Chapter Text
It’s a lovely day for the apocalypse.
The sun shines. The birds sing. The Corrupted lurch around on the ground in front of the city ramparts.
Sitting high above them, Hilda takes a delicate sip of tea. Her axe lays propped up against the leg of the table she dragged out onto the top of the wall. She hums happily as she places her teacup down, then lifts up a square of her regulation-issue hardtack from its matching saucer. She takes a dainty little nibble, relishing in the flavorlessness of her snack, then dips the edge into her tea. The hardtack, now softened and flavored by the tea, crumbles into nothingness in her mouth. She smiles.
It's the little things in life.
Her meditative bliss is interrupted by a sudden hand on her shoulder.
“Hey there, Hilda. Working hard? Or hardly working?”
Hilda groans aloud at the sight of her best friend’s rakish grin. She knows Claude. He only smiles at her like that when he wants her to do something. Usually his dirty work. Or her actual work.
“What do you want from me?” she whines as she slouches down in her chair. “Can’t you see I’m on my coffee break?”
“You don’t drink coffee,” Claude points out, “not even when we actually have some sitting around.”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures.” Hilda sniffles, injured as she picks up her teacup again and takes a sip of the weak bathwater the canteen tried to convince her is tea. “Haven’t you heard that something is better than nothing?”
“Funny you say that,” Claude says with a snap of his fingers, “since that’s exactly why I came to visit you.”
It’s bullshit reasoning, designed to get a rise out of Hilda and make her more likely to do what he wants, and both of them know it. That’s exactly why she deliberately shrugs his hand off of her shoulder. Claude, never one to wear his heart on his sleeve, laughs off the slight. He takes a step towards the edge of the rampart and looks over it.
“Aren’t you supposed to be getting rid of these?” He jerks a thumb out towards the lumbering Corrupted on the ground.
“Yeah.” Hilda tosses her hair, unbothered. “I strung up some old pieces of goat and got a mage to cast lightning on them.” She snickers. “You shoulda seen his face. ‘Why in the world would you want that?’ he asked me.” She glances up at Claude. “Don’t worry. I plan to go back down and get them all at once.”
“Hm.” Claude scratches his beard as he surveys her work.
The Corrupted moan and groan with the ceaselessness of the undead, each step a stumbling attempt to move forwards instead of falling down. Hilda doesn’t need to know that they’re all reaching towards the twitching goat legs she has hanging over the wall. The Corrupted react most strongly to sound and the promise of fresh meat. The sound of detached hooves going tap-tap-tap-tap against the heavily fortified stone walls surrounding Derdriu is more than enough to draw in the few stragglers close enough to kill in one fell sweep.
“Clever work, Hilda,” he finally says, turning around to face her. “Though you could have stood to move it a little further away from the gates.”
“But it’s so much work to bring my tea up here,” Hilda whines. Her plea is ignored.
“How long have you been doing this?”
“A few weeks, maybe.”
Claude sighs. He runs his hands through his hair with an air of frustration as he leans up against her heavy table. “So… that’s a few weeks’ worth of meat that you’ve been taking from the canteen.”
“Hey now!” Hilda puts her teacup down with a clatter. “That’s not fair! I asked for the legs and they gave it to me!”
“Yeah, and what did you tell them? That your poor friend Claude, leader of the entire city, needed you to do something and to get that done, you needed a few goat legs?”
“And so what if I did?” She sniffs indignantly. “It wasn’t a lie.”
“No, but these are valuable resources that you’re using up just to—” He sighs again. “Don’t do that again, Hilda. Come up with something else.”
“But the Corrupted like the meat—”
“Doesn’t matter. We need the food more than you need convenience.”
“Fine.” Hilda wrinkles her nose. She gets it. It makes sense why he’s upset. Technically, the meat is still edible after her shift is over, but not by anyone on two legs. Then, she props her chin up on her hand and looks at her friend suspiciously. “You’re a busy guy, Claude,” she drawls. “That’s not all you came up here for, is it?”
“You know me so well.” He chuckles. “You’re right. I need you to come see me in my office right after you finish up your shift.” He pushes himself back up into a standing position. “Right after. It’s important.”
“Why didn’t you just bring someone to finish my shift for me, if it’s that important?” She waggles her eyebrows in an attempt to make her offer sound appealing. “The sooner I’m done, the sooner you can tell me all about this super-important thing.”
Claude snaps his finger like he’s had a marvelous idea. “I’ll do you one better. Why don’t you—” he points with both hands at Hilda, “—go down there—” he points at the ground outside the wall, “and get rid of all those Corrupted you lured down to the wall.” Hilda watches, unimpressed by his theatrics, as he turns his fingers in towards himself. “—and I’ll get someone to cover the rest of your shift. Sound like a deal?”
He holds his hand out to Hilda, who in turn eyes it with a healthy dose of suspicion.
“Just because I’m saying yes to your sketchy meeting,” she says, narrowing her eyes, “doesn’t mean I’m automatically saying yes to whatever harebrained scheme you’re going to spring on me. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Hilda slaps her hand into Claude’s. His fingers tighten around her hand; she immediately tightens her own grip in turn. It’s the same song and dance as always. One of them (Hilda) inevitably applies more pressure than the other (Claude) can handle, and the victor (again, Hilda) is left with a juvenile sense of superiority until the next time they shake hands. By the time Claude turns away towards the stairwell, holding his aching metacarpals close to his chest, Hilda has grabbed her axe from where it rests against the table and vaulted over the rampart railings.
She could take the stairs, but that would take too long.
Air whistles by her ears as she falls to the ground. She lands with a solid thud of her boots against the hard-packed ground. As she stands up, she tosses her ponytail out behind her with one hand and dramatically twirls her axe around with the other.
“So, who’s going first?” she calls out to the few Corrupted which have gathered around the still-twitching piece of leg meat. There’s only five of them, to her relief. Not that much work to do.
Two of them turn away from the bait and towards her. The first one takes a hesitating, stumbling step forwards, its head tilted unnaturally to the side as a low, dangerous groan scrapes its way out of its destroyed maw. It looks like it used to be an old man, judging from its clothing and the scraggly white beard sprouting from its chin. But that doesn’t matter, because its skin is marred by the black cracks crawling up its neck and across its face, its face is in the process of developing into the thickened, almost mask-like features of the Corrupted, and its deep-set eyes are completely glazed over in the milky whiteness of death. It holds out its clawed hands and stiffly reaches for her.
Hilda shrugs. “You’ll do.”
She catches her axe by the handle and, using its momentum, swings it out towards the most curious—and soon to be most dead—Corrupted. The blade glints in the sunlight for one brief moment before sinking halfway into the side of the Corrupted’s skull. The creature groans at her, like it’s confused by the sudden steel sprouting from its head. Hilda makes a face back at it.
She hates the Corrupted. She hates their weirdly chitinous faces, their awful moans, and the constant threat they present. But this one, thank the Goddess, won’t be a threat for much longer.
Kicking her foot up, she plants the sole of her boot on the Corrupted’s chest and uses the leverage there to yank her axe back out. Then, she slams her weapon back into the gash she’d already made.
The top of the Corrupted’s head slides off of the rest of him. For a split second, it balances on the flat edge of her axe head. Its blank eyes stare out at Hilda with a surprisingly vivid expression of bewilderment. And then, the Corrupted’s body—severance and all—dissipates into a black powder so fine that it’s whisked away with the faintest of breezes.
Hilda doesn’t stop to ponder what thoughts might be going through its head, if any. Instead, she moves on to subject the next closest Corrupted to the exact same fate. This one used to be younger, it seems, but not by much. Maybe this group of Corrupted used to be a family, a series of tragic deaths set off by a single accidental bite. It doesn’t matter.
They’re dead, and she’s not. She’d prefer to keep it that way.
The sound of her fighting draws the attention of the other three Corrupted lingering over by the wall, which just makes her job all that much easier. They lumber towards her without fear or abandon, the consumption of her flesh the only thing on their mind. Hilda makes easy work of them, and as soon as the guards let her back in through the gate, she skips off towards Claude’s office.
To those who don’t know where the leader of what remains of the Leicester Alliance does his work, his office looks like nothing more than a random house.
The only reason Hilda remembers which house it is, is because she and Claude wrote 69 on the wall of the house with paint and had a little snicker afterwards. It had been right after Hilda had made it back from the Locket, just before Derdriu closed its gates for good. The two of them had been horribly shaken up by the end of the world, so they’d been desperate for any moment of levity, no matter how juvenile it was. And it was good that they’d taken that moment for themselves, because right after, they had to grow the fuck up.
She doesn’t bother knocking before opening the door; she just waltzes right in.
Ignatz, his secretary, looks up from double-checking the inventory and waves her on in. “Hey, Hilda,” he says, wiping his hand across the side of his face and leaving an ink smear there. “Good luck in there; he’s been pretty high-strung all day.”
“Really?” Hilda asks with a toss of her hair. “I couldn’t tell.”
Perfect sarcasm. Claude usually doesn’t come up to bother her when she’s on sentry duty, because he knows she’ll take advantage of any opportunity to weasel herself out of the rest of her shift. That’s how she managed to keep using her little goat trick for as long as she did.
But Ignatz, sweet little man that he is, is more book-smart than he is people-smart, so he doesn’t pick up on any of that. He just chuckles and wipes at his face again. “Yes, he’s been pacing around ever since his visitor arrived. She’s in there with him now, actually.”
“Oh? Someone’s in there with him?” That’s unexpected news. Hilda glances towards the door to his office. He probably wants her to meet whoever he’s got, since he was so insistent on getting her to come see him there, but it’s frustrating that he wouldn’t, like, mention it to her. “Did you see her?”
“I did indeed.” Ignatz leans in towards her. Taking the cue, Hilda leans in too. In a conspiratorial tone, Ignatz says, “She actually came into Derdriu with another woman two days ago, but I think she died.”
Hilda whistles, low and slow. “Shit. Was she bitten?”
“No, may the Goddess protect her soul. It was exhaustion and hunger.”
Hilda rolls her shoulders back, releasing the tension that had built up inside her just from the mere mention of a possible bite inside the city. She feels bad for the poor woman, obviously, but she can’t dwell on it for long. “Okay. Good. What else you got?”
“She’s probably a little bit older than us. She was wrapped in a blanket, but I think I saw clerical robes underneath.” He scoots over the ledger he was writing in before Hilda came in to reveal the repurposed prayer tome he uses for sketching in. It’s only about the size of Hilda’s hand, but he’s been judicious with the limited space. As he flips it open, she notes that his illustrations look more like ancient illuminations surrounding the meditations within, but when he points to a specific corner, she lifts a brow in surprise.
“Damn, is that what she looks like?”
Ignatz nods proudly. “From this morning. I only saw her for a few minutes, but I felt like I needed to draw her before I forgot.” His voice turns wistful. “It’s been so long since we saw a new face.”
“Huh.” Hilda isn’t so rude as to take Ignatz’ prize possession out of his hands, so she leans in to see it better. It’s a simple sketch, but with just a few strokes of his pen, Ignatz has captured the likeness of a young but dignified woman. She looks pretty, but more than that, she looks sad.
Maybe if the world hadn’t gone to shit, Ignatz would have become a renowned artist. Sadly, the apocalypse is full of woulda-coulda-shoulda’s, and her friends are no different.
“It looks good, Ignatz,” Hilda says as she stands up. “I’m gonna head in now. Claude’s probably waiting on me.” She’s probably made him wait long enough as is. But also, he knows better than anyone else that Hilda runs on Hilda’s time. “Say hello to Raph for me, will ya?”
“Will do, Hilda. It was nice to see you.” Ignatz pulls his ledger back into the middle of his desk and gets back to work. Hilda watches for a second as he scribbles down numbers, double- and even triple-checking some of them.
She doesn’t envy him, not in the slightest. A desk job may sound cushy, but there’s a lot more work involved than she’s willing to do. As exhausting as it is to be on sentry duty, it’s usually a one-and-done sort of situation. She hits them with her axe, and they crumble away into nothingess. No numbers there.
Nah, the only number she gives a shit about is her body count.
When Ignatz starts to look up at her, Hilda acts like she wasn’t watching him and promptly pivots on her heel towards Claude’s office. Once again, she doesn’t knock. She just opens the door and saunters right on in.
“Hope I didn’t keep you waiting,” she says, fully aware that she’d kept them waiting.
“Hilda!” Claude stands up from behind his desk. With a wide smile, he holds out an arm towards her, beckoning her in. “Thanks for showing up. I was starting to wonder if those Corrupted had got the best of you after all.”
She kicks the door closed behind her. “If you were so worried, you should have finished them off for me.”
Claude clicks his tongue and shakes his head. “Not that worried.”
“Eh. Worth a shot.” Hilda shrugs nonchalantly as she scans about the room. Naturally, her attention is drawn to the woman sitting in the chair across from Claude. She lifts a brow.
Just like Ignatz had said, the woman is dressed in clerical robes. Hilda recognizes them as the uniform of the Eastern Church. Her position within the Locket had been close enough to the followers of the Goddess’ outpost that she’d seen them going around in groups every so often, even after the onset of the Corrupted. But those groups had always been in two or three, and this woman is notably alone.
Oh, right. Ignatz had said something about her companion dying, hadn’t he?
Blue braids are gathered at the back of her neck in a low, demure bun, which brushes against the top of her high-necked collar as she looks over at Hilda. Hilda is stricken by her similarity to the portrait in Ignatz’s sketchbook, with one critical difference:
He had failed to capture just how immeasurably sad her expression is. It’s evident in the sallowness of her face, the redness rimming her dull brown eyes, the anxious way she picks at the skin around her nails in her lap. It’s the kind of sadness that goes even beyond the loss of a colleague; Hilda can only wonder what happened.
Even so, Hilda cocks her head to the side and gives her a grin. “Well, who do we have here?” she asks with a salacious wink. The woman pinkens somewhat, and she looks away from her. Hilda shrugs. “Hey, Claude, is this why you wanted me to hurry up?”
“Yes.” Sitting back down, Claude gestures for her to come over and stand beside him. As Hilda obeys, however reluctantly, he addresses the woman. “Marianne, this is Hilda. Hilda, Marianne. Marianne is from the Eastern Church.”
“Marianne, huh?” Hilda stretches out over Claude’s desk and holds out her hand for a shake. “Like the big man said, I’m Hilda. It’s nice to meet ya.”
“She’s more or less my right-hand woman,” Claude adds for good effect. “I trust her more than anyone else here.” Hilda glances at him, surprised by how thick he’s laying on the compliments. Surprised, and suspicious.
Marianne rises slightly from her seat to shake Hilda’s hand.
It’s possible to tell a lot about a person from their handshake, and Hilda is unconvinced by Marianne’s. Her skin is cool to the touch. Her shake is light and unconvincing, like she’s either unfamiliar with the practice or very, very scared. Hilda’s more inclined to believe the latter.
“The pleasure is mine, Hilda,” she says in a quiet voice. Hilda almost has to stop breathing to hear her at all. “I’m sorry for inconveniencing you.”
“What do you mean, inconveniencing you? You haven’t done anything. Like, you just got here.” Hilda snorts with laughter, but noticeably, no one else does.
Instead, Claude grimaces.
“Actually, I have a job for you to do.” He inclines his head towards Marianne. “I need you to take her to the Black Eagles.”
Upon hearing his request. Hilda feigns vomiting.
She puts her hands up to her mouth and pantomimes the barf falling out despite her attempts to hold it back. She doubles over in pretend pain and lets her invisible vomit fall out onto the ground. All the while, she makes horrible retching noises.
It’s a pretty impressive performance, if she does say so herself. Marianne stares at her with utter horror contorting her delicate features, while Claude appears to be utterly unimpressed. He must have anticipated such a strong reaction upon his request.
When Hilda pauses for effect, he crosses his arms over his chest. Raising a brow, he asks, “Are you done yet?”
Hilda grins at him. “I dunno. Why don’t you ask me to go again?”
He sighs wearily. “Hilda, I need you to—”
She pretends to barf again.
“Ha-ha, very funny.” Claude taps his foot impatiently. “Seriously, Hilda. This is important. I need you to escort Miss Marianne here—” he gestures at the woman in question, “—to the Black Eagles as soon and as quickly as possible.”
“But why, though?” Hilda whines. “Claude, you know my ex is there!” She pushes out her lower lip in a pout, attempting to make herself look as pitiful as possible. “Can’t you send someone else out, pretty please?”
When Claude levels his gaze at her again, it’s with a seriousness that she’s used to seeing him direct towards other people. It sends a chill directly to her bones. She finds herself frozen in place as he sets his hand on her shoulder.
“I need you to do this,” he says, “because I don’t trust anyone else half as much as I trust you.”
“Ha-ha, very funny,” she replies, an echo of his previous mockery. “What’s so important, anyway? It’s just an escort.”
Claude looks at Marianne. An unspoken conversation goes on between them until, with downcast eyes, Marianne grabs hold of her off-white skirt and pulls it up.
There, on her calf, is a bite.
A Corrupted bite.
Hilda goes for her axe. She goes so far as to pull it from its holster before Claude grabs her arm.
Marianne starts talking. “This happened nine days ago,” she says in that soft, whispery voice of hers.
“She’s lying,” Hilda states. She wrenches her arm out of Claude’s grip. “Anyone bitten by the Corrupted turns in two days. That’s common sense!”
“I know!” Claude grabs Hilda by her upper arms and forces her to stay still. “That’s why I kept her in quarantine to make sure she didn’t turn before I let her in!”
Her mind reeling, Hilda stares at Marianne’s calf. Instead of being the fresh, bloody, black-oozing wound of a recent bite, it almost looks… healed? It looks like it’s started to scab over, even.
And Ignatz did say she’d come in with her companion two days ago. It isn’t that she trusts Ignatz more than she trusts Claude, but it helps to have his facts to corroborate Claude’s claims. Her bestie has been known to twist the truth for his own gain.
“Holy shit,” she breathes, lowering her axe. “It’s real, isn’t it.”
“It’s real.” Claude confirms. “And I know you and Edelgard parted on less-than-good terms—”
“She threw an axe at my head.”
“—but she has researchers. The last I heard, both Lysithea and Professor Hanneman are with her—”
“Professor Hanneman from school?”
“Yes, from school. If you bring Marianne to them, they may be able to reverse-engineer a cure.”
The enormity of such a suggestion finally crashes down on Hilda with all the subtlety of a ton of bricks. It’s so heavy that it knocks the breath from her lungs. Pushing Claude aside, Hilda collapses into his chair.
A cure. The implications are staggering.
There’s no way to save the Corrupted who have already been lost. That’s for sure.
But if there happened to be a way to prevent those who had been bitten from ever turning at all… then maybe there was the possibility to eradicate the Corrupted entirely. Little by little, they could reclaim Fódlan for the living.
“If I do this…” she says, the space between her brows furrowing as she thinks, “I want something out of it.”
Claude sighs. He’s sighed so much during this conversation, but that’s what he gets for dumping so many things on her all at once. “I should have known better,” he says. “I shouldn’t have expected you to do something solely for the benefit of humanity.”
“You should have asked someone else if you wanted that,” Hilda points out. “Or even gone yourself! You knew better.”
“I knew better,” he agrees.
“But I’m your right-hand woman. You said so yourself. And as your right-hand woman, I demand proper compensation.”
“What do you want?” Claude asks, pinching the bridge of his nose. Probably to relieve an oncoming headache. Funny; he’ll be getting rid of one as soon as Hilda heads out.
“I dunno…” Hilda kicks her legs back and forth as she leans his chair back. “I should probably ask for something pretty big, seeing as how the whole fate of the world is on my shoulders.” Having laid out the bait, she waggles her brows suggestively at Claude.
He pales. Just ever-so slightly. Like he knows she’s about to ask for something big. “I… guess you could say that.”
“Perfect!” Hilda claps her hands together. “I want soap. The good shit. I know you have some hanging around.”
Claude rolls his eyes. “I can arrange that. I think I have some with flower petals in it.”
“No.” Standing up, Hilda makes direct eye contact with him. “I said I want the good shit. With fragrance oil. Not just petals.”
“You knew about that?”
“I know about everything, Claude.” Hilda grabs hold of his collar. Claude makes a little sound of surprise in the back of his throat as she tugs him down to her level. “I know you’ve been fucking the little purple twink.”
“You know his name, Hilda,” Claude says, exasperated. “We literally went to school together.”
“I said what I said.” Hilda makes direct eye contact. “Give me the soap, and I’ll take the girl to the Black Eagles.”
From the other side of the desk, Marianne clears her throat. “Um, I—I can probably find my way there by myself. Maybe.”
“No, Hilda will take you there,” Claude says, also not breaking eye contact with Hilda. Then, in a lower voice, “I’ll get you the soap. As much as you want.”
“Wonderful.” Hilda places a little peck on his cheek before letting him go. While Claude rubs his cheek, faintly scowling, she turns to Marianne and sets her hands firmly on her hips. “So, Miss Marianne, it looks like it’ll be you and me for the next few days.”
“Just you and me?” Marianne asks. Despite having just asserted that she could make it across Fódlan by herself, she seems concerned about the prospect of it just being the two of them. “Don’t- don’t we need more people?” When Hilda lifts a brow, she curls in on herself. “I mean, um, the Church usually travels in groups of three. Do you not do the same?”
“Nah.” Hilda shrugs, nonplussed. “Maybe if we’re going out to like, gather supplies or something like that, but we’re just trying to move as quickly as possible. More people will just slow us down, y’know?”
“Oh. I see.” Marianne looks down at her hands. “When do we leave?”
Looking at Claude, Hilda tilts her head to the side. When does he want them to leave? As soon as possible, probably. Claude nods, confirming her suspicions. As soon as possible. Probably right away.
“We’ll leave tomorrow morning,” she says as she turns back to Marianne and ignores the way Claude claps his hands against his face in frustration. “I just got off wall duty, so I wanna rest up before we head out anywhere. Plus,” she says, with a level glare towards Claude, “we need to plot out our route and pack our supplies. If you really want me to do this shit, we’re doing it my way or not at all. Got it?”
“Got it,” Claude says, defeated.
“And Marianne,” Hilda says. Marianne’s eyes widen with shock at the sudden turn in conversation towards her. “We’re gonna have to get you some new clothes, got it?”
“I can’t wear my robes?” she asks. Her voice trembles just ever-so-slightly. Hilda shakes her head.
“Our goal is to stand out as little as possible. Hate to say it, but wearing white is gonna make you stick out like a sore thumb. And besides, it’s not like we’re on Church business, right?”
Marianne’s lips tighten. Looking down, she rubs her open palm against the fabric on her lap. “I, um, guess you have a point.”
Hilda’s heart aches for her. It really does. She’s only known Marianne for like, five minutes, but it’s clear as hell that she’s scared as hell. Scared plus sad? Probably not the best time to be taking away one of the few things that seems to give her any sort of comfort. Unfortunately, it’s one of those things that probably has to be done.
Hilda walks around the desk and kneels in front of Marianne’s chair. “Listen,” she says gently, putting her hand on Marianne’s knee. “It’s scary. I get it. I’m a total stranger, and now you’ve gotta depend on me. I’d love for you to be able to keep your dress, but our chances are gonna be a hell of a lot better the more we can blend in.” She smiles comfortingly. Marianne blinks back tears and makes an effort to smile back.
It’s something.
Hilda pats her knee. “Tell ya what. When you get changed into something more practical, let me have your robes and I’ll whip you up something that you can bring with you.” A headband or a bow or something. A little tchotchke to remind Marianne of something that obviously means a lot to her. “Is that cool with you?”
“Um…” Marianne mulls it over. Hilda waits patiently until she nods. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
Marianne nods again, more confidently this time. “Yes. Okay.”
“Okay. Cool.” Hilda pats her knee one last time and then stands up. Sighing heavily, she rolls her shoulders back and cracks her neck side-to-side. “Well, I guess we’d better start packing. Marianne, let’s go get you some clothes. Claude, I’ll be right back after that so we can start figuring out how we’re gonna get to Enbarr.” She pauses. “They know we’re coming, right?”
Claude reclaims his chair. From one of the desk drawers, he pulls out a travel-sized map of the continent. “They will,” he says as he unfolds it and spreads it out across his desk. “I sent them a carrier falcon as soon as I confirmed Marianne wasn’t Corrupted.”
“So… they don’t.”
“But they will.”
Hilda accepts it. The Black Eagles will get Claude’s message
Walking back over to the office door, she yanks it open. When Marianne doesn’t immediately get up to follow her, she clears her throat. With a murmured apology, Marianne jumps up to her feet and hurries to catch up to her.
With Hilda’s help, Marianne exchanges her clerical robes for the duller, more practical clothes similar to what the common populace wears. There’s enough color in their fabric for her to be able to choose dark blue pants and a dove-gray shirt, and Hilda pulls out one more set of clothes to stash away in their saddlebags.
Hilda herself doesn’t need to take any extra clothes. She has her own, all of them altered and adjusted to suit her specific tastes. Claude likes to tease her for her low-cut necklines and figure-skimming tailoring, and for good reason. It’s pretty damn dangerous of her to have so much skin left uncovered—and thus more vulnerable to bites—but where’s the fun in life without a bit of cleavage?
Reluctantly, Marianne passes her discarded robes over to Hilda before retiring to an empty bed to get some much-needed rest. Then, as soon as Hilda gathers up a few of her precious crafting supplies from her bedroom, she takes them back to Claude’s office. She starts piecing together a headband for Marianne while she and Claude plot out the best path for them to take.
They settle on a route that’s as straightforward as possible. Take a southeastern path right out of Derdriu, crossing the river between what used to be Daphnel and Riegan territories at the shallowest point possible. From there it's traveling the plains until they reach and cross the Great Bridge of Myrddin.
Hilda replies to most of Claude's questions with nothing more than an uncommitted nod. Most of her attention is focused on the intricacies of transferring what little pre-apocalyptical lace remains on the clerical robes onto Marianne’s pretty little headband. Claude’s marking down their plans on the map anyway, and she’ll have a compass.
Once they’re in what remains of Adrestia, the plan is to go over Gronder Field and through Aegir territory. From there, it’s just a hop, skip, and jump all the way down to Enbarr on the coastline.
He’s giving her a horse, obviously, with packed saddlebags and plenty of supplies. It would be possible to make the trip by foot, but one, Marianne’s whole shebang is time-sensitive, and two, Hilda’s not walking all the way to the other end of the fucking continent. Even with a horse, it’s going to take almost two months for her to get Marianne to Enbarr.
Honestly, Hilda thinks it's pretty stupid that all of the capitals have stayed right where they were when the outbreak happened. The Corrupted have only made travel even more annoying than it was even when they had carriages and shit.
More dangerous too, in case that was up for debate.
The next morning, Hilda slings their saddlebags over their horse’s haunches with a deep and world-weary sigh. It’s way too fucking early for anyone to be awake, but it’s what they have to do if they want to make a decent amount of progress over the course of the day. She yawns.
Marianne stands by the horse’s head. She strokes the creature’s forehead and whispers to it while it whinnies quietly. It tosses its head and takes a step back; Hilda has to jerk awkwardly to the side to continue stuffing the saddlebags full.
“So you’re a horse person, huh?” Hilda says, maybe a little bit sharper than she should have. She doesn’t feel like being very nice before the sun has risen. “Can you tell it to stay still for, like, a second?”
Marianne mumbles something.
“Say that again, will you?”
“She’s a mare.” Marianne’s gaze flickers to Hilda. She struggles to turn her mouth up in a smile, then looks back down at the horse’s face. “Not an ‘it.’”
“Gotcha.” Hilda is still practically half-asleep, so semantics are the last thing on her mind. “Then can you tell her to stay still?”
“She’ll calm down,” Marianne whispers, seemingly unbothered. “I think she’s just waking up.” She runs her hand lovingly down the horse’s neck. “She knows she’s going to work hard, so she’s warming up her muscles. Isn’t that right, lovely?”
“You’d know better than I would,” Hilda replies, a split second before realizing Marianne isn’t talking to her, but the horse. Her cheeks briefly burn as she turns away and continues packing for their trip.
Eventually, Claude comes out to say goodbye. He doesn’t explicitly say that, but it’s understood. As powerful as Hilda may be, it’s impossible to predict just what may come up on the road.
“Good luck,” he says instead, reaching up to grasp Hilda’s forearm.
A horrible, gnawing feeling starts to grow in Hilda’s stomach as she leans down from her seat on the mare to return the gesture. This is real. They’re really leaving. “Good luck to you too,” she says.
Marianne pulls herself up onto the mare, taking the space behind Hilda due to her height. “Thank you for taking me to Enbarr,” she whispers. “I know it must be a strain on your resources.”
Claude shrugs carelessly. “It’ll be more than worth it when we figure out a way to end this mess. You’ve got my best man too, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”
Hilda feels the lightest brush of hands around her waist. Just for a moment, though, because they disappear almost immediately after she registers them. Frowning, she looks behind her. “What is it?”
Marianne looks away, avoiding eye contact. “I need somewhere to put my hands, please.”
“What, are you scared you’re gonna fall off?”
Hilda can physically feel her passenger shrinking in on herself. “Just—um, just in case. You never know.”
“Gotcha.” There’s really only one place for Marianne’s hands to go, honestly. “Just go ahead and put them around me. Wherever you want—except the boobs. I try to save them for the second date, believe it or not.” Marianne makes a little strangled sound behind her, but Hilda soon feels her spindly arms slinking around her waist.
With a little snort, Hilda pats the top of Marianne’s hand. “Just kidding. They’re definitely first-date material.” The strangled sound gets louder.
Hilda winks at Claude despite her growing trepidation. It’s time to go.
Claude nods. He lifts his hand in a wave. On cue, the door to the city gates open, just wide enough for a single horse to get through.
Marianne’s arms tighten around Hilda’s waist.
Hilda prompts the horse forward.
To Enbarr.