Chapter 61: Frost’s Lullaby
The tension is so suffocating that the massive block of ice that is ’556’ cannot help but shiver and melt. Selene joked as she darted between ’556’ and Demond, the witch’s icy diamonds threatening to crack under pressure. In her years of living as an adventurer, from the cackling laughters of goblins to a sneezing chortle from the Tyrant Dragon, infuriation is a bygone emotion for her years, yet she finds herself sparing some for that shade-tinged smile of the Dragon inside the child’s body.
"Is this a threat?" If so, she will still refuse to give in. She would save the elf if possible, but cold logic dictates the town’s safety to come first. But judging from the sickening mechanical tilt that seems more robot than the robot herself, the witch could almost envision the serpent that coiled around 556’s body, and her chest toiled into itself for how she recognised it’s a mere observation of her unease that fed this serpent.
"Perhaps, perhaps not. Either would not have saved this child from <flooded>, and now with me using this child as the <main server>, her mind must have imploded with more junk data." The calm frequency of her voice measured not to the gravity of her word. The scientist knew full well she had more or less killed someone, but that someone remained a someone in her mind.
"Ah, so? For a coward only known how to hide behind another child, this mattered less than Rouen’s fate to you, right?" A snarky retort from the witch, as ice trail leaked from her bare feet again, a icefield that cackled the restaurant’s ground, and she could almost hear the elf’s screaming’s of loss for her restaurant, overlapped only by this serpent silent, tranquil and utterly unsettling smile.
"Indeed. I would claim myself as a coward, a coward petty enough to take ’revenge’ on the defeat I sowed myself." The doll’s neck creaked as she nodded, the wheel inside has rotted, the limbs a tattering clock of stutters and clutters. Soon, very soon.
"However, allow this scientist to clarify: I would never have allowed myself to kill innocents if the situations allowed. Another subject lost means another loss of growth that I need no monitors. Alas, this is not one of them."
The witch’s brows crackled at the almost subdued regret in her voice, the hypocrisy ever a stain in her pure, iced heart. "Then let her go. Her eyes are not for your leisure but to merely scratch up tea spills and cookie crumbs in the restaurant. Or are you going to eat your own word, Dragon Elder?"
The icefield seethed as it ferried Demond’s wrath, as the field meets the block of ice as if to purify the venom from inside a sealed monster. Coriel chuckled, the hoarse gear in the throat rusting her voice into a million pieces, like organic cogs splting into each other’s skins.
"I am not, but allow me a final word." Coriel’s shoulders loosened, and her head nodded as the purple hair tickled the plastic skins, the only sensation this child was left with before her death. "In an average lifespan for a <flooded>, 30 years would be considered a long one, and this child...has suffered through myriads till this point. So..."