@febuwhump Day 24 - "I'm doing this because I care about you."
To anyone looking at this from the Dungeon Meshi tag - if you're anime-only, HERE THERE BE SPOILERS! If you've read the manga, the MAJOR spoilers are for Chapter 28 - plus a scattering of spoilers for later. This is a scene rewrite! Like the first time we've posted "just canon but from a different POV" also! We are counting internal monologue for that dialogue, and we are having Fun with it.
Watch your step, and we hope you enjoy.
From the instant that Marcille draws the first line of dragon's blood, she knows that she's gone too far to back out now.
There's a dreadful, solid certainty lodged in her chest as she brings her staff down, again and again. An awful sort of knowing, of
It's a unique kind of draining. Mana sickness is one thing, but this is another. Each line draws at something deep, deep inside of her soul, drawing more from her than she ever thought a spell could drain. She wants, so badly that it hurts, a sharp, desperate need for this to work. She dips her staff's handle in dragon's blood again, and she ignored the awful feeling of being bled to the bone. She's only ever theorized about dark magic before, never put it into practice herself - every line feels wrong, sickly, diseased, her staff scraping along the flagstones and funneling awful vibrations into her hands.
Every line she draws feels like a wretched, sickly sort of pain. Like picking at a wound that's only halfway scabbed over, half-clotted blood clinging to her fingernails as she picks at where her skin meets a gash, and scraping off the tiny, disgusting pieces of not-quite-scab onto a piece of paper. It's the worst thing she's ever done, and she hates it, every step of it, with a bubbling sense of revulsion that it feels like she'll never be clean of.
If she doesn't do this, then Falin will be dead. And Marcille doesn't want to live in a world where that's true.
She doesn't know how many runes it'll take, really. She knows the pattern, and that's enough - she just has to finish it. One rune, then another. She doesn't need to know how long.
The world, for what feels like a long time, is just her and the runes.
One, then the next. The future doesn't matter. The past is gone. She inks rune after rune in rotting, thickening blood, pausing to re-ink her staff when it runs dry. The only thing that matters is the next rune in the sequence, and it doesn't matter how long it takes. She has a thousand years to live ahead of her, a thousand years to spend doing anything she wants - she doesn't care how many of them she has to spend doing this, if it gives her Falin back. One rune, then the next.
Marcille reaches to dip her staff in dragon's blood a last time, and stops.
The circle is done.
Marcille is already horribly, horribly tired.
More than tired, really. Exhausted, a bone-deep ache in her chest like she's worked out a muscle she never knew that she had. She feels like she's on the brink of passing out, staring down at a circle of dragonblood runes that she's worn her staff's handle down to fraying roots from. The purpose in her chest that was so strong barely a minute ago is fading, flickering. Fatigue knocks into her like a truck, and she's swaying on her feet, struggling to cling on to consciousness.
She knows, more than she's ever known anything before, that she has to finish this.
She thinks of Falin, and she steels her will to move forward.
Pelvis, femur, humerus. Twelve rib bones, easy to tell apart. The vertebrae, the hands and feet - calcaneus, metatarsal, metacarpal. Eight carpal bones in the wrist, hamate, triquetrum, pisiform, lumate, trapezoid, trapezium, capitate, scaphoid. Falin's wrist bones are shorter than hers, shaped different in a way that's both subtle and the most obvious thing in the world. It's all she can do not to stop and stare at them, hypnotized by the broken remains of her friend - tallman bones, white and clean, so unfamiliar compared to Falin's soft frame, so much like the ones she's already seen buried.
She doesn't know what she'll do if Falin's soul has already left her body. She can't allow herself to entertain the idea of it. Falin will live, because she has to live, because she needs to- because Marcille can't let her die.
She lowers her staff, and she starts to chant.
She's doing this because she cares about her. Because she can't live without her. Because the very idea of trying to go on without Falin, after all this effort to find her, after all this effort to bring her back, is poison on her tongue, fire in her veins, a sickly death in the pit of her stomach. She's doing this because she cares about her, because she wants to talk to her again, because she wants to talk with her, to eat with her, to sit shoulder to shoulder with her as she talks about magic again.
She's doing this because she cares about Falin, so badly that it feels like her heart's started to rip itself apart in her ribcage - because she wants her back, because she wants to talk to her again, because she needs to hold her hand again and press her palm against her cheek and tangle her lanky, bony body around her soft tallman chest and hold her so tight that nothing else exists in the world. She's doing this because she needs Falin, with such strength that it nearly feels like she's drowning in her own skin with every moment she's away from her. She wants, so badly that she can barely keep herself from crumpling on the spot under the sheer weight of it.
Falin. Falin. Falin.
She chants her name in her head with every repetition of the spell, wanting, hoping, begging for this to work. The drain feels like she's cut a hole in her very soul, like she's bleeding out her lips with every word she speaks, like she's slicing holes in the vessel that holds all of her being. Falin, Falin, Falin - her soul to her body, the dragon's flesh to her bones, anything to make her whole again, anything to make her well again, anything.
She draws from the well, again and again, driving herself on sheer, desperate desire. Falin, a silent cry beneath the chorus of the spell. Falin, a desperate wish whispered into the darkness of the dungeon. Falin, Falin, Falin, she cries out, again and again, blind and deaf but for the runes carved into the stone. Falin, Falin, Falin, Falin, Falin-
Marcille is more exhausted than she ever has been, more exhausted than she ever knew was possible to be- she tastes bitter blood on her tongue as she chants. She draws from the well deep inside of herself, draws until it's dry and then beyond that, desperation and need driving her on and on and on. Falin, Falin- she digs deeper, deeper, past the well and into the ground beneath. She wants, she wants, she wants-
"Falin..." she starts. The words flicker on her tongue, abruptly uncertain and unclear. She knew what she was saying only a second ago, but now she struggles to put anything to words. The chant fades out, the words leaving her tongue - she can't remember why she was chanting them anymore, can't remember what she was doing. Her limbs feel weak, bowing under her body's weight, her willpower abruptly draining. Her fingers loosen on her staff, suddenly void of all drive they once possessed. She looks down, bleary-eyed, at rusty red runes drawn for a purpose she can't quite remember, and for a moment, there is nothing to her thoughts but the dull echo of a desire nearly entirely devoured.
And then she is unconscious, and she thinks no more.
