1

Checking the room several times in the light of her oil lamp and judging it clear of pests, Izumi finally set her blanket on the floor. The bed in the corner was obviously not in the condition to be used, with its rotten-through mattress and cracked frame. The blackened floorboards looked downright luxurious in comparison.

“Good graces, whatever is so funny?” Izumi listened to the howling laughter coming from downstairs.

Setting down her backpack beside Izumi’s spot, Millanueve started to take off her uniform without a word. Seeing a well-rounded bust and a finely toned waistline emerge from under the padded coat and vest, the summoned champion had to face away, to keep her blood pressure under control.

Could it be, I just got really, really lucky?

“Finally it’s just the two of us,” Millanueve suddenly spoke.

“Eeh!?” Izumi bounced up at once.

“For a chance to talk!” the girl clarified. “Privately! In peace and quiet! Don’t get any weird ideas!”

“T-talk, huh...?” The older woman’s tension dropped at once.

“Of course! I’m a normal person! Normal!” the knight insisted, looking flustered. “It’s all because of your earlier nonsense that things got so weird! Now, with no one else to overhear us, you will answer me truthfully, yes? You said you would!”

“Right.” Izumi sat back down.

I may not be all that normal myself, though. Which is probably not what you want to hear right now.

“So, where are you coming from?” Millanueve proceeded with her questions, while spreading her coat to dry on the closet by the wall. Her tone turned lighter, friendlier. More alluring, though she probably didn’t mean it. “Your name doesn’t sound Imperial. What does a woman like you want in Alderia? It must be a matter of great importance, for you to risk your life for it.”

“Well,” Izumi replied. “I doubt you’d believe me, even if I were to be honest.”

“If you promise to tell me the truth, then I will also promise to believe you,” the girl assured her.

“Okay then,” Izumi nodded. “I was actually born on another planet, and got teleported to this one by the magic of a Divine spirit. And I’m on my way to Alderia to learn a healing spell from the elves, because I drank something bad and will fall apart unless they help me. That’s the gist of it.”

Izumi braced herself for a lot of insulted yelling.

Instead, what she received was total silence.

Millanueve sat down on her knees, now dressed only in a white shirt and briefs, and her voluminous, curling hair flowed down her slim shoulders unrestrained. It took nothing less but masterful self-control for Izumi to keep looking at the girl without making weird faces, keeping her gaze off girl’s pale thighs.

The young knight kept quiet for a time, her blue eyes examining Izumi.

Then, with naught but apparent sincerity in her tone, Millanueve finally said,

“I believe you.”

“Huh?” Izumi was surprised, a bit startled even.

Never did she dare to expect such a gentle response.

But Millanueve de Guillon was too young and sheltered to have developed the level of cynicism that made one suspect everyone and everything. She hadn’t yet experienced the bitter betrayals and heartbreaks that each person goes through on the way to adulthood, and could so put her faith in Izumi’s word, no matter how absurd it was, only because it was presented as the truth.

That wholehearted trust made something jolt in Izumi’s chest. A ticklish warmth spread throughout her, profound affection that relieved the tension in her shoulders.

I’m really too easy, aren’t I?

“I do hope you find what you’re looking for,” Millanueve told her.

“Ah, I hope that too,” Izumi said, looking away. “T-then, we should go to sleep now. It’ll be another early wake up tomorrow...”

“But I have more questions.”

“There’s more!?”

“Of course? I’ve barely gotten started!”

“Give me a break.”

“For example, yes...” Millanueve leaned forward. “What is your relationship with Heaven’s Hand?”

“Relationship?” Izumi repeated.

“The greatest hero of our age follows you around like a dutiful watch dog. Even to the maws of death. Did he really abandon the Divine Lords in favor of a human girl? It sounds like something out of a romantic fable. Could humans truly be so lucky?”

“When you put it like that, it does sound incredible. Even though the reality is hardly anything so fortunate or glamorous...And you’ve got it all wrong!”

“Then what is the truth?”

“Why are you so interested in that, anyway?” Izumi asked. “Are guys like him your type?”

“I just like beautiful stories,” Millanueve answered.

“There’s nothing beautiful about that story though. On top of it being too long.”

“We have a long night ahead of us. Why don’t you tell me?”

“Not that long.”

“Then give me an abridged version,” the girl requested.

“Take the hint already!” Izumi told her. “I don’t want to talk about it!”

“Well? What kind of a relationship is it?”

“What are you, twelve? Forget it!”

“Hmm...”

Unrelenting, Millanueve crawled over and pursued Izumi’s eyes, as if to extract the truth directly form her gaze.

“I don’t know why he’s following me, really!” the woman said, turning away. “I sure did nothing to woo him. And I’ve no idea what goes through that guy’s mind in general. There’s no relationship of any kind between us! To begin with I’m more interested in—well, never mind...”

“What? Tell me. You already started.”

“It’s nothing, geez!”

“Hm-hm,” Millanueve made a haughty grin. “Let’s leave it at that then. Your special relationship.”

“Give it a rest already!” Izumi lost her temper and turned back, raising her voice.

She had expected Millanueve to retreat, but the girl kept still instead. The two ended up staring at each other, blinking, their faces nary an inch apart.

“...Um, sorry?” Izumi crumbled under the tension and turned away.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, though...” Millanueve mumbled and averted her eyes. “I was the one teasing you.”

“T-that’s true.”

“Is it so important to you, what I think? We’re just strangers to one another, aren’t we?”

“Well, I just don’t want to have any more regrets.”

“Regrets? What do you mean by that?”

“...Go to sleep.”

Izumi laid down on her blanket, pulled her coat over for cover, and turned her back on Millanueve. The young soldier did the same, resting her upper body on her backpack. Of course, even with a blanket or two, the uneven floorboards were far from a comfortable bed.

“You are full of mysteries,” Millanueve said.

“No, I’m a boring woman with absolutely no mysteries,” Izumi denied.

“I don’t think so.”

“You’ll only be disappointed then.”

“We only just met, but I feel safe around you. Isn’t that strange?”

“You’re too trusting. Bad people will take advantage of that.”

“You’re not one of such people.”

“And how do you know that?”

“That’s the way I feel. Only talking to you really puts me at ease.”

“People can’t be saved by words.”

“No. Words can take lives, and words can save them. That’s what I think.”

“Well, think what you want. I’m going to sleep now.”

“Could I...come a little bit closer? Would that be okay? Is it weird?”

The timid question made Izumi swallow.

“I don’t think that’d be a good idea right n...” she began to say.

Before finishing her sentence, Izumi felt the weight of a person slam forcefully against her, a smaller back pressing against her own. Through the contact, she could sense the other person tremble distinctly, with an occasional, suppressed shudder.

“I can’t believe it...You really are a kid.”

Turning around, feeling only slightly disappointed, Izumi reached out her arm and awkwardly comforted the fearfully sobbing girl.

2

The long hours of the night passed, darkness veiling the hamlet and the little house therein. Waramoti kept watch while writing his notes, one ear always open. The fire in the rusted stove faded, but a lamp was kept burning on the floor, as the other watchmen would have been helpless without it. An inexplicable sense of discomfort urged Waramoti to turn it off, though he refrained in favor of continuing his writing. He woke Stefan a bit after midnight and laid down for a few brief hours of rest.

Stefan Sileaur was no adventurer, but guard duty was more than familiar to him. He took a seat in a chair by the door, feeling more at home than ever before in the prior weeks. He watched over the sleepers, thinking back on Benedict’s words. In all the years he had known the old soldier, Stefan had never seen such a side of him, such desperation. Benedict had risked a fight with the legendary Heaven’s Hand for their sake, and it had made Stefan respect the man even more than before.

Could he have done the same, if it were up to him? No way.

Stefan detested the cowardice that lingered in his heart even now.

Surely, a true man of courage would take any path necessary to save his comrades, even if it meant making himself a villain in the process. Even if it meant stabbing the slumbering warrior in the back, while he was asleep and unaware, then to lead the others back home, away from this terrible nightmare.

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Shortly, Stefan’s empty fantasy ended and he recalled his own inadequacy. He was perfectly aware that he had not the skill to navigate the infernal marsh, the wit and will to take charge, never mind the courage to bring out his knife. The very thought of approaching Waramoti’s resting form was altogether impossible. He would have rather put a bell on a lion. Stefan continued to sit with a wry smile on his face as the night crawled on, turning his thoughts to the beautiful forests and pastures of Ludgwert in spring, and the family that restlessly awaited his return.

Halfway through the first period, Stefan woke up Magnus. A pitiful task. The chubby knight had always had a hard time getting up for watch, but he had to do his part, the same as everyone else. It took a good while to bring the drowsy young man to his senses and make him remember where he was. How cruel that awareness!

“Anything happen?” Magnus bravely gathered his fortitude and asked, pulling on his coat. The chill night air sneaking in through the many gaps in the walls had made his voice coarse and barely audible.

“Not a dang thing,” Stefan replied. “You can take it easy.”

“Can you stay up for a little while longer?” Magnus asked. “I gotta go take a leak.”

“Sure. Just don’t fall asleep while on it.”

“Ha, ha. I just might.”

Magnus stepped outside.

The abandoned town looked less unsettling than he had expected, the buildings’ blurred silhouettes faintly visible in the dark. As if the owners of those houses weren’t really gone, only asleep, and this was no different from the many similar hamlets in the outskirts of the barony. Magnus bemused how at home he had started to feel, despite the grim history of the place and the bleak marshland surrounding it.

The horses were bound around the corner, by the neighboring house, which had a suitable shelter. The villagers had had horses in the past, but just like their owners, the animals were now gone without a trace. The knight’s mounts were shifting restlessly and kicking the ground, though no cause for concern could be seen. Perhaps, with their keen instincts, they could pick up the lingering terror that had seeped into the ground and the deserted buildings?

Magnus shuddered, walking across the street.

An appropriate distance away, across the lane, he started to unbuckle his belt. While about his business, he glanced east, towards the pale shape of the mansion—and the enormous pit facing it.

A mass grave?

Could it really be true, that the settlers had all been slaughtered and cast down there, without a due process or even a proper burial? Why hadn’t the killers filled the cavity after the deed? How had the pit stayed open and clean, without its soft walls crumbling, for all this time? It didn’t seem natural. If there was one mad and abhorrent thing about this otherwise plain, drowsy settlement, it was that anomalous hole.

The sooner they got away from here, the better, as pleasant as the visit had been.

Finished with his business, Magnus turned to head back inside.

The horses wouldn’t settle down. They were making even more noise now, neighing nervously, tossing their heads and pulling their binds.

“It’s just me, you idiots,” the man told them, and looked around once again, just to be sure. Indeed, he could see nothing out of the ordinary along the ragged village street.

Then, approaching the porch, he happened to look up—and froze mid-step.

“What is that…?”

It was difficult to tell what he was looking at in the dark, but there was no way it was a natural part of the building. A strange, large shadow clung onto the wall. A bulging, bent, uneven mass strewn all over the facade, like a malformed tree branch. Staring at the thing, squinting his eyes, Magnus soon saw that the shape was not some inert attachment or vegetation, but moved, with deliberation.

The sheer revulsion made Magnus hold his tongue no more.

“AAAAAAHH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

Going back into the house meant passing right under that blasphemous form, a thought almost more abhorrent than Magnus could bear, but he had to warn the others. His sense of duty ultimately overrode his terror and disgust and, avoiding looking up, he sprinted straight for the door, screaming. He jumped over the brief flight of bent stairs, onto the veranda. Upon landing, his right leg sank through the decayed boarding, making him fall flat on his stomach, a few steps from the door. In a frenzy, he pulled and kicked his leg, which took considerable effort to retract from the hole, and then, half-crawling, half-stumbling, got up, clutched at the door, and tore it open.

“WAKE UP, WAKE UP, WAKE UP!” he howled into the house.

Stefan was ready. Waramoti and the others had been woken up by the initial scream and were also quickly up on their feet.

Almost crying from the relief, Magnus quickly reported,

“Guys, there’s something out there, I don’t know what it—”

Before the soldier could finish his sentence, something seized both his ankles. In one violent yank, his legs were pulled from under him and Magnus fell down again. Before the astonished eyes of the people inside, he was swiftly pulled out of the open doorway, into the night.

3

Izumi had been awake for a while now. She had stirred at unsettling sounds, light taps, scratching, and sweeping, like something being dragged upward along the outer wall. Whatever it was, it was too big to be a squirrel. The horses were making awfully lot of noise too, which probably meant trouble, but Izumi was too tired to get up and have a closer look. Wondering if the cause of the racket would go away if only she ignored it, she resolved to go back to sleep. Indeed, if Waramoti hadn’t taken action yet, then it was probably nothing worth getting up for.

There was no more sleep to be had, though.

Next, Magnus’s cries of terror rang out, waking up Millanueve.

“What was that?” the girl jumped up with the exemplary alertness of a soldier. “That was Magnus just now!”

Rather than rushing downstairs in her immodest state of dress, Millanueve’s first reaction was to go to the window and peer outside. It turned out harder than expected. Something covered visibility and it was not the natural dark of the night. Millanueve couldn’t recall the window being boarded up from outside, but there was clearly a dark shape draped over the opening.

Looking closer, her eyes started to pick out vaguely familiar shapes in the obstacle.

Familiar to a disturbing extent.

Staring back at the girl through the stained glass panel was an unmistakably human face. Human but also horribly aberrant, like scornful, sinister mockery of man. That face lacked eyes, with only empty, withered sockets in their place. The nose was merely a crushed pair of holes in the hideous mien. The mouth gaped unnaturally open, the jaws sporting sparse, rotten teeth, and the skin was but a thin-worn sheet tightened over the bones.

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE——!?!”

Millanueve couldn’t hold back her shocked scream.

Perhaps provoked by her voice, the thing outside immediately lashed at her.

The window broke in with a crash, and long, dark arms reached for the girl. True enough, they were arms, with large hands, sinewy fingers, way more of them than was one person’s share, groping for her wrists, her elbows, shoulders, hair, anything they could get a hold of through the hole in the glass, trying to drag her outside.

They couldn’t make it quite that far, however.

In the next moment, the Langorian greatsword flashed past Millanueve’s face and plunged into the struggling mass of limbs. It was received with a horrid chorus of anguished howls, as if from a multitude of mouths. Izumi stepped beside the girl and pulled her aside, while muttering something under her breath.

“Gram.”

Pulling her sword back, the woman kicked at the dark mass outside the window. A nauseating, squishing sound of rupturing followed the impact, and more of that infernal wailing, almost deafeningly loud. Next came hideous scratching, like countless nails on boards, as something very heavy struggled to regain its hold. It failed in the effort and went plummeting down to the ground below, shaking the whole house in the process.

“A...a….ah…!”

Kneeling on the floor, Millanueve looked down at herself to see if she had been hurt, and saw her chest and arms covered in the black, stinking blood of the abomination that had attacked them. Or was it her own? She couldn’t tell in the dark. Whatever it was, it was filthy, filthy, filthy, and she wiped furiously to get it off her hands.

“Come on.” Then, Izumi was by her side again, pulling the girl up by the arm. “Grab your stuff, it’s about time we checked out of Hilton.”

4

Downstairs, Waramoti acted quickly. He chased after Magnus, who was dragged out to the street, and came face-to-face with one of the strangest things he had ever seen.

“A sword, give me a sword!” he shouted back into the cabin.

Stefan drew his blade and turned the handle to the bard, who seized it and charged without hesitation, at the grotesque thing holding poor Magnus. But as bravely as he started out, even the seasoned warrior hesitated before this foe, for he couldn’t tell with good confidence where to aim his blows.

In front of Waramoti wriggled a creature resembling a gigantic centipede, but of a far less natural composition. Even in the dark, he could see that its body was composed of numerous intertwined and haphazardly blended figures, all unquestionably humanoid, naked and deteriorated, their bony arms functioning like so many legs.

Striking those arms wherever he could reach, Waramoti attempted to free Magnus, who clung onto dirt and tufts of grass to keep from being dragged away. But the creature was far from willing to surrender him, and the wounds Waramoti inflicted weren’t severe enough to drive it off. Even if skin was easily cut and muscles rent, bone was harder to hack through with a simple sword than one might expect. Showing great resilience to pain and injury, the abomination used its swirling supply of arms to shield the main body, while slowly retreating, Magnus along, towards the pit down the street.

The other knights were reluctant to join the fray, following the course of events in horror from further back.

“Oil!” Waramoti shouted at them. “Bring oil! All that we have! And fire!”

Breaking from terror’s hold, Benedict rushed to the cart to look for an oil canister. Meanwhile Stefan returned into the house to light sticks in the small flame of the lamp.

“Help me!” Magnus cried, clawing at the ground, powerless to resist the creature. “Help me! Help me, help me—AAARRRRGGHH!”

His legs were left under the squirming mass of flesh, and mauled under its shifting weight. Defying the randomly swinging arms in an effort to break the knight free, Waramoti drove his sword deep into the main body of the abomination. But whether he hit anything vital or not, the creature showed no sign of submitting. Squealing like a crowd of frightened children, the monstrosity jolted sideways. Waramoti received a nasty punch in the forehead and his side, which knocked him off his feet, and made him lose the weapon.

“Here!”

Benedict returned with the oil canister and, going as near the creature as he dared, dowsed it with a generous helping of the precious liquid, while taking care to avoid his struggling comrade. Now all that was missing was the fire.

Right on cue, Stefan came running, a torch in hand. However, the bright flames hindered his vision in the dark. He tripped on the cracked, uneven pavement and fell, the flaming stick released from his grip. Recovering from his blunder, Stefan quickly crawled over to retrieve the torch—but froze before reaching it.

In the torch’s light, Stefan found himself staring at the figure of another man crawling in the grass, as if to mirror him. A bald, naked male form of a sickly green complexion, the body both starved and malformed, missing its eyes. The ghastly figure raised itself, and continued to rise, higher and higher, and Stefan could see that clinging onto it, merged into it, were more people, all equally decayed and revolting. Seeing the familiar and noble human form twisted in the likeness of a mindless parasite drove all rational thought from the soldier’s mind.

Giving up on the torch out of panic and disgust, Stefan backed away from the abomination, which ignored the fire and pursued him, driven by the numerous arms and an apparent lust for murder.

Waramoti wasn’t one to lose spirit easily, but even he had to admit that the situation was dire. The monster they were fighting wasn’t alone. There were at least two, maybe even more. He looked again at poor Magnus, nearly buried under the abominable worm of corrupt flesh and limbs. The fire was out of reach. Meanwhile, Stefan was about to share Magnus’s fate, wrestling with the second creature. Waramoti could probably still save himself if he abandoned the others now and made escaping his priority. If so, he had to make the choice now. He glanced at Benedict, who only answered him with an equally helpless look.

But not everything was yet lost.

The revolting centipede attacking Stefan abruptly fell apart, severed in the middle. The disconnected halves were left writhing helplessly on the ground, hair-raising wailing from a multitude of mouths ringing into the night.

In spite of his inactivity so far, Alexander de Guillon hadn’t fled the battle.

At the start of the horror, his first instinct had been to find his sister, and now the two returned, with Izumi in tow. Cut by Izumi’s magically strengthened blow, the dissected abomination came under attack by Millanueve and her brother, who pulled Stefan away and helped him back up to his feet.

“Get the horses,” Millanueve told the older man. “As soon as we get Magnus, we’re out of here.”

“A-aye, ma’am!”

Meanwhile Izumi caught up with the front line.

The second abomination was on the edge of the pit already, retreating while clinging tightly onto Magnus, like a spider with a captured maggot. The knight had either resigned to his fate or passed out from the pain, and made no sound. Probably only greed kept the horror from yet slipping away, thinking it could get another victim to take with it. The creature kept shifting its attention between Waramoti, Izumi, and Benedict, as if unable to decide which to take first.

“We need fire,” the bard told the woman.

Smelling the pungent stench of oil, Izumi shoved her greatsword in the man’s hands.

“Then you pull aggro for a bit.”

As senseless as her instructions were, the bard could infer the gist of it by the context. Gripping the ancient sword with both hands, he briskly approached the monster from the front.

“Hey, you filthy load of filth from the lowest cesspool of the underworld,” he called out to draw the creature away from Benedict. “Why don’t you come over here and I’ll show you how they treat party-crashes at Ugwunda!”

Whereas Ludgwertan steel had failed to cut through the tough bones and sinews of the monster, the Langorian relic was different. In Waramoti’s able hands, the Amygla sliced through the limbs flailing at him, as if they were no more than blades of grass. To escape the man and the reach of his dreadful weapon, the abomination raised its elongated form high up in the air, letting out a heart-rending chorus of accusing screams. Recognizing that the enemy was too much trouble, the thing was about to slip down into the abyss it had likely crawled from.

But it was then that Izumi made her move.

Dashing in from the side, she reached past the arms and drew a letter of the ancient language onto the monster’s damp hide.

“Brandt.”

Lit by the Rune of Ignition, the creature’s body caught fire in an instant. And as soon as the magically generated flames reached the oil splattered over it, the fire was invigorated into a brilliant, blooming blaze, engulfing the sickening form all over, rising along its uplifted body.

The tormented shrieking of withered tongues now turned maddening, as the monster violently swayed from side to side in the futile effort to escape the heat. At the same time, Izumi and Waramoti defied danger to grab Magnus and pulled him out from under the beast. The horrifying pillar of burning meat slowly bent back and fell into the darkness behind it.

However, even as the creature plunged into its demise, the light of its accursed pyre illuminated a sight more dreadful by far. Catching a brief glimpse of the nightmare many times beyond what they had just narrowly evaded, the survivors tripled their efforts, and sprinted away from the pit as quickly as they reasonably could, carrying the injured knight with them.

The others had unbound the horses and readied the cart meanwhile, onto which they now loaded injured Magnus. The knight hadn’t yet regained consciousness, but neither did they have the time to stop and ascertain his condition. Stopping was altogether unthinkable. As soon as they were all safely on horseback or in the cart, the crew departed from the unnamed hamlet and never gave a single look back.

The fellowship fled southward as fast as they dared in the difficult terrain. Fortunately, the horses had better senses than their riders, and they were spared of crippling accidents on the way. In the cart, Benedict tried to treat Magnus, but the ride was rocky and it was yet too dark. Soon, he found that holding on and keeping himself and the patient from being flung overboard was all he could. After they had put some distance to the terrible village, Benedict raised his voice to plead the driver, Waramoti, that they stopped to confirm everyone’s status.

To this, the bard answered with immediate denial.

“We can’t stop now,” he said. “The night still lingers. Since it’s come to this, we have no choice but to keep on the move till daybreak.”

“Why?” Stefan called out, riding close behind the cart. “Whatever those...things were, they can’t possibly keep up with us! We should be safe now!”

“Safe?” the former warrior scoffed. “Those creatures are not the only threat that prowls the nights of Henglog. A great many beasts hunt in the dark. Deadlier ones. And I cannot be sure we’ll be safe even on horseback. The best we can do is keep moving and pray the Divines that we’ll live to see dawn.”

“Damn it,” Benedict shouted. “Magnus isn’t going to make it!”

“Then sing for his memory. Keep the man still. We’ll treat him when it gets lighter.”

The group rode on through the early hours of the new day, depending on their mounts’ senses to guide them. Since the cart was full, Izumi rode with Millanueve. Alexander rode at the front, Stefan in the back. After the shocking wake up, no one was particularly sleepy. Time flew under the nervous tension and thrill of the escape, no one speaking a word.

Izumi held tightly onto Millanueve, more scared of falling off than any earthly adversary. At times the horse stumbled, or made sudden turns, bringing the riders so close to the ground that Izumi could have touched the land by reaching out her hand. At times they got splashed with water and even became half-submerged, crossing through deeper puddles. But thanks to the mounts’ perseverance and the riders’ expertise, the wild ride continued. Izumi buried her face in Millanueve’s hair and squeezed her eyes shut. The girl was shorter than Yuliana. Her build wasn’t as tough, not as slim, not as upright. But, perhaps more human. Warmer.

What am I thinking, at a time like this?

“Ease up. I can’t breathe!” Millanueve timidly complained.

Maybe it was a bad idea to come here, after all?

But yet it was too soon for regrets. The first light was still hours away, and the danger far from removed, as said. This the fellowship would find out, the hard way.