I Don't Care If I Die

Keith came to in a bone-deep chill. His whole body shook, and nausea surged up in him.

“U-urgh…”

His eyes flew open. He braced a hand on the dirt floor and retched, but nothing came up.

He was wiping the saliva from his lips when he flinched, as if struck by lightning.

“Pai… Pai!!”

She lay unconscious in the spot he had dragged himself out of. A robe had been laid over her, but underneath it she was naked. Only then did he realize that he had not a stitch on himself either.

“Kaff! Kuk… What is all this…”

His head was one great jumble, and a headache rose in it fit to split the skull. Biting hard on his lower lip, he went to Pai and set a finger under her nose. Faint, but there: breath drawn in and let out again.

“She’s alive.”

He gathered the woman up into his arms, his eyes brimming.

“She’s alive. Thank God…”

A wet, torn voice spilled out of his throat like a beast’s growl.

He spotted the clothes shoved into one corner. His, and hers.

“I’m sorry.”

He whispered it before he went over her carefully. Only when he was satisfied there was no visible injury did he dress her, and then shove his own arms and legs into shirt and trousers.

“Hah.”

The mess he had landed in was so preposterous that a scoff leaked out of him.

“Remember, Keith. Remember it.”

Mocking himself didn’t help at all. He swallowed a bitter smile and looked the labyrinth over.

Yes. This was the Great Labyrinth, and that went without saying. He had never laid eyes on the inside of it, but nowhere else on the continent poured out demonic energy thick enough to sting the skin.

“Hgh, hoo. Hgh.”

To a half-demon, vulnerable to demonic energy, every single breath was agony. Holding down the pain of his raw, burning throat, he grasped at the fragments of memory drifting through his head.

“…”

He had been in the middle of the hunting contest. Up to spotting the silver snow elk and giving chase it was all vivid; past that it blurred, as though fog had rolled over it.

“Was I put under a hex? Or else…”

‘Keith, my baby. Come here…’

Mother.

His mother’s voice had beguiled him. Was it a hallucination? Or had someone worked magic to lure him out?

“Don’t tell me this labyrinth has a will of its own and called me here?”

He noticed that the stretch he took for the mouth of the cave was packed solid with earth and stone. And beside it, the half-erased traces of a trap.

“…”

The wall under his palm was cold as a reptile’s skin. The place felt like one huge living creature. If so, then he and Pai were inside its guts.

Baby… Her…

“Kh.”

The voice. His mother’s voice came back to life, clear.

Her. Kill…

“Khuk… Don’t make me laugh.”

Kill her.

— Thud!

Keith drove his head into the stone wall.

“I said don’t make me laugh!”

— Thud!

— Thud!

He beat his head against the wall like a madman. Three times, four times…

A ribbon of blood ran down from his split forehead. The drops gathering at the tip of his nose fell to the floor, or ran along the contours of his face and worked in between his teeth. The bloody taste of iron.

As the demon’s tempting voice withdrew, his head cleared by degrees. The process was unclear, but the result was not in question. He was here, together with Pai. He would not have been in his right mind. Pai had tried something on him, contaminating both body and mind, and the method had worked. And in the aftermath of it she could not open her eyes.

“Because of me.”

That was exactly the reason. Kneeling like a prisoner, he stroked Pai’s pale cheek.

“You saved me.”

Which meant it was his turn now to save her.

“Hold on just a little longer.”

He lowered his head and pressed his lips to her white forehead. And then he gripped his sword.

“…”

Even in this moment the Great Labyrinth’s overwhelming demonic energy was eating into him.

“I have to get it done before I lose myself again.”

Red sword energy wrapped the blade in the shape of a flame.

“If I can only get out and call for help.”

The line of blood running from the wound on his forehead made his face look split in two. He licked the blood off his lips.

— Fwooom!

In an instant the sword energy spread to the size of a house and set his body burning. It felt as though the blood inside him were being heated. A heat boiling up hot enough to melt the skin!

His red eyes glistened with madness.

“Then I don’t care if I die.”

He swung the sword at the wall barring his way.

At last the sun went down, and Hamel moved. The search party was ashamed of having come up empty for three or four hours, but he did not think they had wasted their time.

“It’s a sort of process of elimination. Which is to say… if it’s not here and it’s not there, then in the end that means it’s over theeere.”

“Over theeere.”

Ardine had never heard the phrase process of elimination before, but her master’s explanation gave her the rough sense of it.

“So that’s why we’re going to the Black Forest?”

“That’s right. Keep your promise.”

“Okay. Lock on the mouth.”

Ardine clapped both hands over her mouth and let out a ‘Hyup!’ Hamel shook his head from side to side.

“Such is my lot.”

He hitched Ardine higher on his back and let out a deep sigh. Ever since the peanut had caught him going in and out of the Black Forest as though he owned the place, getting her to keep her mouth shut had been enough to give Hamel brain cramps. The cunning child even knew how to take hold of a weakness (?) and shake him with it. She had overheard the plan to go looking for Pai and Keith in there, and had thrown every tantrum in her arsenal to be taken along.

“You’re to stay as still as the dead. Cling to me like a shell to a turtle.”

“But Ari’s a living person, so how’s Ari supposed to be like a dead one?”

“Always has to have the last word, this one.”

Hamel hopped over the red rope and wrapped a mana shield around the two of them. The Black Forest was dark even by day, and at night it grew a good deal darker. A strong light might make them a target for beasts, so they made their way along the rough forest track by three small lights no bigger than fireflies. Mercifully, all that constant coming and going had taught him the safe shortcuts.

“Heave-ho.”

Now and then Hamel hitched Ardine higher on his back, and his form at it was thoroughly practiced. It left her free to unclench and look about the forest.

— Kee-gee-gee… Kee-kee-kee-kee-kik…

Whenever a spine-crawling cry reached them she caught Hamel’s shoulder in a tight grip and pulled, and each time he changed the color of the lights, yellow and then blue, until she was easy again.

And so they arrived at the Great Labyrinth.

“This is the entrance.”

“There’s no entrance, though?”

“…So there isn’t. Why isn’t there?”

It had been covered over with brush every time he came, but it had never once been blocked. Hamel swung Ardine down off his back and felt over the sealed entrance. Magic power registered, faintly.

“Tsk. Someone’s been up to tricks here.”

“Are mister and Pai in there?”

“Strong chance of it. Hmm… this is a fine piece of trap work. Not some small-timer’s prank.”

“Then wouldn’t it be better to tell people?”

“Looks like a northern-school circle, but an offshoot of it. Unfamiliar. I have seen it somewhere, though… hah, now where was it…”

“Master… Master! Should Ari set this firework off?”

“They’ve laid the traps double, no, triple! Not one person did this. At least two capable mages had a hand in it. Kuku… for all the good it does them. Shall we have a look, then?”

“Hah… Ari’ll handle it herself.”

Since the old days the mages of the southern school and the northern school had been desperate to tear one another down. As time went on, southern-school magic, which produced results more reliably, had become the mainstream, so even a mage as capable as Hamel had not handled a northern-school magic circle in a long while.

Their circles traded stability for a burst of momentary force, so they had to be broken with care. And on top of that, there were people inside the labyrinth. Break this one wrong, bring the whole area down, and there would be hell to pay.

“Ssssp. Somebody used their head on this one.”

Muttering to himself like a mad mage, Hamel bent all his concentration to the work.

— Rrrrrumble… Boom…

“Good. That’s the first trap done. Next…”

He was the type who, once absorbed, could not see or hear or feel a single thing around him. So he spent two hours in front of the Great Labyrinth, and was still muttering like a lunatic when the search party, following the smoke flare Ardine had sent up, reached the place.

— Krrrrumble… KRA-KA-KA-BOOM…

“O-oh?”

Just then the second trap, which had not budged an inch, started shaking like mad and coming apart. He had been pouring spells into it, granted… but this suddenly?

“H-has my power finally taken h— uungh!”

— Ka-thoooom-BOOM!

A wind of tremendous force blew out from inside the labyrinth, and a brilliant red radiance came pouring with it.

“…”

The wind died and everything around fell quiet. Hamel opened the eyes he had squeezed shut.

“…Found them.”

Before him stood a swordsman wrapped in flame.