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Or was it a wolf? It looked like one, but it was the size of a horse! Where had the enormous beast come from?! Even among the trees, we should’ve seen it sooner! At any rate, I was clearly the one it was after. Its hate-filled eyes were locked on me.
“Lina?!” Gourry whipped around, but he wasn’t going to make it in time. And comparing the size of the beast to my skill with a blade, there was no way I could hold it off on my own. In that case...
As the wolf closed in and bared its fangs, rather than run... I slid head-first between its front legs! I heard the sound of its jaws snapping shut above my head. Its four massive paws pounded against the ground as it charged right over me. As I scrambled back to my feet, Gourry ran over, his sword at the ready.
The giant wolf changed direction amidst the trees with great agility. It turned back toward me, and...
“Freeze Arrow!” Gauging my timing, I unleashed my spell! The wolf was too big to dodge it between the trees.
Instead, it howled—and instantly, a shield of pale red light appeared before the beast, shattering my arrows! A defensive spell?! One of the robes had probably cast it... or more likely, it seemed like the wolf’s howl had activated it.
But just then...
“Wh-What is that?!” one of the knights shouted. Upon realizing the golem wasn’t attacking, they’d apparently recovered enough to be startled all over again by the sight of the mammoth wolf.
“Where did it come from?!” another cried, asking exactly what I wanted to know.
“That magician! She must have summoned it with her magic!” yet another said, this one way off base.
Just then, the wolf seemed to... laugh? Without warning, it turned and dashed at the knights.
“It’s coming!”
“Stay strong!”
“Fight back!”
The knights who were still in fighting shape—some on horseback and some on foot—hesitantly tried to form ranks. But before the two sides even made contact...
“Arwoooo!” The wolf howled again. Ten streaks of flaming arrows darted out at the knights. Their screams rose up in chorus. The wolf plunged right into the chaos, bit down on the arm of one knight through his armor, flung him off in a random direction, then charged at another.
“Regenell!” Hearing the robed man’s resounding voice, the wolf stopped in place. “Don’t play games!”
At this recrimination, the great beast called Regenell got some distance from the knights, turned back to me, and...
“You won’t get awaaay!” One of the knights lying nearby sat up with a roar and plunged his sword into the wolf’s side!
“Awoo?!” The wolf yowled as it leaped back. It didn’t look seriously wounded, but the hit did seem to inflict some pain. The beast turned an enraged gaze on the knight, and...
“Hraaagh!” A cyclops sent the knight flying with one sweep of its arm!
“What?!” the knights cried when they saw it.
Which was totally understandable. The giant wolf had transformed into a cyclops in an instant, after all. It was plain as day this was no ordinary wolf or cyclops. This Regenell creature was probably assuming various forms through magic.
While all that was going down, Gourry, Ran, and I were working together to defeat the robed woman. Or, at least, that probably would’ve been the smart call, but instead...
“Blast Ash!”
Whoom! The black something I conjured appeared near the cyclops. It should have devoured the creature with one hit... but the darn thing dodged my spell. It was as if he’d known where and when it would manifest. That wasn’t just a coincidence. He’d readily evaded it!
“Why?” the commander groaned when he witnessed this. He was reeling in pain from the robed man’s attack, but still stood up shakily and said, “Aren’t you... allies?”
“These are the creeps who ambushed us that night in Lanoma. We assumed they were with you,” I replied, my eyes still locked on the robed duo and the cyclops.
“Certainly not... But if they aren’t with you, then you had no reason to interfere with us fighting each other...”
It was true that if the knights and the robed figures were both after us, we only benefited from them duking it out. But...
“It’s obvious from the way they’re acting. ‘Hey, we can slaughter the knights and blame it on the girl.’ And the idea of them getting away with that annoyed me, so I stepped in. That’s all.”
“You... think we’d lose?” The commander was playing tough, but it was clear he and his knights were already in a bad way. Only a few of them had full health at this point.
I decided to just let that one go and just gestured at the cyclops instead. “You’re not exactly outfitted to fight something like that, are you?”
“Is your goal to have us in your debt?”
“Nah.”
“This won’t change our position toward you, Mistress Lina.”
“I know, okay?” I responded so quickly that the commander fell silent.
“Yeah, and I don’t really like sitting back and watching bad people get their way,” Gourry said, standing by my side.
“Um, let’s see. Does this mean...” Ran tapped her right shoulder with her staff, walked over to us, then turned to the robes. “It’s okay for me to interfere with them, right?”
“Yep,” I said with a thumbs-up.
“You were too obvious, Regenell,” the robed man said teasingly to the cyclops. “Your expression’s too easy to read, even as a wolf.”
“Oh, shut up.” The cyclops—or rather Regenell, currently in the form of a cyclops—muttered back at him.
Normally, I would’ve been surprised to see a talking cyclops, but I’d already seen him transform into one from a giant wolf. Talking was kinda small potatoes by comparison.
Apparently annoyed by the still-dancing golem, he walked up to it and smashed it with one arm. “What’s the big deal? It won’t change what we’re doing. Right, Galdorba?”
“Wrong. You have no business playing around until we’ve finished what we came here to do,” said the robed man—Galdorba.
“Tch. Stick in the mud,” Regenell spat.
“So?” I said, turning my eyes to the group. “Exactly who are you people? I hope this isn’t one of those ‘Whoops, made a mistake and got the wrong person, sorry,’ kinds of situations.”
I figured he’d ignore my snark, but...
“A mistake?” Galdorba responded. “No, there is no mistake. I received a prophecy.”
“A prophecy?” I scowled at this.
Where I came from, there were basically two kinds of “prophecies.” The first were legit glimpses of the future received by shrine maidens. These didn’t always reveal useful or relevant information, but they always came true. The second were more like flashes of insight. These were mostly instinct, and they frequently turned out to be inaccurate in practice.
So... which was this dude talking about?
“Yes! A prophecy!” Galdorba declared loudly and proudly. “‘One in which chaos itself has dwelt shall appear from the land sealed by demons—and bring havoc!’”