The light was too bright. It hurt his eye even though it was closed. Someone was carrying him, and he didn't care who or where, so long as it was away from where he just was. Nearly as soon as he was pulled from the water he had begun coughing it out of his lungs, into which he must have inhaled it after all at some point on the way up. Each breath was difficult and painful with his chest tense and constricted from the cold, and his throat and nose burned too. Even after coughing again and again, he couldn't escape the feeling that there was something in his lungs keeping him from getting enough air.
He felt the ground beneath his back, and warmth all around him. Someone was there, loosely gripping his shoulder and brushing the wet hair back from his face. It was still too bright, but when he peered through a squinted eye, vision adjusting slowly, there was Troyard looking down at him. His dripping hair glistened in the sun, framed by an azure sky, and droplets gathered along his dark lashes, rolling off each time he blinked. As paradisiacal as his surroundings appeared to him, with its lush greens and blues, the gentle warmth of the fragrant air and the sounds of birds and rustling leaves, he was glad that this was not the afterlife. Somehow, Troyard had brought him back. He went limp against the ground, still gasping and coughing as he tried to make up for the air he'd been deprived of for too long.
"I...I'm sorry..." came Troyard's voice, and Inaho thought his ears must be deceiving him if not for the genuinely distressed expression that accompanied those words. "I wasn't thinking."
"Obviously," Inaho would have liked to retort, but only coughed instead. His breathing was beginning to steady, but talking was still out.
As he lay on his back, staring up at the cloudless mid morning sky, he realized that they must have been underground for quite some time. It had been evening when they took shelter in that cave, and fell through into the pit. Neither of them had slept a wink, either. Wherever they were now seemed like a good place to stop and rest, and so that was precisely what he did. He was exhausted enough to sleep for days.
Troyard was not finished, however. "I had to open the door to let some light in, or I'd have come after you earlier. It's a good thing you thought to stay put, or else I'd have had a hard time finding you."
He hadn't anchored himself to be saved - rather the opposite - but there was no sense in mentioning that to Troyard. He nodded once and closed his eye to rest some more.
"Ah, the tack's wet through," Troyard spoke again, apparently oblivious to the fact that someone was trying to sleep, and digging without permission through the pack that did not belong to him, "I don't suppose it'll dry in the sun?"
"No, it won't," Inaho replied hoarsely, "We'll eat it wet, and save the other provisions. It's been a while since we've had a meal."
Waterlogged sea biscuits were hardly a meal, but more than ever they needed to be careful with their food supply.
"Mm… but there's a lot of it. A pity it can't be preserved somehow. Ah, the gunpowder, too..."
Inaho sighed, and sat up. "We don't need that."
"You're getting up? You should probably rest. Oh, but give me your shirt, I'll hang it to dry."
Only now did he notice that Troyard had already removed the majority of his own clothing and was sitting amongst a cloud of blue wildflowers in nothing but his drawers. His first thought was to wonder when and why Troyard had been flogged, but remembering his manners, he did not let his gaze linger long. Troyard's past was his own business. Following suit, he peeled off his own sopping wet clothes, starting with his saturated boots, and allowed Troyard to hang the fabric articles in the branches of a nearby tree.
The sun felt warm on his skin, and along with a soft summer breeze, he was dry in no time. It was tempting to stay in this comfortable place, but there was probably some kind of danger here as well. They shouldn't let their guard down too much simply because everything appeared to be fine. Nightfall was especially concerning, but it was many hours away yet and for now they could rest and regroup.
"We should leave here before sunset," said Troyard, seemingly reading his thoughts. "This place is terrifying enough in the daylight, I'd hate to see what emerges in the dark."
Inaho glanced around again. Had he missed something? At the moment nothing looked particularly threatening, but then he hadn't been paying attention to his surroundings until just now.
Troyard stood up to hang the now empty satchel from the tree to dry. "You don't see it?" he glanced over his shoulder at Inaho, "Well then, don't stray too far, and don't touch anything. And I do mean anything , Kaizuka. I haven't had a chance examine this place thoroughly, but on the way here I noticed many deadly flowers blooming by the path. This little lawn is about the only place that appeared safe. The path led right to it, so we'll assume only the path and this spot are free of danger. Don't drink from that creek, either, I'll get water from the cave in a little while. It's likely filled with toxins from the plants here."
"You intend to go back into that trap?" If some accident befell Troyard, he doubted he had the energy left to rescue him.
"It shouldn't be dangerous now that we've made it through, and if the door hasn't been closed again. Either way, it's our only option. Unless," Troyard flashed him a wicked grin, "you'd rather perish from thirst."
"A tempting alternative, knowing that you would share in that fate," he returned moodily.
Troyard's grin vanished, and he rose to his feet with a sigh. "You're really no fun at all, Kaizuka."
"I fail to see the fun in contemplating a torturous death. Where are you going?"
"To get the water. I'm not risking that door closing, and I especially don't want to die if it's to be with you."
About an hour later, the two had set up a small picnic of soggy sea biscuits and fresh, ice cold cave water. Inaho stretched out his legs in the grass and leaned back on his hands, determined to relax and enjoy this respite even if it was a false paradise. Troyard sat a short distance away, cross-legged, biscuit in mouth, and meticulously separating wet sheets of paper - the remaining pages from his father's book, which he must have had tucked somewhere in his clothes and that now needed to be dried along with everything else.
"Everything here seems to require two to continue," Troyard mused, half to himself, "yet the second person is always in danger if the first is careless or has ill intentions. It's practically asking us to kill one another."
"If that's the case, I'd rather go on in front next time."
Troyard laughed cynically. "There's no need - I won't allow you to die, Kaizuka. I have never lied about that."
Whether that was true or not made him no more eager to experience another brush with death just yet. Besides, it was what Troyard was not saying that was most telling. "Is it actually that you don't trust me?"
"Hmm?" Troyard hummed through an amused smile, "I trust your desire to live. As long as that holds, you'll not let me die, either. I'm sure we can both agree that there are no illusions of affection between us, but rather that our individual interests are reliant on mutual survival."
Inaho gave him a tired look. "Then there's no problem. I will lead for a while."
"Very well. Don't run into more trouble."
Troyard's assumption that the same rules applied to everything in this place was hardly fact, and very likely false, but in light of their circumstances for now he would keep his suspicions to himself. There could certainly be a point where only one would be allowed to continue, and in that event he would do what was necessary. But then, perhaps Troyard was also keeping quiet on the subject, and intended to mislead him with false security.
"Kaizuka, don't move," ordered Troyard suddenly, in a deathly serious tone.
Inaho froze. "What is it?" he asked, and felt himself beginning to sweat as he followed the other's gaze downward. There in the grass by his hand was a snake. Before he could stop himself, he jerked away from it on reflex. It reacted just as fast, springing back in preparation to strike. Fully expecting fangs to sink into his flesh at any second, Inaho cringed and recoiled. He waited for it, heart pounding in his ears, but nothing happened.
"Kaizuka, you're actually an idiot," he heard Troyard say, and he looked up into two frightened eyes. The snake itself was nowhere to be seen.
Inaho sprung to his feet and looked around frantically. "What happened to it?!"
"I threw it. Over there somewhere, I think. It won't come back, it only attacked because you threatened it."
In all his life he had probably never felt so relieved as he did at hearing those words. He slumped back to the grass and put his face into his hands. "That was reckless. It could have bitten you."
"It did."
"... what?"
"How many times do I have to tell you that I won't let you die? Even if it's due to your own stupidity."
Inaho stared at him in disbelief. "What about your talk of 'mutual survival'? Your logic is terribly flawed."
"Nevermind all that. This quest can be tried over, it's been here for centuries and will be for ages to come, but I can't revive you once you're dead. In any case, I'm certain that woman will skewer me if I dare to return alone. You'll be the death of me either way, I suppose," Troyard added, and examined his arm with tired eyes.
"Nothing you say makes any sense," muttered Inaho. "The bite, is it serious? Will you-"
"I don't know. My knowledge of wildlife is limited, and I only saw it for a moment. But I think it's safe to assume that anything we encounter here is not to be taken lightly. We should probably press on and not waste any more time taking rests, or you may wind up trapped here alone."
Troyard's calm acceptance of his own circumstances whilst insisting that Inaho live on was quickly becoming irritating. Not that this was unexpected - by now he was used to the man doing things by his own whim, with what might have held true one moment turning to something else completely different the next. He drew a long breath and leaned forward. "Troyard, let me see it."
With reluctance Troyard relinquished his arm and watched in silence as Inaho emptied his canteen over the bleeding wounds, cleaning the area as best he could. Inaho then took the driest strip of shirt he could find and tied it snugly as a bandage. Troyard's arm had begun to swell somewhat, but it did not look too bad yet.
"I revise my theory," Troyard stated thoughtfully as he turned his arm over to inspect Inaho's work, "This place will kill us whether we cooperate or not."
"I don't see any reason for that. Whatever lies at the end of this may be trying to protect itself, but up till now there's always been some way out. If a path is not meant to be traveled, then why does it exist? That is why I believe we're missing something here. If the point was to kill us, it would have done so at the beginning. Why now and here? This garden is far too arbitrary if we view it as simply a trap, but if it were to have a solution, or a loophole, then it would align with this island's logic."
Troyard scoffed as he stood up to retrieve their drying belongings from the tree. "What kind of solution, exactly? A room full of antidotes somewhere?"
"It's not impossible. We have yet to explore the path ahead."
"Hah. Perhaps. If you're right, then I hope you are prepared, Kaizuka," Troyard ran a thumb over the bandage, lightly tracing fire red lines that had already begun to spread from beneath it, "because the price for a miracle will most certainly be hell."