The Sabi Race (4)
They said Baekcheong would reach the summit in six days. Not sure I believed it, I sprang up onto Franc's shoulder and asked whether she could feel any Phase Power in the mountain.
"A great mass of Phase Power, gathered all in one place, can be felt near the mid-slope."
The spot she indicated lay close to the mid-slope, where the eternal snow began.
"Gathered?"
"Yes. I have come to understand it from sensing Phase Power again and again. The larger the body, the greater the Phase Power I feel — and around that great mass, smaller ones are huddled close, almost as if they were bearing the larger one up."
"Then that's the hundred and five Sabi hauling Baekcheong."
Once I'd confirmed they hadn't been lying, I jumped down from Franc's shoulder and spoke to Alkema, who was watching me with a desperate hope that I might allow her to follow.
"We're going on ahead to God's Land our own way, and we'll be waiting there. Come or don't. Suit yourself."
"=What? Ah — yes!"
Permission given, I watched Alkema bolt back the way she had come, then put a question to Kalka-kum and Ahumrek, both of whom looked worn out.
"Do you know how far the Lord of the Great Sea's domain extends?"
"=A domain... you say? This is the first I have heard of Him possessing a domain."
"You've never heard of it?"
That couldn't be right. I asked again, unable to believe it, and Kalka-kum turned to Ahumrek with a bewildered face. Ahumrek, catching her look, shook his head as if he too were hearing it for the first time, and a strange unease settled over me. Nuhodi wouldn't have lied. Was it simply that this was a different age, and the situation had changed?
"So you're saying there is no domain?"
"=Even the lore-stones hold no tale of Them possessing domains."
"...Then why did you fight the Flauvis? Wasn't it a war over domains between the Master of the Sky and the Lord of the Great Sea?"
"=It was a war of races, begun when we moved to stop the winged ones from scooping up the land of Orvinci and raising it as they pleased."
Orvinci was the land of the divine beasts, wasn't it. So the Flauvis had tried to float land out of Orvinci into the sky on their own, the Sabi had stood in their way, and a war of races had broken out? I asked whether I'd guessed right, and Kalka-kum lifted a four-fingered hand, rasped it over the knobby scales of her head, and answered.
"=It is so. In the end, the leader of the winged ones, by self-sacrifice, raised a single handful of earth into the air, and the winged ones boarded that island and departed, every last one. I have heard the ugly scar of it still remains in Orvinci."
They kept calling the Flauvis the winged ones. These lot really hated them.
"Hm. Then do you happen to know anything that looks like this?"
With a Blue Space Wall I shaped a Meo Azitos — a horned demon with blue skin — and set the figure before Kalka-kum and Ahumrek. Both Sabi let out a groan and took a step back.
"=Bolgul..."
"=Why do you inquire after these accursed things?"
"You call them Bolgul, not Meo Azitos? I've got a grudge against these bastards too. I've been hunting them, but I don't know where they live. If you know, tell me."
Hearing me out, Kalka-kum and Ahumrek didn't seem to care about the name one way or the other. What stalled them was being asked for a location. I could feel them wavering on the edge of speech, so I folded my arms and waited, and at last Ahumrek opened his eyes and addressed me with careful gravity.
"=Through all the long years past, I have never once met an Akur with a face like yours. Kalka-kum seems to take every word you speak as truth, and your claim of a grudge against the accursed ones seems true as well... and yet I do not believe we have anything to tell you."
The instant he finished and let out his breath, Franc slipped a question into the gap.
"Does the reason lie in Orvinci, the place you call the land of the divine beasts?"
I caught the faint flinch that ran through him. Without Spatial Perception, I might have missed it.
"If you can't tell me where those things are, then at least tell me where this Orvinci is. You can't even do that?"
I asked because their faces twisted further with every word, and it was getting absurd. Kalka-kum sighed, caught Ahumrek by the shoulder, and drew him back.
What a pain. Should I just slap a mind-control on them and wring it out? The thought had barely formed when a premonition screamed a warning sharp enough to ice the nape of my neck.
What was that? Was prying into Orvinci the dangerous part? Or was it forcing the answers with mind-control that wouldn't be allowed?
It went past cold into the prick of needles, and I swallowed hard.
"Even if I killed every last one of the Sabi, you still wouldn't tell me where Orvinci is, would you?"
"=Th... that is so."
"And the two of you are the only ones who know?"
"=Yes."
Hmm. I didn't know whether the four divine beasts lived in the land of the divine beasts, or whether it was only a place they had once lived. What seemed certain was that the races who served those four had dwelt there. The problem was why the Flauvis had fought only the Sabi — no. Maybe they hadn't fought only the Sabi.
"Let me ask a few more things. Why did the Flauvis try to scoop up the land of the divine beasts on their own? And were your people the only ones who stood against them?"
"=...I believe it was on account of the Bolgul. We led the war, yet a portion of the Luclang and the Merianol took the field as well. Thinking on it now, I wonder whether the winged ones, fearing the accursed ones, did not mean to depart for a place where they could never be met at all."
So telling me the location was the trouble. Talking history didn't seem to be restricted.
In any case, just as Kalka-kum said, among the races I'd seen under torture in that vision there had been a winged woman. Add her guess to that, and had the Flauvis done what they did to avoid fighting the Bolgul? If so, I could roughly see what came after. Those things had gone after the Flauvis first. The Flauvis, realizing it, had raised an island into the sky even at the cost of war with the other races, then stolen the whales' clouds and hidden the island beneath them.
"Are the Luclang and the Merianol the races who serve the Master of the Beasts and the Master of the Earth?"
"=They are."
"Can you tell me what kind of things the Bolgul are?"
"=They... are said to have been, in the beginning, a single race, pure and beautiful. But they were bewitched by something and fell, and for the sake of power and pleasure they became the worst of creations, not even shrinking from interbreeding with mindless monsters. I once read a passage suggesting the winged ones may have been their next target."
"May have been... So there was a chance they weren't?"
"=Yes. But they chose not to seek aid from the other races. They chose flight — and a flight that tore away a portion of Orvinci. Thereafter the Four Divine Beasts would not permit us, nor the other three races, to dwell in Orvinci, and so we were scattered."
"The Luclang and the Merianol as well?"
"=Yes."
For some reason, I found myself thinking that if I wanted to find those blue-skinned demon bastards and all their names, I would have to seek out the races who served the other divine beasts.
"Do you know where I'd have to go to meet the Luclang and the Merianol?"
"=We have scarcely any dealings with them, and so we do not know."
The more I asked Kalka-kum, the stronger the hunch grew that Orvinci, the land of the divine beasts, was the last destination I was meant to reach — as if everything would be settled there. And I realized that the age Nuhodi had lived in and this age were separated by a considerable span of time.
Putting the murals I'd seen on the Floating Sky Islands together with Nuhodi's account, I had assumed the Four Divine Beasts had fallen out, their domains had split, and the blue-skinned demon bastards sat at the center where those domains met.
Ah, I didn't know what was what anymore. Forget it. My goal wasn't saving those things. It was wiping them out. No reason to rack my brain over something this annoying.
Find them. Kill them. Simple is best.
I buried the tangle of thoughts, put on an ordinary face, and turned to the platoon of high-tier subspecies. The ones that had been bobbing about and sniffing the air snapped smartly into ranks and files.
"If we just Space Leap straight to the top, these things are going to be a problem."
Franc seemed to have read my mood. She smiled quietly and spoke.
"We have a guide. We need only bid them follow the guide upward. They are lively even in winter, so they ought to keep pace well enough even through the eternal snow. The slope is somewhat steep, but climbing along the ridge does not appear difficult."
"Hm. Then we'll just walk up too. If they can't keep up, we kill them and go on by ourselves."
For a moment I thought the high-tier subspecies shivered. Had I imagined it?
A little later Alkema came running back astride a Dilaik loaded with saddle and pack. When she heard we meant to climb the mountain rather than take the caves, she went blank and flustered — then composed herself almost at once and declared that she would guide the way.
"=Wear this, and go."
"=Wh— Mother?"
Kalka-kum stripped off a dawn-sky robe stained with earth, brushed the dust from it, and pulled it over Alkema. Alkema fidgeted at the robe her mother had dressed her in, as if it meant something, then set her face in hard resolve and spoke.
"=I will go, and I will return."
"=Pray, take care of yourself."
Anyone watching would have thought they were parting for life.
I watched, half incredulous, as Alkema clung to Kalka-kum and Ahumrek with tears brimming in her eyes, then turned to start up the mountain — only for her to hurry after me and point another way.
"=The path up the mountain is a different one. This way!"
She finished and took off at a run. I moved to follow, and Franc reached out, set me on her shoulder, and strode after her in long steps.
We doubled back along the way we had come for a long while. The buildings thinned, the streets grew quiet, and just as it began to feel as though we had reached the city's outskirts, a well-packed dirt road appeared and ran on between the vast mountain gorges.
Mt. Veltical, like any other high mountain, wore trees and grassland spread like a carpet wherever the snow had not yet settled. We led thirty-five high-tier subspecies up the road that wound through it like a highland highway, and little by little the air grew colder. Weeds began to grow only here and there.
The trees grew fewer, and those that remained twisted into the look of withered old snags. At the same time traces of snow began to show. The wind blew hard, and now and then flurries whipped past.
I looked up, thinking it might be snowing, but the sky was a flawless clear blue without a single cloud. When the wind came hard again, I swept the surroundings with Spatial Perception and saw that it was snow from the eternal snowfields, lifted and scattered on the gusts.
"When are the monsters going to show?"
"Judging by the Phase Power I sense higher up, I believe they will not appear until we have at least crossed the region of eternal snow."
"Are there a lot of them?"
"So far as my sense of Phase Power can tell... setting aside those I cannot distinguish because they overlap, it would seem to exceed twenty thousand."
Quite a few, inside a hundred kilometers. I asked Alkema what kind of things they were, hoping for some information, and she launched into a noisy rant, her face thick with disgust and contempt, calling them pests that periodically ravaged the crops and the livestock in the pastures.
Whatever. I'd deal with them when they came. I turned my attention to Darky, who had been acting strange for a while.
He was draped over me in the shape of a breastplate. He had been nodding off even before we met Kalka-kum, and once we entered Hebult he seemed to have fallen asleep entirely — no reaction when I poked him, and no answer when I spoke.
"Asleep, or something else... I don't know the habits of a Dark Matter Slime, so I'm worried all this extra sleep means something's wrong with him."
"His Phase Power is calm, and he does not appear to be in poor condition. Surely there is no need to worry?"
"Even so..."
I was still a little uneasy, so I drew TP into my hand and ran it over his body. He squirmed, then pushed out a face heavy with sleep.
"Mmnn...?"
"You all right? Haven't you been sleeping way too much?"
"Just... sleepy..."
"You're not sick or anything?"
"Sleep... too much... uuuh."
Well, damn.
He couldn't even hold the breastplate shape anymore and started to slough off in a drip, so I coated my hands in TP and kneaded him. He flinched, twitched, and went into a little spasm.
"If you're going to sleep, just crawl into the inside pocket of my jacket and sleep there. Yeah?"
"Okaaay..."
Darky gathered himself in a slow crawl and shrank until he was no bigger than Thumbelina, then failed to climb the cloth at all. He flailed, rolled off, and I caught him and tucked him into the inner pocket. Franc, who had been watching, looked up the steep face of Mt. Veltical and spoke.
"There may be something upon this mountain that is affecting Darky."
"Wonder if it's because of the place they call God's Land. You don't feel anything, Franc?"
"Hmm. Perhaps because I slept so long through the flood, I am not sleepy at all?"
I snorted a laugh at Franc, who was smiling with a playful glint.
I lifted my head and enjoyed the cold wind combing over my face and body, then turned Phase Power outward to push back the chill trying to sink into me, and looked around. Between Franc's long stride and her quick pace, the world around us had already become a snow mountain buried in pure white — a region with no color but white, set against the yellow-green land spread far below.
It was no trouble for Franc, all of forty meters tall, but Alkema on her Dilaik and the troop of thirty-five high-tier subspecies were sinking nearly a meter into the snow with every step, struggling to plow through it as they followed. Their bodies were tough enough that I wouldn't have thought snow could matter, yet it was getting in their way more than I'd expected.
Franc was sweeping the ground with her feet as she walked, clearing a path, so the high-tier subspecies coming behind managed to keep up well enough. The Dilaik under Alkema at the front, though, was being whipped into a bounding, half-jumping gait, and it was far too slow. At this rate we'd be sleeping in the snow... No. I could raise a Blue Space Wall and sleep on top of it. Did it even matter?
From Franc's shoulder I watched Alkema drive the Dilaik with everything she had, as if being overtaken would be a disaster, while Franc now and then glanced back and sent a killing look at any high-tier subspecies that lagged — and so we headed for the summit of Mt. Veltical.
The path had been narrowing little by little since we entered the snow, and by the time we had crossed about half the stretch of eternal snow it had grown too narrow for a body Franc's size to pass at all.
Alkema had somehow managed to guide us even where the snow lay deep, but once we reached ground where stone outweighed soil she could go no farther. Her face troubled, she blew white breath like a dragon's Breath and spoke.
"=Ah, uh. From here — huff. The path grows too narrow... If a giant tries to pass, the way itself may collapse."
I checked ahead with Spatial Perception. The ground wasn't solid enough to bear Franc's weight, and the path had narrowed to three meters. If she set a foot down, it looked ready to give way at once. Alkema looked up at me where I sat on Franc's shoulder, as if to ask what we meant to do, and I answered at my ease, as though it were nothing.
"We'll go on ahead to where the eternal snow ends and wait. You bring those things up along the path."
"=What? Y-yes..."
Alkema's face said she had no idea how we intended to go on ahead. Then she shook her head, turned the Dilaik, and pushed on through the snow.
The Dilaik's stamina was something else. It had been bounding along for about five hours and still showed no sign of tiring. Move that far and even ability users would be gasping — and in fact, among the high-tier subspecies, the ones that weren't Physical Reinforcement types were puffing white breath as if they meant to die. Even plowing through the snow, the beast never once complained, just kept moving in silence. Good temperament. Make something like that into a mount, and it would be a real help to our raid team. Before we headed back, I ought to see if I could get my hands on an egg or something.
"Follow the lizard ahead, and proceed with diligence."
At Franc's command the high-tier subspecies started after Alkema. Terror filled all thirty-six pairs of eyes — the loyalty I'd planted mixed with the fear Franc inspired, and the result looked desperate.
For the record, our elevation was nine kilometers. For an ordinary person it was an extreme that might already have killed them: altitude sickness, cold, and the brutal conditions of a snow mountain, all at once. They were enduring it only because they were High-Tier Variants.
Alkema kept glancing back as she went. The moment she turned her head forward, Franc and I unfolded a Space Leap to a point five kilometers above her head.
"Shall we rest here?"
"Let us."
We took a spot with a clear view of Alkema and the others on the move, and I spread a Blue Space Wall wide enough for Franc to rest in comfort. Right — I ought to make her something to sit on, too. I shaped a passable beach chair, and she sat down with a faint smile.
As for me... I crawled in through a gap in the scaled hide at the nape of her neck and settled into the cleft of her chest.
"Warm, and soft, and snug. So this is paradise..."
"Good heavens."
I squirmed between her breasts, and Franc, as if she had given up by now, simply let it be and turned her gaze toward Alkema and the rest.
Come to think of it, I'd bought a shelter and never once used it. I had no desire to rest easy while leaving Franc out here by herself, so I'd save it for when she shrank down to something nearer my size.