Drake Helkar's Point of View
Should I do it? Should I tell her? I asked myself repeatedly while Zoe looked at the town, with her back to me.
Since I was little I wanted to keep several things secret from my family, because, despite them being my biological family, I didn't completely trust them. But now…
"Wait." I said out loud, stopping Zoe who had stood up to leave. "I can open it, but… I'm going to need you not to get scared or surprised by what's about to happen."
Confused by my words, she looked me in the eyes, searching for meaning in them.
Not knowing what would happen from that point on, I took a breath and closed both eyes as my mind was absorbed in the many moments I lived with my sister since I was just a baby.
Feeling a cold sensation run through my entire body, the spatial mana that was the key to obtaining my first rune covered me completely.
With a serious and cold gaze because of the change, I looked at Zoe, trying to find a reaction in her. Seeing her in a state of complete shock, my expression changed like a rollercoaster, because as I took a step toward her expecting a positive surprise, she started to back away from me, with an expression of complete terror.
"Zoe?" I asked, worried about what was happening with her. Zoe began to back away more and more, until after bumping into a root of a nearby tree, she fell to the floor and started to shake her head while whispering something I couldn't hear clearly, or at least at first.
"...it can't be, n-no… No, NO! NOOOO!!"
Feeling a burning on the tips of my fingers and the rest of my hand, I noticed that the crystal had broken, and the mana inside it was being absorbed by my body, numbing my fingers.
Brushing it off, I focused on Zoe, who had closed her eyes and started to scream loudly, telling me to get away from her.
Shit!
Bewildered by her words I didn't know what to do, I was confused and hurt by everything that was happening.
After being submerged in my own thoughts and feelings for a couple of seconds, I felt a nearby danger by pure instinct, and upon analyzing my surroundings I noticed it came from Zoe, who had drawn her sword with trembling hands.
Dammit, what's happening!? Why? Could it be because I changed my core? I finally concluded after moving away, and analyzing what had changed for her to be in that state.
I tried to change cores again, but having done it recently, I couldn't. Shit!
Expecting the worst, I saw how Zoe, my sister, dropped her sword and began to clutch her chest tightly, with an irregular rhythm in her breathing that made me understand the gravity of the situation.
Zoe. I said in my mind, before feeling a force push me into the change and return to my draconic core.
Feeling a shower of emotions from the change, I approached her again as she had fallen to the ground from the attack she was suffering.
"Zoe!" I shouted, kneeling by her side to take her by the shoulders. Seeing that she didn't respond, panic took hold of me. Shit, what do I do? Think fast! I know! I have to take her to the medics! Quick!
Driven by the worry I felt, I didn't hesitate to carry her in my arms to take her to the caravan's medics as soon as possible. As I ran, I saw the figures of Markus and Kaito approaching me quickly, with faces clearly worried by the image I was projecting at that moment.
"Drake! What happened to Zoe!?" Markus shouted, running by my side.
"I don't know!" I answered, with a voice broken by the run and the fear I felt. "She reacted badly to something, started screaming and just… just fell to the floor."
Once we arrived, the healers helped me lay her on a cot and took me out of the small room so they could work.
Waiting outside, time became an eternity. Every second that passed, guilt gnawed at me from the inside. When one of them finally came out, I rushed him with questions.
"How is she? Is she okay? What's her condition? Will she recover?"
"Calm down, she's fine." The healer said, with a calm that contrasted with my state. "Her body is fine, she has no visible or internal injuries. But, it seems she suffered a very strong mental shock, because of that, her body simply shut down to protect itself. She should wake up in a couple of hours."
Hearing that she was stable, an immense calm came to my heart, to the point that all the air left my lungs in a long sigh. Good… She's okay.
Markus, who had waited with Kaito in silence, said he would go inform Jael, so they could change the caravan's guard shifts, leaving with the healer.
Leaving Kaito and me alone in the hallway, he approached me and put his heavy hand on my shoulder.
"Kid, are you feeling better?"
Feeling sincerity in his words, I couldn't help but open up to him, as I wanted to tell someone what was happening, because I didn't know what to do once Zoe woke up.
"The truth is, I'm not." I said in a low voice. "It's my fault she's like this, because… I told her something she didn't know about me, or well, I showed it to her directly… I guess I'm an idiot."
Kaito remained silent for a moment, before motioning for me to follow him.
"Look, Drake." He said calmly, sitting in one of the chairs in the wooden hallway.
"Several years ago, I had a wife." He began suddenly, his voice deep and laden with a weight I hadn't heard in it before. "An elf, similar to Jael. Stubborn as a mule, but with a good heart."
I looked at him, not understanding where he was going with this.
"Before I met her, I wasn't a good person, I was someone impulsive and aggressive, but when I met her I changed, I changed for her. Once we were married, to her I was someone strong and kind." He continued, with a half-sad smile. "A mercenary with a sense of duty. Someone predictable, someone who protected her."
He paused, and his expression darkened.
"One night, some drunks in a tavern tried to overstep with her. Seeing that, I immediately intervened, making things turn ugly. It wasn't a clean fight, in the middle of the chaos, one of them pulled out a dagger to take her hostage and threaten me. Seeing that scene my old self surfaced again, rage controlled me. I don't know what she saw exactly, maybe my eyes changed, or maybe the growl that came from my throat wasn't entirely from a person. I only know that for the rest of the fight, she didn't see her husband defending her. She saw the beast I carry inside, a creature willing to kill without a second thought."
"I killed all those men, Drake." He continued. "But when I turned to her, her face was pale as snow. She wasn't looking at me, but through me, as if she were seeing a monster. That look in her eyes… it simply broke me… more than any punch or cut I received that night. After that she didn't speak to me for over a week, not because she was angry with me or anything like that, but because she was afraid. Afraid of the creature she was sharing her bed with."
Finally, his gaze met mine, intense and full of a bitter understanding.
"The point is, kid, that when you show someone such a fundamental truth about yourself, one they didn't know existed, but that you should have told them in the past, you shatter their reality. The image they had of you is smashed to pieces. Their reaction isn't against you, not entirely. It's against the chaos you've just thrown into their head. I understand your intention was good, or maybe innocent, but the result was a disaster. So, don't torture yourself over what's going to happen, but face it with patience and love.
His words, so direct and unadorned, hit me. A bitter smile formed on my lips after understanding and discovering what I had to do from that moment on.
"Thanks, Kaito…."
…
Hours later, I was sitting in a chair next to Zoe's bed, watching her as she slept calmly.
Watching her, I wondered how exactly to make her not hate me for everything that happened or, worse, walk away from me forever.
The answer was obvious, though terrifying for what it meant. I have to tell her everything. No more secrets between us. The truth about my two cores, about Bernal, and the reason for this journey… everything, except for my previous life.
I was thinking of ways to tell her so as not to ruin it, until the idea of her walking away from me crossed my mind, making my stomach churn, since, from the moment I arrived in this world, she has always been there for me, in good times and in bad, something I came to realize over time. I guess, the fact of knowing my sister will be there for me made me very dependent on her, on her advice, and on her support…
Surprised by the words I was saying in my mind, I looked at her, a bitter smile forming on my lips, before looking away to the floor.
"As selfish as it sounds… I'd love for her to be with me forever." I whispered without meaning to, letting my feelings carry me away. "Forever…."
"—D-Drake… I, I also want to be by your side forever."
I flinched, jerking my head up. Her voice, though a murmur, was clear enough to understand. Seeing her, her eyes were open, looking at me with a lucidity that took me by surprise.
"Zoe?" I said quickly, before leaning towards her with a heart beating fiercely. "A-Are you awake? How do you feel?"
"I'm fine, Drake, thanks for being by my side." She answered with a tired voice, before an uncomfortable silence formed because of the things I had said.
"I-I'm sorry." I finally said, unable to look her directly in the eyes, before I remembered the reason she was in bed.
My gaze fixed on my own hands, which, upon understanding the situation I was in, began to tremble slightly.
"Zoe, forgive me. For hiding my other core from you, and for…." The words started to tumble out, just as I had been fearing a few minutes ago. Clumsily, I began to tell her the things she didn't know about me, the things I had been hiding all this time, out of fear, or out of selfishness.
I spent a few minutes talking nonstop, all while Zoe listened in silence, sitting on the bed with her gaze lowered.
"I'm so sorry for hiding all this from you, sorry…. sorry."
"Drake…." Her voice, soft but firm, made me look at her after feeling naked in front of her, because of all the things I had said in just a few seconds.
"Drake, forgive me too, for not being trustworthy enough." She continued, before I felt a blow to the chest from her words. "I… haven't been completely honest with you either, I've hidden several things from you, about me, or about the family. Things I still can't tell you, but that I will in the future."
For an instant, our gazes met in silence. I felt that there were more truths buried between us than I had dared to imagine. Zoe took a deep breath, as if searching for the strength to continue.
"Better forget it." She said finally, before throwing off the blankets that covered her.
"As for what happened at that moment, it wasn't your fault." She continued, slowly shaking her head before standing up and stretching. "The truth is I wasn't scared because you had another core."
Wait, what? I was completely confused by what was happening, as much by her words as by her strange behavior.
"But… because of the mana I felt coming off you." She continued, her gaze lost for a moment, as if she were seeing a ghost on the wall. "That presence… that energy was identical to that of a demon that hurt me a lot when I was a child, a pain I felt watching people I loved die at his hands with my own eyes."
Her words hit me like a ton of bricks, leaving me breathless and not knowing what to say.
"When I felt it coming from you…" She explained, her voice trembling for the first time as she remembered that moment. "my mind couldn't process it. It clouded over and… I just went back to that moment, reliving all the terror I felt when I was a child."
She clearly wanted to change the subject, but, why? why to one from her past? a past that neither she nor our parents ever told me about.
Unable to move a single muscle, I didn't quite know what to think after hearing her words.
"I understand, Zoe, if that's what happened, I promise not to use that core again with you by my side."
A long silence formed between us. She just nodded, still visibly exhausted, and I didn't know what else to say. The atmosphere was heavy, laden with the truth we had just revealed. Desperately trying to change the subject to lighten the mood, I remembered what had happened right before everything went to hell.
"Hey… about before…" I started, a little unsure. "The crystal… I was able to open it in the end."
Smiling, Zoe focused her attention on me to ease the mood.
"Right after changing cores, I felt a numbness in my fingertips, one that…"
I stopped mid-sentence. The memory hit me suddenly. It was the same sensation, the same icy numbness I felt in my chest after absorbing Bernal's mana.
Wait. The connection formed in my mind. If the feeling is the same... then the black dragon that formed on my skin at that moment... was it also a rune? One that was activated at that moment?
"Drake?" Zoe's voice pulled me from my thoughts. "Are you okay? You suddenly went quiet."
Shit. I shook my head, forcing a small smile to cover it up. I have to analyze this later, calmly.
"S-sorry, I got distracted." I said, continuing as if nothing happened. "I was going to tell you that, after that, this appeared."
I held up my hands, showing her the palms.
The tips of my fingers, on both hands, had been stained a deep black. From that darkness, a bunch of black dots spread towards my palms, decreasing in size as they got further away. It looked as if I had dipped my fingers in ink and then someone had blown hard, splattering the rest of my hands.
Zoe leaned in to see them more closely, her expression changing from sadness to genuine surprise. "I've never seen a rune like this. They normally appear in one place, not… scattered like this. But, do you know what it does yet?"
"No idea." I admitted with a smile. "I haven't tried to put mana into it because of everything that happened, and also… because I'm afraid something like an explosion might happen."
She let out a small laugh, sounding a bit more like the usual Zoe. "Hahaha… it's not going to explode. You'll feel what's going to happen as you put mana into it. So, if you notice something bad, you just stop and that's it." She said, with a confidence I didn't feel in the slightest.
I looked at her, not very convinced by her words. Her cheerful and expectant gaze pressured me to give in.
"…Alright." I finally accepted, though with a distrust I couldn't hide.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, concentrating on my hands and the new sensation emanating from them.
This feels very weird. I thought, as I began to imbue a small amount of mana.
It's not like using normal magic. I feel… as if my fingers are sedated, along with a cold tingling that starts to climb up my arms.
Once the flow of mana stabilized in my hands, a strange confidence invaded me. I wanted to experiment, to see what would happen, so standing up with a jump, I felt a little dizzy from the sensations going through my head.
I lost my balance and to keep from falling, I put my right hand on the nearest wall.
But instead of a solid support, my hand simply found nothing. The wooden wall just wasn't there.
Falling awkwardly to the floor, I stopped the flow of mana to my hands by pure instinct, before using them to cushion my fall.
"D-Drake?"
Looking up, I saw that Zoe was as confused as I was. And I saw why. The section of the wall I had touched had completely disappeared, revealing the internal beams of the wagon with a clean cut.
It was then that I felt an itch on the palm of my right hand, even though the rune was no longer active. Without knowing how, or why, I stared with an incredulous look at the wall I had tried to lean on a few seconds ago.
H-H-ahaha… this is so surreal…. A miniature version of it, no bigger than a penny, floating on my skin.
What the fuck is this? Hahaha
Thinking it was a dream or some kind of joke, I started laughing at what had just happened, but seeing the look of confusion and surprise on Zoe's face, I understood it was none of that. With fear, I quickly dropped the wall, trying to get it away from me, as if it were a bug.
No longer held by my hand, the tiny wall instantly fell to the floor like a bullet. It went through the wooden floor with a dull, dry sound, and a second later, we heard a small thud as it hit the earth beneath us, raising a cloud of dust that seeped through the newly created hole.
We remained silent, looking at the hole in the floor and then the hole in the wall. Zoe and I looked at each other, our faces reflecting the same question: what the hell had just happened?
Getting an idea in my head thanks to the knowledge from my past life, I started to move out of pure curiosity.
"Drake, no…" Zoe said, guessing my intentions. "Don't activate it again until we know exactly what it is."
"Don't worry, I know what I'll try isn't dangerous." I said, looking for something small to test my theory with.
I activated the rune again, this time focusing on my left hand. I approached the chair I had been sitting in and touched it.
Unlike the wall, the chair simply… vanished. It left no trace. It didn't appear in my left hand. It didn't get smaller or anything like that.
Still feeling its presence, I let myself be carried away by my theory, so, activating my rune again in my left hand, I returned the chair, but this time a few centimeters from where I had picked it up.
A smile, one I couldn't contain, drew itself on my face. The fear was replaced by an overwhelming euphoria, because I began to understand the true power of my rune, and the things I could achieve with it.
"This is it." I whispered, sitting down in the chair again after having no more mana to activate it again."With this, I have the power of a god."