The Land of Sorrow
The Land of Sorrow
The sea wind tasted of salt. Expected, given all that brine. Some call it a sharp wind, or say it carries a bitterness that recalls life's hardships, but Aslan felt none of that.
His life had held more spice than bitterness, and twelve years laid over nineteen more had been mired in horror and pain too vast to measure.
Even so, his will hadn't broken—but a blade needs something to cut, or it stays sheathed.
For now, Aslan set aside thoughts of life and hardship and walked, listening to the distant churn of a river.
Their destination lay along the sea. Follow the river, and they would reach it.
"—so this old timer says, 'Get your filthy hands off me, you miserable bastards.' And the bastards go, 'The hell is this lizard?' So naturally, this old timer lifts his fist and...."
A booming voice rang out behind him as he followed the jungle path, listening to the river's churn.
The voice belonged to Tiyamal Clo, one of Aslan's companions.
Most people pictured an assassin or a sniper when they heard the title Master of the Bow. Tiyamal defied every convention.
His voice thundered, his frame was enormous, and the roar of his bow and arrows matched the rest.
If a sniper rifle was the metaphor, Tiyamal was a cannon.
Naturally, passing travelers kept glancing back at the party or found their eyes pulled by that rolling voice.
Aslan generally disliked drawing unnecessary attention and would have long since told him to keep it down. Not this time.
And Aslan wasn't the only one.
Tiyamal knew Aslan wouldn't stop him for it.
Even the mercenaries scattered among the travelers showed no wariness, chatting idly or offering greetings to Aslan's group.
It was a peaceful scene, hard to reconcile with the Northern Continent of Geladrion and its notorious lawlessness.
But the peace was neither hollow nor a mirage. Nor was it temporary. The Tatambo Jungle, bordering the independent city of Hatun, was genuinely peaceful.
Sensing the dissonance keenly, Angie studied her companions to confirm her impression.
Fay, half-listening to Tiyamal's boasts, staring quietly at Aslan.
Ereta, humming to herself and drifting lightly around Aslan until her eyes met Angie's; then she flashed a smile and waved.
And Aslan, looking back at Angie and blinking.
Angie walked up to him.
Unlike the others, she couldn't make sense of this peace.
"Aslan."
"Mm."
"Why is everyone so... uh... loose?"
She lacked the vocabulary to describe the lax atmosphere the party was giving off, and the question came out sounding a little simple.
Fortunately, she was young, and her appearance matched her age closely enough. The passing mercenaries must have taken the question for a child's; they smiled faintly as they walked on, and Aslan let a faint smile touch his lips.
"What if a priest shows up? Or some kind of monster?"
But she didn't know the reason, so she pressed him. Aslan took it without any sign of annoyance and answered at his own pace.
"Or bandits—"
"None of that's going to happen."
Angie gave him a questioning look as he cut her off, and Aslan met her eyes with that same faint smile.
"The Tatambo Jungle belongs to the independent city of Hatun."
Independent city of Hatun. Angie frowned slightly at the unfamiliar name. A place she didn't know, which meant she couldn't even begin to reason about it.
Aslan walked on, explaining over his shoulder.
"Hatun is allied with the City of Mages. The city is sustained by both direct and indirect support from the finest mages on the Northern Continent."
"And?"
"The Tatambo Jungle, which serves as Hatun's approach, is layered with large-scale magic. Illusion School magic. Anyone who enters with hostility or malicious intent loses their way."
Angie's eyes went wide. To a girl with no knowledge of such magic, it sounded like something from another world.
Aslan felt the irony of explaining Geladrion to a native of Geladrion, let out a soft chuckle through his smile.
Something like that, he said, and Angie nodded with a look of comprehension, then tilted her head.
"So why don't other cities use it? Why don't they?"
As she asked, she lifted her gaze to the sky. It was deeply dark, and the sea wind cut sharp. Her skin stung.
Aslan glanced at her, then looked ahead. In the distance, beneath layered banks of cloud, the city's silhouette was just visible.
The illusion formula woven through the Tatambo Jungle had been crafted personally by the former Master of Magic. It could only be used in Hatun, which bordered the City of Mages. Replicating it elsewhere was impossible. Spatial, temporal, and resource constraints made that a given. And explaining to the girl the labor required, the mana consumed, or the formula's complexity didn't seem likely to go anywhere.
Aslan kept his explanation as simple as possible.
"It's only possible in Hatun because the City of Mages is right next door—the place is always overflowing with mages. Other cities don't have that many mages."
She didn't seem fully satisfied, but that came from a lack of knowledge. She let the questions drop and lifted her head with a sulky expression. A mixture of curiosity and regret that she'd have to pick up the background knowledge some other time.
"Oh."
Still nursing that regret, she had been watching the oddly flowing clouds. The moment dissonance reached her eyes, she let out a gasp.
The gasp rippled outward, and people around her turned their heads, shifted their gaze, opened their mouths, as something drew every eye upward.
"Wh— that, that—!"
The boldest of the wandering knights spoke first, and then everyone saw something falling from the sky.
Sky and earth shook violently. The sky split.
What emerged from the divided sky was an immense finger.
Its mere appearance filled the heavens like a vast curtain of skin draped across the sky. It plunged into the sea, its enormity undiminished. Though only the very tip—no more than the first joint of a human finger—had been revealed, its immensity seemed to consume the entire field of vision.
――!
The sea surged upward. It looked like a tidal wave—then, in the next instant, the rising water vanished. Every droplet dissolved into empty air. Thousands, hundreds of millions of droplets, scattered until not a speck remained.
Into the awed silence, someone spoke.
"The Veil of Compassion...!"
The Veil of Compassion.
Hearing that name, Aslan clenched his teeth against the images that flooded his mind.
The colossal finger plunging into the sea was indeed a sliver of the Veil's true form. The Veil of Compassion was that kind of god—a god powerful enough to force a fragment of its true self into Geladrion for a short time, using a priest as a sacrifice. From his days as Lee Hyun-woo, if asked which god had the most difficult priests to deal with, he'd have ranked the Veil first.
It was the being that had carved the great line dividing the northern and southern continents, the frozen place called the Faraway World, where time and space lay stilled. The death of a universe, a dimension's end, a god born when death itself took on form and a sense of self little different from dust.
The most powerful of the Evil Gods. The Veil of Compassion.
As white death bloomed from the sea where its true form had struck, Aslan shut his mouth, his face bleak.
And so the voice that followed was not his.
"I thought you said it couldn't come in."
It was Angie. Chiding, not truly scolding, but thick with disbelief.
Of course, Aslan didn't know everything, and he had no way of knowing how this situation had come about, but Angie aimed her complaint at the source of the information.
Aslan kept his mouth shut, and Fay chattered from Angie's side. The smug note in her voice carried clearly even without seeing her face.
"Aslan gets things wrong sometimes. His ears go all red. It's cute."
He didn't know whether to cover his ears or not.
"See, they're all red now."
"Oh, wow, he really is. How cute."
"So the whelp has his moments."
As the party each got a word in, Aslan hastily covered his ears and quickened his pace. The others followed. They slipped through the bewildered travelers and entered Hatun.
*
"A boat? Are you out of your damn mind? How the hell do you expect to launch a boat in *this*?"
The seaman's words came heated, enough to warrant annoyance, but Aslan only offered a quiet "My apologies" and withdrew.
"Now I've seen every kind of crazy bastard."
Angie's expression tightened at the trailing insult, but Aslan wrapped an arm around her shoulders to hold her back and let out a sigh.
Once they'd arrived in the city, he and his companions had set about gathering information while seeking a boat. From fishermen to ship captains, from seamen to nouveau riche who merely owned a vessel, they approached countless people and asked if they could sail. Half a day passed, and by the time the sky darkened and long streaks of sunset scattered deep red across the city, Aslan had collected his forty-seventh refusal. That number matched the total of boat-owners in the city, and all he'd learned was that no one would launch a boat. Given the Veil's nature and how well known that nature was, it was to be expected. The Veil of Compassion was the most famous of the gods. It was the one that had drawn the immense line dividing the northern and southern continents, the frozen line known as the Faraway World, where an ancient empire slumbered preserved exactly as it had once been.
To put it simply, the Veil's power was freezing. To go deeper, it was the final destination of all things—death—best summed up by the concept of heat death. Not even time and space could escape the Veil of Compassion. Like balls suspended in congealing cheese. Aslan let out a sigh as he recalled a depiction of heat death from some old point-and-click adventure game. He'd moved on the principle that he'd rather try and fail than regret not trying, but the lack of any return on his effort sapped his energy. The fruitless effort pushed him to day's end, and by the time the sun was sinking, he'd gathered his party near the harbor and had to explain that the sea was in its current state. And that, since nobody knew how far the freezing extended, his requests to sail a detour along a safe route to the City of Mages had all been refused. Most of the party already knew, except Angie.
The one consolation as they pooled information was that at least they'd learned how it happened. Fay, hugging an armful of fruit, answered the question while eating an apple.
"They said a priest of the Unfalling One and a priest of the Veil of Compassion fought."
A short explanation, but the rest was clear enough without further words. Aslan turned his head to look at the sea, frozen mid-spray.
"That's a problem. Where the Veil of Compassion has manifested... just getting close would freeze you dead."
"Freeze? So if your god shows up, can it melt all that?"
Ereta had her cheek resting on her hand. Angie picked a fight from beside her. Ereta stuck out her lower lip and shook her head.
"No, it's impossible."
"Your god's useless."
"That's so mean~"
Ereta put on a wounded expression, and Tiyamal, who had been watching the exchange between the woman and the girl, scratched at the scales on his chin and spoke. Having long since mastered the art of naturally ignoring their banter, he pushed on.
"From where this old timer stands, we've got no way to travel. Wasn't the original goal to reach that City of Mages or whatsit?"
His tail swept lightly across the ground, then lifted and swayed side to side near his back. Aslan glanced at it and met Tiyamal's eyes. Even for someone not fluent in dragon-kin gestures, he understood. Only the question "what do we do?" had been left unspoken. Meeting those golden eyes fixed upon him, Aslan wore a troubled expression. Angie had called the Fire-weaving Spider useless, but Ereta's assessment was correct. The power held by the Veil of Compassion wasn't on a level that could be compared to other gods. The only beings remotely comparable were the Formless One, or perhaps the Twilight Flock—the entity that had drawn Aslan into this world and created it in the first place. Even if the Three Evil Gods had been a complete deity with full power instead of gods each holding a third, the contest still wouldn't have been winnable. There was no way the Fire-weaving Spider could melt this cosmic death.
Aslan stared at the sea with that troubled expression and exhaled.
Tiyamal, Angie, Ereta, and Fay watched him quietly, waiting for an answer.
"There's... actually one way. At least one."
"Oh, so there is a way. And here I thought you had no plan at all."
Tiyamal's tone was teasing. Aslan glanced at the large dragon-kin and gave an apologetic look. He already knew how Tiyamal would react to what came next.
But there is no other way.
Aslan spoke.
"We go through the underworld."
The underworld. The final destination of the dead.
Tiyamal could only make a face that said, "What the hell are you talking about?"