Nah, there’s no way it can put it back on like that. That’d be too ridiculous.
But come to think of it, the pointy-eared divine soldier had been holding its long pole with both hands earlier despite Manato having lopped one of them off. Had its hand reattached and healed that quickly? Yeah, it had. Did that mean they could put their heads back on too? He wasn’t so sure of that. Heads and hands were different. Totally different.
Except, maybe they weren’t so different after all.
The divine soldier captain let go of its two-horned head which despite not being held in place anymore didn’t fall off. It was stuck back on.
“I didn’t fully destroy its light core!”
Haru said something that Manato didn’t really understand and then struck with the dagger in his right hand. The captain blocked the dagger—though Manato was becoming dubious about whether it could actually be called a dagger—with its left arm. It was trying to knock the blade aside, but instead the dagger lopped its arm off. The captain didn’t let that concern it, though, as it charged Haru.
“This’s the problem with you!”
Haru kicked the divine soldier captain in the chest with his right foot, sending it reeling backward, then followed up with another kick from his left foot that knocked it over.
Oh, that’s right. I need to run away.
Manato tried to start running. He was going to do as Haru said this time.
“O light!”
“Igrantcia! Diedenda!”
“Lumiaris! Rorbarol!”
“Afinke! Lumiarishel!”
“Lumiaris’s divine protection be upon you!”
They were closing in. The captains and the lesser divine soldiers. And even the priest that was covered in the shiny stuff all over.
The priest swung its spear and banner around, urging the divine soldiers on. Had Haru not been able to finish off the priest? Then again, even the divine soldier captain had been able to put itself back together after losing its head. That was supposed to kill people, you know? Getting your head cut off. At least normally. And even if these things weren’t normal, it felt like it still ought to kill them. But the captain had been able to come back to life. Or it hadn’t even died in the first place. A little thing like losing its head wasn’t enough to kill it. Was that the takeaway from all this? Priests were probably the same, or—and this was just a feeling Manato had—they were even tougher than the captains. If Haru couldn’t kill them, that was seriously bad news. It was super scary, but Manato couldn’t laugh. It wasn’t much fun. He needed to get out of there. But even though he was thinking that, his body wouldn’t move as fast as he wanted it to.
“At times like this, you should smile.”
His dad’s wrinkled, toothless face flashed through his mind.
“If you smile, it’ll take the tension out.”
His mom’s face had been just as wrinkly, and that was because she and his dad had always been smiling and laughing together.
“If you always smile, no matter the occasion, then you’ll be able to endure and overcome anything.”
That was what Manato’s parents had always taught him. He’d cried sometimes when he was little, but his parents had always tried to make their little boy smile. But more than that, they had always been laughing and smiling themselves. It had been contagious.
He was aware that there had been times when they hadn’t felt much like smiling at all. In fact, there probably hadn’t been a single day when his parents hadn’t struggled or been in pain in some way. But whenever life felt hopelessly tough, they had forced themselves to smile. Sometimes those smiles had been desperate ones. But it was better to smile than to not. Far better.
Everyone would die eventually. Even Manato. But until he did, he wanted to be like his parents, and smile as much as he could.
“Heh.”
That thought forced a smile onto his face. It made things feel a bit more fun. And if he was having fun, then his body would move.
Haru was trying to send Manato on ahead, and probably intended to follow behind him. If that was the case, Manato needed to run as fast as he could. He needed to face forward, and not look back. That was what he was thinking, but he couldn’t help but glance behind him. They were close. That captain and several divine soldiers. They had closed in an awful lot.
“Wait.”
Something came flying in. But not from Alterna. From the opposite direction. And not horizontally, but diagonally. It swooped down out of the sky. Some kind of creature. It had wings, and it was big. A bird. No, that wasn’t it. That was no bird. It was bigger than a person.
He had spotted something in the sky earlier as it had passed over the head of the captain with two horns. Something too big to have been a bird. Was this the same creature?
“A dragon?!” Haru shouted.
A dragon. So that’s a dragon, huh?
It had wings, and two legs that it used to kick the divine soldiers, sending them flying. It didn’t land. It was skimming the ground, beating its powerful wings as it hovered along in a straight line.
Manato spotted someone riding on the dragon’s back. A person? Were they human? Though they weren’t wearing a cloak, they were dressed as heavily as Haru. He couldn’t see their face. They didn’t have a mask on, but they were wearing some thick glasses, and had something covering the lower half of their face too.
The dragon nearly collided with the wall, but somehow managed to raise its altitude in time to avoid crashing.
✦ ✦ ✦
