An early chapter, I guess. Well, since no Main story today, so I thought I'd upload this one.

Chapter 09

Fern and Frieren sat together on the worn wooden steps that led up to the front doors of the church. The afternoon light slanted across the open ground in long golden bars and the distant sounds of the village drifted through the trees. Fern kept her hands clasped tightly around her staff while her eyes stayed fixed on the path that led back toward the main street. She could not stop replaying the words the priest had just spoken. 

A demon who claimed to be madly in love with Stark. A demon who had held a priest hostage inside the church. The details kept spinning through her mind until her stomach felt tight and her breathing came short. 

A demon with strange powers and an obsession that went far beyond normal feelings could not be good for him. Fern felt a sharp wave of worry that made her fingers tighten until the wood of her staff creaked. What if the demon had already done something to hurt him? What if she had taken him somewhere far away where no one would find them? The shock sat heavy in Fern’s chest and refused to loosen no matter how many times she drew slow breaths.

Frieren sat a little way apart from Fern and kept her own expression calm as always. She watched the younger mage for a long moment and then spoke in her quiet steady voice that never rose above a normal tone.

“This is not the first time demons have tried to go out of their way to bond with humans. Some of them find real joy when they see the look of betrayal on a human’s face. They enjoy the way the human struggles and then they feast on the body while it is still alive.”

Fern turned her head sharply and gave Frieren a scolding look that mixed worry with clear disapproval. Her voice came out firm and sharp.

“That is a scary thing to say. You are making it sound almost like something to enjoy. Stark-sama is not prey. He is our comrade and he deserves better than to be treated like a toy by some demon who claims love.”

Frieren did not change her expression and simply continued as if the interruption had not happened.

“I wonder why someone with Stark’s capabilities lost so completely to a demon like her. Even if she threatened to kill civilians he is significantly stronger and faster than most threats we have faced. He has taken down monsters that have grown strong for centuries.”

Fern kept her eyes on the path and thought about the words carefully before she answered. Her voice stayed low and careful as she measured every possibility.

“What if she had more hidden capabilities? What if she used things we have never seen before? Demons are proud of their mana and their spells and their moves. They show off everything they can and try to prove they are the strongest in any room. Maybe she held back something important just to make sure Stark could not escape.”

Frieren gave a small nod that showed she had already considered the same possibility.

“That is possible. Though it is unforeseen. Demons love to display their power. They will show their mana spells and their dominance in front of anyone who will listen. But even with all that Stark should have been able to protect himself. Still we cannot be sure.”

Fern drew a deeper breath and looked at Frieren with clear uncertainty in her eyes. The worry had grown louder in her chest and it made her words come out faster than usual.

“What should we do then Frieren-sama? We cannot just leave him with her. We have to find him and make sure he is safe.”

Frieren rose from the step and brushed a small bit of dust from her cloak. She spoke with the same calm certainty that had guided her for centuries.

“We find him. I am certain they are heading north. That is where more demons live and where they would choose to go if they wanted to be alone with no one to interfere. The compass we made earlier still points in that direction and the mana signature has not faded.”

Fern stood as well and adjusted the strap of her pack. She kept her voice steady even though the fear for Stark still sat heavy inside her.

“The priest said the demon wanted to sleep... Do you think he was just confused? Maybe he said something strange because of the fever or because he was not thinking clearly.”

Frieren walked down the steps and turned to face the village path once more. She answered without hesitation.

“Most probably. And demons and humans are not compatible as mates. Demons do not see humans as mates. They see them as prey. A demon who claims love is almost always trying to use the human for something and then destroy them when they are finished.”

Fern walked beside Frieren and felt the same cold realization settle over her again. She thought about Stark’s kind face and the way he had once shared his stories of old battles with them. The idea that this demon might be treating him like prey made her stomach turn.

“I wonder… What if she turns out to be stronger? What if she has more power than even Aura had? Stark is important to us. He is our vanguard and he canoot die to a random hundred-year-old demon.”

“…that is still a lot. Frieren-sama.”

Frieren did not slow down and spoke as if the numbers were nothing more than simple facts.

“So what? It is nothing compared to Aura who was five hundred at least. Or me who is twelve hundred years old.”

Before Fern could answer the sound of footsteps reached them from the church steps. Both women turned and saw Sein. The man looked at them with tired eyes and spoke in a voice that still carried the strain of worry.

“Yikes, you're really old.” He said.

“How is my brother?” Frieren asked.

“He is fine. I asked someone to look after him. They should be able to help him now.”

“Why not treat him yourself? You seem to know healing magic.”

The man shook his head and climbed the last step so he stood level with them. He kept his expression neutral and gave a small explanation.

“I am going somewhere. That is why.”

“Where?”

He turned fully to face them and spoke in a steady tone that left no room for misunderstanding. “With you.”

“Us? Why?”

The priest looked sheepish  for a moment and then his face hardened with determination. “To kill the demon bitch or at least punch her because she hurt my brother.”

Fern was surprised at the words. She kept her voice careful even though the it felt sudden and dangerous.

“Are you sure? The path ahead is harsh. The forest is deep and the demon is powerful. She could be dangerous even if she is not the strongest.”

The priest crossed his arms and looked at Frieren with clear conviction.

“Nah. I am fine. Plus I once made a promise to someone long ago that I would go on an adventure. That person went but I had forsaken the promise. Maybe it is time.”

Frieren studied the man for a long moment and then gave a small nod of acceptance. The offer carried weight and the priest’s resolve seemed genuine.

“Alright. Sein. Welcome to our party.”

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They walked for the better part of an hour after Stark stopped fighting her, though walked was not quite the right word for what his legs were doing. He moved the way a man moves after a battle has already decided itself without him, each step heavy and automatic, his mind still caught somewhere back in that clearing full of smoke and dissolving copies of her, still caught on the sound of his own voice saying I will, I will, still caught on the particular cold shape her hand had made around his throat before she let him breathe again.

Subaru walked a half step ahead of him, humming something tuneless under her breath, her mood as bright and untroubled as if the last hour had never happened at all.

The trees began to thin out some time after, the deep unbroken scene giving way, gradually, to patches of open gray sky, and then, without any particular announcement, the forest simply opened into a wide clearing, grass grown soft and undisturbed across most of it, and at its exact center stood a single enormous tree.

It rose up out of the ground wider around than three men standing arm in arm, its bark deep and furrowed with age, its lowest branches already higher than any roof Stark had ever stood beneath, and its branches spread out overhead in a slow unhurried sprawl that must have taken centuries to grow into the shape it now held.

Subaru stopped walking.

She stood there for a long moment, head tilted back, studying the tree with an expression Stark could not quite read, something between appraisal and recognition, as though she had been looking for this exact tree for a very long time without knowing its shape until the moment she finally saw it.

"Here," she said.

"Here what?" Stark asked, though some tired resigned part of him already suspected the answer.

"We'll build the house here," she said, turning to face him with a bright, settled certainty. "Around this one. It's old enough. Strong enough. It'll hold whatever I ask it to hold."

Stark looked up at the tree, and then back at her, and felt something in his chest that was too exhausted to properly qualify as dread anymore, settling instead into a flat, worn acceptance.

"How long is that going to take?" he asked. "Finding wood, gathering it, cutting it to size, that's weeks of work even with two able bodies, and I'm not exactly—"

"A minute," Subaru said.

Stark blinked. "A…minute?"

"Maybe less." She was already walking toward the base of the great tree, rolling her shoulders the way a craftsman rolls her shoulders before beginning a long familiar task, and something in the easy confidence of the motion made the hair along Stark's arms rise despite himself.

She stopped a few paces from the trunk and turned to face it fully, and planted her bare feet wide against the soft grass, and brought both hands up in front of her chest.

Her fingers moved.

It was not a motion Stark recognized from any magic he had ever watched a mage perform, not the gestures Frieren used, not the tight precise motions Fern favored. It was something different feeling than either, her hands folding and crossing through a sequence of positions too fast and too fluid for his eye to properly follow, each shape dissolving into the next before he had finished registering the last, until her palms came together at the center of her chest with a soft, final clap.

"Wood Release," she said, her voice dropping into something low and reverent, half spoken to herself.

The ground beneath the great tree's roots shuddered.

Stark staggered back a full step, one hand flying instinctively to the axe at his side, as the earth around the trunk split open along a dozen fine seams at once, and from those seams came wood, raw and pale and impossibly fast, climbing up out of the dirt in thick curling ropes that wove themselves, strand over strand, around the ancient trunk's base.

He had seen her create things before. This is nothing like them. This was violence dressed up as growth, wood erupting and twisting and thickening in great convulsive pulses, each pulse sending a new tremor through the ground beneath his boots, the air itself filling with the sharp green smell of sap and torn earth and something else beneath it, something that smelled, impossibly, like ozone after a lightning strike.

The lowest branches of the ancient tree began to bend.

They did not break, actually, they bent the way living wood bends under patient, deliberate pressure, curving outward and then back in on themselves, weaving into a lattice that thickened with every passing second, walls climbing up out of nothing around the trunk's broad circumference, floors unfurling flat and solid between one heartbeat and the next, entire rooms blooming into existence the way a flower blooms in the fast turning light of many compressed days, compressed instead into mere seconds.

A roofline rose. Then a second story above the first, the wood thickening and smoothing itself as it climbed, knots and burls softening into something that looked, astonishingly, deliberate, almost carved, as if some patient hidden craftsman worked just beneath the visible surface of the growth, smoothing every rough edge the moment it appeared.

A balcony unfurled from the second story's western face, railing curling up out of the floor in one continuous motion. A doorway opened itself into the ground floor wall, the wood simply parting and then thickening along the new edges it had created, as though it had always meant to leave a space there and was only now remembering to finish the thought.

Windows bloomed next, round and uneven and strangely beautiful, pale wood thinning at their centers until it went nearly translucent, letting the gray afternoon light filter soft and diffuse into whatever rooms now existed behind them.

Stark stood frozen at the edge of the clearing, his mouth hanging open, every instinct in his body screaming at him that what he was watching should not be possible, that no single creature should hold this kind of raw unbothered command over the actual substance of the living world, and underneath that screaming instinct, some quieter, more honest part of him simply stood in awe.

It was beautiful.

He hated it with a tired, worn hatred that had long since stopped having the energy to properly burn, and still, watching whole rooms unfold out of raw timber in the space of heartbeats, watching a home rise seamless and complete around the body of a tree that had likely stood in this clearing since before either of his grandparents had been born, he could not deny the sheer impossible wonder of it.

The growth slowed. Then stilled.

Subaru lowered her hands and turned to look at him with a bright, proud smile stretched wide across her face.

"Well?" she said. "What do you think?"

Stark looked up at the finished structure, wood pale and smooth and warm looking in the fading light, wrapped seamless around the ancient trunk the way ivy wraps around a wall it has already decided to own, and found, for one long disoriented moment, that he had no words ready at all.

"It's…" he managed finally. "That's… You did that in under a minute."

"Told you." She crossed the distance between them with quick, pleased steps, taking his hand in both of hers and tugging him toward the newly formed doorway. "Come see the inside. I left room for a proper kitchen, and a bedroom upstairs, and I was thinking we could add onto it later, once we know what we actually need. It'll grow however we want it to grow. That's the nice thing about doing it this way. Nothing's ever really finished."

Stark let himself be pulled forward, still staring up at the impossible structure rising above him, and Subaru's voice, bright and quick and already spinning forward into some new excited thought, filled the quiet evening air around them both.

"This is going to be perfect," she said. "Just the two of us. No one else, no villages close enough to bother us, no one coming to interrupt anything. I thought about building closer to people, you know, somewhere we could still visit if we wanted to, but then I thought, why? Why would we need anyone else at all. We have everything we could possibly want right here. I'll grow a garden, and I'll learn to cook properly, and I'll make sure nothing ever gets close enough to hurt either of us, not monsters, not demons, not anyone who might try to take you away from me." Her grip on his hand tightened, just slightly, just enough that he felt it. "I used to think I wanted other things too, friends, maybe, a bigger life, but none of that matters anymore. You're enough. You're more than enough. I don't need anything else in the whole world as long as I have you in it with me."

She stopped at the bottom of the new treehouse and turned to face him fully, her eyes bright with an intensity that made something cold curl low in his stomach even as her smile stayed warm and soft.

"I'm going to make this the safest place either of us has ever lived," she said. "Nobody will ever find us here if I don't want them to. Nobody will ever take you from me again. I promise you that, Stark. I'll build whatever I have to build, grow whatever I have to grow, to make sure of it."

Stark looked past her, into the pale wood interior of a home that had not existed sixty seconds ago, already furnished in ways he could not fully account for, soft woven mats laid across the floor, a hearth already carved into one wall with a chimney climbing up through the ceiling above it, and felt the full weight of what she had just said settle slow and heavy into his chest.

A house built in a minute. A life built, apparently, with the same effortless, overwhelming speed.

"It's going to be wonderful," Subaru said again, softer now, pulling him gently over the threshold and into the warm pale light beyond it. "You'll see. Just the two of us. Forever."

Stark let himself be led inside, and said nothing at all, because there was, in that particular moment, nothing left in him that felt safe enough to say.

I just realised that Frieren doesn’t hate LinieBaru as much as she does in the main story. Maybe because she didn’t see a wounded Stark unable to stand.

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