SML Ch 100

Chapter 100

*

How long had he been unconscious?

Reynald came to in a vicious cold that sank to the bone. He forced his eyes open, but the darkness was absolute; even the faint glow of the magic circle no longer reached him, which meant he had fallen quite far.

“Hrm… what on earth happened…?”

First, he checked his own condition. It seemed he had landed without injury even while unconscious; no sharp pain anywhere. Though he recalled something striking the back of his head, his skull did not ache. His hands and feet were numbing from the brutal cold, but the sensation had not faded completely.

“Then the heatstone’s effect has only just worn off. I wasn’t out long.”

At most, ten-odd minutes? So thinking, he reached into his inner pocket for a fresh heatstone.

The moment he moved, something beside him stirred.

“…!”

“My lord? You’re awake?”

A large, solid arm helped prop him up. Volant, Reynald thought at first—then immediately realized that couldn’t be right. Volant? How could that make sense?

The arm he touched in the dark was far harder and more brutish than he remembered—such that it was questionable whether it was human.

“Who is it?”

“Y-you’re badly hurt? Don’t you recognize me? Or, I—I, that is, uh…”

As fear edged the hurried, anxious voice, Reynald knew in his gut. Different in outward form or not, this was Volant.

“I… who am I.”

Even if Volant himself couldn’t be sure, the fact would not change.

“Volant—it’s you.”

“…!”

“Sorry it took me to come around. Seems I blacked out for a bit. Could you… help me up?”

Above his head, rapid breathing. Volant was tall, but not so much taller; for his breath to come from that height was odd.

Reynald ignored it as best he could and leaned into Volant. After a brief hesitation, Volant carefully wrapped an arm around his shoulders. The faint stench—the dragon’s peculiar reek he had smelled before—still clung to him, and yet his body radiated a heat that felt impossible in such cold.

Just leaning against him loosened the heart’s tightness; with this warmth, a heatstone felt almost unnecessary.

The contact seemed to steady Volant, too. His frightened, quick breaths eased when Reynald refrained from pointing out anything amiss.

“Your wits aren’t fully back yet? All right, I’ll support you.”

“The lantern…? It broke earlier, but we’ll still need some light, won’t we?”

“Do we? I think I can walk fine without one. If anything, light would… feel unpleasant.”

“My friend, at my age night-blindness is a fact of life. If you don’t need light, good for you.”

He said it lightly, but Volant’s condition was undeniably strange. The way he strode forward without hesitation, guiding Reynald, suggested he could see in the dark as if it were day.

And he clearly preferred Reynald to remain blind in the dark—if the man lit the area, he might see what Volant had become. That would not be the Volant Reynald knew…

“How are things around us, Volant? Where are the yetis?”

“Oh, the yetis? They’re still falling out of the sky. I only realized after I landed, but seeing how slowly they’re drifting down, this must be a place where falling is slow…?”

“Likely the Illusiongrass. We fell slowly as well, if not as slowly as they.”

“Wait—you knew from the start? Then you should have said so! I was terrified I’d die…”

Terrified, he could not finish. He stood there, wavering, as if even he could not explain what he had done to stave off that fear.

“…What did I do, out of fear?”

At that dazed murmur, a chill of instinctive self-preservation seized Reynald. He smacked Volant’s back with a flat palm. Something like a wing joint seemed to be there, but Reynald chose not to notice.

“Ow—hey! Why hit me?”

“You seemed a bit out of sorts—less than me, but still. Anyway, I’m sorry about before. I forgot at first and only realized later.”

“Even so! I thought I was going to die for sure.”

“You looked very afraid. As if you were recalling some bad memory the whole fall.”

“Bad memory? What memory do you mean…”

“Nothing. Maybe I misheard.”

Volant looked genuinely at a loss, and Reynald let it drop. Either a memory he acted to conceal, or one he refused to recall and so chose to forget.

In either case, not a subject for now. The youth seemed very unstable.

“My lord.”

“Hm?”

“D-doesn’t my… my appearance seem strange to you?”

He was trying to ignore it, and the boy asked outright. Reynald wanted to tell him as much, yet he understood: perhaps Volant wished Reynald didn’t know, but also knew he couldn’t hide forever.

“The feel of me, my voice—don’t they seem off? I—I don’t know why this is. I came to, and I was like this. Please don’t be too shocked or disgusted.”

He tried for composure, but fear bled through. What exactly he had become, Reynald couldn’t say. He could probe with questions and hypotheses—but would that help now?

Instinct told him the need was not exposure but calm.

“It does seem a bit off.”

“…!”

“Likely the Illusiongrass. Nasty stuff—century-aged, and troublesome.”

At this, Volant replied in a voice caught between relief and confusion.

“I-Illusiongrass?”

“Yes. Before we entered, I told you: in here, the hottest fire feels cold, and feathers outweigh iron. Strange things are normal—sometimes a person even sprouts wings or grows in size.”

Membranous wings like a bat’s, and the dragon-stench pricking the nose—these were not changes Illusiongrass could merely “fake.” They pointed to something like what Theophros had mentioned offhand the other day…

“No—not yet.”

He could feel the grim guess raising its head, and forced himself to stay calm, thinking hard. Questions would only frighten this guileless youth.

Volant himself seemed not to know the details—and clearly did not want Reynald to see his form. In that case…

“So, Volant.”

“Yes?”

“If we uproot the Illusiongrass, you’ll surely return to normal.”

He spoke with utter certainty. Volant, startled by that confidence, stammered back,

“W-what if I don’t?”

“Why think that? This happened because of Illusiongrass. Remove it, and you will go back.”

“Really? Th-that’s how it works…?”

“It is. Trust me, Volant—just as I’m trusting you in this unknown cave.”

“…!”

“So for now, focus everything on securing the Illusiongrass. Do you understand?”

He decided to gamble—a suggestion, near to hypnosis. There seemed no special magic here that would transform a man into a monster; the change likely sprang from Volant’s own mental turmoil. If he could be fully steadied, he might return to himself.

If they maximized the sense of achievement from harvesting the Illusiongrass and the relief from removing the presumed cause, perhaps the youth would revert. No guarantee—only a possibility. But if the youth would only trust Reynald…

“…All right. I’ll trust you. If you trust me.”

Volant said this with a small laugh—sounding both relieved and, somehow, glad.