He had been shot in front of her eyes.
Christina had seen the bullet go through his chest, shattering his heart. In fact, it was still visible that there was a hole where his heart should be.
And yet he was breathing. Somehow. He was alive.
The students, even the teachers around her, turned away from Desmond, terror written all over their faces. As was natural. Even for the miracles of magic, death was an insurmountable barrier.
He who was lost in the abyss of darkness couldn't be recovered.
There was no consistency to this. Were it not for the fact that her senses were so heightened, she would call this a dream and possibly even believe it.
This was no dream.
Neither his breathing, lungs that shouldn't be working again exhaling air, nor the fact that he was standing as if nothing had happened was a dream.
Not to mention the black wings burnt into the trunk of the trees.
This was totally beyond her comprehension, beyond anyone's comprehension. For the first time in his life, he understood how the Azure must feel, watching from the other side of the world, plunged into the swampy darkness of their own ignorance.
And, as quickly as it came, she buried that feeling in the depths of her heart.
Because sympathy for the enemy was useless, a burden.
And because it was wrong to think like that. It was simply wrong.
If there was anyone who understood that, it had to be Desmond himself.
But... His body was moving, but was the being in front of him really Desmond? Lying on the floor, looking at him feeling more helpless than ever, she was unable to avoid thinking that.
Their gazes met.
Christina swallowed, waiting.
For what?
For him to recognize her, she realized. But there was nothing remotely similar in his empty eyes. No recognition, not a spark.
He was looking at her, but it was as if he was looking through her.
Even if it was him inside, who knew what the consequences of his 'resurrection' had been? No one had come back to tell what was on the other side, after all. Not to mention whether it was a real resurrection. If it would be permanent.
Christina stood up on shaky legs. And instead of turning away, instead of running in terror, she advanced towards Desmond. Knowing that she might be making the biggest mistake of her life.
Quite possibly the last, too.
She had seen him fight. Slaughter his enemies. While everyone could use physical reinforcement, it was one of the basic affinity-independent spells, but she hadn't seen anyone take it to such extremes.
Even if Desmond didn't share the same opinion, it made him a talented and strong mage.
Strong enough to reach into her chest, literally through her chest, and rip her heart out. She'd never seen him do anything so barbaric, but the important thing was that he was perfectly capable of doing such a thing.
"Desmond? "
At the sound of her voice, the boy looked away. She discovered an unsuspected positive side that clung to that as a sign that he recognized her, after all.
That he was as well as one could be, given the circumstances, and maybe he'd recover. Maybe.
Desmond sprang into action.
He moved as if he really did have wings on his back, but without rising into the air. It was hard to describe and even more unpleasant to watch. As if the blood and the hole in his chest weren't enough, the way he moved made it clear that he had been dead until very recently.
And if she stood back, staring like a fool, Desmond would soon be dead again.
He was hurtling towards death, again.
He didn't even have his sword.It was a little late to think about that, but she realised that she had left it forgotten in the building, Desmond had dropped it when he died, and now it was under the rubble. Broken or not, unrecoverable.
She'd recently been talking about how dangerous he could be even with bare hands.
But there was a limit to everything.
She believed he would be able to deal with the remaining soldiers with his fists and his pistol.
Most likely, in that case, he would still die in the attempt, but at least he had a chance. The spider, however? No matter how strong he was, he couldn't take care of the spider with his physical strength and a gun.
If that was Desmond, if he was in control, he had once again lost his temper at the sight of that metal monstrosity.
Something she couldn't blame him for.
Like many people, he had lost a lot the day he learned that such an abomination existed in this world. She was the odd for not having a trauma related to the Empire's war machine, for the opposite was more common.
She had felt his fear, before he even stood up. His emotions had left her paralysed.
Broken and defeated, waiting for death.
His emotions had acted on Christina like a poison, and, since they were his, Desmond must have been like her then, before she managed to shake them off.
But, still, the boy had thrown himself into the fray. Without looking back.
It took a lot of courage to keep fighting when he was so terrified that every move was an effort.
Perhaps the irritating headmaster was right about one thing after all.
The spirit of the Albionese people was indomitable. At least Desmond's...
And hers.
Christina emerged from the forest, her shadows walking with her. She didn't know what she could do. But even if the answer turned out to be nothing, better to die fighting.
Pride would do her no good on the other side.
No one would honor her for her sacrifice, she would become just another number.
Therefore, dying clinging to her pride or dying a coward's death changed nothing. But she would know. In the moment before she went into the darkness of oblivion, she would know. What kind of moment her whole life had led her to.
And she wanted to be proud of that, even if the memory of that pride and the memory of all the important things would disappear with it.
She would fight.
Darkness was a fundamental part of this world, wherever you went you couldn't escape it. That's why it was powerful even in broad daylight. There were shadows everywhere. There was plenty of material.
Even her own shadow could be used as a weapon.
Moulding the shadow of one of the soldiers into a spear, she drove it through his heart.
She grabbed one and split him in half, as she had done earlier.
She was helping. But it didn't look like Desmond needed any help at all. That being dead was a burden to him.
He took care of most of the soldiers on his own and before the spider got close to them.
The spider was gigantic, rivalling the largest buildings, and therefore also slow. But each of its slow steps covered a great distance, which almost made up for its lack of speed.
Desmond stood among the corpses, among the pools of blood, in a posture like a puppet with its strings cut.
He raised his head, looked at the creature.
He didn't recognize her. But now, instantly, she saw what she had been looking for in his eyes before, only directed at the spider. Some things couldn't be forgotten. Desmond was the person he was because one just like that had appeared on that day, putting an end to it all.
It was only natural that he hadn't forgotten it, even after he died. She thought: He is alive only to finish this.
He cannot die until the spider falls at his feet.
That was the regret that had made his ghost rise.
The spider wasn't a spider just in terms of its appearance.
The creature spat out spider silk, spinning it into a web. Desmond became trapped beneath the silk. It wasn't that he hadn't been able to dodge, but that he hadn't even moved from the spot. As if he hadn't seen it coming.
Its crystal heart pumped out the blue fire that fueled its existence.
Spreading it through the spider's web Desmond was trapped in. Quickly consuming it all. He struggled against the silk, but it didn't make much progress and he wouldn't do it, not in time.
Manipulating her own shadow, Christina pulled him out of it, ripping the threads off with ease and tossing them aside without risking touching them.
The fight was heading for defeat. This wasn't Desmond's fear talking, but her own.
Unlike Desmond, she wouldn't compare that blasphemous creation to death itself. But it was certainly a natural disaster. Humans couldn't fight natural disasters, only prepare, hide, wait for it to pass.
That was what she sincerely believed, even though machines like that had fallen every day during the war that had resumed today.
That was that and this was this.
If they had an army behind them, things would be different. But, under the circumstances, this was as ridiculous as trying to catch a tornado with a net. Or stopping a tsunami with one's hands.
Defeat was predetermined. They would be overwhelmed, crushed. Shattered.
It was time to cut their losses, to accept that they had lost.
Christina hadn't chosen the soldier's path under the illusion that she would live a long life, full of honors. She wasn't one of those many fools who spent their lives half asleep, dreaming of their own glory.
Until reality made them wake up in time. Or a bullet ended it all before it began.
No, she was very aware of the kind of life she had chosen. The hells it hid.
She was ready to sacrifice herself, if necessary, to do her duty to the end. But she didn't want to die a meaningless death in a fight that didn't matter.
Not anymore. Now that the soldiers were dead, they could turn and run.
The spider wouldn't catch up with them.
It would tear the academy apart, collapsing the buildings, but they were just mortar and brick.
They would set the forest on fire, killing countless animals and damaging the ecosystem, food chain and all, but no human lives would be lost. They were in this mess precisely because The Four Seasons was so far from civilization that reinforcements couldn't see this without anyone having to warn them.
They could escape. They should escape.
Fighting an unwinnable battle was for fools, suicidal people, or people who had no other choice. They didn't fit into that last category.
But, Desmond wouldn't move.
She knew he would keep fighting to the end, even if it meant his death.
And she couldn't let him die. Not again.
Why the hell not?
Well, because...
Enough. Thinking about it was only making her head hurt.
She felt like a rat trapped in a maze.
Desmond was ahead of her. He crouched down, gathering strength in his legs and explosively released it. Covering ten meters in an instant. He leapt towards the spider without fear. He didn't seem capable of fear.
The spider fired its web again.
Caught in mid-air, Desmond could neither avoid it nor break it, no matter how many times he fired the gun, which he hadn't yet touched, he would be trapped as before. Or at the very least he would be shot down.
If only she had had the presence of mind to bring his sword alongside the corpse, she would have at least....
But she couldn't blame herself. No one could have seen this coming.
Besides, it turned out that he had no need for the sword.
Before her astonished eyes, Desmond changed again.
■
Desmond felt as if he were dreaming. Time moved slowly and clumsily, as if he were wandering through a swamp, as if the waters were engulfing him with every step he took and he couldn't find his way.
His body burned.
His face was wet, and he couldn't tell whether it was due to sweat or tears.
At the apex of his jump, he felt a burning pain in his back as if a red-hot iron had been thrust into him. It was an intense pain, even for the vague, 'stuck' feeling of a dream. But brief, at the same time brief.
He had wings on his back. Black wings.
I want wings. Not a thought, but a fragment of a memory that had come to life returning to the surface of his mind.
The spider spat silk, intending to catch him again. To have him fall twice, one after the other, for the same trick.
Desmond dodged the attack, spinning in mid-air.
Now that he had his wings, the creature was too slow to reach him. It lifted one of its legs and tried to run him through in a desperate attempt to keep him away. Well, no, a machine was not capable of desperation.
A machine wasn't capable of realizing that the fight was already over.
It dodged the leg just as naturally. He had always been a dirty human crawling on the ground like a worm, but now he was flying through the air as if he had been doing it all his life. That didn't help with the feeling that he was in a dream.
But this was no dream. It was very real.
Desmond landed on the heart of the beast. As if sensing his purpose was over, the wings disappeared without him having given a command, but then again, they had appeared just the same. How else could they disappear?
He didn't think about whether they would come back that easily when or if he needed them again. What he couldn't change wasn't worth worrying about.
That was something he had always known. But, unlike usual, it was very easy for him to put that thought aside and concentrate fully on what really mattered.
He got down on all fours, like an animal. From deep in his throat came a cry like an animal caught in a trap.
He pounded his fists on the glass, screaming and screaming. Cracks ran across the surface, glistening black. It looked like the blood of something inhuman.
My blood. None of this is right.
The spider tried to shake him off. He was anything but firmly clinging, but he managed to keep his balance.
And to deliver one last blow, which caused the heart to shatter into a thousand pieces. The spider fell forward and he fell with it, watching as the blue fire spilled onto the ground, igniting the grass.
He found himself flying through the air.
This time figuratively, not literally. He was falling towards the ground, thrown by the momentum. Desmond braced himself.
The impact robbed the air from his lungs, left him gasping for breath, unable to breathe and sure enough he had broken a few bones. But he was alive and the spider was not. He had defeated his enemy. Questions of whether he would get out of this, or how he would get out, were of no concern to him.
He had defeated his enemy. He'd got what he wanted.
Well, no. Not quite.
Desmond struggled to his feet, wheezing, feeling that something fundamental was missing. Something that kept him from standing, even though he'd done all those things without it too. He just wished he knew what it was.
He made it halfway, but fell to his knees first and then ended up on the floor again.
The energy that had filled him up had run out, it seemed.
The spider's heart wasn't the only one that had exploded, it seemed. Looking at the walls of blue fire that rose up and danced a secret dance of demons laughing at human suffering, he told himself that he himself was burning there. That he could feel it.
That something he was missing. That was...
Christina came over and helped him up.
"I can't believe you did it." She wasn't looking at him, but at the fallen spider that wouldn't get up again. He was so close to her that he could smell her. But all he could smell was the blood she... they had spilled, not a pleasant fragrance.
So close that he could feel her heartbeat next to his, which seemed to beat with the same rhythm.
■
The pounding of his heart.
Or was it her own, and, mad as she was with excitement, with relief, she was letting her imagination run wild? Deceiving herself. Believing what she wanted to believe.
Hugging Desmond, she laid her head on his chest, not paying attention to the blood.
She was so full of it herself that she wouldn't know the difference anyway. Yes, she was going to be smelling blood for weeks, no matter how many times she washed and changed her clothes, a phantom smell would still haunt her. And she would remember everything that had happened during the rest....
But she could hear his heart beating.
She squeezed Desmond tighter, her eyes filling with tears.
In a corner of her mind, she still worried about why she felt so close to him, so quickly. Of how real those feelings were or weren't, moreover.
She wouldn't let anything spoil this for her, though. They had survived.
And everything could start to go in the right direction, the direction the course of events would have taken had it not been for the intervention of those monsters in human skin.
There had been many sacrifices. Many losses. But they had earned this happiness and, damn it, she intended to enjoy it for as long as it lasted.
Which turned out not to be long, as she should have expected, for she was a pessimistic person by nature.
Desmond grunted.
Christina raised her head, intending to look at him as she asked him what was wrong. But one look into his eyes was enough for her to know. Yes, she knew even before she turned around, without letting go, and saw that the spider was moving.
Even though its heart was broken and had been emptied. But its movements were slow and clumsy, it was struggling to sit up and failing.
Agonizing. That was the right word.
It wouldn't get up again.
There was nothing to worry about, really.