Dragonfly (1)
Amid the wretched years of war, an ugly rumor drifted across the battlefield.
The Kingdom we fought against, they said, harbored a monster.
A single woman, they said, who could cut down a thousand men all on her own.
— What a load of ridiculous nonsense.
At those words, Robert, squad leader of the Empire, snorted. Then he sent the soldier who'd carried the story off to tend his weapons.
The reaction around him was no different.
Broken soldiers always needed an excuse.
Rather than confess they'd turned their backs on the enemy, it served their plea for survival better to claim they'd fought something wearing a human's skin.
And if not that, then it was Kingdom propaganda meant to break enemy morale, or else some braggart's tale of heroism that had swollen with every retelling.
Common enough on a battlefield. Nothing worth lending an ear to — that was the thinking.
And so today, as Squad Leader Robert readied himself to march out, his frame of mind was the same as always.
The armor fit him well, and the sword at his hip tapped his thigh with a pleasant weight, clinking softly with every step.
Behind him waited the soldiers, awaiting his orders.
"We march!"
War had been reckoned a good business since time immemorial.
Robert's stride toward his chance at advancement was light and brisk.
All he had to do was play his part on a battlefield they could win, claim exactly that much credit for himself, and no more.
Not even an hour ago, that was what he'd believed.
"A m-monster...!!"
Robert's brief reverie ended, buried under a scream.
Screams rose from all around him. Before he could even turn his head, something hot splattered against his cheek.
Robert numbly wiped his face. His fingertips came away red.
Blood had sprayed in every direction.
"Gyaaaaagh!!!"
This scream came from right beside him. The sound of a blade being drawn mixed with something snapping, and a soldier with his shoulder caved in collapsed at Robert's feet.
The man was one of Robert's own, a familiar face — but where he'd always been a soldier of few words, his mouth now hung wide open.
"Ghhk..."
He seemed to be trying to say something. But what poured out instead of words was only dark red blood.
It was deep autumn.
Yet whether the trees had gone red because of the falling leaves — or because of something else — Robert had no way of knowing.
At last, a single leaf drifted down. It was another soldier's head.
"S-save..."
Faced with a scene beyond reason and sense alike, what was he supposed to do?
Before he could force that thought to its end, his knees buckled.
At the same moment — a splash, and cold water seeped in between his knees. Looking down, he saw the mud soaked through with blood.
Every breath he drew made a wet gurgle deep in his throat.
"What... are you...?"
Amid that bedlam of slaughter, one thing alone lifted its head, serene and apart — a small foot.
"Hah."
He managed to raise his head.
There in his vision stood a young girl. Also a monster.
Only then did a certain word resurface — that outlandish rumor he'd heard once before. Not one inch of it had been exaggerated.
"Then the story about... devouring corpses to grow stronger... is..."
His voice drowned in his own breath. No matter how wide he opened his mouth, no air would come.
Then the girl — death's portrait planted on two feet — drew steadily closer toward Robert.
"It's not, actually."
At last, a single word from that thing.
"I just have a slightly special ability, that's all."
Those were the last words Robert ever heard.
That day, only a single soldier returned alive from his squad.
The man reached the Imperial camp deep in the night, licking his blood-caked lips over and over.
Handed water, he couldn't manage to swallow; whenever someone laid a hand on his shoulder, he shook all over.
Hours later, once he'd recovered some faint measure of composure, he gave a different name every single time he described the same scene.
Monster. Demon. Devil.
Whatever it was, it had butchered the entire unit alone.
And that, he said, it had spoken to the dying commander:
On that point alone, no matter how many times they asked, his answer never changed.
There had to be some extraordinary talent inside me. Of that much, I had no doubt — not even in a world stuffed full of suspicion, treachery, miracles, and magic.
Well... at the moment, my situation consisted of trailing the army's rear end, hauling off whatever loot was left behind, and — if luck was feeling generous — swiping a few scraps of food for myself.
"Up we go."
I hauled the bag strap back up onto my shoulder, then rubbed the back of my neck where the worn leather had scraped it raw, and started walking.
There's a saying, isn't there? A humble beginning makes for a glorious end. That one was written for someone exactly like me.
"Ahem, ahem."
Embarrassing as it was to admit, this wasn't just some adolescent's childish daydream.
I had grounds. Proper, legitimate grounds.
I mean, just look at the circumstances.
"...Status window."
I died, and then I woke up.
Dropped without warning into some medieval world — or at least a world I assumed was medieval — somewhere I couldn't place.
As if that weren't enough, I'd ended up inhabiting the body of a young girl. A war orphan, no less.
Let me make one thing perfectly clear first.
I was never cursed by some nutjob skull, I never ate dirt, and I never participated in any questionnaire about immortality.
I've never even been electrocuted by a hairdryer! No need to grind out mana potions, either.
So anyway — a perfectly ordinary person going through all of that, and by rights I ought to get to expect my own special something at least once. That's just common sense, isn't it?
"If this doesn't work, then maybe..."
As for the afterlife, genre fiction has proven more reliable than the Bible — my own case having settled that question once and for all.
So it was only reasonable to assume I'd truly been granted something.
"...Status?"
I tried other words, wondering if the pronunciation was the problem, but the result was the same.
Poor scattered syllables, dissolving into empty air.
Three months of repeating this until I was sick of it, and once again, today's attempt ended in failure.
"Tch..."
But it was fine. Too early to despair. Failure is the mother of success, as they say.
Granted, my failures hadn't produced a single child yet. At this point I half suspected they were commitment-phobic.
"Hmm..."
Before I could even feel discouraged by that familiar failure, my stomach let out a long growl.
I stared down at it for a moment, then tightened my grip on the bag strap.
I'd get around to the remaining candidates eventually. For now, I decided to focus a little harder on the matter of eating and surviving.
A few steps away lay a corpse, its body twisted to one side.
For good measure, the hand half-buried in mud was curled stiff, as if it had been reaching for something.
"Pardon the intrusion."
An answer with no one to give it, and none expected.
I crouched on the blood-soaked, rust-red ground and rummaged through the dead man's clothes.
The first few times I did this, I think I actually wanted to throw up.
Touching a dead body was bad enough; pulling things out of a chest that still held a sliver of warmth was worse.
But repeat any taboo enough times, and eventually... you just get used to it.
I don't remember exactly when it happened.
At some point, my eyes went to the canteen on a corpse's hip before they ever registered the person, and if the shoes were intact, I'd check the size of the feet. A bulge in the coat, and I'd start wondering if there might be food left inside.
Charitably, you'd call it human adaptability. Less charitably, you could say I'd simply been worn down.
"Hmm..."
Just don't tell me this is human nature — I'd rather skip that tired old line.
Calling the things we do 'because we can't help it,' in situations 'we can't help,' our nature?
Our true selves aren't demons. The situation is demonic — that's all, isn't it?
"Oh, now this is..."
Mid-rummage, my fingertips snagged on something hard.
A canteen. One buried beneath the hem of his coat.
Grabbing the leather strap, I eased it out. Dried mud caked the surface, but there were no splits or tears anywhere.
I gave it a light shake, and water sloshed inside.
"Lucky me."
Uncorking it released a waft of musty leather. I wiped the mouth with my sleeve and tipped it carefully, and lukewarm water wet my tongue.
It tasted much as it smelled, but it went down all the same.
"...Mm."
A few more swallows, then I set the canteen down quickly — my throat was damp now, and my stomach had started wailing that it was its turn.
Thankfully, a small pouch also hung at the man's hip. Inside were two strips of dried meat wrapped in cloth; pressing them between my fingers, they felt less like rations and more like building material.
"Heavier chewing than his belly could manage — must've had strong teeth, at least."
I glanced back and forth between the man's face and his pierced side, then bit the end of the jerky. I pulled. It didn't tear.
I pulled harder, and my teeth complained first. So the only option was to soften it in water after all.
"Mm..."
I tucked the jerky into the one cheek that still had some moisture left in it and checked the rest of the pouch: a few coins, a piece of flint, a short leather cord.
Under the man's body, a knife had been pinned as well. I tugged the handle; it came with him, snagged on his belt, then stopped.
I deliberated a moment, then undid the belt.
"I'll just borrow this."
I didn't mention a return date.
The knife, scabbard and all, was lighter than I expected. It had felt much heavier before.
"Hmm..."
Gripping the handle, I drew it partway out. Dried dark-red stains blotched the blade, which was a flaw, but there was no serious chipping anywhere.
This might fetch a decent price, actually.
I strapped the knife beside my pack and got to my feet. The strap bit into my shoulder, so I leaned forward a little, and the weight settled into a spot along my back I could just about tolerate.
"Up we go."
A pretty good haul today. If I traded all of this off, that should cover dinner.
Something soft, please, if at all possible.
Potatoes, for instance.
Still rolling the jerky around my mouth, I set off.
Food and I seemed to share the principle that prolonged chewing makes things disappear — but factoring in the energy I burned just eating the stuff, I wasn't sure it was actually a net gain.
By the time I'd walked a long while, the stakes and tents of the camp came into view.
Several unfamiliar carts stood at the entrance. Between laborers hauling sacks back and forth, a soldier with a tally board bellowed out numbers at the top of his lungs.
"Here! Two!"
A new supply delivery, apparently. None of my business, though.
I wasn't a soldier. Certainly not a knight.
Just a corpse crow scurrying along in the rear.
Best case, I'd get handed the same withered jerky as now, or at the very most some rock-hard stone bread.
I ducked nimbly between the cart wheels and headed for the tent where I usually sold my goods.
Crouched in front of it was the old man I'd seen every day for about a week now, inspecting the soles of a pair of leather boots.
He used to be younger, allegedly.
This old coot was stubborn as a mule, and somehow he always managed to shave the price down on me.
"What'd you drag in this time? If you're worn out, just say so. I'll send you somewhere comfortable. A scrawny thing like you could lie down for the rest of your days, y'know?"
"Go to hell."
"Aigoo... tsk."
Our usual greeting. We'd long since gotten used to it.
I set my pack down along with that impeccable display of courtesy. The metal inside clinked together as it landed.
The old man's eyebrows lifted slightly.
"You couldn't carry half this much when you first turned up."
"I like to think I've grown, too."
"Earns your keep, I'll give you that. Let's see it."
The old man undid the pack's straps.
I was rubbing my aching shoulder when, suddenly, my head turned toward a smell caught on the breeze.
An unfamiliar smell. And yet a familiar one.
Meat.
Not the mildew reek of shriveled jerky — the smell of fat melting over a fire, of salt seeping into the heat.
The front flap of the tent across the way had been rolled open.
Inside sat a man I'd never seen before. Dressed in clean clothes, he sat with composed ease, on the verge of starting his meal.
On the table lay bread split in half and a single bowl, and behind him, folded blankets hung from a rack.
Blankets neither damp nor dirty, with a soft, thick fleece that made you want to bury your bare skin in them.
Presently, the man lifted his spoon to his mouth — then set it back down.
"It's gone cold. Warm it up for me."
The man in the tent spoke flatly, without the slightest trace of what he might actually be feeling.
His food had cooled, so he wanted it reheated. A perfectly reasonable request.
In other words: the man was living an infuriatingly blessed life.
"Who is that?"
"Supply Officer, milady. Come from the Capital Fortress. Stays about a month, then heads back."
The Capital Fortress — I knew it as the place soldiers could never stop talking about.
How so-and-so posted there never went hungry, how someone else hadn't gone a day without tasting wine.
A place unusually rich in stories that made your own stomach ache just listening to them.
"Hmm."
I craned my neck and peered into the tent again.
The bowl had come back. The supply officer, as he'd been called, tore off a piece of bread and dunked it into the steaming broth.
The bread, soaked through, split apart easily under the edge of his spoon, showing off its snowy white crumb.
Watching that scene with quiet grief, I pushed the jerky still lodged in my cheek around one more time.
It refused to shrink any further. At this rate, the two of us were about to become permanent roommates.