If This Is Life (3)
Nathan twisted the embedded blade roughly. Blood flecked from Morbi’s labored cough and dripped to the ground. When he wrenched the sword free, Morbi’s body jerked and collapsed. Only the breastplate kept his entrails from spilling across the floor. The northern Protector Lord knelt, savoring for a moment the chill that brushed his nose. It was fading. The hateful blessing of the cold, the power of Ingur he had inherited from his father. The mana that had begun leaking the moment he was seized by that knight was now slowly draining away as his life ebbed, scattering into nothing.
“So this is it.”
Only then did he feel the cold. The bone-deep chill. The sting of snow against his face. More vivid than the eight hundred years he had spent in the northern wastes, more vivid than his entire life combined.
“So this is winter.”
Nathan had no intention of listening to a dying man’s ramblings. He only let the bastard speak because he lacked the strength to cut his throat immediately. Balance wavered and failed. Nathan dropped to one knee as if returning the courtesy, planted his sword hand on the ground, clenched his teeth, and roared. By the time he had gathered enough strength to rise again, Morbi’s eyes had already gone blind. Nathan stared into the unmoving pupils of the Protector Lord, then loosened the armor straps and flung the breastplate aside. He raised his longsword.
“Hrozka.”
The word came out thick, blood bubbling at the corners of his mouth. Nathan’s longsword froze in midair. Even Morbi flinched. The voice sounded alien to his own ears. Morbi fumbled at the thigh plate, drew out a small wooden box that resembled a bark-inlaid tobacco case, and tried to hold it out. His fingers failed; the decorated armor slipped from his grasp and clattered to the ground.
“Hroz…ka. Nilly.”
“You want me to deliver it?”
Morbi nodded.
“Why should I?”
Nathan’s reply was sharp. The unfocused Eleim eyes turned toward him, as if trying to meet a face that might still be there. The expression was strangely clean. No lingering attachment. Even a faint trace of a smile had appeared. Nathan disliked that suspicious sense of relief.
“Don’t let our vile old world break you. The Beseni of Nodin.”
That was the end. The Protector Lord’s breath ceased. Nathan, blood still hot, meant to bring the sword down on the exposed neck. His hand would not move. Seconds of countless conflicts passed. In the end he sheathed the longsword and turned away. He had no strength left to waste on petty vengeance. The ice that had bound Aspen had already lost its shape. That was proof enough the caster was dead. Nathan hauled the unconscious Aspen out of the puddle, cursing under his breath.
“Just hold on a little longer, Aspen. We’re almost there. Just a little more.”
As he was about to leave, his eyes met Andau’s. The man once hailed as the Federation’s paragon lay crushed beneath the stolen griffin, eyelids pried wide and blue. Once again, countless conflicts flickered through Nathan’s mind. A few days ago he would never have considered doing this for someone he had been certain was an enemy. Mana that had left Morbi’s corpse rose like smoke and spread across the clearing. Nathan vanished beyond it with Aspen in his arms. Andau, who had stared after them as though still watching, no longer saw anything. His eyes had closed peacefully.
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“I missed you.” Aspen had meant to say exactly that the moment their eyes met, the moment he cut away the webs sealing the boy’s eyes and mouth. “Missed me, kid?”
But the words twisted on the threshold of his throat. Missed him? What was he thinking? A scrawny brat who spent every waking hour seething with rage had nothing remotely endearing about him. Aspen flung the small, awkward feeling far away and began cutting the rest of the webs binding the boy. Slice, slice. The fifteen-year-old hung upside down like a cocooned fruit, face predictably blue. Understandable. He had gone a day and a half without food or even a sip of water, trapped inside the green-lit cave, the lair of the Abyssal cultists. How terrified he must have been.
“No.”
Yet the answer was chillingly calm. The smile vanished from Aspen’s face. He shook his head.
“Would it kill you to say ‘thank you for saving me,’ Maia?”
Nathan’s face poked out of the cocoon, lips twisted in a sneer.
“You’re an Outer Wing too, aren’t you?”
“You? Did you just call me ‘you’ with that mouth I just freed?”
The captain’s sharp voice came from behind Aspen, a short distance away.
“This isn’t the time for bickering, Aspen! Free your junior already. Save the rank disputes for when no one’s watching.”
Aspen’s twitching eyes settled. He shook his head and focused on the task. While cutting the cocoon threads around Nathan, however, he could not endure the boredom. Eighteen years old and starved for stimulation after days of nothing.
“Did it grow longer because we haven’t seen each other for a few days? Thanks to you this is going to take forever.”
“Can’t you just shut up and focus on cutting?”
“This rotten-seed Outer Wing brat.”
Only prickly replies came back. Aspen rolled his eyes as if there was no point answering and looked for another conversation partner.
“Look at him, Captain. Doesn’t his height look like a weeping willow? All he’s had to eat in this cave is cold air, so how—”
“Racial remarks go into your performance evaluation, Aspen. I might let it slide, but the inquisitors might not. How many days until you earn your Double Wing insignia?”
Ah, right. Our junior is from a minority tribe. Aspen sighed, realizing he had just branded himself a Nodin supremacist with one careless remark. The northern Nodin people were said to grow into giants just from breathing cold wind—half admiration for their physical blessing, half mockery of the lunatics who lived in a land with nothing to eat.
“Yeees.”
Nathan frowned, looking genuinely exasperated.
“I always feel this way, but do you ever have a serious moment?”
He had even dropped the honorific. Aspen was speechless.
“Who? Me? If a junior knight drops every honorific and starts mouthing off, I can get serious whenever you want. Why, want to go another round like the first day until your head cracks open? Want me to roll you in the dirt again?”
Nathan fell silent. Aspen, glaring down at him, suddenly felt his resolve weaken. He had heard the boy was abused by his father. It felt strangely cowardly to threaten a kid who was hanging upside down and unable to fight back.
“Since you answered one question, I’ll ask one too. Don’t you have any other expression?”
“Other expression?”
Nathan echoed, face as stiff as ever. Aspen waved a finger at their surroundings.
“We’re inside the cultists’ tunnel, the Aganago’s den. You almost got eaten. Didn’t it ever occur to you that you might die? Weren’t you scared?”
Nathan stared at him, then spat out, “I don’t even know what Aganago is. If I’m going to lose to nobodies whose names I don’t know, I’d rather just die.”
Aspen had always considered himself proud. Compared to this kid, it seemed like nothing. That made him uneasy. People who sharpened their blades too eagerly were always the first to break.
“I know you’re proud of your skills. I know you’re pretty good for your age. But you’re still fifteen. As a warrior you’ve got at least twenty-five years of prime left. Why are you in such a hurry?”
“I trained myself half to death, and this is what happens because I couldn’t beat just six of them.”
Six? He was ambushed by six? Aspen only now understood and was stunned. The boy, three years younger than eighteen-year-old Aspen, had been furious at himself the entire time. Ignoring hunger, ignoring thirst, for a day and a half—because he had failed to defeat six Abyssal cultist warriors blessed by the lesser god of the abyss all at once.
“Why does a kid with his whole life ahead of him talk like he’s dying tomorrow? Even knights with more experience than you have died to smaller setbacks. Isn’t your conclusion a little extreme?”
“Why do you even care?”
“Because I’m worried, obviously. Try thinking for once.”
Nathan, who had been staring straight at Aspen, finally looked away for some reason.
“Proud of my skills, my ass. I lose to everyone.”
“Who’s everyone?”
Nathan’s gaze, fixed on some distant mountain, turned back to Aspen. Aspen wondered whether he should get angry. What would happen if he poked those round eyes with a finger? The moment he decided the stone-faced brat wasn’t worth the effort and focused only on tearing away the cocoon—
“Aspen—! Behind—!”
Nathan’s urgent shout. The most emotionally charged voice Aspen had heard since the boy’s desperate yell after being thrown during training. Aspen spun around. His eyes widened. Poison-laced magic hurtled toward them—skulls flying like arrows, dripping with living sap. The captain, a beat slower to react, struck down two in one motion. The shattered skulls exploded in midair. He threw himself aside to dodge the fragments, but one sluggish black mass grazed past him and flew straight at Nathan and Aspen.
Nathan squeezed his eyes shut, then cautiously opened them a moment later.
“Whoa, shit. Almost died.”
Aspen, who had blocked it by a hair’s breadth, hurriedly tore off his shield straps and flung it away. The shield, coated in consecrated material, was melting at a terrifying speed.
“Captain, are you all right?”
“I’m fine. You two?”
Beyond the tunnel, chaos erupted. The spider-waisted shamans who had tried to ambush them revealed themselves, snarling. The followers of the Abyssal god Aganago, enraged by the failed surprise attack, had paid too little attention to their rear. The pursuing Lion Wing knights kicked, stabbed, and hacked them apart. Dark green blood sprayed across the walls amid screams.
“Hey! There they are—! Kill them—!”
“Those damned human traitors are after the kids!”
Further attacks no longer seemed necessary. Aspen relaxed and turned around. He gave Nathan a bright-eyed smile.
“You called me by name.”
It was certain. He had called him by name. For the first time. The sufficiently weakened webs parted. Nathan tumbled out of the cocoon in an undignified heap and, for some reason, avoided eye contact while getting up, pretending to focus on pulling adhesive threads from his hair. Aspen, who saw it clearly, furrowed his brow. What’s wrong with him?
“Stop dawdling. If you rested that long inside, get up.”
When Aspen’s hand reached under his armpit to help him, Nathan flinched. He did not shake it off, however.
“Let go.”
“Say ‘please let go.’”
“I don’t use honorifics even with my father. Let go.”
Aspen forcibly hauled the half-exhausted Nathan to his feet, then tapped the boy’s head with the hilt of the dagger he had used to cut the webs.
“Forward, you—”
The moment he turned, Nathan’s arms wrapped tightly around his torso. Aspen’s shock at thinking it was an attack turned to bewilderment the next instant. If he had meant to harm him, he would have gone for the throat. So why—
“—Crazy bastard.”
The grip was stronger than expected. Instead of wrestling, Aspen simply stared at him, asking what he was doing. Under the silent pressure to let go, Nathan obediently released him and stepped back. His face was blank and innocent, confusion written across it. He did not even seem to understand what he had just done. It was almost pitiful. If the kid were only properly socialized, that face would actually be useful— What am I thinking? Aspen blinked a few times, then spoke.
“I don’t date fifteen-year-olds.”
“What?”
“Especially not ones shorter than me. Once you grow another half-span or so, then maybe—”
“What are you talking about?”
Ah, so that wasn’t what he meant? Aspen scratched his red hair with the dagger hilt, looking embarrassed. With a child who seemed to have grown up in the wild, he probably needed to ask a more fundamental question.
“Why the sudden hug?”
After a brief hesitation, Nathan answered.
“You could have dodged.”
“That thing earlier? What are you saying? Then you would have died. Wait. Would you have dodged if it looked like I was about to get hit? Just because I beat you one-sidedly during training doesn’t mean you get to act like that.”
When no reply came, Aspen clicked his tongue.
“I barely managed to block it. But what does that have to do with anything?”
Aspen reached out and brushed Nathan’s crown, dusting off the dirt that had clung to him during the fall. Nathan flinched and jerked away. Amused by the honest reaction, Aspen grinned.
“Lion Wings don’t abandon other Lion Wings. Remember that.”
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“A lion does not abandon another lion.”
What?
“A lion… does not abandon another lion…”
Aspen opened his eyes in bed and turned his head. Someone was slumped beside him, head resting on the edge of the mattress. Jet-black hair had turned white. Aspen sat up and carefully brushed the hair the way he had that day. No cloud of dust rose. Nathan’s hair had already turned considerably white. Perhaps from the hardships endured in the Heavens. Nathan was still murmuring in his sleep.
A lion does not abandon another lion.
He kept repeating it. Aspen looked down at him in silence. He had only grown half a span, yet why had he tried so hard? It had become difficult to even look up at him. Aspen stroked Nathan’s hair, then took hold of both cheeks and pressed his own face against the back of the boy’s head. The boy had shed his childishness, but his reaction remained as honest as ever. Nathan flinched awake, voice still drowsy.
“Ow, what the—?”
Aspen laughed through tears.
“What the, sir. You rotten-seed Outer Wing brat.”