A Better World (Record of Ragnarok x Reader)

Chapter 6 - Old friends and new ones

'I never took you for a crybaby, Queen.'

'Then you have missed a lot, Princess.'

The voice of her once-lost friend rang clearly in her head. [Name] might have thought that her brain was playing a cruel joke on her if it were not for the kindness in the princess' tone. Because if it truly had been the doing of her mind, the words that left the princess' mouth would not have been those of an old friend, but those of someone who despised and resented her.

'Do you truly think that lowly of me?' Nehemia snorted, not quite believing what she just heard. 'Do you truly believe that I would have cursed your name for all of eternity just because of an insignificant disagreement?'

Oh yeah, one more thing; she could hear every thought she had.

'Yeah. Kinda.' There was no point in lying if she could read her mind.

'I only did it for half of my afterlife. Then I moved on,'

[Name] let out a muffled laugh at the princess' witticism. "That's a cruel joke, y'know?" She now said out loud. Her voice echoed in the small, dimly lit room.

'I thought you liked those,' she retorted, her words now laced with a heavy sadness. 'I'm sorry, my friend. For everything. I didn't want to lie to you, but the fate of the world depended on you fulfilling your role as queen. And you did. You did more than anyone had expected of you. I do not regret my actions, but my methods, which caused you harm. Once again, I am sorry.'

"You did what you had to do. I hold no hard feelings toward you. At all." And it was the truth. Even after finding out that Nehemia had orchestrated her own death so that she could be one step closer to being sacrificed to the selfish gods, she never blamed the princess. But those damn divine beings that had pushed that fate upon her.

'Still, you had told me the truth of your identity, and I still kept secrets from you. I have failed you as a friend.' Her voice came out weak, heavy. Broken. It felt weird hearing Nehemia cry. Never before had she seen her friend burst into tears. Not even when five hundred of the Eyllwe rebels were killed. She had shed tears for her fallen people then, but only in the privacy of her own chambers.

"Nehemia, you have access to every thought I have; you know that I do not lie." She leaned back on the chair, making the old wood creak in the process.

'That is exactly what makes it so frustrating. You, feeling absolutely no resentment toward me is almost worse than you hating me with your entire being,' the princess spoke, slowly recovering from her sobs.

The queen smiled at her words. "Are you sure about that? People usually don't want to be on the receiving end of my anger. You could ask them, of course, but the dead do not speak."

'I do.' Nehemia retorted. The queen could almost feel the smile dancing its way back to her lips, despite not being able to see her.

"You, my friend, is an exception."

When skimming through one of the books she had found on the shelf, she encountered a spell to reunite with the dead. Not revive but reconnect. However, it had not specified how it would work, so she was fairly startled when she heard a voice in her head. The spell required that you write down the name of the person you wanted to summon, and because she had thought of Nehemia prior to finding it, she did not think twice before writing down the princess' name.

"How Nehemia?" [Name] didn't need to further explain her thoughts because Nehemia had understood the question. She always understood her.

'Wyrdmarks are powerful. Extremely powerful. No one really knows the extent of their power. Even I did not know of such a spell.' [Name] looked down at the book again.