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93 years after the Hero Himmel’s passing
It really was remarkable how all the humans’ inns looked the same, no matter the town or the era, Aura mused. Sixty-odd years of traveling under the yoke of the same blasted elf, and not one room that boasted anything beyond the same tired old bed and nondescript walls. It was a bit disappointing, to be honest—particularly for a species so renowned for their rapid innovation. Absently, she wondered if the innkeeper-humans had formed some sort of secret pact, to ensure no visitor would ever receive too upscale an experience by mistake. (Even after everything, her demonic psyche was still incapable of considering the possibility that a Great Mage of such prestige as Frieren simply preferred the plainer spots.)
“Here we are, Frieren-sama.” She announced, holding the door open as her lazy little excuse for a master drifted in after her, as sedate and unhurried as always. Honestly, the venom she always attached to the elf’s name had become more perfunctory than anything else years ago. Today, it was all but absent, the barest ghost of a reflex.
Today was not a good day for Frieren, after all. Even a demon like her understood that.
Aura kneeled, letting their luggage slip off her shoulders. “Helle and the other children will be at the reception for a little while longer, but she told me to tell you that they’ll be back home by nine o’clock at the latest, and that we should head over then. I believe she thought it unwise to leave Stark alone for too long, given the present circumstances.”
She sighed. “Humans and their fondness for companionship… They rely on it so during times of difficulty, don’t they?”
She capped off her last remark with a nonplussed shake of the head. After spending so long begrudgingly observing the humans and their oddities, she’d picked up on some of their ways through sheer pattern-matching, yes, but that didn’t mean she was any closer to comprehending any of it. Not that she even expected that to be possible, really.
The diminutive elf remained silent, her back turned to Aura.
“Anyways, we should have roughly half an hour before we will need to depart again. In the meantime, shall I brush your hair, Frieren-sama?”
Astonishing, how the behavior she’d been so mortified by at first had gradually become second nature to her. As always, even now, Aura couldn’t help but feel a thin line of pride at the sheer seamlessness and efficacy of her Auserlese; so subtle in its execution, yet flawless down to the most minute detail. It was truly her magnum opus, and she felt no small amount of satisfaction every time she was reminded of its perfection, even as it now bound her.
“Massage your shoulders, perhaps?” I’m the one who always carries all the bags, though. Where are MY shoulder massages? Damn elf.
“Or would you like me to draw you a quick ba—”
“—Have a drink with me, Aura.” Frieren interjected, abruptly. The elfin mage strolled past her, kneeling down to flip open her own deceptively spacious briefcase.
Aura blinked.
“Pardon, Frieren-sama?”
“I believe I still have a bottle of it around somewhere… oh, what am I saying, of course I do—in what other possible circumstance would I ever imbibe it willingly?” The elf rambled, now buried in the briefcase up to her waist. Various knickknacks, items of clothing, and leatherbound tomes flew out from within, haphazardly tossed over her shoulders as Frieren burrowed deeper and deeper. Behind her, Aura groaned.
Oh, why does she always unpack this way? I’m the one who has to put everything back, too— Aura ducked as a burnished silver hand mirror soared over her head, narrowly missing her horn.
“Ah, here it is!” Frieren’s rear end exclaimed. The rest of her quickly resurfaced, holding a dusty brown jug.
“Boshaft, the foulest spirit on the Continent. I can think of nothing more fitting for such an occasion.”
Aura the Guillotine, One among Seven, Commander of the Demon King’s Armies and Great and Terrible Demon Sage of Destruction, felt an involuntary shiver of fear run down her spine. Her face contorted into a sickly grimace, and she took a step back despite herself, recoiling.
“…Why in the Demon King’s name did you bother to keep a jug of that infernal substance for all this time? If you don’t recall, elf, you had me be the one to taste test it!”
(To her credit, though, Frieren had taken a more than respectable swig of it herself afterward, even after witnessing Aura spray the vile brew all over the cellar floor. She couldn’t decide if that made the elf more brave than if she’d just gone in blind, or less.)
Frieren’s tiny hands clenched around the bottle. Her demeanor, as inexplicably carefree as ever just moments ago, faltered.
“I—I do not want to go outside right now, and this is all we have, infernal as it is. It does seem fitting, though, no? To be left with nothing but this dreadful stuff for comfort. A relic of our travels, all the way back from our humble beginnings together.”
“Perhaps… for my cowardice, perhaps this is my punishment.”
Before Aura could—object? She wasn’t entirely sure what to feel, to be honest, but some part of her was convinced that no one deserved to experience that horror, not even the Slayer herself—Frieren uncorked the jug and tossed it back, inhaling a mighty gulp that looked far too big for the petite elf in a single motion.
Aura’s eyes bulged out with shock, but somehow, impossibly, the silver-haired mage remained as reactionless as ever as she wiped the remnants from her lips, now faintly red and rosy, along with the rest of her face and even the tips of her long, pointy ears. She extended the jug out in front of herself, as if… she was offering it to Aura… oh, no.
“Oh, ah, I, um, I—I do not believe that w-would be wise, Frieren-sama,” She babbled, desperately trying to avoid the worst. “A-after all, you conducted all those experiments on me regarding demon physiology yourself, didn’t you? You know as well as I that demons are all but unaffected by human draughts, so it would really just be a waste, a-and—”
“AURA.”
Frieren’s face was flushed and slightly pouting, and her eyes were beginning to glaze over, but her voice carried with it an aura of unmistakable power and gravitas nonetheless.
Aura winced; over the years, situations that had necessitated the direct use of that had become more and more sparse, and it had been a very, very long time since she’d last heard that voice, (nearly a full decade, in fact) yet she still recognized it clear as day. If she closed her eyes, she could almost see the rushing of that overwhelming mana behind her eyelids, like a powerful, silent echo, carved into her soul forevermore…
THIS is what you’re using it for again, after all this time?
…Are you serious?
Damn drunken elf—
“YOU HAAAVE TO, OR IT WON’T FEEL RIGHT BY MYSELF… AND GET DRUNK, TOO! OR, OR AT LEAST PRETENDDDD…”
Frieren was in full pouty-elf mode now, eyes drooped and lips curved up in that stupid little smile of hers. She wiggled the jug of spirit in front of Aura dejectedly, as if it was supposed to be enticing. If anything, the wet sloshing noises as the alcohol lapped against the sides of the bottle made Aura want to quietly scream, just a little.
But, of course, it was hopeless.
Resigning herself to her fate, Aura accepted the bottle and raised it to her lips. A familiar thought of old, once so common, flitted through her mind again for the first time in long eons.
Perhaps it would’ve been a mercy if she’d killed me.
“P-PPFWEEHHHHH—"
—
How had they ended up like this?
One thing was for sure: it was well past nine by now, surely. The empty jug of liquor lay discarded on the bedroom floor, finally empty, thanks in greater part to Frieren’s contributions than her own. The elf in question was now in her nightclothes, draped across the length of their bed, prattling away animatedly about the latest advancements in autonomously-deploying standard defensive magic, one of Fern’s first and most prolific brainchildren. As she talked, her ears bounced merrily, and her bare legs kicked through the air behind her in a distinctly girlish manner.
Aura, for only the third time in living memory, had changed her attire as well, manipulating her mana into a pale purple nightwear set to match the other girl’s. Her hair, free from the elaborate, ever-present braids she kept them in, cascaded down to her waist in waves. Altogether, Aura found the entire ensemble to be far, far too loose. And thin. And flimsy. And something a beautiful, regal, proud demon like herself wouldn’t have been caught dead in, if Frieren hadn’t turned to her, flushed and unsteady, after she’d finished helping the elf change, tearfully mumbling something about a “slumber party, like the ones Fern and I used to have when she was just a young girl…”
Aura had looked into those large, shining elfin eyes, brimming with hope and a rare, liquor-induced vulnerability…
And said no.
And then Frieren had used Auserlese again. So now here she was, in a frilly silken nightgown and stockings with garter belt, sitting primly on the side of the bed and talking advanced defensive magical theory again with Frieren the Slayer.
Lovely.
She didn’t particularly mind the conversation itself, though. She never had. For all their antisocial tendencies, the one thing that could consistently unite demonkind was a near-universal affinity and passion for magical theory, and it so happened that the hazy, hiccupping elf sprawled out in front of her was one of perhaps a half dozen living souls who had plumbed further into its depths than she. Yes, it was true, Aura could admit it to herself. There was no longer any point in the arrogance that would be expected of a demon such as her, not anymore; the proof of Frieren’s superiority over her in that domain was etched into her very soul.
During their earliest days, those initial exchanges about esoteric magic, stilted and brief as they were, had formed the foundation of the first somewhat-civil interactions between the two diametrically opposed mages: master and servant, elf and demon. Even with the promise of violence excised from the equation, finding any sort of common ground had seemed an utterly unthinkable occurrence, all the way up until the day it had actually happened.
And now here they were.
“—becomes inflexible far too quickly, which means further refining the mana flow would remain the only effective method for para-conscious deployment, no?” Aura opined, leaning back. Impossibly, she was feeling a touch light-headed herself. The percent effectiveness of human alcohol on a demonic nervous system should be well into the single digits, she knew, and in any case, she had swallowed considerably less of the swill than Frieren had to begin with…
No. Could it be the power of the Auserlese command? Were her mind and body even attempting to simulate the imagined effects of the liquor, to better comply with her master’s whims?
Damn me and my boundless talent. She shook her head, trying to dispel the fog she knew, she knew, to be false. No luck.
“…”
…It had been quite a while since she’d finished speaking, hadn’t it? Where was the rambling, overly detailed response?
Aura blinked, returning her attention to the elf before her. At some point, the other girl had gone silent.
“…Frieren-sama?” Aura leaned down, poking a pale shoulder.
“Mm.” Was all that came from the diminutive figure in response.
“Hmph. I have carried you home after far too many tavern evenings to be deceived, elf. This was nowhere near enough drink to render you mute. Not to mention, you were tearing my head off about instinctive mana barriers not a minute ago…” Aura lectured, leaning further forward, closer to the prone elfin girl.
Too close.
Frieren rolled over, arms still flung out to the sides, and pulled Aura down beside her in a clumsy, sweeping motion. “Mmm…” she hummed, utterly unconcerned towards the demon girl’s flailing protests.
No. No, this would not stand, Aura decreed. Even intoxicated, using one of the Seven Sages of Destruction as an oversized stuffed animal was out of the question. Completely unacceptable. Visions of her swift and justified wrath upon Frieren flashed through Aura’s mind, limited as they were in scope by the Spell of Obedience’s binds. She was just settling on a good hard forehead flick to teach the impudent elf clinging to her a lesson when, unprompted, Frieren broke her silence.
“…Tell me, demon. Creature of callousness, of unfeeling impartiality.”
Aura froze. Where was this coming from?
“…Was growing closer to humans a mistake?”
For the first time that night, Frieren’s tone was… melancholy.
“Flamme was the first human I ever met. She was a good teacher. A good mentor. I spent nearly forty years studying under her guidance, and yet… when she passed away, all I could remember feeling was pride at the life she had lived, at all that she had done to bring humanity into a new age of magic. And regret that the humans had lost such a brilliant mind.”
“And then, Himmel…”
“Fifty years passed by in the blink of an eye, then. Such a waste, I remember thinking at his funeral, that I had not spent more time with him when I had had the opportunity.”
“Such a waste.”
The bitterness in her words was faint but unmistakable.
“And I thought, surely, that the anguish in my heart, the anguish that I resolved never to feel again if I could prevent it, was from that feeling of lost time and missed opportunities.”
“So why?” Frieren’s voice was small and plaintive, now.
“It’s not fair.”
“Seventy years I spent by her side. I took her in, just as I promised Heiter. I taught her. I traveled with her. I helped raise her children, and her grandchildren, just as I raised her. I believe I could not have embraced a life among humans any more thoroughly.”
“…”
“So why is the pain even worse now?”
Frieren’s face was scrunched up as she craned her neck to look up at Aura, her delicate elfin features twisted and made ugly by raw emotion. Fat tears welled up in the corners of her eyes and spilled over her lashes onto reddened cheeks, wetting Aura’s exposed shoulder.
Throughout it all, Aura’s mind hissed and spat futilely as it struggled to process the events unfolding, utterly incapacitated by the alien sight before her. The Frieren the Slayer she had grown familiar with over the past half-century never lost her composure. Never.
This is entirely uncharted territory, now.
As if to reinforce this conclusion, a red-hot coal of apprehension like nothing she’d ever experienced before had formed in the demon’s gut the moment Frieren had lifted her teary face to meet Aura’s, seemingly in response to the elf’s distress.
What is this?
“Will it hurt as fiercely as this when Stark passes on next? Or Helle, or Stahl, or any of the other children?”
“…Lilie is having her second baby this winter. I will gain my twelfth godchild, just as precious as every single one before them, and every single one to come. Oh, oh… what have I done? How many generations of their children will I say goodbye to? How many farewells can I take?”
The tremor in Frieren’s voice at the end, the quiet, cracking sob…
Of course, the words themselves—and their distinctly un-demonic emotions—slid off of Aura’s innermost layers like rivulets of water on glass, as they always would; there was nothing for them to find purchase against.
But that sound. The sound…
It lanced through her like a javelin.
The roiling unease within her swelled violently. She felt paralyzed, rooted to the spot, incapable of doing anything but continuing to stare dumbly at the silently weeping girl that was the bane of her kind, once her fiercest nemesis, now her unwillingly sworn master.
What in the Demon King’s name was happening to her?! Yes, Frieren was acting strangely, but her odd behavior didn’t appear to pose any sort of threat to Aura herself… was she, Aura the Guillotine, one of the most powerful Greater Demons in existence, so unsettled by the sheer bizarreness of the situation that it was causing her physical discomfort? Or—
She sucked in a sudden breath of realization.
Auserlese.
All these new, abnormal sensations were further lingering effects of her Spell of Obedience, they had to be. After all, she’d been hit with so many damn empathy-related Compulsions in those first few years or so with Frieren, it was perfectly plausible that there’d been at least one she’d forgotten about, one that had slipped through the cracks until now; a stray, vicious little Compulsion that was making her demonic hands tremble and her demonic guts twist into knots and her demonic heart lurch with every tiny sniffle that came from the elf—
Aura moved before she even knew what she was doing, reaching out, reaching across, her arms stretching towards the diminutive figure lying beside her…
Ah, yes. Feel the fear, identify the source, eliminate the threat. Confronted with something new, strange, and unexpected, it was the most expected impulse in the world for a creature like her, by any metric. Incidentally, it was also something that, by her last count, should be completely impossible no less than thirty-six times over. Yet, despite her own stunned disbelief, there her hands went. They seemed to move in slow motion, drawing ever closer to Frieren, ever closer to making contact…
But there were no clawing fingers, no tearing of skin, no rending of elfin flesh from bone. Instead, perhaps even more unbelievably, her first hand moved up to cradle the back of the other girl’s head, and the other came to rest ever so delicately on the small of her back, fingers settling in the folds of her silken nightgown. Both hands firmly in place, Aura pulled the tiny elf even closer—pressing her against herself, eliminating the remaining space between their bodies.
“…”
She was embracing Frieren.
She was embracing Frieren.
SHE, AURA, WAS EMBRACING FRIEREN.
It was a funny little thing; the reality of her situation seemed to be sabotaging her mental faculties. Her mind struggled to process a single thought, compute any next action, in a world that had been flipped upside-down so entirely. After all, what she had just done was as antithetical to her own nature, to the natural order of nature itself, as a wolf tending sheep, or a river flowing upstream, or, or… she couldn’t even think of a fitting comparison.
Auserlese? She supposed it had to be, at this point, though she hadn’t felt anything resembling the signature pull of a Compulsion as a primary source; it was hard to imagine anything else that could tug at the very essence of her being so sharply.
Perhaps this was part of “serving” her master?
…Yes, that might actually make sense, Aura reflected. Just as her body had simulated the effects of human alcohol to comply with Frieren’s wishes before, perhaps now, when her “master” was exhibiting such powerful signs of distress, the Spell of Obedience was trying to simulate aspects and behaviors of… human empathy in her, in an attempt to provide comfort?
Well, that thought certainly sent shivers down her spine.
And furthermore, taking that notion to its natural conclusion… if it meant that she would be laboring under these awful, heart-wrenching sensations until she succeeded in comforting Frieren, then, well…
She was doomed.
But in the meantime, the elf in her arms had gone rather quiet again.
“…Aura?”
“What… mmm… are you doing? Is… is this your response to my questions?”
Frieren’s words tickled the exposed skin below her collarbone.
Aura’s mind swirled. Demon coldness, harsh pragmatism, an earnest desire to fulfill her purpose, whining pangs of heartache, even an odd nauseating warmth somewhere in her breast. They all swarmed her, fighting for control.
“I don’t know, Frieren-sama. Likewise, to the questions you have asked of me.”
“I genuinely do not know.”
And it was true. As a demon, this realm—the realm of the recondite and impenetrable things that the humans referred to by names like affection and empathy and so on—was something she could never come to comprehend, and she knew it herself. It was so unfathomably alien to demonic patterns of thinking, in fact, that one could wonder if it had been the product of intentional design. After all, it had taken the better part of a decade living in direct contact with humanity before Aura had been capable of recognizing the full extent of the gulf in her understanding at all—a feat she knew to be almost vanishingly rare, even among the highest echelons of her kind.
Rather peculiar, for an otherwise ostensibly-intelligent species in their own right… at least, some of the human scholars seemed to think so. Aura herself didn’t much care.
Though maybe she should have, considering the predicament she was in now…
“I see.” Frieren replied.
The two lay there for a time. The hand that rested on Frieren’s head began slowly moving back and forth, stroking her long silver hair softly, like Aura had observed her and Fern doing to one another, and later her children, on occasion. The act of gentleness seemed to give Frieren further pause; as for herself, it nearly melted Aura’s brain out through her horns.
This—this isn’t too bad, she justified, dazed. The motion itself was not too far removed from the routine brushing she did for Frieren all the time, after all.
This is a purely mechanical act. A simple act of service like all the others, just for an intangible need, rather than an actually practical one. Really, it is no different at all.
Frieren shifted in her hold.
“Say, Aura.” she began, her voice low and thoughtful.
“You have spent the past sixty-five years by my side, and thus by Fern and Stark’s as well. Indeed, you have known them for nearly as long as I have. The time you have spent among humans has far surpassed even that of Macht of El Dorado. And yet, in the three decades he served the Fortress City, his relationship with the Lord Weise…”
Bluntly, Aura cut her off. “Macht was always an eccentric demon, even among us Sages of Destruction. I, on the other hand, was not.”
She breathed out, trying to keep her voice even.
“At least, not until you made me one.”
A moment of silence hung in the air.
“Perhaps…” Frieren mumbled. “But you’ve always been so expressive for a demon, even before, were you not? So dramatic. So haughty.”—Aura’s nose wrinkled—"So spirited, compared to the rest of your kind. Or even compared to many elves, to be truthful. It was what I took notice of most strongly about you, back then…”
Her hand stilled.
Hmm. The elf wasn’t wrong, per se; Aura herself had always found it rather boorish how many of her fellow demons seemed to default to stone-faced insipidity as a rule, slaughtering armies with the same amount of enthusiasm as someone just roused from a nap. What was power for, if not to cow and intimidate the weak? And how, exactly, was a drab, mild-mannered statue supposed to be intimidating? Excuse her for at least having some flair for the dramatic…
So why had Frieren’s words affected her? It wasn’t the claims she was making about her, after all…
It was that Frieren herself had bothered to notice.
Curiously, Aura found herself at a loss for words. None of her centuries of lived experience, nor her myriad Compulsions, contained any sort of guidance on how to respond to such a statement, or even how to feel.
“…Perhaps, Frieren-sama.” She acquiesced, finally. “I suppose I’m eccentric too.”
In the lull that followed, she resumed her caressing of the other girl’s hair, smoothing down the loose ribbons of silver. At the same time, her other hand began its own pattern, sweeping over Frieren’s back in slow, languorous passes, rubbing gentle figure-eights into her tense shoulder blades. Just enough pressure to be felt, and not an ounce more.
This—this is just a simple massage. Just another service for this needy elfin brat, as usual. From a slightly unconventional position. No different from the hair-stro—HAIR-BRUSHING, really.
It was odd how little control it felt like she had over herself in that moment. It felt almost like her hands were moving on their own. Back and forth, back and forth, gliding feather-light over smooth skin and silken hair. She watched them go. It was strangely hypnotic.
“Well, in recent weeks, so many of her family and friends have shared their thoughts about Fern. How her life impacted them, how her passing affected them. I will presume that for you, Aura, it has all gone in one ear and out the other.” Frieren said, her voice neutral… though it felt like there was a bit of an accusatory note there at the very end. (Aura winced—of course it had gone in one ear and out the other.)
“However, I would like to hear your thoughts, now.”
“What did you, a demon, think of the human Fern, who you lived alongside for most of her life?”
What was this, exactly? Scientific curiosity? Aura had read the available report about her former confederate during the events of the Golden Land incident, just as Frieren had. Was the elf hoping for something similar from her? To what end? She pursed her lips.
“…She was a powerful mage. Very powerful, indeed. Surpassing even Flamme, Humanity’s first Great Mage, in terms of mana concealment and detection by her middle age… no small feat, not at all.”
“She was a… compelling figure to discuss magical theory with, on the rare occasions she was amenable to it.”
“She seemed to command the adoration of her partner and all her progeny with ease.”
“…”
“The color of her hair, in her youth… it was a bit darker, yes, but I remember taking note that it was a similar shade to mine. Such shades are quite rare.”
Throughout it all, Aura’s tone had remained unwaveringly clinical.
“…She was exceptionally vigilant. Perhaps moreso than any other human I have ever met. It was plain as day, in her eyes. From the very beginning, all the way up to the day she perished.”
“She never lowered her guard around me. Not once.”
And with that, she finished. With a flicker of surprise, Aura realized that at some point, the corners of her mouth had turned up into a thin smile, despite herself.
A smile of begrudging respect.
“And still, you don’t feel a thing, at her passing. Even after everything. Right, Aura?”
Her tiny smile vanished. What to do, what to say? The hollow ache in her chest was urging her to say something comforting, something heartfelt, something to assuage the elf’s grief, the way she’d seen the humans do so often throughout the years.
But her Compulsions were many, and they were strong, and they were shaped to, among other things, keep her in a state of general truthfulness.
“…No, Frieren-sama. I do not feel a thing.” Aura bit the inside of her lip.
But Frieren simply nodded, ever so slightly, as if she had expected nothing else.
Well, of course she expected nothing else, fool. That miserable elf understands our true nature better than most demons do themselves. You know this. Has the Auserlese corroded your mind so considerably? Aura chastised herself.
“Yes. You do not. And yet, most likely, you will live as long as I. We will continue like this long into the future—beyond any of the children currently alive, beyond generations of them yet to be born. The humans live such short lives, and yet… the feelings they create in that short time, that persist even after they have departed… they far, far exceed anything we could muster ourselves, no?”
“I suppose that is what makes them worthwhile, even though they leave us.”
Frieren fell silent in her arms again.
Was that it? Is it over?
“…I couldn’t say, Frieren-sama.”
Aura exhaled, returning her attention to her roving hands. As far as providing comfort to her master with her words, Aura couldn’t even hazard a guess as to where to begin; she was a demon, after all. In the end, the simple physical acts of the humans were far easier to replicate.
Stroke her hair.
Rub her back.
Stroke her hair.
Rub her back—
“Will you leave me too someday, Aura?”
Aura blinked, snapping out of her little trance—she hadn’t actually realized she was in one, until then. What had this girl just said? She opened her mouth, unthinkingly.
“…Hmph. It would serve you well to have some more faith in my magic, elf. Leave you? My soul is practically stapled to yours like a tavern flyer...”
That… probably hadn’t been the right thing to say, but she stood by it nonetheless. Aura sniffed disdainfully. How dare Frieren offer such a slight towards the continued efficacy of her master spell?
However, the strangest thing happened; upon hearing Aura’s dumb little retort of all things, Frieren seemed to actually, finally, relax. She tucked her silver-haired head into the crook of Aura’s neck and let out a quiet, feather-light sigh. As the breath escaped her, seemingly so too did the tension in her frame, in the slender muscles of her upper back.
After a little while, her breath evened.
As if on cue, the churning ball of disquiet in Aura’s stomach began to slowly disperse as well, unraveling further with each soft exhale of Frieren’s lips against her skin. She sighed and let her eyes flutter shut, pulling the elf even closer into her, mostly subconsciously. The sheer relief pouring through her body was so sweet, she could feel actual tears welling up in the corner of her eyes.
It wasn’t even just that Frieren was feeling better, or that the awful, nauseating ache within Aura had gone too. It was what that meant for her.
All the weirdness, all the touchiness, all the strange feelings in her heart—barely even recognizable, for a demon such as herself.
It had surely been the effects of the Auserlese after all, she decided.