“We won, huh?”
I looked at my right arm. The bones, snapped to pieces, my muscles, torn. Not in great shape. I’d just gotten this baby healed, and now I’d wrecked it all over again. I could worry about that later.
“Filia, heal Elfeit!”
“I’m working on it!” But even though Filia used her recovery magic, the blood poured endlessly from Elfeit’s body. “Wh-why isn’t it stopping?!”
“Enough, Filia… Surely you understand. I’m already dead.”
“No…”
Elfeit slumped. He turned his face to me and said, so quietly, “Boy…fight me. Fight me to the death.”
✦ ✦ ✦
(Elfeit’s POV)
I, Elfeit Mistral, was born into this world 650 years ago. When I was born, I was a considerable disappointment to my people. Despite my ancestry, descending from an ancient line of village chiefs, I had no significant abilities. Worse yet, I am a man. The Wind God is a woman, and so the truly devout followers of the Wind God religion view women as superior to men. And yet I, a man, may be the only truly devout believer in this village left. As pitiful as it is ironic.
My ability was, of all things, Underwater Breathing. One can imagine how useful such a power is in the depths of a forest. Because of this ignoble fate, ever since I was very young, I had been plagued by a small, recurring doubt that wriggled in the back in my mind at all times.
“Does the Almighty Wind God hate me?” Prideful, I suppose, to think the Almighty Wind God would bear any feelings at all toward a single elf. But my abilities were so irrelevant, so contextually weak, and I thought myself so terribly unfortunate to be a man. I couldn’t stop nursing these doubts.
And then Filia was born.
I knew the moment I saw Filia that she had received the blessing of the Almighty Wind God’s love. As time passed, Filia’s abilities at last manifested, and indeed, she was found to possess dual abilities: Wind God and Clairvoyance.
For the first time in my centuries of life, I felt angry with the Almighty Wind God.
Why would She bestow the Wind God ability—said to be the incarnation of the Almighty Wind God Herself— upon Filia? I had worked ceaselessly for the sake of the village, and yet!
I issued an order to the people of the village to ignore Filia, half out of pathetic desperation. A repulsive order it was, born of vile jealously and boundless self-regard. Filia’s parents begged me to rescind it, but I did nothing.
That day marred me. I had veered from the path of the Almighty Wind God’s teaching and inflicted an indelible wound on a single girl.
“Chief Elfeit?! I’ll heal you right away!” A high-pitched voice reached my ears and brought me back to the too-bright world. They say your life flashes before your eyes when… Well, that’s what they say.
I felt a throbbing, searing sensation in my stomach, causing me great pain. Hm, right. I suppose I had acted in accordance with the teachings of my god and saved those children, hadn’t I? “Help whoever believes in the Almighty Wind God,” such is Her command.
Respect for that law was absolute, far more critical than respect for my own life. I suppose I was far from qualified to talk about such things now. Seconds after Filia’s arrival, the masked man attacked me.
It was then that I beheld a miracle.
Filia, clad in the form of a giant made of wind, was unmistakably the figure of the Almighty Wind God Herself. Her silver-white hair fluttered in the wind, divine beauty made flesh. The Almighty Wind God rendered divine punishment unto that masked man. Upon witnessing that spectacle, I was borne down by the weight of my sins.
Ah, my Almighty Wind God, I sealed you away. What could be crueler? What could be lower?
“Wh-why isn’t it stopping?!”
Filia, her abilities released but her form as normal as it could be, healed me to no avail. The wound I had received was most certainly fatal, but more importantly, I no longer had the will to go on. All that remained was a desire for atonement in the eyes of Filia and of the Almighty Wind God Herself. Atonement that I knew well I could never truly reach.
Perhaps. But in the Wind God faith, deeds carried out in your final moments, right before death, are regarded highly. I had risked my life to save those children. Surely the Almighty Wind God would look down favorably upon me.
And yet.
No, I couldn’t be forgiven. Even if She forgave me, I would not forgive myself. I refused redemption.
As I struggled to hold on to the faint light of life, I just barely managed to squeeze those words from my throat: “Boy…fight me. Fight me to the death.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“A fight to the death?”
For a moment, I thought I’d misheard Elfeit, but the look on his face told me I hadn’t mistaken him.
A fight to the death… But why? I mean, I didn’t particularly mind getting the chance to punch the guy, but Elfeit couldn’t really mean it, not in his current condition. Yet he staggered up, unsteady on his feet, even while Filia tried to stop him from moving.
“Chief Elfeit?! You can’t, not now. Besides, isn’t a fight to the death blasphemous in the eyes of the Almighty Wind—”
“Precisely. I care more for the Almighty Wind God than anyone, and I am proud of that fact. For that reason, I cannot allow myself to be by Her side.”
Where Elfeit got this power, I didn’t know, but he slowly approached me, one step at a time. Even as blood gushed out of him in amounts way past lethal, Elfeit just didn’t stop.
“Boy…no, Yuri, was it? Yes, Yuri. Please. Accept…my last request.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
I had to. Sure, I had no clue what was going on with the guy, and I could never forgive him for the awful way he’d acted toward Filia, but… I couldn’t just ignore his request as he stood there facing me, fueled by sheer willpower alone.
“Yuri?!”
“Filia, he’s staking his life on this request. I can’t stop it, and I won’t.”
Even though Elfeit’s stomach was split open, he closed in on me with palpable determination. My hair stood on end. There was no way I was gonna miss a chance to go up against this kind of opponent. When Elfeit was about thirty feet away, I held my fists out.
“Let’s do this, Elfeit.”
“I am in your debt, Yuri.”
Elfeit, too, slid into a fighting stance. The tension, which had ebbed after the fall of Misery Mosery, rose again. I couldn’t say I was feeling peachy keen, but Elfeit was on death’s door. And I couldn’t afford to lose.
“Phew.” Elfeit let out a light sigh, softening the ground I stood on, making it difficult for me to keep my footing. I jumped as quickly as I could, high into the sky. My ribs throbbed with pain. I ignored them. This wasn’t the time to wallow in agony. It would be disrespectful to Elfeit if I let my meager wounds get to me.
“Let’s go!”
I kicked through the air and dove toward Elfeit. Lightning magic rained from above, but I dodged, hopping left and right. The lightning stopped—an opening—and I moved in. A few more rounds like that, and I got right up in front of Elfeit.
“It’s over,” I said.
“Not yet.”
Elfeit changed his stance, switching from a magician’s posture—leaning slightly forward and not really focusing power anywhere—to thrusting his right arm out toward me and adopting a form fit for close combat. I’d never seen that pose before, but it was pretty impressive. A fist fight with me, huh? Interesting.
Instead of using my right arm, which was useless by then, I swung my left, and with all my strength. All of it.
“Let’s do this! Hooah!”
“…”
Our fists met—and Elfeit was blown away. His body sailed tens of feet back, snapping through some trees, before falling to the ground.
Filia ran over to Elfeit. Then, a while after, she came back to me.
“He’s gone.”
“I see.”
I stared intently in the direction Elfeit had sailed. In the moment before our fists clashed, I had heard Elfeit’s final words:
“Take care of Filia.”
What in the world did he mean by that? Elfeit hated Filia, didn’t he? He’d never once dropped his stern attitude toward her, not even at the end. It was hard to imagine he’d turned over a new leaf and changed his mind about her in such a short time. But…
“What’s the matter, Yuri?”
“Nothin’.”
I walked over to Elfeit’s body. He had a sour look on his face, but somehow—somewhere in that—I thought I saw satisfaction. Well, whatever Elfeit intended by those last words, I snorted.
“You don’t gotta tell me that,” I muttered into the wind.
I would protect Filia. It didn’t matter if I had to face off against Sinmarch or whoever. But to do that, I had to become stronger. I would become stronger. Stronger and stronger. This I vowed to Elfeit. More importantly, I vowed to myself.