The Elephant Prince
The scream had come from one of the servants.
A massive monster had suddenly burst from the forest.
It was a creature Enki and Inanna had never seen before. Its upper body was nearly human, but its lower half was that of a serpent — a half-man, half-snake. Peculiar as it was, beings with bestial lower halves were common enough in their own world that the sight did not strike them as especially strange.
"I-It's a Naga!!"
Someone cried out at the sight of it.
A Naga. A legendary race long thought extinct. Though its upper body was said to take human form, that was true only of the skeleton. The face and jaw were pure serpent, and the overall impression was less of a person than of a beast that merely resembled one — the way a monkey does.
At the appearance of a creature he had never seen in his life, Sunya felt a jolt of surprise — and, beneath it, a strange, inexplicable thrill.
The Naga struck first at the bodyguard. The enormous blade in its right hand came crashing down. The bodyguard raised his sword to block, but the steel itself was driven through his skull, splitting him from crown to chin. He died on the spot. The soldiers guarding the prince had no time to react before the creature's tail smashed them aside. From the sickening sounds that followed, bones had shattered — or organs ruptured.
"Damn—"
The Naga's next target was the prince. Its thick tail slammed into the horse he was riding. The animal collapsed, vomiting blood, and Sunya tumbled hard across the ground in an undignified sprawl.
"Ghk—!"
He forced himself up as fast as he could — and saw the Naga open its vast jaws and tear the bodyguard's head free. Blood fountained from the ruin. The grotesque sight nearly made him retch, yet some absurd corner of his mind noted that the creature seemed to be enjoying its meal.
"R-Run!!"
"It's a monster!"
Servants and soldiers milled in panic. Judging the Naga beyond their strength — and there were not many of them to begin with — they abandoned the prince and fled in every direction.
So this is what it looks like when terrified underlings desert their master. Your virtue must be truly wanting, boy.
"It… talks?"
A man-eating monster speaking with fluent intelligence genuinely startled the prince. It did not seem to form words with a human mouth, yet the fact that it possessed enough mind to hold a conversation was remarkable in itself.
You hairless ape-spawn speak, do you not? Would it not be stranger if we, the noble and exalted Naga, could not?
"Noble?"
The prince found it difficult to connect the word with a monster whose jaws were still dripping with human blood.
"…I'd like to correct one point, at least."
And what would that be?
"I may well lack virtue. But if you had been nothing more than a common bandit, they would have held their ground to the end. A legendary monster appears, kills the strongest among us in a single blow, and chews his head — of course they panicked."
Heh. Defending the underlings who left you behind. Soft-hearted to the bone, aren't you?
"Since we're talking, let me ask one more thing. Why attack us?"
The Naga seemed mildly surprised. The so-called prince was the youngest of the party, yet he remained composed — even posing questions with perfect calm. The creature wondered if it was bluster, but the boy's heartbeat and body temperature suggested otherwise. What it was seeing looked far closer to genuine confidence.
Hmm… so you aren't merely some pampered human whelp?
"Ordinary enough, but I have a few modest talents."
Right. You asked why we attack you?
The Naga spread both arms, looking down on the prince with open contempt.
This is a hunt. Just as you hunt beasts inferior to yourselves, we hunt creatures inferior to us. Nothing more.
"…Clean answer. I like that."
The prince quietly drew the sword at his waist.
"But do you know something?"
?
"They say hunters usually die because their prey turns on them. I'm no hunter myself — just something I heard."
…The little ape-cub has lost his mind.
There was no amusement in conversing with a madman. The Naga's expression twisted. Its face was serpentine, yet surprisingly easy to read; the muscles around the eyes, on closer inspection, were closer to human than snake.
Without another word, the Naga charged and brought its blade down, intending to cleave the prince in two.
The edge bit only empty earth.
A searing pain flared along its flank in almost the same instant.
"I meant to cut you clean through the waist… Your hide is tougher than I expected."
Sunya was already behind the Naga, flicking blood from his blade.
"Still — keep cutting long enough and something will give."
Only then did the Naga understand its mistake. The strongest among the party had not been the bodyguard it had killed. It was the insolent young ape standing before it — the youngest of them all. The one it should have struck first was not the bodyguard. It should have been the prince himself.
"I expected as much… but he really could fight, even as a child."
"Of course he could. That's my future husband. A snake-head like that is nothing to him!"
Enki let out a dry laugh watching the frail, young human body drive the Naga back. Inanna, for her part, looked thoroughly proud; she reached out as if to stroke the prince's hair, though her hand could not touch him.
The fight went on. It could no longer be called a hunt. If the word still applied at all, the hunter was the prince — and the prey was the Naga.
The Naga was clearly faster than the young human. And yet, aside from that first strike against the horse, it never so much as grazed a hair on the prince's head. The prince, for his part, could not land a killing blow in a single stroke, but he steadily carved the Naga's body, accumulating wound after wound.
You miserable gnat!!
With every passing moment the Naga lost more of its reason. Its movements grew wilder, its openings wider. The prince did not miss them.
A wet, shearing sound.
Gyaaah!! How—?!
The Naga's sword arm spun free into the air. At the soft joint where bone met bone, the prince's technique was more than enough to sever. It was skill that did not belong to a human.
Boring.
The prince who had just displayed that inhuman craft wore an expression of unbroken indifference. Everything had fallen within the range of his expectations. To him, all of it was visible — how the Naga would move, how he himself should move for maximum efficiency. He knew it all.
In the boy's blue eyes, a great many things were reflected.
Yes. The eyes. Those eyes were the problem from the start.
The prince's eyes were special. Once he witnessed a phenomenon, he could grasp its underlying principle. The entire world flowed more slowly before him. And if he wished it, he could even read an opponent's emotions, the flicker of the immediate future — or the past of three days prior.
With those eyes, he was invincible. And that was precisely one of the greatest reasons his life had grown so dull. Most problems could be solved by those eyes alone; he had never truly known hardship.
But overreliance on the eyes had been a mistake.
The Naga spat.
The spit struck the prince's eyes dead-on. An absurd catastrophe, born of letting his mind wander in the middle of a life-or-death fight.
"Ah—??"
Startled, the prince scrubbed frantically at his eyes, but he still could not see properly. The stinging pain at the corners was secondary. The eyes that had always granted him a sense of omnipotence had been neutralized — and in that instant, anxiety and fear surged.
And then—
"Guh—!!"
The Naga's tail smashed into him. He raised his sword on reflex and blocked, but he could not stop his body from being hurled through the air.
"Gah—! Ugh—!!"
Being thrown clear was fortunate, in its way. Holding his ground clumsily would have been far more dangerous.
My eyes…
It hurt. Crushed muscle and broken bone stabbing through flesh — the pain defied description. But what troubled him more than any physical agony was the simple fact that he could not see.
W-What do I do?
For the first time, he was afraid.
His heart, numb only moments before, began to hammer again.
In situations like this, most people lost their composure and made desperate, foolish choices simply to cast off the fear. The prince was different. He was afraid, yes — his body trembled — yet somehow his mind grew colder still. Perhaps it was simply his nature. In its own way, it was the quality of a king.
With what calm he could muster, the prince analyzed his situation.
I can't see.
Then he could not swing a sword either. He was nothing more than a helpless child.
I need something to replace my eyes.
Suddenly he remembered something his maternal uncle — the man who had taught him martial arts — had once said. A seasoned warrior, the uncle claimed, could locate an opponent by sound alone.
So the prince let go of his attachment to sight. Instead, he focused everything on his other senses — hearing, smell, touch.