Page 160 of A Soul to Touch

“No! Fuck!” She sat back on her arse and brought her knees up. At the same time, she covered her face with her shaking hands. “I broke his skull further.”

It must have been his horn she felt smash against her knee.

She broke it, her! She’d been trying to fix him, not be the reason he was even closer to death! He’d never take her soul now, not with the way she could see it was gaping and revealing bits of strange looking muscle.

It was barely holding on, the underside loose while the top part of the crack was all that was left holding him together.

It’s all my fault. It’s all my damn fault.

Mayumi didn’t know how to process this. What she was supposed to do.

She just crossed one foot on top of the other as if she was trying to make herself smaller to the world, unsure of how to handle the growing grief swirling all the way down to the very core of her being.

No tears formed. She hadn’t cried when either one of her parents died. Faunus, from what she could tell, was at least still alive, but there was an uncomfortable tingle in her sinuses like she wanted to.

She was in so much pain. Her arm was bleeding through her bandage, and she knew she’d popped multiple stitches in fighting him. Her face hurt from where he’d cut her, and she was certain something was horribly wrong with her knee.

It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t wanted to bait the Demons, the winged one probably wouldn’t have come here.

The Demon had mentioned something about a king. She knew Faunus had run after him because he didn’t want the Demon King knowing where he was.

Faunus wouldn’t have needed to chase after him. I wouldn’t have been left to fight off Demons by myself and gotten injured.

He wouldn’t have come back here while she was in the middle of patching herself up and cleaning her home. She wouldn’t have been covered in her own blood.

She wouldn’t have caused all of this.

Lowering her hands, she stared at him with her eyes bowed deeply. Bile rose to her throat like acid, her gut churning with emotions that she couldn’t bottle down no matter how hard she tried.

Her heart painfully clenched, threatening to snap the tendons holding it in place. It stole the rest of the agony she felt, more prominent than any of her physical wounds.

How am I meant to save him now?

“I’m so sorry, Faunus.”

Faunus’ mind was discombobulated as he woke. It was the kind of groggy one would feel after a deep sleep.

No, that was wrong. It was dizzy, like in the way he remembered being poisoned felt. His hearing was muffled, like someone had shoved cotton into his ear holes. His sight was shifting, vibrating in and out of light and dark, as everything appeared to move slowly. There were trails and a strange split in his vision he’d never witnessed before.

His skull felt unbearably heavy, but it also gnawed at him with a pounding that forked all throughout his entire face like strikes of lightning in the sky.

It was the strangest sensation, but it felt as though his being, his essence, his verysoul,was severing in two.

A mixture of his own blood and intense herbs, like dill, basil, and multiple others, was all he could smell. Something was covering his bony snout and partially filled his nose hole – although not fully. It was uncomfortable, and he didn’t like not being able to sense where he was.

What... happened?

Usually, when he slept or passed out or even temporarily died,he would remember. He’d even vaguely remembered the many rages he’d had.

Now there was only blankness.

The last thing he remembered was that he’d given up on chasing the winged Demon.I remember falling from the tree...There was nothing else in his memory.

Another attempt at looking around revealed he was in a cottage, a mostly familiar one despite the fog of his vision.

Did I make it to Mayumi?

Faunus tried to move his arms but was unable to. He wriggled when he realised his limbs had been tied together behind his back, and he was rendered immobile against the ground.Enchanted rope?That was all he could think that would be binding him this way.

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