The Faraway Paladin, volume 1: The Boy in the City of the Dead.
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Side Story: The building blocks of a dream.
It was a full moon. The fort was filled with the smell of death.
People’s corpses were there. Bodies that had been cut to death, stabbed to death, bitten and battered to death. Bodies covered in mud, blood, and guts. No one would ever be reflected again in their vacant eyes.
Demons’ corpses were there. Some with forms taken after humans, some a monstrous cross between man and beast. All of these, too, cut or stabbed to death.
The human and the demon corpses were strewn everywhere, entangled, intertwined. They had killed one another.
Some had lost limbs. Others had had one or both of their eyeballs pulled out. Still others had their intestines hanging out of their body. Some had even expired in pairs, with their weapons gouged into each other’s vulnerable spots.
In the courtyard of that fort, which was the embodiment of the word “gruesome,” two people were facing each other.
One was a man. He was a very large man with red hair, wearing thick beast-leather armor. He had a muscular, well-forged body, long, unkempt hair like a lion, and sharp eyes. His name was Blood. He was a warrior.
Saying nothing, the man held his two-handed broadsword at the ready. Its long blade was thick and sharp.
An enormous figure stood facing Blood. What comments could be made about that thing? It was large. Staggeringly large and thick. Its head resembled the head of a wild, canyon-dwelling black mountain goat, with enormous horns, and an oval-shaped face. But its eyes were not those of a goat. Its eyes had vertically slit pupils, like a reptile, and though there was no emotion in them, there was certainly an intelligence there not to be found in wild beasts.
Shift your gaze down below the neck, and its body resembled a person’s. Its arms were packed with thick muscle and covered in short black hair. It had a bulky chest and a six-pack. And finally, as you descended from its muscular thighs down to its feet, it had a goat’s joint structure and hooves. Its form was a disturbing caricature, a mixture of goat parts and human parts, mashed together without rhyme or reason.
It was holding a massive, desperately thick scimitar, which also bore a resemblance to a Japanese nata or a butcher’s knife. This gigantic demon, one or two sizes bigger even than Blood, was known, if you followed taxonomic classification, as a “baphomet.”
“Hey there, king of the keep.” It was Blood who spoke. “How you doing?”
The baphomet did not respond. It merely stood with its scimitar ready. It had determined that the man in front of it would not be an easy opponent.
“See… Us warriors are taught to give our names and a comment or two before getting to the business of battle.” Blood shrugged to himself. “Demons… goddamned savages.”
Perhaps that looked like a moment of weakness. The baphomet rushed forward, swinging its scimitar straight down toward its opponent.
In that very instant, the baphomet’s head flew off. Blood had stepped toward the baphomet with twice the speed and beheaded him.
He had leaped directly into his opponent’s slash, but because he had thrust his own blade into the path of his opponent’s and knocked it off course, he didn’t suffer a single scratch. The baphomet’s body, now missing its head, collapsed to its knees and toppled over onto the ground.
To have fought a demon leader in melee combat and won in a single blow? This man clearly had extraordinary sword skills.
“Demons. Absolute goddamned savages.” Blood shrugged once again.
“If you’re calling them savages, then they’re really in a bad place.” A new, clear voice. It was a voice unfit for a battlefield that stank with blood.
Its owner was a woman, who had her luxuriant blonde hair up in a braided bun. Over her white and green priest’s raiment, she wore a sword belt, attached to which were a one-handed sword and a small shield. The piecemeal leather armor she was wearing was slightly ill-matched for her, but she carried herself in it with confidence. She probably had a certain degree of knowledge of the martial arts.
Her name was Mary. She smiled sweetly at Blood with her beautiful verdant eyes.
“Are you aware of the phrase ‘the pot calling the kettle black’?”
“Hey now, I don’t deserve that. I have style.”
“Style. The man whose greatest contentment is to drown himself in drink, shovel meat into his mouth, and have a big punch-up says he has style.”
“If that ain’t style, what is?”
“You’re blazing new trails, Blood. Unfortunately, in the wrong direction.”
“Blood the Trailblazer! Hot damn, I like that one. Hey, don’t give me the silent treatment.”
Before their friendly banter could go any further, the sky to the south lit up with a blinding light. A moment later, there was a thunderous sound, and the ground rumbled under them.
Blood whistled. “Looks like Old Gus’s team pulled it off.”
“Yes, it does,” Mary nodded.
“I brought down this keep fine, too. They’ll have no problems pulling out.”
“I still can’t believe you took down an entire keep on your own. It’s honestly ridiculous, even if it was small.”
“Aw, shucks.”
“That was not a compliment. In any case… I’ll give them a simple funeral and prevent them from becoming undead. That is why I’m with you, after all.” Mary began offering a prayer to the dead around her. “Mater our Earth-Mother. Gracefeel, god of flux… Let the souls of the dead not wander. Let them not tarry under the god of undeath’s protection, filling the world…”
As Mary stood upright, praying in this hellish place, Blood watched her with a smile. Then chuckled grimly and closed his eyes.
“Phew. That will do it.”
“Great. Good job.”
“Only…” Her expression was dispirited. “How many days do you think breaking the canyon bridge is going to buy us?”
“Well, they’ve either gotta go around, set up some large-scale magic to reshape the terrain, or… the High King could ride some flying creature across, then make more troops on the other side. I’d say a few days at most.” Blood shrugged.
Mary responded with dejected silence.
“Yeah, we’re pretty much screwed unless we kill the High King.”
“I did hear Gus has something planned…” Mary said, not sounding hopeful.
Blood nodded. “You can bet it’ll be a one-way ticket, though. There won’t be coming back from it.” He paused and crossed his arms. “And you ain’t coming.”
“Well, that came from nowhere.” Mary rolled her eyes. “I’m a powerful asset for you, if I do say so myself.”
“I know that. But you’re still staying behind. I’m not having you dying. The thought makes me feel sick.” The red-haired man grimaced, as if he’d pictured it all too vividly.
The blonde priest gazed tenderly at him. “Why don’t you at least try adding, ‘Because I love you’?” she teased. “Women like that. Me, mainly.”
“A cheesy line like that? Do you want me to throw up?”
Mary gave a resigned laugh, her green eyes sparkling. “You really are impossible… All right, and what if I insist on coming?”
“I’ll send you back even if I have to punch your lights out first.” Blood’s voice was harsh and cold. He had clearly reached a firm decision. “Just so’s you know, I got permission from Old Gus for that already.”
“I see. There’s no use resisting, then.” Mary shrugged her shoulders.
“You’re pretty skilled, I’m not gonna lie, but you’re no match for the great Blood.”
“No, I’m not.”
They’d known each other for long enough. Something like that was obvious to the both of them.
“How about this, then?” Mary slowly extended her index and middle fingers. “If you leave me behind”—she rested her fingers against her neck like a blade—“I will kill myself on the spot with my own sword.” Her smile was blinding.
Blood’s expression froze. This was not a joking smile. It was deathly serious. “A-Are you—”
“Did you not hear me? I said, if I cannot stay with you, I will kill myself on the spot.” Still smiling, Mary walked up to Blood and looked up into his face. “You will take me with you, won’t you?” She tilted her head and smiled at him, awaiting an answer. The look was as adorable as it was firm.
Blood’s cheeks were drawn back into a horrible grimace. “So manipulative…”
“That’s women for you, Blood. You may be the strongest man there is, but a man can’t beat a woman. You had better get used to it.”
“What a raw deal.” Blood tilted his neck back and stared into the sky. “Never known anyone so stubborn. Dammit. Nice going, Blood, you caught yourself a nightmare in women’s clothing.”
“Oh? You haven’t made a single move on me and I’m already yours?”
“That’s men for you.” A sigh. “Hey… Mary.”
“What is it?” Mary tilted her head slightly to the side again.
Blood held the slender tips of Mary’s fingers in his rugged hands, and looked intensely into her green eyes. “If we make it back alive, let’s settle down somewhere and get married.”
She gave a refined and quiet giggle. “Gladly.”
“I’d like to find a place on a hill with a nice view or something. Somewhere quiet.”
“Oh, that sounds nice. I can imagine the pleasant breeze. Perhaps we could have a vegetable garden,” Mary laughed.
“And when our kid is born, we’ll get Old Gus to homeschool him.”
Another giggle. “I expect Old Gus won’t be happy about that. He’ll agree anyway, of course, he’ll just grumble about it.”
Both of them understood. The flames of their lives had almost burnt out.
“And if he’s a boy, I’m gonna teach him martial arts! He’ll have my fighting skills, plus Old Gus’s magic. He’ll be ultra-mega-strong, even stronger than me! Whaddaya think of that?!”
“I’m sure he will end up a very strong and intelligent person who has no idea how to function in human society.”
“Oof! That hurts…”
“It’ll have to be up to me to teach him all the little things he needs to know.”
They themselves understood better than anyone that they had no hope of returning alive. So this was a dream.
“But I’m sure our child will be adorable.”
“Yeah.”
Despite knowing that it would never come to pass, they grew something private inside their hearts. An earnest wish. A happiness that could have been. Something glimmering, something warm. Like young children, innocently laughing while making a castle out of colored building blocks, they built a small and idle dream.
“Oh, yes. What would you like to call him?”
“Already decided if he’s a boy.”
“It had better not be anything strange.”
“Would I do that? A long time ago, Old Gus gave me a lecture on the origins of names, you see.”
“And you took a liking to it back then?”
“Yeah. He’s our kid. Without any doubt, he’s gonna have a stubborn force of will.” Blood grinned. “So our boy is gonna be called ‘William.’ What do you think?” he asked, and Mary smiled back at him.
“That’s a nice name. I like it, too.”
Will. William. My boy.
As Mary hummed to herself, Blood started walking, her hand still held in his. The two set off toward death and destruction, leaving the building blocks of an ephemeral, naïve dream behind.
No one knew, then. That far away beyond their death, destruction, and years upon years of time, from the remnants of a gentle and glittering dream, there would rise the small, first cry of a child.
— The End —
Diamond. diamond. diamond.
