Chapter 10: [ARC 1] Chapter 7 - The Face that Stops a Heart

When they were far enough away, Kagami laid the big man on the ground. He was tired. A feeling that he should get used to, but still couldn’t. He collapsed right next to the man, back against the rocky wall, heaving to catch his breath. The hooded woman placed the winged woman down next to the giant. They had collected her when they ran away.

She retreated from him, slipping into the shadows. She tugged her hood down. Her face unseen other than her lips. Kagami found the behavior odd. He didn’t question it now. Things needed to be done.

Though he still hadn’t caught his breath, he got to work. Kagami pulled out a roll of bandages, a needle and some thread from his pouch, placing his lantern next to the big man to better see his wound.

His long fingers played with the needle and then he reached for the man’s shirt. The hooded woman caught his wrist, like a chiding mother to her son.

“What are you doing?” She demanded.

“I’m going to sew the wound shut. Then, I’m going to take him to a doctor.” Kagami leaned forward ready to carry it out.

“That’s unnecessary.” From her shadow, a bottle popped out and she caught it in the air. She held a glass bottle filled with glowing green liquid. Uncorking it, she motioned for him to step aside. She stood over him with her cloak billowing a bit. Kagami watched and waited with the needle and thread in hand, ready to sew him at a moment's notice. The man was dying, he was bleeding out and if nothing happened he would die soon. He hoped that whatever was being dropped into the man wasn’t some snake oil.

The hooded woman drained the contents into the hole in the man’s side.

His thoughts softened to pure bubbling curiosity and he hovered over the dying man in awe. A soft yet vibrant green enveloped the man. The light grew in radiance reaching its zenith and the man’s face relaxed to that of a pleasant dreamer.

His eyes fluttered open.

Kagami’s mouth opened wide. The needle clinked on the stony ground, lost somewhere beyond the lantern’s light.

The wound was gone.

Kagami wanted to ask why she didn’t do that in the first place. He didn’t get that chance.

The woman turned to Kagami and though he couldn’t see her eyes, he could still feel her stare burrow through him.

Kagami shivered at that stare. Those were the eyes of someone who knew who Cedar Oswell was. The question then changed to, ‘what kind of relationship did she have with the former owner of his new body?’

The man sat up, gasping as if he had just surfaced from the ocean’s deep. The man with the bear ears looked to Yoru and then stopped at Kagami.

“Who are you?”

“Hey,” Kagami held up a friendly hand to greet him. “I’m guessing you three dropped from the elevator today? You were attacked by a giant spider. You were lucky that I saw. We didn’t know that there was going to be a prison drop today.”

“Prison drop?” The man suddenly moved his hands to where the hole had been. His face twisted in remorse as he looked up at the hooded woman. “I’m sorry. Because of my carelessness we had to use one.”

“It’s fine. We expected this,” she said looking away.

Kagami pushed himself up, using the wall as a crutch. His front bangs were glued to his forehead by sweat. Pushing himself this much, he knew that tomorrow his legs would be jelly. Still, he knew they couldn’t rest here forever, unless they wanted to become a spider’s meal.

“Can you stand?” Kagami asked looking back at the way they came. “We should get going. The Sanctuary is near here.”

“The Sanctuary?” The bear repeated.

“It’s what it sounds like, it’s a place where prisoners gather. A penal colony.” Kagami forced himself to smile to lighten the mood. It might have had the opposite effect. The hooded woman kept her distance from him.

#

“My name is Kagami.” He realized near the end of their travel together that he hadn’t told them his name yet. “You could say I’m a hunter.”

“I’m Kenichi, I’m the guardi- I mean I’m-” Kenichi shook.

Kagami chuckled. “It’s alright. Everyone down here did something up there. They tend to hide what they did. It’s alright. It might be better like that anyways.”

“Do they change their names down here?” The hooded woman asked. She had stayed silent the whole way, but she had suddenly asked that.

It left him stumped, he wasn’t sure what she meant by that.

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“No. I don’t think so? There’s a processing center down here. The one on the surface sends information down here,” Kagami said with a shrug. “It’s kind of hard to hide anything like that here.”

“You didn’t change your name?”

Ah. So she did know the former owner of this body. Kagami got his confirmation. He needed to treat carefully then.

“No. I didn’t do that.”

This wasn’t the first time this happened. His body was one of the prince, but it was always hard to explain to them that he wasn’t the prince, that he was another man inhabiting the prince’s body. Of course, when he explained it, people looked at him as if he were insane.

From the stories he had been told, the people transported to this world had kept their own body and to Kagami that felt like the Goddess running this world had slapped him in the face. Why couldn’t he have kept his body? His body was awesome. He had never gotten sick, or been seriously injured in his life.

In his old body, he survived assassination attempts, being hit by a truck, being shot in the head, being thrown in a vat of acid, tossed into the sea with an anchor tied to him. He couldn’t count the ways mostly the Yakuza and a few others had tried to kill him and survived with ease.

Then there was this body…it did none of that.

If he was in his mighty body, that giant spider would have been squished like a bug whacked with a slipper.

Speaking of which, he still needed to find some spiders to kill. If he didn’t, he was sure Walnut would come down at him exactly like a giant with a slipper.

Kagami gave an audible groan. The bear and the hooded woman looked his way.

“Something wrong?”

“Nothing at all.” Kagami gave a half hearted wave. “Just remembered something I needed to do. I’ll drop you guys off at the Sanctuary, but after that, I need to go and hunt some things.”

“You say you hunt, but all I’ve seen are spiders. Are you saying there are more than that down here?” Kenichi asked.

“There are.” Kagami nodded “The deeper you go down the Well, the more creatures you run into and the more strange places you find. Sometimes, the things I walked into feels like something that would come out of a fantasy novel.”

“Fantasy novel?”

“Stories,” Kagami said. “Like legends and myths. That kind of thing. My wife liked stuff like that.”

“Wife?! You have a wife?!” The hooded woman piped up.

Kagami and Kenichi both stopped and turned to her. Realizing that she had spoken out loud, she quickly cleared her throat, regaining her composure.

“Did you get married down here?”

“No, she’s outside of here. Somewhere far, far away.” Kagami looked up, though there wasn’t anything but a rocky ceiling above them, he couldn’t help but imagine the sky. “One day, I’ll get out of here and I’ll return to her.”

“Fat chance. This is the Wishing Well after all.” The hooded woman gave a smirk. “No one has ever escaped.”

“Yoru!” Kenichi admonished her. Though she tried to cover his mouth, she was a head shorter than he was. “Don’t you mock someone who has been separated from a loved one.” The bear glanced down at the woman he held in his arms. “You mentioned you wish to escape, would you be interested in joining us? We plan to challenge the Warden.”

“The Warden?” Kagami quickly appraised the three of them. He tucked his lip up into a frown. “You’re not strong enough.”

Kagami turned back and continued to lead them to their destination. They were actually close. They were coming up to an area that opened up like where he found them. Behind him he could hear the hurried footsteps of the two.

“What do you mean by that?” Kenichi demanded, walking by his side now.

“I mean what I said.” Kagami kept his gaze forward. “I’ve fought the Warden once. I know how strong he is. Both of you don’t match up with level.”

“You survived a fight with the Warden?”

“Anyways. It’s not a good idea,” Kagami reiterated, making sure his tone matched how dire his warning should be.

“Are we almost at the Sanctuary?” The hooded woman asked.

“Yeah, actually if we use that stone arch to cross that crevice, then you just need to go down the hole shaped like a heart. Then we should be at the entrance.”

Kagami stopped in place. Blood dripped from his open mouth. He looked down to see a black blade sprouting from his chest. He mechanically looked over his shoulder to see the cloaked woman, black katana in her hand.

“Why?”

Yoru wrenched the blade free from his back. Kagami pivoted his entire body, sweeping the open air with a kick. Yoru had plunged into her shadow. His gaze went to Kenichi and Aria. The bear was as shocked as he was and didn’t make any movement towards him.

“Why are you doing this?” Kagami asked. His breath becoming shorter and shorter with every wheeze. His lung had been struck.

“Why?” Her voice echoed, Kagami couldn’t get a lock on where she would appear. “How can you ask that Cedar?”

Kagami grimaced at that. So, it was revenge. Not the first time this has happened to him.

“I’m not who you think I am. I’m not the Flame Prince.”

“Do you think I wouldn’t know who you are?” Her tone clearly voiced that she wasn’t amused. “Do you think I would ever forget your hideous scent? Do you think I’d ever forgive you for killing Elm?!”

Elm. Kagami had heard that name a couple of times. It was the prince’s brother. This was the first time Elm had been used as a cry for vengeance.

Kagami held his chest. Blood was seeping through the cracks between his fingers. The longer this carried on, the worse it would be for him. He looked down at his red hand.

Then, he clutched it into a determined fist.

“Well, I don’t feel like dying today. So, I guess the only thing that can be said: Bring it!” Kagami yelled.

“As you wish.” Her voice dripped with animosity.

The winged girl in Kenichi’s arms sat up. A bright blue light caught his eyes and he turned towards her ready to guard against it.

“Static.” The winged woman pointed at him.

“What?”

Kenichi’s eyes widened.

Kagami glanced over there and back into the inky darkness of the tunnels. The lantern’s light danced upon the tunnel’s walls. Blood dripped from his hole in his chest, and his breathing wheezed closer to death’s gurgle.

He needed to draw her out. The edge of his lips curled into something of a smirk.

“It was nice you know. Killing Elm.” He lied.

Something changed within the shadows. It wavered and stretched as if it were living and breathing. Kagami could sense that what he said angered her. He licked his lips, continuing.

“What was he to you? He was my brother and I killed him. People say I stabbed him in the back, but that’s not true. I made sure to look into his face when he died. Do you know what his last words were?”

Silence.

“He cried out your name.”

She leapt from his shadow. It was just like he thought would happen. Anger had taken her, and Kagami countered, plunging his fist towards her. His fist was painfully slow. His timing was impeccable. He knew his fist would strike true.

The force of her ascent pulled the hood off her face.

His fist stopped and her black blade skewered his chest, stopping his heart.

“A….sa?”

Her face was his wife’s.