TBATE| The Demon of Elshire

Chapter 25 - Unexpected meeting

Claire Pov

When my eyes finally opened, I was in the same bed I had been in for the past few days. My condition was fairly stable all things considered and I still had a bit of a headache, but nothing felt too unbearable.

I remembered the general feeling of dread that had washed over me right before I had passed out. I'd accepted my imminent death, but someone had saved me. I wasn't sure who it was and the only Lance nearby—Varay—didn't know either.

None of the Lances should have been down in the dungeons, but who else was capable of taking down an S-class mana beast?

I heard a series of knocks from my door and the emitter who had led my recovery was standing at the foot of my room. She was an interesting woman, being a half-elf but also an emitter. I had actually never spoken with her, as most of the time I'd spent here, I was unconscious.

When she finally talked, she spoke of the state of my recovery. I was told my hands-on healing should be complete and I would likely be permitted to go back into the field in a month or two.

"Did you by any chance catch sight of who had brought me here?" I asked. Truthfully, I hadn't asked many people, although it was no fault of my own. During the time I was awake—which had been fairly recently—I hadn't gotten the chance to see many people who would know.

I thought it'd been blessed with a stroke of good luck when I caught sight of Varay walking through the halls. After calling out to her, we had a brief conversation, but she didn't know who had saved me.

"I'm relatively new to the castle, so I didn't exactly recognize the young man, but he couldn't have been too much different in age to you miss Bladeheart.

'Someone younger than me killed an S-class? Could it have been Arthur...or Firae? They shouldn't have been in the beast glades, so it couldn't have been either one of them.'

"I could go look for him if you want?"

I assured her that she didn't have to go through all that trouble, but she insisted. I then decided that I would take this time to remove some of my bandages and get dressed in somewhat presentable clothes.

By the time I had finally gotten dressed, my door had abruptly swung open, and I was reunited with a wonderfully familiar face.

He was a bit older than I remembered, obviously, and he had grown by quite a lot, surpassing me entirely in height. His hair hadn't changed much...if you ignored the fact that it faded out into red. I made a mental note to ask him about it later. On top of that, I noticed that his red eyes had lost a bit of their luster over the years...if that was even possible, and he wore a small scar on his right cheekbone that hadn't been there before.

The bags under his eyes and his generally restless appearance didn't do much to diminish his sharply attractive features, and I felt a lump form in the back of my throat when I looked at him.

His face had matured greatly, easily surpassing what his age would have one assume.

I had prepared for this moment quite extensively ever since he left without saying goodbye. I deliberated constantly in my own mind on whether I should embrace him with open arms, or give him the cold shoulder.

This very moment had replayed in my head numerous times over the past couple of years, but now that it was finally here, the various scripts I had thought up utterly failed me. I stood there, motionless as I stared into his eyes which seemed to brighten when he held my gaze.

We were nearly 10 feet apart, but right now, it felt like there was an impossibly long distance between us. I found myself thinking back to how happy I was when he revealed his survival to me.