No Longer Jobless!

I purchased a map right away. It was a pain to find, but before the day was over I managed to track down a shop that sold maps with details of the Eastern forest, including the location of the Water Dragon shrine. The shopkeep seemed confused about why I would care so much where the shrine was in the first place.

You and me both, buddy.

The next morning, I set out to wait at the city square about an hour before sunrise. I didn’t strictly need to be that early, but Nadine had instructed me to make sure I was on time, and for that kind of pay, I wasn’t taking any chances.

It was still the beginning of autumn, so it wasn’t cold enough yet to make me all that uncomfortable waiting around at the start of the day. Chilly maybe, but not so much that I was bothered by it.

I was equipped with a long sleeved wool tunic and simple leather armor that I had acquired previously for my bodyguard work. Turns out, serving boy attire isn’t really suitable for combat. Who would have guessed.

Adding a coat of some kind would probably become necessary as the winter months approached, but for now I was plenty well insulated.

While I waited, I studied my new map. Nadine thought I already knew how to get to the shrine, so memorizing the route beforehand was a must.

Our destination was farther away than I had guessed. It would most likely take a full week’s travel, or more, for a small caravan to get from Debustadt to the shrine, and that was if we kept up a good pace for the entirety of our journey.

So then, how the hell did Verne-sensei get there so quickly?! Was he some kind of a super-genius mage and he just never brought it up?

No, more likely he was just too humble to admit it. He only cared about his studies—showing off wouldn’t have occurred to him.

Well, any additional travel distance was okay with me. Welcome, even. More time on the trail meant more money in my pocket, and two imperial silvers a day would stack up fast. I had seriously lucked out.

I hummed to myself cheerfully as I thought about what I could do with all that cash once this job was over. Maybe if I had enough left over after getting combat certified, I could move into an actual house!

And that was assuming I wanted to keep fighting for a living. It was exciting when actual fights happened, but more often than not bandits would be deterred by the mere presence of a well guarded caravan, so the only combat I would see was against creatures that were dumb enough to get close to an encampment. The bulk of my time was spent trudging along and trying to look scary, which was both tiring and boring. A far cry from the adventurous fantasy life I had envisioned when I first came to this world.

But once this trip was over, I would have real assets for the first time since my reincarnation. And that meant I had options. Getting a real job with a much lower risk of death was definitely on the table.

The moment the sun crested the horizon, I heard the approaching sound of carriage wheels rolling across cobblestones. These people were punctual. It was a good thing I decided to show up early.

The carriage and wagon arrived at the square, and a handful of brawny workers led the horses to the fountain to drink, just like last time. Or, most of them were tall and muscular, but there was one nervous boy among them, with sandy blonde hair and freckles spattered across his youthful face. I wasn’t sure what his deal was. He barely looked old enough to work.

The green-haired adventuress Nadine exited the carriage, followed by her butler Tomas and one other person who I hadn’t seen yesterday. It was another young woman, similar in age to Nadine.

In contrast to the practically battle-ready girl who had hired me, this one was wearing a dress that made her look more like she belonged at court than in a party journeying to an ancient ruin in the forest. Her yellow hair was split into a pair of short pigtails which she wore low in the back, and poking out from the top of it were a pair of rabbit ears.

A beastkin noblewoman? Those existed?

“Mistress Nadine,” she chittered, “I do not like the way that guide of yours is looking at us. It isn’t too late to hire a new one, right? Right?”

Hey, take that back! My face just looks like this, okay?!

“If he can get us to the shrine, that’s all I care about,” Nadine answered.

So Nadine was the one in charge, not this girl. I had to readjust my image of her. Now that I thought about it, she did sort of have lady-in-waiting vibes.

Nadine turned to me. “It’s good to see that you can follow instructions, Seiji.”

She remembered my name! My heart fluttered a little bit at that, for some reason.

Get it together, Seiji. She may have said your name, but she isn’t being nice to you.

“I’d like to go over some of the details of our route with you, if you don’t mind,” I said.

“Sure.”

Nadine stood ready to listen.

“So, the trip there is going to take at least a week. We’ll want to stick close to the river so that we have access to clean water—”

“That won’t be necessary.”

What? What wouldn’t be necessary, water? Did this rich girl even know what she was talking about?

“Uh, even if you’re carrying enough water to keep your party hydrated for the whole round trip, we’ll still need to make sure the horses are—”

“I said, it won’t be necessary.” Nadine’s voice was more forceful this time. “I would like to take the most direct path possible, so don’t worry about staying near the river. Water isn’t an issue for us.”

Tomas shot me a stare that meant I had better listen to her, or else. He seemed like an intelligent enough guy, so they probably did have some way to keep us all from dying from thirst. I shrugged.

“Have it your way. There is still one detour we’ll need to take to avoid an area where the elevation is too high for your vehicles to cross. Besides that, if we aren’t following the river, it’s a straight shot.”

“Very good,” Nadine said, nodding. She sounded almost smug. I forced myself not to grit my teeth.

“If that’s all you had to say?”

She looked at me expectantly.

“Yes, ma’am.” I felt a growl trying to escape my throat.

“You’re going to be seeing a lot of my crew over the next few weeks, so you may as well get to know them. This…” Nadine waved and the bunny-eared girl stepped forward, “…is my… friend, Inna. She doesn’t like the wild very much, so she will be spending most of the trip in the carriage.”

“There is no need to be so modest, Mistress Nadine. I am but your humble servant, right?”

“R-right.” Nadine didn’t look all that comfortable with Inna calling herself a servant, but she agreed regardless.

“It’s good to meet you, Inna,” I said, extending my hand to shake hers. “I’m Seiji. I hope we can get along.”

Inna eyed my outstretched hand warily. “You aren’t going to do anything untoward with it, right? Right?”

“What do you expect me to do, lick it?”

“Eep!” Inna backed away. “That would be undesirable, right?”

“You tell me! Why do you sound so unsure of yourself?!”

Inna blinked. “This is just how I talk, right?”

Ah. One of those types.

“Just so you know, I wasn’t actually going to lick your hand.”

“The mere fact that you would even consider such a thing… right?” Inna muttered. She hid behind Nadine and watched me like a rabbit keeping an eye on a hungry fox. This conversation clearly wasn’t going anywhere.

“And this,” Nadine said as if nothing abnormal had happened, “Is Tomas, my butler.”

Tomas pulled a white silk handkerchief out of his coat pocket and covered his already gloved hand with it before allowing himself to shake mine.

I just have to deal with them for two weeks, I reminded myself. I could last that long… right?

“I won’t introduce you to everyone else individually, so you’ll have to talk to them on your own,” Nadine said.

Yeah, right. I was going to keep to myself until this job was done except when it was necessary to discuss things with Nadine. As little interaction with these people as possible would be the ideal scenario for me.

***

We set out shortly after that. I led the caravan to the city’s Eastern gate, and from there into the forest. Navigating the large wagon between trees was a challenge, but it was one I had anticipated. That was a big part of what would slow our ETA down to seven days.

Fortunately, the forest wasn’t so dense as to make navigating it impossible. It would have been nice to have an actual road to follow though. There must have been one back when the shrine was still in operation, but that was two thousand years ago. Any trace of the path that existed back then was long gone.

Nadine wasn’t joking when she said that Inna would most likely hole herself up in the carriage. What surprised me more was that both the green-haired girl and her butler chose to walk next to it.

Every so often Nadine would ask me for details about where we were going, which was kind of annoying, to be honest, but at least she seemed to be carefully considering our route rather than just yelling at me to move us along faster. She even helped push the wagon at one point when it got its wheel stuck in a divot. Was that what the adventurer clothes were for—so she could more effectively do her own dirty work?

About halfway through the first day, I tapped her on her shoulder to get her attention.

“What is it?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

“Well, this is about when I would normally say we should stop and take a break for water, but…”

“Oh, is that all? Now is an acceptable time, I think. Tomas, stop the wagon.”

We brought our caravan to a halt, and the half-dozen men in the wagon came out to take a rest. Inna stepped out of the carriage as well. There was no water anywhere in sight. I was curious what kind of trick Nadine had up her sleeve to deal with that.

The dudes from the wagon brought out three large, empty buckets and placed them in front of the horses. They then each started drinking from their own water skins.

Really? They didn’t expect me to believe the horses were going to drink invisible water, did they?

I turned around to ask what was going on. Tomas had set up a small table, complete with tablecloth and tea set. All the cups were empty, and there was no steam coming from the teapot. Inna sat down on a stool next to him.

Uh… what? Were these people crazy?

Just as I started to think that taking this job might have been a very bad idea, Nadine stretched her arms out in front of her and started to chant something. It wasn’t in the language I had become used to hearing in Leauland, but I did recognize some of the words. She was casting a spell.

“O sant draconius Aquariod, fulumen aum tuun pulmonis sola yd caria!”

The air in front of her started to glow a soft sea-green. From the point where the light was coming from, a stream of water burst forth. It twisted around itself like the coils of a snake. Then it shot toward one of the buckets, filling it to the brim.

The glowing water moved to each of the other two buckets and filled them up as well. Once the horses were happily lapping away, Nadine held the magical tendril in the air and allowed the crew to refill their water skins from it.

I stared dumbfounded at Nadine’s spell. That water had come from nowhere. She wasn’t simply controlling an existing element, she was generating it from her own spiritual supply. To create that much water would take a large amount of spiritual power. And she was planning on doing this every day? Come to think of it, she was maintaining the challenging spell without breaking a sweat.

Not to mention she wasn’t using a staff or wand of any kind, yet the precision with which she moved the water through the air was downright graceful. Not even Verne-sensei could have managed that.

“How…?”

Suddenly, in response to my half-baked question, a head poked out from behind the wagon. It was the freckled kid I had noticed before.

“Miss Goldberry isn’t just any old caster. She’s the daughter of a water elemental. I don’t know all the details, but basically that means she’s really good at casting water spells. Like, really really good.”

That much was obvious. But the kid’s explanation actually made sense. Elementals were spiritual beings—the amount of spiritual power they had to draw on was vastly more than any human, elf, or beastkin. If Nadine had even a fraction of that magical energy, she would be capable of some insanely high level water spells without even trying.

And I could tell she was trying. Her concentration was that of a practiced mage, not just a spoiled rich girl who had decided to pick up magic as a hobby.

On top of all that, her human half also came with a natural affinity for all types of chroma magic, including water. She had the potential to be almost as powerful as a full elemental.

“You seemed pretty eager to share that tidbit with me, uh, whatever your name is,” I said to the kid.

“Milos. I’m Milos, Miss Goldberry’s pageboy. And I can guarantee, if you were around someone as amazing as her as often as I am, you’d be singing her praises too!”

I didn’t know about that. Though I had to admit that her magic was seriously impressive.

“So, Milos, how long have you been harboring this little crush of yours?”

Milos instantly turned so bright red not even a tomato could compete with him.

“C-c-crush?! No no, you’ve got it all wrong! Sure, I admire Miss Goldberry, and would seek no greater honor in life than to kiss the ground she walks upon, but I’m not in l-lo— With her… And anyway, I’m not worthy! Far from it! I’m only a humble page, after all!”

“Okay, calm down. I was only kidding.”

He couldn’t be more obvious if he got the words “I love Nadine” tattooed across his forehead, but for the sake of his weak little heart I chose not to point that out to him.

“By the way, do you know anything about—”

I realized halfway through my sentence that Milos had disappeared around the corner of the wagon and was probably hiding somewhere else now. Too bad. He was the only member of Nadine’s group so far who wasn’t a massive pain to talk to.

“Seiji! Come join us!”

Nadine was calling out to me from the table where she sat with Inna and Tomas. Their cups were filled with tea. I could see steam curling off of the spout of the pot. Another impressive spell effect. Changing the temperature of water was tricky, though it was one of the things I was particularly talented at. I mean, before… you know.

I didn’t really want to have tea with the three of them, but I needed to appease this group until they handed over my pay, and the tea itself did admittedly smell quite good. Reluctantly, I sat down on the last unoccupied stool.

I tried a sip of the tea. It was as aromatic and calming as it smelled.

“Woah, this is good stuff!”

“Thank you,” Tomas said with a flourish of his hand. “It is my own personal blend.”

I was lucky that the tea was hot, otherwise I most likely would have downed it all right then and there and regretted not savoring it afterward.

I looked at my employer, the girl at the head of this party who had invited me over for tea. I wasn’t sure what her ploy was. Did she want to gloat now that I was thoroughly blown away by her magic prowess?

“That was quite the spell, Nadine,” I admitted. “You should have told me you could do that. I would have been less worried about our water supply.”

“I— You’re right, I apologize. There are things about me that I prefer not to talk about in public.”

“Like the fact that you’re half elemental?”

Nadine sucked in a breath.

“Where did you hear that?” Tomas demanded. Suddenly I felt like I shouldn’t rat Milos out.

“Um, a little bird told me?”

“It was that pageboy, wasn’t it? I swear, the child is incapable of keeping his mouth shut. Excuse me Mistress, I am going to go have a word with him.”

Tomas cracked his knuckles. For a butler, he was pretty scary.

“Stay seated, Tomas,” Nadine said. The butler obeyed.

The water mage turned her attention back to me.

“Yes, my mother is a water elemental. That is the reason the shrine to the Water Dragon is so important to me. Lord Aquariod was the progenitor of the water elementals.”

Lord Aquariod. I had never heard the Water Dragon’s name spoken before, or any of the dragon’s names for that matter. I hadn’t been sure that they even had names.

“So, the Water Dragon is like your grandpa, then?” I asked.

Nadine spat out her tea in surprise.

“That is blasphemy, right?” Inna said.

“It’s alright, Inna,” Nadine sputtered. “Seiji is like most people, lacking reverence toward Lord Aquariod because of his ignorance, not any kind of willful disrespect.”

I heard her call me ignorant there! That wasn’t a compliment!

Nadine went on with her explanation. “Since the Water Dragon created them, water elementals have always revered him. While the mortal races forgot their loyalty after his death, the elementals never did. So in honor of my mother, I have been traveling around the continent on a pilgrimage to visit every remaining shrine to Lord Aquariod and worship him there. You could say that I am the last priestess of the Water Dragon sect.”

I glanced at Nadine’s outfit. “You don’t really look like a priestess.”

“Maybe not in the sense you’re familiar with. But the clergy of the Protectorate Church aren’t the only devotees still active on the Western Continent.”

I wasn’t familiar at all with the Protectorate Church either, other than having a vague awareness that they worshiped the Protector of the egg the dragon gods were born from, and they were based in the Holy Empire. Their followers did seem to be more common in Leauland than any other religious group I had heard of, which accounted for Nadine’s assumption that I had seen their priests before.

So Nadine was a priestess for a dead religion. Despite my misgivings about her personality, there was something that I could respect about that. She was devoted when everyone else had jumped ship long ago. And she was doing it for the sake of her mother.

Shino’s lifeless body, my knife buried in her back, burned its way into the front of my mind. That’s what I had done for my mother.

My breathing sped up. I leaned forward and clutched at my forehead. Just thinking about her made me feel dizzy.

“Seiji? Are you okay?” Nadine asked in alarm.

“You are okay, right?” Inna said, sounding similarly concerned.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I assured them. “I just got a bit of a headache. I must have drank my tea too quickly.”

“You are welcome to rest in the wagon for the next leg of our journey,” Tomas said. “Your guidance won’t be immediately necessary. It is, as you say, a straight shot.”

“No, seriously, don’t worry about me. Besides, I’m here to protect you, not just show you the way. I can’t do that from inside the wagon.”

Inna looked like she wanted to say something, but Nadine put out a hand to stop her.

“As long as you are alright, we will continue to use your services. We should get moving again soon, shouldn’t we?”

“…Yeah.” I stood up, successfully maintaining my balance with some effort. “The Water Dragon shrine isn’t gonna visit itself. Let’s…”

I trailed off before I could finish my sentence. There was something out there, in the forest. Something with a lot of spirit. I could sense it.

“Get down!”

I dove to the side and grabbed Inna, dragging her to the ground with me. She struggled and shrieked, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that I got to her just in time.

At that instant, a massive form leapt out of the shadows and crashed into the space where Inna had been sitting. Nadine and Tomas jumped back as the table was knocked over and the tea set was scattered across the forest floor.

Three more giant forms stalked out from their hiding place in the woods. They were four-legged beasts, each larger than two of our horses put together. Their bodies were covered in bristly gray fur. Their wet snouts sniffed as they encircled our caravan. We were trapped.

“What are those things?!”

I had never seen anything so big and terrifying in all my time as a bodyguard. I didn’t spend much time in the forest, admittedly, but still.

“They’re called wulfs,” Nadine said, scowling. “They’re more common to the North of here.”

“…Wait, wulf? Like, wolf, but with a U? That’s not very creative.”

Nadine looked at me. “What’s a wolf?”

“This isn’t the time for arguing, right?!” Inna screeched.

She was right. If we didn’t do something quickly, these wulfs would start killing us off one by one. I drew my sword.

Nadine stepped up next to me. “You and Tomas go get the one on the other side of the wagon,” she said. “I’ll handle these three.”

“How are you gonna take on three of them by your—”

“Caerus aum ferrum foria iil hostis!”

Nadine started chanting before I finished my question. As soon as her incantation was complete, the remaining water in the horse’s buckets came together in front of her. It formed into the shape of a large, flat blade, like a giant glowing scythe. The light of the sun shone through it, refracting on the ground in wavy patterns like the kind you see at aquariums.

With a flick of her wrist, Nadine sent the water blade flying toward the nearest wulf. It slashed through the fur and flesh of the beast’s neck, causing it to howl as blood began to spurt from the wound. The water blade swung around again, and all three wulfs pulled back warily.

“…Got it,” I choked out. Why did they even need a bodyguard when she could do that?

Even if I wasn’t needed, sitting back and watching wasn’t my style. I turned around and looked at Tomas. He nodded. The two of us ran past the shattered teacups and circled around the wagon while the howl of angry, injured wulfs sounded behind us.

The remaining wulf was being held back at spearpoint by four of the muscle men who did the heavy lifting for Nadine’s caravan. The fifth of the guys was lying on the ground in a puddle of blood, puncture wounds from the wulf’s teeth visible on his back. I couldn’t see Milos the pageboy anywhere.

The giant, wolf-like beast was stalking back and forth, looking for an opening between the spears to exploit. It wouldn’t take long before it decided to attack again, and when it did another man would almost definitely fall. They were bulky, but none of them seemed all that familiar with fighting. Tomas and I would have to act fast.

I wasn’t sure what the butler was capable of combat-wise. Could he hold his own against an enemy this large and powerful? Nadine sent him with me to fight the wulf, which implied he had some relevant experience at least.

No time to hesitate. I ran straight toward the wulf. It batted a massive paw at me, but I dropped into a slide and the razor claws passed over my head. I was now underneath the creature. I grabbed onto the fur on its side and swung myself onto its back. Drawing my sword, I stabbed the blade into its back.

The wulf bucked up onto its hind legs and threw me off. I hadn’t cut deep enough to do anything more than irritate it. Crap. This was going to be harder than I thought.

The giant beast turned around and prepared to pounce on me. Even without the man-shredding claws I could be crushed under its sheer weight. I started to roll out of the way, when suddenly a chain shot out and wrapped around the creature’s front legs. It went down, its face slamming against the ground with a thud.

At the end of the chain there was some kind of a round, metallic object. My cat ears picked up a subtle noise from it. Tick. Tick. Tick. It was… a pocket watch?

As I stood and reestablished my footing I followed the chain with my eyes from the watch to the opposite end. It led straight to Tomas’s gloved hand.

“Your weapon is a watch?” I asked incredulously as the wulf growled and struggled to free itself.

“It is enchanted with white magic,” Tomas explained. “The chain responds to my thoughts, and can extend to any length I need it to, within reason. It is quite effective at putting ruffians in their place.”

Note to self. Never get on this butler’s bad side.

Tomas’s magic pocket watch was pretty neat, but it wasn’t enough to hold a creature of that size and strength for long. The wulf pulled its front legs apart and wriggled out of its restraints. Back to square one with this thing. We could hold it back, but so far actually damaging it was beyond us.

“Can you sense spirit, Seiji?” Tomas asked.

“Huh? Yeah, I can.” I wasn’t sure how much good that would do us, though. The wulf was plenty big enough to see by normal means.

“Good. Try to follow the enchantment on my watch.”

Before I could ask what he meant by that, the pocket watch shot forward again. Rather than restraining the wulf, it zipped by in front of the creature’s face. The wulf’s snout pointed in the direction the watch had gone. It zipped in the other direction, and the wulf followed it that way, too.

Back and forth, the watch and chain zigzagged around in a speedy blur of unpredictable patterns. My eyes could barely see it moving, but the wulf had no problem keeping track of where it was going. The giant beast chased after the watch like a cat trying to catch a laser pointer.

All of a sudden I understood. I couldn’t see where the physical watch was at any given time, but I could sense the spiritual power that was enchanting it and follow it that way. And if I knew where the watch was, I also knew where the wulf would be the next moment. If I timed this right…

I closed my eyes for a second so I could concentrate on the enchantment. It was clear as day, the quantity of its spirit comparable to that of an average person. That was a crazy amount of magic!

I hadn’t seen any enchantments before, but I knew you had to use your own spiritual power to make them. Who had an entire person’s worth of spirit to give away? Wouldn’t that kill you?

I opened my eyes and shook off my surprise. I was getting distracted, and in the middle of a fight, that could get you killed. Using my magic training, I put all my focus on the pocket watch’s enchantment and the giant beast that was chasing it. I held my sword at the ready, and waited for the watch to come my way.

Tomas saw that I was prepared. With a curt nod, he sent the watch hurtling past me on my right. The wulf pounced. I dashed forward and let the creature fall on my blade, using its weight and momentum to pierce as deeply as I could. With one fell slash, I slit open its side from just under the left front leg all the way back to its tail.

The wulf collapsed to the ground. Its eyes glazed over and its breathing stopped. It was dead.

I was about to celebrate when I spotted movement from the beast’s side. I pointed my sword at it, only to see a slim figure crawling out from the mortal wound I had dealt the wulf. A slimy head of sandy hair showed itself, and then a pair of skinny arms. It was like some kind of horrifying live birth by C-section.

“H-help!”

It was Milos. I grabbed the freckled boy’s dripping hand and pulled him the rest of the way out of the wulf’s stomach. It looked like he was lucky enough to have been swallowed whole.

After a minute, his labored breath began to slow. All of his exposed skin was red from being immersed in the creature’s stomach acid.

“Th-that thing ate me!”

He sounded like he was just realizing this now.

“It sure did. But at least you made it out alive. Unlike that other guy.”

“B-Boris? Then he’s… He’s actually dea…”

I didn’t know the name of the man who had been brutalized, but he very clearly was not going to make it. He was breathing as much as the wulf I just split open was, and his wasn’t the kind of wound you came back from. Maybe if we had a white mage with us, but most magic users specialized in one type of magic, so Nadine probably didn’t know the kind of healing spells required to resuscitate him.

Milos glanced over at the body, and immediately threw up. I patted him on the back. I get the feeling, kid.

“We should return to Mistress Goldberry’s side in case she needs our assistance,” Tomas said. I nodded. Considering how much trouble one wulf had given us, I couldn’t imagine trying to fight three at once, especially without any help.

Tomas and I raced back in the direction we came from, leaving the four remaining men to take care of Boris’s body and make sure Milos was okay. As we rounded the wagon, my heart raced with us. Worst case scenario, Nadine and Inna were both already dead. The rest of us wouldn’t last long without the water mage.

The gruesome sight before my eyes was a much more welcome one. Nadine was panting, arms still outstretched, with the yellow-haired rabbit girl cowering behind her. All three of the wulfs she was fighting had been relieved of their heads. Massive pools of blood had welled up from each of their necks and flowed together, almost reaching Nadine’s feet. She had blood on her face and clothes, but none of it was her own.

Awesome. She was just… awesome.

Inna saw us first. She ran to Tomas and wrapped her arms around his torso.

“Bwaaa! Tomas, I was so scared!”

She was so freaked out she forgot to arbitrarily turn her sentence into a question. Tomas stood stoically as she bawled into his clean shirt.

Nadine wobbled over to us. She was clearly experiencing magic fatigue, the effect of using up too much of your spiritual power at once when casting. Despite that, she managed to maintain a certain amount of pride in her appearance.

“Is anyone hurt?”

The concern in her voice belied her true feelings. As a leader she had to hold on to a certain amount of dignity so others would respect her, but inside she really cared for her people, enough to worry about them.

Suddenly she lost her balance and pitched forward. I reached out and caught her, allowing her to rest her weight on my arms.

“Woah there, careful. We’ve got to sit you down somewhere before you pass out. That was a lot of magic to use up, even for you.”

“Is. Anyone. Hurt?” Nadine asked again, more firmly this time. She pushed me away and stood up on her own.

“Well, um… There was one casualty. A guy named Boris, I think. Milos got eaten, but he’s totally fine. Just a little raw.”

Nadine winced. Not from internal pain—she looked distressed, in a sense that I was quite well acquainted with. Her green eyes were ridden with guilt. She must have blamed herself for Boris’s death.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I told her. She didn’t deserve the burden of a guilty conscience like I did.

“That’s kind of you to say, Seiji, but you’re wrong. None of us would be here on this pilgrimage if it weren’t for me. It was my choice that led to Boris being killed.”

I wanted to argue, but I didn’t know enough about her past to disagree based on anything but assumptions. So I kept my mouth shut.

Before we moved on, we had a short burial service for Boris. Carrying his corpse with us for the next two weeks wasn’t a practical option since we had no way of preserving it, and a rotting body in the wagon would attract all kinds of nasty scavengers that we didn’t want to deal with. So instead the other men dug a grave for him and marked it with a large stone once Boris was lowered in and the hole was filled again.

Nadine used a much smaller version of her water blade spell to carve Boris’s name into the side of his gravestone. She said a few words in the language of magic that I took to be a blessing of some kind, and then the service was over. Milos paused to stand over the grave and sniffle for a few minutes, but even he realized that we had to move on. Our journey was far from over.