CHAPTER 42: VALUE OF A LIFE
—Its posture stooped low, the great, gold tiger glowers over the surroundings.
A giant tiger perhaps four meters in length. Viewing it as a four-legged beast, it boasted a body over twice the mass of the lions and tigers Subaru knew. Its forelegs and hindlegs are thick, its closed mouth unable to contain all its lengthy fangs, swinging its head to and fro in a display of those bloodslicked daggers.
Subaru: “Wh, at...” is that—but before he finishes the question, the flying carriages crash to the ground. The clatter echoes, the wood chips scatter, the shrieks resound. The riders of the stricken carriages hurtle to the ground, those conscious wailing in pain. Those unconscious settle in their puddling blood, unmoving.
—The immediate thought in Subaru's mind was, I need to help the wounded.
But before he can act so, a furious manoeuvre carries Subaru along. Pivoting, ignoring Subaru as he yelps in shock, Patrasche dashes away from the beast in an effort to escape the forest.
Subaru: “Wai—! Hey, Patrasche!?”
Subaru calls out at her ignoring of her rider, but identical to her actions along the route arriving here, Patrasche shows no sign of abiding his will. Leaving behind Otto and those in the carriages—all stunned motionless, Patrasche accelerates. But,
???: “——Ϡ!!”
A bellow slices through the forest, pressing in on Subaru's back. The torrent of bestial rage and hostility spears down the road, enough for even Patrasche's instincts to freeze her still. Something mighty and wielding life-threatening power, directing at them its enmity. Comprehending this sensation savoured more than several times prior, terror and dread run up Subaru's spine. Exactly because he was Subaru, and knew this sensation well, no desire boils up to berate Patrasche for stopping at this eleventh hour. None boils up, but the result remains clear.
Subaru: “—a,”
Glancing back, origin of terror entering his vision, Subaru sees carnage.
Battered by a swing of a forepaw, carriages tumble like toyboxes as their contents scatter and strike the forest trees. Amplify the sound of snapping chopsticks by a hundred, and apparently the resulting noise is that of wood and human bone fracturing to bits. Before a literal behemoth, even knowing that inaction meant merely waiting for death, nobody moves. Motion potentially stimulating the monster, they fear becoming target of its claws, its fangs.
Even though they instinctively knew that all their stillness changed was the order.
Subaru: “Is that thing... why SANCTUARY was empty?”
Upon the paralysed dragon, his teeth chattering, a Subaru prepared for death burns the beast into his eyes. Coated in beautiful golden fur, its face simultaneously possessed a tyrannical bent and a fearless dignity. Its piercing eyes blazed with rage and enmity, its rattling fangs too sharp for blades to be a suitable metaphor. —This assumedly could be the something that attacked SANCTUARY.
Subaru: “—Huh?”
Having strained his eyes so as not to miss a single gesture, move, action, Subaru notices something out of place about the approaching tiger. Eye narrowed seeking what was awry, Subaru notices the cause.
—Something was jutting out of the great tiger's back.
Considering its immense frame and inexhaustible stamina, this injury must have been trifling for it. Its displays no consciousness of the wound as it prowls, leaving it only estimable as perhaps a graze. But for Subaru it possessed great meaning. Not the wound itself. Rather, the object that inflicted it.
—Ram's wand.
Ram utilized that small stave when casting magic concords. Subaru had never observed her use any other intermediary for her magic, at least. He had seen her with it just before when facing Garfiel, and most surely should not mistake it. Surely should not mistake it, but then why was it jutting out of the tiger's flesh? The answer—
Subaru: “Ancestral, return...”
An old scene plays though Subaru's mind. Garfiel discussing with Subaru a fragment of his lineage, on the day he demonstrated the peculiarity of his body. Back then Garfiel transformed only his arm into that of animal's, displaying his origin as a mix between man and beastman. But,
Subaru: “If he's a war tiger, then...”
That would make this wicked beast a fully-transformed Garfiel. This hypothetically explained why Ram, who had remained behind to stop him, had her wand driven into the tiger's body. But this also possessed converse significance. —Her wand lost, Ram had failed to stop tiger-morphed Garfiel.
Subaru: “Garfiel, you... what did you do to Ram?”
Garfiel: “—”
Subaru: “Answer! What did you do to Ram! Garfiel!!”
The beast scrunches its jowls in lieu of any answer. But it swings it head in irritation at Subaru's call, rocking its forelimbs up to down, displaying its claws. Upon their tip is caught a scrap of far too familiar black fabric, this alone informing Subaru of the pink-haired girl's fate.
Subaru: “GARFIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEL!!”
Screaming leaving himself to rage, Subaru releases the reins and springs off Patrasche. His botched landing leads him to tumble across the ground, rolling into quadrupedal posture and glaring ahead. Mutually quadrupedal, the man and beast open distance as they face each other. Their strength gap is obvious, his chances of winning null, possibility of holding conversation most likely non¬existent.
Subaru: “You, despised me that much?”
Garfiel: “——”
Subaru: “You... hated me that much?”
Garfiel: “——”
Subaru: “If you wanted! To kill me! That much! All you had to fucking target was me!!”
Garfiel: “——Ϡ!!”
In answer to Subaru's furious scream, the beast raises a roar to the sky. The atmosphere rings, the forest leaves shake in terror, shivers and dread spread though all creatures present. But Subaru pushes it aside, baring his fangs.
Subaru: “You even laid hands on the girl you loved, what about you is the fangs of SANCTUARY, don't make me fucking laugh!!”
Garfiel: “——Ϡ!”
Subaru jeers. The tiger charges. Wreckage of carriages between it and Subaru pitch into the air, blood and splinters scattering the air around the oncoming, golden beast.
Speed furious, mass huge. A direct hit equates to collision with a semi-truck, an instant death leaving no time for even swallowing breath. DEATH presses in before him. Sensing near that inescapable fact, Subaru's brain thinks faster than ever before. His neurons burn, connect directly to rage, emotions detonating. Something dingy squirms about his heart, riding his bloodflow to rush through the whole of him. That hot, black, dark, dim, vacuous, polluted, immaterial, repugnant something—grasped.
Eye snapping open, the sensation of something pulled and grabbed in Subaru's own interior comes tactile. He looks ahead. Distance little enough to feel its breath, in press the jaws of the beast. Before the red gullet of the open maw, the entryway to death, Subaru reacts transcending the limits of flesh. That is, he raises his arm, and thrusts it between the fangs and the chest.
Garfiel: “——!?”
Instantaneously, a wind whorls the giant tiger away and vanishes it from before Subaru. No, vanished was incorrect. Spinning through the air with its head as the pivot is the enormous tiger. It slams to the ground back-first, howling in pain and confusion as its incredible mass ricochets off the earth, generating impact and hurtling away.
Subaru: “Wha!?”
Glancing back, Subaru stares at the form of the giant tiger as it tumbles somersaults. He was half-convicted that his life was just about to be forfeit there, but? Identical surprise visits the beast, its face expressing inability to comprehend what happened to it as it lands sideways upon the ground. It shakes its head and attempts to stand, but its will does not reach its otoliths and again it falters.
Neither understanding what happened, both flap their mouths in utter confusion. But, a sudden fatigue brings Subaru to collapse, while the tiger shakes its head annoyed and stands up. Who had the advantage after that bout was plainer than flame. Although, Subaru still did not understand what just happened, but—
Subaru: “Following along after taunts... is almost definitely Garfiel.”
Ordering his trembling arms to right himself, Subaru bites open his lip tying him to consciousness. The great tiger stands opposite him, rocking left and right in loose but guarded posture. Probably trying to figure out what happened in that instant. The sensation was incomprehensible, and even if commanded to do it again, surely there should be no way he could.
Got one over on him—was a sense he keenly felt, but even this did not understand. The opponent's caution was also laughable, but unsure of what the basis for snickering at it was, again left Subaru only a clown.
The slowly approaching beast had appeared dubious of Subaru's inaction, but it abruptly stops, and —
Garfiel: “——Ϡ!!”
Subaru: “a,”
Booming. Covering his face at the seeming gale, Subaru startles into shrinking himself up. Cutting through that opening borne of petrification is the noise of feet boring earth.
The ground ruptures, the beast's form dancing through the air, leaping for Subaru. Mass, claws, neither avoidable. This time definitely, the sensation from before has slipped from his fingertips and will not be rising up. Ending. The end was approaching. And—
Darting in from aside, Patrasche rams her head into the great beast's torso. Wailing, the tiger bends, blacking out in pain. Patrasche whips her tail, striking off the toppled tiger's face and robbing its vision. She immediately zips away, riding the wind to again collect Subaru and escape—
Subaru: “Pahtra...”
The sound of tearing meat interrupts him. Patrasche had grabbed Subaru by the hip with her mouth, but she instantly swings and flings him away to the ground. Subaru looks to find the beast's jaws snapped down on Patrasche's tail, and a creature with a body weight easily surpassing 400 kilograms throttled about like paper.
Patrasche shrieks. Flesh tears, blood scatters, and the instant her tail severs from the root, blood spouts down to dye Subaru's body half in red.
Patrasche goes flying, tumbling. The atrocity sticking in his eyes, Subaru glares at the approaching, heavy-breathing tiger. Loathing in his eye, directed at one he perhaps could have called a friend,
Subaru: “Ghhar... fhiiieeEEEELLLLLL!”
He screams, the enmity endless. No reply. Perhaps persons transformed into beasts lacked speech organs, for the tiger with its looming forepaw produces no hostility or murder or words from its throat. It only displays behaviour by instinct.
—Will it be neck broken? Or head devoured?
Regardless which pain, whatever end it is, he will swallow down DEATH. Swallow everything dry, make it his feed, make it reason to prevail for the correct future.
Subaru: “And do you really think you can be in that future?”
Watching the claws close in before him, Subaru announces his final intentions in hateful meter. He closes his eye. Darkness blocks his vision.
With his only regret being Patrasche's devotion, and how he couldn't save her, he—
Subaru: “—?”
Although readied for the coming end, that arriving thing does not come at all. Furrowing his brows in puzzlement, irritation rises in Subaru's chest at the timing of his DEATH going astray. And, slowly opening his eye,
Subaru: “Au?”
The claws to shred Subaru apart now distanced from him, the master of the claws the beast has its face before him. That Subaru made a dumbfounded noise was because this beast, who should be glaring at Subaru with eyes overflowing murder, is looking in a completely different direction. The beast takes its gaze off Subaru and points it in Subaru's left. Going to follow its line of sight, Subaru sees something fly from that direction, strike the beast's body, and tumble onto the ground. —A rock. Completely ordinary, size enough to fit in the hand, a rock. Subaru follows back the parabola of its throw to find the silhouette a person standing at the forest's edge.
Short hair, puckery cheeks with lanky limbs. Not anyone with any eyecatching traits or peculiarities, but Subaru knew him. He was a villager from Arlam, a member of the village's young men's brigade, an evacuee who had evacuated to SANCTUARY, a person who would have been riding in the tumbled carriages, and an individual staggering with blood flowing down his forehead. He sluggishly stoops down, picks up a nearby rock, weakly raises it overhead, and throws it at the beast. A hit. The force is equal to nothing. But,
Man: “Ge-get away, from Subaru-sama. You, monster...”
Wringing out his voice, moaning in pain, he yet displays his will. The second his words strike him, a tremble runs through Subaru's whole body. The quivering transmits to his fingertips as he loses his voice, lost of what to say, merely watching.
Subaru: “—”
One after another come rocks, boards, branches, shoes, thrown at the monster from all around. Subaru looks to find that this is, kept down until now by the immense pressure radiating from the beast, the far-too flickering, shoddy, weak resistance of the people.
Subaru: “he, y...”
What are they doing? thinks Subaru dumbly. Was there any purpose in doing that. Did they could do something about the beast, doing this. Pierce its skin and threaten the flesh below. That would be surely impossible. It was merely a futile resistance, leaving not a single graze.
Subaru: “Sto...”
Everyone covering their heads and running would be the most correct, the wisest action. They should all board an undestroyed carriage and immediately escape. It didn't matter whether they ran to SANCTUARY or cut through the forest. They should take an action with even a slight chance of survival. But even yet, why were they—
Subaru: “What are you all doing!? Hurry, run away—”
Villager: “Subaru-sama! There is nothing persuasive in that!”
The one who interrupts Subaru is an old man with arms like twigs, one raised above his head with all his might, tossing a branch which strikes the breast in the snout. His breathing ragged, he looks at Subaru.
Villager: “We flee for life abandoning our benefactor, then how could we ever show our faces to our sons and daughters? And that is without mentioning you came to this for the sake of saving us.”
Subaru: “That, 's...”
Villager: “If you should die, we too shall die here. This was the minimum condition we placed for leaving here, and everyone has agreed upon it.”
Stunned, Subaru's face stiffens. Seeing Subaru's shock, a gentle smile rises on the man's face. Incredibly out of place, the sunny thing gives entirely the impression he had forgotten the threat before him.
The attack resumes. Everyone throws stones at the vile beast—at Garfiel. The threat of those, as always, does not cause him flinching or even itching. Sluggishly raising his massive body, Garfiel moves. Ignoring Subaru ready for laceration before him, he heads for the forest—for the wounded young man who had initiated the throwing.
Man: “—”
Beast and man face-to-face. The man looses his speech at the pressure and threat before him, but nevertheless slacks not in his actions, drawing a knife from his hip.
Man: “Then, eat this—”
He thrusts out the dagger, driving it between Garfiel's brows—immediately following, the blade snaps in two. Perhaps the golden fur possessed considerable stiffness, for the crudely-made knife passes not through. In response to the man's final resistance, a raised forepaw hurtles down—
Subaru: “Stop!!”
Subaru shrieks. Even this is nothing more than pointless noise.
The sound comes of crushed meat, the slender man's frame flattened from head to toe, transformed into gore. Fountains of blood spout from between Garfiel's digits, the only thing remaining beneath the position of his withdrawn paw a smudge of dark offal.
Subaru: “—”
This time for sure, his throat rises a scream of wrath. Subaru claws the ground to upright himself, leaping at the beast's back. A flick of its left leg smacks Subaru across the torso, him blacking out. His body follows the momentum only for the tail to strike him, and Subaru goes flying through the air like a ball of rubber. His back slams against a treetrunk—his entire body creaks, bones cracking.
Subaru: “Gha, aaah!?”
Writhing on the ground, pain and blood spill from his mouth. His body does not listen to him. His right arm bends from his shoulder at a strange angle. His spine, too, retains not a proper shape. Weak, frail, impossible to change.
Garfiel: “—!!”
???: “ᾀᾀᾀᾀ—!!”
The beast howls. Bounds, bears its fangs, its claws at the surrounding evacuees. Blood dances, shrieks resound, Subaru knows the lives are snuffing out where he cannot see. Someone screams. A bestial scream. Bestial, but the scream of a man. Confusion runs through the beast. Whose scream was that? What was that roar? Subaru, managing his own internal errors, did not know.
???: “—Natsuki-san! Please live!”
Calling his name. The voice of someone he knew, but pain blocks the mental path to determine who. His thoughts strobe, the world hazes, his emotions muddy, dream and reality blur, then hatred and pain diffuse all of these. This was no time to be sleeping. He had to stand. Stand, stand—if there's deaths, then before anyone else—you die.
Subaru: “Don't any, one die... only me having, to die is... plenty enough!”
Wringing blood and wails out his throat, Subaru frantically uprights himself. Right arm useless, use left only. A red curtain coats his only left eye, a cut down his forehead leaking blood. Wiping his eyelid with his shoulder, he grits his teeth hard enough to crack his molars as he raises his head.
Subaru: “—”
The massacre expanded.
Every swing of the beast's arm brought people flying, blood scattering, flames of life burning out. Anyone and everyone possesses bravery, all prepared to die, stabbing the beast with resistance unthinkable to work. The only blood coating its pelt is that of the villagers, their deaths entirely meaningless. They merely defied, to be blown out little by little. Entirely meaningless. Since, if there was any here whose likewise DEATH would have meaning, it was Subaru alone.
Subaru: “Stop, stop, stopstopstop... please, stop!”
If you're going to kill, before anyone else kill me. He was supposed to be aiming for Subaru in the first place. His reason for wounding, stealing the lives of these brave and kind people, existed nowhere. Or otherwise this result of them losing their lives was an outcome invited from Subaru's idiocy. If so then that was—
Subaru: “—ueh, ah!”
His teeth clenched and face lowered, something picks Subaru up. What pulls this clumsily-uprighted Subaru from behind is, a stream of blood running from her whole body, Patrasche. Although Garfiel's blow brought her halfway to death, she frantically crawled back to arrive here. Subaru fails to hold back that welling up in the back of his eye, it spilling.
Subaru: “That's, enough. ...That's enough. You've done enough now, Patrasche...”
Subaru reaches out for Patrasche's bloodsoaked jaw. But she shakes her head, conclusively stating “This certainly is not enough now.” She slips her head beneath Subaru's stomach, sliding him onto her back without any resistance. Subaru yelps in surprise. Him upon her back, Patrasche breaks into a run. Her gait provokes question where she had that energy left, with how strong it is. Perhaps it was the result of working herself to the bone literally.
Subaru: “—”
But even spending her remaining vitality, working herself to the bone, her speed landed a far cry from her optimum. Escape from the beast's fangs, too, was thus distant.
Fangs snap onto Patrasche's hindleg. Shrieking, again she flings Subaru away. He floats through space, and just when he thinks himself again destined to slam the ground, Patrasche reaches out her neck to catch him in her jaw. She bends down her head with all her strength, using everything she has to toss Subaru deep into the forest.
Subaru: “—!”
Subaru understands that this was Patrasche's attempt to distance him from a fatal threat. He simultaneously realises. Why after parting with Ram, Patrasche had sprinted to reunite with the evacuees.
—Patrasche had noticed the existence of the beast.
Noticed, and to raise Subaru's chances of survival by even a little, dashed to a location with more prey. Everything, to protect Subaru. Hitting the ground, Subaru's body bounces once, twice. After wailing on the third bounce—a sensation of floating dominates Subaru's body. Subaru: “—au,” Sharp slanting ground opens a gorge, Subaru's body tumbling, falling down. Lacking room to even cry out, gravel and branches scrape his skin as he bounces and bounces and bounces down and down and down,
Subaru: “—” Orientation faltering, vision gyrating, Subaru manages to grasp what is above him. He witnesses a sight he wished not to see.
Subaru: “—pihtrassch,” Caught between the tiger's jaws, an incredible force crushes down on her body. Fangs shred her apart, blood splashing in pools as she splits into two. Unable to even wail her death agony, the loyal dragon devoted to Subaru her all until the end. Subaru: “—” His throat burns. His throat tears. Rage boils his brain, his blood feeling to catch fire.
Bouncing, tumbling, sliding, falling, scraping, Subaru falls. —A strong ricochet, and again floating. He slams down, his consciousness swallowed.
His body rolls unstopping. His consciousness regardless separates from his flesh. —Only an unvanishing voice of umbrage had continued to churn in his heart.
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