Aramis hopped up the tallest rocks on the plateau nonchalantly as his hulking creation tore its crooked talons from the earth to seek Prier's skull again. The six lesser zombies shambled to follow their formidable companions' lead; Culotte and the vassals surged forward to meet them, blades, claws, fists, and staffs striking against rotted flesh that was past feeling the blows.

These aren't like all the zombies we encountered in La Pucelle. One may look like a single creature, but thanks to Aramis that one is really a party of ten, or twenty, or however many gave parts to the process.

Purifying doesn't work on them. Then again, purifying doesn't work on anything down here.

Prier hissed and dodged as a strike from her baton only produced a brutal counterstrike by the abomination's knotted fists. She couldn't handle it alone, and the others couldn't help her with their own hands full. Skidding to the ground, she dove between the behemoth's legs, then brought her baton up to crack across its' misshapen knee joints. The beast bellowed and splayed forward, howling maw choking into the rocky earth.

"Haha, Prier!" Culotte whooped, and redoubled his efforts to take down the undead that swiped at him wildly, trying to get sharp nails past his easy blocks. He could already tell from the dodging and distracting that Aramis's masterpiece was beyond even his sister's strength.

I'd never seen anyone fight the way Father Salade did against the Dark Prince. It was like Prier's strength, but with a lot more discipline. After Croix left, I asked him if he would train me. It was time to put away my toys.

He was an excellent teacher. I just don't think I'll ever be able to match him, even with all the practice Prier's been providing me.

A moment later, the zombie attacking him in such a frenzy was frozen fast in a glaze of ice; a moment after that, the surprised Overlord's fist shattered ice and undead to pieces.

"Kali!" he shouted, rounding to search the fringes of the chaos.

There, just out of harm's way; the pale demon girl in an unlikely frilly dress replied with a merry wave and what appeared to be an oversized dictionary clutched in her hand. "Ice, ice, baby!"

"Yeah! Omega on the big one!"

Omega Ice was Kali's highest spell, one she was just barely able to manage with her level of study. Now that she'd already cast the smaller form once the effort would leave the young witch drained for days, if not unconscious; but she grinned as though Culotte had given her a raise.

The command carried unspoken others, and the vassals moved to follow them best as their foes would allow. Palmer ducked back, leaving the zombie he was struggling with in Katie's far more effective pawhands. Shielding Kali with his body, he began murmuring the spell of Braveheart to bolster her power further.

The Prinnies kept two of the zombies in a flailing blur of confusion just by sheer numbers alone. Katie held fast to one with her fangs, to another with her claws. Culotte launched himself into the last of them, wings spread and fists brutal. Prier continued to keep the masterpiece rooted to the spot with speed in dodging and striking.

Kali suddenly threw her head back, thrusting the heavy tome aloft in wild sort of rapture.

"Come, spirits!"

Her way of warning allies before the massive spell; her companions scrambled back or dove away from their foes even as a chill blast heralded its imminent completion.

The battlefield froze in a sphere of ice; time seemed to freeze with it, as the party watched breathlessly to see if it worked.

Then Prier shattered the moment as only she could, to make sure it did.

"HIIIIIYAH!"

Her kick exploded the frigid mass in a shower of shards, smashing the zombies back into the fragments Aramis had used to create them.

It took long moments of the great creature and its companions lying motionless and scattered in that grotesque tangle before the party realized they were not getting up again. At least, not until they were rebuilt.

"Kali!" Culotte cried, rushing to Palmer, who already gripped the wilting demon girl in his arms.

"'m cool." she slurred to both with a tremulous smile before the exhaustion took her.

Prier spun to glare at Aramis, baton threatening to crack in her shaking grip. The little zombie master did not notice her furious attention; his own, instead, was held to the heap of decay that had been his masterpiece.

"He wasn't finished." the demon youth said simply.

"Oh, he's finished, all right!" Prier screamed. "And you're next!"

Aramis was nonplussed, calmly closing his great, staring eyes. "Should I still tell Laharl, then?"

"Ugh, you disgusting little brat." Prier spat at last, every ounce of her strength seething against her better judgement, longing to tear the demon into the parts he coveted so much. She never felt such revulsion before, not after countless battles with some of the worst inhabitants of the Dark World, not even after...

I'm sure you have things that you believe in as well. Your beliefs define what you see as right and wrong. But in reality, there are as many systems of right and wrong as there are people.That's the source of all of the fighting and suffering in the world.

...no, she scowled at the memory, squeezing her eyes shut. Some things are just wrong.

"I'm going to anyway," he continued tonelessly. "Unless you find one more thing for me."

"Then we've got less to lose than you." Culotte pointed out with a frown. Never before had he realized with such clarity Aramis was not the child he seemed, beyond emotions that humans could comprehend. His fists tightened.

"Maybe. But no matter where you go, Laharl's army--and my army--will follow you. He'll only think you're dead this way."

Even in his monotone, the emphasis was "think". Prier clenched her teeth. She had no doubt about Laharl, knowing his ego, and scant room to doubt Aramis, as the little monstrosity seemed incapable of empty boasts about his "pets". If they ran, the only ones left standing in the end would be herself and Culotte...maybe.

Culotte shook his head. They were too close. If Laharl found out, he would be sure this moment was a "now or never".

"What do you want, then?"

Aramis' gaze fell to the pathetic remains of his creation once more. "He's not finished." he repeated. "The Underlord is said to keep a powerful undead chained to his throne. I want its heart if the stories are true."

She should have known.

"A heart for a zombie?" Culotte blinked. "How is it a zombie, then?"

The demon answered with a silence that seemed a sigh of impatience. Then, as distant as before: "Hearts don't need to beat to hold power."

Prier didn't want a gruesome lesson; the thought of delivering another pitiful creature to his atrocious madness made her feel almost as sick as he did. Aramis offered none, waiting for their reply with the impassive patience of Death itself. She turned to her small party, who shifted uncomfortably behind her with expressions ranging from hopeless--one of the Prinnies was slumped in a dead faint --to Katie's murderous look of taking on all the Netherworlds. All of them awaited her word as well; their loyalty plain but unspoken in the act, and their belief the chance of death with her was preferable to the certainty of life with another Overlord gave her the answer. They were very much alive, very much trusting of her, and she would not fail them.

It's not like this zombie would die without its heart, she reminded herself. It would be "improved". It's not like the others really ran away from their master in the first place, either.

"The...Underlord?" she growled finally.

"Seedle, ruler of the Underworld. The kingdom of the damned."

"D00d..." another Prinny moaned before it joined the other in fainting.

--+--
The Sea Of Gehenna...in an ancient language, Gehenna was Hell. That's where Aramis told us we would find the way to the Underworld. His zombies seem to know everything, through a ghastly grapevine made of countless corpses buried and forgotten across the Netherworlds; and only Aramis seems to understand them.

Maybe he does what he does because he thinks of them as friends. I don't think the living will ever know, though.

It's hell enough just getting there without a Gatekeeper.

They fled down the cliffs nearly twice as fast as they'd ascended; anxiety drove them mercilessly across the harsh wilderness until the distant jagged rocks of the Sea Of Gehenna tore at the horizon. Even then, when Prier finally snapped the taut silence with an order to make camp for a break, the only vassals who did not continue to pace in agitation afterward were the unconscious Kali and the barely-conscious pair of Prinnies.

Prier watched as Culotte tended to Kali carefully, a slight, wistful smile tugging at her lips.

"Guess it's a good thing she isn't awake for this." he said quietly, brushing her pale hair from her paler face. "She'd be burning up, it's getting so hot."

"We should fetch her water then, Master." Palmer rasped, gesturing to a thin line of acrid smoke coiling from a spring a short distance away.

"Huh...what you guys call water, anyway..."

"Nyah, let's have a pool party while the little bastard zombie lord watches!" Katie snarled sullenly, circling the campfire as though she were caged.

Was the redness creeping from beneath her brother's collar born of that heat, or his own? Prier didn't have the heart to tease him as they walked away.

Culotte...you gave me one of the first questions I found an answer for.

--+--

"Why?" her brother had sobbed again and again, so many nights after that last battle; and even though she held him tight through his tears, she knew his arms felt empty. "Why? Sister Alouette...how could you leave?"

There could be no answer for those that loved her. But in her beautiful, terrible faith, Sister Alouette had found her own answers, Prier was certain.

How could you leave?

"I'm sorry, Prier. Maybe I'm being selfish," Croix had murmured, downturned eyes hidden beneath his dark glasses and careless bangs. The sudden appearance of Culotte and Father Salade had deflected her blushing attempt to kiss him, and he did not lean down to finish what she'd started. He turned instead to the worn dirt road stretching beyond them, as though already seeing where it would lead.

She smiled, and spoke with all the bravado she'd wished she felt. She would be strong for him, as she'd always been. As she always would be. "What's with the grim face? It's not like this is the last time we'll see each other. You can come back any time...right?"

He nodded slightly. "Sure, you're right. I promise. I'll be back. Until then..."

"I'll be waiting!"

He left quickly, without another word or glance.

And so the waiting began.

He sent them letters ocassionally, always from another further-flung town; his own adventures helping those he once desired only to destroy, written with his typical bluntness and bad handwriting. "They sucked", "I made 'em repent, all right." None of them carried the sweet words she craved, returned the sweet words she'd offered him in the darkness of his heart, and they ended only with a "See you soon" or nothing at all. She imagined what she wanted to see between those lines, told herself that mushy talk just wasn't his style, any more than it was hers.

And so the waiting continued.

Sometimes she held those letters the way she wanted to hold him. Other times she agonized there was nothing between the lines to read, and avoided mirrors so she would not see the ghost of the woman that should never have been torn from him. The woman he held no hesitations for with his feelings. The woman he saw when he first saw her.

The woman who showed so effortlessly how she earned that love, simply by being herself. Remembering how Angelique's selfless warmth was taken from the world burned in her own gut, guilt as sharp as any hateful spear. Angelique...so alike with Prier in some ways, yet so different in others. But how could she ever be herself to Croix?

So many questions, and she was too afraid to ask them. So many questions, and there was no one there to answer them.

Early the next year, she saw Homard and Eclair marry, vowing never to part, even beyond death itself.

Croix couldn't attend the wedding.

Almost a year after that, "soon" was still not "now".

And so the waiting continued. Inwardly, she wept, she raged, she worried, she resented. She thought hard about what she loved, and why she loved. So many questions, and only faith was there to offer solace.

She was never one to blindly accept faith.

She came to understand neither she nor even Angelique could give him what he needed from his solitary journey. He needed his own inner light, to take his own inner strength, or the shadows in his heart would always be angled steep and waiting to swallow him again. As for his heart...

Cheerful, dependable...and...handsome too...
But is that love? I just don't know.

His heart was not for her. Not in the way she once thought. She faced her fears at last, and the realization did not come with the devastating sense of loss she once dreaded. She discovered, after so much time alone with so many emotions, that he was not the one who could give her what she needed, either.

She needed to be strong for herself.

Cheerful, dependable...

The change did not make him any less the man that Angelique loved, in her mind. She loved him still in her own way. She would keep her promise, too; she would continue to watch over him, if only to watch him forge his own path in this time that was not truly his.

...and...handsome too...

Handsome wasn't enough to want more than friendship. Wasn't thinking like that exactly why she'd knocked out that silly, shallow girl Suzanne?

Culotte and the others noticed the change in her. She was smiling more, singing more. She was smiling and singing for herself.

The last time she heard from him, it wasn't another letter. He returned to Pot Au Feu, hunting a demon for the Church Of The Divine Mother; it was a sad irony that broke the brittle shell between them. His response was long in coming after she finally found the honesty to put her feelings into words once more. When he did finally put his own feelings into words, though, he was as relieved as she was, and she knew she had become stronger already.

They helped him defeat the demon he was hired to hunt down. If only Sister Alouette had been there, it would have been better than old times.

Afterwards, she had the room to think on other questions in her life...

--+--

"You think they're with him, meow?"

Prier startled from her reverie, certain she'd caught an unfamiliar voice above Katie's restless grumbling, Kali's squeaking snores and cannonballing of the Prinnies at the spring.

"QUIET, meow! They'll hear you!"

Grabbing up her baton, she wheeled about to search the rocks above the camp with wide eyes. "Who's there?"

Katie stopped slinking to stare at the Overlord, then followed Prier's gaze with her own, tufted ears canting forward. "Myuh?"

"Moron, meow."

"Nice job, meow!"

The furtive whispers were replaced by high-pitched yowls and a flurry of struggling.