A Fiery Misunderstanding (5)
When I tossed the damp kindling onto the campfire, the flames flickered strangely and belched out thick, acrid smoke. It felt like I was staring at that dark, murky haze from inches away. One careless breath and it would force its way into my lungs, snake through my whole body, and blacken every organ inside me—the sinister side of fire. The harsh emotions Apis gave off from time to time bore an uncanny resemblance to those dancing flames.
“Hiiik!”
One of the wretches rolling at my feet let out a sob he couldn’t quite choke down. Still, no one present had the right to scold him for it. A man clutching his head and pressed flat to the ground. Another binding his bleeding arm with a strip of cloth, body shaking like a leaf. One had even emptied everything in his stomach onto the dirt. It was only natural. This was probably the first time any of them had faced killing intent sharp enough to feel like icy needles sliding down their spines. Even I, who had grown somewhat used to it, felt my facial muscles twitching from the sheer venom. I could only imagine how they felt. Frankly, it was impressive they hadn’t fainted. I almost wanted to praise them.
“Apis. I can guess what you’re thinking, seeing me dressed like this, but I swear on my life there was nothing for you to misunderstand. Once I finish treating them, I’ll explain everything properly.”
“No. Explain. Right now.”
Every time Apis’s small lips moved, cracks spiderwebbed across the walls, the ground shuddered, and the air itself vibrated. Her voice was utterly flat, stripped of anything human. That chilling aura—magic poured into the empty space where emotion should have been—meant she was already warming up another chant. I remembered once saying it sounded like she was talking in a bathhouse and getting slapped for it. Good times.
“Apis, just calm down a lit—”
“Calm down? You look like that and you have the nerve to tell me to calm down?”
Her red hair, saturated with ferocious magic, bristled like a wild animal’s as if mirroring her rage.
“It was obviously against your will. I don’t give a damn about the circumstances. Just give me the names and descriptions of the bastards who put you up to it. I’ll burn those sons of bitches until there’s not a scrap of flesh or a single shred of soul left.”
A wave of déjà vu hit me. Something like this had happened once before.
It was back when our party was still climbing the ranks and had only just started making a name for ourselves. Apis and I had taken a simple subjugation request against a band of slave hunters. Inside a filthy beast cage we found the cold corpse of a pitiful elf girl. It didn’t take long to realize she was from the same village as Apis. Even with her face battered beyond recognition by blood and bruises, elves could never mistake the unique hue of magical power that clung to one of their own—like a fingerprint. Apis herself had taught me that.
The story of how she’d been driven out of her hometown for the absurd reason that her hair color was different came out every time she drank. A bitter drinking snack, you could call it. None of us in the party—not even once—had ever heard her say a single good thing about that place or the people in it. A pack of idiots who branded anything different as wrong and cast it out. A den of reclusive fanatics obsessed with dogma. I’d only half-listened whenever she brought it up, yet I still remembered all that venom. No need to elaborate on how many flavors of complaint she had.
Right after we found the girl, the first words out of Apis’s mouth were, “Serves you right.”
But that day I saw it clearly. While I was digging her grave and offering prayers, Apis was biting her lower lip hard enough to draw blood. Her clenched fists trembled. The same woman who always claimed one perfect arrow to a vital point was the most efficient had spent the day claiming she “wasn’t feeling well” and proceeded to pump dozens of arrows into the slave hunter leader’s body. No matter how much the man deserved death, inflicting needless agony on a living being was something I had to stop. Yet for some reason I just couldn’t be bothered to intervene that day. I still remember pretending not to see any of it. Besides, it was a rare chance to watch a man turn into a human porcupine in real time.
When the porcupine later screamed at me for allowing such torture and called me a damned cleric who didn’t deserve the title, I couldn’t even offer a proper excuse. I suppose part of me felt frustrated. I’m not sure anymore. What I do remember vividly is the arrow that took him between the eyes the moment he finished speaking. I did pray for his soul. Even if I nodded off halfway through.
Yes… that must have been when it started. The moment I slowly realized Apis was kind enough to feel genuine sorrow and anger over the death of someone who had nothing to do with her.
But right now, that very kindness of hers was fueling a much uglier kind of fury.
“Apis… I keep telling you, it’s a misunderstanding…”
“Ha! So you’re still defending them! Didn’t I warn you once? Keep shielding every bastard who crosses your path without thinking and one day they’ll stab you in the back!”
Of course I remembered. I felt the truth of those words in my bones. I’d heard plenty of such tragic stories in my previous life—people who helped others only to suffer for it. Experiencing it myself made my blood boil.
“S-save us! Please, save us! Mister Manwhore! W-we were wrong!”
“That’s right! We were just following the boss’s orders!”
“We’re sorry! Forgive us, Brother Manwhore!”
While my mind was already a mess, the men clinging to my trouser legs were rapidly draining what little charitable impulse I had left. They were too terrified to speak directly to the avatar of destruction standing across from me, so their desperate pleas, directed at their only lifeline, were almost pitiable. Almost. If I heard the word “manwhore” from ground level one more time, I was going to be the one doing the killing. I forced my attention back to the person in front of me.
“There are people here whose lives are in danger without immediate treatment. So please give me time to heal them first. The explanation can wait until after.”
“Those worms are that important to you? Weren’t they trying to kill you just now?”
“They tried. They didn’t succeed.”
If they truly deserved death, I wouldn’t have gone this far. Being called a manwhore had raised my blood pressure, sure, but when you thought about it they were only retaliating because some thug had insulted their comrade the same way. Anyone who read even a few of those fist-clenching hero comics at the comic shops in their youth could understand what being looked down on meant in the back alleys.
“You… Are you ordering me around right now…?”
“I’m asking you. Though who knows—maybe if even one of them dies, I really won’t answer a single question you ask me from now on.”
“Kuh! You…!”
Maybe it was because I’d spent months arguing with that unreasonable Saintess, but persuading someone I could actually communicate with—someone I knew, someone with basic judgment—felt almost trivial. Apis was simply quick to anger. She wasn’t so emotional that she lost all sense of reason.
If it had been the Hero standing here instead of Apis…
…There was no need to imagine such a horrifying scenario. None at all.
“Haa… Ten minutes… No, finish in five.”
“Thank you, Apis.”
After somehow managing to persuade her, I gathered the men in one spot and began preparing my chant so the prayer wouldn’t leak. Their envious stares, as though they were looking at some mafia boss, felt unpleasant, but I chose to ignore them.
Ah, while I was deep in prayer, Apis spoke a few indifferent words to them.
“You. Over there.”
“Y-yes?! Me?!”
“Take off your jacket and cover him with it.”
“O-oooookay! Right away!”
I decided to pretend I didn’t notice that the man’s pants were soaked through with some unknown liquid as his trembling hands draped the jacket over me while I continued my solemn prayer.