Fresh hums as she works, spinning a metal cylinder around inside of another bigger one, in order to let the grooves in the metal lock into place with each other.

She’s setting up the big telescope, upstairs on top of the tower.

“I still think it’s a waste of time,” says Jubilee.

Fresh turns her head, looking at them, sitting on the railing of the upstairs platform, indifferent to her warnings that it’s unsafe. They aren’t helping her build the telescope, but they’ve nonetheless decided to stay up late and to keep her company as she does so, which means just as much to her, in all honesty. “If you wanna look at the stars, you can do it like that.”

Fresh tilts her head. “But you like telescopes, Jubilee?” she asks, returning to her work. “I know you do.”

“Shut up,” replies Jubilee, sighing. Fresh smiles. She knows that Jubilee was actually just making an argument just for the sake of talking. They’re actually for the telescope idea as well. “Honestly, we should probably have Shamrock just throw you up to the top of the tree,” suggests Jubilee. “Like he did during that boss fight with the stone-giant.”

“I’d need my broom,” replies Fresh. “I don’t think that even Shamrock is strong enough to throw me all the way up there,” says Fresh, looking up and out of the ceiling towards the world-tree which towers up towards the sky.

There is a small clapping sound as Jubilee places their hands together. “Which brings me to my next point -”

“- Why don’t I just fly up with my broom and look outside of the shield?” asks Fresh, knowing what Jubilee’s question is already going to be. They nod, raising an eyebrow, apparently surprised that she had cut them off. Fresh turns back to her work again, bending down to carefully grab a large, glass lens with a half-spherical curvature, which she had pre-made and starts to fit it into the cylinder. It’s quiet for a while as she works. It takes a minute or so until she gets the glass to sit just right. The lens has to be perfectly set, otherwise the view through the telescope will look distorted from the other end.

But, having finished this step, she has no escape anymore. So, Fresh sighs now and turns her gaze towards her friend. “I’m scared, Jubilee,” admits Fresh. “What if there’s just…” She stops, rubbing her arm. “What if there’s just nothing left?”

Jubilee nods. “That is the likely case, if you ask me.”

Fresh frowns. “What if it’s my fault?”

Jubilee nods, pointing at her lazily with a finger. “That is the likely case, if you ask me,” they repeat.

Fresh looks down at her work, racking her brain about what step is next in the process. But she got distracted and now her mind is wandering somewhere else entirely. Fresh lets out a frustrated groan, rubbing her forehead and tired eyes as she sits down on the floor, leaning over to rest her head on the side of Jubilee’s leg.

“…What if it happens here too?” she asks, not bothering to look up, knowing that, in all likelihood, it will.

A hand finds its way to her shoulder. “That is the likely case, if you ask me,” says Jubilee, a third time.

“…Jubilee?” asks Fresh. “Are we evil?”

The hand squeezes her shoulder. “You bet your pale ass we are,” says Jubilee. “We even have vampires on the run. Those gangly fucks.”

“Oh.” She supposes that much is obvious, though she just didn’t want to hear it. “I guess it makes sense, with me being a witch and you being a demon and Shamrock being a monster and all,” she says, not thinking about it. Only after saying it however, she catches herself, too late as always. Fresh turns her head to look up at Jubilee, afraid that she has offended them. But instead, they’re fighting down a tired laugh.

“Now we just need to get Basil to change her class,” they reply. “Maybe we can get her into necromancy?” suggests Jubilee. “We’d have a full set then. Really look the part, you know?”

“Plus, she can revive us after we die then,” notes Fresh.

Jubilee rolls their eyes. “’Revive’ is a relative term,” they explain. “Your body might come back, but the rest of you sure isn’t gonna.”

“Can necromancers make ghosts?” suggest Fresh. “Maybe we could all become ghosts instead of dying then?”

Jubilee shakes their head. “Are you suggesting that we make a suicide pact?”

“Huh? Oh, wow. That’s uh… that’s dark, Jubilee,” says Fresh, turning to look at the unfinished telescope. “I guess we already did, though.”

Jubilee shrugs. “Yeah. That’s life,” they say, yawning. “It is what it is. The world is ending, we’re all gonna die. Who gives a fuck anymore?” They make a show out of extending their yawn.

“That’s life,” nods Fresh in affirmation, resting her head back against their leg. “It is what it is.” She stares at the telescope. “Hey, Jubilee?”

“Yeah?” they ask.

Fresh stares idly. “Can we just do it so… you know, everybody except us dies?”

“Stop, you’re going to make me like you,” replies Jubilee.

“Joke’s on you,” smiles Fresh. “You already admitted that you did. I remember. There were two likes mentioned, actually.”

“Shut up, goo-brain. Get back to work,” they say, poking her head. Fresh sighs, getting up and doing just that. “You’re always living in some weird fantasy in your head. Honestly.”

Fresh continues her work on the telescope. “Hey, Jubilee?”

“Do not,” replies a tired Jubilee.

Fresh shrugs, disobedient as always. “I like-you-like-you too.”

“Understandable,” they reply. “I’m pretty great.”

“Yeah,” smiles Fresh and both of them turn to look up towards the night-sky that somehow, despite the impossibility of it, seems to be closer down towards the world than ever before.

“Hey, Shamrock?” asks Fresh.

It is the morning of the next day and the man sits at the breakfast table, the springan on his lap. “Yes?”

Fresh looks over her coughee towards him. “So, what’s in the south?” she asks. “Like, really-really?”

“The realm of the dead,” replies the man.

Fresh nods. “Sure. But, what does that mean?” she asks. “Is it like… another world?” Fresh looks around the table. “Are the other witches ‘alive’ there, or are they just kind of… I dunno… abstractly existing or being dead?” she asks, noticing that Basil hasn’t objected once to any of her pre-breakfast questions. The priestess just seems to be looking at her tea, as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.

Shamrock shakes his head. “I can not say,” replies the giant man.

“’Cause you don’t know?” asks Fresh.

“Yes,” is all that he says. The table is quiet for a moment, the silence only broken by Basil taking a sip of her tea a moment later. “They found it preferable.”

Fresh scratches her cheek, thinking. “What do you think is up with the south these days?” she asks. “Do you think the other cities got ‘southed’ too?”

“I can not say,” he says again. The leaves on the springan’s head moving from the heaving of his chest. It seems excited about this, bobbing around.

“Mm…” nods Fresh, taking a sip of her coughee. Her stomach growls as she smells breakfast being cooked across the room by Jubilee. “I was just thinking that…”

“- That the dungeons are connected?” asks Basil.

“Mm,” nods Fresh, surprised that Basil had read her mind on such an abstract idea.

“We can’t,” says the priestess, not looking up from her tea. Fresh’s idea had been to go down to level one-hundred of the central-dungeon and to just take the tree-root passage away from the center, down towards the south. Surely, that could be an alternative to staying here or to going to one of the other cities, whose fate is entirely unknown?

Sure, it would mean entering the spirit world, which is a one way trip in the south, apparently. But choosing to go there willingly must be preferable to normal, everyday death, if the other witches had chosen it, right? There must be a reason for them having done that?

“We made this mess,” says the priestess. “We have to see it through to the end, or what will it all have been for?”

“For us, Basil,” says Fresh. “It’s for us. It’s so we survive.”

She shakes her head. “By going there, we won’t achieve that,” she explains. “I’ve thought this through too,” says Basil, looking at the two of them. “Our best chance is here. Right in the middle of the mess we’ve made.”

Fresh turns to Shamrock who nods. “I agree,” says the man. “I once turned back from there,” he explains. “I will not go now,” he says, exhaling loudly. “Not before the moonfall.”

“Poetic fuck,” says Jubilee, noisily setting down a plate of pancakes in the center of the table. “We’re not going anywhere. If we have to cut the fucking world-tree down to do it, we’re staying right where we are. If the world likes it or not.”

“Agreed,” says Basil, reaching over to grab her pancakes.

“Yes,” nods Shamrock, allowing Basil to take hers first.

“Mm,” notes Fresh in agreement, not skipping a beat. It was an interesting fantasy to entertain for a minute before breakfast, but if the world has to go in order to keep her family safe, that’s just what it’s going to have to be, if the world likes it or not.

It is what it is.