Chapter 12: Chiaroscuro
Kouga watches the improvised battlefield when he comes out to help his peers. There are seven horrors left, three among them are wounded, and another one attacks enemies and fellows alike. Rei and Tsubasa fight already without their armor. Jabi, hindered by the bulk and weight of her flamethrower, has left hers on the ground and, without leaving it, struggles with her magic flags. Akane merely keeps away her attackers until both men have left a horror vulnerable enough to be volatilized by the Fire.
As his fellows look bruised, Kouga guesses that being outnumbered has had a decisive weigh. This thing, which at any other time would have hurt his soul, now he sees it as necessary to allow him to be healed. If he had been as stupid as to challenge his mates and to go out and fight with them, probably he would have fallen.
The mad Bariri rushes toward Akane before she can turn on her letal tool, and barely can avoid its sudden jump to land on her. But the heavy flamethrower escapes from her hands. Even though now she is free to fight, and her wild opponent does not tries hard to dodge neither her blows nor her spells, she is grabbed by the neck. And it would have stuck its fangs into her shoulder if Kouga had not distracted it by sticking a severe lunge.
The knight has seen a big sword cut at the womb of that being. Its satiety center has been destroyed and now it only can feel hunger, so its self-preservation is remarkably decreased. He must wear his armor to stop it.
His opponent’s flesh has a lot of resistance to the soul-metal, and can regenerate. Its indiscriminate violence does not give a break to Garo, and it even manages to grab and throw him away. Akane recovers her flamethrower and uses it. The crazed horror turns against her and is about to snatch the device from her hands. Thus, Kouga has the chance to invoke the Fire, and the Bariri finds out to be between two fire fronts. Its hunger, stronger than anything else, does it to rush into the enemy easier to devor, the priestess, who does not wear an armor. Onslaught so hard, the flamethrower unwieldy falls from her again. Shelved by the deranged being, Kouga takes the opportunity to plunge his flaming sword into its back, and manages to keep it there despite that the strong shaking by his opponent is about to throw him away. It soon is consumed in the midst of a big green fire.
“A hungry Bariri is not a joke, right?” Akane says, panting and bleeding.
The knight seeks to take his final seconds to help with the other Bariri, but little can be done. Jabi has taken up her flamethrower and is focusing on two wounded enemy. Rei and Tsubasa face three horrors. Kouga decides to join them, and Akane reaches them after him.
Outnumbered for the first time, anger makes the horrors somewhat reckless. One of them falls. Akane finishes it and Jabi joins the group.
The two remaining horrors halt. They look at each other, while the five humans are surrounding them. Then, one of the foreigners lashes out Jabi and Tsubasa, and the other suddenly gives a huge jump above the jumble of the three fighters, and flies until it disappears from sight among the trees. The beast remaining recklessly fight and that none of the humans can follow its companion. It is real suicide.
Silver, Rei’s Madou jewel, announces that it goes to a new gateway just appeared, and verifies that it gets through.
At the end, four serious faces surround Garo. He dismisses his armor.
* * *
A knock at the door.
“Come in!”
Kouga sticks his head. She smiles. At last, she has managed to accustom him to request entry.
“Come in” she repeats.
As he approaches, Kaoru sat up and tidies up the towel she wears as a turban. Her hair has not survived to the Madou Fire, and she does not intend to take it off until it had grown enough.
He has a trouble speaking.
“How are you feeling today?”
“I still feel very strange, but I think I’m better”.
“Jabi told me that within a week you’ll be almost right”.
“Have she already left?”
“Everybody have left”. Pause. An uncomfortable one. “Gonza wants to tell you that he’ll bring the lunch to you after a half of an hour”.
“How does he feel?”
“The horrors weren’t treated him very well, but he was lucky we arrived in time to apply the Fire before the infection spreaded beyond his arm”.
“Great!” Another pause. “So, now we’ve got another kind of horror ...”
“I doubt that they remain still. One escaped, and will inform the others”.
“They wanted me”.
But he says nothing. When is she going to learn? Kouga does not make neither rhetoric nor useless comments.
“Why don’t you sit?”
He seems surprised. He sits on the chair by the bedside. Third break. Kaoru begins to get nervous. He does not look at her when he speaks again.
“I’ve seen that you kept in the store, disassembled, the old furniture”.
Did he think she had thrown them?
“They’re quality woods, why should I? Maybe someday, when a was a white-haired granny, I fancy them again”. Silly grin. “Or, maybe it’s you to fancy them”.
A silence, longer. Kaoru wonders how she could break it again, when he focusses his eyes to hers.
“Marry me”.
Not that she did not wanted to, –she does– or that she fears he is playing a joke, because Kouga has an underdeveloped humor sense. She wants to shout her assent, but she needs to be cautious. She wonders if he has received outside help to make this request: for long time she has been under the impression that he does not care about social formalities. Even, she had thought that one day he would grab her wrist and drag her to a bed, and she had prepared herself to deal with that contingency.
“D’you really want it?”
Kouga stirs uneasily on his chair, and gets up.
“I ... I thought that was what was done in these cases”.
He rushes to the door. Shame? Pain?
“Wait!”
Kaoru extends a hand to him to bring him back. Yes, there is no doubt that it was his own idea. The tears in her eyes and a wide smile of her lips welcome him.
THE END
