“His wrist?” said Fremy. “What are you talking about?”
“His wrist is dislocated…and his ribs are broken…I can’t heal that.”
“What?”
Eyes still on the ground, Rolonia cried, “But the rest, I can heal!”
“Heal him? Don’t be ridiculous!”
“I can! I know I can! I mean, it’s just that his heart has stopped and he’s bled too much!” As the girl spoke, her hands shone, sucking up the blood that had seeped into the earth. It pooled into a red sphere that enveloped Rolonia’s hand.
“Don’t return it like that!” Mora ordered. “Remove all the foreign matter!”
“Yes, ma’am!” The sphere undulated and spat out a dirty mixture of wet sand and mud. “Hans! Please, come back to us!” Rolonia cried. As the blood disappeared back into the wound at Hans’s neck, his body, which had been deathly pale, began to be tinged with color. All the while, Rolonia was manipulating the small amount of blood that remained inside Hans’s body. She circulated it between his lungs and brain while also managing the work of the cells themselves so that even with his heart stopped, his brain would not die.
Rolonia had assisted Torleau, Saint of Medicine with her surgeries many times. Through much practice, she had learned and perfected the technique of returning drained blood to the body. Mora had helped Rolonia with this by submitting herself as a subject for experiment.
“Next…if his heart can start again…” As Rolonia pressed her left hand on his wounded neck, she set her right hand on his heart. She was trying to move his stopped heart by controlling his blood. To train this skill, Mora had requested the help of an elderly person with only a few days left to live, working on them in the moments before death.
“It can’t be… He’s coming back?” Fremy gasped.
Once Hans’s heart had stopped, the Spirit of Words would have ordered Tgurneu to make the parasite within Shenira die—and they could also tell by how the petal on the Crest had disappeared. The spirits had determined that Hans was dead, and Tgurneu had probably already released his hostage, as promised.
Mora had indeed promised that she would kill a Brave of the Six Flowers—but not that she wouldn’t bring the Brave back to life.
The very moment Mora had met Rolonia, she’d thought this girl, with her rare talent, would perhaps be capable of even techniques to revive the dead. The most difficult part of this plan had been to kill Hans in such a way that he could still be revived afterward. Rolonia’s power was only to control blood. If his neck or any bones in his head had been broken, or if his organs had been badly damaged, it wouldn’t have been possible to revive him.
“Is there any way I can help, Rolonia?” Adlet understood now what she was doing. He sat down next to Hans.
“His breathing… I have to get him breathing again…”
“Leave it to me. Artificial respiration, right? I know some medical stuff.” Sitting down beside Hans, Adlet blew air into his mouth. Rolonia maintained regular circulation as she stopped the gash in his neck from bleeding.
“No way,” said Chamo. “He’s coming back to life?” It was no wonder she couldn’t believe it. Rolonia had to be the first Saint in history who had successfully brought the dead back to life. Even Torleau wasn’t capable of this.
“Guhhaaaa!” Hans gasped. Blood spewed from his mouth. He clutched his chest and coughed over and over. Adlet wiped the blood from around his lips while Rolonia rubbed his back. When the coughing stopped, Hans put his hands over his neck and wailed. “Meeeow! Meeeeeooooow! Hrmeoooow!” He was panicking. No surprise there—he had been dead until just a moment ago.
“Adlet, show me your crest,” said Mora.
He first checked it himself, then showed it to Mora. There were very clearly six petals on the flower.
So it was a success. Mora was relieved. She had walked a long tightrope of a battle. She couldn’t have killed Fremy or Chamo. Fremy was half fiend, so she would differ biologically from a normal human. A resurrection almost certainly would not work on her. Dying and then coming back would also place great strain on the body, and Chamo’s small frame probably wouldn’t have been able to withstand it. Mora had been forced to kill Adlet, Hans, or Goldof.
“You planned to do this all along, didn’t you?” Adlet said. “You needed to kill Hans for some reason, but at the same time, you couldn’t have him die. Isn’t that right?”
She nodded.
“What on earth happened to you?” he asked.
Mora informed them it would be a long story, so the whole group returned to the Bud of Eternity. Hans leaned on Adlet’s shoulder, while Goldof kept Mora restrained.
“This doesn’t make sense,” Chamo muttered as she trailed behind the group. Adlet felt the same way.
Once they were at the Bud of Eternity, they tended to Hans first. Adlet snapped his dislocated wrist back in and set his broken ribs, and Rolonia encouraged his circulation to prevent any aftereffects. At the boy’s instruction, Fremy treated Mora, though she seemed to have mixed feelings as she stitched her wounds and daubed medicine on her.
“Are you okay, Hans?” Adlet asked.
His expression bitter, Hans replied, “My whole body feels numb, and I can’t meowve right.”
Once Mora’s wounds had been treated, she knelt on the ground, hands together behind her back.
Adlet said, “So, talk.”
“Of course. There’s no need to hide a thing now.” Surrounded by the whole group, Mora dispassionately told them the truth—about her secret contract with Tgurneu, the reason she had trained Rolonia, and how it had come to be that she had to kill one of the Braves of the Six Flowers within the next two days—and finally, that she was the seventh.
Adlet quietly listened to Mora’s story, and then he pulled from a pouch at his waist the thing that he had discovered at the hill, looking at it intently. I see…so that
