That Is a Wolf
"A situation I expected. And yet, somehow, not the one I expected."
Black fog billowed up as if a wildfire had taken the mountain. It was the third time I had met this particular familiarity. Beside the real thing it was less than dust—but dust shaken loose from the laws of the universe was not something a person could afford to treat lightly.
"Another One. What did he set that kid to researching..."
At this hour the fellow ought to have been busy clinging to the Demon Tree, and already he had his hands on death.
"The tree must be hurting badly."
Well. Shake a sick child all you like, and nothing comes of it. I should have assumed that result from the start.
"Enough of talk only you understand. What do you mean to do now?"
Hong Yumin spoke with a scowl, a hand seal already formed between her fingers.
"I'd like to put it down, if I'm honest. But this is a sacred battle, however it looks, so I can't."
"You do live at your ease."
She sighed. Fatigue showed in the eyes that held the barrier, but she did not press me to settle the matter. Fair enough. For the company gathered here, that much was nothing worth mentioning. What mattered was whether Na Wangrang could hold. The odds said he could not. Fighting people might have been another matter. Fighting a calamity was plainly past understanding.
And yet.
This world overflowed with beings of living calamity rank, and the calamity the traitor had prepared was no more than a thunderbolt. The king of wolves stood far above that. Depending on the road of his growth... there was even a chance he would become a god.
And so the sun went down. The great bulk of the mountain hid it and spat the moon out over the horizon. The moon was round—round as the sun that had just passed beyond.
"This is a first for me."
Someone other than myself. The sight of a full moon being raised into the sky.
"A little while longer."
And then we would see a true werewolf.
"Elder. We must intervene."
One of the young werewolves near Wildflower stepped forward, a hot-blooded youth who had slipped out of the village behind his family's back.
"Be still."
"Elder!"
"Does the king's command sound like empty noise to you?"
Wildflower loosed his killing intent, and the color died out of the youth's face.
"This is the king's sacred battle. If any wretch means to interfere with that place, I will take his head with my own hands."
"...Elder, can you not see that?!"
Terror of death or not, the youth took one more step. Yamaga kicked his leg out from under him. The bone broke.
"Gaaah!!!"
"Who dares raise his voice before the king? Irreverent thing. Stay down where you fell."
"Gale of the Plains! Why—!"
A dull blow landed, and the youth's head dropped.
"If any of you want to end up like this one, step forward. I'll make you the same."
Yamaga's eyes flared. The werewolves' shoulders jerked at the danger to their king, but the four who barred the entrance left them nowhere to move.
"The king commanded us to withdraw. You would do well to put away foolish thoughts."
Wildflower delivered the last warning with a cold gaze, and the werewolves had no choice but to swallow the impulse boiling up in them.
"Are you all right?"
Ookami came up beside him to ask.
"All right how."
"Your hand, I mean."
Blood was dripping from beneath Wildflower's hand. The amount soaking his palm was nothing ordinary.
"This much? Spit on it and it mends."
"It does not seem to be only that."
He might have fooled the others. He could not fool Ookami. Wildflower's whole body was trembling, faintly.
"Tch. Hopeless at the work, and sharp only in the noticing."
"That is my strong point."
Ookami looked up at the sky.
"The moon is rising."
Far off, the moon was coming up—a full moon, making no effort to hide itself. Ookami let out a low sound of dismay.
"A full moon? How? The season should not have come yet..."
"Our king means to prove himself in earnest."
Remembering that day, Yamaga and Sharl wrapped their arms around themselves and shook.
"What, exactly, did you see of the king that day?"
"The king's true body."
The sight was still vivid. The day the moon had bared half its face. The king, as he was when he set himself free. The wildness with which he had passed judgment, in his own person, upon the reign of that lofty height.
"...That was not all of him?"
Ookami was aghast. Even the king as he stood now had already broken the limits of loyalty. There was more beyond that?
"The king is not as we are."
It was true that a werewolf grew stronger on a moonlit night. Set beside the king, it amounted to having no strength at all.
"Look well. Great Tree's Fifth Branch."
Fear and joy lived together on Wildflower's face.
Thump.
I caught Death's kick. The impact landed like a thunderclap, and the two bones that had been serving as my arms crunched and shattered completely.
"Kh—!"
I cut short the breath I had drawn without thinking. Black fog coiled at my throat. I breathed a thin thread of it out through my mouth and folded at the waist, nearly going down. A whip of fog tore through my fur, and the hairs falling before my eyes blackened and crumbled into dust.
The moon... not yet?
That I was still standing was a miracle. For hours we had traded hundreds of blows, and the damage to my body, piled up grain by grain, had finally burst its limit. Pride was the only thing keeping my knees from bending. If I had followed my heart, I would have collapsed in a blaze of glory.
"Hah. Hah."
The breath I had been forcing down tore free all at once, and the fog, as if it had been waiting for nothing else, tried to kill me from the inside. My lungs burned. It felt like chewing sand.
Then Death stepped through the black fog. He was a monster in the shape of a wolf, wrought entirely of mist, and not a trace of his original body remained. His only organ was a pair of black pupils, the sole light he gave off. He was senseless. No shard of feeling showed in him—cold, heat, or fear—nor any vigor in the way he moved. Befitting the name of death that lingers in the shadow of life, he waited for the end of the living.
The assault that had been trying to kill me a moment ago might as well have gone elsewhere. He only stared in silence, as if any further effort were unnecessary now that my time to die had come.
"Hah."
That brief stillness was a stroke of luck that barely deserved the name. Silver light poured down through the black fog, gathered to a single point like a spotlight over a stage, and wrapped itself around me. Death's gaze lifted. What he saw was surely the moon. I looked up at it, glad.
"A full moon?"
Why not a half moon...?
Before the question could finish forming, my consciousness cut out.
Thump.
Death's heart beat.
Thump.
He looked down at his own chest. The heart that ought to have been dead stirred the blood, faintly. It was an anomaly. By the laws of nature it was a thing that must not happen, and it had happened.
Thump.
The body that had gone cold began to heat. Flesh crept slowly back over a form that had already become the fog of death. Death reacted like a machine. The instant the anomaly appeared, he removed its cause, tearing out his heart and his brain. The two lumps of meat were swallowed by the fog and vanished without a trace.
His workings eased. The hesitation and the loyalty that had faintly hindered him in dealing with the living thing before him were gone. Then the last blow. Kill the wolf that had held him off so stubbornly.
"...?"
The wolf was not there. Only moonlight remained. Not even a full minute had passed.
Death's senses seeped out into the fog. The fog was his domain. A wolf torn with wounds could not have gone far. A growl caught in those senses, and it was not far off. The direction was—
Behind him?
Something seized his head. One hand. Impossible, at a wolf's size.
His senses were slammed downward. Hard stone rose to meet him. A crack ran through the skull—a flaw, in a head as hard as adamant.
"Awooooooo!!!"
The wolf roared, and the roar blew the fog to pieces. The sticky mist that had cradled death was crushed beneath a higher presence and annihilated. Death felt his senses being throttled, savagely. Perhaps it was only that the view had opened wide. The full moon became a light, and it showed him the wolf the dark had hidden.
Fur that held the moon. A body nearly ten feet tall. Pupils like molten gold. The coat, grown thick and rich, dressed him as an emperor's robes would have, and the mane covering his neck streamed and cried on the air. He needed no splendid clothes. The form itself was an emperor's dignity—a lofty king who could move the world by will alone.
Beneath the blessing of the full moon, the true king descended upon that place. A paltry death, drawn out and refined like goods in a factory of spite and resentment, could not so much as look upon him.
"......!"
Death shook with fear. The low-purity raw material concealed behind death gave the feeling of terror back to him. Manufactured death, at best. Beside the real thing, endlessly unstable.
"Krk."
The king drew his arm back—and swung it forward.
The air tore.
The blow never touched him. Even so, the landscape ahead split open along claw marks. The immortal's barrier ripped like paper, and the trees of the mountain fell as if they had been logged. Death, caught in the midst of it, shattered into dozens of pieces. A shabby end, for something that had driven a king so far.
"Grrrr."
The king's gaze turned. At the end of it stood the traitors who had dared to stand against him.
"O King, mercy—"
Sunflower, who seemed to speak for the rest, got no further than that. The king's kick was simply there, and the body was crushed flat beneath it.
"Aaaaagh!!!"
"Hk—!"
Two wretches remained. In a fraction of a second his teeth closed on both of them, and two corpses, bitten cleanly in half, dropped to the ground.
"Awooooooo!!!"
Instinct had killed his enemies, and the king loosed a hunter's cry. The god who had been watching clicked his tongue.
"Yeah. That one went berserk."