The Village at the Foot of the Mountain (3)
When Kayak demanded why James hadn't mentioned this sooner, James only replied that he hadn't thought it was all that important.
"That's probably where the trouble started, then."
Yona nodded at Kayak's words. She couldn't argue with that reasoning—ever since they'd entered the mountain, something had been pulling at her, some intense, inexplicable presence tugging her forward.
"Alec, you're watching ahead, right?"
"Obviously. Keep your eyes open too."
Climbing the mountain trail, Yona found herself breathing hard. It wasn't a particularly difficult path, and even with her stamina diminished, it was hardly far enough to wind her like this. And yet a strange excitement was rising in her chest. Pressing a hand down on her pounding heart, she walked on with her palm resting on Alec's shoulder.
Though it was broad daylight, the trees grew so dense that the whole trail lay in shadow, dark as early dusk.
"How much farther?"
For a man of Kayak's towering bulk, traversing this mountain path was more hindrance than anything. He swept aside a branch hanging in his eyes and glanced back at James.
"A good while yet."
Lizardmen weren't built for this kind of terrain. In the first place, there'd never been any reason for their kind to come up here—Kayak, living the adventurer's life, was the odd one out.
"Yona, you all right?"
Her face flushed a deep red, Yona looked anything but fine. At Kayak's words, Alec, who had been walking at the front of the party, turned around. The sight of Yona reflected in his eyes was a sorry one indeed—a scarlet face, ragged, panting breaths, lips parted so invitingly that warm breath seemed ready to spill out. Something was wrong. He was sure of it.
"I'm—hah, I'm… nnh… fine…."
"No, you really don't look fine."
Her voice had taken on a strangely erotic timbre. James, trailing behind with the bow he'd carried in his adventuring days, scurried up and peered into Yona's face. She definitely did not look fine.
"Really… haah, hah… I'm, I'm… fine."
The flushed face and those odd little moans made Yona's voice truly bizarre. Then there was her right hand, still planted on Alec's shoulder. No, it wasn't just her hand—an unnatural heat was spreading through her entire right arm. Yona alone didn't know it. Alec, whose skin her hand was touching, was the first to feel it—a strange heat pressing through the Holy Shroud, even through his leather armor.
Just as Alec began to realize that something had gone wrong, that Yona's condition was off—
Thud.
The ground rang out. A tremor rippled outward. James, the first to feel it and the first to grasp what it meant, shot a look at Kayak.
"It's out?"
"Likely so."
Kayak tightened his grip on his axe. Drawing an arrow from the quiver on his back and nocking it, James swept a tense gaze over their surroundings. Alec positioned himself in front of Yona as if to shield her behind him.
"…It's coming."
A very small whisper. Her breath tickled the shell of Alec's ear.
"It's coming!" James shouted.
With his cry, a tremendous rumbling and the crack of snapping trees erupted from up ahead. Darkness thick as nightfall descended over the already-shadowed forest, blotting out the sun entirely. The gloom pressed down heavy upon their heads.
"…Is that it? The one?"
"Yeah."
At Kayak's strained reply, James managed a nod.
"You said it had doubled in size, didn't you?"
"It's grown more."
James had said the bear was twice his size; the enormous black bear looming over them now looked far larger than that by a wide margin. Its burning red eyes flickered, impossible to read.
"Alec, forward."
At the calm voice, Alec almost turned his head.
"You're the Guard. Get up front. Now."
Yona's voice had returned to perfect, level composure. Alec couldn't spare her a glance with the bear right there before him, but the hand on his shoulder hadn't left its place, and that reassured him. He squared his shield and stepped forward, one pace at a time, never once taking his eyes off the bear so that he could deflect its attack the instant it came.
—GWAAOOOOO—!
The bear roared. The bellowing cry was so tremendous that the surrounding trees shuddered and scattered their leaves in an instant.
"It's coming!"
With Alec's shout, the bear swung its foreleg. He couldn't block it. No human strength could outmuscle that power. Alec angled his shield.
—CLANG!
A deafening crack, and pain shot tingling up his arm. The impact was greater than the day he'd deflected a troll's club. His back foot, weighted with his stance, sank deep into the earth. In that moment, Kayak darted into the bear's flank. His axe cleaved the air and slammed down hard onto the beast's thigh. With a muffled thunk, the blade bit into the hide and went no deeper.
The moment the bear wheeled toward Kayak, Alec stepped in to block its path, and James's arrow came whistling down from above.
—GUWOOOOO!
Being, unfortunately, a bear, the creature's wits were hardly sharp, and its repertoire of attacks was correspondingly limited. It swung its forelegs, and now and then stomped down with a hind paw—that was all. Kayak bored in from every direction, peeling wounds into the bear's hide the way one might pare the rind from an apple. Each time the bear flailed its forelegs, Alec would slip in with uncanny timing and deflect or turn aside the blows with his shield. Each time a claw grazed him and tore a gash, Yona—clinging to his back like a shadow—healed it on the spot.
"Trust me, Alec. Move however you want."
Alec didn't answer. He already trusted Yona to a degree that felt almost absurd to name.
—GUWOONG!
The bear lowered its stance. Kayak had circled in behind it, and Alec was setting his feet to push past him into the gap—when the bear exploded forward at shocking speed. And in its path stood James.
"James!"
Before Alec could even react, the bear was upon him, closing in a blink the distance James had deliberately kept as a ranged archer. The instant James hesitated, the beast was already at his nose.
"JAMES!"
Kayak and Alec hurled themselves at the bear at the same moment. But the bear was far faster, and in a heartbeat—crack!—the thick, bow-wielding arm went spinning up into the air.
"JAMES!"
"James!"
A half-step too late, Kayak hammered his axe down onto the bear's skull again and again. James, one arm already severed, crumpling to the ground, was no longer in any condition to fight.
"Yona!"
"Is he going to be all right!?"
"He'll be fine, so hurry!"
Glancing back at Alec once, Yona broke away from him, seized James by the nape, and dragged him clear. With the bear's attention locked on Kayak and Alec, this was the one chance to pull him out.
"Please, please… don't look this way…."
Praying desperately as she hauled James back, Yona got him a fair distance away, then stretched out her still-unsteady legs, retrieved the severed arm, and brought it back. Blood welled from the stump in surges, but the arm was still warm. She pressed it against James's shoulder.
"Bear it. Just a little longer."
White light began to bloom from her Holy Shroud. Wherever her right hand passed, a soft glow lingered, and flesh began, slowly, to knit back together.
'Why is it so damned tough…!'
Whenever an opening appeared, Alec swung his hammer into the bear with all his strength. But each blow landed with nothing more than the dull resistance of striking a boulder—he couldn't tell that it was doing any real damage at all. Kayak was faring better; with every strike and sweep of his axe, the bear bled a little more.
"Careful, Alec!"
Yona's voice reached him from far away.
"I'm fine!"
"Alec, cover me!"
At Kayak's shout, Alec sprinted toward him. The wounds Kayak had inflicted were now considerable, and his axe was soaked through with blood—the end of this tedious fight finally seemed to be drawing near.
—GWAAOOOOO!
The battered bear rose up on its hind legs and let out a colossal roar. Then it staggered backward and, before long, began to flee.
"Stop it—we have to stop it! We have to catch it!"
His arm more or less reattached now, James shouted, pointing after the beast.
"Chase it! We have to run it down! We have to finish this!"
Kayak broke into a sprint ahead. The bear ran frighteningly fast, but the trail it smashed through the forest was so plainly visible that they could follow it with ease.
"Hah, hoo… hah, hahh…."
Even Kayak was running until his lungs burned. As for Alec and Yona—and the wounded James, needless to say—they were white-faced and gasping for breath.
"…Here it is."
"This is where the Sacred Tree stood. That… that one over there was the new tree we meant to plant."
Where James pointed, a single withered, twisted tree lay toppled on the ground. It looked nothing like what a young Sacred Tree should.
"It got like this within days. It used to be a good-sized trunk—my, it took every grown man in the village working together just to move it."
"Was that bear connected to it, somehow?"
Catching his breath, Alec tightened his grip on his shield and stepped forward. Through that exhausting sprint, Yona had kept healing Alec's wounds without pause, and by now she'd passed beyond pale into corpse-white.
"It's not the bear. It's this place itself that's the problem."
Yona said this as she rubbed her right arm. It was true enough. The clearing where that massive bear had crouched—there, at its very center, stood the split, forking remains of a Sacred Tree.
"That was the original Sacred Tree."
James pointed at it.
"…That is, if you could still call it a Sacred Tree."
"And Yona took the words right out of his mouth."
Indeed, it no longer deserved the name. The whole trunk had turned a mottled blackish red, and a sludge-like sap—thick, sticky, oozing like filth—came trickling down its bark. And all around it, wild beasts were lapping up that sap as if it were spring water. Every last one of their hides was pitch black.