Fight Beside Them
"You?"
Serena's laugh was cold, edged with open scorn.
"Don't stick your nose in. You can't reason with them."
She told me she and the knights had already gone to them several times, every favorable term they could offer laid on the table, and that the beastkin had refused them all. She was telling me to let it go. I didn't.
"Of course they won't listen to you, Sister."
"What? And what is that supposed to mean?"
"Just give me a little time. I'll handle it myself."
Serena regarded me with flat indifference — the look of an older sister watching a foolish younger brother volunteer for his own humiliation.
"Fine. Do as you like."
She waved me off, already done thinking about it, perfectly content to dump the headache in my lap. That was enough for me.
After that, I asked for a rough picture of how things stood in the Great Forest.
"The war hasn't truly begun yet."
One of the knights gave me that answer. The Lord of the Forest had appeared in the Red Forest, and perhaps he, too, still needed time. He was drawing demons in from every direction, but for the moment he remained quietly inside the Red Forest.
"Even so, the Great Forest is dangerous. Less so than before, perhaps, but the interior is still crawling with demons."
Reaching the beastkin villages alone might cost us our lives, he added.
"Then the timing couldn't be better."
From where I stood, this was exactly the moment — the calm before an all-out war. The beastkin would be starting to feel the threat in earnest, and starting to be swept up in it. There would never be a better time to persuade them.
"Where do I go if I want to meet the beastkin?"
I turned to Serena.
"You'll be walking a long while. Even the nearest settlement is a week's journey into the Great Forest. I'll assign you a compass and a guide."
Follow the guide on the way in, she added. On the way back, trust the compass and find your own road home.
"Understood."
The return trip worried me, but there was no helping it. Persuading the beastkin would take time. I put my last question to her.
"One more thing. The Lord of the Forest you saw — what was he like?"
Serena's mood sank at once. The knights, who had been talking freely a moment before, shut their mouths together. Everyone in that room was a veteran who had ranged the Great Forest for years, and yet the mere mention of the Lord of the Forest had them frowning like frightened children.
In that heavy, smothering silence, Serena was the first to speak.
"...Strong."
That was her first word. Frustration and fear seemed to share her eyes.
"A bipedal demon. I couldn't tell the species. Orc, ogre, troll — even looking at him with my own eyes, I couldn't say. Probably some higher breed I don't know, or a unique specimen."
She described his appearance: a body the size of an ogre, a mountain-goat head sprouting several horns, and over a frame of bare bone, a thin hide of red leather. Neither Serena nor the knight order had been able to identify him. A demon never before found in the Great Forest, or even in the Red Forest.
I, however, could make a fair guess.
Looks exactly like a Demon-type monster.
In Crius Saga, Demons had shared the mid-scenario spotlight with the Branded Monsters — creatures with the look of devils climbed out of hell, and the power to create Branded Monsters besides. They had also appeared as the bosses of raids that broke out in the southern regions. Was this that thing? I kept listening.
"He used a spear. An ominous weapon, soaked through with demonic energy. Every time I parried it, it felt as if my insides were twisting."
With that, I was certain. Demonic energy — the force that repelled a knight's aura. Demons wielded it as they pleased.
"That's all. After that, I was too busy running."
Serena bit her lip. Losing so emptily clearly rankled her. But the defeat had not been meaningless. Because of it, I knew what he was.
"Thank you for telling me."
I had what I needed. The talk ended there, and I left the conference room.
After the briefest of preparations, I decided to leave the fortress at once. The task was already set; there was no reason to linger.
"Young Master. Why are you looking for the beastkin?"
Greg asked it while I packed in silence. He didn't even seem to understand why I had volunteered to persuade them in the first place. To me, though, the beastkin mattered a great deal.
If events followed the Crius Saga scenario, the coming war was already lost. Reading the way things were flowing, House Roenheim would fail to persuade the beastkin in the end, and the two sides would destroy each other. Which was why—
"Because I need them."
I needed the beastkin. If I meant to change a foregone conclusion, I had to move, and that required a variable the scenario did not account for. These beastkin were one of the largest variables I could prepare. Greg still tilted his head.
"There aren't that many of them, are there? All of them together wouldn't amount to a tenth of the knights House Roenheim commands."
"That's true."
Beastkin living in small tribes were never numerous. That was no fresh revelation, and Greg had another reason for saying it. He was asking why we should go to all this trouble to win so few as allies. But—
"Don't underestimate beastkin in the forest, Greg."
He only said that because he didn't know them. Serena was the same, thinking at best that she would use them as scouts. None of them understood what the beastkin were truly worth. It wasn't strange. They had treated them as distant residents of the woods — neither enemies nor friends. How could they know their strength?
"Are they really that strong?"
"They are."
Beastkin characters had shown up often enough in Crius Saga. The terrain-limited buffs they held on forest fields were so skewed that, from a player's seat, you had to wonder whether the balance was even legal. Once the Empire fell and the Great Forest burned until the woods themselves nearly vanished, that talk died down fast. Even so, the advantage they held in a forest was outrageous enough that I still remembered it.
"Until you become a two-star knight, you won't so much as touch the hem of their fur."
Greg's face hardened. Normally he would have grumbled. This time he had nothing to throw back, and he kept his mouth shut. He had been restless ever since I reached the realm of a two-star knight; an escort knight still stuck at one star clearly gnawed at him.
He didn't need to rush. As I saw it, Greg was already at the threshold of two stars. Give him the smallest spark and he would cross it on his own, whether I said a word or not. So I said nothing, and only smiled.
Watching me, Greg seemed eager to change the subject, and he pressed on.
"Do you actually have a plan? The other knights all said they failed."
"A plan? Of course I do."
A way to persuade the beastkin — more precisely, a way to earn their trust. It was simpler than it sounded.
"What is it?"
"We fight with them."
"Pardon?"
"We become their comrades."
Greg stared at me as if I'd spoken nonsense, but I had nothing more to add. That really was all of it.
"Time we left."
I said it and rose. Outside, a soldier was waiting for me, and he soon brought the guide Serena had promised to assign.
"This is the guide?"
I looked at the creature at the soldier's feet. Brown-and-white fur, long ears, a tail held high, and a black nose. Anyone could see it was a dog. The breed... a beagle, maybe. The beagle panted up at me, delighted.
"Yes, Young Master. He may not be much else, but he finds a path like nobody's business. He's sharp at picking up a demon's presence, too. He'll be a real help to you."
I let out a dry laugh. When they spoke of finding a way through the Great Forest, I had half expected them to produce a skilled hunter. A beagle. Thinking it over, though, a beagle was no bad thing. If anything, he was better than a person in one respect: he wouldn't get any strange ideas.
"What's his name?"
"Max, sir."
An unexpectedly familiar name. With Max in tow, Greg and I left the fortress as we were.
For several days after that, we cut our way through the Great Forest. Summer was drawing near, and this forest at the southernmost edge of the Empire was meeting a stifling heat. The Great Forest was a jungle in every sense. At the entrance it had been no different from any ordinary wood nearby, but a day or two inward and even the species of the trees had changed.
That jungle held dangers besides demons. Venomous snakes and poisonous insects swarmed, and bizarre plants that spat toxin at the slightest brush grew everywhere as if they belonged there. Pushing through, though, was easier than I had expected — all thanks to an excellent guide.
"This guy's actually competent."
I muttered it, watching Max trot ahead of me. He did more than show the path and steer us around demons. He could pick out the slither of a venomous snake and warn us in advance, and when some clumsy poisonous insect crossed him he simply crushed it under a forepaw. Aside from the trail not being cleared, there was little to worry about in walking that dangerous jungle.
In exactly one week, we reached our destination.
"Look at that!"
Greg pointed at a strange mark carved into a tree. A sign left by the beastkin — a warning that this was their territory from here on, and that one should not set foot lightly. Their village would lie beyond it.
"This should do. Good work."
I said it while stroking Max's head, and he panted and wagged. I gave him water and food one last time. Max often guided people this way and returned alone, and the knight order had food buried here and there along the routes he usually traveled, so there was no need to worry about him going hungry.
"See you next time."
Fed, Max gave a light bark, turned with practiced ease, and ran back the way we had come.
With the guide sent off, I passed the beastkin mark. A faint path showed on the ground — the road they used, most likely. I followed it a short while.
"There."
Soon we arrived at the beastkin village. Deep in jungle as thick as the rest of the Great Forest, enormous trees had been planted and grown into a dense living wall. And from between those trunks—
"State who you are."
At last a beastkin showed herself. A woman with a leopard's ears atop her head. There was no weapon in her hands, but those narrow feline pupils were fixed on us, and on the surface her wariness was plain. I already knew it was an act.
With a beastkin's senses, she would have read our presence long before we parted from Max. The knight order must have come here with him more than once. There was no way she failed to know who we were, arriving in his company.
"We've come from House Roenheim."
I answered with nothing extra. She let out a short sigh, as if she had expected as much.
"Here to say the same thing again?"
"Something along those lines."
"...Follow me."
Reluctant as she was, she led us into the village. It was nothing like a human city. We passed between beastkin who turned to watch us, and soon stood before the one they called village chief.
"Welcome."
He had the drooping ears of some beast I could not name. On the surface he seemed to welcome us.
"Well. What words have you brought to persuade us this time?"
A faint irritation threaded the question. He clearly expected to hear the same speech all over again. I had no intention of making one.
"I have nothing to say for now."
"What...?"
"But the time to speak will come. So — could you spare us a single house to stay in for a while?"
At my shameless request, the chief only blinked.