I Caught You
It was a quiet, lucid energy, like a river flowing without a ripple, like snow that had settled thick in the hours before dawn. It was neither dazzling nor especially radiant. It simply seeped into Ludville's body, caked in blood and miasma, the way dew wets a blade of grass, and gently began to peel away the darkness clinging to him.
Little by little. Very little by little.
Ludville's shoulder twitched. In that instant, miasma like black fog began to spill from his back, the corrupted energy packed inside him stirring as if in answer to the purification. Odelli poured in still more of her strength. The purifying force condensed and spread like a vibration, and the blackened tips of his fingers slowly returned to what they had been.
"Ugh."
It would not be finished in a single pass. This was a condition that would take a long time, and careful work, to purify. For the moment she threw everything she had into slowing its advance as far as she could.
Just a little more...
She felt, by instinct, her own life force being pared away, but she did not stop. Her breathing grew rougher and rougher. She held on with the single thought that she could not lose Ludville over something like this, and dragged her purification as high as it would go before pouring it out.
A moment later, the current of miasma rising off Ludville's body—ready, it seemed, to burst—began to sink. The most urgent fire had been put out.
Or perhaps it would be truer to say the fire had leapt.
Hot blood surged up.
"Hh—"
Odelli spat blood and shook. The pain was as if her chest were burning from the inside, and this once she could not endure it; a groan slipped out of her. Her mind went hazy. A sharp ringing spread through her ears, and cold sweat ran in streams down her brow.
Thank goodness the monster corpses are strewn everywhere.
At least neither Ludville nor the soldiers would catch her coughing up blood. She fought to steady her breath, clung to a consciousness blurring as if she might faint at any second, and wiped clean the blood left at the corner of her mouth.
That was the moment.
Ludville slowly drew in the breath he had stopped. A pleasant sensation seeped along his spine, neither hot nor cold. Little by little the energy passed through his lungs, his vessels, his heart, clearing away the murky residue that had clung somewhere inside him—so slowly it was almost impossible to feel. And with it, the consciousness that had been severed came back.
"This place..."
He muttered it in a voice hoarse and cracked. A gleam slowly kindled in the violet eyes that had been unfocused and slack. The blood-soaked gloves were uncomfortable. His abdomen, torn open by a monster's claws, throbbed and complained of the pain. Blood plastered over his whole body, sticky and foul, souring his mood still further. Only then did he realize that sensations he had gone a long time without recognizing were returning, one by one.
Only then did Ludville feel how tired he was. His throat was cracked with thirst, his breathing ragged, and he lacked even the strength to twitch a finger. But he felt it, beyond any doubt—so familiar that it needed no explanation.
His whole body answered before he did. He must not let go. If he let go, it would be the end. A sensation he must not forget, even in death. Something he would follow all the way into hell, lock tight in his arms, and never release.
Ludville let out a slow breath and turned his head. Behind him, the face of the woman drawing her hand back came into view—paler than usual, white as paper. Looking as though she might collapse at any moment, she spoke.
"Didn't I tell you that you would need me?"
Odelli Cardel. Ludville could not even summon the name. Before any rational judgment could form, as if something were pulling him, he reached for her by instinct and, in a single motion, drew her in hard.
"...!"
A thin breath stirred against his chest. A familiar scent. A familiar warmth. An energy more familiar than either. His body remembered first. His lips parted.
"...Don't cry."
Odelli set a hand to his chest, gave him a slight push, and said,
"Your Grace, you're under some misapprehension just now..."
"Don't move. Stay still."
It was a whisper that might have been a command or a plea. Like a beast whose instinct had woken, he buried his nose without hesitation against the nape of her neck and breathed in. Herbs dried hard in the sun. A dry, calm scent sank deep into his lungs, and when Odelli stiffened without meaning to, he only held her tighter so she could not run.
Alive. Here. Now. In my arms.
A satisfied smile touched his mouth. The hollow that had gaped in his chest for so long had at last found the piece that fit, and clicked into place. A fulfillment great enough to overwhelm him washed through him. He thought he finally understood what it was he had been searching for all this time.
At last. Mine.
For the first time in a very long while, he felt that he was alive.
...Ah. He fainted.
Odelli felt the strength go out of Ludville all at once. Like a puppet with its strings cut, a massive body close to two meters tall slowly tipped toward her.
"Urk."
The weight was absurd. Even unconscious, he was putting strength into his arms with a stubbornness that suggested he had no intention of letting her go. In the end she went down with him, dropping hard onto the forest floor and landing squarely on her backside.
I can't breathe...
Pinned beneath him, Odelli struggled. Realizing she could not move an inch, she had no choice but to let the strength leave her whole body—nestled, as she was, in the arms of an unconscious Ludville.
Honestly, it was strange he had not collapsed long before. He had been practically steeped in miasma, and even now it was uncanny to think he had held a sword in that state, and moved, and spoken, and fought. She had been genuinely afraid the purification had not taken. She had never imagined she would end up tense for an entirely different reason.
How long was she supposed to stay like this?
Odelli turned her head and looked into Ludville's blood-soaked face. All at once she remembered the last sight of him at the funeral. Even then, lying dead inside the coffin, he had worn a face like this—peaceful, as if he had at last found eternal rest.
Without meaning to, she pressed her ear close to his heart, though she knew perfectly well that he was alive.
Thump. Thump.
A strong heartbeat reached her.
"...Sturdy."
To think he was fine after starving like that, after drowning himself in medicine and miasma, after abusing his own body as if he could not bear to do otherwise. It was a relief. Unlike her, he had been born with a healthy body, with a resilience that did not break easily even past the critical point and that recovered quickly. Which was probably why he treated that body so carelessly.
"...Ludville."
She tried his name, quietly. Afraid he might hear her even in his sleep, she whispered it almost like talking to herself.
"Lu..."
How long had it been since she could look at him this closely? No—perhaps this was the first time. Every memory she had of being with him was something she had only seen through the memories of his regressions. That they had been husband and wife. That they had loved each other. In a sense, she might as well have been nothing but an observer.
And yet why did even this—nothing more than calling his name where no one could hear—catch in her throat and sting her heart? For something like love, which she had never once experienced herself.