Free Sky

by shahanshah

In the cold darkness of interstellar space, beyond every known frontier of mankind, against the most terrible of enemies, the Goddess protects.

9. Akrasia

When Diana was pulled out of unconsciousness by the warmth that surrounded her right hand, she surfaced with darkness having seeped into every single pore in her body. It puddled in oily slicks around her and colored Diana's surroundings a murky, nondescript gray. It sank into her bones and dissolved the structure of her being, and all the while Diana could do nothing but stare in uncomprehending muteness at the static fixture of the sky above her.

The warmth surrounding her hand tightened around her, generating a signal that rushed through her body. She jolted in response, shivering, before her mind began to restructure her thoughts back into something resembling coherence. Slowly, Diana tried to sit up.

Akira gently pushed her back down. "Not now."

Diana's mouth was dry, and her teeth and jaw ached with disuse. Speaking made her feel rusted over. "Why am I still alive?"

"I'm…"

Something caught Akira's eye, and she looked away from Diana.

"I'm not sure. Something happened to the demons, and they withdrew."

Exhaustion etched itself into every crumbly word Akira spoke.

There was a curious numbness that tingled in Diana's face. Idly, she moved her hand towards it, only for Akira to dart out and catch her hand.

Diana blinked. "What?"

"Y-your face…"

An image of blinding white light flashed through Diana's head.

"It's not finished healing yet."

It was only then that Diana noticed the apprehension in Akira's expression. Akira was only a Hearth engineer. Christine had managed demon outbreaks and May had been in the Inquisition, but what had Akira seen of war?

Diana leaned her head back into the ground. "I look like something out of a horror show, don't I?"

Akira shook her head. "I don't want to talk about it."

"I'm sorry."

Slowly, Akira withdrew her hand from Diana's. She buried her head between her knees and wrapped her arms around her body. Her voice was muffled by the folds of her costume.

"Goddess, I was so worried about you."

Diana reached a hand up to her chest to touch her soul gem, only to find the clasp that ordinarily held the gem empty. A quick scan of the area revealed her soul gem sitting on a nearby table, surrounded by grief cubes.

"Where'd we get those?"

"Your reserves. You—without them, you would've died, I think."

Diana let her body fall back to the ground. "Dammit."

There was silence between the two of them, filling the air as thick as smoke. Diana raised her eyes to the ceiling. The house that they were in was much less opulent than the clergyman's retreat. If she had to guess, this place belonged to farmers who subsisted on the crop of their robots.

It was with some surprise that Diana realized that she had been feeling disappointment all along. Ever since she had contracted, the fear of death had hung over her. Death wasn't a distant danger, it was a fate—something that some people even chose, walked into willingly, in the service of the Goddess. And she knew that if she died, she would only be the fifth martyred Servant. Nothing out of the ordinary.

There was more to it than that. Oblivion was scary. Diana knew that there were billions of martyrs who had sacrificed themselves for the Goddess above. But what could the Goddess do for them after death? It was, in every single respect, the absolute end, and Diana didn't think that the story her actions presented could have any end but an unsatisfying one.

So then, why was she disappointed? She had escaped death—something had snatched her straight out of its unforgiving grasp. She had been given the opportunity not to end.

Maybe, she thought, and once again, the irony she had trusted in for fifteen years failed to make her smile, it was because life dominated by the fear of death wasn't much different than death itself. Or maybe she was just tired of fighting and running. There wasn't much room for lucky breaks when she was caught between struggle and destruction.

And of course, there were people who had it worse. The girls she had seen cut down by the demons, the world she had watched burn as the demons consumed it, Inquisitional girls, chained and tortured by their past—there was a world of suffering and death outside of Diana's own. But hadn't they persevered? They believed in the Goddess.

Diana was beginning to doubt the wisdom of the Goddess in choosing a faithless reject like her to be her avatar in this universe. Maybe she hadn't been chosen at all.

And either way, Diana wasn't very willing to use the suffering of other people to make herself feel even worse. Regardless of how awful she felt, the sheer silliness of such a pointless race to the bottom was enough to draw her away from that line of reasoning.

Diana sighed. "That demon had me at its mercy," she said. "Even if the demons suffered some sort of setback, it doesn't make sense that it wouldn't just kill me and then go."

"Akira saved your life."

Diana turned her head around to see Alexander, leaning against the doorframe. His back was resolutely turned towards her, and Diana wasn't sure whether or not to appreciate or resent the gesture.

"We could hear the demons talking," Alexander said. He stumbled a little on the word "hear," but apart from that Diana couldn't see any change in his composure. "The lesser ones wanted to kill you, and their leader was going to, but Akira forced them back."

"It was weird, of course," Akira said. "I mean, I didn't expect it to work. What chance did I have if that thing could take you out? But like I said, something happened to them. Telepathy was also restored, so we established communication with the remaining survivors. We know where they are."

Alexander shifted in the doorframe. "They're expecting us. You."

"To save them?"

Alexander shrugged. "Presumably."

Diana looked into Akira's eyes, and for one terrifying moment, she could see nothing but pity in them. Fear and anger made for an interesting combination, and it swirled on the surface of Diana's face for all the world to see.

On the table, Diana's soul gem burned with a sudden light. Diana had never experienced accelerated regeneration before, and the sensation could only be described as unpleasant, but after her beating at the hands of the archdemon, Diana's perspective had shifted considerably. "Unpleasant" wasn't anything to be scared of, "life-threatening" was, and there was plenty of that to spare.

Akira started in alarm as Diana's wounds began to fill with rapidly-expanding flesh. "What are you doing? The strain on your gem—"

The floorboards creaked as Diana stood. "I'm the Servant of the Goddess, right?" she said, in a voice completely devoid of any conviction in the words she spoke. "My soul gem was made to handle this. This—this is my destiny, isn't it? The Goddess sure as fuck isn't going to come down from the skies and help those girls. We're all that's left."

Diana saw Alexander shiver slightly. "You can turn around now. I'm finished healing."

There was a tiny glimmer of fear in Alexander's eyes as he turned to face Diana, but it was masked, or maybe only subdued, by the stony expression that clung to the rest of his face. Diana was reminded of the Lyudian magical girl in her final moments before Maria had killed her. Lyudians, in her experience, were very good at making stony expressions.

Though the notion occurred to her, Diana didn't bother considering if that was a feature innate to all Lyudians or a result of circumstance.

"I'll be waiting with Rebecca," Alexander said, before walking away.

Diana was about to follow him when she felt Akira's hand grab her sleeve.

"Did you learn that from a movie?"

Akira flinched behind her. "I just—"

Diana knew what she wanted to say. Akira wanted to beg for Diana to stop speaking like that, because wasn't she usually friendly, even if she did have a sharp tongue? There was a space between them so long as Akira's eyes met the back of Diana's head. If Diana turned around, she knew that Akira would find her voice again. She would speak, and maybe Diana would find comfort in her words.

But if she were to turn around, that would be a decision, something to shatter the placid surface of the status quo, and Diana was quickly discovering that she was about as afraid of decisions as she was of death itself.

Akira's hand slipped away from Diana and fell limply to her side as the Servant of the Goddess walked away.

-x-

The peaks of the ruined city drove themselves, straight and regal, into the dusty sky. If Diana squinted hard enough, she could pretend that the buildings were demons, drifting quietly and aimlessly across the landscape.

Over the past day of travel, they had come across the signs of Hierocracy magical girls in the area. There was the girl, with her costume torn and burned by demon lasers. Dead. There was the girl, with no identifiable wounds, her soul gem dissolved into the nothingness from which it had materialized. Dead.

Diana had never heard the distress call from the Armada survivors herself, and she was beginning to doubt that, when they managed to reach the coordinates, anything would be left.

"We need to go through that city," Alexander said. He pointed at the mountains surrounding the metropolis on both sides. "Going through there would slow us down by days."

"All right," Diana said. "So?"

Alexander and Rebecca shared a quick glance.

"That was the center of Domersek-Nazra influence on this planet," Alexander said. "On Rackba, if somebody's a rebel, they're probably Domersek-Nazra. The reverse holds true as well. Wandering in there might be risky."

Out of the corner of her eye, Diana noticed Rebecca bite her lip. She had never seen the Lyudian give an outward sign of anxiety before.

An image of black rosary beads flashed through Diana's mind. She had spoken to demons, inhumanity dripping from their every word. How could the heretics possibly have decided to side with the demons? Didn't that make the heretics monsters in their own right?

Something thin and runny and scalding hot bubbled just beneath Diana's skin when she thought about the heretics. It diffused through her, slowly becoming her, and it took Diana a while to realize that it was paranoia.

There really were heretics collaborating with demons, infiltrating themselves deep within Lyudian society, deep enough that nobody had noticed their heresy for however long they had been working with the demons. Wasn't paranoia justified? The Lyudians could hardly be said to be devout followers of the Goddess when they worshipped Hashal along with her.

Those who resisted the Goddess were resisting hope itself. They were the embodiment of evil. The parts of Diana's mind self-conscious of the way the Hierocracy influenced her thinking was being buried under layers of fatigue and frustration, and Diana was not altogether sorry to see it go. If anything, Diana had no desire to stab herself with sharp thoughts.

"We can't afford to waste time," Akira said. "I guess we don't have a choice, then?"

Akira's eyes darted between Rebecca and Diana, searching for disapproval. Diana averted her gaze.

"We'll get there before noon if we hurry," Alexander said. "If we hurry, we can move through the city and get to your rendezvous point by nightfall. I know an inconspicuous path into the city. The place looks dead, but we should keep out of sight nonetheless."

Alexander led them on a path angled slightly north to the main roads leading into the city. Seemingly abandoned watchtowers swayed in the dusty wind, a reminder that this city was especially interested in who was coming and leaving.

"It's passed hands about a dozen times in the past decade," Alexander said. "Strongest fortifications on this planet. When the demons came, it was in the hands of the Domersek-Nazra."

Diana snorted. "Well, I wonder why."

Alexander led them to an old fusion power plant built flush against a river. They were still surrounded by farmland, and Diana was quickly growing sick of the sound of dead vegetation crunching under her feet.

"How did you know about this?" Rebecca asked, looking at her brother curiously.

Alexander was quiet for a moment. "Joseph and I were exploring the area when we were kids," he said, "when the Inquisition came. They were doing Inquisitional business that I won't detail, and Joseph and I ran and hid while fearing for our lives the entire time, but I did see them use the entrance. There was a password, though."

Diana summoned her bow, drew an arrow, and fired at the ground. With a rumble, the earth caved in, revealing an entrance into a tunnel. Alexander fixed her with a half-amused glance that Diana didn't bother reciprocating.

They walked through the tunnel in absolute silence. There was an overall air of depression in the air. Maybe if they were heroes, and this was some sort of noble quest, they could have gotten some banter going. Maybe if Diana wasn't quite sure why she was still alive, she would have the motivation to mount the feeblest attempt at conversation. But Diana was not very inclined to speak at the moment, and as they walked through darkness, interspersed only by weak lighting strips, the monotony imprinted itself into her very soul.

The tunnel exited into a warehouse that Diana thought would be conspicuous in its abandoned nature, but it was good enough for the Inquisition.

Akira pointed to a set of stairs leading up to the roof of the warehouse. "Before we step outside, you guys think it would be a good idea to get a vantage point?" she asked. Alexander nodded, and neither Diana nor Rebecca complained, so they began to ascend.

When she reached the rooftop, Diana's body froze.

In the streets below, several figures surrounded two magical girls, blindfolded and bound, kneeling against a wall. Their soul gems were nowhere to be seen. Diana couldn't hear what was being said, but she knew that the magical girls' captives were heretics.

It was an execution.

Her hands were beginning to tremble, so she snatched one wrist with her other hand and squeezed tight.

"Diana," Akira said.

Diana ground her teeth together. "I can't believe this—"

"We have to do something!" Akira said. "Those are Hierocratic magical girls—"

In the span of a millisecond, Diana drew her bow and took aim. The head of one of the heretics exploded, and then chaos erupted. Plasma fire took out the rest of the heretics while magical girls with stylized letter i's emblazoned on their uniforms appeared out of nowhere to free the captives.

The scream of Reaper drones was more a psychological attack than anything else. Granted, it took some energy to maintain absolute sonic cloaking, but that was nothing compared to the energy consumed by the electromagnetic cloaking fields that the Reapers generated. Pilots turned off sonic cloaking to advertise their presence to the enemy.

Diana had asked May about the noise after watching a video of an Inquisitional attack. Why would an Inquisitional pilot telegraph their arrival? Wouldn't it make more sense to only remain silent?

Inquisitional doctrine, as May explained it, was to, first and foremost, strike fear into the enemy's hearts. Even if some magical girls—and these were only the very fastest ones—could react in the small space of time between hearing the drones and being hit by their attack, striking at the nerves of the heretics was worth the slight tactical disadvantage.

There had been a faint, almost unnoticeable smile on May's face as she spoke. Diana had felt guilty for being unnerved.

"For fuck's sake," Diana muttered. "Somehow, we maintain some air support on this planet, and here we are, pissing it away by bombing the shit out of heretics instead of getting help to the stranded girls."

But, at the very least, it was satisfying that somebody was doing something to fight the heretics.

Alexander and Rebecca had thrown themselves to the ground upon hearing the drones. Akira immediately raised her staff over them in a protective stance. "We need to let the Inquisition know that we're here," she said. "If an Inquisitor finds them, it'll be bad."

Diana raised her bow to the sky. "By that, she means that they'll kill you. But you probably don't need me to tell you that."

Once in the air, Diana's arrow exploded, sending lines of red and white light into the sky. After a few seconds, the symbol of the Hierocracy shone above them.

Rebecca was trembling. "You expect us to go with the Inquisition?"

Diana shrugged. "Yeah."

A drone broke formation and flew towards their rooftop. The bright lights mounted on the front of the drone momentarily blinded Diana.

The grace in the way the magical girl jumped out the back of the drone that was completely absent in her voice. "Ma'am," she said, glancing from the bow in Diana's hand to the Lyudians huddled behind her.

"You have a new job. Get these two to safety. They're with us," Diana said.

"Understood."

"And tell D'Arco that I'm here."

"General D'Arco, with all due respect."

"Right. Sorry."

The agent's face hardened as she turned to the Lyudians. "Come," she said, her voice about as emotive as an AI's.

Alexander's face was white. "I'm not going with them," he said. His composure had been cracked, and now it was crumbling into pieces around him. He scraped at the wall behind him, desperately looking for something to grab on to. "You can't be serious."

The agent raised her sword, reflecting the sun into the Lyudian's eyes. "If you refuse to comply—"

A high-pitched whine interrupted the agent. All eyes turned to Akira, who was aiming her staff at the other magical girl. Orange light gathered around the tip.

The agent registered no signs of surprise. "I was given orders to take those Lyudians."

"I can pilot a drone. Give me one, and I'll take them to safety personally."

A second passed, and Diana couldn't help but note that, of the two, only the Inquisitional agent had been trained to fight other magical girls.

The agent lowered her sword. "Fine. Please don't give me orders and then prevent me from fulfilling them."

After the agent had left, Diana turned to Akira. "You're leaving, then?"

"I can set the drone's autopilot to take you guys somewhere outside the city. Away from the Inquisition," Akira said. "Sound good?"

Alexander nodded slowly.

Akira bowed her head. "I'm sorry. I didn't know that you'd be so afraid of the Inquisition."

A strangled noise of confusion and amusement escaped from Alexander's throat, and he looked at Akira like she was crazy.

A second later, a second drone was perched next to the rooftop. The first drone had left as soon as it had deposited the agent. It was the same on land as in space: large objects standing still were destroyed very quickly. Akira took a few seconds to fiddle with the console before she waved the Lyudians over.

Rebecca only stared forwards as she entered the drone. She still looked as if she was entering a prison ship. Alexander glanced behind him a second before the door closed. His eyes were filled with fear and regret.

For a moment, Diana felt herself reflect Alexander's regret. How many innocent Lyudians had the empire she served killed? How many lives had been ended in the name of the Goddess she served?

They have helped the demons from the beginning.

"We're fighting," Diana said, looking down over the rooftop. "Right?"

"I don't see any demons."

"So?"

Akira bit her lip. "Diana, what happened?"

I was almost killed because I was stupid enough to stay on this planet, barely survived, and then got half my face blown off by what's probably the most powerful being on this planet. I'm only alive because that thing was too stupid to aim for my soul gem. I'm alone and afraid—too afraid to ask you for help, too.

Because I know the hate inside me is ugly, and I don't want to show you that.

"Those are our comrades," Diana said. "Hierocracy magical girls. And we can't stand by and do nothing while they're in combat. We swore an oath."

Reaper drones continued to scream around them. The fight had lasted barely two minutes, but already several buildings were on fire if not outright destroyed, and infantry combat was widespread throughout the city. The Inquisition attacked methodically and cyclically. First, combat drones swept across the target, inundating everything in sight with antimatter charges and plasma fire. After everything that wasn't under cover had been turned into molten slag, transport drones dropped in kill teams to eliminate heavily guarded key targets. After a brief period of time, a mixture of combat and transport drones flew in to extract the agents, and the cycle began anew.

In the distance, Diana could see several Inquisitional drones continually flying across one patch of ground. Her soul gem could sense the largest concentration of magic in that area.

"Inquisition's getting bogged down over there. I'm going."

"If you're going, then I'm going," Akira said, stepping forwards. "I'll see what I can do from a distance."

Something, which Diana would later identify as shame, made her pause for a second. Then, she leaped off the rooftop, with Akira following close behind.

Plasma fire shot out from a dozen sniper nests, nestled into the towers of the city, as she flew towards her target. None of them damaged her, and in return, she fired arrows that almost certainly killed the snipers.

The Inquisition was focused on assaulting, ironically, a Hierocratic cathedral. Initially built as a symbol of imperial power on the planet, the cathedral had rapidly become the power base of whichever side controlled the city at the moment. Now, there was a heretic sticking a gun out of every window and underground containment bunker.

Diana quickly located the commanding sergeant of the Inquisitional forces, who, she had learned, was always the magical girl wearing the longest, scariest-looking coat. "Hey," she said, landing beside the girl.

The sergeant was crouching behind air-dropped Inquisitional armor. Long-range magical girls occasionally peeked out from behind the hulking mass to exchange fire with the heretics.

"Servant," the sergeant said, nodding. "Plasma mortar is preventing us from advancing. This machine also needs repairs."

Akira stepped forwards. "I can take care of that." The head of her staff clicked and began to transform, sprouting extra tips and glowing lines. Light shot out as Akira aimed her staff at the tank, which gave off a low groan as it began repairing itself.

"Call in another round of the drones," Diana said, "and then I'll take out the cannon."

"Understood," the sergeant said. Half a minute later, the sound of Reaper drones screaming overhead reached Diana's ears.

The sergeant placed her right fist over her heart. "May the Goddess be with you, Servant."

Diana said, "As with you," but only because it was more trouble than it was worth not to. Then, everything that wasn't tagged by the drone AI as friendly was covered in round after round of plasma fire, seeding renewed confusion and disarray into the heretic ranks. Before the dust cleared, Diana spread her wings and flew to the mortar.

To the heretics' credit, they had an anti-drone cannon positioned next to the mortar, which they had successfully concealed until now. Their aim was good, but Diana batted aside the plasma with a sweep of her wings, and then she was on top of the heretics.

Her bow was unwieldy in close quarters. Using her wings to fight would waste magic. That left only the inelegant methods.

Diana picked the first heretic up by the neck, faster than his human nerves could react, and snapped the life out of him. A plasma rifle fell from his hands into Diana's. Three shots later, and the other heretics were dead.

A humming sound behind her alerted Diana to the presence of a transport drone, dropping off combat specialists into the cathedral. There were two magical girls, and one of them grinned in a wide-toothed smile that dominated her entire face.

"Who'd have thought that the Servant fought like an Inquisitional girl all along?"

The other girl frowned. "Show some respect."

Diana noticed that her hands were trembling. She turned away from the Inquisitional girls and tossed the rifle out of the cathedral. As a gesture, either to spite the first girl or comfort herself, Diana summoned her bow.

"Not gonna lie, that felt pretty crude," Diana said. "I'd hate to have to do that on a regular basis."

The first girl laughed. "Didn't you hear? We've got a Crusade going on. The enemy is vermin and hate, and we are the forces of justice and hope. So we gotta kill them all! You know how it goes. In the Goddess' name, let none survive!"

"Just do your fucking job," Diana said. "Come on. We're clearing this place out."

The girl was laughing harder now, and Diana almost wanted to turn around and yell at her some more. Thankfully, the other girl did it for her and snapped, "Shut up!"

With the anti-drone artillery taken out, the Inquisition advanced rapidly on the building, deploying kill teams through every available entry point. Elsewhere in the city, the Inquisition had already done most of its job. The targets of Inquisitional attacks were ninety-nine times out of one hundred taken by surprise, as drones kept their cloaking systems on for as long as possible. Plasma fire, antimatter charges, and kill teams made short work of unprepared resistance, and the heretic forces outside of the cathedral had been broken.

The inside was only a matter of time.

Diana turned to the second girl. "Do you guys need any help in particular, or should I just march in and shoot heretics?"

"The most heavily fortified areas are at the bottom of the tunnel system," the girl said. "If you want to make things easy for us, go down there first. You can get down via the containment cells. The heretics will have overridden authorization protocol, so just break your way in."

It's not like we have much containment left to lose, anyway.

The girl hoisted a giant axe onto her shoulders. "Once you're done, we'll send teams down to clean up. Gather information. Confiscate weapons. Detain anybody who's left alive."

The first girl smiled. "If you feel like leaving anybody alive. Not like we give a fuck."

Diana didn't bother answering. Instead, she turned on her heel and walked away into the main body of the cathedral. Stained glass littered the floors, and pews, broken into splinters, leaned against the walls like dying soldiers. It was exceedingly obvious that battle after battle had rocked these holy walls.

A mosaic of the Goddess covered the back wall. It was a second-rate piece of art, clearly a derivative of the more grandiose Freude mosaic on Earth. The composition was uninspired, and the themes trite and overused.

It still pained Diana to see the scars of war mar the image of the Goddess—to see what could only possibly be a ten or twenty-year-old piece already be a crumbling mess. Her scribbles were hardly transcendental either. Somebody had put their hopes into that mosaic, carving it with love and faith in the Goddess, only for all the beauty that the mosaic might once have held to die on the bloodied plain of human conflict.

The vault doors leading to the containment cells were jammed shut, with only a tiny crack of an opening left. Diana pried her hands through the opening, and with the scream of shearing metal, tore the door of its hinges. Ordinarily, there would be an elevator leading down to the lower levels of the containment cells, but only a shaft remained. Diana landed at the bottom with the raspy whisper of her wings scraping against the shaft walls.

She walked forth into silence and emptiness. Compared to the ornate artwork and magnificent architecture of the cathedral above, the containment cell exuded an atmosphere quite like the one on the surface. They had thought themselves so secure, and yet, for all their precautions, humanity still had to face its old enemy.

"Come on, you assholes," she said, trying to ignore the way her voice strained with the weight of her thoughts. "Come out and play."

Her wings cast the hallway before her in deep shadow. As she walked forwards, the shadows waved back and forth, like black stalks of wheat swaying in a breathless wind.

There were side rooms, which Diana ignored. Those were too small to house anything significant. If there were heretics, they'd be defending something important.

Finally, she found a door big enough to plausibly hide heretics to kill. In one second, she had blasted the door aside, and in the next, the hum of plasma weapons filled her ears, and bolts of light seared themselves into her eyes.

The door had opened up into a large cavern that evidently served as the entrance to the tunnel network. Heretics had dug themselves in along the walls of the cave, allowing them to rain fire down on Diana from most angles.

It hardly mattered either way. No fortification erected by mortal hands could withstand the assault of a divine Goddess' will.

As she tore into the heretic forces, smashing through bunker walls and scattering their forces, something occurred to Diana, a distant thought that chilled her heart. The bunker had to have been built before the war broke out. It wasn't necessarily surprising, because the heretic on Feraxis had described a conspiracy that had existed long before the war started.

Still, though, every physical reminder that hundreds of millions of lives had been lost to a premeditated heretic knife lodged in humanity's back was enough to drive one more sliver of hate into Diana's heart.

The worst part was the other magical girls. Diana knew that the Inquisition was taught that a mahou shoujo who defected from the Hierocracy had committed the ultimate heresy—that they, unlike ordinary humans, had broken their oaths of service to the Goddess, that they were ungrateful of their promised salvation, and that they, worst of all, had chosen to fight their sisters.

The girl in front of her couldn't even hold her sword without it shaking. By now, Diana had shattered the heretic position. Inquisitional forces were already streaming in from the cathedral above. Bloody, mangled corpses lay in peaceful repose around the two girls.

Diana took some pride in the fact that her bow didn't shake when she drew it back.

"Stand down," she said.

Tears streamed down the girl's face. With a strangled yell, she lunged forwards.

Diana heard the familiar smooth sound of an arrow flying out of her bow, and then another body joined the others.

Her soul gem almost slipped out of her fingers as she removed it from her costume's clasp. There were rivulets of darkness flowing amongst the ordinary aquamarine glow of the gem, and Diana knew from experience that once poison got into a river, it was hard to get out.

Now her hands were trembling as she searched the bodies for the magical girls—as she saw the blank, unseeing eyes stare at her, windows to burnt-out shells. She managed to find four grief cubes, which were enough to cleanse her gem.

There was an Inquisitional kill team waiting for her at the entrance to the cave. As she exited, they bowed their heads as one.

"Servant."

"They didn't want to surrender," Diana said. Her hands felt slick as she gripped her bow. "You guys have cleanup to do?"

"Weapons confiscation and retrieval. We need to find the Shivan dealers that did business with these heretics," one girl said.

"And, you never know," another girl said. "There might be survivors."

Without another word, the girls filed into the smoking ruins of the heretics.

The tunnel system below the cathedral was near maze-like. By this point in the battle, the Inquisition had already won. Taking the city would allow Maria to move her girls and drones from whatever hole they had been hiding in for the past few days into a fortified position.

Still, though, was it worth whatever losses the Inquisition had incurred by taking the city? Maria had to be somewhere. Diana could ask the General herself.

Diana was taken out of her thoughts by her unfamiliar surroundings. She had wandered into a new part of the tunnel complex.

She realized, with a bit of unease, that she hadn't seen any Inquisitional agents in some time.

Then, from a flight of stairs leading deeper into the complex, there was a scream, followed by someone yelling. Diana quickly rushed down the stairs.

What she found was, at first glance, confusing.

There were children. Not teenagers like her, but a boy and a girl, far too young to contract, huddled against a wall, whimpering in fear. They were Lyudians.

There was a woman. She was thin, her cheekbones stretching her face out like a drum, and her hair tangled and matted. Defiance and fear mixed like gasoline and fire in her eyes as she stood in front of her children.

There was a corpse with half of its torso missing, bleeding out on the floor.

And then there was the magical girl pointing a plasma rifle at the woman.

"—and confess!" the girl shouted.

Immediately, Diana summoned her bow and aimed at the magical girl. "What the fuck are you doing?" she exclaimed. "They're—"

"Put the bow down, for fuck's sake—"

"I'm the Servant, you listen to what I fucking say!"

Diana was trembling, as adrenaline pumped through her bloodstream, setting off every alarm it could inside her head. Everything was confused and noisy and chaotic, and she could not make sense of any of it.

The girl still hadn't put the rifle down.

"They're heretics," the other girl said, and Diana noticed that she was shaking just as violently. "Look!"

She stretched out one finger in condemnation, and for the first time, Diana saw the blood-stained black rosary beads tangled in the corpse's hand.

The girl bit down her lip hard enough to draw blood. "They were hiding him," she said. "Harboring a heretic! A member of the Domersek-Nazra!"

Diana began to lower her bow.

Part of her brain was screaming at her to raise her weapon, but a larger part of her was dragging her arm down. With each agonizing inch she moved, she felt tortured by what she was doing.

But she did it anyway.

"They won't confess," the girl said. "They won't confess that they're traitors to the Hierocracy. And if they don't confess, then they haven't surrendered. That leaves me only one choice."

Diana shook her head. "Wait, wait, just fucking stop! You can't kill them!"

Her bow still pointed at the ground. Diana was gripping it hard enough to make the wood creak.

"Sure I can," the girl said, snaring. "You!" she shouted, turning to the woman. "Tell the Servant why you're here."

The Lyudian girl cried out, before the woman turned around and silenced her. She's her mother, Diana realized, frozen in horror.

Slowly, the woman turned back around. "We—we've had nothing to do with the heretics. When the demons attacked, we were driven out of our homes. This was the only safe place! We had to hide!"

"Nothing to do," the girl repeated. "Look at him! What do you fucking call those beads?"

"Just stop," Diana said, rapidly shaking her head. "They're not heretics."

The girl narrowed her eyes at Diana. "Yeah, and how are you so sure? I bet that's what they all said before the war broke out. Oh, I'm sure these people aren't heretics. They hide like rats in the shadows. They're a goddamn infestation, and it's our fault for not wiping them out sooner. They hid long enough to do all of this! Even if the information's classified, a blind woman could read between the fucking lines!"

The woman started sobbing. "He was innocent—"

"You can't tell with these people," the girl said. "You can never tell which ones are clean and which ones are out to stab you in the back. And the only way to not get stabbed in the back is to assume that they're all out to get you. Don't you fucking see? If we had only done that from the beginning—if we had only—"

"Put down the gun," Diana said, stepping forwards. "By the Goddess, you can't do this."

"Put down the gun or what?"

The girl's voice was awful in its softness.

"Kill me."

Diana's eyes widened in horror. "I'm not going to kill you."

The girl waved her rifle at the woman. "Then I'm going to shoot her. She's a heretic, and she needs to die."

"I can't kill you," Diana said, her voice hoarse and cracking.

"They're all dead!" the girl screamed. Diana watched as the other girl's mind began slowly slipping out of her own control. "Everyone I knew. Everyone I cared about—all dead! This woman helped the demons kill them, so I'm going to kill her. They deserve justice."

"She didn't have anything to do with the Domersek-Nazra," Diana said. Slowly, she took one step towards the girl. "This—this can't be justice."

There was a moment of awful fear when Diana realized that she was trying to convince herself just as much as she was trying to convince the other girl.

"She was harboring a heretic! She could have told someone. How many people did she let die? You think that if she believed in the Goddess, she would have let this happen? As far as I'm concerned, anybody who worships Hashal is just as bad as a demon."

The girl turned away from Diana. With deliberate finality, she stared into the woman's eyes. "I know you can't see things the way I do. So if you want to stop me, you'll have to kill me. That's the way things work anyway."

Desperation pierced through the girl's voice. "Don't you see? I should have died with them."

The woman turned to Diana. Her lips began forming a word: "Please—"

Diana's reflexes allowed her to experience every agonizing millisecond it took the girl to pull the trigger. Every bit of time that passed was more time that Diana spent only watching. And as she watched light blossom from the tip of the girl's gun, she knew that a part of her was perfectly fine letting this happen.

It was the part of her that knew that, even if the woman wasn't guilty, she probably wasn't innocent either. It was the part of her that refused to believe that the Hierocracy could do any wrong. It was the part of her that hated itself because she always came up empty when she tried to find the strength to face the demons without faltering.

Fear gave rise to a longing for security, so this was all right. Hierocratic magical girls were protectors. Diana couldn't strike out against one of her own. How could she have done anything?

The Lyudian girl started crying again as the body of her mother crumpled against the ground. Snarling, the magical girl turned her rifle to the children.

A knife sailed out of the darkness and sank into the magical girl's neck with a wet, sloppy noise. The girl let loose a bloody gurgle and dropped the gun. A second later, her eyes glazed over, and she collapsed. Her soul gem still shone, indicating that she was only asleep.

It was the Inquisitional girl who had laughed at Diana earlier. There was no humor in her face now.

"We found civilians in other places too," she said. "They were hiding from the demons in the safest place they knew. What the fuck happened here?"

"We need to get those children to safety."

"I'm going to do that, asshole." Diana was struck by how readily sacrilegious the girl was. "I want to know why an Inquisitional girl was preparing to execute two children, and why you weren't doing shit about it!"

The girl trembled in fury as she locked eyes with Diana. Then, all the anger drained out of her, and her lips curled into a smile.

"I believed in you," she said, giggling. "I believed in you. Fuck it all."

Later, when the dust had cleared, Diana found the first dark corner that she could, curled herself up in a blanket of self-loathing, and sobbed.

-x-

The Inquisition was fast to re-establish control of the city. Either the heretics or the demons were sure to mount a counter-attack later. Now, the Inquisition had to take advantage of what remained of the city's resources to recoup their losses in preparation of the oncoming assault.

Diana stared blankly up at the featureless sky. Her eyes traced the paths of drones, streaking silently across her field of vision. If she was thinking anything, she wasn't aware of the fact. Maybe there were just too many thoughts bouncing around in her mind for her to separate the signal from the noise, but it was more likely that she was simply empty.

The Inquisition found her like that, lying down on the rooftop of a rare untouched building. "General D'Arco heard that you were in the city. She wants to have a conversation."

Diana felt her lips move, but she herself wasn't entirely sure what she had said.

"Well?" the Inquisitional agent asked.

The next thing Diana's mind recognized as worthy of registering was Maria's face. She wasn't smiling. There had been a hole punched into the reservoir of confidence that the Inquisitional General carried with her, and now all the knowing smiles and witty remarks were draining out onto the ground and soaking into the dirt. This planet siphoned up hope like a sponge.

"Servant," Maria said, nodding.

"General D'Arco."

Maria stared at Diana's face. "I knew that you were alive, even before that Hearth girl broadcasted it yesterday. I also knew that this meeting was going to happen, which was why I called for you. But beyond that, I don't know. So if you have anything that you think I might need to know, feel free."

"It's pretty shitty news."

"Well," Maria said, closing her eyes, "you might as well get on with it."

Ordinarily, when Diana told stories, she tried to inject them with at least some humor. But there was nothing funny about the way that demon in the wheat field had brought her an inch to death, so instead, Diana told it in as few words as possible.

"How many other people know?"

"Akira and two Lyudians. It hardly matters, though. When the demons come for this city, that thing will be leading them. Its existence won't be a secret for long."

Maria bit her lip. "And you're certain that you can't defeat it?"

"I told you that my survival's a miracle."

The gentle whistle of the wind filled Diana's ears as D'Arco stared at the ground in silence. Then, with the rustle of her uniform, D'Arco summoned her soul gem onto the desk. The gem was colored a shade of red that would have evoked images of passion and violence if it weren't for the darkness that swirled inside.

"The situation seems unsalvageable, doesn't it?" Maria said.

"Yeah."

"I still have enough magic to look into the future and see how the upcoming battle ends. It will take most of what I have, and I cannot in good conscience waste grief cubes on an unnecessary expenditure of magic."

Diana rubbed her eyes. "So if I think that we should know, then you'll do it."

"Exactly."

"Don't do it."

Whatever destiny the universe had bestowed upon her was, in all probability, ugly in every way—a just and proper sentence, given the nature of her own being. Diana didn't want to know what was going to happen, because that was the only way she could maintain the delusion that the noose of causality wasn't tightening around her neck.

That was basically how hope worked, right?

"Well," Maria said, "that will be all, then."

A sudden realization struck Diana. "Where's Julia? I don't think I've ever seen you without her."

"She's heavily injured. It will take some time for her soul gem to repair the damage done to her body."

"I'm sorry."

Finally, a tiny smile graced Maria's face. "Really, though, that was a rather poorly worded question," she said. "What would you have done if it turned out that she was dead?"

Diana shrugged. "Lots of people have died already, haven't they? We can all handle one more."

Contrary to Diana's expectations, Maria didn't become angry. The smile faded from her face, and all that was left was the depressing resignation of a girl who hated the fact that she understood.

"One last thing. May Huang—was she on one of the downed ships?"

Maria nodded, and Diana clenched her hand, burying the nails into her palm.

"In this city?"

"No. I gathered all the Inquisitional forces that I could to mount this attack. I couldn't find her."

Diana clenched her teeth.

"All right, then. Good-bye, General D'Arco," Diana said, before leaving.

-x-

It took Diana a couple hours of searching the city to find Rebecca and Alexander. She wasn't sure why she put so much effort into locating the two Lyudians. In all likelihood, it was because she knew how much worse everything would be if one of them died—how much more of a farce the entire situation would become, or, rather, how much more of the farce the situation would end up revealing.

After the battle was over, Akira had found the Lyudians where she had programmed the drone to deposit them. Eventually, Akira had gotten them into the city. There had apparently been a great deal of heated shouting involved, but it had obviously worked in the end.

The Inquisition had set up camp in the side alleyways of the city, out of sight. Diana wasn't sure whether or not that mattered much when fighting demons, but it certainly helped when fighting heretics, and Inquisitional doctrine was hard to shake. Maria had been staying in a reinforced tent that looked exactly like all the others. It had taken some time to figure out exactly which tent Rebecca and Alexander were in.

When she entered the tent, Alexander was eating something sticky and white out of a bowl, while Rebecca stared at the ceiling.

"You're alive," Alexander said, setting his bowl down.

Diana sat down on the floor. She had come here looking to see if they were alive, but now that she was here, all she could think about was the image—a little girl's face, twisted in shock and horror as her mother's blood began to soak into her shoes. She didn't even know how the man was related to them—maybe a brother or an uncle, maybe a father. But in all probability, Diana knew that she had let that girl orphan those children.

Alexander and Rebecca shared a look. "Is something wrong?" Alexander asked.

Diana buried her face in her hands. "I'm sorry."

There wasn't a chance in hell that she would tell either of them what had happened. She was still too scared to fully admit to herself what she had done, even though she couldn't entirely deny it. She could've stunned the girl like the Inquisitional agent did, or jumped in front of them and caught the plasma, or fuck, maybe she should've killed her after all—

Then why didn't she?

Alexander's brow furrowed. "What happened?"

Diana shook her head.

Rebecca's flat gaze turned towards Diana. "Are you trying to apologize to us, or the Lyudian people?"

Diana wasn't sure.

"You can hardly expect to be able to apologize to the Lyudian people by apologizing to two tiny siblings," Rebecca said. "You probably can't apologize to a people at all."

Diana didn't know how to answer that, although, in all honesty, she wasn't trying very hard in the first place. Fatigue made her eyelids droop down, and she closed her eyes, although her mind remained alert.

After some time, Alexander left without explanation. It bothered Diana that someone like him had been thrust into a situation like this. He didn't deserve it, but then again, by her estimates, nobody deserved what happened to them.

With Alexander gone, Diana had expected the silence between her and Rebecca to be awkward, but a comfortable layer of apathy sheltered the two of them from each other's personalities. They didn't have to pretend that the other didn't exist. Instead, they only had to know that, in the face of the ruined city, their arguments were distant and obscure.

The rustling of the tent flap drew Diana's attention to the door.

"Hey," Akira said. There was hesitation in her smile, something that Diana knew wasn't usually there.

Diana almost smiled back, but the idea that illusions were always better than reality had always seemed to be a cheap, insubstantial thought. She wasn't quite sure what sort of facial expression she was making. The apprehension in her heart was, in all likelihood, reflected in her eyes as well.

"I'm glad you're alive," Diana said, and at the very least, she meant it.

Akira sat down next to Diana. "Yoshio said that he'd be through by tomorrow morning. We'll have to hold out until then."

"What about the Armada?"

"D'Arco sent out scouts to bring them into the city. It's more defensible that way."

Rebecca looked up. "Maria D'Arco?" she asked. "The Inquisitional General?" Both Akira and Diana nodded.

There was fear in Rebecca's eyes when she spoke Maria's name. It struck Diana how many different people Maria D'Arco represented, and she wondered which one, if any could, represented the one that Maria thought herself to be.

"Can we hold this city?" Diana asked. "The Inquisition kinda trashed most of the city's defenses, didn't they?"

"They're more than halfway rebuilt by now," Akira said. "Drone work. There aren't any other Hearth girls, so they had me directing things for a bit. I tried looking for May—"

"She's not here."

"Oh," Akira said. She fidgeted and chewed her lip. "I'm sure she'll be found."

That, Diana knew, was a lie.

Rebecca was frowning. "So then, Maria D'Arco took this city to harbor the Armada?"

Diana and Akira looked at Rebecca at the same time. There was something heavy in Rebecca's words that weighed both of them down.

"Shit," Diana muttered.

"D'Arco losses are non-negligible," Akira said. "There just aren't enough grief cubes to heal everyone, and corruption has already…"

Akira's eyes glinted with obvious discomfort. "We can't know how bad the Armada had it out there. Either way, D'Arco sacrificed her own girls so that the Armada could stand a better chance at survival inside the city."

Diana could see something teetering on the edge of Rebecca's lips, but she said nothing. There was a familiar apprehension in the Lyudian's expression that shined through her stony features. Diana recognized it as the struggle between good and fear—the knowledge that she should do something fighting against the weakness of the will that prevented her from doing it.

Finally, Rebecca drew something out of her pocket. Whatever it was rustled and clattered as she tossed it into the air. It landed in a pile at Diana's feet.

Her eyes widened as she recognized the black rosary beads. Next to her, Akira had a similarly shocked expression.

"Aren't you supposed to turn me in, now?"

"Yeah," Diana said. She so desperately wanted to draw her bow, but something held her back. By her estimations, it was probably cowardice.

Akira was still staring at the beads. "Those…the Domersek-Nazra wear those?"

Diana felt her hands trembling. "You're one of them. People like them—people like you—"

"I never aided a demon," Rebecca said. "I would never—seeing those things in that field was horrifying enough. Do you think that I would help the things?"

"It doesn't matter!" Diana shouted. Her breathing trembled under the weight of her anger. "There's nothing wrong with being afraid of you people. You hid that from us—lied to us—just like the rest did. You're no different from them."

Rebecca bowed her head. It had been obvious all along that there was something behind the ice, because the ice had only ever really been for her. But Diana couldn't find any warmth inside Rebecca, only a dull, impotent bitterness and regret.

She wondered if she were to dig beneath her own skin and scoop out her own brains, whether or not she would find that same regret.

"The Inquisition breeds fear just as well as we do," Rebecca said. "I couldn't tell you. You would hand me over to the Inquisition, and they would kill me. Maybe torture me first."

Diana curled her lips back, baring her teeth. "It would be justified. I was there when Genesis burned! How many other worlds—"

"I never helped the demons!" Rebecca shouted. "What do you think it's like to see a cause that you've been fighting for, something that you believed in, twisted into something evil? The Domersek-Nazra who never wanted to aid demons felt like we were the only ones left to defend the Lyudian people. The others had lost the way."

There had never been any doubt that Rebecca believed in the words she spoke, grasping them as tightly as she could. Diana wasn't stupid enough to not know that it was just a difference of perspective, but at the same time, those were dangerous beliefs, weren't they? Nobody had ever waged war in the name of the Goddess—at least, not an unjust war.

Akira finally pried her lips back open. "Diana, stop it."

For a moment, Diana briefly considered protesting, but Akira didn't look the slightest bit angry, and once again guilt crept into her heart. She didn't say anything.

"If you're a member of the Domersek-Nazra, you're a heretic," Akira said. "How is it that you never helped the demons?"

Rebecca fidgeted with her hands. "Only the upper echelons of the organization knew about the demons. A few months before the initial attack, several high-ranking clergymen were killed. We thought that it was the Inquisition, but, after the demons attacked, information trickled down. The ones killed had refused to support the demons."

"So you never knew?" Akira asked.

Rebecca shook her head violently. "I swear!"

Diana stared at the beads. She had already let somebody die for this. Was she going to be a hypocrite as well as a coward? She reached down to grab the beads, feeling the cool surface of the lacquered black wood.

"I don't know why you told us this," Diana said. The words felt stronger when she didn't frame them like a question. "Do you want us to throw you to D'Arco? Akira's sympathetic, but even she knows that it's heresy for us to hide you."

When Rebecca looked at Akira, questioning Diana's words, the magical girl looked away. She knew that Diana was right. Silence passed hesitantly by.

Finally, Rebecca spoke. "I am done running. I never wanted to go with you, because I knew that if I went, I would have to hide. Neither of you ever suspected me."

Rebecca turned her head up towards the ceiling. "Cowardice is the second greatest offense a human being can commit against Hashal, after arrogance. It is one thing to be ignorant of one's fate, but to know one's fate and hide from it is the ultimate weakness. I will not be weak."

There was something in those words that made Diana look at Rebecca and feel nothing but hate and contempt. There was something audacious in them, for all she spoke of spurning arrogance, and it dug into Diana's body like a wound that she couldn't help but pick at. She wanted to open her mouth and pick at Rebecca until she would shut up and then, maybe, Diana would find some peace.

But that was the angry, bitter voice in her head, and Diana knew that the other voice, the one telling her that she would never find peace, was probably the smart one. Still, that didn't help quench the dark, ugly fire burning behind Diana's eyes.

Diana threw the beads to the ground. A burst of blue-green magic shot out of her fingertips, consuming the beads.

Diana looked up to see Rebecca staring at her in shock.

"I'm not going to let you martyr yourself for a false god."

Rebecca was beginning to open her mouth, so Diana said, "Don't fucking thank me."

Diana's hands were still trembling and her breathing was only getting shakier, which, by now, Diana knew to be pretty reliable signs that her psyche was about to suffer a momentary collapse.

"Just get out," she muttered. Rebecca scampered for the door, and Diana sank to the floor.

Diana looked up to see Akira standing over her. "That was probably the right thing to do," Akira said.

Diana made an attempt to laugh. She sounded more like she was heaving or crying than laughing, but that was fine. Irony was really not serving Diana very well at the moment, so laughing was pretty pointless. "You really think?" she asked.

"Yeah," Akira said. She was putting effort into her words, which Diana knew meant that interacting with Diana was less of something that was done and more of something that Akira had to do. Her posture sagged, as if the miasma of human suffering that permeated the air had actual physical weight.

"I'm sorry for doing this to you," Diana said. "You should probably give up on me."

Akira shook her head. "I can't do that."

"Sorry for making the presumptuous demand, then." Regret's shadow fell, as always, on her words. They were beginning to lose meaning. Maybe they had already lost meaning, and her ears were only beginning to recognize the burned-out husks of words for what they were.

Akira knelt down beside Diana and pulled her into an embrace. "What's wrong?"

Diana looked at her hands, front and back. "There was a Hierocracy magical girl. And then there was this woman, Lyudian, with two kids. And a corpse."

As she spoke, Diana watched Akira's eyes closely. "The dead man—he had been Domersek-Nazra, and the woman had been hiding her. The Hierocracy girl was going crazy. She kept yelling that the woman was a heretic, and that she needed to be punished. Of course I tried persuading her otherwise."

Akira's eyes moved away from Diana for a moment. Then, they focused back on her. They radiated understanding and comfort, giving Diana a sense of warmth that felt entirely pointless.

"What happened?"

"She said that I would have to kill her if I wanted to stop her," Diana said. "Well, that's bullshit. I could've done a million things besides killing her to stop her. But I didn't. I let her orphan two innocent children right in front of my eyes."

Diana raised her soul gem to her face and regretted every speck of the thing, every point of light, and every hint of darkness. "I'm weak. I'm so weak that I couldn't even save one person, when she was right in front of me. And part of me wanted her to die. Maybe, if I had been that magical girl, I would've killed that woman."

Akira was silent, and her eyes were wide. Then, she said, "I'm sorry."

There were glimmers of pity in Akira's eyes that dug into Diana, presumably into whatever shreds of pride remained inside her.

"I don't know if you made the right choice—"

"Don't bullshit me," Diana snapped. "I fucked up."

Akira looked down, took a deep breath, and continued. "Yeah, you're right. You did."

"Do you hate me for it?" Diana hoped that Akira would say "yes," because Diana deserved it, and because then, Akira wouldn't be disappointed by her anymore.

But then, there was something terrifying about being alone that resonated with the primal recesses of her brain the same way dying did.

"I can't hate you. I mean, I can't say what I would've done in that situation."

"You would've saved her in an instant."

"I don't have the weight of the galaxy bearing me down, day after day. I don't know what I would've done if I were you."

Diana looked upwards. "What?"

"I know you're afraid, Diana," Akira said. "If I had the fate of humanity resting on my shoulders, I'd be scared of getting crushed beneath the weight, and I'd be scared of stumbling, too."

"I've already tripped. Humanity's doomed."

"Why'd you save Rebecca, then?"

Diana bit her lip. "I couldn't take her to D'Arco. I didn't know what else I could do! I had to do something, though. I'm nothing but a hypocrite. That woman died for harboring a heretic, and I let her die, and I do the exact same thing."

Akira shook her head. "You've got it mixed up. That's not hypocrisy, that's atonement."

"Tell that to those two children," Diana said. "Maybe they believed in me. Alexander thought that I would protect Rebecca and him. Maybe he believes in me also."

Diana took a shaky breath. "There's something I still remember—the faces of those people. I was on a ship evacuating Genesis, and I had just contracted. There were people, standing right outside the door, sneaking glances at me, praying to me. Because even if their friends and family were going to die like animals behind them, it was all right, because there was a Servant, and I was going to—I was meant to save people."

She tried to take another breath, but the air caught something and came out as a sob. "I betrayed those children, Akira. Nothing I do will ever atone for that."

"No," Akira said, shaking her head violently. "No! That's not true."

She sounded desperate, and Diana couldn't blame her. It was silly to expect that Akira would be able to snap her fingers and make things right, like she could reach into Diana's head, shuffle thoughts around, and erase of all her insecurities. She was trying to do it, though, trying so hard, and Diana couldn't understand why.

"Look, I believe in you. How could I not? I've always, always believed in you. At first, it was only because you were the Servant, and we were supposed to believe in the Servant. But—I learned to trust you. It—it just—you always try, in that weird, pointlessly cynical way, to make people be optimistic, which might be contradictory but still, I admire that!"

A strand of hair had fallen across Diana's face, and Akira reached forwards to brush it out of the way. Akira was almost mocking her, if unintentionally.

"A smile, or a thought that doesn't even have to be happy, it just has to be about something other than death or pain or despair—that's more valuable to me than anything else right now. I'm just as scared as you, you know. And if I think about the fear too much, it begins to control me."

Diana sniffed, which was embarrassing, but she doubted Akira cared. "I'm sorry," she said, like she had said so many times. "It just…"

But she didn't know what she was going to say.

"Please, at least believe in yourself," Akira said. "I believe in you so much, it just seems stupid for you not to."

"You still believe in me?" Diana asked, trying to capture the way those words had sounded coming from Akira's lips.

"Of course."

Diana was so close to Akira that she wondered if they could superimpose her form over Akira's, and then she could be Akira. Akira believed in her, and Akira wanted her to believe in herself, and if she were Akira, everything would be fine.

She tried to sketch what Akira's face looked like in that moment inside her mind, but she knew that it was like writing letters in the beach's sand, and that someday, she would try to remember the moment, and there would be nothing but static. But she tried anyway, and as she stared at Akira's face, a couple inches away from hers, she realized something. She felt something when she was close to Akira, like she was now. That something wasn't about death, or pain, or despair. It felt as real as the stars affixed in the foundation of the sky, and even if it didn't make her happy, Diana wanted to reach out and clutch at that emotion and—

Diana was not afraid.

She closed her eyes and leaned forwards, which Diana thought was probably the way to signal for a kiss. A moment later, she felt Akira's lips press against her own, and her body lighted up like a candle because the pleasure centers in her brain were firing like artillery and she had this sense that maybe, she wasn't alone, and everything was going to be all right. Her cheeks were wet while Akira's were dry, but that was okay.

After a moment, Akira pulled away. Her face was flushed, and her eyes were wide.

Diana bit back a laugh. "I'm actually not sure how that worked."

"I—I'm not too sure either. I didn't know that you—"

Akira shook her head, cutting herself off. "Well, you did, and that's probably all that matters."

Suddenly, there was noise outside: drones buzzing through the air, magical girls shouting orders. Both of them knew—we have to go.

Because, after all, in that moment that had lasted forever, the universe had continued to advance, and the Timekeeper watching over everything stopped his watch for very few people.

Diana didn't care—at least, she didn't care as much—even though she knew that the demons were coming, and even though nothing had happened to increase her chances of survival. Everything seemed a little bit more straightforward now, less confusing, and maybe it was because that kiss had let her reorganize the world and her priorities around the things that had become exponentially more important in fractions of a second.

Demons gathered beyond the horizon, led by a being that had dared to seize the power of Death itself. Fear and love danced inside Diana's heart as she went out to meet them.

-x-

(i know! it usually takes around a month! i can explain! some asshole drugged me and took out my teeth! i'm a student; i had exams!)

(reviews are, as always, appreciated. thanks for reading!)