End of the Trial

The sound of sobbing filled the air. I opened my eyes. I was back. My chest ached, but considering I hadn’t even had a chest a moment ago, that seemed like an incredible improvement. I groaned, and the sobbing stopped. I tried to sit up, but a heavy weight on my chest made me stop. Had Fyth not removed his hand? I looked down, but it wasn’t Fyth at all. It was Nero. He slowly lifted his head, looking like he couldn’t believe his eyes. I looked at where his face had just been, but although the dress was a total loss, with a gaping hole in the center, my skin was smooth and undamaged.

“Luna! You’re alright!”

I took a deep breath, let it out, and then smiled up at Nero. “I am, thank you.”

Slowly, I realized that we were still in the guardian’s room, though it seemed that the guardian was dead now. The leaders of the A-ranked teams were standing around us, but everyone else was milling about, steadily moving our supplies onto the slide's entrance. It seemed to be expanding to accommodate everyone, which I'd have found interesting at any other time, but right now I didn't feel up to worrying about it. 

I tried to stand, but Nero insisted on carrying me. “I’m fine,” I protested, but I was lying. I felt fairly weak, actually. Luckily, Nero refused to listen. To my surprise, he was strong enough to lift me into a princess carry with ease. It wasn't my preferred position, really, but when I considered asking him to carry me on his back instead, part of me pointed out that we'd look like a guy giving his overtired kid sister a piggyback ride. I immediately resolved to deal with the current position without protest.

“Man, we’re sorry about that,” the leader of Please Daddy was saying.

Bode snorted. “Hey, ‘len, write that down. It was at 15% Health when it started firing those lights all over.” He examined me. “Good thing it only hit a Demon.”

“Why you -”

I put my hands up and turned Nero's face towards me. “It’s fine, Master,” I said. I was exhausted. I just wanted to lie down in a bed and nap for a few days.

Yuulen, however, didn’t have a tired girl in her arms. She stomped on Bode’s foot and lifted a flame-covered hand. “You want to try that again?”

He gave a disgusted sigh. “She’s fine. What do you want me to say? Boy, I sure wish it’d hit someone who wouldn’t survive it?”

“Maybe something like ‘sorry we let you get hit?” Yuulen snapped back.

I closed my eyes. I didn’t care.

“I’d also prefer if you apologized properly,” Alicia said icily. I didn't think I'd ever heard her get truly angry with someone before. I didn't need to ever experience it again. “Luna hasn’t done a single thing to you, and even if she managed to recover, the fact is that she was dead for a moment. I find it very concerning for the leader of an A-ranked party to dismiss that.”

“Fine! Jeez. Fine. Sorry you were standing in the way. Better?”

“Not in the slightest!” Yuulen and Bode’s bickering, with Alicia sometimes chiming in, continued until I fell asleep.

By the time I woke up, we were outside the dungeon. That was disappointing. I'd wanted to see what a slide that went up was like. I was curled up in Nero’s lap, and we were outside the city gates, sitting around a campfire with Alicia, Heather, and Justice. “Oh, are we not getting an inn?” I wondered.

Alicia winced. “People found out about Nero’s… um… evolution, and we were asked to stay outside the city. It’s nothing personal, I’m sure. They’re just, you know, nervous.”

Nero looked despondently at the gates. The guards were pretending they couldn't see us, which seemed rude until I considered that they had an entire night of us sitting here to work through. They'd be doing their jobs a disservice if they spent the time staring at us, and that'd get pretty awkward, too, anyway. Nero sighed. “Yeah, Yuulen tried to persuade people by telling them it was just part of the whole Hero/Demon Lord thing, but that just made them panic even more, saying Alicia might evolve at any minute and eat the whole city. I mean, come on. A whole city?” Nero sounded disgusted. “Idiots.”

He shook his head, then smiled at me. It was a tired expression. “Hey, I know you just woke up, but it’s nighttime, so I was going to head to bed. Would you mind keeping me company?”

I nodded, a little bemused but fine with the request. Once we were both inside his tent, Nero made me change into a new dress Alicia provided. He kept his back turned while I changed, reminding me of when he and Alicia shared a tent. Was that over now? There didn’t seem to be a space for her, but I wasn’t sure if that was a one-time thing or something new.

“You were dead,” Nero said once I was changed. “I felt it. Felt you just…. stop. You weren’t connected to me anymore. How did you come back?”

I sighed. Of course, he would want to know why his dead summon suddenly wasn’t dead. “Fyth told me I wasn’t allowed to escape that easily.”

Nero examined me worriedly. “Is that okay?”

I blinked. “What?”

“The way he talks about you. The way he treats you. He says you belong to him, that you can’t escape… Is all of that okay?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that. “It isn’t ideal, no, but… Ultimately, I’m the one who agreed to sell my soul in the first place. If anything, I’m grateful that he sent me to you. No matter what anyone says, you’re my Master.”

Nero’s answering smile was sad as he petted my head. It wasn’t that different from what Justice and Maxwell did, but I leaned into the motion, feeling comforted instead of annoyed.

Speaking of whom, I regretted that I wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to Maxwell. I understood, though. He needed to put his daughter first, and right now, she couldn’t handle the sight of Nero. That was fair enough. I didn’t blame her for that at all. I let Nero pull me into his arms and dozed, contentedly surrounded by my Master's warmth. 

In the morning, we packed up and headed home. It was our first time traveling together in what felt like forever, and it drove home the fact that Fay was gone.

“Oh!”

Everyone stopped. I reached into my Inventory. “Um, Heather’s materials,” I said as I handed them to Alicia.

Alicia looked nervously at the materials in her hands and then at Heather. “Do you want to evolve?” she asked.

“If you don’t mind,” Heather said. “I didn’t want to say anything while we were in the dungeon, since you’d done enough fighting, but…”

“Okay. Evolve.” It was as anticlimactic as ever. I sort of wanted to normalize making a fuss about it.

Very little changed. Heather now had a golden star on her forehead. Nero laughed. “Are you serious? That’s it?”

Alicia stuck her tongue out at him. “Pfft. Shows what you know, Nero. Watch this. Heather, Metamorphosis!”

In an instant, Heather turned back into her horse form. The golden star was now a golden horn, and she gleamed brilliantly. She was the very picture of a unicorn. I clapped, and Justice gave Heather one of his tight, scaly smiles. She turned back and returned the smile, and the pair walked arm in arm while Nero and Heather bickered with each other.

I walked behind them all, content and happy with this second attempt at life.