Last Born Of The Desdemona

Chapter 427 – Just Be [T30 Bonus Chapters 2/7]

"Have you ever seen a weapon having children?" Isolde asked, and Cassius looked at her blankly, his mind still not catching up.

Isolde knew what she was doing was unwise. She knew that after all this time without seeing each other, she could have waited until later to share her insecurities. To share the worries that had been plaguing her, following her like the crimson flies of Vorn.

She knew. But she couldn’t.

The weight of all she had gone through was finally settling down on her after she was in a safe place, and it was immensely hard to bear it in silence.

So Isolde confessed.

"What...do you mean by that?" Cassius asked, his heart pounding so hard that he could feel it beating painfully at the edge of his throat. "A weapon? What kind of question is that?"

"I am a weapon, Cassius." Isolde tightened her hand around his. "I only found out recently, and only after I entered the Fractured Land. So many things have happened since then that I don’t even know how to make sense of them anymore. But I am a Soulblade, Cass. A fucking Soulblade."

Cassius’s mind spun with utter confusion and disbelief. ’A Soulblade?’

"I am not human, like you thought, or even like I thought," Isolde continued, though her voice had begun to tremble. "And you know what that means, Cass? It means I have a master. It means there is someone, or something, in this world that could control me because I am nothing but a weapon. And I have been living with that fear ever since I found out."

"How can you be a Soulblade?" Cassius asked, his voice so low that Isolde had to quiet her own heavy breathing just to hear him.

Only then did she realize that she was crying.

And somehow, realizing it only made the tears fall harder as she looked at the man she loved and saw someone completely lost.

Isolde had never seen Cassius so disoriented before. It was painful to witness.

"I don’t...know." Her voice cracked as she lowered her head. "I don’t know how I am what I am. I don’t even know who or what I am anymore. I have been holding myself together because I needed to survive, but I can’t...I can’t do it anymore. So many things happened, Cass. So many fucking things. I even started having memories of a life I don’t remember living, and...and..."

The words refused to come any further.

There she stopped. She couldn’t bring herself to tell Cassius about the man inside that memory. That man she knew nothing about, and didn’t want to know anything about.

But the very fact she refused to say it, to be transparent with Cassius, afraid of what he could believe, made her cry even harder, and impossibly embarrassed to look at him.

Suddenly, the meeting she had been waiting for all this time, the thing that mainly motivated her to survive, became disastrous because of her.

So she fell silent, holding Cassius’s hand with stubborn tightness, as if afraid he might leave her at any moment.

After all she was—

"—a Soulblade?" Cassius whispered, making Isolde shudder.

He didn’t say anything for the next couple of seconds, and Isolde didn’t lift her head back up.

"I am truly surprised about this revelation. Hell, I don’t even know how to take it." Cassius said honestly, "but tell me, Isolde, what exactly do you fear?"

He held her chin and slowly lifted her up, making her teary face stare at him. His heart sank.

"Do you fear that you can’t have children because you are a Soulblade? Then don’t. Having no children never killed anyone, like I said. And besides..." He forced out a grin. "I refuse to believe there isn’t some Artifact, potion, or just about anything in this world that could allow a Soulblade to have a child. And if nothing like that exists, well, who cares? I’ll create it myself."

Isolde’s eyes widened slightly at his words.

"So I don’t think you have any reason to worry about that."

Then he reached up and began wiping the tears from her face.

"And if you’re worried about having a master who could manipulate you..." Cassius smiled darkly. "If even I can’t manipulate my wife and order her around, then I’d like to see anyone else fucking try. Whoever or whatever that thing is, it will not survive."

His thumb slowly wiped another tear from beneath her eye.

"And the fact that killing your master would kill you too? I’ll find a way around it. No matter what it takes, and no matter what I have to do to find it."

Cassius still wasn’t done. His dark smile softened as he looked at her.

"And if you’re worried about who or what you are, then don’t look too far."

At that moment, he remembered what Ananke had once told him, and suddenly, he understood what she had meant better than ever.

"You are Isolde Amaris," he said, "the daughter of a troublesome woman and a worthless father, the older sister of an annoying woman who is apparently now the girlfriend of my uncle..."

"W-What?" Isolde blurted out, her eyes widening.

The Last Born laughed, but continued. "...you are the older sister of Cassie, the young girl who looks up to you as her role model. You are Olympias of Fangs, and you are the dangerous woman who killed the Crimson Daggers sent after her. And finally, you are my soon-to-be wife."

"You...you still want to? You are not afraid? You...don’t doubt me?" Isolde fired off the questions without pause, her heart still gripped by a fear she couldn’t quite shake.

"Of course I’m afraid," Cassius admitted. "But everything you’ve told me sounds like something we can handle with a bit of difficulty."

"Many difficulties."

"Same thing, darling. And I’m used to it." He chuckled and shrugged. "One more won’t hurt."

"I don’t want to burden you more than you already are, Cassius. You already—!"

"Do you see yourself as a burden?" Cassius tilted his head. "Because I don’t see you that way. I see this as my responsibility, as the man who chose to spend his life with you. If you come to me with your fears and anxieties and I run away the moment they become difficult, then that would mean I was never sincere about my feelings in the first place. It would mean I’m a coward."

He looked directly at her as he placed his hands on either side of her face.

"I am many things, Isolde, but I am not a coward. And I lie about many things, to many people, but never about my feelings for you." His thumbs brushed gently against her cheeks. "And stop acting as though I’m the only one who will have it hard. You just killed someone because of me. And I have no doubt that you’ll be targeted because of me again in the future."

Isolde couldn’t disagree with that. Eyeless had targeted her because of Cassius, after all.

And strangely enough, realizing that made her feel better.

She had been thinking of herself as a burden Cassius would now have to carry. But Cassius was her husband, or rather, very soon, he would be.

So she wasn’t a burden. She was his responsibility, just as he was hers.

He would take care of her, just as she would take care of him.

He would kill for her, just as she would kill for him.

They were in this...together.

"And hey, it’s actually kind of cool that my wife isn’t human," Cassius suddenly said with a chuckle. "Let’s imagine a scenario where I’m being held captive by some ice-loving monsters..."

"I don’t like where this is going."

"...and these bastards tell me they’re going to kill me and serve me as a feast to their cannibal brothers and sisters. Do you know how much I would envy you?"

He looked at her as though she were suddenly the greatest thing in the world.

"Because who the hell is going to eat a weapon? You just got yourself a cheat code, Isolde. Now I don’t want to be human anymore. Let’s be weapons together!"

Isolde looked at him as though he were a fool. And he was a fool.

But she also knew exactly what he was doing. He was taking this thing that had made her feel less human, less normal, almost alien to herself, and treating it as though it were simply another strange thing about the woman he loved.

Which made this fool her fool.

So Isolde smiled, then she laughed.

"Your presence is more powerful, your eyes are like twin suns, and your beauty has increased so much that I already know I’m going to kill some women once you tell me what you’ve been doing while I was gone..."

Cassius’s heart skipped a beat at that last part.

"...yet you haven’t changed much to me, Cass. You are still the lovely fool who fell in love with someone like me just because you played some game back on Earth." She laughed.

"Please, no." Cassius winced, "Don’t give them something to talk about."

"Who cares if they talk about it?" Isolde grinned as she leaned closer to him. "Who cares? Let them talk. And I am eternally grateful for it, Cass."

She paused, reaching up to touch his cheek.

"Just what would I have become without your love?"

"A Great Villainess?"

"Being your Great Villainess sounds better."

"Oh, does it?" Cassius cackled, and suddenly, wings of plasma erupted from behind him, woven entirely from golden lightning and making him look like an utterly insufferable angel.

’Gods, he is far too beautiful.’ Isolde was genuinely startled by the thought, and even more by the fact that it was simply true.

"Now that you’ve made me afraid," Cassius said as he pulled her into his arms, "how about we forget about who I am, who you are, the dangers, the difficulties...how about we forget everything this world keeps imposing on us, fly high into the sky, somewhere among the clouds, and just...be?"

"Be?"

"Yes. Be." He grinned. "Just be. I’ll tell you everything I’ve gone through, and you’ll tell me everything you’ve gone through, in detail."

Isolde smiled, wrapped her arms around him, and whispered, "Well then, husband. Take me to the seventh heaven."

Cassius smiled.

An instant later, his body blurred, and the two of them shot toward the heavens like stars returning to where they belonged.

"I hear and obey, darling."

—End of Chapter 427—