(1)

It wasn't until Rufus had explored the mines in the area of Villnore while searching for the Dragon Orb with Alicia and Silmeria that he had ever seen such a thing as rails. Man, lacking the power to materialize at will, resorted to honing the craft of technology. The rails were wrought to steer the carts carrying minerals and ore safely through the treacherous dark.

Perhaps the gods had begun the same way. They could be credited for blessing mankind with the basics of society, forming order from chaos. They had crafted unalterable fate-lives planned from birth to death-all in the interests of keeping mankind from falling into one of those perilous pitfalls. Valkyrie was the switchboard operator. Goddess of death. Mechanic of fate.

Rufus's first instinct was to ride on one of the strange metal carts and avoid all of those annoying monsters. Some couldn't even be hit by normal weaponry; and that meant he would be working overtime, his magic-laced arrows in high demand. He looked silly hunched in the cart like a child on a wagon ride, but who cared if it cut his work down?

Silmeria told him firmly to stop goofing off. Stop being lazy. Do your job and be grateful for the opportunity. Because in those winding dark places far off the beaten path, there were treasures that would make this trip worthwhile. What were they here for, if not the eradication of monsters? If they ran in, took the straight path, and ran back out, then what would be the point of it all?

After all was settled, he understood exactly what she was talking about. He knew what Silmeria had fought and died for-what young, sweet Alicia had died for.

The gods were not happy with him upon his return to Asgard. It wasn't a simple matter of usurping Odin's throne. Rufus demanded change. He would settle for no less than total removal of the gods' influence from Midgard. As a result, Asgard shook with tension and came to the brink of war. With Gungnir in hand, even a lowly einherjar such as himself could defeat a god. Unfortunately for himself and all of Midgard, direct one-on-one conflict was not the gods' style. Battle required strategy and sacrifice.

Rufus faced a difficult decision-disable the gods as much as possible and disappear, or watch Midgard and Asgard be engulfed in a turbulent war. He was sure that Freya and the rest would be broiling with anger when they discovered the valkyries' spirits-all three-sent to Midgard to sleep. Even more would Freya rant and rave when she realized that he had sealed the ability to summon them back. No valkyries meant no new souls. That meant the gods had little to squabble over, and that einherjar were now in high demand. If it really looked like the world was going to end perhaps he would let one of them awaken after a natural life's end, but he had no plans to do so any time soon.

He wasn't sure if that would fix things, but it certainly diffused them for a few decades. Nothing to the gods, perhaps, but all the time in the world for him-a mortal man who was not quite new to the idea of immortality, but certainly hadn't grown used to it yet. In the meantime, he could examine the situation and learn to use his new powers. He could truly attempt once more to take Odin's place.

He felt as if his cart was no longer attached to a set of rails, a liberating sensation; but along with that feeling came incredible loneliness and fear. He was careening over the edge of an abyss without so much as a light. There was no shining light to guide his way or to warm or comfort him. How he had grown so used to that, to being near Alicia.

(2)

As he returned to his career as an aimless wanderer, always moving to avoid detection from the gods, he began to wonder just how much of fate's tracks could be altered now that they had been set in place. Lezard surely shook things up enough to drastically change everything, and yet... Rufus got the sensation of crashing at the same crossroads over and over again.

A little girl in Coriander was the first. He had nearly tripped over her in the literal sense. Even as miraculous as it was, it meant very little and he was surprised to find himself strangely detached from the entire event. She was dead. To see that her soul still existed was only a small comfort. It let him know that she was happy-that what should have been in her previous life now was. Alicia's life would be free of trouble. No valkyries, no crazy mages, and no half-elf companions. Of course she would likely fret about day-to-day things and experience sorrows that every person who lives experiences. If she didn't, then her life would hardly be worth living. But without memory of what she had overcome and who she had become or what she had lost in the process, it wasn't really a second chance. It was more like a rewrite-just like those poor chumps from Lenneth Valkyrie's other future who may never exist now.

The philosophy behind threatened to drive him mad. If Lenneth's world never existed, then Lezard would not have existed, and thus wouldn't have come to his time to screw everything up. Therefore, it stood to reason that her world did exist out there somewhere in a reality that branched from his own like the countless arms of the world ash Yggdrassil. Then, did that mean that there was some reality where he and Alicia died in each other's arms? That might have been better than saying goodbye. Did that mean that souls retained part of each life they lived? He bordered on schizophrenia arguing with himself. His paths crossed with hers for a reason. No, it was those damned rails again. But what if some paths are there for a reason? No, you can't follow a fated path and drag Alicia back into this. Never.

Goodbye. He kissed his ring to wish her luck and turned to leave while he could still smile about it. He did not see the girl linger, staring into the place from whence he came and promptly disappeared into. He did not see the small girl sigh in a very grown-up sort of way that betrayed her youthful innocence before turning to chase the other children again.

(3)

It seemed that he ran into Arngrim at every bar. Rufus could never look at Arngrim without remembering the guillotine which removed King Barbarossa's head; but at the same time, he could not think of King Barbarossa without hearing the sound of his hand smacking against Alicia's innocent face. Alicia forgave him. Them both. That was what mattered.

He crossed einherjar everywhere. They stopped and spoke with him each and every time. Too many of them. Some of them were ill-informed, and he hated speaking of the past-especially when it came to explaining Alicia's fate, and Silmeria's demise. Their responses ranged from tearful sympathy to shame and disgust. Some argued with him, attacked his poor explanation. He hated each of these interactions regardless of whether they were supportive or aggressive.

He thought: I just want to forget. Forget it all.

He wanted to be with Alicia in blissful ignorance if not in presence, but the fate this world seemed eternally bound to would not allow him that refute.

(4)

Rufus remembered all at once that fate is cruel to others besides himself.

It was a routine trip through the desert outside of Kallstad. The monsters there were armored, resembling desert creatures like scorpions and giant burrowing insects. Their tough shells could be tricky for novices to penetrate, but Rufus was not just a freed einherjar with enough skill gained through treacherous experiences to obliterate a world archery championship-he was brimming with the power of Gungnir. Being so practically invincible now, he often forgot that simple folk had to work very hard to secure their safety.

It was a peculiar scene he came upon in the desert. Fresh corpses ripped limb from limb and half eaten laid around a toppled wagon. Their blood was still wet, freshly spilled. He proved a bit too used to battle when he easily identified the human pieces as belonging to two people, a man and woman. You died together, he thought. At least there is that for you. Enjoy Fólkvangr until the gods grant your souls passage; you deserve it. Their horses were also dead and in the process of being stripped of meat.

Several of the red-bodied insectoid creatures were appeased by the meal, and Rufus was torn on the decision of whether or not to chase them away. It scared him that he was beginning to think of this as natural. Though fairly in keeping with his code of avoiding intervention, it was a bit too close to the gods' way of thinking. But honestly, if the soul was absent, then what is the body? Perhaps he thought that way more easily since his own physical form had been absorbed by Lezard while holding the late All-father, not shredded to carnal bits. All the same, he doubted he would care what became of his remains.

Then he noticed that not all the monsters were done. One of the hulking, clawed, crimson things was very interested in a chest that had been carried by the wagon. Also, the chest itself made noise when it was shaken. It was screaming. It cried with the voice of a small girl.

Needing no further motivation, he made swift work of each remaining creature. And so the killing was pointless, the entire event meaningless. Neither man nor nature prevailed. All that it changed was that a girl now lacked parents. They were taken without anything being offered in return. Perhaps it would be more merciful to allow the girl to follow them. At least there would be no goodbyes. He scared himself thinking like that, and was grateful that his conscience often moved his hands without asking his questioning mind for permission. If he had just come a bit sooner, he could have saved all of them. That made it his fault.

It was a damned good chest, having withstood countless blows by heavy pincers and jagged teeth. Rufus quickly found the key and popped it open. Inside was a girl with messy golden blonde hair and a bloodied blue sun dress that attempted to match the color of her teary blue eyes. She was huddled up into a ball, terrified and shaking.

It was a wreck. Instantly he knew that this girl was Silmeria.

Unlike with Alicia, he could not say goodbye, turn, and leave. He could not forget that he had seen her and that she was a new person. This valkyrie had a destiny and she had a life. He felt that one had somehow been sacrificed for the other in accordance with fate's design. He was meant to find her here and take her with him.

It begrudged him to admit that he had no other choice, but he could not leave a child-reincarnated ally or not-stranded in the desert. He held her in his arms and she curled up against his chest crying. He thought that children should be more averse to touching strangers, but she must have been relieved that he wasn't a monster. At least he didn't think that he was a monster. Not yet, anyway.

(5)

First he took her away from the site of the incident hoping that perhaps putting the viscera of her parents' corpses behind them would help him to calm her. The child cried, but her tears were not of grief. They were sounds of terror and confusion. She failed to form words at all, just a stream of constant agonized noises.

"You are okay now," he said. "Everything will be all right." His words did little to calm her, though she allowed him to carry her without a struggle. After hours of this, when her sounds finally died, he realized that the girl was asleep. Silmeria's soul slept soundly, the cheek of her human host nuzzled against his shirt.

This was the first child that Rufus had ever held. He saw them occasionally in town, playing or doing small chores just as Alicia had been when their paths crossed. He never spoke to children unless he had to, or gave them much attention at all. He would never have a child or a family, and so their existence had always been inconsequential to him.

He carried her to the edge of the desert and made camp there. He hoped to reach Crell Monterfrainge the next day. It had been a while since the idea of getting somewhere with haste had even crossed his mind. He had no place to be, no home to reach. The only quick traveling he did these days was to avoid people he recognized, either in the form of old friends of the occasional reincarnated girl in Coriander. And when that occurred, he simply transported away by magical means.

The girl was so exhausted that she did not even wake at the smell of fresh meat roasting over the fire. He preserved it for her to eat later and studied her face as she slept. She was so similar to Alicia's child form that he could have mistaken them for each other if not for the sense of Silmeria's soul. Her hair was a few shades different in hue, a bright golden blonde rather than ash. Little yellow shoes with pink flowers painted on them adorned her feet. Rufus had never seen such tiny things. He had no idea where one would even hope to have them made.

She drifted in and out of sleep, but it wasn't until well until the next day that she was aware again. When she awoke, she was no longer crying. He left her lying wrapped in his cloak, for comfort more than warmth. It was pleasant on the outskirts of the desert at night. Once the sun rose it began to get hot, but she remained bundled up in it nevertheless.

When she finally opened her eyes, she sat up with the cloak wrapped around herself and looked in all directions, bewildered. Rufus had been sitting nearby quietly all the while. Once unable to stay still and silent, he now sat for hours motionless without making a sound, trying to simply pass through time with as little thought as possible. She held the cloak around her shoulders and stood. "Who are you?" she said meekly, keeping a cautious distance from Rufus.

"My name is Rufus," he explained. "What's yours?"

Nothing but a blank stare.

"Who were your parents?" He continued. The girl would not answer. "What did they do? Do you know where they were going?"

Nothing but a frustrated pout.

"Do you have any relatives? Anyone who could take you in?"

A frown of disapproval. He deemed that the best response so far. Very Silmeria.

"Are you my daddy?" she asked bluntly.

Rufus sputtered at that. "W-what are you talking about?"

The girl frowned and sat back down. "I don't know what my name is," she said, turning her nose up.

Until now he had assumed her lack of grief was simply due to the fact that small children did not understand the finality of death, but that statement made him suspect that something else was wrong with her. "Don't you remember anything?" he asked.

Her eyes became a great deal more sorrowful as she attempted. Her speech was a bit hurried and choppy, but she was otherwise well-spoken for such a young girl. "All I remember is being carried by somebody-I think it was you. Before that, it's scary... and dark..."

No kidding, he thought. She had been locked in a box and tossed about by a pack of oversized sand scorpions. He watched her begin to shake as she concentrated and tried to think. Suddenly she grasped her tiny head and wailed in agony. "What's wrong?" he shouted in alarm and hurried to her side on his knees.

She grasped him about the waist with small, shaking arms and squeezed him. "I don't wanna remember," she said. "It's scary... there's a scary thing..."

"It's okay, you don't have to," he said softly, patting her hair. It was grimy from travel. "You're with me now. I'll keep you safe." He uncovered the food he saved for her. He had only eaten a bit of it himself. "Are you hungry? I hope you like it."

She took a bit of the meat into her hands. It was dry but soft. She began to nibble on it gratefully without saying anything.

He stood and allowed her to finish it while he strapped his things onto his back and got ready to travel onwards. "I don't even know what kids eat," he mumbled to himself.

(6)

She offered to walk by his side; in fact, she wouldn't be held at first. Though she stubbornly refused a piggy-back ride, she insisted on holding Rufus's hand as they crossed the prairie leading into more vegetated lands. After the first hour she began to complain very loudly that she didn't want to walk anymore, and Rufus finally scooped her up. He placed her on his shoulders and she amused herself with he beads in his hair for quite some time.

They traveled all day. Rufus was accustomed to silence, had learned to create silence even in his own mind. Unless he was practicing to control Gungnir or debating himself on what stance he should take regarding the future of Midgard, he sleep-walked through life without so much as allowing himself to dream. But she made that impossible. She was bored and asked him countless questions.

"Why is your hair green?"

"I was born that way." Because he was half-elf and hated it, and he couldn't tell her that.

"Why do you have shiny things in your hair?"

"Because I felt like it." There had been a time when he commemorated his accomplishments by marking them with trinkets. He couldn't even remember what those had been anymore. Couldn't tell her that.

"But aren't you a boy?"

"Last time I checked," Rufus sighed. She was right. He was more boy than man.

"Where are we going?"

"Crell Monterfrainge."

"What's that?"

"A city."

"What kind of city?"

"One full of chapels." And stupid people who visited those chapels and allowed themselves to be enslaved by the gods without receiving anything in return.

"What's a chapel?"

"A place you go to worship a god." Something he could technically be considered.

"What gods do you worship?"

"None," he said, and then reconsidered. "Well... maybe one."

"Which one?"

"Valkyrie."

"Who is she?"

Rufus was getting tired of this. If he wasn't talking then she was, and all she did was ask questions. He wished she would talk about herself; but then he considered that a child with no memories can't exactly tell many stories. He decided to tell one to her, to keep her from asking questions. "Do you like stories?"

"Uh-huh," she answered. "Do you know stories?"

"Once upon a time," he began without leaving an opening for more questions, "There was a princess. She was the beloved daughter of the king of Dipan. She was kind and beautiful and everyone loved her."

"What did she look like?"

Rufus cringed, remembering Alicia's sweet face. "Uh... very beautiful. Long blonde hair, and blue eyes."

"What color dress did she wear?"

Rufus didn't understand why that mattered. "A blue dress, like yours," he said, since Alicia hadn't worn a dress anyway. "But the poor princess, she was cursed. So her father sent her to live in a tower far away."

He went on with the story, substituting Silmeria with a hint-dropping fairy just to make it more kid-friendly. Hrist was the villain since she seemed a suitable a scary evil witch type. "And one night they escaped, running away from the castle."

"There's no prince?" she asked him.

"Afraid not."

"Well, how does it go after that?"

"She runs away and she's free, so that's the end," he explained, puzzled as to why this wasn't satisfactory.

"And then what happened?"

Rufus thought that his choice of stories was not very good in retrospect. There is no prince. The princess dies. The bad guy doesn't succeed, but nobody really wins. "Hm," he muttered, trying to buy time as he thought. "What do you think happened next?"

"The princess meets a prince," she said. "Duh."

"Duh?" Rufus laughed. Of course, saying obviously! in that oh-so-Silmeria tone would be too wordy for a kid her age, but that is what it sounded like. She began to slap the top of his head lightly as if it was a drum. "So where did the prince come from?"

"Um. He, well..." She fiddled with the beaded locks of his hair while she thought. "He ran away too!" she declared. She began to explain so excitedly that her grammar suffered a deal. "The princess run away from the tower and the prince run away from his castle too-and-and-so they decided to run away together! And then... then they go and kill monsters and stuff 'cause the fairy helped them find the treasures."

She leaned over until Rufus feared she would tumble forward over his head. She looked down into his face, seeking approval. "Is that what happened?" she asked.

"Yeah," Rufus replied. "That's exactly what happened."

It was a long road to Crell Monterfrainge, but Rufus was shocked to find that it felt much shorter. Only six or seven years had passed, after all. It felt like centuries. Perhaps it was because he had always been sleep-walking, merely observing, happy to watch as everything grew around him so slowly. With the girl on his shoulders chattering away he suddenly felt as if time was flying by.

Short days spent with his allies, with Alicia. They used to pass this way. He remembered someone saying that fleeting pleasures are more wonderful for their transient nature, like the snow of blossoming trees in the spring, or a child's youth, or love that made itself known between two people for only a day. From Bifrost to the end of their journey. A day.