I sat at the desk and took up a quill. I dunked the sharp tip deep into the inkwell, then scrawled across the blank sheet.
The lines ran on without end. I filled one page edge to edge and moved to the second.
Then something strange happened. I dipped the nib several times, yet no letters formed on the paper. The quill moved busily, but left nothing behind.
What on earth am I trying to say. No, there’s a message I’m clearly trying to deliver—so why won’t anything be written.
It’s suffocating. Why can’t I write anything at all. Suffocating. So suffocating.
“Stu...ck... ngh....”
I must have been that suffocated—my feelings from the dream leaked out of my mouth.
I pried up heavy eyelids. A dark space, and irregular stone pillars jutting up in spikes.
I didn’t know where, but it was a cave. I’d been sure I would really die this time, and yet, I’d lived again.
“Haa... ugh, I’m... stuck....”
“Hiyung! Hiyung, hiyung!”
I thought the emotion from the dream was spilling over, but my body was literally suffocated.
Rami had her belly plastered to my forehead and was crying sadly. With her tiny feet she slapped my eyelids. She was scolding me for waking up so late.
“Ah... Rami, that hurts....”
“Hiyung! Hiyuung!”
Rami was cute, but I didn’t have the strength to laugh. I barely lifted my eyes and looked at what surrounded me.
Kallen was tucked tight to my right, lying on her side asleep, and Varen had his body flipped around, hugging my left leg.
“Prrr, prr.”
“Hey... Ella....”
Even Ella, who rarely came into caves, was pacing by my head.
When she saw me come to, she sniffed and then licked my hair. Viscous saliva parted my hair into a track along the path of her tongue.
I forced my leaden body up to sit. The leg he was holding twitched and Varen, in a deep sleep, snapped his eyes wide at once.
“Ugh... is everyone all right....”
“Ceryl, Ceryl!”
Then he jerked upright and grabbed my shoulders. On one face, anxiety and relief surfaced at the same time. His emotions were brutally frank.
“Yeah, I’m okay. Varen, you?”
“I’m fine.”
Sure you are. Your eyes are swimming.
With my head clearing, some strength came back. I managed a crooked smile to tell him to relax.
“Nngh... nn... Ceryl...?”
“Kallen. You okay t—”
“Ceryl, Ceryyl!”
Kallen scrambled up and threw her arms around me. She couldn’t form words; she broke down in hiccuping sobs that nearly stole her breath.
I didn’t have the strength to hold even that small body. Varen propped my torso so I wouldn’t topple.
“Hu-uhh, Ceryl. I r-really th—thought you were, hic, going to d—die....”
“Yeah, I thought I was really going to die this time too.”
“D-don’t say... such ominous... things! Huh-uhh....”
“You said it first, punk.”
If she had the energy to cry that stoutly, Kallen was intact.
I rubbed my stiff eyes and roused myself slowly. Then I traced back what had happened.
We were ambushed by Dragon Hunters using stealth magic and barely escaped. At the very end....
“I treated your ankle. But you shouldn’t walk for a while.”
The ankle that had been punched through by sharp metal teeth was clean. I’d bled a basin’s worth, but other than clothes dyed black, the skin was unbroken.
Ugh, no wonder my gut turned. Varen had his broad chest pushed out as if angling for praise.
“You licked this?”
“Of course. I told you I treated it.”
“...Urk.”
He’d drunk a bellyful of my blood, so why was I the one dry-heaving.
It’s going to be hard to let Varen kiss me for a while.
...damn it. How does my train of thought slide there so naturally.
“Haa... still, I’m glad everyone’s safe. Really glad.”
I scrubbed my face with a dry wash. How am I supposed to keep these kids alive. The head-splitting planning and heart-bursting sprinting had been worth it.
But the air turned strange. Even Kallen, who’d been sniffling with joy that I’d woken, went quiet.
A chilling premonition slid past. I lifted my head; Kallen’s eyes had sunk, gloomy.
“...Kallen?”
Tears the size of marbles fell in heavy drops. This time she made no sound, only shook her shoulders and swallowed her sobs.
Ah. A low sigh slipped out. In the relief of surviving, I’d forgotten.
That this odd company had gained another member.
“Leobin. Where’s Leobin?”
I swept the cave in a rush. Then I saw the blond head, laid straight near the entrance.
How was I only now noticing. That skin-crawling sound.
My legs had no strength; I crawled. Leobin, whom I’d spent a full week dragging back to life, was a corpse again.
“Gk... ggh, g—ghhk....”
This time an arrow had pierced clean through his neck. I’d thought no one had been hit in that downpour.
“It was lodged from the start.”
Varen’s flat voice chilled my blood. From the start meant—
“He took it while shielding you.”
“......”
“I told you. He’s under a spell that protects you.”
His unfocused eyes wouldn’t close. His trachea was holed and his lungs torn; he couldn’t breathe. Deoxygenated skin went paler than a corpse.
Even so, Leobin’s pupils moved, toward me.
“Gk... Ke, Ke... ryl... gk....”
He couldn’t even pronounce my name anymore. Even so, he still couldn’t die as he pleased.
I stared down at Leobin, blank.
His blued lips worked like a fish’s, but he couldn’t say what he wanted. Saliva he couldn’t swallow leaked in strings from the corners of his mouth.
Stay calm. Right, just stay calm. I saved him once; I can do it again.
“First we take the arrow out. The moment it’s withdrawn the blood will surge. So—”
“Ceryl, stop.”
Varen took my trembling hands in his.
“You haven’t woken for three days. You won’t endure any more.”
I knew it, of course. No one knows my body better than I do.
I couldn’t cite a number, but I felt the limit.
Getting my ankle skewered hurt like dying—but it wasn’t an injury that should keep me down for three days. Not with a dragon beside me who kept restoring me.
All my life force had been flowing into Leobin. So my recovery dragged, and he barely clung to life.
“Varen, if you charge me....”
Clinging to ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) a useless hope, I looked at Varen. Even after “three days,” he was slick with cold sweat.
A dragon may be a powerful monster, but keeping Humanization while restoring me was clearly straining him.
And with a presence right next to us siphoning my life force, it had been pouring water into a bottomless jar.
My empty gaze went back to Leobin. His hiccuping breaths were pitiful. The will not to die, the will to guard me even as a corpse.
It was unbearably wretched.
“Gk... ggh, g—ghhk....”
Still choking, Leobin looked only at me.
Kallen came near and dropped to her knees, tears falling in fat beads.
“I... th-there wasn’t anything I could... do, hic... even the herbs, he c-couldn’t swallow....”
I stroked the trembling orange head.
For the three days I was out cold, she must have fought on alone with Leobin dying with an arrow through his throat and Varen burning with fever.
“Good work, Kallen.”
“N-no... it’s not... I didn’t do... anything... ugh....”
Not being able to do anything applied to me just the same.
There was no longer any way to save Leobin.
I looked into the eyes, their lights out. Meeting eyes that lived only because they couldn’t die gave me a sense of déjà vu.
Ah, right. I’d seen it somewhere too many times.
“Do you remember, back then?”
“I do. I remember.”
They were the same eyes as the dragon begging me to kill him in the Underground Prison.
Without needing to say it, Varen and I were thinking of the same scene. We shared a faint smile over the bitter memory.
“I could take you out of the Underground Prison. But this is all I can do for Leobin.”
Even as I spoke to Varen, I didn’t take my eyes off Leobin.
A body under a spell to protect Ceryl, unable to die.
Turn it around, and it means: a body only Ceryl can kill.
I picked up a cloth from the ground and folded it over. Then I covered Leobin’s mouth and nose.
“Ceryl, wait. Not... not like this....”
Kallen, who’d been watching, caught my collar. I stroked her shaking head.
“It’s all right, Kallen. Leobin should rest too.”
“...uhh, ugh....”
Even though her family and comrades had all died, this would be her first time seeing death this stark. The shock would be great.
I wrapped her thin shoulders. Kallen pressed her face into me and swallowed her cries.
Varen looked between us quietly.
“Ceryl, will you be all right? It would be better if I did it.”
I’d braced for him to roar what I thought I was doing. At the dragon’s consideration, I could only smile.
The thought was kind, but instead of an answer I tightened my grip on the folded blanket.
“No. I have to be the one to send him.”
Because Ceryl Aylos is the lord Leobin tried to protect even in death.
I studied life-saving for a long time. Which injuries are fatal; how to make breathing easier.
And so I knew well how to end life. It was a wretched irony.
Working the seal properly over mouth and nose, Leobin’s body began to thrash.
“Gk... ggh, g—ghhk....”
Leobin, blue to the fingernails, fluttered his fingers.
Whether he was trying to grasp something out of the will to live, or a lingering tie to me—I couldn’t tell.
“Goodbye, Leobin. Don’t hurt anymore. Rest easy.”
On the day I euthanized Berry with my own hands as she writhed in pain, I’d said the same farewell.
A pleading hand reached for me. With his last strength, Leobin seized my wrist tight.
Then the strength left him slowly. Very peacefully, as if falling into a deep sleep, the light went out in his eyes.
Up to the moment he closed them, he didn’t look away from me.
So that the last memory of his life could hold Ceryl in his eyes, I smiled at Leobin.
