Chương 43: 18-2.Blue-Blooded Beast (Venor)

The rubble kept going down. So did I. More precisely: I was holding Alvira while sliding down a crack that seemed designed to humiliate us, accompanied by rocks with strong opinions about human skin. The beast's roaring still echoed above, its light pulsing through the gap like something pressing its face to a window. My one coherent thought was remarkably simple: If I survive today, "exploring Old Civilization ruins" goes on the permanent prohibited list. First entry. The crack steepened.

The surface was slick as greased stone. I tried to arrest our slide with my sword—got hit by a loose rock, lost my angle, and we went into a half-spin. Alvira's breath hitched. Her grip tightened. I pulled her closer on instinct, offering my back to the protruding edges. White-hot impact exploded behind my eyes. For a moment I was convinced I'd been disassembled. Then— Splash. Not stone. Water. Ice-cold black water hit like a chest full of winter being slammed shut.

For a disorienting moment I thought we'd somehow ended up back in the original flood. This cold didn't have gradations—it simply occupied you completely. I pitched forward, knees hitting bottom hard, elbow finding a metal edge. The good news: we'd stopped falling. The bad news: we'd apparently landed in something that looked even more like a tomb. I hauled Alvira up immediately, half-carrying her toward higher ground. Our boots made miserable sounds in the standing water.

The darkness was near-total—just residual blue glow from above and, further away, a faint white light giving the space minimal shape. An old conduit or abandoned cistern. Low arched ceiling of corroded stone and metal, surfaces thick with salt deposits and water stains. Oversized pipes along both walls—some burst, others still dripping with geological patience. The floor was shallow black water littered with debris too degraded to identify.

Ahead, a partially collapsed maintenance platform connected to a warped grate door. Better than standing in the water. I got Alvira onto the platform, pulled myself up after, and leaned against the rusted railing, breathing hard.

"... Still alive?" I managed. Alvira didn't answer immediately. She was curled at the platform's edge, hair soaked and clinging to her neck, the silver gone almost translucent. Her breathing was rougher now, shoulders trembling—cold or pain, impossible to separate. After a moment, she spoke.

"Still... not dead."

"Good." I wiped water from my face.

"I'm developing a sentimental attachment to that phrase." She didn't respond. Not because she was conserving energy. She was staring at the black water, and her expression was wrong. Not combat alertness. Not her usual composed detachment. This was something else—like she was listening to something, or watching something that shouldn't be there but that she was certain she could see. I followed her gaze. Only slow ripples from our entry and occasional drops from the ceiling disturbing the surface. Nothing else.

But Alvira's fingers were closing tighter and tighter, knuckles going white.

"Alvira." No response.

"Alvira. Look at me." Her shoulder jerked—like being pulled back from somewhere far away—and she turned slowly toward me. Her eyes were still clear. For now. But something thin lay behind them, like a hairline fracture beneath ice. Easy to miss if you weren't looking. Impossible to unsee once you had.

"What did you see?" I kept my voice level. She was quiet for a moment.

"... I thought someone was standing in the water." My spine tightened.

"Someone?"

"Possibly just shadow." She spoke carefully, reassembling her voice.

"Or I hit my head."

"You definitely hit your head. So did I." I crouched in front of her, keeping my tone even.

"But right now there are two people here. If there's a third, they can wait their turn." She looked at me. The corner of her mouth moved—not quite a smile, but close enough. Good. She could still process absurdity. We hadn't reached the worst case. I reached to wring out my cloak and my chest exploded with pain. I looked down. The section where the beast's claw had caught me was completely blackened, edges curled inward like acid damage. The underlayer had rotted through in places.

Worse: through the tears, the skin showed not clean laceration but mottled red-black burns, edges tinged with faint blue-green that had no business being part of human tissue.

"... Thoughtful of it to leave a souvenir." Alvira's gaze dropped to my chest. Whatever residual distance had been in her expression sharpened immediately.

"Let me see."

"I thought you were the priority patient."

"Less talking. Sit." The command tone was back. Genuinely reassuring. I sat and she worked the damaged buckle free. The underlayer had fused to the wound—pulling it away even slightly made my vision strobe.

"Hss—""Hold still," she said quietly.

"That's remarkably unsympathetic from someone whose shoulder is half non-functional."

"I don't have bandwidth for sympathy right now." Her voice said that. Her hands were steady. She cut away contaminated leather and fabric with surgical precision, movements suggesting she'd done this before under worse conditions. I expected her to flush it with water—instead she bent close, inhaled near the burn, and frowned.

"No direct water contact."

"Why?"

"If this matches the records, water spreads the residue." She looked up.

"We scrape surface contamination first. Then bandage."

"Your expertise is not boosting my confidence."

"You're breathing. That's sufficient." She worked the blade edge and dry cloth across the burn in careful passes. It didn't feel like normal pain—more like something beneath my skin was waking up and being methodically prevented from finishing. I held still through several passes. Then one caught deeper and I drew a sharp, involuntary breath. Alvira's fingers stopped for an instant.

"Does it hurt?"

"Not at all," I said with perfect composure.

"I just suddenly remembered I probably committed numerous atrocities in a previous life." She stared at me for exactly one second, then actually replied.

"Consider this karmic retribution."

"... You know, that approach to comforting people is going to leave you very friendless."

"I'm not looking for friends." A pause. Then, much quieter:"... At least not right now." I looked up at her. She avoided my gaze, returning her attention to the bandaging. Her silver lashes cast faint shadows in the dim light. Her hands were freezing cold, yet every movement was careful to the point of restraint—as if she feared that pressing even slightly harder might cause this already unfortunate patch of flesh to formally tender its resignation.

In that moment, I suddenly suspected the tightness in my chest wasn't entirely due to the wound. I cleared my throat and looked away.

"Your turn."

"I can do it myse—""If you finish that sentence, I'm spending the next three days mocking you about seeing people in the water." She finally looked up and glared at me. If that look had been an arrow, I'd already be pinned to the wall. But she didn't argue further. She slowly shifted her right leg forward. The ankle had swollen beyond reason, straining the boot leather visibly. I started with the laces; she flinched reflexively but didn't pull away.

"Tell me when it hurts."

"You sound exactly like someone's mother." If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"Thank you. I'm discovering new talents today." Once the boot came off, the damage looked worse than expected. The ankle was badly swollen and bruised, radiating unnatural heat. Her left shoulder was more problematic—the fabric beneath the armor had soaked through with dark blood. The moment I brushed the buckle, her breathing hitched.

"Leave the shoulder alone for now," I said.

"Ankle first, shoulder after." She made a low sound of acknowledgment. But while I was tying the splint, she suddenly spoke.

"Cedric."

"Yeah?"

"Did you... hear singing just now?" My hands paused. This place was too dark—the kind that dissolved distance and direction into uniform blackness. Deep in the pipes there was dripping, wind, the occasional metallic whine of thermal contraction. All of it layered together in ways that could easily convince someone they were hearing something else. But she'd asked specifically about singing. That damned broadcast from above surfaced in my memory like a rusted nail refusing to stay buried.

I didn't answer immediately. Alvira's gaze drifted toward the far edge of the black water, her voice dropping further.

"Not like before... not from speakers. Something far away, like humming behind the pipes. Broken up, hard to make out..." She stopped herself. Because she'd realized exactly how that sounded. Not frightening in a horror-story way. Frightening in the way that happens when the most rational person in the room starts losing track of what they're actually perceiving. I finished the knot and tapped her knee lightly.

"Listen to me." She looked at me. I kept my voice steady—not patronizing, not pretending everything was fine.

"You're injured, hypothermic, and you've spent the last hour being hunted by abominations. Hearing things, seeing things, thinking shadows move—none of that is unusual. It doesn't mean you're losing your mind. It means you're still alive, and you've been pushed past your limits." She said nothing. I continued.

"If you hear something or see something again, tell me first. Don't wrestle with it alone. If there's actually something there, I'll be terrified with you. If there isn't, I'll make fun of you. Either way, you don't lose." She stared at me for two full seconds. That face, usually so perfectly composed, suddenly looked fragile. Not weak—but the specific blankness of someone who has held tension far too long and is suddenly given permission to release it, just slightly. She drew a very quiet breath.

"... You are genuinely terrible at comforting people." I exhaled in relief. Still criticizing. Still present.

"Mutually," I said. I reached out and touched the old pipe wall beside us. My fingertips stopped.

"Wait."

"What?"

"This... is warm." Alvira blinked, then pressed her hand against it as well. It wasn't imagination. The massive old pipe retained faint residual heat—as though somewhere deep inside a system dead for centuries, one stubborn spark refused to extinguish completely. Barely perceptible, nowhere near actual warmth, but compared to the bone-deep damp surrounding us, it was priceless. I stood immediately and traced the platform edge until I found a half-open maintenance alcove.

Rotted crates, rags, rolls of unidentifiable insulation—and crucially, the space was wedged between two warm pipes. Narrow, sheltered, and drier than anywhere else.

"Tonight's luxury accommodation," I announced.

"No view, but unlikely to kill us immediately." Alvira looked at the alcove and said, very quietly:"Better than the last one."

"See? Human standards are remarkably adaptable." I dragged out the driest materials and arranged a makeshift layer, then hung our wettest cloaks near the warm pipes. No fire here—too confined, too little ventilation. We'd suffocate before we thawed. But the pipe's faint heat might extend our survival past tonight. I returned to Alvira and helped her into the alcove.

She held herself together while sitting, but the moment she leaned against that faintly warm pipe wall, her shoulders dropped—an almost imperceptible release, as if her body had finally registered exactly how exhausted it was. Then she caught my sleeve. Light, but immediate. I stopped.

"What is it?" She didn't answer right away. Head down, wet hair falling forward to shadow half her face. After a long moment, she spoke.

"Earlier... I really thought there was someone in the water." Her voice was very low. Uncharacteristically low.

"I know."

"I thought... someone was calling me." Her fingers slowly tightened, like holding something down.

"Not now. Like from a long time ago. From very far away." I didn't press. Asking questions now would be like jabbing a wound with a stick. I crouched to her eye level and placed my hand over hers where it gripped my sleeve. Her hand was ice-cold. I held it steadily.

"Then don't listen to that right now," I said. She looked up.

"Listen to me instead. Breathe. Look at me. Right now we're underground—nowhere else. The person holding you is me, not anyone else. Your job right now isn't chasing voices—it's surviving until tomorrow." I paused, then added:"Everything else—once your foot heals, once you have a bow again—we'll deal with them one by one. Whatever you want to cut down, whatever you want to curse at, I'll be there." She stared at me. That near-fractured distance in her eyes slowly began to recede.

What replaced it was exhaustion, pain, and something I rarely saw on her face—the brief emptiness of someone finally allowed to set their weapon down, if only temporarily. She closed her eyes. Her shoulders trembled slightly, but she didn't pull her hand away.

"... You're a very strange person."

"I get that a lot."

"Terrified out of your mind, yet insisting on acting composed."

"A correction," I said without changing expression.

"I'm terrified with dignity." She actually laughed. Not her usual barely-there smile, but a genuine, if brief and quiet, laugh. The next instant she seemed to realize she'd just laughed in a lightless tomb and turned away. But it had already happened. Enough to make this grave-dark space feel, momentarily, less like a grave. I settled beside her, pulled the driest cloth and cloaks around us both, and gently shifted her closer to the pipe's warmth. She stiffened initially—reflex demanding distance.

But after a few seconds, she leaned in anyway. Her forehead rested against my shoulder. Her breathing was light but steadier. I didn't speak. Outside, the black water continued its occasional dripping. Wind in the deep pipes produced sounds that, if you listened too long, started resembling whispers. The entire underground felt awake, merely pretending not to watch. But for now, this narrow space between old heating pipes belonged to us. I looked down at Alvira.

"Sleep a little," I said quietly.

"If you hear anything again, wake me first. Don't fall into it alone." She kept her eyes closed. Several seconds passed before she gave a very soft "mm." Her hand, still holding my sleeve, didn't let go. I didn't mention it.

Honestly, when you've just survived close combat with a creature whose subcutaneous veins glow with eldritch blue fire, followed immediately by plummeting dozens of meters through jagged stone while carrying an elf who weighs remarkably little but possesses a temper rigid enough to forge swords—your brain reduces itself to two basic functions. First: breathing. Second: declaring a general strike. Leaning against the faint warmth of that old pipe, I felt accumulated damage seeping into my bones layer by layer.

The chemical burn on my chest where the beast's claw had caught me smoldered like banked coals. The rolling waves of nausea—I chose to interpret as reasonable interest charged by fate for surviving direct exposure to that blue light. My eyelids felt weighted with lead.... Just for a minute. I told myself that, then let consciousness sink without resistance. I don't know how much time passed. The needle-thin underground wind that had been grinding against my nerves faded at some point.

Replacing it came an almost impossible coolness. Like parched earth finally feeling rain, or wind from a forest that existed only in someone else's memory—sweeping across my burning forehead and neck, gently pressing down the pain that had threatened to detonate behind my eyes. Then I heard a voice. Very soft. Very low. With a strange, rhythmic cadence. Not human language. I couldn't understand a syllable, yet the melody itself seemed designed to soothe.

Entirely alien, but it made the body want to relax on pure instinct. Like water at night. Like wind through leaves. Like someone murmuring close by: don't be afraid right now. Elven. The realization came belatedly. Then something cool touched my forehead. Slender fingers, slightly cold but not entirely soft. They carried faint calluses from years of drawing a bowstring. The movement was hesitant, almost clumsy—brushing tangled hair from my forehead first, then smoothing it back with extreme gentleness.... Wait.

My mostly-decommissioned brain reluctantly switched one light back on. In this lightless subterranean nowhere, there was theoretically only one other living person with fingers that slender. Which meant— Maintaining my breathing rhythm, I opened my eyes just a fraction. By the residual glow from the pipe surfaces, I saw Alvira leaning slightly toward me, sitting very close. Her silver hair caught the faint light like moonlight on snow.

Those green eyes that usually observed everything with crystalline detachment were currently unfocused, carrying an expression I'd never seen on her face before—complex, unguarded, too heavy to pretend I hadn't noticed. Something like delayed fear. Something like self-reproach. And something else—a tenderness she hadn't managed to hide in time.

She hummed that ancient elven melody under her breath, using her fingertips to brush my hair aside, as if finally confirming I was still breathing but afraid to make the confirmation too obvious. Then our eyes met.

"..." The song stopped instantly. Not faded—snapped. Like someone had grabbed a vibrating string and choked it to death. Alvira's fingers froze in midair. One second. Two seconds. The tips of her ears turned red at a speed visible to the naked eye. The sight was genuinely staggering. The woman who normally issued commands with a face carved from ice, who barely blinked when monsters lunged at her, was currently burning red from ears to cheeks while desperately trying to maintain an expression of complete composure.

Frankly, this was more dangerous than the blue-blood beast's bioluminescence. I cleared my throat, working very hard not to sound like I was laughing.

"... You have a very nice singing voice." Alvira snatched her hand back.

"You were awake. Why didn't you say anything?" Still deliberately quiet, but the composure was purely structural now. She clutched her broken bow tighter—not like a weapon, but like the last available shield for her dignity.

"I just woke up." I blinked, deciding to be merciful.

"Only heard a little bit." She fixed me with a look that communicated with absolute clarity: It had better genuinely be just a little bit.

"You misheard," she said.

"Ah."

"That wasn't singing."

"Right."

"It was... an old calming melody. For medicinal purposes." I nodded with complete sincerity.

"I see." She clearly heard exactly how unconvinced my I see was. Her lips pressed together, ears going redder.

"Furthermore," she said, forcing steel back into her tone, "I was not comforting you."

"Of course."

"I was verifying whether you'd sustained brain damage."

"Very characteristic elven diagnostic technique."

"Your filthy hair was obstructing my assessment."

"I see. Second time." She glared at me. Still lethal, but somewhat undermined by the burning ears, pale face, and obvious reality that she hadn't recovered from the social catastrophe of the moment. I considered pushing further, then saw the exhaustion still lingering in her eyes. I stopped. Alvira seemed to register that I wasn't pressing the attack. Her shoulders eased fractionally. She looked down at her hands, quiet for two seconds, then spoke in a voice like a battlefield report delivered half a beat too slow.

"Your breathing was irregular for a long time." I blinked. She wasn't looking at me—just at dark rust stains on the floor.

"I thought you might lose consciousness completely." She paused, voice dropping.

"If you actually died here, it would be very inconvenient."

"Because I'm the only functional combat personnel?" Brief silence.

"... Among other reasons."

"Among other reasons?" She finally looked at me. Something like irritation flickered there, but she lacked the energy to maintain her usual impenetrable distance.

"Cedric," she said quietly.

"I don't want to be left alone here right now." The words landed. Even she seemed startled by them. Her lashes trembled. Her mouth pressed tight—delayed recognition of exactly what she'd just admitted arriving a beat too late. I went still too. Every joke that could have followed died in my throat. Because that didn't sound like the Alvira everyone saw. More accurately—that was probably the real Alvira, the one she never allowed on the surface.

Unable to endure the silence, she immediately looked away, voice going cold again.

"Pretend you didn't hear that."

"That's difficult."

"Forget it."

"Is that an order?"

"... Yes." I looked at her furiously burning ears and couldn't hold back a small laugh.

"Alright." I pulled the cloak back over her shoulders, covering where the cold was making her shiver.

"Then I'll only remember the important part." She shot me a suspicious look.

"Which part?"

"That you don't want to be alone right now." She stared at me. Her expression suggested she was seriously calculating whether, in her current condition, she could still pin me to the pipe wall with her broken bow. In the end, she did nothing. Just looked away very slowly and muttered:"... Do what you want." That do what you want sounded entirely unwilling. I was sensible enough not to push further. There's a line between being reassuring and being insufferable, and I know where it is.

At least until she actually shoots me. I shifted closer, easing her back toward the pipe's warmth. She was stiff initially—instinct demanding distance—but after a few seconds, she leaned in anyway. Her forehead rested lightly against my shoulder. Her breathing steadied, though it remained quiet. Outside, the darkness showed no signs of releasing us. Occasional water drops still echoed. Wind in distant pipes still produced sounds that resembled whispering if you listened too long.

The entire underground felt awake, merely pretending not to watch. But for now, this narrow space between old heating pipes was tolerably ours. Alvira was quiet for a long moment before speaking softly.

"Cedric."

"Yeah?"

"About earlier..."

"I know. Forgotten." She paused.

"... At least don't remember it too clearly." I nearly laughed out loud, managing to compress it into a soft exhale.

"I'll do my best." She said nothing more. Her fingers just tightened slightly on my sleeve, then she closed her eyes. Looking out at darkness that felt like it might never end, I suddenly thought— Tonight might not be so unbearable after all.