Here it is, everyone! The final chapter of Chapter of the Bird. It has been a long 12 whole years to get to this point, and it hasn't been easy, but we've finally arrived. I have to give a big heartfelt thank you to Mangaka-chan for all the discussions, suggestions, and additional scenes she's helped me write over all these years. I probably wouldn't have gotten here if it weren't for her support. I also want to thank Flo Nelja for following the story so faithfully all these years and not missing a review for each episode. I may not reply to reviews, but I treasure every one of you who took the time to react to my writing, and I thank all of you too for your support. Now, let's get on with it!

Once upon a time, there was a story. The story began as a happy accident, with fate leading the characters into a wondrous labyrinth of magic and mystery. A story without an ending is a tragedy, for then the characters remain in their precarious situation for eternity.

"I'm sick of this!" cried the Raven in the story.

"I'm sick of this!" said the Prince as well.

And so the Raven broke the borders between the story and the real world, enabling their story to continue.

But can there be a happy ending in this world? For in this world, does the story ever end?

Princess Tutu
~Kapitel des Vogel~
~鳥の章~
(Chapter of the Bird)

39. AKT "A Story That Never Ends"
~ Aus der Neuen Welt ~

Komaro, standing on tiptoes, looked out from the tiny window of the Ginkan jail cell he had been locked in. Around him a dozen or so gypsies sat huddled together, their downcast eyes gazing unseeingly at the cold stone floor beneath them. One of them, a teenage girl with tussled dark hair, glanced up at the finely dressed man who had been tossed in with their lot.

"Hey mister, what are you looking at?" she asked quietly.

"For my master. He should be coming any minute now to free us," Komaro answered as he craned his neck to get a better view of the outside.

"Ha!" she laughed mirthlessly. "Save your energy. All of the nobles have either fled or hidden themselves. No one's coming here, least of all a noble."

"He will come."

The clear tone in the red haired man's voice startled the girl, and she looked at him with her full attention when he turned and faced her. "My master will come. He may be timid, but he is selfless and kind, and cares deeply about his people. I am sure that his inner bravery will triumph, and he shall use his strength to save us all."

"You… you really think so?" a small spark of hope appeared in the young woman's eyes and Komaro nodded confidently.

Then, brisk footsteps approached the cell. For a moment, Komaro's words had roused the gypsies as they looked up with amazement, but their eyes dulled when they saw that it was several Ginkan guards with a sharp look in their eyes.

"As punishment for desecrating a sacred church, you are all banished henceforth from Ginkan," one of them said as they filed in and began yanking the people off the ground, tying their hands together. "You will be escorted to the town gates to ensure that you do not slip back into the town like the rats you are."

The teenage gypsy girl smirked. "Why would we? We've never felt welcome here. If this is what a home is supposed to be like, who needs one?"

The guard grit his teeth, raising his hand. "Don't talk back, you—"

Before he could bring it down to slap her, though, Komaro had grabbed his arm and held it back. "Leave her be, please. This is hard for everyone."

The guard stared at Komaro for a moment in shock. The chamberlain didn't look like he could take on a soldier hand-to-hand.

Komaro took the momentary silence as an opportunity to defuse the situation further. "There is no reason to fight right now," he said calmly.

After glaring at Komaro, he pulled his arm away from his grip and back at his side. He turned around, looking at the soldiers around him. "What are you all gaping for? Bind his hands!"

Komaro did not protest as a rope was tied around his wrists, and he was led outside in a line along with the other gypsies.

"Thanks for what you did back there," the teenage girl said in a lowered voice at Komaro. "I don't know what good it did in the end, though..."

"Sometimes we are powerless to correct the ills of this world ourselves," Komaro said, looking ahead. "But there are those with power who I can believe in."

o-o-o-o-o

—bloodlust—insanity—despair—

The human-sized crow that was Trutho gripped his chest as crazed thoughts flooded his mind. He saw himself, a giant towering shadow veiled in an ominous crimson light. Below him, wrecked buildings and pulverized masonry, while people ran like frantic ants, his own disjointed, inhuman voice demanding their hearts.

No! he thought. I can't lose control! Not now!

But he found himself fighting a losing battle with his own mind, the inner torrent sweeping away his rational thoughts and overwhelming his emotions. As if he were being pulled by puppet strings, he began to stand and spread his wings, about to take off into the sky and realize his vision of chaos on the town.

"Wait, Trutho."

An unfamiliar woman's voice caught his attention. He turned around and saw a woman in a brown dress and cloak with white fur around her shoulders looking at him from behind a gear frame, with a small pale girl standing beside her.

Trutho's monstrous blue eyes blinked at the strangers, and he croaked out in a twisted voice, "Who…are you?" as he willed himself to resist the urge to lung at them and devour their hearts.

To his surprise, the woman held out her hand, in which was a white quill and a piece of parchment. "I am the fortune teller Takako, and I bear an object which can relieve you of this madness that has enveloped you. This is the quill that controls your destiny. Though you share the Swan Prince's blood, your naturally docile and insecure disposition made you more susceptible to manipulation by other's will. The Raven's blood in your veins, and this magic quill bows you to their respective owner's desires. But I give this quill to you now, so you may write the ending to your own story."

The outstretched white quill shined brightly in the reflection of Trutho's enormous raven eyes.

With effort, Trutho reached forward and his taloned claws grasped the objects from her hand. Then the gear frame disappeared.

Though he was mystified at the sudden appearance of a woman with a mysterious quill, when he held it, he could feel that there was something special about it, something important. So, with every ounce of willpower he could muster, he grabbed the quill, put it to the parchment on the ground, and in a crooked script, wrote the singular lucid thought he could muster:

I will decide my fate with my own hands!

When he finished that sentence, the quill glowed, and then vanished in his hands. The black feathers covering him shed off, and he reappeared beneath them, clad in the black feathered garb from before. The sense of uncontrollable chaos had vanished into the air like a heavy sigh, and he felt completely in control of himself and his powers.

The crows gathered curiously around him, alongside some of the squirrels, cats and other animals that had helped Trutho before, having sensed the strange energy radiating from Trutho now subsiding. He stood up and looked around at his silent audience with a small smile.

"C'mon, everyone. Let's make this town better."

o-o-o-o-o

At the town square, Friar Tuck was speaking to the townspeople he had gathered. Turning to face the crowd from his perch on top of an up-turned wooden crate, Tuck recounted what had occurred that morning. "And now, he's forcing the gypsies out of town. I think we finally need to stop this nonsense, and tell Archbishop Frollo that we won't let him do this anymore!"

The townsfolk clamored with agreement.

"Hear hear!"

"Trying to arrest Tuck again? He's become no different from the former head councilman!"

"We need to remove him from power, too!"

Then, a ripple of displeased murmurs spread through the crowd as a group of nobles made their way through to the middle where Tuck stood.

"What are they doing here?" an angry voice shouted.

"Have they come to get in our way?"

Friar Tuck raised his hands to mollify the agitated crowd "The noblemen have come to aid in our protest against Frollo. They have suffered alongside us, and they are on our side."

"Even the one who started this all in the first place?" one of the women said with disgust, looking at Macbeth, who was leading them all.

"I knew this wouldn't be a good idea," Macbeth said with a curt sigh to Tuck. "Why get us involved at all? None of the commoners wants the likes of us around."

"I understand where they're coming from, but I trust in what Tuck says."

Tuck and Macbeth turned to the new voice, and saw that Trutho had appeared beside them in a flurry of black feathers. With alarm, the townspeople took note of the crows that now alighted on the rooftops around them, as well as the various animals that gathered beneath their feet.

"It's the dark prince! The one who speaks with the crows!"

"Why is he here?"

"Mama, I'm scared..." whispered a little boy standing near Trutho. Her mother touched her son's head comfortingly while glaring suspiciously at the young prince.

Trutho grimaced at the fearful response of the crowd. "I suppose I'm not welcome, either..."

Just as a murmur of mistrust rumbled through the crowd, a white dog with a large tan spot on its back made its way beneath the legs of the people in the crowd, the dog eagerly ran up to Trutho, wagging its tail.

"Spot!" the little boy who had shrank away from Trutho reached out for the dog, but his mother pulled him back. "Spot, come back!"

Trutho knelt down and stroked the dog's head with a gentle smile. "You did a good job, Spot. I know that the family who got their heirloom back are very happy."

"You…you can talk to animals?" The little boy whispered, his eyes wide with wonder as he edged away from his mother's protective hands to face Trutho.

Trutho nodded. "And you must be Stefan, right? Spot won't stop talking about you. You take very good care of him."

"Why do you wear black feathers?" Stefan asked curiously. "Papa says that those who wear black feathers are crow people, and that they're scary."

"Do you think I'm scary?" Trutho asked him with concern.

"A…a little," Stefan said honestly, glancing up at his mother, who watched the exchange with cautious eyes. "Well, the adults seem to think so. But if Spot likes you then you can't be a bad person. But the crows are scary. Why were they attacking everyone? Can you make them stop?"

Trutho smiled. "The crows were being led astray by people who wanted to use them to scare people. So I became a crow prince so they could listen to someone responsible, and won't do bad things anymore."

Then, one of the crows flew down from the rooftops toward Trutho, cawing. He held out an arm and listened to it speak for a few moments.

"What's he saying?" Stefan asked, eyes wide with curiosity.

Trutho's brows furrowed as he let the crow fly back with its other fellows. "He says that Frollo is taking the displaced gypsies out of the town through the north gate."

Stefan frowned. Pulling free from his mother's grip, he approached Trutho and said urgently, "Papa said that a man named Frollo was making it so we can't have fun anymore, and doing lots of bad things to make people upset! Could you come with and tell him not to do those things anymore?"

Trutho nodded. "That's why I'm here."

"Yay! I think things will be okay if you're with us! Isn't that right, Mama?"

Seeing her son warm up to the strange boy and the gentle manner with which the prince had communicated with her son, the worried frown on Stefan's mother's face slipped into a hopeful smile, and she nodded at her son.

With that, the atmosphere in the crowd had now changed completely, as relieved murmurs spread through the townsfolk.

"Let all of us go forth!" Tuck declared. "To the north gate! We can't let Frollo continue with his draconian policies any longer!"

With shouts of agreement, the large crowd began to move.

o-o-o-o-o

Infuriated with the thought that a hoard of lowly gypsies was making their hideout underneath the very church he presided over, Frollo was adamant about getting each and every one of them out of the hidden door, and for that matter, out of the town itself. He had the Ginkan guard take them out of confinement, and then walk them to the north gate to be thrown out of the town for good.

However, when he and the Ginkan soldiers got there, he found a giant crowd of people blocking their path.

"Frollo, it's time to stop this," Tuck said, stepping forward from the crowd. "You've gone too far with your way of doing things. Step down."

"So says a man who has defied his church and superior," Frollo said, scowling.

"So says the rest of the town as well, Frollo!" Trutho said with an equal scowl, and the crowd clamored in agreement. "Everyone here agrees—you've lost the privilege of governing this town. Your authority, by the will of the people, is now null and void! No one has to listen to you anymore!"

Macbeth crossed his arms. "Ginkan soldiers, that means that you don't have to listen to him anymore, either. So why don't you let those gypsies you have there go free?"

The Ginkan soldiers looked at each other bewilderedly.

"You have not been dismissed!" Frollo said, pointing at the gate. "Take them away, I command you!"

When the Ginkan soldiers hesitated again, Trutho sighed, and instead of saying anything further, walked up to them and began untying the gypsies' hands. The soldiers did nothing to stop him.

"What are you doing!?" Frollo exclaimed.

Following Trutho's lead, the other townsfolk began untying the gypsies' hands, and the gypsies joined the ranks of the crowd of people once freed.

"Komaro, are you all right?" Trutho asked with concern as he began to loosen the rope around the chamberlain's wrists.

"Yes, thanks to you," Komaro said with a smile.

Frollo looked around him with an indignant frown as Macbeth smirked at the archbishop. "Like the young prince said... no one needs to listen to your orders anymore."

"Lock Frollo up!" one of the noblemen said. "Don't let him get away with this!"

"He needs to know justice!"

The Ginkan soldiers finally had gotten accustomed to the change in power structure, and instead of taking the gypsies out, they turned around and took Frollo by the arms to lock him up in the Council dungeon. In contrast to Macbeth, however, he went quietly and with dignity.

"God will see to it that all works out in the end!" Frollo said solemnly as he was led away. "True justice will ultimately prevail!"

An echo of boos followed Frollo as he was led away, and while some murmured that it was almost too easy, Trutho smiled quietly. As far as he was concerned, a bloodless revolt was the best case scenario. An actual battle would have only resulted in more suffering.

With Frollo gone, that left the town of Ginkan once again without a leader. The crowd was enthusiastic for a particular candidate.

"Let Tuck be our new leader!"

"Three cheers for Friar Tuck!"

But before the enthusiasm could spread, Tuck held up his hands. "No, no. I will not be the town of Ginkan's next leader."

The sound of disappointment and confusion was audible in the crowd. Tuck responded to the unspoken question.

"As we now are painfully aware, the power that the position of leader will ultimately corrupt those burdened with it. I don't believe I am a strong enough man to avoid this corruption myself. Instead, I nominate..."

He placed his hands on the shoulders of the pale haired boy next to him. "Prince Trutho of Ginkan."

Trutho was taken aback, as was the rest of the crowd. "Me?! But... but I'm just a boy raised by the gypsies. I don't know anything of running a town."

"I believe you know more than you think," Tuck said. "Unlike our previous leaders, you have shown yourself to me to be considerate of the thoughts of others, even those you disagree with. You are gentle, kind, and humble, and most of all, you know the plight of the common man better than most. I think you would be a fine leader of this town, Trutho, and I would be happy to help you on the way."

"But I..." Trutho trailed off, thinking. The leader of Ginkan! Me!? How can I do such a thing? Especially when... He looked at his hand, thinking of the Raven's blood that now was a permanent part of him.

Uncertain, he glanced back at Komaro, as if to consult him on this weighty decision. Komaro merely bowed his head and said, "I believe in you, Prince Trutho."

Then Trutho remembered something. I said that I would decide my fate with my own hands. He clasped his hand. Maybe, instead of letting others decide my fate, I can shape it myself.

"I don't claim to be an excellent leader, and I certainly don't have experience with it," Trutho said, speaking with a poise he didn't know he had. "But I want to make this town better. I want the people in it to be safe and happy. So I will do what I can to listen to everyone and make this a town to be proud of."

Tuck smiled and began to applaud, and after some moments, the rest of the crowd applauded with him. Trutho did nothing but smile somewhat sheepishly.

Then Macbeth spoke up, as if he had just remembered something. "Wait a moment; Frollo's work is still in progress. In Kinkan, he had sent a legion of soldiers to pull out the exiles who had moved there, including my friend Duncan. Someone needs to tell those fools to stop their useless mission immediately, and tell them that the one pulling their strings is now out of authority!"

Trutho nodded. "I can get there the quickest. I don't want Kinkan to suffer from Frollo's wrongs either!"

With that, he vanished into a flurry of black feathers, whisking himself away across the rooftops and past the town walls in a dark blur.

o-o-o-o-o

Mytho and Rue touched down upon the cobblestone steps of Kinkan, among the belligerent crowd. Their magical entrance gave the people pause, and Mytho spoke in the momentary quiet.

"Stop this fighting at once," Mytho said solemnly, looking at the people around him. "This is solving nothing and it's causing a disturbance of the peace."

"We will leave as soon as the exiles from Ginkan leave!" a soldier exclaimed. "Archbishop Frollo said that it's their fault that the crows have been attacking. The appearance of that monster proved it!"

"That's nonsense," Rue said, frowning at him. "It's no more their fault than it is mine!"

"Any who would side with the unholy ones are just as guilty," another soldier said with a stiff face. "We can't trust your word!"

Nearby, the nobleman Duncan shook his head. "They are beyond reason," he exclaimed in exasperation, looking at the prince. "Words will do us no good anymore! We must battle for our right to be here. Come, fight by our side, Prince Siegfried!"

"I do not wish to fight any of you," Mytho said soberly. "The fighting should stop on both sides, or else Kinkan will be embroiled in chaos."

"Nor do we wish to fight, your Highness," Duncan said. "But his soldiers will not let us be until they have Frollo's way! Even if it causes chaos, I will not give in to the Archbishop's tyranny!"

The other Ginkan nobles with him nodded. "We have to get rid of Frollo's soldiers, or we'll never rest in peace!"

"Away with the traitors!"

"Away with the tyrant's lackeys!"

The battle was clearly about to begin between them again, and Mytho stepped in the middle. "Stop this, now!" the swan prince commanded.

"If you're not with us, you're against us!" both sides said. And with that, Mytho was shoved aside as swords and spears began to swing again.

Drosselmeyer laughed in the Loophole in Time as he wrote on. "See, look at how easy it is for the fighting to erupt among the people! Neither side will give in, and they refuse to think, thus ensuring the tragedy! I don't need that old machine in the cathedral tower to sew chaos into their minds!"

However, before the fighting could break out in earnest, Rue landed in the middle next to Mytho on the ground, swinging her spear in all directions, creating a no man's land in the center between the opposing sides as those in the way scrambled to get out of the way of the princess' deadly weapon. She then slammed her spear loudly onto the ground, the steel tip of her weapon glistening commandingly in the light. "If you won't listen to my prince, then you WILL listen to me. If any of you bare your weapons against each other again, you will receive the end of my spear!"

This intimidating threat accomplished its goal, but only tepidly. The two sides scowled at one another, gripping their still-drawn weapons, the tension in the air as taut as a tightrope.

While the stalemate played out in the square outside, inside the cathedral Fakir sat in the pews, his quill poised nervously above his parchment. Drosselmeyer still has so much sway over the people's minds... what can I do that he won't just override with something worse?

Then, the orchestra behind him began to play. The otherworldly sound seemed as if it was emanating from the world itself. As he turned around to look at them being conducted by the upperclassman Beethoven, he could hear that it was an inspiring song, and Fakir had the feeling as if he wanted to do what was right for everyone.

Outside, the people shared that feeling. Some of the soldiers began to lower their weapons, thinking that it was better to do what was best for everyone, rather than merely what they were ordered to do. The noblemen's belligerence began to wither, as they felt that it was wrong to involve the town of Kinkan in their conflict.

But Drosselmeyer had other plans. Deftly dipping his quill's nub into his inkwell, he wrote onward:

The people of the town swelled with their self-righteousness. Each side thought they were on the side of what was good and just. And when they thought about the other side who thought otherwise, they began to get angrier and angrier until they could hold it in no more.

Just as Drosselmeyer wrote, the feeling of wanting to do the right thing in the townspeople was twisted into defensiveness of their own causes.

"How dare you defy Archbishop Frollo when he's done so much for the town of Ginkan?" a young soldier yelled at the Ginkan nobles.

"How dare you follow the orders an intolerant tyrant!" a noblewoman shouted back. "All he's done for the town is make it into an austere prison ground! No one's free to do as he wishes!"

"Silence!" Rue said, brandishing her spear once more. "Have all of you forgotten my promise?"

"If we must, we'll fight you, too, princess!" a soldier boldly said.

Rue's threat was beginning to lose its potency as Drosselmeyer continued to manipulate the thoughts of the townspeople.

o-o-o-o-o

When Sagi had come to, she found herself in a vast clockwork apparatus, sitting on one of its giant gears. She was still holding onto the hand of the heartless Caras, still unconscious with the dire wound in his chest.

"The Loophole in Time," a booming voice said above Sagi. She looked up to find the Raven perched on a gear above her, looking around. "So that Spinner has brought me here against my will to prevent me from going after the Prince's heart. But I have been sealed away before, and that did not stop me!"

He paused for a moment, glancing down at Sagi and Caras's human form. "I have more important things to do than to waste time getting rid of trash. That body will perish quickly without my doing anything. I must find a way to return to Kinkan! The prince's heart must be mine!"

Without another word, he spread his wings and with a great blast of wind, swept off into the distance.

After the Raven had left, the crimson image of Caras reappeared, looking at his unconscious human body.

"If I return to my human form, I may be able to preserve it, even if just a bit longer," the heart shard said to Sagi as she looked at him.

So saying, it dissolved into a cloud of red sparkles, and condensed into half of a heart-shaped scarlet gem before it disappeared into the chest of his human form.

After the heart portion had returned, Caras stirred, and then winced, clutching the wound on his chest. "The wound... it is deep," he said with a grim look on his face. "I... I doubt I will remain long..."

"We have to do something," Sagi said, standing up quickly. "There has to be something around here I can use to dress the wound, or stop the bleeding, or anything that would—"

But as she turned around, about to leave, Caras reached for her hand and grasped it tightly. She stopped, looking back at him, and saw the pleading look on his face. "Please... do not leave me. I don't want to be alone..."

Hearing the desperate tone in his voice, Sagi slowly knelt back down beside him. "I'll be here."

o-o-o-o-o

The Raven flew among the gears, doggedly searching for a means to get back to the town of Kinkan. He glanced left and right, seeing images of the town all around him; yet, when he approached, they faded away like fleeting shadows, leaving a blank darkness in its place.

"Why can I not return to the world outside of the story?" the Raven grumbled. "It seems that the Spinner has barred my reentrance. Yet there must be a way out, and I will find it!"

Searching and searching, he finally found a pathway of gears in the distance that did not disappear when he approached. He immediately stormed in that direction, expecting to find a way back into Kinkan.

However, when he examined the images that lay within the gears, rather than images of Kinkan, he saw flashbacks of an older time, back when he was young and foolish, before he had gained the power he had now.

"The past..." the Raven said. "Bygone days are meaningless and are of no use to me. Nothing can be gained by seeking the past."

However, despite having said that, he found himself remaining, watching the events play out as he remembered them. He told himself that if there was a way back to Kinkan, he might find it here.

Then, the time came when the roost began fighting over the heart he had taken from the soldier, and he had decided enough was enough. As he remembered, he had snatched the heart from the others, declaring that he would settle things himself.

"And then, that is when I taste my first heart..." the Raven said to himself.

But instead of swallowing it, the young raven looked at it with fear and sadness. He trembled, unsure of what to do, and when the roost was about to swarm him for the heart, he took flight, fleeing the flock of cawing young birds with fright.

"What?! Running away? What cowardice!" the Raven said to himself with derision. "That's not how I remember it."

Because the little raven was a fast flier, he outflew the rest of the roost easily. He hid in one of the bare branched trees in a leafless forest, in a place where only his two best friends could find him.

When Frigg and Loki eventually reached him, they found his head buried in his arms, his hands still clutching the glowing heart.

"Odin?" Frigg asked, looking him over with worry. "Are you all right?"

"No," Odin said curtly, his muffled voice breaking.

"Don't worry, we won't tell the roost where you are," Loki said. "And if we have to, we'll fight them off—"

"Why did this happen!?" Odin burst out, his eyes moist as he looked at Frigg and Loki desperately, streaks of tears tracing his cheeks. "All I wanted to do was to help that human! But now, all this happened because of me. Was what I did wrong? Is this my punishment for taking out his heart?"

"It's not your fault that the roost went crazy," Frigg said. "You don't deserve punishment for what you did. We just have to fix what's wrong somehow."

Loki nodded. "If you get rid of the heart now, that should solve our problems."

"I...I can't get rid of it."

Frigg frowned. "Why not?"

"Because it's..." Odin trailed off, gazing at the heart in his hands. "Because it's special. It's precious. Something that can't be replaced. If I destroyed it, I... I don't think I could ever forgive myself."

"Then, I'll do it for you," Frigg said, trying to take the heart from him, but Odin held it away from her.

He shook his head. "I don't want it on your conscience, either."

"What else can we do, then?" Frigg said, looking at Odin with worry in her eyes again.

Loki looked thoughtful. "Maybe we should ask the wise fairy what to do."

"The wise fairy?" Frigg asked. "The one that lives in the heart of the woods?"

"Yes. She might know a way to fix this."

"But I..." Odin looked guilty. "I played a mean joke on her once, and it really made her angry. I don't think she'd want to help me after that..."

"We'll come and ask with you, Odin," Frigg said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "We'll find some way to work this out."

When they got to the grove where the fairy lived, she was standing there before them, as if she had been waiting for them. With pale skin and light green hair, she resembled an Edel with gossamer wings. "Young ravens, you have come for my wisdom, have you not?"

"We have this heart that our friend took from a human, but we don't know what to do with it," Loki explained. "It's causing chaos among the flock, and now they're after his blood."

"What should we do?" Frigg asked. "I think that the roost will settle down once we get rid of it, but Odin won't do it."

"So you won't destroy a heart that you took," the fairy said, looking at the one in the middle, who was shying away shamefully. "Why not?"

"I... I can't snuff out such a wondrous light," Odin said quietly. "Somehow, I... I think there has to be a way to keep it alive."

"Indeed there is," the fairy said, and the three ravens looked up at her. "What once belonged within a human, there it must return."

"Return it... to its owner?" Odin said, his eyes widening. "But, wouldn't that hurt him?"

"To remove a heart from its owner confers its curses onto the world around it," the fairy said. "Only within the owner can its curses be purified by the owner's soul."

"So I shouldn't have removed his heart..." Odin said, looking sidelong.

The fairy placed a hand on top of his head. "You meant it in all good faith, young one. It is something that the human must learn as well."

From there, the three ravens searched the ranks of soldiers that fought each day for the one without a heart. He was easy to find; the other soldiers talked about and kept their distance from the "one without a soul".

As his two friends watched, Odin flew down from the tree near where he was walking to the bunker and approached the heartless soldier. "I'm giving this back to you," he said solemnly as he released the heart from his hands and it drifted back toward its owner, disappearing within his chest.

He gasped, clutching his heart, then looked up at Odin with a pained look. "Why did you return? Was my heart too foul for you to eat?"

"On the contrary, human," Odin shook his head. "It shined with a light that I could not bear to snuff out.

"Yet the curses within it that haunt you are not for others to bear," Odin said, gazing upon him soberly. "You will have to handle them yourself if you don't want to trouble others with the same curses. If that means that you would end your life, so be it. But a heart is not a thing that should be thrown away."

With that, Odin flew back to his friends. As he sat beside them, he sighed, a tear running down his cheek as he looked down sadly. But when his friends placed their hands on his shoulders, looking at him with relieved smiles, he looked back up at them, returning them with a glad smile of his own.

As the Raven watched in bewilderment, the Odin in the images before him matured and grew, gaining wisdom and experience to become the king of the ravens, and established a kingdom of them that rivaled those of the humans in might and influence. Frigg stood beside him as his queen, and Loki his trusted advisor.

Nearby, Takako and Uzura, having given Trutho back his quill, were wandering around the Loophole in Time once more. When they saw the Raven staring at the gears, curious Uzura was about to approach him, but Takako grabbed Uzura's hand. Uzura looked back at her, and Takako put a finger to her lips.

Uzura tilted her head, but stayed quiet so that the Raven did not notice them. However, as she glanced around, she saw a lever on one of the axels. As Takako watched, Uzura toddled over to the lever and gave it a pull.

In the gears' images, Frigg was flying around in her bird form that was twice the size of a human, looking for Odin. With a loud clank, the gear turned and Frigg came flying out of the gear, coming face-to-face with the Raven.

"Odin! Odin, there you are. Where have you—"

"You," the Raven said, almost growling. "What are you doing here? You died a long time ago."

"Odin, what are you talking about? I'm..." Frigg said, alighting elegantly on a nearby gear. She glanced around, observing all the gears in the shadowy dimension she found herself in. "What is this place?"

"A place outside of time, where meeting those of the past and future is apparently possible."

Frigg trailed off as she studied the Raven for a moment. "You... aren't Odin, are you? Or not the one I know, at least."

"I am the monster Raven, a terror that defied death itself to return," he said, "and once I consume the Prince's heart, I will live forever."

"The Prince's heart?!" Frigg blinked. "Why are you after that all of a sudden?! I thought you forbade the removal of hearts a long time ago!"

"I did no such thing," the Raven said. "On the contrary, I've removed and eaten many hearts. You remember, don't you? When I removed that soldier's heart? The first one of countless others?"

Frigg's scarlet eyes widened. "Wait... that time that Odin had almost eaten that human's heart! That time that you had taken it out... did you, by chance, eat that heart?"

"Yes, and many others," the Raven said with a dark smirk. "That is how I gained my immense power."

Frigg was silent for a few moments. "What a horrible fate Odin had avoided..." she said with a troubled voice.

The Raven scoffed. "On the contrary; I had avoided a horrible fate of pain and death and made it my own power. I have even lost my hideous human form, and no longer disgrace myself with that appearance."

Frigg scoffed back at him. "Our human forms are not ugly," she said, transforming back into a human form and crossing her arms. "They are but another way to express ourselves in a world where humans exist."

The Raven's eyes narrowed. "Humans are disgusting creatures! How dare you deign to appear as one in my presence!?"

Frigg looked him in the eyes defiantly. "You can still fly, Raven, but can you still dance?"

"You fool!" the Raven exclaimed. Infuriated, but conflicted, he took off from his perch and flew off into the distance.

Frigg closed her eyes. "You avoided a horrible fate, so you say. But there are fates worse than death, you know."

She turned around, about to fly back into the gear from whence she came, but before she disappeared, she glanced in the Raven's direction with concern.

Takako and Uzura watched on with curiosity. When the Raven left, Uzura followed, and Takako came along behind the little one.

o-o-o-o-o

As the Raven flew further and further, he saw a mystical glow in the distance. Approaching it cautiously, he saw that it was a particular gear that glowed with an otherworldly light. Seeing that the way was not barred to him, he continued onward toward it.

In the sunlit field where the three Sisters dressed in black sat beneath the shade of the Oak Tree, the light waned and turned into an inky twilight as something eclipsed the light from above. They looked up at their visitor as if they had been expecting him.

"The one who is called the Raven," Urd said. "You have come."

"You three ravens who have deserted their posts at Ginkan," the Raven said with a growl. "What are you doing here?"

"We have retaken our place as the three Fates that guard the threads of fate," Verdandi said. "We are no longer the ordinary ravens that you reigned over some time ago."

"Then use your power and take me back to the town of Kinkan," the Raven demanded.

"That path is now impassable for you, thanks to the Spinner who has blocked your way to the town," Urd said.

"Fine. I won't need to return to Kinkan if you enable me to take the Prince's heart with your threads of fate," the Raven said.

"Denied," Skuld said defiantly. "We won't interrupt the flow of time and space for you, Raven."

"You dare to disobey?!" the Raven raged. "I will have your hearts for your impertinence!"

The three Sisters laughed. "You would threaten us as we are?" Verdandi said, looking up at him with amusement. "We are beyond your reach; we are the guardians of fate now, and you will not be able to defeat us so easily."

As a crimson tapestry appeared beneath their hands, Urd snatched up the thread that was floating outside of the tapestry's weaving and held its loop toward her sister Skuld, in whose hand a pair of sharp silver scissors appeared. She opened them and held them over the thread.

"If I cut this thread, Raven, your life will end," Skuld said, looking back at him. "We do not make a habit of cutting the threads of life without due cause, but should you truly wish to battle us, you would stand no chance."

This shut the Raven up immediately, though he growled with displeasure.

"But why would you want to fight us, when you already have what you want in the first place?" Skuld asked pointedly.

"What?!" the Raven said bewilderedly. "Explain!"

"You wish to take the Prince's heart because you want eternal life, do you not?" Verdandi said. "The heart shards you threw away were made from the power of that same Prince's heart. Thus, they share his power."

"If you take them into yourself," Skuld said, "you will have the eternal life you desire."

The Raven screamed with horror. "You say that I must become a disgusting human again to gain eternal life?!"

"Whether you do or you don't, you must decide soon," Urd said grimly. "For as you know, those shards are about to disappear with its mortally wounded body, and then this chance will be lost forever."

The Raven snarled. "I shall not stoop to become such an ugly being just to gain eternal life. This makes no difference to me."

Saying this, the Raven turned around and flew away from the Sisters, away from the Oak Tree, and continued off into the clockwork darkness, not knowing where he would end up.

o-o-o-o-o

With only the sound distant clanking of gears in the background, Sagi knelt next to Caras, still holding onto his hand.

"In my past, I saw the terrors of mankind firsthand from the skies," Caras' placid but frail voice echoed in the dim space amongst the gears. "Though it horrified me, I also pitied them, and wondered if nothing could be done for them. But my sympathetic nature caused me to take it into myself, to the point where it corrupted me beyond repair. All that was left of me was the will to go on, and the hatred for mankind's darkness that had turned me into what I was.

"But when I was revived, the part of me you see now was created. What I couldn't have felt anymore, I was now able to feel. Though I didn't realize it, I had been reborn in another sense. The part of me that I had thrown away had been given back to me—yet even still, I threw it away yet again."

Turning his head to the side, he met Sagi's worried gaze. "I want you to know, Sagi-san... that I'm glad that I met you. For so long I have been alone... locked away from the world, either by the Prince, or by myself. Yet you were the first to see me without fear. With you, I was able to smile, to laugh my cares away... Even now, your presence puts me at ease. That's why I want you to stay with me... until the very last moment..."

"Isn't there something else I can do? Anything?" Sagi said, her eyes glistening. "I don't want you to go... this shouldn't be your end..."

"If only not to hurt you, I would stay..." he said gently, placing his hand on Sagi's, "But on my own... I don't feel a reason to keep on living. And as it is... I don't have a choice in the matter..."

"Don't talk like that!" Sagi said, shaking her head. "There are plenty of reasons to keep on living. The Caras I know would find a way, no matter what..."

"I am... incomplete, as I am..." Caras said, his strength fading. "What part of me that wished to go on... it resided with my other self..."

"Please!" Sagi said. "Don't give up now!"

"I'm... sorry..." he said faintly, his eyes closing slowly.

"Pathetic," a booming voice said with disgust.

With alarm, Sagi looked up at the speaker, and there was the Raven, gazing down with narrowed eyes at the pair.

"I see that without the will to live, the tenacity to continue onward, even the shards of heart that carry eternity have no power," the Raven said distastefully. "As I have always known... I am the only one who can bear the life of the Raven and continue to live with its anguish."

"The Raven..." Sagi said, leaning over Caras as if to protect him. "Why are you here? Are you here to destroy your human self again?"

"There is one thing I have realized," the Raven said. "It was never my 'human' self in the first place, but rather, a part of myself that I had thrown away, believing it to be too weak to stand the pain of the Raven's blood. It had been given back to me by the power of the Prince himself, and still I threw it away again. But now I know it carries the eternity that I have sought all this time. Is it not ironic?"

The Raven spread his wings. "But there is no time. Out of the way, heron. I must retrieve what I have discarded before it disappears in front of me. I value my life more than my pride."

With that, the Raven began to glow with a brilliant crimson light. Sagi looked down at Caras and saw that his chest, too, glowed with the same light.

The light shone so brightly that Sagi closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, the Raven was gone. She glanced down at Caras, and saw that the wound on his chest was glowing, healing and closing up as she watched. Soon, even the dried blood next to the wound had disappeared, and it was as if he had never been injured at all.

Caras's eyes slowly opened. He turned toward Sagi with a wry grin. "It seems a farewell was unwarranted after all."

Sagi's eyes widened as Caras sat up casually, stretching his arms as though he had just woken from a restful sleep. "Are you all right, Caras-san?"

"Indeed," Caras said. "Better yet, I don't ever need to worry about dying ever again."

He sat there for a moment, then laughed. "I've spent so long trying to gain eternal life, I've never thought about what I would do once I obtained it. I could go anywhere, do anything—but none of that seemed important until now."

Caras stopped. His expression darkened. "No, I know why—Drosselmeyer needed the Raven to create the tragedies that he always wanted. In my endless suffering, I never realized that I, too, was trapped in a tragedy, that I would never obtain happiness as long as I hungered for hearts."

"Raven!"

A voice that was not Sagi's called out from nearby. Caras and Sagi turned around to find Frigg walking out of a cog, glancing around.

"Frigg," Caras said, walking toward her. "Are you looking for me?"

She turned her head toward him in surprise. "Raven? I thought a human form was too shameful and horrid for you to bear."

Caras sighed. "I have thought about the past, and I realized that all this time, I was missing something that I had back then. I thought it was a weakness that I had to rid myself of—but in fact, it was what I had been seeking all along. I decided that I wanted to take it back, along with my name that I had abandoned long ago, so that I should be called Odin once more."

Frigg smiled. "Even if the Frigg in your reality is gone, it seems that you still have someone by your side," she said, looking toward Sagi. "I don't think I need to worry about your fate from here on out."

"Frigg!" Caras's voice called out in the distance from within the cog that she had walked in from.

Frigg glanced back for a moment before looking at Caras again. "I must return to where I belong now. I wish you well, other-Odin."

With a parting smile, she vanished into the cog and the cog disappeared.

"What will you do now?" Takako and Uzura stepped out of hiding as Caras and Sagi turned toward the woman's voice. "A world of possibilities has opened up before you, Odin," Takako said. "What will you do with what you have finally found?"

"It took me so long to find what I had been seeking," Caras said, looking at his hand before clenching it. "No thanks to Drosselmeyer, who ensured that I never found it and remained forever searching, forever suffering. Instead, I will ensure that he does not have the satisfaction that he seeks from his unrelenting desire for tragedy."

"How would we stop Drosselmeyer?" Sagi wondered aloud. "Drosselmeyer is a phantom that lives here beyond space and time... how do we stop someone like that from doing what he wants?"

"Perhaps those who watch over the strings of fate would have some guidance for us," Takako said. "They of all people would be sure to want Drosselmeyer ousted from his lofty place."

"I know where they are!" Uzura said with a chipper voice, dashing off in another direction. "Follow me-zura!"

o-o-o-o-o

"If he is removed from the machine, then there is no way he can control it," said Verdandi to Caras, Sagi, Takako and Uzura under the Oak Tree. "However, we alone cannot accomplish this. We are merely defenders of the strings of fate; we cannot grasp them or spin them. That is the realm of Yggdrasil herself and the Spinners."

"So a Spinner could remove Drosselmeyer from the Loophole in Time?" Takako asked.

"By himself, no," Urd said. "He has uncoupled himself from the tapestry of fate, a free floating thread that we cannot simply cut away. That is why he resides in the Loophole in Time and can control it from the outside."

"Then, how would we be able to stop Drosselmeyer?" Sagi asked.

"It is by your power, King of Ravens, that makes it possible," Skuld said. "As you have demonstrated ages before, you have the power to break the walls between worlds. With that same power, you could reach beyond the world's boundaries and pull Drosselmeyer forcibly out of this realm."

Caras frowned. "Yet if I should pull him away from this realm, he would still be able to return to it freely. What would keep him away permanently?"

"One who could grasp the strings of fate and tie him to the world," Verdandi said. "Yes, a Spinner. Neither of you could stop Drosselmeyer alone, but if you were to combine your powers, Drosselmeyer would not be able to fight his way out of your grasp."

Urd looked pensive. "However... the only Spinner in a position to fight Drosselmeyer on equal terms is the young writer in the town of Kinkan named Fakir."

Caras's eyes widened. "I would need to join forces with the failed knight in order to stop Drosselmeyer...?" He sighed. "A dubious endeavor, indeed. He has much enmity toward my kind and even more towards me for all that I have done to him and his loved ones; to convince him of this would be a monumental feat."

"I suppose the question is, what does he care about more?" Skuld said. "All we can do now is to reweave your thread so that you may go to him and attempt to get him to work together with you."

Caras crossed his arms. "We'll see what happens."