Chapter 26 - Epilogue

In the evening, when Jorgen came to the bridge by Hero Valley, Bossia was already waiting for him. She looked down at the statues by the bridge, and when she heard Jorgen's footsteps, she turned to face him. She was no longer dressed as a Holy Light Cathedral guard, but merely as an ordinary cavalryman.

The scattered remains of the undertakers's armor near the corpse were missing. Jorgen guessed they had already fallen into some civilian armorer's underground warehouse. Bossia did not intend to retrieve them, but instead took the initiative to accept punishment from the Holy Light Cathedral - deprivation of her status as a Paladin, and insisted on refusing the mediation of the Archbishop. Subsequently, she became a cavalryman to be replenished to the frontline.

"When are you leaving?" Jorgen asked.

"Assembly in ten minutes."

Jorgen nodded.

"Do you know where you're going?"

"First to the military camp at the port for reassignment." Where do you think is better? "

"Uh, I haven't been to many places. The Western Plague? Hesleys? I don't know ..."

"Do you think I'll be afraid to go there?"

"That depends on you."

"No time left." Bossia looked at the statue's reflection on the lake surface, then stared straight at Jorgen, took out the thin cord hanging around her neck. "Look."

The golden key at the front end of the cord turned into a warm amber under the sunlight at dusk.

During those days in Moonbrook Town, Jorgen had Hisek make a fake key pendant and hung it around Bossia's neck. The real one was hung from her teeth, suspended in her esophagus, to ensure it would not be found by the undertakers, as Neil suggested.

Hisek could not accurately reproduce the key, and deliberately left some manufacturing errors to ensure it could naturally destroy the precision music box, which would collapse internally even with slight mechanical inaccuracies. Jorgen did not originally expect Hisek to agree to this, but the toy maker said that since his adoptive father's work could no longer be retrieved, he was very willing to give the killer a blow in this way.

Jorgen still did not understand the meaning of the old man snatching the music box. He vaguely felt that he might have destroyed something very important to the old man, and perhaps rekindled the desire to kill him, but that did not matter. As the old man said, Jorgen would bear all the consequences of his actions.

But he did not do this only to strike the old man.

"You decided to keep the key. That's great." He said.

"Why do you think it's good?"

"Do I need to answer that? It was left to you by Neil."

Bossia shook her head.

"It has no meaning anymore. I have always had too many illusions about him. Since he learned that song from the old craftsman, he must have seen the key. Maybe he found it accidentally in the folds of his clothes and lied to me. He recognized this key, stole it from Tortoro, and then to better protect it, gave it to me without telling me. That makes more sense, doesn't it? "

"Bossia, you ..."

"You know, don't you? Such obvious things, even I can think of them, and you wouldn't have noticed? Neil never trusted me. He just used me. Not just him, but the Archbishop too. I feel like I've been living in a dream for the past twenty-one years, everything I've seen is just what others wanted me to see. The dream ended when I heard Neil sing that song. "

"I don't want you to think that way, Bossia. You may have been a little naive before, but you don't have to completely overturn your ideas so quickly."

"The facts can no longer be changed. I woke up, Jorgen. From now on, I'm going to rely on myself. But I have to keep this key because you kept it for me. So don't treat me like a little girl who needs protection anymore, okay? Otherwise I will change my mind. "

Bossia clutched the key tightly, as if afraid it would disappear, and as if ready to tear it off and throw it into the moat at any time. She seemed ready to decide which action to take based on Jorgen's response.

"Keep it," Jorgen said. "Keep it. And you don't have to rely entirely on yourself. Fighting on the front line is teamwork. There won't be any more foolish adventures of me dragging you around..."

Bossia hugged him. Despite the icy armor,

it was still an embrace. Her face was buried in his chest, her hands pressed against his back. Jorgen hugged her back with his left arm, his right arm injury allowing him only to rest his palm edge on her shoulder. He did not intend to show anything.

"When I get back," Bossia said, "will you still see me?"

Initially, Jorgen wanted to say, "By then, I don't know where I'll be," but he immediately realized that Bossia's situation was the same, so he said, "Yes, of course." Extra melancholy was unnecessary, and he did not mind lying a little for it. One of the basic principles of investigation was not to develop feelings for the subject of protection, as this often led to failure of the mission. Jorgen never denied this, and now he was embracing Bossia, but the mission could be considered a failure, because in the end he did not understand the old man's motive for snatching the music box. That seemed fair, he thought.

After Bossia left, Jorgen tried not to recall the casualties of Stormwind's new recruits, which he knew all too well. A few days ago, when the old man asked him, "What do you really want," he answered, "I don't know yet." That was the truth. But now he knew that at least he wanted to see her alive again. Very much.

It grew dark. After the new recruits left, the gates of Stormwind closed tight. Hero Valley was very quiet, but there was always a faint humming in the air. It was hard to capture, like a song floating across the sea.