Chapter 55. Less Insufferable Than Anticipated: Framed and Hung on My Wall

Chapter 55: 55. Less Insufferable Than Anticipated: Framed and Hung on My Wall

I opened my mouth to ask what she meant. Then I saw her face... and I closed it again.

Millie found the Oathglass an hour later.

I was lying under a tree with a wet cloth over my face, trying to convince my aching body that it was still alive, when I heard something that made me sit up.

It was a soft, wordless melody, drifting across the camp like smoke. I pulled the cloth off and looked toward the sound.

She was sitting in the snow between the five sleeping Oathglass, with her knees drawn up and her eyes half closed, humming.

Nobody had asked her to.

She hadn’t been told. She had simply seen five frightened women curled up in the cold, trembling in their sleep, and she hadn’t been able to bear it.

So she’d sat down beside them and started to sing, without words, in a voice so soft that it barely carried.

I’d never heard the tune before. It was gentle and strange, with long, slow notes that rose and fell like waves on a quiet shore.

It didn’t sound like any song I knew in my previous world... It sounded like something very old, something that had been waiting a long time to be sung.

As I watched, the trembling in the sleeping women began to ease.

One by one, their breathing slowed.

Hjalla, who had been twitching and whimpering in her sleep, let out a long sigh, and her face smoothed. She turned her head against the snow and fell still.

A faint glow had gathered around Millie’s hands. It was pale and silvery, the color of moonlight on water, and it hovered in the air over her fingers like a soft mist.

She didn’t notice it. Her eyes were closed, and her ears were drooping, and she was lost in the song.

Across the camp, Sylvara had stopped what she was doing. She stood perfectly still, staring at Millie with a sharp, bright, almost frightened intensity.

And a few feet away from her, Bonette had frozen with a pot in her hands. All the color had drained from her face.

She stared at Millie, her lips parted, and she didn’t say a word.

I looked at her, and then I looked away, and I felt something cold settle in my gut.

...

"I will not have my debtor die from clumsiness," Velora said.

It was a few hours after noon, and she had dragged me out to a flat patch of ground behind the camp, where a few of the Nightclaw riders were practicing drills.

I’d tried to explain that I could barely lift a spoon. She’d told me that was precisely the point.

"Your hands cannot hold a sword," she said. "Fine... We will not use a sword. On your ground!"

I stood.

"Your breathing is a disgrace."

"What? I’m breathing fine."

"You are gasping like a fish... Watch!"

She stood in front of me, her feet planted shoulder-width apart, her hands loose at her sides. She closed her eyes, and she breathed in, long and slow and deep, drawing the air all the way down to her belly.

Then she let it out in a thin, steady stream, and her whole body seemed to settle, like a stone sinking into still water.

"This is the foundation of the draw," she said. "A sword is only as steady as the lungs behind it..."

"Now do it."

I tried. I sounded like a dying accordion because of that.

"Again."

And so... I tried again. She made me do it for twenty minutes, correcting my posture, tapping my ribs, pushing my shoulders back, until the rhythm began to feel less like a chore and more like a heartbeat.

And somewhere in the middle, something odd happened.

I felt a faint warmth in my belly, the same pilot light that Sylvara had shown me in the garden.

As I breathed in, it flared.

As I breathed out, it settled, steady and quiet. I held out my hand, and a spark leaped from my fingertip, about the size of a chickpea, bright and clear.

"I did it!" I yelped.

"You did not do anything," Velora said. "You breathed."

"But it’s bigger! Look at it!"

"It is a spark..."

"It’s a very good spark at that, hahaha!"

Sylvara, walking past with a stack of moon-stakes under her arm, stopped to watch. A small smile tugged at her lips.

"Her breathing technique is very similar to the method of mana circulation," she remarked. "I had not thought of the connection... It is an elegant discovery."

"I had nothing to do with it," Velora said stiffly.

"You taught a human to breathe... and that is the discovery."

"I taught this dumb human to stop wheezing."

I gave Velora my best, brightest smile. She looked at me the way you might look at a puppy that had just managed to sit on command, with a mixture of surprise and deep reluctance to admit it was impressive.

I should have stopped there. And I should have been grateful.

But I’m an idiot, and a man cannot be alone with a beautiful, deadly noblewoman in a quiet clearing and not try something stupid.

Just for another reality check... I HAD to crack some jokes on her.

"Hey, Velora," I said. "Is your sword as sharp as your cheekbones?"

SWOSH!

The blade came out of the sheath so fast that I didn’t see it move. I threw myself backward and felt a thin line of cold slash across my collar, which was now a good deal more open than it had been a moment earlier.

"I withdraw the question!!!" I yelped.

"Wise choice..."

I tried again an hour later, because apparently I have no survival instinct. Velora had picked up her satchel, a heavy leather bag stuffed with maps and supplies, and was heading back toward camp.

I stepped in front of her and held out my hands.

"Allow me to carry that for you."

She stopped. She looked at the satchel, then at me, and then, for five full seconds, at me again.

It was like being examined by a very strict heron.

"I carry my own burdens," she said.

"Then I’ll carry... uh... nothing." I giggled. "Nothing at all."

"I’m just going to walk beside you and carry nothing... very supportively."

"Move."

I moved.

I should have quit. And yeah... I really should have.

But the third time, I couldn’t help myself. I’d noticed the big white ribbon that held her ponytail, and it was spotless and perfectly tied, and it looked really good on her.

Well, for my own criteria, women with their hair tied like a ponytail really brings all the lust in me. Even though Velora is the type of a strong fierce women... I still want to tapped that someday.

"That’s a beautiful ribbon," I said, sincerely. "It suits you."

There was a pause.

Somewhere to my left, one of the Nightclaw riders let out a very small, very strangled giggle and clapped her hand over her mouth.

Velora’s ears flicked, and I swear that the tips of them went a faint, dusty pink.

"Return to your duties now," she snapped at the rider.

"Y-yes, Commander...! S-sorry, Commander...!"

Velora turned her back on me and strode off toward the camp with her spine as straight as a spear, and she did not look at me again for the rest of the afternoon.

Oh boy... seems like I found one of her weakness. And I will always try to make her fall for me.

...

But at the end of the lesson, when I’d collapsed onto a rock and was rubbing my aching ribs, she paused beside me without looking down.

She cleared her throat.

"You are less insufferable than I anticipated," she said.

I put my hand over my heart, like a man receiving a medal. "That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me."

"It is not a compliment..."

"I’m framing it."

"Debtor."

"Yes?" Wait a minute... why did she call me a debtor? But eh... it’s better than having to be called ’human,’ that’s kinda racist to me.

"Rest... You are no use to me dead."

She walked away. And I sat there on my rock grinning like an idiot, until I realized that she hadn’t once called me human.