Too Much Confidence : Part 3
Subaru and Ram had returned to exploring the labyrinth-like mines once more after they woke up, but their advancement was slower than either of them expected. Ram was still in a bad state, and Subaru, at this point, wasn't fairing much better. They had run out of food as well as water, and Subaru had been forced to dial down the phone's brightness even further to buy them a little more time before it ran out of charge for good. With almost nothing left to carry, they had scrapped their empty bags and pouches to staunch their seeping wounds. He focused on drawing the arrows, rather than on their pitiful conditions.
"Done. This part is fully mapped. Dead end," Subaru choked out his words as he finished drawing an arrow on the wall. "Let's… search the other branch, we haven't checked that out yet."
Subaru had been doing most of the talking. While his voice was dry and ragged, Ram's had given out almost entirely. Rather than waste what strength her voice had left, she communicated basic call-outs with rough movements lit dimly by the phone. As Subaru wasn't carrying it, and its effective radius as a light had dwindled to almost nothing, he had to rely on sound to let Ram know what he was up to.
The pair began backtracking their way to the last intersection, and proceeded down a fresh path. After a few minutes of travel, they came to another intersection, when Ram suddenly halted- body taut. He didn't notice this immediately, and started marking another arrow, when the sound of Ram sprinting down one of the paths snapped him out of his robotic motions.
"What!? Ram! Wait!"
Subaru began running after her, but he couldn't catch up, let alone keep pace. Even given his condition, he wasn't exactly moving slowly- as far as he could tell, Ram was moving faster than most professional sprinters could manage, even on a good day.
'I thought she was injured!? Is she for real? What the hell is in that direction?'
The tunnel began sloping up, but the incline had no effect on Ram's pace. If anything, she was running even faster, all while Subaru slowed as he struggled against his physical condition and the increasingly steep path.
She could feel it! Yes, a creature on the same wavelength as her clairvoyance! Tapping into her last reservoir of energy, she launched forward, pounding her feet against the ground as she charged directly towards it. A dim natural light began to illuminate the tunnel as she approached.
'There is a way, Rem! Wait for me- I will save you this time, without fail!'
As the light reached its peak, though regrettably still dim, intensity, Ram burst into a large cavernous room, and momentarily slid to a stop. She glanced up, and fixated on the source of the light- a narrow opening halfway up the wall at the far extent of the cavern, barely accessible via some convenient rock formations. She advanced towards it as fast as she could force herself to move, pumping her arms-
Crack*
She stepped on something. It wasn't important. She needed to reach the exit. No other outcome would be acceptable.
Crack* *Crack*
More debris. It was getting annoying, but she wouldn't let it slow her down. Whatever she was trampling underfoot posed no threat to the reincarnation of the oni-
A sound echoed through the cavern, snapping her out of her single-minded rush towards the light. She spared a glance behind her to spot the source, and found a panting, barely upright Subaru calling out to her. Something was wrong. His expression was not one of relief or joy, but that of-
"RAM! ON YOUR RIGHT!"
-total terror. Her eyes followed Subaru's desperate gestures as she skidded to a halt and looked to her right. How had she missed such a thing?
It was a rat. An enormous rat. No, 'rat' didn't do it justice. If she was the reincarnation of the 'oni god', then this atrocity of nature was the true, original incarnation of the 'rat god'. She met its milky, beady eyes with her own, and instinctively started to back away from its intense aura. Its long, curved horn arced out from between its eyes, and twitched quickly and precisely about- its motions exaggerated from the spastic movement of the beast's head as it tracked her first with one eye and then the other. Its ears twisted rapidly, aiming independently around the room at both the intruders and phantom noises she could not detect herself.
It's alarmingly indistinct, bone white tail whipped up above it into view with a whistling sound, displaying an array of large, shimmering spikes that protruded from either side. The rat smoothly, rhythmically swished its tail like a metronome, as though it learned the gesture from its ancestral predator it had long since surpassed. Such an unnervingly graceful motion was in stark contrast to the sharp, impulsive movements that dominated the rest of its body.
It twitched open its mouth, though it didn't stop opening when Ram would have expected it to. Instead, the witch beast's upper and lower jaws continued to unhinge further and further apart, displaying row upon row of serrated, spine-like protrusions. She would have called them teeth, but teeth didn't vibrate back and forth in a blur faster than she could process. Teeth didn't split apart like scissors, or writhe as though they were fully prehensile.
The tail wasn't shimmering. It was covered in innumerable, shivering quills that covered the entirety of the tail like hair. The large spikes weren't shimmering either. They were convulsing, splitting, and snapping at her- just like the blades that lined its mouth.
But the beast's mouth still wasn't done opening. It kept splitting apart further and further, as though it was unzipping itself in front of her. The light from above caught the inside of its throat, and she felt her knees begin to shake at the sight of rings of yet more sharp pieces of flesh spinning around and around. Ring after ring, row after row, spinning up into a viscous, screeching storm that physically embodied the concept of consumption. Of [Gluttony].
The spines whistled in the air, propelling the stench of rotting, burning flesh towards her, and the beast let loose its cry. A scream. It screamed an echoing, reverberating scream of a thousand victims consumed over the last four centuries, forcing her backwards through sheer intensity. Her legs gave out, and she fell backwards.
Crack!*
As she lay on her back, her hands grasped hold of a piece of the brittle debris she had been crushing on her suicidal charge into the room. She brought her hand up to see what it held- time proceeding sluggishly as she did so.
A bone.
She cast her gaze around.
More bones.
Hundreds upon hundreds of shattered, pulverized human bones.
The beast had used its whirlwind of fangs to selectively strip its victims of every minuscule piece of meat possible. It crushed and snapped the bones apart, and used those same fangs to siphon the marrow from the bones, leaving behind a bed of brittle, hollow bones.
Whatever power she had mustered on her final charge towards the light fled her shaking body. It was funny. The light she had been chasing hadn't been metaphorical.
'Not… not like this. I can't stop here. I can't stop now. I-I… have to get out of here.'
Despite her pathetic state, trembling on the floor in front of an entity that, ultimately, defied description, she forced the rage burning in her eyes first into her voice and then into the rest of her body.
"I will not fail. You are not going to stop me."
The beast howled, and snapped its mouth shut in an instant, forcing a blast of rancid wind at her as she reached for her wand. Its tail whipped up above it, the quills' intensifying vibration piercing her ears with its high-pitched hiss, and sent a storm of shrieking needles hurtling towards her with a whip-like flick.
'Ah. I am going to fail again. Aren't I Re-'
Something smashed into her left side, pushing her away and sending her body skipping across the sea of bones. She looked towards the source of the impact, just in time to see a single quill tear through Subaru's left arm. Up close, she could see the projectile wasn't a simple, streamlined bolt, but was covered in dozens of smaller, backwards-angled spines of its own. As the needle settled into his arm, it's shrill vibration slowing even while it ate into his flesh, she saw those smaller spines press themselves forward- latching into his muscle and fat to dash any hope of clean extraction.
He continued sprinting towards her. Another spike struck him, this time penetrating fully through his left hand. He kept moving. Another glanced off his makeshift spear as he dropped his posture slightly, sliding forward to scoop her up with his undamaged right side while shielding his head with the blade of the weapon strapped to his back.
She watched the space behind Subaru as he continued his flat out sprint towards the opening. As she bounced about in his grasp, the boy managed to stay just moments ahead of the deluge of spines that followed instants behind his every movement. They coated the bones and soft dirt behind him with countless slim, sharp protrusions- as if a field of bony, bladed grass had spontaneously germinated from the piles of human remains littering the ground.
'Pathetic. Pathetic. Failing and failing and failing and failing-'
The witch beast, recognizing that it's aim with its tail quills was insufficient on its own, unhinged its jaws and barreled forward after Subaru, shaking the cavern with its lumbering mass that moved far too quickly for its size. Its bladed mouth rings sliced through the air with an ever rising, increasingly high-pitched whine.
'Pretending and pretending like I could-'
Subaru ran faster.
Yet the beast was getting closer. A completely unremarkable human boy had no chance to outpace a rat such as this in a race.
"Think, think, think-"
Another whistling volley of quills forced him to break off to the left, away from the path leading them to safety.
She listened to him mumble between his frantic panting and his pained gasps as he fled from the maw of the beast.
She saw his eyes latch onto something. At this point, they had traversed almost an entire lap around the cavern, now coming near to where they had entered in the first place. Several tunnels converged from the depths along this wall, overlapping into a mess of thin stone spikes and gaping openings leading into the dark. The dim glow of an arrow Subaru had diligently marked before she had run off was visible far down one of the corridors.
"I know."
'I'm just dead weight, just like I have been-'
Subaru charged headlong into the tunnel even as the beast approached him, falling into a slide and picking up speed against the slick floor. She watched him leave behind crimson marks, any unprotected skin ablating and peeling off his legs. As they approached the arrow marked in the dark, Subaru, with his injured arm, brandished his spear and smashed the butt-end of the shaft into the ground, slowing them down enough to save them from colliding with the tunnel wall.
He pushed her in the opposite direction of the arrow, and braced his spear against the ground while the rat slid down the tunnel towards him.
"C-come on, Shovel-san, show me what you've got!"
She watched the witch beast open its jaws wide as it skittered down the stone towards him, intending to swallow him whole.
'No…'
"Push!"
Subaru yelled out as he pushed himself out of harms way using his spear's purchase on the ground, diving towards her instants before the rat's jaws smashed into the wall- it's writhing mouth spines screeching against the stone. The momentum of its body forced its jaws ever wider as it piled up on itself.
Gasping for air, Subaru scrambled up, turned about, and slammed his spear into the beast's unprotected eye, resulting in another ungodly scream as the rat reeled away while simultaneously trying to unflatten itself off the wall. It thrashed around in pain, struggling to move in the tight space.
Subaru retreated before he could get caught in its flailing and scampered towards her, again taking her up in his good arm, before he began sprinting down the tunnel. It was too dark to see much of anything, but from the dimly glowing arrows she saw marked onto the now left side of the wall, it seemed that he had decided to retreat back from whence they came. Back towards the collapsed tunnel, and the tiny crawl space that remained- the tunnel that had almost killed them the day before. If it saved their lives now, maybe she could forgive the stones' impertinence for-
Subaru stumbled, snapping her out of her thoughts, before he seemed to force himself back to stability with sheer will alone. He continued his all out sprint, pained breathing weighing on her as he struggled to move fast enough to take advantage of the time he had bought. Something wet dripped onto her side. Another blood-curdling, whistle-tinged screech echoed from behind them.
Ram watched the beast's now somewhat distorted form begin to come emerge from the darkness behind them, illuminated by the dim light of the metia clutched desperately in her grasp. It clumsily smashed about, still seeming disoriented from its sudden loss of an eye and the harsh impact it had sustained.
Another of the rat's war cries drowned out the sound of Subaru's strange footwear pounding against the stone as the beast finally regained its composure. In the murky darkness, she could vaguely make out the shape of the rat as it once more unhinged its jaws and charged after them. Subaru took another sudden turn, and began scrambling up what she realized was the pile of rubble from the collapsed tunnel- he had made it. They could still make it. Behind them, she could hear another grinding crash as the beast once more slammed into a wall, unable to turn nimbly enough to pursue them freely. Subaru untangled her from his grip and began trying to usher her through the tiny opening that was all that remained of the path further back. She began to crawl through the hole, but glanced back.
Something was wrong.
She looked at her side- what remained of her uniform now had a massive, and still growing, red splotch centered on just above her hip. She hadn't been injured there.
She looked up.
A quill was protruding from Subaru's left eye socket, still profusely leaking blood in time with his rapid heart beats and breathing. The grinding behind the ceased, and heavy pounding echoed down the hall as the rat aimed itself towards them.
"Your eye."
"No time! Go through!"
Behind him, the form of the beast was looming larger and larger-
She forced herself through the opening with another burst of borrowed strength, tearing her sight away from Subaru again bracing his spear against the debris pile in preparation for the rat's charge.
The ground shook. The still, dusty air of the crawlspace was forced away with another blast of rancid breath expelled from the rat's throat as it stormed forward. She struggled through the rubble and roots as fast as her body would allow. If Subaru used the same strategy as before, the rat would slam into the weak rock surrounding the opening, and likely cause the remaining passage to finish its already nearly complete collapse- burying her, trapping him, or both. She called out, panicking at the realization.
"Subaru!"
"SHAMAK!"
Black smoke exploded out from behind her, followed by the sound of the beast screeching and dozens of projectiles ricocheting across stone. She continued crawling forward, pathetically, as she pleaded.
"Subaru! Please! Please come back!"
She could hear his voice, screaming something unintelligible, followed by a horrible, horrible grinding noise, and then silence.
"Subaru! SUBARU! PLEASE!"
More silence. Ram reached the end of the collapsed section, tumbled down from the elevated exit, curled into a ball, and started to cry.
Clank!*
She looked up in the dim light to see a mangled shovel, now with a significantly shortened shaft, getting tossed roughly out of the hole. It was followed by a hand feeling around for grip, and then a human male's upper torso.
Subaru, covered almost entirely in both dirt and blood, forced his way out of the crawlspace. He grasped his weapon in his right hand, and began dragging himself forward on his stomach, trailing a ruined left arm and heavily injured left leg. He slid down the pile of rubble and gained a few feet of distance towards her, before stopping and rolling over, panting heavily.
"H-heh. N-nice work Shovel-san. L-looking a little chewed up there, t-though. Fuck."
Ram, still sobbing, crawled over to where Subaru laid, sprawled out on his back, and tried to help him sit up.
"H-hey Ram."
He chuckled.
"Kept you waiting, huh?"
"S-subaru."
She choked back her tears for a moment, steadying herself as best she could, and started shakily performing first aid- clumsily ripping strips of cloth from their already shredded clothing and bags to try to bandage his wounds. As long as she didn't attempt to remove any of the projectiles, she hoped she could at least prevent him from immediately bleeding out.
"The dumb rat… I jammed up its blender teeth bullshit with Shovel-san. That seemed to do a number on it. I don't think it's dead, but I did take its other eye. Only fair to do a two for one deal. I think it's out for now."
"Ssss…"
"I'm p-pretty sure it can't force its way through the hole, so we are probably safe for a bit- at least enough for you to figure out what we need to do next."
She lost grip on a knot she was tying, her tremors momentarily overwhelming her hands.
"No, I c-can't. I failed."
She attempted to tie the knot again, but slipped. She gave up, settling for tightly wrapping the grimy fabric so she could move on to another wound.
"That was just a m-mistake! We all make mistakes even when it is easy not to, and right now n-nothing we are dealing with is easy. You can't let it get to you- I am s-sure you can figure out something."
"No… I can't! I keep f-failing and failing and failing!"
She moved her focus away from wounds near the quills- she was afraid that her tremors would cause her to bump into them and cause even more damage.
"W-we're alive, aren't we? I am sure you can come up with an amazing plan, I mean you're our Nee-sa-"
"DON'T CALL ME THAT!"
She fell back away from him, her entire body shaking. She couldn't force her limbs to obey her commands any longer, instead once more succumbing to her sobs.
"... Right, s-sorry, I forgot about the rule…"
"NO! NO, NO, NO! It isn't about that! It isn't about that at all! L-look at you… your eye…" Ram said, while unsteadily moving back towards him. She weakly brought her shaking hand to the side of Subaru's face, careful to not actually touch him.
"H-heh, no can do-"
"STOP! Stop joking around! This isn't a joke! It's my fault! I failed! I failed! Look at your eye! Your head! You hand! Your arm! Your leg! You are injured all over! I couldn't protect you! I got you into every single one of the situations that injured you! By the dragon, ordering you to light that fire could have blown off your hands! Or killed you! Killed me! After all that I said, after all that… I don't deserve to be called that. I don't deserve to be treated that way!"
Subaru opened and closed his mouth in silence, unable to find words to answer her with. He hadn't known Ram for very long in the scheme of things, and had known 'this' Ram for an even shorter amount of time. As someone who almost exclusively relied on trial and error, intuition, and luck, he found himself completely unprepared to handle the normally unflappable maid having a breakdown in front of him. In his exhausted, injury induced stupor, as his ruined eye continued to seep blood down his face and onto his chest, he doubled down.
"You always t-think of everything, you'll c-come up with a plan, right? I'm sure of it. I believe in-"
"NO!" Ram's sobbing intensified as she interrupted him, yelling as loudly as her weak, trembling voice would allow.
"No! Why- why did you listen to me!? Why are you still listening to me!? Why are you putting up with me!? That man from the village was right! I am horrible! I speak like I know and can do everything, yet all I have done is walk around and almost get you killed over and over! I told you I would give you power when all I can do is take! I take, and I take, and I take!
"If Roswaal-sama neglected to provide me with mana, I would waste away and die. If Rem neglected to perform my duties, I would be rightfully declared incompetent and would promptly find myself abandoned- homeless, helpless, and destitute. If you had, even for a moment, taken my horrible behavior on its face and rightfully left me to my own devices at any point in the last few days, I would have been almost immediately killed! When I am this weak, to take on this mask of strength, to lie and manipulate you into acting as a tool and a shield… I am nothing but a fraud! I manipulated you into losing all hope! Rather than conserving my energy, and working with you as an equal, I berated you and beat you in turn until you lost your very will to live! I used all of my understanding of you, all of my wit, to intentionally attack every weakness and insecurity I know you possess to enslave you! I nearly drove you to suicide, and I was completely fine with it! If it saved Rem, I was completely fine with it! Worse, you were completely fine with it! You just took it! You took it, got back up after I pummeled you into dust, and had the gall to thank me! To ask me for help! For guidance!
"I criticize him for following that book. I judge him for what it and his desperation and his sickness drive him to do. I aim to reform him, as I know that what he is doing is wrong! Yet, put into a situation that is but a mere shadow of his, I fall immediately to using the same cruel, unforgivable techniques! I am no better than- no I am far, far worse…
"You have been doing everything since we fell in to this cave- no, even before then. You placed nearly all of the barrier stones without error, even using them to protect yourself when ambushed, while I just watched from afar. Without an ounce of magical talent, and an infinitesimal fraction of the strength I can wield, you faced and defeated multiple man-sized wolves while outnumbered and overpowered, while I struggled with an opponent I should have been able to defeat with less than zero effort. Those reinforcements came from the direction of the barrier stones I placed. In my haste and incompetence, I left myself open to them, forcing you to risk your life to save me. In my haste and incompetence, I squandered the vast majority of my mana collapsing the very ground we were standing on, putting us into this situation in the first place, even as you risked your life to shield me from the immediate consequences of my own moronic actions! At every turn, you have turned what should have been desperate, suicidal 'plans', that were little more than increasingly unfavorable gambles at your own expense, into viable courses of action. You either mitigated and protected me from the consequences of failure, or managed to even eke out a small victory!
"And you know what I felt? Do you know what I felt when I saw this powerless boy, who I had personally beaten into submission, driven to nearly take his own life, and broken into becoming a blindly obedient dog, surpass me? Defeat my enemies for me? Save me? Envy! I was envious of you. You, lacking in everything! You, who cuts himself peeling tatos, who can barely spell his own name! I didn't want you to save me! I didn't want you to do better than me! To be better than me! I wanted to be the one to save my sister!
"I told myself that everything was acceptable as long as I achieved my goal of saving Rem, but that wasn't even really true! I wanted to save my sister, to be her elder who could protect her and look out for her. I accused you of seeking glory when all you were doing was trying to motivate yourself in the face of insurmountable odds. Your antics were just that, harmless antics. You were never thinking of looking like a hero when it was actually time to act like one! Meanwhile, half the reason we are in this situation is because I was too focused on 'playing hero' for my sister to bother even looking around!
"I acted like I had everything under control. I acted like everything would be easy. But it is not that easy, and it was not that easy! And when I crumbled under the pressure, you, you pathetic, homeless piece of living trash, shouldered it all for me. You always charge in, pick me up, and carry me to safety! You faced that- that monster with a shovel that you picked off the ground! That you bashed into shape with a rock! And you didn't lose! You did more damage to it than it did to you! If you are able to do that, what does that make me?! How could I ever possibly justify or atone for how I have treated you?! You just wanted to help, and I belittled you, tormented you, manipulated you, and nearly killed you over my sense of pride. You are not the pathetic one, the disgusting one, the one less than trash!
"A-and look where we are! I don't know what day it is! Rem could die at any moment, and I have gotten us trapped in these mines! There are raw mana crystal deposits in the stone here that could explode if I so much as give the wrong spot a kick! There is a witch beast that I have never heard of before behind that pile of dirt! You think we are safe here?! Those teeth chewed into rock and mangled the metal of your shovel- how long do you think it will take to burrow through some dirt to us?! We are out of food and water. The only light source we have, the one that you brought, a memento from a home you say you will never be able to return to, that you can't replace or 'recharge', is nearly depleted of its light. You have been partially blinded, your left arm is so injured that we might need to amputate it just to limit the number of places you are bleeding from, and I have no idea what those quills are or what they are going to do to you!"
She seemed to force down her hysteria and cries of anguish as she fully collapsed onto his chest, only to continue quietly with an even more broken voice than before.
"Maybe- maybe when I was younger, when I had the strength I just pretend to have now, I could have justified my pride. But I- I don't have it anymore. With it, I was doomed to fall to its urges, and without it… I am nothing. I am worse than a shadow of my former self- at least shadows don't weigh anyone down! Rem will die because of my carelessness and complacency. I will die because of my incompetence. And you will die because of my pride. I- I manipulated you into this, and now we will have three corpses instead of two. You saved a candidate for the throne, only for your reward to be a thankless job, endless abuse at my own hand, and the chance to pursue your infatuation with a moronic, naive woman with the mind of child who does not understand the concept of friendship, let alone romantic love. And even that pitiful reward I have stolen from you! I replaced it with a cruel, pointless death in these accursed depths after you spent all of your energy, threw away every chance of your own survival, to preserve the life of an ungrateful, intolerable wench such as myself for a handful of hours longer! I do not have a plan, Subaru! I do not have a plan, I do not know what to do, I do not know where to go, and I do not know how to give you strength! You did not need me to give you strength! You never needed me! It… it was I who needed you. I- I'm sorry, Subaru."
Her words stopped, though her tears and quiet, choked gasps did not.
Subaru suddenly smacked the less injured side of his face.
"I deserved that."
Ram eyes opened wide.
"What are you doing!? You're-!"
"Sorry, Ram, but…" Subaru interrupted her with an apologetic voice.
"Are you dumb?" His tone switched to one of rebuke.
"Wha-?"
"No, no, you are dumb. Don't get me wrong, I'm even dumber, but that's not the point right now. You have no idea what is going on in my head, do you? You didn't drive me to suicide, I- not important. I would have helped you without any sort of manipulation! I wanted to help, not because you dragged me into anything or because you brainwashed me or whatever, but because I wanted to help a friend, just like I wanted to help Emilia with her insignia! You just needed to ask like a normal person! Gha, all of you, why-?! D-dammit!"
He coughed, spitting out fluid. She couldn't make out the color in the dim light. She averted her eyes, focusing on the ground beneath her while he continued his bizarre simultaneous beratement of both himself and her.
"I'm such an idiot! Sorry for dumping responsibility on you-"
"But it's my fault-!"
"No! Now you're gonna give up? I'm not gonna take that from you. It's the Natsuki family tradition to not take our shoes off when stepping into the heart of the matter, so listen up! Better late than never! You told me we weren't heroes, that we didn't have to perfect, all that stuff- and you were right! But you also said we would give it our all to help the people we care about, and I'm not done giving my all, and neither are you. Sure, you demanded that I let you take on all the responsibility, but it takes two to tango! I played along! What were you going to do if I had said no to something? Beat me up? Seriously? I mean, you could probably beat me up even now, but you weren't going to do that. I didn't commit to calling you on anything because I'm a coward who is more afraid of how you see me than dying of thirst and blood loss in your evil clown boyfriend's abandoned bat-cave! You don't get to steal all the blame for this- I'm a greedy guy, I won't let you. Best offer I can do is a fifty-fifty split."
He let out a strained sigh, grimacing as he readjusted himself against the pile of rubble he had propped himself up against.
"Hey. Ram."
She looked back up towards him. Despite the pain etched into his face, she could see the softness in his remaining eye even in the near-darkness.
"If you want to make up for being a jerk, help me up, would you? If we work together, we can definitely make this work. We can make it out of here. This isn't over. I even have a bit of a plan already, but I need your help with the details. I can't do this on my own."
She stared at him.
"Oh, and if we are talking about atonement- can we maybe nix rule 4? That's kinda a lame one, to be honest."
Despite herself, a raw, dry chuckle escaped her lips. Even though his pep-talk had primarily consisted of calling her an idiot and then insulting himself, she couldn't deny that he had a point.
"Sure, Subaru."
"Oh, yeah, by the way, not that I mind, but what happened to calling me Barusu? Aside from it being a blinding curse, a nickname from Ram is a badge of honor."
"Are you a masochist, moron? It was an insult. I didn't trust you, and you were incompetent, so you deserved an insult as a name. And then I… it doesn't feel right to call you that now."
"Aww, I'm touched, Nee-sama."
"Don't push your luck."
"But I'm all fired up after hearing your bullshit- I'm demonically inspired!"
"What?"
"Well, you know. It's like the demonic version of divine inspiration. Gods don't ever do anything. Demons, though, will laugh all through next year with you. Plus, it sounds pretty hardcore, right?"
"What."
"Well, I think it sounds cool."
A moment of silence passed.
"Come on, Ram, we aren't going to die down here. Let's go save Rem. Together."
She gave a weak nod.
"Alright. Seriously, though, please help me up. My leg is going kinda numb, and there is no way I am standing up on my own."
Subaru pushed her up from his chest, aimed the brightest smile he could muster at her, one that glinted even in the dark, and wiped the tears from her face with strained movements from his only functional arm and hand.
Ram's earlier dry chuckle returned, this time with marginally more mirth.
"You're an idiot."
With her remaining energy, she dragged herself to her feet, and helped him to his. They both limped over to the tunnel wall where they could sit more comfortably, before she continued the process of bandaging and attending to Subaru's various wounds. While his earlier vigor subsided significantly after he finished pulling her back from beyond the brink of despair, he nonetheless remained aware and focused, shifting himself around as best he could to make her job easier. She could tell, however, that the pain was eating at him. She could not fathom how the boy was still conscious.
After treating almost all of his wounds, she turned her attention to the remains of his ruined eye.
"Subaru… your eye injury is exceedingly dangerous. As it is, I can't properly wrap it, and, if you fall on it, you may very well drive the quill further in."
"Oh. A-any ideas on how to handle that?"
"I can't remove the quill without killing you. We would need healing magic to deal with the aftermath, and that isn't available right now. I am going to try to break most of it off so that it at least won't get worse if you get hit the wrong way… but I don't have a good way to do that. It will probably hurt."
"O-oh. There's a one sticking out of Shovel-san, maybe practice on that first?"
She sluggishly crawled over to Subaru's makeshift weapon, and indeed found a quill embedded towards the very end of the shaft, though at this point it was more like a particularly long sword hilt. She dragged it back over to be closer to Subaru's light emitting metia, and motioned for Subaru to pay attention. After taking up two stones of the appropriate size and shape, she positioned them against the quill.
"I want you to try snapping the quill in half. The stones I am holding should keep it from pivoting or moving too much while also giving you some leverage, but I want to make sure that that plan works before we try it on the one in your eye. If that doesn't work… I still have some mana left in me. I can try cutting it with a wind blade, but it will knock me out for quite some time. I need to be awake to actually perform any subsequent treatment. I am also reaching the point where I can't just fight through the mana depletion. If I run out completely, I will die."
"O-oh. Yeah, let's try to avoid that. Lemme just-"
He turned to his side, and grabbed several of the scrap bandages he had helped create while she had focused on his wounds. He wrapped his hand with them to provide some protection from the quill's additional spines, and indicated he was ready to test out the technique.
She pinned the quill in place with the rocks as best she could while using her leg to steady the weapon itself so that it didn't move when Subaru applied force. He cautiously found a grip that avoided most of the spines, said, "Alright, three, two, one-"
She watched as he applied sudden force to the quill… only for nothing to happen.
"Damn that thing is tough! I can't even bend it!"
"Well, we need to clear most of it away- if we don't stop most of the bleeding, you won't wake up tomorrow."
"I can try hitting it with a rock? That's always a good trick."
"I don't see why you can't try that."
They repositioned, and Subaru found a particularly sharp shard of hard stone amongst the clay-like rubble.
"Again, three, two, one-"
He slammed the stone as hard as he could muster into the protruding part of the quill, and it snapped off with a sharp crack that reverberated down the hall.
"It was embedded in wood as opposed to flesh, but I did feel like it tried to move under the rocks, and I was able to hold it in place. Hopefully that holds true for the one in your eye."
"Right. This is going to suck."
"Sorry, Subaru."
"Just make sure I don't brain myself doing this, Nee-sama."
She watched him bring a weak smirk to his face.
"No promises."
She brought her two, slim stones right up against his ruined eye socket, trying to find a spot that steadied the quill enough to prevent movement, while also allowing Subaru to break off as much of the projectile as possible. She watched him grimace as the quill moved slightly under the stones as she applied pressure, fresh blood leaking down his face.
"H-hey, Ram."
"Yes?"
"I'm kind of confused on why this thing hasn't already killed me. Shouldn't it have gone straight through my e-eye and into my brain?"
"Ignoring the obvious joke of you just not having a large enough brain for that to be a problem, it looks to me like it glanced off some bone. These also aren't very heavy, and they seemed to be slower than arrows- I think it fully penetrating your hand was due to the lack of flesh as opposed to the power of the projectile."
"A-ah."
He sat there, quiet.
"Ram, I'm gonna be honest, I am not sure I can bring myself to hit this thing hard enough to snap it. It might be better for me to use my hand to hold one of the rocks you are holding, while you do the honors."
She considered this.
"I don't know, Subaru. I am better able to hold the quill in position since I can coordinate my hands better than if you were holding one of the stones."
"No getting around it, huh. Well, it can't be worse than getting your g-gut slashed open, right?"
He awkwardly chuckled, and she didn't bother responding to his rhetorical question.
"Alright, move to my left then so I don't accidentally hit you."
She shuffled over, and patiently waited for Subaru to muster the will necessary to inflict significant amounts of pain to himself.
"If this kills me, next time I see her, I'm telling Rem that you got my face all busted up."
'Odd choice of words… does he believe in an afterlife? Or maybe he still thinks this is some kind of vision.'
While she would normally have insulted his posturing, she was well aware that in this case his words were more for himself than anyone else. She went with the assumption that he was referring to some form of afterlife.
"Don't bother. I'll tell her myself."
He placed a scrap of leather in his mouth. She then watched him raise his trembling arm up above his head, rock in hand, as he took in a few unsteady breaths through gritted teeth.
He swung down, and the quill snapped.
"GHRRRRAAAAAA!"
Subaru thrashed around, screaming in agony, as she quickly pulled the rocks away from his face and tried to hold him down so she could survey the damage. He weakly attempted to bring his functional hand to cover and protect his destroyed eye socket as he sobbed and cried out, but she easily restrained him. Their plan hadn't worked perfectly, and the quill had definitely shifted somewhat in the socket, but she didn't think the additional damage would prove fatal. With fresh blood and tears streaming down his face, she began working as quickly as her exhausted limbs would allow, tightly wrapping the wound as he struggled under her. This fortunately didn't take long, and she soon had hidden away the gaping hole in his face that had replaced a soft, kind, brown-irised eye. Once she was done, she propped him up against the wall and collapsed beside him- fully depleted of whatever energy she had mustered for the procedure. She kept his hand in her grasp, though, to keep track of his pulse. After a few minutes of listening to Subaru trying and failing to regain control of himself, he finally quieted.
"H-heh. At least the rat c-can't see at all."
"Subaru… it was already mostly blind."
He stiffened next to her.
"Y-your kidding."
"Its eyes were almost completely white. I am not an expert on witch beasts, but…" she replied quietly. Unfortunately, she was not kidding.
He let out a joyless snort in response and slumped over.
"Fucking figures. Thank you for bandaging my eye. I'll handle the next part in a few hours after I rest some. If I'm gone when you wake up, follow the crappy marks."
"Sure. Good luck, and good night."
"Yeah. You too, Ram."
He shut off their dwindling light and fell into silence. They sat propped up against each other to ward off the cold, and Ram, in order to assure herself of his continued pulse, kept Subaru's hand in her own. She fell asleep to its steady, even beat.
Deep into what Subaru presumed was the night, he felt the presence of the light approach, jolting him from his half-sleep into a sluggish awareness. He opened his eye, training it on the glowing orb's lazy motions, and preempted its voice with his own ragged whisper.
"I was wondering when you would show up."
Oh? You were waiting for me? You aren't looking so great. An 'I told you so' just might be in order.*
"Yeah, whatever. It's not like whatever sketchy shit you are trying to pull over on me can be much worse than the sketchy shit I have already pulled over on my self."
Great decision! Follow me, if you would.*
Subaru, careful to extract himself from Ram's hold without waking her, forced himself to his feet, and began limping into the dark after the light, scrawling poorly formed marks along the wall as he did so.
'Here's hoping.'
You probably have noticed it but this chap is split into 3 parts, why not make 3 chaps you would say, it's because i would rather see chaps as ideas rather than see them as a number of words ,meaning that this chapter is a continuity that i can't really split, anyway for why i didn't publish a chap in a while don't be afraid i am not stopping this ,it's just that i had a lot of things to do ,moved counties to study... anyway you probably don't care, enjoy the chapter and leave a comment so i can improve,
Ps : special thanks to my editor and friend (some guy) it's his name for helping me in this chap i honestly think we managed to do better job than any of the previous chapters ,and i hope we keep improving.