The Outskirts

After I had been hunting the Demon Lord for quite some time, I started to get a feel for when demons were nearby. It's not easy to describe. It feels something like when you hold your hand very close to your face without touching it. You can feel it's there, even if you can't feel anything at all.

I can still do it, though not as well as I used to. I thought it was something like reading or writing, where you could figure out the trick and be done with it, but it seems it's much more than that. It seems that even if my mind carried around Mathilda, this body is not yet able to do the things Mathilda could do. I am starting to suspect it never will.

Then again, I never really learned how to do it aside from feeling my way around, so maybe if somebody had taught me properly in the first place it wouldn't be such a problem.

Still, it feels unpleasant not being able to do as well as I used to. If I could feel their presence better, maybe I could have found those birds before they attacked the people on the roof. I need to practice. I thought this world did not have demons, but it does. If I cannot sense them, great calamity will befall us.

I remember once, while I was traveling along the edges of the Empire's territory, that I came across a small village of the King's subjects. It wasn't much more than a few houses surrounding a well, and no more than two or three small families, but they were proud enough that even when I told them of the Demon Lord's coming, they refused to leave.

I showed them my royal crest, and asked if they could spare some food, or a place to rest, but they spat at me and closed their doors instead. I suppose that it might have been a bit much to ask for food so far out from the capital. They probably didn't have enough to feed themselves.

I decided it was acceptable enough to help myself to some of their water instead. I was an Imperial Princess, after all, so in a manner of speaking the water already belonged in part to me. I filled my water pouches and went on my way. I could feel them watching me from their boarded-up windows.

I went back into the woods, thinking to cross the mountains or at least find a place to camp. As luck would have it, I found a young hornback. I killed the animal, and took some meat for myself, but it would have been too much to carry around. I decided to take it back to the small village. They could eat the meat, and then tan the hide, if they wanted. This was before I had found the dimensional pocket, and so I couldn't carry that much with me even if I wanted to. I may as well let the villagers have it, I supposed.

By then it was dark, though, so instead of heading straight back, I hung the hornback from a tree and made a small camp to wait out the night.

The next morning, when I got back to the village, they were all dead.

A pumpkin troll squatted by the well, the feet of one of the children still protruding from its giant mouth. It turned its huge spherical head and looked dimly at me while it kept on chewing as though nothing were wrong at all.

I can remember the sound of it. All the insects and animals in the forest had gone silent, and now there was just this monster sitting by the well, chewing.

A pumpkin troll is nothing like a wraith. A wraith is stupid, and mostly made of black muck and the memories of whatever it inhabited. A pumpkin troll is vicious and clever and cruel. I flung the hornback at it, took my sword from my waist, and rushed at the thing.

The pumpkin troll knocked the hornback out of the way with one of its long arms and lurched up off the ground. It darted forward, its long legs bent low, so that it seemed hardly to have stood from its squat. Before I could get close enough to attack, it swatted me with both hands at once.

The blow was enough to send me reeling backwards. The troll aimed one more lazy swing at my head, but I slipped on something and fell on my back, barely avoiding having my head lopped off. It was undignified, but at least I managed to hold onto my sword.

Thinking back on it, I suppose if I had known then what I do now, I might have been able to give the thing a proper go. But as it was, I turned my back on it and bolted back into the trees. After I had run so much that I dropped exhausted to the ground, I discovered my hands were stained dark red. It had been the villagers' blood that I had slipped on.

The pumpkin troll never bothered chasing me. Maybe it decided that the hornback was a good enough offering, or maybe it was full from eating all the villagers.

I hid in the woods and crept back later to check for survivors, but there were none. The pumpkin troll was gone. I could see where it had waddled into the forest.

Was it just happenstance that the troll had found the village? If I backtracked and searched around the route I had taken to get there in the first place, I might have found evidence of that. Maybe not. Either way, if I had known that sort of monster was in the area, if I could have felt its presence, I probably could have done something about it. Maybe I could have been more persuasive when I warned the villagers. Maybe I could have killed it.

I wonder if anybody was still alive when I first got back. Were they watching me through the window, still? I don't suppose it would have made much of a difference in the end.

I want to take a bath. But every time I go to the bath house, that idiot blond-haired girl clings to me and asks if I'm alright.

Of course I'm alright.

What business is it of hers in any case?