have you seen your captain around, or even the couple of high-ranking humans from Crusch’s camp? I mean that old man with the white hair, and the purple-haired young guy dressed in white.”
The half-boar merc looks towards the center of the village.
“We saw the captain a few minutes ago. He was taking care of some crazies. We can’t find the lieutenant anywhere.”
“Ah, Mimi and her brother are fine. Unharmed. I just talked to them.”
The half-boar’s expression brightens, and he grins.
“That’s great, general. We’ll ride into the fight to see how many we can kill.”
“You do that.”
After they leave, you stand close to the front of a house, unsure of what to do. You recall that you also don’t know if Ram is alive, but you had to focus on recalling the people you know until she popped up in your mind as someone to save. After listening to the horrifying war sounds, you figure that you might as well go where the fight is. At least you will be able to figure out if any of your people are still kicking.
You had forced your trembling legs to lead you towards the plaza when you hear someone approaching from behind. You almost piss yourself. You turn around while wielding your sword, in case you need to thrust it into a body immediately, but a huge, brown and furry hand, half stained with blood, closes around your wrist as if he was grabbing a little branch. You look up towards a big mouth full of teeth, and on top of the wolf head, a dark brown mane that vaguely looks like a mohawk.
“I thought you were food for the scavengers, general!”, Ricardo says cheerfully. “You heard the boom some time ago? I went to see whose head I had to chop, and suddenly a lot of those madmen were running through the streets! They didn’t come from the forest we swept before, that’s for sure.”
Ricardo frees your wrist, which hurts as if the wolf man would have had to squeeze a little bit more to break your bones. The guy wasn’t even fazed that you almost stabbed him; he stopped you by instinct. For a second you think about asking him for a status report, but one look at his face clarifies that he’s happy about being able to kill a new bunch of people.
“Ricardo, have you seen Wilhelm, that old man with the white hair, or Julius, the one with the purple hair?”
“I did see the old man. He was running towards the center of the village, and he asked me for you. I hadn’t found you yet, though.” A sudden worry narrows his mouth. “General, have you seen Mimi anywhere? She’s always running around, and I don’t want to imagine what those fiends would do to her.”
They all seem to love that little psycho. An appropriate mascot for such a mercenary band, you suppose.
“She’s fine! She set up a little kill zone in a dead end street, and she’s been exploding pretty much everyone who comes in, as far as I can tell.”
“Great! Ah, I’m so happy! When I don’t know where people are, it distracts me from fighting.”
“Ricardo,” you say with a serious voice. “I emphasize that she seems to be exploding anyone who comes in. There were pieces of corpses that clearly didn’t belong to cultists.”
You have no clue if this wolf man is going to consider his lieutenant’s behavior a problem, but he furrows his brow and shakes his head slightly.
“That girl… She needs a serious spanking one of these days.”
You take a deep breath.
“Yeah, one of these days. So, where are you going?”
Ricardo perks up and grins. He points with his furry thumb to the enormous blade hung on his back.
“I’ll move up to the first line of enemies and kill as many as I can! Follow me! We’ll have a great time!”
He is already running off. You sigh, but follow him. Although his legs are longer and more powerful, you are content with remaining at an increasingly greater distance. It’s not as if you are going to charge into the line of cultists yourself.
Now that someone else is worrying about the enemies you could run into, not even two minutes after you catch Ricardo cleaving through a fallen cultist’s torso. The enormous greatsword, more a huge slab of sharpened iron than a proper weapon, gets stuck in the dirt and whatever rock lies underneath, and Ricardo has to strain his muscles a bit to pull it out. Beyond him, a few mercenaries mounted on wolves, maybe the same ones from before, are picking off cultists that are trying to retreat from their assault on the village’s plaza. It seems that you inadvertently flanked the enemy. A few of the cultists are turned away from you as they attempt to stab a line of Crusch’s people.
You hear the whoosh of some wind magic coming from further into the plaza. Ram must be alive. You’d say to yourself that such a bitch wouldn’t die easily, but you’ve already known her to die in previous attempts.
A couple of cultists turn the corner, apparently coming from another side of the plaza. When they see Ricardo’s two meters tall frame and the weapon nobody should be able to hold, they stop on their tracks for a moment, but you guess that their hexes have programmed them for suicide attacks. They first throw their daggers at him, which Ricardo deflects with his blade effortlessly, making ding noises. Both cultists each draw another dagger and charge at the wolf man. He twists around and chops through them diagonally, which hurls away the top halves of their bodies as they expel a stream of blood.
Ricardo shouts over his sholder.
“Did you see that!? This time they flew farther than usual!”
“Yeah, if I was as strong as you I’d probably run around just chopping people in half as if I were mowing the lawn.”
Ricardo laughs loudly.
“Ah, what a great day! But come over here, general! Don’t need to stay behind!”
You run up to him. You figure that standing slightly behind Ricardo is the safest place in this battlefield.
The line of Crusch’s soldiers got reinforcements from a few half-beast mercenaries that must have dealt with the cultists assaulting the area from another direction. Two cultists nicked and pushed off by the attacking line tried to charge into the defense again, but for the second of those cultists his own line got closed, and he would have had to jump over his mates. He turns around and notices you both. He clutches his dagger at the side and marches towards you.
You were about to take a few steps backwards when Ricardo puts his huge hand on your back. He’s moved behind you. You look at him in confusion, and you find him staring back with a smile like a father that wants his son to jump in a pool for the first time.
“Ricardo!”, you say with a panicky voice. “This is probably not the time to be fucking around!”
He nods with his head to his sword. He’s rested the edge on the dirt, with the blade at an angle, as if it were a platform.
“Stand on it! Quick, the fiend is coming!”
A glance at the cultist clarifies that it will take a few seconds for him to plunge his dagger into your heart, and you aren’t sure that Ricardo would prevent it. Also, you realize that you were about to argue with a two meters tall wolf man with an entire average man’s weight in muscles alone.
You step back so you stand unsteadily on the blade. When you were about to question Ricardo’s intention, he roars and swings the sword quickly so you find yourself launched in the air towards the cultist. You are clutching your sword as if to a climbing hold in a rock wall. The cultist’s image, centered on the darkness inside his hood, grows as if you are about to crash headfirst into him.
“Aw, shiiiiiit…!”
You get a glimpse of the nose, the lips and the eyes in that darkness. When you are about to collide, you twist your torso to swing the blade and feel the pressure against your hand when the edge of your sword hacks into something solid. You fall on the dirt and roll a couple of times. You don’t wait a second to jump back to your feet, and retreat towards where you must have dropped your weapon.
The cultist lies on his back. The sword’s blade is stuck in his head at the height of his eyes, which must have chopped into his brain. In any case, the guy has dropped his dagger, and the dark blood pouring from the wound tells you he’s dead. You run up to him and pull the sword out.
Ricardo laughs from behind you and pats you on the shoulder, which almost makes you fall onto the cultist’s corpse.
“Your first kill! Our general has grown up! No longer a whelp.”
His smile is sincere. You feel weird electrical pangs in your chest as if you are about to have a heart attack. As you breathe out of your mouth, you blow sweat.
“I feel pretty much the same, though. Similarly terrible.”
Ricardo laughs loudly.
“That’s how it starts. A dozen more and it brings you joy!”
You rest on your knees for a moment, and motion with your head towards the line of cultists attacking your people to overrun the plaza. The backs of your enemies are vulnerable to the merest stabbing, not to mention being cut in half by this barbarian.
“I suppose that as a general I must suggest that you charge at that line’s rear and cut them all down in a couple of seconds. Some of our people might get fatally stabbed if we just play around.”
Ricardo stares at the enemy as if he needed to consider it.
“They are offering their backs and they haven’t noticed me, but I guess that’s their fault.”
He plants his feet and wields his enormous sword properly. You step out of the way.
“And I’m going to run around town to get a general picture of the situation. Have fun, Ricardo.”
“You bet!”
Ricardo roars and charges into the doomed cultists. As you turn and run away from the whole mess, you get a glimpse of startled cultists that a second ago had no clue that such a monster existed in this world.

You are running through streets that you believe will lead you to the area where Crusch had distributed the wounded, before they were evacuated. You feel yourself losing it. You slip on some half-dried blood and roll, getting a mouthful of dirt, before you stand up and run again. You feel as if you took a bath in sweat, you are dirty, your head hurts. As your legs burn, you fantasize that you’ve returned to Crusch’s place and that you have closed the door to your bedroom, where Rem waits for you. Ah, how you wish you were there already. Not pushing your lungs to the limit as you hope to run into Wilhelm or Julius, the only ones who would share your dismay at how this peaceful village has been turned upside down. What kind of life is this? How did you end up having to deal with such madness?
As your thoughts swirled around in your head, you notice some beast running around up ahead, in an area of the village where the gaps between the houses offer you a view of the forest where your crew ambushed through a bunch of crazy people. It’s a black ground dragon, that seems to be looking around frantically like a mother who has lost her child. It’s Patrasche! You call out to her, and she perks up. When she spots you, she sprints towards you. You stop in case the excited beast ends up charging into you. When she reaches you she whines as she nuzzles your face and your shoulders, breathing quickly against your skin.
You let out a tired laugh as you stroke her rough scales.
“What have I done for you to like me this much, Patrasche?”
The ground dragon lowers herself to the ground and looks over her shoulder at you.
You feel safer already. If a bunch of cultists run into you, your ground dragon can help you flee in a moment. You sit on the saddle and pat Patrasche’s neck.
“Can’t say no to you when you are offering yourself so openly. Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle.”
Patrasche either doesn’t comprehend your tone, or doesn’t care, or likes it, because she stands up proudly and then runs in the direction you are suggesting.
Less than a minute later you reach the area where the wounded had rested before, and you see the outside table where Crusch had been enjoying a home-cooked meal. Above the distant racket of battle you hear young people crying and yelling, maybe children. They sound close. You pull on the reins to guide Patrasche towards the source.
You first see two male teenagers, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old, who are moving quickly towards the fence that separates the village from the nearby field where the Iron Fang left their mounts. One of those teenagers is naked from the waist up for some reason, and has a bleeding wound on his back, maybe from having gotten stabbed. They are accompanying a bunch of people. Another teenager is a very pretty blonde girl who wears some Victorian-looking long, white underwear, as if she had been pulled from bed, and the rest are either children or tweens. One of them, a skinny tween with reddish-brown hair down to her shoulders, is crying in fear as she flees from a lone cultist who is power walking towards her like a horror movie villain.
A rage swells in your chest. These pieces of garbage, soiling and ruining everything wherever they go, now pursuing unarmed children. No way, bitch. Not on my watch!
You lean forward and point with the end of your sword at the cultist.
“That one, Patrasche! Fuck him up!”
Patrasche bursts straight into a full-on charge. The cultist hears you coming and turns around. He attempts to raise his dagger, but the ground dragon rams him on the side of the torso, making him spin around wildly, and when he hits the ground he keeps rolling while getting covered with dirt. Patrasche drifts as she maneuvers to return to the fallen cultist without slowing down, and then she sprints and leaps onto the bastard as he was attempting to stand up. Patrasche jumps on him twice, caving his torso in with horrible crunches, and as the ground dragon jumps, your ass leaps off the saddle and then you slam down hard on your balls. When Patrasche steps away from the corpse, you are twisting your toes, clenching your teeth. Your sweat has turned cold, and an electric shiver is propagating from your crotch to the rest of your body.
The two male teens run up to you as they cheer. When they see you suffering, they get concerned.
“What happened, sir? Are you injured?”
You groan.
“I hit… my balls… on the way… down…”
The two teens grimace in sympathy.
“We appreciate your sacrifice, sir.”
They give you a moment, but then they go on.
“Don’t know where that man came from. We were moving from a bad area of the village to a house that we believe is much safer, but we ran into that guy along the way.”
“Glad… to help…”
“You work for the lord, right? I recall seeing you come with those pretty servants.”
You take a deep breath and try to pretend that your balls haven’t been obliterated.
“Yeah, more or less… Listen, are you sure that house you mentioned is safe?”
“It should be”, the topless teenager says while looking around nervously. “It seemed like the fighting at the plaza is dying down. Maybe we just need to hide for a while.”
The guy is patting absent-mindedly a maybe ten year old kid who is crying and holding on to the teenager for protection. The teenager gives off the vibe that he might sacrifice himself to save these kids. You look at each of them to get a feel of the situation, and your gaze stops on the pretty teenage girl, maybe sixteen years old, who is wearing long underwear under the midday sun. Her long, beautiful hair is sunflower blonde, and she has a beautiful, healthy looking face and kind eyes. You imagine her walking through some field as she crouches occasionally to pick up some pretty flower. She’s staring at you expressionless, as if she has no clue how to deal with this situation and is just going through the motions.
Someone approaches you bashfully. It’s the skinny tween that the cultist was pursuing. She has dried her tears, and now looks up at you with adoring eyes.
“Thank you for saving me, sir! And sorry about your testicles!”
“Ah, don’t mention it.” You turn around the sword in your hand so you hold it by the bloodied blade, and you signal the topless teenager. “Use my sword and keep them safe.”
The teenager, surprised and thankful, reaches for your sword, but stops as he was about to grab the grip.
“Are you sure? How will you defend yourself?”
You pat Patrasche’s neck.
“I have this badass dragon. Don’t worry and protect these people.”
He grabs the sword and holds it with renewed determination. He looks up at you almost teary eyed.
“Now get going”, you say. “I’ll run around and figure out if anyone else needs help.”
Both male teenagers guide the mostly crying kids towards another street, but after a few steps, one of them stops and looks around confused.
“Where is that girl?”
That pretty teenager hasn’t followed them. She’s jumped the fence and is walking briskly through the field, amongst the big wolves, who only look at her as a distraction. She seems to be headed to a nearby woods, maybe a hundred meters away from the fence.
“She might think that those woods are safer, but I don’t like that she’s alone… Don’t worry, you go up ahead. I’ll talk to her and figure out what we can do.”
The topless teenager nods and addresses the kids for them to follow him. You turn towards the fence, and Patrasche jumps it effortlessly. The ground dragon walks at a brisk pace amongst the wolves, some of which have stood up and are retreating calmly, but still surprised that a ground dragon passes through their area.
You contain a couple of shivers as you focus on the blonde teenager. She’s halfway across the field. You call out to her, but she doesn’t slow down. You order Patrasche to follow her. The girl has probably panicked and thought that the village isn’t a safe place to remain in, and you can’t blame her. However, you have no clue what’s in those woods. Other cultists might be hiding there for all you know.
When the blonde teenager reaches the edge of the woods, she turns around and stands with her arms at her side. You are stricken again by how beautiful she is; in your previous world she would have seemed at home on a billboard, promoting some beauty products.
“Hey,” you begin to say tentatively, “are you looking to hide in the woods? I don’t live here and I wouldn’t know which place is the safest at this moment, but I want to figure out if you’ll probably be okay.”
You freeze with your mouth open. Your body knows before your mind has realized it. The blonde teenager is smiling at you as if she had never smiled genuinely in her life, and her eyes are dead. You feel like a rat who has figured out way too late that nobody would just leave a piece of cheese on a weird contraption in the middle of the kitchen.
You order Patrasche to turn around and run back towards the fence, but after a moment, the teenager shouts behind you.
“Authority of Sloth, Unseen Hands!”
You hunch over and look over your shoulder, but it feels as if you’ve merely glanced at the ghostly arms elongating in the air towards you when you are picked up from the saddle by the back of your clothes, and a tremendous force throws you backwards towards the trees. You yell and brace yourself. You hit some branches, which scratch your back and hit you in the head, but as you were falling from that treetop, you manage to hold on to a branch. Although it breaks, you fall to the shaded ground on your feet.
The blonde teenager, that you have to remind yourself is actually Petelgeuse, is still standing on the border of the woods, and is currently focused on the field. Your yells as well as seeing you fly through the air seemingly startled the wolves, some of which are snarling towards the teenager. Patrasche is shaking her head and clawing at the grass. When her reptilian gaze finds yours, she runs towards you, but Petelgeuse sweeps the field backwards with one of his ghostly arms and slaps the ground dragon away as if she were a fly, flinging her towards the village.
“No! Patrasche!”, you yell.
You don’t even see the ground dragon land, because you notice that the ghostly arms are coordinating towards the source of your voice. You’re shaking. Your heart beats rapidly. You turn and run deeper into the forest. You can’t think clearly not only because of the headache, but because it’s just been too much. You are too tired, you are freaking out, and for a while you have been restraining an urge to find some isolated house in the village and hide in a corner.
You hear the noise of wood splitting, branches breaking, leaves shaking. The ghostly arms must be passing through the treetops.
“Are you running away, blasphemer!?” The teenager’s voice is incongruous, as if she had been incompentently cast as the villain in a play. “After you shamefully deceived me back at that clearing so that old lackey could murder me!? How can you stand, how can you breathe, when you can’t have any pride!? A lowly thief, stealing the predictions granted by our witch, even though as someone blessed by Her, he should know how important they are for the believer!”
As you hide amongst the trees, avoiding the sound of crunching branches, you shout in a rage.
“Petelgeuse! I swear, if you have killed my ground dragon, I’m going to kick you in the cunt!”
“You will produce my Gospel!”, the teenager shouts, sounding closer. “You will bring me the Gospel you stole, or else I will have you witness every person you know getting crushed as they cry for you to obey me! Tell me, show me where my book is, you rotten unbeliever!”
You rush through the forest, running without any regard to stealth. You figure that these woods can’t be that large, and it isn’t safer to run through whatever field awaits you on the other side, not with Petelgeuse pursuing you. You are breathing hard.
“Every time I meet you I assume you are going to ask for your worthless book. You should assume I won’t say shit about it. Let’s leave it at that.”
You don’t hear any movement in the woods anymore. You lean your back against a trunk, and dare look back towards the shaded trees you’ve left behind. You see the teenager. She’s standing plenty of meters behind you, between two trees and with a fern bush hiding the lower half of her body. Her pretty face is just staring at you, her arms limp at her side. You feel a pang in your heart, as if there was someone else inside that body, another consciousness that is witnessing powerless how the madman, whoever or whatever Petelgeuse actually is, puppeteering her.
“Why are you using that body, Petelgeuse? She must have had a life before. How did you end up possessing her?”
Petelgeuse lowers his head slightly. Is he coordinating his ghostly arms above the treetops towards you, so he can pick you up like the claw in an arcade machine?
“But you know already, blasphemer! Before she became a esteemed, useful Finger, she felt abandoned, untouched, unloved, lost in this cold and hollow world! None of the rotten unbelievers that surrounded her could understand her yearning, her knowledge that the world owed her more! True love! An eternal embrace that would repay her faith and never let her go! Satella, our beloved, heard her prayers, and a Gospel found its way to the abandoned believer. This body wasn’t lonely anymore! The pain, the tears she had endured had a reason for existing! Her goal, her purpose had been revealed! She made her way, against the wishes of the filthy unbelievers, back to us. She understood then that this world, that offers nothing but pain after pain as the perishable bodies decay towards their inevitable ends, is but an illusion, a blindfold put over her eyes so she couldn’t look towards the eternal love that would save her! She had wished for love! She had pleaded for love! Now she had the answer. She merely had to follow what the Gospel predicted, and she found where she belonged. Now she helps us on our way to grant not only believers like her, but the entire world, the love that will free every single being from their loneliness and their pain!”
Some nearby treetops shake, disturbing the leaves. You push yourself off the trunk you were leaning against and run in perpendicular towards another. Along the way you see how Petelgeuse, standing still, follows you with the teenager’s eyes. You rest against another tree. What can you do? Petelgeuse isn’t that eager to kill you, not when that means losing his book forever. You have knowledge that he needs, but you suppose he won’t have issues torturing you again, maybe going as far as tearing limbs off you, as long as you remain alive. What if you lose some piece of yourself? What part of you would you lose and yet decide to continue in this life without resetting? Maybe just a pinky.
“You aren’t a human being, are you, Petelgeuse? Not in the same way that I am.”
“You believe yourself greater than me even in that regard! You contemptible pissant! I have occupied and experienced the lives of many human bodies! I have seen, heard, felt, breathed through these bodies for hundreds of years, far longer than you have existed or will exist! But that still dwarfs the uncountable span of time I experienced before. Years passed by in impotence, unable to affect the course of lives, shackled by the belief that I wasn’t to interfere in the rising and decaying of peoples, of cultures, of civilizations. So much time shackled by such disgraceful, shameful sloth, while yearning to find what I needed and nothing, nobody could provide! But our witch does! Satella always has, always will! And the same way she had embraced in her love half of this rotten world, she would forgive my shameful sloth!”
You keep blinking to keep the sweat from irritating your eyes. Your increasing nervousness is tingling in your legs like white noise.
“Unless every person I’ve met in this world has lied to me, four hundred years ago that Satella didn’t embrace shit. She drowned people in her shadows, as many as half of everybody alive back then. That doesn’t sound like love, Petelgeuse! Those people were murdered!”
“Murdered, you unbelievers repeat! Shameless fools! Those people were saved!”
“Ah, of course!”
“You keep mocking Her, who granted your blessing. Half of the world back then never died. They remain inside of our witch, freed from their perishable carcasses, dissolved into their essences, and to this day they experience the Witch of Envy’s eternal, loving embrace! Is that death? Murder, you said! That was your choice of words, you hollow unbeliever! You talk to me about murder!? What have you done, what have you savages done to my fellow believers in Her love? You ran them through, mutilated them, exploded them, caused them untold pain, and when they writhed on the ground in agony, unable to defend themselves, did you extend your hand to them? Did you soothe their pain? Where was your mercy as you plunged your swords into their hearts, as you crushed the brains out of their skulls? You speak to me of murder, you question our witch’s love, when you do nothing but destroy, when you know nothing but hate!”
You are as tense as a stretched rubber band about to break. Above the birdsongs and the critters and the buzzing insects you imagine the ghostly arms stalking you, waiting for any opening.
“You weave a convenient tale, Petelgeuse. If the armies of this world hadn’t acted against you, you and your followers would have murdered countless innocents. Even if you argue that attacking the village was done as a retribution for our ambushes in the forest, that doesn’t change that if we weren’t here, you would have massacred everybody, killed Emilia and destroyed the world as a consequence. You can and will spin it however you want, but that’s evil stuff.”
You don’t hear a peep from Petelgeuse for a few seconds, and you were about to move to another tree, just in case Petelgeuse is trying to flank you, when he speaks again with the teenager’s voice.
“Our witch desires everyone. She wants, She accepts everyone. No matter your sins, no matter your pains, She will embrace you and pour into you Her eternal love. You have received Her blessing, and yet you doubt this!”
“I don’t need to doubt what I know is true. She does love unconditionally. I am sure that no matter how much time passed in that darkness, she would never tire of offering her love.”
“Then why would you mock and belittle and rebel against Her!?”
“You would feel her love eternally, and yet would be unable to do or be anything else than Satella’s beloved ever again.”
The teenager’s bitter laugh flows between the trees, an aching echo of how she must have sounded before Petelgeuse got anywhere near her.
“What else would you need!? You want despair!? You want pain!? What else awaits you in this world!? Satella’s eternal love is the solution! Not only for your lifetime, but preserved inside her shadow, for the rest of time! You, shameless, rotten unbeliever, were blessed by Satella. She must have had a reason! She must have felt you calling Her, yearning for Her love, and She found Her way to you! Beyond that, She gave you one of Her blessings, as if you were special amongst the believers! Maybe at the core of your hollow self remains a sliver that understands. You must have gone astray!”
Although you don’t want to consider Petelgeuse’s words, you do wonder again, like you have many, many times, and even asked Satella directly, why would she grant you that ability. Why does she care? But maybe you are questioning something that happened by mistake.
“I never received a Gospel. All that stuff about jerking off, I made it up, in case you ended up believing it. So Satella never found her way to me, not how you believe it happens.”
Petelgeuse goes quiet again. You attempt to sneak towards another tree that might allow you to figure out where the teenager is standing. Every dry leaf on the ground betrays you as you step on it. While you hide behind a new tree, you lean towards the shadows and you spot the teenager’s nose and lips, as well as her white underwear, at an angle of around forty five degrees from your position.
“Unbeliever,” Petelgeuse starts with a conciliatory tone. “I need my Gospel back. It contains all the predictions about my role in Her plans. There’s no other copy.”
You laugh, but you only need to remember the recent events to get enraged again.
“More reason not to give it to you then! Why would you try to appeal to my sympathy? But the funniest thing in all this nonsense is that your book actually doesn’t work! I assume that it must have told you you needed to assault the mansion today, and access Roswaal’s inner sanctum to perform the ritual, because that’ll resurrect our witch in my friend’s body! But that doesn’t happen! Emilia dies, and as a result, her great spirit destroys the world!”
“Your words are not going to confuse me, unbeliever! What merit would I give such a rotten tale against the predictions She had put on my hands!?”
You were about to retort with something resembling an insult, and yet a genuine laugh pours from your mouth. Is that it, Satella? Was that your intention? You don’t know if you even believe it, but you want to push it into Petelgeuse’s brain, if only because it will hurt him.
“You know Satella gave me a blessing. That’s undeniable, I believe you said. And yet you failed to predict that I would come here to thwart your plans. Your predictions didn’t warn you, didn’t they? Maybe you aren’t as favored by our witch as you think!”
Petelgeuse produces the sound of anguished pain through the stolen body, which would had made you want to hug that girl until she didn’t feel it anymore. You leave your hiding spot and stand between two trees. You see the front half of the girl behind a tree, and she’s trembling. Petelgeuse turns his head towards you and steps into the narrow corridor of trees, maybe fifteen meters in front of you. From the swollen shadow churning over her shoulders wave arms that lose themselves in the treetops, disturbing the leaves.
“I have done so much for Her, and yet it is as you said! Why would Satella give a blessing to you, even one that allows you to see my Authority!?”
You are pretty sure that being able to see the invisible hands is Beatrice’s doing. Not that you want to correct Petelgeuse’s self-doubt.
“You are clearly a servant of the Witch of Envy. If you haven’t been alerted of my intervention by a book that predicts the future, that means that the presence that writes those predictions, or had written them long ago, doesn’t want you to know. Isn’t that reasonable?”
The teenager is clenching her teeth as she trembles. Tears are growing in the corners of her eyes.
“It is! You undeserving, rotten unbeliever, it is just as you said! The predictions should have alerted me, and they didn’t! Why would that be!?”
“Because you fell out of favor, of course. Satella gave me a blessing that allows me to see your Authority, which is your most powerful weapon. That means that she intended me to stop you. If you don’t quit your plans, you would be working against Satella’s wishes.”
Petelgeuse groans in pain as tears jump from his eyes.
“Damn you, rotten vermin! There’s no way that Satella wouldn’t want to return, and that’s my only goal by performing the ritual!”
“Maybe it’s not that she doesn’t want to return, but that the ritual performed on Emilia will fail, as I told you, and that will destroy the world. If the world is destroyed, our witch cannot return. Wouldn’t it make sense for her to want me, her new champion, to stop you?”
“Stop lying! You’re trying to confuse me, unbeliever! I know Satella’s will better than anyone else, even if She changed it! You said that you never received your Gospel, that means you couldn’t have received that prediction! You shameful, lying refuse of this hollow world…!”
You go quiet for a moment. The teenager has finished talking, and although she’s breathing heavily and tears run down through her face, she returns her gaze to your eyes, waiting for you to certify that you were selling nothing but lies, that she doesn’t have to doubt herself again.
“Petelgeuse,” you begin calmly, “do you want to know what blessing Satella bestowed upon me? Every time I die, I return to the past, which means that I get to relive the same events but with the foreknowledge. I don’t need a Gospel, Petelgeuse. I am the Gospel.”
The teenager snaps her head back, and she narrows her eyes at you.
“That can’t be true! That’s the only…!”
“The only explanation.” You advance step by step while staring at her. Over her shoulder, the arms are waving nervously, and yet there’s fear in her lovely eyes, as if you could crush her in an instant. “I can meet Satella whenever I want and bathe in her endless love. I have done so over and over. Her ghostly presence, with those hazy purple eyes, embraces me as her bell-like voice pledges her love to me. Have you ever seen her ghost, Petelgeuse? Have you heard her beautiful voice?”
You stand a couple of meters from the wide-eyed teenager, whose expression has frozen as her tears drip off her chin.
“I am now Satella’s lover”, you say, “You have disgraced her with your actions, and she doesn’t accept you any longer.”
The teenager shakes her head. She lets out an anguished cry as she retreats.
You hear the crunching leaves again, something stalking in the shadows. A deep breathing you recognize.
“You know, Petelgeuse, I might be useless myself beyond the ability to know the future. My witch could have given me some physical ability that would allow me to put you down like she intended, but turns out that in this world there are many powerful people who want to help me. And even the animals around here are more clever, resourceful and stronger than me.” You turn your head towards the shaded trees to Petelgeuse’s left. “Now!”
Patrasche bursts out of the shadows and charges in a rage against the teenager, crashing into her like a truck. The teenager smashes her shoulder and her head against a tree, imprinting a bloody splodge on the trunk, and bounces to the grass a few meters away. You can see the damage from where you are standing. Half of her face is gone. Her crushed, bloodied eye stares at you as in shock, and her burst head has belched her brain.
You walk towards the teenager and kneel besides her. You tilt your head and shut your eyes, listening to the world as it keeps turning. You stand up and swallow the painful mass that had closed your throat.
Patrasche approaches you and rubs her muzzle against your tears. You stroke her black, rough scales.
“It’s okay, girl. It’s okay.”

Petelgeuse had always been the most difficult character to write in the previous 24 parts, but he flowed perfectly here. This conversation ended up becoming one of my favorites due to its depth, the couple of gotchas that I hadn’t even anticipated as I started writing it, and the reversal of power as the conversation deepens.

One of my main interests in spending my time in this retelling of one of my favorite fictional series is that the AI suggesting stuff would end up, I hoped, changing the events to an extent that very few things, beyond the really big plot points you just have to add, would remain of the original. And that has been the case. Very little since the protagonist left Crusch’s place in the capital towards Roswaal’s domain has happened like in the original novels. Maybe the biggest of those deviations in that stretch is that the White Whale was never killed, while in the originals it’s a huge success that reverberates through what I know of the following arcs.

Also, I like to imagine that this video is what Patrasche aspires to become.