I Promise

“…Rin…?” Akira’s voice shook like an autumn leaf in winter wind. Quivering and dead. Drained of color. Drained of life. Leaning in closer, I could see that she had ripped off a section of her own shirt to try and staunch the gaping wound that Ayano bled from.

 Ayano lay unconscious, battered and bruised. There were cuts all up and down her legs. Bits of glass embedded in her skin.

Akira had been carrying her.

“Rin… what do I do…?” She looked at me, her eyes big and pleading, shuddering in the dark. “Yaya-chan is going to die…”

That couldn’t be true. It couldn’t.

My breathing quickened but I fought back the tears.

“She can’t die…” Akira murmured, echoing my own thoughts. She spoke more to herself than to me.

“She just can’t!” She yelled, pressing down harder on the cloth.

Ayano’s face remained unmoved.

“It’s not fair…” Akira rocked softly back and forth, pigtails swinging to match.

I set a hand on her shoulder.

“Akira. She is not going to die.” I steadied myself. “We won’t let her.”

“…What do we do?”

“First off, I think you’re supposed to keep pressure on the wound. I’m assuming that one’s the largest?”

“Y-yeah. There’s a large shard of glass in her side but I don’t think I can remove it without worsening the bleeding. I’ve pressed down around it instead.”

“Okay. Okay, th-that’s good.”

“Her breathing is faint, but steady… but— I, I don’t know if we can keep this up! How are we going to make it out of here? Where are we!? What was that thing?”

Her eyes are brimming with tears.

“I don’t know. I don’t know! I’m sorry.” I fumble. “I-I think you might need to set her down too?”

“She’s full of glass Rin!” It’s the most mad I’ve heard her. She seems shocked herself.

“…Is Evi okay?”

“Evi is alive.”

“Where is she?”

“The big crashing sounds. That’s Evi. She’s fighting.”

“What!?”

“I can explain later but first we have to figure out how to help Ayano.”

Ayano’s still breathing. She’s still here. But what do we do?

What can we do?

I touch her arm. It feels cold.

I’d considered death in the past, sure, but it was always a thought exercise more than a reality. It was always abstract death. Not personal death. Not friend death. The only deaths in my family happened before I was born.

I’m not ready for this.

The blood is dripping from her wound.

How do we save her?

How can she live?

Maybe we could carry her to a town, but where is a town?

There doesn’t seem to be anything close by.

Call an ambulance?

I don’t have my phone. Does Akira? Even if we did how long would it take to get here?

Stop thinking and start doing.

I can see the life slipping out of her body.

The color emptying away.

My friend.

Fading.

Dying.

My friend is dying.

And I don’t know what to do.

…

This is insane.

This is insane.

This is—

Magic. Magic.

The voice. The light.

I still don’t have a sword, but after the deal I did feel stronger. I wasn’t completely fixed but it let me run. Let me talk. Let me find my friends.

The voice said Evi won’t die. It said Ayano and Akira would likely die.

“Likely” is not the same thing as “definitely.”

“Likely,” leaves room for hope.

Potential. Innate magic.

It said I had no magic, but that these two did!

How do they use it? What do they need to do?

Maybe it’s a fantasy but I don’t see any other way out of this.

Can the sword help somehow?

It can’t heal, can it? It’s a sword.

Think.

Think.

Look for a path out of this. Anything.

Any—

Huh.

Now that I'm closer. Now that I'm looking.

That's interesting.

“Akira. A-are you hurt? At all?”

Her clothes were tattered and her hair a mess, but I didn’t see a scratch on her. I had thought she might have been bleeding, but on further examination it wasn’t coming from her. It was Ayano’s blood streaked onto her. In the dark it was hard to tell, but aside from looking rather pale she seemed physically uninjured. Emotionally drained, and very, very, tired, but otherwise unharmed.

She seemed surprised by the question.

“…I was, but now that you mention it. I don’t really feel it anymore. When I woke up I hurt so much. Then I crawled. And then I stood. And then I walked. And I found Yaya-chan. But I was so scared that I didn’t even notice the pain was leaving.”

The colors.

The shades.

Behind Akira ran a path of lightened blips in the grass. Under her too, though it was harder to tell due to our casted shadows.

I moved over to get a clearer view. These blips. They're lightened patches of grass. Feeling it, these are- it’s dead grass. That’s why it’s lighter. Sure, I’ve seen other areas of patchy plant life before. But these were different.

These were clearly footprints.

“Rin? Where are you going…?”

I rushed back over to her.

“Akira, think I should switch with you for a bit. I need you to try something. Can you please stand up and move a bit to your right?”

“…Okay.”

I pressed my hands down on the cloth as she let go.

As she got up I could more clearly see that, yes, exactly in the shape of her kneeling legs and feet, all of the plant matter underneath her was dead. Lifeless.

More brittle than tea leaves.

“Can you run in the grass for a second? It’s important.”

As she runs she picks up speed.

Her footsteps cut a clear path through the vegetation.

As they wither, she bolsters.

“Now lie down in the grass with you limbs splayed out.”

She did it. But she definitely seemed confused.

“Rin, I trust you but please tell me what’s going on!”

“There was a voice that saved me and it said that Evi would not die. We all saw her get hit. Badly. Now she’s fighting. Sh-she’s dying but will not die. So, if we choose to fully board the ‘magic is real’ thought experiment, then we can say that those words combined with the visual evidence brought about by both her and your feats suggests that either invulnerability, immortality, or at least some level of rapid healing magic exists.”

“Oh.”

“I uh, I know it sounds crazy but I think it might be true.”

“Yeah. A lot of things sound crazy but turn out to be true.” I think she was trying to lighten the mood. But her heart wasn’t in it.

Ayano is still breathing. Good. Good.

I hope I’m right. I’m relying a whole lot on some very big leaps in logic.

Maybe I just don’t want to believe that one of us might d—

No.

Of course I don’t want to believe that.

Of course I’ll take any chance I can.

“Please stand up, and tell me what you see in the spot where you laid down. Have the plants died?”

She stood. “Yeah. They have. In the shape of me...”

“Do you feel any healthier? Or, better, I mean?”

“Yeah… I think so. Less tired.”

“I think you can heal yourself by taking the life from plants. Maybe other things too.”

“So if that’s true, then maybe I can heal other things by taking life from myself?" She grinned. "If it can help Yaya-chan then I’ll do it!”

“Good! Great! Uh.”

“I… don’t know how this works though… Do you?”

“No. I-I’m sorry but I don’t.”

The cloth is dripping with blood. I think we need more fabric.

Please hang on Ayano…

Just a little longer until we figure this out.

“I’m going to add my hoodie t-to, um, soak up more blood, can you swap over again?”

“Oh! I should take off the rest of this t-shirt then too, that way we have more cloth on hand without having to worry about it later.”

She did hers first, I did mine second.

“Y’know Akira, I actually should have thought of this earlier. My blue t-shirt and your green long-sleeve shirt are both much more visible like this.”

“Do we want to be visible?” she nervously tilted her head towards the sounds of fighting.

“Evi still needs to find us.”

“Rin. Maybe we can ask her about this magic stuff? If she’s good enough to fight with it then she probably knows more than we do.” Akira was sounding hopeful again.

See Ayano, it’s okay.

You’re going to be fine.

We’re all going to be fine.

Wait.

Wait, what is that?

Blurry.

In the distance.

I can't see it.

It's too far away. Too dark. 

Vaguely humanoid…

Is that?

That’s not Evi.

Then it must be…

“It’s okay, Akira. Ayano.”

We’re going to be fine.

I promise.