Far Off Unhappy Things
Chapter 21: Endings
By Renko Doremi Rodenburg
The Red Fox spoke to Reinhild. It was an odd sensation, like talking to herself. She was the Red Fox, and she was Reinhild. She was playing out two halves of the same conversation, yet it wasn’t exactly like talking to herself.
There were moments where she wondered if she had finally lost her mind.
Hyacinth will make a proper wife for us, the Red Fox said.
“She will not,” Reinhild replied. “I am content with serving her while walking two steps behind her.”
By the time Reinhild reached the heath where Hyacinth lived, she had fully recovered from her concussion. Her little adventure had not gone the way she- or the Red Fox- had wanted. The Red Fox was a folk hero, not an accomplice to mad sorcery. But there would be more opportunities for adventure. Right now she had to focus on a different kind of heroics, she had to pledge her sword to Hyacinth and fight in her name.
To her dumbstruck surprise, she found half a military operation marching across the heath not terribly far- about half a day’s travel- from Hyacinth’s house. Summer Knights with their white armor and golden flags, as well as peasants carrying equipment- and even a catapult being pulled along by six men. They had a few groups of lightly-equipped men running ahead, scouting parties. To avoid being spotted she had to swerve around them in a wide berth and kept hills between herself and the army. She wondered why Autumn hadn’t let his winds loose on the armies slowly moving to surround the Twin Cities. Perhaps he was dead.
Or perhaps he is waiting until all his enemies are arrayed against him, the Red Fox said. To lull them into a false sense of security, then strike at them all at once.
“Is that what we would do?” Reinhild asked.
The Red Fox did not answer, and Reinhild walked on in silence. By nightfall, she reached Hyacinth’s hovel.
It was as it had always been, yet somehow different. Smaller. It wasn’t the hovel that had changed, of course. She knocked on the door, hoping Hyacinth had not gone to sleep yet. Hyacinth didn’t open up, and with her heart pounding in her chest Reinhild sat down on the porch instead, Helmtatöt in hand. She had waited this long to see Hyacinth again, and she could wait a night longer. Sleep did not come to her anymore, so she simply sat and waited until the sun finally rose again.
Not long after it did, the door to the hovel opened and Reinhild jumped up.
“Autumn,” Hyacinth- beautiful Hyacinth- swore. “Oh. Reinhild. You’re- what happened to you?”
“Oh Hyacinth,” she answered. “Where do I even start?”
Some other voice sounded from inside the hovel. “Who’s your friend?”
“Reinhild,” Hyacinth replied as she gestured for her guest to come out. Along with Hyacinth was a woman dressed in strange clothes. Thick black fabric woven into a shirt of some kind with a hood attached, and pants made from tough black fabrics sewn together with rough silver thread. Her face was young and smooth, with striking blue eyes, a colour Reinhild had never seen in eyes before. She wore a hat reminiscent of the pointed hats of folk magicians, but smaller and plain black, unadorned with moons or stars.
“Hyacinth, who is this?”
“Reinhild, this is Aígle. Aígle, meet Reinhild.”
“Good to meet you,” the woman said, bowing slightly.
“You should come inside, Reinhild,” Hyacinth said. “I take it you have much to tell me.”
Reinhild nodded, followed Hyacinth and Aígle inside and sat down around Hyacinth’s table with them.
“You’ve changed, Reinhild,” Hyacinth said. “You’ve got the stench of my sister on you.”
“Stench?”
“Clementine’s poison flows through your veins now, and I find it difficult to bear looking at you.”
This wasn’t how she had imagined her reuniting with Hyacinth would go. This was all wrong. Her transformation was fantastic and beautiful and she could finally be the champion Hyacinth deserved.
“I am stronger now. I will be your champion, your blade.”
Hyacinth shook her head. “The time of the next duel is almost upon us. Aígle will fight for me.”
“NO!” Reinhild screamed. “I- I’m sorry. I mean- I want to fight for you. Who- why her, who even is she?”
“You must understand, Reinhild, that I did not know if you would return to me at all. You could have died while seeking whatever compels your kind to travel around and I would be without a champion. Do not take it as a personal insult.”
“But I promised you! I promised I would return, I told you how important fighting for you is to me. Hyacinth, I should never have left your side, I’m so sorry.”
The Red Fox chided her for speaking like this, but she brushed the feeling aside. She was Reinhild first and foremost.
“If you wish to fight for her in my stead, I do not mind,” Aígle said. Her voice was soft and delicate. Reinhild could not imagine her fighting, so she was probably a sorcerer of sorts. She was starting to loathe mages, witches and their ilk.
Good, the Red Fox said.
“No,” Hyacinth said. “If she fights for any of us, it’ll be for Clementine. Do tell me Reinhild, where you found my absent sister- tell me what sweet poison she whispered into your ears.”
“Nothing!” Reinhild said, golden tears forming in her eyes. “I found her in a shrine up north, behind a coffin of sorts. I can’t describe it well, I am no wizard! I think I visited the realms of the dead, and I was reborn after meeting her. She didn’t say anything to me, Hyacinth. I still love you, I am still your champion.”
Hyacinth shook her head. “Still love me? Nonsense. When have we ever loved each other?”
Reinhild’s stomach turned. “Hyacinth, please!”
“I seem to have gotten involved in something,” Aígle said. “Should I leave and wait outside?”
“No. We should leave for the abandoned abbey. Our foe is waiting for us, after all.”
Aígle nodded.
“I’m going with you,” Reinhild said.
“Do not bring shame on me with childish behaviour,” Hyacinth scolded her, but did nothing to prevent Reinhild from following her and Aígle.
As they walked along the heath, Reinhild thought back to the first time she had threaded this path with Hyacinth. She’d been intoxicated with the spells Hyacinth had put on her, and the world had warped and changed around her. Again she had the feeling she had outgrown this place, like it was but a playground.
It is, The Red Fox said. It’s shameful how you’re nonetheless still walking after this witch like you are her dog.
“Shut up,” Reinhild said.
“What?” Aígle asked.
“Sorry, that wasn’t- I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”
“Hmhm,” Aígle said. “How do you know Hyacinth?”
Reinhild was a little taken aback that this woman, this rival, wanted to make smalltalk.
“You don’t have to talk about it if it’s painful,” Aígle whispered, making Reinhild painfully self-aware of just how pained of an expression she had made when the woman spoke to her.
“No- no, don’t worry. No, I met Hyacinth while traveling, in a tiny farming community near her hovel. She’s-”
“She’s beautiful,” Aígle filled in for her.
“You two are acting like children or adoring suitors instead of champions,” Hyacinth said.
“Sorry,” Reinhild said.
“I am a child,” Aígle said. “And I am your adoring fan, you know this.”
“How old are you?” Reinhild asked.
“Seventeen,” Aígle said.
“Then you have not been a child for some years.”
“Where I am from, we are not adults until we’re eighteen years old.”
“And where is that, then?” Reinhild asked. Aígle came across as incredibly sheltered, and deep down she now hoped that she was woefully unsuited to combat.
“I’m a worldwalker,” Aígle said. “I have visited a great many places, but I’m from a place known as Prime Materium in your cosmology.”
“What?” Reinhild asked.
“She’s a peasant girl,” Hyacinth said. “And she was a slave for some years. She doesn’t know what you’re talking about.”
We should kill this witch, the Red Fox said. We should not allow sorceresses to speak about us like this.
“Shut up!” Reinhild yelled.
“What now,” Hyacinth sighed. “Since when do you talk back to me?”
“That- I’m sorry, that wasn’t for you, I- I have-” she lost her words, unable to articulate a coherent sentence.
“Tsk,” Hyacinth spat. “Reinhild, you should mind your manners. I’ve never been anything but good to you.”
“You have,” Reinhild whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted. I am still your dear friend, Reinhild. Champion or not. If anything I am glad I don’t have to worry about you dying if Aígle is fighting for me instead.”
“And you don’t worry about her?” Reinhild asked.
“Of course I don’t,” Hyacinth said. “I barely know her.”
Eager to see if this comment had hurt her rival, Reinhild paced ahead a bit to be able to take a good look at Aígle’s face. To her disappointment, she seemed entirely unaffected by Hyacinth’s comment.
Rein, we should leave this place, the Red Fox said. This isn’t where we belong.
“How do you know Hyacinth?” Reinhild asked Aígle.
“I exchanged letters with her a few times after reading about a ritual to contact her on the web.”
“The web?”
“Oh, sorry. That’s, hmm, a sort of invisible set of threads that connect everyone in my world. We use it to speak to each other.”
“Many people know about Hyacinth in your world?” Reinhild asked. This conversation was confusing her no small amount.
“No,” Aígle smiled. “Only the few who obsess about finding the hidden secrets of the world do.”
“I see,” Reinhild said. “Hyacinth?”
“Yes?”
“You once said the Red Fox was something leaking in from another place. Is that the same?”
No, the Red Fox said.
“No,” Hyacinth said.
“Your sister said-”
“Do not ruin my day by speaking of her,” Hyacinth interrupted her.
“Sorry.”
They were near the abandoned abbey now.
“Steel yourself,” Hyacinth suddenly said as they approached it. “Something is wrong. My sibling has done something horrible.”
“What’s wrong?” Reinhild asked.
“Oh my,” Aígle said as a figure appeared from the gates of the abbey.
They were slightly shorter than Hyacinth, with the same sharp, pointed ears jutting from their head like knives. Their hair was a radiant gold with streaks of silver, and the air around them seemed to vibrate as they approached. Something about them was oddly familiar, though Reinhild could not quite place it.
“Hello sister,” they said, their voice something more than mere sound. Tactile, rustling through the heathers as it rolled over the blasted earth.
“Aster, what have you done?” Hyacinth said, her voice unusually tinged with emotion.
“What do you mean?” Aster replied, theatrically looking over their shoulder as if looking for something.
“You know what I mean.”
“I have found a throne for myself,” Aster said. “A throne you and the rest know nothing about, a throne hidden not in the sky behind the clouds but locked away in the depths of my psyche. And I found it quite comfortable.”
“You have delusions of godhood,” Hyacinth said. “What-ever has given you that hideous strength has addled your mind.”
“What do you mean, sister? You have cause and effect reversed.”
“Stop calling me that. I am Hyacinth to you. Call your champion, so we can fight and I can get respite from your unsightly aura.”
Aster laughed. Their laugh had something true and genuine to it, and Reinhild could swear that it invigorated even the plants on the ground. Suddenly she realized where she had seen this being before.
“You!” She yelled. “I saw you. You’re the being on the- oh Autumn, it’s all coming together.” Reinhild’s head started spinning as a million threads, both future and past, connected in her head. Her mind exploded as the future flowed through her like a current, showing her a conclusion working its way into the past. “It’s inevitable,” she whispered.
“Say,” Aster said. “Your pet fox seems to be a bright one. Is she your champion?”
“She is not,” Hyacinth replied.
“Good,” Aster said. “She would be wasted on you.”
“Call your champion, cur,” Hyacinth swore.
“Yes, sister,” Aster said as they turned around and headed back to the abbey. “She’s waiting in the courtyard.”
They followed Aster into the courtyard, where two women were waiting. One was clothed in leather armor and wielded a wooden spear. The other was dressed in what seemed to be naught but undergarments to Reinhild.
“Aster,” Hyacinth said. “Before we fight we must speak.”
“Go ahead, I love talking to my dear sisters after all.”
“Time has resumed its march. The End of All Things is not far off. I need to know if this was your doing or not.”
“What of it?” Aster asked. “Are you so scared of death?”
“I am not, but the kind of death that you and Achlys would invite into this world is something different altogether.”
“Oh,” Aster said. “I am not worried about Achlys or the Silver Prince.”
Hyacinth shook her head. “You believe this is the last of our duels then?”
“It is,” Aster said.
“Aígle, ready yourself. Reinhild, do not dare intervene.”
“Red Fox, what do you say about sitting with me instead of my stone cold older sister?” Aster asked Reinhild. “It’s a waste to let you sit in her shadow.”
This one is even worse than their sister, the Red Fox said. Rein, we need to run. We need to go. We need to go anywhere but here.
Reinhild shook her head.
“Alas,” Aster said as they walked to the other side of the courtyard, where the other two women were waiting. One of them- the one almost entirely naked- whispered something into their ear.
“Really?” Aster replied, before bursting into laughter and whispering something into their friend’s ear in return.
Aígle placed herself in front of Reinhild and Hyacinth, and bowed. “Oh Caesar, those who are about to die greet thee,” she said.
“I doubt it,” Aster said. “Irene, this woman is only here in spirit. It’s subtle, if Fionna hadn’t pointed it out to me I wouldn’t have seen it either. Spíne Gael won’t be able to harm her. You need to banish her instead.”
“Aster!” Hyacinth yelled. “Stop talking, and let our champions fight.”
Aster paid her no heed. “See the threads on her clothes and hat? Isn’t it odd to use silver for sewing, even if you’re rich? It’s way too brittle, you’d end up naked the moment you moved a little roughly. Some people-”
“Aster!”
“What I’m saying is, the threads are your real foe. The girl is but a projection. That silver cord-”
“Aígle, kill her,” Hyacinth commanded.
“Hyacinth, you’re so cruel,” Aster said, backing off and patting their champion- Irene- on the shoulder. “You can do this, go get her.”
Reinhild held her breath as Aígle walked up to Irene, clasping her hands together and pulling them apart again to reveal a tangled web of silver thread between them. Irene dashed forward, stabbing at Aígle who did not even flinch as the spear went straight through her, as if she were made of mist.
Undaunted, Irene immediately stabbed again, this time aiming at Aígle’s legs- at the silver seams on her pants. Aígle ever so slightly shifted her posture, and Irene’s wooden spear passed harmlessly through her leg. Her opponent kept walking, implacable like a glacier. Irene swung her spear to the side, but it got caught on the silver threads in her foe’s pants without breaking them. She tried to back off, but Aígle was close enough to touch her now, and stretched out her arms to catch Irene in the threads she had between her hands.
Instead of entangling the girl as Reinhild had expected to happen, the threads sliced effortlessly through her. Irene’s head was cut into ribbons, and the girl fell limp. Brain and blood and shards of bone were all that were left of her head. Soggy clumps in a pool of red with juts of sickening white sticking out.
Aster’s other friend screamed at the top of her lungs, and Aster themselves gasped.
Aígle simply turned around and walked back to Hyacinth. “Done,” she said, shrugging.
“Autumn,” Reinhild whispered. On the other side of the courtyard, the scantily clad woman was sobbing uncontrollably as Aster pressed her against their chest.
“I take it our game is done, then?” Hyacinth asked.
Aster kissed their friend on the forehead, then faced Hyacinth. “I lost this battle, but that simply means I am still in third place, right after you. I can still win this war.”
“What do you mean?”
“I challenge you again to avenge Irene and slay your champion.”
“You wish to throw the life of your consort away as well?”
“My consort? No. Fionna, can you call out to our daughter?”
“Your what?” Hyacinth spat.
Fionna nodded, and wiped the tears from her eyes. “It’s going to be alright, then?” She asked, looking Aster into the eyes.
“Of course, dear,” Aster said.
“My starlight,” Fionna said, her voice still cracking.
She stepped forward, and took a deep breath. “Irene,” she said, looking at the disfigured corpse before her. “Irene, come to me.”
For a moment, Reinhild thought nothing would happen. Then it became colder on the courtyard, much colder, and a shiver ran up her spine.
“Her soul is still here,” Fionna said. “It is yours to do with as you please, Starlight.”
“Rise,” Aster commanded, and the ground started to spark and crackle with some kind of thunder or lightning.
Sorcery again, the Red Fox said. These witches are interfering even with the souls of the dead. Reinhild, run.
“I won’t run,” Reinhild whispered.
Irene’s corpse broke in half, and crackling with sparks and bolts, another Irene rose. Translucent, vaguely flickering in the light like a candle right before being snuffed out by a gust of wind.
“It’s so cold,” the ghostly Irene whispered. “Aster,” she cried. “Help me, Aster. It’s so cold. The wind is so cold.”
A dark smile fell over Aster’s face. “See that girl over there, who killed you? She’s very sorry for what she did, and to make it up to you she will keep you company, Irene. She’ll give you warmth. She’s a spirit after all, just like you.”
Irene turned to face Aígle.
“Hyacinth?” Aígle whispered while backing off. “Can she hurt me?”
“I know not,” Hyacinth said.
“Please?” Irene said while walking towards Aígle. “You’ll go with me?”
Aígle spun silver threads between her hands again, this time coiling them into a single larger rope, and swung it at Irene’s vengeful spirit. The silver whip hit the ghost, and with a loud bang and a flash some kind of energy was released. Aígle yelped in pain, and stumbled backwards.
It was a dark kind of ironic, Reinhild thought. She had walked up to the girl and executed her without showing a hint of emotion, and now that the girl was returning the favour she was a frightened mess.
Irene chased after Aígle, who backed off away from her ever faster. Eventually she stumbled, fell and started to fumble with the threads woven into her clothes. As they came undone, she started to fade.
“You dare walk away from this?” Hyacinth said. “You’re fleeing?”
As Aígle faded, Irene ran forward and grabbed her by the arm. “Don’t leave me,” the dead girl said. “Aster said that you were sorry, that you would go with me.”
“Let me go,” Aígle screamed. “Let go of me. Hyacinth, help me.”
Hyacinth shook her head.
“I don’t want to go alone,” Irene said. “I- I don’t know if my mother is waiting for me where I’m going. It’s so dark and cold there. I can’t go alone.”
“Unhand me,” Aígle screamed. “Let me go!”
“It’s time to go,” Aster said, making a scattering motion with their hand. A sudden warm breeze washed the unnatural cold in the courtyard away, and with it, Aígle and Irene. Only some silver thread remained where they had previously been.
For a moment, the courtyard was overcome with an oppressive silence. Reinhild did not dare break the quiet, did not dare even breathe.
“Well,” Aster suddenly said, breaking the spell. “I think that’s the first time any of us have ever beaten one of your champions.”
“You cheated,” Hyacinth said.
“Irene beat your champion, and the rules of our game care little for fair play. As long as we’re trading souls, is all.”
“Is- Is Irene-” Aster’s friend stammered.
“She’s fine,” Aster replied. “I have friends along the paths of the dead.”
“Of course,” the woman said, nodding.
Hyacinth shook her head. “And now? Now you presume you can return to Eden and take father’s place? Even if this mockery of our ritual counted as a victory, you are in first place in name only. You have not fought nor beaten Clementine.”
“I propose a truce,” Aster said.
“You are in no position to offer truces of any kind.”
“We can go back to how things used to be, Hyacinth. We can stop this nonsense. Playing out the same game forever until the last of days, what a miserable existence.”
“You’re playing at something. I am not stupid, Aster. I know the End is fast approaching.”
“I will order my champion to take her own life, and I will surrender to you, Hyacinth. I will break this game, and we can go back to how things used to be.”
“We would be reduced to mortals, crushed under the heels of the Deer God.”
“We’d live as siblings, we’d wake up to eat together. You and Fleur could sit all day at the stream again, and I could sneak off with Narcis. We’d run a little shop together, selling rare books or something. Violet would like that, I think, if she could learn to mind her manners.”
“Aster, I know not where you have walked, but you have gone stark raving mad. You are beyond help, beyond salvation,” Hyacinth said. It was the first time Reinhild had heard her truly angry.
“You hurt me so, sister.”
Hyacinth shook her head.
“In that case, Fionna, do your thing.”
The girl next to Aster nodded, and picked up the spear next to Irene’s corpse.
“I challenge you, Red Fox, daughter of Autumn, champion of Clementine.”
“Aster, stop it.” Hyacinth said. “Reinhild, you don’t have to go along with this madness.”
A feeling of vertigo overcame Reinhild. The last months were starting to make sense. Everything had been orchestrated, somehow. Things from the future were blurring into the past. Inside her, the Red Fox screamed at her to run. That this was all wrong, that they were someone separate from the plots and schemes of Hyacinth and her siblings. But Reinhild knew better- her life had never been her own. Not in the tribe, not while enslaved in the Twin Cities, and not while serving Hyacinth.
“What happens if I kill your champion?” Reinhild asked.
“Nothing,” Aster answered. “I will have to find a new one, and three months from now I will challenge Fleur. This is a game we have played for hundreds of years, and if we do not want to diminish and fade, we have to keep playing it.”
“I saw your mural at the temple up north. It- it was overwhelming.”
“Ah,” Aster said. “That is how you ended up the Red Fox. I was wondering where you had come from- I thought you were a worldwalker as well.”
“What happens if you win, and if I die here?” Reinhild asked.
“I inherit the keys to Eden, our distant homeland. I will confront Prince Autumn, and ascend to the throne that has always belonged to me. Make no mistake- I would rather go live somewhere with my siblings, but they’re all so stuck in their ways, and so incredibly angry.”
“Aster,” Hyacinth said in the tone of a parent warning a child. “Do not involve my friend in your insanity.”
“Your friend, Hyacinth? Your friend? Since when do you have friends? You take pets, Hyacinth. Not friends. Look at the girl- she is head over heels in love with you.”
“I am not obligated to reciprocate that,” Hyacinth said.
“You’re-” Aster continued, but Reinhild interrupted them.
“Stop this. Hyacinth has only ever been good to me. I volunteered to be her champion, even though she didn’t want me to because she was worried for my health. She’s the only person in my entire life who has been anything remotely resembling ‘good’ to me. I won’t pretend to understand your conflict, but I will not have you insult her like this.”
Aster nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“Reinhild, we’re leaving,” Hyacinth said. “This madness has gone on for long enough. Aster, I pray you return to sanity.”
“She’s not going anywhere,” Fionna said. “I’ve challenged her to a fight. She either surrenders or confronts me.”
“Reinhild,” Hyacinth chided her.
“No,” Reinhild said. “I will fight her. I do not back down from challenges.”
“She’s challenging you as Clementine her champion.”
“I know.”
“Then you and I are through. If you live, do not come knocking at my door.”
Hyacinth, beautiful Hyacinth, looked her in the eyes, shook her head and walked away.
“No!” Reinhild said. “Hyacinth. Hyacinth?”
Hyacinth did not answer, and walked out the gate of the abandoned abbey, and onto the blasted heath.
“Red Fox,” Fionna said behind her. “Draw your sword.”
Reinhild, the Red Fox said. Reinhild, run away from here. We aren’t supposed to be here. We are the red-haired trickster heroine, not a puppet in a game of witches. The wind blowing through our beautiful hair, sleeping in the forest with our head on our beautiful tail, that is who we are.
“No,” Reinhild said. “I’m an opium addict who spend her entire adolescence being raped by the nobles of Luson. But I haven’t forgotten the ways of my parents- if I am challenged, I fight.”
She turned around, and drew Helmatöt from its scabbard.
Across her stood Fionna, spear in her hands. Reinhild realized that ordinarily she would be at a serious disadvantage here- a shortsword was a worthless weapon against a spear. Shaking her head and trying to quiet her beating heart, she charged the spearwoman.
Fionna stabbed at her, almost casually. There was something wrong with the spear, Reinhild realized. Her opponent was making minimal movements, seemingly intending to tap her on her unarmored left arm instead of actually stabbing her. It was probably poisoned, cursed or both, she realized as she traded skin for fur and dashed under Fionna.
There was a stench on the woman. A horrific stench of death and blood- mixed in with a familiar, nostalgic smell. The smell of the forests of Forever Fall, the smell of red hair stained with soot from endless nights around campfires. As she turned back into a human the moment she was behind Fionna, she wondered if the woman was a barbarian as well.
She slashed upwards with her shortsword, her opponent turning around too slow to properly react. Turning into the Red Fox had thrown her off, as Reinhild had hoped.
Still, if the spear she was wielding was truly as deadly as Reinhild thought, she needed to keep her distance. So as she slashed, she stepped backwards. Fionna stumbled forwards, trying to dodge, but Reinhild hit her nonetheless, cutting a shallow but long gash into Fionna’s back.
She screamed as she spun about to stab at Reinhild, who had already retreated out of her range. Blood gushed from her back, and her strange garment fell from her chest.
Behind Reinhild, Aster laughed.
“I’ll need to get you a replacement for that, or you’ll have to walk through Luson topless tomorrow,” they said.
Reinhild looked over her shoulder, momentarily confused as to why Aster thought Fionna was going to win this. The moment she did, she realized her mistake. A moment of hesitation, a split second wrong decision.
Furious pain erupted through her abdomen as Fionna drove her spear into Reinhild’s back, and back out through her stomach.
She howled. An animalistic scream. She twisted her body as she brought Helmatöt down behind her, hoping to take the women’s hands off at the wrist. Instead she cut the spear in half, but it was enough. Fionna backed off as Reinhild, half a spear sticking out of her stomach, charged her. Pure rage kept her going, suppressed the pain. Then-
Then she collapsed, her legs no longer listening to her. Her limbs grew heavy, and she could feel something chewing at her insides.
Reinhild, the Red Fox screamed. Rein! Reinhild!
Growling, Reinhild traded her broken body for that of the Fox. She had done this before, escaping injury by changing places.
It didn’t help. The Red Fox limped forward, towards Fionna, roots and vines digging through her abdomen.
Reinhild, the Red Fox said. Don’t blame yourself. I’m sure that if you are really me, and I am really you, we’ll meet again.
Then they separated. There was a distinct sensation of being just Reinhild, no longer part of something greater. A hole in her soul that had only recently closed opened back up, and Reinhild was once again alone.
Next to her, in the grass, lay the Red Fox, impaled on half a spear and with her little legs trembling as green buds burst from her fur.
“Reinhild,” Reinhild yelled in a panic, confused. “Help me!” She screamed.
Next to her, Fionna limped towards Aster, who embraced her.
“No,” Reinhild muttered as she climbed back to her feet and pointed Helmatöt at Aster and Fionna. Her arm, scarred and burned, failed her. Her shortsword fell to the ground. She tried to draw on the well of fire and shadow, the murderous rage, bloodlust and hate that had defined her before she had been reborn, but she found only a deep, dark void and a cold resignation.
“No!” She screamed as she fell to her knees. The last of her strengths failed her, and Reinhild lost consciousness.
