Chapter Text
For a Dark World, this place was surprisingly illuminated.
Kris had awoken this time without Susie — which wasn’t exactly an unfamiliar occurrence, but a slightly unwelcome one — but they hadn’t noticed at the very beginning; which was primarily thanks to the fact that they’d been blinded by the light when they’d awoken.
It wasn’t sunlight, as far as they could tell. When they could see again, Kris had almost immediately looked upwards towards the sky; looking mostly for any sign as to whatever light source could possibly wash the land in light such as this, as as far as they were privy there was no such thing as a Dark World that was so, well, light.
Unfortunately, the daylight-like illumination had no clear source; if there was a sun, it was hidden behind layers of clouds so thick that its definitive imprint was completely invisible.
However, the faint visage of the edge of the sky ate away at their vision as it always did — reminding Kris that no matter how interested they were in this world, they were inevitably unable to explore it themself, without whatever controlled them up above pulling them wherever they wanted Kris to go.
An unfair, wretched existence it was, they thought to themself, as they felt the undeniable urge to push off of the plush grass they had been laying on. Kris stretched their arms up to the sky and arched their back. It was a delightful feeling, if one ignored everything else, to live in the moment and feel the breeze upon their face.
They were a bit broken out of the trance they were in by a sound behind them, and Kris felt their hand instinctively move to their waist, and their fingers flexed over their sword’s hilt. They seemingly weren’t meant to enter combat with whatever made it, though, as they instead began moving in the opposite direction.
And so Kris trekked across the plains; perhaps they were meant to be on a search for Susie, for Ralsei, for clues, or anything in between. Susie, preferably. As long as Noelle wasn’t here — and they really hoped Noelle wasn’t here — Susie was the closest thing they had to a real friend. They found her presence comforting, despite her efforts to the contrary. They figured she’d simply went ahead, but since the two of them would have arrived in this world at the same time she couldn’t have gotten far. Perhaps she’d stopped a few minutes of a trek away and started hitting things. They’d find her, Ralsei would appear, and they would all be together again. Then they could continue.
That’s how it was meant to go.
Susie, on the other hand, was much less worried. Kris’ thought process was correct. Susie had not “woken up” in this world so much as landed much more gracefully than Kris, who had unceremoniously fallen onto their head. The grass had broken their fall, but they had been knocked out cold (and outside of her knowledge, this loss of consciousness would allow the player’s loading screen to do its purpose accordingly), and Susie had figured that she might as well scout on ahead.
The village she’d found was considerably more sleepy than what she was used to. This was saying a lot, considering nothing much happened in her and Kris’ hometown, but this place was actively making her feel tired. As she walked through it, feeling distinctly like an outsider - these Darkners were very clearly entirely familiar with each other, and weren’t exactly privy to anyone visiting from faraway lands. They weren’t attacking her, though, even if the prying eyes that followed her made her with, just a bit, that they had been doing that instead.
She’d asked a couple people about the Dark Fountain, certain that at least one of the must have seen it, but the most she’d gotten from nearly every Darkner she had asked was a confused shrug, and perhaps the raising of an eyebrow. She really didn’t feel welcome.
It wasn’t exactly a blow to her pride — Susie was used to being ignored in the best-case scenario — but it did feel a bit off-putting. Was she not supposedly a hero? Shouldn’t they be a bit more welcoming? Though she supposed that if they hadn’t even heard of a Dark Fountain they’d have no knowledge of the prophecy Ralsei had detailed that he, Kris, and she were supposedly the centerpieces of.
Realizing that kept to her own devices she wasn’t exactly the best at getting information out of people (the most effective way of the matter was, in the trio’s experience, when Kris asked a simple question, Ralsei played good cop, and she threatened to pull the subject of their interrogation’s teeth out or similar violent action until they coughed up whatever Kris had asked for in the first place. She probably wouldn’t even have to do the act, but the fact that she would have no qualms with doing it probably made their methods all the more effective.), especially when asking nicely, Susie let out a disgruntled sigh and parked herself on a bench ever so slightly outside of the town’s square. The sound of the fountain was relaxing enough, but she didn’t register what the quiet pluck, pluck, twang noise was until the woman sitting on the edge of it began to play a soft melody.
It was pretty, sure, but Susie had never been one for pretty music. Especially when she realized that she couldn’t understand what the woman was saying; Chaos Language was definitely outside of her realm of understanding, but she didn’t know that. The only thing that Susie really seemed to glean from Devola’s singing was that… well, she didn’t know exactly how she reached the conclusion that this woman knew a little bit more than the rest of the villagers, but that was the sort of air she had.
Not much to sit still there alone and take in the moment, Susie stood up from her spot on the bench and made her way over to the fountain at a relatively leisurely pace. The children running ‘round it made it a point to run in circles around her as part of their game, and both they Susie thought it all in good fun when she jumped at them in order to… keep them on their toes. One of the younger kids let out a shrill shriek, and then laughed it off as the other children chastised him for getting scared.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” Susie hadn’t even noticed that the music had stopped. She turned around to see the red-haired woman rest the lute she’d been playing moments earlier in her lap before looking up from it to smile at her.
Susie cleared her throat. “Uh… yeah, you could say that. How’d you, uh… how could you tell?”
The woman laughed — one of those quiet chuckles that was more akin to simply breathing sharply out of the nose — and deigned to answer the question simply by introducing herself.
“I’m Devola. I’d sure hope I would recognize you if you did live here, since me and my sister are kind of the leaders of this village.”
“Oh.” Susie scratched the back of her head embarrassedly. “My bad, I guess?”
“Don’t treat it like it’s an issue. Sit, and I will answer all.” Devola patted the side of the fountain next to her as a form of invitation. Susie obliged.
“So. You’re looking for something.” Susie blinked. “That’s why you’re here, right?” Devola tilted her head to the side.
“How did you know?” Susie’s eyebrows shot upwards.
“It’s all anyone in town can talk about!” Devola grinned, her previous facade of perhaps mysticism or composure completely melting away. “We don’t get visitors very often, yeah?”
“Really? I think your village is uh… charming,” Susie said, struggling to find a word that didn’t sound like an insult. “…Rustic? Definitely vacation spot material.”
That got a hearty laugh out of Devola, which was a bit of a relief for Susie. Yeah, it was a bit of a reach.
“I appreciate it. Really. You don’t have to suck up to me, though. I’m not exactly worried about making this the place to be. People don’t really… vacation around these parts. To put it simply, traveling is dangerous.”
That was intriguing. “How so?”
“Hey, hey! I can’t go around divulging our Dark World’s secrets to a strange Lightner like you! I told you my name and everything, and you haven’t even given me the time of day!”
Susie coughed sheepishly. “Oh. Yeah. I forgot. Name’s Susie.”
Devola nodded in response, looking a bit serious all of a sudden. “Susie… how interesting. I haven’t heard a name like that before.”
“…Seriously?”
“Is that so strange? Is it a common name where you’re from?”
“Yeah, I… think so? I’ve never actually met anyone with the same name but it feels pretty normal.”
“If you’ve never met anyone else with it, how can you be so sure?”
Susie pursed her lips and frowned, trying to make heads or tails of it, before glancing over to Devola who was very obviously enjoying confusing her just a bit too much; the sly grin on her face was indicative of it.
“Great, I haven’t been here for an hour and I’m already gettin’ antagonized,” Susie said with a slight chuckle, thoroughly embarrassed. Conversation really wasn’t her strong suit.
“It’s all right, really,” Devola said after a short pause. “I’m just teasing you. You traveling with anyone? Looking for this… Dark Fountain thing of yours?”
The idea that Devola had never heard of the Dark Fountain confused Susie a bit; for a split second she felt like that was… kind of weird. Devola was an authority figure, wasn’t she? She had said she and her sister were the leaders of this village, and in past Dark Worlds the ones who had been most knowledgeable about (and most protective over) the Dark Fountains had been authority figures. Perhaps Devola wasn’t being totally honest… or maybe Susie was just reading too much into it.
She tended to do that, when left to her own devices. It’s why she much preferred traveling with Kris and Ralsei.
“Yeah, I am, actually,” Susie replied. “Uh… one of them’s unconscious out in the field, and the other… I’m not sure where he is, actually.” She also found herself wondering in the back of her head if perhaps some of Kris and her classmates had followed them to this Dark World.
This contemplation was short-lived, though; it stopped when Susie noticed Devola’s eyes widen.
“Unconscious… out— outisde of the village, you say?” Her voice was significantly more shaky than it had been previously.
“Uh— yeah. Look, they weren’t getting up and I thought I’d scout ahead for a little bit. I’m not a bad friend! ..It probably looks that way, huh?”
“No, no, it’s not that.” Devola hurriedly stood up. “I don’t think you’re a bad person or anything, it’s just…” she glanced left and right nervously, “I don’t know how safe wherever you’re from is but straying out too far into the plains is kind of a death wish, here. How good are you with that axe?”
Susie let out a heavy sigh. Of course she accidentally left Kris in danger. It was just her luck. You try to do something nice for someone and it comes back to bite you.
“…Decent.”
“You’ll need to be. Come on!” Susie felt her hand being grabbed as Devola hurried her towards the village gates.
The small goat-like boy was strange.
That’s puttin’ it lightly, sunshine, Kainé heard Tyrann say, and she tried not to make the rolling of her eyes too obvious, especially considering she wasn’t alone and couldn’t cuss him out without two pairs of confused (but concerned) eyes looking in her direction. If only the rest of them could hear him, they’d understand. They would probably want to pummel him as much as she did; the only thing keeping her from doing so was the fact he wasn’t exactly corporeal. She scratched the bandages which wrapped her left arm, just for good measure. Maybe he would feel it. She wasn’t actually sure how he worked. Not that she cared, anyway.
He — the goat, not Tyrann — had accosted her party while they were taking a detour through Facade (Nier had insisted that the seeds there were “just so much better, Kainé, you wouldn’t understand” than the ones in the village he hailed from, and he wanted to plant some new greenery in his garden after the last few plants he’d planted in there had been only flowers. They were pretty, but not very useful for cooking. It showed how much he loved his sister, though perhaps in a more morbid than cute way, when his insistence that she would be coming home soon would lead him to grow vegetable and fruit crops that he threw away when the inevitable (that she was, in fact, not coming home soon) came to pass and they had long since rotted. He would wallow, grow some flowers, and then cycle back to edible plants; ingredients for Yonah’s horrible cooking which he ate anyway because no matter how nauseous he felt afterwards it made her smile.
Nier had been doing this for the whole five years Kainé had been petrified in the Library, if Weiss was to be believed.
He was sickeningly self-sacrificial.
“—And now, I can’t find them… and I have no idea where the Dark Fountain is, either! It’s a predicament, to say the least.”
Oh right. The goat boy. He was tugging on his ears in an expression of stress as he explained who he was, who his friends were, and why he so desperately needed to find them.
If only Kainé had been listening. But Nier had, intently, and was always good with younger children; much unlike her, so she left him to be the group’s mouthpiece. That’s kind of how it usually went, anyway.
“Your friends… they’re fighters, right?” Nier had crouched down to the goat-boy’s level in order to converse with him better. “Heroes, like you said?”
“Yes. Kris, Susie, and I… legendary heroes… of light! Heroes of light. And we must close the Dark Fountain… together, so I have to find them,” Ralsei repeated his goal, slightly more concisely.
“I don’t know anything about Dark Fountains or heroes of light, but I know that these friends of yours sound pretty strong, so I think they’ll be okay until we can find them.”
“We?”
“Well, yes.” Here Nier went, accepting another side-quest… “We-” he gestured to his companions “-get around a lot. So if there’s anyone that’ll be able to find them, we probably can. We could bring them here, or—”
The goat-boy cut him off. “No, no! I’d come with you! If you’re really offering. I can hold my own in a fight.”
“So why don’t you just go alone, kid?” Kainé piped up, hoping that they wouldn’t have to go through another one of these tedious detours before anything interesting happened.
Nier was clearly about to shoot her a glare before the stranger responded. “Well, I can’t do it that well... I’m usually with other people.”
“Yeah, come on, Kainé!” she heard Emil’s permanently enthused voice say from behind her, “It’ll be fun! You said you know healing magic, right, Ralsei?” A nod came from him in response.
“I cannot say it would be detrimental to have someone around whose presence would reduce the need for the use of items such as health salves.” Weiss’ commentary was wholly unprompted, and nobody felt the need to respond to it.
“So it’s settled, right?” Emil asked, and it only felt a little bit naggy, but Kainé still had to cave.
“…Yeah, I’m fine with it.”
“Great! Come on, Ralsei!” Emil hurried over to him and noticeably swayed left to right in midair; significantly more giddy than anyone else. Kainé followed the two of them as they began to walk out of Facade, but then they heard Nier clear his throat.
“I, uh… still need to get my seeds.” He pointed his thumb towards the sand raft, where the gondolier had been waiting for them and looked rather impatient, though it was always hard to tell under the mask.
“And we’ll leave in just a few minutes!” Emil corrected himself, and turned them back the other way.
Ralsei would watch the party bicker over what items they needed to buy while they shopped in town before they all left together, walking out into the dunes in the search for his companions, and he would wonder if Kris and Susie felt as friendly with him as this ragtag group seemed to together.