Stark's mouth opened and closed like a fish pulled from water.
Then his boot found the mimic saliva — sole skidding out from under him — and he went down hard, axe clattering away across the stone.
Fern's eyes darted between the two elves, unperturbed by Stark's fall. No words came to her lips. No question. Just frozen surprise.
Frieren rose smoothly from the dusty floor as though she hadn't just spent who-knew-how-long inside the mimic. She crossed the chamber without hurry, eyes on Percia the entire way, and stopped directly in front of her.
Then she stepped forward and put her arms around Percia's waist.
Monster spit smeared across Percia's cloak in sticky streaks. Frieren either didn't notice or had decided not to care.
She tucked herself close, breathing in slowly. Old forests after rain. The faint ozone of carefully restrained mana. Scents all particular to Percia alone.
"I missed you," Frieren said, voice muffled against cloth.
Percia stood completely still. Her arms remained at her sides. She looked down at the crown of white hair with an expression that gave nothing away except the faint tightening at the corners of her mouth.
"…I haven't," she said quietly.
Frieren didn't flinch. She hummed and stayed exactly where she was, small hands loosely fisted in the fabric of Percia's cloak.
"I know."
The chamber was very quiet. Stark had pushed himself up onto one elbow and was staring. Fern had remembered to exhale.
Percia's hand moved, fingers hovering above white hair for a moment too long, before settling. Not quite an embrace. Not quite a refusal.
"You're covered in mimic spit," Percia said.
Frieren tilted her chin up just enough to meet her eyes.
"So are you now."
Percia exhaled through her nose—half sigh, half surrender.
"…You're impossible."
The smallest smile found Frieren's mouth.
"I know that too."
Stark finally managed sound. "Should we, uh." He gestured vaguely at the door. "Give you two a minute—"
Fern's elbow found his ribs without her looking at him.
Frieren didn't answer. She simply closed her eyes, apparently content to remain indefinitely.
---
She stepped back eventually — just enough to look up at Percia properly — and then turned slightly toward Fern and Stark, as though suddenly remembering they existed.
"You haven't asked how we know each other," she observed.
Stark blinked. "I… uh… kind of didn't want to interrupt?"
Fern watched her master carefully and said nothing.
Frieren tilted her head toward Percia. "We met a millennium ago. Before my village burnt down. Before Flamme found me."
Percia had noticed the state of her cloak, now sticky with mimic residue. It'd take a couple washes to get it off.
"I was very young," Frieren continued. "Even for an elf. Percia was passing through our forest one autumn, traveling alone. I followed her." A pause. "For about forty years."
Stark made a noise that wasn't quite a word.
"I trailed behind her the whole time. Asking questions. Watching her cast. She never told me to leave." Frieren's gaze drifted back to Percia.
"She just let me stay."
Percia exhaled. "It's not like you would have listened if I told you to leave."
"True."
Frieren turned back to her companions, expression placid.
"She was my first love."
Stark's jaw unhinged entirely.
Fern's staff slipped an inch. She caught it on instinct, knuckles going white.
"First — " Fern stopped. "First love?"
Frieren nodded once.
Stark had recovered enough to form a sentence. "So you two were— "
"Nothing."
Frieren looked at Percia soft. "More than that."
The ruined mimic chest gave one final, sullen creak behind them, as though embarrassed to still be in the room. Stark felt an unexpected kinship with it.
Percia looked away—toward the ground, the drifting motes of dust—anywhere but at the three faces now fixed on her.
"I left," she finally said. "As one does eventually."
"One morning she was gone," Frieren agreed. "No note. No goodbye. Just gone."
The unspoken question hung in the air between them. Percia had no intention of answering it.
"There's nothing left in this dungeon worth my time." She glanced at the three of them in turn. "I assume you all want to leave."
She walked. Past Frieren — not looking at her, not touching her, navigating the precise geography of her presence with careful deliberateness — and through the doorway.
Frieren watched her go.
Stark whispered, "Did she just... run away?"
Fern elbowed him again, harder this time.
Percia's voice drifted back from the corridor.
"Two passages north, then the spiral stair. Avoid the third pressure plate on the landing."
Silence.
"Come," Frieren glanced back at the two. "We should follow her."
---
The spiral stair forced them single-file. Percia led, steps quiet and certain.
Fern cleared her throat. "Frieren-sama. About Percia."
"What about her?"
Stark leaned forward slightly, "Like… everything? You two were—y'know—together? For forty years? Were you guys even together? I'm so confused."
If Percia heard any of this, her stride didn't change. Her fingers trailed the wall lightly as the stair curved, reading the stone.
Frieren considered the question with apparent sincerity.
"Percia is patient with things that interest her. She'll sit for days just watching. When she explains something, it's exact — like she's handing you the precise shape of it."
Frieren smiled small, reminiscing. "She once spent three years teaching me how to fold a shielding spell thin enough to pass through rain without breaking. I still use it sometimes."
Stark blinked. "Three years. On one spell."
"She doesn't rush things she finds beautiful."
"...But, she can also be horrible," Frieren continued.
"She'll let you stay close for decades and then vanish. No warning. No explanation. And when you find her again a thousand years later, she looks at you like forty years was a long afternoon."
Fern stared at the back of Frieren's head. "She just... left and never came back?"
Frieren tilted her head. "This is my first time seeing her in over a thousand years."
Fern's voice came quieter now, contemplating.
"I always thought… you didn't understand love."
Frieren stopped on the landing—just long enough for Fern and Stark to nearly bump into her.
She turned slightly, green eyes bright with mirth. She puffed out her small chest.
"Of course I understand love," she declared. "I've been a great mage for over a millennium. I've lived long enough to see every shape emotion can take. I know exactly what it is."
She paused, voice softer now, "I just don't let it change me."
Fern looked like she was reevaluating her entire understanding of her master. "So when you first fell in love with her…?"
Frieren resumed walking the path.
"When I first saw her tracing the wards on an old standing stone, I thought — that's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
Frieren tilted her head. "Then I thought I should probably look at her face. That was also very beautiful."
Stark choked on nothing.
"I followed her for weeks before even deigning to speak to her. When I finally did, she looked at me like I was a mildly interesting insect. That didn't bother me much though."
Ahead, Percia's hand rested lightly against the wall as the passage leveled out. Fresh air was close — she could feel it at the edges of the corridor, the dungeon finally thinning into the world outside.
Frieren's voice drifted after her.
"She still is, you know. Beautiful. In the way mountains are beautiful. Untouchable. Enduring."
The passage opened. The setting sun fell through the cracked archway in long pale lines.
Percia stepped into it first.
She didn't look back.
But in the folds of her cloak, hidden, her fingers curled — just slightly, just for a moment — before, she let them go.