Chapter 517: Raging Lion
Calming Eastiel down required a considerable effort.
Oathran grabbed him and launched them both into the sky. The golden lion thrashed in his grip, clawing at the air, his roars echoing across the sky above the medical camp below.
But Eastiel was too wild, too consumed by the rampage, and he twisted free, plummeting toward the earth. Arkai, still in his massive black werewolf form, caught him before he hit the ground.
The impact drove them both into the mud, and Arkai spun, using his weight and momentum to pin the lion beneath him.
Eastiel thrashed again, his claws raking furrows in the blood-soaked earth, his jaws snapping at anything within reach.
And before long, Oathran descended and added his own weight to the effort, the two of them holding their brother down by sheer force.
"Eastiel!"
Cecilia chased after them, a tranquilizer gun in her hand. She raised it, hesitated, then lowered it again.
Instead, she reached into her inventory and pulled out something. The Berserker’s Muzzle.
[Berserker’s Muzzle]
[Rank 1]
[40% effectiveness at preventing and stopping insanity and rampage for any berserker-type user, without decreasing the power boost.]
It was an unassuming thing at first glance, a construct of dark leather and silver buckles that seemed too small to fit a full-grown lion’s massive head.
But when she approached Eastiel’s thrashing form and pressed it against his face, the artifact responded. It expanded, shifting and reshaping, the leather stretching and the buckles realigning until it fitted over his giant snout like a custom-made cage.
Both Oathran and Arkai saw the muzzle and were surprised. Even through the strain and chaos of holding down a rampaging lion, they recognized the quality of the artifact. Rare, surely. Mythical even.
Cecilia glanced at Arkai as she worked. She wondered if he would remember. Perhaps the sight of the muzzle would trigger something in his rewritten memories.
Especially when she had tried to put this same artifact on him. He had been the one who needed it then, lost to a rampage of his own, and he had swatted it away before she could fasten it.
He didn’t seem to remember, though. She could see it in his eyes. Perhaps also because at the time when she tried, he wasn’t of sound mind too.
Click.
The muzzle fastened into place.
Slowly, the growling and heavy breathing of the beast began to slow. His eyes, still burning with fury, didn’t stop burning. But the madness in them receded, just enough.
Strangely, his power didn’t dissipate. The strength that had torn Arzhen apart still thrummed through his massive frame. Only the irrational rage had been dampened, the blind fury replaced by something that could be reasoned with.
As expected of a five-star artifact.
"Get off me. I need to kill him—GRRRRRRR—" Eastiel guttural snarl was distorted by the muzzle and the lingering rage.
"He’s dead." Arkai’s wolf form pressed down harder, tight with exertion and exasperation. "After what you did to him, he’s fucking dead, brother. Let it go now."
"YOU DON’T EVEN REMEMBER WHAT HE DID TO HER!" Eastiel roared, his fury redoubling, his body bucking against the weight of his brothers.
"What do you mean?! The three of us know what he did, alright?!" Arkai snapped back, his wolf ears flattening. "He cheated on her, took away her invention, threatened to hide it from the world—but you shouldn’t have killed him—"
"This is why you don’t REMEMBER!" Eastiel spat the words like venom.
So he did regain his memory of the real world.
Between the four of them now, only Arkai still didn’t remember. He wouldn’t remember how Arzhen had ripped her heart out of her chest or the abuse, the humiliation, the way Arzhen had marked her clothes and belongings with his semen just to tell people that she was his property.
Arkai only knew the version of this world’s Arzhen.
"Eastiel, he’s already dead. It’s enough," Oathran said from above him.
"AND YOU!" Eastiel’s burning eyes snapped to Oathran, and his voice dropped, low, hissing, more terrible than his roars had been. "You fucking left, Your Majesty."
Oathran’s eyes faltered. The title, usually spoken with respect or teasing affection, was now a blade. "Eastiel!"
"Now that I remember everything, you think I don’t know the reason you fucking left?!" Eastiel thrashed with all his might, his anger and disappointment clouding his eyes once more.
The muzzle kept the madness at bay, but it couldn’t suppress the deep fury of a man who had just recovered years of missing memories.
"Calm down and I will tell you the truth. I apologize, alright?" Oathran grasped him tighter, his claws dimpling the golden fur. "I was wrong, dear brother, calm down. Let’s speak. I will explain everything."
"What are you two talking about...?" Arkai’s wolf form twisted, trying to look at both of them, his pitch black eyes wide with confusion. He was the only one whose memories were still locked behind the scenario’s narrative, after all.
"GET OFF ME—"
"It seems the Muzzle is still not effective enough to calm you down." Cecilia’s voice cut through the chaos.
Eastiel turned his massive head and saw her standing a few feet away, the tranquilizer gun raised once more. Her expression was calm, yet also regretful. "Baby, I’ll put you to sleep, alright?"
Eastiel looked at Cecilia, and his eyes blazed with a fresh surge of anger. He was silent for a long moment, his heavy breaths the only sound.
Then, in a voice that was quieter but somehow more dangerous than his roars, he asked, "Why did you reach back to him?"
Cecilia widened her eyes.
Huh.
"Did it look like that to you?"
She asked, genuinely taken aback.
"What?" Eastiel’s lion face registered confusion, his burning eyes flickering.
"I was..." Cecilia raised her hand and made a grasping motion in the air, the same motion she had made when she closed her telekinesis around Arzhen’s heart. "I was suffocating his heartbeat with my power..."
Eastiel went silent again.
The tension in his massive body, which had been coiled like a spring, began to loosen. It seemed this time his mind had calmed itself down after hearing what she said.
"You were about to kill him too?" He asked quietly.
"What did you think I was doing?" Cecilia frowned, clearly offended now.
But she knelt down in the mud and sighed. She leaned forward and pressed her body against his massive, blood-matted face, her arms wrapping as far around his head as they could reach.
"Even if he suddenly transformed into an angel in my heart, I will never take him back. And I’ll do it just because you hate him."
She pulled back just enough to look into his eyes, her own gaze cold. "Will he ever turn into an angel in my heart? I’ll sooner burn the world with my own two hands before it happens."
It was something Cecilia Araceli would never do. She had dedicated her life to saving people, she would never burn it down.
She would unmake the world before she let Arzhen back into her heart, because Eastiel hated him, and Eastiel’s hatred mattered more to her than any lingering trace of the love she had once felt.
Eastiel looked at her, and slowly calmed down.
"In the real world too... you will never take him back, promise?"