Chapter One: After a God Dies
“Hrk—!”
A blade-like talon slashed through the air. Given the effect it had, it might as well have been an actual blade. Several small bushes in its path went flying into the air the moment it touched them, as if they had been cut with a giant scythe.
It was sharp, and huge, and strong. If it struck an average human, it would probably take off their arm—or leg, or head, or whatever it caught. It wasn’t even trying to cut anything—just to grab. Even that was enough to kill a person easily. This was no ordinary power of destruction.
To anger such a creature would surely be to invite death. It could kill any mere human in a single blow; its overwhelming power amounted to authority over life and death.
And that was why, with fear and trembling, such creatures were called “gods.”
“Feh...!”
Yukinari gave a cluck of his tongue as he ducked just low enough to evade the claw.
“You’re no slouch, huh...!”
At what he judged to be the best moment, he moved forward—and the demigod, as though it had been waiting, attacked. This couldn’t be chance. It was clearly intentional.
This was what was called a “counter.” It didn’t simply mean the opponent’s attack was hard to avoid; Yukinari’s own momentum would be used against him. If he had been a fraction of a second slower to duck, it was likely he would no longer possess the top half of his body.
They were called “demigods”: those who wished to become the local erdgod. Then again, one might emphasize that they were demigods—from Yukinari’s perspective, barely gods at all. They hadn’t become true gods yet; they were just pretending to be.
But the power in their bizarre bodies was already close enough to that of a deity. As the earlier attack had revealed, a demigod had intelligence close to that of a human and wasn’t afraid to use it. A demigod knew how to apply their powers, and a single human pitted against one of these beasts could never hope to match it. He could only be overwhelmed and destroyed.
“You friggin’ monster!”
Yet as Yukinari shouted, there was no fear on his face. He knew that gods were not absolute, and they were not invincible. He didn’t have to bow before them and beg for mercy. He was their enemy, someone with power close to their own.
The demigod roared as if in response: “Gryyyaaaahhhh!” The sound bounced off the cliffs on either side.
Yukinari and the demigod were in a valley. To the left and right were cliffsides, walls of stone that wound about in dizzying layers. It was not a very deep valley, but the rocks were hard; there were few places to hide and nowhere to run.
Yukinari moved forward again. As he did so, he swung something in his hand to the right—it was an attempt to take off his enemy’s head, but like the demigod’s claw, it met only air. The demigod had avoided it with an agile backward move.
“Grr!” Yukinari clucked his tongue again and pressed forward. This time he stretched out his arm and torso and brought his beloved weapon—Durandall—up in a rising sweep. But the blow again failed to strike home.
He couldn’t reach the thing. The demigod began to rise, even as it kept sliding backward.
“Get down here, you oversized roast chicken!”
“Grrryyyahhhhh!” The demigod spread its wings tauntingly as Yukinari stared daggers at it.
This demigod was a bird, if that was the word for it. Yukinari knew of no other way to describe a creature that had wings and feathers and flew through the air.
But its body was something vastly different from the image the word “bird” brought to mind. It could only ever qualify as a monstrosity of a bird. It had four massive wings on its back, its talons were long enough to pick up a cow or a horse, to say nothing of a human, and in addition to its beak, it boasted fangs and horns.
From several meters in the air, the demigod gave a cock of its head.
“Roa—st chic—ken. whAt iS That?”
The ability to speak proved its intelligence approached a human’s. Its mouth and throat were constructed differently from a person’s, making its voice screechy and hard to listen to, but Yukinari could understand it perfectly well.
“It’s something we eat for dinner,” he said. “And you better believe we would never let it eat us! You oughta learn what birds are for.” He prepared Durandall for another attack. “So come on down here like a good little chicken. I’ll pluck out your feathers and cook you right up!”
“whaT stRAnge thinGs yoU sAy. HuMAns eat anImals, godS eAt huMans. It is naTurE’s Law.”
The hideous grryaaah! that accompanied its words must have been laughter.
“Like hell it is. I think they changed the definition of nature’s law since you looked it up last.”
“YOU youRself dO not sEEm to kNOw whAt hUmAns are FoR. Do yOu thiNK to eAt a gOD?”
The creature rose even further into the air. Up and up, to a great height—and then it spun. It fell—no, dove—so fast it produced a roar, as though the air itself were crying out in terror.
Yukinari leaped forward to avoid the diving attack, but just when he thought the demigod would slam into the ground, it opened its wings, pushing off the rock face to change direction. Its massive body slipped through the air, following him.
Its claw slashed again. Yukinari ducked once more to dodge it—but he misjudged his movement by the tiniest bit, and the talon brushed the back of his black leather jacket, leaving a long tear.
“Gryaaah! Gryyaah! yOu hAVE no hOpe!” The demigod was jubilant as it began to ascend once more. “swIng your SWORD, iT cannOT reAch mE. Or wiLL yoU trY thrOWing iT? BY RighTs, yOU wHo crawl oN the Ground arE bUt playThings for Me, whO fLIEs iN the SKy!”
Yukinari grunted and adjusted his grip on the sword the demigod spoke of—Durandall—and looked at the sky in frustration. The demigod could come down to attack him, but his sword couldn’t possibly reach the creature where it hovered in the air. He could try to catch it just as it was attacking, of course, but that meant the demigod would always hold the initiative.
“Now what am I gonna do...?”
“DO yOu sEE noW? StAy yoUr hanD, and Be EAten. It iS youR desTINy to noUrish mE.”
And then the birdlike demigod began another dive.
“Pfft,” Yukinari said. “I was just playing you.”
A crack rang out, an explosion as loud as thunder. In the next instant, the onrushing demigod pitched violently.
“whAT—is thIS—?!”
It looked at Yukinari—at the weapon he held. A wisp of smoke rose from an oddly large piece attached just above the blade: a cylinder of steel that had produced the noise of a moment earlier.
It was a gun.
To the untrained eye, Yukinari’s blade Durandall might look like nothing more than a roughly-constructed longsword. But in fact, it included a Randall—a sawed-off Winchester M-92 lever-action rifle—in what amounted to a sword-gun.
“Grryah...”
The .44 Magnum bullet from Yukinari’s weapon had lodged itself deep in the demigod’s head. This time, it was the demigod who had suffered a counterattack. As quick as its reflexes may have been, it could not dodge a ball of steel coming at it faster than the speed of sound.
“Grrrryahh!”
Even with blood gushing from its head, the demigod continued to glide at Yukinari as if hoping to snatch him up. Its closely layered feathers seemed to have acted as natural bullet-proofing, blunting the power of the shot somewhat. The flow of blood soon stopped as well. Smart enough to call itself a god, the creature seemed to understand that it couldn’t let itself bleed out, although how it had stopped the bleeding, Yukinari didn’t know.
“Should’ve used steel-tipped bullets, not hollow-point,” he muttered, turning his back as he worked the loading lever, putting the next bullet in the chamber. And then...
“—Dasa.”
“...Mm.”
The next shot did not sound from Durandall.
When had she gotten there? Behind Yukinari, on top of a large-ish rock, was a girl wielding a crude-looking gun.
She was very pretty: silver hair trimmed neatly to shoulder length, blue eyes blinking behind her glasses. Her cheeks were as white and smooth as a piece of pottery; she was as beautiful as if a finely made doll had come to life.
Dasa Urban. To Yukinari, she was like a sister, a savior—a partner.
There was a silence. The gun Dasa used, “Red Chili,” was a revolver with a bipod and scope for sniper work. It took the same .44-caliber Magnum bullets as Durandall. It was of a construction known as “single action,” a relatively old style popular back when the West was being won.
There was another roar. Another and another.
“Grryaaahh?!”
The demigod screeched. Red blossoms bloomed across its body, showing where bullets had hit. Several of them, in the blink of an eye. Fanning. Rather than cocking the gun and then pulling the trigger in two distinct steps, the right hand steadies the gun and holds the trigger down, while the left quickly works the hammer. The quick motion of the left hand resembles someone fanning themselves, hence the name. The technique is specifically for revolvers, and an experienced shooter can let off six bullets so fast that the effect is almost like a machine gun; the sound of the shots becomes one continuous roar. Dasa, though, was not at that point yet.
The demigod began to garble its words, perhaps from shock. “whAt whaT wHat maNNer of weaP wEap weAPyyyahh!”
Even if its skin or feathers were almost as good as a bulletproof vest, six Magnum rounds would have an effect. The creature began to weave through the air—it brushed the ground as it found itself unable to stay aloft, gave a great bounce, and slammed into a rock wall.
“Got a bit too into playing god, birdbrain? Do me a favor and die.”
Durandall howled as it finished the fight.
“Gyygrahh...!”
The demigod’s head snapped back, turning red. However strong its defense was, two or three shots concentrated in the same area would penetrate deep into its body. That required a certain precision on the part of the shooter, of course—something much easier to achieve when the target was collapsed on the ground, unable to move.
“Grah...”
The body slumped over, twitched briefly, and then went still.
“That’s it for him, then,” Yukinari said with a sigh. “You can come out now.” He was speaking in the direction of a nearby boulder. About ten people emerged, looking absolutely terrified.
“Honored... Honored erdgod?” one of them asked.
“I’m not—” Yukinari started, then seemed to change his mind. “Sorry, I guess I am.” He scratched his cheek in embarrassment.
“Did you... fell that demigod? All by yourself?”
“Well, I had help,” he said, glancing at Dasa.
The people who were accompanying him on this survey knew that Yukinari was “the Godslayer,” but they had never actually seen him fight. To them, the battle that played out before their eyes must have seemed like a dream, or an illusion. From what they saw, two seemingly ordinary humans had just killed a god—a fantastical story if there ever was one.
Yukinari was just saying, “All right, back to our survey,” when a sharp cry from Dasa called his attention.
“Yuki!”
He immediately spun around to find the demigod he thought he had killed taking a great leap. Then the birdlike creature was rising into the air, its four wings producing a tremendous wind.
“Thanatosis?!” Yukinari shouted, looking up.
Some animals “play dead” when confronted with an especially powerful enemy. Apparently, the demigod had only been pretending to be defeated so Yukinari would let down his guard. He had only his own inattentiveness to blame.
The massive size of the demigod was not one any bird or animal would have attained in the normal course of growth. In most cases, an older creature became the “core” to which a dozen or even several dozen other animals would become spiritually bound. They came to look like a single, massive entity.
When the demigod died, the bond would be broken and the various animals that composed it would be separated. But this one hadn’t shown any sign of falling apart—that should have been proof enough that it wasn’t really dead.
Yukinari brought Durandall to bear as fast as he could.
“I won’t let you go, you—!”
But the monster was ascending strenuously. Yukinari looked at its back and let out a little breath. It was already out of range.
“Eh. That oughta teach him a thing or two, anyway.”
Yukinari didn’t have a special hatred for or grudge against this demigod. He had simply fought back when it attacked. If it wanted to run away, he didn’t care.
Dasa rendered her verdict immediately:
“You’re being foolish... Yuki.”
Her face rarely showed her emotions or gave any hint of what was going on inside her, but at this moment she almost looked proud of herself, even if only Yukinari, who had known her much longer than anyone else there, noticed it.
“Foolish? How’s that?”
“That’s... a bird. They can’t remember anything... for more... than three steps. It won’t learn.”
“...That right?” Yukinari smiled grimly, watching the retreating demigod. To him, it didn’t look like it had any interest in coming back.
●
Friedland was a frontier town. It was far away from the capital, for better and for worse: it received no significant support, but also had a certain administrative freedom. So long as taxes were paid and the local trade routes were kept open, its duties were fulfilled.
Such remote cities had not begun as part of a concerted effort by the capital to colonize untamed lands. Rather, they were the cumulative result of expeditions sent by the king, which found villages or even small kingdoms already in these areas. These settlements would become part of the royal purview, not always voluntarily. Often, the people who were already running these areas were simply dubbed mayors or provincial lords.
Many of these localities, of course, had different cultures and customs from those of the capital. One such was the anonymous cult that revered the erdgods—and made sacrifices to them. An erdgod was a deity that had formed a spiritual link with a specific place, and ruled it in more senses than one. The erdgod’s blessing could bring abundance to the land and keep demigods and xenobeasts at bay.
But such protection usually came at a cost. In Friedland, this had been the regular presentation of living sacrifices. Every few years, a young maiden would be offered to the erdgod. The priesthood existed to support this ritual, and they ran an orphanage to ensure the town would have a steady supply of sacrifices. This became a social institution, and had continued for hundreds of years.
And then, one day, that “tradition” abruptly ended.
This was due to travelers who had come to the area—just one of them, really, a young boy. Yukinari Amano. His hair was snow-white, his eyes blood-red, but otherwise he appeared to be a completely normal human boy. He had stumbled into the middle of the ceremony and killed the erdgod that had been about to eat its sacrifice.
The result was a vacancy; Friedland was left without an erdgod. This meant two major problems were likely to occur: the villagers would once again be subject, as we said, to the threat of demigods and xenobeasts, and the harvest would be less fruitful. Yukinari solved the former problem by taking the role of erdgod himself. But as for the latter—it was not so easily fixed.
“All right,” Yukinari said. “Let’s stop here and have some lunch.” He looked back over his shoulder. The ten Friedlanders who had accompanied him on this survey were lined up behind him. Eight men, two women. Add Yukinari and Dasa, and they made a twelve-person survey corps.
“Lord Yukinari!” a small woman said, running up to him. Her flaxen hair was in braids, her amber eyes were gentle, and her chest gave the impression of being large. Her movements and expressions were reserved and mature, but whether this made one want to protect her or bully her depended on the person. Not that she seemed to realize this.
“You must be tired. Here...” She held out a canteen.
Her name was Berta Wohmann. She was a former sacrifice, and the reason Yukinari had killed the erdgod. With the deity gone, she was offered to Yukinari instead, and was now widely recognized as Yukinari’s “property.” Yukinari himself didn’t specifically want this, but Berta had nowhere else to go, and he couldn’t leave her to fend for herself. And so, she attempted to serve him whenever possible. But...
“That’s not... necessary.”
It was not Yukinari, but Dasa who rebuffed Berta’s attempt to be helpful. She showed no more expression than usual, but a hint of annoyance entered her tone. Even though, again, Yukinari was probably the only one who noticed.
“But, Lady Dasa—”
“Yuki will drink... this.” She slid the bag she always carried off her back and dug through it to bring out a small bottle.
“What’s that...?”
“It has special nutrients,” Dasa said with an unmistakable note of triumph. “A drink I... prepared. My older sister was an alchemist. So... of course I know how... to make things like this.”
Berta let out a breath, her expression somewhat overwhelmed. Dasa made sure Berta could see her hand the bottle to Yukinari.
“Yuki, drink.”
“No, hang on a second.” He seemed gripped with a sense of foreboding. “What you know how to make is alchemical medicines, right?”
“So?”
“So that’s not the same as making food.” He paused. “Have you tasted this stuff?”
“Don’t need to. I followed... the recipe exactly.”
“That’s when you most need to taste it. I guarantee it didn’t come out like you expected.” Yukinari looked like he was about to heave a sigh.
Dasa was indeed the younger sister of the alchemist Jirina Urban, and had served as her sister’s assistant. She was well-versed in certain kinds of knowledge, but her long period of blindness meant she had never been allowed to help with crafting or the other work of actual production, and her practical experience was almost zero. She was working from theoretical knowledge alone.
Back when the two of them had been traveling, she had attempted to cook several times. Her tendency to simply follow the steps in the recipe without ever tasting or adjusting anything meant that her efforts lacked a certain spontaneity; they didn’t account for the ingredients she actually had on hand. The results were inevitably too sweet, or too spicy, or too bitter. In due course, Yukinari learned to handle the cooking himself.
“...Yuki.” Dasa’s blue eyes peered up at him through her spectacles. “Do you mean you... like Berta’s water better?”
“This is the dumbest argument I’ve ever seen... Look, it’s not about you or Berta. I just want water, period. I mean... I appreciate your making that just for me, but...”
There was a very long pause. “Fine,” Dasa said at length. With a nod, she exchanged the bottle she was holding for a different one from her bag. “It’s distilled water. Drink.”
“That seems like a little much to go through for drinking water, doesn’t it?”
Yukinari understood boiling water to kill bacteria, but specifically distilling all their drinking water would have been a laborious process. Although, to the extent that it got rid of most bad things in the water, it certainly was good to drink.
Regardless, if he continued to reject her offers, Dasa’s mood would only get worse. She wasn’t the type to shout or sulk, but her angry silence could be profound. Once she got like that, it would take a good deal of time and effort to bring her back around.