“Good or evil? Right or wrong?”
Beneath the gray skies, Zald spoke.
“It matters not how future generations will remember us. All that matters is the oath I swore to uphold.”
He stared at the boaz man before him, beaten to the knee, wearing a look of pain and frustration, and carried on regardless.
“That alone I can never go back on. I must complete my duty.”
“Grh…!”
“And so I must devour all that stands in my way.”
A quiver began in Ottar’s hands and worked its way up his arms. Zald couldn’t tell if it was pain, or anger. Perhaps it was fear of what he knew was coming. Either way, the conqueror showed no interest in a man who could no longer stand.
“We’ve spoken for far too long,” he said at last. “I will not wait for the witch. I shall oversee Orario’s demise personally.”
His long, crimson cloak fluttered as he turned and strode over to the white walls of Babel.
“With this sword…Babel will fall.”
However, just as he passed the fallen Ottar…
“…Wait!”
He heard the flagstones crack, beneath the weight of a foot that was not his own.
“…You stand?”
Zald turned to see a shell of a man, his knees crying out in agony. Yet more than any vengeful spirit or enraged animal, Ottar looked to him like a newborn fawn.
His legs quivered. His entire body dripped with blood. His jaw hung open, his breath ragged and hoarse.
Zald turned and took in the grim and pathetic sight.
“What do you expect to do now, stubbornly clinging to life?” he asked. “Do you really think you can stop me like—”
But Zald never finished his sentence. There was a flash of steel.
“!”
A silver streak traversed his sight from right to left. Reflexively, Zald pulled his head back, but not fast enough. The blow caught his plate helm, stripping it from his head and flinging it high into the air.
“My helmet…!”
Humiliation further twisted Zald’s bare, scarred face. Was it a sneak attack? No. From the moment Zald laid eyes on his foe, such a thing was impossible. This was a swing so mighty even the ever-vigilant conqueror could not move out of the way in time. Its source was none other than the very last sword that Ottar possessed.
The boar man huffed in exhaustion, but leveled a fiery gaze at Zald’s exposed face. Time seemed to stop, and it only restarted after the helmet hit the ground with a loud clang.
“What…was that?” said Zald. “On second thought, you need not answer… I can smell it. I know what that is.”
“Grh…?!”
“It’s anger. You are more furious than any man I have ever seen.”
The source of Ottar’s trembling was obvious to him now. It was not fear or pain, but unbridled rage.
Ottar burned with flames of indignation. Like an engine, they drove him to stand and granted him unrivaled strength.
“Do my words touch a nerve?” Zald asked. “Or do my actions incur your righteous fury?”
Zald remained unblinking in the face of Ottar’s fearsome scowl. He peered into the boar man’s rust-colored eyes and scoffed.
“It matters not what you think,” he said. “My path remains unchanged. To save this world…we must destroy it.”
“Enough.”
Ottar’s single word cut through the man’s farce.
“What did you say…?”
“I said enough. Your excuses mean nothing to me.”
“My excuses? What do you mean?”
“I mean, I couldn’t care less about your self-righteous words!”
Ottar listened to the cries of his own aching muscles, the curses of his own crumbling body. They spoke in Zald’s voice on the night of Ottar’s defeat. You are weak. Pathetic.
Ottar allowed those words to fuel his anger, and with trembling lips, he spoke.
“There is only one thing I wish to ask you, Zald, and it is this.”
His line of sight drifted down to the plate mail that covered the rest of Zald’s body.
“…How far has the sickness spread beneath that armor of yours?”
“!!”
For the first time, Zald showed pure shock, just like the witch when her trickery was revealed.
“When I fought you, I felt nothing of this duty you claim,” said Ottar. “All I felt was a burning desire!”
Ottar was not a man of learning. He didn’t have the knack for cunning like Finn did. All the boaz man knew was combat. Only in the heat of battle could he find enlightenment.
“That night when you bested me… I was afraid of you…!”
He cast his thoughts back to the events of six days prior. To the night of the Great Conflict, when he tasted complete and utter defeat at Zald’s hands.
Ottar had been forced to confront the embodiment of his limitations, a wall he could never cross. It was only now he realized how fearful he had been of it.
“That was why I didn’t see it back then. But I do now!”
Thinking back to how he had been that night, eyes clouded by despair, Ottar could only curse how low he had allowed himself to fall.
“You want to be a mountain for us to scale! That is all that drives you! You wish to propel us forward, just as your heroes did eight years ago! Just as Maxim did!!”
His roar rang throughout Central Park. It carried beyond the wall of ice and the mages’ barriers. To many adventurers, it was just a meaningless string of words. But a single goddess at the peak of Babel recognized their significance and narrowed her silver eyes.
Zald, on the other hand, only laughed.
“…Heh.”
He stood before Ottar like the devil himself, defiant and grinning.
“That’s a fanciful theory you’ve concocted, mewling brat. I’m not sure that I follow it, myself.”
“Grh…!”
“But let’s suppose for one moment you speak the truth. Why would that provoke you?”
“Because you have put me to shame!”
Ottar’s answer was simple, and full of raging fire that roasted his flesh from within.
“You’ve made a fool of me, each time I misjudged my strength! You’ve taught me only what it’s like to suffer in defeat and wallow in despair!”
These were Warlord’s bitter memories. This was his truth. Time after time, he fought for the glory of his goddess, only to be humbled at the hands of Zeus and Hera. Though today he was known as the city’s mightiest warrior, Ottar’s road had been a tumultuous one, marked not by triumph but by defeat.
“And even now, I am weak! Even now, I allow the two of you to block my path!”
Ottar never directed his hate at others. Not his goddess, whom he loved and respected like no other. Not Zeus nor Hera, who constantly stood in his way. Not even Zald and Alfia, who laid waste to the city he called home.
Ottar’s hate always circled right back to himself. When adversity, injustice, or calamity got the better of him, he always blamed his own weakness first.
“I am weak,” he roared. “I am pathetic! That is what I curse, not your disappointment!”
Zald grinned.
“And so?”
“Nothing you say can change my mind! There is only one thing I must do!”
“And that is?”
“I must defeat you!!”
“Just try, if you think you can, mewling brat!!”
As Ottar made his passionate declaration, wildness filled Zald’s eyes.
“You have never beaten me, child! What makes you think this time will be any different?!”
His temper flared, like a mirror reflecting Ottar’s own rage.
“You’re a loser! You always have been, and you always will be!! I’ll put you right back where you belong—in the mud!”
“Then I will turn that mud into bricks, and use those bricks to build my kingdom!”
Ottar was not afraid. His strength came from both his oath to his goddess and his own determination. This was his truth. His mud and his bricks. Humility and failure were his bread and water, sustaining him on the way to the mountain’s peak.
Zald raised his slab of steel and swung it, greatly amused by Ottar’s fire.
“If that’s your game, then prove it to me! Let me hear you roar! Show me that in the heart of every loser, there’s a winner yearning to be free!”
These were the words of his god, repurposed to provoke Ottar’s ire. To rekindle his spirit. To revitalize his bones and sinew.
His oozing blood became a coat of red-hot armor. His eyes took on the wildness of a fierce beast, and the boar growled.
“Roooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!!”