I am almost out of breath and almost out of mana. Hungry, but not thirsty. I have found it at last, after taking wrong forks in the path several times. I counted seven dead ends, but, beyond this corner, Abeline sings her sad cries. The aperture goes straight down, somewhere in the union between a wall and the ceiling. It is wide enough for me to fall through, and if it weren’t… I’d be able to blow it open anyway. I could take my head out and peek, but I don’t want to see her. Beholding her disgraced form will be a hit I am not strong enough to shrug off.
Looking straight below, though, I have a more pressing concern. A young dragon has spotted me. He looks a bit like his father, with the dark green scales and the relatively narrow snout, but his eyes are big and blue, and his wings are tinted in a red hue that resembles Scarreladai’s main body color. He jumps and huffs and does a sound we could, for the sake of simplicity, call a bark. I suspect any attempt to find a way to climb down would result in a less than welcome inspection of my… culinary properties on his part. A fall from this height could kill me if I landed over the hard stone floor. So this dragon could aid me. I am a man, and men are supposedly the creation of Saho. If I survive the jump, I will have to thank Gadorprims for giving me such a good idea to kill his poor child. If I don’t, you would not be reading this because the diary —and the whole place— will be obliterated in the coming explosion.
The explosive sigils embolden me, make me feel my mad plans are flawless. If I manage to live and cut Abeline down into a peaceful afterlife, I win; if I die and the resulting explosion kills Abeline, I win. The only losing situation would be the glyphs not being powerful enough to manage to do so. But I don’t think my trust in them is misplaced. If there is something I have a natural talent for, it’s blowing shit up.
Do or die, do and die; the “do” is the only part that matters.
----------------------------------------
I stabbed a whelp. It was as big as a small truck and there was no pretense of it being a puppy. In this and all other ways one can think of, it was a normal dragon.
I stabbed a whelp. It tried to swat me off the air as I fell, but, like all of its kind and age, it was clumsy. It didn’t bleed a single drop, for it was not the heart that I aimed for, but the head. The poor thing struggled all over the cave wet floor, half blind, as I held Jillsenbane well stuck into its skull, piercing his right eye, the bone deep behind and, then, its very self.
I stabbed a whelp. Fried his brain. Baked his brain. Boiled it, maybe. It was all because, not for even a second, not for a small fraction an illusion made me mistake it for a poor puppy.
No puppies. No madman to save or condemn them. Only a dead whelp, and its brothers and sisters staring from the edges of the room, hissing and snarling, scared and cautious.
And behind my back, Abeline, silent still, staring at me no doubt. Once I turn, once I face her, if the dragons are not yet aware of my presence here, the screams of desperation will traverse the very limestone of the walls and reach them.
Dripping water, the breathing and noises of the baby dragons panicking around, clattering of claws, chittering of teeth, the thud of a falling dragonling hitting the floor. Wan moonlight coming from the thin, long crack in the ceiling. I expected something else. I expected coming here would mark a… a highlight. That it would be the pinnacle of this tragic tale I am living. The hero finally finds out the ugly truth, enter reveal cutscene with Latin choruses booming solemnly in the background.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“Will you escape into a book this time, traitor of mine?” the weary, filed down voice of Abeline asks.
“No, no Abeline. Hello, I just need to document everything. A measure for sanity. The prescription of no doctor that I never could come up with, if not by accident. Hello, Abeline.”
“Hello, Francisco,” she giggles. Oh Lord, why does she have to giggle, “Still a child, after all this time. Still playing with the small game, like the coward you are.”
“There’s no need for cruelty, Abeline, there’s no need for… there is a need for cruelty, isn’t there?”
“Twenty-eight years, seven months, and twenty-two days ago, you abandoned me to my luck, to fend for myself. I have had all of this time to forget, to forgive. Instead, I spent the last twenty at least in cultivating the sour hatred the death of our love sown. Hatred! And now you, the object of my despise, walk in here, not mad, not under the dragon’s charm you seem to have finally broken, but like the coward you initially were? “
“I am sorry, Abeline, I am sorry.”
“An apology won’t make for it! begging on your knees neither will. I have hated you for so much longer than I have loved you. We swore our love would be eternal, but love is like warmth, and hatred like a stone’s cold. One of them has no qualms remaining forever, once a fire dies out.”
“I am sorry, Abel-abi, I am sorry, I have come to right my wrong. If you would allow me to—”
“Do you have any idea, Francisco, the tiniest speck of an idea, of how long twenty-eight years without sleeping, twenty-eight, almost nine, years of uninterrupted conscience and suffering, are? Eternity is shorter. They are not a lifetime or two, a lifetime has dream and nightmare, has the sweet bliss of sleep, it has days neatly separated, from each other, canned away. Tomorrow is another day in a normal lifetime. I exist in a perennial today. And my other eye, it still sees. I saw you licking her muddy shoes all this time, I saw you kiss her like you once did me, I saw you act like her lapdog. I have become very good at reading your lips, twenty-eight years are a lot of time to do so. I saw you suggesting the new decorations. The baby massacre. I witnessed the confection of the shower. So traitor, monster, once-ago-loved Francisco, behold me! You deserve to see me and what you have done! Nude, stripped of the dragon lies, behold me.”
“Abeline no! Give me time, give me just—“
“Twenty-eight years, seven months, twenty-two days and some hours you had already! You want more? Sure, take your sweet sweet time. Time of the living, time with dreams, time that kills you a little. For seven years I called out your name with the hope you would hear me and come back for your heart, your life, your Abeline. Even if you had to kill me, a last kiss, devoid of lips, but a kiss in the end, would have sent me away forever happy. For seven months afterwards I wept in murmurs, lamentations not loud enough to wake the newborns. He won’t come, he won’t come, he loves the dragon now, he loves the lady now! For seven days on end I hollered without interruption. I need not to breathe, as normal lungs are a thing of the past for me. A memory. So it was a single scream, a seven-days-long cry that you, in your world of illusions and ladies in red dresses and palaces did not hear. For seven hours afterwards I cried disconsolately, for seven minutes I tried to wake up from the nightmare, and for all the infinite remaining sevens, I loved you so much and so deep and so dearly it burned and melted my innards. But no matter how long the rational numbers may be, there is always an eight after every seven, and time knows, Francisco, time knows!”
“Painful number, the seven…” I begin, realizing the cruelty behind the words of Scarreladai.
“… as it is composed of several ones,”
Silence, at last, a second of silence to recollect my thoughts.
“Hey, have you finished transcribing?” she says now.
“About to, Abeline, about to.”
“Then hurry, turn and behold Scarreladais tour de force, Francisco. Don’t worry, I am not a shy virgin anymore. Well, yes, the second adjective remains true I guess, but shy? no. Bear, bearless coward, witness to your dear Lady’s masterpiece.”