The Deepest Prison (7)
Life has no shortage of bends in the road, and mine had always bent harder than most. Take now, for instance — standing before a waterfall ready to swallow me whole, and sinking into a reflection this stale.
Stay calm.
I let out a long breath and drove the arm locked around him into the target's collarbone. Smack. Smack. I felt the dazed kid jolt.
"Get a grip! If you don't, you die!"
"If I get a grip, I have a feeling I'll only die in more pain!"
"Hands together on your chest, body straight! Feet first, in a line! I'll set the angle. You just hold the posture and stay sharp!"
Strike the surface wrong and every bone in the body could shatter. To live, we had to hit with as little of ourselves as possible. But the closer the falls came, the larger the fear grew. My heart slammed as if it meant to burst. I couldn't even tell the height, let alone whether rock waited on the bottom, and the roar swallowing my ears dragged my mind out thin.
"Nngh... please..."
The youth let out a groan thick with fear. If I could have had my way, I would have pressed my own hands together and prayed. But I couldn't do nothing and give up.
"Eyes shut! Body straight!"
Before I knew it we had reached the line where the water broke. I clutched the target and stretched us into a single line, and in that instant the whole of the falls filled my sight.
"...!"
It was a height beyond anything I had ever known — the feeling of looking down from the lip of a cliff. Fog smoked across the bottom, so thick I couldn't make out what waited there. Blood surged into my head until my mind reeled, and the nape of my neck prickled. With a chill that went cold through the heart, the brief moment we were flung from the edge into empty air stretched long as eternity.
Please.
I prayed with everything in me that there would be no rock in the line of the fall, and on instinct I wrapped the target's head in my arms. I wanted my body to be a shield, to take even a little of the impact meant for him. Time seemed to slow. I could see, clear as anything, the drops of the falls breaking apart in the air as they fell with us. A dense mist rushed in as if to swallow us and closed around my whole body — and then:
FWOOOOOOOM—!
Kh—.
A tremendous shock slammed through me. It didn't feel like water. It felt like being driven into a floor of solid concrete. For a split second my mind went far away, and a sharp ringing filled my ears — pain so bad I couldn't believe I had hit water at all. Only when the breath I let out broke into bubbles did I understand I had been punched deep into the river. Already the brutal pressure of the falls was shoving me all the way to the bottom.
No time to stay like this.
I flailed with my one free arm and both legs, swimming for the surface. Maybe the tolerance for pain had set in; fortunately, it wasn't as bad as when I'd struck the rocks.
"Phaah!"
Only after a long struggle did I finally get my head above water. I dragged oxygen deep into my lungs and looked for the target first. The impact of the fall had torn him out of my arms, and the enormous spray and steam thrown up by the plunging water threw my vision into chaos.
I have to find him. Fast.
There was a good chance the crash had knocked him out again. Worse, the current under the falls was nothing to dismiss. Hesitate even a little and the distance would open, and I would lose him for good.
Then a black shape rose, bobbing, on the surface some ten meters off. There was no fish in the Tebe that big. It had to be him. I drove my arms toward it with everything I had left.
"Phaah!"
By the time I'd closed to five meters, the black shape — the fine-looking youth — thrust his head out of the water, coughing up a breath. He hadn't lost consciousness after all. His face was a little pale, but he didn't seem badly hurt.
"Just hold on a little longer!"
If he panicked, thrashed, and sucked in water, it was over. I wrung out the last of my strength and churned my arms and legs. The current made it anything but easy, but when I got close I stretched out a hand and just managed to catch him.
"You all right?"
"I kept my head on straight, so I think it hurts more."
He took my hand as if it were familiar and answered like it was a joke. Maybe it was having crossed the line between living and dying; he was calmer than I'd expected. I locked one arm around him and kicked hard with both legs, making for the bank. I wanted out of this damned Tebe, and soon.
"Hey, grab that branch sticking out!"
As we neared the shore, a limb showed low over the water, close enough that the target could reach it if he stretched. Catch that, and getting clear of the Tebe would be a good deal easier.
"It isn't 'hey.' My name is Adrian..."
"Quiet, and grab it!"
"I-I've got it!"
"Good. Hold on a second!"
The current was plenty fast, but he didn't lose the branch. I clamped his waist between my legs and reached up with the one arm that still worked. Wet, rough bark met my palm.
"There! I've got it too, so ease your way inward, just like that!"
With trembling hands the youth shifted his grip along the branch and climbed toward the bank. My own fingers wouldn't take a proper hold, but I tangled myself onto the limb and fought to get out of the river. He, already clear, half-dragged me the rest of the way out of the Tebe.
The moment I knew I was alive, the strength ran out of my whole body.
"Hah—! Hah—!"
Neither of us waiting on the other, we lay side by side on the bank and coughed out rough breaths. Pain I hadn't felt in the water came over me like a tide. Every joint seemed to scream. Soaked through and sprawled limp, we were a miserable sight.
"We... are alive, aren't we?"
"Quiet. I nearly died more than once because of you."
"'You'? My name is Adrian."
Correcting me about his name in the middle of having barely survived — so he had room to spare. I didn't feel it was worth an answer, and kept my mouth shut.
Only after some ten minutes of breathing like the dead could I finally push myself up. He had recovered enough to look at me and smile faintly, and then he let out a long sigh.
"Um... your arm..."
"It's fine."
"But it's because of me..."
He couldn't finish, and over his face I saw Jonghyuk, dead. Before I knew it my hand went out and I rapped him on the head, the way I used to do to that kid.
"Don't get it twisted. It broke on the rocks, not because of you. If you're really sorry, don't fall behind out here. That's how you help."
He lifted his head and looked at me for a moment, then nodded, the rims of his eyes gone red.
"...Understood."
Once I had a little room to breathe, I finally turned my eyes to my left arm, bent at an angle no arm should bend. Moving like this was impossible. If it wasn't going to get in the way, I had to deal with it first.
I drew the dagger from inside my coat and cut a few tough vines lying around, along with a branch of the right thickness.
"What are you going to..."
"Splint it. I can't walk with it flopping around like this."
I bit down hard, roughly lined up the axis of the broken bone, and set the branch against it. The pain was enormous enough to blank my mind, but I didn't make a sound. Even a scream was wasted energy now. When the emergency work was done, I tore my soaked shirt and bound the arm tight against my body.
There. That would be enough to move.
"Let's go."
The waterlogged boots weighed as much as lead, and a hot sensation at my side told me the wound had torn open again. But I couldn't stop. Far beyond the trees, the shouts of the pursuit team calling to one another came riding on the wind.
"They'll come down along the river. We turn east from here, up onto the high ground. The grade will be steep, but it's the only way to get clear of their search."
At my words he stood and put his clothes in order. The terrified flailing of a moment ago was nowhere to be seen.
"The path will be rough. Would you at least take my shoulder?"
Looking at the shoulder he offered, I swallowed a short, empty laugh. Jonghyuk had been the same. Even when he could barely keep his own body in one piece, the idiot had always tried to look after me first.
"I'm fine. Watch your own feet."
I stepped out ahead of him, into the dark of the steep forest.
Riding the Tebe straight across Lasgrid, we reached the vicinity of Veracrus in no time. A little farther, and it would be Fel Grad, in the Kingdom of Kainon. We had moved the opposite of the original plan, but the situation was hardly bad. No — for catching the pursuit off guard and opening the distance, it was close to the best choice we had.
I checked the state of my throbbing arm and kept a steady pace. Through the damp air of the forest, in a stretch where nothing moved but the quiet, Adrian, walking behind, carefully opened his mouth.
"Um... is it really all right for you to save me?"
I kept my eyes forward and answered without much interest.
"Why?"
"The Empire has branded me a Demonic Human."
Demonic Human.
The weight of the word struck my ear. I said nothing.
His voice was in a bad way. Even through the wet dark I could feel it: Adrian had sunk into a deep despair. Overnight, everything had turned over. Driven out of the home he had lived in all his life, he was now a fugitive with an entire empire for an enemy. For someone who had only just come of age, it was a reality far too cruel to bear.
"We've come this far. We should be all right for a while. Want to rest?"
I led him beneath a massive tree that had fallen at a slant. The faint tremor traveling out of his chilled fingertips was so fiercely real that it nearly made me forget the youth in front of me was nothing but data.
I sat Adrian down as he heaved for breath, and put my own back to the trunk.
"How'd you end up branded a Demonic Human?"
He stared into empty air with vacant eyes.
"...I am the second son of Count Hesperos. Adrian von Hesperos. That is my name. But only a week after my coming-of-age, a Grand Priest visiting the imperial capital pointed to me and named me a Demonic Human, and this entire nightmare began."
In a shaking voice he went on — that with that single sentence, everything had ended. He added that if I had not saved him, he would have been on the execution platform by tomorrow.
"Even if I survive here, I'll spend the rest of my life running like this, won't I?"
"...Yeah. You will."
My answer was short. Reality was cold, and I had no wish to cover his eyes with a sweet lie. If a Grand Priest of the Empire had named him with his own mouth, that brand would follow him anywhere on the continent.
"...Haa. Forgive me. You went to such lengths to save me, and all I do is say things like this."
Adrian smiled bitterly and dropped his head. A heavy silence settled between us.
I could see it plain as day. He had already half given up. I leaned against the dead tree and watched him without a word. What had hold of Adrian now was not the fear of death. It was the grief of having nowhere to return to, even if he lived. That was very bad. A rescue target who has lost the will to live weighs more than the same volume of steel. No matter how cleanly I wiped our trail, the moment the man himself gave up on living and started dragging his feet, there would be no way through a search party's net.
And above all else—
I don't want to lose anyone. Not this time.
I didn't really know why. I had wandered battlefields and watched no small number of deaths, and still I couldn't simply pass by this youth, shoulders hitching as he held his tears in. Was it that strange déjà vu, the way he called my dead partner to mind? Or the desperation of those eyes on the cold prison floor, shining as if they had met salvation itself? The reason could be whatever it wanted. I simply needed this one to live.
"But... you aren't going to tell me who commissioned this, are you?"
Adrian looked up at me as he asked.
Hm. What was I supposed to say? I wanted to give him a hope he could keep living on.
A Demonic Human...
In this world, gods seemed to exist in truth. I had heard there was such a thing as divine power — leaving aside whether an actual god was the one handing it down. After all, wasn't "god" just a word for a being whose power and authority went beyond a human's?
Earth, by contrast, still had no clear proof that any god existed. Not proof that none did. The precise thing to say was that no one knew whether they existed or not. Even so, a majority of all humanity had once believed in such beings, and some still did, because leaning on an imaginary existence steadied the mind, supplied life with meaning and purpose, and gave a person the strength to endure hardship.
With that in mind, I decided to put an imaginary being in my mouth.
"The Goddess of the Moon sent me. Told me to save you."
"The Goddess of the Moon...?"
Adrian looked up at the sky. By now the deep blue dark was drawing back, and a red light was spreading past the horizon. The Grand Priest he had spoken of was, in all likelihood, a servant of a sun god. So it was the Tessara Empire, faithful to the Sun God Solanis, that had taken him. I was hoping the wound Adrian had taken from religion might be healed by religion. I wasn't hoping for much.
"Why would the Goddess of the Moon...?"
"No reason."
"Pardon?"
"No reason. She said she wanted you to live. Felt sorry for you. Even gods feel compassion once in a while, don't they?"
Adrian's face went blank. I didn't know the weight of the despair he carried. But I knew exactly how to give him hope. A soul broken after being abandoned by a god could be saved, in the end, only by another god.
"She... wished for me to live?"
"Yeah."
"Th-this is the first time. Everyone only ever tried to kill me..."
The youth, Adrian, broke, and the tears poured out of him as he wept. I patted his back, gently.
"So from here on, offer a prayer once a night. Unlike the sun god, the Goddess of the Moon doesn't ask for much."
After sobbing for a long while, Adrian finally lifted his head.
"Might I know the goddess's honored name as well?"
I worked my head in a hurry. A name that would sound right. Fortunately, it turned over well enough at times like this.
"It's Lady Diana."
"...Lady Diana."
Adrian turned the name I had invented a moment ago over on his tongue. Light came back into his eyes. For an atheist like me, it was a thing hard to understand. But sometimes a single lie with no substance to it saves a person where a hundred pieces of practical advice fail. What filled the hollow of having been cast off was not some grand truth. It was the small belief that another being, beyond him, was watching.
Now he finally looks a little alive.
I gave a quiet nod. At least he would not sink down on his own in the middle of running. Even if I were not beside him, he would live on looking at the moon in the night sky, reminding himself he was not alone.
I got to my feet and slid Waldstein back into its sheath.
"Save the praying for after we cross the border. Right now, we have to move."
Adrian rose with a movement far lighter than before. His eyes were no longer those of a prisoner waiting on death.
"Yes!"