Separate void for the blocks

The gold in her hair, her skin, her everything, is gone.

Pearl didn’t realize it’d leave her. Didn’t realize it could.

It made more than enough sense it would.

And it… helps.

No one really recognizes her, not enough, without the Gold and Light that shone from within her. Without her armour and steady protective presence. Without her sword.

No one looks at her and thinks Hero.

So it helps.

Because no one asks questions about where they are.

Don’t connect the traveling Fighter-Merchant-Villager-Unknown with brown hair and long features to Sain— to a Hero.

It also helps that she's left most of the areas she’d previously traveled far behind.

The towns and villages she’d previously saved.

The lands, claimed, that she can still feel curious and reaching up to her, trying to figure her out. The unclaimed ones sing louder. Pearl tries avoiding those. Until it’s too hard, because even across miles they sing. Until it’s too hard because she can feel the other Lords’ claims in the earth and land, and they don’t like her, ranging from the sensation of spikes on a closed gate armed with Soldiers to an impersonal “you aren’t supposed to be here, don’t try anything.” sort of warning.

She moves around a lot because of it.

The traveling isn’t even an issue. Pearl’s always done that.

Getting work is different. Needing to go and ask around.

Try and learn her changed limitations without letting on they have changed. She’s still stronger than the average Villager, still has all her muscles built up from over the years, but she feels weak. No longer as strong or fast or agile as she used to be.

She’s known that since carrying his body back though.

Pearl travels. Further and further away. Picking up odd jobs, trying not to give herself away. What she was. What she isn’t.

People make assumptions, and thankfully she hasn’t run into an Identifier yet. She’s not sure what they’d even see. But no one she talks to, picks up jobs from, has guessed correctly. Most of them seem to think she’s a Fighter, or a Guard, maybe a Villager.

Pearl still comes off as strange. Most of the time it’s fine. She stays in the area for a bit then leaves.

Most of the time.

Some places are more wary of strange travelers than others. Especially lone ones. Ones who keep their arm covered and seem to feel too much.

It’s… easier to travel with a group because of it.

Pearl doesn’t have as much experience with traveling with groups, but she’s protected them before, helped see merchants back to safety after they’re attacked, almost similar things. She tries to stay with merchants and travelers instead of adventures.

Adventures go after monsters.

And Pearl’s learned since the first group of adventures she’d joined briefly.

Smaller monsters aren’t as bad. Determined Villagers can take one or two of those down by themselves. Far off, isolated villages and houses have dealt with them without calling for a Guard or Soldier. No one questions a traveler with experience in killing smaller monsters.

Almost no Destinies believe they can take something like a group of orc’s on by themselves.

Merchants and traveling groups are safer, choosing to avoid monsters as much as possible.

Even if it feels like another failure on her part.

--

Pearl’s traveling with a trader group at the moment.

Scar, a Merchant who she still hasn’t learned if his name was a coincidence or taken on after getting the numerous scars he wears with a half pride and contradictory attractiveness, apparently sells all sorts of items and kickbacks across most of the northern parts of the continent. Some he makes, some his community makes, some he "acquires" while on the road (though Pearl’s fairly certain the pause and off note he uses is more finding things in ditches and less theft than otherwise implied), and some he buys in one town and sells in another for a higher markup while claiming it’s less.

With the owner of Trader Scar’s Wares and Relics!* (*returns not accepted) comes Grian, a mischievous, wickedly intelligent man who’d only dropped the dramatized secrecy around his Destiny after their second town together when he’d gotten into a fight with another Villager over fishing tactics and they had been shortly kicked out, and Gem, “the Guard for these idiots” and a sharp ginger who comfortably both weaves flower crowns for the group and sharpens a very nice looking sword in the same seat of the wagon. Pearl’s seen her lure rabbits out of the brush to pet and later on gut (hopefully) different ones without blinking.

They're… good. Nice and welcoming, but they don't ask her too many questions, don't push the questions she gives vague to no answers about. They don't ask about her Destiny. Keep a spot open by the campfire but don't push for her to join, at least not too much (especially after she makes soup for the group one night). Pearl still picks up the occasional job in the village or town they pass through, but sometimes on larger jobs she’s not alone, Grian or Gem usually joining her as another set of hands. They talk and joke and bring her in on information and stories all of them already know. Little things that add up over time. Piece by piece building up who they are, who they got here. The group asks her opinions on travel plans and doesn't say anything about how she constantly votes in favor of continuing to move, of going north, or really any direction but south, though they never seem to stray too far that direction to begin with. Only dipping south occasionally and never far enough she does anymore than tense a bit, keeps her head down a bit further and her ears open a bit more.

She asks them about it one day, while they’re traveling three times the distance to a village to the north-east rather than the one a little to the south.

“Oh, Gem’s banished from nearly every other land-holding all south of Vervain.” Scar answers easily, and Grian snickers even as the red-headed Guard smacks him solidly in the arm.

“Huh?” Pearl says before her brain catches up to her mouth. Banishing a Guard was rare, too useful to want to get rid of, but not as important as to stir up trouble. Usually. And Gem was a nice person.

“I took care of idiots.” Gem retorts, crossing her arms with a roll of her eyes. “It's just sometimes those idiots had friends with greater Destinies or had greater Destinies themselves.” And was then banished for enough of them, is the unspoken part. That… that actually makes a lot of sense.

“She also burned down a palace.” Grain adds, dodging another smack as he grins gleefully.

“I burned down a dungeon.” Gem corrects. “The palace was not my fault. How was I supposed to know they made the thing out of wood?!” She complains hotly, and that is a rather stupid building material for a palace.

Pearl doesn’t question why or how Gem was in the dungeon in the first place. Not sure how sensitive that story was. She lets the group tell her the stories they want, not asking questions about the loose threads and half-tangents, and they don’t ask questions of her. It’s a good arrangement. One that might even last a full season if she’s lucky.

They’re a good merchant group to travel with. But it’s not like Pearl expects it to last.

It won’t.

And that’s fine.

--

The world is gold and green when Pearl turns fifteen.

The moon almost full as she sneaks out of the house to go meet up with her friend, her best friend to finally tell him her Destiny. The light revealing everything even if she hasn’t needed it for a long time.

Sausage is practically vibrating when she arrives by the lake, instantly bursting into motion and words when he catches “sight” of her. He says it’s like an awareness, the land, his land, passing back small sensations occasionally. Something he just knows as a Lord, even if he isn’t the lord-Lord of the land just yet.

“Happy birthday! Well not just yet, but it’s really close and you sure you don’t want to be back with your parents for this?” He says, arms spread wide then suddenly retracted as he overthinks things. Rapid speech falling out his mouth like he’d been practicing over and over what to say and then immediately forgot. “Not that I don’t want you here! It’s super amazing and I’m really excited to see you and be here! It’s just parents and I know they’ve been super excited and worried and I’m pretty sure it’s because of your Destiny, and we can technically meet up later, but you’re the birthday girl and also I really can’t argue that much, everyone knows my Destiny but not yours, and it means so much that you’re finally, I don’t mean that in a bad way, showing me, and I promise I don’t care, you’re my Best Friend, I hope you know that. But yeah just so many congratulations and happy birthday, and you sure you want to be here when it comes in?” He ends with, half breathless, and Pearl laughs. Grinning at him bright and glowing.

“I told you, I already got my Destiny, just haven’t been able to do anything with it yet!” She says brightly, almost laughing. “My parents already know, and I was born closer to morning so I’ll be back home when my powers come in.” Pearl had wanted to tell Sausage first though. Have him be the first person to find out other than her parents, and technically it is her birthday now so her promise to not show or tell anyone until now is up.

“So yours does come with powers?” Sausage asks, eager and curious and ever so slightly vibrating with the suspense.

Pearl grins at him, teasing just a bit, but she’s waited years to tell someone.

Also his anticipation is hilarious.

“Yup.” She smirks, trying to hold back her wide grin a bit, but she’s just so excited.

“Aw, come on Pearl, tell me! What is it?” Sausage whines, bouncing on his toes, and she laughs again.

“Alright, fine.” She says, but she’s grinning too much for it to come across as anything but the same eagerness as him.

She rolls up her sleeve and turns her arm, her Destiny, towards him.

“I’m a Hero.” Pearl tells him as Sausage stares, blue eyes gone wide in wonder and awe, at the black lettered word written across her arm.

--

Pearl stares at the small spot of smoke slowly drifting over the horizon and can’t bring herself to look away even as one of the others joins her on the edge of the road.

“Uh, Pearl, you good?” Gem asks, and her throat is too tight. Everything is too tight. “What’cha looking at?” She squints in the same direction Pearl continues staring in. Her brow furrows. A slight frown appearing as she shields her eyes from the rising sun.

“Hey G!” She calls back to their camp, turning away from the smoke.

“What?” Grian yells back.

“Come here, I need your eyes for a sec!”

“What?” There’s more confusion in his voice now, a false aggravation over it.

“Come on! You’ve got the best vision out of the three of us and I want to know if I’m right!” Gem demands. She’d go and drag him back with her if he didn’t come. The smoke curls lazily up into the air and Pearl’s chest hurts.

“Ugh! Fine!” Someone stomps through the bit of brush and then across the dirt road behind her.

Grian’s sandy hair appears in the corner of her vision.

“What am I looking at?” He asks.

“There.” Gem directs, pointing towards the not-so thin line of smoke that’s still there. “North-northwest, past the third hill.”

There’s a few couple of seconds as he follows her finger, scanning the area, but it's not many before he sees the smoke and Grian hisses.

“Crumbly biscuits.” He swears. “That’s a lot of smoke, Gem.” He says it so matter-of-fact. “And I don’t like the look of it one bit.”

“What’s going on?” Scar asks walking up to join them. A little behind, not in her vision.

“Smoke,” Gem answers with a nod outwards across the forested hills, “coming from the area of that village north-west of here.”

“A lot of smoke.” Grian’s lips thin. “Doesn’t look like it’s spreading either.”

“Guess we’re heading right at the next fork then.” Scar’s voice is even, normal. “Good catch Gem!” He adds upbeat, like a spoon of honey for after a child falls out of a tree. Pearl stares at the smoke, all that remains of a fire apart from the still smouldering embers.

“Not me. Pearl caught it.” Gem shakes her head. “I can only just barely make it out.” She doesn’t sound upset really. Despite the frown.

“Ah! Well good catch Pearl then!” Scar says brightly, mostly cheerful. If she stares hard enough she can begin to guess at the size of the village. Where the houses were. Their shapes. What was planted in the fields they most likely had.

Little plumes of various greys curling up into the air to disappear or twine into the larger gathering. Not enough wind to take the last bit of evidence away. Not enough wind to have alerted her earlier.

“Pearl?” Scar asks. Concerned. Grian watching her more than the smoke. Gem’s turned away fully. Facing her.

“They burned a village.” She says. Eyes still locked on the trailing smoke. She should have been there.

“Yeah. They did.” Gem’s voice is softer. Her arm burns. “We’ll report it at our next stop. Make a mark at the crossroads too.” Her arm doesn’t burn.

“We’re not going there.” It comes out as a statement when it should be a question. She could help.

“No. We aren’t going that way.” Grian answers, voice careful but sure. Certain there's nothing to be done, which, he’s right, isn't he? She can’t help, can she.

Pearl isn’t a Hero.

--

Pearl travels across the lands giving help wherever she can, wherever she can reach, wherever she can see.

The glow of her aura, her light, reflecting back from the joy on every person’s face. The relief and hope.

Here comes a Hero. It says. We’re saved, blessed. There’s a Hero to protect us.

Sausage laughs when she comes back and tells him, still beaming as she recounts the mini-festivals and feasts and welcome any and every single town and village she passed through gave.

“Of course they celebrated.” He says, eyes bright and beaming back at her. “Pearl, you’re like the sun. Everyone else is just sunflowers turning your way.” He’s grinning but honest, and Pearl smacks him lightly, rolling her eyes.

“I am a Moon, thank you very much!” She retorts, hand over her chest, still grinning back at her best friend.

Honestly she thinks she’s the sunflower in this scenario.

Ridding lands of its toxins. Feeding people seeds of hope. Providing somewhere safe from them to grow.

Always following the light.

Golden face lifted up towards it.

--

“Do you want to come back with us?”

It’s Scar who makes the offer.

“What?” Pearl says, half startled from her routine of counting out her few coins and other moneys she has now after this round of buying, selling, and trading services and goods in the medium sized town as their small group heads out the gates and back out onto the road.

“To Hermiton, our village.” Scar continues, face open and curious but idle. “Winter is going to start settling in further and ‘Zuma likes it if we at least check in before some of the pathways snow over.” He says, walking next to them with Pudding on a lead instead of driving the cart like normal.

“What?” She repeats. Feeling… lost. Like she should understand what Scar’s saying, but she doesn’t. As if in parallel the land underneath them… pulses, a Lord’s claim on it thin but steady, and Pearl represses the twitch of a grimace. The urge to rub her chest, or stick her hands into the dirt and grass and dig her fingers into them.

“You should come back with us to Hermiton.” Grian pipes up, clarifying, solidifying really, Scar’s offer. “Winter’s suck for traveling, even if Scar sometimes takes week trips out to some of the nearby places when the weather’s not it’s normal terrible.” He adds.

“Oh, it’s not that bad.” Scar denies in that almost-scam tone of voice that either means the person is getting the worst deal imaginable or Scar actually completely believes what he’s saying. “You just hate the cold G.”

“It’s kind of bad.” Gem tells her under the beginnings of Grian and Scar arguing, head tilted towards Pearl as she walks next to her. “Not to put you off, or say you shouldn’t come, I think you’d like the place, but it does get very snowy so we do need to start heading back properly now before the better roads close.” She continues her aside as the other two fight.

“Uh huh.” Pearl says teasingly doubtful. Mostly. She is paying partial attention to Scar and Grian’s argument over what constitutes “workable” road conditions and isn’t so sure she’d take Scar’s side.

“It’s nice! And most people don’t travel during winter anyway so trade and such goes down a lot.” Gem argues lightly. “But Hermiton is great so you should come back with us instead of staying in some other place.” Insistent that she knows exactly what the best option is, no questions asked.

“You sure you can just invite random people back for the winter?” Pearl asks with a quirked eyebrow and half smile instead of giving any answer. Winter can last awhile, especially up in the north and with how the others are talking about things. It’s one thing to travel with someone for a couple months, but to let them in your village, your home…

Pearl stops following that line of thought.

“X doesn’t turn anyone away.” Grian says, shaking his head as he cuts off his and Scar’s argument like they’d never been having one. “Not unless they try to hurt someone.”

X had to be the head of the village then, Pearl thinks she’s heard the name tossed around before. 

“Come on. Come back with us.” Gem urges, now walking backwards in front of Pearl as she pleads her case. “We’re in a valley so the mountains keep a lot of the really harsh weather out, and there’s a lake that usually freezes over once temperatures drop and stay cold enough. The village itself is small but everyone’s super friendly, or they will be because you’re a good person and all, and there are a couple nearby other places so it’s not some super isolated creepy mountain village. And I want to show you my house and you’d get along great with some of the others, so pleeease?” She draws out the last word watching Pearl with big green hopeful eyes. If the paths weren’t so taken care of she would be in danger of tripping. She still might if she keeps walking backwards when they hit the more dirt and gravel roads.

Pearl’s going to need to reply soon, but she can’t quite get the words out. Gem just keeps staring at her expectantly but still patient, and Grian and Scar are watching her as well almost exactly the same, but she doesn’t know how to respond. Can only redirect for so long.

“Join us for winter, Pearl!” Scar says, open and grinning but something else in his eyes that’s maybe familiar— “Hermiton’s great this time of year!” — but she shouldn’t feel recognition at. She should be fine on her own. Is fine on her own. Winter would be no different from any other time, and if it started getting too hard to travel she could always go back south…

“So? You coming?” Grian asks expectantly, standing next to the crossroad’s signs.

“Ok.”

--

“Sausage!” Pearl calls, already grinning, one hand raised as he turns from the market stall entrance.

“Pearl!” Her best friend responds, abandoning the stall owner he’d been talking with and racing towards her. “You’re back!” He’s hugging her before he even stops moving, knowing Pearl won’t let them fall. She’d been prepared for it and dropped her bag the moment he started running.

“Course I’m back!” She says, hugging him back just as tight (and not any tighter, she doesn’t want to break his bones), and grinning brightly. “Your birthday’s tomorrow. I’m not going to miss it two years in a row!” She’d really tried getting back last year on time, but two separate horned rabbit migrations, a group of orcs harassing a village, and a few smaller incidents, and she’d been a month late and deeply apologetic, not that Sausage would hear it.

“According to trader news you were practically on the other side of the continent dealing with a dragon.” Sausage says as he steps back, checking her over “subtly” for injuries, and she waves a hand.

“Trader news.” She says dismissively despite her grin. “Bunch of gossip, is what it is.” Sausage squints at her suspiciously and her grin widens.

“I don’t know. They’re pretty accurate about the basics at least.” Sausage says slowly and she hums noncommittedly. 

“If you say so.” She says indifferently, before switching tones. “Anyway, when I was down fighting that black dragon near the coast of Azemela I picked something up for you.” Pearl tells him as she grabs his gift out of her bag.

“Wait, you what?” Sausage starts just before she shoves the scaled armour at him with a grin.

“Happy 25th birthday, Soos!” She says grinning and throwing an arm over his shoulders, mainly so it’s harder for him to start hitting her.

“Pearl!” Sausage yells at her, and she finally gives in to the laughter that’s been building in her chest since she saw him. “Pearl, this isn’t funny! What do you mean you fought a full grown black dragon by yourself!” She can’t really help it. He hasn’t even noticed exactly what he’s holding just yet. She tugs the armour up with the hand over his shoulder and he instinctively looks down briefly. Then does a double take. Eyes widening.

“Why are you giving me dragon scale armour?!” Sausage cries, before he pauses, some thought occurring to him with a minor amount of horror attached considering the way he snaps his focus back to her.

“Pearl, did you kill a dragon for me?!” And Pearl laughs harder at his expression and the way his voice has pitched up. “Pearl?!”

“N-no!” She’s laughing too much. “No, it really was causing issues with some of the nearby towns. I didn’t just go and hunt down a dragon to make you armour, Soos.” Pearl says soothingly, before pausing as she thinks over that idea. “I could, if you wanted. Maybe for nex—” “No!” Sausage cuts her off vehemently and she forces herself not to start laughing again. “No putting yourself in danger by hunting down dragons that aren’t bothering anyone!” She was mostly teasing, and she wouldn’t be in too much danger hunting down a dragon. “I love the armour, thank you very much, I do not need anything else!” He says quickly and a little frantic.

“Well, let me know if you change your mind.” She says grinning, both teasing and honest. 

“Trust me, I’m not going to.” Sausage says shaking his head, still a bit wary. It’s not like she’s going to go running off to kill a dragon all of a sudden. For one there aren’t any around here, and two it’s Sausage’s birthday tomorrow and she’s home finally.

“Come on! Let’s go see what’s for dinner and I’ll catch you up on things!” Pearl says, swinging around to head towards Sausage’s manor-palace and dragging him along with her. She has more stories than the dragon to tell him, but she’s also starving.

God, it was great to be home.

--

“—and there’s Mumbo of course, he’s the friend I told you about who blew up part of the mountain.” Grian’s talking as the wagon makes its way through autumn-turning-winter trees.

“I remember that story.” Pearl says. “And you said it was an accident?” She squints at the man currently naming all of the “Hermits” with little anecdotes of who they are, what they do for the tiny deep-mountain community.

Grian shrugs.

“He says he was experimenting with lightning and then a bunch of Mumbo Jumbo about the actual experiment. I don’t remember that part.” He says waving a hand.

“Except when you needed it to play a prank on Doc.” Gem adds from her spot back the back of the wagon.

“We don’t talk about that prank anywhere Doc can hear, Gem!” Grian rushes out, eyes scanning over their surroundings in quick flickering motions. “You know he still doesn’t know it was me!” He hisses nervously.

“Are we getting close?” Pearl asks confused, tilting her head to look around at the woods they’re passing through.

“Not yet, sorry.” Grian responds quickly, before going back to scanning things over.

“Doc’s the resident… one of the resident mad scientists.” Gem corrects herself in the middle of her sentence. “Also Grian’s paranoid.” She adds matter-of-factly and Grian starts talking again before she says anything else and disparages him more.

“Anyway, after Mumbo we also have Cub who’s Scar’s best-friend-fellow-cult-member—”

“Cub and I were never in a cult together!” Scar interjects from the driver's seat.

“—basically-childhood-friend-minus-the-childhood-part, Cleo who is more terrifying than she looks and— Hey did we ever get confirmation on if they killed that Demon King or no?” Grian asks, and Pearl blinks. Who did what now?

“I don’t ask them stupid questions.” Gem replies dryly and Scar shakes his head with a frown.

“I tried, but all I ever got were cryptic answers and half-maybe-threats.” He complains, almost pouting. “I’ve been thinking up better approaches, but most of my normal methods have already failed.” Pearl watches the conversation silently, eyebrows raised, and decides not to ask. She doesn’t think this Cleo was anoth— a Hero, but non-Hero’s killing Demon Kings were rare.

And if they were a Hero…

“Hrrn.” Grian vocalizes, like an upset parrot. Scrunching up like one as well briefly before continuing. “Well, Cleo, who really is great underneath the stitching and threats and sarcasm. Then there’s Joe, who’s Joe and is very strange but also really nice and earnest and knows a lot of sometimes useful things. False is probably one of the only people who can really beat Gem in the majority of her fights and half-raised a Giant Eagle a couple years back.”

Pearl just listens as he talks, getting interrupted occasionally by one of the others, hands gesturing as he explains bits and pieces of who everyone is. Rarely giving any sort of physical description (apart from the facts like Mumbo had the best mustache ever or that Skizz could rival Scar in scars) and never saying anyone’s Destiny, but… but she thinks that’s just how Grian works. How he sees things.

Part of her wonders, thinks, maybe even hopes, that, since every other member of Hermiton sounds wildly strange in ways she couldn’t even begin to guess at, that maybe she won’t stand out.

Pearl isn’t too sure what she’ll do if she does anyway.

--

The adventurers she joins up a few hours out of the last town are good. A group of four, who pick up on her skill with weapons and above average strength, and ask if she wants to help take care of the one, maybe two, demon wolves a couple people have noticed signs of in the forest nearby.

Pearl says yes, because of course she does. And maybe this is how she can help. How she can fix the hollow feelings in her chest and head, the idea she should be doing more. Doing what she was made for.

They’re experienced enough, no Heroes in the group of course, but not just Villagers and Guards. And it’s not long before the tracker of the group has led them to a good viewpoint of the den.

But nothing in life is so easy as that now.

It’s not one or two demon wolves but a small pack.

“Damm it.” Someone (Sawyer, the leader, a Fighter) curses, as the three of them with the best vision peer over the ridgeline. “I count at least seven, and we don’t have enough people for that.” They’re upwind, luckily, but that won’t mean much if they get any closer.

“Back to the town?” Another voice asks, as she watches the large night-fured canines move lazily around the small clearing. “See if we can get the Guards, maybe the Blacksmith and anyone else strong to join.”

There’s a reply but she’s not listening anymore.

There are demon beasts in front of her.

Pearl steps over the ridge.

Reaches out for her Destiny, her power, her sword.

There’s demons in front of her.

She’s a Hero.

--

They’ve only experienced two light snowfalls, both Pearl’s fairly certain were more an effect of the mountains they’re currently in than winter’s approach, when they reach the area Hermiton sits in. A valley almost fully surrounded by mountains, with steep hills in the empty spaces, closer to the northern ocean than she would have thought, and when the wagon is still on the higher point of the hill they cross over she can just glimpse fields and buildings in the farther half, the forest still half green with pine all around like second barrier to cross.

Pearl’s heart flickers.

It wouldn’t be too difficult to leave if she needed to. Not until winter really set in, she saw how the roads would almost certainly get piled with snow in the dips and turn to ice everywhere else, but even then she could probably do it. As long as she was smart about it.

“Welcome Pearl, to Hermiton!” Scar beams from the driver’s seat, both arms spread wide, Grian thankfully having grabbed the reigns, in excitement.

“Welcome to Hermit Valley, technically.” Gem says sitting across from her, rolling her eyes, but a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “We’re not back to the village yet.”

“We practically are.” Grian says, pushing the reins back into Scar’s hands pointedly. It’s really a good thing Pudding was such an easy-going horse. “Nobody but Hermits really take the path up here. And with all the projects going on, we basically use the entire valley at this point.” He adds.

“That doesn't make it the village though.” Gem argues back.

“Sure, but it's still Hermiton. People don't say the fields are the village but they're always part of it.” Grian counters. Pearl isn’t entirely sure of the logic of his analogy but it seems accurate?

“Besides,” Scar says, “you’d say we're home now Gem and home is Hermiton!” He spreads an arm out, thankfully only one this time, to gesture both at the direction the village is in and the forest they’re now in.

“I’d say we're almost home.” Gem counters, but Pearl thinks she's just arguing to be contrary at this point.

She half-watches the forest as they continue to argue and debate the finer points of where a village starts and what areas go by what names and what counts as “home” anyway. The pine and spruce mixed in with yellow-leaved aspen and oak and maple.

She keeps her attention on the argument, on looking at the trees and forest. Nothing else. She doesn’t want to know about the land’s claim. About how well it’s treated and cared for. Everything inside Pearl is to stay there. Inside. Bundled up and buried down, and it’s hard to fold an emptiness into taking up less space, but she… needs to.

She needs to be something that won’t get kicked out immediately. Can stay through the winter.

Pearl breathes, steadily, calmly, as the first buildings appear through the trees. She breathes as the cart drives through them, little storehouses, and then there’s a couple fields beyond, and pathways, and more buildings. The village proper.

The group isn’t arguing anymore, moved on to talking about what they’ve brought back, what needs to get put away and where, and Pearl’s joined in a few times. Calm and cheerful.

“Now, welcome to Hermiton, Pearl.” Gem cuts in pointedly anyway.

“Thanks.” Pearl replies, evenly but cheerful and smiling. Calm and upbeat.

“Alright, I’ll go let X know we’re back.” Grian says hopping off the cart even as it’s still moving in his well practiced manner. “I’ll be back shortly to help unpack!” He calls as he heads off into the buildings.

“Uh, should I have…” Pearl trails off, pointing after the now-disapeared Villager.

“Nah. It’s fine.” Gem says unconcerned. “Xisuma will probably follow him back anyway, whether he mentions you or not.” And Pearl blinks.

“Why wouldn’t he mention me?” She's not concerned. There was a perfectly reasonable explanation and not something worrisome like they're sneaking her into the village like contraband which she knows Scar does sometimes, but she’s a lot different than dubiously legal items so that's not what's happening and she isn't concerned.

“It’s Grian.” Gem says, half derisive part explanation. “You’re just lucky Scar didn’t go or X probably wouldn’t show up and think you’re just another cat or some other creature for three weeks.”

“That only happened once and was mainly Cub’s fault, thank you very much!” Scar calls back to them and Gem just waves.

“It’ll be fine.” She promises. “New people showing up isn’t a strange occurrence. I think all of us have brought someone at one point or another.” Pearl nods, calmly.

“Here we are!” Scar says, bringing Pudding and the wagon to a stop outside a colorful wooden two-story building with a sign proclaiming it Trader Scar’s in almost exactly the same font as the wagon's sign.

He hops off and works on unhitching Pudding as Gem gets out as well so Pearl… follows.

She mimics the redhead, grabbing boxes and bags and ferrying them inside the shop. Gem said it would be fine so it probably would be.

The fact Pearl is staying close to her and Scar is more so they can tell her what to grab and where to put things. Not that Scar’s shop seems to have any organization whatsoever.

She resists the urge to start organizing it, same as she’s resisted organizing the wagon.

All Pearl needs to do is follow Gem or Scar back and forth from the wagon, and put things where she’s directed. The fact she is directed proves there is some sort of organization system to this.

She’s just grabbed another box to take in when Grian reappears.

“I have brought back the ‘Zuma.” He announces, hopping back up into the wagon to grab some of the bags and boxes without saying anything further.

He does nudge Pearl as he passes though in what she thinks is supposed to be support. So that's something. She's not panicking.

She straightens (but not fully, not to her full height) and discreetly wipes her hands on her trousers, putting the box she’d just been about to take in back down as the new figure in green and grey partial armour stops out of the group’s path back and forth between the wagon and shop.

“Hello. I’m Xisuma. Welcome to Hermiton.” The leader of the village says politely and probably smiling under his mask. His arm is uncovered. Something she’s not too surprised by with Gem and Grian and Scar’s stories. It’s marked with the word Guardian. Pearl wasn’t really expecting that.

“Pearl.” She replies on automatic, almost giving the rest of her name, her own Destiny.

But… it’s not hers anymore.

She’s a… She’s not a Hero.

She keeps her mouth shut for a beat too long.

“Nice to meet you, Pearl.” Xisuma is saying warmly and without a trace of care to the fact she hasn’t said the most important part of an introduction like this yet. That’s fine. She waits for the question.

She’ll answer it.

She’s not sure with what, but she’ll answer it.

“I heard they picked you up traveling down south, have you ever experienced a northern winter?” Xisuma asks. “It gets pretty cold and snowy, which I know can be unexpected.” Is he trying to warn her off? Get her to leave? See if she'll be useful?

“This is the furthest north I've been, but I’ve seen some harsh winters before. Sir.” She adds the honorific at the last second, just barely keeping from turning into a question, not sure if she's supposed to use it or a different one or none at all, but it was polite at least and showed intent and respect and proper deference.

“Oh you don't need to call me that, just Xisuma or X is fine.” Xisuma says almost embarrassedly, waving his hands.

“Right.” Pearl agrees. Nearly saying sir again.

She shuts her mouth.

Waits for the question.

“Well it’s good to hear you have some experience.” Xisuma continues. “If you have any issues or questions make sure to ask any of us, we’re all pretty used to both the weather and helping each other through it, so don’t hesitate.” Pearl nods, keeping the confusion and uncertainty from her face and movements.

“Gem, Grian, and Scar are all fairly capable, so I’m sure you’ll do fine.” He says after a slight pause. Was she supposed to say something? “Just reach out to any of us if you need anything!” Xisuma says, smiling under his mask. Oh!

“Right.” Pearl responds. “I will.” He’s one of the more concerned and involved types of leaders. She gets it now. Pearl smiles back, she knows how to act with this type.

She keeps herself ready for the question.

“It was wonderful to meet you Pearl!” Xisuma says cheerily. “Welcome to Hermiton! I’ll catch you guys later when you’re not unpacking and all, yeah?”

“Of course. Thank you.” Pearl replies on automatic.

And then he’s leaving, with a wave and a nod, and Pearl blinks.

He didn't ask the question.

Pearl opens her mouth, brows almost furrowing, as she stares at Xisuma’s retreating back.

“Pearl!”  Grian says, popping up next to her and Pearl’s mouth shuts. “You’re tall, can you help put some boxes where Scar wants them?”

“Yeah, sure thing.” She says. It’s fine, Xisuma would remember in a little and come ask her then and she’d tell him.

Pearl follows Grian back inside and over to the boxes Scar wants on the top shelf apparently. She has no idea what’s in them other than probably not the “Crystals!” that on their label, but they aren’t too hard to move and there’s only a dozen or so of them. The others go in and out as she shelves the boxes, and then Gem asks her to the same thing with a few others on a shelf closer to the back door and Grian’s asking her for help bringing in some large box that is full of metal ore and Scar has an entire box of random things he needs sorting out that she takes from him before he can put it on a shelf full of other containers of “to be sorted”. She steals those containers as well to sort them out for Scar but really more herself. Scar is thankful and then immediately distracted before she can get him to come and help her out himself, so whatever categories she comes up with are what’s sticking and he can deal with it. The others go in and out as she works, slowing down now that most everything is inside, and Pearl settles into sorting through all of Scar’s random objects and materials. He really does need some kind of system, she had no idea how he found anything in his wagon while they were traveling (and that’s when he did manage to find the thing he was looking for and not something he redirected attention to) and the shop has so much more in it.

“Scar, you in here? And is Gem with you?” A short-shaven brown haired man calls sticking his head through the door and looking around. Catching sight of her.

“Oh! Hi, I’m Impulse!” The man says, waving a hand, head tilted a little for just a second. “Welcome to Hermiton!” He greets with a smile, looking almost confused but hiding it behind friendly, polite welcomingness. She’s not sure why. Oh, he probably just didn’t realize someone new was showing up. That made the most sense.

“Pearl.” Pearl says. “Grian, Gem, and Scar invited me back for winter. I’ve been traveling with them for a few months.” She explains. Impulse is the one of the “dads”, she remembers from Grian’s mini stories. Also has something to do with ghosts? Grian didn't go into any detail, only mentioning it as an aside.

“Oh, nice. Whereabouts did you join them?” Impulse asks, curious but not… not investigating.

“Down south-ish.” Pearl answers. Honest. Polite. “I don't remember the town name, but around the mid-coast area.” Less honest, but still polite. She does remember the name. She remembers all of them, because she has to.

“Oh nice! I think I’ve been around there once or twice.” Impulse says smiling. “And no worries about the name, I get how they tend to blur together when you’ve been traveling enough.” He’s nice. Still a bit confused, maybe, if she’s analyzing his expression correctly, but nice. Pearl just smiles back, pretends she isn’t lying, and prepares more small talk conversations when the back door opens and both of them look towards it.

“Pearl,” Gem starts before noticing the other person in the shop, “Oh hey Impulse, give me just a second.” She says and Impulse just waves, calm steady patience in his smile. “Pearl,” she repeats, “did you grab all your stuff from the wagon yet? Scar’s ready to put it in its stall and let me tell you no matter what he says it is not that easy to get into the back of once it's in there.”

“Er, I think so?” Pearl says, trying to remember where she’d put her bag in the first couple chaotic minutes of unpacking.

“Better check, just to make sure.” Gem says, grabbing her hand and pulling Pearl after her. “I’ll be back in a bit Impulse!” She calls behind them, and Pearl glances back at the man anxiously.

“No worries, take your time.” Impulse says, with a raised hand as he leans back against the counter. “It was nice meeting you Pearl!” He calls out just before the back door shuts on him and any chance of her giving a reply.

“So you can stay with one of us for now, or pretty much anyone else, while your house gets built.” Gem says as she leads Pearl back around to the wagon. She doesn’t know what Gem’s talking about with building a house though. “Do you know where you want to build? Or what you want? And a bunch of us will help out, especially if you bribe them with your soup.” She continues, and her questions are not helping Pearl’s understanding of the situation. Not that she’s getting time to answer. “Oh, do you care who you stay with? Grian and I both have our own houses and Scar technically does as well, but he also has a living space below the shop he stays in a lot. Grian’s is bigger, but I think my place is way homier.”

“I don’t have any opinions.” Pearl starts, a sort of answer to all Gem’s questions to buy her time as she thinks them through. Tries to understand what she actually is talking about.

“Besides, Pearl hasn’t even seen our houses or the village yet, Gem. Not as more than a pass through at least.” Scar slips into the conversation, hopping down from the back of the wagon, salesmen persona partially donned for some reason. “Also I have Jellie, so I think I beat out both Grian and Gem on hominess.” He says innocently.

“No stealing Pearl, Scar.” Gem orders, finger pointing at him sternly. “Also his place is a mess and an accident waiting to happen.” She tells Pearl quickly.

“My house is lived in!” Scar says, hand on his chest in maybe-mock affront.

“Uh, it’s fine.” Pearl interjects before they can start arguing in earnest. She doesn’t get why they’re arguing but they really didn’t need to. “I’ll go wherever, I really don’t mind.” Wherever she’d take up the least space. Gem shifts her narrowed gaze at her before blinking, a flash expression of consideration on her face for a split second. And then she nods.

“Right, well you grab your stuff and I’ll go see what Impulse needed. Then we can take a tour round the village and figure out who you're rooming with for now.” Gem states, plan straightforward and made in an instant with no room for debate.

“Okay.” Pearl agrees, it does make the most sense out of everything she’s said so far, and Gem gives her a bright smile before heading back in.

--

Her first Demon King finds her two-thirds of a year after she tells Sausage her Destiny.

Pearl’s in one of the villages not quite part of the town but close enough to see over the fields and make day trips to, sent by her mother to deliver a newly repaired plow to one of the Villagers. She’d helped fix it to its cart and was offered some cheese and water for her troubles, taking a short break before heading back home.

And something in the distance had cracked, like something wood splitting down the middle, and then someone screamed and Pearl was on her feet, moving towards the door as more sounds of things breaking and more screams layered on top of each other.

There’s people running outside the door, most one way, a couple people in armour (most likely Guards) the other. Towards the smoke and clouds of dust.

And then a figure appears on the far side of the marketplace square.

Long dark magenta hair half wrapped around blackened antlers and glowing wine colored eyes are all she really notices before she understands what she sees.

Demon King.

It’s like the world snaps into perfect clarity.

She thinks it’s similar to the moment her mother’s talked about when forging a sword or tool, where she’ll plunge it in water and just know, it’s done.

The only difference here is Pearl isn’t a Blacksmith making a weapon.

She’s a Hero. She is the weapon.

And everything burns gold.

Pearl steps from the doorway.

Wraps her hand around the hilt of her sword as she sweeps it upward.

The light following its arc and cutting into the red tendril The Demon King had sent towards the Guards.

“Demon King.” She calls, a grin flickering around her face.

“Hero.” They snarl back, almost mocking except for the rage he does feel.

And then they lunge.

And they’re fighting.

She laughs.

Body light and Light and burning.

It’s not an easy fight. Doesn’t instantly win or come away unharmed.

But she does win.

She slays the Demon King.

Exactly as she’s supposed to.

Pearl kills every Demon King she fights.

--

The “Hermits” are all wonderful.

She can understand why they are all friends, why the three she traveled with only speak highly of the others. Pearl also understands bits of why they’re all out here, the far mountains where the lands are unclaimed (calling to her, asking the same thing in a roar of whispers she still can’t translate).

Some reasons are more clear or given more openly. Some aren’t. But they all have them.

She hasn’t met all of them, has only seen a few in passing, but it’s only been a week and all of them seem busy with the changing weather. And Pearl has met most of them. Xisuma, Impulse, Skizz, Ren, Joe, Cleo, Cub, Etho, Mumbo, False, Doc, Zedaph, Wells, Joel, Jevin, Bdubs, Keralis, Beef, Tango.

And all of them have been told about her and passed along hello’s and welcome’s and little gifts.

None of them have argued against her being here. The ones she’s met haven’t even seemed frustrated or concerned. Just welcoming her into the community like winter isn’t just beginning and she hasn’t just shown up out of the blue with no warning.

Pearl’s mainly staying with Gem in her stone and wood cottage, walls stained red with almost dark floors and ceilings, but she offers her help with any and all winter preparations the others have. Scar’s shop, the community gardens, hunting and gathering wood. Grian has an entire wheat field to harvest somehow. She's not entirely sure who's been taking care of it these past months, but someone has to have been doing so. And Skizz had “stolen” her for an entire day to help him and Impulse get Tango out of one of his forges. It’d been her introduction to the Blacksmith and backfired slightly on the other men as she’d accidentally mentioned that her mother had been a Blacksmith and Tango had lit up practically literally. Gem ended up storming up the mountain and dragging her out and off to dinner as Tango followed still talking.

Xisuma still hasn’t asked her about her Destiny. And Pearl can’t manage to bring herself to just tell him. No one’s asked, even when they tell her theirs, either during their introduction or because their arm’s uncovered or simply during a story. There's a wide range of Destiny’s in Hermiton too. Almost every Destiny is represented by the “Hermits” she thinks. Every Destiny except for a few. There aren’t any Heroes, and there isn’t a Lord.

Pearl doesn’t know everyone’s Destiny, so it’s technically possible there’s a Hero in the people she has only seen in passing (unlikely) or the ones she hasn’t run into yet, but she knows there isn’t a Lord. The land’s unclaimed. So there isn’t a Lord in the area.

She ignores it. Focuses on helping the people she’s intruding on. Doesn’t think about the hum and reaching feeling from the earth below her, around her.

She’s here for the winter.

And then she’ll leave again.

The Hermits are nice and welcoming and it’s clearly a good area to live.

Pearl isn’t something that can stay.

She’ll need to leave eventually.

Travel again.

Endlessly.

--

Of everywhere Pearl’s traveled, Sausage’s lands always feel the best.

Her best friend’s care and love drapes over everything, plants growing full and bright, animals content, paths clean, people happy.

It’s home. No matter how much or how far she goes, she always comes back here, to a castle on a hill with her best friend inside agonizing over crop rotations and town upkeep and border patrols and monster attacks.

She can fix that last one pretty easily. Does everytime she comes back. Clears the woods of anything that she can find and takes the small stack of monster reports as a checklist. It's usually simple, small creatures, but it's something for her to do and a way to help Sausage and keep the land and people safe.

Pearl’s a Hero and she’s home and it’s not a break, because Pearl’s job is too important, but it’s the closest she gets to one. It’s enough of one for her anyway no matter what Sausage hints at.

She’s home. That’s more than enough for her.

And she’s always going to be a Hero. Always going to act one.

Early her second week back a Demon King walks into the grassy fields between the woods and the sections of the town outside the walls.

Sausage orders everyone inside, and Pearl goes out. Destiny bright on her arm and in her hand as it takes no time at all and an eternity holding her breath to race towards the Demon King

“Demon King.” Pearl calls, focusing all their attention on her. “Sorry, this place is protected. I'm going to have to kill you now.” She says before they can respond, bringing up her sword in the same breath to catch the bolt of magic they strike out at her with.

“My reign is eternal, Hero.” They spit out. “You are not.”

The Demon King’s magic cracks like a whip in the air and Pearl dodges, using her momentum to bring herself closer.

This one seems fairly magic focused, showing up alone and unarmed apart from the magic they swing around like an ax made of fire and lightning. They haven’t summoned any beasts while they’ve been fighting either which makes it a simple fight. Just her and the Demon King.

She knows how to do this.

Pearl was made for this.

The light in her hands, sword in her soul, gold of her Destiny.

They fight. The Demon King isn't the easiest one she's fought. But they aren't the hardest.

They trade blows. The grass turns ashy around them. She keeps smiling because she knows how this goes.

She lunges, they dodge, they attack, she blocks. They lose ground, make mistakes. She doesn't.

And Pearl wins, her sword running them through, one of their clawed hands wreathed in purple flames digging through her armour over her mark.

“A Hero’s Death.” The Demon King chokes out around the blood, eyes mad and fixed on hers. “All Hero’s will have a hero’s death.” They say as she shifts to pull out her sword, stop the curse before it fully leaves their mouth, and they burst into dark purple flames. She curses, quickly backing up a short distance before the fire catches on her at all. Demon King flame is always annoyingly difficult to put out, though luckily the field she’s in is pretty trampled and burned already, so it shouldn’t go up along with the corpse.

She squints through the fire to make sure it is a corpse, but it collapses pretty quickly and Pearl relaxes a bit, scanning around for anything else that the Demon King might’ve brought with them. Any other fires from stray or deflected shots of magic.

Pearl finds nothing, and she waves an all clear to the closest guard tower on the distant walls. Letting them know it’s safe for people to be let out. They’d have seen the Demon King go up in fire and Sausage would be heading over by now already, sent back word as soon as he felt things shift, but she likes giving the extra reassurance.

Pearl’s eyes catch on her hands as she lowers them and she blinks.

There’s black lines crawling up her arms, skin around them turning grey and ashy.

She lets her sword vanish, holding her hands up in front of her fingers spread to look over the damage, the curse, better.

The lines aren’t following her veins like poison would. Just run down her skin in jagged patterns like cracks in a pane of glass. Ashy grey spreading around them like a bruise.

She hasn’t seen this before.

She doesn’t know what to do about this type of curse.

Sausage is coming though, so it’d be good if she figured out some of what it was before he saw.

Pearl thinks back on her fight with The Demon King. The magic they used, what they said.

Her hands hurt, sort of, a pain and spreading numbness, which isn’t good.

She can see Sausage half-running up towards her, sending green power into the burned, ashy field around her as he does. He’s still grinning.

No, not burned. The field around her is ashy with decay not fire, the plants having withered where the Demon King stepped.

Their grip around her arm and the words they said both burning when she killed them.

“Oh.” Pearl sits. Butt in dirt and ashy remnants of the grass. 

“Pearl? Pearl, what’s wrong?!” Sausage cries worriedly, dropping to his knees next to her. Her chest feels kinda weird. She’s not really certain if it’s the curse or her body panicking.

“I think I’m dying.” Pearl says, cataloging the feelings and sensations.

“What?!” Sausage asks, alarmed. “No. No you can’t die. You’re a Hero! You won!”

“A Hero’s Death.” Pearl repeats the Demon King’s curse. She unbuckles the armour over her arm, hissing in pain as she lifts the half melted metal off the burned sleeve below, curious about the burning feeling below.

Her Destiny almost reads the same as always, four black letters with a golden cast over them. Almost because at the moment it’s joined by a pulsing purple flicker under her skin, black thorn-like lines spreading outwards similar to the ones running up her hands but darker, thicker.

“It’s a curse.” She says, speaking the fact out loud for the first time. “Heroes die a Hero’s Death.” Her hands are half numb. Fingers a dark grey and the skin flaking slightly as she shifts them around. She stops moving them before Sausage notices.

“I’ll fix this. I can fix this.” Sausage says frantically, already pulling up green power from the land, his land, trying to push it into her.

“I don’t think—” She starts before he cuts her off frantic and forcefully, wrapping green around her limbs. Little phantom vines crawling up her legs and breaking into fragments.

“I’m going to fix this, Pearl! It’s my job to take care of my people!” He yells, wide eyes on the ground, his power, her arm. Pulling more life from the soil in attempts to fix her and failing.

“I’m a Hero.” Pearl tells him. Pulling his hand away. Reminding him as kindly as she can. “Right now it’s your job to let me die, Soos.” She says with a crooked smile as he looks at her and tries not to cry because if he sees her cry he’ll just keep trying.

“I can’t— That’s not how this is supposed to end.” Sausage says, almost begging, disbelief and denial drawing his eyes wide except for the corners.

“Just—” Pearl doesn’t know what to say. Can’t sound too scared or worried. “Stay with me?” She asks, trying to sound okay with what’s happening. She’s known this was going to happen. Was prepared.

She thought she was prepared.

“Always.” Sausage squeezes her hands with his, holding them properly now. Eyes fixed on her face until there’s a flicker of uncertainty through him. “But—”

“No.” It’s her turn to cut him off. Brings his eyes back to her face. “It’s okay. Really.” Maybe she is prepared. You can accept something and still be upset by it right? She’s just sad this is where it ends.

“I’m a Hero.” She says, smiling because saying it still makes her emotions glow. She’s a Hero. “This is just a Hero’s Death.” Fighting. Defeating a Demon King. Protecting the people and the land and the peace. She did good. This sucks, but she did good.

“It’s not fair.” Sausage says, and he’s crying, but Pearl can’t quite manage to respond. Everything hurts, the curse burning through her veins not quite like acid or fire or anything else she’s felt. Like death.

“I’s okay.” She forces out, because she has to reassure him. “I kill’d th’ Demon Lord, so I won.” The sky is so blue. Sunlight falling down around her like the curtains on Sausage’s bed she makes fun of as often as possible. It’s so nice apart from the burning.

“Th’ Hero w’n.” She won. She did her job, her duty, her Destiny.

She’d been a Hero, a great one.

Sausage is sad, but that’s okay, he’ll get better. He’ll be alive. His people will be alive. His land will heal.

He’s so good at taking care of it all.

Pearl isn’t sure if her eyes are closed or not, but it doesn’t matter.

The pain doesn’t matter.

There’s a pressure around her hand and at her side, so it doesn’t matter.

Everything’s heavy around her and the light’s dimming, but that’s okay.

She doesn’t have the energy to panic anymore.

It’s like falling asleep, just bad.

It’s okay.

As long as he’s okay, it’s okay.

“no.” Pearl’s not sure she actually heard anything. She’s tired. Really tired. The pressure on her side shifts, some parts pulling away, some parts moving closer, and she makes a vague noise of disapproval, distress.

Her arm burns.

And the air fills with bright, bright green light.

--

She watches the almost full moon rise slowly over the mountain lake. One arm crossed over her chest to grip her arm tightly. Four black letters, two of them wrong, one right, one in the wrong place. Dark bruise-purple scars like a thorn bush around them.

The earth under her calls in words she can hear but doesn’t understand. She doesn’t know what it’s saying. Not really. Doesn’t know what to do even if she did understand.

It's been eight months since then and she still doesn't understand.

And Sausage is still dead.

She isn't.

Hasn't been a hero.

Certainly hasn't been a Hero.

Hasn't been a Lord.

She's just run. Farther and farther away.

Leaving town after town.

She's too strange for most people. Too secretive, and suspicious. Acting like she doesn't quite fit into her body when she forgets she has to act normal. Be average. As average as she can manage. Never showing her Destiny. Stronger, faster than most people, but overestimating her speed and strength.

An oddity in a world where everyone knows their roles.

Maybe if that's all she was she'd still fit in with the other Hermits, all oddities in their own ways. Strange people that don't quite fit in inside normal towns and villages, but do here in their carved out mountain valley.

Her Destiny isn't hers.

Pearl wonders how long she’ll really get to stay here.

--

Pearl’s learned by now to keep her head down.

She’s far enough away (over two and a half months of travel) that there at least isn’t anyone who recognizes her as a Hero. She rarely went this direction, this far, and she doesn’t look the same anymore. So as long as she keeps her head down people don’t look too closely at her. Don’t question things too much.

She still sometimes hears Hero stories, about her, others, but only snippets. Pearl leaves before her nausea at the words and songs gets too much. She keeps herself busy. Does odd jobs around the towns and villages she finds herself in, carrying things, helping in the fields, cleaning, hunting. She’s polite and friendly and young, so people are usually willing enough to hire her for a meal or few coins. She’s still strong enough it makes it worth it to hire her to speed up fixing a fence or unloading a cart.

Pearl’s been in her most recent town for a week, actually managing to not just trade services for food and shelter but a fair bit of coin this time. Mainly through picking up day jobs in the market area and trading an hour or two of hunting to the Innkeeper's for her room and dinner, but it’s more than she’s had for a while.

The woods are healthy too, so she’s able to bring back small game everyday. Rabbits, squirrels, a few game birds. Pearl could probably hunt something larger, but that might lead to questions. Maybe on her last day. She’s come across deer occasionally enough, so it wouldn’t be too odd if she asked to borrow a bow her last day and brought one back as an extra thank you.

Pearl’s bringing back a pair of rabbits today, something normal and easy to explain away with traps, the sun just beginning to touch the horizon as she exits the woods onto the road leading up to the town.

A group of Soldiers meets her at the gate.

“Uh…” Pearl hesitates, uncertain and a little confused at the partial wall of armoured people. “Is…” She doesn’t know what to say. Isn’t sure what’s going on. “Is something wrong?” She asks, anxiety pricking up the inside of her sternum.

“Roll up your sleeve!” The Soldier in the front orders and Pearl blinks. She doesn’t understand.

“What?” The feelings of wrongness grow, but there aren’t any demons around right?

“I said roll up your sleeve!” The lead Soldier repeats, spear coming down to point at her, and Pearl stares ununderstanding.

“I—” The words won’t come out.

The Soldier makes some noise or says something but all she hears is fabric rip, the metal tip flicking out and up across her sleeve.

There’s a pressure in her chest as she stands half-frozen, arm exposed. She knows what they’re reading. She doesn’t know why it’s important. She’s not a Demon King. If that’s what they’d been checking.

The spears are still pointed at her. So it’s not. Pearl doesn’t understand.

“I’m just passing through.” She says, wanting to cover her arm back up. It’s not right. Pearl isn’t what it says. Isn’t what it doesn’t say.

“You come onto my land with that mark and say you’re simply passing through?” A new voice says harshly, as the line of Soldiers parts to let the man in fine clothing stand at the front, next to the lead Soldier. None of their weapons leave Pearl.

“You think I would believe that?” The Lord, he has to be a Lord, asks. “Some young upstart Lord entering my land without notice, much less permission, and it’s not supposed to be seen as an invasion? Not some scheme? This is my land and you aren’t welcome here.” He says, sending green power into the ground, a claim, and Pearl didn’t know, didn’t know that. She can’t say that though, they wouldn’t believe her. Can only apologize and swear she wasn’t trying to do anything. Even if they won’t really believe that either. Can only leave. Let them push her out without complaint or argument.

“I’m sorry.” Pearl says, forcing her lungs to keep breathing, bowing, hoping it makes her more sincere. “I swear it was not my intent, and I’ll—”

“Intent? Still acting the fool, or are you truly so stupid?” The Lord asks, sneering, distrustful. She bites her tongue, stays as unthreatening as she can think.

“I didn’t know. Of course, I’ll leave now.” Stops thinking about the earth under her feet. Ignores the humming, forces herself as separate as she thinks is possible from it. Even if she doesn’t know how.

“Get her off my land.” The Lord orders. Done with her. But he is letting her go.

The lead Soldier bows, fist over his heart.

“Yes, my Lord!” And then the Soldiers turn back to her, spears half extended as they direct her to walk. Back up the path, away from the town, the Innkeepers, her bags, and she can’t think about that.

Pearl goes.

The Lord is following with his Soldiers.

Making sure she leaves, and she can’t offer any more apologies.

Can only follow the direction and leave.

She’s not meant to be here.

Lords stick to their lands.

And she isn’t one, not really, but it doesn’t matter.

It’s what her arm reads.

She walks over the invisible border she can feel, armour still glittering like a wall behind her (against her).

And she leaves.

Feet taking her away one steady step at a time, town and Soldiers receding behind her, vanishing into the hills, walking step by step, as her pace shifts faster, steps turning to strides, then she’s jogging, then running and her chest still hurts, breath acrid and thin and she’s in the woods now, no longer on the path, but it’s fine, she knows how to handle herself.

She knows how to handle herself.

It’s fine.

Pearl won’t let that happen again.

She’ll be better. Less noticeable. Less obtrusive. Less invasive.

She’ll leave sooner. Keep moving.

She won’t let it happen again.

--

It feels like the last few days before winter sets in properly, with thick snow and cold wind and ice that won’t melt fully until spring, and Pearl keeps her head down now. She just has to get through winter. Keep all her strangeness and wrongness buried as deep as she can manage. She could probably make it out of the valley if needed, but it’d depend on how the weather acts, how much time she has.

The Hermits are nice enough they might let her stay in some far off building, but they’d be wary and suspicious the whole time and that’s not fair to them.

Or they’ll be upset enough it won’t matter.

Pearl focuses on building… “her” house. She accepts help when it’s offered, but only if they’re insistent enough about it. Makes sure to repay them with food or help with one of their jobs, but keeps herself as unobtrusive as possible.

She used to love winter. The cold and the snow and the longer nights. Sure, there were more beasts that roamed closer to human towns and villages during the season, but even that didn’t bother her like it did some Destinies.

She was a Hero. She could protect whoever she came across.

Pearl’s not sure what she’s supposed to do this winter.

She’s not traveling, not following Sausage around and carrying whatever needs carrying, not out killing the beasts preying on people. Not home.

The weather’s colder and it’s probably because of how far north she is, because of the mountains, but there’s no light inside her anymore. No gold she carries with her everywhere she’s been from the moment she turned fifteen.

Right up until she was supposed to die.

She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do.

So she builds a house that all the Hermits keep calling hers and will either get used as storage or a workshop or torn down when she leaves.

Pearl makes it simple because of that.

There’s already only so much she can build in winter, but the outside was done before the weather got too inconvenient, and she doesn’t care it’s small. That progress comes slowly.

The house is for her, but not For her. Not in the way the others think and expect.

It’s a distraction. Something to keep her busy and somewhat away from the others, but not in a way that’s concerning, and maybe when she’s gone they’ll use it for something else.

She doesn’t know what to do with herself stuck in one place and everything she’s been running from stalking closer every second she’s not moving.

Pearl wasn’t made to stay in one place.

She wasn’t made for running either. Not from things. But it’s more similar than not running at all.

The land here hums empty of any claim and Pearl ignores it because it doesn't make sense other than pulling that hollow wanting feeling from her and she's not staying. Even if she was staying it wouldn't matter. But by the time winter thins to an end she'll have worn out any welcome and good will she currently has. Or she'll leave anyway because the hungry-empty-pulling hurts now. She's stayed in places, claimed and unclaimed, longer than this, and Pearl knows it's only going to get worse.

She can make it to the end of winter. Has to make it to the end of winter.

But the feeling is going to get worse and she's going to be unable to hide all of her strangeness. So Pearl isn't going to be here for spring.

It's just fact.

She just has to keep everything held together for as long as possible.

--

Sausage is at the church when she gets back, and she's tired and sweaty and slightly covered in demon blood and mud, but both Sausage and the church have seen her in worse, so she doesn't think too much about it and follows the gatehouse Guard or Soldier’s directions with a wave and thanks.

Pearl does go to the back entrance at least, not wanting to track everything over all of the floors. Especially the carpet. It’s a nice carpet and the priests don’t need to try and get demon blood out of it.

Sausage is sitting at a table on one of the benches in the back area, the private sections, and she drops to sit next to him facing the other way and pressing her forehead into his shoulder as she lets everything drain from her body. She’s home. She can rest.

“Pearl?” Sausage says slightly above her. Slightly concerned, shoulder now tense. “You okay?” Right, the blood and mess.

“Mmm. Just tired.” She says, not bothering to shift her position, and he relaxes at her words and tone. “There were about eight different beast groups on the road here.” 

“I took care of them,” she adds, before he thinks of needing to send out a patrol to take care of the issue. “And did a small sweep around the area. Everything's cleared out now. Just took a bit.” She should check the other roads tomorrow, but not right now. Right now she’s resting.

She’s home.

“You should take a break.” Sausage says. “A real one. Not just the couple days you spend here, and half of that out in the woods making sure they’re still clear.”

“Mmm, maybe this winter.” Pearl hums. “Depends how bad things get.” Last winter had been rough, so hopefully it would be the same this year, but hope only covered so much.

“That’s months away Pearl.” Sausage replies. “You should take one sooner.” And she pulls a face.

“Winter isn’t that far off.” Pearl argues lightly. “There are places already starting their harvests up north.” And if she’s taking a longer break in winter, she needs to speed up parts of her vague travel path before then.

“When are you going to retire then if winter “isn’t that far off”?” He asks and she snorts.

“Heroes don't retire, Sausage.” She says, mouth pulling in a grin. “There aren't enough of us already.” Pearl admits softly, keeping her forehead leaned into his shoulder, eyes closed. Just breathing.

“There are a couple who retire. Or at least stop traveling so much.” Sausage argues.

“Not the good ones.” Pearl says, staying leaned against him. “It’s too important.” They’re the most important defense between people and demons, the ones made to take on demons, and Demon Kings, specifically.

“So you’re never going to stop traveling and fighting?” Sausage asks, half a demand. “Never going to stay longer than a fortnight, even when you’re injured?”

“I can’t.” Pearl’s needed in so many places, for so many things that are all the same. Save, protect, defeat the demons.

“Not even if I asked?” Sausage asks quietly. And he’s upset. She’s his best friend, same as he’s hers and he can’t leave his lands to follow her around and keep her safe like he can his people. Like she can with everyone.

“Fine, maybe for you. But only when I get too old.” She tells him. “If I can still swing my sword, I'm going to be swinging it at something useful.” It’s her job. Her Destiny. The word on her arm that explains her entire life.

“You're going to be able to swing your sword for forever.” Sausage complains, but he’s less upset. “Pick something that'll actually happen within my lifespan.” He says and Pearl rolls her eyes.

“Ridding a horse.”

“No. My great-aunt rode until her death.” Sausage denies it almost immediately. "Literally, she was eighty something and rode off a cliff.” He tells her and she pulls a face. That certainly couldn't have been a nice way to go. But also Sausage was shooting down every option she was making.

“You pick something then, my lord.” Pearl says snidely, poking him with a finger for good measure.

“Blacksmith’s daughter.” Sausage bites back, before falling silent. Thinking it over.

He's quiet for a long time.

“Your tenth Demon King.” He says at last. “After you kill your tenth Demon King you come home and stay.”

“My tenth?!” Pearl cries, jolting up a bit. “Sausage, I’m already halfway there!” And what else is she going to do? Not fight a Demon King when one shows up? She’s a Hero.

“Yeah, and the fourth one nearly killed you.” Sausage says without looking over at her, voice calm. The calm makes it worse. “Most Heroes don’t even kill five, plus all the other things you’ve killed. And you have years to go, who knows how often you’ll run into more of them.” He’s making the points more for her benefit than as actual arguments. He only has the one that matters to him. Pearl shifts to lean on him backwards, head against his shoulder, eyes closed.

“Fine, ten Demon Kings and I stay.” She says. “But I reserve the right to check out anything we hear about that happens within a day's ride of here.” Pearl can’t bring herself to promise anything more or less than that. 

“I’ll even go with you!” Sausage says with a grin if his voice is any indication.

“That's just going to make your advisors complain a whole bunch.” Pearl complains. And Sausage will just ignore them or tell them their deal, so they’ll just shift to complaining to her after a bit.

“Maybe.” He agrees, like that is exactly the plan just so that Pearl won’t go out as often to make them stop complaining.

--

“So I’m thinking sandwiches and maybe stew, I know Bdubs has been baking recently so we can maybe get bread from him. Oh! And Beef was talking about thinning his herd for winter, so we should check with him if there’s anything fresh from today.” Gem talks as Pearl nods occasionally, keeping pace with her easily as she and Grian walk with her through the sort-of village central area, supposedly for groceries and such. She’s pretty sure they set up the shopping-maybe-picnic-later as a ploy to get her out of the half-built house, but it was better to go along with them than argue. More normal.

She’s supposed to be normal.

The snow here is fairly cleared away as well, and it’s a mostly clear day, so it’s not like it’s a bad day to do any of this on. Some of the others are out as well with similar ideas. Trade, talk, taking in the sunlight while they can.

“Peeeaarl.” Gem wheedles, turning to face her with her hands behind her back and big pleading eyes. “Would you make the stew?” She asks, blinking up at her.

“Yeah, okay Gem.” Pearl replies with a grin. “I bet that’s the entire reason you guys brought me back in the first place. You just wanted access to my cooking.” She says teasingly. Like she would on the road.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Gem teases back.

“Suuure, Gem.” Grian adds in, grin crawling up his face. “You totally didn’t tell us one of your backup plans was just “cry at her” if Pearl said no.” Pearl stays smiling.

“I am stronger than you and have no issues throwing you into the lake.” Gem threatens, pointing at him with a finger. It’s normal. Normal teasing and banter.

“I’m faster though!” Grian calls from her other side. “And Pearl will rescue me if I ask!” There’s nothing wrong. Everything is normal.

The air is clear and cool and she stares at the packed earth and flat cobblestone path, watching for stray rocks or ice, as Gem and Grian banter around her, with her. Replying occasionally is the normal thing to do.

Pearl smiles.

Watches the ground but only to make sure she doesn’t trip.

“Well what do we have here?” An oil-slick voice says and her head jerks up, locking on the man with dark hair and burning eyes and horns and clawed hands and slight fangs and she knows this.

Demon King.

Pearl instinctively expects the burn like lightning and falling stars to fill her mind and body.

Expects gold light to fall into her hands with her sword’s comforting weight.

Stepping forward.

Her job, her duty, her Destiny.

Tripping.

Hollow in her chest and arm and mind and under her foot all different than what’s supposed to be there.

There’s no burning.

Not inside of her.

“Pearl!” Gem, Grian both shout. Someone grabbing her arms. Hauling her back.

Away from the Demon King. Behind the quick formed line of defense. False, Xisuma (Guardian), Skizz (Guardian), Cleo, Jevin (Fighter). Wels (Knight) trotting up from wherever he’d been.

None of them are Heroes.

She’s…

It’s her job.

She’s not supposed to be the one protected.

She’s supposed to be the protector.

Pearl’s brain is fuzzy. Focus snapped onto the Demon King, but there’s no light, no gold, no sword in her hand and certainty in her chest, the burn on her arm as she faces down what she’s made to defeat.

There are voices talking, and she knows some of them, but she can’t focus on them. Can’t hear them.

She’s watching the Demon King.

Watching the threat. The danger.

Tugging on whatever has her arm, she needs her arm to fight, she needs to fight.

There’s a humming in her mind, like the static of lightning about to strike, and she doesn’t know when the Demon King is going to strike but she has to protect them. Has to keep them safe.

It tugs at her. The humm. And she doesn’t understand. Pulls at her arm. Keeps her eyes on the Demon King even though someone’s talking. Multiple people.

None of them are the Demon King.

He sneers.

“You think that’s enough to even scratch me?” He’s dismissive, arrogant and bored, and it’s the boredom that’s the reason he hasn’t attacked yet. They aren’t enough of a threat to him for him to take action yet, and playing with them might be more interesting.

She pulls at her arm. She needs her arm to fight.

She doesn’t know how long the Demon King will stay this kind of bored for.

When he’ll get bored of talking.

When action becomes more interesting.

“Now,” the Demon King smirks, dark and wide as a fissure in the earth, “why would I do that?” He’s getting ideas. Looking at the people upfront with cruel glittering eyes.

She needs to be upfront.

She needs to be fighting.

Don’t they know that?

“ —ming Joel, do we really have to run though? Why—” Pearl hears, snapping half of her attention to the new threat. “Oh.” The new Demon King says, startled and already irritated as she stares with blue eyes that instantly turn to slits on looking at the first Demon King.

Two. Two Demon Kings.

Pearl tugs at her arm harder. Why isn’t it coming free?

“You know this is really rude of you.” The new Demon King says, running a hand through bloody seafoam pink hair as bone-blue horns spiral out of it and her ears fan into sharp edged fins, passing a pastel blue handkerchief off to the side. The grass and plant wither under her boots, stitched with blue and pink embroidered flowers, and blue flames spark up as she steps forward.

Pearl tugs at her arm, arms, harder. She has to get free. Has to fight. She’s a Hero. There are two Demon Kings. She can soothe the frantic half-wispears by defeating the Demon Kings.

“Excuse me?!” The first Demon King starts, outraged at the casually annoyed words, before the pink haired Demon King cuts him off.

“I have a cozy cottage in the woods, a cute slightly-murderous husband, a little brother who visits occasionally, neighbors who don’t start screaming as soon as I step outside,” the stronger Demon King lists off, advancing on the other one. “A nice, peaceful home, and You barge in, uninvited, to— What? Raze a tiny mountain community no one’s heard of for no real reason?” She demands, face pulled something between a snarl and a sneer.

“I—” The first Demon King barely manages to get out, still not understanding the situation, before the pink and blue Demon King cuts him off again.

“Ugh. I do not care.” She says, rolling her eyes as she steps forward again still a distance away. “Just die.” She says, less than an arm’s length away and slashing long claws through his throat, red trailing after the indigo blue tips.

The body falls, dead, and it’s no longer important.

The still living Demon King is important.

The humming sounds more like screaming, or maybe shrieking, like lightning scraping against metal, now. It doesn’t make any more sense.

She doesn’t need that.

She needs her arm free. Needs her sword, needs to fight.

There’s people talking again, and the hold on her arm shifts.

Loosens.

Pearl puts herself in front of the others. Shoving them back behind her as she stands, back straight, hand open, waiting.

She just needs her sword.

She’ll fight without it, but she won’t make the first move until it comes.

The Demon King looks at her and Pearl burns.

“He-r-o?” The Demon King says, cocking her head and staring at Pearl in utter bewilderment.

She turns her head to one side, not breaking eye contact with Pearl once. She’s supposed to reply. How does she do that again?

“Uh, why didn’t I get told we had a freaky sort-of Hero in the group now?” The Demon King asks, and Pearl doesn’t understand what she’s saying, what the others are saying but it’s not important.

She’s a Hero. There’s a Demon King in front of her.

That’s all that’s important.

The copper taste in her sinuses and mouth. The pain in her muscles.

She’s a Hero.

“She doesn’t feel like a Hero,” The Demon King says, “I would have noticed that before now, but everything in my powers is saying she is.” Which is rude if it’s about her. But also means she’s underestimating Pearl.

“Demon King.” Pearl says, finally remembering how talking works, voice harsh at the edges like she’s been screaming, trying to understand where her sword is. “Your reign ends here.” Why it’s not coming.

“Also that.” The Demon King says, shortly, confused and wary and something else. “That’s a Hero-like thing.” Her arm burns, her mind burns, but her sword’s not coming, where is her sword? What’s happened to it?

Pearl doesn’t know how long she has until the Demon King attacks her, it won’t be long, but she needs her sword, she only has a knife.

Everything burns, vision bleeding like acid at the edges, and Pearl keeps waiting for her sword even as she prepares herself to fight with her knife.

There’s people talking. So many people, but Pearl keeps her attention on The Demon King.

“I don’t know!” The Demon King snaps, and Pearl tenses. Ready.

She’s fought without her sword before. Not for long, but she can fight with a knife.

The Demon King nods, lips tight. She doesn’t understand.

The horns and scales melt away, but Pearl knows Demon Kings. She’s made to know them. To fight them. She ignores the other voices. Shrugs off the hands. She needs her limbs free to fight.

Especially with only a knife.

“What are you doing?” Pearl demands of The Demon King. Everything burns. She doesn’t understand. It’s not the right burning. “What do you want?”

There’s people talking still, but The Demon King ignores them as well. That’s good.

“I want to protect my home.” She says, voice even, impassive. “That’s been taken care of, so now I mainly want to go back and finish my gardening.” Pearl doesn’t understand. She can’t think properly, and that’s bad, but what does the Demon Lord mean. What is she gardening? Where is her home?

Why did she call killing the other Demon Lord “protecting” it?

“What do you want?” The Demon Lord continues. Repeating her question back.

Pearl wants—

She’s a Hero.

She wants to go home.

Ash and acid in her throat.

She protects people.

Destiny a bright burning thing.

— to stop screaming.

There’s a Demon Lord in front of her.

Blue peasant dress.

Pearl doesn’t want.

Blue eyes.

The world is so green.

There’s a hand on her arm.

Red-rimmed blue eyes and drying tears.

Black lines like thorns across her skin.

She wants her home back.

“I’m a Hero.” Pearl says.

And something about the words drags at her throat like claws.

“Are you?” The Demon King asks. Tilting her head. The world tilts with it. Blue dress and peach skin and pink hair in a sea of acid.

Pearl’s arm burns.

Someone screams.

--

She knows the second she steps from Sausage’s lands (it’s still his, she can’t think of them as anything but his) to the neighboring ones.

The sense of tattered edges, an empty patch in a quilt, moving to something claimed, whole.

She’s never going to be able to go home, she realizes.

And Pearl falls. Legs slipping out from under her. Hands clawed into the grass and dirt like if she looks long enough she’ll be able to find some trace of him.

He’s gone.

Sausage is dead.

She’s never going to get to go home again because he’s dead.

Pearl chokes. The feeling swelling in her chest until it rips from her somewhere between a sob and a scream, cut off and strangled either way.

There’s a hole in the land and a hole in her, and they almost match because they’re almost missing the same thing.

What’s been ripped from them.

Sausage is dead and she’s not.

She was supposed to die. Why didn’t he just let her die?

He would have been sad and in mourning and grieved, but he had his lands, his people! She has nothing! Not even her Destiny because he swapped them and all she feels is the want and hunger for something she doesn’t know.

Pearl doesn’t have a land or people to take care of. She doesn’t have her sword or Destiny or purpose. She doesn’t have her best friend.

He killed himself, took everything from her to “save” her.

It was her job to save people.

She doesn’t feel saved.

Pearl doesn’t have anything.

And she’s never going to be able to go home now.

--

The world burns green.

The world screams.

There’s blood and dying and fire and the earth rebels underneath his feet.

Golden light dies.

But the green doesn’t.

Everything burns.

There’s gold in the green somewhere.

And screams.

There has to be.

The land screams under her.

Burning bright, unknown, acid green.

She can’t find it.

The world burns green and green and Green and Singing and Screaming and Calling and Hungry and Answer It, ANswer It, ANSWERITANSWERITANSWERIT, GREENINTHEDIRTANDTHEPLANTSANDTHEANIMALSANDTHEBUGANDCREATURESANDTREESHANDSTHROUGHTHESTONEANDTHEHEARTBLOODASMINEASYOURSASCOMEHOMECLAIMMEASHOMEASYOURSYOUCOULDBEMINESINGBACKLORDMYLORDMYLORDPLEASEMINELORDASMINE—

And then it doesn’t.

She stagers.

Falling as her muscles and bones give out, too tired to keep her upright, but there’s hands that hold her up instead.

There’s dirt caked around her boots.

And she tilts forward, wanting it around her hands, her limbs, the rest of her.

Wants the earth and grass against her skin as it pulls at her.

The hands keep her upright. Off the ground except her boots.

There’s hands holding her upright.

Pearl blinks.

She forces herself back upright.

She ignores the way her vision swims, knows how to get it to focus, at least there’s no blood in her eyes. Ignores the ache through her body. She’s up which means the fight’s over. Or that it isn’t. Ignores the humming, incessant and static and— And Pearl’s ignoring it.

She straightens herself out. 

The Demon King’s gone.

She… she needs to do something about that?

Pearl blinks forcefully. Refocuses her vision.

“—arl, you’re a Hero?” Someone asks. A voice she recognizes. She thinks they’ve been talking.

Is she supposed to answer? She can’t remember.

There are no Heros here though.

They’re all dead.

That’s what they do.

Hero’s die.

“Who died?” She knows this voice. “Pearl? What hero?”

“no.” Her head hurts. “no, she’s dead.” Dead in a field with her best friend. No corpse to bury. Not the right one. No body in the earth and dirt. Sunflowers withered away to ash but the stalk still standing. Dead in a dead field with her dead friend.

Pearl can’t throw up. She needs to stay standing.

Focus.

Pearl straightens. Again?

Grits her teeth and stands upright like she’s supposed to.

Gem’s in front of her. Worried. Hand on her arm. Grian next to her. Holding her other arm. The same expression in different fonts.

“Pearl?” Gem says. Wide green eyes scanning her face for something.

“Are you okay?” Grian asks. Hand still almost-tight around her arm, right above her Destiny.

“I’m okay.” Pearl repeats back. 

“You don’t look okay, Pearl.” Grian starts. There’s other people talking behind her.

“I am.” She has to be. She is.

“You were white, Pearl.” Grian says. “And green.” Green in the leaves and the hands and the earth. “You still are a little.”

“That’s not right.” She’s supposed to be gold. But… the gold went away. Died away from her. Died not her. And all of her.

“Who died?” Gem asks, worried. Really worried. Like—

“Were you there when a Hero died?” Her eyes are green. Green in pale freckled skin and ginger hair. It helps. She looks nothing alike.

They look everything alike.

“Gem!” Grian hisses out. “That’s not what’s important right now!” Pearl needs to focus.

“Considereing she keeps mumbling about it, I think it is!” Gem hisses back. There’s another conversation happening behind her. Is that important?

“—mpulse never said anything, though he did mention it was strange.” She doesn’t know what they’re talking about. But it seems important.

“Pearl.” Grian calls to her. She blinks at him. “Do you know why you had a reaction to the Demon King?” They were Demon Kings. She’s…

“I’ve fought them before.” Pearl’s calm. Focused. Honest. One Demon King with red eyes and purple-black horns and dead. One Demon King with unwary blue eyes and pink hair tied back and not here anymore. She should do something about that. If she still could’ve, she should.

“When?” Gem presses, face pinched. She needs to have them be less worried. “Where?”

“Back home.” Home is dead. “I mean, before I started traveling.” Pearl clarifies. Gem and Grian don’t look less concerned.

She’s forgetting something isn’t she.

Oh. Right. Normal people don’t fight Demon Kings.

“It was fine. I’m fine.” She hurries to add. She needs to reassure them so she can focus more on the other conversation. Something there is important.

“Pearl…” Grian starts, still worried.

“No, really.” Her brain is catching up. “I’m f—”

“Santa Perla.” Someone says and she spins towards the voice, False. “The Hero Santa Perla.” The woman continues like she’s putting pieces together. Watching Pearl with uncertain, furrowed brows.

“Who?” Jevin asks.

“She was a Hero, a good one, down far south, by the southern coast. Killed somewhere around five Demon Lords last I heard?” False starts explaining. She’s behind on rumours. The last one, the one who’d cursed her, was Pearl’s seventh. “Couple dragons too, I think.” The blonde adds like a side note. Admiration in her voice. “The way people told it her presence was pure golden light. The strongest Hero in decades.” Wait. “Kind too, always helping people fix whatever broke in the fight.” Stop. “A living Saint.” What’s left inside of Pearl freezes under False’s clear gaze.

“Santa Perla.” False repeats the title Sausage had started after she had killed her third Demon King, freed the villages under his control.

“Saint Pearl.” She says. Like a revelation. Eyes, all of them, turning back towards Pearl.

Always.

She was used to that.

Before.

She’s not though.

Not that.

Not anymore.

“Pearl?”

“Pearl!” Sausage says, greeting her as she comes home, beaming bright as the sun.

She can’t breathe.

“Perla.” The Soldiers greet with inclined heads as they open the church doors for her.

She doesn’t know what they want.

“Pearlescent…” Her mother starts warningly as she freezes on her path sneaking towards the forge.

Can’t give them what they want.

“Perle?” The Bard she just saved questions, head tilted and fingers twitching like he wants to write something down, or to play the lute strung across his back, despite the scorch marks across his hat and vest.

She isn’t what they want.

“Peril.” The Demon King spits out, not quite her name, but it’s supposed to be and she grins brightly in answer, hand on her sword as it sweeps forward.

Not anymore.

“Pearl?!” Sausage cries. Concerned and running towards her, hands ringed in green-green power. Pressing it into her. Dragging out the gold.

Pearl rips herself away.

Fabric tears.

Her heartbeat is in her ears and her arm pulses like a bruise in the shape of a hand.

There is no light.

The light’s gone.

It was there and she was dying and now it's gone, he’s gone.

There's only the emptyness. A hole inside her. Edges ragged like something's been ripped out of her or maybe it was ripped out of something else or both but she doesn't know, doesn't understand, she still can't understand, she wasn't made for this.

Feet like a drum over an earth that sings to match it, should match it, but she’s offbeat, offkilter.

This isn’t her. Pearl isn’t herself anymore. Hasn’t been in so long and she thought if she could just ignore it long enough, run far enough, she could get away, that it would go away, fall off her shoulders like her armour at the end of a fight, wash away like demon’s blood and dirt and ash. If she just keeps going, keeps walking forwards, keeps smiling, keeps slowly building her understanding of what’s changed then the other stuff wouldn’t matter. The light doesn’t feel like anything anymore and it’s gone from inside her and she’s not Pearl anymore. Her hair is brown, just brown, skin pale but tanned, eyes blue and dark and the wrong word on her arm, the wrong Destiny.

Her sword is gone, her soul is gone, and she doesn’t know who she is anymore other than hollow and wrong and out of place no matter where she goes because she’s been changed in a way that shouldn’t have been possible and the world itself no longer recognizes her.

She no longer recognizes the world.

There are trees and she can’t see them or the forest. Can’t hear what falls because she’s been falling for so long she isn’t sure there is a landing. A landing would most likely kill her.

And she didn’t die. She already fell and her landing was taken away so now all she can do is fall.

Trees and fields and sky and snow blurring around her. Voices and noises all rushing past like demon bats when you throw a torch down into the cave.

She doesn’t have her sword to fight them.

Doesn’t have her Destiny.

The torch light dies out in the fall. She follows after.

The ground coming up to catch her. Like it could. Like tanned arms with wide shoulders.

Like it could.

--

“Pearl?!” It’s Sausage’s voice that has her opening her eyes. “Pearl?! Pearl!” His face swims above her, thankfully also blocking out the sun.

“Hiya Soos.” She whispers, lips turning up at the corners. “‘m home. Surprise.” She doesn’t dare try to push herself up from the cart yet.

“Pearl, you’re bleeding!” Sausage cries. “What happened? Tell me what happened.” He repeated the question to the cart driver, Lordlyness slipping into his voice unconsciously.

“I’’s fiiiine.” Pearl drawls out before the driver could answer with anything too concerning. “M’ last fight just got a bit rough.” He’d been super nervous about taking her back in her condition and that’d just feed into Sausage’s concern.

“What fight? What’d you fight, Pearl?” He’s worried, really worried.

“Demon Lord, what else?” Pearl says almost grinning, her face hurts too much to pull her mouth into the correct shape. “Well, Demon Lord and his army.” She corrects herself. “But they didn’t get t’ the village! Aren’t you proud of me, Soos?” She spreads her arms, wincing at the movement. Her arm is definitely not healed yet.

“Army?!” Sausage cries, before spinning towards the driver before she can open her mouth to answer. “She fought an army?!” It’d been a small army! And not a very good one either.

“Alone, my lord.” The driver adds, anxiously twisting his hat in his hands. “Please, you can help the Hero Saint, yes?” He asks, eyes still as worried as all the others in the village when she asked them to take her back home. “She wouldn’t accept any medicine from us, only asked to be brought back here.”

“I told you guys you needed it more.” Pearl interrupts the driver, she can’t remember his name and feels bad about it, before he freaks Sausage out any further. “I heal good enough by myself.” She should try sitting up soon. That was going to suck.

“Pearl—”

“Help me up, Soos, so the guy can get back home sooner rather than later.” She cuts Sausage off as she pushes herself upright and towards the cart edge. Better to do it all in one motion. 

“What? Pearl!” He panics a little, but he still helps her, grabbing on to her arms with firm, steadying hands as she moves into a standing position. She’s maybe reopened something, but it’d be fine. “You can stay here tonight,” he tells not-her, so the driver, quickly, “as thanks for bringing her home. Excuse us.” The ground tilts and Pearl is no longer half-standing, half leaning on Sausage but fully being carried by him.

“Hey! Put me down. I can walk.” She complains, but not managing to be as forceful as she wanted. She’s too tall for him to carry easily, which he should know considering they’ve tried this before!

“No.” Sausage says stubbornly, already striding forward towards his mini-castle and it’s maybe faster than her being helped down the pathway. She rolls her eyes, which hurts the least out of all of the motions she’s done since waking up.

“‘M fiiiine.” She draws it out, closing her eyes against the bright sun, which is closer to the horizon than she’d thought earlier.

“You should have stayed in place to heal.” Sausage tells her as he carries her towards the door. He’s clenching his jaw. “Traveling makes wounds worse. You know that.” He berates her.

“Fetch the doctors.” Sausage orders someone as the doors open, before she can say anything back, and he doesn’t even pause in his steps.

“Why wouldn’t you stay?” He asks, and she opens her eyes again now that they’re inside, half-listening to the scramble of people at her and Sausage’s appearance.

He’s not looking at her, and doesn’t look like he’s about to let her down either, so she gives up on that idea. She’s tired anyway, so it works.

“They had so little, Soos.” Pearl explains, remembering the village, the scared, worried people with barely dirt to their names. “I wasn’t going to take what they had when it might save one or more of them.” And she’d be fine. Or what they had wouldn’t have done anything.

“Why didn’t you stay until you were healed at least? Pearl, you looked dead.” Sausage says, eyes wide, still so worried, and she snorts, patting his arm, or at least attempting to.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to die anywhere else.” She says soothingly. “My body’s going to be buried here and nowhere else.” There’s nowhere she’d rather be. Nowhere she’d get a better rest.

All Heroes die, Pearl knows that.

She’s not going to die anywhere else but here.

Not going to be buried anywhere but in Sausage’s land.

Her body in the dirt, sunflowers planted above, Sausage’s claim all around.

--

Pearl opens her eyes to red stained walls and a dark wooden ceiling and for a second it’s the exact same feeling she had waking up next to Sausage’s corpse, just pure confusion and the sense of something being wrong. The feeling she wasn’t supposed to wake up. She hadn’t felt bad about it last time. Not until she realized.

She’s resigned to it now.

Pearl stares at the ceiling from the guest bed she’d been using off and on, though with new blankets and extra pillows at the moment, and she catalogs her injuries out of habit as she traces the whorls in the centerbeam.

Scratches and cuts, some bruises, mainly. Her head hurts but not too much, and as she shifts to sit on the side of the bed nothing does more than twinge a bit. A minor ache in her muscles, joints pinching for just a second.

She’s in clean clothes, pajamas, and in moving she notices her injuries have already been wrapped. Bandages wound around her lower legs, an ankle, a wrist. Her arm.

They know, she realizes.

Maybe not the specifics, the how’s and who’s and when’s.

But they know she was a Hero, and know her Destiny no longer reads Hero.

Pearl sits on the edge of the bed silently.

Most of her stuff is here. Still in their bags. Or on the table next to the bed.

Some things are at the other house, but they weren’t important.

She’d learned quickly to keep everything important on her.

Pearl hasn’t moved yet.

She doesn’t have time to be frozen.

She never used to freeze.

But back then she was never cold. Never empty and hollow.

There’s light, gold, it’s always gold, coming in through the window across the room from the bed to land on the wood floor in front of her. Slowly reaching towards the wall.

It’s late afternoon is what that means.

She needs to be moving.

Pearl stares at the warm sunlight passing over polished wood and making it shine, the occasional dust mote floating through the beam.

She needs to move.

The pajamas aren’t hers-hers so she leaves them folded neatly on the small table, bed made behind her as she shifts her bags to their proper positions on her back.

She leaves the spare bedroom, walking down the stairs so she can leave the house, the town, the valley, and Gem’s there in the main room.

Damn. Pearl had been hoping to do this quietly.

She glances around quickly to check for Xisuma, the Guardian, the leader, or maybe someone else like False and Wells, meant to keep her here until he could Talk with her. Tell her what was going to happen.

Gem’s hair is messy, because of her no doubt, the issues she’s caused, and she jerks her head towards Pearl as she steps off the stairs, purposefully on to the creaking floorboard, mouth opening, eyes widening.

“I’ll leave now.” Pearl says, before Gem says the words herself. “Thank you for the accommodations, and help, and everything else. I’ll just take the path I came in on back out.” She bows slightly, not fully looking at the woman.

“What?” Gem’s eyes pinch back down in confusion, and that’s not right. She should be relieved, or wary, not confused.

“I’m leaving.” Pearl repeats, shifting closer to the door, to the exit. “Both the town and valley.” She’d thought because there’d been bandages wrapped around her wounds, because it’d only been Gem on the first floor, they were planning on letting her leave.

“Pearl, you can’t leave!” Gem cries, quickly moving between her and the door. Pearl doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t know why they’d waste the bandages if they weren’t going to kick her out. She keeps her eyes mostly on the door, her way out, watching Gem from the corners of her eyes.

“Watch me.” She says, and she doesn’t want to fight Gem, but she would. Pearl just wants to leave before things get worse. She’s been here too long, and now they know she’s lied. She thought they’d let her leave. She’d hoped they would.

“No, I mean the pass is snowed in and there’s a storm coming, you’d die!” Gem yells, still pushing herself between Pearl and the door. And something in Pearl snaps.

“Good!” She yells back, teeth bared as she faces the Guard. Spine straight, shoulders back. “I was supposed to die, so at least now I can fix that mistake!” Pearl shouts, no longer half-curled in on herself and slouching, trying to make herself smaller, like she’s done for months.

Green eyes go wide and startled, and Pearl almost feels guilty about it but she needs to leave. And then her eyes narrow again, stubbornness snapping back into place.

“You surviving wasn’t a mistake!” The ginger snaps back, jabbing a finger into her, but Pearl refuses to let herself move. Not anywhere but out. “And you aren’t allowed to go out into the middle of a snowstorm and die!” She says like an order.

“Don’t try and be a “good person” when you don’t even know what you’re talking about.” Pearl retorts sharply, mouth edging towards a snarl. She forces it into something thinner. Sharper. “I’m not someone you can just beat up and then skip town on.” She spits the harsh words out. Jagged and pointed, and if she’d just move.

“No,” the Guard hisses out, eyes locked on hers, “you’re my friend.”

“I’m your stray.” Pearl cuts in with a sneer, words cruel and cutting. “Yours and Grian’s and Scar’s. Some pathetic girl with a tragic backstory you picked up traveling and felt sorry for. Don’t worry!” She says, grinning, eyes wild as she raises her hands. “I get it! You wanted to save somebody!” Pearl cries, smile wide and empty as everything else in her. Her grin drops.

“Funny thing about the people who try to save me is they seem to wind up dead.” She states flatly. Eyes fixed on the ginger haired woman.

“Same with my friends too though, so I guess you’re really eager!" Pearl grins again. Gem hasn’t moved, but Pearl could probably manage to get out the door now.

“Pearl…”

“Dead and buried and screaming!” She grins. “Not believing me when I say it’s fine, just trust me, it’ll be okay!”

“Pearl, you’re bleeding.” Gem says, eyes pinched and wide and contradicting again. There is blood running from where she clenches her fist and grips her arm. The word on it.

“Aww, don’t worry, Gemmy.” Pearl drawls with a grin. “It’s fine. I’ve had worse.”

“Pearl—”

“Pearl, Pearl, Pearl, Pearl!” She cries, raising the hand not on her arm to her head. “Always everyone wanting something from me!” Digs her nails in. “Well guess what! I did that! I was a Hero!” Pearl yells, throwing one arm out. “I was a great Hero!” She hisses, clenching the hand that’d been wrapped over the Destiny embedded in her arm. “And then when I was dying and scared out of my mind and all I wanted was for my best friend to stay with me while I died, do you know what he did?!” She cries, grin cracking up her face, wild and doomed and broken. “He. Didn’t. Let. Me. Go.” Pearl hisses out, inches from Gem. From the door behind her. “He switched our places. He took my Destiny. And he died.” She says. “He died the horrible, painful, Hero’s Death I was having, and I got to wake up next to his corpse and a hole ripped open inside me.” She cries. She doesn’t know if it’s tears or blood falling down her face. It’s probably blood.

“I’m not a Hero.” Pearl says. “And I’m not a Lord.” Gem looks something Pearl wishes she could feel.

“I’m something that was supposed to die and didn’t.” The words pull themselves from her. “I was supposed to die. Not Sausage. And whatever he did to save me, didn’t.” She might be crying now.

“He didn’t save me. My best friend Broke me!” Pearl feels the words leave her like she’s vomiting up her heart. “He tried saving me, and it killed him, and it’s killing me in every other way but what would let me die!” Maybe she is. Her heart had always revolved around two things. Her Destiny, being a Hero, and Sausage.

“He wouldn’t let me die!” She screams, hands in her hair, dampness across her face. “And I’m supposed to be okay, be grateful about that?!” Gem, the door, is further away. She must have stepped backward.

“He killed himself for me!” Pearl doesn’t want to be doing this. Saying these things. “He killed himself and took my Destiny and thought I would be okay with that?!” She left to not be doing this. Not end up like this.

Broken.

Gem steps forward, hand raised slightly, eyes wide with concern, but she’s stepped away from the door.

Pearl bolts forward.

Out.

Outside, outside, outsideoutsideoutsideoutside.

Out and away, and she’s fast, she knows how to run, she can run, just go, get out, she’s out.

Gem running after her, yelling something, asking her to stop, saying things Pearl doesn’t understand.

Cold air, and ice, and it is going to snow, she doesn’t care, doesn’t care if she ever leaves this valley because where she’d go to die is dead before her and the snow doesn’t hurt in the end—

“Etho!” Gem screams behind her, and Pearl whips her head to both sides to see if the masked man was anywhere near her.

No one.

Nothing.

Path, buildings, snow, buildings, firewood.

White hair above a masked face and wide surprised eyes, one black, one red.

“Uh…” Etho starts, having suddenly appeared from the snow and as seemingly as baffled as her by it.

“Stop her!” Gem yells from behind her, and Pearl doesn’t know what she means, how he would, if he could, where he came from, if he’s strong enough to stop her, fast enough, she can’t let that happen, she has to keep going. 

Etho blinks. Raises a hand. Pearl veers her course to stay as far away as possible. There’s a white light in his hand that moves like mist.

Towards her.

She doesn’t know what happens next.

--

Pearl wakes up in the guest bed with its new blankets and extra pillows, new bandages around her arms, and Grian next to the door quietly talking to whoever’s outside of it.

She rolls over, away from him.

There’s a chair, book set on the seat, in between the door and her.

The door shuts after a little longer, and there’s soft footsteps as Grian returns to his chair and sits back down.

“We’re here for you, Pearl.” He tells her softly. “Even if it doesn’t feel like it.” He says.