CHAPTER 4: The Dream

Splashes of icy cold water enveloped Shia’s body as she took the plunge to the river down below. It felt like she has lost all her will to live as the water drove her down to its surface. Everything was drowned in an abrupt but calming silence.

Suddenly, Shia remembered where she was and that she was with someone. She frantically swam upwards into the surface and scanned the scene.

The surface of the water was a violent mess. The current tumbled Shia to and fro all over several times before she had spotted a plant root sticking from amongst the rocks. She reached her arms to it and used her powers. It began to magically extend itself and lifted her up to the edge of the water.

As soon as she was able to climb on top of the rock where the root was seated, she scanned the water for any signs of the boy. Luckily, she was able to spot his cape bobbing from the surface of the current before coming down again. Without further ado, Shia quickly instructed the root to lift the boy from the directions where she last saw him and to bring him towards dry land.

He looked like he was in a terribly awful shape as Shia scanned him. Quickly, she checked his pulse and his breathing, and she found that he had no signs of both.

Refusing to think that he could die in such a manner, Shia yelled, “You don’t deserve to die!” She quickly started pounding on his chest where his heart must be. “You cannot die yet! You haven’t suffered enough!”

Still, there was no sign of breathing. Shia proceeded to part his lips, and she puffed in a full gust of breath into his mouth. Still, there was no movement. His face was beginning to become paler and paler, but Shia continued to pound on his chest even harder.

“You cannot die! Not until you tell me why you killed my family!” Shia remarked as she gave another full breath to his parted lips.

As if hearing her commands, his body suddenly jolted, and he began coughing out some water out from his lungs. Shia heaved a sigh of relief and began to openly sob in a mixture of relief and exasperation.

******************

“Langrey!” the sound of a familiar childish voice filled the air. “Langrey!” it called once again.

“Langrion Zephiry Romualdi, why aren’t you answering my calls? Do you not hear me?”

Langrion lifted his eyes from his book, and he saw the round, bubbly face of his twin brother, Danterion, sneaking a peek on what he was doing.

He had made it a habit to always bother him out whenever he reads. Sometimes, he just wished he could read in total peace without him. Nonetheless, he closed his book and responded to him.

“What is it that the high and mighty Lord Danterion Alexy Romualdi wanted from his servant?” Langrion replied while making an elaborate bow to his brother. Both of them immediately burst out laughing.

“You know what I wanted, Langrey!” Danterion said as he tried to stifle a laugh.

“And what is it?” Langrion asked again.

“I wanted you to die...”

All of a sudden, the young Danterion vanished and Langrion found himself looking at the twenty year old face of his beloved brother. But it didn’t look like his affable and gentle brother at all. It looked like the face of a mad man.

“Die! Die! Just like what you did to our mother and father!” He said with a twisted scowl in his face. “You just need to die for the empire and for me!”

“Don’t die!” a soft, female voice said. “You cannot die yet! You haven’t suffered enough!”

Suddenly, the face of a woman hovered in Langrion’s eyes. With her flowing silvery hair enveloping her olive-colored face, she looked like an angel that had fallen down from heaven.

It was a remarkable sight. She was coming down on him in slow motion.

“You cannot die yet,” she whispered, and as she did, her soft pink lips descended upon him, and she gave him a breathtaking kiss.

*******************

The night passed by so agonizingly long for Shia.

After coughing out some water for a bit, the boy went back to his stupor. She put her hand around his head, and she found out that he was burning up with fever.

Shia looked around and saw a small cave at the edge of the river bank. Shia’s power has not returned to its normal state, but thankfully, she did manage to carry the boy with the help of several feeble looking-vines.

As soon as she entered the cave, Shia began to collect some materials to start a fire.

The boy’s drenched suit did not help at all in lowering down his fever. After instructing some vines into weaving itself into a blanket, Shia then began undressing the boy. He had so many layers of clothes on that it became such a tiresome task to undress him.

As she reached through the final articles of his clothing, Shia noticed the chiselled muscle of his arms and chest and his lower body. He was not a boy after all – he was already a man!

Beginning to feel increasingly flustered, Shia tried to remove the rest of his clothing as quickly as she could while trying her best not to peek at his naked body as much.

After she had finished undressing him, Shia hung his clothes near the fire and covered the boy – or rather the man - with the blanket. The vines did a very fine job. The blanket was thick enough to cover two people for the night. Shia began to swear in her head as she realized that she had only instructed the vine to make one blanket, and it had already used up so much of itself in the process.

By now, the late afternoon sun had already begun to set. Knowing that there was no use in blaming herself for her foolishness regarding the blanket, Shia huddled herself close to the fire and began looking at the contents of a small pouch that she found under the man’s belt.

There were several curious items inside the pouch. There was a ring with an insignia of a cross with two herons on each side. There was also a black metal mask that covered only half of a person’s face. There was a big crack in the middle of the mask, though, and Shia could tell that the mask had taken so much more beating that it should.

She suddenly remembered how the man inquired for his mask earlier when they first saw him at the foothold trap.

Lastly, she found a crumpled note that was half drenched in water. Curious, Shia uncrumpled the note and took a peek of what was inside.

The hand writing had mostly faded where the watermarks had been, and only one side of the note was readable. Shia could only make out these words:

You know it yourself. You could not be that person whom I needed...

It was signed by someone whose name starts with the letters “Edel” but the rest were in such a conspicuous mess that Shia couldn’t make sense of anything else.

Shia tried to bring the letter closer to the fire to see if she could make out the rest of the letter, but suddenly, she heard the man beside her stir, and she jumped a little. It would be bad enough to be caught reading someone else’s letter. Shia then hurriedly put the letter as well as the other articles back inside the pouch.

After eating a dinner made of clear soup and freshwater fish, Shia checked her patient, and found that he was still burning up with fever that seemed higher than before. Shia inspected the man’s wounds, and found that he was beginning to bleed a lot from his side the most where her dagger had pierced him.

Shia knew all the plants she needed to be able to make the necessary medicine for him, and she began imagining the plants in her mind and asking the ground to bring forth these plants from below the ground.

Slowly, the plants began to flourish. Shia asked the plants to bear flowers in an instant. She needed to chop up the flowers and boil them to be able to make a medical paste.

Normally, it would have taken Shia a split second to do all of these with her powers, but it had been months since she used it, and she was too tired from all that had happened that day. She had neglected to dry her clothes as well, and she had begun to feel cold as the night went by.

The man began to toss and moan as Shia applied the medical paste to his side, his back, his leg, and the other parts of his body where she found some scrapes. Shia tried to wash his head with a piece of cloth to lower down his fever.

As the night deepened, Shia herself began to feel tired and weary, but the man continued to moan and toss violently in his sleep. Half asleep, Shia would wake up and begin wiping his sweat away before shortly falling asleep herself. The process continued for several hours until the break of dawn.

******************

Langrion’s dream continued in a cycle. He would see his brother and the angel one after the other either telling him to die or not to die. At times, he would see the angel wiping his forehead with a cloth, and then kissing him once again in his lips. If this was a dream, he wouldn’t want to wake up from it had it not also included the maniacal face and harsh insults of his brother.

Feeling the warmth of the morning sun against his face, Langrion opened his eyes slowly and saw the edges of a cave. He can also smell the faintly burnt scent of wood and medicine.

He felt confused. Where was he? Why was he here? He pushed the heavy blanket away, and saw that he was completely naked underneath.

As he tried lifting his left arm, something stirred from his side, and what he saw almost made him jump.

Lying next to Langrion and holding his hand was the silver-haired angel he saw over and over again in his dreams.