Queen's Gambit Chapter 19

Chapter Index:
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Previous Chapters:
Draconic Fortune (Noelle)
1
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2
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3
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4
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5
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6
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Draconic Fortune

Chapter 07

la danse des canards

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They found themselves at the base of the Journeyman's tower, with several places to visit, and no clue, which one to go to first. Kris and Ralsei led the others ahead. Even though, they were currently wandering into the city, aimlessly. As soon as they were far away enough from the tower, for the smoothed out tiles to stop and the bumpy stone ground to start, the city went back to what Kris' first impression of it was.

Wooden stands and stone buildings with wooden window frames, chariots and carts were drawn along the streets instead of cars, there were no street lights short of an occasional short and wide pole with a torch affixed to its top. The other people walking the streets were a blend between those four new kinds of Monsters or other darkners that he had never seen before coming here on one hand, and monsters on the other. And the city were a blend of its own.

Some of it was new and unknown to him. Some of the streets were ripped straight from pieces in his art stash, down to every detail. Even the wooden stands were in the same locations and some of the Monster passerbys were the same ones. In fact, it sometimes felt like this whole city was just made by taking his sketches for medieval city roads, adopting the rough, colourless grey aesthetic and constructing an entire underground city based on it by filling the blanks between the source material.

The far-away ceiling above glittered, sometimes almost creating the illusion of stars.

The others were following Kris, but he wasn't really leading them anywhere. And he was pretty sure Ralsei and Noelle were getting a sense that he didn't know where they were going either. "Hey." On one of the many crossings at which he stood, clueless, mostly inspecting what lay along each road, he was interrupted in his train of thought by Noelle pulling at his arm. "Before you get too caught up in where to go, why don't we just look for a place to unwind. It's been nothing but tension up until now, let's relax while we can."

He wasn't sure if relaxing was a good idea, if they were essentially in a race for getting to a place he didn't even know how to get to yet. But like she said, and the Journeyman implied: If there ever was a time, it was now. The Susies were the enemy, and the one place you were safe in, was the city where Susies - or succubi as they were apparently called, weren't allowed. He would have given a lot for a place like that, back in Canyon City.

He turned around and went to a specific location that fit the occasion, that he passed on the way to the blacksmith. He wanted to go back to a previously passed road, because he recognized a specific place there. And right where he recalled it to be, there it was. The 'Tavern beneath the Stars'. Or at least it might have had that name, if there were any real stars above them.

It was a picture Asriel had helped him with. It was one of his favourites. You immediately recognized his brother's influence on the design, by the field of green grass embedded right next to the open inn, with several tables standing outside. It had no wall to the side where the lawn was, so you could walk right inside and to the counter or any of the tables without passing through a single door. A breath of fresh air in a maze of closed-off stone walls that made up the rest of Bedrock.

As soon as it came into view, Noelle and Ralsei understood that this was where they were headed, and the two tag-alongs from the castle followed without question. What confused him him a bit while walking up to it, was that unlike what he expected going by the picture it was from, there were no guests. None. All the other streets he recalled, stayed true to their original at least to some extent.

He would have understood a few of the guests not being there at this very moment, or being swapped out with others. But none at all being here? That was a tad strange to him. The only person present, was the inkeeper standing behind the counter. A light-brown or orange cat, just reaching his twenties, who was definitely not inspired by an ICE-E's Pezza employee by the name of Burgerpants.

Going by the look not-Burgerpants was giving their group of five, walking in here must have been so crazy to him, it was as though they were walking on their hands and balancing plates while they did. "Welcome to the tavern beneath the rock. What can I get you?"

Kris wasn't interested in ordering anything. Not yet. Instead, the first thing he asked was: "Why aren't there any guests here?"

"Kris!" Scolding him with her soft voice, his classmate gave him a slight nudge with her elbow. He was used it. He knew that usually, she would next go on about how you didn't ask questions like this in a restaurant. But she also knew that he knew what he was going to say, as they had gone through this routine often enough one way or another, so she spared him with it this time.

Not-Burgerpants raised an eyebrow and his face deformed to allow him to raise it further than otherwise possible. "You don't know? Well gee, no surprise you just wandered in here. It's been a little more than a minute, so it's gotta..." He just stopped mid-sentence and proceeded to stare at his watch. And he stared, and he stared and...

"PLEASE, NO MORE! NO!" The teeth-grinding screech of a familiar voice in severe pain dug its way through the veins of everyone present. If Kris wasn't absolutely sure that it couldn't be Berdly, he would have been convinced that it was.

Suddenly, the disturbed expression on the cat's face made a lot of sense. He dangled his thumb to the side, outside, to one of the buildings on the other side of the lawn. "That's why. It's driving away all the business."

Kris thought about what to do, but he didn't take long to make his decision. "I'm going to go and ask what's going on."

After he had already turned around to make his way outside, he was pulled back by his arm. Apparently, Noelle didn't agree with his decision. "You can't just walk up to people and talk to them like that." Yes he could. "No you can't. Come on, let's just look for another place." No, he was not going to let his favourite tavern run out of business, just because someone wouldn't stop screaming. He pulled himself free of her grasp and marched onwards to the street. "What if it's dangerous?"

"Just stay here then." He didn't have enough patience left to stay any longer and went on. This city was safe from the succubi, he could leave her alone...with a succubus. Just to be sure, he turned around to check on them, but Headbanger and Dasher were already off sitting on the benches around a table in the corner. Okay no, they were fine.

Stunned at a lack of tactfulness she very well knew Kris had, his classmate turned to the prince. "Aren't you going to say something? He listens to you."

Her pleas for her strange form of 'reason' were only met with a confident smile. "I trust Kris. He knows what he's doing."

"Kris? Really?" She didn't even know what to say to that, so she just sighed.

She then noticed that not-Burgerpants was still standing in front of both of them, his eyes darting back and forth between her and Ralsei. "So uh...can I get you guys something? Maybe? Anything?"

"Some light wine for me. And a hot chocolate for when Kris is back."

"Wine? Isn't that a bit much?" Noelle wasn't sure whether that perplexed her more, or the fact that Ralsei already knew Kris well enough to know what to order for him. "I mean if we can, some light wine for me, too."

Dasher raised his hand from their bench. "Two bottles of wine for us, too." The man behind the counter placed a wine bottle and two glasses on the counter and then fetched another glass and a jar of chocolate powder. They had chocolate powder in a superficially renaissance or pre-renaissance city made of stone. Not to mention that he then turned around, slid the door of one of the cupboards behind him aside and revealed a microwave. "Chocolate will take a minute or two."

Instead of sitting or standing at the counter while they waited for Kris and his drink, they took a seat on a nearby table. When they did, when they finally sat down after walking and standing non-stop since half-way through the castle, and finally not having the threat of Susie-look-alikes attacking them from some corner, it felt to Noelle as if a huge load of weight was taken from her body. She just sunk into the sofa with her eyes closed.

And even afterwards, she only spoke with breaks in-between sentences. "I'm sorry for reacting that way, this is just - it's a bit much. I'm just not used to Kris being so - I'm sorry, I'm not even sure how to put it."

She was alone in this though. Ralsei didn't appear fatigued at all. "Nothing to be sorry about. Just go ahead. Or take your time. Tell me what you mean any way you want."

Soon later, she inhaled, was wide awake again, but only enough to lean onto the table by her forearms. "It's just that he really isn't like this. Usually. Just a few weeks ago, me and my father invited him over to play a few games. He spent every minute he could, staring out of the window or otherwise zoning out. He wasn't paying attention to the game at all. Or me or Dad for that matter. Kris doesn't socialize, and even if he does, it's not...if his brother isn't around, it's as if he wasn't either."

"He's not that kind of person. Not without Asriel. And yet two days ago, out of the blue, he gets left alone with Susie, comes back unharmed, and then starts talking to me all of a sudden and says Susie of all people is nice. They were never on good terms before that, if any at all. Susie is the last person he'd call nice. The only person I can see him like less is Berdly. Then yesterday, he was paired up with him, and today, he's sitting at one table with both Berdly and Susie, exchanging stories about a 'dark world' like it's nothing."

Again, he didn't share in her confusion like she felt that he was supposed to. He was glad to hear what she told him. "What's so bad about that? It sounds like a big improvement."

"I know, it's just - " She cleared out her mind. He was right, in a way. That was what she wanted, it was a good thing, or it should have been. What upset her about this? And then fixated Ralsei. Stared right into those white glowing ovals behind his glasses. "It's you. How long has this dark world thing gone on? How long have you and Kris known each other?"

Those ovals shifted down and to the side. He was unsure which of several possible answers to give. "I've been - three days. Today is the third time we met."

That only riled her up right again. "Three days. It took years make him comfortable with me and Dad and he just skipped all that with you in three days. You're always next to him, you're so close, he doesn't back off when you make physical contact, sometimes, I caught him just making eye-contact with you, just like that, and he's only known you for three days. How? This is nothing like him. Is it because of your name?"

"I don't know what to say. Why don't you ask him that yourself? Don't you think he'd tell you?"

"I'm..." She stared at her empty wineglass. "I don't even know. The whole art thing is a side of him he never showed me before."

"While we're at Kris. Can you tell me more about him?"

Well that came a bit out of the blue. "What?"

"Anything. I failed to ask Berdly when I had the chance. I don't want to miss that chance with you. Just tell me anything about him you like. I never met him in the light world. I want to know what kind of person he is."

The way he said this, and the way he lowered himself and looked up to her with anticipation while he did, something about it made her ease up. She couldn't suppress a chuckle and covered her buck teeth out of embarrassment. "All right. What's there to even say? I didn't know he liked to draw. I had no idea until today. But he plays the piano. That's something I knew. His favourite colour is purple. Or blue? I'm not sure, sometimes it's purple, sometimes it's blue. He's a bit inconsistent about it. Maybe it's something in-between."

"He likes long walks through the forest, but only if he's walking alone. I know because I ask if I can come with him sometimes, and unless he gets the sense that he can't, he declines. He likes being on his own. At least when his brother Asriel isn't around. The way he's with you - he's only like that when he's around his brother. Or - he used to be. I think you remind him of Asriel. What with the way you look, and your name and all."

She expected that to sully his excitement, but his smile never waned, he just kept following every word in a trance, leaning with his head on his arm, not from exhaustion, but for lack of focus to sit upright. "You really admire him, don't you?" When she said that, the prince's eyes shot wide open and he retreated just a bit into his robe and pulled his hat over his face to cover up his glowing cheeks.

To make things worse, while he stayed like this, Kris came back from stopping whatever that noise was. But rather than joining them at the table, he only asked the innkeeper to give him all the bread he could carry, and once he had it, he left right again. Once he was gone, she leaned forward to push that hat back and reveal more of Ralsei's face again. "I don't think he heard anything."

"Heard what?" Noelle barely noticed Dasher and Headbanger, until they stood right next to her, urging her to shuffle aside for the two of them along the bench that curved its way around the table and along the wall. When they sat down, they really spread out making themselves comfortable. Both held an entire wine bottle in their hand and Headbanger's was already half empty. "So? Where are we headed next anyway?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. He didn't talk to us either. But say." She shook Ralsei a bit to pull him a little out of the little hideout that was his robe. "I don't know anything about you. It all went under a bit down there. We never got to know each other."

The prince occasionally glanced down at the table. "There isn't that much to tell. I'm a prince without subjects. Well, that's not true any more. I have one subject now. But I want to keep him a surprise for Kris."

"But how are you a prince then?"

"Well, I don't have subjects. But I have a kingdom."

She wasn't sure what she was supposed to make of this. "Even if. Wouldn't that make you a king?"

"There's no need for 'if'!" He got up and walked outside. On the grass between the outside tables, the prince turned to the side and stretched out his arm and pointed at a wall on a nearby building with his open palm. Out of nowhere, within his hand, a bright light emerged. It glowed at first in white, then in multiple colours and in a spiral motion, shot towards the wall. "It's working! I can summon my doors again!"

Slowly and still in disbelief, Noelle followed him outside. On the wall, where the light must have struck it, a 'patch' or black stone grew on the grey bricks. Along and beyond its centre, the triangles, circle and wings of the Delta Rune grew in solid gold and once the black stone stopped covering more of the wall to the left and right, golden filaments of a similar shade to the symbol extended themselves all around the eventual doorframe like vines.

"Woah." The dragon girl and the archer had followed them, and she had to take her sunglasses off to be sure she wasn't imagining things. "Like, did you really just do that?"

"Yes. I couldn't back in the castle. Something kept blocking it. But let's not leave Kris behind." It took less than half a minute for him to come back. Whatever he was doing, it didn't take that long apparently. "So? What were you doing?"

Kris stared at the door with an unsure expression. He hesitated before answering. "Making sandwiches." And he left it at that, too.

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Kris had rather he didn't have to go into detail on who was making these sandwiches or what kind of person he was. When he was already across the street from the tavern beneath the rock to check or ask what that noise was, he turned around one more time to check if Noelle was fine. She was sitting at the table closest to the counter with Ralsei. Any worries were for nothing.

One last time, he heard the screams that not-Burgerpants was talking about. Much louder and more clear, as it came from much more close by now. It came from behind a metal door in a niche two metres further down. Below and next to a butcher shop. He had to take another staircase into a little yard to get to it. Behind it, entered a hallway with rough concrete walls. Metal pipes ran along the ceiling between the rooms that surrounded it.

The rooms he passed were all dedicated to processing cattle or something like it into edible meat. Carcasses hung along pins in a row along a rail, which extended itself through several machines in another room. Another room was a kitchen, with ovens, deep fryers and other utensils. But the screams were coming from a room further ahead. All the way at the end of the hallway. From behind another solid metal door. It must have been so loud for people to hear because of the doors being wide open.

They looked pretty thick and good for warding off the sounds. When he pushed it further open, finally, he came across something familiar. Not something he expected, but in hindsight, he should have. The door led along more stairs, down into a basement. A stone basement with blotches and spatters of red blood all around the walls.

Loose metal chains hung off the ceiling, a range of torture instruments lay spread out on a table at the other end, and axes, spiked clubs, a chainsaw and other murder weapons hung in an open cupboard to the side. In the middle of the room was a rack. One of those medieval racks you used to keep someone in place by binding and stretching every hand and foot separately, to torture them more easily. And tied onto it by his wrists and ankles, was Berdly.

Well, probably not the real Berdly. He had blue feathers, wore the same kind of shirt he always wore at school, even with a pen still in his pocket, but there were tears all over it. Tears and within them, wounds. And unlike how this should work with an actual monster, he was bleeding out of the open wounds that covered not only the holes in his shirt, but his whole body from head to toe, even parts of his face besides his cracked beak. He was whinging and whining between his panicked breathing, terrified to no end to the one who put him in this state.

Kris stared at 'Berdly's torturer. The torturer was Kris. Well, not the real Kris. He was 'Kris' the same way that the bird was Berdly. He only looked like him, and his colours and clothing were what he usually wore in the light world. This other 'Kris' was perhaps a few inches taller than his original, and slightly hunched. He had a curved knife in his hand, with which he probably inflicted those wounds on his classmate.

He guessed as much, because the knife's blade was all red with the bird's blood and smidgens of more blood were in all kinds of places on 'Kris's dirty sweater.

And rather than his messy hair casting a shadow that obscured his eyes, the area around and above 'Kris' eyes was downright blacked out. There was no shading or graduation, the yellow just straight up blended directly into pitch black where his eyes should have begun. The only thing you could see behind his bangs, even right against the light of a running light bulb, was a bright red light glowing from where his right eye should have been.

The torturer had stopped his craft and stared right back at Kris. He recognized this. All of this. This was a drawing. All of it. This whole scene. Everything, even the chains. It was something he once made at home, when he was particularly annoyed with Berdly. Something he sometimes really felt like doing in real life.

Which was also why he had a really good guess at what his titular doppelganger's name was. With narrowed eyes, he subtly pointed down at him. "Butcher?" He paused to check for 'Kris' reaction. "Butcher, is that you?" The torturer didn't answer. Not verbally at least. But after waiting to see if Kris had any more to say, he then just nodded.

Kris' eyes shot back and forth between the wincing bird, and the motionless human. He had to be careful what he said or did. This darkner might have been violent. Very slowly, he raised his finger. "I'm not sure how to say this, but..." He pulled back to look down the hallway one more time. "...I'm here with a friend who scares very easily. So I just wanted to ask: This..." He circled the injured bird with his finger. "...could you tone this down, just for a while?"

No answer. He threw his hands up in a defensive manner. "It doesn't have to be for long. We'll be gone soon and you can go right back to..." He circled butcher-Berdly again. "...to this." For a few seconds, Butcher just stared at him. When he began to move, Kris almost got ready for battle, but he movement was just him nodding. Then Butcher walked over to the table in the back. He put down the knife and picked up a cleaver and walked back to Berdly.

Every single step of what he did, was a bit slow. Including the part where he grabbed Berdly's head by the feathers at its top, held his head up a bit and stretched his neck, and then swung down and chopped at it with the cleaver, again and again, until enough of it was cut off that he could rip the rest of the blue bird's head off and place it on a nearby chair.

Well, with his head chopped off, at least Berdly wasn't going to scream any more. So Kris gave his now blood-smeared lookalike a meek smile and a thumbs up, which Butcher answered with a silent thumbs up of his own.

Berdly's corpse just lay there, lifeless. He wasn't a monster after all, this one at least wasn't. Kris closed the door and made for the exit. He stopped and froze for a moment to listen closely and make sure that Butcher wasn't following him up the stairs. But he wasn't. So he took a deep breath in through his nose, and exhaled, letting all worries escape him with it. He expected much more danger from Butcher than there ended up being.

He had a similar drawing by the name of 'Slasher'. If he ran into him, there just might have. At least in this case, what Ralsei said about darkners wanting to serve lightners proved true. He even would have gone as far as to conclude that all his drawings were somehow more receptive to him than other darkners. And likewise, Butcher looked all kinds of scary at first, but in the end, he was nice and friendly. Just like the Grunts, Berserkers and the others.

It took him until he was already back outside in the below-ground yard before he froze. He had an idea. He spurted back inside, down the hallway and pulled the door open. "Wait." When he looked back into the basement, his lookalike was rested on a chair next to his late captive's head. "Are you an actual butcher? I mean a professional one, with preparing and selling meat and all that?"

Butcher nodded. So Kris stared at Berdly's motionless body for a while. "So uh...if I brought you a load of bread, could you make a load of sandwiches? Ham sandwiches?" Butcher nodded. "I mean sandwiches you can eat. Clean? Edible? No diseases?" Each time, Butcher nodded and eventually got up to follow him upstairs. Kris quickly backed off, but the human-like horror just opened the door opposite to that to the basement.

It was a closet with more sets of clothing identical to his, but not sullied with blood and dirt like his. He took off his shirt and trousers and the next time Kris looked back while moving closer to the exit, he was already wearing a new, clean set of clothes. He then came closer, turned around to walk off into the kitchen to wash his hands.

He really was just getting ready for business, wasn't he? "So I'll just fetch the bread and you'll get to work, right?" Another thumbs up. "Right. Be back in a second." This was all working out a lot more smoothly than he feared.

Without further ado, he marched across the street, into the inn and asked the innkeeper: "Can you sell me some bread?"

As usual, the expression on this cat's face projected what he could only assume was disbelief. "Yeah? Sure. How much?"

"All the bread. If I can carry more, I need more."

"Okay..." He went around the corner into the room in the back. The kitchen, Kris assumed. And he came back with a wooden crate, turned into a basket by removing its lid. Filled with short swirly loafs of bread and with more of it stacked up into a pile in the middle. "There ya go, buddy."

He paid what he guessed was just a rough estimate on how much that bread was worth rather than an actual fixed price, as well as the bill for the drinks the others had ordered, and got right to carrying the basket outside and down to Butcher's workshop. "There." Happy with his precarious journey down the stairs having gone without casualties, he put down the basket near a part of the workspace in the kitchen, that wasn't occupied with stoves or other devices.

"That should be enough for plenty of sandwiches for when I come back. If it's not enough, you can buy more from the guy across the street, I'll pay for them." One last thumbs up marked Butcher's goodbye before Kris left the workshop for good. This time, by the time he returned to the tavern, the others were already standing on the lawn, gazing upon a golden door Ralsei had conjured up on a wall right beside the inn. When asked what he was doing, 'Making Sandwiches' was all he told them.

Taking his act of summoning a door to it into consideration, the darkners present weren't so stirred by what lay behind the slowly opening doors. But the imposing city of arrow-shaped buildings, the black stone, all illuminated behind each house's windows with bright blue, completely overwhelmed Noelle.

Several times, while wandering through her irregular breaths made Kris turn around to check on her to see if something was wrong. But it was just her marveling at Ralsei's kingdom every time. "Wait, stop." Half-way through, the prince begged Kris to stop and rushed ahead. He opened the door to one of the buildings further ahead. The 'Inn', going by the sign that hung down to its side. Then, after a few moments, he wandered back with his head hanging down. "Sorry. He's not there right now. But his door is."

"What door?"

And right again, he was smiling with his glowing eyes wide open. "It's a surprise. Kris! My kingdom isn't empty any more. Someone lives in it now."

"Who?"

"I said it's a surprise." The prince's noticeable excitement over the thought of showing Kris his first subject made Noelle giggle. So unlike what he was looking forward to, he went back to one of the houses on the way to these and unlocked the door. It was the house they used yesterday, as a place for Berdly's sister and her plastic doll turned-living-stewardess to stay. "Come on in. You're more than welcome to."

For the most part, Noelle was astonished at how warm it was in front of the blue burning fireplace and how soft the couch was. Kris and Ralsei wandered right past those, to open a chest right beneath the window on the side of the building. Time to have a look at the old inventory and to see what of his current one he could fill, since quite some of his cake from last time was used up.

One by one, he picked out and inspected the stuff inside the chest to see if they could put anything to use now. There were some old fluttery pages from the old manual that he had to destroy to make space for more stuff to fight Jevil with, a dark burger left over from fighting Jevil, which he never ate and that had gone bad more than it already had two days ago, a left-over amber card, a white ribbon.

Wait. Noelle wasn't wearing anything on the outside but her robe. They could actually put those to use. He got up, walked over and gave them to her. "Stick that on. And that's for you, too."

She was a little unsure at first, as that both came out of nowhere. But when placed on her sleeve, the amber card just latched onto it without problems like a sticker. As for the ribbon, she kept it in her hand and stared at it. "Thank you?" She was confused at those sudden gifts.

"You don't have to put it on if you don't want to."

"No." She got up and followed Ralsei to the window to look at her reflection. "That's not it." She gave herself a close look and tied the ribbon onto a strand of her hair. "I actually like it." But she still had trouble getting used to her face in the mirror being dark blue. The crass change in colour was a little too much for comfort. And any normal person seeing her deep green hair back home would have assumed she saturated it with hazardous hair dye.

"Great!" Kris accompanied the prince's enthusiasm with a thumbs up. "Come with me!" He grabbed Kris by his left arm with both of his own, and dragged him out of the house. "I've got another surprise for you." He didn't stop or come back to tell Noelle and the other two to follow.

That and something about how excited he looked when he did it, told Noelle that he probably wanted that surprise to be between the two of them. Without further ado, he pulled Kris along the street past the window and to the castle. Leaving Noelle alone with Dashed and Banger.

With little else to do but wait out Kris and Ralsei alone time, she went over to the comfy chair beside the couch and sat down, facing those two strangers. In spite of only knowing each other for such a short time, they were leaning against one another. Headbanger only held one of the wine bottles she had brought along, stared up at Noelle's antlers and took a sip from her bottle. The other one was standing on the table in front of them, next to her feet.

They were both sitting there with both shoes or boots on the table. Now that Kris and Ralsei were gone, she was here, with a stranger, nigh-identical to the way Susie looked in school. She knew how to spend her time waiting until that lonely plush of a friend Kris had, was done being alone with him. This was her chance to practise talking to Susie some more.

But sitting down on the comfy chair, she already felt the nervousness take hold below her neck. Whenever things were eventful enough for her to have something to say, she was always distracted from Headbanger. She was always either talking to Kris, or this adoring fan he left with. But now, she was facing her, and the thought of talking directly to her, scared her all over again.

The only thing that lightened that up a bit, was the fact that she didn't have to worry about having to look her in the eye through those monster shades she was wearing. She took long enough with her internal preparation, that both the human and the dragon already gave her a weird look by the end of it. She suddenly felt how stuffy and sticky her robe had really been all along in its entirety and tucked at it here and there to allow for some air to breeze through. 'Hey there.'

That's what she tried to say, but only a little squeak came out. So she tried again. "Hey there." Oh goodness, they were both looking at her. She had shade-Susie's full attention. If this went on for much longer, she was going to snap after all. She just had to do what kept her calm this long. She tried concentrating her attention on Dasher, rather than Headbanger, to take some of the pressure off of herself. "You two seem to be getting along pretty well."

"What can I say?" Laying back with both his arms along the lean of the couch, Dasher turned slightly to Headbanger, enough for their cheeks to touch. "We have a few things in common. We both lost something that was dear to us. And we both take solace in hoping that you can guide us through this somehow."

When he placed his feathered hat on Headbanger's head, the dragon girl took another sip from her bottle and 'woo'ed loud enough, the whole neighbourhood would have heard it through that open front door - if there had been one.

That didn't help at all, that made it worse. Noelle tried to coat how this sounded to her with nigh hysterical fake laughter. "No pressure at all, you two."

"Sorry. Your other friend seemed so confident about it." She could see how he could be hard to read for someone who didn't know him like her.

"I've never...this is all still new to me. Kris has been to the dark world at least once before. I think he's been twice. Once with Berdly and once with Su-...Su..."

The tipsy dragon interrupted her and pointed at her with her bottle still in the same hand. "So what about the light world? Tell us about the light world. You guys always seem kinda - clueless? Aren't you guys like all-powerful...or something?"

All these expectations and strange ideas they had only made her force out nervous giggles and shrink further together, all while inching further and further into the confines of her seat. "I - no. Not really. That's not how it works. I don't think so."

"Then how does it work? What's that stuff about light blue guy..."

Dasher nudged her. "Kris."

"...Kris being responsible for me and all the dragon girls? Religious girl paid no attention to you. So if you're not responsible for us, are you responsible for anything in the same way?"

That...wasn't a question she was comfortable answering. She scratched her cheek and avoided looking at those black stars above Banger's snout. "It's uh...that's a little personal."

"Really now?"

Headbanger was immediately nudged from the side and scolded for her attitude. "Let her keep it to herself if she doesn't want to tell you."

"Wait!" Before Dasher could do her this favour, Noelle threw up her hands. She didn't want this to end with a sour note between her and the closest thing to Susie there was around here. "I'll...I'll tell you as much as I feel I can. Okay?" To her relief, the corners of the nodding dragon's mouth pulled back up a little. "So." She sighed and closed her eyes for a moment to collect her thoughts and pull herself back together.

"Imagine a little girl. She's still very small, and can get scared very quickly. Anything big and dangerous-looking, especially if it has big, sharp teeth, scares her so much she can't move. She's lucky her family lives in a big house in a town far away from too many people like that. But more than all the dragons and sharks and other scary-looking monsters, that little girl is deathly afraid of one thing: Humans. Humans scare her so much, they give her nightmares."

"The bare, leathery skin, the round ears the general form of their faces." She involuntarily gritted her teeth in-between sentences. The mere memory of her past thoughts made her skin crawl even now, if only a little bit. One of the two right in front of her having all those things didn't do much to prevent her short relapse into old, long-past fears either.

"And of all the things, that little girl's best friend is a human. The girl and the human's families spend so much time together, at times, you could barely tell we were separate families. It was as if we were one big family."

With a raised finger, Headbanger cut her off. "Wait. Lemme guess. By the end of this it's gonna turn out Kris is the human, right?"

"Let her tell her story the way she wants to."

"Dude, we're not little kids." She was losing her patience.

"It's alright." Noelle noticed that Dasher was about to raise his voice a little more to reel their friend in, and he had already taken his arm down from behind her back. She didn't want this to become a spontaneous quarrel without Kris and Ralsei to keep it under control. "I'm sorry. It's my fault for being like this to you. Where was I? Yes. Kris' family and mine were really close, because our Dads were best friends from college."

"So of course me and Kris spent a lot of time together when we were younger. We've been friends and seeing each other on the regular for as long as I can remember. And I was able to keep it in. Just barely. I mean, it always built up and when I was alone, it always hit me all at once, but it was bearable. Being a little scared of humans is normal for a deer monster. And I kept most of how bad it was secret from my parents."

"But Kris is...he's a bit difficult sometimes. And he's always liked playing little pranks on people. He found out about my fear of humans...maybe. I'm not sure if he ever found out how bad it is, but he caught wind that it's there. Some tricks he tried work on me better than on others. He always got a rise of convincing me of scary things being real. At times, I couldn't sleep because I was afraid that there was a human under the bed or in the cupboard."

"We spent a lot of days staying at each other's homes overnight, he must have heard me talk about it at some point. So sometimes I'd wake up, I'd worry about there being a human under the bed, and then it turns out there really IS a human under the bed. He'd hide under the bed or in the cupboard, just to jump out and scare me. Even when he wasn't over, I sometimes spent entire nights sleepless because I was so terrified of a human popping up somewhere."

"That's when my Dad realized that it isn't just a little natural fear of humans, I had a problem. Thinking about it now, it's a blessing in disguise that Kris played at my fear so much, because I can't spend all my life in hometown. I've got to go to university some day, and there will be tons of humans there. I'll have to commute, share cars, buses or trains stuffed together with humans."

"But Dad realized I had a problem early on, so he told me to take up a hobby that helps work through that fear. Something that involves looking at humans, even if it's just pictures of them. And we found something that could ease my way into that. Cards. Playing cards. Wherever humans go in the world - well, the light world - they bring different suits of playing cards with them."

"And they always involve pictures of humans on them. In some suits, only on a few cards, in others, more. That was something I actually came to enjoy. I was so fascinated, I started learning the rules of all kinds of card games. They were a first baby step, but they always kind of stayed with me as a hobby. So when I grew older, I took the next step. I dabbled in learning to draw. Specifically how to draw humans."

"It forces you to look at them very closely. Even today I do it occasionally. Only humans, but still. So then...uh..." She began retreating into her robe and her clear narration slowly turned into mumbling. "...I...combined the two..."

"Speak up!"

She had to oblige, so she sat back up and pulled her robe down. "I combined the two. I...things happened. Personal things. Things I don't want to talk about." Thinking about it made her blush, and almost tear up a little but she caught herself before that could happen.

"They're in the past now. That's what matters. Designing an entire set of cards is a huge effort. So I never took it on until there was an occasion. A good reason to invest so much effort into one silly little project. At least, I thought there was going to be an occasion. Those 'personal things' gave me a reason. So after I had developed a routine of using tarot cards, I made my own."

There was a silence between both sides for a while. "So, how does that relate to anything?"

"It's uh - " She was sinking back into her chair again. But in the end, all she had to do, was check for the door to make sure Kris wasn't listening, and then speak with a lowered voice to get it out. "I had help with most. But for major arcana at least, I came up with every design and drew it myself. And some of them may be people or - things we ran into on the way."

"Like what?" She stared at the table and twisted her thumbs. "Oh screw you!"

"We've been pushing her enough." Dasher tried prying the wine bottle from Headbanger's hand to place it back on the table next to the other one. And he succeeded, but she just picked it back up. It was soon empty and left her to go for the second bottle anyway. "She outright told you there are things here that she doesn't want to talk about."

"Yeah, whatever." Apparently frustrated over Dasher 'turning' on her, the dragon put down the empty bottle, picked up and opened Dasher's full one, and shuffled away from him and turned around to rest on the sofa with the bottom of her shoes laying against the archer's formerly clean trousers.

Dasher just let her, rather than further aggravating his new friend. Instead of paying more attention to Banger, he pulled his feet back to put them on the ground and sat upright to level with Noelle. "So 'tarot'. You used that word at Fortune's Keep. Is that the same kind of 'tarot' you're talking about now?" Noelle didn't look up, but she nodded. "I see." After that, the room fell silent.

All the way until finally, Kris appeared in front of the door. He stood straight, with a mood not at all in tune with the awkward silence he trampled in on. He put his arms together behind his back and opened his mouth wide. Ralsei excitedly tiptoed after him, with a plate with a slice of brown cake in one hand, and a spoon with some of said cake in the other.

The glow of his cheeks was at odds in brightness with the fire that illuminated the house. His eyes were shot wide open and his hand was trembling a bit, too, as he brought the spoon to Kris' mouth and held it in place for him to close it around the spoon and peel off all the cake and eat it without lifting a finger. "So." he proceeded still with a spoonful of cake in his mouth. "Did I miss anything?"