The Horned Foal
A bright, clear sky.
A green meadow brimming with vitality, still holding the dew from the night before.
A crystal-clear river babbling along the roadside.
Even the cheerful chirping of birds.
It was a perfect day for travel, I thought.
“Snort!”
If only that damn horse weren’t here.
“Just kill the thing already—!”
“Please, please hold back, Ren!”
“…Master. Let’s just kill it and move on. As long as no one sees, it shouldn’t matter, should it?”
“Lucy, not you too… Please, I’m begging you both, just calm down…”
So, how exactly did we end up like this…?
A few days after we left home with Frederica seeing us off, our prepared provisions had begun to run low. Through a passing merchant we learned there was a fairly large village ahead, so we stopped in to resupply.
As usual, Huey had gone to the Adventurers’ Guild to gather information about other worlds when it happened.
“…A unicorn?”
“Yes.”
The story came from the receptionist, who had been sighing with a worried expression the entire time she spoke with Huey.
Unicorn.
A creature known to allow only pure virgins on its back, and to attack ferociously if anyone impure—or a man—approached.
In short, a foal obsessed with virgins.
“It’s been appearing at the river crossing every now and then lately, causing nothing but trouble.”
“Oh dear…”
It would plant itself in the way of people trying to cross the bridge and go wild, giving everyone a massive headache. This time I could actually understand the receptionist’s feelings, so I quietly nodded along.
“Um… Ren?”
“Huh?”
“What’s so special about unicorns that everyone reacts like that…?”
Just subjugate it and be done, right? Lucy tilted her head at me as she asked.
…Yeah. Subjugating it would be nice.
But you see.
“If you mess with one the wrong way, you get marked by Arcadia.”
Because they were rare enough to be called fantasy beasts, the people of Arcadia—especially those from the Temple of Order, the prickliest lot in the entire world—would foam at the mouth and raise absolute hell. Something about the balance being broken, or whatever.
“Mess with an endangered species like a unicorn and the bare minimum is spending days cooped up in a room with foul-tempered priests listening to sermons, plus paying a fine.”
And that fine was an amount you couldn’t even earn by catching a unicorn, processing every last scrap thriftily, and dumping it on the black market. They were called fantasy beasts, but they were basically just oversized nuisance pests.
“You sound like you’ve experienced it?”
“…No comment.”
The fine was one thing, but they would drag in priests who had zero actual power and nothing but big mouths to preach at you nonstop. Even I had no desire to go through that again.
“If you mess with them just because you’re in a bad mood, only the one who touched them ends up bleeding. So when they block the road like this, it’s a real headache.”
“I see.”
“Well, as long as it doesn’t show up when we pass, we’re fine.”
They weren’t called fantasy beasts for nothing. Surely it wouldn’t appear.
“When you say things like that…”
“Huh? Why?”
“…Never mind.”
Lucy’s gaze toward me was a little strange for some reason. Anyway.
“All done?”
“Yeah. No real harvest today either.”
“Information about other worlds isn’t exactly common, is it?”
“Haha. True enough.”
After finishing the information gathering, we followed Huey out of the village.
“Hee-hee!!”
“…I knew this would happen.”
Before long we found a river blocking the path and a bridge spanning it. And there, sitting squarely on the bridge so no one could pass, staring at us with an unpleasant face, was a white horse with a horn.
A pure white mane and a long, spiral golden horn. A sly snout and murky black eyes thick with desire.
……
“How is that a unicorn?”
It was just a horned foal.
“Hee-hee-hee—!!”
As if it had understood my words, the uni… horse brat stood up and snorted angrily.
“…It does seem to be a unicorn, at least.”
“…I don’t want to admit it, but it is a unicorn.”
Huey and Lucy said weakly, turning their shaky eyes away from the horse in front of them.
See? It wasn’t just me. It would have been better to call it something wearing a unicorn’s skin.
“Snort!”
Anyway, the roughly unicorn-shaped horse brat started snorting at us with hostile young eyes.
“What do we do?”
Seeing that it clearly had no intention of moving aside, I asked Huey and Lucy while spreading my wings.
“Shall we just fly over?”
No need to waste time bickering with that thing.
The moment I flapped my wings—
A sudden flash!
“Peep!?”
The creature’s horn glowed and shot a white beam of light. I hurriedly ducked my head to dodge, but the horse brat was looking at me with a triumphant, laughing face. I felt extremely unpleasant.
I ground my teeth. Then Huey and Lucy quietly approached and each grabbed one of my wings.
“—Chirp!?”
“You hold back. If we mess with that the wrong way, we’ll be beggars.”
“…Looks like flying is going to be difficult.”
I was about to shout what the hell they thought they were doing, but Huey’s gaze pleaded desperately that we absolutely could not go broke.
“Ah, uh. O-okay, so just let go first!”
I hurriedly shook the wing Huey was holding.
“Absolutely, absolutely no violence.”
“That’s right. The village is close, so we’ll get caught right away.”
“I said I got it—!”
Barely peeling Huey’s hand off and forcibly cooling the body that wanted to heat up on its own, I glared at the horse brat again and pondered for a moment.
“…I’ll try going first.”
Huey stepped forward with a resolved face. Then, the moment he tried to slip through the small space beside the unicorn—
“Snort!”
The unicorn that had been glaring at Huey with extreme displeasure quietly lifted its front hoof and pushed him.
“Uh…? Whoaaa!!”
Splash!
Huey fell into the river ungracefully.
Fortunately the river wasn’t that deep, so after thrashing for a bit he stood up. He met eyes with the unicorn looking down from the bridge and sneering at him. Quietly he reached for the sword hilt at his waist—
“You told me to hold back, but look at you reaching for your sword.”
“Pfft.”
As if hearing my mutter to Lucy, he headed toward the far bank with a sheepish, drooping face.
However—
Flash!
“Whoa!”
A white beam shot at Huey as if asking how dare he cross the river without permission.
“…Damn.”
In the end, Huey returned to where we were as if giving up.
And then—
“Then I’ll try this time.”
Since unicorns liked pure virgins, she should be fine, right? Lucy approached the unicorn with confident steps.
The unicorn glanced at her. This time, unlike with Huey, it scanned her with a calm expression.
“Puh.”
When its gaze reached the area of Lucy’s chest, it lifted one corner of its mouth in a sneering sound and lifted its front hoof to push her away.
Splash!
In the end, Lucy fell into the water just like Huey.
“Kh, khup.”
“Hey, if you laugh like that and something happens, I don’t know.”
Huey, looking at the scene, bit his lip hard and shook his shoulders. Right after, at the eerie creaking sound from Lucy’s hands wringing her skirt hem as she returned with her head down in silence, Huey turned his back, knelt, and started burying his head in the ground trying to stop laughing somehow.
“…Then I guess it’s my turn.”
In the past, just lightly gripping my sword could have driven off a horse like that. I sighed with an empty heart, wondering how I had ended up in this situation, and approached the unicorn.
“Hee-hee?”
The creature started looking at me with a somehow subtle expression.
“Sniff, sniff.”
Soon the unicorn brought its snout to me and sniffed something.
“…What the hell are you smelling?”
It was good that it didn’t push me like Huey or Lucy. But now it started circling me completely, sniffing every part of my body.
And then—
“Sssssniff….”
“This bastard…!”
Suddenly it buried its nose in my crotch and took a huge breath. In the moment I was so dumbfounded I tried to lift my leg to stomp its crown—
Thud.
The unicorn’s front hoof casually pushed my raised leg.
“…Huh?”
As I lost my balance and slowly fell off the bridge, in the slowly flowing scenery I finally saw it.
Like a tragic heroine betrayed by someone she trusted, even shedding tears—the face of that damn foal looking at me filled with pure contempt.
Splash!
Without even thinking of spreading my wings to fly up, I fell into the water. Then I ground my teeth, returned to where Huey and Lucy were, and lit fire on my wings.
“Snort!”
Looking at the horse brat snorting at us as if we were laughable, I shouted.
“Just kill it already—!”
And so we returned to the beginning.
Clank.
“Let’s kill it. Yes. Let’s kill it. That is not a unicorn.”
Lucy tightened the chains on her coffin with force and opened her mouth with a murderous expression.
Whoosh!
“Yeah. That’s just a horned horse. Let’s kill it. Something like that never existed in the world from the start.”
I also gathered the hotly burning flames in front of my chest and spoke.
“Calm down! Please calm down! More than that, Ren—you said you were a man, so why are you reacting to that!”
As we were loosening up our bodies with every intention of killing the unicorn, Huey was desperately trying to stop us.
“Oh my? You’re here again?”
Suddenly a voice came from the other side of the bridge. Looking toward the far bank at the woman’s voice full of a welcoming feeling—
“Hee-hee-hee!”
“Kyaa! Being spoiled again!”
That damn horse brat happily hopped over to a woman who looked like an adventurer and nuzzled her cheek. Soon the horned horse brat passed us by with a grinning face, following the woman.
“…Let’s go.”
Huey, who recovered first, patted my and Lucy’s shoulders and said that.
But.
“……”
“……”
Filled with unidentifiable rage and emptiness, I simply stared blankly with Lucy in the direction the horned foal had disappeared.