Chương 92: After Story 6: Tribute

In a small village at the edge of the enchanted forest, in the fresh light of a warm summer's dawn, a particular hut was a hive of activity. Most of the villagers were gathered outside, standing in mournful silence, holding candles or lanterns. Inside, a pair of parents fussed over their little girl.

"Mum!" complained the girl, a young, violet-haired teen by the name of Susan.

"That's gross!" The mother—who had just spat on a handkerchief and was using it to clean Susan's face—continued her efforts, completely unabashed.

"Dad! Make her stop!"

"You need to be presentable," he chided.

"Put up with it for now."

"Sheesh. Looking at you two, you'd think I was being offered up as a human sacrifice or something!" The parents shared a look.

"Well... You sort of are," pointed out the father.

"Alas, it's our village's turn, and our family drew the short straw."

"I volunteered!"

"But it is a noble duty, and it needs to be done," continued the mother, completely ignoring her daughter.

"No-one wants the mascots to spill out of the forest again." Susan sighed, giving up on trying to convince her parents that she wasn't about to face a fate worse than death. Yes, the inhabitants of the forest could be a bit intense, and she could imagine the chaos they'd cause if they got into a city, but they were hardly a threat.

Her 'duty' was simply to go and play with them for a while, to distract them from the fact that there was a whole wide world beyond the forest, ripe to be taught all about the powers of friendship and love.

"Are you done yet?" she complained.

"The sun's already up!" Her mother took a few steps back and conducted a thorough examination. Susan's long, violet hair was freshly washed, shiny and untied, hanging straight down her back. She was dressed in comfortable travelling clothes and heavy walking boots, all spotlessly clean. Susan had no idea why; they wouldn't remain clean for long after she started walking around the forest.

"Okay, you're ready," declared the mother.

"We'll miss you," added the father.

"Sheesh. I'll be back before you know it! And I'll probably have a cool new occupation, too, and piles of new skills," said Susan, throwing open the front door and looking at the crowd outside.

"And why are you lot standing around in silence? What do you think this is? A funeral?"

"Well..." started someone at the back, before being silenced by an elbow to the ribs. Susan sighed and marched between the rows of villagers, heading towards the forest. As tradition dictated, no-one spoke, and her parents watched in silence from the doorway of the cottage, not stepping outside. And that was another thing that bugged Susan. How could it be tradition? Weren't traditions supposed to be old?

It had barely been a decade since the first time the mascots had ventured from the forest, inflicting their special brand of terror upon the local populace. How could it be a proper tradition if people could remember how it started? It wasn't even older than she was! With a sigh at the pointless behaviour of the villagers, she stepped between the trees, having only a small distance to travel.

In the days when this had been the demonic forest, no-one would dare build a village so close to the border; it was nothing but fortified towns and walled farms. With the fall of the demon lord, though, the ruling nobility had seized the opportunity to increase the harvest of high-mana crops, as a way to offset the loss of the monster harvesting industry. Farmers no longer needed to be hardy, capable of fighting low-level monsters on their own. It was even safe for children. It was especially safe for children.

And so a new set of frontier villages had been established, migrants brought in from across the kingdom to populate them.

"Susan!" called a high-pitched voice within seconds of her entry, so close to the border that the village was still visible through the trees.

"It's Susan!"

"Hey!" answered Susan, smiling.

"Have you come to play?"

"Yup."

"Yay!"

"Yay!" echoed a second voice from a different direction.

"And not just that," said Susan, as a pair of purple, winged kittens swooped towards her. She lowered her voice, conspiratorially.

"Guess how long I can play for?"

"Hours!" answered one mascot.

"All day!" answered the other.

"An entire year!" corrected Susan.

"A year? That's... many days!"

"Yup!"

"Wow! We can play for many days?!"

"Wow!" echoed a third voice, a third mascot swooping down and flying in circles around Susan.

"Yup! But... uh... I only have a few days of food on me. Is there anything in the forest I can eat? Otherwise, I won't be able to stay."

"Food!"

"Human food!"

"Lots of delicious berries!"

"Fruits!"

"Mana!"

"Humans can't eat mana, silly!" Susan giggled at the antics of the mascots, another one of which seemed to have turned up at some point during the conversation.

"Come, will show delicious fruits!" declared a fifth mascot, landing on Susan's shoulder and pointing with a paw. The original two flew behind her, pushing at her back.

"Hey!" she giggled.

"I can walk on my own." Of course, given their excitable nature, that fact did nothing to stop the ever-growing mascot swarm. By the time they reached an apple tree, there were almost a dozen of the things. By the time Susan was too exhausted to continue playing tag, there were twenty. She flopped to the floor to rest, covered by a furry, purple blanket; with the mascots around, no child ever needed to carry their own sleeping bag.

She hadn't been intending to fall asleep, what with it barely being midday, but it was warm and comfortable, the swarm of mascots grouping up to give something like a full body hug. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. When she woke up, there were thirty, all asleep.

"Okay, how does that work?" she pondered.

"How does what work?" asked one, blearily opening its eyes.

"How did more of you arrive while we were all napping?"

"Someone interesting!" exclaimed another of the mascots, leaping straight from asleep to fully excited without passing through any intervening state. Susan wasn't even sure if it was a newcomer. With her visits to the forest, she'd grown able to tell a few of the mascots apart, and was especially friendly with the first one who'd called to her, but most of her current entourage were new. They all looked too alike to tell apart.

"Playtime?" asked another one.

"Not yet. I need... uh..." While Susan had known on a surface level that forests lacked toilets, her fruit-heavy lunch left her with a certain urgency that she hadn't fully planned for. Thankfully, child or not, she was a frontier villager, and the new village didn't exactly have the best available facilities.

"Uh... I need some privacy for a few minutes," she continued.

"And maybe some nice, large, absorbent leaves..."

"You really should have researched that sort of thing before entering," said another voice.

"Not that it did me much good. Everyone in the village told me to use the big, tri-lobed ones with the purple rims, so without thinking anything of it, I did. Turned out I was allergic. My first night was interesting." Susan blinked as she looked around to find the source of the voice—which didn't at all match the squeaky, excitable voices of the mascots—finding a girl a little older than herself sitting in a tree, peering down with pitying eyes.

"Uh... Hello?" asked Susan, before an unpleasant gurgling from her digestive system reminded her why they'd been talking about leaves.

"One moment," she added before grabbing a nearby purple-rimmed plant, snapping it off at the stem and dashing behind a tree.

"Hide and seek!" exclaimed half a dozen of the mascots, while another half a dozen followed her. Susan ignored them.

"At least you get on well with the local wildlife," giggled the newcomer.

"Personally, I'm just glad my shift is over. I'm not sure how much more I could take."

"Oh? You're the previous volunteer?" called Susan from behind her privacy-tree. Or at least, what would have been a privacy-tree, had the mascots not all flown around it to investigate the interesting noises." Volunteer?" snorted the girl.

"As if anyone would volunteer themselves to be that thing's dress-up doll for a year. Don't tell me you wanted to? What a weirdo."

"Wait, what? I'm just here to play with the mascots, to stop them venturing out of the forest."

"Huh? No, you're here to play with their master, too, to distract it from making more of them. Aren't you?" Susan pondered, recalling the way everyone's reactions didn't seem to quite match up with her mission. She'd put it down to people thinking she was too soft to sleep and poop outdoors, but the enchanted forest always had perfect weather and a plentiful supply of leaves.

"... Did my village lie to me?" she asked, suddenly suspicious.

"They... were behaving as if I'd never come back."

"Well, I certainly intend to go back," huffed the newcomer.

"I just came to show you the way, because they have a negative attention span, so there's no way I could trust them to guide you. As soon as you're safely delivered, I'm out of here. The name's Jo, by the way."

"... That's a bit mean, isn't it? They aren't that bad. And I'm Susan."

"They are every bit that bad, but it wasn't the mascots I was talking about..." And so the pair travelled through the enchanted forest, tailed by an ever-expanding swarm of magical kittens, who spent most of their time complaining about how Jo was being boring and not letting Susan play. Thankfully, Jo was able to pull out a wide variety of marching songs and walking games to keep them placated. And then, several days later, a village came into view.

"That's a village," pointed out Susan, somewhat redundantly.

"Yup."

"Why is there a village in the middle of the forest?"

"Why not? Every kingdom on the continent has sent researchers here to learn what the hell is going on. They needed somewhere to stay. Then some of them got a little too comfortable together, and there were a few happy little accidents. Some merchants spotted an opportunity, and the makeshift settlement got a little less makeshift. And yes, some of the previous sacrifices ended up so badly broken that they couldn't bring themselves to leave."

"Broken?" asked Susan, who, having spent a few days with Jo—who insisted on using terrible words like 'sacrifice' all the time—had grown a lot more nervous about her mission.

"You'll meet them soon enough. You'll be staying in that village for as long as you're here, after all." And indeed, another trio of older girls came running up to the village's gate as Susan and Jo approached.

"Hey!" shouted one.

"Good morning! So, how's the new girl?"

"Ooo, look at that hair! It's even brighter than the mascots' fur!"

"Hello?" asked an uncertain Susan.

"Nice to meet you. I'm Susan."

"Oh, right! Introductions!" exclaimed the eldest of the girls in a tone of voice that was almost as excitable as the mascots'.

"I'm Jenny, and these are Stacy and Nat."""Hi!"" exclaimed the other two.

"And you've already met the killjoy Jo over there," continued Jenny.

"Just be thankful you don't need to put up with this 'killjoy' any longer," sighed Jo.

"I'll leave her in your capable hands. From what I've seen of her, you should all get on well." And with that, Jo turned around and fled.

"Okay, what's going on? Really?" asked Susan, watching Jo jog off into the trees.

"They didn't tell you before you came in?" asked an adult, walking out of the gate and joining the quartet of girls.

"Well, you know the previous [Hero] didn't kill the demon lord, but kinda messed it up instead? Badly?"

"Yes?"

"Well... Eventually, the egg hatched. And what was inside was kinda messed up. Badly."

"Don't call him messed up!" complained Stacy.

"He's just... a little different. But so was the demon lord! Mystery made him better!"

"It's an 'it', not a 'him'," pointed out the adult, one of the researchers sent to investigate the forest.

"And yes, I'll admit that its existence isn't quite so diametrically opposed to all ensouled life as the demon lord was. It wouldn't be wrong to describe that as 'better'."

"Pfft. Your 'descriptions' are awful!" complained Nat.

"Come on, Susan. We'll just show you!" Nat grabbed one of Susan's hands while Stacy took the other, the pair dragging her off around the village and to the opposite side of the clearing. Jenny followed behind. The researcher just watched them leave, grinning to himself.

"Wow," said Susan, staring at the sight of the broken egg. Shards of snow-white shell, the biggest several metres across, were stabbed into the earth, forming an alien monument. More coated the ground. And in the centre of it all, a white-robed being of indeterminate gender hovered in the air, radiating power and majesty. Susan found her knees trembling as she walked, barely able to look at the transformed demon lord. But it had no difficulties looking at them.

Its gaze landed upon Susan, and suddenly the aura of majesty cut out as if it had never been. The serious expression on its face slackened, a thin strand of drool running from the corner of its mouth.

"That hair is almost exactly the same colour as my children's!" it exclaimed.

"A humanoid version of them! Why did I never think of that before?!" Susan gasped as mana washed over her, stronger than she had ever felt. And then she gasped again as something far more alien boiled up inside of her, miasma bubbling through her body. A single strand of her fringe sizzled, turning yellow from the root. She scratched at her scalp, a sudden unbearable itch occupying so much of her attention that she barely even noticed the pressure building up at the base of her spine.

Fluffy purple feline ears burst from her head the same time as an equally fluffy tail burst from her pants.

"What... What just happened?" she hesitatingly asked, poking uncertainly at her new ears.

"Oh. My. Gosh!" exclaimed Jenny.

"That is so cute!"

"I know, right?" giggled the former demon lord, who had fully inherited Mystery's habit of switching out people's outfits without permission, but who also had a rather more invasive definition of 'dressing up'.

"Do you think I should get rid of the human ears?"

"I don't think it matters in this case, because they're hidden under her hair," opined Stacy thoughtfully.

"Oh, try it on me!" exclaimed Nat.

"You'll be able to see them with my hair!"

"Seriously! What is happening right now?!" exclaimed Susan, starting to sound just as excitable as the mascots she was involuntarily cosplaying as. A year later, she did indeed go back home. But, as her parents had feared, it was only briefly. As much as Susan wanted to visit her family, the enchanted forest was simply far too much fun to leave behind.