Praying mantis, horrors, which wouldn't even let one die in peace.
There was only one thing Valentius was going to do to this cave. Only one thing which he had prepared himself to do, should that black-robed figure from the academy find him.
He took it out of his pocket.
The rune.
It had eaten away all of his savings, forcing him to slave away in the kitchens for just a meal the first week to pay the rest.
But now… now he just wanted out of here!
Out of this Cave of Horrors! Albert was out there! What if something went past him while he was too busy fighting for his life?
Albert was not himself! He wouldn't be able to defend himself!
When Valentius realized what he was doing, he began to shake.
Albert?
No, he wasn't going to torch this place for Albert. He was going to torch it because he was afraid for his own life. For a life, no one found value in but him.
He slung the backpack over his shoulder, even as the seal on the rune came off and the pitter-patter of more horrifying insects echoed up, down, and left and right!
Was it too late for him to run?
He still took a deep breath and rushed down the way he came! The sizzling of the rune told him that, while the cave was too wet for the rune to set fire to it as soon as the timer was over, it was still going to do so!
Because the shifty merchant had told him, as he had given him the ugly red rune, fire runes always found a way. Even if they need to dry the thing you wanted to blow up before they blew it up!
A mantis lunged at him!
Valentius didn't even think! He sent mana into his right fist, a fist he had learned to curl up the hard way, and punched his way through the thing's stomach!
He didn't care that some of the gore was now dripping down his chin! That his clothes would need washing!
The rune was sizzling, and the noise of the mantis' legs was becoming deafening!
Valentius saw it: the sky!
His hands reached out to it as he jumped—a praying mantis was reaching out behind him.
The explosion rocked his world.
Throwing him away from the cave and the flying rocks, which were turning everything that had not been killed in the fire into mincemeat.
The core roared!
A dying roar of something so dark that Valentius felt cold in his soul, even though his boots were burning!
The boy couldn't see. He couldn't feel anything. The only thing he could sense was the blood rushing to his ears.
And then…
"NO!" The voice was familiar. The heat that was robbing the young hero of his senses became bearable. "He can't die!"
Albert?
Was Albert trying to put out the fire?
"Darn it!" He almost sounded like that boy who had stayed behind in the academy.
The boy who had hopes and dreams.
Slowly, some color returned to Valentius' sight. He saw Albert, just in a sweatshirt and underwear, using his robe to put out the flames eating away at the only footwear Valentius had.
"Darn it!" Soon, both boys were cursing.
One rolled around, and the other hit his legs with the robe.
But cursing was a good thing. Valentius couldn't help but decide, and he finally gave up on the boots and threw them at the cave with a yell: "Here! You can have them! Take them to the Devil and offer them as a gift!"
Because if they had died, or become headless ruins surrounded by praying mantises as enormous as they, then they wouldn't be cursing.
They'd be dead.
Or twitching, a dark place in Valentius' mind reminded him.
The boy rolled over and began to heave. Albert continued to hit him with his dirty, torn robe.
A once-pristine robe.
Black and white, just like they had imagined the world to be.
0000
By the time the cave stopped giving away mana, both boys were coherent enough to realize that:
A: Albert still had his slave rune, meaning he would be in another Cave of Horrors.
And B: That Valentius being here meant that he was either an outlaw, which Albert found as logical, or an idiot, which, much to his dismay, Albert found as equally logical.
"Thank you," but Albert still owed his life and soul to this boy, so he started with what was right.
"Huh?" Valentius was blinking up at the blonde. The boy looked as if someone had melted all the fat off him.
Heck, even his once-soft blonde hair was cut so short that it was almost too dark to tell it had been blonde, once!
Valentius looked at Albert once more. Was that… a white cluster of hair?
Albert was just fifteen years old, darn it! And born on a December day, at that!
There shouldn't be any white in the boy's hair!
"I thank you for saving my life, Valenti… Valentius. " Even now, the boy attempted to call him by that false name.
Valentius sighed.
"I didn't come in here to save you," he had to admit. "I had no idea you were inside."
Albert nodded as he took his crooked staff and sighed.
"This thing won't be healing anyone," he threw it to the side, only for it to give out a spark.
"Hey!" The last thing Valentius wanted was for arson to be added to his crime of murdering a lord. Besides, he didn't want the neighboring farmers to lose their harvest and for the region's people to starve! "Be careful!"
"What are we going to do now?" Albert knew that Valentius didn't owe him anything. And yet, the boy had saved him.
"We?" Valentius felt like he had felt the first time Bartolomeo called him Valentine. So, as if a joke was playing at his expense, but he didn't know it.
"You saved me." Albert had been through hell. He wanted out. "Why do it, if you will leave me to rot?"
Valentius felt as his mana accepted the blood vow. He narrowed his eyes.
Darn it! Why were there no good deeds left unpunished?