EP.22 Hraesvelgr -1
EP.22 Hraesvelgr -1
Hraesvelgr.
No intel, unknown abilities, residence somewhere beyond the northern snowy mountain. Only known detail was that she looked like an eagle.
She was a Divine Beast of pure mystery.
Same as with the Time-Leaping Rabbit, she wasn't listed in any reference book either. A Great Divine Beast I hadn't even known existed.
In the end, I had to listen to Yata's intel again this time.
"Hraesvelgr... pronunciation's a pain, so I'll just call her Eagle Lady."
"Alright..."
Since Yata was the type to call even Fenrir a glutton wolf or a lazy bum.
At this point, I just took it in stride.
"Eagle Lady is, like those two said earlier, one of the few Great Divine Beasts. Her power lets her generate wind."
"The power to generate wind? Same as Tia, then."
"Well, strictly speaking, it's different."
"In what way?"
"Tia's power is about manipulating air and wind that already exist, but Eagle Lady's very existence is the wind. She governs all the wind in the world."
"Which means, in other words, if Hraesvelgr were gone..."
"The very concept of wind would disappear from this world."
"That's insane in its own way..."
"Anyway, that's her power, and for looks, nothing special—just a giant white eagle with horns."
That part was similar to Fenrir.
Fenrir also had no special appearance, just the form of an enormous wolf.
A simple look, but that simplicity meant the substance was impossibly, overwhelmingly strong.
Hraesvelgr was probably the same.
"But how big of an eagle are we talking?"
"With her wings fully spread, she easily clears five hundred meters."
"That's so absurd I'm speechless..."
"Right?"
"So, hey. If she's that huge, wouldn't she be pretty easy to spot? Then how come nobody knew this eagle existed? Especially since this snowy mountain where Hraesvelgr lives is right up against human borders?"
"That's simple. The instant Eagle Lady spreads her wings, she becomes the wind itself."
"Becomes the wind. You mean she dissolves into the air?"
"Yeah. From the moment she takes flight, she just becomes the wind. So people couldn't know about her."
"What about when she's at her nest? Wouldn't she be observable then?"
"Hraesvelgr keeps a wind barrier up to hide her nest too. Unless you tear right through the barrier yourself, no one can know about it."
"That's a seriously secretive eagle."
"That lady is thorough about her privacy."
"Then my real last question. Even with a wind barrier over her nest, is there a chance the nest could get wrecked by an avalanche?"
"Normally, it'd never collapse from an avalanche. But do you remember what caused the avalanche?"
"Ah...!"
The avalanche hadn't just appeared. It'd been created by the storm Tia whipped up.
Which meant...
"Tia's storm tore through the wind barrier Hraesvelgr had over her nest. Is that what happened...?"
"Yup, you nailed it!"
"Oh god..."
What the hell did past me do wrong for this many disasters to keep piling up?
Did I sell out my country? Did I commit some unforgivable sin? Did I pull the worst kind of human scumbag move?
How was it that only brutal stuff kept happening back-to-back...
My head hurt. I wanted to give up on everything...
"Just in case, let me ask. What happens if I bail on fixing the nest?"
"You'd probably end up in a huge brawl with Eagle Lady. It's an excellent method if you're looking to off yourself, but if you don't plan on dying, you're better off not bailing."
"Yeah, I figured..."
From the start, there'd never really been any other option for me.
Quit complaining and go fix it.
"Dear husband, you don't need to get too down. If you fix it up right, she might actually be grateful, you know?"
"But I don't have a single shred of construction-related knowledge."
"Don't worry. I figured you'd say that, so I prepared the blueprints for Hraesvelgr's nest in advance!"
Ta-dah~! Yata produced a single sheet of paper from inside her clothes.
Her cheerful action and this paper she called a blueprint gave me hope.
Yet it also stirred up a sense of suspicion.
"Preparing a blueprint means you knew this whole thing was going to happen, right?"
"Ahaha...! Well of course, I'm the crow who reads the future!"
Yata's forced laugh.
If she'd known how to read the future, why hadn't she told me in advance? Was it because the future would change this time, too?
But the unnatural way Yata had acted was too suspicious to chalk up to just that.
It was exactly how a kid acts when caught doing something bad.
In hindsight, aside from Yata's behavior, there'd been one other odd point.
Tia normally wasn't the kind of bad kid who threw fits like this.
She'd said it was my fault for making her keep waiting, but even so, she was a good kid who knew how to hold it in.
That kid had gotten stubborn enough to create a storm? More than rare—it was suspicious.
...No way.
"Tia."
"Nn?"
"I'm asking because I'm really curious. When we got here, what was the secret you had with Yata?"
"It's a secret so I can't tell!!"
"Please, can't you tell me just once? I'm really, really curious."
"D-Dear husband? Digging into girls' secrets is not a good thing!"
"Yeah!"
"I see. So even though I'm trying so hard to play with Tia, you two are cutting me out like that? Sigh...!! This hurts. It hurts so much I won't even be able to play with Tia..."
An act so blatant anyone would call it shameless.
But I was dead certain it'd work on the purest baby dragon in the world.
"Hak...!! Yuu, can't be hurt!!"
"Ahh~! I feel like if Tia tells me the secret, I'll get all better...?"
"Tia, that's a fake sickness! You absolutely mustn't...!"
"Yata told me that even if I wanted to play, I should hold back, then go to the top of the mountain and be as clingy as I want with Yuu!"
"Yeah!"
"She said if I made wind at the top, Yuu would definitely go along with my clinginess! That's the end of the secret! Yuu, are you okay now? Not hurting?"
"Thanks to Tia, I'm all better."
"Ehehe!!"
While petting the head of my ever-good and adorable Tia, I looked toward where the crow was.
Yata had an expression like 'Isn't it too mean to use Tia?' and 'This is unfair.'
Regardless, I called her name in a perfectly dry voice.
"Yata...?"
"...Tee-hee!"
Why you little—!!
***
Right from the start of this training camp, I'd realized the Yeti, then the Wendigo, and now Hraesvelgr were all scenarios cooked up by Yata.
But even so, I was still heading for Hraesvelgr's nest.
Because even knowing the full picture, what'd already happened couldn't be undone.
The nest was already destroyed, and I had to repair it.
Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to escape a Great Divine Beast's fury...
"It really got spectacularly wrecked."
"Given all the branches scattered across the ground and the bird feathers, it looks like there really was a nest here."
"Boss, I searched all around, but there were no eggs."
"That's a relief. Good work!"
For a bird, eggs were a precious thing.
If there'd been eggs inside the ruined nest, even fixing it could've gone catastrophically wrong.
"Mmph...!!"
Yata looked like she had a lot to say.
She was pleading for me to remove the gag I'd put in her mouth.
I'd done it as a message to get her to reflect, but she'd probably done enough self-reflection by now, so I took it off.
"Pwah!! You're too mean, dear husband~! Unlike the fox, I don't have this kind of hobby, you know."
"Since your mouth's a disaster, I just blocked it. So, you looked like you had a lot to say. What's up?"
"First, you seemed to worry about the eggs that aren't here. You don't need to worry about that!"
"Why not?"
"Unlike Fenrir, Hraesvelgr is an old maid lady who's lived a long time but doesn't have a single kid! So the eggs she lays are all unfertilized. Since it's a shame, she just eats them all up herself. That's why there aren't any."
"That's kinda sad..."
"No need to pity her, it's entirely her own fault. When she was young, she turned down every single man who liked her and chased after her, and then once she hit marriageable age, she started getting rejected left and right. That's how it turned out."
"So even Divine Beasts have things like a marriageable age, huh."
"They do. And the reason she's not here right now is because she's roaming around looking for a man to marry her. Though of course, there isn't a man anywhere in this world who would marry a terrifying Great Divine Beast lady!"
It gave me a weird, ambiguous feeling— a story you'd commonly see in human society also applied to a Great Divine Beast.
A Great Divine Beast was an existence that'd lived for thousands of years, practically living history.
And a Great Divine Beast like that still hadn't found a mate... I guess stuff like this happens to anyone.
"Well, anyway, that's enough about Hraesvelgr. Let's hurry and fix the nest before the lady gets back."
"Ah, right..."
Following the blueprints Yata had brought, we set out to rebuild the nest step by step.
Miho and Alice took care of material procurement, while Tia, Yata, and I handled the construction.
Materials we could find nearby were quickly procured by Alice, and materials that weren't were instantly created through Miho's materialization ability.
In the end, it turned into a group effort where everyone cooperated to build the nest.
"Shouldn't we obviously place branches right here?"
"No. The optimal play here is to tie the branches together with vines first, then work."
"What a nuisance of a rabbit, making the work so fussy."
"Better fussy than doing it half-assed and having it collapse, dumb fox."
Even in the middle of repairing the nest, the fox and the rabbit were passionately arguing.
At this point, it was too hard to stop them, and if I paid them any mind, I probably wouldn't be able to repair the nest properly, so I decided to just leave them be.
"Yuu! Where should I put these branches?"
"Let's see... Put them over there on the upper left side."
"Okay! Got it!!"
Watching Tia energetically reply and follow my directions made my heart swell.
How great would it have been if the others were sweet, well-behaved Divine Beasts like that...
Even if she caused troublesome incidents sometimes, this baby dragon without a single shred of malice was so admirable.
'What a relief. That Tia's enjoying the nest-building work...'
I'd have to pet her head as much as she wanted after this was over.
'Anyway, it's almost done.'
It would've been an overwhelming workload alone, but with a bunch of Divine Beasts pitching in, Hraesvelgr's nest repair advanced quickly.
After working on the remaining detailed parts, finishing up by having Tia set up a wind barrier around the nest would be the end of it.
Maybe I could relax just slightly...
"Huh?"
—Clamp!!
Along with an intense pressure on my shoulders, my body slowly began to float upward.
My feet gradually left the ground, levitating into the air.
I had no clue how this was even happening.
Thinking maybe it was some prank from Tia, I looked her way, but the baby dragon was just there, completely absorbed in building the nest.
Then what on earth was this phenomenon...
"Haa...! Haa...!"
When I lifted my head at the sound of breathing from the empty air, I witnessed a sight where the Air Threads were mysteriously woven together.
Normally, the Air Threads were only ever taut and tight.
But right now, every thread had taken the form of a single giant eagle...
"A man! A man...!! There's a young man in my nest...!!"
The woman's voice ringing out from within the threads was clear and beautiful, but the content was genuinely spine-chilling.