They sit there in silence, the sound of Basil’s teacup breaking the quiet of the room as she, holding her palm over its top, slowly wobbles it around on its base, thinking.

“Reincarnation,” says Basil finally. “The core tenet of the faith is that none of this,” she looks around herself. “None of this is a one-time thing.”

“You mean like…” Fresh scratches her cheek. “Like we’ve already had this conversation before?”

“No. Time always keeps moving,” says Basil. “History repeats itself, but time doesn’t.” She grabs a small tea-cookie from the bowl in the middle of the table and breaks it apart into little pieces. “Imagine that time is just… a line going forward, forever,” explains Basil, drawing her finger across the table in a straight line. She picks up some of the broken pieces of cookie, dotting them here and there along the line. “When we live, we’re here. For a moment,” she says, pointing at the first piece of the cookie. “Then we die and we go back to the well of souls,” explains the priestess. “But time keeps moving while we’re dead, until eventually, we wake up again and we’re here,” she finishes, pointing at the next piece of cookie. “Same world. Same timeline, but at a different spot, as someone or something else.”

“If you believe in that crap,” says Jubilee.

“I do,” says Shamrock.

Fresh lifts her hand. “I guess I do too?” she assumes, though she still doesn’t know if it applies to her case specifically, being from another world and all. “But what does this have to do with the hero, Basil?”

Basil gestures to the depiction of the universe she has made on the table with cookie-crumbs. “This is how the gods made the world to be,” she explains. “But sometimes…” Her finger pushes one of the cookie crumbs from its spot to another. “Sometimes something goes wrong and the world isn’t what it should be, according to the will of the divine.”

“Bullshit,” says Jubilee from the side.

“- That’s when the gods intervene and send in someone to fix the problem.”

Fresh nods. “So that’s why. But why every hundred years?”

Basil shrugs. “Don’t ask me. I think it’s just… what it is, you know?” she asks, leaning back on her chair. “A second takes a second, a minute takes a minute -”

“- A crisis takes one hundred years,” finishes Shamrock.

“Usually,” affirms Basil, nodding. She sweeps the crumbs back together with her hand, collecting them back onto the little plate for her cup. She nods. “There’s just a thing that happens every so often, every hundred years, when something goes wrong. A powerful demon. A witch. A revolution of unheard proportions.”

Fresh crosses her arms, leaning back. “So the hero really was sent to kill Perchta? Specifically?” she asks. “Ten years ago?”

“I think so,” says Basil.

The table shakes, the cups rattling. Fresh turns her head, looking at Jubilee who has hit it with their fists. “That’s a crock of shit and you know it, Basil!” they bark, lifting a finger to point at her. “Considering that they murdered you, you sure do love fucking carrying the church’s dogma around!”

Basil looks over towards Jubilee. “I wish you wouldn’t always get so angry,” she says. “We can be civil here, you know?”

“And I wouldn’t be angry if you stopped smearing your ass all over our lives!” they snap towards her. “But here we are,” says Jubilee, narrowing their eyes. “What happened in the south was fucked and it wasn’t because of Perchta,” they state. “It’s because you stupid, robe-wearing, incense burning, chanting crackpots!” snaps Jubilee. “The hero wasn’t ever fucking supposed to go after Perchta!”

Basil crosses her arms. “I’m not going to speak with you if you talk to me like that.”

“Good!” Jubilee hits the table again. “The hero didn’t kill Perchta because that was his job.” They point at Basil. “The hero killed Perchta because your damn church told him to!” they yell. “You conniving, hypocritical fucks used your own ‘divine hero’ in a fucking power-grab!”

Fresh blinks, looking between the two of them. Basil has nothing to reply with, sitting there with crossed arms and closed eyes. “Jubilee? Is that true?” she asks.

“Of course it’s true,” says Jubilee. “What’s the first thing I taught you, when we opened the store together?” they ask. “Back in the north?”

Fresh scratches her cheek, thinking for a second about those frightening days, back in the north. It feels like such a long time ago. “To watch out for the competition?” she guesses.

“Because?” they ask, sharply.

“…Because they’ll mur -”

Jubilee drags their thumb across their throat. “- BECAUSE THEY’LL FUCKING MURDER YOU,” they yell, taking an unusually loud and sharp tone, even for them. Fresh supposes that this topic must be a very personal area for Jubilee. “I don’t know why the hero came here ten years ago,” they say, sitting back down. “But the church stuck their hands up his ass like he was a fucking puppet and sent him to kill Perchta instead of doing whatever he was actually supposed to do.”

The room is quiet again and Fresh looks around the table, trying to figure out what to do from here with this information.

Nobody says anything for a while, all of them just sitting awkwardly, except for Shamrock, who is nibbling on the broken crumbs of Basil’s cookie.

“I’m sorry that I yelled at you, Basil,” apologizes Jubilee, rather abruptly, crossing their arms and looking away. “It’s hard for me to not take this all personally.”

“As long as we’re passing around blame, should we talk about the thieves’ guild?” asks Basil, apparently not accepting Jubilee’s apology. “I recall hearing about a few hundred lanterns when you escaped the north?” she asks. “I wonder how they got those?”

“Uh? Duh?” asks Jubilee. “Because we sold them to them? Dumb-ass?” they say.

“Mhm,” says Basil. “And should we talk about why you and the thieves’ guild were interested in a witch?” asks the priestess. “Was it just out of the goodness of your heart?” she asks, opening her eyes. Basil lifts a hand, wiggling her fingers. “Or were you ‘puppeteering’ too?” asks the priestess.

“Fuck you, Basil!” snaps Jubilee. “I didn’t know she was a witch when I dragged her off of the street!”

“…I wonder about that…” suggests Basil, leaning back on her chair.

“You’re going too far,” hisses Jubilee.

“Am I?” asks Basil. “Sounds to me like you were doing the same exact thing that you’re saying the church did. Just with someone else.”

Fresh sits there and thinks, listening to the two of them get into another argument, this one more heated than their usual ones. It’s true, Jubilee had gone far, far out of their way to help her during the initial encounter. She recalls asking them why, back in the dungeon, back when they became friends. She had only received the answer that they ‘wanted to do it right, this time’.

Could it be that Jubilee knew about her? Since they met? Since before they met? After all, she would have never gotten this far, hell, she would have never even managed to survive a week in the northern city without Jubilee. Jubilee, who had forgiven her for snooping in their northern house, without so much as mentioning it. Jubilee who had known Perchta in their past life, before becoming a demon.

But she didn’t get her witch class until much later, weeks after they started working together. So, that can’t be possible, can it? It’s possible that it’s all just the whimsy of fate.

But…

She looks up towards Shamrock, who has managed to stay out of the argument successfully. The man is enjoying his life, eating the cookies and sharing half of them with the healer spriggan.

“Shamrock?” she asks, talking through Jubilee and Basil’s argument. “You knew Perchta, right?”

“Yes,” says the man.

“What was she like?” asks Fresh, tilting her head.

Shamrock looks at the cookie in his hand for a moment, lowering it from his helmet and giving it to the spriggan, who is overjoyed to get another one. “Desperate.”

“For what?” asks Fresh.

Shamrock shrugs, exhaling a heavy breath a moment later. The leaves on the spriggan’s head billow. “Some are alive, yet they never find life,” replies the man.

“She was a recluse,” says Jubilee. “Quiet. Never left the dark. Not for a lack of trying. You know the type.”

“Oh…” says Fresh. “That’s sad.” It sounds just like she herself was, in her old life. Desperate to be alive, desperate to search for a meaning in life, but somehow never finding the strength to search for it and then, even if by some miracle she found that strength on some odd day of the year, it would never lead to any results that could make the coming emptiness of the next day easier.

“Monsters took a liking to her,” explains Jubilee. “It was a whole string of symbolic bullshit, you know?” they ask.

“The wild-hunt,” finishes Shamrock. “For her, and her alone, the monsters left the dark.”

“Was she bad?” asks Fresh.

“Bad for business, yeah,” says Jubilee. “Hard to run a shop peddling holier than thou nonsense for a monthly fee when someone is living next door offering it for free.”

“Huh?” Fresh tilts her head.

“Perchta set up shop in the southern dungeon,” explains Jubilee. “People, monsters, everyone went down to see her,” they explain.

“Why?”

“Because she was a witch?” suggests Jubilee, shrugging. “It was a bunch of fuckery, like yours,” they explain. “Despite being an absolute social reject, Perchta had a way of drawing people to her,” they say, looking at her.

Fresh laughs. That’s kind of a sad and familiar story. “Did she ever leave the south?”

“Yes,” says Basil, apparently willing to speak again. “She was everywhere, really. The north, the east, the west.”

Fresh blinks. “- The center?” she asks.

“The center,” nods Basil in affirmation.

Fresh looks around the house, staring at the oddity that it is. The pipes in the floor… the connection to the dungeon through an unusual portal…

“Yup,” says Jubilee. “This was hers,” they say, looking around with her.

“Is that why you bad-talked it so much when we moved in?” asks Basil.

“Shut up, Basil,” replies Jubilee. “It was like moving into a grave, okay?” they ask. “I shudder to think of the cosmic fuckery that had to happen to get us here. What are the fucking odds?”

Shamrock nods. “Out of all the houses in the city.”

“The east too,” affirms Fresh. “The pipes in the shower were hers.”

“Yup,” says Jubilee, leaning back. “Time might be a straight line, but it sure has a way of going in fucking circles,” they note.

“Mm…” says Fresh, thinking for a moment. “Hey, guys? I think the black-fountain is Perchta,” she explains. “Like, the old Perchta.”

“…Dead Perchta?” asks Jubilee, lifting an eyebrow.

“Dead Perchta,” affirms Fresh, nodding. “Well, you know, ‘dead’,” she finishes, shrugging.

The three of them look her way, before turning back towards each other.

“Is this bad?” asks Basil.

Jubilee gets up. “Basil. Moon book.”

“Sure thing,” replies Basil, running past them to go down to the library.

Shamrock gets up as well, looking over towards the window.

“Guys?” asks Fresh, looking at her friends who seem to have realized something that she hasn’t.

“Perchta was a lot of things,” says Jubilee. “I liked her. But she had a tendency for dramatics. If she’s going to make a move, it’s going to fucking happen during the biggest fucking theatrical moment of the century.”

“I’ve noticed,” says Fresh, rubbing her arm and laughing nervously. It’s true, the fountain does love to make a show… She herself also has a tendency towards over-exaggeration, perhaps there are really strong similarities between the two of them? Perhaps she really is some sort of reincarnation of the witch?

Shamrock opens the window and looks outside.

“I found it!” says Basil, running back upstairs with an open book in her hand. She lays it down on the table. “It says…” her fingers run across a moon-chart, pointing at a specific image; the picture of a total eclipse. “It says…” Basil blinks, holding onto the edge of the table as she wobbles on her feet. “Uh… oh… wow. I don’t feel so -”

The priestess falls over. A small, green stone flies out of her pocket and rolls across the floor.

Fresh barely has time to react, trying to catch her before her own legs give out. The world spins, her eyes go dark and they all fall over at the same time.

The last thing that she sees are the silhouettes of a spriggan and the springan, standing off to the side of the room, holding hands and watching them as a bowl of cookies falls off of the disturbed table.