[DanMachi/Percy Jackson] Prytaneum

Interlude: The Flame (6)

He'd been naïve. From the very beginning, he'd thought too much of himself. He'd thought that, no matter what happened, if it was only this much he'd be able to protect them. To keep Percy and Lili, the precious friends he'd made, safe somehow. If it was just the sixth floor, he'd be able to handle it.

Except he should have known better than to take anything for granted. Even if the attack of the plant monster had been something impossible to expect, he should have been on his guard, because as an adventurer it was his duty to remember the ruthless cruelty of the Dungeon. Even if he hadn't been with Percy, he was a magnet for danger, he'd heard the horror stories of his Familia, the 'gimmicks' the Dungeon used to ensnare it's pray.

Monster Parties were only the start, what the Dungeon did to prey who found themselves cornered beyond a certain floor. Deeper in, there were the Coliseums, rooms where the Dungeon would simply spawn monsters until a certain limit was reached. Both of those things, he thought he'd gotten an early taste of, following Percy's lead, which was all the more reason to expect the worse. The Dungeon wasn't one to play fair, after all, and it wasn't unheard of for it to 'cheat' against stronger opponents by spawning monsters from the ceiling and surrounding walls, not just send them after adventurers, but to weaken the structural integrity of an area. Though it was rare, the Dungeon wasn't above collapsing a ceiling above a party or the floor beneath them, if it meant making sure that none would survive.

Whenever they entered the Dungeon, adventurers risked their lives. Any sense of surety and security had only been built through the sacrifice of countless lives, like a road made from flesh and bone. In a thousand years, they'd managed to fully explore only fifty or sixty floors, such was the threat it posed—and who'd paid the price for that? Who had first learned that Ward Shadows were newbie killers, or that Killer Ants swarmed through pheromones, or that the tenth floor began the spawning of Large monsters? Who'd found out that past the twelfth, the Dungeon began to spawn Level 2 monsters or that the seventeenth was home to the Goliath, at least a Level 4?

Simple—the first people to make it back alive.

In the Dungeon, nothing could be relied upon or taken for granted. Orario had one of the largest graveyards in the entire world, mostly filled with empty graves, to show that. Countless thousands of their predecessors had died to give them what advantages they had and it was the responsibility of every adventurer to know and respect the prices that others had paid.

How...how had he forgotten that? Because he was a smith, not just an adventurer? But with all the honor and respect he'd worked to put into everything he'd made, how could he have forgotten this?

He was weak. He knew that. Stronger than Lili in some ways, perhaps, but even then he could only admire her strength in others—and he fell far, far behind Percy and Mrs. O'Leary. Even on something that should have been minor and routine, where he was responsible for protecting them and helping them recover, the moment something happened it became clear that he was only a burden for them. Mrs. O'Leary, the one they'd come here for the sake of, had nearly killed herself to save them and then they'd just found themselves on the lower floors, struggling to survive.

Percy had lead them, fighting countless monsters, through the dismal maze of the Middle Floors and he'd gotten another taste of what those early adventurers must have felt. In the Dungeon, the only true landmarks were the way up and the way down, with everything else seeming much the same—even someone who'd memorized the maps like Lili did was powerless to find her way upon appearing in a random part of an unknown floor. They'd had no choice but to wander helplessly, each turn filling them with dread for what waited for them behind the corner. Each room they turned to that wasn't the right way made their hearts sink.

The monsters on those Levels weren't labeled as Level 2s solely for their increase in strength, but of intelligence as well; starting from the thirteenth, even monsters that were dull-witted on previous levels could begin to organize and plan, striking at and making weak points. The Minotaurs planned their attacks carefully, aided by the Lygerfangs and other monsters from the seventeenth, pushing Percy to his limit, and he'd had to bear it alone because there'd been nothing he could do to help. And when they finally reached what they thought to be safety and entered the 'safe' floor on the eighteenth, the Dungeon just twisted the knife.

He was going to lose it, he'd thought the moment he'd seen the monster fall. Everything he'd found, he was going to lose. It hadn't seemed like much, before—being alone. Probably because he was used to it; a scion of a fallen family in Rakia, then a strange and foreign smith, then a Crozzo who wouldn't make magic swords and had no customers. Wherever he went, he was alone, with a few expectations that had their own things to worry about. Being acknowledged for his work, fighting alongside someone, laughing with them, being helped and protected by them; it hadn't seemed like something that important, when it was something that only others had. But now...

Don't take it away, he thought at first, and then felt a kind of furious resolve. I won't let you take it away.

"This..." He whispered to the flames he stoked. "This is all I can do..."

They weren't words of acceptance, really—at least not entirely. If anything, they were words of grief. Again and again, he'd seen them hurt and all he could do was stand and watch. He couldn't do anything to save them on his own, not with the strength he had, not even if he put his life on the line. So...okay. If this was enough for that, if this was what he had to do, if this would be enough to save them...!

Welf hated magic swords. With one in hand, anyone could have the power to do as they pleased, to strike down their enemies without any work or effort. Even someone as strong as Percy could fall to one, Zanis had proven that—and it wasn't a matter of right or wrong, or of deserving it, or of worth, just a simple matter of power. And that power, given so readily, had rotted his family and all of Rakia from the inside.

But more than that, he hated that they broke. By their very nature as magic swords, they'd shatter after a certain number of uses. It didn't matter what they were made of or how well they were made or how skilled their user—a magic sword would break. It was something to be built, used, and then cast aside, worthless once it's time had passed. It could never truly be counted upon, was never a weapon that would stay with its wielder until the end, fight beside them, be trusted, and go down in legend with them. From the very beginning, their end was in sight, their destiny sure, and he hated that more than anything else.

–It was pointless, futile sympathy. While corrupting the hearts of their wielders, they themselves were never truly valued; they were an object to be consumed, not something to be respected or relied upon. Their fate was to sleep and die, not to find anyone that would care for them. Maybe it was foolish to have sympathy for a sword, but as a smith...as a man who could make magic swords and who drew upon the power of the spirits to do so...he couldn't help it. No one would ever look upon or believe in a magic sword the way Percy believed in Riptide, no one would ever share that kind of history with one, no one would ever really know one that way.

As a smith, he envied Riptide's maker—not for her life, but for her legacy. If nothing else, she could be sure it had wound up in good hands and that it would remain. The only legacy of Crozzo's magic swords was sad, pitiful, lonely, and tragic. He'd known that since he was a child, even before his father struck him for refusing to make any, and recently, he'd come to know it better for seeing its opposite and what could have been.

It was pathetic then, wasn't it? And stupid and ironic and hypocritical, too. It was foolish of him and laughable and a sign of just how little all his words meant. All of his words, all of his sympathies, all of his so called respect—this was all it amounted to in the end.

But even if that was true...!

"I'm sorry," He said with each strike of his hammer. What should have been steel had already melted away, changing into something more like a red jewel, glowing from within. "I'm pitiful, I know! I threw you away, but now I'm coming to beg for power, swallowing all my words and convictions! But there's someone I need to help! So please—forgive me for what's to come!"

If he had any say in the matter, this would be his best work—the greatest thing he'd ever made. A magic sword, made with all his heart and soul, designed to draw out as much power as he could. He didn't have Blacksmith, couldn't truly push it to the limits, but with all the mortal skill he possessed, he'd made this blade.

And, perhaps within moments of its making, in an unknown place, with no one to truly see or appreciate it's passing, it was fall apart and scatter.

But if so...but if so...then he'd make sure it would do so beautifully, like a flame.