You feel the pendant burning a hole in your pocket as the four of you finish up the rest of what turns out to be an uneventful patrol. Well, uneventful after the very strange surprise Sidonia left behind for you.
For you? You have no proof the pendant was meant for you specifically, outside of nobody else feeling any sort of strange compulsion towards it. But if you, then why you? Because Sidonia has been occasionally visiting you in your dreams? But then, how did she leave her pendant behind for you to find? You could have sworn she was wearing that pendant when you defeated her, and them almost immediately after being defeated Sidonia stepped into the afterlife with her mother, so how did she leave it behind for you?
You can figure out the how later. As far as the what goes, you're fairly certain that this pendant was left behind for someone, and based on the evidence you'd guess that either yourself, or Franziska, are the most likely candidates. Assuming Sidonia has no knowledge of Franziska, that leaves you as the intended recipient, based on nothing more than the fact that only you felt a compulsion to take the pendant.
The next question you have is why? Why tonight? You could ask yourself
"Why you?" until the cows come home, but asking
"Why tonight?" seems like it at least
might lead to fewer circular arguments. Unless Sidonia slipped out of the afterlife to give you that pendant, somehow, it must have been left there by Sidonia before she went into battle –
a fact you think you can discount because you'd swear you saw Sidonia wearing it when she was defeated – and been there for the whole of that time since.
Unless you assume that Sidonia really did come out of the afterlife just to leave you that pendant. The question then becomes, why tonight? What condition did you trigger for the pendant to lure you to it?
What's different about tonight? Kim was defeated about half a week ago; and it seems like, aside from Benveniste's slimes, Franziska and her team haven't moved into Mitakihara. Does any of that tell you anything?
Off the top of your head, no, that doesn't tell you anything. You must have triggered
something dormant in the spells holding Sidonia's workshop together, but you have no idea what. Does it have to do with the composition of mages-slash-potential-enemies in the city to draw your attention away from Sidonia's workshop? You and Sidonia both shared some ability to manipulate Grief- Did you perhaps hit some sort of ability threshold that the workshop deemed sufficient enough to pass Sidonia's pendant on to you? What does it even mean to hold this pendant? Is this Veles taking an interest in you? Sidonia? Are you just going crazy from the stress you're under and none of this was even real?
Archer, Tomoe-san, and Kirika all saw nothing, while you saw that trippy vision of yourself, your witch, and Madoka. Either there's some deeper meaning to all of that, or you really are just losing your mind.
You breathe in, and out, trying to make sense of the vision you saw. You saw yourself, watching yourself as Madoka died for the first time and you made your pact with the Incubator.
Your witch was right: That was Hell you walked into. But it was a Hell you'd walk into again and again for Madoka's sake. Black gives way to white, to black, to outlines of Madoka, your mother, and Kirika. Archer isn't there? Why isn't Archer there? Why isn't Archer there? Veles is a god of the underworld: Was your witch perhaps being more literal than metaphorical in warning you of the Hell you were walking into?
Was that vision a warning of something that's to come? Are you going to lose Archer? Is Archer going to lose you? What can you do to prevent yourself from losing Archer?
The only part of that vision which even made sense to you was the ending, of you
r witch and Madoka sitting on a throne of black. You'd guess at least that it's a metaphor for growing closer to Madoka, which is something you would like to do, but for your own hesitations holding you back.
If you didn't hesitate, if you weren't terrified of what could happen if you opened yourself up to Madoka intimately, you would take her. You would take her every single night. You would take her each night a hundred times, once for each time you had to watch her die.
See? Isn't it so much nicer when you come out and admit the things you want, rather than hiding them behind your insecurities?
However, out of all the mysteries surrounding your acquisition of Sidonia's pendant tonight, there stands one good thing, one thing you can be sure of without having to soul-search the "why" behind it: Sidonia's familiars no longer attack you. Granted, you're basing this off a sample size of one werewolf, with no guarantee it would work on any of her remaining stragglers, wherever they are, but at best it means you can hunt them down with impunity and remove the threat they pose to the rest of the city.
Would that be fair? If they stand there and feel no impulse to attack you, is it wrong to take advantage of that fact to kill them? If Sidonia's pendant somehow renders them docile, perhaps you can extend that to control over them as a whole? If you could somehow wield control over Sidonia's familiars against Franziska's team… Well, the irony would not be lost on you, using Sidonia's own minions to lay waste to her descendant's forces. Not to mention using them to protect the city they once threatened. Call it, rehabilitative justice, if it works out.
But all of that is questions for another day. It's late tonight, very late, and Archer is already marching the three of you back home. "All right, girls," Archer says as you've all of you gathered back home. "Go to bed. It's late, and neither Minako nor myself are going to let you skip school tomorrow just because you're tired from running around tonight." You know Archer will see you and Kirika off separate from Tomoe-san, so he says to her "Tomoe, get some good rest. Either Minako or myself will be by in the morning to make sure you haven't accidentally cocooned the living room."
An embarrassed blush forms on Tomoe-san's cheeks, which she tries to hide by saying "Archer, please, I'll do no such thing," as if she hadn't done that once already during her stay as your guest. "But, thank you for the support. I'll see you and Minako-san tomorrow morning." Tomoe-san bows for Archer, and for you and Kirika next as she adds "Akemi-san, Kure-san, take care, and good night." With a knowing look in her eye –
flashes of purple cloud gold – she adds, just for you "Try not to stay up all night researching that pendant of Sidonia's. I'm not sure you'll have much to find on a piece of uncommon jewellery from five-hundred years ago."
Maybe not. But that's not going to stop you. As Archer marches you and Kirika back to your bedroom, and closes the door behind you two with a pointed, parental "Now go to sleep, you two," Kirika stares back at you and asks, smirking "You're totally going to stay up all night researching Sidonia's pendant, aren't you?"
"Maybe not all night," you confess. "But I would like to satisfy my curiosity at least a little bit before going to bed."
Hopefully your doing so won't be too much of a distraction to Kirika as she's trying to sleep.
"'Kay," is all Kirika says. "I'm gonna try to get some sleep. Try not to keep me up while you're doing whatever the heck it is you're doing."
You look away while Kirika peels off her layers, until she's reduced down to just her panties and the coiling emerald dragon tattooed across her shoulder. As Kirika reaches into her dresser drawer for one of her tee shirts you boot up your laptop; and as Kirika crawls into bed, turning off the lamp over her bedside table and bathing her half of the room in darkness, you type "Veles" into your browser's search engine. You aren't sure where you should start your search, so you decide to start from the top, clicking on
the Wikipedia link bearing Veles's name.
"
Veles,
[a] also known as
Volos, is a major
god of earth, waters, livestock, and the
underworld in
Slavic paganism. His mythology and powers are similar, though not identical, to those of (among other deities)
Odin,
Loki, and
Hermes..." You aren't sure where any of this even gets you, but it's a start, if nothing else.
