A False Confession

aw priests being struck by arrows a while ago, but I ended up swallowing the words back.

There’s nothing more nerve-wracking than being distracted while trying to defend someone, so I just replied that I understood in a trembling voice.

—But, aren’t I just thinking too cynically? Shouldn’t I make him aware of the fact that they strangely seem to be aiming for priests? I mean, shouldn’t I try to have a little better grasp on the situation before I move around?

“Priestess!!”

As soon as he gave me the signal, I ran back as Tirak said.
I ran, trying to support my shaky legs and praying that I wouldn’t fall.

An arrow grazed my leg.
I stumbled once, nearly falling to the ground, but I managed to keep myself upright.
From behind, Tirak came running to me, cursing loudly and unleashing profanities.
One beat late, he seemed to notice that the situation was strange, too.

And a belated realization during an emergency situation made one feel that much more responsible for it.

A soldier in unfamiliar armor arrived before me.
Since he suddenly appeared in the middle of running, he seemed disoriented and confused to see us as well, but he swiftly changed his direction, following after me.

For just a brief moment I couldn’t help speculating.
Why would they target the priests? Are they trying to slow the soldiers down by injuring the priests, preventing us from advancing properly? If not, are they trying to make sure their enemies don’t recover, cutting them off at the source?

Even while watching his sword swing towards me, I had such pointless questions running through my brain.
In an instant, the running soldier had caught up with me.
He stretched out his sword without hesitation, and the sword itself was horrifyingly red and dark, reflecting the burning barracks around us.

“—No!”

I avoided deep wounds on pure reflex, jumping back just in time.
However, due to the compulsive movement, the hair over my left shoulder lifted into the air and entered the path of his blade, getting sliced clean through.

At the moment I tried to run away before I was targeted again, Tirak embraced me.
He caught me with his arm and hooked me around, pulling me against his back and into a tight hug.
I was confused by his sudden movement, wondering what was the reason for this, when my question was answered all too quickly.

Blood began pouring out of Tirak.

Huh? Tirak wrapped me even more tightly in my state of alarm.
Since I was embraced by a person twice my size, I was protected in that moment.
But flinch after flinch, blood blood coursed more and more heavily out of the body defending me, dripping onto my shoulders.

My lungs forgot how to breathe.
I lost my sense of reality and felt that I was going to faint at any moment.
Tirak’s shoulder was struck in place of mine, moving to block an arrow that had tried to fly through the gap that covered me.
Three shots? Four shots? I couldn’t even bear to count the number of times correctly.

Even in that situation, Tirak clenched his teeth and swung his sword.
Excruciating groans fell from his lips, sending me back into a panic again.

The soldier who initially tried to attack me fell to the ground.
It was so vain an end that I could feel neither pleased nor reassured.
Other soldiers of Vios began to gather around.

“Now—now you need to receive treatment.
No, I’m going to do it right now.”

As I spoke in a stammer, I reached out my hand to his shoulders streaming blood.
But the moment I tried, Tirak pulled away and stood in front of me, letting me out of his arms.

“…..It’s ok—okay, Priestess.”

I shouted in disagreement at his barely spoken words, with a face twisted in pain.
It’s not okay, it’s not okay at all!

But Tirak did not listen to me and stepped forward.
The sound of his great sword cutting through the air became louder.
With weary faces, Vios’s soldiers had to form a more assertive stance to prepare for attack.

The great sword was still daunting and threatening, but their attacks were able to easily penetrate through Tirak’s weakened defense.
His frequent experience in the battlefield had enabled him to sustain his strength and reflexes up to this point, but in the end, even his body had a limit it couldn’t exceed.
In this state, they brought him down.

Tirak collapsed, one knee giving out completely.
He had taken down the soldiers in front of him, and they lay injured, strewn around him on the ground.
But others were quickly approaching.

I knelt with a drained, pale face and crawled to Tirak.
His stomach had been deeply stabbed, and blood was pouring out, pooling onto the ground.

Tirak tried to stand up, seeing Vios’s soldiers drawing near, but his knees buckled under him again.
His arms shook as he tried to hold up his sword.
I couldn’t even scream, and I grabbed onto his arm.

His wound needed to be treated from the deepest bleed, but blood seemed to be flowing from his whole body, and I became dizzy in my frantic search for the source.
I could hear the soldier’s footsteps next to me, but I couldn’t raise my head.

But in that moment, all sound seemed to turn off.
A moment of silence came, as if all the turmoil in the world had been blocked.
It passed by short and strange, like the quiet anticipation between lightning and thunder, waiting for a tremendous noise to erupt—Kwa-kwa-kwang.

Or an explosion.

It was so deafening that my ears were momentarily numb.
The ground shook.
It was such a violent vibration, one that only occurred when something forcefully struck the earth.

Trembling in shock and fear, I turned my head.
And it was the person caught in my sight, the one who strode forward with a cool, rolling blackness curling around his sword.

It was Cabel.