Chương 47: I Will Save You

I looked down at her and kept the sword lowered. [Enemy Status:???] [Health: 1 / 1346] The last adjustment had been deliberate. I had turned the edge before completing the cut, stopping with enough of her health remaining for the encounter to continue. Mimir had seen it.

"Carlos." I shifted the sword farther from her. My arm had begun shaking, and I wanted the point somewhere it could do no harm if my grip slipped.

"What?"

"Finish it." A piece of armour lay against her knee. She was sitting among the fallen plates, one hand resting on the white floor. Her sword was no longer raised. I watched that hand anyway.

"I have questions."

"Ask them on the next floor."

"She won't be on the next floor."

"That is generally what happens when you defeat a Titan." I ignored him and crouched as far as my legs allowed. One knee gave before I intended it to, leaving me lower than I wanted. I steadied myself with my free hand and tried to make the movement look deliberate. Her eyes followed me down. For several moments I had nothing to say. I had spent the fight wishing she would speak, imagining that a conversation would become possible if I could get close enough without a blade between us.

Now I was close enough to see fire moving beneath the edges of her armour.

"Can you understand me?" She remained still.

"Lad, get up."

"I'm asking her something."

"And I'm telling you that she can still answer with a sword." I moved my weapon across my knees. He was right about the danger. I resented him for supplying a fact I had already considered. Her gaze dropped toward the blade.

"What is this place?" I asked.

"The Spire. Who keeps putting you here?" No answer came. I tried a different question.

"The town outside. Those people. Were they here before the floor became like this?" Her fingers moved against the white surface. I leaned forward before I could stop myself, then waited for more. Nothing followed. She might simply have been adjusting the weight on her hand. Mimir spoke more quietly. I looked at her face. Her eyes were open, directed toward me, and that was enough to make finishing the encounter difficult. I had wanted her attention throughout the fight.

Now I had it and could not establish what it meant.

"I want to talk to you," I said. The words sounded inadequate after all the questions I had prepared. Mimir left a pause before answering.

"Then talk. Keep your distance while you do it." I put the sword down beside me.

"Carlos." I extended my empty hand toward her. She looked at it. At least, her gaze lowered in that direction. I held it still and waited, trying to ignore the strain beginning in my shoulder.

"I want you to come with me." Her hand remained on the floor.

"To the top of the tower," I added.

"I want you beside me. As my partner."

"Lad."

"You can object afterward."

"I'm objecting now." I kept my hand extended. She had been waiting for an opening to end my attempt only moments ago. I knew exactly how foolish this looked, and the knowledge did nothing useful to my arm.

"I've learned from you," I told her.

"More than you could know from this fight." Her eyes returned to my face.

"There's something I haven't told you. Every time I fail, I return. I begin again, and I remember." I stopped there. The confession had come out too plainly. I had expected difficulty saying it, perhaps some inability to arrange the words, but the sentence was finished and she was still sitting in front of me.

"I've come back to this floor more times than I can separate properly. Sometimes I remember the class more clearly than the attempt. Sometimes I remember a correction and have to work out which death taught it to me." You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. Mimir said nothing. I lowered my hand slightly. She had not reached for it.

"You wouldn't recognise me from those times. I understand that. But I recognise you." The edge of a plate shifted against her shoulder. I glanced at it and returned to her eyes, worried she would look away while I was distracted. Her black void like skin contrasted with the orange fiery edge of her eye lashes pupils and hair.

"The samurai form I used earlier was better in another body. I knew that and tried it anyway. You've corrected that mistake before. I remember being furious because I thought remembering the form should have been enough." A faint movement crossed her brow. I waited, giving it more meaning than I could justify.

"The water form took longer," I continued.

"I kept trying to meet everything with strength. You would change the direction, and I would follow too late because I was still pushing where you had been. I blamed my weapon for a while." I glanced at the flame crafted sword lying beside my knee. It had settled with its edge turned toward me. I nudged the hilt until it rested flat.

"With thunder, I wanted the first movement to settle everything. I got quick enough to reach you and kept arriving with nowhere useful to go afterward. You made me learn the rest." My hand was still out. I had almost forgotten why it was there.

"The fire form suited my temper better than I cared to admit. I could keep attacking and tell myself I was controlling the exchange. You waited until I needed to recover." Her eyes moved down toward my feet. I almost shifted them into position for her.

"The rock foundation was worse. Standing properly should have been simple. I had spent whole runs with a sword, and you could still move me because I had set one foot badly."

"Your knee," Mimir murmured. I looked down. I had been putting too much weight on it. I adjusted, irritated that even now there was another correction to make.

"That too," I admitted. I looked back at her.

"I thought swordsmanship meant getting good enough that I stopped needing to change anything. Then I came here and you kept finding something else. A movement I had made too large. A step I could leave out." I searched for the grander explanation I had wanted to give her. Something about the beauty of the sword, about why those forms had mattered through so many attempts. The words I could reach sounded less convincing than the things I had already said.

"I like getting it right," I told her.

"Even once. Even when you make the next part harder." Her fingers lifted from the floor and settled again.

"You gave me something I could improve when everything else kept ending in the same place. There were runs when getting back here was the only plan I could finish thinking through." I moved my hand closer, stopping well short of touching her.

"I want to reach the top with you. I want to ask you things when neither of us is waiting for the other to move first." She did not take my hand. A narrow line of fire travelled down her cheek. It looked like... Tears. I stopped speaking. It followed the path a tear might have taken, gathering briefly near her jaw before separating into the light around her. I watched for another. Her expression gave me no reliable explanation. The plate at her shoulder slipped free.

It landed beside her with a sound too small for the piece of metal. Beneath it, the shape of her shoulder held for a moment, then blurred as flame drifted away. I reached toward the fallen plate.

"Careful, it might burn you!" Mimir yelled. I lifted it anyway. The inside was smooth, with nothing obvious to explain how it had remained attached. I turned it, trying to find where it belonged against her shoulder. The shape beneath had already changed. I stopped with the armour in my hands. Fire continued leaving her. The pieces still in place appeared to be holding her outline together, or perhaps I only wanted something solid to blame for the change.

Where the armour had fallen, I could see less of her than before. I tried placing the plate close to its former position. It would not settle. I had to keep supporting its weight.

"Is it the armour?" I asked.

"I don't know."

"You've been inside me. You brought me back."

"That doesn't mean I know what she is." Her head turned slightly as I held the plate beside her. Orange hair shifted against what remained of the collar. The movement caught somewhere in my memory. I had seen an armoured woman turn that way in the town, looking back while civilians moved past her. I remembered a person stumbling near a doorway and the woman holding out an arm until they had cleared the opening. Then she had faced the shadow army again. At the time, I had been trying to understand where I was.

There had been too much movement to follow any one person for long. I had kept watching the civilians because they behaved like people with somewhere they needed to reach. The woman had stayed behind. I looked from the piece of armour in my hands to the Sword Saint.

"Was that you?" Mimir waited.

"The evacuation. You were holding them back." Her eyes stayed on me. I wanted that to be an answer. I had no grounds for making it one. I put the plate down carefully and looked around the room. The white surface offered nothing beyond the fallen armour and the fire. No door I could bring her through, no person to ask, nothing that changed because I had finally found a question worth answering. Lady Livia had spoken about a camera.

The thought arrived so abruptly that I reached for storage before remembering what I was searching for. My hand came up empty the first time.

'The camera. Find the camera.' I remembered her talking about moments, about preserving something that would otherwise pass. Past and future had become tangled in my recollection of the explanation. I should have listened more carefully. The object came into my hand.

"What are you doing?" Mimir asked.

"Livia gave me this."

"That does not answer me."

"She said it could capture a moment." I turned the camera over, searching for the side I was supposed to face toward her. There was an obvious lens. I had nevertheless spent a moment examining the back. The system supplied a description. [Object: Camera] [Description: A human invention that captures still images and preserves moments. Humanity has used it to record people, places, and events throughout history.] I read "preserves moments" again. I raised the camera. The Sword Saint appeared within the frame.

Seeing her reduced to that small rectangle made the changes easier to follow. Part of her arm had become indistinct. Fire moved away from her side while the plates beside it remained on the floor. I changed my grip because my thumb was covering something. If it could preserve her as she was now, perhaps that would be enough. I did not know enough about the invention to establish what enough meant. I was willing to learn after I had stopped losing pieces of the person in front of me. I pressed the button.

The camera clicked. For a moment I stayed completely still, waiting for something beyond the sound. A picture appeared. She was there, her face turned toward me, one hand near the floor. The armour I had tried to replace lay beside her. Even the small strands of fire leaving her shoulder had been caught. I lowered the camera. More of her shoulder was gone.

"No." I brought the image closer, then looked over it at her. The woman in the picture remained exactly where she had been. The one in front of me continued changing.

"It took the picture," Mimir said. My thumb moved across the edge of the image as though I could find a way to open it. I turned the camera slightly, looking for another control, some part of the explanation I had missed. She had tried to end my attempt at climbing up. I had spent most of the encounter making sure she failed. Now I could not bear to let the room take her while I sat holding a faithful little record of it.

"Give me a moment," I said. The words came out directed toward her, though I had no reason to believe she controlled what was happening. Her fingers were becoming difficult to distinguish.

"No..." I said in a hushed voice. I put the camera down without checking where it landed and moved closer. There had to be something else within reach. I looked at the armour, at my own hands, then back at the place her hand still rested. I needed to do something before that disappeared too. Before my only mentor... disappeared.