Her defiant gaze was loaded with that message, burning it upon the enemy holding the shotgun that would force her body to produce a new pair of legs.
Abigail laughed, as if talking about something funny, or as if she had done it in a funny way. On top of that her new legs weren't what was funny here. It was the guy with the shotgun, who looked at her with a somber expression, so serious. And not because he thought her laughter was directed at him.
No, no, no.
"You think you're some kind of hero," she pronounced clearly even with her mouth full of blood, unimpeded by pain. "You think there's no one who can stop you. Because you're righteous. Or because of some shit like that, right? Too bad you're just too blind to see what's in front of your eyes."
The soldier didn't pull the trigger in response to her concerns, emptying the shotgun.
He kept looking at her as if waiting for something.
She didn't wait. She took action without hesitation. She didn't have to wait to be killed, wait for her next resurrection. Even without her legs, she could still fight. Besides, it was temporary.
Abigail grabbed the shotgun an instant before the soldier pulled the trigger.
She twisted it, causing it to discharge against the car next to her. The alarm began to sound.
Another irritating sound added to this chaos, this feast of blood and gore.
She had gripped the gun against one hand. She didn't need to use both hands, even in such a disadvantageous position as this. Neither to deflect the shot, nor to wrench the gun from his hands.
But there was a problem. That the soldier was too alive for her to take the shotgun from him.
Even she had limits.
Luckily, however, she had the power to rectify them quickly. Not all of them, but this one did.
With her free hand, she threw the knife.
The blade stuck between his eyebrows. It plunged deep into his skull and penetrated his brain, killing him almost instantly. Abigail took the opportunity to wrestle the weapon from him before his grip tightened.
The soldier fell along with his knife. The bladed weapon was stuck so deep inside his skull that it would be hard to pull it out. That is, if she had to pull it out. But she didn't need to. With a thought, she could retrieve the knife whenever she wanted. Not at the moment. At the moment she had a more suitable weapon already in her hands.
Abigail fired.
As if she had intended revenge, her shot blew off the left leg of a running soldier.
If so, it was a very poor revenge. She had shattered one, not both of his legs. And she hadn't even aimed the shot at the soldier who had done this to her. It would have been a waste, since he was already dead, but hey, it's not like human beings can't get satisfaction out of something wasteful. If so, humanity would have far fewer problems.
She fired a second time.
The head of one of the enemies, which protruded from behind the car where he was covered, flew through the air.
In thousands of pieces.
His mangled face, with him lying there on the ground, exposed to the sun, resembled what the crows might have left if they had been raging over his corpse.
Was she, then, the scavenger bird in this case?
She laughed sharply. Mocking them all and even herself.
She made a gesture to reload the gun, but the ammunition had stayed with the dead man. She had done it unconsciously, as if this were her gun. Anyone could make a mistake like that. But even a second could be vital in a life and death fight. It was the difference between life and death.
The time she had wasted trying to reload the shotgun was not going to be recovered.
Nor the opportunity to invest those precious seconds in walking away, crawling over her own pool of blood.
So, sure enough, she was punished for her mistake.
Another shot.
The bullet hit the shotgun, close to her hands, and made her drop the gun. It didn't matter, empty it was not a weapon. She supposed she could have cracked the skull of someone who had approached her, brandishing it as if it were a club.
But, for personal encounters, she had a better weapon.
There weren't that many left.
Her slaughter had sown the field with the blood and entrails of the fallen.
There was no way to find out how many she had killed here and now, even if she stopped to count. They were in too many pieces for that to do any good. However, there were only half a dozen soldiers left.
And there would be no surprises.
There would be no cavalry joining the decimated forces of this guard post.
Hers? It had already arrived.
To recover as quickly as possible, Abigail had forced her own body to prioritize her right leg. It looked deformed and strange, like the limb of some unknown creature that had crawled out of the depths of the earth. It didn't look like a human limb at all.
Not yet. But it could do its job, and that was enough for her.
Abigail leapt to her feet.
She was forced to lean against a tree to keep herself upright, as her left leg was not yet ready, it had barely started, because of what she had done.
Thanks to her quick reaction time, while she was unable to avoid all the shots, the bullets that hit her were not able to stop her.
The bullets that hit her hit her chest, piercing it and not her head, putting a temporary end to this little fight.
She wasn't literally growing a new pair of legs.
Her legs, which had been lying on the ground in a pool of blood, had disappeared without a trace.
The blood that had spilled from them as well, of course.
Her power wasn't regeneration.
When she was damaged, time flowed backwards to restore her to her "original state". That was the secret of her immortality.
But time, though flexible, had to be resilient.
That's why it took time. That's why it went piece by piece instead of happening all at once.
Abigail brought the knife back to her hand.
Yes, she burned. She was like a phoenix. Dying and rising from the ashes, over and over again. And, like a phoenix, dead or alive she burned in her own flames. She was doomed to burn. I wish I could make them understand what immortality meant. What it was they were really looking for.
What the reward of their efforts and sacrifices would be, even if they won.
But she couldn't. She had tried more times than she could count.
Every time she failed.
This Organization was not the same as any that had preceded it, her previous enemies. Of course. But, to her, they were indistinguishable. Like the same person wearing different masks. She had no reason to think that anything would change this time.
No, the only path open before her was the only one she always had.
Kill. And kill she did.
The outcome had been decided from the beginning. The timing of the victory was the only thing in question. For time was on her side. Sooner or later, she would come out on top.
Abigail, both legs now in place, recovered (that included her pants and the boots she had been wearing), dropped down among the blood and corpses. Still clutching the knife tightly. In that wasteland of death, Abigail looked skyward as if hoping to find something there. Perhaps fallen souls flying into nothingness. The souls she had mowed down today.
Abigail laughed again, unwillingly.
Not knowing what she was laughing about, this time. It hadn't been that thought, but something else. The shadow of her thought. Something unknown to her. Unknown because she wanted it that way.
She didn't want to dig around and find anything.
Never.
She was tired, very, very tired. She was sick of everything.
So, as expected, she would not be allowed to rest.
She heard the call.
It wasn't some kind of metaphor, it was very literal. As for the person who was on the other side? That was, of course, Desmond. The only one with whom she had formed a contract at this time. The only one alive that she had wanted to offer as a sacrifice on his behalf.
The boy who had promised her that he would give his all for her, that he would bear the curse she carried on her shoulders if that was what she wanted.
And he hadn't lied.
She knew that without a doubt. If he had lied, he had lied to himself as well, he believed it.
But she didn't believe it. She thought she knew him well enough, even though they had never been together. He wasn't the type to lie. He was like an open book. Honest as a child. She had seen that innocence in his face, that night that now seemed so long ago.
They'd had a few conversations since then, since her return, and it had only allowed her to confirm what she'd thought all along.
That he was telling the truth.
That this was her chance to finally get off the hamster wheel she was trapped in.
Following that logic, she should be grateful to him.
She should do anything to please him, and to make up for what she was going to do to him.
Even though that was a crime that had no compensation.
That the boy would never forgive her, just as she had never forgiven the man who did this to her even after coming to understand him.
But instead, she ignored his call once again.
It was so hot. Her forehead, her whole body in fact, was pearly with sweat. And on top of that, now she had to endure this. As if an invisible hand was tugging at her brain.
They had found themselves in the middle of the remains of the normal lives of thousands of people.
It couldn't be called a battlefield, because there hadn't been a battle there in the first place. With no mages to protect the village, the Empire had committed a massacre with hardly any resistance. Their bond had been forged in the midst of that monstrous violence.
It was natural for him to be this violent.
It was natural that her ties with the lambs she wanted to slaughter were all violent, without exception.
In this case, there was another explanation. A reason why the call was even more violent than usual.
Quite simply, Desmond was irritated because she wasn't answering his calls.
More than irritated, scared, surely Exactly like a little boy looking for... looking for his mother. She should answer him. Right now, she no longer had the "excuse" of being immersed in a battle.
Like she hadn't had it dozens of times before, and yet she'd ignored him anyway.
Now?
Even she didn't know what she would do.
Abigail put a hand to her chest, squeezing.
She could feel his heat.
Desmond's warmth, that is.
Their hearts beat as one.
But they couldn't be further apart. Despite everything, they were as far apart as heaven and earth.
What was she going to do if she didn't want to talk to him, if she didn't want to do what was necessary?
Let him go, perhaps?
Spare his life by allowing him to die someday. Ha.
In that case, what would happen to the next one? What differentiated Desmond from the boys and girls she would have gladly offered at her own altar in the past?
Nothing, of course. It wasn't like he was some innocent kid who didn't know any better, even though his personality was similar. He was someone who had crawled out of a pit of corpses, in the metaphorical sense. Like coming out of his mother's womb.
That had been his rebirth.
Having seen so much death at such a young age, he had no problem killing. In fact, he almost seemed to... enjoy it. He was a good person, but he was not innocent, far from it. So why wasn't she suddenly not answering his calls? What was it that made her hesitate even though everything she had ever wanted was at her fingertips?
What was wrong, what had changed?
Her.
She had changed, not Desmond. The thought of making use of the key that would break her out of her prison, that would finally give her peace and freedom, made her feel guilty. She couldn't believe it, but that was the way it was. There had been no need to go round in circles. The answer had been right under her nose from the beginning.
And, because of that poisonous guilt, now she didn't even know how to look him in the face.
Pathetic.
Yes, just plain pathetic.
As if, although she had run a long way since the day of her own rebirth, she hadn't taken a single step since then.
Oh, right. Of course she was like that. He was a hamster stuck on a wheel.
How was she to move forward when she was nothing more than a hamster trapped in the wheel of life?
Once again, the call, the tug.
She knew she had to answer it. To reassure her, not to think the worst, because that's what he was going to think, it would never cross his mind that she was ignoring him on purpose. And to let him live blindly, imagining the most terrible possibilities, was also cruel.
So that he would not have to suffer in that way and also to strengthen her bond with him.
She had a great influence on the boy. Although she had never once acted like a mother, he saw her as one. Those little friends of hers were beyond comparison.
But just because that was the case didn't mean it would stay that way.
Nothing lasts forever.
Not even her, she hoped.
The bond they shared was like a plant. She had to water it and nurture it or it would wither. At least that's according to conventional logic.
But Desmond was a plant that had not only survived for a decade without the sun, it had grown taller, and its roots were more deeply rooted than when she had left him without looking back.
In fact, he'd done virtually all the work....
But that was telling herself excuses.
She wasn't going to answer, but not because of that. Just... because she wasn't.
Abigail closed her eyes, still lying on the ground amidst the filth, dirt and blood, and waited for the sensation to pass.