"All-right my little mutt! You wanna prove your worth, so… You can take the left path, meanwhile I'll take the right."
Somehow sensing how the mood had gotten heavy, her instructions were upbeat and seemingly nabbed the entire attention of the sunken forest with the liveliness and assertiveness of her words—though to be fair, Arabelle was usually like that anyway.
"If you find them, you can yell for me or meet back here. It shouldn't take too long."
That was, in essence, his first task, albeit, with two stipulations.
"The first is that there's still a chance these little Sagas are sentient… So, if they are, you can ask them to Scribe with you if you want. Well—I say that, but if that actually worked, I'd be pretty impressed."
Cobalt didn't necessarily need to fully understand what that meant. All that mattered to him was excusing his worthlessness from earlier. If he could just make himself useful, he could pretend for just a moment that he and Arabelle were on similar grounds. Even if that wasn't the case, if Cobalt could fool the two of them into believing that, then perhaps he could find the confidence he needs to excel in this world.
"The second is to make sure you stay on course. Make sure the bark around you is dark grey. If the trees start to get lighter, make sure you turn back. Lighter trees can look pretty freaky, and I'm pretty sure it's a sign of magical influence of decay. So stay away from them. Don't want you to die so soon, after all."
And that marked the end of the instructions he was given.
Having walked in the direction he was directed in for the last five minutes or so, Cobalt had awakened to the possibility that simply being able to live a life again could perhaps be an attainable goal.
Things didn't have to be so uncertain and scary. Perhaps they didn't have to seem so out-of-control and out-of-reach.
Of course, the true extent of that philosophy was something Cobalt wasn't anywhere near perfecting yet, but that assuring thought persisted in his mind.
The color in this skyless world had faded long ago, but embracing that coldness, perhaps Cobalt could find beauty similar to what Arabelle was able to find.
That's the type of epiphany he wanted to have.
"I know it's nothing like the autumn colors and all that, but it isn't like it's a prison cell."
Cobalt couldn't help comparing the atmosphere down here to the eeriness and coldness of the endless hueless halls he was confined in growing up.
He traveled to Crestia to escape from that, right?
If that's the case, then… Why—
"No, I can't look at it like that. I can handle something like that—it's not like I'm stupid."
Cobalt wanted to believe that, but biting his lip slightly…
No—Cobalt had to believe that.
"All my worrying is stupid… Maybe it's just been too long since I've really… socialized, with people."
And maybe the fact that Cobalt was now, still, talking to himself openly like this, was also proof of that?
"I guess in Arabelle's mind, everything's an opportunity, so… If I keep missing opportunities because I don't want to try, then I won't get anywhere in life, right?"
Time and time again, Cobalt had failed…
He had failed countless times, over the course of 19 years, just so that he could learn that very lesson…
He reached out and touched the tree at his side as he stretched his leg over a protruding root, pounding that inconvenient truth into his mind.
"Yeah… I guess it's only fitting that—"
His words cut themselves off dead as a chill suddenly rushed up and down his spine. In an instant, he was froze into place, and hairs on his extended arm all at once stood uncomfortably on end…
Frozen in place, he was left with a harrowing pigment he wasn't expecting to see.
A painfully vivid showcase to the stupidity he showed…
How was this something Cobalt just now became aware of…? It was hard to swallow, at that realization… That the structure Cobalt was reaching out to touch shakily…
『Was as pure and white as snow.』
Just after that thought whizzed by his distant brain like a train in motion, a rustling from the dark grass sent that chill even further, before his body involuntarily jumped about half a meter back. A shadowy figure peered from behind the dark rustlings, revealing to Cobalt something much bigger than even the bush itself. But as his feet landed, they snagged against the root he was stepping over, sending his body, as well as his chillingly heightened senses, falling backwards.
Before he could process that, his ears were ruptured by a deafening, ear-splitting cry, which embodied bestial rage, and spewed the contents of its slobbered oral cavity across his petrified face…
"GUUURRRRAAAWWWWWWWERRRR!!!!!!"
In a singular moment, an enormous visage rose before him, expelling an indescribably horrifying bellow, as his body was wordlessly thrown into backwards downswing.
With enormous canine fangs gashing out of its red mouth, a white and slippery tongue hung out of it. A tongue roughly the size of Cobalt's lower arm. Those battle-torn and carved fangs reared themselves open amidst a wolf's skull—half of which visible from beneath peeling and rotted flesh—with the force of a hippo's jaw. Its size was impossible to measure, cloaked in masking shadows, but its darkened masses could easily have been the size of an elephant…
Time fell to a crawl, as his feet had now completely slipped from under him, and the beast was just seconds from decapitating both his head as well as his entire upper torso from the rest of him.
Fear shot through him like a bullet, but with both hands instinctively prepared in front of him, a jolting sense of nostalgia coursed through him unexpectedly. Seeing what could be his very last moments play out in front of him in slow motion, he felt an unconscious movement from his arms which had placed themselves front and center, rather than covering his face or preparing for their landing.
In this world of spells and sorcery, Cobalt had been kicked down time and time again.
In this land of opportunity and escapism, Cobalt had felt nothing but betrayal and heartbreak.
In this world which was supposed to be different, nothing had changed…
But with that thought-
Call it cruel survival instincts that had lit up in his soul, or call it the merciless and unforgivable twists and turns of fate that led his hands to spark in front of him. But regardless of the strings pulling them forward, what further pushed themselves through Cobalt's entire bloodstream, lighting up his veins with a light of snow and ivory, was nothing short of his will to live.
"—!!!"
A concept foreign to him. A taste bitter and unpredictable. He felt his arms numbing as they gave all they had. In this extremely small slice of time, fragmented from the rest of Cobalt's pathetic and toiling his life, his entire bloodstream ignited with the beauty and radiance of an otherworldly circuit board under his translucent skin, resulting in an ignition of sunburst light between his fingertips. This was all he had.
Magic…
Feeling adrenaline and magic pumping in unison, he unconsciously charged his bolt of mana to be shot straight into the beast's snarled snout. Feeling the light and stinging wisps of numbness encompass his fingertips, he couldn't help but grin at the thought.
It wasn't a fluke after all.
He wasn't pathetic. He wasn't worthless. It was so simple he must have been an idiot not to have seen it before.
All he needed was a chance for all of that to awaken. That was his catalyst. This was his resurgence.
Along with his callous and egotistical bursts of adrenaline came the uncertainty and instability of the elixir of ivory flame that resided between his outstretched fingers.
But no—none of that mattered.
This was Cobalt's destiny.
With that thought, he sparkled the bits of mana together against a doubtful wince that suddenly encompassed the left side of his head.
A searing pain—one which shook the inside of his brain to its core.
A sensation he didn't understand. A world of uncertainty he didn't have the time to process.
But did it matter? In this moment, Cobalt was invincible. In this moment, Cobalt held all the magic needed to obliterate this half-dead canine in an instant.
So, releasing all the ivory lights and sparks he'd been building up, Cobalt saw for himself the extent of his abilities. The extent of his efforts and failures… In that moment, what Cobalt saw, was…
『Absolutely nothing.』
Falling into a series of sparks, his spell completely extinguished itself before even leaving his fingertips, sparkling its last light out into oblivion. And with a thud, Cobalt's reer smashed against a trunk, followed by the back of his head which struck against it like a hammer.
These few seconds still feeling like an eternity, he writhed against himself for a short moment before the creature's lunge approached the end of its swing, the enormous jaws almost able to vice Cobalt between them. And between those jaws and the breath of a wild putrid monster, his mind simply replied…
After all of that… I turned out to have been right, anyway.
『I should have just shut my goddamn mouth.』
He heard the gentle ringing of bells, or even wings of some kind. It sounded inhuman, like a sort of instrument of hope. The golden rays of light that followed seemed familiar. As if the pure untainted light emitting from the gentle sound was something he had been searching for. It seemed small and salubrious, like the gentle sparkling of a pixie…
Or no…
Fireflies?
His entire world was shaken from oblivion into a new unapproachable hell of a completely different breed. The gnashed and gnarly mouth whose fangs had come milliseconds from tearing his flesh from bone reared back in pure agony, in an inferno of flames which not only shook his entire world, but his mind as well from out of the daze he had fallen into. Golden light rained down in tandem, igniting the dark forest into a spectacle of song and dance. And every beat of that rhythm spoke the pure unyielding wrath of fire. His world collapsing around him, he watched these flames in awe. One after another, like missiles raining down from predator to prey. Bombarded again, and again, and again, his hopeless and desperate eyes reflected the ignition of gold, to amber, to orange, to vermillion, to the fiery blood of red.
Again. Again.
Those colors… Terrifying, over-saturated, burning, and hot to the touch… All of that was true, and yet…
Again. Again.
As he looked up, his restless yet wordless mind cusping from demoralization to pandemonium, he noticed these attacks rained down from the heavens themselves, knocking over entire trees in the process. No—not just trees...
The entire sunken forest quaked in the rhythm of this unrelenting hellscape, not daring to go against the beat of flames in pure terror of their fury.
Again. Again.
The beast, formerly a terrifyingly viscous and incomprehensibly overgrown monster, lay now a completely charred corpse, collapsed back into the burning hellish landscape, merging in with it to form a scorching scalding sludge.
Again. Again. AgainAgainAgainAgainAgainAgainAgainAgain.
Trees collapsing in every direction around him, the white trunks, ivory limbs, and viridian leaves joined in union with that searing molten black and red sludge. He slumped backwards, eyes still opened and widened speechless towards the now crimson cave atmosphere.
Looking around wildly, he realized the only chalky tree left in that area standing was the one he had fallen against. And in succession to this realization, a flock of angel wings fell down from the skies, a lantern of bright sparkles in hand, and a crimson-red cape following its pastel visage.
However, as he adjusted his eyes…
Those were certainly the vibrant contours of a monster wearing the clothing of a little girl…
But hearing those words resonate in his frantic mind, he bit the corners of his lips at the cruelty of that description.
That girl was far worse than a monster.
To Cobalt, who lay beaten, battered, and pathetically hollow on the crisp and embered forest floor, that creature represented something far, far worse than just a monster…
She was a hero.
A hero possessing abnormal and abhorrent unnatural strength that never should have been born unto this world…
An unfathomable creature Cobalt could never, even if he lived a hundred lifetimes, ever, ever hold as much of a candle to.
If a being such as this was allowed to exist in this world…
Then what did that make Cobalt…?
"―t's go!!! Hurry!!!
She called to him, but whatever she was saying, was…
"―ight be a―ave in!!! ―eed t―et out!!!
Barely managing to ignore and throw away his pathetic failures, he could somehow understand what she was trying to tell him…
Coming to against falling pieces of charred ivory, ashen dust, and pebbles raining from above, he brought his defeated husk of a body to stand…
And leaning against that hero, he found the strength he needed to leave, stumbling through the dark ivory forest as the world itself crumbled around him…