Haru reached out with his left hand, wrapping it around the front of the divine soldier’s head and grabbing it on the right side in a way that covered its eyes. At the same time, he used the dagger he was holding in his right hand to cut off its head. Was it that easy to cut a living being’s head from its body? There had to be some trick to it. How he applied his strength, or the angle and timing. The way he’d held the divine soldier’s head with his left hand, pulling it toward him, or perhaps twisting it, had to be important, right? The way he’d used the dagger had been different from an ordinary cutting motion too. Haru had twisted his wrist. And on top of that, he’d moved it up and down too, like he was drawing a figure eight.
Haru wasted no time kicking the captain’s body away from him. Manato expected him to throw the head away too, but that wasn’t what he did. Haru tossed it up into the air, then caught it again with his left hand. The top of its head was resting neatly in Haru’s palm.
The divine soldier’s eyes were still shining, and Manato now noticed that it had something resembling a mouth. Where a human would have had a mouth, it had a horizontal tear, which was starting to open.
“Liiight! Lumiarisss! Let there be light!”
It had a voice, though it was pretty hard to hear. The divine soldier had spoken.
Even though it’s just a head.
“This isn’t enough to kill the servants of the gods.”
Haru reoriented the divine soldier’s head so its cut-open neck was facing him and jammed his dagger into it.
“Ahh! Ahhhhh! The liiight! I see Lumiaris’s light! Liiight!”
What was Haru doing? It looked like he was stirring the inside of the divine soldier’s head with his dagger. But it was probably more than that. There must’ve been something inside of its head. Something that, when destroyed, would make the divine soldier that had been able to survive having its head separated from its body finally die. In a normal animal, that would have been the brain, or the heart, or some other organ that it absolutely needed to live.
The divine soldier captain fell silent. The light in its eyes went out.
Haru chucked the head aside, then lowered himself like a wild cat once again and smoothly moved off to the left where there was another—this one wasn’t like the priest or the captain. It looked human. But its skin was brown, no, ashen. It was thin and had pointed ears. Its clothes were similar to those of the divine soldier captain. It carried a sword in its right hand, and a platelike object in its left—a shield. Its eyes were shining, like the others, but it didn’t have any of that shiny stuff on its body, unlike the priest and the captain. There were times when wild animals’ eyes seemed to shine in the darkness. This wasn’t the same, but it felt pretty similar. The eyes themselves were shining.
Haru took down the pointy-eared one using a different method than he’d employed against the captain. It was the same up until he got behind it, but then he thrust his dagger up diagonally through the base of its neck. Haru held the pointy-eared one’s head still and twisted his dagger. The light went out of its eyes, and it slumped to the ground.
“What are you doing, Manato? You need to keep moving.”
Haru beckoned him with his left hand. Manato took off running again, but found himself wondering if this was going to end well for them. As he followed Haru, Manato kept glancing not just to his sides, but behind him too. They were being tailed from multiple directions. Enemies were all around them. The area they were in was densely forested, and there were the remains of buildings all over the place too, which made it hard to see very far. But even then, Manato spotted humanoid forms occasionally. He heard footsteps and voices too.
“Light!”
“O liiight!”
“Light!”
“Let there be light!”
“Lumiaris!”
“O light! O Lumiaris!”
“Bless us!”
Those were words Manato could understand. The rest, he couldn’t.
“Diedenda!”
“Arfinke!”
“Rorbarol!”
But they were probably shouting the same kind of stuff. The intonation was similar.
There’s so many of them.
It wasn’t, like, five or six. There had to be more than ten chasing them. It could’ve been dozens.
Manato had been chased around by packs of dogs and gangs of yakuza before. He was pretty used to being chased, but now he was worried about whether they’d be able to get away. Common sense told him they were pretty much sure to get caught.
Yet, strangely, ever since Haru had dispatched the divine soldier captain and the pointy-eared one, their pursuers had kept chasing them, but hadn’t been able to catch up. Were they just really lucky? Was that all it was? Manato wasn’t doing anything except following Haru as best he could. Haru was the one choosing their escape route, so it probably meant that Haru had been doing a good job of running away.
“You’re keeping up pretty easily,” Haru said with a backward glance. “I’m impressed, Manato.”
“Yeah, well, not as impressive as you. You’re not even running out of breath.”
“Neither are you.”
“Nah, this is getting pretty hard on me. Well, maybe not that hard, I guess. I can still keep going.”
“That’s a big help.”
“You’re the one helping me here, y’know?”
The walls were visible up ahead. There was a section where they had crumbled, forming a breach with slanted sides. Haru likely planned to escape through there.
“Haru! On the right!” Manato shouted a warning.