The march of the cavalry continued without rest. The sun was already beginning to set; Sid, riding with Dill and utterly exhausted, started to nod off. Dill, who held the reins, supported Sid in front of him, to prevent the boy from falling off the horse. He couldn’t bring himself to criticize Sid’s drowsiness or lack of alertness, though. The boy was not used to riding on horseback, and it was a tiring task. Besides, the presence of this one boy had prevented the atmosphere in the Halberd Brigade from becoming too dismal.
Last night, they had lost a great many comrades. They rode in single file, advancing without speaking a word to each other. The thundering of hooves was all the more clamorous for the cavalrymen’s silence. Conifer trees, characteristic of the northern regions, gradually grew more sparse as they traveled. The air became drier and filled with dust. Against Dill’s chest, Sid stirred. He coughed, as if he had inhaled some of the dust in the air.
“Master, this is...” Sid rubbed his sleepy eyes and gazed across the barren land.
“Right. These are the wastes of Krios.” Dill and Sid had visited this place once before. They had passed through after Dill had rescued Sid from the village at the crossroads, during their journey to Vulcan. “Prodotis is the king of Krios. At the hands of the Tereans in that era, his fortress city was destroyed. I’ve even heard that the forests around it were burned and salt was scattered over the ground so it would never recover...but I can’t think that one of the ancients, having just been resurrected, would go anywhere else. He would have to start by trying to return to his home.”
“Didn’t Prodotis fight against the Ex Machina? Hearing that the Tereans destroyed his city...that wasn’t how the play I saw went at all.” Dill smiled in response to Sid’s doubts. He remembered the story of the play well, as both he and Nue had performed in it before.
“You’re right. The historical reality is quite different. The direct opponents of Prodotis were not the Ex Machina themselves, but the faithful who worshipped them. In other words, the people of the northern region of Boreas, which included Vulcan, and us, the people of Terea. So...I think he probably still bears a grudge against us.” Dill looked up at the sky, searching for a group of seven stars—the stars of the Seven Generals, who had inherited the war in defense of Krios after the death of Prodotis and had later died fruitlessly themselves.
History was written by the victors. However, truths that were once buried can sometimes be unearthed through the work of archaeologists and philologists. Dill was well aware of the fact that the idolization of Prodotis and the Seven Generals through their depictions in plays and epic poems had an undercurrent of guilt to it.
As Dill looked up at the sky, he saw the stars begin to move. The constellation that was said to have existed in the night sky for the past five hundred years suddenly broke apart. The very first to fall was the brightest of the seven stars—Kranos. Next was Nefritis, followed by Achtida, falling in turn and tearing through the evening sky as they approached.
There was a buzz amongst the men of the brigade as they realized that the shooting stars were headed toward their own destination, the ruins of Krios.
“Hey now, hey now! I hope I’m wrong, but...”
“When we went through the contract, I’m pretty sure it said that Prodotis would be our only opponent... It looks like we’ll need to request a special bonus from Halberd.” In spite of their vehement protests, the mercenaries, still atop their horses, were already making preparations for battle.
The stars raining down from the sky opened parachutes halfway down, and decelerated. One of them was blown away by the wind, and its course was redirected toward the mercenaries.
“The white whale, Falaina of the Seven Generals of Krios...!” Dill murmured the name given to that star when it still resided in the sky. Now that he had a closer look at the hero’s star, it was revealed to be a conical hunk of metal, which shuddered and produced a disturbing noise from inside.
The strange noise sounded once again. With the vessel still airborne, a musclebound arm tore through the side of the metal cone and stuck out like a chick’s beak breaking through an eggshell. But even seen from afar, it was clear that the arm was too large for an ordinary human. Even compared to Halberd, who rode beside the mercenaries on a chariot drawn by four horses, it still looked enormous.
“Be careful! If the legends are true, the hero Falaina is a scion of the race of giants!” The metal cone shook after opening a parachute and decelerating, and the giant’s arm that had broken through the wall of the craft proceeded to rip off its own parachute. There was a metallic clang as the craft sped downward and slammed against the ground—and in the next moment, the metal shell was blown apart from within.
There was a roar that made the mercenaries’ hair stand on end. The giant’s bellow, greater even than thunder, echoed as far as the plains of Vulcan. The man who emerged from the vessel was twice as tall as Halberd. Standing atop the shell of a colossal bivalve, he stared up at the heavens with his mouth agape.
The proportions of his body were, as one might expect, different from those of a normal person. His back muscles were disproportionately enlarged compared to the rest of his body, giving him the silhouette of a man carrying a heavy load on his back.
His entire body was muscled—even his arms and legs, which compared to his massive hunched back seemed almost slender, bulged like the fluted pillars that supported the roofs of temples, and he loomed with undeniable strength. His skin, which was surprisingly smooth and fair of complexion, contributed even further to the heroic giant’s splendor and resemblance to a marble carving.
“A giant of purer blood than I...even the Titans we encountered in the Holy War had much thinner blood than their godly forebears and could not sustain such colossal bodies. My boys, engage this enemy with care! This is, without question, the greatest of all heroes in this world!” With this long-awaited, legendary foe before him, Halberd could not conceal his excitement.
The hero Falaina, returned to the world in the present day, slowly became aware of the brigade. Trampling the bivalve shell at his feet, he turned to stare directly at the mercenaries. His chalk-white skin burned bright in the evening sun, and the growl he let out to intimidate the men shook the very air, like a portent of a coming earthquake. The cavalry of the brigade fanned out to surround Falaina, then stopped.
“You men of Terea are persistent, not to mention hasty... Can you not even wait for me to assemble my army of undying soldiers to attack Vulcan?” A dark vortex whirled into life between the giant and the mercenary band, and out of it a voice echoed. This was the power of teleportation, stolen from the Reincarnator Summoner. It was of course the king of Krios himself, Prodotis, who emerged from the portal.