The Witch and the Elf (1)
After all, soldiers were already with the flock to drive it along, and a sheepdog like Bark was expensive enough that if he lost him, Cloud—beggar that he was—would be forced to pay back a sum he could never afford. He didn't know the exact price, but by his rough estimate the dog would cost more than thirty sheep.
A forest pressed close against the city's eastern wall. He didn't know its name. He knew only that Cecile had said the witch would come out of this forest.
In the old days, people must have felled its trees to raise houses in the city, dug wild greens, and hunted game, but now—perhaps because human footsteps had grown scarce—the vegetation had run riot, and even the path people once used lay buried under a tangle of weeds. Look closer, though, and there were traces of trampled grass: footprints leading deeper into the forest. Cloud took them for the tracks of Cecile and her band of elves.
The forest was dark.
It was the middle of a bright day, well past two in the afternoon, when the sun should have been beating down at full strength—but the towering trees screened the light behind their dense canopy, lending the woods a gloomy, creeping air. It was the sort of place where, if a party of companions crept through its somber depths, one of them might quietly vanish before anyone noticed.
Face taut with tension, relying on nothing but the sound of Bark barking somewhere in the distance, Cloud sprinted breathlessly through undergrowth that seemed ready to spit something out at him at any moment—and when he finally found the dog, he found Cecile slumped beside him as well.
"Cecile!"
The moment he spotted her, Cloud ran to her in a single burst, alarm written across his face. Bark barked and wagged his tail the instant he saw him.
Cecile sat propped against a tree, barely holding herself upright, her face slack and drained.
Her half-lidded eyes made her look drowsy, but that wasn't it. She was struggling, desperately, just to move. Her forehead was slick with sweat, her hair tangled and plastered to her skin, her slender legs caked with dirt. She was out of her head, as if burning with fever.
"What on earth happened? What's wrong with you?!"
Cecile looked up at him with unfocused eyes.
"Cloud..."
"Snap out of it! Cecile!"
Cloud seized her by both shoulders and shook. Her body was burning hot, like a live coal.
"Cloud..."
She barely forced her mouth open and began to speak.
"S-suddenly... the witch appeared. The moment she did, the elves hurried me away to safety and lured her deeper into the forest..."
She went on.
"I-I was going to get out of the woods and find help, but—maybe it was something the witch did—something struck the back of my neck, and from that moment on my body just... kept losing its strength..."
"That's enough! I get the picture, so you can stop now!"
Even so, she wrung the words from her throat.
"The... the elves are in danger. You have to help them, Cloud..."
"All right, I've got it. Leave the rest to me—I'll handle it. Bark! Stay here and guard Cecile!"
"Woof!"
Thinking it over, even Cloud couldn't say why he'd done it.
He'd found Cecile hovering at death's door, and now, at her request, he was—absurdly—setting out to rescue elves? By his usual character, it made no sense at all.
For the elves' sake? Throwing himself into danger for the sake of others was something he would never, ever do. He couldn't fight to save his life—how was he supposed to rescue people he'd never even met?
Then for Cecile's sake?
He didn't know.
Cloud just kept mumbling I don't know under his breath as he walked on. If there was one thing he could point to, it was that meeting Sylvia just before had left him feeling strangely restless.
Perhaps that was exactly why he'd taken leave of his senses?
Deep inside the forest, where his feet had carried him half without thinking, stood a waterfall.
The torrent plunged straight down from the cliff's edge, and a milky mist rose from the broad pool below, cradling the fury of the falling water. It was a magnificent sight—beautiful in scale and in form alike, the kind that struck a viewer dumb with its cool grandeur.
But then something came into view that allowed no time for idle admiration.
Near the waterfall lay two elf corpses, side by side, their heads severed.
Cloud's brow furrowed.
And beside them sat a blue-haired elf woman, while a woman with long black hair stood over her, wearing not a stitch of clothing.
A picturesque waterfall for a backdrop, beheaded corpses, an elf, and a nude beauty. It was, truly, a scene out of some fever dream.
Cloud ducked hastily behind a tree trunk and eased his head out for a furtive look.
The woman's long black hair was wet, swept back so that her brow showed, and she stood in smooth, unadorned nudity without an ounce of excess flesh, her figure on shameless display.
An unknown tattoo wound its way from her thigh, across her hip, up to her navel, lending her an allure at once deadly and corrupt. Looking at her proud, unashamed bearing, Cloud understood.
This woman.
She was the witch.
Cloud looked again at the two bodies sprawled on the ground. They turned his stomach just to see, and yet the heads had come off remarkably clean. Judging by those smooth cut surfaces, he'd have guessed a blade—but the witch was naked and empty-handed. Then what had done the cutting...? Magic? If so, things were far worse. If she happened to notice him, he—a man whose fighting skill was so abysmal he lost even to teenage girls—would be slaughtered like a dog, no question about it.
"Damn it all..."
He regretted ever coming here. And he decided that running was the best option.
He was just easing backward, resolved to flee as fast as his legs would carry him, when the witch's laughter suddenly rang out.
"Is the one hiding behind the tree a beast, I wonder—or a person?"
Cloud froze solid. To think the witch had already sensed him. Cold sweat broke out along his spine, and his mind whirled so wildly he didn't know where to put himself.
Should I just bolt, now that I've been made? Damn it all.
But his wits worked fast, and he tried to imitate a beast's cry to talk his way out of it.
He pursed his lips and drew a breath—the very instant he was about to bark like a dog—
"Make a sound like a crying animal, and I may just cut half your body off along with that tree."
"Hck—hck!"
Choking off the bark mid-throat, he instead let out a strangled cough, like a man caught red-handed.
Astonishingly, she seemed to see straight through him.
"And when were you planning to come out? Show yourself while I'm offering you the chance."
Judging that escape from the witch would be difficult, Cloud steeled himself. He shook off the dread of death creeping up on him, drew a deep breath, and resolved that if he was doomed to die anyway, he would die running his mouth without fear.
What in this world would a witch fear most of all?
The moment that one thought came to him, he stripped off his shirt and tensed his upper body to make himself look as muscular as possible.
And the instant he stepped out from behind the tree, he bellowed at the witch with a boldly fearless expression.
"You damned witch!"
He found it mortifying himself.
But there was no helping it if he wanted to live. Clutching at straws, he had to do something—anything.
When Cloud shouted and revealed himself, the witch regarded him quietly, with evident interest. The elf slumped before her, too, painfully turned her head to look his way.
"Do you have any idea where you are, that you dare run riot like this?!"
Cloud strode right up to the witch and stopped, leaving a gap of some five paces between them.
She was, in a word, a beauty. Features as radiant as cut jewels, sensual eyes set with blue irises, skin so pale it looked as though it had been wet and left to dry. In her nakedness she was terrifying—and chillingly, breathtakingly beautiful.
"You've no doubt heard of me—I am the hero Ophelia!"
He roared this triumphantly, hands planted on his hips, flexing his muscle-less chest for all it was worth.
Ophelia.
A heroine he'd come to know by chance, watching a play performed in the plaza of Valois.
"Hmm?"
The witch narrowed her eyes.
"You claim to be Ophelia?"
"I do. This body is the Sword God Ophelia, known to all the world."
He squared his shoulders and answered with perfect confidence.
"The Ophelia I know is of the female sex, no?"
The witch replied, her face brimming with mockery.
"W-well, that is..."
Cloud was flustered inside. But he couldn't stop here. Having come this far, he had to press forward no matter what—live or die.
Abruptly dropping into a bow and mumbling my apologies would be just as ridiculous, after all.
The mortifying performance continued.
"A mere witch dares mock this body?!"
He roared, seizing the appendage between his legs.
"A man I am, and equipped with this magnificent piece! How dare you prattle on about me being a woman! You and I met for the very first time today—you know nothing of me, yet you presume to change my sex at your whim! To think you don't even know that the rumors floating about the world differ from the truth! Honestly, what an insufferable wench you are!"
"The Ophelia I know, I am told, is a hero praised by all the world as the Sword God. Why is it, then, that I see no sword?"
Cloud exploded.
"What need have I to draw a blade against a trifling witch such as you?! Do not try my temper with pointless questions!"
The witch said nothing for a while. She simply gazed at Cloud, an unreadable smile playing at her lips.
It was around the time the eagle circling overhead finally vanished from sight that her seductive crimson lips parted.
"What brings someone as great as Lord Ophelia to a place like this?"
"I was passing by, took a great liking to this waterfall, and stopped thinking I might bathe awhile. Then I happened to catch sight of you. It seemed you had committed murder."
"Yes. I, too, was resting at this waterfall when the elves came rushing at me without a shred of fear. I merely handled them a little."
The witch gave a low, syrupy laugh.
"You've done quite enough."
Cloud cast a glance toward the two bodies lying on the ground.
"All life has its worth. Do not take it so carelessly. What's done is done—I'll say nothing of that—but stop this now, and be gone."
"You ask me to forgive this elf, who disturbed my rest?"
She gestured at the blue-haired elf slumped before her. Cloud, without looking down at the elf, held the witch's gaze and slowly nodded.
"If you intend to stir up any more trouble, this body will not stand idly by."
It was a bluff.
Cloud was all but powerless. Not possibly powerless—utterly so, before the witch's strength; she could tear him apart as lightly as a sheet of paper. He'd count himself lucky merely not to be the one dying.
Could such a bluff possibly work?