Vestige (25)
I dragged the limp corpse aside with a ragged breath.
I hauled myself upright and dropped onto one of the long church pews.
The last cigarette slid from my coat. I tucked it between my lips and lit it.
I prodded my left shoulder, the one the hammer had caught earlier.
Nothing. No pain, no damage. Completely fine.
My skull still held the memory of bone caving in, splintering—
Not that it mattered. I'd be dead again soon anyway.
I wondered how many people would sympathize if I said dying gets old.
Demons kept slithering in after that, wave after wave, and I sent each one packing, more or less.
If the bastards couldn't even finish off a wreck like me, what made them think they could drive humanity to extinction?
They should stay burrowed in whatever hole they crawled out of.
Serepina would be digging trenches around the capital with the mages by now.
The mages would have mapped out every stage of the fighting. They'd established the strategy ages ago—defensive lines outside the walls, fall back to the capital's fortress only if they got overrun. No point clinging to the ramparts from the start.
She'd be running herself ragged, in any case.
Had Estelle reached the Church yet?
What was she feeling?
That sensation of being seized by some unknowable past emotion, of surrendering the precious thing right in front of you with your own hands—what did that feel like?
I didn't particularly want to know.
I wasn't exactly enjoying myself either.
Chasing answers I'd never have. Collecting those damned [Endings]. Sitting here steeped in melodrama, waiting to die.
I flicked the spent cigarette into a pool of blood on the floor. It hissed and died.
I nudged the scattered demon corpses with my foot and lit the very last one.
Midway through that final smoke, a lone demon stepped inside at an unhurried pace.
Dozens filed in behind, fanning out to encircle me—then the first arrival raised a hand and they all went still.
"You've been busy."
A woman's voice.
I offered no reply. Instead, I kicked one of the nearby carcasses.
"Did you hate them so much you had to carve them to pieces?"
"Hate? We just had a minor disagreement."
I scooped up a half-split demon skull from the floor and tossed it at her feet.
It hit the stone with a wet splat and rolled to a stop.
The demoness stared down at it, grimaced faintly, and reached down to close its still-open eyes with her fingers.
"I figured we'd never cross paths again, so they all decided to look like ugly sacks of shit. That's why."
"You don't speak like any human I've met."
She drew the sword at her hip. The blade was garish with ornamentation, gaudy filigree catching the low light.
"Such a beautiful exterior, and yet your insides are rotted through.
Even among my own kin, I rarely see decay like yours."
"Lucky me."
"Still—I am fond of beauty.
Drink my blood. Become mine. I'll place a great many things in your hands."
"If that were on the table, I wouldn't still be in this city."
"A fair point."
She tipped her chin.
The demons lunged.
I cut my way through the tide and killed them as they came, but the whole affair felt like a performance. Maybe because I knew I wasn't walking out of this alive. Or maybe because she was watching me like I was a piece of fine porcelain she intended to keep.
Twenty dead, give or take.
The swarm peeled back in unison.
The demoness stepped forward at that same unhurried pace.
There was something familiar in her face.
I'd seen her somewhere before.
"You really want nothing?"
"I want to die."
"You could have done that at any point."
A hollow laugh escaped me. I didn't answer.
I stared at the horde massed behind her, at this demoness who radiated rank and authority, and flicked my fingers to conjure mist.
She wasn't the sort of opponent who'd fall for parlor tricks.
She sprang forward, blade swinging—unbothered, unconcerned.
I twisted past the strike and swung my own sword, but it caught on something in the empty air.
And then her counterattack.
The blade punched into my abdomen with a wet rip.
I ignored it. I grabbed her face and poured spell after spell into her at point-blank range.
I tried to bring my sword around—
My arm was already gone, sailing through the air off to my left.
I was outclassed. Hopelessly, absurdly outclassed.
That didn't mean I could stop.
My left hand found the mace on the floor. The moment I grabbed it, a blade twisted into my thigh and my balance collapsed, but I hurled myself forward anyway and smashed the mace into her skull.
It didn't seem to accomplish much.
I'd just delivered myself to her on a platter.
Her face was seared with burns, one eye burst and ruined, and still she grabbed the back of my head, pulled me into an embrace, and sank her teeth into my throat.
She drank.
A long, dragging pull as blood pulsed out of me. Only after my body went slack did she wipe her mouth.
Her face was flawless again.
"A peculiar taste."
Her brow furrowed slightly.
She severed one of her own fingers, wedged my mouth open, and forced the bleeding stump past my lips.
Then she grabbed my hair and scattered her blood across the raw cross-section where my arm had been.
One of the demons behind her retrieved the severed limb. She pressed it to the wound.
Flesh knitted with a wet, crawling sound. The arm reattached.
"I don't enjoy forcing what I want."
"Then how about letting me go?"
I smiled as I said it.
She didn't answer. Instead, her sword opened my stomach.
The sharp edge lodged in my bleeding belly and dragged upward.
I learned, then, that blood makes a pattering sound when it spills in volume—a heavy, wet drumming.
She pried the wound apart, reached inside with her bare hand, and began pulling everything out.
A dull thud. A wet slap.
Chunks of meat and the viscera that had filled me hit the floor. The reek of blood and the animal stink of organs flooded my nostrils.
It didn't hurt. Not for any reason I could name.
Just a strange, hollow numbness.
I'd felt like this ever since I sent Estelle away.
People who go through life wounding others—do they really feel nothing at all?
It hurts this much.
"I never imagined the first person to lay my insides bare would be a demon."
I was caught between two feelings: the certainty that I was about to die, and an impulse that wasn't mine—an absolute compulsion to kill the demon in front of me.
I lunged and bit into her throat.
My teeth sank in, but there was no strength behind them. I couldn't tear the flesh.
And still I didn't die.
Unfazed, she peeled me off, split open my chest, and began separating flesh from bone with meticulous precision, extracting every last thing inside.
My heart came out and I remained alive.
But my body wouldn't move.
She placed the still-beating organ into her mouth.
The wounds across my body began to close, knitting fast.
My limbs still refused to obey.
"Someone like you must have earned a name among the humans by now. Keep at it."
Consciousness lingered in my skull, but my body would not do as I wished.
I wasn't panicked. Wasn't in agony. Wasn't horrified.
Maybe I'd sensed this was coming.
And I had the distinct premonition that I would crumble apart and die before long.
I'm not sure how many days passed.
Whenever my vision blacked out and my awareness cut off, I half-expected to open my eyes in that cramped little room at the Academy—but instead I'd find myself trudging along beside the demoness.
Thoughts continued inside my head. My body still ignored every command.
A sword much like hers sat in my hand.
My limbs moved with the same cadence, the same lethal efficiency as the demoness herself. I carved through humans who fled or fought back.
Farmers who'd done nothing. A young girl running with her back turned. The occasional knight who screamed defiance and came at me with bloodshot eyes.
They died by my hand, and I felt nothing.
Even when I dredged up Serepina's words, the past with Levina, the day I burned at the stake—nothing surfaced. No feeling at all.
Was it because my body felt so light?
Physically speaking.
Today, again, I walked beside the demoness.
And a familiar landscape rose before me.
The capital walls. And far in the distance, the Academy spire.
I didn't throw myself at the fortifications. I lingered near the demoness and only drew my sword when humans burst out to stage ambushes.
Every now and then I'd spot one of my own eyeballs on the ground, rolling in the dirt, and think: I'm going to rot away and die soon.
Consciousness blacked out and swam back up.
Something tore through my body from the empty air.
I deflected the next spell with my blade.
I raised my head.
Familiar golden hair filled my vision.
Our eyes met.