The Nameless Traveler (2)
Anyone who showed up would have been thrown into confusion.
In that brief stretch of time when he had not taken his eyes off the stove, someone had arrived and seated themselves.
And that "someone," despite the black robe and leather gloves, moved with such antique grace and manners that piety and courtesy seemed to radiate from them. The sight of a figure like that casually picking up and eating chicken bones was an especially grating one.
Yet Karem could spare no attention for a scene that might otherwise have startled a laugh out of him. The moment he laid eyes on the uninvited guest, a sense of déjà vu washed over him.
A cold yet warm breeze rode the empty wind. An indescribable, somehow eerie smell, and the cry of a crow. Grief-filled sobs mixed with voices cheering and celebrating something. Beyond that no words could be heard, yet Karem could catch a soft murmuring in his mind.
The familiarity struck him at once. He had experienced something similar only a few months ago.
Whether Karem's head was sinking into a swamp of tangled thoughts or not, the newly appeared figure busily worked their hands, pushing chicken bones into the darkness of the hood. The last remaining leg bone vanished. The other said nothing, but Karem could tell they were faintly disappointed.
"This might sound strange to ask, but… are you a god?"
At Karem's question the figure turned their head. The hood nodded slightly in affirmation, then extended a hand toward the seat where Karem had originally been sitting.
"Before that—there are perfectly good pieces here. Why go for the bones…?"
.....
"No, if bones, entrails, and skin are to your taste, then…"
Karem knew well enough that beef marrow was delicious, that pork bone soup was rich and deep, and that pressure-fried whole chicken had bones worth eating. He knew skin could serve as emergency rations, too. To put it bluntly, crispy fried chicken skin and chicharron were tasty.
But still—just chewing them whole like that was a bit much.
Though it left a sour taste in his mouth, Karem had no choice but to nod. They said bones were the best, after all. Preferences ought to be respected.
Karem set the bowl of chicken down on the table. Seated now, he could examine the other more carefully. Yet nothing changed. Even with sunlight falling on them, nothing was visible inside the darkness of the hood.
The god dusted powder from their gloves, politely clasped their hands, and showed deep interest in the bowl heaped high with chicken. They said nothing. Yet Karem understood the meaning.
"Ah—right. Even so, just offering a guest? nothing but bones feels a little…"
......
"Ah. It's called fried chicken."
Talking alone and understanding alone left Karem thoroughly bewildered. The other—the god—spoke no words, only strange sounds, and yet the meaning came through. Still, Karem felt courtesy and gratitude, and quickly portioned out a whole chicken's worth onto an empty plate, offering it politely toward the god.
The god bowed their head slightly in thanks and nodded the hood. Then they began pushing the chicken into the head of the hood, slowly savoring the taste.
Crunch—sizzle, crack, crack!
While the god ate the fried chicken bones and all, just as before, Karem's mind raced. Once his briefly heated head cooled, a thought suddenly surfaced.
The present situation. Catherine and Narke, who had been moving fine, were frozen; even the leaves scattering on the wind had stopped. Karem really, truly wondered if—just maybe—
"I apologize for interrupting your meal, but may I ask just one thing?"
....
"By any chance, the seasoned chicken that was in the basket at the shelter—no, at Lady Skadi's temple—"
At those words the god shook their head side to side. Between the same sounds as before, a piercing cold arrived together with the contrasting coziness of heavy snow, and Karem heard the roar of a fierce winter wind.
....
"Uh… Lady Skadi?"
The moment the god nodded the hood—
Thwack!
.....!?
A hailstone the size of a baseball flew in from outside the window and smacked the god's hood.
"A-are you all right?"
.....
"No, but there's a hole in the hood. Yes? Don't mind it?"
The god, who had swayed heavily, fiddled a little with the hole in the hood, then resumed the meal they had paused. The meaning came through blatantly: forget the recent incident. Karem had no choice but to agree, yet he could not keep his gaze from drifting to the pure-white chunk of ice rolling on one side of the kitchen.
But the request was already arriving in his mind. Just pretend not to notice for a bit. Only after Karem forced his unmoving head to turn did the god finally relax and continue eating.
"But why would someone so exalted come in person to such a humble place…"
....
Karem forced the head that wanted to turn back into place and asked. The god set down the half-eaten chicken leg—literally half remaining—and pointed to the wooden box on the table.
"The Scale of the Death Dragon Naglfar?"
....
"You descended personally to retrieve this…?"
The god nodded slowly, then pushed the chicken leg they had been eating into the hood as well.
....
"Ha—but that's not something I can decide."
....?
"Well, ownership of this item belongs to Lady Atanitas and Lady Escarna, who defeated the monster. Wait—does it even belong to Lady Escarna?"
The god who had been nodding regarded Narke for a moment as if displeased. Then, as if it were not worth fretting over right now, they raised a hand.
Catherine and Narke, frozen like figures in a pantomime, began to move again.
"—I should look up more legends and materials about -far, huh?"
"—Lady Atanitas? Why so suddenly…?"
Catherine and Narke, mid-conversation, noticed the anomaly at once, as mages would.
"…The Nameless Traveler?"
At Catherine's confident question, the robe—the Nameless Traveler—nodded.
Catherine Marigold Atanitas was a great mage who had reached the rank of Sage. Even if the knowledge she possessed were set down in writing, it would fill an entire castle and still fall short; that range included the gods believed by the people of Europa and their assembly, the Pantheon.
The Nameless Traveler. One pillar of the Three Gods Sect worshipped in Iceland alongside Skadi and Tutatis. God of wanderers, travelers, and fugitives roaming the world, and the guest that the dead of the cold frozen lands finally meet. One of the few remaining gods of death in the vast Europa after the fall of the Palatino Empire.
Crunch—munch munch munch—crunch—
Such a being was now sitting calmly at the table, tearing into fried chicken. And as if the fried chicken rather pleased them, the Nameless Traveler's right hand never rested, continuously pushing pieces into the hood without pause.
"O Nameless Traveler. How on earth?"
Catherine asked, never releasing the faint thread of wariness, packing many meanings into the question. Whether positive or negative, a god's deep interest rarely brought good results for mortals.
....-?
BOOOOM!
A sudden roar. Unlike the unfazed Nameless Traveler, Catherine and Karem's heads whipped around. Narke's mind was already on the verge of fainting from the sight of the god of death. Yet her body, driven by an indescribable terror, moved on instinct, slamming her head into the table and blacking out.
"…More fragile than I expected."
"Indeed. Because she's a necromancer, maybe?"
"Could just be her personality."
Thanks to that, the tension snapped and drained away. The Nameless Traveler regarded Narke with clear displeasure. Then, as they had with Karem, they looked at Catherine and pointed to the wooden box. Catherine's brilliant mind grasped the entire content from that single simple gesture.
After the fall of the Palatino Empire, once the center of Europa, the methods by which gods—now finding it difficult to interfere directly in the world—could contact mortals were limited to a few. Conveying will through dreams, bestowing oracles, or, rarely, descending in person through ritual, and so on.
The thick death aura that had covered the forest near Fungusby.
When the monster died, that dense death aura had slipped free of control and blanketed forest and village. Though it was no longer thick enough to threaten ordinary people directly, it remained death aura dense enough to take form. Complete dissipation would take considerable time. Conversely, it meant a god of death could descend through that very aura—much as the war god Tutatis had revealed himself in person at the festival held in his honor.
Moreover, the Nameless Traveler was, as the name suggested, the god of travelers. Death was the final journey that every life met at its end.
"According to myth, when Tutatis was still a mortal, he slew a dragon that sought to become a god of death, as a task given by the goddess."
"God of death, dragon. Then this scale is—?"
"It seems the local myths and the school legends Narke spoke of share a common thread."
Catherine tapped the wooden box, then flung the lid open. Along with a faint death aura, Naglfar's Scale—looking like nothing more than a dead man's hand—revealed itself once more.
"The mage who had been clinging to that monster was after Naglfar's magic after all?"
....
The Nameless Traveler, who had been gazing regretfully at the empty plate, turned at Catherine's words and nodded. Something dropped with a soft plop in front of her from midair. At a glance, a fang as long as a dagger.
"No—isn't that a bit too long to call a fang?"
"Ha, hahaha! If I receive something like this, I can hardly refuse, can I."
"Oh, do you know what it is?"
"No! I don't!"
Catherine could not hold back her laughter and promptly shoved the box to the opposite side. Long years of life had shown her countless things, yet there remained much she did not know. She did not know the identity of the item the god had offered as compensation either. But from the aura alone that rose from the long fang nearly the length of a dagger, it was plain the object rivaled the death dragon's scale.
The Nameless Traveler slowly tucked the box into their bosom, rose from the seat, and turned toward Karem.
......
"I'm simply glad if you enjoyed it."
......
"Yes? Your hand?"
Karem politely extended his hand, and something dropped onto it with a plop, just as before.
"Uh—uh-oh!?"
At the unexpectedly small size and lightness he nearly lost the object, fumbled several times, and only barely caught it before checking.
"This is… a bean?"
A bean. Neither more nor less. A bean that looked rather like a kidney bean, with an impressive bright light-green rare in nature and a black border.
"You should have been more careful."
"No—something this light suddenly dropped. Wait, before that. Where's the guest?"
"They vanished while I briefly turned my head."
As Catherine said, nothing remained in the place where the Nameless Traveler had been. Yet the clean plate, without so much as a speck of frying powder left, proved the earlier events had been no dream.
"Whew. To think I'd see another god's incarnation so soon after Winter-Ascend."
"U-uuuhm. Wh-what on earth… was it a dream after all—"
Catherine snorted as if the idea were absurd.
"What dream. While you fainted the moment you laid eyes on the Nameless Traveler, the whole thing finished."
"What!? Th-then that—no, that person wasn't a dream—no, how on earth did the situation t-turn out!?"
"You're stuttering more than usual. No—I suppose that's understandable."
Narke stared at Karem, her head refusing to accept reality even as her chest did; the only thing Karem could offer her was one remark.
"Well, look on the bright side. You almost died and came back, didn't you?"
"Ah—th-ththththat's right!? I almost died, didn't I!?"
Narke's ears, already drooping, sagged even further like wet seaweed soaked in the relief of having stepped on the edge of the underworld and returned.
"First, let's fill our stomachs. The chicken is… hmm. Cold."
"Hmm? Did that much time pass?"
"Seems so. I'll fry it again to reheat."
Karem immediately picked up the somewhat reduced chicken bowl and returned to the stove. He relit the extinguished fire and was about to set the oil pot back on when something caught at his feet.
Rumble-roll—
"Huh? This is…"
A fist-sized, uneven hailstone. The very object that had flown in from outside the window earlier and punched straight through a god's head.
Karem picked up the hail and turned it this way and that. Come to think of it, the Nameless Traveler had said the seasoned chicken was not something they had eaten. Then that seasoned chicken was… The thought was cut short by Catherine's voice.
"Kid. How long will it take?"
"It won't take long."
Karem decided the bean and the hail could wait for later. What demanded attention right now was the oil beginning to bubble before him and the half-cooled chicken.
Swaaaah—bubble bubble bubble!
Karem dumped the cold chicken into the oil.