Vestiges

-I can't believe it… six chapter titles (K, P, L, O, M, N) left to go, including this one. There's a lot I haven't gotten done (SHIPPING!), and still a lot (CONFLICT!) I have to do. I guess this means I may have to split up the final chapter into two or three chapters (N x 3), hell, and the word count for each chapter from now on might be upwards of 7k. Regardless I wanted this fic done before January; the deadline was originally to be by the one year anniversary, but I'm not gonna rush it because of a reader's insistence. Thanks. I'm only gonna slightly rush it.

-Book of Eli, damn man. You were always a psychic, and now you're evil, too?

-To the French reviewer(s): Tu es plus fou que moi, et je suis content que vous ayez aimé le chapitre!

25.

The quakes finally came to a stop. Everyone looked around at each other for a full minute before all the attention settled on Hekapoo who began to shuffle around nervously, fully aware why they were focused on her. Despite this, she still asked:

"What?"

Toffee stared at her blankly. "Really? You start to rip open a portal through No Man's Land, an earthquake nearly kills us all and you don't know why?" Said Septarian was half-crushed by the fallen debris, huge slabs of rock they were. His acrid blood was oozing between the cracks as if to accentuate the seriousness of his situation. Elsewhere, Marco was hanging on to the edge of the firmer pieces of earth, holding on to Sienna's hand as they dangled over a chasm formed by the breakaway. High above everyone else, Eclipsa was floating using her umbrella. The woman stared at Hekapoo with a frown on her face, chewing on a snookers bar all the while.

"So yeah, I know why!" Hekapoo retorted angrily. "I was just doing what you all expect me to do! Open portals!"

"How much magic did you use?!" Higgs yelled from her precarious position.

"About a shit-ton of it," the demigoddess shouted back as if it was a normal answer. Higgs briefly glanced down into the chasm that had formed by the massive earthquakes that had rocked the area for more than a few minutes, altered the landscape so much that it wasn't even recognizable anymore. Granted, they were already in No Man's Land and the place was already crazy enough to begin with, creatures and monsters on the prowl, some of them flying around. Higgs could've sworn that she could see even more of them gliding through the chasm far below her, and looked back up at Hekapoo.

"How about using less?!"

"Can't. I need at least two shit-tons more to open the portal to the next dimension in No Man's Land."

Well, shit. They just hit a huge roadblock. Sienna kissed her teeth in frustration. Sometimes, the problems just kept cropping up one after another, like some higher being was trying to keep them from succeeding. Before her mind could ramble down this path anymore, her wrist began to feel uncomfortable in Marco's grasp. He wasn't necessarily squeezing her hand, it was just the fact that her hand was the sole thing supporting her body weight.

With her free hand, she fished out her dimensional scissors from its holster, already thinking of a place to teleport to safety. Just before she could use it, she felt Marco's grip tighten just a bit, and she looked up into his face. He wasn't necessarily angry-looking, but he wasn't smiling either.

"Don't."

Without even a trace of reluctance, Higgs put the scissors back, and the King promptly threw her (easily) over his head and back to solid ground. After landing nimbly, she reached her hand to help him up, and although he was strong enough to climb up by himself, he accepted her assistance politely. Eclipsa watched them silently as she levitated the debris from Toffee's location before blowing them apart to free the Septarian. She returned her attention to Toffee and rebuked him for not avoiding getting crushed. The only response he had for her was a silent look. "What is it, Toffee? Something on my face?"

"You're using magic… but there aren't any dimensional quakes." No sooner had the words dropped from his mouth had everyone started to stare at the Queen, suddenly making her self-conscious. Without even realizing it, she had dug into her purse and was once again consuming another snookers bar. Seeing Marco's stare getting colder and colder every second as his perturbed look seemingly demanded an explanation, she nibbled at it faster.

She was becoming a wreck, she thought as she started to use another spell to manipulate the ground, she reformed a decent piece of it, summoned a table complete with a kettle with tea and everything sheltered under a large awning.

…

"So, are you gonna explain, or are we supposed to watch you grow old?" Hekapoo asked rudely before she gulped down her piping hot tea. "C'mon, give us something."

"We've hit a snag," Eclipsa said.

"Duh." Higgs fidgeted in her seat to get more comfortable whilst blowing on her tea in an effort to cool it down. Next to her, Marco was more or less the same. Eclipsa focused on him in particular and silently wondered how the smallest (and the youngest) among them was their leader, their King. While she knew who he was originally, she couldn't get quite read for what lied behind his face. It was a bit too impassive, though it was different whenever he looked at Hekapoo and Higgs-

"Rook and Knight, hmm?" Eclipsa said with a laugh. She resisted the urge currently to eat another of her snookers bar, wanting to make them last. Instead, she started dropping more sugar cubes, (far beyond what was considered healthy) and stirred it into her tea. "Here's the thing. Magic can't be explained-"

"We know that already." Marco interrupted. "Move on."

Eclipsa smiled bemusedly at the boy. "Fine. I'll skip ahead. Can you explain what 'Life' is?"

"Nope."

"That's what magic is."

No one spoke as they tried to process this. Marco thought of replying, but couldn't when nothing came to mind. Finally, he came around to the idea. "Makes sense. If death is order, then life is magic, and vice-versa. It's not necessarily what it is, but it's just a part of it."

"A big part of it," Hekapoo added. "Everything happens for a reason, but you can't explain the biggest things. We know how a person is born, how they live, how they die, even go as far as to figure out why they lived, but you can't explain how life started in the first place. How life starts…"

"Magic." Toffee said gruffly. "I can't say that I'm surprised. Would it also be safe to assume that the growing populations in all the dimensions helped set this apocalypse into motion?"

Eclipsa nodded. "In a manner of speaking, yes, it does." She looked back at the Diaz. "I thought everyone would be aware of this. Have you ever stopped to consider how magic has been used to create living, sentient creatures? Magic is as magic does."

"You sound just like Marco," Hekapoo observed, recalling what he had said during the battle in the ceremonial hall. "I know that it can't be explained, but that doesn't make it a bad thing-"

"Of course magic isn't a bad thing. It's quite lovely, and I daresay that it's rather convenient. But the siphon has got to go. Supporting life and the rest of the dimensions is quite easy, but this Wellspring is allowing people like you, Higgs and Marco over there with their scissors and everyone else to use the power of lives to make their own lifestyles easier." She looked around at them all around the table, noticing their unasked question. "And I can tell what you're all thinking. 'What about Eclipsa? Bloody hell, she just made a shelter and TEA for us!'" Watching them all nod, she went on. "Well, it's simple. I'm using my OWN life to power my magic. See? Simple. Simple, simple, simple."

"Shouldn't you have been dead already if that's the case?"

"Do I honestly seem like the sort to use magic for every little thing? Have you ever seen me try to create living beings?" Seeing them shake their heads, the Queen began to chortle slightly uncontrollably, leading Marco to think that she was spazzing out because of the sugar. He hadn't never before seen someone with such a high sugar intake except for Star. Wait a minute…

"We should've killed Star," Marco said carelessly. Eclipsa jumped in and said that she had meant to remind him about that before they left Mewni, but she had forgotten about her. Deciding to temporarily put the princess on the back burner since she was probably still in her coma, he refocused his attention back on the matter at hand. "What are we gonna do next? Only Hekapoo can open a portal through here to go further to the Wellspring. It'll be easier for her to do it, instead of me and Higgs carving at each portal for a day. She can halve the time or even less, right?"

"But she can't open the portal without killing all of us. You lot, I mean," Toffee pontificated, "Not myself."

"Says the only guy who got hurt," Higgs said snidely. She took out her scissors and held it out to Eclipsa. "Since you can power your magic with your life, can we do the same thing? You know, with our dimensional scissors?"

Eclipsa tried her tea. It was sickeningly sweet, just the way she habitually took it. "Of course you can. This procedure is the equivalent of 'digging deep' to use magic, but also the opposite. Digging deep is basically mentally hooking yourself up to the Wellspring and that's generally bad, right?" Seeing them all nod, she went on to make her point. "But this method will lock you away from using the magic that's coming from the Wellspring and that which saturates the dimensions… you'd be self-sustaining your magic, and to reiterate what I said earlier, you'd be using magic at the cost of your own lives."

Hekapoo's already daisy-complexion seemed to blanch at the proposal as she hesitated. "Seems like a fair trade-off, and can't be that detrimental if you're still alive. How do we do it?"

"All you really need King's 'permission'. You'll also have to forfeit three things; you don't get to choose what those are."

"A WHAT?" Higgs asked as she stared at Marco and scratch her head in confusion. "Permission? Forfeiture?"

"What's this forfeiture and permission crap?" Marco mirrored Higgs, completely flummoxed. "I have to give people permission to use their own lives to power their own magic?"

"I know of the procedure," Toffee stated, "but there really isn't a ceremony, so there's no script. Things just happen naturally, but at the end, Appendaxuz will give permission to the person-"

"Toffee," Eclipsa interrupted gently, "Appendaxuz is dead. I thought it was obvious." Toffee recoiled as if struck; he looked like he was about to become belligerent, but the Queen promised to explain his issue of things later. "For now, let's focus on the current agenda. Marco, you have the authority, correct? Then it's a relatively simple issue. You simply ask the person if they are willing to self-sustain their own magic, and then they say that they will proffer three things in forfeiture… these aren't actual THINGS, but are more like character traits, with the third 'thing' being their lives. Then, they swear themselves to you and state why. Then, you'll say that they have your permission. See? Easy!" Eclipsa said brightly, before becoming thoughtful for a moment. "Except of course, if either Hekapoo or Higgs lie about their reasons, they'll die of a heart attack. It's like one of those horrid Box of Truths, but far more consequential." She paused a moment to allow it to sink in, and her usually chipper expression turned into a glare that she leveled at them both in turn. "You'll wander through hell as a lost soul. And believe me, you don't want to be in the underworld right now."

Both Hekapoo and Higgs shared a panicky look. Eclipsa noticed, and her harsh frown changed back into her smile, knowing that her warning was well-received. "Um… right now?" Sienna questioned unsurely, "And is this a private thing between Marco and me and Hekapoo?"

"Time isn't something we have, dearie. But don't worry, it's really easy. What you need to say seems to come to mind naturally, because I certainly didn't have to rehearse this… the procedure can be formal like a swearing ceremony, or as informal as a handshake. You'll be fine. As for the forfeiture, the 'things' that you lose are a bit random; take me for instance. Low-level spells take something inconsequential, and in my case, my blood sugar. Mid-level spells affect my short term memory capacity. High-level spells take away some of my life's longevity. Nothing to worry about." Waving her wand, Marco's dimensional scissors floated out of his back pocket and flew to her free hand, and she opened up a portal with it. "In the meantime, Toffee and I will go looking for Star-… hmm, no, she's invulnerable to everyone but Marco." Eclipsa hemmed and hawed. "We'll go scouting for Omnitraxus instead. Who knows? Maybe he's weakened right now, and he's hiding out in his dimension. Ta-ta." Marco and the others watched as the Queen and the Bishop left them alone, the Enforcer of the trio realizing that they left alone mostly so that they could have the 'privacy' that Higgs had wanted. It was better than nothing, she guessed.

"Could I do this ritual thing first?" Higgs asked. Before Hekapoo could even put up an argument, Marco agreed to the girl's request. However, before he could possibly dismiss her, Hekapoo excused herself and walked away and it was much further than what one would consider earshot distance. Marco was unsure why Hekapoo now seemed closed off to him, but was brought back to the moment when he realized that he was all alone with his Knight.

"I wonder if she's doing okay?" the Diaz said to himself, his face clouded with apprehension. "She's acting a bit weird right now, huh?" Higgs still heard what he said, and shrugged.

"Kinda easy to see why. She's afraid of what I'll say to you."

Marco lifted an eyebrow. He noted how Higgs was being unusually withdrawn-looking as well and felt nervous all of a sudden. "What ARE you gonna say?"

"Just a bunch of stuff." Sienna took the teenager's hand and with her scissors, she opened a portal and led him through. As he tried to ignore the inner rumblings of the ground when the portal found, Marco wasn't even aware of their destination until he found himself at the inn in the room that he and Higgs had slept in when they were planning their sorties. After seating herself on the bed, she patted the spot next to her, motioning for Marco to sit beside her. After he did, the woman smirked down at the teenager and Marco felt somewhat unsettled at her expression. Her eyes (being sharp from her training in Hekapoo's trial), easily picked up how uneasy Marco had become and tried to clear the tension with a joke. "I guess that 'cougar' thing you mentioned back on Earth must be running through your mind right now."

"Cougar?" He laughed nervously. Superhuman resistance to physical damage or not, he didn't want to risk a fully grown Higgs slugging him in the shoulder. "Errm, nope. Not at all."

"It does feel strange," she admitted as she looked over herself, "actually looking like the grown-up I am, but you're still in your teenage body, 'cause we usually age into the same bodies when we travel everywhere together. And the funny thing is, I've never fully gotten used to this body, at least, I always tried not to. Maybe I oughta push you through into Hekapoo's dimension and bring you back in your adult form too. Just to even things out a little."

"I wouldn't mind obligating you if it would make you more comfortable around me," Marco replied, "But we've been opening some unnecessary portals, even just by coming here. I wouldn't go to Hekapoo's dimension just to look older, but for what it's worth, I'm sorry you look like this. Hmm…" Marco's fingers drummed on the handle of his sword. "Since magic caused you to look like this, maybe I can order it to be reversed." He pulled out the sword and drawing on his aura, repeated his clincher and tapped it gently on her shoulder. Already, she began to revert back to her teenage looking self, despite her insistence that she didn't mind looking the way she did. Too late to fight it, she just shrugged it off.

"I can't fight at my best when I'm a teenager, Marco. I didn't care what I looked like. Hell, maybe I'll actually go back to Hekapoo's dimension when we're done just so I can change back. But on the issue of portals, I dragged you here for the privacy." Before he could interrupt her, she stopped him. "Let me finish. I know we could have had privacy back where we just were, but right here in this room, things are quiet and they still make sense. It's been a whirlwind ever since we bumped into each other in the castle hallways, huh?"

"It was kinda slow for me when I was back on Earth-"

"But it wasn't slow for me!" Sienna exclaimed. "I was in and out of Hekapoo's trial for the whole time, chasing her around for eighteen years! I guess I was just obsessive…" She shook her head in disgust. "But I was still in my right mind. You could just be polite and say that I was fixated on you. It was just like when you said that you spent your sixteen years trying to earn your scissors to give to Star, but for me, I earned my scissors just so that I could get to see you again." Marco frowned, and she could guess why. "Yeah, kinda went the long fuckin' distance just for friendship, and just look at me." Sienna gestured at herself. "I joined forces with a team of freaks, killed Mewni's monarchy, gutted and slaughtered dozens of their knights and now I'm dead-set on a suicide mission to save the universe!" Her voice suddenly became small and quiet, "all because of a friend."

Marco looked down in shame. "I lost my anger. No, I can switch it on or off, and my conscience too. But you don't. You can't. I don't know how you cope, but you've been killing for me. You've been killing because of me. I know that I put pressure on you to do it, and I'm sorry. If I could make it up to you, I would." At this, Higgs grasped at her knife, and with an unexpected show of dexterity, yanked it out of its sheath and twirled it in around her hands, then around her unprotected fingers. It was almost like watching a butterfly knife in motion, and the glint of it flashed faster and faster until she finally brought it to a stop, and caught it by the handle.

"I didn't get this weapon because of you. It didn't cut down your enemies because of you. It didn't kill them because of you. It was my choice to use it, and I did it for you. Me already itching to put most of them down helped with the motivation." Higgs smiled a strange grin as she stared him in the face. "But I can look straight at you and I can tell what you're thinking! 'Sienna Higgs was following my orders, so I'm the one killed all those people!'"

"I wasn't thinking that-"

"Don't try to lie your way out of it," she interrupted sharply, "I can just tell. Don't worry about it. Do you know what I really liked about you being my King, Marco? I always had a choice, and I could've stopped at any time. I've always liked that… none of that sworn-in bullcrap. I told you before that I'm more than willing to do it for your sake, but you've gotta know that once I'm sworn to you with this self-sustaining magic crap, then you're going to be responsible for every act I make. You're gonna be responsible for everything I say. You're not responsible for what I did before, but now, you will." Sienna slid her knife back into its scabbard right up to the hilt with a thud. "Feels like this was a long time coming. Feels like it was only yesterday we were hanging out in your room. Now, we're getting our hands bloodied and trying to stop the universe from going down the friggin' toilet."

"You're saying that we wouldn't be friends anymore."

"I am saying that," Higgs agreed, before heaving a sigh. "I'm kinda confused about this. I have no real problems going through with this, but it's just that I don't want to. I don't want our ranks to come between us! I understand that I'm a Knight and you're a King, but that was all well and good when it was just a title. Now, it'll actually BE a distinction, a separation in class."

"If you won't, I don't think I'll have a problem with that!" Marco insisted. "You've been nothing but a huge help to me, Sienna, and one of my only friends left!" At the dropping of the word 'friends', Higgs flinched almost unnoticeably, but Marco caught it and was unsure why. "Look, the stress is getting to you, and it's no wonder why. If you want, maybe you can take a break, go do whatever you want. If you're feeling like you're way in over your head, you can stop. You don't have to follow me if you feel like you're throwing your life."

"We're friends, Marco." It came out low, and Marco had to lean in closer to hear her. "And you're right, I don't want to follow you anymore. I want to be beside you. In our minds, we're friends, but I wanted us to be more than that." Already, her confession was coming out and Higgs couldn't stop herself. "I've always been drawn to you, and I don't know why. It could be because I was an isolated hungry bitch that you made friends with-… you know how my parents died, and how it messed me up to be in that castle. Trying to help me out and cooking for me, and I latched on to you because of that. Or it could be because I had a crush on you-… it was always growing on me and it never left me, no matter how much I grew up when I was in Hekapoo's dimension, trying to earn dimensional scissors just so I could get to see you again. I always thought about you, about how alone I felt without you."

At this point, her head sagged down and her shoulder slumped. Marco thought of hugging her but was afraid of making the wrong impression. At the last, he cursed himself for hesitating and finally put his arms around her, and pulled her in close. They stayed like that, locked in an embrace for a while. At some point, Marco felt like his clothes were slowly getting dampened at the neck. She was crying.

"Or maybe it's destiny," she whispered into his ear. "I don't care what the reason is. I just wanted it to happen. But it's not going to. No matter how you feel about me, you feel more for Hekapoo than for me. I don't know why, and I don't understand. What does she have that I can't give you?"

He was still unsure about how to respond to all of this. Marco didn't quite trust himself to speak, either, and found himself wanting to break her monologue before she said something he was afraid to hear. "Everyone keeps talking about me and Hekapoo this, me and Hekapoo that. We don't-"

"You're still just a nerd for not realizing," Sienna rebuked not too unkindly, "and anyone can tell just from how the both of you look at each other, and I wished that you'd look at me the same way too. Well, you do, but not as much." She tilted her head up from off of his shoulder and smiled sadly while poking at his chest. "You got a piece of me in there already. Got any more room for me?" It was a simple question with weird wording, but it had a complicated answer. He was already heavily conflicted just from the violence of the past issues and his struggle to accept that he was becoming the God of Order. Now, he was back right into his teenage dramas and romances.

Marco sighed. Life for him was always going to get more and more complicated and it was just now that he was thinking that she was right… he DID have feelings for both of them, although there was a marginal difference in favor of Hekapoo. "I can't promise you-" Before he could go any further, she shushed him quiet by grabbing his head and pulling him towards her, and pressed her lips against his.

She was kissing him.

Sure, he wasn't fighting it. For the first time in a long time, Marco allowed himself to relax and kissed her back. It wasn't his first kiss and it easy to tell that it was hers; she was inexperienced, but they both enjoyed it. Higgs was tickled by the feeling and giggled into his mouth. Marco finally smiled into the kiss and in doing so, at last, their lips matched each other.

They sat there in the serene, all that could be heard were the sounds of the two making out with one another and at some point, he had allowed Higgs to ease him to lie on his back in the bed, with her on top of him. It was deepening, escalating more and more until it felt like Higgs was practically grinding against him, though they were still clothed. After parting from each other and breaking the fragile thread of silver shared between their lips, she leaned down to speak into his ear. "How about we go change into our adult forms," she whispered sultrily, "and I'll give you some real breasts and curves to hang on to?"

"AAANNNDDD… " Marco got back up and bucked Sienna off to the side. "I see what you're doing." The girl rolled sideways off the bed harmlessly to the floor on the other side from him and once she recovered her bearings, sat there with only her head and shoulders showing and gave him a mixed look of disappointment, mischief and... stimulation?

"What, make you forget about Hekapoo? Did it work?"

"Not how'd I put it," Marco said flatly. "I know what you're up to. And knowing how you are, you'll never stop." Sienna gave him what she thought was a sexy smile, and almost relished how he turned his head to hide his face, though there was no way of hiding the growing erection he had in his loins.

"Ha! Prude."

"Says the virgin."

Higgs reddened with embarrassment. "YOU'RE A VIRGIN TOO! A FREAKIN' THIRTY-ODD YEAR OLD VIRGIN!" It was the equivalent of a childish 'no, you' argument, and she knew that she'd already lost face. "Oh cripes, isn't it horrible for you to get cockblocked by thoughts of another woman? You almost had me." Seeing his face contort with irritation, she refrained from further trying to rile him or tempt him-… it wasn't working. With a sigh of acceptance, she got up from where she was and circled around the bed to stand in front of him, topless; she'd removed it while she had been concealed by the bed. "Yeah, there's definitely some love for me in there. It's more than I expected to get. I suppose that's good enough for me and like you realized… I'm always gonna be trying to work my way in there. It's going to be weird though, I gotta admit that. Me trying to cope with the ranks between us, not just Hekapoo. Then there's the fact that she's basically the 'wife', and I'm the outside girl who breaks up marriages." Higgs scratched her cheek at the thought and beamed at Marco cheerfully. "What do you think?"

"I think," Marco grumbled as he tried to keep his eyes from wandering below her face, "that you need to put your shirt back on. Now let's do what we came here to do."

"Well, damn," she said softly, "so… we're doing this, huh?" She stared down at her feet and fidgeted in a bout of strange nervousness; it was queer, as she hadn't had the feeling for years, not since all the way back when she was with Marco in his bedroom so long ago. Even the fact that they would've almost christened the bed hadn't made her uncomfortable, and yet now she was. She gazed up again at Marco, who was trying to look stoic, but his façade soon broke when he saw how timid she looked. Like her, he couldn't understand why she was being nervous all of a sudden. He'd always admired her for how willful and determined she was-… no matter how strong he got, he always depended on her and now it appeared she was close to breaking down. It could be a core personality trait of hers to never subject herself fully to another authority, and anything she did was because she wanted to.

"Errm, Marco? About what I said earlier about our distinction of rank… you won't allow it to change anything between us, will it?"

"No." His tone was in such a peculiar way that it was as if he was trying to be authoritative and non-threatening at the same time. A friendly King, maybe?

"You're prepared to take responsibility for my actions?"

"Yes. But if you try anything like what you just did, that's all on you."

Sienna grinned at this as she noted the state of his clothes. "Yes sir. Man, when Hekapoo sees how rumpled your clothes are, she's gonna make you sleep on the couch…!" She went back around the bed to retrieve her shirt and put it back on before returning to hug him. "I'm in love with my best friend," she said as she came to terms with how she felt, "and he loves me too, just not as much as he does for my other friend. I can accept it. If my job as your knight doesn't come between us, even if I'm sworn to you formally or just like how we're holding each other right now, then I don't care. Even if I'm sidelined, I'm happy enough to be your sword."

Marco thought he had known where he had heard this before. Higgs sounded exactly like him… exactly like Marco Ubaldo Diaz, the Squire to the Princess. Only now, Higgs was Marco, and Marco was Star, and Hekapoo was Tom. It frightened him to see the parallels, yet excited him. If he were in her place now, what would he want to hear that would help comfort him? Before he could say anything, he pondered about whether he should after all. Besides, as Higgs said, she was happy. She wasn't satisfied, but she was happy.

He had said that to Star too. That wasn't enough for him when it happened, so was she the same right now?

"These kinds of complicated relationships are gonna be the death of me," he grumbled, although his attitude was pliable, "and I'm never really sure about what to do. I can't have my cake and eat it. I can't love both of you and expect the two of you to love me back. It's just not right."

"Some of Mewni's kings were known to take concubines." She could feel him tense up in her arms, and rushed to salvage the situation. "Yeah, you're an Earthman, but think about it! Only instead of me, you could take Hekapoo as the concubine."

"That joke's not funny."

"I know. Marco, please? Can you ask me if I'm willing to sustain my magic by myself?" Now, she just wanted to get this so-called ritual thing over with. He obliged her with her request and asked her. "-Yes, I am willing to self-sustain my magic. I offer myself, including my life as forfeit if necessary. I…" Sienna felt hesitancy start to creep in again when she remembered what she was meant to say next, and cast it away in her adamancy. "I SWEAR myself to Marco Diaz… because he's my King, my best friend and I am in love with him."

They waited. She didn't die. This meant that her reasons were real. Not only that, but it meant that she really did love Marco. If she actually didn't, then she would've died. There had been no lies.

Heaving a sigh in acceptance, a delusion briefly overtook her mind. To her, she was suddenly in a huge throne room of an infinite size that seemed to keep growing larger, and Marco's shadow was actually standing behind him as a huge apparition with glowing green eyes, and it kept growing as well. The illusion only lasted for a moment or two, just short of the amount of time needed for her to actually react, and she was suddenly brought back to reality, with Marco replying to her oath.

"Sienna Higgs, you have my permission," he said gently. "I love you too, so don't go overboard and kill yourself."

"I'm gonna be fine, nerd." They released each other, and it was with interest that Marco saw that the Knight symbol on her neck was now green instead of black. "Anyway… wanna stick around for a while?"

The Diaz shook his head. "Nah, we better get Hekapoo to use her own magic too. So let's go." He reached into his pockets but his hands came up empty. "Crap, I forgot that Eclipsa borrowed my scissors. Sienna, can you open up the portal?" He looked to her, but Higgs looked smug-… usually not a good sign. "Where're your scissors?"

"In my shorts."

"Well, take it out-"

"You take it out."

"We don't have time for this!" He stepped forward, and patted her thighs to feel for pocket bulges and to his shock, found none. "Wait, you don't have any pockets…?!"

Higgs grinned. Yep, she had him.

"…I know."

vVv

It'd been a long time since Hekapoo had returned to the table, and rested her head on it in her disappointment. She'd hoped to get to see how the 'swearing-in' procedure was carried out, but Higgs had spirited both herself and Marco away through a portal for an even greater sense of privacy. Besides the fact that the earth shaking a little when the portal opened (it was practically normal at this point), Hekapoo was disappointed. Everyone could travel about with their scissors with minor consequences to other dimensions, but when she was needed to breach portals deeper through No Man's Land, the dimension occupied suffered a quake that completely transformed the landscape at the epicenter.

This was her job, wasn't it? What she lived for? She was the enforcer for the interdimensional travel in the entire damn multiverse! This was what she lived for, what she was made for!

"What I was made for," the demigoddess grumbled heatedly, "and I can't even open a stinking portal without killing everyone." Taking a moment to analyze her situation, she realized that she was at a low point, lower than she'd ever been ever since she was created. Judging by the events of what had happened the night before, she and Omnitraxus Prime were the last of the M.H.C., and if Eclipsa and Toffee were to find and kill him, then she WOULD be the only one left.

She had promised herself that she wouldn't grieve until this mess was all over, but it was getting harder to stave off her anguish. Moon was, well, Moon was the Queen. As the queen in the Magic High Commission, she was replaceable just like every other monarch who had preceded her. They were mortal, and Moon was just as mortal as her antecedents and the citizens she ruled over. However, Moon was one of the few queens that Hekapoo had liked-… an upstanding woman who was both stern and understanding, righteous yet kindhearted as she continued to grow into her maternal role.

And Rhombulus... Literally and metaphorically hardheaded, belligerent and always making mistakes. Stubborn, too.

But damn, he was her kid brother. Not to mention the fact Lekmet died last year.

Fresh tears welled up in her eyes and ran down her cheek in a rivulet of fire. She wasn't even aware of the fact that she was crying until she heard a sizzling coming from the table below her. The molten liquid scorched the wood and ate its way through. Taking a deep breath, she tried to suppress her anguish. Yeah, she could do that. Being successful for the moment, she made a conscious effort to breathe a little more deeply and calmed herself. It only lasted for a brief time before she realized a damning truth.

Their deaths were one thing, though. Now, she had to consider the fact that she was rubbing shoulders with killers. With THEIR killers.

"Oh, shit, we've gone off the rails now, Hekapoo!" She anxiously began to think of reasons why they had to die and although they were 'good' reasons, they scarcely made her feel any better, particularly given the fact they were misdemeanors she was also guilty of. "They kept abusing magic, and that's why they had to die! They wouldn't stop! I could, and they couldn't!"

That was true… sort of. She was willing to stop, but using magic was like an unintentional habit, hell, even her abhorred immortal life was powered by it. And just last night when she was fighting, she defaulted and used magic to kill the knights. The demigoddess knew that she could claim self-defense and that would be justified. Killing herself to stop using magic to fuel her immortality wasn't. And then there was the factor that she had been using magic almost non-stop for the past year along with her fellow M.H.C. members despite warnings from Marco before he was banished from Mewni. She was guilty too. That either meant that she should've either shared their fate and die, or she should've at least made an effort to convert them to Marco's dogma. It would've been a futile effort, but still, it was just principle.

Since that was the case, it meant that she killed them. She killed all of them.

Damn, now her mind was racing, her stress was rising, and the guilt-

"So, how are you feeling?" At the sudden voice, she looked up, only to find Glossaryck floating over the table on the opposite side from her, in his usual meditative-esque stance. She gaped at him in surprise, and the nonplussed being merely shook his head. "Nah, I already know what you're feeling. Or I could guess. Anyway, ask me how I'm feeling."

There were many things that could've happened. This god (her father which had created her) could have been on the wrong end of a fight right then and there in a variety of scissors and/or fire-related ways. He would most likely be unaffected, but she would've tried to kill him because she felt like blaming him for everything that'd happened. Another course of action would be to lose her shit and just yell at him until she got hoarse-… this was the same guy who was pretending to have regressed into a dumb animal and all of a sudden he was back into his old ways. She was too emotionally worn-out to be doing any of these things, however, and settled for humoring him. "Alright. I guess that makes one of us if you know how I'm feeling. How are you feeling?"

"Disappointed." His stomach suddenly growled audibly, and he patted his gut as if to hush it quiet. "Nah, I guess it was just hunger." He snapped his fingers and a pudding cup unexpectedly came into existence in front of him. He helped himself to some, before asking her (with a full mouth) if she wanted some.

"No."

"Okay. More for me." Eating a bit more and actually taking some care in swallowing, he continued. "So… you're here. You said that only I know how you're feeling? I could hazard a guess. You're starting to think that all of your actions were a mistake and you're only doing this to get into Marco's good favor and in the hopes that he loves you. How's that for a guess?"

Hekapoo was a bit tentative in her answer. "Specific. But no." Glossaryck only continued to eat his pudding for a while more, before pointing at her with the spoon that he'd just cleaned off with his mouth.

"Shame. I'm usually a pretty good guesser. Well, what if I were to guess that you're afraid of this procedure that Eclipsa proposed and that it could backfire and kill you because you're primarily a magic being that depends on magic for almost everything including her life?" He was right again, and they both knew it. She denied his answer once more, and this slightly upset him.

"Well, how would you know?" he grumbled sarcastically, "You don't know what you're feeling… isn't that what you said? And if you don't know, then you can't refuse my answers as being wrong. Since you can't tell me that they're wrong, then that means that they're right. Right?"

Man, she'd always hated how he used psychology and logic to win arguments. It was novel of him to be like this instead of being a know-it-all god who knew their answers 'just because', like how Omnitraxus was. Temporarily barring her own personal affairs out of the contention, she decided to move on to a more worthwhile topic. "Aren't you going to get involved? Maybe try to kill us? Avenge Rhombulus and Moon and all the rest?"

Glossaryck smiled in a way that only he could as he pointed at the Rook symbol on her neck. "Do you know about that mark on your neck?"

"The castle?" She'd only discovered it this morning.

"Technically, it's called a 'Rook', but whatever. If you must know what I'm doing, then you should know that I'm not involved, not anymore at least. Only the pawns fight, and the veto ones are the ones that are still left on the board. I admit, my side of the board is rather scant…" He started to scrape the sides of the pudding cup to eke out what was left. "But the truth is, while my brother cared about winning, I don't. I'm all for letting things happen. That's basically order versus chaos right there, am I right?"

"I blame this whole magic fiasco on YOU!"

"I know. I created the Wellspring, I created the Commission to make sure that magic wouldn't be abused, and I was willing to teach the princesses how to use magic and I helped to spawn the tools needed to wield magic. But consider this… Everyone had a choice in what they did. The M.H.C. had a choice in how they did their jobs, the princesses had a choice to refuse the wand and tradition, and everyone was ordinary… simply because they wanted to use magic to be extraordinary. They truly weren't. I didn't force anyone to do anything, never have, and never will. In that same line…" He paused to eat the final helping of the pudding before continuing, "you can't blame me for their deaths, and you don't have to hold yourself accountable. Everything is everyone's joint effort." A garbage bin suddenly materialized next to them on the ground, and he tossed his empty cup and spoon into it. Snapping his fingers once, another cup of pudding with a spoon on top spawned in front of him, and just as Hekapoo was expecting her father to rip into it as well, he instead pushed it over towards her. The gesture wasn't lost on her, and before she could shout at him that she didn't want it, she involuntarily blinked her eye and he was gone by the time it reopened.

Figures. It was just like him to do that. The only proof that he had been there was the fact that both her pudding and the garbage bin was still there. She had a feeling that she knew what the bin was for, but was still unsure how to address it. Not knowing what to do next, she decided to have the pudding after all.

It was good.

vVv

-In the next chapter, we're gonna see a bit of Star and as for my plans regarding her, a shout-out of thanks to Useful76. Also, we should see a bit more Hekapoo drama as she confronts the bin. Lol, it's not a fight, but the reason behind it was heavily hinted in Glossaryck's argument. He seemed unusually literal, but I labored and actually put in a bunch of layers to that shit.

-And so, the underdog Higgs pulls ahead in the race that has been low-key dominated by Hekapoo. Who wins? Will both win? Will any win?

-In case anyone needed help figuring it out, here are some Present Character Alignments based on actions AND mindsets:

Marco - Chaotic Good, Neutral Evil

Star - Neutral

Hekapoo - Lawful Neutral

Higgs - Chaotic Good

Toffee - Lawful Evil

Eclipsa - Neutral Evil

-Hope you all enjoyed the chapter. Don't forget to tell me what you thought and about what you think needs patching.

Valete omnes,

MRAY 4TW.