Yukinari let out a breath and sat in one of the chairs. Dasa seated herself across from him. She watched his face for a moment, then said, “Yuki.” She sounded somehow as if she had made up her mind about something. “Earlier... The erdgod’s—”
“I know.” He interrupted her with a frown. “Fiona told me there was probably an erdgod here, but I didn’t expect to run into a ritual the minute we showed up.”
Dasa was probably disturbed that Yukinari had seen the procession earlier and hadn’t done anything about it. After all, when he had stumbled across Friedland’s sacrifice—i.e., Berta—he had put a stop to it through sheer physical force. He felt more than a little resentment toward the townspeople and priests who were angry that he had interfered with their sacrifice.
Yukinari hated the entire system of living sacrifices. Granted, what happened with Berta had come about almost by accident, but Dasa probably believed that if Yukinari were to encounter another sacrifice, he would similarly fight to protect the victims. And she may have been concerned that he would interrupt the ceremony in Rostruch when they encountered it.
But of course, if he simply barged in and upset the ceremony, the same thing could happen in Rostruch as had in Friedland. Perhaps he could kill the erdgod and stop the sacrifices, but ultimately that would only leave Rostruch in the same place as Friedland. Yukinari had come here in hopes of improving the situation in his village, and murdering another god would not advance that agenda.
Still... Yukinari hadn’t done anything at all about the procession they saw leaving the gate. He had simply watched. And why was this situation, in Rostruch, different from that in Friedland? All this was probably on Dasa’s mind.
“Look, Dasa... Have you ever heard of Mt. Obasute?”
“Mount... what?”
“Uh, never mind. There’s no way you could know it.” Yukinari offered an ambivalent smile and shook his head. “I guess hospitals have replaced that mountain, anyway.”
Dasa gave him a blank look.
“It’s something from my previous world. Mt. Obasute—the name actually means ‘abandoning the elderly.’ Supposedly, when people got old and weak, they would be left on that mountain. Families were so poor they could barely afford to feed themselves, let alone someone who couldn’t contribute anything. Try to support your elderly family member, and you’d just end up dying yourself.”
“Yuki, did... Did you go... to abandon someone... too?” She blinked, perhaps from surprise.
“Huh? Oh, no, no, I’m just saying it was supposedly an old custom. By the time I was born, that was decades or even centuries in the past.”
Yes: in Yukinari’s mind, that story belonged to the past. But in this world—in Rostruch—it seemed to be alive and well, and perfectly accepted. The young man who had explained the procession to Yukinari and Dasa had seemed entirely calm. Perhaps the people of this town were simply thinning the ranks of their elderly under the guise of sacrificing them to the erdgod. So Yukinari thought at first, anyway.
“But then again, this town looks pretty wealthy. Or at least, people seem to have more than they need. It doesn’t seem like straits are dire enough to demand abandoning the elderly.”
“You might be... right.”
“There was one boy on that shrine float, too. And everyone was asleep. So I’m wondering if maybe it’s a form of euthanasia.”
“Euth...anasia?”
“Not that I’m sure being sacrificed to an erdgod is an easy way to go,” Yukinari said, slouching back in his chair. “In my previous world, there were a lot of people who couldn’t even breathe on their own, but machines would breathe for them, keep them alive. There was no way they were going to get better, it was just about extending their physical lives. Nobody benefited from it. So some people... they just stopped the machines. And other people argued about whether it was right to do it.”
“If you stop those machines...”
“The people die, of course. You’re essentially killing them,” Yukinari said bluntly. “But it’s not like you’re cutting them down with a sword or strangling them or something. You’re just letting nature take its course with someone who no longer really has the power to live...”
Dasa blinked repeatedly, not saying a word.
“Other people, they might be sick. They’re hurting, they’re in a lot of pain. But there’s no cure. They’re not going to get better, either. Some people think we should kill people like that, rather than drawing out their suffering. You let them die peacefully instead. That’s euthanasia.”
“And you think that... procession... is... euthanasia?”
“I think it’s possible. And once I had that thought, I couldn’t let it go.” Then he gave a long sigh, pressing his palms against his eyes. People too old, too sick, to have any hope of recovery. Letting them go gently might be the compassionate thing to do, but it put an immense emotional burden on the people who actually had to do it. So instead they let the erdgod handle it, in the form of sacrifices. And in consuming the sacrifices, the erdgod warded off the dissipation of its own sense of self. Essentially, both sides benefited.
Could it really be right, then, for Yukinari to put a stop to that ritual? Friedland, Rostruch, and probably many other towns had forged their connections with their erdgods over hundreds of years. The systems involved were firmly in place. Was it right to destroy such things? Or not?
“...Yuki...” Dasa rose from her seat and went over to him. She took one of the hands he had pressed to his own eyes and put it against her cheek. “Whether you’re right... or... wrong, I’m on your side.”
“Dasa...”
“The logic doesn’t... matter.”
Yukinari didn’t speak.
“If you don’t like... it, destroy it. The sacrifices... The erdgod. I’ll always be on your... side.”
She closed her eyes, as if she were trying to study the feeling of his hand. For a moment, he soaked in the warmth of her cheek, but then—
“I apologize for the wait, Master Yukinari,” a voice said from the other side of the partition. Dasa quickly let go of Yukinari’s hand, and he pulled away from her. The servant poked his head around the blind. “The mayor will see you now. If you’ll follow me?”
A shout went up as Yukinari and Dasa were walking after him.
“You?!”
Yukinari turned to see what the commotion was, and found himself face to face with two familiar-looking knights and two priests in the white garments of Friedland’s clergy. And one of them was...
“Luman?”
The priest from the orphanage.
“Why are you here?!” the priest demanded. The two knights, presumably two of the Harris Church missionaries who had come to Friedland, put their hands on the swords at their hips. With their statue annihilated, they lived in Friedland like defanged animals, but apparently here in Rostruch they had no qualms about showing open hostility toward Yukinari.
“Him! That’s him!” exclaimed the priest next to Luman, pointing at Yukinari. “He is the cursed demon, the Godslayer!”
Yukinari squinted and, without a word, reached back for Durandall. He’d slain a god all right, that was true enough. The question was who that priest was shouting to. Simply telling the people of Rostruch about Yukinari would do no harm to him, and therefore be of no benefit to the priests. If they had come all the way here, it meant they thought something in Rostruch would allow them to oppose him. But what, or how?
“This boy...” Someone appeared behind Luman. “...is the Godslayer you speak of?”
“A girl...?” Dasa whispered.
So it was. It was a girl, or appeared to be. A female child so young that Dasa, just a young woman herself, was justified in using the term “girl.”
She looked normal at first glance. But her hair was green, and she had horns like a stag—no, like the gnarled branches of a tree. It was always possible they were simply a headpiece, or a decoration, but...
She sure doesn’t seem like a r
egular child to me, Yukinari thought.
She exuded something, something that made her seem utterly other. To Yukinari, she appeared to be a locus of vastly more power than the erdgod he had felled, any of the demigods or xenobeasts he had encountered, or even the statue of the guardian saint. Yukinari was not normally capable of sensing “spiritual power,” but when there was so much of it at once it naturally became an almost physical phenomenon, surrounding her like a shimmering haze.
She was no girl. She wasn’t even human.
“Even he!” Luman shouted, stabbing a finger at Yukinari. “He himself is the monster who killed our god! He is our enemy, and he is your enemy. If you leave him be, you and your familiars will surely pay the price! The very fact that he is here is the proof!”
“Listen to you blather,” Yukinari muttered, drawing Durandall from its holster on his back. “Thought you’d get one of the neighbor gods to punish me, huh?”
“...Yuki...!” Dasa opened her bag and pulled out Red Chili, moving to cover Yukinari’s back. “Behind... us!”
“I know.” An overwhelming sensation pressed in from all sides. The missionary knights and the priests backed off, replaced by several human figures that surrounded Yukinari and Dasa. Some were old and some young, some were men and some women, but all of them exuded the same powerful aura as the girl—and all of them had the same green hair and horns. It seemed none of them were human, either. Most likely...
Luman sounded a cry: “O familiars of Lord Yggdra, and First Familiar Ulrike! Mete out divine punishment upon the accursed Godslayer!”
●
To be a merchant caravan in this area was to risk one’s life for one’s business. Small bands of people separated from the larger settlements as they went somewhere else were ideal prey for demigods and xenobeasts. These monsters were not so much interested in humans proper as they were in their brains, the source of intelligence and spiritual power, which the creatures could consume as the quickest way to increase their own spiritual power level. Most demigods and xenobeasts had originally been wild animals—with all the aggression that entailed.
Of course, the main roads in areas that had some kind of pact with an erdgod were relatively safe—but take one step outside such a place, and the danger increased exponentially. Sometimes an especially powerful demigod might even encroach on an erdgod’s territory.
Hence, merchant parties were always armed. The merchants themselves carried weapons, and many hired mercenaries. Obviously, five or ten armed men would have a hard time fending off a herd of xenobeasts or felling a demigod. The armaments were essentially a way of buying themselves enough time to get back to erdgod-controlled territory, or inside a city. What they carried was chiefly ranged weapons: slingshots, Molotov cocktails, bows and arrows, throwing spears, nets. They were not so foolish as to bring swords or pikes or anything else that might involve going toe to toe with a xenobeast or demigod.
Most of the time, this was enough to allow them to escape.
But by the time they heard the roar of rippling air, it was too late. First, the head of the mercenary leading the expedition from horseback disappeared. It was like a bad joke: one second it was there, then you blinked, and it was gone; not even his helmet was left. Instead there was only a geyser of blood spewing red liquid all over his corpse. Finally, as if it had just now realized it was dead, the body tilted, fell over, and flopped on the ground.
“Wh-What the hell?!” the shaken mercenaries and merchants demanded. They looked left and right, searching desperately for their attacker. But they couldn’t find it. Couldn’t see anything. There were no xenobeasts or demigods anywhere around them. No sign of an animal like a bear or a tiger.
Then one of the merchants made a dumbfounded sound.
“Huh?”
A bloody helmet dropped at his feet, bouncing before it rolled to a stop. It was the one the missing head had been wearing.
“It’s above us?!” The mercenaries finally realized where they should be looking, and craned their necks to peer at the sky. Then they saw it—and it was coming down at them at a fantastic speed, as though falling from the sky. A massive birdlike creature with four wings.
“Run awa—”
The flying demigod hurtled directly into the middle of the merchants and mercenaries. The second one to lose his head was the merchant who had been riding on the driver’s platform of the carriage.
“Grrryyyahhh! Brains!” the monster-bird exclaimed gleefully as it floated above them. It broke open the head it had torn off with its claws and beak, extending its unnaturally long tongue to sip at what was within.
“Brains! Brains! Gray matter! AH, DELICIOUS!”
A maelstrom of confusion and terror gripped the party. Flying demigods were extremely unusual. Both the merchants and the mercenaries were armed exclusively with weapons designed to fight other creatures that stayed on the ground. In fact, even if they knew about the existence of flying demigods, they knew of no way to build a weapon with the range and power to fight something like this.
“Brains, brains! I NEED more braiNSSSSS! Slurp slurp!”
“Hrrrk—?!”
The demigod took advantage of the chaos among the humans to plunge down among them again. What followed was a slaughter. Its beak and claws cut down one mercenary and merchant after another. Some of the hired muscle tried to run, but this only seemed to incense the creature, who would pierce them through the belly with one of its claws before devouring them from the head down.
The birdlike demigod screeched and crowed as it broke open the men’s skulls, greedily drinking what came out. The eyes of the pitiful victims rolled up into their heads and their limbs spasmed, until the demigod took one bite, then two, and then at last swallowed the body of its prey.
“as iF tHe liKEs... liKES.... LiKes of a human cOUld kilL mE. More brAIns... mORe...!”
It howled happily, almost as if it were singing, as it went about feasting on the humans.
It was the demigod Yukinari had failed to kill in the valley near Friedland several days before.
●
Yukinari immediately decided this was a bad place to be.
Dasa had drawn Red Chili, but he wrapped his arm around her waist, pulled her close, and set off running.
“Yuki—?!”
“We’re getting out of here!” he shouted, dashing down the hall of the mayor’s mansion. He kicked out the shutter of a window, then leaped out with Dasa in tow, ignoring the splinters that flew everywhere. He rolled once as he hit the ground, then, not even sparing the time to brush off the dirt and dust, he grabbed Dasa again and kept running.
“Yuki... Why...?”
“That thing’s bad news. There are all kinds of reasons I don’t want to fight it,” he said as he ran. “I know it looks human, but I guarantee we’d be in trouble if we let that trick us into trying to fight it.”
“...He called it a... ‘familiar.’”
“Yeah. Sort of an outward manifestation of the local erdgod, a terminal. It looks like a person, but it’s connected right to the erdgod’s power...!”
In particular, that first familiar to emerge—Ulrike, she’d been called—had been immensely powerful. Normally it wasn’t possible to see spiritual power with the naked eye, but in her it had been so concentrated as to appear like a visible haze. Yukinari didn’t know exactly what form this erdgod Yggdra took, but he was clearly different by an order of magnitude from the erdgod Yukinari had fought in Friedland. It was even possible that the body of the familiar called Ulrike was simultaneously the erdgod’s body.
Not to mention, this erdgod had at least ten other familiars, even if they weren’t as powerful as Ulrike. Numbers alone would have put Yukinari and Dasa at a disadvantage.
“Those familiars must all have started as sacrifices...!” Ulrike was obviously a small girl, but all the other familiars had also appeared to be very old, or very young, or otherwise had given the impression of being weak. Yukinari could only speculate, b
ut it seemed Yggdra used his sacrifices as familiars. They presumably moved and acted as a part of his body.
Whatever the case, the overwhelming appearance of frailty made it very difficult for Yukinari to want to fight them. But his opponents, perhaps taken in by Luman, seemed completely convinced that Yukinari was the “Godslayer”—and they had every intention of destroying him.
He couldn’t fight like this. It would just wind up with him and Dasa being picked off.
Yukinari glanced back. “Of course they’d follow us...”
The familiars were behind them, Ulrike at their head. Some of the familiars even jumped from rooftop to rooftop, like ninja. No matter what they might look like, they apparently had superhuman mobility.
“Yuki, I can run. Put me down.” It wasn’t the first time Dasa had made this request, but Yukinari didn’t listen. He needed to at least get a little more distance, or the familiars would catch them. If they really wanted to punish him specifically for being the Godslayer, it was possible they wouldn’t hurt Dasa at all. But with Luman and his friends on Yggdra’s side, Dasa’s being taken hostage was a very real possibility. That would only make this an even bigger crisis for Yukinari.
“Damn it all! What a pain in the ass!”
Holding Dasa under his left arm, he pulled out Durandall with his right hand and made as if to fire—he worked the lever, chambering the first round. Then he picked a direction and fired a warning shot.
He didn’t hit anything, of course. Even if he had been intending to fire at his pursuers, it would have been extremely hard to do while running with Dasa at his hip.
But then—
“Meet your end, Godslayer.”
With those words, Ulrike leaped upward from her place at the vanguard. Her white robes fluttered in the breeze, and, still in midair, she gave a single wave of the branch in her hand.
Bluesteel Blasphemer Volume 2 Page 9
