Chapter 184: Unlucky
The tiny light was expunged in the grand darkness. Feeling was meaningless. Taste was agonizing. His ears were filled with a high pitch. Pain turned to numbness, and numbness turned to nothing. Understanding was a concept that seemed so far beyond his grasp.
His eyelids shifted. His heartbeat began to pound in his chest. The pitch sound began louder and louder, till it was unbearable, till it was everything he could hear. At long last, Matty opened his eyes and saw the world.
The air carried a crisp freshness and his senses gradually returned. ’I’m...alive?’
Sound evolved into singing. He tilted his head up and saw seven shifting colours and equally colourful and lovely sparkles. The Ibong Adarna was healing him.
"Ah..."
He was still against the wall, the angle of his position granting him a standing position. Then, the world became all that much brighter when she appeared.
"Matty? Matty, you’re okay!"
Jules.
She spent all her time healing. In all the time she could have abandoned him, she didn’t. She stayed. For him.
Her concern for him was infatuating. He couldn’t look away, even as she helped him down to the ground. His eyes never left her face, which seemed so pretty with all the dirt and blood from the battle. He gathered up his courage and asked, "What, ngh, happened—"
An explosion erupted and a strong wind grazed them. A concentrated point of black energy rivalled a swirling ball of fire for a few seconds, before overwhelming it. The fire was extinguished and spiralled down to the ground. There was silence for a moment.