“I won’t let you… Even if you run away from here, there’s nowhere to go! I won’t let you get away!”
Elle chased after them, half of her body still on fire and a furious look on her face.
“What’s happening?” Glenn asked as they ran. “Is this firebird really…”
“Teehee, I told you. It’s a phoenix. Glenn, how do you think she annihilated a species that doesn’t die?” Molly quizzed him.
“Huh? By diluting its blood…” he started.
“That’s right. By breeding with harpies, the blood of the phoenixes grew weaker. But that’s just their descendants. What about the phoenixes before them?”
Glenn had never thought of that. Creatures with immortal life shouldn’t have disappeared.
“When they reach the end of their life, they are engulfed in flames and then resurrected. They become small white bugs, and those bugs then grow. If that ritual is interrupted…they are destroyed,” Molly told him.
Glenn listened silently.
“Hundreds of years ago according to the living world’s calendar, Queen Elle manipulated fate and interfered with the phoenixes’ resurrection. She did it to each phoenix in the living world, one at a time…but when things die in the living world, of course, they come to the Underworld.”
The last part sounded like a riddle.
“Queen Elle never looks closely at the dead, so she never cared where the phoenixes were. She probably never imagined they were in the shape of larvae, sticking to her own body!” Molly exclaimed.
Cottingley flew ahead and Glenn followed after with Molly. The fire was spreading through the castle, and the birds made of flame were still aiding in their escape.
“The souls of the phoenixes have changed their form quite a bit. They look like birds now…but they seem to clearly understand that you saved their descendant,” Molly noted.
“I’m honored,” he replied. He never thought he would be repaid for helping Illy like this.
“Everyone was waiting for you to come. We believed that if you did, we could destroy Queen Elle’s evil plan with the power of the flame of life. Of course, to do that, I had to let you meet Queen Elle, yah?”
“That’s why I was killed, then?” Glenn reasoned.
“That’s riiight. Once Queen Elle says something, she won’t let it go, so I had no choice but to kill you,” Molly confirmed.
So she’d been planning to save Glenn the entire time. Glenn found he was genuinely grateful. Everything she’d done had been for the sake of sending him back to the world of the living—and because she needed the phoenix power that Glenn held to awaken the phoenixes stuck to Elle.
“Ah!”
Glenn heard a voice behind him as he ran. At the very end of the corridor, still pursuing him, was Elle. Though half of her body still burned, she gnashed her teeth and glared at him.
“Argh—it’s so hot! I hate heat. I’m steaming… The flame of life? That’s a joke. So are the phoenixes…”
“Queen Elle…”
“Don’t look at me like that! You’ve no right to pity me, who cannot die despite hating death so!”
Elle sounded like she was on the verge of tears as she chased him. Her movements were labored, despite being covered in the flames of life.
They finally made it outside the castle. As soon as Glenn slipped through the gate, Molly quickly locked it.
“So sorry, Queen Elle,” Molly taunted her.
“Molly! You dare treat me like this… I’ll never forgive you! And you have no place to go!”
“Well, that’s true, ha ha.” Molly laughed out loud.
Elle grabbed onto the iron fence, still on fire, and glared at Glenn. The hatred he saw in her eyes was extraordinary.
“You plan to go back to life? Well…you probably can with this much phoenix flame! Even without my powers!” Elle screamed, squeezing the iron bars with all her might.
“She can’t pass through this gate. Queen Elle cannot leave the castle,” Molly assured him.
“Molly!” Elle screamed again, wanting her to stop sharing such information. “I’ve…lost. I lost this time! But don’t forget. All you’re doing is delaying the inevitable. Even if you go back to life now, you will die again. You will come back here. When you do…I will never forget the disrespect you’ve shown me,” she warned.
“Queen Elle…” Glenn said under his breath.
“You can’t escape death. Everything dies! When you come to the Underworld again, I won’t forgive you, even if you grovel at my feet.”
“I—won’t run away,” Glenn said, stopping in his tracks and turning around.
He accepted Elle’s hatred and faced it directly.
“I will become an even better doctor in the living realm. I will save many humans and monsters, and then I will die.” He’d already decided what he would say to Elle. After all, he always had but one goal. “I will die, and I will return. When I do, I will have grown into a doctor that can take away your pain and suffering, so…please wait for me.”
“What…did you say?”
“I will heal you,” Glenn said confidently, pitting his faith in medical science against the Goddess of Death.
“What… I-I can’t do that! Cure me?! Nothing can be done about my body! You saw it yourself!”
“But I will,” he assured her.
“Grrr…” She was gritting her teeth, probably caught off guard by what he said. “I will never, ever forget that you said that! I can’t wait for you to die! I’ll be waiting for you. A human life ends in a second… I look forward to the day you arrive, Glenn Litbeiiit!”
“Yes. I will get better before I die,” he said calmly.
Nothing Elle said could upset him. The Queen of the Underworld was left speechless, not knowing what else to say.
“Please wait for me,” he repeated.
“You…” Elle was dumbstruck.
“Okay, let’s go,” Molly said cheerfully.
With that, Glenn ran away without looking back, following Cottingley’s lead. Elle was left alone at the fence, watching Glenn and the others run away.
The flames on her right side gradually died down, perhaps because she’d let Glenn go. She was silent. She watched Glenn and the others with a vacant look on her face.