Legacy (Daughter of War #2)

Chapter 27: Beginning of the End (Part 1)

Music is Vogel im Kafig from the Shingeki no Kyojin OST. I just recently got into the anime, and holy crap how did I not watch it earlier?! But anyway,  play the song!

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Gilbert blinks once. Twice. His jaw drops open. Closes.

I don't say anything, letting my words fully sink into his head. Behind me, the waters seem to sing their agreement, engulfing me in a crooning lullaby, its undercurrents dark and poisonous.

"This means that everything started from here," Gilbert finally speaks, his voice hoarse, trembling. "But why now? If Lord Hubert had indeed accidentally allowed Diomedes's curse access to the pool, why hadn't the curse manifested earlier? If it were indeed like a plague—the form it's taking now—it should have spread the moment Lord Hubert sought to cleanse himself in the waters."

I draw in a deep breath, clearing my mind. The tether binding me to Abner quivers, as though he were straining himself to soothe me over the distance. The corners of my lips lift slightly in a small smile.

Then the smile drops as quickly as it came. I proceed to tell Gilbert everything—my conversation with Kael, Lord Hubert's strangeness in personality when I'd met him inside the pool, how my predecessor himself is linked to the curse.

When I'm done, a veil of grimness has settled over Gilbert. "Does this mean that to his dying day, Lord Hubert never actually found the cure to the curse?"

I purse my lips in return. These are not healing waters, Hubert, Kael's voice echoes in my head. "I don't know. I'd have to dive in one more time to be sure, but I can assume the case to be so," I reply, cautious.

"Then don't tell me that Lord Hubert had been containing the curse through sheer willpower?" A shiver ghosts over Gilbert. "Pietists, I can't even imagine what agony he must have endured. I didn't experience his memories for myself, but watching him through Luise's eyes was enough. That...thing can't be easy to suppress."

"No, it isn't," I say softly, recalling the memory of Lord Hubert as the curse itself started eating away into his being. Recalling the sheer pain of not being able to retain control of oneself. "It isn't."

"Why don't the records have any mention of this?" Gilbert wonders aloud. "They could have noted it down so that future generations would be alert to this."

"Naturally it wouldn't be recorded," I snap. "Can you imagine the chaos it would cause? That the supposedly slain necromancer had left a curse behind to taint the world for centuries to come. The name of Perinus would be tarnished. Especially considering that there are no necromancers left to give the slightest chance of finding a counter-curse."

Gilbert heaves a long sigh. "Point taken. So what of this trigger then? The reason that the curse has finally awakened after over two decades of laying dormant?"

Now that, I can't bring myself to answer just yet.

"It's a person, isn't it?"

I give my fellow Champion a side-glance.

Another sigh. Gilbert pushes himself onto his feet, extending a hand to help me up. "Come on. You can tell me on the way back to the Lorelay manor," he says. "I imagine that it's nearly nightfall by now. Sir Kendrick and the others would be expecting us."

Does that include Sir Isaac? Perhaps it does. Perhaps it doesn't. It doesn't matter, does it? I haven't seen him for quite some time now.

Screams ring in the distance.

Beside me, Gilbert stills. My own breath catches. The closest human inhabitants are in Battein, and that is quite a long trek away. No one in their right mind would approach the Cave of Three Souls in the dead of winter unless they were Seers, or unless they had no regards whatsoever for sacred grounds. So for Gilbert and I to hear screams so deep into the cavern, from such a distance away...