The Archer of Beast Woods

by Kanata Yanagino

  It wasn’t like the Japanese-style bathhouses I was familiar with—instead, there was a sauna-like hot bath and a cold-water pool—but even so, it was amazing. The travel fatigue that had accumulated in all the muscles throughout my body melted away in the heat and disappeared as I relaxed. It was a moment of bliss.

  After exiting the public bath, I felt like a whole layer had slipped clean off my body like the shell off a boiled egg. My body felt toasty warm, and the breeze felt good against it. Even while on the road, I’d been keeping clean with the Word of Purification, but a proper bath was something else.

  The three of us men killed time in the open area outside the bathhouse, and after a little while...

  “LA LA LA...♪” Bee came out holding the things she’d left with the bathhouse owners. She was singing a tune to herself and was clearly in a very good mood. “It’s really nice to have a bath every once in a while,” she said.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Won’t deny it, but I don’t like packed places like that very much.” Menel had attracted an awful lot of attention because of his beauty and the fact that it was rare to see a half-elf in the first place. Normally he could get around this by wearing a hood or something, but there was just no way for him to conceal himself like that at a bathhouse.

  At this very moment, he had his hood firmly down over his eyes with a sour look on his face, so we decided to hurry up and change locations. “Lessee,” Bee said, “how about we get something to eat at a tavern, and then...”

  “What next?”

  “I suggest we head to a temple,” said Tonio. “Will is a priest, so I imagine he will want to pay them a visit.”

  “Oh!” I said. I’d had my attention pulled in so many different directions that I’d almost forgotten. I had to make contact with an established temple. I was technically a proper priest bestowed with a god’s protection, so I was hoping they’d make time for me, but I had my doubts.

  The four of us walked together to a tavern and had something to eat. I was very surprised when I saw their cooking used rice. It seemed to be what I had once known as Indica rice, probably grown in a dry field. They first stir-fried vegetables with oil and—fittingly for a port—a selection of seafood, including shrimp, shellfish, and whitefish in a flat-bottomed, shallow pan, then added the rice and water and cooked it all together.

  The rice had absorbed the flavors of the fish well, and the dish was salted to perfection. I could have eaten this stuff all day. The diluted wine it was served with tasted good, too.

  This was civilization. That was the only thing I could come up with to describe it. This was the taste of civilization.

  Tonio and Bee were debating the meal.

  “This tastes quite good, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Hmm.” She didn’t sound entirely convinced. “I could have done with it not being boiled down so much.”

  For these two, a traveling hawker and a troubadour, this city was a base of operations. They were probably relatively used to it.

  As for Menel and me, conversation was just not what we cared about right then, so we skipped that entirely in favor of gorging ourselves on what was in front of us. And when we were done, we both ordered seconds.

  Civilization really was such a wonderful, marvellous thing!

  ◆

  And so we reached the temple in Whitesails. It was a majestic building made of smooth white stone, with big, wide columns, column-lined walkways, statues of the gods, and a front garden full of carefully pruned plants and trees. It all looked brand new, but still it had a kind of artistic character. Menel commented under his breath that they must have spent a hell of a lot on this place.

  I asked Menel, Tonio, and Bee to wait in the front garden for the time being, and I walked into the temple proper. Once inside, I thought I’d find a priest and ask to be shown to someone high ranking.

  However, the first reaction that came from the young male deacon who stood before me wearing loose white robes was an uninformative ‘mmm.’ It sounded like I was giving him problems.

  “You say you’ve been blessed with the protection of Gracefeel, god of the flame?” he asked.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  The young deacon mmm’ed again.

  “That is a deity not often seen... By our rules, we like to make use of the prayer of Detect Faith in this instance...”

  “That’s perfectly fine.”

  Just imagine if a priest of an evil god, not caring about the consequences of his actions, nonchalantly walked in and said, “I would like to greet the high-ranking priests.” Not all priests were trained in combat as I was, so I could see the need for a security step to check that someone suspicious stopping by—like me, the priest of a minor god—wasn’t working for an evil god and trying to conceal their identity.

  “Yes,” he said, “but most unfortunately, I’m afraid that everyone sufficiently blessed to determine the faith of others is out at the moment...”

  “Out?” In a large temple like this? I was surprised that was even possible.

  “Yes. Attacks from beasts big and small have been on a significant rise everywhere recently. Everyone from the vice-bishop downwards is being kept very busy.”

  From the vice-bishop downwards... Did he say vice-bishop?

  “What are you doing that requires taking up the walkway?” someone said from behind me in a grave voice that seemed to echo. I turned around to see an incredibly fat middle-aged man, dressed in loosely fitting priest’s robes embroidered with gold and silver thread. They did nothing to hide his noticeable potbelly, nor did his big, puffy cheeks compensate for the sternness in his expression. He was wearing several gold and silver rings on his sausage-like fingers.

  “B-Bishop Bagley!” The deacon twitched in surprise and visibly straightened his posture.

  “I asked you what you were doing,” Bishop Bagley repeated. He looked irritated.

  The deacon seemed very uneasy and didn’t look like he was going to be able to give a proper answer. Although it was slightly bad form, I decided to interject.

  “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. My name is William G. Maryblood. I was blessed with the protection of the god of the flame, Gracefeel, and have come to this Whitesails temple to introduce myself.” I put my right hand over the left side of my chest, brought my left leg back a little, and bowed. Mary had taught me this.

  “Hmm. Bart Bagley. I am in charge of this temple.” Bishop Bagley bowed to me roughly in return, and then glowered at me. “Gracefeel... God of the flame. Practically a lost god. The possibility remains, of course, that what we have here is a suspicious character misusing Gracefeel’s name to carry out some nefarious plot...”

  “That is a reasonable suspicion. Would you like me to perform a blessing as proof?”

  Bishop Bagley snorted. “Novices are quick to turn to divine protection when in trouble. The protection received from a god is not to be brandished lightly and certainly not to be vaunted.”

  Wow. I hadn’t expected that response, but now that I thought about it, he made a good point. Gus had said the same thing about magic. Blessings didn’t carry much risk, so I’d been using them more casually, but he was definitely right.

  “You’re absolutely right. Thank you very much for making me aware of my naïveté.”

  The bishop snorted again. “What do you understand to be the teachings of the god of the flame?”

  “Light is the existence of dark. Words are the existence of silence. And living is the existence of death.”

  The bishop breathed out through his nose once more. “You,” he said to the deacon. “Add him to the register and show him around the temple.”

  “Huh? But... We still have the prayers of Detect Faith and Detect Lie to—”

  “Idiot!” It was a thunderclap. “Did all of that simply miss your ears, you cretin?!” His voice echoed throughout the temple, lingering in the air like static in a thunderstorm. Other people were looking at us now.
<
br />   “I have to put in an appearance at the Weavers’ Guild banquet—spend your time here as you please, do not cause any problems, and donate a little,” Bishop Bagley told me without pausing for breath, then clomped away to somewhere else in the temple. The deacon still had his head ducked into his shoulders.

  Once the bishop had disappeared completely, the deacon finally started talking to me, in a voice that showed he was still a little shaken. “What are the odds we’d run into Bishop Bagley?” he said. “He gave us a hard time, didn’t he? I was impressed by how well you handled it.”

  Then he talked about how the bishop was now a hedonist who spent a large amount of his time at banquets, never performed a single blessing, was quick to anger, and constantly complained; on the other hand, the vice-bishop was noble and wonderful and had only good things to say about him.

  Not wanting to take sides, I gave some vague hums in response as we completed my registration. Then, after meeting back up with Menel, Bee, and Tonio, I had the deacon show us all around the temple and assign us a guest room. It was quite plain, but we’d at least been given more than just a bale of hay or something to sleep on; there were actually beds with sheets.

  “Say,” I said, “about the bishop here, um...”

  “Mmm, I don’t hear much good about him, I guess?” Bee said. “Like how he’s kinda snooty. And materialistic.”

  “He also appears to have behind-the-scenes influence in the city’s commerce and industrial guilds,” added Tonio.

  Huh. That was the reputation he had? As I tried to put this information together with my own impression of him, I realized I was finding it hard to concentrate. What was all that noise going on outside? It sounded like incessant clanging, maybe a bell.

  Bee started, and I looked at her in confusion.

  “That’s... not the bell for the hour...” she said. “They’re hammering it... Is there a fire or something?!”

  “That sounds like the emergency bell, yes,” Tonio said.

  Unrest started to spread around the temple. We rushed to our equipment and other stuff we’d stashed in the corner of the room. We heard the sound of footsteps rushing down the hallway, and then screaming.

  “Wyvern! Wyvern! Everyone, RUUUUN!!”

  Beyond the walls of the room and above the roof, a low rush of wind and a vast shadow passed overhead. The next instant, the force of an impact echoed throughout the temple.

  ◆

  “Hnnnggggggg!”

  “Ow, oww, owwww!”

  “Someone! Someone help! There are people being crushed under here!”

  “What’s happening?!”

  “Don’t shove, don’t shove!”

  “My child, has anyone seen my child?!”

  “Oh God...!”

  The inside of the temple was in a state of panic. Still putting on my armor, I went out into the courtyard surrounded by walkways. Using the temple’s architectural decorations and pillars for traction, I jumped up the side of the building and, after only a few leaps, I made it to the roof.

  The temple was comprised of numerous buildings, like the living quarters, assembly halls, and so on, and as I looked around I noticed that the roof of the main hall had fallen in.

  I looked down inside. It was chaos down there; I guessed there were probably people under all that rubble. It was a disaster that the high-ranking priests were out right now; it looked like it was going to take some time to bring this situation under control. I furrowed my brow unconsciously.

  But I couldn’t go down there to help them.

  I turned my eyes away, and saw the gray silhouette circling the sky over Whitesails. It had a long tail and enormous wings made of stretched sheets of skin. Running down the spine of its back was a series of bladelike spikes, and it had a neck so thick it looked like you could only just barely get your arms around it. I could see occasional glimpses of fire from its mouth.

  The circling, twisting movements of its slender silhouette were full of power and energy, and I was certain that the sight would send a shiver up the spine of anyone who witnessed it.

  It was a wyvern.

  It flew at one of the city’s steeples and grabbed hold of it with its legs. The force of the landing smashed the structure apart. As the stone walls of the steeple crumbled, the wyvern kicked off again, launching back into flight and circling the sky over the city once more.

  Figures on the ground that seemed to be soldiers were firing occasional crossbow shots at it, but it didn’t seem to care. It was moving around too much. Those few soldiers holding crossbows could chase after the wyvern all they liked; they wouldn’t even be able to keep it within range. And if they did manage to get close enough, they would never land a single shot on a wyvern flying at such speeds; their quarrels would fly straight past.

  Flames erupted from the wyvern’s mouth—it was breathing fire. From the area licked by those flames came screams and cries so loud I could hear them from the temple. Houses caught fire. People ran, pushing and shoving each other in the scramble to escape. And the wyvern cried out in excitement and dived straight in.

  Roof tiles, blown off by the wind pressure, fell randomly and smashed on the streets. Some houses had collapsed. The panic was escalating. Several people fell over. I was sure there were others being trampled. I could hear buildings collapsing. The wyvern destroyed another one.

  I had no idea what was going on. Why on earth was the wyvern doing this? But it didn’t change reality: the city was being destroyed before my eyes. Civilization—what those three had fought to protect—a place where people still lived like people should—was being destroyed.

  The blood rushed to my head.

  “Verba volant...” This was a slightly long incantation—not something I normally used. In parallel with my verbal incantation, I added another Word with a single movement of my finger to extend the range, and then—

  “Tonitrus!!”

  At that moment, there was an ear-splitting sound, like the sound of a broken bell being struck as hard as possible, or maybe the sound of a cannon. I smelled the air burning as a single bolt of lightning flew from where I stood on the temple roof directly towards the wyvern flying so proudly over the city.

  But it didn’t connect! The distance was too great. Not only that, but a straight-line attack was far too inaccurate against the wyvern when it had total freedom to move around three-dimensional space. The range of ancient magic was not that great to begin with; that probably wasn’t helping, either. Words being Words, they attenuated with distance, having a smaller effect on further targets.

  I prepared for a second shot. Of the Words I could use with a reasonable amount of stability, the Word of Lightning boasted the longest range. I could fire it as many times as necessary until I hit. That was the thought going through my head, and it came from a place of desperation, and anger, and zero composure—

  “What the hell are you doing, you fig idiot?!” The back of my head suddenly stung. I turned around, and Menel was behind me. He must have followed me up onto the roof. “Don’t cast magic over and over again out of anger! You’re gonna blow yourself apart!” He looked angry. “And high-level magic like that?! Are you nuts?!”

  “But—”

  “But nothing!” Menel grabbed my collar. “You’re up against a wyvern! Do it efficiently is what I’m saying! For a guy with a brilliant brain, you’re as thick as pig shit, you know that?! You were given that brain, fecking use it first!”

  Pierced by his jade eyes, I suddenly came to my senses.

  — Just learn to use small amounts of magic, sensibly and precisely.

  Gus’s teachings revived inside my mind. I could feel my head clearing. Gus wouldn’t lose his head in a situation like this. Be efficient. Be precise. Only use it when needed, and only as much as needed.

  “Got it.”

  “Good.”

  I started thinking. With what I had available to me, how could I do something about that wyvern? Countless thoughts flashed through
the circuitry of my mind like sparks, each being considered for a moment before fading away. “Okay.” I nodded. “Menel, I need your help and the help of your elementals.”

  “Gotcha.” Menel nodded, too.

  “And Bee, Tonio!” I called in the direction of the courtyard, where I could see those two standing. Thanks to that Word of Lightning, a lot of people’s attention was currently focused on us on the roof. “Get everybody around to help get people out of the temple’s front garden!” I waved my arm dramatically and shouted. “That’s where we’re gonna bring down the wyvern!”

  ◆

  “Here goes. ‘Sylphs, Sylphs, maidens of wind. Your steps are the wind’s steps, your songs are the wind’s songs.’”

  His voice rang out clearly as he recited the words. The elementals gathered and danced.

  “‘Sing in chorus, sing in rounds, cheer and shout applause. Thine harmonic tones spread the primordial Words in the ten directions—”

  Ever since Menel started casting his spell, I’d started to see glimpses of tiny white maidens all over my vision, blurred by the flow of the wind and flickering from a while ago.

  Sylphs—wind elementals. Once I was sure of it, I started incanting Words.

  “Verba volant...”

  It was the same invocation as before, the Word of Lightning, but I expanded upon it with the Words that Gus had used to destroy the splinter of the god of undeath.

  “...conciliat, sequitur...”

  I put my fingers to work as well, drawing several complex Words in the air. Like a crest or a magic circle, the intricate glyphs spread through the air. And finally, I spread my arms solemnly and shouted—

  “Tonitrus... Araneum!!”

  The Words echoed instantly. The gathered sylphs sang them out in rounds, their harmony ever-increasing, and lightning forked again and again, darting and spreading through the air. The web of bolts expanded outwards, and though it weakened as it traveled, still it descended and fell like a net upon the wyvern flying far overhead.