Due to the noise of the running water and the distance, Karl couldn’t be heard, but a few hand signs from atop the bridge communicated something to Cris.

“What do we do now?” I asked, watching Karl walk away towards the village.

“I guess I can’t ask you to take Rea and go on ahead, can I…”

“I wasn’t planning on being burned to death after all this, so no, I’d rather not return alone. What is it? Is there something you need to do here?”

“No, nevermind. Getting Rea back home is most important.”

I surmised that she felt wrong about leaving Holly’s remains in there, but there was no helping it.

“Though I’ll have to ask you to carry Rea. It’d be a mess if she woke up while I was in contact with her… Ah, though…” Cris trailed off.

“You get it too, right? There are too many unknowns, even more so now that we’ve made it outside.” What if I returned to that village, and everybody there wanted me dead? It made no sense rationally, but circumstances kept rolling in that direction regardless. “Rea seemed fine when you touched her earlier, didn’t she?”

“That was sloppy of me, I’m fortunate she was barely conscious. Rea might be a close friend but I’ve had enough close brushes with her in the past to know that, none of that matters, she could… Just like Varus, I’ve felt her look at me with those haunted eyes…”

This was just my own perception, but I was sure that this feeling alone bothered Cris more deeply than any part of being trapped in the poppy cellar ever did.

The bushes on the other side of the stream suddenly rustled—I leaped back behind cover of a tree trunk as Varus burst out from a concealed path in the cliff-face.

“Cris, are you alright?” he yelled out. “R-Rea?!”

“We’re fine, Varus,” Cris said exhaustedly, but with relief at seeing him.

“S-She—Syco didn’t do anything to you, right?”

“No? No! Varus, listen,” Cris started, as Varus hesitantly glared at me. “Karl got something wrong. Syco helped me save Rea, okay? Where is Karl, he isn’t here is he?”

“No, I told him to wait up ahead.” He grunted in frustration and scratched his head wildly. “Too much has happened, we just need to get back home and sit down and sort all this out. But we can’t do that if she is around, it’s too shifty. Hey, no offence, alright?” he said to me. “I trust Cris, so I’m willing to trust you if she does. But we gotta reset and sort this out a step at a time, just us three.”

The setting sun cast a severe orange glaze over us.

Varus, wanting to eliminate his discomforts before anything else.

Myself, mostly just watching out for an ambush.

And Cris, whose decision we waited for.

Though, if we were more keen, we’d have noticed that her sight was locked not on a distant point as one in deep thought would do, but the black shape in the sky that, now that I was thinking back on it, had been circling far above, in a way somehow unnatural for any kind of ordinary bird.

That shape, as I caught it again in my sight, catapulted itself from the air directly towards us.

A wingspan of at least 6 metres—that was the profile of the thing that crashed into the ground beside us with a monstrous force, much like a meteorite, only more fearsome, for a meteorite would at least destroy itself at the climax of its destructive path. There was little to fear from a meteorite after it had landed, but simply from the way those wickedly pointed wings folded with a sound like a mad growl, I understood that this thing lacked the decency to provide quick, easy deaths.

The barrage of ricocheting rock had passed by me, but the others, who were in the open, were in a more precarious state. I wanted to call out for Cris, who I couldn’t find through the cloud of dust and spray, but my instincts instructed me to hold my tongue.

The figure’s veiny wings, glowing blood red in the penetrative glare of the setting sun, collapsed fully, leaving a 7-foot tall slim figure in their stead. It smoothly waved the dust from its vicinity and hunched its way forwards, probably toward where Cris was.

I heard her cough and groan as the dust cleared—she had thrown herself over top of Rea. She was conscious, but her arm bled from a bunch of gashes that had been made along it.

“Dear me,” a heavy voice fell from above. Guttural, at a lower pitch than was possibly natural, and malicious with barely a veil to hide it. This creature towered above Cris, who sat in a heap. It towered over me, who was still standing. Long, black tendrils of thick hair—or cartilage—something between humanoid and not, fell over its face and down its back. And, its eyes; red vibrant rings that pierced through the mind, glanced at me for a split-second from its shadowed face.

It looked about itself, then spoke again. “Dear me, dear me. I do hope nobody was killed. That would be unfortunate, very not pleasant, very unfortunate!”

Cris entered its sights, and it continued as if monologuing. “Dear me, dear me, ah, yes that child is alive still, still alive still, how not unfortunate, very pleasant very not unfortunate!”

“Who—“ I leaked out, before I could clamp my mouth shut. The creature’s wings undulated, and two hungry red ringed pupils chained me to the spot.

“Dear me, dear me, quaint and interesting, quaint and interesting!”

It shuffled around, looking about itself, as if searching for something. Then, it sighted Rea, and hunched further forward, reaching out an arm—only then did I notice that it was wearing what was clearly a surprisingly ordinary, though quite elegant, black and maroon double-breasted suit.

The limb it extended, the end of which looked like it was made of several razor-sharp blades in the composition of a hand, touched Rea for but a split-second; she awoke in an instant with a frightened gasp, and began hyperventilating.

“R-Rea! Hold on!” Cris choked out, attempting to drag Rea away from the creature, even if only barely.

“Dear me, completely wrong, completely wrong, dear me!” it said, shaking its head dramatically. It went back to looking around at the ground, acting more and more oblivious to us. It was incomprehensible. Trying my luck, I crouched down and moved over to Cris—the creature surely noticed my doing so, but didn’t react at all.

“Cris, here,” I said, grabbing Rea under her shoulders and pulling her towards a safer spot. She had already fallen unconscious again.

“What is that?” I asked Cris in a whisper. “Where’s Varus?!”

“I… don’t know,” she whimpered.

A trail of spilt blood followed the stream for a short distance, starting from just within the shattered door of the poppy cellar. It was barely noticeable—despite having seen it pooling out of thin air earlier, I had forgotten about it until now.

The creature had seemingly caught on to this trail however, and was invested in following it. Was it curiosity? Purpose? It was pointless to guess.

The creature found the culmination of the trail, several metres away, and while muttering nonsense to itself, grabbed at the air at its feet.

“Oh yes, found it, found it!” it exclaimed. It held nothing, but that seemed to be wrong. It had gotten its claws on something.

“No,” Cris said, wide-eyed. “Don’t take it!” she yelled.

The creature turned around as it unfurled its wings, and it dashed back towards Cris in a horrifying instant. I didn’t have time to step between them, even if I thought it would help.

“Cris, Cris, yes, it is Cris, is it not? Regards, regards to, Gerald! Or was it Gary? Or Jerry? No matter, no matter.”

Abruptly, it beat its wings in a single powerful motion, and rose into the air. At the same moment, Varus and Karl both leapt from behind a thick patch of brush; Varus swung a short blade at the creature’s feet, and from Karl’s hand, a sharp cut of flames flew through the air.

With an agile undulation of its wings, the creature easily dodged both of these attacks, and rose still further into the air. As I heard Cris yelling to stop it, words rose in my mind:

“Regard the Unseen Doll.”

Several happenings flashed in my mind: Being carried and thrown through the air; Cris being gouged and blood flying, and her unharmed body thereafter; The occasional sensation of there being something nearby.

I left my hiding spot and rushed after the creature as it gained momentum. Of course, this was pointless; there was nothing I could do to stop it, just as Varus and Karl were unable to. But I could picture a humanoid shape clenched in its claws. The weight of that imaginary figure and how it would affect the creature’s posture and balance as it beat its wings—it matched up with what I saw.

Was this the “Unseen Doll” spoken of within the message in my soul?

Regardless of whether it really was…

It was out of reach now. The thing that had come and stolen away my closest lead thus far was already a dot on the horizon.

There was no time to wallow in regret, however. Cris was still sat on the fractured ground, distraught. She seemed on the verge of a panic attack. I wanted to go to her, but—

There was still the matter of Karl, who had appeared before us again. Our eyes met. I prepared myself to fight—or rather, to run away—but Varus stepped between us and held out his arms as if to force the animosity between us apart.

“Oh no, no no no, we’re not doing this. I’ve had enough shit today. Karl, you’re staying right there.”

Karl shrugged as if complacent, but his face remained in a scowl. “Fine with me,” he said. “I’ve never had any intention to harm her, in any case. I have no willpower left to do any magic right now, so don’t worry.”

“No intention to harm me,” I repeated in disbelief. I somehow doubted that it was true.

“I’m aware of how illogical it is of me to say that,” Karl said. “It’s true that I don’t trust you. I don’t know you, after all. But there’s no reason for me to want to harm you.”

“I’m going to need a bit more clearing up than that,” I said, while walking back towards Cris. She was practically in tears still, and wasn’t paying attention to the situation at all.

“Understandable,” said Karl. “Feel free to clear it up then. And then perhaps you could explain it to me? Because, I can’t explain it. If you can’t either, then maybe nobody can. Maybe that demon can. That’s all I can say about it.”

“I don’t get it either Karl,” Varus said. “But let’s all leave it for now. We need to get Cris and Rea home.”

Karl nodded in agreement. “Rea… I’m glad she’s alright. What about Holly? What happened in there?”

“Holly didn’t make it,” Cris said. “She’s… in there.”

Grief fell across their faces.

“No…” Varus said.

The original reason for coming here was to find Rea and Holly. Only now that things were settling down did reality fully hit. It was not only a failure in that we were too late to make a difference; these three had lost a friend, possibly even a close friend.

I suddenly felt very much like an outsider. Of course, I had been the entire time… it was only Cris’s open kindness that had made it feel otherwise.

“Shall I… show you inside? It should be safe to do so now,” I suggested. Varus and Karl looked to Cris, and she nodded at them. They obediently agreed.

“I’ll stay here and check on Rea,” Cris said. “I’ll be okay for a few minutes. Rea isn’t critical either, so it’s okay.”

Karl and Varus led the way with illumination, and I directed them around the corner and back into the hall where Holly was. The two didn’t bother questioning what had happened in this room. I told Karl to inspect the centre of the room, which he did, and then returned with a sullen expression.

“I… would rather not leave here with Holly in that state…” he said.

“You don’t have to do that,” Varus said, anticipating something.

“I’ll manage it,” Karl said. “I’m going to burn this place…” he said to me. “Would that be a problem?”

“Not that I know of,” I said. “I think it’d be good. For what it’s worth.”

Karl nodded and, much unlike the previous times, let liquid fire pour slowly from his hands and onto the ground, where the vines, which were becoming dry and hard, sat.

The fire spread slowly around the hall, until all four walls were lit with flickering yellow and orange. The flames licked higher and higher, and the heat became difficult to bear—I treaded backwards to duck out, only for Karl to rush out ahead of me. Varus and I followed after him until we were back outside, only to find him shaking against the rock-face, having vomited and fallen to his knees.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, worried that yet again, something was starting.

“Ah, he’ll be okay,” Varus said. “Karl is uh, well, he can’t handle fire very well.”

Karl chuckled bitterly. “Yeah, don’t mind me. I’m a bit of a weirdo.”

“Huh, I see…” I said. Actually, it was probably the most shocking thing I’d heard all day. “You didn’t have to do that if it’s hard for you.”

“It’s nothing…” Karl said. “It’s all I can do for her now, after all.”

As the flames raged inside the cellar, the surprises of the day finally seemed to be dying down. Hopefully.

“It’s something I’m adamant about, to not apologize for things I don’t consider wrong,” Karl said unprompted. “And while I’m aware that attacking you was wrong, that’s exactly why I won’t apologize. It’s something I never would do without reason, so it makes no sense to me why I should apologize for it.”

I sighed. “This would all be much easier if you actually just hated me.”

“It would,” he agreed. “However, there are more important things than being right. And Cris is staring at me with quite an angry look, so, I do apologize. Syco.”

As reluctant an apology as it was, it was an apology, in a technical sense.

“It’s been a long day,” I replied. I didn’t say more. I looked at Varus—he was staring off into the distance. I wondered if he was remembering the time that he acted in the same way, as Cris had told me about. Still, I was going to be keeping my distance from Karl, and Varus too for that matter, until I had a clue what that was all about.

“I’ll carry you, Cris,” I said to her. She looked about to pass out any minute.

“Sorry, Syco,” she said. I knelt down in front of her and let her climb onto my back. Varus seemed about to reject, but this was something I obviously couldn’t back down on. Fortunately he didn’t say anything. Karl helped him to pick up Rea, and we began the walk back to the village as night began to fall.

We spoke about the appearance of the demon, but to all of us, it was so sudden and frightening that it was practically surreal. ‘Did that actually really happen?’ was running through Varus’ and Karl’s heads, I was sure. In the end, we walked in silence. Picturing our group walking home nonchalantly, despite that ridiculous encounter… it almost got a laugh from me.

It was dark when Cris roused from her sleep. She was leaning against a tree, and I was sitting across from her.

“Morning,” I said.

“Syco? Where are we?”

I controlled my urge to laugh creepily in this situation. It was probably a bad time to make a joke like that.

“Just outside the village. I had Varus and Karl go on ahead. They took Rea to your place to get patched up and all that.”

“You what?… Oh! Right, t-that could have been bad…”

Cris’s parents were probably already anxious about how long she had been missing. That anxiety had likely doubled with Varus and Karl returning without her. But if I had taken her in, passed out on my back, they would have focused their attention on her and been less conscious of Rea’s condition. On top of that, there was the whole trouble of Cris needing to avoid contact with others. So, my thinking was to hide out here for a short while first.

“I was prepared to be punched when you woke up, truthfully. After all, I’m guessing I’m putting your parents through some less-than-pleasant emotions right now,” I said.

“Not to mention letting me wake up in a cold, wet patch of grass in the pitch black, when I was hoping to wake up in a nice warm bed. Oh, I had nightmares about being chased down dark hallways by a horrific monster, by the way.”

“No wonder you were so sweaty. My back is still soaked.”

Ouch. I see, so that was the threshold to get a punch from her.

“I see you wrapped up the cuts on my arm though… by tearing up my shirt some more… thanks…”

“You’re welcome!”

She sighed. “Jokes aside, I’m a bit surprised. That you thought that much about everything for me,” Cris said. “Thank you…”

“You brought me along but in the end there wasn’t much I could do in there, so I thought I could at least try and use my head a little to help you out.”

“Mm? That’s not really what I—well, nevermind. Thanks…” she said, with a hint of a smile in her voice.

Cris checked on the wound in my side, but it had healed up quickly thanks to her stitching. We sat in silence for a few minutes, until I formulated what I wanted to ask.

“Cris, about that thing that appeared…”

“A demon,” she said with a shiver.

“… Was that your first time seeing one?”

“Yes… But it was no doubt one of Demon-kind…”

“Hm. And, it took something… right?”

Cris took a moment to answer. “I’m not sure. I can only tell you what I’ve felt. And that is, that for as long as I can remember, I’ve had… something. There has always been something following me. And now… yeah, I can feel it, that it’s gone now.”

That seemed to confirm what I had surmised. That “Unseen Doll”—or at least, something of that kind—had been following Cris, and had been taken by this mysterious demon. Was there anything I could ask Cris to determine whether this entity was the one that my soul directed me to find? Frankly, there were too many unknowns to even make a conjecture at this point.

“Cris… are you okay?”

I heard her shake her head in the darkness. “I feel so vulnerable. I don’t like this feeling at all…”

“Okay… Let’s get you home then.”

I took Cris’s hand and helped her up, then led her through the trees on a path that I had memorized when there were still remaining slivers of daylight in the sky.

“Do you know something about that, Syco?” Cris asked me.

“No, nothing at all… Just a vague feeling at most.”

It was a strange thing to see. Parents, and their child returned from the unknown, clearly desiring to embrace and share in their relief, but unable to do so, held back by an unnatural, vague madness buried deep within the world, or perhaps themselves.

I stood alongside the wall of the living room with Varus and Karl, who also looked on sheepishly, possibly sharing similar thoughts. I wasn’t sure about Karl, but we all had an understanding that something was unsettled in this ordinary scene, this ordinary household, this ordinary village.

Regardless, none of us chose to speak of it. Nor did we allow it to interfere with the way that things should be, any more than it had to. The reason was simple… To allow Cris to be comfortable here, in her own home and her home town, all it took was to keep those wavering thoughts buried and forgotten. I could understand why they were able to do that, rather than questioning the things that were clearly odd. It was because they cared about Cris, who had always been an honest, ambitious, and thoughtful friend.

Before we had entered the house, Cris had told me that in the morning, she would give me the silver that she had promised. I would be able to afford a place on the carriage that travelled to the capital, where my purpose lay. I’d be leaving behind this village and its people.

I felt a jolt of something peculiar when I realized this. I had discovered at least one thing of critical importance, and that was the potential nature of the “Unseen Doll”. Yet, many more questions now existed in my mind compared to a couple days earlier. Was it a sense of wrongness at leaving all that behind?

Ah, I felt agitated.

I saw Varus and Karl off at the gate.

“Syco. We’ll be asking Cris about exactly what happened in there, but… Well, it seems that you protected her in our place when we were unable to, so… Good work,” Varus said abashedly.

“We might have never found Rea if it weren’t for you being there, for all I know,” Karl said. “I’m thankful for that.”

“I’m glad Rea is safe. And, I’m sorry about Holly,” I said. I didn’t know the girl, of course, but it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that I had somewhat soaked in a portion of their emotions. I felt like new sensations that I had never before experienced had been established within me, and that was undoubtedly a valuable thing.

Rea would be recovering in the room that I had been using, so I ended up getting the privilege of sleeping in a blanket on the cold wood floor of Cris’s own bedroom.

“Sorry about this,” Cris said from her bed after the candles were extinguished. “Think of it as payback for before.”

“It beats sleeping in the woods, so I’m nothing but thankful. Is Rea alright?”

“It looks like she’ll be fine. She has hypothermia and was suffering from malnutrition, but that’s all as expected… nothing Dad can’t handle.”

“That’s good.”

“…”

“…”

“It’d be bad if you got hypothermia too! You can’t sleep on the floor after all,” Cris said, clearly having finally thought up a workable excuse.

“There’s not much in the way of alternatives.”

Cris threw open her covers and patted the bed next to her. “It’s fine. Come sleep next to me.”

It was becoming a very chilly night. Cris’s mother was currently in Rea’s room, using a passive bit of magic that released an extraordinary degree of body heat into the surroundings. The plan seemed to be that Cris’s parents would take shifts doing this, in order to keep a tight lid on Rea’s hypothermia. The girl was in good care.

“You don’t mind?” I asked. Cris just patted the bed again. Well, it wasn’t much unlike the situation in the poppy cellar. “Okay. Thanks.”

I slid into the thin bed beside her and plopped my own blanket over top both of us. The hefty cotton and Cris’s body heat made it incredibly cosy compared to the floor.

Cris lay back down beside me and disappeared under the blankets.

“Syco? Do you think it’d be crazy to be scared that… we never left the cellar?”

“Hm. Yeah.” I said. “The poppy cellar was pretty comfy, but not this comfy.”

“Hehe. It was not comfy at all…” Cris said with a yawn. When people are tired, they sometimes have a habit of stating the obvious…

Cris was still shivering despite the warmth. I put my head under the blankets with her.

“You feeling vulnerable?”

“W-What do you mean by that?”

“You said so earlier. Since your… ‘guardian’ was taken.”

“Oh… yeah.”

“I might be powerless, but I’m here for now. And, think about this… Sure, it would be a problem if we were somehow still under the influence of the poppies. And yet, before we went in there, and forever afterwards, we’re still living lives of questionable sights and sounds and flaky memory. I myself am pretty well aware of this, you know.”

“When you put it like that, I don’t know how you keep so calm,” she said.

“That’s the thing. All of this right now could be an illusion within some other world… what if that were the case? You’ve lived this long without worrying about that. If I had asked you about this before, I’m sure you could’ve easily said, ‘Well, if it turns out to be all an illusion, I’ll deal with it when it happens.’”

“That’s probably true…”

“Maybe I’ve forgotten what fear is. Maybe I’m lucky in that regard. But there may be something incredibly important to me that is hidden behind that veil of lost memory of mine. What if every second that goes by puts me further from what matters to me? The problem is that I might never know. The beauty of that is that I can focus on the moment in front of me, and I can find new things that I can call the import of life.”

I say all this, but that makes me somewhat of a hypocrite, doesn’t it?

After all, I’m chasing after the vestiges of purpose from beyond that veil, without knowing why.

These are tasteless words that exist simply to comfort a girl in this singular moment… But despite realizing this, I say them.

“Mhm…” Cris said. She had listened intently.

“Sorry, I got off topic… I guess I really can’t offer much more than ‘hey just don’t worry about it’, I’m sorry to say.”

“Hmm. You know, I think you use your head more than just ‘a little’. I’ve never heard things like this before.”

I noticed that she wasn’t shaking as she had been earlier. And there was more joy in her voice. That’s something, I suppose.

“Well if you’re feeling better, that’s all that matters,” I said.

“…”

I thought she might’ve fallen asleep, but—

“Syco, cuddle me like before?”

“Oh? So it does come to that again.”

“I’ve never been able to do it before. And I might never get a chance again. So indulge me…”

After all, words could only ever do so much for the mind. There was no substitute for the feeling of sanctuary that arms wrapped around you could provide. Cris wasn’t unlike a lost soul in an eternal desert, having just found the single oasis that inhabits it.

So I put my arms around her and hugged her close to me. Ah, Cris’s parents kindly provided me fresh sleepwear, so I wasn’t pulling Cris into several days of grimy uncleaned skin. Cris put her arms around me and held me tightly, as if afraid of letting go. I felt some remnants of anxiety in her, so I rubbed her back, until she fell asleep.

And, well, this certainly wasn’t a bad way to sleep. What do you think, Goddess? For some reason… I think you’d smile honestly and agree with me.