Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh! It hurts! Everything hurts!
In short, I’d lived.
One second I’d been stuck to the dragon as it whipped wildly around the skies, and the next I’d fallen onto a house somewhere, dramatically crashing through the ceiling.
My apologies to the (seemingly absent) homeowner.
Hngh... I’m...still...
I tried to make sense of my fragmented memories.
The dragon had begun to nosedive, and somehow, I’d managed to break away from it.
Then, as I’d plunged downward, I’d fired Arash at the ground, and the beam that had shot out of it had broken my fall. The impact had still been pretty powerful, mind you, so it was a good thing I’d still been in my Dáinsleif-enhanced state. Otherwise, I’d probably have eaten shit right then and there, thanks to all the flailing around the dragon was doing.
Okay, uh, guess I’ll get up!
I couldn’t just lay there and wheeze forever! I’d been lucky enough just to detach from the dragon, after all!
I should take the chance to heal, and... Huh?
As I stood, my body leaned heavily to the right for some reason. Not like a “dizzy” sort of heavy lean, but a “my center of gravity feels off” sort of heavy lean.
And despite my entire body being in severe pain, my left arm wasn’t hurting at all.
Wait... No way...
That was when I first looked down at myself.
And then I noticed it.
M-My left arm. Where’s my left arm?!
At that moment, I felt a searing pain where it’d been severed, near my left shoulder. The pain in my split nerves fried my brain like an electrical current, much worse than the rest of my battered and bruised body.
“Aaaaaaugh!” I screamed in agony.
Shit! Fuck! Argh!
The severed area burned hot, as if being scorched. I clenched my teeth so hard my molars cracked. Passing out would’ve let me escape the pain, but the intense agony I felt from my missing limb wouldn’t even allow me that mercy.
“VESSEL!”
Muramasa’s voice echoed faintly in my heart, seeming distant, somehow.
Right. I remember...
Just before my left arm had been severed, I’d stabbed the blade into the black dragon, shifting the Death Shot from my left hand to my right. That was why I’d been able to use it to break my fall.
Which had been a good call...and not my call. There was no way I’d have been able to make such a split-second decision.
The pain muddled my memories, but it had to have been Muramasa. Thanks, dude.
Shit, I’m gonna die. I’m seriously gonna die at this rate!
I silently prayed that someone, anyone, would come to my rescue.
Fortunately for me, I seemed to be in some sort of village. I mean, yes, kinda presumptuous of me to expect help after dropping from the sky out of nowhere, but come on! Anyone?!
A commotion outside seemed to answer my prayers as I heard people’s voices.
I’m saved!
I figured they must all have been shocked, talking about the mysterious man who’d dropped from the sky. I’d have to be sure to apologize to them all later (especially the owner of the house I’d just wrecked). For now, though, I just wanted to yell at them to please come help me. Fast.
I didn’t get the chance.
“The sky! A dragon’s coming from the skyyyyyyy!” someone shouted out.
And then a powerful gust of wind began to blow. People screamed, the walls around me were blown away, and my body was sent rolling.
I was already in so much pain that the tumble didn’t even register as painful. Instead, my focus was fully on the now-exposed scenery outside the house.
“GROOOOOAR!”
The black dragon, spreading its wings, was glaring right at me, with no intention of letting me go. It had chased me all the way here, hell-bent on finishing me off.
Dude, go pick on someone your own size.
I was on the brink of death already. How was I supposed to fight that thing?
It’s hopeless, I thought, my heart filling with despair.
✦ ✦ ✦
“So it’s over,” Vortigern—leader of an organization of dark magi—mused to himself in his throne room.
What he saw was not his palace but the image of one man, whose body was torn to rags, his left arm gone—Crow, the black-haired youth.
Borrowing the dragon’s senses, he watched the young man’s pathetic, dying form.
“Hah! Releasing the dragon was worth it. Not even that brat can withstand the wrath of the Blight of the Heavens,” he muttered, stifling a chuckle, stroking his haphazardly grown goatee. “Too bad, boy.”
The tables could no longer be turned. Crow Titus’s spirit had to have been irreversibly fractured.
Vortigern watched the hopeless struggle, playing out to the sounds of the people’s screams, with glee.
“This takes care of one obstacle to our plans,” he mused thoughtfully. “Next we must neutralize Iris of the White Blade... Hm?”
Crow Titus slowly pushed himself to his feet.
Disoriented, but steady. Frail, but heroic. This man, whose body and soul should have been broken beyond repair, was climbing back from the brink.
“What? How?”
One step. Another. Before Vortigern’s bewildered eyes, the young man walked forward.
Panicked, the crowd fled away from the black dragon. And as if to protect them, Crow advanced toward it.
And not only that—
“I will not allow you to hurt these people,” he declared defiantly. “Is it me you want? Come and get me.”
“What?!”
A grand, reverberating oath of protection. Crow stood strong and imposing, a beacon of hope even in his blood-soaked state.
“Ah... Ugh!”
As he looked upon this sight, a piercing shock coursed through Vortigern’s chest.