Chapter 317 – The Winter Dancer.
The cold air stung my fingertips, but I didn’t care. Something like that was fine.
“Please, Belka, stop joking around.”
Usher couldn’t stand the warmth of the girl he was holding in his arms cooling off faster than that. Even right now, as usual, I feel like I’ll look at him with a lovely golden light and touch him fleetingly with my soft hands. The only thing that came back from the girl he embraced was the depressing silence and the feeling of her cooling skin.
“I’ll forgive you if you wake up even now. It’s scary.”
It was so frightening and painful that he hugged the girl even tighter to try to capture even a little of the escaping warmth.
“Please.”
However, no matter how much she begged, the girl’s body could not be stopped from cooling down.
“She’s already…”
Diana swallowed her pity at the sight and barely opened her mouth, but her words could not be followed.
“I know. I know. So if you can’t do anything, please leave me alone.”
Because before that, her usher’s, her barbed voice pierced her. But even though she was stabbed by a broken thorn, it didn’t hurt. She finally shut her mouth and had no choice but to watch her in pity. Then came Kayaba’s voice along with a knock on the door of her carriage.
“Diana, may I come in?”
“Yes.”
Diana watches Usher, and when she answers his voice, she opens the door and Kayaba enters. He looked at her side for a moment and then said to her.
“I ran into a problem checking the number of people, but I think I need you.”
“Yes, then those children.”
“I hope they come out together. It doesn’t sound like a completely unrelated story.”
Diana sensed that Kayaba’s words weren’t very good news. First of all, her role as a saintess seems to be many, but most of them are limited.
“I decide to take those kids out after looking outside.”
“Okay.”
Fortunately, he nodded at Diana’s words and decided to leave Usher and her girls alone for a while. No one dares to come to this wagon. Even if someone were to come, the driver who was in charge of the coachman would block them.
“Ah, saintess! Take care of my child. Please bless me!”
When Diana came out and was walking with Kayaba, she soon noticed her and an old mother came in haste. Seeing Kayaba glancing at her, Diana shook her head and did not stop her old mother from approaching. She stared at the baby her old mother was holding out and her face hardened. Because the baby wrapped in her clothes was already hardened just like that. Diana carefully held her baby’s arm, but what she felt was too cold and hard to believe it was hers.
At least the remaining downy hair and the texture of her skin add to the sense of heterogeneity. Her entire arm was already like a block of ice. She caressed and checked the condition of her baby with a curious mind, but the result was the same. No matter how much she groped, she couldn’t find any sign of her life.
“Saintess, is the child all right?”
The old mother asked again, but she must have already realized the result from Diana’s expression, and her voice trembled along with her wrinkled hands. She had no choice but to shake her head and hand her baby back to her old mother.
“Ahhh!”
In the end, Diana was unable to do anything despite the sight of her old mother sitting there and weeping.
“How did this happen?”
When she looked down at her old mother with her bitter heart and asked Kayaba, he took her Diana and headed to the back of her procession. As she walked like that, she was able to identify the cause of the cold that was getting stronger and colder as if she were being tortured.
“Did Hildisviny and Svadilferry run non-stop, but couldn’t get out of the aftermath?”
From shortly after the sun rose until the sun went down, they ran and ran in the wagon for most of the day. I hardly ever rested, and even though I ran to the point where several wagons fell out, the punishment that fell on the Holy Land had an aftermath to this place.
“Diana, do you know about this phenomenon?”
Diana nodded her head as Kayaba asked after hearing her murmur.
“I’m not the only one. Don’t you know what this situation means?”
“…As expected, the Dragon King descended.”
As if he had guessed, he looked at the mountains of ice that blocked them behind them.
“I never thought I’d actually experience the descent of the Dragon King, which I’ve only heard about in history.”
The three great dragon kings, three gigantic dragons collectively called Hecatia. If ordinary dragons were only at the level of exceptionally strong monsters, the three dragons were not monsters, but were close to natural disasters themselves. It would be easy for a country to perish just because one of those beings descended. The number of times the Dragon King descended was only recorded on two hands, but each time countless countries perished in the aftermath alone. Since it is so rare for them to descend, some say that the dragon king is too exaggerated.
Looking up at the endless mountains of ice, Kayaba could tell that this was the truth without exaggeration. Even though they ran so much, the wagons behind them were trapped in that mountain of ice. It is true that it is only a part, the tip, compared to the whole, but there were no people who could say that it was fortunate.
“I’ll have to prepare the funeral.”
“But right now I don’t have anything properly prepared.”
In the first place, most of them had no intention of leaving the Holy Land and suddenly leaving. That’s why there were a lot of people who couldn’t be said to be a proper top tier, but really took care of themselves in a hurry. If you don’t get out of here even for a day and go to another country or find food, there will be problems. At least, there were not one or two people who insisted on not leaving the Holy Land, so the number of people they had to deal with now was far less than the original population of the Holy Land, but they couldn’t help but talk a lot.
“I know it’s urgent, but if you leave like this, the problem will grow.”
As Diana spoke, she looked at the weeping old mother as she cradled the motionless baby. The voices of those complaining of pain in one way or another did not stop here and there. If you don’t take care of their hearts like this, it will become a bigger problem. She knew very well that people turned sadness into resentment, resentment into anger, and people preferred to find fault in others rather than themselves.
“It seems like Hildisviny and Svadilferi are too tired to stay here today anyway.”
Ka’aba thought this was inefficient, but she reluctantly agreed with Diana. Calmly thinking, it would be right to rest as it is, restore Hildisbini and Svadilferry’s physical strength and prepare their equipment, but many people have already lost their lives in the aftermath. Since people do not necessarily act rationally, I had no choice but to admit that such inefficient work was necessary.
“But the funeral process will be quite complicated. What are you going to do?”
“No matter how urgent it is, I can’t help it, so I have no choice but to do it informally. And…”
She opened her mouth at the sight of the people trapped in the mountain of ice.
“The dead will lean over there.”
Even if he lost his life in the aftermath, if he was there, the corpse’s appearance wouldn’t change over time. I think it’s strange, but people rely more on the visual. When she and Kayaba called together the people and informed them that they would prepare for the funeral, she was accepted without much resistance. Nevertheless, the weather was getting colder quickly, so I gathered several braziers, lit a fire, and started the funeral in front of the ice mountain.
People prayed for their souls by leaning on the ice mountain by covering the corpses of loved ones with things or placing them next to them, and the knights also bowed their heads in front of their comrades who were trapped in the ice mountain or died because they could not escape the aftermath.
“…Belka.”
Watching the people leaning against each other in front of the mountain of ice, Usher also leaned Belka against the mountain. She hopes that he will open her eyes now, and she holds her shoulder and looks at her girl, but again nothing flashes of gold. She didn’t want to leave the girl as she was. I wanted to keep being with you, but why do I have to leave you like this? He hugged the girl’s tender body one last time, but felt only her cold, cold touch, so he let go of her tears and let her go.
Even so, I couldn’t bear to put the ring on Belka’s finger.
“I’d rather have this been a dream.”
She just leaned her head against her girl’s lap and fell asleep. She tried to hope that it would be a bad nightmare to touch, but the cold that felt like she was biting her skin didn’t go away. As Diana put the brazier behind her and watched her say something, the funeral was over before she knew it. It wasn’t a grandiose funeral, even though someone’s precious person died, and many people passed away. Eventually, as night drew near, the people entered the carriage one by one, but Usher stayed still, watching the brazier burn in her eyes as she descended.
It was the time when she just stayed because she couldn’t believe that it was the end. Suddenly, a girl approached the last remaining brazier. Even in the place where the snowflakes fall, the black hair, as if it still holds the night sky, catches the light of the brazier and makes the starlight shine even more. The girl’s loose sleeves fluttered in the wind, and the pure white flowers held in her little hands caught her eyes. A girl holding a blue stalk in her hand, as if small white bells were woven into the stem of a plant.
“Erika…?”
It was Erica holding the lily of the valley he had given him. The girl seemed to notice Usher’s gaze in her, and she met him and her gray light and slowly stepped her foot. Although her walking seemed light, it never strayed from her place. She merely nudges and spins her body, shaking the lily of the valley shallowly to help clear the air for her. Usher belatedly realized that it was a dance. Each movement is light, but not exciting. On the contrary, each one of them was carefully thought out to the extent that it felt reverent.
Usher wasn’t the only one watching the scene. Because there were still people who hadn’t returned to the wagon yet. But no one could stop the girl from dancing in front of the fireplace. It was partly because of the atmosphere of the girl standing with her back to the hearth in the midst of the snow, but also because I was overwhelmed by the graceful lines and solemnity of her hair flowing like the night sky as she danced, and I could sense that it was for those who had passed away.
“I can’t believe that dance.”
And among them, Rachel was also standing. Because she knew it instinctively. She doesn’t know what method she used, but it was her own teacher who descended her Bingryong Auter.
“…Was that child Mika?”
Rachel originally lived in the basement of the Holy Land, and downstairs, so she knew exactly what Erica was doing. Downstairs, each downstairs had its own way of life, and among them there were some who believed in God. Mika was like a priest who worshiped God in her own way. When she lived downstairs, she didn’t see them very well, thinking she was easy going, but now she seemed to know why she entrusted funerals to people like Mika. She stayed in her place until Erica’s dance was over.
