CHAPTER 43: AND THEN EVERYONE WAS—
—What wakes him is the dripping of water upon his face.
The steady rhythm of the cool water on his cheek pulls his consciousness along and up. Alongside his awakening, the keen sense of being alive slowly permeates through Subaru's body. Put more plainly, what permeates through Subaru's body is pain.
Subaru: “...dghaugg”
Agonizing pain comes to welcome Subaru's waking with its hug. Receiving the first shock leaves no method to evade the successive others. His ripped forehead, broken right arm, and jarred spine all shriek. But what eclipses all of them is,
Subaru: “Thhihs's, crap...”
Directing his gaze to the source of the oversharp pain, Subaru discovers a branch thick as two fingers stabbed into the region by his right clavicle, point dripping with blood. Although Subaru prepares for the pain and attempts to dislodge it, it doesn't give an inch. That said though since it is fortunately broken, so long as Subaru ignores it visually, it won't impede his activities.
Subaru: “Way too... avant-garde, this...”
Somehow managing to wrangle his body into uprighting itself, Subaru leans against the nearby rock-face to take a breather. He looks around the surroundings to find himself in the entrance of a small cave. Morning dewdrops drip from the top of the cave mouth, apparently being what wet his cheek. —Morning dewdrops.
Subaru: “Morning!?”
Recognizing the apathetic passing of time, Subaru stirrs only for a shock of pain to run through his body. The back of his eye feels to stain red, and needles feel to pierce his whole body. A tear rises to his eye as his thoughts slowly catch up with what happened to him before he fell unconscious. Recalling it,
Subaru: “—au,”
Recalling it, Subaru remembers just what a pointless slaughter his own existence had bought. He timidly looks upwards to see daylight spilling through the gaps in the forest canopy. Under the light, just what spectacle awaited beyond the slope Subaru fell?
Subaru: “—nn,”
Swallowing his breath and tormented by remorseful desire to die immediately, Subaru crawls at a caterpillar's pace, aiming for the opposite of the slope. His movements restricted by the jutting stick, time slowly, but steadily looms down. Were he past-Subaru, just envisioning the scene waiting ahead would terrify him entirely, and he would likely run away refusing to look. But present-Subaru would not permit that.
He had to see it through, swallow it down, make it his feed. Because this was the duty of Natsuki Subaru, who had failed to died at the timing he should.
Subaru: “Haa... haaa...”
He inches bit by bit up the slope with only his upper body righted. Sweat wettens the dried cut on his forehead, blood again seeping out. He rigorously wipes it with his sleeve, his face dirtied with blood and mud as he crawls. Passing by a segment of a ruined carriage, detouring around a great toppled tree, Subaru's fingers grasp onto his destined elevation—returning back to the spot Patrasche's devotion had thrown him from.
Subaru: “—”
There's a second of hesitation. If he raises his head and stretches his neck to peek over, he will face an inescapable reality. He won't be able to escape into his imagination that some miracle occurred after he was driven away, and the majority of the evacuees managed to flee.
Subaru: “Am I stupid? ...No, I am stupid.”
This one-eyed vision of Subaru's had certainly witnessed the instant of Patrasche's demise. Having abandoning everything for Subaru's sake, he even now had the scene of the loyal dragon's end burnt into his eyelids. To call that a dream or to escape into convenient fantasy was to insult her.
The flame of tenacity alit in his heart, Subaru musters what will he has left and opens his eyes. He pulls himself up, crossing over the thick branches blocking his vision, and beyond the forest in the scene of the disaster is—
Subaru: “—wuh?”
Nothing.
There was nothing.
Subaru: “Uh... au, er?”
Face warped from envisioning the massacre site, Subaru's eye darts around, unable to accept the scene before him. There are scattered remains of carriages and several upturned trees. Clawmarks remained gouged into the ground, destruction and the vestiges of rebellion jumbled about.
But the outcome likely to further break Subaru's heart is not there. The outcome of slaughter. The corpses of the villagers who had in the truest of meanings given their lives to Subaru's escape. The corpse of the dragon, ripped in two. He saw not a sign of either.
The littered remains of carriages and those other signs proved the confict with the beast had been no dream or illusion. Only the outcome of atrocity was missing.
Subaru uses a nearby tree as a support to unsteadily stand himself up. Fortunately the wounds to his legs are limited only to scrapes and bruises. He stands, holding his right arm steady in his left to stop it from hurting with every motion, and looks about the surroundings.
Subaru: “Wh, y? Patrasche... everyo... Otto?”
Of course he did not want to see their corpses. Honestly, if everyone survived then there would be nothing more joyous. But Subaru's body knows better than any other than these conditions were not going to have any fairytale dreams-come-true. Besides, he'd already seen lives lost to the beast's claws before he lost consciousness.
He saw the lanky man put in his all, and regardless be crushed without inflicting a single wound. He saw the woman who lost her life when the carriages went flying, plummeted out. He saw the old man snapped like a twig with one swing of a paw, leaving a dreadful cadaver. With every recollection of the deaths, pain and regret shave away at Subaru's heart. But nonetheless, those deaths supposedly witnessed at this scene have been stolen from here.
Subaru: “Patrasche... Patrasche...?”
Thinking of the lost lives, Subaru frantically and feebly calls the name of his partner. Subaru had assuredly heard, seen the instant of her bifurcation and the accompanying death wail. Thus, he harboured no flickering hopes that her life remained. But the only one who could find her soul-parted remains, convey words of guilt, and mourn for her was Subaru.
He walks slowly, his stamina most entirely expended. His searching is laboured, weak, and he spends over two hours just on exploring this nearby area. But even spending this much time, what Subaru finds in this region is,
Subaru: “Luggage mixed in the wreckage, scraps of clothes, and...”
Innumerable bloodstains. Backing up the near-conviction breed of imaginationed events he has, scattered around this site carved by beast's claws is a tremendous amount of blood. The choking stench of bloodshed likely wafts about the scene, but the blood clotting his nose renders Subaru's olfactory senses inoperable, and he cannot smell it.
He has already lined up irrefutable evidence. The only thing he can't find is the conclusive piece, and the question as to how it went missing leaves many mysteries. Most importantly, while searching around the surroundings, a questions burns extremely belatedly into Subaru's mind. That is—
Subaru: “Why wasn't I killed?”
Subaru had not been finished off—while it was not especially believable that such a wounded Subaru would have survived, not checking for corpses regardless was far too weak of a finish. And Garfiel was supposed to have been aiming for Subaru in the first place. Why he turned his claws even upon the villagers was unclear, but perhaps it was meant as a lesson for Subaru.
But if he were to run with this assumption, then Subaru understood even less why the corpses disappeared.
Subaru: “Even saying hypothetically, he carried them away...”
There were forty evacuees in total. Even were they all corpses, carrying them all away felt unrealistic. Patrasche and the other dragons could also be added to that.
Subaru: “But on the other hand...”
He didn't want to imagine it, but were they settled in the beast's belly—again ran into the same problem of numbers and felt unrealistic. Subaru could understand carrying the bodies away, but not a single idea arose why Garfiel would expend that much effort hiding the corpses from Subaru. And besides before suspecting the tiger of something so roundabout, there was the problem of why did he disappear without finishing off a wounded Subaru?
Subaru abruptly notices that these conditions are rather similar to the depopulated SANCTUARY. The conditions leading up were different from last time, but the results have many points in common. The destruction littered around the place resulted from the raging tiger, unrelated to the evacuees' and the tiger's disappearance. Ignoring this eyecatching aspect, the part where there was not a single person in sight was horrifically similar. Meaning,
Subaru: “S-SANCTUARY's also, in the same condition as last time... maybe?”
Reaching that conclusion with his breath ragged, Subaru again utilises all his strength to stand up. Looking at his own position and the flow of the road, Subaru makes an estimation as to SANCTUARY's direction. —This is morning of the sixth day.
Last night was likely the deadline for the mansion. He had no definitive proof, but assuming Elsa's attack occurred, there would already be a massacre unfolded. Simultaneously in SANCTUARY, something happened that stopped tiger-morphed Garfiel from finishing off Subaru. That something most probably explained what caused all signs of existence to disappear from this place. Why it didn't apply to Subaru was a complete unknown, though.
He spends only a second hesitating on which path to proceed down. A twinge of warmth runs through his heart. That was his unseverable feelings of guilt and attachment towards those left inside the likely-attacked mansion, and the sleeping girl there. Gritting his teeth, Subaru shakes off the feelings, and heads for SANCTUARY.
Slowly, steps sluggish and confirmatory, Subaru proceeds toward Sanctuary. Subaru did intend to spend his life in seeing what laid ahead—burning that of corresponding value to the lives lost into his memories, to redeem. But what he sought was even the slightest of chance of obtaining a cue from which to prevail.
※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※
—Along the road to SANCTUARY, Subaru passes through what was likely the site of Ram and Garfiel's fight.
Slashes from blades of wind remain gouged into tree trunks, familiar and ferocious clawmarks gorged into the earth and crags. Subaru spends a slight time looking around the area, but expectedly Ram's visage—otherwise her corpse, is nowhere to be found.
Assuming the speculation that Garfiel was the tiger was correct, Ram was a long-term crush for
Garfiel. If that love ran deep, then Subaru believed it possible.
Subaru: “Things proceeded to a mutual deathmatch, and there it was love yous or some other thing... I've read too many light novels.”
Neither would surrender to the other, and it escalated to a deathmatch. Just how much of a deterrent would the love or affections between them be to counter that? If that truly was going to stop any violence, they should have stopped before anything started. The instant that it didn't and events began, it became no reason for them to end.
Subaru: “...I'm sorry.”
Out of sight, but nevertheless Subaru reports his apology to the one who spent herself for him. Her fight also purposeless, Subaru renders her sentiments wasted as he continues returning to SANCTUARY. Ahead on this path, there was something necessary to a Subaru intending to die.
The regrets compounding, Subaru doggedly walks on for Sanctuary. This road, which he began walking before afternoon, was of a length that only took a few tens-of-minutes to travel when mounted on Patrasche. For a Subaru defying his wounds and continuing along at a caterpillar's pace, it takes until what is perhaps already evening before he reaches the region immediately near SANCTUARY.
Subaru: “Half a day... fin, ally...”
He managed to return this far. About ready to collapse on the spot in relief, Subaru feels not a scrap of accomplishment. Rather, what bubbles up hot in Subaru's interior is a feeling of powerlessness and anger toward himself. What eclipses his self-hatred is a dingy, glimmering,
Subaru: “You fucking come back, Garfiel?”
Instructing his heart don't think this, don't think this, violent hatred and wrath toward that blond piece of shit.
There were three big reasons he returned to SANCTUARY. The first was because he wanted to ascertain the true nature of the empty SANCTUARY phenomenon. This was an essential factor for the future wherein he wished to grasp some piece of the cause. The second was to confirm that Emilia, who had remained in SANCTUARY, was safe. Should the depopulation of occur, she would be no exception. The third was—incomparable two the first two combined—because of the furious fire burning in the depths of Subaru's heart.
He wanted to rip that fucking tiger apart.
Subaru takes the step into SANCTUARY. Two pillars overgrown with moss substitute as the entrance. Passing them through and entering Sanctuary, Subaru breathes low and quiet as he looks about the surroundings. The silent SANCTUARY feels, as Subaru expected, devoid of people. Even before this, Subaru hadn't heard a single insect during his whole walk through the forest to get here.
It didn't just stop with the residents of SANCTUARY disappearing, it's as if the whole of living creatures in region have had their activities suspended, in this silence.
Feeling even his own breathing as cacophonous in the quiet, Subaru pushes his throat painfully to the limit as he seeks stealth. Taking breath after short breath, Subaru limps to the depths of SANCTUARY—aiming for the building Emilia should be in.
—In these hours before evening, Emilia would spend her time balled up hugging her knees until the TRIAL. It became especially striking after about the third day, and in this loop she lacked Subaru's support entirely. More than likely, isolation and panic had weathered her heart worse than in any loop previous.
Subaru: “Not here, huh...”
Pushing the door open and peeking inside, Subaru looks about the empty room. Emilia is absent, but the sheets of her unpopulated bed are disorderly, and a chair remains collapsed there on the floor. Subaru couldn't tell whether this was the result of resisting whatever caused the depopulation, or an act done by a cornered Emilia. But, indeed on the path here, Subaru encountered nobody.
Subaru: “Should I try going to Roswaal's place?”
Accepting Emilia's absence here, and considering what to do next, Subaru's heart is horrifically calm. Going along with what he stated was a necessary action in the sense of nipping buds, but a part of Subaru had already resigned that going there would likely be a wasted effort.
Just as feared, SANCTUARY lacked anyone. The instant he lost Emilia, Subaru's attachment was no longer for this place. The Emilia he was supposedly attached to had disappeared. Even this, Subaru noticed, had made his heart barely tremble at all.
Had he acquired an unshakable, tenacious, dazzling heart of iron?
Nah, he thinks, immediately shaking his head. The heart of iron Subaru strived for was rather different from this current emotion-bereft mental state. After excessive rage, at the end of confusion, coming off his complete erosion, his heart had simply punctured. It wasn't unshakeable. Just emptied.
—He was losing will to live.
Well of course he was. Subaru wasn't presently living while consciously attempting to. He had merely failed to die at the timing he should have, and had to remunerate his reason for surviving, before he could die. Actually, his attention was focusing not on will to live, but will to die.
How could he live in a world like this. Emilia wasn't here. Rem was also gone. Patrasche was lost, Ram and Petra were probably dead too. Otto's potentials of survival didn't even bear thinking. No one was here. Now, now one was here. Subaru's brains were lacking, Subaru's power was lacking, Subaru's effort was lacking, Subaru's wishes were lacking, and so he wasn't capable of saving anybody. Even though this was something, only he could do.
Subaru: “So... to...”
Take everything back. Make everything complete. Set everything on the correct path—was his responsibility. Only Subaru could do it. And Subaru needed to do it.
The sacrifices thereupon made—must inside him persist. The everything thereupon lost—must in his mind dwell. The compensation thereupon spent—must he expend.
Pay the compensation. Pile the sacrifices. And, regain everything.
Subaru: “—”
His upper body swaying loosely, Subaru leaves the building. His course heads not for Roswaal's treatment house, but to the deepest of SANCTUARY—to the tomb. Last time in this place, Subaru had been wounded and killed there by SOMETHING. Again, his feet head for this spot.
Why? To be killed, of course.
If conditions are identical to last time, Subaru should die there in the same manner. He judges that he could at least dodge one fatal blow, if he knew it was coming. Thus, even should the second blow kill him, if he could just grasp the opponent's identity then he didn't care.
Prepared into DEATH, Subaru approaches his destination steadily, step by step. The place his abdomen was speared from behind—he didn't remember the exact placement, but it was definitely just outside the tomb's entrance.
Sighting the crown of the tomb from a distance, Subaru's pulse turns frantic, blood running through him hot and cool. Was he heating or cooling? Even that he didn't know.
His body is hot, his limbs are numb. But his fingers feel stiff and jammed with lead, his head cool enough to objectively view the situation.
It was heading to his death, knowing it would die. A foolish being. Wager his life to gain results—was supposed to be his heart's ironclad pledge—but his expression speaks a far cry from resolute strength. His eyes are weak, he bites his lip, his limbs tremble unsuppressably.
His pretences peel off at the eleventh hour, and Subaru loathes himself for displaying the weakness beneath. Pushing the feeling aside, Subaru nevertheless continues without slowing. Even if he couldn't change that he was weak, frail, and foolish—he wanted to be having the courage to proceed forward from that self, to be being the self he constantly desired.
Running off a crooked equation of weakness to weakness, minus to minus, Subaru treads along the path toward the tomb otherwise the path toward death. The tomb is near. His pulse throbs hard, the noise of blood rushing inside his skull vividly audible. Acid from his empty stomach burns his throat. His trembling legs could fall at any moment, his left-handed vision losing clarity from his sweat. He raises his arm, wipes his eye, again heads forth. And, notices.
Subaru: “—a?”
Just after lifting his foot to proceed for the tomb, Subaru witnesses the change before him. Gone without hearing even the chirping of insects, the only noise to reach Subaru's ears is the rustling of leaves on leaves in the wind. What cuts into that soundscape is a quiet, chittery cry.
Subaru initially thinks it, blown in by the wind, a tiny, white, fluffball. But the fluffball stops several paces forward of Subaru, where it begins trembling. Subaru's brows furrow in puzzlement as its two long ears arise.
Subaru: “A, rabbit?”
Possessing two long ears and fluffy white fur is this little creature. It sports two round, characteristic red eyes, its mouth jittering as it fretfully looks about the surrounds. It tilts its little head upon sighting Subaru, and cries. A small—small—rabbit. About as large as Subaru's clenched fist, by a glance about as big as a hamster. But being that its ears are of identical size to the entire rest of it, the term 'size to fit in the hand' would perhaps be inaccurate.
Not hide nor hair of insects, people, dragons, or anything else—then suddenly a rabbit. Although perhaps one of the creatures living in the forest, for a Subaru who had not encountered a single other living being the entire way here, its appearance was exceedingly strange.
Subaru: “Why is there a rabbit... it, is a rabbit, right?”
Questions endless, Subaru glances bewildered around the surroundings, searching for any other creatures that perhaps might have flowed into SANCTUARY. With no particular intention he reaches for the rabbit, going to stroke its fur—
When his left hand is lopped off.
Blood spouts from the ragged, sloppy wound, veins dangling from his wrist. Were those thin white things tendons or nerves? Regardless the sight of a destroyed human body was something grotesque, so—and those were his few seconds of escape from reality.
Pain of another dimension thrashes Subaru about the brain as he collapses to the ground in agony. The branch piercing his clavicle snaps at the impact—pain. Pain, pain, pain.
Subaru: “Gaha!? Aauh, aughhgaaaa! Ouuu, aaughghhhggaaaaaa!!!”
His mind solders white. It hurts, is the emotion that suffuses his whole it hurts body already lacking any means to register it hurts reality why was it he had it hurts to suffer like this it hurts where did it come it hurts from what happened it hurts where was it hurts he how come this it hurts happened to him what it hurts happened what on earth it hurts happened why it hurts it hurts ithurts it hurtsithurtsithurts—
His left wrist gushes blood as he paws the ground, unconsciously biting into the earth, chewing the dirt in an act of unclear meaning. The bitter and asphyxiating soil brings his mind back minutely, and searching about his vision in seek of comprehending what happened, he discovers at his feet the white fluffball—its snowy fur speckled unclean with blood, its mouth diligently working away. Beneath its black nose are its bulging, quivering cheeks. Subaru sights, sticking out of its mouth, the fingers of his own hand.
Understood. Got it. He knew what happened. Eaten. Eaten. He was eaten.
Subaru: “Ghohu, agfhuffuuaAAaa!”
Screaming almost insane in pain and understanding, Subaru tumbles himself toward the rabbit. His broken right arm is immobile and his left arm from the wrist down exists in the rabbit's stomach. There's nothing he can do, but if he at least confirms its true nature—
His calf burns. A sharp rasping shaves into his meat and bone, stinging to shoot his eye fully open, foam gushing from the back of his throat. To lay his head and faint would be great, but the ferocious throes of agony seem unwilling to release him.
Spilling bloody froth out his lips, Subaru convulses like a fish on land. That his ears still function is both the miracle and joke of a cruel god.
The pitter-patter of countless footsteps reaches Subaru's eardrums. Hopping motions. Tiny light bodies. The vast number of overlapping cries gives him absolutely no urge to, presuming his sight could sight them, even attempt to count their total. In that instant he was sincerely glad the only thing working were his ears.
Savouring the sensation of teeth biting all across his body at once, Subaru was now keenly experiencing the pain of over one hundred creatures ingesting him simultaneously. He shrieks. Rolled onto his back and looking to the sky, his throat trembles. A fuzzy little creature instantly encroaches inside his opened mouth. It shreds apart his tongue, sharp teeth piercing the back of his throat, gnashing down his oesophagus to his stomach. It internally collides with another which invaded from his rectum, their competition displacing his slivered organs to and fro, turning Natsuki Subaru to mince.
The keen feeling of being alive, with living creatures inside him mangling him to pieces. Fear was already gone away. No pain felt any more. No clue how his consciousness was still here. Eaten. Eaten to bits. Eye eaten. No more ears. Organs devoured completely, presently his face being skinned. A hole opens in his skull, brain unveiled for the spelunking fangs to swill—
—.
——.
———.
————.
————————————————————————————————a—.
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