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one.
She sees him first in a place time has long since forgotten, stalwart and somber, dusted by the light of a crumbling moon. She sees him first – for the first time, yes, borne witness to him tonight just as she will again and again and again – but she sees him first – a human, braver than the rest, daring to step foot in the lands of the west's wicked, wicked witch. Brave, yes, or foolhardy. There is a reason no one has tread where he does now before him, stood still before one of God's mighty, thundering fists, packaged as she may be in the fabrics and threads of a girl-barely-woman.
But is she, anymore? Hilda watches him with eyes of a doe, curiosity devoid of caution, a man who she would have struck down without hesitation on any night before, but one who she has no desire to harm now. In the absence of violence and utility, there is only wonder: wonder at herself, wonder at him, wonder for the world around them, never looking brighter in her eyes despite the hellfire that rains down like heaven-felled debris.
“What did you do to me?” No accusation, no malice.
What he says: “You've been tuned.” What she hears, loud as a gong at her ear: I've set you free. “You are no longer a servant of God.”
He finds her first in a place time has long since forgotten, cutting her marionette strings like a swing of the sword and catching her on her descent. A tool to the Mother, to God for time immeasurable, broken free of her shackles midst a world doomed to ruin. And perhaps it is simply one servitude traded for another that night, one master handing her leash off to another, but there is weight in choice, and a choice is what he presents her. Calamity is built into her bones, carved into her flesh, but he offers the Time Witch a smile, his hand, and asks her if she will help him rise above certain damnation. (The first of five – after her, there is Ukuna, then Millicent, Kaede in the east, and Francisca last of all – but she is the first whose hand he takes in his own, and it is a distinction she'll wear with pride.
(Because Hilda, for the very first time, can think for herself, and what reason has she to say no?)
Elcrest, he calls himself, heaven-bound and heroic. She knows not then, but it's love at first sight.
( --- )
two.
The first years without him are the worst.
It's days before Regnant's survivors poke their heads from hiding to face the remnants of their world, smoldering, wasting, and pitiful as it is. Many more die in the weeks that follow, succumbing to injury or hunger, preyed upon by the monsters that cannot be kept out by walls long since laid to waste. This is the time when her aid is the most critical, the remaining witches tell her, as steely-eyed as they had been in their failed attempt at deicide, for what world is there for her to protect if its inhabitants are all laid to waste? Hilda does not see “the remaining witches”, however, so much as she sees the space where Francisca once was – where Francisca should currently be – and when she thinks too long of the others who fell, it is her who falls to her knees. This is the time when her aid is the most critical, but this is the time when she is most vulnerable; this is the time when she can scarce help herself, never mind the last vestiges of the human race.
In the end, her aid is unnecessary. Former hand of God, creature of destruction. She wouldn't know how to rebuild if she tried.
Where there once lay nothing but ash, towers come raising up to scrape at the sky. Where the ocean once spat corpses along the beach, ports claw their way through the coast. As testament to the tenacity of humanity, civilization rears its head once more, defiant beneath a blazing ancient sun. Ukuna does not see the first of what would qualify as a “city”, having run herself ragged until her heart could beat no longer. Millicent rides the first boats to set sail from the pier, but is tossed overboard in a storm before a second port town is constructed further south. Kaede, the youngest of the all at the time of her tuning lives to be eighty-three, happily passing both Fire Qualia and her title as a witch to one of what will eventually be Amatsu's earliest ancestors.
Francisca, the Water Witch, sees none of this. Xeno, their brother in arms, sees none of this. Elc, their savior, sees none of this. Hilda watches it all through hardening eyes, the same girl-barely-woman who awoke to Armageddon's call a century ago, detached.
But she made a promise, didn't she? Keep his world safe.
She tethers herself to his memory – defiant, survivor of God's wrath – and persists.
( --- )
three.
Hilda falls further and further in love with the idea of a person, the shape of a man. It's easier this way, she thinks, focused so single-mindedly on one goal that she cannot envy the masses for their happy, if not ephemeral lives; that she cannot loathe the waste of a witch she, herself has become. Outlive the other original witches (her friends, all of them dead but one) for Elcrest. Rebuild society (the ones who live where he was sacrificed) for Elcrest. Discard personal interests and ambitions (the ones he gave her the chance to experience to begin with) for Elcrest. Ascend to the heavens to fight God Herself (and lose) for Elcrest.
One hundred years old, two hundred years old, five hundred years old, eight hundred years old. She scarce remembers the details of him: the quirk of his lips, the sound of his laugh, the feeling of his palms pressed feather-soft to her cheeks; only that she is subservient to his wish, obligated to his memory. Someday, he will return, and it is her duty to ensure that the world he returns to is without suffering. Penance, she thinks, for not saving him that day.
Build a nation, then, for Elcrest. Build an army so massive, so powerful that if God were to ever make Her next attempt at genocide, Hilda need only to raise a finger to strike Her down to Hell.
Fahrenheit rises from snow and ice far to the north, Hilda the queen at its helm, glacier-eyed and strung on by recollection – for dear old Elc, of course.
( --- )
four.
“And you know, of course, why witches came to be in the first place, don't you?”
Veronica. Technolomy. She scarce knows what the name means itself beyond the fact that the red-haired woman is perhaps the only other one alive to know what it feels like to live on, persistent in the face of history (older even than she, although for how many years more, she can't be sure). Veronica is, as well, the only one allowed an audience with the queen after barreling headfirst through the guards, ignorant of – or more likely indifferent toward – protocol and basic human decency.
“Yes.” The witch's memories of her life before the planet's purge, before the grand hero Elcrest are often hazy at best, but she remembers the cause for her existence, if not the ins and outs of it. “We were tools for the Mother. God. When humans spread too far, grew too many in number, we called Her to Regnant to wipe the planet clean.” An ensemble of witches and their songs yields great magical power, all while simultaneously functioning as a signal for the Mother to begin her attack. An automatic process, done without care or thought. Emotions and rationality were the aftermath of their collective tuning; before, there was only duty, and duty was eradication of human life.
The other witches, new and unfamiliar as they are with each new generation of them, don't understand this. To them, the legend of God's wrath and the hero who quelled it are the things of picture books and church murals, carved out in colored glass. Hilda recognizes her tale as fanatical, though, and along with any attempts to reach out to the others, has given up on trying to spread it to those it may impact. Spread thin as they've become, anyway, the chances of assembling even three, never mind the four or five witches it would take to alert the deity on high of Regnant's need for bloodshed are simply too low to entertain. “But we're independent now,” she tells her once-friend, once-ally with an edge of something that could almost be called pride. “Without our aid, She won't be able to return.”
Veronica smiles like a monster hidden beneath a bed – like a creature risen up from a murky lagoon – all teeth, beady eyes, not a trace of mirth. Veronica smiles and laughs and tuts, and Hilda feels the color slowly drain from her face without having to be told why. I know something that you don't.
(Of course it couldn't be that simple. They're all standing on a landmine, dancing in a powder keg. Promises of weight aren't made if they're so easily kept.)
( --- )
five.
Regnant cannot be sustained through physical might or stonewall fortitude. Regnant cannot be sustained through witches' rebellion and a scorn for all things holy. In the end, her role as a witch was only an ease of access, an early awakening for humanity's fall; what God seeks is not the call of her servants, but the emotional energy of mankind, like an experiment of breeding rats, exponentially growing, culled when a limit is reached. Elc is not here to save them this time, she knows. Fahrenheit's army is not strong enough yet – may never be strong enough to pose a threat. Her only hope to save her world is to stifle it.
Ten laws passed, one by one: No influx of children, no creative pursuits, reduce the social aspects of life, carve out your emotions piece by piece until there is nothing left, one after another after another after another. (Better to be dull than to be dead.)
In her eyes, it is a necessary sacrifice, one that she will surely be thanked for when the apocalypse fails to return to its orbit around their fragile planet once more. In the eyes of her people, however, these are the acts of a tyrant, under which the citizens of both her capital and her country are made to suffer. Oppression bites harder than the chill of mountain winds, and as popular opinion turns vile and scornful, the advisers she has placed in her aid begin to scheme for their own benefit. Regnant is an eruption waiting to happen. Hilda is so focused on the whole that she can't see the chasms forming beneath her own feet.
Overnight, fighting breaks loose across the lands she had loved so dearly, treated so unfairly. Overnight, the most wise, most respected of all the witches becomes the public's most hated figure. Overnight, the people she had once trusted most turn their blades to her neck. (But she can't die now, not here, not tonight, because Elc had told her that saving this world was something only she could do.)
In textbooks, it will be recorded as the continent's swiftest struggle, a civil war started and concluded in a single country-wide battle. It will also be recorded as the greatest tragedy since humanity's crawl from the dust back onto its feet some nine centuries ago. The causalities will be immeasurable; its legacy will be a reminder to all.
Morning breaks, ice and lavender, and where Fahrenheit and its civilians once stood, a palace of crystal rises high into the sky – decorated with shimmering statues, lifelike, each with their faces twisted in hate.
( --- )
one.
“Promise me, Hilda.” This is Elc's will, spat out in anguish, imprinted on her with the death grip he takes her hand in. He's slipping through her fingers, weaker by the moment, the last causality of the apocalypse. To him, the title of a martyr must be something of an honor; to her, selfish and blinded, there is no point in saving the world if her own has turned to dust. “Promise me.”
No matter who may become her enemy. No matter what she must sacrifice. When he returns to his world, it will be beautiful, and it will be whole -
(Because Hilda is in love, Hilda is a fool, Hilda knows no better, Hilda cannot see the rot and ruin inevitable down any path so single-mindedly adamant,
(and what reason has she to say no?)
( --- )
six.
“You sure a place like this is even worth it, Hilda?”
She had seen him first in a place time has long since forgotten, stalwart and somber, on a night just like this, dusted as they are now by the light of a crumbling, eternal moon. Times were not simpler then, however much she'd like to tell herself they were, although maybe she, herself, was: a girl-barely-woman, marveling at the wonders of individuality, starstruck in the face of a man who would become a legend. Here, tonight, she is an ancient masquerading in youth. Here, tonight, she curses that very individuality and the conflict it brings. How much easier this would all be if only she were a tool, as driven by duty as she is without the fear of consequence, repercussion, or (worst of all) guilt.
“Every individual counts, Dante,” Hilda answers, clearing her throat, wetting her lips. In truth, it is better to prioritize towns – cities, if they are fortunate – over the villages, unaware, but their quartet had claimed victim to one such place just two eves ago, and the risk of the Regnant knights lying in wait at another is too high to go for a target not infant in size.
Dante. Dorothy. Children when she found them, aged twice as much as their “mother” in the time they have spent under her wing. The newly christened Witch of Destruction is loathe to think too long of what lives they may have led without her interference, free as they may have been from their time on the run, their fascination for violence, their undying loyalty to a cause they do no wholly understand. Better, perhaps, than the dirt and desolation she had plucked them from – pitiful and dying, spared a second glance only by a menace similarly scorned. Hroldulf is keeping watch further along the perimeter, a later edition to the group, unbiased by maternal grooming. Stalwart. Somber. Another traitor to his country. Wherever doubts may arise, he is quick to snuff them out.
(Preservation in crystal is the only way. A sacrifice of the few is necessary to save the greater many. Do not forget this. Do not forget what you promised him on that day.)
Down in the village, the citizens slumber. She wonders, before she catches herself, who among they may suffer love as she has; who among them may suffer duty and the self-destruction is brings. A humbling thought. Perhaps, for their sake as well as that greater many, it is better that things end this way.
The symphony of the night plays on, and to its melody, Hilda begins her Song.