A New Freyya (1/2)

One day, we see Haalfrin hunched in a chair, looking dirty and weary after a hard battle. Despite turning into a youngster again after he got his 6th Name, so much time has passed in this bloody war that he no longer looks like a child, but a hardened adult.

Even worse… Haalfrin himself feels through his soul link with Fisco that the man is growing old.

Haalfrin tries to ignore the inevitable, but eventually, a brand new Will pops up in Haalfrin's soul – Fisco's Will.

Almost immediately after that, Fisco's Arkin self is summoned to this side of the battlefield, and he joins as another one of Haalfrin's generals.

All in all, Fisco had led a long and prosperous life as the emperor of Brancotte; he had nearly a 2,000-year-long reign, and he left the world with countless children and a reliable heir.

It's a little unnerving to Haalfrin, realizing that he's been fighting for so long that someone close to his own age just aged to death. In Haalfrin's mind, he's only been alive to fight for this long because he's a 6th Gate mage, meaning that he has a longer lifespan.

(Even now, Haalfrin is unaware that Das's Blessing in his Dra Name has given him an unnaturally long life.)

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With Fisco now out of the picture, Haalfrin no longer has anyone outside of this battlefield to ask for the time.

Despite being able to estimate the time frame, it's impossible to tell for sure. With this barrier of Death Aura sealing this battlefield off, even the blue sky and sunlight are blocked off. The Death Aura is so thick that the entire land became a gloomy, barren twilight.

So, feeling emotionally drained, Haalfrin once again decides that he needs to go visit Freyya.

He drops by with his usual gifts, and he finds her just laying on pile of blankets and pillows, staring at the gloomy-looking sky. "You know Haalfrin, this place is starting to feel more like the Death Realm than the Death Realm itself. The Death Aura here is even denser."

"I know." He then looks at her, and she has a particular aura of lifelessness she didn't have before.

He sits down the drinks he brought, and he says, "OK Freyya. We need to have a talk."

She immediately gets nervous at his words. "Did I do something bad?"

"…What? No! Why would you think that?"

"Sorry," she apologizes, "That's usually what parents say to their children or spouses say to each other when they want to talk about something uncomfortable."

"Well…," Haalfrin starts to say, "… I don't know if this is going to be uncomfortable or not, but it needs to be said."

He leans in and says, "You've changed a lot. Your motivation to do anything has dropped. You don't read your books anymore, and you don't get excited as you talk about subjects you like. Tell me what's wrong. Is it because you've been here for too long away from your home?"

Oh… Freyya gets relieved when he says this. She thought he was going to say that she was doing something wrong, but he was just concerned for her. Aw…

Smiling now, Freyya flops over in her… nest… and looks up at him. "You know, after all these years, I never left this battlefield."

"…I know…?"

"Remember when I told you that the Death Aura is trapped here, and that my avatar will be here until the battle ends and the Aura dissipates?"

"Yes?" Haalfrin isn't sure where she's going with this.

"Well… You're not… Eh… How to say this." She pauses to think. "You don't know exactly how my avatar ability works. Hmm… Tell me what you know; I don't remember what I've told you over the years."

Haalfrin answers, "Your true body is still in the Death Realm. You split off little bits of yourself in order to go do your job in many places at once… That's it."

"Yes," Freyya nods, "But what you don't know is that my true body isn't in any form of contact with my avatars; I don't know what any of them are doing until they return to my main body. Do you get it now?"

"…No?"

"Huh…," she sighs. "That means that I've been away from my main body for thousands of years now. I haven't been splitting up and doing my job, since this self here is completely separated from my true self. I've spent most of my existence constantly getting a stream of new memories as my avatars come and go. However… since I, myself, am just an avatar that never made it back… I haven't been doing that."

She looks down with a strange, empty expression. "Spending so long being separated from my true body… It's uncomfortable. It feels weird to sit around in silence all day without doing my job. I don't feel whole. Yes. That's the best way to put it."

Haalfrin hears this and takes a deep breathe. Then, he abruptly gets up and leaves while saying, "I'll have to think on a few things."

After he hurries on out of there, Freyya crosses her arms and huffs unhappily. She was ABOUT to start expressing her feelings in depth, but he just left suddenly! Rude!

Still, her anger leaves her just as suddenly as it came. She knows him too well. She knows that he is a problem solver by nature. To him, sitting around and having one of those "feelings" talks doesn't fix anything.

While she just wanted to have someone to spill her feelings to, Haalfrin wants to find a way to stop her from feeling empty and bored inside, as if she were a leaky bucket that needed to be patched up.

Well, whatever. So long as she knows that he's not ignoring her, then that's good enough.

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The next day, Haalfrin knocks on Freyya's door with an annoyingly chipper attitude, and he has Faylin and Resburn behind him.

Freyya sees the two humans behind him, and she immediately slams the door.

"Oi Freyya!" Haalfrin calls while suppressing a laugh. "That's a little rude. You've shared cake with these people before."

"Go away."

"Freyya, I know you're embarrassed, but you're wasting away in there. I know you don't like people, but you need to change up your environment a little. Just a half an hour… please?"

Freyya slams her door open just as hard as she shut it, and she says with calm voice unbefitting her rough body language, "Oh, Haalfrin?"

Seeing his wife's unkempt appearance, Haalfrin looks away feeling guilty. He does know that she's one of those people who feels emotionally drained by being around others for too long…, yet she needs to feel that there are people available to her.

Everyone knows that one person who likes to be invited to social events, only for that person to turn them all down. Freyya is one of those people; she likes to feel wanted, but she doesn't like to see people.

To be fair, Freyya doesn't hate people as much as she claims – she just doesn't trust them. After all, she's always glad to spend hours on end with himself, so he KNOWS that she is actually a little extroverted at heart – finding solace in company.

Haalfrin then thinks about how she's demonized as a monster that feasts on the blood of the dead and causes war and suffering. Evidently, most people are afraid of her. Also, when she goes to collect souls, those who had died violently are usually extremely emotional and full of pain and anger. They often fight her and try to hurt her.

Now that Haalfrin thinks about it, the ONLY time she really sees people is when they're at their most hostile to her. (After all, this is the reason why she's the ONLY death reaper to carry a weapon with her to work. Sometimes, she literally has to fight for her own life and dignity because nobody likes her.)

Hence, when Freyya got a friend for the first time in Haalfrin, she brightened up and got really happy. She put a lot of effort into befriending him.

With this in mind, Haalfrin had reasoned that a lot of Freyya's depression will go away if she can make more friends.

So, he sits her down and calmly explains his reasoning to her. She's quite shocked to hear his thoughts, since she had never thought about this part of her, and she's convinced that it must be true. It FEELS true.

She's then a little touched that Haalfrin understood this, so she finally agrees to go out - only for a little bit, though!