It was the five of them left, now. Three, because Cecil and Rosa were together, speaking softly and spending time as lovers did. The Eblani prince was there, pacing or skulking around corners. She was never sure what to think of him. Nor of the lies and truths and inbetweens that he wove together as if she couldn’t tell them apart.

"You can’t lie if you want to work magic," she told him once. Even an illusion needed a mirror of truth. She wasn’t sure if he understood or merely pretended... only that he changed the subject fast enough to make her head spin.

He would confuse her, and afterwards she would avoid him. It was the simplest truth between them.

Kain had strayed farther into his own company. She watched him sleep… although not in a Lunarian bed as perhaps he should have been. Instead, he hunched into the corner, in full armor and guarding his right side. Snoring softly, but always ready for war.

And last there was Rydia, she considered herself, with an awesome power beyond her human years.

She felt strangely spun into the fairy tale, and wondered what they would really say in two hundred years’ time. Or fifty. Or a few short weeks after they had stepped back down upon the soft green grass of the Earth.

And they would be bigger than life, if... When they won, and she would be Rydia the Powerful, or Rydia the Wise, and young magi would flock to her side to discover her secrets. And some would leave in disgust, because they couldn’t learn or she couldn’t teach them. Some might come seeking the power of the Summons; she would outright refuse because she would never be responsible for the evil that might come of it. She would be Rydia the False even though she never promised them a thing.

She had a sinking feeling that she would never be Rydia the Person. Close, maybe, if in the Land of the Summoned Monsters she could again be Rydia the Human. But even there, chances were she would still be Rydia the Hero.

And that was the least of it. Outside herself, there were heroes, there were demons, there were gods, and there were whole other worlds. It was too much to think of all at once.

She slid down against the wall beside the sleeping Dragoon, wishing that Rosa and Cecil weren’t always so busy with one another. Rosa could sooth her mind and Cecil could care. But instead everything was about Edge...

And Kain was sleeping through it all. Even when she crept up beside him and draped one of his cold, armored arms over her shoulders, he didn’t wake up – or if he did, he didn’t do anything awake about it. So she leaned on him, as he leaned on the wall, and rest her cheek against his knee. And maybe it wasn’t her imagination that his fingers tightened on her arm, ever slightly, because maybe he needed the comfort, too.

And when Edge – in the midst of his important, impatient shuffling from here to there – stopped short to gawk at such an impossible sight, Rydia stuck out her tongue.