What were surprise meetings but centuries-long conspiracies commissioned by parties who had never met you even once in person? One could say that about gods, fate, arranged marriages, and an archenemy’s traps.

Once, two hundred years ago, there was a resplendent castle with a courtyard garden blooming with seven colors, filled with plants that shouldn’t exist in this world. It was an oasis in the demons’ realm — the down_realm — where everything was either black or red, but for Poly, it was an oasis not for the colors, but the sincere and steady company of her guardian and benefactor.

A little bit more company than just one other person would have been great, though. She should be happy that it was just her and her master, but wasn’t there something wrong if they had such a huge castle, yet there were only the two of them to live in it?

This morning, she took on the armor of a royal knight, styling her hair gold like her master’s. She styled her face to have scars like a true knight, and she kept the helmet off to show them off.

She patrolled the titans’ halls and found no one. She went to the dragons’ throne room and her queen wasn’t there. There’s only one place she’d be, really, she thought. Going outside and standing on the top of the steps, she surveyed the garden and spotted her queen standing on an arched bridge over a shallow stream.

As always, she carried a parasol; as always, she relied on a cane. She was a legend to everyone, but to Poly, all she saw was someone waiting for someone who would never come.

She went down the steps and hurried to her master’s side. She stopped behind her, however, as she couldn’t bear to stand beside her as if they were equal, and now all she saw was her master’s back, just as she always had.

Her master didn’t even turn her head, continuing to watch the stream flow under the bridge. Donning a brown dustcoat that matched the wood of the bridge, she seemed older than she should be.

“What’s the hurry?” her master said. She looked over her shoulder, glancing at Poly. “And why are you in that? It’s just us for miles around.”

“Apologies, master,” Poly replied. Her armor melted away into a dustcoat like her master’s. Her scar-filled face distorted like a mirage; what used to be the face of a veteran turned into a head wrapped in bandages.

“After all,” she explained herself, “one must imagine a surprise attack at any moment. The fish in the stream, for example, could actually be power-leveled assassins trained by the Koi Sect to take us out.”

Her master bowed her head and hid a snort. “I didn’t expect that.” She paused, looking back up after a while and leaning on the bridge’s railing. “Reminds me of someone.”

Ah, here we go again. “Him again, master?”

Her master chuckled. “‘Again’? You must be tired of me by now. I’m not forcing you to stay here, you know? You can leave me and have your own adventures. I’m not very interesting anymore, anyway.”

Poly sighed and shook her head. “Master, you’re not even a hundred years old.” In the perspective of this world, her master was still just an infant child. “And it goes without saying, I owe you my life and at least a thousand hours’ worth of crochet projects — ah, speaking of!”

She reached into her pouch and approached her master. Without waiting for her to turn around, she gently slid a hair clip into place. Stepping away, she admired the big new flower on her master’s head. Her master reached up and touched it.

“I listen to your stories after all, master,” Poly proudly said.

“Thank you, Poly.” She touched the flower a little more. “Oh, a new pattern. Interesting.”

Poly’s heart fluttered from the acknowledgement of her efforts, but as her master’s hand came back down and the person herself returned to water-watching, Poly felt the void of this place more and more.

“Master,” she called out, “why don’t we invite others here? How about your previous party?”

“He will come,” her master said … and Poly didn’t like that at all. Over and over, she always said it: “He will come” — but when? When decades had passed, what could it be other than a vague hope? And from her master’s stories, she could only think that her master was being willfully blind to all the things wrong about that man.

Her master was only hurting herself. “What if he doesn’t?” Poly said. Her master didn’t reply, and for a moment, she wondered if she’d crossed a red line.

“You doubt him,” her master finally said. Poly didn’t know whether to be relieved that she didn’t say ‘You doubt me’ instead.

“I haven’t heard a single story where he actually tried to make you happy,” Poly continued. She kept her voice steady and low, careful not to sound as if she was a rebel aiming to crush her master’s wishes. “There’s always so much death and violence when it comes to him. He’s such a good fit for the red sky of this realm that I can’t see why you would try to find happiness in someone whose care is no match for yours.”

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She thought people ought to match with their equals. The ones who were kind ought to match with those who were kind, and those who weren’t ought to suffer at each other’s hands and words. Such starkly different worlds ought to be separated, just like the down_realm was from the UpRealm — then everyone would be assured that everyone acted in a way each other understood.

“Come here for a moment,” her master said, shifting her feet, suggesting for Poly to come rest by the railing. The young demon was hesitant to do so, but she approached, compromising and turning around instead, resting her back on the railing so they weren’t watching the same thing. What was so interesting about watching a stream anyway?

“The first time he tried to kill me” —

“There was a first time?” Poly couldn’t help but interrupt. She’d always thought her master had a big heart, but forgiving someone who’d tried to kill her was on another level to what she’d known.

Her master chuckled. “He did end up killing me — or, my first form, anyway.”

“You have forms?”

“Poly.”

She cleared her throat. “Right.”

Her master sighed. “He didn’t have anything left to fight me with when I brought out my second form. Even so, he faced me.”

Poly didn’t find the courage to be anything special, and she knew it shouldn’t be anything special to her master either. If this is the reason why she fell for him…

“I was a little bit impressed, but it wasn’t the first time I’d seen it.”

Oh, thank Enthusia. “So what happened?”

“He was harmless at that point, so I decided to interrogate him. I found out what I wanted. I was right about to kill him, but then he said something about pineapples on pizzas.”

Her master broke into laughter. It spooked her.

“M-master?”

“S-sorry. I-it’s just” — she crouched down, her figure obscured by the parasol, though Poly could tell she was shaking.

“Are you okay? Master?”

She stood up again after a while. “I’m fine.” She took a deep breath. “I can’t believe I almost killed him over it. No, I couldn’t kill him because of it. If I couldn’t get my point across with words, it didn’t matter if I killed him; my pride would be permanently scarred. But thanks to that…” Her voice had become soft at the end there. “Have you ever encountered a stranger, and within five minutes, you’re talking about each other’s life stories?”

Poly wasn’t so sure about that. The only hand she remembered was her master’s. “I don’t think I can say so.”

Her master almost looked at her, granting her the side view of a kind smile. “When you meet someone like that, it’s hard to just watch them die.” She paused. “I wanted to know what makes him so strange. I kept him alive, set him down the Forest of Echoes” —

The Forest of Echoes?! ‘Keep him alive’ and ‘Forest of Echoes’ didn’t belong together at all!

Poly had only seen that magic once. It forced someone to navigate a maze projected by their own mind. The more stubborn they were, the harder the walls and the less of a chance there was even a way out at all. In the worst case scenario, the victim would be perpetually led to believe that they were getting closer to the exit … when they’d only been going in circles all along.

— “and when we met again the next day” —

He got through that?…

— “I was happy to see him. He wasn’t, though.”

“I don’t think anyone would after you do something like that to them, master.”

That besides, Poly was beginning to connect the dots. Someone who could emerge from the Forest of Echoes on their own wasn’t any ordinary person.

Still, that didn’t take away the fact that he hadn’t been attentive to her master at all.

“After that, we had a follow-up fight,” her master continued. “He apologized to me when he realized I wasn’t trying to kill him anymore.” She giggled. “Told me maybe he’d try pineapple on pizza at least once.”

Despite her master’s cozy recollections, Poly frowned under her bandages. They might be in Amatoria now, but she still remembered how power worked — how it was brutal and absolute, turning everyone into a sycophant to avoid its tune.

Thus, there was only one reason that man ever apologized: “Because you could have killed him at any time.”

“And how could you think of that?” Her master shook her head. “Because we learned about each other, and he stopped seeing me as a monster. He was the first to do so for me.”

That wasn’t something Poly could believe. “People can’t change that easily.”

“Yet he did.”

“He didn’t change for you that whole time.”

“He felt he could not.”

It hurt Poly inside, but she didn’t show it. All she saw was her master clinging onto a bad fruit, acting more like a maiden of bad decisions than a living hero of legend. There was nothing more she wanted than to see her master be at her happiest — to let go of the past if that’s what she needed.

“He could not,” her master continued, “because our world only allowed bad decisions and worse decisions. Without knowing any better, he gambled on an experiment, and that experiment failed.” She looked up to the sky. “But now we’re free. Now, the world is on our side, and when he realizes it, he’ll become someone I will not recognize.”

Her master turned to look at her, eyes glistening. “With or without me by his side,” she said, a small smile forming, “all I want to see is him moving forward and living the best life he could.”

It was a difficult emotion for Poly to watch. On her master’s face were a smile, tears, and a lonely expression. Why did it have to be that combination? Why should her master become a martyr? What was this situation where she wanted the same for her master as her master did for that man?

People can’t change that easily. In time, she thought, her master will open her eyes and see that no such person exists who can subvert their natural wiring.

***

That time came sooner than she had hoped.

Two hundred years had passed since that conversation. The throne chamber was dim, and Enthusia’s statue on the one end was blindfolded with a rag. On the opposite side was an armored figure bound to the throne in chains. Spikes adorned the shoulders of their gray-stained armor. The flickering lights of braziers on either side cast the spikes into large thorny shadows on the walls.

Poly approached them, walking up the torn velvet carpet. She kept her face obscured under a hood, unfolding her black wings and splaying them on the ground as she took a knee before her queen. The armored figure squirmed in response, rattling their chains, but saying no words.

“I will see to it, my queen,” Poly said. She bitterly clenched their teeth. “I will bring him here. Unfailingly.”

When she heard the chains rattle, she got up, and without sparing a single glance towards her queen, she headed out of the chamber. The day had come to end her master’s waiting; the day had come to prove, once and for all, that there was no escaping vicious cycles — that it wasn’t worth hoping for even one second for someone to climb out of a deep, dark pit. To do so was just to burn oneself for nothing.

The armored figure could do nothing, watching Poly leave the chamber.