✦ ✦ ✦
Orphen stopped. His fists hadn’t reached Jack’s body.
His shortsword was already there. It was stabbed deep into Jack, thrust straight into his heart through his ribs.
Blood spilled from it. Dripped down the hilt of the sword as from a faucet.
Jack exhaled a heavy breath. He tried to grab Orphen, but his body was sluggish and Orphen easily stepped back and escaped from his reach.
Jack’s huge body crumbled to the ground. His knees hit the earth and the man in the priest’s robes said, “The battle...was already over...”
Looking at the shortsword stabbed into him, Orphen thought to himself, I must have stabbed him with it instinctively when he hit me.
“Truly...fearsome!” It was ludicrous that he could speak with his wound. He should have died instantly from the blow, yet Jack Frisbee was still trembling. “What is that...? I couldn’t dodge it... No one could...!” He finally collapsed onto his back.
Orphen stepped forward as the ground shook with the impact. He knelt down beside Jack’s face and found that the man in the priest’s robes was still breathing somehow.
“But what will you do now...? Can you kill the goddess with that skill?” The man’s labored breathing grew feverish, forming a white fog against the chill night air. “There’s no way you could... There’s no way you could. Even if you defeated the goddess, what remains for this continent then...?”
He knew it was meaningless nonsense, but Orphen still shouted in response, “We’ll remain! Everyone who we were able to protect will remain! You could have remained too! You could have!”
“What does living on matter...? All you’re left with after destroying the goddess is the sin of slaying a god,” Jack shot back. “Of course, there will be no punishment. There will be no one left to mete out that punishment. But that is why those wounds will never heal.”
“Shut up...” Orphen groaned, but Jack kept going.
“Do you think the continent will be able to bear that sin forever...?”
“Shut up!” Orphen shouted, though he knew he would never be able to stop the other man. The incoherent muttering would cease when he died. And the person listening to a dying man’s last words couldn’t stop them.
A part of him thought Jack knew that and was taunting him. There definitely seemed to be ridicule in his words. But it wasn’t sour grapes, Orphen admitted with frustration. If anything, Jack seemed to be pitying him. Pitying, mourning, sneering at the fool who would survive.
Just as he sneered at Jack himself, who had lived all this time without anyone killing him. The despairing lips of the man in the priest’s robes didn’t allow his words to cease.
“If you’ve escaped the death you were destined for, now you must spend an agonizing eternity in a life you didn’t wish for. Even if people wished for the gods, what they found wasn’t them—that’s the sort of world this is. But if you kill those gods, then you’ll really be forced to admit their lack of existence. Humanity is fated to die out! They have been since the day they decided the gods existed!”
His breath must have finally run out then. There was a pause before he kept going. “No matter how long we extend our lives...all that awaits us is doom.”
“So you despaired?” Orphen asked.
Jack nodded. A satisfied smile seemed to come over his thick, meaty face—as if he was simply happy to finally find a place to speak. “Without peace...there is no point in life. People should desire a life like sleep, they should desire peace and mental stability.”
“I don’t know about that. It’s been nothing but trouble for me up until now, but...it’s also been pretty fun.”
“Heh... Heh heh... Even you will despair one day. The strength in your heart will run out. Just like the pitiful Ryan Spoon Killmarked...and like me!”
With those final words, Jack Frisbee expired. With his eyes still open and his limbs splayed out, his huge body finally stopped moving.
Orphen touched the giant’s face, closing his eyelids. He stood without collecting his shortsword.
Orphen looked toward the tents of the wounded. He couldn’t hear any fighting, but he should still probably return as soon as he could.
With that decision made, he ran off.
Sparing only a single howl.
✦ ✦ ✦
Majic stood in front of a burning tent. How had it caught fire? It wasn’t sorcerous fire. Maybe a lamp inside it had fallen over. Whatever had happened, it had collapsed and smoldered now, leaving him doubtful whether anyone could still be alive inside.
Maybe there wasn’t even a body inside. Majic decided that after looking around. The Thirteen Apostles had likely all left their tents and tried to fight against their attackers. Yet now their bodies lay scattered, dead all around him. It wasn’t just the sorcerers, though; there were flaming remnants of disabled Red Dragons as well. If that strange man in the priest’s robes hadn’t occupied their main forces, they likely would have been able to defend themselves...
There was no point in thinking about that now. Majic began walking, wiping away the tears that had fallen before he knew it. Someone was still alive. A woman sitting dumbfounded in front of a tent much like he had just been. Isabella.
The tears in her skin and bloodstains soaking her clothes told him just how fierce the battle that had occurred in this short amount of time had been. She was on the ground as if her legs had simply given out from under her. Her hands were on the ground, her head hanging as she repeated to herself, “I... I...”
The words of self-reproach tinged with tears were probably not spoken with the knowledge that he was listening. She wasn’t looking his way. She was just crying. Just wailing, lamenting, vomiting in pain with her comrades’ corpses all around her.
Her wounds were not at all trivial, Majic soon realized. He wondered if he could seal up the most serious one, a laceration on her back, with sorcery and kneeled down, reaching out to her, when she looked up at him.
The movement was sudden. She looked at him and then grabbed his hand. “You’re...still alive?” Her eyes swam, and when they settled, Majic realized that she was in shock.
Isabella shook her head and groaned as if finally realizing the pain she was in. “What about Krylancelo?”
Majic summarized what he’d seen, and she took a relieved breath as if to say she couldn’t imagine Orphen losing against a single enemy.
Majic couldn’t bring himself to confirm her feelings, so he didn’t say anything about that. He looked at the tragedy around them and finally said, “There was an attack here after we left.”
His face screwing up with regret, he asked, “I really should have stayed here, shouldn’t I?”
Isabella simply shook her head. “You would have just been another corpse. I only survived by good luck. The first attack knocked me out and threw me into the spirit sorcery wall—which tossed me somewhere far away.”
“There are no survivors?”
“No,” she said. There was a pause, and then she burst into tears. Covering her face with her hands, she wailed, “What is this?! I was ready for this... I should have been ready for this! But why did I have to be?!”
“W-We...” Majic started slowly. His hand shook after Isabella let go of it. “We have to do what we can.”
“What can we do?!” she screamed at him.
Majic swallowed and told her, “Stop crying. The enemy could hear it and come back. If that happens, I won’t be able to protect you on my own.”
Isabella stared at him. Her expression was hard to describe, but she’d obviously been taken by surprise. It was like she’d lost whatever words she was about to say.
Majic bowed his head. “I-I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that...”
But when he looked up again, she was no longer crying. Wiping her tears away, she said resolutely, “No. It’s fine. I feel so pathetic, I don’t want to cry anymore. I didn’t think a kid would say something like that to me. What was that? You want to protect me? Irgitte never even said that to me when she was trying to act like my guardian.”
She closed one eye and stood up, adding, “Let’s meet up with Krylancelo. We can think about what to do next then.”
“Okay!” Majic said, taking off after her.