“You look after Nue. I’m going to kill them all.” The warm, dark curtain of the cloak opened, and Sid was left behind. A terrible feeling of loss assaulted him as Dill’s broad shoulders seemed to slide away into the distance.
Dill’s arms whirled as he slashed at the Reincarnators. Spurts of blue blood formed a mist that hung in the air. Screams and curses rang out all around, as though Dill was playing them like a musical instrument. In between slashes, Dill continued to stir up hatred for the Reincarnators. He maintained both rhyme and rhythm, elevating his battle will to a form of music. His cries seeped into the people’s ears, driving them to join the slaughter.
Thump. Thump. Sid could hear his own heartbeat. He knew he was witnessing the birth of a legend. Each time Dill moved, his long, rust-colored hair fanned out wide and streamed behind him, gracing the battle with color. His gestures as he readied his sword or hurled a spear, along with his voice now raised to its limits to encourage his comrades, drew everyone’s attention. Wherever Dill stood became the center of everything. Even in the midst of this bloody battle, Dill was a performer.
“...Oh, right. Nue!” Sid suddenly came to his senses, and searched for the girl with red eyes. She was still sprawled on the ground, facing downward. He could see the back of her black-haired head. Still, she didn’t budge.
“Are you all right?! Hang in there—your father is fighting for you.” As he picked Nue up her eyes opened slightly. They were unfocused.
“Grr...” A vague groan escaped her lips. For Sid, this was still cause for celebration.
“Yes! She’s alive...”
The battle was nearing its conclusion.
“Damn you! Curse you! How dare you, you uncivilized barbarians!” barked the Reincarnator who had tried to drag Sid away by his hair. He was surrounded. The spear Dill had thrown was still stuck in his abdomen. His breath was already faint.
“You won’t get away with this. This is blasphemy against science. This is like some primitive savage beating Einstein to death! It shouldn’t happen... You’re making a mistake!”
“What’s the matter? You seem pretty worked up. Why would a parasitic Reincarnator, who can nest in another body and be reborn, worry about death? Aren’t you proud of your infinite lives?”
Dill held off on the finishing blow. He wanted to mock the Reincarnator, infuriate him, and plant fear in his heart. The bodies of Reincarnators were interchangeable, but not their souls. By wounding their souls instead of their bodies, he could break their will to fight. Or conversely, it might drive them mad with humiliation, leading them to challenge Dill again in a new body.
The Reincarnators stocked thousands, or perhaps tens of thousands, of bodies. Somewhere amongst them was the body of Iris Earhart, Dill’s daughter. Retrieving her was Dill’s true objective.
“Ignorant barbarian... You misunderstand us. In the end, our work will benefit you too! And despite that, you still fight us!”
“Oh, I know. Self-justification is practically a cliché in war. Science? Civilization? Don’t make me laugh. That’s just an afterthought. What you Reincarnators call civilized behavior is nothing more than rehashing the same plundering that has gone on since the dawn of time.” Dill held up a spear. “Whatever you take by violence can be taken back by violence. My name is Dill Steel-Link. Remember it well. It’s the name of the man who killed you.”
The Reincarnator turned up the corners of his mouth and smiled. “No, you can’t kill me. As for why...” The Reincarnator gestured with both hands as if he was parting the air in front of him. Dill opened his eyes wide, then swiftly plunged the spear forward. However, the Reincarnator was no longer there.
“My Skill is teleportation! I’m a Jumper! By the way...” The vanished Reincarnator reappeared outside of the encircling warriors. “I’ll be taking this child’s body with me!”
Sid realized too late that the man was already behind him. The spear that should have pierced the Reincarnator’s abdomen wasn’t there. At this moment, the spear was instead falling uselessly to the ground before Dill’s eyes.
Without warning, something cold and sharp pressed against Sid’s neck. It was the tip of the syringe. The plunger was depressed with great force, and the blue liquid trapped inside the syringe—the blood of a Reincarnator—flowed mercilessly into the nape of Sid’s neck.
“Come, Kaoru. Be reunited with your fath—”
“Grrrrraaaaaa!!!” The syringe shattered, along with the hand of the Reincarnator holding it.
As if propelled by springs, Nue Kirisaki had pounced, and with the full force of her jaw, crunched down on both.
Time froze there. Nobody, nothing moved. As everyone else froze, Nue continued sinking her teeth into the back of the Reincarnator’s hand with a sickening grinding noise. Sid witnessed all this, still afflicted by the blue blood that had been pumped into him. The adorable girl, Nue Kirisaki, had drastically transformed, her red eyes blazing.
Her jaw was clearly dislocated, her mouth opened well beyond its limit. Sharp teeth like those of a beast now sprouted from her pink gums. Her canines were especially long and wide, looking more like stakes than teeth. The white pebbles stained with blood on the ground might have been the teeth that had previously occupied her mouth.
Huh, what’s going on?
Nue?
Don’t tell me, are you—
Not human?
The shock of this revelation robbed Sid of what little consciousness he had left, and he fainted dead away.
“I am the unavoidable fate, the merciless blade, the unrelenting executioner! I am Dill Steel-Link!”
Dill came barging in and tore the Reincarnator away from the children, kicking him to the ground and planting a boot on his back so he couldn’t escape again. Then he cut off the Reincarnator’s head without hesitation.
“Let’s go.” After a moment of heavy breathing, his shoulders moving up and down, Dill grabbed Sid and Nue, each with one hand, and held them close to his sides. Without a second glance at the shocked refugees, Dill hurried to leave.
“Don’t go anywhere.” Dill looked over his shoulder. The refugees had moved to surround him. In one arm he held a girl transformed into a beast, in the other a boy who had been injected with the blood of a Reincarnator. His arms were strained.
His rust-colored eyes glowed like molten metal bubbling inside a furnace. “Just try and lay a finger on these children.” His rusty hair billowed in the wind. “I don’t care if you’re avatars of the Ex Machina up in heaven—”
“My hero...I thank you.” At the head of the crowd, the man in priest’s robes knelt down on the ground, and bowed his head low.
One by one, the other refugees followed suit. The acrid air that had thickened around them was blown away by the wind.
Even so, Dill glared at the crowd for a spell, meeting the people who displayed such respect and gratitude toward him with an expression of hostility.
After another long moment passed, Dill suddenly turned to go.
“I’m no hero. This victory belongs to all of you.”
This time, Dill really did leave.
For a while now Dill had been suffering from a sharp pain in his left arm. From the moment he had picked her up, Nue Kirisaki’s abnormal fangs had been buried in his flesh. Dill had lost too much blood, and now he occasionally found himself swaying from side to side.
He walked in silence until he came upon a ruined temple—the same temple he had camped at just a while ago. The destroyed remains of the stage and countless bodies lay on the ground.
The noise of boulders crumbling, which sounded close to thunder, stopped Dill in his tracks. The roar came again, and then yet another roar. Trampling on its own sacred ground, it appeared.
“W-W-W-W-Warning. Mutant d-d-d-d-detect—[insufficient battery charge remaining]—ed. Workers are advised to evacuate—[insufficient battery charge remaining]—i-i-i-i-immediately.”
A giant without a head or arms. A bunch of dangling cables resembling a dignified beard. The decayed god of Redguard that had been worshipped at the temple—Ex Machina Quiet.
The void where the eyes of the machine god had surely been when it possessed a head appeared to look down at Dill, who held Nue in one arm. Dill glared straight back with his own rust-colored eyes—the very eyes that had belonged to the hero onstage. Even standing before the god he believed in, Dill stood up straight, feet planted firmly on the ground. He wouldn’t budge.
“Warning. Workers are advised to evacu—[2,512 updates available]—ate immediately. Warning. Work—[unable to connect to the Internet]—ers are advis—[insufficient battery charge remaining]—ed to evacu—[application error]—ate imme—[restarting]—diate—[insufficient battery charge remaining]—ly. Warn...”
Then the Ex Machina stopped and did not move again. The two competing synthetic voices fell silent, together with the pulse of its engine. The god was long dead, after all.
Dill dropped his gaze to look at his hands. The two children dangled from his arms, unconscious. He relaxed his tensed shoulders and breathed a sigh of relief. Dill Steel-Link was not a hero. Not a hero—a father.
So, uncle. Who do you care about more—Iris or the gods? This was a conversation he’d had with his daughter more than ten years ago. Dill had read her an old story by lamplight in her bedroom as the rain drizzled outside, but the story had frightened her. In it, a god abducted young girls as a form of courtship. The children of mortal men had no means of resisting.
Dill had answered her question. He prefaced it by saying, Those who properly respect the gods will not be forsaken by the Ex Machina.
However, if based on my faith and your beauty, a god came to abduct you... Dill had made her a promise. Reassured, Iris slept through the night.
Iris was gone now. Five years ago, she had been killed by a Reincarnator. Dill had been unable to keep his promise. So far, he hadn’t even been able to retrieve her body.
Dill looked down at the children he held in his arms. An unconscious person was quite heavy, and the weight of two lives hung from his arms now.
His chain mail cloak clanged against the ground, and the sound of his footsteps grew faint. His legs shook from the loss of blood. Despite this, the arms holding the two children remained firm.