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Rex’s eyes slowly opened, squinting at the stray rays of morning light filtering through the inn’s closed curtains and onto his face. Yawning, he stretched his arms upwards to loosen them up- only to pause, his arms left hanging awkwardly above him as he frowned. That yawn had felt a little too strained, like the air passing through his throat was scraping lightly against it, rather than gliding smoothly through. Keeping his arms raised demanded more of an effort than it should, too, a dull ache running up their lengths, protesting in monotone for him to just let them slump heavily back onto the bed. He did so, the ache easing off slightly, only for it to return as he rose into an upright position.
“Huh, feeling kinda groggy this morning…” he muttered to himself, immediately detecting an unmistakably hoarse quality to his voice, along with an unpleasant stuffiness in his nose.
Rex let out a quiet groan. He knew where this was headed. A cold. Of all the times to get one, too! Missing out on a few day’s work because of Gramps’ insistence he get some rest was bad enough, but now he had an Elysium to get to, not to mention a Pyra to escort there. He didn’t have time to get sick.
Shaking his head, Rex then slapped his own face with both hands a couple of times to snap himself out of his doldrums.
“Ah, well. Nothin’ for it. Just gonna have to power through!” he told himself before hopping out of bed, ignoring the renewed complaints his muscles voiced in unison like a whiny choir as he moved.
The first person he saw upon leaving the boys’ room was Nia, leaning against the corridor wall with a baffled frown on her downcast face.
“Mornin’, Nia! Everyone ready to go?” Rex said, waving casually at her. She responded by whipping her head upwards and blasting him with an irritated glare that he barely fought off the urge to recoil from.
“Oi. You’re sick, aren’t you?”
“Uh…” Rex said, his cheerily waving arm slowly dropping back down to his side like a wilting flower. “Yeah, a little bit. Nothing that’ll slow me down, though.”
Sighing, Nia said “I bloody well knew it. This’d explain everything.”
“Hey, I didn’t ask to get sick! Explain what, anyway?”
Pushing herself off of the wall, Nia beckoned him forward.
“C’mon. Time to see the patient,” she said before turning and walking down the hallway.
“Uh, the patient? Nia, what’s going on?” Rex said, trailing after her. An uncertain dread seemed to grow in his chest with every step. A vague sense that something truly awful had happened.
They soon arrived in front of the door to the girls’ room. Nia jerked a thumb towards it.
“Right, in you go. Go face the music.”
“Into the girls’ room? You sure?”
“It was the girls’ room. Right now we’re calling it the clinic.”
Rex wanted to inquire further on this point- on basically every point Nia had raised so far, actually- but he could tell any questions would be redirected quite firmly to the desk of Just Go In The Damn Room Already.
“Okay, I guess,” he said before knocking gently against the wooden door a couple of times. “Hey, it’s Rex! I’m coming in, alright?”
When no response came, and when the only guidance Nia deigned to provide was an impatient stare, Rex shrugged and opened the door.
Beyond that door was a sight that chilled him to his core more thoroughly than even the most shiver-inducing cold could ever hope to. A bed, with a thick layer of blankets concealing an immobile lump. At its head, barely visible and barely conscious, was a dishevelled mass of red hair. A muffled, elongated groan of quiet misery emanated from the lump. A hushed prayer for release from its speaker’s torment, yet no less fervent for its quietness.
Rex’s eyes widened as the pieces began to click together. Instinct compelled him to rush forth, letting out a panicked cry.
“Pyra?!”
Once he reached her side and crouched down to her level, Pyra turned her head to look up at him. Her eyes, dull and unfocused, stared up at him with a kind of vague pleading.
“Rex…?” she said. Her voice was hoarse and weak, her already soft tone reduced to a faint whisper.
“Pyra… are you okay?” Rex asked, rather pointlessly. Nobody who looked at you with that kind of desperate, almost pathetic plea for salvation in their eyes was doing okay. Still, Pyra mustered her meagre strength to answer him.
“I… I feel really bad…”
An equally pointless answer. One look at her would convince anyone that she was perhaps the most poorly princess to have ever suffered in all of Alrest. Still, when Pyra, normally so eager to gloss over all that troubled her, delivered such a bluntly bleak assessment of her own condition, Rex’s heart couldn’t help but sink as though it were burying itself into the depths of the Cloud Sea. He could only imagine how much worse she was actually feeling.
“I don’t get it…” he muttered to himself, “I thought Blades never got sick. How did this even happen…?”
“You wanna know why? Go look in the mirror, genius,” Nia then said, walking up to the bed with her arms folded.
“Huh? Me?” Rex frowned, trying to puzzle it all out. Then, a terrible realization. The final piece of a macabre jigsaw, slotted into place. “Wait, you don’t mean-“
“Yup. Looks like you two aren’t just sharing injuries. Your half of her core’s only gone and sent your bloody cold to her as well.”
“I… gave her my cold…?” Rex said in horror, looking over at Pyra, then down at his trembling hands- the hands of a Plaguebringer. He didn’t know whether to drop to his knees and apologize profusely to Pyra for his evil deeds, or to deny it all vehemently.
For now, he chose the latter.
“B-but that doesn’t make any sense! I mean, I don’t feel all that bad! Sure, I’m a little under the weather, but I’m hardly bedridden!”
“Ah, I believe there is a simple enough explanation for that, Master Rex,” said a new voice, deep and calm. Dromarch entered the room, squeezing his way through the slightly-too-narrow doorframe. “You see, Lady Pyra holds the dubious honour of being, perhaps, the first Blade in history to contract a human illness. At the very least, I’ve no doubt this is her first ever experience of being in ill health. For humans such as yourself, repetition breeds resilience, and as such, your cold has done little to slow you down. In Lady Pyra’s case, however…”
“She’s pretty much got the pain tolerance of a baby,” Nia concluded.
“I… would have phrased it in a more charitable manner, my Lady, but… yes.”
“So… what, this is like a whole new kind of pain for her, and she has no idea how to deal with it?” Rex asked.
“Essentially, yes.”
Crestfallen, Rex looked back at Pyra, who had chosen to opt out of the conversation to focus on emitting a series of groans and whines of discomfort instead.
“I’m sorry, Pyra. I… screwed up real bad, huh…? I never even considered how hard this’d be on you…”
She tilted her head a little to the left, then a little to the right. This was about as close to shaking her head as she could muster. In what barely qualified as a gesture, though, Rex still saw a glimmer of absolution. The forgiveness Pyra so freely gave out, even if her grace were entirely unearned. Unyieldingly kind, even in her agony- just what he’d expect from Pyra, really.
“Now, now,” Dromarch said, as if to verbalize her sentiment. “A Blade contracting a human illness is an unprecedented incident. You can hardly be blamed for-“
“Forgive me, Dromarch, but I’m afraid I have to disagree,” interjected Brighid, stepping into the room. The rest of their party followed soon after, crowding most of the room.
“Lady Brighid?”
“As her Driver, Rex has a certain responsibility for her well-being. Unique as their situation is, he should be well aware that any harm that comes to him will come to Pyra too. He should have accounted for sickness, too.”
“Poppi feel same way. When Poppi get right down to it, this all Rex’s fault for staying up late in cold Tantal air. That sort of reckless stunt Poppi expect of Masterpon, not more sensible friend Rex.”
“Meh… Tora never get sick in life, other than incurable maid fever…”
“That exactly the kind of comment that show Masterpon have different kind of sickness.”
“Sorry, Rex, I’m with them,” said Pandoria, speaking over a series of disgruntled mehs. “If my Prince made me catch some nasty human illness because he was screwing around in the snow, I’d never forgive him.”
“Hah! Hard luck, chum! Maybe it was all a bit of fun for you, but as the Crown Prince, that snowfort we built last night was actually a serious study of defensive structures for me. No screwing around here!”
“Okay, I won’t forgive you if you give me some nasty human illness because you were ‘studying defensive structures,’ either.”
“Do you want the nation to fall, Pandy!?”
“To who?!”
As he endured the barrage upon his character, and now also a few stray shots aimed at Zeke’s, Rex still quietly noted that it was Zeke’s idea to stay up building that fort in the first place. Perhaps going along with Zeke’s whimsy, too, was a sign of his poor judgement. A test of his ability to recognize the consequences of his actions ahead of time.
“This is all a tad harsh, is it not? Rex, know that I stand with Dromarch in defending your-“
“I would advise you to read the room, Lady Mòrag. He has to accept responsibility for failing his Blade like this.”
Coughing lightly, Mòrag pulled her hat’s visor a little further down over her eyes.
“Ah. Well. You make a good point, Brighid. My apologies, Rex,” she said, those last three words delivered in a sheepish mumble.
Solemnly, Rex shook his head. His shoulders were slumped, buckling beneath the weight of his sins. But then, they rose, as did the determination to face those sins head on.
“It’s okay, Morag. They’re right. A Driver’s supposed to protect their Blade, no matter what. Even against germs. Leave her to me, guys. I got Pyra into this mess, so… it’s my responsibility to look after her.”
At these words, delivered with utter sincerity and unshakeable conviction as he looked down at Pyra, the fury of the crowd seemed to abate.
“Wow, I was just saying all that to mess with him, but I think we kinda awakened something in him,” came the lone comment, from Pandoria.
The rest, in deference to Rex’s newfound resolve, gave him a selection of respectful nods, or in Zeke’s case a thumbs-up accompanied by an approving grin, and began to file out of the room. Nia, the last to leave, turned to face him again.
“Don’t overdo it, you hear? You make yourself any sicker and you might actually kill her.”
“I won’t,” Rex replied firmly. “I’m not letting something like this happen again.”
“Oh, enough with the theatrics already. Who are you, Shellhead?”
“I kinda wish I was. He didn’t catch anything.”
“No justice, huh? Other than his stupid eye, I guess. Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Nia said before closing the door, leaving Rex alone with his patient.
Sighing, he pulled a chair away from a nearby desk and placed it next to Pyra’s bed, then sat down heavily.
“I really am sorry, Pyra. If I’d known this was gonna happen, I would’ve been more careful.”
Pyra’s eyes drifted open once more. Even in the sickness-riddled haze that plagued them, Rex could see not a hint of resentment within them. Only compassion, smothered beneath pain.
“It’s okay, Rex. Honestly. I’m…” she paused, coughing weakly. “I’m the one who gave you my core, and I… never thought anything like this was possible, either. So, if anything…”
“C’mon, don’t blame yourself. If you think I’ve not done anything wrong, then, well, you’ve not done anything wrong, either.”
“You haven’t,” Pyra said in as firm a voice as she could manage. “Everyone’s being… really unfair to you. You don’t have to do anything for me.”
“But I-“ Rex stopped himself. Pyra’s eyes had narrowed just a little as his latest round of self-blame began, and for as much as he still felt that blame was rightly placed… he relented. “Alright then, how’s this? I’m not gonna look after you because I messed up or anything. I’ll do it because we’re partners, and partners’ve gotta look out for each other. Sound good?”
Pyra’s face reddened, though whether from feeling feverish or flustered, Rex couldn’t say.
“Are you sure? You’re sick, too, you know. You don’t have to do anything that will make you feel worse…”
“Maybe I don’t have to, but I want to. It wouldn’t sit right with me if I just left you here feeling miserable.”
Despite all her protests, a faint smile still snuck onto her lips.
“Okay. Go ahead. But Nia’s right- don’t push yourself too hard.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t,” Rex said with a reassuring smile of his own. “Hang on, let me just check how you’re doing.” Leaning forward, Rex gingerly brushed his hand against Pyra’s forehead- only to swiftly yank it back with a sharp exhale. “Geez, you’re burning up! We gotta-“
He paused, considering this. Pyra’s skin had felt practically molten, and the beads of sweat rolling down her face certainly implied she had a fever. This was, however, Pyra. Her body exuded far more heat than most people’s even when she was healthy. Placing a bag of ice on her head probably wouldn’t yield much beyond a melting puddle soaking her pillow.
“I… don’t think you can do much about that, Rex,” Pyra then said, confirming his thoughts. “To be honest, if I have a fever, I haven’t noticed it much. It’s, um… everything else that’s a problem.”
“Right, right. Makes sense,” said Rex, cupping a hand around his chin as he thought. Well, that was one easy avenue to helping her out closed off. But there had to be something. Soon enough, an idea came to mind. “Well, let’s make you a little comfier, at least.”
He reached out towards Pyra’s pillow, reduced to a rather sad-looking flattened mass after a night of restless sleep, and squeezed it at both ends, gently fluffing it back up. A simple, yet delicate operation, the critical element being to bring some softness back to the pillow without jostling Pyra’s aching head. Soon, enough, though, the task was completed with minimal disturbance to Pyra.
“There! That any better?” Rex asked.
Pyra’s head inclined forward slightly in as best a nod as she was able to give.
“A little. Thank you.”
Rex then gave himself a nod in admiration of a job well done. Only one job, though. There had to be plenty more he could do, surely. A quick scan of Pyra’s bed revealed her blankets were a little askew, leaving one of her shoulders exposed to the open air. His eyes lit up, and he lifted the wayward corners up, safely cocooning her once more.
There. That was another little bit of help, albeit a rather underwhelming one. Rex wandered over to a nearby window. Already open, a pleasantly cool breeze leisurely wafting through. Unusually pleasant for a land of bitter cold like Tantal, in fact. If he’d waited just one extra day to have a Boy’s Day Of Fun In The Snow with Zeke, maybe none of this would’ve happened. Still, it was too late to wallow in regret over his follies. The window’s open curtains caught his eye, and he returned to the task at hand.
“Hey, Pyra, do you want these open or closed?”
She made a noise somewhere between a hum and a croak, like a ponderous brog.
“I wouldn’t mind if they were closed. The light is hurting my eyes a little.”
“Closed, got it,” Rex said, dragging the curtains across and blocking out the morning sun, leaving the room in comfortable, eye-friendly darkness.
With that done, though, he found himself at a loss. Eager to help as he was, so much so that any objections his own sickly body had to make about all this moving around business had long faded into the background, he had to admit that all of this was… fairly small stuff. He knew he was grasping at a bunch of flimsy straws with the desperation of a hungry gogol reaching for an overripe banana here. What he needed was something big. Something that’d really get Pyra sprinting down the road to recovery.
Then, inspiration and nostalgia struck him in equal measure. Clapping his hands together, Rex announced his plan.
“Hey, I know! Whenever I got sick as a kid, Auntie Corrine’d always make me some soup, and it’d always make me feel a ton better! How about I go make you some?”
At this, Pyra’s dull eyes seemed to shine with just a hint of eagerness, and her smile became that little bit broader.
“Yes, please! If you think you’ll be okay making it, I’d love to try it.”
Rex laughed sheepishly, scratching the back of his head.
“Well, I remember the gist of the recipe, at least. And I used to cook plenty for myself back when I was living on Gramps, so we’re all good there.”
“If you’re sure you’ll be alright, then…” Pyra said, her usual instinctual worry dueling with her obvious enthusiasm at the prospect.
The fact that the menu at Azurda’s Eatery was more or less entirely hunks of krabble meat, roasted on a brazier until Rex was pretty sure it wouldn’t give him a disease, was one he tactfully omitted. After all, he made a mean roasted hunk of meat, if he did say so himself. How much harder could dumping ingredients into a broth be, really?
“I’ll be fine. Back soon, okay?”
Rex had mostly said that as a bit of reassuring bravado to ease Pyra’s natural tendency to worry, but, happily, reality deigned to allign with his claims. Corrine’s recipe had a certain sledgehammer-like quality to it- blunt and unsophisticated in its approach, but undeniably powerful. As such, preparing it turned out to be quite easy, even accounting for Rex’s amateur cooking skills and the slight fugue his illness forced him to operate under.
It wasn’t long before he returned in triumph to Pyra’s side, a wooden tray with two large bowls of soup on it in his hands.
“Grub’s here!” he said to announce his presence.
Stirring from a nap, Pyra’s eyes fluttered back open.
“Already?” she said. “Are you okay, Rex? You didn’t have too much trouble, did you?”
“Nah, it was easy as pie.”
“It’s soup, though,” Pyra said with a puzzled frown.
“Uh… yeah, it is,” Rex said slowly, to give himself ample time to hold back a laugh between each word. Pyra was nowhere near feeling her best, after all. He had to be nice. Then again, he suspected a healthy Pyra might’ve said the same thing anyway.
Placing the tray on the desk, Rex turned his attention back to Pyra and then reached a hand out towards her.
“Here, I’ll help you up.”
“Oh, no, it’s okay, I-“
“Pyra, you look like you can hardly move. C’mon, let me help.”
“I’m sure if I try, I can manage…” Pyra said before vaguely shuffling around underneath her blankets, her shoulders rising briefly- only for them to flop back down as she let out a defeated groan.
Rex could feel an unpleasant twinge in his own shoulders, Pyra’s core only too eager to broadcast her discomfort straight to him.
“Offer still stands, y’know,” he said, lightly patting one of her aching shoulders.
Sighing, Pyra shrank into her blanket as though she were considering burrowing into it forever like a beast going into hibernation. Then she reconsidered this approach and gave Rex a watery-eyed look of abject, helpless pleading.
“I… think I need the help,” she admitted.
Of course, Rex had already been all too eager to help. However, he imagined that if he had been so coldhearted as to consider abandoning Pyra to her fate, that look alone would have melted straight through his resolve as if she had flung one of her own blasts of fire his way. Strong as his drive to protect her was, it wasn’t often that Pyra, the mighty Aegis brimming with a power that he had seen reduce solid steel to a molten goop, looked as though she needed protecting. Right now, though, just looking at her filled him with an urge to hold her close, as if he could shield her from any incoming germs. Which he could not, as this whole situation had proven.
For now, he settled for beaming at her and gently clasping his hands around her shoulders and, when Pyra attempted to push herself upward, pulling her in tandem in a slow, inch-by-inch climb. Each time Pyra stopped to gather her strength, Rex felt the urge to hug her come rushing back, if only as a show of his remorse for putting her in this state to begin with. Still, he resisted, and in time Pyra was upright, the tray and her bowl of soup now balanced across her lap.
“There!” said Rex, stepping away from her and taking a seat by her side. “Go ahead, eat up before the soup gets cold.”
Pyra obliged, lowering her spoon into the bowl with a sluggish, leaden motion. The first sip passed her lips- and immediately her face contorted into a confused grimace as she swallowed it uneasily.
“It, um… it has a very strong flavour. Quite a few flavours, actually,” she stated carefully, idly prodding at a large lump of Energy Aubergine floating lazily through the broth.
Rex took his own sip, the process considerably smoother than Pyra’s experience, even if he felt himself flinching a little, and laughed apologetically.
“Sorry, guess I should’ve warned you. Auntie Corrine only ever made this when somebody was sick, and she wasn’t messing around with it. She kinda just threw whatever she thought would ease the symptoms in there. All in on the nutrition, not the taste, you know?”
Fishing the chunk of Energy Aubergine out of its swampy home, Pyra ate it alongside her second sip. It produced roughly the same effect as the first.
“That would explain a lot…” she muttered to herself, only for her eyes to widen. “Oh, I’m sorry! I shouldn’t be criticising her cooking. Or yours, when you went to all this trouble for me…”
“Nah, everyone in Fonsett knows this stuff’s like getting punched in the mouth. You get used to it after a while, though. And it really does work!”
After enduring a few more spoonfuls of what Rex suspected she would sooner call a potion or a concoction than a soup, Pyra hummed to herself.
“I have to admit, it’s helping my throat a little.” She paused, inhaling a breath through her nose. “And I’m not as congested as I was earlier. Do humans really have to deal with all this whenever they catch a cold? It feels awful.”
“We don’t usually get it as bad as you’ve gotten it. Not unless it’s really serious. But yeah, most people’re gonna deal with this a few times a year.”
“Being a human sounds harder than I thought it would be… Especially if they have to eat things like this to feel better. I really should talk to Corrine about the taste…” Regret swooped across her features the moment the words left her lips. “Ah! I’m sorry! I did it again! I must sound so ungrateful… I really do appreciate it, I just, um…”
Rex chuckled.
“Don’t worry about it. We’ve told her over and over, but she just won’t budge. Always gives us an earful about our health mattering more than our taste buds and stuff. Then again… it seemed like she liked you, didn’t she?”
“I… suppose we got along fairly well, yes.”
“Maybe she’ll listen to you, then. Especially if she knows how good a cook you are. What’s she gonna do, ignore the expert?”
Pyra’s face flushed, and she looked down at her bowl. Its dubious contents did not seem to be much of an improvement on meeting Rex’s earnest smile, judging by her equally dubious expression.
“Well, I wouldn’t call myself an expert. But… maybe I could give her a few pointers.”
“You’ve got a better shot at convincing her than most people,” Rex said with a laugh. “So, taste aside… you said you’re feeling better?”
“Oh, much better! That recipe really does work. It doesn’t even hurt that much to be sitting up like this anymore.”
Leaning forward eagerly in his chair, Rex gave her a wide grin.
“Really? Great! Auntie Corrine’s soup’s never let me down before, so I figured it’d help, but… you never know, right? Could’ve been different for Blades.” His expression softened a little. “Glad you’re on the mend, Pyra. And… I’m glad I could help, even just a little bit.”
“Don’t say that,” Pyra replied, shaking her head. “You’ve done more than ‘a little.’ You’ve done everything you can to help me, even though you didn’t- and shouldn’t- have to. You’re… a very kind person, Rex.”
Those last few words, paired with a gentle smile and an affectionate shimmer in her eyes, was almost enough for Rex’s medical condition to upgrade from a mere cold to a heart attack, his chest tightening painfully like she was squeezing his heart with her own hands. Consequently, it was Rex’s turn for his face to turn bright red and his gaze to wander far, far away.
“H-hey, don’t mention it. Just doing what anyone’d do. Like I said, we’re partners, right? I couldn’t just leave you hanging like that.”
“Partners…” Pyra echoed quietly to herself before letting out a light giggle, raising a hand to cover her smile. “Well, you’re a very good partner, Rex. The best I could ask for.”
Sensing that he really might die if this kept up, Rex coughed loudly, scrambling for a means of redirecting the conversation, as though he were hurriedly carving out a new fork in the road before they went down a truly dangerous path.
“So, uh! How’s Mythra doing, anyway? She’d have caught this too, right?”
Pyra folded her arms, her face taking on a distinctly sulky air. A sensitive topic, evidently.
“No, she’s fine. The moment I woke up feeling sick, she said she wasn’t going to come out until it stopped. She said she thinks I’ve ‘got it covered.’” Pyra looked at Rex with the put-upon misery of a cat gazing through a window after being left out in the pouring rain. “Isn’t that so unfair of her?”
“Wow, that’s pretty harsh. She won’t even, I dunno, take turns with you?”
“No! I kept asking, and she won’t do it!”
“That’s super unfair, then, yeah. I mean, if I could take your cold and give you a break for a bit, I’d-“
A flash of blinding light interrupted him, quickly fading away to reveal an indignant Mythra sitting in Pyra’s place.
“Hey, cut me some slack! Who in their right mind would see all that and go ‘sure, sign me up?’ You’d have to an idiot to deliberately walk into this-“ Mythra’s defence of her character was cut short by a sudden coughing fit as she gripped her sides. When it eventually subsided, she stared at Rex in horror. “What the hell? Is this seriously what you guys have been putting up with?! This is the worst! Hey, Pyra, switch back!”
Silence descended upon the room. Absolutely no Pyras descended upon the room.
“Did she say anything?” Rex asked cautiously.
“Just that she’s not gonna swap with me for half an hour. Can you believe her? There’s no way I can deal with this!”
Sighing, Rex rose to his feet.
“I’ll go get some more soup.”