The Ambush

The door of a house memorable for the way its windows rattled and clamored against the battering wind swung open to face the storm outside. Perhaps the blessing spoken of in the letter had not yet wholly worn off, for the house looked not the least bit worse for wear compared to the blizzard he had walked through to reach it.

"So the torch has yet to go out."

The candles within had long since died, and yet the torches outside still burned. A strange thing, certainly — though a fortunate one, for his purposes. Better to meet one's enemies in the open, and so he would make his preparations there. Small as the settlement was, it was a village all the same, and a village would have a square. There had been one he'd marked in passing.

"Here, then. Here I shall meet them."

And then the torch went out. The blizzard was far too violent for the flame to be seen clearly from here, but there are things one feels even without seeing. So the blessing had been real after all — he had felt something snap, something severed. The spiders would come swarming now. The only living thing left in this village was—

"Me. Alone, and unaccompanied."

When the sword slid free of its scabbard, a blade some ten centimeters wide and seventy long emerged gleaming into the storm-light. He held it up for a moment, studying his own eyes reflected in the steel — then, finding the sight distasteful, he lowered the blade and flung the scabbard away into the snow.

"It gets ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in the way."

Hwoooooo...

Nothing but the raging blizzard — no other sound reached him, no other shape showed itself. He could not hear them; he could not see them. They simply came. Crawling over the drifted snow, scaling the walls of the abandoned village — a hundred of them, perhaps a thousand. Were it not for the storm, the sight would have been magnificent in any number of ways.

"You come early."

"Kieeeeeeck!!"

What greeted his open eyes was, as expected, spiders. Blade crossed against the charge — a severed shriek, the faint resistance traveling up the steel, and beyond the thick, clinging blood of spiders slicing past him, an endless crowd of them flooding in.

"This place will never know a day without the stink of blood."

And neither, he supposed, would he.

"What of this, what of that — what does it matter."

Having caught the scent of their kin's deaths, the spiders shrieked cries stranger still and hurled themselves forward, a vast wave of chitin and legs. To cut and cut and cut would avail little more than cleaving water —

but he was a man who had cleaved the sea itself.

Cut, and carve. The warmth soaking into his clothes, the fishy reek swallowing the air, the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠waterlogged give of the ground beneath his feet and the corpses sprawled across it. Amid every manner of fluid splashed over his head and streaming into his eyes, he still —

held the sword.

A rising diagonal cut from the left sheared through two heads and a leg. Wheeling backward, a thrust punched through a skull, viscera splashing across his face; even as the thrust finished, the blade whipped around, and he felt the crunch of a spider's head crushed beneath a flailing limb before his returning arc bisected two more. Where the spiders' trajectories crossed the sword's, blood flew. Where they crossed his body's, spiders burst apart. A single line linking point to point, one unbroken road — and the lines kept on, unspooling, carving the spiders asunder.

Even mid-swing, when the dead began to pile high enough to fill his sight —

"K-Kieee, kieeeeeeck!!"

— the spiders came shrieking cries gone beyond strange into grotesque, their ink-black eyes bursting one by one, spilling that thick clinging blood as they charged. Very well. Climb over the corpses and come.

The falling blade. The extinguishing of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠life. Countless unbroken lines wove themselves into a single sword. And I am that sword — the Sword God.

He would remember, still and always, that he was the Sword God.

"Whew."

Swinging on in that selfless trance where the body's exhaustion and the mind's wear both fall away, he swung until — at some point, without his noticing — the warmth soaking his clothes had gone cold and stiff upon him. Only when the last of those grotesque shrieks finally fell silent did peace, at long last, come to meet him.

"It has been a long, long while since I exerted myself so."

Had he still possessed his inner qi, he would hardly have butchered them one by one like this — a single sweep of sword energy would have ended it. Well. It made no difference either way. What mattered was that he now knew himself for an ordinary man. So this, then, was what fatigue truly felt like. How wearisome a thing.

"But tell me — why are you all so terribly quiet? This silent, and it is I who ought to be embarrassed."

Come to think of it, they had been just like this back when he'd caught the scarecrows, too. Was the fault in him? Or in their wicked little hearts?

"Ah."

So that was it. His present appearance must be truly beyond all words. His hair was matted into a stiff cake of every manner of filth, gummed and crusted and streaming down; his face had fared somewhat better, no doubt, but would still be dyed the color of spider's blood. Then there was the square itself, its pooled blood spread wide as a small pond, the corpses strewn about its edges — and, playing its own part in the tableau, a sword so caked in ruin that no one could say anymore whether it was blade or bludgeon.

"Hmm... looking at it this way, there really is a great deal of it."

If there was any mercy to be had, it was this: all that blood had lost its color beneath the blizzard, and the corpses would not rot before winter's end, so the stench would spare him a while yet. And still—

"First, I wash. Then I think."

Come to think of it, this was a game, was it not? Then by what logic did the blood and the bodies remain, littering the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠square, making everything so foul? Even if one granted the pursuit of realism — surely there were limits! He turned away from the ravaged square and made for the untouched white snowfields far beyond.

"Quite cold, this."

But where, in a place like this, was he to find water? However cold it might be, there was nothing for it but to melt the snow against his own body... He found himself remembering a body once impervious to cold and heat alike. Back then, rolling in snowfields like these had been nothing but refreshing. He rolled from one patch of snow to the next, scrubbing down his body and hair, and rinsed his face besides. After a long while of it, he began to think that surely he made a somewhat more presentable sight now.

"Surely I pass for something like a person again."

"In truth I should like to strip down entirely, but the broadcast rather stands in the way of that."

"And you as well — out you go."

He lay rolling in the snowfields for a long while before settling at last in one spot, and there he felt it — the snow settling gently, bit by bit, upon his body. Flake by flake it gathered, melting a little against his warmth even as it accumulated, until at length it blanketed parts of his arms and legs entirely. If he kept his eyes open, it even felt as though some of it might drift into them now and again.

"Ah."

So it had not been his imagination. One really could get in. Well. So be it.

"Tell me honestly — don't you find this kind of realism excessive? There is nowhere to properly bathe, and yet the game sees fit to reduce me to such a state."

"Hmm. It seems you hardly agree with me at all."

"They truly spare no effort, even where none is needed..."

To think they had modeled blood clumping in his hair, of all things... This obsession with realism was no joke at all. Had it truly been necessary to go this far?

"Well. It makes no difference either way. I am merely tired, that is all."

"I believe I have done my share for today. So you'll have no complaints about my indulging myself a little, yes?"

"Well then. Have a good day? Hmm — I've no idea what hour it is just now, so let us simply say: take care of yourselves, all of you."

With the notification that the stream had ended, he shut down the game as well.

"Sleepy, I am..."

It felt as though he had streamed for a very long time indeed, and he had never managed to summon the will to wash properly besides. The moment he sank into the bed, his eyes closed — in an instant.