Fer-de's Fang (2)
My body felt heavy.
Probably because Maeve had settled herself in my arms and fallen fast asleep.
My throat, stiff from having passed out exhausted, ached so badly that a cough rose up naturally, but I forced it down, straining not to wake her.
“…Mmm.”
As I painfully suppressed the cough, a slight tremor must have reached her, because she stirred and shifted her body with careful, deliberate movements.
…How am I supposed to escape?
I even considered biting through my tongue to bleed out, but killing myself that way would hardly be effective, and it was obvious it would only bring pain, so I gave up on the idea.
But if I endured like this until morning, I would become Maeve's slave, neither dead nor alive.
Knowing her, she would harden my body in wax and turn me into a living doll.
Rather than live a life unable to die, an ornament forever, escaping somehow and living as a fugitive was far better.
Carefully, so as not to make even the faintest rustle, I moved my hand in silence toward her waist, trying to slip the musket out of her grip.
With that gun, I could kill myself easily.
My cautious fingers touched the handle with a soft tap—.
The moment I clasped the grip of fine ebony wood and suicide came within reach—
“What are you doing.”
“…!”
“Trying to kill yourself?”
Maeve had noticed my hand on her weapon and opened her eyes with mechanical precision.
“Gahkh…!”
“Go back to sleep. That way you won't be tired tomorrow.”
She wrapped her hand around my throat, tightening her grip, trying to knock me out again.
I hastily pulled the musket from her waistband, raised it, and pressed the muzzle against my temple.
I had no desire to let this meeting drag on any longer, so I pulled the trigger without hesitation.
Click—.
“…….”
Click, click—.
No matter how many times I pulled the trigger, no shot fired.
I could feel the weight of it—it was clearly loaded, the powder packed full.
But with my oxygen running out from the choking, I dropped the musket, and Maeve explained the reason with an expressionless face.
“If you don't have enough mana, the powder won't ignite. That's why it won't fire.”
…A stat requirement.
A weapon that can't perform to its full potential below a certain stat threshold.
To me, barely Level 10, the musket Maeve carried was nothing more than a pretty, shiny piece of crap that couldn't fire a single shot.
“You're incredibly weak, Dean. You can't even fire a gun.”
Her hand stopped choking me right at the point where my breath might have given out, and the touch tickled my cheek.
I tried picking the musket back up and resisting with the blade, but Maeve swept the weapon out of my reach, as if to tell me not to struggle further.
“Don't worry. Even if you're weak, I can protect you, Dean.”
“I don't… need… that….”
In the end, left with no other choice, I bit down on my tongue as a last resort for suicide.
Unlike before, when I'd bitten shallowly and only felt pain, I dug as deep as I could with my molars, trying to end it quickly.
“Not there.”
“Kehk—!”
But Maeve saw through even that, seizing my jaw hard with one hand and completely sealing the movement of my lower jaw.
“Don't leave me behind. I hate being alone.”
Her crushing grip dislocated my jaw, making tongue-biting suicide impossible, but that apparently wasn't enough to put her at ease, because a handkerchief was shoved into my mouth as well.
“…All you have to do is look at me.”
Maeve's low voice, meeting my gaze with an expression devoid of emotion, was certainly flat—but instinctively, I could tell she was in a state of tremendous rage.
“Why won't you look at me?”
A single shriveled tear fell from her eyes onto my face, and then she seized my right wrist.
“Mmmph?!!”
She pulled the knife she'd kept tucked in the hem of her coat and drove it into my wrist.
The finely honed blade severed vessel after vessel without resistance, slicing through the tendons at the same time.
With the tendons cut, the fingers that had been clenched so tightly all lost their strength at once and went limp, and my right hand was stripped of its function forever.
“I love you so much, Dean.”
“Ngh…!! Mmmgh!!!?”
Before long, the knife sank into my remaining, unharmed wrist as well, and the tendons and vessels there were all cut away.
In an instant, both my hands were crippled. With the handkerchief clenched hard between my teeth, I threw my head back and pounded it against the ground again and again.
I'd never been tortured like this even with Eileen.
Even with Carmen, it had never hurt this much.
Maeve… moved for one purpose only: not to kill me, but to inflict pure pain.
To punish the insolent fool who had dared to try to escape her.
“I'll take care of everything for you, Dean. All you have to do is look at me.”
She had begun the work of crafting her doll—a taxidermied figure that would gaze at her every day for the rest of its existence.
With practiced hands, Maeve pulled the knife free from my bleeding wrist, turned the wound open, and packed the gunpowder she was carrying into the gash.
“This will sting.”
“Nghk?!”
Then she set the powder alight, forcibly cauterizing the wound shut.
She burned the other hand the same way, searing it with gunpowder until the bleeding stopped.
Though my mouth was stuffed with the handkerchief, blood kept seeping from my gums from clenching my teeth so hard.
Once the first stage of staunching the wounds was finished, Maeve shifted her gaze to my mouth.
“…Should I pull your teeth too?”
At that spine-chilling murmur about ripping out every last one of my teeth, I shook my head, weeping.
“Mmph!! Mmmkph!!”
I begged with all my might—please don't, please spare me—and at that, Maeve narrowed her eyes into thin, pleased crescents, as if that was exactly what she wanted to see.
“You won't bite your tongue, right?”
“Mmm!! Mm!!”
The moment I nodded in instant agreement, she stopped the hand that at some point had begun stroking the corner of my mouth.
“I'll let it slide this once. There won't be a next time.”
When Maeve's lifeless eyes turned away to somewhere else, only then did the reality that I had survived hit me, and tears spilled down my face.
I made no sound.
I was too afraid it might displease her.
The mere fact that both my hands, perfectly fine mere moments ago, could no longer serve their function as the price of defiance had stamped out every last ember of my rebellious spirit.
I had to accept reality.
There was no escaping Maeve. Not ever.
If I attempted suicide one more time and she caught me again…
I would suffer a torture worse than death.
“Your eyes have died even more, Dean.”
My pupils now were shrouded in an abyss that her own dead eyes couldn't even begin to compare with.
At the sight of me, become a doll utterly devoid of movement, Maeve settled herself back into my arms and closed her eyes.
And I wrapped both my arms around her waist and held her.
My role, now that I had become living taxidermy, was to hold her.
Without a word. Gazing at Maeve forever.
The self that was me no longer needed anyone.
Despite the despair of my situation, Maeve's embrace was so very warm.
But paradoxically, the warmth of a person I had longed for so desperately brought my heart no peace at all.
That night, I did not sleep.
Because the thought of sleeping never even occurred to me.
“Good morning.”
“….”
“I forgot to take the gag out. One moment.”
Only belatedly realizing she'd left the handkerchief stuffed in my mouth all night long, Maeve removed the object that had been sealing my voice.
The once-pristine white handkerchief had turned a deep scarlet overnight.
Casually tucking the blood-soaked cloth into her coat pocket as if it were nothing, she rose naturally to her feet.
She stamped out the dead campfire with a few kicks to erase all trace of it, retrieved the musket lying a good distance away, and stowed it at her hip again.
I simply stared blankly at the scene, still sitting upright.
With every tendon severed, I couldn't even move my hands—there was nothing I could do now.
“Let's set out for the Labyrinth of Rifts again, Dean.”
“Yeah.”
Once every trace of our night there had vanished completely, we set off once more toward our destination, the Labyrinth of Rifts.
If there happened to be a cliff anywhere nearby, I wanted to hurl myself off it that very moment.
Or maybe I should secretly try biting through my tongue right now.
I racked my brain as hard as I could, wondering if there was truly no way to escape.
Because if I didn't occupy my mind with even that, I felt I would become nothing but a monster with a living body and nothing else.
As long as Maeve, the supreme hunter, treasured her taxidermied prize—me—suicide would require exploiting a single opening and dying in one instant.
Beyond the level of biting my tongue or running, a thoroughly planned operation….
…And in that moment, a sense of clarity washed through my skull, and a brilliant plan came to me.
After we reached the Labyrinth of Rifts, I would deliberately lure her into a dead end.
Then make noise to summon Arachne.
And while Maeve fought the creature—when venom or a deadly attack came flying—I would pretend to shield her and take the blow instead.
Maeve, knowing nothing of resurrection, would believe I had died instantly on the spot.
With this method, I wouldn't have to worry about being hunted down afterward, either.
And in the unlikely event that Maeve killed Arachne in a single strike, I would simply aim for the boss fight instead.
“Come closer. Don't wander too far from me.”
Maeve, utterly unaware of my plan to fake my death, only smiled shyly, arms crossed.
What kind of reaction would Maeve show if I died right before her eyes?
I truly, sincerely found myself waiting for that moment to come.