After Christmas Special

This was turning out to be about as emotional as Serilda thought it would. Thankfully, her suggestion for a more private area was agreeable to all present parties. Mythal lead them to one of the corner booths where they wouldn’t have as many of Fairy Tail’s members lingering around. She felt the release of Markus’ magic as he manipulated the shadows around them to obscure the view of anyone trying to watch them. Adding to that, Serilda tapped into her Voidwalking magic, manipulating the air around them until no sound would leave the small bubble they were in.

For a while, Serilda merely listened in silence. She didn’t know Markus and Nessa as well as Mythal did, her only exposure to them being from Mythal introducing the two of them to her back around Christmas. A lot of what needed to be said really wasn’t her play to say. In truth, if it weren’t for the fact that she knew Mythal needed her here for this, it would be something that she’d have suggested be a private conversation between the three of them. However, she was in agreement with him that his friends deserved the truth, and that there were going to be some things that only she may have the answers to. That, and given his inexperience and discomfort with deeper conversations like this.. Well, it was better that she was there to hold his hand.

She wasn’t surprised that Nessa brushed off the more summarized explanation from Mythal, though in truth the noblewoman knew that he was planning on giving her the full details no matter what. They’d just needed to settle into the discussion first. He looked to her and she gave him a small but encouraging smile to let him know that she was there and ready to get through this with him.

And it certainly was a long story. Serilda was more used to Mythal speaking than others would be, if only because of how close they’d become during their time together, but even she had to pause and wonder if he’d ever spoken this much in one sitting before. He knew that Markus and Nessa would need context, so he started from the beginning with the truth of his origins. Using that as a springboard, he slowly turned the explanations toward more recent events. A visible blush rose to her cheeks to match the one Mythal developed as he admitted the relationship that had grown between the two of them. It was a little embarrassing. After all, the last time the four of them had been together like this, she and Mythal had been vehemently denying to an all too observant Markus that there was anything more between them than just friendship.

It was difficult for Mythal to admit the way that he’d treated her after realizing his feelings. She could hear it in his tone. Without interrupting him, Serilda reached her hand over and took his own, giving it a squeeze in support before simply holding it. He very vaguely explained that the two of them had a heart to heart about everything, skipping over a great amount of detail from that night… including how he’d had to break into Serilda’s home at the caution of a demon, to find her passed out drunk on her own floor in a puddle of wine. How he’d had to nurse her back to health, to sit and listen as she poured her heart out about the awful truths she’d learned about her dead husband. How, in her inebriated stupor, she’d begged Mythal in tears to tell her why he was pushing her away, why he didn’t want to be with her anymore. Eventually, he had calmed her down and satiated her enough to convince her to go back to sleep.

And it was during that time, when she was nursing her hangover, that Archimedes had confronted Mythal at her own house and set the makings of a trap before him. He’d taken the bait, recognizing it for what it was, leading him down a road that very nearly cost him his life -- or worse. After he briefly explained about “Little” Gren -- the young wolf pup that looked much like his big sister Xiuhcoatl, both of which were sitting patiently at the foot of the booth while the humans chatted -- Serilda took the pause to give some explanations of her own. “He had left me a note, too,” she softly told the pair sitting across from them. “When I woke up, he was gone and all that was there was a letter. I’ve known about his past for a long time now, so I had a feeling something related to it had happened. I tried coming here, first, to find the two of you and see if you’d seen him, but neither of you were here at the time…”

She’d had to make a choice. Wait to find them, or push forward on her own, so she’d chosen to keep looking. “Eventually I was able to… force my way into Kingdom Darkness to get him out, and his adoptive father was somehow able to open the door from the outside to free us. Otherwise, we’d both still be stuck there right now.” For now, she hid her ire with the human Gren who still had a lot he needed to answer for. Serilda wasn’t entirely sure she would ever forgive the man for tricking her the way he had, causing her to panic and reveal Gren’s return to life to Mythal without understanding what had been going on. However, that gripe was with Gren himself, and the details of it weren’t exactly necessary to the conversation at hand, so she kept them to herself for now.

“Once we were free and in a safe place where we could relax, I texted you.” Serilda nodded to Nessa. “I’m sorry that it took as long as it did for you to receive it. Neither of us were aware until later that time flows differently in Kingdom Darkness. For us, it was only a couple hours at most that we were in that realm, but out here an entire week had passed. If I had known about that ahead of time, I’d have tried to get word to you beforehand.”

Other details she kept to herself were about how exactly she’d managed to not only find Mythal, but to break into a fallen goddess’s realm to cripple one of her most powerful angels before escaping. It was a lot of dark detail, things that she wouldn’t be proud to admit to, and she knew it would come up eventually. By now, Markus at the very least had likely picked up the change in her scent, and the slightly demonic aura that was sometimes felt by those capable of feeling such things. She was a god slayer now, just like the two men. Slayer powers weren’t something easily attained, and rarely did magic of demonic origins come without some kind of price or traumatic experience. It likely wouldn’t take much for the man to assume that her new powers and Mythal’s recent joust against an evil god were related.

Serilda assumed that eventually questions would arise that would lead her to give such details, but for now she wanted to give them the chance to digest the great amount of information they’d already been given. Most of the particulars Serilda had to share would do little more than fill in gaps for the other darkness slayer and the starlight maiden, anyway. So for now, she sat back and waited to see where the conversation would lead, and what Nessa and Markus would have to say, or ask. That, and she was also curious to see if Nessa would lend any explanations to her somewhat sickened looking state. Serilda had noticed something seemed off about the other woman, of course, but she hadn’t been sure because they didn’t know each other that well. With both men clearly wanting some answers from her, however, it seemed there was more going on right now than what Mythal and Serilda personally had been through...