in which the heroine learns about arthropod taxonomy, penicillin, and atomic physics

To reveal herself had, of course, not been part of the plan.

In theory, there was nothing special about the Saint of Swords #244. She was… some woman.

Yet as she’d been attacked earlier, instinctively, Lou had summoned her spouse’s divine spear. Ordinarily, she would’ve blocked the strike with her hand, or even dodge.

What, then, had compelled her to use such a powerful weapon?

From the corners of her eyes, as she conducted the centipede, Lou glanced at the Saint; the latter had wrapped her arms around her legs, face half-buried into her knees, idly watching the scenery.

She was some woman.

That was it.

Then how…?

As they left the mining centers, the scenery began to change, and not only because it stopped raining; the constant mud gave place to palm trees, giant ferns, and butterflies of all colors. As they approached the state-capital of the wind tribes, this would give place to steppes. Pebble had always wondered how climate could change so abruptly, but she didn’t want to come across as stupid, so she’d never asked.

In fact, apparently Alph City (state capital) had been built around a tall, snowy mountain. She learned all of this by reading a pamphlet from one of the boxes tied to the back of the centipede, because what else would she do? Talk? To whom? The family of four was playing board games and the harpy was… reading… somehow… she had no hands, but she seemed to be using some kind of spell that made her novel float and flip itself.

As for the wolf-woman, she didn’t talk. Pebble’s attempts at unsubtle eye contact ended in failure.

And the centipede was. So. Slow. Being a centipede and all.

During their short stay in Alph Town 2, they got another passenger, a wind tribesman who introduced himself as Alphred. “Alfred,” he corrected unprompted.

He was good-looking and stuff. “Alphred?” Pebble asked.

“No. Alfred.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

Conversation died there.

By the second night, Pebble began to fidget. The centipede had to rest, so they would regroup tomorrow. The town they parked at was called Alph Town 2 ½, though no one wanted to answer what had happened to the other half. Pebble understood. The war had been tough.

Since Frell didn’t show up to harass her, unable to sleep, she went to the bar to pick up men. Or find recruits—whatever. It didn’t matter because she got none so she drank two milkshakes and a half then got a tummy ache so she couldn’t train the calories away so she curled in bed and cried a bit so then her eyes were puffy the next morning so she wouldn’t be able to find her husband.

The night before they reached their destination, Frell finally showed up. Pebble had given up on happiness, so she was working on a necklace in her hotel room. “Guess whooo…!” was his greeting as he spontaneously landed on her bed.

Pebble continued to work.

“...oh. Busy?”

“Yes.”

“Should I come back later?”

She stopped. “What do you want?”

As he jumped on the bed, Frell said, “I. Finished. Setting. Everything. Up!” Then he grew tired and stopped.

“For the second stone?”

“Yup!”

“So…”

So tired was he after such a perilous workout that Frell lay on the bed, fanning himself, red hair spilling over her pillow. That was as much male attention as she’d ever get. Not that she cared. “So… I buried the stone on this really… hh… really nice forest at the town’s outskirts. If possible, try not to destroy it once we fight.”

“About that, I was thinking of pretending to get knocked unconscious so Topaz and Alpherson could fight you since I haven’t found any new party members. Yet.,”

“Figured. But yeah. I just wanted to tell you that. I have this scenario set up and everything. You’ll see.”

“So you’re leaving?”

“Yeah? Though if you want some company…”

“I do,” she replied.

Frell was shocked out of saying something dirty. “...uhh… alright. Sure.”

So they went to drink at the bar. She had choccy milk. He had wine. By the third cup, Frell was beginning to sway; not only was he built like a preteen but he had the tolerance of one. “I’m just saying. We can’t go around saving everyone. PEBBLE. The whole Topaz digression was fine and Alph… Alpherson is aight, but that’s it, aight? I don’t have much longer.”

“You don’t?” Pebble drank from a kitten-shaped straw. “I thought you were immortal?”

“Not my BODY, my MIND. I can’t do this anymore. We need another mass extinction. Do you know what that is? No.” He giggled. “Do you know what atoms are? Galaxies? Penicillin? Nu-uh. You new world people don’t know anything. I miss humans.”

Happy drunk Frell would laugh at everything and go from table to table to force people to dance with him. Sad drunk Frell talked about insane, made-up words that Pebble forgot out of disinterest. What a bad time for the latter to emerge…

“I get it was. You know. A lot of that stuff was buried. A lot of it was burned. But some of us were alive at the time, you know? Then why was knowledge forgotten? Where did it go? Cuz it sure isn’t the Holy City, let me tell you that. Half of ‘em are pipsqueaks who could be their own grandmas. Turnover rate is high. I knew it was a bad idea to give mortals conceptual domains, but nu-uhhh…”

“Frell,” Pebble said, “I don’t care.”

“What do you think was the life expectancy before the first great one, huh? Uh, I mean the first great war. SIXTY. And what is it now? What, forty… anyway, it’s lower. You ask one of these so-called scientists what an atom is and they’ll just look at you funny. Peb, Peb dear, how many elements of the periodic table can you recite?”

“Ughhhh…”

He slammed his hand against the counter, startling the bartender nearby. “See? See? And all of this because people were all, oh noo, we have to escape the… the…”

Pebble clicked her fingers next to him.

“...thanks. Head hurts. Too tired to teleport.”

“Want me to get you a room?”

“Why? Just let me sleep in your—”

“Nope.”

Carrying him piggyback the entire time, Pebble rented him the room closest to hers, dumped him on his bed, then headed to her own. She was neither surprised nor disappointed to find him sitting on it. “Let’s talk,” he said.

“...fine. But just—something I can understand, alright?”

“Humanity’s folly?”

“I don’t know what that is.” She lay beside him; he joined her, and together they stared at the ceiling. “You keep bringing up ‘humans’. What with them? Oh—come to think of it, isn’t Topaz one? His ears are strange.”

“So was I.”

“But yours aren’t strange?”

“They were back in the day. Wait, no, I mean that they would’ve been strange, cuz they were pointy, cuz there were a lot less of you people. There was a lot less magic too though. And no gods. Not that there are any real gods now, but there was uhh… people thought there was one. A good one, not like us. Maybe there is. I wish I could hear him.”

“God of what?”

“Everything.”

“Oh, right, you mentioned that there was only one. That must’ve been scary, giving so much power to only one person.”

“Not a person,” Frell mumbled.

“...turtle?”

He snorted. “I miss telescopes.”

“Which means…?”

“I used to look at other planets with mine.”

“Frell.”

“A device used to observe distant objects through emission, absorption or reflection of electromagnetic radiation.”

“Fuck you too then.”

“I miss them,” he said.

“You spend a lot of time missing things, huh?”

“What else am I supposed to do?”

“...what was it that Alpherson said… to stare at the past means to be blind to your future? No, that was someone else.”

“Stormy?”

“Yeah.”

“So you’re telling me to not miss things while saying words from someone you miss. Wait. That made no sense. I mean like. Shut up.”

Possible translation: he was calling her a hypocrite. “Yeah,” Pebble admitted. “That doesn’t make what I said less true.”

“Well, the future sucks. There’s nothing in there.”

“Maybe, but that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing, right?”

“I dunno, Peb. It would be nice if it worked, but it never does. That doesn’t mean I’ll stop trying or anything. I’m just saying. Like I said, I already set up the, uh, pine forest. No. Ugh.” He rubbed his temples.

“...so you’re just humoring me?”

“...imma puke…”

“No you won’t.” She sat up, then locked his jaw shut. He let out a choked scream. “Either you teleport or I become a godkiller.”

Frell scrambled, took the stone out of his pocket, then vanished.

Of course he’d gotten another one…

He was back within a minute or two. “Almost dying sobered me up. Hi.”

Listening to his waffling was making her drowsy—finally. Frell was obviously not having a great time, so Pebble forced herself to stay awake. Whenever she felt herself dozing off, she’d pinch her arm or pat her cheeks.

“...drew the pine forest while upside-down…”

Though it was a losing battle against his nonsense.

“...waking up Leison…”

It was almost like dreaming while awake.

“...end of the world…”

⊹₊˚‧︵‿₊⊱·✶·⊰₊‿︵‧˚₊⊹

The last part of the trek was surprisingly easy to get through, and not only because she didn’t think of asking Frell to teleport her until she was there. Talking to him had been almost invigorating. Did he feel the same way? Who knew. Probably not.

Alph Town had more of those strange, wooden houses with triangular roofs. Ninety-nine percent of the flora were pines. How on earth was she supposed to meet Topaz and Alpherson again? Who knew. The centipede station was at the very edge of town, surrounded by woods. Pebble couldn’t ask the wolf-woman for pointers—she was gone. Vanished. The centipede quietly crawled into its stable.

The family of four and Alfred had hopped down in a previous station, but the harpy had stayed with her to the end, so Pebble asked her, “Do you know where the residential areas are located?”

The harpy gave her a panicked look. “I-I don’t speak…”

“Oh. Sorry.” Pebble gave her one of Frell’s language talismans, then repeated the question.

“Residential areas, hmm? I’m not sure. I don’t think they have those here. Everything is mixed with everything.”

Then how was she supposed to find Alpherson’s house…

“See ya.” The harpy took off, flying towards the town. Then why had she paid for public transportation… if she could’ve done that from the start…

As if things couldn’t get worse, she’d barely left the “station”—which was just a stupid stable surrounded by a pine forest—when someone tapped her shoulder and said, “Heyyy, pretty lady.”

Pebble took a twig from the ground. That’d do to beat this guy up if he got funny. As she turned to see him, she asked, “Can I help?” only to find nobody there.

Her other shoulder was tapped. Pebble was at her wits’ end. “You can. What’s the color of your panties?”

“If you survive this, I’ll tell you.”

“Wait—!”

Topaz leaped like a startled cat as Pebble turned around. She sucked her teeth, aiming at him with the twig. “What, lost interest?”

He held his hands as if to say ‘I give up’.

“...coward.”

“Yeah, yeah. So. I have news. We were wrong.”

“About…?”

“His family’s alive.”

Oh, right, centipede traveling had taken two more days than their turtle trip—plenty of time for them to get settled. Now that she gave him a good look, Topaz’s clothes were new, too. He tore an indigo ribbon that complemented the purple around his pupils and a white coat that was suspiciously loose.

He grinned. “What? Like what you see?”

“Ew.”

“The clothes are Alpherson’s, yeah. Since his wife and daughter are fine, will we tell him to stay with them, or…?”

Pebble let the twig drop. “Maybe.”

“Wife is kinda cuckoo, so there’s that.”

“Yeah. We’ll see.”

The good part was Alpherson himself was not cuckoo. The bad part was that this could potentially mean traveling alone with Topaz. They had to find new people. Or else.

“...wait, why are you here?”

They’d begun walking by then. She just kind of followed him along without asking where they were going. It was weird. “Why do you think, Saint?”

“To… pick me up?”

“Mhm.”

That made sense. It’d be impractical to have her wandering around until she eventually found them. Still—that meant that he’d gone out of his way to find the station and wait for her. “Thank you.”

“Mhm.”

…still an asshole though. “Frell already set up the second stone and stuff. I mean uhh.”

“You mean that the Demon King might show up if we try to retrieve the second sacred stone? Oh noo.”

“Yeah. Um. Although… I don’t know what’s going to happen. He didn’t tell me. And before you get sassy, he does that sometimes. My guess is that he’ll show up again, we’ll fight him, then get the stone. And by we I mean you.”

“No thanks.”

“I’ll try recruiting other people, too, so there’s that. I’ll make it a requirement to not be a criminal and not have a family.”

Topaz did this thing where he looked at people as though they were cockroaches sometimes. “Good luck with that.”

Pebble returned the look (or so she tried). “And you’ll help.”