Prytaneum
Interlude
The Ash-Covered Girl
Part 5
Lili struggled to stay focused, knowing she couldn't afford to be distracted at a time like this, but her pounding heart made it hard to stay calm. The day had been a series of glorious rises and plummeting falls, blurring together until she could hardly make sense of it all.
Or maybe that was the drugs. Since they'd returned from the Dungeon and Percy's friend, the god Miach, had tended to her, she'd been feeling unsteady and off her game. Enough so that there had been moment where she hadn't been certain if everything she saw was real or if she was simply having a nightmare. One moment, she'd been beneath a church speaking to Welf, rambling thoughtlessly about hopes and fears she'd never told anyone, and then they were all coming true. Zanis had appeared, stealing her away as if to wipe away her hopes, and she'd prayed it was just a dream.
But it wasn't—that much she was certain of. Because…even in her wildest dreams, nothing could compare to Soma. She'd panicked when she'd seen it, tried to fight, attempted to escape, but it had been useless. They made her drink it and…
And it was as terrifyingly wonderful as it always was. The taste of it had spread through her head like nothing she could describe, the feeling simply incomparable to anything else she'd ever experienced—and that was the issue. It didn't devour her mind, didn't twist it into knots or dull her senses or make her see things that weren't there. And yet, even with everything looking exactly the same as it always did, it was hard to see anything but Some. Compared to Soma, what was anything else in the world? All that mattered was the next drink and what she needed to do to get it.
Zanis had promised her more if she did what he told her too and that had been that. It didn't make her like the man, didn't make her hate him even a little bit less, but how she felt didn't matter either. All she had to do was play her part and he'd make sure she had all the Soma she ever wanted without ever having to do a thing. Her friends would pay the price, a thought that raked at her but not for reasons she could understand at the time.
But then she'd seen them. They'd been there, right in front of her, storming through the gates of the Soma Familia for her. It was ridiculous, to the point that she had to be seeing things, that it had to be just a foolish, wishful dream. But again, it was the truth. Even as she played the part of a puppet, they'd spoken to her as a person. As if she were there, as if she could possibly resist the Soma.
"I wonder if that's true. Personally, I think it's the other way around—I think she'd rather die than have to drink your Familia's shitty wine anymore."
"Lili. Let's go back home now."
"No. That's not true—because I'm here to keep my word. Lili's leaving the Soma Familia tonight."
"…Lili. I'm sorry—I said I'd never let something like this happen, but I did. But now…I'm going to make things right. You haven't lost it, Lili; this bastard's not strong enough to take anything from you."
They were wrong. She was weak. She'd given in again to what she hated most, had fallen prey to the Soma as easily as she had the first time, and was helpless to resist. The mere thought of resisting had been painful and she knew wasn't strong enough.
But she didn't have to be strong for something like this—because even if she was weak and even if it was impossible and even if the Soma was the best thing she'd ever had…she wanted to go with them more than anything. Even the pain of giving up Soma had seemed meager compared to the thought that she'd let them down, that they'd give up on her, that she'd disappoint them now. That wasn't strength, because she wasn't strong, but—
"Lili doesn't want any more Soma. Lili just wants to go with Mr. Welf and Mr. Percy."
Before she knew it, she'd found herself alone on an empty street. There's been a flash of massive teeth, a rush of chilling wind and concealing darkness, and then she was elsewhere. A hand, Zanis' hand, fell limply from her neck, blood staining her robe slightly as it fell. Then there was silence.
But even in the dark alleys of the city, the eyesight of a Pallum was not to be underestimated. She could tell at once that something was different—that her shadow was somehow off. It began normally at her feet but stretched out massively even in the dim light, splitting into four limbs that connected to her feet at one end and seemed to completely cloak and alley wall on the other. A ways from her, where she assumed the head was supposed to be, red eyes stared back at her in the shadows.
Gods, that dog was creepy. But she was starting to think she might have been tired as well, given the way she seemed to be hiding in her shadow—or in that weird place she went while moving between them, perhaps.
She didn't have much time to think about it though, because in that moment, the ground had rumbled, shaking violently enough that she nearly stumbled even while standing still. At the same time, her heart seemed to skip a beat, stuttering in her chest as she knew exactly what the cause had been—but in that same moment, she'd realized something else as well. She'd recognized her new location and seized the opportunity out of simply desperation. Had Mrs. O'Leary somehow known where she'd been or sensed what she needed somehow? She wasn't sure.
But either way, it got her within several streets of Bom Cornwall's store. She'd worked with the Gnome frequently, fencing her stolen goods, and they had a…perhaps not a friendship—or at least, she hadn't thought so—but at least a mutual respect. She hadn't had time to explain in anything but the vaguest sense, hadn't had time to tell him anything like the full story when a second explosion had gone off shortly after the first, but he'd seen that she was desperate and gave her a chance she didn't deserve, not from someone who probably knew she was a thief. She'd given him the key to her gnomish storage unit, promising all the money she'd made from him was there and that she'd pay any difference, and then—
Well, then she hadn't had much choice in the matter. Mrs. O'Leary apparently grew tired of waiting and what seemed like the moment she had what she needed in her arms, she'd been swallowed by shadows once again.
And she'd reappeared in a ruin. The shattered faces of burnt buildings marked one side of the street while a pitch black field marked the other. Smoke and steam rose in thick clouds, cutting down visibility in the area severely, but not so much so that her eyes couldn't make out what was happening. In the blasted wasteland that had once been the Soma Familia's lawn, a fight was taking place that she could just barely keep track of, fought between Welf and Zanis—the latter of whom, she was somewhat glad to note, had clearly seen better days.
But then, so had Percy. So much so that she hadn't thought him anything but one of the many corpses that littered the street until Mrs. O'Leary walked towards it, completely ignoring the fighting. The massive beast didn't seem all there as she circled the body—as in, she looked more like a three-dimensional shadow of a dog than a real thing, her edges seeming to blur. She sniffed at the body for a long moment, made a sound she felt more as a shudder than actually heard, and began to slowly pace around him. She, Welf, and even Zanis didn't seem to be important to her at the moment.
As for her…rage had given her clarity, given her focus, and focus she did—on the man responsible.
She was weak, of that there was no doubt—too weak to be an adventurer in her own right. If she were to defeat a monster past the sixth floor, she could only do it with items and at a cost that far outweighed anything she'd make from their defeat.
But if it meant Zanis' death, it was worth damn near anything. She'd taken the shot with one of the arrows she'd bought from Bom's store, one coated with poisons from the middle floors. It was true that against a target with Abnormal Resistance, its effectiveness was somewhat questionable, but even if it couldn't kill him the way he deserved, it would at least slow him down.
He'd taken him, she thought, single anger cutting through the haze of drugs and alcohol. He'd taken he friend, like he'd taken everything else. Every chance she'd had at happiness, every hope of escape, every dream—
If she were strong, she'd kill him herself. She was too weak to do something like—but she'd kill him regardless. One arrow or five, Welf's sword or simple blood loss, it didn't matter. She wanted to rage at him, hurt him, shout and scream and tell him she'd had enough!
…Actually, maybe she did do that. Anything she wasn't focusing on as hard as she could seemed to blur, as if ready to slip entirely from her mind, falling to the wayside the moment she wasn't looking. She was doing her best to make her thoughts line up, to fight through the influence of what she was under and keep moving, but she wasn't sure how well she was doing. Maybe she was making a fool of herself right now, blathering on about something and getting distracted, but it made no difference. She just had to—
"Lili, wait! Help Percy! If you have Mrs. O'Leary, get him out of here—or do whatever you can!"
The words seemed to come to her from a distance and when they finally reached her ears they hardly seemed to make any sense. Percy…Percy was dead. Burnt worse than anything she'd ever seen. She'd brought restorative items with her, spent most of who she had to afford them, but even everything she had put together probably wouldn't be enough to fix everything that had happened to him—or at least, not enough to matter. His heart had stopped beating. She'd checked. Hadn't she? Either way, he wasn't breathing and he looked half-melted. Where would she take him? Where could she take him? No one she knew could fix something like this.
"That guy can heal from damn near anything! As long as he's alive, his magic should take care of the rest. If you can get his heart beating and keep it that way…!"
Was that true? Was something like that, actually possible? He was dead and then some; could even he recover from something like that? She'd heard of heroes and legends that died from far, far less.
But—
She was by his side. She didn't quite remember when she'd gotten there with how the world seemed to bend and blur when she moved and it made her wonder if Mrs. O'Leary's shadow traveling had been quite as seamless as she remembered, but she forced those thoughts away to focus on the matter at hand. Percy was hurt badly enough that she honestly wasn't sure where to start listing what was wrong, so she stopped herself before she could try. Instead, she reached into the small bag of items she'd been able to gather in a minute or so, with Bom's help. Several of the items were expensive arrows, but the rest were for just this situation—and of them, she drew out something special; an ornate bottle inlaid with intricate designs.
It was an elixir—the most powerful type of healing potion, said to be able to heal anything. Physical wounds, mental exhaustion, fatigue, poisons, and much, much more. Not only that, but even for an elixir it was of of the highest quality, made by the Dian Cecht Familia. Just a single one cost five hundred thousand valis, the majority of her life savings.
It was her trump card, in a way—and something she was betting everything on now. It was an absurdly expensive purchase by anyone's standards, costly almost as much as a house, but the moment she'd heard the explosions…she'd say she'd feared the worse, but the truth had beaten her imagination. It had taken her years to gather the money she'd used to buy this single vial.
And if it worked, it would be more than worth it.
Opening the elixir, she carefully poured half of it on Percy's chest and face and watched in muted awe as the flesh on both began to mend. Not fully, unfortunately, but enough that it almost looked like skin in places. Taking the rest of the bottle, she carefully lifted Percy's head and brought it to his lips, slowly trickling it into his mouth. He wasn't breathing and while he didn't swallow he didn't have any kind of gag reflex, either. She worked with that as best she could, letting the elixir run down his throat, but when it seemed to gather in his mouth, she put her lips to his and blew into his mouth to force it down.
Odds were, that was probably dangerous, but she'd have to hope the good of the medicine outweighed the bad. Once the elixir was down his throat, she separated and gave him more, repeating the process until the vial was empty. Praying to any god that would listen, she hoped that it was doing its job, before setting him down and putting her hands to his chest. She had more potions, but she couldn't leave his heart still for too long, especially since she didn't even know how long he'd been down for. If nothing else, the elixir seemed to help clear her head a bit, letting her focus a bit more easily, even as the rest of her mind trailed off in the direction of fairy tales—of a kiss that awakens one from an enchanted sleep or cures blindness or whatever else. It was a ridiculous thing to think about at a time like this but—
Wake up, Percy, she thought after pumping at his chest until her arms started to burn—but she just took that to mean it was time for another potion. She went with a High Potion this time, praying it would help at least a little, and brought it to his lips again before helping him swallow.
Wake up, wake up, wake up—