IBTRFL Chapter 28

"Hey!"

At the sharp bark, the dozing guard flinched awake, frantically wiping drool from his mouth as he snapped his spine straight.

The guard captain, his face twisted into a menacing scowl, snarled out his reprimand.

"It's barely been any time since that mess at the orphanage. And you call this keeping watch?"

"N-no, sir!"

"Get caught slacking by me one more time, and it's your head."

The guard captain drew a thumb across his throat and vanished.

The guard, who'd kept his spine rigid a moment longer, furtively let the tension drain back out of him.

There was no sign the captain meant to come back, and no other presence stirred nearby.

"Damn it all, filthy job—I quit, I quit."

Muttering curses under his breath, the guard had gone limp as a rag within minutes.

The demon of sleep and the dregs of his hangover joined forces, kneading at the back of his neck. Few people in the world could have fought off that particular exhaustion.

Before long, a thunderous snore rang out into the night.

Kardo passed quietly through the unwatched entrance. No other guard came running to block his way.

The small city, just past the heart of the night, was quiet to the point of suffocation.

Walking streets where not even a filthy rat stirred, Kardo turned over the conversation he'd just overheard.

A child, dead not long ago.

For some reason, a corner of his chest rang out with ill omen. The wound he'd bandaged throbbed, scraping raw against his nerves.

Kardo scowled, rolled up his sleeve, and pulled down the glove. Whether or not the wound had torn back open, the bandage that had been white was now stained a spine-chilling red.

It had been a rare magic-beast—brute strength paired with cunning intelligence. Left alone, it would certainly have killed several people, so he'd spent a considerable stretch of time hunting it down.

The damn thing had plunged into the river before he could confirm the kill, but he'd sliced its body nearly to mincemeat—it couldn't have survived.

Kardo pressed a hand firmly against the wound once and kept walking.

He passed through the heart of the city, past the square and the church, and reached the outskirts where the town met the forest.

At the end of a modest dirt road stood a single ramshackle building, standing forlorn and alone.

It matched the "damned orphanage" a drunk Aer had once described to him.

"Aer."

The name, called out in a whisper. Warmth that started in his chest spread through his whole body.

His heart, elated to its fullest, beat somewhat faster.

He could meet Aer alive. That fact washed clean away every nightmare up to this point.

Life poured into blue eyes that had been dark and dead.

Kardo quietly drew his sword. Red moonlight caught on the blade's mirror-bright edge.

The sword, stained an ominous hue, grew attuned to its master's feeling and let out an ill-omened cry.

It was exceedingly rare for Aer to let stories of her past pass her lips. Even when he asked cautiously, she'd only laugh it off playfully and steer the topic elsewhere.

After that happened once or twice, he'd decided to stop asking. He hadn't wanted to dig up the wounded places of someone he loved, not if he didn't have to.

There was one exception, though.

Aer would sometimes show, out of nowhere, an unexpected fondness for drink.

Cold beer after finishing a job. Wine mooched off a monastery. Cider offered by some farmhouse.

She'd said drink had been there for the good times and the hard ones both.

Aer liked to drink, but she was never ruled by it. A bottle handed to her in thanks by someone she'd saved would get set aside, saved for one or two glasses after dinner. That was all.

But on the days her mind was driven into a corner, she reached for it with something close to compulsion.

On those nights, she'd tell him pieces of her past, scattered and out of order.

The horrific abuse from the orphanage priests. The awful thing she'd almost had done to her as a green recruit in a mercenary company. Being betrayed and left behind by comrades she'd trusted. And more, besides.

In the fragments she let slip while drunk sat grief and loneliness beyond measuring.

'So Kardo, you stay right by me. Don't you go anywhere, ever.'

Aer always fell asleep on those words.

Watching his sleeping lover held in his arms, his feelings churned, tangled. Satisfaction, that someone so strong and admirable bared her weakness to no one but him. And, in the same breath, hatred for the countless tragedies that had left her no choice but to become that strong.

His grip tightened on the sword.

Lost once—and returned to him again.

The time that had been happy as a dream was gone, but so was the cruel, blood-soaked time. That, too, had been erased.

It's all right. I'll be the one to remember the happy times, and I'll wipe out every hour that ever hurt you.

The blue light warped and sank. Through the hush of the pre-dawn dark, a glint of naked killing intent flashed in his eyes.

The towering, sky-high stone wall did nothing to stop an intruder consumed by fury. Through the gap in an upper window, a faint, secretive light leaked out.

Kardo killed all trace of himself and slipped into the building.

The beginning of every misfortune Aer had ever suffered.

Once today was over, Aer would be able to live a far more peaceful, happier life.

Kardo climbed the stairs without hesitation, moving toward the door the light was leaking from.

It was the very moment he meant to kick the door in. From the floor below, a child's wail tore free, shrill enough to rip. He felt the people beyond the door stir into sudden, clattering motion.

Kardo's brow furrowed, and he pulled himself back into the shadows.

"Let's go, quickly, quickly!"

An elderly priest threw the door open and dashed out, gesturing anxiously. The other priests fell in behind him, heading for the floor below where the crying rose.

Deep worry sat carved into their haggard faces.

His reason, which fury had clouded over, came back to him.

It was strange. Aer had called the priests of this orphanage things that weren't human.

Devils wearing human skin, she'd said, who treated the children like animals and saw them only as a means to money.

But what he was looking at now was—

Kardo kept his mouth shut and followed the priests in silence.

Grief is contagious. Children who caught their friend's sorrow broke into crying, one after another, in a chain.

Soon the small orphanage was filled, wall to wall, with the sound of children weeping themselves breathless.

"Oh, there now, it's all right, children. It's all right."

"Father!"

"My poor little ones, you must have been so frightened."

The priests wrapped their arms around the children wandering the hallway. Gentle voices and warm arms only made the children sob harder, deeper into grief.

Kardo watched from the dark. The children held in the priests' arms were settling, little by little—but unmistakably.

It wasn't a scene that could come out of a relationship built on abuse and fear.

Like his father and himself, once, the priests and children were bound by a warm and affectionate tie.

"Uh—I miss big sister. Sister, sister, I want—sister."

Fat tears rolled down the child's face.

The priest couldn't speak for a moment, then pulled the child gently into a pained embrace. The wrinkled skin around his eyes flushed red, as if the tears might spill at any second.

"Ae—Aer is—"

What? A ringing shook his skull fit to melt it. His sight guttered out for a second.

Kardo staggered, stumbling back. His body wouldn't hold—as if every tendon in it had been cut through.

Aer. Aer. Yes. Aer.

Kardo forgot even to breathe, staring at the priest and the children.

Amid a sense crumbling like grains of sand, only a single name could still be grasped.

"Tomorrow, together... let's go bring flowers to Aer, shall we."

Go where. Aer is right here, isn't she. She has to be here—alive, breathing—isn't that right.

He wanted to scream that, like a man who'd lost his mind. But what his throat produced was not language—a beast's despairing groan, nothing more.

The priests led the children back into the room.

Jaw trembling violently, Kardo staggered and bolted out of the orphanage.

His knees kept buckling like bone-dry straw snapping, but his body, teetering on the edge, somehow didn't lose its balance.

Not someone else—why you. Why, of all people, does it have to be you.

Kardo ran, choking back what rose in his chest. He simply ran, without end. He passed the empty market, the empty square, and reached the church at the city's center.

Behind the plainly decorated church lay a space where countless deaths kept residence.

Headstones lined up in careful order.

Kardo checked the faded names one by one, praying desperately.

Let the name I'm thinking of not be here. Let your name, only your name, not be here.

But reality mercilessly trampled his desperate, earnest plea.

It was a grave made not long ago, still clean and untouched by time.

The earth turned up to plant the headstone hadn't even grown grass yet, still young; and heaped over it were white flowers that hadn't yet lost their life.

The sword slipped from his hand and rolled solemnly onto the ground. Kardo collapsed, lifeless, like a wooden puppet with its strings cut.

It felt like every drop of blood in his body was evaporating. His spine, gone liquid and boneless, wouldn't hold him up.

The headstone filled his dead blue eyes. The moment he confirmed the name written there, the world turned black and white.

It was the same as the moment he'd lost Aer before.

That cruel moment, screaming while holding on to a body going cold, wanting only to let go of everything.

"Why did I—why did I come back."

Only to meet you. So that this time, the way I promised, we could be happy together.

Then how is it that you're there, I wonder.

Tears fell silently from Kardo's eyes. They ran down his jaw and soaked, mournfully, into the grave's dirt.

She had been the only thing holding him up. The one irreplaceable reason he hadn't broken apart in a world full of death and despair.

The only comrade who could watch his back, the friend he could bare his heart to, the lover who had promised him a future.

She was my everything—do you hear me.

"The anomaly the god spoke of..."

Kardo sneered through his tears, a scornful, broken laugh. He didn't know who it was aimed at.

His hollow eyes landed on the sword, fallen to the ground. Sensing its owner's intent, the sword vibrated, desperate.