The white-red light wasn't an explosion. It was an absence. A perfect, silent circle of nothingness where the corrupted bough had been. The light expanded, consuming the gray bark, the wilted leaves, the black, weeping wound, and the very ground the tree stood on. There was no sound, no heat, no shockwave. One moment, the blighted tree was there. The next, it was not. The light vanished, leaving behind a perfectly spherical crater, its edges glowing faintly with a residual heat.
My ears rang in the sudden, deafening silence. The air tasted of ozone and burnt sugar. The sickly-sweet smell of rot was gone, replaced by a clean, sterile emptiness.
The Demon King stood at the edge of the crater, his back still to me. He didn't look triumphant. He didn't look tired. He looked… bored. As if he had just swatted a particularly annoying fly. He turned, and his purple eyes found mine. The cold, calculating fire was still there, but now it was mixed with something else. A deep, simmering resentment.
"Do not expect that I will always be so accommodating to your infancy." His words were a low warning, a promise of future pain.
I don't have a great answer for him.
Rather, I don't have a great answer for me. I can't even think of a good comment on his physical form. I'm too tired and high-strung for it, apparently, which is a surprise given I wouldn't have expected that of myself. But I can't do anything but stare.
The Dryads emerged from the healthy trees, their silent forms surrounding the crater. They did not approach. They did not speak. They just stood there, their wooden faces turned toward the void, their ancient eyes taking in the new wound in their forest.
Whisperwood moved to stand beside me. Her gaze, too, was on the crater.
The blight is gone.
Her thought was a statement of fact, devoid of triumph. The cost for our passage had been paid. Not with my magic, not with my effort, but with his. A debt incurred by my own stubbornness.
I don't really know when I'll pay it.
Don't think I want to know what that debt is at all told, either.
That...
That's a problem for my future self.
My gaze turned to the Demon King.
His expression was one of contempt. For all of it. For the Dryads. For the forest. For me. The same contempt he showed for everything. He'd done it just to get out of here, to get away from the place.
I don't think this was a victory.
The Demon King, not even waiting for a dismissal or acknowledgement, turns and begins walking. There is no acknowledgement from the dryads, but they no longer block our path.
I...
Follow. Not because I'm told. Not because I want to be around him. Because I want to leave this place. Because I want to get to Sylverhaven. Because...I don't know what else to do.
Angus flutters over to me, his usual cheerful demeanor completely gone. He kept glancing back at the crater, at the silent Dryads. [Violet... did you see that? That was... a lot of magic. A lot. (◎_◎;)]
I had seen it. I had felt it.
And...
Somehow I wasn't tired from it.
That's...
Nagging at me.
Like the real reason he did it wasn't to help the dryads or this world, it wasn't to follow my instructions - certainly not - and it wasn't even because I won the battle of wills.
I couldn't help but feel like...
He did it because he wanted to show me.
His power wasn't as leashed as I thought. He could do things like that without draining me.
He wasn't a dog on a leash.
He was a dog behind a fence.
And he was looking for spots to jump over it.
Something like that. I felt like it was a threat like that.
He wanted me to see it.
I...
Don't know.
We walked for what felt like hours before we returned to the spot we started. The path out of the Dryads' city was no less beautiful than the path in, but the silence felt heavier now. The Dryads watched us go, their wooden faces impassive, their ancient eyes filled with a silent judgment. They had gotten what they wanted. The blight was gone. The price had been paid. And we were leaving.
The demon king strode ahead, a tall, imposing figure against the dappled green light of the forest. He didn't look back. He didn't speak. He just walked, a silent, brooding monument to contempt. He was angry. I could feel it radiating from him in waves, a cold, simmering fury that had nothing to do with the Dryads or the blight.
It was directed at me.
It wasn't new.
He was always enraged at me. My very existence was an affront to him. I'd heard him rant about it enough to get that.
But it felt stronger, sharper.
Even if he'd turned it into a threat, I'd still beaten him at the game, gotten him to blink and back down first, for however little that mattered. It was enough to harm his pride, clearly. The way he'd taken it out on that tree...
I didn't want to think about what he'd do if he managed to break the necklace some time.
Though, maybe I should be comforted that it wouldn't last very long.
If he could. At least he didn't seem to have the restraint to make it last.
That felt like...
A rather grim comfort, though.
I looked at the back of his head. The long, blonde hair, the broad shoulders, the smooth, perfect skin that was completely devoid of anything except for that infuriatingly distracting loincloth.
As we walked, as the crater disappeared into the distance behind us, I found my mind wandering more and more. With the crunching of leaves and grass under our feet, I found I wasn't thinking about the fight, or the battle of wills.
I was thinking about how completely and utterly unfair it was for someone so awful to look so good.