Awakening [Part 3]

Although it was clear to me that the route we were taking had, at one time, been an established trail, the pervasive overgrowth made it obvious that it had been years since this path had received any meaningful volume of traffic. In fact, there were very few signs within this dense woodland of any human contact, aside from the remnants of this dirt trail and that stone structure I had awoken in.

We had been walking silently for nearly an hour now, and I was starting to feel exhausted. It wasn’t exactly a difficult hike, but Lucia—I was pretty sure that was the name she’d given me, not that I was sure how to address her since she was supposedly royalty—was moving pretty quickly, and it took everything I had just to keep up. The trail had already forked a couple of times, so I was worried if I fell behind, I’d be trapped in the wilderness forever. It didn’t help that the path was winding too, meaning I had to stay pretty close to keep her in sight.

She would glance in my direction every couple of minutes, as if to ensure I hadn’t abandoned her. Aside from those brief, periodic looks, however, we had avoided interacting even once since setting out.

Considering we had failed to exactly resolve our earlier conversation, I was still uneasy about… well, everything. I didn’t know if it was because I felt bad about being so useless to her or if I was simply too socially inept, but I found myself unable to start a conversation as we walked, even though I desperately wanted to figure things out.

The path straightened out for a short distance, and I took the opportunity to pause and rest, if only for a few seconds. Lucia continued on, probably not realizing I had stopped, and after the distance between us widened—

“Geh?” From my static, crouched position, I suddenly lurched forward as if pushed from behind, and I let out an awkward-sounding grunt. Losing my balance, I toppled to the ground with a light thud. I reacted quick enough with my arms to stop myself from fully faceplanting, but just barely.

Likely having heard the sound, Lucia stopped and turned around. She had a surprised look on her face and muttered something to herself.

She’s probably making fun of me, isn’t she?

I had no idea what had caused the tumble, as a quick glance behind me confirmed there was nothing there to have pushed me.

“Does that mean…” Lucia muttered something again, this time just loud enough I could make it out. She was staring at me intently, and then, for seemingly no reason, she decided to make a standing leap backwards.

As if there was a rope connecting the two of us, I shot towards her with the same momentum despite not willing my body to move. This pull was far stronger than the previous one, so I was unable to shield myself and was dragged a meter or so over the dirt.

I couldn’t exactly explain why the phenomenon occurred, but I had a decent idea of what it was. If it was what I thought, that would be super annoying.

Lifting my head, I got my first chance to glare at her. “You knew that was going to happen, didn’t you? You definitely did.”

She looked down at me for a couple of seconds without saying anything, and then she suddenly burst out into laughter.

Ah, I take it all back. I never should’ve felt bad for her. This girl is pure evil. A demon. I’ll never forgive her.

She was laughing so hard tears began to form in the corners of her eyes.

Awful, just awful.

“That’s very sadistic of you, miss princess. I can’t believe this.”

Oops.

Sure, in my head I had been shooting off a bunch of sarcastic jabs, but I didn’t mean to say that out loud. This wasn’t the first time I’d blurted something out I hadn’t meant to; it must have been a bad habit of mine.

Finally, her laughter died out, though tears were still in her eyes. Wiping them away, she spoke in a far too jovial voice. “I’m sorry. I really am. I wasn’t certain it was a range issue yet, but I couldn’t resist the urge to test it.” She then ran over to me and went about helping me up.

“You can’t apologize while sounding that happy. I won’t accept it.” While I definitely wasn’t happy getting literally dragged around in the dirt, I was still mostly joking. Her laughter hadn’t sounded spiteful, and her leap did appear more like a spur of the moment decision than a premediated action.

Once I had gotten to my feet, she had regained her composure. “I didn’t expect the range to be this short starting out, though. That is going to be very irritating, isn’t it?”

She was talking to herself, but in order to fully piece together what was happening, I sought clarification. “What do you mean by ‘range’, exactly?”

“I had originally planned to explain this to you earlier, but we ended up getting sidetracked. There is a lot about Chains you will need to learn, but I’m tabling most of it until we’re in the safety of the nearby town. As such, I will try to make this explanation as brief as possible.”

“You say ‘brief’, but that was quite the preamble.”

She narrowed her eyes into a slight glare but continued. “The ‘body’ you are in right now is like a memory given physical form—a memory of the body you used to possess. Chains may create these physical manifestations of themselves, but, ultimately, they’re spirits without a natural body. Instead, their souls are stored in special objects called vessels.”

My body’s… a memory? It’s not natural?

I was hit with a wave of existential dread. She had said earlier that Chains weren’t exactly ‘living’, but that didn’t mean it was easy for me to wrap my head around what she was telling me.

Picking up on my influx of worries, she took a brief tangent. “You do not need to worry too much about what I just said. The body you are manifesting is fully capable of anything it would be if you were still human. Your soul knows very well how a human body functions; its original vessel was one, after all.”

I guess that’s kind of reassuring, but this is still an inherently uncomfortable thing to think about.

“Anyway, that manifestation is tethered to your soul contained within the vessel. Your soul cannot maintain your body if one gets too far away from the other. What happened earlier was your soul dragging your body along to keep it in range. As you train your abilities as a Chain, that range can drastically increase, but I suppose it’s just a couple of meters starting out.”

I considered her explanation for a moment. “A vessel, huh?” I was about to ask her what my vessel was, but seemingly sensing the question, she tapped the hilt of her sword with her hand.

Something she had said much earlier that I hadn’t understood at the time came flooding back. “Oh… so that’s what you were referring to when you said ‘Estellous’ Blade’. It’s my vessel.”

“Huh? You were actually listening?”

“Try not to sound so surprised.”

She suddenly smiled at my defeated-sounding retort. “It’s not my fault for assuming so. After all, I’m pretty sure you don’t even remember my name.” Her voice was the tiniest bit teasing. Combined with that smile, I felt a little overwhelmed all of a sudden.

“I-I remember it.”

“Really? You called me ‘miss princess’ earlier. Honestly, that kind of irritated me.”

“Well, I didn’t mean to say any of that out loud in the first place. Plus, I have no idea what the correct way to refer to you is. You’re royalty, right? Using your name feels wrong.”

Out of nowhere, she lowered her voice a little, as if slightly embarrassed to utter the words out loud. “Just call me by my name, please.”

Somewhat flustered, I replied immediately, “O-okay, then… L-Lucia.”

My response ended up coming out extremely awkwardly, and it seemed to have left us both embarrassed.

After a few excruciating seconds, she finally spoke again. “Um… yes. We should keep going, then.”

She turned around and took a step forward before saying one final thing: “Let’s go, Layn.”

I remembered that too; it was the name she had given me when I was summoned. I still couldn’t remember the name I had in my previous life, so it was nice to have a new one.

Layn. Layn. Layn.

I kind of liked the sound of it.

But I really shouldn’t get too attached.