Honor
Honor
Aslan knew what the dwarf wanted. There was no missing it.
The dwarf wanted an embrace. Wanted goodwill. Wanted the kindness it had been shown to come back around like a boomerang.
The sheer innocence of it caught him off guard for only a moment. Then the shaggy creature approached, arms spread wide.
"Friend?"
"...What in the...."
As the party stared in bewilderment, Aslan felt a flicker of genuine surprise.
The dwarf was speaking.
Given that dwarves normally couldn't speak, this was far from ordinary.
A dwarf, with intelligence barely above a chimpanzee's, shouldn't have been able to form words at all.
And the dwarf's hands and arms were blistered and weeping from burns. Unmistakable signs of wild magic.
Yet despite wielding fire through wild magic, the dwarf showed no hint of madness.
Aslan considered just how rare a sight this was, then focused on the language itself.
"Friend, hug?"
The shaggy figure tilted its head. It wasn't producing real conversation, but it was attempting communication with basic words.
'Someone taught it... or it learned by eavesdropping?'
Wild mages were typically individuals of high intelligence and sharp senses. Wild magic was, after all, more intuitive than conventional spellwork.
And as that implied, a wild mage who hadn't succumbed to madness was very likely to possess exceptional intellect.
In that context, this dwarf's speech was nothing strange. It had simply learned and was using the Imperial language, the way a human might pick up a foreign tongue.
But that wasn't what mattered. What mattered right now was that the dwarf was offering friendship.
"Friend!"
The shaggy thing called out. After a brief hesitation, Aslan opened his arms. The dwarf's face split into a grin so broad even a human could read it, and it rushed forward.
It threw itself into the embrace. The little creature, its head reaching about Aslan's waist, patted his sides and murmured the word for friend.
"Well, shit...."
Tiyamal's bewildered voice came from behind, but what Aslan shared with the monster was a perfectly ordinary hug. Aslan caught the rank animal stench filling his nostrils and thought.
The dwarf was unmistakably a monster.
The stench, the wildness it couldn't hide, all of it marked the dwarf as a monster.
Monster.
By definition, a being hostile to humans, one that brought humans harm.
A being with whom negotiation was impossible and speech was useless.
The dwarf was undeniably a monster, and yet it fell outside that definition.
Aslan reached out and patted the dwarf on the back. He could feel its warmth and heartbeat through his fingertips.
He wasn't one to believe every monster had to die.
He didn't kill every monster he saw, either.
Aslan killed for exactly two reasons.
Beings that harmed humans, or beings that made themselves his enemy.
By that standard, there was no reason to kill this dwarf.
It had shot flames, but without intent to harm. The fire had stopped at a warning. So it wasn't hostile to Aslan.
Gobil had said no one was injured or dead. It apparently didn't harm humans, either.
No hostility, no harm done. Even friendly toward humans.
Aslan couldn't kill a monster that didn't hurt people.
He wasn't even sure if it could truly be called a monster. Breathing in the animal musk, he let out a low murmur.
The problem was why he'd come here in the first place.
He was here to exterminate dwarves. He was here to make the acting chieftain into the chieftain by exterminating dwarves.
And now he couldn't even kill the dwarf standing right in front of him. For Aslan, who loathed taking innocent life, this was nothing short of a predicament.
What to do about this? He thought it over.
He'd find out whether the other dwarves were as friendly to humans as this one.
That would at least give him a direction. As soon as he made the decision, he took the dwarf by the shoulders and gently separated it from his chest. The woolly-haired dwarf pulled away without resistance. Aslan held both its shoulders, met its eyes, and spoke.
"I don't know if you can understand me, but can you lead me to the other dwarves?"
The dwarf tilted its head. Just as Aslan was about to try again—
"That won't be necessary."
A voice came from deeper inside the mine tunnel.
Footsteps followed.
Heavy, deliberate steps, and with them, a figure emerged into the lantern light.
It was a human.
A man in clothes that, though somewhat dirtied, were clearly the ornate attire of Mountain Kingdom nobility.
He had blond hair and blue eyes, looked to be a young man, and still carried a boyishness that said he hadn't long left adolescence.
Anyone would have called him a young lord. He walked out and stopped beneath the light, then spoke.
"He's clever, but he hasn't learned much speech yet. He still can't understand complicated sentences."
A clear voice. His face gave an impression of goodness—a purity distinct from Ereta's cruelty disguised as kindness.
At a glance, it was a gentle face that might recall a clergyman from Earth, outside Geladrion.
Beneath that gentle face, something about the young lord felt oddly familiar. He gazed steadily at Aslan.
As Aslan studied him and he studied Aslan, the source of that familiarity clicked.
The young lord resembled Gobil.
The moment Aslan realized it, the young lord spoke.
"...Did my older brother send you?"
The young lord was Gobil's younger brother.
Aslan grasped it at once and thought.
'He said he'd only posted guards and sent no one... so that was a lie.'
Aslan turned Gobil's lie over in his mind and fixed his gaze on the young lord.
*
Gobil tipped back his drink. The liquid filled the wooden cup and burned its way down his throat to warm his stomach.
It was punishingly strong liquor to swallow without so much as a snack, but he wasn't in a position to be particular. Gobil forced his troubled expression down and exhaled.
The smell of alcohol drifted with the sigh, and as if taking courage from it, he let his uneasy look fade for a moment and shifted his gaze.
At the far end of that gaze was a figure who caught Gobil sneaking a glance and answered with a thin smile.
A distinctive figure.
A dreary-looking man with unmistakably decayed skin, wearing ring-mail reinforced leather armor.
Set against that dreariness: a supremely confident smile, a bald head, eyes so pale they seemed blind, and a faded red surcoat worn on the outside.
An old man who looked like a knight or noble left half-embalmed and half to rot nodded with a baritone that matched his self-assured smile.
"What's the matter, Gobil? Lost your nerve?"
The old man's voice seemed to swirl with vertigo. Hearing it, Gobil's expression tightened.
"Are you certain this will work?"
"This, you say?"
"...You know what I mean."
When Gobil snapped at the old man, who was feigning ignorance, the man chuckled and picked up the mace at his feet.
Gobil flinched at the motion. The old man, looking pleased, smiled as he spoke.
"Are you referring to sending your younger brother to his death? Or... to sending the Priest Slayer into the death trap that will kill your brother, so as to clean up the evidence? You'll have to be specific. I've given you so many instructions, it's hard to keep track."
Priest Slayer. The title the priests of the Evil Gods used for Aslan. Gobil, who had flinched at the name, dropped his eyes to the floor.
"You know perfectly well...."
His voice had gone hollow. The old man chuckled, laced his fingers together, and rested them on his knee.
"Yes, just keep to the plan. Gobil."
At the easy tone, Gobil's face darkened further and he ground his teeth. Visibly displeased, he braced himself against the table, his pupils trembling minutely.
Watching that anxious display, the old man smiled in satisfaction.
"Or was there another way? I place great importance on personal will. Even when no other path is visible."
The voice was almost soothing, but Gobil understood. The old man was mocking him.
Gobil clenched his fist, and the old man laughed low and added,
"Are you confident you can surpass your brother's achievements and become chieftain on your own? If so, I certainly won't stop you."
The barb stung, but there was nothing Gobil could do about it.
It was all true.
His younger brother was more capable than he was.
His accomplishments far outstripped Gobil's, and the previous chieftain—their father, Remul—had also believed his younger brother would be the next chieftain.
In a fair contest, Gobil had no way to win.
So he'd had no choice. He despised the old man's attitude and the choices laid before him, but he had followed anyway.
Swallowing his resentment, Gobil leaned on the table and asked in a low voice.
"If I become chieftain... will I truly receive the blessing of the Three Evil Gods?"
The old man answered the hushed question while flicking a forked, serpentine tongue.
"Of course. Once you are chieftain, and you give us what we desire... you will rule the sanctum of the Poison-spitting Dragon."
I guarantee it. The words were light, but Gobil felt the weight behind them, a weight he couldn't ignore.
The Poison-spitting Dragon, currently the most powerful faction among the Three Evils.
Its high priest.
The Artist.
Gobil reminded himself anew of exactly who sat before him. His hand trembled briefly with unease, but he tightened it into a fist.
The being before him was terrifying, but he had something he had to do. Gobil steeled himself.
The world was in upheaval.
He knew it well.
Priests were swarming, and the gods were steadily extending their grasp over Geladrion.
Cities, nations, the world itself were little more than toys before them.
To survive this changing world, you had to abandon the old values and cling even to an Evil God.
To save more people, to save his tribe, he could do anything.
It was a dishonorable course, but Gobil believed honor only existed for those who survived.
He could do anything to save his tribe.
Even if it meant abandoning his humanity. Even if it meant killing his younger brother.
Gobil forced down the bile rising in his throat and managed a smile.
It was a wretched smile.