Ch.40
My arm was the worst of it.
The burns ran from my wrist to the inside of my elbow where I'd channeled Argonaut twice in the same hour, and the skin had that taut, shiny quality that meant the damage went deeper than surface. The Hestia Knife had taken a chip near the guard from punching through the Goliath's core. The cuts across my chest and ribs were shallow but long, parallel, from the Nightmare creature's tentacles on Floor 18.
Lili had my pack. Welf was carrying the salvageable magic stones in a sack over one shoulder and favoring his left leg where crystal debris had caught him during the Goliath fight. Mikoto walked with her katana across her shoulders, arms draped over both ends, and she hadn't stopped watching me since the pillar of light. Lefiya was with Riveria's group somewhere ahead of us on the stairway. Hermes was behind us. His hat was tilted at the angle that meant he was observing.
The stairway from Floor 18 to Floor 17 is steep. I kept one hand on the wall and climbed with my teeth set because the burn pulled every time I braced against the stone. The potion Ryuu had given me an hour ago was working on the cuts but it hadn't touched the arm yet. Potions prioritize. Deep tissue damage waits in line.
Hestia was ahead of me. She kept turning around every eight or nine stairs to look at me, confirming I was still vertical. Her twin-tails swung with each turn and her eyes ran the same circuit every time: my face, my arm, my chest where the shirt was torn, my face again. She wanted to carry something. She'd tried. I'd told her I was fine. She'd given me the look that meant she knew I was lying and was letting me lie for now.
"Bell-sama should let Lili carry the knife at least," Lili said from behind me.
"I've got it."
"Bell-sama's hand is shaking."
I looked at my hand. She was right. The fingers holding the Hestia Knife had a fine tremor running through them. Argonaut's aftermath. The skill drained more than stamina when you charged it that long, and twice in a day was past what my body had learned to absorb.
"It's fine," I said. "Adds character."
Lili made a sound through her nose that conveyed an entire paragraph about my judgment.
We made camp on Floor 12. Welf's leg seized on the stairway between 14 and 13 and he went down on one knee and said "Shit" with enough volume that it echoed. Ouka caught him. Mikoto was there before Ouka, her hand already on Welf's shoulder, steadying him from the side she could reach.
"We stop," I said.
"I can walk-"
"We stop, Welf."
He looked at me. The stubbornness was there but the leg was worse than he'd let on.
"Yeah," he said. "Okay."
Floor 12 had a wide chamber off the main route with a high ceiling and a natural spring in one corner that pooled against the far wall. The water was cold and clean enough. Chigusa filled canteens without being asked. Ouka checked the entrances. Lili organized the packs into a base camp layout that she'd probably learned from three years of doing this with parties who didn't deserve her.
Hermes set his back against the wall near the entrance and pulled his hat down over his eyes. The napping performance continued.
Hestia sat beside Welf and held his leg still while Mikoto applied a potion to the swelling. Hestia's hands were small and her grip was firm and she talked to him the entire time about how reckless his forging stance was and how he needed to stretch more and how she was going to implement mandatory morning exercises for the entire Familia. Welf endured it. His face was tight from the pain and he stared at the ceiling and let the goddess lecture him because the alternative was silence, and silence would have made the pain louder.
Ryuu appeared beside me.
She'd been on the perimeter. She was always on the perimeter. Her twin swords were sheathed across her back and the Hostess uniform was gone, replaced by the light adventurer's gear she'd worn during the Goliath fight. Her flaxen hair was loose and dirty from two days underground and her sky-blue eyes moved across me with the same efficiency she applied to mapping safe-zone edges.
"Sit," she said.
"I'm standing."
"You're swaying. Sit."
I sat. The rock behind me was cold through my torn shirt and the impact sent a pulse through every cut on my chest.
Ryuu knelt in front of me. She set a small pouch on the ground between us and opened it. Inside: bandage rolls, a vial of concentrated potion, a thin wooden spatula, a jar that smelled like eucalyptus and iron. She arranged them in a line on the stone with the precision of someone whose hands didn't need her brain for the sequence.
"Shirt off," she said.
I pulled the shirt over my head with my good arm. Getting it past my burned arm took longer than I wanted. Ryuu didn't help. She watched me work through it and she didn't reach in. She let me do it, and when the shirt cleared and I dropped it beside me, she picked it up and folded it.
Then she looked at my chest.
The cuts were there. Three long shallow lines from the Nightmare creature, red and crusted, running diagonally from my left shoulder to my right hip. The burn on my arm was blistered and tight. Dried blood in the lines between my ribs where the healing potion hadn't reached yet.
And the nail marks.
Four thin crescents on my left pectoral. Another set on my right shoulder. Deeper than the battle cuts, ironically. Already scabbed over but fresh enough that the skin around them was still pink and the shapes were unmistakable. Fingernails. Driven in.
Hestia's hands. The tent on Floor 18, two nights ago.
Ryuu's gaze passed over them. Her hands didn't stop. Her expression didn't shift.
Her mouth pressed flat and then released, and if I hadn't been looking directly at her face I would have missed it. Then her hands moved to the first cut on my shoulder and she began cleaning.
She didn't say a word about the marks.
Her fingers were precise. She dipped the wooden spatula into the concentrated potion and applied it along the first cut with measured strokes that followed the wound's direction. The potion stung. I breathed through it. She moved to the second cut. Same technique. Same pressure. The third cut ran close to my ribs and her free hand braced against my side to hold me still while she worked. Her palm was cool against my skin. Her fingers were long and the calluses on them were spread across the pads instead of concentrated at the base. She'd held her weapons differently from most fighters.
"The burns," she said.
I held my arm out. She took it. Her hands cradled my forearm and turned it so the blistered skin faced up, and her touch was lighter here. She studied the burn with her head tilted and her eyes narrowed.
"You channeled magic through this arm," she said.
"Twice."
"In how many hours?"
"Two."
The jaw again. The same tightening. "Reckless."
"It worked."
She uncapped the jar and spread the salve across the burn with her fingertips. Cool. The relief was immediate and sharp enough that I exhaled harder than I'd planned. Her eyes flicked to my face at the sound and back to the arm. She wrapped the bandage around the burn in a tight spiral, tucking the end under itself so it held without a pin.
Her hands moved to the chest cuts. She worked with the same precision, cleaning, applying potion, wrapping. Her fingers traced the edges of each wound to check for debris. Twice her knuckles brushed the nail marks on my chest. Both times her hands continued without pause.
She finished the last bandage. Checked the tension on each wrap by pressing two fingers against the fabric and watching the color of the skin on either side. Satisfied, she recapped the potion vial and closed the jar and began packing the medical supplies back into the pouch.
Her hand stayed on my side.
Left hand. Just below the lowest bandage, on the skin between my ribs and my hip. She'd finished packing with her right. Her left hadn't moved. Her fingers rested against me, light enough to feel each one, firm enough that the contact was deliberate.
She looked at the wall past my shoulder.
"You remind me of someone I served with," she said.
Her voice was the same as always. Formal, measured, the clipped elven diction that treated every sentence like a report. But the cadence underneath was slower. The words came out with spaces between them that weren't pauses so much as weight.
"She fought like she'd already decided to win," Ryuu said. "Before the battle started. Before the enemy was in front of her. She'd already made the decision, and everything after that was just her body catching up to what her mind had settled." Her fingers pressed against my side. "You do the same thing."
I looked at her. Her profile was clean against the cave wall, her pointed ears half-hidden by the dirty flaxen hair, her sky-blue eyes focused on a point past the stone.
"Was she your captain?"
Ryuu's hand stopped. Still there, still against my skin, but frozen.
"...Yes."
The word came out with a breath in front of it. She blinked. Her fingers shifted against my side, barely perceptible.
Alise Lovell. Captain of Astraea Familia. The woman Ryuu had killed with her own magic on Floor 30 because the Juggernaut had dodged and Alise had been standing where the spell hit. The woman whose death had turned Ryuu into the Gale Wind and nearly consumed her.
I knew the story. I'd watched the anime.
But Ryuu's face right now was a different thing from watching it on a screen. The downward pull at the corners of her mouth. The distance behind the clarity of her eyes. Five years of carrying a dead captain, and the carrying had become so habitual she didn't know how to set it down.
She'd just compared me to Alise.
I didn't say anything for a while. There wasn't a response that wouldn't have cheapened what she'd offered.
"Thank you," I said.
Her eyes came back from wherever they'd gone. She looked at me. The hand on my side shifted, and for a second I thought she was going to pull away, but she didn't. She adjusted her grip. Her thumb settled against the edge of the bandage.
"You should rest," she said.
"So should you."
"Elves require less sleep."
"You keep saying that."
"It remains true."
Her hand stayed for another few seconds. Then she pulled it away, gathered the medical pouch, and stood. She was gone before I could say anything else. Back to the perimeter.
The spot where her hand had been was cold.
The surface hit different after three days underground.
The sunlight through the Babel tower entrance was bright enough that I had to shield my eyes with my burned arm, which was a mistake. Hestia walked beside me with her hand on my elbow, guiding me. Lili was on my other side. Welf limped behind us with Ouka as a crutch, and Mikoto walked rear guard with her hand on her katana and her spine straighter than anyone else's.
Orario looked the same. The streets were full. Vendors were selling fruit near the Guild entrance. A group of kids ran past chasing a cloth ball. The city didn't know what had happened underground. The Black Goliath, the Nightmare creature, the pillar of light. Up here, someone was arguing about the price of potatoes.
Hermes peeled off at the plaza with his hat tipped and his smile in place. "I'll file the report," he said, which meant he'd file the version that served Hermes. He glanced at me one more time before he walked away.
Riveria's group had split from us on Floor 5. She'd taken Lefiya, who was conscious again but moving slowly. Lefiya hadn't looked at me as they left. Or she'd looked and I'd missed it.
The Guild entrance was ahead. Wide stone archway, the crest carved into the keystone, the double doors propped open.
Eina was standing outside.
She was off to the right of the entrance, against the wall, in her Guild uniform with her arms crossed and her glasses low on her nose. Her brown hair was flat on one side. Shadows under her eyes that I'd never seen on her before. She looked like she'd been standing there for hours.
She saw me.
Her arms uncrossed. She pushed off the wall. She adjusted her glasses with one hand, the reflexive motion she did when she was buying time. Her mouth opened.
She crossed the distance between us and slapped me across the face.
Her palm was small and the hit was solid and my head turned with it because I wasn't braced. The sound cracked across the plaza loud enough that two passing adventurers stopped walking.
My cheek stung. I turned my head back to face her.
Her eyes were wet behind her glasses. Her lower lip was caught between her teeth. Her hand was still raised from the slap, fingers trembling.
Then she hugged me.
Her arms went around my torso and her face pressed into my chest and her glasses dug into my sternum through the bandages and she was shaking. She was shorter than me by a few inches. Her brown hair was against my chin. She smelled like ink and paper and the green tea she drank at her desk and the stale sourness of someone who hadn't been home in too long. Her half-elf ears were pink at the tips.
"You reckless, irresponsible, rule-breaking-"
She was lecturing me into my chest. Her voice was thick and cracking and she was listing my faults and her arms were squeezing harder with each adjective.
I put my hand on the back of her head. The good hand. The one that wasn't burned.
She went rigid.
Then she pushed away. Hard. Both hands on my chest, shoving herself back, and her face was scarlet from her collar to her hairline and her glasses were crooked and her eyes were wide.
"I- that was- you can't just-" She adjusted her glasses. Adjusted them again. Smoothed her uniform. Smoothed it again. Her hands were still shaking. "The Guild takes the safety of its adventurers very seriously and as your assigned advisor I have a professional obligation to ensure-"
"Eina."
She stopped.
"Thank you for waiting," I said.
Her mouth opened. Closed. Her mouth worked on nothing for a second, and then her eyes went bright again and she looked away, fast, at the ground, at the wall, at anything that wasn't my face.
"You have to file a report," she said. Her voice was almost steady. Almost. "The incident on Floor 18 requires a formal debriefing. All party members. You can use Conference Room B."
"Okay."
"And you need medical clearance before your next Dungeon entry. The Guild physician is available until the sixth bell."
"Okay."
"And you-" She adjusted her glasses a third time. Her hands needing something to do. "You should have sent word. There are protocols for extended Dungeon stays. I had to hear from Miach Familia that you hadn't returned. Do you understand how- the reporting channels exist for a reason, Bell."
She said my name. First name, no suffix, no title. She heard herself do it and her ears went from pink to red.
"I'll file the report," I said.
"Good." She took a breath. Straightened her spine. Put her professional face back on piece by piece. "Conference Room B. Your party members should be present. I'll prepare the forms."
She turned and walked into the Guild with her back very straight and her stride very measured and her ears still burning.
Inside the Guild entrance, visible through the open doors, Misha Flott was standing behind the reception counter with both hands over her mouth. Her pink eyes were enormous. She caught my gaze through the doorway and her hands came down long enough to mouth three words, exaggerated and silent:
Oh. My. God.
Then her hands went back over her mouth and she turned away from the counter, shoulders shaking.
Hestia was beside me. She'd watched the entire exchange. Her blue eyes moved from the Guild entrance to my face and back again.
"She waited," Hestia said. Quiet.
"Yeah."
"Since yesterday?"
"Looks like it."
Hestia was quiet for a moment. Her bare feet were dirty from the Dungeon stairs and her twin-tails were limp and her white dress had a tear at the hem.
"Your face is red," she said. "Where she hit you."
"Noticed that."
She reached up and pressed her cool fingers against my cheek where the slap had landed. The touch was light. She held it there and then pulled her hand back.
"She hits hard for a receptionist," Hestia said.
Then she walked into the Guild ahead of me, her small feet leaving dusty prints on the polished stone floor.
Lili followed without a word. Her brown eyes flicked to my cheek, to the Guild entrance, to Hestia's retreating back, and her face stayed perfectly neutral.
I stood in the plaza for another few seconds. My arm ached. The cuts on my chest pulled under the bandages Ryuu had wrapped. My cheek stung. The sun was warm and a vendor nearby was still arguing about potatoes.
I walked into the Guild. Misha was still shaking at the counter. Eina was nowhere visible.
Welf limped past me. "So," he said. "That was something."
"Don't."
"The slap was really-"
"Welf."
"I'm just saying, as your smith and friend, getting slapped in public by your Guild advisor is-"
"Conference Room B."
He grinned. Limped through the doors. I followed him.