Master of the Sword
Master of the Sword
Human crimson. The shade people back on Earth would call ginger. Only this was different—a girl with vivid scarlet hair, wearing a dark gray dress. Behind her, dozens of corpses lay split and riven across the floor.
Spilled blood blackened the mine tunnel, soaking into the earth, spreading outward. The soles of Aslan's boots grew slick with it.
A scene wrought by methodical slaughter. Aslan took in the carnage, then looked at Fay. Not a single drop of blood marred her. Through all that violence, Fay remained pristine.
Before she had even entered this mine, Fay had been hunting bandits. Dozens of them. Pressuring them, running them down through the forest, ambushing any she could pin down with certainty.
She must have fought through ambushes and relentless assaults alike. Yet standing before Aslan now, the elf's body bore not a speck of dust.
There were reasons for it, but witnessing this trait in a companion he had not seen in seven years still struck him as eerie.
An elf's clothes almost never got dirty.
On the rare occasions they did, the stain never originated from the elf herself.
If an elf's clothing was soiled, someone else was always the cause.
They needed no sleep. No food.
No elimination, not even sweat. They produced no waste at all.
Elves were living beings, members of the humanoid races, but they were the species most directly blessed by the Ancient Gods.
The moment their bare feet touched the earth, they drew nature's power through the ground to sustain themselves. Because of this, an elf needed never stop so long as she stood upon the soil.
That was why they went barefoot.
So Aslan felt no particular surprise that Fay still wore, clean as ever, the clothes he had bought her seven years ago. Eerie, yes. Surprising, no.
Fighting could tear clothes or cause injury, but Fay was Aslan's student. She had combined the stealth techniques he had taught her with her innate gift for concealment, learning to fight without taking damage. Of course her clothes remained immaculate.
Looking at Fay, Aslan remembered eight years past. Passing through the Kingdom of Bida by chance, overpowering a slaver, rescuing Fay.
The way her eyes had looked back then. Inorganic. Void of feeling.
That affectless quality had fascinated him deeply. The thought of raising an elf warrior had taken root, and he had taken Fay in as his student.
For a year after that, they had traveled together. Fay had recovered her elven nature, learned to hide the blade behind it.
Now Fay stood holding a sword that still dripped blood, watching Aslan as he stared at her. She flicked the blade lightly.
A faint clatter. The scattered blood was dark and thick.
"Aslan?"
"...Ah. Yeah. I missed you too, Fay."
"Heehee, Fay too! It's so good to see you!"
The elf girl beamed. Her smile was clear and bright as any young child's. Bright enough that Angie, standing behind Aslan, felt a visceral wrongness twist in her gut.
"Been a while. You've been well?"
"Mm, not really. Fay ate lots of yummy things, but there was no Aslan to eat them with!"
She said it with animated swings of her arms. Looking at that guileless openness, Aslan murmured a quiet apology. Fay returned the two shortswords to the sheaths behind her dress and grinned.
"It's okay! Fay forgives you!"
"Thanks."
"If you're thankful, tell Fay how you've been!"
Aslan smiled at the question and answered. Small talk, mostly. Which cities he had visited. What he had eaten.
The City of Mages had excellent crawfish. Hatun's food was disappointing, but the liquor was decent. Stories like that.
While they traded these bits of life, Angie exchanged a glance with Ereta. Ereta tilted her head slightly and shrugged.
"Fay, was it you who attacked the Thornbush Mercenary Corps and took the elves?"
"Yep, Fay did! Told her friends to go home through the forest!"
"Yeah? Good work. There shouldn't be any more slavers nearby, so they'll probably be fine."
Aslan asked; Fay answered. Hearing it, Aslan figured that every slaver in the region was, in fact, dead. Killed by Fay and the bloodworms.
"That's right! Fay thought if she just sent them off they'd get caught again, so she waited until she could kill them all! Good, right?"
"Yeah, good work."
"Then praise Fay and pet her!"
The wheedling voice was like a child's. Aslan smiled faintly and beckoned. Fay cut through the blood-trails and threw herself into his arms. Pressing her cheek to his chest, rubbing it there, her scarlet hair swayed gently.
Aslan stroked the elf girl's head. The scene recalled seven years ago. Fay laughed, satisfied.
After a long while of being stroked, Fay lifted her cheek from Aslan's chest and tilted her body. Her hair spilled sideways with the motion until only her head seemed to poke out from his flank.
At first glance it was a cute gesture. But Fay's eyes were empty.
"So, who're these two?"
Empty, and chilling. No emotion stirred in those blue-violet irises. The stare was inorganic, like a doll's.
The moment Angie saw those eyes, it hit her.
The elf race was a pure one—which meant that for the phrase "fighting elf" to make any sense at all, they had to reach this level.
Ereta seemed to be thinking something similar. She let slip a quiet murmur: So this is the Master of the Sword. When Angie flicked her eyes sideways, Ereta spoke.
"I'm Ereta. Master of Blunt Weapons, and Aslan's companion."
Angie belatedly remembered it was her turn.
"I'm... Angie. Just Angie is fine. I'm a Last Descendant of the Ancient Gods. Uh... do you know what that is? Tch, if you don't, ask Aslan. I'm awful at explaining things."
She said it while scratching her head. It came out more like a declaration of identity than an introduction, but Fay's inorganic eyes had already moved on. They swiveled back to Aslan.
"Friends?"
"Yeah, friends. They're precious companions who've agreed to fight for me."
"Oh yeah?"
When Fay's eyes clicked back toward Angie and Ereta, something like easy, open goodwill had surfaced in them.
"Then you're Eri!"
"Wha—?"
"And you're Angge!"
"What?"
"Nicknames! Aslan's friends are Fay's friends, so hello!"
While Angie and Ereta were still thrown by the sudden nicknames, Fay stepped out from behind Aslan and trotted over with light, bouncing steps. She seized their hands and pumped them vigorously.
"Heehee, hi!"
Angie's hand was shaken before she quite knew what was happening, but she noticed something. The coldness from moments ago was gone from Fay's eyes.
That sharp, unnerving chill—Angie had seen something like it before.
She thought about it and realized: it was similar to the look Aslan got when he lowered his gaze and let his killing intent seep through.
Similar, but not the same.
The way a beast recognizes a dangerous human and avoids it—Angie's animal senses picked out the difference.
The killing intent came from a different source.
Aslan's was a manufactured thing, forced, and he disliked his own killing intent for it. Fay, on the other hand, was like a small predator. She had been born with hers.
And she did not seem to care one bit.
'Another insane woman? Goddammit.'
Angie, already tense from putting on a strong front, thought back to the fight with Dmitri moments ago.
A fight where Angie could not even follow what techniques were being exchanged.
If even Dmitri—the former Master of the Sword—was that strong, then an elf who had beaten him to claim the title could very well be like this.
'Are all Masters goddamn lunatics?'
Ereta, Fay, Dmitri—not a single normal one among them, Angie figured.
Aslan watched his companions introduce themselves, then turned away. He knelt by Torek's body and searched it, retrieving the heavy coin purse he had handed over earlier.
Tucking the money into his coat, he followed the long trails of blood with his eyes until they reached Dmitri's corpse.
Unlike Torek, who had died clean, Dmitri's body was missing everything above the lower jaw. The top of his skull was simply gone.
There had been no other way to finish him. Aslan understood that. But looking at the corpse, he still felt a faint regret and something like a sliver of guilt.
Dmitri had been a farmer.
An ordinary farmer among the villagers who had come to thank Aslan for saving them from the priests.
He had begged to be taken along, said he wanted to become strong too. Aslan had refused.
Dmitri had followed anyway, learning Aslan's swordsmanship over his shoulder.
And for something learned over a shoulder, his swordsmanship had been excellent. Overwhelming talent.
A talent like that would have been useful in the fight against the evil gods to come. Had things been different, Aslan would gladly have taken him as a companion. But once infected by the bloodworms, there was no option but death.
Regrettable. And exhausting. Facing the loss of yet another familiar face left Aslan hollow. The repeated use of Equalization and the total drain of his fighting spirit left him weary.
Fighting spirit fueled his perks, and what remained of it was his endurance. Aslan tried not to let the muscle fatigue show.
"Aslan, tired?"
He grunted in response. That was not strange.
He had thought he had not let anything slip, but apparently he had.
Suppressing a faint surprise, Aslan turned his head. Fay blinked at him through her curling scarlet hair.
Ereta and Angie showed no sign of having noticed. So he had not let his exhaustion show after all.
Which meant he could brush this off. Aslan shook his head.
"No, just...."
"Liar!"
Fay grinned and approached. When she grabbed his hand and tugged, Aslan let himself be pulled without resistance. He was not callous enough to shake off a companion's hand.
Outside, corpses lay strewn in the dappled sunlight. Most were bloodworm-infected, but some were not.
Stepping over the bodies, Fay led him to a tree and sat him down at its base. She beamed.
"There. Rest here. Fay'll handle the rest!"
He could not scold her for that. Aslan was not twisted enough to snap at someone showing him concern.
"How'd you know?"
Fay tilted her head one way, then the other. It did not look like deep thought. It was the gesture of an elf who knew exactly how cute she was.
"You looked more tired than seven years ago, and your color's bad?"
At that matter-of-fact answer, Aslan's mouth twisted slightly. Curiosity, at the unexpectedness of it.
"You remember seven years ago? Just from my face."
"Isn't forgetting the weird part?"
Fay looked genuinely puzzled. She touched a finger to her lip, eyes round.
"Fay hasn't forgotten a single thing about Aslan!"
Then she smiled brightly. That childlike ingenuousness—an affected ingenuousness she reserved for Aslan alone—was something he had not seen in a very long time.
Angie and Ereta, who had followed them out, watched Fay's demeanor and could tell: the unsettling, emotionless Fay only acted that way with Aslan.
She opened her heart to him and him alone, and she was clearly performing, putting on the sort of expression Aslan would find endearing or delightful. Cunning, perhaps, but her intentions did not seem calculated.
"If you're tired, rest properly! Fay will reward hardworking Aslan. Lap pillow!"
"Lap pillow...?"
"Uh-huh. You don't want it?"
The idea struck Aslan as more than a little fetishistic, but Fay stubbornly insisted he rest his head on her lap. He figured she must have picked up the concept somewhere, probably in a tavern.
The offer itself was not bad. He genuinely needed rest. The lap pillow was incidental—a garnish at best. It hardly mattered. He was not about to spit on goodwill.
The problem was the size difference between Fay and Aslan.
Fay was annoyingly elfin. She simply lacked the surface area. Her thighs were too slender and short to support Aslan's head for long.
She seemed to realize this only after the fact. A rare look of fluster crossed her face before she turned her head.
A suitable candidate was conveniently available.
"Eri, can you do the lap pillow for Aslan instead? For Fay!"
"Ah? It's not that I can't, but... is that all right?"
The question was directed at Aslan. He did not see why it would not be. If anything, the whole thing was faintly embarrassing, and simply lying down would have been preferable, but Fay was not going to listen.
"I'll keep watch, so just relax and rest!"
Fay had already decided before Aslan could answer. He shot her a troubled look, but when Ereta opened her mouth, he simply turned his eyes toward her without comment.
"Fay, was it? She's right. You need to rest, Aslan. Your arm, your eye, your jaw—each of them's been torn off once, then you teleported and your arm got burned, and now your eye's been cut out again. Your body needs the recovery."
Ereta was correct. Aslan's right eye had been slashed out by Dmitri's final attack. Unless he used Equalization, it would not be seeing anything.
Ereta's slender fingers brushed lightly over the socket. The sting made Aslan flinch.
She pressed him down, and because the gesture held no hostility and precious little guile, he did not resist.
Lying on the ground, Aslan felt the softness of a bare thigh cradling the back of his head. Looking up from Ereta's lap, their eyes met.
"Your scars are striking, Aslan, and you're at your most captivating when you're wounded... but you still have to rest, you know. Even when I was a priest, I was never as reckless as you."
"Can't be helped when you're fighting priests. A few sacrifices are nothing if they serve the objective."
Ereta, who had once been a high priest and had employed strategies built on regenerative resilience many times over, did not scold him—she seemed to agree—but she still insisted he rest, her fingers tapping lightly across his forehead.
The touch felt awkward somehow, but Aslan did not bother swatting her hand away.
Instead, he glanced around with visible discomfort. The area was littered with corpses. Dmitri's body still lay where it had fallen.
"...Thanks for worrying. But I'd rather bury my old friend first, and then rest."
Lifting his head from the yielding warmth of Ereta's thigh, Aslan sat up. He added,
"Meditation is enough for me. Still, thank you. For caring."
He wore a faint smile as he brushed himself off and rose. The last person to block him from burying Dmitri was Angie.
She was already carrying bodies, heaving them up onto both shoulders.
She stacked the dead in a corner, dusted her hands with a slap-slap, and spoke.
"I can bury them by myself. You stay here and rest. I'll take care of the rest of them properly."
She said it with a strangely stalwart expression. She gave a firm nod, and Aslan found himself yielding to the force of it.
"...Yeah, all right. I'll leave it to you."
Angie nodded, satisfied with the answer. Then her eyes shifted. She was mulling something over. Her gaze drifted toward a corner, and when it settled on the ground, a strange heat seemed to rise in it. Her face flushed.
"But, uh, I think it's kind of shameless for you to be resting on Ereta's lap, okay? She's not wearing anything under that. And she's so frail there's no way she can support someone's head on her thighs for long."
"So mean~"
Angie ignored Ereta's protest, bit her lip lightly, and said,
"Rest until I'm done burying them. Then I'll give you a lap pillow."
"I told you, meditation is enough..."
When exactly a lap pillow had become a mandatory component of rest was unclear, but Aslan offered an awkward smile as if it really were not necessary.
"Ah, shut up! If someone says they're giving you one, just take it quietly!"
Angie's face went bright red at his response. She shouted and then stomped off toward the mine tunnel where the bodies were piled.
Aslan watched her retreating back with a dazed expression. Fay, crouched nearby, had been watching the whole exchange, and finally broke into a grin.
"Total popularity explosion!"
Aslan laughed bitterly.
*
For once, Aslan woke without nightmares. He could not say why. Perhaps it was because his fighting spirit had been entirely drained.
A sleep untainted by nightmares was something rare for him, and because of it, his mind was remarkably clear the moment he opened his eyes.
"Hey."
His head was pillowed on Angie's lap. The sky had already darkened.
Fay was crouched beside him, gazing at him with quiet stillness. Ereta and Angie were leaned against a tree, wrapped in blankets, asleep. Their breathing came in slow, even rasps.
Aslan sat up. He draped a blanket more snugly over Angie, who showed no sign of waking.
"How long was I out?"
Fay, as an Elf, had no need for sleep. She would have kept watch. In this forest, nothing—monster or beast—could ambush the party while evading Fay's senses.
The bloodworms had probably killed or driven off everything in the area anyway.
So Aslan felt no tension as he picked up Dmitri's beloved sword, the Blood Sword Rutile, along with Seobsaeng, and fastened them to his belt.
"Half a day?"
"Half a day, huh."
Fay tilted her head as she answered. Aslan repeated the words as if they were foreign to him.
Sleeping half a day without a single nightmare—that was rare.
It did not feel bad.
He exhaled, lightly brushing Angie's hair with his fingers. She murmured something in her sleep and buried her nose in the blanket.
Fay watched him for a long moment, then asked,
"You close with them?"
Aslan answered slowly.
"Yeah."
Fay tilted her head at the reply, angling it to look up at him. In her blue-violet eyes, something that seemed of little consequence flickered past.
"More than Fay?"
Aslan did not answer immediately. He had to consider it. After mulling it over, he spoke.
"It hasn't been half a year since I met Angie and Ereta. You, Fay—you and I traveled together for a year without ever separating. We survived a lot together."
"Yeah, we did."
"So as a companion, my bond with Fay runs deeper."
"Right? Hehe."
Fay laughed brightly. Watching her, Aslan added,
"But that doesn't mean the bonds I've formed with Ereta and Angie are lacking."
Fay fixed him with her smiling gaze. Aslan's own smile was faint.
"Angie clearly admires and looks up to me. I see her as someone whose fate is tied to mine from here on out. Maybe she's even looking for something paternal from me."
His eyes drifted to Angie, who was deep in sleep, breathing quietly.
"Ereta is bewildered by her own masochism, but she considers me an exceptionally unique person and finds me fascinating. That fascination borders on trust. And I trust her fascination."
Fay sniffed at that. "Good taste," she murmured, and fell quiet.
She did not press for a verdict.
She understood what Aslan meant: the depth of companionship with Fay was greater, but that did not mean he intended to rank them.
So they were silent together for a while. The deliberate quiet was more comfortable than awkward. In that easy stillness, Aslan gazed up at the sky.
The colors of the cosmos seemed to drift. A vista beyond which an Evil God might be lurking.
Once, he had left Fay behind because he did not know if he could endure losing her.
In truth, it was as good as abandoning her.
Even knowing how deeply she cared for him.
The guilt of it made him speak.
"I'm sorry for leaving you alone all this time."
Fay smiled softly.
"It's okay!"
The answer came without hesitation. Aslan wondered if she meant it, and saw her toes wiggling as if she were playing with her feet. After fidgeting for a moment, Fay reached out and squeezed his hand tightly.
"Waiting made it even better, so it's all okay!"
A smiling face. Eyes glancing up at him. In the trust and goodwill held in those blue-violet eyes, Aslan felt a twinge of guilt.
The thought pierced him: was he not just using a friend to claim victory?
At the same time, looking at the girl he had changed, he felt deeply moved.
The quiet, emotionless Fay from the beginning was gone.
If he could change the world the way he had changed one broken Elf, he thought, that would be enough.
"Thank you."
So he was grateful. Fay did not ask what for. She just smiled quietly.
She giggled and fiddled with Aslan's hand, her fingers idly playing over his for a moment. Then she asked,
"What now? I heard a bit from Eri and Angge. Are you going back to the Duchy of Hilsinger?"
Something about an artifice, she added. Aslan mulled over the question.
"No."
"Hmm?"
"I'm heading for the Mountain Kingdom."
Fay tilted her head.
"Did they lie to Fay?"
Aslan shook his head.
"I just... didn't tell them. It wasn't the plan from the start."
Going to the Mountain Kingdom, Aslan had decided, was better than carrying out the main quest in the Duchy of Hilsinger.
The Duchy could not withstand the next priest assault.
So Aslan had altered the plan. For now, only Aslan and Fay knew.
"Oh, so only Fay knows?"
Fay caught on and covered her mouth, giggling. The laughter had a mischief in it, close to a prankster's.
Aslan smiled faintly at the sound. Fay leaned in dramatically and asked with playful slyness,
"So Fay really is the best, right?"
"Yeah. Fay's the best."
Aslan ran a hand over her head as he answered. Fay, delighted by the touch, kept laughing.