Chapter 11: Temple

Otonashi’s memory was bone-chilling cold. Shiori worried the cold would be fatal. But this was just Otonashi’s memory.

Shiori wasn’t cold or in a ruined building.

She pulled from Otonashi’s memory and was flooded by his thoughts.

He accepted the cold. If they lit a fire, they’d die at the hands of Colossal Kryptics, like the last expedition.

Reliving the memory through Otonashi was strange. His muscled body shivered.

The other soldiers huddled for heat. The huddle wasn’t intimate but business-like. It was no more friendly than customers in a store.

Otonashi wasn’t invited. They didn’t trust a Speaker, even one vital to their mission.

They were soldiers. They killed Speakers and died doing so. It was rare to escort one, much less two.

The other Speaker, Ribald, entered the building. Soldiers feared all Speakers, but this was one of their own, born and raised in their remote city.

“Spare Bastard,” the captain said to Otonashi.

It wasn’t Otonashi’s turn to patrol, but he didn’t complain. The soldier scheduled for patrol had a cough. If he died of illness, they’d have a corpse to burn lest it rise as a Kryptic Ghoul. So Otonashi went.

“Spare,” Ribald said with a nod. He never included the ‘Bastard’ part, even though Otonashi was a bastard. “Temple’s active.”

Otonashi’s eyes widened. They could complete their mission.

Ribald shook his head. “Nothing visible yet. I felt it.”

Ribald was nearly twenty, older and stronger than Otonashi. He had taught the younger Speaker a thing or two about swordplay. In exchange, Otonashi shared a handful of Speaker secrets, surprising Ribald.

Speaker secrets, the source of their power, could only be gained from empowered writings. Shared secrets weaken, dividing power among Speakers who know it. Killing those with your secrets made you more powerful. Speakers didn’t share.

“The captain won’t let us move on the temple unless it is active,” Ribald continued. “He won’t let us move closer. That killed the first expedition. But keep an eye on it.”

Otonashi ventured into the dead city of Elserwald. Shiori reached out for his other memories to distract from the cold.

Otonashi was a bastard. His mother had been a concubine that fled a powerful Duke after The Final Word cast all into darkness. His father, a servant, died in the escape.

She fled to Felthal, pregnant and hunted. She earned begrudging respect as a friendly Speaker. She protected the town, birthed her bastard son, and hid for years.

Perhaps word of a powerful Speaker in Felthal reached the Duke. Perhaps it was the bad luck that typified Otonashi’s life. The Duke’s hunter squads found his mother.

Otonashi would never forget when he felt the secrets she had stolen from the Duke and shared with him grow stronger. He was ten when she died. Otonashi had shared certain secrets with Ribald to weaken the Duke’s favorite tools.

Elserwald had fallen shortly after The Last Word shattered the realms. Bodies rotted in the streets. They had laid down to sleep and never awoke.

Left alone, the bodies would eventually rise if living souls came too close. Otonashi had needed to strike down Ghouls on several patrols.

As Otonashi rounded the corner, he saw the Elserwald Temple.

It glowed, not the faint glow described by an expedition party. Its wall shone radiant in the gloom. There was a living Princess.

Otonashi ran to the empty mansion that had served as their headquarters, and his heart sank. A column of smoke rose. He heard fighting.

The building’s front half exploded into the street. Masonry and timber chunks crushed the building across the street. Among them was an impaled Ghoul.

Otonashi struck, speaking a word that severed its head. Two more strikes ignited a pair of Ghouls in the opened building.

Otonashi’s reaction was instant. Shiori was still stunned by the explosion while he moved with battle-hardened instincts. He was a boy, but familiar with killing.

“Spare!” cried Ribald, pinned under three Ghouls. A dead soldier lay nearby.

Ribald had blown out the building’s front as an escape route, but there were too many Ghouls. Otonashi, with a calmness that increased Shiori’s panic, touched the ground. He wasn’t slow. He was deliberate. This attack had to succeed.

He spoke a word and pushed the ground. Stone spikes thick as swords impaled each Ghoul.

“Spare,” Ribald called, “captain thought you’d sold us out.”

Otonashi pointed to the smoke. “Someone lit a fire.”

The captain stepped out of the ruined building and cursed.

“Doesn’t matter,” Otonashi said, “temple is alight.”

Eyes widened throughout the company. If they accomplished their mission, they could leave for home.

The captain hesitated, looking at his dead man, who might rise as a Ghoul.

With a word Otonashi lit the corpse. The captain’s eyes held both hatred and gratitude. Soldiers can manage both at the same time.

They ran for the temple.

A roar split the air.

“Colossals,” Ribald said. Everyone ran faster.

“Spare, guard the door,” the captain pointed to Otonashi. The captain hated the boy, but he was a soldier and could follow orders, even if that order was, “die fighting Colossals so Ribald can complete the mission.”

Ribald would speak the ritual, but Otonashi was brought along in case Ribald died. He was the ‘Spare Bastard’.

Ages ago this was a Royal temple. It renounced Royal evil long before the city was named ‘Elserwald’, yet it remained connected to Royal power.

Like most, Felthal’s elders hated the Royals but times were desperate after The Final Word shattered the Realms. Their mission was to seek the new Princess as an ally.

The Colossals came. Shiori had read about mighty Speakers unleashing their power, but she never imagined seeing a twenty-meter monster crushed by a building.

Otonashi knew neither mercy nor hesitation. A severed windpipe from a thrown wrought iron gate would kill a Colossal as dead as crushing it under a dozen tons of rock or opening a chasm to consume it. Otonashi did all three.

They were mountains yet Otonashi crushed them like toys. He reveled in battle. He hated this part of himself, but it was the only thing Felthal wanted of him.

Then he heard Ribald’s death cry.

Otonashi spun and broke through a solid stone wall before the cry had stopped. Ribald, reckless, had failed to search for dangers in his excitement for the ritual.

A red-eyed shadow pulled blood-stained claws from Ribald’s abdomen. An assassin’s strike from the shadows.

Otonashi killed that assassin, the one behind it, and the one hiding near the ceiling. There were too many. The Colossals pounded on the temple’s outer walls.

There are forbidden spells even Speakers fear.

Otonashi spoke and a pearl of pure white light ascended from his palm. It cast unforgiving luminosity that spread like water and burned like fire.

More assassins were revealed by the light and died in pain.

Soldiers cowered as the pearl ascended. Otonashi flicked a finger and the mote of light entered the ritual stones. The corrupted light of Royalty replaced the eerie green-blue light and the temple shone bright. Outside, Colossals screamed. The lucky ones ran. The rest died as the light consumed them.

“What have you done, Bastard?” the captain asked in the silence that followed.

“I’ve doomed this place. For the mission,” Otonashi answered.

Ribald looked up at the scouring light. “How could you?” He clutched a mirror over his wound.

“You opened the portal to her?” Otonashi asked.

Ribald shook his head. “Felt magic where the Princess is hidden. She may be in danger. They got me before I could pull her through the portal. Someone else came through and took the other mirror and ran.”

Otonashi tried to lift Ribald. “Get up, I’ll open a portal and get you through before it comes for the light.”

The ground shook. It was coming for the light. Shiori felt fear in Otonashi for the first time. She didn’t know what was coming, but neither did Otonashi. After The Last Word, something terrible had come to consume all light.

Ribald coughed blood. “It’s a bad wound. Go, Spare.”

The rumbling grew.

“Go,” the captain said with hate in his eyes. The captain would sacrifice Otonashi to save a true soldier of Felthal, but he’d sacrifice his whole platoon to save Felthal itself.

Otonashi acted on orders before he had time to regret it. The remnants of Ribald’s portal distorted the air over an ancient circle. He lifted the mirror and bade the portal open.

Perhaps the unholy light, Otonashi’s fear, or sabotage by whoever came through the portal made the portal unstable. Reality tore open, shattering ancient stone and exposing the Deep, a place Otonashi had only read about in his mother’s books.

He fell forward as reality distorted. The mirror was pulled from his hand and he barely survived the fall into another world.