Chương 60: Chapter 59 - Sleeping Duty

[Ayame's POV] I try to sleep after a long day of yesterday's efforts. This time it is hard to sleep. Its the kind that feels like sinking into mud. My body has taken it from me, this sleep, against my will. Maybe I should stay up and guard a little more just in case, I ask myself. A sound pierces the fog. A sharp, pressurized hiss. It is close. My eyes snap open. The world is blurry, slow. The room is dark, but I see shapes. Lucid is on the floor. He is not moving. A man is hunched over him.

A thin, gaunt silhouette I recognize, the innkeeper. In his hand is a small, glinting device. A syringe. It is buried in the side of Lucid's neck. Lucid's body gives one final twitch, then goes utterly still. Another man, large and broad, stands over me. I see the same glint in his hand, coming down toward my own throat. The wrongness of the town. It has finally shown its true face. My body reacts before my mind can form a plan. Rage and fear are a lightning bolt down my spine.

My Oni nature surges forward, a red tide behind my eyes. My vision tints crimson. I try to lunge up, to get to Lucid.

"Lucid!" My voice is a gurgling choke as the needle pierces my throat. A cold fire floods into my veins. Another sharp pain. My chest. A second syringe. Though have restored to my unrestrained formed, my strength flees like water down a drain. The red haze fades from my sight, leaving only the dim, terrible room. My limbs are liquid. I collapse forward, landing hard on the wooden floor. I come to rest facing Lucid. His mist-shrouded face is turned toward me, peaceful in its unnatural sleep.

The little boy is a small, curled shape next Lucid, he refused sleeping on the singular bed clinging to Lucid instead. I have betrayed them. I said I would watch. I said one hour of rest for my eyes. I slept more. My failure is absolute. Voices drift above me, distorted and ugly.

"This one is a real looker," the large man says. His voice is a grating rumble.

"C'mon, boss, why don't we have some fun with her before we dispose of her?" the gaunt innkeeper replies. His tone is wheedling, eager.

"Holy Mother Alisia," the large man mutters, but it sounds like a curse, not a prayer. He leans closer.

"This one's an Oni. Look at her red eyed and horn."

"Oh, what's the difference!" the innkeeper cackles. The sound is wrong in the quiet room.

"Do not indulge in inhuman blood. You will lose Mother Alisia's divinity," the large man says, his voice turning hard.

"She is generous this year. Three sacrifices, plus another. Though this one is not human, it shall do."

"That man, we'll have to be careful. He is not normal," the innkeeper says, nudging Lucid's still form with his boot.

"He is still human, or close enough. His blood shall do." The gaunt man resounded through the room once more.

"Finally, we managed to abduct the other travelers one by one... but we couldn't get these guys.. with her around." Despite my blurry gaze I could feel his glare. He continued, "it's like she never sleeps""Oni's have more keen senses then us humans but I had other plans nonetheless" the big guard replied. Their words are poison in my ears. Sacrifice. Divinity. They speak of blood and use holy names. It is a disgusting perversion. A fury burns in my chest, cutting through the drug's haze. My veins throb.

I feel the shift beginning in my bones, the expansion of my form, the gathering of my true strength, my clothes start to give away. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. A heavy boot comes down on the back of my neck, pinning my face to the rough floorboards. It presses down, cutting off my air. I struggle, but the drugs and the weight are too much. Black spots dance at the edge of my vision. The gathering power inside me sputters and dies. The world goes dark.

Time passes. I do not know how much. I wake to movement. To jolting. I am in darkness, lying on a hard, ridged surface. A cart. The air smells of old hay, sweat, and fear. My body is a collection of aches. The drug is a wool blanket over my mind, making thoughts slow and thick. I am not alone. Other bodies are pressed around me, stacked like cordwood. I feel the warmth of them, the shallow rise and fall of their breathing. Captives. A cold, heavy chain is locked around my throat, the links digging into my skin.

I am incapacitated. Sedated. I cannot think of a plan. I cannot force my body to change. My mind can hold only one thing, one clear point of focus in the fog. Lucid. Where is he? Is he in this cart? Is he alive? The cart stops. Rough hands grab me. I am dragged out and thrown onto cold, damp stone. The impact jars my bones. I lie there, blinking up at a high, vaulted ceiling cracked with age. A ruined cathedral. Flickering torchlight paints dancing shadows on crumbling walls. Figures move in the gloom.

Cloaked in dark robes, hoods drawn. They mutter in low, chanting voices. One name rises above the others, echoing in the vast, hollow space.

"Alisia… Mother Alisia… grant us your flame of divinity…" A purple light burns at the center of the cathedral. Not the warm orange of a natural fire, but a sickly, vibrant violet. It burns in a wide, stone basin. As my eyes adjust, I see shapes around its base. Bones. Scattered and blackened. This is a blood sacrifice. The thought is cold and clear. I push myself up to my elbows, my head swimming.

My eyes dart around the cavernous space, searching desperately through the crowd of hooded figures and slumped captives. I see the little boy. He is on his knees a distance away, sobbing quietly, held by a robed man. But I do not see Lucid. I do not see the mist, the familiar shape of him. A cold dread, colder than the stone beneath me, settles in my gut. Could he already be…? No. I cannot finish the thought. I have no weapon. My strength is leashed by the drug and the chain. My… group. The word surfaces. My group?

What group? My memory is a hazy, broken thing. There is a sensation of others, of a duty, but no faces, no names. Just this haunting feeling of having failed before and strange urge to complete a duty. A scream pierces the chanting. It is the boy. A robed figure has him by the hair, dragging him across the rough stone floor toward the pulsing purple flame. A raw, animal sound tears from my throat. I try to move, to lunge, to do something. My muscles scream in protest, but they do not obey. The drug holds them down.

I manage only to twitch, to strain against the chain at my neck. I have failed. For a third time. The thought hits me with the force of a physical blow. A third failure. Why does this feeling feel so familiar? This crushing weight of helplessness, of watching harm come to those I am meant to… to what? To protect? The memory is a ghost, a shadow of a similar despair. I have felt this before. I have committed this same atrocity of inaction. Another captive, an elderly woman, is brought forward. She does not scream.

She looks resigned. The robed figures chant louder. They lift her and, with a terrible, ritualistic motion, throw her into the center of the purple flame. There is no roar of fire. Only a soft, consuming whoosh. Her body is enveloped in the violet light. For a second, her shape is visible, a dark silhouette. Then it is gone. Utterly consumed. The purple flame flares brighter, hungrily. One by one. The boy is next. He is so small. I shake. I strain. A pleading noise escapes me, a weak, broken thing.

It is unfit of me but what does it matter when another's life is at stake. One of the robed figures near me turns. A fist connects with the side of my head. The world explodes in white pain. My vision blurs. I taste blood in my mouth. But in that moment, as my head is snapped to the side, I see him. The one who hit me. His hood has shifted slightly with the motion of his swing. Beneath it, his face is shrouded. Not by fabric, but by a familiar, swirling mist. Lucid. The world stops.

The pain, the chanting, the terror, it all recedes into a dull hum. He is here. He is one of them. Or he is pretending to be. His eyes, what I can see of them through the mist, meet mine. There is no recognition in them. Only the blank, dead look of the other veiled cultists. My heart, which had been a trapped, frantic bird, goes still and cold. I want to scream. I want to cry out his name. I want to ask why. But I have never felt such emotions, i have never acted this way. But I do not. I remain calm.

Or what passes for calm, a frozen, numb stillness. I realize what has happened. The syringe. The drug. They took him, and they did something to him. Or he is playing a part. A desperate, dangerous part. He turns away, adjusting his hood, and rejoins the chanting.

"Mother Alisia… accept our offering…" The boy is dragged closer to the flame. The purple light dances in his wide, terrified eyes. I am chained. I am drugged. Lucid is lost, or acting. The boy is about to die. For the third time, I have failed. But why.. What failures have I committed in the past. Am I slowly remembering?