This entry covers part of the tenth volume of the original “Re:Zero” novels.

In the previous entry we learned that some blackmailing kidnappers can be quite nice, that the shy princess is the only one who can pass some psychologically scarring trials, and that the protagonist freaks Garfiel up.

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During the meal, that had already started when you managed to find your pals, Ram told you that Roswaal had congratulated you for your enormous effort in defending the village from the Witch’s Cult, but that he wasn’t ready to meet with you until tonight, around midnight. Ram didn’t seem to know why, but you figure that she’s simply following orders. When you all finish eating and people start getting up, Emilia, concerned, tells you that she’s going to speak with someone by herself. You end up hanging out with Otto and checking out a couple of local taverns, or what passes for them in Sanctuary. Your efforts at regaining some normality by lounging in a tavern turn into a bunch of half-beast people asking you loads of questions about the outside world. Fortunately they seem curious instead of hostile, and word has gotten around that you are here to help, so you didn’t even have to pay for your drinks.

You try to avoid getting drunk, although you are a bit light-headed by the time you exit the last tavern. You both head back to what looks like the center of the village, that church-like building with the big clock which you can see often in the distance, despite the tall trees of the enclosing forest. Once you spot Otto’s carriage as well as both ground dragons, who are curled up and sleeping in a nearby, mostly open barn, you see that Emilia is leaning against the carriage as if waiting. When she sees you she looks relieved, although the underlying worry is obvious. She runs up to you.

“Subaru, can we speak? I’m sorry, Otto, but I mean to speak with him in private.”

Otto’s pleased smile, one that lights up his face whenever the beautiful half-elf is around, fades a bit. You guess the merchant dreams with being in your shoes, but then again he doesn’t actually know what’s like to be in your head. In he did, he likely wouldn’t associate with you.

“That’s alright!”, Otto says. “I hope you are doing well. You have certainly regained the color since the meeting… Anyway, I’ll go check out the church and see how the villagers are holding up!”

Once Otto leaves, Emilia gets closer to you and looks up at your eyes as if she wishes you both were sitting against that rock planter in Roswaal’s yard, when the rest of the world seemed to have disappeared.

“How are you feeling, Emilia?”, you ask softly. “I’ve been wanting to ask you ever since Ram told you about being trapped here.”

She looks towards the forest that starts behind the line of villager houses.

“I wouldn’t say that I’m well at all, but at least I’m moving on to figuring out what to do about this. Please, let’s venture further into the forest for a bit of quiet.”

You both start walking towards the dense treeline.

“Are you sure that it’s fine? Aren’t we going to come across monsters or something?”

“I’ve been walking along the treeline, and nothing’s happened. Besides, we’re in the daylight and I’m with you. I should be fine.”

You are content enough that the half-elf is making a joke. As if you could protect her at all. However, if there were monster nests around, Sanctuary would have probably ceased to exist hundreds of years ago.

“Well, if you say so.”

The two of you walk into the forest for a good five minutes. You find yourselves in a secluded part where the fallen trunks of a few long dead trees make the closest thing to a clearing here. You are surrounded by trees and silence. Not even the birds chirp. It’s like the world forgot about this place.

“This is nice change, I admit”, Emilia says with a tired voice. “As we were travelling here, the forest didn’t suggest it would contain safe, quiet places like this. And all the forests near our home are the homes of monsters and bandits.”

“One would think that Roswaal would do something about that. But then again, I guess I know better.”

You sit down on one of the fallen tree trunks while Emilia leans against it, her eyes closed and taking in the silence.

“Why do you put up with him? He’s using you.” You realize that you have spoken without realizing it. Apparently you have reached that point in your relationship with Emilia in which your brain lets your mouth verbalize some thoughts unimpeded. “Sorry, it just came out. I know that even if you didn’t like him, you need him for the royal candidacy.”

You were a little worried that your verbal jab would bother her, but instead she opens her eyes and sighs.

“Yes, I know he’s using me. And I’m using him. I prefer to interact with people with which I can just be myself, as it is the case with you. But I’d be dead without lord Roswaal’s help. The Witch’s Cult would have gotten me. For that alone I owe him my loyalty, and I guess royalty.”

You chuckle nervously. You can barely believe what you are hearing.

“Emilia, I don’t want to brag or anything, or maybe I do, but Rem and me organized the defense. We were the ones who convinced Crusch’s as well as Hoshin’s armies to rush to Roswaal’s mansion. And even if Roswaal got injured here, it still doesn’t explain why the hell he came to Sanctuary when he knew that the cult would attempt something, after he presented you at the royal summons.”

The half-elf smiles gratefully at you.

“I meant beyond what you have done. Believe me, I have integrated how you defended me. I only meant that I call Roswaal’s mansion my home, and that the other camps wouldn’t have helped you if I were some random half-elf milling about, instead of someone under the care of lord Roswaal.”

You shrug.

“Yeah, you have a point there. Not that I like it.”

Emilia slides her foot back and forth for a while, and you enjoy the silence until she speaks again.

“I met with lord Roswaal a while ago.”

“What? I had asked Ram if I could speak to him, and she told me that he would only see me around midnight.”

“… That would be after I attempt to pass the trials. It seems he wants to speak to you after he learns the result, or maybe so you could tell him.”

You stand up and walk up to her side, so you can stare at Emilia from up close. She smiles, but she lowers her face.

“You will enter the witches’ tomb tonight?”, you ask slowly. “Already?”

“Of course, Subaru. I want to leave this behind as soon as possible. And it’s what Roswaal recommended as well.”

“But you don’t even know if you’re going to pass. And that’s a really dangerous thing, Emilia.”

“Well, you’ll be there, so it should be fine.”

You wince a little as she says this. Emilia means it. Your heart hurts partially because someone you like has managed to care for you this much, but mainly because you know that you can’t help Emilia pass the trials at all. Support won’t be enough.

You put a hand on her bare shoulder.

“Listen, Emilia… If you don’t pass the trials tonight, don’t lose hope, alright? It seems you can try over and over. Even the hardest, most painful thing can be tolerated if you get closer to success each time. And of course I’ll be there for whatever you need.”

She looks up at you with watery eyes and swallows air as if to hold back tears. She sniffles a bit and then smiles as she touches your hand on her shoulder.

“Thank you, Subaru.”

You let her have a moment, but then you ask about what’s been burning on your mind.

“What did Roswaal say, Emilia? How did he justify his actions until this point, or what course of action he suggested for getting out of here in one piece?”

Emilia looks to the side as if putting her thoughts in order.

“First I was shocked by how injured he seemed. I mean, his face didn’t suggest any pain, but I don’t think you could ever tell with our lord. I have never seen him look any other way than like someone who knew what was going to happen, smiling as if could have said for you the sentences that would come out of your mouth.”

“Yeah… That’s terrifying.”

“He was bandaged from the neck down. Most of the bandages were bloody as well, although the blood seemed dry. When I managed to focus on our conversation, Roswaal suggested that my presence in Sanctuary was an opportunity, that by passing the trials not only I would gain the favor of the villagers, and I mean our villagers, but also gain points for my candidacy for the throne.”

You frown and shake your head.

“I’m not surprised that he sees everything from that angle, but still, how is breaking a barrier in a secret village deep into the lord’s territory going to help your candidacy?”

“Apparently Sanctuary is a secret for regular people, and even for some members of the most important households, but not for the higher-ups, and certainly not for the council of elders. Spies everywhere, I guess. So they would know I managed to solve a problem that nobody had for hundreds of years. And they believe me to be related to Satella, so helping a town instead of, I don’t know, drowning it in shadows, might make them lean towards leaving me alone with such accusations.”

“Must be so exhausting constantly having to think in those terms. But then again, I wouldn’t know what to do if I were a royal candidate. What a disaster that would be.”

Emilia nods, then sighs.

“I’m sorry, the meeting ended with Roswaal suggesting that I attempted to pass the trials, or at least the first one, tonight. I was so dazed, as I have been since I woke up from whatever the barrier did to me, that I didn’t think of bringing up anything else, such as the Witch’s Cult assault on the village and my life.”

“It’s alright. I’ll speak with him around midnight, regardless of what happens with your trial. I will force him to explain himself. I haven’t fought so hard to return to your side to let the guy pretend that he didn’t shirk his duties. Roswaal should have been there, fighting alongside us.”

A small tear escapes from her right eye, and she gives a sad smile.

“I’ll try my best, I promise.”

Emilia hugs you tightly. You embrace her as well. A few seconds later, as you feel her heart beating against your chest and her breath warming your neck, she speaks as if she wished she didn’t have to.

“Frederica betrayed us, Subaru.”

You pull away from the hug and look into her eyes, which are now watery.

“… Yeah, what she did was shady as hell. I had been thinking about her words, how she approached you when she gave you that magic crystal. She knew what would happen.”

Emilia closes her eyes tight. It squeezes a tear, which runs down her cheek.

“You grabbed the pendant because you thought it would hurt me, even kill me, and as a result you were sent close enough to the witches’ tomb. I think I would also have wandered in, which would have started the trials, but in your case it should have killed you due to the traps. It’s a complete mystery why it didn’t affect you. Frederica’s negligence almost killed you, Subaru. I don’t think I will be able to forgive her for that.”

“It’s my damn habit of putting myself in danger so others don’t have to suffer. I’m more annoyed because Frederica should have said that if you came you wouldn’t have been able to leave. It means that she intended you to go through the trials, which will fuck with your mind. We are getting used left and right.”

“Mind fuck is an understatement.”

You chuckle softly.

“I hadn’t heard you say that word or a variation in too long.”

“You were the one who taught me it. I was a proper lady when you met me.”

Even though Emilia is joking around, you feel guilty, as if you wiped your ass with a painting.

“… Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine, I’m just messing with you. But Subaru, even though it’s probably not a good idea to bring it up now, you said that you have a habit of putting yourself in danger so others don’t have to suffer. And it’s true, of course. You have done it for me, you intended to do it at the royal summons, and after what you explained of your relationship with Rem, it’s obvious that you want to die for people you care about. You need to value your life more.”

You avoid her gaze. Beyond the fact that you can’t make her understand that you can save people through dying, horribly even, you want to disagree.

“Maybe the value of my life is that I can sacrifice it for the people I love, or even like to a significant extent. Is that a truly a bad thing? I’m okay with it. It’s not like I’m some awesome person that can do great things otherwise, or has some special talents.”

“That’s not true. You have so much potential, Subaru…”

You hold the back of her head to hug her again, and like she was waiting for it, she leans against you and lets out a soft noise of satisfaction, as if she wants nothing else than to stay like this for the rest of the day.

“Love makes people say some wild things”, you reply. “I can do important stuff now, but I remember clearly that for most of my life I couldn’t do shit. I would have lived an unimportant life, probably working at some office or shop, and after I died I would have been forgotten by history. Buried to become one with the dirt. I hold some regrets from who I was before I met all of you, particularly things I never got to say, but right now the fact is that because I sacrificed myself, risked everything, I can hold on to you now, Emilia, and for that I’m as happy as can be.”

Emilia puts her hand on the side of your face and stands on her tiptoes, and before you know it you feel her warm lips on yours. Her wet, hot tongue enters your mouth and licks yours slowly and lovingly, as if you both were lying in bed and holding each other under the covers while draped in darkness. Emilia keeps her eyes open the entire time, staring into your own.

Your mind had gone blank, and when you snap out of it, you feel the blood accumulating in your crotch like a red tinge in your senses, and Emilia’s waist is pressing your hard dick against your abdomen.
You two separate from each other’s lips, and the half-elf exhales a warm sigh. You feel yourself blush profusely, and look away. You would have thought that after the shit you’ve gone through or even done of your own volition, you wouldn’t feel this embarrassment, but you have enough reasons to feel the burn of shame.

With one finger, Emilia moves your head back to look at her. Her face shows a mix of guilt and joy.

“That was on me, Subaru”, she says softly. “My first time, for my knight.”

You swallow, and hope that your dick starts going down soon, even though Emilia keeps leaning her weight against you knowingly. You suppose that in comparison with the prospect of having to pass some trials that nobody has succeeded at for hundreds of years, or else she will get stuck here, Emilia must have been searching for a moment of heaven. But the guilt is already burning in your chest. Emilia’s saliva tastes good, the way a girl you’d take for yourself should, without a hint of snot and blood like back during Emilia’s true first time. You hate yourself for liking it, and you hate that your body reacted without your consent.

The two of you separate, and Emilia turns away from you to hide her burning red face, like the proper lady that she is. You catch a glance at her eyes, which show pools of despair and regret.

Neither of you, or anyone as it seems, really knows what you are doing. Feels right one moment, wrong the next. There are far worse things a person could have done to you than make you feel guilt because your girlfriend is in a coma. You put your hand on Emilia’s upper back, and slide it up until you are touching the warm skin of her nape.

“It’s fine, Emilia. Tell me, what needs to happen now? When are we heading for the trials?”

She looks at you over her shoulder before turning. She seems to understand that you won’t berate her, nor bring up your Rem. She smiles shily, but then her expression darkens and she glances towards the village, even though the dense forest obscures any view of civilization.

“I’m going to do something very uncomfortable and that I’d prefer not to do, but I understand it’s for the best: I’m going to address our villagers. Roswaal suggested it, because they should know and understand the kind of sacrifice I’m making for their sake, as well as for all of us. I will expose myself again to people for whom my very birth was a mistake.”

It only takes recalling the crowd of villagers every time you have faced them for you to get annoyed, but you understand what Emilia won’t bring herself to say.

“If you want to do it as soon as possible, meaning now, let’s go. I’ll stand by your side.”

* * *

You are standing next to Emilia inside the church-like building. It looks older than the surrounding village, yet the masonry is made out of huge stones piled without cement, and cut into complicated shapes without apparent fault. The vaulted ceilings are a thing of beauty, closer to a cathedral’s, and in the large footprint there’s more than enough space to house all of your villagers comfortably. The mayor of Sanctuary, or maybe some of the locals, have prepared makeshift beds as well as some courtains, and a few people of the crowd that has gathered to listen to you are still eating from the bowls they are holding. The children, mothers and the elderly that you had missed when you went down to the village for groceries came here. There are very few able-bodied men, and the most prominent from that group, although he’s not able-minded, is the village chief, who is wearing his wizard costume. No, a different one. Motherfucker must keep a collection of them, and probably no other type of clothing. Why is this man alive?

Emilia and you stand side by side waiting for the people to settle down. You are surprised that the shouts of ‘witch, let’s kill the witch’ haven’t started yet, but you figure that they must feel so out of place and confused by their circumstances that they are taking things as they come. After around half a minute, when there is relative silence, you begin to speak.

“Thank you all for gathering. As you know, we are currently trapped in Sanctuary. We are working on the known solution, which involves passing some witch-created trials, and for that-…”

The village chief puts his hand on his chest, which makes the loose sleeve of his wizardly robe slide down to his elbow.

“I welcome you both to our humble village. I’m the mayor of Sanctuary.”

Your left eye twitches, and you clench your teeth.

“No, you are not! Why are you so resilient!”

The mayor remains surprisingly calm after your outburst.

“If not yet, I will be eventually. We have been stranded in this village for centuries, and nobody tells us when we will be able to leave.”

You take a deep breath, then try to look as professional and reliable as possible. You realize that both you and Emilia have fucked up. You don’t recall any instance in which you haven’t addressed the villagers without Ram being present, so she could threaten to murder whoever got too annoying.

You hold Emilia’s gaze for a moment. She has deflated a bit from her resolve to face the villagers. She must be remembering how terribly they have been treating her all along. Now she must be waiting for you to introduce her properly. You are in no way or form the appropriate person for this task.

You turn to the crowd again and clear your throat.

“Listen, if there’s anything we’ve learned from the cult’s attack on our village back home is that we need to be as clear and truthful as possible, even though it might hurt or cause panic. We are in this predicament together. As it stands, we are trapped in Sanctuary because the locals who hold power want us to break the barrier that has kept them trapped in this isolated forest for hundreds of years. You are all hostages, I’m afraid, although they are going to treat you as kindly as possible otherwise. However, we know the solution to our problem: we need to pass some witch-created trials in a nearby tomb, because that’s what will break the spell holding the barrier.”

The villagers whisper to each other for a while, before a man in his sixties, with a balding head and old-fashioned clothing, steps forward.

“The lord attempted to pass the trials to liberate us, but that damned tomb almost killed him! What would you be able to do when you don’t have remotely as much power as him?”

“I don’t know if you people are aware of this, but the tomb has magical traps set up that trigger if someone who is fully human goes in. Our lord was stupid enough, or possibly brave, to venture into the ruins, because he wanted that hard to free you all. However, our beautiful lady over here,” you extend your arm towards Emilia, who holds her hands in front of her waist and bows slightly, “is half-human as you all are aware. She’s Emilia, our lady and royal candidate for the throne of Lugunica. She will face the trials so all of us can be liberated.”

The old man eyes the half-elf with suspicion and fear, as if at any moment she would decide to transform him into a toad.

“Oh, great! So not only are we trapped here, but also at risk of being subjected to whatever tyranny this young demon-worshipper imposes upon us!”

Your nostrils widen. Here we go. You aren’t sure how to maneuver through these people’s prejudices, and you can’t do what you would want to: walk up to every one of them and clock them as hard as Emilia did to you that one time you lost your legs.

“If you think she’d do something like that, then why the hell are you standing around calmly?”

“We are just scared!”, a woman holding a baby shouts from the back. “I was there, in the village’s plaza, when the witch walked up to that horrible cultist woman and killed her with ice magic. She could kill us all whenever she wanted!”

“And whenever you wanted you could strangle your baby, and that creature couldn’t do anything to defend itself. Isn’t that right? Then why don’t you do it? Same reason that Emilia doesn’t attack any of you.”

The baby’s mother looks down to her child, as it innocently blows a spit bubble. His eyes don’t know enough to be afraid of someone like you.

“Because… because we’re good people!”

“No. You’re not.”

You feel someone touching you in the forearm, and you realize it’s Emilia. She has walked up to you and looks worried, although understanding, as if she knows you are trying to defend her and yet will end up causing more trouble for her. You look at the crowd again.

“Emilia wants me to stop talking, but I can’t. This lady here has done nothing wrong to you all. She was born a silver-haired half-elf, and that’s all any of you seem to need to despise her for stuff Emilia has nothing to do with, and that happened hundreds of years ago. She’s as sweet, and kind, and lovely as they come, and yet she’s afraid of leaving her home because any of you might attack her.”

The village chief points at Emilia with a trembling hand, although his face evidences that at the moment he fears her more than hates her.

“Be.. because she’s a witch!”

Emilia steps towards the crowd, and although she straightens her back, the anxiety glistens in her eyes.

“I can do magic, it’s true. I’m a spirits user. But I would only use it to help all of us”, she says softly.

The village chief barely glances at her, as if holding her gaze would contaminate him.

“Shut it, demon.”

“No, I won’t shut it. Please, just listen to me. I only want to help you-“

“I said shut it!”, the village chief barks loudly.

Emilia’s eyes then widen, and she ever so slightly shakes her head. You know that look.

You lower your head and scowl at the village chief, while you concentrate your anger on your clenched fists. Is there a point in being polite with these people, with most of them anyway? Maybe there are a few decent ones, or maybe even most of them, but they stay quiet. They allow the others to keep spouting garbage, and somehow they keep this lunatic in charge of them. Roswaal should tear their village down and build a new one with entirely different people.

Your voice comes out so angry that it disturbs you.

“You are misunderstanding both your position as well as who you are speaking to that way. Lady Emilia is a candidate for the throne of this kingdom, and you are a worthless lunatic who believes himself to be a wizard because he dresses with a ridiculous costume. You have berated an innocent that in a second could push an ice shard through your rotten brain, but she doesn’t do it because she’s too good-natured for that, and will just take the abuse. Rest assured, if I had her power I would cull your numbers so you understood your place.”

The whole room is silent. Emilia’s eyes widen as she tries not to look at you, while the chief just furrows his brows and stares at you in an attempt to intimidate you. It doesn’t work.

“You dare threaten me with death?”

“I’m not threatening, I’m promising. You will respect lady Emilia, not only because she’s the lady of our house, but because she’s the only one who can move a finger to pass the trials and risk her health, or her sanity, or whatever it implies for her to risk, so you ungrateful scum will be able to return home. Did my words pass through your rotten brain?”

The village chief shakes with anger. The rest of the crowd stands around aghast, not even whispering to whoever is close.

“You fool, I’ve lived long before you were even conceived. I have no doubt in my mind that you are vastly underestimating my capabilities.”

“Then go to the witches’ tomb and try to pass the trials yourself. The local head of security will bother himself picking up your bloody remains to feed the pigs.”

“I’ll do it, and you will do nothing to stop me, because if you try, I will kill you. Do I make myself clear?”

You stare at the chief, your face twisting into a cold malicious grin.

Emilia lets out a noise of surprise and puts a hand on your shoulder.

“Please, Subaru!”, she turns to the crowd. “No, if any of you attempts to pass the trials, you will die! The traps will kill you! I’m the only one who can risk it, and I will! And if I fail, I will try again and again until the barrier is broken. Please, nobody needs to get hurt.”

The crowd stays silent, but the tension can be cut with a knife. Then a woman in her early twenties raises her hand timidly while looking at Emilia with caution.

“Lady witch, why would you want to help us? The people in the village have been terrible to you.”

Emilia lowers her head. Everybody in the crowd must be able to tell how anxious and timid the half-elf is whenever she faces them, and yet they keep harassing her. You are having trouble staying silent as well as controlling your breathing.

“Ever since I remember,” Emilia begins with a quiet voice, “I have only wanted to live in peace. I wanted to get along with everybody, to meet interesting people and have a good time with them. Eventually I wished to get married and have a family of my own. Yet I feared that my children would face what I’ve had to go through. I wouldn’t want that suffering and fear on anybody. I can’t change how you think about me, I’m beginning to understand, so maybe I shouldn’t care, and yet I think that behind the hate and fear of some of you, there are others who don’t understand any of this either, who just want to return home and live in peace as well.”

There’s a silence after her words, followed by some whispers. The young woman who questioned Emilia walks towards her cautiously. She’s short and a bit plump, her blonde hair tied into a pony tail. She looks like the kind of girl you’d see at a market, selling vegetables.

“You’re right about some of us. I’m sorry for ever hating you. We were just confused and angry. We want to return home as well.”

You find yourself smiling at the girl’s words. The atmosphere has improved already, most people seem to be agreeing with her.

Emilia holds her hands in front of her waist again, and bows towards the girl.

“I will face the trials. As soon as I succeed, we can all leave Sanctuary and return to our homes. Please, lend me your support.”

The girl nods, then goes as far as reaching for Emilia’s hands and holding them in hers. Her eyes are watering while she stares pleadingly at the half-elf.

“My brother has stayed behind at the village. I know we can’t do anything to leave if the locals won’t let us. Please fight for us, lady Emilia, even if we don’t deserve it. I will pray for your success.”

Emilia swallows, and blinks to dry her eyes. The girl stops holding the half-elf’s hand, and walks back slowly towards her place in the crowd. Emilia sniffs, then turns to address the rest of the group.

“I will do everything in my power to ensure our safe departure from this place, and back to our homes. I will attempt the trial this very night.”

The mood of the crowd has improved. A few isolated voices thank Emilia, even though they address her as witch.

Emilia has lowered her head, and she looks as if she will tear up the moment she opens her mouth. You step forward, clear you throat and address the crowd while trying to avoid looking at the village chief.

“Any questions before we leave?”

Your statement is met by silence, you don’t know if because nobody has anything to say or because they hate your guts. The villagers slowly begin to melt away. However, after most of them have left, the village chief is still standing there glaring at you as if he would lunge for your neck if he could get away with.

“I am not going to forget your malicious and disrespectful words towards my being”, he says with a raspy voice. “The gods won’t condone such affront.”

You walk up to him to speak in a low voice right to his face. You hope the way you are holding his gaze clarifies how much you wish you’d meet alone in some secluded place, and not precisely for sex.

“You don’t understand, chief. I’m the one who has a grudge on you.”

He seems taken aback by your words, probably expecting you to be cowed by whatever authority he believes he has. You turn your back on him and head towards Emilia. You hear this idiot’s voice behind you.

“Remember what I said! None of you are safe! The gods will protect me from your malice!”

You wave him off without turning around, then put your hand on Emilia’s shoulder.

“Let’s get out of here. A bit of fresh air will do us good.”

You both step out of the village, and after walking aimlessly down the road for a while, you decide to break the silence.

“That could have gone much worse. At least they got the message that you would be the one to free them from this situation.”

She smiles at your remark, but it quickly fades and is replaced by a worried look.

“Subaru, you scared me back there. I don’t think I have ever seen you so angry.”

You don’t like one bit how Emilia is looking at you, as if you have done something wrong and need to be handled with gloves. She’s too good-natured, which is part of the problem for you. Rem would have gotten her flail from her bullshit magical pocket and threatened the bastards in the crowd with more practical ferocity. Your throat closes, and you want to be alone. As you have faced often since your beloved demon servant fell to that curse, you can only keep walking when your brain allows you to forget for a while that you have lost the most important person in your life.

You take a deep breath and smile at Emilia.

“We needed a bit of a good cop, bad cop routine. And it worked, I think. They got the message. Now they’ll know who to thank when you lift the barrier.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard that word, ‘cop’, but I think I understand. Still, did you mean that about culling their numbers so they would understand their place…?”

You want to ease her concern, suggest that you were only riling them up so they would be mad at you instead of her, that you wouldn’t kill anyone, but you prefer to be honest.

“… I don’t know, Emilia. It just came out. You don’t understand how angry it makes me when they mistreat you like that. I see red. I want to protect you, to make sure you are safe, that you can get to feel happy and free, but those people keep making everything worse. They are like a bunch of wild children.”

“You don’t need to keep protecting me. I want to protect you…!”

“Well, I appreciate that. It’s not as if I wouldn’t need it, and you are far more useful when it comes to protecting people than me. I mostly just have my relentless determination to push myself to the brink for the people I care about.”

She hugs you tightly. You feel her warmth and her breathing.

“You can absolutely trust me on that one, I love you. I really do.”

That makes you blush a bit, and the way she washes over you with her sincerity lessens the remains of the anger that were tingling on your hands.

“Emi, speaking of protecting people as well as of hindrances, where the fuck is Puck? I haven’t seen him ever since we left for Sanctuary.”

Emilia goes silent as if she had been dreading anyone bringing it up.

“I have no idea”, she says with a thin voice. “I have called out to him, and he usually ends up appearing. But he’s gone.”

You put your hands on her shoulders to separate her a bit, because you want to look at her worried face.

“Has this happened before?”

She nods slowly.

“Yes, once. Back when we were traveling through a forest, a few years ago. He disappeared during the night, shortly after he told me we would speak in a while, and didn’t show up for days. It was really scary… I thought something bad had happened to him.”

“Well, what explanation did he give?”

She gives you a timid smile.

“None… Which is why I’m worried about him now. Is he playing a joke on me? Has he gotten himself into trouble?”

You shake your head, and thinking about how much Puck has annoyed you ever since you met him, even involuntarily through the way he can’t care properly for how much human beings hurt, makes you want to insult the cunt out loud.

“Emilia… I don’t want to say this to you, given that you have been close to Puck for many years, ever since you were a child, and that he’s called himself your adoptive father. I don’t want to dredge up whatever horrible stuff happened in your childhood. But the fact is that Puck has the unique talent to not be there to protect you whenever you need it the most, whether or not he has a convenient excuse.”

She looks away from you. It seems she doesn’t want to say anything bad about the little cunt.

“We have a contract. He promised me he would always be there for me.”

You sigh. You pat her head gently.

“Contracts can be broken, and promises can be forgotten. I don’t know what Puck’s deal is this time, but I do know that this world is shit. Every world is shit, as far as I can tell. You need to be strong.”

She nods.

“I will, then.”

You kiss her forehead, then hold her head against your cheek for a moment.

“We better rest a bit, particularly yourself, before we head for the witches’ tomb. I can’t even anticipate what’s going to happen in that bleak ruin.”

---

Note from December of 2020:

In the original the villagers are far more willing to accept Emilia at this point, because the protagonist had managed to repeat the Witch’s Cult’s assault until nobody died (in his second run, actually). But in this strange, AI-fueled retelling, they have the justification to hold on to a permanent grudge on the sweet gal, because plenty of people did get killed. I went into the scene not having any plan for it, not even if the villagers would end up accepting her as their lady and savior, and the unexpected result is one of the joys of writing this stuff.

Also, I have mentioned before, that idiotic village chief was made up entirely by the AI many, many parts ago. I thought he would be some comic relief, but the hate the protagonist has developed towards the crazy bastard is as real as can be.

This entry covers part of the tenth volume of the original “Re:Zero” novels.

In the previous entry we met tigerman himself, strongest man in the damn world. We also came across Ram, who is as dutiful and competent as she’s a complete bitch. She also mentions that Emilia is trapped in Sanctuary or something.

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 two-story house that is the closest thing to a normal village abode in Sanctuary, of those you’ve seen so far anyway, belongs to someone named Ryuzu. This Ryuzu person, however, hasn’t made an appearance yet. You all sit around a wooden table in a cozy living room where you can smell the dried meats and hanging vegetables from the kitchen next door. Ram, dutiful servant that she is even away from home, has prepared tea for everybody. Emilia, sitting next to you, looks more worried than anyone, but nobody could blame her when she’s been told that she’s trapped in the village.

Ram finally sits down, takes a sip of her tea and goes straight into the main issue.

“The magical barrier set up hundreds of years ago prevents half-humans from leaving. I suppose that the original intent was to protect people with mixed blood from persecution, particularly during those times in the past when wars were waged between humans and demi-humans. However, the barrier has never been lifted, and as a result generations of half-beasts and half-humans of other types have been born and have died inside Sanctuary without ever seeing the outside world. As things stand now, lady Emilia, you cannot leave either.”

The half-elf stares at Ram in dismay, failing to find any words. You rub your eyes.

“You know, Ram, although I’m about to reprimand you, I understand that this is Roswaal’s doing. However, you are his representative at the moment, so I’ll say it to you: you should have told the other members of the household, particularly Emilia, that if she came to this secret town she wouldn’t be able to leave it.”

Ram glares at you. She doesn’t need to repeat another variety of ‘I’ll do whatever I want whenever I want’ for you to understand her expression. However, you doubt she could deny your point.

“For lady Emilia to leave,” Ram goes on with a steely voice, this time looking at the half-elf, “the barrier will need to be lifted. There seems to be a single way of achieving that: passing the trials set up at the witches’ tomb.”

You turn your head towards Garfiel. The guy is snacking on some homemade cookies, and he either doesn’t seem to notice the amount of crumbs that have fallen on his lap, or he doesn’t care. The punk seems completely unconcerned about this barrier business, but you figure that he doesn’t know anything else than Sanctuary. The outside world might as well be a myth for him.

“Garfiel, you mentioning this witches’ tomb was one of the first things you said to me, right before you hurled me through the air proficiently enough to break world records. How does that tomb relate to witches exactly, and what witches are we talking about?”

“Them witches, everybody knows those! Witches of old, most powerful people before that Witch of Envy swallowed half of the world! It’s a tomb because people were buried there, it’s the witches’ tomb because them witches were buried there.”

“Are you telling me that Satella herself is buried in Sanctuary, in that very same tomb I entered?”, you ask with a thin voice.

Garfiel shoots you a look as if he wants to say something to you but he can’t, maybe because of your company.

“What are you talking about, Barusu?”, Ram says irritated, as if you are spouting nonsense again. “You cannot have entered the witches’ tomb, because otherwise you wouldn’t have survived the magical traps.”

Before you can answer, Garfiel clicks his tongue.

“Don’t want to correct ya of all people, Ram. Hurts my heart. But it just happens that this bastard entered that damn tomb. I saw him leavin’ it in one piece, before I grabbed him and tossed him.”

You aren’t used to that look of uncertainty in Ram’s face, nor do you like it. Your current circumstances seem more grim if Ram wavers. Both Ram and Garfiel are staring at you as if you should explain yourself.

“I don’t know what you expect me to tell you”, you say, and shrug. “I saw some ruins, I ventured into them, I fell unconscious in some chamber inside, and then I came back out.”

Ram frowns as she considers your words seriously for once.

“Why did you faint?”

“Dunno. I just suddenly felt like I was going to pass out, and I barely avoided hitting my head.”

Garfiel is shaking his head while snarling.

“Lyin’ bastard. I already told, all ya noble-born are a bunch of liars. Ya ain’t tellin’ about what ya saw between goin’ to sleep an’ wakin’ up.”

“Subaru isn’t noble-born, I assure you”, Ram says.

“Haah?”, Garfiel answers, taken aback.

“Regardless of my condition of birth,” you say, “please let’s go back to the suggestion that I’m withholding some information. I passed out and I don’t remember a single thing. It wasn’t like dreaming, that when you wake up and you get the sense that you’ve spent hours imagining some crazy shit. There was no sense that any time had passed. It was like waking up from an operation. I truly don’t remember shit, if anything happened at all.”

You would have expected Garfiel to accuse you again, but he holds your gaze almost with sympathy.

“Yer sure? I mean, it’s possible yer blockin’ it out or somethin’.”

“What would I be blocking? Some nightmare?”

“That chamber inside, the one with the pillars of light, that fancy floor an’ all, is where the trials take place. You were there, you fell asleep, and then the trial must have happened. But I can see in yer eyes you ain’t lyin’. If you went through the trial, it would show on yer face. I don’t think ya half-pint would keep that all inside.”

“It really doesn’t seem like Subaru, you know?”, Otto says. He sounds shy about contributing to the conversation. “I can’t see him keeping quiet about something like this, if it happened.”

“Shut it, ya peddler”, Garfiel says casually, then looks at you again. “Ya didn’t go through the trial, so somethin’ else must have happened. Somethin’ new. No clue what. And them traps were set up by number one witch herself, lady of Sanctuary. Dunno how you avoided gettin’ torn to pieces. Don’t like it one bit.”

You drink some more of your tea if only because it will give you a few seconds to think. Your head is already spinning, even though your group has barely begun to unravel this situation.

“Can any of you clarify for me, please, if the witches’ tomb truly holds the remains of the witches associated with the Apocalypse that everyone keeps referring to? And if so, how many of those witches?”

Garfiel shrugs dismissively.

“Them great witches were mentioned a lot in those fairy tales, and people here believe that all of them are buried in that tomb, but who knows? The trials are real though, and they were setup by the Witch of Greed, so Echidna is for sure restin’ there, if she’s even restin’ at all. Wouldn’t think so for what I’ve heard of the lady. About them other Witches of Sin, who knows, who cares.”

“And what do you know about the Witch of Envy, Garfiel? You reckon she might be actually rotting in that tomb?”

He frowns at you, but he chews and swallows part of a cookie before answering.

“Didn’t I say that I don’t care? It’s folk tales, lotsa stupid bedtime stories that mostly gran told us to scare us children into bein’ good. Truth is almost never as scary as people think, an’ those stories are ridiculous.”

Ram sighs deeply and speaks with a tone that suggests she doesn’t want to bother uttering the words.

“The Mathers family has been tending to Sanctuary for many generations, as you all should be well aware of. The witches’ tomb does indeed hold the remains of all the Witches of Sin. So Greed, Pride, Wrath, Gluttony, Sloth, Lust and, yes, even Envy herself, who drowned all the others.”

Even though you try to contain a shiver, you still tremble. For some reason, although facing Satella in the black space between your lives doesn’t bother you any longer, knowing that the remains of her body, and maybe even her restless spirit itself, are hanging out so close to your current location makes you want to jump on Patrasche’s back and ride away from here as fast as possible.

“Beatrice told me that those witches were too powerful even for death, and now they are all trapped in the same place, with the one who murdered the others no less. I don’t think I would wish such a fate on anybody.”

“Are you a fan of the witches of old, Barusu?”, Ram asks with a hint of disdain.

As you hold her red-eyed gaze, you want to make some joke to alleviate the mood, but you remember that being a fan of witches has caused terrible troubles in this world, and is usually incarnated in the Witch’s Cult’s attempts to return Satella to life. You clear your throat.

“I know that the Witch of Envy is as troublesome as they come, with the whole dissolving half of the world inside of her and all. I can’t say anything about the others. Satella killed them, so maybe they don’t like the looped witch any more than we do.”

Ram arches her eyebrows and looks away.

“I don’t think it matters whether they like her or not. They’re all stuck in her company, forever.”

You place a hand on your chin and sigh before speaking again.

“It doesn’t make any sense. Even if the Witch of Envy managed to drown the rest of the other witches, how did she drown herself as well?”

Garfiel laughs, then slaps the table next to his plate of cookies.

“Damn half-pint, didn’t ya even pay attention to the fairy tales? That old Satella got sealed by some group of heroes or another. The Five Corcomisants of Tullidor joined forces to vanquish evil and all. Damn old bitch didn’t drown herself! Foolish thing to say.”

“Can’t say I’ve paid much attention to fairy tales, nor to this group of Five Corcomisants of Tullidor or whatever you just said.”

“Nobody has heard of such a group, Barusu”, Ram says, then sighs. “I suggest you don’t listen closely to Garfiel’s words.”

“Hey now!”, Garfiel complains with some embarrassment, particularly you guess because it came from Ram. “Ya gotta listen if ya wanna learn somethin’! Wouldn’t spout stuff for no reason. We are all tryna figure things out here.”

“I’m sure. But we’re also wasting our energies discussing the background of the tomb, so can we please stop this topic?”

You nod silently. You don’t like that the three of you are monopolizing the conversation. When you look around, your gaze first falls on Otto, who looks back concerned. Even though Emilia healed his facial bruises, as well as the pain in your ribcage for that matter, his posture suggests he wants to be as small as possible so people, particularly one violent hick, won’t notice he’s there. When you look at Emilia, your blood goes cold. The half-elf is hunched over with her gaze fixed on the table. No, way beyond, because she isn’t focusing her eyes. She has paled, and her mouth has frozen depicting her desolation. The newly learned fact that she won’t be able to leave this secret town until these trials have passed must have sunk in, and you can’t even pretend that you understand how she’s feeling, because you aren’t half-human. Nothing would stop you, you guess, from leaving Sanctuary and returning to the mansion. But the half-elf needs a hundreds of years old barrier to be lifted.

“H-Hey,” you begin, and although you had been staring at Emilia without her noticing, you turn towards Garfiel. “Has anyone lifted the barrier in these last four hundred years or so?”

“Haah!? Didn’t ya see yer princess friend fall asleep for a while because she passed through the barrier? It’s there for sure! It was already protectin’ Sanctuary as far back as I can remember.”

Ram closes her eyes for a moment, then she addresses you with a voice drained of emotion.

“It’s not a physical barrier, Barusu. It cannot be forced open, nor literally grabbed and lifted so someone can pass under it. Lifting the barrier that prevents half-humans from leaving Sanctuary means breaking the spell, so making the barrier disappear. It has never been achieved.”

“One of the toughest jobs there must be, I reckon”, Garfiel adds solemnly. “Barrier was made by the lady herself, who knew everythin’. Every damn fact of the world, Echidna knew. Could tell you where to find some vossalios’ nest and what color were the eggs safe to eat. She told damn kings and queens whether they were actin’ like fools an’ all, even though Echidna wasn’t noble-born herself. Musta been some strikin’ lady.”

Ram sighs, then lowers her head.

“It seems she spent her last years researching how to live forever. In a way, she succeeded.”

“Haah!? Didn’t live forever at all, our lady!”, Garfiel says, both confused and amused. “She must be a skeleton now. Not a lotta life in some buried bones.”

Ram closes her eyes, holds her breath and clenches her teeth behind her tightened lips.

You had intended to rely on the past experiences of people who had dealt with lifting the barrier before, which must have happened quite a few times in four hundred years. However, the situation feels more grim now. Emilia has barely moved, and it seems that she hasn’t looked up once. It reminds you of yourself, but from when? You breath thickens as you realize it. You must have looked like that many lifetimes ago, back in your old world, when you were expected to return to your regular life, attending your high school classes, even though you couldn’t find the strength to even leave your bedroom most of the days. It’s the impossible weight of having to succeed at a task for which you were born to fail.

You hear a door closing somewhere else in the house, and you realize that someone must have entered through a back door. Ram stands up calmly and passes you by to stand in front of the teapot, which is still steaming on the other, smaller table where she had left it.

“Must be gran”, Garfiel says, and turns his head towards the kitchen.

The supposed grandmother appears in the doorway. It’s a girl of around Petra’s size, and she doesn’t look older than twelve as well. She’s holding a cane-looking staff almost as tall as herself. She has long, straight, pale red hair that curves upwards at its tips. She’s wearing a ship grey, worn coat that covers most of her mouth. Her long, pointy ears are striking, much more pronounced than Emilia’s, but most importantly, this is the girl who had stared at you back at the clearing, when something, maybe Frederica’s magic crystal, teletransported you there.

Is this elf person truly the same girl you saw back then? The eyes of this elf seem intelligent, wise even, while those of the elf you chased had looked as if she hosted the soul of a deer. And also, she’s way too young to be anybody’s grandmother.

“Good day to you all”, she says.

Her voice had sounded kind and welcoming but somewhat tired, like an old person who has been taking care of her grandchildren even though she should have gone to take a nap by now.

Garfiel finishes swallowing the rest of another cookie. He lifts the plate towards the elf.

“Ya outdid yerself with these ones, gran! Love the new recipe.”

The corners of the elf’s smile peek out from under the neck of her coat. She sits carefully on the empty chair at the head of the table.

“I am glad. I will make lots of them. But you didn’t offer any to our guests, did you, Young Garf? They must have been hungry after their trip.”

Garfiel puts the plate down, then shifts his own weight on his chair. He looks apologetic.

“Yeah, forgot about that… But they ain’t guests, because they weren’t invited! Buncha weirdoes! Don’t have any problem with the shy princess and all, but that one with the evil eyes gives me the creeps.”

“Oh dear, you’re being rude again.”

Now both of the elf’s cheeks are smiling as she turns to face her guests. Before she speaks, though, you lean towards the plate of cookies and grab one. Garfiel is startled for a moment because your hand appeared in front of him.

“I guess I’ll take a couple of them”, you say. “And me being so evil and all, I don’t even have to ask.”

The elf places her hands over the top of her cane and smiles as she looks at the three new people.

“I assure you, you are more than welcome in Sanctuary. You have come to help.”

You sink your teeth into the cookie and chew slowly, then swallow. After all the bullshit you’ve gone through, this cinnamon flavored, homemade cookie tastes like heaven.

“I don’t know you at all, Garfiel’s grandmother, but you must have truly outdone yourself with these cookies. They taste amazing.”

“They’re nothing special, I’m afraid.” She says. “You must have special taste, dear.”

You point at her with the hand that holds what’s left of your cookie.

“More importantly, though, haven’t we seen each other bef-…?”

Something burns your cheek. It almost makes you jump from your seat. You lean away from whatever burned you, and you find yourself staring at Ram’s unconcerned eyes looking down at you. She’s holding a steaming teacup as if offering it to you, even though you have an empty one on the table.

“Ram, what the hell!?”

She leaves the teacup next to the empty one, and pushes the previous one a bit.

“Some more tea will go well with the cookie you stole.” She leans into your ear, and her whisper alone makes you shiver before you understand her words. “Refrain from making unnecessary comments.”

Ram then leaves the teapot back on the other table, and sits gracefully at her chair while folding the skirt of her servant outfit.

You want to stare at the senior servant, but you realize she’s not going to clarify her words. Why did she suddenly give you an impossible task?

This young grandma looks at both of you, but seems to decide that she shouldn’t comment on what just happened.

“Let me introduce myself. I’m Ryuzu Bilma, something like the mayor of our little community. Will you tell me your names?”

Otto clears his throat and speaks way too loudly.

“W-Well, I’m someone unimportant, and who has nothing to do with the comings and goings of this place, but my name is Otto Suwen! I’m a completely harmless merchant, I assure you.”

“Good to know, Young Otto. We are always in need of goods. And you over there?”

“I’m Natsuki Subaru, I can… Uh, I’m not really good with social situations, nor do I have any particular skills, but I can travel through dimensions, save people with some heroics, and stuff like that.” This Ryuzu elf seems amused. For some reason, you continue. “I’m an honorary knight, a wanderer without a purpose, a flirter without much success and…” You look at Ram, who is trying to murder you with her gaze. “…and nothing more.”

Ryuzu Bilma nods agreeably.

“Huh! That’s a rare ability you have there, Young Su. Most humans can’t just u-turn like that without preparation.”

You shrug, trying not to look as uncomfortable as you feel.

“It’s nothing really.”

Ryuzu turns her head to address Emilia, but the full elf ends up arching her brows.

“Are you okay, my dear? You look pale as a ghost. Are you troubled because of the barrier?”

Emilia tries to correct her posture, although everybody must realize how uncomfortable she feels. The half-elf combs her long, silver hair with her hand and forces herself to smile at the elf mayor.

“Ah… Well, to be honest, I’m a little afraid of the barrier. I’m trying to process the news that it has trapped me in your village.”

“I understand. We have brought it up with Young Ros over the years, that it was time for the barrier to be lifted, but the world always produces troubles more pressing than solving a situation that has remained frozen for hundreds of years. It’s understandable. However, now that Young Ros visited us again, and that miss Ram brought over plenty of villagers who would want to return to their homes, we finally had an opportunity to apply some pressure. Suddenly all you three have joined us as well, and lady Emilia is qualified to pass the trials herself. The stars are finally smiling at us.”

Emilia’s expression darkens at that idea.

“But… what if I fail your trials? What then?”

“Well, you wouldn’t be the first. But that means you would remain trapped here for the rest of your life.”

A silence falls over the room as all eyes turn to regard the mayor of Sanctuary.

“Isn’t there any other way?”, Emilia asks with a thin voice.

“Not that I’m aware of. But don’t worry! We’re all behind you, and we’ll be supporting you through this ordeal. You’ll have all the resources of Sanctuary at your disposal.”

Although Emilia’s distress is making it hard for you to think of anything else, this situation doesn’t sit well with you.

“You said apply some pressure. What do you mean? What do the villagers that Ram brought over have to do with anything? They aren’t half-beasts, or half-human, or whatever. They should be able to pass through the barrier and return to their lives. Roswaal as well. Being such a powerful wizard as he’s supposed to be, he probably could just have flown out of here before Ram even came to his rescue, or we did for that matter.”

“That clown bastard came in alone first”, Garfiel says with a voice that suggests that thinking about the lord annoys him. “We asked him again, that people wanted to leave, that it wasn’t fair. Same old shit. Young people ’round here want to see the wide world, don’t know what to tell ya. Ain’t fair and all. This time the clown decided to stick around, even though it didn’t seem to me he was doin’ anything. Other than schemin’, I reckon. That’s all that damn clown does. Then his hot as hell senior servant came in to rescue the clown, and she had brought over a good bunch of small fries, lightweight full humans, because they were afraid of some cult outside or some shit. Guess there are the tides of fumanbos to account for, roamin’ the wastes and all. Makin’ a mess of the place, shittin’ every damn where. Anyways, so them villagers, the fully human I mean, were here, and we could tell the clown, we figured, or gran did mostly, hey, ya damn clown, how ’bout ye finally do somethin’ to lift this barrier of ours. Ya know, that damn thing the bastard and his clown ancestors had heard over an’ over. Then the schemin’ bastard said, ‘well, sure’. Figure he had somethin’ to prove to those small-timer subjects of his. Lord has responsibilities or somethin’, he said. I don’t listen to that clown’s words too much, makes my head hurt an’ all. So we gathered there at night in front of the witches’ tomb, all ceremonial like, and bastard goes in and we heard the noises of them traps triggerin’. I had heard them before when some fools wanted to loot the dirt inside that tomb, but this time I had thought that the damn clown, being so powerful an’ all, well, he would have been able to stop them from firin’ or somethin’. But he didn’t, couldn’t or whatever. To the clown’s credit, he did drag himself out, even though he looked slashed all over as if he had kicked a bambolabe while it was hibernatin’. Damn fool!” He laughs heartily, but a mere look at Ram’s cold scorn makes him stop himself so quickly that he almost coughs. He clears his throat. “Anyway, he’s been restin’ at one of gran’s places ever since, and we thought, damn, it’s all meat for the rodamunos now! But then ya bunch of half-pints, and the hot princess, who is royalty an’ all, came in, so we can do somethin’ more about this barrier business, can’t we? I reckon that’s the case.”

“Yes, indeed”, Ryuzu says.

You rest your elbows on the table and hide your face with your hands. When you have managed to coalesce this punk’s words into something resembling information, you take a deep breath and look at Ryuzu.

“What would happen if we gathered the villagers and walked them out of your Sanctuary?”

Ryuzu, whose face hasn’t shown anything else than calmness, seemed about to answer when Garfiel raises his hand to stop her.

“Let me, gran. What would happen, half-pint, is that I would stand there in front of the barrier and I would grab all of ya and push ya back, or maybe even grab ya and toss ya so ya land on some pigsty. Know what I mean? Ya want yer people to leave now? Then either ya lift the barrier or ya kill me. And if yer thinkin’ of killin’ the beast, I’ll tell ya that nobody has managed to do that, not once.”

That sentence would have held some weight if you had said it. Although you frown in disbelief at the punk, he must be seriously strong, maybe the strongest in the world as he said, if Roswaal, supposedly the most powerful magician in the kingdom, can’t force Garfiel to stand aside as every outsider leaves. You have to admit, you are a little afraid of him.

“You put so much faith in your abilities, yet you’re stuck here in Sanctuary acting as security? Can’t you pass the trials yourself?”

Garfiel’s mood sours, and he glares at you as if you are picking on a wound of his.

“I ain’t stuck here, half-pint. I do this because I wanted to. My reasons are maybe not the cleverest ones, but it’s what’s right.”

This fucking hick is responsible for your current troubles, or at least partially so. And Emilia’s distress has made you despise this village already.

“Right? All I hear from you is a bunch of mindless babble about strength and being the best.”

“It’s maybe all I have, half-pint. If I’m strong, it means I’m good at somethin’. It’s who I am.”

“But are you content with being stuck guarding the prettiest invisible door in the world with no chance to go out there and prove yourself?”

“Of course! Why wouldn’t I want to guard the beauty of ma’ybara? If she sets me apart from others, then it’s a great honor.”

You shake your head. After you take a deep breath, you look at Ram, who now glares at you as if to remind you that you are making plenty of unnecessary comments.

“Ram, have we seriously met with the very people who are blackmailing us into remaining in Sanctuary? Could you, I don’t know, have given me a heads-up or something?”

“I didn’t think it was necessary, I thought you had figured it out for yourself. However, I keep making the mistake of believing you hold some intellectual capabilities.”

“Please, Young Su, if you will allow me”, Ryuzu says with a conciliatory tone. “You are in trouble, and so are we. You can help. We are desperate to solve this quandary, we have been for a long time. We are well aware that if you all left back to your lives, Sanctuary would remain as it always has, maybe for another four hundred years. We have a good chance of breaking the barrier once and for all.”

Otto raises his index finger, and clears his throat.

“Wait a second. I don’t want to draw the ire of such a strong man by making a bold suggestion, but the idea that came into my mind doesn’t sound half bad. If only half-humans are forbidden from passing through the barrier, and they can physically pass, because lady Emilia did, why not use our full human bodies to carry you out of Sanctuary?”

“I… I actually think that might work”, Emilia says, perking up a little. “We would have no issues carrying any of you out.”

Garfiel shakes his head and sucks air through his predatory teeth.

“‘Fraid not. Good idea though, particularly for a follower, but the old witch already thought of it. I told ya she knows everythin’ in the world. Even what buttons to push for the puzzle at the palace of Gromblelidan. The barrier repeals half-human souls. If ya carried us out, our souls would get sucked out and maybe keep flyin’ or somethin’, and you’d be carryin’ empty shells. They would keep breathin’, but ya can’t go through life when yer just a husk. Ain’t no fun in it.” Garfiel crosses his arms, and lowers his head. “This damn barrier business… I wish it was a huge wall, stone-like, that went up straight into the heavens. Them villagers wouldn’t see a path going out, so they wouldn’t dream of leavin’. But there’s lots of noble-born and wombalimbos to gape at out here I guess.”

Emilia rubs her eyes slowly while a silence falls over the room. She then opens her tired eyes to stare at Ryuzu.

“What do the trials consist of?”

“Our lady of Sanctuary wishes to peer into the contestant’s past, present and future”, she says with a weighty tone. “Her woven dreams force you to face them.”

“That’s… vague,” you say.

Emilia has shrunk as if she had gone to the hospital for a headache only to discover she has a brain tumor. Garfiel has hunched over, and is scratching absent-mindedly the leathery skin of the horrible scar between his eyebrows. He genuinely seems to pity the half-elf.

“Wouldn’t wanna be in yer shoes, princess, let me tell ya…”, he says quietly. “The trials are impossible to pass. Echidna was one devious bitch. Her dream forces ya to face the past, an’ against the past ya cannot win. Nobody can. Ya better get comfortable in our little town, ’cause ya ain’t gettin’ out any time soon.”

The meeting ends shortly after, and Ryuzu announces that she will gather a few local cooks to prepare a meal for you that will, you guess, offset being blackmailed into staying in Hick Town. Ram is about to accompany Ryuzu and help, maybe because the senior servant just can’t break character, but after you get out of the two-story house and everybody is scattering, you manage to pull Ram her aside and use the cover of a big tree to talk in a semblance of privacy.

“Ram, is our lord unconscious?”

“I thought you would have wanted to brag about your deeds, as well as explain how you managed to score points for two opposite camps through your operation. Roswaal is awake. I will ask him if he wants to see you, and I will inform you of his response.”

With that, Ram turns on her heel and follows the small, elf leader of Sanctuary. You are left alone with your thoughts under the big tree. After a few seconds you resolve to approach Garfiel like you had intended. Frederica’s blood runs through his veins, so he can’t be entirely worthless. You end up having to run around for a bit, because the guy has diverged from everybody else in the meeting to head towards some area of the village where the ancient buildings become sparse. When Garfiel realizes you are walking behind him, he gets first startled and then annoyed. He eyes you suspiciously.

“Ya followin’ me now?”

“I figured we could talk for a bit without everybody else in the way. I’ve grown fond of your Frederica. You haven’t seen her for a long time, right? She told me that she had left Sanctuary behind, but you have stayed here.”

Garfiel puts his hands on his waist and grimaces at you.

“Yeah, I’ve stayed. What’s it ta ya? And did I look like I wanted to talk about damn ‘Rica? Called ya a buncha fools for ‘ssociatin’ with her and everythin’.”

“I just thought it was odd that you would have separated. She said that her mother came to Sanctuary for shelter, right? You must have grown up here, then Frederica left for the big world outside. It’s odd that you didn’t follow her. With the lioness being so easy-going, she would likely keep going on about you, how proud she is of your strength or some shit like that.”

Garfiel’s nostrils widen, and his grimace opens a side of his mouth, displaying his menacing teeth. Any sane person would have stayed away from this punk, but then again you only learn things by prodding people.

“Well if ya know so damn much, then why’d ya ask?”

“I don’t know, I just wanted to hear it from you.”

Garfiel steps towards you to glare from up close.

“I had enough of ol’ freakin’ furryburglar when she turned her back on us, ya hear!? She’s a damn traitor, that’s what she is. Some sister… Never came back. Never cared about us.”

“That’s not the Frederica I met. She takes good care of Roswaal’s place, she’s very kind to the useless trainee who shouldn’t be there in the first place, and is always sure to make us feel welcome and lighten the mood. She’s a great gal as far as I can tell. And she revealed to us Sanctuary’s secrets, at least regarding how to reach it from the mansion, so we could help you all. I wish she would have mentioned the stuff about the barrier and half-beasts, though…”

Garfiel looks away and narrows his eyes. You look down towards some movement, and realize that his fists are trembling.

“Listen here, small-timer. Yer friends with a traitor, but ya don’t know nothin’. Yer a damn fool. Damn Frederica is only concerned with herself. Always has been.”

“Well, I don’t know about all that, but whatever happened between you both clearly hurts still.”

Garfiel growls, and he narrows one eye further while staring at you. He must not be used to people either asking or caring about a personal relationship of his like this.

“The hell ya think ya are, evil eyes? First noble-born, then not noble-born. We pals now? Whaddya want? It’s not like ya can do a damn thing.”

“It’s just that after meeting Frederica and her being so different from what you are telling me, I want to correct you. It must annoy the hell out of you, holding on to the twisted image of someone you cared about so much. I don’t know why Frederica hasn’t returned, but she certainly cared, and does still.”

Garfiel growls like a wild animal, then steps forward, grabs you by the shirt and raises that fist until you stand on your tiptoes. You are surprised by how little you care, even though you feel Garfiel trembling through his fist.

“Ya know, yer pretty damn brave sayin’ all that to my face. Don’t know what ta make of ya, and it makes my skin crawl. But whatever went on between me and that bitch ain’t any of your business. Besides…”

“You know,” you begin to say calmly, “one of the first moments with your sister in which I thought that she was a real good gal happened when we were speaking about some other horrible troubles, unrelated to you of whom I didn’t know anything at the time, and Frederica started crying. She tolds us something to the effect that the bonds of family anchor us to the world, that we only got one, and that the fact that the memories and feelings associated with a sibling could be taken away was unimaginably awful. Didn’t mean anything in particular to me at the time, but it sure does now.”

Garfiel lowers his head and closes his eyes tight.

“Ya really are a fuckin’ asshole…”

With those words, Garfiel releases you, and you have to take a few steps back to regain your balance.

“We will help you lift the barrier, or break the barrier, or whatever”, you say. “Even though nobody in four hundred years has managed to achieve it. I tend to hold on to delusional hopes.”

The guy is breathing faster, and when he manages to hold your gaze, he’s gone wide-eyed.

“Ya went inta them witches’ tomb although yer just a full human. I should have bothered meself pickin’ up yer bloody remains to feed the pigs. There’s somethin’ wrong wit’cha.” He begins to walk away, even though he refuses to turn entirely in the direction he’s heading. “I’ll be keepin’ an eye on ya, small-timer. I don’t like weird people hangin’ around, messin’ my place. Makes me all nervous.”

This entry covers part of the tenth volume of the original “Re:Zero” novels.

In the previous entry the protagonist revealed that he is only in love with pain. We also discovered that the German lioness grew up in Sanctuary, which allows this damn arc to move into its second act.

• Previous part (41)
• Next part (43)

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A couple or hours into a regular trip cutting through villages similar to the one you’ve become acquainted with, Otto followed a path leading to a forest much denser than the one in which you fought the Witch’s Cult’s units. The thick canopy covers in shadows most of the road, which would only allow a carriage at a time to pass, and you feel that you should have brought warmer clothing. Even though your merchant pal seems confident that he won’t get lost following the path traced on the map that Frederica gave him, you sit next to him on the driver’s seat and help as much as you can.

“It’s really dark,” Otto says while he glances nervously at the darkness between the trees. “We won’t see anything coming.”

“The darkness is just the natural state of things,” you say. “It seems that the lioness didn’t screw with us. Just follow her indications and we’ll eventually reach the barrier.”

You examine again the line that Frederica had drawn across the road near the diagram of a bunch of buildings. You wonder if this famous magical barrier can be seen.

Otto slows the carriage the closer you all get to that mark on the map where your carriage is supposed to hit the barrier. You keep an eye on anything resembling a dome or a wall of some kind up ahead, even though you realize you are holding on to a false hope. The magician who built an enchantment, or whatever other kind of permanent spell, that still lasts and serves its purpose hundreds of years later didn’t screw up by making the barrier visible.

A couple of minutes later Otto speaks up about what you three must have been thinking.

“We are about to pass the mark.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think it’ll just turn on suddenly?,” Otto asks with a shaky voice, while staring straight ahead.

“Who knows?”

“Should we slow down a bit more?”

“Why ask me? I’m not the most informed when it comes to all this stuff.”

You all get quiet again and stare nervously ahead, as you look into the shadows for the barrier that would stop you from continuing. Otto slows the carriage down even more so that you are at a walking pace. You look over your shoulder towards Emilia, and the consternation in her eyes, and how she’s squeezing the emerald-colored pendant hanging from her neck, makes you jump onto the back of the carriage and stand next to her.

“I actually thought you would have been calmer surrounded by such dense forests,” you say attempting to soothe her.

“This forest isn’t welcoming. It screams that anyone who doesn’t belong here should stay away. Roswaal’s ancestors agreed to hide this place for hundreds of years, generation after generation. I can’t imagine what we are going to find inside.”

You can only suspect that it has something to do with skimpily-dressed half-humans, possibly some that didn’t agree to dress that way or stay around for that matter.

“Mere seconds now!,” Otto raises his voice from the driver’s seat.

You didn’t have to think to turn your head towards Emilia. She has ceased to squeeze the magic crystal, because it’s glowing white and its shine is increasing as if to blind you all. When you avert your gaze, the image of Emilia looking down at the pendant, her eyes wide and her mouth open with bewilderment, brings up a memory. You were crouching on the back of another carriage, next to that cultist spy as the bastard activated some magical explosives he had hidden under the floorboards. You almost lost that nasty Ferris back then.

You push Emilia’s head down so the pendant’s cord doesn’t get stuck in the half-elf’s neck when you snatch it. Once you are holding it, you are surprised that it doesn’t burn, even though its brightness has already half-blinded you. You jump out of the carriage through the open tarp while Emilia shouts your name behind you. Once you land and roll a couple of times, you stand up and twist your body to throw the pendant away, but before you can finish that movement you are engulfed in whiteness.

Next thing you know you are lying on grass, and it takes you a few seconds to realize that you had just tried to save Emilia from an explosion. Shocked, you realize that you are still holding on to that magic crystal, but it has ceased to glow as if it never did.

You stand up and look around. You are in a clearing enclosed by the wall-like forest. Its trees have reached the height of a four-story house. You stop breathing to listen carefully, but you only hear insects and birdsongs.

What the hell happened? Did you fall unconscious and someone dragged you here? But if Emilia and Otto did it, why wouldn’t have they stuck around?

The sky is gray and cloudy, although not full of rain. You turn around, but you stop walking after a single step. A chill runs down your spine. There’s a small person staring at you maybe six meters in front of you, next to the treeline. It’s a girl of Petra’s size and a similar age. She has long, pale red hair, and she’s wearing a thick coat buttoned up to her mouth. What strikes you the most are two details: her ears are pointy, much pointier than Emilia’s, and her eyes look at you like a deer’s, with only enough intelligence to worry about whether she should run away from a threat or keep wandering around.

You take a deep breath.

“Who are you?”

The girl stares at you, and then turns and runs away as gracefully as an animal.

“Hey! Wait, please! Where are my friends?!”

You run in pursuit, although along the way you wonder whether you should clarify that you want information, not hurt this stranger, but at the same time the way she held your gaze hadn’t suggested that she would understand you.

This girl is increasing the distance without effort. She disappears behind a bend on the treeline, and the next time you catch a glimpse of her she had stopped to look back at you, but after that last glance she disappears into the trees, where the light barely reaches.

However, you no longer want to pursue this elf-like person, because the clearing has broadened to the size of a football field. Maybe around 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.

The temple, or whatever it is, calls to you. You walk towards it before you can think about it. Did Emilia approach that huge entrance as well? After you reach the top of the steps, you spot between the vines that the huge stone labs are decorated with faded carvings of symbols and figures, but you can’t make anything out other than that the ruin must be far older than the last Apocalypse four hundred years ago.

You enter a tunnel so dark that you can’t see anything. You follow the rough stone wall with your hand. After a minute of walking you are able to see the faint outline of another entryway at the end of the passageway. Light seeps in from under the door. You feel a presence beyond the obstacle, but after you push the door open and step inside, you find yourself alone in what looks like the antechamber of an ancient tomb. Dust motes drift through four pillars of light that fall from holes in the ceiling. The floor is made up of countless flat stones, all different shapes and sizes, and it seems designed to map the night sky.

As you are about to shout in case Emilia and Otto might have wandered inside, someone speaks in your head. It’s yourself. You hear your own voice saying words you hadn’t thought.

“I grant you access to my death-dream.”

Your body fails you as if you had resisted falling asleep for hours. You only manage to avoid hitting your head, but once you lie on the cold stones, you pass out.

* * *

You are standing in a sea of grass as far as the eye can see, featureless beyond some raised hillocks. The sky is piercingly blue to the extent that you narrow your eyes. However, you can’t see a sun anywhere, and the speed of the few sliding clouds suggests a wind that you don’t feel.

Are you dreaming? It feels as real as that opaque blackness in the abyss of yourself, whenever you found yourself engulfed by Satella’s unasked love. You crouch and squeeze some blades of grass between your thumbs, and they break and moisten your skin. You smell the surrounding green.

“I’m not dead then,” you say to yourself, “unless this is a whole new way of dying.”

The next time you turn around you find yourself at the base of a new hillock, at the top of which, maybe ten meters away, are placed two white chairs in front of a white round table. A garden umbrella shades the furniture. Sitting on one of the chairs is a young woman, maybe around twenty years old, whose snow white skin is almost as pale as the pure white of her long, silky hair down to her waist. She’s wearing an ink black funeral dress that only exposes her skin from the neck up, as well as her hands. Both the skirt of her dress as well as her sleeves are decorated with thin, white vertical stripes. The young woman is staring down at you, and despite her delicate features, her self-assured smile suggests that she had expected you to come, that she knew everything about you as well as every way you could react to her presence, as if your brain was as unsophisticated and predictable as an insect’s.

“I am Echidna, the Witch of Greed,” the woman says with a bright voice. “Welcome to my tomb.”

Your heart beats quicker. This woman has already declared herself to be a witch, and despite her currently harmless demeanour, you feel the weight of ages of experiences in her gaze. She is one of the witches of old, who drowned along with half of the world when Satella couldn’t contain herself any longer. You recall Beatrice saying that these witches were too powerful even for death.

“What’s the matter?,” she asks without apparent malice. “Come up here. I’ve prepared some tea for the occasion. I know I’m an impressive sight, but there’s no need for you to freeze in place.”

Echidna waves to you with her hand, encouraging you to walk up the hillock.

You take a deep breath while you collect your thoughts, trying to calm yourself.

“What do you want, witch?” you ask with a serious tone.

“Me? I was resting in my tomb, as I have done for centuries. What did you want? You came in here.”

“I was brought here somehow. I mean, I don’t know the exact location of these ruins, or tomb, or whatever. I saw it and I felt like entering it.”

“You felt like entering it? That’s the first time anyone said that to me. I’ve always attracted travellers with a purpose, but you felt like just entering my tomb without any reason.” The Witch of Greed’s eyes are fixated on you with a mixture of curiosity and childlike joy. “Most importantly, though, you shouldn’t be here.”

“Can’t say I have felt welcome in most of the places I’ve wandered into ever since I came to your fantasy world, but you might be the first one who states it outright.”

“No, I don’t mean that you aren’t welcome. You are fully human, so the magical traps I filled this tomb with should have ripped you to shreds.”

Your heart skips a beat. You clench your fists.

“That’s as unwelcoming as it gets!”

“No, no. Don’t misunderstand. I’m not hostile towards you. I’m just saying that it’s alarming that my magic didn’t work on you.”

“So what does that mean?”

Echidna’s eyes glisten. She rests her chin on her palm and smiles as if contemplating a fascinating mystery.

“I don’t know yet. Please, come and let’s chat. The tea is warm.”

You lower your head. Hanging out with one of the witches of old, considered by most of humanity and even those who are only part human as some of the most dangerous people to ever exist, is so clearly a terrible idea that it tempts you. You shrug and walk up the hillock at a normal pace while this witch stares at you with curiosity. You sit in front of her. Steam rises from the cup of tea that she has prepared for you, and it smells like they did in your past world. Even though you need to swallow first, you hold Echidna’s gaze. She’s so pale that your mind draws pictures of maidens locked for their entire youth in towers, without ever feeling the warmth of the sun. She’s beautiful as well, despite her thick, white eyebrows. A colourful, butterfly-shaped brooch in her hair attracts your gaze.

“It smells good, doesn’t it?” Echidna says softly. “Go ahead, sip it. It’s delicious.”

Her voice is calm and peaceful. However, her irises are the color of ebony, and her pupils are vertical, white slits. The intensity of her gaze would ruin most attempts at soothing.

You warm your hands with the cup that this witch has prepared for you.

“Nice brooch. A butterfly clashes with your name, though. Conflicting symbols.”

The witch touches her hair brooch as if she had forgotten it was there, but then she smiles at you warmly, narrowing her eyes.

“It is nice, isn’t it? But I like to think of how those two symbols fight each other and then soar beyond what they are, or were, or might be. Butterflies have their life cycles, their battles to surpass their forms, but then they transcend them. Beautiful and free.”

You take a deep breath.

“Do you even know what an echidna is supposed to be?”

The witch touches her fingers to her lips.

“Yes, a sort of prehistoric hedgehog. I’m sure there must be some interesting stories behind why I was named that way.”

“I’m surprised you actually have those in your fantasy world. Is the combined symbology supposed to mean something, as in you might look graceful and delicate as a butterfly, but anyone getting close risks meeting the spines?”

The witch shrugs while sipping her tea.

“Maybe. Now, that’s an interesting choice of words on your part. ‘Your fantasy world’. What could you possibly have meant? As opposed to what world?”

“Ah, that was a sort of joke. I meant your world, as in this world we’re both in right now.”

The witch hums and taps her chin.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Taste your tea. It’s getting colder. Don’t you want to drink some of it? You will like it, I assure you.”

You lower your head, but you still look up towards her black eyes.

“Yeah, I’m not missing how much you are insisting on me taking this liquid into my body.”

“Oh, what’s the worst that could happen? I put a spell on it, and you end up ambushing a caravan? But I assure you, I won’t do such a thing.”

That reference to ambushing caravans reminds you of Rem, and for a moment, apart from having to deal with your suddenly soured mood, you wonder whether the witch had intended to bring up that event. Her expression doesn’t suggest it.

“Okay, what’s the best that could happen? My life gets… magically enhanced?”

Echidna leans forward onto the table, and she offers you a smile of affectionate condescension.

“That’s certainly a big question. I suppose it all depends on how open your eyes are to see it. Most likely scenario, you enjoy a rich, buttery tea that improves your day.”

“But you’re not certain?”

“Oh, I’m the person everyone comes to for certainty. I will say though, I am rather confident that you’ll enjoy the tea, and I’ll enjoy you enjoying it.”

The way she is gawking at you fills you with an intense discomfort. However, you’re not one to back down from a challenge.

“Alright then, Witch of Greed, I hope you tried your best.”

You pick up the cup and take a sip. After a few seconds the robust taste still lingers. You look into the cup while you swirl its contents. A brown sludge remains at the bottom of the cup, but there’s definitely some substance to it.

Echidna’s eyes are glistening. She leans her face on her hands and smiles at you.

“How do you like it?”

“I’ll say this much: it certainly tastes better than it smells.”

Echidna’s smile broadens as she gives a nod of assent. You notice how dreadfully quiet it is in this grassy field. You can’t hear the wind outside; the only sound is your breathing and the clinking of the cup against the table.

“I have a basic question, witch,” you begin. “What the hell is this place? We aren’t in the real world anymore, for sure.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure of that. But yes, you are partially correct. We are currently in a space between spaces. It’s an art that has long since been lost to the world, but one I perfected long ago.”

You hold and move your teacup slightly, so its liquid swirls.

“To what extent is this stuff I just put into my body real?”

“It’s quite real. The cup is fake, though. I only have those because their colours and patterns are so pretty.”

“A sense of humor in a witch that has been dead for four hundred years. Kind of a waste.”

“Do I seem dead to you, nameless young man? Are you not speaking to me, are we not exchanging thoughts?”

You did not expect her to retort like that, and mentally respond with a shrug.

“I suppose not.”

“Then let me say that while my physical form may be dead, my soul has never died. And it is my soul that continues on in this grassy reality.”

“So are you saying your soul just happened to land in a tea set?”

“No, I am saying that my soul has inhabited this space for so long that it had formed it into a likeness of the place I loved the most. You could say this place is my brain, and the grass is my nerves, and love is my heart.”

You frown at that odd explanation.

“What are you, a poet?”

“More like a gardener. Back when my body allowed me to move around in that wide world outside, I focused on planting seeds I was fascinated by, and then I tended to the sprouts so I could find out what they grew into.”

“That’s cute and all, but I really don’t see the point. You’ll have to forgive my lack of appreciation for the arts. And you glossed over my concerns about this reality you are presenting to me, and in particular about the stuff I let pass through a segment of my digestive system.”

“Ah, yes. My apologies. It’s a perfectly normal tea, except for the special ingredient that I add only for my most fascinating guests. And I assure you I haven’t gotten nearly enough interesting guests during these last hundreds of years.”

Echidna’s response doesn’t put you at ease, but then maybe that’s the point. You turn your head slightly while narrowing your eyes at the witch.

“So what is this ingredient you are so unforthcoming about?”

“Ah, that would be telling. And it’s really not as vile as you are imagining. If anything, it’s a magical ingredient, so it probably tastes like nothing at all.”

Without another word, you quickly finish the remainder of the tea in one gulp. Echidna lets out a noise of delight, and she bites her lower lip while you dry yours.

“I could only vomit it at this point, witch,” you say as if challenging her. “What did you put in there?”

“Oh, just a bit of my bodily fluids. All perfectly clean, I assure you.”

Echidna gives a creepy smile as the tea sets in. You slap your lips together and move your tongue around, but there’s really nothing to be felt or tasted. When you hold the witch’s gaze again, you understand that glimmer in her eyes, as well as her slightly smug tone when admitting to her deed, like a middle-schooler revealing to a friend that she smokes.

“Uh-huh. Bodily fluids from where?,” you ask calmly. “Not from your corpse, right? It must be little else than dessicated bones at this point.”

Her grin drops, and she shakes her head.

“No, I don’t have access to my corpse.”

“So from where, then? These bodily fluids you mention were tangible, they had some level of physical reality. So what did you do?”

She avoids your gaze for a moment, but then she shrugs and closes one eye while staring at you smugly with her open one.

“A witch doesn’t reveal the specifics of her arts. Not to an outsider anyway.”

“Did you run around for half an hour until you got all sweaty, then you smeared your fingers with the hot, deliciously musky sweat from your armpits before you dunked those fingers into my tea? Did you take your panties off and diddled your little button while remembering the numerous orgies with demonic beasts you enjoyed in the old world, until you secreted your witchy cum into the cup? While I gulped it down, you must have been touching yourself under the table, weren’t you, little freak?”

Echidna’s sudden blush is like a skin irritation in her almost pure white, maidenly face. She shakes her head slowly while failing to hold your gaze.

“It’s just saliva,” she says with a thin voice. “A couple of drops.”

You clench your fists against the table.

“That’s it?! What kind of pussy ass shit is that?! Aren’t you a witch?!” You stand up forcefully, shaking the table. Echidna’s tea spills from her own cup. “I’m leaving.”

The witch snaps her head back and lets out a noise of surprise.

“What?! Already?!”

You turn around and throw a dirty look at her, which she fails to notice as she stares at the spilled tea on her dress. You sigh, roll your eyes and turn back around.

“Yeah. I’ve drank your stupid tea, so now we’re even.”

She looks up at you with confusion written all over her face, with just a hint of anger at the edge.

“You truly don’t realize who you are speaking to, do you.”

“Do you plan on holding me hostage in this death-dream of yours forever, witch? You can open a door to the outside or something, right? Then c’mon.”

Echidna stutters, and after she shakes her head, she lifts her ass from the chair and props her hands on the table to glare at you properly.

“Alright. You think you’re quite the clever one, don’t you?”

“Not really. I’m just a regular fuck-up.”

“That’s nice. Most people are terrified when they see me. Yet, you must not understand how powerful us witches of old are.”

“What, you can kill me whenever you want, right?”

“Of course. I have all the power here.”

You shrug.

“If you want to kill me, I can’t do anything about it, so it doesn’t bother me. Saves me from having to figure out how to defend myself.”

Echidna squints at you, as if you said something she didn’t expect to hear.

“I could prolong your final moments with excruciating pain.”

You stare at Echidna until her menacing smile loses its luster.

“Witch,” you begin, “you don’t have a clue.”

“I don’t… have a clue…?” Echidna sighs, then sits back down. “You’re right. I don’t. I don’t know how you can be so calm. Most people would either be scared out of their wits, or try to escape even though it would be impossible without my help.”

You pity her. It’s been four hundred years, after all.

“I’ve already had to deal with witches,” you say, “or more accurately with one, every time my world goes pitch black, and for the most part that personal witch of mine is boring as shit. Repeats ‘I love you’ over and over. And she’s also a fucking traitor, claiming to love me only to fuck me over without giving me any explanation. ‘I love you I love you I love you’. Gah! Every time I remember that bitch her three words keep repeating in my head like one of those catchy summer songs!”

Echidna frowns.

“So that’s why you’re not afraid of me? You’ve had it far worse? And that witch you refer to must be the Witch of Envy. But how?”

“It’s a long story. I’m sick of the whole thing, and I don’t have time to waste on amateurs.”

She grimaces and goes wide-eyed.

“A-Amateur?! You intrude upon my tomb, you don’t even tell me your name, and you call me, the Witch of Greed, an amateur. Me, an amateur! I’m the repository of knowledge of the world!”

“Sure, with a few more holes in it than anyone else. You haven’t even heard of my world. I mean, you don’t even know who I am. I’m guessing your information is also at least four hundred years old?”

She gasps, then trembles as a film of tears builds up on her lower eyelids. She stands up and passes by the table to stop a couple of meters from you.

“Why, you…” she says with a raspy voice. “I can tell you all the known details of the lives of every ruler of every nation that came to exist. I can list and describe all the creatures that have roamed this world. I know the words that the dragon Volcanica uttered during the covenant that sealed the Witch of Envy and tied the Divine Dragon forever to the kingdom of Lugunica.”

You groan.

“This fantasy world also has regular flying dragons?! I don’t give a shit about dragons, except for my Patrasche, and the flying variety cheapens every story! Nor do I care about any detail of this world that doesn’t affect me directly.”

Her right eye is twitching. She steps closer.

“I can’t believe it. You’re not even interested in the world that you live in… I am Echidna, the Witch of Greed!”

“Stop spitting! I am already digesting your previous saliva! Should I repeat my name over and over too?!”

“You could say it once to begin with!”

“I’m not here to make friends! I did not come here to ask questions and gain knowledge. I didn’t know what I was doing! You are just a talking, craw… fly… a talking fly that is wasting my time!”

“I am the Witch of Greed. You cannot possibly comprehend the knowledge I possess.”

“I’m Natsuki Subaru, mighty planeswalker. I murder great spirits with my willpower. You are quite hot despite the whole goth thing, but you are annoying the fuck out of me right now.”

She looks at your unenthusiastic face and shuts her eyes.

“My knowledge is vast! If you want to gain rightful claim to this world, then you need my help! Some of the most powerful people in the world spent years trying to get an audience with me, or even to get the chance to look at my face and receive a single answer to questions that burned in them for most of their lives!”

“It’s a pretty face, I’ll give you that, in a ‘princess that never left her tower nor felt true love warm her heart’ kind of way. Still, you people are all nuts. You can go to hell.”

Echidna lowers her head, closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.

“You want to leave? Fine. But not before I get my payment.”

You don’t like where this is going.

“What payment? It didn’t say anything about payment anywhere in that old tomb of yours.”

“Well, it wouldn’t, would it? That’s hardly the most honorable way to go about things.”

“Damn it. You witches are all assholes.”

“Unlike some people, we follow through with our word! Now you will give me the payment I asked for. It’s only fair.”

“I agreed to nothing of the sort! I didn’t even know you existed!”

“Yes, and that’s why you ended up here. Lacking knowledge is a horrible thing.”

You facepalm, and after a few seconds you speak slowly.

“Let me out and I’ll go grab some of our clown’s mounds of coins. He doesn’t need his money anyway.”

“What would I do with money in here? It didn’t move me even back when I was alive. No, I will need something else. First, your memory.”

You stand still, pondering what she meant. She takes a step forward.

“I will block the memory of this meeting. You will wake up at the tomb as if from a deep sleep. You won’t remember me at all, so you won’t be able to tell anybody else.”

You narrow your eyes at Echidna. Why would you want to tell anybody about this shitty witch anyway?

“What’s the catch?”

“I imagine you’d want to forget all this, so it would be an empty trade anyway. I will also qualify you for the trials.”

“Is that an extreme mountain bike thing?”

“The trials I set up long ago. Sanctuary won’t open up until I’m satisfied that someone is worthy.”

“Worthy of what?”

“Worthy of my interest.”

You give this black-eyed loon a good, hard look.

“Well, if that doesn’t scream ‘it’s probably really dangerous and shit’, then I don’t know what does. Whatever, Echidna. Let me out, I have a half-elf to find.”

“Very well. But remember, you must visit me soon, or else the deal is off!”

Echidna motions with her hands. A dark portal opens up a few meters behind you, with a red haze pulsating inside. When you turn your head towards Echidna, she’s licking her index finger slowly, leaving a trail of saliva, while holding your gaze.

“… You have been here for far too long, haven’t you, witch,” you say.

“You have no idea how long four hundred years in this place feel like,” she answers dryly.

She pushes the wet end of her index finger between your eyebrows, and you suddenly feel weightless. You float backwards towards the dark portal. The last thing you see before darkness takes you is the witch’s weary face as she bids you farewell.

“Sleep tight, Natsuki Subaru.”

---

Note from December of 2020:

I finally get to play with my own version of the Witch of Greed, Echidna, one of my favorite characters from both the original novels and the anime adaptation. I don’t know how her personality will vary from the source, but that has also been the case with all the other characters, and the whole thing turned out alright as far as I’m concerned. I’m going with the flow. Also, I love scenes in which characters I like just argue with each other. I don’t know what to tell you.

As a weird moment from this session, I refused to add to the story maybe the most savage line that the AI ever made this version of Subaru say: “I’ll impregnate your mouth so every time you try to spit knowledge you will instead let fly a brood of dicks.” Jesus fucking Christ.

This entry covers part of the tenth volume of the original “Re:Zero” novels.

In the previous entry we understood that Emilia is infatuated with an idiot who loves someone else, that Frederica wants to wrestle, that the villagers are helpless children, and that Subaru has become impossibly hard after he lost his dick.

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Shortly after lunch, Emilia offered to teach you another lesson, even though you had expected it to come at night. Although the half-elf is doing her best to smile, the edges of her mouth get dragged down. You don’t know to what extent the other inhabitants of this enormous mansion have realized it, but for you Emilia seems consumed by melancholy. It hurts you to see her that way when you had intended to make her happy. Maybe you screwed up by telling her that you loved her although not as much as your comatose girlfriend. You burdened Emilia with the insufferable weight of outright rejection, and Emilia must be experiencing a vortex of emotions that she had never dealt with before. Even though you are worrying about Roswaal and the fact that the clown is unlikely to return by his own means, Emilia’s pain bothers you like an open wound in your own body.

In the afternoon you ended up spending more time than expected with Beatrice, or at least in her vicinity. She had ordered you to visit her every day so she could check on the recovery of your magic gate, and like every previous occasion she warned you against casting your only spell again until she considered the gate healed, although she couldn’t tell you how much it would take. You then got so curious about the hundreds, thousands of books that surrounded you, combined with your sudden ability to understand some of the words and even a few full sentences, that you kept checking out random ones. You failed to learn anything of value. By the time you left the library it was already time for supper.

After every inhabitant of the mansion except for the shut-in librarian finishes eating, the mood suggests you are separating for the remaining hours of the day. However, when you steel yourself for the incoming tide of gloom, you walk to Rem’s room only to find Emilia there. She’s sitting on the bed next to your sleeping demon servant, and the half-elf is stroking Rem’s hair softly and lovingly like a mother who visited her terminally ill daughter in the hospital. You approach Emilia carefully, because you figure that she wouldn’t want you to know she visited her only obstacle in winning your affections, but when she lifts her face to you, her expression doesn’t change. She looks far more calm than her constant stream of tears would suggest.

You stand there, fixed in place. You feel entirely responsible for this apparent full-blown depression, yet no matter how much you’ve ruminated about how to help her, you don’t know what to do.

“Does it bother you that I want to visit Rem as well, Subaru?”, Emilia asks softly. “If you want, I’ll leave you both alone.”

“No, it’s fine. Rem was very fond of you, I’m sure she would appreciate your company.”

Emilia lowers her face to stare at the servant’s features. That the half-elf doesn’t react to her own tears in any way is making you uncomfortable. You sit down next to her in bed, and put a hand on the bed sheet that covers your beloved demon.

“Rem won’t appreciate my company now that she knows I’m trying to steal you away from her”, Emilia says suddenly. “I think about what I would want in her place, if I were the one who enjoyed a loving relationship with you and then after I fell into an endless sleep, some other girl I was fond of intended to take you for herself.”

“You tend to feel guilty by nature, and you feel the need to shoulder other people’s troubles, but you can’t change how you feel, and loving anyone no matter the circumstances doesn’t seem to me like something to feel guilty about.”

Emilia shakes her head.

“I shouldn’t be enjoying our time together as much as I am right now.”

“Those tears don’t suggest that you are enjoying yourself. I intended to make you happy, but it seems I managed to botch that as well.”

“No… I am happy, it’s just… I’m not used to being pulled in two directions at once like this. On one side I feel that I should leave you both alone, allow you to grieve even for the rest of your life if you want to. If I were on this girl’s place, I might have wanted that, even though… But on the other side, I know that your future will be miserable. And I just want us both to be together. In the end it might be as simple as that. My emotions don’t care about any reasoning.”

You sigh, looking down at your hands.

“I’m also holding on to emotions that are contrary to logic. As far as anyone in this fantasy world knows, apparently nobody ever wakes up from Rem’s state, and yet I believe, I hope, that I will somehow be the first one to free someone from that curse. Thinking about it for a moment would tell me that I’m delusional. However, we don’t live for our reasonings, but for what the oldest parts of our brains already decided for us.”

Emilia takes a good look at you as if she hadn’t seen you in a few days, and she finally dries her tears slowly with her knuckles.

“You remind me of sir Wilhelm”, she says.

“There has been a bit of that going around, yeah. We are both holding on to impossible goals while the person we love is no longer available. I’m on a far better position than that murderous old man, even though it doesn’t feel that way.”

Emilia smiles as if she were ashamed.

“The main thing is that sir Wilhelm is closed off to anyone other than his dead wife. He must have had many chances over the years after his beloved was lost forever, but as far as sir Wilhelm is concerned, time stopped when the White Whale took away that woman. It’s so sad… And of course I fear that will be your case. You are so determined as to have defeated an entire branch of the Witch’s Cult, with help or not, so you might never give up on bringing Rem back to you. I wish I was her…” She’s surprised that the words escaped her mouth, but then she holds your gaze even though her eyes are watering again. “I yearn to be loved like that. Life doesn’t truly seem to be worth the effort otherwise, particularly in this world that seems so eager to discard me.”

Your chest tightens. You place your hand on the back of Emilia’s head and pull her closer, so her forehead rests between your clavicles. She hugs you grabbing the back of your shirt, then she sighs deeply.

“Let’s take a walk outside, Emilia”, you murmur. “It’s a beautiful night, likely as full of stars as it gets in the countryside.”

After a few minutes you are both walking side by side along the hedges of the vast yard. You are grateful that you didn’t come across any of the other inhabitants of this mansion. It’s getting chillier than you had expected, even though the night sky is clear of clouds. You are guiding Emilia away from the road that leads to the gate and also from the magical streetlights, because you want to be bathed only by the moonlight and starlight. Emilia has calmed down, and seems to appreciate the silence. You don’t know whether her fingers nudging yours occasionally is casual, but in any case you hold her hand, although you don’t look at her to see her reaction. You end up coming across a few rock planters that you could sit against, which you do, and then pat your knee as an invitation.

“Come, Emilia, let’s watch the stars for a while.”

She smiles and joins you. You hold her by the waist and turn her so she is leaning on your chest. You stretch your legs alongside hers and tilt your head to look at the starry sky. Her hands reach to hold yours, which are crossed over her stomach. You lean your head against her temple. Emilia is smiling sweetly, her eyes still fixed on the starry sky.

A romantic relationship with Emilia would mean plenty of holding hands, lying on different surfaces to hug each other and kiss softly. You would caress each other lovingly, and she would promise you undying love. You would make all kinds of adult plans for a future together. Imagining such a probable path barely stirs you. You grow increasingly disturbed as your heart beats louder, which Emilia must be feeling against her back.

“You can tell me whatever it is, Subaru”, Emilia whispers. “I hope you know that.”

You close your eyes tight and swallow to clear your throat.

“Emilia, I’m going to try to be as open as possible right now. And it’s going to be hard, because I have only the stories I tell myself, the explanations I have pasted on stuff that comes out of my depths without me having any say in it. I don’t know to what extent what I have concluded about how I feel, and what I need, is true, but…”

“But?”

Emilia holds your hands tighter, as if she knew what was coming. You take a deep breath.

“If you want to love me, your worst mistake would be expecting a romance with a good, honorable man whom you would treat as sweetly and lovingly as possible. I can’t do a fairy tale. Yet you cannot do otherwise, because that’s who you are, that’s what you need.”

“Subaru…”

You shake your head.

“I’m not done. You can’t break out of the routine of being a good, sweet person, because that’s who you are. And I need to tell you something. I’m not a good person. I have good moments, hell, I can even say I’m nice to people sometimes. But I’m not a good person… Actually, I’m a really shitty person.”

“No you’re not.”

“Let me tell you about Rem. She was as sweet as they come, and yet she held on to a regret related to something that happened in her childhood, something I think involving her sister. She never told even me. She hated herself. She ached for the chance to sacrifice herself to save the one person she had managed to love. She desperately needed such meaning to justify the mistake of having been born. I understood such a need very well.”

Emilia’s grasp on your hands weakens. You continue, although it’s getting harder to breathe and you need to contain the rush of warmth heading for your eyes.

“You know already that Rem is an Oni, same as her sister. She needs to consume blood, a bit of it, to keep living. And although I loved her kisses, I loved feeling her in my arms as well as every second we spent lying next to each other, I mainly remember her hunger. I remember her holding on to me while her eyes glistened with the need to consume me whole. I let her plunge into me, so many times. I have never felt as alive, as loved, as when my beloved Rem tore my flesh apart, crushed my bones, absorbed every last drop of my life. I miss that pain ripping through my body, because only when she devoured me alive I finally felt connected to someone. I need a person who would wound me, who would kill me. I can only love someone who would cause me pain.”

Emilia has turned her face to look you in the eyes as if to certify you are telling the truth. She’s baffled and concerned, in an echo of how Crusch dealt with you whenever you suggested you wanted to die, or had attempted to in the past. Even though Emilia’s body rests on yours, you feel the distance between both of you increasing.

It was a mistake to say it out loud. Whenever you feel in your bones how much you lack that connection that Rem provided for you so readily, struggling through another day seems hopeless.

“So you want to die?”, Emilia says with a hollow voice.

“I need to be killed, by someone who needs me entirely.”

Emilia tries to maintain eye contact, but she can’t. She looks away and nods slowly.

You want to clear your throat, but you also don’t want to break the silence with such a noise.

“If you want the why,” you add, “whatever we could come up with would be the most fantastic story ever imagined. Maybe it has always been this way. Maybe that’s the same for everybody.”

Emilia begins to cry as she nods.

“I think I understand.”

The half-elf turns around and hugs you, taking your mind off guard. She cries softly into your chest, soaking your shirt. Her tears seep through your clothing and onto your skin, burning slightly, almost as if her grief is trying to consume you with the same voracity as Rem’s love did. Maybe that’s what you needed, someone to burn you from the inside out.

After a moment of crying, she pulls away. Her eyes are swollen and red, but her tears have stopped falling.

“I’m sorry,” she sniffles, “I can’t give you what you want.”

“You don’t need to apologize. If anyone should apologize it’s me for putting you through all this.”

She nods silently. You think that Emilia is going to stand up and walk away from you, and that she will never look at you in the same way. In your mind she would even be justified in pushing you from her camp, because you aren’t the person she accepted. However, the half-elf rests her face on your chest and she hugs you tightly. You lie like that for many minutes, maybe as long as half an hour, feeling her heartbeat on your ribcage.

“Roswaal won’t return”, Emilia states softly, her voice a huge contrast with the previous silence. “We could spend our entire lives in his mansion and we would never see him again. This hope he gave me of reaching the throne was a strange dream, one I needed to believe in. I should have faced the truth, that a half-elf would never achieve such an opportunity, regardless of the medallions’ enchantment.”

“Roswaal is alive and waiting for us in Sanctuary, whether he knows it or not.”

“Maybe I should return to the forest, make a little home and live in peace and isolation for the rest of my life. But I would want you there, and we could take Rem with us. We would make sure she’s safe even if she never wakes up.”

“Bullshit.”

The determination in your voice startles her, and she raises her face from your chest to hold your gaze.

“You belong in this world”, you say. “If people hate you for reasons beyond your control, you stare them down and tell them to eat shit. There are things outside of your forest that matter, and people who would miss you if you disappear.”

“But…”

“Fuck that. You are going to see your wish fulfilled. And you will hold on to that hope up to the moment when it can’t happen anymore.” She starts to say something, but you interrupt her. “Regardless of what happens in the future, right now you are a candidate for the throne of this country. You’re royalty and you can’t give up. If someone tries to hurt you, you better damn well make sure they regret it. And if any cultists attempt to kidnap you again, I will kill them all.”

Emilia lets out a breath, nodding.

“Yes… That’s how it is.”

You caress her cheek gently.

“Some people know where Sanctuary is, and how to reach it. One of them will have to tell us.”

* * *

“I grew up in Sanctuary”, Frederica says.

Shortly after breakfast, you and Emilia had called both servants, as well as Otto, over to the living room, one of many anyway, to sit down with you and try to figure out how you could overcome the biggest obstacle in locating Roswaal. You had asked the lioness what she knew about the place, and after she answers, the steely resolve you had woken up with goes soft.

“Well, that was fucking easy.”

“Frederica, you agree that it’s very unlikely that Roswaal will return by himself, right?”, Emilia asks while leaning slightly forward, as if trying to seize the opportunity. “The lord must need help of some kind.”

The lioness looks down at her lap, and nods.

“I think it is getting desperate indeed. He could have gotten a message out in some way.”

“If he’s simply restrained there, would it have been so hard to send a single person out carrying a letter?”, you ask. “Hell, it would be surpris-“

“No it wouldn’t. It’s just that he’s too stubborn.”

“Too stubborn to do the smartest thing? Sounds to me that either our clown is dead, or he’s restrained to the extent that nobody in Sanctuary would want to help him in any way, or he’s waiting for us to come to him. I truly wish it’s not the last case.”

Emilia keeps staring at Frederica as if she senses something is wrong, or that the lioness is withholding some information.

“Let’s be clear about this, please. Will you tell us how to reach Sanctuary?”

Frederica looks at both of you while her expression changes subtly. She must be thinking of whether to open up about a subject that has been treated as a secret by everybody else.

“… I will, because the current situation has become too uncertain.”

Emilia smiles, and you clap once.

“Finally we are getting somewhere”, you say. “If only we had asked you from the beginning! Well, what can you tell us about this place? Why are people so tight-lipped about it?”

Frederica lowers her head and closes her eyes for a moment. You can tell that it’s a difficult, emotional subject for her.

“It sheltered my mother, a long time ago… And we lived there for most of my childhood, until I decided to leave it. As its name suggests, it’s supposed to be a place where people go because the outside world threatens them.”

“And that’s not the case anymore?”

“The world outside has changed. Not enough, maybe, but a lot. Sanctuary hasn’t.”

Frederica narrows her eyes while her pupils move around aimlessly.

“You must understand, Mr. Natsuki, that I work for lord Roswaal. I’m opening up because I believe he must have been delayed against his will, but Sanctuary is supposed to remain a secret even to some members of his household. It’s that important. It has been there for a long, long time. Before the Witch of Envy consumed half of the world.”

“We only intend to help”, Emilia says.

“Which is why I will tell you what you need to know, but not all.”

“What dangers can we expect?”, you ask.

“The path to reach the village isn’t perilous, it’s just easy to get lost if you don’t know the directions. Deep into the lord’s domain, the path ventures through a dense forest that serves to obscure the village’s location. I will detail how to follow the road so you will reach Sanctuary without issues.”

Frederica had looked at Otto, sitting by your side on the sofa, and the merchant takes a deep breath as if he had been dreading getting involved.

“I’m going as well, am I not?”, he says with a pitiful voice. “Of course I am. The carriage won’t drive itself, and I wanted to meet lord Roswaal all along so he can brighten my future! It’s too bad that it sounds as if we are going to enter a lion’s den… Maybe appropriately given our present company! Although not everybody in Sanctuary must be like you, miss Frederica, or otherwise the security of the lord wouldn’t have been compromised.”

Frederica laughs softly, although she’s clearly nervous.

“You shouldn’t prejudge Sanctuary based on what you know of me. I grew too big for that place. It’s just that most of those I left behind didn’t. Maybe because they didn’t want to.”

“You haven’t said much about the dangers, Frederica”, you remind her.

“Yes, you are right. It’s not enough with knowing how to reach the village. The place is surrounded by an ancient magical barrier that… Let’s say that the person who created the barrier so it would keep protecting Sanctuary for hundreds of years was very serious about not getting interrupted.”

Frederica stops herself. She stares at Emilia with a ruminative expression, and a few seconds later she nods to herself.

“I will give you a magic crystal that will assist you when the time comes to pass the barrier. You are strong, lady Emilia, much more than you think. I have thought so ever since I met you.”

“That’s a cryptic thing to say, but thank you for your help.”

You shift your weight on the sofa.

“Now about the people inside. Who can cause us trouble? What should be look out for?”

“Garfiel”, Frederica answers without hesitation. “You should be careful with him. Let’s say that he’s unstable. I don’t believe he will hurt you without cause… But now I can’t anticipate what he would consider cause enough to attack you.”

“How will we recognize this guy?”

“You will surely meet him and will be able to tell it’s him.”

“Well, can you tell me why he’s hostile?”

“I think it’s best if I let him tell you himself when the time comes.”

You don’t know what to say to that.

Petra had been quieter ever since you scolded her for maybe believing that she caught you having sex with your comatose girlfriend, but her hands have been trembling for a while, and she raises her voice.

“It sounds too dangerous! Are you sure this is a good idea?” She gazes at you, worried. “Sir, are you sure you will be okay?”

No, but…

“Yes, of course. I am as squishy as they come, but Emilia can impale people with ice shards, and likely other stuff I haven’t seen.”

“… I’d rather not rely on killing people”, Emilia says quietly. “That cultist at the village deserved it. All of them did. But from now on I’d rather not go to such extremes.”

“Anyway, Petra, this is grown-up stuff”, you say. “You should be playing with dolls, for God’s sake.”

“I am not a child!”

She shrinks back. You did get quite a loud voice there.

“Then act your age! I know you want to help, but this is something we have to do ourselves.”

Petra tries and fails at holding your gaze.

“… Alright, but please, you two be careful.”

Frederica stands up from the sofa. She seems anxious, a contrast with her usual easy-going attitude.

“I’ll better figure out what supplies you should carry. Please follow me, mister merchant, so I can detail the route to you on a map.”

“I will, but you can just say my name, miss Frederica. You have known me for long enough!”

The lioness turns towards Emilia and you.

“How soon do you want to leave?”

You let Emilia decide, and she nods.

“As soon as you can tell us how to reach the village”, the half-elf says.

* * *

Like it’s been the case recently, and you figure it will extend for however long Rem sleeps, your brain doesn’t truly register your beloved demon servant’s facial features anymore, the same way it discards from its subconscious processes the unmoving, unchanging furniture in a room. However, when you kiss her warm lips, while she breathes softly on you, and then you rest your forehead on hers, your tears drip on her eyelids, and the surge of pain demands that you forget about anything but holding her sleeping body for the rest of your life. Still, you swallow that pain.

“I’m going to leave for a while, my love. The more I explore of this world, the closer I’ll get to eventually figuring out how to return you to life, if a way exists anywhere. Staying idle won’t change anything.”

* * *

When all of the current inhabitants of Roswaal’s mansion, except for the shut-in librarian, stand near the carriage, which is already prepared to be pulled by both Patrasche and a nameless ground dragon you didn’t bother caring about, and it will only take getting on the carriage and following the road out of the gate to begin a new adventure into the unknown, your increasing nervousness is tightening your chest. You know this is the only way to secure not only your future but also Emilia’s on Roswaal’s camp, because ultimately this camp doesn’t exist without the clown that leads it.

Petra is holding her hands in front of her waist while wringing them, and her twisted facial features evidence her anxiety. Frederica, however, has perked up from her recent descent into the lioness’ version of gloom. Maybe she believes that now that you are going to get involved with Sanctuary, there’s no way Roswaal and Ram will remain restrained there any longer. She has brought the magic crystal that she mentioned would assist you both to pass the barrier. It’s an emerald-colored, generic-looking crystal that reminds you of the one inside Roswaal’s inner sanctum, and that is intended to be worn as a pendant. Frederica herself passes the pendant’s cord over Emilia’s head, and when the crystal rests on the half-elf’s chest, she holds it to study it.

“Don’t take it off, lady Emilia”, Frederica says, sounding like a warning.

“Understood. Thank you, Frederica.”

As you keep going over in your head about anything you might have missed, you think again about the villagers that confronted you when you went down for groceries.

“Please, you two, be careful”, you say with a serious voice to the servants. “Some of the villagers have developed a serious grudge on us in general, and if they are as stupid as they look, they might attempt to take over our place. I don’t want to go through a bunch of likely nightmarish ordeals at Sanctuary only to return and find out that you both have been slaughtered! How annoying that would be.”

Frederica smirks, showing a peek of her predatory teeth through a side of her mouth, and she points at herself with her thumb.

“Are you forgetting how German I am?”

“You don’t even know what that means, Frederica.”

“Explain it then. I was waiting for you to tell me at some point. You can’t read nor write our script, but in turn we don’t know words you brought over from wherever you are from!”

You scratch your head.

“Ah, well… It was supposed to mean blonde, blue-eyed, hard-working, resilient, tough, strong…”

Frederica laughs. She strikes a pose straightening her back and balling her hands into fists at her waist. She looks proud.

“Why, thank you, Mr. Natsuki! You just made my day. A word full of meaning! Except for the color of my eyes, I’d say I’m the most German person there is!”

“You sure are. Listen, I haven’t known you for long, but I already like you, so don’t screw up around here, you damn lioness.”

“Got it! I promise to be the best servant you ever had.”

No way she’ll surpass Rem, but you don’t want to start an argument. And Petra steps towards you. She’s forcing herself to erase the worry from her face with a smile, but her concern remains evident in her eyes.

“Please give me your hand, sir. You saved my life from that cultist, and I will always want to repay the favor.”

Confused, you extend your arm towards the tween, and she ties carefully a white handkerchief around your wrist.

“It will keep you safe during your travels.”

You examine the tied handkerchief, but it just looks like a square of cotton.

“Is it enchanted? Is this some magical artifact that your peasant family has passed down through generations?”

“Well… In our village whenever one of us decides to travel far away, it’s a custom to tie a handkerchief around the traveller’s wrist, because it will bring him or her good luck.”

Your shoulders slump, and you narrow your eyes.

“It’s completely useless!”

Emilia lets out a noise of dismay. She squeezes your shoulder.

“Subaru!” Emilia steps towards the tween and she strokes her reddish-brown hair. “We are grateful, Petra.”

The tween’s look of disappointment, as well as the tears growing in the corners of her eyes, almost elicit some emotion in you.

“I hope you have an uneventful trip, lady wi-… I mean…”

Emilia hugs Petra tightly.

“It’s okay, my dear. I like it when you say it. Take good care of each other, and also of our sleeping resident, alright?”

When Emilia and you finally turn towards the back of the carriage, all four of you wave, even though you are standing at speaking distance with each other. You get on the carriage and sit on the same places of the bench you occupied when you came from the capital. Otto looks over his shoulder from the driver’s seat.

“Everyone ready?” He sighs, and snaps the reins. Patrasche and the other ground dragon begin to pull.

“Let’s head into trouble, then.”

---

Note from December of 2020:

The first act of the fourth arc of this story has ended. Look forward to a whole new place with a whole new way. Lots of new characters, and old ones we will see with different eyes.

This entry covers part of the tenth volume of the original “Re:Zero” novels.

In the previous entry, the protagonist went through his humiliating first time with the hundreds of years old child librarian Beatrice.

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 must have finished cleaning your shameful mess in Beatrice’s library around three in the morning. When you finally returned to your bedroom, you needed to sleep enough so your mana would recharge. Around the time that people wake up to live like normal human beings, part human beings Emilia and Frederica knocked on your locked door so you could join them, but you had to bother explaining that you were fine, that you had been learning some magic with Beatrice but that you fucked up, and that they needed to let you rest. You finally emerged to the world around six in the afternoon, feeling completely out of synch for wasting most of a day.
You get out of the mansion through one of the many secondary doors, and breathe the fresh air of this day that is coming to an end. You spot Frederica in the distance, as she’s trimming some hedges near the main road that leads to the gate.
“So, how did your first magic lesson go?”, Puck says. He appears by your side and flies in a pirouette until he hovers near your face. “It’s hard to imagine you managed to cast any spell when you’ve seemed out of it ever since we returned to the mansion.”
You take another deep breath for a completely different reason.
“What, weren’t you attending my disgraceful lesson, flying while invisible and laughing at how much I botched that whole shooting mana thing, maybe while touching yourself?”
Puck smirks.
“I had things to do, important things, like scaring the hell out of some rats in a bin. But given your downcast eyes, I’m guessing you managed to disappoint our patient librarian.”
“Thankfully for you, your slothful nature as a great spirit prevents you from knowing how it feels to shoot your load before you even get to take off your pants, metaphorically speaking.”
Puck laughs.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell Emilia. I fear that knowing such a detail might make her wonder whether her current infatuation is a sane path to pursue.”
You look to the side.
“Maybe you should tell her, then”, you mutter. “It’d make my life easier.”
“It’s not my place to tell anyone anything, much less my adoptive daughter Emi, when it would break her heart. Are you seriously still thinking about resisting her advances? Didn’t we speak about this at length while you were crying, back at Crusch Karsten’s den…?”
“I don’t remember speaking to you about anything. And I’m already married.”
Puck shakes his head.
“Ah, pretending to be Wilhelm, are we. While admiring that old guy could rub some of his savoir faire on you, his inability to move on from losing his wife is something to pity. As physically strong as he remains, psychologically he’s as weak as they come.”
You glare at the little cunt.
“If you are insulting me by proxy, I wouldn’t consider weak someone who defeated a great spirit in his mind. Imitate Petelgeuse if you want, try to possess me, see how that goes for you.”
A shiver makes Puck tremble from head to toe, and he retreats a bit.
“I assure you, kid, that of the few things I fear in this world, getting trapped in your mind is the most horrifying prospect.”
Your glare softens as you sigh deeply.
“So, what is it that you wanted?”
“To give you a heads up, so you don’t react like the unstable madman that you are when Emilia approaches you later on. She intends to employ her precious time giving you your first lesson to teach you how to read and write, something that you should have gone through as a child. You better appreciate her attentions. After all, she’s one of the sweetest, most beautiful gals in the world, and you are you.”
Although you can’t take Puck’s words as anything less than an attack, you are grateful that Emilia will bother teaching you such basic stuff. You figure that she has spent most of the day in her office, going through numerous official documents related to her wild attempt to become the next queen of this fantasy place. The poor girl must be stressed out, and spending time teaching you while simultaneously believing she’s romancing you is a nice way for her to relax.

When you finally sit next to Emilia in front of her office desk, with both your suppers waiting at the sides of her desk so you will eat them while you learn, you hadn’t considered that Emilia would step up her romancing game now that you’ve all returned home. She’s wearing a silky nightgown that shows both her bare shoulders and also a generous amount of cleavage. Although the half-elf’s tits aren’t on Priscilla’s level, or Rem’s level for that matter, or Frederica’s, she looks amazing. Her smooth, unblemished skin demands you to caress it, and whatever stuff she’s perfumed herself with is affecting your brain like an aphrodisiac. You are tingling all over, even occasionally in your crotch, although you keep shifting around to prevent it. Given that you are blushing profusely, and feeling your heart speed up, she must have noticed by now that you are avoiding to stare at her otherworldly gorgeous face, those big purple eyes, and her moist lips that demand yours.
As she nudges your shoulder with hers, she keeps finding excuses to touch your hand with her warm fingertips. The flirting itself must be exciting this naive girl, for whom the only person she could trust before you returned to her life was a completely untrustworthy would be mass murderer.
You do try to focus on tracing the few dozen characters of this fantasy world script. You have already seen most of them written around in the capital and on documents that people you knew were holding, while you wished silently that they never asked you to read it along with them, or for them. Thankfully those characters are relatively simple, closer to Western script than to Japanese. You figure that it won’t take a long time to become fluent with them, as long as you keep practicing. After all, you aren’t in school, and you are truly attempting to learn something useful.
Emilia has brought a few books of fairy tales that she cherishes from her own childhood, and she’s eager to share them with you. Her silver hair rests on your neck as she leans closer and reads softly word by word, asking you from time to time to pronounce some of the words made out of characters you have retained. It’s getting harder and harder to think when most of your blood is flowing downwards. You take bites of your cold supper to distract yourself.
You fall into daydreams that steal away your focus to the extent that Emilia had to snap you out of it, although kindly, a few times. You remember this very same Emilia trembling and crying her eyes out in the village’s plaza, when that villager with the wart was berating her for having caused, in his eyes, the death of his whole family. At her core, the half-elf seemed mostly shy and timid, and you are partly proud of how she’s blossoming by pursuing you, although it’s making your head spin and feel guilty as fuck. If Rem could see you now she would vomit, and possibly extract her custom flail from whatever magical pocket of her servant outfit she kept her weapon in.
The lesson comes to a point in which you can pronounce entire words by yourself as you follow the sentences on the book. The foreign-sounding syllables end up transforming into comprehensible words that for you sound like regular Japanese. It doesn’t make any sense.
The two of you, although Puck has decided to perch on your head, end up sitting on the carpeted floor, backs against the bed frame as the books lie open on your lap. It must be around two in the morning. The moonlight shines through the window, and the lantern’s glow has long since dimmed. Your eyes start to feel heavy.
“We should give up for tonight, Subaru…”, Emilia says softly.
You must have fallen asleep for a moment. You look over to see Emilia rubbing her eyes. You no longer feel Puck’s weight on your head, so maybe he’s gone through his spirit version of falling sleep.
“Yeah, you’re right… We can continue tomorrow night, or in the morning even. Although I’ve thought about waking up early from now on. I better take up on Wilhelm’s advice and swing for a while whatever sword I find somewhere around here. You are going to bed already, I’m guessing. Good for you that Roswaal, or some more thoughtful ancestor of his, put beds even in the offices.”
You realize you have spoken quickly out of nervousness. Like back during the carriage trip to the mansion, waking up next to the half-elf makes you feel as if you are cheating.
After you stand up and pat your legs absentmindedly, Emilia stands up enough so she can sit on the bed. She lifts her gaze towards you.
“You are going straight to sleep as well, aren’t you, Subaru?”
“Yeah… Listen, Emilia, thank you so much for teaching me both tonight and other nights to come. You have no idea how much not knowing how to read hinders my life, although thinking about it for a few seconds would make it obvious. And also thank you for allowing me to return home. I must admit, though, that you look so gorgeous that it was making it quite hard for me to concentrate on the lesson.”
Emilia laughs, and then keeps smiling at you so warmly that it makes you shiver.
“You look gorgeous as well, Subaru.”
Emilia blushes a bit, which is when you realize that she expects you to make a move on her. For a moment your brain pictures you sitting next to the half-elf, caressing her silky hair, Emilia turning her face slowly towards you while separating her moist lips and looking down at your mouth. You feel your palms sweating and heat going through your body. The thought of betraying Rem even in your imagination makes your throat tighten.
“You do know, don’t you?”, Emilia says with a sad voice.
You realize you must have stood there acting weird for too long. Emilia has lowered her gaze to her lap, and is holding her hands on top of the silky skirt of her nightgown, near her bare knees.
You sigh.
“Yes, I do, but it’s not that easy, and… well…” You have no excuses. You are only just realizing yourself of how selfish you are. “I’m in love with Rem. I can’t just betray her like that.”
Emilia’s face darkens, but is still looking down. She inhales deeply and exhales slowly. When she lifts her head, she looks at you with a tearful expression.
“What am I going to do, Subaru? Never have I met a man who could make me feel the way you make me feel, and yet you won’t even make a move. I can’t stop my…” She quits midway through that sentence, and lifts her hand to her heart. “And you fought so much to save me, to save all of us…”
She starts tearing up, and before you know it you sit next to her and hug her. She embraces you tightly, and her tears fall on your hand, which is placed on her back. The two of you stay like that for a while.
“You don’t need to feel sorry, Subaru”, she murmurs, trying to sound calm. “I won’t blame you for not loving me… My one wish is that we can be friends.”
“I do love you, Emilia. Just not the same way I love my Rem.”
Emilia sniffs.
“That’s fine. I just… I don’t want to lose you. We’ve been through so much already, and I don’t want you to think I’m some clingy girl who would hold a grudge against you for not reciprocating my feelings.”
“If that’s a real concern of yours, I assure you that I will belong to your side until the day I die. Until my final death, I mean. If that ever happens.”

You wake up shortly after sunrise the next day, even though you went to bed late. As you lie on your wide bed with your eyes open, you tell yourself that no way you are going through the trouble of standing up, taking a shower, dressing yourself, getting a sword and wandering to some appropriate spot of the huge yard to imitate Wilhelm’s routine. However, you figure that you’ve vanquished greater evils than finding the motivation to start training, so you jump out of bed. Shortly after you snatch a fancy sword, probably a family legacy, stored in a display case near the dining room, and you head out to the yard. The early morning’s air freshens your lungs while the mighty rays of the sun brighten your mood. You stand near a gazebo slightly hidden near some rows of hedges, and after you take a deep breath and you tell yourself that you aren’t doing something stupid, you imitate Wilhelm’s swings.
After a while the muscles in your arms and in your back get hotter, and you feel stronger. You figure that if you do this for a week, your strength will begin to go up. Your body will adapt to the exercises, and maybe you’ll soak in some of Wilhelm’s aura of murderous heroism.
In between your grunts, some of them exaggerated, you realize you are hearing the sound of something like scissors trimming the nearby hedges. You get uncomfortable. A couple of minutes later Frederica pops up from behind one of the wall-like hedges. She’s already smiling, unsurprised to find you here, so you figure she has been spying on your graceful, manly movements for a while. She’s wearing gloves and holding some sharp scissor-like thing you can’t name, and she’s gathered most of her voluminous, light blonde hair in a hair tie. She seems so zestful and awake at this hour that in comparison you feel as if your body must be operating on a quarter of her reserves of energy.
“I didn’t take you for such a determined warrior, Mr. Natsuki.”
Her voice sounded friendly, but the comment still annoys you.
“Morning, lioness. Turns out there are many fascinating things you don’t know about me.”
She smiles broadly, to the extent that the sun glistens on her predatory teeth, and you get the impression she wasn’t paying attention to what you said. Even though you haven’t stopped swinging and you are standing quite close to the gazebo, Frederica skillfully moves in front of you.
“Are you looking for someone to spar with?”, she asks.
“I didn’t take you for the sword fighting type.”
“I haven’t for a long time, since I was a child… Does swinging like that improve your skills, when you lack an opponent?”
You stop at the end of your current swing, and after thinking about it for a moment, you shrug.
“You know, I have no fucking clue. A guy I admire and whom I witnessed murdering a few very dangerous people did this every morning, and unless he was fighting his inner demons… Shit, he might have been.”
Frederica’s smile has not faded one bit. If she was someone else, you would have been creeped out, but you can sense that this girl is as easy-going as they come, yet still intelligent.
“I think you should continue your training… Maybe you should try to find an opponent?”
“Then it would be a sparring match.”
“We could also wrestle for a bit.”
Your brain freezes mid-swing, and your legs break out of your stance. When you recover your footing, you hold on to your sword as if to give yourself confidence. After a shiver runs down your spine, you concentrate on the glints of sunlight that brighten your blade, so you stop your mind from finishing the pictures it was drawing.
“I… I would say yes, Frederica, and I would also say yes. However, any wrestling match between us would consist on you pinning me down immediately with your superior German body, me losing most of my strength because I would feel your bountiful attributes compressing against me, and in turn you would find yourself occasionally poked by my rock-hard erection. So unless you are into that…”
Frederica laughs loudly while closing her eyes tight, and a moment later she hides her mouth with her hand. Her shoulders shake. When she lowers her hand, she’s still displaying her triangled teeth.
“Too bad lady Emilia wouldn’t like that one bit, would she?”, she asks with a giggly voice.
She then leaves, disappearing behind some hedges. You stand there trembling as your heart beats quickly, and it takes you a bit of deep breathing to even attempt to return to swinging your sword. That damn teasing, exceedingly hot lioness.

Otto looks like he’s living the life. Despite your horror stories, he has used the bathhouse, which would admittedly feel really good if it wasn’t because you were permanently scarred there, and the merchant now also knows the joys of lounging half naked on an outdoor reclining chair while a precocious, skimpily dressed twelve-year-old serves him drinks, joys that in your previous world were usually reserved to the one-percenters.
When you walk up to Otto’s side and he notices you, he grins and greets you cheerfully. He takes a sip from his drink.
“I have to say, these drink aren’t as strong as that part beast servant claimed, but this all feels pretty damn cushy.”
“When you’re done with your absolute power trip there, maybe you and I could go down to the village to secure some food supplies. We might run through our reserves before the end of the week.”
“Oh, of course. Always thinking about the future, that’s Mr. Natsuki!”
“That’s me, I guess.”
“I heard from the ladies that you received your first magic lesson from the mansion’s librarian. I tried to check out the place, but I couldn’t find it anywhere.”
“And you likely won’t. It’s protected by a spell. However, unless you want your back to break, you’d rather steer clear of the librarian. She’s a great spirit with a short fuse. After I botched casting my first spell, she had me cleaning the bookshelves for hours.”
Otto looks down and he seems suddenly worried, a huge contrast with his previous attitude. He then takes another sip.
“But you did learn something, didn’t you?”
“Technically I would be able to cast the one spell she taught me, and like the madman with a hammer than I am I see all of you as nails for this recently acquired ability of mine, but Beatrice, that librarian, told me that I have damaged by gate by shooting all of my gooey essence at once. Until she gives me the thumbs up to try again, I should forget that I am a mighty magician.”
Regarding your recently activated magic senses, though, you don’t know whether to be worried or excited about Beatrice’s likely accurate discovery that you have two superpowers. Why would you have a new one? And why hasn’t it become obvious already? As you lied in bed, you explored the threads of control that you recognized regarding which parts of your body you can move to any degree, something you had become acutely aware of when Petelgeuse tried to steal your body, but you didn’t find anything new. Maybe you need to practice more until you recognize and strengthen that new muscle. However, you already know that it is witch-given. Did Satella grant you another blessing slash curse deliberately? Either way, you’re a freak.

Half an hour later you and Otto get together with the two servants in the kitchen area. Frederica is speaking about which supplies you should attempt to gather in the village. When Otto suggests that you both should bring a written list, Frederica shoots you a knowing yet considerate look, and hurries to begin writing the list herself. Ram must have told her you can’t read so Frederica, as a servant, knew with what she shouldn’t inconvenience you, and you figure that Petra has found out about it as well. You glance at Otto. You had asked Emilia to teach you how to read back at the carriage, but you don’t know how clearly the merchant could hear from the driver’s seat, nor how loud you both were speaking at that moment. You find this secrecy humiliating. There are far worse things in life, you know it damn well, than being illiterate.
“Emilia is teaching me how to read and write,” you say, “and she turned out to be talented at making somewhat idiotic people learn stuff. So in a short while I won’t burden you girls with this task on top of the many others you take care of.”
Frederica is addled for a moment, but she smiles softly. Her eyes tell you that she understands you wanted to free her both from having to hide your weakness.
“That’s very kind of you,” the lioness says, bowing her head a bit to you.
“Well, I mean, you both deserve a break every now and then. And maybe you could teach me how to prepare some of those… soups or whatever it is you make.”
Frederica chuckles.
Otto has arched an eyebrow and is looking down at the table as if thinking about your interaction.
“Care to share your thoughts, Otto?”, you say.
“To be honest, the question that sparked in my mind was how would a general organize such an operation as the one I got myself tangled in, when he doesn’t know how to read nor write.”
“For starters, I did tell you that me being a general was a historical anomaly. I can almost assure you that you will never witness me leading another operation like that, and not precisely because we intend to kill you and bury you in the garden. How come I have managed to get by in this fantasy world despite being illiterate? I have an excellent memory and good sense of orientation. Nah, just kidding. I have managed to survive because I can rely on awesome people who do stuff I can’t do.”
Otto, still looking down at the table, smiles a bit.
“Good to know that you can lead an army to victory by trusting your subordinates and really knowing how the whole system works.”
“I wouldn’t go as far as saying that I really know anything, but I will continue relying on others’ talents as soon as when we reach the village, because you’ll likely have to deal with the local vendors yourself.”
“Alright then, sounds like a solid plan.”
Both servants look towards the door, and you realize that Emilia has entered the kitchen, seemingly attracted by the lively conversation. The half-elf eyes you all shyly as if she feels left out.
“Is something going on…?”
“Oh!”, Otto blurts out. “We’re just preparing to leave for the village. You’re welcome to join, lady Emilia!”
“Th-thank you… but I’m not sure if my face will be welcome there…”
Otto frowns a bit as he looks at her directly in the eyes.
“Of course it will! You have done nothing wrong!”
“… You didn’t hear?”
“Heard what?”
Emilia closes her eyes and sighs.
“The village… The villagers think I’m a witch.”
Otto opens his mouth to insist, but you interrupt him.
“Yeah, I don’t know what kind of atmosphere we are going to find down there, with seemingly only a quarter or fewer of the villagers remaining after Ram took quite a few with her to Sanctuary, and we already know that some are pissed, although maybe just at me. If you don’t want to come, that’s alright, Emilia. Do you want us to bring you something, though?”
She nods.
“Yes, some fruit would be nice. Some appas maybe…”

Shortly after you and Otto are following the main road out of the mansion’s grounds, when the merchant points to his carriage.
“Let’s find your ground dragon, Mr. Natsuki. I have a carriage, so we might as well use it.”
You nod, and call out Patrasche’s name. She soon lumbers out from behind some hedges alongside the road and obeys your calls to approach the carriage.
“Ain’t she the cutest girl you’ve ever seen?”, you say to the merchant as you pat the ground dragon’s scaly flank.
“She’s certainly a good deal less scary than the bigger ones”, Otto says. “I mean, she doesn’t even have big teeth or anything. Not to disparage your loyal ground dragon, though, but she doesn’t hold a candle to lady Emilia!”
While he says this, he looks over at the carriage with a starry gleam in his eyes, which makes him miss the glance that Patrasche shoots at him. You smile and pat the merchant’s back.
Once you reach the village, Otto parks on one side of the main plaza, where you recall that one of the frontlines of both Crusch’s soldiers and the Iron Fang’s mercenaries had battled to the death against the tide of cultists. Maybe due to the lack of hoses in this fantasy world, some patches of the dirt remain dyed reddish-black, as if the liters of blood had become mixed permanently with the ground. Most of the two-story houses facing the plaza have been ruined, and a few have collapsed entirely. Nobody has cleared the rubble piled up, although some villagers have extracted or dislodged some furniture from the damaged houses, which is gathered near their front walls as if waiting for some waste collector to carry them away.
When you and Otto climb down from the driver’s seat, you are gazed upon by a few villagers. All of them are either in their twenties or early thirties, and have the expected weary but determined look in their eyes. They are all dressed in worn yet still colorful clothing. Some whisper to each other, and others avert their eyes.
Otto leans towards you.
“Mr. Natsuki, they could hardly be more suspicious. They behave as if they had been insulted.”
“I don’t know where they could have gotten that idea. But let’s forget about these fuckers and hit whatever passes for grocery stores around these miserable parts.”
You and Otto wander around until you find a building with something similar to a storefront. The man in his thirties that was chopping meat inside doesn’t look pleased with your arrival, particularly when he recognizes you as the one who convinced them to evacuate the village, but after you exchange some of Roswaal’s spare change, the guy relaxes as if life has returned to normal. You repeat this routine in two other stores until you’ve found most of the items that Frederica requested, including a bunch of appas for Emilia, but you and Otto quickly lose your determination to find out what corner of the village could sell the remaining items, because the quality and amount of onlookers have upgraded from people you casually passed by to a bunch of people following you both. You walk briskly with your groceries towards the carriage parked in the village’s plaza. You hear some mumbling on your way, but try not to pay attention.
As Otto loads the groceries on the back of the carriage and you pat Patrasche’s head, you suddenly hear a yell from behind.
“Are you just going to leave without addressing us!?”
You turn around and see a group of people, about seven or eight, catching up to you both. While they aren’t the biggest bunch of dudes you’ve faced, they do look particularly angry.
“Yeah, you’re that bastard aren’t you? The one who ordered everyone to evacuate!”
One of the villagers, a guy in his mid twenties with a conspicuous sewn wound on his bare arm, has a firm grip on a rock.
“I am that bastard, yeah”, you say calmly. “Do you have something to say?”
The guy who addressed you frowns and looks back to his friends, who all seem to be encouraging him. Patrasche growls a bit.
“Look at our houses! That one near the corner is mine, and the whole second floor collapsed during the fight, crushing most of my stuff on the first floor! I’m occupying now one of the vacant houses, and I don’t even know if it belongs to someone who got killed by that cult, or to any of the villagers that left with that scary, grumpy, pink-haired servant girl!”
“What about me?” Another villager, with a big bushy beard, speaks up. “My house collapsed as well, and I lost my business with it. We all did!”
“Yeah! What about us!?”
Otto places a hand on your shoulder, and Patrasche growls.
“Mr. Natsuki, I don’t think we should…”, Otto says with a trembling voice.
You wave him off and turn back to the villagers.
“Well, I hope you get them houses fixed soon. It’s not right to live in other people’s abodes, or on the streets. You don’t even have proper pavement in your village, its just a bunch of dirt! I would be pissed too.”
“That’s what you should tell us! When will you rebuild them!? We need to return to our normal lives! And we have lost many if not most of our possessions as well!”
One of the villagers who you hadn’t noticed, and who has been silent this whole time, a young girl around seventeen, steps forward.
“They’re right, mister noble. We have lost everything, and now we’re forced to live a life we didn’t choose!”
You shake your head.
“Do I look like a construction worker? Why the hell would I be in charge of rebuilding your shit? Just because I told you to evacuate to avoid getting massacred by that cult?”
Some of the villagers look at each other. The guy with a bushy beard frowns in confusion and raises his voice.
“You work for the lord! Don’t pretend that you don’t! He’s responsible for our security, and the village was almost destroyed when those cultists attacked! We lost so many people! And where are the ones that we sent with that pink-haired servant!? We haven’t heard anything from them!”
“Ah, you think I represent that clown. Listen, Roswaal is missing. He was missing already when the Witch’s Cult almost Apocalypsed the world, and he hasn’t returned yet. We can’t locate him nor find out what happened.”
A few villagers complain at the same time, but the bearded guy interrupts them by speaking louder.
“We don’t care! We’re not stupid! You work for the man who destroyed our lives and homes, you have to help us!”
Before you answer, the girl continues with a conciliatory tone.
“The lord abandoned us during the assault, and now we don’t know when we will be able to return to our own homes. We can get by because the cultists didn’t burn our farms nor kill our animals, but we feel that we haven’t been supported in any way!”
You have grown angry, but not at these idiots for bothering you, but at Roswaal. If he hasn’t returned because some trouble in that Sanctuary place restrained him there, if he simply chose to stay away, you don’t think you will be able to let that pass. It’s not just that he abandoned the villagers as well as his own employees, but that he forced you to deal with the aftermath of his indolence. Crusch would have faced the tide of cultists and sliced many of them in half, and then she would have organized the reconstruction the next day. She would have sent some of her staff to feed the villagers if necessary.
“Let me tell you something”, you say with a raspy voice. “That motherfucking clown abandoned us too. His own people. We knew the cult was coming to murder our friend and kill everybody at your village, and that Roswaal just left. I had to break my back and inflict an unhealthy amount of mental scars upon myself so I could bring over a couple of armies so as few people as possible got killed. And after we managed to survive that nightmare, the clown hasn’t returned yet. We can’t get to where he’s supposed to be, because he hasn’t told us the location. You guys have the right to be angry. I would personally beat that lazy piece of shit up if I got the chance.”
The sheer honesty of your words causes them to reassess you. A guy murmurs that you are right, that he saw you during the battle as you were fighting. Their expressions shift, and some look back with a bit of remorse in their eyes.
“I didn’t expect such a statement from someone like you”, one of them says, a guy who had kept quiet.
You suddenly realize that you can’t just wait, even if just because these people won’t stop bothering you about whatever Roswaal does or doesn’t. The clown should answer for himself.
The guy with the bushy beard has kept frowning since the confrontation started, and doesn’t seem to have any intention to calm down.
“You can dismiss our complaints easily because you live at that huge mansion! You enjoy every kind of luxury! What would you know about losing your home, finding out that most of your stuff has gotten destroyed? And plenty of the villagers that have survived have lost family members!”
“I lost my home and my family too”, you say with a hollow voice.
Your words as well as your tone throw the guy off for a moment, but he ends up shaking his head.
“No! You’re different, because you had that mansion to run back to! You stay there enjoying the good life! If you really understood how we feel, you wouldn’t be able to dismiss our concerns this easily.”
Before you recover from your sudden gloom, another guy, who had hidden himself behind a larger man, contributes to the conversation for the first time.
“M-Maybe we should take the mansion for ourselves!”
Otto mutters something with a trembling voice, and out of the corner of your eye you notice him shuffling towards your back, maybe to the carriage.
A weasely looking kid in his early twenties encourages the previous idiot’s idea by shouting that they should burn things down, in general. To be fair to most of the crowd, they insist on shushing those two.
You sigh deeply.
“Again with the burning stuff down. Good luck. Everybody who tries to assault the mansion will die, the same way we took care of the Witch’s Cult. Roswaal might be an indolent clown, but he hires his maids for their combination of hotness and murderous abilities. Our resident lioness alone would be able to handle all of you pitchfork-wielding motherfuckers.”
The crowd seem dumbfounded by your outburst. You climb to the driver’s seat calmly, and when Otto unfreezes, still wide-eyed, he does the same and grabs the reins. Patrasche keeps glaring at the crowd and showing her teeth.
“We will locate the clown and make him pay, in many ways. If Ram is still alive, every villager who left must be hanging out with our bitchy servant. No way she let them die if she’s still standing. Now get out of the way.”
Otto snaps the reins, and the carriage rolls forward. The villagers stare at you as you leave. You assume they didn’t move out of fear of Patrasche or perhaps a mixture of embarrassment and confusion.
One of the villagers snaps out of it enough to shout at you in particular.
“A-And I don’t fuck goats! That’s a dirty thing to do!”
You turn towards him and reply loudly.
“You avoid fucking goats because of the unhygienic aspect of it, huh? I wouldn’t care if you fucked all your barn animals. We all have our fetishes.”
Once Patrasche is already pulling uphill, Otto looks over his shoulder, and when he realizes that the village has disappeared behind a bend on the road, he slumps his shoulders and lets out a deep sigh. He holds his trembling left hand in front of his face, which is slowly regaining its color.
“Mr. Natsuki, you are cold as steel! You weren’t fazed by those rough looking men becoming more and more hostile! That’s a general for you. No wonder even such a bunch of unruly half-beast mercenaries followed you!”
“The Iron Fang is a professional mercenary band. And again, you are too fixated on my role in that operation!”
“That’s how I was introduced to you! My very first impression! Goodness, my heart… You looked as if you could have vanquished those villagers single-handedly if they had attacked you.”
You pat him on the shoulder a couple times.
“No, I wouldn’t have been able to do shit. I suppose that my natural confidence helps, but the fact is that dying doesn’t bother me.”
Your cold words cause him to flinch.
“You mean that you don’t value your life? Well, I do fear death, and you were almost welcoming it! Wait, don’t tell me that you are suicidal!”
“You are going to accuse me of that too?”
“Other people have already brought it up!? Mr. Natsuki… Is this about your unfortunately comatose girlfriend?”
You rub your eyes. You feel tired all of a sudden.
“Sorry, Otto. It’s just that after you have lost your dick and still survived with your sanity relatively intact, few things can truly bother you.”
Otto lets out a noise of distress. He shoots a glance at your crotch, but he then straightens his back and stares forward as his face whitens again.
“You have been castrated”, he states with a thin voice. “By the gods… I can’t… I don’t know what to say about that. Now I understand why it affected you so much to face your lord’s member from so close. It reminded you of your nightmarish trauma!”
You turn towards him on your seat and shake your hand dismissively.
“Hey, don’t go claiming shit like that! I lost my dick, yes, but I recovered it since. It’s all good.”
Otto alternates between following the ascending road and trying to read your expression.
“I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised that a camp with such competent magic users would be able to reattach a cut-off penis, but I don’t believe for a second that everything returned to normality!”
“You don’t believe it!? Let me show you then!”
You lift your ass off the seat to pull down your pants and underwear enough. It’s chilly. Otto raises his palm next to his face as a screen so he won’t see your crotch even involuntarily.
“No! I’m sorry I doubted your words, Mr. Natsuki!”
“No way! You don’t tell a guy that his dick don’t work no more and then not expect him to prove otherwise!”
“Stop it, please! We will end up crashing!”

---

Note from December 2020:

I’m taking my sweet time with this first act of the fourth arc, but there’s plenty more to set up than in the original novels or the anime adaptation due to how the retelling has diverged from the original events. I’m loving the dynamic with the new cast members, particularly with the German lioness, but I miss Crusch’s crew.

This entry covers part of the tenth volume of the original “Re:Zero” novels.

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

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After supper you rushed to the bedroom that Emilia chose for your sleeping beauty. After you close the door behind you, the atmosphere of the room, with the moonlight bathing Rem’s deadpan face, takes you back to those nights you spent at Crusch’s place lying next to your girl, caressing her beautiful skin and wallowing in many painful thoughts. Your lungs have already refused to work properly, and your heart is getting squeezed. You sit next to Rem and lower your head to kiss her forehead. You listen to her breathing softly.
That nerdy doctor had told you that this curse or whatever it is doesn’t cause any decay on the body of the victim and neither do they need to eat, which obliterates the laws of thermodynamics, but you are trusting him blindly. You recall watching on television how people in a coma or who had to spend a lot of time in bed for whatever illness, ended up not only atrophying their limbs, but also producing bedsores unless someone took care of them. What did they do? You faintly remember images of nurses stretching and compressing the bedridden person’s limbs. That seems doable, you’ll gladly tend to her like that every day.
As usual, the limp feeling of her arms when you move them, this time lifting them and testing the limits of their joints, makes your vision go all misty. You feel as if that’s never going to change, that if you end up becoming a fifty or sixty year old not remotely as resilient as Wilhelm, you’ll keep returning to Rem’s side even though she remains expressionless and forever young.
After you pull down the sheets to uncover your beloved demon servant, you grab her legs and lift them to your shoulders so you can kneel properly in front of her waist. You then fold her legs and push yourself forward to compress them against her body. You’ve done this a few times when you hear a gasp coming from the door. Petra is standing there looking flabbergasted while she holds her palm against her mouth.
You get instantly mad, and wish to shout at the tween to get the fuck out. You were about to jump from the bed, but you first put down Rem’s legs carefully so she lies normally on her back. When you stand up at the foot of the bed, you are clenching your teeth, and you refuse to look at the tween in the eyes.
“Damn it, girl! Can’t you knock or something? Didn’t Frederica tell you not to bother the residents in their bedrooms?”
Petra is alternating between eyeing you and Rem. She likely thinks she’s seen something she shouldn’t.
“I-I knocked! But nobody answered, so I used my judgment and came in anyway. And I can’t stay away, sir! Frederica told me to check on her a few times a day. What if she vomits, or chokes somehow…?”
“Well, I didn’t hear anything. Why don’t people install bolts on their mansion’s doors? Are all of the rich people in this fantasy world voyeurs who want that excuse if they decide to walk into someone’s bedroom?”
“There are bolts on the doors of this mansion, sir…” She turns, points at it and then slides it back and forth.
You sigh. You sit on the edge of the bed and hold your head for a moment.
“What do you think you’ve just seen, Petra?”
“You were pushing her folded legs against her torso while you stared at the sleeping servant with hungry eyes, sir.”
“Hungry eyes!? I wasn’t… Well, I would be entitled to! She’s my beloved girl, even though she’s in a coma! And it’s not as if I was doing anything I shouldn’t!”
Petra looks worried and confused. She doesn’t know why you aren’t talking to her that way.
“Do you need any help, sir? I could keep the girl company for you while you go do your business.”
“This demon servant is my girlfriend. It’s not a chore to be with her. And I wasn’t doing anything wrong, as I said, so erase whatever nonsense you just made up in your tween brain. I was trying to help Rem.”
“I don’t… Does that mean you’ll accept my help, sir?”
You stand up and pace to the window and back while shaking your head.
“This is what I told that lioness. These things just happen. And worse! It’s not my fault. Listen, Petra, I wasn’t doing her, alright? I won’t go as low as having sex with my unconscious girlfriend! That’s a scumbag move. What if she gets pregnant? I wouldn’t be able to explain that to the child when he or she grows up. My spawn would turn into a fucked up adult! There’s no way he or she would grow up right with such an origin story.”
“I don’t understand what the problem is, sir. I know enough that sex isn’t as bad as everyone seems to make it out to be.”
You step towards Petra, who looks up at you with her brows arched as if she has no clue what you are doing.
“That’s not a thing that should have come out of your mouth! I wasn’t having sex with my Rem, I was trying to prevent her body from atrophying, or from getting bedsores, or something. I saw it on television! Get your mind out of the gutter. Damn kids these days…”
“I’m not a kid, sir! I’m a grown woman! I already went through my first period and everything, and I’m working as a servant, so I have to get into the rooms…”
Your left eye has begun to twitch.
“You people in this fantasy world are out of your minds. Your whole set of values is ass-backwards. A grown woman, you say! I’d like to see you take a dick and then rep-… No, I wouldn’t want to see that!”
You sit down hard on the bed, which makes Rem bounce, and after you turn your torso sharply towards her to make sure she won’t fall off the bed, you hide your face with your hands.
“I want to cry, Petra”, you mutter with a hollow voice. “That’s what you’ve done. Now I just want to start crying. That’s what you do to people when you walk into their bedrooms unannounced.”
You peek from between your fingers to see the girl’s worried face.
“I am sorry I caused you trouble. You saved my life and everything during the attack, and I’ll always remain in debt with you for that…”
“Consider the debt rescinded! No more weirdness!”
“… O-Okay. Again, I apologize. I’ll make sure to knock harder and wait longer for a response next time, even to enter a bedroom where the resident is unconscious…”
You take a deep breath and stand up again while you avoid looking at the tween straight in the face. Your stomach is churning.
“The lesson you need to learn about this encounter is that you should always be careful when entering people’s bedrooms, unless you want to see a guy balls-deep into someone else. Do you understand?”
“Yes…”
“Okay, then leave me alone. There’s nothing else that needs to be said. Except that, please, don’t tell anybody about this disastrous encounter.”
The girl nods.
“I won’t, sir, although I’m not sure what happened…”
She leaves the room with her body turned sideways, looking awkward.
You sit back on the edge of the bed while your heart beats loudly. Your mood has curdled, and when you look back at Rem, you feel a pang of guilt. Even if you killed yourself, as you suddenly wish to, it wouldn’t change that if you considered handling Rem’s body the same way, nothing would erase in your mind the notion that you might be doing something wrong, or that other people would think you are. Now that Rem is gone, you can’t accrue more more positive memories with her, only an increasing number of sad or regretful ones.
You get up and leave your beloved’s room. The hallway is empty, and eerily silent. Your steps make no noise on the carpet as your legs keep carrying you even though you haven’t decided on a destination. Before your mood soured, you had already thought of visiting Beatrice, but you aren’t so sure anymore. You haven’t seen the ancient spirit for so long, as the last time happened before your self-imposed loop at Crusch’s mansion, that you have gone way out of synch with how she expects you to be. That conversation would demand plenty of maneuvering on your part. However, you want to thank the librarian for saving you: if she hadn’t messed with your essence so you could both face Satella whenever you died and also see Petelgeuse’s Unseen Hands, you doubt you could have ever defeated that ancient ghost. As you keep walking and remembering that kooky, irritable, hundreds of years old librarian, and how she had helped you so much even though you had only bothered her, you don’t care anymore that Petra has ruined your day: you want to see Beatrice again.

You pass by your bedroom to grab Beatrice’s gift, and then you begin the search for the door that opens to the magical library. Beatrice hides its location through a Passage spell that makes it so you will never find it unless you are extremely lucky, or Beatrice wants you to find it, or your name is Natsuki Subaru, because it only takes you four attempts, guided by your instincts, until you open a door and get a good whiff of centuries old books. Maybe you can find Beatrice easily thanks to your high compatibility with spirits that Julius mentioned, or because your only natural talent is foiling people’s carefully laid plans.
Beatrice is sitting on her favorite chair as usual, in the corridor between two bookshelves. She lifts her child face towards you from the book she was reading, but her expression doesn’t change. Your memories of this hundreds of years old child spirit had diverged a bit from the person who sits in front of you. She has her blonde hair in two long hair tails, and although her irises are weird enough, because they have the faint shape of butterflies, what you always found jarring is her outfit: she’s wearing a red and white plush-like dress, which makes her look as if she died on stage while she was performing a Christmas play in school. You wonder if this great spirit was ever alive to begin with, because you doubt that Puck was.
“You took your time”, Beatrice says. “After you people dealt with the Witch’s Cult, I had expected that you and the silly girl would have returned to the mansion right away. Did you get yourselves distracted in the capital, I wonder…?”
Hearing this girl’s voice tickles your mood. You feel like joking around with her, teasing her so she will get fake mad. You always got the sense that although she can’t bring herself to admit it, she enjoys getting interrupted from her tiring duty to protect the library even though seemingly nobody wants to threaten it.
“Plenty of sights to see and alcohol to drink, for sure.” A smile grows on your lips. “But then we thought that there was no way we could leave Beatrice alone. Doing little else than read books and mess with corpses for hundreds of years would get on anyone’s nerves.”
A frown grows on her face.
“Don’t I always seem perfectly content, I wonder…? Like I look forward to your visits! They take me out of this place even in my mind, which otherwise I wouldn’t leave unless it was completely necessary, I suppose.”
“It’s perfectly fine if your dreams consist of nothing but reading books and fiddling with corpses. It just happens that I need to indulge in far more debauchery to find my contentment. These perishable shells demand it, but you wouldn’t know about it.”
One of Beatrice’s eyebrows twitches.
“Would any spirit want to burden itself with the demands of your transitory forms, I wonder? Besides, I’m far too busy fulfilling my contract, I suppose.”
She’s trying to hide it from you, but great spirit or not, she remains a person. She’s been here for far too long. Anyone would want a break, but you don’t know how you could help beyond distracting her from time to time.
“You know the whole deal about the Witch’s Cult assaulting the village, wanting to kill Emilia and all that, right?”, you ask. “A big thing that happened. I missed you during those perilous hours. I’m sure someone considered a great spirit would have been able to help in some way, if only because we would get to see your cute face.”
Beatrice pouts playfully.
“Cute is it, I wonder…? I suppose my face would be the only part of me that wouldn’t frighten children. But should you get to scold me about my actions during the Witch’s Cult attack on the silly girl, I wonder? I am tasked to fulfill my contract, which involves protecting the library and securing the integrity of the mansion. And have you noticed that the mansion and the library stand in one piece, I wonder?”
You are pretty sure that Beatrice did nothing whatsoever. And by now you know that spirits have a hard time understanding how terrifying it is to face impending doom, as well as anticipating the mind-shattering pain that might come. However, even if Beatrice didn’t move a finger to defend the mansion physically, she did contribute to your victory by messing with your insides.
“Yes, you’ve certainly done a great job in that regard. But let me get to my main point. I’ve been aching to thank you for how much you have helped me, even if you don’t remember it.”
Beatrice raises an eyebrow in confusion.
“I have never helped you beyond lifting that demon dog’s curse, I suppose, and any healer with enough ability would have done so. Should I have helped more someone who keeps bothering me, I wonder…?”
“Oh, certainly. You’ve been my lucky charm ever since I met you. I would have been content with that alone, but you messed with my magical insides, calibrated some essence, and thanks to that I could see horrifying stuff like ghostly arms and a stalkerish dead witch. I wouldn’t have made it this far if it wasn’t for your irritable self, for sure.”
Beatrice looks annoyed.
“Are you making any sense, I wonder? I have never done anything like calibrating some essence in you. I would have never used such a vague expression, I suppose.”
You have been growing increasingly giddy just by talking to her, and you can tell that Beatrice is disturbed about the smile pasted on your face.
“Yeah, you did some magical shit on me, you kooky girl!”
After you let out an excited noise, you grab Beatrice’s waist and lift her from the chair as if she were a toddler. She weights even less than a child. As you turn in circles while laughing, Beatrice shakes her arms and yells.
“What are you doing, I wonder!? Put me down, you buffoon! I didn’t do anything to you, I swear on Mother!”
You hadn’t considered obeying her until you notice the distress in her child face, including her moistening eyes, but Beatrice extends her right arm towards you and shouts some arcane term. You find yourself thrown back as by a gigantic bouncer, and your back hits one of the bookshelves. You fall on the ground with a loud thud. A bunch of books that had jumped from the shelves hit you along the back and in the head. You rest on your forearms for a few seconds as you try to recover your breath. Your back hurts bad, as if you had been hit with a baseball bat, but it doesn’t hurt as much as knowing that Beatrice has done that to you deliberately.
Beatrice is huddled on the floor next to her chair, hugging her knees while eyeing you as if she fears what else you could do to her. She looks disturbed as if you had burst deliberately into the bathroom where she was taking a shower. A couple of tears roll down her cheeks.
A cold chill runs through your body, and even when it stops, you still feel ill. You have hurt Beatrice even though you hadn’t intended it for a moment. You don’t know her at all, then, because you wouldn’t have expected her to react this way. Even though the sudden pain in your back increases when you fill your lungs, the way the hundreds of years old child glares at you with her teary eyes hurts a thousand times more.
“You take too many liberties with me, I suppose!”, Beatrice shouts with a shaky voice. “I am a great spirit, and you are merely a human! You take a few steps in this world and then disappear!”
Beatrice looks more scared of you than angry. Even though you are useless and mostly powerless, burdened with an ability that only allows you to help people after you die, this powerful spirit fears you. You remember the numerous occasions in which that nasty Ferris had lectured you about consent, and maybe you should have listened to any of it. You feel horrible.
You prostrate yourself towards Beatrice until your nose touches the floor.
“Please, forgive me, Beatrice. I didn’t know it would bother you so much! I was just excited because I hadn’t seen you in a long time and I like you very much. Don’t cry anymore because I’m a complete idiot!”
After a few seconds you hear Beatrice walking towards you, and then she steps on your back with all of her might. It hurts, but you don’t dare move. Despite her lightness, you feel her leaving a footprint on your back with her heel. You wince and grunt in pain.
“You should learn to read the mood, I suppose! If you’re too dense to know when to contain yourself, how do you survive in this world?”
“I don’t know, Beatrice”, you say with a hollow voice. “Mostly by pure luck, I guess, and by confusing people with my idiocy.”
“It’s just like when we first met, I suppose. You can’t take a hint and you come across as very creepy sometimes.”
“I’m sorry, Beatrice.”
The librarian gives you another shot with her heel.
“Apologies don’t fix everything. It takes a lot of work to rebuild trust, I suppose.”
“I know that.”
“Do you really, I wonder? You’re very dense, I suppose.”
“I’m really, really sorry, Beatrice.”
“Stop saying you’re sorry and get up!”
After Beatrice steps away, you recline your back until you are kneeling. She puts her hands on her hips and looks down at you. Beatrice has stopped crying, and has calmed down almost entirely. You stare at each other for a few seconds as the silence consumes the room, but then she sighs.
“Fine! I forgive you, I suppose.”
“Thank you, great librarian and also great spirit who is way greater than lowly humans. I mean it. I will make sure not to lift you like a child ever again.”
You force yourself to smile, even though you still feel cold and your back hurts like hell. She notices you grimacing, and then she walks to your side and illuminates her palm with a dark, purplish light. You hold your breath in case she intends to murder you, but you recognize the balm-like warmth of a healing spell, and your pain goes away. When you fill your lungs again, it’s as if she never threw you violently against a bookshelf.
“You do care about me after all, Beatrice”, you say with a thin voice.
She looks to the side and her cheeks redden a bit.
“Don’t push it, I suppose. I care enough that I won’t let you die without healing you.”
“I would have died from that hit!? Nevermind, thank you, kind Beatrice.”
“Anyway, you stink, I suppose.”
“An old-timey insult. I’ll take it. Ah, you mean that I smell like Satella.”
Beatrice snaps her head back in surprise.
“How did you know I meant like the witch, I wonder…?”
You stand up and pick up the nearest book that had fallen on you, to return it to its shelf.
“It’s a long story with many unbelievable details, but please, sit down and wait for a moment until I tidy up this mess.”
After you have finished returning every book to its approximate place of origin, you brush the dust off your clothes and sigh. Beatrice is staring at you while frowning.
“I’m not sure how to broach the topic, to be honest,” you begin, “but you already knew-… Ah, I completely forgot! I had brought you a gift that I picked up during the cult’s assault.”
“You smelling like Satella is too significant for a change of subject, I suppose!”
“It’s alright, it can wait. But where have I left it…?”
You look around and you notice that you must have dropped Petelgeuse’s Gospel near the opposite bookshelf, as you were about to do something as reckless as grabbing and lifting a great spirit, regardless of her looking like a child. You pick the Gospel up. It’s too stained with blood and unknown fluids to be considered a gift under any circumstance, but you figure that someone like Beatrice would appreciate it. You offer the book to her, and she eyes it dubitatively while parting her lips.
“Is that what I think it is, I wonder?”
Beatrice takes it with much more care than you ever did, almost as if she’s afraid the pages might turn to ash. She opens it, and you watch as her eyes scan the pages.
“You know what it is, I’m guessing”, you say.
She stares at you while narrowing her eyes.
“Is this your Gospel?”
“Mine!?”, you raise your palms. “I’m not a cultist! And me smelling like that looped witch doesn’t have anything to do with it! We looted this Gospel from the Archbishop’s corpse. From one of his corpses anyway.”
“What was that Archbishop’s name, I wonder…?”, she asks cautiously, as if she doesn’t want to hear the answer.
“It belonged to none other than the previously unkillable Archbishop of Sloth, Petelgeuse Romanee-Conti, madman extraordinaire, that I nevertheless defeated with my own two hands, sort of.”
Beatrice’s eyebrows rise for a moment, and then the sadness that overwhelms her expression erases the smile from your own face. Her shoulders slump, and she holds the book against her chest.
“I suppose you have left me as well, Geuse…”
The quiet sadness of her voice paralyzes you. It’s as if she has just lost someone dear to her. You swallow.
“Beatrice… How come you knew Petelgeuse?”
She shakes her head slowly. Her gaze is fixed on the carpet.
“Do the great spirits of this fantasy world belong to some sort of club, go to meetings, shit like that?”, you insist, and chuckle nervously. “Or is it that the older a spirit is, the more likely she knows everybody in whatever passes for an afterlife around here? Please tell me, Beako.”
“I’m not that old, I suppose! And that’s not my name. Don’t I have a perfectly good name already, I wonder?”
“Please tell me, Beatrice! How do you know that horrible bastard!?”
Beatrice leaves the Gospel carefully on a piece of furniture to her side, that looks like a nightstand. She narrows her eyes at you.
“What business is it of yours, I wonder?”
“I kind of deserve to know! Everything nearly ended because he fucked with us.”
“I can’t tell you anything about that man, I suppose. It’s not my place to speak anymore about what went on in the old world. You would not understand even if I told you, I suppose.”
You sigh in exasperation. You can tell it would be a waste to keep asking her about it. She has no intention of bothering to explain. Your heart is beating loudly, and as you stare at the child-looking spirit, you have no choice but to face in your mind that you know very little about her, even if you are very fond of this kooky girl.
“Beatrice… Can I trust you?”
She looks at you confused, and tilts her head.
“What gave you the idea that I wasn’t trustworthy in the first place, I wonder? Am I not the one who has been there for you through thick and thin? Have I ever lied to you?”
“Well, that whole thing about you knowing Petelgeuse bothers me. And I’m not sure what you mean about being here for me through thick and thin! You don’t even know what you did in that previous lifetime of mine!”
Beatrice shakes her head at your outburst.
“You know that we come with but a single purpose. You don’t threaten the library and you belong to Roswaal’s people, so I’m on your side, as I have been from the beginning, I suppose.”
You turn away for a moment to rub your eyes, and when you face the librarian again, you feel deflated. She looks annoyed.
“Will you tell me about your connection with Satella, I wonder?”, she asks prickly. “Are you an Archbishop of the cult?”
“How can you ask that so casually!? I’m not a cultist, I already told you!”
“Why would you smell like the witch if that wasn’t the case, I wonder?”
“We have already gone through this, with you and with many other people, but I guess I’ll need to do it again. I have a blessing, or curse, granted to me by Satella herself. You already told me that she left part of her essence inside of me.”
Beatrice seems to be listening intently, so you continue.
“Whenever I die I meet Satella again. She has filled the deepest part of myself, the abyss if you will, with her endless love, and every time I die, usually after horrifying pain, that old witch slash bitch is sure to repeat to me how much she loves my bones. Then she sends me to the past. You already know this, Beatrice, because we spoke about it in a different timeline. I froze to death in that one, I think.”
Beatrice looks aside as if to think about your words.
“If you’re immortal and only sent to the past, then why call it a curse, I wonder? It seems logical that you are in fact not cursed but blessed by her.”
“You wouldn’t say the same after you lost your dick like I have. But then again you wouldn’t know how it feels to have a dick, or a real body for that matter.”
Beatrice frowns in disgust.
“It’s not like I wanted this to happen,” you mutter, “or asked for it in the first place. I didn’t want to lose my family either… But I guess Satella needs me more than my parents did, so I can’t be selfish.”
Beatrice narrows her eyes and holds your gaze through your silence. Her lips make a wet sound when she finally opens her mouth to speak.
“I will need to see for myself, I suppose. Follow me.”
After she climbs down from her chair and turns away without waiting for you to follow her, you catch up to the child spirit.
“You intend for me to lie in the place of one of your corpses as you check something in me with your magic tricks, don’t you?”
She shoots you a look over her shoulder. She’s both surprised and disturbed.
“I wasn’t lying to you, Beatrice”, you add. “I can travel back in time whenever I die. If there’s anyone in this world who would properly understand that I’m not fucking around, it should be you. That’s part of why I like you so much.”
You follow Beatrice up the expected set of stairs, and when you reach the corpses, you don’t wait for her input to push off the same half-koala’s corpse, if only for the sake of repetition. When you lie down, you sigh deeply.
“I can’t believe you just made me lie down without foreplay of any kind, Beatrice.”
Beatrice ignores you, as she’s too busy concentrating on producing a dark, purplish light from the tips of her fingers. They converge in a churning ball over your heart. You already know it won’t hurt, so you just stare at it mesmerized.
“Your magic is so damn cool, Beatrice. I wish I was a spirit too instead of having to command a body with body parts easy to lose.”
Beatrice keeps a straight face. She has no idea what to do with your obvious attempt at levity. After the purplish light goes out, she steps away. You sit up.
“You have indeed Witch Factors embedded in you.”
“I could have told you that already.” You smile while Beatrice scrutinizes your expression, but then you suddenly realize that she used the plural. “Wait a second! What the hell do you mean by Witch Factors? More than one?”
The blonde-haired spirit tilts her head. “Couldn’t you have told me that, I wonder?”
“No, I fucking couldn’t! I only had the one! What does it mean that I have two?”
“Your body hosts not one but two Witch Factors. Wasn’t it obvious from the wording, I wonder? It means you have two powers, I suppose.”
“No, I don’t! I only have the one!”
Beatrice frowns and stomps on the ground with one foot.
“Am I not telling you you have two, I wonder!? Do you suppose I’m playing with you? You play around enough for everybody in this mansion!”
You stare at the spirit while she pretends to be offended.
“Beatrice, current love of my life as long as you hold the secrets of the universe, I have only experienced one power, and the last time we went through this calibrating nonsense, you didn’t suggest I had two. Shouldn’t I know if I have two superpowers?”
She narrows one eye.
“You should sense it, in the same way you feel the mana coursing your body, or how to use your magic gate.”
“That makes sense then, because I can’t do magic at all! Not everybody in the world is like you, Beatrice. In fact, nobody is like you anywhere else in this fantasy world, as far as I can tell! The other great spirits are either useless cunts or obsessive stalkers, and neither of them have your cute face, particularly the one who dissolved inside Satella!”
Beatrice’s mood sours. Her frown morphs into a pout, and she puts her hands on her hips.
“And how do you know my face is cute? Have you seen it?”
You are about to consider her words, but you merely sigh and shake your head.
“Yes, Beatrice, I’ve seen it. Several times while you’re talking to me.”
“I don’t care, I suppose! How come you don’t sense your mana, I wonder? Even children figure out how to do that.”
“Because I’m dumber than a child. Let’s leave it at that. But I’m not a magician, Beatrice. You should know that already. Although that Julius fellow suggested I could become a spirits user…”
“Shut up and take my hand, I suppose.”
You are about to hold her little hand she’s offering, but you remember that she almost broke your back for touching her a relatively short time ago.
“Are you sure? Aren’t you going to freak out and throw me to the library below?”
“Only if you keep on mocking me, I suppose.”
You hold her hand. For a second, you feel nothing special. Then you feel a rush of sadness, and an overwhelming sense of powerlessness. You also feel like you’re drowning as your mind screams for air. Your link with Beatrice is kicking in. Beatrice seems to be her own miserable world. The maelstrom of feelings is mixed with remorse, sadness, fear and pain. Every moment of her existence is torture. Even the few happy memories she has are spoilt by the fact that she’s alone. She’s been waiting four hundred years for someone to reach out to her. While her words may have come off as those of a spoiled brat, she truly does want someone to reach out and be friends with her. She wants to have fun. And most of all, she wants someone to love her. But she can’t, because she’s trapped in the magic circle of the library.
You yank your hand away by instinct. Whatever magic bullshit had linked you to the great spirit breaks, and only a faint echo of sadness remains. Cold sweat is beading on your neck, and you shiver.
“Beatrice… What the fuck was that…?”, you ask with a raspy voice.
“I checked your magic category, I suppose. Do you want to know which is it, I wonder?”
You are about to speak when you cough, and keep coughing for a few seconds. The tsunami of emotions that just ravaged your insides made you want to lie down until you can think properly.
“Will you answer me, I wonder?”, Beatrice insists, annoyed. “I did go through the effort of exploring your magic potential, I suppose!”
You swallow, and when you feel the saliva returning to your mouth, you lower your head and look at Beatrice as if she offered you some dessert after assaulting you.
“There was way more than exploring in that interaction. I don’t know what the fuck just happened, but I guess I want to discover my magical potential, sure! What category or whatever am I, or have I?”
“Do you know which are the four categories of magic, I wonder?”
“I don’t know anything, as I keep telling everyone. I still haven’t started learning how to read. You are talking to a toddler here.”
The whole time you were answering her, Beatrice was rolling her eyes.
“In magic there are four categories, I suppose. Fire, Water, Wind and Earth.”
You nod. Thankfully your heartbeat is calming down after whatever the fuck Beatrice transmitted into your insides.
“Generic stuff, but convenient. If you had an element for every fundamental particle that seems to exist, that quantum stuff, magic would turn into complete nonsense. Hell, that whole quantum physics shit seems like pure nonsense most of the time.”
“Don’t confuse me with your delusions, I suppose. Do you want to know your category or not, I wonder?”
“Isn’t it obvious from our interaction, and my words, that I do want to know? I’m pretty sure that I actually stated as much, although my head is spinning at the moment.”
You rub your temples, trying to ignore the creepy stare that Beatrice is doing. While she might be a child, her stare feels far from being a child’s.
“Your category is very rare. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone like you before, I suppose. Your element is Shadow.”
“That’s not any of the categories you mentioned!”
“Of course it is, I just gave them all silly names to fit the theme of my library. Your element is obviously Shadow, but you’re also a Doomer, a Depressive and an occasional Dreamer. Basically, you’re a whiner, I suppose.”
“I don’t want to hear jokes coming out of your mouth!”
Beatrice tilts her head, and crosses her arms as if she was a student being told off by the teacher.
“Should I not tell jokes in my own library whenever I want, I wonder? But your magic category is indeed Shadow.”
You rub your eyes and sigh deeply.
“Okay then. I suppose that’s fitting for someone in love with a demon. What does Shadow magic entail? Can I summon succubi or something?”
“Why would it have to be a succubus, I wonder? Never mind that, you can’t anyway. Shadow magic involves spells that hinder your enemies’ abilities, or that keep you out of their sights. Mainly illusion spells, in practice.”
You deflate.
“That sucks ass, and yet I must admit it does fit me. My main natural ability has always been confusing people so they can’t do the one thing they are supposed to. It’s Shadow all the way down, I’m afraid.”
Beatrice was staring at you with a deadpan expression, and when you stop talking, she follows up immediately.
“Do you want to try casting a spell?”
You perk up, and let out a noise of astonishment.
“Oh, shit! Will I really be able to do magic? Me? If you teach me how to do magic, I will love you forever, Beatrice!”
Beatrice sighs, and shakes her head.
“You better promise that you won’t love me if I help you, I suppose!”
“Fine…”
The librarian takes a deep breath.
“Then follow me downstairs, I suppose.”
You hadn’t even taken two steps on the staircase when you remember that you hadn’t brought up the main topic that was bothering everybody else at the mansion.
“Ah… By the way, mighty Beatrice, do you know anything about that Sanctuary place, by chance?”
Beatrice suddenly stops as if paused, and you nearly crash into her. The librarian’s shoulders tense up and she slowly starts turning around. For a moment you see bewilderment in her face, but she seems to realize something, and she regains her indifferent stare.
“Because Roswaal went there”, she says.
“That’s right, that’s why I’m asking. Ram followed him, and neither has returned.”
She continues descending the stairs. You follow her steps.
“I know everything there is to know about Sanctuary, I suppose.”
“Even how to reach it, if necessary?”
She glares at you over her shoulder.
“Are its location and the path to reach it from the mansion included in the word ‘everything’ that I clearly used, I wonder…?”
You get down to the floor of the library, and its guardian keeps walking towards her chair without waiting for your reply.
“Listen, Beatrice, we might need to get there. Not that I want to, but Emilia is real worried.”
“Sanctuary is no business of yours”, Beatrice says with a sudden seriousness. “Nor does it accept the help of strangers.”
Beatrice stops in front of her chair. You keep walking until a couple or meters separate you from the librarian, and you turn to face her. She’s eyeing you expectantly as if she intends for you to quit talking about this clearly secret place, and focus on the offer to learn magic.
You need to insist, though.
“Sorry, Beatrice, but if Roswaal doesn’t come back, and it feels as if there’s a good chance he won’t, then we are screwed, aren’t we?”
Beatrice frowns, closes her eyes and turns her head slightly as if dismissing your worries.
“Roswaal informed me that he intended to leave for Sanctuary. That implied he would return. But if he won’t return, then that’s that, I suppose.”
“Bea…”
The librarian gives you the harshest glare she can muster, one that would break most men into a jittery mess.
“Will you make me waste more time, I wonder? Do you want me to teach you how to cast a spell or you don’t? Either is fine with me, I suppose.”
You lower your face sheepishly.
“Please teach me how to cast spells, great spirit.”
Beatrice sighs, but then she closes her eyes and her face relaxes. She raises her right hand, and from her extended fingers wobbly threads of purple light converge in a churning ball in front of her palm.
“I will guide you, I suppose, with my magic. For you it will be like using a muscle you have never moved before. Close your eyes and in the theater of your mind imagine a darkness. In its center picture a solid ring. Trace its contour with your mind’s eye. That’s your magic gate, I suppose, through which you must push your magical essence. Now picture a swirly, thick, liquid-like substance building up in you and then entering the scene from the side closest to you. Focus so this swirling essence keeps congealing into a malleable, paste-like form. Mold enough of it with your mind-hands so you can hold it in front of that solid ring. Then concentrate and push the congealed mass through at the same time as you pronounce the arcane word of power that identifies the chosen spell. The spell’s name for today is…”
You had been staring at Beatrice with your eyes narrowed for a while.
“Are you fucking kidding me, Beatrice?”
The great spirit snaps her head back as she opens her eyes wide, and then she frowns at you in stupefied confusion. When she manages to close her mouth, she opens it again to berate you.
“Should you spoil the sanctity of my library with such foul words, I wonder!? And your sudden outburst makes no sense, I suppose!”
“You are making fun of me because I don’t know anything about this magic world, aren’t you?”
“I never make jokes, I suppose. I don’t know what you are talking about!”
“You were making jokes just a couple of minutes ago. So to cast a spell I must imagine myself building up a thick liquid and then shooting it through a hole? In that case I have practiced so much that by now I should have become this fantasy world’s Grand Archwizard!”
Beatrice closes her eyes tight, clenches her fists and trembles.
“Do I want to know what you are referring to, I wonder…!?”
“You definitely shouldn’t. Doesn’t change the fact that-…”
Beatrice opens her eyes suddenly and then glares at you as she shouts.
“Shamac!”
A darkness envelops you in less than a millisecond as if all the light in the universe had shut off. The blackness is so opaque that you are transported immediately into the abyss of yourself. You look down towards your hands, and you feel them moving, but you can’t see any hint of them. You bring them to your face and even touch your eyelids with your fingertips, but there’s no change in the blackness. Your heartbeat is battering your ribcage. Your throat closes, and you break out in sweat from head to toe. In absence of visual stimuli, your hearing has sharpened to the extent that you hear loudly your labored breathing. Are you dead? You must be. Beatrice has gotten so tired of you that she decided to swat the annoying fly. That’s all you represent.
You have gone dizzy, and you aren’t sure if you are still standing up. You extend your arms and try to wander around, and a moment later your hands hit something. You feel it, you are prodding the spines of books. The world remains here.
“Beatrice! If you are still here, please stop whatever this is! It’s not funny anymore!”
The light returns as suddenly as it had switched off. Your heartbeat pulsates in your throat, and you are holding on to the tops of a couple of books as if you feared getting dragged by some current. Beads of sweat roll down your temples. When you turn towards the librarian’s favorite chair, Beatrice is standing in front with a soft smile that doesn’t in any way represent happiness.
“That’s Shamac, one of the most basic Shadow spells. It plunges everyone near the caster in blackness.”
You swallow, and when you manage to speak, you sound almost breathless.
“One of the most basic, huh…? I could find a few uses for it.”
“As long as you target beasts and stupid people, I suppose. Any person with decent enough magical abilities will dispel it in a couple of seconds. Which is why I called it ‘one of the most basic Shadow spells’, I suppose! Now stand in front of me and picture what I told you! Will you trust and obey me now, I wonder…?”
“Yes, my hundreds of years old child master.”
As you face the small, increasingly annoyed librarian, you relax your shoulders and close your eyes. As you do your best to concentrate, you feel yourself falling into a strange state of semi-consciousness. You hear the librarian’s voice as if coming from far away.
“Concentrate, I suppose! Don’t daydream!”
A tingling feeling starts spreading throughout your body. You fill your mind’s theater with blackness, and in its center you draw a solid, pink, somewhat hairy ring. As you trace its contours lovingly, you feel a hot, swelling liquid building up close to you, as if coming from your navel. It spreads enough that it pours into the blackness and begins filling its closest half. You gather it with your mind-hands, you mold the swirling essence into a thick, gooey paste until not a single shred of it swims around in the darkness. Then you align it in front of the hole, aim, and thrust it forward.
“What are you doing!?”, Beatrice shouts. “Not that m-…!”
You are deafened by blast as if someone had popped a huge balloon you were floating inside of. Your legs fail you, and you collapse to the ground. When the whiteness that had blinded you for a few seconds clears up, you blink a few more times, because something must be wrong with your vision: everything around you, from the bookshelves to the carpet and the floor and more importantly Beatrice herself, is covered with a dusty cobweb-like black substance.
As far as you can distinguish of the librarian’s features, she has shut both her eyes and her lips tight, and after a couple of seconds she blows air out through her nose, which disturbs the black cobweb things that have covered her face. She begins trembling and then shaking as if she’s about to explode.
“I did this…?”, your vocal cords barely collaborate to let you speak, and your elbows become wobbly as if they are about to cease supporting you at any moment. “What the hell happened, Beatrice…?”
The librarian turns her hand in front of her to orient the palm upward. A purple ball of light grows to the size of an apple, and then it pops. The cobwebs covering the librarian are swept away as if someone had hosed her with water, except that she remains dry. She then opens her eyes to glare at you furiously.
“You spent all your mana at once, I suppose! How could you have been so irresponsible!? Don’t you have any control at all of your magic gate, I wonder, or any common sense!?”
Your elbows finally give out. You resist the fall enough so the back of your head doesn’t hit the floor hard, but when it rests there, you realize you can barely move a muscle. It’s as if your body suddenly feels the effects of running a few marathons one after the other.
“I can’t move, Beatrice”, you mutter with a thin voice. “I have never felt this weak.”
Beatrice walks up to you until she appears in your field of view. She glares at you from above.
“You are supposed to build up your magical essence carefully, and pace yourself, focusing on pushing the molded essence towards the ring as if threading a needle! You need to handle it with care, but you just shot everything through in a burst!”
A warmth surges to the space behind your eyes.
“It was my first time, Beatrice. I didn’t know what I was doing. I-I’ll take responsibility…”
Beatrice looks around while frowning. She shakes her head over and over.
“My precious library! You won’t go to sleep tonight until you wipe every shred, I suppose, of your congealed magical essence from my books! And the carpet as well! What a disaster, I suppose!”
Hot tears jump from the corners of your eyes, run down your temples and get in your ear holes.
“I feel so naked, and vulnerable, and empty”, you say with a teary voice. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Beatrice. I’m just a little kid, that’s all I can be…”
Beatrice hides half of her face with her palm as she holds her breath, and then turns away and leaves your frame of view, probably to have a cigarette and question her life choices.

---

Note from December of 2020:

This entry was my longest so far, to the extent that I had to remove the links to the parts of the first season.

Last time we saw Beatrice in this retelling happened back in part 13, so ages ago. The kooky librarian is one of my favorite characters in both the original novels and the anime adaptation, and she’s tremendously fun to write to the extent that she probably would warrant some spin-off with her as the main sidekick.

Those of you who have either read the novels or watched the anime adaptation know that the protagonist finding out about his magical abilities happens very early, I think as soon as the second arc starts, but I hate adding setups when they won’t pay off relatively soon, or at least in the same arc, and I already knew back then that Subaru wouldn’t handle his problems with his limited magical abilities. However, some payoffs in this arc involving magic are inescapable, so I had to introduce that scene of discovery. In the original, Puck is the one who explains everything and that shows him how to use his magical essence (with similarly disastrous effects), but I don’t think that the protagonist and Puck have that kind of relationship in this retelling, and also I chose to have Puck around only when necessary; in the original he’s constantly hanging around Emilia.

I feel I’m going to reread this scene plenty of times over the days, weeks, etc.