The Demon Queen Wants To Live.

The Hero's Requital. A month-long celebration held across all the lands of thinking beings, in honor of the death of a Demon Queen.

Ash had read about it as a child. She had studied its traditions and customs during her own training, the way she had studied everything else a Hero was expected to know. Through all of it, she had never truly believed a day would come when people celebrated for an entire month in her name. She had also never understood just how long a single month really was.

Ronan sat three tables down, and he was surrounded by women. There were a great many of them. The last time Ash had glanced his way, there had been five. There were six now. Ronan listened to each of them in turn, and made every one of them feel listened to. The other men in the tavern shot him glances over their cups. It seemed not even the Warrior of the Hero's Party was spared the jealousy of his fellow man.

Ash reached down, grabbed her cup, and took a long mouthful of the wine. It burned on the way down, and lit a small fire inside her besides. That was good. She did not want to be in a place like this sober. She should not have come here at all. It was a scene she was almost used to.

What she was not used to were the women seated around her own table. There were three chairs besides hers, and a woman in each of them. There was even a woman sitting on the table itself, which surely wasn't safe.

"Tell me about the Red Dragons again," said the one on her right.

"That's a boring story, and the Hero has already told it twice," said the one on her left. "I want to hear about the Endless Fight." She leaned in as she said it, close enough that Ash could smell the flowers on her. Something sweet, and yet light all the same.

"It's not that good of a story," Ash said.

"Come now," laughed the woman on the table. "We've all heard the songs, haven't we? How does it go again? I think it was-" And then she began to sing. Ash had not asked her to, and she wasn't very good besides. The other women all leaned in. Toward Ash, for some godsforsaken reason.

Ash wanted to lean away. She was already sitting as far back in her chair as it would go. She didn't understand. Women had always been intrigued by her when she had been a Hero, but that was as far as it had ever gotten. Most of them had lost their interest rather quickly, once Ash had started talking. Here, Ash barely spoke at all, and the women only seemed to grow more interested by the word.

Where were Elowen and Orvyn? Ash had asked them all here tonight. The four of them hadn't spoken much this last month. The month had belonged to feasts and processions, and to a Hero who smiled through all of it. It had given Ash time to think. Time to understand just what had been done to her. And she had needed the month, for what had been done was difficult to believe.

Even thinking of it now made her head want to split open. Two lifetimes of memories insisted she was a man. A single month said otherwise. But Ash knew which was true. She knew it the way one knows their own face.

She had spent days searching this world for a gap in this strange illusion. She had tried to feel anywhere and everywhere for a place where the illusion was thin. There was no such place. The System had made something elaborate, and it had made it perfectly. Everything was exactly where and as Ash remembered it. There was no door out of this world.

Which only meant that if Ash wanted one, she would have to cut it herself. She had known how for days now. Tonight was for goodbye.

Almost perfectly, Ash thought, and glanced at Ronan again. One of the women was in his lap now. Ash had seen enough of this Ronan over the month to know how the night would end. He would take one of those women to his bed, or more than one. He had done it every night of the Requital. Her Ronan never would have.

Her Ronan had courted women aplenty. He had flirted with half a continent and bought drinks for the other half, and it had never once gone further than that. Ash had never understood it. What was even the point, then? She had asked him once, on some road between one battle and the next. Even a king gets lonely, he'd said, so the company's good. And then he had gone thoughtful, which was rare for him. But it's easy to let a good thing go too far. He had said it like it made sense.

It had never made sense to Ash. She found she preferred it now, to the thing she was watching.

Ash blinked. One of the women had her hand on Ash's thigh. Her inner thigh. The woman was speaking, though the words slurred over each other until Ash could not understand a single one. She rose. The table jumped hard enough to send the woman sitting on it scrambling off with a yelp.

"Don't touch me," Ash hissed. Then she blinked, for her tone had not sounded like a Hero's at all. The women were staring up at her now, their eyes wide. They shared a look between them.

The one who had touched her was the only one who found the courage to speak. "We just thought the Hero could do with some well-deserved rest," she said. "After all, slaying Demon Queens is-"

"Get out," Ash said. She was staring down at her closed fists. She kept them closed. "I feel… I feel unwell tonight. I mean." She kept staring at the floor for moments longer. Eventually, there came the sound of several sets of footsteps, all of them moving away from her.

And then Ash was alone. Though she could feel the gazes on her still. She had been loud, and everyone in the tavern had heard. Ash sat back down. Her mug lay on its side, and she righted it. There was plenty of the drink left. She took a sip, and set the cup down harder than it deserved.

Ash saw her every time she closed her eyes. A tall woman with red eyes and two curved horns. A woman Ash had killed in this life. Though that wasn't Lysanthia. Not truly. The body lying in state in the Great Church wore the silver horns of the stories and a stranger's face. Ash had gone to look. It had none of the beauty the songs promised, and none of the power Ash remembered, and none of- it was not her.

"Hey. What's wrong with you today?" Ash looked up as Ronan slid into the seat next to hers. It had been knocked over in the exodus, and she had not heard him set it upright again. "Didn't think you minded the attention. Thought you called us all here to have a little fun."

"They were…" What was Ash supposed to say? "I did not like them. That's all."

Ronan nodded slowly. His brown eyes held understanding, and Ash was certain he understood exactly the wrong thing. "Well, good thing you sent 'em off. Wouldn't want to be the woman on your lap when Orvyn walks in." Ash winced. Ronan had, in fact, not understood the right thing at all.

Ash looked at him. At his shoulders, and at the empty air above them. "Play us something," she said.

Ronan blinked at her. "Play what?"

"Nothing," Ash said. "Forget it."

Ronan nodded slowly. He didn't understand, not that Ash had expected him to. Ash didn't even know why she'd said it. There was no lute there. Habit, perhaps.

"Say," Ronan said, leaning back, "what do you say the two of us get out of this city? Just you and me, back on the road. As adventurers this time. I hear they pay the S-ranks more than they ever paid us. All the praise is good and all, but a man can't fill his belly on praise, now can he?"

"Ronan…" It was a thing her Ronan had joked about often enough. Except she was certain her Ronan had only ever been joking. She was not so sure that held true here.

"Right, right." Ronan grinned. "You're the Hero. Can't go off adventuring now, can you? Besides, where's the fun if you kill everything before I-" He paused. He looked somewhere over Ash's shoulder. "Speak of the devil."

Ash followed his gaze. Orvyn and Elowen stepped in through the door. Orvyn marched ahead, and the Sage trailed behind her, looking anything but enthused. Elowen took one look at the tavern around them and shrank in on herself. The Elowen that Ash knew would never have looked like that. She would have drunk more than all three of them combined, sung the loudest out of all of them, and somehow greeted the morning like the night had never happened. Ash tried to keep her smile exactly where it was as they came over.

"This kind of establishment is…" Orvyn said, glancing around, "not where I expected you to summon us, Ash." She smiled at Ash all the same, and slowly drew a chair closer. Too close, perhaps. Elowen took a seat on the far side of the table.

"You could have just come to the White Library if you wanted to chat," Elowen grumbled. "The people here are…" She shook her head, and did not finish.

Her Elowen had wanted a bakery. When the war's done, she had said once, I'm opening a shop that smells like rising bread, the one my mother used to make. Seems a shame no one else ever got to try it. That Elowen would never have wrinkled her nose as she looked around.

Was this how the Sage was supposed to be?

"Come now, it's not so bad," Ronan said. "You get used to it. You should see this place in a few hours. Now that's a crowd even I would steer clear of."

"Ronan, don't corrupt her," Orvyn sighed, one hand pressed to her brow. "Even your behavior is-"

"Yeah, yeah. The Arch Priest doesn't approve. Maybe the bloody Arch Priest could have gotten off his high and mighty behind and fought the-"

"Ronan." Orvyn glared. "Do not start this again."

Ronan just raised his hands, smirked, and said no more.

Ash looked at them. Her friends. Her Party. And yet these people were strangers wearing her friends' faces. Her Ronan was crude and crass, but he was not only that. Her Orvyn abided by every doctrine of her faith, but that was not all she did. Her Elowen would not have shrunk this way in a bar. She would have been juggling knives in the center of the room by now, to a crowd of her own making.

Ash had wondered, for most of the month, why the world had gotten them so wrong when it had gotten everything else so right. The streets were right. The songs were right. The sound of rain on a tavern roof was right. Only the people had come out wrong, and only the people she loved.

Then she understood. Some of it, at least. The world had not built her friends. It had built their Classes or Roles, and thrown away whatever did not fit. A Warrior who loved three things. A Sage who loved her studies. A Saint who loved her Hero, and nothing that contradicted it. Nothing else had belonged to the story, and so none of it had been kept. Maybe this was how people were supposed to be, by the world's reckoning.

Ash, of all people, knew what it was to be built to the world's expectations. She had spent a whole life doing it herself.

"I want to talk to all of you," Ash said. "About my future."

That stopped them. All three turned toward her. Ash took a deep breath. Those faces were staring at her, and they were not her friends, and they looked so much like her friends that it didn't matter at all.

"I'm leaving," Ash said. "I'm going on a journey. A long one. A very long one. I don't know when I'll come back, or-" She stopped there.

The three of them kept staring at her. Then Ronan laughed and took a big chug from the mug in front of him. "Good one. Didn't take you for the joking type, but not bad for your first."

Elowen and Orvyn slowly eased at that, like people stepping back from a ledge.

"I'm not joking," Ash said. "I intend to leave tonight."

Ronan stared at her, the mug frozen inches from his face.

"You- where would you even go?" Elowen said. "And why? Is there some loose end left, or-"

"You can't just leave-" Orvyn said. Her voice was high, Ash had never heard it go so high before. "You're the Hero, Ash. The one who slew the greatest Demon Queen ever to wage war against the world. The day may be saved, but there's rebuilding to do. Obligations to fulfill. People to inspire. There's-" Her voice went very small. "You… you are saying you really mean to leave? Just like that?"

"I do," Ash said. "Just like that." And she kept her voice firm. These were fakes, but Ash would still respect them enough for that.

"Why?" Ronan demanded, setting the mug down hard enough to make the entire table shake. "Where the hell do you plan on going off to?"

"There's something I need to see for myself," Ash said. That was not quite true. She knew exactly what she had to do. She suspected if she told them, then she would have to fight. Ash did not want to fight people who had her friend's faces. She didn't know if she could.

"Will…" Orvyn's voice was no louder than a whisper. "Will you take me with you? Wherever you're going?"

Ash hadn't expected this Orvyn to say that. And from the sound of it, she seemed sincere. For a moment, something inside of her ached. A small part of her -a part she was not proud of- wanted to say yes.

"No," Ash said. "This is something I must do on my own. And besides, you have your duties as the Saint. You can't just follow me."

Orvyn was staring down at her hands. After a moment, she nodded, just slightly. Across the table, Elowen was glaring at Ash. Ash could guess why. Elowen had always been protective of Orvyn especially. It seemed that this Sage wasn't a complete stranger at least.

Ash looked away. "And there's one more thing," she said. "This one is… almost as important as the other. No. I suppose it's more important."

The three of them looked at each other, then back at Ash. Ash's hands were shaking, and she had to press them still against the table. Why was this so hard? It didn't make sense. These weren't even her friends, and yet her heart did not seem to know that. She took another breath.

She reached inside herself, for the Skill she had worn almost every day since she had first been chosen in both lives.

"[Disguise]," Ash whispered one last time. The spell came off of her in an instant. It always felt like a veil being lifted not just from her, but from the world.

She looked down at her hands. They were smaller than the ones she'd had a breath ago. All of the scars were still there, but they looked larger on her own hands.

"I'm…" Ash tried to find the words she had rehearsed. She didn't find them. So, she chose simple words instead. "I'm not… I'm not what you all thought I was. I'm sorry." Then she looked up at them, at three stunned faces staring at her with their mouths open.

"Ash, this is…" Orvyn's voice came out thin. "This isn't funny. Who taught you how to play pranks like this?"

Ash winced. It was a fake Orvyn saying this to her. She couldn't help but wonder, all the same, if the real one would have said the very same thing.

Ash rose. "I've said all I wanted to say," she said. "I'm leaving."

She took one step toward the door, and a strong hand closed on her shoulder. It held her in place. "Where the hell do you think you're going?" Ronan demanded behind her.

"Let go, Ronan," Ash said.

"Not until I get some goddamn answers."

"Ronan. Please." Ash did not turn around. "I don't want to fight you."

She wondered, for one long moment, if it would come to blows after all. Then, slowly, the hand lifted from her shoulder, and Ash made her way to the door.

"Ash," Ronan called out. Ash paused, her hand on the wood. "You don't look half bad."

It was exactly the kind of thing her Ronan would have said. That was the part that hurt. Her eyes were burning. Ash did not let it become anything more than that. Not here. Not where they could see.

Ash opened the door to the night air outside. Her right arm felt strange and she ignored it.

"[Teleport]," she said. She thought she heard a cry behind her, just before the world changed.

Ash opened her eyes to wind, and to endless white below. She stood at the top of a peak, and the cold found her in the same breath. She shivered. "[Greater Frost Resistance]," she murmured, and steadied as the spell took hold. Ash probably should have done that first. She looked out, down the long white shoulders of the mountain, at a world of snow running out to the edge of sight. She was standing atop Mount Hal, the tallest mountain on the continent.

"At least I get to see this again," Ash murmured. "Never thought I would."

Mount Hal was where she had finally mastered her sword aura, in her previous life. The true one. A trial set by the God of War himself, at the top of the world, where the choice had been to do, or to die. She had done. Then the mountain had been shattered by the Demon Queen in her quest to exterminate the Dwarves.

In this world, the mountain still stood. In this world, the Demon Queen had died before she could finish what she started, and everyone had lived. Ronan would drink at the Greasy Mango tonight. Elowen would read until night turned to day. Orvyn would pray, and mean every word.

They were not real. They were not real, and she loved them anyway.

When she cut this world open, it would end, and they would end with it. Her friends would die a second time. This time it would be her hand that did it.

The wind touched her face and came away colder. Ash reached up, and her fingers found tears. She hadn't noticed when the crying had started. It was good that she had come here.

Ash extended her hand to the right, and the Hero's Sword came out.

It coalesced out of light and settled into her palm, and it was beautiful. White, almost a pure white, humming faintly in her hand as it glowed. A small green gemstone glowed on the pommel.

"Don't mind seeing you like this again, old friend," Ash murmured. "One last swing, huh?" For a moment, she almost felt the blade hum to answer her.

She took a deep breath and raised her blade to the sky. "Don't much like doing this part again though," she murmured. "Oh well."

And she dug inside of herself. She found the spell carved into the deepest part of what she was. The Hero's Requiem. It burned something inside of her that wasn't mana or aura. That was her. And Ash felt some of herself leave. A memory, then another. Then another.

The terror came. Would it take from her what she wanted to go back to? Ash searched, and found all of those memories were still there. There were gaps in her memory, more growing by the second. But those gaps were for the Ash Vale who had lived this life. The one who had succeeded and lived to tell of it.

The Requiem burned what you were. But right now it was burning what Ash wasn't. It was almost gentle. It seemed even the spell knew what she was not.

Power filled her. It was blinding and impossibly vast. The colors began to pour from her skin -every color she knew, and colors nobody had ever seen, and colors nobody would ever see again. Though, that was not quite true anymore. She had seen all of these colors once before. As something had left Lysanthia's hands that had cracked and mended the air all in the same breath.

Ash looked down at her own hands and recognized them. They were light now.

The largest mountain in the world began to shake and quiver beneath her feet. High above, a hole tore open in the sky, spilling brilliant light down across the snow. With it, came pressure. A force that pressed down on her head. Ash had never felt this pressure before, but she could guess what it meant. The Gods had noticed, and they were trying to stop her. It would take even them some time to get down here from their heaven.

"Too late," Ash said. "You can't take your blessings back. Can you?" She had to be quick.

"Ash?"

Ash froze. She turned. "What… what are you?"

Orvyn stood a dozen paces down the slope, her cloak whipping in the wind. She must have followed the teleport. Ash had not felt her do it.

"Ash, you can't-" Orvyn took a step closer, her brown eyes wide and bright with the light pouring off Ash's skin. "Why are you- what is this-"

"I'm sorry," Ash said.

And it hurt. This Orvyn was the love with the dagger cut away. But there had been a dagger, in the end. Perhaps this world would allow her to live a full life here, if she wished it. She did not wish for it.

"Ash." Orvyn's voice cracked. She was crying, and the light turned every tear to a jewel. Ash's own had frozen on her cheeks. "Ash, I've always-"

Ash slashed through the air. It was a single cut, and it spread outward and severed everything. The sky parted along a clean line. The mountain came apart beneath her feet. And for a moment, in front of her where the world had been, was only white. Ash collapsed into the white.

---

She woke to warmth, and to softness. An absurd amount of softness. A thumb brushed Ash's cheek once, where something had dried. Ash groaned and opened her eyes. Red eyes were staring down at her. They were very warm.

"You took your time, Hero," Lysanthia said. Her voice was perfectly even. The hand moving slowly through Ash's hair was not.

Ash blinked up at her. Her head was resting in Lysanthia's lap. That's what the softness was then. Ash forced her gaze onto Lysanthia's face, lest it wander other places.

"I almost thought you would not come out," Lysanthia said.

"Sorry," Ash murmured. "But I'm here now."

Both her forearms were pulsing. She could guess what that meant. She didn't care right now.

Lysanthia's eyes were wet at the edges. Ash pretended not to see. That was the Heroic thing to do, after all.

"So you are," Lysanthia said, and smiled.