Olpasbet
Olpasbet
The world had blackened to an opaque murk, and Aslan knew at once he was dreaming.
It was impossible to say when he had fallen asleep.
Why he had fallen asleep, however, was clear.
Aslan's life force had been flickering on the verge of extinction. Losing consciousness and slipping into slumber followed that same logic.
It wasn't often that Aslan was reduced to a state so ravaged he couldn't maintain awareness, but this time was the exception.
The reckless string of battles. The overexertion of techniques to shield Ereta in the poison pool. The loss of an arm, the toxins seeping into his body from his ankle—the list went on.
Had Aslan lacked wild magic, or had he failed to acquire dragon's blood, he might well have died long before now.
So Aslan accepted his unconsciousness even as he stared into the darkness with tangled emotions.
And even as he strained to feel for the divinity rippling beyond that darkness, he kept himself calm, refusing to seethe over what might come.
Whatever appeared, he would answer with composure, buy time to recover, and claw his way out of the dream. That was all Aslan wanted—and what he anticipated.
True to form, something soon filled the darkness and revealed itself.
If anything defied his expectations, it was that what revealed itself was no ordinary spectacle.
There was no whisper of an evil god, no form of an evil god, no temptation.
What manifested was a recollection closer to a vision.
A memory that did not belong to Aslan himself.
It played out like a recollection glimpsed somewhere before. He simply couldn't place exactly when or where.
Despite his confusion, Aslan fixed his attention on the scene.
In the vision stood a man.
His limbs were hard with training, his head shaved smooth to a polished sheen.
The dense muscle his monastic robes failed to conceal showed he was no ordinary monk, yet the compassionate expression on his face proved beyond doubt that he was a man of profound virtue.
That virtuous man walked through hell, a khakkhara staff in one hand.
Walked through a scene of atrocity that could only be described as hell.
A place teeming with demons, where the innocent bowed their heads and begged for deliverance.
Through a hell from which no hope could normally be drawn, the monk walked without pause.
He was a man true to his appearance.
He sought to bring salvation to many in that hell.
He confronted demons; he preached to evil-hearted men.
He took one who had tried to harm him as his disciple, and on occasion took a demon as his disciple as well.
He sermonized, raised his fists, and kept walking. His stride met no obstacle.
He longed for deliverance.
Hoped that his meager strength might offer some help, that at the end he might reach salvation.
He hoped for it as he gradually grew in power, and he pursued it ceaselessly even as he was defiled by absorbing the demons' strength.
His life was radiant.
It was around then that Aslan realized the way he was seeing this memory mirrored the experience of facing the Formless One.
This memory was being shown to him by the Formless One.
Why or for what cause he was being shown it was beyond him.
As Aslan watched the memory, he felt a pang of déjà vu he could not explain.
Just as he was struggling to find the source of that unease, Aslan witnessed the monk's end.
At the end of his journey, the monk finally grasped deliverance in his hand.
He achieved his goal, claimed victory in a world he knew well but had never experienced.
And the very instant he moved to savor that victory, to rejoice, a being descended upon the man.
Amid a world crumbling down, the monk faced something.
A vast evil, gleaming black.
It had watched the monk always, and now it approached.
Even the Demon King had feared him, and the whole world had known him yet tried to ignore him.
A presence of crushing intensity. A form stained black—a being that seemed to embody menace in its very essence, not merely in name—looked upon the monk.
Against such enormity, no strength held any meaning.
Like stretching a hand toward the moon reflected on water, yet never reaching the moon itself.
Aslan knew instinctively what name it bore.
'The Twilight Flock.'
The moment the monk turned his head as if he had heard that name himself—and his eyes met Aslan's.
"...Ah."
The monk's journey ended.
And Aslan woke from the dream.
As awareness returned, the dream pressed heavily against his eyelids. He blinked against the lethargy swirling through his whole body.
Sensation soon followed.
Aslan felt the light blanket draped over him, then the constricting pressure of bandages meticulously wrapped around his body, and above the bandages and blanket alike, a light weight pressing down on him.
His vision returned slowly. What his right eye saw as it focused was someone's face.
Blinking blue-violet eyes, deep blood-red hair braided back on both sides—an elf girl.
It was Fay.
None of her usual innocent cheer was present. She lay sprawled against his chest, watching him with a sober expression.
Meeting the elf girl's eyes, Aslan slowly exhaled and rolled his own gaze aside.
Right beside him sat Angie and Richard.
They were frozen mid-motion, pieces of peeled fruit halfway to their mouths, staring at him.
As if they hadn't expected him to wake at all.
Proof that the Formless One's memory had been long—and that Aslan's injuries had been dire.
"Hi."
At that greeting, offered while taking in their reactions, Angie's pupils quivered faintly.
Richard, too, chewed awkwardly at his fruit, visibly flustered.
Aslan watched them quietly, then turned his head to the other side.
There was Rumel.
Holding a small knife in one hand and, in the other, a piece of fruit she had been deftly peeling.
A woman dressed in her usual comfortable linen shirt and leather corset that accentuated her chest.
Aslan glanced at her once, then looked straight ahead again. There in front of him was Fay, still seated on top of him.
The elf girl wore a blank, emotionless mask, stripped of her usual innocent cheer.
It was the look of someone candidly anxious—terrified she might lose something precious.
Aslan silently took in the sight of Fay like that, then asked.
"How long... was I asleep?"
Rumel answered first.
"About a week... you were asleep."
"A week and a half, to be precise. Since it's night now."
Fay added to Rumel's words, and hearing that, Aslan figured it was sufficient.
He bobbed his head once, then assessed the state of his body while keeping his head on the pillow.
His right arm was missing. Whether it had been severed after the acid poison got it, the cut was clean.
His left ankle was gone as well. Crushed and regenerated with poison already soaked in, most likely. Cutting it off would have been the only option.
Aslan felt the clean amputation surfaces and allowed himself a faint smile.
Both wounds were meticulously covered in clean bandages.
No risk of infection.
So Aslan spoke as if it didn't matter at all.
"The ankle... you cut it off. Walking's going to be rough."
It wasn't even a proper joke. But none of his companions could muster a reply.
The man it had happened to was treating it as nothing.
So what broke the silence was something else entirely.
Clatter.
An abrupt metallic sound. As the group's eyes turned toward the entrance of the sickroom, several people stood there.
The floor was littered with what looked like herbs, and the tray that had held them lay overturned.
The black-skinned man who had carried the tray—a mage by his look—stood slack-jawed and dazed. Behind him, Tiyamal and Ereta expressed their shock in different ways.
Tiyamal's face held pure surprise and alarm. Ereta's face bore a mixture of relief tangled with guilt and self-reproach.
Aslan guessed the situation from the emotions written on their faces.
And as he guessed, he turned his head slightly toward Rumel.
"Lady Rumel, help me up."
"...Ah, yes."
Rumel drove the knife with a thunk into the fruit Richard had been eating and set it aside.
She slipped an arm around Aslan's body and helped him sit up in the bed.
Having barely managed to sit upright, Aslan looked at Ereta, who was hesitating, nudged forward by Tiyamal.
Ereta looked on the verge of tears. She wanted to rush in and embrace him, but the guilt surging up inside her wouldn't let her.
It was the face of a woman leaping to the conclusion that Aslan's condition was her fault.
Aslan registered this and guessed the herbs she had brought were meant to rouse him from his unbroken sleep.
She must have had a hard time getting them.
He thought this as he glanced at Tiyamal—a dragon-kin trying so hard to force a smile, his expression painfully clear.
So Aslan said it.
"I'm sorry for making you all worry."
They were not words a patient who had nearly died and woken a week later should be saying.
Not a confession of pain, nor a show of how worn out he was—he spoke as if his own state didn't concern him at all.
It wasn't the posture a normal patient would take. Tiyamal let out an empty laugh and shook his head.
"You crazy bastard..."
The empty laugh was deeply sorrowful.
*
The figure who had followed Tiyamal and Ereta into the room was a Restoration School mage from the Southern Continent—not some half-trained practitioner who couldn't even conduct a proper examination, but a specialist who had fully mastered formal magic, medical knowledge, and an understanding of the human body.
A mage who would be called a specialist, as rare across the Northern and Southern Continents as they came. He assessed Aslan's condition.
First, he checked Aslan's vision. The right eye could still see, but its acuity had diminished slightly; the left eye had gone completely blind, unable to perceive even light.
Next, he checked the body. Was pain sensation intact? Could he hear clearly? What about his sense of smell?
Was there any pain anywhere? Could he move his body properly?
In this case, there was nothing problematic.
His sense of taste had died long ago, and his pain sensation had been damaged for just as long.
In that sense, most of his senses remained as they were.
Then he examined the wounds.
Was there any infection at the amputation sites, or any other issue?
Again, no problems.
The problem was the conclusion.
Examination results the group already knew. A conclusion they could only accept with grim expressions.
Seeing the violently subdued expressions of his companions—and especially Ereta, her head bowed in crushing guilt—Aslan deduced the outcome.
The specialist spoke.
"To be frank... it's a miracle you've kept fighting with a body like this. Even if you rest and recuperate from now on, you won't live long."
The news wasn't new.
Aslan took it indifferently and asked in return.
"If I don't, how much longer can I live?"
The doctor did not act surprised, nor did he try to dissuade him.
He reacted like a man who already knew what kind of man Aslan was—or had already been told.
He merely clicked his tongue, hiding his grim face, and answered.
"Five years at best. Perhaps only one, at worst."
Again, nothing he hadn't heard before.
"Is that so."
So the response was just as indifferent. As Aslan brushed it aside, the atmosphere grew heavier still.
The doctor lingered in the silence between their reactions and Aslan's flatness for a long moment, then spoke.
"...I apologize, given the somber mood, but if you have no further requests for tests or prescriptions, I'll have to ask you to follow me for a moment."
It was not a request one should make of a patient who had just woken. Aslan didn't mind.
Geladrion had never cut him any slack just because he was hurt and exhausted.
More than that, he could guess what was happening.
A doctor so rare across the whole continent—there was zero chance of him randomly stopping by Olpasbet.
Even if he did visit, there was no guarantee he'd provide treatment.
Then what naturally came to mind was the presence of someone in power.
A ruler wealthy and influential enough to keep a personal physician.
That person wanted to see Aslan. And given the location, Aslan could even guess who that ruler was.
Their reason for wanting to see him was unknown, but he would find out soon enough.
Resting more wasn't going to improve his body anyway. Aslan didn't hesitate.
He merely nodded once and picked up the cane laid neatly beside the bed.
"Let's go."
At his words, the doctor stood up first, his expression complicated.