“Ooh, this is lookin’ pretty fancy.” Gusinus grinned, stirring the soup with a wooden spoon. Their cooks must have really gone all out, evident by the chunks of bacon he found in it. With all the physical labor still to do in the coming days, he was more than happy to see it.
“This year might be the best we’ll ever have...”
“Yeah, last year was pretty rough.” The other ex-soldiers nodded grimly. Before the fall of Evaloti, the winter they had spent under siege had been immensely brutal.
“But hey, somehow we picked up the pieces. We gotta enjoy times like this.” Gusinus snorted, downing a spoonful of soup. If he let them keep talking, the mood would only dampen, and he wasn’t going to allow that to happen on his watch.
Between the City Guard and field workers, they had a few dozen people. All of them sat in a circle in the middle of the village, enjoying their meal of soup and hard-baked bread.
Sure would be nice if we had something good to drink right about now, Gusinus thought with a smile as he looked around at all the people gathered, lit by the light of the cooking fire. He wasn’t sure whether to say “thanks to having a well” or “because of that damned well,” but in either case, their access to water of their own meant the city wasn’t even sending them the cheapest ale. Of course, by morning, they had to be on guard against any fiends. So it wasn’t like they could get really drunk and rowdy in the first place.
“Damn! This is good!” The beastfolk boy’s tail poking out of his uniform was wagging energetically back and forth as he ate. “Huh...?” And then his face went tense, nose testing the air.
The other beastfolk had also fallen silent, all of them smelling the wind.
“What’s wrong? Fiends?” Gusinus asked, downing the last of his soup.
“Probably...but this scent is unlike anything I’ve smelled before.”
“Seems there’s some old blood mixed in with the scent. No way it’s anything good.”
“My fur’s standing on end. What the hell?”
The beastfolk all began murmuring, clearly unsettled.
Gusinus sprinted back to the watchpost. With the sun having dipped below the horizon, he had to strain to see anything in the last of the light. Empty fields that had once been farmland stretched out in every direction.
“Can you see anything?” the beastfolk boy asked, hopping up beside him.
Gusinus didn’t respond. At the very edge of where he could see, there was...something. It was an enormous shadow, gently gliding across the fields toward them. Dog beastfolk couldn’t see that well at night, but the intensifying smell didn’t prevent the boy’s expression from gradually becoming more fearful.
“Shit,” Gusinus muttered, using his fingers to try and gauge the distance between them and the creature. His already spiky hair now stood on end. That fiend...it was still so far away, yet he could see it so clearly. The bushes and shrubs it was passing by...they weren’t as small as they looked.
This thing was enormous. Absolutely huge.
“All hands! To arms!” Gusinus roared, and the whole village sprung into action. The beastfolk boy jumped down from the watchpost and bolted into the village, joining the ranks.
Thank the gods we finished the trench and walls. Fighting something that big out in the open would be suicide, he thought as he watched the boy go.
“Huh...?” But when he turned his attention back to the fiend, it was gone. No...not gone. The light of the stars had only just started winking to life in the sky, but they were now blocked as a shadow fell over him. “What...?”
Looking up, he saw the belly of an enormous fiend as a pair of batlike wings carried it overhead. The earth shook as the creature dropped to the ground. It had effortlessly soared over their trench and walls, landing squarely in the middle of the village.
Trampling over houses and shacks, the manticore lifted its face to the stars and roared.
†††
It was nighttime at Evaloti Castle. In her private room near the library, Claire waited for the time to deliver the regular report to her boss. With nothing else to do in the meantime, she had opened a gate to the spiritual realm and stuck a magical hand inside. With time to kill, she figured she might as well practice her Necromancy, entertaining herself with whatever spirits she could get her hands on.
“Huh...?” She grabbed a surprisingly lively spirit.
“Gaaaaaah! Dammit! I can’t die here!” Out of the spiritual realm came a man, flailing wildly. “Aaaaaah... Ah? Where am I? What happened...?”
The disoriented ghost slowly lifted itself back to its feet. His hair tapered at the back into a spike. When paired with his pointed nose, it gave off the impression of a crow.
“Wait, the village! Is everyone okay?! Why am I... Was I saved?!”
“Calm down. What happened? Please, take your time,” Claire prodded the ghost gently. She was quite accustomed to dealing with panicked spirits like this.
The man took a breath. “A crazy monster attacked Raian Village. It was some kind of huge lion fiend...but it could fly. We had the trench and walls, but it just jumped over. And now everyone...”
A lion fiend that can fly... Does he mean a manticore? Claire immediately guessed. It was no wonder this man had died. No ordinary human could fight a manticore. And if memory served her right, Raian Village was the name of their frontline base.
“I gotta go! They need my help!” Though the man tried to rush out, it was to no avail. Claire’s spell had trapped him within the confines of this room. “What the...?”
“Just so you know, you’re dead. I’m a necromancer. I called your spirit here. You probably died only a few moments ago,” she added. The man looked down at his hands, gaping as he finally realized they were translucent.
“A necromancer... No way. You’re with the Demon King’s army...?”
“Very sharp. That’s right.” Claire was impressed with how clearly he was still able to think. That was further proof he had really just died.
“You’re a human and yet you practice heresy for the demons?! You traitor!” the ghost shouted with a glare, before collapsing with a groan. The man’s body dissipated as his eyes rolled back in his head. Claire had used a spell to pacify him, putting the man to sleep before sending him back to the spiritual realm.
“Me? A traitor? I suppose I can’t deny that.” Claire couldn’t resist using an ironic tone. With a sniff, she reached back into the gate, searching for other ghosts of the fallen from Raian Village.
And boy did she find them.
“No! No! I don’t wanna die!”
“Stay away from me, you monster!”
“Help! Save me! Mommy!”
One by one, she calmed them down, heard their stories, then returned them to the spiritual realm.
“By the looks of it, they got wiped out,” Claire murmured, face expressionless.
And then the time came to deliver her report. Sticking her fingers into the eye sockets of a skull on the pillow beside her, she activated it. A bright blue flame ignited inside the eye sockets. This simple undead spirit was Claire’s means of getting back once she was done. Lying down on her bed, she slipped out of her physical body. Then, making a solid shell of magic, she dove into the gate before her.
Everything went dark. It was like traveling through an endless void. Both time and space became vague constructs within that bottomless darkness. She idly thought how this sensation was probably similar to floating in an ocean at night. Then, something took a hold of her soul and started pulling. The next thing she knew, she was seated at a round stone table in a meeting room. In spiritual form, of course.
“Hey, Claire.” Seated across the table from Claire with hands folded and wearing a smile was her master, Enma. This room was set aside for the leaders of the undead to confer with each other in spiritual form. Each seat around the table had the ability to call on the spirits of those high-level undead. It also worked as an emergency feature to call them back to the Demon King’s castle. “Nothing to report today either, I assume?”
“While I’d love for that to be the case, something came up just a few minutes ago.”
“Oh?” Enma tilted her head, making a show of great interest.
Claire explained what she had learned about the manticore attack, and how many dead she had found.
“Oh my. Let’s pray that their transition will be as painless as possible,” Enma said, making a shameless show of offering a prayer. “So, what did you do with all those souls? Sounds to me like this would be a great opportunity to make some friends!” And then, without missing a beat, she broke into a smile and continued. Claire did her best to suppress her feelings. With her spirit currently exposed, she had to be mindful about keeping her emotions hidden. Otherwise, they would bubble up to the surface and be clearly visible.
“I was pressed for time, so I just let them go. None of them seemed particularly promising anyway.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.” Enma made a sad expression. “But oh well. I’ll make sure to let Zil know right away.”
“Okay. See you tomorrow.”