The moon reigned over the night sky. Its light illuminated them and followed them like a spotlight.
Or like a great blind but accusing eye.
If it followed anyone for that, it followed him. There was no one who had to pay for more things than him, from among those who were fleeing by following the train tracks.
Of that, at least, he was sure.
The people he had killed... innocent boys and girls.
Someone else had moved his hands, someone else was responsible for those acts. Yes. But it didn't matter.
Because if the shadow had possessed someone else, it would have been less dangerous and surely they would have been able to contain the enemy without so many casualties.
Because, if he had been able to stop the shadow before that happened, how dangerous he was under enemy control wouldn't have had a chance to matter.
He had insisted on helping the other students, not just thinking of themselves.
As if even all of them together could weigh the same as Amy, or more. As if that was possible, or should be.
But he couldn't deny it.
As much as he wanted both, to save the students, to save Amy, he knew he couldn't deny it.
Amy had stopped the bleeding with magic.
However, she was still in danger. She could lose her arm...
And if that was all it was, nothing would happen.
If that was all it was, she'd have a new one in less than an hour. The worrying thing was that she would go into shock when she lost her arm and if she didn't get medical attention then she would die, she would die for sure.
So he should have concentrated on getting Amy medical attention.
The lives of those students shouldn't have mattered a damn to him.
However, because he was weak, because he was afraid of losing anything... even the ability to be able to think of himself as a good person, he had....
Fuck!
He had betrayed her.
As much as Amy had asked for the same thing he had, he had betrayed her.
Desmond should have gotten her to safety no matter what, even if it meant going against her wishes.
That was what a proper teammate would have done.
Better yet, a friend.
And, if that wasn't enough...
Without stopping walking, Desmond glanced back.
They hadn't gone that far.
Abigail was still visible. She was fighting. Fighting with all her might for his unreasonable desire. Even though she had nothing to gain by it, other than making him happy, but a lot to lose.
Not her life, but what made life what it was. Autonomy. She was at risk of losing her freedom.
If she failed to escape from them, she would be captured. They would experiment on her to find out the secret of her immortality. And yet, Abigail hadn't hesitated. She said it was okay because she was still here to fulfill his wishes ... That he shouldn't be afraid to be selfish.
He had betrayed her too. How else could it be called betrayal? Deep down, he had known that she wouldn't refuse if he asked her to.
Desmond had known very well, from the beginning, how things could have ended. But he had done it anyway because it suited him.
He had already lost the right to call himself a good person. No matter how many people he had saved tonight, Desmond couldn't call himself a good person.
Even if they thanked him, even if they called him good, Desmond would always know it wasn't true. Deep in his heart, he was nothing more than a worm who had turned his back on the person most important to him.
He didn't even have the right to decide. Not after doing such a thing. If she was so important to him, he should have chosen her this time and every time, without exception. However, he had chosen his momentary feelings.
On a whim. On a whim, Desmond ....
He watched Abigail lift one of the soldiers over the "head" of the machine. Those arms were short, so the soldier didn't reach very far overhead.
The soldier stood out in the black night. With that new armor in full effect, he looked like a cluster of lava.
The night was dyed red. But not the red of the armor. It was dyed with the red of the soldier's guts as Abigail tore him in half.
His two halves flew into the air. The blood, of course, also followed both directions. It was unnecessary to kill him that way. There were quicker and more efficient ways to dispatch an enemy, especially mounted on that war machine.
However, Abigail hadn't done it.
That was because she intended to spread fear. It was one person, machine or not, against an army. Abigail had to employ anything to simply survive. Even more so when her goal was to hold back that human tide so they would have time to slip away. Disappear into the night.
Mom. Oh, mom.
Mother. The person who gave you life. So there was no more appropriate word to refer to her. She was indeed his mother and he his child, even if they were not of the same blood.
And he had betrayed her. Dirtily... the woman who had given him everything. Unforgivable. It was absolutely unforgivable.
It was already too late.
■
It was too late to repent. No matter how much he punished himself, he couldn't go back and change his decisions. He could only continue down this path and accept the consequences.
Punishing himself was no way to seek forgiveness to begin with. At least not for him. He had the feeling that, since he was a disgusting person, he was punishing himself in this way so that he could feel better about himself. To assuage the guilt.
But what was he changing? No matter how many times he said to himself, "I did wrong," what did it change?
Nothing, of course. Desmond would continue to be that kind of person who had done that something for which he so desperately asked forgiveness.
He could only redeem himself by changing himself.
But, he wasn't sure people could change in the first place. It wasn't that he was looking for excuses, but what he truly believed. He wasn't behaving the way he used to. Meeting Christina and Amy, everything that had happened to him, had made him not behave like he used to.
But had he really changed?
Or had simply having friends unearthed a part of him that had remained hidden for so many years?
Maybe there was no such thing as change.
Not really.
Maybe what people called change was discovering something about yourself, and nothing more.
Abigail was still fighting. He felt certain that she wouldn't back down. Not in time, that she would spend too much time fighting to make sure they could escape. And she would pay for it by being captured.
Desmond looked away. He was so weak he couldn't even bear to look at her with those thoughts in his head.
He put a hand to his mouth. He felt like throwing up. He thought he was going to, but the feeling stayed inside him, burning him from within, instead of being expelled.
"Desmond. Are you all right?"
Christina's voice.
As if imitating her, many of the people around him did the same. There was concern and affection in Christina's eyes. Of course there was. In the eyes of those other people, however, there was only hatred and distrust. That, too, was natural.
It was most natural for them to look at him as a wild animal that at any moment could turn on them.
Even if intellectually they understood what had happened when the shadow took possession of him, that wouldn't undo the negative feelings toward him.
The human heart wasn't governed by logic. In the first place, how could he expect not to be hated if he himself was incapable of not hating himself? It would be foolish, of course.
Of course I'm not well, he thought.
He would never reply with that. It would be a very unfair way to treat someone who was only looking out for him. But he had to admit he felt the impulse to respond that way and had to stifle it.
"I'm... bearing... it... how I can." That was what he answered, in the end.
It wasn't the truth, but it wasn't as blatant a lie as it would have been to answer: I'm fine. Don't worry about it. It was good enough for him.
Christina nodded, not very convinced. He wouldn't have been able to convince anyone of that. Still, Christina didn't insist. She didn't say anything.
She didn't know what to say, after all. And it was really better that way. There was nothing she could say. Silence was not his ally either, but it was for the best, after all.
The only thing that could help him at this point was time. Or maybe not even that.
■
Walking. The train tracks seemed like they would never end.
They had already walked long enough to see and hear no sign of the battle.
The silence of the night had fallen over them like a blanket. They could hear the birds singing. The movement of branches, rustling. A silence full of sounds.
But true silences were extremely difficult to find.
This silence, apart from sounds, was full of expectations. At any moment, enemies could emerge from the shadows. They could come to finish what they had started. At least it was easy to imagine.
The tension that their lives were in danger hadn't left them. It hadn't even left him, or his companions. Even though they were all used to it. Well, as far as anyone could get used to something like that.
So it was natural that everyone was tense. That everyone expected an attack, even though there was no legitimate reason to fear that. They had already been left behind.
Even assuming they reached them, they would see and hear them coming. A surprise attack was impossible.
It wasn't something they should be afraid of.... But, as Desmond had said, the human heart wasn't ruled by logic. Fear was a perfect example of that. Fear was the greatest enemy.
It couldn't be fought. Nor was it possible to defend oneself...
Desmond looked into those eyes full of distrust and hatred. He returned their gaze silently, unfeeling.
Or regaining control.
■
Safety and dawn seemed farther and farther away than when they had set out.
As if they were taking steps backwards. As if, with each step they took, the night grew darker and deeper. A darkness that seemed unnatural. A darkness that could swallow them whole.
The darkness of a night without a dawn. At least, not a dawn they would get to see. Those kinds of ominous thoughts were haunting his head.
But the night was still quiet. Nothing had happened. Nothing was going to happen.
But... Just because they couldn't be attacked by the Empire didn't mean they were all out of danger.
He looked at Amy. She was at his side, leaning on his shoulder. Now he was the one helping her walk so Christina could rest. He had insisted on that. In fact, he had wanted to do it long before, but had to wait for his arms to finish healing.
But "helping her walk" was too mild a way of putting it.
The truth was, Desmond was carrying her.
Amy was clinging to consciousness still, but barely.
She had stopped responding to his attempts to make conversation and keep her awake some time ago.
Desmond only knew she was still conscious by the way she was breathing.
And because her eyes kept opening and closing, as she struggled to stay conscious.
If in the end she didn't succeed.... If he lost her for a reason for such a stupid decision.... Desmond wouldn't be able to take it. He was sure of that.
He wouldn't bear it, and he would never forgive himself.
-Amy.
He tried again, despite everything.
Well, not exactly trying. It didn't matter if she didn't answer him. If she didn't have the strength to answer him, fine. But at least Desmond could give her something to focus on.
-Amy, you'll get through this. I know you will. And we'll go home," Desmond said softly. Was he trying to convince her, or was he trying to convince himself? Both, he supposed. "There's only a little bit left. I just need you to try a little harder."
There was a lump in his throat. His eyes stung.
All three of them wanted that just as badly. But, for all he knew, they might be the only ones. At the very least, many wished the exact opposite.
The weight of their hatred would be bearing down on Amy like a curse.
Many had lost friends. Boyfriends, girlfriends. Loved ones, in general. So they would see his losing someone dear to him as justice.
As Desmond had said, he couldn't even be angry with them. Because he knew he would react the same way.
He knew that, if he had lost Amy or Christina or both, he wouldn't have cared that the person possessed wasn't to blame.
He wouldn't have cared at all. He would have killed the person responsible, the shadow and .... (he vividly imagined the edge of his sword crossing his own neck) And then, silence. Peace.
That's how Desmond would have reacted. So, actually, they were being good. As long as they only wished him ill, he could take it. Looks and words...
He had found great meaning in those things in the last couple of months. He had experienced the value of a lot of things he had considered worthless. However, the looks and words of strangers still meant nothing. That, at least, hadn't changed.
-You'll get out of this. -Was Desmond repeating himself? Was he not even sure of that? -We'll all get out of this. I'm still not completely sure about... this thing between the three of us, but I know that if one of us... disappears, the rest of us will fall apart. We need each other. Amy, I need you.
Christina was crying. He felt some shame at the thought that he had made her cry. But he didn't regret any of his words. Desmond had spoken nothing but the truth, as he saw it.
Had Amy nodded with intent, to show that she would fight and go onward, or had it been an involuntary gesture of her tired body, on the verge of collapse, which he had taken as what suited him?
He had no way of knowing. But he evidently preferred to think of it as the former.
That she was conscious enough to hear his words and understand him. And that she hadn't let go of her will to fight. That, too, was essential. The mind's health affects the body to some extent.
Desmond nodded as well. Holding back the urge to cry, for some stupid reason. Not that it mattered. At this point, he really should cry.
The strange thing would be if he didn't cry. But he still struggled to hold back the tears.
As if... As if he was struggling to stay strong in the eyes of his teammates, who needed him.
As if they couldn't see through him, no matter how hard he tried.
And as if that would do any good.
They kept going through the darkness. Following the tracks, going deeper into the darkness that had no end.
They were... making it. And how would Abigail be? How would she be now?
■
Abigail turned and ran.
She didn't intend to sacrifice herself. As she had told Desmond, she only intended to buy enough time for them to get away and then she would escape. So she didn't hesitate. It didn't cross her mind to keep fighting any longer, just in case.
She should have given them more than enough time to escape by now.
There was no way they would be caught before they reached the nearest town, even if the enemy marched right now.
So Abigail didn't hesitate. She wasn't such an altruistic person.
The war machine was damaged. But it could still move. It should serve her to escape from here. It was badly worn and had hardly any ammunition left, but it should hold.
And if it didn't, she would escape on foot. Abigail always found a way. Even after being captured.
But she wouldn't be content to wait after being captured this time. She wouldn't allow these soldiers to even lay a hand on her. If she was captured, it would take time for her to escape...maybe years, without help. She couldn't leave Desmond alone.
She had made promises. To him, directly, and to herself. She intended to keep them, whatever the cost.
Because, if she was caught, it would shatter the boy's life.
She wasn't talking about the pain of losing someone important to him. If that was all it was, it wouldn't be so bad. But Desmond would never resign himself. He would never accept her as "a loss".
He would look for her, wherever she was. And he would fight. That would be how he would tear his life apart. Fighting to get her back, maybe even succeeding, but destroying everything else in the process.
Everything he had built. Everything he deserved to have.
That's why she couldn't let them catch her.
Once the gates of the compound or the hole they intended to put her in were closed, Desmond's fate would be sealed.
His life would be forfeit.
She had already put him in too much danger by coming to help him. By letting herself be seen by so many people. She couldn't hurt him any more.
Abigail didn't want his life to be ruined like that. However, her ultimate goal was to ruin his life by putting this curse on him.
Luckily, it looked like escaping wasn't going to be a problem.
Abigail went along the train tracks. She did so in the opposite direction from the one Desmond and the group had taken, of course.
They couldn't catch her because they lacked the means to do so. It was that simple. I thought they had depended on that wizard who looked like a living shadow to transport them, to carry out this covert operation. So they didn't have any transports.
Nothing that could match the speed of their machine. Try as they might, they lost her in the end. Even those new armors wouldn't help them catch her.
Especially once she got rid of the war machine, which would eventually just be a hindrance, then get lost in the night.
If they hadn't stopped her before, they wouldn't be able to now either.
They had wasted their best chance and now she could feel freedom at her fingertips.
At that moment...
One of the machine's legs exploded. Abigail managed to keep the machine upright and moving forward, taking advantage of the momentum, for longer than she had expected. But every bipedal creature needed both legs. So, as expected, she ended up falling.
Abigail had been too optimistic. They had no way of reaching it, true. But that didn't mean they couldn't stop it in its tracks. Of course.
She smiled wryly, as if mocking herself, as the machine fell headlong to the ground.
The soldiers gathered around the fallen machine like crows waiting to feast on a dying body.
They weren't black, however. They were swathed in red, their armor running at full power.
Red crows.
Blood-soaked crows. Blood-soaked.
Yes, they had devoured corpses aplenty. But hers would not be one of those. She had only lost the war machine, she wasn't defeated....
No, wait.
Not even that.
The machine had fallen, but that didn't mean she had lost it.
It didn't mean she was practically helpless that she was being surrounded, that she was being left with nowhere to run.
She still had ammunition. Not much, but enough to kill a few people.
Cut a hole in the flock of crows.
And besides...
Abigail made preparations. Next, she emerged from the cockpit. Of course, the soldiers didn't waste a second.
They all turned their guns on her, tracking her, and opened fire.
She was hit.
Of course they hit her.
It would be impossible to dodge so many bullets fired in all directions, even if she had magic that allowed her to have superhuman speed.
Abigail was hit and fell, with bullet holes all over his body.
Her jaw was shattered. One bullet or several, it didn't matter.
Her throat was ripped open.
She wasn't dead yet, or maybe she had died and had risen already, but she couldn't move her legs. They were completely unusable.
The torso and arms could move freely.
The head too, though not without difficulty.
A thick red carpet was spreading under her body.
But...
She had done it.
If she wasn't mistaken, she had moved far enough away. And time.
Unlike the soldiers, gathered around the war machine, who even with her in that state were hesitant to approach.
Abigail smiled.
The only lipstick she wore was her own blood.
There was a huge explosion.
It took many soldiers with it, as she had planned, since they hadn't expected it.
It was a predictable move if ever there was one.
The first thing anyone in a desperate situation would have thought of was the self-destruct function.
That was what it existed for in the first place.
But humans were creatures of habit.
They were slow learners, in other words.
They all had to know what kind of prey they were after. That she was immortal and, therefore, dying could be part of a strategy.
But it hadn't sunk in, and this was the result.
Abigail had run to a certain minimum distance to minimize the damage to her person so that she could regenerate faster. To be ready to run again.
But also for something else.
To fool them, in case the habit wasn't enough.
To make them believe that she had been running for safety as any human being would do after activating a self-destruct mechanism like that.
And it had worked.
After the explosion, pain covered her entire body.
As if she was burning.
Her legs no longer hung limp.
Now she had no legs. Just bleeding stumps.
Well, for the moment.
Rather, for the moment.
Abigail spat blood and licked her lips clean.
She didn't laugh.
She was above that, but, besides, she didn't want to draw their attention back to her, she wanted them, at least for a few seconds, to be focused on the chaos and fear and aftermath of the explosion, in general.
Which were as follows.
A spear of black smoke was aimed at the heart of the sky. The grass on the road had caught fire and that would undoubtedly turn into a fire if they didn't get it under control.
Dead and dying people, with their guts out, everywhere.
Not all of them were in that state as a direct result of the explosion.
The explosion had ripped the war machine to shreds, sending its pieces in all directions at speeds that could only be described as lethal.
So, naturally, they had wreaked havoc.
Crushed, cut up.
Even bisected. From Abigail's position, she could see many who had suffered that fate.
Abigail felt no satisfaction.
Long ago (a long, long, long time ago), she used to feel satisfaction at being rid of her enemies. People who want to capture her and lock her up and reduce her from a human being to a test subject.
But not now.
Now, she simply felt tired.
She was tired of this game.
Of going around in circles, endlessly.
As she was tired of everything.
Of... practically everything.
She remembered Desmond. She remembered that she had to go back to him.
Her regeneration was ten times faster than Desmond's, even when Desmond was close to her.
They could shoot her in the heart and she would stumble, but less than a second later she would be ready to charge again.
Due to the explosion, she had lost both legs.
But that wasn't a serious problem.
She had calculated that her legs should regenerate while the chaos kept her enemies distracted, in that precious interval of time. That is, seconds.
Because it was impossible for their fear and confusion to keep them paralyzed for more than seconds.
She wasn't going to sit around, waiting for her legs to finish regenerating, though. In the meantime, she struggled to gain distance by crawling along the ground.
She wouldn't go very far like that. But hey, it was something.
Crawling made her think of the mage the two of them had killed in the forest. How he had crawled pathetically, trying to escape death... and how he had ended up.
Nonsense, she told herself. I won't end up the same way.
Everything went as she had predicted.
Her legs regenerated before the soldiers regained their composure, and she broke into a run.
They noticed her, then.
Some had lost their weapons, let loose by the force of the explosion, and rushed to retrieve them. Those who hadn't, immediately pointed their weapons at her.
They had filled her with holes only a moment ago.
However, most of those bullet holes had disappeared. And the corresponding bullet had been pushed out as a result of the regeneration process.
Abigail wasn't in top form, but close.
Did it hurt? Of course it hurt, but the pain was just pain. As long as he could move, it didn't matter how much his body hurt, even if it was pain so intense it would have broken a person of lesser mettle.
Abigail was hit with several bullets, again.
One of them hit her in the heart, of that she was quite sure, and for an instant she was not here but in the darkness that awaited everyone. In the nothingness and oblivion.
She kept running, without missing a beat, without even slowing down.
As if nothing had happened.
And she disappeared into the forest.
The kingdom of Albion was full of lush nature, carefully tended.
Because nature was a gift from the gods.
For nature was the expression of the soul of the gods on this earth, and should be treated as such.
That was what they said... while carving away others in the name of progress.
Anyway, she wasn't interested in such things. How they held that doublethink, whether it was right or whether it was wrong.
That had nothing to do with her.
Besides, they weren't the only ones struggling to balance their lives between two incompatible ways of thinking in order to move forward.
In the forest, it would be easier for her to make them lose her trail.
It was quite possible that these fanatics were not willing to give up, that they had the determination to keep fighting until there were none of them left. She wasn't saying she could kill them all. She was strong, but couldn't take on an army on her own, let alone with those special armors.
What she was saying was that that determination that would ensure they managed to catch her wouldn't matter if they couldn't find her in the first place.
Abigail's intention had been to win by running away from the start.
Not to kill them all. Not to do something she couldn't.
Unlike the attack on Desmond's academy, they would have done this for nothing. Almost all of the students were alive.
They had failed to capture either Desmond or her.
They had thrown away so many lives for nothing.
That would please Desmond, too. It would not satiate his hatred of the Empire, nor would it erase the scars of that day.
But it would help, if only a little.
Abigail was grateful for the opportunities to make her child happy that tonight had granted her.
Even though it could be said that Desmond, once again, had put her friends above her.
Abigail didn't doubt him at all.
She had faith. That those two could not harm or replace what was between Desmond and her. That Desmond was the special existence that would finally free her from her suffering.
The person she had been waiting for for two thousand years.
The person who would give her...
Freedom.
That was why she hadn't hesitated to do this, to fulfill his wishes, and she would never hesitate to do whatever it took for him.
She advanced through the trees, through the dark night.
Pursued by the red crows wanting to feast on her flesh and bones.
■
Half an hour or so later, she made it.
She threw them off and went in a different direction from the one they went to investigate.
She had lost them.
She had a clear path, now.
Now there was no one left to stop her.
She would inform Desmond of this immediately, so he wouldn't have to worry about her anymore. She was sure the poor little guy was having a hard time.
Tormented by feelings of guilt and fear that she had been caught.
Abigail would tell him she was safe and that, once again, that he didn't have to feel that way. She would make sure he understood, if that was even possible.
Abigail smiled to herself.
After all, her child was stubborn.
She supposed all children were like that.
After walking for a while, suddenly, for no reason at all, she felt pain in her chest.
It wasn't metaphorical.
There was an explosion of pain in the center of her chest.
What could have happened? Or... what was happening?
Abigail lowered her head.
There was an arm protruding from her chest. An arm as black as night. That is, as if it belonged to a shadow that had risen.
She grabbed that arm with both hands.
Abigail turned around and checked with his own eyes what he already knew.
That mage.
She didn't know how it was possible.
But even with fragments of her knife stuck and scattered all over his body, even though she had stabbed him all over his body with the same knife and then ripped him apart with the bullets spat out by the war machine's cannons, he was still alive.
He was still alive and well.
Abigail didn't know how that was possible, but he didn't care.
That wasn't the important thing right now.
■
She had been so close... but, without realizing it, victory had been snatched out of her hands.
And now all she could do, what she had to do, was to inform Desmond of this.
Not that they would soon meet again, even if not face to face, not necessarily, and that nothing had happened. She had to inform him that she'd been captured and that....
The shadow is still alive. She sent him that message with all her might. Be very careful.
Abigail? Are you all right?
Her child's voice came to her from miles away.
I'll figure it out, she told him, hoping that wouldn't turn out to be the first lie she'd ever told him.
"I've got you," he declared, rejoicing in his victory, the enemy who should be dead.
■
Desmond fell to his knees, bringing his hands to his chest, which was being wracked with pain.
Mom!
■
He withdrew his arm.
Abigail fell into a pool of her own blood.
She fell headfirst onto the grass, onto the dirt and dust.
Abigail used her last seconds of life not for herself, but for Desmond.
Don't come after me. I'll manage.
■
The second set of heartbeats in his chest stopped abruptly, and then Desmond knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that something had happened to her.