Chapter Eight - Out of danger
"Lucifer! "
Maou screams so loudly that his voice breaks on the last syllable, the cold air irritating his throat, but he is not ready to give up. On the contrary, the longer this search lasts, the more desperate and determined he becomes. From the very beginning of this search, he had decided to call his missing general by his real name, hoping that he would respond more quickly.
After all, they do not know in what condition they will find him. He's been out here all night, all alone, in the snowy, dark forest, and maybe he's injured. Maou shudders just thinking about it.
"Lucifer!"
Ashiya calls ten meters away from him. His tone of voice and his dark expression do not bode well for the missing person, but everyone who knows him recognizes the fear and worry he is floating in.
A few more eyes would be welcome, but Maou honestly didn't expect Emi to help them and the longer the search takes, the happier he is about her decision to stay at the cabin and take care of Alas-Ramus.
The last thing Maou knows is that the two of them are busy building snowmen. His cell phone rings at irregular intervals because Alas-Ramus wants to know if they have found her Lucifer yet, and it breaks his heart every time he has to disappoint her. And every time he pretends to be optimistic, he feels worse and worse.
Chiho supported them vigorously until it became too cold for her and her bladder began to squeeze. Stammering and with a red face, she said goodbye to them an hour ago and went back. Maou was reluctant to let her go because hope seemed to have gone with her.
With her cheerful, friendly manner, she always managed to lift him up again, even if she herself might not have noticed it.
Thinking of the teenage girl, Maou feels a slight warmth in his chest. She is a really good friend and he is very proud of her. It was a good idea for him to appoint her as one of his generals, even if the title is not worth much here. But she deserves it very well. And maybe this title will console her for what he will soon have to tell her: that he unfortunately does not return her feelings and sees her only as a good friend.
He has put off this conversation for far too long.
Unwillingly, he shakes off these thoughts. It doesn't matter now, he has to find his other general who is lost somewhere.
Determined, he puts his hands in front of his mouth like a funnel and continues to call his name.
"Lucifer!"
The only thing that answered him was silence. And as always, shortly after his call has faded, a squirrel or some crows make themselves heard.
But the voice he hoped to hear remains silent.
An icy gust of wind makes him shiver and he instinctively buries his hands in his pockets. In his right pocket, his fingers brushed against a small box and he involuntarily closed his hand. It's Lucifer's motion sickness pills. He found them under a bush two hours ago, and that's the only reason they know Lucifer took this trail. For the first fifty meters, the path was even cleared and paved, but now it is hidden under centimeters of snow, and the only thing that indicates that this is a path is the absence of trees.
It is really a mystery to him how Lucifer could choose this way when the road was so clearly in front of him. Maybe Chiho was right with her theory that he must have gotten lost in the snow furry.
Suddenly, something catches his attention out of the corner of his eye - a salmon-red spot in the middle of the white snow.
Maou has never been so happy about Ashiya's decision to buy Lucifer this parka in such a bright color - even though the salmon should annoy Lucifer because it is such a girlish color. Amazingly, Lucifer didn't seem to mind.
"Ashiya, I found him!"
Maou runs over to the blob of salmon-red so quickly that he slips and falls into the knee-high snow, but he immediately climbs back up and runs even faster.
"Lucifer!"
He is lying in the shade of a large maple tree, completely covered in snow, only part of his coat sticking out. If the coat had been a different color, it would have been overlooked, which makes Maou feel sick.
Quickly, he drops to his knees beside the misshapen hill and shovels the snow away. He exposes a shoulder, works his way to the head, finds the hood, and finally encounters wet, dark purple hair and a pale cheek.
At first, Maou's heart almost stops - oh, please, let's not be too late - but he pushes his feelings aside, leaving only the same rational coolness he always felt during a battle.
He carefully turns Urushihara onto his back and gently pats his cheek. Snow sticks to his hair, his eyebrows and even his eyelashes. The color of Urushihara's face is not much different from the snow, his lips are torn, bloody and blue, and dark shadows have formed around his eyes.
He already looks like a corpse.
"Lucifer, come on, wake up."
Indeed, Urushihara's face begins to twitch, and then his eyelids begin to flutter. A faint sound bubbles out of his lips, not much more than a breath, but these signs of life bring a happy smile to Maou's lips.
"Very good, hello, Lucifer."
Cloudy, purple eyes stare at him, no, stare through him.
But Maou forcefully pushes aside the oppressive feeling that overcomes him.
He puts his hand under Urushihara's neck and - with Ashiya's active support - slowly pulls him into a sitting position. Ashiya has sat down behind Urushihara in the snow and serves as a backrest to keep him from falling over. And while Ashiya wraps his arms around Urushihara from behind, Maou frees his face and hair from the snow.
„Lucifer." Maou gently puts both hands around Urushihara's cheeks and looks intently into these purple eyes. It is as if he is staring into the eyes of a dead man.
Urushihara's lips move, but no sound comes out.
"Lucifer, can you hear me?"
A short, almost imperceptible nod.
Ashiya behind Urushihara sighs in relief.
"We've been looking for you all morning, you idiot. What are you doing here, in the middle of the forest? The cabin is in a completely different direction. Are you too stupid to just follow the road?"
At the sound of his voice, Urushihara jerked as if he had forgotten that Ashiya was sitting behind him.
But at his last words, he let out a breath. It almost sounds like a sigh.
"We should warm you up as soon as possible," Maou explains, but makes no effort to put his words into action.
Lost in thought, he stares into Urushihara's eyes and the eerie feeling that something is completely wrong becomes stronger and stronger. He glances at Ashiya for help without being able to say what kind of help he is looking for. Somewhat irritated, Ashiya looks back. Golden brown eyes, now even more golden in direct sunlight because the pupil has shrunk to the size of a pinhead.
Urushihara's pupils on the other hand ...
And suddenly, memories of events flash before Maou's inner eye that he had not given much importance:
Alas-Ramus, with a cloth over her eyes, dangles with outstretched arms through Emi's apartment.
"Are you playing blindman's bluff, Alas-chan?" he had asked her amusedly.
"No," she had replied deadly serious and he had caught his foster daughter just in time when she stumbled. "I want to know what it's like when you can't see."
"Just ignore her," Emi said. "This is Urushihara's work. Make sure this little plaque stays away from her, or I'll never let her visit you again."
He thought it was exaggerated, but he did his best because the time with the little one was important to him. Even if it meant spending most of the days she was with him away from home. All the visits to zoos and amusement parks tore a big hole in his wallet, so Ashiya decided to sell Urushihara's laptop and even his beloved handheld game console and all his PC games. After all - at least according to Emi, who was only too happy to join Ashiya - it was all Urushihara's fault.
And Urushihara didn't even protest...
That had seemed strange to him at the time, but not enough to really deal with it.
Besides, he was much more worried about Alas-Ramus, who did not leave it at this one attempt. She never acted so obviously and especially not when Emi was around, but Maou regularly caught her holding her eyes with one hand and trying to reach for something with the other. Once she even groped down the stairs with her eyes shut. Luckily, she held on to the railing, but after that, he also spoke a word to her.
She looked at him reproachfully, as if he were the one who had done something wrong, but promised to stop.
But he could swear that she will continue these little experiments - in all secrecy, and he does not know what he can do about it without turning her against him. The last thing he wants is for her to say: "You're not my papa."
Maou takes a deep breath and pushes these thoughts far away.
It's all his fault that he didn't listen to his foster daughter.
If he had, this would never have happened.
After all, she said that yesterday:
„Papa, this is nonsense. He won't see the candle."
Why does he never really listen?
He removes his hands from Urushihara's pale cheeks and instead holds his index finger in front of his eyes, moving it from side to side.
As expected - no reaction. Urushihara's eyes continue to stare into space, their pupils much too big in this light.
Ashiya watches his king's strange behavior with irritation.
"Mylord-?" he begins, but Maou is already addressing Urushihara.
"Lucifer." His voice is as soft as when he comforts Alas-Ramus with a broken knee. "You got lost because you're blind, right?"
"What?" Stunned, Ashiya gasps for air.
But Maou, once on the move, continues to speak.
"And that's why you didn't protest when Ashiya sold your laptop and everything else. That's why you don't read to Alas anymore, but rather tell her a story. That's why you stopped giving her piggyback rides and playing horse. That's why you put the red clothes in the washing machine with the white ones. And Ashiya thought you were just teasing him. And Ashiya, do you understand now why he doesn't mind wearing the pink T-shirts as punishment? And why he doesn't mind wearing a salmon-red parka? And," Maou's eyes widened in sudden realization, "that's why you were so reluctant to come along."
"What?" Ashiya gasps, still stumbling over the word "blind". "Since when?"
And why didn't he notice? Unlike Maou, he and Urushihara sit on top of each other the whole day, except for the few hours when Ashiya goes shopping.
How could he not notice?
Urushihara sighs silently, he doesn't like this hallucination, everything feels so heavy and he is tired and just wants to sleep.
"Hey, Lucifer, stay awake, stay with me, Lucifer!"
Frightened, Maou strokes Urushihara's cheeks, but he cannot prevent Urushihara's eyes from closing again.
"My lord, are you sure I shouldn't take him from you? "
Determined, Maou shakes his head, his dark curls flying. He took Urushihara on his back and the fallen angel is a real lightweight, he hardly feels him. And as they walk in their own tracks, Ashiya leading the way and carefully guiding him around every obstacle, they make good progress.
Only his hands are uncomfortably cold and his ears freeze, but Urushihara needs the gloves and the warm woollen hat more than he does. Of course, Ashiya immediately offered his beloved king his own hat and gloves, but both are much too big for Maou, so he refused.
Even if he had not, he would never have let his faithful friend freeze for his sake.
"Lucifer? Hey, Lucifer, are you awake?" He pats his left knee. "Hey, I know it's hard and you're tired, but stay with me for a while, okay? "
Ashiya comes back to take a look at Urushihara's pale face.
"I think he lost consciousness." With his teeth, he pulls off his right glove and touches Urushihara's cheek. "He's still very cold, you should hurry, my lord."
With a determined expression, he holds out his hand to Maou.
"My lord, I don't have much magic, but together with yours, it should be enough to teleport you and him into the cabin, and every second counts for Lucifer. "
A possibility he hadn't thought of.
Maou doesn't have a free hand because he can't let go of Urushihara, so Ashiya puts his hand on his forehead instead.
"I'm glad I have you," Maou gives Ashiya a grateful smile. "I can always count on your help and your wisdom."
Embarrassed, Ashiya smiles back.
"Change his clothes and wrap him in a warm blanket, try to wake him up and give him something hot to drink. Keep him warm, I'll follow as soon as I can."
Maou nods, straightens Urusihara's dead weight on his back, then closes his eyes to concentrate on the flow of Ashiya's magic and teleportation.