Fantasy and Ash

The seventh day of our journey arrived without incident. If all went well, we would reach the Water Dragon shrine at around the ninth hour, which translated to three p.m. back on Earth. I wasn’t sure how long Nadine intended to stay, but in terms of travel time our trip would be halfway over at that point. I felt a twinge of sadness at the thought.

Before we set off, Nadine and Inna took a quick detour to go bathe. The river was far enough away that going all the way there would have slowed us down by a full hour, so they just went far enough out into the forest to take a sponge bath without being seen by the men.

As the caravan’s official bodyguard, I was the only one who was allowed to go along with them.

Inna was not excited about that the first time the girls had decided to take a bath earlier in the week, but when I quietly reminded her of our promise, she relented. One of the times that Nadine would be the most vulnerable was while bathing. She needed someone to watch over her just in case.

N-not to say that I was watching or anything! I kept my back to the girls and my spirit sense on the lookout for monsters, like a good bodyguard. I couldn’t help it if my sensitive ears picked up some splashing and giggling, nor did I have full control over what my imagination chose to do with that auditory information.

Once bathtime was over I was sure we would start moving again, but the other guys weren’t preparing to proceed when we got back. Was I missing something? I felt out of the loop, which was strange since I was one of the primary people making plans for our itinerary.

I didn’t want to come across as stupid and ignorant to Nadine, so I pulled Milos aside to ask him why we were staying put instead.

“If Nadine is in such a hurry, shouldn’t we be setting out as soon as possible? But no one seems even remotely interested in hitting the trail any time soon. What gives?”

“As soon as possible is right,” Milos answered, “but it’s not possible for us to move on just yet. Miss Goldberry has used too much of her magic. She won’t be able to create water for us today unless she replenishes it. That’s what I overheard, anyway.”

“Replenish it?”

That wasn’t something I was aware you could do, outside of waiting for it to build up again on its own.

Milos nodded. “Miss Goldberry has become a skillful forager since we started this pilgrimage. She saw some recovery herbs earlier and is planning to go gather them before we set out for the day.”

“Recovery herbs? What are those?”

It sounded like an MP restoration item from a fantasy video game, but as Inna would put it, it couldn’t be that simple, right?

“I don’t know much about them, other than that they’re used by mages. If you want to know more you should ask Tomas, or Miss Goldberry herself, since you get to talk to her directly whenever you want,” Milos pouted. He was not good at hiding his jealousy.

“I think I’ll do just that,” I announced. It was okay if I stoked his fire a little, wasn’t it? Just a bit of teasing that I had learned from… from Romy…

Welp, forget that, time to go talk to Nadine! I shot Milos an apologetic look as I retreated from his presence. He stuck his tongue out at me in response.

“Ah, there you are, Seiji,” Tomas said. I was standing behind him and not making any noise, but that didn’t matter since he could distinguish me from other people by my spirit. He really was good.

Tomas, Nadine, and Inna were all standing near the carriage, engaged in some sort of discussion. They stopped talking and turned to me as I approached. Had they been waiting for me?

“I’m intending to backtrack a short ways to gather some recovery herbs,” Nadine said, confirming what Milos had heard. “If it were fully up to me I would ask you to stay and help guard the caravan, but Tomas says he can handle things here and insists that I take you with me. Inna agrees with him, so it’s two votes against one. Are you up for it?”

“You’re the boss. If you say I’m going with you, then I’m going with you.”

“In that case, I would like to formally ask you to accompany me on my recovery herb hunt, Seiji.”

“I formally accept,” I said, bowing. I tried, but I couldn’t contain my grin.

“Is there something funny about what I said?” Nadine asked. She sounded genuinely confused. Her naive rich girl side didn’t come out like that often, but it was always kind of cute when it did.

My grin widened. “Not at all. Let’s go.”

“On second thought, taking a grinning animal like him with you might make you even less safe, right?” Inna said.

“Who’re you calling an animal, bunny girl?!”

“It was a joke, right?”

“The way you say that, I’m not so sure.”

“Enough,” Nadine cut us off. “I don’t like to see my friends arguing.”

F-friend…? Wait, no way. There was seriously no way that… oh man, really?

Sorry Milos, now Nadine is my best friend.

I was stunlocked, my grin frozen in place. The water priestess had to grab me by the back of my collar and drag me off with her.

“Be back soon!” she called out as we left the caravan behind.

I got a hold of myself and started walking on my own about thirty seconds later.

“So this stuff we’re looking for. Recovery herbs. What are they exactly?”

I wasn’t a mage, so I figured my lack of familiarity with them was reasonable enough not to raise Nadine’s suspicions when I asked the question.

“A recovery herb is a species of plant that has an unusually high spirit density,” she explained. “They can be used to accelerate the physical body’s recuperation process, similar to how healing magic works, or they can restore vitality to the spiritual body and allow one to replenish some of their magic. It all depends on how you prepare them.”

A one size fits all MP and HP recovery item. How convenient!

It was good to hear that Nadine was taking care of her spiritual health. Inna wouldn’t have to worry about her neglecting her magic reserves and hurting herself if she could use medicine to make the issue go away. These recovery herbs were kind of amazing.

“Of course the effect happens slowly, the same way physical healing does, and you can only recover so much from outside sources. I will still have to be careful how I use my magic for a time.”

I take back everything I just thought! Recovery herbs were worthless!

Okay, maybe not completely worthless. Every little bit counts when your life is on the line.

It didn’t take long before Nadine spotted a small patch of recovery herbs. They had long, flat, oval-shaped leaves that layered over each other and formed together into a small circular plant on the ground. Their roots didn’t reach very deep, but they were deceptively hard to pull up. As Nadine demonstrated, you had to get the whole plant for them to work, because if you killed it the excess spiritual energy contained within would all disappear.

“Is this all we need?” I asked once we were finished uprooting the patch. I could already feel sweat forming on my brow.

“It would be nice if we could find a few more.”

Nadine took off her mantle and used it to bundle up the herbs we had acquired so far. We continued to follow the tracks of the wagon and carriage backwards toward where Nadine had spotted more of them previously.

“Not to be critical, but couldn’t you have bought this stuff in town before we left?” I asked. “I bet you could find it at the market.”

“I probably should have,” Nadine said. “I had my men stock up while we were in Debustadt, and as none of them are magic users, they didn’t think of it. The blame for that oversight is on me. I could have reminded them.”

Suddenly she stopped walking.

“Seiji, can you sense that?”

I closed my eyes so I could focus on my spiritual senses. A large outpouring of energy was coming from a certain distance to our right. It was far enough to be faint, but the fact that I could tell it was there in the first place from so far away was a sign that whatever it was had an enormous amount of magical power. I shuddered.

“Let’s stay away from that. I don’t know what it is, but it could be dangerous.”

Nadine was already heading straight toward it.

“Come on!” she called, waving to me before she took off in the direction of the unidentified magical object. I had no choice but to follow. If we both die, it’s not my fault!

A little ways off the route I had chosen for us we came to the area of higher elevation that we had avoided to keep the carriage and wagon from getting stuck at the bottom. This part of the forest was quite rocky, with large boulders jutting out of the ground at odd angles. It might have been the handiwork of a powerful earth mage at some point in the distant past.

In the side of a weird, craggy hill there was a crack just large enough for a person to fit through. And as luck would have it, the thing Nadine was following was definitely inside.

She slipped into the crack before I could object. I groaned. Mysterious, narrow caves were the worst possible location to run into giant, bloodthirsty monsters. There would be no way to escape.

Bracing myself for a fight, I squeezed into the cave after her.

What I saw inside was not at all what I had been expecting. The whole cave was a single mid-sized chamber. The walls and ceiling formed the shape of a rough dome. Not a single monster was in sight, but the entire ground was blanketed in recovery herbs. Probably hundreds of them—definitely more than I could count.

With the sun obscured I could see that each of the herbs was glowing slightly, releasing a soft white light that filled the chamber and formed interesting highlights and shadows from below. It reminded me of being outside at night during a full moon.

Nadine was standing in the center of the chamber, arms outstretched, just basking in the recovery herbs’ glow. The way they illuminated her face and hair from below made her look even more attractive than normal.

“Look at this, Seiji! I’ve never seen so many in the same place at once! Isn’t it juss amazin’?”

Bit of an accent leaked out there. Did that often happen when she was excited? I found myself wondering, not for the first time, where Nadine and her companions had originally come from.

“It’s beautiful,” I breathed. Something about being in this place made me feel the need to speak softly, almost reverently.

“I use recovery herbs frequently, so I’m pretty used to distinguishing what their spirits feel like.”

So that’s why she was so confident in charging toward them. Could have told me that she knew it wasn’t a monster.

Nadine glanced at me shyly. “I know we’re in a hurry, but… do you mind if I lay down for a minute?”

“Not at all.”

I stood near the cave entrance while Nadine fell backwards of her own free will and landed on a soft bed of glow-in-the-dark plants. She closed her eyes and smiled, absorbing the feeling of being swaddled by the herbs.

“I wish I could stay somewhere like this forever,” she sighed. “Never having to go home and face my responsibilities again. Surrounded by nothing but pure, tangible peace. I’m sure I could be happy like that.”

Yes, stay here! Don’t ever leave!

Is what I wanted to say. But as amazing as Nadine was, I knew I couldn’t keep her all to myself. That wouldn’t be fair to everyone else. Besides, she had a mission to complete, and when that was done, she had people waiting for her back home.

“You would never get to see your mom again either,” I reminded her.

Nadine slowly opened her eyes. “I know. But it’s a nice dream.”

Raising herself to her feet, she continued, “I guess it’s time to wake up. I don’t want to disturb this place, so let’s grab just a few more herbs and then head back to the caravan.”

I pulled up two or three recovery herbs, then threaded the crack to exit the cave. I went out first to make sure the coast was clear, since the spiritual energy from the herbs was so overpowering that neither Nadine or I could sense anything beyond it. There were no horrifying death-beasts lurking around, so I signaled for her to come on out too.

I didn’t sense anything on the walk back, either.

…Something was wrong. There should have been more animals in the forest around us, but all I was picking up with my spirit sense was trees and rocks. Were they scared of the recovery herbs? That didn’t seem right—if anything I would think that other living things would be attracted to their spiritual warmth. Maybe something else had scared them away?

As we got closer to where the caravan should have been, my unease mounted. I couldn’t sense anyone there either. I looked at Nadine. Her brow was furrowed in consternation. She must have noticed our companions’ strange absence as well. We locked eyes, and I could tell we were in agreement about what we had to do.

Wordlessly, we ran toward the place where we had left the caravan. Closer and closer, but I still didn’t sense anything. Where could they have gone? I was starting to pick up on a scent of some kind. It smelled kind of like… like…

Smoke.

Frantically, I picked up the pace. I must have been imagining things. I was just smelling the smoke from the fire they used to make breakfast. There was nothing to worry about. Everything was fine. Everything was—

I emerged in the small clearing where we stopped for the night and saw the charred remains of the carriage. Bodies were strewn across the ground. The stench of blood mingled with the smoke and ash.

There were more corpses than the total number of people in our party. Maybe our friends had escaped, and these husks belonged to people I didn’t know. T-that had to be it.

A thin form was lying face down on the ground right in front of me. Its hair was matted with blood, but I could see a few blonde strands poking out here and there. Trembling, I turned the body over.

Milos’s freckled face stared up at me, his glassy eyes unblinking and unfocused. His body was devoid of life, his soul departed for the spirit realm. There was no denying it. I couldn’t sense anything from him.

As Nadine caught up to me, I searched the bodies for other recognizable features. There was Tomas’s tailcoat, stained dark red at a point originating from a massive tear in the back. And there was Inna’s dress, so consumed by dying flames that it barely covered her blackened body. Her drooping ears didn’t even twitch.

None of them had made it. They were all gone.

***

Nadine covered her mouth with both hands. Her wide eyes were filled with shock and despair. I had only known these people for a week, but for Nadine they were lifelong friends. I wished I had the words to comfort her.

I held my throat as my stomach revolted against me. I had to keep it together, for Nadine’s sake.

“Wh-what happened here?” she said. Her voice was shaky.

I wasn’t sure, but I needed to find out. Whoever did this could still be out there. I took a deep breath through my mouth so as not to inhale the malodor, then stepped over Milos’s hollow shell and toward the rest of the aftermath.

The wagon and horses were gone, as were all of our supplies. Aside from the smoldering carriage, the only thing left in the clearing was death.

The dozen or more bodies that didn’t belong to our crew formed a crescent shape around Tomas’s corpse. Many of them were barely recognizable as members of the mortal races. Their bodies were crushed and their limbs splayed at unnatural angles. Dark marks ran across their skin that were shaped like strings of tiny chain links. Some of their skulls were caved in from blunt force impact.

Tomas’s pocket watch lay on the ground next to the open palm of his bloodstained glove, its chain an ordinary length. The watch face was broken, and I could sense the power of the enchantment leaking out of it.

You took a ton of them with you, old man, I thought. You should be proud.

I didn’t know who the assailants who attacked the caravan were, but by examining their bodies I could tell what they were. I had fought against plenty of their kind before on the road between Debustadt and Cilstadt, though never in these quantities.

“Bandits. I’m not sure where they came from or what they’re doing here, but the people who did this were definitely bandits.”

Nadine walked forward and stood next to me. She was surprisingly calm, though I could see tears welling up in the corners of her eyes. She was putting on a brave face, the same way I was. It made me wonder if she had experienced tragedy before.

“Is… is this all of them?” she asked, vaguely indicating the bandits that Tomas had killed.

I shook my head. “It’s likely that there are more nearby. They’ve thoroughly looted the caravan, so there’s no reason for them to come back here. That means we’re probably safe where we are for now, but we’ll need to move soon if we want to avoid attracting their attention.”

“I see…”

Nadine grimaced as her gaze shifted from the bandits back to the lumps of flesh that used to be Tomas and Inna. The droplets in her eyes started to run down her cheeks. She reached up and violently wiped them away.

“Maybe we should leave now,” I suggested. I reached out to put my hand on her shoulder, but I thought better of it and pulled back before I could. Being touched by someone like me wouldn’t help to improve her mood.

“No. I can’t leave them behind so easily. We will have to dig more graves, and then—”

Nadine cut her sentence short at the same time that I noticed a presence getting closer to us. At least ten human-shaped spirit forms. My ears picked up faint sounds of talking and laughing just after.

“It’s them,” I whispered.

Frantically, I scanned our surroundings for somewhere to hide. The only viable place was a large tree to our left, surrounded by a higher than average amount of underbrush. I quickly ducked behind it, and Nadine followed suit.

The large, ragtag group of people entered the clearing. They were predominantly men, though not entirely, and most were human, though, again, not all of them were. The handful of beastkin in the mix looked even meaner than the rest.

All of them were armed but unarmored—a sure sign that they belonged to a gang of bandits. No one else was reckless enough to run around with weapons unless they had ways of protecting themselves. Their state of dress was as eclectic as their race and gender disparity. One especially hairy man with little round bear ears looked like he might not be wearing anything.

“What I don’t get is why we have to go back and check the wreckage in the first place,” I heard one of them say. He had cat ears like me, as well as a long feline tail. A double bladed axe was casually slung over his shoulder.

“Gotta make sure they’re all really dead,” a female, spear wielding human responded. “We can’t let anyone find out that we’re here. Not so soon after moving into the new hideout.”

“Yeah yeah. But we already checked them once. Believe me, there are no survivors. I’d bet my axe on it.”

The cat beastkin held his weapon out in front of him. The sun glinted off its polished blade. He brushed his thumb against the edge.

“Yup. That’s damn sharp.”

A drop of blood formed on his thumb, which he proceeded to stick in his mouth.

“You oughta be more careful with that thing,” the bear beastkin said. He was standing next to the guy with the axe, and he was taller, so the weapon’s blade was level with his neck. He gulped nervously.

“Leave me alone. I know what I’m doing,” axe guy said. He rubbed his face against the side of his weapon.

“You can make love to your axe later,” the woman snapped. “Area patrol, now.”

I would have assumed she was the leader, except none of the other bandits were listening to her. She stamped her foot in frustration.

“Hey you dastards, get your asses moving!” shouted a short human man with a fierce face. I hadn’t noticed him until that moment because he was partially obscured from my view by the spear woman, who was a full foot taller than him. His right arm hung limp at his side, and it had thin chain marks crisscrossed all over it. As far as I could see he wasn’t holding a weapon.

Immediately the other bandits started checking the bodies. So the little guy was the leader? Did that make the woman his second in command, or was she just bossy?

That kind of thing wasn’t worth speculating about at a time like this, I mentally reprimanded myself. I had to focus on keeping Nadine and me alive.

The spear lady and another woman with mouse-like ears and whiskers sprouting from her cheeks meandered in our direction. For a second I was scared that they were going to check the woods, but luckily they stopped at Milos’s body. The human woman looked down at it, scowled, then thrust the tip of her spear into his throat. I cringed.

“He looked pretty dead already,” the mousy girl commented.

“Never hurts to be extra sure.”

“Seriously though,” mousy said, slinging her arm around spear lady’s shoulders, “how lucky do we have to be to find a hideout as good as that old-ass shrine? We get bothered there less than the last place, and we’re literally hidden in plain sight! It’s pretty damn hilarious, if you think about it.”

“Don’t touch me, mongrel,” the spear lady growled.

Mousy backed off and held her hands up in surrender. “Okay, okay, no need to be so bitchy! We’re all part of the same team here.”

“That doesn’t make us equals.”

The mouse girl whistled. “That’s quite the superiority complex you got there! We’re both castoffs from society, the lowest of the low, and where your ears are on your head don’t change that. You ain’t no better than I am.”

“Wanna bet? How about I run you through, then we’ll see who’s better?”

“I-I don’t think that’d prove anything,” mousy said, but she visibly paled at the suggestion.

The spear lady turned away from her mousy ally. “Anyway, the shrine is a godsend. Or a demonsend, I guess, since the god who ran the place is friggin’ dead.”

“Hey, I didn’t know you was religious!”

From there the two of them walked away, and I wasn’t able to catch any more of their conversation.

Aside from a growing sense of dread, there was one main takeaway I got from listening to them. And I had a feeling Nadine wasn’t going to like it very much.

A brief glance in her direction confirmed my suspicion. Her teeth were grit in calm but observable anger. These bandits had killed her friends and defiled the shrine she was coming to worship at. If I were in her position I would have already lost my cool and tried to slaughter them all. Seeing how distressed she looked was nearly enough to make me want to do it.

If I could say anything, I would have. I would have told her that I understood what it’s like to lose someone important to you (though for me being abandoned by my sister Hana was harder than Shino’s death was). I would have lied and said you get through it eventually. I would have reminded her of all the shrines she had visited during her pilgrimage that weren’t overrun by murderous bandits.

But instead I stood still, in perfect silence, until the bandit gang was positive that our friends were all dead. Then they left the clearing, and Nadine and I were alone again.

We waited for what must have been almost a full hour to make sure the bandits weren’t coming back again. Once we were confident we were safe, I let out a breath that I felt like I had been holding the whole time. I slumped against the side of the tree. Staying still for that long was exhausting.

Nadine reached into a small pouch on her belt and pulled out a large handful of coins. She held it out to me, offering me to accept it.

“I don’t carry much money with me, but this should be enough to cover your payment for the full two weeks. Take it. I’ll continue from here on my own.”

I stared at her in unbelief. Was she being serious?

“You’re still going to the shrine? Didn’t you hear those bandits? It’ll be crawling with them!”

“That’s exactly why I have to go.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

Was it possible that the deaths of her friends were affecting her so badly that she was going crazy?

“I know what it looks like,” Nadine said, “but I’m not doing this for revenge. I don’t want to see Lord Aquariod’s shrine defiled by murderous criminals of any sort. It doesn’t matter whether they killed my friends or anyone else’s.”

For a brief second my soul shook with guilt. How would she feel if she knew I was one of those murderous criminals she was talking about?

“So… you’re really going to fight them?” I asked nervously.

“Yes, I am. But there’s no need for you to risk your life for my quest. Please, go back to the city, where it’s safe.”

She shook the coins in her palm, willing me to take them. If I did, I could leave all this behind now and start the new life I wanted. I could become a respectable member of society, with a job, and a home, and maybe even friends who didn’t hate me and died tragic deaths at a much lower rate than the ones I had met recently. In short, I could have everything I wanted.

I closed Nadine’s fingers over the coins.

“No. I’m coming with you.”

Nadine started. Her beautiful green eyes were open wide in shock. I wasn’t sure if she was surprised with my response, or the reality of the situation had finally caught up to her and her mind couldn’t handle it.

“B-but, why?”

She was on the verge of crying again. Or maybe that was just me projecting my feelings on her.

Why? There wasn’t an easy, singular answer to that question. Because I liked Nadine, and I didn’t want her to die. Because it felt like the right thing to do. Those were part of the reason, but they didn’t show the big picture. Nothing I could say would be enough to do that.

“I don’t know. Because it seems important to you? Anyway, I’m not going to let you take on those bandits all on your own. What kind of man would I be if I didn’t step up to protect a pretty girl who’s about to charge recklessly into danger?”

Nadine narrowed her eyes at me. “I’m not stupid Seiji. I know there has to be more than that.”

Yeah, now probably wasn’t the best time for jokes.

“Fine, you’re right. I… I made a promise to Inna, before…”

I choked on my words, and had to swallow before I continued speaking.

“I swore to her that n-no matter what, I would protect you. There’s no way I’m gonna break that promise now.”

“I…” Nadine hesitated. It was hard to argue with the posthumous wish of a dear friend. “I just don’t want you to get hurt too. I’ve had enough of this.”

That I could understand. I would probably say the same thing.

“Then I won’t get hurt. I won’t die. And neither will you. We’ll take on those bandits and win.”

I’ll admit, I sounded crazy. Even then I realized it. But I also believed we could do it. It was a beautiful contradiction. Or maybe a deadly one.

“…Alright,” Nadine said finally. “I will be counting on you, Seiji. Just try not to get in my way.”

In spite of myself, and in spite of everything, I smiled.

“Yes, ma’am.”