Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1978: Deep Trauma

Celia led them away from the Guild square through streets that narrowed as they climbed from the harbour.

Quinlan walked beside Seraphiel while she asked whether Edric slept through the night. Ahead of them, Celia kept turning to answer without slowing down, until Lucille gently caught her elbow before she backed into a basket outside a shop.

"We aren’t chasing you, sweetheart."

"S-sorry!"

"You don’t have to apologize for that either."

Celia gave her a bashful smile and faced forward.

The house stood halfway up a lane behind a baker’s courtyard. A neighbour opened the door at Celia’s knock, wiping her hands on a cloth.

"He’s by the window. Managed most of his soup."

Celia’s relief was immediate.

"Thank you. These kind adventurers accepted!"

The older woman looked past her at the gathering in the lane. Her eyes remained on Quinlan for a good few seconds. Finally, she smiled.

"Thank you."

"There’s nothing to thank us for," Quinlan replied. It was just work.

"I know. Yet I’m grateful nonetheless."

"Auntie stays with Father when I’m out," Celia explained to Seraphiel. "She’s agreed to look after him while we travel too."

"Of course I have. Come in."

Inside, the sitting room had been rearranged around a padded chair by the window. A cup rested on a low stool within its occupant’s reach, and a blanket covered his legs despite the afternoon warmth.

Celia set down her bow before approaching him.

"Father? It’s me. I’ve brought some people to meet you."

Edric was a broad man with greying hair and hands that still looked capable of lifting his daughter bodily onto his shoulders. Those hands lay open on the blanket.

His eyes followed her braid.

"You’re..."

"Celia."

"Mm."

She knelt beside his chair and waited while he studied her face. Quinlan watched the hope return to her expression, helplessly quick, before Edric looked toward the empty corner behind her.

"No. Can’t... can’t leave that."

"It’s alright, Father. We aren’t taking anything away."

He began rubbing his fingertips together.

Seraphiel stopped near the doorway and turned toward the group.

"Could most of us wait outside? I’d like to give him some room."

Ayame guided the others back toward the courtyard. Kaelira remained with Aurora and Lucille, while Quinlan stood beside the open door.

"He’s used to me being here," Celia said anxiously.

"Of course you’re staying. He’s your father." Seraphiel crouched where Edric could see her. "Hello. I’m Sera. Your daughter brought me to meet you. May I sit with you?"

He looked at the space above her shoulder.

"Too... high."

Seraphiel waited, then drew a chair closer and sat beside him.

She offered him the cup from the stool. He took it after Celia touched its handle, drank, and returned it to the same place.

When Sera asked whether his hand hurt, he stared at her without answering.

"He doesn’t like people holding his wrists," Celia said. "If you show him what you want first, he sometimes lets you."

Seraphiel thanked her and held out her own hand. She waited for him to place his palm against it before examining his fingers.

Quinlan stayed by the door. He remembered enough from Earth to know that a man could survive something his mind kept living through afterward, but remembering a few accounts hardly made him a physician.

He studied Edric’s restless hands. Whatever had happened underground had left this much behind even after the wounds healed. Before taking his family down there, he wanted to get as much information as possible on what they might be exposing themselves to.

Aurora sat at the table with the treatment notes spread before her.

"Celia, are these all the medicines he’s been given?"

"I kept the labels. They’re in the folded paper at the back."

"And these marks beside the names?"

"Whether he slept. Whether he ate. That one means he knew who I was without being told."

Aurora found only a few of that mark.

Lucille drew another chair beside Celia while Aurora unfolded the medicine labels and compared them with the entries.

"Could I borrow these tonight? You’ve recorded the changes in his medicine too, so I can check whether any of them helped."

"Yes! Of course."

Celia looked down, blinking hard. After so many evenings recording the same frightened words, she’d begun to wonder why she bothered. Now Aurora was spreading those pages out to study them, and she was terribly glad she hadn’t stopped.

"His wounds have closed well," Seraphiel said after Edric withdrew his hand. "Can he move around the house without falling?"

"Yes, if someone stays with him. Sometimes he stops because... because he thinks there’s something in front of him. But there isn’t."

Seraphiel looked at the clear floor between his chair and the kitchen.

"I wish I could promise you a healing spell would stop that. But I can’t."

Celia swallowed. "Yes... I know."

"May we see the things he came back with?" Kaelira asked. "There might be damage that tells us more about where he was."

Celia left her satchel with Lucille and hurried to a cupboard beneath the stairs.

Kaelira helped her bring out a wrapped bundle. Inside lay a torn coat, a damaged armguard, and a knife whose edge had been chipped repeatedly near the tip.

"The people who found him brought these. I cleaned the coat, but I didn’t know what to do with the armour."

Kaelira bent over the armguard, examining its crushed plates without trying to force them apart.

"Could you leave the armour with me? I might be able to get something out of this."

She took the bundle to the table while Celia returned to her father’s chair.

His gaze had found the bow beside the door.

"Mine..."

Celia followed his stare.

"It’s mine, Father. You bought it for me."

"Does he recognize it?" Lucille asked.

"He used to check it before I practised. I only shot at targets in the garden then. He said I pulled it wrong."

For the first time since entering the house, she smiled without forcing it.

"He said it very often."

Lucille fetched the bow and gave it to her. At Seraphiel’s invitation, Celia showed her father the grip before resting the unstrung weapon across his knees.

His thumb moved over a worn place in the wood.

"Here."

Celia leaned closer.

He tapped the grip, then reached for her hand. She let him move it, her eyes fixed on his face while he shifted her thumb.

"Too... tight. You’ll..."

His hand stopped.

Celia kept hers where he had placed it.

"I’ll pull the shot to the side," she whispered. "I remember."

Edric stared at the bow. Whatever he had been trying to say slipped away, and he began rubbing the wood with the same restless motion he had used on the blanket.

His daughter bent her head.

Lucille put an arm around her shoulders while Seraphiel lifted the bow away before Edric could grip it hard enough to hurt himself.

"Was that useful?" Celia asked, her voice painfully small.

"He was trying to teach you again," Sera said softly. "Did you see how he reached for your hand?"

"Yes..."

"He remembered how you should hold it. That gives me hope, Celia. There’s still something familiar we can reach."

Celia’s eyes widened. "R-really?! I thought the same but the healers said..."

"If they told you to give up because their spells didn’t work, I disagree." Seraphiel’s voice grew firm. "I can’t promise I’ll heal him either. But I’d like to find out why we can’t before deciding there’s nothing more to try."

She knew that helplessness far too well. Quinlan’s exhaustion after creating Synchra, Iris’s class refusing healing... Being able to mend flesh had left her horribly unprepared for some of the things her family endured.

It infuriated her to stand beside someone she loved and have nothing to offer. She had begun studying other ways to help when her magic failed, and wanted badly to put that learning to use here.

"I see..." Celia’s fingers curled into a fist. "I’m so glad you were the ones who took my quest..."