Chapter 16: Lonely Struggles

“That’s it for today! Please make sure to take the rest you need the day after tomorrow.” Yuuki beamed a smile at the two dozen soldiers around her. Some of them were standing at attention, but most of them were splayed across the ground in groups.

It had been just under three weeks since Yuuki had arrived in Crystalia. One of the first things that she had done after being put in charge of training the Rad-Towns defense forces was to create a schedule that allowed for training as well as actual work defending the city.

Split into two groups of twenty-five people each, one group would spend the day training with Yuuki while the other worked with Tom and Narissa in the actual defense of the city. They would switch roles every other day. On the third rotation, however, instead of training with Yuuki, that group would get a day off.

“Thank you for teaching us every day, Ms. Ito.” One of the people standing at attention walked up to Yuuki as he spoke. He was tall enough that her cat ears barely reached his chin. The way he was built reminded Yuuki a lot of Sarman. If her long-time friend had been light-skinned, she might’ve taken this soldier for his twin. “I hope you get to relax over your few days off.”

The soldier held out his hand.

It was something that he had done every single day since she started teaching them how to use swords properly.

Like every other time, her stomach churned a bit as she grabbed it.

Something about the action set off alarm bells for Yuuki every time.

“Thank you. Good luck on your wall shift tomorrow.” Just like how her own plans for the next two days were known, Yuuki knew the stations of every person in front of her. She had spent time learning them in order to connect with her new pupils better.

“Thank you, Ma’am.”

With the small conversation done, Yuuki turned around and headed back toward the castle that towered over Crystalia. Thinking she was out of earshot, a number of the people catching their breath on the ground started grumbling about the difficulty of her routines.

“Stop your whining! She can still hear you, you know?” The person who had walked up to Yuuki tried to shut his companions up. He knew just how well her hearing was from personal experience.

Yuuki paid the commotion no mind as she quickly sped her way up to the third floor of the castle. Sitting in the center hallway, almost directly in the center of the floor, were two doors opposite each other. One of them led to the tower that the Blood Elf Crystal used as her own personal quarters. Directly opposite it was Yuuki’s temporary quarters.

Normally they would be a place of peace for her to relax. Today, she wasn’t that lucky.

“Well well well… look what we ‘ave here! If it isn’t the know-it-all swordswoman who stole my place!” Tom and Narissa had seemingly just gotten down from Crystal’s tower and were closing the door when the former saw Yuuki walking to her room. His venom-laced words were the same as always.

How many times had Yuuki heard him call her a “know-it-all swordswoman”? She lost count after it hit the double digits.

“Is there something you want, Tom?” Yuuki snapped back at the former adventurer. Her tail had grown fairly rigid, even as it swayed back and forth.

“Yea, my job back.”

“Maybe you should’ve fought better?”

Tom wildly swung a punch at Yuuki. She dodged to the side while Narissa grabbed Tom from behind.

“Stop it! Stop stop stop! Tom, you know better!!!!” She desperately tried to hold Tom back. Yuuki could see the veins tempted to burst throughout her body. Tom was far stronger than her, causing it to look more like she was trying to steal a very awkward ride on Tom’s back.

“What’re you doin’?! Get off my back!” Tom argued with Narissa as he swung his arms wildly about. Another fist came flying towards Yuuki, but she used her left hand to deflect it away from her body.

Yuuki silently slinked backward until her hand reached the door that led to her room. She slipped inside as Tom struggled with Narissa. Only once she was closing it did Tom realize that she had disappeared into the doorway.

She slumped to the ground in front of the door and held her breath. She heard Tom angrily grunt a few times across the hall before she heard footsteps angrily walk away. Hearing them get quieter, she finally let out her breath.

Yuuki was never able to have a conversation with Tom. Every time she tried to, he would quickly devolve into yelling at her or, similar to what had just happened, even get violent. Every time it happened, he wouldn’t let up until she disappeared from his sight or she forced him to be quiet. The latter had caused her to stop using her right arm entirely.

She got up and grabbed a small cup with her left hand. It was half filled with water and had been sitting next to her bed, left there all day, and tasted quite stale by this point.

Yuuki downed the entire thing in just a few seconds before setting it down. She reached out with her right hand and gripped the cup. As she slowly lifted the cup, her entire arm was shaking uncontrollably. It didn’t take long for the empty cup to rattle so much that she lost the little grip she had on it.

It fell to the small side table with a quiet thud.

Something warm started dripping down her right arm. Yuuki saw a red streak of blood slowly moving its way down to her elbow.

A sigh escaped her lips as she quickly grabbed a towel and wiped the blood off of her arm. Taking off her shirt, the blood-soaked bandages wrapped around her upper arm became visible.

In one corner of the room was a small bucket of water that Yuuki had requested. Grabbing the cup from earlier, Yuuki sat down next to the bucket.

The bandages made a sloppy sound as she slowly peeled them off of her arm, revealing the wound she had gotten from the War Bird before she had even been to Aric.

On her third day in Crystalia, Yuuki had punched Tom hard enough that the wound itself had reopened. Ever since it had reopened, the wound never closed. She had to constantly clean the wound and apply new bandages every morning when she woke up and after she was done training the defenders of Crystalia.

“Ahhh!” Yuuki let out a soft cry as she poured water over the wound to clean it up. The water she was using quickly turned red as it dropped back into the bucket.

“Hmmm? Is something the matter, Yuuki?”

A sweet voice came from beyond Yuuki’s door, forcing her body to freeze up. The door was in Yuuki’s line of sight, but if the door was opened, Yuuki would be blocked by it.

“Yuuki? Are you there? I heard what sounded like a quiet scream of pain…”

The sweet voice continued to question Yuuki from beyond the door.

Why was she here? Why was Crystal coming to see Yuuki at that point of all times?

She thought of multiple different ways to get the Blood Elf to leave. Each one passed through her mind before she rejected it and thought of a new one.

She saw the door open slightly and blurted out whatever she could think of.

“I’m fine! You don’t need to come in!” She reached out her hand as if she could force the door closed from a distance only to drop the cup she had been holding with it.

The door swung open as it hit the ground and made a sound. Crystal forced her head into the room. As soon as she saw Yuuki off to the side, her face contorted with worry.

Yuuki’s face suddenly grew hot as the door was slammed shut. Crystal lowered a bar across the door, something that Yuuki was now wishing she had done herself. It was a locking mechanism for the door so that Yuuki could have complete privacy if she wanted it.

Crystal kneeled next to Yuuki and grabbed her right arm so she could look at the wound.

“Is this…?”

Yuuki nodded. She had told Crystal about the wound she had gotten from the War Bird back when she had first arrived in Crystalia. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together and for Crystal to realize this was the same wound.

“How did it reopen? No, wait, when did it reopen?”

Crystal started interrogating Yuuki as she grabbed more water and poured it on the wound. The rest of Yuuki’s body aside from her right arm lurched in pain as the water passed over the wound.

“Three weeks ago…? When I punched Tom too hard…” Yuuki struggled to speak with gritted teeth as bouts of pain swept through her body. Crystal’s worried look only grew deeper as the area around the wound grew cleaner and cleaner.

Once all of the blood was washed away, Yuuki sucked in a gasp of air. The pain was still clear in her mind and lingered in the rest of her body.

“Yuuki… have you had any interactions with Irradiation since this reopened?” Crystal’s voice was grave. The question she asked was ludicrous in contrast. Interactions with Irradiation? Why would she?

Yuuki shook her head.

A soft sigh came from Crystal as she placed her hand over the wound. Yuuki felt something funny in her right shoulder. It was weird, the opposite of the pain she had been feeling. Whatever it was, it tickled as it moved through her shoulder.

“There we go.” Crystal lifted her hand off Yuuki. Where the wound had been was now a solid pink patch of skin. There were no traces of a cut ever being there in the first place.

“How?!” Yuuki stared at her shoulder in shock.

“I promoted the blood in your shoulder to heal that area faster. It shouldn’t open itself again…”

“Thank you!” Yuuki’s tale swung across the floor behind her in a wide arc.

“But…” Crystal still looked at Yuuki’s arm with a hardened look. She reached out and grabbed Yuuki’s hand before placing her thumb in the middle of Yuuki’s palm. Yuuki was confused about what she was doing. She barely felt anything. “Do you feel anything? At all?”

“No…? Am I supposed to?” Yuuki shook her head.

“I’m pressing in with all of my strength.”

“Huh?!” Yuuki looked back at her palm. Her hand was thin enough that she couldn’t tell how hard the Blood Elf was pressing visibly. Somehow reading Yuuki’s mind, Crystal moved her thumb up to Yuuki’s upper arm and did the same thing.

Once again, Yuuki felt nothing. But this time, she could see Crystal's thumb press into her arm by a small bit. There was no doubt that she was putting pressure on it.

But she felt nothing.

“Why…? Why can’t I feel anything in my right arm?” Yuuki used her left hand to grab Crystal by the collar herself. She knew that she had been slowly losing the feeling in her arm, but even just that morning she still had some. Now it was like she had none.

“I think that somehow, you are being exposed to more Irradiation. A War Bird’s attack on the soul is possible because of the Irradiation the monsters have inside of them. While something like this has never happened before, it’s not impossible that coming into contact with more Irradiation would cause that tear in your soul to grow larger.” Crystal laid out her hypothesis on the matter succinctly.

Somehow, somewhere in the Rad-Town, Yuuki had been consistently exposed to Irradiation. Despite how hard she was trying, she couldn’t think of any place that she went often enough for it to happen.

“Even if that is the case, where would it happen? I spend most of my time here, near the castle. The few times I do go out into the town I rarely ever go to the same place…” As she was talking, Yuuki remembered that there was one place she did go to quite often. “Actually… no there is one place. But…”

“What is it?” Crystal helped Yuuki over to the bed and grabbed a shirt for her to put on. As Yuuki took the shirt from Crystal she hung her head. She didn’t want to say it. Why should she believe what she was even thinking?

“There is a place that I have gone to every day I let the troops rest. Cyril’s place…” Yuuki was leveling an accusation against one of Crystal’s top people. Neither of them wanted to believe that he would be the one responsible, especially since he had been the one to bring Yuuki to the Rad-Town.

“Hmm… Were you going over there any time soon?”

Yuuki nodded. She was set to go the following day.

“Then don’t. At least for now. Let’s see how your arm does without being near Cyril for a while. I’ll have him stay out of the castle area for now. If nothing gets better, we will know for sure it wasn’t him.”

Crystal got up and walked towards the exit to the room. As she put her hand on the door keeping the door shut, she gave Yuuki one last warning.

“Don’t let this stay off the door at all. Only open it when someone comes to bring you food. We need to isolate the place you are getting Irradiation from.”

Yuuki gave a slow nod as Crystal left the room.

Once the door closed, she put the bar back in place. The air was as still as a frozen animal.

It was suffocating.

If only she had made Cyril let her bring at least Sarman.

Sarman would have made this isolation more enjoyable. Heck, he could’ve stopped it from happening in the first place. The second Yuuki got hurt, he would use one of his feathers to heal the wound.

“That’s what he would’ve done…”

Yuuki fell onto the bed.

She curled up around one of the blankets. Her eyelids grew heavy before eventually closing entirely.

Time seemed to move differently when Yuuki was stuck in her room. It was faster than it had ever been, yet at the same time was so slow that she desperately wanted it to be over. In the mornings, she would wake up to one of the few real servants in the castle knocking on her door.

“Ms. Ito, I have some food here for you.”

It was always the same line. Whether she was being given it in the morning, at noon, or at night.

Yuuki would get up and open the door for the servant. Once opened, the servant would simply hand Yuuki a plate of food before quickly leaving. Yuuki closed the door as she brought the plate to the desk next to the bed.

“I hope you’re having a better meal than this, Sarman…” With a small whisper, Yuuki would pick up the bread that always came with the food and begin eating it.

In the mornings she usually was only given some bread, an apple, and some water. Later meals in the day added extra items, namely meats, into the mix.

“It tastes the same again…”

The bread she was given was hardened and barely had any taste to it. It wasn’t something isolated to just Yuuki. She knew from her three weeks in the castle that all of the bread was like this. Crystalia didn’t have a big wheat operation, so most of their bread was hardened from being stored for extended periods of time.

Yuuki wasn’t about to stop eating because of the taste.

She scarfed down the food before setting the plate to the side. When the servants came back with food later, she would switch out the plates so that they could take this one to be cleaned.

With food in her stomach, Yuuki began her daily routine, if one could even call it that.

She started out by stretching for quite a while. Because of her right arm, she couldn’t do much in terms of actual exercise so she supplemented it by stretching more rigorously.

By the time Yuuki was done stretching, the sun was high in the sky. Its light cascaded in through the single window into the room.

Opening it, she let the sounds of the Rad-Town wash over her as she sat beneath the window. Her ears twitched atop her head as she tried to focus on specific sounds far away. As a Cat-Person, her hearing was far better than the average human's.

Guards atop the walls were shouting at each other from different points, relaying any information needed for the defense of the city. The main street in front of the castle was already bustling with neighbors in jubilant conversations. Kids ran up and down the street, playing with each other.

A lonely sigh came from Yuuki. Her days of freedom in Crystalia had been spent on that very street. She wanted to interact with the locals and get to know them better. Playing with the kids was so much fun, and with their boundless energy, it turned into quite a stamina-wearing activity.

But for now, Yuuki was forced to simply listen to the town. Her tail droopily sat on the ground next to one of her legs. Like her, it had stopped moving entirely.

“Ms. Ito, I have some food here for you.”

The voice of the same servant as before finally got Yuuki moving again. She stood up and grabbed the empty plate from that morning before opening the door. Once she did, the servant traded plates with her and quickly left.

Sigh…

Yuuki closed the door and sat at the desk again. The meal this time finally changed things up. A beef stew with some extra bread on the side was sitting on the plate. A spoon was also there, though the wood it was made out of didn’t look the best.

In the end, the soup ended up being the tastiest thing that Yuuki had eaten at the castle in her time there.

She devoured it even quicker than normal and soon found herself restlessly moving from one area of the room to another. First, it was the bed, then the window spot. The Third was sitting at the desk and tapping on it. Interspersed in there were countless minutes of restlessly pacing back and forth.

As the sun began to set, a knock on her door interrupted her restless movements. Yuuki’s ears twitched as she listened in silence, waiting for the person on the other side to speak. The fact that they had not immediately said that same line meant that it wasn’t a servant.

“Yuuki…?”

A familiar voice came through the door. One that Yuuki didn’t want to hear right now. She almost spoke up but someone else cut her off.

“Cyril? Are you not banned from the castle for the time being? You should get out of here before Mrs. Crystal finds out.” The same servant as always was apparently here to bring Yuuki her food and had run into Cyril.

“But… I came to get Yuuki…”

“Ms. Ito is sick currently. No one is allowed to see her. I must say this again. Leave the castle until you are told you can return.” The servant was more forceful this time in her “request”.

Yuuki was standing against the door listening to everything they were saying. She wanted to speak up herself, but she still was scared that she couldn’t trust Cyril anymore.

There was a chance he wasn’t the traitor. She wanted to believe that chance.

But if it wasn’t him, then who could it have been?

“Fine… I understand.”

Cyril was dejected as he slowly walked away from the room. It took a bit longer for the servant to finally speak up at the door itself.

“Ms. Ito, I have some food here for you.”

Yuuki opened the door, the empty plate from earlier in the day already in her hands. The two exchanged plates. As she was closing the door, the servant spoke up.

“I’m sorry about what just happened. It isn’t my place to question my lady’s orders, but whatever is going on, Cyril isn’t the one responsible.”

“I hope so too…” Yuuki’s response was barely a whisper as she closed the door. She quickly ate the food before lying in her bed yet again.

She sat there, the sounds of the Rad-Town’s night echoing from the window. She squeezed her eyes shut and covered her ears with her pillow. She wanted to shut the noise out.

“What’s this? The greatest swordswoman I know, brought down by mere loneliness? You endured being alone for how many years now, and now you break?” Sarman’s voice rang in her head, taunting her. She flung her bedding away and looked for the dark-skinned shoulders she had been so used to seeing. But there was nothing there. Just a single feather that had been blown in through the window.

She had imagined the voice.

Realizing that she slowly laid back down.

“I was never alone in those ten years.” She responded to the voice she had imagined.

Those ten years had been spent with some people always knowing her secret. And yet now she was truly alone in this room, in this Rad-Town.

Two days later Yuuki found herself in the presence of the Blood Elf Crystal as she was getting ready for the day. A knock on her door had alerted her to someone being there, but when it was Crystal that spoke up, she opened the door and let her in.

“How’s the arm?” Crystal looked over Yuuki’s arm. As she did she pressed down in multiple places, each one earning not even a blink from Yuuki.

“I still barely feel anything. It hasn’t gotten worse, but it hasn’t gotten better yet.”

It was good that it had stayed the same, but they needed to find the source soon, otherwise it may never get better.

“Alright… I have Cyril staying off the castle grounds for a while longer. During your session today, try not to actively spar with anyone, got it?”

Yuuki nodded in response. She hadn’t been planning on sparring either so she was perfectly fine with what the queen was saying.

“Oh, once your training sessions are done for today, come find me in my tower. I do have something I need to talk with you about.” Crystal left Yuuki with that final request.

She thought about what the Blood Elf could want with her as she finished changing her clothes and heading out to the fields behind the castle.

Was it related to how long Yuuki would be staying? The attack they were expecting should be coming soon. Would she want Yuuki to leave before?

If she did say that, Yuuki would reject the offer. Even if she couldn’t use her right arm, she wanted to help defend Crystalia. Call it a misplaced sense of heroism or just plain foolishness. Yuuki hadn’t done much when Jack attacked Sanum. She wanted to make up for that and help here.

The training session started like any other day. The soldiers all did their usual warmups and were getting ready for a round of sparring to show Yuuki how well they were doing when an alarm sounded throughout the city.

Everyone bolted upright as Yuuki looked around. The alarm was a horn that was seemingly being replicated all along the wall surrounding the city.

“What is this?!” Yuuki turned to one of the soldiers as she questioned the alarm.

“It the signal that were under attack!” A soldier quickly answered Yuuki with a mention of the very attack that Yuuki had just been thinking about.

She was in the very back of the city, behind the castle. Half of their forces were with her.

Narissa and Tom were in charge of the cities defenses that day and were leading the other half of their forces.

BOOOOM!!!!

A massive explosion sounded from the other side of the city. Smoke billowed upwards and was almost immediately visible to even those behind the castle.

“Go! Meet up with Narissa and Tom! Follow their orders!” Yuuki shouted commands at the group who quickly took action.

Each one grabbed their weapons and ran off. The streamed past Yuuki, rushed through the castle and soon found themselves in the main portion of Crystalia. Once there, they were under Narissa’s command, so Yuuki let them slip from her mind.

Her biggest worry at this moment was Crystal. She didn’t know what guard detail the Blood Elf had with her on that day.

Yuuki rushed through the castle. When she reached the hallway on the third floor with the entrance to Crystal’s tower, she decided to make a quick detour to her own room.

She busted through the door and snatched up the sheathed blade leaning on the desk. It’s blade was curved, a signature design from her homeland, Kyoku. She slid the blade under her belt so it would stay in place on her hip as she rushed up the stairs of the central tower.

Three flights of stairs later she found herself in a small foyer area. A single window showed the horrendous state of the Rad-Town below. A massive fire had broken out at the main entrance to the city. It looked like part of the wall had been completely demolished. Weird stone slabs dotted the left side of the town.

Standing in front of the window were two guards. When they saw her they quickly stood at attention.

“Ma’am!”

“You two make sure to stand guard. Don’t let anyone through if they make it this far, got it?”

“Yes Ma’am!” Yuuki walked through the only door in the foyer. It led into a small circular room that took up the rest of the tower floor. In the back was a curved staircase that led up to yet another area.

Sitting in the center of the room was a modest throne facing towards the door. This was the place that Crystal acted as Queen of the Rad-Town. Most visitors to the town would meet her here if they wished to have an audience.

When Yuuki walked into the room, Crystal was deep in conversation with a bald, former adventurer, that Yuuki always had trouble dealing with.

Tom turned to Yuuki as he heard the door close. He grumbled slightly before closing his eyes and speaking normally for once.

“What’s the situation?”

Yuuki stopped midstride. She had expected him to somehow blame her for this as a way to get his position back. She had never suspected he would act civilly instead.

“From what I saw out the window, they seem to have broken into the city already. I sent the full force that was with me out to Narissa to help her drive them off.”

“Why didn’t you go with them?!” Tom questioned her again. His usual aggressiveness slipped into his voice.

“I-”

“She did exactly as I asked of her.”

Crystal cut Yuuki off and answered herself. While Yuuki had been about to reveal the fact that she wasn’t able to fight at her full capacity, Crystal’s intervention kept the truth from being revealed.

“Why would you do that?! If she is going to be a commander for the troops, she should be fighting alongside them!” Jack continued to try to argue with Crystal but was forced quite by a single gesture of her hand.

She had the ultimate say on where people went in the idle of the fight. If she said that Yuuki was to be with her, Tom wouldn’t be able to change her mind.

“For now, you two need to put aside any ill will towards the other and work together. I have a feeling we will be seeing these intruders here in this very tower before long.” Crystal sat down on her throne, an air of royalty exuding from her as she sat with perfect posture despite the circumstances surrounding them.

Yuuki had already thrown away any ill will she held towards Tom for the moment. She agreed with the Blood Queen. She walked up to Tom and extended him a hand.

“She’s right. For now, we’re just two sword fighters here protecting this city, right?”

Tom looked down at her hand and sighed.

“Fine. You get the door, I’ll stay over here. You’re faster than me and will probably be able to react quicker when someone comes through.”

Yuuki nodded. Once she was at the side of the door she waited.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!

She didn’t have to wait long as the tower shook from the impact just outside of the room they were in. Yuuki wasn’t sure what exactly it was but it sounded like something had crashed through the wall of the tower.

The loud noise caused her ears to ring. She was recovering when yelling in the room next to her caught her attention. There was a male voice that sounded oddly familiar in the mix.

“Get ready!” Tom yelled at her from across the room. She got up and pulled her katana out and held it in her left hand.

The door slammed open and a male about a head taller than Yuuki ran into the room. Yuuki immediately swung at his brown covered hair but was blocked by a sword she had paid for.

The black jewel in the hilt pulsed softly as Nic looked back at Yuuki. The second their eyes locked together, they went wide.

“Nic!?”

“Yuuki!?”

The two shouted at each other in unison.