The Unbreakable Stone
In the end, Ingrid touched down safely in the front yard of the cabin in the Forest of Corruption. The owl had seemed just as nervous as its passengers about carrying a human for the first time, but in the final stretch it had even eased its speed, putting on a flight that was nearly masterful.
"You did great, Ingrid!"
"Ingrid, thank you so much!"
"Nice work up there too, Tempesta. The trip was so much smoother thanks to you. I'll be calling on you again next time!"
Flying was an unfamiliar experience for the whole group — and a thrilling one. When Bayul and his friends showered Ingrid and Tempesta with unstinting praise, a delighted Tempesta shot up into the sky, while Ingrid began thumping up and down on its massive frame.
"I-Ingrid! Stop! Stop jumping!"
At this rate, an earthquake seemed imminent. Back in its pygmy owl days the display had been nothing but adorable; now it was beginning to edge into genuinely frightening.
"So that must be the Spirit Stone."
The moment Death alighted in the Forest of Corruption, he had made a beeline for the Spirit Stone standing beneath a great tree.
"It has a rather peculiar look to it. It's difficult to say whether it's a memorial stele or a statue."
Amon appraised the Spirit Stone this way and that with his unseeing eyes.
"Shall we break it right now?"
Bar stepped forward, boldly volunteering to go first. The truth was that his heart was set on finishing the job quickly and getting back to the mansion. He had been away from his post for too long, and thoughts of his master, Rita, were beginning to gnaw at him.
He was bound to catch an earful for abandoning his ingredient prep and running who-knew-where, so if he wanted to make amends even a little, he would have to return early and show her due sincerity.
"And with what, exactly, do you plan to break it?"
Eli, who had been listening in silence, sauntered over and asked with a scoff, plainly incredulous. Not a hammer, not even a club — there wasn't a tool of any kind to be found around them.
"This will do fine."
Bar raised his one good arm and clenched it into a fist.
"You cannot be serious. You mean to shatter that stone with your bare fist?"
"Think I can't?"
Bar's confidence bordered on the excessive.
What is wrong with your servants?
Eli barely swallowed the words before they could leap out of his mouth and shot Bayul a look. Bayul understood the feeling completely — and yet he had expectations of Bar.
Things had changed a great deal from the days when they'd all taken him for an ordinary human. Bar was a demon, and a high-ranking one at that — tenth in the Demon Realm's hierarchy. And looking at that arm, hard and slabbed with muscle, there seemed to be nothing in the world the man couldn't break.
"Young Master, shall we begin?"
At some point, the friends had all drifted close to the Spirit Stone.
"Bar, be careful."
Bayul's order fell. Hot-blooded as ever, Bar raised his fist with no ceremony at all and brought it down on the Spirit Stone with every scrap of strength he had.
Aidan squeezed his eyes shut — he simply couldn't bear to watch. Bayul, whom he'd assumed would intervene, letting it happen meant there was some trick to it, but by any sane measure, driving a bare fist into solid rock meant cracked, if not shattered, bones. He hadn't the stomach to witness such a gruesome sight.
Eli and Quinn, meanwhile, held their eyes wide open, determined to catch the slightest misstep in Bar's every move.
KAAANG!
"...!"
A bizarre sound rolled across the clearing. He had struck solid stone with a bare, weaponless hand, and yet it had rung like metal on metal.
What Aidan had dreaded never came to pass — but neither did what Bar wanted. The Spirit Stone and Bar's fist alike were perfectly, unblemishedly fine.
"Huh? What the—?"
Bar was genuinely baffled. In this world — and this was the human realm, not even the Demon Realm — there was scarcely anything he couldn't break. He glanced down at his fist, then drove it into the Spirit Stone once more, harder than before.
KAAAANG!
"AAAGH!"
And at that very moment, Bayul crumpled to the ground, seized by violent pain around his heart.
"B-Bayul!"
"What's wrong?! What happened?!"
The flustered friends rushed to prop him up, but he couldn't manage it. The boy was white as a sheet, his whole body shuddering. Cold sweat had already drenched his forehead, the bridge of his nose, his neck.
"Get him inside — lay him down, quick!"
Whatever the cause, this was no time to stand about. Quinn hoisted Bayul onto his back and sprinted for the cabin. Death and his brothers, along with the spirits, hurried anxiously after them.
"Everyone, back away."
Even lying in the bed, Bayul still clutched his chest, wracked with pain. He hardly seemed in his right mind.
"Quinn, don't tell me you're—"
"I am. So step aside."
"But then you'll be in agony too—"
"Mine only lasts a moment."
Quinn possessed the ability to draw another's suffering into his own body and then heal it himself. And Bayul was hardly just anyone — he could not simply stand and watch him writhe in pain right before his eyes.
"My King..."
While Spinel gazed down at Bayul with worried eyes, Shame had at some point drawn up beside her. Six other people filled the room besides Bayul, and he paid them not the slightest mind, letting his pale hair hang loose as he kept vigil at the boy's side.
"I'm starting."
With his eyes closed in concentration, Quinn laid both hands near Bayul's chest.
"Hoo..."
Then, with a deep breath, he poured every nerve he had into the boy's pain.
Please, don't be in pain. You mustn't hurt.
Bayul was more than a cherished friend; he was a precious being charged with the restoration of the Spirit Realm. Quinn felt a certain duty toward him. To look after the boy well, to steady and encourage him, and thereby bring a better world into being — that, too, was a destiny of Quinn's as prince of the Mermaid Kingdom.
How much time passed like that?
Just as before, their appearances reversed themselves. Bayul regained his composure bit by bit, while Quinn was slipping toward death's very door. From the look that had replaced his face, one could guess the unspeakable agony that came with it.
"A curious method of healing."
The corners of Death's mouth curled upward, intrigued, as he watched the scene unfold from behind.
"Do we have anyone on our side who can pull that off?"
"I couldn't say. I've heard of the crude remedy of grinding down and consuming the body of a pure-souled human, but something like that — I've neither heard nor seen the like."
"The kid's got real talent."
"He is rather impressive, I'll grant."
"Almost makes me want him for myself."
"Do restrain yourself. You mustn't forget the promise you made to Young Master Bayul."
Thanks to Amon reminding him every time he seemed about to forget, Death — who had already been reining in his interest — withdrew it from Quinn and turned it instead toward Bayul, whose color was steadily returning.
Why had the boy collapsed when they had done nothing but strike the stone, intending to break it? The time had come to hunt down that reason and understand it.
"Mmgh..."
"Bayul, are you coming around?"
Bayul's closed eyes drifted open. The blur before them sharpened with every blink.
"...What happened? Bar was the one trying to break the Spirit Stone, so why did I...?"
"That's what we'd like to ask you! Do you have any idea how badly you scared us?! I honestly thought you were going to die this time!"
"Sorry... All I ever do is make you worry."
"Then get up already! And no more fainting — ever again!"
"By the way, where's Quinn? I don't see him."
One face was missing from the scolding circle. Even the spirits were craning their necks out from behind the friends to watch him, so why on earth couldn't he find Quinn anywhere?
"Oh, him? Well, he..."
"He, he just stepped out to the bathroom! Must've been urgent!"
"...You're lying."
The stammering gave it away at once. It had been the same when they'd taken the train to the capital before. He still remembered, vividly, the sight of Quinn treating that broken thumb.
"Quinn! Where are you?! Where'd you go?!"
Bayul pushed himself up from the bed, crying Quinn's name like a shout.
"...Quinn!"
He was close by. Seated in the far corner of the sofa, hunched over, he was waging a silent war against himself. Everyone was studiously pretending not to see, honoring his plea that no one look.
"Quinn, are you all right?"
Bayul ran to him barefoot. Only Bayul knew, full well, how much Quinn was suffering.
It was agony so extreme that death seemed the kinder option. That was why Bayul felt as though tears would spill from him at any moment.
He's going this far... for my sake...
"...Go. Please... just... go..."
Bayul said nothing. He simply took hold of Quinn's hand as the boy forced the words out one breath at a time. He could not honor the request. If he couldn't make Quinn well, then the least he could do was help him endure it. That much was owed by anyone who had ever been helped.
"Hahh..."
Quinn's ragged breathing slowly found its rhythm. Easily two or three times as long had passed as back on the train, when he had healed a wound for the very first time.
"Feeling any better now?"
"...Yeah."
Quinn's face, as he raised his head, was paler than it had ever been. Even so, he mustered a strained smile for Bayul. It only wrenched Bayul's heart harder — but thinking of the consideration of the friend who had sacrificed himself, Bayul forced a smile of his own, as hard as he could.
"Thank you. I'm always owing you something."
"You'll pay it all back, won't you?"
"Yeah. I will."
He would become a great Spirit User, raise his spirits into Spirit Kings, breathe life back into the vanished Spirit Realm — and see to it that Quinn's Mermaid Kingdom flourished once more. No matter how long it took. Without fail.
"I know it's far too early to be saying this, but breaking the Spirit Stone seems like something we need to rethink. Because I'm fairly certain that thing is what did this to you."
Aidan chimed in, nodding along as if he agreed with Eli down to the marrow.
"I think the same as Rai. Looks like we can't just smash it head-on. I'd bet anything it's the power of the ancient Spirit Kings inside Bayul that stopped it."
"A warning of sorts, then."
"We weren't thinking it through. We never dreamed something like this would happen."
Shaken by Bayul's collapse, Eli and Aidan sat sulking, offering their reflections.
"You're just as much to blame!"
Then Eli wheeled about and rounded on Bar without warning.
"You couldn't break it in the first place, yet you volunteer to do it bare-fisted — and this is what we get? What exactly was the point?"
"I just did as I was told, didn't I?"
"That's not the point! I never should have come here with the lot of you! I knew something felt ominous from the very start!"
"Rai."
Eli, his pride clearly stung, was taking it out on the wrong target. Bayul tried to calm him, but Eli only pressed his lips shut, refusing to lower the sharp edge of his gaze.
"It's getting late — we should head back. Sir Ian and Rita will start to worry."
"I can impose on you, right?"
"Of course you can."
Aidan had walked out of his house only a little while ago. He had nowhere else to go. Relieved, he called for Ingrid.
"I'm coming too."
"...You too, Rai?"
"Yeah. Got a problem with that?"
"No — it's not that you can't, but..."
"But what, exactly?"
"Will you be all right?"
Bayul's question was aimed at the Death brothers. They would all be living under one roof, and if barbed exchanges like the one just now kept flying back and forth, trouble was bound to follow. That was what worried him.
"I'll manage. Probably."
"Then that's settled. Quinn, you're not fully well yet, so you come along with me."
"I'm fine now. Completely healed."
"I'd rather keep an eye on you for a day or so, just to be safe. I'm worried. Tonight we all sleep at my place, and tomorrow we'll go see the night market together."
"Night market?"
"Yeah — I hear a huge one's opening up?"
Quinn was hearing it for the very first time, but Eli and Aidan wore knowing looks. And the Death brothers' expectations were enormous.
Not one of them had any idea what kind of encounter awaited them at that night market. Carrying their expectations with them, they climbed once more onto Ingrid's back. Under the hazy moonlight, a single giant owl beat its wings stoutly and pressed onward.