Unwilling to Part

After many more years, Freyya and Nomad find themselves sitting in a drabby inn room. They're both sitting down on wooden chairs, and they both have their hands propped up on the table – as if they were at a business meeting.

"Do you have it ready?" Nomad asks Freyya.

She holds up a notebook full of fresh notes. "I have the ritual written down here," she reassures him.

"Are you sure the steps are written out so clearly that someone will understand it perfectly if they were to read it the first time?" he asks sternly.

After all, people's notes often make sense to themselves, but are complete gibberish to others. This is because most people take notes as simple reminders to themselves – not to teach others from the ground up.

"Yes, yes, you've asked me this a dozen times now!" Freyya rolls her eyes.

"Let me look," Nomad demands with an outstretched hand.

"What!? You don't trust me!? I'm better at taking notes than you!" Freyya actually sounds offended here.

"I just need to make sure that your notes aren't describing details that should remain confidential – all while listing the Ritual steps clear enough to follow."

Freyya concedes the point, since her companion knows better about what kind of details are dangerous, and which are benign. "Here…" she offers him sulkily.

Nomad looks over her notes for a few minutes, and he corrects very little. "Good," he says as he hands her notebook back to her. "Your Mantling Ritual is ready. I'll let you rest, so let's head out in the morning."

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The next morning, Nomad wakes up, then heads over to the room next door. "Freyya!" he pounds on her door. "It's time to leave! Have you eaten breakfast yet?"

There's no response.

Getting a bad feeling, Yiirkavar teleports in her room and finds her gone.

'No matter', he thinks while his silver eyes start burning brighter. 'I can just check what happened.'

While he stands in place, looking at the wall blankly, his eyes are off in a different time – earlier that morning, to be exact.

With his special eyes, Nomad sees Freyya get up earlier than usual and sneak out.

Feeling a little annoyed, Nomad teleports himself to 2 hours ago – the exact moment when Freyya was sneaking out of her room. "Going somewhere?" he asks her with his hands clasped behind his back.

"Ah! Nomad! I-it's good to see you!" she stammers out. "I'm not trying to sneak away, I promise!"

"Freyya… Didn't we talk about this already? You said that you'll leave with me back to your own home. Weren't you curious about that husband you don't remember?"

Freyya looks down and to the left. "Um… I've changed my mind. I don't want to go." Before Nomad can protest, she quickly adds, "The people in this world need help, Nomad! I've made too many friends here, and I can't just leave them behind!"

"You have friends in the other universe too!" Nomad wants to shout, but he barely raises his voice instead.

Freyya's eyes quiver, then her gaze hardens. Before he can do anything, Freyya raises her hand and smacks the God hard on the back of the head, knocking him out cold.

Before his body even hits the ground, Freyya runs down the hall and disappears.

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"Uuuhh…." Yiirkavar groans painfully once he wakes up on the floor. "This girl…"

He can't quite bring himself to be angry at the young goddess. She's a very caring person, and they HAVE spent a few decades here. Plus, the first few years of your memory always makes the biggest impression on your soul, which means that the people she's met and the things she's lived through here have left a deep imprint on her.

From Freyya's point of view, she's right to feel terrified about leaving; it's a one way trip away from everything she knows and cares about.

Nomad understands her fears, so he decides to forget that she just clobbered him on the head earlier.

'Still, it kind of hurts that she took advantage of that weakness I told her earlier… Oh well. She's just a child. The wiser and more mature one should always forgive the youngsters after a good talking-to."

---------------------

Given his ability to look through time with his eyes and move through it with his feet, he could have easily gotten up, then confronted Freyya right after she stormed out of the room. Sure, it would be a little awkward with another, past version of himself lying unconscious on the ground…

'Never mind that,' he thinks, 'I'll give her some time to cool her head. Then, I'll talk to her.'

The man calmly walks out of the room and follows down the path that he knows she took half an hour earlier.

When he reaches the end of this path, the sun has already reached high into the sky. "Of course she's here," Yiirkavar smiles.

Rehkin never existed on Drakavar's home world, so Freyya attracted a lot of trouble because of her Crow wings and strong spiritual powers. The local tyrants were trying to kidnap her for various reasons, and she had her own fair share of insane wizards trying to dissect her. Many of the locals even thought she was a monster.

The first people in this universe to really accept her were a young couple living in this very same cottage. Freyya became completely attached to these people, and they treated her like a daughter.

(Since Rehkin have very smooth, almost baby-like skin, and since they're shorter than humans, they mistook her for someone much younger than them. Freyya was missing a lot of memories, so she was acting much like a kid too.)

Nomad knows this very well, so he tries to be understanding of her frustrating behavior right now.

---------------------

Sure enough, Nomad opens the door to find Freyya sitting at a table with one hand zealously clutching a wooden tankard of alcohol. She's frothing at the mouth and passed out – dead drunk.

"I'm sorry you had to see her like this, Mr. Nomad," the lady of the house (now a middle-aged woman) says.

"No worries," he smiles tiredly as he steps forward to bring Freyya away.

"Freyya was talking about leaving this world forever. Do you know what that's about?" the woman asks with concern.

"…She has people waiting for her, and she has an important task that can save her people. It would be utterly irresponsible for me to bring her here and then not bring her back out."

He looks down at Freyya and rolls his eyes again. "Here. I'll fix that for you." He puts a hand on her shoulders and uses his Time powers on her.

The next moment, Freyya gasps in shock, and her mind becomes clear. "Nomad! I thought I was drunk?"

Seeing her comical yelp, Nomad chuckles. "Heh… Your body would've sobered up in a few hours, so I just bumped your body forward in time to then."

Before Freyya can escape from him again, Nomad kneels on the ground and looks her in the eyes. "Come on. You said you wanted to help the people of this world, right? Didn't you say that you felt sorry for that little golden eyed girl?"

Freyya nods vigorously.

"Well, very, very far in the future, that girl is going to destroy the universe… But you already know this. We saw it together."

Freyya nods some more.

"You also saw that general leading the god's army. He's your husband."

"But he gets destroyed! My mantling Ritual can't stop that!" Freyya cries out.

"No… but if everything works out, we may be able to at least save the black dragon from her insanity... and the universe too." He stands up and gestures to the door. "Come on. Everyone's waiting for you back in your own universe."

Freyya wipes her watery eyes, and she follows him out the door.

Before she knows it, they're both teleported to the Edge of Nowhere again, Freyya was still quietly sobbing – even as they both jump off the cliff and into the Yiirkala's Realm of Impossibilities.

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One second, Freyya's eyes were red from crying, but the second they leave this universe, the tears disappear, and her face goes calm.

"Yiirkavar?" she says, startled. "Why are we leaving already? Don't we need to find Drakavar's Timeline and make the Mantling Ritual?"

"We already did," Yiirkavar nods. He pulls a notebook out of his pocket. "Here. You've written it all down here."

"But… I don't remember writing this!" Freyya exclaims.

"We're done here," Yiirkavar frowns. "Follow after me, and remember to never let go of my hand."

Freyya sighs, "You've told me this a million times."

"Well! Prepare for the long trip back to your universe!"

"Oh! One more thing," Yiirkavar adds. "Time doesn't exist in this dimension, so when we get you back home, no time will have passed."

"All right, let's just get moving," Freyya shudders. "This place gives me the creeps."

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-Sometime after Freyya gets back to conventional reality-

Soon after Freyya gets back, she sends a dream over to her Soul Fragment on the world Arra – the one who was stuck with Haalfrin during his long war.

In this dream, Freyya tells her fragment/avatar about what she's been up to, and that she's finished a new Mantling Ritual – this time, one that won't be messed up by anyone.

Of course, her Avatar is ecstatic to hear this, so she rushes to tell Haalfrin the good news (albeit, indirectly).

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It was actually the day that Haalfrin advanced his Fel name that Freyya's avatar chose to tell her husband the good news.

She had barged into his room, congratulated him on his success, then shared a bottle of wine with him. They then had a brief talk about how long this war is going to last.

When Haalfrin is getting horrified about the war lasting over 10,000 years already, Freyya reassures him by saying, "Don't worry. I've been working on some plans for you to die in battle."

"Oh? What are they?" he had asked.

She puts a finger on her chin thoughtfully. "I can't tell you too much right now, but I can tell you SOMETHING at least."

She suddenly thinks of something which made her anxious, so she quickly downs Haalfrin's wine as well in a few gulps.

After coughing for a moment, she says, "Remember our wedding, and how I said that it was a Mantling ritual?"

She spends a second reminding him what a Mantling Ritual is.

"Frankly, this war is a Mantling Ritual too…," she starts confessing to Haalfrin about how she tried using this war to kill Haalfrin off. Alas, that Ritual had ended in failure because of Das.

She then gives Haalfrin a thumbs up. "Don't worry, though. I've filled in the gaps of what I should've known about Drakavar, so the next Mantling Ritual I'll attempt, it'll work splendidly!"

"What was it you learned about Drakavar?" Haalfrin is really curious now.

"Hmmm… No. The event I'll be Mantling requires you to not know too much." In reality, she doesn't know much herself. All she really has is a list of instructions that they both have to faithfully follow.

She can't exactly tell him that, though, since Yiirkavar made her swear to keep their little adventure a secret. Plus, she can't exactly explain the land of Nowhere without hurting people's brains.

"Why?" Haalfrin really doesn't like answers being dangled in front of his nose.

To this, Freyya rolls her eyes. "Oh, the warrior you'll be Mantling didn't know what led up to his death, or what the result of his last battle was."

This, Haalfrin can understand. "I see. Nobody knows exactly when they're going to die," Haalfrin concedes.

"Yes, so if I tell you to do something, just trust me and do it."

…