The swarm of monsters had devoured Nil in an instant. The Count joined in and began absorbing magical power from him. Nil fought back. The monsters glomming onto Nil screamed as if struck by lightning and jumped away. Some lost arms or legs in the attack. Some were torn to pieces. The ones still clinging to him burned and smoked. The Count held Nil by the scruff of his collar; Nil winced in pain. A pitch-black liquid dripped from his palms.
“Let go of me,” Nil whimpered hoarsely. “I’m a monster. No matter what you do, I won’t die.”
The Count gripped harder. The liquid sprouting from Nil’s palms intensified. “You might not die, but I can put you to sleep. A sleep that lasts decades. Until humanity heals.”
“You’re too late.” Nil smiled. “This war started before it even began. Do you understand me? The most trivial of incidents fueled fires that had been simmering across Europe for decades, sometimes centuries. Do you really think a break in the fighting can extinguish those fires? This war was nothing more than a preliminary skirmish. Someday a truly great war will sweep the land.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
“That body once fought against the Ottoman Empire. I assume you don’t regret that. Things like that will repeat again and again. This is Europe’s fate.”
“Even so, I’ll stop this disaster you seek.”
“How interesting. See you again in a few decades. Until then, I’ll sleep as you requested.”
Nil’s head fell backward, his knees buckled, and he crumbled on the spot. It looked as if the force animating his body had been suddenly whisked away. The thing that had been Nil couldn’t retain its human form and dissipated into smoke.
Hubert trembled, hiding behind Milos. Jörg didn’t know if he’d seen this gruesome sight or not. But Hubert at least would have sensed that something out of the ordinary had just occurred.
Once Nil had turned to smoke, the monsters eating away at him quietly disappeared. Only the Count remained. He hunched over, crouched down, and picked something up off the ground. He held some small black ball between his thumb and middle finger, raising it up as if examining it in the sunlight.
Milos addressed the Count. “He shrank down quite small.”
Jörg asked, “So that’s Nil’s true form?”
“This is his core that no one can consume. Oh, my stomach feels heavy.” The Count let out an unnerving groan. “I shouldn’t take sustenance from monsters. I feel wretched. Like I want to vomit. I need to hurry back to Xandra’s inn and get some medicine.”
“This is the first time I’ve seen a monster consume their own kind.”
“It happens frequently in emergencies. I didn’t feel like doing it all by myself, so I asked for help.”
“Why did those monsters attack Nil?”
“They are all beings that can no longer exist in the human world for one reason or another. I’m sure they have their reasons to despise someone like Nil.”
Jörg released his corpus and stood.
His corpus stared hard at him. “When did you arrive back inside me?”
“It’s a long story… But I didn’t choose to be there.”
“How dare you interfere with Fritz’s vengeance.”
“You needed to think clearly. You wanted a socialist revolution, not personal revenge.”
“But if I can’t help my best friend, what good is revolution?”
“That head injury you picked up during the war must have changed you. That doesn’t sound like something I would say at all.”
“What would you know about it?” Jörg’s corpus squeezed his hands. “You fled the front the first chance you got, so you know nothing. Up until two years ago, I was always fighting on the verge of death. I even fought British tanks.”
Jörg glanced down at Fritz pressed against the ground. He was still crying. He hadn’t seemed to notice Jörg yet. Perhaps Fritz couldn’t see him.
Just then Lila walked up and thrust something out toward Jörg’s corpus. She had picked a sprig of white lilacs. Indicating toward Fritz with her eyes, she said. “Give them to him.”
Caught completely off guard, Jörg’s corpus couldn’t speak for a moment, then asked briskly, “What are they? Some magic flowers that will heal his soul?”
“Nothing like that, but he needs them to return to reality. You received some once, too.”
A mix of emotions passed over his face. He was remembering the day the Count had given him the lilacs. Ever since that day a shell blew him out of the trench, Jörg had been living two strange, distinct lives. Two lives that shared memories. They were completely separate right now, but that day had altered the boundary between them.
Taking the flowers, Jörg’s corpus gave a curt “Thank you” before facing Fritz and offering the flowers. “Can you stand?” he asked.
“No,” Fritz answered through his sobs. “I don’t have the strength.”
“Stand up, even if it’s hard. The war is over. We can go back to our regular lives.”
Jörg watched the two men apprehensively, and the Count called out to everyone to head back to the inn. “It’s so oppressive here. The enthusiasm of these people celebrating their victory is overbearing. I feel like I might faint.”
Milos asked, “What about the Frenchman?”
“Let’s take him back to Paris through the inn. His sister is waiting for him. After that, he can choose his own path.”
“And Nil?”
“We can throw him in the nearest river.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to seal him away with magic?”
“It wouldn’t make a difference. He’s not someone who can be sealed away. Nothing is an undying presence that exists in every era. After a few decades, this black sphere will naturally resurrect itself.”
“So humanity must deal with him forever, always subject to his mischief?”
“Precisely. That’s how monsters are.”